The world stands at a distinct crossroads. In the face of a global pandemic and subsequently fragile economy, looming environmental collapse, systemic identity-based division and political upheaval, we find ourselves rooted in patterns of aggression, overwhelmed by feelings of fear and isolation. Academics, policy makers and advocates across the globe have contentiously debated where we are to go from here. They see the planet on fire, the bloodshed, and the daily struggle of so many to survive brewing increasing resentment towards widening inequality and the institutions that create it. Some see how these feelings are exploited and exacerbated by the opportunistic power and profit seeking polarization industrial complex. With division so steeped, we fail to collaborate and implement sustainable solutions to these critical issues, and instead become apathetic, made to believe we have no power to overcome these barriers. Numerous theories have been developed to pinpoint the source of these deep divisions, but their intersectionality provides no clear path to healing beyond this continued quest for knowledge, hoping that at some point our self-consciousness will re-activate the apathetic abandonment of civic engagement, and inspire an equitable reform of our institutions.
The truth, however, is that these proliferating theories, communicated through language, fail to transcend the sociopolitical bubbles which create them, and thus, scale into collective action. They are often observational or descriptive of symptoms of our current state, glossing over all deeper psychological causality. They trace the histories of political parties and voting behavior, discuss the historical roots of poverty or the conflict between two religious sects. They sometimes consider what emotions are fostered by intersectional oppression, or are used to manipulate human behavior into engagement or disengagement in one’s community, radicalism, political violence, etc. Some even ask which emotions determine one’s partisan identity or cultural sorting into a more disciplined versus loose society. However, almost all social science research focuses on drawing causality between demography and survey answers or measurable behaviors, describing broader patterns from a distorted metric of the way things are right now. This moment, in that it is not the first existential global crisis, but the latest iteration faced by humanity, cannot be genuinely understood in a vacuum constructed by the influence of these contextual particulars. Rather, we need to zoom out, and reconsider the interaction of human nature with the wider historical narrative. We need to ask not where this particular division comes from, but what is psychologically necessary for shifting away from this human tendency. We need to critically think about what our better future looks like, reimagining our relationships from that lens, if we are ever to effectively strategize a path to getting there.
This series of articles will offer a reframing of the historical narrative and specifically the history of philosophy to illuminate not what is driving these particular divisions, but allows for the mentality of division, aggression, and fear more broadly. This recharacterization will also draw out a timeless path of human inquiry into our fundamental psychological needs for moving past these clearly unsustainable tendencies, the continuation of which can provide a critical standard for the reform of institutions and human relationships that will allow for more inclusive and vigorous civic engagement and human flourishing. This will ultimately take the form of an ontological discussion of human dignity, in relation to recognition, and the somatic reconnection of mind and body offered by spiritual practices of Eastern philosophy.
Historical Recharacterization
Previous historical recharacterizations which aim to unpack the catalyst behind the systemic exacerbation of human division have centered around conflict- especially caused by material and power-based inequity. Thucydides in his Archaeology, social contract theorists, Freud, Karl Marx, Fukuyama, etc. each derived a new framework contingent on material human existence being the force which determines human behavior and turns the wheel of history. Their realities suggest that if a certain equality of outcomes were made possible, there would be an end to conflict. Even if material consciousness is one of the prime factors behind human identity formation and therefore division, we cannot be certain, without a more serious inquiry into human nature, if the tendency for conflict transcends economic interdependence. Perhaps human relationships would exist without material dependence, and all of these conflicts are connected on a deeper level. Perhaps what moves the wheel of history along is something less tangible, and more innately emotional. If this is the case, the solution to our polarization crisis would require an entirely different institutional reformation.
What is clear is that all human relationships are fundamentally perceived through communication, whether it’s rhetorical, or occurs through physical or aesthetic signals, from body language to architecture, arts, or advertisements. Communication has evolved across history alongside technology, which often takes center-stage in conflict-based materialist historical narratives. The birth of language, tools, civilization, the arts, architecture, telephone radio, television, and now social media have changed not only how we communicate, but something about the psychology of our relationships. Debates have circled throughout historical narratives about where human life began, whether in a brutal state of nature and a struggle to survive or the immediate presence of connection drawn from maternal or paternal bonds, for example. However, what is consistent across historical narratives is that at some point, coalitions were built between individuals, creating a pivot from a life as individuals to relationships between people, culminating in the formation of tribes, or the first iteration of community. Eventually, these relationships got more complex with the Neolithic Revolution, and the rise of civilization to the point of polities, regimes, empires, and so on. It’s also widely acknowledged that the development of technology is largely what facilitated each of these stages.
Historical narratives centered around materialism as the root of conflict have demonstrated that technology certainly made an impact on human psychology in this sense, and to some degree talk about deep virtues or shifts in moral consciousness which are fostered by it. However, they focus far less on the metaphysical shift in human consciousness established by technology, which ultimately uncovers not just activated tendencies, but our full range of psychological capacity. If we continue to think about the shift in human relationships caused by technology through the lens of communication, we start to draw out this primordial image.
Think for a moment, about the interaction of two people communicating in simplest terms- the closest we can imagine to an origin of human psychology, prior to the development of artificially manufactured subconscious bias. These two people interact in a physical space where they can plainly see each other. This allows for the perception of a person’s emotional response to the other’s communication, and therefore, connects both actors directly to any ethical obligation which humans may inherently feel toward each other. The relationship exists entirely in the realm of particulars. They get to know each other more from physical actions and responses than through historically shaped assumptions about each other’s opinions. While scholars disagree over the presence of moral agency at this origin point, we can see the situation is open to, rather than destructive of the potential for empathy, for example. This could be complicated by innate judgements about characteristics such as physiology, which are often connected to the psychology of material conflict. However, even these judgements would be made relative to the person observed in the present. This does not substantiate a claim that the development of a divisive material order is inevitable, nor irreversible. Both are communicating from emotions, even if those emotions include fear, which may create a persuasive or intimidating dialogue, but a dialogue directed at this contingent being, nonetheless, rather than at a wider group through the objectification of that being and the associations being made with it.
The evolution of technology, as we know, distorts this model of communication by allowing the formation of human relationships across larger geographic distances and levels of specialization. An ever-increasing proportion of our connections to other people are with those we do not regularly interact with face to face. In fact, across history, relationships have evolved to where most of the people we are connected to we never meet in real life. As such, identity becomes defined increasingly by abstractions, or communities which are not physically interpersonal, but are defined by other joint characteristics or needs, which we can understand conceptually. Within these abstract relationships, we do not see the immediate consequences of our actions on those we are connected to. In other words, without physical presence, we cannot directly observe the emotional response to our words, or the other consequences of our behaviors. We might see backlash through written word or recordings, but we don’t catch the details of facial expression or shifting body behavior, the sad glimmer of an eye, or catch of the voice. This distances us from our immediate ethical instincts, or perceptions of moral obligations towards each other. As such, unprecedented transgressions unfold into an escalation of conflict through the normalization of dehumanizing divisions between communities or identities.
This pattern unfolds in an iterative fashion, with each major jolt technology causes to the formation of human relationships. The Neolithic, Scientific, and Industrial Revolutions, for example, have all been marked by previous historical narratives. as moments where technology reshaped human relationships and ultimately led to an existential crisis over our new reality. Each one of these represented a new level of abstraction within human relationships, and therefore, communication. To illustrate the ramifications using just one example, we will zoom in on the jolt caused by the Industrial Revolution, now referred to as the crisis of the mid-twentieth century, in which globalization and industrial powers culminated in the World Wars. Globalization, enabled by the industrial revolution, was the distinctive benchmark in the evolution of human relationships towards far-reaching connections on the basis of abstraction. Allies and enemies formed under overlapping national goals, as well as value systems and ideologies, not through interpersonal community formation of neighboring peoples. As such, connections were felt in a distanced, intellectual, and therefore strategic rather than emotional way. Yet, prior to the first World War, the world had not fully confronted what globalization would mean for human relations, including the unintended, far-reaching domino effects of ally and enemy distinctions in times of conflict resulting in bloodshed of unimaginable proportions, and devastating poverty for many countries.
These dark ramifications are infamously what laid the ground work for radical political leaders to emerge and triumph racist, xenophobic and dangerous overhauls of existing governments. Germany saw the rise of Hitler and the tragedy of the Holocaust. The Soviet Union led millions to their deaths. Outside Europe, other movements of genocide paralleled these transgressions. Even the United States, who asserted their role as the moral hero to the devastation of Germany and victor against the U.S.S.R. helped facilitate the research on eugenics used by the Nazi movement, and later accepted no blame for that role in their historical narrative. Further, they spent these years constructing Japanese internment camps, hysterically creating the witch hunt of the Red Scare and McCarthyism, and in the early throughs of violence responding to what was becoming the civil rights movement. Ultimately, the world was thrust into a forced confrontation with the question of what had allowed these mentalities and choices to unfold, and how to prevent it from happening again.
Philosophers developed a deluge of theories working to untangle the events of this historical moment. Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger, each of whom had a role in supporting radical political projects which ultimately influenced much of this turmoil in varying degrees, all saw the role of technology in turning the wheel of historical conflict. They believed that the crisis of the century had been caused by the abandonment of philosophy alongside this evolution, thus allowing dogmatic leaders to control the trajectory of society, rather than a philosophical understanding of good. They believed that without philosophy, the lifestyle offered by this technological development was one of alienation from the self, a sense of purpose or meaning, and that it was these emotions which led people to dark and sadistic behaviors, or apathy towards them. Arendt discussed the moment as a crisis of isolation, or loneliness. Together, these resonate with the idea of the abstraction of relationships, and the unintended but very real ethical apathy that comes with these, without a conscious effort to foster empathy or a respect for what was to come as the political “solution” to the World Wars upon their conclusion- dignity.
Following the collapse of the Nazi regime, the world, lost in the devastation, was determined to articulate a preventative solution to future iterations of this moment. The United Nations was formed, and it, along with Germany as one of only three countries in the world to do so, adopted human dignity as a universal and politically protected human right. The idea was to assert that communities which exist as oppressors to other identities by material means would not be tolerated. However, it became clear quickly, as with the vague policy still debated in care bioethics, that dignity was a difficult thing to quantify and enforce. Thus, these declarations and constitutions were largely symbolic, or acts of soft power. Yet, they opened up an entire field of literature in international relations, attempting to understand the concept outside philosophical methods.
Parallel Causal Evolution of the History of Philosophy
This attempt of philosophers to produce literature which could unpack and reconcile the existential crisis brought shift in relationships by technology is not unique to the mid-twentieth century. Instead, if we recharacterize the history of philosophy in the same way as the wider historical narrative, it becomes clear that with each iteration of this pattern of increasing abstraction, philosophers in some sense return to the question of dignity. When abstraction makes us feel further from what was familiar about our humanity, we are reunited with a burning desire to reassert our value by asking what is intrinsically good about us, to assure ourselves that what was good was not lost in this reformation of human being. Thus, with each technological “benchmark,” philosophy gives us two things; a new historical framing which makes sense of the shift, and another contribution towards understanding the ontology of dignity, whether directly or through related concepts. When examined in this sense, each historical reframing and era of philosophy doesn’t, in fact, reject or undermine the previous paradigm completely, but rather, connects to and builds on it from this common thread.
By way of demonstrating a quick overview, Ancient philosophers, from, once again, Thucydides’ Archaeology within the History of the Peloponnesian War, as well as the Platonic and Aristotilean narratives of the development of civilization illustrate a clear understanding of the influence alterations of human relationships have on the development of human psychology. They fixate on questions of what characterizes human being, what is meant by human flourishing, and thus, ultimately, what is human dignity. They see the path to the human telos as analogous to the path from the family to political regime because these are the institutions which shape relationships and therefore human behavior, including communication. This is mirrored in Eastern tradition, which also focuses on determining the virtues and community relations which are intrinsic to and are best for the development of human nature. Then, with the influx of monotheistic religion and shift into a new political world order, came the birth of the Medieval Era. Here, particularly Christian philosophy in the west worked to once again reinterpret the historical narrative through religion, re-confronting and building on Ancient concepts of human dignity and morality. Amidst the Medieval Era also came the Renaissance. Some abstraction occurred here with tensions fostered from its artistic and technological innovation, clashing ideologies of pagan and Christian religion, as well through escalating class consciousness with increasing inequality.
However, the clear iterative shift came with the fall of the Medieval era and launch of the Early Modern period, first with the birth of the Scientific Revolution, where the upheaval of the Christian metaphysical reality with heliocentric theory and questioning of religious institutional power combined with huge leaps in technological innovation that put human reason in a newfound state of power. Because human reason, again, was seen as the characteristic human element within Ancient and sometimes Medieval philosophy, and therefore the foundation of dignity, this was really just another alteration in exploring the ontology of the concept in order to reconcile the overwhelming changes to present reality. Scientific and Religious philosophers, including Descartes, Spinoza, Bacon, Martin Luther, Newton, were both fully conscious of the stakes of this movement, each feeling their personal value as bound to their ideology and methodology, which would be lost if a contradictory historical narrative replaced their own. This fear is reflected, once again, in the horrors of burnings at the stake and introduction of subversive communication, later coined esoteric writing, necessary for each side to survive with the other.
This was continued with the escalation of the Enlightenment through the modern period. Eventually, this shift boiled over into the fusion of the new philosophic paradigm with political theory, where social contract theorists and democratic reformers sprung up in America and France, most infamously, advocating for their dignity, represented by reason, to be recognized by the state through avenues for active political participation, or participation in rational governance, and economic mobility-meaning compensation for their skills and thoughts. This was a new peak of abstraction in which individuals, and in fact entire governments, were boiled down into a representation of certain principles which were either good or bad, signaled by coded language and their participation or lack of engagement in populist revolutions. Violence was unforgiving, because this was not a fight or dialogue between people, but of principle. Suddenly, the masses were willing to die and to kill for ideas on an unprecedentedly extreme scale.
As such, philosophers everywhere attempted to reconcile the existential crisis through unpacking the emotions responding to the lapse in dignity received from institutions and a historical reinterpretation to carve a path forward. Burke, Paine, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, among others throughout western Europe, all came together to reinterpret human dignity, and ultimately cast this as a framework for a new political order. Intimate details of human nature were explored. Burke, for example, through an examination of the ways in which our physical senses respond to different phenomena, determined a mode of analysis for human responses to broader political norms and transitions, which led to him supporting the American Revolution, but not the French, due to the French being so abstracted from interpersonal human, emotional communication and history that they had no ethical responsibility mediating their violence, where he saw the Americans as engaging in a dialogue of peoples on some level, and saw their revolution as inevitable. Part of his reasoning included the geographic distance between the American colonies and British mainland, which would preclude true emotional dialogue, or recognition of dignity across each sides to prime the debate for collaboration in finding a sustainable solution.
Soon after, this focus on human nature and historical understanding was mirrored through the intellectual prowess, unmatched since the Ancient Era, of German philosophers Hegel and Kant, who continue to directly supply a framework for contemporary conceptions of dignity. Naturally, the ethical consequences of previous abstractions within human relationships meant this framework was inherently racist and patriarchal. Nevertheless, it was a confrontation along the same thread of this history of the abstraction of communication. This brings us back to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and the crisis of the mid-twentieth century, our original example, which led to the collapse of this Modern Era of philosophy, and the birth of Contemporary Thought.
There are many other parallels to this historical reframing throughout Eastern and Middle Eastern philosophies. Ultimately, however, we can use this as a starting point for interpreting our current moment of crisis, and determining how to build on these previous contributions for an understanding of both history and dignity which do not propel us into another divisive era, but instead, ask us to see this as the exacerbation of one tendency of human nature, and consider what would it look like to shift ourselves in the opposite direction to a kind of institutional structure and set of communication habits that allow us to innovate sustainably and be brought closer together? In other words, how can we use this pattern to craft a more ontologically serious project of understanding dignity?
Epistemological Benefits of a Historical Ontological Understanding of Dignity
Making use of a historical examination of the evolution of theory on the ontology of dignity in some ways holds the potential to circumvent the epistemological limitations of examining dignity analytically, trapped within the bounds of our language and sociopolitical influential context. More acutely, it allows for the synthesis of all previous observations of the limits to our access of the ontology of dignity, illuminating what, if anything, is within our philosophical grasp and worthy of serious study. As with all historicist methods, this is imperfect to the degree that we cannot escape the ways in which we are being influenced throughout this historical recharacterization. However, to be introspective to the extent we are able is better than to ignore the patterns which brought us here altogether.
In other words, because the concept of dignity has repeatedly been tied to autonomy and reason, the phenomena which we have deemed characteristically human, it would be a mistake of dangerous proportions to ignore that each of these iterations of literature around the theory of dignity have occurred in the wake of an epistemological paradigm shift, and thus, are tied to deep political pressures, while occurring in the territory of fresh, unprecedented and therefore unexplored logic. This kind of confrontation with human nature is overwhelming, and its unfamiliarity both leads us to make grave decisions, and to allow familiar biases to take over, interpreting autonomy, for example, in an exclusionary sense, even when we can’t see that in the foundation of our philosophy. Strauss’ famous critique of Heidegger, demonstrating his lack of political consciousness when trying to examine human nature via introspection as the root of his participation in the Nazi regime, as well as the notorious racism embedded in Hegel and Kant, are all demonstrative of this.
However, there is promise in continuing the quest for dignity despite our inability to fully reconcile our own contextual limitations. Hegel, for example, saw each shift in what he called “categories” of human thought, which includes our perceptions and relations to each other, as becoming more intimate with our intrinsic human freedom, or value, and saw this as an opportunity for the positive rebuilding of institutions. It is here we will pick up in the following segment, infusing these epistemological benefits and possibility for turning around this wider narrative to healthier communication practices that bring out our empathetic, rather than aggressive and divisive tendencies into the beginning of a new exploration of our dignity. It is here we mark a path forward for philosophical inquiry and human healing.