A little while ago I wrote that Nietzsche's condemnation of the "English style" of genealogy has, apparently, fallen on deaf ears. Rereading On The Genealogy of Morals, I notice another lesson he tried to teach us:
Now, this sentiment is downright heretical: it is anti-Darwinist (edit: I'm not so sure about this particular point, and Nietzsche's opposition to Darwin is a matter of some contention). In the case of simple phenotypic traits, it appears as though Nietzsche was importantly wrong: hands do exist because they are good for grasping, in spite of his repeated denials.
Yet, in the case of psychological elements, or cultural practises, his argument has much more force. We commonly hear today, from the extraordinarily uncreative circles that say these kinds of things, that "religion" (as such, whatever that means) has survived because it had a certain utility, for example, it promoted social cohesion. In the nearly comical words of the leading proponent, it "cohered with an existing memeplex".
We hear the same thing about altruism: game-theoretic models sometimes demonstrate that given certain population dynamics the group is better off when its members are altruistic: this economic utility as such is then projected into the past without any other evidence.
Yet, this simply does not follow. It is one possible explanation amongst many. The alternative Nietzsche provides is that institutions like monotheistic religion (and the corresponding self-denying value of altruism) arose at the outset of civilization because people were tortured by the new and necessary suppression of their instincts within society. The practice and advocacy of self-denial could help to make sense of this suffering, and so huge masses adopted religious values without realizing what they were for.
Eventually, the values of guilt and self-denial spread to the noble classes, not because they had any utility for them, but because great cultural wars were waged at varios levels: Christian values in particular have usually been spread by force, with the leaders of pagan nations subdued and converted in the usual style.
Soon, whole societies began to be organized around Christian principles. It is at this stage that the social cohesion and fortification became a reality, but the origin of religion had nothing whatsoever to do with these utilities. Rather, the God was initially a balm for a deeply wounded animal, a beast that was being forced, by the earliest powerful organizers of city-states, to become tame. It was a way for mankind's instinctual aggression to be redirected at the self.
Logically, historically, there are so many more possible explanations, and each of the tenable ones will be massively complex. Yet, when we just project, in a very simple fashion, the current utility of a social form into the past, asserting that "this must be why it arose", we gravely underestimate the distance that exists between us and our early ancestors. Their world is not our world, and when it comes to psychological tendencies or cultural practises, it is not necessarily the case that our utility is their utility.
Indeed, we cannot know the origin of such things until we inquire into the cultural context which produced them. I really wish that certain lazy evolutionary psychologists would just admit that it's way easier to rake in the publishing bucks by publishing vacant nonsense than to actually undertake to study these things.
There is for historiography of any kind no more important proposition than the one it took such effort to establish but which really ought to be established now: the cause of the origin of a thing and its eventual utility, its actual employment and place in a system of purposes, lie worlds apart;... however well one has understood the utility of a thing, this means nothing regarding its origin.
Yet, in the case of psychological elements, or cultural practises, his argument has much more force. We commonly hear today, from the extraordinarily uncreative circles that say these kinds of things, that "religion" (as such, whatever that means) has survived because it had a certain utility, for example, it promoted social cohesion. In the nearly comical words of the leading proponent, it "cohered with an existing memeplex".
We hear the same thing about altruism: game-theoretic models sometimes demonstrate that given certain population dynamics the group is better off when its members are altruistic: this economic utility as such is then projected into the past without any other evidence.
Eventually, the values of guilt and self-denial spread to the noble classes, not because they had any utility for them, but because great cultural wars were waged at varios levels: Christian values in particular have usually been spread by force, with the leaders of pagan nations subdued and converted in the usual style.
Soon, whole societies began to be organized around Christian principles. It is at this stage that the social cohesion and fortification became a reality, but the origin of religion had nothing whatsoever to do with these utilities. Rather, the God was initially a balm for a deeply wounded animal, a beast that was being forced, by the earliest powerful organizers of city-states, to become tame. It was a way for mankind's instinctual aggression to be redirected at the self.
Logically, historically, there are so many more possible explanations, and each of the tenable ones will be massively complex. Yet, when we just project, in a very simple fashion, the current utility of a social form into the past, asserting that "this must be why it arose", we gravely underestimate the distance that exists between us and our early ancestors. Their world is not our world, and when it comes to psychological tendencies or cultural practises, it is not necessarily the case that our utility is their utility.
Indeed, we cannot know the origin of such things until we inquire into the cultural context which produced them. I really wish that certain lazy evolutionary psychologists would just admit that it's way easier to rake in the publishing bucks by publishing vacant nonsense than to actually undertake to study these things.
2 comments:
It's not so clear that N:s words are anti- darwinian. At least in neo-darwinian theory, one separates the cause of a new structure (which can be e.g. random mutation) from the utility of the structure. Its utility explains why it keeps existing in the population over generations, but it doesn't explain its origin.
Nedruz, this is interesting, and perhaps you're right. Nietzsche does not elaborate on his denials that hands exist for grasping, so we can't be sure whether he had your kind of causal origin in mind, or something else. One difficulty is that he repeatedly claims that everything in human history (cultural, biological, or otherwise.) is ultimately explained by the operation of will to power, which puts him at odds with any strictly non-teleological, mechanistic account like Darwin's. Odd as it may sound, he might well have though that the origin of hands lies somehow in the power-drive inherent in biological matter.
However, you're right to say that the text I quoted is not strictly anti-darwinian.
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