Avocado or Artichoke The assigned readings for this week include several cultural and philosophical views on the self. These approaches are quite different, but can generally be categorized according to how they respond to a central question: do human beings have a fixed/essential nature? Some argue that we do, and that this is evident in the characteristics that have been asserted to distinguish us from other living beings, such as reason, language, morality, and toolmaking. However, we now observe that some animals seem to share these characteristics. Furthermore, computers are able to engage in rational activities as well. Nevertheless, there are some philosophers who argue that human beings have a fixed, essential nature that makes us unique. This general approach will be characterized as the avocado view of human nature. The essential part of human beings, the part that makes us more like other human beings than like animals, is the avocado seed, and the flesh and outer skin are simply incidental. Both the Judeo-Christian and Islamic religious traditions set forth a version of the self that is consistent with the avocado view, as do Greek rationalism and modernist/Enlightenment western philosophy. The belief in a soul and the privileging of reason over emotion is generally associated with the avocado view. While this view is appealing, it also admits of some problematic aspects, one of the most serious of which is the association of the avocado’s “core,” i.e. reason, with masculinity, and of emotions and the body with femininity. On the other hand, some disagree that human beings have an essential nature. Upbringing, genetics, culture, particular experiences, and even sheer luck determine who we are more than an essential aspect of our nature such as reason or the soul. While these may be understood as additional characteristics that are part of what makes one human being different from another under the avocado view, in the artichoke view there are no essential human characteristics—merely a series of layers. Since our nature is not fixed, we are better thought of as works in progress than as unique beings with special human characteristics we all share. This is what may be called the Artichoke View of human nature. We all have multiple layers of the self, but these layers are not based on anything uniquely human. This is the view that is generally consistent with a postmodern view of the self, as we will see when we examine the existentialism of Jean Paul Sartre. Before we get to the protean view of the self, however, it may be helpful to look a little more closely at a philosophical approach that is a hybrid of Judeo-Christianity and Greek rationalism by discussing the work of St. Augustine. Reason and the Soul St. Augustine’s Theology and Greek Rationalism We spent some time last week engaged in a close reading of a Platonic dialogue, and so we’ve already been introduced to the idea that the self is the soul. While we saw that there is some debate as to whether Plato really intended the interpretation of his dialogues as an argument in favor of a dualistic reality, this view has nevertheless greatly influenced western metaphysics. In a dualistic account of reality, the world is divided up into two realms. The dualistic account of Platonism is summarized in this chart: Being Becoming Unchanging Transient Immortal/Divine Mortal Culture Nature Soul/Mind/Intelligible World Body/Sensible World Regardless of which approach to Plato you find most compelling, you can probably see where Socratic wisdom fits in here:
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