Politics settles metaphysical issues such as abortion.
Neither the Old or the New Testament refer to abortion, which you would think would be considered there given how many religious people today regard abortion as a cardinal sin. Some Jews think otherwise. They cite “The Book of the Covenant”, included in “Exodus”, but regarded as the oldest of the Biblical texts, and which is a pact about the rules of warfare between raiding parties, as repeatedly invoking the idea that miscarriages are subject to less penalties than a death and therefore, interpreters say, that means a fetus is less valued than a person. But that is a stretch in that “less” does not mean “not at all” and that the text does mean “miscarriages” rather than “abortions”. Robert Alter’s translation just says fetuses “coming out”. Let’s look elsewhere.
A more rigorous discussion of the state of being alive is offered in “Genesis”. At the end of the story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, there is a final remark that seems to upend the meaning of the story but which even close readers of the Bible will neglect, and for good reason. God says: “If Adam had eaten from the tree of life as well as the tree of knowledge, then he would have become one of us.” Hold on there. What is God saying? Being akin to God or perhaps one of the angels is to be the combination of morality, which means free choice, and eternal life. That goes against the idea that the angels did not have free choice in that they could not help but be good while humans were cursed and distinctive for having free will. Maybe God was churlish and would be jealous of having humans become so elevated. The passage in the King James Version says that “therefore” Adam and Eve were banished and so it was done to prevent humanity from becoming like God. But Robert Alter eliminates the “therefore”, which might mean that God was simply making the observation that humanity would become god-like rather than condemning that, the exclusion from Eden done for their disobedience rather than on the significance of the actions.
If Adam and Eve were simply being disobedient, like children who do what their parents forbade them to do, that would be one thing. But maybe Adam and Eve had an inkling of the content of the tree of knowledge and even that of the tree of life, not otherwise named, then eating both these fruits could be considered as ambitions, as quests which mankind could over the ages overcome: to perfect our sense of morality and to at least evidently extend our longevity even if not accomplishing immortality. Remember that a mark in “Genesis” of these legendary times is that they were long-lived. That indicates what the writers thought the extension of life was amazing and admirable rather than a kind of freakishness. That goal of longevity would be to accomplish God given birthrights, what we might call human potential, because why would God otherwise plant these trees?
That, of course, is to read the part of “Genesis" in a very modern way in light of the possibility and actuality of social and economic and scientific progress that would turn nature to human needs. But what is enclosed in the meaning of the passage is that life itself, as an entity, can become regarded as so precious that it can be extended, that even life itself can be valued as an existential rather than a circumstantial matter, people dying off, like salmon going upstream, because that is their nature. To the contrary, people can be different and so the existence of being alive is fundamental and soo of interest to anti-abortionists rather than a convenience of people who become pregnant as a dissociated event from the pleasures and meanings of sexuality.
It mighty be the case that a second tree would be just another unnatural event in that it disrupted the natural order set by God and even a double catastrophe for mankind, but in that case, one might think that imbibing of the knowledge of right and wrong is also unnatural, when animals are spared from that choice and burden and can live their lives without them while people every day have to struggle to assess whether one has been kind or unkind to others or gone too far in sharp business practices or whether or not to decide, among other things, to engage in IVF Morality is a curse as well as a boon.
Similarly, wouldn’t it be awful if people lived forever or even just a very extended time?Consider what that would mean. People would not procreate in that the angels do not do so. Cherubs don't grow up but stay their type. There is no need to have offspring to replace dying people. It isn't a question that Heaven would become overpopulated unless following medieval speculation angels took up space and so there is a limit to the room in heaven. But angels may take up no space and heaven can be limitless. That isn’t a problem. There is a problem in that there is not much to do there in heaven except sit on clouds and be idle except to once in a while accompany God to Abraham or visit with Sarah. Would Mozart in Heaven create new symphonies? So eternal life would have no families and no work, just the opposite of what God said was condemned for Adam and Eve and their offsprings, which would make life so different from what people are that they cannot be considered human at all. Maybe that is why they shouldn’t eat the tree of life. The parallel argument is that people shouldn’t eat the tree of knowledge because making choices both good and evil is part of being human and otherwise, prior to the Fall, they were like the animals, no better than those who respond from instinct. Heavenly serenity, in both respects, is the opposite of being human.
And moving beyond a description of the existential situation on heaven and on Earth, there is the moral issue. What kind of God is it that creates a creature which has consciousness enough to see that death is inevitable and so its most precious attribute will come to an end and that there is not very much that can be done about it for the foreseeable future? Is God toying with us, just making people miserable because He can? Philosophers ponder what purpose that short life span might be of some use. Dante thought it a testing ground whereby people can demonstrate they deserve or not to be eternal and happy rather than eternal and unhappy but that seems very harsh given the moral frailties of people. Even Dante had to steel the fictional Dante to accept what would happen to people, the possibility of non-existence, however terrible its prospect might be, is less terrible a fate than what those in Hell would have.. Lack of consciousness would at least end pain.But Dante has no compassion, the inhabitants of Hell not even angry rather than resigned to their condition.
If longevity is to be prized, then there is a problem for the idea ever since the modern world began, which is when there were gods and spirits in trees and mountains, and that's modern spirit begins with “Genesis” in that the idea of a burning bush in “Exodus” is fanciful and getting the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai is thought literal.The problem is that humankind can only nudge the edges of consciousness, people tro be dead for a very long time and for a very long time before emerging into consciousness to live a rather brief time. All humanity can do is play at the edges in reality when scientists can extend life expectancy only very slowly and in imagination in that people can argue about when life begins, a few months dealer or later than otherwise, as if that were the more important thing than the fact that life pops up and shortly ends, people enfolded by eternity before and afterwards. SWhat difference if you make it to ninety-two rather than ninety and what difference whether you consider a fetus as a human being in the sixth rather than the ninth month? This is just quibbling. But, nonetheless, the metaphysical issue becomes political because societies can try to make human control matters and change their basic views and expect governments to enforce them. So when consciousness begins is an important metaphysical issue and is dealt with by deciding Roe v. Wade is legitimate and by repealing it.
The two sides of the abortion debate, which is a real debate and one that seems consequential, argue past one another. The pro-abortionists speak only of reproductive rights for women rather than balancing off the claims of a woman and tube fetus she carries. Does the fetus have no weight? And anti-abortionists regard fertilization as the beginning of personhood when there are any number of points in the gestation process whereby morality can intrude and decide when a consciousness begins: when a zygote bonds to the uterus wall, or when it feels pain or a heart, or when it can survive out of the womb or when its head emerges from the womb or maybe even when it can survive after a few days, and so monsters to be destroyed as non-humans. It's not easy to find the right dividing point because birth is a sui generis biological procedure not very capable to compare with acorns becoming oaks or cars becoming made from their materials. It might seem that the metaphysical debate, being of great moment, would have to be resolved by national legislation. You can leave motor vehicle regulations to individual states, and even they tend to have parallel laws, but a major issue needs general approbation, especially when there is no philosophical way to resolve the issue. As the man said, “A house divided cannot stand”.
What can be said, as an observation on recent cultural and political history, is that Conservative side has not held up its side of the aborftion debate. The abortionists reiterate the rights of women over their own bodies and the disasters that can come about if women are denied health care and die from bleeding out. But conservatives do not explain why their own cutoff point of fertilization is an appropriate dividing point. If the fertilized egg is a person because it has the potential to be a fully developed human being even if it does not yet have consciousness, then what about all these sperm who could have become human if one of them made it to an egg? In that case, people should try to procreate as much as possible, but Catholics accept the rhythm method, which is not a physical intervention from conception but is nevertheless a mental or intellectual one. It doesn’t make much sense. Also, it is just inconsistent to allow abortion for incest or rape because that is to make the children, if they are that, to suffer from their parents transgressions. But that is to give in to public opinion rather than to stand on principle. Moreover, as recent anti-abortion legislation shows, the anti-abortionists had not worked out the details of their legislation before getting them enacted. They had not considered IVF or related procedures or how much danger women must face before getting a D and C. Legislators need details and not just slogans.
This disparity in the intellectual vigor of the abortionist and anti-abortionist points of view is very telling. They are intellectually crude and thoughtless. Such a disparity also occurred during the Civil Rights Movement when segregationists did not explain why segregation was necessary other than to suggest blacks were not yet ready for integration and King answered that by asking when would they in the segregationist view ever be ready. Race is also a metaphysical issue of who is truly human. The same is class conflict and the right of revolution.
Metaphysical issues are those that are matters of definition and where people categorically prefer one definition to the other when there is only persuasive but non conclusive evidence or arguments on a side. Whether angels take up space is a metaphysical argument and whether to regard people as guilty while holding a reasonable doubt is also metaphysical in that people chose this or the opposite view just as inevitably correct regardless of arguments to the opposite principle. In that sense, the issue of when life begins is also metaphysical, engaging what seems an inevitable sense that life begins at conception or disregarding that consideration for a consideration of the needs of the mother.
Many wars are fought over metaphysics. Obviously, the sixteenth and seventeenth century religious wars were about metaphysics as well as dynastic conquest. The American revolution was about whether to be a republic made up of citizens rather than subjects to a sovereign ruler. The American Civil War was about the difference between slave labor and wage labor, the Confederacy thinking slavery a better way to order life. The Mexican war was about Manifest Destiny, which is that this nation has the right to unify the continent even though the Founding Fathers, writing just half a century or so before, did not grant nationhood a right but just a preference. And the Second World War and the Cold War were existential threats in that the loss of the West would mean the loss of their humanity.
Moreover, there are numerous ways to struggle with conflicts that are metaphysical. Gandhi and King used passive resistance to alter the way a people would no longer be thought inherently inferior. Social movements such as the Suffragettes petitioned the vote so as to establish women were more fully human. Universities challenged the idea that prejudice is natural and engrained through books written and lectures offered. Today the Supreme Court decides the metaphysical as well as practical issue of whether a fetus is a human being although subject to a legislative override.
It is perhaps worth noting that the view that a metaphysical issue can inform any sort of social conflict and social movement was not the point of view of the classical sociology that dominated the second half of the twentieth century. Sociologists were inclined to think that they were applying the invaluable insight that Social action could be explained by looking at the consequences of action, following the Darfwinian idea that the cause of an event is what will be its consequence, just as when eyes develop so that creatures can see. In social life, Neal Smelser portrayed rioting across the ages as the result of food shortages and similar needs for material wherewithals while political revolutions occurred only when a matter of values was at stake. I have suggested that theory to be incorrect in that both peaceful social movements, wars and revolutions can each be charged with fundamental definitions of being. Ideas are ubiquitous and that is clear in that abortion engages protest movements and legislation but has not led to warfare even though that idea of what life is in its beginning would seem to be a fundamental value issue.
“Genesis” and "Exodus", which do concern themselves with social movements such as building an ark or sparing child sacrifice or liberating through force of an ethnicity do not take up arms over longevity, only reflection on how crucial it is to separate the people who are eternal from those who are not. Noone challenges the idea that God is sovereign and can command people to be exiled even if Abraham can try to bargain with God about what people should be saved.. That is a further social revolution that takes place over merely the status of an ethnicity where people go to war to achieve that end. Genesis had not yet invented revolutions, a form of a more developed kind of collective social activity than the idea of technological solutions such as building an ark, Social structures arise from invention father than from their usefulness and we do not have a good social vehicle for dealing with longevity, treating it partially as a war against cancer or as a charitable drive against muscular dystrophy. I await centuries for a proper assessment and intervention into the question of longevity.