The faith that makes you responsive to Isaac’s fate is therefore secular rather than religious. If you care for Isaac and seek to shelter him from death, your living faith—the faith that actually informs how you act and respond—is a secular faith, even if you claim to be religious. It is a secular faith because you are devoted to the living on of a finite beloved. You are committed to sustain a life that may be lost, to fight for a cause that may be shattered, and you would never give them up for a religious promise of redemption.
If you object that God would never command the killing of Isaac, you profess faith in a standard of value independent of God, since you believe that it is wrong to sacrifice Isaac regardless of what God commands. Moreover, you profess secular faith in the irreplaceable value of a finite life. God has nothing to teach you about moral responsibility, since he cannot even understand a moral problem. He cannot understand what it means to lose someone irrevocably and thus cannot understand what it means to care for someone as irreplaceable. He is not constrained by anything, but for the same reason he is not committed to anything. Indeed, God is completely irresponsible because he is not bound by anything other than himself. Only someone who is committed—only someone who is bound by something other than herself—can be responsible. Only someone who is committed can care. And only someone who is finite can be committed.
PART II
Spiritual Freedom
Natural and Spiritual Freedom
I
One late summer afternoon, I am sitting on top of a mountain in northern Sweden. The ocean below me is calm and stretches toward an open horizon. There is no other human being in sight and barely a sound can be heard. Only a solitary seagull is gliding on the wind. Like so many times before, I find it mesmerizing to follow a seagull as it hovers in the air and lingers over the landscape. For as long as I can remember, seagulls have been a part of my life. Every summer morning at our family house I wake up to their shrill vocals as they ascend over the mountains or descend into the sea. When we return from fishing they accompany us, waiting for their part of the daily catch. In the evenings, I often stand on the beach just to watch their line of flight. Even in foreign cities, the sight or sound of a seagull feels like a message from home and brings back a flood of memories. Yet I have never encountered a seagull the way it happens this afternoon. As the seagull stretches its wings and turns toward an adjacent mountain, I try to imagine how the wind may feel and how the landscape may appear for the seagull.
Of course, I will never know what it is like to be a seagull. Nevertheless, inhabiting the question of what it means to be a seagull leads me to the notion of freedom at the heart of this book. In trying to apprehend a life that is so different from my own, I am reminded that I am both a natural being (in what I take myself to share with the seagull) and a spiritual being (in how I take myself to be different from the seagull).
Let me begin with what the seagull and I have in common. We are both living beings. As such there is always something at stake for us in our activities. We must do something—acquire nourishment, adapt to our environment—to sustain our lives. Likewise, both of us are capable of self-movement and self-determination. The seagull walks or flies of its own accord and no one except the seagull can determine how long it will linger in the air before diving into the ocean to catch a fish or settling down on a mountain to rest. Furthermore, both the seagull and I are responsive to a distinction between appearance and essence, between how we take things and what they turn out to be. If the seagull dives for a fish that it takes to be edible and it turns out to be inedible, the seagull will respond by discarding the fish. This is not simply a response to stimuli but a response to stimuli in terms of what counts as food for the seagull. The seagull is not merely an object in the world but an agent for which things appear as nourishing or damaging, appealing or threatening.1
The agency is especially clear if we compare the seagull with the mountain on which it lands. The mountain is not alive. The mountain was there long before the seagull or I existed—and it can be there long after we are gone—but the mountain does not care. Whether the sun is shining or the rain is pouring down, whether there are earthquakes that rip it apart or centuries of stability that leave it intact, the mountain does not care. Nothing that happens to the mountain will ever make a difference for the mountain, since it has no self-relation. For the same reason, the mountain has no capacity for self-movement and self-determination. Because nothing is at stake for the mountain, it cannot do anything and cannot relate to anything as anything. The mountain has no purpose for itself and only acquires one for a living being that makes use of it in some way (as when the seagull lands on the mountain to rest).
The seagull, by contrast, relates to the environment through its own sentience and responds to what happens in light of its own ends. For example, certain kinds of predators show up for the seagull as something to avoid and certain kinds of fish show up as something to catch. These forms of purposive activity can become much more advanced in highly developed animals, but they are all forms of what I call natural freedom. Natural freedom provides a freedom of self-movement, but only in light of imperatives that are treated as given and ends that cannot be called into question by the agent itself. As distinct from natural freedom, spiritual freedom requires the ability to ask which imperatives to follow in light of our ends, as well as the ability to call into question, challenge, and transform our ends themselves.
Philosophers often account for the difference between human beings and other animals in terms of a difference between norm-governed behavior and instinct-determined behavior. As human beings, we are socialized into a normative understanding of who to be—e.g., man or woman, black or white, working-class or aristocrat—and we act in light of those social norms. In contrast, the behavior of all other animals is supposedly hardwired by their natural instincts. This way of describing the difference, however, is misleading for at least two reasons. First, an instinct is already expressive of a norm, since it specifies something that the animal ought to do and that it can fail to do (e.g., the seagull instinctually understands that it ought to eat fish and it can fail to find any fish to eat). Second, many animals can be socialized into forms of behavior that are not hardwired by their natural instincts. For example, there are cats that behave like dogs because they have been raised by huskies, and there are huskies that behave like cats because they have been raised by them. Such behavior is clearly not hardwired by the nature of cats or dogs but acquired through a specific way in which they are raised.
The difference between human beings and other animals, then, cannot simply be explained by the difference between instincts and norms. Rather, the decisive difference is the difference between natural and spiritual freedom. Even when a cat behaves like a husky, she does not call into question the husky way of life but treats it as the given framework for her actions. She is able to learn the husky norms but not able to understand them as norms that could be otherwise. The cat cannot understand her norms as something for which she is answerable and which can be challenged by others, since she cannot hold herself responsible for the principles that govern her actions. The cat is responsive to success and failure in her pursuits, but whether the norms that govern her pursuits are valid—whether she ought to behave like a cat or a husky—is not at issue for her.
For human beings, by contrast, the validity of norms is always implicitly and potentially explicitly at issue. We act in light of a normative understanding of ourselves—of who we should be and what we should do—but we can also challenge and change our self-understanding. We are not merely governed by norms but answerable to one another for what we do and why we do it. Even when we are socialized into an identity as though it were a natural necessity—as when we are taken to belong naturally to a certain gender, race, or class—there remains the possibility of transforming, contesting, or critically overturning our understanding of who we are. Who
we can be—as well as what we can do—is inseparable from how we acknowledge and treat one another. How we can change our self-understanding therefore depends on the social practices and institutions that shape the ability to lead our lives. Moreover, any ability to lead our lives can be impaired or lost by damages to our physical and psychological constitution. Yet as long as we have a self-relation—as long as we lead our lives in any way at all—the question of who we ought to be is alive for us, since it is at work in all our activities. In engaging the question “what should I do?” we are also engaging the question “who should I be?” and there is no final answer to that question. This is our spiritual freedom.
The difference between natural and spiritual freedom is not a matter of metaphysical substance, but a difference in the practical self-relation exhibited by human beings and other animals. Many kinds of animals exhibit forms of mourning, play, courage, deliberation, suffering, and joy. They may even in some cases (as studies of primates have shown) be able to experience a conflict of choice when certain instincts or loyalties are at odds with one another. Yet no other species we have encountered is capable of transforming its understanding of what it means to be that species. Changes in the environment can cause animal species—or certain members of species—to change patterns in their behavior, but the principles in light of which they act remain the same for as long as the species exist.
In contrast, the understanding of what it means to be human—as manifested in the actual behavior of human beings—varies dramatically across history and across the world at any given moment of history. The difference between a monk who renounces filial bonds for an ascetic life in a monastery and a father who devotes his life to taking care of his children is not merely an individual difference in behavior. Rather, the two forms of life express radically different understandings of what it means to be human. The two men may not only have different degrees of courage, but what counts as courage for them is radically different. They may not only experience different degrees of grief and joy, but what counts as grief and joy for them is radically different. Even the experience of suffering is never merely a brute fact for us as human beings, but an experience we understand and respond to in light of what matters to us. Such mattering is not reducible to our biological-physiological constitution, but depends on our commitments. We are certainly subject to biological constraints—and we cannot even in principle transcend all such constraints—but we can (and do) change our relation to these constraints. There is no natural way for us to be and no species requirements that can exhaustively determine the principles in light of which we act. Rather, what we do and who we take ourselves to be is inseparable from a historical-normative framework that must be upheld by us and may be transformed by us.
Let me be clear about the status of my argument. I am not asserting that only human beings are spiritually free. It is possible that we may discover other species that are spiritually free or that we may create artificial forms of life that are capable of spiritual freedom. That is an empirical question, which I do not seek to answer. My aim is not to decide which species are spiritually free, but to clarify the conditions of spiritual freedom. Whether certain other animals are spiritually free—or whether we can come to engineer living beings who are spiritually free—is a separate and subordinate question, which in itself presupposes an answer to the question of what it means to be a free, spiritual being.
Two clarifications are here in order. First, the distinction between natural and spiritual freedom is not a hierarchical distinction. That we are spiritually free does not make us inherently better than other animals, but it does mean that we are free in a qualitatively different sense. Because we can call into question the purposes of our own actions, we can hold ourselves to principles of justice, but we can also engage in forms of cruelty that go far beyond anything observed in other species. Second, the distinction between natural and spiritual freedom does not legitimize the exploitation of other animals. Many contemporary thinkers are critical of any distinction between humans and other animals, since they fear that such a distinction will serve to justify sexism or racism, as well as buttress the mistreatment of other species and the willful extraction of natural resources. Yet such “posthumanism” rests on a conflation of historical facts and philosophical arguments. As a matter of historical fact, it is true that a human/animal distinction often has been employed to classify certain genders or races as “subhuman” and to legitimize ruthless exploitation of the nonhuman world. The critique of such politics is well taken, as is the reminder that we too are animals and dependent on the fate of our environment. However, it does not follow from these facts that any distinction between humans and other animals is illegitimate or politically pernicious. On the contrary, the pathos of posthumanist politics itself tacitly relies on a distinction between natural and spiritual freedom. When posthumanist thinkers take us to task for being sexist, racist, or too centered on our own species, they must assume that we are capable of calling into question the guiding principles of our actions. Otherwise it would make no sense to criticize our principles and enjoin us to adopt different ideals. Likewise, it is clear that no posthumanist thinker seriously believes that other animals are spiritually free. If they were, we should criticize not only humans but also other animals for being sexist and too centered on the well-being of their own species.
To deny the distinction between natural and spiritual freedom is therefore an act of bad faith. Any political struggle for a better treatment of other animals—or for a more respectful relation to the natural environment—requires spiritual freedom. We have to be able to renounce our prior commitments and hold ourselves to a new ideal. No one is inclined to place the same demands on other animals, because we implicitly understand the distinction between natural and spiritual freedom. It would be absurd to reproach the seagull for eating fish, but it can make sense for me to stop eating other animals, since I am capable of transforming my relation to the norms that structure my world. For a naturally free being like the seagull, there is a normative “ought” that guides its actions (e.g., to eat fish in order to survive) but it cannot call into question the norm—the ought—itself. Natural freedom has a single ought structure, since the agent cannot question its guiding principles and ask itself what it should do. Spiritual freedom, by contrast, is characterized by a double ought structure. As a spiritually free being, I can ask myself what I should do, since I am answerable not only for my actions but also for the normative principles that guide my actions. There are not only demands concerning what I ought to do; there is also the question if I ought to do what I supposedly ought to do.
To be clear, our spiritual freedom does not entail that we can question all the norms of our lives at once, and we are not free to invent our principles out of nothing. Rather, our spiritual freedom should be understood in terms of the philosophical model that is known as Neurath’s boat. “We are like sailors who have to rebuild their ship on the open sea, without ever being able to dismantle it in dry dock,” we learn from the famous argument by the philosopher of science Otto Neurath. “Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. By using the old beams and driftwood, the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction.” Neurath presented his boat as a model for the acquisition and transformation of scientific knowledge, but his boat analogy can help us to grasp the conditions for any form of spiritual freedom.2 In leading my life, I cannot retreat to an unshakable foundation or a view from nowhere. I find myself in Neurath’s boat, which is out on the open sea from the beginning and until the end. Who I can be—how my boat is built—depends on socially shared norms, which I am bound to uphold, challenge, or transform through what I do. I can alter or replace parts of the boat, as long as enough of the other parts remain in place and keep myself afloat. I can even undertake major renovations, but my life depends on maintaining some form o
f integrity. Even if I try to wreck the boat—or try to refrain from repairing the boat so that it will sink—I have to sustain that decision with integrity for it to be my decision; I have to try to wreck the boat and try to give up my life.
I can ask myself what I am doing with my life and transform the commitments that define who I am. Yet all such transformations are possible only from the practical standpoint of trying to lead my life, just as all renovations of the boat are possible only from a practical standpoint that is trying to maintain the integrity of the boat. Even when I question who I am—even when I tear planks from the bottom of the boat—the questioning itself only makes sense because I am committed to having integrity as a person. To grasp anything as part of my life—as something that I do or experience—is not a theoretical observation of myself but a practical activity of spiritual self-maintenance in which I am always engaged.
The activity of spiritual self-maintenance should not be conflated with self-preservation and it is not necessarily conservative, since it is the condition of possibility for all forms of self-transformation. For anything I do to be intelligible as my action—and for anything that happens to be intelligible as something that I experience—I have to grasp it as part of my life. Moreover, since my life always runs the risk of falling apart, I must always sustain or renew my life in practice. The form of my self-consciousness is not primarily an explicit reflection regarding who I am, but the implicit activity of spiritual self-maintenance that is built into everything I do and everything I experience. The integrity of my life cannot be established once and for all but is inherently fragile. Indeed, the fragility of integrity—the risk of breaking apart and sinking to the bottom of the sea—is a necessary part of why it matters to maintain any form of integrity in the first place.
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