Existentialism, Essentialism, and Scotus
(It's always about Scotus. Or SCOTUS, as the case may be ;))
On my way to watch the Notre Dame game, I found myself thinking about a certain tension in my own belief system. I don't want to say contradiction, because I think it can be solved, but it's certainly the sort of thing someone would point to if they wanted to point to a contradiction. On the one hand, I'm an existentialist. I know that term is pretty much meaningless, but what I mean by it is 'someone who believes that existence preceeds essence.' That is, someone who believes that what we are is defined by what we do, rather than anything else. But, on the other hand, there's a pretty strong Aristotelian strain in my thinking, especially my thinking about ethics, and if there's anyone who's an essentialist, it's Aristotle.
Of course, to a certain extent these strains of thought are not only compatible, but complementary. Aristotelian ethics defines a good person simply as someone who tends to do the right thing, which gels nicely with the existentialist bias in favor of activity over being. But the problem is that the Aristotelian account goes deeper than that; it defines what good actions are by reference to what sort of beings we are. And so it's not clear how this is compatible with the existentialist refusal to assign us any sort of being/essence whatsoever.
To some extent, this is helped by looking at the ontological/ontic divide. If Heidegger is right, and if I understand him correctly, the old ontic ways of looking at human nature are deeply flawed. But, at the same time we deny there's any sort of ontic essence to humans, we can talk about the ontological structures, such as the being towards death, that underly human experience. So the flaw in essentialists such as Aristotle is that they spoke of human nature ontically, not ontologically -- not they're speaking of human nature simpliciter.
I think this tension is further resolved by taking a minimalist interpretation of human nature, an interpretation that I get from John Duns Scotus. Scotus claimed that either human nature is not sufficiently robust to entail a specific ethical theory, or that we simply don't know enough about human nature to derive an ethical theory from her. I want to read this as a minimalist account of human nature. We know enough about human nature to know what its end has to be. But nothing about human nature entails a specific path to that end.
So I think that these two things taken together can allow us to talk about something resembling the traditional concept of 'human nature', without falling into the old traps into which old concepts of human nature lead us. But I'm not sure. Any thoughts, anyone?
On my way to watch the Notre Dame game, I found myself thinking about a certain tension in my own belief system. I don't want to say contradiction, because I think it can be solved, but it's certainly the sort of thing someone would point to if they wanted to point to a contradiction. On the one hand, I'm an existentialist. I know that term is pretty much meaningless, but what I mean by it is 'someone who believes that existence preceeds essence.' That is, someone who believes that what we are is defined by what we do, rather than anything else. But, on the other hand, there's a pretty strong Aristotelian strain in my thinking, especially my thinking about ethics, and if there's anyone who's an essentialist, it's Aristotle.
Of course, to a certain extent these strains of thought are not only compatible, but complementary. Aristotelian ethics defines a good person simply as someone who tends to do the right thing, which gels nicely with the existentialist bias in favor of activity over being. But the problem is that the Aristotelian account goes deeper than that; it defines what good actions are by reference to what sort of beings we are. And so it's not clear how this is compatible with the existentialist refusal to assign us any sort of being/essence whatsoever.
To some extent, this is helped by looking at the ontological/ontic divide. If Heidegger is right, and if I understand him correctly, the old ontic ways of looking at human nature are deeply flawed. But, at the same time we deny there's any sort of ontic essence to humans, we can talk about the ontological structures, such as the being towards death, that underly human experience. So the flaw in essentialists such as Aristotle is that they spoke of human nature ontically, not ontologically -- not they're speaking of human nature simpliciter.
I think this tension is further resolved by taking a minimalist interpretation of human nature, an interpretation that I get from John Duns Scotus. Scotus claimed that either human nature is not sufficiently robust to entail a specific ethical theory, or that we simply don't know enough about human nature to derive an ethical theory from her. I want to read this as a minimalist account of human nature. We know enough about human nature to know what its end has to be. But nothing about human nature entails a specific path to that end.
So I think that these two things taken together can allow us to talk about something resembling the traditional concept of 'human nature', without falling into the old traps into which old concepts of human nature lead us. But I'm not sure. Any thoughts, anyone?
posted by Mad Jurist at 7:19 PM
2 Comments:
Ah, your failure to resolve this quandry resembles the result of an attempt to put 10 pounds of crap in a five pound bag. Any attempt to take a minimalist approach to something as large and expansive as human nature (and or a resultant ethical structure), will by its nature leave more content on the ground than in your academic construct.
I think, therefore I am, is all one needs to know.
Of course, your own response contradicts itself. You say that a minimalist approach is just going to ignore stuff, and then you espouse a minimalist approach that ignores stuff. It seems to me that, if one is going to spend some time thinking about human nature, one ought to develop an account as true to that nature as one can.
I certainly don't think that we can come up with a comprehensive account of human nature. But we must beware of accounts that are overly reductionistic. That's the problem with Descartes' conception (well, one of the problems). When you say that "Cogito ergo sum" is the core of human nature, you unnaturally glorify the mind at the expense of the body. But the fact of the matter is that we're not just minds trapped in a body. We are bodies with minds, and I will always remain unconvinced that one of those facets could be more important than the other. Our bodies are just as much a part of who we are as our minds are. And so a Cartesian account, which is deeply reductionistic, is just as false or even more so than any more complicated account which may have a few details off.
Post a Comment
<< Home