Over the last several years, I have operatively adopted an historicist account of human nature (ala Hegel, Gadamer, Sartre, Ortega). For many (Sartre and Ortega included, I think) that account is opposed to view of natural law in which the goals and basic structures of human nature are given not by human decisions or by human history but by something more grand in which humans participate. I think Hegel and Gadamer would have a more nuanced position here than Sartre or Ortega allow – that is, while remaining basically historicist, they can incorporate an account of “nature” into that account rather than leaving it as a contradictory opposite.
So, now I’m rethinking my thoughts from the standpoint of primitivism, which completely reconfigures the relation between nature and history On the primitivist account, human nature is a product of millions of years of evolution (so evolution provides a broadly historicist framework, but not in the sense of history used by the thinkers above). “History” (in the narrow sense of the word used by historicists) began only about 10,000 BC, and that is not enough time for any real biological change in humans. So we are all basically what we were in the Paleolithic age; our bodies, our minds -- our nature – is best suited to the environment and life “we” had then. So, the primitivist essentially makes a natural law case for human ethics.
Questions: In what senses is the primitivist case different from a natural law account of human nature? What are the advantages of an historicist account of human nature that we would lose and need to rethink if the primitivist case seems convincing? Has anyone written a critical review comparing the theoretical frameworks of Alasdair MacIntyre’s Dependent Rational Animals with the more historicist framework assumed in most of his other writings?
kids and technology in schools.
9 hours ago
It seems to me that while we haven't changed so much in 10,000 years in any biological sense, demands on our intelligence have changed greatly. From initially being mostly able to comprehend our immediate surround and the beings within it to some degree, to today attempting to comprehend the world from a global perspective.
ReplyDeleteMost people don't master this new perspective very well, and it is that failing which leads to the chaos of contemporary international and inter-racial relations. Hegelian attempts to view the whole and its dialectic are valiant attempts to master this problem, but it seems to me they only show how nearly impossible it really is.
The primitivist case for natural law is an understandable attempt to refuse this demand, to withdraw from the global down to the local. The problem is, the local from which we evolved doesn't exist anywhere. The primitivist position calls for a communitarian ethics, for the rest of the world to return to them, yet for many of us there is no way back there.
What seems missing is a mediation, a way to find ethical sanity while facing the world as it is and as it continues to change. For that, a community is important, since no one of us singly can master the global perspective, but each of together can contribute distinct pieces of that perspective. This allowance for a cooperative project of perspective-building, in which we all contribute in our distinct ways seems at least a strategic way forward.
There are no guarantees here. Some community-generated perspectives will fail. Some will continue in the old Hegelian way of determining the master dialectic, but always overdetermining it.
As I understand MacIntyre, he says the nation-state fails as a community, and I agree, but it fails for two reasons, not just because it is too large to be a community. It also fails because it is too small to be global. The nation-state is currently the dominant power internationally, though increasingly challenged by the multinational corporation.
For all its faults, the Roman Catholic church is the best example of how a community can expand to global proportions. The protestant analogue, the World Council of Churches, comes in a distant second, but the one in which my communion is most involved.
The historic peace churches also have their global bodies and important work is being done there. I also see the work of scientists and academics in global conversation, creating possibilities for a way out of the deadly cycle.
Each attempt to move from the local to the global has something to offer. The hope is that before a global conflagration overtakes us, these efforts will bear fruit.