King Lear in the upper palaeolithic: searching for ethical principles in prehistory.

Ethics should be based on an accurate understanding of human nature. Because behaviorally modern humans have been hunter-gatherers for most of their history, they remain foundationally hunter-gatherers. Key characteristics of Upper Palaeolithic people—wandering, relating to the non-human world, consciousness, storytelling, ethical sense, metaphysical instinct, and a symbolic-metaphoric operating system—overlap with Martha Nussbaum's conditions for human thriving and have ethical implications. Drawing on Peter Hacker, the article argues it is legitimate to derive ethics from biology and evolutionary history. Humans emerge as unfathomable, and this mysteriousness is a reason for moral weight. Ethicists should follow creative artists, not the reverse.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Ethics are concerned with maximising the thriving of individuals and societies. One cannot maximise the thriving of a person unless one has some idea about what sort of creature that person is. Ethics follow ontology. Many answers have been suggested to the question 'What is a human?' and the less fundamental question 'What are the defining attributes of a human'? Many of those answers are theological, and hint that the essence of a human is indefinable; that humans are unknowable, contradictory and mysterious. This article contends that, since behaviourally modern humans have been hunter-gatherers for an overwhelming proportion of their history, we are still foundationally hunter-gatherers, and that accordingly useful insights into our constitution can be gained by examining the quintessential characteristics of Upper Palaeolithic people. Those characteristics are wandering, a relationship with the non-human world, consciousness, story-telling and a consequential ethical sense, a metaphysical instinct, and an operating system based on symbolism and metaphors. Those characteristics (many of which overlap with the conditions of human thriving described by Martha Nussbaum) have ethical corollaries. The article builds on the work of Peter Hacker in contending that it is not only legitimate but necessary to derive ethics from biology and evolutionary history. Humans emerge from this examination, as they emerge from theological speculation and from the work of most creative artists, as unfathomable. The mysteriousness of humans is a reason for according them moral weight. The article suggests that ethicists should take the lead from creative artists, not vice versa.