Perkins found that IQ was by far the biggest predictor of how well people
argued, but it predicted only the number of my-side arguments. Smart people
make really good lawyers and press secretaries, but they are no better than
others at finding reasons on the other side. Perkins concluded that “people
invest their IQ in buttressing their own case rather than in exploring the
entire issue more fully and evenhandedly.” 99

“Both evolutionary and cultural history indicate that the attitude of the
public can be reversed quickly and decisively by either facts or propaganda
about gains by the other side.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 258)

“But this is not to imply that the badness of error is the reason why it is
wrong to lie, or the badness of pain the reason why we ought not to inflict it
without special cause. It is, I think, just because this form of the view is
so plainly at variance with our moral consciousness, that we become driven to
adopt the other form of the view, viz., that the act is good in itself and
that its intrinsic goodness is the reason why it ought to be done. It is this
form which has always made the most serious appeal; for the goodness of the
act itself seems more closely related to the obligation to do it than that of
its mere consequences or results, and therefore, if obligation is to be based
on the goodness of something, it would seem that this goodness should be that
of the act itself.” 24

„Das Ethos des Wohlstands-Humanitarismus, mit oder ohne Religion, fügt sich
wie von selbst in die Lebensbedürfnisse privatisierter Menschen ein, nämlich
solcher, die mit Selbstverständlichkeit von den nächsten Interessen her
empfinden, und das sind ihre und die ihrer Familie. Jenes Ethos kehrt da mit
in seinen natürlichen Ursprung zurück, denn zwischen dem Familienglück und
dem daraus entstandenen Menschheitsglück gibt es keinen qualitativen
Unterschied. [...] Er übersieht nur noch kleine Ausschnitte riesiger und
unerratbarer Ereignismassen, er befindet sich sozusagen chronisch auf der
Talsohle der Wirklichkeit, und wenn er über die Wohnung, den Arbeitsplatz
hinausdenken will, muß er sich auf die gewerbsmäßigen Meinungsverbreiter oder
das Zimmerkino verlassen. Folglich sucht der Industriebürger die echte
Nahrung des Lebens im privaten Bereich, an dessen Wert und Würde niemand
zweifeln kann, er kehrt heim, geistig und seelisch. Das beschriebene
hypertrophe Ethos fügt sich ohne Schwierigkeiten in diese Voraussetzung ein,
ja es wirkt, umgekehrt gesehen, wie eine Verlängerung des Familienlebens ins
Weltweite.“ 153

„Die Gleichheit und Freiheit, alte Ideale, werden selbst zu Glückspostulaten.
Störende Hemmungen des Genusses am Ich-Sein müssen ebenso verschwinden wie
Überragungen durch Andere, die dieses Vergnügen beeinträchtigen könnten. Man
sieht, wie kraft vitaler Expansion solche Einstellungen sich zu
Ausschließlichkeiten entwickeln, bis die Radikalisierung die dazugehörige
Aggressivität freisetzt. Übrigens gab man in Europa jenem Ethos nur zögernd
nach, die altchristlichen Traditionen, mit staatlichen Inpflichtnahmen und
wachsamer Sicherheits-Politik verschmolzen, waren auf Dauer und
Standhaftigkeit hin entworfen. Tocqueville (gest. 1859) ahnte das Labyrinth,
das aus dem Sichkreuzen verschiedener Moralen entstehen würde, denn er nannte
„diese Sorte von Hang zum Wohlsein, die die Mutter der Knechtschaft ist, eine
weiche Passion, die zäh und unablenkbar auftritt", und doch fand er zu seiner
Verwunderung, daß sie sich „mit gewissen privaten Tugenden verflicht: dem
Familiensinn, der Ordentlichkeit, dem Respekt vor dem Glauben". Damit war die
Ableitung der Ethisierung des Wohllebens aus den Kreisen des liberalen
Bürgertums schon geleistet, und Tocqueville sah voraus, wie sich die privaten
Tugenden in den Vordergrund schieben wür den; auch wenn ihm noch verborgen
blieb, daß dann die Privatisierung auch der Laster folgen müsse, und man an
ihnen nicht mehr Anstoß nähme, worauf sie wiederum öffentlichkeitsfähig wären.
Das zu entwikkeln, blieb unserem Jahrhundert Vorbehalten: die Moral, nämlich
die humanitäre des ethisierten Wohlstandes, in großartigem Siegeszug, und die
Sitten in vollem Verfall. Es mag uns schwerfallen wirklich zu akzeptieren, daß
die Lehre vom Glücksvorrang, der Eudaimonismus, eine Ethik hergeben kann, aber
ohne diese Einsicht verstünde man nicht einmal den Sinn des Wortes ,»sozial",
das eben diese Zugänglichkeit der materiellen und geistigen Lebensgüter für
Alle als ethisches Postulat meint. Im antiken Eudaimonismus des Epikur
handelte es sich um eine private, ichbezogene Technik der Leidesvermeidung und
Überlistung der Unlust, um eine Kur und quietistische Gemütsdiät.“ 59

When subjects are told that an intelligence test gave them a low score, they
choose to read articles criticizing (rather than supporting) the validity of
IQ tests. 103

“The “How?” or partial causes approach is most likely to evoke criticism (1)
because understanding is sometimes better achieved by dealing with the
original whole (e.g., the effort to assuage hunger rather than the underlying
morphological and physiological components of the effort), (2) because it is
noticeable that similar ends may be achieved by many different kinds of
subordinate or contributing mechanisms (causing the individual mechanisms to
be less important), and (3) because of the likelihood that something important
may be missing when reconstitution of the dissected phenomenon is attempted.
All three realizations cause us to regard even essential contributing
proximate phenomena as usually more trivial than the functional results of
their collective and cooperative interactions. In contrast, the “How come?” or
ultimate cause approach seeks to simplify, explain, or “reduce” complex
phenomena such as human activities by hypothesizing directly that they are
parts of even grander sets or combinations of actions. Thus, merely to
identify a complex set of activities by a hungry human as an effort to eat is
a step in this kind of reduction; another step is to see that effort as part
of a lifelong effort to build (as a juvenile) and maintain (as an adult) a
soma (phenotype, self) in the further interest of using it in the reproduction
of one’s genetic materials. This reduction by generalizing, because it seeks
the adaptive significance of acts, also tends to identify the larger contexts
within which specific acts or functions are carried out, and as a result
identifies likelihoods of compromise or adjustment in the act that would not
be obvious from any other approach. Without knowledge of food or ingestion,
for example, we might be puzzled about failures to optimize other observed
uses of lips and teeth like kissing, biting, or speaking.” (Alexander, 1987,
p. 35)

„Damit widersprechen wir der abstrakten Ethik der Aufklärung, etwa dem Worte
Voltaires im Dictionnaire Philosophique: „Es gibt nur eine Moral, wie es nur
eine Geometrie gibt." Es kann viel mehr sehr wohl mehrere, voneinander
unabhängige letzte Wurzeln ethischen Verhaltens geben, so wie es mehrere,
voneinander unabhängige Sinne gibt, die Zusammenwirken können oder auch nicht.
Wir glauben nicht nur an eine Mehrheit moralischer Instanzen, sondern letzter
Instanzen; und um den Gedanken an deren übernatürliche Herkunft auszu
schließen, wollen wir von „Sozial-Regulationen" sprechen. Wir haben keine
andere Denkmöglichkeit, als in ihnen triebartige „Anlagen" zu sehen, die in
großen Linien die Harmonien und Konflikte des gesellschaftlichen Lebens
vorbestimmen, wobei die Dichte und Buntheit der realen Ausfaltung von
zahllosen materiellen, geistigen, traditionellen und anderen Faktoren abhängt,
ein Verhältnis, das im Bereich der Instinktresiduen des Menschen ja überhaupt
gilt. Diese können überall in Verhältnisse der Diskordanz oder Hemmung treten,
und so besteht auch zwischen den letzten „Wurzeln" des Ethos ein latentes
Spannungsverhältnis, das in her ausfordernden Situationen sich bis zum
Widerstreit polarisiert. Und diese Konflikte können in dasselbe Herz fallen.
Eine Wissenschaft, die sich an der Darstellung der verschiedenen Formen des
Ethos versuchte, würde „Ethik" heißen und vor allem wissen müssen, daß ein
herrschendes Ethos aus einem Guß, d. h. ein solches, das andere Formen
relativiert, unterordnet oder ausschließt, ohne eine herrschende Schicht
nicht zustande kommt, die ihr Ethos proklamiert und durchgesetzt hat.“ 35

„Roben Musil hatte die Gabe, in wenigen Worten solche Dinge zu kennzeichnen:
„Es hat (= es gibt) heute kulturell keine Bindung, und auch davon kommen die
hemmungslosen Grausamkeiten" (Tagebücher, Aphorismen, Essays und Reden, 1955,
361). Die Menschenwelt verlange, so meinte er, nach gedrungener Festigkeit,
weil sie bei jeder Unregelmäßigkeit fürchten muß, gleich ganz aus den Fugen
zu geraten, eine Ansicht, die übrigens die schon rein biologische Beobachtung
trifft, „daß soziale Unordnung Aggression gegen Gruppenmitglieder freimacht"
(Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Grdr. der vergl. Verhaltensforschung, 1967, 340). Wenn man
daher den Begriff Sicherheit so weit zieht, daß er die institutionelle
Stabilität einschließt, dann kann man Montesquieu zustimmen, der meinte, die
politische Freiheit bestehe in der Sicherheit oder wenigstens in dem Glauben,
daß man sie hat.“ 98

“The answer is, of course, not an answer, for it fails to convince us that we
ought to keep our engagements; even if successful on its own lines, it only
makes us want to keep them. And Kant was really only pointing out this fact
when he distinguished hypothetical and categorical imperatives, even though he
obscured the nature of the fact by wrongly describing his socalled
"hypothetical imperatives" as imperatives” 22

“We must be creative about deterrence—we must control, mold, and shape it so
as to reduce both the risk of war and the risk of war destroying us.”
(Alexander, 1987, p. 254)

genetics explains between a third and a half of the variability among people
on their political attitudes. Being raised in a liberal or conservative
household accounts for much less. 308

The gods of hunter-gatherers are often capricious and malevolent. They
sometimes punish bad behavior, but they bring suffering to the virtuous as
well. As groups take up agriculture and grow larger, however, their gods
become far more moralistic. The gods of larger societies are usually quite
concerned about actions that foment conflict and division within the group,
such as murder, adultery, false witness, and the breaking of oaths. If the
gods evolve (culturally) to condemn selfish and divisive behaviors, they can
then be used to promote cooperation and trust within the group. 283

„Lévi-Strauss sagt in seiner „Strukturalen Anthropologie" (1958, dt. 1967):
»Die Theorie der Gegenseitigkeit steht nicht auf dem Spiele. Für das
ethnologische Denken bleibt sie heute begründet auf einer so festen Unterlage,
wie es in der Astronomie, die Gravitationstheorie ist" (180) Er sagt ferner:
„Die Verwandtschaftsregeln dienen dazu, den Austausch der Frauen zwischen den
Gruppen zu sichern, wie die ökonomischen Regeln den Austausch von Gütern und
Dienstleistungen und die Sprachregeln die Nachrichtenübermittlung
garantieren."“ 48

“ Restrained embellishment involves signals such as those passed between
relatives or cooperative mates, in which the signaler would lose by too much
deception because it shares so many of its interests with those of the
individual to which it is signaling. The core of truth is large and the amount
of embellishment rather small, because too much deceit is contrary to the
interests of the signaler. Included are most signals between close relatives
such as parents and offspring and siblings, and most signals between male and
female in bonded pairs if either or both sexes invest parentally to any large
degree (unless philandering or channeling of assistance to one’s own
relatives, as opposed to those of the spouse, is possible, thus interfering
with a likelihood of complete sharing of interests and honesty in signaling).
Similarly, restrained embellishment should typify communication between long-
term or lifetime friends who may reasonably expect repeated and reciprocal
interactions.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 91)

“it is fair to ask whether the concern of a U.S. president over abortion may
not arise or be intensified by a concern (conscious or unconscious) about the
unity of society, hence, society’s ability and readiness to defend itself.
Thus, Ronald Reagan was quoted in the Michigan Daily (4 Aug. 1982) as follows:

„Ethisch-politische Utopien beweisen durch ihr Schattendasein oder die
parodistisch ausfallenden Realisierungen die Sperrigkeit der Realität
gegenüber einer „reinen" Ethik — dies gehört zu den Grundwahrheiten. Ein
solches Idealsystem muß entweder eine Hintertür offen lassen, durch die die
Wirklichkeit ein- oder austreten kann, oder es muß sich mit einer
fassadenhaften Geltung als rhetorischer Schleier für handfestere Interessen
begnügen; oder das Ideal zersetzt die ihr wesensfremde gesellschaftliche
Realität,“ 22

“by definition moral issues can only be resolved by the collective opinions
and decisions of the populace; otherwise what occurs is either not a
resolution or by definition is not moral (this is true even if I, as an
individual, disagree with “the populace” and work to change a rule or attitude
that I judge to be immoral).” (Alexander, 1987, p. 263)

5. Reciprocity (Direct and Indirect). It appears to me that all reciprocity
so far documented in nonhuman organisms is appropriately termed direct
reciprocity, in which the return from a social investment in another (i.e., an
act of “temporary” altruism) is expected from the actual recipient of the
beneficence, although not necessarily in the same currency […] Indirect
reciprocity involves reputation and status, and results in everyone in a
social group continually being assessed and reassessed by interactants, past
and potential, on the basis of their interactions with others. I do not
exclude the possibility that indirect reciprocity, in this sense, will
eventually be documented in some primates—especially, chimpanzees (e.g., de
Waal, 1982, 1986) social canines, felines, cetaceans, and some others.”
(Alexander, 1987, p. 103)

H. A. Prichard, “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?,” Mind 21, no. 81 (1912): 21–37.

Carnegie was in fact a brilliant moral psychologist who grasped one of the
deepest truths about conflict. He used a quotation from Henry Ford to express
it: “If there is any one secret of success it lies in the ability to get the
other person’s point of view and see things from their angle as well as your
own.” It’s such an obvious point, yet few of us apply it in moral and
political arguments because our righteous minds so readily shift into combat
mode. 64

„Wer das Recht des auf sich selbst gestellten Menschen für ein unbedingtes
erklärt, fühlt in der Linie der Selbstvergötterung des Menschen, und diese
Ideen haben dann, obzwar dem Jahre 1789 angehörig, keine innere Abgrenzung von
der Religion mehr.“ 62

“Williams’ (1957) paper on senescence was the initial contribution to the
refinements of evolutionary theory that created the current revolution in
humanity’s understanding of itself. It is therefore ironic that the principal
criticism leveled at this revolution is that its practitioners are
“adaptationists” in the sense that they insist on finding an adaptive function
for every trait of every organism. Williams’ argument, however, was that
senescence is a maladaptive consequence of other adaptive traits. Moreover, he
also argued, in his pivotal 1966 book, that adaptation is an onerous concept
to be invoked only with great care and after considerable investigation. The
primacy and prominence of these two arguments alone put the lie to the attack
on evolutionary biologists as glib “adaptationists” who see evolved function
in all effects of all traits.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 65)

„Es ergibt sich der Eindruck, daß der Übergang der Kultur zu größeren
Einheiten politische und folglich auch moralische Neuorientierungen mit sich
brachte, denn die Ausschließlichkeit des Polis-Patriotismus war über holt
oder man sah sich, wenn man sich ihm widmete, zu einer nachgeordneten
Gültigkeit herabgesetzt. In das weite Gefäß des Weltverkehrs und der
Großmachtbildungen strömte jetzt ein anderes Ethos ein, dessen Wort führer
Pazifisten und Weltbürger waren, die den Eindruck zu erwecken verstanden, als
spräche aus ihrer dünnen Stimme der Weltgeist.“ 34

„„Intellektuelle, sagt Schumpeter, sind in der Tat Leute, die die Macht des
gesprochenen und des geschriebenen Wortes handhaben; und eine
Eigentümlichkeit, die sie von anderen Leuten, die das gleiche tun,
unterscheidet, ist das Fehlen einer direkten Verantwortlichkeit für
praktische Dinge." [...] Das Wort Verantwortung hat nur da einen deutlichen
Sinn, wo jemand die Folgen seines Handelns öffentlich abgerechnet bekommt, und
das weiß; so der Politiker am Erfolg, der Fabrikant am Markt, der Beamte an
der Kritik der Vorgesetzten, der Arbeiter an der Kontrolle der Leistung usw.
Wo eine solche Instanz nicht zu sehen ist, oder ausdrücklich verpönt, wie im
Art. 5 des Grundgesetzes (Pressefreiheit) die Zensur, dort ist man von der
Verantwortung entlastet und kann sich mit vollem Herzen der Moral der Anderen
annehmen.“ 148

“the most logical and reasonable argument may not be able to supercede the
effect of a practice—such as aborting embryos— on a society’s view of itself.
If sufficient horror is generated—from whatever arguments or background—then
any such act may be regarded as unequivocally immoral and, indeed, if allowed
or promoted, may have a decidedly deleterious effect on the unity of the
society and its general level of beneficence. This is one reason that
questions about the rights of nonhumans, and helpless humans of particular
sorts, must remain somewhat fuzzy, and can never be decided absolutely for all
times and places in any one time and place.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 225)

“the reason the concepts of moral and ethical are peculiarly human is the same
as that accounting for the evolution of selfawareness, consciousness, purpose,
conscience, and many other human attributes that seem tied to our complex and
almost indefinitely iterated social interactions. I see these special
attributes of the human psyche as a system for prediction and manipulation of
the future—especially the social future—when the main actors will be other
humans. From a complex beginning in interactions between cooperating parents
and between parents and offspring, then among kin of several sorts and other
unrelated but repeated interactants, humans have evolved to recognize one
another individually and to cooperate and compete in groups with respect to
partial confluences and conflicts of interest. It is the general awareness of
multiple confluences of interest, and the uniquely human ability to translate
this awareness into rules, enforced and used by groups and
subgroups—ultimately in their competition with other similar groups and
subgroups—that created the systems of indirect reciprocity that we now call
moral systems. I will argue (see pp. 79ff.) that this condition arose because
for humans, unlike any other species, other humans became the principal
hostile force of nature—the principal cause of failure to survive or
reproduce. The primacy of this group-against-group competition within the
species meant that the resulting evolutionary race would be an unending one.
[…] the race that created the human psyche, and the unique and complex social
capabilities of humans.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 96)

„Das Humanitärethos ist das erweiterte Ethos der Großfamilie, es enthält also
von vornherein sowohl biologische, sogar feminine, als auch institutioneile
Einschüsse, und in dieser letzten Hinsicht hängt es ins Leere, wenn es nicht
durch weiträumige Institutionen wie Kirchen oder Logen gehalten wird. Zu
hypertrophem Anspruch kommt es in der Verbindung mit dem Ethos des
Massenlebenswertes und vor allem dann, wenn die entgegenhaltenden eigentlich
politischen Staatstugenden wegfallen, weil der Staat ruiniert oder selbst zum
Wohlstands apparat geworden ist.“ 145f

„Die religiöse Askese wäre dann nicht, wie Pareto meinte, aus einer
Hypertrophie der Sozialmoral zu verstehen, sondern es handelte sich um ein
Selbstopfer als Verarbeitung von Aggressionsmassen, die diese wie jede
ethische Absolutheit freisetzte, weil der Inhalt der Offenbarung, anders als
im antiken Judentum und im Islam, jeden Gewaltgebrauch ausschließt. Wo von
„mortificatio", vom „Absterben der Wirklichkeit" die Rede ist, bringt sich
also in der Tat jemand den Anderen aus liebes- oder mitleidsethischen Motiven
zum Opfer dar, und der Gedanke liegt nahe, daß die Hinrichtung Christi nicht
ganz ohne sein letztes Einverständnis erfolgte.“ 73

“If morality tends to mimic the effects of group selection, if moralizing
seeks to promote this mimicry, and if tendencies for people to be altruistic
are self-reinforcing within societies, then it is not remarkable that
knowledgeable and well-meaning people sometimes resent the arguments that
natural selection is not powerful at group levels, and that humans, as
individuals, have evolved to further their own reproduction. Such persons may
well believe (or sense) that publicizing or stressing such arguments, even if
they are correct, will diminish altrusim and morality by providing an anti-
moral model.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 203)

it sometimes happens that evidence accumulates across many studies to the
point where scientists must change their minds. I’ve seen this happen in my
colleagues (and myself) many times, and it’s part of the accountability system
of science—you’d look foolish clinging to discredited theories. But for non-
scientists, there is no such thing as a study you must believe. It’s always
possible to question the methods, find an alternative interpretation of the
data, or, if all else fails, question the honesty or ideology of the
researchers. And now that we all have access to search engines on our cell
phones, we can call up a team of supportive scientists for almost any
conclusion twenty-four hours a day. Whatever you want to believe about the
causes of global warming or whether a fetus can feel pain, just Google your
belief. You’ll find partisan websites summarizing and sometimes distorting
relevant scientific studies. Science is a smorgasbord, and Google will guide
you to the study that’s right for you. 103

Increase similarity, not diversity. To make a human hive, you want to make
everyone feel like a family. […] Exploit synchrony. […] Create healthy
competition among teams, not individuals. As McNeill said, soldiers don’t risk
their lives for their country or for the army; they do so for their buddies in
the same squad or platoon. Studies show that intergroup competition increases
love of the in-group far more than it increases dislike of the out-group.
Intergroup competitions, such as friendly rivalries between corporate
divisions, or intramural sports competitions, should have a net positive
effect on hivishness and social capital. 265f


the worship of reason is itself an illustration of one of the most long-lived
delusions in Western history: the rationalist delusion. […] From Plato through
Kant and Kohlberg, many rationalists have asserted that the ability to reason
well about ethical issues causes good behavior. They believe that reasoning is
the royal road to moral truth, and they believe that people who reason well
are more likely to act morally. But if that were the case, then moral
philosophers—who reason about ethical principles all day long—should be more
virtuous than other people. Are they? The philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel tried
to find out. He used surveys and more surreptitious methods to measure how
often moral philosophers give to charity, vote, call their mothers, donate
blood, donate organs, clean up after themselves at philosophy conferences, and
respond to emails purportedly from students. And in none of these ways are
moral philosophers better than other philosophers or professors in other
fields. Schwitzgebel even scrounged up the missing-book lists from dozens of
libraries and found that academic books on ethics, which are presumably
borrowed mostly by ethicists, are more likely to be stolen or just never
returned than books in other areas of philosophy. In other words, expertise in
moral reasoning does not seem to improve moral behavior, and it might even
make it worse (perhaps by making the rider more skilled at post hoc
justification). 108

„dann feiert man auch mit, was folgte, so die Abschlachtung der Schweizergarde
des Königs, man kennt von den Tätern 120 mit Berufsbezeichnungen, davon 95
Kleinhändler und Handwerker, 9 Dienstboten, 7 Hafenarbeiter, Hilfsarbeiter und
Fuhrleute, 3 Vertreter freier Berufe, je 2 Schreiber, Musiker und Glasbläser
(F. Jonas, Zur Soziologie der franz. Revolution, Der Staat 1/1966).“ 117

groups create supernatural beings not to explain the universe but to order
their societies. 22

It seems to take more than just a high level of social intelligence to get
reciprocal altruism going. It takes the sort of gossiping, punitive,
moralistic community that emerged only when language and weaponry made it
possible for early humans to take down bullies and then keep them down with a
shared moral matrix. Reciprocal altruism also fails to explain why people
cooperate in group activities. Reciprocity works great for pairs of people,
who can play tit for tat, but in groups it’s usually not in an individual’s
self-interest to be the enforcer—the one who punishes slackers. 199

“To reason is to seek causal basis, or the cause-effect connections in any
situation. This operation parallels the tendency or willingness to be
impartial, fair, or morally consistent in respect to all people. To seek
impartially to resolve conflicts or paradoxes is to seek the causes and
effects involved in them. To do this adequately necessarily involves a certain
openness. Otherwise, one could not possibly be said to be actually pursuing
the truth in that situation, or the just solution to the problem. […] The
self-correcting aspect of science as the pursuit of truth is its openness, and
its requirement that the route to every result and conclusion be described
well enough to be repeatable, if possible, by any one who wishes to try.”
(Alexander, 1987, p. 214)

“The remarkable difference between the patterns of senescence in semelparous
(one-time breeding) and iteroparous (repeat-breeding) organisms is probably
one of the best simple demonstrations of the central significance of
reproduction in the individual’s lifetime. How, otherwise, could we explain
the fact that those who reproduce but once, like salmon and soybeans, tend to
die suddenly right afterward, while those like ourselves who have residual
reproductive possibilities after the initial reproductive act decline or
senesce gradually?” (Alexander, 1987, p. 76)

“Keith refers to the evangelism of Christianity, throwing open the creed of
Christianity to all mankind, as against Nature—“anti-evolutionary in its
aim”—while Judaism, teaching an absence of evangelism, within-group marriage,
and a fierce exclusiveness, remained separate: “The Jew preferred to shoulder
his racial burden and save his evolutionary soul.” He argues that the Jews
managed “to survive [their] ... ordeal and come down, still nationally minded,
to this day ... because their religion, their law, and their mentality are
conformable to the law of evolution: isolation and inbreeding are the chief
factors in the production of special people or races.” Statements of this sort
may have been responsible for Keith being labeled a racist in anthropological
circles, and for the subsequent neglect of his arguments. Keith notes that
Christianity spread through “compulsion, force, and war ... outlawry,
ostracism, excommunication ... persecution and ... naked force to secure
unanimity of tribal faith among the members of its congregation.” (p. 75). He
argues that by thus becoming linked to nationalism Christianity betrayed its
original creed; and he sees this as evidence that “Christianity has failed
because its methods are discordant with human nature, and are therefore anti-
evolutionary. Nationalism, on the other hand, is a growing force because it is
in harmony with human nature, and therefore pro-evolutionary.” Again, I think
that the teachings of, say, Christianity or Judaism as “universal benevolence”
are adaptive only among a conquered or vulnerable people, tending to lose
their force and become perverted when the proponents of Christianity or
Judaism are transformed into powerful peoples.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 187)

As Western societies became more educated, industrialized, rich, and
democratic, the minds of its intellectuals changed. They became more analytic
and less holistic. Utilitarianism and deontology became far more appealing to
ethicists than Hume’s messy, pluralist, sentimentalist approach. 141

I strongly believe that the protection of innocent life is and has always
been a legitimate and indeed the first duty of government. Believing that, I
favor human life legislation... . This national tragedy of abortion on
demand must end [emphasis added]. If we don’t know when the unborn becomes a
human life, then we must opt for life unless and until someone can prove it
is not alive, (p. 2)

“An "ought," if it is to be derived at all, can only be derived from another
"ought." Moreover this link tacitly presupposes another, viz., that the
apprehension that something good which is not an action ought to be involves
just the feeling of imperativeness or obligation which is to be aroused by the
thought of the action which will originate it. Otherwise the argument will not
lead us to feel the obligation to produce it by the action. And, surely, both
this link and its implication are false. The word "ought" refers to actions
and to actions alone. The proper language is never "So and so ought to be,"
but "I ought to do so and so."” 23

“if the motive in respect of which we think an action good is some
intrinsically good desire, such as the desire to help a friend, the
recognition of the goodness of the act will equally fail to give rise to the
sense of obligation to do it. For we cannot feel that we ought to do that the
doing of which is ex hypothesi prompted solely by the desire to do it.” 24

“As young men become more and more crucial for defense, older men become less
and less able to control the women and prevent access to them by young men.
Thus, perhaps, polygyny begins to disappear, and monogamy becomes the rule.
Men are able to marry younger. The extended family (in the anthropological
sense of a cohesive, controlling influence on the lives of individuals)
weakens or disappears as vengeance is forbidden to clans and enforcement of
the rules passes to government. To a greater degree, then, young people begin
to choose their own mates. Socially imposed monogamy may have been a pivotal
issue, because of its involvement with the crucial resource of mates, its
great effects on the young men of military age, its role in reducing conflicts
of interest at the family level (by inducing symmetries of genetic relatedness
among the central core of social interactants), and its close relationship to
the general concept of justice as equality of opportunity in all matters […]
Formal law reduces the power of local bullies and moralizers, and it is
resented by them. […] freeing of slaves, women’s suffrage, social welfare,
desegregation, affirmative-action programs, equal rights efforts, and
provision in public places to accommodate the physically disadvantaged are all
evidence of increased interest in indiscriminateness in social beneficence.”
(Alexander, 1987, p. 197)

“The philosopher, Hans Kelsen (1957), is another example, and in his book What
is Justice? he stated what is meant by conflicts of interests (pp. 2-4):

by the 1990s lead had been completely removed from gasoline. This simple
public health intervention worked miracles: lead levels in children’s blood
dropped in lockstep with declining levels of lead in gasoline, and the decline
has been credited with some of the rise in IQ that has been measured in recent
decades. Even more amazingly, several studies have demonstrated that the
phaseout, which began in the late 1970s, may have been responsible for up to
half of the extraordinary and otherwise unexplained drop in crime that
occurred in the 1990s. 332

“the expense of investing in expectations, and the possibility of doing so
with less expense if certain kinds of interruptions are forestalled, are the
essential reasons for the invention and maintenance of rules. Rules are
aspects of indirect reciprocity beneficial to those who propose and perpetuate
them, not only because they force others to behave in ways explicitly
beneficial to the proposers and perpetuators but because they also make the
future more predictable so that plans can be carried out.” (Alexander, 1987,
p. 114)

2. Indirect (Socially Mediated) Somatic Effort may involve social
investments (initial costs, beneficent acts) in direct and indirect
reciprocity. […] Examples are purchases of goods to be used by one’s self
(which may represent reciprocity in the form of mutually beneficial exchanges
of resources between buyer and seller) and all social and other benefits given
to others as investments in reciprocity when the returns are realized through
assistance to one’s self. There are two kinds of mediation of somatic effort:
(a) direct assistance to Ego (i) by a relative (repayment to the relative’s
phenotype is likely not necessarily to be expected or required) and (n) by a
nonrelative (eventual repayment is likely to be expected, to either the
benevolent individual or its relatives) and (b) assistance to Ego as a return
on an investment made by Ego as a part of somatic effort (i.e., direct
reciprocity, such as, Ego helps a nonrelative, expecting return assistance
from the helped person at some later date). We can predict that infants and
very young children, especially, are evolved to exhibit effort that elicits
the (a) (i) kind of assistance above. What Trivers (1971) called “reciprocal
altruism” would include both the nepotistic and somatic (egoistic) effects of
investments in both direct and indirect reciprocity (thus, while beneficent,
or initially costly, it would be only temporarily phenotypically altruistic
and not genetically altruistic or costly at all) […]. Although also egoistic
in its consequences, socially mediated somatic effort that involves initial
costly investments (beneficence) may often be misinterpreted as altruistic
(that is, as genetically costly). Because of divisions of labor and social
interdependency in the modern world, this kind of egoism is also more
commonplace than direct somatic effort.

„Wenn diese Analyse der Grundströmungen richtig ist, dann erklären sich leicht
die hohen Grade von Weltfremdheit, Urteilsdünkel und Daseinsgefräßigkeit,
denen man überall begegnet. […] Wer jeden Menschen schlechthin in seiner
bloßen Menschlichkeit akzeptiert und ihm schon in dieser Daseinsqualität den
höchsten Wertrang zuspricht, kann die Ausbreitung dieses Akzeptierens nicht
mehr begrenzen, denn auf dieser Bahn gibt es keinen Halt. Die Handlungen und
Gedanken der Menschen, ihre Bosheiten, Tugenden und Laster, Künste und Spiele,
Klugheiten und Narrheiten — nichts wird von der Geltung ausgenommen, außer
allein die Behauptung und Haltung, die erkennen läßt, daß irgendetwas nicht
gelten soll — wer das sagt, hat „Vorurteile" und kommt nicht in Betracht. Der
politische Nutzen dieses Ethos ist eklatant, er besteht in der Chance, vom
künftigen Sieger verschont zu werden, wenn man es ihm beibringen kann; über
den unmittelbaren Kassennutzen braucht man kein Wort zu verlieren.“ 140f

“the rules of morality and law alike seem not to be designed explicitly to
allow people to live in harmony within societies but to enable societies to be
sufficiently united to deter their enemies. Within-society harmony is the
means not the end.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 185)

„Der Entfaltungsraum des Ausgleichs - Glück liegt ganz in der Öffent lichkeit,
in dem agitatorisch beherrschbaren Gelände, in dem eine wache redaktionelle
Presse - und Rundfunkpolizei mit allen Vorbehalten auf räumt. Dort setzt man
außer Kurs oder wenigstens unter Druck, was nicht im großen Nivellementsstrom
liegt, bis schließlich als unleugbare Unterschiede nur noch die bezifferbaren
bleiben. Da scharfe Profilierun gen, vor allem geistige, eo ipso Distanz
schaffen, und da man das nicht will, so wird das Aussprechbare randunscharf
und man muß sich in vagen Ideen aufhalten: Demokratisierung, repressive
Strukturen, Hochschulreform usw. Die Institutionen öffnen sich den
Interventionisten, Pianisten und Vorrednern. Wie angedeutet, erweisen sich
die Unterschiede des Besitzes und Einkommens noch als unterscheidbar, offenbar
deswegen, weil der Kapitalismus zu den Funktionsbedingungen einer so
verrückten Steigerung der Lebensansprüche gehört. So gelten in der
Öffentlichkeit um den Erdball herum dieselben Wertungen, wer ihnen dort
widerspräche, erwiese sich als Reaktionär, Faschist, Rhodesier, Ibo oder sonst
etwas Geächtetes und Abgebuchtes. Indem nun die öffentliche Sprache fast aller
Sender und Zeitungen dieser Welthälfte auf dieselben Begriffe einschwenkt,
zieht sich die Wirklichkeit in den Schatten zurück, sie kann dem Gesetz nicht
entgehen, daß jede Bestimmtheit Verneinungen enthält. So entstehen unter dem
Tisch stumme und intolerante Sensibilisierungen, eine Welt kleinteiliger
Sondertatsachen, der Haß greift auf die ältesten Rückstellungen zurück und
bricht bisweilen überraschend aus, die Jura-Berner, die Quebec-Kanadier, die
Bretonen und Katalanen schwingen ihre Fahnen. Im „Spiegel" vom 29. 4. 1968
wurde gefragt, wo die Analyse eines möglichen Guerillakampfes in Großstädten
bleibe.“ 144

„Pareto sagte im Trattato di sociologica generale § 229, es sei das
einzigartige Glück Venedigs gewesen, daß dort die Intellektuellen von der
Herrschaft ferngehalten wurden.“ 30

“in the analogous case of revenge, the desire to return the injury and the
sense that we ought not to do so, leading, as they do, in opposite directions,
are plainly distinct; and the obviousness of the distinction here seems to
remove any difficulty in admitting the existence of a parallel distinction
between the desire to return a benefit and the sense that we ought to return
it.” 28

Future liberals were described as being more curious, verbal, and self-
reliant, but also more assertive and aggressive, less obedient and neat. 311

Jews and Muslims excelled in long-distance trade in part because their
religions helped them create trustworthy relationships and enforceable
contracts. Even today, markets that require very high trust to function
efficiently (such as a diamond market) are often dominated by religiously
bound ethnic groups (such as ultra-Orthodox Jews), who have lower transaction
and monitoring costs than their secular competitors. 295

“the view that, by emphasizing and holding out an ideal model of morality, we
can teach people to behave as though they had been group-selected in one large
group, even though such selection is evidently a logical impossibility.”
(Alexander, 1987, p. 242)

“Because between-group competition and aggression are major concomitants of
within-group cooperativeness, moreover, I will also argue that moral
“advances” are not necessarily related to the philosophical ideal of morality
as either indiscriminate or self-sacrificing beneficence or producing the
greatest good for the greatest number.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 22)

there are two radically different approaches to the challenge of creating a
society in which unrelated people can live together peacefully. One approach
was exemplified by John Stuart Mill, the other by the great French sociologist
Emile Durkheim. I described Mill’s vision like this: First, imagine society as
a social contract invented for our mutual benefit. All individuals are equal,
and all should be left as free as possible to move, develop talents, and form
relationships as they please. […] Durkheim’s: Now imagine society not as an
agreement among individuals but as something that emerged organically over
time as people found ways of living together, binding themselves to each
other, suppressing each other’s selfishness, and punishing the deviants and
free riders who eternally threaten to undermine cooperative groups. The basic
social unit is not the individual, it is the hierarchically structured family,
which serves as a model for other institutions. Individuals in such societies
are born into strong and constraining relationships that profoundly limit
their autonomy. The patron saint of this more binding moral system is the
sociologist Emile Durkheim, who warned of the dangers of anomie (normlessness)
and wrote, in 1897, that “man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit
to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free himself
from all social pressure is to abandon himself and demoralize him.” A
Durkheimian society at its best would be a stable network composed of many
nested and overlapping groups that socialize, reshape, and care for
individuals who, if left to their own devices, would pursue shallow, carnal,
and selfish pleasures. 185

Brains evaluate instantly and constantly (as Wundt and Zajonc said). Social
and political judgments depend heavily on quick intuitive flashes (as Todorov
and work with the IAT have shown). Our bodily states sometimes influence our
moral judgments. Bad smells and tastes can make people more judgmental (as can
anything that makes people think about purity and cleanliness). Psychopaths
reason but don’t feel (and are severely deficient morally). Babies feel but
don’t reason (and have the beginnings of morality). Affective reactions are in
the right place at the right time in the brain (as shown by Damasio, Greene,
and a wave of more recent studies). Putting all six together gives us a pretty
clear portrait of the rider and the elephant, and the roles they play in our
righteous minds. The elephant (automatic processes) is where most of the
action is in moral psychology. Reasoning matters, of course, particularly
between people, and particularly when reasons trigger new intuitions.
Elephants rule, but they are neither dumb nor despotic. Intuitions can be
shaped by reasoning, especially when reasons are embedded in a friendly
conversation or an emotionally compelling novel, movie, or news story. 87

“the ideal state of morality postulated by philosophers, theologians, and
social scientists, and to Darwin’s “universalism” and Adam Smith’s “universal
benevolence,” If so, biology supports the view of Perry (1954) and numerous
other philosophers that morality (at least as expressed in the behavior of
individuals) is in fact only an ideal or a pursuit, and never actually
realized.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 201)

As you watch the surgery, you notice two nurses assisting in the operation—one
older, one younger. Both are fully attentive to the procedure, but the older
nurse occasionally strokes your son’s head, as though trying to comfort him.
[…] If you are a utilitarian, you should have no preference. The older nurse’s
actions did nothing to reduce suffering or improve the surgical outcome. If
you are a Kantian, you’d also give the older nurse no extra credit. She seems
to have acted absentmindedly, or (even worse, for Kant) she acted on her
feelings. She did not act out of commitment to a universalizable principle.
But if you are a Humean, then it is perfectly proper for you to like and
praise the older nurse. She has so fully acquired the virtue of caring that
she does it automatically and effortlessly, even when it has no effect. 147

“Moral systems are societies with rules. Rules are agreements or
understandings about what is permitted and what is not, about what rewards and
punishments are likely for specific acts, about what is right and wrong. […]
Moral behavior, in general, consists of following the rules—of not “cheating.”
[…] the concepts of moral and ethical arise because of conflicts of interest,
and that—at least up to now—moral systems have been designed to assist group
members” (Alexander, 1987, p. 21)

“Consciousness and related aspects of the human psyche (self-awareness, self-
reflection, foresight, planning, purpose, conscience, free will, etc.) are
here hypothesized to represent a system for competing with other humans for
status, resources, and eventually reproductive success. More specifically, the
collection of these attributes is viewed as a means of seeing ourselves and
our life situations as others see us and our life situations, so as to
outguess, outmaneuver, outdo those others—most particularly in ways that will
cause (the most and the most important of) them to continue to interact with
us in fashions that will benefit us and seem to benefit them. Consciousness,
then, is a game of life in which the participants are trying to comprehend
what is in one another’s minds before, and more effectively than, it can be
done in reverse. This is the reason for the great significance of time,
foresight, and planning in human activities, and for the bringing of
timerelated and -sequenced activities into consciousness. […] The impulse
factor is a combination of (1) previous learning about both costs and benefits
and (2) restraints on capabilities affected by evolutionary history (which can
be translated as individual differences in ease of acquiring abilities to
carry out specific acts, at least in comparison with others—hence, in ease of
likelihood of realizing proximate rewards or punishments such as,
respectively, pleasure and pain).” (Alexander, 1987, p. 129)

“The compulsive truth-teller is as pathological and unhappy as the compulsive
liar. Moreover, we do not always want to be told the truth. In the courtroom,
presumably, somebody’s life, career, or good name is at stake, and there is a
sharp conflict of interest that requires special effort by parties external to
the dispute to bring about society’s version of justice.” (Alexander, 1987, p.
207)

“Some saints, at least, really do appear to act contrarily to their own
interests, at least in the short run, and that is why they are singled out. It
would seem that they are the models we embrace in our moralizing efforts to
get others to carry their temporarily self-sacrificing behavior in the
continuous game of social reciprocity a shade farther than we do. To coerce
someone into helping all group members indiscriminately rather than his own
relatives preferentially is to cause him to help all of the rest of us, even
if ever so slightly; and one reason this is so is that reproductive success is
always relative.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 189)

“Without the pressure of between-group competition, within-group competition
would have been mild or nonexistent—or else dramatically different—because
groups would have been smaller and would have required less unity and
cooperativeness. […] in no other species do social groups have as their main
jeopardy other social groups of the same species—therefore, the unending
selective race toward greater social complexity, intelligence, and cleverness
in dealing with one another” (Alexander, 1987, p. 97)

“five major “atoms” of sociality. The overlays of reciprocity and
pseudoreciprocity, with the possibility of immediate or delayed returns,
brings the number of such “atoms” to 21 […] Human sociality seems composed of
countless such units, and I think we are constantly separating the flow of our
social interactions into units (acts, interactions, transactions) that we can
use for our own purposes (e.g., investments intended to test the readiness of
another to repay social debts with interest).” (Alexander, 1987, p. 105)

„Diese Lehren sind heutzutage nicht recht brauchbar, sie rechneten mit
grundsätzlich übersehbaren Situationen. Den zutraulichen kleinen
Meinungsträger der Gegenwart sollte man in den Labyrinthen der
Indoktrination, der Auf- und Zuklärung und des Imstichlassens nicht an sein
Gewissen verweisen.“ 125

“Some aspects of religion and law and ethics contribute to deception of others
by self-deception; Donald T. Campbell (1975) calls it “sincere hypocrisy” […]
Righteousness is a source of motivation.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 139)


“Senescence, defined as increasing susceptibility to environmental insults, is
a central aspect of the patterning of lifetimes. It has evolved as an
incidental, pleiotropic effect of the evolution of lifetimes as efforts to
maximize success in genetic reproduction.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 157)

“Those who agree cooperate; those who disagree conflict or compete; and those
who cooperate also use their enhanced abilities from cooperation to compete
with those with whom they have conflicts of interest. […] That people are in
general following what they perceive to be their own interests is, I believe,
the most general principle of human behavior.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 53)

Edmund Burke said it in 1790: To be attached to the subdivision, to love the
little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it
were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we
proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind. Adam Smith argued
similarly that patriotism and parochialism are good things because they lead
people to exert themselves to improve the things they can improve: That wisdom
which contrived the system of human affections … seems to have judged that the
interest of the great society of mankind would be best promoted by directing
the principal attention of each individual to that particular portion of it,
which was most within the sphere both of his abilities and of his
understanding. Now that’s Durkheimian utilitarianism. It’s utilitarianism done
by somebody who understands human groupishness. Robert Putnam has provided a
wealth of evidence that Burke and Smith were right. In the previous chapter I
told you about his finding that religions make Americans into “better
neighbors and better citizens.” 342

“the child is at first selfish, because he is still wholly a bundle of somatic
effort.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 154)

we can define moral capital as the resources that sustain a moral community.
More specifically, moral capital refers to the degree to which a community
possesses interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities,
institutions, and technologies that mesh well with evolved psychological
mechanisms and thereby enable the community to suppress or regulate
selfishness and make cooperation possible. 325

“first, that lifetimes are divisible into somatic and reproductive effort,
and, second, that reproductive effort can be subdivided, at least in humans,
into mating effort (on behalf of gametes), parental effort (on behalf of
offspring), and extraparental nepotistic effort (on behalf of collateral or
nondescendant relatives and descendants other than offspring). Next it is
useful to emphasize that humans are unusual among organisms in that all of
their life effort that is social in nature is permeated with reciprocity. The
possibility of mutually beneficial reciprocal interactions can cause both
somatic and reproductive effort to be socially mediated (nepotism, for
example, can involve reciprocity in which the return benefit goes to a
relative of the originally beneficent individual).” (Alexander, 1987, p. 98)

Bert Hölldobler and E. O. Wilson summarize the recent finding that
ultrasociality (also called “eusociality”) is found among a few species of
shrimp, aphids, thrips, and beetles, as well as among wasps, bees, ants, and
termites: In all the known [species that] display the earliest stages of
eusociality, their behavior protects a persistent, defensible resource from
predators, parasites, or competitors. The resource is invariably a nest plus
dependable food within foraging range of the nest inhabitants. Hölldobler and
Wilson give supporting roles to two other factors: the need to feed offspring
over an extended period (which gives an advantage to species that can recruit
siblings or males to help out Mom) and intergroup conflict. 225

“just not done from a sense of obligation but from some desire which is
intrinsically good, as arising from some intrinsically good emotion. Thus in
an act of generosity the motive is the desire to help another arising from
sympathy with that other” 28

“The rightness of an action consists in its being the origination of something
of a certain kind A in a situation of a certain kind, a situation in a certain
relation B of the agent to others or to his own nature.” 25

Where there is no conflict of interests, there is no need for justice. A
conflict of interest exists when one interest can be satisfied only at the
expense of the other; or what amounts to the same, when there is a conflict
between two values, and when it is not possible to realize both at the same
time; when the one can be realized only if the other is neglected; when it
is necessary to prefer the realization of the one to that of the other; to
decide which one is more important, or in other terms, to decide which is
the higher value, and finally; which is the highest value.

„R. Ingrim (Von Talleyrand bis Molotow, 1949, 148) sagt: „Die Intellektuellen
glauben, daß die Redefreiheit und Pressefreiheit wichtiger sind als Brot, weil
sie nämlich ihr Brot sind". Selbst eine vorbehaltslose Meinungsfreiheit
schließt allerdings die Verfestigung und Verstopfung der Verhältnisse nicht
aus. Der ungeplante, endgültige und schweigsame Verlust der Freiheit im
Realsinne kann sich in vielen Formen vollziehen, aber ebenso vielseitig ist
die Erfindungskraft der Philosophen, ihre Freizügigkeit zu verteidigen,“ 26

4. Indirect (Socially Mediated) Nepotism […] includes investments in
reciprocity in which returns from one’s beneficence may reasonably be expected
to be realized by relatives rather than one’s self […] if carried out
appropriately in evolutionary terms, all of the above four kinds of behavior
are genetically selfish, even those which are phenotypically self-sacrificing
or (temporarily) altruistic (or beneficent)

Cultures differ in their attitudes toward immigrants, and there is some
evidence that liberal and welcoming attitudes are more common in times and
places where disease risks are lower. 168

“I expect collective interests to be better served when decisions are made
with more information and by a larger proportion of the people involved, and
partly that I expect deception to be more difficult as knowledge about
morality is enhanced.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 33)

““taking” (selfish, spiteful) behavior, has been programmed to develop
(ontogenetically, by learning or whatever mechanisms) in the individual as
follows: (i) Take from relatives whenever the benefit to one’s own
reproduction is greater than the effect of the same benefit on reproduction of
relatives otherwise likely to receive it, devalued by the fractional
relationship of the relative to the taker, (ii) Take from nonrelatives
whenever the act is likely to be undetected, the cost of being detected is
likely to be lower than the benefit of taking, or the taking is part of a
reciprocal interaction that the benefit-giver anticipates being to his own
ultimate benefit. […] I expect any and all aspects of these strategies to be
concealedsometimes via self-deception as a means of deceiving others”
(Alexander, 1987, p. 126)

I’ll show that Glaucon was right [and Plato wrong]: people care a great deal
more about appearance and reputation than about reality. In fact, I’ll praise
Glaucon for the rest of the book as the guy who got it right—the guy who
realized that the most important principle for designing an ethical society is
to make sure that everyone’s reputation is on the line all the time, so that
bad behavior will always bring bad consequences. 90

The result is a fragile state of political egalitarianism achieved by
cooperation among creatures who are innately predisposed to hierarchical
arrangements. […] Those who could navigate this new world skillfully and
maintain good reputations were rewarded by gaining the trust, cooperation, and
political support of others. Those who could not respect group norms, or who
acted like bullies, were removed from the gene pool by being shunned,
expelled, or killed. Genes and cultural practices (such as the collective
killing of deviants) coevolved. The end result, says Boehm, was a process
sometimes called “self-domestication.” 193

“Plato, Butler, Hutcheson, Paley, Mill, each in his own way seeks at bottom to
convince the individual that he ought to act in so-called moral ways by
showing that to do so will really be for his happiness.” 22

“The concept of a single, just God for all people everywhere, for example, has
always failed. Brotherly love of the most sincere and intense varieties often,
if not universally, correlates with the presence of an enemy. […] the concept
of brotherly love has all too frequently had its greatest potency in war or
its equivalents. In arms race debates I have listened to American peace
activists who argue for some form of universal brotherly love yet seem to
differ from others chiefly in having designated as their enemy the current
administration of the United States government; and I have heard others whose
acceptance of their own view of how to resolve the arms race has become so
precious to them that anyone with a different view is automatically vilified.”
(Alexander, 1987, p. 243)

“reciprocity may have arisen as a modification of direct nepotism in which
flows of benefits began to pass in both directions successively rather than
just one direction from one relative to another. Benefits can be returned to a
social investor as a part of the egoistic behavior of the individual returning
it—i.e., at no cost to that individual. In such instances, possibilities for
cheating are essentially nonexistent and the overall complexity of the mental
activities accompanying evolution of the act will be reduced in comparison to
reciprocity per se. […] most discussions of “reciprocity” in nonhuman species
probably involve pseudoreciprocity instead.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 104)

“Two major assumptions, made universally or most of the time by philosophers,
are counter to the arguments presented here from biological considerations,
and I believe they are responsible for the confusion that prevents
philosophers from making sense out of morality or even being able to resolve
the paradoxes. These assumptions are the following: 1. That proximate and
ultimate mechanisms or causes have the same kind of significance and can be
considered together as if they were members of the same class of causes: this
is a failure to understand that proximate causes are evolved because of
ultimate causes, and therefore may be expected to serve them, while the
reverse is not true. Thus, pleasure is a proximate mechanism that in the usual
environments of history is expected to impel us toward behavior that will
contribute to our reproductive success. Contrarily, acts leading to
reproductive success are not proximate mechanisms that evolved because they
served the ultimate function of bringing us pleasure. 2. That morality
inevitably involves some self-sacrifice. This assumption involves at least
three elements: a. Failure to consider altruism to relatives as benefits to
the actor. Two consequences are that (i) self-interest is sometimes defined as
survival of the individual (which is instantly recognizable as insufficient)
and (ii) when selfinterest is defined so as to include pleasure, and all
similar proximate sensations or rewards, no procedure can be given to account
for the differences between pleasurable and nonpleasurable social actions. b.
Failure to comprehend all avenues of indirect reciprocity within groups. c.
Failure to take into account both within-group and between-group benefits.”
(Alexander, 1987, p. 175)

“origination of something, an origination which on different occasions or in
different people may be prompted by different motives.” 25

“tendencies toward moral behavior, and the establishment of moral systems, are
vehicles for promoting the goals of society as a whole […] the degrees of
beneficence that are actually reproductively appropriate will vary
dramatically as societies move between periods of extreme danger and relative
security” (Alexander, 1987, p. 121)

“the whole problem of care for the aged has arisen, not so much because lives
have been prolonged, but because familial bonds have been fractured,
explicitly in ways that have made confluences of interest between aged parents
and their children much less likely. Self-interested reasons for children to
care for aged parents have all but disappeared, and I suggest that this is why
their care is being thrust upon “society” and why it has become so expensive.
This expense to society is, in turn, why “society” has become concerned to
discuss the question of children’s moral and ethical obligations to their
parents.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 108)

“if I were going to try to establish a society in which everyone came as close
as possible to the philosophers’ ideal of indiscriminate altruism—and to do
this independent of external threats or world events—then I would also begin
by trying to minimize the individual’s “circle of secrecy.” Is this not what
Thomas Huxley was referring to when he said that the foundation of morality is
to have done, once and for all, with lying? Whether or not this is a desirable
goal is a question that I am not prepared to resolve, although I believe that
the answer given by people involved will depend heavily upon circumstances,
such as resource shortages, population pressure, extrinsic enemies, and the
specific values they have been taught or learned to revere throughout their
lives. Although there are reasons and situations in which it seems innocuous
and even desirable to argue for an effort to eliminate deception, the
consequences of attempting this in all situations— as Huxley and some moral
philosophers seem to have been suggesting should be the object of efforts
toward morality—may be somewhat different from what is at first imagined.”
(Alexander, 1987, p. 210)

„„Das Glück für alle, gleichmäßig verteilt unter alle". Nur die lenkbarsten,
d. h. hautnächsten Glücksquellen können unter alle gleichmäßig verteilt
werden.“ 63

“the forcing apart of physicians’ and their patients’ interests by the
impersonality and nonrepetitiveness of physician-patient interactions in
modern urban society is a principal reason for the rises in dissatisfaction,
litigation, and the expenses of medical care. For example, excessive use of
diagnostic procedures (that are often risky to the patient) are carried out to
protect the interests of physicians and hospitals because, I believe,
physicians and hospitals have lost the ability to convince patients that they
have indeed assumed the medical interests of the patient as if they were their
own.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 110)

“if we eventually pay our bills from fear of the county court, we shall still
have done what we ought, even though we shall not have done it as we ought.
The attempt to bring in the motive involves a mistake similar to that involved
in supposing that we can will to will. To feel that I ought to pay my bills is
to be moved towards paying them. But what I can be moved towards must always
be an action and not an action in which I am moved in a particular way, i.e.
an action from a particular motive; otherwise I should be moved towards being
moved, which is impossible.” 25

„Doch ist dieser Satz unvollständig, denn bekanntlich korrumpiert
Machtlosigkeit auch, und absolute Machtlosigkeit korrumpiert absolut. Jacob
Burckhardt scheint übrigens zu seinem oft angestrengten Aus spruch, nach dem
die Macht „an sich böse" sei, aus lokalem Grunde gekommen zu sein, erschreckt
durch die Brutalitäten der schweizerischen demokratischen Entwicklung seiner
Zeit. [...] Damit verkörperte er die sehr spezifische angelsächsische,
puritanische Synthese von verschärfter Religiosität und aggressiver
Weltdurchdringung auf politischen und wirtschaftlichen Wegen. Wahrscheinlich
kann man die von dem reinen Ethos freigesetzte Aggression auch als
„Angriffsenergie" in Arbeit und Kampf gegen die „Feinde Gottes" (der
„Zivilisation" usw.) umsetzen, weil den Protestanten die Wendung der
Aggression gegen sich selbst, als Askese im Sinne der mortificatio, versperrt
ist.“ 111

“As a consequence of the general ignorance of biology, many discussants of
human behavior fail to realize that nearly all traits of organisms are
variable or plastic. Those traits that in usual environments are not so
plastic, and that still reflect genetic variation within the human species
(like eye color, nose shape, ear lobe attachment, and hair patterns on the
back of the hand), are actually rare and probably will require special
explanations. Many such traits in humans are involved in individual and kin
recognition” (Alexander, 1987, p. 28)

Anything that binds people together into a moral matrix that glorifies the in-
group while at the same time demonizing another group can lead to moralistic
killing, and many religions are well suited for that task. Religion is
therefore often an accessory to atrocity, rather than the driving force of the
atrocity. 298

„Aus diesem Durcheinander ergab sich eine „Politologie", und hier hatte
zunächst Plato, am Volk wie an der Adelsherrschaft verzweifelt, jene abstrakte
und literarische Politik erfunden, die darin besteht, den Idealstaat zu
entwerfen, um den Haß gegen das Vorhandene ins Allgemeine und Mitteilbare zu
erheben. Seine mißglückten Unternehmungen in Sizilien bewiesen die
Weltfremdheit, die mit der ethisierenden Ausschweifung zusammenhängt; so sah
er nicht den herankommenden nächsten Feind, nämlich den Makedonen.“ 10

The moral domain varies by culture. It is unusually narrow in Western,
educated, and individualistic cultures. Sociocentric cultures broaden the
moral domain to encompass and regulate more aspects of life. People sometimes
have gut feelings—particularly about disgust and disrespect—that can drive
their reasoning. Moral reasoning is sometimes a post hoc fabrication. Morality
can’t be entirely self-constructed by children based on their growing
understanding of harm. Cultural learning or guidance must play a larger role
than rationalist theories had given it. If morality doesn’t come primarily
from reasoning, then that leaves some combination of innateness and social
learning as the most likely candidates. In the rest of this book I’ll try to
explain how morality can be innate (as a set of evolved intuitions) and
learned (as children learn to apply those intuitions within a particular
culture). We’re born to be righteous, but we have to learn what, exactly,
people like us should be righteous about. 38

“One indicator of the degree to which conflicts of interests among social
individuals have been minimized is the size of the group: only when conflicts
are minimal should very large group sizes be reached. The reason is that there
are automatic costs to group living, mainly involving access to resources […]
Conflicts of interest are not expected when all group members are genetically
identical. This is the case in clones of aphids, rotifers, or any other
organisms in which reproduction occurs through parthenogenesis or fission
without sexual recombination of the genetic materials” (Alexander, 1987, p.
83)

“Happiness and its anticipation are thus proximate mechanisms that lead us to
perform and repeat acts that in the environments of history, at least, would
have led to greater reproductive success. This is a central hypothesis in
evolutionary biology. Paralleling it in importance is the hypothesis that
control of resources is the most appropriate route to reproductive success
(the juvenile lives of all organisms represent a process of increasing control
of resources up to the point—through growth and development—that reproduction
becomes possible). Similarly, I presume that status is typically a vehicle
toward resource control and an outcome of it. If these ideas are correct, then
humans should always experience pleasure when they gain in status or increase
their control of resources (unless they do so at large expense to close
relatives or spouses), and they should experience some converse feeling when
they lose status or resource control (except, sometimes, when they transfer it
to relatives or spouses).” (Alexander, 1987, p. 45)

„Max Scheler sah hier die geistigen Folgen einer weltweit sich verbreitenden
Industriekultur voraus, er sah deren Tendenz zum Abbau der Profile, Spannungen
und Unterschiede, die Einebnung ausgrenzender in stitutioneller Normen und
der zugeordneten Gefühlsschranken. Diese Tendenzen haben gewaltige Fallkräfte,
und in der Zeit, da man das neue Europa zusammenzustecken sucht, hat man seine
alten Gehalte schon weithin preisgegeben, man ist des quälenden Insichtragens
von Gegensätzen müde und schnallt ab. Der Humanitarismus, der
Masseneudaimonismus und das, was noch Disraeli als die „verderbliche Lehre von
der natürlichen Gleichheit der Menschen" empfand, deren Übergang in Anarchie
ihm wohl vorschwebte, vereinigen sich zu einem Chor der Bejahung, der sich
gegen eine zögernde Zustimmung immer intoleranter zeigt, so daß allmählich auf
jeder geistigen und ungeistigen, moralischen und unmoralischen Landschaft die
Flagge „Auch hier ist Arkadien" weht. Man ahnt, daß der Idealismus, der in
dieser Übersteigerung des Ethischen doch zweifellos mitschwingt, eine
tiefgreifende Funktion haben könnte — wahrscheinlich wirkt er als
gegenresignativer Halt und verbirgt das Nichts.“ 143f

“The second brake comes into effect only when the threat of massive
destruction becomes so great that individuals begin to see the original source
of their security—their own government and its efforts to achieve “national
security”—as, rather, the greatest threat to the safety of themselves, their
relatives, and their friends. We have recently witnessed an extraordinary rise
of just this feeling.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 250)

„So hat ein Fritz Stern ein Buch über den „Kulturpessimismus als politische
Gefahr" (1963) geschrieben, und dort heißt es: „Lange vor Hitler, lange vor
Versailles hatten sich national gesinnte Menschen in Deutschland zutiefst
enttäuscht gefühlt, hatte ein quälendes kulturelles Unbehagen bestanden, und
dies hatte zu nationalistischen Phantasien und Utopien geführt, denen die
Elite der Deutschen bereitwillig zustimmte."“ 176

Richard Sosis, who examined the history of two hundred communes founded in the
United States in the nineteenth century. […] Sosis argues that rituals, laws,
and other constraints work best when they are sacralized. He quotes the
anthropologist Roy Rappaport: “To invest social conventions with sanctity is
to hide their arbitrariness in a cloak of seeming necessity.” But when secular
organizations demand sacrifice, every member has a right to ask for a cost-
benefit analysis, and many refuse to do things that don’t make logical sense.
In other words, the very ritual practices that the New Atheists dismiss as
costly, inefficient, and irrational turn out to be a solution to one of the
hardest problems humans face: cooperation without kinship. Irrational beliefs
can sometimes help the group function more rationally, particularly when those
beliefs rest upon the Sanctity foundation. Sacredness binds people together,
and then blinds them to the arbitrariness of the practice. […] Gods really do
help groups cohere, succeed, and outcompete other groups. 284f

„Zuletzt haben die inneren, nicht mehr zu neutralisierenden Spannungen in
Rußland wie in England, wo es 1912/13 im Zusammenhang mit der Home-Rule-
Bewegung in Irland zum Bürgerkrieg gekommen war und die Selbstregierung der
irischen Nationalisten im Sommer 1914 in Kraft treten sollte, und haben
endlich die deutschen Wahlergebnisse von 1912 mit dem großen Zuwachs der
Sozialdemokratie zweifellos die Regierungen veranlaßt, dem Kriegsausbruch
nicht mehr um jeden Preis aus dem Wege zu gehen. Die großen Landnahmen waren
beendet, man über legte sich schon die Teilung des portugiesischen
Kolonialbesitzes, und der Ausgleich der Konflikte im Inneren gelang nicht
mehr. Der Zeitpunkt, von dem an der Staat unter den Anprall der Gesell schaft
geriet, fällt in England etwa mit der Wirksamkeit Lockes zusammen, in
Frankreich mit der Erklärung der Menschen- und Bürgerrechte 1789, die vom
Staat als „corps social" spricht, und die Lorenz v. Stein das erste
Grundgesetz der neuen Gesellschaft nannte. Der Staat wird jetzt als
demokratisches Gebilde oder monarchisch-demokratisches Mischgebilde die
Neutralisierungsebene gesellschaftlicher Konflikte, und da die Armut
nachdrängte, machte er zu seiner wesentlichen inneren Aufgabe die
„Sozialpolitik", d. h. die gesetzgeberische Temperierung des Gegensatzes von
arm und reich. Die führende Figur war hier Napoleon III., dessen Bedeutung
immer noch unterschätzt wird.“ 106


„Vielmehr wird Aldous Huxley (Zeit muß enden, 1950, 343) mit Recht gesagt
haben, daß zur großen Überraschung der Neuhumanisten und liberalen
Kirchenanhänger die Abschaffung Gottes eine wahrnehmbare Lücke hinterließ.
Aber da die Natur ein Vakuum verabscheut, seien Nation, Kirche, Partei, Kultur
oder Kunst sofort eingedrungen, um die leere Nische zu füllen. Er vergaß dabei
die humanitär-optimistische Ethik, mit der ausgerüstet, und mit der Weltmacht
Sozialismus verbündet, sich manche Kirchenmänner eine gestaltungsfreudige und
herrschaftskräftige Zukunft zu versprechen scheinen. So verbindet sich die
humanitäre, masseneudaimonistische Ethik mit dem gesellschaftsreformerischen
Idealismus aus der Aufklärungszeit und mit sozialistischen Kategorien, um die
ratlos gewordene christliche Religion neu einzukleiden. Seit dies läuft,
wissen die Kirchen den Ausweg in die Welt. Von den alten Chiffren wie
Unsterblichkeit, Prädestination, Gnade, Erlösung und Sünde hört man wenig, um
so mehr von Schuld, meist der Anderen, ein Politikum, in das vor allem die EKD
(Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland) freudig eingetreten ist. In einer Welt,
in der die drei Großmächte den alten Begriff großer Machtpolitik wieder
darstellen, werden sich die Kirchen der Politisierung nicht entziehen können.
Die vollständige Staats-Indifferenz des Stifters („O unendliche
Gleichgültigkeit"! — Kierkegaard), entstanden teils aus der Erwartung
überirdischer Wendungen, teils aus der Verwurzelung in einfachen Volkskreisen,
läßt sich nicht wiederherstellen. Es bleiben dann eigentlich nur zwei Wege.
Der eine führt zu dem Versuch, selbst zu herrschen, und ein solcher hatte
seine einzige Chance in dem niedergeschlagenen Deutschland; der andere Weg
ist der zu einem Ausgleich mit sozialistischen Idealen, um den Anschluß an
die überall brodelnde Weltrevolution nicht zu verpassen.“ 129f

„Benedetto Croce äußerte einmal (Italia nostra, 27. Dez. 1914) die Hoffnung,
daß Deutschland den übrigen Völkern ein Beispiel und Vorbild geben werde; er
glaube, daß die deutschen Sozialisten, die sich mit dem Staat und mit seiner
eisernen Manneszucht (!) völlig eins fühlten, die wahren Bahnbrecher der
Zukunft ihrer Klasse sein würden. Croce konnte das zu jenem Zeitpunkt ohne
Absurdität sagen, weil in der Tat dasselbe Dienst- und Pflichtethos, dem
Preußen seinen Ruhm verdankte, in die Fundamente des Deutschen Reiches und
damit ebenso in die einer Partei eingegangen war, die damals das von allen
Sozialisten der Welt bewunderte Vorbild von Organisation, Disziplin und
Geschlossenheit hergab. Wir können uns auf dieses Beispiel beschränken, denn
man weiß, daß zu allen Zeiten der Dienst an einer organisierten Gemeinschaft
einen unvergleichbaren Erfüllungswert auch für die Sinnfrage hatte, über das
Sollen hinaus. Sich von den Institutionen konsumieren zu lassen gibt einen Weg
zur Würde für jedermann frei, und wer seine Pflicht tut, hat ein Motiv, das
von jedem anderen her unbestreitbar ist.“ 71f

independently reasoned judgment is possible in theory but rare in practice. 61

“Sir Arthur Keith (1947) was an effective member of the third group of
biologist-philosophers. Keith disagreed with Waddington (1941) and other
proponents of the naturalistic fallacy “in supposing that evolutionary
knowledge can provide a basis for modern ethics” (p. 6), and also with T. H.
Huxley in supposing that the “cosmic process” and the “ethical process” (p. 7)
are in opposition. Keith saw the two processes as working in harmony […]
Keith’s (1947) view approached that of T. H. Huxley when he described “The law
of Christ” as “incompatible with the law of evolution ... the two laws are at
war with each other; the law of Christ can never prevail until the law of
evolution is destroyed” (p. 15). Here I should note, incidentally, that Keith
failed to distinguish genetic or organic evolution from cultural change; he
simply lumped the two processes under evolution.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 184)

Das familienbezogene ethische Verhalten samt der daraus ableitbaren
Erweiterungen bis zum Humanitarismus und

I had found evidence for Hume’s claim. I had found that moral reasoning was
often a servant of moral emotions, and this was a challenge to the rationalist
approach that dominated moral psychology. 37

„Die sympathisierenden Impulse können, wie sich zeigt, den ursprünglichen, dem
Kinde schon eingedrückten Prägungsbestand überschreiten und sich an Partnern
orientieren, die in immer größeren Kreisen sich aus der Anschaulichkeit
entfernen, bis endlich die bloß schematische Vorstellung „Mensch" genügt.
Dann allerdings wird der Verpflichtungsgehalt mit zunehmendem Umfang der
Adressaten immer blasser und tritt schließlich in eine bloße Hemmung zurück:
Man darf den beliebigen anderen Menschen nicht verletzen, muß in ihm den
„Bruder" sehen usw. Unterscheidende, differenzierende Rechte gegenüber anderen
Gruppen werden damit gehemmt, und endlich langt man bei der Ideologie von der
substanziellen Gleichheit aller Menschen an. Der nächste Schritt besteht dann
in der Vorherrschaft des zahlenstärksten Volkeskraft seiner biologischen
Mächtigkeit.“ 86

“The fallacy underlying the view is that while to base the rightness of an act
upon its intrinsic goodness implies that the goodness in question is that of
the motive, in reality the rightness or wrongness of an act has nothing to do
with any question of motives at all. For, as any instance will show, the
rightness of an action concerns an action not in the fuller sense of the term
in which we include the motive in the action, but in the narrower and commoner
sense in which we distinguish an action from its motive and mean by an action
merely the conscious” 24

If you want to increase egg output, common sense tells you to breed only the
hens that lay the most eggs. But the reality of the egg industry is that hens
live crammed together into cages, and the best laying hens tend to be the more
aggressive, dominant hens. Therefore, if you use individual selection
(breeding only the most productive hens), total productivity actually goes
down because aggressive behavior—including killing and cannibalism—goes up.
[…] In the 1980s the geneticist William Muir used group selection to get
around this problem. He worked with cages containing twelve hens each, and he
simply picked the cages that produced the most eggs in each generation. Then
he bred all of the hens in those cages to produce the next generation. Within
just three generations, aggression levels plummeted. By the sixth generation,
the death rate fell from the horrific baseline of 67 percent to a mere 8
percent. Total eggs produced per hen jumped from 91 to 237, mostly because the
hens started living longer, but also because they laid more eggs per day. The
group-selected hens were more productive than were those subjected to
individual-level selection. They also actually looked like the pictures of
chickens you see in children’s books—plump and well-feathered, in contrast to
the battered, beaten-up, and partially defeathered hens that resulted from
individual-level selection. 238

Our righteous minds made it possible for human beings—but no other animals—to
produce large cooperative groups, tribes, and nations without the glue of
kinship. […] But at the same time, our righteous minds guarantee that our
cooperative groups will always be cursed by moralistic strife. 7

“the concept of God must be viewed as originally generated and maintained for
the purpose— now seen by many as immoral—of furthering the interests of one
group of humans at the expense of one or more other groups. Somehow, as the
concept became that of a universal, impartial god for all people, it converged
on the notion of modern moral philosophers that morality means indiscriminate
and self-sacrificing altruism by individuals so as to bring about the greatest
good to the greatest number. Needless to say, we have not yet been able to
develop the concepts of “good,” “moral,” “god”, and “impartiality” in law so
as to achieve this elusive goal.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 217)

Putnam examined the level of social capital in hundreds of American
communities and discovered that high levels of immigration and ethnic
diversity seem to cause a reduction in social capital. […] Diversity seems to
trigger not in-group/out-group division, but anomie or social isolation. In
colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to
“hunker down”—that is, to pull in like a turtle. […] What Putnam calls
turtling is the exact opposite of what I have called hiving. Liberals stand up
for victims of oppression and exclusion. They fight to break down arbitrary
barriers (such as those based on race, and more recently on sexual
orientation). But their zeal to help victims, combined with their low scores
on the Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity foundations, often lead them to push
for changes that weaken groups, traditions, institutions, and moral capital.
For example, the urge to help the inner-city poor led to welfare programs in
the 1960s that reduced the value of marriage, increased out-of-wedlock births,
and weakened African-American families. The urge to empower students by giving
them the right to sue their teachers and schools in the 1970s has eroded
authority and moral capital in schools, creating disorderly environments that
harm the poor above all. The urge to help Hispanic immigrants in the 1980s led
to multicultural education programs that emphasized the differences among
Americans rather than their shared values and identity. Emphasizing
differences makes many people more racist, not less. 343

“control of the essential resources of parenthood by females correlates with
lack of parental behavior by males, promiscuous polygyny, and absence of long-
term pair bonds. There is some evidence of parallel trends within human
societies […] whether children might not more severely reduce a woman’s than a
man’s chances to secure another mate. If this were so, then some mothers might
in certain circumstances be more likely than fathers to be cruel or neglectful
to their children, because they interfered with her ability to obtain a second
mate, or they might be more likely to allow cruelty by a prospective mate.”
(Alexander, 1987, p. 231)

If you think about religion as a set of beliefs about supernatural agents,
you’re bound to misunderstand it. You’ll see those beliefs as foolish
delusions, perhaps even as parasites that exploit our brains for their own
benefit. But if you take a Durkheimian approach to religion (focusing on
belonging) and a Darwinian approach to morality (involving multilevel
selection), you get a very different picture. You see that religious practices
have been binding our ancestors into groups for tens of thousands of years.
That binding usually involves some blinding—once any person, book, or
principle is declared sacred, then devotees can no longer question it or think
clearly about it. Our ability to believe in supernatural agents may well have
begun as an accidental by-product of a hypersensitive agency detection device,
but once early humans began believing in such agents, the groups that used
them to construct moral communities were the ones that lasted and prospered.
302

„Der Staat rinnt aus objektiven Gründen mit der Gesellschaft zusammen, ist
auf bestimmte, im wesentlichen wirtschaftliche und soziale Aufgaben hin
zweckrationalisiert, er verzichtet auf den moralischen Schutz der Staatsbürger
voreinander und wird gegenüber der Gesinnungs-Unterwanderung wehrlos, die er
bei Mächten wie Kirche, Presse und Rundfunkanstalten selber privilegiert hat.
Folglich entfallen schon von dieser Seite des Staates her die Gegenhalte, die
eine Gesellschaft verhindern könnten, das entgegengesetzte Extrem zu erleiden,
nämlich die volle Aggressivität der guten Sache. Der Humanitarismus liefert
nun nicht nur eine solche, sondern er verlangt auch nichts, weder Steuern
noch Wehrdienst, und er geht dazu noch mit allen wünschbaren Dingen zusammen,
mit dem Vorrang der privaten Interessen des Familienlebens, mit der ethischen
Auszeichnung des Wohlstandes, der endlich nach langer Einspruchszeit des
askesegeneigten Christentums sein gutes Gewissen bekommen hat, und mit dem
gerade bei uns verbreiteten abstrakt egalitären Sozialismus, den Karl Marx in
den weisen Worten voraussah, daß Deutschland einen ebenso klassischen Beruf
zur sozialen Revolution habe, wie es zur politischen unfähig sei.“ 179

“analyses that have built into them the criterion of repeatability so that
their assumptions, speculations, and hypotheses can be falsified if they are
indeed false, and their results can be verified by careful repetition to test
their accuracy. No other procedure allows us to generate a cumulative growth
of true understanding of any topic, particularly human behavior where our
different interests conflict so directly. […] Only science, among human
activities, comes close to being a self-correcting method of pursuing the
truth.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 145)

[…] the righteous mind is like a tongue with six taste receptors. In this
analogy, morality is like cuisine: it’s a cultural construction, influenced by
accidents of environment and history, but it’s not so flexible that anything
goes. 133

„Normalerweise leben die Menschen in einem Durcheinander „mittlerer
Tugendhaftigkeit", von durchschnittlicher Redlichkeit bei einiger
Toleranzbreite; auch mit sehr verschiedenen Graden der Verhärtung, und so
werden sie den Situationen teils gerecht, teils gehen sie sie
gewohnheitsmäßig durch, teils bleiben sie stumpf. Eine verschärfte
Grundsätzlichkeit und Konzentration wird im Leben der Individuen und Völker
nur unter seltenen Bedingungen herausgefordert, so etwa angesichts
ungewöhnlicher Risiken und Bedrohungen oder dann, wenn in Zeiten des Umbruchs
eine Ideologie dazu dient, ein Spannungsgefälle aufrecht zu erhalten, so daß
der Gegner greifbar bleibt; auch gibt es Zeiten, da plötzliche oder
chronische Erschütterungen die Reflexion aufjagen, die sich dann immer bis in
die extremsten Positionen entfaltet. So geschah es in der hier behandelten
Zeit. Auf die vollständige Niederlage folgt eine Flut von Verbalisierungen
und ethischen Forderungen, man sucht mit stürmischer Reizbarkeit nach neuen
„reinen" Lösungen. Erst unter solchen Umständen tritt dann an die Oberfläche,
was für gewöhnlich im Durcheinander der kompromißhaften Gewohnheiten
verschüttet liegt: Es gibt mehrere Fundamente der Moral, mehrere Quellen des
Sollens, die durchaus unabhängig, ja sogar miteinander unverträglich sind;
dies stellt sich erst dann heraus, wenn Situationen eintreten, die extreme
Lösungen erfordern, so daß sich das Ethos radikalisiert. So führte bekanntlich
eine verschärfte, radikalisierte Jenseits- und Erlösungsreligion in der Regel
zur kategorischen Verwerfung bestimmter innerweltlicher Verhaltensweisen,
einschließlich des dazugehörigen Ethos, z. B. der Familiengründung oder des
Kriegsdienstes. Es gibt somit ethische Impulse, die in Realrepugnanz stehen,
in sachlichem Widerstreit, aber diese Intoleranzen treten erst unter
bestimmten Bedingungen hervor. Den latenten Widerstreit zwischen den
Ethosquellen hatten die Griechen schon entdeckt, denn wahrscheinlich
behauptete schon Antisthenes selber, daß wer sich auf den Boden des einen
Naturrechts, des Rechtes des Stärkeren stelle, von dem anderen Naturrecht her,
von der Treue und dem Glauben (Pistis) aus als Rechtsbrecher erscheinen müsse.
Damit war schon damals eine Situation begriffen, in der sich letzte Instanzen
der Moral unversöhnlich gegenübertreten, denn auch das Recht des Stärkeren,
mit anderen Worten die Macht, kann ethisch fruchtbar sein.“ 23

„Unter diesen Gesichtspunkten erscheinen die Institutionen einmal als
„Betriebe", als geschichtlich bedingte Weisen der Bewältigung lebenswichtiger
Aufgaben und Umstände, so wie die Ernährung, die Fortpflanzung, die Sicherheit
ein geregeltes und dauerndes Zusammenwirken erfordern; sie erscheinen von der
anderen Seite als stabilisierende Gewalten und als die Formen, die ein seiner
Natur nach riskiertes und unstabiles, affektüberlastetes Wesen findet, um sich
selbst und um sich gegenseitig zu ertragen, etwas, worauf man in sich und
anderen einigermaßen zählen kann.“ 94

“as we age, and as senescence proceeds, large numbers of potential sources of
mortality tend to lurk ever more malevolently just “below the surface,” so
that, unfortunately, the odds are very high against any dramatic lengthening
of the maximum human lifetime through technology.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 79)

„So ist bei uns vom Staate in seiner alten Mission als Hüter der Sicherheit
wenig übrig geblieben: manebat quaedam imago rei publicae (Tacitus). Es
besteht eben eine zuletzt unschlichtbare Gegensätzlichkeit zwischen Familie
und Staat und daher zwischen dem humanitären und dem politischen Ethos, denn
die Kategorien des letzteren sind Sicherheit und Ehre, die es anderswo nicht
gibt, was an guten Gaben man auch finden möge. [...] Zu der Schwächung der
Staatsautorität, zumal in den westlichen Ländem, trug der Umstand bei, daß sie
als Neutralisationskraft entbehrlich schien, zumal wenn man den steigenden
Lebensstandard selber als ein solches Mittel ansah; dann würden, wie manche
glaubten, die gesellschaftlichen Gegensätze im Wohlstand ertränkt werden.
Diese rein materielle Ansicht erwies sich als falsch, denn nicht nur der
Hunger macht aufsässig; auch Statusfragen, auch der Mangel an sinnvollen
Zielsetzungen oder das Gefühl, man sei ein Opfer moralisch argumentierender
Feindseligkeit, schaffen Unruhe. Außerdem bildete sich eine neue Opposition,
die sog. Intelligenz, deren Machtbedürfnisse in keiner Weise abgesättigt
sind, eine Quasi-Aristokratie, die den Ansturm auf die schon unstabile
Staatsautorität führt: Theologen, Soziologen, Philosophen, Redakteure und
Studenten bilden den Kern. „Von allen Aristokratien die perfideste und
härteste ist die Talent-Aristokratie" sagte schon Sorel (La ruine du monde
antique, 88), und da diese Gruppen sämtlich, von den vordringlichen
Bedürfnissen der Wirtschaft aus gesehen, produktionsunwichtig sind, können sie
gar nicht befriedigt werden, außer durch Herrschaft, und so wird die Ungeduld
und Aggressivität immer drängender. Unter diesen Voraussetzungen geben wir
auch der bisweilen geäußerten Hoffnung, der „Mensch der wissenschaftlichen
Zivilisation" (H. Schelsky) werde nicht nur die Technik, sondern auch sich
selbst als Gesellschaft und Seele in vernünftiger Weise produzieren, fürs
erste wenig Chancen.“ 108

- a. The realm in which the word moral most applies
- b. Most likely to include subconscious” (Alexander, 1987, p. 133)

„Der Prediger der Liebesethik kann ebenso wie der säkularisierte Humanitäre
nur in Abtrennung von weltlichen Geschäften rein bleiben, nur in der Distanz
zu Machtfragen überzeugt eine „weltlose" Liebe, die nicht kalkuliert. Deshalb
hat Luther den Predigern die Intervention in die Herrschaft verboten: „Ist
aber der Kaiser faul, so halte du die Faust stille und lass den Kaiser den
Bauch regieren und regiere du, Prediger, die Seele" (84), und eben deshalb hat
er mit Schärfe diejenigen verworfen, die „ex Ecclesia volunt weltlich
herrschaft machen". […] Luthers Lehre wußte, daß der Mensch nicht „gut" ist
und folglich die Liebe und Brüderlichkeit, unmittelbar in die Ordnungen der
Welt eingemischt, eine blutige Demaskierung des guten Menschen ergeben würde.
„Darum ein ganzes Land oder die Welt mit dem Evangelio zu regieren sich
überwinden, das ist eben, als wenn ein Hirt in einen Stall zusammentäte Wölfe,
Löwen, Adler, Schafe und ließe jegliches frei unter den anderen gehen."“ 123f

Neither George W. Bush nor his father, George H. W. Bush, had the ability to
move audiences to tears, but both had the great fortune to run against
cerebral and emotionally cool Democrats (Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, and John
Kerry). It is no coincidence that the only Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt
to win election and then reelection combined gregariousness and oratorical
skill with an almost musical emotionality. Bill Clinton knew how to charm
elephants. 175

„Erst mit dem Eindringen von Einflüssen vorderasiatischer Reli gionen mit
ihrem scharfen Dualismus, die man schon bei manchen Vorsokratikem und bei
Plato spürt, kann man rein geistig auf der falschen Seite stehen und damit in
die Feindlage geraten.“ 24

„Der selbstreflektierte, überreizte Individualismus heißt Subjektivismus, in
ihm rast der Zerstörungsvorgang der geistigen Halte und Inhalte zu Ende, sie
werden aus der unbewußten Verbindlichkeit in die Erlebnisver arbeitung,
Reflexion und „Aussage" heraufgepumpt und dann ausgekaut. Es liegt in der
Natur der Dinge, daß sich in den künstlerischen, literarischen und
redaktionellen Bereichen dieser Sachverhalt greifbarer darstellt als anderswo,
aber er läßt sich verallgemeinern. Alle die Heimatlosen, Verirrten,
Ausgespieenen, Zuschauer und Bummler, die uns die neuere Literatur seit
Leopold Bloom, Herrn K. und Ulrich vorführt, sind Landsleute derselben
unwohnlichen Heimat, aufgewachsen im Trommelfeuer der Gesinnungen dieses
Jahrhunderts und folglich ratlos, dabei doch um sich selbst rotierend.
Heutzutage ist die Haut wichtig, sie hält die vielen Seelen zusammen, und
folglich trägt man sie nicht gern zu Markte.“ 154

“Aged, moribund individuals are less likely to exhibit or elicit the same
intensity of distress as young individuals, partly for the reason that their
interests are more likely to be realized through death when those interests
conflict with the interests of relatives, and such conflicts arise
automatically with the onset of irreversible senility or other potentially
terminal problems of the aged. Parallel conflicts may be frequent between
parents and young offspring, but there they arise in a situation in which the
offspring normally benefits itself and its parents (and other relatives) alike
by intense, attractive, and emotional calls for assistance. Moreover, the baby
or child possesses potential for assisting in its own reproductive success
directly by someday producing offspring or helping other relatives; its
reproductive value is rising.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 223)

“A corollary to reproductive opportunity leveling in humans may occur through
mitosis and meiosis in sexual organisms. It has generally been overlooked that
these very widely studied processes are so designed as usually to give each
gene or other genetic subunit of the genome (= the genotype or set of genetic
materials of the individual) the same opportunity as any other of appearing in
the daughter cells. […] the leveling of reproductive opportunity for
intragenomic components—regardless of its mechanism—is a prerequisite for the
remarkable unity of genomes” (Alexander, 1987, p. 87)

“The theory of moral systems that I am espousing is obviously contractarian,
as opposed to utilitarian (cf. Grant, 1985; Rawls, 1971); it is also a
particular form of contractarian theory in which (1) individuals seek their
own interests; (2) their interests are ultimately reproductive— hence, include
to varying and predictable degrees the interests of relatives and those with
whom relatives are shared (such as spouses); (3) interests of individuals can
be furthered by cooperating with others both relatives and nonrelatives; (4)
the mechanisms are direct and indirect reciprocity, the latter involving a
very complex significance of reputation or status; and (5) the rules consist
of restraints on particular methods of seeking self-interests, specifically on
activities that affect deleteriously the efforts of others to seek their own
interests. What is new in this theory is that (a) interests are seen as
reproductive, not as individual survival, and, accordingly, pleasure and
comfort are postulated to have evolved as vehicles of reproductive success,
and (b) the mechanism of indirect reciprocity is made explicit as the central
feature. These are not trivial refinements, since together they can account
for aspects of beneficence that have perplexed philosophers, theologians, and
all students of morality who have previously postulated either contractarian
or utilitarian models.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 98)

“moral systems are constructed via the following “giving” behaviors or “rules”
[…]

„Die Taube ist ein Symbol der Liebe und des Friedens, aber die Biologen
wissen, daß sie nicht die kleinste Tötungshemmung gegen Artgenossen hat.“ 99

Eine Mehrzahl instinktiver, verhaltensphysiologisch greifbarer
Regulationen, einschließlich der Ethik des Wohlbefindens und des Glücks
(Eudaimonismus)

“The Stage of Universal Ethical Principles […] For me it is rather a
culmination of the tendency to become preoccupied with rule-following, rule-
enforcement, and rule-making by those increasingly concerned with reproductive
effort, use of power, and confidence that one’s investments in reciprocity
were not in vain and will continue to serve one’s relatives after one’s own
demise.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 152)

“there are parallels among the efforts toward openness in science, openness in
law as impartial justice, and openness of a god argued to be universal and
rational. […] Each step taken in the direction of openness in the pursuit of
truth, i.e., in the scientific sense, seems to me likely to better the world
situation. […] the approach of advocating openness for the purpose of allowing
individuals and groups of individuals to make their own cost-benefit analyses
is worthwhile, if not imperative. It is also true, I think, that pressure for
openness in the matters most relevant to accidental or insane extinction
through intergroup strife is directly consistent with the tendencies and goals
of individual humans.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 215)