Richard M. Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences, published in 1948, was among the founding documents of contemporary conservatism. The title phrase has become something of a cliché, and overuse has stripped it of the interesting meaning it once had. Nowadays most people assume that what Weaver was saying was that how we think is bound to affect how we act, and that the intellectual trends that prevail in a society will determine its moral and political character. To be sure, that was part of his meaning, but if that were all he had in mind his message would have been a pretty banal one, since no one denies that in this sense "ideas have consequences." What is largely forgotten is that Weaver was making a play on words, and that his primary reference was to Plato's famous Theory of Ideas, a metaphysical thesis that has cast a long shadow over the history of Western civilization. Indeed, Weaver's view was that this metaphysical vision is what made Western civilization possible, that its abandonment was the primary source of the pathologies of the modern world so decried by conservatives, and that its recovery is essential if those pathologies are to be overcome.
It hardly needs saying that not all conservatives today would express their creed in precisely these terms. Many religious conservatives, or at least those of an evangelical bent, would find them excessively high-falutin'. Many secular conservatives, fancying themselves too hard-headed and worldly-wise even for philosophy, let alone religion, would eschew Weaver's formulation in favor of economics, or perhaps to take up the current fad for evolutionary psychology.
Nevertheless, a consideration of metaphysical issues of the sort Weaver addressed would, I maintain, do much to clarify the nature of conservatism, and of the disputes that constantly break out among conservatives of different stripes. For there is no one as dogmatically beholden to a metaphysic as the man who denies that he has one; and it is rare that a disagreement gets as fierce as the intramural fights among conservatives have sometimes been, if it doesn't ultimately trace back to some difference in metaphysical first principles. It will be useful, then, to have a survey of the kinds of metaphysical assumptions that underlie the thinking of various people classified as "conservative." I will argue that there are, metaphysically speaking, three basic types of conservative -- conservatives of the Weaver sort, of course, and two others.
And lest this all appear far from topical, let me note that, as we will see by the end, what I have to say might shed some light on the controversy stoked by Prof. Jeffrey Hart's recent piece on the state of American conservatism in The Wall Street Journal.
A brief history of Western thought
Obviously we cannot understand the metaphysics of conservatism without knowing something about metaphysics, and in particular something about the issue with which Plato, and Weaver following him, was most concerned. So let us begin by summarizing the relevant ideas. Is it possible to do so in a way that will make them comprehensible to those unfamiliar with philosophy, yet without oversimplification? The answer, of course, is no, but I will try anyway.
The first thing to say is that the label "Theory of Ideas" is misleading, because (given the way we now use the term "ideas") it seems to imply that Plato was concerned with something that exists only in the human mind. In fact the opposite is true. Plato's view is also sometimes called the "Theory of Forms," and "form" rather than "idea" better conveys what he meant.
Take the example of a triangle, which has a form that distinguishes it from a square or a circle. In Plato's usage, this "form" includes not only its shape, but all the properties that make it the thing it is: the length of its sides, its area, the fact that its angles add up to 180 degrees, and so forth. Now any particular material triangle (such as the ones drawn in geometry textbooks) is going to have certain properties that are not part of "triangularity" as such, and will also lack certain properties that are part of triangularity as such.
For example, it will have a specific color -- green, say -- and lack perfectly straight sides, even though greenness is not part of triangularity and having straight sides is part of it. So in Plato's view, when the intellect grasps the form of triangularity, it is not grasping something material, since nothing material manifests triangularity in the strictest sense. But neither is it grasping something mental. For there are certain facts about triangles -- the Pythagorean theorem, for example -- that are entirely objective, and discovered by the human mind rather than invented by it. Moreover, these facts are necessary and unchanging rather than contingent and alterable: the Pythagorean theorem is true eternally, whether or not any human mind thinks otherwise or would like it to be otherwise. "Triangularity" is therefore something that exists apart from either mind or matter, in a third realm of its own: the realm of Forms. And the same thing is true, according to Plato, of the Forms of everything else -- squares and circles, plants and animals, human beings, beauty, truth, and goodness.
It is important to understand that talk about the Forms existing "in" a "realm," and so forth, is purely metaphorical. Literally they don't exist "in" anything, since "in" is a spatial term and the Forms, being immaterial, are outside time and space. For the same reason, the "realm" of Forms isn't literally a place, since that too would imply spatial location. The concepts we apply to material things simply don't apply to the Forms at all, and the way we learn about material things -- through the senses -- is not how we know the Forms. They are grasped through pure intellect.
Indeed, in Plato's view the senses don't strictly speaking give us true knowledge at all, but merely opinion, for what they reveal to us -- material objects -- are merely more or less imperfect copies of the Forms, and are continually coming to be and passing away, whereas the Forms are eternal. The Forms are what most fully and truly exist, and genuine knowledge is knowledge of them.
Aristotle took a view that was similar to Plato's in many ways, though he thought that forms in some sense existed "in" the material world rather than in a "realm" of their own (even though they were not in his view any more than in Plato's reducible to matter): triangularity, for example, exists "in" all particular triangles rather than as a thing in its own right. Aristotle also emphasized the idea that a substance -- a statue, a tree, a human being -- is a composite of matter and form.
On this view, known as "hylomorphism," a tree, for example, is not merely a hunk of matter, but a hunk of matter with a particular form, the form of "treeness," where this form is (again) not merely a physical property alongside other physical properties of the tree. And the soul, on Aristotle's view, is simply the form of a living body. A human person, therefore, is on his view a composite of soul (or form) and body (or living matter). By virtue of their forms, things exhibit certain natural functions, ends, or purposes, and it is the fulfillment of these natural functions, ends, or purposes that defines what is good for a thing. This is as true of human beings and their various capacities as it is of anything else.
Now the philosophers of the Middle Ages inherited these concepts from the Greeks, some of them more or less following (and sometimes amending) Plato, others, particularly later in the medieval period, following (and amending) Aristotle. St. Augustine combined Plato's view that the Forms are eternal and independent of the human mind with the intuition that it is hard to see how they could exist apart from just any mind at all, and concluded that they exist eternally in God's mind. St. Thomas Aquinas extended Aristotle's view in several ways, including an emphasis on the idea that the human soul, the form of the living human body, is "subsistent" in the sense that uniquely among the forms of material things, it operates in part independently of matter (in particular, its intellectual powers do) and can survive as a particular thing beyond the death of the body it is the form of.
In general, in debating the famous "problem of universals," the medieval thinkers carried forward the debate between Plato and Aristotle over the nature of the forms. "Universals" are really just the things we've been calling "forms" -- triangularity, "treeness," humanness, goodness, and so forth -- and are to be distinguished from "particulars," i.e. specific things (like this or that individual triangle or tree) which might instantiate or exhibit the universal or form. The term "form," though, tends to be used by those who take the view that, in their different ways, both Plato and Aristotle (and Augustine and Aquinas and many others) took: that universals are real and not reducible to either mind or matter. This is the view about universals that came to be known therefore as "classical realism," or just "realism" full stop.
This was by no means a mere intellectual curiosity. A great deal rode on it -- and, as we will see, still rides on it today. To take one example, the traditional understanding of the idea that there is a "natural law" that determines what is objectively right and wrong is inextricably tied to classical realism. For "human nature," as understood by the traditional natural law theorist, is defined in terms of the form that every human being participates in simply by virtue of being a human being. And that means it is something known ultimately and most fully only through the intellect and via philosophical reasoning, not (or at least not entirely or most deeply) through the senses and empirical biology. Moreover, this nature defines certain natural ends and purposes for human beings and their capacities, the realization of which constitutes what is good for them: good objectively, simply by virtue of their participation in the form, and regardless of whether this or that particular human being realizes or (because of intellectual error, habitual vice, psychological or genetic anomaly or whatever) fails to realize it.
To take another, and related, example, a person, being on the view in question a composite of soul (or form) and body (or matter), cannot be identified with either his psychological characteristics alone or his bodily characteristics alone. Moreover, since the soul is just the form of a living human body, for a living human body to exist at all is for it to have a soul, so that there can be no such thing as a living human body -- whether that of a fetus, an infant, a normal human adult or a severely brain damaged adult -- which does not have a soul, and which does not count as a person. For while even a human being who is damaged or not fully formed might not perfectly exhibit the form of the human body (any more than a hastily drawn triangle perfectly manifests the form of triangularity), he nevertheless does exhibit it, otherwise his body wouldn't count as a living human body at all (just as a hastily drawn triangle is still a triangle, however imperfect). One corollary of this is that every single living human body, within the womb or without, severely damaged or not, counts as the body of a person and as a being having all the rights of a person, including the right to life.
Now as the Middle Ages wore on, a rival view to that of classical realism developed: the theory called "nominalism," which held that universals do not, strictly speaking, exist at all. Only particular things -- this or that particular triangle, this or that particular tree, this or that particular human being, and so forth -- are real, and "triangularity," "treeness," "humanness" and the like are nothing more than names we happen to apply to groups of things. Moreover, that the things so named are grouped the way they are is merely a function of our interests and needs, and does not reflect any objective or natural order.
As the medieval world gave way to the modern one, and medieval to modern philosophy, nominalism won the day, and modern thinkers like Descartes and Locke abandoned the old conceptual apparatus of hylomorphism, with its appeal to forms and natural ends or purposes as fundamental to the understanding of things, and to the idea of the soul as the form of the living human body. "Mechanism" -- the view that physical things operate on purely mechanical principles, without natural ends or purposes and without instantiating anything like Plato's or Aristotle's Forms -- entailed a redefinition of the human body as nothing more than a complex machine, and "human nature" as nothing more than a specification of the principles by which the machine operates, like clockwork.
Now if a living human body does not have a form -- any more than anything else does on the modern view -- then it does not have a soul either, at least as classically defined. Descartes thus re-defined the soul as a kind of non-physical object which is only contingently or accidentally attached to its body, rather than as a form which the body necessarily has to have in order to be a living body at all. One result of this is that the soul came to seem to modern Western thinkers an ever more elusive and mysterious entity, and therefore a dispensable one. Another is that it became harder to see what made a living human body the body of a person, since there is nothing about its being alive that entails (on the modern view anyway) that it has a soul. This problem was only exacerbated by Locke's own re-definition of a person as a stream of connected conscious experiences, rather than a union of soul (form) and body (matter).
Thus were sown the seeds -- inadvertently, to be sure -- that would eventually develop into the view that neither a fetus nor a Terri Schiavo counts as a person having a right to life. And in the other trends alluded to -- nominalism and mechanism -- we see the origins of the idea that "human nature" is either a purely human construct, or something that exists objectively only as a collection of behavioral tendencies, of no more inherent moral significance than the workings of a clock. We might, as a matter of prudence, want to keep them in mind as a possible barrier to the realization of our desires, but if we could find a way to alter them there would be no objective reason not to do so.
Certainly these behavioral tendencies -- being ultimately nothing more than mechanical regularities -- do not, on the modern view, reflect anything like Aristotle's natural ends or purposes or Plato's Form of a human being, defining what is objectively good for us. And thus there is no absolute moral barrier to the radical revision of institutions that have traditionally been understood to reflect human nature -- hence socialism, the sexual revolution, and a thousand other things.
The varieties of conservatism
If you are still with me after all that, you have no doubt already begun to see the relevance of metaphysics to conservatism, and in particular the relevance of the classical realist tradition to Weaver's brand of conservatism. "Realist Conservatism," as we might call it, affirms the existence of an objective order of forms or universals that define the natures of things, including human nature, and what it seeks to conserve are just those institutions reflecting a recognition and respect for this objective order. Since human nature is, on this view, objective and universal, long-standing moral and cultural traditions are bound to reflect it and thus have a presumption in their favor.
But this does not necessarily entail a deference to the status quo, for since human beings are by their nature free and fallible, it is possible for societies to deviate, even radically, from the natural law. When this happens, it is the duty of the conservative to "stand athwart history yelling 'Stop!'" (as the editors of National Review so eloquently put it many years ago). Such yelling ought of course to be done with tact and wisdom, but if the cause of the Realist Conservative should end up a lost one, unlikely to win elections, that is irrelevant. What matters is fidelity to the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.
What then are the other two varieties of conservatism I promised to identify? Here another, and much briefer, excursion into the history of philosophy is in order. I noted that realism had as its great rival nominalism, but there is also a third position on the nature of universals -- "conceptualism," which might be thought of as a kind of middle ground between realism and nominalism. The conceptualist does not quite deny that universals exist (as the nominalist does) but he does insist, contrary to the realist, that they exist only subjectively, in the human mind. If they are real, then, they are something other than what the realist takes them to be; though their existence isn't exactly denied, they are nevertheless "reduced" to something less grand, and certainly to something less than eternal and unchanging.
The debate between realists, conceptualists, and nominalists manifests a pattern that one finds repeated frequently in other areas of philosophy: where X is some object of philosophical interest, some philosophers (the Realists) say that X is real and just what it appears to be, others (the Reductionists) say that X is real but not what it appears to be, and a third group (the Anti-Realists) says that X is not real at all, but at best merely a convenient fiction (and maybe not even that). In the debate over universals, the conceptualists are the Reductionists and the nominalists are the Anti-Realists (the realists, of course, being the Realists).
Another example of this pattern in the history of philosophy would be the debate over the relationship between mind (or soul) and body. The Realist view in this case would be "dualism," which holds that mind and body (and mind and brain, for that matter) are completely distinct, and in particular that the mind is something non-physical or immaterial, just as it seems to be to common sense. A Reductionist view would be "identity theory," which says that the mind is real but that it is really identical to the brain -- in other words, that the mind is, contrary to common sense, just one physical object among others. An Anti-Realist view would be "eliminative materialism," which says that the mind does not really exist at all: strictly speaking, there are no such things as thoughts, experiences, beliefs, desires, and the like, but only neural firing patterns, hormonal secretions, behavioral dispositions, and so on and so forth.
Now it seems to me that the distinction between Realist, Reductionist, and Anti-Realist positions in philosophy might usefully be applied to a demarcation of various brands of conservatism.
I have already described Realist Conservatism as committed to the existence of timeless and unchanging essences from which derives a natural law that applies to all human beings in all circumstances. Reductionist Conservatism, then, might be defined as a variety of conservatism that agrees with Realist Conservatism in affirming that there is such a thing as human nature and that it is more or less fixed, but which would ground this affirmation, not in anything like an eternal realm of Forms, but rather in, say, certain contingent facts about human biology, or perhaps in the laws of economics or in a theory of cultural evolution. The Reductionist Conservative is, accordingly, more likely to look to empirical science for inspiration than to philosophy or theology. He is also bound to see grey in at least some areas where the Realist Conservative sees black and white, since facts about economics, human biology, and the like, while very stable, are not quite as fixed or implacable as the Forms. But he is less likely to see grey than is the Anti-Realist Conservative, who might be characterized as someone doubtful that any relatively fixed moral or political principles can be read off even from scientific or economic facts about the human condition. Whereas Realist and Reductionist Conservatives value tradition because there is at least a presumption that it reflects human nature, the Anti-Realist Conservative values it merely because it provides for stability and order. The closest thing we have to an objective moral order, in the view of the Anti-Realist Conservative, are whatever principles happen to be embodied in the history and practice of a particular society. Since those principles can change, though, the conservative ought, in the view of the Anti-Realist, to be willing to change with them.
Realist Conservatives respect religion because it shores up obedience to the natural law, but especially because its teachings are either explicit or implicit affirmations of the very same metaphysical truths knowable through philosophical inquiry. The Realist Conservative also respects science, but sees it as less fundamental in the order of knowledge than is philosophy (and, for some Realists, theology), and insists that its results be interpreted in the light of more basic metaphysical truths. Reductionist and Anti-Realist Conservatives also respect religion, but only because it serves as a bulwark of social and moral order; and the Anti-Realist Conservative is just as likely to see it as a potential danger when its adherents threaten to upset social order in the name of purportedly timeless truths. Reductionist and Anti-Realist Conservatives also tend to regard science (including, for some of them, social sciences like economics) as the paradigm of knowledge, indeed perhaps as the only thing that even deserves the name of knowledge. But the Anti-Realist Conservative is less likely to see in it a source of moral and political insights that might replace the insights traditionally promised by philosophy and theology. For the Anti-Realist, it is ultimately the values that have (for whatever reason) come to prevail in a culture, rather than any objective philosophical or scientific truths, that determine what we should do. Pragmatism is his only unchanging principle.
Now this classification is an idealization, and many real world conservatives probably exhibit elements of more than one of these tendencies of thought. It seems pretty obvious, though, that religious conservatives, whether they are simple believers or intellectuals of the sort associated with journals like First Things, are paradigm Realist Conservatives. It is either realist metaphysical principles of the sort I've described, or the will of God, or some combination of these, that define their conservatism, and this gives it an unmistakably Realist character.
Reductionist Conservatism predominates among secular conservative intellectuals who find in social science or evolutionary psychology the ingredients for a reconstruction of the older conservative conception of human nature in more purportedly "scientific" and "up to date" terms.
Who would be exemplars of Anti-Realist Conservatism?
Hart trouble
This brings us to Prof. Hart's recent essay. Hart is himself a prominent conservative. He tells us that "what the time calls for is a recovery of the great structure of metaphysics, with the Resurrection as its fulcrum, established as history, and interpreted through Greek philosophy." This might seem to mark his conservatism as of the Realist variety, but as every good Platonist knows, appearances can be deceiving.
The part of his essay that has provoked the most controversy concerns abortion, for Hart calls on conservatives to abandon the pro-life cause. This position itself seems to have been less controversial, though, than the reasons he gives for it. For Hart appeals in his defense to the "powerful social forces" favoring abortion, such as "the women's revolution." He tells us that the pro-choice consensus ought not to be challenged, because it is "the result of many accumulating social facts, and its results already have been largely assimilated." Roe v. Wade must be accepted, in his view, because it reflected "a relentlessly changing social actuality" and "the reality of the American social process." Indeed, the conservative mind itself, Hart tells us, is "a work in progress," and ought to be guided by "skepticism" and "the results of experience."
Here Prof. Hart's jargon is clearly not that of Plato or Aristotle, Augustine or Aquinas. If anything, it is that of the pragmatist (and decidedly anti-realist and unconservative) philosopher John Dewey. And lest this seem an odd thing to say about a conservative, let it be noted that Hart almost admits as much himself when he proposes Dewey's fellow pragmatist William James, of all people, as a model for conservatives to emulate. For the Realist, abortion is either wicked or it is not, and finding out which is all that matters. But for Hart (as for Dewey) such questions are trumped by "social forces," "social processes," "social actuality," "revolution," and "progress." God and the philosophers, tradition and reason can have their say, but it is only when The People Have Spoken that every conservative must bend the knee. If this is conservatism, it is certainly not Realist Conservatism, or even Reductionist Conservatism, but it might be Anti-Realist Conservatism.
Anti-Realist Conservatism also seems to be the working ideology of many conservative politicians and activists, for whom assimilating principle to political expediency is always a temptation. It also appears common among populists who oppose liberalism only where it happens to offend the current sensibilities of "the folks," but who are more than happy to give up their opposition when said "folks" decide to bring formerly avant-garde attitudes and practices home with them to the suburbs.
But a drift into Anti-Realist Conservatism must also be a constant temptation even to Reductionist Conservatives. How so? For one thing, such a drift has well-known parallels in the philosophical disputes mentioned above. Conceptualism is often regarded as merely a disguised version of nominalism, preserving the language of realism while abandoning the substance. Reductionist theories of the human mind are constantly in danger of denying the very existence of the phenomena they purport to explain, and thus of collapsing into disguised versions of eliminative materialism. A similar tendency seems inevitable in Reductionist Conservatism, given that it more or less endorses the nominalism, mechanism, and other theses that, as I noted above, have together defined modern philosophy. If you agree that there are no objective, universal, and eternal Forms or essences that things partake of, and no inherent ends or purposes in nature either, then it is hard to avoid taking on board the modern view of human beings as merely complicated machines, and of human nature as something the study of which is of prudential rather than inherently moral interest. But in that case, you are committed to the very philosophical premises that have made possible the modern trends mentioned above, and so lamented by conservatives -- the sexual revolution, abortion, and all the rest. Your objection to these trends cannot be that they are inherently evil, but only that you personally find them rather nasty, or perhaps that if they are allowed to play out too swiftly they might tend to undermine social order. Moreover, insofar as these judgments are based on your understanding of human nature, they can only be provisional and relative to current circumstances, since you can have no objection in principle to trying to transform human nature (through genetic engineering, say), which would of course be possible if it reflects nothing timeless and unchanging. In short, it is hard to see how your view differs in substance from that of the Anti-Realist Conservative.
Now why aren't all conservatives Realist Conservatives? Hart indicates one possible answer when he derides "abstract theory" as incompatible with Burkean scruples. Yet it isn't "abstract theory" per se that is the problem from the conservative point of view -- Burke hardly intended to condemn Thomas Aquinas alongside the French philosophes -- but only abstract theory that seeks to overthrow common sense rather than build upon it, as the classical realist tradition has always understood itself to be doing.
Another reason implied by Hart, of course, is that Realist Conservatism isn't politically feasible. The bottom line for the pro-life agenda, in Hart's view, is that its realization "is not going to happen" and so shouldn't be pursued. Presumably he would extend this judgment to Realist Conservative ambitions generally. But this is frivolous, at least if one believes that politics ought to be guided by moral principle. It is also unfounded. Presumably Hart would not have recommended to conservatives in the 50s, 60s, and 70s that they abandon their goal of rolling back socialism at home and Soviet expansionism abroad because it "is not going to happen." Such a pessimistic judgment would have been understandable at the time, but also utterly mistaken.
Finally, many conservatives no doubt think that Realist Conservatism just isn't intellectually defensible today. If so, they ought to try reading philosophical books other than the kind that get reviewed in The New Republic or The New York Review of Books, because they are wrong. Realism about universals has a great many capable and respected defenders in the academy even today, and so too do such other components of the traditional metaphysical worldview as philosophical theism and mind-body dualism. (For those who are interested, I have written on the second of these topics here, and devoted part of a book to the third.) It is true that these are minority views among contemporary intellectuals, but then again so too is conservatism. And no conservative would have taken the hostility with which free market economics was once treated in the academy (and still is, in some quarters) as a sign of anything other than the faddishness and dogmatism that are as common among intellectuals as in other walks of life.
My own view, for what it is worth, is that Realist Conservatism is true, and that this is the main reason to support it. But establishing that thesis is something that would require a book, and not just an (already overlong) essay. So let me end by citing another, and more practical, reason someone with truly conservative instincts ought to favor the Realist brand of conservatism over its rivals -- namely, that it isn't clear that the other versions are really versions of conservatism at all, any more than nominalism or conceptualism are versions of realism. For the Anti-Realist Conservative, as I've said, does not really oppose liberal measures per se, but only their overhasty and excessively disruptive implementation. Historically, the pragmatists, politicians, and others who exemplify Anti-Realist Conservatism have merely served to consolidate the gains of liberalism -- hence Newt Gingrich's famous dismissal of Bob Dole as the "tax collector for the welfare state"; hence Prof. Hart's desire to put a Burkean imprimatur on Roe v. Wade. And Reductionist Conservatism, to the extent that it risks collapse into Anti-Realist Conservatism, seems threatened with the same unhappy fate. Moreover, even the best writing done by Reductionist Conservatives -- and some of it is very good indeed, and important -- seems too beholden to purely social-scientific categories, and light on serious engagement with fundamental philosophical or moral issues. The farther a conservative gets from the Realist inheritance, the more he talks in terms of "costs and benefits," "trade offs" and the like -- and the more he thereby approximates the liberal technocrat and the "sophisters, economists, and calculators" so despised by Burke. Communists, it used to be said, are liberals in a hurry. Conservatives need to be wary lest their creed degenerate into something indistinguishable from a leisurely liberalism.
Edward Feser's most recent book is Philosophy of Mind: A Short Introduction. He is a regular contributor to the blogs Right Reason and The Conservative Philosopher.
Mind-Body dualism
Good article, but I just want to clarify the rather subtle point that medieval philosophers, especially the Scholastics, did not hold strict mind-body dualism. They held that mind and body were separate entities, but (in contrast to later duelists) they held that the Person was a composite of both parts. Later thinkers developed radical dualism which held that the Person existed only in the soul, as in “This body is nothing, the real me you cannot hurt.” For the medievals, the body was an integral part of the person.
Mechanics
Thank you--this was a germane discussion for me, scrambling to learn about the philosophy I never learned in schools.
I guess I hold realism as an ideal but I've been more of a reductionist. On the issue of abortion I've rationalized to myself that, well, every human life is worthy of protection and yet a young woman who has gotten herself in trouble ought to be able to abort that human life from her womb and just admit she's done it, so that she can get on with her life, and accept the guilt as a part of human living. That's better than lying to yourself that you haven't done anything serious, plus most young women aren't philosophically clear on what they're doing anyway.
I know it will be a better world when we all revere life, and that will come about when we realize that all human beings are created equal. But the argument about revering life is not quite up to the standards of "realism" as I now understand it.
I was taught this realism, not realizing it, in the LDS church as a youth. That's the part of my upbringing I haven't rejected.
Ayn Rand writes of compromise. She says, in every negotiation someone gets some of what they want but has to give up other things they want. That isn't compromise, that's negotiation. Compromise is when you give up on what matters most to you, out of fear.
Ideas have consequences because ideas are the mechanical components which make up our functioning on the mental plane. We may not even know how those mechanical parts came about but we use them anyway.
Thanks again for educating me.
The flip side
Great article Ed. Thought you might like to check out our critique of progressivism and progressive morality.
http://lawnrangers.blogspot.com/2006/01/george-lakoff-frames-progressive.html
Natural Law and Metaphysics? Time to get into the 21st Century
The author writes:
"Thus were sown the seeds -- inadvertently, to be sure -- that would eventually develop into the view that neither a fetus nor a Terri Schiavo counts as a person having a right to life."
I cannot believe the author would even contemplate the equivalency of the two cases. A fetus has a potential that Mrs. Schiavo was found to have lost (based on factual evidence). It is certainly arguable that a fetus has moral standing (including a right to life), while such a right is without meaning in the case of Mrs. Schiavo, as she had lost that which gave her moral standing (i.e., rationality and a will). Indeed, according to the medical facts, there was no potential that these functions could be re-gained.
So the author's reasoning or his recounting of history has gone south here.
"Realist Conservatives respect religion because it shores up obedience to the natural law, but especially because its teachings are either explicit or implicit affirmations of the very same metaphysical truths knowable through philosophical inquiry."
Just exactly what "metaphysical truths" are we talking about here? Such statements make me very su****ious because the statements have no empirical grounding. They sound like "knowledge" created from reason alone without any attachment to the real world. A great way to set up a false (or unprovable) premise in an argument.
Cry babies
I suggest that those who consciously or unconsiously reject realistic conservatives chafe over the idea they are not the center of the universe.
Those in the scietific world who don't accept the status quo have created marvelous inventions. But I belive the difference is they identified the scientific laws and applied them to make the world better.
Unfortunately, if I don't like gravity, significant and immediate consequences manifest when I step off the cliff. But if I don't like abortion laws, I don't follow them, and try to make a logical argument rationalizing my behavior. No apparent consequences, to me.
I believe natural laws exist in all aspects of our lives from gravity to social interaction. The sooner those laws are identified and proven, the sooner our societies will truely advance.
Cry babies
I suggest that those who consciously or unconsciously reject realistic conservatives chafe over the idea they are not the center of the universe.
Those in the scientific world who don't accept the status quo have created marvelous inventions. But I believe the difference is they identified the scientific laws and applied them to make the world better.
Unfortunately, if I don't like gravity, significant and immediate consequences manifest when I step off the cliff. But if I don't like abortion laws, I don't follow them, and try to make a logical argument rationalizing my behavior. No apparent consequences, to me.
I believe natural laws exist in all aspects of our lives from gravity to social interaction. The sooner those laws are identified and proven, the sooner our societies will truly advance
Being Conservative
“Realism” is an idealist philosophy that extrapolates “reality” (that can never be proven to exist) from perceived reality. Consider the “point”…a fundamental Geometric construct. All “points” can be infinitely divisible and therefore have dimension and therefore are not points. Since a “point” cannot be defined, neither can a line, a triangle or a dimension. Points, lines and dimensions are simply constructs (models) that aid us in dealing with the real world…a perfect “point” need not exist to be useful. The models (“Forms”) of Geometry are similar to the morals of civilization; neither technically exists but yet have consequences…and are therefore real.
A conservative should focus not on the ideal nature of man (which like the “point” is indefinable), but on the nature of the human condition…the constant threat to survival and the precarious status of any achieved prosperity. Existence endows each human with a daunting survival challenge, and with an inherent right of self determination. Properly established Government can complement and enhance human freedom and thus the likelihood of prosperity, while too much Government can suppress human freedom and opportunity. Conservatives should focus their efforts on getting and keeping Government in its optimal state, and standing firmly against creeping Socialism. Given the task at hand, I suggest the Realist and the Anti-Realists put aside any differences and focus on the real dangers that threaten human demise or extinction.
Plato's Forms?
"The concepts we apply to material things simply don’t apply to the Forms at all, and the way we learn about material things -- through the senses -- is not how we know the Forms. They are grasped through pure intellect."
This proposition has been proved to be untrue. Doesn't anything in philosophy progress forward. These arguments were shown to be false in 1780.
Perfect Man
"A conservative should focus not on the ideal nature of man (which like the “point” is indefinable)"
Some have defined Jesus as the perfect man.
Where is the hope in just surviving?
The loftier one's goals and dreams, the closer he will achieve them. (If I aim for 100 and hit 80, I am not perfect. But If I aim for 50 and hit 40, I missed both goals but was farther ahead aiming for 100.)
Souls
OK, here’s question. Since souls (classically at least) survive death, then why doesn’t a corpse count as human being? After all there’s still a soul out there for that person.
Also, the essay omits the fact that virtually all classical and medieval philosophers were in agreement that the rational soul (nous in Greek, identified with the immortal, God-created soul in Christian theology) did not come into being until some point well after biological conception—generally 40 days. The insistence of some religious moralists nowadays to attribute such souls even to newly fertilized eggs is decidedly counter to their own tradition.
Excellent and necessary
I applaud this excellent article. I thought they philosophical explanations were both clear and apt, and while I am not a fan of Plato, I am willing to admit that he had many superb insights that continue to be useful.
Many people today are so transfixed by the fight between 'right' and 'left' that they ignore, or are perhaps entirely unaware of, the fight within both 'right' and 'left.' The fight on the left is fratricidal and often homicidal (outside the USA) while the fight on the right is much more cerebral. When one tries to reckon up the number of major factions in the Republican Party, for instance, one grows quickly bewildered.
What is currently called 'right' is of course far to the left of what it used to be. Nobody is arguing for priest-kings or national monarchies anymore, and the constitutional republic is the new far right form of government. The fighting about what a constitutional republic should be is what consumes so much 'rightwing' energy.
This is all to the good, in the end, because that conflict sharpens wits and arguments, but neither are of much use anymore against the left. They have abandoned logic, objective fact, even the very concept of truth, so no argument can reach them. On the right, however, the debate rages on, but unfortunately too much of that debate is over tactics.
Simply taking a position and holding it is not enough, and the definitions listed by Mr. Feser are a good starting point for the various factions to coalesce around. I wouldn't expect uniformity of opinion even after lines were drawn, but it would be helpful to debate the competing philosophies rather than the resultant actions.
All action is the result of belief, and actions are changed only when beliefs change first. If fiscal conservatives are concerned about a tactical mistake, the best method is to convince other conservatives that they have a mistaken belief. In then end that is all philosophy is: a system of beliefs.
I hope that the realist school wins out, and that at the same time the expectations of its adherents would be realistic rather than too pure. Disastrous loss doesn't advance the argument.
The fact is most of the left knows nothing about the right. They are tilting with phantoms of their own imagination rather than engaging the actual conservative movement and the actual people. They slash at strawmen and antique stereotypes rather than Rush Limbaugh or George Bush. Convincing them is certainly uphill work.
Convincing allies ought to be easier. I hope Mr. Feser will write a book on the subject. It's a needed debate.
Set Goals
Externally changing anyone's belief system is very difficult.
Instead, why not set mutually agreeable goals to acheive and continue this process?
Who cares what thier belief system is, do they want lower taxes or more liberty or ....?
Then argue how to get there.
Realism vs. Realist Conservatism
Realist
1: a philosopher who believes that universals are real and exist independently of anyone thinking of them
2: a person who accepts the world as it literally is and deals with it accordingly
3: a painter who represents the world realistically and not in an idealized or romantic style
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=realist
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A true REALIST does not abide by tradition, culture, morality, etc. unless it is UNIVERSALLY PROVABLE. Thus SCIENCE AND REASON are the tools a realist uses to determine the validity of a given concept.
realist
That rules out any and all liberals.
contradiction in terms
>"Realist Conservatives respect religion because it shores up obedience to the natural law,..."
A breathtakingly broad begging of the question. Natural law doesn't need human "obedience." Humans (and all other entities have no choice whatsoever in whether they will "obey" the law of gravity, or combustion.
Moral laws set forth by religious figures are all kinds of things, but they are the opposite of natural. They are artificial constructs. Some may command widespread agreement but that doesn't make them natural; it only makes them popular. This is not "relativism," but the simple and undeniable truth.
Souls?
How does the author even know whether or not a fetus or Mrs. Schiavo have or had a soul? This is an unprovable premise and one which the author uses to come to strange conclusions.
False Choices
The author writes
"If you agree that there are no objective, universal, and eternal Forms or essences that things partake of, and no inherent ends or purposes in nature either, then it is hard to avoid taking on board the modern view of human beings as merely complicated machines, and of human nature as something the study of which is of prudential rather than inherently moral interest."
It is perfectly possible to discard all the nonsense of forms and essences, inherent ends and purposes, and still regard persons as moral agents having understanding, reason and will. Such agents are hardly merely complicated machines, because the will that is exercised is free. I have yet to see a machine with a free will.
I think this whole (tri-part) characterization of conservatives is nonsense. It is an application of 13th century metaphysics to today's appearances and continues to make all of the mistakes that the scholastics made back then.
Soul train to nowhere
Agreed.
How can one be a "Realist" and yet claim that a soul is "truth"? What part of reality does the soul inhabit?
Prolix pomposity
Sorry, Ed, I've not seen such sophomoric pomposity in decades. "Intellectuals" thrive on the gulliblility of us seekers, conservative, liberal, high and low. Don't take them seriously, or you're lost. A good cleansing horse laugh is appropriate and theraputic.
Moral Laws are Natural
Violation of natural physical laws usually bring immediate consequences.
Some take more time. Keeping the rat population down will help keep people heathly, for example. Bathing and brushing teeth will keep away disease.
If one assumes that at a minimum, the purpose of a human soeciety is reproduce itself and grow, moral laws are not just artificial contructs, but laws that have been discovered to advance humanity.
And most moral laws are not very popular.
Accept or reject, but the consequences of violating natural laws range from immediate for individuals (splat on the pavement) to long term decline for societies (Rome).
No, Moral Laws are not natural, though that's what religious leaders try to make people think
Natural is what happens without people. What people decide is right or wong can be many things, but it isn't "natural." All human laws are artificial.
>If one assumes that at a minimum, the purpose of a human soeciety is reproduce itself and grow, moral laws are not just artificial contructs, but laws that have been discovered to advance humanity.
Sure. Tell that to Genghis Khan. What he did was great for the Mongols (and completely justified by their natural morality) but not so good for other people.
As for Rome -- It fell after it became Christian, which I assume you'd think would be following natural moral law. I wonder how that happened.
Humans are not natural?
The behaviour of all natural living things, which I believe includes humans, has evolved to perpetuate the species.
The behaviour the Kahn's was not very productive. His decendents have survived by returning to their traditional life style of not conquering the world.
Rome was in long decline before Constantine. Christianty eventually saved what was best of Rome.
The behaviour of the Vikings was pretty successful. Their decendants are thriving in Europe including England, Scotland, France and Russia, not to mention the USA.
And why to moral laws need to be religious? Don't steal is a pretty good idea for any community of humans, but it does require thought and appreciation of the long term benefits.
So far the religion of Abraham, Issac and Jacob has created a civilization that has survived and prospered for over 5000 years. Has there been any other religion or philosophy that has a similar record?
check your history
1. By the best natural measure, the Khan did just fine: his own DNA is found in a huge number of present-day people, as a recent study showed.
2, Regarding the behavior of the Vikings -- what are y ou talking about? Their behavior in Greenland is an object lesson in failure in Jared Diamond's new book. But they were white and blonde so perhaps this doesn't matter.
Regarding theft:
>And why to moral laws need to be religious? Don't steal is a pretty good idea for any community of humans, but it does require thought and appreciation of the long term benefits.
Sure. But that doesn't make it "natural."
>So far the religion of Abraham, Issac and Jacob has created a civilization that has survived and prospered for over 5000 years. Has there been any other religion or philosophy that has a similar record?
First, sure. China. Second, the religion of Abraham and Ishmael is part of this too, but I'm not sure you want to applaud. Third, what does any of this have to do with "natural?" Why is one more 'natural' than any other.
Vikings and...
"Regarding the behavior of the Vikings -- what are y ou talking about? Their behavior in Greenland is an object lesson in failure in Jared Diamond's new book. But they were white and blonde so perhaps this doesn't matter. "
Iceland has been pretty successful. The Vikings has settelers and traders were very successful in Russia, Normandy, England and Scotland as well as the home countries.
Maybe the personal DNA of Kahn (I thought his body was burried and hidden?) has been spread about, but his culture?
You argue that societal constructs are not natural. I say they are because they have assured survival for many cultures and the the cultures which insprired Western Civilization have been the most successful to date.
Who is to say moral laws were created by man or discovered by man?
Still not focusing
Regarding the Vikings, you should read Diamond's book to see about natural law. In Greenland, they insisted on raising cattle as their main subsistence mode even though the climate was all wrong. They wouldn't fish or hunt seals. When things got bad instead of learning from the native people who were around they murdered them, and spent their resources building a giant church. Natural law caught up with them in the church: they all starved to death.
We know the Khan's DNA. It's found in millions of living men and woman. If you want to talk natural law, impregnating many woman is a commandment. What church teaches that?
>You argue that societal constructs are not natural. I say they are because they have assured survival for many cultures and the the cultures which insprired Western Civilization have been the most successful to date.
Success doesn't mean natural. Watches work, but they are not natural. Western civilization's been a big success for the last 300 years, but that's a wink of the eye in the big picture, and "natural law" has nothing to do with it.
>Who is to say moral laws were created by man or discovered by man?
If they were "discovered,' we'd all agree on what they are, wouldn't we?
World is flat
""If they were "discovered,' we'd all agree on what they are, wouldn't we?"
How long did it take for people to agree the world is not flat?
Here is and interesting article about natural morality.
http://www.science-spirit.org/article_detail.php?article_id=127
Kahn had European DNA?
"Most scientists had previously thought that people from Asia mixed with Europeans sometime after the 13th century, when Ghengis Khan conquered most of Asia and parts of the Persian Empire. However, Keyser-Tracqui and her coworkers detected DNA sequences from Europeans in the Xiongnu skeletons." (2000 years ago)
http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/07_03/ancient.shtml
Piercing the Veil
It is telling that the author evades mention of both the philosophical substrate of contemporary conservatism the anti-metaphysical postivism of the Vienna Circle and the only American philosopher cited in Hart's essay, Charles S. Pierce .
His failure to engage the spectrum of conservative philosophical thought, pehaps most intriguingly evidenced in the work of W.V. Quine, that transcends his presumption that metaphysics is somehowessential to politics reduces this essay to little moere than a circular exercise in apologetics. Is it of interest to those who do not share his beliefs ? Only as a failed example of semantic agression- as a matter of realism, conservatism is more resistant to arbitrary redefinition than is dreampt of in his philosophy,though i expecthe will dream on.
How long?
>How long did it take for people to agree the world is not flat?
For as long as it took to make a detailed demonstration. The mathematics and the observations (circular shadow on the moon) are undeniable. It's not something that anyone can make a serious argument against. Quite unlike morality.
The website argument is simplistic nonsense. "First, note that the observation about the apple’s fall applies on the earth or near a massive body like the earth, but not everywhere; think of astronauts floating around inside a space ship in orbit."
The reason Newton's equations work is they account for this and many other difference. In detail. To many decimal points. Look into it. They fail right at the outer limits, corrected by Einstein. Not on the basis of faith, either. None of this has any application, none, to morality.
wonderful irrelevancy
The website ignores minor things like Alexander the Great and the movement of (originally European-origin) Indo-European speakers eastward, including the far east Tocharians. But so what? What does any of this have to do with natural morality? The IEs didn't expand because they were more naturally moral. Neither did the Mongols.
Note: it's Khan, not "Kahn."
Souls for fetuses
The Classical thinkers gave forty days because the soul is the Form of a living person, and before forty days the fetus did not look like a human being, therefore it did not have the form of a human being, which is the same as saying no soul. However, with the discovery of DNA, we know that the moment a cell is fertilized it contains all of the information needed to become a human being, therefore it has the complete form of a human, which is identical to the soul. It may not be fully developed, but that is just a matter of letting the thing finish the development process. A fetus at forty days lacks many important characteristics of a person, but it was always known that it was at a stage on the way to adulthood. A three month old infant also lacks many important characteristics of a person, like rationality and abstract thought, yet it is still believed to be human. The “forty days till a soul” thing was a lack of knowledge about biology in ye olden days, and its abandonment reflects a change in knowledge, not philosophy. It is important to recognize the difference in understanding of soul as “some religious thing” and soul as Form Of A Living Thing. If a fetus has its own DNA, it is not part its mother. It is completely dependant on its mother for everything it needs to survive, but it is a different entity, kind of like a tapeworm: it draws nutrients from another, yet is separate. If it is separate, what is it? It isn’t a tapeworm, anymore than a nursing infant is a leach. It has all of the information needed to become a person, and only requires time and resources to develop. Therefore, it has the form of a person, not yet fully actualized. The form of a person IS the soul, therefore it has a soul.
Quantum Physics
Quantum physics has implications that the act of observation will affect the observed.
Schrodinger's cat is a simple example.
You assert that morality is not natural yet you have provided few arguments.
I have made some meager attempts, apparently, which have not penetrated your great intellect.
Instead of commenting upon the larger issues, you want to pick appart the allusion.
As Frankl demonstrated and millions of people have proven in their own lives, following or not following moral laws will generally lead to positive or negative consequences.
Given how fickle and hedonistic poeple seem to be throughout the centuries, there seems to be a consistent moral message that somehow gets transmitted down through the genterations. And those who have followed those rules,our ancestors, have created a successful result.
Looks like science to me. Posutulate, observe, derive a theory and test the theory.
sorry, not following
You say morality is "natural" but your back up is saying that nations (the roman empire) that strayed fell. This is dealing from a deck in which every card is wild.
>Given how fickle and hedonistic poeple seem to be throughout the centuries, there seems to be a consistent moral message that somehow gets transmitted down through the genterations. And those who have followed those rules,our ancestors, have created a successful result.>
No, that's not remotely true. All kinds of people have created "successful results," which don't map in the slightest at all to Christian morality. Exhibit A, Genghis Khan.
>looks like science to me. Posutulate, observe, derive a theory and test the theory.
it doesn't look remotely like science to me. It looks like someone trying to attach the prestige of science to a set moralistic teachings.
Why don't we speak Mongol...
"No, that's not remotely true. All kinds of people have created "successful results," which don't map in the slightest at all to Christian morality. Exhibit A, Genghis Khan."
If Khan was so successful, why are we not speaking Mongol, riding horses and sleeping in urts?
Richard Weaver Would Be Proud
Excellent article! Richard Weaver would be proud.
Todd Mitchell
http://withtearsoppressed.blogspot.com
Souls
If you believe that all that is meant by "soul" is human form, then why use the term. The term is superfluous. Do you differentiate a human body that is brain dead from a fetus, which has the potential to become a rational agent?
racism
"But they were white and blonde so perhaps this doesn't matter. "
Whenever someone tries hard to find racism in someone else's words, that's a strong clue that the person doing the searching is at heart, a racist themselves.
BTW, the Vikings were doing pretty good, until the climate grew colder.
I don't think you get it.
Why aren't we speaking Cro-Magnon, for that matter?
You're confusing tools with laws. Yurts and horses aren't natural. Neither are steam engines, sailing ships, lasers, gunpowder, or flint arrowheads. Tools need to obey the laws of physics and chemistry, & etc, but the fact that a society uses one set or another has nothing to do with whether the society itself is in accordance with "natural law." History shows all kinds of societies succeeding and failing for all kinds of reasons, few if any have much to do with the morality they practice, if any. Handwaving about the fall of Rome doesn't remotely answer to an argument on this.
Great example there.
>BTW, the Vikings were doing pretty good, until the climate grew colder
All kinds of people do pretty good until things change. The test is adapting to change. At this time, in this place, the Greenlanders failed. Nothing to do with being blonde at all. But that doesn't make them any less dead. Empty church still very impressive.
The Law of Nature (specifically human nature)
Everybody has their own personal philosophy, but unfortunately, nobody 'speaks philosophy'. (A sad commentary on our modern education system - how many college grads do you know who can even identify (never mind discuss) the philosphies of three philosophers?) Which is why when the author wrote this article, he had to spend the first three pages defining terms. Because it's almost impossible to wrap a philosophy up in a single descriptive label. If I reject "rationalism", does that mean I'm being irrational? Do "Anti-Realist" Conservatives deny the existance of reality? Clearly not. But we need some labels, and unless we want to muddy the waters even more, we best stick with the original "traditional" labels.
Your definition of "natural" ("what happens without people" or the "opposite of artificial") is in stark contrast to the definition used by the ancients, the great thinkers of history. The definition that you have in mind is a fairly recent (and I would argue flawed) definition. In philosophical terms, the nature of an object describes it's normal, unforced, inherent condition or tendancies. For example, it is the "nature" of water to flow down hill. Of course, it can be prevented from flowing down hill. (Freeze water, and you change its "nature".) It can even be made to flow up hill. But its "nature", it's normal, inherent tendancy is to flow, and to flow down hill. With this historical definition, it makes perfect sense to talk about "human nature". Your definition makes "human nature" an oxymoron.
Clearly, humans have, by definition, a "human nature". The question that devides the Realists from the Anti-realists, as described in the article, is "What is the source of our human nature?" It is also a question that separated great thinkers of recent time. (I Googled on Natural Law and found a very good article describing the positions of Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis on this most fundamental debate. I think you'll like it: http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/040603cslewis.html)
On one end of the spectrum, Lewis and the realists argue that the source of human nature (including our conscience, our internal sense of right and wrong) is "real", permanent, and reflective of higher truth, so that to go against it is to disconnect ourselves from our only true objective source of "goodness". On the other end of the spectrum, Freud and the anti-realists argue that human nature is nothing more than learned behavior. We are nothing more than piles of chemicals, and electrical impulses. In their opinion, right and wrong are simply learned preferences. Hitler and Genghis Khan did what they thought was right, and you and I have no "real" basis on which to condemn them.
P.S. Your previous post (I think) talked about "natural law" as the laws of nature; the law of gravity, for example. We would refer to those as the "laws of physics". We do not have the option of breaking those laws (when those laws are broken, we refer to that as a "miracle"). But the Law of Nature as described above can be broken. You can go against your nature. It doesn't come "naturally" of course, but it can be done.
Thus when we talk of man's "fallen nature", we mean that man has a "natural" tendancy toward evil. After all, we are given dominion over this entire planet, we are given amazing powers of intellect, and we are given free will, so what's to stop us from creating paradise on earth? And yet we willingly choose evil. Who is there to blame but man himself?
No Subject
No, both posses the form of a human. A person with no legs may never walk again, but still has the form of a human. A brain dead person may never think again, but is still a human as long as he or she is still alive. The question of what measures should be taken to keep them alive is another topic entirely, but they are still alive as long as the blood circulates. A fetus may never come to term (for any number of reasons) but its humanity is not retroactively applied after it develops rational thought: it is either human from the beginning or it is human only after it begins to think abstractly.
Re: Souls
No, both posses the form of a human. A person with no legs may never walk again, but still has the form of a human. A brain dead person may never think again, but is still a human as long as he or she is still alive. The question of what measures should be taken to keep them alive is another topic entirely, but they are still alive as long as the blood circulates. A fetus may never come to term (for any number of reasons) but its humanity is not retroactively applied after it develops rational thought: it is either human from the beginning because it has the form of a human, or it is human only after it begins to think abstractly.
Where do "brain dead" souls go?
"A brain dead person may never think again, but is still a human as long as he or she is still alive"
But that's just it, a brain dead person is legally dead even if their heart and lungs are kept functioning by artificial means. Of course "souls" don't recognize legal declarations, so we must ask where is the soul? Does it remian with the body being kept alive or does it depart when the brain dies?
The answer is simple -- it's all a matter of belief. The soul is strictly a religious matter because the presence or absence of a soul can not be detected by any scientific means.
Really, Really Wrong on Aristotle
This article *substantially* and *egregiously* misrepresents Aristotle's views in order to support some totally foreign religious conservatism, as discussed here:
http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog/2006/02/platonic-conservatism.html
...As for the substance of [Fesser's] argument that modern conservatism is rooted in ancient thought, let me indicate just some of the mental gymnastics required to make that case.
For example, the article basically ignores the quasi-communist totalitarian dictatorship of The Republic, even though Plato regarded that state as the natural outgrowth of his mystical metaphysics and intuitionist epistemology -- and rightly so. As otherworldly entities, the Forms will be distant from the thoughts of most people. Lacking the special training of philosophy, ordinary people are easily deceived by the imperfect, changing, and sordid appearances of this world -- not to mention led astray by their passions. So a good society would have to be rule paternalistically by a special caste of those truly in touch with the Forms -- conservative intellectuals, no doubt. Although the details of Plato's ideal state -- such as women, children, and property in common -- would be rejected by modern conservatives, the basic ideal of a rigidly paternalistic state flows directly from Plato's metaphysics and epistemology. Fesser ignores that rather large element of Plato's philosophy, perhaps unwilling to admit just how paternalistic his conservative ideal would be.
Even worse, Fesser grossly misrepresents Aristotle's philosophy so as to claim him as a source for modern theocratic politics. For example, he attempts to use Aristotle's hylomorphism (i.e. the idea that substances are unions of form and matter) to justify a total ban on abortion, euthanasia, and the like. When he makes this argument, he's already mentioned that "Aristotle also emphasized the idea that a substance -- a statue, a tree, a human being -- is a composite of matter and form... And the soul, on Aristotle's view, is simply the form of a living body. A human person, therefore, is on his view a composite of soul (or form) and body (or living matter)." That's accurate. Yet consider what he does with those ideas:
*** begin quote *** ... a person, being on the view in question a composite of soul (or form) and body (or matter), cannot be identified with either his psychological characteristics alone or his bodily characteristics alone. Moreover, since the soul is just the form of a living human body, for a living human body to exist at all is for it to have a soul, so that there can be no such thing as a living human body -- whether that of a fetus, an infant, a normal human adult or a severely brain damaged adult -- which does not have a soul, and which does not count as a person. For while even a human being who is damaged or not fully formed might not perfectly exhibit the form of the human body (any more than a hastily drawn triangle perfectly manifests the form of triangularity), he nevertheless does exhibit it, otherwise his body wouldn't count as a living human body at all (just as a hastily drawn triangle is still a triangle, however imperfect). One corollary of this is that every single living human body, within the womb or without, severely damaged or not, counts as the body of a person and as a being having all the rights of a person, including the right to life. *** end quote ***
The first sentence and a half of that quote is accurate. The rest is a logical leap to Platonic and Christian garbage. Perhaps most obviously, the claims about damaged or immature humans "not perfectly exhibit[ing] the form of the human body" is a highly Platonic analysis -- and quite inconsistent with Aristotle's approach. Also, Aristotle would not even recognize all the talk about a fetus as a "person" with "all the rights of a person, including the right to life," since he had no concept of "rights." Yet even if we make some allowances on those scores, nothing in Aristotle's views about the metaphysical nature of the human organism supports the notion that abortion and/or euthanasia are morally wrong. If anything, Aristotle's discussions of these matters in De Anima (DA) or Generation of Animals (GA) suggests precisely the opposite view.
As already mentioned, Aristotle does regard the soul as the form of a living human body. Yet souls are not limited to human beings, as in Christian dogma and as implied in the above passage. Rather, the soul is the form of any living body, whether human, animal, or even plant. Different kinds of living organisms have different kinds of souls, differentiated by natural capacities. So plants have a "nutritive soul" of growth and reproduction. Animals have a "sensitive soul" also capable of perception and locomotion. Humans have even more, namely the "rational soul" required for abstract thought. (See DA 2:3)
Since souls are not uniquely human, the mere possession of a soul cannot confer any special moral standing upon all and only humans, as Fesser implies. Moreover, nor can the rational soul possessed by only humans do so, since not all humans have the capacity to reason. Some humans will only have a sensitive soul. Others are limited to a nutritive soul. As pertains to abortion, Aristotle explicitly says the soul of a human must develop from nutritive to sensitive to rational, albeit with some subtleties about actual versus potential. (See GA 2:1.) As for euthanasia, clearly a person suffering from degenerative brain disease may regress from a rational to sensitive to nutritive soul. That's why they're called "vegetables"!
Given Aristotle's analysis of the metaphysical nature of organisms, it's hardly surprising that he was no opponent of abortion, but rather allowed it in the early stages of pregnancy due to his metaphysical views. In his discussion of the best state in the Politics, he writes:
*** begin quote *** As to the exposure and rearing of children, let there be a law that no deformed child shall live, but that on the ground of an excess in the number of children, if the established customs of the state forbid this (for in our state population has a limit), no child is to be exposed, but when couples have children in excess, let abortion be procured before sense and life have begun; what may or may not be lawfully done in these cases depends on the question of life and sensation. (Politics 7:16, emphasis added) *** end quote ***
In contrast, Aristotle is opposed to suicide, but for reasons which have nothing to do with the nature of the human soul. (For more details on Aristotle on both abortion and euthanasia, including detailed textual references, see this helpful paper.)
In short, by leaping from hylomorphism about humans to moral and legal opposition to abortion and euthanasia, Edward Fesser is engaged in that all-too-common practice in philosophy of "making stuff up." (Yes, that's technical terminology.) Even worse, he's obviously relying upon the ignorance of his audience to do so: Although his claims about Aristotle are little more than logical leaps based upon gross misinterpretations, few of his readers are likely to know those technical details of Aristotle's philosophy. Thus Edward Fesser, like the philosopher-kings of Plato's paternalistic totalitarianism, is perfectly willing to engage in whatever deceptions necessary to induce the rest of us lower beings to accept the rule of conservative intellectuals.
Lovely.
I feel for you Mr. Fesser. Having read your article and then the subsequent posts i realize how stupid the average person is. Half of the comments completely misrepresent what you said or just highlighted a lack of understanding and intellect.
All in all i thought it was a great article and provided a clear outline and history of some of philosophies trends and ideas. Thanks