"42"

What does it mean to be human?

It is to have a conscience and free will.

Conscience is defined as "the sense or consciousness of the moral goodness or blameworthiness of one's own conduct, intentions, or character together with a feeling of obligation to do right or be good" (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary). I argue that conscience is not merely the result of socialization; it is something that inherent and unique to humankind.

Nietzsche believed that it made no sense to speak about right and wrong, to wit: "No act of violence, rape, exploitation, destruction, is intrinsically unjust, since life itself is violent, rapacious, exploitative, and destructive and cannot be conceived otherwise" (Pojman 188). Yet, humankind does conceive of life differently all the time.

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis gives a few examples of everyday quarrelling and then delves into the assumptions behind them: "Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man's behavior does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some standard of behavior which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: 'To hell with your standard.' Nearly he always tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse…It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behavior or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. And they have. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals, but they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football" (Lewis 17-8).

Saint Augustine said much the same thing in his Confessions some millennium-and-a-half earlier: "Theft is punishable by Thy law, O Lord, and by the law written in man's hearts, which not even ingrained wickedness can erase. For what thief will tolerate another thief stealing from him" (Pojman 73-4)?

It may be argued that this sense of right and wrong is something learned through the process of socialization. Although it is true that behavior is taught and modeled to others, there are also many cases where this kind of instruction is inadequate. Even so, "A person might be badly informed about what the right and wrong are; yet conscience is an urge to do the one and avoid the other" (Grider 238).

Another analysis might be that morality is a function of the state to keep people in line. Morality is nothing more than adherence to the law. The weakness in this view is that societies are remarkably similar in their approach to right and wrong: "There have been differences [in] moralities, but there has never amounted to anything like a total difference. If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him is how very like they are to each other and to our own…[I] only ask the reader to think of what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of doublecrossing all the people who had been kindest to him…Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to—whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked" (Lewis 19).

A people with a radically different sense of right and wrong will never emerge because it is an impossibility. One might just as well search for an island where waterfalls run upwards and people can taste purple.

A human being possesses a conscience. A human being also possesses the ability to obey or disobey its impulse. Free will is defined as "the power of making free choices that are unconstrained by external circumstances or by an agency such as fate or divine will" (Yahoo Online Dictionary).

The biological determinist would disagree with the previous statement, as "…every act and event in the universe is caused by antecedent events" (Pojman 250). In other words, everything, including human behavior, is determined by other events. Free will is an illusion. But biological determinism grossly oversimplifies the complexity of human behavior. As Steven Rose, Richard Lewontin, and Leon J. Kamin point out in their critique of sociobiology, "Humanity cannot be cut adrift by its own biology, but neither is it enchained by it" (Stevenson 311).

The materialist is also in opposition to free will, believing that "…what we call a mind is really a function of the brain" (Pojman 234), which is to put all of our decisions down to instinct. A cursory survey of history demonstrates that humans have higher capacities in their thinking: "Animals may seem to make decisions at times, but they are only acting on the basis of stimulus-response programming. They make decisions, but not moral ones. They make decisions, but not costly ones. Human history shows that moral decision is a capacity of ours" (Grider 237).

C.S. Lewis illustrated the difference between instinct and a moral conscience: "We all know what it feels like to be to be prompted by instinct—by mother love, or sexual instinct, or the instinct for food. It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act in a certain way. And, of course, we sometimes do feel just that sort of desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is due to the herd instinct. But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not. Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires—one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away…But at those moments when we are most conscious of the Moral Law, it usually seems to be telling us to side with the weaker of the two impulses. You probably want to be safe much more than you want to help the man who is drowning: but the Moral Law tells you to help him all the same" (Lewis 22).

This impulse to do the noble, the altruistic, and the courageous when it would be more expedient to cut and run is a compelling argument against animalistic instinct. As Immanuel Kant put it, "When we have the course of nature alone in view, "ought" has no meaning whatsoever. It is just as absurd to ask what ought to happen in the natural world as to ask what properties a circle ought to have" (Pojman 133).

To be human is to know the difference between good and evil and to have the ability to choose between the two. This can inform the process of spiritual formation in many different ways.

First, it is an important reminder that humankind knows the difference between right and wrong. That is not to say that the decisions that life thrusts upon us are easy, but neither are they perhaps as complex as the culture of today would have us believe. So often an issue is covered in layer after layer of debate and point/counterpoint when a simple and direct examination would lead to clarity.

There is an increasing shift in our religious communities to use the language of psychology, business, education, and social work to explain the problems of humankind. While these sectors contribute a lot of insight to life, it is also important to be reminded that good and evil still exist. Good people will lead to thriving neighborhoods and communities. People behaving in right relation to each other will alleviate poor social conditions.

Free will means that we aren't victims of fate or circumstance. We have choices. Knowing good and evil isn't enough—it is important to act on those "oughts" too.

WORKS CITED

Grider, J. Kenneth. A Wesleyan-Holiness Theology. Kansas City: Beacon Hill, 1994.

Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. New York: Macmillan, 1960.

Pojman, Louis P. Who Are We?: Theories of Human Nature. New York, NY: Oxford, 2006.

Stevenson, Leslie (ed). The Study of Human Nature. New York: Oxford, 2000.