Naturalizing Ethics: A Girardian Perspective

As the vulgar generally look no higher for the original of moral good and evil, just and unjust, than the codes and pandects, the tables and laws of their country and religion, so there have not wanted pretended philosophers in all ages who have asserted nothing to be good and evil, just and unjust, naturally and immutably; but that these things were positive, arbitrary and factitious only.¹

In this short presentation I want to propose a sketch of what “naturalizing ethics from a Girardian perspective” would look like. My goal is not to engage in a Girardian tentative at naturalizing ethics, but rather to contrast what such a project entails in comparison with some of the current attempts at naturalization, which we find in philosophy as well as in evolutionary biology and psychology. Carrying out this comparison requires me to indicate, at least to some extent, what “naturalizing ethics” means from a Girardian perspective, and why it is different from other current attempts. In other words, it demands that I fill out the Girardian naturalization of ethics program sufficiently for the comparison to be meaningful. Doing so, however, does not amount to an attempt at naturalizing ethics. My goal is not to naturalize ethics from a Girardian perspective, but primarily to show that the Girardian perspective proposes a different research program from much of what usually goes by the name of “naturalizing ethics.” Such a claim is of course different from deciding whether, or to what extent, this alternative research program is viable. My second point is that the Girardian research program is preferable on at least two counts. First, if naturalizing a domain is to be understood, as it often is, as bringing the tools and methods—rather than simply the results—of (natural) science to bear on its objects and questions, then the Girardian approach satisfies that criteria better than many current attempts at naturalization. The second count on which the Girardian perspective on naturalizing ethics proves superior is that it is much more precise, as it opens the door to much finer-grained explanations of various moral beliefs and practices. These two characteristics of the Girardian approach are not independent of each other and together they reflect one of its central differences from many Darwinian or evolutionary approaches: its sensitivity to human cultural evolution, or, if you prefer, its sensitivity to history.

Naturalism in Ethics

The idea of “naturalizing ethics” has been with us for a very long time and has been understood in a variety of different ways. For example, Hobbes wrote in Leviathan (1651):

But whatsoever is the object of a man’s appetite or desire that is it which he for his part calleth good; and the object of his hate and aversion evil; and of his contempt, vile and inconsiderable. For these words of good, evil and contemptible are ever used with relation to the person who useth them, there being nothing simply and absolutely so, nor any common rule of good and evil to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves...²

According to Hobbes then, moral predicates like good and evil do not correspond to anything that are such in themselves; they do not pick up any real differences in the world, but only reflect the changing preferences of agents. Therefore the moral predicates of good and evil are neither true nor false. They have no direct purchase on the world. They can, and should be reduced to the very “natural” difference that exists between desiring and hating something.³ “Natural” in this sense very precisely means “not supernatural” or “not transcendent” and in consequence it means the opposite of what “natural” means, for example, in the language of natural law theorists. Naturalism in ethics originally is the claim that moral differences do not correspond to anything moral as such. In other words, according to the proponents of naturalism in ethics, moral differences do not really exist, but merely obliquely, and generally obscurely, reflect some natural differences which they falsely represent as moral differences. Historically, the main reason to argue such a point is...