Speaking Stutteringly About Moral Freedom: Part 2

What is a man? Not “What is man?” but rather “What is a man?”.

That’s a big topic and one not to be addressed in a consistent and coherent manner at this time just because we have no good words and concepts to allow a rational anthropology. Our first task is the more humble one of building up something akin to the language of traditional Greek philosophy — with it’s underlying concepts. Catholic Christianity once was rich in having multiple such languages, Thomistic and also some more closely tied to Aristotle or Plato. But those Catholic and Greek-pagan languages were similar enough that careful thinkers could translate between them with great accuracy.

When I say we have no good words or concepts, I really mean that we have unrealized possibilities but it will take a lot of work to form those possibilities into good, hard words and concepts. Two plausible sets of words and concepts are of particular interest to me: the anthropological views of St. Thomas Aquinas and the somewhat raw views of modern sociobiologists. I speak of raw views only because the better sorts of thinkers in this branch of evolutionary biology take their cues from the harder-edged and more rational predecessors, Huxley and — more recently — George Williams. Such thinkers knew they had a lot of work to do building up their particular sort of empirical knowledge about the human species before any general statements could be made. I think we’ve reached the point where more general sorts of theories could be drawn from that knowledge — in light of our traditions from pagan Greece and Christian Europe as a whole.

The sociobiologists — especially in the school of Robert Trivers so far as I can figure — have made substantial progress in designing ways of interrogating animal nature with regard to social characteristics in particular. And, far more than is true of other schools of evolutionary biology, they’ve developed ways of organizing their findings so that a bare minimum of assumptions are to be found in the results. That process is itself disturbing to those who want moral findings to be explicit in every detail of nature, but we should respect the discipline of scientists — themselves sometimes atheistic — who refuse to corrupt their findings with their own prejudices. That way, we all have equal opportunities to corrupt those findings with our own prejudices — which might sometimes bear witness to the truth of moral natures.

I’m largely interested in one aspect of the evolution of animals with moral inclinations, an aspect which seems to indicate a good fit with one of the two foundational ideas for my version of Thomistic existentialism: the human mind is formed by interaction with its environments and — potentially — by the universe as a whole. The human mind is the only known entity in the universe which can encapsulate this messy, developmental phase of Creation. This points towards new ways of thinking about thought, including moral thought, in ways that are consistent with proposals by some evolutionary biologists and by some neurobiologists.

That very sketchy background can be filled out by a reading of my book, To See a World in a Grain of Sand, and — possibly — by future books. For now, I’ll continue towards that one aspect of this view:

1. Moral natures are very common in nature and it matters little that primitive moral natures can be tied back statistically to the inheritance of behaviors that act to preserving commonly-held genes. Voles, a form of rodent, will sacrifice themselves for relatives and will tend to sacrifice themselves more often for close relativies. This isn’t exactly in disagreement with Biblical views or the views you’d get from reading older books in history and sociology.

2. Some animals have more strongly formed moral natures than human beings. Wolves are far more reluctant to kill members of their own species than men are — though military psychologists say men aren’t generally enthusiastic about killing other human beings. It takes great stress or reflex training or a very perverse upbringing to make men aggressively kill each other — see “On Killing” by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman if you’re interested in pursuing this.

3. Human beings have more flexible moral natures which rely very strongly on intentions and intentions can only be as good as the concepts which form the goals and also guide the behavior.

It’s most certainly not true that all members of a morally well-structured society need to be moral philosophers or moral theologians. It’s not even necessary that there be any be such thinkers. Often, poets and prophets have helped to shape and focus the moral concepts which founded the principles and ethical rules of their society. It’s only necessary that concepts exist that are adequate to the needs of a particular society and those concepts need to be abstract and wide-ranging in a cosmopolitan society. But the development of a cosmopolitan society is coextensive with the growth of marketplace forces that turn all aspects of the prior societies into fungible entities. Family assets, local political ties, privately-held property, and even our minds are bought and sold. This not only damages the true, flesh-and-blood ties of moral societies, it also tends strongly to destroy the common stock of moral concepts — just when the needs for moral concepts are most needed.

We human beings have poorly formed moral natures but also the ability to adapt to an extraordinary variety of societies and also physical environmental conditions. This works only when at least some respected members of a society have strong enough minds to develop new concepts when necessary and to be always working with the stock of moral concepts to reinforce moral structures to meet the needs of a society. As Psalm 49 tells us: When men become prosperous, they become as stupid as the beasts in the field. In practice, this means that we men tend to let our minds decay just when we most need them, just when traditional moral habits and moral principles are tested by new circumstances.

At least for Christians, thinking about God and thinking about our own moral responsibilities overlap to a very great extent. We believe that we might understand, but that only starts off a cycle. A deeper understanding on the part of Christian leaders opens up the possibility of a deeper and richer faith which can lead to a still deeper understanding. Christianity demands more understanding that other faiths. Hence, it demands more faith as well. But it also takes a deeper faith and a deeper understanding to live in a good life in a cosmopolitan society.

We have to use our preliminary understanding to strengthen and reform our belief. This process is not always appreciated in our time and hasn’t been appreciated for most periods of history. Aquinas was arguably the greatest advocate of the importance of the mind in Christianity. I admit to the ambition of joining with Etienne Gilson and Alasdair MacIntyre in the struggle to restore respect for the mind in helping us to understand Christ and His words. That struggle, as MacIntyre well-understood, runs parallel with the struggle to restore respect for the mind in our moral thought,

The intentional religious faith and moral faith appropriate to human beings, and best manifested in the truths of Christianity, depends upon concepts. For example, a well-formed belief in the God of Jesus Christ requires a coherent pair of concepts such as the traditional Christian distinction between ‘nature’ and ‘person’. This loss of two good concepts is also a problem for moral thinking, including thinking about abortion, artificial contraception, stem-cell research, and — in my opinion — organ transplants.

When even Catholic bishops and Christian theologians assume that every human being, a particular manifestation of human nature, is a human person from birth to death, then we can be pretty sure that few — if any — of them are true Trinitarians. What can they believe about He who is three Persons in one God — one divine Nature — if they’ve lost the concepts which distinguish between person and nature? How can their moral teachings be coherent if they have an incoherent understanding of human nature?

What does it mean to believe in something when you have no concepts or words to speak about it or to think about it? What does it mean to believe in respect for a human being when you don’t have a clear understanding of what that entity really is? We have moral intentions guided by concepts some of which deal with our behavior and others of which deal with principles and goals. Without those concepts we are so many loose-guns, acting out of ‘nice intentions’ and squeamishness.

Again, we have damaged or even destroyed many of the traditional concepts of the Christian faith and even many traditional concepts from the moral beliefs we share with virtuous pagans. This has occurred because we’ve damaged our own minds and those of our children by mis-use of our prosperity. A damaged mind might be adequate for watching reality shows on television but not for thinking through the difficult moral problems of our world. Nor is it any good for understanding the traditional concepts of Christianity.