Philosophia Perennis

Plantinga against materialistic naturalism

2011-12-21T19:45:00.011-05:00

I'm not sure there couldn't be a non-materialistic form of naturalism, but Plantinga's argument against the materialistic variety, presupposed by most proponents of Darwinian Evolutionary Theory, is an interesting one: he argues (as posted yesterday at Philosophia Perennis) that it's incoherent.

The video is misleadingly entitled "Prof Alvin Plantinga on Reasons for God," because he doesn't really give any reasons, let alone argument. I think it's perfectly true, as he often avers, that the theist is within his epistemic rights to believe in God even in the absence of rational arguments, just as we often find ourselves reasonably believing all sorts of things we cannot prove, such as the reliability of our memories, sense experience, self-perception, being awake rather than dreaming, and even such curious things as the falseness of Bertrand Russell's hypothetical proposition that the world popped into existence five minutes ago with all the appearance it has had since then of great antiquity. But it's not a demonstrative argument, as much as it is a reasonable testament to common epistemic experience.

St. Thomas Aquinas himself says in his Summa Theologiae, Q. II, Art. 2, ad 1:

The existence of God and other like truths about God, which can be known by natural reason, are not articles of faith, but are preambles to the articles; for faith presupposes natural knowledge, even as grace presupposes nature, and perfection supposes something that can be perfected. Nevertheless, there is nothing to prevent a man, who cannot grasp a proof, accepting, as a matter of faith, something which in itself is capable of being scientifically known and demonstrated.

Nope, nothing wrong with simply believing in God because one finds himself believing in God; and this needn't be seen as a form of fideism or "blind believe-ism" provided one does not close the door to reasoning about it.

Related:

Here's a related clip with a more extensive development of Plantinga's argument against materialistic naturalism: "ATHEIST DOGMA™ DEBUNKS ITSELF."
See also Plantinga's Evolutionary argument against naturalism (Wikipedia)

"Scrutonizing" modern philosophers ...

2010-10-19T20:12:00.000-04:00

Christopher Blosser offers a bit of humor from a book he just finished re-reading by Roger Scruton, entitled A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein. Scruton, he says, has a dry, sardonic (characteristically English?) wit. Several examples:

On Fichte: "Fichte's philosophy rests not so much in argument as in impetuous explosions of jargon, in which that fabricated verb "to posit" (setzen) kaleidoscopes into a thousand self-reflecting images."
On Schopenhauer: "Schopenhauer enjoyed his pessimistic conclusions too much to convince the reader that he really believed in them; and his sardonic assaults on popular prejudice reveal a far greater attachment to life than to the renunciation he officially favored."
On Heidegger: "[T]he reader has the impression that never before have so many words been invented and tormented in the attempt to express the inexpressible."

Nevertheless, such quips are not to be taken as outright dismissals, he says, since Scruton does take painstaking effort to read and explicate the chief ideas of each.

[Hat tip to C.B.]

Transcendentals

2010-09-12T15:54:00.001-04:00

Tridentine Community News (September 12, 2010):

[We are pleased to present today’s column guest authored by Sacred Heart Seminary Professor Dr. Philip Blosser. A convert to Roman Catholicism, Dr. Blosser regularly attends our Extraordinary Form Masses at St. Josaphat, St. Albertus, and Assumption-Windsor.]

Converts are drawn to the Catholic Church for many different reasons: her historical credentials, the clear moral witness of pro-life Catholics, reasons of doctrine and truth, etc. Some, particularly former high church Anglicans, have spoken occasionally of being impelled by conscience to convert despite the vast doctrinal confusion and liturgical ugliness they found in certain Catholic parishes. Conversely, some have been drawn to the Church for aesthetic reasons -- by the beauty of Gregorian chant, Palestrina, Chartres, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, the breath-taking vision of Dante, and the majestic traditional Latin liturgy itself. Converts from non-liturgical backgrounds attest to the compelling power and beauty of even simple gestures, like kneeling, genuflecting, and the Sign of the Cross.

What is the relation of beauty to truth? Usually truth is understood as a matter of propositions or judgments. The Medievals distinguished three acts of the intellect: (1) understanding, (2) judging and (3) reasoning. Logically, the object of understanding is a term (“rose”), the object of judging is a premise (“All roses are red”) and the object of reasoning is a syllogism (“All roses are red/This flower is a rose/Therefore, this flower is red”).

In these examples a flaw is readily apparent in the syllogism because of the false premise: it is not true that all roses are red. This tells us something important: truth applies to judgments, the second act of the intellect. Judgments can be true or false. But can the term “rose” be true or false? Clearly not. It is either understood or not; but the question of truth seems irrelevant to understanding, the first act of the intellect. Or, at least, so it seems.

The poet, John Keats, once declared: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” What did he mean? Is there a sense in which the beautiful can be true? Beginning with Plato, a number of ancient and medieval philosophers have referred to the good, the true and the beautiful as though they were somehow inter-penetrating concepts. Medieval philosophers related these to other concepts like “being,” and called them “transcendentals” (from Latin transcendere = “to climb over”), meaning they transcend or “climb over” all divisions, categories and distinctions between and within beings.

For example, anything in the world, by the mere fact of its having been created by God, is good. Evil, then, cannot be some sort of existing thing, but rather a kind of non-being, as blindness is the non-being of sight. The goodness of something (like sight) does not add anything to its being, but is simply an aspect under which its being may be considered.

The same is true of all the other transcendentals: Truth is being as known, Goodness is being as rightly desired, and Beauty is being as rightly admired. Being considered (1) as the object of the intellect is Truth; (2) as the object of right desire is Goodness; and (3) as the object of right aesthetic delight is Beauty. Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, then, are various aspects of Being as apprehended by the intellect, will, and emotions.

A little sticking point might be the terms “right” in the definition of Good as the object of “right desire” and Beauty as the object of “right admiration.” After all, is not the proverbial maxim De gustibus non est disputandum (“there is no disputing about taste”)? Isn't “beauty” purely subjective? Aren't “goodness” and even “truth” considered purely subjective these days? Who is to say what is “really” true, good, or beautiful? Isn't that presumption a trifle arrogant?

This is hardly the place for a full-blown discussion of criteria for adjudicating differences of opinion over judgments of truth, goodness, and beauty. Suffice it to note several conditions that will serve to define the framework of a traditional Catholic approach to these questions. First is the conviction that reality is intelligible and that the intellect can know it -- maybe not exhaustively, but adequately. Hence, Truth is defined as the correspondence between intelligible reality and the knowing intellect (adaequatio rei et intellectus).

Second is the conviction that what is really (as opposed to merely apparently) good for us is knowable and that we ought to desire it. Hence Goodness is defined as the object of right desire.

Third is the conviction that what is really (as opposed to merely apparently) beautiful is knowable and that we ought to admire and delight in it. Hence Beauty is defined as the object of right admiration.

Beauty has been called “the synthesis of all transcendentals” since it is related not just to one faculty but to the intellect and will and emotions. It is therefore the most complex of the transcendentals. St. Thomas Aquinas defines it in one place as id quod visum placet (“that which pleases upon being seen”), which underscores its subjective aspect. The beautiful is pleasing to us. Yet this is not the end of the matter, because we clearly do dispute whether certain objects rightly warrant aesthetic admiration. Accordingly, St. Thomas adds three objective criteria to his subjective criterion of pleasure: (a) integritas (unity), (b) consonantia (harmony), and (c) claritas (splendor or radiance).

Thus, when John Paul II entitled one of his encyclicals, Veritas splendor (“The Splendor of Truth”) he seems to have touched on the inter-penetrating quality of transcendentals: Truth is beautiful. It exhibits qualities of beauty: unity, harmony, and splendor (or radiance). One could also refer to the goodness of truth. Well, you get the picture.

Can we also speak of the truth of beauty, then? There does seem to be some reason for supposing that truth need not be limited to judgments alone. While it makes little sense to speak of a beautiful rose as “true” in a strictly propositional sense, a rose nevertheless presents itself as an object of the intellect, and as an intelligible being created by God in correspondence to His own intellect and will. At the very beginning of his Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas refers to “God, in whose power it is to signify His meaning, not by words only (as man also can do), but also by things themselves.” Thus God signifies not only His existence, but His power and majesty by the sheer beauty of His creation (see Romans 1:19-20). Likewise, the beauty of music, liturgy, and religious art can serve, as do Sacraments themselves, as signs that point to realities and truths beyond themselves.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

Regular Sunday Masses are not listed.
Mon. 09/13 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (Requiem Mass with Absolution at the Catafalque)
Tue. 09/14 7:00 PM:High Mass at both Assumption-Windsor and St. Josaphat (Exaltation of the Holy Cross)
Wed. 09/15 7:00 PM:High Mass at St. Josaphat (Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary)

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@stjosaphatchurch.org. Previous columns are available at www.stjosaphatchurch.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Josaphat bulletin insert for September 12, 2010. Hat tip to A.B.]

Philosopher on why philosophy cannot be taught

2010-09-07T21:55:00.001-04:00

Bill Vallicella,"Can Philosophy be Taught?" (Maverick Philosopher, October 8, 2009), tackles the old analogue to the Socratic question whether virtue can be taught:

In one sense a philosophy is a set of conclusions, systematically set forth, on ultimate matters. To appreciate the conclusions, however, one must appreciate the arguments and counterarguments the sifting of which first led the philosopher to the conclusions. But to understand the arguments and counterarguments one must understand the issues and problems that they revolve around. Appreciation of the issues and problems, in turn, is rooted in wonder the presupposition of which is a contemplative detachment from the taken-for-granted.

And so we must distinguish: doctrines, arguments, problems, wonder. Philosophy as the study of the doctrines of the philosophers is philosophy in its most superficial sense. Studying that, one is not studying philosophy, but philosophies, and them in their most external form. Philosophy as the grappling with the arguments whose conclusions are the doctrines is closer to the real thing. Philosophy as the exfoliation and penetration of the problems themselves, under suspension of the need to solve them at all costs, is closer still to philosophy's throbbing heart. This is philosophy as aporetics. But without wonder there can be no appreciation of problems, let alone solutions. Thus we have it on the excellent authority of both Plato and Aristotle that philosophy begins in wonder.

Upshot? Teaching philosophy is well-nigh impossible. One can of course teach the lore of the philosophers, but that is not what philosophy is in its vital essence. And although argumentative and logical skills are impartable to the moderately intelligent, the aporetic sense, the feel for a philosophical problem, is not readily imparted regardless of the intelligence of the student. A fortiori, the wonder at the source of the aporetic sense is a gift of the gods, and nothing a mere mortal teacher can dispense.

So I propose to go Kant one better. Somewhere deep in the bowels of The Critique of Pure Reason, he remarks that "Philosophy cannot be taught, we can at most learn to philosophize." I say that neither philosophy as doctrinal system nor the art of philosophizing can be taught. For there is no one extant doctrinal system called philosophy, and neither the aporetic sense nor the wonder at its root can be taught. As I used to say in my teaching days, "Philosophy cannot be a mass consumption item." Logic perhaps, philosophy no.

Or to paraphrase a remark I once heard Hans-Georg Gadamer make, "Just as there are the musical and the unmusical, there are the philosophical and the unphilosophical." One cannot teach music to the unmusical or philosophy to the unphilosophical. The muse of philosophy must have visited you; otherwise you are out of luck.

[Hat tip to C.B.]

Gary Gutting on Philosophy and Faith

2010-08-02T09:09:00.003-04:00

Notre Dame professor of philosophy, Gary Gutting offers a thought-provoking discussion of "Philosophy and Faith" (New York Times, Opinion, August 1, 2010):

One of my jobs as a teacher of bright, mostly Catholic undergraduates is to get them thinking about why they hold their religious beliefs. It’s easy enough to spark discussion about the problem of evil (“Can you really read the newspaper everyday and continue to believe in an all-perfect God?”) or about the diversity of religious beliefs (“If you’d been born in Saudi Arabia, don’t you think you’d be a Muslim?”). Inevitably, however, the discussion starts to fizzle when someone raises a hand and says (sometimes ardently, sometimes smugly) “But aren’t you forgetting about faith?”

That seems to be enough for most students. The trump card has been played, and they — or at least the many who find religion more a comfort than a burden — happily remember that believing means never having to explain why.

I myself, the product of a dozen years of intellectually self-confident Jesuit education, have little sympathy with the “it’s just faith” response. “How can you say that?” I reply. “You wouldn’t buy a used car just because you had faith in what the salesperson told you. Why would you take on faith far more important claims about your eternal salvation?” And, in fact, most of my students do see their faith not as an intellectually blind leap but as grounded in evidence and argument.

“Well, if there’s no God,” they say, “how can you explain why anything at all exists or why the world is governed by such precise laws of nature?”

At this point, the class perks up again as I lay out versions of the famous arguments for the existence of God, and my students begin to think that they’re about to get what their parents have paid for at a great Catholic university: some rigorous intellectual support for their faith.

Soon enough, however, things again fall apart, since our best efforts to construct arguments along the traditional lines face successive difficulties. The students realize that I’m not going to be able to give them a convincing proof, and I let them in on the dirty secret: philosophers have never been able to find arguments that settle the question of God’s existence or any of the other “big questions” we’ve been discussing for 2500 years.

This seems to bring us back to where we started: “It’s all faith.” I, with my Jesuit-inspired confidence in reason and evidence, have always resisted this. But I have also felt the tug of my students’ conclusion that philosophy, although a good intellectual exercise and the source of tantalizing puzzles and paradoxes, has no real significance for religious faith.

Recently, however, I’ve realized a mistake in the way that I — and most of my professional colleagues — tend to think about philosophy and faith. (One of the great benefits of getting to teach philosophy to bright undergraduates is that it makes it easier to think outside the constraints of current professional assumptions.) The standard view is that philosophers’ disagreements over arguments about God make their views irrelevant to the faith of ordinary believers and non-believers. The claim seems obvious: if we professionals can’t agree among ourselves, what can we have to offer to non-professionals? An appeal to experts requires consensus among those experts, which philosophers don’t have.

This line of thought ignores the fact that when philosophers’ disagree it is only about specific aspects of the most subtle and sophisticated versions of arguments for and against God’s existence (for example, my colleague Alvin Plantinga’s modal-logic formulation of St. Anselm’s ontological argument or William Rowe’s complex version of a probabilistic argument from evil). There is no disagreement among philosophers about the more popular arguments to which theists and atheists typically appeal: as formulated, they do not prove (that is, logically derive from uncontroversial premises) what they claim to prove. They are clearly inadequate in the judgment of qualified professionals. Further, there are no more sophisticated formulations that theists or atheists can accept — the way we do scientific claims — on the authority of expert consensus.

In these popular debates about God’s existence, the winners are neither theists nor atheists, but agnostics — the neglected step-children of religious controversy, who rightly point out that neither side in the debate has made its case. This is the position supported by the consensus of expert philosophical opinion.

This conclusion should particularly discomfit popular proponents of atheism, such as Richard Dawkins, whose position is entirely based on demonstrably faulty arguments. Believers, of course, can fall back on the logically less rigorous support that they characterize as faith. But then they need to reflect on just what sort of support faith can give to religious belief. How are my students’ warm feelings of certainty as they hug one another at Sunday Mass in their dorm really any different from the trust they might experience while under the spell of a really plausible salesperson?

An answer may lie in work by philosophers as different as David Hume, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Alvin Plantinga. In various ways, they have shown that everyday life is based on “basic” beliefs for which we have no good arguments. There are, for example, no more basic truths from which we can prove that the past is often a good guide to the future, that our memories are reliable, or that other people have a conscious inner life. Such beliefs simply — and quite properly — arise from our experience in the world. Plantinga in particular has argued that core religious beliefs can have a status similar to these basic but unproven beliefs. His argument has clear plausibility for some sorts of religious beliefs. Through experiences of, for example, natural beauty, moral obligation, or loving and being loved, we may develop an abiding sense of the reality of an extraordinarily good and powerful being who cares about us. Who is to say that such experiences do not give reason for belief in God as much as parallel (though different) experiences give reason for belief in reliable knowledge of the past and future and of other human minds? There is still room for philosophical disputes about this line of thought, but it remains the most plausible starting point of a philosophical case for religious belief.

But this defense of faith faces a steep hurdle. Although it may support generic religious claims about a good and powerful being who cares for us, it is very hard to see it sustaining the specific and robust claims of Judaism, Christianity and Islam about how God is concretely and continually involved in our existence. God is said to be not just good and powerful but morally perfect and omnipotent, a sure ultimate safeguard against any evil that might threaten us. He not only cares about us but has set up precise moral norms and liturgical practices that we must follow to ensure our eternal salvation. Without such specificity, religion lacks the exhilarating and terrifying possibilities that have made it such a powerful force in human history.

But how can religious experience sustain faith in a specific salvation narrative, particularly given the stark differences among the accounts of the great religious traditions? What sort of religious experience could support the claim that Jesus Christ was God incarnate and not just a great moral teacher? Or that the Bible rather than the Koran is the revelation of God’s own words? Believers may have strong feelings of certainty, but each religion rejects the certainty of all the others, which leaves us asking why they privilege their own faith.

I am not saying that religious believers are in principle incapable of finding satisfactory answers to such questions. I am saying that philosophy and religion can and must speak to each other, and that those who take their beliefs seriously need to reflect on these questions, and that contemporary philosophical discussions (following on Hume and Wittgenstein) about knowledge, belief, certainty and disagreement are highly relevant to such reflection — and potentially, to an individual’s belief. This is what I will try to convey to my students the next time I teach introductory philosophy of religion.

Gary Gutting teaches philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and co-edits Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, an on-line book review journal. His most recent book is “What Philosophers Know: Case Studies in Recent Analytic Philosophy.”

[Hat tip to N.B.]

Very interesting list

2010-04-16T21:18:00.001-04:00

"The 20 Most Brilliant Christian Professors" (College Crunch, April 4, 2010).

As Janet Smith said in her email, the ones who are listed that I now, richly deserve to be on the list.

[Hat tip to J.S.]

Key Letter by Descartes, Lost for 170 Years, Turns Up at Haverford

2010-03-27T21:06:00.002-04:00

Mary Helen Miller, in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (February 25, 2010), reports that "the president of the Pennsylvania college, Stephen G. Emerson, said this week that when he found out the letter had been stolen—from Paris's Institut de France about 170 years ago—he knew it must be returned. So in June, Mr. Emerson will fly to France with the letter in his carry-on bag, and give it back."

I'm not sure the letter provides any substantial new information on Descartes' theories, but it does appear to shed some light on the structure and composition of his Meditations on First Philosophy, indicating that he made some significant rearrangements and extractions.

[Hat tip to N.B.]

APA censures Calvin College for anti-gay affiliation

2010-02-27T09:42:00.000-05:00

A mildly livid Roy Alden Atwood, Ph.D., New Saint Andrews College’s first president and a founding member of the College’s board and faculty, writes in "Philosopher high priests excommunicate Calvin College" (On Higher Education, February 10 2010):

The philosopher kings have become the philosopher high priests of a new orthodoxy. Academic freedom no longer includes religious freedom for the members of the American Philosophical Association. The APA’s high priests have declared Calvin College heretical for not embracing their new homosexual dogma. The APA has the audacity to claim Calvin is engaged in “a most egregious form of discrimination” when it is their own new priestly power mongering that is forcing an utterly novel orthodoxy on the scholarly association members for its own political ends. In this Brave New Academic World, secularists are working overtime to make Christian orthodoxy the new social and political heresy and to declare sexual perversion the new confession of faith. Another case of “Repressive Tolerance.”

According to the report from Inside Higher Ed, the American Philosophical Association singled out Calvin College for punishment using the association’s new pro-gay rule on APA job listings. Calvin, whose supporting denomination, the Christian Reformed Church, is fairly”tolerant” on the homosexual question compared to many other evangelical denominations, was no doubt targeted because Calvin has long been a powerhouse in philosophical circles. Nick Wolterstorff [now retired from Yale] and Alvin Plantinga [now retired from Notre Dame] are two extraordinarily prominent American philosophers who once taught at Calvin and led the APA. This secular academic power play is likely intended to threaten and punish any and all Christian academic institutions that refuse to embrace secularism and neo-pagan sexual mores. The Sodomite-homosexual lobby has been putting increasing pressure on Christian institutions, whether through the radical SoulForce protests on Christian campuses or through professional association agitations like the APA’s. Calvin College’s prominence among evangelical and Reformed colleges and its leadership in academic circles generally has apparently made it a prime target for testing such coercion and challenging religious freedom in the academy. Homosexuals must figure that if they can whack Calvin into submission through such tyrannical means, they’ll eventually be able to force every Christian college or university to bow the knee toward Sodom. (emphasis added)

[HT to E.E.]

Two Great Apologists for the Catholic Faith

2009-08-28T18:20:00.001-04:00

Peter A. Kwasniewski

The Meeting of the Countess Matilda and Anselm of Canterbury in
the Presence of Pope Urban II, by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli
Whoever has followed the speeches and homilies of Pope Benedict even to a limited extent is aware that one of his major themes is the harmony of faith and reason—and not just their harmony, but the dependence of human reason on the creative divine Reason or Logos. For Pope Benedict, it is not merely the case that faith does not contradict reason, as if the two are compatible partners on an equal footing. Human reason is a finite and fallible light that derives from the prior, all-encompassing light of God, who is also the font of life, love, freedom, and wisdom. Therefore men can be truly reasonable and free only when they must submit their intellects and wills to this light and live in its radiance. Without this light, men are doomed to the darkness of self-will, the tempest of irrational urges, and ultimately the madness of nihilism. Put differently, unless we embrace God’s revelation in faith, which purifies and elevates the natural light of our mind, our own reason is fated to be its undoing. By refusing or abandoning faith, we undermine reason at its foundation. Those who labor to sweep clean the rooms of their minds, thinking to find in scientific and technical prowess a kind of secular salvation, end up verifying the somber words of our Lord Jesus Christ when he speaks of the demon who, finding his old house “empty, swept, and garnished,” takes with him “seven other evil spirits more wicked than himself” and enters in to dwell there.¹ Is this not what we are seeing all around us as our beloved country plummets with accelerating speed into the folly, nay the insanity, of liberalism unbounded, which refuses allegiance even to reason and to nature in its insatiable quest for self without soul, liberty without loyalty?

To the “enlightened” of recent centuries, the Catholic Church was the great enemy of reason, progress, liberty; wrapped in her dark robes of medieval superstition, she sought to enslave men with her dogmas and decrees, despising the goodness of raw nature. From our vantage in the twenty-first century, when for the first time large numbers of people seem incapable of recognizing, much less assenting to, the ironclad results of a valid syllogism or the normalcy of heterosexual love, it is sweetly ironic that the Catholic Tradition is increasingly the only bastion and defender even of nature’s integrity and of the luminosity of reason properly employed. Even while I recognize that rational argument is a dying art with a steadily diminishing potential audience and that the appeal to reason can never be an exclusive means of approach or the last word because, as Pascal observed, “the heart has reasons of which reason knows nothing,” still, I have often thought that our day and age is exactly the right time for a major revival of intelligent apologetics. And, it seems to me, we need to hit the books and begin studying anew the great theological apologists of our incomparable Tradition, both for the deepening of our own faith and for the missionary work Vatican II rightly called each of us to undertake. The stakes are higher than ever: not faith alone, but reason too is besieged. Christian faith is ridiculed as utterly irrational, when in reality, as the best minds have seen for the past 2,000 years, it is supreme and sovereign Reason — God’s Reason. Our own minds can begin to discern this beautiful reasonableness if only we will make the effort. We owe it to our Lord and to ourselves to prize and nurture the gift of reason as we do the gift of faith, so that we can be sane within and talk sanity to a world hell-bent on going mad.

In this article I would like to introduce (or, for some, re-introduce) two towering figures in the history of Catholic theology and apologetics: Saint Anselm and Blaise Pascal—one medieval, one modern, both committed to explaining and defending the mysteries of our holy religion through a judicious use of the God-given gift of reason, always submitting to the primacy of divine revelation and in this way exemplifying what Saint Paul calls the “obedience of faith.”² Unlike Saint Augustine or Saint Thomas Aquinas, each of whom wrote so much that the official editions of their works run to dozens and dozens of volumes, Anselm and Pascal wrote relatively little; their major religious writings amount to about one modest volume apiece. Since we moderns, surrounded by the constant distraction of emails, cell phones, Twitter, and who knows what else yet to come, simply do not read as much as our forebears (a tragic decline on which the Antichrist is heavily relying in his endgame strategy), this relative brevity is a mercy and an incentive to buy those single volumes and set about reading them. Even so, their works are tough going at times, and perseverance is called for. Those seven demons mentioned by our Lord would, of course, prefer to see the room of your mind “empty, swept, and garnished” with the latest fads and fictions, but you know better than to yield to their desires. In reading Anselm and Pascal (and, needless to say, Augustine, Aquinas, Leo XIII, Benedict XVI, or any Catholic master worth reading), you will furnish your mind with solid truth that no demons, or their unwitting human captives, can gainsay.

The Father of Scholasticism

The future Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), the 900th anniversary of whose death we are celebrating this very year, was born at Aosta in the Italian Alps. As a young man he traveled from place to place for his education, a life of “wandering scholarship” not uncommon in the Middle Ages. In 1060 Anselm became a Benedictine monk at the Norman monastery of Bec, where he was made prior in 1063 and abbot in 1078. From 1063 to 1093 he led the quiet life of a monk and scholar, writing several treatises destined to have a huge impact on the intellectual life of Europe, among them two works on the existence of God (Monologion and Proslogion), a work on truth (De veritate), and another on free will (De libertate arbitrii). In the main Anselm followed Augustine as his master, but he incorporated much from the logic of Boethius and Aristotle as well as from the theology of his monastic predecessors. In 1093 Anselm was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury, in spite of his repeated protests against entering the active life, and in his new role he fought a long battle against the liberties taken by English kings in appointing Bishops apart from papal authority. Nevertheless, in the midst of the duties and controversies of his episcopacy Anselm managed to complete his treatise on the Incarnation, Cur Deus homo (Why God became man), along with a number of smaller works. He died in 1109 and was canonized in 1494. In 1720 Pope Clement XI declared him a Doctor of the Church.

Saint Anselm of Canterbury

Although much scholarly discussion has centered around the writings of this brilliant theologian, the central characteristic of his life is often forgotten. Anselm was above all a man of intense prayer who placed his entire intellectual life in the hands of God like a child trusting in his father for guidance. He sought rational or logical arguments not because his mind was clouded with doubts but as a way of using his God-given mind to probe the foundations of the faith he already accepted, and to clarify what our language and concepts mean when adapted to mysteries above the domain of natural reason. The contemporary Catholic apologist should therefore learn his first lesson from Anselm’s very life, which wedded prayer and study, words and silence, wisdom and charity.

Anselm’s most important works, the Monologion, the Proslogion, and the Cur Deus homo, each deserves close study. The relevance of the Proslogion’s ontological argument for the existence of God—namely, that all men are capable of forming the concept “that than which no greater can be thought,” to which existence must belong if it is truly that than which no greater can be thought—is rather limited, for three reasons. First, later Western theologians, among them Saint Thomas Aquinas, found the proof defective. Second, a careful reading of the treatise as a whole shows that Anselm is seeking to deepen his grasp of a truth he already accepts in faith, making the argument a meditative response of reason to God’s self-revelation rather than a proof directed towards unbelievers. Finally, most modern people are not patient or schooled enough to follow Anselm’s abstract reasoning or would be tempted to dismiss it as playing with words. Yet the spirit of the treatise has an abiding relevance, and the prayers it contains help the reader to dwell within the luminous truth of God. Anselm’s Monologion, a profound exploration of the divine nature and the mystery of the Trinity, is more immediately useful to an apologist preparing to present or defend the existence of one God in three divine Persons. Anselm’s dialogue on the fittingness of the Incarnation, Cur Deus homo, contributes to an apologetic tradition stretching back to the earliest Fathers of the Church. The infinite holiness of God deserves perfect honor, but man, by sinning against God, has failed to render this honor; therefore God’s majesty is infinitely offended and man is infinitely guilty. If man is to be rescued from his plight, then this perfect honor must be given by him, canceling out his guilt and restoring his friendship with God; but God alone can restore what man has lost, and God alone can forgive the guilt of an infinite offense. Jesus Christ, Word made flesh, true God and true man, undertakes the work of redemption by offering Himself to the Father in an oblation of love on the Cross for the sake of mankind, an oblation fully acceptable to God because it is made by God; man is redeemed by man, the Father’s wrath is appeased and His mercy poured out, and the path to heaven is opened through Christ, the way, the truth, and the life.

Saint Anselm’s generous and positive attitude towards the integration of faith and reason is much needed now, as the encyclical Fides et Ratio repeatedly emphasized, and his humble way of “questioning God” is a model for the Christian thinker seeking to penetrate the mysteries of faith. Consider these words from chapter 2 of Cur Deus homo: “As the right order requires us to believe the deep things of Christian faith before we undertake to discuss them by reason, so to my mind it appears a neglect if, after we are established in the faith, we do not seek to understand what we believe.”

The Grandeur and Misery of Man

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) was unquestionably one of the most eminent modern apologists for the Christian faith. Despite his poor health, Pascal was a prodigy in mathematics and science from his earliest youth. He performed ground-breaking experiments with water and air pressure, invented a calculating machine, and made striking advances in theoretical mathematics, especially probability theory. However, he came to see more and more that burgeoning empirical-mathematical knowledge could not satisfy yearnings for the ultimate meaning of life, nor could its technological counterpart deliver the earthly paradise it promised. Through his keen observations of people and their self-deceiving efforts to escape the unhappiness that lingers beneath the glitter of distracting pleasures, he became acutely aware of man’s radical need for God and the meaninglessness of life without faith. On November 23, 1654, Pascal underwent an intense spiritual experience, during which he wrote down some phrases on a piece of paper he later sewed into his jacket and always wore about with him:

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of philosophers and scholars. God of Jesus Christ. He can only be found in the ways taught in the Gospel. Joy, joy, joy and tears of joy. This is life eternal, that they might know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ. I have cut myself off from him. I have fled from him, denied him, crucified him. Let me never be cut off from him. He can only be kept by the ways taught in the Gospel.³

After receiving this tremendous grace, he retired into seclusion, placed himself under the direction of spiritual advisors at the Port Royal monastery, and turned his attention to the practice of religion and the composition of apologetic works. The greatest of these is entitled Pensées, a collection of notes for a massive apologetic which Pascal did not live to complete. The notes he preserved, ranging in length from a few words to a few pages, contain some of the most profound insights into the heart of man ever written, and deserve to be read and pondered time and time again. He sketches arguments for the truth of the Christian faith and the divine authority of the Catholic Church from a variety of angles: experience of sin and error in the world, the futility of life without a final purpose, the inability of man to save himself from suffering and death, the incongruity between ideals and facts, proofs of natural reason, the correspondence of Old Testament prophecies to the Messiah who fulfills them, the compelling beauty of Jesus and his Covenant, the miracles performed by Christ and the saints throughout the ages. Warring against the rationalism that was starting to conquer European culture, Pascal emphasizes the primacy of the heart in search for God—that is, the centrality of will, conviction, submission—over cold intellectual arguments. “Reason’s last step is to recognize that there is an infinite number of things which surpass it. It is simply feeble if it does not go as far as realizing that.” “Reason would never submit unless it perceived that there are occasions when it should submit. It is right, therefore, that it should submit when it perceives that it ought to submit.”⁴

Blaise Pascal by Philippe de Champaigne
No apologist has so powerfully insisted on the truth of original sin and, in the face of it, the need for a Redeemer:

If man had never been corrupted, he would enjoy in his innocent state both truth and happiness with confidence. And if man had never been other than corrupted, he would have no notion of either truth or happiness. But in the wretched state in which we are . . . we have an idea of happiness and we cannot achieve it, we feel an image of truth and we possess only untruth. We are incapable both of total ignorance and certain knowledge, so obvious is it that we were once in a state of perfection from which we have unhappily fallen.⁵

And again:

Certainly nothing shocks us more deeply than this doctrine [of original sin]. Nevertheless without this most incomprehensible of all mysteries we are incomprehensible to ourselves. Within this gnarled chasm lie the twists and turns of our condition. So, humanity is more inconceivable without this mystery than this mystery is conceivable to humanity.⁶

“Not only is it through Jesus Christ alone that we know God but it is only through Jesus Christ that we know ourselves. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ we do not know what our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves really are.”⁷ In the end, one who wants to be honest with himself must either believe in and submit wholly to God, accepting the Messiah whom the Father sent to redeem mankind, or be an atheist in despair, abandoning the search for truth and happiness, substituting in its place a routine of shallow diversions to mask the emptiness of a life poised for immanent death. “It is good to be weary and tired from the useless search for the true good, in order to stretch ones arms out to the Redeemer.”⁸

The most famous argument in the Pensées has been called Pascal’s Wager. If God exists and the Christian religion is true, then those who believe gain eternal life and those who do not believe earn eternal damnation. Since eternity is infinitely greater than the meager span of one’s life, one ought to wager on the truth of Christianity and embrace it. If it proves to be true, one gains everlasting life. If it proves to be false, then one has merely lost a short life that one had to lose anyhow. But if the religion is true, and one did not embrace it, one has lost infinitely more—one has lost everything. How could an infinitesimal fraction of time have any value in comparison with even the possibility of an eternity of bliss or woe? Here we see Pascal ingeniously using probability theory against the very agnosticism generated by the modern scientific mentality. This argument, like many others in Pascal, was intended to startle and provoke, so that an inquirer after religious truth would search all the more earnestly; it was not intended to be sufficient by itself or to supplant other classical arguments leading in the same direction.

In the later part of his life, Pascal became heatedly involved in political and ecclesiastical controversies surrounding the theology of Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638), Bishop of Ypres, whose interpretation of Saint Augustine’s doctrine of predestination, grace, and free will formed the basis of a heresy, or at least a heretical tendency, subsequently known as Jansenism. Although Pascal fiercely attacked the Jesuits of his time as traitors to Christianity and may have held some questionable theological positions associated with the Port Royal school, by the end of his life he had withdrawn from public controversy to spend his time in prayer, meditation, and works of charity. In the six-month period of his final prolonged sickness, Pascal sold off his carriage, horses, tapestries, furniture, silver, and most of his books, giving the money to the poor. In spite of his own physical sufferings, he earnestly requested those nursing him to go out and find a poor man who might be sheltered under the same roof with him. He died in peace of soul on August 19, 1662, shortly after receiving the last sacraments.

The Editions to Buy

As mentioned above, the major works by Saint Anselm fit snugly in a single volume. Two affordable paperback editions on the market contain almost exactly the same items in different translations: the Thomas Williams edition published by Hackett and the Brian Davies-Gillian Evans edition published by Oxford. While both translations are reliably faithful to the Latin originals and quite readable, on balance my preference goes to the Davies-Evans, for the simple reason that Williams insists on using inclusive language throughout in a way that uglifies the prose and needlessly complicates the theological points Anselm is making. In keeping with centuries of English usage and just plain good sense, Anselm’s famous question Cur Deus homo deserves to be rendered “Why God became man,” not “Why God became a human being.” Is anyone so witless as to think that “man” in this expression means only males of the species? And, more to the point, if anyone does think it, do they not need a lesson in grammar more than a clunky politically-correct translation?

With Pascal, however, the choices for an English Pensées are more numerous, and I can claim no expertise in recommending the best edition. I have always found the Penguin edition by Krailsheimer serviceable; the language is appropriately eloquent for a master controversialist like Pascal, and the content well-organized.⁹ One could likely find other good translations of this work as well.

A last piece of advice: skip the modern introductions to the volumes and go straight to the author’s own words. Without a doubt some introductions are interesting and helpful, especially for students doing research, but life is short, time is precious, and the wisdom we stand to gain is found in the primary sources, the original writings, of our great Catholic Tradition. Do yourself a favor and make time to read Pascal’s Pensées and, of Anselm’s works, at least Why God Became Man. A noble goal, faith seeking understanding, with two noble guides. May the gracious Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, grant each of us a consoling foretaste of His sovereign Reason as we walk through this vale of tears toward the light of glory.

Notes

See Mt 12:43-45. [back]

Rom 1:5, 16:26. [back]

From Pascal’s “Memorial” of the event. [back]

Nos. 220 and 205 in the Penguin edition. [back]

No. 164. [back]

Ibid. [back]

No. 36. [back]

No. 524. [back]

Recall that Pascal’s original text is, in fact, a huge assembly of scattered notes, which gives rise to disputes about how best to arrange and present the material. [back]

[Dr. Peter A. Kwasniewski is Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyoming. The present article, "Two Great Apologists for the Catholic Faith," was originally published in Latin Mass: A Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Summer 2009), pp. 6-10, and is reprinted here by kind permission of Latin Mass Magazine, 391 E. Virginia Terrace, Santa Paula, CA 93060.]

Craig spanks Hitchens in debate

2009-05-12T08:31:00.001-04:00

William Lane Craig debated the famous "new atheist," Christopher Hitchens, at Biola University in April. "Hitchens Debate at Biola" (Reasonable Faith Newsletter, May 2009):

The debate on April 4 was the largest ticketed event ever held at Biola University. The gymnasium where the debate was held was stunningly illuminated with a bright blue backdrop and equipped with a giant screen and packed with 4,000 people. High-definition television cables linked the gym to every other auditorium on campus. The debate was webcast live (as well as on delayed feeds) to 35 other states and even to four foreign countries! Bloggers in the gym were providing live, blow-by-blow coverage to people across the internet.

... Hitchens showed himself utterly incapable of interacting with the [philosophical] arguments in a substantive way. By his third speech he had reverted to his usual railing against God as a North Korean dictator who robs us of our freedom....

The reaction in the blogosphere was immediate and unanimous. Hitchens was uniformly denounced for his empty rhetoric and posturing and his failure to interact with the arguments. One atheist blogger summed it up: “Hitchens was rambling and incoherent, with the occasional rhetorical jab. Frankly, Craig spanked Hitchens like a foolish child.”

A controversy in Reformational philosophy

2009-04-17T15:53:00.003-04:00

Last year, the following article appeared by Lambert Zuidervaart, "After Dooyeweerd: Truth in Reformational Philosophy" (Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, 2008). In it, Zuidervaart makes some interesting claims about the nature of truth and interpretations of the late, great Dutch philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd, that have been controverted.

J. Glenn Friesen, "Standing in the Truth: A Response to Lambert Zuidervaart" (2008) argues:

Zuidervaart says that he wants to transform the idea of truth by “critically retrieving” Dooyeweerd’s conception of truth. He explicitly abandons Dooyeweerd’s ideas of transcendent truth, the supratemporal selfhood, and numerous other ideas. He claims (p. 12) to be a “loyal critic” of Dooyeweerd, and says he wants to preserve the holism and normativity of Dooyeweerd’s conception, and that he is introducing the idea of “authentication” to appropriate insights from Dooyeweerd’s emphasis on “standing in the truth.”

Although Zuidervaart’s article is an interesting example of what reformational philosophy might be like if it continues to reject Dooyeweerd’s philosophy, Zuidervaart’s suggestions cannot be said to be in any way a continuation of or an appropriation of Dooyeweerd’s ideas. In fact, Zuidervaart sets out exactly the kind of philosophy that Dooyeweerd opposed: a temporalized view of our experience and existence, or what Dooyeweerd calls “immanence philosophy.”

This article will examine how Zuidervaart’s article (1) is itself based on immanence philosophy, which Dooyeweerd opposed; (2) is itself based on the self-sufficiency of thought; (3) misinterprets Dooyeweerd’s view of “standing in the truth”; (4) makes simplistic and misleading comparisons of Dooyeweerd to other philosophers such as Husserl and Heidegger, and fails to address recent research regarding the history of Dooyeweerd’s ideas; (5) makes other fundamental errors of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy.

Issues of accuracy are highly important in the tradition of Reformational philosophy, as Friesen suggests, and it is impossible to build upon a philosophical legacy until it has been properly understood. Otherwise, the reformational movement would be merely building on the errors of the past, instead of building upon what Dooyeweerd actually said.

Friesen says elsewhere that in the past year alone, his articles were viewed more than 50,000 times by people from 161 countries, and that a previous article, in which he criticized Zuidervaart’s interpretation of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy of aesthetics, has been viewed more than 3,550 times, and continues to be viewed about 20 times per day.

Zuidervaart, like some other reformational philosophers, holds the view that Dooyeweerd’s philosophy changed radically over time, and that Dooyeweerd's so-called "transcendental critique" was a new development. Friesen, however, referring to an interview by Dooyeweerd in 1974, argues that there was never a fundamental change or revision in his philosophy. Dooyeweerd suggests in his 1974 interview that his later transcendental critique was nothing more than a "sharpeing" of his earlier critique, which was always transcendental:

"From the very beginning, I subjected these views to a radical critique, which I called ‘the radical transcendental critique.’ And now they [Dooyeweerd’s critics] suppose that there has been a fundamental revision in the Philosophy of the Law-Idea, which they date from the first publication of the English edition, in which I sharpened the way—or the method—of the transcendental critique. I did this by not proceeding from particular views of philosophy, namely that it must be a total view of reality (a view which I did not give up). But in order to have a discussion with an opponent, to maintain contact with him, to engage in a broader and sharper way of analysis, I therefore subjected the theoretical attitude of thought and experience, in itself [zonder meer], to a transcendental critical investigation." [Friesen's translation, "Interview of Herman Dooyeweerd by Magnus Verbrugge, September 23, 1974"]

In his De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee (The Philosophy of the Law Idea), says Friesen, Dooyeweerd began with particular views of totality. His sharpening of the transcendental critique proceeded from general ideas of totality (Totality is the second transcendental idea. The three ideas are Origin, totality and coherence. Origin is eternal, totality is supratemporal, and coherence is temporal). Friesen's claim, then, is that those, like Zuidervaart, who do not accept any idea of supratemporal totality, cannot be said to accurately understand Dooyeweerd's transcendental critique. While they are free to believe whatever they wish, and while they are free to reject Dooyeweerd's idea of totality, along with the transcendental critique that depends on it, this does not grant license to misinterpret what he has said, or try to divide Dooyeweerd's own thought into distinct developmental phases which he himself rejected.

By contrast, Friesen endeavors to interpret Dooyeweerd's thought in a unified way, which, he believes, preserves the integrity of his views. That is what motivated him to write his “95 Theses on Herman Dooyeweerd,” to which a forthcoming issue of the Reformed philosophical journal, Philosophia Reformata, might be devoted.

Fr. Stanley Jaki, OSB (1924 - 2009)

2009-04-11T14:08:00.000-04:00

Benedictine Father Stanley Jaki, died quietly in the company of friends, from complications after suffering a heart attack without knowing it, on 7 April 2009 [13:15 Spanish time], at Clinica de la Conception in Madrid, Spain where he was visiting friends following a lecture series in Rome for the Master in Faith and Science of the Pontificio Ateneo Regina Apostolorum.

As Paul Zalonski writes in the Communio obituary, "He was a monk and priest of the Archabbey of Saint Martin, Pannonhalma, Hungary. He entered the archabbey in 1941, professing solemn vows in 1944 and was ordained a priest in 1948. Like many other Hungarian priests, Jaki immigrated to the USA during Soviet persecution." Father Jaki was first and foremost a faithful priest and scholar -- a physicist as well as a theologian -- and a prolific writer. He had served as Distinguished Professor of Physics at Seton Hall University, New Jersey, since 1975. As Zalonski notes:

Jaki earned a doctorate in theology from Sant'Anselmo (Rome) in 1950 and another doctorate in (astro)physics from Fordham University in 1957. Since 1965 he has taught at Seton Hall University and honored as Distinguished Professor of Physics in 1975. After retiring he kept active by holding court, giving lectures and writing, often cantankerously.

Father Jaki was well-known for his writings on science and religion. He delievered the prestigious Gifford Lectures from 1974-1976, later published under the title of The Road of Science and the Ways to God. In 1987 Dom Stanley was award the Templeton Prize. He is considered one of the best scholars on the thought of Cardinal John Henry Newman in the U.S. His publishing record show he published 7 books and numerous articles on Newman.

Fr. Jaki was one of the premier contemporary minds in the fields of philosophy of science and theology, as well as on inter-disciplinary issues. He authored innumerable books, articles and essays covering everything from the metaphysics of the Eucharist, to Petrine primacy, to exactly where and how Charles Darwin went woefully wrong. In short, Fr. Jaki was one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century and his contributions to Catholic thought and culture will be difficult to quantify.

As one G.K. Chesterton fan comments: "In addition to so many other things, Father Jaki was also a beloved and much-sought after Chestertonian, and a true follower of the Rule of St. Benedict in every way imaginable; he was always teaching. He only had to be invited to speak once to the annual American Chesterton Society Conference....after that he would simply call Dale Ahlquist in advance and announce his topic! Such graceful moxie is very rare these days and those of us who have known him, learned from him, and love him have all been blessed and bettered by his initiative; it will be a palpable loss not to have this spiritual and intellectual giant in our midst any longer."

I am amused that Zalonski mentions that Fr. Jaki could be "cantankerous." A couple of friends of mine report that in conversations with him he would without any hesitation simply declare: "You are no physicist!" or "You are no philosopher!" I say amused, because he was usually quite right in his judgments, even if a trifle tactless. Socrates keeps good company.

Another feature of Fr. Jaki that goes unmentioned, however, is how he was almost always peddling his personal publications. One friend of mine mentions that he met Fr. Jaki at a conference on the East coast. My friend mentioned that Fr. Jaki recruited him to the task of helping him cart books (and flyers promoting them) from the trunk of his automobile and to help market and distribute to those assembled. I have to confess that in phone conversations with him, Fr. Jaki was a persuasive salesman and managed to sell to me about two dozen of his books and publications he warehoused in his basement. I should add, however, that he gave me a significant discount and that I have profited immensely from the books I have read, though I have yet to tackle his huge tome on physics!

Fr. Jaki will be missed. Let us pray for the merciful repose of his soul.

[Hat tip to Fr. Zuhlsdorf and Chestertonian, Miki]

Manfred S. Frings (1925-2008) -- Requiescat in pace

2008-12-17T20:47:00.004-05:00

Manfred Frings, the world's leading Scheler scholar, is dead. Frings was the editor of Max Scheler's Collected Works (Gesammelte Werke), translated many of Scheler's works into English, and was singlehandedly responsible for introducing Scheler's phenomenology into the English-speaking world.

Born on 27 February 1925 in Cologne-Lindenthal, Germany, Frings was the third son of Gottfried and Maria Frings. He attended a Catholic elementary school, lived close to a Jewish community where he forged significant friendships shaping his later antipathy towards Nazism. Both his school and home were destroyed during the bombing of Cologne in WWII, and he remembered rescuing his mother from the ruins of their house. He was drafted into the German military near the end of the war, and was captured by American forces and sent to a POW camp near Rouen, France, where he made the first of many lifelong friendships with Americans.

Following the war, Frings attended the University of Cologne, where he studied philosophy, English and French. He earned his doctorate in philosophy in 1953. In 1958 his dream of emigrating to America was realized when he accepted an invitation to teach philosophy at the University of Detroit. In 1962 he accepted an appointment in philosophy at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. From 1966 to his retirement in 1992, he taught at DePaul University in Chicago. He subsequently continued teaching part-time at the University of New Mexico. At various points throughout his career, he served as visiting professor and lecturer at the Universities of Cologne, Freiburg, Oxford, and Sorbonne.

Frings initiated the annual International Heidegger Conference at DePaul in 1966. He was one of six scholars chosen by Martin Heidegger to be the original editors of Heidegger’s Collected Works (Gesamtausgabe). He edited Heidegger’s 1942-1944 lectures on Parmenides and Heraclitus (volumes 54 and 55 of the Gesamtausgabe). Since 1970, he served as editor of the Collected Works (Gesammelte Werke) of Max Scheler (1874-1928), a task completed with the publication of vol. 15 in 1997. He was President (then President Emeritus) of the international Max Scheler Society (Max-Scheler-Gesellschaft), as well as a founding father of the Max Scheler Society of North America.

The principal focus of Frings’s career was Scheler’s phenomenology of values, sociology of knowledge, ethics, political theory, and philosophy of time. Among Frings' major contributions are the recognition he brought to Scheler’s phenomenology as a credible alternative to Edmund Husserl’s, his clarification of the relationship between Scheler and Heidegger in his seminal Person und Dasein (1969), and his concept of absolute time in his LifeTime: Max Scheler’s Philosophy of Time (2003). He has published well over a hundred articles, and edited twenty-four books, including his notable The Mind of Max Scheler: The First Comprehensive Guide Based on the Complete Works (1997, 2nd ed. 2001). His publications have been translated into Chinese, French, Japanese, and German. His work was recognized in a special audience with Pope John Paul II, himself an accomplished Scheler scholar, and by Martin Heidegger in personal meetings in Freiburg.

Frings is survived by his wife and long-time companion, Karin.

Select Bibliography

Max Scheler: A Concise Introduction into the World of a Great Thinker (Pittsburgh, 1965; 2nd ed, Milwaukee, 1996).
Person und Dasein: Zur Frage der Ontologie des Wertseins (The Hague, 1969).
“Max Scheler: Rarely Seen Complexities of Phenomenology,” Phenomenology in Perspective, ed. F. J. Smith (The Hague, 1970).
Zur Phänomenologie der Lebensgemeinschaft: Ein Versuch mit Max Scheler (Meisenheim, 1971).
Philosophy of Prediction and Capitalism (Dordrecht, 1987).
“Scheler, Max,” Encyclopédie Philosophique Universelle, III, Les Ouvres Philosophiques (Paris, 1992).
“The Background of Max Scheler’s 1927 Reading of Being and Time: A Critique of a Critique Through Ethics,” Philosophy Today 36 (1992): 99-113.
“Max Scheler,” Encyclopedia Americana (Danbury, Connecticut, 1994).
“Max Scheler,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed (1994).
“Max Scheler,” Dictionaire d’éthique et de philosophie morale (Paris, 1996).
“Max Scheler,” The Encyclopedia of Phenomenology (Dordrecht, 1997).
The Mind of Max Scheler: The First Comprehensive Guide Based on the Complete Works (Milwaukee, 1997).

Goodbye, dear friend. You carry away a whole world with you. Requiescat in pace.

(DE)CONSTRUCTIVE ABSENCE

2008-11-26T19:01:00.004-05:00

To critically deconstruct or not, that is the question
To sling discursive arrows at outrageous fortunes
Or to take arms against a sea of techno-capitalist powers
And by deconstructing end them?
Yet so foul and fair a day i have not seen
For is this a summons which i see before me
An unseasonal gift in my hand?
Come, let me hold thee
I have thee not, and yet i see thee still
Art thou not a fatal vision, a present absence?
A simulacrum of the mind?
A hyperreal calling
Proceeding from the heat-opressed brain?
Yet, the deafening silence of the calling announces
To critically deconstruct or not, is that the question?
Why, what care i?
Why should you?
Since there's much safety in numbers, in foul analysis
What need we fear?
Who knows it?
When none can call our power to account
Still tis so foul and fair a day i have not seen
For i must attend the true event
My haste is very great
I will be gone
For with the dark, i'll steal away
And all's well that ends well
Whatever the course
The postmodern end is renown
So post-haste, i must depart
For i am become quite old
And the inaudible and noiseless foot of time steals
Nay deconstructs us all, low or high, knave or saint
Thus farewell for now
This day so foul and fair
Alas this speech must meet its end
For speech is much ado about nothing
And foul words are but foul wind
and foul wind is but foul breath
Yet with this breath forget not the question
Of being or not being
Of the différance of identity
That "is"
Critical deconstruction

Arek Shak(espe(ar)e)ian
11-03-1993

[Hat tip to Arek Shakarian. Reproduced by permission of the author, 2008.]

The origins of totalitarian democracy

2008-10-11T17:58:00.002-04:00

In book VI of The Republic, Plato offers a fascinating sketch of how, in his view, democracy may give birth to tyranny. The discussion is much too long to quote in its entirety here; but here are some choice excerpts:

"When a democratic city athirst for liberty gets worthless butlers presiding over its wine, and has drunk too deep of liberty's heady draught, then, I think, if the rulers are not very obliging and won't provide plenty of liberty, it calls them blackguards and oligarchs and chastises them."

"So they do," said he.

"Yes," I went on, "and any who obey the rulers they trample in the dust as willing slaves and not worth a jot; and rulers who are like subjects, and subjects who are like rulers, come in for the votes of thanks and the honors, public and private...."

***
"Then it is likely," said I, "that democracy is precisely the constitution out of which tyranny comes; from extreme liberty, it seems, comes a slavery most complete and most cruel."

***
" ' People' will be the name of the [largest] class; all who are handiworkers and outside politics, without much property of their own. This is the largest and most sovereign class in democracy, when it combines."

"So it is," he said, "but it does not often care to combine unless it can get a bit of the honey."

"Well, it does get a bit from time to time," I said, "depending on the ability of the presidents, in taking the property away from those who have it and distributing it among the people, to keep most of it themselves."

"Yes, it gets a share to that extent," he said.

"So those whom they plunder have to defend themselves, I suppose, by speaking before the people and taking action in what way they can."

"Of course."

"And so they are accused by the other party of plotting against the people ...."

"... So the common people will always put up for itself some special protector, whom it supports and magnifies?"

"One thing is clear then," I said, "that when a tyrant appears, he grows simply and solely from a protectorship as the root."

"That is quite clear."

"Then what is the beginning of this change from protector to tyrant? ..."

"...When the Protector of the People finds a very obedient mob ... when he hints at abolition of debts and partition of estates -- surely for such a one the necessity is ordained that he must either perish at the hands of his enemies, or become a tyrant, and be a wolf instead of a man?"

"Such must be his fate of necessity," said he.

"That is the man then," said I, "who comes to lead a party against those who possess property."

"... those who get so far always hit on the tyrant's notorious plea -- they beg the people to give them a bodyguard, in order that the people's champion may be kept safe for themselves."

***
"Well, then," I said, "at first, in the early days, he greets everyone he meets with a broad smile; says he is no tyrant, and promises all sorts of things in private and in public, frees them from their debts and parcels out the land to the people and to those about him, pretends to be gracious and friendly to all the world."

(Plato, Republic, VIII, 562c-566e)

Of related interest

J.L. Talmon, Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (W.W. Norton, 1970) -- a fascinating study based on an examination of Rousseau's Social Contract.

Von Baader now online

2008-09-24T19:43:00.002-04:00

This will be a bit arcane for most of you, but a major influence on the Dutch Calvinist philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd, was Franz Xaver von Baader (1765-1841), whose work is now available online, albeit in difficult archaic German. J. Glen Friesen just emailed me the news that Google Books has digitized all 16 volumes of the Collected Works of Franz Xavier von Baader, the link to which is available at Friesen's website, along with links to several articles translated into English by Friesen.

[Hat tip to J.G.F.]

Theodore Plantinga - 1947-2008

2008-08-06T23:10:00.000-04:00

I take note of the passing of the philosopher, Theodore Plantinga (not to be confused with Notre Dame's Reformed philosopher, Alvin Plantinga), not only because of his particular contributions to the field of Dilthey studies and historical philosophy from his perspective as a Reformed Christian, but because of his personal assistance to me in my days as a doctoral student in helping me formulate my dissertation topic in such a way that it brought together my interest then in the Dutch Reformed phenomenologist, Herman Dooyeweerd, with parallel strands in the German phenomenological tradition adjacent to that of Dietrich von Hildebrand and Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) in Max Scheler and the critique he leveled against the classical ethical formalism of Immanuel Kant. The yield of this line of advice, years later, was my publication of Scheler's Critique Of Kant's Ethics, Continental Thought Series, V. 22 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1995).

I never got to know Plantinga well, although I did read several of his books and articles, through which I gained considerable appreciation for his perspective and depth of analysis.

Here, in part, is how his university memorial reads under News and Events, "In Memoriam Professor Theodore Plantinga" (Redeemer University, Ancaster, Ontario, July 5, 2008):

It is with deep sadness that Redeemer University College announces the death of Dr. Theodore Plantinga, Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department. Dr. Plantinga died peacefully at his home in Dundas on the evening of July 4, 2008 . Visitation will be held in St. James Anglican Church from 6:30 – 8:30 Tuesday evening (137 Melville, Dundas), and a memorial service will be held there on Wednesday at 1 pm.

Theo Plantinga was born in 1947 in Ee, Friesland , the Netherlands . His family emigrated to Canada when he was four, settling in Winnipeg , where he attended elementary and secondary schools. He went to university at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan , where he received a B.A. in philosophy in 1969. He subsequently completed a Masters degree, and a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Toronto (1975). His doctoral dissertation, published by the University of Toronto Press in 1980, was Historical Understanding in the Thought of Wilhelm Dilthey.

During the next two years, Dr. Plantinga held a full-time position as lecturer in philosophy at Bishops University in Lennoxville, Quebec. Subsequently, he was a translator and managing editor for Paideia Press in St. Catharines, Ontario. He was appointed Executive Director of College Development for the Ontario Christian College Association, founded to explore the possibility of starting a Reformed Christian liberal arts and science college in Ontario.

Plantinga spent the next quarter century as the chair of Redeemer's philosophy department during the institution's founding years. He also translated numerous books by Dutch authors into English, including volumes by the philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd. He also became managing editor of the Dooyeweerd Centre at Redeemer in 2005.

The memorial concludes with these words: "He had a lively wit, a vibrant faith, a ready laugh, a listening ear and a particular fondness for the eccentric. He will be greatly missed as a friend, colleague, teacher and mentor. 'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.'"

[Hat tip to C.B.]

The young Scheler

2008-05-21T21:16:00.002-04:00

Mancuso Giuliana, Il Giovane Scheler (1899-1906) (Milano: Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto, 2008).
310pp.
€28,50
ISBN-13: 9788879163651
ISBN: 8879163655

Con la pubblicazione del Formalismusbuch e la proposta di un'etica materiale dei valori, Scheler si impose come esponente di punta della fenomenologia di impronta realistica. Tuttavia, egli aveva esordito sulla scena filosofica con una serie di scritti di impostazione neokantiana, e tale restò il suo quadro concettuale di riferimento almeno fino al 1906. Di questa fase giovanile ci si è occupati ben poco. Il neokantismo che informa la prima produzione scheleriana è rimasto una nozione vaga, non tematizzata in quanto tale. Il libro specifica questa nozione attraverso l'esame dei testi giovanili, dei loro più significativi debiti teorici e delle questioni teoriche in essi affrontate. Le risposte del giovane Scheler mostrano come il suo pensiero fosse radicato all'interno del paradigma inaugurato da Kant e sviluppato dal neocriticismo: un paradigma del quale egli accolse la strumentazione concettuale, pur problematizzandola, per lavorare dall'interno alle linee di tensione dell'impostazione trascendentale. L'analisi di due luoghi celebri della filosofia scheleriana della maturità coglie, infine, la presenza operativa di elementi teorici riconducibili al neokantismo giovanile.

Giuliana Mancuso (Carate Brianza, 1975) ha conseguito il titolo di Dottore di ricerca presso l'Università di Torino e attualmente è assegnista all'Università degli Studi di Milano. É autrice di traduzioni e saggi critici che hanno per oggetto la filosofia tedesca tra Ottocento e Novecento, con particolare attenzione al pensiero di Max Scheler, al neokantismo marburghese e alla fenomenologia.

Foreclosure of homes and philosophy departments

2008-05-18T22:10:00.000-04:00

Homes are being foreclosed at a fearsome rate these days, and it begins to look as though academic departments and programs are a similarly endangered species. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the termination of the German Department at the University of Southern California, and on May 5, I noticed in The Chronicle that the University of Florida was terminating its doctoral program in Philosophy.

The university, confronting a substantial cutback in state appropriations, has announced that it will lay off 20 faculty members, among other steps, to reduce costs for FY2008-9. As part of this retrenchment, President Bernie Machen has also proposed reducing undergraduate enrollment and cutting back on research expenditures, as well as eliminating some degree programs.

I gather that other Florida universities are reacting similarly to dire state budgetary situations. Many states are experiencing exactly the same financial difficulties, and passing through their problems to public institutions of higher education.

Source: Stan Katz, "The Unity of Philosophy" (The Chronicle Review, May 14, 2008).

[Hat tip to E.F.]

The celebrated Saul Kripke never earned more than a B.A.

2008-04-28T22:36:00.004-04:00

One of my good friends and readers of my blog wrote to me recently expressing his surprise that the world-class philosopher, Saul Kripke, was never educated beyond the undergraduate level. "Kripke decided to write and publish rather than take up graduate studies," he wrote. "What a guy!"

The Kripke personal story is indeed impressive and intriguing, as related by Charles McGrath in a New York Times article just after Kripke had turned 65 years old in November of 2005. The Graduate Center of the City University of New York convened a two-day conference on the occasion of his his birthday in celibration of the man and his work. "In many circles, Mr. Kripke, who in 2001 was awarded the Schock Prize, philosophy's equivalent of the Nobel, is thought to be the world's greatest living philosopher, perhaps the greatest since Wittgenstein," says McGrath -- except that Wittgenstein didn't do some of his most important work while still in high school.

Mr. Kripke, a rabbi's son, grew up in Omaha, and by all accounts was a true prodigy, so brilliant and precocious that the so-called prodigies of today are by comparison mere shadows flickering on the wall of our collective cave. In the fourth grade he discovered algebra, which he later said he could have invented on his own, and by the end of grammar school he had mastered geometry and calculus and taken up philosophy. While still a teenager he wrote a series of papers that eventually transformed the study of modal logic. One of them, or so the legend goes, earned a letter from the math department at Harvard, which hoped he would apply for a job until he wrote back and declined, explaining, "My mother said that I should finish high school and go to college first."

The college he eventually chose was Harvard. "I wish I could have skipped college," Mr. Kripke said in an interview. "I got to know some interesting people, but I can't say I learned anything. I probably would have learned it all anyway, just reading on my own."

While still a Harvard undergrad, Mr. Kripke started teaching post-graduates down the street at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and after getting his B.A. didn't bother to acquire an advanced degree. Who could teach him anything he didn't already know? Instead, he began teaching and publishing. His 1980 book "Naming and Necessity," based on work he began in high school, is among the most influential philosophy books of the last 50 years ....

Funny, how easy it is to forget. I remember working through parts of Naming and Necessity (1980) about twenty years ago, aware of its importance and significance as a major philosophical work. It's easy to assume that a work like that might have been written by a philosopher near the end of his career, or even by someone deceased for some time; but the fact is that Kripke was only 40 years old when he wrote it, and it was based on ideas he worked out when he was in high school, probably in the late 1950s. Since Kripke didn't waste any time on post-graduate schooling, dissertating and self-promoting, he was essentially able to complete what in effect the work of a spectacularly successful career by the time he was only 40, and he's been going strong for the 28 years since, with what appears to be as many years yet ahead of him. Setting aside the self-promotional shenanigans required of most graduate students in order to procure professional jobs, one is tempted to ask concerning the value of post-graduate education except as an inconvenient way of weeding out what the professional guild considers the candidates least likely to succeed. Yet one wonders how many Kripke's are forestalled by the prospect of having to endure six-years-to-a-decade of such nonsense before being allowed to settle down to the serious work of philosophical thinking.

[Hat tip to E.F.]

Memories of Dietrich Von Hildebrand

2008-03-22T23:07:00.002-04:00

by Ronda Chervin, Ph.D.

It was truly a miracle that I met Gogo (as all his friends called him). Here is how it happened.

I was brought up as a total atheist, though my background was culturally Jewish. I studied philosophy hoping to find truth but only found skepticism, relativism, and historicism. I was looking for love but only found fascinating, sinful, disappointing relationships. By the age of 20 I was in despair of ever finding love or truth.

One Saturday my mother, who never surfed the TV, not ever, turned on the set in the middle of the afternoon, and there was a program called the Catholic Hour with two philosophers on it: Dietrich Von Hildebrand and Alice Jourdain. "Ronda, come see, there are some philosophers on TV." To my amazement, these philosophers were talking as if truth, love, goodness and beauty were objective realities.

I wrote them a long letter describing my futile search and asked if they could help me. It turned out that Alice (Lily – shortly afterwards to become Gogo's second wife) lived but 2 blocks away from me on the West Side of New York city. Neither she nor I, nor Madeleine (to be Stebbins) who was her roommate will ever forget our first meeting. Somehow, even though I was an atheist, I knew that there was something extraordinary in that apartment. Never had anyone looked into my eyes with such compassion and insight as did Lily. Afterwards, I danced down the street thinking, "I have met a saint."

Impressed by my yearning for truth, Lily suggested that I make a visit to the classes of Dietrich Von Hildebrand at Fordham and if I was enthusiastic, why not transfer my Woodrow Wilson scholarship from Johns Hopkins graduate school to Fordham.

Stephen Schwarz escorted me to Fordham. Two things caught my attention. The first was that, unlike the professors at Johns Hopkins who seemed to me to be dessicated academics, Von Hildebrand and Balduin Schwarz were vibrant men, overflowing with joy. Secondly I noticed that they could refute skepticism, relativism and historicism in a few sentences.

I like to think that two of my favorite saints also had something to do with the miracle of my mother turning on the TV at that moment: St. Therese of Lisieux who, during her dark night, prayed so much for atheists, and St. Edith Stein – who, having been an atheistic philosophy student from a Jewish background herself, surely she would want me to meet her "cousin" philosopher, Von Hildebrand.

Of course, being such a thoroughgoing atheist who had been brought up to think that all religious people were stupid and weak, I didn't think that the wonderful traits of Von Hildebrand, Lily, and the Schwarzs: Balduin, Leni (a convert from an atheist Jewish background) and Stephen, their son, had anything to do with their religion. I just wanted to be with them.

Zealous Gogo, at the urging of Lily, quickly arranged for my scholarship to be transferred and within a month I was taking courses at Fordham.

Ecstasy is the only word to describe my reaction to each of Gogo's classes, as I realized that truth was real, and what glorious truths, such as proofs that moral values were absolute. Simultaneously I was lapping up the love the members of the lay community surrounding me with. Getting to know them took place at lunches at the Schwarz house, and on the D-train of the NY subway from the Manhattan to the Bronx and back again, for I was able to travel a whole hour each way with either Gogo or Balduin who were riding up to the classes I was taking and they were teaching.

The miraculous events that led me to become a Catholic a year after meeting Gogo and Lily are told in my autobiography En Route to Eternity. A large part came from reading the authors recommended by them such as Augustine, Newman, and Chesterton. The night before my baptism I was visiting the Schwarzs who would become my godparents. Gogo was there. On my way home, I grabbed his arm and asked, "But suppose it isn't true, after all?" I expected some insight into philosophy or psychology of religion, but he replied with the simplicity of a peasant, "but think of the miracles!"

I found the personality of Gogo overwhelmingly. That the same man could be so serious, so deep, but also so spontaneous and affectionate, delighted me. We used to attend the same daily Mass, walking from different directions. Always I would find him singing opera loudly along the way. I often thought of this as the Italian side of his personality whereas the philosophical side was more German.

These personality traits of Gogo made whatever he wanted to teach me not so much didactic as enticing. And this was not only in the realm of philosophy. My father was a lover of classical music who filled our early childhood with the sound of music every hour he was home. As a teenager I rebelled and listened only to popular tunes. By college I gradually grew to love classical music, but had very little sense of choral music. I will never forget sitting in a room next to Gogo who was playing a 78 recording of Mozart's Laudate Dominum. To make sure I understood the beauty of it, he grabbed my arm with his hand and emphasized each climax of the singing with an extra squeeze accompanied by his radiant smile.

Another memory from these early days of the friendship, which would last until the end of his life, is of his insistence that those of us who rode with him on the subway from Fordham back to Manhattan pray Compline out loud in Latin. It was for me such an exemplification of the later buzz-word "counter-cultural" but also of freedom of spirit. In later years I followed his lead by insisting that friends pray the rosary aloud with me in airports during long waits at the gate.

Gogo played a large role in my marriage to Martin Chervin, a man from an orthodox Jewish background who had become an atheist as a teen but who wanted to know Christ. When I got interested in Martin as a possible spouse, I was on the verge of becoming a Catholic. At the time, he was a divorced playboy. I was confused. I thought a good way of getting rid of him would be to introduce him to Gogo and Lily and the Schwarz family. Surely they would tell me to drop this dangerous friendship immediately. Instead they all loved him and encouraged us in what turned out to be a long chaste courtship and helped us get a dispensation from Martin's previous non-religious marriage. We went through a long process with the New York and Roman tribunals. Finally Gogo was instrumental in persuading a prominent Cardinal to intervene for a dispensation in favorem fide.

It seemed as if Martin would soon become a Catholic. A major influence on him was the reading of Transformation in Christ. He recognized the genius of Gogo's combination of consummate understanding of human nature with sublime faith.
Even more, my husband, who had the same kind of joie de vivre as Gogo, could only have understood a faith like Gogo's, which included rejoicing in the goods of the earth, as well as opening to the redemptive gifts. Before meeting Gogo he thought of Catholics as either tight Puritanical types or rebellious sinners. It took him many years to finally become a Catholic, because he detested the American post-Vatican II Mass. Shortly before Gogo's death he made a bargain with God that should Gogo survive longer, at a time when his life seemed almost at an end, he would take it as a sign to become a Catholic in spite of his dislike of the English Mass. Gogo was spared a short time longer and Martin did become a Catholic

Gogo also had an influence on the conversion of my atheist mother. She was horrified at my interest in Roman Catholicism, but the personality of Gogo opened her to investigating the faith for herself. He decided to meet her informally at our home for individual teaching sessions to overcome her formidable doubts. In a charming gesture, the first time he came he presented her with a huge bouquet of peonies.

A few less important but telling memories:

Before his conversion, Martin and I were once traveling in Europe and went out of our way to go to Florence to see Gogo and Lily. I was praying constantly that whatever Gogo said would be a turning point for Martin to becoming a Catholic. We had a lovely visit but mostly the conversation was humorous and anecdotal instead of deep. At the end I was alone for a few moments and told Gogo how sorry I was that no important points had come up. Immediately Gogo's humorous expression changed to great seriousness and he exclaimed "What a sin on my part to have talked so much thoughtlessly!" I was touched by his readiness to acknowledge a fault even when it was unintentional.

Summers included a yearly meeting of a lay community that most of the Von Hildebrand circle were part of. I occasionally came to these meetings in Bavaria. The Mass was celebrated in a small chapel with parts of the congregation on either side – men on one side and women on the other. It always delighted me to see that, even after many years of marriage, Gogo could not bear to be separated from Lily – so throughout the Mass he would turn his head and gaze upon her with love.

A memory that fits with the name of the book The Soul of a Lion took place when Gogo and Lily came to Loyola Marymount University where I was teaching in the early 70's. Gogo gave the first talk. During the break, Lily told me that I must sit next to him while she was speaking and be sure that he stayed calm because he could have a fatal heart attack at any moment. During the question period the wife of a colleague of mine challenged Lily on some point. Gogo took it as an insult and tried to leap up to seize the floor. I grabbed him to hold him down. He turned on me swiftly and remarked: "Ronda, you can't keep me down. I am not a lamb, I am a lion."

We all knew that Gogo had a bad heart. Once, toward the end of his life, I had a nightmare that he was falling down a staircase to his doom. After that, whenever I was with him and there were stairs I pushed myself ahead of him so that I might cushion a fall.

As a professor of philosophy I have taught Gogo's books for decades with great impact. Some of my philosophy majors such as Michael Healy and James Harold, now at Franciscan University of Steubenville, went on to graduate school to study his thought. I cannot teach his ideas, or those of Lily, my life long friend, without a sense of the presence of their minds and hearts and souls permeating my smaller personhood. What a legacy. Viva the Von Hildebrands!

[Ronda Chervin is presently an adjunct philosopher at Lenoir Rhyne College in North Carolina. For more information about her numerous books about Catholic living, as well as videos and audios, go to www.rondachervin.com. The present article is reproduced here by kind permission of the author.]

Richard Rorty on Jacques Derrida having a bad day

2008-02-28T20:57:00.001-05:00

In his memorial, "Richard Rorty (1931-2007): In Memoriam" (CrossCurrents, Fall, 2007), John D. Caputo (right, pictured with white-haired Derrida) writes:

Later on, I also took exception to what [Rorty, pictured left] said about Derrida, that Derrida was not just making fun of the great philosophers but he had an important philosophical project of his own. His response to that was equally gracious. Again, he did not contest what I said about Derrida but only mused that at those times when Derrida stopped making fun of philosophical theories and started developing positive philosophical theories of his own, Derrida was just having a bad day.

[Hat tip to Dr. P.B.]

Beatification of Rosmini: wonders never cease

2007-11-24T21:46:00.001-05:00

Sandro Magister, "Blessed Liberty: The Posthumous Miracle of Antonio Rosmini" (www.chiesa, November 12, 2007), writes:

ROMA, November 12, 2007 – A beatification ceremony is approaching that is a miracle in its own right: the beatification of the priest and philosopher Antonio Rosmini.

It's a miracle because just six years ago, the new blessed was still under a condemnation issued in 1887 by the congregation of the Holy Office, against 40 propositions drawn from his writings.

Magister remarks: "The philosopher Dario Antiseri paints the portrait of this teacher of a form of liberalism open to religion." Rosmini fast tracked ahead of the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman?

The rediscovery of Dietrich von Hildebrand's legacy

2007-11-21T19:48:00.000-05:00

Sue Ellin Browder, "‘Lost Treasure’: Catholic Colleges Recovering Von Hildebrand’s Philosophy" (National Catholic Register, November 4-10, 2007), writes:

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio — John Henry Crosby is determined to revive interest in the thought of philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand.

First persuaded by von Hildebrand’s reasoned arguments for the necessity of beauty, Crosby soon was caught up by the story of the philosopher’s heroic fight against Nazism and communism and his suspense-filled flight to freedom. The notion of a “brave philosopher” willing to put his life on the line for the truth inspired him.

“I’ll be involved with this until the day I die,” said Crosby, 29.

His enthusiasm for von Hildebrand is shared by none other than Pope Benedict XVI. As a priest in Munich in the 1950s, Father Joseph Ratzinger attended one of the lectures von Hildebrand often gave on his summer visits to Europe. The subject was “beauty.”

“The joy and freshness of [von Hildebrand’s] understanding of Catholic doctrine were contagious,” Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in 2000 in the foreword to The Soul of a Lion, Alice’s von Hildebrand’s biography of her late husband.

Cardinal Ratzinger believed the “transcendent beauty of truth” that had captured von Hildebrand’s heart was the “same love for the beauty of truth” that later led him to embrace and defend the magisterium’s teaching on birth control. He did so in a small volume originally titled The Encyclical “Humanae Vitae:” An Essay on Birth Control and Catholic Conscience, reprinted by Sophia Institute Press as Love, Marriage and the Catholic Conscience (currently out of print).

Characterizing von Hildebrand as “a man captivated by the splendor of truth,” Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: “I am personally convinced that, when, at some time in the future, the intellectual history of the Catholic Church is written, the name of Dietrich von Hildebrand will be most prominent among the figures of our time.”

The Legacy Project

To ensure that all the philosopher’s works will be available in English, Crosby has worked with Alice von Hildebrand and others to set up the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project (hildebrandlegacy.org).

Last month, the Legacy Project brought together more than 150 scholars and devotees from around the world for a conference at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. Scholars focused on von Hildebrand’s growing impact on Christian philosophy.
The philosopher’s impact is making itself felt, too, in university courses. At Steubenville the master of arts philosophy program is furthering von Hildebrand scholarship.

In support of the Legacy Project, Pope Benedict put through a $45,000 Papal Foundation grant to help fund the translation, publication and promotion of von Hilde-brand’s work.

That, my friends, is the substantial first half of the sizeable NCR article, which is well worth reading in its entirety. As a presenter at the recent von Hildebrand conference at Franciscan University and one who has discovered only relatively recently the philosophical breadth of the thinker, I heartily commend Mr. Crosby's Legacy Project to you.

[Hat tip to The Legacy Project Staff]

The Turning of an Atheist

2007-11-04T20:18:00.000-05:00

Mark Oppenheimer, The Turning of an Atheist (New York Times, November 4, 2007).

Of related interest: "Anthony Flew's newfound belief in God" (Musings, December 11, 2004).

Ingwagen on the advantages of skepticism

2007-09-12T20:41:00.001-04:00

Peter von Ingwagen, in God, Knowledge & Mystery: Essays in
Philosophical Theology (Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press, 1995), on p. 2, writes:

One advantage philosophers bring to theology is that they know too much about philosophy to be overly impressed by the fact that a particular philosopher has said this or that. Philosophers of the present day know what Thomas Aquinas and Professor Bultmann did not know: that no philosopher is an authority. Philosophers know that if you want to pronounce on, say, the project of natural theology, you cannot simply appeal to what Kant has established about natural theology. You cannot do this for the very good reason that Kant has established nothing about natural theology. Kant has only offered arguments, and the cogency of these arguments can be (and is daily) disputed.

This is, of course, amusing in one way; and I think I agree with in in the sense in which I believe he intends it. Yet I would disagree with the notion that no philosopher can properly be an authority, as, for instance, Aristotle is for St. Thomas Aquinas. This, of course, is what Ingwagen's quote would entail, if it were taken in the literal sense. Authority, I would argue, is something a bit like honor. You can be honored by others and not deserve it; and you can be dishonored by others and not deserve it. But when you get it right, you're honored by others because you've earned it by becoming worthy of their honor; and that worthiness is the important thing -- far more important than the actual honor given you by others. Accordingly, I would argue that it's possible for a philosopher (like Aristotle) to earn the right to be considered an authority -- whatever lack of consensus may exist within the contemporary fraternity of postmodern professional lemmings who call themselves philosophers. And a philosopher earnes this right by being worthy of being so regarded -- by becoming, in fact, an authority on a subject.

Decadent postmoderns

2007-09-08T16:06:00.000-04:00

For a scathing indictment of the existentialist philosophers, Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger, and postmodern philosopher (I use the term loosely), Marcel Foucault, see Christopher's post, "Revolutionary Intellectuals" (Against the Grain, September 1, 2007). The discussion is occasioned by Gerald Augustinus' dismissal of Jean Paul Sartre at Closed Cafeteria (to which http://vox-nova.com/2007/08/31/whos-afraid-of-existentialism/) -- the former referencing Fr. Neuhaus' post Sartre, Legal Scholarship, and Those Troublesome Male Pronouns "On the Square") and the following excerpt from Clive James' Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts. Complete with personal confessions of capitulation to the existentialist seduction and delicious quotes from Paul Johnson's wonderful book, Intellectuals, it's sure to provoke a plethora of responses.

Reformational Philosophy

2007-07-17T11:59:00.000-04:00

The Dutch Reformed tradition in philosophy -- often called "Reformational Philosophy" (not to be confused with the "Reformed Epistemology" of Alvin Plantinga, et al., which is an independent development in the Dutch Reformed tradition of Anglo-American analytic philosophy -- has produced a wealth of societies and journals and theorists stemming from Calvinistic tradition of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck and the seminal philosophical work of Herman Dooyeweerd (pictured left) and D.H.Th. Vollenhoven (pictured right) at the Free University of Amsterdam in the last century. Philosophical societies include the Stichting voor Reformatorische Wijsbegeerte (Society for Reformational Philosophy) and the professional journal, Philosophia Reformata. Other related sites include that of The Dooyeweerd Center for Christian Philosophy (Redeemer College, Ancaster, Ontario, Canada), Studies relating to Hermann Dooyeweerd (J. Glenn Friesen, Calgary, Alberta, Canada), Herman Dooyeweerd (Steve Bishop, Bristol, UK), The Dooyeweerd Pages (Andrew Basden, Salford, UK), Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977) (Philip Blosser, Lenoir-Rhyne College, Hickory, NC), and numerous other links. Of recent interest is the launching of a new electronic periodical, Aspects of Reformational Philosophy, Vol. 1 (2007), No. 1. Philosophers from a Catholic background may be interested in the work on Dooyeweerd by the Jesuit, Fr. J. Marlet, Grundlinien der Kalvinistischen "Philosophie der Gesetzesidee" als Christlicher Transzendentalphilosophie (Munchen: Karl Zink, 1954), which has interesting chapters comparing Dooyeweerd with St. Thomas Aquinas.

A number of sites promote the published work of the premiere Dutch Reformed philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd. Among these one finds, for example, Steve Bishop's New Critique site, self-described as "A Guide to Dooyeweerd's New Critique of Theoretical Thought." This site offers introductory summaries not only of Herman Dooyeweerd's major philosophical work, the four-volume New Critique of Theoretical Thought (2nd ed., 1997)

Vol 1: The Necessary Presuppositions of Philosophy
Vol. 2: The Structures of Individuality of Temporal Reality
Vol. 3: The General Theory of the Modal Spheres
Vol. 4: Index of Subjects and Authors.

Bishop's "Guide" also offers an introduction to and study guide for Dooyeweerd's In the Twilight of Western Thought, a series of lectures Dooyeweerd gave at Princeton in the 1960s. A survey of Amazon links to the works of Dooyeweerd reveals that English-language translators of his works (originally in Dutch) have been busy over the last decades:

The Christian Idea of the State, tr. John Kraay (1968)
Christian Philosophy and the Meaning of History (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd. Series B, Vol 1) (1997)
Encyclopedia of Legal Science: Introduction (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd) (2007)
Encyclopedia of Legal Science: Historical (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd) (2007)
Encyclopedia of Legal Science: Systematic (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd) (2007)
Encyclopedia of Legal Science: Systemic (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd) (2007)
Essays in Legal, Social, and Political Philosophy (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd. Series B, Vol 2) (2001)
In the Struggle for a Christian Politics (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd) (2007)
Political Philosophy (Dooyeweerd, H. Selections. Ser. D, V. 1.) (2004)
Reformation & Scholasticism in Philosophy (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd) (2007)
Roots of Western Culture: Pagan, Secular, and Christian Options (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd Series B, Vol 3) (2003)
Christian Theory of Social Institutions (Dooyeweerd, H. Works. V. 1.) (1986, currently unavailable)
In the Twilight of Western Thought (1999)

Although there is not much in English by D.H.Th. Vollenhoven, Dooyeweerd's brother-in-law, one can find the following:

Introduction to Philosophy, ed. John H. Kok and Anthony Tol (2005)
The Idea of a Christian Philosophy, Essays in Honour of D.H.Th. Vollenhoven (includes selected and annotated bibliography of Vollenhoven by K.A. Bril) (1973)
Vollenhoven's Problem-historical Method: Introduction and Explorations, by Kornelis A. Bril, ed. by John H. Kok (2005)

Any intellectual wading more than ankle-deep into the work of these Reformational Philosophers soon realizes that he would be a fool to ignore the wealth of theoretical insights yielded by them over the last century. Dooyeweerd is probably among the two or three greatest Christian philosophers of the twentieth century from any tradition, period. I say this as a Catholic with more than a passing acquaintance with the work of Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Gabriel Marcel, John Courtney Murray, Bernard Longergan, and Alasdair MacIntyre, not to mention Karol Wojtyla. This is a philosophical tradition, in my opinion, with which every serious thinker ought to be acquainted and conversant.

The gnostic temptation

2007-03-22T10:49:00.000-04:00

Theology as Literary Criticism
By Ralph Roiter-Doister
I love the idea of theology as literary criticism. Much of literary criticism can be reduced to the explication of metaphorical language, or of the language of symbolism (which, with the flash and filigree removed, is only a more complex and challenging permutation of metaphor). The common denominator of both metaphor and symbol is the illusion that two separate things are actually one. With a simple metaphor, such deliberate confusion may amount to nothing more than a conceit, designed to highlight the cleverness of the author. With a symbol, however, a more complex statement is being made, the template of which is typically (1) A is not B, but (2) in a different and more profound way, A is B. The "more profound" way has to do with the cleverness of the author, of course, but also with his relationship with the reader: the author has set out in his text a deeper, more profound and elusive subtext, a hidden level of meaning which only the best prepared, most intelligent, most sensitive, most attuned, can fathom. It is a game of perspicacity, and also of exclusivity.

Thus, there is a certain gnostic tincture to literary criticism: a secret, "higher" knowledge which only the initiated can appreciate. The exquisite insights of Keats and Shelley are lost on workaday drudges, who prefer the ringside orations of WWF freaks of chemistry. The "quiet desperation" crowd is clueless before the altar of Shakespeare, and must wallow in the trashy cultural trough of soap operas and "American Idol" (and, as post-modernists might claim, the poor boobies don't even grasp the proper significance of that!)

But hark ye, a yet deeper layer. As the American university has transformed into a standard item of upper middle class accessorizing, many departments have had to staff up. The ability to teach is all well and good, but it has long been assumed by departmental pashas that performance and promotion has to be decided by more than just that: the basis for promotion in most English departments across the land is popularly referred to as "publish or perish", which means that you must demonstrate your attainment of the gnostic inner circle of knowledge by having your insights on a suitable topic accepted for publication in a book or a journal that is likely to be read only by other members of that inner circle. You must have your parchment placed in the gnostic Nag Hammadi, or face banishment to the bleak desert of the berber bourgeosie, where people actually perform manual labor for money, follow the doings of local sports teams, and watch the Fox Network – all willingly!

Quiet desperation indeed. And the effect of it has been to reduce literary criticism to an almost atomistic level of relativity – an incidental but absolute vindication of the postmodern thesis. My personal favorite example of this phenomenon is Moby Dick. Where once, not so very long ago, there was a fair amount of agreement about what was going on between Ahab and the white whale, today, Moby Dick resembles less a great work of literature than an abandoned strip-mine. The Bible, Shakespeare, Freud, Jung, John Calvin, Pierre Bayle, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Zoroaster, the Ophites, Hindu mythology, Polynesian mythology, even Husserl – it is common, in piling yet another interpretational apparatus upon the novel, to extol the greatness of its symbolism as lying in its ability to "support" all of this gnostic dead weight. A true knee-slapper, that! The post-modern horselaugh in a nutshell: there is no deeper knowledge, no deepest layer: the Nag Hammadi parchments may as well be blank.

How marvellous, then, to see theologians behaving like literary critics! From Han Urs von Balthazar's radical inflation of Shakespeare's "all the world's a stage" into "all's a stage, period", to ressourcement fascination with the perfumed vitalistic metaphors of Blondel and Bergson, to Scott Hahn's promotion of the family as a suitable symbol for the triune God, to the current competitive "gnosticizing", if you will, over the proper reading of the metaphor of communio (why, for example, it is more than just a shiny new term for the pockmarked old one, "dialogue"), our "call to holiness" seems to lead so many of us into pursuit of one or another "white whale".

Habermas Writes to Pope Benedict XVI, ally against the "Defeatism" of Modern Reason

2007-03-07T07:54:00.000-05:00

Sandro Magister (www.chiesa, Roma, March 7, 2007): Habermas Writes to Ratzinger, and Ruini Responds. Allies against the "Defeatism" of Modern Reason -- "The famous atheist philosopher invokes a new alliance between faith and reason, but in a form different from the one Benedict XVI proposed in Regensburg. Cardinal Ruini highlights the points of agreement and disagreement. And he insists on “the best hypothesis”: to live as if God exists."

[Hat tip to M.F.]

Theology's Captivity to Continental Philosophy

2006-12-29T14:27:00.000-05:00

R.R. Reno, associate professor of theology at Creighton University, has written a thoughful analysis of what he calls "Theology's Continental Captivity" (First Things, April, 2006, pp. 26-33). His thesis, essentially, is that contemporary theology has been taken captive by the continental tradition of philosophy, a tradition which in its contemporary postmodern recension is deeply inimical and corrosive of its own purposes, while ignoring the tradition of Anglo-American analytic philosophy, which could be most serviceable to its ends. Referring to trends in contemporary theology, he writes:

Catholic or not, in the main it cannot see the apparent renewal of philosophy in the English-speaking world. Alvin Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen, William Alston, and the rest of the Society of Christian Philosophers can meet for twenty years, but theology remains blind to ways in which analytic philosophy can contribute to the “evangelization of culture” and renewal of theology that John Paul II—and now Benedict XVI—identify as singular imperatives in the West.

There are exceptions. Bruce Marshall’s Trinity and Truth assesses and reformulates the remarkable new philosophical resources developed since Quine lead analytic philosophy out of its epistemological captivity. Marshall’s colleague, William Abraham, works out of the analytic tradition. There are self-described analytic Thomists. The late Donald Mackinnon helped his theological students see the value of analytic philosophy. But by and large, these figures and trends are eccentric to the main body of contemporary theology. The overwhelming majority of theologians today sift through Heidegger and his philosophical children and grandchildren to try to find useable material.

This impulse is understandable but misguided. Heidegger and his progeny have developed into a tradition unsuited to the traditional role of philosophy has played in Christian intellectual life. It has little to offer for the task John Paul II thought so pressing, to renew confidence in reason, and it does more harm than good in the technical work of systematic theology. (emphasis added)

I have little doubt as to Reno's general critique of the Heidegger and his stepchildren here, but less certainty about his prescription for harnessing theology to the horses of Anglo-American analytic philosophy. On the one hand, as profound as Heidegger's critical analytic of the western metaphysical tradition may be, it ultimately disappoints. Like the work of postmodern deconstructionists who followed him, it leaves one with nothing but the dismantled debris of disbelief. On the other hand, although significant figures have emerged from the ranks of the Anglo-American analytic tradition to make common cause with Christian theology, this is by no means a generalizeable feature of that tradition, any more than the supposition that all contemporary continental philosophers have been atheists. Some of the most outspoken opponents of the Christian "meta-narrative" and of foundationalist projects generally have emerged from out of the ranks of Anglo-American analytic tradition. Bertrand Russell, A.J. Ayer, and Richard Rorty come to mind. On the other hand, some of the most outspoken defenders of Christianity have emerged from the ranks of that continental tradition of Husserlian phenomenology in which Heidegger and his postmodern deconstructionist successors, such as the French Jacques Derrida, were themselves schooled. Dietrich von Hildebrand, Max Scheler, Edith Stein, Karol Wojtila, Robert Sokolowski, and Marold Westphal come to mind. So the first tentative inference I draw is that Reno's distinction may be precipitously overdrawn.

One of the first things one notes about the Existentialist tradition is that it includes both Christians (like Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Berdyaev, and Marcel) and atheists (like Nietzsche, Kafka, Camus, and Sartre -- though both Camus and Sartre were reverting Catholics at the end of their lives). The same polarity is evident in the subsequent movement of existential phenomenology, which includes both Christians (like Scheler, Jaspers and Ricoeur) as well as atheists (like Heidegger, Hartmann, and Merleau-Ponty). The Anglo-American analytic tradition is similarly checkered. Until the advent of Alvin Plantiga's "Reformed Epistemology" (belief in God as "properly basic") in the 1970s, it was dominated by agnostic and atheist evidentialists. Since that time, it is true, the Society of Christian philosophers and other such groups have produced a bugeoning discussion about Christian issues within the analytic tradition. One of the interesting results has been the debate between Catholic and Reformed Protestant philosophers over questions of religious epistemology, such as that sparked by Alvin Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology (cf. the anthology, Rational Faith: Catholic Responses to Reformed Epistemology, edited by Linda Zagzebski, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994).

In sum, I agree with Reno's critique of the disappointing and often nefarious fruits of the contemporary postmodern stepchildren of Heidegger and his fellow deconstructionists; however, I think it may be a bit too facile to suggest that the future and hope of Christian theology lies in looking to contemporary developments among Christian analytic philosophers as such. What of the current development in Protestant circles of the movement called Radical Orthodoxy? What of traditions of contemporary Catholic philosophy? What of the Polish movement of (phenomenological) Lublin Thomism? Realist Phenomenology? Personalism? What of the perspective of scholars such as Kenneth Schmitz? The new semiotic philosophy of John Deely?

Update 1/3/07 -- R.R. Reno responds:

Dear Phil,

Many thanks for contacting me and directing my attention to the discussion of Continental Captivity.

As I step back and think about the many discussions I have had since the article appeared, one thought (or perhaps cluster of thoughts) keeps coming back to me. The decisive figure in modern European intellectual life was Hegel. He saw that the “picture” of human existence provided by Christian teaching needed to be superseded by the “concept” of human existence provided by theology. To do so, theology takes a subordinate place within the overarching competence of modern intellectual life, as the final section of the Phenomenology clearly (and with remarkable contemporary relevance) shows. Or as my article says, with Hegel, born of an elite culture that could not longer affirm the ultimacy of Christian teaching, European philosophy reverts to the original, theological form of Hellenistic philosophy: theology and cure of the soul. Hegel was a conservative. He wanted to preserve the phenomenological core of the Christian worldview. Others were more radical. But what makes Continental philosophy distinctive is its collective “hermeneutical” agenda — it wishes to interpret us to ourselves. Again, this is a recovery of the ancient promise of philosophy — it will bring us to know ourselves, and in knowing ourselves, into participation with that which is lasting. Such a view of the vocation of philosophy cannot but collide with theology.

One of the folks commenting on your post wrongly portrays St. Augustine’s encounter of Cicero’s Hortensius as a step forward on the journey to God. In Book Eight, St. Augustine reports that it was Ponticianus’ story of the power of St. Antony’s biography that brought him to the painful fulfillment of the Socratic imperative: know thyself. “You took me up from behind my own back where I had placed myself because I did not wish to observe myself,” Augustine writes of the visit by Ponticianus, “and you see me before my face so that I could see how vile I was, how twisted and filthy, covered in sores and ulcers.” In this state of self-knowledge, St. Augustine reports that his enthusiasm for philosophy born in his youthful reading of Cicero bore no spiritual fruits — it only shifted his self-love from material indulgence to the labyrinths of an intellectualized self-conceit. Thus he observes in Book Six how astounded he was to discover that what he had imagined a momentous new beginning as a nineteen year old was, in fact, a long detour of delays and self-deceptions.

Compare the failure of philosophy to cure his soul with Book Nine. There, the ideals of classical philosophy are portrayed as realized and fulfilled through his recitations of the Psalm. The Psalms are the language of transformative self-knowledge. By reciting the Psalms, Augustine writes, “I was expressing the most intimate feelings of my mind with myself and to myself.”

One of the great achievements of medieval intellectual culture was its full use of the cognitive potential of classical philosophy within the spirit of the Augustinian critique of its failed promises of personal transformation. Medieval theology domesticated philosophy (handmaiden!), and in so doing, claimed to realize its true potential, both as a world-focused instrument for an ever more accurate picture of finite reality, and as a discipline of mind and spirit that prepared one for full reception of the gospel.

When I wrote the essay for First Things, I tried to provide an accurate assessment of how different modern philosophical traditions might relate to this medieval achievement. Perhaps I am mistaken. Surely a popular essay cannot do justice to the complexities of continental or analytic philosophies. But I would ask readers of my essay to read Hillary Putnam’s recent book, Ethics without Ontology. It is clearly a book in which an eminent analytic philosophy tries to take responsibility for the future of western culture, and it is highly critical of any possible role for theology in that future. Compare with Gianni Vattimo’s After Christianity. Putnam bases his analysis and recommendations on material, defeasible claims about the relationship between Christianity and scientific culture. Vattimo provides oracular, “hermeneutical” pronouncements about the career of Being. Putman argues against the role of theology in public life — Vattimo offers a post-Christian theology. As a teacher of theology and a person of scholastic leanings, I can use Putman’s objections to refine and develop an account of the relationship between theology and modern scientific culture. Vattimo offers an occasion to refine my knowledge of the logic of heresy. Both may be good exercises of the Christian intellect, but only the former holds out promise of renewing and deepening the tradition of Christian philosophy.

Thanks again,

Rusty

Note: For comments in progress on this article, please go to the comment box for Musings of a Pertinacious Papist, December 29, 2006.

Ronald Knox on Bishop Berkeley

2006-11-11T13:46:00.000-05:00

There was a young man who said, "God,
I find it exceedingly odd
That this tree I see should continue to be
When there's no one about in the Quad."
Reply.
"Dear Sir:
I am always about in the Quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by
Yours faithfully,
God."

[cited in James L. Cox, A Guide to the Phenomenology of Religion (London: T&T Clark, 2006), p. 13]

Society for the Defenestration of Television Sets

2006-10-30T16:40:00.000-05:00

Jerry Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television,

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business ,

Jane M. Healy, Endangered Minds: Why Children Don't Think And What We Can Do About It ,

Marie Winn, The Plug-In Drug: Television, Computers, and Family Life .

2006-10-28T11:58:00.000-04:00

"If somebody has a bad heart, they can plug this jack in at night as they go to bed and it will monitor their heart throughout the night. And the next morning, when they wake up dead, there'll be a record."

Mark S. Fowler, FCC Chairman

Feeling any better?

Protestant converts and ironies among phenomenologists

2006-08-15T16:36:00.000-04:00

We've all heard about the Catholic converts from among the ranks of the phenomenologists -- Edith Stein, Dietrich von Hildebrand, and (on a bit shakier ground) Max Scheler, etc. But how many of us have heard about the Protestant converts?

While in grad school, I had heard several rumors that the father of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl himself had converted to the Christian faith before his death, but no definite details. There was some mention about conversation between him and a nun on his deathbed. But these last details may have been apocryphal.

What I did discover last year, however, through a generous contact, was that Husserl had converted to the Lutheran faith; and it was hardly on his deathbed. Here is a quotation from an online Biography:

1886-7 was a pivotal year for Husserl. He moved to Halle, and studied psychology, writing his Habilitationsschrift, entitled, The Philosophy of Arithmetic. He converted to Christianity along with his fiancé and member of the Prossnitz Jewish community, Malvine Charlotte Steinschneider. They had three children together. (emphasis added)

Furthermore, on page 15 of a book titled Husserl-Chronik by Karl Schuhmann (Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), Husserl's baptism at a Lutheran church in Vienna is reported as having occurred on April 26, 1886:

"Husserl wird in der Stadtkirche der evangelischen Pfarr gemeinde Augsburgischen Bekenntnisses zu Wien auf den Namen Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl getauft. Als Pate fungiert Dr. Gustav Albrecht, Gymnasiallehrer in Maehrisch-Treubau."

Translation: "Husserl was baptized under the name of Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl in the town church of the evangelical Pfarr municipality of the Augsburg Confession in Vienna. Dr. Gustav Albrecht, a teacher at he Gymnasium in Maehrisch-Treubau, served as his godfather."

Again, on p. 16 of the same book, one reads: "Unter dem Einfluss Masaryks ging H. zum Protestantismus ueber" (Translation: "Husserl turned to Protestantism under the influence of Masaryks").

Another interesting conversion is that of Adolph Reinach (pictured left), who was of Jewish ancestry, converted to the Lutheran faith, but apparently a lapsed Lutheran for most of his life (Evelyn Waugh called him an "apostate Lutheran" in his 1952 review of a biography of Edith Stein). However, he evidently returned to his Lutheran faith while in the army before he was killed in action. In another twist of Providence, his widow, Frau Reinach (who later became a Catholic), by the resignation and hope with which she accepted her husband's premature death, was instrumental in shedding significant light on the significance of the experience of the Christian faith for Edith Stein, who had agreed to organize Reinach's unpublished manuscripts.

Finally, as to ironies, Thomas S. Hibbs, in his splendid review of Alisdair MacIntyre's magisterial Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue 1913-1922 in First Things (May 2006), entitled "The Beginning of the Journey," notes how MacIntyre points out in his book the intriguing parallels and differences between Stein (pictured right) and Heidegger (below):

At various points, MacIntyre offers tantalizing comparisons of Stein and Heidegger, whose lives have intersecting but opposed trajectories. Heidegger began as a Catholic, studied with Husserl, abandoned Husserl to embark on a radical deconstruction of traditional metaphysics, and ended up an ally of the Third Reich. Edith Stein began as a practicing Jew, turned to atheism, studied with Husserl, struggled to move beyond the limitations she detected in Husserl’s phenomenology, became a Catholic, moved toward traditional metaphysics, and was executed by the Nazis at Auschwitz.

Simply amazing!

Alasdair MacIntyre update

2006-07-24T17:50:00.000-04:00

In late 2005 Sheed & Ward, an imprint of Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, published Alasdair MacIntyre's latest book Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue: 1913-1922. Stein, canonized by John Paul II, was born into a devout Jewish family, became an atheist in her teens, then took up the study of philosophy under the famous phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl, during which period she also came into contact with Dietrich von Hildebrand and Max Scheler. Later she converted to Catholicism and entered the Carmelite order, and lost her life in Auschwitz to the Nazis. In his book, MacIntyre traces the neglected importance of Stein's philosophical development up to her conversion. Robert Sokolowski, a well-known phenomnologist in his own right, an professor at The Catholic University of America, comments that MacIntyre shows "how the word 'philosophical' can be said of a life as well as a doctrine. He describes the people, events and ideas in whose company Edith Stein lived in the decade that led to her baptism in 1922, and he defines phenomenology not as a method but as a dispotition to let the truth of things come to light."

In April of this year, Alasdair MacIntyre was also elected to the American Philosophical Society, the nations oldest learned society, founded by Benfamin Franklin in 1743 and headquartered in Philadelphia -- a singular privilege and honor. Alasdair MacIntyre is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Notre Dame's Center for Ethics and Culture.

Chicago conference shows interest in Scheler

2006-05-01T09:24:00.000-04:00

The Max Scheler Society of North America (MSSNA) conference in Chicago, in conjunction with the Central Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association, April 26-29, 2006, attracted a modest but happy increase in interest this year. With two full sessions, there was still hardly enough time to accommodate the number of speakers and respondents on the roster. (A full schedule of the Society's speakers and commentators may be found on the MSSNA program page.) Furthermore, it was good to see a significant number of younger newcomers in attendance this year -- one even a student from Belarus! More than anything, I had the sense of a great deal of work in progress, with many fecund ideas for future projects in the work. A great meeting with prospects for more to come. Hopefully we can get more of the younger Scheler scholars on board as speakers next time around. Further information on the Society may be found on the Max Scheler Society of North America (unofficial website). From time-to-time I will also post updates on Scheler scholarship to my Amazon blog, which, at this point, is devoted primarily to Scheler.

Gender and Divinity (continued)

2006-03-06T08:41:00.000-05:00

This post continues the discussion of "Gender and Divinity" (March 3, 2006) with Edgar Foster.

Blosser (from earlier post):
Nice point, again. Analogies always work only to a point. Obviously a corporate legal 'person' is an eidetic abstraction (the adjective 'eidetic' here serving no purpose but to appeal to your salubrious nomenclaturological appetite) and not a concrete reality, as God is. The claim Volf is making is that gender presupposes biological specification, and from that I surmise that you're wishing to infer or argue that gender cannot be specified in any other way but biologically. Would that be fair?
Foster:
I believe Volf himself argues that a sexed body is requisite in order for gender to subsist. He most certainly denies that gender specificity obtains IN DIVINIS:
"The ontologization of gender would ill serve both the notion of God and the understanding of gender. Nothing in God is specifically feminine; nothing in God is specifically masculine . . ." (Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, 171-173).
Blosser:
Well of course that's because God isn't a species of anything, though we are. But why should we suppose that gender must be understood in terms relative to biologized human species? (Notice I'm not necessarily referring here to God, though the question of God is of course relevant.)
Foster:
Gary Rosenkrantz and Joshua Hoffman similarly conclude:
"Indeed, assuming that God is nonphysical, and that a nonphysical being could not be biologically gendered,
it is impossible that God is biologically gendered" (The Divine Attributes, 2).
Blosser:
That's a moot point, though, isn't it; because I never disputed that a non-biological being couldn't be biologically gendered. I only raised the question whether gender necessarily is exclusively (or even ultimately, for that matter) biological.
Foster:
John Cooper rightly observes that God's supposed genderlessness is based on a number of philosophical assumptions about ultimate reality (ENS REALISSIMUM). But he sides with those who eschew gender specificity in God because Cooper thinks that Christian believers customarily have confessed that God is not gendered. Moreover, he maintains that Scripture indicates God is neither masculine nor feminine.
Blosser:
It would be interesting to know what he thinks those philosophical assumptions are (I don't have Cooper at hand.) His eschewing of gender specificity in God is the traditional view of Christian tradition, in any case. I don't necessarily disagree with that tradition. I like Kreeft's notion that God in Himself embraces whatever is in either human gender, since the original must logically contain everything that is in its image -- though Kreeft goes on, as you know, to insist that God is masculine in relation to us. There are both biblical and metaphysical arguments one could make, I would suggest, for that point (but we may have been through that together).
Foster:
Finally, Kallistos Ware makes a case that God is genderless based on God's boundlessness or qualitative limitlessness (i.e. infinity):
"God in himself is neither masculine nor feminine, since he infinitely transcends any such categories. Yet it does not therefore follow that we are free to apply to him whatever symbols we please."
Blosser:
Timothy (or Kallistos) Ware would seem to agree with Kreeft here.
Foster:
As far as I'm concerned, independent of special revelation, all we have to inform our concepts of God is our phenomenal experience.
Blosser:
What about metaphysical (logical philosophical) reasoning? (I would have said "metaphysical speculation," but that usually gives non-Catholics unfamiliar with the tradition of scholastic speculation apoplexy.
Foster:
. . . It is my belief that phenomena and special revelation should largely govern our view of gender IN DIVINIS. But you make an interesting comment above. Could you please explain what you mean by gender differences being expressed in one's psyche? I'm not sure that gender theorists would acquiesce to the notion that such differences are psychically expressed. For gender is considered a cultural taxonomy by most anthropologists. Volf ultimately contends that gender is rooted in a sexed body, but it is played out culturally or dynamically.
Blosser:
Well, let's assume for the moment that Volf is right and gender is rooted in a sexed body. Furthermore, let's add to that the quite widespread rejection of Platonic or Cartesian dualism one finds in contemporary discussions of human nature. Then we've got a syllogism:
Major Premise: Biological gender is innate.
Minor Premise: The psychological and biological are one, not two.
Conclusion: Psyches must be innately gendered too.
This would support such popular discussions as that found in the book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, the supposition being that, whatever connections these differences may have to biology (hormones, etc.), men and women have psyches that express themselves differently too.

One could of course deny the minor premise and still argue that psyches are in some way 'gendered' as well, though not by virtue of being rooted in a biologically gendered organism. For example, if one were to accept that the soul of a human being is capable of subsisting apart from the body in the 'intermediate state', as much of Christian tradition has assumed, then I think one could try to make the argument that the soul of, say, the apostle Luke is a masculine soul, whereas that of Lydia is feminine. If someone were to counter that such a difference were based solely on the soul's having been previously lodged in a biologically gendered body and its residual associations with that previous incarnation, I suppose one could counter with some notion of Creationism (as opposed to Traducianism) with respect to the origin of the human soul, where the identity is divinely determined independently of the biological process of organic generation and then (either simultaneously or subsequenly) infused into the biological organism. In that case, I suppose, one could argue that the identity of the soul -- including its gender orientation -- is something independent (even if concommitant with) biological gender -- perhaps somewhat as in Malebranche's doctrine of Occasionalism. But that's all another matter.
Foster:
You raise some issues that would probably take us down familiar beaten paths. What is mind? Is it metaphysically possible for mind to exist independently of the body? Is it possible (logically speaking) to conceive of mind as gendered independently of the body? These are tough questions with no easy answers, from the vantage-point of logic.
True. But that doesn't mean one can't build a decent metaphysical case for one view or another. Plato would have certainly thought the mind or soul capable of existence apart from the body. Aristotle was in two minds about the matter (no pun intended). On the one hand, he seemed to view the individual soul as the animating principle of the body, which would not survive the body. On the other hand, he seemed to accept the notion that the rational soul, or at least the rational part of the soul, is capable of subsistence independently of the body, though of course the question of whether such a rational soul could sustain a personal identity was moot for him. Coming up into the later Christian centuries, the notion of a soul that survives the body becomes somewhat entrenched, based on the tradition (found also among the Pharisees) that the body of the deceased would later be resurrected, and, thus, the emergent notion of an 'intermediate state' (see, e.g., Loraine Boettner's book Immortality, or, for that matter, the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on 'Immortality.'). I would also recommend the book with which you are familiar, John Cooper's book, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monistm-Dualism Debate (2000).

Foster:

Regarding your final sentence above, keep in mind that when Volf refers to God's lack of gender specificity, he probably has in mind God the Father or God the Son, not the risen and exalted "incarnate" Christ.

Blosser:

The above reference to Volf raises interesting questions. For example, the question to what extent the identity of the Second Person of the Trinity as "Son" is dependent or independent of the biologically incarnate and physically gendered historical Jesus. Someone might want to argue that the question of gender as pertaining to the preincarnate Logos purely rests on incarnational associations. One might raise the counter-argument, however, that the identity of the historical Jesus is already fully established in the pre-incarnate Logos, but only comes to expression in His incarnate form in the historical Jesus. After all, the Second Person of the Trinity is understood to be the "eternally begotten" Son of the Father prior to His incarnation.

A reflection on religious doubt

2006-03-03T14:58:00.000-05:00

You raised the question of 'doubt' today in a conversation with me. You said that you remembered when I was received into the Church and now found, ironically, that you were having doubts about your faith. You said that I must have "faith," as though it were some sort of achievement. This got me thinking.

Curiously enough, as soon as I got back to my office, I received an email with this provocative quotation on the question of 'doubt' by St. Thomas Aquinas:

"Doubt can happen to some in matters of faith but this is not because of any lack of certitude in the thing itself but because of the weakness of the human intellect. And yet it is at least true that whatever can be obtained in the knowledge of the highest realities is more desirable than absolutely certain knowledge in matters of least importance." (Summa Theologiae Part One, Question 1, Article 5).

The last sentence has, it seems to me, a Pascalian implication: though our knowledge in matters of least importance may seem much more epistemologically certain in terms of 'disinterested' scientific categories, our knowledge of the highest realities is much more desirable. I'm sure you've read Pascal, so I'll say no more about this now.

The first sentence, however, is no less intesting, because it supposes a distinction between what is subjectively certain and what is objectively certain. Matters of faith, it says, are not lacking in (objective) certitude, but may seem (subjectively) uncertain because of the weakness of the human intellect.

This leads me to an observation: I was puzzled when you referred to me as a person who seemed to "have faith," because it seemed to suggest that faith involves some sort of virtue. I can imagine only one circumstance in which that might be so: in the circumstance that one's fidelity is called upon in the face of prima facie data that may suggest the opposite -- as, for example, when one is confronted by 'data' suggesting his wife's infidelity, but gives her the benefit of his doubt because he trusts her (and it is virtuous in such a circumstance to doubt the 'data' and trust her).

On the other hand, I usually don't find myself called upon to exercise such 'virtuous' or 'heroic' faith in matters of religion -- perhaps because my faith has never been tested quite like that of Job in the Old Testament. In any case, this is where Aquinas' statement, to me, makes a great deal of sense. He says that our lack of faith comes from "weakness of the human intellect." He does not intend "weakness" here, I believe, in any sense suggesting any defect of moral virtue. Rather, I believe he is thinking about the metaphysical deficiency of the human intellect vis-a-vis its supernatural object, which, in this case, far surpasses its limited capacity. Because of this weakness, our knowledge of God must rest on a posteri inductions from the empirical record of history (about Jesus, the Bible, the Church, etc.), metaphysical inferences of an analogical nature based on divine revelation (about God's existence, and loving, merciful, fatherly nature, etc.), and existential intuitions forged out of our cultivation of a personal relationship with Christ (about his faithfulness, forgiveness, fidelity, etc.).

When someone says I have "faith," then, I feel rather awkward and uncomfortable if this suggests that faith is some sort of virtuous achievement, because faith -- as a species of "intellectual assent," is something effortless. It is effortless to believe in something when you have the right facts to support your belief. It becomes difficult to believe when those facts are covered over by apparenly contradictory facts suggesting the belief is not well founded. If I have faith, perhaps it is because some things seem evident to me that to not seem evident to others.

Basil Mitchell has a parable of a freedom fighter from the Second World War:

In an occupied country during the second world war, a freedom fighter meets a mysterious stranger and spends the night in deep conversation. The stranger tells the fighter that he is on the side of the resistance, even if at times he might be seen helping the enemy. They never meet alone again. The fighter's faith in the stranger is constantly tested. Sometimes he helps members of the resistance and they are grateful that he is on their side. Then the stranger is seen with German officers, going into their headquarters and attending parties with them. Sometimes he is seen in police uniform handing over patriots to the occupying forces. However the freedom fighter still trusts him. Sometimes he asks the stranger for help, and he receives it. Sometimes he asks and no help is given, but he still feels that 'the stranger knows best'. His friends in the resistance finally say, 'Well, what wouldhe have to do for you to admit that you are wrong and he is not on our side?' The partisan refuses to condemn the stranger. Sometimes his friends say that if the stranger's conduct is what he means by 'being on his side' then the sooner he switches sides the better. Despite being tempted to lose faith in the stranger, as he sometimes sees him appearing to help the enemy and sometimes not, the figher always says t himself, 'The stranger knows best.' (Source.)

On the one hand, from the point of view of the skeptical agnostic, the freedom fighter could easily be taken to be a sort of fideist -- someone who 'blindly' believes. On the other hand, from the point of view of the fighter, it could be that he 'knows' something that others do not see by virtue of having had this personal encounter with the stranger. It's possible that he may have different data. Or, it's possible that he may have no different data, but perceives the same data differently. We all know, for example, how people say the "love is blind" -- whereas it is almost the exact opposite that is the case. It is the lover who sees in the beloved what the indifferent skeptic may not see. The Baptist evangelist, Billy Graham, may wake up in the morning and see a world saturated with the handiwork of God. The French existentialist, Albert Camus, may wake up and gaze upon the same 'data' and see a world evacuated of all meaning, pointless and utterly absurd.

Why is this? Does it mean there is no objective reality, that meaning is in the eye of the beholder? No, of course not. But it may mean that the 'evidence' and 'facts' are not simply neutral 'data', but always presuppose an interpreting subject. The question, then, might be: whom do you trust? Whose understanding of life and the world seems most penetrating, insightful, and trustworthy?

Gender and Divinity

2006-03-03T08:46:00.000-05:00

Foster:

In one of our arresting dialogues many aeons ago, I wrote:
Making divine triadic relations the basis for gender content may seem perplexing to those who analyze gender scientifically. Volf's analysis may also lack cogency or persuasiveness for non-Trinitarian Christians. Nevertheless, his notion that gender is rooted in a sexed body appears to have potential explanatory power. Since God the Father evidently does not possess a corpus that is biologically sexed, it evidently follows that He no doubt transcends gender. See Volf's Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 172-176. For an alternative approach to the question of gender, see appendix [not yet numbered]."
You then offered the following rejoinder:
Nice point: and the inference is a bit like asking how a business corporation like Microsoft could possibly have any legal rights like a human person, since, unlike a human person, it has no physical hand with a pinkie on it.
In my opinion, Volf's argument that one should not ontologize gender in God because deity does not possess a sexed body is not analogous to denying legal rights to Microsoft because it does not possess a physical hand with a pinkie on it. According to Volf and other thinkers, gender appears to be rooted in a sexed body. The very concept of gender presupposes a sexed body (e.g. a corpus informed by hormones, genitalia, or chromosomes). On the other hand, it does not seem that legal rights are rooted in a sexed body. Legal rights may be rooted in human personhood; but that is not the same as contending that sexed bodies are requisite for the extension of legal rights.

Blosser:

Nice point, again. Analogies always work only to a point. Obviously a corporate legal 'person' is an eidetic abstraction (the adjective 'eidetic' here serving no purpose but to appeal to yo salubrious nomenclaturological appetite) and not a concrete reality, as God is. The claim Volf is making is that gender presupposes biological specification, and from that I surmise that you're wishing to infer or argue that gender cannot be specified in any other way but biologically. Would that be fair?

Again, I think Volf has a point. Human gender is certainly expressed biologically in our experience. I'm not sure that's enough to claim that its 'rooted' in biology in the sense that, say, gender differences that might express themselves in one's psyche are exclusively dependent upon biological gender differences. One would have to make that case, it seems to me, which would require further assumptions about the nature of a body and its possible relation to a mind or soul, even if one wishes to go in a holistic or non-dualistic direction.

I guess what I might contend is that the question of whether the Persons of the Godhead can be conceived of as gendered in some way might be analogous to the question of whether human minds can be conceived of as gendered in some way independently of the body. As far as the Godhead is concerned, of course, Trinitarians are stuck with one Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, whose gender is already accepted as specified, however the psycho-somatic question is settled.

Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005)

2005-06-17T12:10:00.000-04:00

MADRID, Spain, JUNE 16, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Paul Ricoeur, a leading philosopher of the 20th century, died serenely in his sleep May 20 in Chatenay Malabry, Paris, at the age of 92.

Ricoeur's death occurred as he would have liked, sources close to the French thinker told ZENIT. He died at home, not in a hospital. He was spared traumatic suffering and did not lose consciousness. His funeral took place as he requested: It was discreet, and held in his Protestant parish.

Carlos Diaz, founder of the Mounier Institute and professor of phenomenology of religion at Madrid's Complutense University, knew Ricoeur personally. Diaz said that with his death has silenced one of the last Christian voices of major influence in present-day philosophy.

In July 2003, Pope John Paul II awarded Ricoeur the Paul VI International Prize and acknowledged that the philosopher's research "manifests how fruitful is the relationship between philosophy and theology, between faith and culture."

Q: What has been lost with Paul Ricoeur's demise?

Diaz: With Paul Ricoeur's death, has gone one of the last Christian voices of greatest reach and authority in today's world of philosophical thought.

His acceptance is due essentially to the hermeneutic character of his discourse, which was open to all systems, and sought the best in each.

The negative aspect of this attitude is that it pays the price of a certain non-assertiveness, namely, a certain desire "not to stress reason." In contemporary thought this approach to problems is more acceptable than one that is more open and emphatic.

Q: For what will his legacy be noted and who will carry it on?

Diaz: His legacy -- given what was said earlier -- will not be disputed exclusively by anyone; rather, he will be remembered as a friendly and kind thinker.

He will not appear with striking signs anywhere. In my opinion, the fact that Ricoeur is one of the important philosophers of our time does not mean that he will mentioned in histories of philosophy, although he will undoubtedly be known by those who are more specialized.

This will be the case because, in my opinion, Ricoeur is more analytical than propositional.

Q: Personally, what aspect of the thinker fascinates you most?

Diaz: First, the faithfulness of his friendship and the recognition of the influence Emmanuel Mounier's teaching on him.

At a purely human level, when I had the good fortune to meet him, I was impressed by his friendliness, his delicate manner, combined with a certain humorous capacity, which was not expressed, however, in biting criticism. In addition, his humility -- I would venture to say his tenderness -- to converse with anyone, including the most conceited ignoramuses.

With reference to intellectual dimension, what most impressed me about Ricoeur was his capacity to understand any author in any language; his ability to dissect problems analytically seemed to me almost unsurpassable.

Q: Are we being left orphans of great Christian intellectuals of the stature of Ricoeur?

Diaz: No, not at all. First, because I have already said that his contribution to Christianity as such was not very thematic, and then because, how can we not expect the emergence from the Christian milieu of more theologians, namely, of those who think of the Lord by leaning their head on him?

A discussion about metaphorical language (continued)

2005-06-08T16:57:00.000-04:00

Interlocutor:

A trope (used rhetorically) = a figurative use of speech. Metaphors, similes and metonymic sememes are rhetorical tropes. A sememe = a linguistic sign (i.e. a word). A metasememe = Figuren der semantischen Deviation or metaphor, that is, a linguistic sign that undergoes some type of change (based on the etymology for "meta"). Cf. the German "Ubertragung." According to the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric edited by Thomas O. Sloane, a metaphor is a metasememe that is characterized by a substitution involving similarities. Is that a little more helpful? Sorry if some of this STOFF or my expressing of this STOFF comes across in an opaque manner. I do take pains to define terms in my dissertation.

Blosser:

Well, HELL, my friend, why didn't you jes' SAY SO!? Like I've always been tellin' ya, you could have just used everyday words, couldn't ya have? I mean, if a "sememe" means, in your own words, "a linguistic sign (i.e. a word)," then why in hell not just say "word"? Nothing like a good expensive edjumacation to complexify your speech, eh!

But thanks for the definitions. Now at least I KNOW yo jes puffin 'n' crappin'! (That, by the way is a metasemene (i.e., a Figuren der semantischen Deviation) used by Prof. Von Dohlen with a wide range of semantic meaning and broad manifold of diaphonic allusiveness and expansive acoustical space. (How am I doin'? ...)

Interlocutor:

On [the point that God is appropriately called "Father" rather than "Mother"], we agree. My only beef with you, it seems, is that we part ways on what "Father" communicates with respect to determinate concepts. I hold that no ontology of gender is implied by the expression "God the Father." You seem to think at masculinity is conveyed by the noun phrase above concerning the putative first person of the Trinity.

Blosser:

Something like that. Why, I wonder, would the divine Author of Sacred Scripture have insisted on having Himself portrayed so consistently in masculine terms in relation to us, even where He so clearly includes everything that is imaged in His creatures? As Genesis 1:27 says -- "So God created man in His own image ... in the image of God creatd He him; male and female created He them" (KJV). On the one hand, I since God is in some sense humanly incomprehensible, I agree that He is beyond gender as we understand gender. On the other hand, I believe He is portrayed in masculine terms for a good reason, and that this reason has to do with something in His nature.

Analogies are of limited use and I'm bad at them, but let me give a try: If puppies could talk and, in describing their human master to their young, say that he is a "doggie dad," there would be some tropological figurative truth in that statement. It wouldn't be literally true that the human master, an ordinary man, is a "doggie dad"; but it would be true in some sort of analogical sense.

But here is where I come to my point. Instead of being something LESS than a "doggie dad," wouldn't the human master be FAR MORE? Wouldn't the human master, assuming he is a human father, be far more a "daddy" than in any sense comprehensible to a doggie? That's how I picture God as "Father." Of course I can't prove that, since we're talking about the incomprehensible Holy Mighty and Immortal One here, but I think it pays due homage to the inspiration of Scripture and makes sense of biblical and Christian "God talk."

I don't want to be cornered into a position where I have to say that by calling God "Father," I'm making use of a figure of speech that has no more truth value than, say, speaking of the "Ground of Being," if you see what I mean. When I say God is our "Father," I want to be able to say that this means something not just subjectively for me but objectively about who God IS -- who He is in His relationship to us, yes, but also who He is in Himself (for He is eternally Father, just as the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, at least in my creed).

Interlocutor:

Metaphors are "as-if structures." The tropic expressions "Father" and "Mother" (when employed with reference to God) only say that God is a quasi-Father or quasi-Mother. It is as if God were a mother or father. In answer to your challenge, you won't hear me calling Jesus "mother" in corporate worship since that would violate our "liturgical" custom. But I'm sure that if any of my religious brothers or sisters heard me employing such nomenclature, they would assume that I had either gone bonkers or was speaking in a metasememic fashion.

While pursuing my studies, I've consulted linguists, philosophers of language, cognitive scientists, literary critics and I can only proffer a stipulative definition for the term "metaphor." Much of what I've read makes sense, whereas some of it does not. But I think there are good reasons for the mass confusion vis-a-vis metaphor.

Blosser:

Which mass confusion?

Interlocutor:

One reason is the irreducible phenomenon itself; another reason is the limited and fallible noetic structure that we all possess. There is also the problem of competing presuppositions and agendas amongst metaphor theorists. I'm sure you can think of yet other reasons linguists and philosophers have problems defining "metaphor" with any adequacy.

Blosser:

Indeed.

Interlocutor:

Truth-conditions are what obtain when a sentence or proposition is true. For example, truth-conditions
>obtain for the proposition "S is F" iff "S is F."

Blosser:

Permit the following humble translation: "Truth-conditions mean that if something is true, then it's true. In fact, its true only if it's true. . . . Profound . . .

Interlocutor:

Richard Swinburne argues that truth-conditions may obtain between complex metaphors and similes that express the same element of claim or assertion. Therefore, Swinburne contends that there is no real difference (respecting truth-conditions) between the famed metaphor "Life is a tale told by an idiot; full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" and the simile version "Life is LIKE a tale told by an idiot; full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." My contention, however, is that the same truth-conditions may also obtain between non-complex metaphors and similes, so that "God is light" and "God is like light" communicate the same truth.

Blosser:

While I might be able to say the same for the Shakespearian reference, I would argue that the two statements "God is light" and "God is like light" are not reducible to the same truth. "Like" sets up a relationship of resemblance within a context of difference between God and light, whereas "God is light" does not do so in the same way. Granted, it's what we call metaphor, but I think anyone can recognize the difference in how the statement feels. Further, granted the simplicity of the divine Nature, I would argue that there's a profound if incomprehensible sense in which God is all His attributes, which would mean that light (whatever the metaphorical meaning) IS the essence of God. That's different from "like," is it not? We could say the same for "God is love," or "God is life," or "God is goodness itself." A faithful Christian would hardly want to settle for the pale admission that God is "like" goodness, would he, especially when our Lord has said that "only One is good." Just some thoughts.

Interlocutor:

Moreover, one cannot forget about metaphorical entailments, wherein a set of figurative terms entail other tropic concepts (e.g. "Father" entails "Son" or suckling entails "mother" as in the Israelites feeding on the overflowing breasts of YHWH).

Blosser:

I think that almost goes without saying, even though I always find that mamory reference rather bizarre out of context. These terms, like "Father" and "Son" are ineluctably relational, just like the Persons of the Trinity are essentially "relations" in St. Thomas (although that term has to be finessed more carefully than many do, to avoid the impression of impersonal abstractness).

Interlocutor:

The problem I have with your "George is a teddy bear" example is that it seems to be based on what Max Black calls, "associated commonplaces" or what Aristotle refers to as ENDOXA. I could say, "Man is a wolf," and because of certain ENDOXA subsisting in a given Sitz-im-leben or koinonoetic context (i.e. shared presuppositional pool), some folks might conclude that I believe "man" is ferocious or carnivorous (in a metaphorical sense). But am I really saying anything about the inherent nature of men when I utter the claim about wolves? Am I not rather coining a metaphor based on certain ENDOXA? The same could be said for Schopenhauer's "A geometrical proof is a mousetrap."

Blosser:

"Koinonoetic context" ... That takes the cake! But let's work with that a moment. Granting the existence of a "koinonoetic (hey, we're on a roll: let's add "doxastic"!) context" in which the phrase "George is a teddy bear" means something to those sharing that context, the question may be asked: Does this mean the proposition asserts nothing about George or his own nature? I think not.

The statement "Man is a wolf" differs in not being person-specific but in referring to the genus "man." Given this fact, the statement might seem to make sense only where a certain ENDOXA or koinonoetic doxastic social context subsists -- where, for example, one is dealing with gang members in the inner city slums of Los Angeles or Chicago. Perhaps the meaning is specific to these violent individuals, in this case.

Still, couldn't one also generalize and say that given the fallen nature of man, the statement also communicates something true about man's fallen nature, the "in cuvatus in se" of his wolf-like violent heart? Whether metaphor or simile, the tropological semiotic locution (how am I doin'?) could still be understood as communicating something truthful about the nature of fallen man, could it not? Perhaps there's no significant difference over this little point.

Interlocutor:

A "mind-independent" property is simply an objective characteristic that obtains whether a given subject affirms the given property or not. A mind-independent property of water, it seems, is H20; a mind-independent property of heat, on the other hand, is molecules in motion. Whose mind? The mind of a rational creaturely entity or non-rational creaturely entity. In other words, there are evidently some properties of created entities (e.g. trees, lakes, stars, planets) that would obtain even if rational subjects did not exist on earth to apprehend or perceive them.

Blosser:

Oh, so you mean the objective property of a thing? Fair enough. That isn't so hard. But I do have a question. When you say that a mind-independent property of water is H2O, it sounds like you are calling the formal substance of a thing its "property." Isn't H2O WHAT water is, at least from the point of view of its chemical composition? I don't get how that's a property.

That aside, I think I understand what you mean. It sounds a lot like the Lockean distinction between primary and secondary qualities of a thing -- the primary properties belonging to the thing objectively (like weight), the secondary properties belonging to the thing as perceived subjectively (like sweetness).

Interlocutor:

My family and I concur with your words here. We too refer to Jesus' Father when we utter the Pater Noster. I certainly am not referring to God as mother or Aunt Bea when I say the prayer. On the other hand, I don't think I'm praying to a heavenly masculine figure either. As for your "innocence," it is refreshing. We need more of that in today's world.

Blosser:

At the risk of belaboring an earlier point, I would agree with your statement that we're not praying to "a heavenly masculine figure" only in the sense that God's Fatherhood has the property of being masculine in a sense that incomprehensably exceeds any of our pathetically girly-boy notions of what masculinity consists in. Which means, of course, that I can't help sensing when I pray to the Father what C.S. Lewis hints
at by calling a "rough male taste of reality."

A discussion about metaphorical language

2005-06-08T16:42:00.000-04:00

Interlocutor:

Earlier, I merely sent you the prayerful invocation uttered by Anselm, while purposely making no comment regarding his prayer because I was anxious to see what you had to say. Now I will point out that I too think his words are metaphorical. Since I know that is your position as well, it is now time to unfold the implications of your view.

Blosser:

You're erudition is surpassed only by your charm, my friend.

Interlocutor:

We agree on how "mother" was used by theologians like Anselm or Bernard in the Middle Ages. One thing that I don't understand, however, is why your view appears to lack consistency with respect to the metaphors "Father" and "Mother." For instance, when calling God "Father," you insist that the paternal trope (assuming it is one) informs those who encounter it via writing or speech WHAT God is. On the other hand, when medieval theologians address God as "Mother," you say that it does not tell us WHAT God is. I, however, believe that neither metasememe ("Mother" or "Father") tells us WHAT God is but only what the deity is like.

Blosser:

Hey, my friend, do you remember where Zaliv Kara Bagaz Gol is? No? Well, I don't rememember what a trope or a metasemem is. See if you can C.S. Lewis-ize your lingo a wee bit.

Well, I agree that both terms can be used to tell us what God is like, but, for whatever reason (I can't exactly say why), it's proper to call God our Father, but not proper to call Him our Mother, perhaps because the Bible tells us He's our Father.

Interlocutor:

Metaphors are "as-if structures." The tropic expressions "Father" and "Mother" (when employed with reference to God) only say that God is a quasi-Father or quasi-Mother. It is as if God were a mother or father. In answer to your challenge, you won't hear me calling Jesus "mother" in corporate worship since that would violate our "liturgical" custom. But I'm sure that if any of my religious brothers or sisters heard me employing such nomenclature, they would assume that I had either gone bonkers or was speaking in a metasememic fashion.

Blosser:

Well, like me, they probably wouldn't have much of a clue what your were talking about and might doubt whether you did either ...

Interlocutor:

As I mentioned earlier, Paul Ricouer argues that metaphors also dialectically preserve the tension between the "is" and the "is not," even if "is not" or "like" or "as" do not appear in metaphorical propositions. In another helpful study on religion and metaphor by Janet Soskice, we are told that metaphors are figures of speech that speak of one thing in terms suggestive of another thing. The key to remember here is that metaphors (as George Caird further points out) are linguistic assertions, not ontological pronouncements. They are literally false, but figuratively true. They assert unfamiliar identity syntheses, not create them. In short, I'm trying to say that whether one says "God is our Mother," "God is like a Mother," or "God fed the Israelites from his overflowing breasts," we are pretty much asserting the same thing. The truth-conditions for all three propositions are identical, even though not all metaphors assume the syntactical form "S is P" or "A is B."

Blosser:

Of the "historical-critical" approach to the Bible, C.S. Lewis says that at first sight it is very convincing. I think I should be convinced myself, he ways, but that I carry about with me a charm -- the herb MOLY -- against it (you may know the classical reference to the herb Hermes gave Odysseus against the wiles of Circe).

I sometimes feel thus about some of the experts in linguistic theory. They seem to find ways of twisting things around so that they no longer make any common sense.

I can see the angle of your argument. I understand the inferences. But I don't think I can buy it. I just do not see the "truth-conditions" (whatever that means) as "identical."

You distinguish between linguistic assertions and ontological predications, what is literally false and figuratively true. On one level, I agree with these distinctions as you apply them to metaphor. It's literally false that George is a teddy bear, though figuratively true. In that sense it's not an ontological predication, granted. But I don't want to follow those, like Tillich and many others, who want to make "metaphor" and "figurative" reducible to or translatable into something that can be re-stated "more accurately" in more "scientific" terms. How would we do that with "George is a teddy bear"? Try it. It doesn't work. Somethng is lost rather than gained by the attempt. So I want to say that George's "teddy bear-ness" does predicate something about his being even if it does
so in a non-literal way. It doesn't mean nothing (or just anything) to call George a "teddy bear." For those of us who know him, it has a very precise recognitional Wesenheit (that was for your benefit)! One thing for sure, George ain't no "chihuaha."

Interlocutor:

Repeat after me, my friend and instructor. :-)

Metaphors do not literally synthesize or create identity: they assert it. They create meaning or new significances by stating that "S is P." I don't think what I'm suggesting diminishes the referential significance of terms such as "Father" "Shepherd" or "King." Nor am I sure that by "symbol," Tillich means to say that there is no actually existing referent for terms such as "Son" or "Mother." I could be wrong here, though. The bottom line is that when I predicate paternity or maternity of God metaphorically, I may be referring to God, but I am not asserting that he has the mind-independent properties of maternity/paternity.

Blosser:

"Metaphors do not literally synthesize or create identity: they assert it." I would also add that, when properly ("fittingly") used, metaphors assert identity based on the discerned nature of a being.

As for poor, schizoid Tillich, it all depends on which genre of his works you read-- his pastoral writings or his systematic writings. In the former it sounds like his metaphors and symbols actually refer to something. In his systematics works, it's not clear that they couldn't refer to just about anything, or nothing in particular. But that's another story.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that when you call God "Father" you aren't asserting that He has "mind-independent" properties of paternity. Can you give me an example of a mind-independent property? Whose mind? What property?

As for my humble household, when we say "Our Father, which art in Heaven ..." we're referring to our Heavenly Father. Not a mother hen. Not Aunt Abbey. Not Boy George. Not even God the Son. But to His Father and ours. But of course my "innocence" must be quite frustrating here. Sorry about that.

Kierkegaard against feminism

2005-05-28T13:49:00.000-04:00

Beautiful Words About Women

by Alice von Hildebrand

To write on Kierkegaard's thought is an act of daring. In a way this is true of many philosophers. One only need think of the various interpretations given to Aristotle.

Those acquainted with the voluminous literature written about the greatest Danish philosopher (and Kierkegaard remarked wittingly that "there is only one") will face a similar difficulty. Who was he? One thing is certain: Soren Kierkegaard seemed to derive an impish pleasure from putting us off track. To my knowledge, no other thinker has written a series of works under various pseudonyms. When he published Either/Or [1: Kierkegaard's Writings, Vol. 3] (a work which unlike most of his publications enjoyed great success), it was rightly suspected that the witty young man might be the author. He denied it in very strong terms, but later acknowledged his authorship. He made this confession at a time when he simultaneously claimed that none of his early works contain a single word which is his! Yet, Walter Lowrie, a devoted admirer of Kierkegaard, argues that several of them contain valuable biographical information.

In a remarkable book published posthumously, The Point of View for My Work As an Author, Kierkegaard informs us that his intention from the very beginning of his career as a writer was religious -- something which is surprising indeed if one reads such works of his as Either/Or. He intimates that, given the secularized nature of Denmark, the indirect way of communication was the one which had a chance of catching the attention of "this individual who is my reader" and bringing him to Christianity (later, however, he changed his mind). Kierkegaard was definitely a committed Christian.

It is not my purpose here to discuss some of the contradictory interpretations of his thought that scholars have offered; such would call for a whole book. In the framework of this article, my modest concern is to shed some light on Kierkegaard's views on women. His position is ambiguous; he has written about them both beautifully and spitefully. Deal Hudson, in his book An American Conversion, tells us that he did not like Kierkegaard because the latter "did not like women -- a remark likely to attract the sympathies of the fair sex.

I am going to take to Kierkegaard's defense and show that the few regrettable things he wrote about women are largely compensated by the beautiful things he wrote about them, and that his insights into the female personality and role in human and religious life could only come from the pen of someone who has loved.

That Kierkegaard loved Regina Olsen [pictured below right] is something no one can deny, for he says so explicitly and unambiguously. It is true that a German "scholar" by the name of Schrempf contested this fact. But Kierkegaard was in a privileged position to know his feelings for his fiancee; I find it wiser to trust him.

The Soren Kierkegaard-Regina Olsen love story is certainly one of the most tragic in the history of great love affairs. He fell in love with her; he conquered her; he got engaged to her and was hoping to marry her. Then, to his horror and despair, he realized that he could not achieve the universal, tread the common path, and marry the girl he loved. Kierkegaard was a penitent; he had received a special calling which was not compatible with marriage. He often refers to the tragedy of Abraham, who was called upon to sacrifice the son he loved. To read about how he broke off his engagement, about her despair, about the humiliation to which her proud father submitted himself by begging him not to abandon his daughter, and the qualms of conscience that Kierkegaard suffered make at times painful reading. To the end of his life, he makes reference to this drama. At times, he hoped he could, after all, make her his wife. All these hopes were dashed when he found out that she was engaged to a previous beau that his ardent courtship had eliminated from the picture. That this was a serious blow, that he probably had to fight against a certain bitterness and disappointment, is not unlikely. He left her his literary bequest -- this was rejected by Regina's husband, and it fell into the hands of Kierkegaard's older brother, Peter. But this is not my concern here.

My claim is that someone who has written so beautifully about the love between man and woman, who has tasted its sweetness and enchantment, cannot be a misogynist. Someone who has never been deeply moved by the sublime beauty of a sunset would be well advised not to give a course on aesthetics.

What does Kierkegaard have to say on the topic of women? We shall examine his observations in The Woman Who Was a Sinner, an "Edifying Discourse" he composed shortly before his death, and in Either/Or, a book in which the young Kierkegaard etches two radically different conceptions of life: Either is sheer hedonism; Or is an ethical conception of life and marriage. We shall purposely omit the unflattering remarks that he puts in the mouth of characters etched in The Banquet, and those clearly influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer, the misogynist par excellence. My exclusive aim is to show that the sublime things he has written about women prove that the true Kierkegaard - the fiance of Regina -- had deep insights into the mystery of femininity and the crucial role that women play in both human and religious life.

He refers to "that unspeakable blissful feeling, the eternal force in the world - earthly love" (Or). He puts the following words in the mouth of Judge William, the defender of love and marriage in Or: "For what would all my love and all my effort avail if she did not come to my aid, and what would I avail if she did not arouse in me the enthusiasm to will?" How profoundly has Kierkegaard understood that feelings -- powerful as they may be -- have little chance of survival if they are not backed up by the will, which gives them their full reality and validity (ibid.). Dietrich von Hildebrand, in his Ethics, calls this "sanctioning" valid feelings, just as one is called upon to disavow "illegitimate feelings." How far Kierkegaard is from cheap romanticism and the dangerous wallowing in one's own emotions sought for their own enjoyment and in which the object motivating them is purely instrumental to achieve this self-seeking purpose.

Kierkegaard addresses himself to the perennial topic, the weakness of the female sex, so strikingly formulated by Shakespeare: "Frailty, woman is thy name." Kierkegaard comments: "Woman is weak -- no, she is humble, she is much closer to God than man is. Hence it is that love is everything to her, and she will certainly not disdain the blessing and confirmation which God is ready to bestow upon her .... Man is proud,he would be everything, would have nothing above him (Or). These are certainly not the words of a misogynist!

Kierkegaard understands the crucial role that God intends to play in a woman's life. The degradation nurtured by the feminist movement is to convince women that their greatness resides not in love -- a self-giving abandonment -- but in rivaling males in creativity and exterior accomplishments. It is a repeat of the sin of Esau, who sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. A woman's mission is essentially a religious one. The noble role of women is religious, "for to a woman it belongs essentially to pray for others" (Ibid.).

That it is easier (or rather less difficult) for a woman to be humble finds its expression in the following words: "A first love is humble and therefore rejoices that there is a power higher than it. If only for the reason that it has someone to thank. (It is for this cause one finds a pure first love more rarely in men than in women)" (Ibid.).

Kierkegaard has also intuited that love is the crucial factor in a woman's life. It is the value that unifies her, that makes sense of her existence. It is easy for her to grasp the meaning of the famous sentence in The Canticle of Canticles that he who gives up everything for love would consider this donation as nothing. He writes: "It would be very difficult to convince a woman that earthly love in general might be sin, since by this affirmation her whole existence is destroyed in its deepest root" (Or).

That many women betray this calling is, of course, true, just as it is also true that many men lose sight of their noble mission to help and protect the weak. But a philosopher's approach is not sociological. He is not -- or should not be -- concerned with statistics, but with "essences" -- the metaphysical "secret" of a being, unveiling what it is called upon to be. How profoundly has Kierkegaard grasped the admirable complementarity which God has established between man and woman: "It ennobles the whole man by the blush of bashfulness which belongs to woman but is the corrector of man; for woman is the conscience of man.... His proud wrath is quelled by the fact that he turns back constantly to her. Her weakness is made strong by the fact that she leans upon him (Ibid.).

Wrath is weakness under the appearance of strength; to acknowledge one's weakness and call for help is true strength. This is why St. Paul writes, "It is when I am weak that I am strong" (2 Cor. 12:10). Man needs woman; woman needs man. (this is an admirable teaching of Catholic theology, illuminating the role that Mary -- the woman par excellence -- played in redemption).

Kierkegaard remarks that, according to Genesis, it is the man who leaves his father and mother, not the woman. This certainly indicated that the Bible does not look down upon the woman: "A man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife" (2:24). We would expect it rather to say that woman shall leave her father and mother and shall cleave unto her husband, for woman is in fact the weaker sex. In the scriptural expression there is a recognition of woman's importance, and "no knight could be more gallant toward her" (Or).

Kierkegaard rejects the view that marriage is exclusively the necessary means to procreate. But one should not draw the conclusion that he would favor artificial birth control or abortion. He sees the child as a fruit of love, and not as the exclusive purpose of marriage, which, if it were so, would render love an unnecessary addition: "And yet such a marriage [exclusively for the sake of procreation] is as unnatural as it is arbitrary, nor has it any support in Holy Scripture. For in the bible we read that God established marriage because 'it is not good for man to be alone,' hence in order to give him company (ibid.). And: "it is always an insult to a girl to want to marry her for any other reason than because one loves her" (ibid.).

That Kierkegaard understands the dignity of a child is expressed in the following words: "the highest thing one person can owe another is ... life" (ibid.). And: "Children belong to the inmost and most hidden life of the family.... every child has a halo around its head.... the father will feel with humility that the child is a trust, and that he is in the most beautiful sense of the word only a stepfather" (ibid.).

Kierkegaard has a keen sense of the mystery of love. How far it is from a cold, rational calculation in which one makes a careful list of desirable qualities that a spouse should possess.

An objection that could be raised to what Sheldon Vanauken calls "the wrinkled of heart" (A Severe Mercy) is that the Church does not ask the Bride and the Bridegroom whether they love each other, but whether they are willing to bind themselves with the bonds of marriage. Kierkegaard has a prompt answer: "If the Church does not ask if they love one another, this is by no means because it would nullify earthly love, but because it assumes it" (Or). He adds: "all the talk about the disparagement of love by the Church is utterly unfounded and exists only for him who has taken offense at religion" (ibid.).

These quotations should be read in connection with Kierkegaard's claim that, for women, love is everything. He sheds light on the role she is to play in marriage -- a communion that should always be lit by the light and warmth of love, for marriage is the pillar of society.

Not only is the woman the heart, but because the affective sphere is her anchor, she is given a great talent to read into the soul of her mate. Kierkegaard writes: "who is such a judge of men as is a woman?" (ibid.).

The importance of women is often downgraded or even denigrated because she is called upon to deal with the small and indispensable tasks of human life -- the tasks that the French poet Verlaine calls "les travaux ennuyeux et faciles" (the boring and simple tasks). But Kierkegaard's sharp glance makes him understand that a special loving talent is required to elevate small things through the loving attention given them. A little French girl (St. Therese of Lisieux) who became a saint and died some 40 years after him would unveil a secret of sainthood: Do everything with love, even small tasks such as cleaning or cooking. Kierkegaard writes: "She [woman] was created to deal with the small, and knows how to give it an importance, a dignity, a beauty which enchants. Marriage liberates one from habits, from the tyranny of one-sidedness, from the yoke of whims" (ibid.).

One of Kierkegaard's deep insights is his understanding that "habit" is a deadly enemy.
To say one's prayers by rote while thinking about something else; to kiss one's spouse out of habit, or to go to church because one has always done it is to inject a poison into meaningful things. This is why he writes in Works of Love [Kierkegaard's Writings, Vol 16] that "one hundred cannons should warn us against the danger of habit." Habit puts dust on everything it touches. It kills poetry; it freezes the buds of spring.

Kierkegaard has also grasped the paradoxical character of women, a paradox which some men find so difficult to understand, that a man is best equipped to understand a woman -- and vice versa. But this presupposes a deep mutual love. St. Claire of Assisi was no doubt the best disciple of St. Francis of Assisi; St. Jeanne Francoise de Chantal had a unique understanding of the holiness of St. Francis de Sales. This is a pattern that keeps repeating itself.

The mysterious side of women is expressed by Kierkegaard in the following words: "It belongs to her nature to be more perfect and more imperfect than man. If one would indicate the purest and most perfect quality, one says 'a woman'; if one would indicate the weakest, and most feeble thing, on says 'a woman'; if one would give a notion of a spiritual quality raised above all sensuousness, one says 'a woman'; if one would give a notion of the sensuous, one says 'a woman'; if one would indicate innocence in all of its lofty greatness, one says 'a woman'; if one would point to the depressing feeling of sin, one says 'a woman.' In a certain sense, therefore, woman is more perfect than man, and this the scripture expresses by saying that she has more guilt" (Or).

Kierkegaard confessed on his death bed that his life had been a long suffering. He knew its bitter taste and he also knew its purifying effect if properly accepted and embraced. No doubt, this gave him a deep insight into the fate of women to give birth in pain and anguish; he knew that it is probably easier for a woman to understand that there is a deep bond between suffering and love, suffering out of love. "Is she not as close to God as you? Will you deprive her of the opportunity of finding God in the deepest and most heartfelt way -- through pain and suffering" (ibid.).

It also was his conviction that women have a religious mission toward men. Whereas Eve was a temptress who led her husband to a fall, she finds in Christianity her true role -- to help him toward God: "above all have a little more reverence for women," Kierkegaard wrote, "believe me, from her comes salvation, as surely as hardening comes from man.... It is my conviction that if it was a woman that ruined man, it was woman also that has fairly and honestly made reparation and still does so; out of a hundred men who go astray in the world, ninety and nine are saved by women and one by immediate divine grace....You can easily see that in my opinion woman [when she restores a man to the state] makes due requital for the harm she has done" (ibid.).

Kierkegaard is a radical enemy of feminism. He views it as a diabolical plan to ruin both femininity and the salvific role women are called upon to play. He writes: "I hate all talk about the emancipation of woman. God forbid that ever it may come to pass. I cannot tell you with what pain this thought is able to pierce my heart, nor what passionate exasperation, what hate I feel toward everyone who gives vent to such talk" (ibid.).

Prophetically, Kierkegaard foresees the horror of a unisex society: "But the poor wretches known not what they do, they are not able to be men, and instead of learning to be that, they would ruin woman and would be united with her on terms of remaining what they were, half-men..." (ibid.).

One could object that I am contradicting myself: I have mentioned about that Kierkegaard claimed that his early works do not reflect his own views. But the same thing can be said of The Banquet, which contained some very unflattering remarks about the weaker sex.

This is why I shall conclude by referring to an "Edifying Discourse" to his Training in Christianity that Kierkegaard wrote shortly before his death and which I consider to be his "last will" on the question of femininity. It is titled The Woman Who Was a Sinner. No one reading it could possibly draw the conclusion that Kierkegaard was a misogynist.

The Woman Who Was a Sinner contains a sublime eulogy about woman -- the match of which is not easy to find. It should be read by everyone who has a sincere interest in Kierkegaard's thought. No commentary upon this text can be satisfactory, for what Kierkegaard writes is so admirably formulated that grateful receptivity alone is called for. The "ungodly rage" of feminists might have been somewhat quelled had they been acquainted with the insights of a thinker who through prayer and suffering had undertook the noble mission of those who are told to "keep silent in the churches" (1 Cor. 14:34). The calling of women is to piety and godliness. This is precisely what it means to remain silent -- for to keep silent in front of God is to drink at this holy fount of wisdom which teaches one godliness.

The danger of many men -- be they professors Kierkegaard hated so much, be they contemporary theologians who want to explain everything and irreverently tear the veil concealing holy mysteries - is that they raise questions about things that God, in His infinite wisdom, has chosen not to reveal. Instead of reverently dwelling on the rich fullness of revealed truths, they want to conquer by reason "the secrets of the kingdom" (Mt. 13:11). The result being that because of their proud lack of receptivity toward the content of divine revelation, they arrogantly want to teach God -- and become very foolish in their worldly wisdom (1 Cor. 1).

How different from Mary's attitude. And because of her faith and silence, her holy receptivity, she was granted to become the mother of the Savior. Kierkegaard had already mentioned in Or that "woman believes that with God all things are possible." Now, his theme is to praise Mary, the blessed one among women who "kept all these things in her heart" though not understanding. No doubt, for him, Mary was the model of femininity, and Mary Magdalene, the sinner, who was also at the foot of the cross, learned from her that "one thing alone is necessary" (Lk. 10:42).

Feminism manifests its evil genius by offering a caricature of femininity and misreading the order of St. Paul that women should "keep silent in the churches." To feminists it seals their inferiority. In fact, the very opposite is true: To remain silent is to accept being fecundated, and to be fecundated by God is to be blessed. It is written in the Gospel that men will be held responsible for every unnecessary word they have uttered. One shudders at the thought of the endless perorations of some pompous theologians who inundate libraries with "theories" that are at odds with God's revelation, which as Kierkegaard writes, should be read on one's knees -- as one reads a letter from one's fiancee.

Just as one thing alone is necessary, Mary Magdalene teaches us that there is one source of great sorrow: grief over one's sinfulness. Real contrition is a response of profound grief because one has offended the Holy One whom one now loves with every fiber of one's being. Mary Magdalene has -- through God's grace -- ascended very high on the scale of perfection, but the higher she finds herself, the more she will recall that she is "the woman who was a sinner." The more miserable she sees herself to be, the more she loves the One who has come not for the righteous but to save sinners. Mary Magdalene will not be forgotten because she did not forget -- and did not want to forget -- that she was a sinner who has been forgiven.

Kierkegaard grants us that man is stronger than "weak woman." But this very weakness is compensated -- as he emphatically underlines - by the fact that she is "unified." Man has many thoughts; Mary Magdalene has but one. She has one sorrow, that she is a sinner. She has only one burning desire: to be forgiven. This burning desire to be forgiven is expressed by her tears, and the gift of a precious perfume poured on the Holy One. The fact that she dries His feet with her hair, expresses her religious "seriousness," for, Kierkegaard tells us, this is precisely what seriousness means. Mary Magdalene's sorrow over her sinful life does not drive her to despair -- the "sickness unto death" -- but to loving confidence that He who is love and mercy will cleans her of her sins. Responding to the "offense" taken by the disciples that money spent on this precious ointment should have been given to the poor, Christ says that there will always be poor among us, and that wherever His Gospel will be preached, her deed of contrition and love will be proclaimed. This precious perfume symbolizes an act of adoration -- the only adequate response to God. Mary Magdalene teaches us that this response to His holiness is the liturgical act par excellence. This is what the Holy Liturgy teaches us. This is what is being forgotten today.

Mary Magdalene's loving repentance makes her scorn shame, disgrace, and humiliation: She is publicly acknowledged to be a sinner. But all this she tramples under foot because she loved Him who is love, and knows that there is greater joy in Heaven for a repentant sinner than for one hundred "just" who have no need of repentance.

Kierkegaard tells us that Mary Magdalene (a model for all women) experiences "infinite indifference" -- an indifference which is at the antinodes of the cynical, diabolical "nothing matters" attitude which has gained currency in some modern literature. What does it matter what people think of her or say about her? She has conquered this holy indifference because she knows that men tend to be chatterboxes who make noise but say nothing. She loves, and trust that much will be forgiven her because she has loved much.

To conclude, let me refer to Pastor Boesen's testimony about Kierkegaard, he who was Kierkegaard's closest friend. Boesen tells us that Kierkegaard was the purest man he had ever known, that he "stood in a finer, purer and higher relationship to women" than other men. It is impossible to be pure and not to respect women.

In light of this, it should be evident that to compare Kierkegaard to Nietzsche -- who, brutally, advises men never to forget their whip when they go to a woman -- is not only unfortunate but very unjust.

Man-haters and woman-haters are to be pities indeed because they are blind to the biblical teaching that they are made for each other and are called to help each other to love the One who is the source of all love.

[Alice von Hildebrand [pictured left] is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at Hunter College of the City University of New York. She is the author, most recently, of The Soul of a Lion (Ignatius), about her late husband, the Catholic philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand [pictured right]; The Privilege of Being a Woman (Sapientia Press); and By Love Refined [Letters to a Young Bride] (Sophia Institute Press). She has written extensively for many Catholic periodicals and appears frequently on Mother Agelica's EWTN. This article is reprinted with permission from New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley CA 94706, U.S.A.]

Best introductions to Aristotle and Thomistic metaphysics

2005-02-19T12:56:00.000-05:00

Anyone wishing to master or even gain an elementary acquaintance of Aristotelian thinking or Thomistic metaphysics must begin by learning what amounts to a new language--the language of Aristotle (the teacher of Alexander the Great). In many ways this is analogous to learning the language of computers, where one must learn about "hard drives," "USB ports," "gigabytes," "CD-ROMs," and so forth. In the case of Aristotle and Thomistic metaphysics, you have to become familiar with the vocabulary that includes words like "substance," "accidents," "quality," "relation," "essence," and so forth.

One of the best and most painless introductions to this Aristotelian language is Mortimer Adler's popular classic, Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy. Adler follows the divisions of learning found in Aristotle (theoretical, practical, and productive) and divides up his book into corresponding parts, beginning in reverse order with the most easily accessible and progressing to the more difficult: (1) making, (2) doing, (3) knowing. Adler is exceptionally gifted at simplifying difficult concepts, and makes use of extensive practical illustrations which bring Aristotle's concepts readily to life. He also appends an annotated bibliography guiding the reader where to find specific passages in Aristotle's writings catalogued by topic.

When it comes to Thomistic metaphysics, one of the best introductions is Peter Kreeft's annotated anthology of St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, entitled A Summa of the Summa: The Essential Philosophical Passages of st Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica Edited and Explained for Beginners. Kreeft's footnotes are invaluable for the beginner in St. Thomas Aquinas's writings. Of course, there are numerous commentaries and synopses of St. Thomas's philosophy and theology available. Among the best are G. K. Chesterton's classic, Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox. The "Dumb Ox" is not intended as a slur on St. Thomas but refers to the biographical facts of St. Thomas's shyness and portliness as a student, when he acquired the sobriquet, or nickname. Chesterton's book is remarkably well written and insightful. Also good is Josef Pieper's Guide to Thomas Aquinas, as well as Etienne Gilson's more scholarly and excellent study, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Anyone wishing to make their way thence into the deeper waters of metaphysics proper would do well to start with the clear and indispensably important introductions by Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers and The Unity of Philosophical Experience. The author is clearer than any other writers to be found in English, and will prevent the reader from chasing down blind alleys and undue confusion. Gilson also offers constant reference to the historical development of metaphysical ideas, which helps to furnish the rationale for the development of various concepts in their original context. Also excellent is the work of Gilson's pupil, Joseph Owen, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, which is neither elementary nor "Christian" except in the sense that the metaphysical concepts are employed, among other things, in application to the Christian theology of God. Owens' detailed historical footnotes are invaluable for intermediate and advanced students. Those who would profit from a discussion by a philosopher equally acquainted with classic Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics and contemporary physics may enjoy reading Means to Message: A Treatise on Truth by Stanley L. Jaki, a Hungarian-born Catholic priest of the Benedictine Order who has doctorates in both philosophy and physics, the author of almost forty books on philosophy and science, and the recipient of the Lecomte du Nouy Prize for 1970 and of the Templeton Prize for 1987, and was invited to give the prestigous Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh in both 1975 and 1976, as well as the Fremantle Lectures at Oxford in 1977. His books may be purchased at a discount directly from the author at

Rev. Stanley L. Jaki
P.O. Box 167
Princeton, NJ 08542-0167
Tel. 609-896-3979 (call around 8 pm.)

A full catalog of Dr. Jaki's books is available online at his homepage, and his books may also be purchased through his major distributor at Real View Books Shipping Office.

The Matrix, and faith that the world is more than five minutes old

2005-02-16T10:52:00.000-05:00

Interlocutor:

You'll recall that for the guy who wanted to be put BACK into the Matrix that the beef and the red-dress woman were real enough. What was really real wasn't relevant to him. Sadly, knowing the beef is real might mean that in reality it's just moldering, fatty hamburger. Knowing the woman is real might mean knowing that you had too much to drink the night you thought she was pretty or that her dress was red.

Blosser:

True. The philosophically relevant point is that not caring about existence, but only for essence (actually accidents of taste and appearances of the womanish phenomenon in what looks like the red dress) corresponds to "essentialism," while caring about being corresponds not only to "existentialism" but the classical metaphysical position of, say, Thomas Aquinas, that the principal features of reality are "esse," "act" and "perfection."

While it may be true for Kant that "being" isn't a "real predicate," and therefore can't be a content of simple apprehension (the first act of the mind), nevertheless it's also true that we apprehend things as "existing" in our everyday acts of judgment (the second act of the mind) in a complex synthesis of a formal (non-material) judgment that things either exist or don't: like "I'll take the real $100 over the imaginary $100 dollars, please."

Interlocutor:

I suspect G.K. Chesterson, were he pressed on the issue, would have to concede that there's faith and then there's faith. There's the faith that, based on one's past experiences, one can reasonably predict future happenings, such as the daily rising of the sun or that roses will continue to smell like roses. Then there's axiomatic Faith which needs no independent verification because it is, definitionally, a matter of faith. To confuse the two, in my humble opinion, is bad epistemology.

Blosser:

If I understand you correctly, you're distinguishing between what is (1) evidentially probable and (2) matters of blind faith-- the former having some sort of basis in empirical facticity, the latter none.

I am impressed that anyone whose seen and thought about the Matrix as you certainly must have would think the matter so simple. As my favorite atheist Bertrand Russell
points out, for example, how do we know that the world did not come into existence
five minutes ago with all the appearance it now has of age? Is there any piece of
factual empirical data that you could point to that would make it any more probable
than not that the world did so?

Of course, like you I think it's perfectly "reasonable" to believe that the world has had a long history, that memory is generally reliable, that the deliverances of our sense experience are generally reliable, that we have minds, that we have free will, and so forth. But I don't for a moment suppose that any of these things can be known apart from something very much like faith or trust-- of the sort that would utterly confound anyone who tried to demonstrate these things to a Humean skepic.

You might enjoy reading a chapter called "The Suicide of Thought" by Chesterton in his delightful little booklet for closet atheists entitled Orthodoxy. It's hilarious.

Interlocutor:

I never said either faith or knowing were so simple. When you assert that by Faith (using the big "F" to denote religious faith) I mean "blind faith," you are making a subtle two-pronged argument, which respectfully both miss my point.

Prong 1) Infer and imply that TC has argued that all Faith equals the sort of faith that is blind and irrational and generally unsupported by anything other than stubbornness or ignorance.

But this characterization misses the fact that I concede and even applauded the fact that that for many people Faith is rarely blind and unsupported. Instead, it comes from having a feeling in your gut (your soul?) that this thing is correct. Faith very often comes from an experience - real or perceived - of God. I am not in a position to evaluate what this experience is or its validity in individual people, but I acknowledge that it is there.

What I won't accept, however, is the proposition that this basis in experience is somehow a self-evident axiom upon which all sorts of logical conclusions can be reached. All too often, such a view leads people down the primrose path of moral and spiritual certainty by which they unknowingly fall in to ignorant and narcissistic condescension. It's one thing to poo-poo moral relativism; it's quite another to lay the down the full of canon of Natural Law. Speaking of which, has the Church articulated all of the rules that comprise Natural Law yet?

Blosser:

Fair enough. Several things here. Though I haven't the time for it now, your characterization of Faith calls for some sorting out. First, I would want to distinguish (a bit differently than you do) between "faith" (as a subjective act) and "Faith" (as an objective content, usually of the Christian Faith). Second, I would want to define "faith" in God as an act of "intellectual assent" in which the will is moved not by an intellectual object (as in "knowledge") but by God's grace, making faith a supernatural gift rather than a natural achievement. Third, one would have to distinguish between such religious "faith" and other acts of "belief" in which one's assent is moved by an act of will (such as trust in one's wife or friends, or the proposition that the world is more than 5 minutes old), etc. Fourth, though I do not doubt that the religious convictions of people may rest to some extent on some sort of "gut feeling" (or feeling of "certitude"), or even that this feeling may be one of the by-products of faith, but I would not want to argue (and I'm not claiming that you do) that this constitutes the only basis for such convictions or that a "self-evident axiom upon which all sorts of logical conclusions can be reached." Fifth, I would want to distinguish from the subjective act of "faith" the objective appeal of rational arguments that may be adduced in support of The Faith (only the latter constitute a basis for "intellectual conclusions"). Sixth, I would want to stress that "knowledge" and "rational proof" are person-relative and situational, and that most of what we reasonably claim to "know" we could not conclusively demonstrate that we know to a sufficiently tenacious skeptic. Seventh, no, the Church has not made any declarations laying out the content of Natural Law since it is not an article of faith and no part of Church dogma.

Interlocutor:

The very point of Faith and faith (meaning faith in sensory perceptions) is that an experience - a knowing - is incomplete. By themselves, Faith and faith are just bridges between what we think we know and what is. If a thing is experienced and understood in its entirety - putting the limits of sensory perception aside for now - then Faith and faith are no longer necessary. If Faith and faith change, then in both cases it is because what they are bridging has changed.

Blosser:

Agreed. I would add that there is very little that we could be said to understand in its entirety, and that confidence in reason (our faculty for making sense of experience) is itself a matter of some sort of faith.

Interlocutor:

But what I was getting at in my last email when I used the term "axiomatic Faith" was that all too often people are unwilling to allow Faith to be changed in light of new information, even though they allow faith to regularly be changed by new perceptions. The only way I could account for this difference is that Faith must be, to some extent, a matter of belief and knowing that is beyond mere sensory experience. It's a matter of faith.

Blosser:

I agree that this is true not only of many groups of people of religious faith, but also of many groups of people unwilling to allow their political convictions to be changed in light of new information, for example.
Or, for that matter, the excessive and nearly "axiomatic" confidence the public seems too often to repose in television and the western media. Here I love Alasdair MacIntyre's reference to "the readership of the NEW YORK TIMES, or at least to that part of it which shares the presuppositions of those who write that parish magazine of affluent and self-congratulatory liberal enlightenment ...." (Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, p. 5).

Interlocutor:

Prong 2: Conclude that because even the simplest of "evidentially probable" events can't be known in an absolute sense that Faith, as a way of knowing, is perfectly valid. In other words, because you can't prove that the world wasn't created five minutes ago my Faith is valid.

Blosser:

Why should one believe that I make such an inference? Isn't the import of what I wrote here simply that a probabilistic argument is never more than a probabilistic argument? I don't see (any more than you) how the fact that one can't furnish conclusive arguments for conclusions in one sphere would make the conclusions of another sphere (where one similarly can't furnish conclusive arguments) any more intellectually credible. It simply shows that the situations are similar, does it not? Namely, that many things we reasonably believe cannot be supported by conclusive argument. The Matrix comes to mind, as a possible film for a future course in philosophy and film.

Interlocutor:

The problem with this prong is that a lack of absolute certainty about sense perceptions in no way bolsters arguments about Faith. To crib from Aristotle, ordinary sensory perceptions really only deal with everyday events which occur lower down the chain of being. Faith , on the other hand, has always claimed to be about things higher up the chain. The two really should be unrelated, except to the extent that a person claims sense perceptions as basis for Faith, in which case they may very well be talking about something other than mundane perceptions.

Blosser:

Your first sentence is answered by my foregoing paragraph. As to the distinction between the realm of senses and the realm of religious faith, I would say this: while it's true that physical sensation is one thing and the intellectual assent involved in faith is another, I would not want to say they are unrelated. It is an act of faith, for example, to believe that your sensations offer access to a real external world at all, is it not? Like the religious faith, trusting the deliverances of our senses involves an intellectual assent that involves an act of will, does it not?

Interlocutor:

I'm reading an interesting passage in Thomas Merton's Zen and the Birds of Appetite that somewhat addresses this point. From the Zen and Buddhist points of view, everyday perceptions - even the perceptions of one's own thoughts and cravings - are always objects observed by the omnipresent subject "I." Zen cannot be adequately described in subject-object terms because it strives to describe the perception of the world as simply existing, no subjects, no objects. The Zen master does not deny the existence of subject and objects. His experience, however, tells him that this is simply not how the universe is.

Blosser:

Tucker N. Callaway's equasions (in Zen Way--Jesus Way) are to the point as well: for Zen Buddhism, "everything is mind, and mind is no-thing." But isn't that as much an act of willed intellectual assent as believing the world is more than five minutes old or believing in God? I don't see how "experience," as such, teaches us anything. As C.S. Lewis observes in one essay, "Experience by itself proves nothing. If a man doubts whether he is dreaming or waking, no experiment can solve his doubt, since every experiment may itself be part of the dream. Experience proves this, or that, or nothing, according to the preconceptions we bring to it."

Interlocutor:

All I meant by Chesterson having to concede that there's faith and then there's Faith is that the former allows me to wallow around in my day-to-day life, while the latter is my link to the higher parts of the chain of being. In an objectless world, the two would be the same. But I'm no Zen Master. I'm just a due admiring the pretty red dresses.

Blosser:

Well spoken, Sensei!

Metaphor and gender in theological language (continued ...)

2005-02-04T09:30:00.000-05:00

[A continued development of the discussion on terms such as "Father," "He" vs. "Godself" in theological language.]

Foster:

After reading [Martin Heidegger's] Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) again, I tend to agree [that his language is turgid]. I also sometimes wonder if Heidegger wasn't pulling a fast one on us all. Does HE even know what he's talking about in S & Z?

Blosser:

Good question.

Foster:

I employ "Godself" because it is standard terminology in the Trinitarian literature I regularly assimilate, plus I believe the nomenclature does full justice to Origen's concept of autotheos.

Blosser:

Well, I suppose as a technical translation of 'autotheos' in Origen studies, it's excusable, at least, if barely. =)

Foster:

My point is that Justin viewed the title "Father" as a "form of address" that humans have coined based on God's benefices and works. Justin indicates that "Father" (as a designation for God) does not imply God is masculine IN SE or immanently: the term "Father" does not tell us anything about God's essence or what God is like AD INTRA.

Blosser:

I agree that it's a form of address, though I wouldn't want to say that it's (merely!) coined by humans. Isn't God the primary cause of His revelation? Also, I'm hesitant to say that this doesn't reflect in some way on God's nature in the following sense: even if we say that God is not masculine IN SE [in Himself], but only in His relationship AD NOS [to us], why is it that we do NOT say that He is feminine AD NOS? There must be a reason. What's the status of that reason? That's what I would want to explore.

Foster:

I, as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, have no problem with believing God has a proper name (NOMEN PROPRIUM). Isa 42:8 suggests that YHWH is God's proper designation and so does Ps 83:18 along with Exod 3:14-15. This is elementary in Judaism and Christianity. However, Justin does not believe God has a NOMEN PROPRIUM nor does he think that words such as PATHR or PANTOKRATWR are ONOMATA (in the strictest sense). Rather, they are ways in which humans invoke God based on the almighty deity's special and general revelatory works. For Justin, "Father" not only fails to function as a proper noun, it is not even a name, but a form of address that is a product (in part) of human language.
I am now speaking about what Justin believes, not myself.

Blosser:

Fair enough. I would also hesitate to say that he speaks for me at this point.

Foster:

I have no problem calling God YHWH or "Father" or Creator. Nevertheless, with Justin, I too must say (as the Martyr implies) that the Bible writers do not ontolgoize God's gender when they call God "Father." There is nothing being said about God as Godself when one speaks of the Christian deity as "Father," IMHO.

Blosser:

Let's keep Origen out of this. I personally find really offensive the use of "GODSELF" for the reasons mentioned in the earlier email [such as preemption by New Age gnosticism: see book right]. How about "autotheos" if we're talking about Origen's theology, and otherwise, "God Himself"?

As to your assertions, I have utterly no confidence that one can surmise whether or not a biblical author was or was not "ontologizing" anything. Certainly they were not philosophers.

But who knows what they were assuming about God's own nature? Do we have any solid reason for assuming they DIDN'T think of God as masculine, even if that
were mistaken?

Foster:

With Minucius Felix, I'm not denying that God is (in some sense) Father or King or Lord. However, Minucius Felix seems to believe that none of these figures of speech truly tell us what God IS. Take away these designations, Minucius Felix argues, and then one will have a clear portrait of Godself. God may be a Father in a metaphorical sense. This does not mean that God is masculine, however, any more than the metaphorical proposition "Juliet is the sun" indicates Romeo's lover is a gaseous fiery blob of helium and hydrogen located at the center of our solar system. In other words, the proposition concerning Juliet doesn't tell us a thing about her ontology or secondary substance.

Blosser:

Doesn't it? Does it tell us only about Romeo's perception of Julia? Or does it not tell us also something about her. If I say Julia is "bright" like the sun, as opposed to "dark," couldn't this tell us that she's not gloomy and moody but cheerful and positive? Just a question.

Foster:

If what Schoonenberg says is true though, one cannot legitimately reason from God's soi-di-sant fatherhood to human fatherhood. The philosopher or natural theologian must reason from the divine economy to the divine being, from the phenomenal to the noumenal realm.

Blosser:

With all the due qualifications about God being the ultimate initiator of communication to man, via Revelation, etc. Speaking of man's taking the initiative in seeking God, Lewis says, is like speaking about the mouse's search for the cat.

Metaphor and gender in theological language

2005-02-04T08:58:00.000-05:00

In the continued discussion on metaphor between the doctoral candidate at Glasgow University (Edgar Foster) and myself, we turn to questions of linguistic simplicity vs. turgidity, then to question of gender in theological language (e.g., calling God "Father," "Him," vs. "Godself," etc.):

Foster:

Your suggestion regarding simplicity is well taken. The apostle Paul also indicated that speech not easily understood is akin to enunciating or articulating in the air (ESESQE GAR EIS AERA LALOUNTES). On the other hand, I recall reading about Etienne Gilson (pictured left) being moved to tears by a speech that Martin Heidegger gave. But since I don't want old ladies to be perplexed nor French guys to be extremely moved (VALDE COMMOTUS)--I'll simplify my presentation. :-)

Blosser:

Perhaps Gilson was moved to tears because of Heidegger's unutterably turgid teutonic unintelligibility.

Foster:

I don't want to suggest that "metaphors" such as the divine title "Father" are strictly arbitrary. Nevertheless, like Justin the Martyr (right) and Minucius Felix, I believe such terms aptly delineate God's functions but not what God is in Godself. We evidently derive terms like "Father" or "King" from both general and special revelation. Justin writes:
"But to the Father of all, who is unbegotten, there is no name given. For by whatever name He be called, He has as His elder the person who gives Him the name. But these words Father, and God, and Creator, and Lord, and Master, are not names, but appellations derived from His good deeds and functions" (2 Apology 6).

Blosser:

My friend, for the life of my I cannon understand how you can stomach using "words" (I use the term lightly) like "Godself." The only people besides you whom I know who use that "word" (and others like it) are dissident Catholics under the influence of prevailing "PC" and Femi-Nazi ideologies. Whatever your rationale, it has all the appearance IMHO of something analogous to trying to Christianize the profession of prostitution.

I'm not sure what your point with Justin is beyond the obvious fact that "God" as usually understood in English is not proper name. Orthodox Jews, of course, believe that God does have a proper name, which they won't pronounce, and therefore won't even write out the English word "God" but only "G-d," since they take it to symbolically stand in the place of His holy name, YHWH, to which they refer with the word "Ha-Shem" ("the name"). I don't know what they'd say about Justin's comments. They might simply say God names Himself.

But why not simply refer to God as He refers to Himself in His inscripturated Word? Why try to finesse that?

Foster:

Minucius Felix reasons:
"If I were to call Him [i.e. God] Father, you would judge Him to be earthly; if a King, you would suspect Him to be carnal; if a Lord, you will certainly understand Him to he mortal. Take away the additions of names, and you will behold His glory" (Octavius 18).

Blosser:

All of these make good points, of course, but should hardly be seen as decisive reasons for denying that God is Father, King, Lord, etc., for He reveals Himself to be all those. But I know you'd agree in some sense, and I'm not making any really contrarian point.

Foster:

A modern voice [Piet Schoonenberg] states:
"All our thinking moves from the world to God, and can never move in the opposite direction."
I tend to agree, with qualifications, of course.

Blosser:

Ditto. Just as Thomas would.

Foster:

Max Black's notion of "associated commonplaces" could well explain why some metaphors are more fitting than others. The account given by Kevin Vanhoozer (pictured right) of speech-act theory might also explain why the Christian deity is generally addressed as "Father" rather than mother or why Christ is the "Lamb" rather than the "Piggy" of God. I know you're familiar with Saussure's distinction between LANGUE and PAROLE or John Searle's distinction between brute facts, institutional facts and constitutive rules. Vanhoozer presses these distinctions into service when he develops his own take on illocution and perlocution. See Is There a Meaning in This Text? (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, Publishing Company, 1998).

Biblical metaphor and the "ontologization of gender"

2005-02-04T08:47:00.000-05:00

Foster:

My basic question [is] whether the "Jerusalem above" mentioned in Gal 4:26, which Thomas Aquinas identifies
with the Church militant (in the first place) and the Church triumpnant (in the second place), is a religious metaphor and, if so, how does Paul's speech function metaphorically. If Paul's words are not to be taken metaphorically, why not?

What difference would it make? Well, I am trying to see if viewing "Jerusalem above" as a metaphorical "mother" will shed any light on what we as Christians might mean when we address God as "Father." It appears to me that in both cases, "ontologization of gender" is or should be intended. Calling God "Father" does not address what He is immanently. It only has reference to what He is QUOAD NOS or PRO NOBIS.

Blosser:

I take it you intend "immanently" in the second-to-the-last sentence above as meaning "within God Him-self."

The key to this sort of business, where you're drawing a sort of boundary like Kant drew between that which is phenomenal (and apparant to us) and that which is noumenal (and lies beyond us), I should think, lies in whether or not we can sort out how metaphor can mean anything at all without meaning anything in God Himself. My hunch is that in many cases it may be mistaken to say that the metaphor means something only for us and not for God in Himself, because that may end up making the metaphor rather arbitrary.

My own approach to trying to answer this sort of problem would be to follow Wolterstorff's suggestions about objective qualities in things that make them
appropriate or inappropriate (fitting or unfitting) to serve as metaphors, via his notions of relative cross-modal similarity. Thus there are objective reasons why
"Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" is appropriately imputed to Jesus while "Behold the Piggy of God who takes away the sin of the world"
isn't. Etc.

More on metaphor

2005-02-02T10:09:00.000-05:00

Foster:

I've made use of Ricoeur in my research and I'm also gonna get my hands on the work by Sokolowski which you reviewed. I read his intro to phenomenology recently and really enjoyed it. He also had a little something to say about metaphor in that work. Moreover, I learned what a dative of manifestation or disclosure is, by reading his intro.

Blosser:

His works are consistently substantial. Check out his numerous other titles as well.

Foster:

I like that nomenclature--ambiguous identity synthesis! If I decide to employ it in my dissertation, I'll give you due credit for introducing me to the expression. :-)

Blosser:

I need all the credit I can get!

Foster:

Concerning "meaning creation," if you have not done so already, you might enjoy perusing what Max Black has written, here and there, regarding the Tenor and Vehicle of a metaphorical construction creating meaning through Tenor-Vehicle interaction.

Black contends that metaphors such as 'man is a wolf' do not create meaning by means of the lexical definitions for "man" or "wolf." Meaning is primarily created via the qualities that those hearing the metaphor associate with a wolf, in this case. The
soi-di-sant "associated commonplaces" that metaphors evoke do not have to be true, only capable of being readily evoked (according to Black).

Blosser:

Sounds interesting and promising. Thanks for the tip on Mr. Black.

Foster:

Walter Kasper also writes that metaphors and similes "offer a new and creative description of reality" by combining "a dialectic of the familiar and the strange." I agree with what you also observe regarding "God the Father." The literature I've been reading calls these constructions "dead metaphors."

Blosser:

Yes, dead metaphors, as in the "foot of the mountain," or the "leg of the table." We don't even think of them as metaphors anymore.

Foster:

Have I hugged my "teddy bear" today? No, cause I don't think I still got one.

Seriously, [on the metaphor issue ...] What made Jesus suggest there was something similar between Herod and a fox? What made Bill Shakespeare perceive some type of similarity between the world and a stage? These are questions that metaphorologists seem to tackle often and they usually come up with sundry and disparate answers to such queries.

Blosser:

Fascinating business. Thomas Howard's book, Chance, or the Dance? is wonderful on the metaphor issue, particularly with examples, though not in a typical "scholarly" context--for the better, in my opinion!

Foster:

I love Hannah Arendt's treatment of this topic in The Life of the Mind. Based on her reading of Aristotle and Kant, Arendt prefers to define "metaphor" as "the transition from one existential state, that of thinking, to another, that of being an appearance among appearances." That is, metaphors make concealed thought exposed, bringing it out into the open to be
observed. One uttering a metaphor thus putatively makes the existential transition from the notional state to the empirical state by positing analogies in relation to one another, such that A is to B as C is to D ("e.g. Juliet is the sun").

Metaphor

2005-02-02T09:56:00.000-05:00

Edgar Foster, currently writing a dissertation on the patristics, offers the two following paragraphs on Lactantius and the question of metaphor from the current draft of his dissertation. He also appends some observations by Ralph Earle. Foster:

Modern-day metaphorologists have developed terminology that attempts to clarify descriptive discourse concerning metaphorical utterances. For example, I.A. Richards introduced the nomenclature 'Tenor' and 'Vehicle' to metaphor theory in 1936. Tenor refers to the 'principal subject' in a metaphorical construction, Vehicle to the 'subsidiary subject' or concept that further describes the Tenor. Therefore, in the proposition 'God is the Father of Jesus Christ,' the constituent 'God' functions as the Tenor while 'Father' is the Vehicle. Of course, the Tenor-Vehicle method is limited. Yet, it has produced much fruitage in cognitive research.

Blosser:

I haven't researched as much as I'd like in the "serious" scholarship about metaphor, though I have some of it on my shelves, such as Ricoeur's study, and the work of Sokolowski's that I've recently reviewed. Phenomenologically, a metaphor is sometimes called an "ambiguous identity synthesis," and there are some fascinating features of it that can be isolated and analyzed, though the overall feature of metaphor that fascinates me is the way in which it seems to be a locus of meaning creation--one that Amy is particularly good at and which makes conversations with her particularly delightful. To work effectively, metaphor often seems to require a certain degree of strangeness or novelty; otherwise they become "unthinking" metaphors, like "God the Father," instead of delightfully engaging metaphors, like "Edgar the Teddy Bear" (Have you hugged yours today?).

Foster:

Another important expression in modern metaphor theory is 'point of similarity,' or common domain factor, which refers to the intended focal point of a metaphorical utterance. To illustrate how the point of similarity differs from the Tenor or Vehicle, we can turn to the Sermon on the Mount. While recounting that famous discourse, Matthew records Jesus of Nazareth employing a metaphor wherein Jesus describes his disciples thus: 'You are the salt of the earth' (Mt 5:13). In this passage, the disciples are the Tenor, the Vehicle is 'salt' and the point of similarity (i.e. common domain factor) is evidently the preservative quality of salt and possibly its potential to accentuate the taste of food. In other words, just as salt may function as a preservative or enhance the taste of food, making it more palatable for consumption (Job 6:6; Col 4:6), so the disciples of Jesus (it would seem) are to preserve human lives by means of the Gospel and utter words of graciousness to both Christians and non-Christians alike. Regardless of what Jesus' intended-speaker meaning in Mt 5:13 is, his words illustrate the three distinctions (tenor, vehicle and point of similarity) that metaphor theorists commonly implement."

Blosser:

Fascinating. Another thing I've recently become interested in, though I forget to whom I've talked about this and may therefore be indulging your patience (!), is the connections between metaphor and what Wolterstorff (Art in Action, remember?) means by "fittingness" as "cross-modal similarity." Intra-modal similarity is similarity with respect to one modality-- say, speed, where you are comparing two cars: so the similarity is with respect to speed. Cross-modal similarity is where two things are being compared in different modalities (like color and heat in the metaphor "Red is a hot color") with respect to something else-- potency, preference, or--as in this case--activity. I'm not sure if Osgood's studies of the 1950s get at the root of all the relevant issues here, but the ability to compare ping and pong with ice cream and warm pea soup seems to me to involved a kind of "ambiguous identity synthesis" similar to that involved in metaphor. What is it, for example, that makes it fitting to suggest that there is something similar between Edgar and a Teddy Bear? The possibilities are delightfully endless here, and the surplus of meaning grows exponentially with brainstorming.

Foster:

From Ralph Earle's Word Meanings in the NT:
"In the Greek comic writers the verb ARTUW, 'season,' referred to the seasoning with the salt of wit. But too often this degenerated into off-color jokes. Paul says that the Christian's speech should be 'with grace' or 'gracious'" (p. 362).

"Let your conversation be always gracious, and never insipid; study how best to talk with each person you meet" (Col 4:6 NEB).
Blosser:
I say we season our speech not only with that which is 'gracious', but that which exhibits "ambiguous identity syntheses" that are delightful and charming with respect to their cross-modal similarities.

Anthony Flew's newfound belief in God

2004-12-11T08:00:00.000-05:00

The word is that Professor Antony Flew (pictured right), the former champion of Humean skepticism and philosophical atheism, now believes in God. Flew, whose teaching career has led him from philosophy professorships in Britain at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keel, Reading, and York, to posts in North America in Toronto, Calgary, San Diego, and Los Angeles, is author of numerous books offering philosophical arguments against theism as well as naturalistic alternatives to theistically-based theories of human nature, cognition, belief, and ethics. Representative are his books:

Hume's Philosophy of Belief (1961)
God and Philosophy (1966)
Evolutionary Ethics (1967)
The Presumption of Atheism, and other philosophical essays on God, Freedom and Immortality (1976)
A Raional Animal: Philosophical Essays on the Nature of Man (1978)
Darwinian Evolution (1984)
Atheistic Humanism (1993)

I can remember being assigned books by Flew when I was beginning my undergraduate classes in philosophy in the 1970s. His perspective was consistently imbued with an unequivocal opposition to what he regarded as nonsense quite typical of the tradition British empiricism, which had invested all its stock in the "sensible." His arguments and illustrations against theistic belief seemed, at least within the framework of that mindset, devastating. (This, of course, was before Alvin Plantinga [pictured left] injected new enthusiasm among theistic philosophers for a counter-offensive beginning in the late sixties and early seventies.)

Philosophical debates between philosophers about the existence of God, of course, have a venerable tradition. I remember reading as an undergraduate the famous BBC Copleston-Russell debate of 1944 beween Fr. F.C. Copleston, J.S. (pictured right), the great Catholic historian of philosophy, and Bertrand Russell (pictured left), the author of Why I Am Not a Christian (Amazon link)--a book, which, I've heard it said, has ironically nudged more than one disappointed atheistic reader in the direction of theistic belief! More recently the same tradition of debate has been continued by William Lane Craig, Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, and Walter Sinnot-Armstrong, Philosophy Professor at Dartmouth College, in their book God?: A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist (Point/Counterpoint Series, Oxford, England) (Amazon link). Antony Flew himself has been involved in such debates. One famous debate, published back in 1977, was that between Flew and Thomas B. Warren, under the title: The Warren-Flew Debate on the Existence of God (Amazon link). Another, more recent debate was that between Flew and William Lane Craig (pictured left), under the 2003 title: Does God Exist: The Craig-Flew Debate (Amazon link) In the same year (2003), a debate between Flew and Gary Habermas, a prolific philosopher and historian from Liberty University, was published under the title of Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?: The Resurrection Debate (Amazon link)

The Winter 2004 issue of Philosophia Christi features an exclusive interview with the former atheist Antony Flew, conducted by Gary Habermas (pictured right). Flew, who is eighty-one years old, says that he doesn't yet believe in the God of a "revelatory system," although he's "open to that." It will be interesting to see where his newfound theism leads. Flew is hardly the first philosopher, of course, to find his way from atheism and agnosticism to theism. Many have pushed beyond that to explicit belief in the "revelatory God" of Judaism or Christianity. Examples that come to mind include Alasdair MacIntyre (pictured below right), who converted from sexular Marxism to Catholicism some years ago, as well as Mordimer J. Adler (pictured left), who converted from a secular Jewish background to theistic belief, then to Christianity, becoming a member, first, of the Episcopal Church in 1986, then the Catholic Church in 1999. MacIntyre, whose book After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (1984) brought him international attention, is now Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame. Adler, who chaired the Board of Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, founded the Great Books program and authored many books, including Aristotle for Everybody and How to Think About God, died on June 28, 2001. Edward T. Oakes has written an account of MacIntyre's career and conversion in "The Achievement of Alasdair MacIntyre" (First Things, August/September, 1996). An account of Adler's conversion is available in the Wikipedia article, "Mortimer Jerome Adler," as well as a humorous remembrance by his secretary, "Nancy Olson Remembers."

For a detailed academic curriculum vitae of Antony Flew, listing his educational background, teaching posts and publications, see a Brief Biography of Antony Flew.

Link to publications by Antony Flew:

Link to publications by Alasdair MacIntyre:

Link to publications by Mortimer J. Adler:

[Credits: Thanks to Christopher Blosser for the tip regarding the Habermas interview in Philosophia Christi.]

Update:

Mark Oppenheimer, The Turning of an Atheist (New York Times, November 4, 2007).

Feminism, psychology, & metaphor

2004-12-10T18:49:00.000-05:00

Colleague:

I respect any woman's choice to be a stay-at-home mom. I think it's hilarious when women have decided to be stay-at-home moms before they've even found boyfriends, which was the case with the two female students I mentioned in my last, just so they won't be called feminists. To me, it's sort of like saying you want to be president--sure, if you can get everyone to vote for you, then you can be president. If you can find someone who can afford you, then you can stay at home, and maybe you'll find someone. Personally, the idea makes my skin crawl, but it's a question of taste, I guess. As I have said, if someone in my family were to be the stay-at-home person, I'd rather that it be me, just as, if me or my brother had to go to war, I'd rather it be me. But not because I see anything wonderful about it in either case.

Blosser:

You know, when Sarah Degenhart asked John Kerry in the third (town meeting style) debate whether he could provide her with any assurance that he wouldn't use tax dollars to support abortion, he replied by professing his "respect" for her question. [For two accounts, click here and here.] I think I echo the opinion of others when I say that words are cheap. But that's a detail.

I wonder at all this derisiveness you share with so many feminists towards the traditional notion of home. A Freudian might have a field day with this one. Perhaps it's the mother thing-- when we say of women that we can't live with them and can't live without them ... Is it that we long for the warm, soft, comfortableness of mommy's arms, but when we find ourselves enfolded in them we feel claustrophobic, like our identities are somehow going to be swallowed up and lost? For all the ways in which you find that the idea of staying at home makes your "skin crawl," I really can't find in myself what is so oppressive about it. But maybe that difference is simply a function of different childhoods or something. I really wouldn't know. All I can do is testify to the fact that in my experience, home has almost always been a place I'd much rather be than out somewhere else. Someone might be tempted to say that this is because we moved nearly every other hear-- around the world, different parts of Asia, China, Japan, and different States in the U.S.- but I wouldn't make much of that. If there is such a thing as a "homebody," that would be me, I suppose. I'd love nothing much more than staying home, cooking, reading stories to the kids, and doing my own reading and writing as time allowed. So much of jetting about the country and attending conferences to take turns listening to professors quack in front of an audience strikes me as such a colossal waste of time, if not a disease. Touring is something else, perhaps. I enjoy traveling, especially to Spain and Italy and Switzerland where I spent a year. But there's nowhere like home and family, even if it's in Hickory, in my opinion.

Colleague:

I also think it's hilarious the way we pick and choose which feminists we want to base our notion of feminism on--we do so to project our version of politics on the world around us, not out of any regard for statistical accuracy.

Blosser:

I don't know that there's a "hard science" to any of this, but it doesn't take much--it seems to me--to stick one's finger up and see which way the wind's blowing, as Dylan says. I wonder what you mean by "statistical accuracy." Do you trust the polls? Have you ever seen their questionnaires? Do you think they mean anything? Is there a meaning in this text? (pace Kevin J. Vanhoozer)

Colleague:

I don't smile at all, by the way, to think of you or the Pope as a feminist.

Blosser:

Well, that's reassuring.

Colleague:

I'm very interested in the question of identity--well, it's not that I've read anything about it, really, but I've thought a lot about it. I don't think, for example, that a person identifies as a Christian, a Lutheran, an English major, or a homosexual because one fits the definition.

Blosser:

The word "because" here is ambiguous. It can mean either (1) a subjective psychological motive, something that pushes from the inside, or (2) an objective logical reason, something that pulls from the outside. Before it would make sense to talk about any sort of agreement or disagreement here, it would be necessary to distinguish which sense was your authorial intention, I suppose.

Colleague:

I think one may do so for a variety of reasons, and probably the same basic set of reasons in each of the above cases. (I suspect that converting to a religion is very much like discovering a sexual orientation, for example.) Furthermore, I think that one never identifies as any of these things with a sense of fully understanding what the identification means. In other words, I bet few homosexuals would pretend to have fully considered all the theories and all the possibilities and all the data and made a rational decision that they are homosexual--rather, I bet that for a homosexual life is a never-ending journey of discovery of what it means to be a homosexual. I bet it is the same for a Lutheran and the same for a feminist. So I congratulate you, and I wish you well on your feminist journey.

Blosser:

Ahem ... [caugh, caugh] Why, thank you. Why yes ... thank you very much indeed ...

Colleague:

My advice, though, would be to let it unfold naturally before you and not to be too hasty to decide what your feminism is to mean or where it is to take you. The idea that, as a feminist, you somehow either do fit or can rightly be taken to fit into some narrow stereotype of what a feminist is, is of course propaganda propagated by those who want to use you as a foil to define and exalt their own political agenda, so just ignore them. Also, shave your head, out of solidarity--long hippy hair like yours just perpetuates the oppression of all women. But above all, be patient with yourself. Developing a political identity is like learning a language--it takes time, and practice, and open discussion with others who so identify. Your courage inspires me--perhaps I'll shave my head, too.

Blosser:

Now let's not get too solemn and serious about all this. I prefer to just let my hair fall out, as it surely will soon enough.

I forget whether we've discussed Sartre's St. Genet: Actor and Martyr. Sartre raised these questions precisely about identity. The question is, Who is Jean Genet? A voice once publicly declared of him: "You're a thief." He had indeed been caught in the act of stealing something. But the question is: is this his identity? Does this define him? Is this who he is? If anything, Sartre is interesting to read, because he's so French-- so extreme in his declarations. Makes him fascinating. Even where one thinks he's dead wrong--just like, perhaps, you apparently thought your father was. Does the fact that reality is more complicated than any theory about it, just as a person is more complex than any identifying label that may be applied by himself or by others to him, mean that it's utterly meaningless to say of a white Anglo-American Protestant male professor here that he is a "White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant male" as opposed to a "Black Muslim Lesbian"? One of Confucius' doctrines is called the "Rectification of Names," which involves the conviction that "language be in accordance with the truth of things," that "the names a person uses be spoken appropriately," and so on. Confucius is simply dogmatic about this, as he is in his whole social ethic. With good reason: if he called for a metaphysical grounding, the only thing available might have been some form or another of the monistic dogma which says that ultimately everything is mind and mind is nothing, which wouldn't work very well. But he lived during a period of anarchy, and people required a sense of order so they wouldn't go on slaughtering one another and forcing their relatives to drink the soup they made of them. As finite and foolish as we human beings are, I find little to fault Confucius in his notion that generally (perhaps with some exceptions like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck) people ought to say what they mean and mean what they say and avoid using words in irresponsible ways. I know that may grate. But language can be horribly dishonest, can't it-- as so much of it is these days.

Colleague:

Your question about metonymy--why it is preferable to metaphor--is the crucial one. I'm not sure I know the answer, or whether it's the same for everyone. I will send you a description, if I can find it--it's a good one, I think (hope), a close reading of a couple of pages of Lacan that sort of beaches him on the strand of deconstruction--I'm sure you'll admire it's subtlety.

Blosser:

I would admire it if I could understand it. We'll have to see.

Colleague:

Here's one way to generalize an answer. Metaphor basically works by equation--by equating one thing like another. But the old, wrinkled truth, to quote this guy I met quoting Shopenhour (sp?), ...

Blosser:

"Schopenhauer"]

Colleague:

... is, that things aren't equal to other things--they simply aren't.

Blosser:

Well, now there's a capital generalization. Is that really so? Fichte would enjoy a conversation with you on that subject. He would state that principle of logical non-contradiction rests upon an underlying assumption of a principle of identity. A = A. But that's a discussion for another day. But maybe you mean something else: that two or more different things are never equal (identical). I would agree. But isn't the principle involved in metaphors, like "Red is a loud color" something different still, a kind of cross-modal similarity (betweeen a color and a sound) with respect to something else? If I compare a fast car with a slow one, I'm comparing them with respect to their speed. We could call that an intra-modal comparison. But when I use a metaphor creating an innately ambiguous (that's what makes it interesting) "identity synthesis" between a color and a sound, one finds it hard (at first) to answer the question: "With respect to WHAT are these two things being compared"? Some psychologists (including one named Osgood) in the 1950s did experiments using the "Osgood antonymn scale" and "Osgood semantic differential technique" on samples of Navajos, Mexicans, Japanese, and Anglo-Americans and found a 90% uniformity of responses (identifications like ping is to pong, as ice cream is to warm pea soup, as young girl is to old matron, as Mozart is to Beethoven, and so on). When they tabulated the results, they found that the metaphorical equasions clustered around three discernable categories: (1) potency, (2) activity, and (3) preference. In other words, on their view, if I say that a "Red is a loud color," I'm comparing something in the visual modality with something in the audible modality with respect to "activity" or "potency." Interesting. I just reviewed a Festschrift for a brillian philosopher in his sixties (Robert Sokolowski) which contained an interesting essay on metaphor based on one of Sokolowski's books written some twenty years ago, Husserlian Mediations: How Words Present Things. Fascinating. I'll grant you that this kind of identity isn't simple identity, but I think it's one of the most interesting, meaning-disclosing kind of identity locutions can yield: Red is a very hot color indeed! Red hot!

Colleague:

(Case in point: when I call you on your generalizations about feminists, you subdivide them, and generalize about "radical" feminists, but that doesn't work, either--they don't all agree, and they identify out of a yearning for solidarity, not out of allegiance to some set of principles. Why do they need solidarity? Could it be because, without it, they'll just magically, coincidentally, wind up stuck at home doing someone's laundry? Hmm--yes, maybe that's it.) Okay--let's go with that, provisionally, of course.

Blosser:

Now that's so cute I could wrap it up in swaddling close and stick a bottle in its mouth. Of course-- with apologies to Clinton -- that depends on what "that" means. Provisionally I'll agree with you about that, where "that" means that the identity-through-solidarity of "feminists" is found through their relief at not winding up stuck at home doing someone's laundary? Sheeesh. I love the sound of a washmachine, and the smell of clothes in the dryer. I'd make someone such a fine house-husband--as long as it wasn't a "feminazi" !

Pascal's Wager revisited

2004-12-03T13:43:00.000-05:00

Pascal's wager is well known. It assumes everyone is betting on whether God exists by how they are living. But since there are good arguments either way, nobody generally decides which way to wager based on the arguments, but on personal desires. So is there any prudent way of deciding which way to wager? Pascal basically says that if you place your bet on the truth of Christianity and it turns out to be untrue, you end up the same as the atheist: dead. But if you bet on the truth of atheism and it turns out to be false (and Christianity true), you have all eternity to think about what you missed out on.

People often find this wager silly, or just plain stupid. On one level, I would agree that it seems so-- at least IF you take it as an argument intended to persuade anyone to change their views about God. Even if it only convinced you that you had a vested interest in believing that God exists and that you had good reason to submit to Him, it couldn't achieve the goal of getting you to change your beliefs. Pascal knew that our beliefs are, on some level, beyond our volitional control. I can't get you to believe the moon is made of blue cheese by offering you a $1000 to believe it, even if you'd like to. Pascal understood all this.

He also understood that the traditional metaphysical proofs, though valid as arguments, were generally ineffective except for the most exceptional philosopher-types, since they are far too abstract and complicated for most people, and even if it were effective for them, it would be only during the demonstration, because the moment it was completed, they would wonder whether a mistake could have been made somewhere and they were just being credulous.

So Pascal took a different approach, which his gambling and skeptical friends couldn't wriggle out of--an approach which couldn't help engage their wills: he pointed out to them by his "wager" that they were involved in gambling with their lives and eternal destinies by the little decisions they were already making every day-- whether or not to take prayer and moral integrity seriously, whether or not to take truth seriously and respond honestly to the light that each of them already had, and so forth. In other words, he put the onus on THEM by showing that some of the most important kinds of knowledge in the world (including religious knowledge) has attitudinal, moral, and dispositional prerequisites, and that if they hadn't already engaged in a serious and sincere investigation of the claims of religion, their dismissal of things religious couldn't be taken seriously as having any intellectual or moral integrity.

Hence, the wager wasn't intended to get anyone to directly change their beliefs. Pascal knew he couldn't achieve that. He also knew that if people chose to "become religious" simply on the basis of "fire insurance," this would be one of the most self-centered and unworthy motives in the world. Rather, his wager was intended to get people to consider how they were in fact already wagering their lives, and to consider those areas which, unlike their beliefs, are under their volitional control: their decisions about how to live, whether to take their moral lives seriously, along with things like prayer and search after truth, etc. The wager, thus, was intended to launch people in a new direction in their lives, by beginning to change those areas of their lives where they could do so-- their actions: keeping their promises, treating their neighbors with respect, caring about moral integrity, caring about truth where they could see it. I'm guessing that Pascal calculated that this would lead people eventually see things as "evident" to which they had previously been blinded, much as Max Scheler says (in The Nature of Sympathy) that love, far from being blind, opens the eyes of the lover to qualities in the beloved that others are blind to. Eventually, then, the person to whom the world looked devoid of any ultimate purpose or meaning might come to view the same data as replete with the handiwork of God and as saturated with His presence.

Something like that.

Edgar Foster returns (with Kripke)!

2004-11-16T18:49:00.000-05:00

Edgar Foster returns, after a long absence, to raise a new question. The question, it turns out, comes from his recent reading and researches in the philosophy of former Princeton Professor, Saul Kripke (pictured left):

Foster:

I hesitate to ask this question for fear of starting a new email thread. But what do you think about the proposition "If x is possibly distinct from y, then x is necessarily distinct from y"?

Blosser:

I would say: nonsense and bullwinckle. X could be possibly distinct from y without being necessarily so, could it not? Even if you want to eliminate altogether the element of seeming (to be) in possibility, this would seem to be so, in my humble opinion. For if x is possibly distinct from y, this has to mean that it is also possibly not distinct from y, which means that it can't possibly be necessarily distinct from y.

Foster:

My question is based on Kripke's discussion in the last portion of Naming and Necessity [Amazon link]. What you say above makes sense. However, there are two points I did not mention in my original missive. First, Kripke has identities in mind. Second, he posits the view above with rigid designators in mind as well. For example, "Hesperus (x) is Phosphorus (y)." This proposition asserts that x is y. In this case, we know that x is not possibly distinct from y since x is y. But what if someone says, "Mental states are brain states"? The proposition is again one pertaining to identity. Kripke would also say that "mental states" and "brain states" (in the example above) rigidly designate their respective referents such that these designations obtain in all possible worlds.

He would then undoubtedly ask whether mental states (x) are possibly distinct from brain states (y). Kripke would go on to reason that if mental states are possibly distinct from brain states, then they are necessarily distinct from brain states in the same way that Hesperus, if possibly distinct from Phospherus, would have to be necessarily distinct from Phospherus since an entity that is possibly distinct from another entity cannot be (evidently) identical with that entity. So it seems that possibly not being distinct does not enter into the picture when we're talking about the subject of identity and rigid designators.

On the other hand, [Notre Dame philosopher, Peter] Van Inwagen (pictured right) takes Descartes to task for making a similar argument with respect to the RES COGITANS and the RES EXTENSA. Essentially, the French philosopher is arguing that his soul is possibly distinct from his body. Ergo, the soul is necessarily distinct from the body since it is possible for the soul to exist without the body, also possible for one to be certain that he has a spiritual substance while being equally doubtful that he possesses a RES EXTENSA.

Ok, fire away!

Blosser:

I guess I have some questions about what Kripke means here (& perforce you) by the distinction between "possibly distinct" and "necessarily distinct,"as well as by "rigid designations." First, I wonder to what extent a person's epistemic ignorance might play into the category of "possibly distinct." That is, does the distinction depend, at least in some cases, on a person's not knowing that x is necessarily distinct from y and therefore hypothesizing that it may be "possibly distinct"? Secondly, I wonder what "rigid designations" means in this respect too. Could something be "rigidly designated" yet fail to be rigidly self-identical or to exactly fit the rigid designation ontologically? This would seem to make a difference also.

Kripke says "Hesperus (x) is Phosphorus (y)." Okay, for the sake of an argument let me accept that this identity is ontologically determined and absolute. It would then make no sense suggest that x could be "possibly distinct" from y, would it; or, perforce, "necessarily distinct." Granted.

But when Kripke states "Mental states are brain states," he says something less clear. For we aren't entirely certain how mental states and brain states are related, though we have some non-empirical (pistical, for your benefit) commitments to the relative independence of mental states from brain states, as even epiphenomenalists have.

At this point one could meaningfully ask, it seems to me, whether mental states are "possibly distinct" from brain states, based on our ignorance as to how the two are related. A strict materialist would collapse the former into the latter, but even then might grant the former an epiphenomenal independence or seeming independence from the latter. But then it would seem that one could meaningfully ask whether, in this case, x is not possibly distinct from y without being sure whether x is necessarily distinct from y.

All of which would boil down to the question: what can Kripke possibly mean by his language of "rigid designation" here? Of course, if it is true in all possible worlds that x is necessarily distinct from y, then the identity of x and y is absolute regardless of whether we successfully recognize this identity and choose to "rigidly designate" it for what it in fact is.

I'm still not at all clear how "possibly distinct" is supposed to entail "necessarily distinct," in Kripke's usage. I can conceive of how darkness (x) could be "possibly distinct" from an overcast sky (y), as would be the case, for example, on a clear night. But I don't see how that would make x "necessarily distinct" from y (in this case), since one could easily conceive of an overcast day also being dark.

An exchange on pro-choice logic (Part 7)

2004-11-12T13:46:00.000-05:00

(Continued ...)

Colleague:

Yeah, there are thousands of people out there who tolerate everything except intolerance, who want their kids to be anything but republicans--and they are all now licking our wounds and asking each other, how, since we're obviously right about everything, could we have lost an election? NPR is such dark comedy these days--Neil Conan and others inviting in these upper-echelon evangelicals, asking them their opinions, challenging others to respond to the challenge--it's hilarious. Funny times. It's enough to get one interested in politics.

Blosser:

Well, the blind spot in many of these people who, as you say, "tolerate everything except intolerance," is that they are themselves extremely intolerant of those they disagree with, sometimes to a point bordering on fanaticism. Intolerance of some things may be a function of anyone's thinking he's right about anything; but what heightens the irony with the people you describe is that they're often found among the ranks of those touting the celebration of every kind of "diversity," as long as it doesn't have anything to do with the cold, wet blanket of Christianity.

Colleague:

You always forget that I'm not a philosopher--I just play one on TV. I don't use terms with a huge degree of accuracy sometimes, though I always try to, and so I don't know what I meant by "faith" in my last. But Augustine says in On Christian Doctrine that "the life of the speaker has greater force to make him persuasive than the grandeur of his eloquence, however great that may be" (IV.59). What I find that that I am moved and persuaded when people are willing to be open and truthful, not about their truths, which we all have and behind which we all hide, but about their emotions. I don't think most of us even have direct access to our emotions--I know I don't most of the time. And when I meet someone who does, I am often persuaded--not on the basis of shared assumptions, which I thought was meant by cogency.

Blosser:

Oh, I don't think for a moment that you merely a TV philosopher. You can't pull that one over on me. I know you're actually a philosopher traveling in the disguise of an English professor. But anyway, you do make a nice point from St. Augustine's On Christian Doctrine. And I do agree with the old saw that one ought to "practice what he preaches." As. St. Francis of Assisi once declared: "Preach at all times. Use words if necessary!" All children are sensitive from their tenderest years, of course, to any discrepancies between what their parents say and do. Which doesn't make me think for a moment that what one says is unimportant: it had just better be backed up by a consistent integrity of life.

The issue of emotions, in my opinion, is a mixed bag. Therapists and women often point out that men aren't good at talking about their emotions, and I think this is especially true of "nordic"-type men from Scandanavian or Teutonic backgrounds, like the groom in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" [Amazon.com DVD link]. I think it's probably less true of the Mediterranian and Latino types of men who wear their emotions on their shirt-sleeves. I think we nordic types of men often don't even know what emotions we're feeling. We have to sensitize ourselves to feel what we're feeling, oddly enough. On the other hand, I don't think of emotions as an alternative to truth. I don't think you were saying that they are, but only that an emotional connection between people is indispensable. Who wants to be "talked AT"? That shows no respect. Where I think some people may be led astray, though, is in thinking that emotions are somehow a substitute for truth. For example, if I find myself emotionally infatuated with a woman other than my wife, I might tell myself: "I've got to be honest with myself and with my feelings. I'm in love! I can't help myself!" But here I would be ignoring the fact that I had made (however tacitly) a decision to allow myself to indulge in feelings for someone in direct infidelity to my wife. Unless a human being is an animal unable to make and keep promises, this would be dishonest behavior. Furthermore, I would likely also have feelings of affection for my wife. So which feelings are the "true me"? That's something I have to decide on the basis of what kind of person I want to be: do I want to be a person who keeps his promises and makes love work, or a person at the mercy of whatever emotions and inclinations may come his way?

Colleague:

... As to Lacan, I'm certainly hoping the students will do more than cite him. I've never done this course this way before, so I don't know what they'll do. But one can distinguish metonymic from metaphoric thinking anywhere, whether it be in the thought process of a character, the relation between images in a work, the process of reading, or just in life. It's all very practical. Where it becomes complex and interesting is when Lacan associates metonymy with desire and metaphor with symptom. Since Silas had chosen to go to a gay bar and write about it, we talked last night about the limp wrist thing. Is that a symptom of homosexuality, in which case it would have a metaphoric relation, or something arbitrarily associated with it--in which case it is something one can play with? All the authors we have been studying seem to think that the metonymical way of thinking is simply better than the metaphorical--even Jakobson, who says that something is poetical because of the material relations between the signifiers in contiguity and sequence, not because the words mean things, refer to great truths, etc. Which I think is a little simplistic. But there are metonymies and metaphors everywhere, and they're fun to read.

Blosser:

So when our college administration issues a policy statement we might say "Linberger has spoken" and that would be a 'metonymy', and if their policy was particularly ill-though-through we might say "The administration's policy was lame" and that would be a 'metaphor', something like that? Why do the authors you've been studying seem to think the metonymical way of thinking and speaking is somehow better?

Colleague:

I share your skepticism about applications of relativity theory at the macro level, where things are obviously not relative at all. And also the Bloom quote--I think it's true that most students at least say that truth is relative. They say it because they have been taught it in high school, I imagine, and they were taught it to combat various forms of prejudice. But I don't think most of them really believe truth is relative--they are just surprised to find teachers, in college, who don't believe it.

Blosser:

I like your description of the phenomenon. I wonder, though, whether there isn't an inadvertent duplicity at work, not only among the students entering college but even among many professors, who often profess a relativistic outlook disdainful of any absolutes ("Whatever floats your boat," "Different strokes for different folks," etc.) while selectively adhering to absolute principles and values when it's convenient. For example, I can easily imagine a classroom of students professing their disbelief in any objective absolutes, yet inconsistently appealing to the absolute value of justice were I, their professor, to arbirarily flunk all of them. "That's not fair!" they would protest. But what is "fairness" if all values are subjective and personal and relative?

Colleague:

I've not read [Simone de] Beauvoir (pictured right), but I've heard of her argument that someone women are politically obliged to not be stay-at-home moms. Do you think my students' notion that that's what all feminists think comes from their having read Beauvoir or having spoken with people who have? I doubt it. Maybe very indirectly. I bet you that people who say this have never spoken with a feminist who holds that opinion. And I bet that very few people who identify as feminists do hold that opinion. The thing most feminists want, I think, is that there be laws prohibiting men from hitting or raping women and that these laws be enforceable. But I was talking with a young woman who volunteers at the rape crisis center and is somewhat of an activist--I called her a feminist, and she balked, as if that were some sort of insult. Very odd. We like our ghosts better--they walk around in our brains, doing the sort of things we expect them to, doo-doo-doo-toot doo, and everything's fine, and then you have a real experience in the world and the ghosts get mad.

Blosser:

Feminists come in different varieties. In one sense of the word I would call Pope John Paul II or myself a feminist, though you would smile at that. If the good of women is what is wanted, we would certainly want to champion that.

I've heard of such distinctions as these: 'equity feminists', who want equal wages for equal work; and 'gender feminists', like Mary Daly (pictured left), who want to eliminate males from the gene pool or eliminate gender difference altogether. The majority of women in the States, I agree with you, would certainly not want to take away the right of any woman to be a mother and wife and homemaker, if that was her choice. But that's not the view that animates the more radical feminists. Most radical feminists loathe and despise this choice and wouldn't hear of permitting it if they could have their way. They would derisively dismiss the feminism of a Christina Hoff Sommers or even the lesbian Camille Paglia (pictured right), who probably scares the hell out of them. But let them speak in their own fevered words:
"[A]s long as the family and the myth of the family and the myth of maternity and the maternal instinct are not destroyed, women will still be oppressed.... No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. It is a way of forcing women in a certain direction." ~ Simone de Beauvoir, "Sex, Society, and the Female Dilemma," Saturday Review, June 14, 1975.

"A parasite sucking out the living strength of another organism...the [housewife's] labor does not even tend toward the creation of anything durable.... [W]oman's work within the home [is] not directly useful to society, produces nothing. [The housewife] is subordinate, secondary, parasitic. It is for their common welfare that the situation must be altered by prohibiting marriage as a 'career' for woman." ~ Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1949.

"[Housewives] are mindless and thing-hungry...not people. [Housework] is peculiarly suited to the capacities of feeble-minded girls. [It] arrests their development at an infantile level, short of personal identity with an inevitably weak core of self.... [Housewives] are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps. [The] conditions which destroyed the human identity of so many prisoners were not the torture and brutality, but conditions similar to those which destroy the identity of the American housewife." ~ Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 1963.

"[Housewives] are dependent creatures who are still children...parasites." ~ Gloria Steinem, "What It Would Be Like If Women Win," Time, August 31, 1970.

"Feminism was profoundly opposed to traditional conceptions of how families should be organized, [since] the very existence of full-time homemakers was incompatible with the women's movement.... [I]f even 10 percent of American women remain full-time homemakers, this will reinforce traditional views of what women ought to do and encourage other women to become full-time homemakers at least while their children are very young.... If women disproportionately take time off from their careers to have children, or if they work less hard than men at their careers while their children are young, this will put them at a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis men, particularly men whose wives do all the homemaking and child care.... This means that no matter how any individual feminist might feel about child care and housework, the movement as a whole had reasons to discourage full-time homemaking." ~ Jane J. Mansbridge, Why We Lost the ERA, 1986.

An exchange on pro-choice logic (Part 6)

2004-11-10T11:04:00.000-05:00

(Continued ...)

Colleague:

I still am very interested in this question of an argument's being persuasive, as opposed to the quite separate question of its validity. I didn't find you persuasive when you spoke of murder, nor when you spoke of equality, but I do when you speak of faith. I suppose I could analyze that, but another time, perhaps.

Blosser:

This is interesting. Since "faith" is usually divorced from rational content in the contemporary mind, this makes me wonder what "persuasive" means here. Of course I could be wrong in my assumption and, if so, I would wonder what (content) it is that you find persuasive. But in my current experience "faith" is usually associated by individuals with something like "sincerity" or "authenticity," which they seem to admire, but which has little if any identifiable rational content; and if that were the case I would wonder what "persuasive" means here. The only other possibility that comes to mind is that you didn't find my arguments "persuasive" because you disagreed with them, but then that doesn't reflect negatively on the soundness of the arguments but just only their cogency (or ability to persuade). Blaise Pascal (pictured left), of course, faced the same issue with traditional metaphysical arguments for God's existence, which he recognized to be impeccably sound but utterly ineffective, and therefore chose the approach of a "wager" that might appeal to the probability theories of his gambling buddies. Which makes me wonder what a similar strategy might look like in the abortion debate-- maybe an argument about how each of us is already up to our ears in gambling on the outcome of our choices, gambling that God won't be pissed off at the Last Judgment by our voting for a pro- abortion candidate, or whatever. Perhaps I'll have to think about that line of reasoning.

Colleague:

The spectre of the anti-essentialist raises its savage head, finally. That's a term I have heard but am not real familiar with--it sounds like what one would get if one tried to go about reducing Lacan to something simple and practical and catch and generally applicable. The word must go back to the days before I started paying attention (or have come about since I stopped paying attention--that's possible, too.)

Blosser:

The Greek term PHYSIS has a long history, just like OUSIA, and there have been those around, like the sophists, who refused to grant the existence of anything stable resembling 'natures' or 'essences' for a long time. So anti-essentialism is hardly anything new, though in its more recent forms (such as anti-foundationalism) it has a fairly short history from the late sixties in the Anglo-American philosophical academy, I suppose. I did find it interesting in the class you let me sit in on at the Taste Full Bean that you encouraged the class in your closing remarks to consider how Jacques Lacan (pictured left) might be applied or whether his thinking could be implimented in any practical ways. I'm still not quite sure what you may have had in mind by that invitation. I know several writers, like Julia Kristeva, who QUOTE Lacan in their work; but I can't help thinking you might mean something more than that.

Colleague:

The gender thing, though, has to do with a person who was just a strong, athletic man until she had to submit to a chromosome test, which revealed an x chromosome. The claim was not that she has no essence but that it was scientifically impossible, or only unscientifically possible, to determine whether she is male or female. I suppose you could say that Lacan is an antiessentialist, since he, like Judith Butler and just about everyone else, wants not to think of one having a self, which would be one's essence.

Blosser:

As I said in my remark about Buddhism, I find it interesting that Buddhism arrives at its ANATTA (or "non-self") doctrine by means of a kind of introspective phenomenological analysis of the empirical 'self,' which ends up dismantling any kind of Cartesian notion of an Ego Cogito. On a phenomenological level, I find this entirely compatible with the Christian notion that the self or soul is something unknowable in any self-subsistent way and can come to be known only indirectly or reflexively, as it were, as node or center of relationships with the world, with others, and with God. But I don't see how a moment that any of this leads to the conclusion that we have no self or soul. Why should we think that? The best discussion of this I've found is The Selfhood of the Human Person by the phenomenological personalist, John Crosby.

Colleague:

But Fausto-Sterling's point about gender had to do with the very real inapplicability of labels. (At least, she says it's real.) This was a sort of macro-application of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle--you cannot reveal the truth of her sex but only determine it by choosing your criteria arbitrarily.

Blosser:

I don't know much more about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle than the average non-physicist, I suppose. But I've always felt a bit uncertain (!) about the way in which such principles get applied outside the realm of physics by the laity. For example, I've seen Albert Einstein's Relativity Theory referenced in support of various spiecies (moral, metaphysical, epistemological, even religious) relativism, whereas I've always assumed that the whole theory hinged on the non-relativity of two ineluctable absolutes-- electromagnitism and gravity. But that's a mere detail.

Colleague:

But tell me more about this spectre, the anti-essentialist. There are so many such spectres--two women this week have told me that they're not feminists because they think it's alright for a woman to be a stay-at-home mom. Find a feminist who doesn't! I mean, a real, living, breathing one, not the gothic hairy-armed beast in a gothic, undergraduate mind. Relativist is another spectre--have you ever met one of those? Someone who really believes as an article of faith that it depends how you look at it? (Fausto-Sterling, in the example cited, might seem to be one, but as she shows, it only "depends how you look at it" if male and female are somehow the only two possibilities. The athlete in question, she argues, is an intersexual. And I'm sure she goes in doors and looks out windows, same as us essentialists.) Deconstructionist--postmodernist--skeptic--nihilist--these are Halloween costumes. I'm not saying that all labels are, but that we have our list of ghosts we walking around talking about as if we've actually seen. Republican--that's different. I met one of those once.

Blosser:

Ha! I thought I began hearing the strains of Dance Macabre some time ago ... I know how you like monsters and spectres. But these are your readings, not mine. You ask me to tell you more about "this spectre, the anti-essentialist." I find it much more interesting to talk about the nature of things, with Husserl, who used to say "Zu den Sachen selbst!" Why shouldn't we find our point of orientation in what is, rather than in what isn't, or in what seems capable of identifying itself only parasitically, reactionary-like, by way of opposition to any ostensible definition of what is? Who's to say, furthermore, that the shoe doesn't fit the other foot as well, if postmodernist recoils in horror from the spectre of the thing he hitherto thought harmlessly inanimate: "Aaaaaaaaaaaaah! It's ALIVE!"

Find you a feminist who doesn't think it's alright for a woman to be a stay-at-home mom? Sartre's mistress, Simone de Bouvoir (pictured left), for starters; and I don't recall any hairy arms in the video of the interview with her in our library.

Have I ever met a relativist? Well the more interesting question here might be whether anyone has met an absolutist-- these days, anyway. And I would define "relativism" more narrowly than the belief that it "depends how you look at it," which is quite compatible with absolutism or objectivism, in my opinion. I would define "relativism" as any view that denies the existence of any objective absolute that is not relative to time, place, or opinion. But even those are a dime a dozen. Allan Bloom writes in the opening paragraph of his book, The Closing of the American Mind, the only philosophy book I know of to make the New York Times bestseller list, "There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative. If this belief is put to the test, one can count on the students' reaction: they will be uncomprehending. That anyone should regard the proposition as not self-evident astonishes them, as though he were calling into question 2 + 2 = 4. These are things you don't think about." He wrote that in 1987.

And a Republican. Yeah, I suspect so. I remember Amy and I talking with the kids of the former LR dean of students at Wildacres this past spring, now with kids of their own. They were telling us how they weren't the least concerned about how their kids grew up, what influences they received in their schools, what sexual orientation they chose to embrace, etc., etc., etc. -- the quintessential picture of liberal urbanity-- with only one proviso: "provided they didn't become Republicans"! That -- ha-ha! -- seems to be one predictable absolute among a given cross-section of the population! Which does raise the question again about double-standards, doesn't it-- like Rousseau's insistence that he couldn't be expected to be "clear and consistent at the same time." But at least that has a certain charm about it, I suppose.

An exchange on pro-choice logic (Part 5)

2004-11-10T10:56:00.000-05:00

(Continued ...)

Colleague:

Your dog analogy is problematic, isn't it? Sure, calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg, but what DOES make it one? I was reading recently about an Olympic hurdler in the 60s who failed her gender test and was barred from competition. She was chromosomally male but genitally female. Susan Fausto-Sterling, a biologist at Brown and the author of the book I read about this in, says that science simply cannot sex you scientifically--it must decide what the criteria are (genitalia, chromosomes, whatever else might bear on the question), and it can apply the criteria scientifically, but the criteria themselves are arbitrary. So I don't know--should I just dismiss this as "postmodernism"? (The Olympic Committee, or whatever it's called, didn't do so--they reinstated her status and took back their decision, though of course long after her career was ruined and she'd been spit upon after she returned to her country in disgrace, etc.) Who says what's a leg and what's not? The leg-ologists, of course. [Abraham] Lincoln's dog metaphor only applies if we assume, as he seems to, that we all know exactly what a leg is, and are only talking about how to name this thing that we all of course understand because it's obvious. Which may be the case with legs, though I have my doubts, but it isn't the case, apparently when it comes to sex and gender, and it isn't the case with abortion either if you're a "pro-choice"-ist. You can pretend that a leg is a leg, a spade is a spade, a life is a life--or perhaps it's not pretending, perhaps a life simply is a life. But I think that someone who actually wanted to communicate with and persuade people of the opposite opinion would take on the question and not beg it, which was the thrust of my original response to the parody. It just seems to me that we're mostly content to divide ourselves into tribes and sing the jingle.

Blosser:

Here we go again. I'm not sure how profitable this line of discussion can be. Yet I think it's an important, so I'll try to say a bit more. First, calling a tail a leg or anything else doesn't "make" it anything, does it? Isn't a thing whatever it is whatever we call it? Now of course that's what the anti-essentialist questions: that natures exist at all. Yet I would not only contend that they do, but that anti-essentialists selectively acknowledge their existence. They are most always seen entering a building through its door, for instance, rather than trying to walk through the wall.

Second, your gender-bender example involves all sorts of unknown details, since I'm not acquainted with the (tragic) case. For example, I don't know whether the person was genitally "female" by virtue of a "sex change" or by some other act of God. But all of this is really beside the point in view of Aristotle's principle that fuzzy boundaries (which he recognized abundantly in nature) don't eradicate genus/species categories. In more recent times, scientists have trouble deciding whether to classify light as waves or particles, just like they have trouble deciding whether to classify a virus as organic or inorganic. But how does the existence of boundary difficulties in these kinds of examples compromise our otherwise very clear distinctions between particles and waves, or the organic and inorganic, or male and female, forsooth (now THERE'S a word!)?

Third, my students typically tend to assume that differences of opinion reduce to differences of perspective, which they think means these differences are beyond adjudication. But we all know some opinions that are simply stupid, just like this one. The most elementary lesson taught by Plato is that the sophist ends up hanging himself on his own "logic." Which brings us to the folly of the members of the Flat Earth Society: just assuming the world is flat won't flatten it, as Sir (now Saint) Thomas More pointed out to Thomas Cromwell and the Duke of Norfolk.

Fourth, there are limits to our ability to persuade one another, as you point out; and this may be as distressing to some as it is boring to others. Joe's ability to persuade Roger of anything rests in part on the willingness of Roger to accept certain premises in common with Joe, as well as upon the soundness and cogency of Joe's argument. There are limits to this, however, as discussed previously. The court of ultimate appeal, of course, is the reality of the world, which, as Max Scheler (pictured right) notes, offers "resistance": the wall that the anti-essentialist refuses to try and walk through. At that point he may want to accuse the essentialist of begging the question, but he (the anti-essentialist) demonstrates by his own behavior that he accepts the existence of natures or essences (such as the solidity of walls), whatever he may say. So one test of the viability of a view of things is very likely the ability of a person to consistently live out the view. And I just don't quite see how the anti-essentialist manages it without being selective or inconsistent. While I admit, as Aristotle did, that there are fuzzy boundaries to various genera, I think (like him) that distinguishing between men and women is generally a task not condiserably more difficult than distinguishing between a dog's tail and his leg. But then, I've been called "dogmatic," "fundamentalist," along with all sorts of other names (though I'm not sure how any of that's relevant).

Colleague:

So you say that "I don't think there's any real need for an argument on this point," which I assume is the point of what's a life and what isn't, and I feel like I must be either a dolt or some spiritually craven fiend for falsity (and maybe I am), but I disagree. I don't think I'm arguing for a straight pro-choice platform but just quietly insisting that the issue is complex. I think the question of "where and why killing human lives is justifiable" is less interesting and also less important here. I don't know why I think that, though--interesting question.

Blosser:

I assure you that I have no wish to offend you. Maybe I was a bit blunt. Maybe there are complications. I know an acquaintance of mine just had a son whom she refused to abort even though he is mentally retarded, has cerebral palsy and is blind (his brain was growing outside his skull in the womb and required surgery upon delivery to correct that problem). Life can be complicated and often tragic, though often it seems like it's amidst the tragedies that God seems to pour out His most abundant and miraculous graces. But I feel a little like the British member of parliament who quit his party the day it simultaneously adopted a platform affirming abortion-rights and the protection of Gold Fish. Albert Camus (pictured right) wrote:
"The world expects of Christians that they will raise their voices so loudly and clearly and so formulate their protest that not even the simplest man can have the slightest doubt about what they are saying. Further, the world expects of Christians that they will eschew all fuzzy abstractions and plant themselves squarely in front of the bloody face of history. We stand in need of folk who have determined to speak directly and unmistakably and come what may, to stand by what they have said."
I view myself as an unworthy aspirant to that ideal-- an ideal, which, in my humble opinion, the Catholic Church has come very close to meeting, especially in the person of the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II. Not many people (Catholics included) may LIKE everything the Church stands for, but I doubt whether many have serious questions about what that stand is.

No organization comes close to having the network of social service programs for feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, assisting unwed mothers and battered wives, providing orphanages, etc.-- not even the United Nations. But amongst all these programs there is one thing that I've never heard called into doubt: the belief the life is sacred and that deliberate abortion is murder. If the Church is doing her job on this front, I'm not really too concerned if arguments fail to persuade, because I know when it comes right down to what's most important, people are far more apt to be persuaded by personal compassion than by an argument.

Colleague:

I don't know--it's an interesting question to me. Suppose you think that (in the context of this discussion, which I take to be a discussion of the moral and legal issues of the abortion question) that there is no substantive difference between a fetus and an abortionist, and I think there is. How do we proceed? We don't just look up the answer in the World Book Encyclopedia, do we? Categories are not absolute but creative, or so I've always thought. Do we determine the outcomes or results from the category assumptions and then backtrack, judging the assumptions accordingly? (I.e. you must be right, because your assumptions lead [let us say] to criminalizing of abortion, whereas mine [let us say] do not). But then we would have to know a priori that abortion should be criminalized, which is precisely what we want to find out. Do we manipulate categories creatively, just for the fun of it? Do we sit up all night, Quaker-style, praying and listening for an answer, and refusing to budge until consensus has been achieved? I can't think of a better way than that, but I'm not sure how philosophical it would be.

Blosser:

I don't have sufficient time here for this, but I wouldn't write off entirely the Quaker-style thing. At least, I agree with Pascal that spiritual and moral dispositions affect how we see the "data." Love opens our eyes to things that others (who don't love or who hate) are blind to. Etc. So I would want to say something about the importance of this factor in the background. The other thing might be to go take a look at the abortion scene and, if possible, to witness an abortion, or watch one on TV or something. Talking to women who have been through abortions is eye-opnening. The repression, sublimation, and scarring are beyond imagining. Then there's the carnage of the act itself, which is awful to behold. There's always a chance that none of this would affect one, but I would think it important to check it out. My own humble page on this issue can be found here. Then, in turn, I should probably be open to hearing and prayerfully reflection on the stories of some of the more outspoken opponents of the pro-life position. Something like that, maybe.

Colleague:

And the equity thing is interesting, too. You're right, of course, that we are in no sense equal in any meaningful sense, even if we're identical twins. Perhaps it does follow from this that equality as a political banner or slogan just makes no sense. It's a relatively new idea, of course. Medieval peasants didn't think they were "equal," I bet--nor did their owners. But two questions: isn't it the case that we simply cannot say this on today's cultural scene? You can be against abortion, but you cannot be against equity and equality: whatever your opinion on whatever you're opinion is on, the need for equity must warrant it. So you say, if there's such a thing as equity, then the fetus must have its share, etc. But you cannot say, men and women simply are different, and they have different gifts and different consequences, and must therefore orient themselves differently vis-à-vis (let us say) sexuality--even though all this us quite obviously true. I mean, we can say it, but Bush can't--no elected official can, and it seems to me the whole debate is conditioned by that universal need to self-censor.

Blosser:

You have never uttered a truer word. This self-censorship thing is simply amazing to me. I have caught the most unlikely people engaging in the most amazing acts of self-sensorthip in this way. The ungrammatical singular "they" is the most notorious linguistic example. Even Catholics tip-toe around the wording of Ephesians 5 by talking about "mutual submission" of husbands and wives to one another, though of course the text says no such thing.

Having said that, I think we would both acknowledge that there's a distinction to be made between the moral and the legal and the politically possible, and that the difficulty of supporting a position politically is insufficient excuse for supporting it morally, if it calls for support. It would have been so easy for the then Sir Thomas More just to sign the Act of Supremacy-- so easy ... but for that little thing called conscience.

Kant vs. Bush

2004-11-03T13:37:00.000-05:00

A colleague of mine forwarded to me the following piece of skywrighting offering a Kantian reading of Bush by a Bruce Merrill:

Here is an election day quote from the close of the 18th century (1795), which applies (I contend), to the current president of the USA.
"Just as we view with deep disdain the attachment of savages to their lawless freedom-- preferring to scuffle without end rather than to place themselves under lawful restraints... consequently preferring a mad freedom to a lawful one-- and consider it barbarous, rude, and brutishly degrading of humanity, so also should we think that civilized peoples (each one united into a nation) would hasten as quickly as possible to escape so similar a state of abandonment. Instead, however, each nation sees its majesty... to consist in not being subject to any external legal constraint, and the glory of its ruler consists in being able, without endangering himself, to command many thousands to sacrifice themselves for a matter than does not concern them."
Thus Kant notes, in his essay on "Perpetual Peace" [Perpetual Peace, and Other Essays on Politics, History, and Morals (HPC Classics Series)], which, despite the rationale for a past social contract that everyone acknowledges, individual nations and rulers continue to behave in a barbaric & brutish manner.

Well, [Merrill writes] certainly our ruler "sees [his] majesty... to consist in not being subject to any external legal constraint." International law and UN sanctions are for other weaker nations. Certainly not for those born-again men who swagger out of Texas. And then, too fearful to "endanger himself" in 1972 in a war which he ostensibly supported, and hardly endangered now, he takes great satisfaction-- "bring it on!"-- in the power of sending those not as wealthy and entitled as he to the front lines, where they fight & die a war whose true rationale (the geo-political game-plan of the Bushites) remains essentially concealed, and "does not concern them."

To this, I offer the following brief rejoinder:

Kant's "Perpetual Peace" was written under the Enlightenment assumption that sin is a myth and that the scourge of war, like the aberrations of interpresonal conflicts, could ultimately be resolved through universal Reason. Hence, when planning his world-government, Kant had not the fears of England's Lord Acton, who said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. By contrast, I find at least some small comfort in the notion that our tradition of liberal democracy, whatever its many shortcomings, emerged from the widespread assumption that the checks and balances upon human government are necessary ("that government is best which governs least") because human nature is fallen. The Christian ideal without doubt is a theocracy with Christ as King. Short of that, we are left incapable of the best three forms of government described by Aristotle (monarchy, aristocracy, and polity), because our we cannot trust our own nature to govern for the wellbeing of the governed; and thus we must have recourse to the least opressive of the worst types of government described by Aristotle (democracy, oligarchy, and tyranny). Since tyranny is out of the question, we're left with democracy (government by the greed of the majority) or oligarchy (government by the greed of the rich). Of these two, the least objectionable is democracy, which has the virtue of slowing the inevitable progress of society towards tyranny by its colossal inefficiency.

Our country's reluctance to submit to the tribunal of international judgment could in fact be motivated by a primitive and barbaric desire for selfish autonomy. But it could just as readily be motivated, at least on the part of some, by distrust of any tribunal in which the highest recourse is the arbitrary law of the majority, subject to no further sanction of divine or natural law. I find it interesting that those most hesitant to trust the judgment of the United Nations and/or World Court tend to be individuals who believe in natural law, if not divine law, while those most trusting of these international bodies tend to be individuals who believe in nothing higher than the voted will of the majority, which makes me think of the French Revolution and Rousseau's lovely notion of the Volente General and of dissidents who must be "compelled to be free." Our country today may no longer have the virtues observed by Alexis de Tocqueville, but I like to think that the American people, including the local farmers and Joe Six Packs, are still possessed of a sufficient residue of that legacy in their common sense, that I can repose more trust in their collective judgment than in that of the power-mongers of world government. Of course, I could be sorely disappointed. We're all merely human, after all.

An exchange on pro-choice logic (Part 4)

2004-11-02T13:21:00.000-05:00

(Continued ...)

Colleague:

You are exactly right about corporations taking advantage of the perceived need for equity and somehow managing to get two for the price of one, which sucks for everyone. I don't see how the earlier system of gender policing was preferable, however. What would be interesting to me would be an argument against equity as a value. But if we continue to value equity, legislating in favor of it is going to mean legislating for control over one's body. I think an argument against equity might be so new and surprising that it might get some attention, but people seem afraid to make that argument, preferring to just say abortion = murder.

Blosser:

Well, stating the obvious (we're killing human lives here) is no argument, but it's enough to keep most simple-minded people from me from thinking it's a good thing. I don't think there's any real need for an argument on this point. Where the argument is needed, rather, is where and why killing human lives if justifiable.

The equity thing is interesting. I've always thought so since reading Jose Ortega y Gasset's The Revolt of the Masses (pictured right). And I do see how it's socially related in some of the feminist discourse, but I don't see how it's logically related in any way that really makes sense (unless I'm missing something here). People often want to tie the issues together in terms of a woman's right to control her own body, but this seems to miss the simple point that the baby's body is not her body, even if it's hosted by her body, as well as the further point that equity would seem to demand granting that infant a right to the protection of his or her little body as much as the mother has to the protection of hers.

But the equity thing has also been subjected to a great deal of mistification, in my view. For, in what sense are people equal? We're not equally healthy, intelligent, wealthy, strong, education, wise, gendered, able to carry babies in our wombs, diligent, etc., etc. I might want to argue that we're all equally human, but that presupposes a common human nature, which those disposed to puke at any hint of Aristotelian "essentialism" would seem to want to deny. So where does that leave us? We might want to argue that people have the right to equal rights before the law? But what does this mean when natural law is denied so that all we're left with is positive law (arbitrary human laws), which can be horribly unjust, and when "rights" seem to have reduced to whatever anyone wants to do that they can get away with doing?

Personally, I'd want to argue that the only viable defense of any kind of equality of rights before the law would have to be tempered by the demands of justice and based on the good consonant with their nature as human beings. There's really nothing that complicated about this. Natural law says we learn what a thing is from what it does, and we should treat things according to their natures. We don't water our tomato plants with gasoline, and we don't put water into our fuel tank. We learn to treat things according to their nature. What is the nature of a human being? Aristotle walks us through this in his The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford World's Classics). It's not that hard. At least, it wasn't until this case of collective amnesia suffered by the readership of the New York Times, or at least that part of it which shares the presuppositions of those who write that parish magazine of affluent and self-congratulatory liberal enlightenment.

Colleague:

I was not aware that an unborn child could both be killed and inherit property. That does seem contradictory, though I'm not sure how to resolve the contradiction. Very interesting. I guess in a sense the point is moot, since the child can only inherit the property if it is born and lives.

Blosser:

It's one of the many crass and hypocritical inconsistencies ensconced in our contemporary system of positivistic, analytic jurisprudence.

Colleague:

I try not to get emotional about whether staying at home is shit-work or some wonderful privilege. I suppose at issue is choice. I will be honest with you: I have never found the idea of a "wife," or at least the concatenation of images that term conjures up in my head, to be anything but repulsive. I have no objection to anyone being a "wife," if that means staying at home and playing with kids and baking cookies and beaming radiantly or snarling bitterly depending upon her mood, but I don't want one in my house, thank you. I feel about wives about the same way I feel about TVs--don't want one. A friend and lover, someone with whom to share life's adventure, that I can see, but not a wife, a soccer mom, or what have you. But that's just me personally. I feel about "wives" the way I feel about war--if someone had to go to war and kill and die, I'd rather that person be me than someone else, but it seems better if no one has to. But if people want to . . . But anyway, as I say, the issue is choice. Choice is political, so sexuality is political. I've threatened to tell you about my father, but some day I'll tell you about my mother, too, if you're not careful.

Blosser:

I thought you said you were going to try not to get emotional here! But this sounds downright pathological, if not Pavlovian! Good heavens. Just what did happen between you and your mother!? You're working with a model of "wife" here that is appalling. Your wife must find this amusing, to say the least. Of course you may not like the connotations involved in her "having" a "husband" and you're "having" a "wife." But unless something has escaped me, that's what you apparently are to one another, like it or not.

Abraham Lincoln used to ask, "If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?" When people would answer, "Five," Lincoln would correct them: "No, the answer is four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one." But then, that's just common sense. Lincoln didn't know anything about postmodern insights.

Colleague:

I'm sorry I missed your guest--I don't remember any notice of her visit.

Blosser:

She was good. Sorry you missed her.

Colleague:

. . . I don't know that I have an opinion about the politics of abortion. My head is full of leftist arguments, as I have said, but I enjoy having this discussion with you and am learning a lot.

Blosser:

I don't know that I follow you here. On the one hand, you seem fond of saying that you don't know how pro-choice people think because you've never read any, and that you don't know whether you have an opinion about the politics of abortion. On the other hand, you state here that your head is full of leftist arguments. But then it would seem to me that it should be perfectly clear to you what pro-choice arguments would be and that you would have a definite opinion about the politics of abortion. In fact, it would seem that this datum would rise to the level of public knowledge, unless someone's missed something here.

An exchange on pro-choice logic (Part 3)

2004-10-29T16:44:00.000-04:00

(Continued ...)

Colleague:

I agree with most of what you say--maybe all of it.

First, what you say last. That the pill and abortion rights and everything were mainly to make sexual promiscuity convenient. I rather suspect that something deeper and more troubling is at stake. My sense, from having dabbled in feminism, is that what was really motivating people through those decades was a perceived need to establish equality among individuals. Equality, not promiscuity. I imagine the idea in most peoples' heads was that, if some promiscuity and promiscuity-related consequences, arise from the legislation of equality, then so be it. And also in peoples' minds was the fact that gender politics is not fair. The consequences of sex were different for men than for women, and that was both unfair and, thanks to the technology of contraception etc., unnecessary. Promiscuous men were tolerate/glorified, while promiscuous women were shunned, and that was only because of pregnancy--for no other reason. And thanks to technology, that reason was no longer reasonable.

Blosser:

I suspect you're right about the equality issue. Many feminists stumped for the lifiting of the traditional bans on contraceptives because they felt it would free them up from being homemakers so they could break into the work force. There's an irony there too. Prior to WWII and for some time afterwards, a man's work wages were called a "living wage" and were sufficient (as a single income) to cover the expenses a whole family. After the changes of the sixties (when the Democratic and Republican parties changed places on many issues) the equity feminist agenda of equal pay for equal work was realized, but at the cost of the rapid erosion of the actual buying power of an individual's wage. The capitalist employers were delighted, since they eventually could hire two workers for the price of one, but it eventually meant that a family could hardly survive on a single income, leaving single mothers strapped and on WIC and welfare. Another thing, though, is the utter disdain some feminists express for homemakers, like Simone de Bouvoir, who says somewhere that women must not be allowed the carte blanche choice to become mothers and homemakers, lest too many women make the choice-- and Naomi Wolf who calls domestic homemaking "shit work." I don't deny that some women have suffered abusive husbands unjustly. But the atmosphere such remarks creates, I think, is hideously demeaning to one of the most important vocations a woman may have.

But I also suspect it's more than equity: probably also fears of overpopulation (at least that was a reason often given back in the seventies after the Club of Rome report), and the desire for what they conceived to be better marriages without the anxiety of abstinence during the fertile periods of the wife's cycle if they wanted to space children or avoid pregnancy. So I agree that most people probably did not blatantly say: "Hey, contraception? Great idea! Now we can be utterly promiscuous and have sex whenever we want to, in or out of marriage, without any fear of pregnancy!" But I'm quite certain that was something people quickly surmised as an inevitable by-product of the contraceptive and abortive technologies.

Colleague:

Now, of course, that legislation may have increased promiscuity. I don't know--I don't know what the statistics are, and I don't know to what factors to attribute them. But I think the above line of reasoning is basically valid: Equal treatment is desirable in principle; thanks to technology, unequal treatment is no longer necessary; therefore equality should be legislated. You could of course say, equal for whom? It's not equal for the unborn. But as I said before, the assumption seems always to have been that the unborn, or whatever you want to call them, are not to be counted. So that assumption needs to be refuted, and I'm not sure there's a scientific way of refuting it. Saying life begins at conception, at birth, or anywhere in between is arbitrary--you just choose your political agenda and decide according to that because there is no alternative.

Blosser:

Well, there are all sorts of ways, actually. Here's a legal way: I think it's a lovely inconsistency that though we permit abortion, we still recognize an unborn child in law when it comes to property rights. An unborn child is able to inherit property, and for legal purposes has been considered a legal "person" for as long as I can remember. So it's a blantant inconsistency, not to mention hypocrisy, that we extend the legal protection of property inheritance to the unborn while not extending to them to legal protection of their lives. In fact, we offer more legal protection to various endangered species of animals today than we do to unborn human beings (but that's a detail). We also subject to legal prosecution anyone who, through reckless endangerment, injures or otherwise causes a mother to miscarry her unborn baby.

Then there's the phenomenology of language. You like language. Have you noticed that no woman contemplating an abortion ever calls her unborn child a "baby," but rather a "fetus," "tissue," or even a "blob"? On the other hand, a woman (like Amy) who had been trying to get pregnant, will call her unborn child, even in the first few weeks of pregnancy before there is anything remotely recognizable as a human being inside her, her "baby"?

How is there anything "arbitrary" about saying that "life begins at conception, at birth, or anywhere in between"? Medievals like St. Thomas Aquinas lived long before there was any split in political opinion about any of this business, and none of them had any trouble recognizing an unborn child as a living human being. Did your son Peter suddenly become a living human being at birth? C'mon, the Chinese traditionally say that a child is one year old at birth! There's nothing mysterious about this. A child, like Peter, at birth has no recognizable use of reason. We therefore don't hold him morally accountable for knowing right or wrong. But anyone who would take the life of an innocent young child like him we would rightly consider a monster and prosecute as a criminal. What qualifications does an innocent human life have to meet before we grant him the protection of law? For Hitler, of course, it was being of sound mind, the age of reason, and Aryan. For us it seems to be birth. But if you're only partially born, you're not safe. A child doesn't have to have attained the age of reason to be 'safe.' If you're too old to be useful, you may face a threat of euthanasia, at the other end, of course. All of THIS strikes me as quite arbitrary indeed. But nothing about the recognition of a human life as human from the first moment of conception until natural death strikes me as arbitrary in the least. We've accepted the killing of unborn children as a fact of life, like the ancient Canaanites, I'm afraid, and we just don't like thinking about the details. Is there any other way to view it? "Terminating a pregnancy"? What's that? What sophistical euphemisms! I'm reminded of the Nazis.

Colleague:

You say,
You ask whether any distinction should be made between the morality of killing an unborn baby and a born (and presumably adult) human being. I would say that the more fundamental distinction is between human beings who are "innocent" and those who threaten our lives.
But it seems to me this is just dodging the question. And anyway, how is one's innocence, a theological quality, more "fundamental" than one's having been born or not been born, a biological quality? They just seem different to me--I don't see how one can be called more "fundamental" than the other.

Blosser:

What question is dodged here? There is NOTHING theological about my reference to "innocence." That is precisely NOT what I'm referring to, for then I would insist that nobody is innocent (Rom. 3:23). Rather, I'm using the term in the sense that has been generally applied to the 3000 civilian individuals who lost their lives in the Twin Towers in NYC. Anyone recognizes the difference between combatants or terrorists, on the one hand, and innocent civilians on the other. An unborn infant is "innocent" in that sense: he doesn't generally threaten anyone so far as I can see.

Colleague:

You're right about traditional morality being basically upheld in the popular media, which are almost always tediously conservative, except when it comes to sex. I think lots of people have come to value the radical, the alternative, the progressive, or to think they do anyway, so the veneer of sexual deviance is brought in to mask a deeper vein of tedious conservatism, and also, of course, because sex sells, as everyone has always known.

Blosser:

I would agree, with the exception that I find nothing at all "tedious" about traditional morality. I consider it common sense sanity, and I don't see much to commend as "progressive" (as I think you will agree) in alcoholism, drug addiction, gluttony, etc. Consider it an analogue of what G.K. Chesterton says about theological orthodoxy: nothing, he says, is so "exhilarating." (But you'd have to read his book, Orthodoxy, to appreciate precisely what he meant.)

Colleague:

And I agree with you that there's a lot about our society that needs to be changed. But the pro-life argument will always be received as an argument for political regression, an argument that we should go back to the old days, when women dealt with the consequences of sex and men didn't have to, when women were subject to strict controls and policing that men were not because of the consequences partly for them but mostly for the family's social status, etc. Bottom line, people will say, is that people will have sex, and pregnancies will happen, and if one sex can escape the consequences, or choose creatively among the possible consequences, then the other should also be able to. You could say, well, if people were brought up properly, then unwanted pregnancies wouldn't happen, but "brought up properly" means guarding your daughters with a shotgun, teaching them that their bodies are eclairs that everyone is going to want to take bites out of and that this is their fault, etc. It's just not fair, people will say. And I don't know how to refute that argument.

Blosser:

You say that it was back in the old days when women had to deal with the consequences of pregnancy and men didn't. I think nothing is further from the truth. The statistics paint the opposite picture. Contraceptives and abortion have enabled men to be totally irresponsible in their treatment of women. Men by and large view women as sex objects today. The use women for their own pleasure, and, because they can avoid encumbering a woman with babies, they feel justified in abandoning them for other, more attractive prey. Since 1965 the statistics show that men have generally held off longer before marrying, which has often made them less responsible. Incidences of delinquency, drug use, and sexual promiscuity (often at women's expense) have risen exponentially. And despite the existence of contraception and abortion, single mothers with children (often abandoned by their father) are the single most predictable group among those at or below the poverty line. I don't see how women fare better today, except as they are often portrayed on TV. Which is why I tell my students: protect your freedom of thought, avoid brainwashing: get rid of your TV. The bottom line is that MEN have been the group singly most at fault for escaping the consequences of their irresponsibility with women.

If fairness is what you're after, here's something that Dr. Janet Smith (who was here last weekend as my guest and a guest of the college, and largely ignored) points out that might have a bearing:
"There's a wonderful book out by Dr. Ellen Grant called The Bitter Pill: How Safe is the "Perfect Contraceptive"?. She was very much in on distributing contraceptives in the 60's in London, but she saw woman after woman coming in with different pathologies that she found were pill-related high blood pressure, blood clots, cysts in the breast, all sorts of things. So, she said, 'I'm not going to prescribe these anymore.' She looked into this and she discovered, that when they were first testing for the pill, they were trying to find a male contraceptive and a female contraceptive pill. And in the first study group of males, they found that there was some slight shrinkage of the testicles of one male, so they stopped all testing of the male contraceptive pill. You might notice that there is no such thing in the first study group of females. Three females died and they just readjusted the dosage. Now, I don't know what that tells you, but it tells me that there's something sinister going on here. Women are still dying from the pill." (For the whole discussion, see "Contraception: Why Not")
For more information on the connection between hormonal contraceptives and the epidemic of breast and ovarian cancer, largely ignored at the encouragement of the pharmaceutical and Planned Parenthood lobbies, see: Links Between "The Pill" and Breast Cancer

For further titles by Dr. Janet Smith, see below (and order here):