The Evolutionary Origins of Human Autonomy

I am working on a paper on autonomy.  Here are some preliminary reflections. 

This essay concerns the biological origins of human autonomy and thus involves the intersection of biology and political science.  My point of departure is the assumption that the two fields of inquiry are interdependent.  It is not possible to fully understand human autonomy, individual or collective, without understanding its biological origins.  Likewise, to recognize that genuine autonomy emerges from the evolutionary history of life on earth is to understand how metaphysically robust the phenomenon of life really is.  This approach avoids both reductionism and any hint of vitalism; it allows biology and the human things to reveal themselves for what they are in the context of the natural world as a whole. 

One thing that the Socratic philosophers understood better than their modern counterparts is that the possibility of science rests on the assumption that human intelligence (or Nous, as the Greeks called it) operates on the same principles by which nature is ordered; otherwise, nature is forever unintelligible.  Accordingly, I begin with a consideration of the intelligible meaning of the word autonomy. 

The philosopher Ernst Mayr famously argued that biology is an autonomous science.  He meant by that not that biology contradicts or is free from the principles of physics, but that biology has more principles than physics.  I take that as the first clue that autonomy emerges as a space between two realms of laws.  This turns out to reflect the history of the term. 

The term autonomy is a classical Greek word built on two important roots.  Auto means self, as in Socrates himself.  It is a very basic word that functions both as a pronoun (him or it) and as an adjective, as in autoagathos, which means “good in itself”. 

The second root word is nomos.  This word is usually translated as “law.”  Like a lot of Greek words, it is borrowed from an earlier use.  It originally meant an enclosed pasture.  A nomos was boundary imposed by human beings that confined the movement of herd animals but allowed them to move freely (according to their own natural laws) within that boundary.  It was adopted to indicate both explicit, codified law and the unwritten moral rules that bound the citizens together into a polis.  I am pretty sure that Nietzsche’s phrase “herd instinct” derives from this Greek root. 

Herodotus uses the term when he describes the history of the Medes.  When they threw off the rule of the Assyrians, they achieved autonomy.  They later lost it when they allowed a man known for his fair judgment to establish a tyranny over them. 

Herodotus 1.95 [2] Ἀσσυρίων ἀρχόντων τῆς ἄνω Ἀσίης ἐπ᾽ ἔτεα εἴκοσι καὶ πεντακόσια, πρῶτοι ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν Μῆδοι ἤρξαντο ἀπίστασθαι, καὶ κως οὗτοι περὶ τῆς ἐλευθερίης μαχεσάμενοι τοῖσι Ἀσσυρίοισι ἐγένοντο ἄνδρες ἀγαθοί, καὶ ἀπωσάμενοι τὴν δουλοσύνην ἐλευθερώθησαν. μετὰ δὲ τούτους καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ἔθνεα ἐποίεε τὠυτὸ τοῖσι Μήδοισι.   96. [1] ἐόντων δὲ αὐτονόμων πάντων ἀνὰ τὴν ἤπειρον, ὧδε αὖτις ἐς τυραννίδα περιῆλθον.

The Assyrians ruled Upper Asia for five hundred and twenty years, and from them the Medes were the first who made revolt. These having fought for their freedom with the Assyrians proved themselves good men, and thus they pushed off the yoke of slavery from themselves and were set free; and after them the other nations also did the same as the Medes: and when all on the continent were thus independent, they returned again to despotic rule as follows:--

Thucydides uses the same term to indicate the self-government of Greek cities and Xenophon follows suit when he continues the history of the war between the Athenians and the Spartans. 

Xenophon also uses the term in his Republic of the Lacedaimonians to indicate the practice in most Greek cities of emancipating children when they become adults.  They are then allowed to be autonomous, which means that they are self-governed with respect to their own families. 

Xenophon, The Republic of the Lacedaimonians, 3.1  Ὅταν γε μὴν ἐκ παίδων εἰς τὸ μειρακιοῦσθαι ἐκβαίνωσι,  τηνικαῦτα οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι παύουσι μὲν ἀπὸ παιδαγωγῶν, παύουσι δὲ ἀπὸ διδασκάλων, ἄρχουσι δὲ οὐδένες ἔτι αὐτῶν, ἀλλ’ αὐτονόμους ἀφιᾶσιν·

When a boy ceases to be a child, and begins to be a lad, others release him from his moral tutor and his schoolmaster: he is then no longer under a ruler and is allowed to go his own way.

This does not mean, of course, that the young adult is free from the laws of his city; it does mean that he is in some sense free within the bounds of those laws. 

Autonomy then literally means “self-law”.  It indicated both individual and communal independence: a person or a political community that lived under its own laws.  A political community is free when it is free from the authority of other communities and lords.  A man enjoyed autonomy when he could act of his own free will. 

However, and more revealing, a poet enjoys autonomy when he exercises poetic license and an animal enjoys autonomy to the extent that it can range freely.  Poetic license frees the poet from some convention but it frees him to institute boundaries of his own.  Without boundaries, his poetry cannot have meaning, as all meaning binds.  An animal that ranges freely will nonetheless range within a boundary set by its nature.  It will not go where there is likely to be neither food nor mates nor comfort, but it will turn aside on its own and not for any fence. 

The idea of autonomy extends along three dimensions.  One opens up a space between the natural laws of animal instinct and the artificial boundaries imposed by human husbandry.  The second opens a space between some human community and a larger community seeks authority over it.  The third opens between the individual human being and some larger human community of which he or she is a member. 

Autonomy means liberty rather than freedom.  Freedom is freedom from.  It is simple release.  Liberty is self-government, which is to say, self-legislation.  The topic of this essay is the biological origin of that space within which autonomy is possible.  I will argue that this space opens up with the emergence of human beings as moral and political animals. 

We were social animals before we became human animals.  Social animals must learn to live together.  In a harem species, this is achieved by the dominion of an alpha male whose rule, while he rules, is unchallenged.  In our own species, like our chimpanzee cousins, the position of the dominant individual was never so secure.  Our ancestors evolved into self-legislating creatures.  We were able to internalize rules that allowed us to live within the group but that also allowed the group to resist the domination of would-be tyrants.  We needed to cooperate, as cooperation was the key to social power.  At the same time, cooperation opens up the possibility of cheating and exploitation.  These tensions open the space for human autonomy. 

The Utility & Beauty of Virtue

Long time reader and very dear friend Miranda left a comment on earlier post and I thought it deserves a prominent response.  As usual, Miranda poses such penetrating questions that only a rash and presumptuous man would attempt to answer them.  Here are her questions with my answers. 

First, you write, "Virtuous actions are those mostly likely to be provisional in the sense that they are the actions most likely, in most situations, to achieve the best outcome. The virtuous person will be best able to achieve the best human life. She will provide for herself, her family and friends, and her polis."

I would like this to be true - but is it? If so, how do we know? Many of the people in society who seem to be able to best provide for their families, friends and cities do not seem particularly virtuous - unless the version of morality you are writing about is Machiavelli's.

There is actually a great deal of literature on this question in evolutionary science.  It appears that communities of human beings in which there are a lot of virtuous persons (= honest cooperators, willing to subordinate or even sacrifice their own interests for those of their fellows) do much better than communities in which such virtues are rare. 

It is true that in a generally honest community, a con artist will sometimes do very well precisely by exploiting the appearance of virtue.  On the whole, however, it seems clear that virtuous persons do better than less virtuous ones and partnerships between virtuous persons do better still. 

As for Machiavelli, he rehabilitated Callicles’ view from Plato’s Gorgias.  True virtue and vulgar virtue are quite distinct.  The truly virtuous man must appear virtuous in the vulgar sense (honest, trustworthy, generous, etc.) but must be the opposite when circumstances require it.  The person able to do that is truly admirable but can only be admired by the truly discriminating view (i.e., Machiavelli).  This view results from his fundamental disagreement with the ancients.  Machiavelli thought that all law and order was the result of an original act of ruthless power in resistance to nature.  Aristotle believed that law and order were more consonant with human nature, in the sense that we have both cooperative and competitive instincts.  The ancients were right and the moderns wrong. 

Second, what exactly is "beauty?" and is it of more, less or equal value than usefulness?

Some years ago I was listening to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto on a Walkman and a short passage stopped me in my tracks.  The violin was going along in a merry, dancing way, and then suddenly plunged downward into a more serious mood.  It was like a dance party that suddenly turned into the Council of Elrond.  I found it utterly delicious and it occurred to me at that moment that something like what I perceived must have been perceived also by the composer, if from the other side.  It must also have been perceived by Anne Sophie Mutter who wove it out of her instrument.  That is beauty.  It is part of the design space opened up by the individual capacity of three people to compose, play, and listen and thus come to inhabit a common place.  I think that Plato is a better guide to this design space than Aristotle. 

We learn to appreciate beauty by exposure to beautiful things.  As we do, we usually discover that others have been there before us.  What is true of music is true of virtue, if Rudyard Kipling is to be believed.  I am going from memory here:

East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet
Till both shall stand alike before God’s great judgment seat.
But there is neither east nor west, border nor breed nor birth
When two strong men stand face to face though they come from the ends of the earth. 

That stanza, which bookends his marvelous story poem ‘The Ballad of East and West’, suggests that virtuous men recognize each other even when they come from the most distinct cultures.  Moreover, even those who are incapable of virtue or perhaps only modestly capable can recognize the beauty of it.  You don’t have to be any kind of hero to be stirred by the story Kipling weaves. 

Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the border side
and he has lifted the Colonel’s mare that is the Colonel’s pride,
lifted her out of the garden gate between the dawn and the day
and turned the calkins upon her feet and ridden her far away. 

Then up and spoke the Colonel’s mare that is the Colonel’s pride,
is there not a man of all my men can say where Kamal hides?...

You get the idea.  The beautiful is that which is it is good to look at, hear, and appreciate. 

Socrates held that the beautiful is rooted in the useful but is not quite identical to the useful.  In Xenophon’s Memorabilia, Socrates interviews an armor maker.  He admires a suit of bronze that seems so exquisitely fashioned that one could imagine the body of the man it is designed to fit.  The armor is obviously useful to the fellow who put down the deposit but it is not at all useful to Socrates.  It is however beautiful to Socrates.  Thus the beautiful achieves independence from the useful. 

I think Socrates was, as usual, dead spot on.  Our appreciation of beautiful instruments, gorgeous music, gourmet meals, and heroic deeds is rooted in what is biologically functional.  Our basic pallet of appetites (see Southern pulled pork) and emotions (see Thelonious Monk’s ‘Round About Midnight’) have their origins in functional motives that promoted survival and reproduction in our ancestors.  However, evolution works by endowing some animals with the ability to pursue their own agendas.  Human beings are the products of our evolutionary history but we do not serve that history or our genes.  Aristotle says that while the polis came to be for the sake of mere life, it exists for the sake of the good life.  We do not eat and love merely to survive; we survive in order to eat and love. 

I hold, therefore, that the beautiful is primary and the useful, only useful in so far as contributes to the beautiful life. I would note, in closing, that Winston Churchill stood up to Hitler successfully and Abraham Lincoln saved the union.  I would also note that both of these perfect examples of virtue would be beautiful even if chance had prevented success.  Virtue can never guarantee victory; it can only guarantee that one deserves it. 

I am deeply grateful for your excellent comments.  Please post more of them.