On Human Nature and Government

The purpose of this essay is not a criticism, but rather a response and posit of my own inspired by the piece "Is Democracy Natural" by author Richard Carriero. First, I would like to address his thesis for hist article that stipulates human nature being at odd with democratic forms of government and its contrary proposition that anarchy is the most natural form. My goal here is not to put forth any account of human nature that would oppose or contradict Mr. Carriero's claim, but rather put the entire piece into perspective.

Their are some fundamental problems one will inevitably encounter when trying to make authoritative claims regarding human nature. The question itself is a difficult one, often resolved with fallacious reasoning where one moves from strictly descriptive claims to normative ones. This particular type of fallacious reasoning is known as the naturallistic fallacy. This type of fallacy occurs in everyday discourse; we often employ it unknowingly and likewise are subject to such claims on a constant basis. An example of this type of fallacy can be even of the most trivial sort; for instance, it is relatively uncontroversial for people to support monogamy within the United States. This is a political issue, but it typically does not end there. Rather, one almost feels compelled to take the next step and formulate the claim that this is only natural. However, this reasoning is fallacious, for it only employs the empirical data that indicates that current peoples living within the United States practice monogamous relationships, and follows with a normative claim that this is the natural state for human romantic relations. You can understand now why such claims regarding what is natural versus unnatural are inherently problematic - especially when one moves to more complex arguments. We have here an epistemological problem.

That being said, we have to consider another descriptive problem - all political philosophies that advocate how government ought to be are in some ways committing this very same error. How problematic this error may be is another question altogether - for, if Mr. Carriero is right, many of us may appreciate the movement from a state of nature based on certain assumptions towards an unnatural form of government. Recognition of this problem is only a concern for academics and philosophers, not the general population. Thus, for all practical purposes we can dismiss the epistemological problem raised above regarding claims of human nature.

What I really aim to do though, is leave the reader with two fundamentally important conclusions regarding the point that I believe Mr. Carriero was trying to address: First, that according to its own assumptions regarding human nature, democracy indeed recognizes itself as being unnatural, and second we have to be prepared to acknowledge that democracy is in fact not only unnatural (if its assumptions are correct or otherwise) and that it may be less desirable an outcome than we had predicted - but nonetheless one that has emerged not out of choice but rather the causally determined by other important factors.

My first claim deals with democracy itself and its own assumptions; whether or not these assumptions are wrong is unknowable, but what I aim for here is to simply make the claim that by its own accounts that make democracy intelligible -- human nature is one of rational egoism and democracy is the best solution. The heart of the philosophic foundation of democracy as a legitimate form of government lies in liberalism. Note: by liberalism I do not mean the ideology within the mainstream American discourse as the opposite of conservatism, but rather as the broader ideological movement towards constitutional republics that would encompass both understandings of "liberal" and "conservative" as we understand them today. This movement towards accepting pluralism (and with it liberalism) can be traced genealogically back to the earliest (yet most comprehensive) proto-liberal thinker, Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes had a very clear account for how he saw human nature: man is selfish, petty, committed to his own desires, and defined by self-interest. Remarkably, Hobbes put forth a conception of the Good and the Evil (in connection to his account of human nature) that would serve as the basis for pluralism and subjectivism for centuries to come. In The Leviathan Hobbes claims that the only things that are good are what men desire, and the only things that are bad are those which he tries to avoid. This seems intuitive, but is quite radical from Hobbes contemporaries who accepted a divine origin of both the Good and Evil in an objective form; for which Hobbes clearly denies. Pluralism is adopted because the Good for human desires is quite often at odds with one another, and drastically different dependent upon varying groups and individuals. We can liken this description of human nature to laboratory rats. If you place a dozen laboratory rats in an enclosed area surrounded by both desirable and undesirable ends (let's say, the desirables = various types of sugar-rich foods, and the undesirables = traps which cause either pain and/or violent premature death). Upon experiencing the undesirable ends, either inflicting pain or violent premature deaths, the lab rats will come to systematically avoid those ends and they have thus become the Evil. Conversely, the laboratory rats will move towards the various sweet foods - some will choose different foods and all will be somewhat content. The various sweet foods is indicative of two different conclusions: that which is desirable is Good (conversely that which is avoidable is Evil), and the Good can take different forms for varying groups and individuals.

This is the principle of pluralism as it relates to human nature, which is also the very basis of political and social institutions that have developed especially in the Western world since Hobbes.

Forms of government emerge from this conception of human nature on account of inhibiting its flaws and accommodating its strengths through a complex system of arrangements which respects and upholds institutions positively correlated with presupposed notions of human well-being and creates a coercive tool in the state for curbing human interests of the individual when at odds with society at large. The other arrangements and arguments for how we arrive at democracy as we understand it now is one more of historical development, rather than what I have sought to do here. However, what Mr. Carriero has done is not uproot our own understandings of human nature that is at odds with democracy, rather, he has made a claim that is wholly compatible and reaffirming of human nature as it is understood from the proto-liberal Enlightenment thinker (like Thomas Hobbes).

The question moves then from an account of human nature in general, to the accuracy of the claim to begin with. While Hobbes indeed was an intelligent made who made extremely useful claims, how thorough his understanding of human nature and how applicable it was as a universal account of human behavior from the natural standpoint is at best questionable. For Hobbes, like any human being, cannot be separated from his experiences. Hobbes wrote amidst the turmoil of the English Civil War and all the circumstances that were dictated by it; thus, his account of human nature was much shaped by his surroundings independent of his own consciousness of them. The same can be said of any of us; how aware we are of this does vary though. What this means then, is that Richard Carriero's account of human nature too is fundamentally the same one in which we experience based on our conditions today. This experiential conditioning serves the same function today as it did in Hobbes' time and all the centuries in between. Our own accounts of human nature are the product of other important factors, namely the political, social, and economic as they've been long determined before we were ever conceived. The most ironic thing about current American peoples' is their willingness to accept democracy as a legitimate formulation of government - which serves as the solution to the inherent problem of viewing human nature as essentially self-serving. However, if this is true, it ignores the foundation of experiential and institutional conditioning that affirms this self-oriented account of human nature and democracy as its best resolution. Hence, it makes it rather absurd to think that one could reasonably export democracy (although I really doubt this is the true motivation for American foreign policy, which would inherently be at odds with the cynical construction of human nature that makes altruism all but impossible!) to other countries and peoples that have not experienced similar accounts.

My point here is that this account of human nature is only correct insofar as it has served as a justification for events and systems that have come about through material development and precede the ideal (the contrary would be to say that man's ideals are responsible for the several thousand years of social, political, and economic development). Secondly, our own account of human nature (if we accept it to be true) is neither conducive nor motivating to support the exportation of democracy at all. Thirdly, that we readily accept democracy is unnatural unless we contradict ourselves or reject our own account of human nature. Finally, I make the claim that democracy and pluralism have been adopted because they were necessary for explaining a move towards private ownership and "free-market" arrangements and production for exchange as we have experienced them, and the latter were not spontaneous nor were the philosophical and political accounts surrounding them -- rather, they all exist as dependent upon a number of material factors that make up our existence and the process for which these things came about is determined only through the material.