It has been my intention in this essay to point out a distinctive mark or characteristic of man that finds no root and no parallel in the structural properties of other intelligent animals. The mark for which I have argued, with the aid of the insight won by von Hildebrand’s efforts, is the capacity for value response. Mary Midgley denied the possibility of any such mark within an evolutionary framework. She based her conclusion upon the principle that every species has its own distinct set of instincts and advantage. Taking the animality of man as her departure point in anthropology, she ascribed a distinct nature to man with his own structural properties. However, man was also fit into a purely evolutionary view of the biosphere, wherein his structural properties, found in various forms in other species, combined to constitute his peculiar characteristics. Comparably, Alasdair MacIntyre took a metaphysical biology as his departure point, with particular attention to the animality of man. While he was more lucid in his descriptions of man’s characteristics, namely the capacity to become an independent practical reasoner, MacIntyre did not, nay he could not if he had so wanted, find any characteristic that was uniquely man’s apart from an evolved rationality. He even went so far as to describe intelligent animals as “prelinguistic” as opposed to “nonlinguistic,” which both accented man’s evolutionary transition and allowed for the evolutionary possibility of naturally spontaneous linguistic and rational animals.
Von Hildebrand’s own observations likewise stem from his chosen starting point. However, rather than beginning with man qua animal, von Hildebrand chose to begin with “the immediately given,” that which most immediately and primarily imposes itself upon the intellect. He began with man qua spirit, and correspondingly, man’s primordial and immediate experience of the world. From this perspective, all “goods” could not be reduced and fit into the Procrustean bed of animality as object. Man’s ability to respond to value removes man from the sphere of pure teleology or purposiveness based upon his nature and enters him into a realm that is objective and transcendent. Herein lies a distinctive mark of man—his capacity to recognize and respond to value. Value’s importance is not determined by his nature as are all other goods are for him, and as is the totality of goods for other animals. In other words, when man is considered in his subjective plentitude, a plethora of distinctively spiritual values, unbeknownst to a strict cosmological or teleological outlook, are identified and appropriated. The spiritual quality is not attributed to some quasi-mystical capacity latent in a human soul, but simply the manner in which the subject-object relation is transcended cognitively by means of intentionality. Indeed, this means pushing well beyond an evolutionary, Aristotelian, or Thomist view of man as object.
Finally, von Hildebrand lends aid to MacIntyre’s understanding of virtues through the consideration of superactual value response. Here, I find both thinkers compliment one another on the question of virtue. If man is viewed as an object, as a substantia, the only detectable virtues are teleological, and consequently, his goods are always for him. But when man reflects upon his subjectivity, which is how he actually finds himself in the world, a new realm of virtues is open to him whereby his affective plentitude is fecundated, and, consequently, he recognizes values that are objectively present to him. This does not amount to a negation of MacIntyre’s virtues and goods, but rather amounts to the bestowal of another level to the ethical edifice, a level that is plainly peculiar to man, inclusive of his animality, but transcending to spirit.
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