Interpretation

A JOURNAL

JL OF

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
Volume 27
Number 2

Winter 1999-2000

99

Laurence Berns

Heidegger

and

Strauss:
and

Temporality, Religion

Philosophy
105 Tim

Hurley

John Rawls Discussion

and

Liberal

Neutrality

129

Richard F.

Hassing

Darwinian Natural Right?

Book Reviews

161

Christopher

Flannery

American Compact: James

Madison
and the

Founding, by
169

Problem of Gary Rosen

Paul Seaton

Postmodernism

Rightly

Understood: The Return to Realism

in American

Thought, by Peter

Augustine Lawler 179 Charles E. Butterworth Generation X Goes to College: An

Eye-Opening
Sacks

Account of

Teaching

in Postmodern

America, by Peter

Interpretation
Editor-in-Chief

Hilail Gildin, Dept.

Leonard

of

Philosophy, Queens College

Executive Editor

Grey

General Editors

Charles E. Butterworth Seth G. Benardete Robert Horwitz (d. 1987) Gildin Hilail Howard B. White (d. 1974)
Ernest L. Fortin Joseph Cropsey Christopher Bruell John Hallowell (d. 1992) Harry V. Jaffa David Lowenthal Muhsin Mahdi Harvey C. Mansfield Michael Oakeshott (d. 1987) Arnaldo Momigliano Leo Strauss (d. 1973) Ellis Sandoz (d. 1990) Kenneth W. Thompson
Terence E. Marshall

Consulting

Editors

International Editors

Heinrich Meier

Editors

Fred Baumann Maurice Auerbach Wayne Ambler Patrick Coby Bonnette Amy Thomas S. Engeman Elizabeth C de Baca Eastman Maureen Feder-Marcus Edward J. Erler Will Morrisey Ken Masugi Pamela K. Jensen Leslie G. Rubin Charles T. Rubin Susan Orr Martin D. Yaffe Bradford P. Wilson Susan Meld Shell Catherine H. Zuckert Michael P. Zuckert
Lucia B. Prochnow Subscription
rates per volume

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students (four- year

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The Journal Welcomes Manuscripts

in

in

Political

philosophy as

Well

as

Those

Theology,

literature, and Jurisprudence.

contributors should

follow The Chicago Manual of Style, 13th ed. or manuals based on it; double-space their manuscripts, including notes; place references in the text, in endnotes or follow current journal style in printing references. Words from languages not rooted in Latin should be transliterated to English. To ensure impartial judgment of their manuscripts, contributors should omit mention of their
other with

postal/zip

work; put, on the title page only, their name, any affiliation desired, address code in full, E-Mail and telephone. Please send four clear copies,

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Composition by Eastern Composition A Division of Bytheway Publishing Services

Binghamton, N.Y. 13901 U.S.A.

Inquiries:

interpretation

(Ms.) Joan Walsh, Assistant to the Editor Queens College, Flushing, N.Y 11367-1597, U.S.A. (718)997-5542 Fax (718) 997-5565
,

E Mail:

interpretation

joumal@qc.edu

Interpretation
A JOURNAL

lOF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Volume 27
Number 2

Winter 1999-2000

Laurence Berns

Heidegger

and

Strauss: Temporality,

99

Religion
Tim

and

Philosophy
Liberal

Hurley

John Rawls Discussion

and

Neutrality

105

Richard F.

Hassing

Darwinian Natural Right? Book Reviews

129

Christopher

Flannery

American Compact: James Madison

the Problem of

and

161

Founding, by Gary

Rosen

Paul Seaton

Postmodernism

Rightly

Understood: The

169

Return to Realism in American Thought, Peter Augustine Lawler

by

Charles E. Butterworth

Generation X Goes to College: An

Eye-

179

Opening Account of Teaching in Postmodern America, by Peter Sacks

Copyright 2000

interpretation

ISSN 0020-9635

Interpretation
Editor-in-Chief Executive Editor Hilail Gildin, Dept. Leonard
of

Philosophy, Queens College

Grey

General Editors

Consulting

Editors

Charles E. Butterworth Seth G. Benardete Robert Horwitz (d. 1987) Hilail Gildin Howard B. White (d. 1974) Ernest L. Fortin Joseph Cropsey Christopher Bruell

John Hallowell (d. 1992) Harry V. Jaffa Muhsin Mahdi David Lowenthal Harvey C. Mansfield Michael Oakeshott Arnaldo Momigliano (d. 1987) Leo Strauss (d. 1973) Ellis Sandoz (d. 1990) Kenneth W. Thompson Terence E. Marshall
Heinrich Meier

International Editors

Editors

Fred Baumann Maurice Auerbach Wayne Ambler Amy Bonnette Patrick Coby Thomas S. Engeman Elizabeth C de Baca Eastman Maureen Feder-Marcus Edward J. Erler Will Morrisey Ken Masugi Pamela K. Jensen Leslie G. Rubin Susan Orr Charles T. Rubin Martin D. Yaffe Bradford P. Wilson Susan Meld Shell Catherine H. Zuckert Michael P. Zuckert

Manuscript Editor

Lucia B. Prochnow Subscription

rates per volume (3 issues): individuals $29 libraries and all other institutions $48 students (four-year limit) $18 copies available.
outside

Subscriptions

Single

Postage
or

elsewhere

U.S.: Canada $4.50 $5.40 extra by surface longer) or $1 1.00 by air.

extra;
mail

(8

weeks

Payments: in U.S. dollars

a

AND payable
within

by
the U.S.A.

financial institution located (or the U.S. Postal Service).

The Journal Welcomes Manuscripts

in

in

Political

philosophy as

Well

as

Those

Theology,

literature, and Jurisprudence.

follow The Chicago Manual of Style, 13th ed. or manuals based on it; double-space their manuscripts, including notes; place references in the text, in endnotes or follow current journal style in printing references. Words from languages not rooted in Latin should be transliterated to English. To ensure impartial judgment of their manuscripts, contributors should omit mention of their
contributors should
other
with

postal/zip

work; put, on the title page only, their name, any affiliation desired, address code in full, E-Mail and telephone. Please send FOUR clear copies,

which will not

be

returned.

Composition by Eastern Composition A Division of Bytheway Publishing Services Binghamton, N.Y. 13901 U.S.A.

Inquiries:

(Ms.) Joan Walsh, Assistant to the Editor interpretation Queens College, Flushing, N.Y 11367-1597, U.S.A. (718)997-5542 Fax (718) 997-5565
,

E Mail:

interpretation

journal@qc.edu

Heidegger

and

Strauss:
and

Temporality, Religion
Laurence Berns

Political

Philosophy

St. John's College, Annapolis

At St. John's College

a great

with

its

almost all-required curriculum all students read

deal of philosophy, all original texts: Plato, Aristotle, Anselm, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and others. A number of students, not the best, come to believe
that

they know
four

what

their

years

philosophy is. To my great joy, the has become Heidegger's What is that

penultimate

Philosophy?*

reading of (The last

reading is Plato's
not

Phaedrus.)

In that little

work

Heidegger, partly

through an

it perfectly clear that we do philosophy is; that to talk about philosophy is not to enter into philosophy, to philosophize; that like religion philosophy must enter into our
examination of the origins of philosophy, makes

know

what

very being, if we are to enter into it. It is not some method that can be turned on and off like a light switch; it is a way to be traveled, a way of living and searching, an extravagant searching for the governing sources of things. We study Heidegger for the
take a philosopher
same reason that we

take seriously: we think that we might

study anyone whom we learn something important from him. To

to accept what he or she says.

seriously does

not mean

Any

decent teacher
argue with

of

philosophy

classes

knows that the best

students are those who

falsity of what you say any concern they might have for good grades or recommenda tions. We study Heidegger especially because we think that through him we may be able to understand better the deepest tendencies of modern philosophy
far
outweighs
whole.2

you, those whose concern for the truth or

as a

Heidegger laid down in

understands

that the

foundations
were

of modern

philosophy

were not

vacuum; that

they

laid down in

explicit and conscious of

opposition to ancient

philosophy, especially the philosophies

Plato

and

Aris
as

totle,

and to the synthesis of classical

philosophy

and

biblical

religion

known

paper

delivered

at

the XlVth

Congreso Interamericano de Filosofia, Benemerita Universidad

Autonoma de Puebla, Mexico, August, 18, 1999. Some of the subjects discussed here are treated in greater detail in Laurence Berns, "The Prescientific World and Historicism: Some Reflections on

Strauss, Heidegger,

Husserl,"

and

in Leo Strauss's Thought: Toward

pp.

Critical Engagement,

edited

by

Alan Udoff (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991),

169-81.

interpretation, Winter

1999-2000, Vol. 27, No. 2

100

Interpretation
To
understand

scholasticism.

the

foundations

of modern

philosophy

requires what

understanding

what

those philosophers thought

they
same.

were

rejecting

and

they

were

rejecting; the two might not be the

of

This does

not mean

the

merely historical task

philosophically,
understood

listing

done contrasting doctrines. If the job is to be

understood as

each of

the positions must be

own

those
and

taking

them
wres

themselves, in their his

own thinking.
out that

terms. Heidegger's
of

long
are

deep

tlings with Greek texts are not

clarification of

displays

erudition,

they

necessary for the

one

So

then

it turns

in

order to understand modern

philosophy

is

obliged to understand classical ophers appear to

philosophy in its own have thought that they uncovered some fundamental truths. If
classical philos

terms. The

they
to

are

to be

understood

in their

own

terms, is

one not obliged to

be

open seem

minded about those claims to

truth, to take them seriously?

ancient

Silly

man, I

hear, don't

we all

know that

philosophy

rested on a

thoroughly

refuted mar

conception of

nature, refuted

by

modern natural science?

The technological

vels we see around us

every day, better

than any argument, confirm the under

of modern mathematical and experi

standing

of nature

mental science.

they rest upon, the nature True, my interlocutor might

admit, in the study of human things,

the realms of justice,

modern science

beauty, human
to take

aspiration, philosophy
nevertheless

itself,

the success of

is

not so

conspicuous, but

it is really very difficult

seriously.

for

a modern man or woman

classical

philosophy

Leo Strauss have in taking

addressed classical

himself in many

ways

to the obstacles modern men

philosophy

seriously:

The
most

modern students of classical

approach classical

inevitably

philosophy are philosophy from

modem

men, and

hence they

al

a modern point of view.

Only

if

the study tion

on

of classical

philosophy

were accompanied

by

constant and relentless reflec

the modem principles, and

hence

by liberation from
of an adequate

the

naive acceptance of

those principles, could there be any prospect

cal

understanding

of classi

philosophy

by

men.3

modem

The

serious

study

of classical and modern

philosophy, then,

must

accompany

one another.

Strauss's formula, it
modern

seems to me, can also

of the classics

be

applied to the objection

natural

from

science.

Study

of modern

science and careful

reflection on

its

principles

(as the

mathematics and

laboratory
of,

science program

of

St. John's College

attempts to

do)

should

be

part

or prerequisite

to

any

philosophy program. There is me, to liberate ourselves from a naive

serious ciples.

no other

way for

most of us,

it

seems to

acceptance of the
a

authority

of

those prin

Modern

science reveals

itself to be

field

of

fascinating hypotheses,

ingenious
deeper
refutes

experiments and
of

appreciation

many very open questions. Such a study leads to the truths it has discovered, at the same time that it
claims to universality.

its early

founders'

Let

us assume

that modern

Heidegger
physics

and

Strauss

-101

mathematically clear and distinct account of its subject matter, but this apparently has been accomplished by simply ignoring everything that cannot be made to fit into such an account, ignoring anything that cannot be mathematicized. The more comprehensive classical account, say
provided us with a of

has

Aristotle, bases itself

ethical

on principles

like

act and

potency
clear

or

form

and material nature

that are constitutive principles throughout all nature,

and and political

including
and

human

life. The mathematically

of the

distinct

account

would count.

then

be

one

part

more

comprehensive, true and adequate ac

true universal science

Strauss evidently had something like this in mind when he spoke of "the into which modern science will have to be integrated

eventually."4

It is striking that thoughtful physicists, like

when

Heisenberg

and

John

Wheeler,

trying theory fall into Aristotelian language. The theory, since it is primarily statistical and probabilistic, is spoken of in terms of potentiality, the experimental measurements in terms of actuality. Lis
to make sense of quantum ten to Wheeler

interpreting
. . .

Bohr's complementarity thesis: "The laws

of physics

tell us only what may happen. Actual measurement tells us what is

happening

(or

what

did happen).
. .

Measurement

[is]

the act of

turning potentiality into

actuality.

Both Strauss

and

Heidegger

agree with the ancients that all

theorizing,

all

science and philosophy, begins from and therefore is a modification of what is naturally and primordially given to human experience, that is, prescientific and
prephilosophic

experience, what Husserl calls the

what

"life-world."

(Human

experi

ence

includes is

is

said about what

of

is experienced.)
description

Thinking
is,

that wants to

get at the roots or

foundations

human cognition, that

philosophic

thinking,

then

obliged to make a careful, accurate

and analysis of that pre

such analysis

scientific articulation of things. existential of

(Heidegger's technical term for

is

analytic.) This
experience

poses a special problem shaped and

for

our

times when so much

science.

ordinary

itself is

dominated

by

It

also pro

vides another motive

for

the serious

study

of ancient texts.

Heidegger

criticizes all previous attempts

to articulate the meaning and struc

all

ture of the given, the life-world:

they have

failed to

reach the

primordially

given, the pragmata, the fundamental objects of human concern. This to put

failure,

it in

non-Heideggerian

terms, is the failure to

articulate the

fundamental

religiosity permeating the perspective of the life-world. A christian ized anthropology is used by Heidegger to articulate the structures of human
attitude of
existence.

The foundations

of

morality

are

discussed in terms

of

conscience,

guilt and fallenness; history, Geschichte, is connected to Geschick, what has give themselves to been sent; objects of thought "at the end of

philosophy

102

Interpretation
that opens

thinking

itself in

grateful

Karl Lowith,
put

deep

student

and personal acquaintance of

Heidegger,

it

as

follows:

lies obscurely at the basis of everything Heidegger ever said, and induces religious motive, many to become attentive and listen is something unsaid: The Christian belief, but just in its dogmatically which has surely separated itself from uncommitted indeterminateness appeals the more to those who are no longer believ
But
what

ing Christians,
Strauss, too,
and

but

still would

like to be

religious.

was most attentive to the religious element of the prescientific

world.8

or prephilosophic

understanding

of the
and

The differences between Strauss

on

the ancients, on the one

hand,

Heidegger,
not

the other, about how that

religious element

is to be

understood are

fundamental.
only, to
what

Strauss devoted himself primarily, but

"political"

he

called political

philosophy, even more particularly to "Platonic Political

Philosophy."

The

word poli

in

political

philosophy is

fruitfully

ambiguous.

It

can

designate

tics

as the subject matter of political philosophy.

The highest, but

by

no means

the only, object of political

just,

the

best

society.

philosophy from that point of view is the good, the in political philosophy can also refer The word
"political"

to a manner of treatment of philosophy as a whole, to politic philosophizing.

This less

manifest meaning requires some explanation. Differences between individual human beings go far beyond the differences of

between individuals
notes, human

any

other species, and at the same

time,

as

Aristotle any

beings

are more political and more social than members of

other animal species.

This tension between

radical

individuality
forceful

and

sociality,

the need

for

unified communal action and

life

requires a

political center.

One kind

can of

by

force drive

animals together

in herds. But for human beings this hateful

and earns the

imposition

of social

unity is

always

hated

name of

tyranny. Human

they

can

beings look for something better; they want to act in ways that believe are right. For society to exist decently, with a modicum of
the sanctification of norms

freedom,

is required, both to

provide

individuals

with sufficient moral strength radical selfishness as well as

to make the sacrifices required

for overcoming

tions required to

keep

for overcoming external enemies. The sanctificasociety decently free have, from philosophy's point of

view, the cognitive status of opinions. to

Philosophy,

as the ascent

from
as

opinion

knowledge,

calls

into

question all

opinions,

even the

best opinions,

insuffi

cient

knowledge. The

canons of philosophic and scientific

evidence, therefore,

tend to

dissolve

the moral commitments

society

requires

by

calling the

cognitive

status of their supports

into

question.

Is philosophy then

inherently

subversive?

Not necessarily, if in their

mute whatever might

public speech and

tend to weaken

writing the philosophers learn to the sources of human decency and free

dom. What

seems

to be required is an art that can

liberate

those capable of

it

Heidegger
from

and

Strauss

103

unsubstantiated opinion and at the same time support and strengthen the

morality that makes for good citizenship. This is what I was referring to earlier
"political"

as politic

philosophizing, the

other

meaning

of

in

political philosophy.

If

some such art, as

Strauss has

argued, characterized most of philosophy prior to

Kant,

prior

to the so-called

Enlightenment, in
must

order to understand such

have is

recourse to the political

implications

of

philosophizing the serious student his philosophic rhetoric.

teachers'

Classical
politics,

philosophy, then, in Strauss's

of

view

consisting

of ethics and and

that

branch

philosophy that is devoted to the

articulation

understanding

of the prephilosophic or prescientific point of view and the nego

constituting it. The fundamental tension constituting the prephilosophic perspective is the tension between the demands of piety and the divination of an impersonal, intelligible nature that leads to philosophy and sci
tiation of the tensions
ence.
not

Political philosophy,

so

understood, articulates the fundamental tension,

only

by
the

its study
study
of

of

the straightforward questions of ethics and politics,

but

also

by

the origins of philosophy, the quarrel between the poets

and the philosophers, the questions of the

possibility

of

philosophy

as a

way

of

life,

the religious

life,

the principles of revealed religion. A number of Strauss's

the pretensions of the so-called

early
stand

writings were

devoted to exposing

Enlight
under

enment's alleged refutation of revealed religion.

His

mature

view, if I

it, is that

revealed religion and rational science and

philosophy

are mutu

irrefutable.9

ally

This

mutual

irrefutability, he

suggests, may be the secret of the

vitality of Western civilization. For Strauss, with Aristotle, philosophy itself from religion. Heidegger rejects this
as a

came

into

the world

by

separating

account of

the origin of philosophy

Platonic-Aristotelian
thinking."

prejudice.

Opposing faith
nor

and science

he

regards as a
separated

"fall

of

Religious

mythos and philosophic

neither mythos

logos "became
Plato."

and opposed

only there where

appropriate

logos

could maintain their

original essential presence.

academically

This happened already to defend religiosity as

refers

with

It

would not

be

such.

Heidegger's religiosity

comes through what

Strauss

to as his

radical

historicism.

Following Hegel and Nietzsche, for Heidegger, all thought is bound and con trolled by temporality, by History, by how Being reveals itself mysteriously
to each thinker's own time. Are the political consequences of such a position

philosophically

relevant?

All transcendent, i.e., transhistorical, induce

historical
situation are

ethical and politi stand to as

cal principles that

could support or

moderation and a critical

ward the given goals of one's own

timely"

disparaged

"un

Can this have nothing to do with Heidegger's albeit temporary infatuation with National Socialism? For Strauss, following Plato and Aristotle, what makes it possible for us to
or
superficial.

have

access to

transhistorical, to

permanent natural

principles,

if it is possible,

is the

power called

intellect,

the

activity

called

intellection. Bacon, Descartes,

104

Interpretation
and

Hobbes, Locke, Hume

ger, if he
enough to accepts

Kant

are said

to have refuted that

possibility.

Heideg
know
open.

it

at

all, boxes it

within temporality.

For

us who

do

not

be

either

dogmatists

or sceptics about

the matter, the

question

is

NOTES

The illusion

of these students

is

matched

by

the general

practice

in

academia of members of

"philosophers,"

philosophy departments

who call each other

as

if

one could

become

an artist

by

becoming
introduce

a member of an art das die

department.
a

Was ist
a

Philosophie?"

lecture

given

in Cerisy-la-Salle, Normandy, August, 1955, to

questionable assumption.

discussion,
a

as

Qu'est-ce

que

la

philosophie?

2. That it is 3. "On
p.

a whole is certainly an arguable and New Interpretation of Plato's Political

Philosophy,"

Social Research, September, 1946,

328. 4. "Social Science

Humanism,"

and

duction

to the Thought of Leo

with

Strauss (Chicago:

The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Intro University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 8.
and

5. John A. Wheeler 6.
"Existence"

London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1998),

translates

Kenneth Ford, Geons, Black Holes & Quantum Foam (New York pp. 338-40.
"being-there."

Dasein, literally
n.

199;

und Zeit (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1957), sees. 54-60, and especially Zur Sache des Denkens (Niemeyer, 1969), p. 80. 7. Heidegger: Denker in diirftiger Zeit (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1960),

See Sein
and

1,

p.

p.

111.

Translation

by

L. Berns.
and

8. See Natural Right

The

History (Chicago: University

McNally, 1964),
see
pp.

of

Chicago Press, 1953),

pp.

79-91;

and

City

and

Man (Chicago: Rand

writings

240-41.

9. Of Strauss's early

especially Spinoza's Critique of Religion (New York:

Schocken, 1965) and Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and his Predecessors, translated with a valuable introduction by Eve Adler (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), especially Strauss's Introduction. Cf. Laurence Bems, "The Relation Between Philosophy and Religion: Reflections on Leo
Strauss's Suggestion

Concerning

the Source and

Sources

of

Modern

Philosphy,"

Interpretation 19

(Fall, 1991): 43-60. 10. Was heisst Denken? (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1954),
1 1. Karl Lowith his
opinion reports that

pp.

6-7.
expressed

in his last meeting with Heidegger in Rome, in 1936, he that Heidegger's "declaring himself [Parteinahme] for National Socialism
of

lay

in the

essence and

[or very being Wesen] added that his concept of

his

philosophy.

Heidegger

agreed with me without reservation,

'historicity'

[Geschichtlichkeii]

was the

basis for his

political

'engage

ment.'"

Bericht (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1986), p. 57. Translation (here modified) by Elizabeth King, My Life in Germany Before and After 1933A Report (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), p. 60.
no.

Mein Leben in Deutschland

vor und nacli 1933 Ein

Cf. Leo Strauss, "German a lecture delivered February 26, 1941, Interpretation, 26, 3 (1999): 364, see also p. 362. "I do not see how those can resist the voice of that siren
who expect

Nihilism,"

[Nihilism]

the answer to the

such; who mistake analysis of the present or past or

by

known

and stable standard:

lack

of resistance

to nihilism seems

question from from the future as future for philosophy who are not guided which is known and not merely believed. In other words, the to be due ultimately to the depreciation and the contempt of
and
.

first

last

'History,'

John Rawls
Tim Hurley
Furman

and

Liberal

Neutrality

University

[I]t is

an of

inevitable
liberalism'

mark of what

the

late Sir Edwin Hoskyns

not

used

to

call

the

"tyranny
wise?

that the

liberal is

only

convinced that

he is right; he is

also convinced that other people and are

only

restrained

worldly prudence,

material

how could they do other secretly agree with him from saying so by unworthy motives arising from interest, and so forth. CH.
Smyth1

This essay addresses two different justifications of liberal neutrality about the good in the thought of John Rawls. The distinction between these justifica
tions

for neutrality

can

be

understood

in terms

of the

familiar

contrast

between

the right and the good, where the right concerns how we should act
what

(including

justice demands

of

us)

and the good concerns what ends are valuable, or

more

generally what constitutes a choiceworthy human life. Each justification is of a sort that has been put forth many times. Thus the
resembles one articulated

first justification, concerning the good,

who says

by

Kurt Baier,

that

[a]

modem

belief is that there is

no such

thing

as the
often

single pattern will suit

everybody, that people

that absolutely best life find that they have made a

no

mis

take

in their first choice,

that people's tastes can change

along the way, and that no

one can

tell reliably what

life

style a given person will

find fulfilling.

This justifies neutrality about the good by positing that the good is very broad, that it is based on desire, and that it is not much constrained by a human
nature

that

defines

specific

ends

suitable

for humans

as

such.

Then

at

least
nor

tolerance of a broad array

of

human

practices seems

to follow naturally;

mally it is wrong to ban something that is good. The other justification concerns the right. Whatever the breadth
this view
practices. above.

of the

good,

holds,
are

we

have

duty
to be

not

to

reason

from

the

badness, if any,
in the
ends and

of certain argument

We are, that
to be

is,

neutral

in

a stronger sense than

various

We

neutral

both between

human

concerning
to allow

the question of how broad the good

persons to go their own way,
even

is. It is just
that way

that we

have

duty

if

is

mistaken.

want

to thank John

Robinson, David Solomon, Neil Delaney, Jim Sterba, Jim Edwards,

and

and

Paul Weithman for reading

commenting

on earlier versions of

this essay.

interpretation, Winter

1999-2000, Vol. 27, No. 2

106

Interpretation
sort of justification appears

in A Theory of Justice, more in the form of an assumption than an argument, the latter sort in Political Liberalism. The neutrality, such as it is, of Theory depends upon a crucial assumption about the The first
human
good.

In Political Liberalism

similar conclusions

are supported

by
that

an

argument about the right.

assumption

My

contention

is

that a

difficulty in Theory
unsupported

its

about the

good

is

controversial

but

could

at

least

partly be remedied by the argument concerning the right in Political Liberalism. But the argument in Political Liberalism in its turn fails, leaving a serious hole
in Rawls's
view.

Inevitably
neutrality
work

this

essay

also

has

another theme.

Though the

nature of

Rawls's liberal

changes over

time, there is

one

very striking

common on a

thread in his

his

provincialism.

Theory

articulates what

follows

distinctly

account of the
versal support.

human good, while asserting that that Political Liberalism divides political

account

actors

has virtually uni into the reasonable

unreasonable, with garden-variety conservatives, and others who do not in any interesting sense reject the essentials of democracy, often turning out to be unreasonable or worse. Rawls's work, early and late, exhibits little awareness that there are serious-minded persons who in fundamental respects disagree with
and the

him. In his early

work this

is

problem; in his later

work

it is fatal.

1. NEUTRALITY IN A THEORY OF JUSTICE

1.1 The Role of Goodness

as

Rationality

in A

Theory

of

Justice

The

account of the good

that operates

the primary goods. The most crucial primary goods

explicitly in the original position is for political purposes are

wealth"

"rights
as well

and as

liberties,

opportunities and
most

powers, income

and

(TJ,

p.

92),

"perhaps the

These

are conceived of

important primary (p. 440), self-respect. not as good in themselves but as all-purpose principally
good"

means useful

in the

pursuit of

primary

goods the parties prefer

many different life-plans (p. 93). Without the in the original position would lack all motivation;
over

they

would not

life

death, freedom
is to

over

slavery, so the primary

goods are essential

if the

original position

work.
prefer more

The

parties are so constituted that

they simply

primary
the

goods

for

themselves, but here in the

good? are

real world we must ask:

Why

are the

primary

goods

This is

a complex

question, but the

as

main answer

is that

primary

goods

"based

on"

(TJ,

p.

x) goodness

rationality, Rawls's account

of the good

in Part Three
rationality.

Theory."

of

So it is necessary
provides

briefly

to examine goodness as

Goodness

as

rationality

Rawls's

"thin"

theory

of

the good, that

as-

John Rawls
pect of the good

and

Liberal

Neutrality

107

known before the

principles of

justice

are chosen.

From this

account of the good we can see that the

primary
a

goods

in fact

promote the good

of all rational persons and so all rational persons will

desire them.

good if it is rational to rationality 403-4). Applied specifically to life-plans, goodness as 399, rationality has two parts, the principles of rational choice and deliberative ration ality (p. 408). The first takes our general aims and by applying certain rational
general under goodness as pp.

In

thing is

desire it (TJ,

principles

(e.g.,

that more effective means are to

be

preferred over

less

effective
rational

[pp.

411-13])

generates a class of rational class.

life-plans. Then deliberative

at

ity helps select from among this hypothetically grants the agent
consequences of chosen with such

Most important

this stage

is

that

Rawls
the

full knowledge his

good

of relevant

facts

including

his choices,

and

is defined

as the plan that would

be

knowledge (pp. 417, 421). Of course, some religious believers would say that any rational person with full information about the consequences of his choices would adopt their faith because he would know that rejecting
the

faith

would merit eternal

"full"

damnation. Rawls
restricted

of course

does

not mean

this;

presumably

information is

to terrestrial matters, or it is simply

assumed that no rejection of a true

faith

could

have
good

such consequences.

Goodness

as

briefly,
a

the good

rationality is an account of the is the satisfaction of rational

of a person

based

on

desire. "To

put

it
as

desire"

(p. 93).

Taking Theory

whole, the good

constrained

is

conceived of

in terms

of what that person

desires,

in

several

ways.

First,

the good must be rational as

Principle,"

de

scribed above.

Second,

one should

follow the "Aristotelian

capacities

which

is enjoyed, and enjoyed more the more developed and complex the capacity (p. 426). The significance of the Aristotelian Principle in directly constraining the good is doubtful, however; it holds that the
exercise of

developed

functions

most

(the desire to
p.

act on

prominently in Rawls's argument as to why the sense his two principles of justice) is part of a person's
good

of

justice (see

good

571,

sec.

79). Third, the

is

constrained

by

the principles of right chosen

in
of

the original position

(p. 31). Finally, Rawls human

good

justice is itself Several things

part of the

extensively that the sense (sees. 79, 86). He recognizes that for
argues nature

some this might not

be the

case

but "their

is

misfortune"

their

(p. 576).

are

initially

restrictions on the objects of

striking about goodness as rationality. First, the desire that define a person's good are all either
the Aristotelian

formal (deliberative rationality,

account of the right

Principle)

or

derived from

the

(the

restraints

deriving

from the two

principles, the good of

the sense of

justice). Beyond
humans

these there are no restrictions on the ends that

as such.
neutral

constitute the good of

Second,
But it is
of

goodness as

rationality is

in

a sense.

It

spells out no particular

neutral

conception of

the good as the correct one because

it is

between

aims.

not neutral

the idea that

in that it assumes, essentially without argument, a version Some views of the good are essentially good is the the
desired.5

108
based

Interpretation
on

desire; they

take the desires persons

in fact have,
real

perhaps with some

persons'

modest

modifications, as establishing

good.

Other

views

work

from,

say, an account of

human

nature

that

fixes

certain ends as appropriate

for

humans

as such, and to which their

desires

must conform

if the human

good

is

to be achieved. Goodness as rationality places Rawls

in the former

camp.

Thus,

neutral between particular its neutrality is at the same level as that of J. S. Mill desires but not between those views that assert, and those that deny, that the

desired is the
as

good.

holding
Third,

that "the best that can

own

Thomas Nagel has aptly summed up goodness as rationality be wished for someone is the unimpeded

pursuit of

his

path, provided

it does

not

interfere

others."6

with

the rights of
sees goodness as
which

and surprisingly, as

Rawls

gives no

indication that he
a remarkable

rationality
the good

claims that

seriously "there is wide agreement,

lines"

controversial.

He has
with

footnote in

he

many variations, on an account of

(77, p. 400 n.2), citing as parties to that agreement along these Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Kant, Sidgwick, and a number of others. But any
appearance of such agreement

is

spurious.

For instance,
. . .

as

Alasdair Maclntyre
a crucial

says, "[a]n Aristotelian theory of the virtues tion between what any particular individual
good

presuppose[s]

distinc

for him

and what

Someone
sial

might

at any particular time takes to be is really good for him as a object here that goodness as rationality truly is not controver
man."7

because it is merely formal,

that the good
each

thus acceptable to virtually everyone. It might

framework for understanding the good, and be argued that to say, as Rawls
with such

does,

is the

object of rational

giving
I

his due. No

one

disagrees
is

desire is like saying that justice is notions, it might be argued;

or what a person

persons

simply differ

about what

"rational"

is

"due."

To this

would make
"rational"

three replies.

First,

we

have

seen that

Rawls does

give an account

of

restricted

across a

emerges is that the desires that count as rational are in very limited ways. This makes goodness as only rationality neutral very broad range of desires. Far from rendering goodness as rationality

desires. What

acceptable to

everyone, it is precisely this neutrality that

makes

it

controversial.

Second,

as we

have seen, it is from

goodness as

goodness as

goods are

derived. But if

rationality

were

rationality that the primary truly formal it could not

account of the good.

produce such a substantive

(though

still

open-ended)

Third,

as

we

will

see
or

below,

the account of the

primary

goods needs goodness as

rationality,

Rawls had

not put

something like it, if serious objections are to be avoided. So if forth goodness as rationality in the controversial form I have
we would

described then

have

to

back from the primary

controversial

invent it for him. And this ability to

of goodness as

work

goods to an

further

supports

understanding my interpretation.

rationality

as

A final thing to
assume that

note about goodness as

it is the

true account of the good.

rationality tells

us a person's

"real

good"

rationality is that Theory appears As Rawls says, goodness (p. 417).

to
as

John Rawls
1.2 Three Questions
I

and

Liberal

Neutrality

109

want now

to turn to three questions the answers to which reveal how

or

Theory
re-

needs goodness as

that would at

rationality, something like it, in order to avoid difficulties least render the book radically incomplete. These difficulties

emerge when the central argument of

Political Liberalism fails.

7.2.7
tion?
ends

Why

Are Conceptions of the Good Eliminated from the Original Posi

parties'

In the

original position, the

conceptions of the are

good, the specific

veil of

they
p.

will pursue

in the

real

world,

hidden behind the knowledge

would

ignorance
contin

(TJ,
to
an

12). Now the

veil

is designed

to eliminate

of

arbitrary
natural

gencies that

tend to produce bias (pp.

12, 136-37). It
is

be

to object

Rawls that

one's own account of the good

not an

arbitrary contingency but

objectively known to the parties in the is the

true

insight into human nature,

original position.

and that therefore

it

should

be be

But this

objection appears to

misplaced, given Rawls's assumption about the good. Rawls assumes that the
good object of rational

desire

and

is thus very broad. The

conceptions of

the good excluded

from the
of

original position

from among all the objects in the real world. To admit bias his
and

desire,

that

are simply those specific ends, individuals will be inclined to pursue original position would produce

those

into the

both

hopeless deadlock. So from the in

given goodness as

claim to exclude

original position

rationality Rawls makes good only inappropriate knowledge of

the good. The parties

effect act on the assumption that goodness as

rationality

is

correct, so to tell them about their specific ends would simply allow them to
their own

favor
at

idiosyncrasies. Once this is understood, cursory from the (see

one's

initial

puzzlement

Rawls's

rather

treatment of the question of the exclusion of

original position p.

concep

tions of the good

12)

evaporates.

7.2.2
most
place

Why

Is Self-Respect Good? Self-respect (or self-esteem), "perhaps the

good"

important primary in Rawls's

(TJ,

p.

440),

occupies

peculiarly

prominent

thought.8

Rawls

regards the

securing

of self-respect as an

im

portant political goal.

Self-respect has two

parts.

First
that

of all

it includes

a person's sense of

his

own

value,

his

secure conviction

his

conception of

the good,

his in

plan of

life, is

worth

self-respect

implies

a confidence p.

one's ability, so

carrying out. And second, far as it is within one's power,

to

fulfill

one's

intentions. (TJ,

440).

I
a

want

to

focus

on

the

first

part of

self-respect, and

in

particular on

its

involving
value. each

belief,
The

or as

Rawls

puts

it,

"secure

conviction,"

that one's

life-plan has

preconditions

for securing

self-respect

include the availability, for

individual,

of a

community

wherein

his

endeavors are appreciated and esteemed.

110*

Interpretation
our endeavors are appreciated

"[Ujnless

by

our associates
"
.
.

it is impossible for

us to maintain the conviction that

they

are worthwhile unable

(p. 441). The Rawls

ian

citizen

is

sensitive

to public opinion and

of

to resist strong, general

condemnation of

his way

life. "[The parties'] (p. 338).

self-respect and their confi

dence in the
much

value of their own system of ends cannot withstand the

others"

indifference

less the

contempt of

This cosseting community lowing Rawlsian justice:

[A]s citizens, for the
er's at

essential

for

self-respect

is itself

secured

by fol

we are to reject the standard of perfection as a political

principle, and

purposes of of

justice
.

avoid what

way

life.

Thus

least

one

community in

of

any is necessary is that there should be for each person shared interests to which he belongs and where he finds

assessment of

the relative value of one anoth

his

endeavors confirmed

by

his

associates.

And for the

most part this assurance

is

sufficient whenever

public

life

citizens respect one another's ends and adjudicate

support

their political claims in ways that also

their self-esteem.

background

condition that

is

maintained

by

the principles of
of

It is precisely this justice. The parties in fulfill the Aristote

This
well-

the original position

rion prepares

do

not adopt

the principle

perfection, for rejecting this crite

the way to recognize the good of all activities that

are compatible with

lian Principle (and

the principles of justice).

of self-respect

democracy

in

judging

one another's ends

is the foundation

in

ordered society.

(TJ,

p.

442).

By
one

negative
ends"

implication, departure from

persons'

this

"democracy
and

in

judging
not

one an see

other's

would undermine

self-respect,

it is

hard to

way it would happen. Rawls has assumed a citizen almost painfully sensi tive to disapproval. If the law itself were to embody the assumption that a given
way
of

life

was

suppress that

unworthy, and still more if it were actively to discourage or way of life, this powerful political condemnation would undermine

way of life. You can legislate morality. primary goods, is a means to the pursuit of our good. With it we can pursue our life-plans with vigor. "Without it nothing may seem worth doing, or if some things have value for us, we lack the will to strive for them. All desire and activity becomes empty and vain, and we sink into apathy and (77, p. 440). Rawls's principles of justice are a precondition for self-respect, which in turn is a precondition for achieving our good. Those in
goodness of that
other

belief in the

Self-respect, like

cynicism"

the
cost

original
"
.
.

position

would

avoid

undermining

self-respect

"at

almost

any

(p. 440).
at

It may
a good

first

seem strange that

Rawls

gives so central a place to

self-respect,

that might seem to

have little in

political significance.

But Rawls's treat

ment of self-respect

in fact

reflects considerable psychological

place

insight. The
citizen.

ac

count of self-respect and

its

political

society

stresses a theme as old as

Plato

and appears

to answer a standard critique of the

soul

liberal

Plato fa

mously divided the

into

three parts, the rational, the appetitive, and the

John Rawls
thymotic or spirited (see

and

Liberal

Neutrality
is
a

'111

Republic, 435e-441c). The

dangerous. Included here
and raise

thymotic
are

the seat of

impulses both ennobling

recognition nature are of one's

and

courage,

desire for
of

self-respect.9

superiority

These features level

human

ennobling, because

they

humans

above the

of mere mun contemptible acquisitive

dane desire. A because his He is

common critique of the

liberal

citizen

is that he is

soul

is dominated

by

the appetitive part, especially

its

aspect, and reason understood as nothing but calculation of how to

aims. p. all appetite and rational

achieve one's

calculation, no spiritedness (see

Fukuyama,
To (identi
one's

160). To this Rawls

self-respect

demand fied

reply is to demand

can

by

pointing to his

account of self-respect.

recognition of the worth of one's ends

by dignity
respect

Rawls be in

with one's worth as a person

[77,

p.

440]). It is to insist that

respected

by

others.

This is

one of the an

higher human
good.

aspirations. Self-

some sense of

the term

is

important

Although Rawls

must

be wrong to suggest that it is to continue to value one's ends in the face of hostile public opinion, it is difficult, and even for those who can do

"impossible"

it, enduring
of one's

such

hostility
must

is

painful.

Of course, the desire for

egalitarianism.

recognition of

one's worth must

be tempered be

by

Rawls's

Desire for

recognition a

superiority

relegated to the private

sphere,

including
one's

carefully

circumscribed arena of permissible economic competition.

Self-respect,

as

mentioned

above, involves a

belief that

life-plan has
a

value, that one's ends (objects of good, then self-respect

can

desire)

are worth pursuing.

If this belief is

be good,

otherwise not.

And surely the belief is

good

if true, but bad if false. Here is

provides support

a crucial point at which goodness as

rationality

for the primary goods. Goodness as rationality is a version of the idea that the good is the desired. So if goodness as rationality is correct, then the life-plan that a Rawlsian citizen desires to pursue will in fact be good,
so

long
is

as

it is

consistent with

the principles of

justice

and satisfies the rather such a life-

lenient
plan

requirements of goodness as rationality.

Then the belief that

and

good will

be true. Then that belief

will

be good, To lose

self-respect, insofar
to

as

it

consists of that

belief,
both
a

will

be

a good.

self-respect

lose the

conviction that the objects of our

desire

are good

will

then be an unqualified
vigorous pursuit of a

evil,
good

depriving
life-plan

us of

and of a

necessary true belief.

precondition

for the

If

goodness as

rationality is

correct.

For the

picture changes

reject

Rawls's

close connection

between the

good and the

radically if desired, that is, if

are will

we we a

reject goodness as rationality.

Then the

objects of some permissible

desires in be

Rawlsian society

will

not

be good,

and

the belief that

they

be false.
an evil.

And

so self-respect,

consisting in

part of that

belief,
and

will sometimes

It may

seem odd that self-respect could

be

an evil and

its loss

benefit. But

goodness as

rationality is
where

not

obviously correct,
that one's

many
truth

cases

to prefer self-respect

if it is wrong then there are to its loss is to prefer the ignorant

pursuit of evil

over the awareness

life-plan,

or some part of even

it, in

lacks

value.

This

awareness

may

sometimes

be painful,

(as Rawls

112*

Interpretation
preferable

says) enervating, but it is surely

to the

alternative.

And

so one of

Rawls's

goods turns out to

be

quite

possibly

an evil.

Indeed,
the

some might

find
the

an objection

to liberal society in its

tendency

to

promote

false

sense of

goodness of as

many life-plans lacking, at least in part, in real value. If shame is, Rawls says, "the feeling that someone has when he experiences an injury to
self-respect or suffers a

his

blow to his

self-esteem"

(77,

p.

442),

some will

find
the

the Rawlsian citizen shameless.

And

of course of

Rawls

cannot countenance

the securing of self-respect

as

by

promotion
out"

false belief. "[S]uch devices

Plato's Noble Lie

...

are ruled

so

454 n.l) in justice as fairness. Goodness as rationality must be true, that the belief partly constituting self-respect will be true and hence its pro

(TJ,

p.

motion

legitimate in

a well-ordered society.

Rawls

needs goodness as

rationality

as the true account of the good.

7.2.3 is
a

Why

Is Freedom Good? In both

Theory
and

and

Rawls's later work,

with other

liberty
of

primary

good

(77,

p.

92; PL,

p.

181),

this, along

features

the original position,

leads the

parties to choose principles of justice that guaran

tee "the most extensive total system of equal

similar system of

basic liberties

compatible with a

liberty for
p.

Political Liberalism,
count of

(77, 5.) So Kant's

all."

p.

great purported

302. This theory is later modified. See failure that from an ac

the right neutral between ends

few

prohibitions will

flow

becomes

Rawls takes the goodness of liberty contemporary liberalism's great to be rather obvious (see TJ, pp. 92, 396), and given goodness as rationality it
seems that and

triumph.10

if

one's

it is. For freedom clearly is a means to the pursuit of the desired, desires define one's real good, then freedom unequivocally pro
But
matters

motes one's good.

may be

more complicated

if

we question good

ness as rationality.

If

goodness as

rationality
pursued

were

false

then

it

would
were

things
could

permissibly in principle do

in liberal society

both that many in fact bad and that the law

possible

be

people good

by directing
This

them onto paths other than the

would

ones

they

would pursue when unimpeded.

be true because the

paths

people would pursue when unimpeded no

longer necessarily

would reflect their

true good. Now as the original position stands such considerations cannot occur to the parties: their situation and motivations model goodness as

rationality

But

once goodness as

the original position should model

rationality is questioned there is it. Assuming instead

no obvious reason

that

an account of the good

drawing
certain

a sharper

distinction between the least that their

good and the

desired

would require at all.

changes, if the

original position remained a useful

device

The

parties,

knowing

at

unimpeded choices might go wrong, would

face
the

far

more complex question

concerning freedom. What

pursuing
evil?

would

they

want

community to do if they
at

were

The

answer

is

by

no means

obvious, and of course could vary

But

least

we can

say that their

considerably depending on circumstances. decision would not be biased, because

they

John Rawls
still would not

and

Liberal
that

Neutrality
is,

'113

know their

own aims

would not

know,

whether

they

themselves,

once

in

the real world, would be

inclined to

pursue

the good or not.

Nor

would

this information introduce dissension into the original position. The

parties would

be

clones

just

as

before, only
which

now with

different information.
once goodness as ra
own

There is something

else the parties should

know, too,

tionality
Rawls
the

was

rejected, something

seems

to follow from Rawls's

thought once goodness as rationality

posits a citizen whose social and

is

excised: the educative effect of the

law.

beliefs

about the good are

exquisitely

sensitive to

surrounding
morals

legal

order.

Rawls's

assumption that political princi

ples can affect self-respect understood

in his

sense provides the perfect

persons'

opening
own

for

legislation designed to improve

says that
us

awareness

of their

good.

Rawls

"unless

our endeavors are appreciated

by

our associates

it is impossible for
p.

worthw

to maintain the conviction that

they

are

(TJ,

441). This is

a sentiment

dear to

morals

legislators

everywhere.

If Rawls is

right that political

principles can

undermine

self-respect,

that one's aims are good, then law could confer a

more persons to
would

including the belief positive benefit by causing

in the
original position grants

believe the
aware

truth about the good. Those

have to be
of

of this

if only because Rawls

them general

how society operates (TJ, pp. 137-38), and so they would have to know that in a liberal society their chances of true belief about the good and
knowledge

desire for it

could

account of the good.

society in fact
good.

would

a political society informed by the full, true And in affecting their beliefs and desires the nonliberal be promoting their good, because true belief and desire for things

be lower than in

good would

surely themselves be

good and would

lead

people

to the

Experience

reinforces the sense that

law

affects moral

judgment. Robert P. be
argued that

George has
can't

argued

that since the civil rights era

it

cannot

"you

legislate

morality,"

if

by

that

is

meant

that law cannot cause citizens to

and

judgments.12

alter moral

The

court

decisions

legislation

of that time were

surely among the causes of favor of racial equality. Both

aware of

the

development

of a over

sides

in

the

battle

strong public consensus in homosexual rights are well

this,

which

is

one reason

that legal

issues concerning

homosexuality
Mi
suit

which are not otherwise of chael

Hardwick

of

earthshattering consequence Bowers v. Hardwick (478 U.S. 186

stir such passions.

[1986]) had

to

file

to challenge the constitutionality of the antisodomy statute because the authori ties

in Georgia followed

the practice, virtually universal

in America,
adults.

of not

prosecuting private,

consensual

holding denying
controversial,

a constitutional

homosexual activity between right to homosexual activity

But the

remains

deeply
moral

in

part

because

of

implicit

awareness of

the

Constitution's

authority in American culture. Law is a powerful, authoritative cultural symbol, and the fight is for control of it. Rawls is acutely aware of the regime's effect
on moral attitudes, and

apparently

would not

be bothered

by

the knowledge that

one

justice

as

fairness

would tend

to produce citizens who

believed that the life

114*

Interpretation

chose was good

was

for one,

and that what

they

themselves were inclined to pursue

good,

but this

could

of goodness as rationality.

only be because of the implicit moral indifferentism Take away that unsupported assumption and a tension
the primary goods appears starkly.

between the

real good and

1.3 Rawls

and

Utilitarians

on the

Relation Between

the Right and the

Good

One implication
man good

of

this understanding of Rawls's assumptions about the

hu

is that
prior

one must

be very

careful

in

interpreting

the

idea

that

for Rawls
to the

the right
right.

is

to the good, whereas

not mean

for

utilitarians

the good

is

prior

This does

that Rawls chooses principles of

justice

with

less

reference

to the good than do utilitarians.

Goodness do
the

as

rationality

assumes that

the good

is the

object of rational

desire,

utilitarian

and so

Theory
trying

starts

from

utilitarian

assumptions

about

the good while

to avoid utilitarian
comparisons of

problems.

Hence the primary

and the requirement

goods allow

better interpersonal

well-being, and the maximin rule and

of

liberty,

resulting difference principle, the priority that life-plans conform to the principles of justice her basic life-prospects destroyed for
some

protect the

individual from

having

It is this softening of the hard edge of utilitarianism that most distinguishes Theory. In no interesting sense is Rawls's early work any clearly more neutral about the good than is utilitarianism.
greater good.

The
course rates even

in Theory, then, should be controversial, and it is crucial to the

problem

clear.

Goodness

project.

rationality is of But although Rawls elabo

as

it

length in Part Three, nowhere does he argue for it. He does not acknowledge that it is controversial. The remainder of this essay investi
at great

gates whether

anything in Political Liberalism

can

fill this hole.

2. NEUTRALITY IN POLITICAL LIBERALISM

2.1

Stability

in A

Theory

of

Justice

After 1971 Rawls

problem of

appears to

have become

increasingly
as

concerned with the

stability,

part of

Theory
be

had already addressed at (chaps. 8-9). The exposition of justice

a

topic he

great

length in the latter

proceeds

fairness

in

two stages. The

that would
whether

first be

concerns the original position and the principles of

justice

chosen

there. The second tests these principles to

determine
to restore

they

will

stable.

The stability

of the system

is

assured

if departures

from its

equilibrium state generate sufficient

countervailing forces

John Rawls
equilibrium

and

Liberal

Neutrality
instability

1 15
are

(TJ,

p.

457). In the

account

in Theory,

tendencies to

of two sorts.

First is the tendency of persons to become free riders, to attempt to derive the benefit from a cooperative undertaking without making a full con
tribution to
share

sustaining it. Second is the tendency of persons not to do their fair if they fear or perceive that others are not doing theirs (p. 336). Clearly, the first sort of tendency would contribute to the second, and eliminating the first
would tend to eliminate the second. sense of

justice,

the effective

desire to

act on the principles of

Crucial to maintaining stability is the justice chosen in be

stable

the original position (p. 458). A political system should

if

citizens

have

effort ples

strong and enduring sense of justice, and so Rawls devotes considerable in Theory to showing how the sense of justice corresponding to his princi could be developed in an individual, and how it is in fact part of an individ
a

ual's good.

Perhaps it is not,
with

on

reflection, so surprising that Rawls

stability,

a subject that

for

most political philosophers

is greatly figures
good
nor

concerned
much

less

prominently.

He has,

one

might

say,

neither the

highest

the most

fearsome

evil to motivate

loyalty

to his regime.

His

political

promise that
perfection. violent

it

will can

promote a

determinate

set of ends

society does not constitutive of human

passion

Nor

he,

with

Hobbes,

call on the

strongly felt for

such a

to avoid
wants

death. His
broader

political

society

will provide

security, of course,

but he

much

consensus

than that necessary

limited

purpose.

Rawls's but

citizen must adhere

to principles more extensive than that commanding

most

the simple obedience

not extensive enough on a

necessary to satisfy the to promote human

"built
hillside.14

basic

and reliable passions,

perfection.

If the
solid

ancients

built

shining city
citizen

hill,

and the moderns

on

on

low but

ground,"

Rawls's

is

camped

uneasily

the

With

neither

high inspiration

nor

abject terror to move

will

him,

the danger
problem

is

that

his

response to

his

political

society

be

tepid at

best. This

is especially
primary

acute given the account of the

good

that operates in the original position. If a person outside the original posi
regarded

tion

simply

his

good as the

goods

(plus his

more specific ends would emerge

to which the primary goods are means) then a

sharp

conflict

between the
good as

pursuit of

justice

and

the pursuit of his good. He would see

and so on
with

his

consisting in more wealth, self-respect, happenstance would he see his good as tied up
that to

for himself.

Only by
only,
come

that of

his fellows
could

is, if his
seen

particular ends

happened to be

altruistic.

Justice

easily

be

as

something merely onerous,

and

stability

would

be

imperiled.1

Hence the
Rawls's

need

for

an extensive treatment of the citizen's motives

for upholding

political society.

The two
signed

main strands

in Rawls's

account of

stability

are a

psychology de
princi

citizens'

to make believable the development of

loyalty

to the two

ples and an

axiology designed to

show that the sense of

part of a citizen's good.

The

psychology, much

justice is (normally) indebted to Piaget and Kohlberg,

1 16

Interpretation

takes the growing citizen through stages of moral development

(77,

sees. 70-

72). At

each stage the citizen

perceives others

acting

justly
his

toward

him

and

develops

loyalty

toward persons and rules that promote

explain

good.

This

psycho

logical tendency helps

principles,
prove the

why

citizens

which assure equal of all

liberty

and which,

generally in the

would support

the two

economic a

sphere,
of

im

lot

(where improvement is
contrasts

measured

from
with

baseline

equality

[TJ,

p.

80]). Rawls

justice

as

fairness here

utilitarianism, which

may require the interests of some to be sacrificed for the greater good, rendering less plausible the development of its corresponding sense of justice (pp. 499502). The second, axiological strand of the account tries to show that a normal
person would see

the sense of

justice

as

part of
of

his

psychological price

for the deception life in

our acts

good. We pay a heavy injustice entail; injustice is

likely justly
Thus,

to harm those we care about; the Aristotelian

Principle

shows that the

complex

activity

of

a well-ordered

society is

part of our good; and

expresses our even

us

desire to be free

and equal rational

beings (77,

pp.

acting 570-72).

from

the standpoint of the thin

we choose principles of

theory (that

account of the good

known to

before

justice),

the sense of

justice is hope

part
for"

of our good

(77,

sec.

86). Justice

as

fairness is "as
diverse

stable as one could

(TJ,

p.

399).
sketch
of

This
stability
as

does

not exhaust the

props

Rawls

uses to shore

his

political society.

For instance, he has

civil

an account of of

up the justice why envy

fairness
sees.

would not

tend to generate unacceptable

levels

destabilizing

(77,
what

80-81),

and of

how

disobedience

can restore equilibrium to a

what

system that

has drifted into injustice (p. 383). But

is striking throughout is

is

conspicuous

by its

absence.

Recall the two

sources of

Rawls does mention, free riding and the perception that their share. What is not mentioned is a third powerful
namely, principled objection to the principles of justice
violate one's

instability that others are not doing

of

source

instability,
omission

when

those principles

deepest

convictions.

And it

appears to
and

have been this

that concerned

Rawls in

the years after

political

1971

led him to try to

framework for resolving

ject. It is, then, to that

develop

disputes that

no reasonable person could re

project that we must turn.

2.2

Stability

in Political Liberalism

In crafting
modern

a revised account of

stability the basic

problem

is

pluralism.

democracy
which

is

characterized

by

an

irreducible plurality
of

of comprehensive

doctrines,
good that
simple

are much

broader bodies
p.

belief than

the accounts of the

pluralism to

they

generate

(see PL,
can

59).

16

Rawls believes this

be

a p.

historical fact that

be

expected to remain true

xvi), and in this, at

least, he

indefinitely (PL,

seems to

be

correct.

Rawls takes it

that no political

John Rawls
doctrine
can

and

Liberal

Neutrality
p.

-117

be

stable

in

such a

society

unless

it

can appeal to all the

"reason

able"

comprehensive comprehensive
and

doctrines

likely

to

be

present

there

(PL,

10).

Among
Kant
And

doctrines

"comprehensive"

are such

liberalisms

as those of

Mill,

which are

burdened

with controversial accounts of

things such as the

good and

the

autonomy and which are not accepted by all liberalism of Theory is itself comprehensive (PL, basis for
politics

reasonable persons.
p.

xvi),

so

that

it

cannot

serve as a stable

in

a pluralistic society.

An

essential part of are supposed

Rawls's later
to accept,
"political."

project

is

an

argument,

which all reasonable

persons

designed to

clear the

political

landscape

of

views not

be justi fied if they are to be acceptable. Within the framework thus established political disagreement still will take place, but those debates will be resolved in terms
rather

issues;

This argument does appropriately it establishes the terms in which political

not settle most political positions must

all reasonable persons can

accept, albeit sometimes reluctantly. All

reasonable of

persons will accept those resolutions

because they

will

be justified in terms
values

political,

not

comprehensive,

values.

Exclusively

religious

or

disputed

sexual moralities will and state will not.

be excluded;

women's

equality

or the separation of church

So the line between

reasonable and unreasonable

defines

who

is
of

entitled to a political system she can accept and who

is

not.

And the

problem while

stability becomes that

of

keeping

the unreasonable at

finding a consensus among the reasonable bay, hopefully a manageable undertaking.

fundamental issues, to "matters

There

are certain complications.

Thus,

the prohibition on the political use of compre

of constitu

hensive doctrines

applies

only to
justice"

tional essentials and

basic

(PL,

p.

224). And it is
a

permissible to offer

parallel, comprehensive

justifications for
1

policy

supported also

by

the

best
main

balance

values.17

of political

comment on these

briefly

below, but in the

they

should not much affect the argument. as

Justice
suited space

fairness

as articulated

in

Theory is
The

comprehensive and

hence

not

for the

political world.

It

must

be recast,

and

Rawls

spends considerable

in Political Liberalism

on this effort.

makeover at

times seems quite

as rational

superficial, however. In particular, the primary goods and goodness

ity

are carried over

essentially unchanged, now carefully

utilitarianism

labeled "for

political

only."

purposes

But if

utilitarian concepts comprehensive

is comprehensive, then why are not these too? Rawls's argument as to why the primary

goods are still to

nation.

function

as our public measure of the good proceeds

by

elimi

No

other account can serve

for

political

purposes,

so the

primary

goods
pp.

will serve as an

overlap between

permissible conceptions of

the good the

(PL,

179-80). That
the

no other account

is

acceptable

is

established

by

first So

part of

later project,
thus

what we might call the

ground-clearing

argument.

we must

consider whether that and

argument,

if successful,

will support

the primary goods

and we must con

fill

the hole we earlier

identified in Rawls's view,

successful.

sider whether

that argument

is in fact

118

Interpretation

2.3 The

Ground-Clearing
world

Argument

Disagreement in the These two kinds

of

is

sometimes reasonable, sometimes unreasonable.

sources.

disagreement have different

Rawls

mentions a num

ber

of sources of reasonable

disagreement,

without

claiming to

have

established

an exhaustive or

list.

Among

them are that evidence

may differ as may be vague, requiring judgment in their application, and that our thinking is influenced by our experiences and backgrounds (PL, pp. 56-57). These sources of reasonable disagreement are the burdens of judg

hard to evaluate, that

that our concepts

we

may be conflicting, complex, to the weight to be assigned to evi

dence,

ment

(p. 55); they

are

reasonable

persons.

why agreement often is difficult or impossible between But some disagreement is less benign in origin. The
disagreement"

"sources

of unreasonable and

are

"prejudice

and

bias,

self-

and

group
and

interest, blindness
The
categories. a moral

willfulness"

(p. 58;

elsewhere

he

adds

"irrationality

stupidity").18

sources of unreasonable

disagreement divide into two broad

self-

The first

flavor, in
or and

of a

group

and group interest) has (including prejudice, bias, and involving the unjustifiable favoring or disfavoring individual. The other category (including blindness, willfulness,
each case

irrationality,

stupidity) is

more

epistemological, though

with

moral

over

tones. The term

mological error.

'unreasonable'

perfectly

captures this mix of moral and episte

Reasonable
not

persons recognize that

it is because

of

the

burdens

of

judgment,
puts

because behind

of

the sources of unreasonable

unite

one comprehensive

disagreement, doctrine (PL, pp. 54, 60). And

theory
of

that society cannot

so

Rawls

forth

an argument

that is supposed to convince all reasonable persons and the

conclusion of which

is

that an acceptable
and thus

justice
the

must

be

neutral

be

tween comprehensive

doctrines

between the
we get

conceptions of the good

that

they

generate.

Distilling

Rawls's reasoning

following:

1.

Disagreements between
able, that

comprehensive
of the

is, they

arise

because

burdens

doctrines normally of judgment.

are

reason

2. 3.

No

person should

have imposed

by
No

a comprehensive
person should

on him political arrangements justified doctrine he reasonably can reject; and therefore have imposed on him political arrangements justified

by

reference to

any

particular comprehensive

doctrine (see PL pp 62

137, 217).
The

essential

idea is that
to

reasonable

persons,

disagreement
of

with other reasonable

persons, abstract if

disagreement
(in Rawls's

something

more general upon

they find themselves in they can from the area which they can base a consen
when

sus of

case an

"overlapping

consensus"). In the political realm the area

disagreement is that

of comprehensive

doctrines

and the area of consensus

is

John Rawls
the shared assumptions of a constitutional
and

and

Liberal

Neutrality
justice.

1 19

democracy

which, suitably construed

of

arranged, yield
are three

an

appropriately

political

understanding

There

things to

note about this argument.

First, it

needs the second

premise, which
those who
ment

holds

that comprehensive
reject

doctrines

should not

be imposed
of

on

reasonably

them.

Argument direct from the burdens

judg

to the conclusion would be a

blatant

non sequitur.

Rawls

must

bridge this

gap

with a premise

concerning

the wrongfulness of
reject them.

imposing

certain sorts of

policies on persons who

reasonably

And

as we shall

see, this creates

difficulties.

Second, for Rawls's later

and

project

to work, both the state's acts of coercion

its failures

to coerce must be acceptable to all reasonable persons.

consensus

Otherwise

the

overlapping be

and the account of

stability

will

be imperiled. If
practice, then

reasonable persons can reject the state's refusal to prohibit some

there will tion.

endless strife no

between them
why

and those who reject such a prohibi

This is

doubt

one reason no

even comprehensive must

liberalisms,
recast

which

presumably
purposes.

would

favor

illegitimate coercion,
the

be

for

political

Finally,
to provide

the argument

from

burdens

of

judgment

appears at

first

glance

implicit

grounds

for accepting something like

goodness as

for like

political

purposes.

The

argument provides a political

rationality basis for something

goodness as

rationality

by

requiring us, in

our political activities, to accept

the equal goodness of all reasonable accounts of the good. As

each assume

individuals
the

we

that some account of the good,

derived from

a comprehensive

doctrine, is
judgment

true or at

least

reasonable.

But

by

the argument

from

burdens

of

we cannot

for

political purposes assume otherwise about other reason

able accounts of the good.

Thus

we must

for

political purposes affirm the good

the good. This indifferentism is exactly selfrationality asserts, and it supports both the goodness of respect and freedom and the exclusion of any particular conception of the good from the original position. And thus Rawls might have, after all, a justification
ness of all reasonable conceptions of

what goodness as

for assuming for

prehensive

that

both

goodness as

political purposes.

Although

we

rationality and what flows from it may believe in our hearts that
and the things

are correct com

others'

doctrines

are

largely
for

false

so,

we cannot assert

this

political purposes and would

they hold good not always use it as a basis for political

Thus the democratic
rationality, seems to

arrangements

because

reasonable persons

object.

attitude toward ends, an attitude embodied

receive an

in

goodness as

effective, appropriately political,

basis.

2.4 The

Inadequacy

of the

Ground-Clearing

Argument

But the ground-clearing argument cannot do the work that Rawls do. Let us first note one remarkable implication of the argument and

wants of

it to

Rawls's

120

Interpretation

assumption that all reasonable persons will accept

it,

an

implication that

can

be

stated

in

various ways.

It

assumes a vast

difference between the degree

of rea

sonable

disagreement

possible on questions of

the good as opposed to questions

of the right.

Disagreement

about

the good (and more generally about compre

reasonable.

hensive doctrines) is generally framework for resolving

strates unreasonableness.
ableness so grant

But disagreement
aspect of the
easy.

with

Rawls's

questions of

justice (an
politics

right) demon

Ethics is hard,

is

criterion of reason religious

easily

satisfied that

it

requires

the most
vice

devout

believer to be
met

the

reasonableness of

the atheist

(and

versa) is too

strict to

by
not

nonliberals.

Rawls

achieves

civility

of

cal

liberalism

at the cost of

insulting

discourse among those any who do not.

who accept politi

'Unreasonable'

may

seem

to rank very high on the scale of

invective, but in Rawls's

prose, which

almost never raises

persons moved who

its voice, it is a serious charge indeed. Rawls holds that in fundamental respects disagree with his views on justice are

to that disagreement

by bias,
or

prejudice,

self-

or

group interest,

will

fulness, blindness, irrationality,

dissent. Rawls
cannot accept

stupidity

never

by

principled grounds

for
The

central argument

any less skewed of Political Liberalism

this there can

account of the reasonable than this. needs to

be

acceptable

to

all reasonable

persons.

Without

be

no

overlapping for

consensus of the reasonable

comprehensive
will

doctrines in society,

and so the account of justice and of at

stability

be imperiled. But
view.

there are ample grounds

least

reasonable rejection

of

Rawls's

For Rawls,

reason unites us and reason

divides

us.

In the

political realm an
reason"

overlapping p. 137), but

consensus
a

is "acceptable to human

[citizens']

common

human

(PL,

plurality

of reasonable comprehensive reason under

doctrines is "the

natural

outcome of the activities of

p. xxiv).

Reason is strong
on

enough to produce as

(PL, enduring free agreement on Rawlsianism (though

226]), but
not

institutions"

not

specifically
this

justice

fairness [PL,

p.

produce agreement on reason:

the true comprehensive

doctrine, if

any.

strong enough to Rawls says to

far

and no

further, but

some will prefer a

are possible

At least three

stances opposed to

Rawls's

different stopping point. here. First, one can deny

that rejection of the true comprehensive

that such

disagreement

arises

from

the

burdens

doctrine is reasonable, deny, that is, of judgment and thus deny the

first

premise.

Second,

one can

deny

that reasonable

disagreement
set

with the true of the more

comprehensive
which

doctrine

entails that

policy

cannot

be

in light

truth,

is

to

deny

the second premise.

Finally,

one can

simply be

lenient

than

Rawls

on the question of what a person

therefore that rejection of at

least

one premise

reasonably can believe, is at least reasonable. In

and

hold

that case

Rawls's later
so at

project cannot obtain

the agreement of all reasonable persons, and

loses

much of

its

point.

The

right stance

is that

rejection of either premise

is

least reasonable,

and that rejection of the second

is

correct.

John Rawls
2.4.1

and

Liberal

Neutrality

-121

Rejecting

the

First Premise. Rawls

makes a number of comments re

vealing his easygoing

among
much

attitude toward rejection of even the religious matters. not a

true comprehensive
on

doctrine, particularly in
comprehensive
. .

Rawls

says

early

that pluralism

doctrines is fact

"disaster"

(PL,
is

p. xxiv).

Later he

goes

further: ".
human

the

of reasonable pluralism not

not an unfortunate condi so

tion of

life"

(p. 37). It is

hard to

see

why this is

for Rawls
could

once

we understand

that we are not to

believe that

rejection of

the faith

have

any

unfortunate consequences:

Perhaps the doctrine

to

of

free faith developed because it is difficult, if

of those with whom we

not

impossible,

believe in
and

the

damnation

have,

with

trust and confidence,

p.

long
The

fruitfully

cooperated

in maintaining

just

society.

(PL,

xxv)

real

implication

of this one

is

religious

political purposes.

For if

believes that
one

then no matter how

forgiving

is

of

and not merely for faith is in any sense the best, unbelievers, one is likely to regard their

indifferentism,
one

unbelief on matters of such

fundamental importance liberalism it is banishes thoughts

as at

least

"unfortunate."

But for
that

adherents of political
and

not so regarded. of

As for the idea

would

long

fruitful

cooperation

damnation, many

differ. Martin Luther, in his early years, felt daily his own unworthiness and was haunted by a sense of his own likely damnation. It nearly drove him to
despair.19

He surely would have had no difficulty believing in the damnation Rawlsian citizens, even had he cooperated with them.

of

regard as the true able.

Even today there are those who insist on seeing the rejection faith as a very serious matter indeed, and as not
David Smolin
asserts that

of what

they

at all reason

The problem, from

understand

Christian perspective, is

not

that the non-Christian cannot suffi

ciently them. The barrier to

Christian doctrines, but

that the non-Christian will not accept

ethical and stems

becoming

ful human nature,

which refuses

Christian is primarily to submit to God.

from

the sin

In

support

Smolin

cites a

John Frame,

who calls rejection of

Christianity

"stu

pid,"

thereby evincing
sent.20

virtually Rawlsian

attitude

toward

fundamental dis
com

There simply are many who will refuse to see the rejection of their prehensive doctrines as benignly as Rawls insists that they should. Comprehensive doctrines
refuse to accept them.
reasonable

often generate their own assessments of those who

generate

They

their own accounts of what

is

and

is

not

disagreement. As in the

cases of

Smolin

and

Frame,

these accounts

of reasonableness will sometimes clash with that offered offers

by

Rawls. Since Rawls

the truth so to

virtually

no argument as

to why

we should regard rejection of

leniently, he leaves

adherents of such comprehensive

doctrines

with no reason

1 22

Interpretation
his. Rawls therefore is in Adherents
of such
no position

adjust their views to

to say, as he

does,

that

they
will

are unreasonable.

that pluralism

is

likely

to continue in some

doctrines may agree with Rawls form, but they will lament that fact.
under

They

be unwilling to
except perhaps

bring
on
notion

their

doctrines
hoc basis,

the umbrella of political tactical or

liberalism,
maneuver.

an ad

as

As for Rawls's

that religious views are no more

peacekeeping inappropriate

for the

resolution of political questions than are other comprehensive

doctrines,

they

are

likely

to take that hint in directions Rawls

p.

would not

intend (see "Public

Reason 2.4.2

Revisited,"

780).

Rejecting

the

Second Premise. The

second ground

central argument relies on a straightforward rejection of are entitled

the

for rejecting Rawls's idea that persons

to political arrangements the

reject.

justification first

of which

they

could not

reasonably
extreme

Where

rejection of the

premise of

Rawls's

argument

is
an

reasonable, rejection of the second is in fact correct. Rawls's idea here

is

overextension, not of the doctrine of religious toleration, but of some

the

thing like
erroneous

doctrine

of conscientious refusal. some

The

claims of the

innocently

many have thought, that one has a moral obligation to follow the dictates of one's own erroneously formed conscience. And there are circumstances in which political
conscience

do have

weight; it may even

be,

as

society should respect a person's right to an exemption from an otherwise valid legal requirement because that person conscientiously rejects the basis of that requirement. Of course such cases are quite rare, military conscription being the
example.21

to take something very like this for 'conscientious') and to turn it into a central concept in a theory of justice. Surely, though, we do not ordinarily be lieve that a person's reasonable but erroneous rejection of the justification of a

only

obvious

But Rawls

appears

principle

(with

'reasonable'

substituted

law

entitles that person even to a personal exemption

sale repeal. conscience

even

Once the true

comprehensive

doctrine,
might

on

from it, much less a whole its own terms, has given
widespread reasonable, or

its due, that

should

be

enough.

Of course,

for not enacting it, but that is another matter. This objection derives greater force from Rawls's implicit admission that the full use of human reason might allow us to settle on a single comprehensive
policy
a pragmatic reason

unreasonable, objection to a

be

doctrine. Rawls does

not

say that there

accepted

are

only two

categories of acceptable

beliefs,
sense)
an

those that will

and

be

those that are accepted

of

intermediate category human reason and in that

the rejection of which thus unreasonable as
established

(in his blind faith. There is, or at least may be, beliefs that can be established by the full use of
on

by

all persons who are reasonable

sense will

be

accepted

does

not show one to

be

by all reasonable persons, but biased, stupid, or whatever (and

Such
propositions cannot

Rawls

understands the term).

be

"by

the resources of a reasonable political conception of

such a conception

justice"

(PL,

p.

135 n.2) because

has

available to

it only those

proposi-

John Rawls
tions available to persons who are reasonable

and

Liberal

Neutrality
(see

1 23
also

in Rawls's

weak sense

PL,
set

p.

60

n.

13).
this, it is
natural

But

once we see

to conclude that political policy should be

in light

of all that

human

reason can tell us, and that citizens should

be held grasp be seen human

responsible

for the full full

use of

the truth. The truth should to be such

with

necessary be followed because it is in fact true human

reason.

human

reason

to allow them to
and can

by
is

the

use of

Merely

reasonable

disagreement

the law

not enough

to

justify

voiding it

when the

full

resources of

reason support

it.

2.4.3 An Objection

and a

Reply. I have

argued

that Rawls's second premise

is false
of

and that the

first
view

can

be denied
a

by

reasonable persons.

One

consequence

this

is that his
and

is in

sense

self-defeating.

If the

reasonable

is

the

legitimate,

if contrary to

what

Rawls believes it is

reasonable to use compre

hensive doctrines in resolving

must accept the

even

fundamental

political

questions, then Rawls

of

legitimacy

of such use or redefine

legitimacy. The burdens

judgment
To
of

must

be

applied to political

liberalism itself. When they are, Rawls's

reply

project collapses. all of this

it

would

be

natural to not

by

pointing to the limited

resolve all
political

nature

Rawls's later

project.

He does

seek to

questions

without reference to comprehensive

doctrines; in fact he
justice"

wants us to resolve on

only

few that way,

and those

only the most basic

on

fundamental. It is only

"matters

of constitutional

essentials and

(PL,

p.

224)

that we are not to

invoke
can

our comprehensive at

doctrines. And

those matters all reasonable people

agree,

least

as to the sort of values that are relevant.

On

other questions

citizens and

legislators may reason from their comprehensive doctrines. And Rawls's framework for resolving political issues does not decide those issues; it merely lays down the terms of reasonable political argument (see "Public
Revisited,"

Reason

pp.

794-97). All

reasonable parts of

the political spectrum

still will

be

able

to argue, so

long

as

they do

so

in

reasonable terms.
would

So Rawls 64). He is
to use

is excluding only

comprehensive

doctrines like those "that

suppress, if

they

could,

liberty

of conscience and

freedom

thought"

of

(PL,

p.

asserting simply that "reasonable

political

persons will

think

it is

unreasonable

power, should

they

possess

it,

to repress comprehensive views that are

own"

not unreasonable, though political not

different from their

(p. 60). Thus the hope for

society the fundamentals of which no reasonable person can reject is futile. But in fact Rawls goes a great deal further than platitudes, and when
asserts things that reasonable persons can
of

he does, he

reject, and rigs

political

debate in favor

the Left.
seems ambivalent about the scope of accounts of who

Rawls himself
seen

his project,

as can

be

from his different

his

cultural opponents are.

Revisited,"

Sometimes
p.

he

mentions autocrats and

dictators (see "Public Reason

clear

806). But
character-

at other times the

enemy is Mother Teresa. This is

from the

most

124
istic

Interpretation
expression of the on abortion
an

footnote
n.32).

in

intellectual personality animating Rawls's later work, the the first edition of Political Liberalism (pp. 243-44

Far from

anomaly, this

footnote

position and the able

is

a mix of the trimester approach argument

up the whole book. Rawls's of Roe v. Wade (410 U.S. 113 [1973])
sums
women's

currently fashionable
trimester.

from

equality.

Any
right

reason

weighting

of the relevant values,

he says,

yields at

least the

to abortion

in the first
cases of

standard prolife position

(banning

abortion except

in the

rape,

incest,
not

and, he presumably meant to add, threats to the mother's

life

or

health) is
n.32).

merely unreasonable, it is "cruel

all persons not prone to
abortions.

oppressive"

and

(PL,

pp.

243-44

Thus

to permit

first trimester

In

an

cruelty and oppression will agree implicit reference to Catholicism and

other cruel and oppressive comprehensive

doctrines that be

oppose

abortion, Rawls
which

is

quick to suggest that those

holding

to comprehensive

doctrines

have

cruel and oppressive views on abortion can still

good citizens

if they

abandon

those

doctrines'

aspects.23

cruel and oppressive

Rawls later
tion.'4

softened

his language

on

abortion,

issuing
solved

a sort of

quasi-retrac-

But

a problem that runs so a

Rawls in fact is in
world

dilemma

created

deep cannot be by his own

bite, in

idea

of

by cosmetic changes. dividing the political

much oppo must

into

the reasonable and the unreasonable.

work

If this distinction is to do Rawls

interesting

it

must

have

some

which case

insult

nents and undermine the

very civility he
view will

claims to value.

On the

other

hand, if

too many turn out to

political

be reasonable, then Rawls his

will exclude

too little from the

be unimpressively bland. Rawls chooses the first horn of the dilemma. His later view may be unique in the history of political
sphere,
and

thought

in

that

it takes the

practice of

insulting

the cultural opposition,

hereto

fore merely Rawls

7-8 n.7),
and

an enjoyable

pastime,

and turns

it into

an act with philosophic and

political significance.

makes

spects and

it pellucidly clear which parts of the political spectrum he which he does not. Socialism is a serious option, he tells us (PL,

re pp.

and

"[a]mong

our most

basic

problems are those of

race, ethnicity,

gender"

(PL,

p. xxviii).

But Rawls's

respectful nods toward the socialists

and the race-ethnicity-gender

theorists are unlikely to be matched in the case of

cultural or economic conservatives.

The later Rawls studiously

avoids talk of

truth, but from the gravitational influence it

sonableness,
we can

seems to exert on the zone of rea

on the

be

sure that

it is

firmly
of a

Left.

The

abortion

footnote is

the

tip

large iceberg.

Many

people end

up

unreasonable. position

Rawls's latest

view

is that it is
values,

acceptable to articulate a political

in terms

of comprehensive

so

long

as the position

is

supported

by

the

best

weight of political values and an argument

course"

based

on such values

is

offered

"in due

("Public Reason
Ii Iii). Then

Revisited,"

p.

776; Political Liberalism

if they
offer

[paperback edition],
positions that
weighting.

pp.

persons will

be

unreasonable

they do

not

believe

to

be

supported

by

such a

purely

political

Examples

of unreasonable positions could

include:

John Rawls
1. 2. Opposition to legalization
that acting

and

Liberal

Neutrality
on

125

of physician-assisted suicide

the ground

directly

against the good of

recognition

human life is immoral;

marriage

Opposition to legal

of

homosexual

because

of a

religious conception of

marriage, or because of a belief that homosexual

of similar comprehensive
of
of

3. 4. 5.

ity is immoral, or because Opposition to legalization

Opposition to legalization
and

beliefs;
grounds;25

polygamy

on comprehensive on the ground that

pornography

it is intrinsi

cally degrading Opposition to legalized cloning as a the ground that it violates the natural

immoral;

means of order.

human reproduction,

on

Again,
priately

these positions are only unreasonable because offered without appro

political collateral support.

On

some

issues it
be

will

be

possible

for

non-

liberals to

offer reasonable arguments

for their

positions. offered

Thus

fairly
some

political argument against assisted suicide can vulnerable persons will

based

on the

strong fear that

be
no

railroaded

into

killing

themselves.
or

On

issues,
cloning
to be

however,

there will

be

convincing

arguments will

convincing political arguments, be comprehensive. Thus, on the

by

far

the most

question of

the most convincing arguments are

likely

to call on a

deepseated

revulsion

against the unnaturalness of the practice that seen to rest on comprehensive grounds. prehensive arguments ment

is

likely

when articulated

Further,
it

the allowance of parallel com

is

not as generous as

sounds.

For if the

political argu

is convincing
not

on

its own, is
at not

the comprehensive argument

is

not

needed, and

if the

political argument

convincing, the comprehensive

support prohibitions.

argument presum

ably may
positions

be used,

least to

And

of

course, some
un-

held

by

nonliberals could turn out reasonable

to be

inherently

unreasonable,

supportable

by

any

weighting

of political

values, as

Rawls

at one

point says about opposition to abortion.

One
of a

might mention

here too

libertarianedi

ism, presumably
tion],
and p.

unreasonable

for lack leave

reciprocity (see PL [paperback

number of people

lviii). All
be

of this would

large

unreasonable,
regarded as

it

must

enemies of

many of them cannot plausibly be democracy. Rawls's later project is quite ambitious.
recognized that

3. CONCLUDING REMARKS

tion that the good

neutral

Rawls's neutrality begins modestly, in Theory, with the unsupported assump is the object of rational desire. This renders his view largely between desires but
nonneutral

on

the disputed question whether the

a

good should account

be

so regarded.
good

It

also

leaves
and

hole in his view,

crucial

since

Rawls's

of the

is

not

supported

is

to the entire

project

in

Theory. I have
possible

considered

the central argument of Political Liberalism as a

argument

remedy for that defect. That

issues in

neutrality between

1 26

Interpretation
doctrines that
appears to require much the same

comprehensive

tween ends that was required

argument

by

the account of the good

neutralism can

neutrality be in Theory. When that lack

support.

in its

turn

fails, Rawls's
of

be

seen to

In tracing the history the growth of his liberal

Rawls's neutrality this essay unavoidably also traces provincialism. The assumption in Theory that the good

is

the

count of

desired may make the book unconvincing to anyone who accepts an ac the good based on a different understanding of human nature, but there
with

articulating what follows on certain assumptions without defending those assumptions. The only drawback to Rawls's attempt to improve on utilitarianism is that the book sometimes shows little tendency to

is nothing terribly wrong

offer arguments on points where utilitarians are

likely

it.26

to agree

with

offered

Thomas Nagel gently "without a sense

suggested that the account of of

the good

in
on

Theory

was
p.

its

character"

controversial

("Rawls

Justice,"

228). Rawls apparently never took the hint. Political Liberalism is much more provincial than its precursor, indeed fatally so. The problem is that Rawls moves

from articulating the

assumptions of a particular

camp to

declaring

what all

reasonable persons must accept.

Such

a project must exhibit the

broadest

sensi

tivity
cal

to the range of serious possible answers to serious philosophical and politi

questions.

Instead Rawls

emerges

as

a partisan

in

our

culture

wars.

His

neutrality between comprehensive doctrines is precisely of the sort embraced by the liberal side of our cultural divide and rejected by the conservative side. The
abortion

footnote
political

reveals

clearly his

attitude toward

his

cultural opponents.

Brought into
"cruel
and

discourse,

the epithet

"unreasonable"

(not to

mention

oppressive")

would serve not to promote consensus

but to heighten

animosity.

Too many
of

on all parts of the political spectrum

an

have disdain for the

an

convictions
central role

others, but only Rawls gives such

a system of thought. common

attitude

explicit and

in

When Rawls, seeking

ground, proposes that

all accept a

neutrality

that is precisely what provokes the those who will not accept

it,

one

fiercest disagreement, and proceeds to insult is tempted to look for some suggestion of
a

irony, for

an esoteric

teaching, for

hint that he is in

on

his

own

joke. But in
them.27

Rawls is the

most earnest of writers.

He is

deadly

serious when

he

proposes as

articles of peace

in

our culture wars

something that is in fact

a weapon

NOTES

1. "The Importance tiswoode, 1937),

p.

of

Church ix.

120,

quoted
p.

in The Recall to Religion (London: Eyre and Spotin Maurice Cowling, Mill and Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge

Attendance,"

University Press, 1963),

2. Kurt Baier, "Virtue Philosophic Exchange 3 (1982), 3. A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
(New York: Columbia

Ethics,"

57-70,

at

67.

University Press,

1971). Political Liberalism

University Press,
as

1993). In
PL.

parenthetical citations I refer to A

Justice

as

77

and

Political Liberalism

Theory

of

John Rawls
4. "[W]e
need what
. . .

and

Liberal

Neutrality

127

I have

called the thin

p.

theory

of

the good to

explain the rational preference

for primary goods 5. Literally this

certain

Theory,

397.
good about

might not

desires deemed unworthy,

be entirely accurate. Someone might find his and Rawls would grant that he was right

in

part

his

good.

in overcoming So it might

be

more accurate

to say that for Rawls the good is what one will pursue
Justice,"

when unimpeded

(subject,
228.

as

always, to the mentioned restrictions). But this complication should not affect the argument.

6. Thomas Nagel, "Rawls

Notre Dame Press, 2d
ed.

on

Philosophical Review 82 (1973): 220-34,

at

7. Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue: A

Study

in Moral

Theory

(Notre Dame, IN:

University

of

1984),

p.

150. in Theory. Theory,

p.

8. Rawls

equates self-respect and self-esteem

440. Contrast John Rawls,

one sets on
and the

"Reply

Journal of Philosophy 92 (1995): 132-80, at 157 n.39. 9. "Thymos emerges in the Republic as being somehow related to the value
to
'self-esteem.'"

Habermas,"

oneself,

what we

today

might call

(New York: Avon

Books, 1992),

pp.

Francis Fukuyama, The End of History 164-65.

Last Man

10. "It is very easy to see that many immoral and trivial non-moral maxims are vindicated by than the moral maxims which in some cases more convincingly Kant's test quite as convincingly
uphold."

Kant

aspires to
.

Maclntyre, After Virtue,

"models"

pp.

45-46.
such as

11

The

original position

a number of

things,

fair

conditions of social coopera

political conceptions

tion (Political

Liberalism,

pp.

25-26),
the

restrictions on reasons

for

favoring

(p.

26),

and

Rawls's

conception of

person

(p. 304). What this

appears to mean

is that the

original

position represents

these things in a coherent way that allows us to see their implications and to

connect them with

Rawls's

principles of

justice.

12. Robert P. George, 13. On the priority

see, e.g.,

Making

Men Moral (Oxford: Oxford

good

University Press, 1993),

pp.

2-3.

of the

right to the

in Rawls

and of the good to the

right in utilitarianism,

31; Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cam Press, 1982), pp. 1-10. Sandel is well aware that Rawls's account of the good is University essentially utilitarian. See Limits, p. 166.
Theory,
p.

bridge

Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed De Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), p. mocracy 167, quoting Leo Strauss. "Socrates imagined a shining city in speech; Hobbes discovered an iso (p. 163). Rawls "is unable to lated individual whose life was 'mean, nasty, brutish, and
14. Allan Bloom, The
and
short'"

found did
at

consensus on

knowledge

of

the good, as

did the ancients,

or on agreement about

the

bad,

as

moderns."

the
and

in his Giants 325.

Allan Bloom, "Justice: John Rawls versus the Tradition of Political Dwarfs: Essays 1960-1990 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990),

Philosophy,"

pp.

315-45,

15. This latter point was suggested to me by David Lewis Schaeffer, Justice or Tyranny?: A (Port Washington, NY: National University Publica Critique of John "Theory of tions, 1979), chap. 4, especially pp. 73-76. 16. "A modem democracy is characterized not simply by a pluralism of comprehensive reli gious, philosophical, and moral doctrines but by a pluralism of incompatible yet reasonable compre Political Liberalism, p. xvi. It might be worth noting a parallel use of language hensive
Rawls' Justice" doctrines." justice."

in Theory: "But 129-30.

human society is
of

characterized

by

the circumstances of

Theory,

pp.

17. See John Rawls, 'The Idea 64 (1997): 765-807, 136. I

will assume

Public Reason

Revisited,"

University

at

776, 783-87; Political

as

Liberalism (paperback edition),

Restatement"

of Chicago Law Review pp. li-lii.

18. John Rawls, "Justice

p.

Fairness: A Briefer

(unpublished manuscript,

1989),

that

positions persons adopt

or unreasonable.

It

should

be

noted that at one point

(or the justifications they use) are either reasonable Rawls suggests that there may be another See John Rawls, "The Law
Peoples,"

category, that of the not reasonable but not

unreasonable.

of

in Stephen Shute and Susan Hurley, eds., On Human Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1993 (New York: Basic Books, 1993), pp. 41-82, at 63 n.28. This should not affect the argument, because
on the this category is introduced in the context of applying Rawls's view internationally, and seems to assume that one is either reasonable or unreasonable. domestic scene Rawls generally

128

Interpretation
misfortune."

Jacques Maritain, Man and the 19. "Religious division among men is in itself a State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 108. Maritain adds: "But it is a fact that we
recognize."

must

willy-nilly Luther the Reformer: The

As to Luther's doubts
of the Man
and

about

his

own salvation, see

Story

His Career (Minneapolis:

James M. Kittelson, Augsburg Publishing

House, 1986),

pp.

56-57.

20. David M. Smolin,

Response to Professor

"Regulating

Religious

and

Cultural Conflict in Postmodern America: A

at

Perry,"

Iowa Law Review 76 (1991): 1067-1104,

1086
and

n.87.

John M.

Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian lishing Co., 1987), p. 58.
21.

Reformed Pub

By

conscientious refusal

mean

the

noncompliance with a

legal

requirement on grounds of

conscientiously held principle. For Rawls's discussion, see Theory, sec. 56. See, in regard to the claims of the innocently erroneous conscience, the discussion in Alan
entious objection, see

Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), sec. 4.4. On consci Gillette v. United States, 401 U.S. 437 (1971). 22. See Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 856 (1992): "The ability of women to
participate

equally in the

economic and social

lives."

life

of

the Nation has been facilitated

by

their

ability
an

to control their reproductive

23. "However,
time."

a comprehensive

doctrine is in

not as

such unreasonable

because it leads to

unreasonable conclusion

in

one or even
p.

several cases.

It may

still

be

reasonable most of the

Political Liberalism,
Revisited,"

244

n.32. paperback edition of

24. In the Introduction to the

"Public Reason
pp.

Political Liberalism,

pp.

Iv-lvii,
p.

and

in

798-99.

25. On homosexual

marriage and polygamy, see

Rawls, "Public Reason

Revisited,"

779.

26. John Robinson originally

version of utilitarianism.

pointed out to me that

Theory essentially

offers an

improved

27. This way of putting this idea was 1074: "If neutrality is an instrument of war,

suggested to me
rather

by Smolin, "Regulating
of

Conflict,"

p.
peace?"

than a compact

peace,

which

way lies

Discussion Darwinian Natural Right?

Richard F. Hassing
Catholic

University

of America

1. INTRODUCTION: THE BASIC CLAIM AND BROAD TERRAIN

Can Aristotle
to

and

Darwin be

combined on terms acceptable

to both? Accord

The intention of the ing Larry Arnhart's Darwinian Natural Right, they book derives in significant part from Strauss's well known remark on modern
natural science

can.1

in the Introduction to Natural Right

and

History:

Natural
verse. what

right

in its

classic

form is for

connected with a teleological view of the uni

All

natural

beings have is

a natural end, a natural

destiny,

which

determines
required

kind

of operation

good

them.

In the

case of man, reason

is

for

discerning

these operations: reason

determines

what

is

by

nature right with ultimate of which

regard to man's natural end. ological view of man

natural science.

The teleological

view of

the universe,

the tele

forms

a part, would seem to

have been destroyed

and who could

by

modem

From the

point of view of

Aristotle

dare

to claim

to

be

better judge in this

matter than

Aristotle?

the

issue between

the mechani

cal and the teleological conception of the universe

which

is decided

by

the manner

in

the problem of the

heavens,

the

heavenly bodies,
which seems
.

and their motion

is

solved

[Phys. 196a25 ff., 199a3-5]. Now in this respect,

of view was

from Aristotle's

own point
of

the

decisive one, the issue

the

to have been decided in

.

favor

the

non-teleological conception of

universe.

This

means

that people were

forced

to accept a

fundamental, typically

modem, dualism
. . .

of a nonteleological natural sci

ence and a teleological science of man.

we

The fundamental

dilemma, in

whose

grip

are, is

science."

caused

by

the

victory

of modem natural

reconciling Darwinian biology with natural teleology and Aristotelian ethics, Arnhart aims to provide the solution to the problem Strauss raises. Does

By

he

succeed?

Is it

possible

to add to Darwinism an account of a specifically

that

human,
ductive
ognized

natural end success?

(involving reason)
science

is

not

just

a means to universal repro

natural end rec

Conventional

opinion would

say, no, the only

by

Darwinian

is

reproductive

fitness in the local

not

environment.

specifically human. Species are thus differentiated only by the means they have acquired fortuitously through natural selection. According to Darwin himself, "there is no funda-

This

one end

is

common

to all organisms and

is

interpretation,

Winter 1999-2000, Vol.

27, No. 2

130

Interpretation
difference between
the
man and the

mental

higher

mammals

in their

mental

facul
it

ties.

...

difference in
one of

mind

between

man and the

higher animals,

great as

is, is certainly
chapters of

degree

kind."1

not of

But

anyone who reads

the

opening

say about (See especially

the

The Descent of Man will be struck by just how much Darwin does the human difference in terms of our moral and intellectual capacities.
pp.

104-5

on

"the immense

[difference] between

the mind of

lowest
degree

man and that of the

wonder of

what,

in Darwin's
difference

own of

highest animal.") In view of this, one cannot but mind, was the difference between a difference kind? That is, how did Darwin
understand
a question

and a

the

degree-kind distinction in his

Darwin
scholars which

account of

human

status?

This is

for

Arnhart does

not attempt

to answer. Based on

existing

scholarship, this much can safely be said: the biblical doctrine of special cre ation, and not the Aristotelian account of uncreated natural

kinds

and

ends, was

the

main

target in Darwin's

theory

of common

descent

thus of

his degree-kind distinction. A human in Darwin's mind,

and

by natural species differing

selection, and

in kind from
supernatural

other natural species would,

principle of

require a

origin,
p.

i.e., Genesis 1:26,

is
not a
maker

this was,

different, for Darwin,

on

to be reject
on

ed

(see Mayr,

99). But Aristotle

offers no

teaching

divine creation;

the contrary, his god

peak of a universe of eternal species

thinking itself at the (Metaphysics 1072b 15-22, 1074bl5-5al 1;

pure

but

thought

1033b5-8, 1043M7). From

ence

this

Aristotelian,

nonbiblical

perspective, a differ

in kind

would refer not

to origins but to ends: the species

in

question would

have
an

an end unlike

that of others. Perhaps there

is

room

then, surprisingly, for

although

Aristotelian
an

addition to the stripped of the

house

of
of

Darwinian science,
the
of the

it

would

eternity living retaining the teleology of natural kinds after their evolutionary emergence (and before their possible extinction) (Physics 193b7-19, 194a33, Metaphysics 1015al2, Nicomachean Ethics 1176a3-9, 1178a5-6). This is Arnhart's basic
claim

be

Aristotle

doctrine

species while

(see especially DNR,

pp.

232-48). But, in the

agree?

spirit of

Darwin, he holds
human difference

that his new synthesis

is

compatible with the notion that the

is

one of

degree

not

kind. Would Aristotle

Arnhart thinks so, but this is

problematic.

For

purposes of this

review, let us grant that the human species came into

origins common to all

being by

descent from temporal

living
of

things.

That is, let

us remove the

degree-kind

question

from the domain

past, unseen origins to

that of present, conspicuous phenomena.

proach.

This would surely be Aristotle's ap is then, do we now (in the period of recorded human history) differ in degree or kind from other species? Is there "a meaningful barrier between humans and or not? Unfortunately, the question cannot The
question
animals"

be decided

by

any

scientific method.

For, despite

the

amazing

similarities

be

tween us and various other animals revealed

by

ethologists and sociobiologists,

differences
could call

remain.4

always

It is

finally

a matter of one's own

judgment
constitute

we

it

one's theoretical

phronesis

whether the

differences

"a

Darwinian Natural Right?

barrier."

131
that

meaningful

Aristotle

and

Strauss hold
of

In my judgment, they do, the same view. This Aristotle

and

and

argue

in

the

following

presents a problem good

for Arnhart's
presupposes we must

proposed synthesis

Darwin, but

judgment

deliberation based

study step back and survey an unusually broad and diverse terrain. To assess Arnhart's claim requires an examination of his
of

on our shared

of evidence and reasoning.

Thus

argument

in light

both Aristotle's This is

and

Strauss's understanding

of

the problem of natural sci

ence.

not a simple matter.

yet

richly detailed in its

Darwinian Natural Right is remarkably broad coverage of Darwin's writings, the history of philoso

phy, and recent sociobiology. It totle and

age of

involves Arnhart's

own

interpretations

of

Aris

Darwin, thematic treatments of Hobbes and Hume, and important us the Bible, Augustine, and Aquinas. I believe, moreover, that Strauss's
of

understanding
Natural Right
ment of

the philosophic problem posed

by

modern

natural

science,

namely, species-neutrality,
and

is

not

adequately

expressed

in the Introduction to
point.5

History,

the text most often cited on this

An

assess

Arnhart's

plex argument of

endeavor thus requires not only careful analysis of the com Darwinian Natural Right, but also a substantive review of

Strauss's

statements on natural science.

To facilitate the latter,

eleven such state

ments are

the

listed chronologically as an appendix to this essay. Citations are to Appendix. In the following, I will focus on the issues I take to be most
conclude

important. I

of Strauss's account and my reading of Aris in reconciling Aristotle and Darwin, thus does totle, Arnhart does not succeed in overcoming the problematic dualism of natural science and politi cal or Socratic philosophy. But Arnhart has provided us with a serious piece of

that, in light

not succeed

work, containing nuances,

alternative evaluations.

distinctions,

and ambiguities that might well ground should supplement

Interested

readers

my

verdict with

their own
on

study

of

Darwinian Natural Right,

and of the writings of

Leon Kass

ethics.6

Darwin,

nature, science and

respect the

fact

that

Arnhart's

purpose

In any case, a balanced review must is not simply philosophical, it is also

strongly

polemical.

2. A POLEMICAL INTENTION

The
cultural

cultural relativists teach that most things of

constructs

arising
valid

historically

and

any human importance are contingently, like artifacts. Thus in

which

moral values are always relative to the culture

they

are

found:

particu

lar

values

can

be

for

some people some of the

time, but

never

for

all

people all of normative

the time.

Therefore,
such

there

is

no such

sense, and no

thing

as natural right.

thing as human nature Furthermore, like artifacts,

for
the sake of

in any

cultural constructs can

ation

be deconstructed

and reconstructed,
"natural."

liber

from

constraints

and political agendas

erroneously judged to be for the abolition of the family

Thus,

Utopian schemes

or the revision of marriage

132

Interpretation

and parent-child relations recur.

To

appreciate

how far

one can go

in the direction

of relativism and constructivism, consider the

following

two

quotations:

'reality,'

It has thus become

'reality,'

increasingly

apparent

that physical

no

less

than social

knowledge,'

is

at

bottom

a social and

linguistic construct; that

scientific

far from
lations
nity
.

being

objective, reflects and encodes the

dominant ideologies

and power re

of the culture that produced

.

it: that

...

the

discourse

of

the

scientific commu

cannot assert a privileged epistemological status with respect

to

counterhege-

monic narratives of

emanating from dissident

or marginalized communities.

the n

Euclid

and the

of

Newton, formerly
ineluctable

thought to
.
.

be

constant and universal, are

now perceived

in

their

historicity

All departments
and

of nature
. .

below the level

of mankind are exempt

both from disease

from

treatment.

Outside the

significances

that man voluntarily attaches to

nature.

certain

conditions, there are no illnesses or

diseases in

The first is from the

notorious spoof

by

the

physicist

Alan Sokal. A high

to the
a

school science student could see

the humor. It

is

stark

testimony

intellec
organ

tual capacity

and moral

disposition

of the editors of

Social Text,

house

of postmodern

"cultural

studies,"

that Sokal's joke

was taken

lished. The

second quotation
physical

is

not a

joke, but it
a

should

seriously be. The author is

and pub
claim

ing,

absurdly, that

health is

socially constructed, culturally

relative

standard.7

It is

an

unfortunate

but

unavoidable

fact

that such attitudes and opinions

side of the

retain considerable

influence

on the

humanities

American

academic

house. Arnhart's
tual conflict.

work

is directed

against the cultural relativists

in this intellec

As such, Darwinian Natural Right is his

polemical

a valuable weapon.

In light

of

intention,

we can

frequently
X is

repeated and crucial

phrase,

rooted

specify the meaning of Arnhart's in the biological (DNR, pp. 13,

66, 69, 113,

rooted

also

56-57,
X

on the nervous system).

means that our

in the biological
cannot

To say that a human behavior biological nature limits the variabil

transformation
examples

ity

of

X,

so that

be

an object of unlimited

by

human

will, as would

be

an artifact or a piece of clay.

Principal

discussed

by

Arnhart

are relations

between

parent and child

(chapter 5)

and relations

between

men and women

(chapter 6). As Arnhart

makes

clear, the fact that human desires

for mating and family life are rooted in our biology as an evolutionary genetic inheritance does not mean that our actions and emotions in relation to parents,
children, and the opposite sex are
social

determined

by

our

genes,

leaving
that

no room
our

for

learning, habituation,
limit
and

and

deliberate

choice.

It does

mean

"natural

propensities

direct

cultures"

such that radical projects

"liberation"

for the

abolition

of the traditional

family,
and

the

of women

from
and

attachment to their

children, the open-ended transformation of

nature

individual

society

will

lead

by

to

frustration

destruction,

not emancipation

fulfillment.8

and

This

Darwinian Natural Right?

understanding
of the

133

biological

rootedness

of the

desires involved in human

moral and social

behavior defines Arnhart's determinism

ethical naturalism

in

opposition

to

both

reductionist

and radical relativist

freedom.
time, Darwinian

But in

spite of
must

its
be

value

in the

pervasive polemic of our

Natural Right

addressed to the extent possible on the plane of magnitude of

disinter

ested philosophy.

The

its claim,

and the

fundamental
less.

character of

the problems on which this claim

impinges,

require no

3. SIX PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS

Darwinian Natural Right

prompts reflection on major philosophical

and

issues,
me

issues

emblematic of

Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes,

order and

Nietzsche. Let

list

them

in historical
arise

in

preliminary way,

and then and

try

to explicate

them as

they

in my

analysis of

Arnhart, Strauss,
in

Aristotle.

1.

The

relation

between

ends and origins

living

things and

human

socie

ties: Which
or the end

is ontologically prior, the process of development (becoming) 17product (being)? (Aristotle, Physics 193b 19, Metaphysics
'species'

1015al2, Politics 1252b29-34.)

2. The meaning
natural norm

of

as product of the

for the

guidance of

evolutionary process: Is it a human choice, or a contingent collection

of genes malleable

to human will through future genetic science?

(Bacon,

New Organon, 1.129, II.

1-5.)
apparent objects of the

3.

The

relation

between the

human

actions and pas

sions, and their

real causes:

Are the consciously

apprehended objects of

my

choices?

the genuine causes of those emotions and my Or is, for example, my desire in fact produced by causes of which I have no conscious awareness (which are thus accessible only to special
emotions and choices

methods of science)?

And do I really know

the reason

for my choice,

or

is

my

choice a result of some sort of

hidden-hand

causation

(again,
on

accessible
Adam-

only to

special methods of science)?

(Descartes, Treatise
aa. or

Man,

Tannery XI, 130-31,

4.
5. The
status

Passions of the Soul,

25-27.)
incidental to human life?

of philosophy:

Is it

essential

(Plato, Republic 473d, Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1152M-4.) The value of truth: Is it good or bad for life; in Darwinian terms, Is it
good or and

bad for human

reproductive success?

(Nietzsche, Beyond Good

Evil, Aphorism
in

1)
way
or another

All

of these are related

one

to the abiding question,

introduced

above, of:

134 6.

Interpretation
Man's
place

in

nature:

Is

the

human

species

simply

a part of

the natural
not

universe,

differing

from

other

living

species

only in degree but

or stand out

in

kind,

or

does the human in

some

way transcend,

from,

the

rest of nature?

As noted, Arnhart denies

that man transcends nature.

or species-specific
unlike cats and

The human is

distinct
say

species, thus possessing distinctive the same about cats and dogs. But
animals, human

features. We

could

dogs,

unlike all nonhuman

beings

possess

language

and therewith remarkable possibilities.

rooted

Nevertheless, Arnhart insists that human behavior is

a way that it is a mistake to take man as difference between humans and other animals is one such

in the biological in

"supra-animal."9

Rather,

the

of complexity,

thus one of

21, 25, 37, 52, 53, 66-67, 68). Arnhart attributes resulting ethical naturalism, first to Aristotle, then to Hume and Darwin (DNR, pp. 5, 19, 69). It is crucial to decide whether Arnhart's ethical naturalism is Aristotle's. I believe it is not, and that, for Aristotle, man
degree,
not

kind (DNR,

pp.

this position and the

is indeed

set apart

from

the rest of nature

in

way that

makes

him uniquely

problematic.

My interpretation

(itself

debatable)

turns on the unlimited character

double meaning of human nature in Aris totle. These two meanings are: (1) human nature as intrinsic principles (form and matter) constitutive of every human substance (Physics 192b9-3bl9, De
of certain and on the

human desires

Anima 414a30-bl9),

and

(2) human

nature as

that in virtue of

which

we are

distinctively
the

directed in

relation

to the noble

(to

kalon) by
for the

nature.10

Nature in (Physics

first

sense

is found in

things that occur always or

most part

192b9-35, 196M0-17, 198b34-9a2); nature as the noble is instantiated only rarely (Nicomachean Ethics 1099al2-15, 1109a25-30, 1115bl2, 1127a28-30).
Despite its rarity,
of

and

the

the noble is a necessary part of

obscurity of its mode of being, the existence Aristotle's ethics, for the nature that mea

sures

human is

excellence

the virtues above and

nature.

beyond
of the

physical strength

and

health We lem

not

biological
with

must

begin

Strauss's understanding
I
argue

key
falls

philosophical prob
species-

attendant to modern natural

science, namely, its commitment to

that Arnhart
short

neutral principles of explanation. ness of

in his

aware

this problem, despite

his

clear

superiority

to the reductionism of many

reductionism and spe

scientists.

(See

note

12 below for the distinction between

what seem to me to

cies-neutrality.) I then turn to

of Aristotle resulting from Arnhart's attempt to reconcile Aristotle with Hume and Darwin in a new ethical-naturalist synthesis. Briefly put, I believe that Arnhart overem

be distortions

phasizes the

first

or

biological

sense

(above)

of

human

nature

in Aristotle,

to

the exclusion of the second sense, man as

directed

by

the noble, and all that this

implies.
ral
ing"

appears only once in Darwinian Natu my count, the word and that in a quotation from Darwin: p. Right, 144.) In thus "overbiologiz-

(By

"noble"

the

human, Arnhart fails

to render

theoria,

virtue and

(especially)

vice, the

Darwinian Natural Right?

noble and

135

(especially)

the base in a way that accords with the phenomena and

that Aristotle would accept. I am not qualified to assess

of

Arnhart's interpretation
it
and

Darwin, beyond noting

Newton
of

that

it

was a pleasure to read

pp.

learn

more about

the

biology

(see especially DNR,

232-35). Similarly, his interpre

competence.

tation of

Hume
of

on the natural moral sense

is beyond my

omit

discussion

Arnhart's treatment first.

of religion since

the purely philosophic cri

tique must come

4. STRAUSS ON NATURAL SCIENCE: SPECIFIC DIFFERENCE

VS. SPECIES NEUTRALITY

Consider the

following

statement

from The

City

and

Man:

This
. .

question

['what is the polisT],

and all questions of this

kind [namely,

what

is

.?],

were raised

by

Socrates

who

for this

reason

became

the

founder

of political

philosophy.

The 'what

is'

questions point to

that the whole consists of parts

'essences', to which are heterogeneous,

to
understand

'essential'

differences-to the fact

merely sensibly (like
and

not

fire,

air, water,

and

earth) but

noetically:

the whole means to under

stand the

'What'

of each of these parts, of these classes of

beings,

how they

are

linked

with one another.

Such understanding

cannot

be the

reduction of one

hetero

geneous class to others or to

class,

or

the class character,

any cause or causes other than the class itself; the is the cause par excellence. Socrates conceived of his turn,
or a

turn to the

'what

is'

questions as a

return, to sanity, to
are

'common

sense':

while the roots of the whole consists

[in the distant past]

parts.

hidden,

the whole manifestly

quotation

[in the present]

of

heterogeneous

(Appendix,

9)

For example,
as animals

we perceive ourselves and certain other contradistinction

beings, like

cats and

dogs,

in

to plants and nonliving things.

And in

contradis

tinction to the other animals, we experience ourselves as

possessing thought,

speech, and choice in action (Nicomachean Ethics 1 139al8). It is common sense

to think that the intelligible

(noetic)

different kinds
makes me tick
and choice

of things should

causes and principles of these obviously be correspondingly different. For if not, if what

is

basically
opinion)

the same as what makes a plant

causes of motion
such a most

tick, then my thought utterly

paradoxical

aren't

genuine

in

me

an

(against

common

notion.

Were my

thing

the case, then what appear

choices

to me to

be the

causes of some of

important

the uniquely

human

goods at which

My

consciousness of

I consciously aim deliberate choice in like foam

aren't the real causes of

view of a good would

then

my action. be some
no causal

sort of odd epiphenomenon,

on waves: a side effect

exerting

agency in
me what's

the motion of the wave.

Then, only

a scientific specialist could

tell

moving me,
problem

since

I have

no conscious
problem of

motives.

This is

3,

above, the

my hidden-hand causation,

awareness of

genuine
even

136
in
as

Interpretation
It is
severe

the things closest to us, our own passions and purposes.

because,

animals, cannot any live unless they believe they know why they live [and (DNR, p. 266. See also Metaphysics 1020b24-25.). Are we, or our children, supposed to face death

Arnhart

beautifully

puts

it, "[h]uman

beings,

unlike

other

die]"

in battle just
spread

so the

hand

of natural selection

(and deselection)
the
p.

can

somehow

the human gene pool? ("[G]roups can

as

be

'vehicles'

genes
noble

the evolutionary
real and

'replicators,'"

DNR,

77.)

evolutionary Don't justice

for

and the

have to be

irreducible to first

mere

biological interest (Nicomachean

Ethics 1099al0-ll, 1 1
tive

15bl2 13)?

And if

competitive selection

for

reproduc

fitness is the only

(in those

genuine

principle of

human behavior, then isn't the

Darwinian military tactic, opposing ethnicity Balkan societies) it keeps them from having enemy babies? Don't injustice and the base have to be irreducibly real if we are to
mass rape of women of

a good

since

conservative

have

a reason to resist crimes against

humanity?"

Therefore, for
our cognitive

the sake of commonsensical trust

in

apparatus

in its ordinary,
responsible

prescientific

reliability of employment, let us say,

the rough

with

Aristotle,

that the nutritive, the sensitive, and the rational souls are the
causes

principles

formal

and operation of

plants, animals, and,

and

most

for the essentially heterogeneous being importantly, humans. And let us

say,

with

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle,

is indicative
of

Strauss,

that the admiration of

a

human

excellence

"phenomena that form

class

by

themselves"

(Strauss, Natural Right

the
we can continue

and

History,

p.

129. Appendix,
and

quotation
on

2). In

spite of

fundamental difference between Plato

Aristotle

the status of
means

form,
above

to use Aristotle to explicate what

Strauss

in the

and

following

statements

(Plato Republic 507b, Phaedo 100b

ff; Aristotle,

Physics 193b5). Aristotle begins the Parts of Animals by asking whether we should study each species separately or should first focus on attributes common to many species (639al5-b8). Such properties cut across the natural kinds indiffer respiration belongs as much to dogs as to cats and we can thus call ently
them species-neutral. (The term
'species-neutral'

is

opposed to the somewhat

e.g. clumsy but accepted term barking in dogs and meowing in cats.) In Darwinian biology, for example, "[t]he struggle for existence inevita bly follows from the high geometrical ratio of increase which is common to all
beings"

'species-specific,'

organic common

(The Origin of Species,

seems

p.

432). Since there

to

are

in this sense, it

inefficient

study

each species

many properties in turn, repeat

ing

for

each

the account of, e.g., the

what

heart,

the

brain,
be

sleep, respiration.
to the

But,

as

if to indicate

is

at

stake, Aristotle turns

immediately

final cause, for the

terms.

primacy

of the

end of each species cannot

understood

in species-neutral

common

Most importantly, as just emphasized, if all we to the human and the nonhuman, e.g., mass,

consider are properties

charge, nuclei, electrons,

our account

metabolism, replication, there won't

and choice as constitutive of our

be any

room

left in

for thought

specifically human

end.

Yet, paradoxically,

Darwinian Natural Right?

this

137

is

what modern natural science

(with

notable

exceptions) has consistently

with the

done

or

tried to do since

programmatic

its seventeenth-century origins, beginning generalization of Newton's theory of universal

formulation
are common of the

gravitat

Look

at

Spinoza's

paradigmatic

early

modern

intention to

under pro

stand nature gram

in terms that

to

(apparently) distinct

species, the

for the interpretation

of nature

in

species-neutral terms:

That

which

whole

common to all [bodies] and which is equally in a part and in the Cartesian extension, Newtonian mass], does not constitute the essence [e.g.,
.
. .

is

[the Aristotelian
things noza,

natural

species; Meta. 1030a 12] of any particular thing.

to all
. .

Those (Spi

which are common

cannot

be

conceived except adequately.

Ethics, II. 37-38)

Less

succinct

occur

but equally significant formulations of the in Bacon, Descartes, and Newton. The search for
the
conceived

same paradoxical

idea

species-neutral princi and

ples with which to oppose and replace ends

Scholastic-Aristotelian forms

very

inadequately

their conspicuousness

in

sense perception

according to the early modems in spite of is integral to the meaning of method

species-neutral explanations of what

in early modern philosophy (see note 5). Modern science's intention to produce
at

first
its

appear

to

be distinct

and unrelated classes of effects

is partly

warranted

by
ics,

spectacular successes

in

particular cases and a

(e.g.,

gravitation, thermodynam

electromagnetism) for three

half

centuries.

These

successes

destroy
"spe

the comprehensiveness of the premodern science of

species-neutral type of physics
forms.13

Aristotle. This surprising,

intelligibility
requires

was unanticipated

by Aristotle,

whose

cies-specific"

But in

view of

correspondingly different matter for different the problem of human self-understanding, of the specifi

cally human desire to understand that causes science itself, species-neutral sci ence cannot be comprehensive either. It cannot claim to be an adequate account
of the whole

including
denies

the scientist

without

failing

the test of self-reference.

This, however, is
natural science

a philosophic, not scientific, critique. or neglects specific

Left to its

own

devices,

differences. Thus,

no account of the

human

on

its
be

own

specific

terms can count as scientific, while the pervasive

of

attempt to own

scientific

in the study

self-understanding.

Giving

each

(the human

human things accordingly distorts our and the nonhuman) its due humanities. Thus
statement, I
the

leads
we

to a

problematic

dualism

of natural sciences versus the

have

no unified science of

the whole. In

view of

following

believe

that this

is

what

Strauss
to

understands as the

first

and most conspicuous

philosophic problem attendant

modern natural science:

[I]f

we

take modern natural science, modern non-teleological natural science, and

try
a

to apply it to human affairs we

of

do

not achieve a solution.

This

leads, in

effect to

distortion

the understanding

of

human things. The

key

point

is this

and this

138

'

Interpretation
effect

has in

nothing to do

with

teleology,

understood

modem natural

science, if it
the

by
lar

other

considerations,

implies

at least not with teleology as ordinarily is left entirely to itself, and not influenced denial of essential differences. The most popu essential of the

example of that

tween man and the

are cases of

is the theory of evolution. There is no brutes because man has developed out

difference be
and there

brutes

men, either

today
the

or

in the

remote

past,
. .

who are closer

to some

living

or extinct apes than these men are to other men. ences and this

The denial

of essential

differ

implies

the

higher, namely
as

man, to the
of
. . .

understanding of what we popularly surely would call lower: to understand man as much in terms of the
terms of the sub-human; of the rational that the approach which
of the
of

brutish

possible;

the

human in
that

in terms

of the sub-rational. ern natural science

nient

Seeing
a

fact,

is

peculiar to mod most conve

leads to

distortion

human phenomena, the is

thing
. .

to

do is to

speak of a
...

dualism
this

the sciences: the sciences of nature and

of sciences a convenient practical

the sciences of man as man.

solution.
mate
.

So

dualism

But

and

here I

agree with the positivists

of science can

there

is

a need

for

an ulti

unity ally indispensable. But this

therefore one cannot

of science.

So this dualism

be

accepted

only

as provision
and

comprehensive science

say

more

than

it is

to

is today only a pious wish; be desired. (Appendix, quotation 7)

natural science

Strauss does
seventeenth results and

not explain

in detail how

or

why

became in the in its

century, and remains

for

the most part today, species-neutral

of

intention.14

philosophy in relation to the preceding, Scholastic-Aristotelian tradition is indispensable. It is clear, however, that, for Strauss, Darwinian biology fits the pattern and exemplifies
early
modern

For this the study

the problem at

least

as well as per se

classical, nonteleological physics. Note that, as

not

Strauss says, teleology

affirms the

is

the

issue, for Darwinian

science

obviously

reality

of a telos.

It is the

universal end at which all organic popula

tions aim, namely, survival and reproductive success (in some combination that

may involve tradeoffs). The point, for

common to all

Strauss, is

that

Darwinian teleology,
any
more

as

species, cannot specify the

physics can

distinctively human,
of

than

mass mass

in Newtonian

specify any kind

body, precisely because

through
of

is

common to all

bodies

regardless of their

kind. Quotations 6
and 11 consists
not

10,

appended to this review,

mentioned

express the same

idea. The
1

related problem

technology

by Strauss

in

quotations

in the fa

miliar across

fact that

species-neutral principles
and

usually convey
celestial,

only

distinct kinds, e.g., terrestrial

sense?

intelligibility
also

natural and

artificial, but

manipulability, e.g., controlled space

flight.15

Is

genetic science species-neutral

in this

At present, it

seems to

be,

to a

troubling

extent,

and

this

defines

problem

2,

above.

But I have

gotten ahead of the story.

5. STRAUSS AGAINST NATURAL SCIENCE: PRIMACY OF BEING OVER BECOMING

In the two statements, above, Strauss

asserts the significance of essential

of natural science.

heterogeneity

and

its

rejection

by

our

tradition

Both

state-

Darwinian Natural Right?

ments,

139

however,

point

explicitly to another,

related

issue

of at

least its

equal

impor

tance: the
origins of

possibly problematic, even mysterious, a thing "the roots of the whole are

relation

between the historical

and present nature.

hidden"

This is

problem

1,

on

the above

list, concerning
we

principles of

becoming

in

rela

tion to principles of
of

being.16

Once

have

problem

1 in view, the three issues

can

being-becoming,
Strauss

species-neutrality,

and the

degree-kind distinction

be

tied together.
states the matter

in

general

terms:

If 'to

is 'to be something', the being of a thing, or the nature of a thing, is pri its What, its or or 'character', as distinguished in particular marily from that out of which it has come into being. The thing itself, the completed thing,
'shape' 'form'

be'

cannot

be

understood as a product of the process process cannot

trary, the
of

be

understood except

leading up to it, but, on the con in the light of the completed thing
3)

or

the end of the process.

(Appendix,

quotation

This

says that

something

might

develop,

originate, come to

be, in
the

a certain

process, but that, either the process

by

itself is unintelligible,

or

intelligible
product.

principles of the process aren't the same as the principles of the

final

It says, furthermore, that the

the eidetic
somehow without

principles of the completed product are superior to

those of the process, or that a genetic account cannot attain to the

account.17

Is it

possible that the

higher

could arise

adequacy of from the lower

or at

being

reducible

to the

lower? Could

natural species

least
are

the

human

species

distinctly

aware of

be like that? I believe that Socrates, Plato, and Strauss one form or another of this possibility. In Plato-Socrates,
Phaedo 96e-7b: twoness
a

it

seems to

be the

point of

type of

intelligible
in fol

form
space,

cannot

be

accounted

for

by

the combination and separation of matter

i.e., by

efficient and material causality.

As for Strauss,

consider the

lowing
Let

statement:

us

look

at the specific grounds on which refuted.

it is

claimed that

Aristotle's

political

philosophy has been

ence,

The

most common reason

is

that modem natural sci

or modem cosmology, having refuted Aristotelian cosmology (e.g., by demon strating 'evolution'), has therewith refuted the principle or the basis of Aristotelian political philosophy. Aristotle took for granted the permanence of the species, and
'know'

we

that the species are not permanent.

But

even

granting that

evolution
man

is
still

an established

fact,

that man

has

come

into

being by

out of another

species,
the

is

essentially different from there are has in

'forms'

non-man. no

The fact

of essential

differences

fact that

way been
of

refuted

evolutionism.

of

Aristotle,
is
fall back

as well as of

Plato, is

that the whole consists of

The starting point heterogeneous beings;

that there
we

a noetic

heterogeneity

beings,
no

this common

sensible notion on which

. .

However far the way been refuted. defeat of Aristotle's cosmology may extend, it does not go to the length of having destroyed the evidence of the concept of essential differences. (Appendix, quota
all the time and this
.

has in

tion

10)

140

Interpretation
even says that not

Strauss
of the

eternity

of the

doctrine only Plato but also Aristotle, in spite of his with the evolutionary emer living species, is compatible
can this

gence of an

irreducible, human-specific difference. How

be, if Aristotle

denies

evolution?

No doubt Aristotle's doctrine

emergence

of species permanence removes the problem of

(a

mysterious

principles of present

gap between principles of historical becoming and being) from center stage in his physics. But look at the
natural species

following

remark, not about

in general, but

about

the

human, in

the Politics:

while

coming into

being

for the

sake of

living, [the
if

city]

exists

for the

sake of partner

living
ships.

ple, a
plete

by Every city therefore, For the city is their end, and nature is human being, a horse, or a household
well.

exists

nature,

such also are

the

first

an end: what each

is,

we

assert, the

nature of that
.

thing.

thing is for exam when its coming into being is com The city is thus prior by nature to the

household

and to each of us.

there is in

everyone

by

nature an

impulse toward
responsible

this sort of partnership. And yet the one who

first

constituted

[a city] is

for the

greatest of goods.

(Politics 1252b

29-53a31)

The human species,

eternal

as

a class of

biological form-matter substances, may be

seems that the political

(De Anima 415a24-b8), but it

our

fulfils it did

Furthermore,
not

specifically the first city evidently did not develop like an oak from an acorn; come into being in a manner analogous to nature in the biological

social and rational nature

is

not:

there was a

community that first founder.

sense, namely,

by

the (for the most part) automatic

in-form-ation
potentials.

of matter.

The

first founder did

would

not

just

"cultivate"

largely

biological

Otherwise why
and thus

the

first founder be "responsible for

It
seems then

goods"

the greatest of

praiseworthy?

that, for

Aristotle,

there

is

a sense of

human

nature

beyond the biological. It has to

nature and the

do,

of course, with virtue and vice, the noble arduous efforts

by

base,

with

our own

in

action and

obscurely
nature, as

but essentially with philosophy. These discussed in section 10, below.

manifest our suprabiological

Finally,

and

to the main point of the present section, the principle of the

city's genesis, or
principle of

becoming, is different from

the principle of

its being. The

animals,

coming into

being
is

is

mere

life

or

survival,

common to all

thus species-neutral in the sense

described

above

(History

of Animals 589a3-5).

The

principle of

its

being

good

life,

which

accessible

only to

humans.18

adult

And Aristotle

is specifically human, and in fact makes clear, that, just as Strauss

needs]
cannot

says, "the process [which

except

is driven

by

survival

be

understood

in the light
be

of the completed

thing

or of the end of the process

[the

flourishing
cess must

city]."

In general, in

such cases of
of the

evolutionary

emergence, the pro

the product cannot

understood

"in the light

product; that

is,

be

understood as a

merely

chance or per accidens effect of the

process,

with the

Darwinian Natural Right?

process regarded

141

(mistakenly)

as more

basic

and

intelligible

than the

(allegedly)

incidental
cess

product.

In this sense, the

product

ontologically but not chronologically. difference of degree and end up different in kind, with specific charac teristics irreducible to the species-neutral principles of origin. (In spite of its
through a
polemical

is ontologically prior to the pro And so something could begin

spirit, this is virtually the conclusion of Gould's brief but very inter "The Human cited in note 4.) esting All of this is asserted or implied by Plato and Aristotle, and reported by
Difference,"

Strauss, in
tion
with

spite of the

imposing
and

question of what
of

exactly happens
the

at the transi
or

from

the

lower

principles

becoming

to the completed form

eidos

its higher responsibility

understood

intelligibility! In

face

of modern science's

commitment

to mastery, the notion of emergent properties that cannot be ade

quately

in terms

of simpler antecedent parts and conditions

is hard

to swallow;

it

smacks of mystery.

Thus
of

genetic as opposed

to eidetic accounts
of

displays strong preference for things. In the typical pattern of genetic

science
common

explanation, the general principles needs, are neutral to the specific,

origin, e.g.,

biological

survival

particular character of

the product, e.g.,

dis

Isn't tinctively human excellence, which character is then attributed to this the pattern of Darwinian explanation? Hans Jonas crystalizes the issue.

chance

Consider: is the Darwinian but

following

crucial statement

by

Jonas (1) Darwinian, (2)

non-

compatible with

Darwin,
that

or

(3)

anti-Darwinian?

It is

one of the paradoxes of end

life

it

employs means

[adaptations]

which

modify the

[originally
. . .

survival and/or reproductive

animal strives

fitness]

and

themselves
not

be
a

come part of

it. The

feeling
the

to

preserve

itself

as a

feeling,

just

metabolizing entity
ing
entity.
. .

perceiving

animal strives

to preserve itself as a

perceiv-

Finally,

the animal of truth and praxis (Nicomachean Ethics

1139al8)

thinks

and chooses not

just

to survive,

but to find the truth

and perform well at

even regardless of survival or reproductive

fitness (look

in action, Socrates). In general,

own."21

"[s]ome functions may have come into being for one reason but persist for different ones, acquiring, once here, so to speak, a life of their The answer to the question above determines whether there can be a synthe
sis of

Darwin

and

Aristotle

or not.

Answers 1

and

permit

it,

answer

excludes of

it. Did Darwin himself

ever

say that,

at some point or phase

in the

history

life, his

great principles of random variation and natural selection must yield to

ever say that what originates as a becomes (somehow) something more by entering into and constituting that for the sake of which the organism thereafter survives? If he did, then we have answer 1. Or perhaps he said or implied that his principles

essential

heterogeneity? That is, did Darwin

mere survival tool

are not

ultimately
of

comprehensive and

exclusive, but only partial,

i.e.,

that other
without

principles

living

things might also

be

needed

alongside

his own,

142

Interpretation
what and

specifying if Darwin

they

might

be. If so, then

we

have

answer

2. On the

other

hand,
for

Darwinism hold that

random variation and natural selection

survival and reproductive

fitness

are the

living

things, then

we

have

answer

exclusively 3. We have then "the

adequate principles of all present

orthodoxy in
to
a

sociobiology [which] Natural Science,

p.

treats our sociality as but a

fancy
the

mechanism geared

the sole end of the survival of the human gene

pool"

(Kass, Toward

More

315). Now the

mere survival of

human

gene pool

is So

not we
sci

noble, does not prompt our admiration, and cannot inspire

confront an ence

moral virtue.

exceedingly important
us

question on the

meaning

of

Darwinian

in

relation

to classical natural right. Arnhart provides some

help, but

not

enough.

Let

as a tool of gene projection. addressed

intellect as the adaptation originally arising The human capacity for deliberate choice will be below in my critique of Arnhart's Aristotle.
take human mind or

6. THE DESIRE TO UNDERSTAND

The last

section of

Darwinian Natural Right is titled 'The Desire to Under

some awareness of their sur

Indeed, "[although other animals have roundings, we seem to be the only beings with
and the

stand."

fully

conscious self-awareness

capacity to

reflect on the

things"

meaning

of

(DNR,

p.

267). Arnhart

then says that,

while

these mental capacities evolved

survival and reproduction

for human

originally because of their practical benefits [species-neutral principle of becoming], these

civilized societies to assume a

capacities allow modem

attitude

human beings in

theoretical
. . .

in seeking understanding for its

own sake

[specific curiosity
. .

principle of

being].

we can see

in

some other animals the

tendency

to

or playful exploration
.

that

is

the natural root of the

human desire to

understand.

[but] [u]nlike
as a
a

other an

imals, human beings

ence

seek to understand the causes or principles of

The

philosophic

life is the

peak of this

development,
added)

sensory experi few people find

the quest

for theoretical understanding to be the highest life for

human

being

(Meta 980a27-983a23).

(DNR,

p.

268;

emphasis

Mind is

Scientists must grant this if doings. The striking claim for development" philosophic life as "the peak of this is in the spirit of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. But is it Darwinian or compatible with Darwin, or is it, rather, incompatible with Darwin and anti-Darwinian? Let us begin with mind
only
also truth seeker.

not

survival tool

but

they

are to give a consistent account of

their own

as truth seeker and the test of self-reference.

If the Darwinians say

mind

is only
at

a survival

tool, they
genes

contradict their own

credibility

as

(potentially)
be

truthful speakers,

because

their own published ac

counts would then

aimed

only

getting their

into future generations,

Darwinian Natural Right?

a practical

143

agenda

for

which

falsehood
gets

might

be just

as

efficacious as truth
self-

about reality.

Arnhart, therefore,
was

Darwin

past the

test of

reference that

many
of

scientists and all proponents of scientism

fail. It is

not

clear,

however,

whether

Darwin himself

fully

aware of the general problem,

i.e.,

the pitfalls

applying a one-sided explanation of things to one's own act of explaining. It is clear from Darwinian Natural Right (pp. 269-72) as well as The Descent of Man that Darwin
nate the was concerned

to show how his

theory

might

deep

problem of the says

historical

origins of the

human

plausibly illumi Accord

mind.22

ingly, Darwin
around
p.

that,

after natural selection

had fashioned preliminary

what was

cogni

tive capacities, "man would

naturally have vaguely speculated on his own 270; Descent of Man, p. 65). Obviously his own existence is

crave to understand

passing

him,

existence"

and would

(DNR,

related to the
we move

existence of

many

other

things, biological

and

astronomical, and so

from

a natural

craving to understand the local environment to a natural craving

to understand the universe, thus,

life"

for example, "to formulate

p.

scientific theories

of the
whole

natural

origins of

(DNR,

270). Darwin's

science

in fact his
not practi
will

cal

only be understood for we have no idea how desire,

life

can

as a product of pure or whether

theoretical,

Darwinian science, if true,

or on

confer a reproductive advantage either on

humanity

Darwinian

scientists.

This leads to
the

problem

5,

Darwinian

version of

Nietzsche's

radical question on

value of truth

for life. For now, let

us stick with the present

line

of

analysis,

which

is

on

the way to problem

4,

on

the status of philosophy, essential or

accidental.

7. ON ESSENTIAL AND ACCIDENTAL CAUSATION

How

can

Darwinian

natural own

selection

be

understood

to produce a natural
sake of reproductive
understood

desire to

understand

for its

sake,

rather

than

for the
be

fitness? Can this

per se or selection or

effect

intellectual

eros

for the

truth

to

follow

essentially from the cause,

alone, the
answer must cause.

natural

selection?

On

grounds of natural

be,

no:

this effect proceeded only per accidens

incidentally

from the

So how

can

it be

said that philosophic

life is the

peak of

evolutionary development? If a builder builds a house in squirrels happen to make a nest in the chimney, would he say the
peak of

which some nest

squirrels'

is the
not

only
then

at

building career? He could say it is the peak only if he aims building houses but also at the conservation of squirrels (assuming
his

they had
But
of

no place else to

live),

an additional rule of

his life besides

carpentry.

his

activity.

carpentry would not be the comprehensive, but only a partial, principle Similarly: on Darwinian grounds alone, unless Darwin grants
of the

that

his theory is partial and not comprehensive only be incidental to life, not essential, and not
clear

organic, philosophy can

the peak. This

not

is

problem

4. It
the

is

that, for Plato

and

Aristotle, philosophy is

incidental, but is both

144

Interpretation
necessary for the success of political regimes generally. Darwinism is willing to concede its own partiality, it is only
and grounds that philosophic

highest human life

Therefore,
on

unless

Socratic (Platonic, Aristotelian)

life

can

be the

peak.

8. COSMOLOGY: NATURE, TRUTH, LIFE, AND WILL

we can avoid this controversy over squirrels, chimneys, and peaks. do truth seeking and reproductive fitness have to be separated and made Why by intricate arguments into some sort of problem? Why can't mind be both

Perhaps

survival tool and truth seeker compatibly?

same

Can't

we walk and chew gum at the

time? Since

Arnhart does
Aristotle

not regard

the status of philosophy as a problem

can

for his
view.

synthesis of

and

Darwin, I

only

conjecture that this

is his

It is

not an

implausible one, but

we must

Why
and

can we walk and chew gum at

the same time?

carry the inquiry further. Because the functions

supporting structures of the whole living human body enable simultaneous eating and locomotion. If these functions mutually interfered in any serious way,
nature would

maladaptive and subject

have done something in vain, or in Darwinian terms, something to deselection. What is evident to sense in the case of
not at all evident of the

walking
the

and

unlike the

chewing gum is heterogeneous parts

in

the case of truth and

life:

body,

e.g.,

mouth and

foot,

we cannot see

unity

of the

heterogeneous

parts of the whole

biological

and

astronomical,

sensible and

intelligible

that would show the

Republic 6
the

we get a sketch of

this

harmony
of

"divined"

as

harmony by

of

truth and

life. In

idea

of the good and the

pp.

image

the sun

(504d-9c. See

Socrates (505el) in also Hassing, Final

Causality,
telos,
and

2-3). There the

good

is (1)

principle of

solar motion somehow and thus of the conservation of

knowledge, (2) cause of living things, (3) ultimate

is
more of an unfinished

(4)

ground of

being. But

Socrates'

account

mosaic than a
not

finished
the

painting.

The four
with

great characteristics of the good are

Socrates'

explicitly unified, and, in

to

keeping

second

sailing, Plato

seems

famously
teleology
of natural

deny

possibility his

of a science of nature.

It is Aristotle

who

tries

to put the pieces of

Socrates'

sketch or puzzle

together in his comprehensive

the union of

science of nature and

pure

theory

of

form culminating in the

modern natural

actuality
or

of the

knowledge by means first unmoved mover.

As noted,

science

has

refuted the

comprehensiveness of this

account.25

But however

incomplete,

poetic,

conjectural

they may be,

or

and

whether successful or
a

not, these cosmic teleologies of

Plato

and

Aristotle convey

fundamental idea:

the whole

is beneficent,

and not

hostile
very

indifferent

to us

human beings. On

grounds of this

belief, it

makes

good sense to

hold

that truth and life are compatible and even

mutually

supportive

(for example,
truth

Nicomachean Ethics 1178a5-8). So

men

of course the pursuit of scientific

like Darwin

would

be

by

compatible

with,

or even good

for,

the reproductive

Darwinian Natural Right?

fitness
of the

145

human

species.

Otherwise,

the cosmos would be

hostile

or

indiffer

ent to us.

ern science

But if any philosophic notion attends the conception of modernity in major thinkers from Machiavelli through Nietzsche,
that the whole

and mod

including

Darwin, it is

beneficent. The universe, falsely regarded with wonder and reverence the Greeks and Medievals, is in reality "an indif by ferent and largely homogeneous otherness, in part edible, in part
not
dangerous"

is

(Leon Kass, in The Ethics of Human Cloning, p. 28). Here is Nietzsche, with his customary moderation:

'According
these are!

to

nature'

you want to a

livel O

you noble

Stoics,

what

deceptive

words

Imagine

being

like nature,

wasteful

beyond measure, indifferent beyond

and

measure,

without purposes and

consideration,

desolate
how
rism

and uncertain at the same

without mercy and justice, fertile time; imagine indifference itself as a power

could you

live according

to this

indifference? (Beyond Good

and

Evil, Apho

9)
of

In the face
another

this, it is human

will

and

that counts (see

of willful

Appendix,

quotation

human creativity in one form or 1 1). And it seems that we have

two

an early modern, Baconian-Cartesian, and a later, Nietzschean-Heideggerian form. The Baconian-Cartesian form is most

forms

creativity:

conspicuously exemplified today in the unsettling implications of genetic sci ence, as discussed in section 9, below. In the Nietzschean-Heideggerian form,
powerful

truth could

poetry is ultimate. My present point is that, according to this account, be deleterious to life (Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorisms 1-23). In
scientific truth of our

particular, the

fitness, because it destroys

ian theorists
of the
Jews"

inspiring

Darwin's theory could be bad for reproductive beliefs. According to Arnhart, "Darwin
as and

can explain the

Mosaic law

(DNR,

p.

259). Did Moses

worked

promoting the reproductive interests his people understand themselves

Nietzof

in this

way?

Would it have

scheans to see that the answer

if they did? We don't have to be to these questions is, no. In view, then,
question,

the

cosmological or cosmo-theological

we cannot assume a simple

har

mony between

scientific truth and reproductive success.

This is

problem

5. Let

us consider the other

form

of the modern exaltation of

of

human

will and

creativity,

Baconian-Cartesian mastery

nature, in

its latest incarnation:

genetic science.

9. UNNATURAL SELECTION: REMAKING EDEN

The
posed

cosmological

or cosmo-theological question

is, How is

the whole

dis

through the

community
toward

ble

and

intelligible

"[w]hat has

neither will nor

its parts, biological and astronomical, sensi us, the human part? In the words of Hans Jonas, wisdom and is indifferent to itself solicits no reof

146

Interpretation
(Philosophical Essays,
p.

spect"

70). This
of

characterizes the

denigration

of nature

in

the

ever, that,
nature

early in is
not

modern

cosmology

indifference. Arnhart

wants

to argue, how

contrast to earlier notions

based

on classical physics,

Darwinian

indifferent to itself, bearings. For

and thus possesses a

kind

of wisdom

by

which

we can

take our

our evolutionary-genetic

inheritance

grounds and

limits,

through the nervous system,

for example,

some of our

deepest desires

and satisfactions,

pleasures, and pains in life. This

the social animals, that what

is

the rule of all animal

species,

including
is

The

assumption

is

among which ourselves (DNR, pp. 56-57). has become so deeply embedded through natural be
altered without of

selection

robust and cannot

dysfunctional consequences, in
ethical-naturalist opposition

our

case,

unhappiness.

This is the basis

Arnhart's

to the cultural relativists and radical constructivists.

But is Arnhart's

assumption true?

He

calls

it into

question

himself,

although

indirectly. He does this in replying to the

ethical naturalism: as a product of

following

objection

to Darwinian

evolution, our species

is only

contingent and

temporary, Arnhart This is

and so

why

claim that what conforms to our specific nature

is it

good?

replies

that the contingency and

temporality
human

of

the human species

is

no

argument against the normative character of

a plausible

nature as

long

as

exists.

answer, assuming a certain stability to the products of natural

uses an example

selection.
problem

But then he

that points to the Baconian-Cartesian to collide with the earth

in his

own claim:

"If

huge

meteorite were

tomorrow and

kill

us

all, wouldn't we still have to say

years]?"

it

was good while answer

it

lasted [a few hundred thousand

acceptable

(DNR,

p.

238). This

may be

dogs, but not for "the will of certain men using (Descartes, Discourse on Method, pp. 26-27). We (or some of us, the scientists)
cats and of gravitational motion.

for

reason

know the laws

permit the controlled alteration of

trajectories

Because they are species-neutral, they of bodies moved under gravita

force, if we can just deliver the needed impulse at the right time. (Hassing, Final Causality, pp. 230-37). (Recent Hollywood movies have expounded on
tional

how to do this
nature except

with the

by

killer asteroid.) As Bacon says, "we cannot command obeying her (New Organon, I, 129). If genetic science is spe
"obey"

cies-neutral, then why can't we also

"natural"

the genetic code, the rules of

gene

expression, etc., to command alterations in our genetic

hardware,

and

begin to

modify our may have shaped

wishes and

desires according to our own designs? Natural selection some of our basic propensities, but it didn't constrain our
and maybe our genetic of the

imagination,
rootedness

biological
might then

hardware isn't all that hard. The desires whereby Arnhart defines our humanity
of the

be

quite malleable.

The title
books.26

of this

section, above, is composed

titles of two recent

The four

words are self-explanatory.

The

genetic

code

is

universal

DNA techniques

mean

is on the horizon. in the species-neutral sense, and recombinant that, once the human genome is mapped, we can begin

"Self-evolution"

to modify a person's genetic

inheritance

and thus the genetic

makeup

of

future

Darwinian Natural Right?

generations

147

as we wish.

Until

now

the

hand

of natural selection

has

worked

by

chance, without

intention,
we

without

of genetic

science,

(or

some of claims

foresight. But now, in the liberating light us) can begin to steer the evolution of our
of

species willfully.
would

Radical Or is

thus

find

their greatest support

all

for the possibility from the very

science that

changing human nature Arnhart wants

overwrought

to use against them.

nation?

this mere science

fiction in my

imagi
and
our

Will future

research

in the

serious sciences of molecular

biology
limits to

complex systems

(rather than

science

journalism)

reveal essential

ability to alter organisms? Will human cloning, not to mention chimeras

genetic

the

mixing

possibility after 2 on the opening list. It is

seems,

turn out not to be a previously distinct species all? Unfortunately, Arnhart does not discuss this issue,
of not a problem

realistic problem

for the

whole of

for Arnhart but, it presently simply humanity. What becomes of the human specific differ

ence, and

Strauss's

phenomena that

form

a class

by

themselves, if the
the

physical and

bases

of

human

mental and emotional capacities admit unlimited

tinkering

transformation?

What

are the

implications

engine

of

"engineering

To

argue against experiments of this

type, don't

we need a transbiological

concep
and not

tion of our

humanity?
will and

Do human

intellect

possess objects not of our own objects

making

subject to our future creative powers

by

which

to measure our

human

ity? Plato's Good, the noble, Aristotle's Intellect betoken ancient attempts to make coherent sense of the belief that, "the good man orders himself in relation
to the whole, and the wicked one orders the whole
seems to require an account of the whole atic

in

relation

to

himself."

This

however We
are

conjectural or problem

back to the shaky game of cosmic teleology shaky but, I suspect, unavoidable if we are to defend the notion that we have ends prior to choice whereby to limit our transcendent
in
which man

is

not the

highest

being.28

powers of

domination. The

cosmological question needs

to

be kept
pp.

open and

respected,

but Arnhart

considers

it

closed and rejects

it (DNR,

236, 242,

245). In light

of problem

2, I fear he

throws the

baby

out with the

bathwater.

10. ARISTOTLE ON THE HUMAN TRANSCENDENCE OF BIOLOGICAL NATURE

principle of

As previously discussed, the principle of becoming of the polis is life, the its being is good life. The former is clearly and strongly rooted in

our common animal with

biology

and as such

it issues in forms

of social cooperation
and sexual

the inner

force is

of powerful

desires for food, shelter, safety,

goods"

intercourse. But
accomplishment

these are not

"the

greatest of

(Politics, 1253a31). Their

"admiration
of

not praiseworthy,

does

not prompt that

human

excellence"

that, for

conditions"

ible to

their

Strauss, exemplifies (Appendix, quotation 4). But

"phenomena

which are

the

simply irreduc higher principle of

148

Interpretation
good

being
coming.

life,

eudaimonia, eupraxia, the

not operate with

realization of moral and

intellec
be
of

tual excellence

does
clear

the same
statements

force

as the principle of

This is
nature

from Aristotle's
virtue.

showing the indifference

biological
our
. . .

to

human in

On

grounds of our

biology

alone,

including

sociobiology, human communities can turn out well or badly: "The virtues
are engendered us neither

the capacity to receive them, and

by nature [they are]

not

nor against

nature; nature gives us

brought to

perfection

by

habit"

or

to destruction. Habituation can be good or

bad,

as we can

ical

nature

will

not

save us:

"we do

become

good

obviously or bad by
and

see.

Biolog

nature."29

Otherwise there
machean

would

be

no need

for teachers, trainers

founders (Nico

Ethics 1

103b7 14).

Arnhart

shows that

habituation

and social

learning

are not

specifically human

but
as

occur

in

other species as well.

This is

a major theme of

Arnhart

makes clear,

something that
social

would not surprise

sociobiology and, Aristotle. But the in

other

existence of

habituation,
is

learning

"technology"

and culture, even

animal species chimpanzee are the

not

not the

society was first human founders

Would Aristotle say that the first founder of responsible for the greatest of chimpanzee goods? Why
responsible

point.30

for

the greatest of

human
For

goods?

Is it

because

of the unique obstacles

they

must

have

overcome?

just

as man

is

the

best

of animals when

completed,

when separated when

from law

and ad with

judication he is
arms; and man
nevertheless

the worst of all.

For injustice is harshest

arms

it is furnished This is why,

is bom naturally possessing

susceptible to

for

prudence and virtue which are

without

very

being
the

used

for

their opposites.
.
. .

virtue, he is

the most

unholy

and

most savage.

(Politics 1253a 32-36)

Hobbes

surely agree that without law, man is bestial. Would not Aristotle and Hobbes both agree, despite their great disagreement over natural sociality and rationality, that only man among the animals can be bestial? In assessing human status in relation to nature, we should not ignore man's transcendent
would

badness. Despite his upbeat, hortatory approach in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle is aware of the problem. Thus, for Aristotle, the whole is beneficent
with respect

to ends in the sense that

with respect

being

virtuous and

linked. But

to origins, nature
an arduous

is

not so good:

being happy are reliably becoming virtuous

ethical
would suggest.

(and then staying that way) is

naturalism, and Hume and
we could

task, harder than Arnhart's

Darwin's

moral-sense

theory,
way:

Perhaps
bio

formulate
we

the problem

in the

following

Beginning
comparing

with our

logical nature,

humans

are necessitated to use

force

and techne.

Whatever

the similarities to other species

in this respect,

we are

mountains to
greater

molehills, for we
extent than
man

humans

end

up using force

and techne to an

immensely

any other species against the rest of nature beings, because there is no equally natural limit to

and against other

our use

hu
and

of force

Darwinian Natural Right?

techne.
us

149

That is: there Aristotle did

are no

biological limits to
of the or

the

desires

and

fears

that

drive

to the use of compulsion and artifice to get safety and satisfaction. As stated
not

above,
saw

know

technological mastery of nature, but he

men

clearly the

problem of

force

the warlike domination of some

also saw

by

others, not to mention

of our

tyranny itself. He desire for money (Politics

1257b24-8al3).31

clearly I believe that Aristotle's

the problem of our

the unlimited character

striking reference to "the highest has something to do with this overall

unlimitedness and

causation"

at

Nicomachean Ethics 1099b23 distinctive

solv

problem

its destructive

potential

and the role of

philosophy in
position
. . .

ing

or

ameliorating it. It is

not plausible that

"Aristotle's

would

support the recent revival of

Darwinian
p.

social

theory by rooting

political science

in biological

science"

(DNR,

51).

11. CONCLUSION

When

we

look

at the evils of

life, is

the

difference between the human

and

the other animal species one of

eth century: world

degree

or

kind? Consider the data

most

of the twenti
ethnic cleans

wars, totalitarianism, genocide,

recently

ing,

also

family disintegration,
Darwin

and violence against women and

children, rising

at century's end.

could not

have known,

and thus we can perhaps

forgive

his naive, childlike, nineteenth-century belief in winians (who do know) try to maintain that none

progress.32

Today, many Dar

of these evils

is specifically
to

human,
the

that all exist

p.

in the behavior

of various animal species as precursors recent

human (DNR,

28, 53, 55, 58, 60, 63, 66). A

DiscoveryNews televi

sion program announced

(during

that the roots of genocide may

been

observed

lying

in

wait

a break in reporting on atrocities in Kosovo) have been found: a group of chimpanzees has for another group, which they then attacked and
what

killed. But is this really anything like Pol Pot? Do other animals, however
tragedies"

the Nazis

did,

or what

Stalin did,

or

aggressive their

intraspecific encounters,
conflicts"

or really have Yugoslavias? Moreover, to call such enormities "tragic "moral Arnhart might say that it is the seems woefully influence of Augustine that affects my thinking (DNR, p. 147). I claim it is CNN and the newspapers.
inadequate.33

With the
versal

exception of

his

(Socratic)
"The

treatment of human slavery and

its

uni

injustice, Arnhart's Darwinian

rather

account of natural p.

human

conflict of

is

disappointing
ex

for its
presses

bleak
as a

particularism.

itself

love

own"

of one's

(DNR,

sociality 146). To a

human beings

great extent

it does

for better
city

and

for

worse

but is love

of one's own ultimate? and the

For Aristotle, the

transcends the
of

family

(Politics 125 3a 19-29), disinterested love

bility

philosophy
needed

and the

of truth

city opens the possi (Nicomachean Ethics

1096al4-18)

for impartial justice (Nicomachean Ethics 1132a22). But

150

Interpretation
seems that the

in Arnhart, it

"natural

self-love and tribalism of

human

beings"

is

ultimate, and thus

between

kinship

groups, war

is

the

fundamental

situation:

"human

survival requires that

human beings fight for their group

one's

against com

groups."34

peting

Accordingly, "[throughout human history, justice has

and

meant
view

helping
of

one's

friends

enemies"

harming

(DNR,

p.

75). Is this the

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle? For Arnhart, following Darwin

ameliorated

and

Hume,

the

fundamental

state of war can

be

"as human beings

are united

into

ever

larger communities,

[for]

their natural sympathy and benevolence can to some extent embrace all mem

bers

of the of

human

species"

(DNR,

p.

75). But for Aristotle,

although there can

unlike

be love

justice (Nicomachean Ethics 1099all), justice is

in that it is
not

the other

moral virtues
a mean on

itself

an emotion or

feeling;

specifically, it

is

not

a spectrum

of

emotion, e.g.,

fear

and confidence

in the

case

of
of

courage

(Nicomachean Ethics 1 107b 1-4, 1 129a7-10). It involves knowledge

proportion

in

merit and

desert,

crime and

punishment, and would thus seem to

be the its

most

theoretical of the moral virtues (Nicomachean Ethics

of

1 1 30b30-

34a 16). All

role

this concerns the essential status of philosophy in Aristotle and

our

and

in overcoming Arnhart.
source of

partiality, in contrast to its incidental status in Darwin

The

Arnhart's particularism,
priority
of of the

his insistence
sophical.

on the

the ultimacy of love of one's own, is biological over the political and the philo

According

to

Arnhart,

the mother-child
sociality.

bond,
"[A]ll

and the social

resulting

family,
ulti

constitute the sole

source

human

cooperation

mately

arises as an extension of the natural

young"

impulses

to sexual coupling and

parental care of

the

(DNR,

pp.

ments, the political

attributes

community is reduced to this view not only to Darwin but

52-53). Thus, in its motivating attach an extension of the family. Arnhart

also

to

Aristotle: "Aristotle

refers

repeatedly to maternal love for children as the all forms of love, friendship, and affiliative is added;
ean

model

behavior"

for, and (DNR,

natural origin
p.

of,

101,

emphasis

see also pp. are given

72

and

89). No less than

eight references to the

Nicomach

157al2, 1 159a2737, 1161M6-28, 1162al6-28, 1166al-10, 1168a8, 1168al9-27). But, as far

support of

Ethics

in

this claim (1 155a 16-29, 1

as

can

see, a careful reading of these texts (taken either

not support

individually
no

or all

together) does
parent-child

Arnhart's

interpretation.35

There is

doubt that the

sociality, "for

bond is extremely important for Aristotle's understanding of human man is by nature a even more than a political being, pairing being

[in time] and more necessary than the (Nicomachean Ethics 1162al7-18). And there is no doubt that Arnhart has in terpreted this correctly to a large extent but not completely. For Aristotle, the
as the

inasmuch

family

is

prior

state"

noble and the truth

transcend one's own. The polis, the philosophical

student-

teacher relation, and philosophical

friendship

are not reducible

to,

and not sim

ply
the

an extension

of, the

family, for they

aim at activities and ends that

transcend

family's

achievements

(Nicomachean Ethics 1096al4-18, 1151M9-20,

Darwinian Natural Right?

1 164b2-6). This is the meaning
of the ontological

151

family,

of the end over the origin of mother

priority of the polis over the (Politics 1252b30-33, 1253al9-20).

strongest

The love

for

child

is the

in nature, but for that reason, her

child as

also the most partial:

What

mother can perceive

bad? Arnhart fails

to give sufficient weight to the

obstacle

distorting

effects of

love

of one's own, and the

it

presents

for

our openness

to truth, thus to philosophy and to

enables

justice

(Rhetoric 1356al5, 1377b31-78a2). This

that "[t]he
and

him to say,

following Darwin,
is
p.

human

sense of vengeance

the

desire to

get even

the earliest
emphasis

deepest

expression of the

human

sense of

justice (DNR,

79,

The Descent of Man, p. 67). But how much is even? Vengeance leads equally to dreadful injustice and is the main impediment to rule of law in large
added.

areas of the world,

e.g., the

Balkans, Caucasus, Central Asia,

science and

to name some of

the currently most visible.

According
come

to

Arnhart, "natural
to
a

the authoritative source

for knowledge
human

about

particularly human

biology

has be

nature"

(DNR,

p.

126).

According
leads to
still

Strauss, "the

approach which

is

peculiar to modern natural

science

distortion

phenomena"

of the

(Appendix,

quotation

7).

Strauss is
why.

right

and, despite its virtues, Darwinian Natural Right

shows

APPENDIX

STRAUSS ON MODERN NATURAL SCIENCE

To
press

retain

his power, [the Universal

which might

and

Final

Tyrant]

will of

be forced to sup
philosophy
as

every activity

lead
In

people

into doubt
he

the essential sound

ness of the universal and

homogeneous

state:

must suppress
must

an attempt to corrupt the young.

particular

he

in the interest

of the

homogeneity
there
are

of

his

universal state

politically

relevant

forbid every teaching, every suggestion, that natural differences among men which cannot be
scientific

abolished or neutralized mand

by

progressing

technology.

He

must com

his biologists
of

to prove

that every human

.

being has,
. .

or will

acquire, the
conquest of

capacity

becoming

a philosopher or tyrant.

Thanks to the

nature and

to the completely unabashed substitution of suspicion and terror

and

for

law,

the Universal

Final Tyrant has

at

his disposal practically

be
right although

unlimited

means

for

ferreting
coming

out, and

for extinguishing,
would seem to

the most modest efforts

in the

direction

of thought.

Kojeve
the

for

the wrong
end of

reason: the

of

universal and

homogeneous

state will

be the

philosophy on earth. aca, NY: Cornell University

("Restatement

on

Xenophon's
p.

Hiero"

in On

Tyranny

[Ith
Phi-

Press, 1968],

226,

also

in What Is Political

152

Interpretation
and

losophy?
and

in the

revised and expanded

Other Studies [Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1959], On Tyranny, ed. Victor Gourevitch

pp. and

132-33,
Michael 1950

S. Roth [New York: The Free Press, 1991])

Natural
universe.

right

in its

classic

form is is

connected with a teleological view of

the

All

natural

beings have

a natural end, a natural

good

destiny,
what

which

deter

mines what
required

kind

of operation

for

them.

In the

case of man, reason

is

for

discerning

these operations: reason

determines

is

by

nature
of

right with

ultimate regard

to man's

natural end.

The teleological

view

the

universe, of which the teleological view of man

forms

a part, would seem to

point

have been destroyed Aristotle

Aristotle?
of

by

modern

natural

science.

From the

of view

of

and who could

dare to

claim to

be

better judge in this

and

matter than

the

issue between the

mechanical

the teleological conception

the

universe

is decided

by

the manner in which the problem of the

heavens,
decisive

the

heavenly bodies,
issue
of

and their motion

which

is

solved

[Phys. 196a25 ff, 199a3-5].

the
of the non-teleological con

Now in this respect,

one, the
ception

from Aristotle's
This

own point of view was

seems to

have been decided in favor

. .

the universe.

means that

people were

forced

to accept a

fundamental, typically
are, is
caused

modern, dualism
. . .

of a nonteleological natural science and

a teleological science of man.

The fundamental

dilemma, in
pp.

whose

grip

we

by

the victory of modern natural science. (Natural Right and

of

History [Chicago: University

Chicago Press, 1953],

7-8)

1950

To

understand the whole

then means to understand all the parts of the whole

is 'to be something', the being of a thing, or the nature of a thing, is primarily its What, its or or 'character', as distinguished in particular from that out of which it has come
or the articulation of the whole.
'shape'

If 'to

be'

'form'

into being. The thing itself,

product of the process

the completed

thing,
on the

cannot

be

understood as

leading
and

up to

it, but,
pp.

contrary, the process

cannot

be

understood except

in the light

of the completed

thing

or of the end of the

process.

(Natural Right

History,

122-123;

see also

Aristotle Physics
1950

193a29-b7, Politics

1252b32-34)

The

phenomenon of admiration of
or utilitarian

human

excellence cannot

be

explained on

hedonistic

grounds, except

by

means of ad

hoc hypotheses. These

Darwinian Natural Right?

hypotheses lead to the
scoped calculation of

153

assertion that all admiration ourselves.

which

is,

at

best,

kind

of tele

benefits for

They

are the outcome of a material understand the

istic

or crypto-materialistic

view,

forces its holders to

higher

as

nothing but the

effect of the

lower,

or which prevents them

from

considering the possibility that there are phenomena which are simply irreduc ible to their conditions, that there are phenomena that form a class them

by

selves.

(Natural Right

and

History,

pp.

128-29)

1950

The failure
to the

of the predominant philosophic tradition could with p. which

be traced
. . .

directly
1950

difficulty

every teleological

physics

is beset

(Natural

Right

and

History,

172)

Whatever the
our

significance of modern natural science

of what

understanding

is human in

man.

To

understand man

may be, it cannot affect in the light of in the light

of

the whole means

for

modern natural science to understand man

man as man

the sub-human. But

political

in that light

tes.

philosophy viewed man in a And Socrates was so far from being

was

is wholly unintelligible. Classical different light. It was originated by Socra

committed

to a specific cosmology that

of

his knowledge

knowledge
of

of

ignorance. Knowledge

ignorance is

not

ignorance. It is knowledge

the elusive character of the truth, of the whole.

of the mysterious character of the whole.

Socrates, then,
. . .

viewed man

in the light
At

The knowledge

which we possess overcome.

is

characterized

by

fundamental dualism
of

which

has

never

been

one pole we

find knowledge
branches
of

homogene

ity:

above all

in arithmetic, but

also

in the

other

mathematics, and

derivatively
Preface in
to
of

in

all productive arts or crafts opposite pole we ends

....

1686]. At the

[see especially Newton, Principia, find knowledge of heterogeneity, and

are therefore

particular of

heterogeneous

Men

constantly tempted

force

the

issue
of

knowledge
of ends.

by imposing unity homogeneity [as unity

on the phenomena, of species-neutral

pp.

absolutizing either science] or knowledge 1955

by

(What Is Political Philosophy?

38-40)

7
[I]f
and

we take modern natural

science, modern

non-teleological natural

science,

try to apply it to human

affairs we

do

not achieve a solution.

effect, to a distortion of the understanding of

This leads, in human things. The key point is

154
this

Interpretation
and as

this

has in itself nothing to do

understood

with

teleology,

at

least

not with

teleol

ogy

itself,
is

and not

ordinarily influenced

modern natural

science, if it is

by

other considerations,

implies the
the

left entirely to denial of essential

There has devel
remote

differences. The
no essential

most popular example of that man and

is

theory

of evolution.
man

difference between brutes

the brutes because men,

either

oped out of the

and there are cases of

today

or

in the

past, who are

men.
. . .

closer

to some

living

or extinct apes than these men are and

to other

The denial

of essential

differences

this implies the understanding

popularly surely would call the higher, namely man, to the lower: to understand man as much in terms of the brutish as possible; of the human in
of what we

terms of the sub-human; of the

that
a

rational

in terms
to

of the sub-rational.

Seeing

fact,

that the approach which

of the

is

peculiar

modern natural science

leads to
do is to

distortion

human phenomena, the

most convenient

thing

to

speak of a

dualism
...

of the sciences: the sciences of nature and the sciences of

of sciences

man as man.
. .
.

So this dualism So this dualism

is

a convenient practical solution.

But

and

here I

agree with the positivists of science can

there

is

a need

for

an ultimate

unity

of science.

ally indispensable. But this

and therefore one cannot
Right,"

comprehensive science
more than

say

it is to

only as provision is today only a pious wish; be desired. ("Lectures on Natural

of the

be

accepted

University

of

Chicago;

quoted

with permission

Estate

of

Leo
1962

Strauss)

according to the Aristotelian view, man is his own: man is the rational and political
can

being

sui

generis,

with a

dignity

of

animal.

be

concerned with
. .

self-respect;
.

man can

Man is the only being which respect himself because he can

.

despise himself; he is from brutes

as well as

the only

being
.
.

presupposition of all this

is that
gods.
.

man

from

The possessing a sense of shame. is radically distinguished from nonman, This presupposition points to a more funda
.

mental presupposition ent parts.

according

to which the whole consists of

The

new political science on

the other hand is

based

on the

essentially differ fundamental

In

premise that ences of

there are no essential or

men and

irreducible differences:
or

there are only differ

other

degree between

brutes

between

men and robots.

words,

according

to the new political, or the universal science of which the new

political science of

is

part, to understand a
conditions and

thing

means

to understand it in terms
understand the

its

genesis or

its

hence, humanly
of

speaking, to

higher in terms

of the

lower: the human in terms

the subhuman, the rational in

Epilogue,"

terms of the subrational, the political in terms of the subpolitical. ("An

in Herbert J. Storing, ed., Essays

on the

Scientific

Study

of Politics [New York:

Darwinian Natural Right?

155
and

Holt, Rinehart

and

Winston, 1962],

p.

309;
p.

reprinted

in Liberalism Ancient

Modem [New York: Basic Books, 1968],

207)

1962

This
what

question
.
.

['what is the polis?'],

and all questions of this

who

is

?],

were raised

by Socrates

for this
to

reason

kind [namely, became the founder

of political philosophy.

The 'what

is'

questions point to

'essences',

'essential'

differences-to
not

the

fact that the

whole consists of parts which are and

heterogeneous,

merely

sensi

bly
and

(like fire, air, water,

earth) but
of each of

noetically:

to understand the whole

means to understand the

'What'

these parts, of these classes of

beings,
be
the

how they

are

linked

with one another.

Such understanding

cannot

reduction of one

any cause or causes other than the class itself; the class, or the class character, is the cause par excellence. Socrates conceived of his turn to the 'what questions as a turn, or a return,
is'

heterogeneous

class to others or to

to sanity, to 'common sense': while the roots of the whole are

hidden,

the whole

manifestly
versity
of

consists of

heterogeneous
p.

parts.

(The

City

and

Man [Chicago: Uni

1964

Chicago Press, 1964],

19)

10 Let
look

us

at the specific grounds on which

refuted.

it is

claimed that

Aristotle's
modern

political

philosophy has been

The

most common reason refuted

is that

natural science, or modern

cosmology,

having

Aristotelian cosmology
granted the perma

(e.g., by demonstrating 'evolution'), has

basis
of

therewith refuted the principle or the

Aristotelian

political philosophy.
'know'

Aristotle took for

nence of

the species, and we

that evolution

that the species are not permanent.

But

even

granting

is is

an established still

fact,

that man

has

come

into

being

out of another species, man of essential

differences

essentially different from non-man. The fact the fact that there are has in no way been
'forms'

refuted

by

evolutionism.

that the whole consists

The starting point of Aristotle, as well as of Plato, is of heterogeneous beings; that there is a noetic heteroge

neity

of

beings,
has in
of

this common sensible notion on which we

no

fall back

all the

time

and this

the subject
so good:

way been refuted. [Strauss presents the example of opium, Moliere's notorious joke against formal causes. The joke is not has
specific properties

opium

that

its

uncombined elements

do

not

have.]
parts].

What is true
...

of opium

is true

of man

[irreducibility

to simpler antecedent

It is, then, the notion of essence, of essential difference, which dis tinguishes the Aristotelian and the Platonic teaching from that of the charac However far teristically modern philosophy, and especially modern science.
. .
.

1 56
the
of

Interpretation
Aristotle's cosmology may extend, it does not go to the length destroyed the evidence of the concept of essential differences and,
of of essences.

defeat

having

therefore,

("The Crisis

of

Political

Philosophy,"

in Harold Spaeth,

ed., The Predicament of Modern Politics, pp. 92-93, reprinted as "Political in George J. Graham and George W. Philosophy and the Crisis of Our
Time,"

Carey,
p.

eds.,

The Post-Behavioral Era

[New

York:

David McKay,

1972],
1964

230)

77

In

order

to

do justice to the

change effected

by Machiavelli,
natural

one must con

sider two great changes which occurred after

his time but in

final

which were

in har

mony

with

his

spirit.

The first is the

revolution

science,
causes

i.e.,

the emer

gence of modern natural science.

The

rejection

of

(and therewith

also of the concept of cal philosophy. older one not

chance) destroyed the theoretical basis

of classical politi

The

new natural science

differs from

the various

forms

of

the

only because of its new understanding of nature but also and because of its new understanding of science: knowledge is no longer especially understood as fundamentally receptive; the initiative in understanding is with
man,
not with

the cosmic order;

in seeking knowledge
nature to

man calls nature

before

the tribunal of
a

his

reason:

he 'puts

question'

the

(Bacon); knowing is

kind

of

making; human understanding prescribes nature its

greater than
matter was

laws;

man's power

is

infinitely
meaning

corrupt
and

human

hitherto believed; not only can man transform into incorrupt human matter, or conquer chance all truth
in man; they
are not

originate

inherent in but

a cosmic order which no

exists

independently
is

of man's

activity.

Correspondingly, poetry is
as creativity.

longer for

understood as of science

inspired imitation

or reproduction

The

purpose

reinterpreted: propter potentiam,

for the

relief of man's

estate,

the conquest of nature,

natural conditions of

for

the maximum control, the systematic control of the

of nature

human life. Conquest

implies

that nature

is

the

enemy, a chaos to be reduced to order; everything good is due to man's labor rather than to nature's gift: nature supplies only the almost worthless materials.

("The Three Waves Six Essays

Modernity,"

of

in Hilail Gildin, ed., Political Philosophy:

by

Leo Strauss [Indianapolis:

to

Bobbs-Merrill, 1975],
Strauss
wrote the

pp.

87-88. I

have been

unable

find the

year

in

which

essay.)

NOTES

1.

State

Larry Arnhart, Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological University of New York Press, 1998), hereafter DNR.

Ethics of Human Nature (Albany:

Darwinian Natural Right?

2. Leo Strauss, Natural Right given in the Appendix to the
and

157
pp.

History

(Chicago:

University

of

7-8,

present

essay, quotation 2. See

DNR,

Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 1, 3-4, and 238.

Tyler Bonner

3. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Introduction by John and Robert M. May (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 35 and
a recent

105. For

statement, see Ernst

of Modem Evolutionary Thought 106.

Mayr, One Long Argument, Charles Darwin and the Genesis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 104 and
Difference,"

4. The

quotation

is from Stephen Jay Gould, "The Human

of proves

The New York Times,

July 2,
issue
size

1999. Gould,

course, emphasizes similarities; for example: "A study published in a recent the existence of complex cultures in
chimpanzees."

of the

journal Nature

Others

empha
Do,''

differences. See, for example, Stephen Budiansky, The Washington Post, Nov. 15, 1998. 5. See Richard Kennington, "Descartes
and

"They Think,
Nature,"

But Not the

Way

We

Mastery

of

in Organism, Medicine
I,"

and

Metaphysics: Essays in Honor of Hans Jonas, ed. Stuart F. Spicker (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Co., 1978), pp. 201-23, and "Bacon's Critique of Ancient Philosophy in New Organon
and

Publishing
in Nature
of

Scientific Method,
pp.

ed.

Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Washington, DC: Catholic

University

America

235-51, especially p. 245. I have discussed species-neutrality in Final Causality in Nature and Human Affairs, ed. Richard F. Hassing (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1997), pp. 31-43 and 230-37. 6. Leon R. Kass, Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs (New York: The Free Press, 1985), part 3. Leon R. Kass and James Q. Wilson, The Ethics of Human Cloning (Wash ington, DC: AEI Press, 1998), pp. 3-59, 77-88. Leon R. Kass, The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), especially, pp. 59-62 and
91-93. It is surprising that Kass is not mentioned in DNR. 1. Alan D. Sokal, "Transgressing the Social Text 46-47, vol. 14, (Spring-Summer 1996): 217-18, 222. Peter Sedgwick, "Illness Mental and
Boundaries,"

Press, 1991),

nos.

and

Otherwise,"

Hastings

Center Studies 1(3) (1973): 30-31; emphasis in original. 8. DNR, p. 124. A remarkable example of sociobiology

appeared on the

CBS television
in
a

program

60 Minutes II,
national park

July 20,
was

1999. Bob Simon

reported on

young

male elephants

South African

in a manner completely out young elephants had been killed in a con trolled ecological program. The fatherless juveniles had formed gangs and begun attacking and killing the rhinoceroses. Park authorities then transported adult male elephants into the area to
that were

killing

rhinoceroses and

behaving disruptively

of character.

It

discovered that the fathers

of these

interact with the delinquent juveniles, who subsequently stopped their aberrant, violent behavior. Note, however, that the delinquent elephants were killing animals of another species, not each other. Thus, there is a striking similarity to the human, and a striking difference. 9. DNR, pp. 8, 13, 28, 38, 56-57, 64-66, 69, 113, 144, 208, 211, 275. The term American Anthropologist (DNR, p. 64) is taken from p. 205 of Alfred Kroeber, 'The 19 (1917): 163-213. Arnhart disagrees with Kroeber's, and social science's, dichotomy of nature
'supra-animal"

Superorganic,"

and

culture,

biology

and politics.

meanings"

ent

10. Nicomachean Ethics 1099a6-15, 1 1 15bl2 13. Arnhart knows that nature has "many differ (DNR, p. 36), but he omits discussion of the noble (fine, beautiful) by nature. 11. Arnhart's longest
chapter

his

argument seems

far

more

is about slavery and its universal injustice (DNR, chap. 7). But Socratic than Darwinian: every known justification of slavery both
of the

affirms and

denies the

humanity

slave, and is thus

self-contradictory.

Concerning

the rest of

humanity's

conflicts and with

interprets him),

resulting gross injustices, Arnhart remains faithful to Darwin (as Arnhart results discussed in the conclusion, section 1 1 of this review.
,

12. Darwin, The Origin of Species (New York: Mentor, 1958), p. 432. For Aristotle on the primacy of the final cause, see PA 639b9-40al 2; NE 1 176a3-9, 1 178a5-9. For this reason, species-neutrality is a major weapon in the early teleology. See Hassing, Final Causality, pp. 26-43 and 230-37.
modern

attack on

Aristotelian

On

consideration of common properties

only, see NE

1097b22-8a20, 1 139al9. Species-neutral

The behavior
of a

ity

is

a wider and more

fundamental term than

reductionism.

whole, e.g., a clock,

can sometimes

be derived from the

motions and properties of

its parts, e.g.,

gears and springs.

In

158

Interpretation
is
reducible

such cases one says that the whole called reductionist

to the parts, and the corresponding explanation

is
in

in the

material or ontological sense.

(There

are other senses of reductionism

philosophy
e.g.,

of

science, such as
are

theory

reductionism,

in

which the

terms of a higher level theory,

thermodynamics,

translated down to the terms of a lower level theory, e.g.. statistical

mechanics.) The

preface

to

Newton's Principia

announces a program of universal

(material)

reduc

tionism: all whole

particles

bodies in nature, of whatever species, are assumed to be aggregates of subsensible interacting by forces that are mathematically analogous to the gravitational force law.
reductionist program

Newton's
Darwinian

is clearly

species-neutral

because his (hypothetical

and yet

to be

discovered) forces
whole organisms

and particles are supposed to

contrast well

be

common

to many species of sensible

bodies.

biology, in
may

to Newtonian physics, makes no claim to material reductionism:

tionist account at

be irreducible to their parts, as Aristotle taught (see Arnhart's antireducDNR, pp. 239-40). But Darwinian biology is species-neutral because the funda

mental principles of random mutation and adaptive selection

for

reproductive

fitness
cells

are taken

to

of form and matter do not apply univocally to all species, but only analogically a major theme in Aristotle's Metaphysics. See especially Meta. 1070bl8-20. See the First Preface to Newton's Principia. here means precisely common to appar ently distinct (terrestrial and celestial) species of bodies. For the limitations of universal reduction
"Universal"

apply in the same way or univocally to fundamental contrast, Aristotle's principles

all

living

populations

from

single

to humans. In

ism based

Newtonian physics, see my "Animals versus the Laws of Review of Metaphys ics 46 (1992): 29-61. Notable exceptions are quantum physics in its account of the atomic species
on and

Inertia,"

biological
the

How

scientists who step outside of the Darwinian ambit. See, for example, Brian Goodwin, Leopard Changed Its Spots (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994). an

13. Phys., 194b9, Meta., 1069b25-27. This is

important

part of

the doctrine of hylomorph-

ism. See
the

note

12,

above, on the analogicity of Aristotelian form and matter. It should be remembered

that classical physics suffered its own huge defeat with the

discovery

that

it

could not account

for

stability

of matter.

The

quantum physics of atomic

structure, thus of the chemical species,

is in

certain respects

like Aristotle's

physics of

irreducible

substances.

14. Consider Stuart Kauffman, The Origins of Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 4: "deeply embedded in the tradition of science from Newton, lay the ideal of accounting for the

diversity

of

principles,"

universal

superficially heterogeneous phenomena on the basis of relatively few underlying Complexity," and John Holland, "Searching for Simple Rules of The New
of our most systems

York Times, Dec.

of

26, 1995: "Many

troubling long-range

problems

center on systems

extraordinary complexity

The

that host these problems

economies, ecologies, im

embryos, nervous systems, computer networks appear to be as diverse as the prob lems. [But there may be some hidden order some common interactions.] A feature that is obvious in one system can be recondite and hidden in another The challenge is to build a computer finance." model that explains both protein Kauffman and Holland are folding and international authorities in the contemporary theory of complexity.
. .

mune systems,

15. The formulation of Hans Jonas, Philosophical Essays: From Ancient Creed to Technological Man (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974), p. 48, is apt: "[T]he new concept of nature contained manipulability at its theoretical
. . .
core."

16. The

scientific version of the problem can

be found in

current

discussions

"emergence,"

of

i.e.,

physico-chemical phenomena

in

which a system acquires

in its temporal

evolution properties cannot

that must be taken on their own terms, taken as primary and adequately understood in terms of simpler antecedent parts.

irreducible, because they

be

17. The
18. NE

intelligibility
llllb7-10,
causation

of the process

depends

on

that of the product; see

good arise

Aristotle Meta. 1051b2.

chance.

also

highest

or

best

Phys. 197bl-8; furthermore, (NE 1099b20-25), if it is not to is.

life

requires the support of the

merely

by

Remarkably,

Aristotle does

not

say

what this causation

19. For example, John Horgan, The End of Science (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1996), p. is a hoary idea, related to holism, vitalism, and other antireductionist creeds that date back to the last century at least. Certainly Darwin did not think that natural selection could be derived from Newtonian As described in note 12, above, and assuming Horgan is right about Darwin, Darwinism would then be nonreductionist but species-neutral. 192: "Emergence
...
mechanics."

Darwinian Natural Right?

Descartes

159

provides an early modem example of this pattern. See Le Monde, trans. Michael S. (New York: Abaris Books, 1979), chaps. 5-7, and Discourse on Method, ed. George Heffernan (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp. 66-69, 88-89. 20. Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 106.

Mahoney

21. Kass, Toward a More Natural Science, p. 336. Kass emphasizes the sociobiology of Adolf Portmann in contradistinction to the prevailing orthodoxy. 22. On self-reference, see John C. McCarthy, "The Descent of Review of Metaphysics, June 1999, forthcoming. For current research, Arnhart follows Merlin Donald, Origins of the Mod ern Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991).
Science,"

23. Stephen

Jay

Gould

emphasizes that
Thought,"

Darwin

never used the word

"evolution."

According

to

Gould, "Darwin's Revolution in

wrote, as a marginal note to
see the phrase,

Teaching

Guide

himself, "Never say higher or in The Descent of Man, p. 106. Republic 473d, NE 1152bl-4, 1178a5-8. For Plato and Aristotle, philosophy

Classroom Video, 1996, Darwin lower in referring to But

and plays a central

organisms."

"gradually
our

evolved,"

role

in ordering

we must

pattern"

coherent

conflicting desires. Arnhart obviously recognizes the problem: "To live well, perceive what it is we truly desire, we must order our often conflicting desires into a (DNR, pp. 23-24). But, perhaps in keeping with Darwinian commitments, Arnhart
in

is

silent about philosophy's role

defining

that pattern.
Understand"

24. The

main problem own

discussed in "The Desire to

(DNR,

pp.

267-75) is, in keep

ing

with

Darwin's
also

concerns,

whether the origin of

the human mind requires a special act of

creation.

25. Note
committed

Strauss's

remark

(Appendix,

quotation

6)

that, "Socrates

was so

far from

being

to a specific cosmology that his knowledge was knowledge of

and the

ignorance."

search

26. Lois Wingerson, Unnatural Selection: The Promise (New York: Bantam Books, 1998), and Lee M. Silver, 27. Kass, Toward

Remaking

Power of Human Gene Re Eden: Cloning and Beyond

Brave New World (New York: Avon Books, 1997). a More Natural Science, p. 8. See Strauss's reply to Kojeve (Appendix, quotation 1) on the possibility of the destruction of philosophy in the universal and homogeneous
a

in

state

by

means of

"the

nature"

conquest of

in the form

of

biological technology.

is from Rousseau, Emile, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979), p. 292. Compare Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, ed. George Heffernan (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), pp. 158-59: "It is the will alone, or the freedom of
quotation

28. The

choice,
greater

which

I know

by

experience as

being
of

so great

in

me

that I might apprehend an idea

reason of which

of no

faculty
some

so much so

that it be above all [the will]

and

by

understand that of

bear in be

way the image

and

likeness

God. For

although the will, or the

freedom

choice,

without comparison greater

. . .

in God than in me, both

reason of

by

reason of

the cognition and the power

that are joined to it

still

by

the object, because it extends itself to more things

[!], it
in

does

not seem greater

[than mine],

regarded

formally
is
not

At NE 1141al6-b4, Aristotle
the account of
wisdom as certain

says that man

precisely in the highest being. This

and

itself."

statement occurs

knowledge The

of the

of wisdom as perfect and complete. we can

context

highest things (1 141a20, 1 141b4), the account conveys the impression that Aristotle holds that

know

with

the certainty of complete wisdom (nous plus episteme) that man

obscures the aporetic character of the
or

is

not

the highest
the

being. Aristotle thus

zetetic character of

inquiry

into

ultimate principles and

philosophy

love

of wisdom not

fully

possessed.

This does

not mean,

however,
expedi-

that his account of cosmic

encey"

teleology (in Phys. 8

more at

and

Meta. 12) is simply "for

matters of

(Meta. 1074b6). I believe that

habit"

is

at stake.

29. 'The
trast both

virtues

is found
what

NE 1103a24-6. The

following lines, 1103a27-b2,

con

virtue and

art

with

is

acquired through realization of a

biological potential, e.g.,

seeing, hearing.

"We do
sense

not

become

good or

bad

nature"

by
p.

is

at

NE 1 106al0. In

fitting

Aristotle to the Darwin

moral-

tradition, Arnhart identifies

sense"

natural virtues

(DNR, in Aristotle (NE 1144b4),

to natural virtue.

72)

the moral passions of Hume and

with

the

"in the

strict see

underplaying the superiority of Aristotelian virtue For Aristotle, natural virtue is to true virtue as cleverness is
while underplays

to prudence;

NE 1144M-21. Arnhart, accordingly,

the difficulties in

converting

160

Interpretation
to true virtue. True
as
virtue requires

natural virtue

both

good

habituation
prudence

and

prudence, as

Arnhart

notes,

but, I believe,

Arnhart does not, that Aristotelian

in turn involves

an essential

relation

to philosophy.

Finally, in making Aristotle

a moral-sense

thinker, Arnhart ignores the dis

says that

tinction between moral weakness

experience of of our

(akrasia)

and genuine vice. and then

cannot

Arnhart

the "common human the reality

being

mistaken about our

desires
that

basic desires

as a part of our nature

regretting be willfully

our mistakes confirms

disregarded"

(DNR,

p.

23) This
.

experience of moral weakness

is indeed common, but there

remains an uncommon,

hard

core of

that does wrong on principle and without regret. See NE 1146a31-5, 1146b21-4, 1150al9-23, 1150a31, 1150b29-32, 1151a7-28 for the distinction between vice and moral weak ness. For Arnhart, it seems that the Aristotelian category of vice is replaced by the modern category of psychopathology (DNR, chap. 8).

humanity

30. Darwinians

claim that
of

technology is

not

it in the

precursor

form

tool use: "[I]n

some chimpanzee communities

. .

specifically human because other animals possess [but not others], mothers
. . .
nests"

(DNR, p. 57). "Chimps strip leaves off (Gould, "The Human twigs, and then use the naked sticks for extracting termites out of Difference"). But are these examples anything like human technology, e.g., electromagnetic, genetic,
teach their children how to crack nuts using stones
nuclear?

Does the

"technology"

of other animal species

have the

potential

to alter their own nature?

occurs after

31. See Politics 1324a5-5al6, Aristotle How

over raises

on nine regimes whose

laws

aim at

domination. This

the

crucial question of

the

philosophic versus

the political way of life. See also NE

1177b6-12.
will

the sociobiologists deal with this one? Do any other animals have money and go

crazy

it

as we

do?

32. For example, Descent of Man, p. 104: "Looking to future generations, there is no cause to social instincts will grow weaker, and we may expect that virtuous habits will grow stronger, becoming perhaps fixed by inheritance. In this case the struggle between our higher and fear that the
lower impulses
will

be less severe, kind

of

and virtue will

be

triumphant."

33. DNR,
with

pp.

81, 149. Recall Strauss, On Tyranny,

tyranny
our political science

p.

21: "when
it."

we were

brought face to face

tyranny

with a

that surpassed the boldest

imagination

of the most powerful

thinkers of the past

failed to
are there

recognize

34. DNR,

p.

260. So, besides slavery,

any

other universal

injustices? Are

we

right

or

wrong to speak of crimes against 35. For example, 1 161bl 628

humanity
says that

and go after

their perpetrators?
not all

friendships between relatives,

friendships, derive

from the

parent-child

bond.

Book Reviews

Gary Rosen,

American Compact: James Madison

and the

(Lawrence: The

University

Press

of

Kansas, 1999),

xii +

Problem of Founding 237 pp., $29.95.

CHRISTOPHER FLANNERY Azusa Pacific

University
republic, proudly and

Let us, Let

as citizens of a great

honorably

determine "to
self-govern

rest all our political experiments on

ment."

the capacity of mankind

and

for

us then
which

honestly, if humbly
is

paradoxically,

admit that

"there

are

subjects

to

the capacities of the bulk

one of them

unequal,"

of mankind are

and that

designing
had

a good constitution

(p.

vii).

What then? James Madison

answers to this question that are worth contemplating.

them out, arranges them cogently, and puts them in

philosophical context.

Gary illuminating

Rosen ferrets

historical

and

If

students of

James Madison have

tury, it is

that Madison

disagreed

with

agreed about anything over the past cen himself. Historians, Madison biographers,

and students of the

founding

with

matters
political

join in concluding,

with

some of

widely different views of other important his contemporaries, that Madison's

transformation,"

thinking

underwent, as Rosen says, a "radical

a
was

"meta

morphosis,"

and that
inconsistent."

in

the end the

Father

of the

Constitution
correct

"hopelessly
error,

The

purpose of

Rosen's book is to

this

respectable

to

demonstrate Madison's
"to
rehabilitate

lifelong

consistency both in demonstrate

practice and

in theory,
statesman

and thus

Madison

statesman

as a constitutional thinker and a

To

accomplish

this, Rosen

undertakes to

that

Madison's
"the
root

ship

was guided

by

profoundly

original

compact"

political thought: the social

understanding (pp. 1-3).

of

idea

of

his

Madison's standing
of nature

contribution

to social compact

theory lay primarily in his

The

under

of what

Rosen
the

calls the

"political

nature."

right of

political right

involves

"notion, implicit in
generation,
. .

the social compact as

it had

come

down to the

founding

that a sovereign people,

to escape the state of nature, was capable on

end"

its

own of

having resolved forming a government

assump
political

adequate to that

(p. 7). Rosen

considers this

"the

most problematic

compact"

tion of prior accounts of the social

(p. 81). "For Madison, the

moment"

right of nature represented the social compact's

son recognized, as great social compact

defining

(p. 14). Madi

theorists like Hobbes and

Locke had

failed adequately to do,

that the people were not capable themselves of exercis

ing

this right

effectively.

Possessing

the natural right to establish government,

govern-

the people lack the deliberative capacity, the prudence, to establish good

i interpretation,

Winter 1999-2000, Vol.

27, No. 2

162
ment.

Interpretation
The
consent of the people, though a

necessary foundation
secure the

of

legitimate

government,

is

an

instrument inadequate to
into

safety

and

happiness for
The
people which as a

the sake of which people enter

are not

government

in the first

place.

founders,
and

and

they naturally
of

founding is necessary to reasonably leave the state of

in the

accomplish

the ends

for

nature.

Madison therefore,

member of a people engaged

complex act of

nature, sought and found a place not yet

exercising the political right discovered in social compact think

ing

for

founding

and

for founders: for

a modern, republican, architectonic pru

dence
lated

not altogether unlike

the classic understanding of phronesis

first

articu

by

Aristotle.
years

In the

leading

up to

and

following

the constitutional convention of

1787, Madison
mental

came to see clearly and understand the implications of a funda distinction between the mass of his countrymen whose consent was the

source of

legitimate

government and a wise

few

on whose prudence the

best

hopes
Much
can

of of

the people for

liberty

and

justice

decisively

depended (pp. 71, 81). in Ameri forms

Rosen's interpretation
when

revolves around this epochal moment

history

the people exercised their right to alter or abolish the

of government of

to which
and

Confederation)
form
shows

they had become accustomed (in this case, the Articles to institute new government on such principles and in
"most

such

as to them seemed

likely

to effect their safety and

Period,"

happiness."

Rosen fellow

how Madison,

during

this "Critical

came to understand

many motives and influences animating his desire for safety or security, various civilized inter ests that had grown up in American civil society, the self-assertive pride of both individuals and states. Madison's statesmanship relied upon accident and force
and to shape the

interplay

of the

citizens: the natural

to complement reflection and choice as

he attempted,
to

with

founding

prudence,

to harmonize wisdom and consent

in the

establishment of a new constitution.

Many founding

of those

who

devote their time

place

trying

to explain the American

the founders in different respects and in varying degrees in relation to ancient or modern political thought. Indeed, this is a tradition begun by the founders themselves. Rosen contributes to this
"prudence," Aristotle,"

have thought it fruitful to

Madison's understanding of an under that has an "affinity with and "[a]t the is a standing very least departure from the broad principles of Hobbes and (p. 88). With Aris totle, Madison regarded prudence as a virtue of the practical intellect which, at
tradition with an analysis of
...

Locke"

its full height, is

men.

the uncommon or rare political

judgment

of great political

Madison

also
not

"seems to have held [with

good'"

Aristotle]

that 'a man cannot

be
at

prudent

if he is

(p. 84). Thus Madisonian

teaching,"

prudence seems to

be

home in the

classical world of statesmen and

citizens, morality
the other

and politics.

The

"key

proposition of

[Hobbes's]

on

hand,

was that

'"Pru

dence is but Experience;

things to

which equall

they

equally apply themselves

competent

time, equally bestows on all men, in those (p. 91). Prudence is thus reduced
unto'"

universally

instrumental

calculation

in

the service of mere

self-

Book Reviews
preservation.

1 63

It is Madison's
dignity"

republicanism that raises

the sights of

his

prudence

above

this mere necessitous calculation "toward the achievement of a certain

kind

of

human

(p. 100). This

republican

dignity

grows a

from liberal

roots, to

be

sure.

It

arises

from "a

certain proud

self-reliance,
potential

jealous

and

irascible

nature."

attachment

to the rights of

But the

dignity

of the

attachment

to and assertion of our natural rights

is completely

"suppressed"

in

Hobbes's
becomes

account of at

the compelling passions

leading

to the social compact; it

least

"visible"

in Locke's idea
and
freedom"

of a right of revolution,
spirit"

but it is

more

fully

expressed

in

the

"vigilant

America, both
Two

"nourishes

that, manly and is "nourished by

and

as

Madison

saw

in

it"

(p. 117). Madison

other great modern

thinkers, Hume

Rousseau,

anticipated

in recognizing the deficiencies in Hobbes's and Locke's accounts of the social compact, but their responses to these deficiencies were themselves deficient in
part

because in different
soul"

ways

they "rejected

reason as the

the

(p. 96). Madison, in contrast, "believed himself

praxis"

ordering principle of and his counterparts

at times
produced"

to be capable of rational

(p. 97). Furthermore, Madison "did

allude to a certain order of the soul that republican

institutions
in

(p.

118). In this order, "Reason

or calculation

manifested

itself

not

[mere]
thought,

problem

but in character,
a

as a

kind

independence"

of self-control and

solving (p.

119). Here, in
stitutional

way

characteristic of classical political

a

republican con

forms foster
terms"

"human

virtue

corresponding] to the authoritative

founding"

regime"

opinions of a

(p. 1 19). "Madisonian

in the

end

is "best

seen

in Aristotelian The

(p. 99).

great pivot of

generations of

Madison's inconsistency, in the widely shared view of scholars, is his mystifying shift in the 1790s from broad construc

tion and nationalism to strict construction and states rights,

vision against

from

prudential pro

brief, majority tyranny from Hamilton to Jefferson (pp. 142-43; 158). from Federalist to Republican,
The

to organizing a united ruling majority: in

inconsistency

appears to resurface
question of

during

Madison's presidency

when

he

reverses

himself on the

the constitutionality of a national bank

(Mad

ison had unsuccessfully opposed a national bank as unconstitutional when first put forward by Hamilton in the 1790s) (p. 169). The inconsistency seems to

descend into
of the

confusion

when, less than a year after recognizing the constitution

United States, Madison vetoes a bill for funding internal ality improvements apparently on his old strict-constructionist grounds (pp. 169-70). What appears inconsistency in Madison's long career, Rosen argues, is a
Bank
of the

profoundly

consistent

effort, amid different challenges, to secure enduring con

ditions for
were

fulfilling threatened by proud

the ends of the American social compact.

and exaggerated claims on

These
of the

conditions

behalf

few

whose and

prudence was essential

to the goodness of the new constitution

(Hamilton),

by

proud and exaggerated claims on

behalf

of the people whose consent was

essential

to the

legitimacy
in

of the constitution

(Jefferson). The

harmony

of pru

dence

and consent

the moment of the

American

founding

was made possible

164
in

Interpretation

part

by

a combination of rare or miraculous accidents that ought not to

be

relied upon

in ordinary times. The blessings

of

this

harmony
large

were

best

secured

and perpetuated

by inculcating

among

the people at

a reverence

for the

forms few

of the new constitution and

a prudential

requiring deference to these forms (pp. 128, 137-38).

tradition rooted

of the most ambitious and talented

By developing
of

an

authoritative constitutional

in

an original

kind

"originalism,"

Madison hoped to arably

and

perpetuate

both the

consent and

the prudence that were

insep

necessarily

combined

in the

successful exercise of

the political right

of nature that was the

American

founding
first

(pp. 157-77). for Madison's

consistency.

Rosen does

not claim

to be the

to argue

He in

acknowledges, for example, the

recent success of

historian Lance

Banning

founder

showing the consistency between Madison the Federalist and of the Republican Party. But Banning's account does

Madison the
not extend

co-

to the

period of
on

Madison's presidency, and,

mistaken

more

important, his
is

analysis

is founded (Gordon

the

"thoroughly
or to virtue.

premise"

of the
"Liberalism"

"ideological

school"

Wood, J. G. A. Pocock,
things"

et

al.) that

Rosen's analysis,

by

contrast, conforms to a

"utterly indifferent to public "growing litera

it
once

ture that seeks to restore natural-rights liberalism to the preeminence

enjoyed

in interpretations

of

the American
capable of

founding."

According

to this view,

the

founders "were perfectly

Rosen's
concern

integrating
(p. 5).

the

seemingly incompatible
hypothesis"

domains

rights"

of civic virtue and natural

to

correct

the

ideological

or

"republican

school's error seems to

wants to show

lead Rosen himself into

republican

certain

difficulties. He rightly
school's

that, contrary to the

and

hypothesis

account, the

American 55). To

revolutionaries

founders did

not

"find the

opposition

between

virtue and rights

show

and rights

do most defenders of this (p. nearly how Madison, in particular, understood the relation between virtue "republicanism" to show how and are blended in his
so absolute as
"liberalism"

hypothesis"

thought

Rosen, among
passages

other

things,

offers reflections on the

following

three

interesting

from Madison's

public and private writings.

No instance has heretofore occurred, nor can any instance be expected hereafter to occur, in which the unadulterated forms of Republican Government can pretend to
so

fair

an

zens of the ciety.

opportunity of justifying themselves by their fruits. In this view the Citi U.S. are responsible for the greatest trust ever confided to a Political So
good

If justice,

faith, honor,

gratitude

&

all

the other

Qualities
the

which enoble

the character of a nation, and

fulfil the

ends of

Government, be

fruits

of our es

tablishments, the
never yet

cause of

liberty

will acquire a

dignity

and

lustre,

which

it has
most

enjoyed; and

an example will

be

set which can not

but have the

fa

vorable should

influence

on the rights of mankind.

with

If

on the other

side, our

Governments

be unfortunately blotted
great cause which we

the reverse of these cardinal and essential Vir

engaged to vindicate, will

tues, the

have

be dishonored & be
nature will

trayed; the last & fairest

turned against

experiment

in favor

of the

rights

of

human

be

them;

and their patrons and

friends

exposed to

be insulted &

silenced

Book Reviews

1 65

by

the votaries of

Tyranny

and

Usurpation. (P. 55; from Address to the States, 26

April, 1783)
Were the
pictures which

have been drawn

by

the political

jealousy

of some

among us, faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less
than the chains of
another.

despotism

can restrain

them

from

destroying

and

devouring

one

(P. 56; Federalist 55 [cited

as

56 in Rosen]) is
more

There is
which

no maxim

in my

opinion which

liable to be misapplied, interest

and
of

therefore more needs elucidation than the current one that the the political standard of right and wrong.

the
as

majority is

"Interest"

Taking
it is

the word
qualified with

synonomous with

"Ultimate

happiness,"

in

which sense

necessary
ular can

moral

ingredient,
the

the

proposition

is

no

every doubt true. But taking it in the pop

the

sense, as referring to

immediate
latter
sense

augmentation of

be

more

false. In

it

would

be

property and wealth, nothing interest of the majority in ev

and

ery community to despoil &

enslave

the minority of

individuals;

in

federal

community to make a similar sacrifice of a minority of the component

States. (P.

68; letter
Rosen is
tues'

to

James Monroe, 5 October,

1786)
essential of

were

in saying that, "[fjor Madison, the 'cardinal and perfectly compatible with a regime based on 'the rights
right
right

Vir
"

mankind'

(p. 55). He is
means

to point out that these virtues

were

in

one respect a

necessary
right that

to securing the ends of the rights of mankind. He may even

considered the rights of mankind

be

Madison

"precedent in every

respect"

to such

cardinal and essential

virtues; that Madison thought American government pro

as

motes such virtues

"only incidentally,

fit instruments
corresponds
founders'

policy"

of

(p. 56); that

inclination"

Madison

agreed with and

Hobbes that "virtue

of

to no natural

(p. 57);

that the "final the

cause"

the
as to the

preservation of

body

(pp. 29, 113). But,

statesmanship was last few claims, he

mere

goes

conclusions

them. To draw such wrong insofar as he depends on these passages to prove he must read these passages in a strained way, to say the least.

Of Madison's Address
he

to the

States, Rosen
and

writes:

Thus,
worth,

as

writes

in his address, justice

the
ambit of

the other virtues are the

liberty."

"fruits"

of

governments established within

"the

cause of

Their true
"Qualities"

that however pleasing they may be to the eye, lies in their being "fulfill the ends of They are not to be cultivated simply for their own sake. American government might require certain virtues, but it promotes them only

government."

incidentally, The
son

as

fit instruments

of policy.

(P.

56)
seems

more natural

reading

of the

Address, it
"only"

to me,

is to

understand

Madi but

"incidental"

"instruments,"

to be speaking of

virtues not

as

or as

as ends.
sake

In

this passage, the virtues are to

republican

be

cultivated as much

for their

own

as

is

government, which could not

be justified if it did

not

166

Interpretation
results, or

produce certain
"luster"

bear

"fruits."

certain

These

virtues

lend
and

not

only

but

"dignity"

to the cause of

liberty. The friends

of

liberty

the rights

of

human

nature will

be

"silenced"

if

their experiments, rather than

and the rights of mankind
will not

bearing
do
not

these

fruits, bear

their opposites.

If

liberty

ends, they results, only be less pleasing to the eye: there will be nothing to say on their behalf. Where freedom produces baseness and all manner of vice, despotism may be justified. Madison could
produce these or achieve these

hardly
is

be

more explicit: these virtues

"fulfil the

governm

ends of

Now it

true that

they

are not to

be

"simply"

cultivated

for

their own sake.

They
and

are

among those
other goods.

goods

(like

health)

that are ends

in themselves

and conditions

for be

Similarly

we choose

liberty

because it is

a good

in itself

cause

necessary condition for virtue. These virtues, as Madison might say, both nourish freedom and are nourished by it. Certainly the passage from Federalist 55 speaks of virtue as a means to the

it is

ends of self-government.

But it is hard to

reconcile

Rosen's human

suggestion that

for in

Madison "virtue
which which ment.

corresponds

to no natural

inclination"

with of the

this passage,
as

Madison

refers to

"faithful likenesses

character"

those

portray If the virtues necessary for self-government are essential parts of the "human are they not intrinsic to human nature? Is not this Madison
character,"

the

human

character as capable of enough virtue

for

self-govern

ian

thought

less

at

home

with

Hobbes than

with

Aristotle,

who

holds

that nature,

while not

providing 1103al4-25)?

us with

virtue, equips us to acquire

it through habit (Ethics

happiness"

In the letter to Monroe, Madison

"interest,"

recognizes

"ultimate

as

the true

measure of

but Rosen is inclined

of

not

to hear the

loud

echo

here

of

the teleological
ness"

language

Aristotle. Rosen

chooses to reduce

"ultimate happi

to
about

an

impartial

respect

for

others'

rights
and

Madison's

republicanism

about the

(p. 69). Whatever he may say intrinsic dignity of politics in

and the other
founders'

Madison's thinking, Rosen

manship
no more
as also see pp.

presents

Madison's

states emphasis

"ultimately 24, 29, 117). It may be

aimed at

self-preservation"

(p. 113;

added;
meant

possible that

in this

passage

Madison

by

"ultimate

happiness"

than a

disposition

suited to preservation of

bodily
more

to

existence, but is that the most plausible reading? Such a reading seems descend from Rosen's thesis about Madison's liberalism than to arise

from

a natural

reading

of

Madison's full

words

in

context.

The

phrase

"ultimate

happiness,"

as used

here,

more

plausibly

suggests as the true measure of a man's

interest the finis

ultimus of

moral and

intellectual development.

It may be that Madison's few brief paeans to virtue are difficult to reconcile with his many famous and extended paeans to freedom and rights and his fa
mous concessions to or reliance on self-interest.
without such strained readings as

Rosen

offers

But if they cannot be reconciled for these passages, they are per

haps better left in On the

other

undisturbed

tension.

hand,

maybe

Madison is

even more

Aristotelian than Rosen

Book Reviews
wants

1 67

to give him credit

argues

for. In

developing his
'motive
of

idea

of

the political right of

while

nature, Rosen
enough

that "[t]he

self-preservation,

strong
them

to

lead human beings to associate, is

not so

unrelenting

as to

keep

from considering various means for escaping their arises from necessity but attempts to transcend (p. 34;
it'"

predicament.'

emphasis added).

'Civil society But

Rosen is

reluctant

to consider that this very relenting quality of the motive of

enable

self-preservation must

may

human beings to

consider other natural ends that

be

neglected so

long

as the struggle
must
it,"

for

survival consumes all one's ener

"civil society arises from and to say that, "while coming into being necessity but attempts to transcend (n. 61, p. for the sake of living, [the city] exists for the sake of living
gies and attention.

How different

it be to say

that

well"

192)? However
capable

Madison

and

his fellow founders

of

were of

"integrating

seemingly incompatible
not

domains"

thought, their heirs

and successors

have

to preserve or reconstruct the reasoning by which In making the case for the consistency of Madison's they statesmanship, Rosen recovers or discovers grounds in Madison's thinking for integrating domains widely held to be in various ways incompatible: social com
always accomplished this. pact

found it easy

theory

and the

idea

of

founding,

ancient and modern political

"republicanism,"

thought, the

"liberalism"

current academic categories of

and

and even the

thought of

Madison's

great contemporaries

Hamilton

and

Jefferson. Most to his

point, Rosen discovers grounds on which Madison can

seemed

integrate

what of

have
own

to so many

for

so

long

to

be

the

incompatible domains

his

thought and practice. Whatever questions may still remain about the ultimate
ground of

Madison's theoretical Madison's

and practical consistency,

Rosen has ably

come

to the defense of

own

self-assessment,

made

late in his

long

life:

There

were

few, if

any, of

my
to

contemporaries, through the

whom a

long

period and var

ied

scenes of

my

political

life,

mutability

of opinion was

less applicable,

on the great constitutional questions which

have

agitated

the public mind.

(1831;

p.

143)

Lawler, Peter Augustine, Postmodernism Rightly Understood: The Return to Realism in American Thought (Lanham, MD.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), vii
+

195 pp., $60.00 cloth, $19.95

paper.

Paul Seaton
Fordham

University
you think about

What do
think about

death? Do

you

think about

death? What

should you

death?
timid a soul as the next, these should

am

as

but in my better

moments

I know that
and

questions such as of a

be

a regular part of a thoughtful

human life

liberal

education worth

its

salt

(and its $15-25 thousand

per annum price

tag).

Consider

a great

books

course

focused

on them.

The Bible, Hebrew

entrance

Scrip

ture and the

New Testament,

would tell us about

death's

into human
the

life

and

its defeat

by

Christ's death

and resurrection.

Socrates in

Apology
we

would not

apply, in
what

a superhuman way, the rationalist's criterion to

death: if
our

do
of

know

death is,

and thus whether

it is

a good or an

evil,

fear

death is strictly speaking irrational and should not be indulged. Or, in a more commonsensical vein, Aristotle describes the debilitating effects of cowardice in the human
tion of
soul and on

threatening
sweet

evils

human agency; courage, headed by a rational recogni within a wider vision of human nature's and life's in
one's soul of the attachment

goods, helps to
to life

achieve

the proper conjunction

life
much

and the aspiration

to a good

life.
to death's necessity

Machiavelli

later taught

spirited resistance

by

ex

tolling
mildly:

the ambition to acquire and to expand one's state,

both

political

and

"cranial,"

i.e., in,
us all

and over, men's minds.

save our

Hobbes took
as possible,

another

tack, to

put

it

let

skins as

long

by

rational

art and the

construction of a new peace-geared condition.

Pascal,

about

the same time as

Hobbes, Montaignian,

saw most

human

activities

(not to

mention

modern,

i.e., Cartesian

and

philosophy)

as pathetic,

And Heidegger

used an analysis of

Being

self-forgetting towards Death (or

efforts at

divertissement.

one's own

Nothing

ness) to call individuals from their

fallen

existence as mass men.

As

the

so varied

survey reminds us, the topic is so daunting and takes on it that guidance in these dark matters is precious. Peter Augustine Lawler

foregoing

is

one such guide.

us

As is the
almost all

case with

every

self-conscious thinker
come

today, he
within the
moder

knows that for

framework

issues, death included,

called modernity.

to

light

provided

by

something

He

also

knows that
so-called

nity itself is
erns. nature and

a contested

Accordingly, he lets

topic, especially (but not solely) the issue of human mortality,

by

postmod-

as emblematic of our

limits,

surface

in the interstices

of

these two combatants.

interpretation,

Winter 1999-2000, Vol. 27, No. 2

170

Interpretation
Lawler'

The relatively conventional character that this might lend to tions is very quickly belied, however. According to Lawler,
thought nor
or

s reflec
neither

modern

fashionable
right.

postmodernism gets

human

being

He

advocates

understood."

rightly
and writers such as

Its

proponents

mortality something he wittily calls "postmodernism are respectable, but not fashionable thinkers

death

or self-conscious

Solzhenitsyn

and

the writer of wonderfully

philosophical pher

essays), and the

odd

zany late

novels

Havel, and closer to home Walker Percy, (and, Lawler instructs us, of penetrating
historian
and social critic, at the

"populist"

Christo

Lasch. An
of

grouping, to be

sure!

As Lawler indicates

very begin
mod-

ning

his book, he looked for

"signs"

(p. 1)

and thinkers outside of the

ern-fashionably
men who might

postmodern constellation of

debate

and

dogmas in
reed.

search of

have

a clearer view of man, the

and writer.

thinking

Lawler is

dialectical thinker

He begins

with what

is first for

us

as citizens and thoughtful observers of the world

scene, "the

1989"

revolution of

(p. 15). Pierre Manent has

the

called the collapse of most

Communist

regimes and
scene."

discrediting

of

Marxism-Leninism "the

arche of our

contemporary

Two interpretations lead the way in explicating the significance of this event. The dissidents Solzhenitsyn and Havel maintain that Communist ideocracy was
the culmination of modern man's
on

hubristic

endeavor

to

deify

himself. Its

assault

human

nature and

the

latter's

vindication

against the totalitarian modern men.

man should chasten

slightly less

arrogant

Western

enemy of The task before

"repentance"

contemporary,
"renewal"

i.e.,

posttotalitarian,

mankind

is gigantic,

spiritual
revolution"

according to Solzhenitsyn, an "existential human domain of "consciousness and tinctively We late modern men and women must from the
and
"ascend"

in the dis

conscienc

in Havel's

view.

premises and spiritual

of

horizon
episode.

of

modernity if

we

truly

are to

reap the bitter harvest His

the

Communist

Francis Fukuyama
that

provided another reading.

was the most recent claim

modernity is true, that it reveals the truth about man and that it is unimpeachably successful. Marxist-Leninist hypermodernity, rather than discrediting liberal democratic capitalism,
reached

vindicates
.
.

it. Man's
with us.

adventure

in

history

has

its

unsurpassable culmination
claim

Lawler

points out that

despite

Fukuyama "convinced virtually (p. 16). Alexander Kojeve explains why and instructs Fukuyama in the true meaning of History's end in s first chapter, "Francis Fukuyama versus the End of
this

hugely flattering

nobody"

Lawler'

History."

The disagreement between the two Hegelians is

academic, interest in Lawler's
view.

not of

Before he artfully

constructs a

merely sectarian, or debate be

the

tween the two over the proper meaning of the end of

and the
modern

History, he links
and the

debate

issue

of

History's

end to two

bigger topics:

the general character of

philosophy, of "modern

or systematic

rationalism,"

fundamental
an appar

premises of our

"free, individualistic,
quite precise

society"

secular

(pp. 15-16). In
affirms that

ently extreme, but really

formulation, Lawler

"modern

Book Reviews
rationalism"

171

aims

to make man

God,

to replace the

Christian

Deity

with a man

kind possessing the traits of omniscience and omnipotence, of unfathomable freedom and world-creating power formerly ascribed to the transcendent Being
(p. 17). In
so

promising
Being"

and

projecting, modern thought aimed to eradicate

"misery"

"the

mysteries of

"alienation"

human soul, along with the that heretofore had characterized human life (thus giving
and of the and their religious

and
other

worldly

hopes,

custodians,

distracting

purchase on men).
seen

To

make conceptual room

for this

awesome task mankind

rule and

had to be

fundamen
and

tally

as

freedom, free from God's

make

Nature's determination
sees

direc
eman

tives, free to cipatory "radical

ism"

himself

and

his home

as

he

fit. This fundamental

a

premise

was

articulated

by,

or required,

distinction"

between

mechanical

Nature

and a

characteristically modern naturally inexplicable

on an

human freedom;
(p. 6).

modern thought as a whole

is based

"ontological dual
self-realization,

History

then

becomes the domain

of mankind's

both socially and cognitively. The issue between Fukuyama

quences of the
end of

and

Kojeve is, What

are the ultimate conse

working out, this development will

and

thinking through,
into its

of this own?

dichotomy? At the

mankind come

Has it in fact already

and

done

so?

The benign Fukuyaman

version of the end entails widespread recogni

tion of man's essential

freedom from God

now

and

Nature

justified

pride at

contemplating what he has true City of Man to replace

meaning,

the

imaginary City

successfully wrought, a satisfying home, the of God. Do the story's end and Kojeve thought
reconstructs so.

however, lie

elsewhere?

In my

simplified rendition,

Lawler

Kojeve's

alternative account
understood

around two

distinctively

human features,

man's rational

freedom

in

his contingency and mortality, in his thoroughly historical character. The end of history of all that is implied in its penultimate stage sees man in social orders that mirror his core as freedom
the emphatic modern sense and

his

awareness of

and affirm that goes

his

humanity is
is

this far. But

there

a worm

wholly his doing. So far in the apple.

so good.

Fukuyama

Concomitant

with

man's realization of

his freedom is his

ever more acute of the

awareness of the natural and

divine

groundlessness of

his existence,

disor

der he introduces into

pressingly his
extinguished.

the cosmos and

that

himself,
as
or

and most

importantly

and de-

recognition

he

both

individual

and as a species

will

be

Man is radically historical

temporal, therefore there is

no eter

nity for him, in

either personal or species

immortality. The

penultimate stage of

History sees these two recognitions contend, with the latter the deeper and the increasingly dominant one. Pragmatic pride gives way to existential despair. Kojeve then takes the next step in his "wonderfully consistent (p. 22). The true end of History must be, by choice or development or a combi nation of both, the return to mankind's prehistorical condition as described by Rousseau, one devoid of all distinctively human qualities, especially the aware
Hegelianism"

ness of and

futile

resistance

to eventual

death, both

one's own and mankind's.

172

Interpretation
about mankind's nonhuman

Wisdom

but

contented original condition and then

his historical,
timate stage;

that

is,

"misery-producing,"

development
of as

characterizes

the penul

its final

stage

is "the death

man"

from Nature, primarily

conscious playful

by decapitating
(pp. 28

him

and end

animal"

29). The

existing distinct him to an "unselfreducing of man's historical existence

being

or

must entail the eradication of man's

humanity.

Lawler dissents from this

conclusion and the rationalism that produces

it.

They

are

"pretentious

misanthrophic"

and

(p. 15). Man is

and will

be the

self-

conscious

mortal, a mixture

of grandeur and

misery

who

knows

enough about

the world and himself to live and to die well, but part of whose

knowledge
human
soul

includes
and

awareness of the mysterious character of

"intractable"

Being

and the

haunting

awareness of

limits to human

power exemplified

in

the necessity of

death (p. 2).

man."

Remarkably, modernity's old foe knew this about man, too. Lawler claims that Christianity, in Pascal's phrase, "knows It should receive a renewed, respectful hearing from all those who have discovered, or rediscovered, for
themselves these ancient truths.

Richard Rorty, however, is Lawler

must

not one of these chastened modern men.

Since

considers
given a

him "America's

leading

philosop

professor of

(p. 41), he

be

sor of

hearing. Rorty, the contemporary atheist and pragmatist profes philosophy, concurs with Kojeve's view that man is "contingent or histor
the way
down"

ical

all

and turns

his

considerable self-conscious

intellect to the
to

project of man

making the classless, evolutionary

an accidental

contented

society
more

a reality.

According

him

is

the

culture

being,

or,

precisely, the

linguistic being.
survival with no

Language,

acquisition, an evolutionary tool for

capacity to grasp reality beyond human making, determines human experiences of "the (sic) (pp. 45, 47, 58). Rorty's project, Lawler amply shows, is
human"

essentially "sentimental, linguistic

change their

therapy"

(pp. 49-50):
very

change

words,

or

meaning,

and our self-image and the

"musings"

experience of self will

"Death"

change. chief culprit and,

(and the

metaphysical

to which it gives rise)

is the
of the

therefore, the

chief object of redefinition.

The lodestar

therapy,
must

Rorty is
men

candid enough of

to admit,

is Hobbesian: Don't be forms

of

cruel.

We

free

from the fear

death

and the various

cruelty it

engen

ders. Since
to such

our awareness of our

death-defying
or

follies

as religious

mortality continually pricks us and prompts us belief and practice and great passionate

love,

self-conscious

mortality

as the root of

cruelty

must

be "talked to We
must

death,"

ignored

drugged

or redescribed

out of sight and mind.

become

for the sake of our peace of mind. merely "clever Allan Bloom, unwittingly, provides Rorty evidence that his project is feasi ble, that last men are beginning to appear. Bloom describes his students as
animals"

"nice,"

as

thin-and-flat souls without concern for eternity, without

calls them the

longing

for

love that defies death. Bloom

ation"

first

"thoroughly

historicized

gener

(pp. 64-65). He

recoils

from this scene, but this

evidence points

in the

Book Reviews
direction
being.
of the truth of

173

the

modern

view of man as that

thoroughly flexible
Lawler is
glad

Happily

Bloom

also provides counter

evidence,

and

to

find him in

self-contradiction

(pp. 71-72). The

children who are

the most repre

sentative of modernity's
order,"

detachment from
of

other

human beings have been

and

"the

natural

sons and parents

daughters

divorced

parents who

assured

by

their

and reassured

by

parents'

their

hired therapists that divorce is okay,

even good

for

all concerned, resent and rage

In their disappointment

tremendously this affront to love and vows. they are the antipodes to apathetic, nice youth.
of old-fashioned nature.

Within the thoroughly historicized lurks some In this way and others, there is evidence,
evidence, that cuts

and other
and

interpretations
Kojeve's

of the

in

different direction from

of

impending Percy and

overcoming Christopher Lasch In his

humanity's
are

wracked yet

Rorty inspiring

view of

the

existence.

Walker

invoked to

speak

for the

other side.

Percy
a nice or

makes a two-part case.

novels

he depicts

and unveils that

beneath
even

surface modern men and women are still

human, i.e.,

anxious,

loony

deranged
on

by

their more and

less

conscious awareness that time

is running

out

them, because the human

a good

mortal

is

not

lord

and master of existence and time.

novel"

Like

Socratic,

or practitioner of

"the

polyphonic
"scientific,"

(Bakhtin's fine
re

phrase),
sponses

Percy depicts inhuman,

a

antihuman

therapeutic

to mortality and anxiety and their counterparts, humane ones. The

latter,

as

befits

Socratic

and

Catholic

author

for

whom

man

viator, ever on the way, are never completely successful to be on

is essentially homo what would it mean

top

of

death,

of one's mortality?

but they
mortality.

provide a representative

and respectable range of responses to

human

Percy
the

also,

and

in his

own

judgment

more

fundamentally,

makes a case

for

naturalness of

human

speech and

cially truth about the soul,

reader.

its capacity to from individual to individual

"semiotics"

communicate and

truth,

espe

from

author

to

scientific"

Percy's

ambition was

to

develop

or

"genuinely

view of man as the

together modern

naturally linguistic animal, one that acknowledges and brings evolutionary data, Peircian semiotics, and premodern doctrines,
realism and

chiefly Thomistic
not and

Judeo-Christian beliefs (pp. 77-91).

necessarily incoherent,

this view
enables

is the

Lawler'

theoretical core of

Eclectic, but s book,

his

reconstruction of

and cogency.

judge for himself its plausibility Percy's Catholic-Socratic openness to truth about mortal man from it
the reader to

various quarters and model

his

personal, even
Lawler'

idiosyncratic,

synthesis about

is

a proximate
self-

and

inspiration for

s own search

for truth

man, the

conscious

mortal,

in

these

late

modern

times.

Percy
mocracy.

is

of particular

interest

and

help

to those of us, citizens and political

scientists,

who are concerned about

the moral political

health
and

of

American de
so char

Percy

focused

upon

the

expert-layman

distinction

division

acteristic of

American

social and political

life today (pp. 91-96). He allegedly impersonal

noted

that

"laymen tend to
their
personal

surrender

their personal sovereignty, their own

scientists'

judgments

about

authority"

experiences, to the

(p.

174

Interpretation
reason

92). Percy's

for this is

modern or

Cartesian

science's great successes

in

creating a humanly hospitable environment and its promise to deliver more. Laymen judge, erroneously, that it is reasonable to continue to be subject to scientific rule. Tocqueville chimes in that democratic individualism
experts'

makes

democratic in

men and women susceptible

to the

tyranny

of public opinion

and,

notes

Lawler, "democratic
the

public opinion
or

expressed

language

of

impersonal

[has a] growing tendency to be deterministic science [because ]

. . .

in Tocqueville's words, 'metaphysics

(pp. 93-94). In the tral,
objective

and

theology
square,

...

slowly lose

ground'"

increasingly

naked public

science's

purportedly
us as

neu

discourse has

sole right of speech.

what we

Unfortunately,
and

much of this

science

distorts evidence, denies

and citizens.

know,

debilitates
deal
of

human
to

beings

(Christopher Lasch devoted

science"

a good

his

effort

showing that "therapeutic

responsible

self-consciously
the view that to

replaces man as a

morally

individual

with

he is

a psychosomatic organism capa

ble

at

best

of

healthy

adjustment

his

environment.

The therapeutic distinction,

healthy-sick,
citizenship the face of Lawler

replaces the moral one of good-bad

[p. 157]. Genuine democratic

and a vigorous personal existence such an counters

become

increasingly

difficult in

authoritatively

presented with

view.)
that

by

sovereignty
ence
of

and so of

affirming individual truthful,

Percy

"the true

source of personal

rights"

is "the reality
of the

of the

[personal]
that

experi

authenticity

or

undiverted

self-consciousness

language it

makes possible and

[which] is

the

foundation

dignity

of the

human indi

vidual"

(p. 96). Percy's "New

Science"

of man

and

Lawler's

exposition of

aim

to validate such experience and to

incorporate it into

a genuine science.

This

science, in turn, can

the rule of

help revitalize

American

democracy

and our commitment to

law. The latter

presuppose

ity

of

deliberative

processes

individual accountability and the possibil that eventuate in laws furthering the public weal. individualistic
explorer-thinker was

Another

maverick or

highly

Christopher

Lasch,
this

so

Lawler is drawn to him. Lasch

analysis"

was the

biggest

discovery
and

for

me

in

book. His "class

focuses

on the comparison

contrast, and

misanthropic unilateral

cognitive elite and

evaluate the

relationship (top to bottom), between two classes, the the populace (pp. 157-58). His insight is to explore and to

two in terms of their souls and

especially in terms

of their aware

ness of and responses

closer

to,

you guessed

it,

their mortality. The latter are much

to truth about mortality than the

former.

The contemporary cognitive elite has pushed the capitalist division of labor between mental and physical labor to an extreme. Cut off by their work from
their own

bodies, they live in

does
not allow them

"virtual

reality."

(Rejoining

their

bodies

at the

health

club

to reconnect with the wisdom of the

flesh; they
El

rather see

the spa as an essential element of the

contemporary
see them

death-denying

Dorado.) Surveying

from

above and afar the other noncognitive workers

in the

postindustrial, information age,

they

cannot

but

body

(since

mind

is

theirs).

Modem-day

compassionate

primarily in terms of pastors of this benighted

Book Reviews

175

flock, they
"suffering"

tend to reduce public morality to the compassionate care of the

"disadvantaged."

and
existence of the others as easy,

This

care aims above all

to make the somatic

comfortable,

pleasurable and

long

as

is techno
that comes

logically
from any
merly

possible. and all

And,

to be sure,

they

are to

have the

"self-esteem"

"identities"

and

they may currently enjoy hegemonic sway. To

possess or

create, save those that for

achieve this goal of self-respect

of excellence an assault on
et

minority identities, earned dignity and universal standards have to be dismissed (pp. 158-61). All this, of course, requires

ing

all the

traditions,

of

religion, morality,

sexual roles and

practices,
soul

cetera, that

have

as their common

denominator the thoughts that the

is higher than the

their

body

and that the soul's chief work consists

in

helping
was

individuals to lead

mortal existences

in the light
who

of this and other

hierarchies. unstinting in his

unmask

Lasch,

an

intellectual
and

lived

and

died well,

ing

of the

illusions

disdainful

"compassion,"

of the

deeply

antidemocratic

attitudes, characteristic of the therapeutic elites. His unravelling of the cocoon

malfunctioning revelatory force. Lawler's discussion of out and buy them. You will, too. Lawler's topics
nemesis, "modern
and reflections cause

environment and psychic

of

Lasch'

many of my peers s "last five

struck me with made me go

books"

him to

recur of

rationalism"

in

most of

its forms,

constantly to one great which Cartesian techno

are two.

logical

science and

contemporary

psychoanalytic

therapy

These

deny

mysterious, fundamental, know, or at least have more immediate

albeit citizens.

truths about man,

truths

that the unlettered

access to than their sophisticated

fellow

The fateful division

"person"

of

the world

into

res cogitans and res

extensa; the
self-

therapeutic reduction of man to the well-or-poorly adjusted animal; man as

"autonomy"
"choice"

creator, as the
pass

with

and

grand enough

to encom

his self-identity
of man,

and the
and

life

or

death

of nascent

life: these

and other articu

lations

Being,

the world guide and misguide us throughout our

public and semi-public permeated our

lives. Lawler's hope is that they have not thoroughly intimate lives, that the truths about man the individual with con
the thoughtful mortal who accepts his mortality and

science and responsibility, other

limits

with courage and grace, remain not

fairly

and, perhaps,
our society.

inaccessible to the well-educated,

intact among the populace well-positioned leaders of

"science"

It is nearly impossible to

deny

the ascendancy of

in

our

time and

in

our public,

semipublic, and even private

or other

lives. We

turn on the electric

lights,

open our chiatric

Scientific American

journal,
its

and read that the

American

Psy

Association has
cure"

ruled that

because

homosexuality is
science's

"disorder,"

not a

therapies "to
show

it

should not receive

approbation.

"Studies

begin

so

many

public and partisan pronouncements.

And

so on. of our

Lawler therefore has his grip

common and

on one of the

deep

constitutive

features

individual lives. His

reflections on

it, both

expositions and criti

cisms, are regularly

illuminating,

often cogent.

176

Interpretation
perhaps yields too much to

Yet he

his
I

opponent

in

one of

its first

and

basic

forms,
and

modern natural

science, Baconian-Cartesian in

inspiration,
and

materialistic

evolutionary in modem science has

special natural

content.

As far

as

can

tell, Lawler

Percy
to

agree that

nonhuman

Nature

about

right, it just misses

Man,
be

the very

being. I do
in

not think the

first

concession needs more

made.

With

it, intelligible,
talk of

"soul"

connection with man

becomes odder,

difficult to

render

than need

be. Let

me sketch

two steps that I

would take

to bolster

Lawler's generally strong argument. Hans Jonas and Leon Kass have "substantial late
form"
"soul,"

made the

best

case

I know for

"form,"

or

as

being

a rational requirement

in

order to articu

and to account

for

what we see and observe about organic

life throughout

Nature. In the former's The Phenomenon of Life (Harper & Row, 1966) and the latter's work, especially his book The Hungry Soul (Free Press, 1994), the two
show

that the

fundamental
oneself as

vital

activity, metabolism, the transformation of out

and

side other
"powers"

into

energy

substance, cannot be understood

being"

without

inherent in

a recognizable

"principle

of

called

The basic activity that all life's forms alive, involves three "great discriminating
powers,"

"form."

engage

traditionally in, eating

and

best

to stay

"awareness"

of the edible
"action,"

other within the world;

"appetite"

or

"felt

need"

the

interaction Chapter 1

with the other and

the world

for replenishment; and to incorporate suitable others into

Form,"

oneself.

of

The

Hungry Soul,

'The

Primacy

of

concludes that not

vital

only does form exist as a necessary factor in accounting for from being, but that as such it has a certain
"independence"

activity

and

"supremacy"

and

over

the particular material components

it

organizes and activates at organic

any

particu

lar time both

of

during

its lifespan. From

the

beginning

life is

"transcendent,"

its immediate life

materials and
organic
a

its here

and now existence.

Man,

of course,

extends and

intensifies this
and

"openness"

to the world. But openness

can account

is

characteristic of

only

formal dimension

for this trait.

arguments.

The

reader will want to consider

for himself Kass's

and

Jonas 's

But for Lawler's purposes,

"form"

such a rehabilitation of the scientific and philosophi makes

cal

credibility

of

human

psychic

life,

while quite

special

and

distinctive,
favors thus With

not quite as

anomolous a

feature

of the natural world as modern of the

science might

claim,

or

he

seems to think.

Soul talk

traditional

sort

he

gains

contemporary
may
and

rational credibility.

"soul"

recognized as an

old psychologists centuries.

appear more

intellectually necessary category, some of interesting and relevant than they have

the

for

Thomas Aquinas. So Percy do I. In my experience, most political scientist Straussian readers of Thomas only are familiar with his natural law doctrine and his famous Question One of the Summa theologiae on "sacred This is a pity, I think. I find his
advocate a reconsideration of
doctrine."

Lawler

anthropology, his

rational

psychology

and

doctrine

of man's moral and rational

development

and

perfection,

rather more cogent and

illuminating. Aquinas 's

Book Reviews
arguments

1 77

for the

rational

soul,

its

various

kinds (five his

"genera"

to be precise)

of powers, their

hierarchical order, the two

the

sorts of passions

concupiscible and

irascible (six
the will,

of

former, five
most

of the

latter)
sort.

arguments

for freedom

of

his

analyses of particular virtues, psychic types or conditions, and the

like,

continue report

to be of a

impressive

Percy
a

and

Lawler

accept or

merely because he is

Aquinas 's
rational.

general view

that man

is

free

and responsible

being

While this intuition is

commonsensical and the

founda

tion of genuine

democracy, Aquinas
order.

gives several arguments

for it is

and unravels

many

of

its

consequences and

implications. A

return to them

an

intellectual

treat of the

first

As

an appetizer or entree to

Aquinas's feast

of considera argu

tions, let
ments

me recommend will as

David Gallagher's

reconstruction of

Thomas's

for "the

appetite"

the rational

in

the

October, 1991, issue

of

The

Journal of the

History

of Philosophy.

Percy
of

and

Lawler's

"twentieth-century

Thomism,"

their advocacy of "a sort

should also encourage a revisiting of the original Thom its thinking about that special in-between being, man, who is "intellectual and free in will and possessing power over himself (intellectuale

Thomistic

realism,"

istic

mind and

et arbitrio

liberum

et per se

potestativum) (Prologue to Summa Theologiae

God,"

I-

II). As

such

he is "the image

of

not

God Almighty.

Peter Sacks, Generation X Goes to College, An Eye-Opening Account of Teach ing in Postmodern America (Chicago: Open House, 1996), xiv + 190 pp., $18.95
paper.

Charles E. Butterworth

University
In this

of Maryland

lively

account of

students, teachers, and administrators

in

the contem

porary multicultural the low aspirations

administrators.

world of

higher education, Peter Sacks

and even

points

unerringly to

of students

lower

expectations

of teachers and

Teachers bewildered from Sacks's

by

the vacant stares of vapid, uninterested

students will gain

account some notion of

why

so

many only

students

deem it
ally,

not

necessary to do expecting
such

more than show

up for class,

and that

occasion

while still

and, unfortunately, receiving

increasingly

better

grades.

Worse,

teachers will

find

anecdotal confirmation of their suspicions

that administrators are well aware of

teachers'

how

students'

abilities

clined yet resist

allowing

grades to reflect that reality.

have actually de For Sacks, the

the

all-pervasive student evaluations of courses and the pusillanimous accession of

teachers as well as administrators to the

ultimate causes of student

judgments

set

forth therein

are

apathy,

not

to mention the

tendency
class-

among students,
which

teachers,

and administrators to prize entertainment over

substance,

is

so

evident now as multimedia

teaching

theaters replace

and seminar rooms

in

colleges and universities.

Peter Sacks is

a pseudonym adopted

by

the author, an accomplished

newsroom

journal

for the community the ist, prompted for personal reasons to college classroom. Once he found that the only way he could keep his new that is, to move a position was to lower his standards semester after semester
abandon

step farther from the room he decided to

newsroom

report on

making his classroom a sort of play his experience. The narrative is consciously

by
as

journalistic,
tell

even

to a

fault, insofar

Sacks

resorts and

excessively to
of

anecdotes

to
of

his

tale. It

is

a tale of grade

inflation
to please

coddling
who

inept students,
agencies

faculty
how

review committees content

deans,

themselves think only

of enrollment

figures,

the

items

by

which government

funding

decide

highly

to rank the

institution,
railing

and of teachers who

bow to

such practices

even while

detesting

and

against

them.
and of

But the book is

more than a

cautionary tale

where, not just to those in community colleges.

provides

interest to teachers every The first part of its two parts

classroom

an

account

of what the

new

postmodern

is like,

and the

second attempts an analysis of what ered expectations.

has

occasioned the new practices and

low
por-

The book's

strength

derives from the

author's

ability to

interpretation,

Winter 1999-2000, Vol.

27, No. 2

1 80

Interpretation

and vividly what occurs in the classroom even as he admits to become precisely the kind of entertainer cum teacher whose appearance having he deplores, this as a means of succeeding in an enterprise he views as fatally

tray accurately

flawed. Still, his

claim that

anonymity

permits

him

greater candor notwithstand

conducive

ing,

one wonders whether such a mask

is

not

unduly

to overstate

ment.

The first

part of the

book rings

all

too true. The second part, the attempt to

ferret

out the reasons

for the

changes

in

popular assumptions that

have facili

tated or called

forth the

changes

depicted in Part One, is less

compelling.

To

some extent, this

is due to the

author's conscious presentation of

himself

as a

journalist willing to depict things as they are on the surface and to rely primarily upon evidence from magazine articles, newspaper stories, and television shows in
order

to explain how and why postmodernism, which

for him is ultimately

certainly
thought

the culprit
allows and

in this saga, has

capture

come about.

His

reliance on such sources

him to

accurately

what postmodernism

is in

popular

how it

appears.

postmodern

He clearly identifies, for example, the assumptions of the consumer and points unerringly to the way in which students have in their
approach to education.
not sufficient

internalized

such assumptions

To

explain

why things are,

however, it is

to

they

are.

Nor does
are that
set

knowing
before

the

way things are now, without

of traditional practices.

identify the way being aware of

The
"why"

why they

way, allow one to meet the challenges that advocates of

advocates so

postmodernism

eludes the author that

would

like to

oppose.

he ultimately falls victim to many of the assumptions he Although he seeks to attenuate his suggestion that "educa
might no

tion as we've

known it
that

longer be
a

relevant

for

age"

a postmodern

(p.

174) by reiterating

he is merely

journalist

and not

"an

educational on

policy
merits.
no

scholar,"

expert nor a postmodern

the suggestion must be

judged

its

On those grounds, it is longer The

relevant
now

evident that traditional

are somehow

education

is to be judged different
or

only if things

fundamentally
no

if every

thing is

miraculously

new.

But that is in

way the

case.

author

falls prey

to this postmodernist claim of novelty

because he is,

ideas. Thus, taking a cue from Jean-Francois Lyotard, he urges that the postmodern classroom "be simply a space for teams of students to work with raw materials of (p. 175). He does so insofar as he is persuaded by Lyotard's claim that "the question
admittedly, not
well schooled

in the

history

of

learning"

(overt

or

implied)

now asked

by

the professional student, the

true?'

State,
use

or

institu Al in

tions of

higher

education

is

no

longer 'Is it

but 'What

is

it?' "

though the author, qua

and

journalist, may be his famous formulation in the Emile

unaware of
or on

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
published
cela?"

Education, first
"a
quoi

1761,
good

that all education should address the question

valid excuse or not

bon be

(what

is that?), Lyotard has no his phrase, borrowed wittingly

for

such

ignorance. Consequently,
cannot
a root of
post-

from Rousseau,

Book Reviews
modernism, unless the latter is
now

'181

to be

understood as

developed

by Rousseau,

Dewey,

and

Piaget.
an age where
via

We do live in

learning
internet
not

is facilitated
and other

by

by
has

access to

information

the

forms
"take

technology, especially of electronic dissemi

everyone now of their own

nation of

information. But it does

such

follow from the fact that

control

access to

information

that students can

of the

learning,

without the not

intermediary

institution

professor"

or the one ought to

(p. 177).

Or it does
no proper

follow therefrom,

unless there

is nothing

learn

and

way for anything to be learned, that is, unless knowledge has become less important than imagination (see pp. 179-80). Another instance
snares of of the author

having

ultimately become

enmeshed see

in

the

the very doctrine he wishes to combat is his

centers on there

failure to

that the
seek

fundamental issue
communicate need

being (a)

knowledge human beings

to
a

to one another as opposed to

information to be

shared and

(b)

to learn how to acquire such

knowledge

as well as to gain confidence

in

its
is

soundness versus
not

imagining
to

new ways of

manipulating information. To teach

and teachers are
tools."

the same as to serve as a guide in

not equivalent

information-gathering,

certainly

gathering in any way the

"information-gathering same thing as learning how

Nor is

information-

to learn. The

former is

merely what the name implies, getting facts and ideas together in some kind of bundle. Once gathered, it is still necessary for the gatherer or the gatherer's helpers to know how to make sense of what has been gathered. Acquisition of
this

limited

it is tempting to say

paltry

kind

of

knowledge is the least

of

the

tasks of

education.

Nonetheless,

as noted, the strength of the

book lies in its

vivid

description

of

the classrooms teachers encounter.

The

author

has identified the

ever

attitudes that
who still

frustrate teachers desire to learn

and those students,

becoming

less numerous,

and not

merely to acquire the certification offered

suggestions of ways

by

the system.

Equally

sound are

his three

institutions
notions

can

battle the trend 182-86). The in

modern

toward grade inflation and thus the underlying

entitlement

of consumerism and

that

students

have

acquired

(pp. 181-82

and also pp.

suggestions are uncomplicated and, given the

very

tools so vaunted

institutions

of

learning, disarmingly
in the
class and of students

easy to adapt.

First,

a published record or
an

transcript of a student's grades should

average grade

be

accompanied

by

indication

of

the

its

size.

Second,

there should be restrictions

on the

final date for

being
the
or

allowed

to withdraw

from

classes without

the

withdrawal

being
about

noted on

student's transcript.

Finally,
grade

there should be

some

institutionwide policy

stipulation

concerning
class that

distribution for

courses, that
mention a

is,

the

percentage of

any

may

receive an

A,

not

to

or an

F,

and about what

the class average should

referring to what

is

common practice

in law schools,

suggests

be. The author, that it be a C or

minus.

They

prevail as

well,

he

might

have added, in

professional schools.

1 82

Interpretation
whoever

Peter Sacks,
that

he may be, has

written a

thoughtful,

provocative

book

intelligently
his

addresses

university teachers. His

room and echelons are masterful. ern

many of the questions now faced by college and description of apathy and sheer ignorance in the class behind the
scenes

account of what goes on

in the

administrative

It is

pity that his

wished

attempt to think through the postmod

framework

and to reform the classroom so as to meet

its

challenges suc
practical

cumbs to the tendencies

he first

to combat.

Still, his final

sug

gestions on
errors.

how to

reduce grade

inflation

somewhat redeem those theoretical

Given the

whole argument of the

book, however, it is simply inexcusable

and grammat

that the author and publisher

ical

errors as well as

many typographical infelicitous formulations to be printed.

allowed so

have

Rousseau: The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings

and

Rousseau: The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings

Translated and edited by Victor Gourevitch
The
anthology of Rousseau's political writings in English. Volume I: First and Second Discourses together with the
most comprehensive

Replies to Critics,

Essay on

the

fdea of the Composition ofa Volume II: Discourse on Political Economy,

manuscript,
selected

Origin ofLanguages, Letter to Voltaire, Book and Discourse on Heroic Virtue.

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