Abstract
The concept of relational consciousness emerged during an investigation of the plausibility of the hypothesis that Darwinian natural selection underlies the cultural phenomenon of religion. This conjecture originated with Sir Alister Hardy FRS, who was the Head of the Zoology Department in Oxford University between 1946 and 1961 and founder in 1969 of the Religious Experience Research Unit, originally based in Manchester College Oxford. Hardy’s initiative is not well known in the United States, so I will begin with some background information as a preliminary to clarifying my own hypothesis about the connection of relational consciousness with altruism.
Avarice, envy, pride,
Three fatal sparks, have set the hearts of all
On Fire. – Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy (1314) 1
No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. – John Donne Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624) 2
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages. – Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations (1776) 3
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed – for lack of a better word – is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. – Gordon Gecko in Wall Street (1987) 4
We have to fight uphill to rediscover the obvious, to counteract the layers of suppression of the modern moral consciousness. It’s a difficult thing to do. – Charles Taylor Sources of the Self (1992) 5
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Notes
- 1.
Translation by Henry Francis Cary. Currently available in an edition published in 2006 by Hard Press, Lenox, MA.
- 2.
In, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions/Death’s Duel, Vintage Books, 1999.
- 3.
See Penguin Classics Edition (edited by Andrew Skinner), p. 119.
- 4.
Starring Michael Douglas in the role of Gordon Gecko. Directed by Oliver Stone, written by Stanley Weiser and Oliver Stone. First shown in 1987.
- 5.
Sources of the Self: the Making of the Modern Identity, Cambridge University Press, 1992.
- 6.
Renamed The Religious Experience Research Centre, the Unit is now based in the University of Wales at Lampeter. See the website: http://www.alisterhardyreligiousexperience.co.uk.
- 7.
- 8.
From, ‘Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour. July 13, 1798’ See Collected Poems published by Wordsworth Editions Ltd. in 1994.
- 9.
See Peter Brierley’s report Religious Trends No. 1: 1999/2000, London: Christian Research Association, 2000. For an account of the decline of the religious institutions in the UK, consult Steve Bruce’s provocatively titled book, God is Dead, published by Blackwell in 2002. See also, Callum Brown, The Death of Christian Britain, published by Routledge in 2001.
- 10.
See, David Hay and Gordon Heald, ‘Religion is good for you’ New Society, 17 April. 1987; also, David Hay and Kate Hunt’s The Spirituality of People who don’t go to Church. Final Report, Adult Spirituality Project: Nottingham University, 2000.
- 11.
Brierley, op. cit.
- 12.
Lambert, Y. (2004). ‘A turning point in religious evolution in Europe’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, 19(1), 29–45.
- 13.
- 14.
See Bryan Zinnbauer et al. ‘Religion and Spirituality: Unfuzzying the fuzzy.’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 76(4), 1997, 549–564. I should add that, at the time Hardy was writing, the distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ was not as clear as it is today and he himself was inclined to confuse the two.
- 15.
Data from surveys of reports of experience are summarised and commented upon in my book Religious Experience Today: studying the facts, published by Cassell in 1990. See also Hay (1994, 2006, 2007); Hay and Morisy (1978, 1985); Hay with Nye (2006); Hay and Socha (2005). ‘“The biology of God”: what is the current status of Hardy’s hypothesis?’ International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 4(1), 1–23. There are complex problems concerning comparability of data in a field where definitions of the subject matter are diverse. In a short chapter, there is not space to cover this question adequately. For more detail, see, D. Hay, ‘Asking questions about religious experience’, Religion, 18, 1988, 217–229.
- 16.
See her book Human Minds published in London by Allen Lane at the Penguin Press in 1992.
- 17.
In Self Abandonment to Divine Providence (trans. Algar Thorold), London: Burns Oates, 1933.
- 18.
Published by Basil Blackwell as Being and Time, (trans. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson) in Oxford in 1962.
- 19.
See the User’s Guide for QSR.NUD*IST published by Sage software SCOLARI in 1996.
- 20.
See the translation by George Eliot and with an introduction by Karl Barth, published in New York by Harper Torchbooks in 1957.
- 21.
Translated by Ralph Manheim and published in New York by Harper & Row in 1967.
- 22.
- 23.
See Katherine Kirk et al. ‘Self-transcendence as a measure of spirituality in a sample of older Australia twins’, Twin Research, 2(2), 1999, 81–87.
- 24.
For a review of this measure, see C.R. Cloninger et al. The Temperament and Character Inventory: A guide to its development and use. St Louis, Missouri, Washington University Center for Psychology of Personality, 1994. To understand Cloninger’s perspective, I have also consulted his book Feeling Good: The Science of Wellbeing, published by Oxford University Press in 2004.
- 25.
Consult, Juko Ando et al. ‘Genetic and Environmental Structure of Cloninger’s Temperament and Character Dimensions’, Journal of Personality Disorders, 18(4), 2004, 379–393.
- 26.
See Andrew Newberg et al. ‘Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief’, New York: Ballantine Books, 2001.
- 27.
See, Mario Beauregard and Vincent Paquette, ‘Neural correlates of a mystical experience in Carmelite nuns’, Neuroscience Letters Volume 405, Issue 3, 25 September 2006, pp. 186–190.
- 28.
- 29.
See Postmodern Ethics published by Blackwell in Oxford in 1993.
- 30.
Ibid. p. 81.
- 31.
See especially Grace Davie’s Europe: The Exceptional Case; parameters of faith in the modern world, published in London by Darton, Longman & Todd in 2002.
- 32.
Republished in Penguin Classics, 2003.
- 33.
See Wilson’s book Religion in Secular Society, published in London in 1966 by C.A. Watts.
- 34.
The atheism of Advaita in India, or in Theravada Buddhism might be cited as evidence to contradict my thesis, but these forms of atheism are in fact intra-religious. They are aspects of a debate about the nature of transcendence and as such are akin to certain mystical movements in Christianity, for example, the near monism of someone like the fourteenth-century Dominican mystic, Meister Eckhart.
- 35.
See, Chapter 7 in W.H. Durham, Co Evolution: Genes, Culture and Human Diversity published by Stanford University Press in 1991.
- 36.
There are many texts on this theme. Possibly the best introduction because he gives a systematic overview of its many dimensions is Stephen Lukes’ Individualism published in the series Key Concepts in the Social Sciences by Basil Blackwell, in 1973. See also, Colin Morris The Discovery of the Individual, 1050–1200, published by SPCK in London in 1972; and Louis Dumont, Essays on Individualism, published by Chicago University Press in 1986; also Aaron Gurevich, who disagrees with Morris’ claim that individualism appeared in the 12th century. See his The Origins of European Individualism, published by Blackwell in 1995.
- 37.
For further information on these questions see the articles by Terrence Deacon on ‘Biological aspects of language’ (pp. 128–133) and C.B. Stringer on ‘Evolution of early humans’ (pp. 241–251) in The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Human Evolution, (edited by Steve Jones, Robert Martin and David Pilbeam), Cambridge University Press, 1994.
- 38.
The question of the self-awareness of other animals is hotly disputed. It is discussed at length in Marc Bekoff et al. (eds.) The Cognitive Animal, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
- 39.
See for example Nagy, E. & Molnar, P. (2004). ‘Homo imitans or Homo provocans? Human imprinting model of neonatal imitation’. Infant Behavior and Development, 27, 54–63.
- 40.
For a popular discussion of the effect of language on self-awareness, see John McCrone The Ape that Spoke: Language and the Evolution of the Human Mind, London: Picador, 1990.
- 41.
See Luria’s book Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations. (trans. Martin Lopez-Morillas and Lynn Solotaroff; ed. Michael Cole), Harvard University Press, 1976. Because of difficulties with Stalinist censorship, these findings were not published in the Soviet Union until the decade of the 1970s.
- 42.
One only has to think of the way that reading and writing dominate our everyday lives, now added to by the ubiquity of the Internet and the World Wide Web, to begin to see that the mode of action of our consciousness is very different from that of our non-literate forebears. See, for example, John L. Locke’s (1998) book, Why we Don’t Talk to Each Other any More: the Devoicing of Society.
- 43.
Note for instance the experience of the psychotherapist Eugene Gendlin (1981, 1997), when encountering academically high-flying clients in his Chicago consulting rooms. Gendlin comments on the disconcerting fact that he was unable to help many of them to explore their immediate emotional difficulties because they were isolated from the felt sense of their bodies. Too good a training in academic detachment had crippled them. See also the related arguments from the neurologist Antonio Damasio (1994, 2000) on the importance of the body in relation to emotion and consciousness.
- 44.
Republished in Penguin Classics in 2004.
- 45.
See, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, (translated by Talcott Parsons), London: George Allen & Unwin, 1930: p. 104. Pastoral need led to the mitigation of the doctrine and it became accepted that one plausible sign of election was material prosperity in this life. Weber’s (often-disputed) contention was that this belief encouraged the growth of capitalism in Europe.
- 46.
The teaching of Cornelius Jansen, which split the Roman Catholic Church in France in the mid-17th century. Jansen emphasised the belief that individuals can do nothing to assure their own salvation, all is due to divine grace. Jansenism was centred on the abbey of Port Royal and Pascal was its most prominent lay supporter. The Jansenists were excommunicated in 1719.
- 47.
See The Self as Agent. (with an introduction by Stanley M. Harrison), London: Faber & Faber, 1995, p. 71.
- 48.
See David Berman’s fascinating thesis on hidden atheism in, A History of Atheism in Britain: From Hobbes to Russell, London & New York: Routledge, 1990.
- 49.
For an overview of scientific approaches to altruism theory, see Lee Alan Dugatkin, The Altruism Equation: Seven scientists search for the origins of goodness, Princeton University Press, 2006.
- 50.
In, Jean Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 9.
- 51.
In, Philosophical Rudiments concerning Government and Society, Ch. 1, Section 4, 25–26, (quoted in MacPherson 1962a: p. 44).
- 52.
Leviathan (edited with an introduction by C.B. Macpherson), London: Penguin Classics, 1985.
- 53.
Ibid, p. 228.
- 54.
C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, Oxford University Press, 1962.
- 55.
The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph was first published by Princeton University Press in 1977, and republished as a Twentieth Anniversary Edition with an foreword by Amartya Sen.
- 56.
Hirschman, Op. Cit. p. 14.
- 57.
Ibid, p. 40.
- 58.
Ibid. p. 50.
- 59.
Currently available in the two volume Penguin edition, with an introduction and notes by Andrew Skinner, published in 1999.
- 60.
A distinction must be made between Smith’s account of the way things are in capitalist society and his personal view of ethics. Smith’s moral philosophy is expounded in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) published seventeen years before The Wealth of Nations. He has much to say of ‘sympathy’, which suggests that it is not remote from relational consciousness. The apparent ethical disjunction between the two works has led to much discussion. It must be added that Smith’s rhetoric, particularly in the later chapters of The Wealth of Nations frequently makes clear his distaste for some of the situations he is describing (See Muller, 1993).
- 61.
Pseudonym of Johann Caspar Schmidt.
- 62.
Translated by Steven Byington, with an introduction by Sydney Parker. Published in London by Rebel Press in 1993.
- 63.
Ibid, p. 5.
- 64.
Ibid, pp. 296–297. His lover in Berlin left him in disgust, accusing him appropriately enough of being totally self-centred. She eventually entered religious life and died in a convent in London.
- 65.
The Nihilistic Egoist Max Stirner, published for the University of Hull by Oxford University Press in 1971.
- 66.
Bruno Bauer, another member of the Young Hegelian group in Berlin and a former theologian.
- 67.
Ibid p. 31.
- 68.
Ibid p. 263.
- 69.
Ibid p. 197.
- 70.
Karl Marx quoted in Michael Walzer (1990). ‘The communitarian critique of liberalism’, Political Theory, 18(1), 6–23.
- 71.
Hobbes may have dispensed with religion, but it would be interesting to investigate the theological complexion of his early upbringing. He certainly encountered Calvinist opinions when he was a student at Magdalen Hall in Oxford and this may have encouraged in him a belief in the natural depravity of the species. When he discarded religious belief in his maturity, he would then have been left with depravity, now deprived of saving grace.
- 72.
See Between Man and Man (trans. Ronald Gregor Smith), London: Fontana, 1961, p. 64.
- 73.
Ibid, p. 66.
- 74.
Boyer’s interesting ideas are a development of his anthropological field work in West Africa. A highly readable account of his views is contained in his book Religion Explained: the evolutionary origins of religious thought, published in New York by Basic Books in 2001.
- 75.
See, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
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Hay, D. (2011). Altruism as an Aspect of Relational Consciousness and How Culture Inhibits It. In: Sussman, R., Cloninger, C. (eds) Origins of Altruism and Cooperation. Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects, vol 36. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9520-9_21
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