Dichotomies of human nature, part 2: the relational view

Philosophy matters because who we think we are affects how we live

Last week I started surveying two dichotomies that support individualistic and relational views of human nature. That post ended with a big-picture sketch of the consequences of the individualist view of human nature:

While the recognition of the individual was liberating in the social context of the eighteenth century, the dichotomies on which it is implicitly based have had centuries to play out, and we’re seeing their downstream effects now. Environmental degradation, political fragmentation and loss of community, and an epidemic of loneliness, depression and anxiety are surely among the most prominent challenges of our times. They are arguably consequences of the narrow view that we are, and ought to be, free and independent of one another, staying out of each other’s business.

Dichotomies of human nature, part 1: individualism

The other ends of the dichotomies: Humans as relational

As I said last week, however, humans aren’t built for that. We evolved in a context of cooperation and interdependence. Human infants require intensive and extended parenting that is most successful when mothers have support from a network of caretaking adults (“alloparents”): care is fundamental to our survival and ultimately to our ability to flourish, both as individuals and as a species. It also has a rich philosophical history, but it’s been overlooked because it’s associated with the lower ends of the mind-body and reason-emotion dichotomies—the ends associated with femininity rather than masculinity.¹

As feminist philosophers and other scholars began pointing out in the 1980’s, there is an alternative to individualist assumptions about human nature. When we start from the (scientifically sound) assumption that humans are fundamentally relational, then groups are natural and self-interest is more expansive; it’s based on the recognition that we are interdependent with one another and with the natural world, so that our interests are intertwined with those of others. A relational orientation emphasizes the values of connection, trust, care, attentiveness, and cooperation—as important and familiar as the values associated with individualism, but cast as lesser because of their associations with the lower ends of the dichotomies that dominate Western thinking.

Photo by Rafael Idrovo Espinoza on Unsplash

The roots of relationality

The relational conception of human nature, with its attention to physical embodiment and emotional attunement, also has significant philosophical roots. For instance, an ancient Pythagorean philosopher named Theano wrote letters of advice to women of her acquaintance that emphasized the value of harmony, grounded in the Pythagorean conception of the universe as a harmonious (and mathematically governed) whole. In her letters, harmony is about maintaining flourishing relationships in the face of our inevitable human thoughtlessness, temptation, and failure. Living well involves tuning into one another’s needs and interests, hearing and valuing everyone involved, holding one another accountable, and constructing livable compromises.

Along related lines, Russian scholar Peter Kropotkin argued in Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution that cooperation rather than competition is actually the primary factor in evolution, contra interpretations of Darwin that coined the slogan “survival of the fittest.”² Kropotkin provided a wealth of examples of cooperation from the animal kingdom, then argued that humans are no different. Work like his lays the groundwork for the arguments of people like contemporary psychologist Darcia Narvaez, who argues that humans are essentially built to be relational: we evolved in a social context that involved much more connection than we now have, and a lack of connection can affect our cognitive and emotional development down to the epigenetic level.

Regarding the mind-body dichotomy, Hildegard von Bingen, though maintaining proper Catholic body-soul dualism, was kinder to the body than Plato was. She emphasized that the soul animates the body and is “glorified” by the use of our senses, and thus has a more cooperative relationship with the body. It’s through the body that the soul does good works. At one point she even concedes that bodies need care as well, and that within reason souls should allow the bodies they inhabit to partake of some of the joys of embodiment.

There are also anti-dualist positions available: Lucretius, an Epicurean philosopher from ancient Rome, made some lovely arguments that the soul is material, made up of tiny invisible particles—rather like our modern understanding of the nervous system. More recently, Walt Whitman’s poem “I Sing the Body Electric” asks “[I]f the body were not the soul, what is the soul?” and speaks of “discorrupting” bodies. In appreciative and loving language, Whitman presents the body as a miracle, saying it’s “perfect” and “balks account.” He expresses the wish to be surrounded by and to touch “beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh”—that doing so “pleases the soul well.” Calling them “sacred,” he celebrates the bodies of women and men, and also, significantly, the bodies of enslaved people.

Even more recently, the reason-emotion dichotomy has also been undermined, both as a dichotomy and for elevating reason over emotion. Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s narrator in Notes from Underground rants about reason’s threat to free will and individuality. Feminists such as poet Audre Lorde and philosopher Alison Jaggar celebrate the knowledge that emotions provide us, and philosopher Aaron Ben-Ze’ev argues that emotions are not irrational, but non-rational: a separate system, perhaps, but just as reasonable as logical rationality is.

The threads of more relational views should teach us that we don’t need to take our dichotomies for granted, and that even if the dichotomies themselves are difficult to get past, they need not be vertically oriented, with one pole above the other. We can at least think of them more horizontally, if we can’t defeat them entirely. Both poles of these dichotomies have deep roots. In the end, my point is that to understand how to approach our contemporary problems, it’s important that we understand the way those roots have borne fruit in the present. When we do, we can choose intentionally which cultural “plants” to cultivate more and which to cultivate less.

1. In particular, patriarchal masculinity.

Celeste Davis

has recently written an insightful series distinguishing this kind of oppressive masculinity from both being male and being masculine, and tracing its implications in contemporary events. It starts with this piece. I like the term “patriarchal” rather than “toxic” masculinity because it’s less insulting to men and because it highlights the role of a system that we’re all caught in.

2. Which are incorrect interpretations of Darwin’s work and, as

Elissa Strauss

points out in When You Care, also contrary to the way Darwin himself lived.