Biological Precursors of Ethics and Religion. Antonio Damasio and the Homeostatic Imperative

Abstract

The biological individual and the precursors of ethical-religious action: The most recent reflections in the field of biology and the philosophy of biology have highlighted how complex and little obvious is the idea of a personal, individual identity in the world of life. On one hand, having lost a geno-centric reading, life, right from its first manifestations (bacterial, cellular), appears endowed with subjectivity, which is expressed in multiple and increasingly complex forms; on the other hand, the individual man appears to be the result of the interweaving of several living forms. Using the reflections of Antonio Damasio, the article will try to understand the “precursors” of man’s ethical and religious action – that is, all those biological premises, such as strategies of cooperation and altruism, which emerge as preconditions for a human life. On the other hand, to understand the discontinuities and the specificity of man’s advanced and personal action, which are expressed in cultural life, artificial in general and particularly in ethical and religious interiority.