An exchange on pro-choice logic (Part 3)

(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):

• Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later
• Why Humanae Vitae Was Right: A Reader
• Humanae Vitae: A Challenge to Love

An exchange on pro-choice logic (Part 2)

Continued ... (from here)

Colleague:

I think I understand your position better now, and I don't disagree with what I see as the logic of it. Assuming it is true that, as you posit, abortion is a question of convenience, and not about the question of what constitutes federally protected life, then of course someone who thinks convenience has a higher moral value than right is ridiculous and fair game for parodists. (Is that a word? Parodiers?)

Blosser:

I appreciate what you're saying. And, as for "parodists," Heidegger loved creating neologisms, if that's one, so I don't see why you can't.

Colleague:

My point was not to take a position on the abortion issue but to question the rhetorical effectivenes of the parody. I was assuming that a parody is more rhetorically effective if it has the power to noplus those not already inclined to agree with the author of the parody on the issue in question. And I maintain that the parody is puerile because it makes no attempt to persuade anyone. The reason is that I don't believe those who identify as "pro-choice" of course do not believe that the abortion issue can be reduced to taking a position, for or against, on sexual freedom. I don't think they would share either your assumptions, as laid out in your most recent post (below), or those of the parodist.

Blosser:

The effectiveness of an argument (or parody) is, of course, very subjective. An argument may be perfectly valid and totally ineffective, such as "Either God exists, or Blosser is a ham sandwich; Blosser is not a ham sandwich, therefore God exists." Or it may be logically fallacious but perversely effective, as in the ad hominem genetic fallacy: "A belief based on a psychological need is untenable; theists believe in God because they have a psychological need for a heavenly father figure to give them security, therefore belief in God is untenable." But of course, even if that was why theists believed in God, this fact wouldn't have anything to do with whether God in facts exists. And an ad hominem genetic fallacy can be turned against the user: "Atheists disbelieve in God because they have a psychological need to believe they are not accountable to a higher authority, or else they might feel burdened with guilt," etc.

The parody in question, however, doesn't require adherence to any of the afore-discussed assumptions for against sexual freedom. It simply focuses on the "exception logic" of "I'm personally against abortion because of religious reasons, but wouldn't want to impose my views on others, so I'm willing to permit abortion as a matter of public policy." That's what it parodies, by saying: "I'm personally opposed to killing abortionists for religious reasons, but wouldn't want to impose my views on others, so I'm willing to permit killing abortionists as a matter of public policy."

So the question is: Is that effective? I think it does a pretty good job of exposing the insufficiency of such sloppy reasoning as a justification for allowing a public policy of killing anyone. Now whether it's effective in the sense of getting people to change their minds about abortion is another matter. I doubt it has much immediate success of doing that. It's more likely to provoke anger. In fact, one of my Catholic brethren told me, after hearing that I emailed that parody to some of my colleagues, that I must have the apostolate of "POP4Christ" (or, pissing off people for Christ). Is there any virtue in that, apart from the questions of my personal motives for doing this (which may or may not be charitable or puerile)? Well, short of taking up arms in defense of the unborn, since I'm not of the mind of John Brown who did so against the blight of slavery, I suppose I believe that provoking some anger among pro-abortionists may be one appropriate way of getting them to re-consider the idiocy of their "exception logic." Even if it got a few of them to abandon that "logic," I suppose that would be a coup.

However, I do agree with you that "effectiveness" is not a cut-and-dried matter. Logicians thus distinguish between validity, soundness, and cogency. An argument is sound if it is valid and also has true premises. But it is cogent only if it is sound and if the person to whom it is directed recognizes it to be sound. Which means, of course, that logical argument is unavoidably person-relative. Aristotle abandoned the attempt to argue with classical Skeptics, who refused to commit to any premises, seeing that they would undermine themselves by asserting the self-referentially contradictory proposition that "Nothing can be known."

Colleague:

Now I could be wrong. At issue, as I see it, is the question of what "pro-choice" people believe. If they do believe that their own convenience and their own sexual itch-scratching take prescendence and priority over moral law, then I stand corrected. But I don't think you'd find that most people who have had abortions or who support others' right to have them would think of things in those terms, and so arguments based on those assumptions will fail to persuade. A philosopher might want to say, well, even if people don't think they are making those assumptions, they really are, so therefore I am right in asserting (with some violence, which we have discussed before) that they are and in proceeding accordingly. Which may satisfy the philosopher, perhaps many philosophers. More interesting to me, though, and more rhetorically effective, would be a parody (or any other textual intervention) that addreses those it is designed to address in their own terms. I have suggested that texts that don't do that have the effect of most of the 527-type ads on the radio and television. They first of all persuade no one, second of all make no attempt to persuade anyone and could never persuade anyone not eager to be persuaded, third of all just participate in the tribal dumbing-down of society in general, and fourth of all polute intellectual air. It's an important and difficult point, I think. No number n of reasons (I like to put the n in there--it makes me sound so scientific) of reasons why I should move to the moon will pursuade me to do so unless they are accompanied by the necessary number of refutations of the reasons I have for not moving there. And people who make no effort to refute my own reasoning, as it actually is and not as they like to think it is, are not interested in teaching me but only in patting themselves on the back.

Blosser:

The above I take as a helpful gloss upon the topic of effective persuasion, and I accept it. I certainly believe you are right. If the opposition in any argument is to be effectively engaged, it has to strike home, like a good advertisement would. Most political ads are, as you suggest, abominably poor, a waste of money, and pollution of air time (which makes me happy we don't have a TV). The most effective political ad I've seen, a mailing, was a large thing that looked at first like an ad for a new Mexican restaurant. On closer inspection it was a political ad directed against Erskine Bowles, which pictured a Mexican, in sombrero and full get-up, THANKING Bowles for all the jobs he had sent to Mexico. That was actually funny, and perforce, somewhat effective.

As to abortion, you say that you don't think that those who procure abortions support others' right to have them because of convenience or sexual promiscuity. Maybe not. Usually, I'm convinced, they recognize that individuals find themselves in very difficult and often embarrassing circumstances with an unexpected and unwanted "pregnancy" (unborn child on the way to being born). I recognize that. And I'm hesitant to judge too harshly any individual involved, because the society as a whole has come to accept abortion in much the same way that Canaan came to accept the practice of child sacrifice to Moloch (pictured left).

But the historical data quite frankly disturb me. Whatever the evils of the 1950s, and there were many, they are a far cry from what we face today, as you'll agree. The Donna Reed Show, I Love Lucy, Father Knows Best, and The Spin and Marty Show may have been colossally banal, but they reflect a very different world from that of the Jerry Springer Show (which I saw for the first time two years ago), and whatever else they have on TV today. Some statistics: one-third of all American pregnancies are aborted today. One-third of a children are born to single mothers. Over one-half of marriages end in divorce. Three-quarters of all African-American children are raised without fathers. 60% of poverty in the USA is accounded for by single women with children. The statistics on child-abuse, wife-abuse, and general abuse of women are off the charts. Pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry. The statistics on sexual promiscuity among teens is nearly matched by those on adultery among married couples. Furthermore, all of this-- in terms of exponential skyrocketing statistics-- has happened since Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) struck down all civil laws against contraception and Roe v. Wade (1972) struck down the laws against abortion for any reason up to the third trimester (and Clinton allowed partial-birth abortion [pictured right]-- the killing of a partially born baby-- a.k.a. legalized infanticide). The pill was promoted as a means of improving marriages by taking the anxiety out of sex, reducing unwanted pregnancies, eliminating child abuse ("every child a wanted child"), improving the lot of women in life, etc. And abortion was supposed to serve as back-up contraception where the pill or condom (or whatever) failed. What the data suggests, however, is the opposite: contraception made promiscuous sex much easier, hence, divorce is skyrocketing, along with children born outside of marriage, child abuse, single mothers below the poverty line; and despite the "blessing" of back-up abortion (at 4000/day), the trend continues unabated, contributing also to teenage delinquency, drug use, violence, etc., etc., etc.

Of course, in principle, it's really very easy to avoid pregnancy if you just don't have sex. The majority of kids used to wait to have sex until marriage, though that may be hard for anyone born since the fifties to remember. Equally uncommon was divorce: I remember my mother, when I was a kid, once whispering to me in a restaurant that someone at another table had been divorced, as if it were something utterly unheard of. But of course, the whole society has changed, which is why we can no longer easily expect teens to abstain from sex and couples to remain faithful in marriage. Which is why, as I said earlier, I find it hard to fault individuals.

But I do find it ironic that women now take "pills," not because they're not sick, but to avoid pregnancy; and that when a couple get's pregnant, they often call it a "mistake." The whole thing seems turned on its head: when a couple performs the procreative act and get pregnant, it actually means that something has gone right. God gave us pleasure in doing things that are good for us: eating, sleeping, procreating. But that which, in Aristotelians categories, was once regarded as "accidental" (the pleasure) has not become the "essence" of sex, so that when that which was once regarded as the essential purpose of sex (pregnancy) results, it is called an "accident." Ironic, to say the least.

Also ironic, I think is just how popular traditional morality is among Americans as long as it doesn't have to do with sex. Sitcoms and soap operas and movies never glorify murder or rape or stealing or even lying. But in one way or another they do seem to glorify fornication, adultery, sodomy, abortion, and contraception. They tell you to control your drug addictions, your alcohol addictions, your violence addictions, your gun addictions, and even your smoking addictions-- everything except your sex addictions. Isn't this inconsistent? Isn't this a problem? Isn't this related in some way to the holocaust of abortion on our hands?

Colleague:

But as I say, I lack the fundamental information here because I don't know how "pro-choice" people actually think. I'm sure studies have been done on that--I just haven't read any of them. My own question you have not answered--not that you should, but I still wonder about it. Should one or should one not distinguish between the morality of killing one who is attached to and is resident with a human host and killing one who is not. It's easy to just say yes, or no, or whatever, but what I would hope for in someone who wanted to change my views is someone who could try answer that question to my satisfaction. (I haven't decided in advance what the answer is.) And I don't even know what such an answer would look like or how the argument would proceed, so I'm kind of at a loss myself.

Blosser:

I doubt you need to search some obscure sources to find how "pro-choice" people actually think. Just listen to John Kerry, or any representative of the National Organization for Women being interviewed on NPR, or, for that matter, just turn on your TV and listen to how people talk about it on sitcoms or soaps, or even how your students talk about it. Among the highest perceptage of the clientelle of The Pregnancy Care Center in Hickory come from Lenoir-Rhyne College. Ask Gail Bowman, the director. I know kids who have had abortions at LR, and those form whom they have borrowed the blood money to pay for them. "How 'pro-choice' people actually think" is not some dark, occult secret. It's how half the population of the country thinks, and most of the media outlets think.

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. I can conceive of the justifiability of killing an unborn baby who, through no fault of his own, threatens his mother's life as a result of an ectopic (tubal) pregnancy. These, of course, are highly uncommon. Likewise, I can conceive of the justifiability of a police SWAT team taking out a killer on a rampage, or a military intervening, as in the Gulf War, to rescue a country under attack by tyrannical foreign invader, which requires subduing (and in many cases killing) enemy forces. In such rescue operations, some innocent civilians almost always lose their lives, but presumably the rescuing force never intends this, whereas it does intend to rescue the innocent civilians being oppressed and killed by the foreign invader. I don't find any basis for distinguishing between the morality of killing in terms of whether the human being killed is pre- or post- partem.

Alasdair MacIntyre: "The Only Vote Worth Casting in November"

Notre Dame philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre (pictured right) takes the "hands off" approach to the election in a fascinating analysis in the Archives of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture. In his essay, entitled "The Only Vote Worth Casting in November," He writes:

When offered a choice between two politically intolerable alternatives, it is important to choose neither. And when that choice is presented in rival arguments and debates that exclude from public consideration any other set of possibilities, it becomes a duty to withdraw from those arguments and debates, so as to resist the imposition of this false choice by those who have arrogated to themselves the power of framing the alternatives. These are propositions which in the abstract may seem to invite easy agreement. But, when they find application to the coming presidential election, they are likely to be rejected out of hand. For it has become an ingrained piece of received wisdom that voting is one mark of a good citizen, not voting a sign of irresponsibility. But the only vote worth casting in November is a vote that no one will be able to cast, a vote against a system that presents one with a choice between Bush's conservatism and Kerry's liberalism, those two partners in ideological debate, both of whom need the other as a target.

Why should we reject both? Not primarily because they give us wrong answers, but because they answer the wrong questions. What then are the right political questions? One of them is: What do we owe our children? And the answer is that we owe them the best chance that we can give them of protection and fostering from the moment of conception onwards. And we can only achieve that if we give them the best chance that we can both of a flourishing family life, in which the work of their parents is fairly and adequately rewarded, and of an education which will enable them to flourish. These two sentences, if fully spelled out, amount to a politics. It is a politics that requires us to be pro-life, not only in doing whatever is most effective in reducing the number of abortions, but also in providing healthcare for expectant mothers, in facilitating adoptions, in providing aid for single-parent families and for grandparents who have taken parental responsibility for their grandchildren. And it is a politics that requires us to make as a minimal economic demand the provision of meaningful work that provides a fair and adequate wage for every working parent, a wage sufficient to keep a family well above the poverty line.

The basic economic injustice of our society is that the costs of economic growth are generally borne by those least able to afford them and that the majority of the benefits of economic growth go to those who need them least. Compare the rise in wages of ordinary working people over the last thirty years to the rise in the incomes and wealth of the top twenty percent. Compare the value of minimum wage now to its value then and next compare the value of the remuneration of CEOs to its value then. What is needed to secure family life is a sufficient minimum income for every family and that can perhaps best be secured by some version of the negative income tax, proposed long ago by Milton Friedman, a tax that could be used to secure a large and just redistribution of income and so of property.

We note at this point that we have already broken with both parties and both candidates. Try to promote the pro-life case that we have described within the Democratic Party and you will at best go unheard and at worst be shouted down. Try to advance the case for economic justice as we have described it within the Republican Party and you will be laughed out of court. Above all, insist, as we are doing, that these two cases are inseparable, that each requires the other as its complement, and you will be met with blank incomprehension. For the recognition of this is precluded by the ideological assumptions in terms of which the political alternatives are framed. Yet at the same time neither party is wholeheartedly committed to the cause of which it is the ostensible defender. Republicans happily endorse pro-choice candidates, when it is to their advantage to do so. Democrats draw back from the demands of economic justice with alacrity, when it is to their advantage to do so. And in both cases rhetorical exaggeration disguises what is lacking in political commitment.

In this situation a vote cast is not only a vote for a particular candidate, it is also a vote case for a system that presents us only with unacceptable alternatives. The way to vote against the system is not to vote.

While I think MacIntyre offers some profoundly helpful considerations above, I also think that the practical exigencies of the current election are addressed more immediately by Catholic Answer's "Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics" published by Karl Keating (pictured right). The following is an excerpt:

YOUR ROLE AS A CATHOLIC VOTER

Catholics have a moral obligation to promote the common good through the exercise of their voting privileges (cf. CCC 2240). It is not just civil authorities who have responsibility for a country. "Service of the common good require[s] citizens to fulfill their roles in the life of the political community" (CCC 2239). This means citizens should participate in the political process at the ballot box.

But voting cannot be arbitrary. "A well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program or an individual law that contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals" (CPL 4). A citizen’s vote most often means voting for a candidate who will be the one directly voting on laws or programs. But being one step removed from law-making doesn’t let citizens off the hook, since morality requires that we avoid doing evil to the greatest extent possible, even indirectly.

Some things always are wrong, and no one may deliberately vote in favor of them. Legislators, who have a direct vote, may not support these evils in legislation or programs. Citizens support these evils indirectly if they vote in favor of candidates who propose to advance them. Thus, to the greatest extent possible, Catholics must avoid voting for any candidate who intends to support programs or laws that are intrinsically evil. When all of the candidates endorse morally harmful policies, citizens must vote in a way that will limit the harm likely to be done.


THE FIVE NON-NEGOTIABLE ISSUES


These five current issues concern actions that are intrinsically evil and must never be promoted by the law. Intrinsically evil actions are those which fundamentally conflict with the moral law and can never be deliberately performed under any circumstances. It is a serious sin to deliberately endorse or promote any of these actions, and no candidate who really wants to advance the common good will support any action contrary to the non-negotiable principles involved in these issues.

1. Abortion

The Church teaches that, regarding a law permitting abortions, it is "never licit to obey it, or to take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or to vote for it" (EV 73). Abortion is the intentional and direct killing of an innocent human being, and therefore it is a form of homicide.

The unborn child is always an innocent party, and no law may permit the taking of his life. Even when a child is conceived through rape or incest, the fault is not the child's, who should not suffer death for others' sins.

2. Euthanasia

Often disguised by the name "mercy killing," euthanasia also is a form of homicide. No person has a right to take his own life, and no one has the right to take the life of any innocent person.

In euthanasia, the ill or elderly are killed, by action or omission, out of a misplaced sense of compassion, but true compassion cannot include intentionally doing something intrinsically evil to another person (cf. EV 73).

3. Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Human embryos are human beings. "Respect for the dignity of the human being excludes all experimental manipulation or exploitation of the human embryo" (CRF 4b).

Recent scientific advances show that often medical treatments that researchers hope to develop from experimentation on embryonic stem cells can be developed by using adult stem cells instead. Adult stem cells can be obtained without doing harm to the adults from whom they come. Thus there is no valid medical argument in favor of using embryonic stem cells. And even if there were benefits to be had from such experiments, they would not justify destroying innocent embryonic humans.

4. Human Cloning

"Attempts . . . for obtaining a human being without any connection with sexuality through 'twin fission,' cloning, or parthenogenesis are to be considered contrary to the moral law, since they are in opposition to the dignity both of human procreation and of the conjugal union" (RHL I:6).

Human cloning also involves abortion because the "rejected" or "unsuccessful" embryonic clones are destroyed, yet each clone is a human being.

5. Homosexual "Marriage"

True marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Legal recognition of any other union as "marriage" undermines true marriage, and legal recognition of homosexual unions actually does homosexual persons a disfavor by encouraging them to persist in what is an objectively immoral arrangement.

"When legislation in favor of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic lawmaker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favor of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral" (UHP 10).

An exchange on deconstructing the liberal arts curriculum (Part 3)

Note: this post focuses on the question whether there are irreducible dimensions of experience or reality, which serve as the basis for dividing the curriculum into distinct subjects or majors. I cite the work of Herman Dooyeweerd for the affirmative.

Colleague:

... whether from rottenness or bad instruction, our students are getting very little out of the current core - judging by the students I get, including honors juniors & seniors, who ain't never dunno about Heisenberg, or string theory, or James Baldwin, or Cinco de Mayo... or anything, really. If the argument for our present core is that it is essentially remedial, I think it fails utterly in its task. I'd also ask whether the configuration of the core as it is, this tedious 15-chair rotation, doesn't itself produce the result, and isn't responsible for some of the stupidity. Courses in which lectures from 30 years ago are simply read aloud in monotonic blah, blah, blah, recital and regurgitation, blah, blah, blah - & wait! I'm like Paul, suddenly I'm in a John Hughes flick, mouth-breathing, gum-swallowing and all. At best, a smattering. Stuff 101. It's like this ridiculous required Convocation nonsense - we model, and so invite contempt.

Blosser:

They say, guns don't kill, people do. I say the core doesn't fail students, teachers do. The other half of the problem is students who fail themselves. Whose contempt should we fear? Sophomoric students'? Eddie Izzard's?

Colleague:

... As to the Reflections on the Revolution in... Hickory.

My Dear Mr. Burke, hmm... but into "reductionism" you package an agenda - essentially the whole old anti-Enlightenment case - & borrow the unspecific pejorative aspect of the word, thus creating a "definition" that organizes the whole problem in a way that pre-duces a certain kind of answer. There are always "plenty of data," because data are rhetorical - everybody has plenty of it, and everybody is right. Including me.. How about that.

Blosser:

That we each have biases is hardly news. Neither is it news that all arguments are in some sense circular (Heidegger's "hermeneutical circle"). But if all arguments were viciously circular, what are we doing being teachers at a liberal arts college anyway ? C'mon, I have students who think they've formulated a refutation when they raise their hands with smug grins on their faces and say: "Well, that's ... YOUR opinion!" Oh, really? And so that makes all of us right? Both Socrates and Thrasymachus? I would like to see Plato construct that conversation and deliver it wearing heels.

Colleague:

There are several things here - whether these 15 are reducible, and whether they are interchangeable, and therefore contingent & arbitrary (& historical), and therefore, in their historical and cultural variability echoes of something else - but then, of course, (& this is where Paul and I argue) this variability, this observed difference, however cleverly or rigorously gazed at, is itself the echo of a scripted laboratory process that tends to produce what it assumes is already there. Difference gives birth to itself - whereupon it is experienced - (along with its Moloch, similitude). One can't treat Text as something to be experienced, and at the same time argue that experience is merely Text. That's a palindrome. Or something. Like Ipswich.

Blosser:

Granted. I don't know any other way of discovering anything but under the regulative ideal of the assumption that there is something intelligible to be discovered. (Have you read Michael Polanyi's The Tacit Dimension?) But how does the fact that biology and chemistry and sociology are cultural artifacts (constructs, if you will) in any way compromise the proposition that some things are irreducible to others? If I tried to understand what a book is only by examining and analyzing it as a composition of wood pulp and ink, would I not be missing the semantic dimension of the words formed by the ink on the pages? How does the fact that the Arabic numerals are cultural constructs compromise the integrity of arithmetic? If nothing prevents some constructs from being arbitrary and silly, what prevents some cultural constructs from being true?

Colleague:

Of course one can reduce the biotic and the kinematic to string theory; and life to material; and the ethical and lingual to the psychical, and life and language to the Holy Spirit, and the historical to the lingual, and lingual to the biotic, and (indeed) as many poststructuralists are wont to do, all to the lingual (except the lingual). They are, after all, metaphors - as well as things. Hence what one might call, lumping reduction and transition together, their malleability -

Blosser:

It would be more accurate to say, in my opinion, that they try to reduce these things in this way. They may say that they have succeeded in doing so, since, as you put it, these things are all only metaphors. But I would want to argue that this is quite simply nonsense. A physicist may say that a wall with the appearance of solidity is ultimately reducible to ("nothing but") sub-atomic particles, but let him try to walk through it. Q.E.D.

Colleague:

Do we believe the Medical when he says the Body is just an amalgam of chemical reactions? How bout plastic surgery - more, the way our cultural fixation upon the Looky and the Healthy body seem to coincide - How bout the Hilarious History of Health, and the obscene & ridiculous ideas and procedures that for so long, in the face of some really bad data (= death), persisted? Lynn Hunt's stuff here.

Blosser:

Let me respond with a quote from Thomas Howard:

"So, for the sailor, the businesman, the boy, and the old queen, another human body is by far the best means of getting a certain kind of pleasure. But it also happens that the human body is the epiphany of personhood. It cloaks and reveals a human individual. A doctor may probe it strictly as a complex of organs and tissue; a gymnastics coach may manipulate it as a pattern of muscles. But the sexual exploration of this mass of tissue puts the bread and wine on the altar: the real presence of the person must now be reckoned with." (Chance or the Dance? p. 125g.)

Of course these dimensions--the biotic, the physiological, the personal--are culturally differentiated, just like the equations of the multiplication table. So what? Since when does fiction have to be false?

Colleague:

one cannot establish the irreducibility of experiential categories experientially; the question is the scheme of difference, the criteria by which the Numbers of Things are distinguished - how many, and how many Not? - and that (grossly and subtly) inculcated schema, immanent as it is in the very possibility of intersubjective & discursive experience, remains necessarily opaque, and can only be considered in its own terms - or? Here again I will argue with Paul, and suggest that experience plays with that scheme, giving rise to Other things - like deconstruction - and its Moloch, Levi-Strauss.

Blosser:

How else could one possibly establish the irreducibility of experiential categories than by experience? What else is there but looking and seeing, and looking again to be sure? What alternative would there be but some a priori scheme, which one might assay to impose upon us? Blas-pho-me, blas-pho-you ...

Colleague:

We need a prioris - and the criterion for selection of an a priori scheme is arbitrary - so, let's Play ...

Blosser:

Exactly ... as I was saying ...

Colleague:

"Art is worth more than truth."

Blosser:

Depends what you mean. In the view of St. Thomas Aquinas, the beautiful and the true, together with the good, ultimately coincide with one another as inseparable 'transcendentals' in God. But I would agree with anyone who said that a picture is worth a thousand words.

An exchange on deconstructing the liberal arts curriculum (Part 2)

Note: this post focuses on the question whether an "interdisciplinary" approach to the curriculum is justified by the assumption that there are no irreducible aspects of experience or reality that serve as the basis for distinct subjects and majors. I cite Herman Dooyeweerd's work for the negative.

A third party, another faculty colleague, joined the discussion as follows:

Colleague:

WHOA--WHA? HUH? WHAT THE . . . I feel like my students must feel when they suddenly wake up in the middle of one of my classes.

Blosser brings up an important suggestion: that most or many or some of our students just won't be able to do interdisciplinary work. Ah--interesting. This gets us straight to the issue, for me--disciplinary thinking is easier, which is of course why we do it. It's easier for the faculty as well. My logic book calls this biconditional introduction. The core is, triple-equal-sign, that which is easiest. Question is, do we want to do just what is easiest--do we want to let easinesss determine our praxis. Maybe we do--I don't know. But at a certain point in any college's history, people always say no, no more--we're moving to the next level right now, as of now, and we're not going to be a place where lower-order thinking is taken seriously. I have no idea how we are to know when we get to that point, but my inclination is always to just decide by fiat and see what happens. Or we could always ask Wayne and see whether he thinks we're ready.

Blosser:

Several things here, in order of least to greatest importance: (1) our entering students over the last two years are among the least prepared, least motivated, and lowest analytical abilities of any I've seen over my twenty years here. In a typical semester, no more than four or five students fail my classes. Last semester, in just two classes, nineteen students failed! I've never seen the likes of it. And we're discussing moving to the "next level"? We need better students.

(2) My first year here I had five preps, and my compensation was insufficient to pay for medical insurance for my family (wife + 4 kids then). Things improved sufficiently that I did not have to teach summer courses or overloads for a few years. Only four years ago, I was making in the mid-to-upper 30K salary here. That's improved since Powell has come into office. But I've found over the past couple of years that the raises haven't been enough to prevent me having to take overloads and summer classes again, especially after taking over Amy's car payments and such. Two summers ago, I was teaching 5 courses to make ends meet. Now with Amy taking classes (instead of working), I'm teaching overloads during the year as well. We hardly live extravagantly. We spend $110/month on food (including both groceries and dining out).

Now, here's the deal. Since the faculty size has been significantly curtailed, our classes are bigger than ever. I have nearly 40 in both of my core classes. This is good for the college, but difficult for us. We're supposed to incorporate more writing into our courses and invest more prep time in interdiciplinary teaching, which takes even more time -- with our pay? I've been looking for ways to supplement our income outside of teaching. In short, what we're already doing is too labor intensive for too little pay. Try paying out medical insurance premiums for a family on one LR income.

To teach effectively we need more time and improved compensation (so we don't have to teach multiple overloads or spend our time seeking extra income off-campus).

(3) I'm not sure that the most effective way of "moving to the next level" is to diminish the liberal arts core (lose a philosopher, lose a historian, lose an English and a religion prof) and cobble together an "interdisciplinary" course to take care of the "humanities" requirements. I think a lot more could be done by working the core we've got, which is quite demanding (and effective) enough if we did the work. I was had legal action taken against me for failing a student, who correctly pointed out that she had earned "A's" in two other classes at LR (in history and religion). She was later diagnosed as suffering from significant mental retardation. She couldn't write an intelligible sentence, let alone a paragraph. She got the "A's" in courses where she wasn't required to write anything and requested that her profs read the test questions to her (because of some claimed disability), and she was adept at reading the implict cues in her profs' voices as to the correct answers.

I'm willing to be corrected, but there's nothing about our liberal arts curriculum that calls for a major overhaul, at least not that I can see. It's not perfect, but the curriculum we have is the result of hard-earned gains, and I would hate to see these improvements undermined. Many of the interdisciplinary sorts of things you envision, I think, is already being done in philosophy classes. This would be doubtless enriched by the sorts of conversations we might have if we could team teach with historians and English professors; and this could likely be done on a voluntary basis where class schedules permitted. But implimenting structural changes that would mandage such arrangements would seem prohibitive, given our course loads, compensation, etc.

Finally, students need to learn math, chemistry, physics, biology, psychology, sociology, history, language, literature, ethics, religion, and philosophy, do they not? You say this is the "easy" approach, while the "interdisciplinary" approach is more challenging. Yes, and no. In another sense, there is nothing "easy" about learning any of these. They take hard work. I seriously doubt whether half our students are up to it, or whether they should even be in college (trade schools may be the better alternative for many). But throwing them into a higher-order class where they're confronted with the Masters of Suspicion (Marx, Freud, Nietzsche and their stepchildren, Lacan, Derrida, Barthes, etc.), and asked to discuss the relative socio-political constitution of "knowledge" or "truth," and such, seems a little like asking them to draw conclusions from Russell's Paradox or Heisenberg's indeterminacy theories before they've mastered Euclid or Newton.

Colleague:

And Blosser says that "Dooyeweerd suggests that it's possible to distinguish 15 irreducible modalities of experience" and that we should not try to reduce them, which (I take it) is what he fears an interdisciplinary approach to the core would do. But this all seems undermined by the use of "aspect" as somehow similar to "modality." An aspect is a face or side of something, not a discrete whole. I have read Dooyeweerd (Is his name for sale? I'd love to have it.), but this seems like metaphor mixture to me. (Mode and aspect are different things, in linguistics, at least.)

Blosser:

An interdisciplinary approach doesn't have to buy into reductionistic theories. I would never assume that, otherwise I would be afraid of philosophy, which is unavoidably interdisciplinary. Rather, I am responding to the proposition floated by one or another of you guys that there is no such thing as a "discipline," which (in my mind) suggests some confusion about the distinct subjects that are the focus of the special sciences, 'disciplines,' call them what you like. To begin with these were undifferentiated in pre-Socratic philosophy, but were well on the way to being differentiated by Aristotle, even though some subjects (like sociology) are said to be relatively recent developments.

What is it, again, that is "undermined" by the notion of "aspect"? I don't seem to follow. How does the fact that an aspect is a "face or side" of something and not "a discrete whole" undermine anything? Yes these may be called "metaphor," if you like. But what prevents my saying that a cup of coffee (a discrete whole) has various aspects ("faces" or "sides") under which I can analyze it, each of which is irreducable to the other-- numerical, physical, chemical, historical, aesthetic, economic, etc.? Does the fact that each aspect is something distinct from the thing exhibiting it prevent it in some fashion from being a recognizable, distinct face of the thing?

Colleague:

... I'm still puzzled. It seems true, now, that English is cross-modal, whereas biology may be (I don't know, at all) modality-specific. Now I know that the cross-modality of English is entirely historical and contingent--it wasn't cross-modal at all even 20 years ago, and for many it still is not. It's just that English graduate departments now are cross-modal by self-definition, and so young PhDs come out not knowing any other way to think.

Blosser:

I don't think we're quite on the same page here. English could never have been anything but cross-modal in the sense in which I'm talking about it. What this means is that, unlike biology, chemistry, physics, etc., which each have as their nearly exclusive focus just one dimension of things, English does not. To the extent that it focuses on the lingual (grammar, linguistics, writing, public speaking, etc.) I suppose one could say it's a science of the lingual. But it's always been much more than that. It has always included literature and poetry, which involves looking at much more than merely the lingual dimension of things, but at the multiple dimensions that present themselves in the worlds projected in literature. In that respect, I would say that English is much closer to being a general science (like philosophy) than a special science.

I'm guessing that what you mean is something a bit different, having to do with the way English departments have opened up to the study of what might otherwise be classified as meta-philosophy or cultural analysis or something, and the reading of authors like Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Irigaray, Barthes, etc. But that is another matter, in my view.

Colleague:

How we got to this crossroads I don't know--I know only that it appeals to me and that it was really cross-modality that attracted my interest from the beginning, not the "discipline" of English, about which I still know and care very little. But English may one day decide it's a discipline again, as it most emphatically was and still is, by God, for my Father, who was a was a minor character in Moby Dick back in the 3rd century and who has no idea what his young psycho-deMarxionist colleagues are talking about and is determened never to find out (it's a matter of pride). And Biology may well decide that it's not really a discipline so much as an intersection of chemistry, physics, and other "sciences." It could happen, and it may already have happened--I'd be the last to find out, of course. It's all pretty arbitrary. It's not carved in stone unless we carve it there.

Blosser:

It may be arbitrary to a degree how we organize our curriculum. But I don't see how there is anything arbitrary about Dooyeweerd's fifteen aspects or about how they serve as objects of study in the sciences or disciplines. These aspects are empirically testable. We can look and see for ourselves. If we think Dooyeweerd is mistaken, and 8 of his aspects can be reduced to 4, then we can try to show how. Or if we think he missed an aspect, we can try to show that too. But I doubt whether our own phenomenological analysis would yield significantly different results, though you can correct me if you think I'm mistaken.

Colleague:

The pendulum swings. But what we could do, if anyone were interested (my doubly-inflected subjunctive is meant to indicate that this is a fantasy contracy to fact), is decide how we want to do things here. How do we, right here, right now, for our reasons, want to be--modality specific, cross-modal, or both, or what? Let's look at the mission statement and see which one is more in harmony therewith.

Blosser:

I agree with the importance of reflecting on our teaching in light of the college mission statement, and seeing if what we're doing best conforms to its stated purposes. I'm not sure I follow what you mean when you conclude by saying "... and see which one is more in harmony therewith." Why the implicit disjunct here? Assuming you have in mind (1) the "discipline" model and (2) the "interdisciplinary" model, why either/or? In fact, how can you have one without the other? If we are exposed to different subjects, we're eventually going to begin asking how (and perhaps seeing how) they are interrelated. And how can interdisciplinary approaches (such as we have in philosophy of art, history of philosophy, philosophy of religion, sociology of knowledge, psychology of religion, etc.) proceed without acquaintance with the different approaches they endeavor to relate?

Colleague:

Or, we could rewrite the mission statement, emphasizing not the whole person and the spirit, etc., but modal specific bunkers and silos. Which would be hilarious fun. (I want a silo, if I have a choice, but I suppose the Business school will get to choose first and choose thousand of dollars worth of high-end furniture, etc.)

Blosser:

Perhaps we need to think about how to implement the mission statement we've got. I've always been concerned about discrepancy between word and deed at this college. My argument has been that it has to begin closing the gap, either practicing what it preaches, or changing what it preaches to fit its practice. I doubt whether there are many professors here anymore who give much mental space to the Christian mission of the college, let alone understand what it might mean to teach sociology or psychology or history from a Christian perspective. I doubt most faculty believe it's even possible to have a Christian understanding of their subjects any more than there could be a Christian way of, say, opening a door, and that they assume Christianity is the thin residue of piety that remains in the form of prayer before faculty assemblies, commencement addresses, and football games. The case is not too different, in my view, with the liberal arts commitment expressed in the mission statement. I doubt whether there is one member of the board of trustees who could, if asked, produce an intelligible description of what he holds in trust in terms of institutional purpose. Given these facts, the most convenient way of achieving integrity vis-a-vis the mission statement might be to write the liberal arts and Christian commitments out of it.

Colleague:

Finally, I'm not really convinced that interdisciplinary work should properly come in the junior year, after people are grounded in the disciplines and punishments. Better there than nowhere, of course, but Custer's such a crusty curmudgeon--I'm with the radical Ratke, who wants to get people started with it right away. My reason is that there is no better grounding in the disciplines than interdisciplinary (interpunishmentary?) inquiry.

Blosser:

I would argue that our students already have an interdisciplinary core requirement: philosophy. In philosophy we analyze everything: the nature of "nature," "knowledge," "truth," "reality," "good," "beauty," "justice," "history," "time," etc., etc. To repeat something I said in an earlier email to Custer, this makes me think that you guys missed your calling in life-- that you really want to do what I'm doing -- teach philosophy -- and you're just jealous. So then, why don't you just do the opposite of what Richard Rorty did at Princeton, quit the English department (or history, in Custer's case), and come on over to Philosophy? We'd love to have you! I doubt you'll achieve what you want by trying to deny that distinct disciplines (with their respective subjects) exist, or by trying to re-define them into something they're not, or by re-arranging them in such a way that permits professors of English, history, sociology, or psychology to spend all their time talking about philosophical questions.

An exchange on whether the liberal arts core should be deconstructed in the college curriculum (Part 1)

Note: this post focuses on the question whether the contention that curricular disciplines are cultural constructs means that the traditional distinctions between curricular courses and majors has no basis in fact. I cite Herman Dooyeweerd's work for the negative.

At Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, North Carolina, we have been undergoing an administration-imposed review of the liberal arts core curriculum that is being used as an opportunity to reduce the liberal arts core requirements by 20% across the board and by 25% within the School of History, Philosophy, and Religion. My personal view is that this is very bad for the future prospects of the liberal arts curriculum. Furthermore, it would mean that the presently existing core requirement of 3 hours in philosophy would be eliminated. Yet the administration has been complaining that the "outcome studies" of graduating seniors shows them lacking in critical reasoning. This would suggest, to me anyway, that they need more philosophy, not less. Furthermore, my own impression is that the administration's animating interest in this heavy-handed venture is because of pressure from the professional programs (Occupational Therapy, Nursing, etc.) to reduce the liberal arts core requirements to accommodate their top-heavy requirement-intensive majors. For example, nursing has something like an 80 credit-hour requirement for their majors, whereas philosophy has 30. Moreover, my impression is also that the administration is taking advantage of the voices of younger faculty members in a couple of ways. First, younger faculty are vulnerable to administrative influence because they are usually untentured and can be motivated by an interest in securing their positions by currying favor with the administration. Second, younger faculty in various liberal arts programs are sometimes enamoured of postmodern deconstructive sentiments and may think that any dismanteling of the liberal arts "canon" of core requirements will be amicable to their own agenda. I do not think that any of these reasons for supporting the suggested core revisions are good ones, and furthermore I think those who go along with these changes for the cited reasons may quite likely find themselves bitterly disappointed. My earlier discussions of the matter can be seen here:

• Axing liberal arts courses in a market driven curriculum (Part 1)
• Axing liberal arts courses (Part 2)
• Axing liberal arts courses (Part 3)

One of my colleagues, opposed to the reduction in liberal arts courses but in favor of the loosening up of the core requirements to allow for what he called "inter-disciplinary" courses (especially seen as desirable from the deconstructionist vantage point), floated a counter proposal, which he defended as follows:

Colleague:

...the point behind my proposal is to query this strange thing 'science,' both as a method and as a rhetoric - & to ask [insist] that everybody treat their own discipline [another strange word] as a bundle of metaphors first - which somehow makes people nervous, to think about one's identity as having assumptions, & as being contingent. oops, did I say identity? I meant discipline.

I don't know what students gain from an incoherent & aimless perambulation of silos, which is what we have now. I know what faculty get from it... but not students.

I responded as follows:

Blosser:

I understand the point you offer by way of rationale for your proposal. I would say, in turn, that I think I understand what you and I and perhaps some other faculty would get out of querying "the strange thing called 'science'" and treating their own disciplines as a bundle of "metaphors." I even think I know what some graduate students or even some very bright senior honors students at LRC might gain from it. But I wonder what the vast majority of our students majoring in things like "Exercise Science," "Communications," or "Business" would gain from it.

I remember interviewing prospective honors students and looking over their portfolios, which included SAT scores. I saw one, wondering whether the 600 score was for the verbal and math, only to discover that it was the combined score (this was of a candidate interviewing for one of the school scholarships). It takes money to make money. But what do you do with students who come with nothing in the bank? I'm not sure one can lead a student very far into the query you envision without it seeming as aimless and incoherent as the "perambulation of silos" you perceive in the extant curriculum. Do we start with the infinitesimal calculus when dealing with students that haven't had arithmetic?

Questions about identity and classification such as you raise were also raised by Aristotle, not only in his classification of sciences into those concerned with thinking, knowing, and doing (theory, practice, and production), but in his analysis of categories (substance, relation, quantity, time, place, etc.) and analysis of substantial as opposed to accidental change in terms of form and matter, etc. Most of us haven't tackled Aristotle's most difficult notions, but he offers what seems to me the sort of questions one can profitably start with when dealing with students such as ours -- questions such as "What is a thing?" which is a question really as profound as it is mundane. It's the first question asked by the pre-Socratics, after all, as they contemplated the world about them: "What IS this stuff?" "Water?" "Air?" "Fire?" "Earth?" Come combination? What is a "thing"? Amidst the flux of endless change, is there anything which, while undergoing change,
remains in some sense the same? Etc., etc.

Elementary metaphysics before advanced deconstruction: otherwise what would there be to deconstruct?

Colleague:

hmmm ... an unconsidered, knee-jerk response is that I'm not sure I buy the disciplines as sui generis - historically, their assignment & development has been pretty arbitrary, market-driven, and as mundane as the history of the academy - I don't think that the lines between, say, literature and philosophy, or political science and sociology, have that much more than interest and taxonomy - and identity ["ism"] behind them: of course some fields are further away than others, and we can't make France part of Myanmar - but I am uncomfortable, and always have been, with taking as a substantive claim about the world the hugely contingent, habitual, and artificialish distribution of Things in the Thing that is The Academy. And the classificatory scheme is such a claim - it naturalizes and specifies - Foucault's "Order of things" - and as such constitutes a bar to thinking - and at least should be queried while the downloads (of disciplinary content) are going on.

I'm about Play - in all senses. My other colleague is about deconstruction. pshaw to that. "Boredom is the root of all evil," said old S.K. & I don't think serious ID stuff should begin till that 3rd tier I propose, a Jr-Sr sequence of people who, yes, have a disciplinary grounding. my Rhetoric sequence would have courses like Principles of Historical Interpretation - ways of knowing, approaches - thinking not about the substance, the soup-to-nuts-in-two-semesters, of a discipline, but the sort of questions it asks, its means of persuading, its approaches and assumptions - how do historians, as opposed to feelosofers, read, say, Henry IV? Students can take tools - metaphors - from their Core education - prisoners' dilemmas, dialectics, the uncertainty principle - rather than Tamerlane's sons, or the number of moles in... I dunno, 3 lb. of moronium sulfate - or a mole-hill; or that ATP has three phosphates; or to know the following 146 things for no other reason than habit and Blah -

... & we don't ground them now. we expose them superficially to everything, and are surprised when they don't retain it. Blah, there are only scripts there, mandatory & mantra-like, closely tailored for Blah, and suited more to us than to them. Read Sartre. Why? Because Feelosofers do. Learn Henry VII. Why? Because That's History. Blah.

... & if we are going to take as writ that students are dumb, and will always be so, and that dumb people first must be programmed correctly... wait. what is it we do for a living?

Blosser:

I've thought for a long time about the 'disciplines' business. It may be simplistic, but it has given me a sort of grid with which to analyze things. The source for it was Vol. I of Herman Dooyeweerd's A New Critique of Theoretical Thought: The Necessary Presuppositions of Philosophy (that's the formidable title of his first of four volumes)! The idea is that experience presents us with multiple dimensions or aspects, some of which we can see phenomenologically mental experiments in imaginative variation apparently are irreducible. Some modern theories are reductionist and try to reduce multiple dimensions to one, like Behaviorism, when it says that human behavior is exclusively the result of environmental conditioning, or the "masters of suspicion" when they say that politics and/or morality and/or education and/or religion are "only" a matter of power, economics, sexual self-interest, or whatever. Yet experiments in phenomenological variation suggest that such reductionisms are a bit simplistic, that experience is more complicated, that the moral is irreducible to the psychical (as in emotivism), etc., etc. and Blah (as you might say).

Dooyeweerd suggests that it's possible to distinguish 15 irreducible modalities of experience, which exhibit themselves in various "aspects" of things we experience. These includes aspects like the "religious," "moral," "aesthetic," "economic," "psychical," "lingual," "historial," "social," "jural," "biotic," "physical," "kinematic," and "mathematical." If you analyze a simple thing, like a wedding band, you can immediately see that it exhibits itself in a number of aspects that can analytically be sorted out. If used in a religious service, it presents a "religious" aspect. It symbolizes moral troth or fidelity. It cost something so exhibits an economic aspect. As a cultural artifact it exhibits an historical significance. Etc., etc.

The special sciences devotes themselves to various of these modalities of experience such as the physical, mathematical, chemical, etc. Various of the "human sciences" devote themselves to other aspects. Some "disciplines" are modality-specific, such as biology, which focuses explicitly just on the biotic. Others are not, such as English, which deals with a range of cross-modal dimensions, such as the grammatical-
lingual, aesthetic, historial, cultural, technical (skill in writing), etc. Or philosophy, which by its nature is not a special science but a general "discipline."

Tell me if you think this is silly.

Colleague:

... as to Dooeyeweerd's (you are so taking a piss with that name) I dunno how this list appears as irreducible - and I think reductionism is intrinsic to thinking as such [incipit Zarathustra] - whence this "experience" that presents aspects to us? Isn't it already constituted in a certain way, so that it sorts out "aspects" in a given number? How clear is our vision, and how do we measure that clarity, that aspects may exhibit themselves?

Blosser:

Thought you'd like that name. Imagine how HE felt, wearing it. You ask how clear our vision is, how we measure that clarity, such that aspects may exhibit themselves. These-- as well as the others preceding it-- are good questions, as you know; and as one who cut his teeth on the phenomenologists, I would simply say, "Well, let's take a look and see." Are there any alternatives, short of calling upon some unsupportable apriori schema? Of course experience is always already constituted in a certain way. Is there any other kind? How is that a problem? I don't see how reductionism should be intrinsic to thinking, unless you mean by reductionism "definition" or what Beidler calls "concept manipulation." But by reductionism I mean something else, something along the lines of saying that the ethically acceptable is nothing more than the socially accepted, or that moral judgments are nothing more than descriptions of our own emotive responses, or that the mind is nothing more than the brain, or that religion is nothing more than masked economic self-interest, or that happiness is nothing more than pleasure, etc. While one could find some willing to argue for these, I think there is plenty of data that would emerge from a discussion of our intersubjective experience that would show against these 'reductions.'

Take the last one-- that happiness is nothing but pleasure. If this were true, why can we easily imagine a situation in which we simultaneously experience pleasure and sorrow -- for example, nursing a brandy while watching a sunset, and at the same time grieving the death of a loved one? Or take any one of DooyeWEERD's 15 aspects and try reducing it to anything else through imaginative variation (or whatever means). Take the biotic (vital dimension), for example. Can biotic "life" be reduced to anything else? If so, to what? Is "life" a species of some other genus? In my experience, it seems to elude definability: it just IS. And the same with the others.

Colleague:

Numbers: difference: 1 is not 2 is not 6.73; specialization - to focus, to select one modality (methodology also, but modality works) results in a proliferation of ascribed differents between Numbers, and the accumulation of interest, identity, institution (and assonance) around that [centripetal] process of differentiation - further antidiscursive subdivision of Numbers - till we need to take Philosophy, or Biology as a foreign language... um... ok, that's what Everything 101 already is.

Blosser:

Well, yeah. Dooyeweerd shows how distinctions multiply as well. He points out that each aspect has analogical "anticipations" or "retrocipations" in other spheres (dimensions). Take the psychical modality of feeling, for instance. One can distinguish between different modalities of feeling: physical sensation, aesthetic feeling, moral feeling, religious feeling, lingual feeling (feeling for language), social feeling (with which you appear to be blessed in spades), etc. Likewise the kinematic modality of movement finds echoes in other modalities: physical movement, aesthetic movement, logical movement (from premise to conclusion), temporal, psychical (e-motions), historial, etc. But how would this either count against irreducibility? Does any of this suggest that all (or any) of these aspects are reducible to feeling or movement alone? If so, how? If not, how is reductionism unavoidable?

Colleague:

The historical only happens in the lingual, the psychic, and the social - kind of by definition (they're mostly dead). The lingual, in turn, happens as a chain of past speech, and its constraints and preferences frame the way the frame is. We observe a ring - in a Number of aspects - and do we really want to entrust the presentation of its aspectal whole by a series of people speaking Babel? Is that a core education, or is that an Englishman lost in India?

Blosser:

As to your first sentence, absolutely: but how could this be construed to suggest that the historial (or historical) is reducible to (or disappears in) the lingual, the psychic, the social, etc.? I'm not arguing that history doesn't deal with everything: it does. I am arguing that history deals with everything from the vantage point of the historial. Just as the gynecologist examining a woman at the clinic is supposed to take primarily a medical interest in examining her body (biotic sphere), even though the whole woman (psyche, soul, intellect, aesthetic tastes, religious beliefs, personal history, sexual preference) is there in the examining room.

The ring could symbolize the world, or life, or the totality of our experience, of course. In our ordinary pre-theoretical experience, the aspects that could otherwise be distinguished theoretically (as they are by our academic "disciplines"), remain implictly enmeshed, concrete, non-abstracted. On the whole, that is how we appear to experience persons, places, and things. But in theoretical reflection, it's possible to extract or abstract out a single dimension and to focus upon it. Isn't that precisely what chemistry does? or physics? or biology? or history? or linguistics? or ethics? or aesthetics? or law? or economics?

Colleague:

... to give them a grounding first? in what? how about we give them a mess, and let them decide...

Blosser:

I would argue that they already have the mess and lack the means to decide. Most individuals in my experience, before they go to college, haven't had much experience in abstractive reflection. Even quite a few professors, to infer from their discourse, haven't engaged in much. Ground them in what? Ground them in logic, math, physics, chemistry, biology, linguistics, psychology, sociology, history, economics, aesthetics, politics, ethics, religion -- and while you're at it, give them a constant diet of interdisciplinary philosophy, the whapping mother of all 'disciplines.' (Perhaps you and your colleague in English really just want to be philosophers!)

An exchange on "pro-choice" logic

I recently forwarded an email to several colleagues with what I consider to be an absolutely brilliant parody of pro-choice logic by Robert P. George, Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, a graduate of Harvard Law School with his doctorate in philosophy of law from Oxford University. George currently sits on the President's Council of Bioethics and is author of numerous books on constitutional law and jurisprudence. His parody on pro-choice logic runs as follows:

"I am personally opposed to killing abortionists. However, inasmuch as my personal opposition to this practice is rooted in sectarian (Catholic) religious belief in the sanctity of human life, I am unwilling to impose it on others who may, as a matter of conscience, take a different view. Of course, I am entirely in favor of policies aimed at removing the root causes of violence against abortionists. Indeed, I would go as far as supporting mandatory one-week waiting periods, and even non-judgmental counseling, for people who are contemplating the choice of killing an abortionist. I believe in policies that reduce the urgent need some people feel to kill abortionists while, at the same time, respecting the rights of conscience of my fellow citizens who believe that the killing of abortionists is sometimes a tragic necessity—not a good, but a lesser evil. In short, I am moderately 'pro-choice.'"

One colleague responded as follows:

Colleague:

This is hilarious. Some comments:

First, I think it interesting that the author's impressive credentials need to be given after the parody. This would not be necessary if the parody were in fact logical--if the effect on most reasonable people would not be to make them scratch their heads in bewilderment.

Blosser:

I disagree. Most people these days are so image driven and clueless about logic (witness the response of the instant polling to the debates) that they often need some authority reference to make them sit up and pay attention, in my experience. Impressive credentials can do that, though (as you may mean to suggest) they neither reinforce nor undermine the inherent logic of an argument.

The fact that a deduction makes people scratch their heads means nothing in itself. It could mean the problem is faulty, or that they don't have the brains to get a valid inference.

One fallacious syllogism I like is:

Nothing is better than sex.
Sushi is better than nothing.
Therefore, sushi is better than sex.

Which usually has my students tied in knots for days.

Colleague:

Second, it's question-begging, isn't it? The piece is "logic"al only if you assume that a fetus is a "life" in the same sense that an abortionist is a "life." And many people think it is, of course, but that's exactly the question that the abortion debate always comes down to, and people who want to contribute to the debate would have to answer the question clearly and persuasively and not just beg it.

Blosser:

Well, it's an ad hominem parody, which indeed illustrates that the original piece of Kerry logic is question begging, if that's what you mean.

Colleague:

I don't find Kerry a very impressive candidate, as I have said. I have yeat to even hear a rumor of anyone who does--he's somebody's compomise. And all the negative advertising is disappointing. But I would honestly ask you--do you really think that reasoning like this has the potential to or is even intended to persuade real people who are not inclined to agree with it? It seems to me like cheer-leading for one's own tribe--the kind of thing one hears on commercial radio and finds on personal sky-writing web blogs and sites.

Blosser:

Hey, I became a Roman Catholic because of a footnote I read in a textbook on the history and philosophy of law. People change their minds for all sorts of things, and if they can be made to see that a political statement is a piece of question-begging propaganda, that's at least a step in the right direction: a bit o' fluff, a piece of sophistry will have been seen through. Hazzah!

Colleague:

Well, I haven't read the Kerry piece--do you have it handy? I'm aware of his general position and heard what he said at the third debate on the topic of abortion. I'm not immediately sure, though, that, since the parody you distributed is question-begging, the original Kerry position must be. So perhaps you can enlighten me. To me, he's seeing abortion as a religious but not a legal question: he opposes it but opposes legislating against it. I can see ways to attack that view, but I'm not sure it's question-begging. Is it? Perhaps I've missed something--I haven't been following the campaign very closely.

Blosser:

This piece of reasoning is hardly unique to Kerry. I heard Kerry use it in the debates, and I hear it all the time from people who want to support a position but feel some embarrassment at doing so in certain venues and therefore excuse themselves by distinguishing between private conviction and public policy. Now such a distinction might support a case where ignoring it would actually endanger the life of another individual. But what Robbie Georges' parody illustrates is that in most cases people would be appalled by this sort of 'reasoning' if it were turned against themselves on some other issue where their moral scruples would override their (often hypocritical) public/private dualism. The fact that people with religious views hold certain moral views on certain public policy questions has no bearing on the issue that I can see. I can't think of any public policy that doesn't involve legislating somebody's morality. Religious people believe rape is wrong. So what? There are non-religious people who think that killing of helpless innocent human beings is wrong too. What gives the protection of the innocent unborn the warrant of public policy is not that some religious people have views about it, but that helpless, innocent human life deserves protection, and that everyone can readily see this whether they like it or not, or whether it's convenient or not. This is why those who support abortion stoop to euphemisms that conceal the brutality of the practice and why they insist on the dualism of being "privately opposed." Is is not? For some thirty years the debate has no longer been over whether the fetus is human, but whether we have the right to kill and dispose of human life when it's an inconvenience. Intellectual integrity requires that we as a nation face this fact. The main reason hormonal contraception was fully legalized in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) was the pressure from society to engage in unimpeded sex: the primary reason abortion was legalized in Roe v. Wade (1973) was as backup contraception animated by the same intention. 4000 lives per day. Nazis, eat your hearts out. As Eddie Izzard puts it: Blas-ph'me, blas-ph-o-you, blas-ph-o-everybody ...

Colleague:

I think that eventually someone would raise the question of whether the "logic" of the parody would apply if the abortionist were connected by an umbilical cord to a female and were in residence within her. What I'm assuming is that some would probably assert that those circumstances would make a difference, while certainly others would not. Your parody seems to me written solely for the amusement and self-congratulation of the latter, and so I can't imagine it being persuasive at all. But then, I haven't seen the piece the parody is parodying, so I may be wrong.

Blosser:

You haven't seen how this piece succeeds in being parody? C'mon, my friend. Even our staunch Democrat colleague in Political Science could see that, though he didn't like it. He tried to turn it against Robert George by applying it to Bush's preemptive incursion into Iraq, though he didn't see that that would provide precisely the pretext Bush people WANT, namely an exception to the rule that preemptive warfare is always wrong.

As to amusement, I confess that I find the parody amusing, though only in a tragi-comic sort of way. I see nothing amusing about the killing of innocent human beings, whether in Iraq or in utero.

Martin Niemoeller, a Lutheran pastor during the Nazi administration of Germany, wrote the following:

"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the Catholics, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a Catholic;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me-- and there was no one left to speak out for me."

Order the following books by Robert P. George here:

• The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis
• In Defense of Natural Law
• Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality (Clarendon Paperbacks)
• Natural Law and Public Reason

A discussion about postmodernism (part 7)

(Continued ...)

Interlocutor:

I see your point about the crosses at your church. Certainly, you are not to be called violent because of someone else's sense of guilt. And that woman's anger should not be confused with feminism. Of course what she would probably argue is that a male-dominated institution making a public display out of telling women what to do with their bodies is an outrage. I suppose you would argue that what she has done is a lot more of an outrage, and I suppose at some level she knows this. I don't really see the issue here--I can put anything on my lawn that I please, and people can take a different route to work if they don't like it. People like to go through life under the illusion that they are invisible, and when you show them that you see them, they are offended. I have often had this experience teaching publis speaking. After a carefully reasoned argument the other day, Glenn seemed taken aback when I asked him why he chose to sit down rather than stand. I suppose he thought the emphasis should have been on what he'd said, or on the fact that he had done nothing wrong, not on what he did with his body--we think of the body as private, even when we're in public.

Blosser:

Some nice observations here. I agree.

Interlocutor:

I agree with you about the need to distinguish Derridean deconstruction from the "movement" that has spiralled out of control, but I'm not sure I'd call it a movement, though of course it called itself one. I read a fascinating book this summer, The Theory Mess, by Herman Rapaport (pictured left) -- I will lend it to you if you're interested. It's basically a history of the English Department phenomenon with emphasis and focus on all the different bends and twists in the road of complete misunderstanding of Derrida and of sloppy "theoretical" thinking generally. Turns out, according to him at least, that the only thing the different writers in this "tradition" or "movement" have in common is ignorance and sillyness. I don't know about the "impact" of this "movement," though--I have not read most of its texts, many of which were written when I was in high school, and have not been affected by them except insofar as they seem to determine peoples' preconceptions about the essays I try to write.

Blosser:

The rapidity with which things have changed in English departments across the the board over the past couple of decades is nothing short of astonishing. I remember when "deconstruction" was primarily a novelty in philosophical discussions. Since then it seems to have become the animating principle in many English departments, as well as many programs in sociology and other programs of the humanities. Books could be written about it, and have been, I'm sure.

Interlocutor:

On the originality of Derrida, we are in agreement, I think. Seems to me, his originality is his desire to generalize as substantive what most others have acknowledged but have tended to dismiss as accidental, inevitable, trivial, etc.

Blosser:

I find Jacques Derrida (pictured right) at his most fascinating and original in the specifics of his writings, rather than in any generalities I've been able to distill from them. Whenever I try to summarize what I think can be summarized about Derrida, whatever I come up with doesn't look or sound particularly novel or interesting. But I really like to delve into his particular analyses of Heidegger or Nietzsche or Plato or whatever. There he often seems to flash with insights, or so it seems to me anyway.

Interlocutor:

Also, I must admit that I have felt your characterizations of me as violent at times. I'm sure this wasn't intentional, and I'm also sure that the feeling is at some level a symtpom of some weakness residing entirely within myself. As I have said, my life was pretty out of control when I rolled into town, and it just got worse from there. Looking back, I remember things a bit differently than I then felt them -- assuming that I was relatively under control of things, you may have been trying to spur me into a healthy exchange, and I appreciate that, but I see no reason to hide the fact that I didn't always take things that way. Now that I know you better, I suppose I must have missed your irony when you proclaimed that Derrida is a vampire who sucks the life out of texts and leaves them dry, but I was at a pretty insecure and miserable place in life then, and didn't really know how to take that.

Blosser:

I can't say I remember much about any of this, though it's interesting to hear you describe yourself rolling into town "out of control," or whatever. I remember when you first took the trouble to come visit me and ask me about what I thought of Kant's aesthetics. That was interesting. I also enjoyed your input into one of my classes on Derrida for a couple of sessions. I remember you mentioning the comparison of Derrida to a vampire before, though I don't remember my having ever said anything quite like that. (I could be mistaken: my memory isn't the best. But that actually sounds much too clever for me, though I'm flattered you'd attribute it to me.) Insecurities I can understand. I think we all have those -- perhaps especially those who appear most confident. But we're all in this human thing together, after all; and it's good to understand that and acknowledge it.

Interlocutor:

Having said that, I'm still not sure that it makes no sense whatsoever to speak of a violence inherent in a discourse or perpetrated through discourse, and I'm not thinking only about hate speech. I think I hear you saying that, since the "violence" of "category manipulation" is inevitable, people need to just be tough and accept it as a fact of life--when it is not something that their victim mentalities are not bringing entirely upon themselves.

Blosser:

It would be clearer to say, I think, that "category manipulation" is unavoidable, but it only makes sense to call it "violent" sometimes, not always. "Category manipulation" seems to me to be another (cumbersome) way of saying something like "using language to communicate." As we grow up, we learn that words have a certain semantic range of meaning: "ring" may refer to a wedding band, a circle of crud around the top of a bathtub, a sound that a bell makes, etc.; but it doesn't generally refer to sushi or wasabi paste, and so on. When we go off to college and take philosophy, we learn that terms like "materialism" also have a semantic range of meaning that goes well beyond its everyday uses, such as describing a life-style of consumerism, to embracing a metaphysical theory according to which only physical phenomena are real. This is "category manipulation" that I don't see much sense in describing as "violent."

Interlocutor:

I think the discussion about "violence" surfaces over conflicting interpretations of words that are used to refer to groups of people and what they love or hate. Here I suppose we have to distinguish between the "violence" that people perceive and that which is (or is not) intended. But quite apart from these matters of intended or perceived violence, I think some sensitivity is called for to the historical development of certain semantic ranges of meaning attached to words. For example, the term "liberal" is often used today as a term of derision for those embrace maximal government "intervention," high taxation, an actively revisionist supreme court, etc. Is there "violence" involved in calling someone or being called "liberal" today? Probably sometimes. Is it a useful term in specifying "sides of the aisle" in congress, etc.? Probably so (it certainly is often used as an antonym for "conservative"), although there is a high degree of fluidity to the terms signification. One could profitably point out that the term "liberal" is used today to refer to Democrats like Kerry or Kennedy rather than Republicans like George Bush or Ronald Reagan; whereas historically it emerged in connection with a political theory stemming from John Locke (pictured left) and others which is far closer to the ideology embraces by contemporary conservatives like Jessie Helms, as well as libertarians -- both of whom stress minimal government (checks and balances of power between the three branches of government, etc.), for the sake of promoting personal liberty (steming from the historical liberal and Judeo-Christian assumption, of course, that human beings are sinful and fallen and not to be trusted with absolute power, which corrupts absolutely, etc.-- cf. Lord Acton). The term "liberal" is therefore used today very differently from how it was used classically. Is there "violence" in noting such distinctions? Not necessarily, in my opinion.

Blosser:

Another term is "fundamentalist," which is widely used today as a blanket term of derision for anyone who is considered some sort of a radical or fanatic (often with accompanying appellatives such as "foam-at-the-mouth," "mealy-mouthed," or "stiff-necked," etc.). Thus we hear expressions like "Islamic fundamentalist" and "fundamentalist terrorists," etc. In fact, the term has almost come to function as a derisive term for anybody who holds firm convictins about anything. I've heard the Pope described as a "fundamentalist," or as holding "fundamentalist attitudes." Obviously, I think you'd agree, the term is intended here as a term of some opprobrium and therefore employed with some "violence." Yet one could also profitably point out that the term originally developed in the 19th century among some evangelical Presbyterians (J. Gresham Machen [pictured right], and others) who were alarmed by influences of historical criticism in biblical studies, which, having their roots in Enlightenment anti-supernaturalism (cf. David Hume), dismissed anything pertaining to the miraculous in the Bible (which would amount to 90% of it) as "myth." Hence, against these encroaching influences, these Presbyterians set forth what they called "The Fundamentals" of the Christian faith (such as belief in the divine inspiration of Scripture, the Trinity, deity of Christ, creation and fall of man, resurrection of Christ, promised return of Christ, etc.), which one could not reject and still meaingfully call himself a Christian in light of the historical creeds. Was this use of the term "Fundamentals" also "violent"? It certainly wasn't intended to be, I don't think. These people were saying: "Yes, we're fundamentalists, which means that we stand by these articles of faith that can be found all the way back to the Nicene Creed, the Apostles Creed, the teachings of the Apostles and Christ Himself." Did some people-- viz., those who rejected some of these "fundamental" articles -- perceive it as "violent" that they were thereby regarded as less than fully "Christian"? Certainly so. But should that mean that these Presbyterians were out-of-line in wishing to pin down for themselves the meaning of the designation "Christian" by defining the "Fundamentals" of the Christian faith? I doubt so. Where many mainline Protestants came to reject these "Funamentals" as defining the essence of "Christianity," it simply became a matter of conflicting interpretations and understandings of what it means to be a Christian. Those who rejected the "Fundamentals" may have felt "violated" at times; but those who accepted them probably felt no less "violated" when the term "Fundamentalist" increasingly came to be used as a term of opporbrium equivalent to "mindless fanatic," or "foam-at-the-mouth redneck." But I really don't see much of a way around such perceptions, except to seek charity on all sides of the debate. Do you? Beyond asking for mutual charity, it doesn't seem very helpful to me to ask people to stop defining or using terms as they wish to. Does it?

Interlocutor:

I think Derrida has labored carefuly to show that beside, throughout, within, and most importantly before this projection of categories upon the outside world, there is listening, reading, reflection, and that one can proceed entirely on the basis of this quiet passivity and still be a philosopher. It doesn't sound very philosophical to hear me say it, but this is how I read him.

Blosser:

Well, wouldn't Derrida admit that his "listening, reading, and reflection" is something he carries on also while writing? And don't we carry it on in this way as well, in our correspondence and in our conversations? And, if so, I wonder whether the "before" and "after" you distinguish can be divided quite so neatly.

Interlocutor:

I wonder whether Derrida would deny that "category manipulation" is "not only unavoidable, but a great gift." Certainly, he has spent the last fifty years reading and copiusly commenting on all the great category manipulators, (though I must admit I have often wondered about his apparent refusal to talk about Hume). I don't think he would deny it--I think he would claim that he is practicing category manipulation in a particular way that turns that practice against itself. The "deconstruction of the subject" that I mentioned is categorically quite simple--the self that I see cannot be the self that I am when I see it. He's using terms that can be defined, employing categories, etc. First of all, what people often miss is that these are not his terms--here, he is reading a Blanchot story, and using its vocabulary--he's quite consistent in making philosophy reading, not projecting.

Blosser:

I also wonder whether Derrida's own activity can be separated quite so neatly from the activity of "category manipulation." Does the fact that he reads and uses terms and categories used by others (as we all unavoidably do) prevent him from being (even if in the most positive of senses) a consummate category manipulator? Even if he's showing what others have missed or overlooked in their category manipulations, doesn't this activity itself of pointing this out involve category manipulation?

Interlocutor:

And second, what he says seems quite true.

Blosser:

This would depend on what you think he's saying by the "deconstruction of the subject." If our inability to humanly comprehend what we call our "self" is taken to imply that no comprehensible "selves" exist, I think those would disagree who assert that God created us and knows us as we are incapable of knowing ourselves. Further, I don't think that our inability to comprehend our "selves" fully prevents us from apprehending our "selves" adequately in proportion to our limited and fallible estate in the world; any more than I think Werner Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty in quantum theory or Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity undermines the adequacy of Newtonian physics within the limited range of our mundane perceptions. When I am drinking a glass of Guinness at McGuire's, a physicist's description of the the glass and beer as "really only atoms of varying degrees of density which takes the apparent form of solid glass and liquid" hardly diminishes the pleasure of the beer proportionate to the concrete dimension of reality that we mortals ordinarily inhabit. Aristotle wisely taught us that the methods of one science cannot be applied without violence to others (as the methods of mathematics to medicine or politics), by contrast to the temptation of reductionism that has haunted us ever since Francis Bacon reduced causality to "efficient causality" and jettisoned the other three of Aristotle's four causes.

Interlocutor:

And third, the effect ought to be that such words be only used provisionally and with caution, because violence is everywhere in the world. To say that the self that I see is the self that I am when I see it is simply inaccurate, since the event of seeing myself cannot but change me. Denying that the "self" category works this way is just stubborn, and not seeing it is dull, so those are our two choices without deconstruction. Perhaps "violence" is too strong a term--not all dull and stubborn people are voilent. Maybe the term "unrefined" is better, although unrefinedness seems like a violent imposition to those of us who are defined as refined by fiat.

Blosser:

I'm not sure I see the connection between the "violence" that "is everywhere in the world" and Derrida's point about the self here. If there is a connection between them that's important for me to grasp, you may wish to develop it a bit further.

As to Derrida's point about the self, I'm not sure what I can say beyond what I've said in my foregoing paragraph. Derrida's point seems like it should be "profound" in some way. I'm not sure it is. When I look into the mirror, I know I'm looking at an image of myself-- that the image that I see reflected back is not the original self looking into the mirror. But I know that Derrida's forte consists in deconstructing, or assisting the implosion of, dualities such as this one between "image" and "original." So I think he must want to go deeper than my superficial mirror analogy. He wants to show that I can't really get at the "original" self either. Okay, so it's true: even on a physical level, I've never seen myself as others can see me. I've never actully seen my back, and I never will. It's humanly impossible because our eyes are in the front of our head and are necks can't twist back far enough. But even if we could see our bodies as others can, that's still limited by the fact that perceptions are spatially and temporally profiled and partial. The point is even more profound than that: we don't and cannot know (in the sense of comprehending) ourselves. We are mysteries to ourselves. But is this something new? Walker Percy (pictured right) makes this point ingeniously, humerously, and repeatedly in his book, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. It is a continuing refrain throughout the Bible, as when Job says that we seek to grap what is too high for our understanding, or Jeremiah says that our own hearts deceive us. And even if I understand (with the help of Socrates and Jesus) that I lack self-understanding, may I not believe that God who made me understands and knows me and that my self-understanding can be deepened by seeking as best I can to understand how He perceives me? John Calvin even says there can be no self-knowledge without knowledge of God, or knowledge of God without knowledge of self -- as if that isn't a paradox!

As to "violence," I agree that the world is full of it, though I think I'm not being deceived (perhaps I'm naive?) when I encounter some individuals in whom I perceive no violence whatsoever, like the little old lady who leads the Rosary before Mass at 7:30 every Sunday morning. But perhaps it's a matter of perception, and someone (like the woman at McGuire's who had two abortions) might even perceive her as "violent," somehow. I've even seen it suggested (was it by C.S. Lewis?) that Hell may not even be a different location than Heaven, and just as attendance at an opera would be heaven for some people and hell for others, so the blazing fire of God's love in Heaven may be perceived by some as warm and pleasant by some while others perceive them as the torments of Hell. I'm hardly sure of that, but it's an interesting thought.

Thinking of people who don't get Derrida's point about the self as "dull" or "stubborn" "unrefined" makes some sense, I suppose, though I'd have to have the connections made for me to see any link to their "violence." I think I "get" Derrida's point about the self, at least on some level. But I don't think I'm being "violent" for questioning its implications. But then again -- heh -- you might persuade me otherwise.