tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post7760211629855054092..comments2024-03-28T08:57:53.180+00:00Comments on Darwinian Conservatism by Larry Arnhart: Nietzsche, Darwin, and Christian MoralityLarry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-88547480390436633202012-03-01T15:02:46.537+00:002012-03-01T15:02:46.537+00:00Look here, here, here, and here.Look <a href="http://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2010/01/does-darwinism-make-morality-fictional.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>, <a href="http://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2009/11/did-darwin-naturalize-genocide-or-does.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>, <a href="http://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2008/08/ross-lincoln-and-biblical-morality-of.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>, and <a href="http://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2006/01/religion-morality-and-darwinism.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>.Larry Arnharthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-31143183746384245052012-03-01T14:35:15.865+00:002012-03-01T14:35:15.865+00:00My mistake then! If you could just point me to th...My mistake then! If you could just point me to them, I'd be obliged. <br /><br />- JPAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-59453944012169125552012-03-01T01:32:20.281+00:002012-03-01T01:32:20.281+00:00Mr. Musselboro,
I have responded to the points yo...Mr. Musselboro,<br /><br />I have responded to the points you make in many posts on this blog.Larry Arnharthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-3278847059434000332012-02-29T22:50:48.833+00:002012-02-29T22:50:48.833+00:00This seems to me a highly misleading post. As I&#...This seems to me a highly misleading post. As I'm sure you must know, Darwin was notoriously inconsistent when it came to moral questions, and to the category of the "natural." Cherry-picking quotes is a game that can be played to support all kinds of positions. So, for example, we also find him saying this in the Descent: <br /><br />"Nor is it probable that the primitive conscience would reproach a man for injuring his enemy; rather it would reproach him, if he had not revenged himself. To do good in return for evil, to love your enemy, is a height of morality to which it may be doubted whether the social instincts would, by themselves, have ever led us. It is necessary that these instincts, together with sympathy, should have been highly cultivated and extended by the aid of reason, instruction, and the love or fear of God, before any such golden rule would ever be thought of and obeyed.)"<br /><br />in other words, without religion, the social instincts on their own would not have "naturally" produced something like the golden rule. Note he's not saying (as you do) that religion is "important" for the development of the golden rule, he is saying it is <i>necessary</i>.<br /><br />We might also note this passage: <br /><br />"It may be well first to premise that I do not wish to maintain that any strictly social animal, if its intellectual faculties were to become as active and as highly developed as in man, would acquire exactly the same moral sense as ours. In the same manner as various animals have some sense of beauty, though they admire widely-different objects, so they might have a sense of right and wrong, though led by it to follow widely different lines of conduct. If, for instance, to take an extreme case, men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering."<br /><br />Which strikes me as approaching a radical form of moral relativism. <br /><br />He's not consistent on this score, but that's my point. The category of "the natural" is a problem for Darwin, one we can see him struggling with throughout his entire writing career. To pretend otherwise is to do his work a disservice. <br /><br />--JP MusselboroAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-25840391460931122042009-10-29T12:10:18.184+00:002009-10-29T12:10:18.184+00:00Rafinha,
What do you think about my posts arguing...Rafinha,<br /><br />What do you think about my posts arguing that Nietzsche in his later writings showed his religious longings by suggesting that a new morality would require a new religion (Dionysian)?Larry Arnharthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-56306806326670184372009-10-29T12:06:35.956+00:002009-10-29T12:06:35.956+00:00Rafinha,
What do you think about my recent argume...Rafinha,<br /><br />What do you think about my recent arguments that Plato (or Plato's Socrates) does not really endorse any moral cosmology? It is not clear that Socrates supports the sort of cosmology set forth by the Athenian Stranger or Timaeus, or even the Idea of the Good in the REPUBLIC.<br /><br />Darwin stresses the natural sociality of human beings that lead them through social instincts to develop morality. Edward Westermarck elaborates this idea.Larry Arnharthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-31331199510945303132009-10-29T01:25:11.060+00:002009-10-29T01:25:11.060+00:00Darwin might have had a conception of ethics and m...Darwin might have had a conception of ethics and morals that is close to the Christian one, but he doesn't explain where he derives it. For even his explanation of why primitive man would act in a moral, sociable way - because he responds to praise and criticism by his fellows - presupposes that egoistic drives guide his actions. Egoist interests cannot be a safe source from which to derive ethical principles, especially altruistic, sociable ones - either from individual men or whole communities - because such interests might vary in accord with circumstances. Different types of behavior might be potentially useful to the egoistic interests of men in particular, and societies in general, and, as such, in what respects to the primitive man in question, nothing can guarantee that his behavior will necessarily follow what his community determines as praiseworthy - if it is in his interest to betray his community, or if he can conceive for himself a good that is greater to the admiration of his fellows - and nothing guarantees that what his community determines to be done - what Darwin presupposes, without any given reason, to be something similar to that which the golden rule predicates - will be equal through time as its needs varies.Rafshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01746094202823415912noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-54060905688006739672009-10-29T01:24:12.378+00:002009-10-29T01:24:12.378+00:00Hello.
I think your post is a very well-written o...Hello.<br /><br />I think your post is a very well-written one. However, I disagree with it. I think the thesis you defend, that one can deduce an altruistic morality through naturalistic premises, reflects a very precocious position on the matter.<br /><br />To present my reasons, I need to commence with a rather long introduction. (By this, I don't mean to imply that you don't know the things I expose here, however, in order to make my case more persuasive, and for myself to follow the reasoning I develop, I feel I need to write all those things.)<br /><br />First of all, ontological naturalism implies the following question when one takes its premises to ethics: where does one derive all notion of good and evil, if, in a universe constituted only by matter and energy, there is not, and there cannot be, ethical facts independent of the thinking mind? (Transcendental religions and metaphysics don't need to bother with such questions. Platonism, for example, presupposes an Idea of the Good that is independent of the material world; and Judaism and Christianity derive all notion of good and evil from the laws given by God. Neither of these alternatives fit a naturalistic worldview.)<br /><br />There are two possible answers to the above question: first, that those notions are derived from circumstances which man finds himself in, and as such they (the moral notions) are mutable along with those circumstances; and second (and this seems the position you defend here), that the content of such notions are innate to human mind.<br /><br />Nietzsche preferred the first answer over the second for the following reason: because the variability of the moralities produced by different societies, religions and philosophies, doesn't testify to any stable notion of good aprehended by human mind. Homeric poems - of which it is said that they informed education in classical Greece - offer a notion of the good action that is different from the Bible's; Greek and Roman philosophers also thought morality to have a different end (personal happiness)* from that which Christians professed to believe (the neighbor's well-being or obedience to God), etc.<br /><br />In order to explain such variability, Nietzsche decided to treat the content of human moralities as a product of two variables: the external circumstances of the men and the people who thought such moralities (e.g., their social status and condition); and their inner facts (their personal psychology or, in Nietzsche's terminology, their physiological health or decadence). Also, for Nietzsche, the psychological fact that best summarizes the tendency of human instincts is will to power - which is comprehensible only as an innate tendency to egotistic and expansionist pursues - because, by assuming a different essence in man, for example one impelled by self-conservation primarily, or an inherently sociable, altruistic one, it is not possible to understand the course of history, marked as it is by wars, corruption, slavery, oppression by the ruling classes of society over the inferior ones, etc.<br /><br />As for Darwin's reasoning on why man would necessarily conclude the golden rule, it fails to explain all the historical and social facts that Nietzsche, and the thinker who did it before him, Schopenhauer, adduces when concluding the psychological facts that produced those different types of morality. It also fails to explain why there are those different types, for most societies have never presented an ethical principle such as the golden rule before the advent of Christinaity.<br /><br />* Even the Stoics, the philosophical sect which Marcus Aurelius belonged to, should be included in this group.Rafshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01746094202823415912noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-50589358533504930792009-09-16T21:43:41.474+01:002009-09-16T21:43:41.474+01:00In this view of things, seems like good must be de...In this view of things, seems like good must be defined as something akin to "live according to determined nature".<br /><br />Am I far off? If the above definition I gave is your definition (or your world view's definition via logical outworking) of good, then Christianity (and religion in general), and naturalism are arguing for different things.<br /><br />(forgive me if I'm way off)Encounterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08647357241103560287noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-49759247434989409472009-08-23T00:35:54.781+01:002009-08-23T00:35:54.781+01:00Roger,
Yes, of course. Darwin read Smith's T...Roger,<br /><br />Yes, of course. Darwin read Smith's THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS. And Jim Wilson's account of the "moral sense" draws from both Smith and Darwin.Larry Arnharthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-88506701957210156622009-08-22T21:31:08.429+01:002009-08-22T21:31:08.429+01:00In The Descent of Man, Darwin says that "to d...<i>In The Descent of Man, Darwin says that "to do good unto others--to do unto others as ye would they should do unto you--is the foundation-stone of morality," and he claims that even primitive human beings might act according to this principle as impelled by "the love of praise and the dread of blame," because they care about how they appear to others (1:165). He writes: "The moral sense perhaps affords the best and highest distinction between man and the lower animals; but I need not say anything on this head, as I have so lately endeavoured to show that the social instincts--the prime principle of man's moral constitution--with the aid of active intellectual powers and the effects of habit, naturally lead to the golden rule. 'As ye would that men should do to you, do ye to them likewise;' and this lies at the foundation of morality" (1:106).</i><br /><br />This sounds so much like Adam Smith's "impartial spectator" and James Q. Wilson's <i>The Moral Sense</i>.Roger Sweenyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12734128265493099062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-44038634350221567292009-08-19T23:04:50.982+01:002009-08-19T23:04:50.982+01:00I find your blog very interesting. Your entire th...I find your blog very interesting. Your entire thesis that human morality <i><b>does not</b></i> require religion is provocative.<br /><br />However, I must ask, is the morality you speak of- reciprocity and various iterations of the "Golden Rule"- merely <i>utilitarianism</i> in the absence of a transcendent deity?<br /><br />I confess that I do believe Nietzsche's critique (at least in its practical implication). Further, I think he is the greatest critiquer in the last two centuries. His vision of the "Last Man" is haunting. His vision of the "abyss" and what happens as you stare into it is also haunting.<br /><br />He sees better than almost anyone what men become without God. Unfortunately for him, his preferred solution of transvaluation of values and "Ubermensch" can't escape the primal need man feels for ethereal transcendence.<br /><br />I do not believe nature is good enough. At best, it seems to be a complement to morality, not a justification solely on its own terms.Greg R. Lawsonhttp://www.gregrlawson.comnoreply@blogger.com