The Dignity of Man and the 21st Century
Mortimer J. Adler
[A speech delivered to members of The Commonwealth
Club, 10 October 1952]
President White, members of The Commonwealth Club, my pleasure in
addressing The Commonwealth Club today is exceeded only by my even
greater pleasure in now being a resident member and very soon, I hope,
a voting citizen of the commonwealth itself. At the moment, I am
disfranchised. This is something that I think should be taken care of
by constitutional amendment; it should be possible to move from state
to state and still vote in presidential elections.
The announcement that I was to talk to you today on the 21st century,
I think had its origin in the fact that last May and June, the time
that I was trying to explain the work of the Institute of
Philosophical Research to the press, I did say, I did mean, more than
say, I meant that this work would probably take something around 50
years to do and its effect might be felt in the 21st century, if not
the 20th. But I am not going to engage today with you in large-scale
prophecies. It would be too much of a strain, I think, upon your
patience and your attention to indulge in guessing about things- what
things would be like on October 10, 2052 when what all of you are
interested in is in guessing about or betting what they're going to be
like on November 4, 1952.
Let me only say in passing, at this point, that has something been
made of, the work the Institute is engaging in is a long-term project
-- that is, if the money lasts -- a long-term project that may go on
for many years. This 50-year point is not the only thing that's
perplexing about the House on the Hill. I find from all sorts of
quarters that the phrase, "philosophical research" is not
generally intelligible. People know what it means to be philosophical,
and they know what it means for scientists and others to do research,
but when the words philosophical and research get put together, this
becomes mysterious. I'm not going to tell you all the indications of
this and all my recent experiences, but I would like to mention three
very quickly.
We've had quite a large number of phone calls at the Institute asking
us when we are going to begin to conduct services. Last week, I was at
the Hotel Huntington in Pasadena, and a manuscript came down to me
there with the mailing label of the Institute on it. And, the bellboy
that delivered to me at my room said, he said, "Doctor, this
thing says philosophical research. What's that, what's that?" And
I said, "Oh" -- it was about a quarter to eight in the
morning and I was in no mood to explain -- I said, "Oh, that's
just thinking, just thinking." And he said, "Oh, I'm very
sorry." Obviously very disappointed. And he said, "Oh, I
thought it had something to do with mental telepathy." And the
third and most recent experience is this telegram I have in my hands
from the head of the Speakers Bureau from one of the two national
parties, I will let you guess which, asking me to go on tour and stump
for one of the two candidates. That isn't the important fact. The
important fact is that it's addressed to me as Mortimer J. Adler,
Institute of Philanthropical Research. I think if I did what I was
asked to do I would be the head of the Institute of Philanthropical
Research.
Now to explain to you today, at least indirectly, the work of the
Institute and its relation to the 21st century, I want to talk to you
directly and immediately about an issue that I think is much deeper
than all the issues in the present campaign -- one on which our future
depends much more than these that are being discussed, precisely
because it is a matter of how our people as a whole, not just our
leaders, think about human life and human society. This issue, which I
shall elaborate on in some detail, this issue we tend to think of as
an issue between East and West; as an issue between democracy and
communism, the issue which involves on our side respect for the
dignity of man as the very basis of a free society versus the
degradation of man under one or another form of totalitarianism. A
week or more ago, General Eisenhower, in a speech in Milwaukee, said
precisely this. He said, "Communism and freedom signify two
titanic ideas; two ways of life, two totally irreconcilable beliefs
about the nature and destiny of man. The one, freedom knows man as a
creature of God blessed with a free and individual destiny, governed
by eternal, moral, and natural laws. The second, communism, claims man
to be an animal creature of the state, curses him for his stubborn
instinct for independence, governs him with a tyranny that makes its
subjects wither away."
On this, I think we can all be sure that Governor Stevenson would
also agree. On this, there can be no, I think, real difference of
opinion by anyone who could even begin to run for the presidency of
the United States. Now, you may say, of course, that these two men
would not agree about what they would do about it in the face of the
issue. That may be true. What I want to say is that I think that it's
more important, more important than this agreement about what to do
about it is what we, as a people, now in this year and in the years to
come, do about understanding the issue because the immediate practical
steps we take are not wisely taken or well-advised unless they are
taken upon a better understanding of what it means to affirm before,
espouse the dignity of man.
It often seems to me that when we talk about this issue as being one
between East and West, we fail to realize that it's a deep issue
within our own national boundaries. It seems to me, or in some sense,
more important for us to realize that this issue concerning the
dignity of man, his nature and his destiny, is an issue in the very
heart of American life itself. I do not mean that most of us, if asked
the point-blank question, would not affirm in words like this respect
for the dignity of the human person, his rights and liberties. I think
we would all do that. But I mean that for many of us, and particularly
for individual leaders, that affirmation might prove, in many cases,
to be lip service. And the evidence for this point, which is, I think,
a damaging one if true, the evidence for this point lies in the fact
that there's so many aspects of American life, both in action and in
speech and in thought, that stand in direct conflict with a genuine
and understanding belief in the dignity of man.
It is not new to you, would be new to you to hear me say, it is not
infrequently said, that American life is through and through
materialistic. Not only materialistic in its preoccupation with the
multiplication of things in productivity, in the comforts and
conveniences of life, but materialistic even more deeply in the things
we honor and respect. And, if this is true or to whatever extent it is
true, this prevalent materialism in our view of things is in deep
conflict with a genuine respect for the dignity of man, which is
inseparable from some attribution to him of a spiritual nature.
There is also widespread in American life, a relativism about morals.
The notion that good and bad, right and wrong are, for the most part,
matters of opinion, subject to taste and individual preference, but
not subject to universal principle and law. And here, again, this
attitude, this relativism in morals, is in deep conflict with notions
that are connected with the conception of man's personal dignity,
conceptions that General Eisenhower mentioned of the natural moral
law, the objective standards of right and wrong. And even more deeply
than those two is, I think, for most of us in school or out, college
graduates or not, a skepticism which is somehow widespread in the 20th
century, a skepticism about the power of reason itself, either as a
faculty for inquiring into the truth or as a faculty for guiding human
life wisely and well.
One could go even more deeply, but to do so, I think, would have to
go beyond philosophy and into religion. Because wherever there is --
and, with respect to the dignity of man, these two things are not
quite separable -- wherever there is among us, doubt about man as
created in the image of God, doubt about man's immortal soul and
eternal destiny wherever there is a thoroughgoing naturalism, a
reduction of man to the same natural plane that all other creatures
are on; there again, I think, you have beliefs and doctrines that are
fundamentally inconsistent with respect for the dignity of man.
Well, if this issue is our issue, it's not merely an issue of America
versus Russia or East versus West, it's an issue right in America
today. Then let's look at the issue a little more closely and examine
what is involved in the two sides of it. Let me just state the issue
first, then examine why it became the issue of the 20th century, and
not of previous centuries, and face it both as a theoretical and a
practical issue.
I think I would say that in order consistently and coherently and
with full understanding of the grounds, in order to affirm the dignity
of man and to affirm in addition that man and man alone of all
terrestrial beings has this special dignity, one would have to affirm
the following propositions: that man and man alone is a rational
animal with free will; that all the other creatures on earth from
stones up to apes, have no reason and no freedom, no choice, in the
course of their behavior; that the kind of reason man has is, in the
conduct of human affairs, able to direct his free decisions, of the
decisions that we make individually and as societies; that man is a
person, not a thing, and that we understand that this distinction
between being a person or being a thing is a distinction that is
radically one of kind, not of degree: you can't be more or less of a
person or more or less of a thing. All the objects in the world divide
absolutely into persons and things, and man, on earth at least, man
and man alone is a person, that as such, that as such, he is created,
created in God's image and that, as a person with reason and free
will, he had only as a person with reason and free will, does he have
inalienable natural rights, especially those of citizenship and all
the basic civil rights and liberties. And that, as a person, with
reason and free will, he is innately imbued with the natural moral
law, which is the guide of his conduct and the source of his
obligations and which finally appoints to him a good or end or goal
that transcends this temporal life and the welfare of the state as
such. This is a body of notions that hang together, no one of which, I
think, can be torn apart from the others. If anyone is affirming,
really affirming the dignity of man, he's affirming all these things
together.
Now, on the opposite side, these are the denials which I think are
involved in denying the dignity of man, any one of which involve the
denial of man's dignity: that man differs from all the other things
around him, from apes, all brute animals in general, or animals in
general, and plants and stones, only in degree; that he differs only
in degree, in consequence of his having an origin on earth by a
natural evolution from these other things, particularly the higher
forms of animal life; that he's not rational, but that he has a much
greater power of intelligence, the same kind of intelligence, but much
greater in degree than other animals, an intelligence useful to him in
the struggle for existence and survival, an intelligence which so used
gives him a rule of expediency. And since the Bible is the ultimate
biological criterion here, it is a measure of expediency that judges
what the intelligent decision is.
He is a creature like other creatures of instinct, though he has the
power to rationalize. Not to direct by reason his conduct, but to give
reasons for conduct that arises from deep irrational or unrational
instinctive impulses. That he has no free will or free choice, but
like all other things, is like a machine subject to the simple
deterministic laws or even in the indeterministic laws of physics. And
that, like other animals, particularly other social animals, he is
subordinate to the life of the group and the life of the species of
which he is a member. There are no universal moral principles that
bind all men and oblige them and no man has, beyond this temporal
sphere, a good or an end beyond the welfare of the state. Any one of
these things, any one of these things would I think involve the denial
of man's dignity.
Now, this issue that I've sort of set up for you in terms of opposite
affirmations and denials, I think, has come to the boiling point or
has come into full focus only in our own century. I don't mean that it
doesn't have its roots before, one can see it rising towards the end
of the 18th coming even nearer, clearer into view, in the middle of
the 19th with Darwin, but I think it is only in our century that a
real confrontation of these two sides of the issue has occurred. Let
me document that just a little in the time. And the reason why I think
that this is important to recognize is that this is not an ancient
issue. At least it wasn't an ancient issue that had the insistence it
has today, and if I'm right about this, then this is an issue which
what we do about one which our thinking about in the 20th century may
have deep significance for the 21st.
If one went back through 25 centuries of the Western tradition -- I
want to stay with the West for a while -- and, looked at it in terms
of its Hebrew roots and development, its Greek and Roman, its
Christian development, looked at all the major strains in that
tradition, one would find ancient, medieval and modern down to the end
of the 18th century, what I would like to call the great traditional
view of man, which affirms his dignity in terms of the character of
his reason and his freedom, the nature of his soul, the manner in
which he was created, and the manner in which his destiny is
appointed. It often seemed to me that though one could cite this
philosopher or that philosopher to document the point -- I don't mean
to say that there isn't disagreement among philosophers on minor
points there -- nevertheless, in that famous speech which Hamlet gives
in the second act, there is in the magnificent language of
Shakespeare, an eloquent summary of the great traditional view that
for almost 25 centuries, Western man had upped man's nature and his
place on earth. The lines that Hamlet speaks are these: "What a
piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties.
In form and moving, how express and admirable. In action, how like an
angel. In apprehension, how like a god. The beauty of the world, the
paragon of animals."
That, I say, was how man looked at himself and understood himself for
almost the whole of the Western tradition. Only in the 20th century
does the opposite view become widely prevalent, especially, I would
say, in our learned circles, in our colleges and universities. I don't
mean that it began there, it begins with some dissenting voices on the
part of Machiavelli and Montaine. It begins with some dissent from
Hume, but I think that Freud, who was one of the great dissenters
here, has really hit the nail on the head, when in a famous lecture
recently, with one of the last lectures he gave in his life, he said
that in the course of modern history, with the development of modern
science, I quote him now, "Humanity, in recent times, has had to
endure from the hands of science, three great outrages, three great
outrages, upon its naïve self-love".
Science, he says, has dealt three cruel blows to man's self-esteem.
What are they? One, Copernicus, the Copernican revolution that took
man from being the inhabitant of the Earth which was the center of the
universe, and put him out at the far edges of space, a speck upon a
small planet, in a small solar system, in a small galaxy, moving at
almost infinite speed away from other galaxies in an enormous universe
which dwarfed him completely. This changed man's estimation of
himself.
Secondly, says Freud, the second great attack on man's self-esteem
came from Darwin. Not with the beginning of the negation of the notion
that man was specially created in God's image and a substitution,
therefore, of the notion that he is like other things, a descendant
from other creatures, in this case, a descendant from a common
ancestor with the anthropoid apes.
And then the third great blow dealt to man's self-esteem and his
conception of himself, Freud says, quite modestly, "I, myself,
delivered." "When, through my work, through the work of
modern psychology," meaning himself, of course, "we learned
that it was not through reason and free will that man was a master of
his own conduct, but rather that man was subject to instinctive
drives, unconscious impulses and emotions which, at best, he can only
rationalize and not really control." And, since Freud wrote this,
there's even a fourth, not so much on this continent as in Western
Europe, a fourth great blow to man's self-esteem, an attack upon the
traditional conception of man which comes from all varieties of 20th
century existentialism.
This, I say, Freud is right. This issue has come to focus in our time
because, slowly, slowly, the results of modern astronomy, modern
biology, and modern psychology have made us feel that man is not what
once man thought he was. This is our issue more than any other
because, as we decided, we decided about a great many other things,
about man's moral responsibilities, about man in relation to the
state, about the very nature of government. And I say it is not merely
an issue between East and West, but one we must decide for ourselves
because I do not think that most Americans have understood this issue
or know what they mean or are even consistent in the way they take one
side or the other of it.
Let's go back to the issue again. Let me see if I can state the issue
in its essence, purely theoretically, and then state it practically
for you. Because there's theoretical questions here and then there are
deep, practical questions that flow in consequence from these
theoretical issues. On the theoretical side, purely a matter of pure
speculation, science or philosophy, either one, makes no difference
now for the moment. The question is, when one looks at the whole of
nature, looks at the whole of nature, whether that nature, the whole
of nature, the world, the things, is constituted as a hierarchy of
kinds with real steps up in grades of being, one thing really higher
in being, in value than another. Or whether the whole of nature
represents a continuum from the least particle to the most complex
organization of matter, nevertheless, a continuum of degrees of the
same kind of thing. And whichever one of those divisions you take, you
look at man differently.
Again, it's a basic theoretical question as to whether or not the
laws of natural evolution, which do apply to the kind of species the
botanists and zoologists deal with, also apply to the great
distinctions among the forms of life and especially the man, the
question whether man, in fact, originated on Earth by natural
evolution -- the Darwinian theory of man's descent -- or by God
creating him. This is an issue you can't take both sides on. It either
happened one way or the other. And, accordingly, as you take one side
or the other, you look at man differently and judge the question of
his dignity differently. And the third is an issue, theoretically now,
between all forms of materialism and mechanism on the one hand, and on
the other, the notion that the world is not constituted of matter
only, it does not always operate in the form of mechanical laws or
mechanical procedures. For, as against the claims of the thoroughgoing
materialist or mechanist, there would be on the opposite side the
claim that though man has a body and his body obeys the laws of
mechanics, in part, man also has a soul, which is a spiritual soul
that has other laws and grounds.
Now, as you face this theoretical issue, practical consequences flow
as follows: four, let me take just three to illustrate this. Let's
think of our whole system of laws in Western Europe -- Greek, Roman,
Germanic, Anglo-American common law, the common jurisprudence of the
Western world. If there is any fundamental distinction upon which that
jurisprudence rests, it is the distinction between person and thing.
The law of the person, the law of the thing. Persons have rights that
things do not. Just think of the words, "kill" and "murder."
You can destroy a thing, you cannot murder a thing, and I mean by the
word "thing" now to include all the forms of animal life and
plant life. You can't murder a rose, you can't murder a dog, you can
kill a dog, but you can only murder a man, as we understand these
terms because the thing we're involved here in the notion of murder is
the violation of something sacred and only, by the distinction of
persons and things, is a life of a person sacred, not the existence of
a thing. Mr. Schweitzer disagrees with this, and many in the East
disagree with this, but all I want to do is draw the lines here for
you.
Nor can you enslave a thing, you cannot exploit. You can misuse an
animal wantonly, but you can't exploit a domesticated animal. You
can't enslave an animal. Why can't you? Because the animal is a thing
and is, therefore, of such a sort that it can be a means used. It is
just, it is just and right to use things as means, but if men are
persons, it is neither just nor right to ever use, ever to use them as
means or merely as means for what a person is, is that which must be
treated as an end. Always regard it as an end to be served and never
as a mere means to be used. So, I say if man is not a person, if man
is merely a higher grade or degree of thing, then all of our
fundamental jurisprudence in the West should be revised. Or, we must
go on saying, well, even though man isn't really a person, we will,
for some practical reasons, treat him as if he were, which, I think is
utterly unsound and unsteady.
Well, let's look at democracy for a moment. The essence of democracy
is not liberty. The essence of constitutional government is liberty,
but democracy goes beyond liberty to equality. The essence of
democracy is equality, the equality of all men, the equality of all
men as men and as citizens. Now, you know, every time anyone examines
the Declaration of Independence and reads the line, "We hold
these true to be self-evident" that God created all men equal,
all men were created equal, there usually can be a great deal of
sophistry about it. Everyone says, "Well, it's perfectly obvious
it isn't true. All men are not equal." The most obvious thing
about any thousand men you can collect in one place is their great
inequality in almost every human trait. Some are more intelligent,
some are taller, some are stronger, some have better stances, some
have better health, unequal in every respect.
If this is true, if men differ in degree from one another, as men as
a whole -- the opposite position says, differ in degree from their
nearest animal kin, the apes -- then I say to you, there is no
equality of men, there are only approximate equalizations of a degree.
And, if we are justified by our superiority in degree over the other
animals, in treating them as we do, killing them without calling it
murder, using them without calling it slavery, then I say the superior
man or the superior race of men is just as much entitled to take
inferior men in degree and enslave them or kill them for his needs or
purposes.
The only way to protect intellectually, to save yourself from this
position, is to say no: Men differ in degree, but only within a
fundamental equality which is theirs because they are all persons and
differ radically in kind from all other things, which are things. In
other words, the proposition that all men were created equal means
equal as persons, not equal as individuals. Equal in that they all are
persons and have the rights of persons. Without this affirmation,
democracy doesn't stand. For upon the equality of human rights, in
virtue of personality, also from that flows the equality of men as
citizens and all the other democratic propositions about equal,
social, political and economic opportunity and right.
Finally, let's go from the legal to the political to the religious
aspect of our lives. And you will react to this in proportion as you
think that religion is an important part of a culture or an important
part of Western culture in the fight that exists in the world today.
If you do, then what I'm saying is serious because the validity of all
the Western religions; Judaism, Mohammedism, and Christianity in all
its forms, I think depends upon the proposition that man and man alone
is created in God's image.
If this proposition is not true, then I think certainly Christianity,
and I think with it Judaism and the Mohammedism as well, have no
genuine basis for all the things that they recommend for men to do,
for the salvation they promise, for the moral and spiritual life they
exhort men to undertake. And here at this point, by the way, you have
the deepest rift between East and West, a rift that may take
centuries, way past the 21st century, to overcome, because in any
culture, such as that of India, in which there are sacred animals --
let me make this one point -- in which there are any sacred animals
and in which those sacred animals take precedence, have priority over
human life, you've got a totally different picture of what man is and
of human society and human life. The Western religions and the Western
religions alone, I think, make man the sacred animal and no other.
This is not true, I think, for other religions and, particularly, for
the great religions or philosophies of the East. And this difference
between East and West on the dignity, sacredness of man, is one much
deeper than all the political issues that we face in the world today
and affects the problem we face when we consider the unity of the
world, politically and culturally.
Now, in terms of this issue, let me take one moment more at the end
of this half hour to explain the work of the Institute and its
relation to the 21st century. We have chosen this problem, the nature,
origin, and destiny of man as the first subject on which we want to
do, what we call, philosophical research. Let me say it once what we
are not going to do. We are not going to argue or develop arguments
for one side of this set of issues against the other. That would be to
no avail, the arguments exist pretty well developed, as a matter of
fact. There are many forceful exponents of both sides of these issues.
And to argue some more on one side or the other, I think, for the most
part, would not produce the result we are looking for. Instead, what
we want to do is to take this issue and many others after it -- this
is merely the first -- and try to clarify it by stating the questions,
the questions that all sides of the controversy are engaging in,
facing, undertaking to answer as precisely as possible and more than
that, connecting those questions with one another so inexorably that
the basic either/ors become inescapable choices for everyone.
I can make the importance of this clear to you by addressing myself
to you personally, I hope with no injustice done to anyone. In this
audience, for example, right now, it would be my guess that there are
many persons whose minds are on both sides of this basic issue, whose
minds are really -- there are logic- type compartments who affirm one
thing when they think about that and then quite inconsistently,
incoherently even, affirm something incompatible with it over here,
and don't know it because, I think, no one of decent intellectual
self-respect really, really embraces inconsistencies and
contradictions gladly.
There are people in this audience, most of you, for example, I'm sure
affirm the dignity of man with a goodness of a free society and the
rightness, the justice of democratic government. But I'm also sure
that many of you affirming that would accept the Darwinian hypothesis
as to man's origin or of Freudian or behavioristic psychology
concerning his nature and actions: that many of the persons who would
affirm man's dignity would also deny, that man had free will or deny
that man has a spiritual or immortal soul and would certainly doubt,
if not deny that there's anything supernatural about man in origin or
destiny.
Now, if the work you want to do can achieve this, if the basic
either/ors -- either this or that, either this or that -- were made
clear and all of them, either this or that, either this or that, so
far as we could divide in twos or threes or fours, not necessarily
always in twos, were seen in their inseparable connections with one
another, then everyone who could think and would desire to think might
realize that on many of these questions there is no middle ground, no
compromise, no refuge from clarity or coherence or consistency.
This is what we're going to try to do with respect to this first
subject, and after that, with a succession of other fundamental issues
both theoretical and practical that have occupied the attention, the
thought, the concern of the whole Western tradition. It is my own
faith that when issues become clear to people and when all the basic
choices involved in those issues become connected for them, that the
truth prevails. I personally think the truth lies on one side of this
issue. I'm not being open-minded about this, but I'm saying that much
stronger than arguing for the side I personally adhere to is making
everyone realize themselves what the issues are and what the choices
are and let them choose. It is my firm faith in human reason that when
the issues are made clear enough and all the connections are put on
the table, the human mind is itself a good instrument, and if it is of
goodwill, it chooses a right. And, in addition to this faith, I have
the hope, I have the hope that the 21st century, not so far off
anymore, will find the planet still spinning with atomic energy used
for good rather than evil purposes, will find democracy and freedom
triumphant against all its enemies, but I hope for much more than
that, because I personally do not think that democracy in America
today has a firm foundation. I think it has a firm foundation in our
political tradition. I think we are rapidly losing the ideas, the
basic principles, which are its lifeblood. And unless we manage
somehow in this country and elsewhere to find its fundamental bases in
truth, democracy may be defended by the sword, but it will not long
survive or flourish in fact.
So that my hope is more than that by the power of might, democracy
and freedom will triumph. More than that, that the traditional view of
man, which as I see at least, has been the very heart of the Western
tradition, that that traditional view will once more become the
dominant and prevalent view, not only throughout the West, but
everywhere in the world. Thank you.
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