Posted on 07/25/2010 1:37:12 PM PDT by betty boop
TWO REVOLUTIONS, TWO VIEWS OF MAN
By Jean F. Drew
As every American schoolchild has been taught, in Western history there were two great sociopolitical revolutions that took place near the end of the eighteenth century: The American Revolution of 1775; and the French, of 1789. Children are taught that both revolutions were fought because of human rights in some way; thus bloody warfare possibly could be justified, condoned so long as the blood and treasure were shed to protect the “rights of man.” The American schoolchild is assured that the American and French revolutions were both devoted to the expansion of human rights and thus were equally noble revolutions. Moreover, it is widely believed that the French Revolution was an evolution from the American one.
Rather than simply accept these ideas uncritically, comparison and contrast of the two revolutions can shed some light on what turns out to be their stark differences — as to inceptions, ostensible goals, foundational ideology, and respective outcomes.
Inceptions
There is a famous Pythagorean maxim (c. sixth century B.C.): “The beginning is the half of the whole.” That is to say, inception events have a way of profoundly influencing the course of events that follow from them; and so their analysis can give insight into the character of their development in time, and even of the motivations they configure. Less obviously, an inception event is itself the culmination of a train of social, political, and cultural development that finally “erupts,” or takes evident shape, as a concrete beginning, or precipitating event of what follows. At that point, a situation of no return has been reached: “The fat is in the fire.” There is no turning back….
And so, let us take a look at the beginnings of two revolutions:
The American:
“In London George III and his cabinet, their confidence bolstered by their huge majority in Parliament, moved toward a confrontation with the Americans. On February 2, 1775, [Prime Minister Frederick, Lord] North introduced a motion to declare the province of Massachusetts in a state of rebellion and asked the King to take steps to support the sovereignty of England. The opposition, led by Edmund Burke, decried this move as a declaration of war. But the measure passed by a majority of three to one. George III was immensely pleased….”
The King decided to send some 1,000 reinforcements to Boston, far short of the number that Governor General Thomas Gage had wanted.
“…The King and his ministers still refused to believe Gage’s assessment of the odds he faced…. Colonel James Grant — who had served in America, at one point in the same army with George Washington [in the French and Indian Wars] — declared he was certain the Americans ‘would never dare to face an English army.’… In this spirit the King … ordered Lord Dartmouth to draft a letter telling Gage that it was time to act.”
Gage promptly acted. Thanks to his spies, he knew that the Colonials were accumulating military stores at Concord, including large quantities of gunpowder. So Gage decided that a swift march on Concord to seize the powder as well as the fourteen cannon said to be in the town “would have a crippling, even demoralizing impact on the Provincial Congress’s plans to form an Army of Observation to pen the British inside Boston.”
From this decision ensued, on April 19, 1775, the opening shot — “the shot heard ’round the world” — of the American Revolutionary War, at North Bridge, Concord, Massachusetts at about 8 o’clock in the morning.
Although the Colonials already knew the British were coming to Concord and Lexington sooner or later, and for what purpose, and that the incursion would come by a night march (rare in that day) — the Americans proved early to be remarkably effective spies — what they did not know was the specific date, or whether the British forces would be moving by land — over Boston Neck — or by sea — in longboats across the Back Bay. Hence the famous signal of “one if by land, two if by sea” posted at the Old North Church, wherein observers were keeping an eye on British troop movements.
It turned out to be “two”: The British forces, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, were subsequently debarked at Cambridge across the Charles River, from longboats attached to H.M.S. Somerset then standing guard over the Boston Harbor ferryway. This was a force of some 700 men composed of light infantrymen and “fearsome” grenadiers. From thence the body proceeded overland, on a much shorter march than would have been the case had they approached Concord via Boston Neck. The route from Cambridge to Concord led straight through the heart of the neighboring town of Lexington.
As soon as the news came that the British were moving, Paul Revere set upon his famous midnight ride “on a fast mare,” traveling west at high speed to warn the people of Concord and the surrounding towns that the British were coming. Samuel Prescott and William Dawes likewise fanned out on horseback, spreading the alert to all within earshot.
The folks at Concord, having thus been warned, working feverishly overnight, managed to remove all the military stores to safe locations. The locals felt confident they could handle the threat: After all, the town had 600 drilled and trained Minutemen on spot, and there were some 6,000 other Minutemen and Militia — a body composed of all able-bodied men between the ages of 15 and 60 — within fairly easy reach of Concord town who were already pledged to come to her aid in the event of the outbreak of actual hostilities.
The people of Concord evidently figured a show of force would suffice to deter the British officers from doing anything rash. But really what they were relying on was their expectation — based on their understanding of the so-far prevailing rules of engagement, frequently tested — that British troops would never open fire on their fellow citizens — i.e., the Colonials themselves, who were British subjects also — unless they were fired upon first. And the Americans did not intend to fire first.
In this assessment of the situation on the ground, they were sadly mistaken. In the approach to Concord, the Brits had provoked a bloody engagement at Lexington Green in which “the British light infantry unquestionably fired the first volleys, killing eight men and wounding ten.” Then the British forces continued their march into Concord, to secure the bridges of the town: The British commander Smith had detached four squadrons to visit a prominent local farm to see whether contraband might be stashed there; and feared his troops could not safely return if the North Bridge were under the control of the Colonials. In defense of the bridge, the Brits again fired first. For a moment, the Americans could not believe this was happening. “‘Goddamn it,’ one man shouted, ‘They are firing ball!’” Then their commander, Major Buttrick, “whirled and shouted, ‘Fire fellow soldiers, for God’s sake fire.’” The Americans sustained six casualties at North Bridge, all fatal. On the British side, “Two privates were killed and a sergeant, four privates and four officers were wounded.”
Then the Brits cut their losses and in disorderly retreat high-tailed it back to the security of their barracks in Boston — empty-handed. Their mission was a failure: They had not found, let alone confiscated, any military stores.
But the American Revolutionary War was officially ON….
* * * * * * *
The French:
“History will record, that on the morning of the 6th of October 1789, the king and queen of France, after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down, under the pledged security of public faith, to indulge nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled melancholy repose. From this sleep the queen was first startled by the voice of the sentinel at her door, who cried out to her, to save herself by flight — that this was the last proof of fidelity he could give — that they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with his blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with an hundred strokes of bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted woman had just time to fly almost half naked, and through ways unknown to the murderers had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and husband, not secure of his own life for a moment.
“This king … and this queen, and their infant children (who once would have been the pride and hope of a great and generous people) were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the most splendid palace in the world, which they left swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewed with scattered limbs and mutilated carcasses. Thence they were conducted into the capital of their kingdom. Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous slaughter which was made of the gentlemen of birth and family who composed the king’s bodyguard. These two gentlemen, with all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly and publicly dragged to the block, and beheaded…. Their heads were stuck upon spears, and led the procession; whilst the royal captives who followed in the train were slowly moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell…. After they had been made to taste, drop by drop, more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture of a journey of twelve miles protracted to six hours, they were, under a guard composed of those very soldiers who had thus conducted them through this famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of Paris, now converted into a Bastile for kings….”
And thus, the French Revolutionary War was officially ON….
On the question of origins — beginnings, inceptions, precipitating events — it would appear that the American and French Revolutions do not seem to resemble one another very much. It’s difficult to draw a common understanding of what human rights might be on the basis of such disparate evidence.
On the one hand, it’s possible to see that perhaps human rights had something to do with the defense of Concord: People coming together to protect and defend their lives, liberty, and property against the tyranny of George III, who then was most corruptly usurping the ancient “rights of Englishmen” not only in America, but also back in the home isles — as the Colonials were very well aware.
People today do not appreciate how close was the tie with the “mother country” at the time, through the printed word: In that day, the London presses were offloading their publications directly onto American ships bound for Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, as soon as the ink was dry. It was from the London press that the Colonials learned of the usurpations of individual liberty that good King George was perpetrating at home, not to mention in their own backyard. They wanted no part of it.
On the other hand, it’s difficult to see what human right is implicated in the inception event of the French Revolution — unless it be the right to commit regicide. Or maybe the right to agitate and deploy mobs as instruments of social and political change….
In the end, “Citizen Louis Capet,” formerly known as King Louis XVI of France, was tried and convicted of treason by the National Convention and was guillotined on 21 January 1793 — the only French king in history to fall victim to regicide. His queen, Marie Antoinette, was also tried and convicted of treason: She was executed by guillotine on 16 October 1793, nine months after her husband.
Ostensible Goals
It seems clear that the Americans were not seeking to kill the king, or to overthrow the traditions of the British constitutional monarchy. Rather, they were seeking a complete, formal separation from it — because they were motivated by the conviction that their historic liberties were being systematically violated by George III.
By 1775, the Americans already had a tradition of local or self-government going back some 150 years. When the king sent in his governors, who ruled autocratically as directed by himself and his council, the Americans were outraged. The maxim “no taxation without representation” was but one expression of their revulsion for what they perceived as the wholesale destruction of the historic liberties of British subjects in America. The Sons of Liberty at Boston, notably including Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock, eloquently argued for total separation from the British Crown — not the most popular idea at first. But the events at Lexington Green and Concord Bridge caused many to reappraise their position on this matter. In the end, complete separation was the idea that prevailed, and which was finally achieved….
So what was this notion of liberty that had the Americans so exercised? John Trenchard and Robert Gordon, writing in Cato’s Letters — serially published in The London Journal in 1721 and after, which was avidly read in America at the time — describe human liberty as follows:
All men are born free; Liberty is a Gift which they receive from God; nor can they alienate the same by Consent, though possibly they may forfeit it by crimes....
Liberty is the power which every man has over his own Actions, and the Right to enjoy the Fruit of his Labor, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Member of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys.
The fruits of a Man’s honest Industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above Limitations, every Man is sole Lord and Arbiter of his own private Actions and Property....
These were the ideas that had earlier inspired the Glorious Revolution of 1688, of which the great British philosopher and political activist, John Locke (1632–1704) — a thinker enormously respected in America — was the intellectual father. Above all, Locke’s ideas constitute a theory of the individual human being. This is the same theory that inspired the American Revolution of 1775: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….” Indeed, it appears the author of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) was strongly resonating to Locke’s essential political ideas in these passages.
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) — the great Anglo-Irish statesman, political theorist, and philosopher (who as already noted was sympathetic to the American cause) — also articulated the historic rights of Englishmen, and of all free peoples universally, as follows:
“…If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; the law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to justice; as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in political function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry; and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents; to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring; to instruction in life, and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing on others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. But as to the share of power, authority and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing to be settled by convention.
“If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That convention must limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory power are its creatures. They can have no being in any other state of things; and how can a man claim, under the conventions of civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose its existence?”
This last point draws attention to Burke’s understanding that the foundational rights of man declared by the French philosophes — Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité — are purely abstract rights indicating no sign of understanding of, or connection with, the actual development and maintenance of a just civil society. In other words, the philosophes envisioned man abstractly, or to put it another way, as abstracted from both nature and society as if this abstract man stands as a total end in himself, as sacrosanct, beyond any demand of society which nature assigns to him as inescapable part and participant of it. It seems the philosophes first reduce the human being to an abstraction — by taking him entirely out of the context of historical experience and traditional understandings of natural law going back millennia. Then, with man having been so abstracted, from there it is easy to dissolve him into an abstract mass: The individual is no longer the natural or even “legal” bearer of rights; rather, the legal bearer of rights is now the mass, the “group”— mankind at large or however else defined.
There is a further consideration regarding the original American founding that we should remember today: The British colony at Massachusetts was not established by means of military power — which is the usual way that states of whatever description acquire new territories. Instead, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was established by religious refugees: They were dissenters from the Church of England, the established church of which the reigning king was titular head.
Beginning with Henry VIII and extending to all his successors, the king of England entirely combined in his own person both the fundamental secular and spiritual authority of British society. But, when religious pilgrims on November 11, 1620, at Provincetown, Massachusetts, ratified what has been described as the first written constitution in human history, the Mayflower Compact, they were acting in resonance to a spiritual authority superior to that of the then-reigning king, James I — or of kings in general.
Just by making the voyage to America, the religious refugees were repudiating the authority of the king over their spiritual lives. Once there, the secular authority of the king was of absolutely no help to them. They had to shift for themselves, and basic survival was the highest priority: Almost the majority of the original colony perished during their first New England winter. They were forced to place their reliance entirely on themselves, on each other, and on God. The Mayflower Compact, moreover, made the pilgrim’s primary reliance on God perfectly explicit. Its first five words are: “In the name of God, Amen.”
Hold that thought while we turn to the French experience.
For centuries, the foundation of French society, culture, and politics had been the idea of the Etats General, of which there were three “estates”: the aristocracy, whose head was the King; the Church, whose head was the Pope; and everybody else; i.e., your average, everyday, common, “small” people….
What is known is that when King Louis XVI was decapitated, the social force of the French aristocracy was effectively decapitated with him. Also it is known that in the four-year period between the invasion of the queen’s bedchamber and the execution of the king, some 16,000 French men and women were guillotined at Paris — mainly aristocrats and other well-off people — as “enemies of the State.” Also all Church lands (probably accounting for some twenty percent of the total French real estate) and property were forcibly confiscated by the State, now reposed in a body called the National Assembly, composed by the Third Estate, the “people” of France. Thousands of clergy — bishops, priests, monks, and nuns — were murdered.
In effect the Third Estate utterly destroyed the other two: That’s the French Revolution in a nutshell.
Foundational Ideology
The French Revolution managed to kill off the first two Estates — and with that, evidently hoped to extinguish forever all aristocratic and theological ideas, pretensions, and powers regarding questions of the human condition. Indeed, the general expectation then seemed to be the Third Estate, the people, unchained from past “superstitions” and “repressions,” had at last come into its own sphere, where it could finally define and exercise true human “liberty.”
But the people were not some sort of homogeneous mass. Rather, there is a natural hierarchical order within the Third Estate similar to that found in both the aristocratic and theological estates.
In France at the time, at the top of this natural hierarchy were the people with expertise in manufacturing, commerce, banking, and law. They were the beneficiaries of the rising tide of the Enlightenment, as plentifully nourished from the side of Newtonian science.
In the rank immediately below them were the skilled craftsmen. Below this, relatively unskilled laborers. Then, the “least” of the people, the peasants/serfs who mainly were the impoverished suffering victims of the feudal order then embraced by both the aristocracy and the Church.
Thus within the Third Estate there were marked disparities of wealth, opportunity, education, talent, and ability. Yet the doctrine of Egalité erases all such distinctions: An Einstein and the most ignorant day laborer were considered “equal.” All were “equal” in the National Assembly too. On this basis, the doctrine of Fraternité, of the universal brotherhood of mankind, is blind and silent regarding the problem of: how the victims of the revolution become “non-brothers” in the first place, such that they could be destroyed with impunity by the mob, or condemned as “enemies of the state” by the National Convention and sent to the guillotine. On this basis, the doctrine of Liberté seems little more than a defense of gratuitous, passionate license that is immensely destructive to society.
Burke’s analysis of the situation in France, the condition of the National Assembly, and their combined implications, retains its extraordinary political noteworthiness to defenders of Liberty in our own day:
“It is no wonder therefore, that it is with these ideas of everything in their constitution and government at home, either in church or state, as illegitimate and usurped, or, at best as a vain mockery, they look abroad with an eager and passionate enthusiasm. Whilst they are possessed by these notions, it is vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form of a constitution, whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of long experience, and an increasing public strength and national prosperity.
“They despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; and as for the rest, they have wrought underground a mine that will blow up at one grand explosion all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament. They have ‘the rights of men.’ Against these there can be no prescription; against these no agreement is binding; these admit no temperament [modification], and no compromise: anything withheld from their full demand is so much of fraud and injustice. Against these their rights of men let no government look for security in the length of its continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration….”
Burke again reminds us a few pages later on that there is deep danger in relying on abstract rights when it comes to the organization of a just — that is “liberal,” in the sense of liberty, the root idea of classical liberalism — political society:
“The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men, each to govern himself, and suffer any artificial positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is which makes the constitution of a state, and the due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength, and remedies to its distempers. What is the use of discussing a man’s abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor of metaphysics.”
In Burke’s view — and I daresay in the view of his contemporary American readers — the French Revolution was a
“… usurpation which, in order to subvert ancient institutions, has destroyed ancient principles, will hold power by arts similar to those by which it has acquired it. When the old feudal and chivalrous spirit of Fealty, which by freeing kings from fear, freed both kings and subjects from the precautions of tyranny, shall be extinct in the minds of men, plots and assassinations will be anticipated by preventive murder and preventive confiscation, and that long roll of grim and bloody maxims which form the political code of all power not standing on its own honor and the honor of those who are to obey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle.”
“Excuse me … if I have dwelt too long on this atrocious spectacle of the sixth of October 1789, or have given too much scope to the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most important of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day, I mean a revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions. As things now stand, with everything respectable destroyed without us, and an attempt to destroy within us every principle of respect, one is almost forced to apologize for harboring the common feelings of men….”
Clearly, Burke understands the French Revolution first and foremost as a “revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions” — that is, it was preeminently a social, not a political revolution. Certainly that was not the case with the American Revolution. Indeed, Bernard Bailyn, eminent professor of Early American History at Harvard, has asked a tantalizing question: Was the American Revolution a revolution, or was it an evolution?
The prevailing American view at the time did not reject the ancient British tradition of natural liberty under natural law; it was rejecting King George as the traducer and usurper of this tradition. They didn’t want a king or a pope; they wanted a system of self-government that had already been in long usage in America. Ultimately they wanted a Constitution exclusively devoted to the defense of human liberty under just and equal laws. Which if history was of any guide meant that the action of the State had to be kept minimal in its scope by well-defined authority.
Most colonial Americans, being heirs of the same ancient, natural-law cultural tradition as Edmund Burke, likely would have agreed with him about this:
“…We are not the converts of Rousseau; we are not the disciples of Voltaire; Helvetius has made no progress amongst us. Atheists are not our preachers; madmen are not our lawgivers. We know that we have made no discoveries; and we think that no discoveries are to be made, in morality; nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, which were understood long before we were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grave has heaped its mould on our presumption….”
The allusion to Rousseau here is particularly instructive. Rousseau held that man is born perfectly good: He is born the “noble savage.” But as soon as he is in the world long enough, he becomes subject to a relentless process of corruption that makes him “bad” — because of the “bad institutions” of society, including churches and states, educational systems, economic organizations, and so forth. Man is victimized by society and powerless against it. “Bad institutions” are entirely to blame for human misery.
In short, Rousseau’s doctrine is directly opposed to the natural law doctrine that human beings are responsible (within limits) for whatever happens to them. Natural law theory holds that individual human beings alone have the ability to choose, decide, act; and that they are responsible for the decisions they make. And this implies the objective existence of good and evil. It also requires a universal (divine) spiritual authority to underwrite the foundational truths of the natural and moral worlds, thus to bring them into correspondence in human reason and experience.
In short, the Americans were not disciples of Rousseau…. He stands their theory of man on its very head.
Two Views of Man — Then and Now
The two revolutions have theories of man that are diametrically opposed, based on the idea of what constitutes human liberty, of the source of human rights. What Locke and Burke and the Americans held in common was the belief that human rights are the gifts of God, and are therefore inseparable from human nature itself. In other words, these rights inalienably inhere in concrete individual persons, each and every one, equally.
In contrast, on the French revolutionary view, human rights are the province of an abstraction known as “mankind.” Its doctrine is the Rights of Man — not the equal, inalienable rights of actual men. It sets up scope for the idea of “group rights,” as opposed to the idea of rights divinely vested in the individual person in such a way as to constitute his or her very own human nature. Under the French Revolution, the “metaphysicians” — Burke’s term for intellectual elites — would guide the rest of us in our understanding of such matters. In short, our rights as human beings ineluctably would be what politically powerful elites tell us they are. There is to be no higher standard of truth than that.
In the so-called post-modern world, the revolution that works overtime to kill truth wants to destroy it at its root — at the Logos. Rather than engage in fully free and fair debate, the entire project of the French Revolution seems have been the delegitimation of the idea that there is an “objective” standard by which Reality can be ascertained and judged, the root criterion for the discernment of good and evil in the actual world, by which human beings, acting according to reason and experience, can guide their lives in fruitful ways — or do the opposite. In short, once the concept of good and evil is destroyed, the human being has no firm guide by which to navigate his own personal existence.
Instead of the perennial question of good v. evil, in the post-modern world some “metaphysicians” tell us there is no objective truth at all — which logically follows from the presupposition of the “death” of God which they have, like Rousseau, already achieved in their own minds. The description of human reality thus boils down to a competition of amoral human “narratives,” or skilled opinions; but in the end still opinions. And under the principle of Egalité, one man’s opinion is just like any other man’s, neither good nor bad.
It appears we have among us today “metaphysicians” who desire, in the words of the great Anglo-American poet T. S. Eliot, to contrive and execute “systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.” And then to impose them on humanity. To succeed in this project, first they have to discredit the foundational motivating ideas of the American Revolution….
To speak of the Now: The currently sitting American president seems to be an activist of the French model. He is distinctly a post-modernist thinker, as an analysis of his words vis-à-vis his actions will show. Evidently he has no sympathy for the values, principles, and goals of the American Revolution, and has disparaged the Constitution — to which he freely swore an Oath of fidelity — on grounds that it is a “system of negative liberties” that has outlived its usefulness.
Indeed, it appears that he is doing everything in his power finally to drive a silver stake through the very heart of American liberty — the historic liberty of We the People of the United States of America, and that of our Posterity — for which the Constitution originally was “ordained and established.”
©2010 Jean F. Drew
ENDNOTES
1 Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, David Fideler, ed., Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1988, p. 97.
2 Thomas Fleming, Liberty!: The American Revolution, New York: Viking, 1997, p. 104f.
3 Fleming, p. 105.
4 Ibid.
5 Fleming, p. 112.
6 Fleming, p. 118.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, New York: The Classics of Liberty Library, 1982, p. 105f. Note: Because this edition is a facsimile of the original publication of 1790, I’ve taken the liberty of modernizing the spelling and punctuation.
10 John Trenchard and Robert Gordon, Cato’s Letters, Vol. 1, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1995, p. 406ff.
11 Burke, p. 87–88.
12 Burke, p. 85–86.
13 Burke, p. 89–90.
14 Burke, p. 116.
15 Burke, p. 119; emphasis added.
16 Burke, p. 127–128; emphasis added.
Yes. And it changes as the society changes. What was morally unacceptable 50 years ago is not considered immoral today. Half a century ago, separate but equal was morally acceptable; today it is "hate speech." The Founding Fathers did not condemn slavery as immoral in their days because in their society it wasn't, even though there was already a movement underway to free the slaves elsewhere.
Even Lincoln, who is credited for freeing the Southern slaves, would be considered a bigot today if one reads what he had to say about the blacks.
Today calling someone a "Negro" is considered unconventional at best and outright racist as worst. And while 'black' is not frowned upon (yet), African-American is considered more proper (but not European-American for e whites). Likewsie the perfectly legitimate English word 'neggardly' is not much in use today and some poltician a while ago lost his job over it. All man-made "morality."
Much of the Old Testament morally prescribed standards would be considered morally unacceptable today—on moral grounds. Whose moral grounds? Certainly not God's! If God were the source of our morality than every word in the Bible would be practiced as morally upright to this day.
What you are describing is conventionalism, i.e., that you ought to do what your society tells you to do
That's how every society works. We raise our children according to what we believe is right, and we congregate in groups that share the same outlook on life. We discourage or prohibit that which we find hurtful, or counterproductive for the society and our own interests and values. We believe our society is superior to others.
which if you think about it for a moment leaves you no basis or grounds for your condemnation of the destruction of the state and lawlessness of the French revolution
The grounds for condemnation are that the anarchy that resulted is antisocial, it threatens the survival, destroys the security offered by the society, it threatens our property, privileges, etc. and, academically speaking, it is not what the 17th century Lockean Liberalism advocated.
If there is no law above society and moral rules are relative to society, then once French society speaks, end of discussion. Fin.
What law is above the society? What law can be in effect unless the society, or a subset of society accepts it as the law?
Part of morality is also culture and tradition. 0bama says the Muslims have the legal right to built their mosque at Ground Zero in Manhattan because the law allows them.
But the history of that site says it is improper, indecent and an in-your-face provocation. The law was created for man; not man for the law.
This is like saying can we put up an all-naked strip joint right next to a church? Just because the law may allow doesn't mean it is proper because it disturbs the social order, it is disingenuous, polarizing, potentially violent, or just plain antisocial, unnecessary, etc.
I think you already have proved it by your condemnation of the French revolution
I don't think so. One would have to define God first before one can make God the standard. And, as I said, if scripture is as close as it comes to God standards, I really don't think the Bible is the best source to emulate when it comes to morality and acceptable punishment, even though it supposed to be from none other than God himself.
If you really believe the scriptures are inerrant word of God, then you ought to believe that stoning disrespectful children to death should be morally acceptable for all times, for the Bible musthave been true back then as it must be today.
Yet in terms of what view of reality and knowledge inherent in the moral conventionalism that you espouse do you assume that there is anything like an objective criterion of morality by which to find the French revolution lacking?
French anarchy is no different than any other anarchy. Anarchy is undesirable for many objective reasons, but I am sure some lone Grizzly Adams living by himself in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere couldn't give a rat's about any law or morality because he doesn't have to. Nor is he technically subject to any laws other than nature.
Yes, Rousseau believed the direct democracy was the preferred form of government.
And that direction was?
Lawlessness and anarchy.
What you are saying, it appears, is that human values are self-created, subjective, fleeting, and relative.
That's how every society works. We raise our children according to what we believe is right, and we congregate in groups that share the same outlook on life. We discourage or prohibit that which we find hurtful, or counterproductive for the society and our own interests and values. We believe our society is superior to others.
Morality by social construct led to the murders of six million Jews in Europe. That sort of normative ethical relativism logically leads to the absurd conclusion that people like Dietrich Bonhoffer and Corrie Ten Boom who disobeyed Hitler's edicts were, by definition, immoral. We believe our society is superior to others - based on and measured against what? Other can self-created, subjective, changing values?
The grounds for condemnation are that the anarchy that resulted is antisocial, it threatens the survival, destroys the security offered by the society, it threatens our property, privileges, etc. and, academically speaking, it is not what the 17th century Lockean Liberalism advocated.
While I agree with your assessments, I still must point out that the examples you use to explain or account for morality are all ultimately based on some prior moral notion for their support, which says nothing ontologically about the source or grounding of morality itself. Without God, you have only a couple of options left, and without begging the question it is going to be very difficult for you to explain how a materialist, impersonal universe that is the result of nothing but the result of blind chance or necessity is the origin or source of prescriptive moral truths that exist outside of our opinion of them, and that are incumbent upon us to obey in the future. Why should I not be selfish, or antisocial, or why I should care about the survival of society, or the security of society, or other people's property or privileges if nothing transcends nature itself?
What law is above the society? What law can be in effect unless the society, or a subset of society accepts it as the law?
Do you believe that moral right and wrong exist outside our opinion? I think the Founders did. The appeal of the Declaration that the Founders signed was to a Law above the law to which even governments are beholden:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Unalienable refers to, among other things, something that cannot rightfully be abrogated, and the ground and source of that non-transferability according to the Founders is the endowment of a transcendent Creator. On the other hand, if your rights come only from society then society can decide to take them away, if society says so, and in that case the society says view of morality that you espouse here leaves you without standing for complaint.
Cordially,
What you are saying, it appears, is that human values are self-created, subjective, fleeting, and relative
Societies are man-made, and so are the values that govern them. Just as the societies evolve so do their moral values. They are subjective, and relative, but not fleeting, imo.
Morality by social construct led to the murders of six million Jews in Europe
Bible morality justifies exterminationnbsp;of entire nations found to be offensive, including children and even animals. By biblicla standards, a complete destruction of every German man, woman, child and animal would have been jusitfied in the aftermath of Hitler's reign.
What moral leg does the Bible stand on to criticize Hitler or Stalin and others like them? Or to offer its morality as a suitable norm?
That sort of normative ethical relativism logically leads to the absurd conclusion that people like Dietrich Bonhoffer and Corrie Ten Boom who disobeyed Hitler's edicts were, by definition, immoral.
No it doesn't. I am sure some would come to that absurd conclusion, but the majority of people wouldn't. But what does that mean? Even the Soviets were outraged with Hitler, yet perfectly capable of massive murder of groups they considered their soul enemies. The fact that Stalin was not much different didn't stop us from forming an alliance with him. Pragmatism trumps morality every time.
the examples you use to explain or account for morality are all ultimately based on some prior moral notion for their support, which says nothing ontologically about the source or grounding of morality itself.
The Enlightenment created a new set of moral standards precisely by asserting that sovereign authority is vested in the will of the people and not divinely imposed through a king. This is the exact opposite of what the Bible tells us.
I think it will be much more difficult for you to explain, let alone prove, that there are prescriptive moral truths that exist "outside of our opinion" or that they are incumbent upon us to obey in the future.
Why should I not be selfish, or antisocial, or why I should care about the survival of society, or the security of society, or other people's property or privileges if nothing transcends nature itself?
Because we behave naturally according to the Golden Rule, and, more importantly, because selfishness in our society has a negative connotation; it is inherently anti-social, and therefore undesirable for any society, large or small.
Our morals are not "out there." There is nothing moral or compassionate about nature. In fact, it's just the opposite. We don't live in nature but outside of it in our man-made island called civilization—cities, houses, states etc. Nature may be pretty from the distance and the comfort of our civilization, but it is a pretty nasty place, perilous, cruel and violent.
Humanity as we know it is learned and man-made. So are its values and, of course, morality. If you took a child from the moment he was born and kept him in the back yard, with enough food and water and no other human interaction, I am willing to bet he would lack morality, compassion, good manners, language, etc.
There is nothing intrinsically moral about the "natural man". A natural man is really not human as we think of humans, but only if he is properly civilized, that is—brought up, taught, trained to be a domesticated beast. As long as we remind ourselves that this domestication is also a man-made product of human culture and not something "out there".
A Muslim father will go as far as to kill his wife (or wives) or daughter(s), which they call "mercy" killing, to defend the family honor. Their twisted religious beliefs tell them it is morally right to do that! I am sure the Muslims will tell you that their sharia law is morally "upright." Sadly, if you or I or any one of us were brought up Muslim, we'd believe that too. So, yes, I say morality is man-made.
No. I see no evidence of that.
I think the Founders did. The appeal of the Declaration that the Founders signed was to a Law above the law to which even governments are beholden:
What they wrote was very logical and self-evident. They realized that all humans are born without a contract, and therefore under no obligation. How do we know that? Simple: none of us asked to be born, but here we are.
We owe nothing to anyone for being alive. We are free. That freedom was not granted upon us by some king, or government, but by the very fact that we are alive and that this is everyone's world.
Brought unbound into the world, we certainly have a natural right to do as we please (be free) to seek satisfaction (happiness), because all living things seek to satisfy their needs. Also, by the manner of birth we are are obviously equal. We all put on our pants one leg at a time.
And because none of this was given to us by any man-made institution or king, or government, etc. it cannot be taken away by any of them. Very self-evident.
Unalienable refers to, among other things, something that cannot rightfully be abrogated, and the ground and source of that non-transferability according to the Founders is the endowment of a transcendent Creator
It cannot be abrogated because it was never given by a society; rather it was given by nature and what the Founders called the Nature's God. As far as I know, no Founding Father was an atheist, so yes, they all believed in some sort of deity.
By agreeing to a social contract people give up a portion of some of their rights for the general (mutually beneficial) good. A government commissioned by a social contract is obligated contractually to deliver something in return for those rights surrendered to it by the people, things that benefit all, that make us stronger and safer, and economically better off.
The social contract places the sovereignty in the people, and not in the king or the government. The government is commissioned to serve the people, is a pulbic servent (tell that to our Imperial Congress and the White House!). A government that decides to play god and violates the contract is immoral, by definition.
Using social contract as the man-made standard, then, any government that tells the people how they should think what they should eat, whom they must love, what they much purchase, etc., is not a society in harmony with our creation and therefore undesirable and inherently immoral.
But if we follow the Bible as the standard, then any authority is from God and the rulers are divinely anointed sons of God who are to be obeyed. Disobedience, then, is seen as rebellion against God and therefore inherently evil.
So, we have two mutually exclusive man-made "working models" of the society, one placing the moral high ground in the natural man, and the other in a God-annointed ruler; one wiht moral obligation of the authoirty to serve the people, and the other one with the obligation to obey all authority because all authority comes from God. These represemnt two morally exclusive standards.
As for the French Revolution, the Enlightened philosophers realized that nature, man, society and government should be in harmony which is achieved through social contract: Man is free, he freely forms an association with others of his kind, freely forms a government by contract, the governed give up some of their sovereignty in order to receive mutual benefits in return; Man remains free.
The French Revolution never achieved that harmony. One tyrant was replaced by another, even by multiple tyrants. There was no contract and the society was in discord with the natural order of things. As such it was immoral according to the social contract. It was immoral according to the Biblical standard as well, for a different reason of course, because it rebelled against the God-annointed sovereign king.
Merciful Heavens! Whatever led Monsieur Rousseau to think that twenty eight million Frenchmen could make a ‘direct’ democracy (a ‘pure’ democracy?) work? Or, for that matter, twenty eight million of anyone.
“Lawlessness and anarchy.”
An inevitable outcome, surely. Lawlessness and anarchy . . . the fruits of the “social contract.” Monsieur Rousseau is thought brilliant? Yet, this was the best he could do? Like today’s Socialist Democrat, perhaps Rousseau was judged by his intentions and not by his results. So . . . when his ideas failed, a bunch of thugs took over and declared themselves the new elite. We seem to be repeating history.
He didn't. He admired the type of government in Geneva at that time, realizing it would never work in France (too big as you suggest), which is why he modified his social contract to include a representative form of government, as a necessary evil, not as a preferred choice.
Monsieur Rousseau is thought brilliant?
Actually he was subjected to rather strong criticism form the English side of the social contract for allegedly idealizing the "natural man."
So . . . when his ideas failed, a bunch of thugs took over and declared themselves the new elite. We seem to be repeating history.
He was dead eleven years when the French Revolution broke out. But he wouldn't be the first or the last philosopher whose ideas were misused for extreme political purposes. Nietzsche comes to mind.
Well, that's certainly an understatement! Certainly the "English" who objected would include Edmund Burke (who you seem to cite in support of your own view, which is mystifying to me); and Jonathan Swift — among others. Rousseau didn't "allegedly" idealize the "natural man." He actually did so.
Trouble there is Reality trumps ideological idealizations every time.
In Monsieur Rousseau's book, man is born a "noble savage." Which strikes some sensibilities as being an outright oxymoron on logical grounds. But he never explains this "term of art." He cites no empirical evidence in support of it (though he had several millennia of human experience and history to draw from, had he chosen to do so); no fuller definition is forthcoming. This term of art stands as simply an unsupported allegation, which we are instructed to uncritically accept. But it is interesting to note that where such "allegations" loaded into the base of abstract systems have actually been tried in human history, all have failed — to the misery of untold numbers of human beings.
Obviously, there must be some deeper truth in Nature than man as the Noble Savage. Or man as the center of moral order in the universe. But that's the very truth that neither Rousseau — and one sadly suspects, nor dear kosta — refuses to accept.
If man is the center of order in the universe, then it should be perfectly legitimate to accept that 28 million Frenchmen — of virtually uncountable degrees of intelligence, culture, and condition — can make a "representative form of government," a social contract. And thereby establish a workable "democracy."
But this overlooks the problem of: How do you get 28 million Frenchmen to agree about what should be in that social contract? Are you going to poll them? (Oh, isn't that what an election is all about?) The peasant wants to fill his belly, and his family's bellies, and hopefully get some security WRT property into his insecure position in society. The merchant or banker is looking after his mercantile or banking interests. The lawyer, the dignity of his profession, on which his personal revenues depend. The guildsman, the rights and privileges of his trade. The sick, the "right" to be healed. The hungry, the right to be fed. Etc., etc.
Dear kosta, earlier you wrote: "Morality is part of society and society is man-made. Reason is capacity humans are born with."
Well we know that morality is necessarily "part of society." [Let alone that "part" business for now; to me fidelity to the moral law is the whole of a just, free, good society — and I do believe the historical record is on my side here.] If morality is man-made — if it is something that is to be determined by 28 million Frenchmen — then how can we even call it "morality?" You can't base the moral law on the shifting sands of human self-interest and cupidity.
As usual, betty boop, I am at a complete loss as to what you are talking about, and why do you have to distort everything I say? To wit:
(1) I did not say "English;" I said "English side," the Anglophone critics of his.
(2) Exactly where do I "seem to cite" Edmund Burke and why is this "mystifying" to you?
Rousseau didn't "allegedly" idealize the "natural man." He actually did so.
He did?
In Monsieur Rousseau's book, man is born a "noble savage." Which strikes some sensibilities as being an outright oxymoron on logical grounds.
Funny, such a term was never used in France. And sauvage doesn't mean "savage."
He cites no empirical evidence in support of it (though he had several millennia of human experience and history to draw from, had he chosen to do so)
I don't think in his days they really knew much about the pre-societal man. What "empirical" evidence did the English side have about the pre-societal man?
But it is interesting to note that where such "allegations" loaded into the base of abstract systems have actually been tried in human history, all have failed — to the misery of untold numbers of human beings.
What "allegations"? That man has an innate sense of justice?
Obviously, there must be some deeper truth in Nature than man as the Noble Savage.
Oh yeah? You have "empirical" evidence for that?
Or man as the center of moral order in the universe
Now we are really reaching...
But that's the very truth that neither Rousseau — and one sadly suspects, nor dear kosta — refuses to accept.
I can't speak for Rousseau, but why should I accept it?
If man is the center of order in the universe, then it should be perfectly legitimate to accept that 28 million Frenchmen — of virtually uncountable degrees of intelligence, culture, and condition — can make a "representative form of government," a social contract. And thereby establish a workable "democracy."
Wow. What does workable "democracy" (I guess there is some doubt in your mind as to what that really is) be in any way connected with man possibly being "in the center of order in the universes"?
But this overlooks the problem of: How do you get 28 million Frenchmen to agree about what should be in that social contract? Are you going to poll them? (Oh, isn't that what an election is all about?)
I don't know, how did American Founding Fathers draw up a social contract? It sure wasn't through election. It was more like four-five people who commanded respect among the Founders who drew up a document and got a blessing from the rich and the educated who could afford to sit and ponder cosmic mysteries of mankind and be away from the affairs of their estates.
You can't base the moral law on the shifting sands of human self-interest and cupidity.
But we do.
”necessary evil” . . . Even though it was a favorite of Madison’s, I’ve always had a little trouble with that expression. How can something ‘evil’ be thought ‘necessary’? Bad idea? Good idea badly expressed? What?
Despite their remarkable achievement, the Founding Fathers don’t seem to have hit it quite square on the screws. They spoke of even the best-constructed republics as lasting little more than two hundred years, and expressed the hope that their posterity would rise to the challenge of keeping things going. Time’s up.
Aside from a couple of obviously needed changes made by their posterity, I’ll take the vision of the Founders over anything anyone else has proposed. I’ve been waiting for over a half century now, but I haven’t seen anything better come along. Have you?
[Rousseau] “was dead eleven years when the French Revolution broke out.”
Yeah, and Marx was some 125 years’ dead when 0bama broke out. So, what? Am I mistaken in understanding that it was the thought and the spirit of Rousseau driving the French Revolution? Something went awry. What was it?
Mz boop has introduced the idea that something deeper (greater?) than Man’s nature is at the center of the Universe, and that it has guided our more profound thoughts about Man’s relationship amongst his own and with the Universe. Rousseau and the Revolutionaries had little but themselves to fall back on in their attempt to create a greater society. It was a debacle.
The Founding Fathers seemed to have something more. So, while they built a republic that has lasted for over two hundred years, the French went through a king, two empires, a Directory, a Convention, a Consulate a Vichy puppet government, and five republics. Whence might that ‘something more’ have come, do you suppose? From a source with which you find yourself in perpetual denial. But you seem to have no better answer. Jefferson does, however:
“If we are made in some degree for others, yet, in a greater, are we made for ourselves. It were contrary to feeling, and indeed ridiculous to suppose that a man had less rights in himself than one of his neighbors, or indeed all of them put together. This would be slavery, and not that liberty which the [Virginia] bill of rights has made inviolable, and for the preservation of which our government has been charged. Nothing could so completely divest us of that liberty as the establishment of the opinion, that the State has a perpetual right to the services of all its members. This, to men of certain ways of thinking, would be to annihilate the blessings of existence, and to contradict the Giver of life, who gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness. (Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Monroe, 20 May, 1782, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol 4, pg 196)
Yet you seem incapable of looking past doctrine to see values.
Your own presuppositions of prescriptive moral truths that you deny the existence of is evident throughout your replies. A few examples from this post alone:
... selfishness in our society has a negative connotation; it is inherently anti-social, and therefore undesirable for any society, large or small.(begs the question; assumes a prior moral obligation not to be selfish, anti-social, or to act in ways undesirable to any society)
A Muslim father will go as far as to kill his wife (or wives) or daughter(s), which they call "mercy" killing, to defend the family honor. Their twisted religious beliefs tell them it is morally right to do that! I am sure the Muslims will tell you that their sharia law is morally "upright." Sadly, if you or I or any one of us were brought up Muslim, we'd believe that too. So, yes, I say morality is man-made.
("Twisted" assumes a prior prescriptive moral obligation for fathers not to kill to kill their wives and daughters. Begs the question in that morality can't be accounted for by positing a prior moral rule. Vitiates the claim that morality is relative.)
A natural man is really not human as we think of humans, but only if he is properly civilized, that is—brought up, taught, trained to be a domesticated beast.
(Assumes the very thing in question; a purpose or an established standard for which the natural man is appropriately fitted.)
Cordially,
How can something ‘evil’ be thought ‘necessary’?
Life is a compromise, so some things that would normally be rejected are accepted reluctantly because of the lack of choice. I don't think in this case the evil is literally the evil, but "evil" nonetheless because it is imposed circumstantially as a practical solution.
They spoke of even the best-constructed republics as lasting little more than two hundred years, and expressed the hope that their posterity would rise to the challenge of keeping things going. Time’s up.
Yup. Now that we have reached the point when the government is telling us what we must purchase, I would say the Founders were right on the money. I don't think this country is morally, and otherwise, the same country it was at its foundation, or fifty, even thirty years ago.
I’ll take the vision of the Founders over anything anyone else has proposed. I’ve been waiting for over a half century now, but I haven’t seen anything better come along. Have you?
No, not by any stretch. The problem with such more perfect union (how can perfect be more perfect?) is keeping it such. The Founders were a perfect storm of free thinkers, an event that doesn't repeat itself very often and an act that is hard to follow consistently, especially when the country itself is undergoing tectonic changes and challenges politically, demographically, economically, etc. This country has radically changed in the last 30-40 years in the direction that seems to be leading her into a third world camp, and most of it is by design, undoing what the Founder did, brick by brick.
Modern politicians are like caricatures compared to the wise Founders. There seems to be a perilous lack of political talent (and political will) in this country, and each successive election seems to produce more bad apples.
Yeah, and Marx was some 125 years’ dead when 0bama broke out. So, what? Am I mistaken in understanding that it was the thought and the spirit of Rousseau driving the French Revolution? Something went awry. What was it?
Progressivism has been alive and well in America practically from Marx's death in 1883, and 0bama is certainly not the first who pushed progressivist agenda. There have been a number of progressivist US presidents who added their 2-cents': Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and LBJ in good measure (he changed the immigration law which is directly responsible for the irreversible demographic changes in the US in the past 40 years).
What went wrong in the French Revolution is probably misunderstanding or adulteration of Rousseau's idealism. He was not against religion, and he did not advocate violence or mass executions as far as I know.
Mz boop has introduced the idea that something deeper (greater?) than Man’s nature is at the center of the Universe, and that it has guided our more profound thoughts about Man’s relationship amongst his own and with the Universe. Rousseau and the Revolutionaries had little but themselves to fall back on in their attempt to create a greater society. It was a debacle.
So, what will be our excuse when it happens here?
The Founding Fathers seemed to have something more. So, while they built a republic that has lasted for over two hundred years, the French went through a king, two empires, a Directory, a Convention, a Consulate a Vichy puppet government, and five republics.
And Great Britain outlives both the French and the American republics hands down. The Holy Roman Empire existed over 800 years technically speaking. The Roman republic lasted 492 years. China was an empire over 2100 years. Egypt lasted for 1,000 years, etc. What does that prove? That there is a "higher power?"
Whence might that ‘something more’ have come, do you suppose?
Honestly, probably our heads.
But you seem to have no better answer.
I will be the first to admit that I don't know the answer. Trouble is that those who claim otherwise really have nothing to show for it.
Jefferson does, however: ... Nothing could so completely divest us of that liberty as the establishment of the opinion, that the State has a perpetual right to the services of all its members. This, to men of certain ways of thinking, would be to annihilate the blessings of existence, and to contradict the Giver of life, who gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness. (Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Monroe, 20 May, 1782, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol 4, pg 196)
So, he believed that life was given for happiness. I guess he wasn't aware of the misery that exists in the world.
Yet you seem incapable of looking past doctrine to see values.
What doctrine?
Thank you for your beautiful essay-post, dearest sister in Christ!
... selfishness in our society has a negative connotation; it is inherently anti-social, and therefore undesirable for any society, large or small.
begs the question; assumes a prior moral obligation not to be selfish, anti-social, or to act in ways undesirable to any society
Being selfish is simply an antisocial phenomenon. No society to my knowledge promotes selfishness.
... Their twisted religious beliefs tell them it is morally right to do that!
"Twisted" assumes a prior prescriptive moral obligation for fathers not to kill to kill their wives and daughters. Begs the question in that morality can't be accounted for by positing a prior moral rule. Vitiates the claim that morality is relative.
Killing your own kind is counterproductive. No society promotes murder as something beneficial. Muslim "mercy" killings are also in conflict with our societal values.
A natural man is really not human as we think of humans, but only if he is properly civilized, that is—brought up, taught, trained to be a domesticated beast.
Assumes the very thing in question; a purpose or an established standard for which the natural man is appropriately fitted.
Properly civilized according to each cultural standard. No assumption there.
Your descriptive observation misses the point. Morality is prescriptive. Why shouldn't be a person be selfish?
Killing your own kind is counterproductive. No society promotes murder as something beneficial. Muslim "mercy" killings are also in conflict with our societal values.
So what? Societies values are relative. And why should a person care about being productive? (fact check - I think some societies have promoted killing of one's own kind in some instances, but it's besides the point)
Properly civilized according to each cultural standard. No assumption there.
Ok. But is there moral incumbency for a person to be "properly civilized" according to each cultural standard?
Cordially,
No reason whatsoever, except social. Without a society, unselfishness as a virtue loses any meaning or purpose.
Since it subsists only in man-made social settings, it is a pragmatic man-made value.
So what? Societies values are relative. And why should a person care about being productive?
Same answer. Being productive is meaningless without a society, which is a network of interconnected and interdependent activities.
(fact check - I think some societies have promoted killing of one's own kind in some instances, but it's besides the point)
For superstitious religious reasons in hopes of gaining favor from some imaginary god. Its "virtue" was in the primitive cause-and-effect belief that a sacrifice was necessary for the society's well-being. Shall we call it the ancient form of "charity?"
But is there moral incumbency for a person to be "properly civilized" according to each cultural standard?
No, there is no moral incumbency.
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