NATURALLY GOOD
A Behavioral History of Moral Development
(From Darwin to Wilson)
By John H. Morgan
ISBN 1-929569-13-0
Copyright © 2005 John H. Morgan
Published in the United States of America
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Cloverdale Books
The Tower Building
218 West Washington Street
South Bend, Indiana 46601
…as far as I know,
no one has approached it (moral development)
exclusively from the side of
natural history.
---Charles Darwin (1871)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
No author thinks alone and no author writes alone for, as Robert Frost once said,
we all work together whether alone or not. The names of scholars and friends, like the
names of institutions, who have been of assistance to me over my forty years in higher
education would sound like a Who’s Who of western scholarship and would embarrass
me to boot. Yet, there is that in me which wishes to offer some thanks to specific points
of personal contact for, as Rabbi Heschel is keen to point out, expressions of gratitude are
a very human endeavor and they must be “specific” rather than “general.” So, I wish to
be specific in point of naming and rather general in point of reasons for the gratitude.
First, I give thanks to the major institutions in my life -- The Hartford Seminary
Foundation, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the University of Chicago, the University of Notre
Dame, and especially to Oxford University where I teach what I love to teach and where I
love to teach it. Second, I give thanks to major teachers in my life -- Reba Russell,
Robley Whitson, Ian Macquarie -- and to significant colleagues -- Francis Abraham,
Vincent Strudwick, Jane Shaw, Khutb Uddin. They each one know why they are
mentioned and that is enough for me.
This book is really a tribute to those thinkers who have most specifically
influenced my own work and thought and, therefore, the book itself is an expression of
my sincere gratitude for what they have written before me. My tribute here is what I have
chosen to write about them.
Finally, to my family -- my wife Linda, daughters Kendra, Bethany, Kyna,
son-in-law Milton, and grandchildren Kionna and Dorian, to Russell, and to my mother,
Kate, all of whom took the time to listen to my often demented madness as I struggled
through the writing of yet another book, from which again may saints preserve us. And
to Rowdy, our dog, who took fewer walks than he would like to have become
accustomed owing to the demands of this book but who lay at my feet by way of
encouragement even for that of which he knew little, and so to him I say, “Many thanks
old chap and let’s now go for a walk, how about it?”
JHM
Autumn, 2004
On the farm in Indiana
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION…
Roots of Right and Wrong in Western Thought
I. HERBERT SPENCER and the First Principles of Society (Social Philosophy)
SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY: First Principles
II. CHARLES DARWIN and the Ascent of Morals (Biology)
Descent of Man
III. KARL MARX and the Pursuit of Equity (Labor and Society)
Das Kapital
IV. SIGMUND FREUD and the Principle of reality (Psychoanalysis)
Civilization and Its Discontents
V. JEAN-PAUL SARTRE and Human Possibility (Existentialism)
Existentialism and Human Emotion
VI. VIKTOR FRANKL and the Will to Meaning (Psychotherapy)
Man’s Search for Meaning
VII. ALBERT SCHWEITZER and the Reverence for Life (Christian Thought)
Reverence for Life
VIII. ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL and Being Human (Jewish Thought)
Who Is Man?
IX. JEAN PIAGET and the Development of Mind (Psychology)
Moral Judgment in Children
X. SIR JULIAN HUXLEY and Evolutionary Humanism (Natural Humanism)
Evolutionary Humanism
XI. EDWARD O. WILSON and the Altruistic Imperative (Sociobiology)
On Human Nature
CONCLUDING COMMENT
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INTRODUCTION … Philosophical Roots of Right and Wrong in Western Thought
I commenced this book in my mind many years ago when I gave a lecture at
Notre Dame on the “natural history of moral behavior.” Needless to say, it caused a stir
and I have not forgotten it nor the urge to press on with a summary of those pivotal texts
in the history of western thought which have both given rise to and nurtured the notion
that human being as good by virtue of the evolutionary necessity of being good in order
to survive. In other words, “moral behavior” is an evolutionary product of survival. Of
course, we have blessed our product of morality with transcendent accolades in order, as
Freud would say, to enforce our principles upon children and the world. Yet, the
argument stands that moral behavior is an evolutionary process necessary for the survival
of the species. And this, of course, will be what is explored in the following run through
of the major theorists and major texts in western thought written in the past one hundred
and fifty years.
My earliest encounter with this insight came, as it did to thousands before me,
when I first read Charles Darwin’s autobiography and subsequently his major texts,
Origin of Species and Descent of Man. Though I had taken my Ph.D. in theology, I
found myself so consumed with both what he had to say and the astounding void in
answer to him from the theological community that I was driven from theology into the
behavioral science. The only consistent and deafening response from the theological
community seemed to be ignorant rebuttal and no real engagement. So, off I went to
pursue a series of postdoctoral appointments in the social and behavioral sciences and
here I have stayed.
I moved on with my intellectual interests in the sociology of knowledge and
found that Peter Berger’s Social Construction of Reality and Karl Mannheim’s Ideology
and Utopia would forever constitute the basis upon which I would draw strength for my
work.
In that process, I discovered other writers, all of whom in some fashion have profoundly
affected my life’s agenda. I have considered each of them in the following discussion.
Though there are a few more I might throw in if given a larger basket but these, I feel,
will do my just fine and all speak, directly or indirectly, to the point of this effort, viz.,
the demonstration that moral development in human behavior has been an evolutionary
mandate for survival and that to identify the natural history of moral behavior seems,
within itself, a noble task and one which I eager undertake in the following discussion.
With each of my carefully selected authorities on some aspect of western thought,
I have done three things. First, I have given a brief biographical sketch for both the
initiated who enjoys hearing the old story once again and for the uninitiated in order that
there might rise up within the reader a greater appreciation for who the theorist is as well
as what he has offered to the world. Second, I have given due regard to the literature of
each, calling particular attention to the major works and, in some instances, lesser works
and secondary sources. Though I myself prefer not to deal with secondary sources,
some really good ones have been listed for the convenience of the reader which to
broaden the perspective beyond my own prejudices. Finally, I have offered, in most
instances, a cursory review of a major (not necessarily THE major) text of each figures
discussed herein.
I have been a student or faculty member of institutions of higher education for
forty years and have yet to find an effective and defensible way around dealing head on
with primary sources. Indeed, I have come to realize (actually, came early on to realize)
that the primary sources are nearly always easier to read and understand than the
commentaries on the primary sources. I have come to understand that the litmus text for
a scholar is not so much knowledge of the “field of learning” as knowledge of the person
in the field who has made it what it is. John Macquarrie, Lady Margaret Professor of
Divinity Emeritus at Christ Church, Oxford, once pointed out in a gathering of young
promising theologians that the best way to become a recognized voice in the field was to
(l) learn one person’s work, and (2) learn one concept thoroughly. His was Heidegger
and existentialism. Well, I have used that over and over again in my teaching and in
disciplining my own life’s work. Staying with primary sources is the way to go. A few
years ago, as I approached a turning point in my life and my work, I determined to sell
over several thousand copies of my personal library and put that money in a college fund
for my grandchildren. I did that and am pleased I did. What I learned in the process
was that the books I chose to keep were without exception primary sources, letting the
secondary works and commentaries on key figures go the way of the book shops. I have
not once regretted divesting myself of secondary books I bought (and sometimes read)
while hanging on to the major texts that have influenced my life and thought.
This book really started out as something quite different. That is to say, the early
title was The Biology of Guilt: A Natural History of Moral Behavior. The intent was to
explore the positive role of guilt in the evolutionary process of human community,
arguing, as I still can, that the role of guilt in the development of society has been a
positive ingredient in the overall process of evolutionary emergence, demanding of our
prehistoric ancestors responsibility, accountability, and inadequacy in the care of the
young, the sick, and the old. This tripartite constellation converges in the human psyche
as guilt, positive guilt, motivating guilt to do more and do better. Religion, of course,
unfairly appropriated the power of guilt and supercharged it with transcendent authority
and, thus, we have the psychiatric fall out even today of that plague of which we will
speak considerably later in this study. Finally, I gave up on guilt and moved to a broader
picture of human behavior and moral development. What follows is the result.
Of course, one must begin any of this type of discussion with Herbert Spencer, a
social Darwinist of sorts, and greatly maligned by many who only knew of him and never
read his books! In addition to inventing the paper clip, he was fastidious about neatness,
he also wrote a multivolume set of books in social philosophy called Synthetic
Philosophy which for many became the beginnings of the science of data-analysis and
theory-building endeavors. He once said that by not cluttering him mind with useless
information which could easily be gotten from the library if one only knew where to find
what he needed rather than trying to remember everything, he could maintain “cerebral
hygiene” and keep his mind clear and fresh.
Charles Darwin was, of course, a profoundly fascinating individual, late bloomer,
always sickly, and never forthcoming without great effort, care, and trepidation. He
many writings occurred only after twenty years of silent research following his five years
on The Beagle, which, for many of us, is considered the missing shrine of evolutionary
theory. From this floating laboratory, this youngster gathered sufficient evidence to
launch one of the greatest breakthroughs in human understanding of ourselves and the
universe in which we live. Darwin raised, for the first time in literary history, the
prospects of a correlation between evolution and moral development within human kind.
Of Karl Marx, much has been said and much has been wrong in the saying, but
enough has not yet been said and we may yet see another complete era of influence
brought by his insights into the relationship between labor and society, humanity and
capitalism, ethics and the will the succeed. One of the most challenging perspectives
offered by Marx and his followers of capitalism is the immorality of that form of
economics and that the future would eventually see the human spirit liberated from the
shackles of corporate imperialism and capitalistic entrepreneurial motives of self-interest
and self-serving entities which have reduced the human laborer to a unit of labor rather
than a person of integrity and dignity.
Sigmund Freud is, without question or dispute, one of the most important figures
in western thought in the 20th century. The father of depth psychology as we have come
to know it was from the outset a pioneer of the human unconscious. Being life to be
essentially meaningless and that the more mature a person is the more ready and willing
that person is to embrace this reality. Society has, however, developed protective
mechanisms for the less mature in the form of religion which is a defense mechanism
against maturity and the reality principle of life. His assessment of the human condition
in social relationships is most poignantly represented in his Civilization and Its
Discontents. A major spokesperson in his criticism of society’s demands placed upon
the individual, Freud carefully analyzes the reality of this oppression and its inevitability.
The relationship of his thought to his ancestral legacy within mystical Judaism is a side
agenda in our exploration of the meaning and significance of Freud to our quest for a
deeper understanding of human behavior and moral development. One of the few
theorists in this book, along with Karl Barth, who is not a fundamental believer in the
goodness of humanity.
If Soren Kierkegaard is the father of Christian existentialism, then indisputably
Jean-Paul Sartre is the father of atheistic existentialism. The predicament of modern
society, says Sartre, is that it has divested itself of its own rightful responsibility in the
world and has foisted it off on an illusion, the illusion of an all-seeing and all-caring God.
God is dead; the crutch of dependence upon a Transcendent Power and Authority which
rules over the world has been broken, and human kind is left to its own devices.
Therefore, we are all called to a level of responsibility, accountability, and duty which
precludes crutches, alibis, excuses, and certainly dependence on an “outside source” for
making the world and our lives better. We are the ones, only us, you and me, it is with
us in community and as individual selves that the world’s hopes and dreams are deposited
and can, if we work hard, without excuses, become reality. The human person is the
embodiment of such potential. It is up to us, here and now, to decide for the right and
the good and the true and the beautiful. No waiting, no blaming, no substitutes. His
little classic, Existentialism and Human Emotions, will constitute our entry into this
world of thought.
However, Viktor Frankl comes along during and following World War II and
survives the Holocaust and becomes one of the most prolific Jewish writers on that
experience within the medical community where his standing as a psychiatrist with a
message of hope is second to none. Frankl’s existential analysis, called logo therapy,
and summarized in his little class, Man’s Search for Meaning, is a system of
psychotherapy based upon the fundamental goodness of human kind and our ability to get
in touch with the will to meaning which characterizes every effort expended in human
activity. The task and challenge of modern society is to identify, nurture, and foster this
will to meaning, a pronouncedly different perception of the human agenda as relates to
human behavior and moral development than found in Alfred Adler’s will to power or
Freud’s will to pleasure.
A near contemporary in time and in profession, though a Christian rather than a
Jew, Albert Schweitzer came onto the scene in western Europe just as it was preparing to
come apart. Trained as a philosophy and theologian as well as being ordained in the
Christian ministry of the Protestant tradition, Schweitzer established himself as a
formidable biblical scholar with his books on the historical Jesus and Paul the Apostle as
well as gaining an international reputation both as a concert organist and a repairer of the
great organs of Europe. At the peak of his reputation as scholar and musician, he chose
to pursue medicine and be in service to human kind “where I want have to use words to
offer my services,” was his explanation for the shocking and notable transition from
pastor to physician. He built a most famous hospital in the jungles of the Belgium
Congo and spent the better part of his life in that service, writing extensively on western
culture and a philosophy of civilization which is admired by scholar and layman alike.
But his famous little classic, The Reverence for Life, has become the standard by which
we judge the importance of Schweitzer’s contribution to modern society. And it is
formidable.
A Polish rabbi in the mystical tradition of Judaism, Rabbi Abraham Joshua
Heschel, has left us a veritable library of insight into the nature of the human experience
and a call for humanity to live up to its potential. Heschel’s distinguished career at both
the Hew Union College in Cincinnati and the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York
provided him a stage upon which to deliver the clarion call of historic Judaism, a call to
be human, a call to be human in service to the world, a call to be human in service to the
world as a manifestation of humankind’s quest for God in answer to God’s search for
humankind. A bold and audacious affirmation of the human potential for good in the
face of a tragic potential for evil, Heschel testifies to our human worth and dignity while
challenging us to live up to our potential. His Stanford Lectures, Who Is Man?,
constitutes the focus of our discussion but we will explore the range of his scholarship in
the process of unpacking this little classic.
The French, it can be argued, have a disproportionately high representation
among western thinkers who have a genuine and abiding belief in the human potential
based upon a fundamental belief in the goodness of human kind. Jean Piaget, more than
any other French medical researcher or psychologist, has made the most profound
discoveries about the maturation process of children. His now acclaimed classic, Moral
Judgment of Children, is unquestionably one of the most important studies in moral
development ever written and, because he is a behavioral scientist as well as a physician
and philosophy, we get the best of the best when he offers his insights on the subject.
Few modern medical experts in the field of human behavior have spent as much time
systematically analyzing human growth and development. When Piaget speaks about
children, the world listens. And when they listen, they hear a clear voice of hope and
optimism about the potential of the human community embodied in every child. In
jumping from one stone to another in our hopping across the time line from Darwin to E.
O. Wilson, we have found no firmer footing that in the life’s work of Jean Piaget.
Not just another scholarly Huxley, Sir Julian Huxley was the first Executive
Director of UNESCO and the distinguished scientist-grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley,
the noted and undaunted “bulldog” of Charles Darwin. The greatest spokesperson in the
20th century for ethical humanism, Huxley was untiring and relentless in his promotion of
the program social benefits to be gained from a comprehensive embracing of evolution
and its implications for social reform and social advancement. Called by him,
“evolutionary humanism,” he believe that evolution as a worldview and ethos has and
will replace superstitious-laden archaic religious systems thereby freeing the human
community to assume responsibility for itself instead of waiting upon a god to fix it all.
His now distinguished, Evolutionary Humanism, will be the text for analysis and the
expectations are that Huxley religionless humanism will point the way to a deeper and
greater understanding of the merits and promises of the human community. Believing
deeply in the worth of the human person and the community created by our corporate
efforts, he also believes that moral development is the inevitable result of human
behavior which has responded to the demands of evolution’s insistence upon survival.
Huxley quite clearly paves the way for the coming of E. O. Wilson.
Though the world’s leading authority on the ant, E. O. Wilson is not important to
us here for that reason, as admirable as that has proven to be. Wilson is important to us
because he is considered the father of “sociobiology,” a merging of good biological
science with a genuine understanding of social behavior in the sociological traditions of
Weber and Mannheim. From Wilson has come a plethora of outstanding works of
scholarship and, like Darwin, he is very much a reluctant celebrity, preferring the
laboratory at Harvard and the fields of West Africa for his work amongst the little
creatures. But his books, On Human Nature, Sociobiology, and Consilience have
elevated him into the highest realms of controversy, being the target of every religious
pundit and every conservative pastor in the English-speaking world. The tragedy of all of
this controversy is that the critiques don’t understand him and, in most cases, have not
even read him. One is painfully reminded of Bishop Wilberforce’s debate with Huxley
in his attack upon Darwin when it because painfully clear that the good Bishop had not
even take the time to read Darwin. One is equally and fearfully reminded of the Scopes
trial in which William Jennings Bryan did not even take the time or put forth the effort to
read Darwin before standing in a court of law disputing with none other than Clarence
Darrow.
With E. O. Wilson, we bring our exploration to a close with one long clarion call for a
more open exploration of the impact evolution could, should, would, and has had upon
the emergence of this moral creature we call human.
CHAPTER ONE
HERBERT SPENCER and the First Principles of Society (Social Philosophy)
SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY: First Principles
Herbert Spender (l820-1903), was a English philosopher who attempted to apply
evolutionary theory to all branches of knowledge. He was an original thinker and the
first of his type and quality to make such a bold attempt. Spencer was born in Derby in
England, being the son of William George Spencer, a Quaker teacher with a keen and
independent mind. In spite of his father’s intellectual inclinations, Spencer had an
education that was exceptionally free of restraint or guidance. Unlike John Stuart Mill,
who began to learn Greek when he was three years old, Spencer was allowed to study
whatever he wished until the age of l2 when he was sent off to school, of sorts. He knew
little or no Latin or Greek, less history and English and was dysfunctional in his
knowledge of mathematics. He was, however, very interested in the sciences and
particularly keen on learning what he could about physics, chemistry, and anatomy.
When he turned l3, he was sent to his uncle, the Reverend Thomas Spencer, at
Hinton Charterhouse, near Bath, to begin his formal education. But, he found the
discipline required for serious learning too demanding and so he ran away, returning
home to derby after walking ll5 miles in three days without sleep and with scarcely any
food. Eventually, he was returned to his uncle and, finally, by the age of l6 he had
acquired some knowledge of mathematics even though he was still very ignorant of
language and history. Spencer declined an offer from his uncle to who offered to send
him up to Cambridge University, preferring rather to more or less end his formal higher
education and rather rely upon his own reading, chiefly in the natural sciences.
At l7 years of age Spencer managed to become assistant schoolmaster at Derby
but left after three months to become, even more surprisingly, a civil engineer with the
London and Birmingham Railway. During this period, he began to show interest in
education as both theory and practice, as well as politics and religion and philosophical
systems of thought. This also seems to have been one of the few times that Spencer was
actually interested in a young woman, but, alas, nothing came of it, then or later.
With the construction of the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway in l84l, the
engineers, including Spencer, were discharged from their employment, the work having
been done and completed. He returned home to Derby intending, therefore, to develop
several inventions and also to continue his interests in natural history, sculpting, and,
curiously enough, phrenology, a populist pseudo-science all the rage at the time. These
interests were interrupted when, in the following year of l842, he became active
politically and was appointed honorary secretary of the Derby branch of the Complete
Suffrage Movement, which was allied to the Chartist agitation! During this time,
Spencer unsuccessfully attempted to publish several reviews and articles. He also
became an assistant editor of the Pilot, an official newspaper of the suffragist movement,
but he soon resigned. Kant interested him, but he complained that the reading was
difficult and unrewarding.
As we have pointed out, in l842 Spencer contributed some letters (republished as
a pamphlet, entitled The Proper Sphere of Movement (l843) to the Nonconformist
magazine, in which he argued that it is the business of government to uphold natural
rights and that they do more harm than good when they go beyond this. After some
association with progressive journalism through such papers as the Zoist (devoted to
mesmerism and phrenology) and the Pilot (the organ of the Complete Suffrage Union as
mentioned above), Spencer became in l848 a subeditor of the Economist.
In l848, Spencer’s fortunes were considerably brightened when he joined the staff
of the Economist and thereby became acquainted with such important figures as John
Chapman, George Henry Lewes, Thomas Carlyle, George Eliot, and Thomas Henry
Huxley. In l850, Spencer published his very first book, entitled Social Statics, which,
nine years before the publication of the Origin of Species by Darwin, advocated a theory
of evolution similar to that of Darwin although with a strong Lamarckian bent. (This
book was reissued in l955 with an outstanding Preface by F. Neilson). This, his first
book, contained in embryo most of his later views and all subsequent writing seems to be
simply and justifiably a continual refinement and elaboration of his original first
thoughts.
He herein argues in favor of an extreme form of economic and social laissez faire
and describes progress as “not an accident but a necessity.” After l850, Spencer made
the acquaintance of G. H. Lewes and Marian Evans (George Eliot). His philosophical
conversations with the latter led some of their friends to expect that they would marry;
but in his Autobiography, published in l904, Spencer says that there was never any such
desire on his part, much as he admired Miss Evans’ intellectual powers. Other friends
were, as mentioned above, T. H. Huxley, a great supporter of Charles Darwin and the
theory of evolution, and John Stuart Mill, the great English philosopher of the day. In
l853, Spencer received a legacy from his dear uncle and, relying on this, resigned his
position with the Economist in order to devote the rest of his light to the further
development of his own thoughts about evolution and the theory’s impact upon social
philosophy and public policy.
In l854 and in spite of his lack of any systematic learning, Spencer began to write
his second book, entitled The Principles of Psychology, which he published himself in
l855. Four years later, Darwin’s first major work was published, namely, Origin of
Species, and Spencer became so enthusiastic about it that he decided to write a series of
volumes which would apply the conception of evolution to all the sciences. In this way,
he hoped to develop an all-inclusive philosophical theory, a synthetic philosophy, as he
called it, which would incorporate all scientific data and use a scientific methodology.
This was the first great vision of a comprehensive theory of evolution, well beyond what
Darwin himself had imagined or had an interest in for with Spencer, an overarching
theory of evolution applied to all the sciences would provide a framework and worldview
within which modern science could move forward. From 1860 to 1893, Spencer worked
on this project, producing volumes on metaphysics, biology, psychology, sociology, and
ethics. In spite of occasional inaccuracies about scientific details, Spencer’s work
obtained world recognition.
Having published the first part of The Principles of Psychology in 1855, Spencer
developed over the next five years a prospectus of his grand scheme of embodying
evolutionary theory into all the sciences. He obtained promises of subscriptions for a
comprehensive work, what he came to call The Synthetic Philosophy, which was to
include, besides the already published and rather highly acclaimed Principles of
Psychology, volumes on what he continually referred to as “the first principles” as
particularly applied from an evolutionary theory point of view to biology, sociology, and
ethics. First Principles was published in 1962, and over the next seven years, when the
third volume of The Principles of Sociology appeared, the task he has set for himself was
finally brought to fruition.
In order to prepare the ground for the writing of The Principles of Sociology,
Spencer, in collaboration with such intellectuals of the time as David Duncan and others,
started in 1873 a series of works called Descriptive Sociology, in which information was
provided about the social institutions of various societies, both primitive and civilized.
The series was interrupted in 1881 because of lack of public support.
Spencer was a close friend of Richard Potter who was at the time the chairman of
the Great Western Railway company in England, and, thus, Spencer became a great
friend and adviser of Potter’s children, one of whom was Beatrice Potter of children
literary fame subsequently and who later became Beatrice Webb. She frequently visited
Spencer during his last illness and left a sympathetic but sad record of his lat years in My
apprenticeship, published in 1926. Spencer never married, however and it is believed by
some that it was possibly due to his continual poor health through much of his life and
certainly contributing to this consideration was that fact that his writing did not bring him
financial independence until near the end of his life.
After an extended period of illness, Spencer died on December 8, 1903, at
Brighton, leaving a will by which trustees were set up to complete the publication of the
Descriptive Sociology with further volumes being written by such distinguished
authorities as Sir W. Flinders Petrie and J. P. Mahaffy. By the time the series was
completed in published form in 1934, it came to nineteen volumes of outstanding
scholarship all of which embraced evolutionary theory with such careful science and
philosophical insight as to carry with it a long tradition of influence well into the 20 th
century.
Herbert Spencer as a person was one of the most argumentative and most
discussed English thinkers of the late Victorian period. He vigorously advocated the
scientific or naturalistic view of the world against supernaturalism. He was, too, the
prophet of evolution and of progress. As an unrepentant liberal, he upheld the doctrine
of laissez faire in a most uncompromising and sometimes obstinate form. As a student
of society, he urged the importance of examining social phenomena in a scientific way
and endeavored to do this himself. All these aspects of his thought were believed by him
to form a coherent and closely ordered system – the first major attempt at systems
building using evolutionary theory as the foundation stone. Science and philosophy, he
held, gave support to individualism and progress. It is natural to cite him, therefore, as
the great exponent of Victorian optimism, but it should also be noticed that he was by no
means unaffected by the pessimism which from time to time clouded the Victorian
confidence. Evolution, he thought and taught, would be followed by dissolution, and
individualism would come into its own only after an era of socialism and war.
According to Spencer, philosophy is a synthesis of the fundamental principles of
the special sciences, a sort of scientific summa to replace the theological systems of the
middle ages. “Science is partially-unified knowledge; philosophy is completely-unified
knowledge” he wrote in the opening pages of First Principles. Spencer thought of
unification in terms of development, and his whole scheme was suggested to him by the
evolution of biological species as somewhat later carefully demonstrated and articulated
in the work of Darwin. IN an article entitled, “The Development Hypothesis,”
(1852-1854), he rejected the notion of special creation, and in “Progress: Its Law and
Cause,” (1857), he applied the idea, borrowed from K. E. von Baer, that biological
development in the individual is from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous to the
evolution of the solar system, of animal species, of human society and of industry, art,
language and science.
It should be noticed here that Spencer published his idea of the evolution of
biological species before the views of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace were
known; but Spencer thought at that time that this evolution was caused by the inheritance
of acquired abilities. Darwin, on the other hand, along with Wallace attributed this
evolutionary process to natural selection. Spencer later adjusted his early speculations as
to causality in this regard and came to enthusiastically accept the theory that natural
selection was one of the causes of biological evolution and himself actually coined the
phrase “survival of the fittest” (often attributed unfairly to Darwin) in his major tome in
biology in his great Synthetic Philosophy entitled, Principles of Biology (l864), Volume I,
page 444.
Nevertheless, Spencer continued to hold in the same book that alterations caused
in the organism of a particular animal by forces external to it may be passed on by it to its
descendants. Furthermore, he did not think that the inheritance of acquired characteristics
or the survival of the fittest were ultimate principles of evolution. In his view, the
principle of change from homogeneity to heterogeneity was more important than either
and was itself a consequence of principles still more fundamental law of matter, which he
came to call the “law of the persistence of force,” from which it follows that nothing
homogeneous can remain as such if it is acted upon, because any external force must
affect some part of it differently from how it affects other parts and, hence, cause
difference and variety to arise.
From this logic, it follows that any force that continues to act upon what is
homogeneous must bring about an increasing variety. This law of the multiplication of
effects is, in Spencer’s view, the clue to the understanding of all development, both
cosmic as well as biological. He holds that an unknown and unknowable absolute force
is continuously operating on the material world and producing variety, coherence,
integration, specialization and individuation. Gases concentrate to form planets; the
earth becomes more variegated and gives birth to such simple animals as the amoeba;
man evolves from less complex species and at first lives in undifferentiated hordes;
various social functions are developed so that there are priests, kings, scholars, workers,
etc.; poetry splits off from music and painting from drama so that a diversity of arts
arises; and knowledge itself is differentiated into the various sciences.
But, when the final stage of integration has been reached, Spencer argues,
dissolution must necessarily ensure, so that the variety and coherence of the world will
lapse into quiescence once more.
“And have we thus to contemplate,” he asks, “as the
outcome of things, a boundless space holding here and there extinct suns, fated to remain
for ever without further change?” His answer is that this may be, but that perhaps a new
form of integration will then commence which, after reaching an equilibrium, will itself
decay and be followed by new evolutions and dissolutions in an infinite alternation. His
speculations are strikingly in alignment with modern physics.
The significant points of Spencer’s comprehensive philosophy are to be found in
his First Principles (1862) and the six-part Principles of Ethics (1879 – 1893). He
began by accepting the view of William Hamilton and John Stuart Mill, namely, that
knowledge is concerned strictly with empirical subject matter. However, he did not take
this to mean that we are inevitably involved in some form of solipsism, for he was much
to practical and perceptive to fall into that trap. In agreement with Kant, Spencer
acknowledged the existence of two domains of knowledge, that which we name
“experience” and that which has traditionally been named “reality.” The experience we
undergo is the result of the interaction between reality and the particular human
organism, but even though we are required to acknowledge the existence of the external
stimulant, we can never know exactly what it is like in its own right. This is a unique
case in that, although we can investigate the effects of the stimulant, the cause is
inherently unknowable.
This theory of epistemology, Spencer and his followers as well as his detractors
found particularly applicable to religious knowledge. Since we cannot know the nature of
reality apart from its effects encountered in experience, we are led to a belief in some
Unknowable; this does not mean, however, that we are committed to a belief in the
existence of a personal God. First of all, our complete dependence on sensory data for
knowledge makes it impossible for us to tell whether this Unknowable is at all
comparable to any kind of divine substance. We are never in the position to test whether
our idea of what the Absolute is corresponds to what it actually is. Second, reasoning
(which for Spencer is no more than an advanced physical ability by which an organism
can meet environmental problems) cannot cope with data that are not reducible to
observables. When such an endeavor is made, reasoning, like any machine whose
function is abused, breaks down inevitably.
Consider what occurs when we attempt to analyze a concept whose reference is
taken to be necessarily outside of the domain of experience – the concept of God, for
instance. All questions are either unanswerable or productive of paradoxes. If there is a
God, then how did he come into existence? If he was created by something else, then
who created that? And so forth into an infinite regress. Could God have created
himself? If so, then out of what elements did he create himself? If there were elements
out of which he created himself, then who created these elements? If he created
himself out of nothing, then how can something come out of nothing? None of these
questions can be answered by an appeal to some possible empirical datum, nor can they
be answered by any pure logical analysis without at once involving further unanswerable
questions. Thus, for Spencer, theism fails as a means of giving us insight into the nature
of the Unknowable and its religion to us. Likewise, pantheism also fails because it
treats the concept of God as an immanent rather than an external power and, thus, does
not eliminate the questions that are raised with theism.
Are we then necessarily led to atheism by this Spencerian epistemology?
Spencer denies this as well. The fact that we do not know whether a God exists does not
mean that therefore no God does exist. The rejection of theism and pantheism entails
only that we can have no empirically verifiable knowledge of or about the Unknowable,
not that the Unknowable does not exist. At most we can simply say that we do not know
whether there is a God. Agnosticism, Spencer concludes, is the only reasonable belief in
regard to religious and metaphysical issues in the world of comprehensive synthetic
thinking.
Spencer, therefore, rejected all known theological schemes and was also highly
critical of the various absurdities and abuses he believed existed in all religious
institutions. Many religions, he claimed, still cling to beliefs that arose strictly because
of wrong inferences about natural phenomena. Thus, the notion of a soul, or of a ghost,
arose because primitive peoples could not account for dreams, shadows, and reflections.
All such phenomena led to the belief that people were dual personalities, one of which
remains unchanged regardless of changes in the visible person.
From this conception there gradually developed the theory that there were
eternal, unchanging, omnipotent personalities. In this way, Spencer declared, people
came to believe in gods; and, for similar reasons, the Judaeo-Christian God has many
strictly human traits. Spencer deplored this religious anthropomorphism which depicted
God as filled with hatreds and desires that were appropriate only to human beings. He
also strongly disapproved of the attempt by the church to fight scientific doctrines,
especially those of Copernicus and Darwin. But, in spite of these objections, he felt that
religion could serve as a means of fostering friendship and cooperation among human
beings and also of guaranteeing the retention of the most worthwhile values of the past.
Furthermore, religion could be useful as a way of developing interest in the various
enigmas that are found in the universe, a means of motivating individuals to initiate
scientific inquiries, a movement, if you will, from superstition to scientific knowledge
driven on by the passions fostered by religion and realized in science.
Scientific knowledge was, of course, the objective in the comprehensive work of
Spencer. The fact that we can never know what the Unknowable is in itself does not
imply, according to him, that we cannot have any genuine knowledge at all. The domain
of phenomena is characterized by features which are not controllable by our desires or
even by our manipulations. Certain relationships consistently appear in spite of our
objections or antagonistic attitudes. Also, in all objects, including ourselves, there are
varying degrees of energy – or force, as Spencer called it. These aspects of reality are
manifestations of the Unknowable, and information about them is the only kind of
knowledge human beings can obtain or ought to seek. Spencer was keen for the
scientific community to identify and name the perimeters within which it could do its
work.
It is clear in Spencer’s work that knowledge, for human beings, is not a study of
the Unknowable among phenomena – he discounted the viability of a “scientific”
theology studying God!
Rather, the scientific agenda is the study of the
“manifestations” of the Unknowable among phenomena, the world of observation and
experience. Out of this concern with phenomena and the force implicit in them arises
science, which, according to Spencer, is simply a more sophisticated, more precisely
stated form of ordinary knowledge. Science is ordinary knowledge with intentioned
carefulness controlled by logic. The task of science, then, is to accumulate data and then
to discover general laws, accomplishing this task by assigning the investigation of
specific aspects of phenomena to specific disciplines.
Thus, says Spencer, the study of matter is the purpose of physics, and from this
discipline has come the recognition of those universal characteristics of force which are
described in the laws of the conservation of energy, the indestructibility of matter, and
gravitation. Similarly, the science of biology studies living beings and has discovered
laws of development and evolution. The other sciences have made analogous
discoveries. But we ought not to think that these laws are simple empirical
generalizations, for they describe the ways in which the Unknowable makes its
appearance in the phenomenal world. Therefore, says he, these observable and
experienced phenomena have an urgency, a necessity attached to them that is not to be
found in ordinary, purely statistical laws. Thus, even though Spencer began by adopting
a Kantian position, unlike Kant, he did not attribute the necessary relationships that are
taken to be in nature to the peculiar formation of the human mind. These are not
categorical imperatives! They are manifestations of the Unknowable in observable and
experienced form.
We do not, Spencer argues, impose forms and categories on what is observed.
On the contrary, the external stimulant itself imposes upon us restrictions and limitations
which we cannot ignore or change. Newton’s laws are not characteristic of our kind of
mind, for surely we can conceive of a world in which other laws would hold and, after
sufficient time, would seem to be just as necessary. We can also imagine minds being
changed by operations or accidents, but such changes do not entail an accompanying
reconstruction of nature. Thus, if there are any necessary relationships, they must be due
to something external to ourselves, I.e., the Unknowable.
Similarly, Spencer rejected the whole Kantian analysis of space and time. He
agreed that space and time cannot be regarded as objective in the same way that
phenomena are, for if they were, then the ought, like all things, to possess attributes. But
neither space nor time can be said to have any observable attributes, so they are not
objective. Nor are they subjective, for if they were, Spencer argues, then they would not
exist; and to allege that non-existents exist would be a contradiction in terms.
Furthermore, historically, space and time have been defined differently. They are not,
therefore innate concepts in the mind. Along with force, causation, motion, substance,
and matter, they are, in Spencer’s system, concepts whose explication can never be
completely given. Since, like the Unknowable, they relate to the realm which we can
never know, all attempts at their definition must be unsuccessful and scientists must use
such concepts with the recognition of the limitations involved. For all practical
purposes, we can regard time as an abstract term summarizing all sequences of
phenomena and space as a term summarizing all coexistences.
Spencer applies his general evolutionary scheme to human society. Indeed, it
was from reflection upon human society that he conceived it, as can be seen in his Social
Statics, where social evolution is held to be a process of increasing “individuation,” (his
term). Human societies, then, evolve from undifferentiated hordes, by means of
increasing division of labor, into complex civilizations. Spencer believed that primitive
peoples were smaller, less intelligent and more emotional than civilized peoples (thus
indicating just how closely he was aligned with the Victorian zeit geist!). Insight into
these less developed human beings was greatly increased by a study of children in
civilized societies. That primitive people’s religion arose from belief in ghost souls seen
in dreams, so that worship was originally directed toward the spirits of dead ancestors;
that civilized religions were all more or less elaborate variations on this primitive theme;
and that the fundamental sociological classification was between military societies, in
which co-operation was secured by force, and industrial societies, in which co-operation
was voluntary and spontaneous.
For Spencer, the word “industrial” is used here not in the sense of
“technologically developed” – for Spencer gives instances of extremely simple societies
such as the Todas to illustrate his meaning – but to designate societies chiefly concerned
with producing for their members’ needs by peaceful and voluntary co-operation.
Military societies are ruled by warlike chiefs who maintain themselves in power by arms
and superstition; in them women are depressed in status and often forced to do the most
burdensome work; and there is an hierarchical organization in which each individual is
expected to know and to keep his place. Industrial societies, on the other hand, are the
reverse of all this, although, if they become involved in war, they have to adopt the
military, hierarchical organization.
Although science is concerned with the discovery of general laws, its results are
departmentalized. That is to say, science does not attempt to discover or speculate about
relationships that will hold for all subject matters. Therefore, scientists are not
philosophers, for only philosophers deal with the formulation of theories that hold for
everything. In the past, theories about the nature of reality were metaphysical and were
rightfully rejected, but Spencer believed that the new Darwinian hypothesis could
become the nucleus of a genuine philosophical theory. The law of evolution, Spencer
proclaimed, would be the first philosophical world view that would incorporate scientific
data and would be substantiated by purely inductive procedures. Later in this book, we
will see this position taken to its highest level of implementation in the work of Sir Julian
Huxley.
With this pronouncement regarding the future comprehensiveness of evolutionary
theory, Spencer then went on to show how every state of being – both mental and
physical – is characterized by the same evolutionary principle. Everything, from single
entities to classes, develops from a simple, almost primitive stage in which only
elementary functions are performed to a state in which more complicated functions arise.
The growth and transformation that are described so clearly in biology and anthropology
are processes found everywhere, but this does not mean that there is some Hegelian end
which is gradually making its appearance.
Spencer consistently denied that his evolutionary theory was to be construed
teleological, claiming that so far as we can ever tell, there are no final goals that
everything is striving to attain. There are beginnings, middles (or periods of
equilibrium), and ends; but all these processes take place in a finite space and a finite
time. A person is born; he matures; he dies. Similarly, a society begins, reaches a stage
of equilibrium, and is destroyed by something internal or external. All around us we can
see the workings of the law of evolution and dissolution, but we can never know whether
the universe as a whole is undergoing this process. (The most recent scientific
explanations on this point suggest that the process is universal, after all).
For Spencer, such questions are inevitably directed toward the domain of the
Unknowable and, therefore, can never be answered. That evolution applies to
phenomena only in a relative sense – in a sense that there are finite and not absolute ends
– is expressed in Spencer’s famous formula of evolution. “Evolution,” he suggests in
First Principles, “is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion;
during which the matter passes from a relatively indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a
relatively definite, coherent heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion
undergoes a parallel transformation.” Darwin will refine it and bring it more fully into
the biological science for explanation but Spender had begun the journey which many
others after him will continue.
Having formulated his theory, Spencer undertook to substantiate it by showing its
application in all fields of inquiry. In his Principles of Biology (l864-l867), Spencer
presented a detailed examination of how, under the influence of environmental
conditions, organisms that are almost without any structure gradually become
differentiated. Whereas in primitive organisms the entire body carries out all the
functions, in the more advanced organisms there is a “physiological division of labor” as
special organs evolve to fulfill specific functions and homogeneity gives way to
heterogeneity. Thus, the amoeba has little coherence among its parts; and there is
comparative homogeneity throughout; but in such a highly developed form as the human
person there are distinct parts that have highly specialized functions and yet are
integrated to form a unified whole. Similarly, the heart, which is initially no more than
an enlarged blood vessel, eventually becomes the four-chambered structure found in
human beings. Accepting a Lamarckian viewpoint, Spencer further argued that the use
or disuse of an organ could cause its function to be modified in future generations. The
eye came about when light kept striking a particularly sensitive cell, causing it to operate
in a certain way. This new cellular behavior was inherited by later organisms.
Primitive and archaic as his explanations were, Spencer was moving the discussion of
evolution to another level of inquiry, all of which served well the agenda of Darwin.
Evolution is not the only biological conception that Spencer applies in his
sociological theories. He also made a detailed comparison between animal organisms
and human societies. In both there is a regulative system (the central nervous system in
the animal and the government in society), a sustaining system (alimentation among
animals, industry among humans), and a distributing system (veins and arteries in the
animal organism; roads, telegraphs, etc., in the social organism). The great difference,
however, between an animal and human society is that whereas in the former there is one
consciousness relating to the whole, in the latter consciousness exists in each member
only and there is no consciousness relating to the whole. Society as a whole has no
mind. At this point, Spencer abandons description and theory in order to conclude that
society exists for the benefit of its members, and not they for its benefits. This point, of
course, will be argued exhaustively and to no final conclusion among the early social
theorists of the late l9th and early to mid 20th century – Marxism, Socialism, Capitalism,
etc.
This individualism is the key to all of Spencer’s work and to miss its centrality is
to miss the driving force of his thought system. His contrast between military and
industrial societies is a contrast, as we have already mentioned, between types of order
which he considered bad and those which he considered good. In industrial society,
coercion and regimentation are at a minimum, and the order achieved, although – indeed
because – not planned by anyone, is delicately adjusted to the needs of all persons. In
The Man Versus the State (l884), Spencer says that the Tories support a military and
Liberals an industrial social order, but he thought that the Liberals of the latter half of the
l9th century were, with their legislation on hours of work, liquor licensing, sanitation,
education, etc., developing a “New Toryism” and preparing the way for a “coming
slavery.” “The function of Liberalism in the past,” he reasons, “was that of putting a
limit to the powers of kings. The function of true Liberalism in the future will be that of
putting a limit to the powers of Parliaments.”
In his emphasis on variety and differentiation, Spencer was unwittingly repeating,
in a l9th century mode, the metaphysics of liberalism which Spinoza and Leibniz had
adumbrated in the l7th century. Spinoza had maintained that “God or Nature” has an
infinity of attributes in which every possibility is actualized; and Leibniz had argued that
the perfection of God is exhibited in the infinite variety of the universe. Neither of these
philosophers believed that time was an ultimate feature of reality. Spencer, however,
combined a belief in the reality of time with a belief in the eventual actualization of every
possible variety of being. He, thus, gave metaphysical support to the liberal principle of
variety according to which a differentiated and developing society is preferable to a
monotonous and static one. Within modern philosophical circles, Spencer has not been
given his just due in moving this argument into center stage with the coming of scientific
evolutionary theory.
Spencer’s attempt to synthesize the sciences showed a sublime audacity which
was not repeated because the intellectual specialization which he welcomed and predicted
increased beyond his expectations. His sociology, although it gave an impetus to the
study of society, was superseded as a result of the development of social anthropology
since his day and was much more concerned with providing a rationale for his social
ideals than he himself appreciated. Primitive peoples, for example, are not the childlike
emotional creatures that he and most Victorians thought them to be, nor is religion to be
explained only in terms of the souls of ancestors.
When Thomas Henry Huxley, Sir Julian Huxley’s grandfather, said that Spencer’s
idea of a tragedy was of “a deduction killed by a fact,” he called attention to the
system-building feature of Spencer’s work which led him to look for what confirmed his
theories and to ignore or to reinterpret what conflicted with them. His vision, his goal to
build a comprehensive world view based upon scientific evolution set the stage, however,
for a hundred years of development in modern biology and has nurtured the work of so
many leading scientists, culminating in the life’s work of E. O. Wilson in sociobiology
whom we will consider in the last chapter of this book.
Spencer’s epistemology, his theory of knowledge, was informed by his notion of
intelligence. He sought to define intelligence as a characteristic acquired by a live object
with a highly complex physical structure, reacting and interacting with a harsh
environment. Intelligence is a set of tendencies and behavior patterns by which human
beings endeavor to adapt themselves to environmental difficulties. More specifically, it
is a mechanism by which mind acquires the ability to produce ideas about future possible
events. However, intelligence is not given all at once.
At first, animals depend solely upon the sensations they receive when their skins
are acted upon by the environment. Eventually, parts of the skin become specialized to
perform gustatory, visual, auditory, and olfactory functions; animals can then respond to
environmental forces with which they are not in direct physical contact. An amoeba
reacts only when it is touched, but more advanced organisms can respond to objects at a
distance. In the next stage of development, the sensations caused by these specialized
stimuli become fused into an integrated whole which we call experience or
consciousness. This kind of fusion serves to shorten the time needed for evaluating
sensory data and making appropriate responses. Finally, Spencer says, this basic
stimulus-response kind of experience itself evolves. From this fusion of basic sensations
there arises a new and better way of giving the organism its desired equilibrium – the
ability of mind to produce ideas depicting future possibilities. Whereas the lowest form
of animal knows only the passing moment, man can imagine both future and past times
and thus learn to meet difficulties before they actually occur.
Of course, it is through the evolutionary process that social relations emerge
within the human community. The evolution of moral behavior is, of course, what we
are pursuing in this book, and Spencer is our starting place. Feelings arise through
evolution. This point is made over and over again. Life seeks to survive, and feelings
of pleasure are necessary to sustain this urge. If the organism experienced no rewards
for maintaining its own life and reproducing its kind, if there were no sense of
accomplishment, then the urge to survive might easily be extinguished. Therefore,
behavior that contributes to survival is accompanied by the feeling of pleasure, and
behavior that endangers survival is accompanied by the feeling of pain. Similarly,
feelings of sociality and sympathy developed in human beings, says Spencer, because in
the struggle for survival human beings began recognizing that cooperation is not only
helpful but absolutely necessary for to sustain the nurturing community. The pleasures
that accrue to the feeling of sociality were the rewards that guaranteed the continuation of
such cooperation.
This evolutionary process, Spencer points out, which produced feelings of
sociality and sympathy eventually led to the emergence of a new kind of entity, namely,
human society, which, says he, is the fundamental subject of both sociology and ethics
for social relations and moral behavior cannot effectively be separated. Here, too, the
principle of evolution holds strong and true. Society, like other organisms, has its period
of infancy, of maturity, and of death. Spencer, however, unlike Hegel, did not push the
organic theory of the state to its extreme. He maintained, rather, that there are important
differences between an organism and a society. IN an organism, consciousness is to be
found in one particular area, the brain, and not in any of the parts. On the other hand, in
a society, consciousness is to be found only in the individual parts. Furthermore, the
cells of an organism are subordinated to the organism as a whole, but a society exists
solely for the benefits of its members, individually and collectively. For this reason,
Spencer opposed all forms of socialism and was a firm believer in the principle of
laissez-faire. In fact, he argued that if socialism were ever to arise in a state, it would lead
to a very strict military despotism.
Even though Spencer believed that all societies must eventually die because of
some external or internal disturbance, he was not a pessimist. He maintained that
Western civilization, at least, was just entering its most mature stage of development.
Sympathy and understanding were increasing. Nations were becoming less prone to
resort to war in order to settle their differences. Freedom of speech, religion, and the
press were being guaranteed. Society was no longer as rigidly stratified, and people
could more easily move up the social ladder. Even representative government was
gradually becoming universal. IN fact, Spencer believed that with the proper
indoctrination of society of the very highest order could continue for a very long time.
Accepting the fallacious Lamarckian theory, Spencer imagined that if a code of ethics
were taught to human kind for several successive generations, the code would become
congenital. Every individual, Spencer believed, inherits some predispositions from his
predecessors, and later generations are therefore more advanced intellectually than earlier
ones. History will prove him blatantly wrong, but the Victorian mindset of
one-dimension unilateral and one-directional development was too strongly embedded in
Spencer’s worldview.
In accordance with Spencer’s view that societies exist only for the benefit of their
individual members, he developed a strict utilitarian system of ethics. Good is what
gives people pleasure in the long run. Ethics is the science of conduct, and conduct
deals with the adjustment of acts to ends. The lower animals find their satisfaction in
using the environment to their best advantage; human beings find their satisfaction, or
happiness, in a similar way. Appropriate adjustments result in pleasure; inappropriate
adjustments result in pain. We ought, Spencer declared, to look to our own pleasures,
but we ought to do this by using intelligence, which gives us some insight, no matter how
small, into what the future may bring; present pleasure may be outweighed by possible
future pains.
Unlike primitive humans, Spencer maintained, we have the ability to form ideas
about remote ends, and disaster befalls us more easily when we refuse to entertain such
ideas or to construct them in accordance with the scientific data available to us. In fact,
the whole conception of a moral consciousness is no more than a rule that a mind
imposes upon itself to the effect that it ought always ton consider the consequences of its
actions, to examine whether more or fewer possible benefits to itself and to society would
result. The notion of duty is also a rule emphasizing the need to consider future benefits
in contrast with present temptations. Without the feeling of duty we would simply act
for ourselves alone and, in this way, in the long run act against our own best interests.
Early studies have validated this notion especially in relationship to the positive features
of the feeling of guilt within an individual as relates to duty, responsibility, and
accountability to one’s self and one’s community respecting the care of the young, the
sick, and the old.
This account of duty also gives Spencer what he believes is a means of
eliminating the traditional contraction between egoism and altruism (E. O. Wilson has
written extensively upon this complex topic.)
At first, all people were primarily
interested in themselves, as was necessary in a world where people could scarcely keep
themselves alive. IN fact, even in a more advanced society, egoism serves some good,
since the person who is very interested in himself and takes care of himself is very often
healthier than others and is, therefore, better able to care for others. But, in any case, as
society advanced, egoism became modified by the recognition that, if we wish to attain
the objects that can afford us pleasure, we ought to help others because they, in turn, will
help us. Thus, according to Spencer, egoism and altruism are mutually compatible. We
are concerned with the welfare of others because their welfare affects our own. This
resulted in a sort of evolutionary concept of a quid pro quo ethics.
Spencer’s utilitarianism and his biological analysis of human behavior led to
concrete educational proposals. Since human beings are in constant struggle with
environmental forces, they ought, says he, first and foremost, to be taught the subjects
that will help them most in this struggle. A knowledge of science, therefore, is crucial
because it is the primary means by which mean may be able to avert possible natural
disasters. After the sciences, one ought to study psychology, education, and the social
sciences because these will give insight into ways of resolving family and social
problems. Finally, Spencer thought that one ought to study art because it produces the
kind of satisfaction that needs neither justification nor analysis in terms of future
satisfactions. It is an immediate good in itself, producing an immediate feeling of
mental well-being.
Spencer was highly critical of the study of Greek and Latin and languages in
general because it seemed to lead to rote learning and a conditioned acceptance of
authority as the ultimate criterion of truth. Learning should begin by introducing
children to actual experimental situations from which they should deduce the law
involved. Children should be taught to regard the world as a place in which they must
make their own decisions in accordance with the best available scientific data.
Therefore, teachers should encourage initiative and the free expression of ideas, and they
can best do this by being actively engaged in inquiry and study. Teachers who are
interested in their own work, according to Spencer, will be more apt to produce
research-oriented students.
Although Spencer’s philosophy was influential during its time, it has not proved
to be as significant as it originally seemed to be. Like Hegel’s evolving Absolute,
Spencer’s evolutionary theory covered too much for the time and given the limited
scientific knowledge needed to cover such a wide sweep of thought. It did little to
explain why evolution took one direction rather than another. Genetics was needed to
move this point forward and that didn’t come for over a hundred years. Unlike scientific
laws, his principle of evolution did not permit any genuine predictions. Any change
whatsoever could be interpreted as a step in the evolutionary process, and, therefore, no
falsification of the principle could ever occur. Thus, the charge of tautology which
Spencer directed against metaphysics, namely, that empirical data were not relevant to
either the confirmation or the disconfirmation of its theories, cold also be made against
his own theory.
Furthermore, Spencer’s claim that he was employing inductive procedures shows
that he harbored a confusion between induction and deduction. He apparently believed
that there could be sufficient empirical evidence from which one could deduce that there
exist certain fundamental laws of nature. It is fairly clear that the theory of evolution
had the same logical status for Spencer as the dialectic had for Hegel: no evidence was to
be allowed to repudiate the doctrine.
The unknowable is also open to criticism. First of all, it is paradoxical to defend
science, with its demand that all assertions be at least potentially verifiable, and, at the
same time, to insist on the existence of an entity which is inherently incapable of ever
being inspected. Second, even though the Unknowable is supposed to be unknowable,
Spencer finds no difficulty in attributing characteristics to it: it exists, and it is the cause
of the domain of phenomena. But since, in Spencer’s view, all descriptions and
statements of cause refer only to relations among phenomena, one ought not to be able
even to speak of the Unknowable as a cause of phenomena. It has no function in a
theory of knowledge.
Spencer’s social and ethical theories have also been challenged. His laissez-faire
doctrines are simply not defensible in a world as highly industrialized as ours. Spencer
believed that an industrial society would foster self-reliant, humane, and individualistic
human beings, but he ignored the brutalities and injustices that could arise in such
societies unless appropriate controls were introduced. In his ethical views, Spencer’s
hedonism is open to the same criticism as that made against Bentham and John Stuart
Mill, and there is the same difficulty in determining how mathematical techniques are to
be applied to pleasure and pain.
In fairness to Spencer, it ought to be pointed out that he was aware of how
difficult it is to construct a hedonistic calculus; but his view that a maximum of pleasure
will accompany a maximum of social and physical adjustment was not more
enlightening. Adaptability frequently is not accompanied by pleasure, and it is
questionable whether such adjustment ought to be aimed at by human beings. History
abounds with examples of people who rightfully fought against the accepted conventions
and mores of their time. Spencer himself exemplifies the spirit of opposition to
convention.
The importance of Spencer, however, lies in his insistence on the use of scientific
knowledge and methodology for philosophical analysis and in his championing of
individual rights. As if anticipating twentieth-century totalitarianism, he warned against
allowing governments to encroach upon private rights and permitting military
organizations to become too influential. In an age in which imperialism and
expansionism were popular concepts endorsed by both the press and the general public,
Spencer did not hesitate to voice his strong objections.
Finally, Spencer’s
encyclopedic knowledge must be admired. In spite of gaps in his background reading,
he was actively involved in inquiries into almost all significant areas of learning. In all
these areas he made some original – even if not, perhaps, everlasting – contributions. It
is a feat that few philosophers have ever performed and today, at a time when our own
government has begun again the encroachment upon human rights and when our military
has become once again expansionistic and imperialistic in its pursuit of
energy-domination in the world, Spencer’s cautions are no longer as out of date as we
once would have thought.
Before leaving Spencer, we wish now to engage in a more systematic analysis of
his major work, First Principles. Spencer intended the monumental work, his life’s
work, to be an introduction to his comprehensive study of the world, entitled Synthetic
Philosophy. But, he made it an independent work, complete in itself, which not merely
announced the principles of evolutionary naturalism but illustrated them amply from all
fields of knowledge. For good measure, he also raised the issue of science and religion
and proposed an amicable solution.
Spencer shared the classical positivist conviction that knowledge consists solely
in empirical generalizations or laws. Particular sciences, he held, have the task of
formulating the laws which govern special classes of data; but, inasmuch as there are
phenomena common to all branches of knowledge, a special science is needed to gather
them up into laws. This, he claimed, was the business of philosophy. In his view, that
business was now completed. The synthetic philosophy included not only general laws
but also one law from which all other laws, both general and specific, could be deduced a
priori. Spencer, therefore, offered a new definition of philosophy: it is “completely
unified knowledge.” This, he set out to develop.
Two highly general principles of natural philosophy were already well-established
in Spencer’s day; namely, the continuity of motion and the indestructibility of matter.
Work in the field of thermodynamics had more recently shown that matter and motion
are, in fact, different forms of energy, making it possible to combine these principles into
one, which Spencer called the “principle of the persistence of force.” Here, in his
opinion, was a fundamental truth from which all other principles could be deduced. The
first principle which Spencer inferred from it was that of the persistence of relations of
force, more commonly known as the uniformity of law. The second was that of the
transformation of forces; namely, that every loss of motion is attended by an accretion of
matter, and vice versa. The third was that motions follow the line of least resistance.
None of these principles, however, sufficed to explain the origin and structure of
the ordered world of our experience. What Spencer needed was a unifying principle that
applies equally to the burning candle, the quaking earth, and the growing organism. All
these events he saw as instances of one vast “transformation.” The problem was to find
the dynamic principle which governs this metamorphosis as a whole and in all its details.
The answer he found was the “Principle of Evolution and Dissolution.”
Spencer regarded it as his special contribution to philosophy that he was able to
show deductively what others had concluded experimentally and on a limited scale.
That is, he demonstrated that change is always from a state of homogeneity to a state of
heterogeneity. According to Spencer, it is self-evident that homogeneity is a condition
of unstable equilibrium. At least this is true of finite masses – though if centers of force
were diffused uniformly through infinite space, it might possibly be otherwise; but
Spencer held such a state of affairs to be inconceivable. It follows that, because of the
inequality of exposure of its different parts, every finite instance of the homogeneous
must inevitably lapse into heterogeneity.
Primarily, according to Spencer, evolution was a passing from the less to the more
coherent of energy; for example, the formation of the solar system out of a gaseous
nebula. But because the same instability is found in each part of the universe as is found
in the whole, the differentiation process will be recapitulated within each new aggregate,
giving rise to a secondary evolution: for example, the stratification of the surface of the
earth. Primary evolution is a process of integration, the passage from a less to a more
coherent form with the dissipation of motion and the concentration of matter. Secondary
evolution adds to this, says Spencer, a process of differentiation, in the course of which
the mass changes from a homogeneous to a heterogeneous state.
But not all heterogeneity is constructive: for example, a cancerous growth. Thus,
Spencer had further to qualify his law of change: evolution is change from the indefinite
to the definite, from the confused to the ordered. Finally, the same process which has
hitherto been stated in terms of matter might equally well be stated in terms of motion:
evolution is a concentration of molecular motion with a dissipation of heat. “Evolution,”
says Spencer, “is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion;
during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite,
coherent heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel
transformation.”
It was clear to Spencer, however, that evolution cannot go on forever. The
redistribution of matter and motion must eventually reach a limit beyond which a
simplification takes place: lesser movements are integrated into greater ones, as when the
secondary gyrations of a spinning top subside into the main motion. Spencer called this
tendency “equilibration.” In a harmonious environment, suitably integrated motions
continue indefinitely without undergoing noticeable change. Nevertheless, a change is
taking place. Resistance, ever so minor, must in time produce its effect upon the system,
wearing it down, causing it to dissipate its force without adding to its organization. Even
the solar system, which is nearly a perfectly equilibrated system, is losing its energy and
must continue to do so until in the distant future it no longer radiates light or heat.
Evolution, therefore, according to Spencer, is only one aspect of the process; it is
paralleled by its opposite, dissolution, about which, however, he had little to say because
he found it lacking in the interesting features that attend evolution. Still, it is not to be
ignored, nor is it a stranger to us. The death of any living organism is “that final
equilibration which precedes dissolution, is the bringing to a close of all those
conspicuous integrated motions that arose during evolution.” And, the process of
organic decay is dissolution. Particular systems decay while more general systems are
still in the state of integration, and Spencer was far from being of the opinion that the
evolution of our planetary system has reached its height.
Spencer was eager to employ convincing illustrations of this point in all of his
work. To show that the principle of coherence governs even such matters as the
evolution of human speech, he pointed out that the primitive Pawnee Indians used a three
syllable word, “ashakish,” to designate the animal which the civilized English call by the
one-syllable word “dog.” The history of the English language offers illustrations of the
same tendency toward coherence and integration: witness the passage from the
Anglo-Saxon “sunu” through the semi-Saxon “sune” to the English “son;” or, again, from
“cumin” to “cumme” to “come.” Other examples are taken from politics, industry, art,
religion – not to mention the physical sciences. And Spencer was eager to accumulate
more of these type of illustrative examples to demonstrate his point.
A characteristic one is the following, which shows the change toward
heterogeneity in manufactures: “Beginning with a barbarous tribe, al most if not quite
homogeneous in the functions of its members, the progress has been, and still is, towards
an economic aggregation of the whole human race; growing ever more heterogeneous in
respect of the separate functions assumed by separate nations, the separate functions
assumed by the local sections of each nation, the separate functions assumed by the many
kinds of makers and traders in each town, and the separate functions assumed by the
workers united in producing each community.”
It was in connection with his argument that homogeneous masses are always
unstable that Spencer gave his most explicit account of biological evolution. Given a
homogeneous mass of protoplasm, the surface will be subject to different forces from
those of the interior, and consequently the two will be modified in different ways.
Moreover, one part of the surface is exposed differently from another, so that the ventral
features will differ from the dorsal. Again, two virtually identical blobs of protoplasm
which chance to arise in different environments – for example, moist and dry – will be
modified in different ways.
Spencer’s theories in these matters had already been published before Darwin’s
On the Origin of Species (l859) appeared, and he saw no reason to change them
afterwards. In his view, the real cause of differentiation between species lay in the
environmental influences. He thought it probable that modifications in the parent are
transmitted through heredity to their offspring. But, in any case, it must sometimes
happen “that some division of species, falling into circumstances which give it rather
more complex experiences, and demand actions that are more involved, will have certain
of its organs further differentiated in proportionately small degrees … Hence, there will
from time to time arise an increased heterogeneity both of the Earth’s flora and fauna,
and of individual races included in them.”
No doubt Darwin’s principle of “natural selection” facilitates the differentiation,
Spencer did explain in a footnote, but the varieties can be accounted for without it; and
without the changes caused by the environment, natural selection would accomplish little.
Thus we see that Spencer addressed the issue of “environment and heredity” long before
genetic research and in the context of a consideration of Darwin’s contribution to the
conversation as well. Never fearing to venture into a discussion of evolution, Spencer
was always attempting to “make sense” of the process using logic as well as biology.
Spencer’s theory of social evolution paralleled his account of biological origins
and today, the integration of sociology and biology is one of the most important
developments in evolutionary theory since Darwin himself, and it is E. O. Wilson who is
the pioneer and senior spokesperson today in this new field of research. IN Spencer’s
view, society is a kind of super organism, which exemplifies the same principles of
differentiation as those that appear on the inorganic and the organic planes. His was a
system of strict determinism, after the Victorian trend of the day, which explained social
dynamics in terms of universal laws and denied any role to human purpose or endeavor.
His guiding principle was the formula that motion follows lines of least
resistance. Thus, migrations and wars result from the reaction of societies to climate,
geography, and the like. Likewise, internal movements, such as the division of labor and
the development of public thoroughfares, arise from the effort to fulfill humankind’s
desires in the most economical manner. To the objection that this was only a
metaphorical way of viewing social change, Spencer replied that it was certainly not:
people are, he said, literally impelled in certain directions, and social processes are in fact
physical ones.
Psychology provides further instances of this point. What we think of as mental
processes are, from a more fundamental point of view, material ones. Spencer cited as
an example the processes of thought engaged in by a botanist who is classifying plants.
Each plant examined yields a complex impression; and when two plants yield similar
impressions, this “set of molecular modifications” is intensified, “generating an internal
idea corresponding to these similar external objects.” It is a special case of the general
principle called by Spencer “segregation,” which states that like units of motion will
produce like units of motion in the same or similar aggregates, and unlike will produce
unlike.
Such is the flavor of Spencer’s system. Philosophy in the traditional sense hardly
concerned him. He has grander ideas than mere academic philosophy. He aspired to
create a new world view based upon scientific evolution and its application to an
understanding of human behavior, particularly moral development. His objective, like
that of Descartes, was to put all knowledge on a deductive basis, and his First Principles,
like Descartes’ Meditations (1641), merely laid the foundation for the superstructure
which was to follow. Unlike Descartes, however, Spencer pleaded ignorance of the
underlying nature of things. Following Hume and Kant, he professed that what we know
are only appearances, ideas or impressions in the mind. Reality is unknowable.
Spencer had no intention of wasting his energies on the transcendental problems
which concerned Kant and the German speculative philosophers. But he did devote the
first hundred pages of his book to “The Unknowable.” Here he dealt, very much in the
manner of Thomas Henry Huxley, with the limits of human understanding, especially
with the claims of revealed religion and of scientific metaphysics. He found it
conveniently admitted by Canon H. L. Mansel (1820-1871) of the Church of England that
the object of religious devotion cannot be thought. In Mansel’s opinion, this belief was
due to the relativity of human knowledge, whereas God is, by definition, Absolute. Of
course, said Spencer, it is not merely the object of religion that is unknowable. The
reality which science describes is also unknowable, if one tries to think of it absolutely.
Kant’s para-logisms and antinomies make it clear that such concepts as space, time,
motion, consciousness, and personality have meaning only in the limited world of
experience and tell u s nothing about reality.
Nevertheless, said Spencer, the notion of the Absolute is not entirely negative:
there is something which defines and limit’s the knowable; we have a vague, indefinite
notion of a being more and other than what we know. Perhaps our closest approach to
it is by analogy to the feeling of “power” which we have in our own muscles. The true
function of religion is to witness to nature from its mysterious side, as the true function of
science is to discover its knowable side. Here as elsewhere Spencer discerned a process
of differentiation. The conflict within culture between science and religion is due to “the
imperfect separation of their spheres and functions … A permanent peace will be reached
when science becomes fully convinced that all its explanations are proximate and
relative, while religion becomes fully convinced that the mystery it contemplates is
ultimate and absolute.”
But, according to Spencer, writing and talking about the problem will not do any
good. Cultural changes are not furthered by taking thought concerning them. As
presently constituted, people are not ready morally or socially to do without theology:
they still need to believe that the Absolute is a person like themselves in order to
strengthen their resolve to act rightly. By the time science and religion have
differentiated themselves completely, people will presumably have evolved morally to
the point that they do good spontaneously and without the prodding and threat of religion.
Bibliographical Notes
Spencer’s Synthetic Philosophy finally comprised the following books:
First Principles (1862); The Principles of Biology, 2 volumes (l864-67);
Principles of Psychology, 2 volumes (l855, l872); The Principles of Sociology, 3 volumes
(l876-96); and The Principles of Ethics, 2 volumes (l892-93). Other important books of
his include Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative, 3 series (l857-74); Education:
Intellectual, Moral, Physical (l86l); The Study of Sociology (l873), The Nature and
Reality of Religion (l885), and withdrawn from publication was his Facts and Comments
(l902). His Autobiography in two volumes was published posthumously in l904.
CHAPTER TWO
CHARLES DARWIN and the Ascent of Morals (Biology)
Descent of Man
Charles Robert Darwin (l809-l882), an English naturalist and biologist who first
soundly established the theory of organic evolution in his monumental work, Origin of
species, was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on February 12, l809, the grandson of
Erasmus Darwin. His mother, a daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, died in l8l7. Darwin
was educated at Shrewsbury school under Samuel Butler (l774-l839), and in l825 went to
Edinburgh University to prepare for the medical profession, for which he came to realize
rather quickly and somewhat to the disappointment of his family that he was not suited.
In l828, he went then to Christ’s College, Cambridge University, with the idea that he
should become a clergyman as he was purported to have, according to the populist
notions of the day propounded by the phrenologists, the “divinity hump” on his skull.
He took his degree in l83l, tenth in the list of those who did not seek honors. The chief
advantage which he gained at both Edinburgh and Cambridge had to do with the
development of friendships of scientific men such as Robert Edmond Grant and William
MacGillivray (both from Edinburgh) and of John Stevens Henslow and Adam Sedgwick
of Cambridge. Darwin took a field trip to Wales with Sedgwick during which time he
was to learn much from what Darwin called Sedgwick’s “on-the-spot tutorials” and was
subsequently and as a result of this influence was to develop “intellectual muscle.”
Interestingly enough for the record, Sedgwick was known later to greatly oppose
Darwin’s theory of evolution and the concept of natural selection. But that comes later.
This friendship with Henslow particularly, near the end of his undergraduate days
at Cambridge University, proved especially pivotal in Darwin’s early development.
Henslow was professor of botany at Cambridge and of him, a youthful Darwin wrote in
his Autobiography, “he is a man who knew every branch of science.” This association,
together with an enthusiasm for collecting beetles and a reading of works by Humboldt
and Herschel, generated in Darwin “a burning zeal to contribute to the noble structure of
Natural Science,” as he wrote years later of himself in his autobiographical reflections.
The opportunity to do so on a large scale arose when Henslow secured for him the post of
naturalist “without pay” aboard H. M. S. “Beagle”, then about to begin a long voyage in
the Southern Hemisphere. “You are the very man,” Henslow told Darwin, “they are in
search of.”
It seems that the admirals of the fleet were looking out form someone to
accompany Captain Robert FitzRoy on his two-year planned survey of coastal South
America. FitzRoy, only twenty-six himself, wanted a young companion, a well-bred
“gentleman” who could relieve the isolation of command, someone to share the captain’s
table. Better still if he were a naturalist, for there would be unprecedented opportunities
for studying nature on this voyage. The ship was equipped for “scientific purposes” and
a “man of zeal and spirit” could do wonders, it was thought. Darwin was certainly not a
polished naturalist, but “taking plenty of books with him on board” would help, and
Darwin very quickly became the obvious choice and, finally with some pleading,
received his father’s blessing for he adventure.
Darwin was accepted by those responsible for the voyage, though there were
some anxious moments in the petitioning and receiving of the final permission. The
plans for the cruise of the Beagle were extended, in that it was to take place over the best
part of five years (l83l-l836) rather than the planned two years and was to take in the
southern islands, the South American coast and Australia. While aboard the vessel,
Darwin served as a geologist, botanist, zoologist, and general man of science. It was
rare to have aboard a sailing vessel of the early l9th century a person who could read and
write, let alone one, such as Darwin, who could appreciate the necessity of applying
scientific principles to the business of gathering data and carrying out research on its.
From December, l83l, to October, l836, Darwin sailed in the “Beagle” as
naturalist for the surveying expedition which visited Cape Verde and other Atlantic
islands, the South American coasts and the Galapagos Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand,
Australia, Tasmania, Keeling Island, Maldives, Mauritius, St. Helena, Ascension and
Brazil. His work on the geology of those lands became the subject of volumes which he
published after his return, including his Journal of Researches (l839) and The Structure
and Distribution of Coral Reefs (l842); in the latter he advanced a theory of reef
formation that is still generally held.
An extended quote, namely, the opening paragraph of The Origin of Species, 1859
edition, seems in order at this juncture:
When on board H. M. S. Beagle as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts
in the distribution of the organic beings inhabiting South America, and in the geological
relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts, as will be
seen in the latter chapters of this volume, seemed to throw some light on the origin of
species -- that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest
philosophers. On my return home, it occurred to me, in l837, that something might
perhaps be made out on this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all
sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it. After five years’ work I
allowed myelf to speculate on the subject, and drew up some short notes; these I enlarged
in l844 into a sketch of the conclusions, which then seemed to me probable: from that
period to the present day I have steadily pursued the same object. I hope that I may be
excused for entering on these personal details, as I give them to show that I have not been
hasty in coming to a decision.”
The voyage was the real preparation for his life’s work. His observations on the
relationships between geographically separated animals (forms on the islands and the
contiguous mainland) and time-separated animals (living and recently extinct forms,
related to but not the same as the extant animals) led him to reflect upon the prevailing
view of the fixity of species, a position commonly held both within and outside the
scientific and philosophical academies of the time. He had also been much impressed,
as he said, by “the manner in which closely allied animals replace one another in
proceeding southwards” in South America. His journal for l837 contains this comment:
“In July opened first notebook on Transmutation of Species. Had been greatly struck
from about the month of previous March on character of south American fossils, and
species on Galapagos Archipelago. These facts (especially latter) are the origin of all
my views.”
Upon his return from this historic voyage which proved to be the passion
dictating his scientific work for the rest of his life, he lived in London for six years where
he came in contact with the leading scientific figures of the day. While Darwin was
secretary of the Geological Society from l838 to l84l, he saw a great deal of Sir Charles
Lyell, whose principle of uniformity, contained in his then famous book, The Principles
of Geology, had impressed Darwin greatly. In January of l839, Darwin married his
cousin, Emma Wedgwood of Wedgwood pottery fame and fortune. They lived in
London until l842 when they moved to Down, near Beckenham, Kent, which was
Darwin’s home for the remainder of his life. From l846 to l854, he was chiefly engaged
upon monographs on the recent and fossil cirripede Crustacea, publishing extensively in
the scholarly journals highly technical articles which were quickly acclaimed as most
distinguished by the scientific community of the time.
Darwin’s productivity, despite recurrent bouts of illness, was prodigious. His
publications ranged over such diverse subjects as volcanic islands, coral reefs, barnacles,
plant movement, the fertilization of orchids, the action of earthworms on the soil, the
variation of domesticated animals and plants, and the theory of evolution. Even if he
had never written his now famous Origin of Species (l859) and his Descent of Man (l87l),
Darwin would still be regarded as one of the great biologists of the l9th century. Of
course it was these two books, more than all of the others combined, that made him the
initiator of a revolution in thought more far-reaching than that ushered in by Copernicus.
It was characteristic of Darwin that he came to these conclusions by his own
observations and reflections. When he embarked on the Beagle, his outlook was, as he
wrote in his autobiographical reflections, “quite orthodox.” He accepted without
question the fixity of species and their special creation as depicted in Genesis. Doubts
began, however, to arise in his mind during the ship’s visit to the Galapagos Archipelago
in l835, when he noticed that very small differences were present in the so-called species
inhabiting separate islands. The doubts were reinforced by his observation of fossils on
the Pampas and the distribution of organisms on the South American continent as a
whole. Darwin was, in his own words, “haunted” by the idea that such facts “could be
explained on the supposition that species gradually became modified.”
In July of l837, Darwin wrote that he “opened his first notebook” to record
additional facts bearing on the question, but it was not until he happened to read Malthus’
Essay on Population in October of l838 that he found an explanatory theory from which
the above “supposition” followed. “In October l838,” Darwin wrote, “that is fifteen
months after I had begun my systematic enquiry, I happened to read for amusement
Malthus’ Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence (a
phrase used by Malthus) which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of
animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favorable
variations would tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result
of this would be a new species. Here then I had at last got hold of a theory by which to
work.”
From this encounter, Darwin commenced the now famous formulation of the
principle of “natural selection” which is, as he wrote, “simply the doctrine of Malthus
applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms.” Darwin
never professed himself to have invented the idea of organic evolution, of the mutability
of species, or even of natural selection itself. What he did profess was to have produced
the first scientific proof that these ideas apply to the living world.
Darwin established beyond reasonable doubt that all living things, including
human kind, have developed from a few extremely simple forms, perhaps from one form,
by a graduate process of descent with modification. Furthermore, he formulated a
theory, called by him “natural selection,” supporting it with a large body of evidence, to
account for this process and particularly to explain the “transmutation of Species” and the
origin of adaptations. As a result, the biological sciences were given a set of unifying
principles, and humankind was given a new challenging conception of our place in
nature.
Soon after beginning his now famous notebook in l837, Darwin began to collect
facts bearing upon the formation of the breeds of domestic animals and plants, and
quickly saw, as he said, “that selection was the keystone of man’s success … But how
selection could be applied to organisms living in a state of nature remained for some time
a mystery to me.” As we has noted above, upon reading in October of l838 T. R.
Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population, Darwin’s own observations having long
since convinced him of the struggle for existence, it at once struck Darwin, as he wrote at
the time, “that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved,
and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new
species. Here, then, I had a theory by which to work.” It was because Darwin provided
a scientific explanation of how evolution occurred, free from miraculous intervention or
unfounded fancy, that he succeeded where Lamarck had failed in making the fact of
evolution acceptable.
In l856, Darwin started to write a large treatise on his views, and had completed
about half of it, when, in June of l858, he received a manuscript from Alfred Russell
Wallace who was then at Ternate in Moluccas, in which Darwin was startled to find a
complete abstract of his own theory of natural selection. He placed himself in the hands
of Lyell and Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker who decided to send Wallace’s essay to the
Linnean Society, together with an abstract of Darwin’s work which they asked him to
prepare, the joint essay being accompanied by an explanatory letter to the secretary of the
Society. The title of the joint communication as, “On the Tendency of Species to Form
Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by natural Means of
Selection.” It was read on July l, l858, and published in the Journal of the Linnean
Society for that year.
Unlike some lesser men of science then and now, Darwin was not at all inclined
to rush into print upon his return from this historic voyage for his intent was not to
attempt immediately to establish a proprietary right over his theory of evolution. Indeed,
his modesty and single-minded desire to find out the truth forbade any such action.
Accordingly, the theory underwent several preliminary formulations. It was first set
down in a short abstract in l842 and two years later was expanded into an essay which
both Lyell and Hooker read, being representatives of the cautious and highly respected
scientific community of the day. Eventually, in l856, Lyell advised Darwin to write a
full-length account of his views on the subject. It was when this manuscript, which
would have been “three or four times as extensive” as The Origin of Species, was about
half finished that Alfred Russell Wallace’s now famous paper, which contained virtually
the same ideas that Darwin was working out, arrived at Down from the Malay
Archipelago.
On November 24, l859, Darwin published his now great work, On the Origin of
Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the
Struggle for Life. The whole edition of l,250 copies was sold out on the day of issue.
The first four chapters explain the operation of artificial selection by man and of natural
selection in consequence of the struggle for existence. The fifth chapter deals with the
laws of variation and causes of modification other than natural selection. The five
succeeding chapters consider difficulties in the way of a belief in evolution generally as
well as in natural selection. The three remaining chapters deal with the evidence for
evolution provided by paleontology, geographical distribution, comparative anatomy,
embryology and vestigial organs. The theory which suggested a cause of evolution is
thus given the foremost place and the evidence for the fact of evolution considered last.
Darwin’s idea, says Sir Julian Huxley (of whom much more later in this book), “is the
most powerful and the most comprehensive idea that has ever arisen on earth. It helps us
understand our origins … We are part of a total process, made of the same matter and
operating by the same energy as the rest of the cosmos, maintaining and reproducing by
the same type of mechanism as the rest of life.”
Despite the interest which The Origin of Species excited, it was by no means
universally approved at first. IN the scientific world support for it came from Darwin’s
friends primarily, but others expressed opposition which often took the form of
objections to the modes of explanation and proof employed in the work. Darwin’s use
of historical or genetic explanations, his implicit adoption of statistical conceptions
(“population thinking,” as it is now sometimes called), and his practice of introducing
conjectures or “imaginary illustrations” to buttress his argument were repugnant to
biologists who held that scientific explanation must consist in bringing directly observed
phenomena under general laws. Believers in this oversimplified model also disliked his
notion of “chance” variations and his repudiation of “any law of necessary development.”
Before long, however, the cumulative force of Darwin’s arguments, augmented by the
case put forward in his subsequent major work, The Descent of Man, convinced the great
majority of biologists, so that opposition from this quarter had disappeared by l880, more
or less.
Although others before Darwin had conceived the idea of evolution, none had
thought out and marshaled the evidence in a manner which bears any comparison with
his. A storm of controversy arose over the book, reaching its height at the British
Association meeting at Oxford in l860, when the celebrated disputation between Thomas
Henry Huxley, the grandfather of the later to become famous Sir Julian Huxley, and
Bishop Samuel Wilberforce too place. Throughout these struggles, it was Huxley who
was the foremost champion of Darwin’s theory of evolution and became known far and
wide as “Darwin’s bulldog” owing to his aggressive and articulate promotion and defense
of Darwin’s work.
In Darwin’s day, little was known about heredity or, of course, genetics. There
was a vague belief in blending inheritance and in the inheritance of acquired characters.
Darwin’s great difficulty was to account for a sufficient supply of variation, which is why
he relied more and more on the supposed inheritance of acquired characters. Gregor
Johann Mendel’s discovery of genes that are particulate, remain uncontaminated,
conserve past variance and change occasionally by mutation provided exactly the
mechanism required by Darwin and removed his major difficulty. The integration of
Darwinian selection and Mendelian genetics and the proof that variation in organisms is
not directed but fortuitous, demonstrated in l930 by Sir Ronald Fisher, are now generally
accepted as the explanation of evolution.
Darwin’s character was marked by great tenderness and kindness to his family,
friends and fellow scientists. After returning from the voyage of the “Beagle,” he was
almost continually in poor health; he suffered extreme fatigue and was often disinclined
to meet company, with the result that he led the life of a semi-invalid, recluse under the
constant care of his wife. When he was not well, his daily routine involved no more than
four hours of work, the remainder of his time being taken up by walks, rests and reading
novels.
About his work he was always modest, although he realized that they inaugurated
a new era of thought. His retiring disposition prevented him from ever taking part in the
violent controversies over his demonstration of evolution by natural selection, and he was
content to let his views be defended by others, particularly his friend T. H. Huxley. At
the same time, his sensitive nature was deeply pained by unfair criticism. Even when
subjected to formidable attacks, as by Fleming Jenkins on what is called the swamping of
new variations, or Lord Kelvin on the reduced estimate of the age of the earth, Darwin
never lost faith in the validity of his demonstration of natural selection, and modern
knowledge has justified him completely.
The negative popular reaction to Darwin’s theory focused on its religious and
ideological implications rather than upon its scientific merits. These were recognized to
be hostile to the Establishment, and the Established Church. Hence, Darwin found
himself enthusiastically supported by radicals, rationalists, and anti-clericals and
vehemently attacked by reactionaries, fundamentalists, and priests. He shrank from
entering into this controversy, which was altogether distasteful to him personally,
professionally, and emotionally. Of course, his “bulldog,” Thomas Henry Huxley, was
very pleased to fill the bill for he thoroughly enjoyed crossing swords with theologians.
Huxley relentlessly pursued such antievolutionists as Bishop Wilberforce and W. E.
Gladstone and his efforts in this regard had a good deal to do with creating the image of
Darwin as an enemy of the Bible, the Church, and Christianity, if not of good moral
society in general.
This image was, in fact, fairly close to the mark. Darwin’s religious believes, as
he relates in his Autobiography, underwent a change from naïve acceptance of Christian
doctrines to reluctant agnosticism. In the two years following his return from the voyage
of the Beagle, Darwin was, as he put it, “let to think much about religion.” Doubts were
engendered in his mind about the historical veracity of the Gospels, the occurrence of
miracles, and the dogma of everlasting damnation of unbelievers (which Darwin chose to
call a “damnable doctrine”). By reflection upon such matter, Darwin “gradually came to
disbelieve in Christianity” and wondered how anybody could wish it to be true.
A similar erosion occurred in connection with his belief in the existence of a
personal God. When he wrote The Origin of Species, Darwin accepted a vague theism
or deism. In the last chapter he speaks of laws having been “impressed on mater by the
Creator” and of life’s powers “having been breathed by the creator into a few forms or
into one.” He was, clearly, able at that particular time early in his work to deny that it
was his intention “to write atheistically,” as he was accused of doing. Yet, it was also
clear to him that the theory of natural selection exploded the old argument for theism
based upon the presence of design in the organic world. The vast amount of suffering
and misery which exists seemed to him a strong argument against any belief in a
beneficent First Cause. He had moods in which it seemed difficult or impossible to
conceive that “this immense and wonderful universe, with our conscious selves, arose
through change.” In the end, however, he concluded “that the whole subject is beyond
the scope of man’s intellect … The mystery of the beginning of all tings is insoluble by
us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.” Darwin’s reflections upon
religion, although not systematic, provide a good example of his intellectual integrity,
however. He wrote, “I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free, so as to give up
any hypothesis, however much believed (and I cannot resist forming one on every
subject), as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it.”
One of the most important results of Darwin’s work has been the demonstration
that the evolution of plants and animals, and of the adaptations which they show,
provides no evidence of divine or providential guidance or purposive design, because
natural selection of fortuitous variations gives a scientifically satisfactory explanation of
evolution without any necessity for miraculous interposition or supernatural interference
with the ordinary laws of nature. This fact alone led to a conflict between the upholders
of orthodox revealed religion and the scientific community. Darwin himself was well
aware of the significance of this conflict. He wrote, “My theology is a simple muddle,”
he recorded in l870: “I cannot look at the universe as the result of blind chance, yet I can
see no evidence of beneficent design, or indeed of design of any kind, in the details.”
In l856, he had written in his private journal, “hat a book a devils’ chaplain might
write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of nature.”
Darwin believed that all morality was the result of evolution and that in man it had been
produced not by natural election working on the individual, but by the improvement of
social standards conferring survival value on the social units whose members show
them. It was therefore not surprising that as he grew older Darwin abandoned the views
of an orthodox member of the Church of England and became an agnostic. This point,
of course, is the motivation for the writing of this book and has been the driving force in
the author’s own work in this field. From Darwin to Wilson is, of course, an celebration
of this evolutionary fact and its demonstration in natural history and scientific research.
The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication was published by
Darwin in l868, and may be looked upon as a complete account of the material condensed
in the first chapter of the Origin of Species. It contains his now abandoned theory of
pangenesis but, short of that, it was one of his most profound and articulate recitations of
the nature and character of evolution.
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, published in l87l, was the
natural sequel to the Origin of Species and amplified his statement there that “light will
be thrown on the origin of man and his history.” More so than in any other single
document, this study was a tour de force articulation of Darwin’s conviction that morality
is a direct product of evolution as embodied in the emergence of human society. Later,
we will make a more careful investigation of this major work. Research has, of course,
confirmed Darwin’s fundamental conclusions expressed in his major works even though
today the refinements and sophistication exemplified in genetic research as been
profoundly brought to bear upon Darwin’s early notions of evolution. The book, The
Descent of Man, also contains the evidence in support of his hypothesis of sexual
selection which, with modifications, is still widely accepted as the best explanation of
this phenomenon.
The expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, published in l872, offered a
natural explanation of phenomena which appeared to be a difficulty in the way of the
acceptance of evolution. Of Darwin’s numerous other works, his On the Various
Contrivances by Which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilized by Insects appeared in
l862. The Effects of Cross and Self-Fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom was
published in l876 and proved that the offspring of cross-fertilized individuals are more
vigorous and more numerous than those produced by a self-fertilized parent. The
Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species, published in l877,
demonstrates that each different form, although possessing both kinds of sexual organs, is
specially adapted to be fertilized by the pollen of another form, and that when artificially
fertilized by pollen from a plant of its own form, less vigorous offspring are produced.
On the Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants and Insectivorous Plants were
published in l865 and l875 respectively. The Power of Movement in Plants, assisted by
Francis Darwin, appeared in l880, and The Formation of Vegetable Mold, Through the
action of Worms, in l88l.
Darwin died on April 19, l882, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. For of his
sons became prominent scientists: Sir George Howard Darwin (l845-l9l2), professor of
astronomy and experimental philosophy at Cambridge University; Sir Francis Darwin
(l848-l925), botanist; Leonard Darwin (l850-l943), a major in the royal engineers, and
afterward well known as an economist and eugenist; and Sir Horace Darwin (l85l-l928), a
civil engineer.
We could not end this discussion of Darwin with a better eulogistic celebration
than that offered by Sir Julian Huxley in his now famous work, Evolutionary Humanism:
Darwin’s work … put the world of life into the domain of natural law. It was no longer
necessary or possible to imagine that every kind of animal or plant had been specially
created, nor that the beautiful and ingenious devices by which they get their food or
escape their enemies have been thought out by some supernatural power, or that there is
any conscious purpose behind the evolutionary process. If the idea of natural selection
holds good, then animals and plants and man himself have become what they are by
natural causes, as blind and automatic as those which go to mold the shape of a
mountain, or make the earth and the other planets move in ellipses round the sun. The
blind struggle for existence, the blind process of heredity, automatically result in the
selection of the best adapted types, and a steady evolution of the stock in the direction of
progress … Darwin’s work has enabled us to see the position of man and of our present
civilization in a truer light. Man is not a finished product incapable of further progress.
He has a long history behind him, and it is a history not of a fall, but of an ascent. And
he has the possibility of further progressive evolution before him. Further, in the light of
evolution we learn to be more patient. The few thousand years of recorded history are
nothing compared to the million years during which man has been on earth, and the
thousand million years of life’s progress. And we can afford to be patient when the
astronomers assure us of at least another thousand million years ahead of us in which to
carry evolution onwards to new heights.”
THE DESCENT OF MAN and Selection in Relation to Six (1871)
selectively quoted below from the l883 edition of Appleton and Company of New York.
The main conclusion here arrived at, and now held by many naturalists who are
well competent to form a sound judgment, is that man is descended from some less highly
organized form. The grounds upon which this conclusion rests will never be shaken, for the
close similarity between man and the lower animals in embryonic development, as well as
in innumerable points of structure and constitution, both of high and of the most trifling
importance -- the rudiments which he retains, and the abnormal revisions to which he is
occasionally liable -- are facts which cannot be disputed. They have long been known,
but until recently they told us nothing with respect to the origin of man. Now when viewed
by the light of our knowledge of the whole organic world their meaning is unmistakable.
The great principle of evolution stands up clear and firm, when these groups of facts are
considered in connection with others, such as the mutual affinities of the members of the
same group, their geographical distribution in past and present times, and their geological
succession. It is incredible that all these facts should speak falsely. He who is not content
to look, like a savage, at the phenomena of nature as disconnected, cannot any longer
believe that man is the work of a separate act of creation. He will be forced to admit
that the close resemblance of the embryo of man to that, for instance, of a dog -- the
construction of his skull, limbs and whole fame on the same plan with that of other
mammals, independently of the uses to which the parts may be put -- the occasional
re-appearance of various structures, for instance of several muscles, which man does not
normally possess, but which are common to the Quarryman -- and a crowd of analogous
facts -- all point in the plainest manner to the conclusion that man is the co-descendant with
other mammals of a common progenitor.
We have seen that man incessantly presents individual differences in all parts of
his body and in his mental faculties. These differences or variations seem to be induced
by the same general causes, and to obey the same laws as with the lower animals. In
both cases similar laws of inheritance prevail. Man tends to increase at a great rate than
his means of subsistence; consequently, he is occasionally subjected to a severe struggle
for existence, and natural selection will have effected whatever lies within its scope. A
succession of strongly-marked variations of a similar nature is by no means requisite; slight
fluctuating differences in the individual suffice for the work of natural selection; not that
we have any reason to suppose that in the same species, all parts of the organization tend
to vary to the same degree.
By considering the embryological structure of man -- the homologies which he
presents with the lower animals -- the rudiments which he retains -- and the reversions to
which he is liable, we can partly recall in imagination the former condition of our early
progenitors; and can approximately place them in their proper place in the zoological
series. We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably
arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World. This creature, if its whole
structure had been examined by a naturalist, would have been classed among the
Quadrumana, as surely as the still more ancient progenitor of the Old and New world
monkeys. The Quadrumana and all the higher mammals are probably derived from an
ancient marsupial animal, and this through a long line of diversified forms, from some
amphibian-like creature, and this again from some fish-like animal. In the dim obscurity
of the past we can see that the early progenitor of all the Vertegrata must have been an
aquatic animal, provided with branchae, and with the two sexes united in the same
individual, and with the most important organs of the body (such as the brain and heart)
imperfectly or not at all developed. This animal seems to have been more like the larvae
of the existing marine Ascidians than any other known form.
The high standard of our intellectual powers and moral disposition is the greatest
difficulty which presents itself, after we have been driven to this conclusion on the origin of
man. But everyone who admits the principle of evolution, must see that the mental powers
of the higher animals, which are the same in kind with those of man, though so different in
degree, are capable of advancement.
The moral nature of man has reached its present standard, partly through the
advancement of his reasoning powers and consequently of a just public opinion, but
especially from his sympathies having been rendered more tender and widely diffused
through the effects of habit, example, instruction, and reflection. It is not improbable that
after long practice virtuous tendencies may be inherited. With the more civilized races,
the conviction of the existence of an all-seeing Deity has had a potent influence on the
advance of morality. Ultimately man does not accept the praise or blame of his fellows
as his sole guide though few escape this influence, but his habitual convictions, controlled
by reason, afford him the safest rule. His conscience then becomes the supreme judge
and monitor. Nevertheless the first foundation or origin of the moral sense lies in the
social instincts, including sympathy; and these instincts no doubt were primarily gained, as
in the case of the lower animals, through natural selection.
The belief in God has often been advanced as not only the greatest but the most
complete of all the distinctions between man and the lower animals. It is however
impossible, as we have seen, to maintain that this belief is innate or instinctive in man. On
the other hand a belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal, and
apparently follows from a considerable advance in man’s reason, and from a still great
advance in his faculties of imagination, curiosity and wonder. I am aware that the
assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for His
existence. But this is a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled to believe in the
existence of many cruel and malignant spirits, only a little more powerful than man for the
belief in them is far more general than in a beneficent Deity. The idea of a universal and
beneficent Creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated
by long-continued culture.
I am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be denounced by some
as highly irreligious; but he who denounces them is bound to show why it is more irreligious
to explain the origin of man as a distinct species by descent from some lower form,
through the laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of the
individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction. The birth both of the species and of
the individual are equally parts of that grand sequence of events, which our minds refuse
to accept as the result of blind chance. The understanding revolts at such a conclusion,
whether or not we are able to believe that every slight variation of structure -- the union
of each part in marriage -- the dissemination of each seed -- and other such events, have
all been ordained for some special purpose.
Sexual selection has been treated at great length in this work, for, as I have
attempted to show, it has played an important part in the history of the organic world. I
am aware that much remains doubtful, but I have endeavored to give a fair view of the
whole case. In the lower divisions of the animal kingdom, sexual selection seems to have
done nothing: such animals are often affixed for life to the same spot, or have the sexes
combined in the same individual, or what is still more important, their perceptive and
intellectual faculties are not sufficiently advanced to allow of the feelings of love and
jealousy, or of the exertion of choice. When, however, we come to the Arthropoda and
Vertebrata, even to the lowest classes in these two great Sub-Kingdoms, sexual selection
has affected much.
Sexual selection depends on the success of certain individuals over others of the
same sex, in relation to the propagation of the species; whilst natural selection depends on
the success of both sexes, at all ages, in relation to the general conditions of life. The
sexual struggle is of two kinds; in the one it is between the individuals of the same sex,
generally the males, in order to drive away or kill their rivals, the females remaining
passive; whilst in the other, the struggle is likewise between the individuals of the same
sex, in order to excite or charm those of the opposite sex, generally the females, which
no longer remain passive, but select the more agreeable partners.
The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely that man is descended from
some lowly organized form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful to many. But there
can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians. The astonishment which I
felt on first seeing a party of Fuegians on a wild and broken shore will never be forgotten
by me -- for the reflection at once rushed into my mind -- such were our ancestors. These
men were absolutely naked and bedaubed with paint, their long hair was tangled, their
mouths frothed with excitement, and their expression was wild, startled, and distrustful.
They possessed hardly any arts, and like wild animals lived on what they could catch; they
had no government, and were merciless to everyone not of their own small tribe. He who
has seen a savage in his native land will not feel much shame, if forced to acknowledge
that the blood of some more humble creature flows in his veins. For many own part I
would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded
enemy in order to save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon, who descending
from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of
astonished dogs -- as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up
bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows
no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.
Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his
own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus
risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still
higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears,
only with the truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it; and I have given the
evidence to the best of my ability. We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me,
that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with
benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with
his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar
system -- with all these exalted powers -- Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible
stamp of his lowly origin.
WORKS BY CHARLES DARWIN
The Autobiography of Charles Darwin was edited by his granddaughter Nora Barlow,
who restored in the London, l958 edition, the material omitted from the original. The
original was first published in l887 as part of the Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, but
many passages of the manuscript were omitted because they contained candid and caustic
judgments of persons and of the Christian religion. These omitted passages, amounting
to nearly six thousand words, were restored in the l958 edition. The Life and Letters of
Charles Darwin was edited by Francis Darwin. The 1959 edition published in two
volumes carries an introduction by George Gaylord Simpson. Among the many editions
of On the Origin of Species are a facsimile of the first edition, with an illuminating
introduction by Ernst Mayr (Cambridge, MA: 1964), and sample texts of the six
editions, edited by Morse Peck ham (Philadelphia, l959).
DARWIN, Ch. (1839): Journal of researches into the geology and natural history of the
various countries visited by H. M. S. Beagle. (Revised Edition 1845: "A naturalist’s
voyage").
DARWIN, Ch. (Ed.) (1839-43): The zoology of the voyage of H. M. S. Beagle. Ed. and
superintended by Charles Darwin. Pt. I: Fossil Mammalia, by R. OWEN (1840). Pt. II:
Mammalia, by G. R. WATERHOUSE (1839). Pt. III: Birds, by J. GOULD (1841). Pt.
IV: Fish, by L. JENYNS (1842). Pt. V: Reptiles, by Th. BELL (1843).
DARWIN, Ch. (1842): The structure and distribution of coral reefs. DARWIN, Ch.
(1844): Geological observations on the volcanic islands, visited during the voyage of
HMS Beagle.
DARWIN, Ch. (1851): A monograph of the fossil Lepadidae: or, pedunculated cirripeds
of Great Britain.
DARWIN, Ch. (1851): A monograph of the sub-class Cirripedia, with figures of all the
species. The Lepadidae: or pedunculated cirripeds.
DARWIN, Ch. (1854): A monograph of the fossil Balanidae and Verrucidae of Great
Britain.
DARWIN, Ch. (1854): A monograph of the sub-class Cirripedia, with figures of all the
species. The Balanidae (or sessile cirripedes), the Verrucidae etc.
DARWIN, Ch. (1859): On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or
preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.
DARWIN, Ch. (1862): On the various contrivances by which British and foreign orchids
are fertilised by insects, and on the good effects of intercrossing.
DARWIN, Ch. (1868): The variation of animals and plants under domestication, 2 vols.
DARWIN, Ch. (1871): The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex, 2 vols.
DARWIN, Ch. (1872): The expression of the emotions in man and animals.
DARWIN, Ch. (1875): Insectivorous plants.
DARWIN, Ch. (1875): The movements and habits of climbing plants.
DARWIN, Ch. (1876): The effects of self and cross fertilization in the vegetable
kingdom.
DARWIN, Ch. (1877): The different forms of flowers on plants of the same species.
DARWIN, Ch. (1880): The power of movement in plants.
DARWIN, Ch. (1881): The formation of vegetable mould, through the action of worms.
CHAPTER THREE
KARL MARX and the Pursuit of Equity (Labor and Society)
Das Kapital
Karl Heinrich Marx, German philosophy of history and the most important figure
in the history of socialist thinking, was born on May 5, 1818, of Jewish parents in the
town of Trier in the Rhenish region of Prussia. Descending from a long line of rabbis on
both sides of the family, Marx was born into a progressive family fearful of no thought
which might help the plight of humankind. Actually, Marx came from a long line of
rabbis on both sides of his family and his father knew Voltaire and Lessing by heart. In
l824, his father, a lawyer with a keen interest in philosophy, embraced Christianity and
all members of the family were baptized as Lutherans. As advancement opportunities
for Jews were rather limited in early l9th century Prussia, and as they were not extremely
religious, Herschel Marx decided to change his name to “Heinrich” and convert to the
family to the Prussian state religion of Lutheranism, after which his legal career did really
prosper.
The young Marx received good marks in the Prussian secondary school program
at the gymnasium where his senior thesis, anticipating his later development of a social
analysis of religion, was a treatise entitled, “Religion: The Glue that binds Society
Together,” for which he won a scholar’s prize. During Marx’s student days at the
University of Bonn where, at the age of seventeen, he enrolled in the Faculty of Law, and
the University of Berlin, the “metropolis of intellectuals,” as Marx called it. There,
where to the dismay of his father he studied philosophy and history, Marx was strongly
influenced by the works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, an influence that always
remained one of the most important elements in his thinking. Hegel had been dead only
five years when Marx arrived in Berlin and the intellectual legacy of Hegel, wrote Marx,
“weighed heavily on the living.”
In l84l, he received a doctor’s degree from the University of Jena in Germany for
a thesis on Epicurus and Democritus. Marx had been warned by his mentor Bauer not to
submit his doctoral dissertation at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitat, as it would
certainly be poorly received there due to his reputation as as Young Hegelian radical.
As an undergraduate Marx had identified himself with the left wing of the young
Hegelians and was known as a militant atheist whose creed was (and remained):
“Criticism of religion is the foundation of all criticism.”
This group of Young
Hegelians, which included the theologians Bruno Bauer and David Friedrich Strauss,
produced a radical critique of Christianity and, by implication, the liberal opposition to
the Prussian autocracy. This reputation made an academic career impossible under the
Prussian government. So, his future quite obviously lay in the direction of journalism,
liberal journalism to be more exact.
His liberal political views led him to consider journalism as a career and in l842
he became an editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, a liberal newspaper backed by
industrialists, in Cologne, which had been created to respond to Frederick William IV‘s
declaration of his love for a loyal opposition. Marx took the unprecedented position of
opening criticizing in the paper the deliberations of the Rhine Province Assembly such
that at by the end of l842 he had become such a thorn in the side of the censors that they
honored him by sending their own fulltime censor from Berlin just to watch his
editorializing.
Marx’s criticism of the deliberations of the Rhine Province Assembly compelled
him to study questions of material interest, something in which he had not yet engaged.
In pursuing that he found himself confronted with points of view which neither
jurisprudence nor philosophy had taken account of during his years of study at Bonn and
Berlin. Proceeding from the Hegelian philosophy of law, Marx came to the conclusion
that it was not the state, which Hegel had described as the “top of the edifice,” but “civil
society,” which Hegel had regarded with disdain, that was the sphere in which a key to
the understanding of the process of the historical development of mankind should be
looked for. However, the science of civil society is political economy, and this science
could not be studied in Germany, it could only be studied thoroughly in either England or
France, particularly Paris to which Marx was soon to be off to and eventually expelled
from.
The following year he married Jenny von Westphalen, close friend of his boyhood
and daughter of a high government official and the daughter of Baron von Westphalen, a
prominent member of Trier society. The Baron interested Marx for the first time in
Romantic literature and Saint-Simonian politics. It was a marriage of deep love that
withstood the vicissitudes of all the subsequent years. Shortly after his marriage, Marx’s
newspaper was suppressed owing to his articles which particularly raised economic
questions, and he emigrated to Paris with his wife. There he became acquainted with
French socialist writers and an organized group of émigré German workers. He edited
for a very short time the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher which was intended to bridge
French socialism and the German radical Hegelians. During his first few months in
Paris, Marx became a communist officially.
He also here established his lifelong
friendship with Friedrich Engels.
This friendship between Marx and Engels has been
called one of the most momentous literary partnerships in history. Both these influences
led Marx to become a socialist.
In his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of l844, written in Paris, Marx
roughed out, in a more metaphysical form than his later work, a brilliantly original view
of human society, whose three components were French socialism, English economics,
and German philosophy, a Hegelianism of his student days which had become corrected
by the influence of Feuerbach’s materialism. In this series of articles, Marx outlined a
humanist conception of communism, influenced by Feuerbach and based on a contrast
between the alienated nature of labor under capitalism and a communist society in which
human beings freely developed their nature in cooperative production.
In l844, at a new place of exile in Brussels, Marx continued his economic studies
and made his first contact with the workingmen’s movement. For three years, Marx
stayed in Brussels but regularly visited England where Engels’ family had cotton
spinning interests in Manchester. Asked to draft a statement of principles for one of
their leagues, he and Engels produced that immensely influential document, the
Communist Manifesto (more later). While in Brussels Marx devoted himself to an
intensive study of history and elaborated what came to be known as the materialist
conception of history. This he developed in a manuscript (published posthumously as
The German Ideology, of which the basic thesis was that “the nature of individuals
depends on the material conditions determining their production.“ Marx traced the
history of the various modes of production and predicted the collapse of the present one
-- industrial capitalism -- and its replacement by communism.
Marx also at this time wrote a reply to P. J. Proudhon’s book , Philosophie de la
misere,” (transl. Philosophy of Poverty) and entitled it Misere de la philosophie (transl.
Poverty of Philosophy).
In it, Marx developed the fundamental propositions of his
economic interpretation of history. Against Proudhon’s (and the utopian socialists’)
quest for the morally most desirable social order, Marx put his own search for the
inevitable, namely, the system that would by necessity result from the operation of
historical forces. While working on The German Ideology, he also wrote the polemic
against P. J. Proudhon and managed to join the Communist League. This was an
organization of German émigré workers with its center in London of which Marx and
Engels became the major theoreticians. At a conference of the League in London at the
end of l847, Marx and Engels both were commissioned to write a succinct declaration of
their position which came to be the now famous manifesto of the organization and
eventually the communist party.
As mentioned above, the more important document originated from Marx’s (and
Engels’) pen during the stay in Brussels -- Manifest der Kommunistischen Partie (l848),
which contains a summary of his whole social philosophy. It was written to serve as the
platform of the Communist league. The Communist Manifesto appeared at a moment
most favorable to its effectiveness, that is, on the eve of the February, l848, revolution in
France during which socialism showed its power.
The revolutionary atmosphere in Germany in l848 made it possible for Marx to
return to Cologne and revive his newspaper, now under the title of Neue Rheinische
Zeitung, a paper which supported a radical democratic line against the Prussian autocracy
and Marx devoted his main energies to its editorship since the Communist League had
been virtually disbanded by this time. Marx’ paper was suppressed and he sought refuge
again in London in May of l849 to begin what he came to call the “long, sleepless night
of exile” that was to last for the rest of his life. However, the following year he was
expelled permanently from Cologne. The Manifesto is, of course, an analysis of
capitalism, a criticism of “false” socialism, an interpretation of history as the preparation
for the coming of true socialism, and a call to revolutionary action. During the l848
revolutions, Marx was expelled from Brussels; he went first to Paris and then to Cologne
to edit the newspaper during an abortive experiment in parliamentary democracy. Upon
the defeat of the democracy Marx was arrested, tried for sedition, acquitted, and expelled.
This time Marx settled in London, where he spent the rest of his life -- most of it
in abject poverty. Journalistic activity for Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, whose
managing editor was Charles A. Dana, a Fourierist, at times alleviated the financial
distress only intermittently and Marx never really did have any regular work for the
remainder of his life. Settling in London, Marx was optimistic about the imminence of a
new revolutionary outbreak in Europe. He rejoined the communist League and wrote
two lengthy pamphlets on the l848 revolution in France and its aftermath. He was soon
convinced that “a new revolution is possible only in consequence of a new crisis” and
then devoted himself to the study of political economy in order to determine the causes
and conditions of this crisis.
However, it was due primarily to the generosity of Engels, who worked in the
Manchester affiliate of his father’s textile firm, that the Marx family was somehow
protected from starvation. During the first half of the l850s the Marx family lived in
poverty in a three room flat in the Soho quarter of London, Marx and Jenny already had
four children and two more were to follow. Of these, only three survived. Marx’s
major source of income at this time was Engels who was trying a steadily increasing
income from the family business in Manchester, and, of course, there was the little bit
coming in from the article for Greeley’s paper.
Marx’s major work on political economy made slow progress. By l857, Marx
had produced a gigantic 800 page manuscript on capital, landed property, wage labor, the
state, foreign trade and the world market. The Grundrisse (Outlines) was not published
until l94l. In the early l860s, mark broke off his work to compose three large volumes,
Theories of Surplus Value, which discussed the theoreticians of political economy,
particularly Adam Smith and David Ricardo. It was not until l867 that Marx was able to
publish the first results of his work in Volume I of Capital, a work which analyzed the
capitalist process of production. In this work, Marx elaborated his version of the labor
theory value and his conception of surplus value and exploitation which would ultimately
lead to a falling rate of profit in the collapse of industrial capitalism. Volumes II and
III were finished during the l860s but Marx worked on the manuscripts for the rest of his
life and they were published posthumously by Engels.
One reason why Marx was so slow to publish his opus on capitalism was that he
was devoting his time and energy to the First International, to whose General Council he
was elected at its inception in l864. He was particularly active in preparing for the
annual Congresses of the International and leading the struggle against the anarchist
wing. Although Marx won this contest, the transfer of the seat of the General Council
from London to New York in l872, which Marx supported, led to the decline of the
International.
Several of Marx’s children died, among them his only son, Edgar. Of his tree
daughters who reached adult life, two married French socialists and the third, after
Marx’s death, established an unhappy association with the British Marxist Edward
Aveling and ended her life by suicide.
During the last decade of his life, Marx’s health
declined and he was incapable of sustained effort that had so characterized his previous
work. He did manage to comment substantially on the contemporary politics,
particularly in Germany and Russia. In Germany, he opposed the tendency of his
followers to compromise with state socialism in the interests of a united socialist party.
N his correspondence, Marx contemplated the possibility of Russia’s bypassing the
capitalist stage of development and building communism on the basis of the common
ownership of land. Marx’s health did not improve. He traveled to European spas and
even to Algeria in search of recuperation. The deaths of his eldest daughter and his wife
clouded the last years of his life. Marx himself died on March l4, l883, just fifteen
months after the death of his dearly loved wife. He was buried at Highgate cemetery in
North with little fanfare.
Frederich Engels delivered the following eulogy upon the occasion of the burial.
On the l4th of March (l883), at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest
living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and
when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep - but for ever.
An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant proletariat of
Europe and America, and by historical science, in the death of this man. The gap that
has been left by the departure of this mighty spirit will soon enough make itself felt.
Just as Darwin discovered the law of development or organic nature, so Marx
discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed
by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and
clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the
production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic
development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation
upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on
religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must,
therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.
But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special law of motion governing
the present-day capitalist mode of production, and the bourgeois society that this mode of
production has created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on the
problem, in trying to solve which all previous investigations, of both bourgeois
economists and socialist critics, had been groping in the dark.
Two such discoveries would be enough for one lifetime. Happy the man to whom
it is granted to make even one such discovery. But in every single field which Marx
investigated -- and he investigated very many fields, none of them superficially -- in every
field, even in that of mathematics, he made independent discoveries.
Such was the man of science. But this was not even half the man. Science was
for Marx a historically dynamic, revolutionary force. However great the joy with which
he welcomed a new discovery in some theoretical science whose practical application
perhaps it was as yet quite impossible to envisage, he experienced quite another kind of
joy when the discovery involved immediate revolutionary changes in industry, and in
historical development in general. For example, he followed closely the development of
the discoveries made in the field of electricity and recently those of Marcel Deprez.
For Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to
contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state
institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern
proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs,
conscious of the conditions of its emancipation. Fighting was his element. And he
fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could rival. His work on the
first Rheinische Zeitung (l842), the Paris Vorwarts (l844), the Deutsche Brusseler
Zeitung (l847), the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (l848-49), the New York Tribune (l852-6l),
and, in addition to these, a host of militant pamphlets, work in organizations in Paris,
Brussels, and London, and finally, crowing all, the formation of the great International
Working Men’s Association -- this was indeed an achievement of which its founder might
well have been proud even if he had done nothing else.
And, consequently, Marx was the best hated and most calumniated man of his
time. Governments, both absolutist and republication, deported him from their
territories. Bourgeois, whether conservative or ultra-democratic, vied with one another
in heaping slanders upon him. All this he brushed aside as though it were a cobweb,
ignoring it, answering only when extreme necessity compelled him. And he died
beloved, revered and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow workers -- from the
mines of Siberia to California, in all parts of Europe and America -- and I make bold to
say that, though he may have had many opponents, he had hardly one personal enemy.
His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work.
In spite of poverty and persistent illness, Marx proved himself a prolific writer.
Anxious to apply his philosophy of history to the events in France, where civil war had
broken out between the workers and the middle class in the summer of l848, Marx wrote
his booklet Die Klassenkampfe in Frankreich 1848 and followed it up with Der
Achtzehnt Brumaire des Louis Napoleon Bonaparte -- both of them masterpieces of
historiography. He gave a critical history of economic literature in his book Zur Kritik
der politischen Okonomie in l859.
Marx’s contribution to our understanding of society has been enormous. His
thought is not the comprehensive system evolved by some of his followers under the
name of dialectical materialism. The very dialectical nature of his approach meant that it
was usually tentative and open-ended. There was also the tension between Marx the
political activist and Marx the student of political economy. Many of his expectations
about the future course of the revolutionary movement have, so far, failed to materialize.
However, his stress on the economic factor in society and his analysis of the class
structure in class conflict have had an enormous influence on history, sociology, and the
study of human culture.
The philosopher, social scientist, historian and revolutionary, Karl Marx, is
without a doubt the most influential socialist thinker to emerge in the l9th century.
Although he was largely ignored by scholars in his own lifetime, his social, economic and
political ideas gained rapid acceptance in the socialist movement after his death in l83.
Until quite recently almost half the population of the world lived under regimes that
claim to be Marxist. This very success, however, has meant that the original ideas of
Marx have often been modified and his meanings adapted to a great variety of political
circumstances. In addition, the fact that Marx delayed publication of many of his
writings meant that it has been only recently that scholars had the opportunity to
appreciate Marx’s intellectual stature.
In a famous quote from Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of l844,
we find this profound summary: The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he
produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes
an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. With the increasing
value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion to the devaluation of the
world of men. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker
as a commodity -- and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities
generally.
Marx’s most famous work was, of course, Das Kapital. The first volume
appeared in l867; second and third volumes were published posthumously in l885 and
l894 and edited by Engels himself. An English translation of the first volume by Samuel
Moore and Edward Aveling appeared in l886; a translation of the second and third
volumes by Ernest Untermann, l907 and l909 respectively. In this book, Marx
developed a theory of the capitalist system and its dynamism, with emphasis on its
self-destructive tendencies.
This work for which Marx is most commonly known and revered, contains the
results of studies to which a whole life was devoted. It is the political economy of the
working class, reduced to its scientific formulation. This work is concerned not with
rabble-rousing phrase mongering, but with strictly scientific deductions. Whatever one’s
attitude to socialism, one will at any rate have to acknowledge that in this work it is
presented for the first time in a scientific manner, and that it was precisely Germany that
accomplished this. Anyone still wishing to do battle with socialism, will have to deal
with Marx, and if he succeeds in that then he really does not need to mention the dei
minorum gentium (“gods of a lesser stock”.
But there is another point of view from which Marx’s book is of interest. It is the
first work in which the actual relations existing between capital and labor, in their
classical form such as they have reached in England and America, are described in their
entirety and in a clear and graphic fashion. The parliamentary inquiries in England
provided ample material for this study of Marx, spanning a period of almost forty years
and practically unknown elsewhere, material dealing with the conditions of the workers
in almost every branch of industry including women’s and children’s work, night work,
etc. All this is here mad e available for the first time and Marx made the historic study
of it.
Then, there is the history of factory legislation in England which, from its modest
beginnings with the first acts of l802, has now reached the point of limiting working
hours in nearly all manufacturing or cottage industries to 60 hours per week for women
and young people under the age of l8, and to 39 hours per week for children under l3.
From this point of view, the book Marx wrote is of the greatest interest for every
industrialist.
For many years, Marx has been the “best maligned” of the German writers, and
no one will deny that he was unflinching in his retaliation and that all the blows he aimed
struck home with a vengeance. But polemics, which he “dealt in” so much, was
basically only a means of self-defense for him. In the final analysis, his real interest lay
with his science which he has studied and reflected upon for twenty-five years with
unrivalled conscientiousness, a conscientiousness which has prevented him from
presenting his findings to the public in a systematic form until they satisfied him as to
their form and content, until he was convinced that he had left no book unread, no
objection unconsidered, and that he had examined every point from all its aspects.
Original thinkers are very rare, but, if a man is not only an original thinker but also
carefully labors over his subject, then he deserves to be doubly acknowledged.
When Marx wrote his one thousand page classic, Das Kapital, factory conditions
were often intolerable, wages were at best barely adequate, and there were few groups or
governments who advocated reform. In the mid-nineteenth century amidst all of the
political chaos breaking out all over Europe, Marx took it upon himself to define
“capitalism, explain and condemn capitalist methods, predict the inevitable doom of the
system, and issue the rallying cry, Workers of the world, unite!.” When Marx simply
described what he saw, his analyses an criticisms appear most lucid. In contrast, his
theories become confusing as he attempts to prove even the vaguest point using
mathematics. He felt that these elaborate equations and proofs were necessary because
his book does not purport to be merely a moral prescription for society’s ills, but a
scientific description of the unavoidable course of history.
As has already been pointed out, Marx’s work draws heavily on the dialectical
theories of Hegel who had posited that the world was in a constant process of
transformation from lower to higher orders of existence. Each new order, he thought,
emerged as an embodied idea, or “thesis,” and each thesis carried within itself the seeds
of its own destruction , its own opposing force or “antithesis.” But out of the inevitable
clash between thesis and antithesis, a new and more perfect order -- the “synthesis” was
destined to emerge. Christianity, for example, emerged as a result of the struggle
between Greek and Hebrew thought.
In its turn, then, this synthesis would now function as a new thesis, engendering
another antithesis and advancing the conflict-resolution cycle, until finally history fought
its way forward to the ultimate synthesis, the “total realization of the world spirit.” For
the passionate, nearly religious, disciples of Hegel, all this was tantamount to the coming
of God’s kingdom on earth. For Marx, however, who admired Hegel’s thought but
despised religion as a tool of oppression and dismissed idealism as “unscientific,” it was
a challenge to ground Hegelian dialectic in the down-to-earth materialism of economics
which Marx saw as the engine of history.
The inherent tension between social classes under different economic orders has
created both conflict and progress through the ages, he pronounces. Most recently, the
emerging merchant-capitalist class that arose to service feudalism was broken down, as
merchants overwhelmed their masters; it is this merchant class that rules today. But
now, says Marx, is the hour for the “ultimate synthesis,” namely, the Proletariat
revolution and the final achievement of a classless and stateless society. In Das Kapital,
Marx was keen to illustrate the problematic relationship between capitalists and labor.
Capitalistic society provides, he explains, three main sources of income: (l) capital
(which “profits” the capitalist); (2) land (which provides landowners with rent); and (3)
labor power (which earns the worker his wages). A laborer is, in a sense, a merchant,
who sells his labor power as a commodity. And, says Marx, “the value of labor power is
the value of the necessaries required to sustain its proprietor.” Thus, the capitalist
purchases a laborer’s work in exchange for a wage, which the worker then converts into
food, shelter, and clothing which, on the surface, appears to be a fair exchange.
Because the capitalist must make a profit, however, and the simple exchange of
commodities does not produce any profit, Marx asserts that the Capitalist is forced to
extract his profit from the labor of his workers, he must “lower the wages of the laborer
below the true exchange value of his labor power.” Profit, then, can be increased by
various means, the most common being, says Marx, “simply prolonging the duration of
the working day,” paying the same wage for more work. Today, of course and thanks to
labor unions, this tactic would not be tolerated as it once was. “More intense utilization
of labor power” and the emergence of large-scale cooperative enterprises, with various
hierarchies of merchants and managers, has subjected the Proletariat to a “serfdom” of
wage slavery, claims Marx.
Remembering that Marx wrote during the height of burgeoning industrialization
of Europe, we understand more clearly his early and somewhat naïve perceptions of the
relationship of the worker to the merchant, a time when labor unions could not have
possibly been imagined. Yet, his critique of the problematic of the relationship is often
still quite insightful and quite telling of the infra-structurally manipulative character of
capitalism. Manufacturing by machines, Marx said at a time when industrialization was
pressing forward with greater and greater productivity without a concomitant acceleration
of benefits and safety for the worker, gives the capitalist an added advantage and further
converts the worker into a “crippled monstrosity,” cut of from the chance to cultivate
“human” skills as an artisan or craftsman.
The garment worker in a factory, for instance, does not make suits; he sews on
hundred and twenty-seven shoulder seems every two hours! What’s more, technology
tends to be self-generating with machinery begetting more machinery. In the textile
industry, Marx points out by way of illustrations, the revolutionary spinning wheel
prompted the demand for weaving machines in order to cope with the increased
availability of threads and yarns. In turn, these spawned the “mechanical and chemical
revolution that took place in bleaching, dying, and printing” of fabrics. While these
innovations in themselves were good, under capitalism, they displaced many skilled
textile workers and forced them into less skilled, lower-paying positions which were
vulnerable to be used and discarded as interchangeable cogs in the labor machine itself.
The use of machinery also undermined the wages of working-class males. The
design of machines in Marx’s time often demanded that workers be small and slim.
“The labor of women and children was, therefore, the first thing sought for by the
capitalist.” And, with more embers of a family working, subsistence wages for each
worker could be gradually lowered without immediately and conspicuously lowering the
standard of living of the worker for now it was a “working family” contributing to the
wellbeing of the whole family no longer dependent upon a single father-based income.
The gradual lowering of wages across the board, thereby, occurred with obvious notice,
at least for a while. As labor power became cheaper, the perceived value of individual
workers was further diminished, fostering a cavalier disregard for their safety, health and
comfort in the grim factories and workshops of the day.
A machine, Marx pointed out rather graphically, allows for round-the-clock use.
“The longer a machine works, the greater is the mass of the products over which the
value transmitted by the machine is spread, and the les is the portion of that value added
to each commodity.” The machine running at full capacity day and night will probably
wear out sooner, but this is desirable because more profit can thus be extracted before it
becomes obsolete. Thus, it is only the worker who wears out ahead of time and he can
be replaced at no extra cost from the ranks of the unemployed and hungry workers who
have been displaced by machines. “The reserve army of the unemployed,” said Marx,
awaits the beck and call of the capitalist.
During the periods of stagnation and average prosperity,” explains Marx, this
group of excess workers “weighs down the active labor army, acts as a brake against
wage increases. But during the periods of over production, it holds the claims of the
active labor army in check. Relative surplus population is therefore the pivot upon
which the law of supply and demand of labor works.” Improved manufacturing and
farming methods, the proliferation of banks and loaning practices (often owned by the
capitalists themselves), increased ease of global transportation and travel all have helped
swell the capitalist tide of expansionism and exploitation. The complex and selfish
industrial society, immoral because of its self-serving interests at the expense of society
itself, is ripe for revolution.
According to Marx in this major contribution to economic theory, the last few
centuries have seen the common worker suffering the “maximum of working time and
the minimum of wages” in order to supply capitalists with profits. “Accumulation of
wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil,
slavery, ignorance, brutality, moral degradation, at the opposite pole.” This must and
shall be ended, professed Marx. Granted, says Mar, the capitalist is in tight control.
But the pendulum of power has swung many times in the past, and he promises that it
will again shift. The Proletariat, under the banner of communism, will ultimately be
victorious. Revolution is the destined scenario -- and the ultimate historical “synthesis”
will be a perfectly just and egalitarian society, where everyone works, “according to his
ability” and receives “according to his needs,” where the state itself finally withers away.
The only important organizational activity Marx ever undertook was his
leadership of the International workingmen’s Association, beginning in l864. Most of
the time his own followers were only a minority among the members, but he balanced the
various factions against each other with great skill and infinite patience and held out to
them their common goals, until the conflict with the anarchists put an end to the
International Association. With the British labor movement Marx had little contact,
although in the International some British trade-unionists were for a time among his
strongest supporters. In France, his influence during his lifetime was overshadowed by
that of Proudhon and in Germany -- at least up to the late l870s -- by that of Ferdinand
Lassalle but Lassalle and his successor, J. B. von Schweitzer, were interpreters rather
than opponents of many of Marx’s ideas.
Marx’s other writings were mostly exercises in political pamphleteering, in which
his keen but often overhasty analysis was backed by unusual gifts for rhetoric and
invective. Most of Marx’s final years were spent in the British Museum which was
really the city library, and at his death Marx was, in his own words, “the best hated and
most calumniated man of his time.” His life had been dedicated to political fanaticism
and to a passionate quest for a vast synthetic view of all history and culture.
That synthesis, the great Marxian quest, was only partially achieved, yet, it
succeeded well enough to provide an ideology and a fairly coherent world view for
attempts to produce a new civilization, supposedly better and more advanced than the one
produced by democracy and industrialism in Western Europe and North America. The
aim was a more humane, even more morally upright, culture and civilization based upon
mankind’s willingness to share and help each other rather than reducing each other to
mere competitive labor units of consumerism driven by greed and animal baseness. The
world sought by Marx was a kinder, more gentle and more human-oriented world of
mutual sharing. This was the world of the coming egalitarian communist state he
envisioned.
Philosophy played little part in the Marxian synthesis, which was intended to be
positive, historical, and sociological -- “scientific,” as Engels called it. It has been
argued that any such generalizing world view is by definition philosophical or even
religious and that, therefore, Marx must be classed with such great metaphysical
synthesizers as Aristotle, Aquinas, and Hegel. But that begs the very question Marx
himself posed, namely, whether the study of history and economics, free of all
philosophical speculation, religious prejudice, and overt ethical promotion, cannot show
us the course that humanity will follow on this earth.
Marx’ system began with an economic theory. Goods were exchanged at rates
decided by the amount of labor that went into them (the labor theory of value). The
price of labor itself was no exception to this law; labor was paid subsistence wages, just
what was needed to “make” workers, that is, to keep them alive and reproducing
themselves. Yet labor produced goods worth more than its wages, and the difference
belonged to the capitalists. Thus, the misery of the masses was not due to wickedness
that might respond to preaching, but to the operation of economic laws.
However, a critical study of political economy showed that these laws were
peculiar to capitalism as an economic system, which was merely one stage of historical
development, one soon to be destroyed by its internal contradictions. As the masses
became poorer and more numerous, the capitalists became fewer and controlled greater
concentrations of productive equipment, whose full productiveness they throttled back
for their own gain. The capitalists would soon be swept aside as a restraint on
production, and the masses would take over the already socialized industrial economy,
which had been carried to the edge of perfection by self-liquidating capitalism. There
would succeed a progressive, rational society with no wages, no money, no social classes,
and, eventually, no state -- “a free association of producers under their own conscious and
purposive control.”
The author of the doctrine of historical materialism, Marx proposed a theory that
the “material conditions of life” and specifically “the mode of production of the material
means of existence” determine much else in human consciousness and society. Neither
Marx nor any of his followers, in a century-long debate, ever succeeded in stating this
theory both rigorously and plausibly at the same time. Yet, because it stressed economic
and technological factors in human affairs that previously had been overlooked or veiled
by hypocrisy, the theory has had an extensive and generally fruitful influence over much
thinking and writing about society.
Marx “flirted with” Hegel’s triadic dialectic to express some parts of his
economic and historical theories, but it was Engels who developed dialectical materialism
as a metaphysics or a theory of reality. Marx remained, like many Germans in his day,
marked by the influence of Hegel, which revealed itself in a taste for metaphysical
bombast but also in certain specific doctrines, such as that history progresses by struggle
and opposition and that change occurs in revolutionary leaps rather than in gradual,
quantitative stages. Not surprisingly, the Hegelian imprint is clearest in the earliest
work: Marx’s Paris manuscripts are a fusion of political economy and Hegelianism,
each interpreted in terms of the other. But as Marx extended his knowledge of history
and economics, he abandoned the metaphysical-moral critique of capitalism for an
approach that sought to be factual and scientific.
Marx’s critique of capitalism and the capitalist state and enterprise was the first
and scientifically sustained protest of the l9th century against the abuses of the laborer
implied in the philosophy of capitalistically-driven consumerism. He argued that the
alienation of labor power and its resulting commodity fetishism is precisely the defining
and demeaning feature of capitalism as we have grown it in modern society. Prior to
capitalism, markets existed in Europe where producers and merchants bought and sold
commodities. According to Marx, a capitalist mode of production developed in Europe
when labor itself became a commodity -- when peasants became free to see their own
labor power, and needed to sell their own labor because they no longer possessed their
own land or tools necessary to produce. People sell their labor power when they accept
compensation in return for whatever work they do in a given period of time. That is,
they are not selling the product of their labor, but their capacity to work. In return for
selling their labor power, they receive money, which allows them to survive. Those who
must sell their labor power to live Marx calls the “proletarians.” The person who buys
the labor power, generally someone who does own the land and technology to produce, is
a “capitalist” or “bourgeois.” Marx considered this an objective description of
capitalism, distinct from any one of a variety of ideological claims of or about capitalism.
The proletarians inevitably outnumber the capitalists but the capitalists control the
wealth.
The Marxian critique of capitalism makes a distinction between the capitalist and
the merchant. Merchants buy goods in one place and sell them in another, more
precisely, they buy things in one market and sell them in another. Since the laws of
supply and demand operate within given markets, there is often a difference between the
price of a commodity in one market and another. Merchants hope to capture the
difference between these two markets. According to Marx, capitalists, on the other
hand, take advantage of the difference between the labor market and the market for
whatever commodity is produced by the capitalist. Marx observed that in practically
every successful industry the price for labor was lower than the price of the manufactured
good. Arc called this difference “surplus value” and argued that this surplus value was
in fact the source of a capitalist’s profit.
The capitalist mode of production is capable of tremendous growth because the
capitalist can, and has an incentive to, reinvest profits in new technologies. Marx
considered the capitalist class to be the most revolutionary in history, because it
constantly revolutionized the means of production. But Marx believed that capitalism
was prone to periodic crises. He suggested that over time, capitalists would invest more
and more in new technologies, and less and less in labor. Since Marx believed that
surplus value appropriated from labor is the source of profits, he concluded that the rate
of profit would fall even as the economy grew. When the rate of profit falls below a
certain point, the result would be a recession or depression in which certain sectors of the
economy would collapse. Marx understood that during such a crisis the price of labor
would also fall, and eventually make possible the investment in new technologies and the
growth of new sectors of the economy.
This cycle, according to Marx, of growth, collapse, and growth again would be
punctuated by increasingly severe crises. Moreover, he believed that the long-term
consequence of this process was necessarily the empowerment of the capitalist class and
the impoverishment of the proletariat. He believed that were the proletariat to seize the
means of production, they would encourage social relations that would benefit everyone
equally, and a system of production less vulnerable to period crises. In general, Marx
thought that peaceful negotiation of this problem was impracticable, and that a massive,
well-organized and violent revolution was required leading eventually to a stateless
society of self-governance based upon need and ability for all equally.
Marx regarded tzarism, next only to capitalism, as the greatest enemy of freedom
in all of Europe, and he wished for a strengthening of British imperial power as a
counterweight to Russia. He also had a great hatred of Napoleon III. He was opposed
to Prussian hegemony over Germany as established by Bismarck but asserted the right of
the German people to unity; some utterances to the contrary notwithstanding, Marx
respected and even shared national feelings. Marx took a passionate interest in the
American Civil War as a partisan of the North. In spite of his merciless criticism of
bourgeois liberalism, Marx treasured the liberal-humanitarian tradition from which the
socialist movement had sprung, and in all probability would have abhorred the ant
humanitarian practices of present-day Communism. Marx did not live long enough to
co-ordinate the strands in his great fund of ideas, and the unrecognized contradictions
became a source of dissension among his intellectual heirs.
With the exception of Engels, Marx had no close, lifelong friends. To many of
his contemporaries, he appeared coldly arrogant, conceited and full of hate. Whether
these traits were part of his nature or merely a response to his many frustrations, is a
question which none of his many biographers has convincingly answered.
WORKS BY MARX
The complete edition of Marx’ works is in Russian, Karl Marx and Freidrich
Engels, Sochieniya, 32 volumes (Moscos, 1955-), of which the parallel German version is
Werke, 30 volumes (Berline, l957-).
Previously scholars used Marx-Engels
Gesamtausgabe, l2 volumes (Berline and Moscow, 1927-1935). Neither contains al of
Marx’s output, which is catalogued in Maximilien Rubel, Bibliographie des oeuvres de
Karl Marx (Paris, l956). In English, there are several selected editions: Marx and
Engels, Selected Works, 2 volumes (London, l942); and Marx and Engels, Selected
Correspondence l846-l895 (London, l934). Selections dealing with philosophical
subjects include Marx and Engels, Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy,
Maximilien Rubel and T. B. Bottomore, eds. (London, l956); and Marx and Engels, Basic
Writings on Politics and Philosophy, L. S. Feuer, ed. (New York, l959). Separate works
in English by Marx alone include Capital , translated by S. Moore, E. Aveling, and E.
Untermann, 3 volumes (Chicago, l906-l909); A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy, translated by N. I. Stone (Chicago, l904); Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts of l844, translated by M. Milligan (London, l959); Letters to Dr. Kugelmann
(New York, l934); The Poverty of Philosophy, translated by H. Quelch (Chicago, l9l0);
and Theories of Surplus Value (London, l95l). Separate works in English by both Marx
and Engels are The Holy Family (Moscow, l956) and The German Ideology, R. Pascal,
ed. (New York, l933); The communist Manifesto has had numerous editions, whose
history is told in Bert Andreas, Le Manifeste communiste de Marx et Engels (Milan,
l963); the most useful in English are those of Max Eastman (New York, l932) and Harold
Laski (London, l948).
CHAPTER FOUR
SIGMUND FREUD and the Principle of Reality (Psychoanalysis)
Civilization and Its Discontents
If a date can be set for the founding of psychoanalysis, it would be l895, at the
time Freud and Breuer co-authored the publication, Studies in Hysteria. It was Freud’s
first full-scale attempt at a psychological explanation of the concept which had been
studied and observed for quite a long time but with a variety of good and bad definitional
attempts. Among the cases report was that of Anna O, as we have suggested already, but
some of the germs of psychoanalysis were also there -- the influence of early childhood,
repression, and a discussion of Freud’s therapeutic technique. The book caused little stir
and received few reviews, mostly unfavorable in a climate of conservative and caution.
It sold only six hundred and twenty-six copies in the next thirteen years.
The following year, l896, turned out to be a rather traumatic one for Freud. By
this time he was becoming increasingly impressed with the significance of sex, not only
in personality development but also in sexual traumas as being related to neurotic
symptoms. He gave a paper before the Society of Psychiatry and Neurology in Vienna
in which he reported that his patients had revealed in the process of their analysis that
sexual seduction had occurred during childhood. The seducer was usually an older
relative, often the father. His patients were usually reluctant to recall these facts. To
saya the least, according to Freud’s biography Ernest Jones, the paper received an “icy
reception.” Soon afterwards the “horrible truth” began to occur to Freud. His patients
had not actually been seduced, but the statements were the product of their fantasies.
Freud accepted his mistake, but became even more impressed with the importance of sex
in the etiology of psychological disorders.
In l897, Freud realized that if he were to continue to psychoanalyze his patients he
must engage in his own self-analysis. Since he found it difficult to play the dual role of
patient and analyst at the same time, most of his analysis was to come from his own
dreams, and thanks to Freud, today, dreams are considered an important source of data in
the therapeutic process.
Arising out of his self-analysis came one of Freud’s most important books, The
Interpretation of Dreams, not only because of the discussion of dream analysis but also
because other major psychoanalytic concepts were presented, among them the Oedipus
complex. Freud was also realizing the great role that the unconscious played for the
human personality. The Interpretation of Dreams was published in l900 and, like his
previously published Studies in Hysteria, “fell flat off the press,” as virtually no
professional and few journals paid any attention what so ever to its release.
However, Freud did not give up. In l904, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
was published, in which Freud further established his deterministic views. In slips of the
tongue, forgetting, and losing objects, even accidents, there was unconscious motivation.
In other words, these were not mere accidents or happenings of chance, but had actual
underlying causes in the psyche of the individual.
During the first decade of the twentieth century, psychoanalysis began to gain
attention. At first, it attracted only a few men. In l902 the Wednesday Evening
Discussion Group was established which was attended by Alfred Adler and Carl Jung.
During these meetings various psychoanalytic concepts were discussed. By l909,
Freud’s fame had crossed the Atlantic, and he was invited by G. Stanley Hall, a
pioneering American psychologist and president of Clark University, to give lectures on
psychoanalysis in celebration of the University’s twentieth anniversary. Jung also went
along. Freud never liked America, and attributed his bowel troubles to American food.
According to his biographer, Ernest Jones, the difficulty had existed prior to Freud’s visit.
Freud commented that the only excuse for Columbus’ great mistake was the discovery of
tobacco, since Freud smoked about twenty cigars daily. Jung later returned to America
and wrote back to Freud that the American people were ready to accept the
psychoanalytic doctrine except for the overemphasis on sex. Freud obviously did not
take well to this remark, and the two of them eventually parted.
In 1910, the International Psychoanalysis Association was established with Jung
as president, over the objection of Freud’s Viennese colleagues, most of whom were
Jewish while Jung was the son of a Protestant minister. However, in 1911 the break
came with Adler and three years later with Jung. They never spoke to each other again.
By 1933 Hitler had come to power, and most of the German psychoanalysts soon
fled to America, the preponderance of them being Jewish. That same year the Nazis
made a bonfire of Freud’s books in Berlin to which Freud was reported to have said,
“What progress we are making. IN the Middle Ages they would have burnt me,
nowadays they are content with burning my books.”
Freud had been encouraged earlier to leave Austria but he stubbornly resisted.
By 1938, however, the Nazis had taken over Austria and Freud’s home was invaded by
the Gestapo. Through the efforts of Ernest Jones and William Bullitt, the American
ambassador to France, Freud was allowed to leave Vienna for London. In order to leave
and receive an exit visa, Freud had to sign a paper attesting to the respectful and
considerate treatment he had received from the Gestapo.
He died in England
9/23/1939.
Freud’s greatest social critique is, without question, his Civilization and Its
Discontents, is his major address upon the meaning of life and particularly are relates to
the countering balance of the pleasure principle and the reality principle. Freud says,
“the purpose of life is simply the program of the pleasure principle,” and since
humankind is unable (for personal reasons) or not permitted (for social reasons) to gratify
his desire for pleasure, he must learn that “satisfaction is obtained from illusions.” The
tensions resulting from the desire for pleasurable gratification on the one hand and the
encounter with social reality on the other hand make for a life-experience characterized
by anxiety and neurosis which are most readily coped with through illusions. Therefore,
in a real sense, says Freud, “our civilization is largely responsible for our misery.”
The impact that Freud’s thought has had upon Western culture in the past one
hundred years is profound. Since the publishing of his now famous, but then little
regarded, Die Traumdentung (trans. The Interpretation of Dreams), Freud’s thought has
gained such widespread usage that it would be difficult to imagine a modern world
devoid of his contributions to the understanding of the individual in society. If his
studies of the human psyche have revolutionized our thoughts about and attitudes toward
the unconscious, his writings on religion, society, and culture have shaken older images
of human experiences and ushered in a new era of religious and social theorizing.
Not unaware of the profound shock his thought would have on modern society,
Freud saw himself in a select line of great minds who have shaken the Western world.
There have been three narcissistic shocks to Western society, says Freud. First was the
Copernican or cosmological shock which shook Western society look from our
anthropo-geocentric cosmology which located humanity and the earth at the center of the
universe. This rude awakening brought trauma to Western people who then had to learn
how to live in a world where neither we nor the earth could claim centrality, but rather
had been pre-empted by a heliocentric cosmology. The sun, a gaseous ball devoid of
life, became the center.
The second and equally traumatic shock to Western man was dealt by Charles
Darwin -- the Biological Shock -- which demonstrated the biological relatedness of all
living things, humanity included. If Copernicus had challenged the status of human
beings in the universe, Darwin had surely succeeded in establishing the dependence of
humanity upon the earth and our kinship with all living creatures. The fact that we had
persisted even after Copernicus in an anthropocentrism which over-valued the differences
between us and other animals as well as between various genetic groupings within the
human family made even more difficult the acceptance of Darwin’s revelation. To this
very day, there are vocal if not large pockets of supposedly modern people who still
decry the atheism erroneously assumed implicit in Darwin’s biology and still lay claim to
a primitive worldview nurtured by a creation-story literalism.
Last and most profound of the shocks to Western society has been the
Psychological Shock mercilessly dealt by Sigmund Freud, as he understood it. The
shock was ushered in by a succession of scientific bomb-blasts, viz., the Interpretation of
Dreams (l900), Totem and Taboo (1912), Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), The
Future of an Illusion (1927), and Civilization and Its Discontents (1930). By no means
the whole bibliography of profound, challenging, and highly controversial studies, these
works are exemplary of the breadth of Freud’s research interests. His study of the origin
and function of religion, published under the significantly descriptive title, The Future of
an Illusion, is without question his most controversial and most widely read study outside
the specific field of psychoanalysis.
And yet, his Civilization and its Discontents, which reviews the arguments in the
religion book, represent his most mature thoughts on human society and the individual’s
relation to it. David Bakan, in his provocative and highly controversial study on Freud,
entitled, Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition (1969), has cogently argued
that Freud was himself a most exemplary thinker in the Kabbalistic tradition of Jewish
mysticism. Kabbalism was an esoteric tradition which chose for reasons of safety and
privacy to speak of the human spiritual condition in terms of the dark mysteries and
primitive symbolisms of sexuality. If Bakan is right in this bit of theorizing, then the
following statement from Freud gains even more profound eminence in modern religious
thought: “The tendency on the part of civilization to restrict sexual life is no less clear
than its other tendency to expand the cultural unit.” But, let us know now more closely
at his work before we pass judgment on Freud’s either apt or warped view of the human
condition.
The opening remarks in this brief statement of Freud’s under scrutiny here are in
reference to a friend who, though he entirely agreed with Freud’s analysis of religion in
his 1927 study, was concerned to call himself religious on the basis of a “sensation of
eternity” or “oceanic feeling.” Not only was Freud disinclined to accept his friend’s
suggestion, but Freud also wished to demonstrate how his friend’s suggestion, but Freud
also wished to demonstrate how his feeling of eternity corroborated the ego-development
schema of psychoanalysis.
The emergence of the ego -- “There is nothing of which we are more certain than
the feeling of ourselves, of our own ego,” says Freud -- is “through a process of
development.” The go is developmentally the inevitable result of a confronting of the
pristine libidinal impulses of the undifferentiated id with the external world of sheer
actuality. The id, having its motivational impetus centered in the pleasure principle,
confronts the reality principle as the individual infant begins to discover the
unpleasantness of the otherness, separateness, and outsides ness of the real world.
There is a strong motivation on the part of the id-driven child to “separate from the ego
everything that can become a source of such unpleasure, to throw it outside and to create
a pure pleasure-ego which is confronted by a strong and threatening ‘outside’.” The id
begins necessarily to develop a negotiating capability -- the ego as executor of libidinal
powers -- whereby the desires of the id are pacified with substitute gratifications which
are physically accessible and socially acceptable. “In this way,” says Freud, “one makes
the first step towards the introduction of the reality principle which is to dominate future
development.”
Freud is here explaining a scenario of ego-development which will address the
issue of the oceanic feeling, and thus the subject of religion. This executive function of
the differentiated ego serves as the primary medium of negotiation between the
pleasurable desires from within (the raw libido of the id) and the realities of the outside
world (social restraints upon behavior).
The more responsible the ego is to the reality
principle, the greater the experience of separateness from the external world -- “Our
present ego-feeling is,” says Freud, “therefore, only a shrunken residue of a much more
inclusive, indeed, an all-embracing feeling, which corresponded to a more intimate bond
between the ego and the world about it.” There, Freud concludes that to the extent that
this earlier primary ego feeling of virtual undifferentiating of self and world in infancy
has persisted alongside the narrower demarcated ego feeling of self-separation from the
world in maturity, there is the likelihood that feelings of “limitlessness and of a bond with
the universe,” i.e., the oceanic feeling, will be present.
Freud contends that “…in mental life nothing which has once been formed can
perish,” and, therefore, such feelings as these considered here are simply the residue of
infantile experience. And though Freud is reluctant to connect the feeling of “oneness
with the universe” with the origins of religion, he is “perfectly willing to acknowledge
that the ‘oceanic’ feeling exists in many people, and (is) inclined to trace it back to an
early phase of ego-feeling.” In conclusion to this topic of oceanic feelings, Freud is
wont to trace the origins of the oceanic feeling to “a first attempt at a religious
consolation,” which is to say, a feeling resulting from the developing ego-s growing
awareness of the external world. Furthermore, he is anxious to rearticulate his 1927
theory of religious origins, which says that “the derivation of religious needs from the
infant’s helplessness and the longing for the father aroused by it … (is) incontrovertible,
especially since the feeling is not simply prolonged from childhood days, but is
permanently sustained by fear of the superior power of Fate.” Though this point will be
considered in a later context, it must be noted here that for Freud, the energy output
demonstrated by the ego-s undying efforts to responsibly direct the otherwise unbridled
powers of the id is the result of a deep feeling whose function is the “expression of a
strong need.” The religious feeling, says Freud, is a source of energy because it is
expressive of a powerful need, namely, the helpless infant’s longing for a powerful
father.
In considering religion, Freud consistently was “concerned much les with the
deepest sources of the religious feeling than with what the common man understands by
his religion.” And yet, he was often so convincing in his critique of religion’s object
being nothing more than an “enormously exalted father” that it is difficult if not
impossible to separate the “deepest” from the “common” in religion. Freud had no
patience with the “great majority of mortals” who were dependent on this projected
father-image as a substitute for ego-development and personal maturity. “The whole
thing is so patently infantile,” complained Freud, a painful reality that most men,
avoiding true maturity, opt for a “pitiful rearguard” attachment to childish fantasies of a
loving Providence which, watching over us, will reward us eternally in heaven if we are
good.
The question of “the purpose of human life,” says Freud, bespeaks man’s
“presumptuousness.” Religion alone can answer this question, for the whole “idea of
life having a purpose stands and fall with the religious system.” And though these
metaphysical complexities lie outside Freud’s investigation here, he chooses to get at the
question by an inquiry into the nature of human behavior which demonstrates man’s
purpose and intention in life. And in answer to this question, “What do men show by
their behavior to be the purpose and intention of life?,” Freud answers simply, “They
strive after happiness, they want to become happy and to remain so.” That is, they seek
the “absence of pain and unpleasure” while seeking the “experiencing of strong feelings
of pleasure.” Therefore, Freud concludes, the rhetoric of religion to the contrary
notwithstanding, “what decides the purpose of life is simply the program of the pleasure
principle.”
Happiness, I.e., the satisfaction of needs too seldom gratified, is difficult to realize
and impossible to sustain. Society is ever ready to condemn violations of its laws, and
unrestrained self-gratification, I.e., personal happiness, inevitably results in a clash of the
individual’s desires (pleasure principle) and society’s rules (reality principle).
Therefore, “unhappiness is much less difficult to experience” because the individual is
threatened with suffering from three sides: from our own body due to its finitude, from
the external world with all its rules, and from our relations with other people. Since
happiness is hardly possible at all, and never for any significant duration, human kind has
necessarily had to develop techniques for controlling the instincts which given free rein
would inevitably bring catastrophe to the individual and to society.
Through the executive services of the ego, the libidinal forces are displaced
(focused upon a secondary and socially acceptable object choice) and the instincts are
systematically sublimated. IN the movement from pleasure to reality, the individual
adopts two kinds of “satisfaction … obtained from illusion … (which arise out) the
imagination.” Both religion and the enjoyment of the arts are the result of sublimated
instincts and displaced libido. In an extended quote, we hear Freud explain:
A special importance attaches to the case in which this attempt to procure a certainty in
happiness and a protection against suffering through a delusional remolding of reality is
made by a considerable number of people in common. The religions of mankind must be
classed among the mass-delusions of this kind. No one, needless to say, who shares a
delusion ever recognized it as such.
And, says Freud, those who define happiness in life as the pursuit and love of
beauty fail to realize that aesthetic impulse is simply the result of an ungratified primary
sexual motivation. The tensions experienced in the perpetual struggle between the desire
for happiness (pleasure principle) and avoidance of pain (reality principle) often lead to
neurosis and even psychosis. “Any attempt at rebellion (against society, that is, against
reality), is seen (either as psychosis,” or “as a last technique of living, which will at least
bring him substitutive satisfaction, that is, that of a flight into neurotic illness.” Freud’s
concluding remark regarding the function of religion in this context is worth quoting:
Religion restricts this play of choice and adaptation, since it imposes equally on everyone
its own path to the requisition of happiness and protection from suffering. Its technique
consists in depressing the value of life and distorting the picture of the real world in a
delusional manner -- which presupposes an intimidation of the intelligence. At this
price, by forcibly fixing them in a state of psychical infantilism and by drawing them into
a mass-delusion, religion succeeds in sparing many people an individual neurosis. But
hardly anything more.
Why has humankind singularly, collectively, and consistently failed in our quest
for happiness and the prevention of suffering? In attempting to answer this question,
Freud says that a kind of “suspicion dawns upon us” which says that maybe the answer
lies in “a piece of our own psychical constitution.” that is to say, the contention which
“holds that what we call our civilization is largely responsible for our misery for it is a
certain fact that all the things with which we seek to protect ourselves against the threats
that emanate from the sources of suffering are part of that very civilization.”
Can it be? Civilization serves both to protect us against nature and to adjust our
mutual relations. Wherein lies the evil, then? Certainly our civilization bore the culture
from which came technical skills, fire and tool usage, writing and dwelling houses. And
also, humankind invented gods to whom were attributed human cultural ideals.
Furthermore, beauty, cleanliness and order became “requirements for civilization.” And
of all characteristics of civilization esteemed and encouraged most highly are our higher
mental activities, that is, intellectual, scientific and artistic achievements, and “foremost
among those ideas are the religious systems.” The “motive force of all human
activities,” argues Freud, “is a striving towards the two confluent goals of utility and a
yield of pleasure.”
The last and significantly problematic characteristic of civilization is the manner
in which relationships of people to one another are regulated, that is, family and state.
“Human life in common,” contends Freud, “is only made possible when a majority comes
together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains untied against
all separate individuals.” Thus, a concept of the right or social good develops in
opposition to individual brute force. “This replacement of the power of the individual by
the power of a community constitutes the decisive step in civilization.” The first
requirement of this newly formed community is, therefore, justice -- the assurance that
the good of the many expressed in law will be honored over the desires of any single
individual. “The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization.” And in this
connection, Freud would have us see that there is a great “similarity between the process
of civilization and the libidinal development of the individual.” As sublimation
functions in the individual for the development of a strong ego and creative capacity to
deal with the principle of reality, so likewise, “sublimation of instinct is an especially
conspicuous feature of cultural development; it is what makes it possible for higher
psychical activities, scientific, artistic or ideological, to play such an important part in
civilized life.”
As we move closer to Freud’s perception of the nature of humankind in society -our stumblingly and futile attempts to construct a viable meaning to life -- we are
confronted by an indispensable dialectic between life and death, especially as Freud had
earlier developed the idea in his book, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (l920). He
explains its development this way:
There still remained in me a kind of conviction … that the instincts could not all be of the
same kind … Starting from speculations on the beginning of life and from biological
parallels, I drew the conclusion that, besides the instinct to preserve living substance and
to join it into ever larger units, there must exist another, contrary instinct seeking to
dissolve those units and to bring them back to their primordial, inorganic state. That is
to say, as well as Eros there was an instinct of death.
Within every society, as within every individual, Freud believed there to be two
conflicting instincts. The life instinct is at the service of society so long as society is
devoid of aggression, for aggression is a stark manifestation of the Death instinct.
Aggression, says Freud, “is an original, self-subsisting instinctual disposition of man …
(and it) constitutes the greatest impediment to civilization.” Eros and Death share
“world-dominion” and explain the movement of civilization back and forth upon the
scale of creativity and destruction. This eternal and unexplainable struggle is essentially
what life is all about, and the evolution of civilization is simply described “as the struggle
for life of the human species.” There is only futility in attempting to explain the
meaning of life beyond this simple reality -- the meaning of life is the struggle of life
against death. “And it is this battle of the giants,” concludes Freud, “that our
nurse-maids try to appease with their lullabies about Heaven.”
It is the super-ego which constitutes the source of the human feelings of guilt.
The super-ego evolves in consort with the development of the ego. As the ego gains
relative control over the id, it does so by means of taking to itself the moral expectations
of society, as society in turn, through the agency of parents, impresses its values upon the
child. The super-ego is the projection of society’s self-image into such an exalted state
as to elicit devotion and adoration. But as the ego becomes educated to the reality
principle, as a balancing source to the id’s pleasure principle, the super-ego is being
socially reinforced in the adoption of an ideal principle. As the ego’s sense of reality
confronts the super-ego’s sense of the social ideal, tension results within the individual.
The super-ego serves as the conscience which testifies against the ego’s reluctance to
support the ideals of society. “The tension between the harsh super-ego and the ego that
is subjected to it,” says Freud, “is called by us the sense of guilt; it expresses itself as a
need for punishment.” The stronger the ego, the weaker the super-ego, and vice versa.
Society’s moral expectations are mediated through the child’s parents and give rise to a
conscience educated to certain idealistic expectations. “Civilization, therefore,” says
Freud, “obtains mastery over the individual’s dangerous desire for aggression by
weakening and disarming it and by setting up an agency within him to watch over it.”
Guilt, which is really a social anxiety though frequently misnamed “bad
conscience,” often results from a “fear of loss of love” on the one hand and a “fear of
punishment” on the other. But fundamentally, our sense of guilt springs from the
Oedipus complex “which was acquired at the killing of the father by the brothers banded
together” as classically illustrated in Freud’s scenario of the development of primeval
human community in his Totem and Taboo (1912). And thus, what began in relation to
the father is completed in relation to the group. Freud reasons:
If civilization is a necessary course of development from the family to humanity as a
whole, then -- as a result of the inborn conflict arising from ambivalence, of the eternal
struggle between the trends of love and death -- there is inextricably bound up with it an
increase of the sense of guilt, which will perhaps reach heights that the individual finds
hard to tolerate.
It was Freud’ intention from the beginning “to represent the sense of guilt as the
most important problem in the development of civilization and to show that the price we
pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the
sense of guilt.”
Quick to make a qualitative distinction between a “sense of guilt” and a
“consciousness of guilt,” Freud argues that guilt plays its greatest role in the human
experience when operating in the unconscious. And when functioning here, “…the
sense of guilt is at bottom nothing else but a topographical variety f anxiety; in its later
phases it coincides completely with fear of the super-ego.” To the extent that guilt
remains unobserved in the dark chambers of the unconscious, we are condemned to write
in our dissatisfaction -- a sort of malaise produced by civilization itself. “Religions,”
says Freud, “have never overlooked the part played in civilization by a sense of guilt.”
The sense of guilt, the harshness of the super-ego, the severity of the conscience -- all are
demonstrative of a need for punishment. This need, says Freud, “is an instinctive
(manifestation on the part of the ego) which has become masochistic under the influence
of a sadistic super-ego.” Religion, as an illusion produced out of the imaginations of
sublimated instincts, functions as a social neurosis which protects humanity from the
stark realities of life devoid of any ultimate transcendent meaning. Mature individuals
must eventually rid themselves of illusion and imagination and learn to face squarely and
without guilt the meaninglessness of life.
Freud’s attitude towards life’s meaning is capsulated in a quotation from his
study, Civilization and its Discontents, with which we conclude this discussion here.
The fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent
their cultural development will succeed in mastering the disturbance of their communal
life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction … One thing only do I know
for certain and that is that man’s judgments of value follow directly his wishes for
happiness -- that, accordingly, they are an attempt to support his illusions with
arguments.”
CHAPTER FIVE
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE AND HUMAN POSSIBILITY (Existentialism)
Existentialism and Human Emotion
Here, we will consider a collection of brief essays by Jean-Paul Sartre entitled,
Existentialism and Human Emotions. Sartre, propounding what he has chosen to label
“atheistic existentialism,” suggests that since “…God does not exist, there can be no
human nature…” and consequently the “first principle of existentialism” is simply that
“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself -- what is called subjectivity.”
Furthermore, the challenge of modern man (called the experience of “forlornness”) in the
face of the absence of God, is to face all the consequences of this discovery. Therefore,
after God, “Man is the future of Man’ and is thus “condemned to be free” from the
shackles of the Divine. The question of meaning fro Sartre is the question of how man
can live responsibly in a world “after God.” Sartre pursues his question ruthlessly in
these few essays.
A novelist, playwright, existentialist philosopher, and literary critic of French birth,
Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964, but he declined the award in
protest of the values of bourgeois society. His longtime companion was Simone de
Beauvoir, whom he met at the École Normale Superieure in 1929.
"The bad novel aims to please by flattering, whereas the good one is an exigence
and an act of faith. But above all, the unique point of view from which the author
can present the world to those freedoms whose concurrence he wishes to bring
about is that of a world to be impregnated always with more freedom." (from
What Is Literature, 1947)
Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris. His father was a naval officer who died when
Jean-Paul was young. Through his mother, the former Anne-Marie Schweitzer, he was a
great nephew of Albert Schweitzer. Sartre lived after his father's early death with his
grandfather, Charles Schweitzer and his mother in Paris. When his mother remarried in
1917, the family moved to La Rochelle. Sartre attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. He
graduated from the Ècole Normale Supérieure in 1929. From 1931 to 1945 he worked as
a teacher and traveled in Egypt, Greece, and Italy. In 1933-34 he studied in Berlin the
writings of the German philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.
Sartre first achieved fame by his early fictional works, for example, the short stores of Le
Mur, 1939, and by helping to introduce into France from Germany the theories of
phenomenology and existentialism. In three early philosophical works, L’Imagination
(1939; Imagination, 1962), Esquisse d’une theorie des emotions (1939; Sketch for a
Theory of the Emotiions, 1962), and L’Imaginaire (1940; The Psychology of Imagination,
1950), Sartre proved his ability to deploy the phenomenological technique with success
and originality in the treatment of particular problems. L’Etre et le neant (1943; Being
and Nothingness, 1956), his massive attempt to construct a full-scale existentialist theory
of Being, earned him his place among the leading philosophers of the first half of the 20th
century. By the time it appeared Sartre had already a considerable reputation in France
as a novelist. From the existentialist standpoint, fiction or drama was as much a form of
philosophical literature as the conventional essay, and in some ways a medium even
better able to communicate the experience and meaning of existence.
At the Left Bank cafés Sartre gathered around him a group of intellectuals in the 1930s.
During WW II Sartre was drafted in 1939, imprisoned a year later in Germany, but
released in 1941 (or he escaped). However, he lost his freedom he valued above all for a
short time. In Paris he joined resistance movement, writing for such magazines as Les
Lettres Française and Combat. After the war he founded a monthly literary and political
review, Les Temps modernes, and devoted full time to writing and political activity.
Sartre was never a member of Communist party, although he tried to reconcile
existentialism and Marxism and collaborated with the French Communist Party as the
only hope of bettering the lot of the working classes. However, when Albert Camus, with
whom Sartre was closely linked in the 1940, openly criticized Stalinism, Sartre hesitated
at that time about such acts. The publication of Camus's novel The Rebel in 1951 caused
a break between the two friends.
"Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count no one
but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite
responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with
no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth." (from L'Être et
le Néant / Being and Nothingness, 1943)
Sartre's first novel , LA NAUSÉE, appeared in 1938, and expressed under the influence
of German philosopher Edmund Husserl's phenomenological method, that human life has
no purpose. The protagonist, Antoine Roquentin, discovers the obscene overabundance of
the world around him, and his own solitude induces several experiences of psychological
nausea. He is not only impressed by the solidity of the stones on the sea shore, but feels
similar kind of horror when he contemplates the world of bourgeois banality.
"Nobody is better qualified than the commercial traveler over there to sell Swan
toothpaste. Nobody is better qualified than that interesting young man to fumble about
under his neighbor's skirts. And I am among them and if they look at me they must think
that nobody is better qualified than I to do what I do. But I know. I don't look very
important but I know that I exists and that they exists. And if I knew the art of convincing
people, I should go and sit down next to that handsome white-haired gentleman and I
should explain to him what existence is. The thought of the look which would come on to
his face if I did makes me burst out laughing."
The rationality and solidity of this world, Roquentin thinks, is a veneer. LE MUR (1938)
was a collection of five stories and a novella. In ‘The Childhood of a Leader’ the pitiful
hero, Lucien, believes he do not exists. He seeks a feeling of strength through a
homosexual affair. Encouraged by his friend Lucien ends up in the ultra-conservative
organization of the Action Française, with a desire to purify the French blood and beat
the Jews.
"Bergère spoke often of Rimbaud and the "systematic disordering of all the senses."
"When you will be able, in crossing the Place de la Concorde, to see distinctly and at will
a kneeling negress sucking the obelisk, you will be able to tell yourself that you have torn
down the scenery and you are saved."
After La Nausee, Sartre wrote only one novel, a four-volume work entitled Les Chemins
de la liberte (Paths of Freedom). This is a short tapestry, intended to give a synoptic
picture of different peoples’ “paths to freedom;” but it was woven in a variety of styles,
and was eventually abandoned unfinished. The first volume, L’Age de raison (1945; The
Age of Reason, 1947), can nevertheless stand as a novel on its own. It has a hero,
Mathieu, whose concentrated experiences over a few days lead him from one set of
illusions about freedom to another, equally illusory. The second volume, Le Sursis
(1945; The Reprieve, 1947), is based on the “realist” or “documentary” U.S. novel, and is
an attempt to convey the inner story of the week of the Munich crisis (September, 1938),
in France by a montage of different peoples’ reactions. In the third volume, La Morte
dans l’ame (1949; Iron in the Soul, 1950), Sartre returned to the particular case history of
Mathieu, the hero of his first volume, and followed his adventures up to the fall of France
in 1940. Having been hitherto an ineffectual character -- something of an “antihero” -Mathieu is transformed under the stress of battle into a military hero. Sartre left the
fourth volume unfinished, but the two chapters of it which he did complete he published
in 1949 in his review Les Temps modernes with the title role d’amitie (Strange
Friendship); this incident dates from the period of Nazi-Soviet friendship, and describes
how a renegade communist is betrayed by the party hacks. The whole tone of the novel
is heavily pessimistic, reflecting the mood of Sartre at the time.
In his non-fiction works L'ÊTRE ET LE NÉANT (1943, Being and Nothingness) Sartre
formulated the basics of his philosophical system, in which "existence is prior to
essence." Sartre made the distinction between things that exist in themselves (en-soi) and
human beings who exist for themselves (pour-soi). Conscious of the limits of knowledge
and of mortality, human beings live with existential dread. "Man is not the sum of what
he has but the totality of what he does not yet have, of what he might have." (from
Situations, 1947) Reflecting this time in Sartre’s life, L’Etre et le neant contains a
notable element of pessimism, and even nihilism, and this earned for its author a
notoriety that hindered appreciation of his theories. Flaunting consistency, as was his
style and manner, Sartre argues that there is no moral law, that “man is a useless
passion,” that no one can really respect the freedom of others, and that the basis of all
relations between human beings is one of conflict.
On he other hand, however, in his now famous L’Existentialisme est un humanisme
(1946; Existentialism and Humanism, 1948), an exposition and discussion of Sartrean
existentialism, he puts forward the view that the pursuit of one’s own freedom requires
one to promote the freedom of others, and that each man is responsible to all for the
values affirmed by his way of life. These “humanistic” notions are elaborated in greater
detail in his Question de Methode (1960; The Problem of Method, 1964), and in a longer
work, Critique de la raison dialectique (1960), in which he tries to formulate a revitalized
Marxist sociology; that is, one which incorporates existentialism, and which is purged of
such “19th century anachronisms” as determinism.
In the latter instance, Sartre also argues that conflict between men is simply the result of
economic scarcity and of the shortsighted measures their ancestors have taken to deal
with scarcity. Conflict is thus seen as being in principle curable. In all of his work,
Sartre puts the strongest emphasis on his belief in indeterminism, or “human freedom.”
He sees freedom as a heavy burden on mankind, since it brings with it responsibility,
guilt, remorse, punishment; but he sees it also as the unique source of human nobility,
since it is his freedom alone which “makes man like a God.”
Sartre developed his ideas further in L'EXISTENTIALISME EST UN HUMANISME
(1946), and CRITIQUE DE LA RAISON DIALECTIQUE (1960). According to Sartre,
human being is terrifying free, and responsible for the choices he makes. In a godless
universe life has no meaning or purpose beyond the goals that each man sets for himself.
In Being and Nothingness Sartre argued that an individual must detach oneself from
things to give them meaning.
Sartre's first play, LES MOUCHES (1943), examined the themes of commitment and
responsibility. In the story, set in the ancient, mythical Greece, Orestes kills the
murderers of Agamemnon, thus freeing the people of the city from the burden of guilt.
According to Sartre's existentialist view, only one who chooses to assume responsibility
of acting in a particular situation, like Orestes, makes effective use of one's freedom. In
his second play, HUIS CLOS (1944), a traitor, a lesbian, and a nymphomaniac are forced
to live in "hell", in a small room, their inauthenticity after their deaths.
After the liberation of France at the end of the second World War, Sartre took an active
interest in French political movements. In 1945, he founded a monthly periodicals,
mentioned earlier, Les Temps modernes, as a platform for independent left-wing thought.
Several of his works were first published in this review, especially his critical essays,
many of which have reappeared in the seven volumes of his Situations (1947-65). Other
more extensive essays on philosophy and the arts include works on Baudelaire and Saint
Gent, the latter being a remarkable psychological study of the poet Jean Genet, a
homosexual with a police record. IN 1949, Sartre helped to found a political part, the
Republican Democratic Rally; after its collapse in 1952, he moved closer to the
Communists. In 1954, he visited the USSR; he traveled widely in the Soviet Union,
Scandinavia, Africa, the United States, and Cuba, where he became a champion of the
Castro regime.
Sartre resisted what he called “bourgeois marriage,” but while still a student he formed
with Simone de Beauvoir, the French writer, a union which remained a settled
partnership in life. Simone de Beauvoir’s published memoirs provide an intimate
account of Sartre’s life from student years until his middle 50s. Sartre himself published
in 1964 an autobiography of his childhood, Les Mots (The Words, 1964). This short
book is one of outstanding literary distinction, and marks a return, after the diffuse,
teutonic, jargon-ridden style of Critique de la raison dialectique, to the Cartesian clarity
of his early writing. It was a popular book which earned for Sartre the 1964 Nobel Prize
for Literature, which, with characteristic intransigence, he refused to accept.
QU'EST CE QUE LA LITTÉRATURE (1947) is Sartre's best-known book of literary
criticism. He grouped poetry with painting, sculpture, and music - they are not signs but
things. For the poet emotion has become a thing. A writer is always a watchdog or a
jester. A novelist cannot escape engagement in political and social issues. The function of
the writer is to act in such a way that nobody can be ignorant of the world. One of the
chief motifs of artistic relation is the need of feeling that we are essential in relationship
to the world. The reader brings to life the literary object - it is not true that one writes for
oneself. On the other hand Sartre sees that literature is dying and alludes to newspapers,
to the radio and movies. "The goal of art is to recover this world by giving it to be seen
not as it is, but as if it had its source in human freedom."
In 1956 Sartre spoke out on behalf of freedom for Hungarians, and Czechs in 1968. After
Stalin's death in 1953 Sartre accepted the right to criticize the Soviet system although he
defended the Soviet state. He visited the Soviet Union next year and was hospitalized for
ten days because of exhaustion. The O.A.S. (Organisation de l'Armee Secrete), engaged
in terrorist activities against Algerian independence, exploded a bomb in 1961 in Sartre's
apartment on rue Bonaparte; it happened also next year and Sartre moved on
Louis-Blériot, opposite the Eiffel tower. In a historical debate between Louis Althusser
unexpectedly Sartre lost, perhaps the only time in his public life. In 1965 Sartre adopted
Arlette Elkaïm, his mistress, who received the rights to Sartre's literary heritage after his
death. In 1967 Sartre headed the International War Crimes Tribunal set up by Bertrand
Russell to judge American military conduct in Indochina. He became closely involved in
movement against Vietnam War and supported student rebellion in 1968. In 1970 Sartre
was arrested because of selling on the streets the forbidden Maoist paper La cause du
peuple.
In Les Mots, Sartre analyzes the formation of his mind and temperament as an
intellectual. He looked on the early death of his father as in some ways advantageous,
since it had given him “undisputed possession” of his mother; on the other hand, his
loneliness, and the fact that he was an exceedingly ugly child, had driven him into a
fantasy world. This world was in the first place inhabited by imaginary beings that he
read about; and then by imaginary beings that he wrote about -- for Sartre became an
author as soon as he learned how to write at all. He attributed his later obsession with
metaphysics to this early experience of fantasy; and he claimed that he owed his
deliverance from this metaphysical obsession to Marxism, when it came into his life and
middle age.
From 1960 until 1971 Sartre worked with a four-volume study called L'IDIOT DE LA
FAMILLE, a wide biography of Gustave Flaubert, which used Freudian and Marxist
interpretations, familiar from his philosophical work. Sartre had been preoccupied with
Flaubert since childhood. In this study Sartre showed how Flaubert became the person his
family and society determined him to be. While writing this work, Sartre used Corydrane,
a drug that also race bicyclists used in the 1960s. In 1974 Sartre visited the terrorist
Andreas Baader at the prison of Stammheim in Germany.
L'idiot was Sartre's last large work; it remained unfinished. According to Sartre, the fact
that he will never finish it "does not make me so unhappy, because I think I said the most
important things in the first three volumes." From 1975 the philosopher suffered from
failing eyesight and near the end of his life Sartre was blind. He died in Paris of oedema
of the lungs on April 15, 1980.
Jean-Paul Sartre was largely responsible for our image of the postwar French intellectual
- and as an activist and writer he was considered the leading interpreter of the postwar
generation's world view. In his essays Sartre dealt with wide range of subjects, sometimes
in provocative manner. 'The Republic of Silence' starts 'We were never more free than
under the German occupation', explaining this later that then each gesture had the weight
of a commitment. In 'The Humanism of Existentialism' he condensed the major theme of
existentialist philosophy simply 'first of all, man exist, turns up, appears on the scene,
and, only afterwards, defines himself'.
Consistently inconsistent, Sartre first followed this interest, then that interest, but
wherever his thoughts have taken him, he persists in his affirmation of humankind. Of
those who affected his thought, such as his friends Albert Camus and Maurice
Merleau-Ponty and such giants as Husserl and Heidegger mentioned earlier, none had
such pervasive impace upon Sartre as did Frederick Nietszche. In both his novels and
short stories, Sartre lays out in elaborate and stark detail his perception of the
predicament of modern humanity -- “man without excuse,” “condemned to freedom,”
“man devoid of God.”
The discovery that “God does not exist,” counsels Sartre, carries with it the necessity for
humanity to face responsibly the “consequences of life after God.” In true existentialist
form, Sartre denies that there is a given nature of humanity. That is, human nature as a
reality beyond the concept is a non-existent concoction of a philosophy seeking to escape
the inevitabilities of a world devoid of Divine Will or the capacity for Divine
Intervention. Rather, in a world after God, humanity must learn to create for ourselves
meaning and purpose. The essential characteristic of reality is action, and in action we
create values for living from out of the meaninglessness of a godless world. The
challenge for humanity is conceived in terms of a creative effort to live responsibly in a
world devoid of a priori meaning and purpose, I.e., a world discovered and enduring after
God.
In a small collection of essays by Sartre mentioned earlier, entitled in English translation,
Existentialism and Human Emotion (1957), we have Sartre at his best and most succinct.
There is no substitute for reading his Being and Nothingness (1956) for a comprehensive
exposure to his existential and phenomenological system in all of its embellished finery.
However, in our quest to come to terms with Sartre’s understanding of life’s meaning and
the development of moral behavior, no other collection of his profuse essay-writing
equals the one here being considered.
Of singular excellence is the first essay entitled simply, “Existentialism.” It is
essentially a defense of Sartre’s brand of existentialism “against some charges which
have been brought against it.” Critics of Sartre have observed that he is at his best in
polemical writing and, indeed, this essay corroborates that view. The charges against
existentialism come from a variety of rather diverse camps, especially from the Christians
and the communists who have virtually nothing in common save a mutual contempt for
Sartre and his philosophical thought. The Communists, he points out amusingly, accuse
him of a multitude of social evils, calling his philosophy “a kind of desperate quietism,”
“a philosophy of contemplation,” “a bourgeois philosophy,” and “pure subjectivity.” On
the other hand, the Christians charge him with inordinately “dwelling on human
degradation” and with “pointing up everywhere the sordid, shady, and slimy, and
neglecting the gracious and beautiful, the bright side of human nature … and (with)
forgetting the smile of the child.”
Of course, the charges are wide-ranging and suggestive of deep ideological differences.
Nevertheless, with resignation and no little self-confident optimism regarding the
outcome of his response, Sartre marches forward “to answer these different charges.”
From the very beginning, says Sartre, we must understand that by the term
“existentialism we mean a doctrine which makes human life possible and, in addition,
declares that every truth and every action implies a human setting of a human
subjectivity.” Sartre refuses to approach man from a philosophical anthropology which
seeks to discover the nature of humanity. Human beings are action and subjectivity.
Existentialism begins with the human person in the here and now of the immediate world
environment, not in some abstracted Platonic Ideal or religious imago de.
Though existentialism “is regarded as something ugly” because it speaks of the “dark
side of human life,” Sartre is convinced that the real problem is the realization that human
beings are, indeed, in a world devoid of supportive illusions. The intimidating and
challenging message of existentialism is that “it leaves to man a possibility of choice.”
Of those who readily decry the “gloomy mood of existentialism,” such catch phrases as
“it’s only human,” “we should not struggle against the powers that be,” and “we should
not resist authority,” all too easily foster a mood of resignation. Such a mood constitutes
a veritable choice not to choose. Who, asks Sartre, ultimately is more gloomy? The
citizen on the street who systematically opts out of possible choice-making situations
because of some childishly assumed cosmic plan or divine scheme, or the existentialist
who recognizes that whatever meaning and purpose there is in life , it is a creation of
ourselves who choose to act? The argument is well framed.
Though Sartre has defined existentialism above, he insists that beyond the definition lies
a reality which must be characterized if existentialism is to be significantly and
experientially grasped. Sartre derides those chic culturalists who so vaguely label
everything from music and art to scandal and gossip as “existential.” “Actually,” argues
Sartre, “existentialism is the least scandalous, the most austere of doctrines.” A task
intended strictly for the specialist and philosopher, existentialism is of two kins:
“Christian existentialism” as practiced by Jaspers and Marcel to mention only two among
a host, and “atheistic existentialism” such as is done by Heidegger and the French
existentialists not least of whom is Sartre himself. That common bond between these
two branches is the belief “that existence precedes essence, or that subjectivity must be
the starting point.” After God, that is to say, after the discovery that the world is actually
devoid of God, free of intervention from the Divine Will, humanity must necessarily
become the starting point.
In a world conceived theistically with God as Creator, “the individual man is the
realization of a certain concept in the divine intelligence,” and this is true whether one
likes the theistic philosophical view of Descartes or that of Leibnitz. Though devoid of
an ostensibly theistic cosmology, nevertheless, the 18th century did support the “notion
that essence precedes existence,” and therefore, in Diderot, in Voltaire, and even in Kant,
the human person is understood as having a true nature. “This human nature,” says
Sartre, “is found in all men, which means that each man is a particular example of a
universal concept, man.” Of all the great difficulties resultant from this kind of idealistic
metaphysic, a simple one is seen in the difficulty with which Kant had to deal when
lumping the “wild-man, the natural man, as well as the bourgeois” into the same human
nature. To cluster Hitler and Gandhi into the same “human nature” flies, say the
existentialists, in the face of reason and logic. The human person has a history; the
human person does not have a “nature.”
The incoherence, or near contradiction, of Christian existentialism becomes apparent
when it says on the one hand that existence precedes essence while on the other claiming
that God is. “Atheistic existentialism,” argues Sartre, “is more coherent.” In the
absence of God, there is still one being in whom existence is first, and that being is the
human person. Humanity preceded the concept of humanity; the human person came
before the concept of the human person. We preceded attempts at self-definition.
Therefore, the existentialist must assert that “there is no human nature, since there is no
God to conceive it.” The human person is forever freed from an a priori concept of
definition of his being which precedes his actual life-experiences. The person now,
“after God,” is both what he “conceives himself to be” and “what he wills himself to be.”
This discovery that our existence is devoid of any restricting predefined essence brings
freedom, but also responsibility. Humanity must now “conceive” and “will” ourselves,
or, in terms of the first principle of existentialism, says Sartre, “Man is nothing else but
what he makes of himself.” We are a plan aware of our own possibilities. After the
demise of a confidence in a Heavenly Plan, we come face to face with our own
subjectivity and immediacy of experience. And, because we exist before we are defined,
we are responsible for the definition -- what we conceive and will ourselves to be.
“Thus,” says Sartre to those who falsely accuse him of moral and social irresponsibility,
“existentialism’s first move is to makes man aware of what he is and to make the full
responsibility of his existence rest on him.”
This, says Sartre, is the fundamental challenge the existentialist calls forth, viz., the
necessity of taking full cognizance of the fact that man alone is responsible for himself
since God does not exist. This human subjectivity has a dual meaning: First, it means
that every individual chooses and makes himself, and second, humankind is unable to
transcend our own subjectivity. When people choose, we affirm the value of what we
choose. And furthermore, since every individual chooses, affirms, and values at the
same time, that which the individual chooses, says Sartre, “is valid for everybody and for
our whole age.” That is to say, in assuming responsibility for ourselves in a world after
God, we also choose for all people. “In choosing myself,” says Sartre, “I choose man,”
because “my action has involved all humanity.” Those who accuse the existentialist of
social irresponsibility have failed to understand the profound ethical imperative implicit
in this necessity of individuals to “choose man.”
Within the context of this imperative to assert oneself in a world devoid of a priori
meaning and purpose, Sartre says we are better able to understand ‘what the actual
content is” of such characteristic terms of the human condition as anguish, forlornness,
and despair.
“Man is anguish” say the existentialist. He is so because, in a world after God wherein
the individual must choose for himself and all mankind, he cannot “escape the feeling f
his total and deep responsibility.” And those people among us who disclaim anxiety
about the human predicament are simply hiding their anxiety and fleeing it as a coward
flees the battle. This anguish over man’s condition characterizes all human experience,
though it is seldom articulate and dealt with creatively. And though there be those who
would seek quietism and passivity in the face of the existential demands to make choices
in life, no one can truly escape, for not to choose is indeed to choose. Sartre says, for
example, that all leaders know of this anguish because, as with all men, the demands to
action necessitate a choice from a number of possibilities, all the while knowing that
one’s choice “has value only because it is chosen.” Since there is no a priori ethic, man
creates value by virtue of the choices he makes in the immediate situation. Anguish is
the inevitable result of an awareness that choosing creates value in a world without
essential goodness, only existential value.
From Heidegger, Sartre has taken the word “forlornness” and defines it as humanity’s
realization “that God does not exist and that we have to face all the consequences of
this.” Sartre is most critical of those secularizing ethicists who liberally profess the need
to abolish God yet at minimal expense to society. They would dispose of God but cling
to certain values to which they readily attribute a priori existence. Thus, social reform
movements of a most simplistic sort often say essentially that “nothing will be changed if
God does not exist.” Sartre will have none of this liberalizing secularism!
“The existentialist, on the contrary,” says Sartre, “thinks it very distressing that God does
not exist,” primarily because all hope of finding “values in a heave of ideas” has
consequently disappeared. There can no longer be a quest for an a priori God, since
there is no “infinite and perfect consciousness to think it.”
Contrary to those
liberalizing secularists who speak of a world unchanged by God’s absence, Sartre quotes
Dostoyevsky in support of atheistic existentialism, who has said: “If God didn’t exist,
everything would be possible.” This, says Sartre, “is the very starting point of
existentialism.” The experience of forlornness derives from the realization that man
“can’t start making excuses for himself,” that in essence, he is “condemned to be free.”
He is condemned because he did not create himself, yet free because he is responsible for
the way he conceives and wills himself and all other men to be. Quoting Ponge, Sartre
says that, consequently, “Man is the future of man.” Condemnation and freedom go
hand in hand -- condemned to life, free to act. “Forlornness and anguish go together,”
explains Sartre, for “forlornness implies that we ourselves choose our being and anguish
implies an existential awareness of the human condition devoid of a priori foundations.”
Despair is the third characteristic of the human situation. Simply stated, despair “means
that we shall confine ourselves to reckoning only with what depends upon our will, or on
the ensemble of probabilities which make our action possible.” Or, in the words of
Descartes, “Conquer yourself rather than the world.” Man is what he wills himself to be.
Action results from this will, and the moment the possibilities being considered become
disassociated from an imperative to action (decision-making and follow-through), Sartre
says we must disengage ourselves. Man must limit himself to what he sees, to situations
wherein he can act. “Actually,” says Sartre, “things will be as man will have decided
they are to be.” The result of such a posture is not quietism, but action informed by a
will to choose from among various options tempered with the realities of ever-present
risk. First, says Sartre, “I should involve myself (and should) act on the old saying,
’Nothing venture, nothing gained.’ the ethic of existentialism runs diametrically
opposite to quietism. An existential ethic declares: “There is no reality except in
action,” and furthermore, it contends that “Man is nothing else than his plan; he exists
only to the extent that he fulfills himself; he is therefore nothing else than the ensemble of
his acts, nothing else than his life.”
Though this view may and does horrify some people, it is really the inevitable results of
the discovery of humanity’s true situation as being along in the world. In trying to cope
with one’s wretchedness, the easy way out is to blame one’s condition on circumstances
beyond one’s control. For those who aspire (without will and action) to greatness,
whether in art, literature, music, scholarship or whatever, and fail to realize their wistful
dreams, the existentialist offers no comfort. To blame failure on outside circumstances
is bad faith, and demonstrably infantile. There is no genius other than that which is
“manifest” and “expressed.” “A man is involved in life, leaves his impress on it, and
outside of that there is nothing.” What foolishness to speak of what might have been!
“Reality alone is what counts, (for) dreams, expectations, and hopes warrant no more
than to define a man as a disappointed dream, as miscarried hopes, as vain expectations.”
The existentialist will not define man in such negative resignation, but rather positively -“You are nothing else than your life.” To label the existentialist pessimistic, then, is to
misperceive his true character, viz., as one of “optimistic toughness.”
Existentialism, rid of restrictive and oft times debilitating a priori categories of idealistic
metaphysics, “defines man in terms of action;” its ethic is an “ethic of action.” The
existentialist seeks to establish a “doctrine based on truth and not on a lot of fine theories
full of hope but with no real bases.” There is only one real truth, and that is the
Cartesian cogito: I think, therefore, I exist. There is no universal essence and no
universal human nature, but there is undeniably “a universal human condition.” Though
history and geography vary, what does not vary is the necessity for man, all men in all
times and places, “to exist in the world, to be at work there, to be there in the midst of
other people, and to be moral there.” By this line of reasoning which says that a single
individual experience of whatever sort is analogous to the whole human condition at all
times and places, Sartre is led to say that, whether speaking of Chinese, Africans, Indians,
or Frenchmen, “every configuration (I.e., experiential situation) has universality in the
sense that every configuration can be understood by every man.” In this sense, the
existentialist can speak of a universality of the human situation and though not given, “it
is perpetually being made.”
In the arena of the universality of experience, we are forced to make choices which affirm
human value. No one is exempt from decision-making. “In one sense,” says Sartre,
“choice is possible, but what is not possible is not to choose.” And, since the choice is
freely made from among a variety of supposedly equally viable possibilities, ethical
decisions can be compared to the “making of a work of art.” The analogy between
ethical choices and aesthetic values is a good one, because with both there is no a priori.
What art and ethics have in common, in a world after God and thus devoid of a heavenly
plan, is the qualities of “creation and invention.” “Man makes himself,” says Sartre, and
consequently, both art and ethics are his creation and his invention. And, reasons Sartre,
since “we define man only relationship to involvement,” aesthetics and ethics are
possible only as humanity engages them in our creative and inventive activities.
Recognizing that human depravity must allow for the possibility that some individuals
will choose dishonestly, Sartre says that the existentialist is not in a position to pass moral
judgment upon dishonest decisions since there are no a priori ethical standards.
Nevertheless, the existentialist can label dishonesty as error. Dishonesty is a falsehood
because it essentially undermines the possibility of “complete freedom of involvement.”
Just as there is dishonesty in a choice made as if freedom was not absolute, so likewise,
Sartre considers as dishonest the position which claims “that certain values exist prior to
me.” Complete freedom of involvement implies, even demands, that decisions be made
without reliance either upon supposed a priori ethical categories or upon an intentional
limiting of the range of possibilities. Therefore, says Sartre,” the ultimate meaning of
the acts of honest men, I.e., those who accept neither universal givens nor arbitrary
limitations of possibilities, is the quest for freedom as such.”
Honest men seek freedom. But freedom for oneself implies freedom for all at the point
at which I myself become involved in the pursuit of freedom. That is, as I take freedom
as my own personal goal, I do so only by recognizing that I take freedom as the goal of
all men. In the context of the recognition of and participation in the “universality of the
human situation,” the existentialist realizes that the desire for personal freedom is
simultaneously a desire for the freedom of all humanity.
Furthermore, and most importantly for the development of an existential ethic, I must
face responsibly the realization that as I choose freedom for myself, and thus for all men,
must necessarily pass judgment upon those who for whatever reason choose to hide
themselves from the “complete arbitrariness and the “complete freedom” offered them in
their existence. This is true whether they hid by means of allegiance to a supposedly
universal code or by means of intentionally narrowing their range of possible choices.
Sartre puts his views this way: “Those who hide their complete freedom from
themselves out of a spirit of seriousness or by means of deterministic excuses, I shall call
cowards; those who try to show that their existence was necessary, when it is the very
contingency of man’s appearance on earth, I shall call stinkers.”
The content of ethics is relative, says Sartre, but the form of ethics is universal, and that
universal is man choosing freedom. Ethics are mature and responsible to the degree that
they seek out and are made in the name of freedom. And, it must necessarily follow,
since values are relative though their impetus is universal, viz., the human quest for
freedom, “values aren’t serious, since you choose them.” Though “I’m quite vexed that
that’s the way it is,” says Sartre, nonetheless, he reasons, “if I’ve discarded God the
Father, there has to be someone to invent values.” There we have it. In the name of
complete freedom of involvement, in a world after God wherein neither cowards nor
thinkers have status, the existentialist must come to terms with his anguish, his despair,
and his forlornness. This is done by asserting oneself responsibly in the creation and
invention of ethical and aesthetical values. “You’ve got to take things as they come,”
counsels Sartre.
In this context, Sartre assails a wrong-headed kind of humanism which, as in the cult of
mankind propounded by Auguste Comte, for example, “ascribes a value to man on the
basis of the highest deeds of certain men.” This kind of pseudo-humanism Sartre
considers absurd. Another more responsible conception of humanism is exemplified by
the existentialist. This kind of existentialistic humanism reminds man that there is no
law-maker but himself, that he must decide alone, and that his liberation from forlornness
will result from his decision to seek outside of himself the goal of freedom.
“Existentialism,” explains Sartre, “is nothing else than an attempt to draw all the
consequences of a coherent atheistic position.” With regard to the human necessity of
creating values in a world after God, Sartre says by way of concluding his essay:
Moreover, to say that we invent values means nothing else but this: life has no meaning
a priori. Before you come alive, life is nothing; it’s up to you to give it a meaning, and
value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose.

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Sartre, J.-P.: 1962, Transcendence of the Ego, tr. Forrest Williams and Robert
Kirkpatrick , New York: Noonday Press, [1936-37].
-------, 1948, The Emotions. Outline of a Theory, tr. Bernard Frechtman, New
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York: Philosophical Library, [1939].
-------, 1948, Being and Nothingness, tr. Hazel E. Barnes, New York:
Philosophical Library, [1943].
-------, 1948, Anti-Semite and Jew, tr. George J. Becker, New York: Schocken,
[1946].
-------, 1962, "Materialism and Revolution," in Literary and Philosophical Essays,
tr. Annette Michelson, New York: Crowell-Collier, [1946].
-------, 1956, "Existentialism Is A Humanism," in Existentialism from Dostoevsky
to Sartre, Cleveland, OH: World Publishing, Meridian Books, [1946].
-------, 1988, What is Literature? And Other Essays, tr. Bernard Frechtman et al.,
intro. Steven Ungar, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, [title essay
1947, Les Temps modernes, and 1948, Situations II]
-------, 1968, The Communists and Peace, with A Reply to Claude Lefort, tr.
Martha H. Fletcher and Philip R. Berk respectively, New York: George Braziller,
[1952].
-------, 1968, Search for a Method, tr. Hazel E. Barnes, New York: Random
House, Vintage Books, [1958].
-------, 1959, Between Existentialism and Marxism, (essays and interviews, -70),
tr. John Mathews, London: New Left Books, 1974.
-------, 1976, Critique of Dialectical Reason, vol. 1, Theory of Practical
Ensembles, tr. Alan Sheridan-Smith, London: New Left Books, [1960].
-------, 1964, The Words, trans. Bernard Frechtman, New York: Braziller, [1964].
-------, 1981-93, The Family Idiot, tr. Carol Cosman 5 vols., Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, [1971-72].
-------, 1976, Sartre on Theater, ed. Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka, New
York: Pantheon.
-------, 1977, Life/Situations: Essays Witten and Spoken, tr. P. Auster and L.
Davis, New York: Pantheon.
-------, 1996, Hope, Now: The 1989 Interviews tr. Adrian van den Hoven, intro.
Ronald Aronson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1980].
-------, 1992, Notebook for an Ethics, tr. David Pellauer, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, [1983].
-------, 1984, The War Diaries, tr. Quentin Hoare,New York: Pantheon, [1983].
-------, 1993, Quiet Moments in a War. The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone
de Beauvoir, 1940-1963, ed.. Simone de Beauvoir, tr. and intro. Lee Fahnestock
and Norman MacAfee. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, [1983].
-------, 1991, Critique of Dialectical Reason, vol. 2, The Intelligibility of History,
tr. Quintin Hoare, London: Verso, [1985 unfinished].
-------, 1992, Truth and Existence, tr. Adrian van den Hoven, intro. Ronald
Aronson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1989].
CHAPTER SIX
VIKTOR FRANKL and the Will to Meaning (Psychotherapy)
Man’s Search for Meaning
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize
that it is he who is asked. And he can only answer to life by answering for his own life.
Thus, logo therapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence.
---Viktor Frankl
Viktor Emil Frankl, his wife, mother, father, and brother, were arrested in Vienna
in l942 and taken to the concentration camp in Bohemia. It was during this time of
confinement there and at three other similar camps that this young psychiatrist (inmate #
119,104) began to reflect systematically upon the significance of the meaningfulness of
life to its perpetuity, its direction, its purpose as perceived by each individual.
One of the earliest events to poignantly illustrate this focus was the loss of a
manuscript, his life’s work, during his transfer to Auschwitz. He had sewn it into the
lining of his jacket, but was forced to discard it at the last minute. He spent many lonely,
frustrating nights attempting to reconstruct it, first in his mind, and then on stolen paper.
Another significant moment came while he was on a predawn march to work on
the railroad tracks. Another prisoner wondered out loud about the fate of their wives.
Dr. Frankl began to think about his wife and realized that in a sense she was present
within him for the love which bound them together was the source of his salvation as a
person, a person with hope, purpose, direction. He was later to write: “I understood
how a man who has nothing left in this world (as I did in Auschwitz) still may know
bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.”
Frank, through this horrendous ordeal of concentration camp experience, he could
not help but see that, among those given a chance for survival, it was those who held on
to a vision of the future -- whether it be a significant task before them or a return to their
loved ones -- that were most likely to survive their suffering. The meaningfulness that
could be found in suffering itself is what most impressed this young psychiatrist.
“There is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment
and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude
to his existence, and existence restricted by external forces,” for, continues Frankl,
“without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.”
Viktor Frankl was born in Vienna on March 26, l905. His father, Gabriel Frankl,
was a strong, disciplined man from Moravia who worked his way from government
stenographer to become the direction of the Ministry of Social Service. Viktor’s mother,
Elsa Frankl nee Lion, was more tenderhearted, a pious woman from Prague. They were
all secular Jews and were nurtured by a broad extended family.
Frankl himself was the second of three children and he was, without question, the
most precocious and intensely curious of the three. Even at the early age of four years,
he already knew that he wanted to be a physician. In high school, he was actively
involved in the local Young socialist Workers organization. His interest in people
turned him towards the study of psychology. He finished his high school years with a
psychoanalytic essay on the philosopher Schopenhauer, a publication in the International
Journal of Psychoanalysis, and the beginning of a rather intense correspondence with the
great Sigmund Freud.
There is no evidence as to why Frankl, one filled with hope and optimize about
the future would choose to write upon someone as morose and pessimistic as
Schopenhauer, but he did. To Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860) life was a painful process,
relief for which, might to achieved through art or through denial. "The good man will
practice complete chastity, voluntary poverty, fasting, and self-torture." (Russell.) It was
Schopenhauer's view that through the contemplation of art, one "might lose contact with
the turbulent stream of detailed existence around us"; and that permanent relief came
through "the denial of the will to live, by the eradication of our desires, of our instincts,
by the renunciation of all we consider worthwhile in practical life." Presumably any little
bits of happiness we might snatch would only make us that more miserable, such real and
full happiness was not possible, "a Utopian Ideal which we must not entertain even in our
dreams." It is not difficult to understand that this "ascetic mysticism" of Schopenhauer's
is one that appeals to the starving artist. Schopenhauer was "a lonely, violent and
unbefriended man, who shared his bachelor's existence with a poodle. ... [He was of the
view that the world was simply an idea in his head] a mere phantasmagoria of my brain,
that therefore in itself is nothing."
In 1925, a year after graduating and on his way towards his medical degree, he
met Freud in person. Alfred Adler’s theory was more to Frankl’s liking, though, and
that year he published an article, “Psychotherapy and Weltanschauung,” in Adler’s
International Journal of Individual Psychology, a competitive journal to Freud’s. The
following year in l926, Frankl used the term “logo therapy” in a public lecture for the
first time, and began to refine his particular brand of Viennese psychology.
In the late 1920s, Frankl organized cost-free counseling centers for teenagers in
Vienna and six other cities, and began working at the Psychiatric University Clinic. In
1930, he earned his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Vienna Medical
School, and was promoted to assistant of the Clinic. In the next few years, Frankl
continued his training in neurology, and, in 1933, he was put in charge of the ward for
suicidal women at the Psychiatric Hospital in Vienna with many thousands of patients
each year. Then, in 1937 at the age of thirty-two, Frankl opened his own private practice
in neurology and psychiatry. The following year, Hitler’s troops invaded Austria and
though he would obtain a U.S. visa in 1939, he chose to stay out of concern for the
wellbeing of his parents and family.
Finally, in 1940, Frankl was made head of the neurological department of
Rothschild Hospital, the only hospital for Jews in Vienna during the Nazi regime. He
made many false diagnoses of his patients in order to circumvent the new politics
requiring euthanasia of the mentally ill. It was during this period that he began the now
famous book, Arztliche Seelsorge (trans. The Doctor and the Soul).
The same year Frankl married, he and his wife, father, mother, and brother were
all arrested and brought to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt in Bohemia. His
father died there of starvation. His mother and brother were killed at Auschwitz in l944
and his wife died at Bergen-Belsen the following year. Only his sister, Stella, would
survive, having managed to emigrate to Australia a short while earlier. When Frankl
himself was moved finally to Auschwitz, his manuscript for The Doctor and the Soul was
discovered and destroyed. His desire to complete his work, and his hopes that he would
be reunited with his wife and family someday, kept him from losing hope in what seemed
otherwise a hopeless situation. After two more moves to two more camps, Frankl finally
succumbed to typhoid fever. Ever dauntless, Frankl began reconstructing the manuscript
which had been destroyed, first by committing it to memory, and then by writing it down
on bits of stolen paper as the occasion arose. In April of 1954, Frankl’s camp was
liberated by the American army (this author’s father was an officer leading troops in the
liberation of Buchenvald concentration camp in Germany at the same time). Upon his
return to Vienna, he learned of the deaths of his family members and though nearly
broken as a person with little prospects for quick recovery from the great loss, he was,
nevertheless, given the position of Director of the Vienna Neurological Policlinic which
was, in a sense, his salvation. He held this distinguished post for twenty-five years.
In 1948, Frankl received his Ph.D. in philosophy, a nice compliment to his Doctor
of Medicine earned several years before. His dissertation was on the topic of the
“unconscious God,” and was an examination of the relationship between psychology and
religion. That same year, he was made associate professor of neurology and psychiatry
at the University of Vienna. Two years later, he founded and became president of the
Austrian Medical Society for Psychotherapy. After becoming full professor, he became
increasingly well known in circles outside of Vienna. His guest professorships,
honorary doctorates, and awards are too many to list here but they include the Oskar
Pfister Prize by the American Society of Psychiatry and a nomination for the Nobel Peace
Prize.
Frankl continued to teach at the University of Vienna until l990 when he turned
eight-five years old, continuing to maintain a rigorous regimen of mountain climbing and
airplane piloting well into old age. In 1992, his friends and family members founded the
Viktor Frankl Institute in Vienna in honor of his life and work. In l995, he finished his
autobiography, and in l997, he published his last book, Man’s Search for Ultimate
Meaning, based on his doctoral dissertation. He has 32 books to his name and they
have been translated into 27 languages. Frankl died on September 2, 1997, of heart
failure. He is survived by his wife, Eleonore, his daughter, Dr. Gabriele Frankl-Vesely,
his grandchildren, Katharina and Alexander, and his great-grandaughter Anna Viktoria.
As the founder of the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy, Frankl’s legacy will last
indefinitely as he offers a system of hope and promise as the “will to meaning” when the
other two schools offer the “will to pleasure” (Freud) and the “will to power” (Adler).
In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl did not consider himself a hero, rather he
describes the heroes or “saints’ to be among the minority in the camps; those who gave
up their portions of bread to others, or gave their lives in other to save someone else from
the bas chambers. He leaves the reader in awe of his determination to survive in the
midst of horrendous carnage. Frankl uses words to portray haunting images; designing a
masterpiece from the death of his soul. He paints images, not of extraordinary human
beings, but of extraordinary circumstances, which led average individuals to become in
their won way, masterpieces of humanity. “This story,” Frankl wrote, “is not about the
suffering and death of great heroes and martyrs … Thus, it is not so much concerned with
the sufferings of the mighty, but with the sacrifices, the crucifixion and the deaths of the
great army of unknown and unrecorded victims.”
Individuals held in captivity, explains Frankl, go through three psychological
stages as a result of the trauma they experience. First, “the period following his
admission; then, the period when he is well entrenched in camp routine; and finally, the
period following his release and liberation.” Shock, and disillusionment encompass the
first phase; the second, an emotional death of sorts occurs in order to protect the mind.
A shell of apathy is built up around the individual at first, known as the blunting of
emotions and feelings. It is in this phase, a person ceases to be shocked at the horrors he
sees on a daily basis. Frankl later said of this phase: “if my lack of emotion had not
surprised me from the standpoint of professional interest, I would not remember this
incident now, because there was so little feeling involved in it.” The final phase
involved a slow, gradual process of becoming acclimated with being “free.” This
psychological stage includes depersonalization; things appearing not to be real. It is as if
the mind does not trust the safety it now sees. The protective shell no longer needed, the
mind slowly begins to allow the resurrection of emotions and feelings to emerge, thus the
path to becoming human again starts to take place.
Upon being deposited at the camp, Frankl tried to hid in his coat pockets the
manuscript upon which he had worked for so long and so hard. It was his life’s work.
Soon learning that nothing was held sacred in the eyes of his tormentors, they took every
link to his previous life away from him, his clothing, all personal items, even the hair on
his body. However, they could not strip him of his inner strength, dignity, or his unique
insight into the human mind and spirit, which became his in-camp passion. The
starvation, the beatings, the savage living conditions, and prospect of death was his
constant reality and though he chose to concentrate upon these very things in search of
the meaning and purpose to keep on going, to the outside world he had lost his identify
and had been reduced to a series of digits -- the inmate number 119,104.
Frankl describes one cold bleak morning, stumbling for miles on ice to begin
another day of ruthless forced labor. He thought of his wife, and in doing so came to an
introspective revelation: “A thought transfixed me; for the first time in my life I saw the
truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many
thinkers. The truth that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can
aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human
thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and is love.”
Pieces of bread became more precious a commodity than any piece of jewelry.
Sunsets were visions to be cherished. Tears were a sign of great courage to suffer, not a
demonstration of weakness in character. One evening when many had already chosen to
give up, or thinking of it, Frankl shared his insights with his fellow comrades. He told
them not to lose hope, and their sacrifices did mean something in the overall scheme of
the world. His comrades responded in kind to him. “I saw the miserable figures of my
friends limping toward me to thank me with tears in their eyes.” This we came to know:
“He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.”
How could anyone under such a primitive existence survive, much less find
meaning in life? Viktor Frankl did just this, transcending great odds, he put into practice
the theories of psychology he had used to treat former patients in the suicide wards of the
city hospital. From his own experience was born a new therapy used around the world
today in the treatment of depression, what is called “logo therapy” and “Existential
Analysis.” “Under the influence of a world which no longer recognized the value of
human life and human dignity, which had robbed man of his will and had made him an
object to be exterminated,” Frankl offered up the “will to meaning” as our goal in life.
“We must never forget,” he counsels, that we may also find meaning in life even when
confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For
what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is
to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human
achievement.”
Existential Analysis called “logotherapy” developed by Frankl has become known
worldwide as the “Third Viennese Schol of Psychotherapy.” He gives a brief synopsis
of the therapy in his great classic and, he explains, it is a theory not only viable in
professional practice, but in one’s own personal life as well. According to Frnkl, an
individual can find meaning in life (l) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by
experiencing something or encountering someone; or (3) by the attitude we take toward
unavoidable suffering. The “existential” aspect of Frankl’s psychotherapy maintains
man always has the ability to choose; no matter the biological, or environmental forces.
The last scope of this therapy is known as the “tragic triad,” pain, guilt, and death.
Frankl’s “Case for a Tragic Optimism” uses this philosophy to demonstrate “optimism in
the face of tragedy and in view of the human potential which at its best always allows for:
(l) turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; (2) deriving from
guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; an (3) deriving from life’s
transistorizes an incentive to take responsible action.”
Frankl has been criticized by many in his native land regarding the absence of the
word, “Jew’ in his take of the camps. The word is never used in any of his stories. To
this, years later in an interview, he answered his critics by saying, “the jury of Vienna is
absolutely against me, because I’m too much for reconciliation. They are very mean to
me. They are fearing that I’m one who has forgotten the Holocaust. In my whole book,
Man’s Search for Meaning, you will not find the word “Jew.” I don’t capitalize from
being a Jew and having suffered as a Jew.”
Frankl’s life serves as a reminder to all, no matter how difficult the path may be,
the human spirit is only held back by choosing to give up, before it has had the chance to
fly. Frankl leaves an eerie, yet realistic, challenge to humanity. He write: “For the
world is not a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his
best. So let us be alert -- alert in a twofold sense:
Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.
And since Horshima we know what is at stake.”
Reflecting upon his experiences in the Nazi death camps, watching those who did
and did not survive when given an opportunity to survive, Frankl concluded that the
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had it right: “He who has a why to live for can bear
with almost any how.” Frankl observed that people who had hopes of being reunited
with loved ones, or who had projects they felt a need to complete, or who had great faith,
tended to have better changes than those who had lost all hope.
He called his form of therapy “logo therapy” by combing in the Greek word
“logos” which can mean word, spirit, God, or, in his particular application, “meaning,”
with a therapeutic application. It is this last sense of a “will to meaning” that Frankl
chose to focus upon. Comparing himself with those other great Viennese psychiatrists,
Freud and Adler, Frankl suggested that Freud essentially postulated a will to pleasure as
the root of all human motivation while Adler posited a will to power. Logotherapy,
known also as Existential Analysis, postulates a “will to meaning.” Frankl, however,
pressed even further his reconstruction of psychotherapy for he uses the Greek work
“noos”, which means mind or spirit, in the creation of a word he coined, “noodynamics,”
wherein he suggests that tension is necessary for health, at least when it comes to
meaning. In traditional psychology, he suggests, we focus upon “psychodynamics,”
which sees people as trying to reduce psychological tension. Not so with logotherapy.
People desire the tension involved in striving for some worthy goal!
Perhaps the original issue with which Frankl was concerned, early in his career as
a physician, was the danger of reductionism. Then, as now, medical schools emphasized
the idea that all things come down to physiology. Psychology, too, promoted
reductionism: Mind could be best understood as a “side effect” of brain mechanisms.
The spiritual aspect of human life was (and is) hardly considered worth mentioning at all!
Frankl believed that entire generations of doctors and scientists were being indoctrinated
into what could only lead to a certain cynicism in the study of human existence. He,
therefore, set as one of his goals the balancing of the physiological view with a spiritual
perspective, and saw this as a significant step towards developing more effective
treatment. As he said, “The de-eroticization of humanity requires a re-humanization of
psychotherapy.”
Frankl’s meaning-based psychotherapeutic methodology has become a major
system of treatment today as an alternative to the other two leading systems of mental
health care. The goal of human life, explains Frankl, is to find meaning and order in the
world for “me” personally and for “us” collectively -- both as an individual and in a
social sense of purpose and orderliness of the inner and outer environment.
The story is told of Schopenhauer who, customarily strolling through a Berlin
park during the early hours of the morning in shabby clothes and sockless feet, was halted
and questioned by a conscientious police officer: “Who are you? Where are you going?”
To this our German philosopher answered true to form, “I wish to God I knew!” As this
litle story graphically illustrates, in modern times, life has become a struggle for reason
and purpose. The sense of alienation which results in a concomitant sense of loss in
personal identity and a growing recognition of an all-pervading estrangement from self
and others, from personhood and neighborhood, from ego-identity and social identity, is
so common that the feeling has become a cultural given. “The concept of meaning in all
of its varieties,” explains Suzanne Langer in her Philosophical Sketches, “is the dominant
philosophical concept of our time.”
Modern-day fixation upon and bafflement over our individual meaning -- “the
meaning of meaning” -- is evidenced in every serious effort at the construction of a
workable politic and social ethic. And yet, explains Heidegger, “no age has known so
much, and so many different things, about man as ours … And no age has known less
than ours of what man is” (Kant and The Problems of Metaphysics). In fact, in view of
the current agitation over the need for an effective definition of humankind, we can
honestly say we are in a “crisis of meaning.” “We are the first epoch,” corroborates Max
Scheler, “in which man has become fully and thoroughly ‘problematic’ to himself; in
which he no longer knows what he essentially is, but at the same time also knows that he
does not know” (as quoted by Martin Buber in Between Man and Man).
In recent years, Frankl has emerged as the leading proponent in psychotherapeutic
circles of the centrality of the experience of “meaning” in mental health, explored by him
rather carefully in an article entitled, “Psychiatry and Man’s Quest for Meaning” in the
Journal of Religion and Health (I, 93-l03, l962). Frankl dismissed Freud’s inordinate
emphasis upon the pleasure principle -- we might call here for the same of symmetry the
“will-to-pleasure” -- contending that pleasure for the human person only has significance
and purpose within the context of the individual’s own grasp of life’s meaning for
oneself, I.e., life as personal. Furthermore, Frankl denigrates the Second Viennese
School of Psychology, namely, Alfred Adler and his notion of humankind’s
“will-to-power,” by arguing that personal power in the face of suffering and in the
absence of personal meaning has no visible function within the personality. He
developed this notion particularly well in an article entitled, “Logotherapy and the
Challenge of Suffering,” in Pastoral Psychology (XIII, 25-28, l962).
One might logically ask, how do we find meaning? Frankl discusses three broad
approaches in answer to this question. The first is through experiential values, that is,
by experiencing something -- or someone -- we value. This can include Maslow’s peak
experiences and esthetic experiences such as viewing great art or natural wonders.
Frankl points out that, in modern society, many confuse sex with love. Without love, he
says, sex is nothing more than masturbation, and the other is nothing more than a tool to
be used, a means to an end. Sex can only be fully enjoyed as the physical expression of
love. Love, on the other hand, is the recognition of the uniqueness of the other as an
individual, with an intuitive understanding of their full potential as human beings.
Frankl believes this is only possible between loving and caring individuals who, through
this medium, affirm life’s meaning.
A second means of discovering meaning is through creative values, by “doing a
deed,” as he puts it. This is the traditional existential idea of providing oneself with
meaning by becoming involved in one’s projects, or, better, in the project of one’s own
life. It includes the creativity involved in art, music, writing, invention, and so on.
Frankl views creativity (as well as love) as a function of the spiritual unconscious, that is,
the conscience. The irrationality of artistic production is the same as the intuition that
allows us to recognize the good. He provides us with an interesting example. He says:
We know a case in which a violinist always tried to play as consciously as possible.
From putting his violin in place on his shoulder to the most trifling technical detail, he
wanted to do everything consciously, to perform in full self-reflection. This led to a
complete artistic breakdown … Treatment had to give back to the patient his trust in the
unconscious, by having him realize how much more musical his unconscious was than his
conscious.
The third means of finding meaning is one few people besides Frankl talk about,
namely, attitudinal values. Attitudinal values include such virtues as compassion,
bravery, a good sense of humor, and so on. But Frankl’s most famous example is
achieving meaning by way of suffering. He gives an example concerning one of his
clients. A doctor whose wife had died mourned her terribly. Frankl asked him, “If you
had died first, what would it have been like for her?” The doctor answered that it would
have been incredibly difficult for her. Frankl then pointed out that, by her dying first,
she had been spared that suffering, but that now he had to pay the price by surviving and
mourning her. IN other words, grief is the price we pay for love. For the doctor, this
thought gave his wife’s death and his own pain meaning, which in turn allowed him to
deal with it. His suffering becomes something more: With meaning, suffering can be
endured with dignity.
Frankl also notes that seriously ill people are not often given an opportunity to
suffer bravely, and thereby retain some dignity. Cheer up! We say. Be optimistic!
Often, they are made to feel ashamed of their pain and unhappiness. In his now famous,
Man’s Search for Meaning, Frank says: “Everything can be taken from a man but one
thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one’s attitude in any given set of
circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
The goal of human life, argues Frankl, is to find meaning and order in the world
for me personally and us collectively. Resulting from his heart-rending wartime Nazi
concentration camp experiences -- where death and dying, suffering and inhumanity
reigned supreme -- Frankl became convinced of the sui generus nature of the
will-to-meaning.
Amidst suffering and inhumanity, alienation and tragedy, he
encountered the ever-impending onslaught of meaninglessness. Within the walls of an
earthly human-made hell, an inhumanity which had taken his family and which
threatened his own existence, he faced, in stark nakedness of body and soul, the possible
absence of any meaning to life. And yet, though the temptation for inmates to throw
themselves upon the high voltage wires encircling the camp was ever present and often
utilized, nevertheless, most did not succumb to what Dostoyevsky has diabolically
referred to as the “ultimate expression of human freedom,” namely, suicide. In spite of
unbelievable suffering and persecutions, most persons sought out and held on tenaciously
to a sense of personal meaning in a world reduced to stark nothingness.
Sitting in the filth and hideousness of humanly contrived persecutions, where pain
was omnipresent and depth commonplace, Frankl’s thought s rose above his situation as
he reflected upon the plight of others besides himself. Later in Life, he write in his
book, Man’s Search for Meaning: “I remember my dilemma in the concentration camp
when faced with a man and a woman who were close to suicide; both had told me they
expected nothing more of life. I asked both my fellow prisoners whether the question
was really what we expected from life. Was it not, rather, what life was expecting from
us? I suggested that life was awaiting something from them.”
As a result of Frankl’s concentration camp experience at Auschwitz, he
discovered that our greatest need is not the will-to-pleasure nor the will-to-power, but
rather the will-to-meaning, the need to find meaning for one’s own life. Through this
discovery, and his utilization o this need in therapeutic situations, he developed what
today is acclaimed as a major new school in psychotherapeutic psychology. By helping
prisoners then and patients later remember their past lives -- their joys, sorrows,
sacrifices, and blessings -- he emphasized the “meaningfulness” of their lives as already
lived. He dealt with this specifically and in depth in an article, entitled, “Group
Psychotherapeutic Experiences in a Concentration Camp,” in Group Psychotherapy (VII,
3-7, l96l). During moments of apparent helplessness and meaninglessness, these
recollections serve therapeutically to stabilize and reinforce the meaningfulness and
purposefulness of life. He emphasizes not only the recollected past, but calls attention to
the existential meaningfulness of suffering and tragedy in life as testimonies to human
courage and dignity (“Logotherapy and the Challenge of Suffering,” Review of
Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, I, 3-7, 1967).
The surprising feature about Frankl’s psychotherapeutic formulations is that
throughout he consistently makes inferential comments about the religious dynamic
operative in his theory while constantly omitting any specific reference to its
fundamentally Jewish character. Especially does he consistently fail to refer, even at
most commodious opportunities, to the presence of a strong element of Hassidic
teachings, I.e., the teachings of the rabbis who rose up in the eighteenth century in
Eastern Europe in reaction against an overemphasis on Talmudic learning and radical
mystical Messianism.
If David Bakan is even tacitly correct in his attribution of religious motives to
Sigmund Freud’s psychological formulations in his book, Sigmund Freud and the Jewish
Mystical Tradition, we cannot be far wrong in the identification of major Jewish
principles in Viktor Frankl’s psychology. As Freud utilized, whether consciously or not,
the conceptual frameworks of the Hassidic book of mysticism, the Zohar, so Frankl
unquestionably used the philosophical teachings of the Hassidic rabbis in his
consideration of life’s meaning.
And yet, nowhere does Frankl face frankly the
legitimate philosophical question: “From whence cometh this meaning?” Is it a human
contrivance a la Sartre, or a discovery? Frankl answers with the latter, but gives no
satisfactory explanation as to the origin or source of this meaning. However, appropriate
to this discussion, Fackenheim supplies us with a genuinely religious view of the Jewish
perception of this quiry. “In the eyes of Judaism,” explains Rabbi Fackenheim,
“whatever meaning life acquires derives from this encounter: The divine accepts and
confirms the human in the moment of meeting. But the meaning conferred upon human
life by the Divine-human encounter cannot be understood in terms of some finite
purpose, supposedly more ultimate than the meeting itself. For what could be more
ultimate than the Presence of God.”
For the religiously sensitive Jewish thinker, humankind cannot simply be satisfied
with the discovery of meaning for oneself, but must plumb deeper for the source of all
meaning. The Presence of God, Buber has explained, is an “inexpressible confirmation
of meaning … The question of the meaning of life is no longer there (when God is
Present). But were it there, it would not have to be answered” (I and Thou). And
though we would not wish to fault Frankl prematurely or unfairly, we might have
legitimately expected from a Viennese Jewish psychiatrist an expression of his sensibility
to the philosophical problem implied in his psychology and the source of his
philosophical perspective in addressing these problems.
One of Frankl’s major concepts is conscience. He sees conscience as a sort of
unconscious spirituality, different from the instinctual unconscious that Freud and others
emphasize. The conscience is not just one factor among many; it is the core of our being
and the source of our personal integrity. He puts it in no uncertain terms. “Being
human is being responsible -- existentially responsible, responsible for one’s own
existence.” Conscience is intuitive and highly personalized. It refers to a real person in
a real situation, and cannot be reduced to simple “universal laws.” It must be lived. He
refers to conscience as a “pre-reflective ontological self-understanding” or “the wisdom
of the heart, more sensitive than reason can ever be sensible.” It is conscience that
“sniffs out” that which gives our lives meaning.
Like Erich Fromm, Frankl notes that animals have instincts to guide them. In
traditional societies, we have done well-enough replacing instincts with our social
traditions. Today, we hardly even have that. Most attempt to find guidance in
conformity and conventionality, but it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid facing the
fact that we now have the freedom and the responsibility to make our own choices in life,
to find our own meaning. But “meaning must be found and cannot be given” says
Frankl. Meaning is like laughter, he says. You cannot force someone to laugh, you
must tell him a joke! The same applies to faith, hope, and love -- they cannot be brought
forth by an act of will, our own or someone else’s. “Meaning is something to discover
rather than to invent” says Frankl. It has a reality of its own, independent of our minds.
Like an embedded figure or a “magic eye” picture, it is there to be seen, not something
created by our imagination. We may not always be able to bring the image -- or the
meaning -- forth, but it is there. It is, he says, “primarily a perceptual phenomena.”
The therapeutic efficacy of his logo therapy is not open to question, but
accountability for its rational basis must be pondered. As we have considered at length
in another place, we are not simply satisfied with an ontological answer to our existential
question, “Who am I?,” for we are also in pursuit of the source of the answer when it
comes. That Frankl is indebted to Jewish teaching is without question. “What Frankl
calls ‘logo therapy’ and the ‘will to meaning,’” explains Rubenstein, himself a rather
critical Jewish philosopher of the post-Auschwitzian variety, “is not unlike the striving
for an ordered, meaningful cosmos on the part of the rabbinic teachers in their own times
(cf. Richard L. Rubenstein, The Religious Imagination: A Study in Psychoanalysis and
Jewish Philosophy).
Rubenstein believes that for Frankl, this reaching back into his own religious
heritage, namely, the Hassidic tradition of Viennese Judaism, constituted the only basis
upon which Frankl could ever hope to decipher the ultimate meaning of the concentration
camp horrors. Without such a legacy, Frankl and his fellow inmates would have surely
succumbed. “Only by resorting to the age-old Jewish interpretation of misfortune,”
explains Rubenstein, could Frankl maintain his sanity.” That Rubenstein is correct in his
conclusion is certainly open to discussion (and in my personal opinion he is doing little
more than attempting to disparage Frankl’s religious faith in the wake of his own loss of
faith), but that Frankl’s psychology and Jewish philosophy are intertwined is
indisputable.
In Frankl’s logotherapy, not only is the human person portrayed as being in
possession of a sense of meaningfulness but also of a personal sense of indebtedness.
Not only is life charged with meaning, this meaning implies responsibility. Life is for
me meaningful and I, therefore, must respond. Life provides an arena within which I
must discover meaning, and this discovery places upon me “an expectation of me.”
To demonstrate the fundamentally religious character of Frankl’s psychology, we
need only look to the writings of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who is without question
America’s most respected Jewish philosopher in this century. “the dimension of
meaning,” says Heschel, “is an indigenous to his (mankind’s) being human as the
dimension of space is to stars and stones. Human being is either coming into meaning or
betraying it” (Who Is Man?). In other words, all of human life is a struggle to maintain a
relationship to meaning, and though this relationship ebbs and flows with the rise and fall
of our conscientious quest for meaning or our recalcitrant niggardliness in seeking it,
humankind is continually confronted with the choice of meaning or meaninglessness.
Heschel explains further:
Imbedded in the mind is a certainty that the state of existence and the state of meaning
stand in relation to each other, that life is accessible in terms of meaning. The will to
meaning and the certainty of the legitimacy of our striving to ascertain it are as
intrinsically human as the will to live and the certainty of being alive.
Heschel offers a clarification to the ambiguity suggested in Frankl’s perception of
meaning -- from where does it derive and who is it for. If meaning is derived from
within ourselves and is strictly for our personal aggrandizement, we are not better off
than Freud’s pleasure seeker, Adler’s power seeker, or Satre’s pathetic drunkard who
chose freely not to serve his fellow man. “What we are in search of,” clarifies Heschel,
“is not meaning for me, an idea to satisfy my conscience, but rather a meaning
transcending me, ultimate relevance for human being.”
Let us consider more carefully this dual sense of meaning and indebtedness,
alluded to in Frankl and explicated in Heschel. What Frankl faced in the camps and
what we all confront at various moments in our lives is the immanence of despair, of
forlornness, of a sense of nothingness. “There is not a soul on this earth,” contends the
Rabbi in his book, Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion, “which has not realized
that a life is dismal if not mirrored in something which is lasting.” Heschel’s criticism of
Sartre and Nietzsche is precisely here -- we are not our own measure. “Tell man he is an
end within himself,” warns Heschel, “and his answer will be despair.” Humankind are
not our own judge and jury and “despair is not our last word,” says Heschel in his An
Echo of Eternity, nor is “hiddenness God’s last act.”
As with the Rabbi, Frankl has had a great deal to say about transcendence.
Experiential, creative, and attitudinal values, as we have seen in Frankl, are merely
surface manifestations of something much more fundamental, something Frankl has
chosen to call “supra-meaning” or sometimes “transcendence.” Here we see Frankl’s
religious bent: Supra-meaning is the idea that there is, in fact, ultimate meaning in life,
meaning that is not dependent on others, on our projects, or even on our dignity. It is a
reference to God and spiritual meaning. This sets Frankl’s existentialism apart from the
existentialism of someone like Jean-Paul Sartre, as we shall see later in detail in a
subsequent chapter of this book. Sartre and other atheistic existentialists suggest that life
is ultimately meaningless, and we must find the courage to face that meaninglessness.
Sartre says we must learn to endure ultimate meaninglessness; Frank, instead, says that
we need to learn to endure our inability to fully comprehend ultimate meaningfulness, for
“Logos is deeper than logic.” Again, it was his experiences in the death camps that led
him to these conclusions. “In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness
of the life in a concentration camp,” he explains, “it was possible for spiritual life to
deepen … They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner
riches and spiritual freedom.” This certainly does not contrast with Freud’s perspective,
as particularly expressed in his The Future of an Illusion, when he says, “Religion is the
universal compulsive neurosis of mankind.”
It should be understood that Frankl’s ideas about religion and spirituality are
considerably broader than most. His God is not the God of the narrow mind, not the god
of one denomination or another. Not even especially the God of the Bible. It is not
even the God of institutional religion. God is very much a God of the inner human
being, a God of the heart. Even the atheist or the agnostic, he points out, may accept the
idea of transcendence without making use of the word “God.” Paul Tillich in Protestant
theology has suggested the same sort of God, more or less. Let me quote extensively
from Frankl:
This unconscious religiousness, revealed by our phenomenological analysis, is to be
understood as a latent relation to transcendence inherent in man. If one prefers, he
might conceive of this relation in terms of a relationship between the immanent self and a
transcendent thou. However one wishes to formulate it, we are confronted with what I
should like to term “the transcendent unconscious.” This concept means no more or
less than that man has always stood in an intentional relation to transcendence, even if
only on an unconscious level. If one calls the intentional referent of such an
unconscious relation “God,” it is apt to speak of an “unconscious God.”
It should also be pointed out that this “unconscious God” is not anything like the
archetypes Jung talks about. This God is clearly transcendent, and yet profoundly
personal. He is there, according to Frankl, within each of us, and it is merely a matter of
our acknowledging that presence that will bring us to supra-meaning.
ON the other
hand, turning away from God is the ultimate source of all the ills we have already
discussed. “Once the angel in us is repressed,” says Frnakl, “he turns into a demon.”
Though Heschel agrees that humankind is fundamentally “a being in search of
meaning,” unlike Frankl, he is not satisfied in stopping at that observation. To the
biblical mind, explains Heschel, “man is not only a creature who is constantly in search
of himself, but also a creature God is constantly in search of.” Furthermore, says
Heschel, “man is a creature in search of meaning because there is meaning in search of
him, because there is God’s beseeching question, ‘Where art thou?’” Here is the
juncture at the juncture at which Frankl’s psychology must give way to Jewish
philosophy -- where meaning no longer is an a priori given but an explanation of a prior
relationship which exists between god and humankind. The meaning of human life
derives from the source of all meaning -- “God is in need of man … To Jewish religion,
history is determined by this covenant,” explains the Rabbi. Religion, culminating in its
Jewish expression, consists of God’s question -- “Where art though?”, and in man’s
answer -- “I was afraid.” Personal meaning derives from God, and God is searching for
the human person.
It is with this insight that we can come to a better understanding of our own
nature. Meaning does not derive from humankind for humankind does not produce
meaning, neither can we look to ourselves in hopes of understanding the nature of
meaning. “Man is man,” explains Heschel, “not because of what he has in common with
the earth, but because of what he has in common with God ( Insecurity of Freedom).
Humankind cannot endow the sky with stars, neither can we bestow upon ourselves
inalienable rights. Equality of humankind is not due to our own ingenuity, but rather “is
due to God’s love and commitment to all men … (for) wherever you see a trace of man,
there is the presence of God.” Only when we lift our sights above frivolities, inhumanity
and selfishness, can we hope to sense the meaning of life, for, says Heschel, “the destiny
of man is to be a partner of God (God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism).
In this consideration, we have seen how Frankl’s logotherapy, which is a
psychotherapeutic method employed to assist individuals in getting in touch with life’s
meaning and its implied indebtedness, draws heavily from the Hassidic tradition within
Jewish philosophy most recently extrapolated in the writings of Abraham Joshua
Heschel. We have not attempted to indict Frankl as a deceptive and conniving rabbinic
teacher in psychiatric garb, but rather have attempted to vindicate Frankl’s logotherapy
from the appearance of being devoid of philosophical underpinnings. Furthermore, we
have attempted to indicate that his psychology is quite defensible both in terms of
existential psychology and Jewish philosophy. Frankl’s theory, it seems, is thus
rendered stronger thanks to its identifiable philosophical defensibility witnessed in
Heschel’s grasp and use of the Hassidic tradition.
Finally and in closing, we wish to draw careful attention to Frankl’s clinical
therapeutic practice for which he is well known. The first of these details is a technique
know as paradoxical intention, which is useful in breaking down the neurotic vicious
cycles brought on by anticipatory anxiety and hyper-intention. Paradoxical intention is a
matter of wishing the very thing you are afraid of. A young man who sweated profusely
whenever he was in social situations was told by Frankl to wish to sweat. “I only
sweated out a quart before, but now I’m going to pour at least ten quarts!” was among his
instructions. Of course, when it came down to it, the young man couldn’t do it. The
absurdity of the task broke the vicious cycle.
The capacity human beings have of taking an objective stance towards their own
life, or stepping outside themselves, is the basis, Frankl tells us, for humor. And, as he
noted in the camps, “Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for
self-preservation.” Another example concerns sleep problems: If you suffer from
insomnia, according to Frnakl, don’t spend the night tossing and turning and trying to
sleep. Get up! Try to say up as long as you can! Over time, you’ll find yourself
gratefully crawling back into bed.
A second technique is called de-reflection. Frankl believes that many problems
stem from an overemphasis on oneself. By shifting attention away from oneself and
onto others, problems often disappear. If, for example, you have difficulties with sex, try
to satisfy your partner without seeking your own gratification. Concerns over erections
and orgasms disappear -- and satisfaction reappears! Or don’t try to satisfy anyone at
all. Many sex therapists suggest that a couple do nothing but “pet,” avoiding orgasms
“at all costs.” These couples often find they can barely last the evening before what they
had previously had difficulties with simply happen!
Frankl insists that, in today’s world, there is far too much emphasis on self
reflection. Since Freud, we have been encouraged to look into ourselves, to dig out our
deepest motivations. Frankl even refers to this tendency as our “collective obsessive
neurosis.” Focusing on ourselves this way actually serves to turn us away from
meaning!
For all the interest these techniques have aroused, Frankl insists that, ultimately,
the problems these people face are a mater of their need for meaning. So, although these
and other techniques are a fine beginning to therapy, they are not by any means the goal.
Perhaps the most significant task for the therapist is to assist the client in rediscovering
the latent religiousness that Frankl believes exists in each of us. This cannot be pushed,
however, he explains: “Genuine religiousness must unfold in its own time. Never can
anyone be forced to it.” The therapist must allow the patient to discover his or her own
meanings.
“Human existence,” says Frankl, “at least as long as it has not been neurotically
distorted, is always directed to something, or someone, other than itself, be it a meaning
to fulfill or another human being to encounter lovingly.”
Frankl calls this
self-transcendence, and contrasts it with self-actualization as Maslow uses the term.
Self-actualization, even pleasure and happiness, are side-effects of self-transcendence and
the discovery of meaning. He quotes Albert Schweitzer (with whom we will spend time
later in this book): “The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who
have sought and found how to serve.”
Even if an individual is not of a religious inclination, it is difficult to ignore
Frnakl’s message: There exists, beyond instincts and “selfish genes,” beyond classical
and operant conditioning, beyond the imperatives of biology and culture, a special
something, uniquely human, uniquely personal. For much of psychology’s history, we
have, in the name of science, tried to eliminate the “soul” from our professional
vocabularies. But perhaps it is time to follow Frankl’s ead and reverse the years of
reductionism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Frankl, V. Doctor And The Soul
Frankl, V. Man's Search For Meaning
Frankl, V. Psychotherapy And Existentialism
Frankl, V. Recollections: An Autobiography
Frankl. V. The Unheard Cry for Meaning
Frankl, V. The Will To Meaning
CHAPTER SEVEN
ALBERT SCHWEITZER and the Reverence for Life (Mysticism)
Reverence for Life
An Alsatian philosopher, theologian, musician, missionary doctor, and winner of
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952, Albert Schweitzer was born on January l4, l875, at
Kaysersberg, Upper Alsace, the eldest son of a Lutheran pastor. This old Alsatian
family had for generations been devoted to religion, music, and education. Not only was
his father a pastor, but his maternal grandfather as well and both of his grandfathers were
talented organists. The family soon moved to Gunsbach, in the Munster Valley, which
remained Schweitzer’s European home. At the Gymnasium at Muhlhausen, where he
went when he was nine years old, he sowed interest in history and natural science. At
eighteen, he entered Strasbourg University to study theology and philosophy. His mind
soon began to turn to the problems of the Synoptic Gospels, the three different accounts
of the life and death of Jesus in the New Testament, and during his military service,
which occurred during l894, he pursued the researchers into the life of Jesus which,
despite many other labors, he continued throughout his life.
After studying in Paris, he took his doctorate in philosophy at Strasbourg with a
thesis entitle The Religious Philosophy of Kant (l899) and received his licentiate in
theology or ordination the following year. He then studied at Berlin, returning to
Strasbourg as lecturer in philosophy and preacher at St. Nicholas’ Church, and taking his
doctorate in theology in 1900. In l903, he became principal of a theological college
attached to the university. He had already published, in l90l, The Mystery of the
Kingdom of God, and followed that with his most famous study of Christian Scriptures,
The quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Remarus to
Wrede, which established him as a world figure in theological studies. In these two
books, he made a radical and exhaustive demonstration of the eschatological view of the
life of Jesus, that is, the view that Jesus’ ministry was dominated by his knowledge of his
messiahship and his expectation of the imminent end of the world. In his book on St.
Paul, notably Paul and His Interpreters, 1912), and in later and briefer writings, he
continued to expound the view that the New Testament is pervaded by eschatological
expectation.
Meanwhile, Schweitzer was also studying music. He had begun his career as
organist at Strasbourg in 1893, when E. Munch, the initiator and conductor of Bach
concerts there, asked him to play the organ accompaniment for performances of Bach’s
cantatas and Passions. In Paris, he studied the piano with a former pupil of Liszt.
Becoming interested (l896) in organ-building and restoration, he published in l906 a
booklet on the art of organ-building and organ-playing in France and Germany.
In l902 C. M. Widor, his organ teacher in Paris, recognizing that, as well as being
a gifted organist, Schweitzer was a Bach interpreter of rare and original perception, asked
him to write a study of Bach’s life and art. Although already working on his later to
become famous study of the life of Jesus, Schweitzer agreed, and the intended essay grew
into a substantial book, J. S. Bach: Musician and Poet (l905), written in French while he
was lecturing and preaching in German at Strasbourg.
As a distinguished and
increasingly famous organist, he was particularly interested in the music of Bach. He
developed a simple style of performance, which he thought to be closer to what Bach had
meant it to be. He based his interpretation mainly on his reassessment of Bach’s
religious intentions. Through the book, the final version of which he completed in l908,
he advocated this new style, which has had a great influence in the way Bach’s music is
being treated even today. The book’s publication brought him acclaim in France and
Germany. Called upon for a German translation, Schweitzer rewrote the book in German
at twice the length, and it was form this edition in l908 that the English translation came
out in two volumes in l911.
Following his usual practice, he gave the reader a thorough historical and
analytical background of the subject, of the origins of the chorale, of the cantata, and of
the Passion music; he reviewed the forms of music and art within the history of thought
and presented Bach as a deeply religious mystic whose music was impersonal and
unselfconscious, as cosmic as the forces of nature. In a style matching his theme, he
described the composer as a musician-poet and the supreme pictorial artist in sound; and
he gave detailed, copiously illustrated (and sometimes controversial) instructions for
playing Bach’s works. His study of Bach remains a classic study for the depth and
breadth of its interpretation and for its rich spiritual content.
In l905, a scholar and an organist of wide reputation with an unbounded academic
future before him, Schweitzer announced to his family and friends his intention to realize
a decision made back in l896. He began to study medicine, to qualify himself as a
missionary doctor to the people of equatorial Africa, and in l906 he resigned his
university appointments to engage upon a life’s work in which, as he said, “talking is not
a part.” Many years later in l92l, he explained this decision in his autobiographical
reflections, entitled, On the Edge of the Primeval Forest (1922), saying that he had found
his simple motive in the parable of Dives and Lazarus (Luke l6:l9-3l), identifying Dives
with the white man, endowed with all the benefits of culture and science, and Lazarus
with the African, exploited and oppressed and lacking even medical treatment for his
disease and pain.
With characteristic thoroughness he took the six years’ course in medicine and
surgery, continuing meanwhile some of his major literary and musical work. In l9l2, he
married Helene Bresslau, daughter of a well-known Strasbourg historian and herself an
accomplished scholar, who trained as a nurse to share her husband’s renunciation and
adventure in discipleship until her death in l957. In l9l3, after earning his doctorate in
medicine from the University of Strasbourg school of medicine, they went to the Bagon
province of French Equatorial Africa. The site for Schweitzer’s hospital at Lambarene,
on the forested banks of the Ogowe River, was provided by the Parish Missionary
Society, which had declined his services because of his unorthodox theological views;
but in all else his was an independent enterprise. He equipped and maintained his
hospital from the proceeds of organ recitals and lectures on his visits to Europe and from
royalties on his books, and later also from gifts and grants from individuals and
foundations in many countries around the world.
Building his hospital with his own hands and African help, operating far into the
night under the most primitive conditions, and entering his long fight with leprosy, with
sleeping sickness, and with a host of tropical diseases, Schweitzer began to turn his active
intellect to the problem of world civilization. Opportunity for the development of his
thought was given in l9l4 by the brief internment at Lambarene of himself and his wife as
German subjects, and he continued to work more intensively on his thesis when in l9l7
they were taken back to Europe and eventually in l9l8 to a prison camp in Saint Remy de
Provence. The outcome was the publication in l923 of the first two volumes of his
Philosophy of Culture. The first volume, The Decay and the Restoration of Civilization,
is a brief introduction while the second volume, Civilization and Ethics, is a brilliant
review of the history of ethical thought leading up to his own original and positive
contribution of “reverence for life” as the true and effective basis for a civilized world.
Schweitzer’s philosophy was mainly based upon his little philosophical
medication, written in l9l9, entitled Reverence for Life. In his eyes, civilization was in
decay because people in general lacked the will to love. It was his firm conviction that
all life must be respected and consequently loved, contrary to the then popular philosophy
of Friedrich Nietzsche, and on the same line as the Russian writer and philosopher for
whom Schweitzer had a great deal of respect, Leo Tolstoy. Some people in his day
compared Schweitzer and his philosophy with that of Francis of Assisi, a comparison he
did not object to. His personal credo was: “I am life that wants to live, in the midst of
life that wants to live.” Life and love in his view are based upon and follow out the
same principle: eternal respect for every living thing in the cosmos and a spiritual
relationship, a form of surrender, to wards the entire universe. On this conviction, he
built his ethical and cultural theory, which he advocated widely through is entire life and
which he hoped would result in a new Renaissance of humanity.
Schweitzer envisioned a humanity that is aware of its context, that lives and
works in this world in a noble, elevated sense. He emphasized the necessity to think, not
to just act on superficial suppositions, or to submissively follow other people’s opinions.
He was convinced that people who think and go to the bottom of things will eventually
find the truth and with it the inner strength to love life. In his opinion, respect for life,
resulting from one’s own conscious will to live, makes one live in service of other people
and in fact every living creature, on each scale, large and small. Schweitzer was very
much respected for putting his theory in practice in his own life as the ultimate example
of the will to live.
Believing that ethics is nothing more nor less than the “reverence for life,”
Schweitzer contended that the good was that which maintains, assists and enhances life,
and the evil was that which destroys, harms or hinders life. In his Out of My Life and
Thought, Schweitzer told how his idea of reverence for life came to him while on an
errand of mercy in Africa. He was on a boat, creeping slowly upstream and following
channels between the sandbanks. His mind was deep in thought, searching for some
conception of the universal ground of ethics. He scribbled disconnected sentences on
sheet after sheet of paper, refusing to abandon his mental quest:
Late on the third day, at the very moment when, at sunset, we were making our way
through a herd of hippopotamuses, there flashed upon my mind, unforeseen and
unsought, the phrase, “Reverence for Life.” The iron door had yielded; the path in the
thicket had become visible.
“As far back as I can remember,“ he said, “I was saddened by the amount of
misery I saw in the world around me. The sight of an old limping horse, tugged forward
by one man while another kept beating it with a stick to get it to the knacker’s yard at
Colmar, haunted me for weeks.” The sight of animals being beaten or hurt was
something he could never understand or accept, from the times of his early youth. “This
brutality was quite incomprehensible to me, even before I began going to school,” he
recorded, “and I wondered why in my evening prayers I should pray for human beings
only. So when my mother had prayed with me and had kissed me goodnight, I used to
add silently a prayer that I had composed myself for all living creatures. It ran thus: ’O
heavenly Father, protect and bless all things that have breath; guard them from all evil,
and let them sleep in peace.’”
Schweitzer also told of the discovery of a more intuitive form of this ethic when
he was only seven or eight years old. One spring, a friend invited him to go to a place
where they could shoot birds with a sling-short. Though the idea was repugnant to the
young Schweitzer, he went along, fearing that his friend might laugh at him if he didn’t.
They found a bird singing in a tree. His companion put a stone in the leather catapult
and Schweitzer, determined to be brave and manly, did the same. At that very moment
the bells of a church began to ring. Schweitzer felt it was a voice from heaven,
reminding him of the wrongness of senseless killing. He shooed the bird away and ran
home.
Schweitzer insisted that all human beings have these feelings, but most of us
refuse to express them out of fear of being ridiculed and called a sentimentalist. In
Civilization and Ethics, he spoke of a reverence for life as an intrinsic motivating system:
“Reverence for life drives a man on as the whirling, thrashing screw forces a ship through
the water.” He called reverence for life an inner necessity, which has little to do with
thinking or understanding. “Reverence for life brings us into a spiritual relation with the
world which is independent of all knowledge of the universe.”
Schweitzer extended his ethics to other species. He spoke of a tradition in
European thought, beginning with St. Francis of Assisi, that envisions ethics as a
reverence for all life. A man is truly ethical in Schweitzer’s eyes only when life -plants, animals, his fellow man -- is sacred to him, and when he devotes himself to all life
that is in need of help. To be ethical is to feel responsibility in an ever-widening sphere.
The deeper we look into nature, says Schweitzer, the more we recognize that all
life is a mystery and that we are united with all life that is in nature. Man can no longer
live his life for himself alone. With this insight comes a spiritual relationship to the
universe. As we grow spiritually, we widen the circle of our sense of kinship from the
narrowest limits of the family to include the clan, then the tribe, then the nation and
finally all mankind. But ethics does not stop here, it expands until one declares the unity
of all created beings.
For Schweitzer, even the smallest manifestation of life is sacred. The ethical
person goes out of his way to avoid injuring anything that is living; he doesn’t tear leaves
from trees or step on insects. He rescues worms stranded on a sidewalk after a rain.
Schweitzer said the ethical person is reluctant to shatter ice crystals gleaming in the sun.
In Indian Thought and its Development, Schweitzer describes the Jains, a
religious sect who carry this principle to its absolute limit. In accordance with a
commandment of Ahimsa, they give up hunting, bloody sacrifices and eating meat.
They also consider it their duty to be careful not to trample on insects or other crawling
things. The Jain monks even tie a cloth over their mouth in order to avoid breathing in,
and thus killing, tiny creatures in the air.
According to Schweitzer, the Jains were the first to have discovered the principle
of reverence for life. Schweitzer himself is less rigid. Human beings, he says, are able
to preserve their own lives only at the cost of other life. Killing and injury are necessary
to sustain life. The central issue becomes whether or not killing and injury arise from
necessity or simple thoughtlessness. It is acceptable for a countryman to mow a
thousand blossoms in order to feed his cows, but is not acceptable for that same person
carelessly to snap off the head of a single flower while walking home after work.
Unfortunately, no matter how seriously people attempt to abstain from killing and
damaging, they cannot entirely avoid it. We are under a low of necessity, which
compels us to kill and to damage both with and without our knowledge. The only
answer is a mystical participation in nature; the hunter and the hunted become a single
thing; the berry and the berry-gatherer are one.
However, Schweitzer was not sentimental about killing. He wrote that a slavish
adherence to the commandment not to kill can be contrary to the dictates of simple
compassion. When there is no way to alleviate the suffering of a living creature, it is
often more ethical to end its life by killing it mercifully than to do nothing. It is also
more cruel to let domestic animals, which one can no longer feed, die a painful death by
starvation than to kill them quickly and painlessly. Furthermore, there are many real-life
dilemmas in which in order to save one living creature we must destroy or damage
another. The ultimate principle is compassion. When the decision to injure or kill is
made, the ethical person must be aware that he or she is acting on subjective and arbitrary
grounds and therefore bears the responsibility for the life sacrificed. We ought to feel
what an odious thing it is to cause suffering and death out of mere thoughtlessness.
Early in l924 Schweitzer returned to Africa to rebuild his derelict hospital and to
renew its work. Famine, pestilence, floods, and lack of adequate help made this fresh
start even more formidable than the first beginning, and he decided to move to a better
site about two miles farther up the Ogowe River. There his practical powers were
devoted to the creation of a larger and more efficient hospital. Over the years the
hospital village grew, and with the discovery of new drugs for the treatment of leprosy, a
large leper colony came into being near by. IN April of l963, when he received an
address of felicitation on the jubilee of Lambarene from his supporters in 28 countries,
there were in the hospital about 350 patients with their relatives, and in the leper colony
l50 patients, all served by a staff of 30 white and 30 nonwhite doctors, nurses, and
helpers.
Besides this principal preoccupation, Schweitzer published The Mysticism of Paul
the Apostle (1930), more mature than his previous pieces of original New Testament
scholarship, and Indian Thought and Its Development (l936), a book that grew from one
chapter of the draft of the continuation of his Philosophy of Culture. He returned for
brief visits to his home at Gunsbach where he had used the proceeds of the Goethe Prize
awarded from Frankfurt he received in l928 to build a house for himself and his
colleagues, and where he received many visitors, and to give lectures and organ recitals
in Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and France; and he accepted an
invitation to take a leading part in the Goethe bicentenary celebrations at Aspen,
Colorado, in the USA in l949. He also made recordings and resumed his editing of
Bach’s music, begun with Widor in l9ll.
Intermittently he returned to the third volume of the Philosophy of Culture,
though not with the intention that this should be published during his lifetime, and to a
restatement of his theological thought. His address on receiving in l953 the l952 Nobel
Peace Prize, entitled, “The Problem of Peace in the World of Today,” had a worldwide
circulation. He was received by Queen Elizabeth II in l955 when he was appointed an
honorary member of the British Order of Merit. In l958, he broadcast from Oslo in
collaboration with Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell three appeals to the world,
published as Peace or Atomic War?. Schweitzer died at Lambarene on September 4,
l965, and was buried there.
At the height of his influence, Albert Schweitzer was often referred to as the most
famous person alive. He inspired millions by his revelation of how rich a human life can
be. He once said, “No one can give a definition of the soul. But we know what it feels
like. The soul is the sense of something higher than ourselves, something that stirs in us
thoughts, hopes, and aspirations which go out to the world of goodness, truth and beauty.
The soul is a burning desire to breathe in this world of light and never to lose it -- to
remain children of light.”
At Lambarene, Schweitzer was doctor and surgeon in the hospital, pastor of a
congregation, administrator of a village, superintendent of buildings and grounds, writer
of scholarly books, commentator on contemporary history, musician, and host to
countless visitors. Schweitzer’s astonishing and lasting capacity for arduous physical
and mental labor was supported by an exceptionally strong physique. Tall and broad, of
relentless energy and acute concentration, his face at once forceful and compassionate, he
had immediate and magnetic charm for all who met him. Shrewdness was evident in his
business arrangements and in the administration of his hospital settlement, together with
an almost patriarchal feeling in his retention of control over every detail of its work and
management. The practical thoroughness underlying his powers of creation and
interpretation was reflected also in his passion for the building and repair of organs and
in his exhaustive mastery of the work of his predecessors in theology and philosophy.
SELECTIONS FROM THE REVERENCE FOR LIFE
Owing to the classic nature of this little gem of Schweitzer, we have chosen some select passages
from an article Schweitzer wrote upon this general topic related to the overall theme of this book
on the topic of the nature of ethics and moral behavior within the human community.
In the history of world thought we seem to be met by a confusion of antagonistic
systems. But if we look closely, we see that certain essential laws of thought are to be
discerned. And as we trace them, we see a certain definite progress in this bewildering
history. In fact, there emerge two main classes of problems. To begin with, we see
certain façade problems, important looking, but not really connected with the main
structure. Questions as to the reality of the world and the problem of knowledge belong
here. Kant tried in vain to solve the essential questions by busying himself with these
scientific, façade problems. Admittedly they are intriguing, but they are not the real,
elementary matters.
We are concerned with the other problems, the essential ones. As we know life
in ourselves, we want to understand life in the universe, in order to enter into harmony
with it. Physically we are always trying to do this. But that is not the primary matter,
for the great issue is that we shall achieve a spiritual harmony. Just to recognize this fact
is to have begun to see a part of life clearly.
There is in each of us the will to live, which is based on the mystery of what we
call “taking an interest.” We cannot live alone. Though man is an egoist, he is never
completely so. He MUST always have some interest in life about him. If for no other
reason, he must do so in order to make his own life more perfect. Thus it happens that
we want to devote ourselves; we want to take our part in perfecting our ideal of progress;
we want to give meaning to the life in the world. This is the basis of our striving for
harmony with the spiritual element.
The effort for harmony, however, never succeeds. Events cannot be harmonized
with our activities. Working purposefully toward certain ends, we assume that the
Creative Force in the world is doing likewise. Yet, when we try to define its goal, we
can not do so. It tends toward developing a type of existence, but there is no
coordinated, definite end to be observed, even though we think there should be. We like
to imagine that man is nature’s goal; but facts do not support that belief.
Indeed, when we consider the immensity of the universe, we must confess that
man is insignificant. The world began, as it were, yesterday. It may end tomorrow.
Life has existed in the universe but a brief second. And certainly man’s life can hardly
be considered the goal of the universe. Its margin of existence is always precarious.
Study of the geologic periods shows that. So does the battle against disease. When one
has seen whole populations annihilated by sleeping sickness, as I have, one ceases to
imagine that human life is nature’s goal. In fact, the Creative Force does not concern
itself about preserving life. It simultaneously creates and destroys. Therefore, the
will-to-live is not to be understood within the circle of Creative Force. Philosophy and
religion have repeatedly sought the solution by this road; they have projected our will to
perfection into nature at large, expecting to see its counterpart there. But in all honesty
we must confess that to cling to such a belief is to delude ourselves.
As a result of the failure to find ethics reflected in the natural order, the
disillusioned cry has been raised that ethics can therefore have no ultimate validity. In
the world of human thought and action today, humanitarianism is definitely on the wane.
Brutality and trust in force are in the ascendant. What, then, is to become of that
vigorous ethics which we inherited from our fathers? Knowledge may have failed us;
but we do not abandon the ideals. Though they are shaken, we do not turn from them to
sheer skepticism.
In spite of being unable to prove them by rational argumentation, we nevertheless
believe that there is a proof and defense for them within themselves. We are, so to
speak, immunized against skepticism. Indeed, the classical skepticisms were, after all,
puerile. That a truth cannot be proved by argument is no reason why it should be utterly
abandoned, so long as it is in itself possessed of value. Kant, trying to escape from
skepticism, is a pre-indication of this immunity. In intent, his philosophy is great and
eternal. He said that truth is one of two kinds: scientific and spiritual. Let us look to
the bottom of this; not by Kant’s method, however, since he was often content with naïve
reflections on very deep questions. We shall avoid his way of seeking abstract solutions,
and distinctions between material and immaterial. Instead, let us see that truths which
are not provable in knowledge are given to us in our will-to-live.
Kant sought to give equal value to Practical and Theoretical Reason. More, he
felt the demand for a more absolute ethic. It would, he thought, give new authority to
spiritual and religious truth, thus making up for the loss involved in not being able to
verify these truths by knowledge. This is the very heart of Kant’s gospel, being uch
more important than anything he taught about space and time. But he did not know
where to find the new ethic. He only gave a new, more handsome, and more impressive
façade to the old. By his failure to point out the new ethic, he missed the new
Rationalism. His thought was on too narrow a basis.
The essential thing to realize about ethics is that it is the very manifestation of our
will-to-live. All our thoughts are given in that will-to-live, and we but give them
expression and form in words. To analyze Reason fully would be to analyze the
will-to-live. The philosophy that abandons the old Rationalism must begin be meditating
on itself. Thus, if we ask, “What is the immediate fact of my consciousness? What do I
self-consciously know of myself, making abstractions of all else, from childhood to old
age? To what do I always return?” we find the simple fact of consciousness is this, I will
live. through every stage of life, this is the one thing I know about myself. I do not say,
‘I am life”; for life continues to be a mystery too great to understand. I only know that I
cling to it. I fear its cessation -- death. I dread its diminution -- pain. I seek its
enlargement -- joy.
Descartes started on this basis. But he built an artificial structure by presuming
that man knows nothing, and doubts all, whether outside himself or within. And in order
to end doubt, he fell back on the fact of consciousness: I think. Surely, however, that is
the stupidest primary assumption in all philosophy! Who can establish the fact that he
thinks, except in relation to thinking something? and what that something is, is the
important matter. When I seek the first fact of consciousness, it is not to know that I
think, but to get hold of myself. Descartes would have a man think once, just long
enough to establish certainty of being, and then give over any further need of meditation.
Yet meditation is the very thing I must not cease. I must ascertain whether my thoughts
are in harmony with my will-to-live.
Bergson’s admirable philosophy also starts from such a beginning. But he arrives at the
sense of time. The fact of immediate consciousness, however, is much more important
than the sense of time. So Bergson misses the real issue. Instinct, thought, the capacity
for divination, all these are fused with the will-to-live. And when it reflects upon itself,
what path does it follow? When my will-to-live begins to think, it sees life as a mystery
in which I remain by thought. I cling to life because of my reference for life. For, when
it begins to think, the will-to-live realizes that it is free. It is free to leave life. It is free
to choose whether or not to live. This fact is of particular significance for us in this
modern age, when there are abundant possibilities for abandoning life, painlessly and
without agony.
Moreover, we are all closer to the possibility of this choice than we may guess of
one another. The question which haunts men and women today is whether life is worth
living. Perhaps each of us has had the experience of talking with a friend one day,
finding that person bright, happy, apparently in the full joy of life; and then the next day
we find that that he has taken his own life! Stoicism has brought us to this point, by
driving out the fear of death; for, by inference it suggests that we are free to choose
whether to live or not. But if we entertain such a possibility, we do so by ignoring the
melody of the will-to-live, which compels us to face the mystery, the value, the high trust
committed to us in life. We may not understand it, but we begin to appreciate its great
value. Therefore, when we find those who relinquish life, while we may not condemn
them, we do pity them for having ceased to be in possession of themselves. Ultimately,
the issue is not whether we do or do not fear death. The real issue is that of reverence
for life.
Here, then, is the first spiritual act in man’s experience: reverence for life. The
consequence of it is that he comes to realize his dependence upon events quite beyond his
control. Therefore he becomes resigned. And this is the second spiritual act:
resignation.
What happens is that one realizes that he is but a speck of dust, a plaything of
events outside his reach. Nevertheless, he may at the same time discover that he has a
certain liberty, as long as he lives. Sometime or another all of us must have found that
happy events have not been able to make us happy, nor unhappy events to make us
unhappy. There is within each of us a modulation, an inner exaltation, which lifts us
above dependence upon the gifts of events for our joy. Hence, our dependence upon
events is not absolute; it is qualified by our spiritual freedom. Therefore, when we speak
of resignation it is not sadness to which we refer, but the triumph of our will-to-live over
whatever happens to us. And to become ourselves, to be spiritually alive, we must have
passed beyond this point of resignation.
The great defect of modern philosophy is that it neglects this essential fact. It
does not ask man to think deeply on himself. It hounds him into activity, bidding him
find escape thus. In that respect it falls far below the philosophy of Greece, which
taught men better the true depth of life.
I have said that resignation is the very basis of ethics. Starting from this position,
the will-to-live comes first to veracity as the primary ground of virtue. If I am faithful to
my will-to-live, I cannot disguise this fact, even though such disguise of evasion might
seem to my advantage. Reverence for my will-to-live leads me to the necessity of being
sincere with myself. And out of this fidelity to my own nature grows all my faithfulness.
Thus, sincerity is the first ethical quality which appears. However lacking one may be in
other respects, sincerity is the one thing which he must possess. Nor is this point of view
to be found only among people of complex social life. Primitive cultures show the fact
to be equally true there. Resignation to the will-to-live leads directly to this first virtue:
sincerity.
Having reached this point, then, I am in a position to look at the world. I ask
knowledge what it can tell me of life. Knowledge replies that what it can tell me is little,
yet immense. Whence this universe came, or whither it is bound, or how it happens to
be at all, knowledge cannot tell me. Only this: that the will-to-live is everywhere
present, even as in me. I do not need science to tell me this; but it cannot tell me
anything more essential. Profound and marvelous as chemistry is, for example, it is like
all science in the fact that it can lead me only to the mystery of life, which is essentially
in me, however near or far away it may be observed.
What shall be my attitude toward this other life? It can only be of a piece with
my attitude towards my own life. If I am a thinking being, I must regard other life than
my own with equal reverence. For I shall know that it longs for fullness and
development as deeply as I do myself. Therefore, I see that evil is what annihilates,
hampers, or hinders life. And this holds good whether I regard it physically or
spiritually. Goodness, by the same token, is the saving or helping of life, the enabling of
whatever life I can to attain its highest development.
This is the absolute and reasonable ethic. Whether sub-and-such a man arrives at
this principle, I am not know. But I know that it is given inherently in the will-to-live.
Whatever is reasonable is good. This we have been told by all the great thinkers. But it
reaches its best only in the light of this universal ethic, the ethic of reverence for life, to
which we come as we meditate upon the will-to-live. And since it is important that we
recognize to the best of our ability the full significance of this ethic, let us now devote our
attention to some commentaries upon it.
The primary characteristic of this ethic is that it is rational, having been developed
as a result of thought upon life. We may say that anyone who truly explores the depths
of thought must arrive at this point. In other words, to be truly rational is to become
ethical. How pleased Socrates would be with us for saying this! But if it is so simple a
matter of rationality, why has it not long since been achieved? It has, indeed, been long
on the way, while in every land thought has been seeking to deepen ethics.
Actually, whenever love and devotion are glimpsed, reverence for life is not far
off, since one grows from the other. But the truth of the matter is that thought fears such
an ethic. What it wants is to impose regulations and order that can be duly systematized.
This ethic is not subject to such bonding. Therefore, when modern thought considers
such an ethic it fears it, and tries to discredit it, by calling it irrational. In this way its
development has been long delayed.
Again, it may be asked if this sort of meditation is not definitely that of civilized
rather than primitive men. The primitive man, it may be argued, knows no such
reverence for life. To this I must agree, having associated with primitive people in my
work in Africa. Nevertheless, it remains true that the primitive person who begins to
meditate must proceed along the same path. He ust start with his own well-to-live, and
that is certain to ring him in this direction. If he does not reach a point as far along the
way as we do, that is because we can profit by the meditations of our predecessors.
There are many great souls who have blazed sections of the trail for us. Proceeding
along that way, I have led you to this conclusion: that rational processes, properly
pursued, must lead to the true ethic.
What of this ethic? Is it absolute? Kant defines absolute ethics as that which is
not concerned with whether it can be achieved. The distinction is not one of absolute as
opposed to relative, but absolute as distinct from practicable in the ethical field. An
absolute ethic calls for the creating of perfection in this life. It cannot be completely
achieved; but that fact does not really matter. In this sense, reverence for life is an
absolute ethic. It does not lay down specific rules for each possible situation. It simply
tells us that we are responsible for the lives about us. It does not set either maximum or
minimum limits to what we must do.
In point of fact, every ethic has something of the absolute about it, just as soon as
it ceases to be mere social law. It demands of one what is actually beyond his strength.
Take the question of man’s duty to his neighbor. The ethic cannot be fully carried out,
without involving the possibility of complete sacrifice of self. Yet, philosophy has never
bothered to take due notice of the distinction. It has simply tried to ignore absolute
ethics, because such ethics cannot be fitted into tabulated rules and regulations. Indeed,
the history of world teachings on the subject may be summarized in the motto: “Avoid
absolute ethics, and thus keep within the realm of the possible.”
We have already noted that Kant did postulate and demand an absolute ethics as
the foundation for a spiritual ethic. He knew it must be more profound than what is just
and reasonable. But he did not succeed in establishing what it was. All he did was
label ordinary ethics “absolute.” Consequently, he ended in a muddle of abstraction.
As Descartes said, “Think,” without telling what to think, so Kant demanded, “Observe
absolute ethics,” without elucidating what the term involved. The ethics he proposed
could not be called absolute in matter of content. His “Practical Ethics” proved to be
simply the good old utilitarian ethics of his own day, adorned with the label, “absolute.”
He failed by not thinking far enough. To justify the name, absolute ethics must be so not
only in authority, but in matter of content as well.
Reverence for life is a universal ethic. We do not say this because of its absolute
nature, but because of the boundlessness of its domain. Ordinary ethics seeks to find
limits within th sphere of human life and relationships. But the absolute ethics of the
will-to-live must reverence every form of life, seeking so far as possible to refrain from
destroying any life, regardless of its particular type. It says of no instance of life, “This
has no value.” It cannot make any such exceptions, for it is built upon reverence for life
as such. It knows that the mystery of life is always to profound for us, and that its value
is beyond our capacity to estimate. We happen to believe that man’s life is more
important than any other form of which we know. But we cannot prove any such
comparison of value from what we know of the world’s development. True, in practice
we are forced to choose. At times we have to decide arbitrarily which forms of life, and
even which particular individuals, we shall shave, and which we shall destroy. But the
principle of reverence for life is none the less universal.
Ordinary ethics has never known what to do with this problem. Not realizing
that the domain of ethics must be boundless, it has tried to ignore any absolute ethic.
But when its boundlessness is realized, then its absoluteness is more plain. Indian
thought recognizes this, but it limits its effectiveness by making ethics negative. The
characteristic attitude of Indian thought is less a positive reverence for life, than a
negative duty to refrain from destroying. This comes about through a failure to
appreciate the essential illusory nature of an ethic of inaction. Nor has European thought
been free from that same illusion. The great works on philosophy and ethics in recent
years have all tried to avoid absolute ethics by concentrating on a type which should
apply only socially. But when reason travels its proper course, it moves in the direction
of a universally applicable ethic.
A universal ethic has great spiritual significance. Ordinary ethics is too narrow
and shallow for spiritual development. Our thought seeks ever to attain harmony with the
mysterious Spirit of th Universe. To be complete, such harmony must be both active and
passive. That is to say, we seek harmony both in deed and in thought. I want to
understand my ethical activity as being at the service of the Universal Spirit.
Spinoza, Hegel, and the Stoics show us that the harmony of peace is a passive
harmony, to which true philosophy leads us, and towards which religion tries to lead us.
But this does not suffice, since we want to be at once in activity as well. Philosophy
fails us here because of too narrow an ethical basis. It may seek to put me in relation to
society, and even to humanity at large (although contemporary philosophies are in some
instances directed only towards the relationship to a nation or a race).
In any case, no philosophy puts me in relationship to the universal on an ethical
basis. Instead, the attempt is made to take me there by knowledge, through
understanding. Fichte and Hegel present such an intellectual philosophy. But it is an
impossible path. Such philosophies are bankrupt. Ethics alone can put me in true
relationship with the universe by my serving it, co-operating with it; not by trying to
understand it. This is why Kant is so profound when he speaks of practical reason.
Only by serving every kind of life do I enter the service of that Creative Will whence all
life emanates. I do not understand it; but I do know (and it is sufficient to live by) that
by serving life, I serve the Creative Will. It is through community of life, not
community of thought, that I abide in harmony with that Will. This is the mystical
significance of ethics.
Every philosophy has its mystical aspects, and every profound thought is
mystical. But mysticism has always stopped with the passive, on an insufficient basis, as
regards ethics. Indian, Stoical, mediaeval, all the great mysticisms, have aimed at
achieving union through passivity. Yet every true mysticism has instincts of activity,
aspiring to an ethical character. This fact explains the development of Indian mysticism
from the detachment of Brahminism to modern Hindu mysticism. Mediaeval mysticism,
in the same way, comes in its great exponent, Eckhardt, to the point where it longs to
comprehend true ethics. Failing to find the universal ethic, it has commonly been
content to exist with none. But in the universal ethic of reverence for life, mystical
union with the Universal Spirit is actually and fully achieved. Thus it is provided to be
indeed the true ethic. For it must be plain that an ethic which only commands is
incomplete, while one which lets me live in communion with the Creative Will is a true
and complete ethic.
In what sense is this a natural ethic, and how does it stand in relation to other
explanations of the origin of ethics?
There have been three general classifications of ethical origins. The first is a
spiritual interpretation. We find in Plato, Kant, and many others, the assertion that ethics
comes out of an inherent, insubstantial, given, sense of duty, which has its source in our
own power of reason. Through it, we are told, we see ourselves bound to the immaterial
world. The exponents of this view believed that they had thus given great dignity to
ethics. But there are difficulties in the way of accepting this view. It bears little
resemblance to our own ethical sense; and we cannot see how it can be carried into our
lives in this world in which we live.
The second classification comprises the intellectual theories of ethics. Here we
find such philosophies as those of the Stoics, and Laotze. This group claims to see
ethics in the natural world, and concludes thereby that whoever is in harmony with the
universe is by that fact ethical. Now, this is a grand theory, and it is based on a profound
realization that one who is truly in such harmony must be ethical. But the fact remains
that we do not in deed understand the Spirit of the Universe. Therefore, we cannot draw
any ethics from such an understanding.
Consequently, these theories of ethics are pallid, and lacking in vigor. What they
really amount to is a negative quietism, which has been tinged with ethics. The third
classification consists of three kinds of natural ethics. There is, to start with, the
suggestion that ethics exists within our very natures, waiting to be developed. It is
argued that we are primarily composed of egoism, but that we nevertheless have an
inherent selflessness. Altruism, as we know it, is thus simply exalted egoism. Man is
assumed to get his greatest fulfillment in society; wherefore, he must serve it, sacrificing
his own wishes temporarily. But such an explanation is childish.
Next, comes the sort of natural ethics which is said to exist in man’s nature, but is
incapable of being developed by the individual himself. Society, so the theory runs, has
worked out a system of ethics in order to subject the individual to its will. Centuries of
such exalting of society have had beneficial results, but it is mere delusion to imagine that
that is nature to us which has actually been created by society. But observe how childish
this is also. I grant that society has its place in ethics, but the fact remains that I have
individual as well as social relationships, and society simply cannot be responsible for the
ethic which determines my dealings in the individual sphere.
The third type of natural ethics was expounded by Hume. It admits that ethics is
a matter of sentiment, but explains that it is given in the nature of man, for the sake of
preserving his life. Thus, in the late eighteenth century, came Hume’s teaching that
ethics is natural, while in the same period came Kant’s realization that it must be
absolute.
To explain that ethics is a matter of feeling, prompted by our own hearts, Hume
called it sympathy. The capacity to understand and live others’ lives in our own is, he
said, what makes us developed individuals. In this, he was joined by George Adam
Smith. They were headed in the right direction, too. If they had properly explored
sympathy, they would have reached the universal ethic of reverence for life. But they
stopped on the very threshold of their great opportunity, because they were dominated by
the contemporary dogma that ethics is concerned only with the relationship of man to
man. Therefore, they twisted sympathy to mean only a relationship between like kinds.
Spencer and Darwin did the same thing in their time, putting ethics on the basis of the
herd. This brought them to the explanation of non-egoistic action as arising from herd
instinct. What Darwin failed to see is that the herd relationship is more than this
superficial sort of instinct. He did, it is true, catch a glimpse of the possibility of
sympathy extending beyond the range of man and society. But he concluded that it was
just a high development of the herd instinct!
It is only when we break loose from such traditions that we find sympathy to be
natural for any type of life, without any restrictions, so long as we are capable of
imagining in such life the characteristic which we find in our own. That is, dread of
extinction, fear of pain, and the desire for happiness. In short, the adequate explanation
of sympathy is to be found rooted back in reverence for life. But let us inquire into this
sympathy more closely. On what foundations does it exist? Hat is its natural
explanation? To answer these questions, let us ask ourselves how we can live the life of
another being in our own lives. In part, we depend upon the knowledge received
through our senses. We see others; we hear them; we may touch them or be touched by
them. And we may then engage in activities to help them. In other words, there is a
natural, physical aspect to the matter which anyone must recognize. But hat compels all
this?
The important thing is that we are part of life. We are born of other lives; we
possess the capacities to bring still other lives into existence. In the same way, if we
look into a microscope we see cell producing cell. So nature compels us to recognize the
fact of mutual dependence, each life necessarily helping the other lives which are linked
to it. IN the very fibers of our being, we bear within ourselves the fact of the solidarity of
life. Our recognition of it expands with thought. Seeing its presence in ourselves, we
realize how closely we are linked with others of our kind. We might like to stop here,
but we cannot. Life demands that we see through to the solidarity of all life which we can
in any degree recognize as having some similarity to the life that is in us.
No doubt you are beginning to ask whether we can seriously mean that such a
privilege extends to other creatures besides man. Are they, too, compelled by ethics? I
cannot say that the evidence is always apparent as it may be in human instances. But
this I can say, that whoever we find the love and sacrificial care of parents for offspring,
we find this ethical power. Indeed, any instance of creatures giving aid to one another
reveals it. Moreover, there are probably more proofs than we might at first think. Let me
tell you of three instances which have been brought to my attention.
The first example was told me by someone from Scotland. It happened in a park
where a flock of wild geese had settled to rest on a pond. One of the flock had been
captured by a gardener, who had clipped its wings before releasing it. When the geese
started to resume their flight, this one tried frantically, but vainly, to lift itself into the air.
The others, observing his struggles, flew about in obvious efforts to encourage him; but it
was no use. Thereupon, the entire flock settled back on the pond and waited, even
though the urge to go on was strong within them. For several days they waited until the
damaged feathers had grown sufficiently to permit the goose to fly. Meanwhile, the
unethical gardener, having been converted by the ethical geese, gladly watched them as
they finally rose together, and all resumed their long flight.
My second example is from my hospital in Lambarene. I have the virtue of
caring for all stray monkeys that come to our gate. If you have had any experience with
large numbers of monkeys, you know why I say it is a virtue thus to take care of all
comers until they are old enough or strong enough to be turned loose, several together, in
the forest--a great occasion for them--and for me. Sometimes there will come to our
monkey colony a wee baby monkey whose mother has been killed, leaving this orphaned
infant. I must find one of the older monkeys to adopt and care for the baby. I never
have any difficulty about it, except to decide which candidate shall be given the
responsibility. Many a time it happens that the seemingly worst-tempered monkeys are
most insistent upon having this sudden burden of foster-parenthood given to them.
My third example was given me by a friend in Hanover, we owned a small café.
He would daily throw out crumbs for the sparrows in the neighborhood. He noticed that
one sparrow was injured, so that it had difficulty getting about. But he was interested to
discover that the other sparrows, apparently by mutual agreement, would leave the
crumbs which lay nearest to their crippled comrade, so that he could get his share,
undisturbed.
So much, then, for this question of the natural origin of the ethic of reverence for
life. It does not need to make any pretensions to high titles or noble-sounding theories to
explain its existence. Quite simply, it has the courage to admit that it comes about
through physiological make-up. It is given physically. But the point is that it arrives at
the noblest spirituality. God does not rest content with commanding ethics. He gives it
to us in our very hearts.
This, then is the nature and origin of ethics. We have dared to say that it is born
of physical life, out of the linking of life with life. It is therefore the result of our
recognizing the solidarity of life which nature gives us. And as it grows more profound,
it teaches us sympathy with all life. Yet, the extremes touch, for this material-born ethic
becomes engraved upon our hearts, and culminates in spiritual union and harmony with
the Creative Will which is in and through all.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SELECTIONS
(English translations when available)
Albert Schweitzer
Christianity and the Religions of the world (l924)
Cultural Philosophy I: The Decay and the Restoration of Civilization (l923)
Deutsche und franzosische Orgelbaukunst und Orgelkunst (l906)
From My African Notebook (l938)
Goethe: Five Studies (l96l)
Indian Thought and Its Development (l935)
J. S. Bach (l9ll)
Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (l924)
More from the Primeval Forest (l93l)
The Mysticism of Paul the apostle (l930)
On the Edge of the Primeval Forest (l920)
Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography (l93l)
Paul and His Interpreters: A Critical History (l9ll)
Peace or Atomic War? (l958)
The Psychiatric Study of Jesus (l9l3)
The Quest of the Historical Jesus:
A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (l906)
CHAPTER EIGHT
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL and Being Human (Jewish Thought)
Who Is Man?
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) was the most significant Jewish thinker
ever to live and work in America. His significance is such that without him no Jewish
thinker of my generation (I was privileged to be his student) and the generations after
could utter the name "God" with intelligent passion in the public square. The world of
religious discourse for Jews in this society and culture has been forever changed by his
life and work. It is now simply impossible to think through the sources of the Jewish
tradition—as opposed to merely describing them—without Heschel being either in the
background or at one’s side.
Nevertheless, despite Heschel’s indelible mark on American Judaism, he did not
come from America but to it. That fact is extremely important to bear in mind, especially
for those who are discovering Heschel’s theological works for the first time. For Heschel
brought to America spiritual and intellectual resources that were not present here,
certainly not during the years of his formation. Unlike most of the European Jewish
scholars who came to these shores, Heschel made the transition from Europe to America
in a way that not only did not dilute or dispel his deep Jewish roots, but that enabled him
to grow from those roots new branches, whose emergence would have been unforeseen in
the world of his youth. This first volume of a projected two - volume biography of
Heschel is now the best historical source for tracing his personal and intellectual
trajectory in the years before he arrived in America as a refugee in 1940.
Before Heschel came to the attention of spiritually earnest Americans, the view of
Judaism held by many Christians had not changed all that much since the composition of
the New Testament. For them, Torah was a dusty, rigorous doctrine without a great deal
to say to those who sought a relationship with God. Of course, religiously observant
Jews had been seeking, and finding, such a relationship through the medium of Torah for
three thousand years. But the Jewish world lacked a spokesperson who could explain
the spiritual core of traditional Judaism to those who had not had a Jewish education from
their youth. Heschel became that spokesman.
Heschel wrote like a poet and, after the publication of his now famous Between
God and Man in l949, he was increasingly seen by American “mainstream” (by which we
mean liberal) Christianity as the single most influential Judaic theologian of our time.
The Reverend Canon John Macquarrie, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity Emeritus of
Christ Church College, Oxford University, has told this author that the very first person
Macquarrie met upon arriving to teach at Union Theological Seminary in New York was
Rabbi Heschel who welcomed him to the community. Macquarrie is, of course,
considered the leading liberal theologian among Protestants in the 2lst century as well as
the last quarter of the 20th century.
The key to understanding Heschel’s roots and his development is to know that he
was born and raised in a unique kind of Jewish royalty: the world of the hasidic
"rebbeim." The hasidim (literally the "pious ones") are part of a mass movement that
began among the Jews of Eastern Europe almost three hundred years ago, and that is still
very much alive today. The movement is characterized by simplicity of life, deep
religious fervor, and messianic expectation. The leader of a hasidic community (and there
are many) is the rebbe. A rebbe is much more than an ordinary rabbi, one traditionally
authorized to render decisions in Jewish law and teach sacred texts. In the hasidic world,
a rebbe is the closest Jews have come to experiencing prophecy after the destruction of
the Second Temple in 70 c.e. The rebbe in very significant ways is the living connection
between his disciples and God; his prayers on behalf of his disciples are considered to
have extraordinary influence with God, and his counsel to his disciples has normative
force. A rebbe is even considered capable of performing miracles. To be a rebbe is to be
part of dynastic royalty—more often than not the office is passed down from father to
son, and the mother often is also from the family of a rebbe.
Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in Warsaw in 1907 to Rabbi Moshe Mordecai
Heschel, known as the "Pelzovina Rebbe," and Rivka Reizel Perlow, the daughter of the
"Noviminsker Rebbe." Although he was not the eldest son in his family, Abraham Joshua
was by virtue of his precociousness seen to be a prodigy, destined to become a rebbe
himself at an early age. He drew upon the most distinguished hasidic ancestry on both
sides, going back directly to Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism in the
early 1700s. Although his father died when he was but eight years old, he was virtually
adopted by his maternal uncle, the Noviminsker Rebbe, and educated under his tutelage.
From earliest childhood, those nearest to him were convinced he was destined for
greatness.
Considering his background, one would have expected Abraham Joshua to have
become a rebbe in Poland and to have continued the family tradition. But his mother’s
strong will opened for him a different way. Like many daughters and sisters of rebbeim,
Rivka Reizel was a powerful personality in her own right, capable of getting what she
wanted—in this case for her gifted son—even in a society where women were to be
modestly deferential to male authority, publicly at least. Rivka Reizel exercised her
power by preventing an early marriage for Abraham Joshua. For dynastic and other
reasons, young men destined to become rebbeim were often married in their early teens.
Had this happened to Abraham Joshua, his future as a rebbe in the ancestral mold would
have been virtually sealed. Although one could ascribe a variety of motives to his
mother’s nonconformist act, Heschel himself saw it as her belief that he was destined to
play a role in his adult life other than that of a traditional hasidic rebbe. Her act allowed
him, he thought, to become a different type of rebbe to a larger, and stranger, world.
When Heschel was eighteen he left for Vilna to spend two years at a Yiddish
gymnasium. This can be seen as an unusual, but important, transition to the wider world
of European culture. Ostensibly, his purpose in going to Vilna was to prepare himself for
entrance to a European university, for up until that time Heschel’s education was
exclusively in talmudic and hasidic texts, although he began writing Yiddish poetry even
earlier. But there is more to it than that.
Although Yiddish was the spoken language of virtually all the Jews of Eastern
Europe, using Yiddish as a literary language in place of classical Hebrew (the language
of Heschel’s very first literary compositions) was a tremendous concession to the
growing secular influences on East European Jews. For many intellectuals of Heschel’s
generation, the move to literary Yiddish was a conscious move away from the tradition of
Judaism and its authority, even though they remained Jewish culturally. For Heschel,
though, it was a vehicle for bringing the spiritual riches of the tradition into a new Jewish
milieu, showing that traditional Judaism could not and should not be surpassed by Jewish
modernity. Heschel’s Vilna sojourn enabled him to move from a basically medieval
Jewish milieu to a modern Jewish one before moving on to a world in which he would
have contacts with assimilated Jews—and with non - Jews. One senses that without this
transitional phase, Heschel might have gone the way of many Jewish intellectuals from
the traditional milieu of Eastern Europe who went straight to the West, which made most
of them too eager to simply interpret Judaism in an essentially non - Jewish way. Vilna
helped make Heschel a modern Jew before he had to become a modern man.
After preparing himself for entrance to a German university, Heschel began his
studies in 1927 at the University of Berlin, at the time one of the most avant - garde
universities in the world. His main subject there was philosophy; and he did not continue
his studies in the Orthodox rabbinical seminary in that city, but became a fellow of a
liberal institution known as die Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, even
though his personal belief and practice could still be described as "orthodox." During his
Berlin years, Heschel availed himself of the wide variety of intellectual and cultural
opportunities of Berlin, and he made many significant personal contacts. Had things not
radically changed in 1933, he would have no doubt become a leading intellectual
presence in Germany, like his older colleague Martin Buber, whose complicated
relationship with Heschel is well described in this book.
After January 1933, with the rise to power of Hitler, Heschel’s life as a Polish Jew
and work as a doctoral candidate at the University of Berlin became more and more
precarious. He struggled to get his dissertation published before German universities
stopped granting degrees to Jewish students, a testimony to Heschel’s determination and,
ultimately, good fortune.
His dissertation was a tour de force. Using the methods of the phenomenological
philosophy he learned at the university, Heschel worked out a highly original view of
prophetic consciousness, seeing the biblical prophets as those who were in "sympathy"
with God’s concern, that is, who "felt with" what Heschel called "divine pathos." This
topic can be traced back, I think, to Heschel’s hasidic roots. The rebbeim that Heschel
knew so intimately in his youth might very well have been the living models for how the
ancient prophets actually functioned. The dissertation shows Heschel’s desire to bring
modern Jews, indeed modern people in general, back to a relationship with the living God
of the Bible. This had been the mission of the founders of Hasidism, Heschel’s own
ancestors, in an earlier era; it was Heschel’s passion. Edward K. Kaplan and Samuel H.
Dresner beautifully evoke Heschel’s faith and his ability to communicate it. God was
never a stranger in his life, as his favorite hasidic rebbe, Rabbi Menahem Mendel of
Kotzk, might have put it.
Heschel, in an attempt to escape Germany and Poland for a new life, wemt first
ito England and finally to America. He would not have made it were it not for the efforts
of Dr. Julian Morgenstern, the president of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, the
Reform Jewish seminary, and a man very different from Heschel in background and
religious outlook. It was Morgenstern who got Heschel a visa to teach in his institution,
saving Heschel from the Holocaust. Many members of his family were not so fortunate.
In his notion of “divine pathos,” by which he meant the presence of God in the
world reaching out to man, irreligious Jews and unchurched gentiles alike discovered that
Scripture might after all be reconciled with, and even supersede, the assumption of
secular modernism. Today “spirituality” is big business, and writers for the enormous
market in religious books know, if they are smart, to include that word or a derivative of
it in the titles of their books. In the l950s, when Heschel did his most important work,
that was not the case. The popularity of his writings can be seen as, for better or worse,
among the first stirrings of the spiritual revival that is now upon us.
In his person, Heschel lived through the principal experiences, intellectual,
religious, and political, that have defined the condition of the Jews in modern times. At
first, receiving little honor or respect within the Jewish community itself for his religious
thought, he achieved renown alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., in Selma; later on, he
became an intimate of the Berrigans and others in the outer reaches of antiwar radicalism.
Oddly, it was his leftist politics that brought him to the attention of many Jews who
otherwise might never have bothered to consider the religious thought of a theological
traditional rabbi. He died before the Boat People and two million Cambodians
slaughtered by the victorious Communists demonstrated the fatuity of his, and others’,
prophetic calling. Today, Heschel’s left-liberal politics have already begun their
inevitable fade in irrelevance. His religious ideas, on the other hand, will ensure his
place as a major figure in modern Jewish and Christian religious history.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was, after all, a direct descendant of Dov Baer,
the Maggid of Mezhirech, Abraham Joshua Heschel of Apt, and Levi Yitzchak of
Berditchev, and the recipient of a classical Jewish education. He had earned his
doctorate from the Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin and taught
Talmud there as well, later succeeding Martin Buber in Frankfort as director of the
Central Organization for Jewish Adult Education. Later, of course, he was to hold
faculty posts at first the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati from l940 and five years
later at the Jewish Theological Seminary as professor of Jewish ethics and philosophy
where he taught until his death in l972.
A prolific writer with a poetic style of presentation, he wrote on Saddiah Gaon,
Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Maimonides, Kabbalah and hasidism. His works attempt to
penetrate and illumine the reality underlying religion, the living dynamic between God
and Man, through the understanding of Jewish text and experience. In this quest,
Heschel recognized the limited value of the tools of the philosopher. While reason may
help structure his inquiry, it is limited in its ability to quantify the aspect of divinity that
is infinite and unquantifiable.
Heschel’s work fits into two categories. He did traditional scholarly study and
interpretation of classic Jewish texts. Additionally, he sought to offer an authentic
theology based on traditional sources that could be applied to the questions and
challenges facing the modern Jew. His approach to the challenges of modernity was
composed not only of the rhetoric of philosophy, but was also brought to action through
his involvement in the civil rights movement and other areas of social activism
mentioned above.
An unlikely candidate for the position he came to fill in American Judaism,
Heschel had to abandon or vastly reconfigure his own heritage: his nationality, his
ethnicity, his modes of thought and expression, even the language he spoke and the
clothes he wore. In the face of adversity, he adapted with remarkable courage. Starting
within what was culturally the most isolated of th Orthodox Judaisms in Poland,
namely, Hasidism, he got himself a secular education while remaining Orthodox in
Luthuania, affiliated himself with Liberal (Reform) Judaism in Germany and then the
Untied States, and ended up at the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary in New
York.
It is hard to point to a more successful story than Heschel’s renewal of an ancient
tradition through the encounter with modern intellect and sensibility. Heschel was no
ordinary Hasid, meaning a mere follower of some holy man. He was no ordinary
anything. As a Hasid he was a prince of the realm, the scion of a leading Hasidic
rabbinical dynasty. And when he went off to Germany he did not merely clip off his
beard and side curls and hook up with Westernized Orthodoxy, as did many other Jews.
Rather, he found his way into the intellectual heart of German Liberal Judaism and taught
at the seminary of its U.S. counterpart, Hebrew Union College, before moving on to the
somewhat more traditional Conservative school in New York. He preached a
philosophical form of Hasidism, much as did Martin Buber. If Billy Graham’s son
became a Roman Catholic cardinal and then preached Evangelical Christianity in the
Vatican, the full peculiarity of Heschel’s life would find its parallel.
In a world ravished by ar, anxiety, materialism and hopelessness, Rabbi Heschel
speaks with an undisputed air of humble authority about the nature of humankind, not of
humanity statically conceived as “is,” but organically conceived as “becoming.”
Heschel was an untiring proponent of a new definition of the human person in an age
which has lost a sense of its true humanity -- and yet, says he, not a new definition at all,
but rather an ancient notion of our relatedness to the divine. The Rabbi plunges into the
turbid history of human depravity. He does not flinch at the reality of Auschwitz and
Hiroshima, nor does he cower in the face of Hitler and The Third Reich. The challenge
fur us, as Heschel grasps it, is to see through, not around, these actualities of human
history for that image of ourselves which can change war into peace, anxiety into
tranquility, whereby materialism is transformed into humanism, and helplessness into
faith.
The freshness and clarity of Heschel’s thought is in stark contrast to the subject he
chooses to address -- not our animality, but our humanity. Heschel would have us know
of the baseness of humankind, but also of our glory. He would have us know our
failures but also our successes and ingenuity. Far from being a Pollyanna, Heschel is a
man willing and able to bear the infirmities of the weak, one who knows firsthand about
the oppressiveness of the wicked, the destructiveness of human debauchery. Having
endured the atrocities of the Nazi holocaust, Heschel speaks of humankind in both our
holiness and our depravity, of our being and our nonbeing. He speaks with a sense of
ultimate meaning whether addressing the depths or the heights of human nature.
In his little classic delivered at Stanford in l968, What Is Man? Heschel begins by
insisting that if we are to think responsibly of ourselves, we must do so in human terms.
And since thought implies questioning, we ask questions in search of knowledge and in
this specific instance, knowledge of the human person. But, says he, before we are the
object of questions in search of self-understanding, we are already a problem to
ourselves. We must be clear, Heschel maintains, between approaching humanity in
terms of a question, that is, the product of curiosity, and in terms of a problem, that is,
which reflects an embarrassment of knowledge. “A question,” explains Heschel, “is due
to knowing too little … (whereas) as problem is often due to knowing too much, to a
conflict between opposing claims of knowledge. Therefore, we must keep in mind the
distinction between the actual problem of humanity, however conceived, and the question
which comes from it.
We are, says Heschel, in the midst of a situation, an immersion in our own
perplexities about ourselves. And too often, we attempt to explain our situation, in
answer to a question, is taken mistakenly to be an accurate portrayal of our actual
situation itself, that is, the problem. And, as we speculate upon our situation mediated
through our questioning, “the danger always exists,” cautions the Rabbi, “of those
moments (of speculation) becoming distorted and even lost in the process of translation
from situation to conceptualization.”
The problem of humanity, which expresses itself in “anguish, in the mental
suffering of humankind,” arises out of the experience of conflict between “existence and
expectation,” that is, the tension between who we are and what is expected of us. And
upon inquiring into our nature, the perplexity begins when we move beyond our
animality (which is all too vividly demonstrated and too exhaustively belabored) to our
humanity. This inquiry is not at the low level of parlor disputes over semantics in
characterizing the human species, but at a much higher level of investigation of a reality,
of a situation. “Being human,” explains Heschel, “is not just a phrase referring to a
concept within the mind, but a situation, a set of conditions, sensibilities, or prerequisites
of man’s special mode of being.”
Heschel is distraught at the profuseness of supposedly scholarly studies of
humanity which do little more than increase the “atomization of our knowledge of man.”
These studies, variously labeled biological, psychological or sociological, not only deter a
legitimate perception of humankind as a living organic whole, but furthermore propagate
a ghastly falsehood that we are categorizable according to disciplinary directives. Just
as the social sciences are unable to disjoin us without destroying us, neither can
philosophy claim only to be describing human nature. A philosophy of humanity,
worthy of the name, is not only a description, but even more importantly, “it is a critique
… (a) disclosure of possibilities as well as exposition of actualities of human being.”
And because our intellectual culture is so prone to a disjointed view of humankind, our
entire civilization suffers from a misinterpretation of humankind ourselves.
“Self-knowledge,” says Heschel, “is part of our being.” We are under an
imperative to grasp our own nature, but with a response to the imperative comes also
perplexity in trying to interpret one’s own being. Not only must we inquire into the
nature of humanity; we must also realize that our nature includes “what he thinks he is.”
In our quest for self-knowledge, not only must a theory speak of our nature; it must also
realize that the theory itself “shapes and affects its subject” directly. IN a real sense,
thinking may make it so! For “hat determines one’s being human is the image one
adopts … The image of man affects the nature of man.”
In a few terse and profoundly provocative words, the Rabbi addresses the foibles
and incongruities of the behavioral sciences as they vainly attempt to facilitate a modern
understanding of who we are as beings. The behavioral sciences strive for feasible and
plausible analogies between human and animal behavior. However, “we must not
forget,” the Rabbi counsels, “that in contrast to animals man is a being who not only
behaves but also reflects about how he behaves.”
Heschel characterizes as
“intellectually stifling” the notion that behavior patterns are matters of fact, pure and
simple. The immodest desire for exactness, that is, “empirical intemperance,” may very
well be a self-defeating process by making us blind to the “fate behind the facts” of
human behavior. The inclination to “reduce all of man to what is explicit, manifest,
observable” grows out of the ease with which behavior patterns are observed and
described with a degree of statistical precision. The grave and detrimental mistake
lurking in this bit of blatant positivistic reductionism, warns Heschel, is the equation of
“man’s essence with his manifestations.” for, as pointed out earlier, “the chief problem
of man is not (so much) his nature, but what he does with his nature.”
Whatever the medium used for gathering facts, facts of personal existence are
never devoid of interpretation, for interpretation presupposes self-comprehension which
involves not only “value judgments, norms, and decisions,” but also results from
“selective attentiveness, reflecting a particular perspective.” My existence as a fact is
know to me only in terms of an interpretation. And, to the extent that I perceive myself
as a problem, such an awareness is rooted in self-understanding operating as “critical
reflection.” And, explains Heschel, “displacement of complacency, questioning the self,
its acts and traits, is the primary motivation of self-understanding.”
As we seek to understand ourselves as situation and problem, we are grasped by
wonder. And since from this wondering about ourselves, countless questions do arise,
“the choice of question determines the trend of the inquiry.” That is, the question chosen
for the asking already presupposes an agenda, a pattern, an origin and direction. “To
know that a question is an answer in disguise,” the Rabbi says, “is a minimum of
wisdom.” The earlier suggestion that humanity is conceived not just in terms of our
nature but in terms of our own expectations, returns to enable us to understand that in
selecting the question to ask, we are implying an answer, that is, “I am what I seek to
know, being and knowing, subject and object, are one.”
In an age “in which it is impossible to think about the human situation without
shame, anguish, and disgust,” it is impossible to be content with the answers already
offered to the question about humankind. Those answers are blown like chaff in the
searing wind of humanity’s bloody history and are as transient as the grassless sands of
the windswept desert. “The sickness of our age,” wails the Rabbi, “is the failure of
conscience rather than the failure of nerve.” We are impotent in the face of injustices;
we sense our moral bankruptcy in the midst of human atrocities. Contrasting the Age of
Englightenment in which the philosopher’s task was the emancipation of humanity from
the shackles of history, Heschel says that “today, our concern seems to be to protect
ourselves against the abyss of the future.” The issue before us is that of the “ontological
connective between human being and being human,” for they “are interdependent …
Being human, I repeat,” says Heschel, “is inherent as a desideratum in human being. It
is not given explicitly but is interpreted by experience.”
Surveying this problem of defining humanity through history, Heschel comes
away disappointed. Whether one looks to the Delphisc maxim to “know thyself,” of
which Plato equated the essence of knowledge, or the naturalist’s belief expressed by
Protagoras, “Man is the measure of all things,” or the animal rational of scholastic
philosophy, or Benjamin Franklin’s homo faber, or Wester La Barre’s the human person
as “no more than (a) heat-producing metabolism with warm blood,” something is surely
missing. No clear thinking person would disagree that each one of these definitions
speaks accurately of ourselves, “but,” asks the Rabbi in exasperation, “is this the whole
truth about man?” Heschel envisions a grand scope in his definitional quest, while
smaller, more cowardly minds seek shelter amidst the particles of poorly constructed
reductionistic systems which crumble under scrutiny.
When we establish a definition of humanity, we are defining ourselves, explains
the Rabbi. Who defines ourselves in terms of a single, isolated characteristic? We do
not seek to understand our animality (blatant as it is) when we strive for a definition of
humankind; rather we long for a definition of our humanity.
“Man is a peculiar
being,” Heschel says, “trying to understand his uniqueness.” And our uniqueness is
understandable only in human terms. To propose a definition of humanity built upon a
definition of an ape plus the faculties of reason and speech is preposterous! “it is
reported,” recollects the rabbi, “that after Plato had defined man to be a two-legged
animal without feathers, Diogenes plucked a cock and brought it into the academy.”
Mocking both La Mettrie’s first explicit statement which characterized man as
“the human machine,” and the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica’s
definition of humankind as “a seeker after the greatest degree of comfort for the least
necessary expenditure of energy,” the Rabbi asks: “Do we still recognize man here?”
We can even admit to the scientific accuracy of the pre-Nazi Germany statement which
pointed out hat “the human body contains a sufficient amount of fat to make seven cakes
of soap, enough iron to make a medium-sized nail, a sufficient amount of phosphorus to
equip two thousand match-heads, enough sulphur to rid one’s self of one’s fleas.” But
the proof of the Rabbi’s contention that a definition of humanity affects our self-image is
corroborated by the actuality of the Nazi extermination camps, viz., that of making soap
of human flesh. All of the foregoing definitions, however scientific, when pretending to
express our essential meaning actually contribute to the “graduate liquidation of man’s
self-understanding.’
And after the liquidation of self-understanding comes
self-extinction.
In referring to what Heschel calls “the eclipse of humanity,” that is, “a new
Skepticism,” he compares the struggles of the great minds of the Middle Ages trying to
“discover proofs for the existence of God” with our efforts at a “proof for the existence of
man.” We have spanned the gamut from calling ourselves “heaven’s masterpiece” to
calling ourselves “Nature’s sole mistake.” And so our contemporary legacy is a
definition of humanity propagated by one of our cultic heroes, Tennessee Williams, who
calls the human person “a beast .. (explaining), the only difference between man and the
other beasts is that man is a beast that knows he will die .. The only honest man is an
unabashed egotist … (explaining), the only difference between man and the other beasts
is that man is a beast that knows he will die … The only honest man is an unabashed
egotist … The specific ends of life are sex and money … So the human comedy is an
outrageous medley of lechery, alcoholism, homosexuality, blasphemy, greed, brutality,
hatred, obscenity.” And so the miserable and pitiful take is told!
Within the question, Who is Man? There are two interrelated questions, says
Heschel. “Specifically, our theme is not only: What is a human being?, but also: What
is being human? Though both dimensions of our situation are crucial to our becoming,
it is conceivable, the Rabbi says, hat we could continue to be without necessarily being
human. Therefore, though both dimensions of our situation are “exposed to danger,”
that is, human being and being human, the latter is more so than the former. “Every age
must in its own distinctive manner seek out ways of rescuing man’s being human from
chaos and extinction.”
The specialness of our being is dependent upon “certain relationships without
which man ceases to be human.” these relationships establish humankind as human
being, and “human being depends upon being human.” To understand the special ness
of our being is to understand these central relationships as modes of being which are
unique to the human person. In asking the question, What is the self? We are inquiring
into the core of these relationships wherein, throughout all the changes and
transformations I am subject to in body, intellect and psyche, nevertheless, there is an
enduring continuity of may self. To seek an understanding of our being-as-relationship
is to be recognize that existence is dynamic, “is anchored in depth.” The Rabbi seeks out
those modes of being which are “fundamentals of human existence,” those relationships
which bespeak the essential in every person’s perception of essential meaning in life.
Beyond all agony and anxiety lies the most important ingredient of self-reflection:
the preciousness of my own existence. In the presence of each person, there is the
realization of something more than simply another specimen of my species, more than a
particular individual with name and personal history. For in the presence of a human
being, we are in the company of “the only entity in nature with which sanctity is
associated.” Though there are sacred objects, holy places, etc., they are made so by
ourselves, or discovered to be so through the agency of human persons. “Human life,”
says Heschel, “is the only type of being we consider intrinsically sacred, the only type of
being we regard as supremely valuable.
The qualitative difference with which we seek persons versus things testifies to
this preciousness of humankind. Thinking about ourselves is not like thinking about a
thing, for with the later I “think what I believe, but with the former, ‘I “think what I am.”
when inspecting human from “without” I encounter our “being there,” but from “within,”
“I feel my own being, here-and-now.” Therefore, the Rabbi reasons, though “it is
possible and legitimate to ponder being in general … it is futile and impossible to ponder
human being in general … (for) there is only one way of comprehending man’s being
there,” continues Heschel, “and that is by way of inspecting my own being.”
Heschel is concerned that we discover our own special preciousness and our own
personal distinctiveness, that is, “how to actualize, how to concretize the quiet eminence
of my being,” while avoiding the dangers of a pagan anthropocentrism. “When man
becomes his own idol,” cautions the Rabbi, “the tablets are broken.” This danger, says
Heschel, is the under-lying cause of the “exaggerated anxiety about death,” for such
idolatry of man leads him to presumptuously lay claim “to go on living without dying.”
And yet, we must not flee “to go on living without dying.” Still further, we must not flee
the destiny of his own being, for as the Scriptures teach: “Man is obliged to say: It is
for my sake that the world was created.” We must, therefore, assert ourselves in our
own time and place for there is a task which we alone can carry out, and a task of such
importance “that is fulfillment may epitomize the meaning of all humanity.”
It is the uniqueness of the human person that puzzles our mind Heschel points out.
As with all other animals, we are biologically easy to define and classify. But with us,
that which characterizes us most accurately are just those features which defy
classification. “Generalization,” says Heschel, “by means of which theories evolve, fails
in trying to understand man.” And every attempt to generalize upon our nature ends in
pitiful failure. Though trite-sounding, yet true, “No two human beings are alike.” Each
person is in a real sense an original without copy. Being human is, therefore, a
“novelty,” not common-place. And the quality of being human “consists of outbursts of
singularity.” To overlook our singularity, personal distinctiveness and individual
idiosyncrasies is to disregard that which is most genuinely human about ourselves.
Defying the behaviorist’s “statistical man,” Rabbi Heschel lashes out in these especially
cogent words: “No man is an average man. The ordinary, typical man, the common
run undistinguished either by his superiority or by his inferiority, is the homunculus of
statistics. In real life there is no ordinary, undistinguished man, unless man resigns
himself to be drowned in indifference and commonness. Spiritual suicide is within
everybody’s reach.”
It may be feasible to describe what the human species is; it is beyond our power to
conceive what the human species is able to be. Whereas animal life is a straight path,
the life of a person, the inner life, is a maze through which and within which man seeks,
discovers, creates. The life of an animal is fixed, and what it can be is determined at
birth. With the human person, there is no fixedness or determinedness; there is prospect,
expectation, opportunity. “One thing that set man apart from animals,” observes
Heschel, “is a boundless, unpredictable capacity for the development of an inner
universe.” That which is apparent in the individual person is only the surface of that
which is possible. And, since our “unpredictable capacity for the development of an
inner universe” is that which most distinguishes us on the earth, we are forbidden to
characterize ourselves simply according to what one appears to be at any given moment.
“Indeed,” the Rabbi concludes, “the enigma of human being is not in what he is but in
what he is able to be.”
“It is a fatal illusion to assume that to be human is a fact given with human being
rather than a goal and an achievement.” Heschel points out that the human person is a
work of God to-be-completed, not a completed masterpiece. To seek the definitive
edition of the human species is to misconceive the nature of our being. To seek the
finality of humanity is to bypass our humanity, for finality and humanity explains
Heschel, “seem to be mutually exclusive.” Whereas with animal life, one can
legitimately speak of the final state of being and behavior; with humankind neither our
being nor our behavior are fixed. “To animals the world is what it is,” says Heschel, “to
man (however), this is a world in the making, and being human means being on the way,
striving, waiting, hoping.” And just because human nature is never really final, we are
never really safe from the dangers of losing or distorting our being. “Our being human,”
the Rabbi cautions, “is always on trial, full of risk, precarious.”
“Life,” says Heschel, “lived as an event is a drama. Life reduced to a process
becomes vegetation.” The potentiality of our being is not limited to an established
sequence of causes and effects, but rather manifests its power in our capacity to create, to
anticipate, to plan. We do not confront our being as a sheer block of reality, an already
established actuality. Our being is “a moment that happens.” We are not merely acted
upon; we are the initiator, we decide, we intend, we challenge. “The self that I am, the
elf that I come upon,” explains Heschel, “has the ability to combine a variety of functions
and intentions in order to bring about a result, the meaning or value of what transcends
my own existence.”
In attempting to understand the nature of being human, we must continually
differentiate process from event. For process follows a given path, whereas event
pioneers on the frontier of possibility; process happens regularly, whereas event occurs
spontaneously and without anticipation. Process takes place in the physical world, e.g.,
climatic changes and earthquakes; events occur in the “inner world of man’s being,” e.g.,
Beethoven’s music and Shakespeare’s literature. That which is human about man dwells
within events, that which is animal within process. “Being human,” the Rabi says, “is
not a solid structure or a string of predictable facts, but an incalculable series of moments
and acts.”
“Human solidarity,” therefore, says Heschel, “is not the product of being human;
being human is the product of human solidarity. Indeed, even the most personal
concern, the search for meaning, is utterly meaningless as a pursuit of personal
salvation.” Such modes of being human as “self-sufficiency, independence, the capacity
to stand along, to differ, to resist, to defy,” these are all valuable to humankind. “There
is no dignity,” the Rabbi contends, “without the ability to stand alone.” As with Moses
at the west bank of the Red Sea, we must stand still and withdraw from the tumult if we
would truly hear. Heschel calls solitude a period of “cure and recovery,” a time
necessary as a protest against “the incursions and the false alarms of society’s hysteria.”
But, and in spite of the need for solitude, we must understand that there is never really a
time when humanity is completely alone. As with the pillar saints of the third century in
the Syrian desert, even in my solitary seclusion, I necessarily share life with my
contemporaries -- our tears, our laughter, our pain, our joy are ours together. “Genuine
solitude,” says Heschel, “is not discarding but distilling humanity,” for a genuine quest
for solitude is actually a searching for “genuine solidarity.” Humanity is not other than
“derived from, attended to, and directed to” the being of our own community.
Therefore, “for man to be,” counsels the Rabi, “means to be with other human beings.”
As our being is realize in relationships, so our existence is coextensive with community.
“How shall I ever repay to the Lord all the bounty He has given to me?” (Psalm
116:12) is a genuine question for all humankind. “The dignity of human existence is the
power of reciprocity,” says Rabbi Heschel. The growth of the individual from infancy
to maturity is reflected in the gradual shift in our experience from “obtaining and seizing”
to “giving and providing.” this, Heschel calls “primary data” in the make-up of life.
Life is a constant receiving, life itself is a gift, and even a single breath of air Heschel
calls an “inhalation of grace.” The reciprocity of life is discovered through maturity,
whereby the “fullness of existence” is achieved “by what we offer in return.” Contrary
to our blind notions of personal freedom, “for every new insight we must pay a new
debt.” And, since knowledge is really a debt (not private property), we must work at
balancing power and mercy, truth and generosity. Reciprocity is co-terminus with being
a person, and therefore, says Heschel, “the degree to which one is sensitive to other
people’s suffering, to other men’s humanity, is the index of one’s own humanity.”
Consequently and finally, the great tension in our being is not between existence
and essence, but rather between existence and performance. The distinguishing mark of
humanity is that our problem is not “to be, or not to be,” but rather “how to be and how
not to be.”
“Sanctity of human life,” says Heschel, “is not something we know conceptually,
established on the basis of premises; it is an un-derived insight.” The sanctity of life is
not a creation of humankind, but is a discovery of our relationship to God. “Life,”
Heschel says, “is something I am,” and the discovery of life’s sanctity comes when oen
ponders the “mystery of another person’s life.” A primordial characteristic of all
persons in all times and places, indeed, a truly universal given, is our “sensitivity to the
sacred.” The sacred is beyond description in terms of goodness, for example. Whereas
the beauty of an object is inherent in the object, the “sanctity of a sacred object
transcends the object.” Beauty is intrinsic to a thing, sanctity is imposed from above.
Though in appearance, there is a distinction between the sacred and the profane,
nevertheless, “reality embraces the actually sacred and the potentially sacred.” And
though thee are degrees of sanctity, they all share one common aspect, namely, ultimate
preciousness. “To sense the sacred,” says the Rabbi, “is to sense what is dear to God.”
Having viewed the questions, Who is Man? From the two underlying questions of
What Is Being Human? And, What Is Human Being?, we must develop our answer to the
latter question in as responsible a way as we have the former, that is, What is being
human? Answered by way of a close examination of eight modes of being. Now, the
question fo hat is human being? must be addressed by way of two underlying themes
suggested in the question, I.e., first, What is being?, and second, What is the meaning of
human being? “The first theme,” suggests Heschel, “dawns upon us in moments of
radical amazement, when all answers, words, categories are suddenly disclosed to be a
veneer, and the mystery of being strikes us as a problem that lurks behind many other
problems.” The confirmation with being occurs in the primordial regions of human
experience.
And yet, being is never devoid of the human -- stark being is unknown to the
human person. And being which is known to humankind, I.e., human being, goes
beyond the grasp of self-understanding -- to understand the self, we must look beyond the
self to that which is greater than self. We must look beyond being, our being, to
meaning. “Human being is never sheer being,” says the Rabbi, “it is always involved in
meaning.” For us to speak of being is for us to speak of our own being, human being,
and our being is known to us as meaning. “The dimension of meaning,” Heschel argues,
“is as indigenous to his being human as the dimension of space is to stars and stones.” it
is our nature that our being is charged with the responsibility to actualize meaning. “The
dimension of meaning,” Heschel argues, “is as indigenous to his being human as the
dimension of space is to stars an stones.” It is our nature that our being is charged with
the responsibility to actualize meaning. However, neither being nor meaning are static,
and just as we are continually challenged to actualize our own being, so are we ever
“coming into meaning or betraying it.”
The ordering of existence results from our unceasing effort to identify our
meaning as person and human being. The perpetual search is to answer satisfactorily
once and for all the nagging question, What is the meaning of my being? Humankind
is not so obsessed with finding being or losing it in non-being. NO, our obsession is
with meaning. “Mental anguish,” explains the Rabbi, “is occasioned more by the
experience or fear of meaningless being, of meaningless events, than by the mystery of
being, by the absence of being, or by the fear of non-being.” And though the problem of
being and the problem of meaning are necessarily interrelated, they are not coextensive.
For the problem of being is our concern for our own existence, our being human as
human being, whereas the problem of meaning concerns “what man means in terms
larger than himself, being in terms of meaning.”
Humanity is not in search of an understanding of who we are in terms of our own
immediate existence.
We seek not a knowledgeable grasp of our existential
here-and-nowness. Rather, from out of the experience of our being, I.e., our existential
presence, we seek an underlying structure of meaning. And where anguish exists in the
experience of being human, I.e., the existential awareness of one’s own being, such
anguish is demonstrative of our ever-present “fear of finding himself locked out of the
order of ultimate meaning.” Wherever and whenever we can, we flee such fear, we seek
shelter from meaninglessness. And, Heschel says, when humankind comes face to face
with “a world full of anguish, of the incoherence of existence,” such an encounter
becomes a perpetual “nightmare.”
The existentialists of the Sartrean variety are wrong when they characterize as
mature those who accept this anguish and thus wallow in life’s meaninglessness.
Humanity has time and time again demonstrated that there is a stake involved in being
human. And that stake, claims Heschel, is in “the meaning of life.” For every
achievement of humankind, for every deed done for good, for every stride made towards
justice, for every stone laid in the foundation of human equality, humanity “raises a claim
to meaning.” This meaning which legitimates our being is not a creation but a
discovery; we do not make it as we do a house; we find it as we do a treasure. This
meaning is not reducible to “a material relation and grasped by the sense organs.” The
behavior lists labor in vain to explain it away as this or that neurotic manifestation, as do
naturalists who try to account for it in terms of bio-chemical activities in the brain.
“Imbedded in the mind is a certainty that the state of existence and the state of meaning
stand in a relation to each other, that life is accessible in terms of meaning. The will to
meaning and the certainty of the legitimacy of our striving to ascertain it are as
intrinsically human as the will to live and the certainty of being alive.”
The meaning which we are in search of is not a meaning which derives from
humankind, a meaning generated by good will or diligent internal probing. The task of
philosophy itself, when cast in the classical tradition, is understood to be “what man dares
to do with his ultimate surmise of the meaning of existence.” That meaning which will
satisfy the special search, which will pacify that most primal of human urging to grasp
our true meaning, must come from above us. Our search for “significant being” will end
only in the transcendent wherein our ultimate relevance is discovered. With Freud,
many self-claimed mature moderns are wont to cast aside the search for meaning as so
much infantile play, and choose rather to define humanity in terms of so many biological
drives and psychological needs, and to define human happiness in terms of the satisfying
of such needs and drives.
The Rabbi, on the other hand, does not accept such a position so quickly taken
and easily kept. After satisfaction, what? asks Heschel. Happiness does not so easily
pacify. Rather, he says, happiness worth the having “may be defined as the certainty of
being needed,” and for those who to the question, And who needs man? Quickly answer
“society,” Heschel follows by asking, And who needs society? But this will not do!
“To say that life could consist of care for others, of incessant service to the world,”
counsels the Rabbi, “would be a vulgar boast. What we are able to bestow upon others
is usually less and rarely more than a tithe.” We cannot establish our own meaning in
terms of ourselves and our own existential being, nor upon society, for both I individually
and we socially are in need of an ultimate meaning which transcends our being.
Meaning and human being are inseparable. Humanity is a being in search of
“significant being,” I.e., of ultimate meaning of existence. But by connecting human
being and ultimate meaning with the question of “And who needs man?,” we are
suggesting that no only are we “part of a whole … but (we are) an answer to a question,
the satisfaction of a need.” By phrasing the relationship of the human person to meaning
in this way, Heschel would have us to understand that this unceasing quest for the
ultimate relevance of being is in “response to a required ness of existence.” It
demonstrates a discovery that we are not precious only to ourselves in human terms but
are precious in terms of ultimate meaning. It is likewise an experiential realization that,
no matter how hard we may try, “Man cannot prove transcendent meaning” because “he
is a manifestation of transcendent meaning.”
The nature of our being in the context of meaning is one of relationship -- “man is
a being involved in a relationship to meaning.” The only context within which we can
be understood is that of meaning, and since “meaning is a primary category not reducible
to being as such,” we must grasp our humanity by grasping our relationship to meaning.
“Man is in need of meaning,” says Heschel, “but if ultimate meaning is not in need of
man, and he cannot relate himself to it, then ultimate meaning is meaningless to him.”
that relationship which authenticates human being in search of meaning is a relationship
of reciprocity. Heschel points to a crucial distinction between the Greek formulation of
the search for meaning as “man in search of a thought,” and the Hebrew formulation as
“God’s thought (or concern) in search of man.” Biblical thought centered upon “man’s
being known by God” and the “awareness of God’s interest in man” rather than “man’s
knowledge of God.”
As humankind comes to know that our being has meaning of ultimate significance
only in relationship to God, we come to value life as partnership between ourselves and
God. “The tragedy of modern man,” the Rabbi explains, “is that he thinks alone.” The
biblical person understands that “beyond all mystery is meaning.” The mistake which
has produced anxiety and tragedy in modern times is our failure to perceive the meaning
beyond the mystery. The modern person flees from meaning by fleeing from mystery.
“The mystery is not a synonym for the unknown,” says Heschel, “but rather a term for a
meaning which stands in relation to God.” And the difference between finite meaning
and transcendent meaning is that the former has beauty but no grandeur, it pleases but
offers no redemption, is thinkable and not beyond comprehension. When we come to
know transcendent meaning, our being takes on new significance -- “Humanization is
articulation of meaning inherent in being.”
When we come to this discovery of meaning which transcends and offers itself to
our own being, we sense a personal debt. “We come close to an understanding of
religion,” says Heschel, “by defining one of its roots as a sense of personal
indebtedness.” Humanity become anxiety-ridden when we do not know what is
expected of us, and when we accept the debt which comes with the discovery of meaning,
we accept what Heschel calls the “prerequisite of sanity.” furthermore, says Heschel,
“the reality of being human depends upon man’s sense of indebtedness being a response
to transcendent required ness. Without such awareness man is spiritually inane, neither
creative nor responsible.” Acceptance of one’s debt in a world does not own is the first
step in mature responsibility towards Divine-Human reciprocity. Humankind stands
between the earth and heaven as that concrete instancing in the here-and-now of
transcendent meaning.
“We” is more than what “we” is to ourselves. In our reason we may be limited,
in our will we may be wicked, yet we stand in a relation to God which we may betray but
not sever and which constitutes the essential meaning of our life. Humanity is the knot
in which heaven and earth are interlaced.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abraham Joshua Herschel (l907-l972)
Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (l95l)
God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (l955)
Man’s Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism (l954)
The Prophets (l962)
Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (l965)
The Earth is the Lord’s and the Sabbath (l966)
Who Is Man? (l968)
A Passion for Truth (l973)
CHAPTER NINE
JEAN PIAGET and the Development of Mind (Psychology)
Moral Judgment in Children
Jean Piaget was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland, on August 9, l986. He died in
Geneva on September l6, l980. He was the oldest child of Arthur Piaget, professor of
medieval literature at the university, and of Rebecca Jackson who was, according to
Piaget, intelligent and energetic but a bit neurotic (an impression from early childhood
which he says led to his early interest in psychology, but “away from pathology.”)
The oldest child, he was quite independent and took an early interest in nature, especially
in collecting shells. His first published paper as a youngster, at age 11, while he was a
pupil at Neuchatel Latin high school, was a short one page paper on an albino sparrow.
This short paper is generally considered as the start of a brilliant scientific career made of
over sixty books and several hundred articles.
He began publishing in earnest in high school on his favorite subject, mollusks.
He was particularly pleased to get a part time job with the director of Neuchatel’s
Museum of Natural History. His work became well known among European students of
mollusks, who assumed he was an adult. All this early experience with science kept him
away, he says, from “the demon of philosophy.” Later in his adolescence, however, he
faced a bit of a crisis of faith: Encouraged by his mother to attend religious instruction,
he found religious argument childish. Studying various philosophers and the application
of logic, he dedicated himself to finding a “biological explanation of knowledge.”
Ultimately, philosophy failed to assist him in his search, so he turned to psychology and
the sciences.
After high school graduation, he went on to the local university where his father
taught. Constantly studying and writing, he became sickly, and had to retire to the
mountains for a year to recuperate. When he returned to the University, he decided he
would write down his personal philosophy. A fundamental point became a centerpiece
for his entire life’s work. He wrote: “In all fields of life (organic, mental, social) there
exist ‘totalities’ qualitatively distinct from their parts and imposing on them an
organization.” This principle forms the basis of his structuralist philosophy, as it would
for the Gestaltists, Systems Theorists, and many others.
Piaget studied the natural sciences at the University of Neuchatel where he
obtained a Ph.D. He worked for a year at psychology labs in Zurich and at Bleuler’s
famous psychiatric clinic. At this time, he was introduced to the works of Freud, Jung,
and others and, in l9l9, he taught psychology and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris.
During this period, he published two philosophical essays which he considered as
“adolescent work” but were important for the general orientation of his thinking.
After a semester spent at the University of Zurich where he developed an interest
for psychoanalysis, he left Switzerland for France. He spent one year working at the
Ecole de la rue de la Grange-aux-Belles, a boys’ institution created by Alfred Binet and
then directed by De Simon who had developed with Binet a test for the measurement of
intelligence. There, Piaget standardized Burt’s test of intelligence and he did his first
experimental studies on the growing mind of the young. However, Piaget didn’t care for
the “right-or-wrong” style of the intelligent tests and started interviewing his subjects,
using the psychiatric interviewing techniques he had learned the year before. In other
words, he began asking how children reasoned.
At about this time, his first real scholarly article on the psychology of intelligence
was published in the Journal de Psychologie. In the same year, he accepted a position at
the Institute J. J. Rousseau in Geneva. Here he began with his students to research the
reasoning of elementary school children. This research became his first five books on
child psychology. Although he considered this work highly preliminary, he was
surprised by the strong positive public reaction to his work.
In l92l, Piaget and Valentine Chatenay were married. The couple had three
children, Jacqueline (l925), Lucienne (l927) and Laurent (l93l) whose intellectual
development from infancy to language was studied by Piaget. Successively or
simultaneously, Piaget occupied several chairs in the fields of psychology, sociology, and
history of science at Neuchatel from l925 to l929; history of scientific thinking at the
University of Geneva from l929 to l939; the International Bureau of Education from l929
to l967; psychology and sociology at the University of Lausanne from l938 to l95l;
sociology at Geneva from l939 to l952, then genetic and experimental psychology from
l940 to l97l.
Piaget was, reportedly, the only Swiss to be invited at the Sorbonne from l952 to
l963. In l955, he created and directed until his death the International Center for Genetic
Epistemology. Having been made professor at the Sorbonne in l952, three years later, he
crated the International Center for Genetic Epistemology, of which he served as Director
the rest of his life. And, in l956, he created the School of Sciences at the University of
Geneva.
Key appointments, amidst this plethora of teaching engagements, included his
l929 appointment as the director of the Bureau International Office de l’Educatino, in
collaboration with UNESCO. He also began large scale research with A. Szeminska, E.
Meyer, and especially Barbel Inhelder, who would become his major collaborator.
Piaget, it should be noted, was particularly influential in bringing women into
experimental psychology. Some of this work, however, would not reach the world
outside of Switzerland until after World War II. Another distinguished appointment
came in l940 when he became chair of experimental Psychology, Director of the
psychology laboratory, and President of the Swiss Society of Psychology. In l942, he
gave a series of lectures at the college de France, during the Nazi occupation of France.
These lectures became his world acclaimed book, The Psychology of Intelligence.
Then, at the end of the war, he was named President of the Swiss Commission of
UNESCO.
His researches in developmental psychology and genetic epistemology had one
unique goal: how does knowledge grow? His answer is that the growth of knowledge
is a progressive construction of logically embedded structures superseding one another by
a process of inclusion of lower less powerful logical means into higher and more
powerful ones up to adulthood. Therefore, children’s logic and modes of thinking are
initially entirely different from those of adults. Piaget is known all over the world and
he is still an inspiration in fields like psychology, sociology, education, and economics as
witnessed in the annual catalogues of the Jean Piaget Archives. He was awarded
numerous scholarly prizes throughout his academic career including the Erasmus Prize in
l972 as well as being co-director of the Department of Education at UNESCO.
Honorary degrees Piaget received from such distinguished institutions as the Sorbonne in
Paris (l946), the University of Brussels (l949), the University of Brazil (l949), and
Harvard University (l936).
Although Piaget is usually considered a psychologist working in the field of child
thought, his interests have always been, broadly speaking, philosophical. As a young
man he read widely in philosophy, and while in Paris he studied with Andre Lalande and
Leon Brunschvicg. Even his earliest mature work, which appeared between l925 and
l932, dealt with such topics as thought, casualty, moral judgment, and the development of
language. His logical and epistemological interests show themselves particularly in his
later studies, starting about l937.
By means of simple, although highly ingenious experiments, Piaget set out to
make a detailed investigation of the way in which logical, mathematical, and physical
concepts develop in the individual. He thus studied experimentally many of the
concepts and principles that philosophers had discussed in the past on a purely a prior
level. Piaget would say that what he was really doing in this work was re-examining the
whole question of the Kantian categories. This re-examination formed for him the basis
of a new discipline that he called “genetic epistemology.”
Piaget began his career as a biologist -- specifically, a malacologist! But he
interest in science and the history of science soon overtook his interest in snails and
claims. As he developed deeper into the thought-processes of doing science, he became
interested in the nature of thought itself, especially in the development of thinking.
Finding relatively little work done in the area, he had the opportunity to give it a label
and, as mentioned above, he labeled it “genetic epistemology,” meaning “the study of the
development of knowledge.”
Noticing, for example, that an infant knows how to grab his favorite rattle and
thrust it into his mouth, Piaget registered the point that the baby had the schema of
grabbing and thrusting down pat. This, of course, works poorly with the new object, at
first. So the scheme must necessarily adapt to each new object as it is encountered and
experienced by the baby. Perhaps, in this example, Piaget suggests that “squeeze and
drool” might be an appropriate title for the exercise. This is called by him
“accommodation,” specifically accommodating an old scheme with a new object.
Assimilation and accommodation are the two sides of “adaptation,” Piaget’s term
for what most psychologists would simply call learning.
Piaget saw adaptation,
however, as a good deal broader than the kind of learning that behaviorists in the U.S.
were talking about. He saw it as a fundamentally biological process. Even one’s grip
has to accommodate to a stone, while clay is assimilated into our grip. All living things
adapt, even without a nervous system or brain.
Assimilation and accommodation work like pendulum swings at advancing our
understanding of the world and our competency in it. According to Piaget, they are
directed at a balance between the structure of the mind and the environment, at a certain
congruency between the two, that would indicate that you have a good (or at least
good-enough) model of the universe. This ideal state Piaget called “equilibrium.” As
he he continued his investigation of children, he noted that there were periods where
assimilation dominated, periods where accommodation dominated, and periods of
relative equilibrium, and that these periods were similar among all the children he looked
at in their nature and their timing. And so he developed the idea of “stages” of cognitive
development. These constitute a lasting contribution to psychology.
In a series of studies Piaget examined in some detail the development not only of
abstract concepts such as classes, relations, and numbers but also of physical concepts
like space, time, speed, atomism, conservation, and chance, all of which he has regarded
as constructed from our behavioral activities. In starting from the facts of observable
child behavior rather than from adult introspections (or sensations), Piaget has differed
from thinkers like Ernst Mach, Karl Pearson, and Bertrand Russell by the importance he
attaches to the part played by overt activities in building up the conceptual machinery of
thought. Throughout his work Piaget has placed considerable emphasis on the pragmatic
aspect of logical and mathematical operations, as, for example, the way we actually
handle symbols and formulas From this point of view Piaget’s account bears a marked
resemblance to the views of Jules Henri Poincare and the intuitionist; the construction of
number, for example, has for Piaget a definite psychological aspects.
Piaget believes that logical and mathematical notions first show themselves as
overt activities on the part of the child and only at a later stage take on a conceptual
character. They are to be conceived as internationalized actions in which things are
replaced by sings, and concrete actions by operations on these signs. Rational activity
occurs in the child when his trial-and-error groupings attain a definite pattern of order
that may be inverted in thought. At this rational stage, if the child makes a mistake in
performing a task, he is able to return to his starting point. This characteristic of thought
that enables us to reverse a train of ideas or actions Piaget calls “reversibility.” It is the
basis of our ability to perform mental experiments, as well as the psychological
foundation of the deductive process.
He contends that the more elementary forms of logical behavior in which the
child compares, distinguishes, and orders the objects around him are largely concerned
with the creation of concrete classificatory and relational systems. It is from these
systems that we develop our later, more abstract, logical and mathematical modes of
thinking. Piaget would rather not speak of the intuition of number before the child has
developed logical concepts of invariance and has thereby grasped the operation of
reversibility. The transition to number occurs in the child just when his activities of
classifying and ordering objects take on the form of simple logical systems. What
emerges from Piaget’s experimental researches is that numerical concepts in their
psychological development are ultimately based on simple logical notions. There is thus
some resemblance between the way number comes to be constructed in a child’s thought
and the attempt on a purely normative plane by Russell and others to define number in
logical terms.
Among the other concepts studied by Piaget, those of time and space are of
particular philosophical relevance. Kant, for example, believed that these concepts were
objects of an a priori intuition. Piaget, however, has found that the abstract notion of
time arises at a relatively late stage; at first time is connected with space. For example,
the child first confuses the notion of age with that of height or other visible signs of age.
As far as space is concerned, his ability to make spatial judgments is initially fairly
rudimentary. He can differentiate between open and closed figures but has difficulty in
distinguishing one shape from another. He is also incapable of imaging a perspective
other than his own. Only at a later stage is he able to take account of several relations at
once (before and behind, right and left) and to coordinate them into a general system of
perspectives.
For Piaget learning plays an important part not only in the elaboration of
intellectual structures but also in the field of perception. It is this that distinguishes his
view from that of the Gestalt psychologists. For the latter, the perceptual constancies of
shape and size belong directly to the perceived objects and are independent of age and
ability. For Piaget, however, perception of figures is built up as a result of a series of
random eye and other muscular movements, which are gradually corrected. The young
child does not attribute a constant size or even identity to the objects around him. Piaget
believes that the logical forms of activity that emerge in child behavior, namely
classifying, relating, and so forth, arise as a result of his trial-and-error activities.
Piaget’s views on perception have certain philosophical implications. In the past,
he points out, philosophers have assumed a definite psychology of perception in their
epistemologies. A good example of this is Locke’s sensationalism, in which it is
assumed (l) that empirical facts are passively given in perception, and (2) that they
correspond to a certain range of linguistic expressions that designate them. For Piaget,
however, even the notion of an object, one of the simplest forms of perceptual invariants,
requires a definite learning process. Before the child is able to use linguistic expressions
to refer unequivocally to definite objects, he must first have developed concrete
classificatory and relational activities. Even the simple statement, “This is green,”
implies the acquisitions of such skills and hence cannot be regarded as a reference to a
simple perceptual datum. When we talk intelligently of green, this presupposes that we
have learned to classify objects according to their color and to differentiate one color
from another.
Piaget’s work might be dismissed as philosophically irrelevant by philosophers of
a Platonic turn of mind. It might be said that philosophical discussions of conceptual
thinking are largely concerned with questions of validity and not with questions of origin.
Piaget does not deny that logical notions as they appear in purely formal discussions
differ from those occurring in ordinary thought. However, he asserts (l) that even our
simpler kinds of intellectual performance have a logical character about them, which we
can study formally, and (2) that when the logician constructs logical systems, performs
deductions, tests for validity, and so on, his logical behavior can be studied in the same
direct way as that of the child or unsophisticated adult. Piaget also believes that it may
be illuminating to compare the simpler logical structures inherent in our behavior with
the purely formal systems constructed by the logician, as we may find some continuity
between them.
Early work done by Piaget’s covered a wide range of topics including verbal
communication, concepts of physical causality, and moral judgment and behavior. This
last topic will be considered here. Piaget begins his study of moral behavior and
judgment with a detailed consideration of children’s games of marbles. He describes
how children conceive of the game and follow its rules. At first glance it may seem
quite unusual to study morality by means of the apparently trivial game of marbles. Our
intuitive definition of morality probably realties to such matters as lying and stealing, and
not to mere games. However, according to Piaget, the essential aspect of morality is the
tendency to accept and follow a system of rules which usually regulate interpersonal
behavior. Our society has gradually developed norms which control how an individual
treats others, behaves toward property, and so on, and these regulations, supplemented by
the individual’s own conceptions, constitute the moral system.
On closer inspection it would seem as if the rules governing the game of marbles
fulfill all the defining conditions of a moral system. The rules control how individuals
behave toward one another in terms of the actions which comprise the game; they
determine individual and property rights; and they are a cultural product which has been
passed down from generation to generation. The game of marbles also has a unique
advantage from the point of view of child psychology. The rules have been developed
largely by children, and the game is played almost exclusively by children. Therefore,
the child’s conception of the game and his playing of it reflect the working of his own
mind and is subject to little adult influence. Unlike rules dealing with lying or stealing,
marbles is the child’s game, not the adult’s. If we question the child about the game,
his answers do not simply parrot the teachings of adults, but give a genuine indication of
his own thought.
But, is not the game just lay, something that is not at all taken seriously, and that
therefore bears no relation to morality which is a grave matter? We may answer this
criticism by pointing out that the child does take the game seriously. While a game has
its “fun” aspects, if one observes children playing, one realizes that they are deeply
engrossed in their activities, consider the other players’ actions of some importance, and
are not entirely disinterested in the outcome. Is the adult who “plays” the stock market
very different?
To study children’s behavior in the game of marbles, Piaget first acquired a
thorough knowledge of the rules of the game. Then he asked about 20 boys, ranging
from 4 to l2 or l3 years of age, to show him how to play. (In Switzerland the game of
marbles is played exclusively by boys.) In the course of his game with the child, Piaget
tried to appear as ignorant as possible about the rules so that the child would feel that he
had to explain them. In this way Piaget was able to determine both whether the child
understood the rules, and, if so, whether he followed them. Sometimes Piaget observed
pairs of children, particularly younger ones, play the game without him. Piaget also
questioned the child about the nature of the rules. He was interested, for example, in
whether the child believed that the rules might be changed and in the child’s conception
of the origin of rules.
In observing children at play, Piaget noted differences in how younger and older
children conceived of the rules for simple games other than marbles. Younger children,
aged about six to nine, tended to use what Piaget called heteronymous morality, or a
“morality of constraint.” In this way of thinking, children regarded the rules of a game
as sacred and unchangeable, yet they were very lax about actually following the rules.
Infractions were judged according to the amount of objective damage that a child did,
regardless of whether the damage was accidental or purposeful. Knocking all the other
children’s marbles out of the playing circle was worse than knocking only one marble
out, for example, whether or not the child had meant to do so. Yet children at this age
would often commit precisely such a “sin” whenever they could get away with it in spite
of judging it rather harshly.
By the later years of elementary school (around ages nine to twelve), however,
children shifted toward what Piaget came to call “autonomous morality,” or a “morality
of cooperation.” In this more mature philosophy, children began to take their peers’
desires and intentions into account in evaluating their actions. Now, spoiling the entire
circle of marbles might be judged less harshly if it happened accidentally, and moving
just one marble illegally might e judged ore harshly if the child moved it on purpose. At
the same time, the children Piaget observed felt that they cold change the rules if they
wanted to, through group discussion an decision; the rules were no longer fixed or sacred.
Perhaps as a result, children at the later stage adhered to the rules more carefully, because
they felt more responsible for creating them. The very awesomeness of rules may have
prevented younger children from taking responsibility for following them.
Piaget argued that children in the middle years shifted from heteronymous to
autonomous morality because of repeated encounters in playing with peers. Inevitably,
disagreements would arise, and the conflicts would stimulate children to take other
viewpoints into account in laying games with rules. Over the long run, according to
Piaget, children therefore become more democratic -- more willing to cooperate in
changing rules, on the one hand, and more willing to follow the rules, on the other.
Unfortunately, as plausible as this process sounds, very little research evidence actually
supports it. Children who must deal repeated with peers, that is, do not necessarily
become more democratic over the long run. But Piaget is right about the sequencing of
the two types of morality: heteronymous morality does appear more often in younger
children, and autonomous morality does appear more in older ones.
Before proceeding with a more detailed analysis of Piaget’s notion of moral
behavior in children, let us quickly recite the stages of cognitive development upon which
Piaget spent most of his research life developing and studying and which, according to
the leading lights of today, constitute his greatest and lasting contribution to the
psychology of children. The first stage, “the sensor motor stage,” to which we have
already referred, lasts from birth to about two years old. As the name implies, the infant
uses senses and motor abilities to understand the world, beginning with reflexes and
ending with complex combinations of sensor motor skills.
“The preoperational stage,” being the second stage of development, lasts from
about two to about seven years old. Now that the child has mental representations and is
able to pretend, it is a short step to the use of symbols. A symbol is a thing that
represents something else. A drawing, a written word, or a spoken word comes to be
understood as representing a real dog. The use of language is, of course, the prime
example, but another good example of symbol use is creative lay, wherein checkers are
cookies, papers are dishes, a box is the table, and so on.
The third stage of development, “the concrete operations stage,” lasts from about
seven to about eleven years old. The word “operations” refers to logical operations or
principles we use when solving problems. In this stage, the child not only uses symbols
representationally, but can manipulate those symbols logically.
Quite an
accomplishment! But, at this point, the must still perform these operations within the
context of concrete situation. “Formal operations stage” is the last developmental stage
in children. From around l2 years old and onwards, we enter the formal operations stage
where we become increasingly competent at adult-style thinking. This involves using
logical operations, and using them in the abstract, rather than the concrete. We often call
this “hypothetical thinking.”
Now, let us return to consider the practice of rules, or what we know as “moral
behavior.”
As with developmental stages in children, Piaget also spoke of
developmental stages in moral development. From about ages 4 to 7 years, an
egocentric stage occurs where children do not know or follow the rules, but they insist
that they do. For example, Piaget separately examined two boys who were in the same
class at school, who lived in the same house and often played marbles with one another.
The first boy described and played by a et of rules which was highly unusual and
idiosyncratic. The second boy did not understand the first boy’s rules and moreover
proposed an unusual system of his own. Thus, each of the boys, who often played
“together,” in fact followed his own system of rules which bore little relation to the other
child’s. There was little notion of “winning,” in the adult sense, and little genuine
competition between the two players. For the young child “winning” means “having a
good time” and it was, therefore, quite possible for all players to win in this particular
game. Each child was merely playing an individual game and did not really need the
other. At the same time, the children believed that they were playing like other children
and that they knew and followed the rules quite well.
The next stage in moral development according to Piaget is called incipient
cooperation which lasts from about 7 to about 11 years of age. The same begins to
acquire a genuinely social character, and the child has a much firmer grasp of the rules.
While his knowledge of the game is not perfect, he has mastered the basic rules and
attempts to learn the rest. The child of this stage both cooperates and competes with his
partner. There is cooperation in the sense that each child tries to win for himself, while
at the same time he adheres to the mutually agreed upon framework. Nevertheless, play
is not yet fully mature. Since the child has not yet mastered all of the rules, the game
does not proceed smoothly, and there are difficulties and conflicts.
The final stage of moral behavior is that of genuine cooperation which begins
about 11 or 12 years of age, and is the stage in which the child acquires a thorough
mastery of the rules. As before, he agrees with the others on the way to play the game,
and it is within this common framework that he tries to win. In addition, however, the
older child shows a kind of legalistic fascination with the rules. He enjoys settling
differences of opinion concerning the rules, inventing new rules, and elaborating on
them. He even tries to anticipate all of the possible contingencies that may arise.
Piaget tells a delightful anecdote about the legalistic tendencies of this stage. He
observed a group of boys aged 10 to 11 who were preparing to have a snowball fight.
Before getting on with it, they devoted a considerable amount of time to dividing
themselves into teams, electing officers, devising an elaborate set of rules to regulate the
throwing of snowballs, and deciding on a system of punishments for transgressors.
Before they had actually settled on all these legalistic aspects of the game, it was time to
return home, and no snowball game had been played. Yet, all the players seemed
content with their afternoon!
We may summarize by stating, then, that there are three major stages of the
practice of rules and, by extension, in the moral development of children. There is
egocentrism where each child does not know the rules or how to apply them but thinks he
does; incipient cooperation where mastery of the rules has improved and children begin
to share them in order to compete; and finally, the stage of genuine cooperation where
children know the rules well and enjoy elaborating upon them.
Piaget points out that since the younger child cannot assume the older child’s
point of view in understanding, developing, and elaborating the rules, he cannot
participate in the cooperative effort required for the use of rules and their meanings.
Because the young child does not participate in making the rules, they remain quite
external to him. The rules are not really his; they are a kind of foreign body imposed
upon him. It should come as no surprise that they do not effectively transform his
behavior. IN other words, because the child has not cooperated in devising the rules, he
does not understand them, and, therefore, is not able to follow them.
In a subsequent phase of rules conceptualization, beginning about age 10 or 11 as
mentioned earlier, the child believes that the rules can be changed, that they originated
through human invention, and that they are maintained only by mutual consent among
equals. Consequently, the child will agree to a modification of the game so long as all of
the other players agree, and so long as the change is a fair one. Since he himself
participates as an equal in the invention of new rules, he feels obligated to follow the
rules and does so.
To explain the shift from the absolutistic morality of the younger child to the
flexibility of the older child, Piaget proposes a social learning theory. He begins by
noting that as the child in Western society grows older, he becomes progressively free of
parental and other adult supervision. During the first five years or so of life the child is
very closely tied to his parents. After that point the goes to school, spends an increasing
amount of time with peers, and generally assumes greater responsibility for his own life.
As these events take place, the child gradually learns to make decisions for himself and
does not necessarily accept as authoritative the views of other persons who are now
considered his equals. As a result of this development he does not unquestioningly
accept rules as binding and immutable. Because he now sees himself as the equal of
others, he desires to assist in the formation and modification of the moral code.
Another and related factor influencing the decline of the absolutistic concept of
rules is the child’s increasing contact with divergent points of view. As the child widens
his sphere of contacts beyond the immediate family, he discovers that there are diverse
and conflicting opinions and customs. He finds that not everyone accepts the views
promulgated by his parents. This conflict between what he has been taught and what
other people believe forces the child to reassess his own position and to resolve the
differences in opinion. In attempting to do this, the child reasons about rules and comes
to the conclusion that they must, to some extent, be arbitrary and, therefore, changeable.
As he grows older, the child evolves from a position of submission to adults to
one of equality. He is confronted also with beliefs contradictory to those he has been
taught. Both of these experiences influence the child so that he sees rules as having a
human, and hence fallible, origin, and to agree to participate in their formation and
alteration. Since the child now has a hand in the formation of rules, they no longer exist
as a foreign entity imposed on his conscience; they no longer exist as a code which may
be unquestioningly respected, occasionally obeyed, and seldom understood. The child
now chooses to follow rules which are his own or at least freely agreed upon.
In his lifelong study of moral judgment and judgment development within the
child, Piaget emphasizes that the various stages overlap, that he same child may be in
both stages simultaneously depending upon the content of a particular situation, and that
primitive forms of moral judgment are often characteristic of adults as well as children.
Neither the stages nor the course of their development are clear cut, and Piaget does not
wish to give an impression of orderliness where little is to be found. Piaget’s social
learning theory -- that primitive moral judgment derives in fact from unilateral respect,
and mature conceptions from cooperation and similar factors -- is speculative because
there is no direct evidence linking adult constraint with moral realism.
Nevertheless, the theory points in interesting directions. The effect of the social
environment on intellectual processes has hardly been considered. Undoubtedly the
theory wll require clarification and elaboration, particularly with regard to the reciprocal
effect which seems to exist between cooperation and the diminution of egocentrism.
Does the child take the other’s point of view mainly because the two persons interact, or
do they interact mainly because they can each take the other’s point of view? Or, as
seems more plausible, could it be that there is a complex relationship between
cooperation and the passing of egocentrism?
Piaget’s theory, like Freud’s, is somewhat pessimistic. According to Freud it is
inevitable for both social and biological reasons that the child will experience an Oedipal
conflict, the result of which will be the adoption of a harsh and authoritarian superego or
conscience. For Piaget, too, it seems inevitable that the young child will display
egocentric thought, and that he will stand in a relation of unilateral respect to the adult.
Egocentrism defines certain properties of thought observed in young children which
appear to be unavoidable and which must be overcome before the child can reach a more
mature level of cognitive functioning. Unilateral respect is inevitable too; even if the
parent tries, he cannot create a total atmosphere of mutual respect. The parent must
arbitrarily impose upon the child some regulations because the child cannot understand
their complex rationale. Since egocentrism and unilateral respect are inevitable, so is
their product, moral realism.
Piaget has, however, not fully demonstrated that the moral judgments elicited by
his questioning on stories correspond to moral judgments in “real life.”
Piaget’s
arguments may be convincing -- for example, that children take the game of marbles
seriously -- but no amount of argument can resolve the issue. What is requires is
naturalistic study. We need to see whether moral realism, for example, is indeed found
in children’s moral judgments in the natural situation. Nevertheless and finally, there is
no question that Piaget’s work on moral behavior and judgmental development within
children has certainly fulfilled its original purpose and made a lasting contribution to
child psychology, namely, to stimulate further experimentation and theorizing. Moral
judgment has been a popular topic for research for a good number of years now, and in
the main, independent investigators’ are finding that Piaget was more often right than
wrong.
One troublesome and not inconsequential omission in much of child studies of
moral development, including Piaget’s, is that of the nature and role of religion in this
process. From Freud we have learned of the superimposition of transcendent authority
upon social morality such that a child from early on is impressed with the “high
authority” which comes with behavioral rules and their violation. To extend this inquiry
empirically would be marvelous in our deeper understanding of this developmental
process of inculcation and appropriation of moral codes of conduct within the developing
child. By the time the child reaches adulthood, there is no opportunity short of a
sustained academic reflection and investigation to understand the origin of moral codes.
To learn empirically that moral codes are derivatives of society’s own self-interest would
go a long way to dislodging the inordinate ownership of morality by religious institutions.
To demonstrate that moral behavior has evolved owing to the necessity of society rather
than a mandate from a transcendent source of authority would move humankind further
towards individual and social maturity and away from infantilism and naiveté. The
further explication of this insight will come with our closer look at the life and work of
Sir Julian Huxley culminating in the monumental labors of E. O. Wilson.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PRIMARY SOURCES (An English Translated Selection Only)
Judgment and Reasoning in the Child (l924)
The Language and Thought of the Child (l926)
The Child’s Conception of the World (l929)
The Moral Judgment of the Child (l932)
Origins of Intelligence in the Child (l936)
Construction of Reality in the Child (l957)
Play, Dreams, and Imitation in Childhood (l945)
The Psychology of Intelligence (l950)
Intelligence and Affectivity (l954)
Growth of Logical Thinking (l955)
New Ideas in Psychology (l962)
The Early Growth of Logic in the Child (l964)
Biology and Knowledge (l967)
Psychogenesis and the History of Science
Towards a Logic of Meanings
CHAPTER TEN
SIR JULIAN HUXLEY and Evolutionary Humanism (Humanism)
Evolutionary Humanism
The English biologist and author Julian Huxley (l887-l975) helped establish the
modern synthetic theory of evolution by natural selection and served as first director of
the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization. Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
was born June 22, l887, in London, England. His father, Leonard Huxley, master of
Charterhouse School and later an editor, encouraged his children Julian, Trevenen,
Aldous, and Margaret to live up to the achievements of their grandfather, the famous
evolutionist Thomas Henry Huxley. Huxley traced his thinking in many fields to this
influence of T. H. Huxley maintained by his father. It was the origin of his creed of
rationalism, atheism, and general, as opposed to specialized, thinking. Leonard
encouraged his son’s early interest in natural history, which found opportunity in the rural
setting of their home in surrey. Huxley’s mother, who founded a school in the area, was
also a great influence and encouraged his intellectual interests, including a passion for
poetry.
After taking a degree in zoology at Oxford in l909, Huxley went to the Naples
Zoological Station in Italy for a year of research on sponges. This led to his first book,
The Individual in the Animal Kingdom (l9l2), upon his return to an Oxford lectureship in
zoology. In l9l2, the newly opened Rice Institute (later Rice University) in Houston,
Texas, hired him. He effectively developed and headed the biology department, but
during World War I he felt called to duty for his country. He returned to England in l9l6
and served in the Army Intelligence Corps until the end of the war. He remained in
England, returning once again to Oxford. He married Juliette Baillot in l9l9. They had
two sons.
The young Huxley became a driving force in the zoology department, promoting
new teaching and research priorities and organizing an ecological research expedition to
Spitsbergen Island in the Arctic. Huxley himself had already produced studies not only
a morphology and development but also of bird ecology and bird behavior during
courtships. He wanted to move zoology away from its classical morphological and
descriptive base, toward the new excitement of dynamic ecology and of genetics and
physiology.
To that end, he began his own laboratory researches in developmental
morphology, choosing to examine growth rates. He developed the idea that an
organism’s form depends on differential growth rates in the separate parts of the body.
Begun at Oxford, this work was continued after l925 at King’s College, London, where
he had been appointed professor of zoology. Although he kept the laboratory until l935,
he served only as an honorary lecturer after l927, having resigned in order to gain more
time for research and for the large amount of writing he had begun. By the tie of the
publication of Problems of Relative Growth in l932, Huxley had become widely known
as a talented popularizer of biology.
Huxley combined his writing talent with his broad interests in biology in the
collaboration with H. G. Wells and his son G. P. Wells to produce The Science of Life
(l93l), an encyclopedic textbook. Other Huxley books during this time included Essays
of a Biologist, Religion without Revelation, Essays in Popular Science, The Stream of
Life, What Darwin Really Said, Ants, and Bird-Watching and Bird-Behavior. Notable
were his breadth of interests and his willingness to entertain the controversy created by
his adherence to rationalist views, held with the Huxley commitment to intellectual
integrity and public responsibility. He tackled evolution and its meaning for human life,
religion, and ethics; he also explored the impact for society of the latest biological
knowledge. Huxley believed in the self-directed evolution and progress of humanity.
He called is view an evolutionary “religious humanism,” but Huxley’s views nonetheless
eschewed the need for belief in a personal God. He looked toward scientific method and
knowledge as the new guide and promoted concentration on science teaching and
research as an aid to social problems. This theme continued through the l930s in such
book as If I Were Dictator and Scientific Research and Social Needs.
Other controversial applications of science to human life included Huxley’s early
commitments to eugenics, and birth control. His thinking about population regulation in
nature and the ecological problems of over-population fostered a concern for family
planning, and he campaigned for the birth control movement. Because of his reputation
as a eugenicist, he was invited to join in the writing of a book refuting Hitler’s pure race
theories; We Europeans appeared in l935. The authors argued that ethnic characteristics
are determined mainly by environment and cultural history, not genetics.
In his scientific researchers, Huxley in l932 began a second phase of his career,
devoted to synthetic works. With Gavin de Beer he wrote Principles of Experimental
Embryology (l934), in which they attempted to survey the various approaches to the
subject. They concluded that organized regions, with chemical influences spreading
outward, led development. Stimulated by much new work on the theory of natural
selection, Huxley also wrote Evolution: The Modern Synthesis (l942). His earlier bird
researches had led him to revive biologists’ interest in sexual selection, and now in the
l930s he gathered supporting arguments for the theory of natural selection from the new
mathematical genetics of J. B. S. Haldane, R. A. Fisher, and Sewall Wright.
Darwinism had declined in popularity since the late l800s, with many biologists -especially in the new field of genetics -- rejecting the operation of natural selection in
nature. Huxley’s book played a major role in establishing the “modern synthesis,” an
undated version of Darwinism incorporating Mendelian genetics and the latest findings in
all biological fields. The theory holds that a major cause of evolution is the action of
natural selection on small genetic differences within populations, creating adaptation;
separation of different populations in a species can lead to new species through various
“isolating mechanisms.” Exemplifying the value of Huxley’s generalist approach to
science, the book was his proudest achievement and his most influential.
The final phase of Huxley’s career found him involved in even more public
activities for science. As secretary of the Zoological Society from l935 to l942 he
worked to improve the London Zoo. During World War II he lectured frequently on war
aims and postwar problems. IN l946 he became the first director-general of the United
Nations Educational and Scientific Organizations (UNESCO), and his ideas about
applying scientific findings to world problems were influential in determining the future
of the organization. After retirement he continued until his death in l975, to write
popular works about science, covering such topics as Soviet genetics and politics, current
evolution theory, cancer, and humanism. Late in his life, Huxley wrote two personal and
professional life stories, Memories (l970) and Memories II (l973). He died in l975.
Huxley was a far more innovative thinker than is generally recognized today,
even by humanists. Although he was one of the foremost biologists of his time, his most
important contributions had to do not primarily with genetic evolution but with that of
culture, and with the interrelationships between the two processes. Today we are
accustomed to the concept of interactive, feedback systems; and to scientists at the
forefront of physics, engineering, neuro- and cognitive-psychology and evolutionary
theory conceptualizing their theories in terms of these. But few of the people concerned
are aware that it was Julian Huxley who laid much of the groundwork for this type of
thinking. He did this by spelling out the critical evolutionary role of “emergence”: the
process by which an accumulation of quantitative changes could somehow set the stage
for the triggering of a seemingly qualitative transition in the nature of patterns of
interaction.
Huxley was perhaps the first evolutionary theorist to recognize the reality and
causal significance of human society and culture -- a reality which materialism, by the
very nature of its premises, is forced to ignore. He concluded “that in the future it world
be cultural factors, rather than biological, which would determine the direction for
evolution.” As for Huxley’s belief that evolution is progressive in nature, he did employ
the concept, but in a carefully defined and limited manner.
Huxley was maintaining that humankind must attempt to achieve a unity of
knowledge. According to him, the only potentially universal type of knowledge is
scientific, in the broad sense of resting on verified observation or experiment, it follows
that this unity of knowledge will only be attained by the abandonment of non-scientific
methods of systematizing experience, such as mythology, superstition, magico-religious
and purely intuitional formulations.
He then went on to list the most important ideas on which the unified system must
be based. These were (l) the unity of nature, as opposed to all forms of dualism; (2) all
nature as process, to be explained by evolution rather than any static mechanism; (3)
evolution as directional, but only in the sense that it generates greater variety, complexity
and specificity of organization -- even though this may often lead into dead ends; (4)
evolutionary advance as defined in terms of the realization of new possibilities in nature;
and (5) an evolutionary view of human destiny, with humankind recognized as the chief
instrument of further evolution, as against all theological, magical, fatalistic or hedonistic
views of destiny.
As one of the twentieth century’s leading exponents of evolutionary theory,
Huxley was following in the footsteps of his celebrated grandfather. Also like his
grandfather, Darwin’s “bulldog,” he espoused a humanistic approach to life. Indeed,
much of his popular writings addressed the connections to be found between these two
areas of interest. He called for a concerted effort to both appreciate the implications of
evolution for the human species, and for that species to finally begin to take a hand in
directing its own evolutionary course.
For this idea development, a new idea-system was necessary. In his introduction
to the l96l anthology, The Humanist Frame, Huxley wrote: “This new idea-system,
whose birth we of the mid-twentieth century are witnessing, I shall simply call
Humanism, because it can only be based on our understanding of man and his relations
with the rest of his environment. It must be focused on man as an organism, though one
with unique properties. It must be organized round the facts and ideas of evolution,
taking account of the discovery that man is part of a comprehensive evolutionary process,
and cannot avoid playing a decisive role in it.”
Huxley called this approach specifically “evolutionary humanism.” It added a
dimension to the humanist outlook which had hitherto been little appreciated. Although
humanism as a worldview broke from dogmatic religious teachings, before the time of
Darwin it tended to share with theistic religions a static approach. The proper study of
humans tended to continue along previously established lines and, even after Darwin,
evolutionary theory was often relegated to discussions of non-human life. As Michael
Ruse points out in his book, Monad To Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary
Biology, T. H. Huxley himself, “Darwin’s Bulldog” and the Victorian Age’s primary
defender of the theory f evolution, was nonetheless careful to relegate this defense to only
his popular lectures.
In the classroom and in scholarly papers, Julian’s grandfather evaded discussion
of this controversial notion, since he was interested in having the field of biology
accepted as a proper discipline, and therefore feared involving it too closely with what he
himself saw as primarily a metaphysical system. In Ruse’s words: “In major part,
Huxley did not want evolution to have any part in his professional science! “Darwin’s
bulldog” excluded it, keeping it firmly down at the popular level -- at least inasmuch as
professional science was a matter of the day-to-day work within the discipline. There
was essentially no place for evolution, either in physiology or morphology. As Huxley
grew in power, and as he developed biology, the profession of biology and the subject of
evolution became badly estranged.”
Such reticence was not due solely to an urge to distance the discipline of biology
from unwanted controversies, however. Huxley had his own personal qualms about
accepting the mutability of species. Ruse continues: “…at some deep level, evolution
was incompatible with Huxley’s ontology and his pedagogy … Huxley always thought in
typological terms, and his teaching -- focusing on exemplars: earthworm, crayfish, frog,
etc. -- was based on such thinking, explicitly. Notwithstanding his popular philosophy,
his professional philosophy was static.”
For a long period time even such agnostics and humanists as the philosopher
Bertrand Russell (l872-l970) shied away from exploring the implications of evolution for
the future of the human species, let alone addressing how it had led to the contemporary
members of the species. No doubt this hesitancy was due to a perceived need to distance
agnosticism from its connection with the evolutionary teachings of Herbert Spencer -teachings which had been used to justify the abolition of social programs aiding the poor,
the insane, and handicapped and others deemed to be losers in the “struggle for
existence.” the American philosopher John Dewey (l859-l952) was one of the few
humanists who felt that Darwin’s teachings had radical implications for understanding
human nature.
Julian Huxley was deeply influenced by his grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley,
who died when Julian was only eight years of age. In his autobiography, Julian Huxley
discussed his “calling.” “I thought of my grandfather defending Darwin Against Bishop
Wilberforce, of the slow acceptance of Darwin’s views in the face of religion and
prejudice, and realized more fully than ever that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural
selection had emerged as one of the great liberating concepts of science, freeing man rom
cramping myths and dogma, achieving for Life the same sort of illuminating synthesis
that Newton had provided for inanimate nature. I resolved that all my scientific studies
would be undertaken in the Darwinian spirit, and that my major work would be
concerned with evolution, in nature and in man.”
In this regard, Julian differed from his grandfather’s approach, for he made no
sharp distinction between his public and his scholarly writings. His entire career was
essentially devoted to defending and exploring the evolutionary perspective, and
demonstrating its relevance to the human condition. Graduating from first class honors
in biology from Oxford University, he had a teaching career at such distinguished
institutions as Balliol College in Oxford, the Rice Institute in Houston, Texas, New
College in Oxford, and King’s College, London. At the latter, he was named Professor
of Zoology, becoming the first biologist in Britain to earn a four-figure income. It was
there that he completed work on the book which he felt would best synthesize the
connection between biological evolution and the evolution of human culture. Written in
l925, he called it Religion Without Revelation.
With John Dewey in America, Huxley was a major contributor to the
establishment of humanism in the 20th century, a humanism radically departing, however,
from the pre-Darwinian mix of materialism and rationalism characteristics of the free
thinkers of an earlier day. Huxley said of this movement, “There are dominant systems
of ideas which guide thought and action during a given period of human history, just as
there exist dominant types of organisms during a given period of biological evolution.”
He felt that in his time, even the humanist outlook was still being defined in terms of the
dominant idea system of philosophical dualism, as implied by the division of reality in
the ‘spiritual’ versus the ‘material,’ or the ‘sacred’ versus the ‘secular.’ This was a
worldview which forced free thinkers into an axiomatic form of rationalism based upon
an autonomous, logically structured mind capable of acting upon and observing material
reality from the outside, while at the same time committing them to a materialism that
denied the very possibility o such a mind, as well as of the existence and causal potential
of non-material phenomena such as values, ideals an cultural norms.
His grandfather, as we have mentioned earlier, once said of this problem that
“materialism and spiritualism are but opposite poles of the same absurdity.” As an
alternative to this intractable dilemma, T. H. Huxley proposed a concept of his own
creation, “agnosticism,” which was an addressed to the necessity of an ontology of
evolutionary naturalism. As a member of the new Metaphysical Society, T.H. Huxley
had felt the need for a name for his own philosophical position. His concept (derived
from the Greek gnosis meaning knowledge) was to be the antithesis of “gnosticism,” the
mystical creed of an ancient Persian cult which had believed in the possibility of a
mysterious, direct accessibility to absolute truth.
He believed, rather, that the
empirically tested facts of science are the only ‘truths’ accessible to human beings, “and
blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”
Agnosticism, T. H. Huxley explains, is not what we believe that matters so much
as why we believe it. “Moral responsibility lies in diligently weighing the evidence.
We must actively doubt; we have to continually scrutinize all our views, not take them on
trust.” Julian Huxley, in his turn, came to feel that the time was long overdue for a
radical restructuring in world view to match the new paradigm which Darwin had forced
upon biology and the world. He decided to devote his life to completing the revolution
in social thought instituted by his grandfather, among others. This new world view, he
chose in the tradition of his grandfather who likewise invented words and concepts, to
call “evolutionary humanism.”
In explaining his view of the world in light of modern biological science, Huxley
used the comprehensive term employed by William James, namely, “world stuff” to
replace the more restrictive concept of “matter” which he considered to have been thrown
into question by the new physics. “Matter” or “substance” as the basis of reality,
explained Huxley, had previously been soundly repudiated, along with dualism, by
Bertrand Russell, so the notion of movement in concept development and employment
was alive and well when Huxley arrived on the scene. The fact that, in l957, the British
free thinkers changed the name of their journal from The Rationalist to The Humanist
provides us with some evidence of Huxley’s success in spreading the new ideas.
Evolutionary humanism, Huxley believed, could best be understood as the latest
and most scientifically accurate development of the human need for understanding the
cosmos and finding one’s proper place within it. Religions, like other cultural artifacts,
are created by humans to answer basic needs. One can see here the influence such
thinkers as Feuerbach and Freud had upon Huxley’s early thinking about religion,
particularly as these writers address the anthropological and psychological dynamics of
religious behavior. The desire for mystical transcendence is simply the deeply felt thirst
for knowledge, the wish to “se a World in a grain of sand / And a Heaven in a wild
flower,” to quote Blake.
Previous religions, however, had become static, too concerned with preserving
dogmas and rituals, and were no longer in tune with the new scientific understanding of
evolution that had revolutionized such fields as geology, biology, physics, paleontology,
and cosmology. In the final chapter of his book, Evolutionary Humanism, he offers what
he calls an “evolutionary humanism as a developed religion.” “Twentieth-century man,
it is clear, needs a new organ for dealing with destiny a new system of religious beliefs
and attitudes adapted to the new situation in which his societies now have to exist. The
radically new feature of the present situation may perhaps be stated thus: Earlier
religions and belief-systems were largely adaptations to cope with man’s ignorance and
fears, with the result that they came to concern themselves primarily with stability of
attitude. But the need today is for a belief-system adapted to cope with his knowledge
and his creative possibilities, and this implies the capacity to meet, inspire and guide
change.”
For Huxley, this belief system was evolutionary humanism. The central idea of
this new religion was human fulfillment, realizable through a thorough understanding of
Darwin and the evolutionary principle. Man’s most “sacred” duty, Huxley contended,
“and at the same time his most glorious opportunity, is to promote the maximum
fulfillment of the evolutionary process on this earth; and this includes the fullest
realization of his own inherent possibilities.” Evolutionary humanism, he clearly saw,
was the only approach which not only welcomed the realities of a dynamic universe
understood in terms of scientific evolutionary principles but also sought to take an active
role in its own destiny. This, for Huxley, was his life’s work and mission and he labored
throughout his life to further this notion within both the scientific and culturally sensitive
and aware populations of the world. In his later book, Essays of a Humanist (l964), he
venture to propose a vision of the future. “Man is not merely the latest dominant type
produced by evolution, but its sole active agent on earth. His destiny is to be responsible
for the whole future of the evolutionary process on this planet … This is the gist and core
of Evolutionary Humanism, the new organization of ideas and potential action now
emerging from the present revolution of thought, and destined, I prophesy with
confidence, to become the dominant idea-system of the new phase of psychosocial
evolution.”
Of course, history, recent history, has so far proven Huxley wrong in his optimism
about the future and humanity’s grasping of evolutionary humanism as the proper
direction for our self-understanding and our destiny. In the United States, for example,
the teaching of evolution in biology courses in the public schools is always under threat.
And while such threats are not very prevalent in European societies, the importance of
evolution for the human species is still little addressed in philosophical and sociological
circles, and, regrettably, in theological circles virtually non-existent, with theologians still
spinning out doctrinal commentaries based upon the doctrine of “Original Sin”! The
Christian community particularly has continued to operate on the same agenda since
Darwin as before, leaving one with the impression that their theologians are unaware of
the major breakthrough in scientific knowledge brought about by Darwin’s work in
evolutionary processes.
Furthermore, Huxley’s concept of “religion without revelation” remains
controversial and, for the most part, ignored by both philosophers and theologians of
today. Traditional theistic religions have neither withered away nor been superseded in
the evolutionary sense that Huxley predicted. Indeed, religious fundamentalism of
various stripes is one of the principle causes of social disharmony at the beginning of the
2lst century. The humanistic approach has not become dominant, and a scientific
exploration and understanding of the universe has come into heavy criticism not only
from fundamentalists but also from the so-called “postmodern” school of thought, which
tends to see science as merely another, and not necessarily superior, ideology. The
amount of harm unintentionally done by the liberal community who has embraced
postmodernism as a worldview to the movement of the human community away from
religious fundamentalism and towards social justice is hard to measure, but is ever in
evidence throughout the academic community around the world.
Even within the humanistic community of scholars, teachers, and academics,
many have differed with Huxley on the use or misuse of the term “religion” within the
context of a conversation about contemporary worldviews. As with John Dewey, who
compared scientific attitude to a “religious” cause in his book, A Common Faith, once
very popular and now generally overlooked, fellow humanists have pointed out that the
use of such terminology -- as well as words like “sacred,” which Huxley was also prone
to use -- tended to confuse rather than clarify the issues being discussed. For example,
to separate concepts such as workshop, revelation and reverence from any form of
religion is difficult at best and, at the end of the day, seem to serve no real purpose at
all. Huxley’s redefinition of traditionalist terminology and, on occasion, the attempted
creation of more innovative utilitarian ones has failed both among the theistic
transcendental religionists who continue to cling to pre-scientific worldviews as well as
with secular humanists who are, by and large, put off by any faint attempt to
re-appropriate from traditionalists religious terminology with a secular twist.
Nevertheless, Huxley was a far more innovative thinker than is generally
recognized today, even among humanists. Although he was one of the foremost
biologists of his time, his most important contributions had to do not primarily with
genetic evolution, of which he was a noted spokesman, but with that of culture, and with
the interrelationships between the two process of evolution and culture envisioned by him
as a sort of “social evolution.”
Today, we are accustomed to the concept of interactive feedback systems; and to
scientists at the forefront of physics, engineering, neuro- and cognitive-psychology and
evolutionary theory conceptualizing their theories in these terms. However, it was
Huxley, more so than any other public science figure of the times, who laid much of the
groundwork for this type of scientific and popular thinking. He did this by spelling out
the critical evolutionary role of “emergence,” the concept first introduced by his
grandfather and later developed by George Herbert Mead, the American social
psychologist. Huxley’s conjectures about the process by which an accumulation of
quantitative changes could somehow set the stage for the triggering of a seemingly
qualitative transition in the nature of patterns of interaction, and the units involved in this
were remarkably poignant.
He felt at the time that the breakthrough in symbolic language and culture, which
was experienced by one particular branch of upright primates, as the most significant
example of emergence. As he explained, “The critical point in the evolution of man the
change of state when wholly new properties emerged in evolving life was when he
acquired the use of verbal concepts and could organize his experience into a common
pool.” The mental processes which resulted from this transition are what people mean
when they speak of “mind.” However, Huxley noted, “Mind is not an entity in its own
right, and our minds are not little separate creatures inhabiting our skulls. So it is much
better to speak of ‘mental activities’ though ‘mind’ may be used as a shorthand term.”
Huxley was perhaps the first evolutionary theorist to recognize the reality and
causal significance of human society and culture: a reality which materialism -- by the
very nature of its premises -- is forced to ignore. He concluded “that in the future it
would be cultural factors, rather than biological, which would determine the direction for
evolution.” He saw human culture as unique in the world, in that “it enabled life to
transcend itself, by making possible a second mechanism for continuity and change in
addition to the genetic outfit in the chromosomes. This is man’s method of utilizing
cumulative experience, which gives him new powers over nature and new and more rapid
methods of adjustment to changing situations.”
Furthermore, Huxley believed that humans, with their newly acquired powers,
must accept responsibility not only for the kind of culture that they transmit to following
generations (a clarion call from the earlier likes as Jean-Paul Sartre), but for the health of
the gene pool that they bequeath as well. He was aware, earlier than most, that our new
technologies were providing us with formidable tools for interfering with the process of
natural selection which had given our species its current adaptive capacities. He felt that
a high level of technical expertise in the hands of people still mired in a world view
rooted in mysticism and superstition made for a dangerous situation. This impelled him
to sound a warning concerning the direction in which the mindless use of technology
might propel us, and the kind of destructive genes that we might be cause to multiply in
our own species and in others, by our short-sighted behavior.
In his work, Huxley explained the emergence of self-consciousness solely in
terms of the self-transforming nature of evolution. It is the driving force in the universe,
for biology as well as for culture. He explained that the psycho-social-cultural level of
interaction, although different in quality from the inorganic level, has its total source
within the latter just as life differs from non-life, but has evolved solely out of the
inorganic substance of the cosmos, with no vital force acting from outside the process.
“To postulate a divine interference with these exchanges of matter and energy at a
particular moment in the earth’s history,” Huxley argued, “is both unnecessary and
illogical.”
It was, indeed, Huxley’s evolutionary approach to language itself, and his
consequence preference for using everyday words while wresting them from their
dualistic framework and redefining them in monist terms, that is responsible for common
misunderstandings of two of his key concepts; the “ideal” and the “spiritual.” In his
writings, it is clear that he viewed evolutionary advance solely in terms of the
accumulation of improvements in effectiveness resulting from increasing complexity and
diversification of organization. As he explained it, “We need a term for the sum of these
accumulations through the whole of evolutionary time, and I prefer to take over a familiar
word like progress instead of coining a piece of esoteric jargon.” In the case of the
word “spiritual, however, he was attempt to present a comprehensive naturalistic
explanation for all those shared human experiences and strivings and collective memories
which, although not material, must be recognized as objectively real because they have
clearly observable causes and effects.
He has, however, been soundly taken to task for his enthusiastic utilization of
evolutionary theory with the broader notion of “Progress.” This enthusiasm, shared in
his writings for the general public, caused his own scientific work to be generally
downplayed by his fellow scientists, who continued to hold to the model of his
grandfather, maintaining a dichotomy between professional and popular science, thereby,
unfortunately, failing to educate the public in consort with scientific advances in
understanding. His colleagues said and would say again that it is by no means at all
clear that the human species is either ready or able to shoulder the awesome
responsibilities involved in determining our own course through evolutionary emergences
into the future. Huxley’s visionary optimism to the contrary not with-standing, it
seems, ironically, that today primarily traditional religions, which he predicted would be
transcended by the advance of evolutionary theory taught and grasped by the general
public, that continue to be the primary stumbling block to his vision and to our social
advancement.
Perhaps Huxley’s greatest contribution to humanity was, after all, his constant
campaign to educate the general public. IN this, he was also following in his
grandfather’s footsteps, for the latter was famous for his lectures on science to
workingmen. Huxley dedicated much of his later life to the cause of UNESCO, which
sought to increase educational and cultural opportunities for people throughout the world.
And it is not surprising that, again like John Dewey mentioned earlier, he made an
explicit connection between his educational advocacy and his humanistic worldview.
The humanistic core of his philosophical understanding is capsulated in the following
except from his Essays of a Humanist:
The world has become one de facto. It must achieve some unification of thought
if it is to avoid disaster … and this can only come about with the aid of education.
We must remember that two-fifths of the world’s adult population … are still
illiterate, that the world’s provision for education at all levels is lamentably
inadequate,
and that the underdeveloped countries are all clamorously
demanding more and better education … make no mistake, the basic task before
the educational profession today is to study and understand the evolutionary
humanist revolution in all its ramifications, to follow up its educational
implications, and to enable as many as possible of the world’s growing minds to
be illuminated by its new view of human destiny.
Huxley was maintaining, long before E. O. Wilson’s “consilience,” that
humankind must attempt to achieve a unity of knowledge. According to him, “Since the
only potentially universal type of knowledge is scientific, in the broad sense of resting on
verified observation or experiment, it follows that this unity of knowledge will only be
attained by the abandonment of non-scientific methods of systematizing experience, such
as mythology, superstition, magico-religious and purely intuitional formulations.” He
then went on to list the most important ideas on which the unified system must be based.
These were: (l) the unity of nature, as opposed to all forms of dualism; (2) all nature as
process, to be explained by evolution rather than any static mechanism; (3) evolution as
directional, but only in the sense that it generates greater variety, complexity and
specificity of organization -- even though this may often lead into dead-ends; (4)
evolutionary advance as defined in terms of the realization of new possibilities in nature;
and (5) an evolutionary view of human destiny, with humankind recognized as the chief
instrument of further evolution, as against all theological, magical, fatalistic or hedonistic
views of destiny.
Nevertheless, he was not optimistic about the possibility that his objective of a
unitary approach to knowledge would be realized. He was all too aware of the
prevalence and staying power of dualism, especially as of archaic service to traditional
religions worldviews. “The very organization of our language, and all our habitual ways
of thinking,” he explains, “artificially dissociate real and ideal, object and subject,
quantity and quality, material and spiritual … ‘we’ of the in-group and ‘they’ of the
out-group, individual and society, intuitional appreciation and intellectual analysis.
Howe can we expect people to grow up whole in a world which is presented to them
already split by organization of thought, and when the main instrument we give them in
education is one for carving reality into separate slices?”
Such a task remains imperative. Hulxey felt that evolutionary humanism was
necessary for the betterment of our species and for the world. In this regard, he
continues to be an inspirational and compelling figure as we attempt to understand how
and why the human species is naturally good.
BIBLIOGRAPHY (Sir Julian Huxley’s major texts)
Julian Huxley
Essays of a Biologist (l923)
Animal Biology (with J. B. S. Haldane) (l927)
Religion Without Revelation (l927)
The Science of Life (with H. G. Wells) (l93l)
Scientific Research and Social Needs (l934)
Thomas Huxley’s Diary of the Voyage of H. M. S. Rattlesnake (l935)
We Europeans (with A. C. Haddon) (l936)
The Living Thoughts of Darwin (l939)
The New systematic (l940)
Evolution: The Modern Synthesis (l942)
Evolutionary Ethics (l943)
Touchstone for Ethics (l947)
Man in the Modern World (l947)
Heredity, East and West (l949)
Biological Aspects of Cancer (l957)
Towards a New Humanism (l957)
New Bottles for New wine (l958)
The Humanist Frame (l962)
Essays of a Humanist (l964)
From an Antique Land (l966)
The Courtship Habits of the Great Grebe (l968)
Memories (l97l and l974)
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Edward O. WILSON and the Altruistic Imperative (Sociobiology)
On Human Nature
E(dward) O(sborne) Wilson was born June l0, l929, in Birmingham, Alabama,
and is an entomologist and biologist known for his work on evolution and sociobiology
and, by some, is called the “father of biodiversity.” A childhood accident claimed the
sight in his right eye and later, in adolescence, he lost part of his hearing. He struggled
with math and a mild form of dyslexia. The accident with the eye, he suggests
amusingly, probably pushed him into the study of ants which he could bring up close to
his one good eye for careful scrutiny. After earning both a B.A and M.A. from the
University of Alabama, he received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and is a specialist
in ants, in particular their use of pheromones for communication. Wilson is the
Pellegrino University Research Professor Emeritus at Harvard University today. Hailed
as “the new Darwin” by Thomas Wolfe, and one of “America’s 25 Most Influential
People” by Time Magazine, he has twice received the Pulitzer Prize. He is also famous
for starting the sociobiology debate when he wrote his now highly acclaimed
Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (l975), an enormous volume comprised of 697
extra-sized pages. Wilson sought to extend the understanding he had gained of the
principles of the intricate behaviors of social instincts to vertebrate animals. Prior to this
landmark tome, he had published The Insect Societies (l97l).
His inquiries into the new science called “sociobiology” argues that social
animals, including humans, behave largely according to rules written in their very genes.
The theory sparked controversy because it not only appeared to contradict cherished
beliefs about free will, but also, according to critics, harked back to retrograde ideologies
charging that some human groups were biologically superior to others. He and his
colleagues, have over the years defended and refined sociobiology such that at this point
it is now a dictionary word. Of this new discipline and the resulting book he says: “It
was a new discipline that I was proposing, which was the scientific study of social
behavior in all kinds of organisms on a foundation of biology. It was a very successful
attempt in the study of animal behavior. It succeeded immediately. But I also decided
to apply it to that special species of animal, Homo sapiens, and when I did, I just
suggested that maybe there were some implications of this for human beings as well….I
said that maybe there is such a thing as instinct and human nature and maybe this is the
way to study it, with this new discipline. And in the middle seventies that was not an
idea permitted in most of the social sciences on American campuses.”
A third book, entitled, On Human Nature (l978), was concerned with the further
extension of these same principles to the human species.
Because of the significance
of this major work, a selection of key passages will be quoted here at length.
Innate censors and motivators exist in the brain that deeply and unconsciously affect our
ethical premises; from these roots, morality evolved as instinct. If that perception is correct,
science may soon be in a position to investigate the very origin and meaning of human values,
from which all ethical pronouncements and much of political practice flow. Philosophers
themselves, most of whom lack an evolutionary perspective, have not devoted much time to the
problem. They examine the precepts of ethical systems with reference to their consequences and
not their origins. Like everyone else, philosophers measure their personal emotional responses
to various alternatives as though consulting a hidden oracle.
Which of the censors and motivators should be obeyed and which ones might better be
curtailed or sublimated? These guides are the very core of our humanity. They and not the
belief in spiritual apartness distinguish us from electronic computers. At some time in the future
we will have to decide how human we wish to remain -- in this ultimate, biological sense -because we must consciously choose among the alterative emotional guides we have inherited.
To chart our destiny means that we must shift from automatic control based upon our biological
properties to precise steering based upon biological knowledge.
The only way forward is to study human nature as part of the natural sciences, in an
attempt to integrate the natural sciences with the social sciences and humanities. I can conceive
of no ideological or formalistic shortcut. Neurobiology cannot be learned at the feet of a guru.
The consequences of genetic history cannot be chosen by legislatures. Above all, for our own
physical well-being if nothing else, ethical philosophy must not be left in the hands of the merely
wise. Although human progress can be achieved by intuition and force of will, only hard-won
empirical knowledge of our biological nature will allow us to make optimum choices among the
competing criteria of progress. The important initial development in this analysis will be the
conjunction of biology and the various social sciences -- psychology, anthropology, sociology,
and economics.
The true humanization of altruism, in the sense of adding wisdom and insight to the
social contract, can come only through a deeper scientific examination of morality. Lawrence
Kohlberg, an educational psychologist, has traced what he believes to be six sequential stages of
ethical reasoning through which each person progresses as part of his normal mental
development. The child moves from an unquestioning dependence on external rules and controls
to an increasingly sophisticated set of internalized standards, as follows: (l) simple obedience to
rules and authority to avoid punishment, (2) conformity to group behavior to obtain rewards and
exchange favors, (3) good-boy orientation, conformity to avoid dislike and rejection by others, (4)
duty orientation, conformity to avoid censure by authority, disruption of order, and resulting
guild, (5) legalistic orientation, recognition of the value of contracts, some arbitrariness in rule
formation to maintain the common good, (6) conscience or principle orientation, primary
allegiance to principles of choice, which can overrule law in cases the law is judged to do more
harm than good. To the extent that this interpretation is correct, the ontogeny of moral
development is likely to have been genetically assimilated and is now part of the automatically
guided process of mental development.
The principal task of human biology is to identify and to measure the constraints that
influence the decisions of ethical philosophers and everyone else, and to infer their significance
through neurophysiologic and phylogenetic reconstructions of the mind. This enterprise is a
necessary complement to the continued study of cultural evolution. It will alter the foundation of
the social sciences but in no way diminish their richness and importance. In the process it will
fashion a biology of ethics, which will make possible the selection of a more deeply understood
and enduring code of moral values.
The idea of the genetic evolution of moral predispositions by natural selection has a long
but relatively ineffectual history. Charles Darwin raised the possibility in The Descent of Man
and Selection in Relation to Sex, and he was firm in disputing the view held by John Stuart Mill
and Alfred Russell Wallace that the mind has been freed from natural selection. He felt that if
the human mentality were excepted, the basic theory of evolution by natural selection would be
gravely threatened; to Wallace, the co-discoverer of natural selection, he wrote in l869, “I hope
you have not murdered too completely your own and my child” (More Letters of Charles Darwin,
edited by Francis Darwin, l903). Darwin’s thought on this subject had run deep. In his
unpublished notes of July, l838, he took the optimistic view that an understanding of evolution
would lead to a stronger morality: “Two classes of moralists: one says our rule of life is what
will produce the greatest happiness. The other says we have a moral sense. But my view unites
both and shows them to be almost identical and what has produced the greatest good or rather
what was necessary for good at all is the instinctive moral sense.”
Wilson’s The Diversity of life (l992), which brought together knowledge of the
magnitude of biodiversity and the threats to it, had a major public impact, and stil today
he continues entomological and environmental research at the Museum of Comparative
Zoology. However, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (l998), has proven to be the
bombshell it was predicted to be for here he draws together the sciences, humanities, and
the arts into a broad study of human knowledge. His premise in this controversial book
is that a common body of inherent principles underlies the entire human endeavor.
Again, following the controversies of his work in sociobiology, his “consilience“ work
has again placed him at the center of debate and controversy. Some scholars have
praised it as “bold“ and “provocative,” while others have lambasted it as intellectually
shaky and a right-wing treatise disguised as science.
“The gist if this book,” says Wilson, “is that, contrary to the widespread views
coming out of what’s called postmodernism, truth is relative, each discipline, each person
is a little universe unto itself. Contrary to that -- and it still ha strong influence on many
campuses today -- we really can unify knowledge. Science has done it from physics all
the way to biology of the mind and ecology, by cause and effect relationships, and it’s
time now the book argued to look into the possibility that we can take that network of
explanations, that unity of knowledge, on into the social sciences and even into the arts.”
One of the main reasons for writing this book, he explains, is to bring about a
convergence of environmentalists with philosophers and ethical issues affecting the world
and the human community.
Environmentalism, according to Wilson, is the
convergence particularly of the study of the environment with the ethical issues which
surround it.
The word itself was coined in the last century and refers to long-separated fields
of inquiry that come together and create new insights. For instance, the marriage of
chemistry and genetics this century created the powerful new science of molecular
biology, the basis of genetic engineering. The controversy surrounds Wilson’s belief
that all human endeavor, from religious feelings to financial markets to fine arts, is ripe
for explaining by hard science. Philosophers and artists, to say nothing of theologians
and religious leaders, bristle at what Wilson calls his “unification agenda,” his attempt to
show, as he puts it, that “the greatest enterprise of the mind has always been and always
will be the attempted linkage of science and the humanities.”
“I believe that the Enlightenment thinkers of the l7th and l8th centuries got it
mostly right the first time,” he says. They assumed a lawful, perfectible material world
in which knowledge is unified cross the sciences and the humanities. Wilson calls this
common groundwork of explanation that crosses all the great branches of learning
“consilience,” and he argues that we can indeed explain everything in the world through
an understanding of a handful of natural laws. The world he envisions is a material
world that is organized by laws of physics and evolves according to the laws of evolution.
Wilson makes his point through a fascinating tour through the Enlightenment and
the age of scientific specialization. Among his topics of interest are “professional
atomization,” which works against the unification of knowledge, and cultural relativism,
that is, “what counts most in the long haul of history is seminality, not sentiment,” he
says with amusement. In examining how a few underlying physical principles can
explain everything from the birth of stars to the workings of social institutions, he offers
fresh insight into what it means to be human.
Selections from this major book are included here so the reader can get a flavor of
this work which has made such a contribution and produced such a controversy of ideas.
Centuries of debate on the origin of ethics come down to this: Either ethical precepts,
such as justice and human rights, are independent of human experience or else they are human
inventions. The distinction is more than an exercise for academic philosophers. The choice
between the assumptions makes all the difference in the way we view ourselves as a species. It
measures the authority of religion, and it determines the conduct of moral reasoning.
Theologians and philosophers have almost always focused on transcendentalism as the means to
validate ethics. They seek the grail of natural law, which comprises freestanding principles of
moral conduct immune to doubt and compromise.
On religion, I lean toward deism but consider its proof largely a problem in astrophysics.
The existence of a cosmological God who created the universe (as envisioned by deism) is
possible, and may eventually be settled, perhaps by forms of material evidence not yet imagined.
Or, the matter may be forever beyond human reach. In contrast, and of far greater importance to
humanity, the existence of a biological God, one who directs organic evolution and intervenes in
human affairs (as envisioned by theism) is increasingly contravened by biology and the brain
sciences.
The same evidence, I believe, favors a purely material origin of ethics, and it meets the
criterion of consilience: Causal explanations of brain activity and evolution, while imperfect,
already cover the most facts known about moral behavior with the greatest accuracy and the
smallest number of freestanding assumptions. While this conception is relativistic, in other
words dependent on personal viewpoint, it need not be irresponsibly so. If evolved carefully, it
can lead more directly and safely to stable moral codes than transcendentalism, which is also,
when you think about it, ultimately relativistic.
There is a biologically based human nature, and it is relevant to ethics and religion. The
evidence shows that because of its influence, people can be readily educated to only a narrow
range of ethical precepts. They flourish within certain belief systems, and wither under others.
We need to know exactly why.
To that end I will be so presumptuous as to suggest how the
conflict between the world views will most likely be settled. The idea of a genetic, evolutionary
origin of moral and religious beliefs will be tested by the continuance of biological studies of
complex human behavior. To the extent that the sensory and nervous systems appear to have
evolved by natural selection or at least some other purely material process, the empiricist
interpretation will be supported. It will be further supported by verification of gene-culture
co-evolution, the essential linking process described earlier.
Which world view prevails, religious transcendentalism or scientific empiricism, will
make a great difference in the way humanity claims the future. During the time the matter is
under advisement, an accommodation can be reached if the following overriding facts are
realized. On the one side, ethics and religion are still too complex for present-day science to
explain in depth. On the other hand, they are far amore a product of autonomous evolution than
hitherto conceded by most theologians. Science faces in ethics and religion its most interesting
and possibly humbling challenge, while religion must somehow find the way to incorporate the
discoveries of science in order to retain credibility. Religion will possess strength to the extent
that it codifies and puts into enduring, poetic form the highest values of humanity consistent with
empirical knowledge. That is the only way to provide compelling moral leadership. Blind faith,
no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science for its part will test relentlessly
every assumption about the human condition and in time uncover the bedrock of the moral and
religious sentiments.
The eventual result of the competition between the two world views, I believe, will be the
secularization of the human epic and religion itself. However the process plays out, it demands
open discussion and unwavering intellectual rigor in an atmosphere of mutual respect.
His books in sociobiology and human nature gave rise to a storm of controversy
that has somewhat abated as the evolutionary behavioral ideas as suggested by Wilson
have gained more acceptance. Both within and beyond academic circles, it was inevitable
that ideas that are effectively concerned with fundamental questions of human life: its
meaning and its inherent dignity, would have the potential to be enormously
controversial. In the first paragraph of his book on sociology, he states his view of life
in quite unequivocal terms as follows: “In a Darwinian sense the organism does not live
for itself. Its primary function is not even to reproduce other organisms; it reproduces
genes, and it serves as their temporary carrier … Samuel Butler’s famous aphorism, that
the children is only an egg’s way of making another egg, has been modernized. The
organism is only DNA’s way of making more DNA.”
The overall message carried was a startling one, namely, that various kinds of
social behavior are genetically programmed into any species, including our own, and that
this programming is particularly true of the social behavior human beings label
“altruism,” which Wilson defines as “self-destructive behavior performed for the benefit
of others.” People are animals, their behavior has evolved just like that of the animals,
and our culture has a biological component, he announced. Human sexuality has
evolved in certain ways for specific reasons, all through natural selection. It seems to
some that Wilson was dramatically undermining human dignity, as if Darwin hadn’t said
it all before!
Cultures need to accomplish certain things, says Wilson, if they are to survive at
all. The must assure effective use of natural resources, for example, which might
involve the learning of all sorts of territorial and aggressive behaviors. And they must
assure a degree of cooperation, which might involve learning altruistic behaviors, rules
for sharing resources and for other social relationships. And they must assure a
continuation of the population, which might involve certain courtship and marital
arrangements, nurturing behaviors, and so on.
Wilson has argued that the preservation of the gene, rather than the individual, is
the locus of evolution, a theme explored in more detail by Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish
Gene, of New College, Oxford, Sir Julian Huxley’s old teaching grounds. Wilson has
also studied the mass extinctions of the 20th century and their relationship to modern
society. He explains: “Now when you cut a forest, an ancient forest in particular, you
are not just removing a lot of big trees and a few birds fluttering around in the canopy.
You are drastically imperiling a vast array of species within a few square miles of you.
The number of these species may go to tens of thousands. May of them are still
unknown to science, and science has not yet discovered the key role undoubtedly played
in the maintenance of that ecosystem, as in the case of fungi, microorganisms, and many
of the insects.” He continues, “Let us get rid immediately of the notion that all you have
to do is keep a little patch of the old growth somewhere, and then you can do whatever
you want with the rest. That is a very dangerous and false notion.”
Wilson inadvertently created one of the greatest scientific controversies of the late
20th century when he came up with the idea of sociobiology. Sociobiology suggests that
animal, and by extension human, behavior can be studied using an evolutionary
framework. Many critics accused Wilson of racism and he was even physically attached
for his views. However, Wilson had never intended to suggest that human nature was
static and independent of the environment. Nor had he intended to apply a ‘survival of
the fittest’ model on human society as had been true of social Darwinists in the l9th
century. The controversy caused a great deal of persona grief for Wilson; many of his
colleagues at Harvard, such as Stephen Jay Gould, were vehemently opposed to his ideas.
Nevertheless and in view of his international vindication, he has received many awards
for his work, including most notably the National medal of Science and twice the Pulitzer
Prize.
Most recently, his 2002 book, entitled, The Future of Life, offers a plan for saving
earth’s biological heritage and has received a great deal of acclaim as offering a way out
of our present dilemma regarding the environment and our role in surviving within it. In
this new presentation, he draws on his forty years of research to make a passionate and
eloquent lea for a new approach to the management and protection of our eco-system.
Marshaling arguments from science, economics, and ethics, he demonstrates that proper
stewardship of the earth-s bio-diversity is not an option. Rather, it is a necessity, and a
choice we must make if life is going to continue to thrive on the only home we have.
In this book, he talks about the bottleneck and suggests that this is what humanity
is currently experience. “We all, or most all,” he explains, realize that humanity has
pushed its population growth pretty close to the limit. We really are at risk of using up
natural resources and developing shortages in them that will be extremely difficult to
overcome, and yet we have this bright prospect down the line that humanity is not going
to keep on growing much more in population, that it is like, if we can use the United
Nation’s projections at this stage, to top out at perhaps nine to ten billion, fifty percent
more people than exist today, and then begin to decline.”
In our modern context, Wilson explains, “we’ve really lowered the death rate and
where poor people around the world, all except those in absolute poverty have access to
medicine and social assistance and so on, so their children can survive.” In the long haul
of history, however, where the well-off, the dominant, elements in the society have
co-existed with the poor and the subordinate, it turns out, it’s just the result of studies of
these types of societies that have been made, that even though the poor having a larger
number of children per capita, the children aren’t living as long because of their
condition, and those who are wealthy and having a smaller number of children are
actually producing more children into the next generation.”
In view of this demographic configuration, the human community is under ever
increasing pressure to push our technological capabilities to the limit. But the fact
remains, says Wilson, “that with existing technology, you can show fairly reliably the
figures have not been seriously challenged to my knowledge that in order for the whole
world, the whole world population to live in American standards, we would need four
more planet earths!” This cannot, of course, continue. At the end of the day, Wilson
says, he likes to think of that phrase that was used so effectively by the late Abba Eban,
during the l967 War. “When all else fails, men turn to reason.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SELECTED MAJOR TEXTS BY E. O. WILSON
The Theory of Island Biogeography (l967)
Insect Societies (l97l)
Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (l975)
On Human Nature (l978 -- Pulitzer Prize)
Biophilia (l984)
The Ants (l990 -- Pulitzer Prize)
The Diversity of Life (l992)
Naturalist (l995 -- autobiography)
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (l998)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John H. Morgan, Ph.D.(Hartford), D.Sc.(London), Psy.D.(Foundation House, Oxford), is
the Karl Mannheim Professor of the History and Philosophy of the Social Sciences at the
Graduate Theological Foundation (IN) and Senior Fellow of Foundation House, Oxford
(UK). He has held postdoctoral appointments to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and has
been a National Science Foundation Science Faculty Fellow at the University of Notre
Dame. Three times he has been appointed postdoctoral Research Fellow to the
University of Chicago. In 2010, he was a Visiting Scholar at New York University and
in 2011 was made Visiting Scholar to Harvard University for the second time in his
career and is also Senior Fellow of All Saints Cathedral College of Alberta. Dr. Morgan
was appointed to the Board of Studies of Oxford University’s international summer
school in 1995 and taught a doctoral-level seminar at Oxford University from 1998 to
2011 where now he is a member of the Advisory Board of the Oxford University Kellogg
Centre for Religion in Public Life. The author of over thirty books in the history and
philosophy of the social sciences, his recent publications include Beginning With Freud:
The Classical Schools of Psychotherapy (2010) and Psychology of Religion: A
Commentary on the Classic Texts (2011) and Clinical Pastoral Psychotherapy: A
Practitioner’s Handbook for Ministry Professionals (Expanded 2nd Edition, 2012).
Presently, he is chair of the Clinical Pastoral Psychotherapy Doctoral Programs (Ph.D.
and Psy.D.) at the Foundation.