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The continuities and discontinuities in complex lines of thought about 'human nature', the origins and exploration of our 'moral instincts', and most ...
Typology: Study notes
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To the memory of my husband, John Malcolm Worley, my beloved soul mate (1946-1993)
And for Marianne and Luis, in whom their father’s generous spirit, inspiration and love, lives on
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West. The new scientific understandings which displaced most theistic beliefs as the new grounding of Western thought and morality, anchored from the outset on a moral philosophy that increasingly absorbed naturalistic elements in its method and practice, is discussed next. While some of the more idealistic aspects of Enlightenment thought have often been contested, the notions that affirmed the freedom and rationality of the human spirit, as well as the dignity of our ‘human nature’ are found to have importantly resurfaced in a contemporary guise.
The last part of the thesis gathers some of the most recent findings that followed another equally important shift in Western thought, as the Darwinian revolution spread, influencing crucial aspects of philosophical and scientific investigation. The empirical research conducted in the past few decades, as the sciences have branched out and developed, has seen philosophy, evolutionary biology, and psychology in close collaboration with the neurosciences and cognitive sciences, all bent on further illuminating our ‘human nature’ and our moral disposition.
This thesis clearly favours a naturalistic conception of human beings as intensely social animals, endowed with a rational mind, a sophisticated language and many other evolved capacities, but it also places this understanding alongside that enabled by our traditions of cultural and social development. It is thus, framed by both biology and culture , that our ‘human nature’ and our moral sense have evolved, and it is in this complex interaction that we humans have thrived.
This ‘moral sense’, which could have emerged in our species as a combined product of the dynamic between our natural evolution and of our process of acculturation, has most likely enabled, this thesis also suggests, the development in humans of an extended sense of responsibility, a feeling of empathy and connectedness with other living beings, and with our natural environment. This ‘expanded’ sense of self may also underlie our natural proclivity to behave as moral and also deeply spiritual creatures, and ethical selves. These are concerns that our best scientific and humanistic thinking continues to address, and that guide the explorations and concluding reflections of this study.
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I, Leticia Worley, declare that the PhD thesis entitled The Poiesis of ‘Human Nature’: An exploration of the concept of an ethical self is 105,435 words in length, including quotes and exclusive of references and footnotes. This thesis contains no material that has been submitted previously, in whole or in part, for the award of any other academic degree or diploma. Except where otherwise indicated, this thesis is my own work.
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process of report compliance almost painless.
To those former colleagues and students with whom I crossed paths, I am grateful, for keeping my sense of human connectedness alive. Often unnoticed, simply a cheerful hello or an open smile of recognition coloured my world anew.
Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my family, as ever. To my daughter Marianne Alexandra, who travelled this road before me with enthusiasm and aplomb, for sharing with me the beauty of her microscopic green wonderland, for many a vibrant conversation, spiced with wit and laughter, for the quiet resonances of mind and heart, and, most of all, for her constant warmth and kindness, and her encouraging support. To my son Andrew Luis, my talented technical advisor, whose orderly mind and patience I often taxed with my anarchic approach to technology, and to whose devoted concern and gentle determination, characteristic generosity, and wizardly skills, I owe the fact that this thesis has emerged in its finished shape from the entrails of my sometimes ailing computer. To both of them, for their solicitude and love, I owe my spiritual sustenance, and my wellbeing. To both, and to their respective partners, Dan and Liang, to my kin and kind, to you all I thank for the joy of our shared moments, an enduring sense of wonder, and for my delight in travelling along this human path.
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…any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man.
(Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man , and Selection in Relation to Sex , 1879)
In this room – this lecture room, say – there are a multiple of thoughts, yours and mine, some of which cohere mutually, and some not... My thought belongs with my other thoughts, and your thought with other thoughts…The only states of consciousness that we naturally deal with are found in personal consciousness, minds, selves, concrete particular I’s and you’s…The universal conscious fact is not ‘feelings and thoughts exist’, but ‘I think’ and ‘I feel.’ (William James, The Principles of Psychology , 1890)
From the mere fact that society exists, there is also, outside of the individual sensations and images, a whole system of representations which enjoy marvellous properties. By means of them, men understand each other and intelligences grasp each other. They have within them a sort of force or moral ascendancy, in virtue of which they impose themselves upon individual minds. (Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life , 1915)
When I turn my gaze skyward I see the flattened dome of the sky and the sun’s brilliant disc and a hundred other visible things underneath it. What are the steps which bring this about? .... The whole chain of these events, from the sun to the top of my brain, is physical. Each step is an electrical reaction. But now there succeeds a change wholly unlike any that led up to it, and wholly inexplicable by us. A visual scene presents itself to the mind: I see the dome of the sky and the sun in it, and a hundred other visual things beside. In fact, I perceive a picture of the world around me. (Charles Sherrington, Man on His Nature , 1940)
We are immensely complex animals, possessed of remarkable gifts – consciousness and abstract thought, as well as the ability to live rationally, morally, and meaningfully. But we are animals through and through. Unless we accept this truth about ourselves we will lack self-knowledge of the most basic sort. (Owen Flanagan, The Problem of the Soul: Two Visions of Mind and How to Reconcile Them , 2002)
The illusion is irresistible. Behind every face there is a self. We see the signal of consciousness in a gleaming eye and imagine some ethereal space beneath the vault of the skull, lit by shining patterns of feeling and thought, charged with intention. (Paul Broks, Into the Silent Land, Travels in Neuropsychology , 2003)
Poised midway between the unvisualizable cosmic vastness of curved spacetime and the dubious, shadowy flickerings of charged quanta, we human beings, more like rainbows and mirages than like raindrops or boulders, are unpredictable self-writing poems – vague, metaphorical, ambiguous, and sometimes exceedingly beautiful. (Douglas Hofstadter, I am a Strange Loop , 2007)
brought into the light.^2 It is in such a manner that this present investigation also seeks to be regarded, as awakening a sense of ongoing creation, in which we humans are involved, a process that follows the inscribing and revision of the ideas that have shaped our modern understanding of ourselves and our culture in the Western intellectual tradition; one that regards humans as rational and moral beings acting in the world. Heidegger’s analogy of poiesis as a ‘bringing-forth’, is here particularly applicable to the study of ‘human nature’ in its widest sense, as it suggests something like a ‘threshold occasion’, a moment of ekstasis and transformation when something moves away from its standing as one thing to become another.^3 This is also the sense in which our focus on ‘human nature’ can be understood; as a process that is continuously renewing itself and forever bringing forth new challenges and opportunities to ‘stand out of ourselves’, to satisfy the profound curiosity and restless nature of our ‘human nature’ and its constant desire to re-create it, redefine it, and apprehend it in all its aspects.
In tracing the development of the salient ideas that have contributed to shape such understandings, this study also relies on the more contemporary scientific developments that have delved into the nature of our consciousness and the emergence of our sense of selfhood, our rationality and feelings, as important contributions aimed at explaining the conception of ourselves as ethical and responsible agents , and at defining the traits and capacities that can be said to distinguish humans from other sentient beings The thesis thus reviews selectively a variety of positions and perspectives, from the classical tradition of European thought
(^23) Ibid
Alexander Ferrari Di Pippo, who looks into Heidegger’s use of this concept in his essay, Heidegger’sMartin Heidegger refers to^ poiesis^ as a ‘bringing forth’, using this term in its widest sense. According to interpretation oftranscendental Aristotelian framework in his metaphysics. This opens up a deeper horizon against which poiesis undergoes a transformation in the 1930s, when he attempts to free himself from the Heidegger then examines ‘the Being-question’, and which also paves the way, Ferrari Di Pippo suggests, towards a more comprehensive interpretation ofGreek word for ‘nature’, that ‘human production takes its bearings and distinguishes itself.’ As Heidegger writes: poiesis. It is apparently through the experience of the poiesis of phusis , the ‘Not only handicraft manufacture, not only artistic and poetical bringing into appearance and concrete imagery, is a bringing forth.irruption belonging to bringing-forth, e.g., the bursting of a blossom in bloom, in itself.’ (Alexander Ferrari Di Phusis is indeed poiesis in the highest sense. For what presences by means of phusis has the Pippo, ‘The Concept of Poiesis in Heidegger’s An Introduction to Metaphysics’ , in ‘Thinking Fundamentals, IWM Junior Visiting Fellows Conferences, Vol. 9, Vienna, 2000, pp.1-33, extracts from article, retrieved from http://www.iwm.at/publ-jvc/jc0903.pdf, on 14.08.2011). Heidegger’s explanation of poiesis as ‘the blooming of the blossom, the coming-out of a butterfly from a cocoon, the plummeting of a waterfall when the snow begins to melt’, is also seen in a different encyclopaedic entry that also explores the notion of ‘bringing forth’ as analogiesunderlining Heidegger’s example of a threshold occasion: a moment of ecstasis when something moves away from its standing as one thing to become another. (Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poiesis, 14.08.2011)
to the more contemporary thinking in both the sciences and the humanities, noting key developments, and following the ebb and flow of intellectual currents that has led in our time to the convergence of some important ideas. The unfolding of what can be seen as the ‘poiesis’ of Western civilisation is also here presented as embracing the argument for reconciliation of some of the traditional philosophical understandings of human beings as capable and responsible moral agents with the more recent scientific perspectives that see humans naturalistically, as a biological species with distinctive traits and orientations. These two traditions, the humanistic and the scientific, the biological and cultural aspects of our ‘human nature’, this thesis argues, are essential to a fuller understanding of ourselves as autonomous, resourceful creatures, and responsible social beings with a proclivity for rational and moral behaviour.
It is only through a committed inquiry into our combined legacy, the biological as much as the cultural, that a true picture of who we are and what we are capable of will emerge, and a holistic , ethical vision of our modern selves can be fully realised. This is a vision that has at its core fundamental and rational principles of freedom, justice, compassion, and morality for each and all living beings - the principles that have inspired Western culture and civilisation. This is the aim of the inquiry that informs the conception of ‘human nature’ that most of us hold but also strive to honour, an old project that this thesis follows in its most significant and also its most recent manifestations, as it wends its poietic path, and points to a new way to best live our lives, and to best honour and fulfil our ‘human nature.’
We need to forge a different culture at the dawn of this new century, one that fosters a holistic conception of ourselves that moves our science and our philosophy towards an informed convergence, a new poietic synthesis, which in the spirit of the complex aesthesic process of reception that reconstructs a ‘message’^4
(^4) Aesthesic, or esthesic, and poietic are terms used also in semiotics, the study of signs, to describe ‘perceptive and productive levels, processes, and analyses of symbolic forms.’its original Greek meaning of ‘sense’, to signal the perceptive or receptive quality of the process of meaning In this sense, we use this term, which derives from production. Retrieved from
will deploy the best of our human characteristics, our rationality, our sensitivity and compassion for all sentient beings in a cultural and scientific rapprochement that brings together the best in our ‘human nature.’ This is the essence of the poiesis that this thesis envisages, an ongoing act of awareness, of meaning-making through interaction with others, an
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esthesic_and_poietic (14.08.2011)
The inevitable dialectical movement of these notions, their contestation and defence, and the many contradictions and challenges this originates, sees European thought arriving at a point in modernity when the rational and autonomous conception of the modern self develops, and individuals are regarded as persons worthy of dignity and respect, possessors of rights, and of moral responsibilities. The implications of this particular conception of the self, the Enlightenment legacy, for our humanistic and scientific understandings of ourselves and of the world, are then examined. The thesis centres next on some of the most relevant humanistic and scientific ideas which, whether based on a reconceptualised post-Kantian approach concerning the development of our moral agency, and the most recent neo-Darwinian thought and findings in the natural sciences, have repositioned our human species, revealing our common ancestry and the emergence of our distinctive human faculties, such as our conscious awareness and sense of selfhood, our language ability, prosocial behaviour, and our powers of reflection. The poietic journey here traversed is then concluded and summarised towards the end of the thesis. What follows is a description of the many explorations, the many roads and detours taken along the way in the poiesis of our ‘human nature’ and the shaping of our ethical selves.
Chapter One introduces some of the ways in which Western societies have sought to systematise how humans have understood moral motivation and behaviour, and the attempts to set these notions apart in favour of a more personalised, but also possibly timeless and universally applicable definition of the ethical as applied to human conduct. This short account sets the direction that the thesis follows, one of exploration of the various moral systems, as products of their time, while taking a tack that takes on board Bernard Williams’ sceptical approach, and that finds affinity with Timothy Chappell’s ethical outlook , arguing with him that ‘what we value’, while it unquestionably has to be rationally defensible, cannot be captured by any one moral system. Ethics is thus seen as what human beings have come to value as guiding notions for the way they act in the world. This view is more fully explained as the last chapter revisits and expands on this notion, where the thesis’ main arguments are reinstated and summarised.
The first chapter then examines the classical origins of such principles as we can still invoke to guide human behaviour. Central to these understandings was the notion of
the good , in which the flourishing of human beings is determined by a set of principles that enable one to live well and to thrive, in accordance with the needs and values of society. The ancient world encouraged the pursuit of virtuous conduct for human fulfilment, valuing moral virtue as a source of honour, truth and knowledge. The self, or more appropriately the soul, or psyche , was tied in classical antiquity to the role an individual occupied within the Greek polis , reflecting that individual’s worth in the community. This early conception, limited as it was within the hierarchical structure of Greek society, defined what we would now call a sense of agency that carries with it a responsibility for our actions in the world.
Attaining eudaimonia , or well-being, meant living honourably and justly, doing right, and faring well, as a way to happiness and moral success. Plato’s idealised theory of truth and knowledge exemplified these values, and also inspired some of the ideals of moral and political behaviour that are still relevant in our time. Aristotle’s empirical approach emphasised the role of experience for the acquisition of knowledge and the harmonious flourishing of human beings, aided by cultivation of the virtues. Central to Aristotelian philosophy, this defined the purpose, or telos , of human existence. The knowledge that can guide humans to attain ‘ what is good for man’ , was for Aristotle the object of political science, and it is part of the legacy of rational activity that still pervades our moral thinking.
The ethical views of Epicureanism and Stoicism represent the last stages of Greek philosophy, before this was translated into Latin and adapted in the Christian era, competing with rival interpretations. Roman Stoicism in particular, emphasising personal freedom, granted human agents the power to control their own affective responses to internal experience, regardless of the general course of events in the world. The value placed by Epicureans on sober reasoning and peace of mind as the goal of morally good activity, and the views of both Epicureanism and Stoicism regarding justice, self-reliance, wisdom and rationality, would remain influential beyond their time.
The chapter closes with an examination of Plotinus’ thought, whose mystical depiction of the soul’s union with the divine strongly influenced later Neo-Platonic understandings, as this philosophy was debated and transformed by an increasingly
similar notions first explored by Italian humanists, were complemented with the belief in reason and the force of ethical obligation in its Aristotelian exponents in other parts of Europe. As the new spirit of enquiry spreads throughout the continent, continuing the challenge that Copernicus and then Galileo had begun to pose to the established classical cosmology, Baconian induction establishes the basis of empirical observation. The notion of individuals as free and rational selves emerges as this more open society increasingly questions traditional beliefs and moral foundations and ‘human nature’ is constantly redefined in the thought of Renaissance Europe.
We thus find particularly in Italian but also in British and later Portuguese and Spanish schools of thought - the latter enriched by the flourishing of Jesuit ethics - the same concerns, linking morality, conscience, and practical reason to explain human behaviour. In Protestant thought, the force of reason is replaced with the power of divine grace, and the self-exploration that ensued and that Montaigne inaugurates, continues the line of Augustinian ‘inwardness’ that still characterises modern life. Galileo’s differentiation between objective and subjective properties in nature, together with a new mechanistic conception of reality and Bacon’s empiricism, would nevertheless set the scene for the momentous developments that would follow.
Chapter Three examines how the universal vision of ‘human nature’ begins to give way to a conception of human beings that includes individual rationality and free will. Preoccupations then arise about the foundations of social life and the basis of political obligation, heightened by the religious turmoil and the political upheaval that characterised much of seventeenth century continental Europe. In Britain, the collapse of the monarchy in the Civil War of the 1640s, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, would keep these preoccupations alive.
The relation between morality and human motivation is explored in Britain early in the century by Thomas Hobbes, who proposes a covenant whereby individual and social good could live in harmony. His solution demands observance by all to the laws of civil society, rather than the laws and ‘rights’ of nature. Hobbes’ beliefs are passionately refuted by Joseph Butler, who claims that the power of reflection in human beings, together with their natural benevolence , leads them to act in accordance with their inclination to virtue.
The century that saw the scientific discoveries that began with Bacon and Galileo, has its culmination in the radical proposals of Cartesian rationalism, which mark the beginning of modernity. Descartes develops a mechanised view of human subjectivity and agency in which reason would make human beings ‘masters and possessors of nature.’ His dualist conception of human rationality has since engaged intense scientific and philosophical speculation, and found immediate opposition in both Spinoza and Leibniz, as they elaborated their own theories of freedom and morality. Leibniz put forward his belief in the higher order of reason operating in human beings through the power of reflection, which in turn reveals the harmony of the universe. His pre-modern conception of the self already signals a turn to the empiricism of Bacon, Newton, and Locke, and all the writers in this tradition who would redefine human reason and objectives as no longer part of a teleological universe. The debate in the second half of the seventeenth century accompanies the desire to accommodate the best principles of human individuality and rationality in the emerging disciplines of political science and liberal economics. Moral concerns are thus universalised, and the private good is tied to the common good in a nascent political science that extends the norms and values of self-rule to the ruling of nations, thus giving rise to civil society and the ideal of citizenship.
Following in the empirical tradition of Locke, but inspired by the Cambridge Platonists, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson put forward a theory of moral sentiments, believing that individuals have an innate ‘moral sense’, and developing an ethic in which benevolence and sympathy play an important role. Such moral sense would be understood by Hume and then later by Darwin himself as the predisposition to sociability that is characteristic of human beings, an idea that Mandeville forcefully disputed at the time.
Reconciling private virtue with civic virtue thus becomes one of the main challenges and one of the main characteristics of Enlightenment thought as the eighteenth century dawns. This too becomes a concern of the new form of piety in Protestant societies, where an individualism of personal commitment is also tied to politics through social contract theories, with the value of work and the ordinary life prevailing in the Protestant ethos. The belief in providential design is typical of the leading Deistic strand in moral philosophy in both Britain and France that aimed to
