of an urge to harm the same person) and all the theories and formulations dis-cussed could be applied to this group. As such, the book might be of interestto psychologists and therapists within this field.

Liz JamiesonBroadmoor Hospital

Crowthorne, Berkshire andInstitute of Psychiatry, London, UK

References

Aronson, E. (1968) Dissonance Theory: progress and problems. In R.P. Abelson, E. Aronson,W.J. McGuire, T.M. Newcomb, M.J. Rosenberg, and P.H. Tannenbaum (Eds) Theories ofCognitive Consistency: A Sourcebook. Chicago: Rand McNally, pp 5–27.

Beauvois, J.-L. & Joule, R.-V. (1996) A Radical Dissonance Theory. London: Taylor & Francis.Bem, D.J. (1967) Self-perception: An alternative interpretation of cognitive dissonance phe-

nomena. Psychological Review, 74: 183–200.Cooper. J. and Fazio, R.H. (1984) A New Look at Dissonance Theory. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.),

Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Orlando, FL: Academic Press, Vol. 17, pp229–264.

Shultz, T.R. & Lepper, M.P. (1996) Cognitive dissonance reduction as constraint satisfaction.Psychological Review, 103: 219–241.

Steele, C.M. (1988) The psychology of self-affirmation: sustaining the integrity of the self. InL.Berkowitz (Ed.) Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, Vol.21, pp 261–302.

Tedeschi, J.T., Schlenker, B.R. & Bonoma, T.V. (1971) Cognitive dissonance: private ratioci-nation or public spectacle? American Psychologist, 26: 685–695.

Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature

By Mary Midgley. Routledge, London EC4P 4EE, 1995, 377pp. ISBN 0-415-12740-8

This book was originally published in 1978 and now reappears in paperbackwith a fresh introduction. Mary Midgley’s original introduction began by stat-ing ‘We are not just rather like animals, we are animals ... comparisons withthem .... Must be crucial to our view of ourselves’ (p. xxxiv). The new intro-duction makes clear that her approach to contentious issues in general, and towhether there is something called Human Nature in particular, is one of‘building bridges across disputes’.

Midgley is a moral philosopher who rejects the recently fashionable moralrelativism and avoids the increasingly fashionable analysis based on rightswhich she regards as ‘an obscure notion’ (p. 47). Instead she attempts toground a moral theory in our innate structure of motives and instincts. As partof this project she attempts to build bridges between, on the one bank, those

Book reviews S37

CBMH 11(suppl.) crc 17/5/01 5:55 pm Page 37

culturists and historicists who claim, improbably, that there are no, or onlyinsignificant, innate aspects to our humanity, and, on the other bank, theequally improbable proponents of an immutable ahistorical human naturewhich reflects such basic animal drives as aggression and dominance, derivedas they are in its most egregious incarnation from our ‘selfish’ genes.

Midgley writes fluently in a style stripped of technicalities and untram-melled by the pretentiousness of academia. Commonsense, decency and anever present moderation and reasonableness are the hallmarks of herapproach. Philosophers writing well about topics of direct relevance to psychi-atrists and behavioural scientists are still scarce, and were in even shorter sup-ply when this book first appeared. There is no doubt that most mental healthprofessionals will find this an interesting read which, if it is unlikely in mostcases to challenge their pre-existing views, will often give those views a newintellectual depth. This book is, however, more than an entertainment itattempts an important and formidable intellectual task, that of groundingmoral theory not in gods or in cultures but in human biology. A critique of herwhole thesis is way beyond this reviewer’s competence but a somewhat closerlook at her views on good and evil may be illustrative of the problems as wellas the strengths.

Midgley argues that in Western society from Plato onward there has been atendency to identify goodness with obedience to the dictates of reason, andevil to the expression of the Beast Within. The animal within us is, in thismodel, the moral problem. Midgley in contrast argues that humans share withother animals a range of positive and beneficent tendencies based on innateinstinctual mechanisms which determine aspects of emotional experience andexpression. Pity and affection which she considers to be rooted in innate pre-dispositions are examples of feelings she believes are not given sufficient cred-it. We ignore, she writes, those instances ‘where the body might be held tomake good suggestions to the soul’ and this exclusion ‘has been both morallyand psychologically disastrous’. ‘Fear of and contempt for feeling make up anirrational prejudice built into the structure of European rationalism’ (pp.43–44). Primitive man, she asserts, has a ‘natural inhibition’ against cold-blooded violence and an inbuilt predisposition to remorse should he commit‘horrible’ acts. These inhibitions and remorseful tendencies are, she believes,‘pre-rational’. ‘They are not the result of thinking; more likely they are amongthe things that first made him think’ (p. 40). ‘Conceptual thought formalisesand extends what instinct started’ (p. 41). So, far from the Beast Within beingthe original of all evil, the emotionality we share with other animals providesa basis for our own moral responses.

Midgley attempts to legitimise her ethical and moral arguments by notionsof instinctual mechanisms. For example, she writes on page 332: ‘Whatreplaces closed instincts, therefore is not just cleverness but strong, innate,general desires and interests’. These ‘evolutionary devices’ deal in ends notmeans. What is argued is an evolutionary progress from fixed behaviour

S38 Book reviews

CBMH 11(suppl.) crc 17/5/01 5:55 pm Page 38

patterns to innate tastes and interests which influence rather than fully deter-mine behaviour. More advanced and subtle parts of our emotional life are,Midgley claims, adapted versions of cruder ones just as the elephants tusks areadapted teeth. It is these subtle and evolved aspects of our emotional lifewhich potentially, but not inevitably, inform our moral choices.

As a project of balance and bridge building this book is curiously one sided.It is very much about nature rather than nurture. This is not, one suspects,from any desire to downplay the cultural and historical influences on humansbut reflects Midgley’s search for some firm ground in the given in which toroot her moral and ethical enterprise. It is for the same reason, I suspect, thatshe repeatedly conflates instincts, feelings and motives to try and establishsome universal predispositions to goodness. The imbalance is also a reflectionof the time the book was written when the humanities were dominated bythat particular brand of sixties romanticism which would happily assert thatman’s nature was to have no nature, or that human nature was a historical andcultural creation. In part the imbalance in this book could have been anattempt to correct the then existing imbalance. The reprint comes at a time,however, when the pendulum has swung to the other extreme creating anintellectual climate increasingly ruled by a determinist biologism and a pes-simism amounting to despair about the improvement, let alone perfectibility,of humans and their societies.

The dichotomy which pervades Midgley’s thinking between the innate andthe acquired is difficult to apply usefully to the concrete realities of humanexistence. Take one of her favoured examples: maternal protectiveness. Howcan one separate those aspects of child care which are culturally and histori-cally contingent from the manifestations of Midgley’s instinctual mechanisms?She suggests we gain hints from cross-cultural and cross-species comparisons.These must be veiled hints at best, given cross species comparisons areinevitably contaminated by constructions reflecting our own cultural and spe-cialist assumptions, and commonalities across cultures are surely dependent asmuch on the practical exigencies of caring for the child as on the innatedesires and feelings of the carer. We may, as Midgley repeatedly points out,share gestures and expression for many emotional states, not only across thehuman race, but with many primates. Does this commonality of gesture neces-sarily imply a commonality of feeling let alone values and desire? An exasper-ated professor looking angry may well share outward expressive gestures with afrustrated baboon but that tells us little if anything, of the what, the why andthe wheretofore of that ageing human’s state of being or likely behaviour. Ithas not been easy to rescue the emotions from those who would reduce themto innate responses to specific stimuli and though Midgley, I am reasonablysure, would not favour such silly reductionism on occasion she comes close togiving it comfort.

It may well be an escape from the direct implications of moral relativism toground some moral judgements in emotional responses. Midgley, however,

Book reviews S39

CBMH 11(suppl.) crc 17/5/01 5:55 pm Page 39

short cuts what is a challenging argument. One way she advances her argu-ment is by eluding categories like feelings, desires and motives, which shouldsurely be kept separate. She then proceeds to write, for example, of remorse asif it were a primary instinctual response. Clearly if remorse and inhibitionsagainst cold-blooded violence were inbuilt human attributes, even if onesoccasionally suborned or ignored, then a natural morality could indeed flowfrom these feelings. But at best we may have innate tendencies to such emo-tions as disgust, fear and anger, which are commonly evoked by not entirelydissimilar situations across our race and related species. Moving from disgustto remorse, fear to inhibitions against violence and anger to justice is not,however, about biology but about history and culture (not however Midgley’snotion of history, since she apparently believes ‘to think historically in thisway, we shall certainly need to compare remote species to talk of wasps as wellas wolves’.)

Even if we grant that inhibition against some forms of violence, and evenremorse, reflect to a significant degree innate mechanisms, there still remainsa problem in regarding such sensitivities as the roots of a moral system.Remorse and inhibition of violent tendencies only become good when some-one with Midgley’s attitudes and beliefs contemplates them. In what way arethey good biologically? Possibly in improving the survival chances of thespecies. But following this route soon leads to the social Darwinism of aHerbert Spencer or, worse still, to sociobiology, from both of which Midgley isat pains to distance herself.

Midgley for all her moderation and reasonableness takes a number ofthinkers to task including Hobbes, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. They all quali-fy for her displeasure for different reasons. Hobbes, Marx, Nietzsche andFreud, however, all in their different ways attempted to transcend the limita-tions of the thoughts and assumptions of their age to offer a new way of view-ing people and their world. They were all at their own historical period sub-versive of the accepted wisdoms. Admittedly in each case their work wasrapidly recuperated and became in bowdlerised versions justifications for newcertainties and texts to legitimate the prejudices and power of new orthodox-ies. Nevertheless, because of their work people came to understand themselvesin new ways, constructed their worlds in new ways, desired somewhat differentends, both for themselves and those whom they valued, and ultimately justi-fied different manners of pursuing those aims. In short their writings shiftedthe moral values within their culture. The reason each had such influence wasnot, of course, just the power of their thought or rhetoric (though all werestrong on rhetoric) but because their work brought together, and gave expres-sion to, important emerging conceptualisations in their culture. Each gave hisown spin and direction, but each, in part, expressed what a significant groupof restless spirits were beginning to feel about themselves and their worlds.This may have occurred, perhaps, because of economic, social or ideologicalchanges, but certainly not because of evolving human biology. Hobbsians,

S40 Book reviews

CBMH 11(suppl.) crc 17/5/01 5:55 pm Page 40

Marxists, Nietzschians and Freudians at different times and in different socialspaces contributed to shifts in moral values and I would argue in emotionality.(For relevant histories of emotions see Singer 1996 and Stearns 1989). It ispossible to trace the influences of such major thinkers and apportion credit orblame for the consequent moral and emotional shifts. Trying the same exer-cise with the supposed instinctual mechanisms seems far more problematic.Such instinctual mechanisms provide a given open to extensive, though notinfinite, variation by historical and cultural influences. Doubtless they arethere, but usually buried beneath the more mutable aspects of being human.By definition they are unchanging givens. For those who would affect theworld and change attitudes and values these innate mechanisms potentiallymerely set limits to the possibility of change and for all practical purposes arelargely, if not totally, irrelevant. Those who would stop change and resistprogress have always appealed to arguments based on human nature.

Though Midgley’s intentions are not reactionary the implication of manyof her arguments, in this reviewer’s opinion, are just that. If, however, theethological and behavioural sciences had generated knowledge of a statuswhich continued to sustain Midgley’s arguments then, however unfortunateone might believe them to be, those arguments would have to stand. At leastuntil better and different data came along. Unfortunately for Midgley, etholo-gy in particular remains a soft science, able to sustain speculations and possi-bilities but certainly not able to establish a knowledge which imposes itself.Philosophers who move into questions whose answers are sustained by empiri-cal knowledge can reap the rewards of relevance, but must pay the price thatscientists have to pay of becoming prisoners of their database, which, almostalways, moves on leaving their previous pronouncements naked and exposed.

Paul MullenThomas Embling Hospital

Fairfield, Australia

References

Singer, I. (1966) The Nature of Love, Vol. 1: Plato to Luther. New York: Random House.Stearns, P.N. (1989) Jealousy: The Evolution of an Emotion in American History. New York: New

York University Press.

Book reviews S41

CBMH 11(suppl.) crc 17/5/01 5:55 pm Page 41