Existentialism and animal nature
When I was a small child at St. Lawrence Elementary School, I was told that what sets us apart from mere animals is that we, unlike the beasts of the field, can think, choose, and love. I believed it at the time. Now I believe the answer is more complicated than that, but as a first approximation it is perhaps not bad.
A fancier, more philosophical (but not necessarily therefore better) way of naming these capacities would be to call them theoretical and practical reason. The first two anyway--the capacity to love is much too complicated for philosophers to handle and is best left to the poets and priests. The latter sort of reason was the subject today of a talk in the department, in which a familiar claim (due perhaps to Anscombe, perhaps to Aristotle) was advanced: that it is constitutive of rational action as such that it be done for the sake of something which is believed by the agent to be good.
I am only an amateur philosopher of action (as if I could claim to be more than an amateur at any other branch of our discipline!), and it is not for me to dispute this claim. Only, here is a case we might think about.
Suppose that I am at a bar. Perhaps I am in an unhappy mood. My desires have been frustrated and I am seeking solace in the company of friends. Perhaps I have had a few beers, enough that I think to myself that I will not have another, that it would, in fact, be a bad idea to do so. Perhaps I even go so far as to act on this thought, by telling the waitress that I will not have another beer. But a friend, acting out of sympathy (or perhaps to repay a debt or in the hopes that I will not go home early), buys me another beer anyway. It is offered; I believe that it is bad for me to drink it, and I do not even want to, feeling, let us suppose, already some unpleasant effects of my previous drinks. I know that my friend will not be offended if I do not accept. And yet, I take the beer and drink it. The same considerations that, moments before, sufficed for me to refuse to buy another beer have now been ignored. Perhaps we can blame this on my mood. I think that would be one possible response, although I think it more likely that, if someone were to ask, "Why did you drink that last beer if you knew it would be a bad idea?" the only proper response would be a shrug and perhaps a small feeling of shame.
How should we describe this case? Perhaps it will be said that, when I refused to buy a beer, I acted rationally, but that my later "action" is only an action improperly-so-called. It is, as it were, like an animal behavior for which no answer to the question "Why?" can be given other than an explanation in terms of mental causes. If this is so, it suggests that we (or at least I!) behave in non-rational ways much more often than I would like to suppose.
Another way of describing the case has been recently suggested to me by M., in the context of a discussion about existentialism. M.'s claim was that actions which are properly existential must be, essentially, nihilistic or self-destructive. What we agreed upon was that, to be properly existential, an action must not be dictated by any external forces (including, perhaps, facts about what is good), and perhaps not even internal ones (including, perhaps, beliefs about what is good). I claimed that this did not force them to be nihilistic; that the most ordinary of everyday actions could be properly existential if undertaken in the right way. M. disagreed. I could not see why at the time, but perhaps he takes "existential" to describe a class of actions of which my example is a case, which are in some way not merely animal, but which nevertheless do not count as a cases of "intentional" action--or at least as degenerate or abnormal cases. And, since intentional action is action for the sake of something believed to be good, this would mean that existential actions must be undertaken despite our beliefs about what is good. Perhaps that is supposed to be analytic of nihilism.
A fancier, more philosophical (but not necessarily therefore better) way of naming these capacities would be to call them theoretical and practical reason. The first two anyway--the capacity to love is much too complicated for philosophers to handle and is best left to the poets and priests. The latter sort of reason was the subject today of a talk in the department, in which a familiar claim (due perhaps to Anscombe, perhaps to Aristotle) was advanced: that it is constitutive of rational action as such that it be done for the sake of something which is believed by the agent to be good.
I am only an amateur philosopher of action (as if I could claim to be more than an amateur at any other branch of our discipline!), and it is not for me to dispute this claim. Only, here is a case we might think about.
Suppose that I am at a bar. Perhaps I am in an unhappy mood. My desires have been frustrated and I am seeking solace in the company of friends. Perhaps I have had a few beers, enough that I think to myself that I will not have another, that it would, in fact, be a bad idea to do so. Perhaps I even go so far as to act on this thought, by telling the waitress that I will not have another beer. But a friend, acting out of sympathy (or perhaps to repay a debt or in the hopes that I will not go home early), buys me another beer anyway. It is offered; I believe that it is bad for me to drink it, and I do not even want to, feeling, let us suppose, already some unpleasant effects of my previous drinks. I know that my friend will not be offended if I do not accept. And yet, I take the beer and drink it. The same considerations that, moments before, sufficed for me to refuse to buy another beer have now been ignored. Perhaps we can blame this on my mood. I think that would be one possible response, although I think it more likely that, if someone were to ask, "Why did you drink that last beer if you knew it would be a bad idea?" the only proper response would be a shrug and perhaps a small feeling of shame.
How should we describe this case? Perhaps it will be said that, when I refused to buy a beer, I acted rationally, but that my later "action" is only an action improperly-so-called. It is, as it were, like an animal behavior for which no answer to the question "Why?" can be given other than an explanation in terms of mental causes. If this is so, it suggests that we (or at least I!) behave in non-rational ways much more often than I would like to suppose.
Another way of describing the case has been recently suggested to me by M., in the context of a discussion about existentialism. M.'s claim was that actions which are properly existential must be, essentially, nihilistic or self-destructive. What we agreed upon was that, to be properly existential, an action must not be dictated by any external forces (including, perhaps, facts about what is good), and perhaps not even internal ones (including, perhaps, beliefs about what is good). I claimed that this did not force them to be nihilistic; that the most ordinary of everyday actions could be properly existential if undertaken in the right way. M. disagreed. I could not see why at the time, but perhaps he takes "existential" to describe a class of actions of which my example is a case, which are in some way not merely animal, but which nevertheless do not count as a cases of "intentional" action--or at least as degenerate or abnormal cases. And, since intentional action is action for the sake of something believed to be good, this would mean that existential actions must be undertaken despite our beliefs about what is good. Perhaps that is supposed to be analytic of nihilism.
posted by gregates at 8:30 PM
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