Frans de Waal: An Ethologist's Confusion About Ethics — Part II

Some time ago I wrote a two-part critique of Frans de Waal's book, The Atheist and the Bonobo, arguing that de Waal had failed to grasp the evolutionary significance of religion in the success of human groups, while advocating a return to the moral world of the apes for the betterment of society. Specifically, he advocates a world regulated by the rules of conduct set forth by Nicolo Machiavelli, in the Prince, a manual of conduct for an absolute ruler unaffected in the pursuit and retention of power by either empathy or morals. Part 1 of that critique delivers, I believe, points worth making. Part 2, however, entered I now see, a realm of incoherence, notwithstanding the seeming validity of the objective that I was driving at. Normally, coming across a flawed post from the past, I either shrug or hit the delete button. The critique of de Waal, however, seems worth getting right, especially as, according to my blog stats, people are still reading it. Here, then, is the revision, which I have temporarily pinned to the top of the page.

First Posted December 1, 2016, revised November 23, 2019, with a concluding addendum November 30, 2019: Frans de Waal, whose accounts of animal behavior have won him numerous awards and honors, believes that empathy, which is innate to both mankind and many other species, is the only effective basis for socially constructive behavior and that religion as a guide to human conduct is, therefore, both unnecessary and undesirable.

However, as I discussed in an earlier post, de Waal fails to acknowledge the limits to the power of empathy, which is most clearly expressed among family members, friends and neighbors, but which is less evident or entirely absent in interactions among strangers, especially among strangers differing in tribe, culture, race or nation.

Moreover, even among family or close associates, empathy is often insufficient to ensure fair dealing, sharing, sympathy and kindness. This is evident in the behavior not only of people but of chimpanzees, the study of which has been the focus of de Waal's own research. Thus, de Waal wrote, he found reading Machiavelli's The Prince, a useful guide to interpreting behavior among chimps.

...breaking with tradition, describing chimps as schmoozing and scheming Machiavellians, my book drew wide attention and enjoyed many translations.

Specifically, as de Waal makes clear in Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? chimps, like people, frequently engage in deception, bribery, and theft in the pursuit of food, sex, and status, such behavior often resulting in violence. Moreover, as with humans, chimps are much more likely to be uncooperative or violent with strangers than with members of their own family or troop.

It is precisely the tendency for strangers to be uncooperative, dishonest, or violent, that made a top-down, universally enforced code of conduct a necessity of social cohesion in communities larger than the family or tribal groups in which humans lived prior to the agricultural revolution and the emergence of urban civilization and its imperial expansion.

A universally applicable code of conduct to promote socially constructive behavior in a large community constitutes a religion, whether it is based on a claimed supernatural authority, or mere force, propaganda and tradition. Thus, Political Correctness, the atheistic code of the American Empire, is just as much a religion as Islam, Buddhism, or Roman Catholicism, and its value must likewise be judged by how well it serves the community over which it holds sway.

Thus, de Waal's dismissal of religion as an unnecessary relic is based on a misunderstanding both of the nature of religion and its necessity. Moreover, de Waal confirms his misconception of the nature and function of religion — and I use the term function in the evolutionist's sense of the way in which a characteristic contributes to the survival and propagation of a species — by his analysis of perhaps the best known teaching of the Christian religion, the parable of the Good Samaritan.

As a prelude to that parable, Jesus was questioned by a person that de Waal identifies as "a lawyer." However, as the gospel account makes clear, the questioner was "an expert in the Law," which is to say an expert in the Jewish religious law, not a specialist in some secular legal code.

As the gospel of Luke recounts:

On one occasion an expert in the Law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

“The answer” to that question, writes de Waal, “came in the parable of the good Samaritan. A half-dead victim, left by the side of the road ...” in which, according to the Gospel of St.
 Luke:

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.

A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.

So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.

He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him.

The next day he took out two denarii[c] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

Then Jesus asked:

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

To which the expert in the Law replied:

“The one who had mercy on him.”

Which is to say, the outsider, the non-Jew, who took care of a member of another tribe and nation.

And in response Jesus said:

“Go and do likewise.”

From this, de Waal draws the conclusion that:

everyone is our neighbor ...the biblical message is to be wary of ethics by the book,  which as often as not offers excuses to ignore the plight of others.

In this, de Waal is saying that Jesus specifically directed his hearers to reject Jewish ethnocentricity, which is to say, concern for one's own family, tribe and nation, over the interests of other groups.

But such a conclusion is highly questionable. Thus, as the 1906 edition of the Jewish Encyclopedia states:

The story of the good Samaritan, in the Pauline Gospel of Luke 10: 25-37, related to illustrate the meaning of the word "neighbor," possesses a feature which puzzles the student of rabbinical lore. The kind Samaritan who comes to the rescue of the men that had fallen among the robbers, is contrasted with the unkind priest and Levite; whereas the third class of Jews—i.e., the ordinary Israelites who, as a rule, follow the Cohen and the Levite are omitted; and therefore suspicion is aroused regarding the original form of the story. If "Samaritan" has been substituted by the anti-Judean gospel-writer for the original "Israelite," no reflection [would have been] intended by Jesus upon Jewish teaching concerning the meaning of neighbor... 

It can be argued, therefore, that contrary to de Waal's assertion, the expert in the Law must have correctly identified his neighbor, i.e., the victim described in the parable, in accordance with the Jewish Law, or what de Waal calls “ethics by the book.”

Moreover, this interpretation is buttressed by Jesus's affirmation of the Law:

Matthew 5. 17: do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

So most likely the lesson that Jesus taught that day should, if correctly rendered, be known as the parable, not of the Good Samaritan, but of the Good Israelite. In which case, it follows that Jesus was not, as de Waal assumes, preaching a universalist ideology appropriate to the multitude of  peoples absorbed into the Roman empire, which is what Christianity became. Rather, Jesus was saying adhere to "ethics by the Book," the Book being the Law or the Prophets of the Jews.

In addition, Jesus is warning his hearers not to be misled by religious authorities who, in their personal behavior, may often fail to abide by the "Law or the Prophets." The hypocrisy of the religious authorities is a recurrent theme of Jesus's teaching: take heed not of outward displays of religiosity, only of actions and intentions.

Another lesson of the parable, writes de Waal, “is that everyone is our neighbor ..."

Which as we have pointed out, was most likely not the lesson Jesus intended. Rather, that is the message of Pauline Christianity, the invention of a Roman citizen, who adapted the teachings of Jesus to the needs of the Roman Empire.

That Jesus was put to death by the occupying Roman power with the support of the Jewish authorities, lends support to the notion that Jesus was at odds with the Jewish authorities primarily on religious grounds. But that idea likely reflects the fact that the gospels were written after the Jewish revolt and the Roman sack of Jerusalem, including the burning of the Temple. By then, the followers of Jesus and the gospel writers surely wished to play down Jewish nationalism and adjust their doctrines to suit their Roman imperial overlords. 

What is perfectly clear, however, is that de Waal's notion that all we need rely on in the way of morality in order to achieve the good society are our natural chimp-like feelings of empathy is absurd. To abandon an explicit moral code means, as de Waal acknowledges, to adopt the psychopathic morality of Niccolo Machiavelli's Prince. 

The question, therefore, that post-Christian Western society must resolve is not whether we need what de Waal calls "ethics by the book," but by what book should we take our ethics. For a civilization so diverse as that of the Western nations have now become, to adopt the code of the Jews as set forth in the first five books of the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, what is known to the Jews as the Torah, would be catastrophic. It would result in civil war among indigenous groups and the multiple immigrant tribes.  Yet to adopt the Christian code, which assumes that when Jesus spoke of loving one's neighbor as oneself and forgiving one's enemies, means acceptance of the globalist's dream of a borderless world. It is a code that would see the European peoples, the nations of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, including, eventually, even the vast nations of India and China, becoming minorities in their own homelands. Thus, what many take to be the beneficient and noble embrace of diversity and unlimited racial, religious and cultural tolerance, thus, in fact, constitutes a program for universal racial and cultural genocide.  For us the choice is clear. We are for diversity. The diversity, that is, of the world's nation states and of humanity's many tribal groups. If you are a Christian or belong to a formerly Christian nation, uphold the Christian faith and adhere to the teachings of the Master: love your neighbor as yourself and forgive him his transgressions, but guard your borders carefully. Steadfastly refuse either mass replacement immigration or the influx of those who, with a settler mentality, seek to impose on you an intolerant, imperialistic and  alien religious code and political culture.

Related:

 CanSpeccy: Frans de Waal: An Ethologist's Confusion About Ethics — Part I