Abstract
The dominant naturalistic tradition in moral philosophy assumes that the basic capacities and characteristics of the individual exist prior to his or her socialisation and that morality arises out of the necessity for cooperation. In order to exist peacefully in society, aggressive instincts are either redirected from external objects to the individual him or herself or the human being has a natural tendency to cooperation. There is a third alternative which avoids the problems with these accounts and also offers a way to comprehend the relationships between morality, social conventions and moral law. Giambattista Vico grounds his historical science in the faculty of imagination regulated by basic universal facts about human beings. The argument of the present paper will present the problems with reductive naturalism and outline the alternative Vichian moral sociology, projecting what the empirical consequences of this new methodology may be.
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Notes
- 1.
I here use ‘Hobbes’, ‘Freud’ and ‘Locke’ to stand in for standard positions, but pay little attention to the subtlety and nuances of their particular approaches. For this I apologize, but do so for reasons of expediency. For example, I believe that the indifference to at least thinking through the theological aspects of Locke’s theory does serious damage to his theory as a whole.
- 2.
It should be noted that, for Locke, practical reason is ad hoc and not scientific: the justification of the moral conscience is theological in nature and hence not consistent with modern science. However, there exists a secondary justification in self-ownership in which the human being is aware of his body as his own and reciprocally realizes that others, too, own their bodies (Locke 1988, § 27). Such philosophical explanation has its counterparts in evolutionary discourse: a debate has opened up between those who believe that human cooperation and group regulations can be traced to, on the one hand, the aggressive instincts of the chimpanzee and those, on the other hand, who trace them to the social instincts of the bonobo (Peterson and Wrangham 1997; Kano and Vineberg 1992). So, it is possible to use Locke’s general description in a way consistent with natural science and independent of theological assertions.
- 3.
By mentioning only Hobbes and Locke, there is a felt lack of the third principal character of modern, social contract theory, viz. Rousseau. Rousseau is more complex and like Vico he sees society as an effect of language, which Locke and Hobbes both think predates society. Unlike Vico, though, Rousseau holds that the rule of nature is innate and guarantees liberty and equality beyond social convention, rather than an imagined effect of society. There is a further ‘radical’ alternative symptomatic of Aristotelians and Hegelians in that a moral conscience is derived from social existence (like the core explanation above) but that (unlike the core explanation) social existence is natural, an organic development of our existence. Human beings naturally and necessarily exist in societies. Such an alternative cannot be considered here and can be dismissed by the terms of the present debate. Neither Hegelians nor Aristotelians are coherent with modern science. For the former, ethics and politics are part of a discourse that is inflated from poorer and simpler scientific ones (rather than reduced to it); and for the latter, explanation is based in a metaphysics wholly contradictory to modern science. Vico, as we shall hopefully see, is different because perhaps he gives us a way to link the science and morality in a different way.
- 4.
Such a descriptive problem is equally true of Freud’s purely psychological description of the formation of the super-ego through the oedipal development phase. If internalization occurs through turning aggressive instincts on oneself, it can only be dependent on the equally important love of the father and not just aggression towards him. In fact, love seems stronger than aggression.
- 5.
As formerly, with Hobbes and Locke, the reading of Vico offered here is pragmatic and expedient, rather than nuanced and attentive, although I do feel it is consistent and ultimately right. Closer interpretation would be required to prove this conviction of course.
- 6.
All references to Vico’s writings are cited by paragraph number (§).
- 7.
Vico uses the genetic-etymological method to show that the myths of Jove are then reified into ‘ius’ or Justice. So, the primal motivation to be good even if it conflicts with other interests is fear of punishment. From such sensuous beginnings, abstract notions of right and wrong are developed through historical embellishments to the irreal system of ‘moral’ nature. I cannot comment on the status of the etymological proof, though I would take it with a huge pinch of salt. See § 398.
- 8.
One problem here is that my child is already socialized. He has completed 1 year of school and possesses a language. He has been taught about ‘sharing’ and ‘fairness’ since his birth.
- 9.
It is very similar to Sartre’s (2003) discussions of self-consciousness as well.
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Rose, D.E. (2013). Society and the Origin of Moral Law: Giambattista Vico and Non-reductive Naturalism. In: Musschenga, B., van Harskamp, A. (eds) What Makes Us Moral? On the capacities and conditions for being moral. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 31. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6343-2_18
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