I was a student of the late Harry
V. Jaffa. One of the seminal moments in
my intellectual career took place over two days, when I read Jaffa’s Crisis of the House Divided. Anyone who has read that amazing book will
sympathize with my experience. When I
went to bed on the first night, I was convinced that Stephen Douglas was right
in his argument with Lincoln. When I
finished the second half of the book the next day, I was persuaded that Lincoln
was right: slavery is by nature always and everywhere unjust. I have never revised that opinion, and I have
been a natural right thinker ever since.
Another seminal moment came many
years later when I was reading a primer on evolutionary psychology. It had occurred to me that, if we want to
talk about natural right, we might want to know something about nature. Sitting on my deck one grey afternoon, I
realized that Darwinian evolution was not opposed to Aristotle and to the
classical natural right that Jaffa championed.
On the contrary, evolutionary theory can provide powerful support for the
thought of Aristotle. I later concluded
that the same was true for Plato.
Most of those who take the writings
of the classical philosophers seriously, not as mere historical artifacts but
as guides to the truth about morality and politics, see evolutionary thought as
utterly opposed to classical thought. A
good example of this is the first two paragraphs of a 2013 conference paper
written by Steven Forde.
As a political theorist
by training, I avoided tackling the problem of Darwin for many years. I
suspected that the theory of evolution would call into question the very
enterprise of political theory, as traditionally understood. My fears have
largely been borne out, as the following indicates. Yet it
is impossible in this day and age to deny that evolution is the truth—that
human beings, like all existing life forms, evolved out of prior, typically
simpler life forms. Our organs, including our brains, are all descendants of
organs found in earlier primates. Certain key intellectual capacities, such as
the capacity for language, are “hard wired” into our neural makeup. Certain
emotional responses appear to be so as well, including some closely tied to our
sense of morality. These include such natural responses as empathy and
indignation, emotions that have analogues in other primates today, and
presumably in our evolutionary ancestors.
These facts, along with findings of neuropsychology concerning
gratification received from cooperative and other putatively moral behavior,
suggests that morality is hard wired into us. This is good news and bad news. The good news is that it seems
we are destined to remain a moral, cooperative species regardless of
intellectual or cultural trends. The bad news is that this morality has no
grounding of the sort that ordinary human beings believe it does, and that
traditional political philosophy sought. It is simply an artifact of our
evolutionary heritage. This is the conclusion I dreaded all the years I avoided
this topic of study.
This is an example of what I
would call a pious dread. It reminds one
of the famous quote from the wife of the Bishop of Worcester who, when informed
of Darwin’s theory, supposedly said:
My dear, descended from the apes! Let us hope it is not true,
but if it is, let us pray that it will not become generally known.
The most significant passage in
that quote is this one:
Morality has no grounding of the sort that ordinary human
beings believe it does, and that traditional political philosophy sought. It is
simply an artifact of our evolutionary heritage.
My question, which I do not think
was addressed in Forde’s piece, is what kind of grounding do ordinary human
beings think morality has? What kind of
grounding does traditional political philosophy seek? Human beings, ordinary or otherwise, are
moral animals. We are endowed with moral
emotions, including guilt, righteous indignation, and admiration. Perhaps what we seek is an account of moral
right that satisfies those emotions.
What sort of account might that be?
The most satisfying account is
this: justice is what God demands and human beings must choose, or else. Divine law provides powerful support for
moral emotions; however, as such, it doesn’t provide much that the
philosophically inclined can work with. What
does provide that material is the fact that a lot of moral rules seem to be
socially functional. Prohibitions
against murder, theft, adultery, and incest, are all defensible by rational
argument.
The strongest defense of justice
without direct appeal to divine law is found in Plato’s Republic. In the first book
Thrasymachus argues that justice is no more than a confidence game played by
the strong in any political community in order to persuade the weak to accept
their lot. The weakness in that argument
is that it can’t explain why the con job works.
If all of us want the same things, power, prosperity, revenge, why are
moral admonitions useful to the strong?
Socrates argues that even a gang
of thieves must observe some rules of justice among themselves if they are to
effectively exploit others. In the
second book, Glaucon and Adiemantus challenge that answer. Glaucon presents a view of justice that he
himself finds repulsive. Most people
would like to exploit everyone else but know that they are not powerful enough
to do so. Principles of justice are then
a mere compromise: we agree not to exploit others so that others will not
exploit us. Adiemantus argues that
people do genuinely value justice, but what they care about is not the thing
itself but the reputation for it. A man
who appears just will attract good friends and arrange good marriages for his
offspring.
Why are the two brothers
unsatisfied with their respective accounts of justice? While these accounts provide objective
grounds from justice, they are vulgar rather than noble or, what is the same
thing, beautiful. Apparently, only a
beautiful account of justice will be genuinely satisfying.
In the body of the Republic, Socrates presents an account
of justice as an element in a well ordered soul. In such a soul, intelligence rules the
passions and the passions rule the appetites.
An ideal regime would reflect that order, with the philosopher (Socrates
or someone like him) ruling, the exquisitely trained military class obeying his
commands, and the producer class minding its own business by producing.
This account provides a beautiful
and coherent solution to the problem. If
an individual behaves unjustly, he feeds the worst part of himself and that
means that he cannot have the kind of soul that makes for the best possible
life. The same is true of political communities. Thucydides supplements this account. Cities that behave unjustly toward other
cities encouraged injustice among their own citizens, thus undermining the
cooperation upon which their strength depends.
What is most beautiful is the human being who lives the most admirable
life and the city that governs itself and its foreign policy in a way that
makes for the most admirable civil life.
If justice contributes to that, then justice is indeed beautiful.
Socrates takes the moral emotions
of his interlocutors for granted. He
does not try to explain how we became such creatures for whom a beautifully ordered
soul and a beautifully ordered regime might be possible. He does suggest that the most natural
political community is one that provides for the minimal physical needs of
human animals with the least effort. For
justice to be genuinely beautiful, it has to provide for a life that includes more
than that: noble deeds and, last but not least, the leisure for some to pursue
philosophy.
Evolutionary theory explains how
we became the kind of animal that Socrates examines. Our moral emotions were shaped by eons of
natural selection. They made it possible
for us to cooperate on a level far beyond that of other animals. At some point, they made it possible for us
to satisfy our basic biological needs and then seek satisfactions beyond those
needs. The rise of civilization made it
possible for some people (and eventually most people) to stop worrying about
the next meal and look instead for something interesting to do.
The best human lives are ones
that are not merely physically and emotionally satisfying. They are interesting. What interests us is rooted in our
evolutionary heritage but necessarily goes beyond that heritage. We inherit preferences for color, symmetrical
lines and objects, and landscapes including mountains and water. That doesn’t mean we have genes for liking a
J. M. W. Turner painting. An
appreciation for great art depends on evolved dispositions; however, it
explores new existential space that cannot be reduced to those
dispositions. We inherit preferences for
fat, sugar, texture, and color in foods.
That doesn’t mean that we have genes for liking a four star Michelin
meal. We inherit preferences for certain
kinds of sounds and harmonies. A William
Parker jazz composition builds on those evolved dispositions to produce
something that will not advance the interests of my genes but is simply
beautiful.
A house is an artificial product. Houses do not grow as trees do. It is nonetheless natural in so far as it satisfies
natural inclinations for a safe, warm, and dry shelter. Political communities are artificial. As Aristotle recognized, we have to build
them more or less deliberately. They
come to be, he said, for the sake of mere life.
That is Darwinian thinking.
Political communities emerged in a long history of human beings trying
to survive in as comfortable a way as possible.
They exist, Aristotle said, for the sake of the good life. Once a political community has achieved self-sufficiency,
its citizens can turn to explore the benefits of existential freedom.
This is the ground for morality
that Forbes craves. Cooperation based on
reciprocity is central to every code of moral behavior. It not only allows individual human beings to
form communities that secure the most basic needs; it also allows for the
production of surpluses that allow us to live beautiful lives. His pious fear is unfounded.
