Personalism, Vaticanum II and The Natural Roots of Morality “Why should our nastiness be the...

Personalism, Vaticanum II and The Natural Roots of Morality

“Why should our nastiness be the baggage of an apish past and our kindness uniquely human? Why should we not seek continuity with other animals for our ‘noble’

traits as well?”(Stephen Jay Gould)

Johan De Tavernier, KU Leuven

Human Nature after Darwin?

• “The human scientists proclaim that animals are irrelevant to the study of human beings and that there is no such thing as a universal human nature. The consequence is that science, so coldly successful at dissecting DNA, has proved spectacularly inept at tackling what the philosopher David Hume called the greater question of all: why is human nature what it is?”

M. Ridley, The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, 1993

19/04/23 2J. De Tavernier

1. Christian ethics ignoring evolutionary knowledge

• The essentialist character of the designed scala naturae• Boethius (513) – Aquinas: “Est enim persona ut dictum

est naturae rationalis individua substantia” • The person signifies what is most perfect in all nature:

“substantia completa, per se subsistens, separata ab aliis” (Summa III, Q. xvi, a. 12, ad 2um)

• Personalist morals: superiority of thought to sense, the unique nature of self-conscious beings, the person as a unity of mental life and will (Knudson, 1927)– A. Marc & E. Mounier: in comparison with all other realities the

person is an absolute because he/she is “a free begin that adopts, assimilates, lives and affirms values which constitute his uniqueness,…” (Manifesto, 1936)



• J. Maritain: distinction between the individual and the person– ‘Individual’: material component which we have in common with

animals, plants, microbes– ‘Person’: “une substance individuelle complète, de nature

intellectuelle et maîtresse de ses actions” covering the spiritual– ‘Modernity, having declared the human being as sovereign and

autonomous, will end in the hands of Darwin and Freud…’ (True Humanism, 1936)

• M. Scheler: the person = a unity-of-acts-of-different-natures (Formalismus, 1916) and can only be known in his/her relationships (Mittvolzug); L. Janssens: the sphere of the entire person is in every single act; the person is a complex totality, existing in a spatio-temporal universe (1939).



• The person is the supreme principle (free willed actions, spiritual being, intelligence, self-actualisation, acting morally); the mind is never reducible to some material substance

• ‘Is’-’ought’ distinction + morality is rooted in human’s unique unity of mental life and will and is therefore an entirely cultural phenomenon

• How to think about other conditions of being a person, f.i. the capacity for psychological experiences?– Dichotomist view of human being, omitting/reducing the

physical embodiment of human functions and upholding the view that emotions are only ‘accidentiae’


2. Is human morality innate? Darwin vs. Huxley

• Evolutionary biology: morality roots in dispositions which are programmed by evolution into our nature

• Darwin’s ‘dangerous idea’ – all life can be explained through insights into the efficiency of natural selection – results in Natura non facit saltum

• The Descent of Man (1871), Ch. 4 & 5: analogies between human and animal behaviour but also differences

– “The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man. (…) Many animals, however, certainly sympathize with each other’s distress or danger”.


2. Is human morality innate? Darwin vs. Huxley

• Thomas Huxley: while accepting that evolution has an impact on the nature of human condition, humans are capable of controlling it. They are able to act competently and ethically, based on explicit rational choices and free will. – “Human morality is a victory over brutal evolutionary

processes” (1894)

• Seen the immense difference in mental powers between the highest ape and the lowest ‘sauvage,’ morality is completely distinct from animal behavior

• But evolutionary knowledge explains the hybridity of who we are and the ambivalence in human condition


3. Nature vs. nurture? Evolutionists / gradualists vs. saltationists

• Saltationists like G.C. Williams see morality NOT as “an accidental capability produced, in its boundless stupidity, by a biological process that is normally opposed to the expression of such a capability” (1988).

• Evolutionists de Waal, Ruse, E.O. Wilson, Korsgaard: saltationism = a veneer theory of morality (2009); the roots of morality have to be situated in emergent emotional, social and cognitive capacities

• R. Joyce: two different ways of understanding that human morality is INNATE– Evolution designed us to be social, friendly, benevolent, fair (moral

behavior = adaptive)– Human behavior is outcome of psychological mechanisms that are

adaptations but behavior itself is not adaptive19/04/23 8J. De Tavernier


• Sociobiologists Ruse and E.O. Wilson: morality serves inclusive fitness goals (upholding reciprocal fairness, fulfilling duties, being loyal, accepting social control, sacrificing ourselves, etc.)– Hobbes is wrong by qualifying the natural condition as a war of

all against all, in which there is no room for mercy, altruism and empathy

– Moral systems are the result of the need to manage conflicts, guaranteeing personal security and promoting social cohesion

– Even altruistic behavior (reciprocal altruism & kin altruism) could have evolutionary roots (Trivers & Axelrod: tit-for-tat strategies)

– Emotions are lubricants creating cooperation: honor if we keep promises, shame if we are unmasked as cheats, guilt if we misuse someone’s trust



– De Waal: morality = development of social instincts (reciprocity, fairness, community concern, conflict resolution) and emotions (shame, anger, being touched, compassion, consolation, fidelity, protest) = builing blocks of morality/proto-morality

• Moral behavior relies on underlying, innate psychological mechanisms that are adaptations, but the behavior itself is not necessarily adaptive (Joyce)– Innate emotional, social and cognitive faculties result in open-

ended plasticity, having shaped memory capacity, a kind of will, a capacity for understanding and reflection (Ayala)

– Emergence of capacity for suffering and idea of vulnerability for suffering explain why humans are interested in morality (Damasio)

– E.g. ‘primordial autochtony’


4. Christian ethics on evolutionary roots of morality

• Morality seems to be a mixture of culture and nature vs cultural deterministic positions– Cultural positions on morality (the human person as ‘image Dei’,

created co-creator) are not the whole truth about moral behavior– The biblical doctrine that human beings are created in God’s

image suggests that human beings differ in kind and not just in degree from other animals (Arnhart)

– Fixed moral code? Pope: “the evolutionary process provides an emotional and cognitive constitution characterised by general proclivities, desires, or preferences, not a fixed moral code”

– It helps us understanding the often limited impact of both ethical reasoning and moral judgements on concrete behavior (a more realistic view?); natural moral sentiments enable us to learn moral traditions (Arnhart)



• Acceptance by Christian ethics of evolutionary accounts of morality not necessarily discredits the moral enterprise

– Christian ethics can profit by recognizing the functional value of morality without presuming that morality is only meaningful for its social functionality

– Knowledge about evolutionary impact could help to understand human behavior, the often limited impact of ethical reasoning on behavior and the way we morally judge (f.i. the difficulty of realizing distributive justice, of eradicating prejudices, of changing eating behavior, the attractiveness of ethnic culture for belonging)

• Unscientific worldview of the classics is maybe closer to truth than modern ethics

– Children are born with “a range of fairly indeterminate abilities, powers and capacities which are gradually shaped by training, instruction, and habituation to become the adult’s ‘second nature’, that is, the virtues or vices that constitute character” (Pope)



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• Biological predisposition has to be understood as an ‘open program’– Proper knowledge about evolved emotional and mental

inclinations will urge Christian ethics to emphasize their moral ambiguity (e.g. kin altruism, male desire for sexual variety, uncritical obedience, desire to preserve self-esteem, preference for conformity)

• Understanding the evolutionary roots of morality emphasizes the need for properly coaching and tutoring evolved emotions– Moral life = constantly directing natural inclinations and

emotions towards a virtuous living– “Habitual action shapes and organizes emotional states and

their neurochemical profile” (Damasio)



• “If we take the passions as being inordinate emotions, as the Stoics did, it is evident that in this sense perfect virtue is without the passions. But if by passions we understand any movement of the sensitive appetite, it is plain that moral virtues, which are about the passions as about their proper matter, cannot be without passions. The reason for this is that otherwise it would follow that moral virtue makes the sensitive appetite altogether idle: whereas it is not the function of virtue to deprive the powers subordinate to reason of their proper activities, but to make them execute the commands of reason, by exercising their proper acts.” (Summa I.II Q. 59 art. 5)



• Evolutionary knowledge allows us to see the human transcendence of our evolutionary past (without abandoning it)– Transcending our fitness interests: loving others for their own

sake, acting like a good Samaritan (Holmes Rolston)– Christian ethical ideals of universal solidarity, including love of

enemies and option/preferential love for the poor, renunciation of revenge, adoption of non-relatives, etc. surpass the kind of morality provided by natural selection



• Christianity should remember her own long held tradition that morality has a natural basis (Gensler)– Humans are ethical beings by their biological nature (Ayala)– The natural law tradition recognizes that natural inclinations

which we share with other animals (desire for food and sex, eager to learn, companionship) are not only biologically significant but could also be considered as morally good when ordered properly (Scholasticism vs Cathars)

– The idea of ‘free will’ as uncaused cause treats the human will as unconditional, transcendental power beyond the natural world: a Gnostic idea?

– The human being as person is NOT seen in major part of Catholic tradition as counterpart of nature



• Grace perfects rather than destroys nature– Balanced reciprocity will always be an easier attainable ethical

goal than the benevolent willingness to give without counting the cost.

– Christian ethics prefers to describe the origins of immorality rather in religious terms than in natural terms, e.g. the distraction of the will and intellect by both original and personal sin

– It is theologically improper to assume that nature is ordered either by God or by the evolutionary process; for Christian ethics it’s a mistake to force a choice between either religious or biological roots (spiritualist vs. naturalist/reductionist view)

– Neither direction accepts that God works in and through human nature, that is “divinely created, habituated in the moral life, denigrated by sin, and healed by grace”

5. Nature or/and Person: Reception of Gaudium et Spes no 51


• 1. A new FOCUS: humanum or personhood (GS no 11: “…solutions that are fully human”)

• 2. Another WORLD VIEW: historical consciousness, wherein time, place, context and circumstances play a role (GS part II: “…signs of times”)

• 3. A new METHOD: from deduction to induction (GS no 46: “reading the signs of the times in the light of the gospel and of human experience”)

5. Nature or/and Person: GS no 51


• 2 schools of interpretation: faith ethics promoting a relatively distinct Christian ethics + autonomous ethics in Christian context

• Debate on relationship Christianum and humanum (cf. J. Fuchs)• Focus on interpretation GS no 51: “Hence when there is question

of harmonizing conjugal love with the responsible transmission of life, the moral aspects of any procedure does not depend solely on sincere intentions or on an evaluation of motives, but must be determined by objective standards. These, based on the nature of the human person and his acts…” (McCormick…objectivis criteriis ex personae ejusdemque actuum natura desumptis…” Janssens: “…objectivis criteriis in eadem personae humanae dignitate fundatis…)

• L. Janssens: all human activities have to be considered from the perspective of the human person, adequately considered



• The Ratzinger Report (1985): Card. Ratzinger about moral theology in relation with what he calls the ‘permissive late modern culture’

• P. 88 about GS no 51: “Whereas the reflections of the Council were based on the unity of person and nature in man, personalism began to be understood in opposition to ‘naturalism’ (as if the human person and its needs could enter into conflict with nature). Thus an exaggerated personalism led some theologians to reject the internal order, the language of nature (…). This indeed is one of the reasons that Humanae Vitae was rejected and that it is impossible for many theologies to reject contraception”



• “Exaggerated personalism”? Ratzinger: separation between nature and person has led to the conviction that norms could be known through rationality/experience: “From this erroneous point of departure, they arrived unavoidably at the idea that morality was to be constructed solely on the basis of reason and that this autonomy of reason was also valid for believers. Hence no more Magisterium, no more God of Revelation with his Decalogue”.

• Alternative? “A morality of ends!” (= consequentialism)

• In order to counter permissivity, a return to fixed reference points is proposed: “landmarks which can neither be removed nor ignored without breaking the bond that Christian philosophy sees between Being and the Good”.



• Proportionalism = consequentialism? Veritatis Splendor (1993) no 74:”But on what does the moral assessment of man’s free acts depend? (…) Is it the intention of the acting subject, the circumstances - and in particular the consequences – of his action, or the object itself of his act?”

• “Certain ethical theories, called ‘teleological’, claim to be concerned for the conformity of human acts with the ends pursued by the agent and with the values intended by him. The criteria for evaluating the moral rightness of an action are drawn from the weighing of the non-moral or pre-moral goods to be gained and the corresponding non-moral or pre-moral values to be respected.” (…) “This ‘teleologism’, as a method for discovering the moral norm, can thus be called ‘consequentialism’ or ‘proportionalism’.”



• Intrinsece malum? “The teleological ethical theories (proportionalism, consequentialism) (…) maintain that it is never possible to formulate an absolute prohibition of particular kinds of behaviour which would be in conflict, in every circumstance and in every culture, with those values” (no 75).

• Do personalists deny the existence of intrinsic evil? What is the difference between proportionalists and consequentialists?


• THANK YOU!

• Speltheorie: zero-sum en non-zero-sum spellen• Geen onvoorwaardelijke altruïsme in de natuur, wel wederkerig altruïsme• Voorbeelden van tit-for-tat strategieën (R. Trivers, R. Axelrod): kin altruism• Moreel gedrag wortelt in emoties: bv. de eer om beloftes na te komen• Mensen trachten de moraal te rationaliseren maar het begint met gevoel

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