Dr Greg Bahnsen - Philosophy of Christianity: Six Views of the Nature of Man Part 2 (Part 23)

Like to do some comparison of six theories of human nature, which, although are not exhaustive of all of the non Christian options, seem to me to come very close to combining the main lines of non Christian philosophical thought on the theory of man. I was suggesting earlier today to Tom Shifler that in a real sense, what is surveyed in our book, those six theories of human nature are the main strains of anthropological opinion advanced in our culture and colleges today, either in themselves or in some form of combination. Platonism, Marxism, Freudianism, Sartreanism, Skinnerianism and Lorenz, who is probably unknown to many of us American thinkers. But anyway, these six approaches to man embody, as I recall my undergraduate education, the main thought of unbelievers about man himself. And so I'd like to go through the theories of these six men with respect to basic philosophical approach to the universe, the nature of man, the diagnosis of man's problem, and the prescription for man's deliverance that they offer. And you're saying, well, that's a very nice thing to do in the last day of class, because you may recall there is a question like that on your final exam. I'm going to be doing it, probably briefer than you're going to do on the final exam, but nevertheless, this will give you some outline of what I'm looking for. Let's begin with Plato. And I suppose the most important thing to say about Plato's metaphysics is that he believes in a realm of timeless forms. I think one of the easiest ways to explain the theory of forms in our day is to think of forms as the formulas for things. When Euthyphro comes to make accusations against his father in the court in Athens, Socrates encounters him. He says, you must have a very good idea of what piety is and what justice is if you can bring accusation against your own father. Euthyphro says, yes, I have a very exact notion of what these things are. And so Socrates says, well, then, what is justice? What is piety? And every time he proposes a definition or something, then Socrates, you know, picks it apart. And Socrates is looking for that one essential element or definition that makes justice or piety what it is, a timeless formula that covers all the diverse instances. Now, we have a lot of different instances of justice, don't we? Okay, this particular court case is an instance of justice. Another court case, say in New York and another day, is an instance of justice. The way you treat this particular person in your neighborhood is an instance of justice. You have all these different instances of justice point by Point by point. But what is it that they have in common? What is the one essential universal feature of all these particular instances? And that will be a timeless formula. Timeless because it's not set at some particular time or location. This is what all instances in time have in common. So this is the formula, the timeless formula for justice. Now, if the form is timeless, if the idea or essence or formula for something is timeless, then it is not known in any empirical way, because the only things we know in empirical fashion are things tied to spatial location and temporal location. So that I know there's a tape recorder on the chair in front of me, because at this particular time, using these particular eyes, I, I can have a sensation from that particular object at that particular point in space. But if the form of tape recorderness, if the formula for something being a tape recorder, is to be known, it can't be known by just looking at this tape recorder and that tape recorder and this tape recorder and that tape recorder. Because in looking at these empirical objects, you only know a particular thing. But I don't want to know a particular, I want to know a universal, I want to know the essence of tape recorder ness. And so Plato in his theory of knowledge was anti empirical. He had a rationalistic theory of knowledge. People know things by intuition. People know the forms because in a previous existence they had familiarity with the forms. Now, if there is such a realm of timeless forms that are not known through the senses, but are known rationally and intuitively, then among those forms must be numbered the most important, the objective form of the good. Objective goodness, therefore exists. For Plato, there is a universal standard of justice, a universal standard of value. Values don't vary from culture to culture. It isn't as though what's wrong in America is right. In the South Sea Islands there is a timeless form of the good. And cultures which do not approximate the good, do not reflect the good, are not, if you will, participating in the form of the good are not good cultures. Okay, so this is basically Plato's philosophical outlook. As you can see, at every point, Plato is speaking in an anti skeptical fashion. Plato lived in a day where the sophist had taught that man is the measure of all things, that everything is relative, that what's good is good for you, what's right is right for you. What's true is true for you. And so everything is tied down to the particular man in a particular culture at a particular time. Plato said no, the forms of things are timeless. They are not known by looking at particular cultures, men or Experiences and they are objective. It makes no difference what you think about it. The good exists in and of itself. So he was anti skeptical. He's against the idea that we couldn't know these things. What is Plato's theory of man? Plato basically thought of man as dualistic. Man is made up of a material body and an immaterial soul or immortal soul. The soul of man, it turns out, is tripartite. Next time you read that in a Christian theology book, you might want to ask how much comes from Plato and how much comes from biblical exegesis. Plato taught that man's soul is really made up of three different types of things. First of all, reason, Man's ability to think things through according to intuition and logic. The reasoning part of man. And then there's the desire part of man, if you will, part of his material nature. Men are hungry, men desire sexual relations. Men have various, if you will, physical desires. And then the third part of the soul of man is variously called emotion or spirit or anger, whatever it is that, if you will, motivates man. So you have, let's say a man is, in terms of his desires, let's say he's hungry for a. A double hot fudge Sunday. Okay? But his reason says, now if I have another hot fudge Sunday, which is going to be the third I've had today, then I'm going to get a little bit overweight and that's not good for me. So the reason says, no more hot fudge Sundays. Today the desire says, I'm hungry for hot fudge Sundays. And very likely, if the person is not philosophically inclined, his spirit, you see, his emotion is going to determine what he actually does. There is going to be the deciding factor. Usually Plato says, usually the spirit sides with the reason. Isn't that true? You've noticed people, when they get really emotional and make up their minds on the basis of emotion, they usually do the most reasonable thing, don't they? This is the point where a lot of philosophers reading Plato say they're not sure that he was really watching human beings when he formulated this theory. Because as a matter of fact, emotion tends to go with desire rather than with reason. Or so it seems to me. Yeah.

Which one of these would we call the will?

The will is actually determined by all three together.

As far as Plato's.

Yeah, according to Plato, that's what I'm trying to answer, that what you will to do is determined by the combination of your desire, reason and spirit. Okay, now what is justice for Plato? Deoxy Righteousness in the New Testament, a Greek word for righteousness or justice. Plato says justice is a harmony of these three elements of the soul. You have the three parts of the soul. And when they're all working together, each doing its proper function, when they're all balanced with each other in the proper proportions, then you have a harmonious spirit, a just man. The last thing to be said about Plato's theory of man is that he saw man as a social creature dependent essentially upon his social relations and especially the division of labor. No man can supply all of his needs. So you've got to learn in society to harmoniously get along with those who supply flour, those who supply military protection, those that supply medical benefits, what have you. You need to learn the division of labor so you can harmoniously relate to men in your society. Okay? There, you see, is the nature of man. What's man's problem, according to Plato? What's man's problem? Well, it's disharmony. Men get into difficulty when there's not a balance in the three parts of their soul. Now, things really get out of hand, really out of control when reason is no longer the charioteer, as Plato says. Reason is supposed to be the one who is driving the chariot. And you have appetite, desire and spirit, you know, as the two horses of the chariot. And what happens, though, you see, when the charioteer gets thrown down on the ground, one of the horses is in the chariot, then things are going wacko. You can't have man operating properly if he doesn't let reason dominate. So the problem for men is that they're not letting reason dominate lead them. They're not letting reason take control of their appetites and their desire. I mean, their desires and their spirit or their spiritedness. Injustice, then, is disharmony. Now, what's injustice in society by reflection or analogy? Injustice in society is a state of disharmony among men. Not within. Not within the soul of man, but from man to man. Now, every particular man has a particular emphasis that he can add to society. While all men should let reason dominate. There are some men who are better at doing reasonable things. And other men are better at doing appetite or desirable, desired type things. And some men are more spirited. Some men are more emotional, okay? And so there are three basic types of men, too. There are, if you will, the intellectuals. Plato calls them the philosophers. There are those who take care of, if you will, the administrative needs of people. The soldiers, the police, the civil servants. And then there's another class of men. Plato usually calls them the Farmers and merchants, okay, Those who make, if you will, a middle class living now in a society, you're going to have to bring some harmony to, if you will, the soldier class, the philosopher class, and the working class. And what kind of harmony is just society going to see? The same kind of harmony that you expect in the soul. And what is the harmony in the soul? It's when reason is leading. And so in society, who should be the kings? The philosophers. Now, you all have to admit, as a result of this class, you're probably all very much inclined toward that view. Right. You've seen in reading these philosophers, this is just the sort of person you'd want to lead you, right? Yes, it does seem a little implausible. There is, if you will, a prima facie absurdity to this. But of course, in terms of Plato's philosophy, it all fits, doesn't it? This is exactly the appropriate thing to say. If reason is what brings justice and balance within the soul of man, then the reasonable men, the intellectuals, ought to be the leaders. Now, just to show you that we don't lose any of the elements of this ancient philosophy. We just get it repackaged from time to time. This week, one of the wives of a presidential hopeful candidate happened to say to a civic club that she was better qualified to be the first lady than somebody else who happens to be the first lady. And why was she better qualified? Because she has a master's degree and the first lady does not. Now, I'm not going to make a big deal of that in terms of presidential politics, but again, that is, if you will, a resurrection of this old Platonic idea that the intellectuals are the natural leaders. What happens when you have a society where the soldiers lead? Obviously, you're going to get a despotic society, a tyrannical society, a bloodthirsty society. What happens when the merchants leave? Then the poor get pushed down and nobody gets taken care of. It's a selfish society. It turns into an elitist society. And so the best society is going to be a society run by the intellectuals.

But I bet she doesn't know anything about indexable reference. Right?

That's. Well, you know, there are people who are educated and then there are people who are super educated. And if we get one of the candidate's wives, say that she knows something about indexical reference, then I'd say you better vote for her. That's right, because she knows a lot more than we do, obviously, the nature of the problem. What's the solution then to man's difficulties for Plato. Mrs. Jerry Brown. Now, now, now, Linda Ronstadt had nothing to do with this. Okay, what's the solution to man's problems for Plato then, the philosopher king? I want you all to remember this in case I ever run for president someday. Secondly, education is the key. If you want to make people do what is right, then you must educate them as to what is right. Now that is perhaps the, if you will, the most enduring influence of Platonic philosophy on our social structure today. Because we continue to believe that if we'll educate people in what is right, that they will do the right, if you will. Education is a regenerative force in our society, or so it is thought. It is thought that if we just get people enough education, we'll have a safer and a saner society. Do the facts bear that out? There was no public school prior to the 1830s in this country. Was it a safer, more moral, considerate than all the rest of society? Because before the 1830s, I think there's very few people that can deny that it was, it was a much, if you will, much more moral society. Education has not brought about the reform of man. Finally, Plato believes in a strict threefold class division. There are some people who are naturally suited to lead, some people naturally suited to follow out orders and soldier class, and there are some people naturally suited to be merchants. So in the Platonic approach to man, I'm going to take far too long if I don't speed this up here. I want to point out some difficulties. You notice that his anti skeptical thrust all depends upon his metaphysical theory of the forms. Where are the forms to be found? Nowhere. Has anybody ever seen a form? No. The nature of the case, they can't be seen. They're anti empirical. How do we know the forms aren't just apple pie in the sky? By and by Aristotle, the greatest student of Plato. Aristotle, the greatest student of Plato, got rid of Plato's. He said whatever forms there are, are always embodied. There are no disembodied forms. There is no, if you will, form of triangularity in the heavens somewhere. Triangularity is found to the degree that it is found only in existent particular empirical triangles. Well, if we have difficulty with the forms, and I think we will, are there then objective universal values after all? Well, even if you grant that there are objective and universal values, and if we are to follow those men who know the forms better than anybody else, because they're the intellectuals, they're the philosophers, how are we going to go about settling disagreements between rational men? You see Plato's theory would be all well and good if it turned out that everybody who studied philosophy agreed. But have you been convinced by reading the textbook, this term, that philosophers? One of the predominant traits of the class of men called philosophers is agreement? No. Of all men, they are the most disagreeable, not only because they're so arrogant sometimes, but because they just tend not to agree with each other. So how do you settle these disputes between rational men? Moreover, has history or your personal experience borne out the idea that knowledge leads to virtue, that if you make a man knowledgeable, you'll make him more virtuous? No. So there's another unrealistic feature of Plato's philosophy. Notice that in Plato's ideal society rulers, the philosophical rulers would have absolute power over the opinions that are expressed in society, what people think and how children are educated. You have to stop and think about the tyrannical implications of that. Are you satisfied that no philosopher would ever abuse that kind of ultimate power over the thoughts of other individuals? Well, I'm not. We could ask also about Plato's theory of man, this dualism. Is it true that there is an immaterial substance within man, that man is a material being with an immaterial ghost within him? Well, if it's true, and I have some real questions about that, if it's true, how can an immaterial thing be broken up into three parts? I know how to cut a pie into three parts. I know how to divide this room into three parts. You can divide all sorts of material things into parts, but how do you divide immaterial things into parts? The only way you can think of dividing immaterial part things into parts is to pretend that immaterial things are material. And so Plato seems not to be able to make up his mind about the nature of the soul. By the way, why are there only three divisions in the soul? I mean, you can think of other ways of cutting the cake, if you will. Why can't we say there are 16 features to the soul rather than 3? You can divide up men into their various proclivities and powers and all the rest various ways. So there seems to be some arbitrariness here.

Does he ever try to answer that interesting question?

No, he doesn't. Plato seems to be tied to this macrocosm, microcosm analogy. And so since he thought of men as falling into three kinds, the intellectuals, the followers, soldiers, and then the merchants, he tended to think the soul would have three parts too. Which being first? Well, chicken or the egg? Questions would not bother Plato too much. The important thing is that justice for man is harmony within the soul. Justice for society is harmony within the society, whichever historically comes first. So for him, neither one. I mean, speaking of. They come together. Actually, we're not going to get justice in society until the disharmony within men is taken care of. Okay, well, let's move on. I have other criticisms I could make of Plato, but by contrast, let's see what Marx does with these questions. Let me cut short my exposition here a bit. Marx was a determinist, of course. He believed that men were made up of material bodies, and that's all. And that what happens in terms of the relationship between men who were nothing more but matter, sophisticated matter, was determined by laws of historical development characterized by economic relations, if you will. He was an economic determinist. Economic conditions determine what happens in history and society. Now, Marx did believe that society was moving in a particular direction. What direction? Moving toward the stateless society, a society without the state. Now, to get there, we're going to have to go through various stages. We're living, at least Marx thought in his day, in the stage known as capitalism. But capitalism would give way to socialism, socialism to. To communism through the dictatorship of the proletariat as one of the steps along the way. And then finally, men would abolish the state and we would reach utopia. Now, Marx had an interesting way of getting there. To decentralize the state. Marx believed in doing what? Centralizing the state. That's one of the contradictions in Marxism that it. It's going to be resolved. I'll have to leave you to resolve it because I can't see how it can be. According to Marx, man was essentially social in nature. He has no afterlife. Man is basically a social creature determined by his economic conditions. Man is distinctively a productive being as well. Man is among all the animals. Remember, he is just another animal like anything else. He has no soul or no spiritual aspect. But man is productive. He is an economic creature determined by his social conditions, his economic social conditions. What is the problem in man? Alienation. The worker is alienated from the means of production. He is alienated from his true nature because he has to work for somebody else. And therefore, his time is not his own. The product of his labor is not his own. The way it's priced is not his own. And consequently, he hates his life. He doesn't care for the product of his labor. He doesn't care about his time. He is really a slave. And so this alienation from his true nature is the basic problem in man work is not part of the worker's nature anymore. He is alienated from his work. And Marx suggests many causes for this alienation. Private property, the fact there's no community feeling among people. The fact that people are being used merely as a means to an end rather than being seen as valuable in themselves. And so how are we if man is basically a social and productive animal who is alienated from his work? The answer for man's problems is going to be an economic revolution. The workers must arise and take over. They must change their economic environment. Because if man is conditioned by his social environment, the only way to regenerate man is to change his environment. And what in particular do we have to do in the revolution? We must abolish private property and move to a stateless society. Okay, we're going to get to a stateless society by emphasizing the state along the way. However, remember we're going to give ultimate power to the state so that eventually the state can abolish itself. Freud. Yes, sir.

Before you get the point, I'd just like to make the observation that puzzled me for many years until I figured it out. Why is communism, especially Chinese communism, so anti family? Why did they divide the children from the parents and so forth? Because there's nothing inherent in communism that would demand that. In fact, communism would accentuate the families. And then I really realized if the biggest sin is private property, and private property in sense of domain comes from the clan and from the family. We, daddy, mommy, kids own something, inheritance that if I can get rid of the family, then private property would vanish.

You're exactly right. Private property and the family go hand in hand. In Marx, the only way to break the hold of the family and therefore private property is to have the state do the education and raising of the children.

But I don't know of a Marxist who considers family intrinsically evil. It's private property that's intrinsically evil. So they just say in compassion, they say, well, I'm sorry, but the family has to go. In other words, they see the dispensing of the family well, as an act of mercy to where one wants to get.

I don't know how many Marxists you've talked to. It may be true the ones you've run into have not felt that way. But Marxist philosophy says family is inherently evil. There's a family essential breaks up society into units that consider themselves owners of particular property. Inheritance, as you mentioned it, the idea that the parents own the children can control the children rather than the State is essentially the claim that the state doesn't have this ultimate power that it must have in terms of Marxist dialectic of history, so that eventually there'll be no state at all. We all have to become one large family, to put it another way. And as long as we perpetuate into individual families will never have this communal society.

Precisely. The sin is not ownership of private property, but ownership, Lordship.

Oh yes, oh yeah. The ultimate sin is private property. Ownership.

Ownership, ownership in the broader sense, like me owning my kids.

Yeah, okay, but that, that's one of the same with private property in terms of economic theory. Okay. Freud is a materialist, a determinist and he believes very strongly in evolution. Man is an animal that has evolved. Now according to Freudian anthropology, man is psychologically determined. And the most important thing in man that determines, psychologically determines what he will be and do are obvious unconscious drive. There are unconscious drives in man, that unconscious mental state that determine what a man will be and do. Now like Plato, Freud believes in a tripartite division of the human soul, if you will, or consciousness. He divides it into the well known division of id, ego and superego. The yid being subliminal drives the ego being the conscious self, as he tries to relate to his society. The superego, the conscious self as developed under the constraints of civilization. Now there are instinctive drives within man as an evolutionary animal. For instance, the eros drives, the life affirming drives, self preservation, self sex or what have you. And then there is also in later Freudian thought, the thanatos drive or the death instinct, the death wish. And so, and then Freud also in his, in his theory of man stresses the individual's development, his character development through the various stages of sexual advance. Okay, so the, what happens in the various sexual stages of a child, you know, for instance in his anus stage or in the phallic stage or perhaps under the Oedipus complex or what have you is going to determine the kind of person he turns out to be later. Now if that's what man is, basically he has these unconscious drives within him. What is the basic problem in man for Freud? Well, it's neurosis. Neuroses develop from frustrated basic instincts, if you will, that come about when men repress their basic instincts. And the reason men repress their basic instincts is because society has taught them to do this. Society turns out then to be the basic problem with men. In that society creates malcontents or discontents. Society's pressure then develops neurosis in man. When the superego is warring with the id, and the ego stands between the two and doesn't know how to adjudicate the conflicts. Okay, so you grew up with a basic sexual nature. You see something, some other creature you want to have sexual relations with, but your society says no, no, that's taboo, that's wrong. And that creates a neurosis within somebody. He has to repress this. And the answer to the neurosis that comes from frustrated basic instincts is going to be psychoanalysis. So you go to the psychoanalytic counselor and he is going to try to restore harmony between the id, ego and superego, try to restore harmony between the individual as well as his society by analyzing his dreams, trying to find out where there is, if you will, arrested development in his character or sexual development, so forth and so on. The psychoanalyst tries to get to the bottom, if you will, of these unconscious drives and helps you deal with them in a more constructive way. We hurry along into Sartre, the existentialist philosopher. Sartre is an atheist. In terms of his general worldview. He does not believe that there are objective and transcendent values to which all men are responsible and which exist no matter what men may think of them. He doesn't believe in objects of transcendent values, and he doesn't believe that life has any inherent purpose. Life is absurd, according to Sartre, in the sense that life does not itself generate its own values, its own structure of meaning. Whatever value there is for man is a chosen value. It's not, if you will, a pre existing value. In terms of Sartre's basic theory, the nature of man, there is no true universal human nature in the nature of the case. Man is, if you will, first existent and then he chooses his essence. Man chooses what kind of person he will be. So there is no true human nature, no true universal human nature. Man first exists and then he chooses his essence. Now man's basic nature is, it turns out, there is no true universal human nature. But what all men have in common is that they are free beings. Freedom is the essence of man. Or, as Sartre says in some of his works, man is condemned to be free. Where does this, if you will, essence of man as freedom come from? Well, I don't have time to go into any elaborate discussion of being and Nothingness, Sartre's major philosophical work, but in it he talks about the nature of consciousness. Man, totally apart from rocks and trees and dumb animals, has consciousness in that he can think about things as they are not. I can think about being on the beach in Southern California right now, even though I'm not on the beach in Southern California, I can negate the true state of affairs in imagination. My consciousness allows me to negate things. Therefore, now, in this power of negation, it turns out man can other himself. Man is one thing, okay? He may be lecturing in a seminary classroom somewhere, but he can other himself by imagining that he's on the beach in Southern California. And if that. That ability to negate into other himself, that is, if you will, man's freedom. He has freedom because he can imagine things other than the way they are now. Of course, that freedom leads to anguish. In Sartrean philosophy, anguish is the awareness that one's own self is unpredictable. Since I am ultimately free, there's nothing that controls what I am and what I will be. There's no God controlling what I am and what I be. There's no objective value that determines what I ought to be. I'm not controlled by my society. I'm not controlled by psychological determinism. I'm not controlled by biological urges. I'm not controlled by subconscious instincts or drives. As Freud says, I am what I choose to be, and that's all there is to it. And that leads to a sense of anguish. I am totally unpredictable. Nobody can predict what I will be tomorrow because I am a free man. What is the problem with free men then? How come men who have this freedom turn out to have the difficulties that they do personally and socially? Sartre says the difficulty with man is bad faith, his technical designation for what is called another philosophical literature, self deception. Man deceives himself about his true nature. Men try to escape their anguish over their unpredictable freedom through bad faith, seeking to play a role. Okay, so you have a waiter who does not, if you will, make his own authentic decisions as to who he will be and how he'll perform or behave in the world. The waiter plays the part of a waiter. He says, well, if I'm a waiter, then I've got to carry my tray in a particular way. I've got to do particular things. I've got to speak in a particular way. I've got to have a particular type of gait and all the rest. He, if you will, tries to fit into the mold of somebody else's life. He denounces his freedom. He tries to pretend that he can't be free. Or you have somebody else who, in self deception, says, well, I got respect responsible because I was controlled by my, if you will, subliminal drives. There was nothing I could do about it, or I've been determined by my economic conditions or something like that. Sartre says these are all ways of escaping your freedom through bad faith. Of course, on the other hand, utter sincerity is not possible. According to Sartre. One can't be utterly sincere about what he is. Because if he were utterly sincere, that would mean that he is totally objective about himself. But if you're totally objective about yourself, that means you're treating yourself as an object. But man, in the very nature of the case, is not an object like a rock or a tree or a chipmunk or something that you might analyze. Man is a free being, and therefore man cannot be captured. If you could objectify man, then everything about man would be predictable. But don't you see? The very nature of man is that he's free and therefore unpredictable. And so you see the difficulty. Bad faith is the attempt to escape one's anguish over his freedom. And yet he never can reach sincerity and completely objectify himself either. Well, what's the answer then? The answer is going to be authenticity. The person who is living an authentic life rather than the life of bad faith is one who is aware his freedom and makes his choices. And complete awareness that he is the one who's doing the choosing. He's not determined by anything else. He and he alone is responsible for what he makes himself to be. And it's that which gives meaning to somebody's act. And so whether you stay at home to help your aging mother during the time of the French Resistance or you join up with the French underground to fight Hitler, makes no difference. The important thing is that you make that choice in full awareness that you have made up your own mind that you are a free person. There are no objective values. One must choose for himself. And to do so in full awareness that he is choosing is to be an authentic individual. Let's do a real flip flop here. We can go from Sartre and freedom to spring Skinner then, which is just the opposite of the idea of man is free. Skinner says man isn't free at all. In fact, I'm going to jump ahead on the outline here and point out that for Skinner, the very problem of man is not the illusion that one is determined. Bad faith is the illusion that nothing I do can make any difference. I've been controlled by my economic and environment or by my subliminal drives or by objective values given by the church or something. That's bad faith, the illusion that you are determined. Skinner says the problem with man is the illusion that he's free. The problem with men is that they think they're free. The illusion of freedom then becomes, if you will, the difficulty with man. Skinner believes in scientific method. He says, anything that we're going to believe, anything we're going to engage in. Is going to have to be determined by the methods of scientific research and proof. And the method of science is to be used not simply to learn about the world. Learning about the world has no value. The only thing that counts is being able to control one's world. And so knowledge is for the sake of power. Power. Power over one's environment, control over things. Skinner believes in environmental conditioning. He says that our environment totally conditions what we are and how we respond to things. He doesn't believe in, if you will, the instinctive nature of man. What appears to be instinctive behavior appears this way only because it is so universal in a culture that people are concerned, conditioned in particular, where they are. Skinner rejects all dualism in his theory of man. He says, if you want to know what man is, you must study human behavior. And so there is no dualism, no soul in man. The only thing that counts is behavior. How do men respond under such and such a condition? Skinner believes that men behave in terms of environmental causes. And conditioned reflexes, if you will. There is an operant conditioning that takes place in all human development. So that, if you will, a child is operantly conditioned to eat his meal with a knife and a fork and a spoon. He's conditioned to thank the host for the meal, may be conditioned to respond in this or that way. And all of social relations and all of human behavior. Are part of this basic conditioning that takes place. We learn to control our environment and to control each other in terms of conditioned response reflexes. Okay, now, the easiest illustration of this sort of thing. The simplest illustration of this, of course, is Pavlovian dogs. You know, Pavlov learned that if he would ring a bell just a few seconds before he'd feed his dogs every day, that after a while he could ring the bell and make them salivate even though there was no food there at all. They would be conditioned, you see, to respond by the. This pervasive use of the bell every time they expect food to come. And human beings, in a more complicated way to be sure, nothing is that simple in terms of social conditioning. Human beings are operantly determined by the conditions under which they learn to respond as well. Now, what is the basic problem of man, according to Skinner? The illusion that he's free. Man's problem is that he is trying to make of himself something he's not some kind of noble creature that can make his own decisions and all that. And so we think that it's valuable in a society to grant human dignity and freedom. But that's the difficulty. We let all these people run around, you know, and they begin acting like uncontrolled animals. And so if we're going to get around the problems of man, what we need to do is manipulate man's environment. We need to have, if you will, diversified controllers manipulate the environment of man. If you want to get rid of the criminal element in society, you've got to learn to be more effective in making, if you will, men not respond to various things in a criminal way. And the effective way to do that, if you will, is to make it harder and harder for people to engage in criminal behavior. And you make it harder on them by negative reinforcement. How do you negatively reinforce the idea that you don't engage in criminal behavior? There are a lot of different ways of doing it. Let's say that every time a person engages in criminal behavior, there's something implanted in one of his teeth that gives him the effect of a dentist drilling right into his nerve. And every time a man begins to do something which would be antisocial behavior, that nerve immediately kicks off like that. Well, Skinner would say, after a while, you're not going to find very many people tending toward criminal behavior. Get rid of this illusion of freedom and have the right people manipulating the environment. Condition them in the correct way, and then you're going to get rid of criminal behavior. Now, that seems to suggests we're going to have a despotic society, though, where the elite determine what is right and wrong behavior. Freedom is taken away. Skinner says, that's right. We want freedom taken away. Man doesn't have the dignity of being a free being. That's fine. And we're not going to have a despotic society, however, says Skinner, because what we're going to do is we're going to rotate those who are in control. We're going to have those in control be a diversified group of people, some from this sector of society, some from this industry, some from this occupation, some from this race, some from that race. I suppose some kind of diversity is going to keep everything in check. Naivete is written all over the face of this theory, of course, that because one has got to ask who will determine the, if you will, the membership in this diversified lot of social manipulators. And even if we could die, even if we could determine membership in some objective way for a diversified lot. How do we know that these people are going to know the right things to do? And if they're diversified, aren't they going to be arguing and bickering over the right things, things to do? Well, isn't their arguing and bickering determined by social conditions? And if so, then it makes a big difference as to who has, if you will, programmed these people as to how they're going to resolve their difficulties. This just takes it one step back every time he talks about we'll diversify the manipulation of society. We want to know who has, if you will, manipulated the diversified manipulators and so on and so forth. We come to one more theory of man before we make some closing remarks, and that's Lorenz. Lorenz is a leader in the study of animal behavior today. He is firmly committed to the theory of evolution. Man is basically an animal, just like all the rest. And in terms of his theory of evolution, he is very interested in the survival value of certain instinctive kinds of behavior. Animals have instinctive kinds of behavior, but not all. But not all forms of behavior have as much survival value as others. We might compare the following instinctive behaviors, say in an animal, there's the. The instinctive behavior of eating, instinctive behavior in sexual relations, the instinctive behavior of warring with other animals that come on your turf. Which of these have survival value and to what degree? Well, sexual relations have a lot of survival value. I mean, if you don't have sexual relations, you're not going to propagate the species. Consequently, that's very important. And so it's important that the aggressive urges of an animal be used to protect his sexuality and his freedom to engage in sex and his eating as well. Other things animals do that don't have as much survival value. And this can lead to antisocial and to negative behavior, destructive behavior. Now, according to Lorenz, in terms of the basic human nature that men have, men are subject to the same causal laws as all other animal behavior. Men, if you will, have the same causal laws as all other animals. There is innate in man an aggressive urge. Men, human beings are naturally aggressive, as many other animals most animals are. And the way they handle their aggression is going to determine the nature of their societies. Now, what's the problem with man? Where do problems arise? Well, problems arise because of the restraints of civilization. Civilization's restraints get in the way of man's aggressive behavior and his instinctive way of handling that aggressive behavior. In particular, civilization has Enabled man to develop a form of technology that has outstripped his animal instinctive way of handling his aggressions. And so, if you will, in terms of the development of animals in evolutionary history, street it's not going to be too terribly destructive if two bucks fight with each other over a particular plot of ground in the forest. It seems that their willingness to engage in this aggressive behavior is somewhat. I mean, its destructive effect is stifled by their inability to do much more, but, you know, gore each other. Okay, so you're not going to have a terrible devastation. But what happens when through evolution, men develop atomic bombs? Then you see their technological ability has completely outstripped their instinctive ability to moderate and control, if you will, the destructive effects of aggression. Well, what kind of answer do we have to this problem? Lorenz says we must study ourselves. We must get to know each other. We must know what man is and what makes him what he is. And so self knowledge is salvation. Lorenz suggests that we must find other ways of channeling our aggression sublimation. We must sublimate aggressive urges in ourselves into other ends. And so we have professional football and basketball and sports and so forth as a way of developing the animal urges of men working out their aggressive tendencies without doing a great deal of destruction to each other. At one point, Lorenz even suggests that humor is a very valuable way of dealing with our self knowledge, learning to deal with ourselves and our aggressions without engaging in destructive behavior. Okay, now what do we have up here on the board? In closing, what we have up here on the board is essentially the very bad news of man over against the good news of God. You see, man has some real bad news for himself when he's left to determine his own nature problem and destiny. You see how man is already alienated in his essential being. For Plato, there is no harmony in man. There is a disharmony between his material and his immaterial aspects. Man is a soul entombed in a body. According to Plato, the body is the tomb. The basic nature of man, making him what he is, has nothing to do with himself or his inherent value. According to Marx, his value is simply in that he's a productive being and his value is gained from his society. He is but a pale reflection of his society. For Freud, it becomes even worse. Man's basic nature is unconscious. It's something that he can't even come to to know without the help of a psychoanalytic psychologist. Sartre says there isn't even an unconscious aspect to man that is determining what he Is there is nothing objective that makes man what he is. Skinner takes away even the freedom of man, takes away the idea that there is an essential nature of man. In Plato, the only thing to be found in man is be Any man is like any other natural object. There's behavior that characterizes man and that's what makes a man what he is. Lorenz says that the behavior that's important in man is instinctive. Skinner would say it's not instinctive. It's socially developed, a pale reflection of his society again. But in the case of Lorenz, man is just another animal, pure and simple. And we analyze man just like we analyze pigeons and oxen and warring bucks and all the rest. Well, what's man's problem? Here you have rationalization for the sinfulness of man rather than, you see, since man's dignity, according to Christianity is found in that he's the creature of God, he's the very image of God. And therefore he with a body has the ability to do what God does. He makes free decisions. He has dignity, makes moral decisions, has reasons and exercises dominion. Man is the image of God in bodily form. All these theories try to find the basic nature of man somewhere else. And so the problem of man is a moral problem I suggested in our last class. But all these theories, you see, try to rationalize the immorality of man. What's wrong with man? Well, you see, there's some disharmony in his soul. He simply needs to get reason back on the throne and then he's going to be okay. Well, the difficulty with man, it's not his fault. He's alienated from the means of production, says Marx. Freud says, look, a man's difficulties aren't his own fault. It's due to society. He's developed this neurosis in man. Sartre says man's problem is that he. He thinks that he's a sinner, that there are objective values. He's answerable too. That's the problem. Problem is not that he is a sinner, but that he thinks he's a sinner. That's bad faith. He needs to learn his ultimate freedom. Skinner thinks that man's problem is that he has some problem in terms of self conception. He has this illusion that he's a free creature. Lorenz says civilization and its restraints have gotten in the natural. In the way of the natural evolutionary development of man. And consequently man's problems don't turn out to be willful rebellion against the Creator who made him as his own image and made him in order to image the righteousness of his maker. Man's problems are always somewhere else. They're internal in terms of the soul not being harmonious in terms of one's society, in terms of one's subliminal drives or what have you. So man doesn't take responsibility for his problem. And then here you have all these bad news ways of salvation too. You're going to be saved through the philosopher kings, saved through revolution, through psychoanalysis, through authentic decision making, through manipulating one's environment, or if you will, through some form of self knowledge and sublimation. These are the basic theories of man that we find controlling our society and our educational systems. And strangely enough, you find these various theories in strange and often contradictory combinations in people that you talk to around you today. They'll suggest that their problems are economic problems, and then, lo and behold, their problems are subconscious problems. And their problems are that their freedom is being stifled by society. And on and on and on and on and on. All of these are but elaborate illustrations of what the Bible tells us about man when he falls into sin, in terms of his rationalization of his sin, in terms of his efforts to save himself. When man becomes his own savior, you notice that he saves himself by doing just those things which are contrary to the Christian gospel. He says, you see, education is the answer. The gospel says that education is not the problem. The you educate people, they tend to become more, if you will, proficient in their evil desires. Education, not education. But revolution becomes the solution to man's problems. For Marx, the Bible tells us that God made us to be subordinate to our rulers and all the rest. Revolution, only if you will, replaces one despotic type of rule and evil government with a another kind of evil government. The answer is not revolution, but to start reflecting our creator again, start using his standards. Psychoanalysis is not going to help somebody if psychoanalysis is simply calculated to show that he shouldn't feel guilty about the various bad things that he does and thinks. Psychoanalysis, if you will, is just an elaborate way of making you feel good about your very bad conscience. Authenticity. What Sartre calls authentic is what God calls inauthentic. The most authentic man, the man who is living as man is supposed to be, as created, is the man who says, I'm not free to do what I want to do. I'm only free to do what God wants me to do. I'm free to advance the kingdom of the Lord, the Savior, Jesus Christ. Sarfar says, if you're going to be genuinely authentic, you must renounce Any commitment to religion and God and be your own boss, okay? The problem in man, of course, is the evil desire in man, the fact that he's alienated from his creator, the fact that he's in rebellion against his creator. If you take a rebellious sort of man and let him manipulate the environment of other people, then what he's going to be creating is more rebellious. Men. Men are going to be made in the image of other men, as that image is construed in a sinful and rebellious way. Then of course, to suggest that man's salvation is to recognize that he's but an animal is to go totally contrary to what the Bible teaches us about the nature of man. Man is set above the animals, is distinct from the animals. It's the one who has control over the animals. Lorenz says, what you have to understand, understand is that you are an animal, and that's your salvation being to sublimate your animal aggressions and all the rest and start, if you will, letting evolutionary development catch up with technological abilities in the area of aggression. Then we can take care of our difficulties point by point by point. What we have here is the humanist version of salvation. You have the creation of the man, his nature, if you will, his dignity. You have the sin or fall of man found in these various forms, and then you have the salvation of man manifest in these various forms. Each one of these we don't have time to go over, but each one of these has its own philosophical problems that are somewhat touched upon in the text. There are a number of psychological, excuse me, philosophical difficulties with them that are left untouched. Also, just one example, in very quick passing, Freud talks about psychoanalysis helping a person understand his repressed desires, his frustrated instincts and all the rest. Well, as part of my doctoral dissertation on self deception, I was interested, of course, in Freudian and Sartrean anthropologies. And one of the questions that I think has to be posed in all honesty to Freud or to any adherent of psychoanalysis is what's the difference between a person going to a psychoanalyst and learning that he has had a repressed hatred of his father? What's the difference between going and working, learning of a belief that you hate your father that you have not been willing to look at, and going to the psychoanalyst and being trained to hate your father? Does the psychoanalyst convince us to have a new belief, namely, I must hate my father? Or does the psychoanalyst bring us to realize that we've always had that belief that I hate my Father. But I was unwilling to look at it. What is the difference between those two? My suggestion is obviously that the psychoanalyst is not helping us to analyze ourselves, to understand ourselves. The psychoanalyst is giving us new beliefs about ourselves. He's reforming our self conception rather than, if you will, revealing our self conception. And there's no way that any Freudian, psychologist, psychoanalyst has been been able to get around that criticism. And I believe in principle, because of the nature of the theory and the idea of the unconscious, it will always be unable to answer that sort of thing. So there are very important philosophical problems with each one of these of the same sort that I've been mentioning. But as Christians, the main thing we want to see here is that what we have presented are various worldview. When you're dealing with people who hold these various worldviews, you want to set them very clearly in contrast to the Christian world and life view. We needn't feel embarrassed that we have a philosophy that's been provided by divine revelation and that we don't answer, if you will, every particular detailed question about every particular detail of our worldview. When we present it to people, we expect them to look at the whole and say, compare the options in terms of our worldview. The meaningfulness of human nature is explained, the waywardness of human behavior is explained, and a realistic way of dealing with man's problems according to man's nature and the nature of man's problems is provided. And so what you have is the possibility of a transcendental apologetic fraternity, Christianity, in terms of philosophical anthropology that would, it seems to me, have carried out, mirror the epistemological apologetic that we've been dealing with throughout the term. In terms of the impossibility of the contrary. Compare the two worldviews and see which one will allow for objective truth and knowledge, will allow for scientific progress, will allow for the parts and the wholes to be meaningfully related to each other. You know, the monism and atomism tendencies in human philosophy and all the rest. What I'm suggesting is that what we need is a presuppositional approach to the defense of our faith. Look at the presuppositions that are guiding this philosopher or this philosophical anthropology, the presuppositions of this theory of knowledge or this metaphysic, and compare them with the presuppositions of Christianity. When all is said and done, the conclusion is going to be what the Apostle Paul himself said in Colossians, the second chapter, that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge will be found to be deposited in Christ Jesus. And therefore we must be careful, and I bid you now in closing, to be careful. Lest any man rob you by means of vain philosophy, by means of any philosophy that is after the tradition of men, and not after Christ robs you of that treasure which is yours in Christ. Because, as the Bible itself tells us, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.