warnings [about the inscrutability of motivations] have their place, but honored in practice they tend to close off investigation precisely where it needs to begin. When we ask why abolitionism, why did individuals and groups organize against the slave trade, we are asking not only about macrohistorical processes and contexts. We are asking also about motivations, about decisions to act. This problem cannot be dodged. If the answer to questions about motivation must be incomplete, as it must, dodging the problem encourages, as it has in most published work on the abolitionists, implied or perfunctory explanations of individual and collective behavior that merely assume or assert the noble (or contemptible) motivations of the figures in question. … To get at the problem of motivation, we need to revisit the Evangelicals’ intentions.[741]
This is not to claim that those involved in the antislavery movement were motivated only by altruism and empathy. As the antislavery movement gained traction, it became possible to make a career in antislavery activism, and once the view became widespread that slavery was evil, people could signal their virtue and enhance their reputation by loudly opposing it.
Moreover, as noted below, while there can be little doubt that Rev. Thomas Clarkson, the most effective and well-known abolitionist activist, had genuine empathy for the slaves, he also had a heroic sense of ambition that was foreign to the Quakers he worked among, writing “Grand in ambition, visionary in aim, demanding in execution, and nearly impossible to achieve, yet principled in purpose, altruistic in spirit, and a pleasure to contemplate—what could be more heroic than a life devoted to the abolition of the slave trade and an end to slavery?”[742]
Brown describes several antislavery figures who had a similar heroic sense of ambition utilized in the cause of moral righteousness.[743] Such motivations recall Ricardo Duchesne’s description of Indo-European warrior ethos with its emphasis on heroic action and lasting fame as fundamental to the Western spirit: “It is my contention that the aristocratic culture of Indo-Europeans was dominated by men whose souls were ‘too high-spirited, too intrepid, too indifferent about fortune.’”[744] “The expansionist aggression of the West is an inescapable expression of its roots in aristocratic men who are free and therefore headstrong and ambitious, sure of themselves, easily offended, and unwilling to accept quiet subservience.”[745]
The following describes psychological mechanisms that could give rise to altruistic attitudes and behavior, especially in people so disposed—mechanisms that go some way to explain the moral idealism and moral outrage exhibited by an important subset of the opponents of slavery. Two mechanisms will be discussed: the emotion of empathy and the explicit processing that enables moral idealism and the possibility of purposeful altruistic behavior in conformity with an ideology—in this case the ideology of moral universalism embedded in the Christian religiosity of the period. Evidence is then provided that empathy and an ideology of moral universalism were indeed important to abolitionism.
The Personality System of Empathy
Empathy is a social emotion that motivates helping behavior. Empathic individuals are strongly moved by the suffering of others; indeed, at the extreme, empathic individuals are prone to “pathological altruism” in which they engage in maladaptive, personally injurious or self-destructive behavior on behalf of others.[746] Pathologically altruistic persons are prone to Dependent Personality Disorder characterized by self-sacrificing behavior on behalf of others motivated by empathy as well as fear of losing close relationships. “They may make extraordinary self-sacrifices or tolerate verbal, physical, or sexual abuse.”[747]
Individual differences in empathy are most closely linked to the personality trait of Agreeableness in most versions of the Five Factor Model of personality.[748] Within an evolutionarily informed factor rotation emphasizing evolutionarily expected sex differences in psychological adaptations, empathy lines up with Love/Nurturance, the personality system underlying close relationships of intimacy and trust that evolved in order to cement close family relationships.[749] People at the high end of the distribution in this trait are prone to love and intimacy, while those at the low end are prone to sociopathy, a trait that predisposes to coldness toward others, exploitative relationships, and lack of guilt or remorse when harming others. Whereas sociopathic traits are higher in men, empathy and wanting to be loved are higher in women: On average, women are more altruistic and empathic than men, and they place more value on close relationships. In the following, it will be shown that abolitionists appealed to the empathic tendencies of their audience by graphically depicting the suffering of slaves and that, although both sexes were responsive to these messages, women were more responsive than men.
Nevertheless, there is evidence that empathy by itself may not motivate altruistic behavior if the prospective recipient of the altruism is seen as a member of an outgroup. There is substantial research linking empathy to levels of the hormone oxytocin. However, oxytocin operates to make people more altruistic and defensive toward their ingroup—what Carsten DeDreu et al. label “parochial altruism.”[750] Since the ingroups in such studies are not based on ethnic homogeneity, these results may be interpreted as supporting the proposal that altruism-prone individuals would be likely to support and defend culturally created ingroups (i.e., moral communities) at cost to self.
This research suggests that a good strategy for abolitionists would be to frame the African slaves as members of a common humanity—as members of an ingroup rather than an outgroup. In the following, evidence will be adduced indicating that the abolitionist activists did indeed appeal to the common humanity of the African slaves. For Rev. James Ramsey, the leading intellectual light of the Evangelical Anglicans, the point of opposition to slavery was to “gain to society, to reason, to religion, half a million of our kind, equally with us adapted for advancing themselves in every art and science that can distinguish man from man, equally with us capable of looking forward to and enjoying futurity.”[751] Similarly, the above-mentioned Rev. Thomas Clarkson referred to slaves as “oppressed brothers.”[752]
Moral Idealism and the Ideology of Moral
Universalism
Other mechanisms relevant to the human psychology of altruism are those that allow for the moral idealism which played such an important role in Puritanism as discussed in Chapter 6. This analysis depends on psychological research reviewed in Chapter 5 indicating two very different types of psychological processing: implicit and explicit processing. Explicit processing is involved in the regulation of emotions and is fundamental to general intelligence.[753]
Moral idealism is possible because of the ability of explicit representations of moral ideals to control the modular psychology of moral reasoning and behavior (i.e., emotional states and action tendencies mediated by evolved implicit processing centered in the lower brain).[754] For example, people are able to effortfully suppress ethnocentric tendencies originating in the lower, modular parts of the brain.[755] Thus, under experimental conditions, White subjects presented with photos of Blacks had less of a negative response when the photos were presented long enough for explicit processing to take place.[756] Other research indicates that people may suppress moral emotions like moral outrage, empathy and guilt. For example, Alan Sanfey et al. showed that prefrontal rational choice mechanisms could suppress moral outrage at people who make unfair offers in a one-shot ultimatum game (presumably a modular mechanism promoting self-interest by producing anger directed at people who behave unfairly).[757] Further, moral emotions such as empathy may be overridden by utilitarian concerns: subjects will make decisions that override concern for a particular victim if more people will benefit.[758]
Given the general findings that explicitly represented ideas may suppress emotions of moral outrage and empathy, it is a short step to suppose that a moral ideal could also motivate people to control sub-cortical egoistically inclined modular systems independent of self-interest or utilitarian considerations.[759]
The psychological literat
ure thus supports the proposal that moral idealism is possible. Such a framework may be found in the abolitionist literature. For example, the seminal abolitionist writer Anthony Benezet, a Quaker, emphasized the need to suppress human pride and desire for worldly success by engaging in charitable works.[760] Like other Quakers, Benezet did not see opposition to slavery in terms of personal ambition: “Like most Quakers, Anthony Benezet showed little interest in self-promotion. Unprepossessing and lacking in charisma, he had a greater interest in charity than in burnishing his reputation.”[761]
This implies that altruistic behavior is possible because of the power of explicit processing over implicit processing—the worldly temptations implied by slavery (greed, controlling others) may be suppressed, just as it is possible to suppress reward-oriented behavior, aggression, and ethnocentrism.[762] Explicit processing is able to control egoistic moral emotions in the service of a moral ideal, even an altruistic moral ideal. In the following, evidence from the historical record will be discussed indicating that moral idealism was part of the self-conception of abolitionists.
Ideologies are a particularly important form of explicit processing that may result in top-down control over behavior. That is, explicit construals of the world—for example, costs and benefits mediated by human language and the human ability to create explicit representations of events—may motivate behavior. This is implied, for example, by the Sanfey et al. study mentioned above: people can rationally decide to act in opposition to their emotional proclivities. Ideologies are coherent, explicitly held beliefs associated with the prefrontal cortex which can control behavior and evolved predispositions that in the absence of prefrontal control, are involuntary outputs of the lower-brain.[763] They are not necessarily adaptive.[764] Ideologies often characterize voluntary subgroups within a society (e.g., churches, political parties, the abolitionist movement in the United States or Britain). And finally, ideologies often rationalize social controls (e.g., Marxist rationalizations for advocating a “dictatorship of the proletariat” that would forcefully eradicate dissent from political orthodoxy); in turn the social acceptance of ideologies may be strengthened by such controls (enforcing the teaching of Marxism in the educational system).
In the following I will describe the ideologies of the abolitionists, particularly religious ideologies, that conceptualized all humans as created by God, as having equal natural abilities, and as candidates for eternal salvation. Quite clearly, the point of the abolitionist movement was to enact social controls in opposition to the slave trade and to slavery. The ideologies of the abolitionist movement rationalized such controls.
Putting the comments in this section together with the previous comments on the personality basis of empathy, we would expect that people prone to empathy (high on the trait of Love/Nurturance) would also be prone to moral idealism promoting behavior that relieves others’ suffering. However, a morally idealistic ideology may play an independent role and facilitate positive behavior toward others even in the absence of strong tendencies toward empathy, and of course the reverse is true: people inclined to empathy my attempt to relieve others suffering even without subscribing to an explicit ideology that they should do so.
Philosophical Antecedents
One advantage that the abolitionists had was that they could cite the authority of influential, well-known philosophers who collectively had altered elite opinion in the direction of prizing empathy. Gertrude Himmelfarb’s Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments, describes the British Enlightenment as a “sociology of virtue” that contrasted with what she characterizes as the French Enlightenment’s “ideology of reason.”[765] The central feature of the British Enlightenment was acceptance of an ethic that “derives from a moral sense that inspired sympathy, benevolence, and compassion for others.”[766] “The British moral philosophy … was reformist rather than subversive, respectful of the past and present even while looking forward to a more enlightened future. It was also optimistic and, in this respect at least, egalitarian, the moral sense and common sense being shared by all men, not merely the educated and the well-born.”[767]
The “moral sense” or “moral sentiment,” the “social virtues” or “social affections,” the ideas of “benevolence,” “sympathy,” “compassion,” “fellow-feeling,”—these were the defining terms of the moral philosophy that was at the heart of the British Enlightenment. … It was that ethos that found practical expression in the reform movements and philanthropic enterprises that flourished during the century, culminating in what the Evangelical writer Hannah More described (not entirely in praise) as “the Age of Benevolence,” and what a later historian called “the new humanitarianism.”[768]
Hannah More (~1746–1833) was a playwright who also wrote on moral and religious topics; she was also an abolitionist and a member of the Evangelical Anglicans discussed below as having a major role in abolitionism. The “later historian” mentioned by Himmelfarb is Mary Gwladys Jones whose 1938 book, The Charity School Movement: A Study of Eighteenth-Century Puritanism in Action, describes the Puritan roots of the Age of Benevolence and is discussed below.[769]
Indeed, abolitionists commonly cited philosophers such as Montesquieu, David Hume, and Adam Smith.[770] Hume proposed a moral sense common to all humans. At the root of the moral sense was sympathy, the “chief source of moral distinctions,” and the source of “the public good”[771] and “the good of mankind.”[772] In A Treatise on Human Nature (1738), Hume claimed that all humans resonated to positive emotions and that these emotions result in similar emotions among others—what psychologists term emotional contagion:
The minds of all men are similar in their feelings and operations; nor can any one be actuated by any affection of which all others are not, in some degree, susceptible. As in strings equally wound up, the motion of one communicates itself to the rest; so all the affections readily pass from one person to another, and beget correspondent movements in every human creature.[773]
In An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume emphasized “general benevolence” or “disinterested benevolence”—benevolence without concern for personal interest.
It appears that a tendency to public good, and to the promoting of peace, harmony, and order in society does, always, by affecting the benevolent principles of our frame, engage us on the side of the social virtues.[774]
There is some benevolence, however small, infused into our bosom; some spark of friendship for human kind; some particle of the dove kneaded into our frame, along with the elements of the wolf and serpent.[775]
Adam Smith’s well-known and highly regarded Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) emphasized emotional contagion as well, but also mentions feelings of pleasure at others’ happiness, empathy for suffering others, the human ability to control selfishness, and the desire to achieve a reputation as a morally upstanding person:
How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others and render their happiness necessary to him, although he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others when we either see it or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner [e.g., by the graphic depictions of the suffering of slaves employed by abolitionists]. … By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation … we enter, as it were, into his body and become in some measure the same person with him.[776]
Hence it is, too, that to feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish [i.e., via effortful control as described above[777]] and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature.[778]
Man naturally desires not only to be loved but to be lovely. … He naturally dreads not only to be hated but to be hateful. … He desires not only praise but praiseworthiness.[779]
Smith thus emphasized the moral emotions rather than abstract rules of j
ustice based on reason. Moreover, theories of moral emotions were divorced from religion and thus appealed to the more secularly minded elites that looked down on the religious enthusiasm of the Evangelical Anglicans and Methodists[780]—not to mention the Quakers. Smith was an ardent opponent of slavery, stating in 1759 that colonial slaveholders were “the refuse of the jails of Europe.” Calling them “wretches,” he wrote: “fortune never exerted more cruelly her empire over mankind, than when she subjected those nations of heroes” [Africans] “to the levity, brutality, and baseness” of British Americans.[781]
Because this intellectual framework dominated the most elite intellectual circles of British society, it was easy for abolitionists to make a credible moral argument. Opposition to slavery could easily be seen as an example of Hume’s disinterested benevolence and Smith’s universal compassion for the suffering of others. Further, it was difficult to defend slavery when “the luminaries of the Enlightenment [e.g., Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws and Encyclopédie] increasingly subjected human bondage to a sustained critique. It would be difficult … to find many in the British Isles willing to describe colonial slavery and the Atlantic trade as an emblem of social, cultural, or moral progress during the mid-eighteenth century.”[782] “It became more common to doubt the morality of the slave system because certain intellectuals did too, because prominent theologians, philosophers, and historians raised troubling questions about the moral and legal foundations on which the system stood.”[783]
Empathy and Abolitionism
The abolitionist movement clearly involved calling attention to the suffering of slaves. “In Britain, the campaign to abolish slavery, like the other reform movements, was motivated not by ‘rational will’ but by humanitarian zeal, by compassion rather than reason.”[784] The movement realized that “the way to stir men and women to action is not by biblical argument, but through the vivid, unforgettable description of acts of great injustice done to their fellow human beings [i.e., in a “very lively manner” as Adam Smith noted (see above)]. The abolitionists placed their hope not in sacred texts, but in human empathy.”[785] Although practical arguments were also made (e.g., that slave owners would benefit from the abolition of the slave trade), empathy elicited by depictions of the suffering of slaves was not only the main way that the abolitionists appealed to the masses, it was also apparent in the key figures of the movement. While doing research for his prize-winning essay at Oxford University in 1785, Rev. Thomas Clarkson “found himself overwhelmed with horror”[786]; his essay exhibits “heartfelt outrage about slavery.”[787]
Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition Page 27