A Darwinian-Existentialist eulogy

I went to a funeral today and spent the whole time the ministers were talking thinking about how Epicurus might want to edit their comments. They didn't need that much actually, probably because they were talking about a woman who loved life, with the good and the bad. There was apparently a little amor fati in her. They read a portion of a letter her father had written to her on her high school graduation; she died at 90, so this would be around 1947. In the letter, her father said that she would face good times and bad, success and failure, but that the bad was necessary for her to appreciate the good, to grow, to find meaning in her life, and be happy. Nietzsche guy? 

I started thinking about what I'd like to say to whoever was going to eulogize me so they'd get me right before they took the pulpit. When I came home this article was in my email (providence?), which I think is something I'd like to share with my eulogist. And you all, of course.

I was raised as a Quaker, but around the age of 20 my faith faded. It would be easiest to say that this was because I took up philosophy – my lifelong occupation as a teacher and scholar. This is not true. More accurately, I joke that having had one headmaster in this life, I’ll be damned if I want another in the next. I was convinced back then that, by the age of 70, I would be getting back onside with the Powers That Be. But faith did not then return and, as I approach 80, is nowhere on the horizon. I feel more at peace with myself than ever before. It’s not that I don’t care about the meaning or purpose of life – I am a philosopher! Nor does my sense of peace mean that I am complacent or that I have delusions about my achievements and successes. Rather, I feel that deep contentment that religious people tell us is the gift or reward for proper living.
I come to my present state for two separate reasons. As a student of Charles Darwin, I am totally convinced – God or no God – that we are (as the 19th-century biologist Thomas Henry Huxley used to say) modified monkeys rather than modified mud. Culture is hugely important, but to ignore our biology is just wrong. Second, I am drawn, philosophically, to existentialism. A century after Darwin, Jean-Paul Sartre said that we are condemned to freedom, and I think he is right. Even if God does exist, He or She is irrelevant. The choices are ours.

Sartre denied such a thing as human nature. From this quintessential Frenchman, I take that with a pinch of salt: we are free, within the context of our Darwinian-created human nature. What am I talking about? A lot of philosophers today are uncomfortable even raising the idea of ‘human nature’. They feel that, too quickly, it is used against minorities – gay people, the disabled, and others – to suggest that they are not really human. This is a challenge not a refutation. If a definition of human nature cannot take account of the fact that up to 10 per cent of us have same-sex orientation, then the problem is not with human nature but with the definition.

(Michael Ruse, continues)

‘When people who are fairly fortunate in their material circumstances don’t find sufficient enjoyment to make life valuable to them, this is usually because they care for nobody but themselves.’ J.S. Mill