John Kekes on the Human Condition:
How should one conduct one's life in an indifferent universe?
How should one conduct one's life in an indifferent universe?
John Kekes is a secular philosopher (now
professor emeritus at the University of Albany in NY) who has absorbed the lessons of the scientific revolution of
man's insignificance and non-centrality in the overall scheme of the universe
and developed a response. He starts with a few premises about the human
condition -- i.e. about the situation we humans find ourselves in. These can be
summarized as:
1.
We live in a universe that is indifferent to human life. It itself imposes
no purpose on our existence.
2.
We have only partial control of our lives. There are many contingencies
which we cannot predict nor whose effects we can control.
3.
We are fallible. Our knowledge is incomplete and our ability to come to
correct conclusions is imperfect and so our beliefs may be untrue or in error.
Significantly he does not make some other
assumptions that have been made by other secularists. For example he makes no
assumption of human goodness or 'perfectibility'. In fact he feels that humans
are ambivalent concerning goodness and are capable of acting in both good and
evil ways. Similarly he is neither 'optimistic' nor 'pessimistic' about human
perfectibility and its prospects in the future.
Of course just because the universe seems
indifferent to us and offers no ultimate purpose or goal does not mean we ourselves should be
indifferent. In fact we have every reason to care deeply about our lives. This
naturally raises the question of what our goal should be. Kekes proposes that
what we are interested in is our well-being.
While each of us can readily imagine what might
constitute well-being, Kekes does not define it further. Pointedly, he does not connect well-being
categorically with freedom, equality, autonomy, security or abundance. For
Kekes, there is no single overriding principle characterizing well-being -- its
recipe is as likely as not to be a blend of compromises.
What is more important for Kekes is that each of
us have our own concepts of well-being and that these concepts are shaped
largely by the accidents of our heritage and upbringing and cultural milieu.
Furthermore we act in accordance to our psychology -- our needs, desires,
aspirations, and inclinations among many other drivers. Thus to Kekes, our
beliefs about well-being together with these psychological drivers form a kind
of theory of behavior. I shall return to this point in a moment.
Another important aspect of Kekes's theory is the
role of what he calls contingency -- his term for all the aspects of our lives
over which we have no control. These include both negative and positive aspects
and include the misfortunes of natural disasters, disease and war, our congenital
talents and handicaps, social position and even episodic strokes of good or bad
luck. Basically 'stuff happens'. Try as we may to anticipate or ameliorate its
effects, there is some residue which we cannot anticipate or control.
Kekes's response is that we should therefore
concentrate our efforts in areas over which we do have control. These are
primarily our concept of well being and our psychological drivers and
attitudes. In the first place, our
concepts of well-being are subject to error. Some of our predispositions --
wants, fears, preferences -- may similarly be counter-productive. Since these
are internal to us, these are the areas where we have the most control. Thus
Kekes feels that our freedom and agency lies primarily in critically examining
these concepts and predispositions and developing the most productive ones that
we are able.
Reading
Jussi Suikkanen: Review of Kekes's The Human
Condition
