CONSERVATIVE

This intertwining in birth of radical “Mineness”
and radical heteronomy produces a clash of two
irreconcilable contraries. Or at least it does for any view
of human life that makes freedom the sine qua non of
personhood, which is what happens when “good” is
only an adjective or adverb and never a noun.
Kant has already shown us the extent to which
modern man is ashamed of being simply human and
so dreams of becoming something more. Dostoyevsky
wrote of this shame as early as 1864, at the end of his
enigmatic Notes from the Underground: “We are oppressed
at being men—men with a real individual body and
blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and
try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalized
man.” Dostoyevsky was not a philosopher, but his
observation can be transposed in a philosophical key:
The shocking thing is individuation, the fact that we
received our own particular body. We would be glad to
possess the same universality as the angels, since each
and every one of them is his own species.
Günther Anders’s notion of a “promethean
shame” identifies a similar sense of inadequacy. We are
ashamed not to be a match for the perfection of our
own products. The artefacts are perfect because they
were designed and made according to the blueprint, not
begotten and born.
The solution is to ascend to perfection.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is to overcome man and to sail
in the direction of the Overman. Today, the dreams—
or nightmares—of a post-human endpoint of history
are deeply rooted in the desire modern man feels to
escape the passivity of his birth, the moment of natality
that can’t be turned into a project or enterprise, that
can’t be made good. Hence the fascination with the socalled
“transhumanist” project of transforming men
into beings that would be more than men.
If we’re not inclined toward the Overman and
want to remain loyal to the human condition, then we
face a fundamental question: What do we do with this
radical impossibility of doing anything about our birth?
Procreation
There is a point at which freedom as the
condition of action and the radical non-freedom of
birth meet each other, and even clash against each
other. This point is generation. For the existence of
mankind depends on the free decision of its members.
Children are born only because men and women come
together and conceive them. This is not automatic.
From the very beginning human freedom has played
a role in the forward march of the generations. All the
more so as technology progresses. Instinct may vouch
for the survival of animal species. In the case of man,
however, species survival is more and more relayed by
freedom. Freedom’s dominion over natural impulses is
a fact that we should wholeheartedly affirm. But, mind
you, we should affirm this dominion if and only if it
brings the subject of freedom to self-assertion, not to
self-destruction. For this we need an external fulcrum.
Plato conceived of the Good not so much as a
norm that active subjects have to abide by but rather as
a creative principle. He compares the Idea of the Good
with the sun. Now, Plato insists that the sun doesn’t
only shine its light on what already is, a role it plays
to show us right action, the path to the good life. It
also and more importantly gives being and life to what
doesn’t yet exist. It furnishes coming to be (genesis),
growth (auxē), and food (trophē). This corresponds to
our everyday experience and was what Aristotle had in
mind when he made what seems an odd qualification:
Human being begets human being with the help of
the sun. He meant this in a literal sense, which is to
say, material sense. The sun makes plants grow, brings
again the spring and so forth. Yet we should not limit
ourselves to the literal. The sun’s indispensable light
can be interpreted as a metaphor for the necessity of
the Good for the survival of man.
How can I tolerate not having created myself? My
answer is: If and only if I come from some utterly good
principle. Suppose that I owe my being to chance, to the
concourse of blind forces. This is now a common view,
one widely thought to be mandated by modern science.
If this is so, I have no reason whatsoever to contribute
to the coming to be of new life. But if I understand
myself as the creature of a good and generous God,
who calls me to share his life and love, then I have
reasons to ensure the continuance of life.
Put bluntly: If a blind watchmaker threw me into
life without asking me for my advice, why should I play
the same trick on other people by bringing them into
the world? If, on the contrary, I experience myself as
the creature of a good and generous God who calls me
to partake of his own loving life, then I have the very
best of reasons to use my freedom to promote life.
Rémi Brague is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Sorbonne
in Paris and at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. He
is the author of numerous books, including La Loi de Dieu:
Histoire philosophique d’une alliance (2005) and Le
Règne de l’homme: Genèse et échec du projet moderne
(2015). This article is an abridged version of an article that
appeared in the February edition of First Things. It is printed
here with permission.
42
Summer 2015