HUMANS
IN THE WORLD: INTRODUCTION
TO RADICAL PERSPECTIVISM
HUMANS
IN THE WORLD: INTRODUCTION
TO RADICAL PERSPECTIVISM
Other Chapters:
Alexander Makedon
Chicago State University
Copyright © 1992
One view of morality is based on reciprocity: the obligation to return a favor done with a similar favor. It is the basis of the so-called "golden rule:" do unto others as you would like others to do unto you. Everyone has a basic sense of fairness, since everyone can distinguish between equal or unequal returns, or at least thinks she can, and therefore is capable of distinguishing between fair or unfair actions. It is in this sense that humans are moral only as they return to the world that allowed them to rise as human, the opportunity to rise as world.
As interpreters with a duty to return a favor, humans are moral only as they represent through their actions not only themselves, but the world as a whole, including all forms of animate or inanimate "life." It is in this sense that humans should avoid killing plant or animal life, or destroying nature, other than for their absolute minimal survival; or, alternatively, they should re-design their lifestyles to help maintain or improve the planet's universal possibilities. From the perspective of morality as reciprocity, it is only as humans translate their interpretation abilities to world-helpful action, that their actions as humans-in-the-world are also "moral."
Humans' place in the world may also be interpreted on the basis of a view seemingly more selfish than that of reciprocity, namely, that good is what helps humans survive. Faced with a moral dilemma between physical survival and returning a favor, under this interpretation of morality humans should choose to survive. Yet seen even from that perspective, it becomes clear that humans need the world to survive even if they were to ignore the idea that they have a reciprocal duty to help the world. This is so because by denying the world its possibilities, humans deny a world without which they cannot exist.
Preservation of World Possibilities
If by "morality" is meant maintaining intact the possibilities of the other, then from a world perspective, a morality is "moral" if its end result is the preservation of world possibilities. By the preservation of "world possibilities" is meant the preservation of the future possibilities of each species of animate and inanimate "life." On the basis of this view of morality, some cultures, patterns of human behavior, or institutions may be more moral than others: they are moral to the extent that their "plans of action" better represent the world as a whole, including all forms of animate and inanimate life on the planet earth (instead of only this or that type of human).
However theoretically sophisticated a culture may be, for example, in reinterpreting the world hypothetically on the basis of a large variety of first assumptions, it may still be considered less moral than another, less sophisticated one if its actions (institutions, laws, etc.) cause the world's possibilities as a whole to shrink. For example, however sophisticated our western industrial culture might be in thinking critically about the world, it may have caused so much irreparable damage to the world (the atmosphere, animal kingdom, etc.) that it may rank lower, morally, than another culture, say the culture of Native-American Indians, that respects "nature." Stated another way, this means that someone from a "primitive" culture may be morally superior to people living in presumably "advanced" societies imbued with industrial values, because of the more universal nature of the former's cultural assumptions.
Schematically, this view of morality as the preservation of world possibilities may be represented with spheres. Each moral sphere contains those world-parts whose future possibilities such morality presumably protects. It follows that the larger the sphere, or, to put it differently, the more moral spheres it contains, the closer it comes to "universal" morality. Eventually, to be truly "moral" a sphere must be symbolically as large as the universe itself to represent the preservation of all world parts.
A world part can change, since its possibilities as a future-world-part may result in a world-part-descendant that is "different" from its current existence; or a world part may overtake another, two world parts unite into a new synthesis, or a world part come naturally to the end of its possibilities. As a result of these combinatory or self-imposed actions the possibilities of each world part, or, to paraphrase from Aristotle, its potential-in-the-present as a becoming-world-part, are not hastily eliminated through mindless exploitation of nature. Witness the variety of "lifestyles" which modern biology has shown is possible among life forms on earth, from symbiosis to parasitism, each of which may be seen as maintaining, minimizing, or maximizing the future possibilities of their own or other world parts, and therefore, on the basis of the aforementioned view of morality, as more or less moral.
Humans may feel they must become less playful in their moral behavior to lend it an air of "seriousness:" they insist that in order to be good, you must act according to certain moral imperatives. This may explain why some of the best known indices to good behavior, such as the ten commandments in the Bible, are presented in the form of "commands" that require that people take them seriously.
At the same time that humans pretend their morality to be serious, they play with moral alternatives. While requiring that all people obey moral rules, humans offer themselves a variety of moral codes to choose from, as if morality were a matter of free choice. For example, such codes may be chosen from among any number of world religions, such as, Christianity, Islam, or polytheism; secular theories, from idealism to Marxism; or theosophical systems, such as, Hinduism, Confucianism, or Buddhism. This inventiveness by humans implies that they understand that none of their moral codes are paramount, but more like so many games with rules which they can play by, as freely as they do in a game. Humans don't have to take any of these codes more seriously, than they have only... one moral code to obey. Some people may even choose to obey no moral codes, or any such type of rule-embedded code, as presumably do not anarchists, although even they live by the one rule that they obey no rules.
Even as humans often invest their moral codes with god-fearing implications, as in several religious codes, they still change, reject, or reinvent such codes. Perhaps they sensed the towering preponderance of universal possibilities that surround them, sometimes even threatening to replace humans by another world part that will become the "new human," and feel that they must take their own human possibilities seriously to survive; or, more vainly, to give themselves the illusion of greater importance than their place in the universe calls for. At the same time, they can't help noticing the variety of possible worlds (which is their world), including its playful reinterpretability, and want to imitate it no less in their own moral choices.
The lives of humans are both comic and tragic. So are, for that matter, their human-generated thoughts, symbols, and artifacts. Small wonder, then, that humans would represent this comico-tragic element of their existence in their theatrical and other artistic reenanctments of themselves. Their mixed, comico-tragic reaction to the world stands as a metaphor of the world's own reaction to itself through-humans. Ultimately, humans come face to face with the uncertainty of their own possibilities, not unlike the chances the universe took in allowing them to become. Moral rules allow humans at least temporary respite from the lawlessness of a world-becoming, while play allows them to break them, to become world-like.
The world can exist as a world-without-humans: a world where humans will never again be a part of. A world-without-humans is a world without the morality which humans imposed on themselves or the world. Unless somehow humans can teach other animate or inanimate parts of the world about their human-morality, which in turn is perpetuated as the morality of another species, human morality can just as easily disappear from the universe, as can humans themselves.
Human morality is as much human, as are characteristically human ways of thinking or imagining. Ironically, humans are as much part of the world, as are other animate or inanimate parts, and therefore so is humans' own sense of "morality." Although humans may be the only part in the world with a human-made morality, their morality is an expression of one of the world's possibilities. By allowing humans to rise as human, the world also allowed their sense of morality to join the world.
A world where no-one world is for sure, as is the world of our world, is a world beyond conventional morality. By having their minds subjected to a variety of first assumptions in their re-intertepretations of the world, some people may find that the morality inside which they have safely managed to survive may not be the only one possible. This doesn't necessarily mean that theirs is any better or worse than other views of morality, but only that other people's might be at least as good an alternative as theirs, and therefore neither better nor worse. This may cause some people so much insecurity as to reject reinterpretation in favor of a less "reinterpretable" morality where nothing is uncertain.
In this section we raise three objections against the radically perspectivist view of morality developed so far in the chapter, and make an attempt to respond to such objections. For a longer list of possible objections against radical perspectivism, please see the chapter on Objections.
Objection #1: Morality Can't Be Non-Human
First, it may be objected that there can't possibly be a morality other than that which humans designed. In fact, the very idea of something being moral is a human-made idea, and therefore impossible for non-human parts of the world to have a "morality."
If morality is defined in strictly human terms, then the world is clearly a-moral: What is "moral" from the perspective of humans, is no-thing from the perspective of the world. It is in this sense, to paraphrase Nietzsche, that our world is beyond good or evil. The problem with the use of the term "morality" in human affairs is that it is so inextricably tied to only human-made moral rules that it doesn't seem to make sense to speak of a morality other than that which humans designed. It is in that sense that a human-made morality may be no less self-serving, and no more universal, than is humans' myopic understanding of the world.
If we re-define morality to include how might other non-human parts of the world "feel" or "think" of morality, were they capable of expressing their views as well as do humans, then we are no longer limited to human-bound views regarding morality, or the view that morality must be human-bound to count as "morality." By expanding our conception of morality to include the perspectives of other world-parts, we include the world. By transcending our culture-bound, time-bound, or human-bound first assumptions regarding morality we can role-play the world's moral possibilities as the world itself might have interpreted them: our morality becomes cosmic. It is at this point where we may come to realize the limited nature of human-bound moral perspectives: humans' "morality" may be more a morality made to serve humans-without-the-world, than one based on their role as a world-part whose place in the universe is inextricably tied to the well being of other world parts.
To illustrate this point regarding human-bound versus non-human-bound moralities, let us use the example of the "populist politician." A politician may consider pollution only a small price to pay for generating more jobs in his community, for example, by building more factories. He claims his view of morality is roughly utilitarian: good is what is good for the majority of the people. Consequently, he is prepared to argue that his actions are moral: he would like to generate more jobs, which most people in his community consider to be good. Seen from a short term utilitarian perspective, his actions may be characterized as moral. But seen from a world perspective, his actions may be too limited to his atomic first assumptions to be considered "moral." Possibly worried about being re-elected in a community that considers generating new jobs the most important priority, his assumptions are too culture, time, and human bound to be the world's: he takes into consideration neither those alternatives which ultimately may benefit future generations without necessarily destroying existing jobs, such as, income re-distribution or lowering his community's materialistic expectations; nor those which may benefit other non-human parts in the world, such as, saving the environment for other world-parts, such as, plants, rivers, or other animals. His "morality" is so human-bound that he doesn't take into account the possible perspectives of other non-human parts of the world, let alone use role-playing exercises to learn how to empathize with them. His greed for power stands as a metaphor for a larger social "malady" which he does nothing to change. His conception of "greed" is based on certain atomic first assumptions which he was taught or socialized to believe in, and which in turn he perpetuates through his own example in his community. Perhaps unknowingly, he has come to identify himself with his beliefs so strongly that he is unwilling or incapable to see the world from different perspectives.
Objection #2: Human Morality as the Only One Worth Applying
A second objection to our analysis of morality might be that even if humans can re-interpret the world morally on the basis of universal or non-human-bound first assumptions, their human-bound morality is "better," and therefore the only one worth applying in their behavior.
The problem with this objection is that we can't simply claim that human-bound first assumptions about morality are better, but must also give a reason why. If we do so, then our reason becomes another type of "morality-behind-our-morality," which is itself in need of another reason, and so on ad infinitum. On the other hand, if somehow it can be shown that the reason given is an irreducible first assumption, then it can be either human-bound or non-human-bound. If it is human-bound, we have shown nothing: we are using the same type of first assumption in our proof as that which we set out to prove in the first place as being "better," and therefore we proved nothing; if it is non-human bound, then we have shown precisely the opposite of that which we set out to prove, as we have shown that even as we attempt to prove that human-bound first assumptions are "better" than non-human-bound, we rely on non-human-bound first assumptions to prove it. Any way one looks at it, we come to the conclusion that it is impossible to show that human-bound first assumptions are "better" than non-human-bound. At best, they are "different."
Objection #3: Human Morality as Generalizable
It may be argued that certain human-made moral rules are moral even in spite of the fact that humans made them: they are inherently generalizable, and therefore applicable to every part in the world.
The problem with such a view is, again, that it is based on certain human-bound first assumptions regarding "generalization" which other parts of the world may not share. The only possible exception to this might be the idea of morality as reciprocity, or what was earlier identified as the "golden rule." This is so because underlying the golden rule of reciprocity is a mathematics of equal returns that may be applied to any world part irrespective of time or place. It is in this sense that if there is a morality that the universe obeys, it is a mathematical one of harmony among all of its parts. To paraphrase several philosophers and mathematicians ever since Pythagoras first postulated the idea, the mathematics of the universe is a type of non-human-bound morality that humans can understand.
We close the chapter on Morality by applying some of the basic tenets developed so far, such as, the idea of reciprocity, to the treatment of animals. From a world perspective, it is no more "humane" to sacrifice an animal to save a human, than it is to sacrifice a human to save an animal.
The world is less concerned with the survival of any one individual species, than it is any one individual species more than another. Seen from that angle, it may be argued that humans who consistently eliminate the survival possibilities of other animals, such as, by destroying their natural habitats, deserve no more help from such animals for their own human survival. From the perspective of the animals being sacrificed, for example, lab animals used for "medical research," they are no less expediently or "cruelly" used, than were the humans in Nazi medical experiments.
Certain religions that prohibit the consumption of meat, or maintain an almost sacred respect for other animals, may have a better clue to human's survival, than the most efficiently ran meat industry that destroys the "balance" of nature. For example, humans may cause irreparable damage to the survival possibilities of other world parts by destroying their natural habitats by giving them over to the feeding of cows to meet the human demand for beef. Subsequently, when the time comes for humans to borrow the survival techniques or "defenses" of such world parts, such parts will no longer be there for humans to use for their own survival. Furthermore, to use the same example, researchers have linked the consumption of beef to cancer and heart disease. In non-meat-eating cultures the rates of cancer or heart disease are much lower than in cultures that rely heavily on beef consumption.
Cultures that live with, as opposed to against other animals, may have better chances for survival, than cultures that don't. Thus while "destructive" cultures may find themselves in a world where they can't live without those possibilities for their survival which such animals provided, "cooperating" ones are compensated for their respect for animals with more possibilities for their own human survival. This reversal of fortune best exemplifies universal justice: there is nothing destructive that humans do to the world, that the world does not reciprocate, or, as people say, "make them pay for it."
1. See also the chapter on Ethics. We examine the relation
between ethics and morality in a separate chapter on Ethics, in a section
in that chapter on "Morality." The section on "Moral Education" in the chapter
on Education is based on the sections on "Conventional Morality" and "Objections"
in this chapter. Back to the text
2. A shorter version of this section may be
found in the chapter on Education. Back to the text
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