Tuesday, May 11, 2010

A Darwinian Left?--A Reply to Jiro Tanaka





















Paul said...

I have been reading Darwinian Natural Right, and it seems to me that your own suggestion that culture is a completion of nature supports the possibility of Utopias. Human nature and human desires may be quite stable, and they most certainly constrain possible social contracts, but the tradeoffs involved in satisfying those desires have changed over time, such that the modern West is a Utopia compared to the medieval West. What really is a Utopia, but a society wherein most of the natural desires of most of its members are satisfied? I don't see why, in principle, such societies are impossible. Certainly Utopias that require all humans to treat each other as kin are impossible, but what about something like Bacon's New Atlantis?

However, I do agree that so long as the left doesn't accept that the naturalistic fallacy doesn't apply to biological organisms,then they will unconsciously still be waging a war against our evolved desires. Where will our values come from, if not from ourselves? Nietzsche criticized the left for being Christians by another name, and I think Tanaka displays exactly this tendency when he accuses Mr. Arnhart of endowing human nature with sacral authority. Someone who does not believe that our own feelings are a reasonable source of morality must look outside of humanity for moral guidance, and whether or not they are willing to admit it, they are essentially looking for God. Because Tanaka's views necessitate a lawgiver external to humanity, he assumes that Mr. Arnhart is hoisting a reified human nature up as a golden calf. But really we have no choice but to look to our own humanity, which is nothing other than our evolved biology, for moral guidance. Wasn't this why Nietzsche, no real friend of conservatives, still reserved almost of all of his vitriol for the left?

Anonymous said...

Your writing - and thinking - is inestimably clearer than Mr. Tanaka's.

He assumes that progressivism, "social change," "social justice," are obvious goods and a part of our better nature (you know, compassion versus all of our less charitable tendencies).

This is simplistic and unreflective and hardly worthy of your response.


P.S. Just finished the second edition of D.C. with the critical essays at the end - very rewarding.

Troy Camplin said...

I just wrote up a piece I am going to send to Mises.org to possibly be published on Mises Daily on the issue of the Left essentially being economic creationists or intelligent designists. If they do, I'll come back and let you know, if you're interested.

jar games said...


Troy Camplin said...

THey didn't. Too interdisciplinary.

Mopenhauer said...

I think the problem with simply ruling out the possibility of a Darwinian left is that it essentially turns evolutionary psychology into a conservative historical materialism. In other words I would be a little wary of simply resting comfortably that science supports all conservative political position and thus your opponents are illegitimate. That attempt to make a scientific politics that de-legitimizes pluralistic discourse, is precisely the utopian impulse that conservatives have warned of.

I think it makes more sense to use natural law as an explanation of why you have your goals, and positivism to explain to your opponent the price of reaching his. The attempt to combine natural law and science leads to a monistic political system. In this way Darwinian conservatism is actually fairly radical to the American political system. Unlike most nations we have traditionally been a 50-50 divided nation. The times in history in which one party simply dominated, are rare. If people were to be won over to your position that conservatism is science, then that would basically be the end of politics. We could all agree on the same conservative ideology, and have 99% election results.

Rejecting scientific political programs does not mean we should fall into post-modernism. But perhaps Von Mises more positivistic approach of saying you set the goals, I'll tell you the cost. is more realistic.

The other thing is what exactly is the left? Even if you were to Darwinian politics to limit the left, you would have to draw some line, where you could say "this far, towards utopia you may go, and no further".

So what exactly is left? In Europe the political divide is between Social Democrats and Christian democrats. Both of which share a far more communitarian ethos and welfare economics than even the relative leftwing of US politics. In the US liberal means leftwing, but in most of the world that would be center-right.

Within the realm of prosperous healthy nations you have the whole gamut from the relatively minimalistic states in the USA and Hong Kong, to the tax-based welfare state of Sweden. I don't think science will ever be able to say that the American model is inherently more "natural" than the French, German, or Scandinavian models. But I think it is a fair point to say that if you wish to satisfy the natural human need for security and reverse-dominance hierarchy, you might have to pay the price in the natural human need for productivity. But that argument is based more on Von Mises and Friedman than Darwin.

Well Fukuyama's end of history in democratic capitalism still says we are free to chose from as far left as social democracy and as far right as minarchism. In a way that is what Darwinian conservatisms says. But even if thats so the competition between American minarchism on the right and Swedish social democracy on the left, still leaves plenty of room for rich left-right discourse and debate.

Troy Camplin said...

The Left are at best economic intelligent designers (which is what interventionism is) and, at worse, economic creationists (which is what socialism is). Thus, a Darwinian economic Left is a contradiction in terms.

Mark Anderson said...

When you talk about Leftist Utopianism are you talking about Norway?

Larry Arnhart said...

Mark Anderson,

Mao Zedung's socialism or Peter Singer's utilitarianism would be examples of what I mean by leftist utopianism.