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The New York Review

tically unsentimental self-obsession ispotent enough, in Heilpern's skillfultell ing, to give his fise and fal l a kindofsad grandeur. But the shadow ofhiscolossal ego always loomed too largeto allow him the clear vision that agreat playwright needs. 0

'For a discussion of the difficulties 'ofevolutionary explanations of culturalphenomena, see Richard C.Lewontin,"The Wars Over Evolution," The NewYork Revi~w, October 20, 2005.

press~.1awyers, accountants, his mother;and Albert Finney. Such targets makegood magazine columns-he wrote a 'highly entertaining' one for The Spectator-and the paranoid grudges thatpowered his hatreds gave his autobi ographies their manic energy. His caus-

Any 'animal whatever, . endowedwith well-marked social instincts , ,the parental and fil ial affectionsbeing here included, would inevi tably acqui ,e a mmal sense orconscience, as,soon as its intellectual powers had become as well. developed,or nearly as well devel

. oped, asin man.'

'Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man,and Selection in Relation to Sex(Princeton University Press, 1981), pp.71-72. 7"

and specifying what ispermissible; anda necessary, part of being a moral"agent" -someone who acts mmally-. is engaging in deliberation using prin'ciples that apply to everyone.A different view prevailed among,the Greeks; for whom the core ofethics was the virtues. Rather thanacting in conformity to principles, they, , b elieved, good human beings tend to,live according to right action. Andwhi le deliberation might at t imes benecessary, morality was essentially ahabit of good judgment and behavior.Acting well meant displaying courageor prudence, for example, rather thanobeying rules or principles. The typeof reasoning associated with this Greekview was mO,e casuistic, a case-by-caseappmach in which the situations inwhich actions were taken were ext remely important. Greek ethics wasnot, normallyrelativistic-Atistotle 'took for granted. that courage and pm-',' ~~ dence are generically human vrrtues-"';-"0'" '; ,but it did not aim to formulate univer-

'A t ypical instance of consolation in chimpanzees in which ajuvenil e puts an ann around sal rules. , ,a screaming adult male who. hasfust been defe~ted in af ight with his rival '; photograph ' Westem' thinking contains both orby Frans de Waal fro.m Pnmates and Philosophers: How MOfahtyEvolved ' th' , . I 1_ ., . " ese conceptIOns. n one mora ItY,Iswith this view is that it assumes a dis- . kind of autonomy they could not be modeled on law and has at its centercontinuity between the biologies of 'moral beings. A different objection to a set of categorical demands, while

humans and other animals that Dar- the idea that morality is n atural comes in the other mora'lity is based on pre-win did not recognize. As Darwin from relativists and postmodemists cepts for living the good life and has,wrote: ' who argue that morality is a human con- .more in common with medicine, hy-. struction whose content varies widely giene, and the practical arts, such asacross di fferent human groups, and', building and gardening. These concep-'who often reject any idea of a f ixed' or ',tio,ns have often been combined' inconstant human nature. central Western traditions., MedievalThe idea that momlity is uniquely' Christian thinkus accepted that thehuman has many variations, but all of virtues were an integral part of mmalthem rest on the assumption that hu-', "life, and adopted from the Greeks themans are in some fund;unental way ex- view that prudence and fortitude, forempt from the evolutionary laws that example, were among them. Again,govem other animals. Darwin's theory obeying legit imate moral rules has al-of natural selection does not entail any ways been seen as virtuous. Yet therestrong type of genetic determinism re- .~emainsa basic difference between thegarding human behavior, and attempts " 'v .iewhat moral behavior means actingto apply evolutionary models to the rin principles and the Greek idea thatdevelopment' of cultures have not it means having good habits and dispo-been notably productive.' Even so, the sitions, and it has been the formerassumpt ion that human moral behavior .view that has been accepted by mosthas no roots in traits we share with our modern philosophers ..closer evolutionary kin is hard to s quare In Moral Minds, Marc Hauser, a psy-wi th any version of D,arwin's theory. It chologist at Harvard who has studiedis difficult to resist the suspicion that sociaL behavior and altruism among,this assumpt ion isan inheritance ITom monkeys, accepts ,the prevail ing viewreligion, and it is notable that much that mmal behavior is fundamentallyof the' debate surrounding evolution about conforming to pr Inciples, but ar-and ethics assumes a view of momlity gues ,that this view attaches, too muchderived from Western traditions of , , imponance to conscious processes ofmonotheism (to which Is lam in this ' reasoning. Just .because wereason fromrespect belongs). In these traditions the explicitprinciples-handed down ITom-"cme of moral ity is a set of rules, laying . parents , teachers, lawyers, judges, ordown duties, imposing prohibitions, "religious leaders-to judgments ofright and wwng doesn't mean thatthese principles are the source of ourmoral decisions. On the contrary,Hauser argues that moml judgmentsare mediated by an unconscious pmc

ess, a hidden moral grammar that eval-

Are We Born'Moral?'

changed and Osborne stayed the same,he could interpret its indifference to his"rage only as betrayal. In 1989,he listedinhis notebook those who had most consistently betrayed him. The list includedhis ex-wives, Faber and Faber, the Nat ional Theat re, the Royal Court , the

Darwin accepted that humans havea natural capacity for morality that has'precursms in other animals. For exam, pIe, he argued that the social instinctsthat form the "prime principle" of, man's moral sense can be found in, inonkeys, pelicans, and dogs, amongother animals. Huxley rejected Darwin's view and, so it seems doesDawkins; in doing this they are in l inewith much modem philosophy inwhich there is a widespread resistanceto any attempt to link moral behaviorin humans wi th the behavior of otheranimal species. Kant believed thatbehaving morally means 'acTIng in accordance with pr inciples that can beconsciously articulated, and many philosophers have thought that becausenonhuman animals lack the cognitiveand linguistic abilities required for this

'Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 201.

charmless, unbeautifully black natives?Osborne's tragedy wasthat he becamerich and famous for indulging a ragethat made him, astime went on, anevermore marginal f igure, howling fromthe sidel ines at a world he couldn' t bebothered to unders tand. As the wor ld

Moral Minds:,How Nature DesignedOur Universal Senseof Right and Wrongby Marc D. Hauser.Ecco, 458 pp., $27.95Primates and Philosophers:How Morality EvolvedbyFrans de Waal,edited by Stephen Macedoand Josiah Ober.,Princeton University Press,209 pp., $22.95According to a prominent traditionof Western thinking, morality is a thinoverlay covering human savagery.H)i ll lan beings are best ial' hy natureand ethical codes are curbs on theirb.rutish inst incts that enable them tove together in relative peace. Morality is a restraint on natural human behavior. At the same time itis believed

to be uniquely' human. Only humanspossess the intel lectual powers thatare needed, to repress natural impulses, and so only they can be moral."Though this view can be found inmany schools of thought , secnlar aswel l as religious, it i shard to spell outin any ,coherent fashion. Ifmorality isa system ofrules for the suppression ofbeastly behavior , where does i t comefrom, and why have humans acceptedit? How was it devised and imposed?Such questions are not easily answered, but when morality is assessedas i t often is 'today according to someversions of Darwinian, theory, the not ion that, it is a human construct ion'without roots in our animal naturefaces difficulties that are in~oluble. IfDarwinian theory is sound, moralityin humans results at least in somepart from evolutionary processes, andwhen they act asmoral beings humansare displaying capacities they have incommon with some other animals.R'Ither than suppressing their instincts,they are behaving naturally.To view morality as a fetter on animal instincts is to think of it in preDarwinian terms, but curiously SOmeof the most ardent Darwinians havealso seen it in this way.As a result ofhis indefatigable ,defense ofDarwiniantheory the British biologist T.H. Huxley was known as "Darwin's bulldog,"but he held that moral li fe was a struggle to combat nature-a view that leftmorality hanging in mid-air , withoutany evolutionary explanation, as akind of human protest against the cosmOS.In our own time Richard Dawkinshas reaffirmed the Huxleyan position,concluding his book The Selfish Gene'with the declaration: "We, alone onearth, can rebel against the tyranny ofthe self ish replicatms. ,,' A problem

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' Penguin, 1985; p, 226, The passageiscited by de Waal, Primates and Phi-losophers, pp, 65-66. '

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pick out disw~te qualities of vice andvirtue. So, for example, when wejudgewhether an action is benevolent,such as an act of generosity-Hume'argues that we feel a pleasurable emo, tion regarding it, which reflects oursentinlents regarding the traits of character such actions express, These sentiments in turn, Hume believed, reflectthe usefulness of the character traits tothose who possess them and to societyin generaL ,No doubt there are' many-difficulties "with this account, including those that''arise when we try to clarify the ideaof usefulness. Yet Hume's view thatmorality isbased in natural human capacities for sentiment and judgment ismore plausible, it seems to me, than'views in which 'reasoning from principles is fundamental, because it fitsb'etter with an evoiutionary account ofthe origins ofmorality. As Hume ptit i tin a chapter of his Treat ise of HumanNature entitled "Of the Reason of An-, imals," "When any hypothesis ., . isadvanc'd to explain a Iflental operation,Though he does riot aim to settle the ,which is common to men and beasts,_question definit ively, Hauser suggests we must apply the same hypothesis to,that the part of the iIloral faculty that' both.'" In Hume's account, as in re-

is unique to humans is t hat which they cent evolutionary accounts, humanuse "to create judgments ofpermissible, morality develops out of, and remainsobligatory, and forbidden actions." dependent on, capacities and traits'" that humans share with their doserThe problem with this argu~ent is' 'e~olutionary kin and there is no unnot its suggestion that the' human ,bridgeable discontinuity between the.moral faculty has uuique features," two. ,Applying principles remains awhich can hardly be doubted. It is that distinctive feature of moral life" butit takes for granted that these have to one that reflects human conventions, do with creating and following rational- rules or principles. Here Hauser differs from Hume, who, believed thatwhen we employ our moral sense'we

morality and 'that his is "a pluralisticposition, one that recognizes differentmoral systems, and sees adherence to,a single system as oppressive," Evenso he is' insistent that huma,n manu ca-pacities embody universal principles,While he rejects the view that "putsprecise moral rules or norms in thenewborn's head," he alsb rejects theidea that the human ,moral faculty,, lacks any rules:We are born with abstract rules orprinciples, with nurture enteringthe picture to set the parametersand guide us toward the acquisit ion of partiCular moral systems, 'This middle view is the one Ifavor. It comes closest to the l inguistic analogy. It makes the obvi-" ous point that something about''the human brain al lows us to ac-:'quire a system of moral norms.And it makes the equally obviouspoint that dogs and cats that grow, 'up witl i humans never acqui re our 'moral norms.

'uates the causes and consequences of one another's character and actions.our own and others' actions. ' , Using our moral sense involves em-Viewing human moral psychology ploying these abi lities, and in the casewi th reference to an inst inct or faculty of the natural vir tues-which include'we share with some other anirrials, prudence and benevolence as well asHauser rejects the idea that we must be quali ties like sel f-esteem-includes'able to articulate the reasons for our having the appropriate emotional re-act ions in order to be moral agents, In sponses in ci rcumstances where thesehis view both moral judgment' and be- virtues may be required. Hume didnothavior are largely the product of un- deny that acting prudently or benevo- 'conscious processes-not the repressed lently requires thought and judgment;thoughts and desires of Freudian the-" but i tdoes not presuppose the applica-'ory but the, vast areas of mental life ,tion of rules, ouly the intelligent use of ,that lie beyond the reach of conscious natural human capacities, 'awareness. Though they are widely ac- Hauser links his account of a moral'cepted, accounts of morality in which faculty with both Noam Chomsky'sconscious del iberation is central are, ,theory of a universal human grammaraccording to Hauser, unreal. Hauser and John Rawls's 'theory of justiceis not denying that moral reasoning is as fairness. Chomsky's hypothesis thatemployed in ,many areas of life-as language use is governed by iimate'when judges reach opinions; or teach- ' rules has made a major impact on lin- ,ers give out grades. Rather ', he is argu- guistics, psychology, ' and cultural an-,ing that when people deliberate;and thropology; but the content of thesemake decisions in, such contexts theY' rules and the degree to which theycannot help relying, to some extent on vary between cultures are disputed,processes of thought that need not be and the idea of a uuiversal grammarbased on, and often are not ful ly-acces- -' remains controversial. Linking the'sible to, conscious awareness. idea of i nnate morality to such an am-,A rich, pathbreaking book, Moral ..hitious and contested theory of lan-

'Minds uses evidence from rapidly ad- guage acquisition 'burdens it with 'avancing research on animal and human considerable baggage that does notbehavior to suggest that humans have clarify the origins of moral judgment. 'an inborn moral faculty, parts of which More fundamentally,' thinking ofthey share wi th other animals-a claim 'the moral facul ty as strict ly analogousthat is acutely relevant to some of the to a universal grammar reproducesmost fundamental contemporary de- the model of morality Hauser rightlybates in philosophy and public 'life. finds inadequate. The core of Chom-'Hauser ranges widely over av ariety of sky's theory is the Claim that theredisciplines, supporting the idea of in- are universal rules of language usenate moral knowledge by citing,' for that are innately human. As Hauserexample, findings by the neuroscientist ',puts it: 'Antonio'Damasio that patients with The langua e faculty maintains adamage to theIr frontal lobes never- ' 't gf" I fthe1ess "dist inguished between moral ly :eposl airy0 pnnclp es lor grow-"b'l d f b'dd . d mg a anguage, any anguage.permlssl e an or 1 en actIOns an Wh r . f t th ' ....justified them at an advanced, adult . en lDgUlStSe er? .ese pnn-leveL" He also i nvokes Frans deWaal's ctples as the speaker s graml!'llr,Chimpanzee 'Politics' to illustrate the they mean the rules or operaoonscapacity of nonhUIIian primates to ~hat allow any normally develop-make judgments about harm and con- mg human to unconsclOu~ly , gen-, sequences of the kind ihat are central erate and comprehend a 11Imtle~s. n ',' " ,range of well-formed sentences 10:lDmora 1 y. " their' native language. Whenlin-A H kId "th .d 'f guists referto universal grammar, ..sauser ac now e ges, e 1 ,ea a they im; refemng to a theory aboutan mnate moral faculty Or s ense ISnot the set of all principles availablenew, and was common among the "h hild f ..thO k f th S tf h E li ht to eac c ,or acqulflng anylD ers a . e co IS n g en- specificJanguage.ment, ,mcIuding DaVId I:Iume. For, . Before the child is born, she-Hume moralIty was, b ased'll the natu- , doesn't know which language sheral emotIon of sympathy or benevo- 'II t d h tI 'h'le' f " ffi' I WI mee; an s e may even mee~nce ;: 1 JUSIce was an .ar I Cta two if she is born in a bilingualvIrtue, a system of conventIons that family. But she doesn't need tohas developed because benevolence IS k' Wh t h d k 'r ' d d hr' di . now. a s e oes now, 10 anImlte an umans Ive lD can Oons unconscious sense, is the set of'~f moderat~ scarCIty.. Once conven- principles for all the world's lan-tlOns of JustIce are established, human d dr'beings use their powers of reason in' guadgtehs- e a t antes, Iv~ngdoTnehs,, I' 'h b h . an ose no ye conceIve. eapp ymg t em;, ut t ese conventIOns environment feeds her the partic-develop, as unmtended consequences I d tt 'f h fof social interaction over time rather ul ar soun thPa bernst0 ,t e na tlvhe, 'I f anguage, ere y urnmg on ethan as a resu t of any process 0 rea- specific principles of only one lan-sODlng, and are mostly accepted as a 'f th 'tt f hab't "M kind' ',' guage, or two 1 e parents are,ma er 0. 1 . an . ISan lDven- 'bilingual. The problem of lan- ,tlve species," Hume wntes, and though ' ... , . 'the rules of just icto seem natural "if by gua~e acq~'SI110nIS there!ore like, ,,'. settlDg SWItches.Each chIld startsnatural we und~rstand wh~t lS com-, out with all possible switches but 'mon to any speCIes, or even If we' con- ... ,' , . ' .,~-,fine it to mean what is inseparable "':Ith no parl1cular settmgs, the en- ,,from the' species," they come into ~Ironment the~ sets .them accord~,..being "without the intervention' of 109 to the chIld s native language., 'thought or reflection," Just as a universal grammar containsIn Hume's view our judgments of linguistic universals embodied in rulesright and wrong reflect the kind of of language use, so, it has been argued,species humans are, with dispositions there are moral universals, which arefor sympathy and pleasure and a ca- embodied in an inborn set of moralpacity for approval and disapproval of rules. Throughout Moral Minds, how---------- ' ever, Hauser is emphatic that he does'Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. not accept a single set of rules about

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on sympathy "fall a long way short ofmorality." Christine Korsgaard presentsa version of the same view when shecontends that morality only emergesalong with a form of self-consciousnessthat allows agents to know the groundsor reasons for their beliefs and actions,-a type ofself-awareness only humanspossess. Defending a modified versionof de Waal's Veneer Theory, RobertWright maintains that reciprocal altruism of the kind to which de Waal andother students of animal behaviorrefer is not "true morality" because itcannot be universalized.Peter Singer uses his contribution to

Primates and Philosophers to restatethe argument for equal moral consideration for animals for which ,he isjustly celebrated.' In his substantivemoral theory Singer is a utilitar ian inthe, tradition.of Hume and JeremyBentham, but his belief that moralityis based on impartial principles alignshim with Kant rather than Hume.Singer shares wi th Kant the view thatthe test of right action is whether itconforms to universal principles-aviewin line with that defended by mostother contemporary philosophers, whoinsist that morality isa human prerogat ive. Singer's stand en animal rights is ,in effect, an applicat ion of this view toother species. While he argues in favorof extending the scope of moral con-,cern beyond humans, he does so by invoking a conception of morali ty that isanthropocentric. In each case we see'an a priori move of the sort againstwhich de Waal has warned, which responds to evidence of sympathy andreciproci ty in other animals not by revising the received view of moralitybut by reasserting the parts of it thatexclude other species.Many philosophers have accepted anundersta)1ding of morality that is diffi~cult to square with the f indings of science, and even tostate coherently. Suchis the view that Hauser and de Waalhave incisively criticized: while humansare fundamentally amoral or bad,morality is uniquely human. Hauser'sand de Waal's research suggests something more like the Greek standpoint"of a more practical, virtue-based morality, which accepted that humans aremoral by nature. 'An evolutionary view is bqund to'be more pluralistic than that of Greekphilosophers such as Aristotle,however. Aristotle's theory of morality wasbased on a metaphysical theory ofhiology, according to which each kind'Of organism had a natural end-s tateor goal. Darwinian theories have noplace for teleological explanationsthat isto say, explanations that rely onascr ibing pnrposes to evolutionaryprocesses,These processes have no overallpurpose or direction. If they have produced an innate moral faculty in humans i t is likely sometimes to confl ictwith other instincts and to leave manymoral dilemmas unresolved. The hard- .est of these dilemmas will not resemble difficulties iil lfammar, when thereis doubt about the right application ofa rule. They will be cases where universal human virtues or values point indifferent di rections-as when just iceclashes with mercy, or the promotionof general welfare coll ides wi th someconception ofjustice. Evolutionary the- 'ories may do much to illuminate theorigins of morality, but they are unlikely to help us solv.ethese dilemmas. 0

'For a summary of evidence regardingthe sense of equity in nonhumanprimates see his "Monkey Fairness" inPrimates and Philosophers, pp. 44-49.

other primate scientists, he criticizesthe understanding of morality predominant among contemporary .mora lphilosophers, who he believes for th"most part accept vers ions of the Veneer Theory. He argues that humansare like thei r closest evolutionary kinin being moral by nature. For example, he cites some fascinating evidenceshowing that monkeys, like humans,have a marked aversion to inequi ty .6Along with a wealth of rigorous research de Waal includes some lovelyanecdotes. He cites a report of a female bonobo who had captured a starling and been urged by her keeper tolet it go; she climbed to the highest'point of the highes t tree in her enclo- 'sure, carefully' unfolded the, bird' swings, arid spread them wide open be-fore trying to throw it out of the enclosure. When the bird fell short, thebonobo guarded it for a long periodagainst a curious juvenile bonobo.As de Waal comments, the bonobodisplayed a capacity for empathy andevel,lexercised it aqoss species boundaries: slle had a notion of what was, good for the bird, and did her best toachieve it. Of course there will bemany who reject this interpretation as "anthropomorphism, and it is t rue thatwe should avoid projecting distinctively human traits onto other species.It is wrong to describe a cat playingwith a mouse in terms that invoke human sadism, or group hunting among'lions as a type of warfare. Again,'though they may have antecedents. inthe b~haviorof other primates, tortureand genocide remain peculiarly human. Anthropomorphism should beavoided in these and other contexts.But the larger danger lies surely inwhat de Waal has termed anthropodenial-the a priori rejection ofshared characteristics between humans

and animals, "which leads to a wil lfulblindness to the humanclike characteristics of animals, or the animal-likecharacteristics of ourselves." Whatjustification can there be-apart froma religious faith in human uniqueness-for rejecting evidence that points tothe ,animal origins of human morality?Part of the resistance to de Waal's ar- 'gument seems to come from a sensethat it deflates morali tY. Many philosophers have argued that withoutawareness of the principles it expresses, altruistic or empathetic behavior isno more than a repertory of emo- tional. responses; but this presumeswhat has yet to be shown, that actingaccording to our natural sentimentscannot be fullymoral.AII the commentators in Primates and Philosophers-,an impressively well-focused collection of essays , the longest of which is'drawn from the Tanner Lectures delivered by de Waal at Princeton's Center. for Human Values in 2004-insist onthe'essential role of self-consciousness:"genuine" morality requires somethinglike Kantian autonomy-being responsible for one's actions and capable ofspecifying the reasons on which theyare based-that confines it to humans.The philo~opher Philip Kitcher maintains that unless they indude a high levelof rationality and self-consciousness,expressions of altruism that are based

rather than rules of conduct hardwiredin the human brain.In presupposing that the innate con

tent ofmoral ity must be a set ofprinciples-however abstract and culturallyvariable-Hauser departs from the account of the moral sense presented byHurne. He,does so partly under the influence oJ John Rawls, He writes:Like the British philosophersof the Enlightenment, especiallyDavid Hume, Rawls believed ina moral sense, a sense of justicethat was designed' on the basisof principles that "determine aproper balance between competing claims to the advantages ofsocial life."

However, pai ring Hume and Rawls inthis way blurs significant differences.For Hurne, following rules is a centralpart of morality only where justice isconcerned, and even there he wasready to make exceptions to the ruleswhere such exceptions prornoie thegeneral welfare. For example, he sup,ported the forcible recruitment of seamen by "press gangs" that was practiced under the authority of the Britishcrown .forcenturies. In contrast, whilehe made use of Hume's account of thecircumstances in which justic~ develops,Rawls viewed just ice in Kantianterms as "the first virtue of social institut ions" and viewed acting in conformity with its principles as an integralpart' of being a moral agent. While forRawls (and Hauser) universal princi ples generate intuitions about whichactions are morally right or wrong priorto generating any emotions, for Humeemotions precede our moral judgments.. By using the theories of Chomskyand Rawls to model the moral faculty,Hauser links his account with an un-derstanding of morality that in otherrespects he rightly resists. Despite rejecting the view that having the abilityto articulate principles is an essentialpart of acting morally, he endorses thebelief, entrenched in Western religionand reproduced in philosophy by Kantand Rawls, according to which morality means acting on rational principles ..In doing so he accepts an understanding of what it is to be moral that isculture-specific, and one that has notalways been accepted, even in Western traditions.One of the.chief obstacles to a naturali stic view of ethics- meaning herenot any view that conflates facts wi thvalues but instead the belief thatmorality must be explained according, to natural human capacities and trai ts-has been the belief that human nature is amoral or savage. A strong version of thisview,which Frans deWaal,a professor of primate behavior atEmqry University, has usefully described as Veneer Theory, was invoked by Hobbes when he described astate ofnature as a condit ion in whichhomo homini lupus-"man is wolf toman." As de Waal observes, this isunfai r to wolves, which are among themost gregarious and cooperative ofanimals, while it denies the factofnatural human sociability.De Waal is one of the world's foremost authorities on nonhuman primates, and his thoughtful contributionto Prim,ates and Philosophers is enriched by decades of close observat ion of their behavior. Using this evidence and research conducted by

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