The Secret Teaching of Adam Smith and Bernard Mandeville on the Mistakes in Christian Ethics

In preparation for the International Adam Smith Society conference in Bogota, Columbia, July 11-13, I have been reading some papers on Adam Smith and Bernard Mandeville.  This has stimulated me to think more about Smith's comments on Mandeville, particularly regarding Christian ethics.  I foresee that in some of the discussions in Bogota, I will suggest a way of reading Smith’s response to Mandeville that differs from readings offered by others at the conference.  

            I see Smith as an esoteric writer, who conveys a surface teaching that differs from his secret teaching.  His surface teaching will be popular with his orthodox Christian readers.  His secret teaching will be unpopular with those readers.  He felt compelled to write this way to avoid persecution.

          The clearest evidence for this is the one time in his life in which he publicly, if only momentarily, removed the cloak of esotericism—his Letter to William Strahan in 1776 on the life and death of David Hume.  In the last paragraph of that letter, Smith identified Hume as “a perfectly wise and virtuous man,” which meant that an irreligious skeptic could be morally and intellectually virtuous. 

This provoked an angry reaction from Christians that lasted for the rest of Smith’s life and even after his death.  As John Ramsey of Ochtertyre wrote at the time, the Letter to Strahan “gave very great offence, and made [Smith] henceforth be regarded as an avowed skeptic, to the no small regret of many who revered his character and admired his writings.”

          Seeing Smith as an esoteric writer allows us to explain the complexity of his comments on Mandeville.  His surface teaching was that Mandeville’s moral theory was “licentious” and “erroneous,” because Mandeville was deceptive in identifying all self-love as vanity, and because he mistakenly defined all virtue as “complete self-denial,” so that what were popularly thought to be virtues were disguised vices.

          Smith’s secret teaching, however, was that Mandeville correctly saw that all virtue was motivated by proud self-love, and therefore that the Christian definition of virtue as humble self-denial and “ascetic abstinence” was wrong.  Although Mandeville’s surface teaching assumed the Christian definition of virtue, Mandeville’s secret teaching in The Fable of the Bees was a comic satire of Christian virtue that employed a reductio ad absurdum argument to refute the Christian understanding of virtue.  It was this secret teaching of Mandeville and Smith that allowed Smith to identify Hume as “a perfectly wise and virtuous man.”

          Christian theologians—like Saint Augustine in The City of God, for example—had long taught that all human beings were by nature so depraved by the original sin of pride that they could never be truly virtuous in their earthly life. The worldly pretense of virtue is corrupted by a proud “self-love, even to the contempt of God.”  True virtue could be achieved only through a humble “love of God, even to the contempt of self” (14.28). 

Therefore, Augustine insisted, there can be no true virtues without true religion.  In their natural experience of social life, human beings want to be virtuous because they want to be praised for their virtues to satisfy their self-love.  But virtues motivated by this self-loving desire for praise are really vices not virtues.  Even those who seek virtue for its own sake—to be praiseworthy regardless of whether anyone actually praises them—are still moved by the self-loving desire for human praise, even if only in praising themselves for being praiseworthy.  True virtue is achieved only through humble self-abnegation in submitting to the transcendent law of God that promises eternal salvation in the afterlife (19.25).

This Christian understanding of virtue denies the ancient teaching of pagan philosophers like Aristotle that the good man should love himself, that the “great-souled” or magnanimous man should be properly proud of himself, and that humility is not a virtue (TMS, 258-59).  It is notable, therefore, that Smith identifies Aristotle’s account of virtue as corresponding “pretty exactly” with his own (TMS, 270-72).

          As Smith suggested, even if only by subtle implication, Mandeville correctly saw the mistakes in this Christian understanding of virtue and vice (TMS, 308-14).  Mandeville saw that if vanity is the desire for undeserved praise, then, according to the Christian doctrine of total human depravity, all self-loving desires for praise or praiseworthiness are vanity, because no human beings deserve praise for their self-loving conduct.  Mandeville also saw that according to the Christian definition of true virtue as “complete self-denial” and “the entire extirpation and annihilation of all our passions,” such virtue could never be achieved among men, and any pretense of such virtue was fraudulent.  Moreover, even if such perfect Christian virtue could be achieved, this would be “pernicious to society.”  That’s why, as Mandeville famously and scandalously declared, “private vices are public benefits.”

 

The Evolution of Heaven and Hell (3): Aristotle and the Contemplative Life

For Augustine and other early Christian philosophers, Plato's teaching about the immortality of the soul and the supreme happiness of the contemplative life was fulfilled in the Christian understanding of the beatific vision in Heaven as the eternal happiness that all human beings long for (City of God, VIII, 4; XXII, 25-29). Nietzsche pointed to this when he said that Christianity was Platonism for the common people.

But for Plato, immortality was attained only by disembodied spirits, which seemed to deny the orthodox Christian teaching that at the Last Judgment all human bodies would be resurrected to eternal salvation or eternal damnation. In the gap between death and the Last Judgment, human souls would exist in some disembodied existence, as Plato believed, but eventually those souls would be reunited with their resurrected bodies, which Plato seemed to deny.

By contrast to Plato, Aristotle defended a biological understanding of the soul as the vital activity of the body, so that mind and body were bound together in an organic unity. So Christian theologians like Thomas Aquinas looked to Aristotle as the philosopher who could provide the philosophical psychology to justify the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of bodies to eternal life.

In his commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Aquinas explains: "Some philosophers [Plato] held that the intellect is something imperishable and separate; and in their system the intellect would be a divine thing, for we call those beings divine that are imperishable and separate. Others, like Aristotle, considered the intellect a part of the soul; and in this view the intellect is not something divine by itself but the most divine of all the things in us. This is so because of its greater agreement with the separate substances, inasmuch as its activity exists without a bodily organ" (sec. 2084).

This comment leads into Aquinas's reading of Book 10 (chapters 7-8) where Aristotle argues for the superiority of the contemplative life as the best and happiest life. Aquinas can then interpret this as Aristotle's opening to the Christian doctrine of heavenly beatitude as the fulfillment of all human desires.

Straussians interpret this part of the Nicomachean Ethics as showing Aristotle's agreement with Plato on the philosophic life as the best life for human beings, in contrast to the merely moral life of the multitude of human beings. So while most of the Ethics presents the moral virtues and practical reasoning as necessary for human happiness and excellence, the Straussians suggest, Aristotle shows in Book 10 that the only truly happy life is not a moral life but a purely theoretical life of philosophic contemplation. Although most of the Straussians are atheists, they agree with Aquinas's Christian interpretation of Aristotle's Ethics as pointing to contemplation as the highest human good.

But the difficulties with this interpretation become clear as soon as one looks carefully at Aristotle's arguments in X.7-8 of the Ethics. He presents six arguments for why a life of theoretical contemplation is superior to a life of moral or political activity. Each of those arguments is remarkably weak, particularly when considered in the context of the whole of the Ethics. One must wonder, then, whether Aristotle is being ironical in stating arguments that assume an implausible Platonism.

The best survey of these six arguments in X.7-8 that shows how dubious they really are is Germaine Paulo Walsh's book chapter "The Problematic Relation between Practical and Theoretical Virtue in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics," in A Moral Enterprise: Politics, Reason, and the Human Good, edited by Kenneth Grasso and Robert Hunt (ISI Books, 2002), pp. 59-81, 354-60.

Consider, for example, the second and third arguments for why theoretical contemplation provides the only true happiness for human beings. Aristotle says that contemplation is the "most continuous" activity of a human being, and that this activity brings pleasures "which are wonderful in purity as well as in permanence" (1177a21-28). This resembles the Platonic Idea of the Good that Aristotle criticizes in Book 1 of the Ethics, and there he criticizes the Platonic identification of goodness with permanence. "If indeed a white thing that exists for a long time is not necessarily whiter than a white thing that exists for a day, neither will the Idea of the Good by being eternal be more good than a particular good" (1096b4-5). And even if "we are able to contemplate continuously more easily than to perform any kind of action" (1177a21-23), it is still true that human beings cannot engage in any activity continuously because of their compound nature. As Aristotle says elsewhere in the Ethics, "the same thing is not continuously pleasurable to us because our nature is not simple" (1154b21-23). A life of continuous pleasure without pain is not possible for human beings.

The fourth argument for the supreme happiness of contemplation is that it is the most self-sufficient of the activities available to human beings (1177a28-34). "A wise person is able to theorize even if he is alone, and the wiser he is, the more he can do so by himself." And although it might be better for him to have "co-workers," the wise person is never said here to have friends. But this conception of self-sufficiency as solitariness contradicts what Aristotle says elsewhere about true self-sufficiency as encompassing all those social relationships--children, parents, friends, and fellow-citizens--necessary for human beings as social and political animals (1097b8-12, 1134a26-27). Moreover, the longest section of the Ethics is the two books devoted to all the various kinds of friendship.

After laying out his six arguments, Aristotle suggests that they are not sufficient. "We should examine the statements which we have already made by referring them to the deeds and the lives of men, and we should accept them as true if they harmonize with the deeds or facts [ta erga] but should regard them merely as arguments if they clash with those facts" (1179a20-22).

So what are the relevant "facts"? Aristotle explains:

"Now he who proceeds in his activities according to his intellect and cultivates his intellect seems to be best disposed and most dear to the gods; for if the gods had any care for human matters, as they are thought to have, it would be also reasonable that they should take joy in what is best and most akin to themselves (this would be man's intellect) and should reward those who love and honor this most, as if they cared for their friends and were acting rightly and nobly. Clearly, all these attributes belong to the wise man most of all; so it is he who would be most dear to the gods, and it is also reasonable that he would be the most happy of men. Thus if we view the matter in this manner, it is again the wise man who would be the most happy of men" (1179a23-34)."

But notice how conditional or hypothetical this argument is, as indicated by the repetition of "if." In Aquinas's commentary on this passage, he removes the conditional mode of expression: "For, supposing--as is really true--that God exercises solicitude and providence over human affairs, it is reasonable for him to delight in that which is best in men and most akin or similar to himself" (sec. 2133).

Of course, Aquinas is confident of God's providential care of and love for human beings. But Aristotle is not. Shortly before this passage suggesting that the gods love philosophers, Aristotle ridicules the idea that the gods have any moral concerns at all (1178b8-18). The purest divine activity is completely self-contained because it is "thought thinking itself" (nous noesis) (Metaphysics, 1074b15-1075a11). If the happiness of the gods comes from purely self-contained contemplative activity, then why would they care for human beings or love philosophers?

The weakness and strangeness of Aristotle's arguments for the supremacy of the philosophic life at the end of the Ethics suggest that Aristotle's true teaching is that conveyed in the rest of the Ethics--that the human good is attained not just in one dominant good--philosophy--but in the whole range of moral and intellectual goods. Moreover, the intellectual life of the philosopher cannot be a continuous, self-contained activity, because the philosopher, like all human beings, needs the right material, bodily, and social conditions for a good human life. Human self-sufficiency must include living with family, friends, and fellow-citizens. And even when human beings are fortunate enough to secure all of these conditions for a good life, their life must come to an end, because (as Aristotle says explicitly) immortality is impossible for human beings, and death is the end of life (1111b19-23, 1115a25-29).

To the careful reader of the Ethics, Aristotle indicates by his presentation of theoretical contemplation in X.7-8 the appeal of Platonic philosophy as catering to the desires for a self-contained, continuous, and invulnerable human pleasure that is free from the contingency and mortality of ordinary human life. But even as he does this, Aristotle reminds us of the fragility and impermanence of all human happiness--the real but fleeting happiness that we can know as embodied animal minds that must decay and die.

We learn from Aristotle to enjoy the life we have, without the fear of Hell or the hope for Heaven.

A couple of related posts can be found here and here.

Aristotle's Darwinian Ethics (8): Existential Friendship

In previous posts, I have suggested that what Aristotle calls "friendship" (philia) corresponds to what David Hume, Adam Smith, and Charles Darwin call "sympathy"--as terms for every kind of "fellow feeling" or social bond between human beings.

For Aristotle, a friend is "another self," and thus one's own self-conscious awareness is deepened by seeing oneself reflected in one's friend as a mirror. The most profound form of friendship might be called "existential friendship." This is suggested in those passages of the Nicomachean Ethics where Aristotle uses the term to einai for "existence." "Existence is desirable and lovable for all" (1168a1-10). We love existing, and consequently we love those activities through which we exist, and we love other human beings in whom we can see our existence at work. Love of others is an extension of one's self-loving existence. Mothers love their children as extensions of their own self-loving existence, and this mother-child bond is at the origin of all social bonding.

The experience of existential friendship is most fully depicted in the following passage, where the term "existence" (to einai) appears four times (1170a25-b19):

It appears then that life in the ruling sense is sensation or thought. Now if living itself is good and pleasant (and it seems to be so from the fact that all desire it, and those who are decent and blessed most of all, since the life they lead is most choiceworthy and their living is most blessed), and if one who sees is aware that he sees, and one who hears is aware that he hears, and one who walks is aware that he walks, and similarly in the other cases, there is something in us that is aware that we are at work, so that whenever we perceive, we are aware that we perceive, and whenever we think, we are aware that we think, and if being aware that we are perceiving or thinking is being aware that we are (since our existence is a good thing by nature, and it is pleasant to be aware of the the good that is present in oneself), and if being alive is choiceworthy, and especially so for good people, because their existence is good and pleasant for them (since people are pleased by being additionally aware of something that is good in itself), and if a serious person is the same way toward a friend as he is toward himself (since the friend is another self), then just as one's own existence is choiceworthy for each person, so too, or very nearly so, is that of a friend.

But one's existence is choiceworthy on account of the awareness of oneself as being good, and such awareness is pleasant in itself. Therefore, one also ought to share in a friend's awareness that he is, and this would come about through living together and sharing conversation and thinking; for this would seem to be what living together means in the case of human beings, not feeding in the same place like fatted cattle. So if existence is choiceworthy in itself to a blessed person, since it is good and pleasant by nature, and that of one's friend is very nearly the same, then a friend would also be something choiceworthy. But that which is choiceworthy for him ought to be present to him, or he will be deficient in that respect. Therefore, for someone who is going to be happy, there will be a need for friends of serious worth.

Thus, as Aristotle says in the EUDEMIAN ETHICS: "To perceive and to know one's friend is somehow necessarily to perceive and somehow know one's self" (1245a35-38).

This full self-awareness of one's personal existence through activities of sensing and thinking shared with one's friends is said to be a "blessed" (makarios) state, the Greek term for the "blessed ones"--the gods--or for human beings enjoying a fully happy life of unimpeded pleasure in existence. This existential friendship is for Aristotle what the beatific vision of God in Heaven is for Christians (see Augustine, City of God, xxii, 27-30). In Thomas Aquinas's commentary on this passage, he feels compelled to add a qualification that is not found in Aristotle's text: "Here he is discussing the kind of happiness that is possible in this life" (sec. 1911). Obviously, Aquinas is worried that Aristotle's readers might conclude that this existential friendship brings the deepest happiness simply, and so they might fail to see the need for the beatitude of Heaven. Repeatedly, Aquinas has to tell his readers that Aristotle's account of happiness is restricted to earthly happiness, and is therefore inferior to the transcendent happiness of Heaven (secs. 113, 129). Of course, Aristotle never says this. On the contrary, Aristotle suggests that existential friendship achieves the deepest happiness of which human beings are capable, which comes through the full and unimpeded activity of sensing, thinking, and desiring.

Moreover, the happiness of existential friendship does not come from a solitary life of contemplation, which casts doubt on the claim in book 10 of the Ethics that the life of solitary contemplation is the highest. This also denies the famous teaching of Descartes--derived from Augustine--that becoming fully aware of our existence requires a withdrawal from social life into a purely inward experience of one's existence as pure thought thinking itself. For Aristotle, each person's self-conscious existence is a social activity. I think with my friends, therefore I am.

The natural sociality of human intellectual existence is confirmed by the modern Darwinian idea of the "social brain" in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. The evolution of the primate brain was probably driven, not by the need to understand the complexity of the physical world, but by the need to navigate through the intricacies of the social world, which required the ability to read the minds of one's fellow primates in negotiating the terms of social cooperation.

The discovery of "mirror neurons" indicates that the primate brain has been designed so that a primate individual can enter the minds of other primates by mentally simulating their conscious experiences. The need of primate offspring for prolonged parental care, which included many years of social learning, created evolutionary pressures for the evolution of primate brains capable of what Aristotle describes as existential friendship.

A previous post on sympathy and mirror neurons can be found here.  Another post on the liberalism of Aristotelian friendship can be found here.

Aristotle's Darwinian Ethics (6): Hare on Aristotle's Platonic Religion

As a proponent of the divine command theory of ethics, John Hare (a professor at Yale University) criticizes my Darwinian ethics for not recognizing that morality without belief in God is impossible.

In his book God and Morality: A Philosophical History (2009), Hare tries to show the fundamental influence of theistic religion in the history of Western ethical philosophy. He concentrates on four philosophers--Aristotle, Duns Scotus, Immanuel Kant, and R. M. Hare. These four thinkers represent four periods--ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary. They represent four kinds of ethical theory as concentrating on virtue, will, duty, and consequences respectively. And they represent four conceptions of god--God as magnet, God as lover, God as sovereign, and God as model. He pairs each of the four philosophers with successors who abandoned the theological premises of their forerunner. I am paired with Aristotle, Jean-Paul Satre is paired with Scotus, Christine Korsgaard is paired with Kant, and Peter Singer is paired with R. M. Hare.

For the Aristotle chapter, Hare begins with a photograph and a description of Raphael's depiction of Greek philosophy in his sixteenth-century fresco in the Vatican--The School of Athens. Plato and Aristotle stand at the center of the painting. Plato's right arm is raised vertically, and his right index finger is pointing to heaven, while his left hand holds his book Timaeus vertically. Aristotle's right arm is extended horizontally, his right hand is spread out with his palm gesturing down towards the center of the group, and his left hand hold his book Nicomachean Ethics horizontally. The obvious suggestion is that Plato is a more "vertical" thinker, in pointing upward to the heavens or the divine, while Aristotle is a more "horizontal" thinker, gesturing downward towards the human beings around them.

Hare suggests, however, that this difference between the vertical Plato and the horizontal Aristotle is only a matter of emphasis, and that in fact Aristotle incorporates into his thought the vertical dimension of Platonic religion. He supports this with the claim that Raphael was probably influenced by Renaissance thinkers like Marsilio Ficino and Egidio da Viterbo who had sought to reconcile Plato and Aristotle. Some scholars of Renaissance art believe that Raphael was guided by a program laid down by Egidio, who argued that Plato and Aristotle agreed that humanity combined two natures--the sensual nature that is embedded in matter and the rational nature that is free from matter. While Aristotle stressed the material side of human experience more than did Plato, Aristotle showed his agreement with Plato in the tenth book of the Ethics by affirming that the highest part of humanity is pure intellect, which grasps what is divine and eternal by imitating the Divine Intellect.

This introduces Hare's argument that Aristotle agrees with Plato's religion--God as Cosmic Intellect towards which all human beings are drawn by their intellectual love of the Ideas. This is what Hare calls "God as magnet"--the magnetic force of the divine radiating out through the great chain of Being.

Hare offers plenty of textual evidence for this conclusion. For example, in the Timaeus, it is said that God has given human beings Intellect as a divinity that looks up to heaven, while struggling against the mortal desires of the body.

When a man devotes himself to the love of learning and to true prudence, and has exercised himself in these things above all others, then there is every necessity, I suppose, that he think thoughts that are immortal and divine (if in fact he touches on truth); and again, to the extent that human nature admits to a share in immortality, he does not fall short of this; and since he's always caring for his divine part and keeping well-arrayed the divinity that dwells within him, he is supremely happy. (90b-c)

This sounds a lot like what Aristotle says about the contemplative life in Book 10 of the Nicomachean Ethics.

We should not follow the recommendation of thinkers who say that those who are men should think only of human things and that mortals should think only of mortal things, but we should try as far as possible to partake of immortality and to make every effort to live according to the best part of the soul in us; for even if this part be of small measure, it surpasses all the others by far in power and worth. It would seem, too, that each man is this part, if indeed this is the dominant part and is better than the other parts; so it would be strange if a man did not choose the life proper to himself but that proper to another. And what was stated earlier is appropriate here also; that which is by nature proper to each thing is the best and most pleasant for that thing. So for a man, too, the life according to his intellect is the best and most pleasant, if indeed a man in the highest sense is his intellect. Hence this life, too, is the happiest. (1177b31-78a8)

But as I have noted in some previous posts, the reasoning offered by Plato and Aristotle for this divinization of the human intellect and the elevation of the contemplative life as divine is remarkably dubious. So the careful reader might wonder how seriously to take this.

Hare is ambiguous about this. On the one hand, he clearly thinks we are intended by Aristotle to take his theological language seriously. On the other hand, Hare admits that this theology of the contemplative life is "in tension" with much of what is taught in the Nicomachean Ethics (17). Hare observes: "Unfortunately Aristotle gets tentative when he starts talking about God" (19). At least initially, Aristotle is drawing from traditional religious opinions--as in Homer's depictions of the gods. But it's not clear whether Aristotle is sincere about this. Sometimes he speaks of gods in the plural, but then he shifts to speaking of God in the singular. He says that God or the gods are so self-sufficient in their lives that they don't care about human beings. But then he says they love philosophers. Sometimes he suggests divinity is inside us, but at other times he suggests divinity is outside of us.

Aristotle indicates that traditionally the gods were originally human beings who were divinized for their heroic deeds by their fellow human beings, which suggests that talk of divinity is just one way of talking of heroic human virtue. Aristotle quotes Homer as having Priam recognize the exceptional goodness of Hector by saying he was a God, and thus "people are turned from humans into gods by a surpassing degree of virtue" (1145a20-24).

Moreover, Hare is never clear as to what difference this confusing theological language makes for Aristotle's ethical teaching. His general argument is that the case of Aristotle illustrates how morality is impossible without God. But Hare never explains exactly how Aristotle's conclusions about morality depend on his theology. The only clear case of this is that Aristotle apparently thinks that elevating the philosophic life over all other lives requires religious language, but the confusing character of his reasoning makes the reader wonder if he is completely serious about this.

Hare tries to argue that my Darwinian Aristotelianism is not really Aristotelian, because it ignores the theological foundation--the "vertical" dimension--of Aristotle's ethics. But, then, he concedes that I and Aristotle are in agreement on the fundamental principle that the good is the desirable, and the human good is the harmonious satisfaction of our natural desires over a complete life, which is happiness (55, 69, 71, 254, 271, 278). And yet, Hare also insists that since I don't accept Aristotle's theistic religion, I can't resolve the tragic conflicts in human desires: "Arnhart is stuck in a difficulty that Aristotle is not" (72).

I argue that sometimes the natural human desires create tragic conflicts between human beings that can only be resolved by force or fraud. For example, in the conflict over slavery in the United States, in which the master's desire for mastery came into conflict with the slave's desire to be free from exploitation, the only final resolution came with the Civil War.

Generally, Hare argues that a religiously grounded morality is free of tragedy. Thus, the theistic teaching of universal love allows theists to overcome tragic conflicts of interest. But Hare is never exactly clear how this works. Does universal love require absolute pacifism and socialism in which all human beings would love one another impartially without any bias towards themselves or those close to them?

Consider the famous case of the Dutch householder hiding a Jew in her attic during the Nazi occupation of her country. When the Nazis come to her to ask if there are any Jews in her house, is it immoral for her to lie? Here, Hare admits, is a tragic situation where the woman must lie but then confess that she had violated the moral law against lying. Hare explains: "Putting the difficulty theologically, the person who lies is breaking God's command, but perhaps (given the situation) in the hope of mercy" (282).

"In a similar example," Hare writes, "some bishops in the early Christian centuries required soldiers who had killed, even in a just war, to abstain for a while from Communion on their return" (282-83). So does this mean that just killing in war is against God's commands? But God will forgive us for our sin of not loving our enemies?

Hare explains: "The position we imagine as ideal is one in which all the people involved, including ourselves, are loved the same. But that is not a position we in fact occupy. It is the position God occupies, if there is a God" (285). It is hard for me to see how this provides any reliable guidance for our moral conduct.

Even with all of his insistence that morality without God is impossible, Hare actually concedes that there is a natural moral sense that allows atheists and believers to understand one another's moral language. Some people might understand the chemical properties of water, while others might not. But they could all talk about "water" with mutual understanding, without having to talk about its chemical properties. Similarly, Hare suggests, theists and atheists can talk about what is "right" or "good" with mutual understanding, even though the atheists will not share the belief of the theists that what is "right" and "good" ultimately arises from God's commands (272).

If that is Hare's position, then he's agreeing with me that while religious belief can reinforce our moral judgments, our morality can stand on its own natural ground as part of our evolved human nature even without religious belief.

Related posts can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

The Aristotelian Biology of Thomistic Natural Law

In some of my recent posts, I have argued that Thomas Aquinas's teaching on natural law is rooted in Aristotle's biology, that this is particularly clear in Aquinas's biological account of the natural law of sex, marriage, and parental care, and that much of this biological reasoning for natural law can be confirmed by modern Darwinian biology.

I must admit, however, that I have not done a thorough study of how Aquinas uses Aristotle's biology in all of his writing. So I was pleased to discover a dissertation that studies how Aquinas uses Aristotle's biology in his account of marriage. Eric M. Johnston wrote a dissertation in 2009 for his Ph.D. in theology at the Catholic University of America, the title of which is "The Role of Aristotelian Biology in Thomas Aquinas's Theology of Marriage." Johnston is now a professor of theology at Seton Hall University. His dissertation is a wonderfully insightful study of all the places in Aquinas's writing where he speaks about marriage, sexuality, and parenthood, and he shows how Aristotle's biological comparisons of human beings and other animals are used by Aquinas to support his understanding of sexual mating and parental care. Johnston's general conclusion is that "Thomas is able to account for all the main Catholic doctrines on marriage through parallels between human and animal procreation" (44).

I agree with Johnston on most of the points he makes. But I disagree on some points.

I agree with the core of Johnston's dissertation, which is to show how Aquinas carefully employed Aristotle's biological writings--especially, The Generation of Animals and The History of Animals--in using animal biology to explain human sexuality, marriage, and parenting. He shows that even when Aquinas does not directly cite Aristotle, Aquinas often uses examples from Aristotle's biological observations.

For example, one of the most important Biblical texts for the Christian doctrines about marriage is the seventh chapter of Paul's First Corinthians. Paul begins this chapter by writing:

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote. It is well for a man not to touch a woman. But because of the temptation to immorality, each man should has his own wife, and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does. Do not refuse one another except perhaps by agreement for a season, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, lest Satan tempt you through lack of self-control. I say this by way of concession, not command. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own special gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well from them to remain single as I do. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion. (I Cor 7:1-9)

In Aquinas's Commentary on First Corinthians, one of the remarkable features of his commentary on this passage is that he introduces biological comparisons with other animals (from Aristotle's biological writings), although Paul says nothing about this. Aquinas writes:

Natural reason teaches that man use the act of generation according as it is suitable for generation and education of children. But in brute animals, it is found that in certain species the female alone is not sufficient for the training of the offspring, but the male takes care of the offspring with the female. For this, it is required that the male recognize its offspring. Therefore, in all such animals, as doves, pigeons, and the like, solicitude for the training of offspring is inspired by nature. Wherefore, in such animals, intercourse is not random and indiscriminate, but a definite male is joined to a definite female, not one to another promiscuously, as happens in dogs and such animals, in which the female alone takes care of the offspring. But above all in the human species, the male is required for the education of the offspring, which are attended to not only regarding bodily nourishment, but to a greater degree regarding the nourishment of the soul, as it says in Hebrews (12:9): "We have had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them." And consequently, natural reason dictates that in the human species intercourse is not random and uncertain, but is by a definite man to a definite female, who in fact made the arrangement through the law of matrimony.

Thus, therefore, matrimony has three goods. The first is that it is a function of nature in the sense that it is ordered to the production and education of offspring; and this good is the good of offspring. The second good is that it is a remedy for desire, which is restricted to a definite person; and this good is called fidelity, which a man preserves toward his wife, by not going to another woman, and similarly the wife toward the husband. The third good is called the sacrament, inasmuch as it signifies the union of Christ and the Church, as it says in Ephesians (5:32): "This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church."

That comparison of human beings with other sexually reproducing animals states the main principles of Aquinas's teaching on sex, marriage, and familial bonding. Like other animals, human beings are driven by a powerful natural desire for sexual mating. Like other animals whose offspring cannot survive or flourish without parental care, and for whom the care of both parents is often necessary, there is a natural need for long-lasting bonding between the mother and the father for the care of the young. But the parental attachment of the father depends on his confidence that he's caring for his own children rather than the children of another man. This must be so, because love of children is an extension of our self-love, so that we love our children as our own. Even adoption requires some such special attachment so that our adopted children seem to be our own. For human children, parental care includes not just bringing children into existence but also feeding them and educating them, because children need a long period of social learning before they can live as mature young adults.

As thus rooted in human biological nature, human marriage has two natural goods--the good of parental care and the good of spousal love.

For Catholic Christians, there is a third good of marriage that is supernatural--the good of marriage as a sacrament of the Church in symbolizing the supernatural mystery of Christ's marriage to the Church as His bride.

It seems, then, that while the first two goods are matters of natural law as rooted in the biological nature of human beings as sexually reproducing animals, the third good surpasses natural law because to recognize marriage as a sacrament, we need the divinely revealed law of the Bible.

But then we might wonder how far Thomas's Aristotelian biology goes in supporting the Thomistic natural law teaching as grounded in natural experience and reasoning without need for divine revelation. We might also wonder how far modern biological science could support this teaching. On both points, I go farther than Johnston wants to go. I'll explain this in my next post.

Aristotelian Liberalism (2): The Virtue of Prudence

In making their case for Aristotelian liberalism, Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl revive Aristotle's claim that prudence or practical wisdom (phronesis) is the supreme virtue. Prudence is the intellectual faculty for judging conduct, for judging the best course of action for particular individuals in particular circumstances. From what we know about human nature, we can see that human beings generally pursue certain generic goods--for example, health, wealth, beauty, friendship, honor, and knowledge. But this general knowledge of the generic goods of human life cannot tell us how best to organize and integrate the pursuit of these goods in a manner that is appropriate for particular individuals. To do that, individuals must exercise prudence in deciding for themselves what form of life is best for them as most conducive to their happiness or flourishing (eudaimonia). The primary purpose of a liberal regime as favored by Rasumussen and Den Uyl is to protect the liberty of individuals to exercise the intellectual virtue of prudence in their pursuit of moral virtue understood as their flourishing or self-perfection.

Rasmussen and Den Uyl take their account of prudence from Den Uyl's book The Virtue of Prudence (1991). This book has not received the attention it deserves. I don't know of any other book that covers so well the logic of prudence and the history of how prudence fell from being the preeminent virtue (for Aristotle) to being hardly a virtue at all (for Kant and many contemporary moral philosophers).

In the first part of his book, Den Uyl summarizes the logic of prudence. In the second part, he surveys the history of prudence in moral philosophy, concentrating on Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes, Adam Smith, and Kant. In the final part, he argues for reviving an Aristotelian conception of prudence.

Although I generally agree with him, I disagree on a couple of points. But with some slight modifications, Den Uyl's framing of the argument for prudence would be compatible with my argument for Darwinian natural right.

Den Uyl summarizes the main points in his reasoning in five "negative" theses on the positions that deny the importance of prudence and five "positive" theses on the positions that favor prudence (pp. 50-51).

Here are the five "negative" theses:

"Thesis I: The Polarity Thesis: When ethics is considered to be fundamentally concerned with the conflict between duty and self-interest, prudence will be unlikely to surface as a significant virtue.

"Thesis II: The Hedonic Thesis: Any moral theory which takes desire alone to be either motivationally or axiologically foundational will thereby fail to accord prudence the status of a virtue.

"Thesis III: The Impersonalist Thesis: A moral theory which understands duty in essentially impersonalist or agent-neutral terms will be inimical to the development of prudence as a virtue.

"Thesis IV: The Non-teleological Thesis: Prudence does not thrive in non-teleological contexts.

"Thesis V: The Communitarian Thesis: If our relations with others are given foundational importance in ethics, the virtue of prudence will, to the extent that the individual self is given secondary or derivative status, diminish in importance as a virtue."

Here are Den Uyl's five "positive" theses:

"Thesis I: The Self-Perfective Thesis: When the first concern of ethics is conceived to be the individual agent's own well-being or perfection, then prudence will flourish as a virtue.

"Thesis II: The Non-Hedonic Thesis: Any moral theory open to the possibility that desires alone are not motivationally or axiologically foundational will, ceteris paribus, also be open to the possibility of prudence being a virtue.

"Thesis III: The Personalist Thesis: A moral theory which takes agent-centeredness to be essential and foundational to moral obligation and moral propriety will, to the extent of its focus upon individual flourishing and well- being, encourage the virtue of prudence.

"Thesis IV: The Teleological Thesis: Prudence thrives in teleological contexts.

"Thesis V: The Individualist Thesis: Prudence maintains significance as a virtue when relations with others are grounded in principles that are either directly derived from, or shown to be compatible with, those principles or conditions that contribute to the agent's own well-being or self-perfection."

While I agree with these theses, I think some of them are stated in misleading ways that lead to some mistakes in Den Uyl's line of argument.

First, the "Hedonic" and "Non-Hedonic" theses are misleading in suggesting a false dichotomy as to whether "desires alone" motivate moral conduct. While "desire alone" is not sufficient, we need to see how conduct combines desire and reason, and so "reason alone" is not sufficient either.

Second, the "Communitarian" and "Individualist" theses are misleading in suggesting a false dichotomy between community and individuality. As Den Uyl indicates, human individuals are naturally social animals, and therefore one's individual good includes the social good.

Third, I agree with Den Uyl's "Impersonalist" and "Personalist" theses, but I don't agree with how he applies them to the case of Adam Smith. I don't agree with his criticism of Smith's appeal to the "impartial spectator" as "impersonalism."

REASON AND DESIRE
Den Uyl (like Rasmussen) has been influenced by the exaggerated rationalism of Ayn Rand, and consequently he is inclined to play down the importance of desire or emotion in moral life. Den Uyl comes close to making Kant's mistake of insisting on an absolute separation of reason and desire (147-57, 246).

No serious thinker (not even Hume) believes that "desire alone" is "motivationally or axiologically foundational" for moral conduct. Surely, "reason alone" is not a sensible position either, despite Kant's insistence that morality is a matter of pure reason. Rather, what we need is a combination of reason and desire.

This is Aristotle's position. Oddly, Den Uyl is almost completely silent about this. But in two passages, he does very briefly acknowledge this. So, for Aristotle, the good life was "equally affective and rational" (155). Moreover, "Kant always found it 'risky' to allow emotions to creep into motivations, whereas Aristotle did not" (298).

As I argued in Darwinian Natural Right (chap. 2), Aristotle thought that in the striving for a good human life, reason and desire were mutually dependent. "Thought by itself moves nothing," Aristotle insisted, because any human action that is deliberately chosen requires a union of reason and desire. A deliberate choice manifests either "desiring reason" or "reasoning desire" (NE, 1139a36-b6).

I use the word "desire" to translate the Greek word orexis. Aristotle coined the Greek noun orexis from the Greek verb orego, which means "to reach out." Orexis is the soul's "reaching out" for something in the world. For Aristotle, it is a general term for all kinds of longing or striving, including physical appetites, social emotions, and intellectual yearnings (DA, 433a9-b31). I use the word "desire" in the same way as a general term for all kinds of psychic impulse or inclination. With that sense in mind, I defend an ethics of desire: the good is the desirable, and reason judges how best to satisfy the desires in a manner that is coherent and harmonious over a whole life, which is the work of prudence.

Den Uyl obscures this point by sometimes suggesting that prudential reason somehow works without desire, but then at other times he says that reason "expresses itself through desire" or "directs" desire (64-65).

Den Uyl rightly argues that the primary purpose of prudential reasoning is to integrate the generic goods of human life in a way that is appropriate to an individual life. Den Uyl takes his list of generic goods from Aristotle's Rhetoric. This list corresponds closely to my list of twenty natural desires, which supports my idea that the good is the desirable. But Den Uyl is reluctant to identify these goods as desires. He says that while prudence manages the mixture of the goods, the goods themselves are "essentially givens" (81). "Aristotle says that practical wisdom deliberates about means and not about ends, for the ends are given" (284). Given by what? I would say they are "given" by desire.

Den Uyl speaks of the generic human goods as "basic attractions" or "natural inclinations," as objects of human "aspiration" or "longing" that exert "teleological pull" (168-70, 188). As far as I can tell, such language is circumlocution for desires.

In Norms of Liberty, Den Uyl and Rasmussen are more open in acknowledging the generic goods as desires. They write: "Human flourishing is an object of desire. Yet, in terms similar to Socrates' question to Euthyphro, flourishing is an object of desire because it is desirable and choice-worthy, not simply because it is desired or chosen. In other words, it is desired because of what it is" (127). The desirable is an objective fact of human existence because it is rooted in human nature. But the right mix of these generic goods for an individual human being requires prudential judgment. "The desirable and choice-worthy elements of flourishing need to be achieved, maintained, and enjoyed in a coherent manner, and this involves a consideration of generic, individuative, and circumstantial factors" (147).

This moves towards my position. The good is the desirable. The generic goods of human life correspond to the natural desires of human biological nature. But prudence is required to judge how best to manage those desires in the life of any individual human being (Darwinian Natural Right, 17-49).

COMMUNITY AND INDIVIDUALITY
Because of the influence of Ayn Rand, Den Uyl (as well as Rasmussen) tends to play up "the virtue of selfishness"--that is, understanding ethics as self-perfection. So the good is always good for someone. Although we can by abstraction see the generic goods of human nature, we should see that the actualization of the human good is always the individualized good of particular human beings.

As a consequence, Den Uyl is suspicious of modern moral philosophers who define ethics as other-regarding conduct, and who therefore dismiss self-regarding conduct as non-moral. I agree with Den Uyl about this. But I don't agree with him that Adam Smith is guilty of this mistake.

Den Uyl rightly sees that if we understand the human good as self-perfection or self-regarding conduct, we can then recognize that insofar as we are naturally social animals, we extend ourselves into others. We love our families, our friends, and our fellow citizens. We can even see a friend as "another self."

I think this is Smith's position. Den Uyl criticizes Smith for appealing too much to social sentiments as a foundation for morality, because he thinks Smith thus denigrates the self-regarding character of morality. I disagree, because it seems clear to me that Smith's moral sentiments are simply expressions of the social nature of human beings by which their self-regarding concerns extend to a concern for others who are attached to them. As individuals who are social animals, we can extend our sympathy outward from ourselves to embrace an ever wider circle of people. But our attachments will tend to be stronger to those near the center of the circle than those farther out.

Den Uyl seems to acknowledge this when he writes that "the moral virtues are largely social in character," and therefore "a type of theory of moral sentiments, which Adam Smith analyzed perhaps better than anyone else, comes into play. For the particular manner in which one's liberality or magnificence is demonstrated will largely be a function of the social sentiments present in one's society" (205-206).

It would be good if Den Uyl noted that much of what Smith and Hume said about the moral sentiments or emotions comes out of the rhetorical tradition begun by Aristotle, particularly in Book 2 of the Rhetoric.

Moreover, as I have often argued on this blog, the importance of the moral emotions for moral experience has been confirmed by research in biological moral psychology, particularly in neuroscience.

THE PARTIALITY OF THE IMPARTIAL SPECTATOR
Den Uyl criticizes Smith for his idea of the "impartial spectator"--the idea that we adjust our moral sentiments to conform to what we imagine would be felt by an impartial observer. This can look like the sort of "impersonalism" evident in the moral philosophy of Kant and others in this tradition, in which the universal rules of morality require a "view from nowhere."

But in fact, as I have already suggested, Smith's "impartial spectator" is not absolutely impartial, if that means a total denial of any individual self-regarding perspective. What Smith has in mind, I think, is close to what Den Uyl suggests when he speaks of the "detached perspective" as a "necessary tool of prudence" by which we see ourselves as others see us, or as some fully informed spectator might see us (222-23). This does not deny the primacy of the individual. Rather, it's a way by which an individual satisfies his social desires for interpersonal life.

The discovery of "mirror neurons"--a subject of some posts on this blog--indicates how the evolution of the brains of social mammals has shaped cognitive abilities for entering into the thoughts and feelings of others in order to better satisfy natural desires for social engagement.

Ultimately, then, I see Den Uyl's account of prudence as fully compatible with my account of how a naturalistic view of morality can be rooted in human biological nature.

A couple of my posts on Ayn Rand can be found here and here.

Leo Strauss and Liberal Democracy: Grant Havers's Response

Grant Havers has sent me the following response to my blog post on "The Attack on Leo Strauss from the Paleoconservative Historicists":

While reading Professor Arnhart’s bracing review of my book on Strauss, I kept recalling the oft-quoted words of John Adams: “Facts are stubborn things.” The gist of Arnhart’s critique of my book seems to be that my historicist argument that Straussianism is essentially wrong to teach that there is a universal human desire for liberal democracy (regardless of faith, history, or culture) is unpersuasive because my thesis does not fit into the theory of evolution that Arnhart has popularly applied to the history and content of political philosophy. In brief, I am apparently wrong to dismiss this ideology of democratic universalism that Straussians usually teach because I set up a false dichotomy between nature and history. My insistence that bourgeois Protestant Christianity is a necessary precondition for successful constitutional self-government apparently flies in the face of liberal regimes that are not rooted in this faith tradition. Arnhart asks the rhetorical question: “Isn’t this historical evidence for the universal appeal of liberalism, suggesting that liberalism really does conform to a universal human nature?” Strauss’s teaching that liberal democracy is the best regime for all human beings must be correct, then, according to Arnhart, because both nature and history support it.

        I find it curious that Arnhart does not give much attention to the reasons why I make this historicist argument. Most of my book develops the argument that Strauss and his many students erroneously tried to locate the true origins of liberal democracy in Greek political philosophy, particularly Plato and Aristotle. This reading of ancient political thought is crucial to the Straussian assumption, which Arnhart shares, that human beings by nature seek the best political regime. In the process, they can argue that democracy is the universally best regime for humanity. Yet I show in my book that this central assumption is false because the ancient Greek concept of democracy never allowed for certain virtues that are crucial to successful self-government: these include Christian virtues such as charity (love thy neighbor, and even one’s enemy, as one loves God) as well as humility and mercy. The best evidence for the unnatural status of these virtues is that the greatest Greek philosophers did not even account for them, based on their own philosophies of nature. This fact was sometimes recognized by Strauss himself, who, as I show in the last chapter of my book, rigorously distinguished the moral teachings of “Athens,” or Greek political philosophy, from “Jerusalem,” biblical revelation. Until the Christian Era, which includes early modernity, the assumption that charity is a necessary precondition for a peaceful, stable, and humane government was absent in the works of political philosophers who followed Plato and Aristotle. The ancient Greek tolerance of slavery, infanticide, and natural hierarchy held no place for the ethic of caritas, a fact that was well-known to social contract theorists such as Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke. (It is also central to Hegel’s philosophy of history.) Only in a specific historical period, as opposed to nature, then, do we find evidence of a regime that rises above nature to embody, however imperfectly, an ethic of charity.

        I recount all these facts because of Arnhart’s Darwinian-Straussian thesis that it is false to set up a dichotomy between nature and history. Apparently, Christian charity is just as natural as the desire for liberal democracy, according to my reviewer. To anyone who is familiar with the biblical tradition, the first assumption is shocking in its naiveté. If it is natural for human beings to love each other, why does our sinful nature so regularly conflict with this natural moral desire? And, why did the social contractarians cited above similarly insist that there is neither charity nor government in the “state of nature,” the natural order of humanity, if charity is so closely aligned with our instincts? (I must confess to a strong Protestant bias here about the fallenness of humanity as well as the sheer difficulty that human beings have in practicing charity on a consistent basis.)

        Arnhart, of course, will have none of this. His first specific objection to my argument is that I too harshly limit the universal morality of Christianity to the particular foundation of liberal Protestantism, even though I also inconsistently claim that Christian charity has great influence beyond this modern foundation. How can a morality be universal without being historically universal as well? My answer to this objection is that Arnhart is confusing moral universalism with historical universalism. It is one thing to claim that all human beings ought to be charitable. It is quite another to assert that all traditions in history have practiced or even understood charity. Arnhart confuses the “ought” with the “is” here because his adherence to the theory of evolution forces him into this theoretical cul-de-sac: if charity is not historically universal (that is natural), then it cannot be naturally intelligible to all human beings. Evolutionism, then, is inadequate in trying to explain how charity emerged naturally. (Arnhart presumably does not agree with his fellow evolutionist Richard Dawkins that Christian charity is so unnatural that only “suckers” would practice this ethic.) Arnhart can always fall back on his view that human nature and human history are equally influential, but that tactic is just question-begging. Which is most influential?

Additionally, how does evolution, in Arnhart’s own words, explain how “some historical traditions show a better grasp of human nature than do other historical traditions”? How indeed would evolution explain the fact that Athens, one of the founding traditions of the West, lacked a concept of charity if the latter ethic is natural? Why did it take so long for this ethic to be applied to politics, culminating in the creation of modern self-government, if it is all so natural and universal? How can we avoid the fact that Jerusalem, not Athens, makes possible the historical rise of charity as it is applied to politics?

        Arnhart’s response to all this is that “many different religious and philosophical traditions have discovered the Golden Rule (charity) as a reasonable inference from natural human experience” and cites C. S. Lewis’s famous argument in defence of natural law as the “Tao” that all human beings understand by nature. This assertion, to say the least, requires evidence. Although all religions teach some concept of moral obligation, Christianity is unique in teaching that love and obligation extend to one’s enemy, a teaching that is consistent with the Christian emphasis on mercy and humility. Arnhart would have to show how the pagan texts of antiquity, including those of Plato and Aristotle, contain these virtues. (Arnhart’s fellow Straussian Harry Jaffa, in his Thomism and Aristotelianism [1952], brought out this distinction between Jerusalem and Athens with great insight.) In Plato’s famous dialogue on love, The Symposium, the reader will look in vain for any expression of love akin to charity. Confucianism, which at a superficial level teaches moral obligation towards other human beings, generally restricts this sense of duty to one’s family. (Christ’s famous condemnation of family-based love in Luke 14:26 would be shocking to a Confucian.) Since charity teaches the love of both God and humanity, any religion or philosophy that dualistically opposes one to the other (either love God or humanity) is incompatible with Christian morality.

        I am not, of course, claiming that all Christians in history have adhered to this demanding ethic with perfect consistency. Arnhart is quite right to point out that abolitionists and slave-owners in the decades leading up to the American Civil War profoundly disagreed as to whether Scripture, including the Christian teaching on charity, opposed slavery or not. How, then, asks Arnhart, can I appeal to the Bible for guidance or claim that the Golden Rule was the foundation of Abraham Lincoln’s opposition to slavery when Americans on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line claimed to be good Christians? My answer, which I develop in detail in Lincoln and the Politics of Christian Love (2009), is that the 16^th president never doubted that a true application of Christian charity was incompatible with slavery. Since no slave-owner would ever choose to be a slave, he could not justifiably enslave another human being. Yet Southern slave-owners sinfully and wilfully denied this moral truth even as they falsely projected onto the Bible a violently uncharitable rationale for slavery. Lincoln knew all too well that human beings were naturally inclined to enslave each other and to reject the “self-evident” nature of human equality. For this reason, he appealed to that most unnatural, yet humane, expressions of morality: charity.

        Arnhart nevertheless claims to have the facts on his side when he confidently recounts the “historical trend towards the spread of liberalism” around the world since the Enlightenment. (Ironically, this progressivist argument would not have sat well with Strauss, who absolutely opposed any appeal to the “march of progress” as a justification for a prudent politics.) He goes on to claim that many of these “liberal regimes are clearly not rooted in the historical tradition of liberal Protestant culture” such as Japan, Malaysia, and South Korea. These examples, however, do not exactly confirm his thesis since all three of these nations had some significant exposure to English or American ideals due to the influence of occupation, colonization, or war. What is shocking in this discussion is Arnhart’s deafening silence on the failure of liberal democracy to take root in most nations of the Middle East. If liberal democracy is so natural, then why has the Arab Spring become the Arab Winter? Could the grim oscillation between theocracy and dictatorship have anything to do with a distinct religious and historical tradition? And recent wars for democracy in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya have not exactly confirmed Arnhart’s optimistic view that all the peoples of the world are itching for constitutional government and the rule of law. But then again, history is full of inconvenient truths that do not fill well into ideological boxes.

Aristotle's Darwinian Ethics (7): Friendship & Sympathy

The longest section of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is devoted to "friendship" (philia) (books 8-9). For Aristotle, "friendship" becomes a general term for all kinds of social bonding in which human beings show some mutual care for one another.

In this way, Aristotle's "friendship" coincides with what David Hume and Adam Smith called "sympathy"--any kind of "fellow feeling" among human beings. Charles Darwin adopted this idea and made "sympathy" one of the fundamental themes in his evolutionary account of moral and political order. More recently, biologists and psychologists have used the word "empathy" in a way that largely corresponds to what Hume, Smith, and Darwin would call "sympathy," or what Aristotle would call "friendship."

Running through all of this research is the idea that "friendship," "sympathy," or "empathy"--the psychological disposition that underlies social bonding--arises originally from the biological bond between parent and child, and particularly, mother and child.

Aristotle observes that human beings are not only political animals by nature but also household animals by nature. Indeed, the human coupling instinct is in some sense more natural than the political instinct, because human beings could exist in families even without living in political communities, as was the case throughout early human history when human beings lived in foraging groups of families. Moreover, the various forms of friendly feeling that unite human beings as individuals, as fellow citizens, and as members of the same species, radiate out from the natural affection between parents and offspring that human beings share with birds and other animals (1155a1-33, 1159a27-37, 1160b23-62a29). "Consequently, in the household are first found the origins and springs of friendship, of polity, and of justice" (EE, 1242b1-2).

Darwinian biologists have noticed that animals with the greatest cognitive capacities are often those with the longest periods of childhood dependence on adults. Aristotle agrees:

It would seem that nature wishes to provide for a sensation of attentive care for the offspring. In the lower animals, nature implants this only until birth; in others, there is care for the complete development of the offspring; and among the more intelligent animals [phronimotera], there is care for its upbringing. Among those who share in the greatest intelligence, there arises intimacy and friendship even towards the completely grown offspring, as among human beings and some quadrupeds. (GA, 753a8-14)

Through their love for their children as extensions of themselves, husbands and wives strengthen their marital bond because children are a common good, which is why childless marriages are more easily dissolved (1162a16-28). The parental affection of mothers is greater, however, than that of fathers, both because mothers must invest more effort in pregnancy and childbirth, and because they are more certain of their maternity than fathers are of their paternity (1161b16-29, 1166a1-9, 1168a20-27).

Beyond the bonds of kinship, unrelated individuals can develop friendly affection based on a reciprocal exchange of benefits. Rejecting any cosmological explanation of friendship as a force of attraction in physical nature, Aristotle argues that friendship must be a psychic relation among animals, "for there is friendship when like-mindedness [eunoia] is reciprocal" (1155b34). In the noblest friendships, people benefit others without expecting anything in return. But all or most people choose what is beneficial to themselves. In most cases, therefore, the recipient of a benefit is expected to return the equivalent of what he has received. Social conflict arises when people think this reciprocity has not been maintained (1162b22-65b37).

Not only personal friendships but also political communities are held together by a reciprocal proportionality of benefits (1132b33-33a5). People unrelated to one another can form associations based on calculations of mutual benefit. The political community arises from less associations to secure the common advantage of citizens for the whole of life (1159b25-62a34). Every community rests on some sense of friendship founded on the common advantage of its members. Although the strongest feeling of common advantage is among those who are biologically related, other bonds can arise as there is any reciprocal sense of shared needs.

As a consequence of his biological understanding of animal bonding, Aristotle sees the moral and political obligations of human beings as a series of concentric circles around the individual. Insofar as justice coincides with friendship, the claims of justice vary in proportion to the nearness of attachments (1155a16-29, 1159b25-60a8, 1165a14-36). One's obligations are stronger to closer relatives than to more distant ones, and stronger to close friends and fellow citizens than to strangers, although there is some friendly attachment to all members of one's species based on shared humanity (philanthropia).

As a biologist, Aristotle affirms the unity of humankind as one species, "simple and having no differentiation" (HA, 490b18). He believes there can be a kind of sympathy among animals of the same species, and this is especially true for human beings, so that "we praise those who love their fellow human beings" (1155a20-21). But the humanitarianism of human beings will always be difficult to cultivate and almost always weaker than their egoism, nepotism, and their patriotism. This explains the mistake of Plato's Socrates in proposing the community of wives and children and the communal ownership of property for the guardians in the Republic: it is unreasonable to ignore the natural love of oneself and one's own that makes it difficult for people to live together if they must share everything (Pol, 1262b22-25, 1263a41-b41). In fact, Socrates concedes that even in the best political community, the warriors would have to be taught that justice is doing good to friends and harm to enemies (Plato, Republic, 332a-3, 375a-e, 469b-d; Cleitophon, 410b).

Aristotle's biological claim that parental care for the young is the root from which all other social bonds grow finds support in Darwinian biology. "The feeling of pleasure from society," Darwin believed, "is probably an extension of the parental or filial affections, since the social instinct seems to be developed by the young remaining for a long time with the parents" (2004, 129).

This personal bonding between parents and their offspring distinguishes the vertebrates from the insects. Despite the functional similarities between insect and vertebrate societies, the crucial difference is that, in contrast to the impersonal character of insect societies, the vertebrates depend on personal recognition among members of a group. The efficiency of insect divisions of labor among castes was made possible by the evolutionary novelty of sterile castes, which means that the colony becomes the unit of natural selection. But vertebrates depend on individual reproduction. The cooperating castes among social insects are generally sterile, which lessens the genetic competition between cooperating individuals, which makes possible the evolution of self-sacrificial altruism. Among the social vertebrates, by contrast, genetic competition between cooperating individuals impedes the evolution of self-sacrificial altruism. As Edward Wilson has noted, the evolutionary path taken by the social vertebrates involves a trade-off, because it "enhances freedom on the part of the individual at the expense of efficiency on the part of society" (1971, 460). This explains whey the city described in Plato's Republic looks in some respects more like a bee hive than a community of human beings.

Modern ethologists have shown the importance of the mother-infant bond, especially for primates, as the root of all social bonding. Psychologists have noted the harmful, and sometimes fatal, effects of maternal deprivation on infants. We have learned much about the neural and hormonal changes during pregnancy, childbirth, and lactation that promote maternal behavior (as surveyed by Sarah Hrdy and Melvin Konner). Evolutionary psychologists have gathered evidence for the idea of Robert Trivers that, since females generally invest more in their offspring than do males, females tend to be more devoted to the raising of the young (Trivers 1985, 203-38).

On this, as on so many points, evolutionary psychologists are rediscovering what was originally discovered by Aristotle in his biological studies.

Some posts on the biology of friendship, sympathy, or empathy can be found here, here, and here.

Against Altruism: Bowles, Gintis, and Strong Reciprocity

At the end of the summer (August 29-September 2), I will be in New Orleans at the convention of the American Political Science Association.  I will be on a panel entitled "Darwin, Justice, and Politics: The Evolution of Human Reciprocity."  The other panel members are Steven Forde (the University of North Texas), Tamler Sommers (the University of Houston), Alex Schulman (Duke University), and Barry Weingast (Stanford University).  The panel will be organized around a new book by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution (Princeton University Press, 2011).  The panel meets Saturday, September 1, at 10:15 am.

This book is a good survey of the evidence and arguments for explaining the evolution of human cooperation through evolutionary game theory.  It is also a good statement of the view favored by Bowles and Gintis--the the crucial mechanisms for the evolution of human cooperation include the group selection through warfare of strong reciprocity and parochial altruism.

I see three problems in this book.  First, there is some conceptual confusion in their idea of strong reciprocity.  Second, there is a gap in their evolutionary history, because the initial appearance of strong reciprocity is explained with only two paragraphs of speculation.  Third, there is a second big gap in their evolutionary history--the past 7,000 years--that is covered in only a few paragraphs.

The first problem is the confusion in the very idea of strong reciprocity, which Bowles and Gintis identify as the disposition to cooperate without any expectation of future reciprocation and to punish defectors at some cost to oneself.

If there is no expectation of reciprocation, then why call this strong reciprocity?

Bowles and Gintis argue that while Robert Trivers' "reciprocal altruism" is not real altruism, but actually "enlightened self-interest," strong reciprocity is real altruism.  But they also indicate that this is a conditional altruism, because the strong reciprocator will not cooperate if most others are not cooperating.  So it seems that there is some self-interest here--the strong reciprocator expects his cooperation to be reciprocated--but this contradicts their definition of strong reciprocity as free from any expectation of future reciprocation.

Bowles and Gintis insist that the strong reciprocator bears the costs of punishing defectors without any expectation of any payoff.  But then they also say that strong reciprocators will not bear the great costs of punishing if others are not punishing defectors.  Moreover, they indicate that punishing defectors, or even just threatening to punish them, motivates defectors to become cooperators, and thus costly punishment has a payoff, because it sustains cooperation.

The fundamental problem here is that Bowles and Gintis take for granted the idea of "altruism" as originated by Auguste Comte--the idea that there's a strict separation between self-interest and selflessness, and that morality is identified as utterly selfless behavior.  Comte coined the word "altruism" (altruisme in French) as a term for "the good of others" in contrast to egoism.  If one accepts this, then prudence is no longer a moral virtue.

In her argument for "the virtue of selfishness," Ayn Rand rejected the morality of altruism--living for others and denying one's own good--as a denial of life.

Although this idea of altruism has been a pervasive and unexamined assumption of modern social science, biology, and moral philosophy, I doubt it.  As naturally social animals, we extend ourselves into others for whom we feel some attachment.  Thus, our concern for ourselves includes a concern for others who have some connection to us.  Consequently, our other-regarding dispositions are extensions of our self-love.  This also means that absolutely disinterested and universal love is impossible.  That is, I think, the idea behind Aristotle's "friendship" (philia) and Adam Smith's "sympathy."

The incoherence in the idea of altruism is indicated by Bowles and Gintis in their edited book Moral Sentiments and Material Interests in two footnotes (33).  They concede that any voluntary, intentional act of altruism must "increase the subjective utility of the actor," and thus, "if one truly cares about others, it may be self-interested to sacrifice on their behalf, even though it is manifestly non-self-regarding to do so."  So now it seems that true altruism might be "self-interested"!

The other two problems in this book are related to this problem of altruism, and they concern the two big gaps in its evolutionary history.  The first gap is the initial appearance in human history of strong reciprocity.  Bowles and Gintis admit that they can only speculate about this, and their speculation consists of only two paragraphs (197-98).  They assume that strong reciprocity originated as "a small behavioral modification of either kin-based altruism or reciprocal altruism."  Notice that this concedes that strong reciprocity is evolutionarily rooted in kin selection and reciprocal altruism.  What they say here is similar to what James Q. Wilson in The Moral Sense says about "attachment or affiliative behavior" (44, 127-28), which corresponds to Aristotle's "friendship" and Smith's "sympathy," and which was picked up by Darwin in his account of the "moral sense."

The second big gap in this book is the 7,000 years of human history from the early Holocene to the present.  Bowles and Gintis cover this in only a few paragraphs (3-4, 111-12).  Of course, it would be unfair to criticize them for not giving us a complete history of human civilization in one book.  But the point here is that explaining this history is crucial for their general argument.

For example, they indicate in various passages the importance of trade throughout human evolution from prehistoric foragers to the present (2, 79, 94-99, 101, 114, 134).  But they don't elaborate their view of trade in human history.  What would they say about Matt Ridley's argument in The Rational Optimist that Smith in The Wealth of Nations was right to see "the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange" as the ground for explaining the uniqueness of human cooperation?  Does this explain the commercial/industrial revolution of the past 200 years?  What would they say about Deirdre McCloskey's argument that this great revolution came from intellectual changes favoring the "bourgeois virtues"?

Here is where Bowles and Gintis need to turn to the history of political philosophy, particularly the early modern history of liberalism.  They do refer a few times to Smith.  But they seem to favor "the Adam Smith of The Theory of Moral Sentiments" over "the Adam Smith of The Wealth of Nations" (1, 44-45, 79, 199-200), and thus they overlook the connection between markets and morals.

Explaining the commercial/bourgeois revolution would force Bowles and Gintis to clarify their ambivalent and ambiguous position on market societies.  As former Marxist economists, they often denigrate the moral culture of market societies.  And yet they have been involved in some cross-cultural research that shows that primitive societies that engage in some market exchange have stronger norms of fairness and trust than those with little market integration.  Recently, in the Boston Review (May/June 2012), Bowles and Gintis have argued that markets promote morals.  But in this book, they say nothing about this.

Another point about the second gap in their history is the issue of violence.  Group selection through warfare is a fundamental element of their argument in explaining the evolution of "parochial altruism."  They don't say anything, however, about the apparent decline in violence in human history, particularly in the last few centuries.  The evidence for this has been surveyed by Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature, and he argues that a major reason for this decline in violence is the cultural transformation brought by modern liberalism.  Would Bowles and Gintis agree?  In their Boston Review essays, they imply their agreement with this.  But this is not clear in their book, which reflects their reluctance to embrace Darwinian liberalism.  (One can also see this in Gintis's response to my essay on "Darwinian Liberalism" at the Cato Unbound website.)

If a great book is one that raises great questions, then this is a great book.

The many posts on related topics would include my posts on Pinker and Ridley.  Some others can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

The Darwinian Emergence of Aristotle's Political Animals and de Waal's Moral Animals: A Reply to Cheryl Abbate

In various publications (Arnhart 1990, 1994, 1998, 2009), and in some blog posts, I have argued that a Darwinian science of animal behavior can support Aristotle's biological science of political animals.  Aristotle's statement that "man is by nature a political animal" is famous.  But it is often falsely assumed to mean that human beings are by nature the only political animals.  As Aristotle explains in his biological writings, the political animals include ants, bees, wasps, and cranes.  But even if humans are not the only political animals, Aristotle indicates, they are distinctive in that they are more political than the other political animals, because humans have a biological capacity for logos, which allows them to organize their political communities through shared symbolic conceptions of justice.

In his biological works, Aristotle sees that some animals are solitary and others gregarious.  Of the gregarious animals, some are political.  Some of the political animals have leaders, but others do not.  The distinguishing characteristic of the political animals is that they cooperate for some common work or function.  Humans, bees, ants, wasps, and cranes are all political animals in this sense.

The uniquely human capacity for speech or rhetorical persuasion makes humans more political than the other political animals, because while other animals can share their perceptions of pleasure and pain, humans can use speech to share their conceptions of the advantageous, the just, and the good.  Through speech, humans cooperate for common ends in ways that are more complex, more flexible, and more extensive than is possible for other animals.  Through speech, humans can deliberate about the common interest as the standard of justice.  A just political community can be judged to be one that serves the common interest of all or most of its members, as contrasted with an unjust political community that serves only the private interest of its ruling group.

I have argued that Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory of morality and animal social life supports Aristotle's biopolitical science.  I have also argued that the biological study of animal behavior over the past 60 years (beginning with Jane Goodall's arrival at the Gombe Stream Preserve in 1960) has largely confirmed this Aristotelian science of animal politics.

Recently, I noticed that Cheryl Abbate (2016) has disagreed with my reasoning in what is essentially a critique of my 1990 article in Social Science Information.  I also noticed that Edward Jacobs (2018) has written a response to Abbate's article, and Abbate (2018) has replied to him.

Abbate's critique consists of two arguments.  First, she claims that my defense of Aristotle's teaching contradicts the Darwinian principle of the psychic continuity between humans and animals--the idea that humans differ from other animals only in degree and not in kind.  Second, she claims that recent studies of animal behavior show that some highly social nonhuman animals have a sense of justice, and so Aristotle is wrong in thinking that this is unique to human beings.

As you might expect, I believe she's mistaken on both points.

DARWIN ON EMERGENT DIFFERENCES IN KIND

Abbate correctly quotes from the crucial passage in Aristotle's Politics (1253a) where Aristotle declares that a human is much more a political animal than other political animals, because "man alone among the animals has speech [logos]," and through speech, "he alone has a perception of good and bad and just and unjust," which is the uniquely human basis of human politics (Abbate 2016, 57).

She then claims that this contradicts the Darwinian principle of "evolutionary continuity"--that all differences between species are only differences in degree and not in kind (Abbate 2018, 160).  She correctly quotes from Darwin's apparent endorsement of this idea in The Descent of Man:

"Nevertheless, the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.  We have seen the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals" (2004, 151).

Abbate is silent, however, about the fact that despite Darwin's explicit statement that humans differ only in degree, not in kind, from other animals, he implicitly recognized human differences in kind.  That is to say, Darwin saw that human beings have some moral and mental traits that other animals do not have at all.

In The Descent of Man, Darwin noted that self-consciousness is uniquely human: "It may be freely admitted that no animal is self-conscious, if by this term it is implied, that he reflects on such points, as whence he comes or whither he will go, or what is life and death, and so forth" (105).  Morality is also uniquely human: "A moral being is one who is capable of comparing his past and future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving of them.  We have no reason to suppose that any of the lower animals have this capacity. . . . man . . . alone can with certainty be ranked as a moral being" (135).  And language is uniquely human: "The habitual use of articulate language is . . . peculiar to man" (107).

Darwin was thrown into self-contradiction--both affirming and denying that humans are different in kind from other animals--because he failed to see how he could affirm emergent differences in kind without affirming any radical differences in kind.  Emergent differences in kind can be explained by evolutionary science as differences in kind that naturally evolve from differences in degree that pass over a critical threshold of complexity.  So, for example, we can see the uniquely human capacities for self-consciousness, morality, and language as emerging from the evolutionary development of the primate brain, so that at some critical point in the evolution of our hominid ancestors, the size and complexity of the brain (perhaps particularly in the frontal cortex) reached a point where distinctively human cognitive capacities emerged at higher levels of brain evolution that are not found in other primates.  With such emergent differences in kind, there is an underlying unbroken continuity between human beings and their primate ancestors, so there is no need to posit some supernatural intervention in nature--the divine creation of the human soul--that would create a radical difference in kind in which there is a gap with no underlying continuity of natural causes.

Edward Jacobs points to this when he describes the evolution of the human mind.  "The moment a certain threshold of mental development was reached (and logos is as good a placeholder name for this threshold as any), we became able to make and grasp persuasive accounts," which made humans more political than the other political animals (155).

Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka (2019) have shown how an evolutionary neuroscience could explain this emergence of the human mind as passing through the three levels of mind identified by Aristotle in De Anima (On the Soul). The basic nutritive and reproductive soul belongs to all living things--plants and animals.  The second level--the sensitive soul--belongs to all animals.  The third level--the rational or symbolizing soul--is specific to humans.  The crucial evolutionary transition marker of the rational soul is language.  The rational soul gives humans the capacity for grasping and sharing the abstract symbolic values of the good and the just that make human politics unique.  Ginsburg and Jablonka suggest that all three levels can be explained by evolutionary biology.

I have written some previous posts on emergent evolution (here and here).;

BEKOFF AND DE WAAL ON THE MORAL LIVES OF ANIMALS

Abbate relies heavily on two cognitive ethologists--Marc Bekoff and Frans de Waal--for providing the evidence that some nonhuman animals have a sense of justice, and therefore Aristotle is wrong in saying that humans alone have a moral sense, which makes them more political than the other political animals.  For Abbate, this proves that humans differ only in degree, not in kind, from other animals.

Bekoff is best known for his studies of canid social carnivores--wolves, dogs, and coyotes--and his argument that their social play shows that they have "codes of conduct" that indicate a moral life of "wild justice" (Bekoff 1995; Bekoff and Pierce 2009; Pierce and Bekoff 2012).

De Waal is best known for his Chimpanzee Politics and other studies of primate colonies in captivity.  He has endorsed what he calls my "Darwistotelian" view of human politics and morality as showing an evolved political nature shared with chimps and other primates. A sample of my many posts on de Waal can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

She does not notice, however, that Bekoff and de Waal show the same self-contradiction that one can see in Darwin.  On the one hand, Bekoff says that "animal morality is different in degree but not in kind from human morality."  On the other hand, he says there are "bona fide differences in kind" (Bekoff and Pierce 2009, 139-40).  He admits that "human morality is unique," because humans are unique in their capacities of language and judgment (Bekoff and Pierce 2009, 132, 139-42).  Similarly, de Waal sometimes seems to say that morality is not unique to human beings, but then he concedes that morality at the level of judgment and reasoning is uniquely human (de Waal 2006, 20, 173-75).

Abbate might say, however, that this is not necessarily contradictory.  If de Waal is right about there being three levels of human morality, and if nonhuman animals show some elements of the lower levels but not of the higher levels, then the fullest expression of human morality is uniquely human, although some animals show some features of the moral life.  Thus, there is both continuity and discontinuity in the moral psychology of animals.  At some levels of morality, there is only a difference in degree.  At other levels, there is a difference in kind.  This is exactly what one would expect from the emergent evolution of animal morality.  And, I suggest, this is Aristotle's position, even though his biology did not have a fully developed evolutionary theory.

According to de Waal, the moral sentiments constitute the first level of morality--the emotional building blocks of morality that include empathy, reciprocity, retribution, a sense of fairness, and reconciliation to resolve conflicts and restore harmonious relationships (de Waal 2006, 166-75).  All of this can be seen in some form in other animals

In stressing the importance of the moral sentiments for moral psychology, de Waal belongs to the philosophic tradition of sentimentalist ethics that includes David Hume, Adam Smith, Darwin, and Edward Westermarck--a tradition that is set against the Kantian tradition of rationalist ethics.  I have written many posts on this, including here, here, here., and here.

De Waal identifies social pressure as the second level of morality.  Through social pressure, individuals are habituated to conform to the social rules of their group that maintain the good order of the community.  These rules are enforced through reward, punishment, and reputation.  In these ways, morality serves as a social contract for a cooperative society. Some of this can be seen in some nonhuman animals.  For example, high-ranking males in chimpanzee groups show "policing behavior"--males break up fights among others, and their intervention seems to be remarkably evenhanded.  Nevertheless, the human morality of social pressure goes beyond animal morality by formulating social rules that are more abstract and systematic than is the case for other animals.

Finally, judgment and reasoning constitute a third level of morality, and this is uniquely human.  So, for example, we are like other social animals in that we care about our reputations--how we appear in the eyes of others--so that we want to be praised and not blamed by others; but we can also use our distinctively human capacity for abstraction and imagination to see ourselves mirrored in the eyes of an "impartial spectator" (as Adam Smith said), so that we can want to do what is praiseworthy, regardless of whether we are actually praised by anyone. We care not only about our real reputation but also about our imaginary reputation.  From this we develop an internal sense of self-esteem or conscience.  There is no evidence for anything like this in nonhuman animals.  (I have written about Smith's concept of the "impartial spectator" here.)

Like de Waal, Aristotle saw both continuity and discontinuity between human beings and other animals in their moral psychology.  In his History of Animals (588a15), he wrote:

"In most of the other animals, there are traces of the qualities of soul that are more evidently differentiated in human beings.  For there are both gentleness and savagery, mildness and harshness, courage and timidity, fear and confidence, spiritedness and trickery, and, with respect to intelligence [dianoia], something like judgment [sunesis], similar in many ways. . . . For some of these qualities differ only more or less with reference to human beings. . . . For nature passes little by little from the inanimate to animals, so that this continuity prevents one from seeing a border or perceiving on which side an intermediate form lies."

Aristotle argues that the moral psychology of wild animals is like that of children: they can have natural virtue and habitual virtue, but they cannot have the deliberative virtue that requires fully developed logos (Politics, 1332b1; Nicomachean Ethics, 1144b1-1145a5).  They can have the natural virtue that comes from being born with a good natural temperament that inclines them to do the right actions.  And they can have the habitual virtue that comes from obeying social rules so that they habitually do the right actions.

Only human adults are capable of deliberative virtue, which requires logos. And logos is the capacity for grasping explanatory accounts--for understanding both theoretical and practical syllogisms (Moss 2014).  In ethics and politics, explanatory accounts do not just prescribe right actions, they also explain why these are right.  Children and animals can be trained to know what they ought to do but without understanding why they ought to do it.  Virtue in the strict sense requires deliberate choice and prudential judgment with full knowledge of both what should be done and why it should be done.  This deliberative virtue with prudence corresponds to what de Waal identifies as the third level of morality--reasoning and judgment.

Because of their unique capacity for logos, human beings are more political than the other political animals--and more moral than the other moral animals--because this capacity for grasping explanatory accounts means that rather than just habitually obeying social rules of justice in their group, human beings will want to know why these are the rules, and they will argue over whether there might be better rules.  For that reason, human politics is always a rhetorical activity in which people have to persuade one another that what their community is doing is just, right, or noble.  That's why Aristotle's Rhetoric is a crucial text for his moral and political philosophy.

The importance of rhetorical speech for human politics and human morality explains why language is the critical marker in the evolutionary transition to uniquely human symbolism and rationality, as Ginsburg and Jablonka have indicated.

ADDENDUM--SEPTEMBER 3, 2025

Abbate's article has been recently reprinted in a book edited by Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey--Animal History: History as If Animals Mattered (Eugene, Oregon: Resource Publications, 2025).  In this new version of her paper, she makes no attempt to answer my objections.  Is that because my objections are irrefutable?

REFERENCES

Abatte, Cheryl E. 2016. "'Higher' and 'Lower' Political Animals: A Critical Analysis of Aristotle's Account of the Political Animal." Journal of Animal Ethics 6:54-66.

Abatte, Cheryl E. 2018. "Redefending Nonhuman Justice in Complex Animal Communities: A Response to Jacobs."  Journal of Animal Ethics 8:159-165.

Arnhart, Larry. 1990. "Aristotle, Chimpanzees, and Other Political Animals." Social Science Information 29:479-559.

Arnhart, Larry. 1994. "The Darwinian Biology of Aristotle's Political Animals."  American Journal of Political Science 38:464-485.

Arnhart, Larry. 1998. Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological Ethics of Human Nature. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Arnhart, Larry. 2009. Darwinian Conservatism: A Disputed Question.  Ed. Kenneth Blanchard. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic Press.

Bekoff, Marc. 1995. "Play Signals as Punctuation: The Structure of Social Play in Canids." Behaviour 132:419-429.

Bekoff, Marc, and Jessica Pierce. 2009. Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Darwin, Charles. 2004. The Descent of Man.  Second edition. Ed. James Moore and Adrian Desmond. London: Penguin Classics.

de Waal, Frans. 2006. Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

Ginsburg, Simona, and Eva Jablonka. 2019. The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness.  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Jacobs, Edward. 2018. "Aristotle and the Zoon Politikon: A Response to Abbate." Journal of Animal Ethics 8:150-158.

Moss, Jessica. 2014. "Right Reason in Plato and Aristotle: On the Meaning of Logos." Phronesis 59:181-230.

Pierce, Jessica, and Marc Bekoff. 2012. "Wild Justice Redux: What We Know About Social Justice in Animals and Why It Matters." Social Justice Research 25:122-139.