Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture

by Christian Smith

What kind of animals are human beings? And how do our visions of the human shape our theories of social action and institutions? In Moral, Believing Animals , Christian Smith advances a creative theory of human persons and culture that offers innovative, challenging answers to these and other fundamental questions in sociological, cultural, and religious theory.

Smith suggests that human beings have a peculiar set of capacities and proclivities that distinguishes them significantly from other animals on this planet. Despite the vast differences in humanity between cultures and across history, no matter how differently people narrate their lives and histories, there remains an underlying structure of human personhood that helps to order human culture, history, and narration. Drawing on important recent insights in moral philosophy, epistemology, and narrative studies, Smith argues that humans are animals who have an inescapable moral and spiritual dimension. They cannot avoid a fundamental moral orientation in life and this, says Smith, has profound consequences for how sociology must study human beings.

Genres: Philosophy, Sociology, Nonfiction, Religion, Psychology, Theology

176 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. Smith's research focuses primarily on religion in modernity, adolescents, American evangelicalism, and culture.

Reviews

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh how I wish I had read this book in undergrad! As a sociology major and an evangelical, I was quite defensively-minded about the discipline as so many of its primary architects (Comte, Marx, Spencer, Foucault) were skeptical - in some cases even hostile - towards Christianity (I did not yet know about the impressive coterie of Christian sociologists such as Peter Berger, Rodney Stark, Robert Wuthnow, James Davison Hunter, Mark Regnerus, and Christian Smith).

Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture is a compelling book, a kind of sociocultural apologetic that reminds readers of the importance of narrative and religion for motivating individuals. Smith persuasively deconstructs some of the reigning sociological theories (functionalism, rational choice theory, constructivism, sociobiology, etc...), pointing out both their strengths and, ultimately, their shortcomings. He insists that all human beings are "moral, believing animals" who inherently operate out of a sense of moral order (regardless of if they are religious or not).

One sees in Moral, Believing Animals the seeds of Smith's later writings such as his exposé and critique of his discipline, The Sacred Project of American Sociology (related to this, it is deplorable to me that a leading Canadian university, the University of British Columbia, doesn't appear to have any faculty who specializes in the sociology of religion whereas there is an overabundance of professors focusing on race, sexuality, migration, pedagogy, health; you know, just under 6 billion people or so are religious).

Moral, Believing Animals is an excellent text by one of the most acclaimed Christian sociologists working today. It is already a classic.

[Kendall]

a short tome that makes for a perfect saturday afternoon read in the bathtub. not sure i agree with some of the fundamental assumptions but it serves as a reminder of the importance of questioning what one does and believes and how that may be a result of societal norms or a conscious choice.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book mainly summarizes and codifies religious thought in the field of sociology. His thoughts on morality, belief, and religion are eloquent and appealing.

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting reading. Smith finds himself somewhere between sociology and theology but managed to combine the two disciplines. Lots of examples (sometimes they tend to make the reading a bit tedious), but overall it is a readable volume.

[Stephen Cranney · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well-written, concise portrayal of an iconoclastic perspective not often presented.

[Mitchell Traver · Rating 4 out of 5]

The chapter on Narrative is top notch. The book as a whole was solid and fun to read. I’m a Christian, and thus, didn’t exactly need a whole lot of convincing regarding the Theistically-grounded Anthropology. Nonetheless, I really did find Christian Smith’s arguments clear, cogent, and compelling. Human beings are inescapably moral, believing animals. Assuming what it means to be human operates as the base of our institutions, cultures, and history. A persistent problem at current seems to be a sub-human understanding of the person operating within the scholarly guild, especially. We’ve got to ask better questions, and recognize the presence and necessity of faith-based assumptions. Doing so is a deeply human thing to do.

“The human animal is a moral, believing animal—inescapably so. And the larger cultural frameworks within which the morally oriented believing of the human animal make sense are most deeply narrative in form. We are the makers, tellers, and believers of narrative construals of existence and history, every bit as much as our forebears at any time in history. Furthermore, we are not only animals who make stories but also animals who are made by our stories. We tel and retell narratives that themselves coke fundamentally to constitute and direct our lives. We thus cannot love without stories, big stories finally, to tell us what is real and significant and to know who we are, where we are, what we are doing, and why. Narrative is our most elemental human genre of communication and meaning-making, an essential way of framing the order and purpose of reality.” (P. 151-152)

[Mikael Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Smith presenterar här vad jag skulle kalla konservativ postmodernism det vill säga att han delar, mot sitt nekande väl och märke, en del grundläggande postmoderna drag men drar konservativa slutsatser ur dem. Titeln säger egentligen allt, enligt Smiths antropologi är människan som följd av evolutionen eller Gud, han håller båda för möjliga, stadgade så att vi är kapabla till metabegär, dvs begär om våra begär. Det gör att vi är kapabla till moraliskt tänkande och till konstruktionen av personliga och allmänna moraliska ordningar som vi i sin tur inordnar oss i. Dessa moraliska ordningar kan inte finna sin grund utanför dem i empirisk mening utan måste grundas på tro, vi har alltså kommit till titlens andra ord. Vi måste tro på något som grundar vår moraliska ordning, denna tro kan vara såväl religiös som sekulär, men vi kommer inte undan tron. Så långt är jag med Smith ska jag vara ärlig, de konservativa politiska slutsatserna han hintar om är jag mer skeptisk till men de är i min mening inte nödvändiga. Vidare är hans antropologi ofullständig och i full avsaknad av någon historisk dimension, vissa aspekter av den mänskliga naturen må vara fasta men mycket av den är föränderlig och historiskt bestämd snarare än biologiskt. Det sagt bedriver inte Smith någon biologisk reduktionism, han är en stark och tydlig motståndare, men hans antropologi ter sig så ahistorisk att den måste sägas vara biologisk. Slutligen kan jag säga att boken knappast är banbrytande men samtidigt övertygande och pedagogisk.

[Andrew Mcneill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Smith's analysis of what makes us human is an incredible and illuminating work. As a social psychologist I found his criticism of reigning paradigms insightful and his postulation of an alternative perspective brilliant. Fundamentally, humans are moral, believing creatures (animals seems to me to be an loaded term based on the premise that humans are mostly the same as other creatures - but perhaps that's only my impression of the term). In cultural environments we share moral frameworks that drive our behaviour towards what we believe is good. The narratives we tell to ourselves and each other shape our understanding of what is good and thus mold our character and behaviours.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Postmodernism wishes to liberate individuals from moral orders by granting the freedom of unfettered self-creation. Such a liberation is an illusion, a sociological absurdity. As heretical as it sounds to both modern and postmodern ears, it is necessarily only by giving ourselves to, indeed, by submitting ourselves to, specific moral orders derived from particular historical traditions that we can ever have anything like flourishing humanity. The truly autonomous individual turns out to be a dead individual in every way imaginable." - pg. 156

[N Perrin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent and accessible vision of what it is to be human as essentially creatures who live within moral narratives. A helpful guide to cast off the detritus of modern rationalist and postmodern self-creation anthropologies that obstruct our pursuit of self-understanding.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sociology text that gets to the heart of personhood debates. He's written a bigger book since, but I like this one, especially its sections on narrative. Everyone has a narrative, even the "objective" and "neutral" empirical scientists who think they do not.

Worth re-reading.

[Bill Berg · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://beingbeliefbehavior.blogspot....

[Kori · Rating 2 out of 5]

Why am I reading this religious sociology text for a non-theologically based intro class at a secular state school? This is what I get for going to school in Texas I guess.

Honestly the book isn't poorly written (so 2 stars for that) but it starts at a theology based-point, and the arguements it advances it advances suffer because of it. The author reaches to prove his points, and makes connections that wouldn't follow if it weren't for taking God on faith.

[Joseph Sverker]

I should really give a thorough review of this book because it was an interesting read and I think Smith should be lauded for his way of dealing with both evolutionary psychology on the one hand and more cultural focused perspectives on the other hand and trying to steal his way somewhere in the middle. But I'm not sure I have the time or energy to really engage properly with the book. Smith manages to pay due account to the body for identity formation and argues for a 'human nature' and that this human nature is characterized by being, as the title says, a moral and believing animal. And I think this is where he argues that evolutionary psychology goes wrong. Their emphasis on (sham) altruism and individualism is not compatible with the strong place that belief and morals has in the human being. Smith's problem with the more cultural focused approaches is that they are unable to account for human motivation (I can see that in my own research on Judith Butler and her ambivalence with the concept of desire, so I think this is a valid point).

[ltcomdata · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very refreshing book by a Christian social scientist. The thesis of the book is that human being are by nature moral, believing, animals, and that therefore any reductivist, mechanistic, or otherwise shallow descritpion of humans will fail in its descriptive nature. It also contains as a subordinate subject the thesis that the sociology currently in vogue cannot adequately describe people because it is one of those simplistic approaches that does not take into account humans' need for moral stories they can believe in.

Also, tt is quite gutsy for an academic to openly declare herself a Christian and defend her stance as logically and cademically coherent, as the author briefly does. Finally someone who calls the bluffs of academics.

[Caleb Woolsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful look into the ontology of humans from a moral perspective.