These situations entail the psychology of morality-an intriguing and growing topic of study. Significant and insightful research has been completed in an attempt to understand more about morality from a psychological perspective. Many questions have been raised in the realm of morality and ethics, such as: How do people think about morality? What are people’s concepts of a moral person? How do people apply morality in conflict and their everyday lives?

In psychologists’ attempts to answer these questions, we learn more about mankind as a whole and about our own individual selves. This article will summarize some of the most prominent studies in the field of morality psychology and use these perspectives to help attain a better understanding of who a moral person is and what they do.

Exploring differences in moral foundations between political liberals and conservatives is one interesting area of research in the psychology of morality. Graham, et al. (2009) established a definition of a moral foundation as consisting of five moral intuitions: harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. The researchers found that political liberals were likely to chiefly judge a moral situation along the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity aspects, while conservatives were more likely to use all aspects equally. The results of this study seem to agree with the ideologies of liberals and conservatives. Considering that conservatives are less receptive to changes in political policies and culture, it makes sense that they would place a high value on the authority of a government, and also that they would give more weight to protecting their in-group from outside influences. This ideology may in turn stem from a Hobbesian worldview (Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679) in that everyone is at the most basic level self-interested, and therefore they must protect their own interests from the interests of others.

Liberals, on the other hand, would be more likely to go against the authority of the government or in-group concerns if they felt a moral injustice was being committed. This may be one reason why conservatives sometimes accuse liberals of not being patriotic.

As for the purity/sanctity condition, there is some doubt as to whether it can really be considered a moral facet. Conservatives seem to think that this is the case, but liberals on the other hand give nearly zero consideration to aspects of purity during moral judgments, as it seems to be an unrelated concept. Additionally, this idea may explain why conservatives tend to be against gay marriage, while liberals are more likely to support gay relationships.

Before moving on, let me pose another question: which action is more moral, volunteering time in a soup kitchen or keeping your vow to your wife not to go to the racetrack and gamble on payday?

Now we turn our attention to an enlightening study by Janoff-Bulman, et al. (2009) that analyzed morality in a different way: by categorizing it into two distinctive types, prescriptive and proscriptive. Prescriptive morality has a commendatory and encouraging nature, and it is characterized by taking positive action and the question what one should do to be moral. Proscriptive morality is more commanding and punishing in its aspects, and it is characterized by preventing negative action and the question what one should not do to prevent immorality. The distinction between the two can be states as helping versus not harming.

The researchers provide evidence for these two different types of morality in their studies. For example, in one experiment, participants were asked to describe what they thought it meant to be-depending on the manipulation-either moral or immoral. They had correctly predicted that proscriptive morality tended to have more concrete and defined language, so as to assist its adherents in knowing exactly what actions are wrong. Prescriptive morality’s language was more abstract so as to include more possible right actions.

It was also found that people were more disapproving when someone committed forbidden acts as opposed to someone failing to perform righteous acts. This finding-that it is generally more objectionable to see an overtly immoral act than to see a failure to commit a positive act-is strong evidence for the prescriptive/proscriptive distinctions of morality.

There are many more questions about morality researchers are asking. For instance, what lies behind the rationalization of a racist behavior or attitude? How are people’s moral principles influenced by the particular identity of the individuals involved? Uhlmann, et al. (2009) examined these topics. Most of us tend to think of ourselves as having a relatively stable moral standing, but this study showed that for most people, this simply is not the case. People were presented with different moral dilemmas that measured if they would support either a consequentialist solution or a deontological solution to the dilemma. According to the researchers’ hypothesis, changing some details of the scenario could influence people’s preference for either consequentialism (the idea that it is permissible to commit an action that would normally be considered immoral for the benefit of the greater good) or deontology (the idea that there are some actions that are morally wrong under any and all circumstances); this is in fact what they observed.

They observed that political liberals were more likely to sacrifice a white man to save a black group of people and less likely to sacrifice a black man to save a white group. The reverse effect was observed for conservatives in that they were more willing to sacrifice a black man to save a white group and vice versa. They also found that conservatives were more likely to endorse the unintended killing of Iraqi civilians by American forces than the unintentional killing of American civilians by Iraqi armed forces.

These results provides a striking example of how people’s moral concepts can change when the specifics of those involved in the moral equation change, which in turn suggests that people value some lives more than others. Conservatives, in particular, seem to value people who are part of the in-group over people who are not. This study also suggests that liberals may actually devalue in-group members in an attempt to maintain a non-racist morality.

Another major question is how do religious concepts and the knowledge that one’s actions are being judged affect how people behave morally? The following study (Shariff & Norenzayan, 2007) asked participants to play a game that would measure their generosity towards total strangers. The researchers discovered that people who were primed with words relating to God and religion were more generous on average than those who received no priming. The researchers also found that priming people with secular concepts of moral institutions had the same effect.

These results provide strong evidence that people will try to act more morally if they have some idea in the back of their minds, whether conscious or not, about being judged in some manner for their moral actions. This does not have to apply exclusively to religious concepts, as the results of this study show. As a matter of fact, related research conducted by Bateson, Nettle, and Roberts (2006) showed that just the indirect suggestion of being judged by other people was enough to reproduce this effect-an increase in moral behavior. Specifically, they saw a three-fold increase in the amount paid for drinks supplied on an honor system when the image associated with payment resembled human eyes versus a control image. Apparently, a pair of eyes is enough to trigger a conscious or subconscious idea of being watched and judged.

What is known about the neural activity of the brain itself with regards to moral judgments? What roles do cognitive and emotional processes in the brain play in thinking about morality? Greene et al. (2004) conducted detailed biological mapping of brain neuronal activity of individuals during their thought processes that went along with solving hypothetical moral dilemmas. It was observed that areas in the brain associated with abstract reasoning and cognitive control-regions noted included the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex-were found to be more active during very difficult moral judgments where utilitarian resolutions require violation of personal moral convictions. They concluded from their work that utilitarian moral judgments rely more on cognitive processes and abstract thinking, whilst more personal moral judgments relied primarily on social-emotional processes.

This is good evidence for two different types of moral processing-cognitive or more logical, and emotional or more personal. During this study, Greene and colleagues also considered the degree of personal relatedness of a scenario with the likelihood of utilitarian resolution, and therefore the associated cognitive processes and abstract-thinking brain regions. They looked at what happens when you alter the classic moral dilemma of the runaway trolley car (Thomson, 1986) by making it either more personal or less personal. It was observed that people were more likely to engage in utilitarian calculations when the harm was less personal-in the case, that involved pulling a lever to kill a person-as opposed to when harm was more personal, in the case requiring pushing someone off of a bridge.

Morality is often connected to religion and religious values, and a natural topic to investigate is the role that sacred values may play in moral psychology. Ginges et al. (2007) examined the Israeli-Palestine conflict in an attempt to answer the question of how sacred values are involved in the resolution of political conflicts. The researchers wanted to shed some light on several issues related to sacred values in political conflict – namely, how do instrumental incentives, such as monetary gain, affect compromise with sacred values?

Interestingly, they observed that adding instrumental incentives to hypothetical deals involving the forfeiting of some sacred value actually made the subjects who held sacred values more opposed to and outraged about compromise than if they simply offered the compromise on its own. They also found that these people were less opposed to compromise if the deal also stipulated that the opposing party would give up one of their own sacred rights.

These results are important in that they show how radically different sacred values are from instrumental values. Sacred values are, for the most part, non-negotiable, except in the cases mentioned above, and it seems as though the idea of offering something of instrumental value in an attempt to negotiate the non-negotiable only serves as an insult to those who hold these sacred values. It is only when some other sacred value is offered up that we see some willingness to compromise, suggesting that sacred values cannot be compared with instrumental values, but they can be compared to other sacred values. Because of this, one may wonder whether sacred values can really be considered truly uncontestable, as opposed to simply a different type of value that is not comparable with more material principles.

An important side of the psychology of morality concerns how people perceive the moral legitimacy of authority under different circumstances. More specifically, how much of a moral investment do the participants have in the moral issues. The researchers Skitka, et al. (2009) correlated an individual’s general degree of moral conviction with how much they either supported or agreed with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on physician-assisted suicide in 2006 that prevented the Attorney General from prosecuting doctors in Oregon who operated under state law. It was discovered that the degree of moral investment a person had about this decision increased the variance of people’s perception of the legitimacy of authority. More specifically, people who supported the decision with high moral conviction more strongly supported the post-decision legitimacy of the Supreme Court than people with lower moral conviction, and people against the decision with high moral conviction more strongly opposed the post-decision legitimacy of the Supreme Court than people with lower moral conviction.

These results are strong evidence for the idea that our perceived legitimacy of authority is intimately tied with our moral conviction on the issues that matter most to us. In other words, if the government made a ruling that we did not agree with, but did not care much about (for example, the ruling that pizza is a vegetable), we wouldn’t have much reason to deny the legitimacy of the government. However, decisions made about issues we have a strong moral standing on tend to either strongly reinforce or strongly undermine the perceived legitimacy of authority in our attempt to reconcile our moral standing versus the decree of authority. Additionally, a study could be run to test the hypothesis that liberals would be more willing to deny the legitimacy of the government, and conservatives would be more willing to affirm the government’s power.

We believe it is moral to care about others and give charity, but what motivates the moral response of giving? Some psychologists are interested in this question. Olivola & Shafir (2011) found that people were willing to give more money to a charity if they were required to run a marathon as opposed to simply attending a picnic. This finding shows that associating donations with self-sacrifice or suffering activates people’s concepts of morality.

How could we measure if having concepts of justice and fairness cause people to strengthen their moral responses as well? An experiment might be set up in this manner: one group of participants would be told that they would be donating to a village in Africa that is suffering from a drought, and as a result, running low on food. The other group would be told that local rebels are constantly raiding the village and taking their food, thus depleting their food supplies. We would then measure how much people would be willing to donate to the village in each situation. The condition of need arising from a natural disaster should not activate concepts of justice and fairness; however, even if some people think suffering from droughts is an inherently unjust event, the second condition – need arising from a military-type attack – should greatly outweigh the first in terms of justice/fairness considerations. Based on the results of the Olivola & Shafir (2011) study, it is reasonable to expect that people would donate more money to the people being raided, since that condition should activate moral concepts such as justice and fairness.

What do these studies tell us about what a truly moral person is? Let’s first look at the five moral foundations again, from Graham, et al. (2009). It appears that a truly moral person bases their judgments primarily on harm/care and fairness/reciprocity. This is because there can be situations where authority or in-group concerns can conflict with harm and fairness considerations, and in these situations the latter set of moral outlooks should prevail. One only needs to consider an example such as this: imagine you are asked to commit atrocities in the name of your country. It should be clear that these atrocities couldn’t be justified in this way. Based on the results of Skitka et al. (2009) such a request may even lead one to deny the legitimacy of whatever authority commanded this action-which is what a truly moral person would and should do in that situation. For reasons like these, harm/care and fairness/reciprocity should be on the forefront of one’s moral concerns.

Harm/care and fairness/reciprocity are also probably closely related to each other, and in many situations, one moral concept is found with the other. Consider an instance where a person beats his wife in an act of drunken violence. It’s clear that harm/care are involved in this situation, but also consider that we could say that what he is doing is an injustice to his wife. Similarly, suppose an example where a banker swindles a client for thousands of dollars. It’s clear this has to do with fairness/reciprocity, but we could also consider this action as a way of harming somebody else in a non-physical manner.

Research further clarifies a truly moral person as one who leads a disciplined life that builds off of the proscriptive, preventing immorality, and subsequently the prescriptive, acting morally. Such a person must be a role model for everyone else to follow. For this reason, a truly moral person is careful not to commit proscribed acts. A person who performs many good deeds, but also many bad deeds, will appear insincere and hypocritical. In other words, a truly moral person does their best to not mix the good with the bad. Once a person has built a strong moral foundation of avoiding proscribed behaviors, he or she can branch out and help others with ever-increasing frequency. Furthermore, with regards to the study on the effects of being watched, a truly moral person acts in every situation as though he or she is being watched or will be judged later on, even if they know that they are alone. This is because they know that any action they do may have consequences at some point, either immediate or distant.

Work in the area of the psychology of morality sheds some light on how a moral person behaves, however an ideally moral person does what is right with 100% accuracy, and no matter what the circumstances. This is an ideal, and very few people can be considered to be ideal moral examples. Prophets are the only people who could be considered to be morally infallible. Prophets like Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, peace be upon them, serve as examples of perfect moral conduct. Even though none of us can hope to attain the rank of a Prophet, every person ought to strive for this ideal and be the best person they can be. If we hope to have any positive impact on the world we must first start by changing ourselves for the better. Only then can we attempt to sincerely help other people around us, starting with our close family and friends, and later on, the larger world.

M. Tarik Ozgur is a graduate of Lehigh University Physiology Department in 2013.

References

• Bateson, M., Nettle, D., & Roberts, G. (2006). Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting. Biology letters, 2(3), 412-414.
• Ginges, J., Atran, S., Medin, D., & Shikaki, K. (2007). Sacred bounds on rational resolution of violent political conflict. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(18), 7357-7360.
• Graham, J., Haidt, J., & Nosek, B.A. Liberals and Conservatives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 96 (5), 1029.
• Greene, J. D., Nystrom, L. E., Engell, A. D., Darley, J. M., & Cohen, J. D. (2004). The neural bases of cognitive conflict and control in moral judgment. Neuron, 44(2), 389-400.
• Janoff-Bulman, R., Sheikh, S., & Hepp, S. (2009). Proscriptive versus prescriptive morality: Two faces of moral regulation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(3), 521-537.
• Olivola, C. Y. (2011). When noble means hinder noble ends: The benefits and costs of a preference for martyrdom in altruism. The Science of Giving: Experimental Approaches to Study of Charity, 49-62. New York, NY: Routledge.
• Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2007). God Is Watching You Priming God Concepts Increases Prosocial Behavior in an Anonymous Economic Game. Psychological Science, 18(9), 803-809.
• Skitka, L. J., Aramovich, N. P., Lytle, B. L., & Sargis, E. G. (2009). Knitting together an elephant: An integrative approach to understanding the psychology of justice reasoning. In The psychology of justice and legitimacy: The Ontario symposium (Vol. 11, pp. 1-26).
• Thomson, J.J. (1986). Rights, Restitution, and Risk Essays, in Moral Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Uhlmann, E. L., Pizarro, D. A., Tannenbaum, D., & Ditto, P. H. (2009). The motivated use of moral principles. Judgment and Decision Making, 4(6), 476-491.

There are many possible explanations for this, not least of which is the presentation of science and the use of reason in Islamic texts, but also sociological factors, such as different economic situations during the Middle Ages, and internal political structures. There is also the fact that the Qur’an simply doesn’t contradict scientific findings .

The Middle Ages (or the Dark Ages as they used to be known) of European civilisation extended between the 5th and 16th centuries, encapsulating the Islamic Golden Age spanning the 7th to 16th centuries. It was once thought that Islamic science during this time was little more than a translation of Greek conclusions, however there is now sufficient evidence to suggest that this was a scientific revolution in its own right, and it contributed greatly to the basis of modern scientific thought. Part of the reason science played such a key role in the Golden Age of Islam is surely because of the importance placed on it in Islamic texts. There are hundreds of references in the Qur’an related to human knowledge and contemplation, including the first command of God, instructing humanity to “read.” The hadith also contains hundreds of references the Prophet made to seek knowledge, including one instance of the him saying, “Seek for science, even in China” ; the significance of China being that it is the furthest known country to the Muslim Empire. There is a moral obligation for Muslims to seek knowledge; in fact, learning is often seen as a form of worship and a quest for spiritual perfection through knowledge. This surely acted as an incentive that enabled them to become the great scientific civilization they were during the Golden Age. The Renaissance, which followed the Middle Ages, could be described as the Western equivalent

There is nothing in the Bible to discredit specific scientific discoveries, though it also doesn’t encourage the scientific pursuit in the same manner as the Qur’an. The Bible does convey an ordered world in which science is not only possible but should tend towards the truth, but any such scientific commendation can also be levelled at the Qur’an.

What’s unique about the Qur’an, however, is that it is not as susceptible to the human fallibility excuse, in that it was written immediately after the Archangel Gabriel imparted the Revelation to Muhammad, it was arranged by Muhammad himself, and has remained unchanged since, at least when speaking of the original Arabic and not a translation. The areas of science explored in the Qur’an range greatly from astronomy to physics to biology, and all seem to be in well keeping with modern scientific findings.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Qur’an does not contain any hardline indisputable science, however. The meanings of many of the Arabic words are subtle and open to interpretation, and different interpretations of the same passages have been used to support different scientific enquiries at different times.

The rapid expansion of the Muslim empire beginning in the 7th century brought great wealth and security, and this naturally led to great advancements in science and technology, similar to the Greek and Roman empires before them. Once an empire establishes itself and can comfortably support its population in terms of food and security, it can turn sights on its lesser problems, and attempt to solve them using its ingenuity, thus making great strides in science and technology. The West had, as already noted, become stagnant in these fields following the collapse of the Roman Empire. Europe was unified once more under the Catholic Church, but there was much animosity between the destitute working class and the self-interested ruling class. It was a time of prosperity for few, and the Muslim empire attracted great minds and became the hub of scientific achievement. Viewed in this context, the Islamic Golden Age is not so much a religious achievement as it is a cultural achievement of a burgeoning civilisation.

The contrast with the Western Renaissance is clear. Galileo, a friend of the pope and of the church, is the most famous example. Upon expressing his approval of Copernican theories, he was incarcerated for heresy. The pope famously rebutted Galileo’s arguments by stating that Galileo could not assert a scientific theory that contradicted the scripture unless it could be shown that God, in his infinite power, could not have brought it about that all the evidence in support of the theory existed and the theory itself not be true. This is of course an impossibly high standard of truth for science to achieve, and furthermore put in jeopardy all scientific knowledge. Galileo was, however, purposefully antagonistic towards the church, and may have done more harm, especially for the relationship between religion and science, than he is usually given credit for. Rene Descartes was on the verge of publishing a similar paper in support of Copernicus, but suppressed it upon seeing the treatment that Galileo received. During this time, it was required that all work be approved by representatives of the church before it was published in order to avoid the publication of any heretical material. This was catastrophic for any scientific theory that may have contradicted the interpretation of the scripture as advocated by the Church. Islamic science avoided this problem. While the Church, as a figure of authority, advocated a particular interpretation of the scriptures and had in the past exercised this authority with punitive measures such as excommunication and incarceration, Islam had no centralised authority with the same level of control. The closest analogous administration is the caliphate, whose role has changed over time, but never gained the overarching power of the Christian church. This could well be due to the Muslim Empire being founded by many small tribes with Bedouin roots, and city states, who had no history of being subject to a greater authority. Also, due to their disparate nature, both culturally and geographically, such an overarching authority was a logistical impossibility. Furthermore, the legitimacy of any one caliph was always controversial; the most divisive split of course being between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, the former believing Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s father-in-law, was his rightful successor, while the latter preferring his cousin and son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib. Such disagreement continued and constantly threatened the supreme power of the caliphate, despite Muhammad’s assertion that Muslims should fulfil oath of allegiance to only one caliph. This disagreement in turn led to a lack of a single ruling authority, and a lack of one single interpretation being enforced across the empire. Often, the interpretation of the Islamic texts varied from community to community. Further supporting a lack of enforcement was the Qur’an. “There is no compulsion in religion” can be interpreted both as a decree of tolerance to other religions, and also a decree of tolerance within Islam itself. This aspect of religious tolerance must surely have played some part in the ability of Muslims to abide alternate interpretations of their text, and also rationalise discrepancies between the text and the constantly evolving hypotheses of science. Without an authority to push an anti-scientific agenda, the Muslim Empire became a hub of scientific enquiry which, along with an unusual tolerance for religion, attracted scientific minds from across the entire region.

There is another hypothesis that should be noted, which is that the view of Christianity and science being in direct opposition to each other is unwarranted. After all, modern scientific prosperity grew out of the Christian West, and it can also be argued that without the fundamental view that nature is uniform and has an observable order and organisation, provided initially only by religion, science would never have even had a grounding on which to start. Perhaps religion and science are not as diametrically opposed as they seem, and their previous confrontations have been due to misunderstandings that are not fundamental to their positions. While it is undoubtedly true that Christianity and science have in the past had a tolerant, if not a symbiotic, relationship, it is nevertheless the case that for quite some time the two held hostile policies in regard to each other, and these policies have resulted in animosity that exists even to this day. This animosity is not a necessity, however, as demonstrated by Islam.

It seems it can then be concluded that the roots of the Islamic propensity for science are a product of both Islamic texts and sociological factors, such as a lack of a centralised authority pushing a particular interpretation of the text. The search for knowledge which the Qur’an advocates must surely have helped initiate this scientific resurgence, but it was also the ability of the Muslim population to interpret the findings of the scientific community (and it should be noted that Muslim and scientific groups were by no means mutually exclusive) in a way that didn’t conflict with their theological beliefs which allowed science to flourish. The Golden Age of the Muslim Empire should stand as an example to all cultures that science and religion can coexist, and not just tenuously, but harmoniously.

Stephen Pant is a freelance writer in Australia. He has a degree in philosophy and history from Monash University, Melbourne.

Notes

1. H.R. Turner. 1997. Science in Medieval Islam: An Illustrated Introduction, Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 5-9.

2. George Saliba. 2007. Arabic Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance, Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press.

3. A.H. Syed, Islam and Science, New Delhi, 2003, p. 111.

4. Ibid.

5. Maurice Bucaille. 1978. The Bible, the Qur’an and Science: The Holy Scriptures Examined in the Light of Modern Knowledge. Indianapolis, p. 92.

6. Syed. 2003. p. 116.

7. Syed. 2003. p. 115.

8. F. M. Donner. 1981. The Early Arab Conquests. Retrieved 16/5/2009 from http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/donner.html

9. John Cottingham. 1991. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Cambridge: CUP, pp. xi–xiii.

10. Sachiko Murata, William Chittick. 1994. The Vision of Islam. New York, p. xxiv.

11. A. H. Siddiqui. Translation of Sahih Muslim. 2007, 20:4543.

12. Qur’an 2:256.

13. Syed. 2003. p. 112–113.

Today, the Western world is seen by many as the representative of freedom and democracy. How has freedom been understood and treated in the history of the West? To answer this question, we will go on a journey through history, in which we will restrict ourselves to continental Europe, focusing on different periods in terms of how freedom has been approached and used. Here, we basically define freedom as being free from suppression or obstacles which have deliberately been placed before an individual by others to impede said freedom.

In the Middle Ages, freedom was not relevant to the masses in Europe. Most people did not even dream of it, since inequalities in society were the norm. A person could not attain freedom, but some were born free. Freedom was a privilege inherited from the class that your family belonged to. Being born into the lower classes was a fate one had to accept. This limited concept of freedom based on social status was further acknowledged or legitimized by the dominant religious authorities, that is, the Christian clergymen. “Keep silent and obey the orders of the feudal lord; hope you will be rewarded in the next life” became the common prescription for the masses that kept them subjugated to and suppressed by the political authority. . In other words, if one was not of the upper-class, one could “freely” make a choice between the despotic order of the feudal lord and the in justice of the clergy, who were abusing the social role assigned to them as the unquestionable judges.

A breaking point in the stable intellectual line of the Middle Ages was certainly the Renaissance and the Reformation. Those who had the opportunity to study and read the works of the ancients directly, without the filtering of the Church, became aware of new directions for human thought. This current, propelled by these newly educated people, nurtured the idea of freedom of “thought” and “belief.”

The development of gunpowder and the cannon brought an end not only to the feudal-lords but also to the age. These changes reduced the importance of the skilled cavalry in warfare, which were supplied by the feudal lords to the kings, and in turn reduced the importance in the lords. Even well-fortified cities fell when faced by this immensely destructive force. Therefore, small feudalities had to unite, or else be erased. The strength of the state/king increased, while the lords’ sovereignty was reduced. Centralized authority became the dogma. Everything belonged to the monarch, including the authority to decide who had the freedom to do what.

Ironically, the concept of sovereign states was fortified through strong and able monarchies, which later produced the nation state. As the France of Louis XIV grew stronger, for instance, it started to dominate the surrounding territories. In its effort to support military campaigns, the powerful French state pushed forward the idea of a “French nation.” This new concept of nation superseded all local bases of identity, particularly, at the expense of religion.

Freedom under the shadow of capitalism

In the age of monarchy, everything was controlled and directed by a supreme state, the symbol of sovereignty. The idea of individuals with basic freedoms, such as freedom of thought or freedom of speech, was inconceivable as the state demanded complete obedience of its subjects. In other words, individual freedom would have been a threat to authority. Therefore, despite all the changes in the overall picture, the main component of society, the individual, was still overlooked.

While the feudal order became history with an alliance between the king and the rising bourgeoisie in towns and cities, in turn the bourgeoisie played a key role in introducing the concept of a state with limited powers. In the end, such limitations on the state meant greater freedom for the citizens.

With the new discoveries and inventions that led to industrialization, the bourgeoisie demanded more freedom. Its power was its wealth, which directed politics, its weapon was “reason,” which was used to challenge and abolish the monopoly of the Church on ideas, and its flag was “freedom for all.” For all? Could there really have been a chance of freedom for a person who could hardly make living? However, for the bourgeoisie, the answer was in the affirmative. To them, freedom was two-fold: freedom of thought and economic freedom, the core idea of a freely operating market. Both of these were held sacred and were considered to be closely intertwined. In this sense, the bourgeoisie, the primary agent of capitalism, was the first social agent to celebrate and pursue human liberty.

Demanding a market free of all kinds of controls was the fundamental idea of economic liberalism. In response to the concerns of justice, economic liberalism claimed that the invisible hand of the economy would balance out the inequalities in due time, provided that it was able to operate free of control. Although not everyone supported these notions of freedom, the poorer classes did ally with the bourgeoisie against one common enemy: the royalty. As the bourgeoisie’s power reached a critical stage they united with the lower class, overthrowing the king and holding a revolution. However, this was not a revolution for all of society. In fact, for some thinkers, all that the bourgeoisie had done was to present the old ideas in a new suit. The bourgeoisie set the bottom line of freedom at the possession of property. This was quite apparent in the constitution of France for example, where those who could pay a certain amount of tax were allowed to vote. In other words, freedom for all meant freedom for those who could afford it. One’s right was proportional to the tax one paid. If you did not have enough money, you had no right to be represented.

Freedom vs. justice

Certainly, the liberal understanding of freedom was far from pleasing to everyone. The lower class had no teacher at that time. They started slowly to become aware of Marx’s teachings, who claimed that the “evil capitalist system” was due to collapse. The new teacher of the lower class also preached to them that “history is the history of struggle between classes, and we are in the final round. We must win this battle, and begin a new life in a new world.” Thus, the socialist/communist notion of “social justice” grew stronger. The Marxist thinkers revealed the hidden realities of the society and gathered the working class around one goal, i.e., getting rid of the “evil capitalist system.”

This kind of interpretation of the new order was very attractive for some. It appealed to the angry masses and asked that they raise their voices in response. The Marxist theory dealt primarily with economic justice and the distribution of wealth. It spoke not of the “freedom of human beings,” but of the economic independence of the lower classes, for in Marxist thought human beings were “working animals.” As a solution, people’s future was closely tied to the dominance of the proletariat, who were seen to be the true owners of the wealth produced in a society. In this scheme of thought, individual freedoms were of secondary importance to the well-being of society.

Thus, one can say that the Marxist view of freedom was an abuse of freedom. In brief, what it said was this: Freedom is good as long as it gives us reasons to complain about the existing system and permits us to rebel against the bourgeoisie. After all, we are exercising our freedom to speak! But it is fundamentally problematic in that it erases the individuality of the person in favor of the group (the proletariat, the working class), whose existence is based only on abstract notions of materialism and historical determinism.

Multi-dimensional freedom for multi-dimensional individuals

After the age of ideologies, freedom today is understood more properly as a personal dimension of being human, a quality that is directly related to individuality. Despite many violations of justice, at least fundamental freedoms, such as freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of travel, are protected by most democratic governments. The demands placed by political authority on people’s personal lives seem to be less controlling in democratic countries as compared to authoritarian ones. Can we then say that issues concerning freedom have been settled? Unfortunately not.

To resolve this matter, one has to think of humans as multi-dimensional beings. As we know, everything we experience in social life has a reflection in our internal life and vice versa. Laws and regulations address the social, political or economic aspects of life. What about our internal capacities that affect our decisions? Do we not have a strong attachment to our desires and impulses, which sometimes makes us act according to emotions instead of reason? If the aim of any theory is to guide us to true freedom, it must account for the inner dimensions of freedom. Since this guidance cannot be provided by any political or social means, each individual must strive to attain inner freedom by using the means available to him or her. We may start searching for this guidance by contemplating the meaning of our existence and what freedom really means in relation with our status in the universe. Perhaps, complete freedom is never attainable as all of us are connected somehow with each other and with the rest of the creation.

However defined, freedom is the fundamental requirement for the flourishing of the individual. Through much of the historical developments in the concept of freedom, there are two certain conclusions we can draw. First, freedom as a human condition has been ignored and has become subject to violations. Our history is full of examples that support this contention in which everything is expressed in terms of abstract-plural concepts. Remember our history books: Nations migrate, armies fight, states make peace, or civilizations clash. The individual human being, if not an exaggerated hero, is individually absent in history.

Secondly, freedom has prevailed as an intrinsically valuable notion for our existence. Several unpleasant examples in history witness that negligence or resistance to the use of this fundamental right only results in drastic changes that make it more valuable.

Ozgur tagla is a teaching assistant at the School of Arts&Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh.

Economic Individualism and Secularization

The wider context of Robinson Crusoe

Crusoe’s relationship with God is sincere, intense and actively personal. It is also general and subjective. He does not read the resources he uses as ‘signs of God’; only the general fact that they are available to him to work with is a ‘sign from God’, a helping hand from Providence. He has no objective relation with the world as given to him which might inspire him to call a halt to his efforts at economic ‘improvement’. He finds money on the shipwreck and reflects on its uselessness to him, but he keeps it anyway, in case. He keeps it because he continually hopes for the means (a labour force) to do more with his island colony. There is no reason for doing more other than that he simply can do more, and the inward hope that his striving will please God. Once economic individualism dominates the structures within which economic activity is undertaken, the urge to increase surpluses ceases to operate as a purpose and can never be satisfied. Instead, it operates like a mechanical process, a force that goes on ‘improving’ resources until either the resources are exhausted, or they are taken over by a rival force. The history of nation-states or empires founded upon the ideology of economic individualism corroborates in the outer world, as it were, what Crusoe experiences in the solitude of his island prison/garden. And that experience is also corroborated in our epoch by the ruin of this planet: no moral argument, no inward initiative from within an individual conscience, however sincere, suffices to prevent the degradation of resources by economic ‘improvement’; the only force capable of preventing it is the external, mechanical one of scarcity: the resources become too expensive to ‘improve’. Where conservation is the cheaper option, it is adopted: where it is not, the ‘improvement’ goes on relentlessly. The logic is not moral but economic.

More grave is the issue of secularization itself. Though people conceive of it as something willed and chosen by individuals or societies, it too has the unrelenting quality of a mechanical process and individuals and societies are passive in relation to it. The secularization of knowledge was already well under way by the time Crusoe was written. At the collective level, knowledge becomes divorced from understanding and wisdom, and married to the quest for power or technology in the service of economic surpluses. (See box p.36 ‘From Faust to Frankenstein’ for an impressionistic sketch of the process.) The science of medicine, once devoted to the service of health, is now reduced to an increasingly efficient technology for responding to ill-health. Perhaps most dramatic of all has been the secularization of the law. The laws (however established) used to express a people’s collective will to enforce those of their traditional (religious or moral) values which were capable of enforcement. It used to be a recognized objective of the laws that they should improve the people morally. In European societies the laws of the Church, always distinct from the laws of the monarch, were nevertheless the basis of the typically unwritten or common law of custom and practice, and enforced by the monarch. Gradually, the law has been deprived of moral purpose and is increasingly seen as a merely administrative device to regulate the commercial or contractual relations between individuals. In England, this particular transition was formally stated after the long-running debate in the 1950s about the legalization of homosexual acts: it was concluded that the state had no business to intervene in the moral choices of consenting adults; the state has no role as moral guide. One could go on multiplying instances of secularization – the family become a temporary aggregate of distinct economic units, consuming or productive; social belonging become an abstract relationship of citizen and state – and that is the point, that the process continues, dividing the individual again and again from all traditional values with meaning and authority.

But, one wants to protest, the man Crusoe is yet himself in himself, a conscience intact. Religious experience, the individual’s most interior relation, his being under the gaze and care of His Creator, that, surely that, is invulnerable to secularization? Unfortunately not.

The secularization of religious experience

Crusoe is, as we noted, actively personal and direct in his address to God. But this addressing God and reflecting upon His Word, the Scripture, is conditional upon the authority of that Scripture as His Word. The Protestant revolt against the Catholic Church hinged essentially upon limiting the Church’s authority to determine the meaning of the Scripture and, thus, its authority to intervene between the individual believer and his understanding of the Scripture. The authority of the Scripture itself remained intact or was even strengthened through the Reformation.

By the time of Crusoe, the English Protestant dream of creating a commonwealth of individual believers, tolerant of minor variations in each other’s practices of worship, a fellowship in Christ of social and moral equals, had long since turned to ashes. By the early 18th century, all that the Non-Conformists expected for or from the state was to be left alone – non-persecution, and freedom of worship: those who had despaired of toleration in England were already settled in the New World. The Scripture was powerless to influence collective affairs but it remained effective in informing and building individual conscience – as we see in the character of Crusoe. The authority of Scripture was still intact.

However, by the late 18th century, techniques of textual criticism evolved to analyse the history of classical works such as Homer’s epics began to be applied to the Bible. That, combined with the growing rift between scientific accuracies about certain natural phenomena and the claims made about them in the Bible, led to the crumbling of the authority of the Scripture and of the appeal of books embedded in that authority, such as Pilgrim’s Progress and the religious reflections in Robinson Crusoe.

The authority of the Bible is now affirmed by ‘a leap of faith’ in spite of reason, and reason always fights back. Religious experience is reduced to psychology and emotion, the quest not for understanding but for consolation. People find consolation in belonging, there is a market for it, and the need is supplied by the growth of mini-churches and cults. People find consolation also in escapist entertainment and in self- indulgence. Consequently we see even the established, traditional churches re-arranging schedules, furnishings, and their rites and services, to approximate church-going to an expedition to the supermarket or to some musical or other entertainment. The argument that this trend is the church coming back to its flock, working in the idioms of the ordinary people, is an unworthy self-delusion. The truth is that religious experience has been secularised: contemplation and prayer have been annulled or altered into a sort of ‘feeling – good’ which can be as well gratified by joining a club or cult or by buying something as by church-going. No doubt, going to church at all may yet preserve a link with traditions of prayer and contemplation, however feeble the link, and is therefore to be respected as the crumb of comfort better than the half- loaf better than none.

In conclusion

Robinson Crusoe has been popular because the situation of an enterprising, practically-minded, hard-working individual making something of himself in a foreign land serves as a sort of founding myth for the energies underlying European imperialist expansion and the structures of thought and policy related to economic individualism. The novel exceeds the myth insofar as it records the individual’s progress in self-discovery and self-mastery, his improvement in conscience and character. To some extent, the personal, moral quail- ties of the individual rescue the myth from its ugliest implications. However, the situation of the novel – a solitary individual achieving an economic surplus on an uninhabited island – is fundamentally nonsensical. The concept of surplus presupposes other individuals with whom economic transactions are possible. Crusoe knows that he may, and by Providence he will, join others to his little economic empire to make it grow into a big empire. First there is the warning footprint and then, in the end, the ship arrives and he is re-connected to the world. Once that re-connection is made, as we have explained, and we re-enter the wider context of European history, individual self-mastery is ineffective (or, more precisely, irrelevant) to direct or contain the processes of economic individualism. Little by little, all traditional concepts, values, structures and relationships are secularized and lose their authority and appeal. Nothing is sacred – not the king, nor the head of church, nor the Scripture, nor religion – not even conscience, which is only the old name for a consciousness that is uneasy, in need of soothing or distracting.

The individual represented as an economic unit has become, for the human conscience, an almost uninhabitable, unworkable island, and that island, once in contact with the economic mainland, is not a garden. The idea that it could be is the wish-fulfilling quality of the book so delightful in boyhood and to an adult mind in need of plain truth so profoundly vexing. Mercifully, Robinson Crusoe is not the only vision of a man surviving alone on an uninhabited island. By a curious coincidence, this other vision, originally in Arabic, was published in English in Defoe’s own London in 1708, the very year that Selkirk returned to England and recounted the adventures upon which Crusoe is based. Like Crusoe, this book was composed towards the end of its author’s life. The author’s name is lbn Tufayl, and his book, a brilliant philosophical allegory (not a novel) is called after its hero: Hayy bin Yaqzan. (See next issue for concluding article in this series.)

FROM FAUST TO FRANKENSTEIN

The story of Faust, though not so central as Robinson Crusoe, is nevertheless also at the core of the modern European imagination. It grew up around a historical figure who lived in Germany in the 14th/15th century and was alleged to have encyclopedic learning and supernatural powers. Some called him a charlatan; others thought he had made a contract with the devil – his soul in exchange for knowledge. Here was an early ‘Renaissance man’, the European equivalent of the great polymaths of the Islamic world known to Europeans by their Latinised names as Averroes, Avicenna, Alhazen, etc. The earlier of the two most famous treatments of the Faust story is the dramatisation (c.1589) by Shakespeare’s contemporary, Marlowe. In this version, Faust is cheated by the devil. Instead of knowledge of the mysteries of physical or human nature, Faust acquires knowledge corrupted into trivial kinds of worldly power and pleasure. He acquires, in modern idiom, not science but technology. Moreover, having lost his soul, Faust has lost the impulse to do good with his new powers – he degenerates into a common sorcerer or conjurer doing tricks to amuse kings and courtiers. He passionately desires to repent but it is too late: the playwright allows him a magnificent speech before the devils carry him off to eternal damnation. Despite the Renaissance date of Marlowe’s play, the religious horror at Faust’s contract with the devil is unmistakably medieval-Christian. Perhaps, in the medieval-Christian imagination, scholarly curiosity about nature was associated with the (then) intellectually more dynamic Islamic world. Just as in cheap romantic fictions the ‘tall, dark stranger’ is repelling as well as alluring, the superior achievements of the Muslims in crafts and commerce, in geographical and scientific explorations, etc., had to be (in order to contain the envious fascination they aroused) condemned as the product of a bargain with the devil.

Behind the legend lies the chilling assumption that the human potential for knowledge is less of a Divine favour than a Divine punishment. God, by definition Good and Benevolent, Who created man in His image, nevertheless andowed man with an overwhelming curiosity that must lead to his perdition: knowledge must be ‘stolen’ as fire was stolen for mankind by Prometheus, a crime for which the gods punish him eternally. In Marlowe’s version, Faust is unequivocally damned, partly a tragic figure, but mostly a fool: his bargain does not benefit mankind. In Goethe’s two- part poem on the same theme (1808;1832), Faust is ultimately saved, because his motives, to advance human knowledge, were noble. What has intervened between the two treatments of the same story is the secularisation of European ways of thought, the functional irrelevance of religious doctrines that once presumed to direct or limit curiosity. Among later Faust- types are the horror-film surgeons who advance the frontiers of medical science by practising their skills on corpses plundered from fresh graves in the dead of night: the religious horror at this desecration is merely a literary affectation and, in effect, comic. While the power of religion, that is, its ultimate truth, is acknowledged, in practice Europeanised people rely on the accuracies of scientific knowledge; science and religion are seen to be in competition and science wins.

Frankenstein and his monster

The most popular version of Faust, one contiunally revived and renewed, is the early 19th century horror story, Frankenstein. By that date, the reliable triumphs of experimental, mathematical physics had convinced people that all knowledge should be modelled upon physics, including biology. Thus, it came to be believed that life is not an inherently supernatural quality given directly by God to each living being, but instead a ‘natural force’ that must in principle be capable of being isolated, calculated, contained and reproduced by man. So, the brilliant young Dr. Frankenstein stitches together bits of different human corpses and exposes them to the ‘natural force’ of electrical energy: the result is the familiar monster with the bolt through his neck. Frankenstein regrets his experiment and perishes with his suffering, pitiable monster. We are supposed to be appalled by his presumption in daring to mimic the miracle of life. But there is little question where the sympathy of the fiction lies: those who counselled Frankenstein against the attempt are presented as dull moral conformists, Frankenstein as the damned, doomed hero – Faust without a devil to blame. If the story regrets what Frankenstein did, it is only because the experiment failed. If European imagination regrets Frankenstein’s arrogant daring, it is because society and its laws prevented the genius from doing enough experiments to get his work right.

AMERICAN SCIENTIST TO BREAK THE LAW AND CLONE HUMAN BEINGS 

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that an American scientist has recently announced that, in spite of the legal prohibition against such experiment, he will clone a human being.

There have been expressions of public horor at this announcement: we can be sure, therefore, that a science fiction novel or film will sooner or later represent this American as an intellectual hero pushing back the frontiers of human knowledge and power. And the rest of us will be cast in the role of the Indians, the savages, who (with their bows and arrows) try in vain to hold back the ‘progress’ of civilization.