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CRITIQUE AND VIEWS OF HUMAN
NATURE
BY CATHRINE HOLST, ASSISTANT
PROFESSOR AT CENTRE FOR THEORY OF SCIENCE,
THE ANSWER TO THE
QUESTION of whether one regards humans as being wolves, lambs or
animals of a
mixed kind influences one’s views on society and politics”
writes Carl-Göran
Heidegren in his introduction to Antropologi,
samhällsteori och politik (Anthropology, Social Theory and
Politics). “Anthropology,
social theory and politics tend to be interrelated; when one of these
issues
are in focus the other two are – implicitly or explicitly –
rarely far away”
(p. 9). We know these connections from political debate. Debates on
school
politics, the health services, social politics, immigration,
development aid,
biotechnology and cultural politics often end up as discussions on
human
nature. Those who support or oppose certain politics can be accused of
having
an incorrect or even unacceptable view on human nature. Anthropology is
discussed in the academic world as well, particularly in cross-faculty
discussions. Ask a sociologist and an economist to discuss the question
of what
distinguishes their approaches from one another, and you can be quite
certain
that one of them, most likely the sociologist, will start talking about
views of
human nature or “models of the actor”. Sociological
foundational critique of
competing disciplines is often bound up with reflections on the nature
of human
beings. Homo sociologicus, the human
being ruled by norms, is often contrasted with the homo
oeconomicus of economics, the supposition being that differing
views on the nature of man results in different approaches to issues
concerning
society and politics. HEIDEGREN JUSTLY
STATES: “The anthropology, theory of society and political
orientation one
prefers, as well as how and to which degree one is capable of
harmonizing these
components, is the result of a painful and detailed argumentative
work” (p.
359) The book presents five such works of detail; the constellations
between
anthropology, social theory and politics in Arnhold Gehlen
(1904–1976) and
Helmut Schelsky (1912–1984), Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth
and Hans Joas, where
the two former represent German radical conservatism and the three
latter
critical theory. Thus constellations within two very different
traditions are
presented. The remarkable
connections can also be found. For instance, Gehlen’s
philosophical
anthropology has influenced the work of Habermas, Honneth and Joas.
Hence the
views on human nature of prominent intellectuals of the German Left are
coloured by the works of a philosopher with a bright academic career
during the
National Socialist regime and who remained profoundly sceptical towards
open,
democratic societies after the war. Habermas himself has called Gehlen
“the
most disturbing intellect”, “the most consequent thinker
when it comes to
institutionalism in the spirit of counter-enlightenment” (p.
187). But Gehlen
was also a thinker who admired John Dewey, George Herbert Mead and
William
James, and who was inspired by the American pragmatists’ theory
of action –
although not by their defence of the democratic form of life. Hence the
connections between one’s views of human nature, of society and
one’s political
judgments can hardly be said to be simple. HEIDEGREN, who is
a sociologist at the Gehlen’s life is a
fascinating one. During the Hitler years, he was a professor at the
prestigious
universities of REGARDED AS A
HISTORY OF THEORY, however, Antropology,
samhällsteori och politik is a splendid book. Heidegren
provides a clear
and nuanced – yet also exiting – account of the ambitious
projects of the
book’s protagonists. The author starts with a description of Carl
Schmitt’s
(1888–1985) and Helmuth Plessner’s (1892–1985)
reflections on the relations between
anthropology and politics, which serves as a background to the
presentation of
Gehlen and Schelsky. Both Schmitt and Plessner are concerned with the
fact that
theories of the state and political ideas take a more or less explicit
anthropology as their starting point. They, for their part, regard man
as an
exposed, incalculable being with a great willingness to take risks,
hence
seeing the “opposition of friend to enemy” as
characteristic of political
struggle (p. 24). Inspired by Schmitt’s ideas, Schelsky delivered
his
dissertation on Thomas Hobbes in 1939, its focus being the Hobbesian
anthropology. Hobbes’ view on human
nature, argued Schelsky, is not primarily a pessimistic, but an activistic one – man is regarded as an acting
being; there is “nothing eternal
in the human being, no preconceived aim, but only the concrete action,
through
which she carries her life into the future” (p. 31). Schelsky,
who is obviously
sympathetically inclined towards the idea, refers to James and Dewey in
this
context. He is particularly inspired by Dewey’s Human
Nature and Conduct (1922). Heidegren then
takes a fascinating detour, in which he draws a line to Pierre
Bourdieu, who
has said that his concept of habitus bears a “striking”
resemblance to Dewey’s
pragmatism (p. 35). Starting from Donald
Broady’s interpretation of Bourdieu’s anthropological
presupposition; that man
is a being who exchanges and battles, and one whose freedom is limited
(p. 35),
Heidegren thinks he sees affinities between Schelsky’s German
view of Hobbes,
American pragmatism and Bourdieu’s praxiology. Since it falls
outside of the
main horizon of the book, this hypothesis is not thoroughly defended.
One may
hope that others should feel called to do so. GEHLEN’S
PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AS OPPOSED TO
JAMES AND DEWEY, Schelsky did not connect the activist view of human
nature to
a defence of democracy. While he emphasises the importance of
democratic
consent to government in his Hobbes dissertation, the citizens’
consent is not
to be under the rule of “private expression of will”; their
consent to a
government and a state is at the same time a consent to “rule of
consciousness”
(p. 41), writes Schelsky. Political agreement is not gained
through free
formation of opinion, but rather through state propaganda. Thus the
foundational ideas of radical-conservatism are sketched: an activist
view of
man in combination with a rejection of liberalism and parliamentary
democracy,
and an emphasis on the state and the nation. GUIDANCE IS
INSUFFICIENT, however, discipline is
needed as well; self-discipline and institutional
discipline: Institutions are needed to orient human beings, since
nature fails
to do so. And the fundamental human institutions, such as the family,
division
of labour, property, customs, laws, the state and religion, according
to
Gehlen, are based in a non-rational, ritualized
form of action which assumes a character of obligation. This fact
should
not be taken to imply that institutions contain foundational aims of
action. To
the contrary: “The habitual form of action within these
institutions has the
effect of suspending the question of
meaning. The one who poses the question of meaning is either
confused or is
consciously or unconsciously expressing a need for other institutions
than the
existing ones” (p. 68). Institutions are enriching and
liberating; they
instantiate a freedom of a higher kind – the
collective one. Individual freedom
can be a heavy burden, too heavy,
thinks Gehlen: Individual freedom is exerts a pressure, which is inhumane. Hence human beings must let
themselves “be consumed by the realities history has brought into
being” (p.
68). Thoughts like
these contributed to Gehlen’s attraction towards National
Socialism. He was
obviously (like most National Socialists) deeply convinced that man was
a
norm-ruled being. He idealized homo
sociologicus who allowed himself to be “consumed” by
the institutions, and
who only posed questions regarding his own norm-ruledness in confused
moments.
Gehlen hated the abstract man of philosophy, construed through
“the uncommitted
and inconsequential acrobacy of reason” (p. 81) as well as the homo oeconomicus of economy, who
maximised self-interest rather than acting ritually without regard to
his own
needs. These passages give food for thought. While the example of
Gehlen in no
way demonstrates that the sociological presupposition of man as a
social,
normatively oriented being is in error, it shows this statement as
being
compatible with very different views as to which
norms should be regulatory of sociality. GEHLEN DID NOT
REMAIN A NAZI after the war, although he kept his foundational beliefs.
His
main concern was the decay of the institutions; they became rational
goal-implementing organizations, thus loosing their quality of
“intra-mundane
transcendence” (p. 79). Thus each individual is forced to take
greater
responsibility and into a state of reflectivity which is more or less
permanent. According to Gehlen, two problems result from this
development.
Firstly, action is partially replaced by reflection of a kind, which is
out of
touch with reality, and secondly, this intensified reflection is not
amenable
to institutionalization. Gehlen’s and
Schelsky’s views on this issue, and many others, came apart
(diverted) after the
war. Schelsky described the state of permanent reflection as the form
of
consciousness par excellence of
modern society – one that could and should be institutionalized,
for instance
as the publicity later described by Habermas. But the reflexive need
was also
about the need and demand for personal
freedom; a private and protected space for the freedom of thought
and of
speech, stated Schelsky, as he became more liberal. Schelsky’s
liberal turn
gave birth to a sharp critique of the way in which sociology
over-sociologized
the issue of freedom. He prescribed a liberal
“anti-sociology”, one which
should “break the sociological circle in which the social is
explained by means
of the social” and insists “in the autonomy of the human
being, on her ability
and right to take up a position in the middle of society which
simultaneously
allows her a distance to society” (p. 130). The right is
question was one that had to be won through a fight, a fight for just
laws
amongst other things. The relation between law and justice; legal norms
regarded as facts and their validity, is a theme which is later
discussed by
Habermas, first and foremost in Faktizität
und Geltung (1992). A line can also be drawn from Schelsky to
Habermas’
discussions on the technocratic state in the 1960’s, while he is
also
influenced by Gehlen, whose analysis of the rationalization of the
institutions
led him to raise the issue of how science, technique and the industries
gives
rise to a “dominion based on the force of things which is
functional and
impersonal” (p. 98). HABERMAS READS GEHLEN THE WORKS OF
HABERMAS can be subdivided into several distinct phases.
Heidegren’s main
concern is with the anthropological elements contained in his
publications
between the mid-1950’s and the end of the 70’s, that is,
before the publication
of Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns
(1981). Gehlen’s sociology and philosophical-anthropological
teachings are
central to Habermas early anthropological reflections. Like Gehlen,
Habermas
worried about the spread of technocracy and instrumental reason. He
agreed with
Gehlen’s description of man as a language-being and reflective
actor: Man is
capable of participating in reflective action together with others and
in
communication. These qualities should be institutionalized and serve as
a
buffer against the force of the system, thought Habermas – herein
lays the
potential for human liberation. Thus he agreed with post-war Schelsky,
and
disagreed with Gehlen. Gehlen, for his part, prescribed a ritual form
of action
– freedom through entfremdung – a
form of action, which although a part of the human repertoire, Habermas
admitted, was particularly influential on an early stage in human
development.
Primitive, mimetic action of this kind cannot, or at least should not
be part
of a polemic directed towards modern forms of life. Furthermore, such
an
orientation in no way reflects human nature: We are not destined to
remain in a
state of alienation forever. On the whole,
Habermas was sceptical towards teachings on anthropological invariance
that he
thought resulted in a one-sided focus on what remains constant at the
cost of
disregarding that, which is subject to historical change. However, as
Heidegren
shows, Habermas’ first formulations of a critical theory also
rest on a presupposition
of constant anthropological features. In Erkenntniss
und Interesse he claimed that man is a species with three knowledge
guiding
interests which were founded in the two fundamental preconditions for
the
reproduction and self-constitution of mankind; interaction as well as
work,
communicative rationality as well as aim-guided rationality. The claim
is based
on of Marx’ historical materialism and Weber’s concept of
rationalization,
reformulated as a theory of action. Hence the three knowledge-guiding
interests
were the technical interest (associated with the empirical and
analytical
sciences), the practical interest (associated with the historical and
hermeneutical sciences) – but also the liberating interest;
breaking down the
“fences that hinders a possible satisfaction of needs” was
in the interest of
working and interacting man (p. 228). This part was given to the
critical
social sciences. During Habermas’
linguistic turn in the 1970’s, the theory of quasi-transcendental
knowledge-guiding interests, the
anthropology of knowledge, was reformulated, becoming an
anthropology of competence; a rational reconstruction of human
abilities as quasi-transcendental rules – of our linguistic
abilities,
cognitive abilities, and role-competence. These anthropologically
fundamental
systems of rules, universal pragmatics, was combined with a theory of
social
evolution, being an “anthropological a priory attached to a
socio-cultural form
of existence” (p. 250), and hence to a theory of socialisation
inspired
primarily by Piaget’s theory of learning and Kohlberg’s
stage-based model of
moral development. HEIDEGREN IS RIGHT
in stating that the anthropological reflections become less explicit in
Habermas’ works after his linguistic turn. After his turn, he
focuses on the
constitutive norms of linguistic communication: He claims that the
structure of
conversations contains measures for the formulation of a critical
theory of
society. Still, one may ask whether the anthropological concern is a
constant
element in Habermas’ works. Is not the view of man as
“fragile” and
“inter-subjective” a foundation upon which discourse-ethics
rests? Habermas’ most
recent book, Die Zukunft der menschlichen
Natur (2001), discusses the moral challenges posed by the
developments in
biotechnology. Its main thesis is that biotechnology enables one to
interfere
with human nature in ways which may change the self understanding which
characterizes our species: Radical manipulation of our genetic material
will make
our self-conception as autonomous beings impossible to maintain. And
this fact
is a serious one, since this conception is intimately connected to our
democratic form of life. Thus, a discussion of these reflections,
containing
conceptions of an ethics of species,
on the basis of the topics of Antropologi,
samhällsteori och politik could prove to be an interesting one. HONNETH AND JOAS
are thoroughly influenced by Habermas. The latter’s reformulation
of historical
materialism in terms of a theory of communication signifies “the
beginning of a
new era” in the history of critical theory (p. 290), as stated by
Honneth in an
adjoining passage. However, they take a critical stand as to
Habermas’ reasons
for a critical theory. In 1980, they published Soziale
Handeln und menschliche Natur together, an attempt to
formulate a philosophical anthropology, inspired by Gehlen and Mead
among
others. A certain distance to Habermas is already present in this work,
but a
more thorough critique is formulated later, for instance in
Honneth’s Kritik der Macht (1985), where he
attacks Habermas’ dualism of normatively regulated and
non-normative fields of
action, a “reified transmission of both types of action –
communicative action
and action as a rational mean to an end – to concrete spheres of
societal
reproduction” (p. 291). Inspired by
Gehlen and Schelsky, Habermas describes the economy and the state as
being
expanding and norm-less organizations of action. Habermas locates the
counter-weight to this system-expansion in the life-sphere; in the
rationalization of communicatively integrated spheres of action free
from
power. Thus, states Honneth, power is rendered in terms of system
theory rather
than action theory, which makes descriptions of social interaction as a
“battle
between societal groups as the form of organization of action as means
to an
end” impossible (p. 292). HONNETH AND JOAS
belong to the tradition of social philosophy from Rousseau, Hegel and
Marx.
Taking this tradition and the works of Gehlen as their starting point,
they
attempt to formulate a weak, or formal, anthropology, one that
“does not
privilege a certain form of life as being the only normal form, but one
that is
still capable of singling out certain existing forms of life as being
pathological, based on ideas of the good life derived from
anthropology” (p.
298). The programme in question, critical theory conceived as a
critique of
social pathologies with a basis in anthropology, is presented as an
alternative
to “Left-Rawlsianism” as well as to deconstruction;
“a negativist social
critique” (p. 299). Honneth and Joas are also influenced by
American
pragmatism, in particular by Mead’s theory of socialization and
Dewey’s concept
of creative democracy. Furthermore, they refer to more recent French
thinkers
such as Merleau-Ponty, Castoriadis and their body-based anthropology,
but also
to Derrida, for instance in Honneth’s very interesting article
written in 1994,
“Das Andere der Gerechtigkeit. Habermas und die etische
Herausforderung der
Postmoderne”. Honneth’s
second major work (in addition to Kritik der Macht), Kampf um Anerkennung. Zur moralschen
Grammatikk sozialer Konflikte, was published two years
earlier, in 1992. In
this book, Hegel’s account of the dialectics of customs and
Mead’s theory of
taking over roles are synthesized into a theory of morally motivated
conflict
and battle, driven by people’s experiences of “being denied
the social
recognition to which they have a rightful claim” (p. 305). It is
a battle for
individual self-realization – and different forms of recognition
are required in order to reach this aim. Honneth is
concerned with three kinds of recognition: We need love
to secure our faith in ourselves, rights to secure our
self-respect, and solidarity or social esteem. And our
expectations of love, rights
and solidarity are anchored in our anthropological equipment. Where
these
expectations are violated, we are motivated to fight for recognition,
although
social movements are required to channel this motivation into real
fights. JOAS’ MAIN WORK, Die Kreativität des Handelns (1996) also
focuses on collective action and aims to formulate a formal conception
of the
good life, a formal concept of custom,
as a position in between a Kantian moral theory and a communitarian
ethics. He
starts from an anthropological concept of creative action containing a
non-teleological intentionality. Our aims are not decided before we
act, rather
they are shaped and reshaped in the course of our action by our bodily
habits
and dispositions, which, however, can be made subject to reflection (p.
335).
This action creates social order when social movements transform it
into
collective action. The normative kernel of this theory of societal
constitution
through creative action is the idea of
deciding for oneself; the actor is enabled to see the social order
as his
or her own work. Joas sees it as containing a democratic impulse, so to
say; it
prescribes a rudimentary democracy “in a rudimentary form”
(p. 343). The value
of democracy in a wide sense as a “way of living together”
– as “togetherness,
solidarity, fraternity and love of one’s neighbour” is
described as being
anchored in universal anthropological structures of action and
communication
(p. 345). HEIDEGREN TAKES A
FEW DETOURS during the course of his tale of the five selected
theorists. In
addition to reflections on the relations between the five thinkers and
American
pragmatism, French thinking, classical philosophy and sociology, he
presents
“Exkurs: Apel om Gehlen” (“Excursion: Apel on
Gehlen”) and “Mellanspel: Adorno
och Gehlen i diskussion” (“Intermezzo: Adorno and Gehlen in
a discussion”), the
latter referring to debate between the two on the radio in 1965 on the
question
“Is sociology a science of man?” (p. 177). The long passage
where the author
analyses the affinities between Gehlen’s institutionalism and
Luhmann’s
system-theory is also very enlightening. The problem with Antropologi,
samhällsteori och politik
is rarely what the book says, but frequently what it does not say. I
have
already mentioned the scarcity of information on the social
environments of the
five theorists. It poses a problem also because Heidegren himself in
his
closing chapter emphasises the importance of the “influence of
experiences,
basic orientations and attitudes towards life, in brief, stories of
motivation,
on theoretical work” (p. 359). He claims that such stories of
motivation are
particularly related to experiences that characterize specific
generations. For
instance, the focus of Habermas’ works can be seen in the light
of his
experiences with Nazism, and the theories of Honneth and Joas are
rooted in the
politization of the 1960’s (p. 358). His reflections on this
point remain
superficial, however – he does not really investigate his
interesting
generation-hypothesis further. THE CENTRAL
UNDERLYING THEME of Heidegren’s book; the relation between
anthropology and
normative theory, should have been discussed in such a closing chapter. Can philosophical anthropology provide the
evidence for the normative standards of social critique? How are our
conceptions of man related to our normative judgments? Does normative
theory
really require an anthropological foundation? If it does, how extensive
should
this foundation be? These questions are worth posing because:
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