Value Presuppositions in Theories of Human Development

Leonard Cirillo, Seymour Wapner

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138417281
• eBook ISBN: 9781317757450
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

First published in 1986. The chapters and discussions presented in this volume derive from the conference, Value presuppositions in theories of human development, sponsored by the Heinz Werner Institute, Clark University, on June 10-11, 1983. The conference included both psychologists and philosophers and mainly concerned those assumptions about what ought to be that enter into the ways that investigators in the human sciences construe development

1	The Question of Moral and Social Development

Richard J. Bernstein

Haverford College

There is a deep paradox and anxiety in our contemporary discourse about the very concept of human development—especially as it pertains to moral and social development. On the one hand, we live in a time when there has been a flourishing of theories of human development, when many social scientists believe that we can base theories of development on empirical observations, elaborate sophisticated methodologies for testing hypotheses and theories, and advance our scientific understanding of human development that is free from ideological bias. But on the other hand, there is a widespread skepticism and questioning of the very idea of moral and social development. The multifaceted critique seeks to cut deeper than raising objections and criticisms about specific theories that have been advanced, but to question and deconstruct the very idea of human development—to show that although it is embedded in Western philosophic and scientific modes of thinking, the concept is suspect, for it is based on metaphysical assumptions that are dubious. Underlying this paradox is a growing anxiety. For any cool observer of the human condition in the latter part of the 20th century, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the most probable telos of the human species is total self-annihilation, that despite all the talk of moral and social development, there seems to be an almost “ineluctable” logic working itself out leading to global disaster—a “logic” that appears to be happening to us, and over which no one has control. And this growing apprehension is reflected in a cultural anxiety, which I shall call the Cartesian Anxiety. This is the belief that either we can discover some solid foundation, some Archimedean point to ground a concept of human development, or we are confronted with intellectual and moral chaos, where “anything goes.” There are a growing number of voices telling us that this state of radical relativism and nihilism is precisely our situation today.

I want to probe this paradox and anxiety. First I want to indicate how deep and pervasive the concept of human development has been in the tradition of Western thought; then consider some of the themes in the critique of this concept; finally I want to turn to how we might reconstruct and think about human development in our contemporary situation and historical horizon.

Conceptions of human development became manifest as soon as thinkers began to reflect on the question, what is the nature of the human species (typically what is man?)? They are already present in the Pre-Socratic thinkers. And by the time of classical Greek philosophy, most of the themes and motifs that have influenced subsequent theories of human development were well entrenched. Think of the powerful metaphors and tropes in Plato's Dialogues—the divided line, the allegory of the cave, the image of education as a turning and journey of the soul. There is directionality, a telos, structural stages of progression, a belief that although we live in a world of shadows, we can make the transition to reality, a transition by which we can become virtuous and approximate the Good. And this conception of human development—becoming what we truly are—encompasses what we would today call our cognitive, affective, and moral character. It is essentially holistic and has educational and political consequences, for it provides a standard for what must be done to cultivate a virtuous life, and enables us critically to assess any political community—judging it by the degree to which it fosters or inhibits human flourishing.

Despite the many important differences between Plato and Aristotle, the idea of human development is extended and deepened by Aristotle. Almost everything he wrote is influenced by his biological extension of the concept of development. It underlies and shapes his metaphysics, his psychology, his analysis of knowledge—as one moves from sensation, memory, imagination, experience, art, and science. Indeed, Aristotle's entire metaphysics is elaborated from a developmental perspective in which the concepts of potentiality and actuality are fundamental. And, of course, this sets the framework for his Ethics and Politics. Recently, Alasdair MacIntyre (1981) succinctly stated the moral scheme that underlies this way of thinking—a way of thinking that he takes to be characteristic of what he calls “the tradition of the virtues”—a tradition that had its origins long before classical Greek philosophy and lasted through the Middle Ages.

There is a fundamental contrast between man-as-he-happens-to-be and man-as-he-could-be-if-he-realized-his-essential nature. Ethics is the science which is to enable men to understand how they make the transition from the former state to the latter. Ethics therefore on this view presupposes some account of potentiality and act, some account of the human telos…. We thus have a threefold scheme in which human-nature-as-it-happens-to-be (human nature in its untutored state) is initially discrepant and discordant with the precepts of ethics and needs to be transformed by the instruction of practical reason and experience into human nature-as-it-could-be-if-it-realized-its-telos. (p. 50)

Now it is important to emphasize what this scheme presupposes. For it presupposes that there is a human nature, that we can know what it is, that there is a human telos, that we have the potential to actualize this telos, and that there are practical procedures for realizing or approximating it. As we shall see, every one of these presuppositions has been called into question.

MacIntyre (1981) claims that with the rise of “modernity,” with what he calls “the Enlightenment project,” this moral scheme was abandoned. Furthermore, he argues that the Enlightenment project of “rationally justifying” morality failed, and had to fail, resulting in a catastrophe “where people now think, talk and act as if emotivism were true, no matter what their avowed theoretical standpoint may be” (p. 21).

But for all the explicit criticism of a classical conception of human nature and teleology, something like this scheme has been appropriated, modified, and transformed by most modern thinkers, and indeed has served as the metaphysical underpinning of contemporary social scientific theories of moral and social development. Thus, for example, Hume and Kant, despite their distance from classical thought and the differences between them, are concerned to tell us what human nature and rationality really are. They are committed to a threefold scheme in which we can distinguish human nature in its untutored state, a telos or ideal of what we might become if we realized what we truly are, and with establishing a set of precepts for achieving this telos. Of course, we can realize with the aid of historical hindsight how, despite the perennial philosophic aspiration to achieve universal and ahistorical knowledge (episteme), their “visions” of human nature and its development are deeply influenced by historical and cultural prejudgments and biases. Indeed it should be sobering to realize how in every age (including our own) conceptions of human development have been advanced making the claim to universal validity, which turn out to be projections of historically situated cultural ideals. Thinkers in every age claim that now (for the first time) methods and procedures have been discovered for distinguishing genuine episteme (scientific knowledge) from mere opinion (doxa).

But although modern thinkers such as Hume and Kant appropriate a great deal from the traditions they are reacting against, they also sow the seeds for skepticism about this moral scheme of development. This becomes apparent in the famous passage from Hume's Treatise (1969) when he writes:

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author preceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation 'tis necessary that it should be observ'd and explain'd; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. (p. 521)

Every subsequent theory of morality and moral development has had to confront the problem that Hume locates here. Kant sought to turn this fissure of the “is” and the “ought” into a philosophic virtue—arguing that a moral categorical “ought” can never be grounded in a posteriori claims about what “is” but only by appealing to a priori practical reason. Neither Hume nor Kant—nor most Enlightenment thinkers—seriously doubted that there is an objective and universal foundation for morality. For all Hume's skepticism about the rational foundations of morality, he argued that there are universal moral sentiments shared by all human beings. But the fissure introduced here was soon perceived as a major chasm.

One response to this “split” was that made by Hegel and Marx. Both relentlessly criticized the split between the “is” and the “ought.” With Hegel, humanity itself was to be understood in the context of the dialectical development of Geist that dirempts itself and overcomes (Aufhebung) itself in the course of its historical development. No longer is human development localized; it is universalized into a grand cosmic process. It is not surprising that Hegel (and Marx too) so deeply admired Aristotle, for both, in radically different ways, not only sought to overcome the modern dichotomy of the “is” and the “ought” but to reclaim the concepts of potentiality and actuality for understanding the historical ideological development of humanity. For all the apparent irrationality of history, both argue that there is a deeper dynamic logos at work leading to the concrete embodiment of human freedom. And both claim (with different understandings) that the time is at hand when we can grasp this dialectical developmental process by Wissenschaft (science).

Although the theoretical self-confidence of Hegel and Marx is gone, and our age is one that is profoundly fallibilistic, many contemporary theories of development stand in their shadow. When Kohlberg wrote his famous article “From is to Ought: How to Commit the Naturalistic Fallacy and Get Away with it in the Study of Moral Development,” he rightly perceived the problem that any adequate theory of moral development must face. It makes good sense that one of Kohlberg's heroes is John Dewey, who himself attempted to scale down Hegel's grandiose claims, but appropriated from Hegel a historical developmental perspective.

But there has been another response to the fissure of the “is” and the “ought.” The most dramatic representative is Nietzsche. The voices of Hegel, Marx, or even Dewey have become fainter in our time. They seem to be drowned out with variations on Nietzschean themes. Nietzsche's critique becomes so radical that the very idea of human development is called into question.

There are three interrelated themes suggested by Nietzsche that I want to consider. The first is his counter-discourse—his ironical narrative of moral and social development; his interpretation of the history of European civilization as a story of decline; his “unmasking” of morality as founded on resentment; the second is his claim that the idea of a determinate human nature is itself a fiction that tells us more about our grammatical categories and language than it does about any underlying reality; and the third is his questioning of truth and the will to truth.

Against the Enlightenment conviction that the history of the human species is one of progressive emancipation through use of reason and the extension of scientific knowledge, Nietzsche is one of the first to reveal “the dark side” of the dialectic of the Enlightenment. In this “hermeneutics of suspicion” he seeks to show that contrary to the manifest belief in furthering human autonomy, the history of Western civilization leads to nihilism.

He concludes his Genealogy of Morals (Nietzsche, 1969) by telling us:

We can no longer conceal from ourselves what is expressed by all that willing which has taken its direction from the ascetic ideal: this hatred of the human, and even more of the animal, and more still of the material, this horror of the senses, of reason itself, this fear of happiness and beauty, this longing to get away from all appearance, change, becoming, death, wishing, from longing itself—all this means—let us dare to grasp it—a will to nothingness, (p. 162–163)

But how is one to understand Nietzsche's own discourse? Is it intended to be a “true” narrative? But truth itself and the will to truth (which is only another variation of the ascetic ideal) require a critique—“The value of truth must for once be experimentally called into question” (Nietzsche, 1969, p. 153). And indeed Nietzsche not only critiques the will to truth, but is constantly trying to show us that we never break out of our metaphors, illusions, interpretations, and constructs—that every attempt to characterize human nature and human development is itself metaphorical. We desperately seek some “metaphysical comfort,” to know the true essence of what we are, and yet if there is any “message” in Nietzsche, it is that we must learn to live without such comfort. Nietzsche (Kaufman, 1954) carries his critique to the most radical extreme when he writes:

What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms and anthropomorphisms—in short a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins, (pp. 46–47)

Nietzsche's “claims” may strike us as so extreme, so outrageous, so “irrational,” that we may be tempted simply to dismiss them. Yet if we are honest we must at least recognize how influential he has been, how he speaks to many contemporary thinkers, how much of contemporary thought seems to be playing out variations on Nietzschean themes. We hear the reverberations in Weber, Horkheimer and Adorno, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Feyerabend and Rorty (among many others). Let me briefly consider the working out of these Nietzschean themes in two thinkers who have special relevance for thinking about moral and social development: Weber and Foucault.

Weber's relation to the Enlightenment tradition is deeply ambivalent. For he was at once a rationalist who himself questioned the progressivist and emancipatory aspirations of the Enlightenment, and a passionate moralist who increasingly came to believe that there could be no rational foundation for our ultimate moral norms. He sought to work out with extraordinary comprehensiveness the progressive “rationalization” of Western society and the consequent disenchantment of the world. For the triumph of the mentality of zweckra-tionalität—instrumental or means-end rationality—affects and infects every domain of human life.¹ Weber accepts the Kantian dichotomy of the “is” and the “ought”—...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Question of Moral and Social Development
• Chapter 2 Value Presuppositions of Developmental Theory
• Chapter 3 Remapping Development: The Power of Divergent Data
• Chapter 4 Presuppositions in Developmental Inquiry
• Chapter 5 Value Presuppositions in Theories of Human Development
• Chapter 6 On The Creation and Transformation of Norms of Human Development
• Chapter 7 General Discussion
• Chapter 8 Concluding Comments
• Author Index
• Subject Index