Thus Leo: "private possessions are clearly in accord with nature" (15), following his hero, Aquinas.10 "The law of nature , . . by the practice of all ages, has consecrated private possession as something best adapted to man's nature and to peaceful and tranquil living together" (17). "The fundamental principle of Socialism which would make all possessions public property is to be utterly rejected because it injures the very one's whom it seeks to help" (23). "The right of private property must be regarded as sacred" (65). "If incentives to ingenuity and skill in individual persons were to be abolished, the very fountains of wealth would necessarily dry up; and the equality conjured up by the Socialist imagination would, in reality, be nothing but uniform wretchedness and meanness for one and all, without distinction" (22).

Nick Hornby's comic novel *How to Be Good* (2001) shows the diffculties of To Each According to His Need, Regardless of His Property Acquired by Effort Directed at Supplying Goods and Services That Other People Are Willing Themselves to Expend The Effort to Acquire ("Thank you for your service"). A graceful generosity that works just fne within a family works poorly within a large group of adult strangers. In Hornby's book the husband of the narrator goes mad and starts giving away his and his wife's money and his children's superfuous toys. He and his guru are going to write a book:

"'How to Be Good', we're going to call it. It's about how we should all live our lives. You know, suggestions. Like taking in the homeless, and giving away your money, and what to do about things like property ownership and, I don't know, the Third World and so on."

"So" [replies his annoyed wife, a hard-working GP in the National Health Service] "this book's aimed at high-ranking employees of the IMF?" (Hornby 2001, p. 210).

It's a version of the Sermon on the Mount, from which many people have concluded that Jesus was of course a socialist.  Knight and Merriam are correct if they mean, as they appear to, that Love *without other and balancing virtues* is a sin. Knight's understanding of Christianity appears to have derived from his childhood experience in a frontier Protestant sect, the Campbellites (evolved now into a less ferce Church of Christ and Disciples of Christ), and theirs is what he took to be the core teaching of Christianity: "No creed but the Bible. No ethic but love."

9These are Pius: *Quadragesimo Anno*; John: *Mater et Magistra* and *Pacem in Terris*; Paul: *Populorum Progressio* and *Octogesima adveniens*; and John Paul: *Laborem Exercens* and *Centesimus Annus*. Michael Novak is my guide here (1989, chapt. 6–8).

10Leo XIII. 1891. *Rerum Novarum,* paragraph numbers given. See Aquinas *Summa Theologiae*, c. 1270, IIa IIae, Q 66, quoted and discussed in Fleischacker (2004, p. 35 and n40).

But Love without Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and the rest is not Christian orthodoxy – for example the orthodoxy of Aquinas or of Leo XIII. Leo in fact was a close student of Aquinas, and in 1889 elevated him to dogma within the Church.  Economists would call the actual orthodoxy a "second-best" argument, as against the frst best of "if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." Given that people are imperfect, the Christian, or indeed any economist would say, we need to make allowances, and hire lawyers. Otherwise everyone will live by stealing each other's coats, with a resulting failure to produce coats in the frst place, and a descent into poverty for everyone but the thief.

St. Paul himself said so, in his earliest extant letter (1 Tim. 3: 8–11):

Neither did we eat any man's bread for naught; but wrought with labor and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you . . . .to make ourselves an example unto you to follow us. . . . We commanded you that if any would not work, neither should he eat. For we hear that there are some . . . among you disorderly, working not at all.

Or to put it more positively, as Michael Novak did, "one must think clearly about what actually does work – in a sinful world – to achieve the liberation of peoples and persons" (Novak 1989, p. xvi). "In the right of property," wrote even the blessed Pope John XXIII in 1961, "the exercise of liberty fnds both a safeguard and a stimulus."11 Frank Knight couldn't have put it better.

Charity is not socialism. Generosity is not a system at all. It is of a person, then two, then a few. God arranges such encounters, a Christian might say. But humans want them, too, the gift-economy of grace above material concerns. So the great Quaker and economist Kenneth Boulding said. To make them into a system, *How to Be Good*, is to cancel their virtue. The heroine and narrator of Hornby's novel sees that Erasmus began all editions of his *Adages* from 1508 onwards with "Between friends all things are common," remarking that "If only it were so fxed in men's minds as it is frequent on everybody's lips, most of the evils of our lives would promptly be removed. . . . Nothing was ever said by a pagan philosopher which comes closer to the mind of Christ" as the proposed socialism of goods in Plato's *Republic*. 12 Such is the frst best. But Erasmus notes, sadly, "how Christians dislike this common ownership of Plato's, how in fact they cast stones at it." Many of his 4150 proverbs collected from classical and Christian sources recommend attention to Prudence and work, if not quite with the insistence of, say, proverbs he might have collected in his native Dutch. We are mostly not friends, but strangers, and even in the Society of Friends property was not held in common. Knight and Merriam are not really undermining Christian orthodoxy and Christian ethics. They are misunderstanding it.

One owes Love to a family frst. Property, with the virtue of justice, protects the beloved family. If any would not work, neither should he eat. Work, depending on temperance and prudence, is desirable to create and to acquire the property. So is

11From the encyclical *Mater et Magistra,* 1961, quoted in Novak (1989, p. xxii).

12Erasmus, *Adages,* 1500–1533, 1508 onwards I i 1 (Barker 2001, p. 29).

prudent stewardship in managing it, though the lilies of the feld toil not. For societies of humans, she realizes, not lilies and families, the right prescription is bourgeois virtue. True, she cannot quite get rid of the notion that "maybe the desire for nice evenings with people I know and love is essentially bourgeois, reprehensible – depraved, even" (Hornby 2001, p. 218). Such is the agony of the left US "liberal."

It is a matter of Christian ethics.

Ethics has three levels, the good for self, the good for others, and the good for the transcendent purpose of a life. The good for self is the prudence by which you selfcultivate, learning to play the cello, say, or practicing centering prayer. Self-denial is not automatically virtuous. (How many self-denying mothers does it take to change a lightbulb? None: I'll just sit here in the dark.)

The good for a transcendent purpose is the faith, hope, and love to pursue an answer to the question "So what?" The family, science, art, the football club, God give the answers that humans seek.

The middle level is attention to the good for others. The late frst-century BCE Jewish sage Hillel of Babylon put it negatively yet refexively: "Do not do unto others what you would not want done unto yourself." It's masculine, a guy-liberalism, a gospel of justice, roughly the so-called Non-Aggression Axiom as articulated by libertarians since the word "libertarian" was redirected in the 1950s to a (then) right-wing liberalism. Matt Kibbe puts it well in the title of his 2014 best seller, Don't Hurt People and Don't Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto.

On the other hand, the early frst-century CE Jewish sage Jesus of Nazareth put it positively: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." It's galliberalism, a gospel of love, placing upon us an ethical responsibility to do more than pass by on the other side. Be a good Samaritan. Be nice.

In treating others, a humane libertarianism attends to both Golden Rules. The one corrects a busybody and coercive pushing around. The other corrects an inhumane and soul-destroying selfshness. Together they are the other-ethics of modern liberalism. What we do not need is the reactionary version, the old spoof of the Golden Rule, namely, "Those who have the gold, rule." Nor do we need to follow the Florida football player on the eve of the Florida-Florida State game, "I follow the Good Book: 'Do unto others before they do it unto you.'" Neither is nonaggressive or nice.

The Golden Rule in either formulation, note, is radically egalitarian. In the Abrahamic religions you are to treat every human soul the way you would wish to be treated. You are to honor your one God and keep His day holy, but the rest of the Ten Commandments are about treating other humans as you would wish to be treated in matters such as truth telling or adultery. By contrast, in the theism of the Hindus or in the civic religion of the Confucians you are to treat the Brahman or the emperor as superior souls. An Untouchable or a peasant or a woman or a younger son is not to expect equal, reciprocal treatment. Of course, it was not until the bourgeois societies of late eighteenth-century Europe that anyone but an early Christian radical or a late Muslim saint thought to carry out in any large society the sweetly other-regarding theory of Abrahamic egalitarianism. Until Tom Paine or Adam Smith, a duchess was still a duchess, a sultan still a sultan, King Herod still Great.

It is liberalism, a fulfllment at last of the Abrahamic equality of souls, that brings us human fourishing and human virtue, as God wishes for Her creations.

To this the Christian statist has a series of worries, replies, indignant objections.

For one thing, she says, work is not free. We are "wage slaves." The claim was in fact the defense of actual slavery offered by Southern apologists before the Civil War in the United States. The Northern factory workers, they said, were virtual slaves. The leftish usage and its politics echo down to the present, as in *The Concise Oxford Dictionary* of 1999, in which "wage slave" is defned coolly as "a person who is wholly dependent on income from employment," with the notation "informal" – but not "ironic" or "jocular" or, better, "economically illiterate" (Pearsall 1999, p. 1610). Thus Judy Pearsall, the editor of the *Concise Oxford*, who lives, it may be, in a nice semidetached in London NW6 and drives an old Volvo, is a "slave." You yourself are probably a slave. I certainly am a slave. We are all "slaves" – though all of us are paid in proportion to the traded value of goods and services we produce for others and none of us owes *unpaid* service to any boss (except, as Higgs and I would observe, to the state through taxation or draft, an actual slavery admired by most of the left and much of the right). Such progressive or conservative terminology of "wage slavery" is like calling an exchange of harsh words "verbal rape." We need terms for the physical violence entailed in actual slavery and in actual rape, or for that matter in actual taxation backed by the wide powers of the IRS to do violence. We should not cheapen them by applying them to our middle-class guilt in NW6 or Morningside Heights.

One fnds Oscar Wilde in 1891 declaring that "socialism [about which he knew only the contents of a lecture he had just heard by George Bernard Shaw] would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others," by which he means charity but also paid work: "An individual who has to make things for the use of others, and with reference to their wants and their wishes, does not work with interest, and consequently cannot put into his work what is best in him" (Wilde [1891] 1930, pp. 257, 270).13 Even the owner of property is not exempt, Wilde continues, because property "involves endless claims upon one, endless attention to business, endless bother" (Wilde [1891] 1930, p. 259). Think of it. Worker or capitalist or landlords, we are all "slaves" to supplying things for others. Frightful.

In that highly metaphorical and imprecise sense, we are indeed "enslaved," and to our mutual good. After Hegel, many intellectuals have declared that capitalism makes people work for others, and makes the worker therefore an "object," not a "subject." So it was said by Marx and Heidegger and Sartre, since "being for others" is "inauthentic."  As the philosopher Roger Scruton puts it, to follow such a Kantian obedience to ethical law with respect

13The editor, Hesketh Pearson, remarks that Wilde had been inspired by Shaw's lecture, "without bothering himself much about economics" (p. xii). The astoundingly scholarly Wikipedia entry for "wage slavery," by the way, gives arguments from people like Noam Chomsky against my views, and those by people like Robert Nozick in favor of them.

to others "launches us down that path towards the 'bourgeois' order on which fnicky intellectuals are so reluctant to tread" (Scruton 1994, p. 468).

Or they say things like, "All right, a 3,000% increasing in material goods and services since 1800 – but humans do not live by bread alone." Yes, certainly. If economic growth, as many conservatives and some socialists argue, corrupts the human soul, I will join them in attacking it. What beneft is it to someone who gains the world but loses her immortal soul? But the counter argument was the burden of *The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce*, the most theological of the trilogy. "Consumerism," for example, is a common worry. But it has an answer, chiefy that it does not corrupt and is not new and is anyway a worry only for the rich, who are always with us.

Or they say that inequality is worrisome. Or that monopolies are prevalent and corrupt the government. Or that the 1980s Me Decade was a bad 'un. Or, or, or. They all have answers that ought to satisfy a Christian or Jew or Muslim, and did before the theologians and their enemies became confused and immune to the evidence on innovism and its sad opposite in statism. The liberal era was brief, from 1776 to 1848. It established freedom of religion. But freedom is freedom is freedom. A free-willed person, in God's eyes, should be free from human interference in religion and behavior and business.

#### **References**

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## **Chapter 6 What Is the Nature of Christian Love?**  *Homo Amans* **and Revolutionary Altruism**

**Rebekka A. Klein**

**Abstract** The attempt to explore human beings transdisciplinarily as beings of love can contribute to a more realistic anthropology, with an increased practical relevance for science and research. On the other hand, with its holistic orientation towards the whole person, it leads to an improper standardization of scientifc research results. In order to avoid the problems associated with the holistic study of man as *Homo amans*, this article therefore reverses the perspective. Fundamentally, the nature of love is not discussed anthropologically on the basis of an examination of human nature and its altruism or egoism, but on the basis of the phenomenon of love in its ambivalence. Following Kierkegaard's phenomenology of love, the article shows that love cannot be clearly distinguished from selfsh acts without the reference of interpersonal relationships with a "third party." In the Christian perspective, God is such a "third party," who makes our fellow human beings recognizable to us as neighbors of God and enables us to behave in the spirit of love. Christian love of neighbor is therefore an example of the revolutionary, socially transformative dynamics of love.

#### **6.1 Introduction**

*"A person can fourish only by seeking the common good, by seeking the good for oneself and others."*

*"Economics should foster the human well-being."*

These quotes from the outline of the *Homo amans* project are signifcant for the aspirations and hopes that our society and culture ascribe to science in the present day. They remind us that science and ethics are subject to intense questioning these days in terms of their usefulness and real-world orientation. This questioning of science as a whole represents a major trend in society and politics as well as in the

© The Author(s) 2022 99

R. A. Klein (\*)

Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
J. van Nes et al. (eds.), *Relational Anthropology for Contemporary Economics*, Ethical Economy 61, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84690-9\_6

contemporary philosophy of science. In this respect, it is no longer regarded as suffcient for scientifc knowledge and interdisciplinary research to seek the truth or fnd out facts and fgures concerning a certain subject or question of theory. Rather, the two processes are brought together to make a substantial contribution to solving the real-world problems of our society (Mittelstraß 1982; Klein 2017). One slogan that is very well known in this context is "science into society," which is currently very common in the design of new research projects and proposals in so-called hard sciences.

In order to contribute to solving real-world problems – which can be said to be the main goal of scientifc research in the twenty-frst century – it is suggested that science should take a more holistic perspective, not submerging itself in the production of academic and scholarly knowledge, but rather it should develop concrete insights, which can actually be proven to be orientational and useful in our everyday lives (Nowotny 1997, 1999; Nowotny et al. 2001). A viable way to achieve this goal, which has evolved in recent decades, is to pursue science in a transdisciplinary manner, i.e., by integrating different scholarly and disciplinary approaches, methods, and perspectives into a more comprehensive and unifying scientifc endeavor (Hirsch-Hadorn et al. 2008; Mittelstraß 2003). The rationale behind this trend is the idea that science *has* the power to infuence and transform real life but that it can only *actualize* this power when it becomes holistic again – as with premodern scientifc knowledge practices, for example. Consequently, a trend has also resurfaced towards the antique and premodern traditions of wisdom and knowledge.

Likewise, the *Homo amans* project seeks to develop the idea that science should serve the common good of society and help to solve real-world problems. In the outline of the Project it is argued that economics must foster human fourishing instead of merely fnding out the truth about human nature (as it is). What is implied here is that science has to prove the anthropological, psychological, societal and political usefulness, pragmatic and ethical impact of its insights, rather than merely safeguarding the correct methodological fabrication of scientifc facts. Thus, transdisciplinary and holistic research prospects also represent a shift towards greater commitment from scientists to ethical and social change, and also to political and societal interests. A political interest which could be seen to lie behind this focus on human fourishing in current science, especially in economics and ethics, is the concern that people should not be broken by the wheels of late-modern capitalist working conditions; becoming mentally or physically sick from exhaustion, for example. Thus, the focus on human well-being as the latest goal to be served by the economy represents a political resource, transforming contemporary society for the better. A concrete example of the increasing relevance of this issue can be seen in the public discussion of the retirement of German politician Andrea Nahles in June 2019 who gave up her leading position in the social democratic party after severe infghting. Responding to this incident, a journalist from the German newspaper DIE ZEIT claimed that the exercise of power in politics, which was formerly a domain of masculine virtues and cold-blooded heroism, should become more humane and solidary (Peitz 2019).

A second point of reference in explaining society's current interest in human fourishing is the attempt to interpret it as a response to the nihilisms of late modernity. As theologian Miroslav Volf has argued in his book on this topic, there are two nihilisms in late modernity which reinforce each other: the passive nihilism of fundamentalists and the active nihilism of libertarians (Volf 2015, p. 200f). Both have in common an unsustainable end for our lives. The passive nihilism of religious world-deniers and world-destroyers offers a life with strong values and a transcendent foundation which imbues the order of life with "weight" and meaning. This is illustrated, for example, in the attractiveness for young Westerners of terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State. Here, such a strict and stable order of meaning can be a welcome alternative to the active nihilism practiced in market-driven globalization movements of late modernity. The latter have given rise to a character type which Volf calls "free spirits," i.e. consumerists for whom nothing matters with any sort of profundity, or who lack a constancy of meaning. Their nihilism consists in the willingness to fght "for the pleasures and comforts of their way of life" (Volf 2015, p. 201) making the realm of values ultimately arbitrary and insignifcant. According to Volf, the plea for human fourishing in the present is therefore to be seen as an attempt to fnd a third way which – as he suggests – is the great challenge of our time (Volf 2015, p. 201).

Thus, current endeavors to reorient science and research towards human wellbeing as a whole, stand on the horizon of a broader development in late modern culture. A number of consequences follow from this reorientation of science which can be summarized as follows: frstly, pressure to solve overall societal problems and to present an all-inclusive solution to them means that scientists are motivated to develop an integrative and overly harmonious picture of human society which tends to make the solutions they are studying more plausible and approachable. Consequently, they are inclined to disregard the fractures and ambivalences of certain phenomena or theories under investigation, for in giving attention to such fractures they would make their own account more vulnerable and less effcient. Secondly, transdisciplinary research projects ultimately create transformative knowledge rather than picturing and reproducing the world as it is. As convincing as this endeavor may be in times of postmodernist relativism, constructivism, and perspectivist visions of truth, it nonetheless shifts the focus of science away from objectivity and independence of real-world matters, and reshapes its work into a kind of service enterprise (which is, I believe, problematic in the long run). Thirdly, scientists who take a transdisciplinary perspective and attempt to solve real-world problems of a holistic nature are in danger of becoming "do-gooders" (*Weltverbesserer*, in German) when participating in the scientifc process. This means that they might leave the "cool mood" of science and philosophy and become over-engaged campaigners.

Let us now turn to the *Homo amans* project. The initiators of this project would probably resist my emphasis on the major shift from investigating human nature (as it is) to studying human fourishing (as it can be advanced by society and science). They would certainly argue that such predestined fourishing refers directly to human nature (as it is) and is not to be separated from it. This is rational because they argue from an approach of virtue ethics. In this approach, fourishing and the nature of human beings are essentially the same thing.

Now, my aim in this regard is not to downgrade or devalue the perspective of the initiators of the *Homo amans* project in any way. Rather, I want to create a productive contrast, applying my own approach and experience (Klein 2011) from a transdisciplinary perspective in order to shed some light on aspects which may not have been given enough attention in the outline of the *Homo amans* project. This means that my goal is to challenge and, ultimately, complement the project's perspective, as well as to describe and to explore the limits and problems inherent in the argument that is presented here.

My discussion is divided into two main parts as follows: sections two and three of my chapter critique and respond to the *Homo amans* model as given in the initiators' outline. I will focus on the opposition of *Homo economicus* and *Homo amans*, critically exploring the holistic nature of anthropological models in general. Finally, I will contrast the understanding of the virtue of love in *Homo amans,* taking a phenomenological approach that encompasses ambivalence as well as the failure of human love. The second main part of the paper will then develop and elaborate upon my own understanding of the nature of love. It will effectively present a reversal of perspective by, frstly, seeking to understand the nature of love and then questioning the nature of human beings on the basis of this understanding. I will argue that this is exactly the right order of thought if we truly want to adopt a Christian perspective on the topic. In section four, this thesis is elaborated further by following the thought of the Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard and his argument that a (self-)critique of love is the key to love's fourishing. Although Kierkegaard regards love as a reality of human life and not as a purely fantastical idea that belongs to some Christian people, he strongly resists the opinion that love could be exercised as a virtue of human nature itself. He defends the view that Christian love is not among the capabilities of human beings and should not be identifed with the nature of human being. Instead, he argues that love is made possible by a relationship to the other as a child of God, and that it is God as a "middle term" in this relationship who liberates human beings from their narcissism and selfshness. I will provide some support for this position and, fnally, I will try to give my own answer to the question of the true nature of Christian love. In the ffth section, therefore, I will argue that love is to be understood as a form of revolutionary altruism. Its revolutionary effects originate from its power to transform social relations by reshaping them from the point of view of a new reality. Here, love can be described as a central dynamic in human life that introduces radically new perspectives and social practices. Beyond Kierkegaard's focus on the presence of God, the revolutionary nature of love can be seen in the interruption of the normality of social relation and interaction by introducing the relation to a third of universal nature into the ordinary relation of self and other. Finally, it will be shown that love is misunderstood by focussing solely on the relationality of human beings, because the understanding of love also requires an understanding of the interruption of social relations.

#### **6.2 The Problems and Limitations of a Holistic Anthropological Model**

The *Homo amans* project attempts to collect and synthesize an assortment of developments within the study of human nature and philosophical anthropology from the past few decades. It does so in a very inspiring manner and grounds these recent advances in a philosophical anthropology of relationality. However, relational anthropology, as presented here, is mainly concerned with the dynamics of *becoming* human rather than the state of *being* human. It has the conviction that humans *become what they are,* in and through the relations which form and inform their lives and self-understanding. Relational anthropology, therefore, moves away from understanding human nature as an essence or core of the human being. It conceives it anew, not as a given but as a dynamic structure. This means, the nature of humans is not assumed to be the same or self-identical all the time. Rather, it develops in a certain direction out of a varied network of relationships with oneself and others. Hence, in this approach, crucial questions concerning humankind shift from the nature of human beings to the nature of their relationship with themselves and others.

In my view, it is not quite clear whether this approach and its shift of perspective has been fully acknowledged and valued in the given outline of the *Homo amans* project. The crux of my concern here would be the starting point of the project, which is in strict opposition to the *Homo economicus* model prevalent in economics and the social sciences. The outline of the project expressly refers to John Stuart Mill's defnition. *Homo economicus* is defned as a human being capable of judging the comparative effcacy of the means for obtaining an end, as the outline paper says. *Homo economicus* thus refers to the mainly self-concerned utility maximizer who manifests an egotistic type of rationality in his preferences, choices, and behavior. In the outline of the project, this model of *Homo economicus* is taken to be a mere idea or concept, which appeared at a certain point in the history of ideas. As a result, its reality content is devalued. Furthermore, it is criticized for being too narrow to account for the full spectrum of human behavior, although no mention is made of the possibility of there being at least some truth in it as far as human beings are concerned.

In contrast, the *Homo amans* project, as it is outlined here, aims to introduce love and the Christian virtues of faith and hope into the picture and form a wholly new understanding of human sociality. *Homo amans* thus provides a fuller picture of human life and its relationality, i.e. concern for the well-being of others, for the common good, and for the crucial role given to the prevalence and protection of social norms. As appropriate and rightful as this endeavor undoubtedly is – and I have the utmost respect for it – there is an inherent danger in the strict opposition between *Homo economicus* and *Homo amans* and also, very often, in the broader discourse about changes to this model in the social sciences. When the concept of virtues and human relationality, on the one hand, is contrasted with a mistaken understanding of the human being as merely a rational utility maximizer on the other, two problems can arise from this starting point: (a) the limited but nonetheless existing reality content of the *Homo economicus* model could be marginalized and overlooked; and (b) the model of *Homo amans* could be taken as a full and defnitive representation of the reality of human beings. In sum, the *Homo amans* perspective could then be implemented in the same totalitarian fashion as the other model was before.

Both points can now be seen to endanger a correct understanding of the *Homo amans* project because they could – perhaps not initially but later on – produce negative consequences in the continuation and building of a *Homo amans* anthropology. Whereas the frst point mentioned above could result in the *Homo amans* model itself becoming ideological as it neglects and denies the reality of egotistic and self-concerned attitudes and behaviors in the study of humankind, the second point could imply a naïve bias, as with the *Homo economics* model previously, when taken to be the sole and exclusive model of human behavior. The frst problem leads to the question of how *Homo economicus* and *Homo amans* (or human beings with egotistic and prosocial preferences) can coexist and/or interact with one another or how the second one can prevail over the frst one in social interaction. The second problem leads to the question of how the concept of love can be focused and differentiated enough to discriminate between the ambivalent and multi-layered phenomenology of real-world phenomena.

To put it more succinctly, my concern is that the holism indicated in the *Homo amans* model could entrap and suppress the intrusions and ambivalences of sociality phenomena in real life. Therefore, what is needed here is a dual perspective involving (a) antagonizing or conficting *Homo amans* with the reality of *Homo economicus* and (b) differentiating the inner reality of *Homo amans* by exploring and probing inner tensions and misunderstandings associated with love among human beings. The following sections will address the second research lacuna of the *Homo amans* project and the fnal part of this article will elaborate further on the antagonism between *Homo amans* and *Homo economicus*.

#### **6.3 The Focus on Virtues and the Ambivalence or Failure of Love**

The outline of the *Homo amans* project does not only motivate study of *Homo amans* by presenting it as "a viable alternative" to *Homo economicus* but also by pointing to the prosocial qualities of humans living a life of love. Thus, *Homo amans* is pictured in the project as an other-regarding, cooperative, and even altruistic being by nature. These prosocial qualities are further elaborated to constitute a phenomenology of human fourishing. However, at this point in the outline paper there is a certain changing of perspective which takes place; from the level of typifying and modeling human behavior to the level of an ethically informed phenomenology of human life. This change of perspective can be addressed by distinguishing between the terms "prosociality" and "human fourishing."

In behavioral sciences as well as in social psychology and evolutionary studies, the term "prosociality" denotes a type of behavior which contributes to the welfare of society as a whole insofar as it increases, for example, the cooperation level of a certain group (Gintis 2003; Henrich and Henrich 2006). "Prosocial" behavior may include concrete actions of helping or beneftting others, but also punitive actions, for example, the sanctioning of social norms (Fehr and Gächter 2002). Hence, the term "prosociality" also refers to the fact that not all actions which beneft the welfare and fourishing of human societies have to be at the same time actions beneftting the welfare of concrete others. As demonstrated in the case of social sanctions, such as the "altruistic punishment" (Fehr and Gächter 2002) 1 of norm violators and free riders, a prosocial behavior is not required to be benefcial to the other in either case. Instead, it can also contribute to the common good, for example: the enforcement of social and cooperation norms by introducing severe costs at the personal level of social interactions.

In contrast, the term "fourishing" does not refer to a certain mechanism of behavior which can be measured and observed or to an outcome-oriented approach to human action at all but to a psychological attitude or lifestyle of individuals that is seen to be balanced, resilient, and orientated towards positive emotions and wellbeing, in order to allow humanity as a whole to fourish (Keyes and Haidt 2007). Taken as a psychological term, it describes the optimal functioning of human beings or their ability to live their lives well – even in the face of suffering and frailty (Fowers 2017). The term has recently become prominent in the context of positive psychology but it can be traced back to the antique Aristotelian concept of *eudaimonia* which means striving to live an intrinsically good life (Aristotle 2014).

As Miroslav Volf has shown in his book *Flourishing*, a good life has to be understood as a life worth living viz. a meaningful life in late modernity (Volf 2015, pp. 1–26). Volf emphasizes that the turn towards fourishing points toward the fact that life has to be more than just the satisfaction of needs and the initialization of pleasures, but also has to have meaning (Volf 2015, pp. 195–206). Furthermore, he suggests that the goodness of life we are striving for should not be understood too idealistically or transcendently, but rather that fourishing requires a unity of meaningfulness, as well as the experience of pleasure and joy, in order to avoid a decline into nihilism (Volf 2015, p. 201).

Hence, the shift from the observation of prosocial behaviors to the study of human fourishing and the phenomenology of a good and meaningful life, which is taken by the proponents of the *Homo amans* project, is a step into an ethically informed perspective on human life as well as a step into developing a holistic, instead of a fractional, perspective. In this shift of perspective, what is called the phenomenological constitution of *Homo amans* is made understandable by elaborating on the inner reality and differentiation of human beings' capabilities and virtues. The latter are focused on the triadic interrelation of three core virtues,

1For a critical commentary on the experimental studies on altruistic punishment see Klein (2011) as well as the article published together with Christine Clavien: Clavien and Klein (2010).

which are assumed to be inseparable. Thus, the initiators of this project express their conviction that the inner reality of *Homo amans* can be made understandable by discriminating between three basic capabilities of the human being: love, hope, and faith. These virtues can be traced back to the biblical tradition and to the epistles of Saint Paul, who wrote in 1 Corinthians 13 that these three are the basic virtues of a Christian community, but that love is the greatest among them. In his epistle, the apostle makes it quite clear that neither the gifts of charismatic speech nor wisdom nor knowledge can build up Christian community as this is done by acts of love.

In the reading of this tradition by the proponents of the *Homo amans* project, faith represents the quest for meaning in human life. Hope refects the universal human desire for a future, and love (taken as being the primary virtue) grounds all human capabilities and virtues in relation to other human beings, making it quite clear that human beings are social or rather prosocial beings. With regard to the primacy of love, the initiators of the *Homo amans* project argue that love is a feminine virtue that might lead to a complementary rather than exclusive understanding of human nature. This then stands in contrast to the masculine virtues, which are characterized as being more or less anti-relational or egotistic.

From the outline paper, it follows that the virtue of love is somehow seen to prevail over faith and hope because (a) it is of a fundamental nature, pointing towards the basic relationality2 of human beings and (b) it relates to secular anthropology more easily because the core relation inherent in love is taken to be primarily interpersonal and not divine, given that God is not the main object of love but is certainly the main object of faith and hope. I would like to challenge the last thesis in particular, as we will see later.

For now, I want to stress another point and to question whether the virtue of love, in a very common theological fashion, is presented in an overly positivistic manner by the *Homo amans* project outlined so far. To address my suspicion, I would like to pose some exploratory questions concerning the nature of love and its visibility and appearance in human life: Where do we fnd love in our lives and can it actually be equated to the prosocial behaviors and attitudes of cooperation and altruism? Is love grounded in a feeling, or is it grounded in a rational choice made by us? Is love a capability and among the properties of human life, or rather is it a phenomenon of contingent appearance? Is love the solution, or key, to human fourishing, or is it a challenge that we do not normally master but which always proves to be a milestone for failure in our lives?

These questions suggest that it is not so clear or obvious what love is and which role it plays in our life. Furthermore, it can be said that the longing for love as well as the desire for bonding, for reliable commitment and rootedness, is a kind of child of the spirit of our age, and I think this should also be taken into account when we address the problem of exploring the possibilities and limits of an orientation towards a loving human being. Human beings have become increasingly uprooted

2See this claim regarding St. Paul's preoccupation with love also in Schnelle (1999, p. 84).

and separated from their original bonds in late modern societies since the industrial revolution and late-capitalist globalization movements. Hence, an orientation towards relationality as well as a strengthening of other-regarding attitudes and behaviors seem to be the solution to the pressing problem of growing anonymity and atomization of the human being in a liquid modernity with fuid identities (as, for example, sociologist Zygmunt Bauman [2000] has argued). Not for nothing, then, recent studies in science – for example, the social neurosciences and economics of empathy and care – have been inaugurated and conducted on the grounds that we need to develop mental training in empathy and other caring attitudes, particularly in a globalized world where we are confronted with "the stranger" every day.3 A better understanding of the neural mechanisms of empathy and care could thus help to better position us in the advancement of human fourishing.

These remarks are given to indicate that the quest for an examination of *Homo amans* is in no way a timeless or contextless project. Rather, the study of *Homo amans* can be seen as an indicator of a growing uncertainty about formerly selfevident phenomena in the era of globalization. Because traditional means of social bonding and human relationality have been broken so dramatically and with such intensity in late modern times, people long for a deeper understanding and maybe also for a restoration, or for a new confguration, of these basics of human fourishing. Seen in the context of the current agenda, a virtue approach to *Homo amans* which is mainly elaborated in Neo-Aristotelian terminology might overlook the opportunity to refect on this current context agenda, and, therefore, could create a superfcial impression of a romanticized fairy-tale like world instead. But I think that this is in no way intended in the *Homo amans* project.

The following thoughts should not, therefore, be understood so much as a critique but as a continuation of the differentiation process of the *Homo amans* project. The differentiation achieved by discriminating between love, faith, and hope must be opened out into a differentiation process of the inner reality of love. This inner difference of love will continue to be explored in the next section with reference to the work of Søren Kierkegaard.

#### **6.4 Kierkegaard: A (Self-)Critique of Love as the Key to Love's Flourishing**

In his later work, gathering together a collection of upbuilding discourses, Søren Kierkegaard wrote a book on the realness and actuality of Christian love, entitled *The Works of Love* ([1847] 1995). He did so because he was concerned that love

3See "Ein mentales Training, um toleranter Weltbürger zu werden," Interview with Prof. Tania Singer, Director at the Max-Planck-Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, 7. Oct. 2017, https://www.mpg.de/11514867/interview-singer-neue-meditationstechnik-fuer-empathie (accessed 26 Aug. 2019).

should not be taken as an idea but as a reality, not as an ethical ideal but as concrete work that can actually be done. At the same time, in his book, Kierkegaard directly addresses the problem that love cannot easily be discriminated from other actions and that it has a certain "invisibility" among human affairs. He writes at the beginning of his book: "There is no work, not one single one, not even the best, about which we can unconditionally dare to say: The one who does this unconditionally demonstrates love by it" (Kierkegaard 1995, p. 13).

This means that love is not a phenomenon which can be recognized easily and that there is no proof or demonstration of love which safeguards its existence. Love is not a certain type of action or a stable character trait at all. Rather, Kierkegaard determines the relation of love and action as follows: "It depends on *how* the work is done" (Kierkegaard 1995, p. 13). Obviously, the view that love is a general trait of human persons or actions is not helpful but only obfuscates the study of its phenomenality. Kierkegaard emphasizes that the reality of love is, let us say, more complicated. Its study requires a special form of phenomenology which Kierkegaard then aims to develop throughout his book.

In recent years, there has been an extended discussion about whether Kierkegaard's book, *The Works of Love*, and the phenomenology of love that is developed in it, can be considered to be ethical in nature. In it, Kierkegaard himself polemicizes against certain strands of modern moral philosophy. Arguments, therefore, have been put forward to suggest that it seeks to engender ethical wisdom (Grøn 1998, pp. 358–68) and that it can even be interpreted as the pursuit of love as virtue.4 On the other hand, there have also been suggestions that Kierkegaard's ethical considerations in this book are built on a theology of sin and that he is sceptical about seeing love as a meritorious action (Welz 2007). Hence, Kierkegaard's intention could not have been to build an ethical theory of human virtues. Against the view that he is not a virtue theorist, it has been argued that there is some evidence in his book that he also thinks about the constitution of the author of loving action (Lippitt 2013, p. 7). Or at least, that he sees love as "a divinely inspired potential that we humans are required to actualize" (Krishek 2017, pp. 3–15, esp. pp. 3–4). It has also been pointed out that he argues that "emotion-virtues," understood as ways of seeing the other, can be cultivated in Christian faith.5

A more moderate view regarding this debate is taken by Claudia Welz when she argues that "Works of Love can be termed as a 'virtue ethics' only in a restricted sense", because in Kierkegaard's view "it is not the human agent himself who naturally develops the virtue of love, nor does (s)he receive a supernatural virtue for personal use" (Welz 2007, p. 272). Rather, love could be actualized by the human being only "by acting in the spirit of God's love" (Welz 2007, p. 281). As Welz

4An ethical theorist who has put this thesis forward in many publications is Robert C. Roberts. See Roberts (1995, pp. 142–66; 2008, pp. 72–92, and many more).

5Compare the argument that virtuists like Kierkegaard are committed to upbuilding and ethical education, including a formation of proper concerns and dispositions of emotion, in Lippitt (2017). The approach to Kierkegaard as an emotion-virtuist is also elaborated in Welz (2007); Evans (2008).

argues, the relation of the human being to the other is built up by the reality of God's love alone.

Against the backdrop of this debate, one's attention should be turned to the phenomenology at stake in *Works of Love*. The term "phenomenology" here refers to a study of the way love comes into being and how it can be identifed in its signifcance. In this regard, Kierkegaard emphasizes that love has a "hidden life" that we have to explore and carefully discover (Kierkegaard 1995, pp. 5–16). Very often we invariably think we already live a life of love and we err precisely because of our certainty. According to Kierkegaard, it is very important, then, to acknowledge that love is not just given to us as an inherent part of our nature that can be exercised on a whim. On the contrary, in an in-depth analysis of interpersonal relationships and social interaction, he demonstrates that we are more often confronted with the impossibilities of loving ourselves and others than with the experience of love in the true sense of the word.

Kierkegaard writes parts of his book, then, to reduce his readers to despair and release them from their certainty that love is already there in their lives. Nonetheless, on the other hand, he also aims to encourage the reader to see that love is a way to live one's life before God. According to him, it is something which can manifest in our lives although we experience all the misunderstandings, failures, and aporias that exist in human togetherness. To experience the failure of love, then, does not mean that we have to call off the realm of love and social bonding completely. For him, a self-critique of love is, in the end, the key to the fourishing of love's true nature.

By taking this position, Kierkegaard makes it possible to introduce a critical view of human sociality into the picture of love. Love is not automatically a representative of the good life prevailing under all circumstances. Love is not just a token of a certain type but is contingent in nature. The latter is made clear when Kierkegaard develops his phenomenology of love from a decidedly Christian point of view. To him, love is not only one of a kind but the only true way of living one's life in the spirit of Christian faith. In no way does this imply a glorifcation of the Christian way of life. Hence, Kierkegaard develops the latter stance into a self-critical attitude of modernity and Christian religion. A part of his phenomenology of love, therefore, is a critical discussion of the modern ideal of romantic love as well as the Christian denial and demonization of self-love (Lippitt 2013). Furthermore, he reviews critically the tradition of the denial of bodily love in Christianity and Western culture, and, in the light of true selfessness, questions the high esteem for seemingly altruistic and selfess behaviors celebrating a cult of the self in the other.

Kierkegaard, hereby, again resists the view that loving action is to be seen as a self-evident outcome of human nature (Kierkegaard 1995, Chapter III.A, IX 90–IX 129, pp. 91–134). His phenomenology of love is not built on the seemingly solid grounds of anthropology. Instead, it opens the door for social criticism and for a critical debate on widespread preconceptions of what love is in the Christian tradition. Through the narrowly designed contrast between human love and that of true Christian love, Kierkegaard accounts for the problem that in real life, loving

attitudes and behaviors mostly remain ambivalent and diffcult in their nature.6 In his upbuilding discourses, he argues that what true love is (or is not) can be judged neither from the object of love or its meaning to the subject, nor from the selfess outcomes of its actions, nor the spiritual versus bodily nature of love. Rather, proper love, as Christians understand the word, can only be identifed in this world by acknowledging that God has put love close to us, namely, in our neighbor (Kierkegaard 1995, Chapters II.B and II.C, IX 47– IX 89, pp. 44–90). The core of concrete love, as Kierkegaard puts it, is to see others just as they are and respond accordingly.7 Hence, love is not a distant ideal that we reach out for, but is rather a daily concrete encounter with someone near to us (Kierkegaard 1995, Chapter IV, IX 147–IX 194, pp. 154–204). At the same time, however, it is exactly this concrete person whom we generally neither address nor see in the right way because we all too often account for their presence only in the horizon of selfsh preferences or even narcissistic attitudes. Hence, love is needed to open our eyes, despite the fact that it is seldom found and exercised.

According to Kierkegaard, it is only the language and performativity of the Christian tradition and its way of life which gives witness to the eye-opening process and dynamic of love in our lives. It is the term, or better, the metaphor of the "neighbor" from the biblical tradition which can help to illuminate the dynamic of transformation taking place in love. The "neighbor" then serves as a middle term in all our social relationships as Kierkegaard continually seeks to emphasize (Kierkegaard 1995, Chapter II.B, IX 60, p. 58). The other being seen as the neighbor enters social relationships as a qualifying dimension, transforming the dyadic relation of self and other into a social and universal one in the full sense of the term. Concretely, the neighbor stands for a different mode of seeing the other, i.e., of seeing the other as a child of God who is neither worth more nor less than me and is an equal.8 Thus, seeing others as neighbors means to acknowledge the primacy of this equality in all the inequalities and injustices of human relationships. Seeing the other as an equal child of God, therefore, helps the human being to acknowledge the nearness of love and also its practicability.

What love is and how it can be sought and found in our lives is, for Kierkegaard, clearly committed to a Christian perspective. Here, God appears not as the object of love but as a "middle term,"9 as Kierkegaard calls it, which helps to redirect our relationships in order to make them more equal, more consistent, more solid, more responsive and concrete. Consequently, these relationships will be mediated and

6For an emphasis on the diffculty of love and the rigor of its demands, see Critchley (2012, pp. 247–52).

7This has been referred to as Kierkegaard's "paradoxical embrace of both the universal and the particular" which could form a model for the commitment in the context of multicultural societies and globalism in Veninga (2018, p. 122).

8Kierkegaard (1995, Chapter II.B, p. 60): "The neighbor is one who is equal. […] He is your neighbor on the basis of equality with you before God, but unconditionally every person has this equality and has it unconditionally."

9Kierkegaard (1995, Chapter II.B, IX 60, p. 58): "in love for the neighbor, God is the middle term".

transformed into relationships of a new kind: relationships of love. It is this new perspective and the actions resulting from it which mark the dynamic of love as a dynamic of freedom. From this perspective, Kierkegaard can address the pressing questions arising in the ethical study of human helping and other benevolent actions, such as: Are works of love driven by feelings and emotions or by rational interests? Are they self-concerned or other-concerned? Is sacrifce for the other always a form of love? Etc. To all these questions, Kierkegaard can give a clear answer, namely that the crucial criterion in this regard is whether the loving action is oriented towards the other by seeing and addressing him as a neighbor (as a fellow child of God).

In the concluding section, I will now return to the question of what the nature of love is and how it can be addressed best by a scientifc approach. Following the fundamental distinctions of Kierkegaard's phenomenology, I will argue that love is not an attitude, an action, or a virtue but a central dynamic in human life which has the power to transform all social relations into prosocial ones with a tendency towards universality. The structural dynamic of love, thus, can be characterized as disruptive. Thus, I will argue, secondly, that the invoked dynamic of love is marked by a certain kind of revolutionary potential. The nature of love, then, can be found in its power of social transformation. It opens certain social practices, as well as dyadic and egotistic relationships, to change by introducing a third one which works as the initiator of a different order and establishes social bridging and prosociality.10 In the end, it will be shown that the dynamic of love will not be subsumed by social techniques aiming at human fourishing or the ethical quest for a good life, because, rather, it is of a non-conformist nature and aims at unmasking the ideological character of social techniques of human fourishing too.

#### **6.5 The Nature of Love and Revolutionary Altruism11**

Besides Kierkegaard who has written at length of the inner struggles of love, there remains the question posed earlier in this paper whether there is any valid content in the repudiated *Homo economicus* model and consequently whether there is a struggle for love to be won against the non-cooperative and egotistic behaviour of utility maximizing. In this regard, it might be interesting to note some critiques of the *Homo economicus* model in the feld of neuroeconomics, a research approach combining experimental economics and social neuroscience (Vromen and Marchionni 2019; Glimcher et al. 2009). This newly emerging feld of transdisciplinary research aims to overcome neoclassical economics and to "provide an alternative theoretical approach for predicting behaviour" (Glimcher et al. 2009, p. 7). Its major paradigms for studying human social behavior are behavioral experiments designed after the

10For a study of the role and order of the third in social philosophy, see Bedorf (2003).

11Parts of this section have already been published in: Klein (2012).

paradigms of game theory, as for example the trust game, the dictator game, and the third-party punishment game etc. (Gintis 2000). Neuroeconomics does not simply take leave of the model of *Homo economicus*. Rather, it takes egoism to be a continuing challenge to the prosocial orientation of altruistic and cooperative human beings. Hence, the research question posed here is how altruism12 and prosocial behaviors can prevail over *Homo economicus*? (Fehr and Gächter 2002; Fehr and Rosenbach 2003).13 A special focus in the feld of prosociality is placed on the study of norm enforcement.

Several experimental studies on cooperation and prosociality in economics have shown that altruistic punishment plays a key role in understanding the evolution of norm enforcement in human societies.14 Altruistic punishment does not directly beneft the welfare of an individual person, but society as a whole. Therefore, it is referred to as a "prosocial" behaviour. As already noted, the term "prosociality" is used in experimental economics but also in other behavioral sciences to indicate a behavior that does not directly beneft others (as does cooperation), but the wellbeing of group interaction as a whole.15 The behavioral pattern of altruistic punishment has been clearly shown to be of great signifcance for the study of prosociality in a series of behavioral experiments in economics and neuroeconomics (Fehr and Gächter 2002; Fehr and Fischbacher 2003; Fehr and Rosenbach 2003; de Quervain et al. 2004).16 These have been conducted in different behavioral laboratories since the frst study on altruistic punishment was published by Ernst Fehr and Simon Gächter (2002).

In this study, altruistic punishment is defned as a non-selfsh act of punishment which "[provides] … a material beneft for the future interaction partners of the punished subject but not for the punisher" (Fehr and Gächter 2002, p. 139). In an experimental setup with 240 participants17 at the University of Zurich, Fehr and Gächter tested their subject's individual willingness to punish altruistically in a "public goods" experiment. In this type of experiment, several people have the option of investing a certain amount of money in a group project.18 Afterwards, the sum of all contributions is to be shared among the group members equally. The

12The term "altruism" is used here in a behavioral sense referring to the outcomes and not the motivation behind this behavior. Thus, the economic use of the term has to be distinguished from its use in moral philosophy and psychology. See further discussion in Peacock et al. (2005); Clavien and Chapuisat (2013).

13Compare also Clavien and Klein (2010).

14The claim that social reciprocity (prosocial norm enforcement) provides the best explanation for the evolution of punishing behaviors has been defended in Carpenter et al. (2004).

15A defnition of the distinction between prosociality and cooperation can be found in Henrich and Henrich (2006). For a model explaining the cultural evolution of prosociality and cooperation see Gintis (2003).

16An assessment of the evolutionary origin of altruistic punishment can be found in Boyd et al. (2003).

17All of the participants in the experiment were undergraduate students from the University of Zurich.

18The money they earn is paid to them actually after the experiment.

experiment in Zurich was conducted in 12 sessions and the group composition was changed after each session. The latter guaranteed that none of the subjects could again meet the same subjects during the experiment. This ensured that the subjects' decisions and behaviors were not based on a preference for reputation-building among group members. The opportunity to punish group members who did not invest in the group project, but benefted from its gain, was offered at the end of each session. In order to test whether the subjects' willingness to punish did include the willingness to suffer personal cost, the punishment was not only costly for the free rider, but also for the punishing subject himself, because he had to pay for it from his own gain.

The results of the experiment were as follows: over 12 sessions, the opportunity to punish social free-riding behavior was taken by 84.3% of the subjects at least once, and 34.3% of the subjects punished more than fve times (Fehr and Gächter 2002, p. 137). A minority of 9.3% of the subjects punished more than ten times. Thus, the experimental results provide strong evidence that altruistic punishment is a stable behavioral pattern among humans. Additionally, a signifcant effect of altruistic punishment was shown in the later sessions of the experiment. After having been punished, the punished subjects invested a higher amount of money in the group project and changed from non-cooperative to cooperative behaviors in the following sessions. Thus, altruistic punishment caused a substantial increase in terms of the average cooperation level of the group over time. This was highly correlated with the subject's investment strategies and can, therefore, be considered among the facilitating conditions of the evolution of human cooperation. Hence, the remarkable result of the study by Fehr and Gächter was that the opportunity to punish free riders altruistically has a signifcant impact on the maintenance of the norm of cooperation and equity, even in anonymous encounters.

With regard to the interpretation of this evidence, the researchers suggested that the evolution of social norms has to be explained further in terms of the level of the individual's preferences. Thus, they asked how the willingness to punish might be triggered on a psychological level. As a suggestion, it was hypothesized that the subjects' negative emotions concerning the free-riding behavior of others might be the source of their decision to punish. Emotions such as anger and outrage could provide a proximate mechanism of altruistic punishment.19

To elicit the correlation between punishment and the individual's emotions, the researchers prepared a questionnaire given to the subjects after the experiment that asked them to indicate their intensity of anger concerning the free-riding behavior on a seven-point scale. The results recorded that 47% of the subjects had indicated the highest intensity of anger. Hence, it was concluded that these emotions might be a psychological trigger for punishment. This led them to seek a research tool to further investigate this correlation, which in turn led them to engage in a new research feld investigating the neurobiology of prosocial and cooperative behaviors in humans.

19A defnition of proximate causes of evolution can be found in Mayr (1961, p. 1503).

In a follow-up study (de Quervain et al. 2004, pp. 1254–8) to the frst experiment on altruistic punishment in 2004, Fehr and fellow economist, Urs Fischbacher, started to work together with neuropsychologists for the frst time. They added a neuroimaging tool to the experimental setup of their study on social norm enforcement and observed the neurological foundations of people's choices. The idea of combining experiments on norm enforcement with the neurological investigation of the human mind had already come up in a study in 2003 when neuroscientists Alan Sanfey, James Rilling and other colleagues had adapted an experimental design from economics, and started to investigate the neural substrates of the cognitive and emotional processes involved in decision making about altruistic punishment (Sanfey et al. 2003). After they brain-scanned the subjects with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), they found an increased activity in the "anterior insula"– a brain area associated with negative emotional feelings. They concluded that emotions might be the psychological and neurological driving force behind this behavior, a view which was still consistent with the 2002 fndings of Fehr and Gächter.

However, the follow-up study by Fehr, Fischbacher and de Quervain in 2004 led to a rather different neurological fnding. The procedure of this experiment was as follows: the subjects were brain-scanned during their decision to punish free-riding behavior by using positron emission tomography (PET). They were placed in a scanner immediately after the interaction with another player was over. The scanning started when subjects learned about the free-riding behavior of the other participant and it fnished when they had determined the punishment. In the observation of the neural circuits of the subjects' brains, it was shown that not the "interior insula" but a brain area linked to the anticipation of reward – the "caudate nucleus"– played a prominent role when people decided to punish. Subjects who exhibited stronger activation of the "caudate nucleus" were ready to incur more personal costs to punish a free rider in comparison with subjects who exhibited low caudate activation.

Hence, the researchers interpreted the fnding as evidence that the anticipation of "hedonic rewards" (de Quervain et al. 2004, p. 1257) was considered a beneft that altruistic punishers weighed against the costs of punishing. The punishing subjects seemed to feel relief when the violated social norm was established again through an act of retributive justice. Thus, it was concluded that, according to the underlying neurological processes, the subjects' decision-making was driven by hedonic motivation. Hedonic motivation is one of the key features in an evolutionary explanation of behavior, because there is natural selection for avoiding pain and unpleasantness. The correlation between hedonic motivation and altruistic punishment, then, might function as a proximate mechanism with respect to the evolution of human cooperation.

From the presentation and analysis of these pioneering experimental works it can be seen that the fndings, in a way, renew the initial question of modern political philosophy posed by Thomas Hobbes (1651): How can human society with stable cooperation and norm enforcement evolve out of the nastiness and brutish

character of the state of nature? At the same time this question is transformed in the laboratory setting of the neuroeconomic experiments by introducing a dual anthropology into this so-called "state of nature". It is no longer the question of how a society with stable cooperation and norm following can be built out of a bunch of egotistic individuals, but rather how it can evolve out of a group of egotistic and altruistic individuals interacting with each other. The interesting thing about this recent experimental research in neuroeconomics is, therefore, that it stimulates the perspective of a fghting antagonism between *Homo economicus* and *Homo amans*. This means, it regards the cooperative and prosocial orientation not just as a viable alternative which fully replaces the view that human beings are egotistic utility maximizers. Rather, prosociality is seen as an orientation that must establish and sustain itself in a direct confrontation with radically egotistic preferences and behaviors and can – under certain circumstances – be seen to prevail.

Experimental economists have examined in their research the individual conditions (of the human mind) and institutional factors (of setting and context) which can help altruism to win against egoism (Fehr and Fischbacher 2003, 2004, 2005). A combination of both perspectives, behavioral and neuroscientifc, helps them to determine in more detail the nature of altruism and cooperative behaviors. What they discovered after extensive experimental research is that there is a mechanism in human brains which helps altruists and co-operators do their job. The experiments have therefore given an empirical proof that there actually exist altruists and co-operators which are willing to sacrifce their individual self-interest to safeguard the existence of common goods (such as social norms of fairness), and that they are naturally oriented towards the welfare and fourishing of society as whole.

What we can learn now from this research concerning a deeper understanding of the nature of love is the following: The modern romantic view that love is fully developed in an interpersonal relation is misleading. Instead, it can be argued from a Christian point of view, but also from the insights of recent experimental studies, that love has a prosocial nature insofar as it is reliant on introducing a third into the interpersonal relation and transforming it in the light of a universal signifer. Likewise, the view is false that love is always aiming at a personal beneft or at the welfare of others. Rather, it can require personal sacrifce or even loss of self and other in order to safeguard the welfare of society and its ethical virtues such as fairness, justice, and norm compliance.20

Further, what has been shown by Kierkegaard to be true for the inner struggle of love is also shown to be true in the neuroeconomic experiments for the outer dynamics of prosocial behavior: the signifcance of *Homo amans*, a human being with a preference for loving and cooperative behavior, lies in its potential for social transformation which, in the behavioral experiments, is manifest in the establishment and protection of social norms as a main public good of every society. Other orientations do not disappear when *Homo amans*, i.e. human beings with prosocial

20This reference to the virtue of institutions or society can be traced back to John Rawls (1971).

preferences, appears on the scene. Hence, the *Homo economicus* has reality content as well, but – as the experiments have shown – the love for the third, the prosocial action, can defnitely prevail due to its revolutionary nature. Thus, a convincing model of *Homo amans* and the nature of love should also provide a good analysis and explanation of the disruptive dynamic of love introducing a third that transgresses interpersonal relations.

#### **6.6 Conclusions**

Love is not a stable core of human nature nor a character trait that can be educated or trained. Rather, it should be seen as a dynamic structure at work in human attitudes and behaviors, arising out of a change of perspective concerning the world, oneself, and others. This change of perspective cannot be determined but happens for contingent reasons. This makes it uncomfortable to account for it in the realm of hard sciences with its focus on the measurability of love and cooperative behaviors. As has been shown, the characteristic of the dynamic structure of love is that it is creative in its nature because it brings into being a wholly new social reality, which transforms the *status quo* and the shape of human relationality completely by introducing a horizon of universality. Crucial for the prevalence of love in its true nature is the introduction of a notion of the third that opens the space for prosocial action and sets the focus on the welfare of all humankind or society as a whole.

Hence, it could be fruitful in future to explore in more detail the revolutionary potential of love – love's potential to induce social transformation and the role it plays in the implementation of radically new perspectives and social practices in human life. As has been further shown, the orientation of love is an orientation towards the third in the relationship with the other. Thus, it can be seen as structurally equal to what Kierkegaard already described in the language of Christian faith as the central dynamic of love of neighbor. The interpersonal relationship, which can be of a cooperative or non-cooperative nature, is transformed through love by introducing a third – in the experiments represented by a universal social norm of fairness and in the Christian faith represented by the universal perception of humans as children of God. Both orientations have in common that they describe the two terms "love of neighbor" and "prosociality" as revolutionary, i.e. disruptive dynamics which transgress the current social state and open it for a human sociality of a different kind. It inaugurates the existence of universal norms (in the horizon of a new and yet invisible social order) and overcomes the unstructured interaction of atomized individuals. Thus, love can be seen to set up the rules by setting out the rules frst. It distances current social practice, for example, of free riding and exploiting the common good, and introduces a new one. Suspending the reigning unwritten rules is in itself an act of non-conformity. Building new structures of interaction by setting the rules for it in a kind of violently nonconformist act is, thus, a crucial capability of love.

#### **References**

———. 2012. The Neurobiology of Altruistic Punishment: A Moral Assessment of its Social Utility. In *Philosophy of Behavioral Biology*, ed. K. Plaisance and T. Reydon, 297–313. Dordrecht: Springer.

Mayr, E. 1961. Cause and Effect in Biology. *Science* 134: 1501–1506.

Mittelstraß, J. 1982. *Wissenschaft als Lebensform. Reden über die philosophische Orientierung in Wissenschaft und Universität*. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.

———. 1999. The Place of People in Our Knowledge. *European Review* 7: 247–262.

———. 2008. Kierkegaard and Ethical Theory. In *Ethics, Love and Faith in Kierkegaard*, ed. M. Westphal, 72–92. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## **Chapter 7 Searching for the Anthropological Foundations of Economic Practice: Controversies and Opportunities**

**Gerrit Glas**

**Abstract** This chapter is a comment on the contribution of Rebecca Klein in this volume, preceded by a conceptual analysis of the argument that is developed in the *Homo Amans* discussion paper.

The main question that is raised is twofold and concerns the relation between science and worldview on the one hand, and between science and economic life on the other. With respect to the science – worldview relationship, it is doubted that science can play the role the authors of the *Homo amans* project expect it can have. What they have in mind is that science helps in validating and legitimizing a biblically informed concept of love. This author disagrees, to a large extent. Science can indeed orient itself on ideas and intuitions that are based on one's worldview. But it cannot prove the truth of these intuitions and ideas. To think so, is to commit a naturalistic fallacy.

With respect to the relationship between science and economic life, the author is also not convinced that science and philosophy as academic disciplines will by themselves be able (and should be expected to be able) to transform deeply ingrained, institutionally anchored economic practices. New theories, concepts, and paradigms are a precondition for change, but they do not bring about change by themselves. What is needed is a change in the practices themselves, a change that is both personal and comprehensive. What is needed is a clear, succinct, and encompassing view on the intrinsic normativity of economic interactions between relevant stakeholders in what we call 'the' economy. This is a huge undertaking, that requires painstaking 'phenomenological' analyses of a wide variety of economic practices. The chapter agrees with most of Klein's observations and concerns with respect to the discussion paper. These observations and concerns gain even more depth and relief given the conceptual distinctions that are made in the chapter.

© The Author(s) 2022 121

G. Glas (\*)

Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
J. van Nes et al. (eds.), *Relational Anthropology for Contemporary Economics*, Ethical Economy 61, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84690-9\_7

#### **7.1 Introduction**

In this response I will frst focus on the argument in the discussion paper by Nullens and Van Nes (Chap. 2) in this volume. I will introduce a distinction to be made between four perspectives on economic practice and show its relevance for the conceptualization of the *Homo amans* project. I proceed by giving some comments on the paper by Rebekka Klein and conclude with a few more general, evaluative comments.

#### **7.2 The Discussion Paper: Structure of the Argument**

The discussion paper presents itself as "…a modest attempt to encourage a multidisciplinary dialogue on anthropology in contemporary economics by

The paper builds on well-known oppositions such as that between mechanistic and teleological views of humanhood; and between materialistic and other, richer views on man. Sources of inspiration in the development of a new, relational view on man are critical realism, as developed by C. Smith (2015); personalism, as can be found in the work by Pope John Paul II (Wojtyla 1993); and the plea for nonreductionism and anti-scientism that, for instance, has been voiced by C. Taylor (1989). Nullens and Van Nes quote Smith (2010), when he describes the human person as "a conscious, refexive, embodied, bodied, self-transcending center of subjective experience, durable identity, moral commitment, and social communication who – as the effcient cause of his or her own responsible actions and interactions – exercises complex capacities for agency and intersubjectivity in order to develop and sustain his or her own incommunicable self in loving relationships with other personal selves and with the nonpersonal world." This thick notion of personhood grounds a eudaimonistic ethics, i.e., the understanding that the human good can be conceived as a realization of human nature and a rediscovery of the wisdom of old moral systems that are often already in line with our own intuitions. In other words, the paper builds on the idea that universal traits such as love, justice, generosity, and the like, should be enacted and developed for the beneft of others and ourselves and that this is made possible by the fact that they are in some way already present in us because they are part of our nature.

This anthropological intuition is then undergirded by a wide variety of arguments derived from the Bible, positive psychology (Peterson and Seligman 2004), behavioral economics (McCloskey 2006), insights on religious behavior based on evolutionary theory (Wildman 2009), neuroscientifc insights into the neuroendocrine 'basis' of prosocial behavior (Pfaff 2015), the psychology of hope (Scioli and Biller 2009), leadership studies focusing on servant/responsible/spiritual leadership, trust and cooperation; and on a phenomenology of multiple perspectives (economic, philosophical, theological) on love.

#### **7.3 Four Perspectives**

Although I sympathize with the general intentions of *Homo Amans* as a theological/ empirical program and recognize the relevance of antireductionist fndings in contemporary psychology, neuroscience, and (as I now understand) economy, I still have diffculties with (a) the structure of the argument and (b) the lack of clarity of the concept of *Homo amans* itself. To get a grasp on the project *Homo Amans* it is helpful to make a distinction between at least four perspectives: the perspective of one's life- and worldview, the perspective of philosophy (core concepts; conceptual frameworks; paradigms; argumentative structures), the perspective of theoretical knowledge (marked by abstraction and based on methodic reduction), and the perspective of practical (professional) knowledge and know-how. In other contexts, I have added a ffth perspective relating to the lay knowledge and everyday experiences (of a particular topic or situation). Since I will not deal here with lay perspectives, I will continue with the four perspectives mentioned earlier.

Each of these perspectives offers a way of looking at the phenomenon under study. One can, for instance, study empathy as a human capacity (or virtue) and give an account of it in terms of one's *life- and world view* (let us say, as one of the sources of self-surrendering love or as an evolutionary advantageous adaptation); one can study empathy from a *philosophical/conceptual* perspective (is empathy a feeling, a disposition, or a form of behavior?); one may formulate *scientifc* hypotheses about empathy (mentalization is a prerequisite for the development of empathy; or: empathy is a capacity that builds on "earlier" abilities such as successful performance of perception-action cycles); and one may approach empathy from the point of view of the *professional* who, for instance, is interested in the empathic capacities of an offender or a person with personality disorder. One of the premises on which my account is based, is that these four perspectives are more than merely conceptual and epistemic and that they are part of, and intrinsically intertwined with, practices of knowing, interaction, and action, that diverge in scope, aim, function, content, and role (Glas 2019a, Chapters 6 and 7). Professional knowledge is not just a way of knowing. Professional knowing cannot be defned apart from the practices in which it is embedded. It is, for instance, characteristic of these practices that the relevance of a model, theory, or explanation (rational choice theory, for instance) for the understanding of a phenomenon (behavior of consumers) is weighed, and that different pieces of knowledge (rational choice theory versus, for instance, theories about prosocial behavior) compete for recognition of their relevance. In other words, scientifc knowledge needs to be translated into relevant practices. This translation process requires awareness of contexts, the infrastructure, and the interactions between relevant parties. The translation process itself is not scientifc, it is not based on methodic reduction and fxing and standardization of boundary conditions. Translation requires, instead, that the relevance of a certain theory for the understanding of a phenomenon is seen and weighed against intuitions about the relevance of other theoretical insights. Recognizing this relevance requires contextual knowledge, practical experience within the feld, 'insight', holistic knowledge, and so on.

The context of scientifc knowledge is scientifc practice, i.e., the world of laboratories, technology, experiments, publishing, texts, libraries, peer competition, fund raising, and so on. The context of economic practice is the market as the platform for real life interactions and negotiations between consumers, producers, and other stakeholders. How relevant rational choice theory is for the behavior of a group of consumers in a segment of the market depends on the contribution of other possible factors that infuence economic behavior. There is, in other words, no logical (deductive, straightforward 'applicative') relation between scientifc knowledge and economic practice. There are also no such (logical, deductive) relationships between philosophical views on man and labor and economic theory; nor between the images of man based on life- and worldview and economic theory.

This does not imply, however, that there are no relationships at all between the different epistemic perspectives. There are, for instance, overarching intuitions, analogies, and metaphors that enable communication between the different perspectives. These intuitions and analogies need to be elucidated and tested in the relevant contexts: are they creative fctions or do they really hit the phenomenon under study. Moreover, people learn from their experiences, also in the application of scientifc insights to the practices in which they are embedded. Professionals learn when these applications lead to something and when they lead them astray. They build up experiential expertise with the concepts, the techniques, the algorithms, and other implementations of scientifc knowledge. This largely tacit expert-knowledge may in turn inform scientists when they reformulate their hypotheses and ideas.

#### **7.4 The Four Perspectives in the Discussion Paper**

Diagram 7.1 gives an impression of the argument in the discussion paper based on the distinctions I made in the previous section, i.e., the distinction between life- and worldview, philosophy, scientifc theorizing, and professional practice. According to the *life- and worldview* of the authors, man is driven by faith, hope, and love. These and other virtuous are constitutive of human nature (perspective 1, life and worldview). The paper describes how this overarching idea might be supported by philosophical analysis and by insights found in theology, psychology, neuroscience, and sociobiology. This 'enriched' view leads to a relational view of human nature, as *philosophical* paradigm (perspective 2). This paradigm should then be operationalized in terms of new economic *theories* (perspective 3) and lead to better *economic practices* (perspective 4).

**Diagram 7.1** Structure of the argument in the *Homo Amans* discussion paper

However, these expectations are based on mixed and somewhat shaky grounds. There are, as I said, no strictly logical, deductive, or purely empirical grounds to expect that the combined efforts of the empirical sciences will lead to a 'richer', or 'more biblical', philosophical image of man. That is to say, judging a view as richer and/or more biblical is a value judgment that cannot be based on the combination of empirical research and logical reasoning *per se*.

We are dealing with different transitions here, for instance with the transition from philosophy to the sciences (and back); and from the sciences to theology. By viewing these transitions as logical, deductive, or self-evident, the authors run the risk of committing a *naturalistic fallacy.* By this, I mean the error of considering scientifc evidence as evidence for a normative position. Views based on, for instance, developmental psychology do not necessarily lead to a better (richer) philosophical theology or anthropology. Such theology or anthropology has obvious normative implications that the sciences will never deliver. Scientifc evidence may be consistent or convergent with one's life- and worldview, but it cannot serve as the basis for it. Theories about the capacity to empathize with fellow human beings may be consistent with (aspects of) certain philosophical views on man, but they don't entail the full spectrum of meanings associated with the notion of man as a relational, virtuous being. Understanding how empathy develops does not necessarily lead to recognition of empathy as moral virtue. The frst is an empirical hypothesis or theory, the latter is a normative valuation. There may be moral and religious reasons for thinking empathy is an important phenomenon to understand. But empirical understanding of a phenomenon that we value on the basis of our moral and other convictions, does not add to the normative force of these convictions. Consistency is something other than validity and legitimacy.

One other problem of this view on the relationship between philosophy/theology and the sciences is the risk of circularity, lack of precision, and pseudotheorizing. The idea of the project is that a richer, relational view on man will lead to better economic theories. However, philosophical accounts of man are typically caught in general and abstract terms. Defnitions of these terms are based on theoretical refection and discussions that are primarily philosophical and that relate to a philosophical/conceptual context. The aim of these defnitions is to shed light on and articulate the content of a term or theory in the context of a wide range of competing philosophical theories and ideas. These abstract and general terms are usually not precise enough to serve as a basis for solid empirical hypothesizing and experimenting. They are diffcult to operationalize and refer to contexts that are distant from the experimental practice. Using them to support empirical hypothesizing easily leads to circular reasoning, vagueness, and pseudo-theorizing. The philosophical term is defned in terms of the phenomena it is supposed to explain; the *explanans* entails the *explanandum*, then, which is a logical error.

With respect to the transition from *philosophy to professional activities,* the idea of the paper seems to be that a richer, relational view on man will lead to better education, better economic practice, and better working ethics. Surely, overarching ideals and views do guide all kinds of practices. They may serve as legitimation for one's approach, they highlight the general perspective. But there are again a number of risks: risk of ambiguous interpretation of the overarching ideas and concepts; risk of ignorance of differences in the application of these ideas and concepts on varying practices. The umbrella term itself may mean different things in different contexts; but the term may also lead to different practical applications. A more urgent risk is the suggestion of moral superiority that comes along when one's own view serves as touchstone for other conceptions. In short, to say this in a somewhat different formulation, it is crucial to recognize that the implementation, application, and translation of scientifc discoveries are not by themselves scientifc activities. They presuppose in-depth knowledge and contextual sensitivity. But the search for meaningful application and the weighing of the relevance of scientifc evidence within a particular context build on something other than scientifc scrutiny.

#### **7.5 Different Routes to 'Integration'**

All this, I need to say, does not imply that I am negative about the possibility of connecting philosophical discussions with issues in the sciences and professional practices. Earlier, I mentioned that the implementation of scientifc insights in applied contexts requires insight and creativity to discern the potential relevance of scientifc evidence for a certain practice. This innovative mindset does not primarily consist of deductive reasoning and logic. It does not work with the idea of a linear process from basic research via the applied sciences to professional practices. It does not derive distal changes from proximal causes. The innovative mindset supports the view that successful implementation is based on (circular) learning processes and on socialization into ways of interacting and collaborating that further and enhance insight and creativity.

Let me zoom out and briefy indicate four ways to conceptualize this process of learning, translating, and collaborating. An essential component is building a culture of interaction and collaboration that is sharply aware of the different mindsets of scientists, philosophers, professionals, and designers. Given these differences, there are nevertheless ways to cooperate fruitfully and to gain deeper understanding.

Iain Barbour, for instance, who has written extensively about the interaction between science and religion, discerns four forms of interaction: confict; parallelism; dialogue; integration (Barbour 1997). Scientists and practitioners may perceive each other as being in confict; as operating in different domains without any interaction (parallelism); as being in dialogue with one another; and as operating conjointly and moving toward integration of perspectives.

Jochemsen, Hoogland and this author have developed a so-called normative practice approach (NPA) to medicine and healthcare. This NPA has been elaborated for other felds too: media and communication, public administration, military ethics, and philosophy of organizations. The cornerstone of this approach is the idea that practices should be seen as responsive to clusters of intrinsic norms, rules, and/ or values. Within these groups of norms (rules, values), one needs to make a distinction between norms that form the basis for a practice; norms that undergird the (economic, jural, institutional, and political) conditions for a practice; and norms that qualify that practice. Qualifying norms indicate the kind of normativity that guides a certain practice. Economic practices could be evaluated along similar lines as being founded on a variety of norms that are foundational, conditional, or qualifying with respect to these practices. Economic theories function as cognitive artefacts in these practices, in the sense that they highlight certain aspects of the practice. Religious and philosophical anthropological ideas inform one's view on the *Homo economicus*; they may be seen as constructs that help to articulate the ethos or spirit that dominates economic life (Dooyeweerd 1953–1958; Glas 2019a, b, c; Jochemsen 2006; Jochemsen and Glas 1997; Hoogland and Jochemsen 2000; Verkerk et al. 2015; de Vries and Jochemsen 2019).

One other approach that is worth mentioning is the so-called actor-network approach as developed by Latour (1987); and applied by scholars such as Callon et al. (1986). The actor-network theory is often seen as belonging to social constructivism. It suggests that a practice (technological, medical, social, economic) is not solely determined by the acts and intentions of economic subjects, but also equally by all kinds of contextual factors (from the physical to the political).

In terms of Barbour's four models of interaction between science and religion, what can be achieved with this approach is dialogue between contributions from different felds. The next step could be convergence between the results based on the sciences, philosophy and worldview. This would be no small result: the interaction between the felds would lead to "richer" conceptualizations in each of the interacting practices.

In terms of the normative practices approach, one could start with an attempt to analyze the "intrinsic" normative core of economically qualifed practices. From that point on, one could proceed with an analysis of how economic functioning might be opened up by (analogical) references to higher order (jural, social, moral, esthetic) norms and ideals. Another approach could consist in the analysis of qualifying, foundational, and conditioning norms for the interactions between economic subjects and their micro-, meso-, and macro-environments.

In terms of the actor network approach one could analyze how economic practices develop under the infuence of technology (ICT), globalization, migration, ecological crises, political leadership, and the like.

#### **7.6 Response to Rebekka Klein**

After these lengthy introductory remarks, it is time to focus on Rebekka Klein's 'What is the Nature of Christian Love? *Homo Amans* and Revolutionary Altruism' (Chap. 6, this volume). Let me start by saying that I agree with most of what she says. It will come as no surprise that I agree with Kleins's warning that the *Homo amans* should not be taken as a comprehensive and defnitive representation of the reality of human being. That would lead to similar totalitarian implementations, she says, as with the older *Homo economicus* model. Philosophical models should play a role that is different from dictating scientifc hypothesizing. The project seems to require too much from scientists in this respect. They are expected "… to prove the anthropological, psychological, societal and political usefulness and the pragmatic and ethical impact of its insights instead of merely safeguarding the correct methodological fabrication of scientifc facts." I agree, that this is simply too much. The idea that science can prove the truth of a prescientifc (philosophical, religiously inspired) view on man comes dangerously close to the idea that science can prove metaphysical claims, whatever their content. This view could also easily drive us into the arms of scientism.

There are, therefore, "limits and problems inherent in the argument." I will briefy discuss another fve of these limits, problems and issues that are mentioned in Klein's contribution. One of them is that the holism and integrationism implied in notions like well-being and love disregards the fracturedness and ambivalences of the phenomena under study. Man is not the rational calculating being that traditional economic theory has supposed him to be. He is driven by ambiguous, skewed, and sometimes downright contradictory motives and impulses. The things people value and are willing to invest in, emotionally, fnancially, or in terms of efforts, depend on their individual and collective histories. Identifcation of the fracture lines, and the active search for issues that evoke tensions and feelings of unease, is a condition for understanding what people avoid or strive for. I am convinced that searching for such fracture lines and areas of unease and tension is crucial for the detection of underlying values in economic life, values that do matter and have proven to matter in the lives of concrete groups and individuals, also and especially in the economic sphere.

Klein's second concern originates from the question of how the proposal takes notice of the independence, objectivity, and cool mood of science? What is left from these? What is the validity and legitimacy of the concept of *Homo amans*? My response is, briefy, that this is a matter of concern for me too. As I have argued above, the transdisciplinary perspective, as such, does not guarantee the wholeness and integration the discussion paper is aiming at. In the act of abstraction, scientists lose by defnition the connection with this wholeness. They may retain, of course, prescientifc intuitions about this wholeness and they may try to do justice to these intuitions in their hypothesizing and model-building. But they are not able to reconstruct this wholeness and its inner coherence by scientifc means (Dooyeweerd 1953, Vol. I, p. 1). Attempts to do so, for instance in systems theory or (other) computational approaches to a given feld of science, will by defnition be colored by the language and the perspective of the supposedly overarching and connecting science (mathematics, for instance).

Third, Klein raises a question about the concept of love. What is love? Can it be equated with prosocial behaviors and attitudes of cooperation and altruism? Like Klein, I am inclined to suggest that this is not, or at best only partly, the case. There exists a huge amount of research on empathy and altruism, suggesting that there is continuity between animal and human behavior. However, the issue here is love in the biblical sense, i.e., self-giving, self-surrendering, altruistic love that doesn't expect to get anything in return for one's "investment"; love of one's enemies; love that is ready to sacrifce oneself and one's own interests. This self-giving love is not instrumental, it is the expression of one's deepest self, of one's giving, caring, and life-preserving motives.

How about love as grounded in a feeling or in a rational choice? Is it a capability? Is love essential or contingent in the defnition of who we are as human beings? Is love a remote ideal, or should we conceive it as a fulflment of a latent capacity, a fulflment that leads to human fourishing? These are again big questions, that cannot adequately be addressed in a couple of paragraphs. But let me briefy indicate in which direction I am thinking. With Klein, I am inclined to reject all these options, except the latter, the virtue-ethical approach to love. I feel sympathy for this latter approach, which conceives love as an excellence of human nature and as an important aspect of human fourishing. But there are also important differences between the virtue-based approach to love and the biblical emphasis on love as a form of self-surrender and as a counter-intuitive movement in the presence of often overwhelming suffering and tragedy. Biblical love emerges against a background of broken relations, anger, suspicion, negativity, shame, ambivalence, and deception. Love is indeed central to our existence as human beings, but it is not what we are inclined to do, especially not in situations in which we ourselves feel threatened, devalued, put to shame, and so on. Love is indeed a central dynamic within our existence, a driving force that helps us focus on doing well by our fellow human beings; whoever this fellow human being is and whatever the difference is between their and our situation. But this will to love is always, in a way, in opposition to

other inclinations we also have; inclinations that manifest themselves as egotism, lack of trust, misanthropy, lack of self-disclosure, narcissism, and tendencies to grandiosity.

Fourth, Klein expresses as a special worry that the concept of love should be defned by acknowledging the societal context. What love is, can only be identifed given the alienation and atomization of individuals and given the liquid society in which we live with its increasingly fuid identities of individuals and groups. By not systematically adopting this perspective of alienation, individualization, and loss of identity, the *Homo amans* project runs the risk of "dreaming away." I agree, again, and I am inclined to include systematic and institutional injustice as important other contexts against the background of which acts of love gain meaning and prove to be transformative.

Fifth, with Kierkegaard, Klein is inclined to suggest that love is not a virtue nor an expression of human nature, but something in the concrete world, that God has put next to us, in our neighbor. Love is a "middle-term" instead of an end-term (or object), she says. It is that through which we reshape our relationships.

I agree that love is not a goal in itself, but a mediating power with transformative potential. As I said, I see love as a central, transformative dynamic. Love gets shape in the struggle with egotistic and disconnecting forces. It is accompanied by a hidden creativity in fnding out what is good for others and for society in spite of all sorts of resistance and animosity.

So, in sum, I agree with most of Klein's observations and concerns with respect to the discussion paper. These observations and concerns gain even more depth and relief given the conceptual distinctions that were made earlier in the chapter.

#### **7.7 Final Comments and Conclusion**

Let me fnish by summing up my most important hesitations with respect to the *Homo Amans* initiative and the role it is supposed to fulfll in the context of economic theory and economic life.

My main question is twofold and concerns the relationship between science and worldview on the one hand and between science and economic life on the other. With respect to the science – worldview relationship, I doubt that science can play the role the authors of the *Homo amans* project expect, in validating and legitimizing the biblically informed concept of love they have in mind. Science can orient itself on ideas and intuitions that are based on one's worldview. But it cannot prove the truth of these intuitions and ideas.

My strictness on this point is not based on the idea that biblical love and love in the mundane economic sphere are completely distinct realities. It is based on the conviction that the epistemic attitude of scientists fundamentally differs from the epistemic attitude of believers (citizens, entrepreneurs, employees, consumers, or experts in a certain profession). Each scientifc discipline highlights a different and distinct aspect of a phenomenon; and the combined sum of all these partial insights does not reproduce the original coherence and holism of the phenomenon under study. This also holds for the concept of love. The combined efforts of all the sciences will not deliver us the coherence and holism of the idea of love the authors of the *Homo amans* project have in mind.

With respect to the relationship between science and economic life, I am also not convinced that science and philosophy as academic disciplines will by themselves be able (nor should be expected to be able) to transform deeply ingrained, institutionally anchored economic practices. New theories, concepts, and paradigms are a precondition for change, but they do not bring about change by themselves. Economy will not be changed by a new model or paradigm about human nature *per se*. Nor can the economy be rescued by implementing legal, institutional, political, or moral innovations alone. What is needed is a transdisciplinary approach guided by an overarching and inspiring view, which is informed by a worldview or worldviews, with contributions from all relevant stakeholders and a set of useful conceptual distinctions. What is needed most of all is a clear, succinct, but also encompassing view of the intrinsic normativity of economic interactions between relevant stakeholders in what we call "the" economy. This is a huge undertaking, that requires painstaking "phenomenological" analyses of a wide variety of economic practices. But this new view and these analyses are worthy of being strived for, given the needs of our time.

The idea that there exists someone like a *Homo amans* or a *Homo economicus* is also vulnerable in a more practical and empirical sense. Does the *Homo economicus* actually exist? Is it not a strawman? Are we not tilting at windmills? Does the term refer to essences, attitudes, relational characteristics, or something else? And, has economic theory not already recognized for quite some time the importance of collaboration, a certain measure of non-selfshness, and sustainable interactions? All these questions need to be addressed. The answers will determine which conclusions can be drawn from the *Homo amans* project.

#### **References**

———. 2019b. Roots of the Normative Practice Approach: The Philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd. In *The Normative Nature of Social Practices and Ethics in Professional Environment*, ed. M.J. de Vries and H. Jochemsen, 15–30. Hershey: IGI Global.

———. 2019c. A Normative Practice Approach to Healthcare. In *The Normative Nature of Social Practices and Ethics in Professional Environment*, ed. M.J. de Vries and H. Jochemsen, 164–184. Hershey: IGI Global.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## **Chapter 8 Altruistic Concern for the Other and the Development of the Virtue of Humility**

**James A. Van Slyke**

**Abstract** Humility is often defned by what it is not; as the antithesis to various vices such as pride, arrogance, conceit, or vanity. This negative defnition leaves open the possibility of some underlying characteristic or trait that infuences the formation of this virtue. *Homo amans* lays out the classic theological triad of faith, hope, and love as a natural inclination in humanity. This chapter explores one aspect of this triad, love, as a possible underlying characteristic or trait that uniquely informs the formation of the virtue of humility: specifcally, love as altruistic concern for the other that puts them ahead or before the self. Contemporary psychological studies of humility demonstrate a connection between this virtue and altruistic concern for the other.  Holocaust rescuers demonstrate that moral schemas, which contain altruistic concern as a primary component of their view of the world, cultivate a moral identity that makes rescuing a consequence of their self-identity and naturally leads to humility about their actions.

#### **8.1 Introduction**

Humility is commonly defned according to what it is acting against; most often some form of pride.

Humility is most easily defned as the virtue that opposes pride, that is, the virtue which opposes ascribing to oneself an excellence one does not possess, or wrongly thinking of oneself as the cause of one's own excellence, or wishing to be the exclusive possessor of the excellence (Pinsent 2012, p. 261).

Aquinas defnes humility as a restriction against thinking too highly of oneself and a type of restraint against forming an identity based on the over-estimation of

J. A. Van Slyke (\*)

Fresno Pacifc University, Fresno, CA, USA e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
© The Author(s) 2022 133

J. van Nes et al. (eds.), *Relational Anthropology for Contemporary Economics*, Ethical Economy 61, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84690-9\_8

oneself (1912/1981). Humility is foundational to the formation of virtue, generally through the actions and resistance it takes against pride.

Wherefore, the frst step in the acquisition of virtue may be understood in two ways. First by way of removing obstacles: and thus humility holds the frst place, in as much as it expels pride, which "God resists," and make man submissive and ever open to receive the infux of Divine grace (Aquinas 1912/1981, ST II-II.161.5.ad 2).

Both of these defnitions focus on a type of negative claim, the presence of humility is the absence of some other sort of vice. Humility is present when something else is regulated or restricted.

Roberts and Wood (2010) argue that humility is best described by paying attention to its vice counterparts because it has a negative character. They list a number of its opposite vices including "arrogance, vanity, conceit, egotism, hyper-autonomy, grandiosity, pretentiousness, …" among many others (p. 236). Humility is ultimately defned by being opposed to vanity and arrogance. Vanity is excessive concern or anxiety with how one appears to others, which can be focused on a number of personal qualities such as intelligence, attractiveness, or social status. Thus, a humble person is one who is unconcerned or inattentive to their appearance to others, based on these qualities (Roberts and Wood 2010). Arrogance is defned as a type of entitlement that is afforded to oneself based on some quality (real or imagined) where a person sees himself or herself as superior to others and thus deserving of special treatment. The humble person may accurately perceive a special quality in themselves (a skill, a strength, or some other asset), but the difference is that they do not use that information to see themselves as superior or requiring special treatment.

Descriptions of some property using contrasts are certainly helpful, and aspects of the virtue of humility contain elements that are antithetical to its corresponding vices. Roberts' (2003, 2013) overall method of focusing on detailed descriptions of virtues, using a Wittgensteinian family resemblance approach, is very helpful to understanding virtue formation. However, defnitions focused on absence or restriction seem to indicate the possibility that there might be a separate property or character trait that lies underneath, which actually plays an essential role in the overcoming of vice. My suggestion is that altruistic concern, which views the other as intrinsically valuable, is the ultimate foundation or bedrock of the virtue of humility.

The idea of *Homo amans* uses St. Paul's tripartite view of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love as a new paradigm for understanding certain predispositions in humanity and argues against the typical idea of *Homo economicus* as a foundation for human anthropology (See Chap 1, this volume). One aspect of this view, love, understood as altruistic concern for the other, is foundational for the development of the virtue of humility. Part of the development of this virtue is dependent upon a certain view of other people, a view that sees intrinsic worth and value in the other. When this altruistic view of the other is present, humility becomes a natural consequence because the temptations to various vices related to selfshness no longer take hold in the virtuous person.

In this way, a certain sense of relational connection and identifcation with the other provokes the various cognitive states and behaviors associated with the virtuous state of being humble. Humble people have moral schemas that include a distinctive valuation for the other and places a high value on those relationships. Their moral identities are partially constituted based on this altruistic view of other people, which infuences their actions and view of the world. Other people have an inherent value simply based on their status as fellow humans and this perspective promotes many of the factors commonly associated with the virtue of humility. This view of *Homo amans* is a helpful starting point for reconsidering human nature and the possibility of developing humility as a virtue.

#### **8.2 Human Nature and Altruistic Concern**

Selfshness is often perceived as a core aspect of human nature. Theologically, original sin and the doctrine of total depravity describe human nature as fully corrupted by sin (Augustine 1961/1996; Calvin 1559/1999). Philosophically, Hobbes viewed the essence of human nature as egoistical, eventually leading to a brutal competition among people, absent a proper monarch to rule over them (1651). More recently, Dawkins' idea of a selfsh gene has been interpreted as evidence that human nature itself is also inherently selfsh (1976). De Waal (2006) has argued that a popular view among many biologists is that human morality and culture are just a façade that covers the selfsh core of human nature. The view of *Homo amans* is a helpful corrective to the assumptions of human selfshness presumed to be foundational to human nature. By emphasizing the aspects of human nature that are searching for meaning, projecting the self into the future, and focusing on the inherent worth of human relationships, it is possible to re-imagine the basic characteristics of human nature and highlight the most positive attributes rather than relegating them to a secondary or cursory status.

Elsewhere, I have argued that this focus on the inherent worth of others or, as I have defned it here as altruistic concern, is not antithetical to the evolution of human nature. Rather, the evolutionary or natural processes that produced human nature as we know it today actually allows for the *possibility* of altruistic concern and behavior (Van Slyke 2010). The altruistic concern that is such a noteworthy part of many forms of moral exemplarity is actually based on the everyday evolved characteristics of human nature (Van Slyke 2012). Sociality is a basic aspect of many mammalian species and is most prominent in the primate lineage (de Waal 2005). Attachment processes establish a trajectory of care and concern for offspring that can later infuence altruistic concern in other relationships (Shaver et al. 2016). Neuroeconomics has shown in a variety of experiments that people often prefer various types of transactions that emphasize cooperation and fairness rather than self-interest (Camerer and Fehr 2006; Fehr and Camerer 2007). When one person experiences empathy for another, similar areas of the brain are activated in the two people, thus each feels a facsimile of what that other person is feeling, based on

shared neural circuitry (Singer and Lamm 2009). Neural systems underlying empathy in concert with human mirror systems involved in imitation and specialized circuitry for theory of mind encompass a natural human propensity towards understanding another (Van Slyke 2014).

These human characteristics (along with a host of others) make the development of altruistic concern a very natural part of human nature. It is not so much working *against* a selfsh core or intrinsic self-interest, rather it is an emphasis and development of the parts of human nature related to cooperation, trust, attachment (among others), toward the end of viewing the other as intrinsically valuable. The development of altruistic concern is foundational to the development of humility, in that showing humility seems to be dependent upon viewing the other as having an intrinsic worth simply by being a fellow human being. Thus, part of the development of this virtue will be dependent upon developing the relational or love facet of the *Homo amans* triad.

#### **8.3 Recent Defnitions of Humility**

Recently, there has been a revival in the study of humility, both as a virtue and as a positive character trait associated with optimal human fourishing. Although humility has historically been defned in terms of low self-esteem, unworthiness, and self-deprecation, more recent defnitions focus on the positive contributions it makes to human relationships and individual psychological functioning. Three components stand out as important characteristics of humility that have taken center focus in recent defnitions of this virtue. Those components are (1) accurate selfassessment, (2) openness, and (3) low self-regard. Each of these components is related to how a person views the other and their relationship to other people in their lives.

Emmons initially identifed accurate assessment as one of the primary components of a humble person.

To be humble is not to have a low opinion of oneself, it is to have an accurate opinion of oneself. It is the ability to keep one's talents and accomplishments in perspective … to have a sense of self-acceptance, and understanding of one's imperfections, and to be free from arrogance and low self-esteem (Emmons 2000, p. 7)

Humble people are able to understand the limitations to their own knowledge; an understanding of their intellectual accomplishments without the belief that they are somehow all-knowing (Templeton 1997). Humble people are able to perceive themselves accurately, both their strengths and weaknesses, without defensiveness (Exline and Hill 2012).

Part of their accurate assessment is related to their understanding of dependence on others. Humble people realize that their accomplishments and relationships are not produced in a vacuum, but are dependent upon others. Humble people recognize that the formation of any virtue occurs in particular groups with unique

characteristics that help to foster the relational conditions necessary for virtue formation. It is through social formation that we begin to acknowledge our dependency on others for moral formation and virtue, even though dependency is not often acknowledged especially in academic circles.

Dependence on others is of course often recognized in a general way, usually not as something that we need in order to achieve our positive goals. But an acknowledgement of anything like the full extent of that dependence and of the ways in which it stems from our vulnerability and our affictions is generally absent (MacIntyre 1999, p. 3).

This view of virtue demonstrates that dependency on others is an essential element of overall fourishing; each of us is indebted to our parents, teachers, siblings, etc. for the type of formation they bore in us (Boyd 2014).

The second primary component in humility is a sense of openness, both towards others as well as in regard to taking advice from others, hearing new ideas, and graciously receiving criticism. Humble people are often open-minded and willing to admit their mistakes in different areas while also interested in learning from and seeking advice from others (Tangney 2000; Templeton 1997). They are able to see and acknowledge their own imperfections and refuse to use their own infuence or power to control others (Sandage 1999). Humble people recognize the importance and need for others based on an accurate appraisal of their own limitations and gaps in their knowledge, often in regard to some form of a higher power or spiritual truth (Tangney 2000). This openness to others is foundational to their development of altruistic concern because so much of their life is built upon and sustained by relationships. When relationships are valued at that level and the openness to the other includes emotional availability, the development of altruistic concern is a natural outcome.

The third primary component of humility is related to the stereotypical defnition of humility in terms of low self-regard; humble people lack a strong focus on the self. However, this focus on others does not include the types of self-effacement often associated with the stereotypical defnition. Humble people show empathy, respect, and kindness toward others; they value others in such a way as to promote equality and compassion (Sandage 1999). Humble people are not preoccupied with themselves and are willing to share the spotlight with others. They do not have an exaggerated sense of self-importance, but are able to forget themselves while recognizing that they are one part of a much larger universe (Exline and Geyer 2004; Tangney 2000). They are much less likely to distort information about themselves, because of, in part, the type of security experienced by them both in terms of their estimation of themselves and their self-esteem deriving from more stable sources (such as unconditional love in relationships; devotion to meaningful causes) rather than transient sources such as physical attractiveness, climbing the social ladder, or projects focused on self-enhancement (Exline and Geyer 2004; Peterson and Seligman 2004).

Nadelhoffer and Wright (2016) condensed these three components along two primary dimensions, low self-focus and high other focus. Their defnition assumes a "particular psychological positioning of oneself … one that is both epistemically and ethically aligned" (Wright et al. 2017, p. 4). Epistemically aligned refers to the proper knowledge of oneself as but one person that is a part of a much larger universe and all the limitations and imperfections this imparts on one's singular perspective. Ethically aligned refers to the recognition of the moral value of the other who is worthy of dignity, respect, concern, and compassion. As other defnitions have emphasized, low self-focus does not necessitate an overly negative or diminished view of the self, rather the attention is directed to a low level of "selfprioritization or self-importance" while high other-focus refers to an "increase in one's orientation outwards – towards other morally relevant beings" (Wright et al. 2017, pp. 5–6). This suggests a type of re-orientation in which a person does not necessarily need to diminish or downplay the self in order to focus on the other but adjusting the balance between emphasis on self and other towards more of an integration between the two.

#### **8.4 Humility and Concern for the Other**

Recent research on the psychological functions of humility demonstrates a relationship between humility and concern for the other. Humility is related to a host of pro-social relational variables including generosity, helping behavior, repair of social bonds, forgiveness, and gratitude. These types of pro-social variables would seem to include a component of concern for the other in that they naturally involve showing affection (at some level) for another whether through giving generously, showing gratitude or extending forgiveness to another. I would argue that altruistic concern and humility actually build on each other such that displays of humility engender more closeness and connection between people and the feeling of relational connection induces more humility towards others. People are more likely to show humility and contribute to a common purpose when they know and experience a sense of affnity with particular individuals. Thus, altruistic concern creates the context in which humility is more clearly experienced and displayed among persons of similar character and conviction.

Exline and Hill (2012) found that humility was often associated with generosity. Humility predicted higher levels of charitable donations as well as mailing back an extra survey to the researcher. Humble people most often passed on anonymous donations to future participants, and this form of generosity was positively correlated with a lack of self-focus. Humility was also associated with greater levels of self-reported motives to be kind to others, such as close friends, strangers, and enemies. Humility played a larger role in the generous acts in contrast to other individual variables such as self-esteem, entitlement, religiosity, gratitude, or social desirability.