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Evolutionism and the Ontology of the Human Person: Critique of the Marxist Theory of the Emergence of Man

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

John F. Crosby
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Extract

In the preface to his doctoral dissertation Marx wrote: “Philosophy makes no secret of it. The proclamation of Prometheus, 'in a word I detest all the Gods,' is her own profession, her own slogan against all the gods of heaven and earth who do not recognize man's self-consciousness as the highest divinity. There shall be none other beside it.” Now this attitude of defying God goes hand in hand with an attitude toward the world: one who cannot endure the idea of God's sovereignty often resents even the “givenness” of things with specific natures. It is not just that he senses that they would lead him back to God, but also that they, each with its own inner logos which imposes itself on man, are themselves felt to belong to the detested gods. Such a man approaches these things to destroy their givenness, and to make new objects out of them which reflect himself and his powers, and depend on him. The Austrian art historian, Hans Sedlmayr, describes this attitude as follows:

Dem Menschen, der sich ganz autonom proklamiert, muss es unertraeglich sein, Kreaturen zu begegnen, die offenbar nicht seine Geschoepfe sind. Es ist ein prometheischer und im Grund narzistischer Traum, sich durch Technik und naturfreie Kunst eine menschliche Umwelt zu bauen, in der man nichts und niemandem begegnet als den Schoepfungen des eigensten Menschengestes.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , April 1976 , pp. 208 - 243
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1976

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References

1 Karl Marx: Early Texts, trans, and ed. McLellan, David (New York, 1972), p. 13Google Scholar.

2 Sedlmayr, Hans, Gefahr und Hoffnung des Technischen Zeitalters (Salzburg, 1970), p. 59Google Scholar. Free translation: ”For the man who has proclaimed himself completely autonomous it has to be unbearable to encounter creatures which are obviously not his own productions. It is a Promethean and ultimately a narcissistic dream to use technology and a kind of art which is completely divorced from nature, so as to build an environment for man in which he encounters nothing and no one except his own productions.”

3 Calvez, Jean Yves, La Pensée de Karl Marx (Paris, 1956), p. 543Google Scholar. Free translation: “In reproducing nature, in making a new nature out of it, a human and social nature, man produces himself.” Cf. Jakob Homines, who, in speaking of the same idea of human nature, indicates that it is characteristic for much more of modern thought than simply Marxism: “Als die geistige Grundmacht der Gegenwart muessen wir den technischen Eros ansprechen, d.h., das Streben des Menschen, in seinem technischen Schaffen aus der Natur oder der gegenstaendlichen Welt sich hervorzubringen. Der Mensch will mit der gegenstaendlichen Welt sich vermaehlen und durch diese taetige Vereinigung mit ihr die Gebilde seiner Schaffenskraft erzeugen, in denen er sich selbst empfaengt und zelebriert” (Krise der Freiheit [Regensburg, 1958], pp. 10–11)Google Scholar.

4 Karl Marx: Early Writings, trans, and ed. Bottomore, T. B. (New York, 1964), p. 202Google Scholar.

5 Ibid., pp. 165–67. Cf. the following passage from Fichte, which points to a deep affinity between German Idealism and these sentiments of Marx: “Es ist in mir ein Trieb zu absoluter, unabhangiger Selbsttatigkeit. Nichts ist mir unaustehlicher, als nur von einem anderen, für ein anderes und durch ein anderes zu scin: ich will für und durch mich selbst etwas sein und werden.”

6 What Calvez writes in a section entitled, “Humanisme Integral: Creation de l'homme par l'homme,” perhaps overshoots the mark, but is instructuve all the same as expressing the radicality of the Marxist position: “L'homme crée ainsi lui-même, au sens le plus fort que peut revêtir ce mot de création selon la definition théologique: productio ex nihilo sui et subjecti …” (La Penséde Karl Marx, p. 543).

7 Engels, Friedrich, Dialectics of Nature (New York, 1960), p. 187Google Scholar.

8 Ibid., p. 279.

9 Schaff, Adam, Marxismus und das menschliche Individuum (Vienna, 1965), p. 95Google Scholar. Free translation: “Thus the process of producing is from the point of view of man a process of self-production. In this way the species homo sapiens, thanks to work, came into being….”

10 Grundlagen der marxistischen Philosophie (Berlin, 1965), p. 372Google Scholar. Free translation: “Man was not created by a mysterious, supernatural force; he came forth from the animal kingdom …. Men owe it to the producing of material goods that they were able to separate themselves out from the animals.” Cf. the other main textbook in the Soviet Union, Fundamentals of Marxism–Leninism,(Moscow, 1963), p. 38Google Scholar.

11 Hommes, J., Dialektik und Politik(Cologne, 1968), p. 229Google Scholar. Free translation: “This concept of the generation of man by himself is the axis of the Hegelian-Marxist dialectic; it is the basis of all their notions about the world and human life; it is the soul of the Communist ideology.”

12 Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, p. 73.

13 A closely related truth implied by this dictum is that every consciouact presupposes a conscious subject who performs it. Acts of willing, or knowing, would hang absurdly in the air apart from someone who performed them. Even this truth shows that the activity of work must be grounded in some being, for productive work necessarily includes various conscious acts, such as understanding the thing to be produced, willing to produce it, etc. But this truth is not simply identical with the one just considered in the text. For work commonly (though not always) consists not only in conscious acts, but also in certain bodily activities as well. To say that an activity of work having both a conscious and a bodily side needs an agent as its ground is clearly different from, though directly parallel to, saying that a pure conscious act needs a conscious subject as its ground.

14 Another sense of “act” is found in Scholastic philosophy, as when one speaks of the actus essendi (act of being). In this sense of act, even every agent is in act, act extends as far as being; and it would be true to say, “In the beginning was act.” But Faust does not mean this; he says Tat, which means “deed,” and this always presupposes an agent. And Marxism means that man's self-production was a deed which he performed. So the very broad sense of act in Scholastic philosophy is not at stake here.

15 I do not quote a Marxist text here, nor below, when the argument develops further, for the simple reason that Marxist authors, to the best of my knowledge, have not thought this problem through, are not aware of the objections I am raising, and so do not have answers to the positions I am presenting in my areument against them. So I ascribe to Marxism the most plausible response possible consistent with Marxist thought as a whole.

16 Engels, , Dialectics of Nature, p. 285Google Scholar. Cf. Marx and Engels: “Man can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. Thev themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as thev begin to produce their means of subsistence” (The German Idenlow [New York, 1960], p. 71)Google Scholar.

17 Quoted by Wetter, G. A., Soviet Ideology Today (New York, 1966), p. 52)Google Scholar

18 Marx, and Engels, , German Ideology, p. 7Google Scholar.

19 Marx: Early Writings, p. 127. Cf: “It can be seen that the history of industry and industry as it objectively exists is an open book of the human faculties, and a human psychology which can be sensuously apprehended. This historv has not so far been conceived in relation to human nature, but only from a superficial utilitarian point of view …” (p. 162).

20 The petitio would obviously be equally glaring, no matter what distinctively human acts were resorted to as explaining the emergence of man from the apes. The scope of our argument is by no means limited to the Marxist theory with its explanation in terms of productive work.

21 Wetter, the noted scholar of dialectical materialism, shows a similar petitio in Marx's account of the making of tools. In commenting on the passage from Marx comparing an architect with a bee, Wetter observes that toolmaking presupposes a kind of consciousness which Marx in that passage recognized as characteristically human: “The creation of tools certainly implies an adaptation of means to the attainment of ends. The as yet unrealised end is already present in the head, i.e., in the thinking, of him who fashions the means, and it governs what he does. But this is to credit the toolmaker with the ability to anticipate something in thought when it does not yet exist, and thus presupposes in him the very consciousness whose origin was to be explained. The origin of consciousness is thus ascribed to consciousness, i.e., to labour as a conscious, goal-seeking exertion upon Nature” (Soviet Ideology Today, p. 53).

22 Engels, , Dialectics of Nature, p. 203Google Scholar.

23 Thus we read in The Fundamentals of Marxism–Leninism: “Leaps, transitions from one quality to another, are relatively rapid. However, the slowness of the quantitative modifications and the rapidity of the qualitative change are relative. The leaps are rapid in comparison with the preceding periods of gradual accumulation of quantitative modifications” (p. 74).

24 Cf. Aristotle, Categories 3b 33–4a 9Google Scholar: “Substance, again, does not appear to admit of variation of degree. I do not mean by this that one substance cannot be more or less truly substance than another, for it has already been stated that this is the case; but that no single substance admits of varying degrees within itself. For instance, one particular substance, 'man,' cannot be more or less man either than himself at some other time or than some other man. One man cannot be more man than another, as that which is white may be more or less white than some other white object, or as that which is beautiful may be more or less beautiful than some other beautiful object. The same quality, moreover, is said to subsist in a thing in varying degrees at different times. A body, being white, is said to be whiter at one time than it was before, or being warm, is said to be warmer or less warm than at some other time. But substance is not said to be more or less that which it is: a man is not more truly a man at one time than he was before, nor is anything, if it is substance, more or less what it is. Substance, then, does not admit of variation of degree.” I quote Aristotle as agreeing that the being of man admits no degrees, but I do not want to commit myself to his thesis that this is because man is a substance, or even because he is a particular kind of substance. Not that I would deny the substantiality of man, or even of the human soul; but perhaps one could admit of degrees touching this substance, as when a human person matures, all the while maintaining that this substance's kind of being does not admit of degrees.

25 Cf. the distinction made by von Hildebrand, between ontoiogical and oualitative values, in his Ethics (Chicago. 1972)Google Scholar, chap. 10. He obviously means “qualitative,” as I do in the text, in a sense completely different from the dialectical materialists when they oppose “qualitative” to “quantitative,”

26 This latter becoming does not just seem eradual because of our inability to find the moment in time when the change of state occurred; there is no such point; the change really fills a tract of time.

27 Seifert, Josef, Leib and Seele: Ein Betrae zur Philosophischen Anthropologie (Salzburg. 1974) pp. 90. 91Google Scholar. Cf. Seifert's entire discussion of the difference between man and the animals, pp. 90–115.

28 The Marxist has a deep aversion to philosophical marveling in any form, and thus avoids those depths of being which we cannot look into without marveling. He complains that this philosophical wonder does not help to change social conditions, and he ridicules it as “mysticism.” The deepest motive for this aversion to marveling is surely that Promethean attitude described at the outset of this essay.

29 Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, pp. 95–98.

30 Of course in one sense acts of knowledge are also objective events. We have to distinguish two senses of objective: a) pertaining to nonpersonal being; b) fully real, as opposed to all appearance and illusion. Now in the text we mean objective in the first sense. And we want to stress that it is not only things objective in the first sense that can be objective in the second. The human person is not an objective reality in the first sense, but rather a conscious subject; yet it is preeminently objective in the second sense.

31 Not even animal consciousness can be rightly explained as a form of reflection in the Marxist sense.

32 Pascal, , Pensees, no. 347Google Scholar. Cf. no. 397: “The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be miserable. A tree does not know itself to be miserable. It is then being miserable to know oneself to be miserable; but it is also being great to know that one is miserable.”

33 Fundamentals of Marxism–Leninism, p. 38.

34 It is one of von Hildebrand's many fundamental contributions to have achieved the full philosophical prise de conscience both of the datum of value, and of the response due to a value. Cf. his Ethics, chaps. 17, 18.

35 In the famous words at the end of the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant expresses the grandeur of morality in such a way as to make it absurd to think that animals participate in this grandeur: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing awe and admiration the more frequently and continuously reflection is occupied with them; the starred heaven above me, and the moral law within me. … The first begins with the place I occupy in the external world of sense, and expands the connection in which I find myself into the incalculable vastness of worlds upon worlds, of systems within systems. … The second starts from my invisible self, from my personality, and depicts me as in a world possessing true infinitude which can be sensed only by the intellect. … The first view of a numberless quantity of worlds destroys my importance, so to speak, since I am an animal-like being who must return its matter from whence it came to the planet (a mere speck in the universe), after having been endowed with vital energy for a short time, one does not know how. The second view raises my value infinitely, as an intelligence, through my personality; for in this personality the moral law reveals a life independent of animality and even of the entire world of sense. … This is not restricted to the conditions and limits of this life, but radiates into the infinite.”

36 This of courses does not mean that the misuse of animals by man can not be immoral; it does not deny that animals can be morally relevant for man's action; it only means to deny that they themselves can be morally good or bad.

37 Seifert, , Leib und Seele, pp. 109–112Google Scholar.

38 The concept of something characterizing a being could be further clarified. We do not mean that the ability to do productive work (or to sceak, or to know, etc.) is just any kind of criterion distinguishing man from the apes. One could conceivably find such a criterion on a very superficial level of man's being; the average life span of a man would conceivably give us such a criterion. On this level there really is only a difference of degree, indeed a mere quantitative difference, between man and the apes. But in saying that man is characterized by his ability to do productive work we give no mere external criterion, but we get at his very kind of being. In the text we are maintaining that an ability which is characteristic of man in this sense cannot be found in a merely lower degree in subhuman animals.

39 Part of the stuff which one individual consisted in might inter into an individual of a different kind (if e.g., the matter of an ape body found its way into the body of a man); this is of course not excluded by what we are here maintaining.

40 Our discussion in this section enables us to see that a self–creation of man is excluded even if dialectical materialism were to let go of the thesis that productive work is in any sense characteristic for the being of man. For even then, one would still be trying to explain how one and the same individual being changed its basic kind of being, which we have just seen to be impossible.

41 Perhaps it will be objected that mv argument has force only because itis always easy to knock down straw men. that if I do the ascribing of a position to Marxism, then of course I can destroy it. To this I would respond, firstly, that if the present position under consideration is a straw man for being able to be refuted clearly, then so are the theses explicitly maintained by Marxism, for the former was not easier to refute clearly than were the latter. Secondly, I am convinced that, if anything further can be said at all in behalf of theMarxist theory, it is something- like the position under consideration. If someone can defend it more convincingly, let him by all means try to. Thirdly, I pursue the argument, and will continue to in the next section, because in doing so we can bring out more of the basic ontological truths which are decisive for explaining the coming into being of the human person.

42 Stein, E., Endliches und Ewiges Sein: Versuch eines Aufstiegs zum Sinn des Seins (Freiburg, 1962)Google Scholar. Free translation: “There is rather being in a twofold sense in that which is ‘in possibility’: first, an ordination, a being-directed to that state of being which was called act.Secondly even the possibility itself is a certain kind of being. For ‘to be possible’ does not simply mean ‘not to be.’ Were it not the case that even potential being is a kind of being, there would be no sense in speaking of degrees of potentiality” (p. 38).

43 The idea of an ape producing a man, if we were to investigate it thoroughly, would turn out to be no less absurd than the theory of self-creation, ascribing as it does to the ape that creative power which philosophers and theologians have ascribed to God.

44 Engelhardt, H. T., “The Ontology of Abortion,” Ethics (04, 1974), pp. 217–234Google ScholarPubMed.

45 Thus the conclusion about abortion which Engelhardt reaches in this piece is that it does not involve the crime of killing an innocent human being. He ends his essay expressing his enthusiasm for the Supreme Court decision of 1973 on abortion, which in effect legalizes abortion through the ninth month of pregnancy.

46 Ibid., p. 233. Cf., “Human ontogeny begins with the body as a ‘what’ or at most a ‘who’ in the sense that an animal is a who, which then, because of the development of new properties, becomes a who in the personal sense” ibid., p. 223.

47 Ibid., p. 228. Engelhardt errs greatly in thinking that his position is basically that of the theory of mediate animation maintained by Aristotle and St. Thomas. Engelhardt evidently thinks that St. Thomas meant that the nutritive soul is a first stage of being human, the coming of the sensitive soul a further development of humanness, and the infusion of the rational soul a still further development of it. Engelhardt evidently thinks that he differs from St. Thomas only in that for St. Thomas this development was complete after 40 days in the case of a male, and 90 days in the case of a female, whereas Engelhardt lets the development run through the first year of infancy in the case of both. But in reality the position of St. Thomas, whatever one thinks of it, does not contradict, as Engelhardt's does, our conclusions about the ontological being of the human person. For according to St. Thomas, the human person comes into being instantaneously with the infusion of the rational soul. Our distinctions above regarding act and potency (distinctions central to the thought precisely of Aristotle and St. Thomas) enable us to see that the coming of the nutritive and then the sensitive soul represents degrees of potency for the coming into being of a human person, but not degrees of being a human person.

48 Ibid., p. 233.

49 I do not claim that our discussion in this section can be so applied to the question of the coming into being of each new human being in such a way as to establish conclusively that a human person exists from the moment of conception. I only say that these conclusions favor this position, and show absurdities in Engelhardt's position. It would take me away from my subject to develop the further considerations which establish immediate animation as the only reasonable assumption in this matter, and to show the other confusions in Engelhardt's piece.