animals, solitary, social, and political

This is the second post presenting the elements that will be included in my paper for the IPSA in Poznan, Poland.  See The Human Thing for the first. 

Perhaps the most famous quote from Aristotle is found in the Politics, 1253a following:

It is evident that the polis exists by nature and that man is by nature a political animal, for he who exists outside a polis because of his nature and not by luck is either worse or superior to man.  He is like the man denounced by Homer as “clanless, lawless, and hearthless.  Moreover such by nature desires war inasmuch as he is solitary, like an isolated piece on a game board.  It is clear, then, why man is more of a political animal than a bee or any other gregarious animal; for nature, as we say, does nothing in vain, and man alone of all the animals has the power of logos. 

What does it mean to say that the human being (anthropos) is a political animal?  To understand this, we must distinguish between three possible types of animals: solitary, social, and political.  As is usual with Aristotle, these are not mutually exclusive categories but instead represent stages of development.  A solitary animal is not, in any but the most primitive way, social; however, a social animal may remain, in certain significant senses, solitary.  Likewise, an animal can be social without being political, but not vice versa. 

For examples of solitary animals, we could consider a male polar bear.  He spends most of his life alone, hunting on the ice.  His social life will be limited to the time he spent with his mother and, if he is lucky, his mate.  We could also consider social amoebae, like the slime mold organisms.  In one stage of their existence they crawl around like individuals, without interacting much with their colleagues.  Some of my colleagues are like that. 

What does it mean to say that these amoebae are social?  When food runs low, they crawl atop one another and form a slug with lumbers around looking for a meal.  If that doesn’t work, they form a stalk and bulb structure.  This is designed so that a passing insect or something else (L.L. Bean hiker shorts) can burst the bulb and carry the spores to greener pastures.  This latter business requires that a lot of amoebae sacrifice themselves to make the stalk.  Only the lucky ducks in the bulb will have a future. 

Social animals are not animals that dwell together.  You can find lots of grizzly bears at the salmon spawn.  Social animals coordinate their behavior so that all of the contributors benefit.  In most cases this means that a solitary organisms or animal has a repertoire that includes both solitary and social behavior.  A wolf kicked out of his group will hunt on his own until or unless he finds a mate and founds a new pack. 

Aristotle recognized that there were many social animals, including bees.  He does not say that human beings are the only political animal; he only says that we are more political than all the other animals.  What exactly does it mean for an animal to be political?

An answer is provided elsewhere in the Politics, where Aristotle discusses the evolution of the family. 

The ruler of a household, as a husband and a father, rules both his wife and his children, who are free, but not in the same manner.  He rules his wife politically, but his children royally. 

However offensive this view may be today, it was remarkably liberal for its time.  He thought it barbaric for a man to treat his wife the same way as one would treat a slave or a beast of burden. 

That aside, what does it mean to treat the children royally but the wife politically?  The answer is that the father must explain his decisions to the mother and try to persuade her and thus gain her consent.  In this respect it reflects politics in so far as citizens rule and are ruled in turn.  Aristotle says that the relationship between the father and mother is like this, except that there is no change of office.  So the father must treat the mother as if she would one day rule over him, just as he must treat his fellow citizens while he is in power. 

By contrast, he gives his children commands and expects that they will obey them.  He may explain, but he doesn’t need to.  He knows more than they know about what is proper and safe.  Whatever happens in the future, he won’t be ruled by children. 

Politics is possible because all social organisms must obey rules that are morally logical.  A honey bee worker may be tempted to rear her own offspring; however, if she does, that would threaten the interests of the hive.  The worker is offered genetic success through the flourishing of the queen.  In that sense, the bees are political. 

Human beings are much more political because we possess logos.  Logos is the power to distinguish between what something looks like and what it is.  This includes the power to distinguish between what looks good but isn’t, and what looks bad but is really the best choice.  We anthropoi are political animals because we can attempt to persuade one another regarding the good and the just.  

Larry Arnhart's Biopolitical Philosophy

In the essay “On Classical Political Philosophy?” Leo Strauss distinguished between the definite activities of the political philosopher, the legislator, and the statesman, in the following way. 

“Political science” as the skill of the excellent politician or statesman consists in the right handling of individual situations; its immediate “products” are commands or decrees or advices effectively expressed, which are intended to cope with the individual case.  Political life knows, however, a still higher kind of political understanding, which is concerned not with individual cases but, as regards each relevant subject, with all cases, and whose immediate “products”‑laws and institutions‑are meant to be permanent...

Every legislator is primarily concerned with the individual community for which he legislates, but he has to raise certain questions which regard all legislation.  These most fundamental and most universal political questions are naturally fit to be made the subject of the most “architectonic,” the truly “architectonic” political knowledge: of that political science which is the goal of the political philosopher. 

I still remember the wonder with which I first encountered this progression from the immediate, to the long term, to the universal.  It came to mind when I read the following conclusion to Larry Arnhart’s essay: “The Grandeur of Biopolitical Science.” 

Biopolitical science would thus explain politics as the joint product of natural propensities, cultural traditions, and individual judgments. The natural propensities as shaped in the genetic evolution of political animals constrain but do not determine the cultural traditions of politics. These natural propensities and cultural traditions constrain but do not determine the practical judgments of political actors about what should be done in particular cases, as in Lincoln’s decision about the Emancipation Proclamation. 

To explain this complex interaction of nature, culture, and judgment, biopolitical science would draw knowledge from all fields of traditional political science and from intellectual disciplines across the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities.

There is grandeur in this view of political life, as originating through the laws of nature for the emergence of irreducibly complex wholes from the cooperation of simple parts, so that, from ants and bees to chimps and humans, endless forms of political order most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

The emphasis is mine.  This essay comes from the June 2013 issue of Perspectives on Politics.  It is one of a series of responses to John R. Hibbing’s article: “Ten Misconceptions Concerning Neurobiology and Politics.” 

The emphasized words constitute one of the most concise and powerful arguments for biopolitical science and, one may go farther here, biopolitical philosophy.  This is evident in the comparison between Strauss’s political philosophy, legislation and statesmanship, and Arnhart’s “natural propensities, cultural traditions, and individual judgments.”  The objects of political philosophy are the political things in the broadest possible sense: those that do not change or change the least with place and time.  Culture traditions are the products of more or less conscious legislation, as the Greek word nomoi indicates.  Finally, statesmanship is only a special case of individual action, which every citizen necessary participates in. 

The point in Arnhart’s statement is that while nature constrains both culture and individual action, it leaves open a space within which both communities and individuals are able to move, innovate, and make deliberate choices.  That addresses one of the most common objections to biopolitical science: that it amounts to determinism. 

I would add three points here.  One is that nature constrains culture and individual action in two ways.  One is that it limits what is possible.  Someone who believes that she can survive without consuming physical nutrients is mistaken, and no amount of faith or spiritual awareness will supply this limitation. 

Another way that nature constrains the human action is that it limits what is desirable.  It is possible for a person to live the solitary life of a hermit, since hermits occasionally do it; however, human beings being social animals, such a life will never be desirable for most of us. 

The second point is that nature constrains individuals in two ways that can, for some purposes, be distinguished.  Human beings are mammals and mammalian nature is a broad universal.  Individual human beings are also individuals and individuals vary not only by environment but also by biological inheritance.  John Hibbing’s work presents powerful evidence for the inheritance of a wide range of character traits that were, not long ago, assumed to be entirely acquired. 

My last point is that causation works both ways.  Christopher Boehm argues (Cross-Cultural Research, November 2008, 319-352) that

Purposive social selection at the level of phenotype can have parallel effects at the level of the genotype, and that social control has shaped human genetic nature profoundly.

In other words, human cultures, operating within that free space that our natural propensities allow, can bring selection pressure to bear that is sufficient to change those natural propensities.  Boehm begins by reference to the fact that Serbian mountain pastoralists are the tallest “Caucasians” in the world.  He argues that this is in part because of a cultural preference for taller women.  This example, if it holds up, suggests that more or less conscious social selection (the Serbs presumably didn’t know they were breeding for stature) can act relatively quickly.

Boehm’s central target is the evolution of human morality.  He thinks that our capacity for altruism and (my terms) our pallet of moral emotions are the result of selection pressure that originated in the free action of individuals, living in small groups, and over time acting more and more collectively.  I think he is right.  

Hobbes & the Modern Anxiety

If there is anything that is unambiguously modern in modern political philosophy specifically or modern thought in general, it is a reject of ancient thought.  What was it that the moderns rejected?  All ancient thought was in the widest sense theological.  Including in the term ancient both the classical philosophy of Plato and Aristotle (along with the pre-Socratics and the post-Socratic philosophers) as well as both pagan and Biblical theism, all the ancients recognized some authority that was higher than man.  Even the Epicureans, who thought that the gods took no interest in human affairs and so did not bother to legislate for human beings, thought that wisdom amounted to accepting the place of man in the natural order.  Plato and Aristotle regarded nature as an authority. 

Machiavelli’s thought is founded on a rejection of higher authority.  Neither God nor nature provides guidance or salvation.  We are on our own and must make out way by our own will and resources.  Hobbes political thought, despite his necessary concessions to Christian theology, is grounded in that same foundation.  This is most apparent in The Leviathan, his magnum opus. 

Perhaps the most striking feature of that work is the introduction of early modern science at the beginning.  Hobbes gives us a thoroughly mechanical account of the human being, body and soul as so many machines, and an account of the commonwealth.  Here is the opening paragraph:

NATURE (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within, why may we not say that all automata (engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet further, imitating that rational and most excellent work of Nature, man. For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH, or STATE (in Latin, CIVITAS), which is but an artificial man, though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; the magistrates and other officers of judicature and execution, artificial joints; reward and punishment (by which fastened to the seat of the sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to perform his duty) are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural; the wealth and riches of all the particular members are the strength; salus populi (the people's safety) its business; counsellors, by whom all things needful for it to know are suggested unto it, are the memory; equity and laws, an artificial reason and will; concord, health; sedition, sickness; and civil war, death. Lastly, the pacts and covenants, by which the parts of this body politic were at first made, set together, and united, resemble that fiat, or the Let us make man, pronounced by God in the Creation.

Two things occur to me here.  One is that Hobbes regards the regime as an altogether artificial creation, as much as any automata.  Think of a player piano.  This sets him apart from the Socratics who took the political community as a natural growth resulting from man’s nature as a political animal.  More on that later. 

The other is that Hobbes work mirrors Socrates’ strategy in the Republic.  It is frequently forgotten that the political theory developed in that work is secondary to its moral psychology.  Socrates builds a regime in speech in order to model the human soul, so that he can defend justice against the challenge posed by his spirited interlocutors.  Plato’s soul is tripartite: intelligence rules (or ought to rule) the passions and the passions rule (or ought to rule) the appetites.  The three parts of his regime: philosopher kings, guardians, and producers, correspond to the parts of the soul. 

In the passage above we can see that Hobbes adopts the same strategy.  The human being is a natural machine consisting of a number of mechanical parts.  The regime is an artificial machine consisting of roughly the same set of parts.  The difference is that Plato’s soul is based on the classical understand of nature.  Natural wholes are primary in that account.  The parts of things are derivative from the wholes of which they are parts.  For Hobbes, apparently, the parts are primary and the wholes are derivative from the mechanisms that coalesce into them. 

This raises a profound problem for Hobbes and for the moderns generally that did not bother the Socratics.  This is noted by Leo Strauss in the introduction to Hobbes’ Political Philosophy. 

Hobbes tried to base his political philosophy on modern natural science.  The temptation to take this way could hardly be resisted.  As traditional moral and political philosophy was, to some extent, based on traditional metaphysics, it seemed necessary, when traditional metaphysics were replaced by modern natural science, to base the new moral and political philosophy on the new science. 

Attempts of this kind could never succeed: traditional metaphysics were, to use the language of Hobbes’ successors, ‘anthropomorphistic’ and, therefore, a proper basis for a philosophy of things human; modern natural science, on the other hand, which tried to interpret nature by renouncing all ‘anthropomorphisms’, all conceptions of purpose and perfection, could, therefore, to say the least, contribute nothing to the understanding of things human, to the foundation of morals and politics. 

Yes.  Human beings are creatures with purpose.  We care, each of us, about ourselves and others.  We can live better or worse lives and what is better or worse suggests the possibility of perfection.  We are wholes which can flourish or decay and die.  If modern science indeed requires the rejection of all anthropomorphisms, then indeed it can have nothing to say about the moral and political things.  It drives a wedge between the human being and all other things, leaving the former as strangers estranged from the world they live in. 

I think that this is the root of the anxieties expressed by critics of scientism.  The fear is that when the light of science is brought to bear on love, literature, art, etc., that it will extinguish the human being in those things.  I think that this fear is mistaken because the early modern view of modern science, the one in which Hobbes was situated, is wrong.  Some things can be explained in purely mechanistic terms.  Biology cannot.  Purpose is not uniquely human.  A spider, crawling across the kitchen floor, is up to something.  A vine crawling up a stone wall is, in a metaphysical sense, trying to get somewhere. 

If to have purpose is anthropomorphic, then living organisms are metaphysically, robustly anthropomorphic.  When science turns its attention to organisms, it is not the latter that are reduced; it is the former that is enlarged.  The same is true when scientific methods are applied to the foundations and origins of human morality and political life, to love, literature, and art. 

Hobbes believed that human beings were by nature solitary animals.  Hobbes was wrong.  Classical philosophy did not drive a wedge between human nature and nature in general, as Hobbes was forced to do.  Classical philosophy was closer to the truth, as the modern biosocial sciences are discovering.