Richard D. Alexander, The Biology of Moral Systems , Foundations of Human Behavior (Hawthorne, N.Y: A. de Gruyter, 1987).

“it is now possible to abort fetuses more easily and less expensively than
ever before. It is also possible to save babies that previously would have
died, even though it is not always possible simultaneously to cause the baby
to attain the level of quality in life that previously characterized all
babies (or nearly all) that were able to survive. The question is thus posed,
and must be answered by conscious, deliberate decision, whether a child ought
to be kept alive if its condition will be, perhaps unprecedentedly, miserable
or painful or “vegetable”-like. This increasing degree and consciousness of
control by some individuals (doctors, parents) over the life and death of
others seems to stir a general uneasiness among people. The rest of society is
placed in the position of mediating the conflict of interest between parent
and its offspring under the conditions that what is done to one individual, or
class of individuals, may affect what is done to other individuals, or other,
even totally different classes of individuals in the same society—that is, it
may affect the general level of beneficence in society, hence the unity of
society as well.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 221)

“Suppose we now take the same approach as appears to be currently adopted for
determining the rights of the moribund—that of post-consciousness. We can ask
if the offspring is conscious or preconscious—that is, whether or not it has
acquired any kind of self-knowledge equivalent to that we regard as existing
in ourselves. Regardless of the difficulty of answering that question, it at
least gives us a reasonable starting point.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 221)

Arnold Gehlen, Moral und Hypermoral: eine pluralistische Ethik , 4th ed. (Wiesbaden: Athenaion, 1981).

„Sie ist das Werk der Intellektuellen, die so gern die Freiheit und den
Globuseinfluß für sich und die sozialisti sche Gleichheit bei den Anderen
hätten. [...] hier wird Herrschaft erstrebt, und für die Massen die
Lämmerweide.“ 114

„Wenn die Daseinsnot am schlechten Willen der Regierenden liegt, kann man wie
ein Provinzanwalt das große, keineswegs menschenfreundliche Schicksal auf
Personen ablenken und diese haftbar machen. Der Haß gegen den Luxus der
Feudalen, vielleicht antike Reminiszenzen an frugales Hirtenleben und vor
allem wohl die Ahnung, daß ein Automatismus zunehmender Glücksgefräßigkeit
bevorstehen könne, haben nun gerade bei den logisch konsequentesten, d. h.
blutigsten Fortschrittlern den Gedanken an Glücksmaximierung ausgeschlossen:
Robespierre, Saint-Just und Babeuf verkündeten einhellig „le bonheur de
médiocrité" - das Kleingärtnerglück.“ 61

Michael Tomasello, one of the world’s foremost experts on chimpanzee cognition
[…]: “It is inconceivable that you would ever see two chimpanzees carrying a
log together.” I was stunned. Chimps are arguably the second-smartest species
on the planet, able to make tools, learn sign language, predict the intentions
of other chimps, and deceive each other to get what they want. As individuals,
they’re brilliant. So why can’t they work together? What are they missing?
Tomasello’s great innovation was to create a set of simple tasks that could be
given to chimps and to human toddlers in nearly identical form. Solving the
task earned the chimp or child a treat (usually a piece of food for the chimp,
a small toy for the child). Some of the tasks required thinking only about
physical objects in physical space—for example, using a stick to pull in a
treat that was out of reach, or choosing the dish that had the larger number
of treats in it rather than the smaller number. Across all ten tasks, the
chimps and the two-year-olds did equally well, solving the problems correctly
about 68 percent of the time. But other tasks required collaborating with the
experimenter, or at least recognizing that she intended to share information.
For example, in one task, the experimenter demonstrated how to remove a treat
from a clear tube by poking a hole in the paper that covered one end, and then
she gave an identical tube to the chimp or child. Would the subjects
understand that the experimenter was trying to teach them what to do? In
another task, the experimenter hid the treat under one of two cups and then
tried to show the chimp or child the correct cup (by looking at it or pointing
to it). The kids aced these social challenges, solving them correctly 74
percent of the time. The chimps bombed, solving them just 35 percent of the
time (no better than chance on many of the tasks). According to Tomasello,
human cognition veered away from that of other primates when our ancestors
developed shared intentionality. At some point in the last million years, a
small group of our ancestors developed the ability to share mental
representations of tasks that two or more of them were pursuing together. For
example, while foraging, one person pulls down a branch while the other plucks
the fruit, and they both share the meal. Chimps never do this. Or while
hunting, the pair splits up to approach an animal from both sides. Chimps
sometimes appear to do this, as in the widely reported cases of chimps hunting
colobus monkeys, but Tomasello argues that the chimps are not really working
together. Rather, each chimp is surveying the scene and then taking the action
that seems best to him at that moment. Tomasello notes that these monkey hunts
are the only time that chimps seem to be working together, yet even in these
rare cases they fail to show the signs of real cooperation. They make no
effort to communicate with each other, for example, and they are terrible at
sharing the spoils among the hunters, each of whom must use force to obtain a
share of meat at the end. 227

„Nun steckt im Begriff des Naturrechts auch die Frage nach dem, der es auslegt
— wer bringt die Gesetzestafeln herunter? Ohne Zweifel der Philosoph, und je
großartiger das Naturrecht durch ihn erhöht wird, um so gewaltiger wird die
eigene Rolle.“ 29f

In his book Darwin’s Cathedral, Wilson catalogues the ways that religions have
helped groups cohere, divide labor, work together, and prosper. He shows how
John Calvin developed a strict and demanding form of Christianity that
suppressed free riding and facilitated trust and commerce in sixteenth-century
Geneva. He shows how medieval Judaism created “cultural fortresses that kept
outsiders out and insiders in.” But his most revealing example […] is the case
of water temples among Balinese rice farmers in the centuries before Dutch
colonization. Rice farming is unlike any other kind of agriculture. Rice
farmers must create large irrigated paddies that they can drain and fill at
precise times during the planting cycle. It takes a cast of hundreds. In one
region of Bali, rainwater flows down the side of a high volcano through
rivulets and rivers in the soft volcanic rock. Over several centuries the
Balinese carved hundreds of terraced pools into the mountainside and irrigated
them with an elaborate series of aqueducts and tunnels, some running
underground for more than a kilometer. At the top of the whole system, near
the crest of the volcano, they built an immense temple for the worship of the
Goddess of the Waters. They staffed the temple with twenty-four full-time
priests selected in childhood, and a high priest who was thought to be the
earthly representative of the goddess herself. The lowest level of social
organization was the subak, a group of several extended families that made
decisions democratically. Each subak had its own small temple, with its own
deities, and each subak did the hard work of rice farming more or less
collectively. […] The ingenious religious solution to this problem of social
engineering was to place a small temple at every fork in the irrigation
system. The god in each such temple united all the subaks that were downstream
from it into a community that worshipped that god, thereby helping the subaks
to resolve their disputes more amicably. This arrangement minimized the
cheating and deception that would otherwise flourish in a zero-sum division of
water. The system made it possible for thousands of farmers, spread over
hundreds of square kilometers, to cooperate without the need for central
government, inspectors, and courts. The system worked so efficiently that the
Dutch—who were expert hydrologists themselves—could find little to improve.
288f


„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

language became possible only after our ancestors got shared intentionality.
Tomasello notes that a word is not a relationship between a sound and an
object. It is an agreement among people who share a joint representation of
the things in their world, and who share a set of conventions for
communicating with each other about those things. If the key to group
selection is a shared defensible nest, then shared intentionality allowed
humans to construct nests that were vast and ornate yet weightless and
portable. 230

“the very worst thing one could reveal to associates and potential
interactants is that he is, first and foremost, a selfinterested individual.
One way of avoiding the impression that this might be so is to deny that
hedonism or self-interest could possibly be a reasonable creed. Another is to
believe sincerely that one is not self-interested. We see in these arguments a
reason for promoting an ideally moral model of society that carries benefits
for the promoter: it is a way of assisting others to believe that we ourselves
are more moral than we are.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 136)

„Ein Kampf auf Leben und Tod zwischen Einzelnen, etwa im Kriege, ist ja
moralisch keineswegs verwerflich, wenn die Chancen ungefähr gleich sind, aber
was wir ohne weiteres verwerfen, ist die Tötung von Wehrlosen, und sie ist ja
in dem Beispiel der technischen Ferntötung gemeint. Im allgemeinen Begriff
besteht das Böse wohl in der Aggression gegen Wehrlose, sei es Tötung,
Quälerei, Erniedrigung, Entwürdigung oder was immer. Es kann auch darin
bestehen, daß jemand unter Bedingungen gesetzt wird, in denen Überleben und
Sichtreubleiben sich ausschließen, damit kommt das „suum esse conservare"
(Spinoza) in Widerspruch zu sich selbst. Auch die Vernichtung des Generösen
und der Großherzigkeit ist böse, ein Geschäft, auf das, unsere Zeit wie keine
andere abzielt (H. Ball, Die Flucht aus der Zeit, 1927, 96 ). Hier geht es
dann um den geistigen Teil des Bösen, den die Verhaltensforschung nicht leicht
greifen kann. Die Ehrverweigerung, die Entwürdigung und Demütigung, der
auferlegte Zwang, unter niedrigen Umständen leben zu müssen, das sind
bösartige und von Grund aus empörende Zumutungen, und gegenüber der
herrschenden Meinung ist die Vermutung berechtigt, das Böse könnte in seiner
äußersten Aufgipfelung einer kalkulierten Aggression gegen den Wehrlosen
gerade darin bestehen, ihn unter entwürdigenden Bedingungen am Leben zu
lassen.“ 181

„den Interessen der Söldnermarschälle mußte die Bagatellisierung alter
Verbindlichkeiten, Loyalitäten und Machtreste nur dienlich sein, und der
Einzelne, der sich zu halten suchte, hatte die Redewendung für eine
Präventiv-Kapitulation bereits zur Hand, er ging eben in ein „höheres
Vaterland" ein. Der Logos, der diesen Uberstaat angeblich durchwaltete, war
auch nicht weniger prak tisch: nach der einen Seite der Bedeutung führte er
zu der griechischen Sprache und Begriffswelt hin, die an allen den zahllosen
Höfen, Garnisonen, Städten, Märkten und Kolonien die Verständigung
herstellte, wie die englische Sprache in Indien; andererseits war der Logos
der an den Himmel projizierte Philosoph selber, ähnlich wie heute die
sogenannte WeItmeinung der verabsolutierte Redakteur ist.“ 28

The gains from cooperation and division of labor are so vast that large
companies can pay more than small businesses and then use a series of
institutionalized carrots and sticks—including expensive monitoring and
enforcement mechanisms—to motivate self-serving employees to act in ways the
company desires. But this approach (sometimes called transactional leadership)
has its limits. Self-interested employees are Glauconians, far more interested
in looking good and getting promoted than in helping the company. In contrast,
an organization that takes advantage of our hivish nature can activate pride,
loyalty, and enthusiasm among its employees and then monitor them less
closely. This approach to leadership (sometimes called transformational
leadership) generates more social capital—the bonds of trust that help
employees get more work done at a lower cost than employees at other firms.
263

„Zurückkehrend zu dem Thema der Produktivität des Entlastungseffekts zeigt
sich ein Vergleich mit der Sprache lohnend, denn die Institutionen wie Ehe,
Familie, Arbeit, Recht, Wissenschaft usw. mit allen ihren Einrichtungen ähneln
der Sprache insofern, als sie ein automatisches Schonverständigtsein bewirken,
und als innerhalb ihrer Grenzen und Regeln eine beliebige Verfeinerung,
Anreicherung und Vertiefung des jeweils eingegossenen Themas möglich ist.
Taine schrieb in einem Brief an Guizot (De Jouvenel, De la souveraineté, 1955,
295): „Die Geschichte zeigt, daß die Regierungen, die Religionen und Kirchen,
alle die großen Institutionen die einzigen Mittel sind, durch die der
tierische und wilde Mensch (l'homme animal et sauvage) seinen kleinen Teil an
Vernunft und Gerechtigkeit erwirbt." Allein an dieser Stelle kann man den
Gemeinplatz festmachen, der von der Freiheit als einem Ertrag der
Selbstbegrenzung spricht, denn anderswo gibt es keine, geschweige eine „edle"
Natur unterhalb des Überbaus der Institutionen; sondern Zwänge, Aggressionen,
„Erlebnisse" und ein wahrhaft unentschuldbares Sichgehenlassen. Der Mensch
weiß nicht, was er ist, daher kann er sich nicht direkt verwirklichen, er muß
sich mit sich durch die Institutionen vermitteln lassen. Gegensätze und
Spannungen bedürfen nicht der Versöhnung, sondern der Institutionalisierung,
um sie geregelt auszutragen, und gegen den gewaltigen Anprall der
Gleichheitsregie, die herrschen will, findet man nur Schutz in Einrichtungen,
die sich verteidigen lassen.“ 97

We are terrible at seeking evidence that challenges our own beliefs, but other
people do us this favor, just as we are quite good at finding errors in other
people’s beliefs. When discussions are hostile, the odds of change are slight.
The elephant leans away from the opponent, and the rider works frantically to
rebut the opponent’s charges. But if there is affection, admiration, or a
desire to please the other person, then the elephant leans toward that person
and the rider tries to find the truth in the other person’s arguments. The
elephant may not often change its direction in response to objections from its
own rider, but it is easily steered by the mere presence of friendly elephants
(that’s the social persuasion link in the social intuitionist model) or by
good arguments given to it by the riders of those friendly elephants (that’s
the reasoned persuasion link). There are even times when we change our minds
on our own, with no help from other people. Sometimes we have conflicting
intuitions about something, as many people do about abortion and other
controversial issues. Depending on which victim, which argument, or which
friend you are thinking about at a given moment, your judgment may flip back
and forth 84

Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Vintage Books, 2013).

My definition of morality was designed to be a descriptive definition; it
cannot stand alone as a normative definition. (As a normative definition, it
would give high marks to fascist and communist societies as well as to cults,
so long as they achieved high levels of cooperation by creating a shared moral
order.) But I think my definition works well as an adjunct to other normative
theories, particularly those that have often had difficulty seeing groups and
social facts. Utilitarians since Jeremy Bentham have focused intently on
individuals. They try to improve the welfare of society by giving individuals
what they want. But a Durkheimian version of utilitarianism would recognize
that human flourishing requires social order and embeddedness. It would begin
with the premise that social order is extraordinarily precious and difficult
to achieve. A Durkheimian utilitarianism would be open to the possibility that
the binding foundations—Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity—have a crucial role
to play in a good society. I don’t know what the best normative ethical theory
is for individuals in their private lives. But when we talk about making laws
and implementing public policies in Western democracies that contain some
degree of ethnic and moral diversity, then I think there is no compelling
alternative to utilitarianism. I think Jeremy Bentham was right that laws and
public policies should aim, as a first approximation, to produce the greatest
total good. I just want Bentham to read Durkheim and recognize that we are
Homo duplex before he tells any of us, or our legislators, how to go about
maximizing that total good. 301

„Die seit langem ausgebaute Vorbereitung dieser Sanktionierung des Daseienden
aus dem Grunde des Daseins bestand in dem endlosen Kritisieren und
Problematisieren, das jede Eindeutigkeit und Grenze benagte, bis niemand mehr
gegenüber den letzten Enthem mungen etwas anderes hatte als ein verlegenes
Lächeln.“ 141

“no organism outside clones has been shown to display population-wide
indiscriminate beneficence […] only in human systems of indirect reciprocity
does a modicum of essentially indiscriminate beneficence or social investment
exist in large groups. Indirect reciprocity must have arisen out of the search
for interactants and situations by which to maximize returns from
asymmetrical, hence highly profitable direct social reciprocity. One
consequence of large complex societies in which reciprocity is the principal
social cement and indirect reciprocity is prevalent is that opportunities for
such mutually profitable asymmetrical reciprocal interactions are vastly
multiplied. This situation, in turn, fosters the appearance of tendencies to
engage in indiscriminate social investment (or indiscriminate
beneficence)—which I define as willingness to risk relatively small expenses
in certain kinds of social donations to whomever may be needy—partly because
of the prevalence of interested audiences and keenness of their observation,
and the use of beneficent acts by others to identify individuals appropriate
for later reciprocal interactions. In complex social systems with much
reciprocity, being judged as attractive for reciprocal interactions may become
an essential ingredient for success. […] a modicum of indiscriminate
beneficence would arise, as social investment, because of benefits to
individuals who are viewed as altruists.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 116)

they’re given information about a legal case and then asked to infer guilt or
innocence. Some subjects are told that they’ll have to explain their decisions
to someone else. Other subjects know that they won’t be held accountable by
anyone. Tetlock found that when left to their own devices, people show the
usual catalogue of errors, laziness, and reliance on gut feelings that has
been documented in so much decision-making research. But when people know in
advance that they’ll have to explain themselves, they think more
systematically and self-critically. They are less likely to jump to premature
conclusions and more likely to revise their beliefs in response to evidence.
92

It is not to be overlooked that the speech was made to a Catholic organization
or that the rest of it concerned the international arms race. If the idea that
the “first duty of government” is to protect innocent life is ludicrous, it is
not ludicrous to suggest that to make such an argument is a way of using a
popular cause to support government, and of using the sacredness both of
“innocent life” and of government to restrain the independence of women. In
the abortion arguments it is also not irrelevant that abortion “on demand”
delivers to women a freedom in respect to sexual life that seems to many to
(1) reduce the control of men over women, (2) allow “immoral” or licentious
behavior, especially by women, and (3) thus erode the “moral fiber” of the
populace—hence the unity, purpose, and strength of the nation. It is not
difficult to consider that the entire issue feeds back to the history of the
control of resources—hence, control of the lives and reproduction of women —
through the defense of the group against other such groups by its adult
males.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 224)

“Utilitarianism in the generic sense in which what is good is not limited to
pleasure. It takes its stand upon the distinction between something which is
not itself an action but which can be produced by an action and the action
which will produce it, and contends that if something which is not an action
is good, then we ought to undertake the action which will directly or
indirectly, originate it.” 23

“western democracies are characterized by particular kinds of flexibility in
allowing or promoting individual liberties, in which entrepreneurship is used
relatively effectively by the society as a whole for the good of its
membership. The entrepreneur gains, but in the process others gain too. The
same societies manage to keep their military as a separated branch of
government service. These societies respond to changing circumstances by
changing the sizes and strengths of their armies and the freedom of
entrepreneurs. Such flexibilities may be strengths or weaknesses in the
presence of competing or aggresive neighbor societies. For example, they are
strengths when they lead to useful technological breakthroughs or promote
unity through pride of social structure or desire to maintain “freedom,” They
are weaknesses when the debates that characterize decisionmaking delay or
cause equivocation in responses to aggressors. They are also strengths when
they involve flexibilities in responding to novel situations […] Discussion of
liberty and equality in democracies closely parallels discussions of morality
and moral systems.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 201)

„Herbert Spencer hat in den „Principles of Ethics" eben diesen Sachverhalt
entwicklungsgeschichtlich ausgedrückt; „Sowohl primitive Stämme wie
zivilisierte Gesellschaften sind gezwungen, sich nach außen zu verteidigen und
im Innern Freundschaft zu halten. Daher haben sich bei ihren Mitgliedern zwei
verschiedene Gruppen von Gefühlen und Gedanken herausgebildet, die diesen
beiden verschiedenen Aktivitäten angepaßt sind ... Da sowohl die Ethik der
Feindschaft wie die Ethik der Freundschaft im Zusammenhang mit den äußeren wie
inneren Zuständen ihre Forderungen stellen und beide nebeneinander bestehen
müssen, ist ein Konglomerat äußerst widersprüchlicher (!) Gefühle und Gedanken
zustande gekommen."“ 119

Newt Gingrich, the new speaker of the House of Representatives, encouraged the
large group of incoming Republican congressmen to leave their families in
their home districts rather than moving their spouses and children to
Washington. Before 1995, congressmen from both parties attended many of the
same social events on weekends; their spouses became friends; their children
played on the same sports teams. But nowadays most congressmen fly to
Washington on Monday night, huddle with their teammates and do battle for
three days, and then fly home on Thursday night. Cross-party friendships are
disappearing; Manichaeism and scorched Earth politics are increasing. 345

„Wir glauben nun, den abstrakten Humanitarismus als elargiertes,
schwellengesenktes Familienethos auffassen zu sollen, wobei die
Ausformulierung, die gesinnungsethische Zuspitzung samt der dazugehörigen
Intoleranz Sache bestimmter Trägerschichten war — der Gegenaristokratie der
Intellektuellen. Daß dieses Ethos, das noch gewisse objektive Konstellationen
voraussetzt, wie weltumfassende Verkehrsräume oder eine vermeintliche
Unterprivilegierung dieser Träger, in zwei Fällen auch eklatante Niederlagen
des Staates (Antike, Gegenwart), zuletzt mit dem sich abgrenzenden
politischen Ethos des Patriotismus unverträglich ist, wurde an den alten
Konflikten zwischen Familie und Staat sowie an gewissen theologischen
Positionen gezeigt.“ 165

„Der elektromagnetische Weltverkehr schickt uns Umrißskizzen von allen
denkbaren Ereignissen bis zu den Antipoden zu, diese Skizzen verhalten sich
zu den Tatsachen selbst wie der Schatten zum Körper — farblos und
dimensionsarm. Diesem weltweiten Versand von Hohlformen soll nun unser
moralisches Empfinden entsprechen, das von Natur her auf Nahoptik eingestellt
ist; daher haben wir als Ersatz der nicht vorhandenen Fernmoral nur die
humanitär-eudaimonistische, deren Ansprüche man nicht einlösen kann.“ 152

a. Give, when the benefit goes to a genetic relative (sometimes via a
spouse or in-law) and its return to the giver via the improved
reproduction of the relative is likely to be greater than the expense of
the act multiplied by the fractional relationship of the recipient to the
giver  […]
b. Give, when the recipient is likely to give back more than he or she
receives (= investment in direct reciprocity).
c. Give, when failure to do so is likely to cause others to impose costs
greater than the expense of the beneficence.
d. Give, when the act is likely to cause a sufficient number of
appropriate people to regard the act as indicating a significant
probability (in other interactions) of the actor giving back more than is
received, hence indicating that the actor is himself a good object of
social investment by the observers (= investment in indirect reciprocity).
e. In all other situations do not give.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 125)

3. Direct Nepotism. Included here are all investments in relatives for
which the return may be expected in genetic terms, through the reproduction of
the assisted relatives. […] Mating effort is the most problematic form of
effort placed here: it may be viewed as selfish (hence, be confused with
somatic effort), particularly in males, who usually, as in mammals, strive to
place their sperm inside the body of the female, hence are in a better
position to abandon the offspring to its mother’s care than vice versa. A
gamete, after all, is not an individual, and it possesses no genetic materials
other than those of its producer. But gametes are also not merely parts of the
phenotypes that produce them, and (except in species with haploid males) are
not genetically identical to their producers. Mating effort, moreover, is
reproductive effort that involves risks and expenditure of calories. Effort
exerted on behalf of gametes lowers the reproductive value of the individual
as surely as that exerted on behalf of offspring or other relatives. […] in
mating effort, as compared to other reproductive effort, the genetically
selfish aspects of acts may be relatively more apparent than their
phenotypically altruistic aspects. […]

“obligations are not self-evident but need proof […] an act which is referred
to as an obligation may be incompletely stated […] "Why should I do it?" is
perfectly legitimate. This fact suggests, but suggests wrongly, that even if
the nature of the act is completely stated, it is still necessary to give a
reason, or, in other words, to supply a proof. […] The obligation to repay a
benefit involves a relation due to a past act of the benefactor. The
obligation to pay a bill involves a relation due to a past act of ours in
which we have either said or implied that we would make a certain return, for
something which we have asked for and received. On the other hand the
obligation to speak the truth implies no such definite act; it involves a
relation consisting in the fact that others are trusting us to speak the
truth, a relation the apprehension of which gives rise to the sense that
communication of the truth is something owing by us to them. Again the
obligation not to hurt the feelings of another, involves no special relation
of us to that other, i.e., no relation other than that involved in our both
being men and men in one and the same world. Moreover, it seems that the
relation involved in an obligation need not be a relation to another at all.
Thus we should admit that there is an obligation to overcome our natural
timidity or greediness, and that this involves no relations to others. Still
there is a relation involved, viz., a relation to our own disposition. It is
simply because we can and because others cannot directly modify our
disposition that it is our business to improve it, and that it is not theirs,
or, at least, not theirs to the same extent.” 26

Religions are moral exoskeletons. If you live in a religious community, you
are enmeshed in a set of norms, relationships, and institutions that work
primarily on the elephant to influence your behavior. But if you are an
atheist living in a looser community with a less binding moral matrix, you
might have to rely somewhat more on an internal moral compass, read by the
rider. That might sound appealing to rationalists, but it is also a recipe for
anomie—Durkheim’s word for what happens to a society that no longer has a
shared moral order. (It means, literally, “normlessness.”) We evolved to live,
trade, and trust within shared moral matrices. When societies lose their grip
on individuals, allowing all to do as they please, the result is often a
decrease in happiness and an increase in suicide, as Durkheim showed more than
a hundred years ago. Societies that forgo the exoskeleton of religion should
reflect carefully on what will happen to them over several generations. We
don’t really know, because the first atheistic societies have only emerged in
Europe in the last few decades. They are the least efficient societies ever
known at turning resources (of which they have a lot) into offspring (of which
they have few). 298


“The imposition of monogamy by custom or law has the interesting effect of
reducing both male-male and male-female conflicts to a minimum, especially
when clans are discouraged (as in nation states” (Alexander, 1987, p. 88)

Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices,
identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms
that work together to suppress or regulate self-interest and make cooperative
societies possible. 299

Das aus der Gegenseitigkeit entwickelte Ethos

“Darwin (1871) developed the first complete theory of morality and ethics,
in the following words (p. 500): Ultimately our moral sense or conscience
becomes a highly complex sentiment—originating in the social instincts,
largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by self-reason,
and confirmed by instruction and habit. It must not be forgotten that
although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to
each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe,
yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and advancement in
the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one
tribe over another. A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a
high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and
sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves
for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this
would be natural selection. At all times throughout the world tribes have
supplanted other tribes; and as morality is one important element in their
success, the standard of morality and the number of well-endowed men will
thus everywhere tend to rise and increase. […] It is obvious that the
members of the same tribe would approve of conduct which appeared to them to
be for the general good, and would reprobate that which appeared evil. To do
good unto others—to do unto others as ye would that they should do unto
you—is the foundation-stone of morality. It is, therefore, hardly possible
to exaggerate the importance during rude times of the love of praise and the
dread of blame. A man who was not impelled by any deep, instinctive feeling,
to sacrifice his life for the good of others, yet was roused to such actions
by a sense of glory, would by his example excite the same wish for glory in
other men, and would strengthen by exercise the noble feeling of admiration.
He might thus do far more good to his tribe than by begetting offspring with
a tendency to inherit his own high character, (p. 500)” (Alexander, 1987, p.
182)

“there is much more to heavily publicized moral and legal questions such as
abortion, euthanasia, welfare, and equal rights than meets the eye. And I
would argue that many of these “hidden” elements are only likely to be exposed
and clarified through a deep understanding of our biological-evolutionary
background—specifically, through analyzing the conflicts of interest involved
and taking into account the nature and significance of the system of indirect
reciprocity involved.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 236)

Durkheim believed that these collective emotions pull humans fully but
temporarily into the higher of our two realms, the realm of the sacred, where
the self disappears and collective interests predominate. The realm of the
profane, in contrast, is the ordinary day-to-day world where we live most of
our lives, concerned about wealth, health, and reputation, but nagged by the
sense that there is, somewhere, something higher and nobler. 251

„wird das Wort „Kosmopolit" dem Antisthenes zugeschrieben; auch sein Schüler
Diogenes soll gesagt haben „Ich bin ein Weltbürger" (Diog. Laert. VI, 63).
Demokrit, vielleicht kaum älter als Antisthenes, fand heraus, das Feld des
weisen Mannes sei die ganze Erde, das Vaterland der guten Seele der Kosmos.
Arnold A. T. Ehrhardt (Polit. Metaphysik von Solon bis Augustin, 1959, I, 162
f.) meint nun, es sei die Lehre des humanistischen Kosmopolitismus gewesen,
die den Stadtstaat auflöste, und die Anhänger der frühen kynischen wie der
kyrenäischen Schule hätten noch im frühen vierten Jahrhundert die Bindung an
die Polis als nicht menschlich empfunden. Solche Ansichten treten indessen
nicht als Ursachen auf, sondern sie sind Verarbeitungen oder Bewältigungen
einer schon eingetretenen Katastrophe, die sie bewußt und, wohlgemerkt,
definitiv machen, indem sie schon die Konsequenzen idealisieren.“ 12

“Three decades ago Konrad Lorenz also tried to name a “new field” which he
also said consisted of the evolutionary study of behavior. The label he used,
“ethology,” also came to be associated with his particular views concerning
the physiology, development, and inheritance of behavior and as a result
eventually became obscure and less frequently used.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 26)

“generosity and unselfishness are probably not taught because otherwise we
would grow up to be selfish, but because otherwise we would grow up to be
bumblers rather than experts at self-interested activities. Up to now, I would
argue, social learning has been all about becoming better at self-
interest—indeed, about becoming so good at it that we will be regarded as
honest, kind, fair, impartial, reliable, and altruistic not only by our social
interactants but also by our own conscious selves.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 155)

[…] genetic evolution greatly accelerated during the last 50,000 years. The
rate at which genes changed in response to selection pressures began rising
around 40,000 years ago, and the curve got steeper and steeper after 20,000
years ago. Genetic change reached a crescendo during the Holocene era, in
Africa as well as in Eurasia. It makes perfect sense. In the last ten years,
geneticists have discovered just how active genes are. Genes are constantly
turning on and off in response to conditions such as stress, starvation, or
sickness. 239

“ Unrestrained embellishment characterizes signals passed between sharply
competitive individuals, such as brief interactants and nonrelatives, in which
the degree of embellishment is determined, not by shared interests between
signaler and signalée, but by how much the signaler can get away with—what
Otte (1974) called “the limits of gullibility” in the responder. […]
Unrestrained embellishment differs from total deception mainly because
gullibility may be reduced among conspecific competitors.” (Alexander, 1987,
p. 93)

“we regard as the really best man the man in whom virtue and morality are
united.” 28

“Both law and ethics are much more concerned with punishment than with
rewards, because, I believe, they are systems of restraints against too-
extreme acts of self-interest. Both law and ethics are most often a defense of
the many against the few: the many who recognize the value (to themselves and
theirs) of the unity, strength, and persistence of the group against the few
with shorter (or longer) vision or alternative connections. The moralizer is
one who is making a special effort to turn it all to his own personal gain
within the group. He is damned only with faint resistance, for what he
advocates is that ideal behavior which if universal would further the
interests of the group. He has the possibility of gaining (1) because his
advocacy not only is aimed to correspond to the group’s interests but
simultaneously portrays him as more a promoter of the ideal than his actions
may reveal (i.e., his moralizing, if cleverly done, may draw attention away
from his own transgressions), and (2) because he may induce self-deleterious
behavior in others. […] the general trend of law is toward equalizing access
to the usual resources of reproduction, including mates.” (Alexander, 1987, p.
195)

“Whether or not those who originated and promoted the notion of a single god
for all people, and an impartial god, really practiced what they preached, the
fact remains that the mere concept represented an opposite or a denial of the
competitive principles that had governed human existence as a consequence of
its evolutionary background. In this sense a universal impartial god
represented what Thomas Huxley called “combating” natural selection. The
notion of a god of all people, who was impartial, was the notion of a god who
could not condone inequalities such as polygyny, slavery, and caste systems.
It was the notion of a god who was, in the modern philosophers’ terms, morally
consistent, and who insisted on, or promoted, moral consistency among humans
[…] It is the negation of personal selfishness, selfishness for one’s family,
or favoritism even to one’s own group members (tribe, nation) as opposed to
others. Institution of such a god represented a formalizing of the moral ideal
toward which many humans would like to think they have always been striving.
This kind of god would have been from the start the hope of ordinary
people—the peasants and the downtrodden and the minorities.” (Alexander, 1987,
p. 212)

“The distinction I would suggest between moral and legal systems is that legal
systems arise out of long-continued agreement, by either the majority or the
power structure, on matters of right and wrong: such agreement leads to
establishment of more or less permanent régulations, and this works because
such a high proportion of the powerful people in the society agree. Moral
systems, on the other hand, comprise belief systems of subgroups and
proportions of the people that are small enough, or else belief systems that
change often enough, to reduce the desires and tendencies of society as a
whole to make them into definite, permanent, or irreversible regulations.
Everyone knows that issues of morality and ethics present paradoxes; and many
know that not merely ordinary people in their everyday activities but the
intellectuals and formal students of moral systems across the ages have made
little progress toward resolving the moral paradoxes since the first records
of their consideration by the ancients. […] If we were all agreed on what is
conducive to harmonious happiness, morality as a topic of interest—perhaps as
a topic at all—would fade.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 194)

„So wurde wieder einmal wahr, was David Hume im Jahre 1739 schrieb: „Das
Äußerste, was Politiker zustande bringen können, besteht in einer Erweiterung
der natürlichen Gefühle über ihre natürlichen Grenzen hinaus" (Abhdlg. über
die menschl. Natur III/II/2).“ 160

“rape will occur most frequently in regions populated by women of relatively
high status and men of relatively low status. […] rape is more common in
university towns with a considerable population of transient males.”
(Alexander, 1987, p. 230)

“theories of inclusive-fitness-maximizing (Hamilton, 1964) and reciprocity
(Trivers, 1971) enable us to formulate testable hypotheses about aspects of
altruism that previously could not be investigated scientifically. […] I
regard indirect reciprocity as a consequence of direct reciprocity occurring
in the presence of interested audiences—groups of individuals who continually
evaluate the members of their society as possible future interactants from
whom they would like to gain more than they lose” (Alexander, 1987, p. 111)

These beliefs and practices turned out to matter very little. Whether you
believe in hell, whether you pray daily, whether you are a Catholic,
Protestant, Jew, or Mormon … none of these things correlated with generosity.
The only thing that was reliably and powerfully associated with the moral
benefits of religion was how enmeshed people were in relationships with their
co-religionists. It’s the friendships and group activities, carried out within
a moral matrix that emphasizes selflessness. That’s what brings out the best
in people. Putnam and Campbell reject the New Atheist emphasis on belief and
reach a conclusion straight out of Durkheim: “It is religious belongingness
that matters for neighborliness, not religious believing.” 296

What, then, is the function of moral reasoning? Does it seem to have been
shaped, tuned, and crafted (by natural selection) to help us find the truth,
so that we can know the right way to behave and condemn those who behave
wrongly? If you believe that, then you are a rationalist, like Plato,
Socrates, and Kohlberg. Or does moral reasoning seem to have been shaped,
tuned, and crafted to help us pursue socially strategic goals, such as
guarding our reputations and convincing other people to support us, or our
team, in disputes? If you believe that, then you are a Glauconian. 91

it’s no puzzle to understand why people want to lead. The real puzzle is why
people are willing to follow. […] people evolved to live in groups of up to
150 that were relatively egalitarian and wary of alpha males […]. But we also
evolved the ability to rally around leaders when our group is under threat or
is competing with other groups. 264

“1. Direct somatic effort is mediated by neither nepotism nor reciprocity.
Examples are eating, drinking, seeking shelter, and avoiding danger, when
these actions are carried out without the assistance or positive intervention
of others. This category of behavior, which probably corresponds most closely
to the moral philosophers’ egoism (particularly when the latter specifically
involves seeking to promote one’s own welfare rather than someone else’s), is
not as common as might be thought in today’s specialized social environment.
We can actually do very little for ourselves without some kind of assistance,
however indirect, by others. […]

“our efforts toward idealized models of morality within societies may also
cause, ironically, the most serious threats to humanity. Nationalistic
chauvinism, patriotism, and pride in one’s own group, society, people,
religion, or way of life represent the large-scale cooperative efforts that
produce adversaries capable of destroying the world and incapable so far of
withdrawing from the brink of disaster. Perhaps we must substitute a different
model of morality which admits and accepts the history of individual efforts
that philosophers would call egoistic” (Alexander, 1987, p. 204)

“In humans the laws and mores of larger and larger groups seem increasingly to
(1) guarantee to every individual the right to produce and rear its own
offspring and (2) restrict the amount and likelihood of variation in
reproduction among families. China is currently an extreme in both size (over
one billion) and regulation of reproduction […] the government of India now
pays individuals who submit to sterilization. More subtle, but also more
widespread, are laws that reduce variance in access to resources, such as
graduated income taxes, the vote, representative government, elected (not
hereditarily succeeding) officials, and universal education.” (Alexander,
1987, p. 89)

If you see one hundred insects working together toward a common goal, it’s a
sure bet they’re siblings. But when you see one hundred people working on a
construction site or marching off to war, you’d be astonished if they all
turned out to be members of one large family. Human beings are the world
champions of cooperation beyond kinship, and we do it in large part by
creating systems of formal and informal accountability. 91

“If egoism, as self-interest in the biologists’ sense, is the reason for the
promotion of ethical behavior, then, paradoxically, it is expected that
everyone will constantly promote the notion that egoism is not a suitable
theory of action, and, a fortiori, that he himself is not an egoist.”
(Alexander, 1987, p. 167)

„Man darf nicht vergessen, daß seit langem, seit der Dänenfrage 1848 oder
spätestens seit dem Krimkrieg sich die große europäische Auseinandersetzung
vorbereitete, die durch die freie Expansion in Übersee immerhin um einige
Jahrzehnte vertagt wurde; so entstand die Periode einer unwahrscheinlich
langen Waffenruhe von 1871 bis 1914.“ 105

“overlaps of human interests are appropriately classified as follows:

“The longer the usual lives of individuals, and the longer individuals
continue to interact significantly and repeatedly with one another, the
greater will be their adeptness at assessing and acting appropriately with
respect to partial confluences of interest, as well as conflicts of interest,
and the more complex will be society.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 82)

„Auch das Gesinnungsethos entstand in der Antike; als Plinius Statthalter in
Bithynien war, etwa im Jahre 112, wurde das Bekenntnis zu Christus mit dem
Tode bestraft auch ohne Nachweis des Kultes, und umgekehrt behauptete der
gleichzeitig lebende Justin, ein Diener Christi sei schon seiner ganzen Natur
nach frei von aller Schuld — die Gesinnung kompromittierte oder qualifizierte
also unabhängig vom Verhalten, mithin absolut.“ 146

“To the extent that males and females (of any species) commit themselves to
lifetime monogamy, the interests of two individuals in a pair approach being
identical. […] to the extent that (1) philandering is unlikely or too
expensive to be profitable, and (2) the relatives of one or the other are not
significantly more available for nepotistic diversions of resources, each
member of the pair will profit from complete cooperation with the other to
produce and rear their joint offspring. In humans this condition is most
likely in (1) societies in which (a) families live and work separately and (b)
husband and wife are in fairly close contact most of the time and (2)
societies in which married couples are “neolocal,” living in some new location
apart from both sets of relatives but close enough to be affected by the
interests of their kin networks in sustaining the marriage. In such societies
(which historically have probably been most often agricultural), I predict
that the devotion of husband and wife will be measurably most complete.”
(Alexander, 1987, p. 88)

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


Descartes’ Error, by the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. Damasio had noticed
an unusual pattern of symptoms in patients who had suffered brain damage to a
specific part of the brain—the ventromedial (i.e., bottom-middle) prefrontal
cortex (abbreviated vmPFC; it’s the region just behind and above the bridge of
the nose). Their emotionality dropped nearly to zero. They could look at the
most joyous or gruesome photographs and feel nothing. They retained full
knowledge of what was right and wrong, and they showed no deficits in IQ. They
even scored well on Kohlberg’s tests of moral reasoning. Yet when it came to
making decisions in their personal lives and at work, they made foolish
decisions or no decisions at all. They alienated their families and their
employers, and their lives fell apart. 46

“Now biologists realize that the conflicts of interests that exist because of
histories of genetic difference imply instead that nearly all communicative
signals, human or otherwise, should be expected to involve significant deceit
[…] in rare circumstances, such as honeybee workers dancing about food sources
or a pair of parents wholly committed to lifetime monogamy, signals may be
totally honest. It is the rarity of this expectation from biological
considerations that is most intriguing to us at this point. Conversely,
signals involved in predator-prey relations, such as the mimicking of a
poisonous prey species by a harmless one, may be expected to be totally
deceptive.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 90)

“The sense that we ought to do certain things arises in our unreflective
consciousness, being an activity of moral thinking occasioned by the various
situations in which we find ourselves. At this stage our attitude to these
obligations is one of unquestioning confidence. But inevitably the
appreciation of the degree to which the execution of these obligations is
contrary to our interest raises the doubt” 30

„„Es gibt heute, sagte Pareto, eine humanitäre Religion, die den
Gedankenausdruck der Menschen reguliert, und wenn sich zufällig einer dem
entzieht, dann erscheint er als Ungeheuer, wie jemand im Mittelalter als
Ungeheuer erschienen wäre, der die Göttlichkeit Jesu geleugnet hätte" (dazu
Cours de Soc. Gén. § 1172, 1).“ 79

„Wir leben aus objektiven Gründen in einem Zustand der Sprachverarmung, der
differenzierte Gedankengänge seltener macht und sie an den Rand des
Tagesbewußtseins schiebt. Damit steigt die Neigung zu moralisierenden
Argumenten, um den Verständigungsprozeß abzukürzen. Diese Verarmung der
Sprache erfolgt aus mehreren Gründen: Die Massenbildung bewirkt selbst schon
eine Simplifizierung des Denkens, die Massenmedien arbeiten in dieselbe
Richtung, und, die Politik setzt oft ganze Bedeutungsfelder unter Druck. In
dieser Hinsicht gibt es heute Beutebegriffe wie „Diskussion",
„Demokratisierung" oder „autoritär", die sofort jeden Sachwiderspruch zum
Schweigen bringen. Sehr merkwürdig ist dabei, daß die zweifellos zunehmende
und in die Breite wachsende Zahl von Unterrichteten, bei hektischem Ausbau der
Hochschulen, die Sprachverarmung nicht verhindert. George Steiner erwähnt in
seinem Aufsatz „Der Rückzug vom Wort" (Merkur 172, 1962) eine Schätzung
McKnights, da hingehend, daß 50% der modernen Umgangssprache in England und
Amerika auf 34 Grundwörter zurückgingen.“ 174

When social competition begins to take place through cooperation of
individuals in social groups, and when reciprocity becomes a significant
element in the social cement, then social capital can be acquired through
investment even in others who themselves are unlikely to reciprocate, because
of the value of being identified as a reliable and effective reciprocator.

“Moral and ethical problems and questions exist solely because of conflicts of
interest; moral systems exist because confluences of interest at lower levels
of social organization are used to deal with conflicts of interest at higher
levels.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 52)

Liberals have a three-foundation morality, whereas conservatives use all six.
Liberal moral matrices rest on the Care/harm, Liberty/oppression, and
Fairness/cheating foundations, although liberals are often willing to trade
away fairness (as proportionality) when it conflicts with compassion or with
their desire to fight oppression. Conservative morality rests on all six
foundations, although conservatives are more willing than liberals to
sacrifice Care and let some people get hurt in order to achieve their many
other moral objectives. 206

There’s been a decline in the number of people calling themselves centrists or
moderates (from 40 percent in 2000 down to 36 percent in 2011), a rise in the
number of conservatives (from 38 percent to 41 percent), and a rise in the
number of liberals (from 19 percent to 21 percent). 304

“In some sense society can never be a completely truthful organization. […]
Why do we admonish our children to be truthful yet teach them not to tell Aunt
Martha that she is fat or Uncle John that his breath is bad or cousin Jim that
his pimples are repulsive; or to reveal to visitors that Mom threw a book at
Dad this morning, or what sister Jane looks like with her clothes off, or that
what littered the living room was thrown quickly into the closet when they
arrived? […] Why, if the truth is our goal and motto, do we begin to deceive
from the moment we arise from our beds in the morning, with clothes that
modify our body shapes flatteringly, makeup and hair arrangements that improve
our eyelashes or face shapes or cover a bald spot? Why do we spend our waking
hours before and after sleep, and while shaving (shaving?) or showering or
dressing, building scenarios by which we may deceive or best in some fashion
those with whom we are scheduled to interact during the day? Why do we exclaim
enthusiastically upon meeting someone we would rather have avoided; or when we
meet another, dear or attractive to us, at a time when the enthusiasm is
covering a deep and desolate feeling of despair or boredom or dissatisfaction
with the day, ourselves, or the combination of the two? Why do we constantly
deceive everyone? […] To tell Aunt Martha she is fat, or Uncle John that he
has bad breath, hurts. But whom? We discuss such questions, saying that
perhaps she will lose the weight, and be happier, if we tell her. Or Uncle
John will brush his teeth and people will then like him and he will be happy,
if we tell him. But, if we tell them, these may not be our real reasons.
Perhaps we were a little angry at Aunt Martha or Uncle John and relished a
secret bit of enjoyment at creating discomfort. From another point of view, if
we tell them, they may not like us afterward. And if they have resources to
distribute they may leave us out. Who then is hurt? Or whose possible or
probable hurt is the reason for the truth or the deviation from it?”
(Alexander, 1987, page 208 f)

„nach der Kapitulation Deutschlands, als die von den Frauen zusammen
gehaltene Familie die einzige Institution war, die noch funktionierte.“ 147

„Da ist erstens das selbst schon erstmalige und unwahrscheinliche
Zusammenspiel des Humanitarismus, den wir als elargierte Familienethik
erkannt haben, und des Eudaimonismus des Massenlebenswertes, einer ethi
schen Schöpfung der Aufklärung im 18. Jahrhundert. In diese Kombination ist
eine zugleich hochgereizte und verharmlosende Ansicht vom Menschen schon
eingeschlossen, die psychisch wohl der Innenseite eines verlängerten
Jugendlichen-Zustandes entspricht, denkbar unter dem Schutz angegriffener,
aber noch haltender alter Mächte, die früher noch standen, jetzt wie
ausgesetzt. Soziologisch muß das Embourgeoisement eines spätkapitalistisch
sehr breiten Mittelstandes für das heute gelebte Zusammenspiel eingerechnet
werden, auch wiesen wir schon darauf hin, daß diese von Grund aus apolitische
Gesinnung des Fortschrittsbürgertums in Kreise hineindrang, die früher
sozialistisch-revolutionären Ideen angehangen hatten. Die Kirchen haben sich
als einflußreiche Parteigänger hinter diese Bewegung geschoben, sie glauben
auf diese Weise den Kontakt mit den Massen zu behalten. Zusätzlich sind nun
bei uns unter dem Einfluß der beispiellosen Niederlage und nach der
Zerstörung aller inneren Reserven die Individuen auf ihre Privatinteressen und
deren kurzfristige Horizonte zurückgefallen. Was sie dort finden, ist die
egalitäre Moral der Familie, egalitär zumal in Notzeiten, ist das
Wohlstandsdenken und der Feminismus, die mit der Moral des Humanitarismus
sogar ursprungsidentisch sind. Und endlich läßt sich der Rationalismus der
Nahziele, wie ihn die Industriekultur erzeugt, mit den Gewohnheiten der
Kinderstube leicht vereinigen“ 139f

(I suspect it was the development of cooperative groupishness that enabled
these ancestors to conquer the world and take over Neanderthal territory so
quickly.) 237

“in ordinary speech the words "motive" and "purpose" are usually treated as
correlatives, "motive" standing for the desire which induces us to act, and
"purpose" standing for the object of this desire. But this is only because,
when we are looking for the motive of some action, say some crime, we are
usually presupposing that the act in question is prompted by a desire and not
by the sense of obligation. At bottom, however, we mean by a motive what moves
us to act; a sense of obligation does sometimes move us to act; and in our
ordinary consciousness we should not hesitate to allow that the action we were
considering might have had as its motive a sense of obligation. Desire and the
sense of obligation are co-ordinate forms or species of motive.” 27

“so far as, we act from a sense of obligation, we have no purpose or end. By a
"purpose" or "end" we really mean something the existence of which we desire,
and desire of the existence of which leads us to act.” 27

„Die moderne Geschichte von den „gesellschaftlichen" Repressionen, die den
Menschen an der freudigen Bejahung seiner Triebe hindern, stellt die zur Zeit
gängige Fassung der Philosophie der klugen Enttäuschten dar. Dieses
ideologische Opium wird auch in materieller Form, als Pille angeboten.
Übrigens hielt ein Geist wie Kant es nicht für wünschbar, daß der Mensch nur
gut sei. Er meinte, es „würden in einem arkadischen Schäfer leben, bei
vollkommener Eintracht, Genügsamkeit und Wechselliebe, alle Talente auf ewig
in ihren Keimen verborgen bleiben. Die Menschen, gut artig wie die Schafe,
die sie weiden, würden ihrem Dasein kaum größeren Wert verschaffen, als dieses
ihr Hausvieh hat; sie würden das Leere der Schöpfung in Ansehung ihres
Zweckes, als vernünftige Natur, nicht aus füllen. Dank sei also der Natur für
die Unvertragsamkeit, für die mißgünstig wetteifernde Eitelkeit, für die
nicht zu befriedigende Begierde zum Haben, oder auch zum Herrschen" (Idee zu
einer allgem. Geschichte, 1784).“ 18

Tetlock found two very different kinds of careful reasoning. Exploratory
thought is an “evenhanded consideration of alternative points of view.”
Confirmatory thought is “a one-sided attempt to rationalize a particular point
of view.” Accountability increases exploratory thought only when three
conditions apply: (1) decision makers learn before forming any opinion that
they will be accountable to an audience, (2) the audience’s views are unknown,
and (3) they believe the audience is well informed and interested in accuracy.
When all three conditions apply, people do their darnedest to figure out the
truth, because that’s what the audience wants to hear. But the rest of the
time—which is almost all of the time—accountability pressures simply increase
confirmatory thought. People are trying harder to look right than to be right.
Tetlock summarizes it like this: A central function of thought is making sure
that one acts in ways that can be persuasively justified or excused to others.
Indeed, the process of considering the justifiability of one’s choices may be
so prevalent that decision makers not only search for convincing reasons to
make a choice when they must explain that choice to others, they search for
reasons to convince themselves that they have made the “right” choice. 93

„Schon im Jahre 1589 sagte Franfois Le Jay (Schnur 21): „Es ist besser,
hundert Jahre der Tyrannei zu dulden, als einen Tag die Leiden des
Bürgerkriegs erleben zu müssen." Damals trat zum ersten Male der Staat als
Neutralisationsebene gesellschaftlicher Konflikte in Erscheinung, ein
bedeutendes Verhältnis, denn er nährt seine rationale Größe dann von der
virtuellen Dynamik der Spannungen, die er zu sich heraufzieht und in sich
ausgleicht, er transformiert revolutionäre Energien in sein eigenes Potential
hinein. Das hatten zuerst die Römer dargetan, denn man kann aus der frühen
Geschichte dieses Modellstaates bei Livius ablesen, wie die periodischen
Waffenstillstände zwischen Patriziern und Plebejern sich jeweils in der
Erfindung neuer staatsrechtlicher Einrichtungen niederschlugen, die für eine
Weile den chronischen Kampf zum Einstand brachten, so daß jeweils neue Ämter
als Spannungskompromisse in institutioneller Umformung entstanden: Die
Zehnmänner, die Volkstribunen, die Militärtribunen mit konsularischer Gewalt.
Das Institutions-Ethos des Staates vermag Aggressionen zu bändigen, ja zu
verwerten.“ 104

“approval and our use of the term "good" is always in respect of the motive
and refers to actions which have been actually done and of which we think we
know the motive. Further, the actions of which we approve and which we should
describe as intrinsically good are of two and only two kinds. They are either
actions in which the agent did what he did because he thought he ought to do
it, or actions of which the motive was a desire prompted by some good emotion,
such as gratitude, affection, family feeling, or public spirit, the most
prominent of such desires in books on Moral Philosophy being that ascribed to
what is vaguely called benevolence.” 24

There are many inexpensive ways to give benefits that are nevertheless of
great value to others.

Despite this clear statement and the rather grand essay written 16 years
earlier by Roscoe Pound (see pp. 33-34), neither Kelsen nor any other author I
have discovered sets out to identify interests and quantify their conflicts
and confluences (although Strong, 1984, comes close); most do not even
acknowledge this as a matter of importance.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 110)

„Die Disqualifikation der moralischen Autorität des Staates ist in westlichen
Gesellschaften weit fortgeschritten, und das hat Folgen. Wenn die Gesetzgebung
eingreifen und eine bestimmte Position wenigstens in ihren Äußerungsformen
verbieten wollte, dann müßte sie erwägen, daß eine Illegalisierung durch den
Staat nicht entfernt mehr eine moralische Kraft hat, die sich mit der von den
Massenmedien mit Leichtigkeit erreichbaren vergleichen ließe. Da deren Tendenz
auf Enthemmung alles Auflösbaren geht, versetzen sie den Staat ohne weiteres
in die Position des Unterdrückers. [...] Wenn eine Gesellschaft tolerant
wird, d. h. in ethischen Grundfragen Diskordanzen als erträglich proklamiert,
dann muß sie entweder in sich oder außer sich keine Feinde mehr haben oder
ihre Beschwichtigungsformeln für ausreichend halten; sie mag auch von der
Verharmlosung benommen sein, oder vielleicht hat sie bereits einen Tempel der
Alleinherrschaft errichtet, in dessen Schatten alle anderen Werte
bagatellisiert werden, wahrscheinlich dem Gotte Plutos, der übrigens den Alten
als unmündig galt und als Kind dargestellt wurde.“ 37

“Each person is programmed by the history of natural selection to
maximize the likelihood of survival of his/her genetic materials through
reproduction and nepotism, both of which depend on the acquisition and
redistribution of resources. More precisely, we are programmed to develop and
respond to the proximate stimuli of particular environments in ways that at
least in the general past would have accomplished this end.

McNeill fought in World War II and later became a distinguished historian. His
research led him to the conclusion that the key innovation of Greek, Roman,
and later European armies was the sort of synchronous drilling and marching
the army had forced him to do years before. He hypothesized that the process
of “muscular bonding”—moving together in time—was a mechanism that evolved
long before the beginning of recorded history for shutting down the self and
creating a temporary superorganism. Muscular bonding enabled people to forget
themselves, trust each other, function as a unit, and then crush less cohesive
groups. 245

There are many useful endeavors that cannot be carried out, or carried
out as effectively, by one person alone, or even by small (as opposed to
large) groups; the outstanding and pivotal example has for a long time been
defense against other competitive and aggressive human groups. These endeavors
call for cooperativeness, and social investment in others.

„Wir unterscheiden mehrere voneinander funktionell unabhängige,
instinktartige Triebfedern des sozialen Verhaltens, sie bilden den
Gegenstand einer empirischen Lehre von den Sozialregulationen oder Ethik.
Verspannt mit ihnen ist auch ein angeborener Aggressionstrieb, der in viele
Handlungsweisen seine Energien einfließen läßt, sich übrigens beim männlichen
Geschlecht auch mit der Sexualität vereinbaren läßt, nicht beim weiblichen.
Diese Sozialregulationen sind mit gelernten und rational gesteuerten Motiven
umhüllt und verschränkt; unter Durchschnittsumständen stören sie sich
gegenseitig wenig, dann sind Kompromisse, Abwechslungen, Fehlgriffe mit oder
ohne Entschuldigungen, Rücksichten und Rücksichtslosigkeiten in Gemengelage
alltäglich. Erst wenn extreme Situationen eintreten, zeigt sich, daß die
latenten Widersprüche innerhalb dieser Impulse auseinandertreten und sich zu
unversöhnlichen Gegensätzen entwickeln. Solche Situationen können in
Gesellschaften eintreten, deren inneres Gleichgewicht verzerrt ist, sie können
in „Spannungen", Revolutionen und Kriegen bestehen, sie scheinen auch bei
kulturellen Überspezialisierungen vorzukommen, etwa in der Mentalität von
imperialistischen oder, umgekehrt, von Handelsvölkem, und schließlich sogar
sich einfach bei kritisch gewordener Reflexionshöhe größerer Teile der
Bevölkerung einzustellen. Dann wird es jedesmal ernst, denn die
Radikalisierung jeder Ethosform setzt Aggression frei, auch natürlich die
Radikalisierung des Pazifismus. Dann kommt aber auch zutage, daß auf jeder
Seite echte Tugenden stehen, die somit in Konfliktslage geraten, sei es, daß
sie sich auf Klassen oder Gruppen verteilen, oder daß sie in derselben Seele
kollidieren, und seit solche Gegensätze nicht mehr in konfessionellen
Abweichungen derselben Religion sich ausdrücken, treten sie in fast antiker
Klarheit her aus. Es gibt Tugenden der Friedlichkeit und Menschlichkeit, aber
auch Tugenden der Macht — one had to be formidable to do good (Coltman II); es
gibt solche, die nur im Kampf zur Geltung kommen und andere, die sich in
Mitleid und Sanftmut entfalten. Nietzsche hat versucht, zwei große Gegensätze
zu konstruieren und sie auf geradezu medizinisch definierte Gruppen zu
verteilen, die Starken und Gesunden gegen die Schwachen und Angekränkelten.
Bergson trennte offene und geschlossene Gesellschaften und die zugeordneten
Moralen der Autorität und des Fortschritts. Wir dagegen nehmen einen
pluralistischen Ansatz und stellen in Rechnung, daß Staat und Gesellschaft
sich ineinanderschieben, friedliche und latent explosive Zustände in
Mischformen eingehen. Dadurch wird der problemlose Alltag durchzogen von
halbartikulierten, chronischen Konflik ten, und die moralisierende Aggression
ist eine der Reaktionen auf diesen bedrückend-extremen Zustand. Andere
Reaktionen, wie der Zynismus, die stagnierende Zerstreutheit, der alberne
Unernst oder die Rebarbarisierung in Kriminalität oder Pornokratie blieben
hier unerörtert. In der Bundesrepublik dieser Tage gilt der öffentlichen
Meinung der abstrakte Humanitarismus als selbstverständliche Leitmoral. Die
anthropologische Ableitung dieses Ethos ist uns (Kap. 6) gelungen, es handelt
sich um eine „Erweiterung" des primären Ethos der Großfamilie und ihrer
Brüderlichkeit, wobei „Erweiterung" eine Kategorie darstellt, wir fanden noch
andere Anwendungsfälle des Begriffs. Wie wir ebenfalls im 6. Kap. sahen, ist
dieses Ethos von dem Humanismus der kommunistischen Gesellschaften zu
unterscheiden, die nicht bereit sind, vom Klassenkampf zu abstrahieren.
Ebenso steht auch der Humanismus im klassischen Sinne für sich, und zwar als
eine sehr spezielle kulturelle Differenzierung. Der Ursprungsort dieser
humanitas war der Kreis um Scipio Aemilianus (Sohn des L. Aemilius Paullus),
gest. 129 v. Chr.; es handelt sich um eine selbstsichere Geste der
kultivierten, noch fraglosen, ästhetisch sensibel gewordenen Herrschaft. Es
gab übrigens keinen analogen griechischen Begriff. Ein gutes Beispiel ist das
von Cicero De orat. geschilderte Gespräch zwischen Lucius Licinius Crassus
(cos. 95), Quintus Mucius Scaevola Augur (cos. 117). Marcus Antonius (cos. 99)
sowie einiger jün gerer Magnaten, man unterhält sich in der kritischen
politischen Lage des Jahres 91 mit Heiterkeit und Eleganz, das Werk Ciceros
erschien im Jahre 54, kurz vor dem Ende des ersten Triumvirats. Das ist die
Atmosphäre, die Goethe nachempfand, in Deutschland fiel die nach einem
imitierenden Vorspiel sehr spät nachgeholte Renaissancebewegung mit einer
feudalistischen Aufklärung zusammen: Geist von Weimar. Von diesen Dingen ist
hier nicht weiter die Rede.“ 177f

Many psychologists have studied the effects of having “plausible deniability.”
In one such study, subjects performed a task and were then given a slip of
paper and a verbal confirmation of how much they were to be paid. But when
they took the slip to another room to get their money, the cashier misread one
digit and handed them too much money. Only 20 percent spoke up and corrected
the mistake. But the story changed when the cashier asked them if the payment
was correct. In that case, 60 percent said no and returned the extra money.
Being asked directly removes plausible deniability; it would take a direct lie
to keep the money. As a result, people are three times more likely to be
honest. You can’t predict who will return the money based on how people rate
their own honesty, or how well they are able to give the high-minded answer on
a moral dilemma of the sort used by Kohlberg. If the rider were in charge of
ethical behavior, then there would be a big correlation between people’s moral
reasoning and their moral behavior. But he’s not, so there isn’t. 100

Baron-Cohen has shown that autism is what you get when genes and prenatal
factors combine to produce a brain that is exceptionally low on empathizing
and exceptionally high on systemizing. Autism, including Asperger’s syndrome
(a subtype of high-functioning autism), is better thought of as a region of
personality-space—the lower right corner of the lower right quadrant—than as a
discrete disease. The two leading ethical theories in Western philosophy were
founded by men who were as high as could be on systemizing, and were rather
low on empathizing. [Bentham & Kant] 136

“The value of an evolutionary approach to human sociality is thus not to
determine the limits of our actions so that we can abide by them. Rather, it
is to examine our life strategies so that we can change them when we wish, as
a result of understanding them.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 29)

“the two basic reasons for honeybees having evolved such potency in their
communication are (1) they have something complicated and important to
communicate about and (2) conflicts of interest have been dropped to near zero
among workers. The objects of communication for honeybees are bonanza food
sources—nectar and pollen —that last long enough, and are sufficiently
difficult to locate” (Alexander, 1987, p. 85)

“I see these final “stages” of moral “development” as being just as self-
serving (in reproductive terms) as the first three stages. They represent the
transitions to (1) reproductive effort being paramount (somatic effort having
been reduced toward maintenance per se), (2) seeking positions of power, and
(3) concern with enforcement of the rules under which one has learned to
operate and according to which one has made his investments in society. The
difference between this reproductively self-serving interpretation and the
increasingly altruistic interpretations of others is very great indeed. Its
implications for the understanding of society, and for the question of why
some individuals do not enter into the last three stages of moral
“development” are enormously important. If one has been prevented from
investing significantly, if one has been thwarted in the gaining of power (or
the feeling of having invested successfully or having gained power), then it
will likely serve one’s interests to resist becoming a rule-enforcer.”
(Alexander, 1987, p. 151)


“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)

“Biologist-philosophers can be divided into three main groups: First are those
like Wolfgang Wickler and Julian Huxley, and some others, who believe that by
looking into the evolutionary process one can determine how we ought to
proceed because what is “good” in evolution, they think, mus t be ethically
good. […] Huxley’s assertions presage those of Edward O. Wilson (1978), who
gives as the first three principles the “new ethicists” must follow: survival
of the human gene pool, preservation of genetic diversity, and universal human
rights. Whether or not these goals would all be judged admirable by humanity,
Wilson does not connect his selection of them to biological principles.”
(Alexander, 1987, p. 178)

Intuition is the best word to describe the dozens or hundreds of rapid,
effortless moral judgments and decisions that we all make every day. Only a
few of these intuitions come to us embedded in full-blown emotions. In The
Happiness Hypothesis, I called these two kinds of cognition the rider
(controlled processes, including “reasoning-why”) and the elephant (automatic
processes, including emotion, intuition, and all forms of “seeing-that”). I
chose an elephant rather than a horse because elephants are so much bigger—and
smarter—than horses. Automatic processes run the human mind, just as they have
been running animal minds for 500 million years, so they’re very good at what
they do, like software that has been improved through thousands of product
cycles. When human beings evolved the capacity for language and reasoning at
some point in the last million years, the brain did not rewire itself to hand
over the reins to a new and inexperienced charioteer. Rather, the rider
(language-based reasoning) evolved because it did something useful for the
elephant. The rider can do several useful things. It can see further into the
future (because we can examine alternative scenarios in our heads) and
therefore it can help the elephant make better decisions in the present. It
can learn new skills and master new technologies, which can be deployed to
help the elephant reach its goals and sidestep disasters. And, most important,
the rider acts as the spokesman for the elephant, even though it doesn’t
necessarily know what the elephant is really thinking. The rider is skilled at
fabricating post hoc explanations for whatever the elephant has just done, and
it is good at finding reasons to justify whatever the elephant wants to do
next. Once human beings developed language and began to use it to gossip about
each other, it became extremely valuable for elephants to carry around on
their backs a full-time public relations firm. 60

„Aber damit nicht genug. Das humanitaristisdie Ethos, zur Alleinherrschaft
oder letzten Instanz erhoben, vermag von den Widersprüchen zu entlasten, die
wir im vorigen Kapitel skizziert haben, und es befreit wirklich das Gewissen,
nämlich dadurch, daß es die Gegenposition politisch staatlicher Wachsamkeit
bagatellisiert. Je mehr der Staat sich auf eine Rolle als Exekutive von
Verbandskompromissen und Auszahlungskasse beschränkt, desto mehr kommt er
diesen Tendenzen entgegen. [...] Die Gewissensprobleme der Machtausübung, wie
sie z. B. noch den alten Kaiser angesichts des Rückversicherungsvertrages
beunruhigten, die stets verwendeten unsagbaren Mittel, die Listen und
Gewalttaten bewegten nur eine hauchdünne Schicht, die an solche Probleme seit
Generationen gewöhnt war. Mit der Demokratie wird jedermann zur Politik
herangezogen, und er wird von Großereignissen im Gewissen betroffen, zu denen
er nur mit einem Zettel beitrug — man denke an die amerikanische Vietnam-
Opposition. Francis Osborn, ein Freund von Hobbes, glaubte daher, „that the
common man was made to feel guilty", daß der gewöhnliche Bürger dazu da war,
sich schuldig zu fühlen (Coltman 227), während der Dichter Thomas Flatman ihm
den Rat gab, „silently to creep away", sich still schweigend zu verdrücken
(231). Vor der Konfrontation mit solchen Fragen schützt die
Moralhypertrophie, weil sie erlaubt, so gut wie jedes Ansinnen konkreter
Politik an Idealen auflaufen zu lassen, indem man noch mehr Gleichheit, noch
mehr Freiheit und noch weniger Autorität fordert, als irgendein praktischer
Zustand hergibt. Als Deutscher kann man dazu noch der Frage nach dem
verlorenen Vaterland aus dem Wege gehen, wenn man die Zwischeninstanzen
zwischen Familie und Menschheit moralisch preisgibt. Da die Moralhypertrophie
sich gegenüber den noch funktionierenden Autoritäten kritisch verhält, gibt
sie die Aufstiegsleiter für die neue Gegenaristokratie der von Verantwortung
nicht betroffenen Idealisten her, deren Wirkungschance ja im Angriff liegt. In
der Frühgeschichte der schottischen Freimaurer und ihres Zeremoniells spielte
Kain eine große Rolle, er baute ja übrigens auch eine Stadt.“ 180

the climate in Africa fluctuated wildly between 70,000 and 140,000 years ago.
With each swing from warmer to cooler, or from wetter to drier, food sources
changed and widespread starvation was probably common. A catastrophic volcanic
eruption 74,000 years ago from the Toba volcano in Indonesia may have
dramatically changed the Earth’s climate within a single year. Whatever the
cause, we know that almost all humans were killed off at some point during
this time period. Every person alive today is descended from just a few
thousand people who made it through one or more population bottlenecks. What
was their secret? We’ll probably never know, but let’s imagine that 95 percent
of the food on Earth magically disappears tonight, guaranteeing that almost
all of us will starve to death within two months. Law and order collapse.
Chaos and mayhem ensue. Who among us will still be alive a year from now? Will
it be the biggest, strongest, and most violent individuals in each town? Or
will it be the people who manage to work together in groups to monopolize,
hide, and share the remaining food supplies among themselves? Now imagine
starvations like that occurring every few centuries, and think about what a
few such events would do to the human gene pool. Even if group selection was
confined to just a few thousand years, or to the longer period between 70,000
and 140,000 years ago, it could have given us the group-related adaptations
that allowed us to burst forth from Africa soon after the bottleneck to
conquer and populate the globe. 241

“As hunting weapons and skills improved, group sizes should have decreased.
Cooperative group hunters among nonhumans tend to live in small groups
(canines, felines, cetaceans, some fish, and pelicans), and large groups are
typically what Hamilton called “selfish herds,” whose evolutionary raison
d’etre is security from prédation. Even groups evidently evolved to cooperate
against predators are typically small (chimpanzees, baboons, musk ox). […]
humans alone play competitively group-against-group on a large and complex
scale” (Alexander, 1987, p. 96)

„Dem in krisenhaften Zeiten ohnehin halbsbrecherischen Ideal der autonomen
Persönlichkeit stellt die industrielle Epoche nicht mehr die geeig nete
Umwelt zur Verfügung, denn die Unübersehbarkeit der Superstruk turen macht es
sinnlos, die im kleinen Individualbereich gemachten Erfahrungen auf die
großen Verhältnisse zu übertragen, man muß sich da mit Meinungen und
Gefühlsstößen begnügen, auf die man von den Mas senmedien eingeübt wird,
deren langfristig gesehen enorme Indoktrinationskraft nur von ihnen selbst
bestritten wird. Die Fiktion, frei zu sein, läßt sich leichter als jede andere
durchhalten, weil man adoptierte Meinungen und Gesinnungen als eigene erlebt
und in die Tagesgeschäfte des Privatalltags einbaut, wobei Politisches nur
insoweit wahrgenommen wird, als es in Erlebnisbegriffe des Alltags und Berufs
übersetzbar ist. Eben deshalb wird es von vornherein moralisierend dargeboten,
und es ist gar nicht leicht zu durchschauen, daß die heutzutage geübte
Allgegenwart der Politik dieser Art auf eine Entpolitisierung von innen her
herauskommt. So ergibt sich ein neuer Typus des Individualismus oder
Subjektivismus: Leistungswille geht mit Ichbetonung und Empfindlichkeit
gegenüber Geltungsansprüdien Anderer zusammen, und die Forderung auf
acceptance so, wie man ist, mit einer sozusagen provisorischen Einstellung zur
Umwelt. Im Grunde ist das eine ganz vernünftige Einpassungs-Mischung der
vielen Atome in die großen unübersehbaren und unlenkbaren Auf- und Abmärsche
der Ereignisse. So entfaltet sich das Persönliche in dieser Aufbereitung
gerade deswegen ungehindert, weil es nichts Wirkliches mehr verändern kann,
denn das „Umfunktionieren" ist ja doch nur eine Umschreibung für
Zerstörungsakte. Dagegen sind zwei klassische Strukturen des Individualismus
heute verloren, nämlich zuerst die große Schlüsselattitüde, der dramatische
Durchsetzungsanspruch einer selbsterfundenen Lehre, mit der eine Person steht
und fällt, wie Spinoza oder Nietzsche, offenbar handelte es sich da um den
verweltlichten Auftrag des Propheten, und zweitens die hochsensible,
differenzierte Kultiviertheit, wie sie bei Proust oder Musil vorgeführt wurde
und jetzt selbst bei den Literaten verschwand.“ 155

“much of the confusion about the significance of dreams dissipates if one sees
them as instances of scenario building, or repetition, in the interests of (1)
cementing prior events of great significance for retention and (2) testing
series of alternative possibilities with respect to social events yet to
transpire. […] They could do this first in the context of helping kin of all
ages and then use the ability to identify the interests of others to best or
cheat them while simultaneously evolving to conceal their own individual
interests. Concealment of interests would acquire importance as (1) interests
became individualized and (2) sociality became more prevalent or intense.”
(Alexander, 1987, p. 132)

Being small, isolated, or morally homogeneous are examples of environmental
conditions that increase the moral capital of a community. That doesn’t mean
that small islands and small towns are better places to live overall—the
diversity and crowding of big cities makes them more creative and interesting
places for many people—but that’s the trade-off. (Whether you’d trade away
some moral capital to gain some diversity and creativity will depend in part
on your brain’s settings on traits such as openness to experience and threat
sensitivity, and this is part of the reason why cities are usually so much
more liberal than the countryside.) 325

“whether after all these obligations are really obligatory, i.e., whether our
sense that we ought not to do certain things is not illusion. We then want to
have it proved to us that we ought to do so, i.e., to be convinced of this by
a process which, as an argument, is different in kind from our original and
unreflective appreciation of it. This demand is, as I have argued,
illegitimate. Hence in the first place, if, as is almost universally the case,
by Moral Philosophy is meant the knowledge which would satisfy this demand,
there is no such knowledge, and all attempts to attain it are doomed to
failure because they rest on a mistake, the mistake of supposing the
possibility of proving what can only be apprehended directly by an act of
moral thinking. Nevertheless the demand, though illegitimate, is inevitable
until we have carried the process of reflexion far enough to realise the self-
evidence of our obligations, i.e., the immediacy of our apprehension of them.
This realisation of their self-evidence is positive knowledge, and so far, and
so far only, as the term Moral Philosophy is confined to this knowledge and to
the knowledge of the parallel immediacy of the apprehension of the goodness of
the various virtues and of good dispositions generally, is there such a thing
as Moral Philosophy. But since this knowledge may allay doubts which often
affect the whole conduct of life, it is, though not extensive, important and
even vitally important.” 31

„Als jene eudaimonistisch-naturalistische Einstellung zur Zeit der Aufklärung
im Interesse des Bürgertums entworfen wurde, hatte diese Klasse in weitem
Umfang noch Zuflüsse aus ganz anderen Quellen aufgenommen, z. B. Haltungen und
Normen des damals politisch noch maßgebenden Adels. Ideale wie Ehre, Großmut
und Tapferkeit sind kriegerischer Herkunft, sie wurden in den maßgebenden
Kreisen des Berufskriegertums hochgehalten, und die Bourgeoisie hatte sie
adoptiert; so duellierten sich vor dem ersten Weltkrieg gelegentlich noch die
Führer der plutokratischen Demokratie, wie Caillaux. Auch hatte das
Christentum den Idealen der Entsagung und Askese noch nicht in der Tendenz,
die Sozialdemokratie zu überbieten, den Rücken gekehrt. Die Mehrheit lebte
also, wie immer, auf verschiedenen moralischen Ebenen und innerhalb der dann
notwendigen Kompromisse und Unschärfen, während die Wortführer des
Proletariats das Ethos des Massenlebenswertes um so vorbehaltloser
übernahmen, als es im Klassenkampf polemisch damals noch gegen das Militär und
die Kirchen zu verwenden war; zudem schien die oft sichtbare Begrenzung der
Lebensbedürfnisse, die Not, der Mangel an Sicherheit und sozialem Status die
Expropriation der Ausbeuter zur Forderung der Gerechtigkeit zu machen. Auch
darf man nicht vergessen, daß die Bewertung des Lebens als der Güter höchstes
die Dramatik der frühzeitigen Sterblichkeit um sich sah, aber schon seit der
französischen Revolution die Aussicht auf die Güter der Reichen vor sich.
Auch bei der Expropriation (zuerst des Adels) ging das Bürgertum voraus, nach
1789 bildete die Okkupation der Reichtümer der Adligen und des Klerus einen
besonders reizvollen Teil der Tugend: „Niemals hat sich eine reichere Beute
für den Sieger dargeboten, sagte Desmoulins, 40 000 Paläste und zwei Fünftel
aller Güter Frankreichs werden der Lohn der Tapferkeit sein." „Wie, und Sie
leben noch?" sagte der Deputierte Laurencot zu dem Besitzer, als er die
Schönheit des Schlosses Chevemy gewahrte. Nach Napoleon (Mém. de St. Hélène,
3.9. 1816) hat die Revolution darin bestanden „den Inhabern aller Stellen, den
Eigentümern aller Chargen und den Besitzern aller Vermögen zu sagen: entfernt
euch". Hier ist Raum für eine Erinnerung an die wohlbekannte Grausamkeit der
reinen Tugend — ein Sonderfall der steigenden Aggressivität bei
Alleinherrschaft eines der ethischen Impulse: Es gibt nicht nur den blutigen
Staatsmann, es gibt auch die borniert egoistische Kleinfamilie und den
giftigen Pazifisten. Wer die „Realisierung" einer Idee anstrebt, wird leicht
die realen Widerstände als unmoralisch empfinden, als Unebenheiten der
Wirklichkeit“ 66f

“In the second place, suppose we come genuinely to doubt whether we ought, for
example, to pay our debts owing to a genuine doubt whether our previous
conviction that we ought to do so is true, a doubt which can, in fact only
arise if we fail to remember the real nature of what we now call our past
conviction. The only remedy lies in actual getting into a situation which
occasions the obligation, or -- if our imagination be strong enough -- in
imagining ourselves in that situation, and then letting our moral capacities
of thinking do their work. Or, to put the matter generally, if we do doubt
whether there is really an obligation to originate A in a situation B, the
remedy lies not in any process of general thinking, but in getting face to
face with a particular instance of the situation B, and then directly
appreciating the obligation to originate A in that situation.” 31