It has been noted that America’s culture wars are the byproduct of two clashing fundamentalisms: religious and secular. While it is clear what text the Protestant defenders of religious fundamentalism base their world-views on, does Secular Fundamentalism have an equivalent text? Well, yes and no. Secular Fundamentalists (this is a polemical term for which I will henceforth substitute the more ontologically oriented category “Naturalism”) consider the entire corpus of modern science to be their “Bible”…and tout this as their strong point. But in a narrower sense, a special category of texts (and they happen to be school texts) serves the cause of Naturalism in the vital role of” anti-antinaturalist” polemics.
Anti-antinaturlism seems to be an unnecessarily roundabout mode of expression, but I am using it to call into question the proceedure by which the secularist view was enthroned in academia. Many religious reasoners, conflating theology and anthropology, go wide of the mark when they talk about the marginalization of God in modern culture. This marginalization, or the “Death of God” if one wants to dignify it with Nieztsechen rhetoric, is the end product (one might even say, the byproduct) of the inversion of Man and Nature in modern thought.
Specifically, Naturalism called upon an anti-anthropology (which we call simply anthropology today) to dethrone the category “Man” from ontological center stage. Apart from careful students of Christian doctrine, this seemed initially to have no effect on theology. “Nature and Nature’s God” was the siren call of 17th and 18th century Deism, which empasized the creative, rather than the incarnational, attributes of Deity. In the old “hermetic” science which prevailed in Europe prior to circa 1600, the key formulas: Logo=Athropos, Macroprosperos=Microsprosperos, etc. highlighted Human Being as paradigmatic of all Being. Although being a hermetic scientist didn’t commit one to being a Christian, hermetic formulas could be translated into Christian theology, and vice versa, with great economy and coherence. This ended with the rise of naturalism.
If, however, naturalism was to permanently evict Humanism, in both its Christian and Hermetic forms, from the learned counsels of Europe, it would have to develop an apologetic dicipline dedicated to diminishing any and all claims to human uniqueness and priority in the scheme of creation. This is the anti-anthropology which eventually became established in American and European departments of “Anthropology.” The textbooks of these apologetics, i.e. “Basic Anthropology Texts” are as close as one is likely to come in identifying a secularist Bible.
Now one of the ways in which this secularist “Bible” is more fanatical than its Christian counterpart consists in the fact that it is revised every year, presumably with the intention of profiting the publisher and the author, but also with the equally clear intention of becoming more and more orthodox, that is to say naturalistic and anti-anthropological. I refuse to abet the process by buying or using these “upgraded” texts…although I will admit that there are bound to be some exceptions to the overall secular tendency towards naturalism, value inversion, and political correctness.
Indeed, I am proud to say that at my last inventory, the most recently published general anthropology text in my library happened to be Ember and Ember’s ANTHROPOLOGY edition of 1981. Of course this is way too late to avoid the ravages of naturalism…but it at least has a sporting good faith in the reader’s dicernment and ability to recognize contradictions. It begins in a truely remarkable way:
Anthropology defines itself as a dicipline of infinite curiosity about human beings.
This is a “curious” statement indeed! As it stands it would seem to indicate that “anthropology” is nothing more than a passtime…infinite research done with no goal of attained results in mind. However that this is not precisely what Ember and Ember are getting at is made clear in the next statement which states:
Needless to say, the many other diciplines concerned with humans would not be happy to be regarded as as subbranches of subbranches of anthropology. [they have previously listed sociology, psychology, political science, economics, history, human biology, philosophy, and literature.]
But one suspects that this has less to do with departmental jealousy, than the fact that these diciplines could be grouped together as “The Human Sciences” but for the existence of a competing science of “anthropology” which dooms them to an ad hoc, disjointed existence. And what does this “anthropology” consist of? According to Ember and Ember, its core(s) are constituted by ethnography, comparative linguistics, and human biology (especially osteology). These are the odds and ends seemingly left out after all the other human studies formed themselves into separate diciplines. This, of course, begs the question…why weren’t these raised to an equal rank of studies? This is in itself “curious”…but then Ember and Ember add a final twist to their definition which makes things “more curiouser” than even Alice’s view through the looking glass:
Another distinguishing feature of anthropology is its holistic approach to the study of human beings.
Yet how can this anthropology be “holistic” if it is a holism which excludes, on principle, sociology, psychology, political science, economics etc.? Clearly the reason for dividing the human sciences into the aforesaid diciplines on the one hand and “anthropology” on the other, has nothing to do with the intrinsic characteristics of their repective subject matter. But it has everything to do with eliminating the category, not to mention the primacy, of the human race in nature. Keep in mind the contrast of anthropology’s classic definition as “the study of man [in contemporary idiom 'human beings']” with Evans and Evans “a dicipline of infinite curiosity about human beings.” Even at the risk of being considered frivolous, Evans and Evans have taken the bull by the horns and indicated that they do not think that there is such a thing as a “human species” which is subject to a general definition. As such they are to be applauded for their candor, if not their humor!
These suspicions are augmented when we look at the diciplines which have been isolated from the other human sciences and pressed into the service of a naturalist apologetic. The fall into two, or perhaps three categories:
1) diciplines which show the human race to be entirely embedded within nature. The naturalist appolgetic here is to show that the causes of all effects, even those governing psychical events, are ultimately based on the movements of inchohate matter.
2) diciplines which show the unity of the human race to be an accident of genetic continuity. The naturalistic appologetic here is to show that calls for universal benevolence must be based on biology and nothing but biology.
3) diciplines which show the autonomy and particularity of local cultures. The naturalistic appologetic here is to show that, if indeed there is such a thing as “spirit”…even so it is limited to specific groups. To the extent that one wishes to dissent from naturalism one must take on the onus of being a nationalist or a racist. To the extent that one wishes to be cosmopolitan one must embrace naturalism.
Since is precisely these disciplines, or rather paradigms, which are gathered together as “anthropology” one can hardly escape the observation, in spite of the humor and tact of Embers and Embers, that the way in which the diciplinary lines have been drawn reflects more than simple ad hockery. In fact modern “anthropology” has clearly been established with the intent of marginalizing the idea of Human Nature, and replacing it with an unqualified Nature of which humanity is no more than an epiphenomenon.
I am using Evans and Evans as an illustration of a typical introductory anthropology text of the late 20th century, one which on the whole is better written and less subject to poltical hackery than most, and certainly subsequent, publications in the genre. None the less, I can’t resist a small, but significant, retrospective joke at their expense. Evans and Evans ask:
What induces the anthropologist to choose so broad a subject for study? In part, he or she is motivated by the belief that any generalization made about human beings should be shown to be applicable to many times and places of human existence. For example, before Margaret Mead embarked on her famous field study of the people of Samoa (which was later reported in her Coming of Age in Samoa, 1928) many Americans believed that adolescence was necessarily a period of “storm and stress” because of the physiological changes that occur in puberty. However, on the basis of her observations of Samoan adolecents, who did not seem to show signs of emotional upheaval, Mead concluded that the Western belief about adolecence was not universally applicable and was therefore subject to question. The clear implication to be drawn from her work was that emotional stress in adolecence was not universally applicable and was therefore subject to question.
The above text (1981) would have been dated only a few years later with the publication of Derek Freeman’s exposure of Mead’s faulty research. She was apparently taken in by adolecent girls who wowed her with tales of fictitious liasons. However Evans and Evans couldn’t have known about this research at the time, since Freeman was waiting for the decease of the much respected Mead to release his criticisms (whether out of fear or respect is itself a subject of debate).
What Evans and Evans can be held responsible for are the stated motives which “induce the anthropologist” to contradiction. We are told that that any generalization about culture should be made “applicable to many times and places of human existence” which is a movement towards generalization, the universal, or what some philosophers of science have called the nomothetic. But in fact Mead purports to show that one supposedly universal attribute of human development “adolecent stress” is culturally, that is locally, optional. In doing so human nature is replaced by many different human natures, which is precisely the opposite of the program outlined by Evans and Evans. After giving lip service to universalism, a particularist conclusion is reached. This is, of course, in persuit of the third, and possibly the second, variety of naturalistic appologetic indicated above. This kind of programmatic contradiction would have betrayed an anti-anthropic bias even if it had not been falsified by the debunking of Mead’s research.
Going back to a previous generation of Anthropological texts, I can’t help but feel there is much more substance in a book, however crabbed and user unfrendly, as Penneman’s ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF ANTHROPOLOGY (1965). Although later in time, Penneman is the sort of person who probably could have written a respectable article for the eleventh edition of Enclyclopedia Britannica. The “one hundred years” refers to the great divide between naturalistic and traditional anthropology…the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Penniman is, of course, a Darwinian…but not a vicious supporter natural selection, biologism, or the reign of the ubermenchen. While he is clearly no friend of religion, this is more the kind of stock English Deist quibbling, and his Ruskinesk love of agrarian details shows that he was dragooned into scientism more through scruples than conviction.
Although Penniman’s HUNDRED YEARS is more of a bibliography than a book, it waxes poetic at critical moments. None of these is more important than the tribute he gives to Darwin, who was, if not the inventor, at least the enabler, of modern anthropology. Knee-jerk anti-evolutionists would do well to consider the fact that Darwin was in no way “evil” but, as Penneman explains, his very conservatism and modesty gave a false veneer of probity to the radically inhuman theory of “natural selection.” In this respect he is somewhat like Marx, the most libertarian of the German socialists, who’s idealism honey-coated the bleak historical determinism that we today know as “Marxism.”
Penneman’s anthropological world is much more genteel and erudite than what became of the dicipline after it was invaded, first by bohemians and then by leftists. None the less, it is a scientistic world, one in which all phenomena are neatly classified and arranged in museum boxes. In this post-Darwinian world “man” is no more speical than the occupyer of any other box, be it the chambered nautulus or the armadillo. To get back to a time when Anthropology was something more than anti-anthropology masquerading as curiosity, one has to get well back before the great divide of 1859.
The last great system of thought before Darwin was that of Hegel, whom few today can relish. None the less his usage of the term “Anthropology” is interesting in so far as it is transitional between the hermetic Logos=Anthropos=Cosmos formulations and later positivistic notions. One could do worse than to take as one’s textbook on human nature the third part of Hegel’s Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences: Philosophy of Mind. In it one would find a surprising identification of anthropology with pneumatology. Moreover it is a pnuematology which, unlike classical systems, is divested of nous (=speculative mind). How can one account for this strange, dialectical inversion? Perhaps Hegel was trying to make good on his claims to being “scientific”…he was defending his Idealism against the materialists by showing that idealisms were not inherently cognitivist, but could assign a foundatinal place to sentience. Hence the strange equation of sentience with the soul, and the soul with human nature. This is not as bad as it seems from a traditionalist point of view, since Hegel’s Absolute encompasses nature, rather than vice versa. Still, it is rather shocking and a deviation from perrenial thought.
Which brings one to the final question: how far back into history do we have to go in order to retrieve a “real” anthropology book, one that has not been infected by naturalism? According to traditionalist thinkers there were times in the past when a basic consensus in metaphysical speculation prevailed. Rene Guenon claims that the “modern deviation” began in the fourteenth century, while other people claim someone as late as Leibniz (fl. 1700) is solidly in the perenial philosophy…a term which he coined.
Rather than giving any clear response to that question, I would like to end on a cautionary note. I have been cautioning against anthropology being the handmaiden of naturalism, but that doesn’t mean that there no cylla to this charibdis. Secularist fundamentalism is ugly, but so is religious fundamentalism. One risk of buying into the perrenial philosophy which must frame any viable theology, anthropology, and cosmology, is the trap of thinking that thought cannot develop. Thought can, and should develop…however it is the thesis of traditionalists that thought has, for a long time, been developing on the basis of specious principles. These principles have to be utterly revoked, but having once set out on the basis of a sure foundation, thinking can raise a sounder ediface. In traditionalist thinking man is not “a part of” nature. Rather God, Man, and Cosmos interpenetrate and participate in each other. This notion is literally “unthinkable” to most people today…especially those of a fundamentalist bent, be they religious or secular. One of the barriers to making it “thinkable” is the modern anthropology text, that bible of naturalist non-men.
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April 18, 2008 at 1:27 am
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