Sociodicy

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Sociodicy is the explanation and exploration of the fundamental goodness of human society. It seeks to provide an account for humans' general success in living together (and their enacting of good qualities such as love, friendship, cooperation, and teaching) despite their propensity to selfishness, violence, and evil (which are also clearly a part of human nature) and despite the variation and difference seen across human populations. [1]

The complex relationship between good and evil in human nature is a longstanding topic in philosophy and the social sciences. [2] [3] [4] [5] Sociodicy addresses the conceptual and empirical question: How can the goodness of the social world be explained despite the badness? In theology, by analogy, this concern is known as “theodicy”: How is God justified in the face of the presence of evil in the world?

One technical illustration of the concept of sociodicy is the fact that, according to some evolutionary theorists, such as Samuel Bowles, tribalism and out-group hatred in humans (which cause so much conflict and suffering) actually emerged in our species as a way to promote the desirable property of cooperation. For instance, mathematical models suggest that conflict between groups for scarce resources was actually required for altruism to emerge in the human evolutionary past. [6] Another technical illustration is provided by the notion of self-domestication, an idea advanced by anthropologists such as Brian Hare, Richard Wrangham, and others, who have argued that some primates, such as bonobos and early hominids, "domesticated themselves" and evolved to become more peaceful through the banding together of less aggressive members of the species to kill more aggressive members. [7] [8] In other words, violent and peaceful tendencies may not only co-exist, but may even depend on each other, in what Wrangham has called the "strange relationship between virtue and violence in human evolution." [5] Indeed, the extreme sort of lethal inter-group conflict seen in humans (e.g., warfare) is very uncommon in animals, as are also the extreme versions of many of the good qualities seen in humans (e.g., friendship and widespread cooperation, including with non-kin). [1]

This concept, in the sense of a "vindication of society despite its failures," [9] [10] was first advanced (and supported with empirical data) by sociologist Nicholas Christakis in his 2019 book, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society. [1] But the term "sociodicy" has also been used in prior work in sociology, albeit in different ways. Daniel Bell used the term (in 1966) to describe the act of explaining the evolution of the meaning of sociological concepts. [11] Pierre Bourdieu used this term (in 1979) to explain how ideology works to justify a then-current state of affairs. [12] Stanford Lyman used the term (in 1994) in the sense that the field of sociology as a whole is a way to explain society. [13] Other authors have explored these conceptualizations. [14] [15] [16]

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The problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God. There are currently differing definitions of these concepts. The best known presentation of the problem is attributed to the Greek philosopher Epicurus. It was popularized by David Hume.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theodicy</span> Theological attempt to resolve the problem of evil

Theodicy means vindication of God. It is to answer the question of why a good God permits the manifestation of evil, thus resolving the issue of the problem of evil. Some theodicies also address the problem of evil "to make the existence of an all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good or omnibenevolent God consistent with the existence of evil or suffering in the world". Unlike a defense, which tries to demonstrate that God's existence is logically possible in the light of evil, a theodicy provides a framework wherein God's existence is also plausible. The German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz coined the term "theodicy" in 1710 in his work Théodicée, though various responses to the problem of evil had been previously proposed. The British philosopher John Hick traced the history of moral theodicy in his 1966 work, Evil and the God of Love, identifying three major traditions:

  1. the Plotinian theodicy, named after Plotinus
  2. the Augustinian theodicy, which Hick based on the writings of Augustine of Hippo
  3. the Irenaean theodicy, which Hick developed, based on the thinking of St. Irenaeus
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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicholas Christakis</span> American physician and sociologist

Nicholas A. Christakis is a Greek-American sociologist and physician known for his research on social networks and on the socioeconomic, biosocial, and evolutionary determinants of human welfare. He is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University, where he directs the Human Nature Lab. He is also the Co-Director of the Yale Institute for Network Science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Augustinian theodicy</span> Type of Christian theodicy designed in response to the evidential problem of evil

The Augustinian theodicy, named for the 4th- and 5th-century theologian and philosopher Augustine of Hippo, is a type of Christian theodicy that developed in response to the evidential problem of evil. As such, it attempts to explain the probability of an omnipotent (all-powerful) and omnibenevolent (all-loving) God amid evidence of evil in the world. A number of variations of this kind of theodicy have been proposed throughout history; their similarities were first described by the 20th-century philosopher John Hick, who classified them as "Augustinian". They typically assert that God is perfectly (ideally) good, that he created the world out of nothing, and that evil is the result of humanity's original sin. The entry of evil into the world is generally explained as consequence of original sin and its continued presence due to humans' misuse of free will and concupiscence. God's goodness and benevolence, according to the Augustinian theodicy, remain perfect and without responsibility for evil or suffering.

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The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution is a book by British primatologist Richard Wrangham.

<i>Survival of the Friendliest</i> 2020 non-fiction book by Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods

Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity is a book by anthropologist Brian Hare and writer Vanessa Woods, first published in 2020, based on Hare's research hypothesis of human self-domestication. The main thesis of the book is that late in human evolution Homo sapiens underwent a process of extreme selection for friendliness that led to the self-domestication syndrome, as seen in other animals. The self-domestication syndrome led to a series of cognitive changes that allowed modern humans to out compete other species of humans in the Pleistocene, including Neanderthals, and become the most successful mammal on the planet. Hare and Woods argue that self-domestication is an ongoing process that continues today.

Evolutionary theodicies are responses to the question of animal suffering as an aspect of the problem of evil. These theodicies assert that a universe which contains the beauty and complexity this one does could only come about by the natural processes of evolution, therefore, evolution is the only way the world we now have could have been created: the goodness of creation is, therefore, intrinsically linked to the pain and evil of the evolutionary processes by which such goodness is achieved. As John Polkinghorne argues, the randomness that is a necessary aspect of developing new forms of life is the characteristic which also creates the unintended suffering of those life forms. Natural suffering, then, is defined as an unavoidable and unintentional side effect of developing life.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Christakis, Nicholas (2019). Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society. New York: Little Brown. p. 418.
  2. ↑ Lara, Maria (2001). Rethinking Evil: Contemporary Perspectives. University of California Press.
  3. ↑ Fry, Douglas (2013). War, Peace, and Human Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  4. ↑ Wright, Robert (1994). The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. New York: Pantheon Books.
  5. 1 2 Wrangham, Richard (2019). The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution. New York: Random House.
  6. ↑ Choi, JK; Bowles, S (2007). "The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War". Science. 318: 636–640.
  7. ↑ Hare, Brian; Wobber, Victoria; Wrangham, Richard (2012-03-01). "The self-domestication hypothesis: evolution of bonobo psychology is due to selection against aggression". Animal Behaviour. 83 (3): 573–585. doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.12.007. ISSN   0003-3472.
  8. ↑ Furuichi, Takeshi (July 2011). "Female contributions to the peaceful nature of bonobo society". Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews. 20 (4): 131–142. doi:10.1002/evan.20308.
  9. ↑ Bruni, Frank (2019-03-19). "Opinion | A Yale Professor Moves On". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2022-10-08.
  10. ↑ Bruinius, Harry (April 2, 2019). "This professor is still an optimist". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved January 8, 2023.
  11. ↑ Bell, Daniel (1966). "Sociodicy: A Guide to Modern Usage". American Scholar. 35: 696–714.
  12. ↑ Bourdieu, Pierre (1979). "Symbolic Power". Critique of Anthropology. 4: 77–85.
  13. ↑ Lyman, Stanford (1994). Social Movements: Critiques, Concepts, Case-Studies. New York: NYU Press. pp. 397–435.
  14. ↑ Alciati, Roberto (2022), Paolucci, Gabriella (ed.), "If Theodicy is Always Sociodicy: Bourdieu and the Marxian Critique of Religion", Bourdieu and Marx: Practices of Critique, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 313–325, doi:10.1007/978-3-031-06289-6_14, ISBN   978-3-031-06289-6 , retrieved 2023-01-07
  15. ↑ Giner, Salvador (2015). "Sociodicea". Clivatge. Estudis i tesitimonis del conflicte i el canvi social (in Catalan) (3). ISSN   2014-6590.
  16. ↑ Morgan, David; Wilkinson, Iain (2015). "The Problem of Suffering and the Sociological Task of Theodicy". European Journal of Social Theory. 4 (2): 199–214. doi:10.1177/13684310122225073. ISSN   1368-4310.
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