In and of itself, the concept of 'difference' possesses no significance.
Its meaning emerges only in the context of a common standard against which
the relationships, and hence the differences, between a set of objects, phenomena
or events can be judged. Any discussion of differences, then, only makes sense
in relation to a discussion about commonalities. In humans, the discussion
about 'commonalities' usually turns on a discussion about 'human nature' -
that is, the common nature that all humans are perceived to possess.
The concept of human nature is, of course, a highly contested one, and many
deny the very existence of a universal essence to human life. In part, this
denial has been shaped by the history of anthropology. Nineteenth racial science
had viewed humans as entirely moulded by the laws of nature, and the differences
between human groups as the consequence of distinct evolutionary paths. In
response, twentieth century anthropology rejected not simply racial essentialism,
but increasingly any form of essentialism. Human nature, and indeed the very
idea of the human itself, has come to be see by many anthropologists as suspect.
On the other side of the debate, sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists
view an understanding of human nature as a fixed quality that constrains the
human condition, and fundamental to any understanding of what it is to be
human. The denial of human nature, Steven Pinker suggests, 'distorts our science
and scholarship, our public discourse and our day-to-day lives'.
Looked at in a certain fashion, though, the distance between sociobiologists
and relativists is not as profound as it might sometimes seem. Virtually all
cultural relativists accept the idea of the 'psychic unity of Man' - that
is, a common set of mental abilities that ensure that no human group is inherently
superior to another. Virtually all sociobiologists accept that cultural distinctions
give rise to a multitude of variations in human behaviour and beliefs. Hence,
in an influential paper on 'The Scope of Anthropology', Claude Levi-Strauss
argued that 'universal forms of thought and morality' pertain solely to 'biology'.
The primatologist Frans de Waal, suggests that 'Culture... means that knowledge
and habits are acquired from others... which explains why two groups of the
same species may behave differently.'
Whatever their other differences, in other words - and I would not wish to
diminish those differences - both sides in this debate accept that human unity
is manifested solely at a biological level, while culture expresses its differences.
What separates the two sides is largely a debate about the relative weights
that should be attached to one's biological nature and one's cultural upbringing
in shaping beliefs and behaviours. For sociobiologists humans are defined
primarily by their nature. Given the pliability of human nature, relativists
retort, the universal aspects of the psyche are largely unimportant.
Over the past half century, in other words, the debate about human differences
and commonalities has become conflated with the nature-nurture debate. This
conflation, I want to suggest, has been unhelpful for our understanding of
both human nature and human differences. To explore this further I want to
look more carefully at what we mean by human nature, and at what constitutes
human universals.
Human nature is an inherently ambiguous term. On the one hand, it means that
which expresses the essence of being human - or in Darwinian terms, species-typical
behaviours and beliefs. On the other hand, human nature means that which is
constituted in nature - which is usually taken to mean that which is the product
of natural selection.
In non-human animals the two meanings are synonymous. What bats or sharks
or chimps typically do as a species, they do because of natural selection.
Many suggest that this is also true for humans. 'Evolutionary biology is fundamental
to the study of human behaviour and thought', Leda Cosmides and John Tooby
argue, because there are only two ways in which the human mind and its products
can be designed - natural selection or divine intervention.
There are certainly species-typical human behaviours and social forms that
are likely to be the products of evolved adaptations. But humans, unlike non-human
animals, also forge universal values and behaviours through social interaction
and historical progress. In this sense the human essence - what we consider
to be the common properties of our humanity - is as much a product of our
historical and cultural development as it is of our biological heritage.
The historicity of the human essence is revealed in a number of ways. The
fact that humans are rational, social beings places certain constraints and
creates certain opportunities that can shape the way we think about the world
and organise our collective lives. Being rational we are able to apprehend
both the regularities of the external world, and our social needs, and to
draw conclusions from them. Being social creates certain opportunities common
to all societies - the possibility of a division of labour, for instance -
and imposes certain universal restrictions - such as the need for social order.
Being both social and rational means that the common social goals, opportunities
and constraints are often tackled in a similar fashion in different societies.
A good illustration of the way that human universals can be the product of
social, not biological, development, can be seen in an example that is often
cited as evidence for the view that universals are evolved traits. Over the
past three decades a number of anthropologists have shown that many pre-industrial
societies have developed taxonomies of the natural world that are remarkably
consistent with the modern Linnaean system. The anthropologist Brent Berlin,
who pioneered the cross-cultural society of biological classification, suggests
that there exists a 'default' taxonomy characteristic of all traditional,
or folk, societies. All such societies can recognise hundreds of species -
far more than they eat or utilise in other ways - which they classify according
to a complex hierarchical system. All regard the rank of species as the most
important in the hierarchy, and there is a remarkably high correspondence
between what such societies regard as species and what modern biologists do.
All this has led some anthropologists to suggest that humans possess a special
mental faculty whose job it is to distinguish between animate and inanimate
objects and to classify animate ones. The rules by which people classify the
living world are common to all cultures because they are hardwired into our
brains.
It is possible, however, to understand the universality of such taxonomic
rules in a different way. All humans habitually classify all manner of things
from books to weather systems. All pre-industrial societies require a good
grasp of relations within the natural world. And while the flora and fauna
of, say, Europe and Australia may differ, the relationships between classes
of organisms remain the same the world over. The objective world, in other
words, is a constant. Given all this, it is likely that many different societies
are both driven to classify the natural world, and compelled to establish
similar kinds of rules about the manner in which the natural world is parcelled
up.
There is another way of putting this. If the capacity for biological classification
is an evolved trait, it could only have arisen because the brains of some
of our ancestors noticed regularities in the living world. Such people may
have been better at finding food or avoiding predators; they would have survived
and reproduced better than those who did not notice the regularities, and
hence the trait would have spread through the population.
But here's the catch. If there exists enough regularity in the living world,
and sufficient selection pressure, for nature to design a brain module that
can classify the living world, then there also exists sufficient regularity
and pressure for humans to create such a taxonomy-maker empirically. If nature
can do it without foresight, so can humans with a little forethought. If,
on the other hand, there is insufficient environmental structure or external
pressure for humans to generate this taxonomy empirically, then neither is
there likely to be for it to evolve naturally.
I do not know - and nor does anyone else - whether the apparently universal
capacity to classify the natural world along similar lines is an evolved trait
or not. All I'm suggesting that for humans, unlike for non-human animals,
such universals can arise without the help of nature because humans are rational,
social beings.
A second expression of the historicity of the human essence lies in its normative
quality. Salman Rushdie has suggested that if human nature did not exist,
then 'the idea of universals - human rights, moral principles, international
law - would have no legitimacy'. This belief has become central to much sociobiological
thinking, and indeed invests it with a certain moral authority. If our moral
capacities were not evolved, the argument runs, then we could not develop
a common moral universe. Both Steven Pinker and EO Wilson have suggested,
for instance, that revulsion at the practice of slavery is part of human nature
because we have a natural aversion to being humiliated and imprisoned. Francis
Fukuyama insists that human values are rooted in human nature and hence that
liberal capitalism lies at the end of history because its beliefs and institutions
'are grounded in assumptions about human nature that are far more realistic
than those of their competitors'.
I have no doubt that our capacity for moral thought is likely to be an evolved
trait. But this is not the same as saying that values are natural. Take the
question of slavery and the idea of equal human worth. For most of human history,
slavery was regarded as natural as individual freedom is today. Only in the
past two hundred years have we begun to view the practice with revulsion.
Why? Partly because of the political ideas generated by the Enlightenment,
partly because of the changing economic needs of capitalism, and partly because
of the social struggles of the enslaved and the oppressed. Certainly, today
we view opposition to slavery as an essential aspect of our humanity, and
see those who advocate slavery as in some way inhuman - but it's a belief
that we have arrived at historically, not naturally.
Human nature is neither an illusion, nor simply an expression of our rootedness
in nature. It is a concept that only makes sense if we understand it historically,
and normatively. The human essence is not something simply given to us but
is also made by us. In this sense, human universals are also, paradoxically,
historically contingent.
The unique character of human universals arises out of the existence of humans
as rational, social beings with the power to act as political subjects - with
the power, in other words, to transform themselves and their societies through
reasoned dialogue and activity. All animals have an evolutionary past. Only
humans make history. The existence of humans as a uniquely history-making
species has moulded the relationship between universals and particulars in
human society, between human nature and human differences. Humans are able
both to create social distinctions (and to view them as natural or fixed)
and to ignore natural differences (as irrelevant to social intercourse).
Discussions about the relationship between human nature and human differences,
however, whether rooted in natural or cultural views of human behaviour, have
paid insufficient attention to the transformative character of human life.
The conflation of the debate about universals and differences with the nature-nurture
debate has established a dichotomy between biological universals and cultural
differences, a dichotomy within which the sense of human agency has been lost.
On either side of the debate, both what we have in common and what differentiates
us has come to be viewed as fixed. And, as cultural relativism has given way
in recent years to biological universalism, so both our commonalities and
our differences are seen increasingly as rooted in nature. Or, as the philosopher
John Gray has recently put it, 'The good life is not found in dreams of progress,
but in coping with tragic contingencies.'
To restore balance to the discussion of human commonalities and human differences,
we need to do three things: first, to distinguish the debate about universalism
and relativism from nature-nurture debate; second, to understand human nature
not simply in naturalistic terms but also as historical created; and thirdly
to restore the concept of human agency into the discussions of both human
nature and human differences.