Arnhart, Aristotle, and Evolution

            In Larry Arnhart’s Darwinian Natural Right, he makes a connection between evolutionary theory and an Aristotelian view of morals.  The perceived relation between our evolutionary history and morality is that rooted in our biological nature is a moral sense, the foundations of which can be identified in other mammals.  This combination of natural moral emotions and abstract moral principles has thus resulted in the systems of ethics that have emerged in human cultures.  Contrary to previous notions that culture is a human fabrication, Arnhart sees it as a natural way that humans develop their capacities and satisfy their desires.  In these regards, his ideas are aligned with Aristotle’s definition of man as a social and political animal by nature, engaged in building his moral character.
            Arnhart’s stance is compelling because it is a perspective of natural science that does not negate cultural conventions, but rather considers them an extension of our natural existence.  During out evolutionary history societies have shaped the way our instinctual needs are fulfilled, therefore our complex deliberations about morality demonstrate how our advanced speech has allowed us to fulfill our basic needs through social and political organization.  In later chapters Arnhart outlines the twenty natural desires that he believes encompass the physiological adaptations that have occurred over four million years of evolutionary history, to direct the adaptation of human beings to diverse ecological circumstances.
            These classifications of human behavior and motivation effectively relate to Aristotle’s question of “how to shape the moral character of human beings to conform to a naturally good way of life” (1).  However, some of Arnhart’s assumptions and conclusions based on Aristotle’s model and not entirely satisfactory.  The concept that “the good is the desirable” does not seem to generate a clear criterion for morality.  Because of his opposition to the Kantian ideal of selfless moral conduct, he does not deal with the logical fallacy of inferring a moral ought from a natural is.  He simply states that nature has demonstrated how there is no necessary separation of these principles, and that every human society must have rules for the proper expression of desires, lest the people suffer because of repressed appetites.  Yet due to the complex organization of society, dilemmas appear where the resources cannot be equally distributed for the satisfaction of all desires.  Arnhart implies that societies learn to organize themselves in a manner as to deal with such conflicts, but the means to a resolution, or a prioritization of values, is not part of his moral system.  These and other issues are part of an analysis of Darwinian Natural Right that would evaluate it as a moral system.
            Arnhart as a biologist writes about how Aristotle’s view of philosophy and biology influences his assertions.  He says Aristotle was the one to best develop a view of politics as a character-forming activity rooted in human nature, the central theme to his argument.  He expands on this definition by saying that “human beings are by nature social and political animals who use their natural capacity for speech to deliberate about the conditions of their social and political life” (2).  He also establishes that we can judge political communities by how well they conform to the nature of human beings as political animals and rational animals.  Because Aristotle’s view was rooted somehow in his biological understanding of human nature, Arnhart’s approach is to infer philosophical principles from a biological perspective as well.  He incorporates Darwin’s theory of evolution to explain not only that political animals are driven by biological desires, but how those developed over evolutionary history.
            At an individual level, Arnhart explains his Aristotelian position that desires are not fulfilled in a uniform and predictable way, but that the political nature of human beings “shows an ambivalent combination of individualistic competition and social cooperation, and that the full development of human moral and political capacities requires a complex interaction of nature and nurture” (3).  This raises the question of whether lack of development in an individual can be fairly measured, and if so, what are the moral implications that follow.  Arnhart addresses this indirectly by dwelling on the ancient Greek concept of “natural right” stating that whatever hinders the life of human beings as political animals is contrary to nature.
            Arnhart then points out certain dilemmas with this perspective because to say that something can be “contrary to nature” depends on a teleological conception of nature – the idea that nature acts for the sake of ends. (3) If modern science refuted Aristotle’s teleological concept of the universe, then it refuted natural right.  Arnhart states that we must either assume that human action is purely mechanistic, or that there is a separation between non-teleological natural science and teleological science of human life.  “Although modern physicists try to explain inanimate nature without referencing to ends, modern biologists must explain animate nature as serving certain ends” (4).  If we indeed take this position, Aristotle’s concept of natural right is still valid because nature is seen as serving the end of sustaining life, and therefore humans should reserve the right as political animals to nurture life appropriately.
            With regards to identifying a moral sense in human nature that would direct the development of all other social and moral character, Arnhart draws on other resources.  “Wilson,” he says, “surveyed the contemporary research in the social sciences supporting the existence of a natural moral sense, and he concluded that this research sustained the ethical naturalism of Aristotle, Hume, and Darwin in rooting human morality in the biological nature of human beings” (5).  Other research describes how human neural structures allow cognitive and linguistic capacities acting on social emotions to create a natural moral sense. (63) Arnhart elaborates on this to include that the species-specific behavioral repertoire of Homo sapiens includes inborn desires that are fulfilled in social and political life.
            This biological perspective also states that the natural moral sense “emerges as a joint product of moral emotions such as sympathy and anger and moral principles such as kinship and reciprocity” (7).  Therefore, divergent ways of life are judged by how well they nurture the natural desires and cognitive capacities of human beings in different circumstances, but deciding what should be done in particular cases requires prudential judgments that respect the social practices of the group.  Arnhart’s view of morality seems to be based on fulfilling the individual, while still considering his place in society.  A sense of moral duty to society would in fact be necessary otherwise the actions of certain individuals would infringe on the natural rights of other individuals.  It is unclear from this model where the boundary exists between an individual fulfilling desires to the best of his capacity while being fair to the disadvantaged.  Evolutionary history can account for the primal instincts that originated societal systems, but it yields no specific insights about cultural values that may have emerged arbitrarily or due to historic peculiarities.
Arnhart does, however, examine different ways that cultural practice emerged from patterns that can be found in other animals.  He criticizes the Hobbesian separation between culture and nature, saying that this “antithesis between instinct as completely fixed and learning as  completely flexible is false” (51).  Aristotle, similarly, believed that almost all animals have some natural instincts for social learning, and some are intelligent enough to live as social and political animals.  He reasons that if culture is the flow of information between animals about their physical environment and their social relationships, then human culture differs from nonhuman culture only in the degree to which human language extends and formalizes this flow of social information.  From other sources Arnhart also concludes that in varying degrees, all social animals have natural instincts for social learning.  Just as some birds are predisposed by nature to sing, human beings are predisposed by nature to speak.  As Aristotle said, “here nature and art are not antithetical but cooperative” (54).  Our political activity seems to be a part of the evolutionary heritage we share with our close relatives.
            Yet it seems that entire civilizations and diversified expressions of culture create circumstances and implications that cannot be detected through the study of moral behavior in ancient hunter-gatherer societies.  Arnhart does in fact point out that “the emergence of large-scale states with centralized governments and bureaucracies depends upon peculiarities of human history that cannot be completely rooted in their natural sociality” (62).  For most of their evolutionary history, human beings have lived in small bands of fifty to one hundred individuals bound together by ties of kinship and reciprocity in face-to-face relationships.  Arnhart makes the connection that living in such groups is natural for human beings because it arises from bonds of kinship and reciprocity that belong to a natural repertoire of social behavior that they share with other social mammals and particularly primates.  But because earlier he identified culture as a natural way for the species to satisfy its needs as a political animal, it seems as though large-scale states with governments and bureaucracies, albeit arbitrarily constructed, are still the natural result of an increasingly diverse, connected and populous world community.
            If Arnhart is right, and these complex modes of organization cannot be rooted in natural human sociality, then it seems there could be a different approach to his “Darwinian Natural Right”.  Since cultural and political variation creates circumstances and characteristics that cannot be biologically traced, then perhaps a moral system based on natural desires is not complete enough to take into consideration the desires that are solely connected to those cultural values.  Even if Arnhart’s twenty natural desires cover all the possible motivations behind an individual’s actions, there may still be choices that apparently contradict all of that person’s natural desires in favor of the good of something else.  As long as that decision does not infringe on anyone else’s natural right, and if it promotes a necessary but biologically untraceable aspect of human society, can it be morally reprehensible?
            Regardless, Arnhart’s objective is to define culture as an extension of natural impulses.  Since Aristotle’s concept of rationality is what distinguishes a species that can develop language and culture, even if the natural moral principles do not provide an answer for culture-specific issues, then a rational examination could arrive at the most reasonable course of action with regards to any natural desires involved.  Richard Cumberland saw the “distinctly human capacities for speech and reason as the natural instrument by which human beings become more political than the other political animals” (63).  Arnhart emphasizes that it is a difference of degree of learning and not of kind that has allowed the capacities for speech and reason in human beings.  He believes that Darwinism has denied the dichotomies on which a separation between culture and nature rest, refuting Hobbes’ presuppositions about animal nature vs. human will.  Hobbes believed that in creating a political order, human beings transcend and conquer nature.  Kantian belief supports this because if only humans have the understanding and will to set purposes for themselves, it is an autonomous human artifice that transcends nature, and a necessary condition for forming moral values. (65)
            Arnhart demonstrates how Aristotle’s ideas, although based on a different understanding of biology, are completely aligned with a modern Darwinian view.  Other authors and social scientists such as Kroeber, have often ignored Aristotle’s references to other political animals which are a foundation for helping us understand our own behavioral patterns.  When Kroeber mentions Aristotle’s declaration that “Man is a political animal,” he omits the phrase “by nature”, to preserve the presumed dichotomy of nature and culture, biology and politics, Arnhart says. (64) Since Darwin’s research on the evolutionary heritage of the human species, it has been possible to compare human beings with other primates who show the precursors of human moral dispositions, indicating that morality is rooted in biological nature.
            The most concise of these descriptions of the natural moral sense is taken from Frans De Waal, who says that:
Evolution has produced the requisites for morality:  a tendency to develop social norms and enforce them, the capacities of empathy and sympathy, mutual aid and a sense of fairness, the mechanisms of conflict resolution… the need of the young for care, a desire for high status, the need to belong to a group… (66)
            Contained in these basic instincts is the potential for an entire societal structure to develop around the fulfillment of those needs.
            All of Arnhart’s ideas are a sum of Aristotle’s biological ethics, supporting his views that man is a political animal by nature, and building on his theories with newfound empirical material collected over the past few centuries.  Modern studies of our evolutionary history has helped build on structures for the understanding of morality as an all-encompassing quality in existence, not reserved to some, but built into the ancient make-up of everyone.  Although Arnhart’s system is not entirely complete at a pragmatic level, lacking certain resolution on matters of cultural variability, it certainly offers a more unified and coherent view of society than a Hobbesian dualistic separation, for instance.  Ultimately his most compelling argument complements Aristotelian political belief by saying that culture is natural for human beings because through culture they develop their natural capacities and satisfy their natural desires.

 

Work Cited
Arnhart, Larry.  Darwinian Natural Right:  The Biological Ethics of Human Nature.  State University of New York Press, New York:  1998.

 

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