Harvey Sarles
Additions: 2005. Somewhat in response to – in the context of the President of Harvard L. Summers claiming that women are somewhat inferior to men, intellectually – supporting his views from the thinking/writing of Steven Pinker: “The Blank Slate,” “How the Mind Works,” etc. – following from N. Chomsky, his teacher.
Pinker thinks/claims that we have lost interest in the importance of the problem of human nature, at least have downgraded it considerably from the centrality in everything, that it should have. I agree that the problem and notion of human nature is quite central to everything – perhaps, most particularly in this historical moment – and that it has been bypassed or obviated in various ways.
“The Blank Slate” begins with a quote from John Locke in his “Essay on Human Understanding” (which, amusingly, is said in my “Oxford Companion to Philosophy” not to have been in the original essay). Man is a tabula rasa, born anew, with essentially nothing “built-in,” “predetermined,” or these days, “prewired.”
Importantly - for pursuing the study of human nature - the ideas were developed by Locke in his “Civil Treatises on Government” (check sections), as a critique of the idea of hereditary kingship. That is, the idea was originally placed in a political context – and this is quite important to note, and to keep “on the table.” That is, the question of human nature wanders in many directions and contexts, and is not just to be pursued and understood as having “scientific” or factual meanings.
For Americans, especially, it is necessary to recall that Jefferson crafted this idea into the Declaration of Independence, and began the first revolt against monarchy, toward the idea of “we the people” having a {participative} democracy. Moreover, this study also raises the question of our being in the context of the religious notions of the human. Were we “created” by the deity, or did we “evolve?” As this issue “heats up” in various times, the question of human nature takes on even more impetus than it might in other historical moments.
Pinker takes on a kind of ancient meaning of the human, as if it represents the entire framework of our being human. He claims that some notion of an “essential” human responds most directly to the question of how we got here – not only by some long evolutionary process – but by processes which already much about how we are: forms of predeter-mination, what is innate or already built-in to our being. He follows Chomsky, for example, in claiming that language is already too complex to be learned in the very brief period of our early childhood. Thus it must be part of our nature.
As I agree with Pinker that the question of human nature is central to questions of philosophy and much else in this historical moment, I disagree with much of what he claims. To begin, then, I will attempt to lay out the grounds for our larger discussion, to locate Pinker (and myself) in the context of, e.g., the notion that we were created by a deity. I will also provide some critical contexts of these arguments, as well as my own heavily observational and experiential notations. Much has been omitted from the question of human nature, and much needs to be specified or enlarged to see where arguments rise and fall: the political contexts in which Pinker operates, but does not much acknowledge, is just one of several such issues of great import in the study of the human.
Where to begin? I think we have to “begin” in several places or contexts. Protagoras said that “man is the measure of all things,” and I agree, but want to widen the contexts of what this means. What, for example, is the nature of the “measurer” who is describing the world? There are some senses in which, in order even to recognize the question of what we are, we need to note that we are the ones noting and “describing” the world, and this indicates that something about our experience already resides in our asking the question(s) about human nature. What? Who? Why?
Earlier works: c. 1985.
This moment in the history of history: We are having a global discussion/argument about the world and our place within it. The world of humans and other life-forms is changing at a very rapid pace, and is likely increasing toward robotics, nanotechnology, more genetic engineering, and on and on.
We are experiencing – importantly in this realm of discussion – a rapid “return” toward religion in the West and Near East (actually built on ideas from the historical West: Plato et al). Christian and Islam are rising. The reasons for this, and what it involves and implies, are important to contemplate.
The question of our being, the question of our nature – we humans – arises in these contexts, as Western religion particularly directs us towards (our concepts of) death: Christ died for our sins…the God of the Qur’an is the God of the day of judgment…
What, then, is life? What informs it, directs it, inspires it? Where do various conceptions of death come into this discussion?
How much of this current discussion is informed by ideas from the past, particularly about the nature of the human? How do these get informed or applied in the currency of our concerns?
And do these ideas correctly or fully reflect actualities of human nauture and experience? Or do they derive as a variety of historical themes and variations dependent upon how certain thinkers framed their inquiries into the human?
My response is, of course, that we have derived our ideas of the human quite narrowly from particular noticings, or certain selections of our being and doing. But a great deal of our (actual) being has been neglected or omitted or narrowly shaped in our accounts of our being. In the current climate of “return” to ancient ideas and arguments, it seems most important to raise the question of the human and to expand our questionings and quests to fit the human condition and nature more accurately and completely.
How to do this well or at least more comprehensively is opened in this set of aphorisms on Human Nature.
I Entering the Human Nature Issue
The “apology”
II Human Nature Arguments
The Quest for Universality
Expressions of Human Nature Claims
Exclusions
What Motivates the Quest?
Purpose of Universality of Human Nature Arguments
Comparative World Visions
Sleep Unto Death
Changing Conceptions of the Entire Earth
Shadows and the Sources of Light
On Good and Evil
Who We Grow Up Among
On Reading texts (…the Bible)
What is Human Nature?
Morality: Absolute, Relative…Other Species
Absolute and Relative
Racism and H-N Arguments
Individual or Society
The Cosmological Question
ON HUMAN NATURE
Harvey B. Sarles
Preface
Entering the Human Nature Issue
The Apology:
In Plato’s dialogue Apology, Socrates refers to what is the nature of humans: why they act and think like they do; how they would respond to his defense of his being and teaching; why they condemned him. In defense of his life he praised his dedication to the truth, rather than pandering to the opinions and praises of others. Socrates, in his “apologia,” eloquently spells out what is the best life, toward integrity, virtue and wisdom. He says, also, that he is a good citizen — praising the gods and the city-state of Athens — that he worked not for riches, but for the good of humankind.
In the “Apology,” Socrates was accused of mis-education, corrupting the thoughts and knowing of the youths of Athens; and being godless, against the best interests of Athens. He was convicted and sentenced to death. In his last speech to the tribunal of “justice” he explained why he would not avoid death: death being either nothing (like a good night’s dreamless sleep), or an adventure of deepest and most interesting dimensions.
Socrates, the teacher, a person who thought himself and was acknowledged by others as a person of wisdom, thought he could improve the state of being human by good laws, a good education, and laws well-constructed in a reasoned manner by those philosophers who were dedicated to justice and to truth. Wisdom was less a matter of knowledge, and more of critical thought. Human nature was complex, but able to be altered and directed well - by the highest and clearest reasoning and good laws. Plato’s Republic is a model for a series of Utopias in which the “best” sort of society is depicted.
Some modern “constructors” of human nature are opposed to the Platonic. Reasoning, in the minds of some, is exactly what we do not need. Reasoning, rational thought, is just what has gotten us in a huge mess, and should be disregarded or overcome. Inferring, we are told, from other species who do not (it is claimed) even possess reasoning, is where our only future lies. We are on a path toward self-destruction because that is our nature, and we have become self-destructive and must be controlled. This notion of reason, which has led to a “false” construction of “freedom” is no longer tenable. In the words of a behavioral “biologist” (K. Lorenz: “On Agression”)) we need a group of philosopher-biologists to see our “true” nature by inferring from other species; in the words of a behavioral-”psychologist” (B.F. Skinner), we need a group of philosopher-behaviorists who will lead us to control ourselves (Beyond Freedom and Dignity).
Things have not worked out vs. things can work out: the juxtaposition is not exactly opposed. But what these depictions of the future - one wonderful, the other bleak - have in common is the concept of a privileged few: the philosopher-kings who will lead us via their wisdom, on proper paths. For truth and knowledge are, on both sides, hidden to ordinary view; privileged and open only to the seekers of “truth.” Obviously there is some disagreement as to the truth nature of truth, knowledge, thence to the nature of being human…
Kierkegaard:
“Step by step we have become habituated to the idea that the wretched state in which we are living is the natural condition…”
xi 201 n.d. 1854
Journals V.2.p.302
“In the old days they believed that whatever one hears concerns the individual himself (de te fabula), that everything concerns himself: now everybody believes that he can tell a fable which concerns all mankind but not himself.”
vi A 20 n.d. 1845
Journals V2. p.394
The Dilemma:
The difficulty is one that constantly dogs the thinker of any sort, the artist included. Any effort to evolve categories or forms adequate to the job of making sense of one’s experience eventually threatens to backlash, affecting the quality of experience itself. What reflection has brought us to think of as important does, in time, tend to occupy center-stage in our view of the world. We begin to see what we are looking for, and look for it because we have come to think it is the thing worthy of primary notice. Not even in our earliest years is experience a totally undifferentiated field, unstructured by such foci of importance: language, the cues of elders and companions, the myriad features of environment in the widest understanding of that term, all serve to direct our attentions, influence our valuations. As life proceeds, it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid, in T.S. Eliot’s phrase, the fate of having “had the experience and missed the meaning.” For the meanings we have progressively imposed upon experience place certain landmarks in the limelight, leaving others cloaked in shadow. A truncated theory of friendship, marriage, or art can in time blunt our perceptions, blind us to the shifting tones that for another man, or for another age, become the very focus of contemplation and evaluation.
…This problem of experience and meaning only complicates when the thinker involved is at the same time trying to see his world in the light of a religious revelation. How does human experience relate to the experience of the world that revelation suggests should be the experience of the Christian?…How is human life to be understood, when some at least can claim, and believers themselves be sometimes tempted to think, that the understanding proposed in revelation is a different one from that which man, left to his own resources, could arrive at?”
St. Augustine’s Early Theory of Man, A.D. 386-9.
Robert J. O’Connell. Howard U. Press (1968):280-1
(The “Fall” into the human body implies a rejection of sense data and truth.)
Carl Becker:
“The fact is that we have no first premise.” (p. 16)
“There really is no occasion for despair: our world can be computed even if it doesn’t exist.” (p. 27)
“…when the mind is satisfied with the pattern of the things it sees, it has what is calls an `explanation’ of the things - it has found the `cause’ of them.” (p. 29)
The Heavenly City of the 18th Century Philosophers
Yale University Press: 1932.
Some Issues which Move this Author:
1. The current attack on reason! (See: Nietsche’s Prophecy: The Crisis in Meaning)
2. How one comes to “possess” enlightened self-interest (or any other interest)!
3. A “bodily” view of morality. (See: Moralit & Genesis of Moralityy)
4. Notions of culture, “race,” and other categories.
5…
John Cardinal Newman:
“I am not so irrational as to despise Public Opinion; I have no thought of making light of a tribunal established in the conditions and necessities of human nature. It has its place in the very constitution of society; it ever has been, it ever will be, whether in the commonwealth of nations, or in the humble and secluded village. But wholesome as it is as a principle, it has, in common with all things human, great imperfections and makes many mistakes. Too often it is nothing else than what the whole world opines, and no one in particular. Your neighbour assures you that everyone is of one way of thinking; that there is but one opinion on the subject; and while he claims not to be answerable for it, he does not hesitate to propound and spread it. In such cases, everyone is appealing to every one else; and the constituent members of a community one by one think it their duty to defer and succumb to the voice of that same community as a whole.
University Sketches (3)
St. Thomas: argument for the “Primacy of Existence”
“Now it is impossible for existence to be caused only by the essential principles of a being, since no being whose existence is caused is sufficient of itself to cause its own existence. It follows that a being whose existence is other than its own essence has that existence as caused by another. Now this cannot be said of God since we say that God is the first efficient cause. It is impossible, therefore, that in God existence is other than His essence.”
Primacy of Existence in T. Aquinas (18)
Dominic Banez: Henry Regnery Co. Chicago. 1966
Essence is (a) form, existence is actuality.
Human Nature: as the history of (the definition of the) virtues and the emotions…!?
What {necessarily} constitutes a theory of Human Nature?
What “is” Human Nature?
On Universals: in Human Nature…the Species
Miriam: There are three primary sorts of people: men, women, and children. Of these, two are constant throughout, and will always be: male & female.
Janis: Yes, but…
Miriam (breaking-in): What we want in any accounting is what is everywhere, in all times. Do you know? I was in Jamaica living in the hills with poor people and they, even they, are talking about the survival of the species. Everyone agrees that we are in dangerous times. And we must survive!?
H [an observer]: (to himself): Oh? Why? — must we?
M: The trouble is, the fact is that the question of survival arises because the “construction” of the world, the actuality, the ideas, power, the will to hurt and destroy, are in the hands of men. The only chance we have is to attempt to take the power which men got…? - and give more, take more for women. Not only change their power, but in the change, alter the nature of men-women relationships.
J: How will we do that? Will it help? Why do you think there are only two kinds of humans.
M: That’s only too obvious! Male and female. That is the basic, the fundamental and foundational.
J: But, they never exist, except with respect to…one another.
Virtues and their Motivations [Schopenhauer]:
Much of the history of the idea of human nature is filled with notions of what is proper or good or excellent vs. bad…types of persons or personal Virtues might be. Schemes of the good life, the “ends” of society and nations are constructed to enhance or control whatever virtues were “in” (popular) in those times (are “in” in these times). One approach to the study of human nature is by considering: (1) the virtues and (2) how they arose, were maintained and changed — with respect to particular societies and times, their provenience and descendence; how this affected their ethics/politics, esthetics, education toward these virtues, schemes of “having” or obtaining them, etc.
They are underlain, usually (but perhaps not always) by motivational or “impulse” theories of various sorts; active vs. passive (theories of “will” vs. predetermination and certain environmental theories).
Will:
The psychological-social question: Do individuals/gods “possess” wills? If no, then why do we do what we do? - life is an illusion! If yes, then of what sort(s), how “caused,” how broad, where reside, how plastic, how motivated…? Theories of life mean theories of positive will (theories of life-as-death may contain theories of will; but may not!)
The (Social) Reality:
Those who stay alive demonstrate what parents (sponsors) consider to be active wills. This is not an exhaustive truth (i.e., we are more than mere wills), but it is a way of the world, of this and probably other social species. The rest do not survive.
“In fact contempt for the political process is a very widespread method of masking subordination to those who direct it.”
David Jaworsky: Review of: “Robert Oppenheimer: Lectures & Recollections.” NYRB 17 July 1980
Will:
Parents teach, look for, observe, believe that their children possess a will - an active, dynamic sense of self which talks, thinks, does, has power over itself (and them). The children accede to this picture of will, and come to act as if they are actually in possession of will, mostly in the same senses as their parents’ observations and reactions. A great human fiction? Perhaps. But one which is…which works.
Life and Death
Two “great” theoretical traditions about the nature of being, of life. The tradition of and from death creates (from time-to-time) the notion that life “is” deeply an aspect of death; a preparation, a very small moment in some eternity - life, an illusion, the body, a testing; unreal in any experiential sense (certain exceptions a la Kierkegaard). Life theories which are mirror images to the death theories (not all are) try to make death an aspect of life in the sense that it is life which goes on forever - or at least till it seems to be beyond interest. The body is all (non-dualism), each moment is forever or all there is. But neither of these has a strong theory of experience “in” the world.
Conjunctions of Existence:
To be alive while particular others are alive - is in many senses less important than the particular histories through which each of them has gotten here. Those histories are so powerful that they can enable us neither to see nor to appreciate those conjunctions which some spiritual (e.g., Am. Indian) traditions find overwhelmingly obvious.
Spirituality:
In a world full of different, often opposing and contradictory religions, one can still appreciate that others believe in their own traditions, that they each try in some sense to transcend their experience (some altogether, some in each moment). To be spiritual is to appreciate this without being captured by any specific tradition, but to dwell on the wonders of being and becoming; and to not be so frightened that one has to accede to pictures of being which are not honest to oneself and best friends/spouse.
Human Nature and History:
…many questions. Are humans the same in all eras? Does different life experience — individual, age grades, etc. - make one different? How? (strength, gullibility, openness and resistance to certain ideas…?) Different histories, languages, traditions - in what senses are we children of our parents? Are these senses always the same; or can they bring us up to not be like them? Do we have equal access to the stories we are being told, as, for example, the tellers of those stories? (e.g., Confucius). In what senses do we learn from history? Can we imagine, usefully, what great figures would have done in this era, in one’s own setting and experience? How does the nature of how we see ourselves affect our theories of human nature? - are these so inexplicably intertwined that they cannot be disconnected? — e.g., is what it takes for a “humble” persona to discuss world-class theories the same as what it takes for God’s “chosen” to do the same?
Why the Human Nature Discussion NOW?
Because questions/observations of other species are quite different from the stories we have told ourselves about them: they are social, communicative, possess something like knowledge; learn, change, survive in an experiential world. Because these stories we have told ourselves about other species become important/are important in delimiting what we claim to be human and uniquely human. So the discussion arises now because the delimitation of what is human appears to be incorrect in some possibly deep senses.
(How, a rational person asks, could one’s theory of human nature be said to be “incorrect?” How would one claim to know what is correct since we live out our lives with respect to being theorists of our own nature? The question thence comes down to: what sorts of human nature theorists are we and why? That is, there must be some slippage between what we believe and what we believe we believe!)
Human Nature and Gravity:
More than 3 centuries it took to discover that Newton’s apple applies to the human condition — except that we grow on the ground, not above it, and falling is a relational factor, not a free-fall. Always in some gravitational dance, we spend our first two decades defying it, the next… acceding to its power in counts of years and eras. The apparent paradox is that we are, at once, gravity and users of gravity.
Social Reality:
The nature of experience is determined, it is said, by what others claim reality to be. But that claim cannot be anti-real, anti-physical in any critical sense. And where do “they” — who determine us — find out? Isn’t it a question of infinite regression? Who, on the other hand, can deny that we are aspects of a history and language which is deeply social: agreed-upon if only to talk, about…There remain questions of will, of determining what one can determine about oneself, how one comes to conceptualize possibilities of becoming (also social?), how one pursues them, etc. If I say to myself that I will do something, is it only or merely because others have willed me to will this or that? What difference does it make, if I can and do act out of this will to action, the exact senses in which it can be said to have been determined? (And, e.g., what do teachers do in the world?) Doesn’t death, e.g., become a determiner for the Christian (gets personified, etc.)??
Illuminating the Human Nature Discussion:
I presume that our neglect of the argument indicates that it has been considered “well-understood” until now; that we have assumed that we knew the nature of Human nature in essential outline, and were merely filling-in detail. Good times push large problems into obscurity and bad times unleash those aspects which had been presumed banished, or merely personal and personality quirks. To me this merely indicates that we have infinite ways to hide; to develop theories of our being which manage to take those aspects of the human condition we dislike in any era, and create a theory which declares them abnormal, thus not me, not us.
The problem is how to illuminate an issue which we hide so well, or even deny is an issue (except in bad times)!?
Natural Selection:
…is invoked to demonstrate, against the view that species are continuous and fixed forever; that the “mere” workings of nature are sufficient to “cause” or otherwise account for evolution; that the natural world is sufficiently harsh that many individuals of whatever types do not survive; that those who survive are either fit or capable of adaptation to a harsh (and/or “new”) environment; that those who are fit are individually or collectively at least slightly different in certain ways (minimally in ways which permit survival) from their brethren and cousins who do not survive; that these differences “move” in such directions as to “produce” offspring who are different from their collective antecedents sufficiently that they are a “new” species.
This is not to say that NATURE caused selection, but that the vicissitudes of life (due to weather, volcanoes, bloods, chance,…,etc.) caught some creatures unprepared, unaware, … or that it could have. Whether evolution actually happened because of natural selection is moot, and remains debatable, and to be demonstrated — if possible (e.g., changes in response to modern antibiotics). As an argument against the fixity of species, it is plausible and generally pursuasive. It is not an argument against theology in general, but opposes certain particular notions of the deity as ultimate, once-and-for-all creator. It is not necesarily anti-theistic, nor atheistic in principle; it opposes certain forms of theism, most particularly (so far) those concerned primarily with the “origins” of humankind, of life, etc.
The entire argument depends, of course, on definitions and conceptions of “nature,” most of which (all of which?) seem debatable at the present time.
The Biologists’ “present” is a period of at least 10,000 years!
Existence:
Why are we here? — often couples itself with questions of: “Are we here?” Do we exist? Isn’t “this” (worldly apparition I call myself) an aspect of…”death”, of non-existence?
The question implies (already in its asking, because its posing already entails a world-view; i.e., why would anyone ask about his (!) own existence unless he expected a form of negative answer?) a reason, a cause to our being which is more/other than the so-called “biological facts.”
What is the form of an “answer” (more than, perhaps, a mere response) to such a question? God created us; Eve sinned and we “fell” into our bodies? Always “more than” a mere biology — and it raises questions of what is a biology, and how do we claim that we know? It entails theories of “time” (e.g., when is the “present” and what is an observed; what observable?)
The biologists’ answer: to survive! We are here in order to…survive. A trivial fact, from many points of view, becomes fascinating when one begins to realize the travails through which we must have gone, in order (merely) TO BE HERE (and why the theologian-anti-biologists want to shorten the history of being; i.e., to again trivialize evolutionary survival difficulties).
But: why pose this question? — of why we are here? Why is this not sufficient…being? Will wishing change the actuality, or (merely) change our perceptions of it? (and/or will the perceptions lead to actual changes in its reality?)
Virtues and Emotions:
Either/or, in various combinations structure the visions of our worlds. That which is prized, those to be avoided, to be sought, to be frightened of…this comprises the bases of our world-views. Fear, courage — here, axes of being reside: to overcome fear — a powerful principle; the awesome power of the fear of fear.
One more piece: what to do with/about pain?
Biology - A Critique:
To use the term Biology or biological in reference to the human condition is at once to inform, to demarcate, and to obfuscate. Like the use of the term “Anthropology” to talk only about “others” (exotic and/or dead), the history of the term is taken as the study not of life, but of other species. In both “Biology” and “Anthropology” we become residual beings, defined and existing only in contrast with the focus, the subject matter, the others. More ways to lose meaning? — to be the left-overs in our own perorations?
The fact is, in Western thinking, that there is no biology without anthropology, no anthropology without biology, because humans are juxtaposed with other creatures in this tradition (body=animal/nature). Any change in our knowledge, even in our conceptions of others or of what is human, affects our thinking about the others. To state the primacy of one, to even believe they are independent subject areas, is a high order of fakery. To study one is to study the other. To not know this, to hide or deny it, is delusory or a lie.
“Biology” — used in isolation, rather as if it is isolable, is already to have assumed much about the life of other species (thus, about humans), that probably ought not to be assumed.
Life’s Surprises (in this order??):
1. There is continuity.
2. There is change.
3. There is death.
4. There is life.
Entire visions, whole eras are constructed herein: which questions are considered; which ones seriously; in what order.
Epochal Battles in the Shrunken World:
1. Justice –by those who feel downtrodden. How do people(s) come to perceive themselves as “down?” What will get them: even; ahead, justified, treated fairly?
Do some want control, or a little more, of what they think they deserve, or what they see others have, or riches, or to be left alone, or…, or?
“Terrorism,” civil disobedience, mutiny, martyrdom — attempts to “win,” to call attention to,..to make the world more “serious?”
2. Existence/Reality — in a world of different, perhaps competing “-isms,” the wonder of what is…right,…real, of what is life, and what is it worth.
To live right vs. to die right!
To be some -one, some -nation, some -caste:: to NOT be…
a. Truth vs. Opinion::Absolute vs. Relative — are these, indeed, the same arguments?? — or do their overlapping semantic fields blind us to their arenas of difference?
Example: of the string player whose intonation is very good:
I tune my A string to 440 Hz (give or take a few Hz). I tune my D and E to the A; listening for the best 5th, I turn the pegs aft and yon, surrounding and dampening the relationships until they are very good (and depend, obviously, on my esthetic — but good intonation is not so difficult to discern). And the G is tuned a 5th down from the D and in-relation. Then, I try to play “in tune,” a notion which is “fairly” absolute, even if based, in the first instance, on a set of relationships. It leaves a great deal of room for illusion and trickery, but the limits of in-tuneness are very narrow. And, it is in this sense, that we are both absolutists and relativists, simultaneously. It is an empirical question - and an important one - which is which, however.
The Superorganic (Agency and the Agent):
…or how the underpinnings of social science have become bureaucratized!
It was “Grimm’s law” (or Law) which did us in. It stated that language (now, Language) CHANGES. Language has an evolution; Language evolves. This was the essence of the study called Philology. And it was interesting and important news.
It meant, among other things, that questions of meaning, translation, and history are intertwined; that a literal understanding of ancient texts is impossible, but can be possibly elucidated by careful scholarship into the study of language and cultural change; that life is ongoing, processual and not fixed or essential — at least with respect to whatever we base upon some arche-language (e.g., Adamic) notion of human derivation whose supposed elucidation would be through etymology.
It meant also that to whatever ever extent the human psyche is dependent upon or intertwined with language and linguistic processes, it is probably also changing and evolving, almost in spite of itself. Some aspects of the Zeitgeist are due to linguistic change. And that’s interesting.
What Grimm’s Law also did was to persuade many thinkers that Language has/had an independent existence: that it can be characterized, grasped, and studied by itself, per se; that it is a “force” which exists independently of “its” speakers, and lately, that the study of language is the place to go to study the human psyche. Language is the mind, is like the mind, establishes the mind, or controls it. (A corollary is that as language becomes Language, the existence of “the mind” is also reaffirmed.)
Carried along on these enthusiastic wings were other superorganic concepts such as: Society and Culture, each of which was given ITS laws, its evolution. But…
But…there are no people; only Language. No people–> no existence, it has led to a new and modern form of nihilism.
The fact that people(s) are dynamic, and change in what/how they hear and speak, and that turns out — on large scale — to be what we observe or realize as language change; that fact of live humans disappears from our rememberings..as with Society, Culture, etc.
The invention of normality, statistics, etc., also derives from this notion of superorganic, and appears to give it substance by providing an underpinning characterization of it, which further appears to be mathematical, thus really lawful.
It used to be that we gave “agency” only to the deity; now we give agency to any gathering category…
(Cf., R. Solomon, “History & Human Nature”–>the Transcendental Pretence!)
Libertarianism:
The only problem with libertarianism (Ayn Rand) is that there are other people in the world (individualism gone wild!!)
Enlightenment and Society:
“But this [neglect of society] left the Enlightenment with perhaps an impossible task, which we are still trying to carry on today: to develop a theory of society without first taking the concept of society seriously.” (Solomon: p.31)
Human Nature Theories:
What do human nature theories include (explicitly or implicitly): a theory of the world, a theory of time and space (not always interlinked), a theory of society — a theory of the individual; a theory of causation…, of history.
Do these theories differ on where one’s assumptions begin, how they are put together? — e.g., in Western thought, physics is primary, being is meta- or after- physics.
Empty Categories (& their Importance):
What is there not there that is “left out,” that we do not notice (because of our predilections or our perspectives, etc)? How important are these omissions; how would they change our ideas and theories? Are certain things “left out” — on purpose; or do they not get noticed because they seem trivial or something other; disconnected? Similarly there are “residual” categories like “bit buckets” in computerese and “wellness” in the context of pathology-as-medicine.
The Meta-Curriculum and the Interstices:
I work in the places between, the subjects between - what there is and what there appears to be. Where (they say) there are boundaries, edges of subject matters, of inquiry, that is where I dance. Asking the proprietors of subject areas: why don’t you ask?, what about? — within the logics of their subjects, and they don’t and they won’t, often — because — an outsider asks; the queries which count have already been decided upon and the matter is closed. Those I ask have no nerve and are producing for the ghosts of their youths. They own what they have, and any new query threatens ownership — and because they all have an imperium - to take the right-ness of what they own - and attempt to own all inquiry thereby increasing their holdings, but particularly justifying what they do and who (they think) they are.
Human Nature and Nature:
In meta-physics, where human is some sort of residuum, human nature is related to, derived from our notions of nature and all that entails: what is life (for), what is the nature of existence, (how) do we relate to nature — causally, likeness of bodies (?), susceptible to the same or different “Laws.” So in this important sense the issue of human nature is the issue of what is nature, how do we know and study, and what is our (human) place within/outside of nature.
But there are several competing ways of thinking about nature (& some others we haven’t considered yet, I’m certain), and each of these directly affects how we think about human nature. And, vice-versa: how we think about nature depends on our orientation; habits, what strikes us as important questions or observations, from sickness/health, life/death, from a normative model; also how we solve these questions.
Does, e.g., nature possess - or is nature governed by - laws (logos)? Where does logos reside; how do we locate “it”? Is it a constancy for which we seek — and find? Is it caused — or does it somehow merely inhere? — in nature, in our observations?
Does this entire orientation or vision or…depend on a Zeitgeist (e.g., does the question of “existence” now arise?) — when? why? when not? why not?
Heraclitus vs. Plato:
Heraclitus: “Whatever comes from sight, hearing, learning from experience: this I prefer”. (XIV –Kahn)
Plato: “…have sight and hearing any truth in them? Are they not, as the poets are always telling us, inaccurate witnesses?” (Phaedo 65)
The Problem: that we have fallen in love with our imaginations??
Logos vs. Chaos:
The (mistaken) interpretation of Heraclitus which froze his experiential oppositions into some natural dialectic: where opposites exist, merely are, rather than as being derived from experience (e.g., the notion of “wellness” derives from the experience of being sick within allopathic medicine).
The taking of the opposition between continuity and change as somehow being between continuity and chaos: that is, if the notion of change, of history is considered, it would lead to chaos, to a kind of falling-off the world, into an abyss, out of control. The rejection of (the experience of) change, the creation of (a) metaphysics in which change and experience is to be considered illusory, death is banished, as in chaos. Thus any and all experience of change. Thus the creationist battle against evolution is against chaos, not against the experiential, observational idea of evolution as mere change. The danger of admitting any change is that we are in constant danger of loss of control: of chaos.
Culture:
About 1962, I lost the anthropological concept of Culture. At the least the report that a group of macaques in Japan seemed to be handing on “new” habits or customs from one generation to the next, raised the question of whether humans possess Culture in any sense uniquely. Not that I didn’t (and don’t) believe humans are unique (I actively identify humans and non-human; I must possess such categories in my deeper being), but that the notion of Culture (and, for me, also Language) no longer seemed sufficient to account for such species differences.
By now the concept of Culture has been claimed for other social animals (E.O. Wilson), and the notion of Culture has moved from Anthropology to Literature (as have I). In the present context, the sense of culture is that it is an omnibus notion accounting for human-group-category differences, but seems to gather very little with it.
On Embodying the Human:
What a strange notion, embodiment. Somehow some of us have discovered the philosophical problem of life and of living. Somehow this directs us to realize that we have/are bodies. The strangeness, having accepted this view always (at least many years ago) is to note that the “philosophers’ vision” is that we are and we are continuous, and now we have bodies; at least our concepts of being are embodied.
How — I have been wondering — did the facticity of our bodies ever get sidestepped; how did they not appear in our theories about human beingness? It was, as far as I can tell, because the question of our abilities to imagine, to live outside of the here and now, struck thinkers (especially Parmenides) as wonderfully remarkable. Thence, the rest of our being was, somehow, kept in the realm of the ordinary or mundane. Even now, we are still kept busy trying to explain how the “mind” works without noting clearly that it, as Nietzsche says, is some story about the body (TSZ,I).
To embody: what a wonderful and strange notion.
Next, we will rediscover experience.
Observation:
We are neither passive nor constant observers. If violin practice is exemplary, I have to “warm-up” each day. This entails the stretching, use, extending of myriad muscle groupings, some very subtle, some still new and surprising. But it also involves hearing and seeing. Both have to be re-exercised, recalibrated, re-established each day. Visually, for example, I work on my “eye muscles” to see faster (literally, to see more notes in any unit of time). There is nothing direct or obvious in this. I am not merely faster because I was able to see at a certain rate yesterday (though this is a skill at which I have become much more proficient in recent years). Whether I actually see faster, have confidence I can both see and play faster, of know how to re-study velocity better, or…I do not know.)
In hearing, I have to rethink sound relationships each day: I usually begin practice by tuning my strings to my A (often leaving the A as it is, unless it sounds awful to me). I alter the D string, first sharp, then flat with respect to its 5th with A, studying to hear the best harmony I can find; first by what is decidedly off, then gradually discovering what sounds “best.”
So I think observation is not so passive, and not so constant and we have to restudy, relearn, practise each day. We apparently change somewhat just by our mere being (due to gravity and other bodily changes, forgetfulness, etc.). While this may be inobvious in ordinary tasks, it is certainly true in violin play at my level, and I think it is true generally that the bodily arts require “warm up” before one can regain the “form” sufficient to perform at any previous level; certainly it is necessary in order to “improve.”
Other Species Rational?
If other (any other) species were rational, I am convinced that we would not be able to realize that fact.
Taking this as a given: why not? What is it about us (and/or them) which would obscure their rationality? {A major problem in our thinking about what it means to be human!}
Loving Porpoises:
Jean Houston told me that it was true that the women (on LSD) who worked with porpoises under John Lilly, fell in love with them. She offered two reasons: 1) their skin feels unbelievably good to the touch; 2) their shape is exactly how a human can imagine being, having remained in water and changed to a perfect shape: human –> porpoise.
Power of the History of Ideas:
If I re-organize the fragments of Heraclitus, to “show” that he was basically an existential/experiential thinker, who was mis-interpreted throughout Western thought to be the master perpetrator of logic, rather of the axis of logic ve. chaos, then it seems to be easy to show how particular ideas can so dominate thought as to have become the obvious, our common-sense.
Searles’ Biologism {NYRB 4/29/82}:
Having abandoned the computer as a metaphor for knowledge/intelligence on the grounds that the test for Artificial Intelligence is a “syntax without semantics,” Searle wants to replace this with some notion of the brain as “causing” mental events. This invoking of the brain, a nod to biologism but not to experience or to existence, is another form of essentialism.
Offhand, I prefer AI because the rules are able to be discovered; that is, I can inspect the wiring, the programs, and see if it mimics whatever we imagine human intelligence to be [Make the AI test more experiential!] For 25 years the field of linguistics which was praised uncritically, attempted to generate a kind of semantics cleanly from the rules by which we put phrases together into ideas and sentences, as if we already knew what grammaticality is, free of surreptitious theories of meaning.
Searle, instead of wanting to make AI more like humans, wishes to abandon the enterprise, and to invoke the brain. I think he wants to bury the problem once more, hoping to cast a new essentialism upon us: ironically, now, in the name of “Biology.”
II
HUMAN NATURE ARGUMENTS (1984-5)
The Quest for Universality
What is the same or in-common among some of us, stretched to “all” of human-kind, in all the world, now, in the indefinite past, toward an indefinite future.
Expressions of Human Nature Claims
All humans are, do, will, think, believe…e.g., all humans “have” religion, “have” language, souls, etc.
The same claims often work in the obverse: if they have religion, have language, then they are (must be) human.
Exclusions
Those humans (i.e., born of humans [Generation]), looking like other humans, who do not speak, are anti-religious, etc., are not admitted into human-beingness, or are kept in some sub-category (e.g., “retarded” persons, children, slaves) which is almost human (or almost non-human). [What is an "interface" category?]
a. Appearance: bodily, especially facial…in Western thought, made in the “image” of God (Genesis:1.26); usually means in the image of the “visage” of God: looking like “God looks” (face, eyes, expression) –> fear of the study of expression? –> (entering into God’s domains?? — not to be tampered with??)
b. Different Aspects or Attributes: different language (un-understandable, thus unintelligent?); different visage (color, facial features, “stupid”, “looking like…?); different beliefs::different God(s); different habits/histories.
What Motivates the Quest
a. Religious/Personal: if God(s) and humans in some [causal?] relationship, then if (I) am human, I partake in all of what Human means: God, Language (e.g., eternity, blessedness, etc — depending on the “attributes” of my God[s]).
b. Metaphysical/Political: if I am human, then I (individually) partake in the essence of what is human. I can do, be, look inside my own being, and be secure that I “know” who I am and what I do: justifying self-thought, self-action.
c. Psychological/Individual: fear, guilt, etc. A “set” of bodily feelings which some/all of us find annoying-to-disturbing, and which may seek relief or justification. These feelings accompany or are accompanied by thoughts/internal images which interact with the feelings: driving or driven by them. New or substitute thoughts can be used, often, to manage or alter feelings, or vice-versa: e.g., fear of “death” can often be managed or shifted by images of “salvation”. Sometimes these become quite derivative: e.g., the fear, of the fear, of death, may itself be very powerful and we may be moved to control or to flee any sense or feeling of fear (perhaps no longer knowing what it is a fear…of).
Purpose of Universality Claims of Human-Nature Arguments
Once the claim of Human Nature is made and secured, the circularity of its logic is obscured: e.g., if God, then Humans. Now, if Human Nature essence is shared by many, then a search for causes; thus the necessity for the cause of the (human) design; thus God.
A lack of the necessity of responsibility for one’s own character development: aids in extinguishing blame for one’s failures, weaknesses; leaves self-understanding shallow, tends to objectify self, to stand outside oneself watching, removed from action and from time.
Justifies any (political/moral) treatment of those who are excluded: “partial” Humans, non-Humans.
Comparative World-Visions
The Pursuit of Life: Not the cosmological questions — of the nature of existence, because it is ours already — but, “What is life in its living?” How “far” can anyone go in the direction of a good life toward perfection, or toward perfectibility? Can perfection be achieved or gained within what we call Life — or can perfection be achieved only upon/after death? Is life — being born — “neutral”, or already laden with some aspects of an existence cast more widely: other lives, some notion of a pre-formation?
What is the good life? — How does anyone pursue it? — Is it available to all and to everyone? — What is the path? — Who will help us, teach us, criticize us, return us to the correct or righteous way? — Is the way the same Way for everyone?
Perfectibility:
1) If available within (what we call) life, how to pursue it? A doing, a mode of being, of “seeing” (sensing), of knowing? Is there a model (e.g., Confucian) who has achieved a state of human perfectibility — or who has moved “as close as possible”, who continues to pursue perfectibility? Is this a “human” model? — i.e., does the “perfect one” exist essentially as we, human as we, born of the ordinary, partaking of the same life as we? How has this one (these ones) moved toward perfectibility? Can I/we merely “copy” (mimic?) that one; at the point of perfectibility (i.e., with the same attitudes, outlooks, thoughts, practices); or must we pursue a similar path or path-processes? Can we (ever) find our own paths (our “characters”)? Do these change; in any obvious or particular directions? Do we use/need teachers?
2) If existence “includes” death (or any states of being or non-being as we know it, or preformation), then is perfectibility achievable? — If NO — we are, possibly, forever “damned”, and there is nothing to do — then this leads to slavery or to anti-social and/or to a self-destructive sense of being.
If “existence” includes death, is perfectibility available within “existence,” within life (not usual in such a scheme), only within or upon death? By approaching a “perfect” deity? That is, what is the model of perfectibility, what path (if any), what to do: study, pray, etc. — or is there “nothing” to do?
Time and Existence: if existence includes pre/post life, then the time of life and living tends toward the infinitesimal; each moment very tiny; diminishing perhaps. If our “souls” exist “forever” then today is very short, indeed, as is a lifetime. We tend, in these schemes, to move toward Metaphysics, to stand outside of our own being, to live life as if it were symbolic, to objectify our selves; to separate being and existence, and to separate these into (usually) mind and body.
If existence remains within life (in some sense of being available within the “longest” lifetime), then we tend toward Ontology: being in/as process, with Life as a (particular?) kind of development/progression (regression?).
Within these schemes the question of what is a good life, what is progressive (transcendental?!) differs, often radically. While life may (appear to) be lived similarly, the valuation of self, of others, of acts and of being, the judgment of self/others, may be quite different. That is, hope and the future, may dwell within a person, or be kept outside — the concept of futurity dependent upon our fears and faiths, rather than within our beingnesses…
Sleep unto Death
From Heraclitus to Plato, the dualism once-established, persisted. Two categories, only two, to cover all of being and experience. What evolution that the sense of two-ness, of the one and its “opposite,” reigns, while the apparent substance, the concentration of our thoughts, finds its focus changed?
Life and Death: the questions of the Socratic sickness unto death; the aged, threatened Socrates who proclaimed himself the master arbiter of all of knowledge, these he left us with. But in any earlier age, and “still” among many peoples, particularly those native to the Americas, the question of being and experience (which may indeed be the ultimate-ultimate), was whether our human reality really occurred while we slept or while we were awake.
Among the Mayans I have known, it is during what we call “sleep,” the sleeping state — that we are “open” to the fundamentals. Sleep is when our true knowledge is “awake,” that the spirit of life (which in Mayan lore we share with some other species — or they share with us) — may enter and/or leave us. Awakeness, when our bodies are abroad in the world of what we Westerners call experience, effectively stops movement in the true-spirit world. Knowledge, true knowledge, occurs then only while we are asleep.
Heraclitus pondered this state of affairs at length, concluding, it now appears, that he “liked the senses best.” I surmise that by the senses, he meant the senses when awake (but this would mean the opposite among the Mayans because the true senses are “open” only while we are asleep). But Heraclitus was taken with the difference between the aloneness of sleep — its individual-ness — and distinguished this being and knowing from the waking state when our knowledge is “in-common” with others. Through some ironic trick of historical fate (i.e., the rise of the metaphysicians), the in-common sense of knowledge shared by persons became the “common sense” by which every individual now believes s/he knows what is basic truth. The common sense grounded itself within the “logos,” the “logic” which became the property of each individual, and the waking state became Phenomenon, while sleeping became epiphenomenal: commentary upon being and experience. But sleep and dreams were/are not touchstones of being, nor related to actuality in any clear or direct sense. The individual-ness of our aloneness in the sleeping state became the central aspect of our being…
Having lost or given up the meaningful comparison between sleep and wakefulness, finding ourselves (as it were) awake, and still not able to account for much of being and experience, the problematic was to account somehow for our being — for the deeper sense of some underlying dualism about knowledge persisted. And the quest for knowledge now concentrated itself in the formerly (sleeping) individual. The problematic became cosmological rather than ontological-in-common-sense, and we began to question [individual] existence. Parmenides (Fragment VIII) invented the deity which corresponded to that question and which would then provide “solutions” for several millennia, and whose notion of the human spirit of our sleeping state, metamorphosed into a notion of the continuity of this spirit within the concept of time which “logos” promoted, and a sense of a deity which “caused” existence turned to a depiction of time-as-eternal.
Within this construct of time-as-eternal, and the question of existence is the cosmological “why,” the focus of the solutions to the why-ness of life turned toward the notion of reality as enduring as the concept of the deity whose existence was postulated to explain ours. The real became (Pythagoras, Plato) the forms behind any actual object or event. The world of actuality, of waking-sleeping dissolved, as it were, into a world whose reality was no longer how it appeared to us; i.e., to our senses of seeing, hearing, touching, etc. Knowledge was removed from any immediate sensing, and skepticism about any present, about time and about our being became attractive as a solution to the cosmological, “why.”
The enduring deity, of which we were part and product, gave us life as one aspect or part of our existence The greater part, the life of the spirit soul which endured, was to be accounted for as prior to life, or as after life. As death reigned, life became the incarnate aspect of life everlasting; i.e., death, grotesque or paradisiacal.
The quest for knowledge, heretofore concerned with sleep and wakefulness, now turned upon life and death. The body, the senses, the actual of here and now, of change, being and becoming, became distrusted: actualizations of the underlying, enduring forms and little, in and of itself. The question of what is the aloneness of sleep, what is the in-common of common sense and logic, disappeared, replaced by the question of why we exist, whose final solution was to claim that life is an aspect of death: an illusion; a time to prepare for the truths of final judgment. But life, in-and-of-itself, weakened.
The dualism, the sense that what is, is duple, somehow paradoxical, that experience is not what it seems, but has a second, hidden part…persisted. The foci, the quest for what is knowledge as a metaphor for what is life, also persisted. What changed, however, were the salient, sapient, significant questions. From an acceptance of life within which is the problematic of sleep and whatever else is its “opposite,” the concern evolved to the problematic of death — and whatever else is its opposite. (The notion of duality, of opposites, as encompassing the entire universe of possibilities, continued…continues!)
Changing Conceptions of the Entire Earth
From time immemorial, the quest for what is Human Nature has extended to the entire earth: as far as it was known, and — for the rest — from hearsay [Glacken]. As the world is now shrinking in our concepts, as we can move easily and swiftly from place to place through the air, as we can conceive of missiles moving across vast continents or satellites circling the globe in 90 minutes, the sense that all is known or, certainly, knowable, impresses upon us.
As the earth has become effectively smaller, as there is actual movement from place to place, the experience with exotic peoples who derive from other, distant homelands, has become usual, perhaps ordinary. With the people has come ideas and knowledge whose interchange with our peoples’ ideas and knowledge is affecting the world in various ways. From South and East Asia, different concepts of the body, of medicine, of experience and outlook, have inspired us of Judaeo-Christian derivation, to lives of exercise, of a new sense of awareness of self, of responsibility for our own health and well-being.
It has caused a tension, as well, between our concepts of being, of purpose and meaning in life, in some, as yet ill-defined conflict with other ways of being. While we join some concepts, others seem to cause some vague dis-ease to which we react by seeking firmer ground within our own traditions. A sense of differences on the earth, among its peoples, translates often into a sense of moral relativism where foundational issues of being, of reason, of law, of any “oughtness” in our lives, seem to be without basis, except that we claim them to be…
As technology has shrunk the earth in our ability to travel, to know at least in possibility, who and what it consists of (including television reportage instantly from everywhere on this earth), an ecological sense of the relationships of place and person and the rest of life’s processes, and the inorganic, these have shown us that there are some parameters surrounding being, some limitations upon the earth, to support and nurture us. The technical-mechanical knowledge of life processes and how to alter them, has grown, apparently far in excess of our knowledge and/or ability to understand the relationships between humans and other life forms.
Similarly these technical advances, deriving from a view of human nature which, in many philosophical-religious-political traditions, is opposed literally to such mechanical views, has fought the impingement of the technological outlook, while surreptitiously accepting some/much of the technology. This seems often to result in social theories which derive historically from pre-technical eras, while our actual lives are conducted in the brief interstices among micro-chips. In this sense the shrinking earth has caused many of us to live our lives from at least two vastly different and often opposed outlooks which we keep in separate and distinct modes in our lives. While this cultural schizophrenia does not often conflict directly or overtly, the disparities are felt by some people(s), especially as the sense of accelerating change and increasing complexity of our lives pushes us in many directions, often at the same time.
Also in this era, the ancient questions of social and political arrangements are given radically new bases. The notion of the State, the pledges of allegiance which we accept (or reject) to some idea of a flag which represents placeness and history and shared outlook, is in some relation to the fact that the earth is geographically and economically ordered in different (and new) ways; i.e., the theories of the State — which still govern our thinking — derived from other times. Minerals, goods, knowledge, etc., flow like osmotic qualities in the cells of our bodies. Cells, like States, are differentially permeable. They exist with respect to some configurations, but have no being with respect to others. This fact, also, is conflictual, but not always and not in any direct or obvious sense. The temptation of State-National Governments to attempt to seal boundaries in some actual or conceptual sense is at odds with the ease and necessity of flow. We find that governments increasingly try to proclaim simultaneously the firmness and the openness of their national boundaries: war, of course, “enemies,” etc., being metaphors for the closeness and existence of clean boundaries, to be invoked in times when the diffuseness of the State seems to be problematic.
As knowledge of a variety of ways of living and thinking enters the mentality of many peoples, the questions of justice arise in new ways. Who has, who has-not, who deserves what, why…all these questions gain a new backdrop against which to compare any particular situation. The interaction between perceived and actual repression, their moves to action and counter-action, tends to form many splintering factions; paradoxically, as the world gains a sense of one-ness. Historical-religious-political-linguistic claims to political dominance are argued against other cases. Local and international harmony and peace are motivated and reacted to with more strength and violence, as all claims have global cases to support or to defeat their own claims. Virtually every claim can find a precedent claim…somewhere.
The shrinking earth notion, actual and conceptual, the flow of ideas and peoples, also possesses its paradoxes. While we believe we know in some depth of our experience how others live and think — we can get instantaneous video virtually from anywhere on earth — the presentation of the people and ideas is easily shaped and limited by governments, the nature of reportage and what is NEWS, and by our critical sense, knowledge, and ability to conceptualize differences among peoples. Since these are presently extremely limited, it is comparatively easy for even “free” presses to shape news, reduce it imagistically, so that understanding in some critical depth eludes any public.
It is in this context that the question of how to educate, to understand, to conceptualize the entire earth, gains new meaning.
The difficult questions: will understanding lead toward mutual respect, or to more subtle attempts at manipulation or control? When/how can we pursue some vision(s) of future which can listen to the voices of all the people, and accommodate to them; advance them in some sense of life and justice which sustains and grows?
Shadows and the Sources of Light
We find ourselves, awakened, ensconced in Plato’s Cave of Shadows. What we see and hear, when we sense and know may be only shadows; merely shadows. Not knowing whence the light derives, we do not know whether we see what there is, or some complex effect of the light, things, and events…and ourselves. We must therefore seek the sources of light to begin to know what is, what is actual, what is shadow, where and who we are…having arrived in this Cave before we could know about knowing.
The shadows, sometimes larger, sometimes smaller than what they reflect, may be more attractive and enticing than any actuality. How they move, dancing; a kind of superordinary quickness, flickerings, too thins, too thicks, looking like…mostly from what our imaginations conjure. Now they dance, now they embrace, now they threaten, contact, disappear only to reappear with an eerie suddenness, always the same within their differences; always different within their singularities.
What shadow; what actual? Where is the source of light and what see I, watching? The path: from shadows to the unclarity of what is shadowed; to the source which illuminates, casting shadows…Perhaps it is the space about the shadows which reflect, outline, highlight, but only figures as some whatever-is-not; to us watching. What trust in what we see?
Shadows are not nothing: not illusions, nor chimeras, nor tricks, nor deceits.
Let us, as Plato pleaded, seek the light, bright — too bright, that it might be — remembering that it is us who know light and darkness, actual and shadow. Let us seek after the sources of light and we may determine who we are, and how we happened into this Cave.
On Good and Evil
The ideas and definitions associated with the words and concepts of good and evil are very powerful in the world and in the minds of people. It is, however, clear that even such basic concepts change! What is included within the notion of the good, whatever is its opposite — evil — what is their relationship, varies in time, in place, and in each of our lives. This fact of change, even in such basic ideas, does not diminish the importance of the words and their meanings, but asks us to consider them in the broadest contexts possible.
Very generally it is clear that good and evil partake in some comon domain of meaning; i.e., they are similar, but opposite. Like the notions of other similar oppositions such as big and little, light and dark, it is the contrast, the opposition which impresses itself upon our thinking. Nonetheless, the similarity is also clear, and we should seek out its nature. Indeed, where we attempt to understand meaning, where similarities and differences are already important in our thinking, we should make every attempt to note similarities, because the contrasts always seem very large and important, and will impress us even if we concentrate first upon similarities; whereas the opposite is seldom true, as we noted above. In this general sense, then, the question of good and evil is concerned with the nature of concepts and words which partake in similar domains of meaning, yet seem to be definitely opposite and contradictory to one another. Where do such domains of meaning reside and arise?
Grammatically, good and evil are adjectives and/or adverbs which describe or delimit something about a person/object or some event: to live a good life — to do evil — I am good. The pair is generally interchangeable, and this is a part of their similarity. Whatever can be described/delimited as good can also be evil (and vice-versa). Part of the similarity, then, partakes in those objects, events, persons which can be/are described as good/evil. Part of the differences between them reside in the objects/events which are not described this way. Many things or objects are “neutral” with respect to good/evil; others do not partake of good/evil, or good/evil do not exist within them. Usually, for example, paper, or, say, a cup, are neither one nor the other…except that they may, and such conditions help extend the notion of the domain of good/evil. Paper, which is ordinarily neutral, may be good if utilized or conceptualized a particular way, depending, that is, on its “agency.” Who uses it, what it is used for/against. Paper used for a holy text may be good; if used for bad ends, may be evil. (There is, of course, a separate domain of “good for” some purpose, or good in relation to something which is not very good for that purpose; here evil is not an opposite.)
The similarities, then, reside partly in the notion of the object/person/event which may partake of good/evil, and in those which do not. Also, the similarities reside in our minds, knowing that as descriptive terms, they are usually a pair; i.e., interchangeable one for the other. Much of the rest of the similarity resides in the senses or circumstances in which these terms are invoked. It is in these latter, the situations or circumstances which call to mind judgements of good/evil, where most of the (cultural) change occurs, and why the notion of such a basic pair, may actually change.
As an example, consider that the oppositional pair is invoked in a time and place where humans being on earth is considered to be positive or neutral, compared to one being considered to partake, already, of some evil (e.g., the pre- and post-Christian interpretation of the book of Genesis). If one is (…I am, you are) generally neutral, then any act or thought may be judged, in some sense, in its own terms. If one is already evil, by dint of mere being, then most acts/thoughts partake in evil, and judgement is quite another business. It may, for example, be impossible to be or do “good” in a world where our corporeal (!?) being is a “fall” (evil) to earth; or it may require herculean efforts to be good, when, it is assumed, so much evil must be overcome. Indeed, historically, Humanism has attempted to override the “already-evil” notions of our being, and to substitute for it a neutral idea. None of this discussion, of course, either confirms or denies the notion of good/evil, but is concerned with “locating” it, in order to see what it is, in an overarching sense, irrespective of temporal or cultural particularities. Why a two-opposed category system, a dualism which posits either one and elaborates its theology through the other? Why attach a dualistic meaning scheme to our very existence? — e.g., to ward-off (fears of) death?
Beyond the taxonomic-category assignations of terms to our being and/or reasons for being, arises the question of the nature of morality. Are good/evil ensconced within some encompassing contextual idea of morality which has to do with how one ought/should be? Or is morality derivative somehow from a primary existence marker for which the categories of good/evil provide a framework of understanding or interpretation? Do either/both of these considerations of morality inhere in our very existence; do they partake in judgment, interpretation, and valuation of our being; do they provide guides for determining or judging the activity in/of our lives? The nature of morality differs considerably according to which notion of morality (e.g., as context for good/evil vs. aspects of a good/evil primary framework for interpreting all acts and being) informs thought and judgment; as well as the sense we have/develop for the oughtnesses of our lives.
If we situate morality external to living, we are likely to attribute the qualities of good/evil to some force exterior to our own existence (God, Satan, “the Force”, etc.), setting up a moral theology which we invoke to explain or judge life and activity. If we situate morality in each life and in the relationships we have with others, then the locus of the study of morality is in the development and maintenance of moral judgment between others and oneself; e.g., morality overlaps with justice. The reason to explore this latter notion, locating moral study within (human) existence, is not to deny any notion of a transcendent deity, but to attempt to understand how different outlooks, markedly different ideas of deity and of morality, have in fact sustained life/sustain life, and to explore those aspects of the secular which involve the shoulds and oughts of life, and how we maintain justice in our lives.
In this context, of an agnostic, “secular” morality, the clearest point of embarkation in the moral sphere concerns “generation.” Why do we choose (when we do) to support and nurture infants and children to the point of self-maintainence? Why do we sacrifice self-interest to nurture those who would perish without the concern, interest, and quite constant nurturance of (our) children? This we seem to have in-common with other (social) species, and may mark, as well, a comparative biological notion of morality.
We raise the next generation because we will/want to. It is from this notion of willing, and how this will is maintained/supported in real-social life, that morality gains its force and power. That is, we are not only committed, as Schopenhauer put it, to will our ideas and lives, to will our futures in the Nietzschean sense of overcoming our presents, but also to relate to particular others — our children, who would not survive without us — to will their lives as well. This is the kernal of morality; not merely good/evil, no mere invocation of any deity to pray tell us what should we do, but the constancy of willingness to relate to the not-yet-self-maintaining, and to maintain them.
True morality is located in these relationships, in the aspect of ourselves which we transform into the necessity to parent/maintain. The prevailing morality in any time/place has to do with how the morality of generation is maintained, supported, its costs and satisfactions. Herein are good and evil located, as aspects of the human condition.
Who We Grow Up Among
Many of those “kinds” of people now missing in my life, I seek the faces and characters of my youth’s experiences. I think I liked the Irish best: the Nelligans who lived across the street; O’Leary down the block; McDonough, Fitzpatrick and Boyle, a couple of blocks away. Today, even, I seek out those characters who are much like those of yesteryear: Martin, McCarthy, Gearity…Others, too, are missed more. All the Mediterranean peoples who found a home together, all those faces and laughs, the black, black hair of the beauty of my teen-age imaginations never settled in my present home. Whenever I travel, I seek them out, merely to look at them, see them, and wish I was among them more, with their intensity and spirit, which I miss in this land of blonds and coolness of disposition, the self-contained appearing taciturn in comparison with my retrospective visions.
I remember that many kinds and sorts lived together, that I loved seeing and smelling and being amongst them, wondering who they were, what languages they had by now forgotten, how they lived and thought and loved, trying to find meaning in a land whose life they shared through some historical quirks.
What difference, what effects, who we grow up among? Why, what I saw, who I knew, who laughed and played and let me into their lives still resonates in my lookings-out. A kind of love of all people, different, but each a sense of beauty and dignity which I could find if I saw correctly through the drab and dung of surface smiles.
Who I am now reflects itself against the mirrors of the others who saw me as they saw me, emerged to study and judge, to look for the beauty that is there; and that, that may yet be.
On Reading Texts (…the Bible)
“Vanity, vanity. All is vanity,” says the Book of Ecclesiastes. I love the mellifluous flow of words in the English version: “A time to sow, to reap, to live and die.” The words sing, a kind of poetry whose penetration into the soul of my being is as beautiful and as deep as the deepest sky of blackness’s starlights. They carry, as well, a sense of content, of meaning. “What is vanity,” my heart murmurs. Is my reading, my hearing and loving the sounds, is that also vanity? I look in vain at the reflection of my image’s visage: that, too is vanity? “Here, I think,” is a good beginning. How I am, what I am, is not so very deep. It is vanity, surface. Where is the I which watches myself watching, knowing what is vanity, and searching for more?
Texts which are mellifluous, which carry meaning, also remove us from ourselves, watching, hearing the form of words, flowing, laughing, crying, they enter our thoughts, moving at first between them. Then, joining sounds which dance already inside, enter thinking, repeating for the joy of the sake of repetition: vanity, in the beginning, all the world, he came upon a midnight clear, woe is me…a time to sew, to think, to know. They ring, and ring…and gradually they ring true.
What vanity, what beginning, what paradise? The experiences of life, the dawning of the I who I am, ponders. I learn to look at myself, looking; to see the world in its reflections placing myself outside lo