Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind (2012)

Jonathan Haidt.  The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.  New York: Pantheon Books, 2012.  xvii + 419 pp.  $282.95 (cloth)

         The Righteous Mind is a apt to garner media attention in an election year, especially given the success of Haidt’s previous book, The Happiness Hypothesis.  But the book is badly flawed.

 

         Haidt’s major claim is that liberals and conservatives talk about morality differently.  His efforts to analyze moral discourse are badly hampered his ignorance of virtue ethics, which (consciously or not) continues to shape how any of us talk about morality.  He argues that liberals value compassion and integrity (my labels, not his).  Conservatives value not only compassion and integrity but also group loyalty, respect for authority, and reverence (again, my language not his).  Liberals lack physiological “receptors” for conservative values, he proposes, and that explains the hostility between liberals and conservatives. It wasn’t clear to me whether that his comments about “receptors” was metaphorical or literal, but given his emphasis on evolutionary psychology I think he means this literally.

         Haidt’s bases his Moral Foundations Theory on the results of several online surveys accessible to anyone at all. Such surveys are gossip, not research.  It's modestly interesting gossip, perhaps, but that's all it is.  He asserts that his six paired terms (what tradition calls virtues/vices) reflect "mental modules" created by evolution.  Evolution, then, is the ultimate “foundation” of human morality. 

        

         Unfortunately, Haidt’s supposedly biological “modules” are pure supposition.  That’s not to deny that morality plays a role in human reproductive success.  Clearly it does: religions make for healthy group dynamics, and that’s vitally important for human well-being.  (That’s the claim made by David Sloan Wilson in Darwin's Cathedral (2002), to which Haidt refers at one point.)  But Haidt offers no basis for his own claim that his six “modules” have a physiological basis that might have been shaped by evolution.

         In fact, he either ignores or misrepresents the work of thinkers who are investigating the neurology of moral judgment. He argues at length  

that intellect plays absolutely no role in moral behavior, incorrectly basing that assertion on the work of neurologist Antonio Damasio.  Despite Haidt's interest in evolution, he ignores relevant work in “animal morality” by figures like Frans de Waal (although he lists de Waal in his bibliography).  de Waal argues that complex cooperation in social groups arises  only with the neurological capacity for critical judgment.  Haidt instead instead attributes human groups to the persistence within us of insect-like “hive” behavior, positing a “hive switch” that reverts us from primates to bees.  Again I wasn’t sure whether he was speaking literally or metaphorically, but the claim is nonsense either way.

            Rancorous debate between "conservatives" and "liberals" is certainly a problem, but Haidt doesn't have much to offer.  If the biological evolution of a capacity for morality interests you, I would more confidently recommend Frans de Waal, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolves.  On the social construction of morality, I recommend  Alasdair McIntyre, After Virtue.  And on politics and religion, Robert Putnam and David Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us.

Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists (2012)

Alain de Botton.  Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion.  New York: Pantheon Books, 2012.  320 pp.  $26.95 (cloth)      

    At first I thought that the title of this book was a joke, a witty introduction to religion by a philosopher who made a name for himself with such previous best-sellers as The Consolations of Philosophy and How  Proust Can Change Your Life.  But the title Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion is not meant as witticism.  de Botton thoughtfully reviews all the valuable things that religion provides to believers to help us cope with the human condition, step by step arguing that secularists need parallel institutions.  In fact, since 2008 he has been involved in one such  institution, The School for Life in London. 

     de Botton argues that we come to church not because we need formal instruction in the principles of morality, but because we need continual encouragement in right action.  We come to church not because prayer and ritual can change our lives in some direct or magical way, but because we  need consolation for our suffering--and we need to admit that suffering is the human condition.  We need to forgive; we need forgiveness; we need help and support in doing to.  We need reminding that we ourselves are not the center of the universe, because our culture encourages grandiosity and narcissism.  Above all, he argues, we come to church because we need a way to meet people who are seeking what we seek, and in a setting where it's safe to say hello to strangers.  In churches, he marvels, saying hello to strangers is normal.   

     So far, so good: I thought that his brief, elegant arguments on these points were consistently astute and even thought-provoking.  But the book took a progressively darker turn as merely fatuous proposals for secular equivalents were followed by actively dangerous ones.  Jumbotrons in every city broadcasting "edifying" messages?  Maybe not. 

     de Botton further argues that universities should be reorganized around the moral and psychological needs of students rather than academic subject matter.  Literary works should be valued for the "lessons" that each provides.  Art museums should reorganize their collection in the same way: a gallery of suffering, a gallery of compassion, a gallery of fear.  Petty moralists in the 18^th and 19^th century tried that approach: it was catastrophic for education, for the arts, and for religion itself.  Anyone with de Botton's education knows that story.   Anyone.  It's an inescapably important part of the rise of secularism in the West. 

     de Botton's "secular church" proposals would destroy vital resources, traditions, and institutions within secular culture without meeting the needs he describes so adeptly.  And that's why, in the end, Religion for Atheists struck me as essentially dishonest.                                                        

Catherine M. Wallace, PhD

CatherineMWallace.com