Reflecting on Durkheim and His Studies on Law through Cancellation of British Citizenship

Through an analysis of cancellation of citizenship laws in the United Kingdom, this chapter evaluates Durkheim’s writings on law and its links to moral evolution. It argues that Durkheim’s studies on law are complex and offer rich insights for contemporary sociolegal research. His methodological approaches are also ones that map onto modern-day sociolegal (“law and society” or “law in context”) research. However, Durkheim is overoptimistic in his view that, with time, a modern morality has emerged which venerates the sanctity of the Individual.2 In nationality deprivation cases, analysis reveals the breakdown of social solidarity and the failure to protect people from statelessness. It appears that organic solidarity of the kind that supports human rights is not always a matter of seamless moral and legal progression, contrary to Durkheim’s views.

The Complexities of Self-Governance

The first two Parts of this work have responded to two of Hayek’s unsettling claims concerning morality: that, given our moral evolution, we may be unfit for the Open Society; and that the Open Society is so complex as to befuddle attempts at moral justification. Each of these turned out to indeed be pressing problems, yet in both cases the resources of humans in a complex society are richer than Hayek thought. Part III turns to Hayek’s last unsettling thesis, and that which has been the focus of greatest criticism: that our complex Open Society is in many ways beyond human control and governance. This Part considers the dimensions of self-governance (control, setting the institutional framework, and solving strategic dilemmas), and considers the challenges posed by social complexity at the macro, meso, and micro levels.

Building Moral Brains

Technology is evolving at a rate faster than human evolution, especially human moral evolution. There are those who claim that we must morally bioenhance the human due to existential threats (such as climate change and the looming possibility of cognitive enhancement) and due to the fact that the human animal has a weak moral will. To address these existential threats, we must design human morality into human beings technologically. By moral bioenhancement, these authors mean that we must intervene technologically in the biology of the human animal in order to get it to behave morally to address these existential threats. I will bring the idea of moral bioenhancement into conversation with two philosophers of technology. Bernard Stiegler has argued that technology and culture, and thus technology and human beings, have always evolved hand in hand. Peter-Paul Verbeek notes that we have always designed morality into technology, and thus he sees technology as mediating human morality. When we offload human intentionality onto technology, Verbeek argues, technological objects and systems participate in shaping the moral subjectivity of the human actor. I will show that modern technological bioenhancement obliterates human being. Whereas in the past, human culture was handed from generation to generation through the mediation of technology, in the modern era, the human becomes the raw material upon which a technological will (imperative) rides.

Bridging the Gap between Civilizations: Swami Vivekananda

The article analyses Swami Vivekananda’s views on differences between civilisations and how they can be overcome. It focuses on the role of religion in the process of the coming together of the civilisations of the East and West. Vivekananda treats various religions as a manifestation of one universal religion and considered the morality of the individual as the main criterion of religion. Depending on the moral requirements, Vivekananda distinguishes three basic religious steps. The simplest and most common form of religion is the fulfilment of the historically-formed religious moral requirements. Individuals with a higher need for improvement can practice meditation. People at the highest stage of moral evolution perceive their lives as a constant and tireless service to others. Vivekananda’s life and creative work is the theoretical and practical basis for these fundamental claims of universal religion.

The Progress of Moral Evolution

Buchanan and Powell’s book is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the evolution of morality. I suggest that they exaggerate the degree to which their view of the evolution of moral progress is committed to a form of moral realism. I also suggest that Darwin’s own approach to the evolution of the moral sense shares more with their view than they may realise. Finally I point to some tensions in their invocation of the concept of the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness (EEA).

Dean of St. Paul’s

W. R. Matthews found the moral argument (along with the teleological argument) the most persuasive of all the theistic arguments. He reflects upon the “moral evolution of mankind” and asks what it implies concerning the nature of the universe; he discusses the conscience and asks, “On what grounds can we justify that sense of obligation which is the characteristic property of moral experience?” He ponders the nature of the good and asks, “What is the place of the Good in the general structure of the universe?” He finds that in each case he is led to the theistic hypothesis.