1

Essays in Anthropology: Variations on a Theme by Robert Spaemann

notes by David Alexander

Chapter 1: “Human Nature”

The question "What is a human being?" in Psalm 8 is posed as the fourth question in Kant's lecture on
logic, and he comments that the first three questions can be subsumed under this one: "What can I
know?"; "What ought I to do?"; and "What may I hope for?" Although Kant makes this observation, he
leaves the question hanging, asserting that all attempts at scientific inquiry about the subject encounter
considerable difficulties that are inherent in human nature itself.

Its not always clear what someone who asks "What is a human being?" actually wants to know. Robert
Spaemann lists a few leading questions to illustrate the different answers people may be looking for (p.
2).

In the preface to his Anthropology in Pragmatic Perspective, Kant also refers to a basic dualism in
perspectives that characterize our anthropological perspective - the "physiological" and the
"pragmatic." The physiological knowledge of the human being concerns the investigation of what
nature makes of the human being. Pragmatic knowledge concerns the investigation of what he, as a
free-acting being, makes of himself. The question is how do these two forms of knowledge relate to
each other. Can a free-acting being in any way be conceived of as a "natural product," or shall nature
instead be thought of as a "substrate of freedom," if we want to have a conception of freedom at all?
Descartes identified this dilemma before Kant. He believed it impossible to conceive of the unity of the
soul (res cogitans) and the body (res extensa). The union as he understood it could only be experienced
empirically, not through pure intellect. In other words, philosophical anthropology in its true sense is
impossible in Descartes's view.

The aftermath of the dualism can be explained according to the dictum: "What man is, only his history
tells him." Heidegger's phenomenological approach also ended up like Descartes's, a theory of
historicity. His effort remains the dialectical counterpart to various forms of natural reductionism, both
interpreting human beings as products of nature programmed for survival, and integrating the whole
realm of spirit into this interpretation. The dualism of perspectives in the question “what is man?”,
hermeneutic on the one hand, scientistic on the other, seems to speak of an insurmountable stalemate.
Sartre radicalizes the "inner perspective" of res cogitans. As Sartre saw it, the gaze of the other fixates
me as what I am rather than who I am, turning me into an object. That is why he says hell is other
people, because he presupposes that the human gaze is a Cartesian one resulting in a total
objectification of that on which it falls. Understandably, Spaemann asks, "Is that really the paradigm of
the human gaze?" The gaze under which human beings become human, the gaze of the mother upon
the newborn child, is normally a gaze of love. Dawkins conceives of the mother as a machine
programmed to propagate copies of the genes which ride in it. Dawkins and Sartre represent the
extremes - scientific reductionism which can tolerate any 'transcendental' self-interpretation as long as
it claims no 'objectivity,' and a pure phenomenology of solipsistic self-experience which can claim no
more truth than scientistic reductionism.

We are confronted with a new form of the double truth doctrine. Recently attempts to secure a new
epistemic monism have appeared, emanating from scientific circles, seeking to clarify this dualism in
 2

terms of evolutionary theory, and to surmount it in terms of a system-theory (Rupert Riedl, etc.)
Despite their intention, the attempts made thus far are in fact actually reductionist. In reality, the new
"epistemic monism" sticks to one side of the dualism.

The process of surmounting the dualism will require from both sides not only intellectual effort but also
the mobilizing of the full spectrum of human experiences. A deeper reflection on the particular history
of thought that began with the concept of "nature" (physis) is also called for. To back this assertion,
Spaemann notes for example that it is common among Catholic theologians today to put the concept of
person against the concept of nature, questioning the moral relevance of the concept of nature. This is
one way in which the dualism of modernity surfaces.

The concept of nature was itself not "naturalistic" as pure exteriority according to Aristotle since this
was precisely what physei was not. Rather, nature denotes that which has in itself the principle of
movement. We can know what it means to have in oneself a principle or beginning only because we are
selves and we experience ourselves as a beginning, an origin of spontaneity.

A human being cannot understand his humanity as a quality of something other than himself.
Spaemann says it was no coincidence that the beginning of modern science was marked by polemics
against the concept of nature. The idea that God could create such things as secondary causes and that
creation could involve the release of independent beings alongside God retreats from accepted
scholarship into the cabbalistic and hermetic. Nature becomes understood as a purely immanent realm
where objects are just moved. "Nature becomes exteriority without selfhood (Selbstein)." Knowing
something as "existing by nature" objectifies it and alienates it. This alienation contrasts markedly with
the classical understanding of knowing as "understanding in act is identical to the thing understood in
act." This oneness with what is known becomes completely implausible where the ideal of cognition is
self-contained enlightenment. In the modern understanding of things, the human being can no longer
understand himself as "natural being" and "person" at the same time. The only way reconciliation of
these two perspectives might proceed is if there is a hermeneutic of nature not conceived merely
metaphorically or poetically. The typical experience of the indeterminacy peculiar to humankind,
expressed in our concepts of truth, beauty, moral ought, good, and sanctity can only be naturalistically
reconstructed to the extent that it is deprived of what is specific about it, namely its unconditional
character.

Rousseau tried for the first time to deduce human nature by way of a radical abstraction from all
historical and social conditions. What is "natural" no longer shows itself in its teleological end, but
rather becomes pure initial availability. Rousseau was following the path of early modern theologians
who conceived the concept of a "state of pure nature" by hypothetically abstracting human beings from
their actual context of salvation history. Because our reason is historical, radical abstraction from
history does away with the definition of the human being as 'rational animal.' The beginning of
historical existence comes to be understood as a taking leave of nature. For Rousseau, the beginning of
the human being is free in a negative sense, not determined by an instinctive submersion in his
surroundings. History and nature become incommensurable. Person and nature also in the Rousseauian
perspective of modernity have become incommensurable.

However, Rousseau did not invent this anthropological dualism. It is grounded in the very structure of
human self-experience. A distinction of body and soul is already characteristic of the most ancient
manifestations of humanity.
 3

Aristotle abolishes the dualism, understanding the soul as the "form of the body," but then he
immediately reintroduces it. The principle of intelligibility is in no real sense part of the human soul.
Only this nous is immortal and eternal.

Aquinas encountered this form of dualism in Averroes. To combat it, Aquinas wrote that if the acting
intellect were a separate substance, then "human nature would be a deficient nature," for it would lack
"one of the principles that it needs for its naturally appropriate activity of understanding, which
requires both the potential and the agent intellects. Hence, complete human nature requires that both of
these be intrinsic to man." (p. 14).

The anthropological dualism resurfaces despite Thomas's labors, this time leading to the concept of the
"supernatural." He writes that nature did not give man the wherewithal to attain Happiness but it did
give him freewill with which he can turn to God, that He may make him happy.

For Aristotle, to isolate a self-sufficient individual "nature" is to abstract from the social nature of
human beings. For Thomas, to isolate a "pure nature" is to abstract from our religious nature, a nature
leading to friendship with God. A human being is not a surplus from nature, but a creature in which
nature transcends itself toward that surplus. Only insofar as he transcends human nature does the
human being recover it. Only in human beings does what nature really is intrinsically manifest itself
because only in him does nature's purposive structure become free of ambiguity and appear as both free
will and free recognition of a foundation and end he did not posit himself.

In the late Middle Ages this "ecstatic" view of nature and humanity is no longer understood and there is
a return to the idea of nature's necessary self-sufficiency, which Thomas had emphatically rejected.
Thomas's anthropological observations according to which nature transcends itself in humankind are
lost. The new understanding of nature that replaces it moves toward the Cartesian/Spinozan definition
of substance as what can be grasped without having a concept of something else. It is here that the
anthropological fiction of "pure nature" commences its triumphal procession. The human being is again
conceived in purely immanent terms.

In the wake of this process, reason becomes a late epiphenomenon of a creature's originally irrational
and undetermined life. Spaemann lists some of the further dismantlements of teleology on p. 18 and he
prescribes for us all readings of Husserl and Frege's critique of psychologism in logic for use in testing
out genetic theories of evolution. Neither Husserl nor Frege ultimately surmount our dualism, however.
They had nothing to say about the obvious fact that a thinking creature must first have come into
existence before it can entertain truth-assertions.

To see the other as other, and oneself as his "Thou" is to see oneself as an environment for other
centers-of-being. This stepping out from being the center of the world is an "eccentric position" that
opens up a realm "beyond substance", as Plato put it when he wanted to define the locus of the good.
Human nature is defined by what it is not and is characterized by anticipation. It is only possible to
conceive of the human being as both open to the Absolute and as a natural being if a structure of
anticipation is divined from the general structure of nature. After the Cartesian reduction of nature to
mere extension, Leibniz was the first to reassert this structural anticipation in human nature. Leibniz
saw that one can only understand movement in nature if one understands it as analogous with our own
striving for or anticipation of the future.
 4

To understand nature as in principle self-transcendent is also the condition for understanding nature as
a medium for the expression of personality. Such an understanding allows us to grasp "body language"
and to understand that a person's dignity can be injured in a physical way. We already find "striving
for" in ourselves and others as a pressing onwards for satisfaction.

As a phenomenological anthropological claim, the fact that the human being transcends himself is
independent of metaphysical interpretations. The utopian interpretation of human self-transcendence
(as we see in Marx and Nietzche's looking forward to the "superman", etc. ) replaced the theological
one in which human self-transcendence implies an indeterminacy, a via media, which cannot be
accounted for sociologically or cosmologically. The theological outlook will not permit man to be
conceived of as a mere means for the production of a future superman, or a future reconciled society.
All ages are "equidistant." "The good itself," God as final end, is forever real and does not require
humanity for its realization. A human being can only be related to this ultimate end by being its image
or representation. The human being as representation of the undetermined is completely independent of
any function. The independence of the person hinges on the fact that no one is allowed to decide
whether or not another human being bears the fundamental features of personhood. Representation is
an ultimate category, beyond self-assertion and beyond making oneself into a means for something in
the future, or for others. We cannot model ourselves on an ideal human being and no anthropology can
teach us what we ought to be.

When we pay attention to what nature makes out of human beings, we resort to biology and inevitably
speak of something less than human. For nature does not "make " a person. If we ask, as we must, what
ought a free agent to make of himself, we must speak of indeterminacy and that which is more than
human. The unified perspective can only be reached when we consider the whither of humankind and
the whence of nature.

Chapter 2: “Evolution”

Spaemann assumes the truth of the claim that we live in an age of totalized Enlightenment in which
scientific results are no longer a matter of ideological battling in the public realm. He asks why this is
the case and why it was previously not so.

To be reliably informed of the facts of our circumstances typically enhances our ability to arrive at
goals we set for ourselves. However, there are obvious cases where the "noble lie" would seem to be
desirable or understandable. There are clearly occasions when the refusal to take a report as read may
be a sign of humanity. Spaemann asks whether a friend who doesn't think twice about believing a
report severely incriminating a good friend can be a true friend. He notes that those who, for religious
reasons, resisted the Copernican worldview did so because in their view nothing less was at stake than
the credibility of divine revelation.

What emerged from the challenge of the "reactionaries" was a formula in which they pushed Galileo to
concede that his theory dealt purely with a mathematical hypothesis depending on a particular
paradigm of thought, which is exactly what, according to the modern understanding of things,
scientific theories can only be. This opened the door for a similar critique of the Ptolemaic theory,
which was perceived to be more harmonious with the Biblical account.
 5

A wholesale rejection of revelation as a reliable source of knowledge and a theological reinterpretation

rendering revelation immune to scientific results developed as a result of the conflict between the
Ptolemaic and Copernican worldviews. This theological reinterpretation paved the way for the fully-
fledged "banalization" of the Copernican worldview. The laws of science are laws that allow us to
dominate nature by reducing it to an indifferent or banal realm.

There are three modern ways of reacting to the banalization of the world. The first is theoretical
resistance. Leibniz and A.N. Whitehead explained the indifference of reality as a passive continuum
that is structured by mathematical laws of nature as seen from an external perspective. The second
possibility is materialism. Materialism tries to explain human beings as merely particularly complex
features of the objective world, totally subject to its laws. Not only is the non-human world indifferent
but human beings themselves share in this indifference, as Marquis de Sade evinces. The materialist
cannot explain his revulsion to Marquis de Sade except as subjective dislike. The third way is Kant's
attempt to understand human subjectivity as the condition for our objectification of the world, so that
he is subject to the laws of the objective word only if he makes himself an object of theoretical
inspection. Kant's solution to the problem of scientism was to make subjectivity immune to the attack
of objectifying science.

Kant noted that scientism knows only the interrelations of material conditions and does not
comprehend the absolute that is represented in basic moral experience. Scientistic reinterpretation of
moral absolutes mars them beyond recognition. This is part of Kant's rejection of theoretical realism in
his wider program to claim that what is real is actually consciousness of freedom or subjectivity. Yet
when transcendental subjects are reduced to objects of experience, they automatically lose what
constitutes them as subjects. They are suborned in the subjective. Reconstitution theoretically of the
object constituting subject turns outside of Kant to realist interpretation. When evolutionary theory
plays this role, it spells the end of Kant's subjective immunity.

Recent discussion of the evolutionary paradigm has been characterized by the application of Darwinian
design to the entire cosmic process, as well as the origin of life, and by an attempt to reconstruct
genetically transcendental subjectivity. It is typical for this moment in evolutionary theory that it
refuses to bracket out subjectivity as Incommensurable, nor tries to deconstruct subjectivity as an
illusion, but attempts to reconstruct it as serving our survival.

Where is the subject who will reduce the a priori of knowing to a product of adaptation? And what can
be the truth of such a reduction, as it can be itself only a product of adaptation? Evolutionary ethics
does not necessarily reject the use of the term "good" in an absolute sense but it does not provide an
adequate scientific "translation" of it either. The "good" becomes "good for x, if x wants A."
Evolutionary ethics merely offers a functional account, claiming that in order to prevent reflection
from constantly suspending or relativizing conscious moral imperatives, the "aura" of the Absolute is
tacked onto these imperatives. Yet in saying that the Absolute is useful, evolutionary theory again
abolishes the Absolute. The sentence "It is good to sustain human life" now only means, "It is life
sustaining to sustain human life."

Evolutionary theory can go a long way in reconstructing the basic contents of human ethics in
functional terms, and can even highlight the dysfunctonality of once useful behavioral patterns (one of
the main concerns of the latest publications in the field of human ethology). Yet what evolutionary
theory cannot do is set out the specific form of human ethics, the form of the Absolute expressed in the
 6

use of the "good" in a non-relative sense. Evolutionism must relativize our admiration for a worthy
action, our disapproval of a detestable one. For, on the view of evolutionism, such admiration and
disapproval can only indicate that this particular action is functional or dysfunctional in terms of a state
in itself indifferent to value, a state the person expressing admiration or disapproval simply happens to
want. The chorus of moral appeals with which the books of evolutionary thought are abundantly
supplied cannot change the fact that they have first deprived these very appeals of all their force."

The discovery of the Absolute can be reconstructed. For animals the imperatives of instinct are
subjectively unconditioned because they cannot reflect at all on the possibility of their being
conditioned. Not until we reflect on the conditioned nature of our own passions do we confront the
distinction between relative and absolute. The condition of such theoretical reflection is that we cannot
understand the Absolute as relatively absolute, absolute only for us. "The experiential dimension of the
Absolute can be reconstructed from the conditions of its origin, yet it is by definition a dimension for
which the conditions of origin become indifferent the very moment it arises" (p. 37).

There is a deadlock between the scientistic approach focusing only on conditions and the value-
oriented approach focusing only on the Absolute. If we begin with a purely material world, how can we
possibly reconstruct what it means to form an image of anything, let along a correct image? A living
being goes from one state of affairs to another, reacting to circumstances. Why then do human beings
need to conceptualize anything at all? How can the origin of negativity be reconstructed at all without
begging the question? Negativity appears in three forms: as pain, as difference (that which is other than
myself), and as the notion of the Absolute. For the animal that suffers pain, that pain is fundamentally
negative, something that ought not to be. To the extent that negativity is essential to how beings behave
when they are in pain, pain cannot be defined behaviorally nor neurologically. Naturalistic reductions
run aground in dealing with "becoming other qua other." Recognition involves seeing the other as
other, as one who is more than what appears to me, while it is equally clear to me that I appear to him
too. Recognizing the act of recognition is useful for survival remains extrinsic to the significance of the
act of recognition, so the reductionism does not work. The Absolute implies the negation of conditional
reality.

Our being an end in ourselves is completely independent from whether or not we see ourselves as a
goal of nature and outcome of evolution. Even the highest claim imaginable could not provide a
foundation for the idea of human dignity. The human capacity for reflection really entails the ability to
distance natural ends and take up a stance towards them, either affirmative or negative. The religious
view that each individual human being is a creature of God, explicitly willed as this particular person
and not another, does not predetermine how God's will realizes its end.

On p. 43, Spaemann examines Karsten Bresch's argument regarding evolutionary progress. Bresch tries
to promote a reverence for a process of development of ever more complex and comprehensive
structures. First, the process which brought us into being is assigned retrospectively a positive value.
The regularity of the process that is deemed to have brought us into being is now valued as progress
per se. The positive evaluation that brought us into being is carried over to encompass the tendency
toward the construction of ever more complex structures. Paradoxically, the process is now presented
as worthy of our reverence to the extent that it leads to macro-structures which lack consciousness
themselves and contain persons only as cogs in the system. Where originally the process was valued
for leading to consciousness, it is now valued in a way antithetical to consciousness. This just ruins the
positive evaluation of evolutionary progress.
 7

Contemporary debates are really all about evolutionism. The term "evolution" detaches evolutionary
theory from denoting changes that an organism undergoes from its origin until its end. Now it is
employed to describe the emergence of organisms in the first place. Yet no one would say, "My father
developed into me." You and your father related as independent individuals. This was necessary to
become human, because you can become human only by communication with a Thou with whom you
interact. Evolutionism always has to make substantial unities into only another aspect of the same
substrate. It always must dissolve the I and Thou, so it leads to the inhuman.

Today people try to subsume beginning and ending under the concept of change. Nothing begins at all
anymore because existence is no longer temporally understood. Yet for humans to live is the same
thing as to exist. For evolutionism there is no end, only change. Nowhere do we find something that
exists discretely. The only thing that exists is the process of becoming.

What brought us to presuppose individual substances was the experience of negativity in a threefold
form: as pain, as experience of the other, and as the notion of the Absolute. All three of these Buddhism
considers illusory. Spaemann mentions in passing that he thinks Buddhism is the most compatible
ideology with the evolutionary worldview, but one which is also superior because evolutionism does
not acknowledge, as Buddhism does, the contradiction of positing a succession of states that are, in the
end, states of nothing.

Spaemann ends with prescriptive aphorisms: "It is crucial to think subjects as substances" and "Man is
a self-subsistent thing."

Chapter 3: “Human Dignity”

There are basically two positions on the basis of human rights, one which attributes them to natural
law, and one which sees them as merely the product of legal systems created, altered, and destroyed by
human beings. The later position is held by positivists and when they talk about human rights, what
they mean is mere "edicts of toleration" which can be easily revoked. A positivist holds that natural law
convictions have no legal character in themselves and should not be accorded legal authority lest
freedom of thought be violated. A natural law lawyer, on the other hand, would say that positing a right
is a demand of natural law itself. Transcendental philosophy provides a version of natural law which,
while not establishing an Ought on the basis of an Is, manages, by taking the Ought for an a priori fact,
to secure the presupposition of every Ought. An analogous version of positivism, the functional
sociological theory of right, hold that while human rights are not logical conditions of possibility, they
are functional conditions of reality and they are not merely invented at will.

Natural law and positivism seem to differ more over the basis of human rights than on their content.
Both sides might agree then on a right to express one's opinion freely. However, the belief that human
dignity is inviolable, like the concept of freedom, is transcendental. It does not just describe one
specific human right but contains within itself the basis of such things as human rights. The ambiguity
in the formulation of the inviolability of human dignity (It cannot be violated, or it may not?) is a sign
that it is rooted in a soil below the surface opposition of Ought and Is.

How are human dignity and human rights related? Is there a right to dignity or does dignity form the
basis of each right. The idea of human dignity is older than that of human rights. Human dignity is
 8

inviolable to the extent that other people cannot take it from you. Only you can forfeit your own
dignity. All that other people can do is to affront your dignity by failing to respect it. What can be taken
from the other person, however, is the opportunity for dignified self-presentation. Crucifixion in its
essence is the exposing of a person to the gaze of all without any kind of self-presentation. Christian art
has again and again highlighted the dignity of the crucified one even in this situation of objective
indignity. Thus dignity has something to do with an inner self-possession that is independent of
circumstance. Dignity is about mastering one's existence and then displaying that mastery.

In Aristotle's account of megalopsychia, or dignity, the magnanimous person has only great, and
therefore few, purposes. He has a strong sense of self-worth so that he does not go around seeking
everybody's approval. He values honor more than life.

Dignity demands a kind of distance from the natural aspects of one's existence.

The idea that human beings possess a dignity demanding absolute respect arises only with the Stoics
and with Christianity. The concept pf dignity points to the distinctive way in which a being is not
simply an end-in-itself for itself, but an end-in-itself absolutely. The anti-ontological position which
would treat human beings as ends in themselves only to themselves undermines arguments against the
secret murder of the human being who has no relatives. If the human being is of value only to himself,
then when he is murdered, there is no loss of value (except what he had for himself). But if we no
longer exist, we no longer can suffer loss. Only two things can change this: either a human being
survives his own physical death, or there exists a God who regards the human being as precious,
rendering life holy. Dignity signals something sacred. The only argument against murder is a religious
one. It is a mistake that persists into our own time to think that you can drop your religious view on
reality without losing something else, something you would not so readily do without. (Hence Paul tells
Timothy to watch his life and doctrine closely).

The argument for a non-functional understanding of dignity has culminated in the ascription of self-
value to everything that exists. Where does the distinction lie in the general way in which everything is
an end-in-itself and the specific way we use this to denote our inviolable human dignity? Non-human
beings cannot take ownership of the web of purposes into which they are drawn by external forces. A
human being is one who can stand back and relativize him or herself. He or she can submit his or her
own interests and agendas to a wider conversation because he or she can recognize others' interests as
being worthy as his or her own for consideration. By thus relativizing his or her own finite "I," the
person expands to become an Absolute. The person becomes capable of "love of God carried as far as
contempt of self. Human beings possess "dignity" for the sole reason that as moral beings they
represent the Absolute.

Dignity is unequally distributed because it consists in the ability to stand back and let be and so the
person who takes greater responsibility for other people and things than he does for himself has more
dignity. Dignity can be forfeited by failing to meet the moral demands of one's office. The more a
person is absorbed with his natural self and his passions and interests, the less distance he commands
on himself, and therefore the less dignity he has.

It is impossible to go beneath the minimum threshold of human dignity because it is impossible

because freedom for potential moral dispositions and actions cannot be lost. Human dignity is
respected by both anticipating the alignment of the good and making free space required for it to
 9

occur.

The Platonic and Aristotelian idea is that that which shows itself in a certain species most of the time is
an indication of something essential to that species which always applies to it. Nominalists reject this
presupposition and require demonstration of certain characteristics to recognize personhood. Even with
nominalists, however, since the origins of the "I" are obscure, it can be argued that we must respect the
aptitude for "I," for freedom. Unless we are to say that human rights are rewarded by a majority vote,
biological membership in the species homo sapiens can be the only criterion which establishes the
minimum threshold called human dignity.

What is the result of a belief in human dignity? Human dignity can only be violated by beings that can
discern this dignity in the first place, human beings. It is a moral concept. In the context of legal
distribution and enforcement, it can only be understood minimally. It serves as the ultimate, basic
residuum of selfhood as potential self-determination.

Demanding unconditional respect for human dignity is incompatible with demanding its maximum
"positive" promotion. Dignity functions as a constraint upon actions ostensibly serving human
wellbeing. Bruno Schuller holds the view that personal dignity is a transcendental principle of morality
and as such is incommensurable with all empirical values. Schuller's view ignores the fact that
morality, though a priori, is materialized only in the empirical existence of concrete human beings.
Some courses of action are always irreconcilable with human dignity. The German Federal Court
determined that, on the Christian and pan-European view, the active participation in the killing of
innocent human beings cannot be justified by any weighing-up of goods. Spaemann lists three other
examples which, in his view, cannot be justified by any weighing-up of goods: torture, sexual
exhibition for anonymous voyeurs, and the production of human beings in test-tubes.

First, we know a human being possesses a spatial shape and human dignity requires that we respect its
integrity. It also possesses a temporal shape, and this is respected, in so far as it represents the
Absolute, by ensuring that its beginning and end are not the result of any intentional making on the part
of other human beings. The artificial extension of human life, reducing human existence to a function
of instruments, also violates human dignity.

Spaemann believes that modern civilization poses a threat to human dignity unlike any that has ever
existed before.

The human perspective on what it is to be human is now deemed unscientific. Scientific technical
civilization characteristically eliminates physical labor but, in so doing, it deprives many human actions
of their inherent meaning and the occasion for an expression of human dignity.

The notion of human dignity in truth finds its theoretical foundation only in metaphysical ontology, a
philosophy of the Absolute. Atheism deprives human dignity of its foundation, and with it the
possibility within civilization to reflect on the good reasons to protect human life. It is not by chance
that both Nietzsche and Marx described dignity as something that still needs to be constructed rather
than something that is already respected.

Chapter 4: “The Natural and the Rational”

 10

The late-Medieval concept of the 'supernatural' prepared the way for naturalism. The theological
distinction between natural and supernatural leveled all the classical distinctions involving "the
natural." The meaning of the term "natural" changed to designating the passive condition of the
possibility of revelation: "grace presupposes nature." God's free self-communication takes place in a
realm that is already illuminated, the realm of rational nature. After this shift, nature is no longer the
dominant term but the derivative term, only representing absolute divine freedom and only being a
condition for that freedom to reveal itself.

When the distinction between "natural" and "supernatural" is ignored, as in Voltaire, only nature
remains, now it is claimed to be everything. "Natural" becomes the dominant term, an inversion of
supernatural-natural distinction.
"Natural" always has a double-meaning. It refers to the origins of things, to what came first, and it
refers to norms and purposes. In the process of biological organization, we find a system building itself,
whereas an artifact receives its structure from outside, to serve an extrinsic purpose. For Aristotle, the
criterion for what is natural is self-organization. In his case it seems that the distinction "Natural-
artificial" can be substituted with "growing organically" versus "imposed extrinsically."
In the Ancient Greek distinction "natural-violent," a movement is violent when it no longer follows
from the nature of the object being moved (eg. transgenderism as violence). But a man being eaten
naturally by a lion experiences it as violence.
The "artificial" is treated as more "successful" the closer it approximates to the natural, but this
undermines the natural-artificial distinction. Artificial in common parlance first explains how
something came about by being intentionally initiated by human beings. Then, when used in its
normative sense, it is always pejorative (man's initiative as contagion; seems to contain an implicit
misanthropy), implying suboptimal functioning. "Artful" is substituted for "artificial" and seems more
pleasant because art works by the forgetfulness of its origins (by "magic"). Art now intends the
opposite, intentionally displaying the process of its development (no more magic).
With regards to the voluntary versus natural distinction, only when unnatural striving achieves the
appearance of the natural does the will appear at one with itself. (Popular anthropology posits "natural"
sexual orientations which promise a false peace of oneness with one's will). The Stoics regarded living
in agreement with nature as a rational and harmonious existence but believed it was not achieved by
nature or automatically. So, paradoxically, you can only live in agreement with nature by becoming
independent of immediate natural inclinations.
This leads to another distinction: "nature-custom." As in "nature-art", "nature" here denotes something
distinct from the world of human action. However, "natural" also denotes criteria for the adequacy of
action. Nature preceded all human custom and must exist already if custom is to exist. Sophists claimed
that custom belonged to a different order than that of the natural and yet they held that the origin of
custom is natural. The distinction of nature-custom is used by them to signify that a particular custom is
only as "valid" as the natural force that produced it ("Oh well, Darwin"). The "validity" of custom adds
an illusory appearance of legitimacy. Each custom represents an aggregate of forces producing it and
moral judgment of these forces is eschewed. Forces and interests are behind custom and nature alike
and the "common good" is a fiction the powerful convince others to believe or impose on them."
Plato's doctrine inverts the Sophistic thesis about purely natural origins and the unnatural/illusory
character of custom's validity. He holds that there is natural custom, something that, though manmade,
is right by nature. Reason apprehends the adequacy of accordance with nature, and failing this
 11

apprehension, "noble lies" about origins are fed to those seeking the answer in origins.
Plato denied that we all know best our own natural interests, citing the example of a doctor
understanding the conditions of health better than a layman. This non-immediate way of relating to
ourselves is essential to our nature. The Sophists believed you could take an interest in the basic
conditions for social interaction and for satisfaction of everybody's interests only if you understand
securing them as a means to satisfying your own interests. (The Sophists seem to have many parallels
with the Darwinian materialist reductionist who would reduce all our mind's actions to adaptive
strategies, rejecting Truth. But nothing can unify the cosmos without a belief in Truth.) Plato's counter-
thesis is that the good is by definition the common good which can be called "naturally right." Though
Sophists may deny universal truth, they in fact presuppose it when they speak of "overpowering with
words," implying that the person with whom one is speaking takes the words as signifiers of Truth.
Socrates holds, against Callicles's belief that the customs of nature are a variant of the selfish system,
that there is a real common good that is not simply an outcome of compromise. Reason is the
appearance of the common good. Only the rational implies the appearance of the truth about the
natural. A lion may eat a man naturally but the man in consternation may yet grasp the truth about his
unfortunate circumstance.
Foucault launched an attack on the Platonic axiom that constitutes philosophy. He did so by arguing
that the concept of truth does not denote what is common but merely an instrument to discipline
discourse. He held that all discourse does violence to the other. If the content of what you communicate
is indistinguishable from your subjective-cognitive condition, it is purely a function of your will to
power. All there is are things acting upon each other. Discourse is the continuation of war by other
means.
This erroneous view contains partial truth: if discourse is to be possible at all, there must be continuity
between the content and the audience of the speech. Each mental relation to actual entities involves
integration of their respective feelings. If the objects of our thoughts have no objectivity, how could we
say anything about them? Wouldn't we just be saying something about our own mental states? But we
would not even be able to make Truth-claims about our own mental states either, misunderstanding
them as cognitive. All there would be is self-expression greeted by incomprehension.
Either participants in discourse are merely things, and things are radically opaque; or they are partners
in a life-context. The revelation of what is natural, the disclosure of natural "selfhood", we call
rationality.
"Nature is always turning back on itself" but the transcendence of knowledge interrupts this curvatio.
Artificial systems cannot simulate original selfhood by which it is possible for a rational being to hold
itself back and admit the existence of something that is other than itself. The hallmark of awakening to
reason is the discovery that there is something completely other to which no inner 'mental state'
corresponds which I register as something I cannot fully understand nor master. Only reason
accommodates spaces that are not yet filled with understanding, on account of the fact that reason does
not do violence to things.
The concept of reason is only actualized when a person takes the common good and appropriates it him
or herself. To see something not as merely an object but as real simpliciter, to apprehend its selfhood, is
what the philosophical tradition terms rational or benevolent love. Benevolent love, in contrast to self-
seeking love (amor concupiscentiae), does not primarily aim at becoming one with the other. Rather,
benevolent love purposes union only on the condition that distance has first been preserved. Benevolent
love allows the other's Being-for-Itself (Für-sich-Sein) to be real for me. Any naturalistic
 12

reinterpretation of this transcendence is necessarily reductionist... Thomas Aquinas wrote that there is
no act of love which could not also happen without love. And Kant argues that the realization of pure
morality is never empirically verifiable: morality is an idea of reason independent of any verification,
fundamentally distinct from any simulation. One can construct a natural history of benevolent love but
in the end a leap is required, even if barely noticeable empirically. Reason eventually comes "from
outside," in an empathic role-reversal in which the reality of the other person presses upon us.
Rationality allows conflict to arise and also implies reconciliation with nature, outside solipsistic
impenetrability.
We experience ourselves as beings whose identity is simply the conscious enactment of presupposed
organic and lived unity (How broad then are the implications of the doctrines of gender fluidity?)
Recognition of rational beings can only be recognition of them in all their naturalness. ("Gender
fluidity" doctrine is pernicious then in undermining rational discourse and in increasing the triumph of
solipsism).
By enacting benevolent love the human being shows the greatest respect toward herself. If we remain
stuck in concupiscent love, our only source of value is our self value. This does not provide an
argument even against the destruction of the entire human race. If a person loves himself rationally, it
is not with blind concupiscence. Rather, he is freed from the realm of desire and only in benevolent
love does reality fully reveal itself.