But liberal theory, now only a few centuries old, may yet prove historically short-lived, as we seem poised to enter into a new period of scientific revolution. These efforts began, infamously, as the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century versions of Social Darwinism, with corresponding efforts to apply what were thought to be Darwinian approaches to the improvement of the species — particularly in the form of eugenics: Indeed, as the author Tom Wolfe pointed out in his Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities , as soon as humans developed the ability of speech, they were effectively able to put an end to most forms of accidental evolution.
In developing the ability to dominate every other species on the planet, humanity has taken charge of the evolutionary process. It is not that evolution has ended: The logic of Darwinism suggests that once humans grasp the concept of evolution, humanity is now in a position to assume responsibility for its own evolutionary development and improvement. Thus enter the transhumanists. Author Simon Young, in Designer Evolution: The revolution in scientific thinking in the early modern period, in which the conquest of nature became a central aim, underlay the deepest presuppositions of the liberal political project — just as a different scientific conception had underlain the pre-modern understanding of politics, as aimed at realizing the human telos.
Scientific assumptions unavoidably inform political theory. And so we can surmise that the expansion of the ideal of conquering nature to include humanity itself is likely to have political consequences as far-reaching as the scientific revolution that informed the now-nearly-universal modern regime of liberalism. We can and must expect that a similar transformation of our political ideas will come with what many hope to be the expansion of the evolutionary imperative as knowingly and intentionally guided by scientific advances and human design.
Despite the historical parallel, experience offers us little guidance in the current circumstance. For this newest scientific revolution begins with the rejection of the idea of any immutable nature, whether the natural world or human nature itself. We find ourselves in uncharted waters — an unknown topography that encourages speculation about the future, pointing alternatively to nirvana and dystopia.
And the problem with either the dream or nightmare scenario, or anything in between, is that our projections about the future are based upon contemporary, which is to say steady, assumptions about human nature. But if the science proves to be correct — if the transhumanist project really does succeed in remaking our nature — then we are talking about a subject post -human nature with which we as yet do not have any knowledge or experience.
Speculations of any kind about such a future must then be suspect. In the cases of the two broad political-scientific philosophies we can roughly call Aristotelian and Lockean, we can see with some clarity the relationship between the scientific assumptions and the political assumptions. In the pre-modern view, human beings organized society around the ideal of attaining the virtues, in light of the need to attain a proper condition of human freedom. Human freedom was considered to be a condition of self-governance within self-imposed limits, consistent with the idea of a given human nature and a fundamentally unalterable natural order.
While regime types varied in the pre-modern world, a basic set of anthropological assumptions informed a broad consensus that political society should be organized around the ideal of the attainment of human virtues in accordance with a given human telos. Ancient limits upon acquisitiveness were lifted, in the belief that the expansion of human mastery could provide for the fulfillment of limitless human desires.
Restlessness — described so well by Tocqueville, though also anticipated by such thinkers as Locke, Pascal, Rousseau, and Montesquieu — was predicted to become a basic condition of modern life for every citizen.
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The aspect of these political ideas crucial for us moderns to note is that both were premised upon the belief in some fixed human nature, and the respective political beliefs and arrangements flowed from those assumptions. That is, each political theory flowed in a sensible fashion from basic aspects of human nature.
Based upon observable facts of human behavior, each respective political philosophy was able to articulate its essential features by means of appeal to a certain fund of knowledge about humanity. A fundamental debate between ancients and moderns revolves around the question of which conception of human nature is more correct — one oriented toward the attainment of virtue within a fixed natural order, or one based upon the expansion of satisfactions of human self-interest through the conquest of nature.
In both cases, experience is brought to bear: On the side of the ancients, contemporary authors such as Alasdair MacIntyre argue that modern liberal philosophy and practice is not only morally incoherent, but that it is destructive of the human soul, while authors such as Wendell Berry additionally argue that the practical consequences of the modern project make our world increasingly uninhabitable. On the other side, defenders of liberalism point to its evident success on the modern stage, especially the successes of science in pushing back an indifferent and often cruel nature — thus, along with increasingly humane state policies, increasing human health, wealth, and welfare.
I f we are at the advent of a new scientific order, then we must ask what political implications flow from a scientific revolution that urges the transformation of humanity itself. If the human race is to be altered in a unpredictable and perhaps fundamental manner, can any political arrangements or assumptions reliably flow from such a moving and unpredictable target? In response to these concerns, libertarian-minded transhumanists seek to assure critics that political solutions to such grim possibilities are sure to forestall any fearful outcome.
For example, if some form of intelligence amplification becomes available, it may at first be so expensive that only the wealthiest can afford it. The same could happen when we learn how to genetically enhance our children. Those who are already well off would become smarter and make even more money. Trying to ban technological innovation on these grounds, however, would be misguided. If a society judges existing inequalities to be unacceptable, a wiser remedy would be progressive taxation and the provision of community-funded services such as education, IT access in public libraries, genetic enhancements covered by social security, and so forth.
Technological progress does not solve the hard old political problem of what degree of income redistribution is desirable, but it can greatly increase the size of the pie that is to be divided. In short, the WTA documents establish a broad political tent, with an explicit embrace of political engagement, the need to defend and extend liberal democracy, and the inclusion of social democratic policy alternatives as legitimate points of discussion.
Addressing another set of concerns, namely, the fear that — as in the past — a eugenics policy may become the result of political fiat, enforced by a tyrant with the goal of liquidating sub-par humans, Simon Young assures his readers: Superbiology will and must be controlled by individual consumers, not the state. We should protect ourselves from totalitarianism by voting out of office any government which shows the first signs of a drift toward authoritarianism.
This all sounds well and good — but on what basis can it be assumed that liberal political institutions will remain relevant or applicable to a creature that we do not yet know we will become? Liberal forms and institutions are the consequence of a particular scientific and political understanding, one that would be fundamentally altered by a neo-Darwinian transformation. How can it be predicted or assumed in advance that political institutions and practices derived from a pre-transhumanist scientific and political understanding will continue to apply or be regarded as relevant?
Is it not just as likely that our future selves will come to regard the liberal regime as even more of an antiquated curiosity than we now regard the city-state? For all of the futurism of the neo-Darwinians, when it comes to their political assumptions, they reveal themselves to be utter nostalgists, clinging to a provincial form of belief that is utterly unjustified and unwarranted by their own scientific assumptions. Neo-Darwinians often resort to explaining our social condition as the result of a long process of social evolution, which gave us the capacity to cooperate with strangers and eventually to establish institutions and behaviors that permit increasingly global forms of governance.
But if humans are now going to actively alter our very composition, to what extent can we have confidence that the institutions and processes that have developed by a very different evolutionary track, for very different creatures, will not be regarded as fundamentally disposable? Again, the assumptions about a liberal future seem to be more a matter of faith than science. Finally, further and deeper reflection on the sedimentation of our various political traditions ought to give pause.
The most thoughtful liberals — perhaps above all, Tocqueville — recognized that liberalism contained an internal logic that threatened its own self-destruction. The anthropological individualism at the heart of its theory could be given institutional credence so long as those assumptions did not colonize every aspect of human life.
Liberalism rested fundamentally on pre-modern and pre-liberal institutions and practices, ranging from family to community, from church to civil society. Thus, Tocqueville observed, though Americans justified their actions in terms of self-interest, they continued to act altruistically.
The proposed new scientific settlement would introduce an even thinner human anthropology. In this view, humanity is reduced largely to physical bodies that seek life and health. Families, where they make an appearance, are generally composed of parents who seek to enhance their children. Society is envisioned as composed of near-immortal autonomous individuals who pursue their own ends, forever. Ironically enough, transhumanism gains a great deal of its persuasive and intuitive force from its reliance upon our widespread experience of self-sacrificial parental love.
We are asked, who would not want to prevent a child from being born with a terrible disease? Yet the motivation of transhumanism is finally selfish: What then becomes of the relationship between the generations? In a world of limited resources, space, and opportunity, would not the next generation now be experienced as a threat? Would not every inclination cry out against reproduction?
Would not our experience of humanity as generational creatures, bound ceaselessly in relationship to the past and to the future, cease to be a fact of our existence? Liberalism was the first major step in the weakening of our generational consciousness. Society is the consequence of voluntary choice aimed at mutual advantage, not reciprocal gratitude and inherited obligations.
Yet this theory was always leavened by the fact of our pre-modern inheritance. Families, communities, and religion, even if weakened by the forces and logic of modern liberalism, even if puttering along in bold though largely unrealized defiance of the theories that purport to dispose of them, nevertheless have long persisted as a bulwark against the full implication of liberal theory. His view is that the one exists only as instantiated in the many.
Both universals and particulars are real.
On Human Worth and Excellence
Individual concrete entities exist in reality and universals exist only in particulars in the form of essences. In this way, Aristotle wedded universals to objects. The universal and the particular are indivisible in reality and are separable only in analysis and thought. All things are a composite of a "this" and a "such. Aristotle distinguishes between matter and form. The matter is the individualizing and unique-making element or aspect.
The form is the universalizing element that makes it a member of a particular class. Forms are joined to objects. Aristotle's view is that concepts refer to essences that are within the concretes of the external world. An essence is an object's nature. It is made up of the invariant characteristics inherent in a thing. An essence is in an object from the time the entity is a potentiality all the way to its becoming and being an actuality.
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Aristotle explains change as matter getting restructured and as requiring identity. An object that changes is what it is, the thing that it changes into is what it is, and the change process itself is what it is. Change is the actualization of potential. It follows that the world of particulars and changes in particulars is rationally explainable.
Change is the capacity to grow into something and is thus the actualization of potential. Since universals exist only in particulars, we cannot apprehend the universal except through apprehension of the concrete. Matter is the underlying substratum in which development of form occurs. Aristotle is an "ontological essentialist" who defines essence as embodying the actual metaphysical nature of things.
Essences exist in the world independent of the mind and are what a person's mind refers to when it forms concepts. Knowledge is a natural process in the real world. Aristotle explains that it is natural for an animal with rational consciousness i. This potential involves the ability to understand intelligible or law-governed structures and changes.
It also includes the ability to apprehend that there are intelligibly impossible changes. Aristotle taught that the world encompasses both material and mental aspects and that it exists independently of our reasoning and thinking activities. In addition, there are certain essences in the world as well as knowable laws, structures, and connections governing them. He explains that there are no contradictions in nature i. By a contradiction he means being both x and not x at the same time and in the same respect.
Furthermore, he emphasized deductive reasoning in which a person begins with self-evident axioms and deduces from them. For Aristotle, essences or universals are phenomena intrinsic in reality and that exist in particulars. It follows that to comprehend essences or universals is at root a passive intuition or receptivity.
Aristotle, the naturalistic realist, explains that knowledge begins and arises out of our sense experiences which are valid. It follows that a man can build on the evidence of the senses through reason which includes logic and the formation of abstractions.
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Some contemporary thinkers find fault in Aristotle for viewing essences as metaphysical rather than as epistemological. They oppose Aristotle's apparent intuitionist view that essences are simply "intellectually seen. He explains that means or instruments of production are valuable because their end products are useful to people. The more useful or desirable a good is, the higher the value of the means of production is. Aristotle then goes on to derive a number of economic ideas from axiomatic concepts including the necessity of human action, the pursuit of ends by ordering and allocating scarce means, and the reality of human inequality and diversity.
Aristotle explains that actions are necessarily and fundamentally singular. For Aristotle, the individual human action of using wealth is what constitutes the economic dimension. The purpose of economic action is to use things that are necessary for life i. The Good Life is the moral life of virtue through which human beings attain happiness. Given that human actions are voluntary and intentional, it follows that action requires the prior internal mental acts of deliberation and choice. Human beings seek to fulfill their perfection via action. Observing that human nature has capacities pertaining to its dual material and spiritual character, Aristotle explains that economics is an expression of that dual character.
The economic sphere is the intersection between the corporeal and mental aspects of the human person. Aristotle made a distinction between practical science and speculative science. He states that practical science is concerned with knowledge for the sake of controlling reality. It studies knowledge that may be otherwise i.
Practical science studies relationships that are not constant, regular, or invariable. Aristotle classifies economics as a practical science. On the other hand, Aristotle sees speculative science as yielding necessary, universal, noncontingent truths. Speculative science generates universal truths deduced from self-evident principles known by induction.
The goal of speculative science is knowledge for its own sake. Mathematics and metaphysics would be speculative sciences for Aristotle. Aristotle taught that economics is concerned with both the household and the polis and that economics deals with the use of things required for the good or virtuous life. As a pragmatic or practical science, economics is aimed at the good and is fundamentally moral. Because Aristotle saw that economics was embedded in politics, an argument can be made that the study of political economy began with him. For Aristotle, the primary meaning of economics is the action of using things required for the Good Life.
In addition, he also sees economics as a practical science and as a capacity that fosters habits that expedite the action. Economics is a type of prudence or practical knowledge that aids a person in properly obtaining and using those things that are necessary for living well. The end of economics as a practical science is attaining effective action. Aristotle explains that ontologically the operation of the economic dimension of reality is inextricably related to the moral and political spheres.
The economic element is integrated in real action with other realms relating to the acting human person.
The Science of Politics and the Conquest of Nature
The various domains mutually influence one another in an ongoing dynamic fashion. Aristotle explains that practical science recognizes the inexact nature of its conclusions as a consequence of human action which arises from each person's freedom and uniqueness. Uncertainty emanates from the nature of the world and the free human person and is a necessary aspect of economic actions that will always be in attendance.
Aristotle observes that a practical science such as economics must be intimately connected to the concrete circumstances and that it is proper to begin with what is known to us. The proper function of every person is to live happily, successfully, and well. This is done through the active exercise of a man's distinctive capacity, rationality, as he engages in activities to the degree appropriate to the person in the context of his own particular identity as a human being.
Because man is naturally social, it is good for him to live in a society or polis i. Aristotle emphasizes the individuating characteristics of human beings when he proclaims that the goodness of the polis is inextricably related to those who make it up. For Aristotle, social life in a community is a necessary condition for a man's complete flourishing as a human being. Aristotle explains that friendship, the mutual admiration between two human beings, is a necessary condition for the attainment of one's eudaimonia. Because man is a social being, it can be maintained that friendship has an egoistic foundation.
It follows that authentic friendship is predicated upon one's sense of his own moral worth and on his love for and pride in himself. Moral admiration, both of oneself and of the other, is an essential component of Aristotelian friendship. Self-perfection means to fulfill the capacities that make a person fully human including other-directed capacities such as friendship. Noting that individuals form communities to secure life's necessities, Aristotle also emphasizes the importance of active citizen participation in government.
He views the proper end of government as the promotion of its citizens' happiness. It follows that the goodness of the polis is directly related to the total self-actualization of the individuals who comprise it. Aristotle contends that the state exists for the good of the individual. He thus preferred the rule of law over the rule of any of the citizens. This is because men have private interests whereas laws do not.
Hobbes, Thomas: Moral and Political Philosophy | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
It follows that the "mixed regime" advocated by Aristotle was the beginning of the notion of constitutionalism including the separation of powers and checks and balances. He was the first thinker to divide rulership activities into executive, legislative, and judicial functions. Through his support for a mixed political system, Aristotle was able to avoid and reject both Platonic communism and radical democracy.
For Aristotle, an entity that fulfills its proper i. He explains that the nature of a thing is the measure or standard in terms of which we judge whether or not it is functioning appropriately or well. Things are good for Aristotle when they advance their specific or respective ends. For whatever has a natural function, the good is therefore thought to reside in the function. The natural function of a thing is determined by its natural end. With respect to living things, there are particular ways of being that constitute the perfection of the living thing's nature.