The Mark of Man: Midgley, MacIntyre, and von Hildebrand on the Distinctively Human (Part 2)

Last updated on: August 29, 2008 at 11:08 am by Policraticus

The Mark of Man: Midgley, MacIntyre, and von Hildebrand on the Distinctively Human (Part 2) 2008-08-29T11:08:20-05:00 Policraticus

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Midgley’s ideas find several commonalities with those of Alasdair MacIntyre, especially as expounded in his Dependent Rational Animals. In this, one of his more recent books, MacIntyre poses two specific but related questions: Why is it important to know commonalities that exist between humans and other intelligent animals? Why is attention to human vulnerability and disability important for moral philosophers? In order to answer both interrogatives, MacIntyre admits that an understanding of a metaphysical biology that takes account of man’s animal condition and his vulnerability is necessary to construct an ethics based upon virtue.[1] One notices immediately that the first aspect of MacIntyre’s metaphysical biology, man’s animal condition, resonates affably with Midgley’s starting point. Both MacIntyre and Midgley strive to eliminate those exaggerations of human characteristics that serve to obscure the stark similarities between man and other animal species. Man must be considered as an animal among animals, whose body is truly an animal body.[2]

Of the three sets of virtues MacIntyre describes in Dependent Rational Animals, the first two are apropos of the intent of this paper. The first set of theses contends that from the time of early childhood activities and thereafter, man comports himself toward reality in a similar way as other intelligent animals. While man may indeed transcend the limitations of these animals, he never emancipates himself from those characteristics he shares with them. Human identity is primarily animal identity. The second set of theses concerns the “virtues of independent rational agency” and the need for accompanying “virtues of acknowledged dependence.” Together, these sets of virtues are necessary for the actualization of distinctive potentialities specific to man.[3]

Over the course of the past two decades, MacIntyre’s work has been occupied with the retrieval and application of virtue ethics. Essential to virtue ethics is the recognition of a telosor goal toward which man strives, the potentiality of which is grounded in nature: “humans are goal-directed in virtue of their recognition of goods specific to their nature to be achieved.”[4] These goods have their raison d’être in this telos, and the attainment of these goods propels a creature toward it. Indeed, the achievement of that telos is a good in itself. Each species has its own telos and its own goods that aid it in the pursuit of fulfillment—the species’ purposiveness and advantage, to import Midgley’s terminology.

MacIntyre looks to compare man with another intelligent, social animal: the dolphin. If it is true that goods can be ascribed to dolphins, it seems reasonable to ascribe to them reasons for pursuing these goods. And MacIntyre is confident that dolphins fulfill the criteria for having reasons ascribed to them: a set of goods toward which they aim to achieve, a set of judgments about which actions are most appropriate and efficient to achieve, and a set of counterfactual conditions that enables one to connect the dolphins’ goal-directedness to their judgments.[5] Even more compelling are the perceptual and communicative capacities possessed by dolphins whereby they establish individual and communal awareness of the relevant facts surrounding their environment, their goods and their goals. MacIntyre presumes to be justified, in light of the extensive studies and data collected on dolphins, to ascribe to them thoughts and beliefs.

The matter of another comparison between man and intelligent animals is what MacIntyre dubs “pre-linguistic distinction-making.” While human language enables man to characterize, reflect and classify his perceptual experiences, it is always preceded by more basic pre-lingual distinctions between truth and falsity embodied in beliefs stemming from perceptions of change. While the gradual acquisition of language over the course of a lifetime affords the luxury of reflecting upon and characterizing this prelinguistic distinction-making, there remains an essential continuity between prelinguistic and linguistic capacities. The former provides the basis for the latter, and the latter conceptualizes and communicates the former. MacIntyre feels that these observations lend credence to describing certain intelligent animals, such as dolphins or chimpanzees, as prelinguistic rather than nonlinguistic. He writes,

What I am suggesting then is that adult human activity and belief are best understood as developing out of, and as still in part dependent upon, modes of belief and activity that we share with some other species of intelligent animal, including dolphins, and that the activities and beliefs of members of those species need to be understood as in important respects approaching the condition of language-users.[6]

MacIntyre’s intention, as I understand it, is to place a strong emphasis on the direct continuity and connection of man with the evolving biosphere, and this intention finds strong support from Midgley as I have shown above. However, MacIntyre is not equating animal judgment with human judgment in his comparisons. Rather, he follows Thomas Aquinas in ascribing judgment and reason to animals by analogy, but does not deny that certain animals on occasion have reasons for acting.[7] Nonetheless, what is established by MacIntyre’s comparisons is the non-analogical predication of flourishing and fulfillment to dolphins qua dolphins and humans qua humans.[8]

What a particular species needs to flourish are the distinctive powers that are apropos of its nature. In the case of man, he must develop these powers in order to attain the goods that enable him to flourish qua man, that is, that which “benefits human beings as such and to what benefits human beings in particular roles within particular contexts of practice.”[9] For MacIntyre, goods can be classified into three groups: 1. as means; 2. judgments of those well-suited in some role or discharging a function within a practice; 3. goods valued for their own sake. This third group is distinguished by judgments about human flourishing where its goods are determined by that which best suits the individual and the community. “Human beings need to learn to understand themselves as practical reasoners about goods, about what on particular occasions it is best for them to do and about how it is best for them to live out their lives.”[10] Otherwise, humans cannot flourish qua humans; to reach his telos, unlike other intelligent animals, man must become an independent practical reasoner. Practical reasoners learn to separate themselves from purely bodily desires in order to recognize more substantial goods that do not merely assuage bodily predilection. Man becomes capable of standing back from his desires in order to evaluate whether it is good to act upon a particular desire. But at the same time, man cannot make this transition without the aid, advice, counsel, and argument of others.

Man learns from others about goods in general and about goods for his particular situation. The power of independent reason, latent in human nature, is developed under the tutelage of family and teachers until the individual is capable of making his own judgments with regard to goods. Thus, the independence of practical reasoning emerges from dependence upon others. Herein lies what MacIntyre takes to be a distinctive mark of man: the ability for man to flourish as an independent practical reasoner. But this transition is brought to term by those “qualities of mind and character that enable someone both to recognize the relevant goods and to use the relevant skills in achieving them, the excellences, the virtues, that distinguish or should distinguish teacher from apprentice or student.”[11] The virtues—self-knowledge, truthfulness, justice, trustworthiness—enable one to become a practical reasoner and to “overcome the harms, dangers, temptations and distractions we encounter, and which will furnish us with increasing self-knowledge and increasing knowledge of the good,”[12] but equally important, they create the sober realism that one never loses one’s dependency on others in one’s quest for human fulfillment or advantage. Independent practical reasoning is entered through temporary transition, yet always remains a reasoning with others. Hence, there is a narrative unity to a flourishing human life that incorporates both independence and dependence in the different stages of fulfillment. Man’s life is a constant oscillation between giving and receiving, and his goods are inseparable from the common good.[13]

Has MacIntyre noticed a single distinguishing mark of man, namely the ability to become an independent practical reasoner, that has escaped from Midgley’s sight? Compare the above summary of MacIntyre’s description of detachment from desire with the following comment by Midgley:

What about other animals? We know little of their inner lives and ought not to dogmatize about it. But, crudely speaking, though they do share our struggle to harmonize conflicting motives, they plainly do not have anything like our power of dealing with it by standing back from their various motives, by taking the point of view of the whole, and trying to make some kind of balanced decision. [14]

The ability to stand back from desires or motives and evaluate them accordingly is indeed a unique feature of man, but as Midgley has made clear, it can be explained as a more fully evolved and developed form of self-consciousness operating as an open instinct. Such a capacity for judgment allows man to withdraw from immediacy. Hence, there is a sense of continuity through time, and the need to integrate one’s personality lends itself to the formulation of morality. Midgley writes candidly, “We are looking inward for a need, for some psychological fact about us that makes it deeply distressing to us to live shapelessly, incoherently, discontinuously, meaninglessly—to live without standards.”[15] In fact, under Midgley’s guise, MacIntyre’s description “dependent rational animals” can loosely be ascribed to intelligent, social animals. Though there is not any distinct and utterly unique mark of human nature to be found in his work, MacIntyre nonetheless illumines Midgley’s simple “knot of general structural properties,” providing a more thorough description of practical reasoning and the sociality of man, even if these characteristics only place man on the higher end of an evolutionary spectrum or scale.[16]

But we seem to have gained little ground in terms of arriving at a solution to the problem originally posed: What is the distinguishing mark of man such that we can take it be not only distinguishing, but also distinctive?

Notes:
[1] MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals, ix. cf. 4: “It will be a central thesis of this book that the virtues that we need, if we are to develop from our initial animal condition into that of independent rational agents, and the virtues that we need, if we are to confront and respond to vulnerability and disability both in ourselves and in others, belong to one and the same set of virtues, the distinctive virtues of dependent rational animals, whose dependence, rationality and animality have to be understood in relationship to each other.”
[2] While I agree with the statement that “our bodies are animal bodies with the identity and continuities of animal bodies,” (Dependent Rational Animals, 6), I reluctantly concede MacIntyre’s assertion “we…are our bodies” provided this neither entails nor implies an empirical reduction of the self. Simply stated, we do not primarily experience ourselves as mere bodies, but as conscious centers or datives of the manifestation of objects. In addition, our bodies can always be made objects of our knowledge, while the “self” as transcendent proves ever-elusive of purely reflexive or thematic knowledge.
[3] MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals, 8-9.
[4] Ibid., 23. Here, MacIntyre corrects his initial position in After Virtue that “although this account of the virtues is teleological, it does not require any allegiance to Aristotle’s metaphysical biology.” After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 196.
[5] See Dependent Rational Animals, 25.
[6] Ibid., 41. cf. 48-9: “It is not only that the same kind of exercise of the same kind of perceptual powers provides, guides, and corrects beliefs in the case of dolphins—and some other species—as in the case of humans, but that our whole initial bodily comportment towards the world is originally an animal comportment and that when, through having become language users, we under the guidance of parents and others restructure that comportment, elaborate and in new ways correct our beliefs and redirect our activities, we never make ourselves independent of our animal nature and inheritance.”
[7] Ibid. 55-6.
[8] Midgley would approve of this common predication as it is engendered by a holistic consideration of a given species: “comparisons make sense only when they are put in the context of the entire character of the species concerned and of the known principles governing resemblances between species,” and again, “when you have looked at the relation of the act to other relevant habits and needs, when you have considered the whole nature of the species, comparison may be possible and helpful.” Beast and Man, 23.
[9] MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals, 65.
[10] Ibid., 67.
[11] Ibid., 92.
[12] MacIntyre, After Virtue, 219.
[13] MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals, 113. cf. After Virtue, 221: “For the story of my life is always embedded in the story of those communities form which I derive my identity. I am born with a past; and to try to cut myself off from that past, in the individualist mode, is to deform my present relationships. The possession of an historical identity and the possession of a social identity coincide.”
[14] Midgley, The Ethical Primate, 24.
[15] Can We Make Moral Judgments?, 160.
[16] MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals, 57.

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