Tearing Down the Mask of Maya

Philip Goodchild Lecture on Global Capitalism

2011-04-11T13:17:00.000-07:00

Philip Goodchild: What is Wrong with the Global Financial System? from IHR on Vimeo.

The Deeper Blemishes

2011-01-09T19:14:00.000-08:00

Hawthorn’s The Birthmark is, on the surface, an account of a quite sexist man who cannot love his wife because of his idea of womanly perfection. Alymer’s obsession with the small mark on his Georgiana’s cheek, the only thing that mars her otherwise perfectly beautiful countenance, grows deeper as their young marriage grows older, and he devotes the full powers of his intellect and scientific craft to its eradication. Georgiana, who at first could not understand his disgust, comes to share it and his scientific attempts to find a cure. This Alymer does, but while the cure takes away her defect it also takes away her life, for the birthmark went to Georgiana’s very core. As she herself remarked, “the stain goes as deep as life itself."

One finds Alymer a quite unsympathetic character, and he symbolizes the fundamental darkness of the human condition when all knowledge and modes of valuation become reduced to those of positive science. But what if we were to read The Birthmark as a different sort of moral fable? Adopting the well-known analogy between beauty of the body and the beauty of moral character, what if we invert the two? Would we view Alymer’s character as vicious and unloving if instead of removing a bodily blemish he attempted by all his learning to remove a moral blemish?

Say that Georgiana was the exemplar of womanly virtue, the envy of every person for her dedication and loyalty, save one small thing—an infidelity, say. Her malefaction be dwarfed by her otherwise excellent character, and at first Alymer could overlook it. However, the act nonetheless marked her character, and over time Alymer would find he could think of nothing else. Despite its relative minuteness in comparison with Georgiana’s good qualities, it remains, and it goes to the very core of her, as deep as life itself. As the years spent in marriage pass by, Alymer spends his intellectual efforts not on medical science, but on moral science in the hopes of somehow erasing the stain of the mark that continues to haunt him. In this case, what would we think of his occupation? What do we think of one who believes in an ideal of one’s lover and seeks to conform the lover to it? What else did Socrates mean when he spoke of his ladder of love or his midwife?

And what could Alymer do? Must he, in order to love Georgiana, love her trespass against him? Perhaps the story points us to the bleak answer: such a sin goes to her center, and if Alymer were to remove it, he would destroy her life, her happiness.

Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale has a similar structure. On the surface, it tells us of King Leontes, who observes that his pregnant queen’s relationship with his childhood friend runs deeper than his own. The observation leads him into paranoia, where he questions whether the fruit of his marriage is his own, or that of his friend. He attempts at first to kill his friend, Polixines, but keep his wife. However, his friend escapes, and he charges Hermione, his wife, with adultery. Hermione apparently dies from the shock. Through a series of coincidences, Polixines’ son proposes to marry the child Hermione bore prior to her supposed death. Because of the marriage Leontes repairs his friendship with Polixines, and then, miraculously, a statue of Hermione comes to life. Hermione and Polixines walk off arm in arm, while Leontes tells the audience of his remarkable good fortune. However, the story, joyous as it seems on the surface, has a darker message. The relationship that was restored was that between Hermione and Polixines, who exit together in each other’s arms; Leontes found his friendship with Polixines and marriage with Hermione revivified only as a consequence of returning Hermione to Polixines. His own marriage and friendship stand secondary to the primary relationship between Hermione and Polixines and only holds together because it supports the deeper relationship between his wife and friend, a relationship that will now always elude him. Leontes must embrace this relationship – one which may not be literally adulterous but certainly stands outside the bounds of what would have been appropriate – if he wishes to keep his friend and his wife.

Must a lover seek not only to love but to maintain the very part of the beloved’s life that betrays him or else give up the beloved? The Birthmark answers in the affirmative, and A Winter’s Tale goes even farther—one must love the other object of her affection as well.

John Milbank on Adam Kotsko

2010-03-17T11:36:00.000-07:00

In an interview, John Milbank said this of Adam Kotsko (the author of a book on Zizek and theology, who blogs here):

[T]he posturing of someone like Kotsko can only produce a wry smile in someone of my generation. This is exactly the sort of pusillanimous theology of some in the 1960s that we have long sought to escape from. Why? Because it is bad faith. If you are going to be an atheist and nihilist, then be one. Only second-raters repeat secular nostrums in a pious guise. Such theology can never possibly make any difference, by definition. It’s a kind of sad, grey, seasonal echo of last year’s genuine black. All real Christian theology, by contrast, emerges from the Church, which alone mediates the presence of the God-Man, who is the presupposition of all Christian thinking. Kotsko fears that the Church is an institution, but of course it isn’t—or isn’t primarily—as Graham Ward has well pointed out. It’s rather the continued event of the ingestion of the body of Christ. This fact provides a critical self-correction, well in excess of any outsider criticism of all the Church’s shortcomings and abuses, which I would hope to be among the first to recognize and denounce.

This sort of posturing is common among young "theologians" (though I don't know Kotsko's work well enough to fully endorse Milbank's rather harsh treatment of him). There's a difference between critically approaching Christianity from the perspective of continental philosophy and critically approaching continental philosophy from the perspective of the Church. Those who to do the former and claim to be theologians are hopelessly confused.

Richard Posner on Moral Theory

2010-02-24T16:26:00.000-08:00

Richard Posner is widely hailed as one of the greatest living legal thinkers. This apparently does not carry over consistently to his thoughts on more philosophic questions. From his article in the Harvard Law Review entitled "The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory":

[M]orality is local. There are no interesting moral universals. There are tautological ones, such as "Murder is wrong," where "murder" means "wrongful killing," and there are a few rudimentary principles of social cooperation - such as "Don't lie all the time" or "Don't break promises without any reason" or "Don't kill your relatives or neighbors indiscriminately" - that may be common to all human societies. If one wants to call these rudimentary principles the universal moral law, fine; but as a practical matter, no moral code can be criticized by appealing to norms that are valid across cultures, norms to which the code of a particular culture is a better or a worse approximation. Those norms, the rudimentary principles of social cooperation that I have mentioned, are too abstract to serve as standards for moral judgment. Any meaningful moral realism is therefore out, and moral relativism (or rather a form of moral relativism, an important qualification to which I'll return shortly) is in. Relativism suggests an adaptationist conception of morality, in which morality is judged - nonmorally, in the way that a hammer might be judged well or poorly adapted to its function of hammering nails - by its contribution to the survival, or other goals, of a society.

This treatment, crucial to Posner's argument, betrays no more than a passing familiarity with the basics of traditional problems of ethics. Are we to suppose that someone like St. Thomas Aquinas, who believed in the Fall, believed that moral universals could be inferred from the uniform morality of fallen men? The point is rather that moral demands follow from the nature of reality, and that reality is common to all human beings; or again, that morality follows from the way human beings are structured, and insofar as all human beings share this essence, they share in common moral demands. It need not follow that all human beings actually live up to this standard, and, in fact, we might for many reasons expect them not to.

Natural law theory does propose that morality is natural to human beings, but this does not entail that human beings invariably are moral in a state of nature. This is the familiar error of confusing the Hobbesian concept of nature (what we might find were we to tromp out into the wild, or what happens when civilization breaks down) rather than the Aristotelian concept of nature (when a thing actualizes its potential in a way that manifests its essence). Nature in this sense is what a thing attains to, not what it is when social constructs are not present.

Posner's errors extend beyond his apparent unfamiliarity with the relevant literature. Posner chooses to formulate the prohibition against murder tautologically when there is no need to do so. For example, "one ought not intentionally kill another human being except in self-defense or the defense of others, or as part of a just war." And while for Posner, a Seventh Circuit judge and an academic, a universal prohibition against murder may not be particularly "interesting", one suspects the case might be different for those such as the Congolese, whose circumstances in the aftermath of a brutal civil war are significantly less comfortable and secure.

Finally, Posner critiques a sort of categorical moral universalism, and then concludes that "[a]ny meaningful moral realism is therefore out." However, there is a clear distinction in believing that certain moral rules hold universally, and believing in "moral realism." Aristotle, for instance, did not view ethics as categorical, but teleological; and he did not view moral propositions as being universal, but holding in the ordinary course of events. Aristotle was also a moral realist, in that one's actions effect the virtue in the soul. Given Aristotle's eminent and hugely influential place in ethical theory, one might expect Posner to be passingly familiar with him, or at least familiar with the distinction.

The Manichean Problem

2010-01-31T14:28:00.000-08:00

But [the Manicheans] believe as they do because they are ignorant how to interpret any passage except literally. If this is not so, let them show how it is just, in a literal sense, for the sins of the parents to be visited on the heads of the children, and on the children's children after them, to the third and fourth generation? We, however, do not understand such sayings in a literal sense, but as Ezekiel taught when he uttered his well-known "proverb", we inquire what is the inner meaning of the proverb.

-Origin

Fate and Belief

2010-01-23T11:16:00.000-08:00

[If faith is not the result of free choice then] the entire peculiarity and difference of belief and unbelief will not fall under either praise or censure, if we reflect rightly, since there attaches to it the antecedent natural necessity proceeding from the Allmighty. And if we are pulled like inanimate things by the puppet-strings of natural powers, willingness and unwillingness, and impulse, which is the antecedent of both, are mere redundancies.

- Clement of Rome

Fate and Pantheism

2010-01-18T11:11:00.000-08:00

For if they say that human actions come to pass by fate, they will maintain either that God is nothing else than the things which are ever turning, and alter, and dissolving into the same things, and will appear to have had a comprehension only of the things that are destructible, and to have looked on God Himself as emerging, both in part and in whole in every wickedness; or that neither vice nor virtue is anything; which is contrary to every sound idea, reason, and sense.

-Justin Martyr, Second Apology

Initial Impasses in Aristotle's Metaphysics

2009-11-26T13:30:00.000-08:00

In order to orient the inquiry of the Metaphysics, Aristotle begins with the traditional opinions about the causes of things as a whole, and draws out their inherent difficulties. This, in part, follows from his general dialectical method: he does not begin with first principles and deduce from them a universal philosophy, but begins with the traditional beliefs that he has inherited. In one sense, this method takes into account the "thrownness" of the philosopher; that is, the fact that the philosopher is always historically situated and does not have immediate access to objective truths from which he can begin his philosophy. To start in any other way covertly imports one's inescapable intellectual inheritance into the inquiry, and allows this inheritance to be acknowledged and addressed up front. This gives Aristotle's dialectic an advantage over any deductive metaphysics, in that his starting points need not be incontrovertible.

Aristotle examines the philosophy of those that went before him by drawing out their inherent tensions and contradictions. From these tensions, he establishes the problematic from which the Metaphysics will work. Aristotle must get some idea of what sort of thing metaphysics reveals; that is, of the nature of the metaphysical question. The immediate difficulty lies in the fact that one cannot know what metaphysics asks about without knowing the object of the metaphysical question. One must know the end before the beginning.

As an initial matter, the metaphysical question concerns the source of things. But is this source one or many? If there are irreducibly many sources of things (e.g., the four elements, or the four causes), then there is no metaphysical knowledge, but different kinds of knowledge for each kind of source. The sources can be irreducibly many either in kind or in number. If the sources are irreducibly many in kind, then thinghood is impossible, for thinghood implies a kind of unity which is grasped in thought when one grasps its cause. However, if the causes of the thing are multiple in kind, then no unity exists by which one might grasp the thing. Yet things present themselves to us in a kind of unity which we immediately and pre-reflectively grasp without trouble. Positing a multiplicity of sources different in kind is simply insufficient to explain everyday experience.

On the other hand, if the source of things are irreducibly many and differ in number, but not in kind (Aristotle calls these elements), then there will be nothing other than the elements. The sources would differ by virtue of their particularity alone (being this atom and not that one, for example), and if there were no causes higher than these elements, nothing could exist other than these elements. Syllabic sounds, for example, in order to come together and form words, have to take on the reality of a whole above and beyond the parts. This whole necessarily takes the form of an unified cause incompatible with an ontology that posits irreducibly many sources.

A multiplicity of causes precludes the unity that things possess, and fails as an explanation of ordinary experience. If, however, the cause of things is one (this would be called "oneness" or "being", and applies univocally to all things, the Parmenidean problem arises. To understand being in this way would be to understand being as a universal genus or category. "But", Aristotle says, "it is not possible for either oneness or being to be a single genus of things," for then there would be only one Being. Being, understood as a universal category, would rule out individual beings as illusions, because a species is differentiated within a genus by differentia outside the genus. "[I]t is not possible either to predicate the species within a genus of their own differentia, or to predicate the genus without its species of the differentia."

In the footnote to his translation, Joe Sachs explains it this way:

If we define doves as wild pigeons, the species is doves, the genus pigeons, and the differentia is being wild. If this is a sound definition, it cannot be true that (all) wild things are doves, or, the more important point here, that (all) wild things are pigeons. The reason is that all characteristics by which a genus is differentiated into the species are outside the genus.

The characteristics that differentiate genus into species must be outside the genus, for if the differentia were within the genus, then those characteristics would belong solely to the species or to the genus as a whole. In the first case, if only pigeons were wild things, then the terms "wild things" would have no meaning or extension other than "pigeon", and differentiating doves by the characteristic of wildness is simply to differentiate doves by the character of being doves. If the differentia existed only within the species, the only way the species could be differentiated from the genus would be by tautology (essentially saying a dove is different from other pigeons because it is a dove). In the second case, no differentia would separate doves from other pigeons, collapsing the species into the genus.

The basic problem: being, it seems, cannot be one because it abolishes all difference, and it cannot be manifold because it abolishes all unity. It is from this problematic, the apparent tension in being between the one and the many, that Aristotle's metaphysics takes its direction.

St. Basil the Great on the Rich Young Ruler

2009-11-01T10:44:00.000-08:00

From St. Basil's Sermon to the Rich:

For if [the rich young ruler's claims] were true, that [he had] kept from [his] youth the commandment of love, and have given to each person as much as to [himself], how has it come to [him], this abundance of money? For it takes wealth to care for the needy: a little paid out for the necessity of each person you take on, and all at once everything gets parceled out, and is spent upon them. Thus, the man who loves his neighbor as himself will have acquired no more than what his neighbor has; whereas you, visibly, have acquired a lot. Where has this come from? Or is it not clear, that it comes from making your private enjoyment more important than helping other people? Therefore, however much you exceed in wealth, so much so do you fall short in love: else long since you’d have taken care to be divorced from your money, if you had loved your neighbor.

One wonders what his judgment on the ethic of capitalism might look like.

Metaphor in Practice

2009-10-18T09:31:00.000-07:00

"[The Israelites] waged war against a foreign nation. The text calls those combining against them Amalekites. For the first time the Israelites were drawn out fully armed in battle array... Moses, standing on a hilltop far away from the furor of battle, was looking up toward heaven with a friend stationed on either side of him.

"Then we hear from the history the following marvel. When Moses raised his hands to heaven, those under his command prevailed against their enemies, but when he let them down, the army began to give in to the foreigner's assault." St. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses (HarperSanFransisco, 2006) 17.

"Moses's holding his hands aloft signifies the contemplation of the Law with lofty insights; his letting them hang to earth signifies the mean and lowly literal exposition and observance of the Law." Id, 75.

St. Gregory's bold assertion of the superiority of the non-literal exposition of the Law of the Old Testament over the "mean and lowly literal exposition and observance of the Law" doubtless runs contrary to the instincts of some of the hermeneutic traditions arising after the Protestant Reformation. The literal exposition tends to lead to a more univocal meaning, regulated by the text itself, giving epistemological certainty as opposed to a method that would lead to a multiplicity of meanings that must be judged on the basis of extra-biblical criteria. If the Bible serves as the epistemological foundation of all things Christian, then the Christian would be desirous of finding a method that grants definite certainty, that can be clear enough to delineate those beliefs and practices which may be permitted, and those that may not be. St. Gregory's hermeneutic undermines this certainty.

Another objection may be lodged: the metaphorical meaning of a text abstracts away from any practical value, perhaps for the purpose of freeing the reader from the text's demands, and allowing the text to be reshaped to fit the reader's own purposes, clearing a way for man to usurp God's own word; or, to put it more simply, the metaphorical meaning requires only that one understand, not that one's life be conformed.

Both objections recklessly presuppose the existence of a set meaning that can be elicited from Scripture -- or any other text -- in isolation from both the context in which the text came to be and the context in which the text gets read; epistemological certainty belonging more to the former, and the accusation of mutinous abstraction going more to the latter. That meaning can be constituted and grasped without taking into account the contexts of significance in which the work was produced and in which it is read surely ignores the traditions one necessarily must rely on in understanding the texts (i.e., extra-biblical hermeneutic devices such as: "interpret the unclear passages by the clear ones"), and the obvious fact that reading Scripture itself without the intent to utilize other forms of tradition produces far less epistemological certainty than those who intentionally make extensive use of tradition in Biblical exposition, judging by the continual fragmentation of those who believe in the strict form of "sola scriptura" (a version not really held by most of the original Reformers) and the relative unity of those who adhere to a more traditional exposition.

One can, however, hold that tradition has its place in interpreting Scripture, yet nevertheless privilege literal readings over metaphorical readings--Luther and Calvin would more in this camp than the one above. The reason for St. Gregory's privilege does not, however, arise from a tendency towards the abstract, but rather from quite the opposite. The metaphorical reading of both the Law and histories of the Old Testament has its high place precisely because of its superior practical value.

St. Gregory's intention in, for example, his exposition of Moses' life does not seek simply to find those principles by which Moses lived in his time and place and, by understanding these reflectively, to instruct his readers to live by those same principles in their own time; Gregory wishes to instruct us how we may be raised by the daughter of a Pharaoh, be faced with a burning bush, ascend a mountain to see God's back, or again what it would mean to kill an Egyptian and flee to the desert, to turn water into blood, and to part the Red Sea. In his analysis, then, the events recorded in the history should not be used as fact patterns from which we might derive rules for living (and here, any fact pattern might do as well as another), but rather the history ought to be lived out by imitation; Gregory does not limit the language of participation to the metaphysical conception of the soul's union of God alone, he extends it to those great men of God which we would be well served to emulate. In a way, we must not only live out Moses' principles, but live his life by means of analogy.

How Gregory works this out with regard to the specific events in the history of Moses must be understood as one reads his Life of Moses; for our purposes, we need only grasp the general intent behind his exposition. He reads the history non-literally in order to determine how we are to fight the Amelikites when they no longer exist, or scale Mount Sinai after leading a nation out of Egypt. Gregory's use of metaphor arises not out of any lack of confidence in the relevance of the lives of those who lived long ago, but precisely in order to understand the relevance in each detail of such a life.

Looked at this way, the process of extracting from the history a rule that Moses lived by, even something as simple as "trust in God", makes the history more distant to its practical application and involves a greater process of abstraction than does living the history by analogizing one's own life to that of Moses. A metaphorical reading is not, therefore, more empty and abstract than a literal reading, but eminently more practical, and neither is a metaphorical reading, properly performed, an imposition of one's own intentions on the text and a freeing oneself of the text's demands; rather, it necessarily involves subjecting oneself to Scripture's demands, reforming one's intentions, and actually living out the history by way of analogy.

The Penal Soul

2009-09-26T13:06:00.000-07:00

If the surplus power possessed by the king gives rise to the duplication of his body, has not the surplus power exercised on the subjected body of the condemned man given rise to another type of duplication? That of a 'non-corporeal', a 'soul', as Mably called it. The history of the [works] of the punitive power would then be a genealogy of the modern 'soul'. Rather than seeing this soul as the reactivated remnants of an ideology, one would see it as the present correlative of a certain technology of power over the body. It would be wrong to say that the soul is an illusion, or an ideological effect. On the contrary, it exists, it has a reality, it is produced permanently around, on, within the body by the functioning of a power that is exercised on those punished - and, in a more general way, on those one supervises, trains and corrects, over madmen, children at home and at school, the colonized, over those who are struck at a machine and observed for the rest of their lives. This is the historical reality of the soul, which, unlike the soul represented by Christian theology is not born in sin and subject to punishment, but is born rather of methods of punishment, supervision and constraint.

- Michel Foucault

What does it mean to say that the soul is born of punishment, supervision, and constraint? We might think of the soul as that activity in which a coherent identity gets formed. Often, this has been conceived as coming from within the inner potentiality of a human being, brought out successively through time as one's essence progressively manifests itself. However, the Aristotelian must also grant that any inner potentiality does not possess the power to manifest itself; rather, potency can only be brought into actuality by something already actual.

For the Christian tradition (and even for Aristotle), that actuality that calls the soul out from hidden potentiality and allows it to come into its own is God. God as pure act should not be thought of as one actual thing among others that comes alongside something such as the sole and "activates" it. God's immanence, especially as expressed in the doctrine of the imago Dei, exists "inside" the soul, bringing it to its own natural actuality from within.

Foucault's claim is quite different. The soul does not come from within, but from without. The soul is imposed by the principalities and powers of the world through acts of violence. The soul is that force exercised by power and the technics of repression. And rather than the soul enlivening the body, freeing it from inert materiality, the soul, as the product of the mechanics of power, imprisons the body.

The Structure of Motion in Aristotle's Cosmological Argument

2009-08-07T14:35:00.001-07:00

Aristotle does not limit motion to change of place, to growth and decay, to alteration, or the like; for motion, while it encompasses these things, cannot be thought of as one sort of motion that all other sorts of motion can be reduced to (i.e., motion cannot be alteration, while all other forms of motion can be reduced to alteration). Neither can the sorts of motion, added together, tell us what motion itself itself is -- any more than listing different virtues can answer the question of what virtue itself is -- and so Aristotle must give an account of motion that goes beyond listing different sorts of motion, or collapsing different sorts of motion into a single kind of motion; or to put it another way, Aristotle must explain motion as such.

In III:1 of the Physics, Aristotle defines motion as "the being-at-work-staying-itself of whatever is potentially, just as such" (201a10-20) and again as the "being-at-work-staying-itself of what is potentially, whenever, being fully at work, it is at work not as itself but just as movable" (201a15-30). The definition might be formulated in a more paradoxical (and troubling) way: motion is the activity of potentiality; and thus one might conclude Aristotle's definition directly contradicts itself, for actuality and potentiality ought to be opposed to one another--at least on the superficial reading.

How would a potentiality be at work while remaining as a potentiality? Isn't potentiality precisely that which has not yet been actualized? Aristotle clarifies his definition by saying that he does not mean that a particular potentiality for a particular being constitutes motion, else we might say that to be brown constitutes motion; rather, motion is the activity of potentiality as potentiality. To take an example, a light-skinned person who rarely spends time in the sun can be called potentially tan, and while "being tanned" obviously does not constitute motion in its essence, neither -- precisely speaking -- does the becoming tan from being light-skinned constitute motion itself (though it is a motion). What, in the process of becoming tanned, constitutes motion itself? In any particular motion, motion itself must be present, accessible to us on reflection, and since we know that motion is the activity of potency as potency, we can ask: how, when a light-skinned person becomes tanned, does motion manifest itself as an activity of potency?

Motion cannot be inextricably tied to any particular potentiality, but it must be related to potentiality as such; and so we say that motion manifests itself in the fact that, while one becomes tanned, being light-skinned slides from actuality into potentiality. By always claiming, as it were, one contrary, and giving the other contrary to actuality, potentiality always keeps something for itself; for contraries cannot both be actual at one time (a person cannot at the same time be both light-skinned and tanned). Motion is the activity of potentiality's maintenance of its own reserve, and this can only be possible with finite beings. Motion does not consist in being light skinned or in being tanned, but in necessarily only being one at the same time, while potentially the other; and one cannot help but note that even potentiality, considered in itself, exists as an actuality.

This brings us back to the previous insight that potentiality and actuality cannot be opposed to one another, that potentiality, in order to be at all, must be actual; yet, in spite of this, one cannot simply conflate potentiality with actuality--the two must be considered distinct, although connected. In order to see the distinction, we must return to the problematic definition that seems to threaten the distinction between actuality and potentiality: potentiality, to be potentiality, must be actualized in the structure of motion. This can be reformulated as: motion is potentiality being itself actually. Aristotle goes a step further, defining motion in explicitly contradictory terms as an "incomplete being complete" (257b8-10), but rather than creating an impasse, when Aristotle defines motion in its most problematic form, he opens the way to altering the nature of the problem. Motion itself may be called a complete way of being incomplete, an actuality that preserves potentiality, not because motion cannot ever be abstracted from things (though it must always exist in them), but rather because it constitutes the being of composite things. The definition of motion as an incomplete being complete forms a bridge, for it points in two directions: motion in itself as the active maintenance of a reserve of potentiality (the potential maintained being the incomplete), and motion as always making possible an actual, composite being. The two can only be separated in thought; for to be a composite being means to never be fully complete (i.e., fully actual), and to be a motion means to be completed only in the presence of a composite being that takes responsibility for the motion (as the first mover).

Motion's completeness is the composite being's incompleteness; this only says that motion finds its explanation in a being that takes responsibility for it, and the composite being only finds its being composite in the perpetual presence of the potentiality that motion preserves. Here a problem arises, for it seems as though I might be using "motion" equivocally: first as a particular motion, and second as motion itself (the structure of motion as motion). A particular motion, in order to be understood, requires a particular being to take responsibility for it (to be its first cause), but it does not seem as though composite being as such owes its being-composite to a particular motion (becoming tanned, changing location, and so on), but rather to motion as the preservation of potentiality. Note, however, that although motion finds its explanation only in a being that takes responsibility for motion, this does not immediately indicate that this being must be composite or that the motion is a particular motion. One can read Aristotle's definition of motion as creating a fissure in the ontic through which the ontological makes its appearance: particular motions may be explained in one way by reference to natural beings responsible for motion, while they may be explained in another way by motion as such; however, motion as such cannot be explained by particular motions, nor by reference to itself, but must be explained by its causes. Thus, the question of the cause of motion as such lies implicit in both particular motions and the structure of motion that makes composite beings possible. An important question arises at this juncture: does motion (not particular motions, but motion as such), which gives composite beings their being as composite, belong properly to the composite being itself, as an aspect of that being, or does it belong to something higher than the composite being itself, being given from another source (and it seems clear this source would be the cause of motion)? To put it a clearer way: can we call motion as motion prior to the composite beings in which motion constitutes their being as composite, or are composite beings ontologically prior to motion as motion? Can we call composite beings prior to their being, or must we call the being of composite beings ontologically prior? This line of questioning interrogates the possibility of the presence of the transcendent in the immanent as well as the basic character of their ontological relation. How Aristotle answers the question determines how he conceives of the ontological difference.

Aristotle begins his explanation of motion as such by first considering particular motions; considering the ontic first, to reach the ontological. The cause of motions must be explained by reference to a first mover that exists as a particular being, and so we would suspect that the question of the cause of motion itself might move along similar lines; as said above, motion cannot be explained by particular motions, and so its cause must lie in itself, or in an external cause. If the first cause of motion itself (first, of course, in the ontological, not temporal sense) turns out to be a composite being, then composite beings would be ontologically prior to motion itself, and this would be the case if motion exists simply as a feature of composite beings.

In order to determine whether the cause of motion as such can be understood to be ontologically determined by motion itself, Aristotle moves back to the consideration of particular motions so that he might determine whether individual motions encompass their causes (that is, whether the causes of motions are themselves moved by the motion they cause). Some things seem to be obviously moved by something else, such as when a man moves a rock with a stick. In this case, the first mover must be said to be the man, not the stick, for the man bears responsibility for the motion of the rock, and the stick serves merely as an instrument; further, the motion of the rock, though caused by the man, did not move the man himself (the motion of the man moving the rock must be distinguished from the motion of the rock itself). From this, we might be led to conclude that the mover causes the motion, but remains outside of that motion. However, in some cases, it seems as though the moved thing moves itself. The man who moved the rock perhaps looks about for a stick to move the rock with, and this motion seems to originate within the moved thing itself (in this case, the man). Aristotle regards animals as paradigmatic cases for beings, and so the seeming self-motion of animals poses a particular problem if he wishes to maintain that the mover causes the motion without being moved by it. In order to establish that the mover must be unmoved by the motion caused, Aristotle must show that a self-moved mover in some way must be unmoved by the motion.

A self-moved mover must either move itself as a whole, or some part of the self-moved mover must move the whole mover. However, if a whole moves a whole, then the distinction between mover and moved collapses, for that which bears responsibility for the motion also undergoes the motion, and the causing motion and being caused are not two separate things, but one in the same; and -- as Aristotle points out earlier -- if it is possible to collapse the distinction between mover and moved, then teaching and learning could be the same--this cannot be true. An even more basic (though similar) problem arises if one says a whole moves itself as a whole: in order for a whole to be moved, it must be first potentially movable, then brought into motion by an actuality; but if the whole is moves itself, then it must be both be both potentially and actually in the same way at the same time. Therefore, a whole cannot move itself as a whole.

It follows that in a self moved thing some part must move the whole, but that part can move the whole in two ways: either by being moved itself, or by remaining unmoved; but if the part moves itself with the motion it causes in the whole, then the part may itself be viewed as a self-moved mover, in which mover and moved must again be distinct. Thus, the self-moved part that moves the whole can itself be viewed as a whole that must also be divided into a part that moves and a part that is moved, and so the only way to avoid an infinite regress would be to identify a part that moves the whole, but is itself unmoved. Since the part that causes motion does so not in a temporal sense, but in an ontological sense wherein that part causes motion by being primarily responsible for it, it would be irrational to say that there is nothing responsible for a motion. Therefore, even in self-moved movers, an unmoved mover causes the motion, and so the cause of motion in all moved things itself remains beyond the motion caused. Taking this logic from the ontic to the ontological, it follows that the cause of motion as such cannot itself be determined by motion, but must be outside composite being. Therefore, the being of composite beings, motion, is ontologically dependent not upon composite beings themselves, but upon a being that is beyond potentiality, and is itself purely actual.

The Irony of the Euthyphro

2009-07-17T13:08:00.000-07:00

The irony of the Euthyphro as a whole consists in this: Euthyphro sought to defend his position that personal investment in justice was irrelevant, while being so personally invested in this argument that he was unable to give himself over to the demands of Socrates' philosophic dialectic.

Works of Art and Works of Nature

2009-06-12T15:47:00.000-07:00

In our age of industrial technics we often find the distinction between natural things and man-made products blurred or erased; think, for instance, of how the project of artificial intelligence seeks to replicate a human mind -- a natural occurrence -- on computer hardware, as though the mind exists as an abstract form that can be freed from one physical instantiation and reconstituted in entirely different physical material. David Hume pointed out that Newton's design argument confused the cosmos with a mechanism, failing to consider that other analogies (such as that of an animal) might be even more appropriate, an error made more and more earnestly even by those who would later deny the design argument; and now society, living beings, and the cosmos as a whole suffer being conceived of as mechanisms that operate (or should operate) for maximal efficiency towards certain quantifiable results. However, it goes unquestioned -- and therefore, unproven -- whether the model of the machine can encompass the reality of living beings, or of society, or of the cosmos as a whole; and Aristotelian phenomenology makes a strong case against such a confusion, for the works of the artisan are ontologically distinct from the works of nature.

Aristotle gives an initial definition of natural things as those things that have an internal impulse towards motion, while stating that artifacts lack such an internal disposition:

For [the things of nature] has in itself a source of motion and rest, either in place, or by growth and shrinkage, or by alteration; but a bed or a cloak, or any other such kind of thing there is, in the respect in which it has happened upon each designation and to the extent that it is from art, has no innate impulse of change at all. (Physics 192b10-20)

At this juncture in Aristotle's investigation into nature one can safely think of motion as change generally, rather than as primarily locomotion; and so Aristotle characterizes as natural things which have an internal principle of change. Natural things change in a way appropriate to the sort of thing they are (for example, when a tree grows upward towards the sunlight, this change constitutes an expression of what it means to be a tree), so the internal principle of motion can be understood as the sort of motion that belongs properly to a thing by virtue of what it is. Some motions can be said to be natural and others unnatural: when a person lays down to sleep, the motion of laying down and the change from being awake to being asleep arises from within that person, and can be understood as an outward manifestation of that person and of human beings generally; however, if a person is knocked to the floor by something striking him, this motion is unnatural in that the striking thing imposes the motion from without.

Natural and unnatural motion can happen only to a natural thing, while a work of art (here understood in the broad sense of craftsmanship) does not have its own natural form of motion. The artifact undergoes change both from within and without: within from the material out of which the artisan formed it, and without from the design of the artisan. The work of the artisan necessarily constitutes a certain violence: a tree, formerly having its own nature and principle of growth, suffers being cut down and hewn into the form of a bed frame; the nature of being a bed-frame does not belong to the tree itself, but must be imposed from without, and the wood of the bed will not strive to maintain the integrity of the bed through time, but will decay as wood does and eventually return to the earth. Natural things are at work being and maintaining themselves in a way that incorporates the material of other things -- think of how when an animal eats an apple it destroys the nature of the apple and turns the material towards itself -- but in the case of natural things, it is the nature or form of the thing itself which recruits foreign material into its own nature; however, the artifact does not recruit material into its own way of maintaining itself, rather the artisan forces the material and the form together from the outside--artificially.

The internal principle of motion or change constitutes the means by which the being maintains itself in its being (Heidegger calls this "care"), and so the natural changes proper to a thing such as a tree maintain it in its being: the tree grows up from a seed, pushing through the ground, and opens itself up to the world as a tree. By shedding its leaves during the winter, growing them during the summer, reaching ever upwards, and dropping seeds down the the earth, the tree manifests itself as a tree, the tree is its own striving towards manifestation; it initiates its natural changes from within and expresses them outwardly, and in this activity has its being. An artifact suffers changes, for it has no internal principle of motion or change that allows it to outwardly express its inward possibilities, and so, every once in a while, it must be repaired or replaced; the artifact has no intrinsic way to be at work maintaining itself or striving towards its own expression, but only the natural tendencies of the things out of which it is constructed, and the efforts of the artisan to force and reinforce a functional structure upon it. A bed does not work at keeping its nature intact by actively looking after itself and recruiting new material into its active being, rather the wood rots and the artisan replaces it or makes another bed. Thus, if the being of a thing consists in the work to persist over time that it initiates from within itself, we can say that artifacts, in the purest sense, do not possess an authentic being, except insofar as they imitate natural things.

This difference between natural things and artificial things ought not be considered to be "merely" mental, having no hold in nature as it is in itself: the highest manifestation of each natural being occurs in its being understood by mind, for here the natural thing exists at its most purely actual; beings can be understood -- which simply means: brought to their highest actuality -- when one knows the "why" of their being (194b20-25). In order to further elucidate the ontological difference between natural beings and artifacts, we should consider that to which both sorts of things owe their being, and how they differ. When we inquire into the sources of a thing's being, we inquire into what bears responsibility for that thing, and we know in advance that what bears responsibility for the being of a natural thing must be, in some sense, the natural thing itself; for the natural thing's being is nothing other than its effort to persist and express itself over time, and a natural thing must (as we said above) initiate this activity from within. However, if we wish to inquire further to the responsibility for the thing's presence, we see that the thing can be said to be responsible for its being in several different ways.

In order for a thing to hold itself in being, it must have something to hold together and to recruit when it needs more material; when the tree acts on itself, we mean "tree" and "itself" in slightly different ways, for the tree in the primary sense is its being-at-work-staying-itself, while the tree in the second sense is that out of which the tree is made. The former acts upon the latter, and we call natural beings composite, having an active and a passive part. Motion, in its highest sense, is the preservation of the thing's potencies as such, and so motion guarantees a reserve of material for the thing to act upon.

Second, in order for a thing to hold itself in being, it must have something that it holds together, and this something must be intelligible; for example, the sheep dog chases after its charges and thereby maintains that by which one recognizes it as being a "sheep dog" and which all individual sheep dogs possess. What the natural being holds together and offer to the external world belongs to all things of its kind, and does not depend on an individual instantiation of itself; for example, if one sheep dog perishes, one can still recognize what distinguishes sheep dogs as sheep dogs. Aristotle calls this the look that one discloses in speech; Aristotle means by this formulation what occurs when one says "that looks like a sheep dog."

As a finite thing must have a beginning that we call coming-into-being, and this change must begin at a certain point, something must be responsible for initiating the coming into being of the thing. In order for a change to occur, something must cause it to occur, and in the case of the change of coming into being from not-being, the thing responsible cannot be the thing brought into being, for then it would precede itself; and therefore, the individual thing -- while it can be responsible for its changes once it exists -- cannot be responsible for its own coming into being. In works of art, we rightly call the craftsman responsible for the coming into being of the artifact, but in works of nature, the thing responsible can only be a thing of the same sort (a sheepdog must come into being from other sheepdogs); one can distinguish natural things from unnatural things by asking whether the thing was brought into being by the same sort of thing.

However, a thing undergoes other changes other than coming into being, and if these other changes are natural then they will be initiated from within the thing itself, rather than from without. We have already mentioned several marks of natural things -- that they initiate motion from within, that another thing of their own sort is responsible for their coming into being, that their form and matter belong to one another -- but all these should be drawn together under a final sort of responsibility: that wholeness towards which the thing directs its activity of maintaining itself through time. The three sorts of responsibility discussed above are likewise subordinate to this kind of responsibility, the actively self-maintained wholeness of the thing that Aristotle calls the for-the-sake-of-which; this can be seen when the sheepdog corrals the sheep, when it escapes from the powerful predator, when it eats--all of these aim towards the maintenance of the whole sheepdog under which are gathered all other aspects of the sheepdog.

This final aspect only natural things possess, for the responsibility for the presence of an artifact cannot be brought under this final cause, as it lacks the requisite unity: the material has no inherent desire to be brought together into the intelligible form of the artifact, and so the intelligible form does not belong to the matter that suffers to receive it; neither does that which is responsible for the coming into being of the artifact manifest the same intelligible form that he or she brings into being in the artifact; and certainly the artifact does not actively maintain the harmony of these aspects, directing them towards the wholeness that they help constitute. Aristotle calls this wholeness the nature of a thing, and it is precisely the presence of nature that determines works of nature in their being, and likewise it is precisely the lack of this nature that determines works of art in their being.

Metaphysical Naturalism Is a Crude Form of Idealism

2009-06-09T13:20:00.000-07:00

Metaphysical naturalism, the view that the hard sciences possess a rightful claim over all other disciplines regarding the explication of the nature of reality, has spread from scientists through the popular culture and even into some quarters of philosophy. One easily forgives the scientist who overestimates the limits of his or her craft and one hardly faults the common person for being overawed by the accomplishments of the scientific enterprise, but philosophers – who ostensibly ought to be aware of the particular demands of metaphysical inquiry – ought not accept these claims so easily. After all, within the confines of modern science one cannot even make claims as to the metaphysical status of scientific theories, such as whether science treats of things in themselves or of a chain of causes conditioned by transcendental categories, because as soon as one takes up such questions, one has moved from the territory of science to that of philosophy. Therefore, the philosopher ought not simply accept the scientific picture of the world as an entirely true picture – though perhaps, to borrow Heidegger's distinction, the philosopher might accept the scientific picture as correct – but neither ought the philosopher dismiss it out of hand simply because it originated in the field of natural science rather than in the field of philosophy. In order to subject this sort of metaphysics to philosophical scrutiny, this essay will focus on an area in which the tension between metaphysical materialism and its opponents is particularly palpable: the question whether the mind is identical with the brain. I will argue that the metaphysical implications of identity theory have not necessarily been thoroughly thought out and lead to a sort of metaphysical dualism which is untenable, or else to the sort of idealism which would require the scientist to give up on his or her status as an empiricist.

To the metaphysical naturalist, science appears to promise fairly complete answers in most of the areas it has applied itself; however, the explanation of the mind in naturalistic terms is notoriously difficult, and might be seen as the last holdout for the opponents of materialism. As J. J. C. Smart puts it: “There does seem to be, so far as science is concerned, nothing in the world but increasingly complex arrangements of physical constituents. All except for one place: in consciousness.”(1) However, one must note that the mind ought not be considered one item (among a determinate number of other items) that resists – at the outset, at least – scientific explanation; rather, the activity of the mind functions as a necessary prerequisite for the scientific explanation of anything at all—scientific inquiry as such is a particular kind of mental process. So the optimism that science has explained, say, 99% of things in the universe and will therefore probably explain the other 1% that includes the mind overlooks the constitutive role mind plays in the scientific construction of the universe. It would be a mistake to suppose that the mind will be eventually explained just as scientists have explained everything else for the obvious reason that scientific inquiry is bound in a very peculiar fashion to the workings of the mind; the activity of the mind cannot be extirpated from the activity of scientific inquiry in a way that would allow mental activity to ever become a mere object of investigation. This does not mean that the mind cannot be explained in a naturalistic way, and so we can proceed through Smart's argument without error as long as we remain aware of the peculiar relation of the mind to scientific explanation and avoid the unreflective talk of “nomological danglers”.

Identity theory depends upon the distinction between the “is” of correlation and the “is” of identity; identity theorists do not wish merely to argue that mental states are correlated with brain states, but that mental states are identical with brain states. The weaker claim that whenever a person has a mental state, that person also has a brain state – an entirely reasonable claim – does not go far enough for Smart; the mental state must be identical with the brain state. To put it succinctly: “Sensations are nothing over and above brain processes.”(2)

As Smart notes, this immediately calls forth the obvious problem that one can talk about mental processes without knowing about brain processes, and so he must distinguish between what the common person means by “mental process” and what mental processes actually are. In fact, the identity theorist must say that what the common person actually refers to is a brain process insofar as he or she refers to anything at all. Both U. T. Place and Smart refer to the way in which lightning, rather than being thrown down from the heavens by Zeus as an ancient Greek might have thought, is (in the sense of identity, not merely correlation) the discharge of electricity; the way in which heat must be identified as molecular motion; or some other natural phenomena which readily admits to reduction to a scientific model. U. T. Place declares that the phrase “'consciousness is a process in the brain' in my view is neither self-contradictory nor self evident; it is a reasonable scientific hypothesis, in the way that the statement 'Lightning is a motion of electric charges' is a reasonable scientific hypothesis.”(3) Likewise, Smart remarks:

When I say that a sensation is a brain process or that lightning is an electrical discharge, I am using “is” in the sense of strict identity (just as in the – in this case necessary – proposition “7 is identical with the smallest prime number greater than 5.”) When I say that a sensation is a brain process or that lightning is an electrical discharge I do not mean just that the sensation is somehow spatially or temporally continuous with the brain process or that lightning is just spatially or temporally continuous with the discharge.

Both Place and Smart base their identity theory in the analogy that just as natural phenomena appear one way, scientists have actually discovered them to be something else entirely, and both presume that natural phenomena can be reduced to the corresponding scientific explanation, leaving nothing left over. Therefore, while one might agree that one aspect of lightning might be an electrical discharge, or that one aspect of mental activity might be the functioning of the brain, this does not go far enough for the identity theorists; just as lightning is electrical discharge and no more, so mental processes are brain functions and no more. At this point, one can begin to see the outlines of a wider metaphysical view of the world surfacing, which, under further analysis, might turn out to be quite suspect.

If identity theorists wish to offer the scientific model of the universe as an exhaustive explanation of the world,(4) then they propose a dualistic ontology which posits that things do not appear in everyday life in the way that they exist in reality—which signifies nothing else than a sort of revival of Kant's distinction between phenomenon and noumenon. Thus, the common man might say, “my feelings toward my pet goldfish sure don't feel like neurons firing in my head”, but who is he to know? After all, just as the true nature of lightning cannot be conveyed through the perceptual experience of lightning, neither does the apperception of affection reveal the ontological basis of mental states. This means that what appears can be devoid of what truly exists, that phenomenon can be devoid of noumenon. Thus, one can find within the ordinary apperceptual experience of affection absolutely nothing about the neurological process that supposedly constitutes the reality of the experience (remember, we aren't talking about physical processes which accompany mental processes, but physical processes and nothing else).

Ought we to consider the division between what appears and what exists absolute? We have established that we appercieve mental states without any hint of their supposed “true nature”, but perhaps mental states alone do not convey their true nature, perhaps the true nature of externally existing things does become accessible through their appearances. Taking Place's example of a cloud, we might say that although the ancients might have thought of clouds as fairly solid objects, one finds on closer examination – through the help of a hot air balloon – that clouds are not solid at all, but droplets of water. In this example, the true nature of the cloud gets revealed through the perceptual experience of clouds, and humans were formerly deceived (for the purposes of our story) because they didn't have the requisite technology to get the needed vantage point to reveal the true nature of the clouds. However a few problems present themselves. In the first case, why ought the closer appearance of clouds be privileged over the way they appear from the ground? What reason do we have for regarding the more accurate view of clouds as the one from the air? One answer that might be given: things appear most fully to human beings “within arm's reach”. I am not entirely satisfied by this answer, as I think a counter-argument might be made that the way in which clouds appear in the usual course of human activities ought to be considered the truer view; however, for the purpose of this discussion, we can accept the “arm's reach” explanation.

The second, more significant problem regarding the cloud example occurs when one says that the true nature of the cloud consists not in the small droplets I might catch in my fingers from within the hot air balloon (and therefore, the droplets I can feel and see), but in the accumulation of H20, suspended in the air by certain pressures, reacting to gravity in certain ways, and so on. Nothing in my perceptual experience of the water droplets forming on my hand gives me anything like the molecule H20, and if one wishes to say that the true nature of water can be exhausted in that molecular form, then the true nature of the cloud again exists nowhere in the perceptual experience of it. This suspicion only gets confirmed more thoroughly if we consider again the favorite example of identity theorists: lightning. If, while I am gliding my hand through the cloud before me while riding in my hot air balloon and trying in vain to somehow perceive two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, my hot air balloon gets struck by lightning, then not only do I not perceive lightning any better than from a distance – indeed, it seems as though I might have more clear view from a distance – but I don't see anything like an electrical discharge; instead I see a blinding flash, hear a crash, perhaps smell the fabric of my hot air balloon burning, and so on. Neither the perceptual experience of the cloud nor that of lightning gives me anything like H20 or electricity, and so one would expect to find this true of all natural phenomena. Indeed, if we were to get down to the basic constituents of the physical universe, we find quantum theory proposing things which cannot be observed (in principle) as basic to reality—and even claiming that the whole of things within space and time are held in being by super-spatial and super-temporal quantum strings vibrating. If this turns out to be true, the universe as a whole would have its true reality in something that can be neither perceived nor even imagined, but only modeled mathematically. Therefore, I think it safe to say that the identity theorist's metaphysics posits an absolute divide between appearances and reality, meaning that reality cannot become available through perception.

Though Place and Smart might maintain an absolute division between phenomenon and noumenon, one sees that they cannot regard the noumenal (as Kant did) as absolutely beyond knowledge, but rather precisely as that in which the true natures of things become known. This brings us to a peculiar turn: the kind of materialism which the identity theorists advocate – wherein the universe as it shows up in the hard sciences exhausts the whole of its reality – turns out to be a kind of idealism, in that reality is constituted by ideal models which cannot be given in perception, and while transcendental idealism does not regard either the pole of appearances or the pole of reality as more real than its opposite, identity theorists must deny any ontological status to appearance and instead maintain that scientific constructions exhaust the whole of the real. This is the full metaphysical consequence of declaring that lightning is electronic discharge and nothing else, that water is H20 and nothing else, and that mental processes are brain processes and nothing else. However, the identity theorist might protest that while hydrogen atoms cannot be perceived, brain processes can be perceived through the use of mental imaging equipment. In this case we must note that even if mental processes could be observed, the more basic (and therefore more real, on the materialist view) physical constituents still stand beyond the possibility of anything other than mathematical modeling. Secondly, and more importantly if we wish to maintain an absolute distinction between the phenomenal and noumenal, one does not really perceive brain processes when one views a CAT scan any more than one observes a duck when one sees the word “duck.” The image that the brain scan reveals stands in for the brain process; it represents it in the same way way atomic force microscopy generates an image that represents an atom. A process itself cannot be given in strictly sensuous experience any more than a cause could be (as Hume famously observed).

Although one might find it ironic that a philosophical position which purports to be empirical in fact entails a radically idealistic ontology that denies the reality of sensuous perception per se, this does not yet constitute an argument against identity theory. I would suppose that Smart or Place might be willing to give up on the strict claim that natural phenomena must be identified with the scientific explanation of that phenomena and nothing over and above that, since it leads rather obviously to the idealism I have been expounding, but of course I can't speak for them. And this would require them to give up identity theory. So I will end my formal argument here and – as I don't have space to make another rigorous argument – instead suggest some reasons why one should be very suspicious of identity theory's tacit ontology.

In order to convince a person that their perceptual experience can never convey reality, but instead can only stand in for ideal models beyond any possible perception, one would need – as the “man on the street” might say to the enthusiastic identity theorist – a damn good argument. In fact, I am suspicious that any argument could convince anyone that the way in which we see and encounter the world around us ought to be considered an illusion; the sheer force of the world's truth presses in through perception over against any attempt to deny it—indeed, the philosopher might need a good deal of peace and quiet to deny the reality of what threatens to distract him from his studies. Neither Smart nor Place offer a convincing argument to consider appearances void of reality, they simply assume this to be the case.

One way to disprove identity theory might consist in a phenomenological investigation which would lay out precisely how science arises as a function of the consciousness, and would lay out the ways in which this sort of consciousness depends on the “life-world” (as Husserl called it). At this point, one could examine whether or not science has – by virtue of the type of consciousness it is – the capacity to make metaphysical claims about the world, and one would perhaps demonstrate from this that science necessarily deals with constructs which have a lesser claim to reality than, for example, philosophical claims. In this way, one could show that metaphysical naturalism arises from a misunderstanding of the basic nature of science. Of course, fleshing out these arguments would have to take place in a further essay.

____________________________________
1.J. J. C. Smart, p. 60.
2. Smart, 62.
3. Place, 56.
4. As consistently as possible, I will use the term “universe” to refer to the scientific model of the world used by physics, and “world” to refer to the lived-in phenomenal world—by which I mean nothing more than the world as it ordinarily shows up for us in everyday life.

Derrida on Sacrifice and Modern Society

2009-05-02T16:27:00.000-07:00

The Sacrifice of Isaac is an abomination in the eyes of all, and it should continue to be seen for what it is--atrocious, criminal, unforgivable; Kierkegaard insists on that. The ethical point of view must remain valid: Abraham is a murderer. However, is not the same spectacle of this murder, which seems untenable in the dense and rhythmic briefness of its theatrical moment, at the same time the most common event in the world? Is it not inscribed in the structure of our existence to the extent of no longer even constituting an event? It will be said that it would be most improbable for the sacrifice of Isaac to be repeated in our day; and it certainly seems that way. We can hardly imagine a father taking his son to be sacrificed on the top of the hill at Montmartre. If God didn't send a lamb as a substitute or an angel to hold back his arm, there would still be an upright prosecutor, preferable with an expertise in Middle Eastern violence, to accuse him of infanticide or first-degree murder; and if a psychiatrist who was both a little bit psychoanalysis and a little bit journalist were to declare that the father was "responsible", carrying on as if psychoanalysis had done nothing to upset the order of discourse on intention, conscience, good will, etc., the criminal father would have no chance of getting away with it. He might claim that the wholly Other ordered him to do it, and perhaps in secret (how would he know that?) in order to test his faith, but it would make no difference. Everything is organized to insure that this man would be condemned by any civilized society. On the other hand, the smooth functioning of such a society, the monotonous complacency of its discourses on morality, politics, and the law, and the very existence of rights (whether public, private, national, or international), are in no way perturbed by the fact that, because of the structure of the laws of the market that society has instituted and controls, because of the mechanisms of external debt and other comparable inequities, that same "society" puts to death or (but failing to help someone in distress only counts for a minor difference) allows to die of hunger and disease tens of millions of children (those relatives or fellow humans that ethics or the discourse of the rights of man refers to) without any moral or legal tribunal ever being considered competent to judge such a sacrifice, the sacrifice of the other to avoid being sacrificed oneself. Not only does such a society participate in this incalculable sacrifice, it actually organizes it.

-Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death.

QOTD

2009-04-16T16:26:00.000-07:00

"The most sophisticated inventions are boring if they do not lead to an exacerbation of the Mystery concealed by what we discover, what is revealed to us. The powerful penetrating ability of the human mind uncovers with an undreamed-of insistence, yet what it uncovers is right away seized by the everyday and by understanding of being as in principle already fully uncovered and cleared, that understanding which at a stroke turns today's mystery into tomorrow's common gossip and triviality."

Jan Patocka, "Is Technological Civilization Decedant, and Why?"

The Imitation of the Divine In Aristotle

2009-04-09T15:06:00.000-07:00

In order to gain knowledge of divine circularity in the simplest way, we will start with how human beings come to understand the divine, rather than how the divine understands itself. The question this essay takes up: to what extent is human participation in the divine contemplative? And, as a corollary, to what extent does the contemplative life exclude the “merely human” life (i.e., the political, familial, etc.). Lear formulates this problem by asserting that, according to Aristotle, the philosopher reaches a point where he must choose between the higher life of the divine and the lower life of the human. I will argue that this dilemma can and should be avoided in order to remain consistent with the general drift of Aristotle's thought, and that divine participation and political interaction can be mutually complementary.

The argument will proceed along the following lines: First, we will examine Aristotle's account of thinking as it relates to the actuality of form. Second, we will examine Aristotle's prime mover, with an emphasis on the account from the Metaphysics. After this we will be in a position to critique Lear's position about the impossibility of a life that is both political and contemplative. Aristotle's epistemology differs very importantly from post-Cartesian epistemology in that he does not sharply divide the thinker and the object of thought. Whereas dualism holds that the object of thought stands outside the mind and gets replicated within the inner space of the consciousness (and thereby reduces truth to the “accuracy” of the mental image to the external object), Aristotle instead holds that in reflective thought the thinking of an object and that object itself cannot be distinguished (De Anima II:1 413a4-7).

Aristotle's epistemological position depends on his ontology; the highest actuality of a thing lies in the thinking of it, rather than in “the thing itself” apart any apprehension of it.

Aristotle famously distinguishes between the form and matter of a substance, and the form generally corresponds to the thing's actuality, while the matter corresponds to the thing's potentiality. A substance, though it always shows the wholeness of its form in a way, nevertheless often fails to manifest it explicitly. If we think of the frog Lear uses as an example, we see that “Kermit” manifests his frog form to different degrees at different times. When Kermit was a tadpole his frog-nature was not as actual as it is when Kermit grows to be a full-grown adult frog; when Kermit sleeps, he does not actualize his frog-nature to the degree he does when he hops from lily pad to lily pad (Lear, 118). According to Aristotle, Kermit never fully actualizes his frog-form, although he possesses it (and has being by virtue of it) at all times, for Kermit cannot understand what it means to be a frog. However, this does not mean that frog-form cannot be fully actualized; frog-form gets most fully actualized in the active contemplation of what it means to be a frog. Kermit's frogness is potentially what the mind makes actual in the contemplation of the nature of frogs. This ought not be construed as saying that the frog-form is an inert potentiality which the mind actualizes, for form is actuality and mind does not act upon it so much as receive it. As Lear observes, since we cannot distinguish between the object of thought (frog-form) and the thinking of it, we can say that in the mind frog-form thinks itself—contemplation is the “self-understanding of the frog form!” (Lear 131). The highest actuality of a form is the contemplation of that form, and therefore mind cannot be said to be incidental to nature as a whole, but in some sense constitutive of it. One must take care here to avoid construing Aristotle as an idealist in the modern sense; for the mind which constitutes the world is not in any straightforward sense a human mind.

The contemplation carried out by human beings relies on perceptual, inner-worldly engagement with the things thought of. Thus, though active thinking brings out the full actuality of, for example, Kermit's frog-nature (or, probably more accurately, provides the space within which Kermit's frog-nature can fully express itself) human contemplation depends upon the things encountered in order that it might happen at all. However, human beings stand out from nature as the only sub-lunar beings who possess the ability to think. Aristotle regards this ability to think as not merely human, but as divine. If the being of things cannot be separated from their highest actuality, and the highest of actuality is thinking, then the being of things establishes itself in the activity of contemplation. But if contemplation belongs to human beings alone, and human beings depend so heavily on things in order to think them, Aristotle's ontology begins to appear quite frail.

Aristotle diverges from transcendental idealism in the sense that he does not believe reality to be divided into the phenomenal and the noumenal in such a way that mind must impose its processes upon the noumenal in order to make it intelligible as phenomena. Rather than attribute to the mind this kind of computational conversion process, Aristotle regards the reality of the things which we think of as already constituted in mind, and therefore human minds participate in a Mind which transcends the shortcomings of composite beings. Mind does constitute the reality of nature (as its full actuality) in a way which encompasses the whole of the cosmos, and this mind Aristotle calls the unmoved mover.

At this juncture we would do well to consider the relation of actuality to potentiality, for, as stated above, the full actuality of a substance is the contemplation of that substance, and so when Aristotle posits the unmoved mover he declares the being of the cosmos to be pure actuality. Put another way, the being of the cosmos cannot be separated from the source of its actuality—which is the unmoved mover. This view requires that actuality be ontologically primary to potency, and if this proves false, Aristotle's doctrine of the unmoved mover stands in immediate peril.

In Metaphysics Λ:6, Aristotle makes a brief argument for the primacy of actuality(1): “But surely if [potentiality takes precedence over actuality] there would be no beings at all, since it is possible to be capable of being and yet not be.” (1071b27-29) If the being of inner-worldly beings were constituted by potency, then these beings might exist or else they might not, but no reason accounts for their existence. This relies partly on the cosmological argument found in the eighth book of the Physics (258b26-259a8) which, briefly summarized, asserts that a series of ontologically contingent beings (that is, beings which admit potentiality) cannot be explained simply by explaining each thing in the series by the thing which comes before it in the series, and therefore that the series can only be explained by a pure actuality. Motion consists of the change in a substance from potentiality to actuality – for this argument to work it is rather essential that we not think of motion as the relative movement of extended substance in abstract space – and while one composite substance might cause another composite substance to be actualized in a certain way, this does not explain why anything has become actual in the first place. The whole infinite series of movers may as well not have been, and therefore even an infinite series of contingent things cannot explain the existence of the whole—which itself admits of potency. While an individual in the series of causes might be explained by the individual before it, this does absolutely nothing to explain why the series as a whole exists, when it might just as well not have. We might ask, with Leibniz, why not rather the nothing? Therefore, composite beings as well as the totality of composite beings, cannot account for their actuality, and so any account must include a necessary being(2); an account of existence as a whole presupposes the primacy of actuality.

The cosmological argument indicates something more basic concerning the nature of actuality and potentiality: that actuality cannot only be called prior to potentiality for purely a posteriori considerations (something exists rather than nothing), but also by virtue of what actuality and potentiality are. Thus, even for schools of thought, such as that represented in the Upanishads, which would not accept the basic tenets of Aristotelian physics which make his argument binding, if one only considers actuality (form) or potentiality (matter) it becomes evident that potentiality must depend on actuality if one hopes to have any sort of intelligible ontology. In the ontic sense, of course, actuality does depend in a way upon potentiality; in the case of tangible things, for example, we usually see that things must be able to be x before they actually become x. However, when we consider potentiality and actuality as such, we find that potentiality is only insofar as it is a kind of actuality—otherwise it would be nothing at all. David Bentley Hart summarizes the point nicely:

...While, in the realm of the ontic, the possible is in some sense a wellspring of the actual, this necessarily finite order requires a kind of conceptual inversion, which renders its logic infinite, if one is to think of being as such, for even possibility – whether one conceives of it as abstract forms or simply concealed “ecstasies” -- must first be... One must also recall that “necessary” here does not mean a first cause in the ontic sense, but the transcendent “possibility of possibility” (which must be infinite actuality). Anyway, even to think of the possibility as “higher” than actuality is covertly to think of it as actual... (3)

When one posits possibility as higher than actuality, error arises from the confusion in terms, because actuality has more being by virtue of what it means to be actual. The arguments above demonstrate this both a posteriori and a priori. Thus, we can now take the unmoved mover as the sheer actuality that acts as the source of being for all inner-worldly beings or – what is the same – the Mind in which the highest actuality of the forms gets constituted.

The foregoing treatment of thinking and form, actuality and potency, puts us in a position from which we can begin to attack the central question of the essay: to what extent can human participation in the divine be purely contemplative? Obviously, insofar as we think, we participate in the divine (our mind becomes like the divine Mind), but we might inquire more closely into how we participate as humans in the divine.

Perhaps the corollary to the thematic question will be best to deal with first. As mentioned above, Lear declares that “Man must be pulled in contrary directions: toward a political life within society and toward an anti-social life of contemplation,” and holds that Aristotle maintains the harmonious ethical life ought to be abandoned if possible for the higher, divine life of contemplation (Lear, 312). This argument seems to obscure a crucial difference between the the way in which the divine contemplates and the way in which human beings contemplate. God, not being a composite being, needs no engagement with things to begin thinking about them; rather, the intelligibility which renders things thinkable to humans gets constituted in God's thinking. Although when humans actualize their capacity to think they participate in the divine mind, they do not participate in the same way that God does—the thinking belongs entirely natural to God, while it does not belong entirely naturally to men. Humans can contemplate only what they encounter, and therefore, for humans, the importance of inner-worldly engagement with things cannot be ignored. Human beings certainly can exercise the contemplative life without company, while the social life is impossible under the same circumstances, but men cannot contemplate entirely apart from composite existence. A frog must at some point have been present for a human to contemplate what it means to be a frog, a tree must at some point have been present for a human to contemplate the form of a tree, and so on. It might be said that after a certain level of interaction with the objects of contemplation one no longer needs them and can go off to solitude to contemplate, and while this might be true of things, plants, and non-rational animals (which I am suspicious of), this cannot be said of human beings; for while it seems that whatever Kermit the frog can never exceed Kermit's frog-form – in other words, when one knows the form of frog, nothing remains left to know that Kermit himself might add – it seems that the human form remains so inexhaustible that a point will never be reached at which a finite mind will have achieved sufficient knowledge of the human form that it can leave to go off to solitude so that it might contemplate. Simply by virtue of human limitations the point Lear theorizes will inevitably be unreachable; knowing at least one form – the human form – cannot take place apart from the everyday engagement with particular substantiations of that form. This may not be a satisfactory answer, because it might be the case that the human form can be known by the solitary simply through his contemplation of the things around him—after all, the solitary still has himself. However, Aristotle's ontology maintains that a thing reaches the divine through its actuality as the particular kind of thing it is (for insofar as it manifests its form, it participates in the divine mind); therefore human beings participate in the divine insofar as they become more the kind of thing they are, and while this includes the rational faculty by which humans imitate God especially, one cannot ignore that this is one (especially privileged) aspect of the human form and that the animal and social aspects of man also fall within the human form—man is a political as well as a rational animal. Thus, if one intends to understand the human form by reflecting on himself, it seems that, in order for this self-reflection to capture the fullness of the human form, one must participate wholly in all aspects of what it means to be a human being—and this obviously must include the political dimension.

Now we have gained the position from which we can answer the original thematic question concerning the extent to which human participation in the divine is contemplative. The kind of motion which characterizes the divine is circular motion, because in circular motion there is no distinction in motion away from... and motion towards... Lear claims that the philosopher reaches a point where two different ways invite him in different directions, towards the social or political life or towards the solitary or contemplative life. Although I have argued these are not entirely mutually exclusive, it must be admitted that they still go in different directions; the one towards the purer divinity, the other towards the more ambiguous life possessed by a human being. However, one also should note that both of these are, in their own way, pathways to the divine by different routes. The more one becomes the kind of being one is, the closer one comes to pure actuality, and therefore engaging in animal and social life, though it may appear to be leading away from the divine, is an expression of the divine as actuality. The way which at first appears to be a more direct way to the divine in fact incorporates the ordinary types of human engagement. Despite the different directions the two pathways start out in, they meet in a sort of complimentary circularity, one less inherently stable than divine circularity, surely, but that is to be expected for a composite being, and so we can conclude that while contemplation may permeate the whole of human life and the participation of human life in the divine, it does not have to do so in a way that excludes the more mundane aspects of life, but instead takes them up into the context of a full, balanced human life.

___________________________
1Aristotle makes the fuller argument in Book Θ, Chapter 8 of the Metaphysics.

2“Necessary being” must be taken in an analogical sense here; neither Mind as Aristotle imagines it nor God as the Christian tradition later imagines it can be construed as having “being” in a univocal sense with circumscribed beings.

3. David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. Grand Rapids: Eerdman's Publishing Co. p. 224

The Criminal and Civil Metaphors for Justification

2009-02-22T13:12:00.000-08:00

Among all the analogies of the relation between God and man, the one most vulnerable to misinterpretation or exaggeration must surely be identified as the "legal analogy"; which, since Anselm's Cur Deus Homo, has enjoyed a preeminent status among other analogies, and which has, in some varieties of Christianity (particularly those located in the more "conservative" Protestant sectors) become either the reigning metaphor -- before which other metaphors, such as that of father and son, king and nation, or doctor and patient, must relinquish their traditional authority -- or, in extreme cases, a reality not bound by the humility claimed by metaphor. Several obvious objections may be leveled against such a lopsided emphasis; the most serious among these would consist of the elevation of Paul's writings, in which the legal analogy sees comparatively frequent use, above Jesus' sermons, which tend to use more personal metaphors--thus the excessive attention proceeds from a rather unbiblical theological preference rather than from the emphases found within the text itself.

But even aside from the unbalanced stress on the legal metaphor, in some quarters of Christendom exegetes relentlessly obscure the significance of the metaphor by misreading it. Often enough, one hears accounts of salvation which run something like this: mankind sits in the seat of the accused, having violated the Law of God, and God, as the judge of the court, renders the judgment that all who sin shall be condemned to eternal perdition. However, the son of the judge emerges, declares that, being innocent, he can take upon himself the judgment rendered upon mankind and spare those who accept his substitution for their just penalty. Thus mankind does not suffer the judgment of God, being instead free to enjoy the mercy of God as the result of Christ's sacrificial act. In all such stories -- and the one recounted here only conveys the basics of such exegeses -- one might find himself asking about the appropriateness of such an analogy: why does the finite violation of God's law merit infinite punishment, and isn't this (to express it mathematically) infinitely out of proportion? I have never come across a plausible way out of this impasse. Furthermore, how can we call that sort of substitution just? Even if an innocent willingly accepts the criminal punishment of another, has justice been meted out, or has it not instead been diverted to where it is not deserved? And, after all, Christ didn't undergo eternal damnation. The biggest problem with this analogy lies in the fact that Jesus saves mankind from the wrath of God (which only says: himself), and thus the enemy of humankind is God himself--this explains, at least in part, the psychological motivations of militant atheism. In any case, the metaphor's inconsistencies threaten not only its own integrity insofar as it does not even conform to the demands of its own internal logic, but its relationship to scripture and the whole of Christian tradition.

Any exegesis which construes Paul as discussing justification in terms of criminal law is at best anachronistic; Paul's legal analogy explicitly uses the language of civil law, particularly as it applies to slaves (Romans 6:16-19). The analogy might be better expressed in this way: men remain within the power of death, having enslaved themselves to the Devil by their defiance of God. No man can pay the ransom to the Devil required to buy their freedom, for they have become too ensconced in his power to be able to offer anything beyond a feeble revolt destined, at it outset, to failure. God, wanting back those who were once his, cannot simply rend them from the grasp of the Devil, for not only do they belong rightfully to the Devil, but nothing would prevent them from falling back into his grip; or to put it another way, God could consider those alienated from his glory no longer alienated, he could forgive their trespasses (in the sense of not allowing these trespasses to create division between creature and creator), he could change their legal status as a judge might change a deed to a piece of property, however, the people themselves would not change, for none of this would require the voluntary cooperation required to change their hearts. Instead God must pay the ransom to death himself, and in paying the ransom he offers the free gift of grace in such a way that the debt for freedom has been paid and men no longer remain rightfully under the power of the Devil. The only thing holding men within the power of the devil is their own decision to remain there unjustifiably, for they now belong rightfully to God.

This analogy has its limitations of course, but these only become problematic when the analogy itself gets emphasized disproportionately. Among the many virtues of this analogy one finds that the image of God conforms to a more Biblically and theologically acceptable one: our enemy all along has not been God but ourselves and the powers we have voluntarily enslaved ourselves to, and God's justice does not consist of equal parts of wrath and love, but purely of the love which liberates us from the clutch of the Devil, which we perceive as wrath only because it makes our destitution known to us and offers us a path of liberation we do not wish to take. God's justice, therefore, does involve the wildly disproportionate punishment found in the criminal analogy, but instead manifests in his power of setting things aright in a way which does not destroy their intrinsic logic (i.e., the free will of human beings). In legal terms, men have been bought as slaves, and they now have a new master however much they might yearn for the old one; the forces which determine one's fate have now all been rendered impotent except for two: man's will and the God's offer of salvation.

Although these comments hopefully establish the internal consistency of the analogy of civil law and the way in which it gets derived out of its Scriptural basis as superior to the analogy of criminal law, a few reservations might remain. Why, for example, do we speak of Christ as a sacrifice offered to God rather than to the power of death, why do we speak of Christ as reconciling men to God? This problem results from mixing metaphors; sacrifices belong to the province of (primitive) religious devotion and have very little to do with legal relations, and reconciliation belongs more properly within the personal sphere as the new possibility of rapprochement after a conflict. If one offers these as supplementary analogies (and one ought to), one must take care to give the analogy its own sphere of significance which can be brought alongside the legal analogy, but cannot be confused as one of the juridical analogy's component parts.

But, one might object, we do speak of God as a judge rendering a verdict; does this not indicate some presupposition of criminal law? And doesn't Paul speak of Jesus saving us from God's anger? In the first case, God renders a judgment in a civil issue; men belong by right to the dominion of death, having given themselves over to death of their own accord. God's judgment declares the validity of man's free decision and the legitimacy of death's claim. The punishment which follows the judgment consists in a "giving over" of the sinner to himself; or to put it another way, the punishment does not follow the judgment, it is the judgment, and the judgment in turn is little more than the explication of the implications of man's sin. Man sins, and God punishes him by letting him sin; the punishment of sin is that same sin, and the punishment may be differentiated only by the fact that it makes known the full nature of sin which can easily remain concealed. Thus the punishment follows the sin as the force of its articulation which cannot be evaded or ignored, and therefore God's judgment ought to be feared only because it recognizes the validity of human decisions, only because it gives man over to himself in a transparent way. And what of the propitiation which assuages God's anger? Because Christians confirm God's impassibility, one ought to be at the very least suspicious of any statement which suggests that the propitiation changes God's anger into love by changing something about God; rather, the change the propitiation effects occurs not in God -- for in asserting this one would be guilty of the kind of heresy which reduces God to the status of a pagan deity -- but in man. "We have been reconciled" (Romans 6:10), and God's wrath turns out to be the love to which we belong (having been bought) and which we experience only as wrath when we long for the old order from which God has freed us. His anger is his love when we cannot or do not accept it, just as the love of a parent appears repugnant to the malcontent child.

All of which does not say that a metaphor of God's relation to man cannot be depicted in terms of the accused criminal, however, one must hasten to add that the legal order in which the accused stands as accused is not properly the order of God's own justice, but instead one of those principalities and powers within the domain of sin and death. It is precisely this order from which God frees man, calling him to the higher order of a justice in which all is restored rather than destroyed--in which the entire order of creation is born again and renewed.

Daniel Dennett's Problem of Consciousness

2008-12-22T11:37:00.000-08:00

A recent speech given by Daniel Dennett for TED illustrates the now common infiltration of scientific presuppositions into what often gets identified as the philosophical enterprise, and although this tendency to render the scientific method as metaphysically true can be seen most obviously in the neo-atheist's (among which Dennett counts himself) arguments against religion, in this case Dennett commits the same error of method in regard to cognitive philosophy. I have not read Consciousness Explained and so cannot comment on the rigor of that work, but I think it possible to see in Dennett's presentation for TED the starting point of his philosophical approach to the "problem" of consciousness. He says:

What you are, what I am, is approximately 100 trillion little cellular robots; that's what we're made of, no other ingredients at all, we're just made of cells... Not a single one of those cells are conscious, not a single one knows who you are or cares. Somehow we have to explain how when you put together teams, armies, battalions of hundreds of millions of little robotic unconscious cells, not so different, really, from a bacterium, each one of them, the result is this [Dennet points to an an illustration of the mind], I mean just look at it: the content, there's colors, there's ideas, there's memories, there's history, and somehow all that content of consciousness is accomplished by the busy activity of those hordes of neurons. Many people just think it isn't possible, at all. They think: "No, there can't be any sort of naturalistic explanation of consciousness."

Dennett's description indicates a thoroughly materialistic metaphysic which considers the truly real aspects of the universe to be quarks, atoms, cells, electromagnetic forces, and so on. I have directly argued against this view elsewhere, but there's a rather obvious problem in talking about consciousness in this way which should be immediately evident to anyone with any philosophical acumen whatsoever. Even without any phenomenological training one might see the peculiarity of trying to explain consciousness by referring to things which can only be accessed through that same consciousness; or to put it another way, the problem of explaining consciousness by the objects of consciousness which can never be spoken of outside the domain of consciousness. Quarks and neurons can only be conceived of after one has adjusted their consciousness so as to conceive of the universe through mathematical physics; consciousness rather obviously precedes any of its objects in the act of knowing, whether they are scientific entities or common artifacts. Objecting to the explanation of a phenomena in terms of things which can only be made known by that phenomenon does not mean that one must fall back on the supernatural because no rational alternative can be found, and Dennett's method can only be called natural in the same sense as Locke's theory of perception: Locke attempted to explain the mind as a blank sheet of paper upon which experience writes, but in doing this he commits the "naturalistic fallacy"--he attempts to explain something by something else, though he -- more than Dennett -- understood this method as an analogy. Here we see the real problem: if we wish to explain something and understand it in itself we cannot simply substitute other things which admit to simpler explanation and declare our work done, and this basic error of substitution only gets aggravated when we try to explain something which reveals something else by the thing revealed.

If Dennett begins to study consciousness by the things to which consciousness might be directed such as the bodies cellular activity, he has already run past the phenomena of consciousness. Really, it makes no difference whether he attempts to explain consciousness though cellular activity, by referring to a sheet of paper, or by referring to anything else which he might be conscious of; for Dennett has ignored how we become conscious of these things in the first place.

The difficulty of discussing consciousness lies in the fact that we do not usually become conscious of consciousness, from which follows that philosophical language which talks about the things at which we can direct our conscious will have to be revamped or abandoned if it intends to make the mind thematic. Phenomenology takes up this project, and in Husserl, Heidegger, Merleu-Ponty, and others we see attempts at this. A good bit of conflict can be found, especially between Husserl and Heidegger, but the important thing about phenomenologists is that they realize the problem. Dennett would do well to engage with these philosophers instead of simply repeating the prejudices of cognitive science and christening it "philosophy."

Against Prohibitionism

2008-12-07T14:48:00.000-08:00

Without the principle of moderation the possibility of true asceticism gets lost, and strangely enough this unfortunate state of affairs can often be found in those groups who claim to advocate moderation. Moderation does not have anything in common with prohibitionism as many seem to believe--from the point of view which advocates moderation, prohibitionism is an extreme to be avoided just as one ought to avoid excess.

I do not mean by "prohibitionism" specifically the historical movement which set out to ban alcohol, nor the continued theological position that one must avoid alcohol (though in these cases one sees in an obvious and concentrated form the attitude at which I take aim), but the disposition that if something should not be used in excess one ought -- in order to be on the safe side -- not to use it at all. In the case of alcohol, this attitude does not manifest in those who declare alcohol to be evil in principle; this is a different, and rather silly, intellectual disorder. To the Christian mind, this absolute prohibition of alcohol appears suspiciously close either to gnosticism (in its distrust of the goodness of creation), or to Islamic teaching. Even setting aside the historical attitude and traditional position of the Church towards alcohol, the Bible simply lauds wine -- and particularly in regard to its psychoactive effects which promote revelry and fraternity -- too loudly and too repeatedly for the intellectually honest fundamentalist to ignore. If one considers the Bible to be in any sense authoritative in the way a Christian ought to live his or her life, one simply cannot regard that which in the Psalms is declared to be made by God for the purpose of "[making] glad the heart of man" as evil without very obviously impugning God in the process. And those few who attempt through absurd etymological strategies to deny that the Hebrew word for "wine" means "wine" make Bishop Spong's Biblical criticism look like the work of a hermeneutical genius.

One finds a better example of the prohibitionist temperament I have in mind in those who accept the obvious historical reality concerning the Judeo-Christian use of wine and who -- while not maintaining an absolute prohibition against alcohol consumption -- hold that it might be better to abstain from alcohol altogether lest one drift into excess. Though this position has the benefit of at least being intellectually honest, it either misapprehends the nature of moderation or does not consider moderation virtuous in itself. Moderation does not simply mean avoiding excess, one must avoid deficiency as well; to paraphrase Aristotle, moderation stands in the mean between two extremes. The motivation of the prohibitionist just mentioned can be considered good, but incomplete: for by avoiding all alcohol (in this example) one does not violate the moral rule against drunkenness, but neither does one fully assert the goodness of the gift of wine. In Aristotelian terminology, one unintentionally falls into the extreme of deficiency while trying to avoid the opposite extreme of excess. Here one can see a fundamental problem that cannot simply be restricted to issues such as alcohol; that is, that creation is a good gift from God and must be received as such.

In asserting that one does best to not only avoid extremes but to avoid moderation as well, one must implicitly claim not only that whatever a person takes in moderation is not a good but that moderation itself is not good. In the case of alcohol the abstainer avoids drunkenness in a way which ends up expressing (quite unintentionally) disdain for God's creativity. The prohibitionist gets so wrapped up in avoiding doing wrong that he fails to do right, or else he conceives of moral law in a fundamentally negative way wherein one stays on the right side of the law simply by not violating it. In either case, we see that without a practiced moderation one cannot live fully, and that the state of one's soul gets inhibited in a way which makes it difficult -- though not entirely impossible -- to affirm the goodness of creation.

Moderation must not be interpreted in solely a legal way; though it is a mean it is not a mathematical mean. To eat moderately does not really entail eating a precise amount of food; moderation cannot be placed on a coordinate system. For this reason Aristotle asserts that while moderation requires a mean between extremes, moderation is itself an extreme; in other words, in order to be moderate one must avoid excess and deficiency, but this alone does not constitute moderation--it merely makes it possible. Once a person frees himself from extremes he creates the calm space in which he can enact virtue. In the case of food, moderation becomes possible when one neither eats too much or too little, but moderation is achieved when one relates to food as one ought to. It is quite possible that one avoids excesses but still is not moderate. Similarly, in the case of alcohol one cannot be called moderate simply by avoiding drunkenness or excessive sobriety; one is moderate when, neither given to drunkenness nor sobriety, one relates to alcohol as a good to which one is not enslaved but which one may enjoy as one should. Moderation is a state of the soul, and moderation with regard to alcohol is simply a particular way in which this moderation may express itself.

Moderation with regard to alcohol cannot be considered as an ethical issue independently from wider ethical issues, and not only because -- in the Christian tradition especially -- immoderate alcohol intake gets categorized as a species of gluttony. Whether a person can drink moderately speaks to the state of their soul; an inability to drink a reasonable amount of alcohol is not so much bad in itself as it is an indication that one suffers from a disordered soul. Indeed, consuming alcohol in moderation offers good practice at being moderate generally, and only though practice and habituation can one become moderate. Thus when the prohibitionist abstains from something in order to avoid excess he not only engages in a sort of excess of his own (and this might indicate a wider disorder), but deprives himself of an opportunity to improve the state of his soul.

Some cases do exist where one simply ought not to partake in some good he or she finds simply too tempting; this, of course, indicates something analogous to an illness in which one forgoes the mean because of excessive personal weakness. In these cases, abstinence stands as the best choice, but it must be considered a diminished good arising from a particular pathology; or to put it another way, an unfortunate circumstance arising from a psychological disability. This ought be viewed not with disdain but with a compassionate awareness that recognizes the situation as not ideal but best given the circumstances. We might think of other cases in which a supervening reason, such as the wishes of one's friends or family, might cause someone to justifiably forgo the mean. In these cases one must again realize that the circumstances do not allow for what is ideal, that those who rule out moderate behavior are wrong, and one must take special care not to let the spirit of immoderation spread beyond its current site of infection. One must always remember that all goods take place in a mean, and that in order for them to be accepted as good one must have incorporated the principle of moderation into one's soul.

The practice of moderation -- whether in alcohol, food, entertainment, time management, and so on -- ought to be viewed as the practice of training one's soul in virtue and as part of the process of achieving moral maturity. One gains personal stability and good judgment in this way and only in this way. By denying the goodness of alcohol or food one implicitly impugns the wider goodness of creation, and by avoiding moderation in this instance one falls prey to an extreme which makes it more difficult to practice moderation generally. Fortunately, those who oppose the use of alcohol very often do not let this tendency infect too deeply the other aspects of their lives and so prevent the prohibitionist attitude from causing any wider damage. However one must keep in mind as a Christian that only when the soul stands well ordered in a state of moderation can one receive creation as a gift by enjoying it without being enslaved by it, and only in this way can one maintain a relation to things which both affirms their goodness and places God as the source of all good things; only in moderation can asceticism be a celebration, rather than a condemnation, of creation.

Freedom, Ancient and Modern

2008-12-05T15:38:00.000-08:00

One ought to take care when speaking of freedom as something valuable in itself; the truth of such an assertion depends entirely on which sense one uses "freedom." In political dialogue, freedom often indicates the absence of coercion: one can be considered free when he or she chooses without external compulsion. This notion of freedom probably goes beyond simply being ever-present in political conversation; it determines the plane on which the discussion takes place and different political positions often arise from slightly different permutations of this concept of freedom.

For example, libertarians (and usually fiscal conservatives) understand freedom to mean the absence of government interference; the libertarian considers a person free when the government leaves him to mind his own affairs as he wishes. The libertarian understands coercion primarily in the sense of external violence. The liberal, on the other hand, understands freedom not as an absence, but as the presence of the resources which allow a person to carry on his affairs. The liberal believes that one can only be considered free when he has sufficient resources to exercise his freedom, and therefore freedom takes on an active dimension. The liberal understands coercion as not only active intervention but as material deprivation. Social conservatives offer a third perspective in which the government maintains a moral society. By enforcing a stable society with a clear code of morality, the government protects the conservative's freedom from having to suffer from the spectacle of public immorality. Here, coercion signifies the imposition of morally undesirable behaviors which affect others.

These interpretations of freedom arise out of a particular philosophic formulation of freedom: freedom as the autonomy of will. In this sense, human beings can be called free if one's choices do not get determined by outside forces but by one's will alone. One sees this quickly in the debate over determinism: some philosophers argue that all the choices a person makes have already been decided. Even if the cause of all decisions were to be found as the will, human beings would still not be considered free because the will is not autonomous (in that it could not have chosen otherwise). In this philosophic interpretation of freedom one can be called free only if the source of his or her decisions -- the will -- could choose any number of different ways and chooses based on a pure act of will in which no reference point behind the will can be found.

This understanding of philosophy is without doubt a modern one; one which has lost a higher idea of freedom. This higher sort of freedom requires something very like the kind of freedom described previously, it requires the capacity to choose without external compulsion. However, this sort of freedom does not consist in autonomy, but depends on one's essence. Freedom is the manifestation of who one is. This even applies in a limited way to non-rational life: a flower, if it receives nutrients and sunlight, grows and expresses what it means to be a flower. If it suffers deprivation of sunlight or nutrients it dies or becomes deformed in such a way that it no longer shows what it means to be a flower then its freedom has been infringed.

Similarly with a person: if one is an artist and has the means and opportunity to pursue one's artwork, one possesses freedom in respect to being an artist. If one does not have the resources to express oneself as an artist, one is not free. The uniqueness of human beings lies in our ability to express many different sorts of essences, to be free and unfree with regard to these different essences, and to govern these various expression with our rational faculty. Freedom does not mean simply choosing, it means choosing what is in accord with our nature.

Though human beings can express different essences, one stands out as particularly basic. The essence of human being seems to include and delimit things such as artistry. Indeed, it seems other human potentialities depend on -- and perhaps are only a modification of -- human nature. Therefore, one could reasonably suggest that the primary sense of freedom consists in how well a person manifests the human essence; a person's freedom for the most part means how well he or she lives up to what it means to be human.

This necessarily entails limits on the autonomy of the human will; the sheer exercise of the will does not in itself constitute freedom and can actually result in bondage. Certain action of the will acquire a significance beyond the will itself, a significance grounded in human nature. This means not all choices can be considered equivalent, that some choices stand in accord with one's human nature (in existential language: some choices are authentic) and other choices violate one's nature as a human being (existentially, these choices are inauthentic). At the one end we have virtuous activity; not virtue in the sense of conforming to universal moral law, but virtue in the (Greek) sense of human excellence. The virtuous man stands out as particularly showing what it means to be a human being; put another way, the virtuous man manifests his human nature well. On the other end we could think of vices, not as an instance which violates some universal moral law, but as activity which betrays one's own human nature. Degrading activities such as torture or prostitution stand out here as obvious examples.

At this point one who holds the modern view of freedom might say that even degrading activities express one's freedom, that if one prevents another from such things one violates his or her right of choice. In order to hold this position, one cannot simply propose that human nature is not static but dynamic, and that norms from one group cannot be applied to other groups. Few great philosophers would say that human nature can be expressed in a static fashion; most -- at least most among the ancients -- would be at home with the Aristotelian position that human nature comes to be through commonly shared meaning in a community. Further, and more to the point, in order to call an activity degrading one must mean that it does a disservice to the one who performs it; one must say that through degrading acts one misrepresents and reduces who he or she is. This relies on a coherent notion of a human essence, regardless of whether it is dynamic or static, grounded transcendentally or practically. Therefore, our opponent must either hold that there is no such thing as human nature, or that in principle it is necessary that some actions degrade ones essence. If one believes the concept of human essence to be without content, one can hardly argue about human freedom since by discussing human freedom one already operates with some latent concept of humanity.

Having put forth the ancient way of thinking about freedom, we might consider for a moment the coherency of the modern version. It seems that, if this sort of freedom is a good, the things which restrict it are bad. In the political sphere, we might think of certain laws, the absence of resources, or the imposition of riotous immorality as restricting freedom. But if we think beyond the political sphere to the wider implications of such freedom, we find something more controversial. It seems that autonomy is violated by every instance of specificity. That is, insofar as we are something concretely, we limit ourselves. Every time one chooses, one limits himself. If one chooses to be a liberal, for example, in that instant he closes off the possibility that he chose to be a conservative--even if he changes his mind later. If one chooses to travel to France, one cannot simultaneously be in Australia. Every time one exercises one's freedom, one simultaneously limits it. Even refusing to take stands and make decisions closes off possibilities, for temporality itself refuses such absolute autonomy. Existing in any definite way places restrictions on the will, and it is for precisely this reason that the theologian David Bentley Hart accuses the modern form of freedom as fundamentally nihilistic. The very act of existing requires us at every moment to be something definite, to close off our choices. The only way one can be absolutely autonomous: one must escape existence altogether. Modern nihilism can be directly linked with the demand for absolute freedom of will.

Part of the blame for this, ironically enough, lies with theology. David Hart describes how William of Occam introduced the notion of freedom as autonomy into theology as nominalism, which later became systematized as Calvinsim. I quote at length from his book The Beauty of the Infinite:

[W]hen nominalism largely severed the perceptible world from the analogical index of divine transcendence, and thus reduced divine freedom to an ontic voluntarism, and theophany to mere legislation, such that creation and revelation could be imagined only as manifestations of the will of a god who is, at most, a supreme being among lesser beings, theology and philosophy alike were surrendered to a kind of elected darkness; and when the nominalists, or those of the factio occamista who followed them, succeeded in shattering the unity of faith and reason, and so the compact between theology and philosophy (or as, in an Occamist moment, Luther phrased it, "that whore"), both were rendered blind... For theology, of course, this represents an incalculable impoverishment: it contributed to a quite unbiblical dread of the goodness of creation, a misconstrual of divine glory as a supernatural corollary to the majesty of the sheer power of a human monarch, the idolatrous diminution of God to the condition of a composite being -- rather than the source of all being -- whose acts could, like ours, be indifferently related to his essence, expressing or dissimulating his nature... At a critical moment in cultural history -- not that there were not various fateful moves in the history of Western theology that led to it -- many Christian thinkers somehow forgot that the incarnation of the Logos, the infinite ratio for all that is, reconciles us not only to God, but to the world, by giving us back a knowledge of creation's goodness, allowing us to see again its essential transparency -- even to the point, in Christ, of identity -- before God. The covenant of light was broken. God became, progressively, the world's infinite contrary. And this state of theological decline was so precipitous and complete that it even became possible for someone as formidably intelligent as Calvin, without any apparent embarrassment, to regard the fairly lurid portrait of the omnipotent despot in book III of his Institutes -- who not only ordains the destiny of souls, but in fact predestines the first sin, and so brings the whole drama of creation and redemption to pass (including the eternal perdition of the vast majority of humanity) as a display of his own dread sovereignty -- as a proper depiction of the Christian God. One ancient Augustinian misreading of Paul's ruminations on the mystery of election had, at last, eventuated in fatalism. (131-132)

Calvin, in Hart's view, systematizes the perversion of freedom. Omnipotence, instead of indicating that God, in his transcendence, is always the full and perfect expression of himself, indicates instead the infinite power to dominate and control others in a way analogous to political power. But God's absolute freedom in the higher sense would mean a restriction on the autonomy of the will; God cannot do a great number of conceivable things, for this would be at odds with what it means to be God – or put another way, this autonomy would actually violate God's freedom. When freedom gets reduced to the autonomy of will it becomes theologically possible for God to willfully bring about evil, as Calvin makes evident.

A full return to the full notion of freedom transforms not only theology, but philosophical anthropology and politics. It would reopen the question of human nature with a certain urgency, for – as Aristotle notes in the Nicomachean Ethics – the more understanding one has of human nature, the better one understands how to be virtuous; this, certainly, offers a better standard than adherence to universal laws. This, in turn, leads to political questions; as men are social animals, their freedom manifests in their engagement with others. However, it transforms the level of political discussion as well, for if freedom consists in manifesting the human essence, politics becomes the place in which this can be enacted practically.

God and Being: A Review of Part I of John Macquarrie's Systematic Theology

2008-07-29T21:23:00.000-07:00

In Being and Time one finds the question of the relation between being and God, ontology and theology asserting itself again and again, though not explicitly. Heidegger's reopening of the question of being transforms the history of philosophy, and one must wonder what impact it could have on theology given the close relation between the two. Despite Heidegger's warning that he is engaging in a fundamental ontology which must remain separate and prior to any theology, and despite his claim that if he wrote a work on theology it would not contain the word "being", one nevertheless wonders what relation being has to God. Is God what Heidegger calls being? Or does God transcend even being? John Macquarrie's Principles of Christian Theology takes on this question, proving a theological response to (and sometimes an appropriation of) Heidegger's thought.

Read the complete essay.

Life is Art

2008-06-16T21:25:00.000-07:00

"Our religion, morality, and philosophy are decadence forms of humanity -- the countermovement: art."

-Nietzsche, Will to Power.

In the West, either religion, morality, or philosophy stands widely considered as providing the meaning for things, people, and relationships. Christianity commands that we look on nature as a fundamentally good, albeit corrupted, creation. Morality demands we treat others as we would be treated ourselves. Philosophy (science being one of its derivations) tells of an external, real world. Nietzsche intended to overturn Western modes of thought, and so it comes as no surprise that he wishes to overturn religion, morality, and philosophy.

"The countermovement: art." But why art? Does Nietzsche merely mean to turn from the objective to the subjective? This surely underestimates both the nature of art and the depth of Nietzsche's thought. Nietzsche does not advocate turning away from life and living to a banal relativism. He wishes to end the turn away from life to the otherworldly, whether through religion or metaphysics; more clearly than anything, Nietzsche calls these flights of fancy back to life.

Nietzsche identifies a close relationship between art and life. What is art but bringing forth? Until relatively recently, art encompassed such things as craftsmanship as well as fine art. When one builds a table, he brings forward what was not already there: the craftsmen is a creator. Life also possesses the character of bringing forth--in life man creates himself. Throughout the whole of life, man makes himself who he is. Does he create himself as religions says? As philosophy would demand? Nietzsche argues these stifle man's creativity, it obstructs his role as creator, and consequently religion and philosophy deny life as creative self-becoming.

"Art as the single superior counter-force against all will to negation of life, art as the anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, anti-nihilist par exellence."

Phenomenology and Scientism

2008-05-26T21:18:00.000-07:00

Phenomenological insights can be used to refute "scientism", the notion that scientific facts form the most fundamental reality. Scientism is pervasive even in those who ostensibly reject it. For moderns, it is difficult to conceive of ourselves as anything much distinct from a higher order animal on a small planet which orbits a small sun located in a backwater galaxy in a massive universe. We are equally minute in regard to time; humans have only existed for a few hundred thousand years, only a blink of an eye in terms of the age of the universe. In this context, humanity must be seen as quite small. The notion of a special immortal soul does not pose a significant threat to this worldview; it is not an alternative in itself, its content is in negation, and offers nothing positive. The entire universe is seen as a conglomeration of mass and energy, atoms and quarks, different forms of substance with no innate significance. If this truly is the most fundamental reality, Albert Camus' absurdism seems like the only possibility.

Before we acquiesce to the metaphysical dominion of science, perhaps we should first ask how such a view is possible. The scientific universe requires a scientific view; science is a way of looking at the world. If, then, the scientific universe is the most fundamental way of looking at the world, it stands to reason that the scientific way of looking at the world is the most basic. Because science requires a scientific view of things, it needs someone who is capable of having a view in general; therefore science requires a subject. This insight means that the physico-chemical universe depends on a particular kind of view from a particular kind of being. The scientific world is only possible on the basis of the subjective world, as a form of the subjective world. Before exploring these ramifications, let's back up for a moment and consider what we mean by science.

Heidegger begins is essay Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics by considering the usual account of the difference between modern and ancient science. He identifies three common elements.

First there is the assertion that "modern science start from facts while the medieval started from general speculative propositions and concepts." (Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics, 271) This is an oversimplification: the scholastics dealt with facts, and modern scientist deal with concepts. Galileo and Newton started their systems from general propositions that were not at all obvious facts. Indeed, Heidegger asserts that the greatness of the scientists during the seventeenth century was possible because they were consciously engaging in philosophy. (Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics, 272) Newton and Galileo did not purport to be dealing with bare facts; they conceived of their scientific work as under the philosophical and theological fields.

Secondly there is the assertion that modern science is experimental while ancient science eschews empirical proof. This is a reformulation of the first objection, as the idea is that general principles need no proof, while "facts" do. This not only contradicts the historical data, but the nature of experiential learning. The ancients and medieval tested experience and falsified theories based on the evidence of the senses, for this sort of technique is inherent to using tools. It is true that ancient science did not have the same sort of formal focus on experimentation, but this difference belies a more fundamental conceptual difference about the nature of the world.

Third, modern critics claim that modern science calculates and measure, while ancient science does not. Heidegger states that this too is misguided historically. Both engaged in calculation and measurement, but these were of a different kind in ancient days than in modern days.

The real difference is to be found in "what rules and determines the basic movement of science itself." (Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics, 273) Both ancient and modern science are ruled by mathematics, but mathematics of a different sort. Heidegger warns the mathematical is not to be identified by numerical calculation. Numbers are mathematical, but mathematics is not limited to numbers. Numbers are the most obvious form of mathematics; when we say there are three pencils on the table, the number three is not actually there. We know in advance that things will show up numerically. "The mathemata are the things insofar as we take cognizance of them a what we know them to be in advance, the body as the bodily, the plant-like of the plant, the animal-like of the animal, the thingness of the thing, and so on." Thus learning is never the intake of purely new information, it is delimited according to certain mathematical features.

Any form of inquiry such as science has certain mathematical features, certain a prioris in terms of which the answers will show up. Heidegger locates the fundamental difference in the differing accounts of motion. For Aristotle, the definition of nature is motion and rest. By motion he meant change, which includes movement, but is not limited to it. All bodies engage in motion according to their nature. Fire moves up because that is its proper place, and for the same reason earth moves down. The earth forms the stratum against which motion is possible.

For Newton, on the other hand, the first law of motion applies to all bodies uniformly. Bodies do not move according to their natures, but according to the nature of spatial location and force. The internal impetus for motion, Aristotle's natural principle, ceased to be used to explain things. Instead space became a uniform field much like the Cartesian co-ordinates in which any body may exist in any spatial location. The notion of proper place disappeared. One cannot appeal to experience to justify Newton's first law:

How about this law? It speaks of a body, corpus quod a viribus impressis non cogitur, a body which is left to itself. Where do we find it? There is no such body. There is also no experiment which could ever bring such a body to direct perception. But modern science, in contrast to the mere dialectical, poetic conception of medieval Scholasticism and science, is supposed to be based on experience. Instead, it has such a law at its apex. This law speaks of a thing that does not exist. It demands a fundamental representation of things that contradict the ordinary. (Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics, 289)

Thus the insights of Newtonian physics, despite their utility, do not provide an accurate view of reality if they strip bodies of qualities such as place. All things we perceive show up initially with a particular significance for us, and it takes a very artificial attitude to see things that as substances devoid of significance. Science is a particular mode of objective presence; that is, science is a particular way of looking at the world objectively. It is only one of many such ways (most philosophy falls into this category as well). Having briefly discussed the shortcomings of modern science as an accurate way of looking at the world, we will discuss the way such a view can arise.

To put the question as concretely as possible: if we do not experience anything like a scientific universe, what type of everyday experience do we have that gives rise to this scientific viewpoint? Even the scientist must adopt a peculiar attitude to things to be scientific. When he gets up and eats his breakfast, he does not treat his cereal as bits of matter without inherent significance. Without reflecting at all, he simply eats it. Even when the scientist enters the lab, he engages with in the lab in a pre-reflective way according to their use. When using the microscope, if all goes well, he observes not the microscopes but the microbes which the microscope reveals. Only when the microscope does not work properly does it stand out starkly as a thing to be examined without significance. And only because it before had a significance was it able to do so. This "standing out" which comes about the breakdown of ones purposeful engagement with the world Heidegger calls "objective presence."
Being-in-the-world, as taking care of things, is taken in by the world which it takes care of. In order for knowing to be possible as determining by observation what is objectively present, there must first be a deficiency of having to do with the world and taking care of it. In refraining from all production, manipulation, and so on, taking care of things places itself in the only mode of being-in which is left over, in the mode of simply lingering with... On the basis of this kind of being toward the world which lets us encounter beings within the world solely in their mere outward appearance (eidos), and as a mode of this kind of being, looking explicitly at something thus encountered is possible. (Being and Time, 57)

Thus the scientific universe is possible only on the basis of a practical , purposeful universe which related back to Dasein. The notion of matter without significance stretched out over space without place is possible only on the ground of a basic purposeful engagement with things. The physico-chemical world is not to be confuted with the basic world in which we live, significance and meaning inhere in the world-structure and make objective views such as science possible. This is the basic truth of the world: we and the world are interwoven in such a way that neither us nor the world is possible without one another, and that things in the world -- with or without significance -- becomes possible only in the interaction between subject and world.

Bibliography:
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh. State University of New York Press: (c) 1953.
Martin Heidegger, "Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics" in Basic Writings: Revised and Expanded Edition. HarperSanFransisco: (c) 1993.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colon Smith. Routledge Classics: (c) 1958

Phenomenology as a Kind of Awareness

2008-05-05T20:30:00.000-07:00

In the Preface to Phenomenology of Perception Maurice Merleau-Ponty attempts to provide a description of phenomenology. He finds this necessary not only for readers who may not be familiar with previous phenomenological works, but because the nature of phenomenology is still an open question. This fact rightly raises questions about the rigor of phenomenology, for Merleau-Ponty is writing about 50 years after Edmund Husserl established phenomenology as a philosophical method. The first sentence of the preface, "what is phenomenology", does not merely serve as an introductory question that stands already answered, but as a problem to be worked out. Is phenomenology a coherent method, or simply the transposition of philosophy into subjective psychology? Or is phenomenology perhaps an awareness or disposition that gives rise to various methods of phenomenology? To answer this question, we will discuss some features of phenomenology.

Phenomenology "puts essences back into existence" (Phenomenology of Perception, vii). The notion of a thing-in-itself apart from perceptive experience plays no role in phenomenology. Phenomenology deals with what Kant termed the "phenomenal": what appears in experience. The phenomenologist must set aside the question of whether a substructure apart from perception exists, at least temporarily. What appears is epistemologically prior, and so the phenomenon of appearance must first be grasped before anything super-phenomenal could be seriously discussed.

Phenomenology limits itself to the phenomenal, but this does not provide a sufficient definition. All humans deal with what appears to them no matter what their discipline, at least in their everyday lives. Phenomenology therefore approaches phenomena in a distinctive way, it attempts to understand phenomena as phenomena. An early distinction must be drawn between thinking about things and engaging with them. Phenomenology gives a certain priority to engagement with things, and this will come into greater focus later. However, phenomenology is a philosophical enterprise, and thus by definition it engages in a thoughtful way. This contradiction can be resolved into a provisional formulation of the project of phenomenology: the attempt to think about what one engages with in a way proper to that engagement. All abstract thinking can arise only on the basis of practical engagement, but one must not assume from this that all kinds of thinking arises in the same way. Different types of thinking arise in different ways, and in some cases thinking can be at odds with engagement. One obvious example: radical skepticism. One who professes the belief that nothing truly exists and that reality is merely an illusion still professes this belief to others as if they existed and the engagement were meaningful to him. And indeed his active engagement betrays at least a tacit belief in the reality of himself, others, and his engagement with others. The skeptic would object that his actions may betray that sort of belief, nevertheless there is no proof of the reality of the world and therefore he is justified in finding reality suspect.

Phenomenology proceeds much differently than the skeptic. The skeptic assumes there must be logical proof of the reality of things in order to accept them. He gives logic the most basic role in determining the certainty of things. In this sense, he does not differ too much from logical positivism. Bertland Russell, for example, stated that one could not "prove" this world is real, but no countervailing reason stands out to reject its reality. In a way, this misses the fundamental nature of reality. One does not exist in reality in a basically reflective way; in fact, the reflective or the logical enterprise is only possible on the basis of a pre-logical existence. Put another way, logic is not self-sufficient, it has prior dependencies that logic itself cannot examine. Only two possibilities arise from this: either philosophy is groundless, or there is another way of grounding philosophy which has a different sort of proof. Phenomenology purports to be the latter way, and this is what Husserl meant by phenomenology being the grounding for philosophy. By examining the pre-logical being-in-the-world, phenomenology justifies logic and provides a more fundamental way of doing philosophy.

Phenomenology is liberated from the constrictions a purely logical form of proof labors under, but where does phenomenology begin? Logic directs itself to the objective world, the world which for everyone is the same. A basic structure of the objective world is logic. The entanglement between the two deserves more attention, but here one must only note that if the phenomenologist is to examine the foundations of logic, he is examining the foundation of the objective world. Consequently, if logic is to be set aside in order to find what makes logic possible, the objective world must be set aside at the same time. This "setting aside" Husserl calls the "epoche". Husserl pointed out that in order to lay out the ground of the objective world, he had to take it out of play through suspending it without making any judgments as to its truth or falsity. The starting point for phenomenology must then be the subject. This is no arbitrary method; a man must start with the himself because he can do nothing else. When I think about philosophy, I do this always as myself, whether I recognize it or not; I cannot do philosophy as another would.

Phenomenology requires a presuppositionless analysis of the subject, as far as possible. Therefore, the "subject" is not automatically considered as an isolated substance, but as the subject already is. Merleau-Ponty proposes that careful descriptive analysis reveals the subject as already in a world. The subject, by definition, experiences the world; and phenomenology intends to explicate this basic interaction as it actually happens.

A concrete example which distinguishes phenemenology's subjectivity from positivistic objectivity will be useful. Merleau-Ponty points out that phenomenology at its early stages is descriptive. The scientific way of conceiving of myself involves my chemical makeup, my evolutionary history, and so on. However, this characterization is foreign to me as I experience myself, and indeed it is questionable whether anyone can completely conceive of themselves in such a way. Merleau-Ponty points out:

"I cannot shut myself up within the realm of science. All my knowledge of the world, even my scientific knowledge, is gained from my own particular point of view, or from some experience of the world without which the symbols of science would be meaningless. The whole universe of science is built upon the universe as directly experienced, and if we want to subject science to rigorous scrutiny and arrive at a precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must begin by awakening the basic experience of the world of which science is the second-order expression." (Phenomenology of Perception, ix)

But what is this basic experience of the world that must be awoken? First we should ask: who has this basic experience? We have already said the subject experiences, but this alone is a tautology: the subject by definition experiences. Who is the subject? The idealists believed the subject stands detached from the world. "They presented consciousness, the absolute certainty of my existence for myself, as the condition of there being anything at all..." The idealists identify the pure subject as the condition of possibility of the world, and in doing this offer not an account, but a "reconstruction" (Phenomenology of Perception, x). The detached subject who brings the world into being through an act of synthesis arises from analytical reflection which "installs itself in an impregnable subjectivity, untouched by being and time." (Phenomenology of Perception, xi) Merleu-Ponty maintains that the kind of reflective experience which presupposes a detached subject depends upon a prior unreflective experience. Reality does not wait for an act of judgment on the part of a subject to constitute itself; rather, judgment works on phenomena which have already arrived. The error of the idealists: in detaching the subject from the world the idealists introduce something alien to experience which violates the nature of experience. The relation of subject to world is not determined through an act of the intellect; the subject is already in a world. The very notion of a "detached subject" is possible only because the subject is already in a world.

Insofar as I am a consciousness, that is, insofar as something has meaning for me, I am neither here nor there, neither Peter nor Paul; I am in no way distinguishable from an 'other' consciousness, since we are immediately in touch with the world and since the world is, by definition, unique, being the system in which all truths cohere. (Phenomenology of Perception, xiii)

The idealist conception conceals the phenomenal relation between subject and world by foisting philosophical presuppositions upon that relation and passing over its original nature. Other pernicious effects follow as well: the detached subject has no individuality, for he exists apart from a world and thus has no distinguishing characteristics. The detached subject exists apart from accidental properties such as birthplace and parentage, his historical situation and his attempts to define himself. Merleu-Ponty points out that for this reason, idealism knows nothing of the problem of the "Other", because there can exist no other. One detached subject cannot be distinguished from another, and all individuality is lost.

From this problem arises the question: in our usual way of experiencing the world, can we encounter anything like this detached subject? Indeed, if experience required this detached subject for there to be a sensible world, wouldn't this detached subject be accessible in some sense by experience? To put it more precisely, what evidence shows that I experience as a detached subject? These questions cannot be answered abstractly, we must find -- phenomenologically -- whether I am a detached subject or a concrete historical subject.

In order for there to be any real validity to inter-personal relationships I could not be a detached subject indistinguishable from the other. By definition, a relationship requires distinct persons; relationships require an "other." On this count, the weight of experience rules against a detached subject.

However, one might inquire deeper and ask if the very nature of subjective experience rules out a detached subject. My experience is always limited to my perspective, and I can never completely take over the perspective of another even in the most pure empathy. I still experience others with reference to my own being, as Heidegger pointed out. Empathy, which takes over the perspective of another always takes it over partially, and does not liberate me from my own perspective. Therefore, when I understand and act for others, I am able to do this through a constituent of my being: my potentiality to be-with-others. I am never able to escape myself, my unique perspective or my being. The idealist hypothesis of a detached subject freed from thrown historicity, not limited to an individual perspective, is not consistent with the very experience it seeks to explain.

Merleu-Ponty contends that Husserl's transcendental reduction does not separate the transcendental ego from the world; Husserl recognized that the subject and the world are interwoven. His transcendental reduction differs from Kant's in the sense that the world is suspended not because is the world and the subject exist indepentanly, but precisely because they are interwoven. Husserl recognized that this close relation of subject and world must be unconcealed, and that by taking the world "out of play" this relation might come more easily to our attention. The transcendental ego stands above the world not in any real sense, but in a very artificial sense, for it is still tied to the world. Understanding the transcendental ego in this way absolves Husserl of any apparent affinities with the idealist conception of the subject. Thus, the important lesson Husserl's reduction teaches is "the impossibility of a complete reduction." (Phenomenology of Perception, xv)

It is evident then that the subject is always in a world, that the subject is always thrown into history. The above consideration of the nature of the subject is therefore incomplete without a discussion of the "world." The phenomenal world must be distinguished from the physical universe. The universe as a totality of matter is possible only because of a world, but is not to be identified with that world. The phenomenal world only exists in relation to a subject (as it is phenomenal), and so any world which one considers as existing whether or not a subject experiences it is not the world of experience. Indeed, it is only in terms of the world of experience that any super-subjective world could be conceived. Phenomenology calls relation between the subject and world "intentional".

Merleu-Ponty distinguishes phenomenological intentionality from Kantian intentionality. To be sure, all consciousness is consciousness of..., as Kant recognized. However Kant proposed that consciousness actively gathers up and shapes sense-perceptions, whereas phenomenology finds the unity of the intentional relationship already there. One finds the world already constituted with regard to one's being; no effort is required to form it. Consciousness comes upon the world already made, yet a world that exists in relation to the perceiving subject.

It is a question of recognizing consciousness as a project of the world, meant for a world which it neither embraces nor possesses, but towards which it is perpetually directed--and the world as this pre-objective individual whose imperious unity decrees what knowledge shall take as its goal. This is why Husserl distinguishes between intentionality of act, which is that of our judgments and of those occasions where we voluntarily take up a position--the only intentionality discussed in Critique of Pure Reason--and operative intentionality, or that which produces the natural and anti-predicative unity of the world and our life, being apparent in our desires, our evaluations and in the landscape we see... (Phenomenology of Perception, xx)

Thus the constitution of the world is not based in the abstract or intellectual aspect of the perceiving subject, but in a more fundamental constitutive of the subject's being (here termed operative intentionality). This field becomes clear only in the course of phenomenological investigations.

Here we must return to the original question, "what is phenomenology?" We have discussed its field, the phenomenal. We have discussed the methodological independence from positive logic. We have discussed its primary problems of subject, others, and world. But in defining what these mean, are we guilty of the same sort of metaphysical dogmatism? The subject, after all, does not present itself to experience as an object in the world does; neither does the "other", nor even the "world"? Phenomenology isn't pure empiricism then, but it doesn't seek to go beyond experience to refer to "higher" beings as does metaphysics. Phenomenology investigates what makes experience possible, always from the limited perspective of a concrete subject. As such, phenomenology is not as much a method as it is a kind of awareness. The phenomenologist attempts to open himself to phenomena in a way possible for him as a limited perspective. He seeks to become directly aware of the foundations of experience and world, not to deduce it logically (which would be an indirect awareness). The particular method differs for different thinkers, in their aims, and the level of analysis they attempt.

The Nature of the Polis in Aristotle's Physics and Politics

2008-04-21T17:34:00.000-07:00

In what way is nature an analogy for the polis? Natural things actualize themselves through their own interior principle of motion (Physics, Book II, Ch. 1). Unnatural things do not possess this interior principle of motion, they come to be through an external force. Aristotle regards artifacts as the paradigm for the unnatural. A table is unnatural even though it is composed of wood, which is natural. The composition of the table (wood) does not make it what it is, for then it would be natural--a table does not generate itself in the same way a tree does. An artifact is that which has no integral principle of unity, whose unnatural existence is imposed on the natural.

This distinction between what is natural and unnatural will now be applied to the polis. At first, it may seem as though a state is unnatural; that human beings are naturally in a state of nature and are domesticated by society. Yet Aristotle says that man is a social animal, and therefore he does not consider the society of the polis an imposition, but the expression of something proper to man. From this it also follows that the state is not merely a collection of individuals without a principle of unity. The state has its own character beyond a bare collective. This distinctive character of the state might be its internal principle of unity, and if this be found, the state will be established as natural.

Socrates found that internal principle in unity. He proposed that all property be held in common (for the guardians, at least), so that all men have the same relation to both the means of production and that which is produced. Further, he proposed that even wives and children should be held in common. Thus all men, at least in the guardian class, would be indistinguishable in their relation to things and to people.

Aristotle objects to this schema on what first appears to be merely practical ground. In regard to property he points out that all men will not care for common property as they would their own property. This is a psychological observation, but it also gets at the nature of property. Property is what one uses to accomplish ones purposes, and ones own purposes have a practical priority over that of the collective.

His objection to wives and children being held in common at first seems less plausible than his objection to common property: what if a son strikes his father? He would not know that it is not merely another citizen he assaults, but his father. At first appears a culturally relative objection, for it depends both on the Greek taboo against striking ones father and it assumes the same categories of father and son that Socrates sought to do away with. However, here Aristotle is recognizing that people must maintain their nature in a political system.

These two objections Aristotle raises against Socrates are based on his destruction of the intrinsic principle of unity of the polis. The polis obviously cannot be absolutely complex, its parts must have something in common for there to be a polis. But Socrates goes to the other extreme: the polis may not be a total unity either. If the polis was without difference it would be an individual, not a polis (Politics, Book II, Chapter II). If the it were a total unity it would suppress or subvert the natures of the men that make it up, and would violate the nature of man. The polis must provide the opening within which individual natures fulfill themselves, but it must have its own fulfillment as well. The natural principle of the polis is therefore the tension between unity and complexity.

The Ambiguity of Method in Intelligent Design

2008-04-17T22:45:00.000-07:00

The most superficial observer might suppose that the battle over intelligent design takes place between Christian creationists and atheistic scientists. ID theorists are -- without any significant exceptions -- theists. The mainstream scientific community is far more cosmopolitan: every major religion, including Christianity, is substantially represented. An only slightly less superficial observer might suppose that the creationists are authentically faithful, atheistic scientists authentically unfaithful, and Christian mainstream scientists inauthentically faithful. That is, Christians who are truly faithful may not accept evolutionary theory, while atheists must. A Christian who accepts evolution holds contrary worldviews. The third observer, in descending order of superficiality, might suppose that Christianity does not require acceptance of evolutionary theory or ID theory, but the weight of the evidence supports ID theory. The main obstacle to mainstream acceptance of ID in the scientific community is the atheistic a prioris of the scientific establishment. There is a sense in which the a prioris of science do exclude ID, but these a prioris are methodological and not metaphysical.

ID theorists are guilty of procedural errors, and the scientific community has already focused on the specific scientific errors. These are not my focus. I will instead argue philosophically, where the errors of ID are even more substantial. The most basic error of ID is its failure to recognize the distinction between science and philosophy, both in ontology and methodology.

Ironically, this is the same basic error as the neo-atheists such as Richard Dawkins regularly. Richard Dawkins believes that because science cannot demonstrate God, he does not exist. ID theorists believe the opposite, science shows the work of God (excuse me, an Intelligent Designer), and therefore God does exist. Science does not investigate the whole of things in an unqualified way; science is ontologically regional. As any other discipline (except perhaps ontology) science marks off a region of being and investigates it in a particular way.

Another discipline may investigate the same region of being in a different way. Or one discipline may investigate in the same way as another, but investigate a different region of beings. Therefore, disciplines are distinguished ontologically by their scope and their approach. A few example are helpful for clarity.

Take scientific anthropology and physical anthropology. Both investigate the same general region of being: man. Their method differs in their approach, physical anthropology uses fewer methods. Scientific anthropology encompasses physical anthropology, but they are not the same thing. The virtue of physical anthropology is greater precision due to its more restrictive method, but this is also a limitation. Scientific anthropology has its virtue in that it is more inclusive, but it gives up some precision. The former is more precise, but it is no more or less rigorous. Every discipline has its own rigor, which must not be reduced to precision.

Other disciplines may have a similar method, but investigate a different region of being. A good example of this is archaeology and and paleontology. Both use the same methods, but one studies the material remains of humans and their artifacts, while the other studies the remains of older creatures.

The most general discipline is philosophy, which is grounded in ontology (the inquiry of being qua being). It is the widest and scope and the broadest (which is not equivalent to permissive) in methodology.

Science, therefore, is not the true discipline while the other disciplines are "mere belief." The precision of science is also its limitation. It does not follow that because God is not accessible scientifically he does not exist. The method of science excludes inquiry into God. Many scientists have made this point, though it is a philosophical one.

Science puts forward natural explanations for natural phenomena. From this science derives both its scope and its method. Supernatural or spiritual phenomena are exclude from the scope of scientific methodology, while teleological explanations are excluded by the approach. Therefore, offering a supernatural explanation for the bacterial flagellum is not scientific; this is true analytically. In fact, the method of science does not allow the scientist to say that the bacterial flagellum is not possible naturally, he must instead assume he has not found the natural explanation. He must recognize, even if inexplicitly, that the way a question is asked determines the way in which it can be answered. The scientific region of being is an enclosed nature, and that is where all scientific questions will have their answers.

Therefore, analytically a priori, ID theory is guilty of methodological error if it attempts to posit supernatural causes or demonstrate supernatural beings. ID theorists would then move into philosophical or theological territory which has its own methodological requirements. Philosophical questions must be asked in a way appropriate to philosophy, and the same is true of theological questions. ID theory moves inappropriately between disciplines, and therefore is guilty of crippling ambiguity.

What makes an ID theorist? Why is William Dembski considered an ID theorist but Francis Collins not? After all, Collins has called DNA the "language of God" and asserted that God designed the universe for life. Is it not precisely because Dembski argues that aspects of God can be demonstrated by science? In other words, is it not because Dembski directly violates scientific methodology? The essence of intelligent design is precisely in this violation of method.

The obvious objection to this from the ID side is that ID theorists do not necessarily posit a supernatural designer; the merely attempt to show that natural processes require an intelligent designer. This is true to a degree, and in a way ID can be scientific. But only if it gives up on the possibility of supernatural explanation and searches within the closed world of nautre that belongs to science. Then, if ID theory did indeed show that life on earth was intelligently designed, it would have proved that something from another planet, or dimension, or anywhere within the natural world would be the cause. If ID proves true scientifically, it merely demonstrates panspermia, nothing more. This "scientific ID" is not the ID which actually exists, nor would ID's proponents accept it. ID as an intellectual movement has its essence in ontological ambiguity and methodological error.

Deliberative Imagination in De Anima

2008-04-09T17:06:00.000-07:00

Aristotle's treatment of the deliberative imagination is mentioned only very briefly in the course of his treatment of local motion. “The soul of animals,” says Aristotle, “is characterized by two faculties, the faculty of discrimination which is the work of thought and sense, and the faculty of originating local movement.” Having dealt with the former earlier in De Anima, Aristotle sets out to investigate the latter.

The first problem that presents itself is whether the originator of motion in an animal is a part of the soul or the whole soul. Given his earlier treatment of motion, it is evident that one part must be immovable and the other moved. Therefore the originator of movement is not the whole soul. But if the originator is a part of the soul, a difficulty arises--what are the parts of the soul? Different thinkers divide the soul differently, and different divisions may be made under differing aspects. Aristotle begins by using his own classifications of the soul: the nutritive, the sensitive, the calculative, the imaginative, and the appetitive. Aristotle quickly disposes with the possibility that the nutritive aspect of the soul is the origin of motion. Local motion is always for an end, and the motion of nutrition seeks to perpetuate itself. Additionally, in the world of nature experience tells us that plants, which have only nutritive souls, do not move. This empirical refutation can be extended to the sensitive aspect of the soul as well, for some animals sense but do not exhibit forward motion.

Aristotle appeals to inner experience to deal with the calculative faculty. The mind is capable of considering something as pleasant or painful without the corresponding attraction or repulsion. For example, one may consider the ravages of war horrible, yet only know the horror in the abstract and not be emotionally moved. In another way, one may know that healthy behavior is good and will lead to happiness, and yet not engage in it. There is not a necessary connection between speculative knowledge and motion. Yet appetite too appears insufficient, for one may desire something, and action may be headed off by reason.

Forward motion seems to come about through an interplay of thought and appetite. Practical thought (as distinct from speculative thought) calculates means to an end, and results in action. Yet it is not possible for two things such as appetite and practical thought to begin motion; there would have to be one thing common to them both. Aristotle places movement in a single faculty, appetite, because even when thought initiates motion appetite is necessary. However the specifics of this interaction differ in the most complex animal to the most simple.

“Sensitive imagination,” says Aristotle “is found in all animals, deliberative imagination only in those that are calculative.” Not all animals have the types of minds that can calculate. What sets humans apart (though Aristotle does not specifically distinguish humans here) is that they are able to manipulate their imaginations, or more precisely, recognize their imaginations as imaginations. Humans are able to recognize that the images of things in the mind are images, and they are able to bring these images under a single criterion. In this way humans are not only driven by mindless desire, they are able to consider their desires, and order them by a single standard.

Deliberative imagination may be thought of in terms of a practical syllogism which contains a universal premise and a particular premise. In the syllogism the universal principle may be “one should be merciful to ones friends.” This has no practical connection to anything without the second premise “John is my friend.” Here the deliberative imagination determines John as my friend, and makes possible the conclusion, my being merciful to my friend. Deliberative imagination brings particulars under universals, making rational action possible. Therefore, local motion can result from reason in humans because humans have deliberative imagination.

Aristotle on Friendship and Virtue

2008-04-06T15:58:00.000-07:00

Aristotle distinguishes between three kinds of friendship. The first is based on utility; one person is friends with another because the other is useful to him. The second is based on pleasure; one is friends with the other because the other provides pleasure. The third is based on the good, however in this case one is not friends with the other for his own gain or desire. Instead, one wants what is best for his friend. The third friendship is qualitatively different than the first two. The other kinds of friendship are fundamentally selfish and fleeting: once the utility or the pleasure is gone, the friendship is dissolved. Friendship based in the good, on the other hand, is far more stable.

Though all three are called friendship, only friendship based in the good is truly friendship; the others are called friendship only because they resemble true friendship. True friends are useful and pleasurable to one another, but this alone is not the basis of their friendship. Authentic friendship is based in the good. If we are to ask what friendship is in order to establish the role of choice in friendship, an analysis of friendship based on the good is necessary.

Friendship is between those who are "alike in virtue" (Nic. Ethics 1156b10). Here Aristotle may mean they are alike in the virtues in general, but there is a more specific virtue he has in mind: the virtue of friendship. Friendship is between those who possess the virtue of friendship. But what does it mean to possess the virtue of friendship? "They wish for good things for one another in the same way insofar as they are good, and they are good in themselves" (1156b10). Friends desire good things for another as they would desire them for themselves. This is not entirely a selflessness, as there is a sense in which the good for a friend is a good for oneself, but the good for the friend is a good for oneself insofar as it is good first for the friend. Friendship unites people in the good, in such a way that they are intertwined; when good befalls one friend, through that friend it befalls the other. In friendship, the good is not pursued individually, but communally. As all humans seek the good, friendship unites them in this seeking. But friendship is not simply the "wish" for the good of ones friend; this implies passivity.

People are called friends with regard to an active condition, a being-at-work. This is why friends desire to be together, they desire to do things with one another. When friends move away, the friendship is not lost because of the distance; the distance prevents them from being at work together. But simply being at work together does not constitute friendship, if "at work together" is regarded as spacial location. An active condition requires choice, deliberative volition. Friends must recognize their friendship in their being at work with one another. Activity in a close spatial location is not sufficient for friendship, the activity must be carried out consciously for the sake of friendship. Spatiality allows this to occur, but it is only a precondition. When one recognizes the way to act in friendship towards someone else, and chooses to carry it out, he is acting in friendship. Our being at work in the world in virtue, by which we seek to obtain the good, is not a solitary activity. Whether the good can be found in such isolation at all is dubious. In a way, friendship is required for a human to come to be good, one only actualizes ones potential as a social animal with others. In friendship the potential for humans as social animals is actualized in the good. Friendship is the authentic mode of the social dimension of humans, it is being-for-the-sake-of-one-another actualized intentionally in being-at-work-with-one-another.

Biblical Truth and Modern Biblical Criticism

2008-03-31T22:37:00.000-07:00

The question of the “truth” of the Bible has been largely determined in the last few hundred years by Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise. The TTP was the first work of Biblical criticism, and it is in terms of this work – whether positive or negative – that the debate is now carried on. The creation/evolution controversy is a prime example of the way in which Spinoza determines the ground of the debate. It it a historical fact that species developed from one another by natural selection (including the non-Darwinian theories) over the course of billions of years? Or did God intervene in nature and create man specially? Do we say that the Genesis account is historical or “merely” mythical? Where specifically is Genesis historical and where is it metaphorical (and in this metaphor is understood as something like primitive history)? It is notable that the early theologians paid little attention to the “historical” truth of the Old Testament, particularly when wresting it from the Jews. It was in Spinoza that historicity first became thematic. Why is this? What is new in Spinoza?

Read the complete essay here.

Sartre and the Underground Man

2008-03-30T22:55:00.000-07:00

Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground is considered by many to be one of the foundational (or pre-foundational) works of existentialism. It is the portrayal of the introspection of a man in St. Petersberg, a city founded with the intention of creating a rationalistic utopia. The “underground man”, the fictional author, furiously rejects the restraints put upon him by those who wish to construct an enlightened society, and to include him. Man is an irrational animal, Aristotle was wrong, says the underground man. His introspective critique undermined previous essentialism in a literary way, and therefore opened the way to existentialism. The influence of this work is seen prominently in the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, who acknowledged that Dostoevsky's little book had a profound influence on him.

There are many comparisons worthy of discussion between Notes and Sartre's philosophy. It is necessary to be cautious to avoid anachronism. Sartre's writings are significantly later than those of Dostoevsky, and while Dostoevsky stands at the very beginning of existentialism, Sartre comes after many permutations of the philosophy. Therefore this essay will focus on the self-alienation of the underground man, and describe this in Sartrean terms.

One of Sartre's most radical claims is that human beings are not subject to the law of non-contradiction.ⁱ Man, by virtue of his transcendence, is not subject to all the restrictions that belonging to Being requires. This is evidenced by the ability of man to ask questions, and thus place himself and the object outside the deterministic structure of being.ⁱⁱ A man can both be something and not be something, simultaneously. This is irrational, but for Sartre this is not problematic. Man is largely irrational.

While man can take on roles, he cannot ever allow them to touch his being. Sartre elaborates with the example of a waiter in a restaurant: “[A] waiter in the cafe cannot be immediately a cafe waiter in the sense that this inkwell is an inkwell.”ⁱⁱⁱ The role of the waiter is something someone takes on. He understands the responsibility of being a waiter, he understands the characteristics a waiter is supposed to have, and he assumes them. But at the same time, he is not the waiter, and he is separated from being the waiter by nothingness. He is the waiter in the mode of “being what [he] is not.”^iv Likewise, when one is speaking, he is not “the speaking,” rather, it is an act that he is assuming but that does not determine his being. Likewise, Sartre says one is not his body. One is not even his own consciousness in an unqualified sense.

This division of a person creates a gap that does not allow anything to truly touch ones being, and makes one's true essence appear to be nothingness – or at the very least unintelligible. This recognition that one cannot truly lose oneself in ones roles is seen acutely in Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground.

The protagonist of the Notes is unnamed, and will be called the underground man. He describes himself as a sick, mean man with a liver problem. ^v He does not wish to go to the doctor because he is spiteful, yet he is aware that his spite has no object. He was a civil servant for much of his life, wiling away his time by being difficult to civilians. He said he enjoyed being rude. But after recounting several encounters with his customers, he retracts that claim. Though he acted rude, he was not really rude, not deep down.^vi He was simply “playing a role,” much like Sartre's waiter. Except he was playing his role because he was bored. The underground man says “the intelligent man [among whom he included himself, of course] cannot really turn himself into anything,” thought the same is not true of fools. But what does the intelligent man have that the fool does not? Lucidity, the underground man declares. But being a lucid man is not something the underground man desires. At times, he declares, he tried to become an insect. He envies those men of action who simply do, and do not over analyze what they do. He is “bilious” with envy.^vii They are lower than him, men of lesser intelligence. But they can act! They are not paralyzed by their anxiety. If they wish to take revenge, they take it. They can take pleasure in the misunderstanding that revenge is justice. They are not mired down in insecurities; they do not have to find their pleasure in filth.

The underground man can not act against those who wrong him. He simply takes the abuse, and even takes pleasure in it. Then he scurries off to his “mouse hole” to fixate on his wounds internally. The underground would even confess to sins he did not commit, taking on roles one does not normally find desirable, and all because it is better than doing nothing. He played at love, made himself believe it, but this too could not touch him. At one point he attempted to befriend his co-workers, but it didn't last. The underground man oscillated between a feeling of superiority and a feeling of inferiority for others. And, even after spending time with his co-workers, could not really become their friends. His recognition of the gap between his roles and himself rendered him unable to engage in society.

Though he “became” a sinner and a rude man, he – like Sartre – realized that he wasn't really these things. He talks of how he wished he could even be lazy. He longs to hear others call him lazy, to identify him as something, anything. A lazy man who could dream of the true and the beautiful. But the underground man claims he could never be known as this, he could never be a real, positive person.^viii But after all this introspection, the underground man could not believe his own words. He said them about himself, but even they are not true. He has no core; or at least, nothing which can become something else. He can tell stories about himself; he can relate events. And though these are colored by his memory, he can believe them. But when he talks about what he is, nothing rings of truth, it is all superfluous.

The lucidity of the underground man may be expressed in Sartrean terms as this: the consciousness of the separateness of the self, of the nothingness that separates oneself from being something positive. The underground man can never be anything fully, not even the underground man. Even this he takes on as a role. This self-alienation gives rise to agony, loneliness, and absurdity. It is an illustration not only of Sartre's notion of the self, but of the acute anguish the consciousness of this in oneself brings.

iSartre, Jean-Paul. 2001. The Humanism of Existentialism. In Existentialism: Basic Writings, Second Edition. 335. Hackett Publishing Company: Indianapolis, Indiana.

iiSartre, 319-320. Due to space, the issue is dealt with briefly here. The whole of section 3 deals with this notion.

iiiSartre, 336-337.

ivSartre, 337.

vDostoevsky, Notes from Underground. (London: Signet Classic, 1961)p. 90.

viDostoevsky, 90.

viiDostoevsky, 96.

viiiDostoevsky, 104-105.

Plato's Account of Beauty in the Symposium

2008-02-29T15:21:00.000-08:00

Socrates' account of beauty in the Symposium is bound up in his account of Love. Love is the pathway whereby we are able to recognize Beauty, and while Socrates does not provide his listeners with an interpretation or definition (in any strict sense) of Beauty, he instead provides a way. By recognizing and clarifying the nature of Love, one finds the path to Beauty. This path cannot be followed in a theoretical way, but only through the exercise of love itself.

Socrates is, as always, interested in the truth, and so temptations to declare love beautiful, good, eternal and the like must be set aside if they are not established properly. Love has four features which Socrates lays out in order to clear away any enthusiastic praise of Love which obscures its object. First love is love of something rather than of nothing. Love does not stand on its own, it is never mere “Love”, but always “Love of...”. Secondly, and less obviously, desire is always of what one does not have. This seems to be obvious in some cases, for example a poor man desiring wealth, or a single person desiring a partner. But what of a wealthy man who desires wealth which he already has, or a married person desiring his spouse? Socrates does not say these cases are impossible, but that that way of expressing them is misleading. The wealthy man does not desire his present wealth, but the perpetuation of his present wealth, wealth in the future which he does not yet possess. The married man does not desire his wife now, but desires the continuation of their relationship. The third feature is that Love desires to make the object of ones' desire ones' own. Fourth, the object of Love is beauty. This is sometimes made obscure when Socrates refers to the object of Love as the good, yet the difficulty may be resolved by understanding that the good is desired because it is beautiful.

After making these initial clarifications, which prevent false praise and provide a direction for the investigation into love, perplexity arises. If love is not beautiful, is it then ugly? And if it is ugly, does it not belong to the mortal realm? Socrates asked these same questions to Diotima, the woman who instructed him in the art of love. Diotima cautioned him against such blasphemy, and showed him that a thing is not always beautiful or ugly, but sometimes something in between. Likewise, Love does not belong to the realm of the mortal or the immortal, but to the spiritual, through which the two are mediated. Love is then the conduit whereby the things in the realm of the mortal are enabled to strive towards immortal beauty.

The process Socrates sketches whereby beauty comes to be known is often called the “ladder of love.” One begins at the bottom rung with the love of bodies. One finds a body to be beautiful, and loves the beauty he finds in it. Then he realizes that it was not the body he loved, but the beauty found in the body. This beauty is present in other bodies as well, and so the lover loses his exclusivity to merely one body. Beauty is found in a muted way in bodies, and the lover finds that it is manifested more in souls than in bodies. Bodily beauty is largely forgotten, as the object of the lovers desire is found better in souls. Yet the lover is not content to rest on this rung, but propels himself upwards where he finds beauty even more in customs, and laws, and then in knowledge. At each stage the lover becomes more and more conscious that it is not the beauty of particular things which is his object, but the beauty common to all of them. He is able to gaze at a “sea of beauty”, and he begins to develop beautiful ideas until finally, having turned ever more from the particular instantiations of his object, he sees his object in its unadulterated radiance. Finally, the lover knows Beauty itself.

The way to beauty then, is through Love. Socrates does not provide a theoretical understanding whereby we maintain our objectivity, where we are mere disinterested spectators analyzing Beauty. Disinterestedness is devoid of desire, and as beauty is known through desire, this prevents one from understanding beauty. Instead, Socrates describes the progressive realization of Love, and it is in this realization that we mortals are able to encounter something immortal—Beauty.

Aristotle's Account of the Joint

2008-02-28T22:29:00.000-08:00

Aristotle believed that he had established that the “origin of other motions is that which moves itself, and that the origin of this is immovable, and that the prime mover must of necessity be immovable.” (Physics 698a 10) This proof was theoretical, and in the “Movement of the Animals” he wished to establish this concretely in the world of the senses, particularly in animal life.

Animals are unique in that they move themselves. Because animals initiate their own motion, they are both the one that causes movement and the one that moves. This distinction is important, for motion requires a division. What causes the motion and what suffers the motion must be distinct;. when an animal acts on itself then, there must be an active part which causes the motion, and a passive part which is moved. However the way in which the animal is divided in moving does not negate the way in which it is one, for when we say “the animal moves” we mean a singular thing by “animal.” The unity of an animal is more obvious than its distinct active and passive parts. When one sees a dog move, the evident thing is “the dog moved itself,” and it is only upon reflection that the active/passive distinction is made.

Why is the distinction between the active part of an animal and the passive part necessary? The source of the motion must itself be unmoved. When one considers the origin of a particular motion, this is origin is necessarily a beginning. The motion was not there, and then it was. The source of the motion could not have been in motion (participating in the same motion), for it must precede the motion. Therefore the origin of motion must necessarily be unmoved with respect to that motion. The active part of an animal is not in motion. Still it is the cause of the motion of something else, and so it “moves.” Is it possible to consider the active part and the passive part as the same, differentiated only temporally, in other words, one and the same part moved itself, and it is considered active before it moved itself and passive afterwards?

Aristotle provides an example to demonstrate the impossibility of such a proposition. If a man is trying to move a boat, this is done by standing outside the boat and pushing it while ones feet are on shore, or, if he remains in the boat, he applies force to the earth outside the boat in order to move the boat. He requires the stability of what is – in relation to the boat – immovable. Likewise, in animal motion, the part which moves requires a part at rest, against which it may be supported.

In the body, the juncture at which the moved meets the unmoved, which both divides a thing and unites it, is the joint. The joint contains a point from both the moved and unmoved, and provides the place in which the point of the moved moves, and the point of the immovable remains unmoved. It is the meeting of the two which participates in motion and yet abstains from it. Without the joint there is both no way in which the parts are divided so that one may be moved and the other unmoved, and there is no way in which the parts come together and, maintaining their distinctness, produce motion. Thus the forearm and the upper arm meet at the elbow, and it is against the resting upper arm that the forearm is able to move.

One initial objection to this account is inevitable. What about the obvious case where, for example, both the forearm and the upper arm moves when a boxer throws a punch? Obviously one part is able to derive its motion from another part, itself in motion. Here one must be careful of what is meant by motion. Motion is always motion of something. When considering the motion of, say, the forearm, the “rest” of the upper arm is considered in relation to the particular motion of the forearm, not the motion of the whole body. With respect to the forearm, the upper arm does not move, but with respect to the motion of a boxer's punch, the whole body moves, while the mat provides the support.

In the body then, the motion of a particular part is supported by an unmoving part, and the place in which the moving and unmoving meets is the joint. The motion has this structure: ABC, such that A is the moving part, B is the joint, and C is the unmoving part. Motions are considered on different levels, A may be the forearm in one motion, B the elbow, and C the upper arm in one motion; while in another A may be the arm, B the shoulder, and C the body. By keeping in mind that motion is always motion of a distinct part, the structure of bodily motion as consisting of the moved and unmoved meeting in the joint is easily discernible.

A Fundamental Grounding for Philosophy

2008-01-18T14:29:00.000-08:00

From Husserl's Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy:

The ideal of the philosopher to work out once and for all a systematically complete logic, ethics, metaphysics, etc., which he could at any time justify to himself and to others on the basis of absolutely compelling insight, this ideal I had to forsake long ago and still deny myself today, and for no other reason than that the insight was always, and continues to be, indubitable for me that a philosophy simple cannot begin naively at random. That is, it cannot begin the way the positive sciences do, settling on the pregiven soil of world-experience, a soil presupposed as obviously existing... A philosophy with problematic foundations, with paradoxes due to the unclarity of its fundamental concepts, is no philosophy and contradicts the very sense of philosophy. Philosophy can take root only in radical reflections on the sense and possibility of its own enterprise. Through these reflections it must first of all appropriate, by its own activity, its own proper soil, the absolute soil of pure experience, and must then create, again as self-active, the original concepts that adequately fit the measurements of this soil, and must in this fashion proceed altogether by way of an absolutely transparent method.

Nietzsche on the Origin of Sin

2008-01-06T23:20:00.001-08:00

Sin, as it is now experienced wherever Christianity holds sway or has held sway, is a Jewish feeling and a Jewish invention... The Christian presupposes a powerful, overpowering being who enjoys revenge. His power is so great that nobody could possible harm him, except for his honor. Every sin is a slight to his honor, a crimen lasae majestatis divinae--and no more. Contrition, degradation, rolling in the dust--all this is the first and last condition of his grace: in sum, the restoration of his divine honor. Whether the sin has done any other harm, whether it has set in motion some profound calamity that will grow and seize one person after another like a disease and strangle them--this honor-craving Oriental in heaven could not care less! Sin is an offense against him, not against humanity. [1]

Sadly, Nietzsche's shocking analysis has been justified far too often by Christians who -- since the Middle Ages -- have made the controlling metaphor for the relation between God and his people as that between a judge and the accused. Sin is conceived of in primarily juridical terms, specifically that of Roman criminal law. A "crime" has been committed, and justice declares a punishment. But even this analogy does not justify an infinite punishment (hell) being given for a finite sin. This would offend even the most harsh conception of justice. If we are to conceive of sin in legal terms, let us first be cautious to use this as a metaphor among metaphors, and second use the Greek conception of civil law. In this way justice can be viewed as a restoration, not as a means of restoring offended honor. Let us be cautious not to justify Nietzsche's accusation.

1. Frederic Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, pp. 187-188.

Liebniz on the Awareness of Thought

2007-11-28T22:02:00.001-08:00

In Liebniz' New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, he deals with the philosophy of John Locke. One point in particular receives attention at the beginning of the work: can one think without being aware of ones thought? If the answer is yes, that there are a seething mass of thoughts within us that are only hinted at in the edges of our conscious awareness, this would have huge ramifications for philosophical psychologists such as Nietzsche. It would also weaken the strong claim of rationalism, that the world can be represented systematically. How can we understand the world explicitly if we can't understand ourselves? Here is Liebniz, through his character Philalathes, on the subject:

Bear in mind that we do think of many things all at once, but pay heed only to the thoughts that stand out most distinctly. That is inevitable; for if we were to take note of everything, we should have to direct our attention on an infinity of things at the same time - things which impress themselves on our senses and which are all sensed by us. And I would go further: something remains of all our past thoughts, none of which can ever be entirely wiped out. When we are in a dreamless sleep, or when we are dazed by some blow or a fall or a symptom of an illness or other mishap, an infinity of small, confused sensations occur in us. Death itself cannot affect the souls of animals in any way but that' they must certainly regain their distinct perceptions sooner or later, for in nature everything is orderly.

A brief excerpt by Marcel on Atheism and Theism

2007-11-27T23:14:00.001-08:00

The question, 'Do you believe in God?' is one of those which, according to the common belief, can be answered by a simple 'Yes' or 'No'. But a deeper analysis would enable us to lay bare the invariably illusory character of these answers. There is a mass of people who imagine that they believe in God, when in fact they are bowing down to an idol to whom any decent theology whatever would undoubtedly refuse the name of God; and on the other hand there are many others who believe themselves to be atheists because they conceive of God only as an idol to be rejected, and who yet reveal in their acts, which far transcend their professed opinions, a totally inarticulate religious belief. It follows from all this that the answer to a referendum on the question, 'Do you believe in God' ought to be in the great majority of cases, 'I don't know whether I believe in God or not--and I am not even quite sure that I know what "believing in God" is'. Note, carefully, the contrast between these formulae and those of the agnosticism of the last century: 'I don't know whether there is a God or not'.

I have long held the vague notion, which Marcel makes more explicit here, that one can be an atheist for the right reason and a Christian for the wrong reason. For example, one could be a Christian out of the selfish desire to save oneself from eternal torment. In doing so, one clings to the proposition "God exists" loudly and as if any doubt, even in a believer, was not only a cause for reprimand and an example of weakness of faith, but risking eternal damnation. Honest doubt is squelched, one clings to a "faith" that is reduced to the acceptance of certain propositions as "God exists" without evidence, or at least certain evidence. This is the caricature of faith men like Richard Dawkins ridicule, and take as the norm. The full mystery of faith, as a thing neither a rational nor irrational, but mysterious and resplendent, is leveled down to a certain type of verifiability.

Now consider the atheist to whom God is proposed as a being who, though able, does not help children in need, one who even eternally damns those who do not believe he exists. Certainly an atheist would be correct to reject this God! As Ivan Karamosov observed, if God builds the edifice of his kingdom on the tears of a child, we are morally required to return our ticket to heaven. The atheist who disregards a sadistic God does so justly, and should be admired for his courage. Further, those who reject the God of continental or even classical philosophy are likewise justified. This God is limited to a being which exists in this world, missing entirely the ineffable transcendence of God. The atheist is correct here too, for this is a false God. But in a sense, these atheists are closer to the truth than the Christian given in the earlier example. They disregard false or evil images of God, and while they do not set forth a positive image of their own, by their practice they can experience him. The Christian who clings to propositional truths and is incapable of doubt, however, worships a false God as a result of selfish desperation.

Technorati Tags: Marcel, existentialism, atheism, theism

Zen Epistemology

2007-11-22T13:00:00.001-08:00

What is the epistemology of Zen Buddhism? What does Zen Buddhism say about the self and the world? Is it even possible to derive philosophical positions from Zen? In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to take a number of steps. First, it is necessary to establish whether it is even possible to treat Zen philosophically. Second, it is necessary to define what is meant in this essay by “epistemology.” Third, it must be determined (briefly) what exactly Zen is (or does). Fourth, three aspects of Zen practice will be considered from which we will finally derive some basic epistemological positions. This will lead us to the conclusion that Zen does allow for a certain epistemology, though it arises from Zen practice, is not necessary for Zen practice, and ultimately simply points back to Zen practice.

Is it possible to treat Zen philosophically? At the outset, it is necessary to acknowledge that the practitioners of Zen maintain strongly that Zen is not a philosophy. If it is treated as a developed philosophical system it has to be done over the protestations of its adherents. This seems an odd path to take, and puts one in the rather awkward position of claiming to know Zen more than the teachers and students of Zen do. Zen is not even comparable to a religion. It has no God or gods to worship, and thus has no theology. Shunryu Suzuki remarks:

Although there are many people in [America] who are interested in Buddhism, few of them are interested in its pure form. Most of them are interested in studying the teaching of the philosophy of Buddhism. Comparing it to other religions, they appreciate how satisfying Buddhism is intellectually. But whether Buddhism is philosophically deep or good or perfect is not the point.i

Zen cannot be approached in the standard way one generally approaches philosophy or theology. It does not begin with certain axioms or even observations and proceed to form a systematic exposition which becomes fundamental to a philosophy or theology. Yet it is not inapproachable. Philosophical propositions are not anterior to Zen, they do not quite underly and justify Zen, but it is possible to formulate some of the fundamental aspects of Zen in an explicit way that accurately portrays the Zen attitude concerning the nature of self and of the world, and of knowledge. Even when approached in this way, caution should be exercised. Part of the hesitancy on the part of Zen practitioners in associating philosophy with their discipline no doubt lies in the tendency of many philosophers to create a philosophy which is exhaustive, in which all that is necessary or useful has been said, or is easily derivable from what has been said. This betrays a trait inherent to rationalism which leaves no room for mystery, and which assumes that everything may be spoken in language and is rational. This essay does not set out to provide the epistemology of Zen Buddhism, rather the purpose is to set out an epistemology which is not essential to Zen and arises only secondarily from Zen. It is not intended to be exhaustive, nor is it intended to exclude other interpretations. It is merely a philosophical representation.

Keeping these cautions in mind, it is necessary to elucidate what, for the purposes of this essay, is meant by “epistemology.” Most importantly, this term is not to be used in the strictest of senses, for in this sense epistemology is too closely tied up with modern Western philosophy. Such a use of the term denotes particular characterizations of what it means to be a self, what kind of thing the world is, a particular framing of the means of perception, and other presuppositions. Because Zen did not arise within this tradition it is best to distance these notions from those found in Zen teachings. Instead “epistemology” will merely be a general account of the nature of knowledge, and, by extension, truth and falsity. Before we can develop an epistemology from Zen, we must specify what Zen is.

Above it has been established that Zen is not an abstract system of thought. It is not theoretical at all; in the words of master Dogen: “Practicing zen is zazen.”ii In order to practice zazen, one must find a quiet place, secluded from distracting activity. It should be protected from the weather, well lit, and not unnecessarily uncomfortable. The practitioner should sit on a pillow with his legs crossed in the full or half lotus position. “Place the right hand on the left foot and the left hand on the right hand, lightly touching the ends of the thumbs together. With the hands in this position, place them next to the body so that the joined thumb tips are at the naval.”iii Posture is especially important. In zazen one should not slouch or lean to the side, but sit up straight and symmetrically. The eyes should be not entirely open, nor entirely closed. One should breath in and breath out. Finally, the mind should be quieted, and one should think not-thinking. “How do you think not-thinking?” Dogen asks. “Nonthinking. This is the art of zazen.”iv

What is nonthinking? It is not something that can be described, for then, by forming and idea of it, it would be thinkable. But nonthinking is not open to thinking by definition. Thus, thinking not-thinking is performed by nonthinking. We cannot form any image or idea of nonthinking, because images and ideas can be thought. The only way to come to an understanding of nonthinking is not in positive theory, but through direct experience in practice. Therefore, the question “what is nonthinking” cannot be answered discursively; instead, it can be answered only by inviting the questioner to practice zazen.

Rather than ask what nonthinking is, it is beneficial to inquire how nonthinking is to be achieved. Through this question, we may come to something of an understanding of nonthinking. Further, from the answers to the questions we will find the grounding from which we may derive a basic epistemology. We will formulate three aspects of zazen, and then from these three aspects extract an understanding of the self and the world, and of knowledge.

One of the more striking features of zazen is the position one takes up while practicing it. Why the lotus position? Shunryu Suzuki explains:

When we cross our legs like this, even though we have a right leg and a left leg, they have become one. The position expresses the oneness of duality: not two, and not one. This is the most important teaching: not two, and not one. Our body and mind are not two and not one. If you think your body and mind are two, that is wrong; if you think they are one, that is also wrong. Our body and mind are both two and one. We usually think that if something is not one, it is more than one; if it is not singular, it is plural, but also singular. Each of us is both dependent and independent.v

If we say that something is one while excluding the ways it is not one, we deceive ourselves. If we say that something is many and exclude the ways in which it is not many, we again deceive ourselves. The lotus position does not signify that things are one or many, it simply allows them to be both. “The Buddha way is, basically, leaping clear of the many and the one...”vi This is the first point.

In addition to the lotus position, a great deal of importance is placed on breathing. At first this seems odd: we breathe all the time, why pay attention to it? Why is breathing significant unless something hinders it? But it is precisely the assertion “I breathe” that is deceptive. “If you think, 'I breathe,' the 'I' is extra. There is no you to say 'I.' What we call 'I' is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale. It just moves; that is all. When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing: no 'I,' no world, no mind nor body; just a swinging door.”vii When I breathe, there is no “me” apart from my breathing. In that particular moment, I am my breathing, and I cannot be distinguished from my breathing. I am not a substance which breathes, the notion of substance is entirely superfluous. It presumes something beyond the phenomenal world, for nothing like a substance appears apart from an event unfolding temporally. There is no “I” apart from what is done or not done in a particular moment. This is the second point.

In order to perform zazen, one must control ones mind through non-attachment. “If you want to obtain perfect calmness in your zazen, you should not be bothered by the various images you find in your mind. Let them come, and let them go. Then they will be under control.”viii Any attachment to a particular thing alters the way in which one perceives reality. For example, if a person especially enjoys a certain kind of food, he grants it so much significance that it stands out in front of all the other foods on the table. Additionally, if one is too attached to an idea, say a memory of a heroic act he performed, then the “I” asserts itself strongly, imposing itself on the phenomenal world. Non-attachment allows the control of the mind, and freedom from the “I.”

The unifying theme in these three points is that they attempt to surpass deception to get at reality. It is here that we find material with which we can construct an epistemology. Zen distinguishes between delusion and reality, and so must have something of an explicit epistemology. “The true purpose is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes... Zen practice is to open up our small mind.”ix What is it that constitutes delusion?

It has already been said above that to judge a thing as one or as many is deceptive, for there are ways in which anything can be seen as simple or composite, dependent or independent. Is it simply enough to say that we should view a thing as simple in this respect and composite in that respect? Philosophers who declare that all things are truly one or truly many surely err in their general outlook. Yet most people are not philosophers, and such questions as the ultimate nature of the universe don't seem to come up often. However, in our thoughtful engagement in everyday life we find ourselves distinguishing between this or that thing, emphasizing either unifying themes in events or the ways in which they are dissimilar. The sort of classification where one says “but this is just the same as that” or “but they are not the same thing at all” is quite common, and they are delusions. Ultimately there are similarities and dissimilarities, but these are not properly in the things themselves, but in the way we associate things and mediate experience.

Likewise, we have a strong tendency to divide ourselves from our world, or from events in our world. This division does not come from experience itself, but from an active effort on our part for the “I” to appropriate aspects of experience. “This memory or feeling is mine, it is what defines me.” But the enduring “I” is a delusion. Commonly this comes from a mistaken epistemological position that our minds and the world are distinguishable. Suzuki distinguishes between what he calls “big mind” and “small mind”:

Nothing comes from outside your mind. Usually we think of our mind as receiving impressions and experiences from outside, but that is not a true understanding of our mind. The true understanding is that the mind includes everything; when you think something comes from outside it means only that it appears in your mind... If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm. This mind is called big mind.
If your mind is related to something outside itself, that mind is a small mind, a limited mind. If your mind is not related to anything else, then there is no dualistic understanding in the activity of your mind. You understand activity as just waves of your mind. Big mind experiences everything within itself. Do you understand the difference between the two minds: the mind which includes everything, and the mind which is related to something? Actually, they are the same mind, but the understanding is different...x

Suziki's primary point is that one should not attempt to understand experience as a self which separates itself from the phenomenal world. This is why, when one practices zazen, everything they experience practices zazen as well; there is no sharp distinction between self and world. This leads directly to the third point, the practice of non-attachment. It was previously mentioned that being attached to things, ideas, or memories is a means of the “I” possessing these things by attempting to make them ones own and not letting them be as they are.

Delusion therefore arises in these three ways: by calling things one or many, by being attached, and as a result by remaining a small self which opposes itself to the world. The common features here are that each of these cause a distortion of reality; they all impose something on experience that conditions it and is not truly present in it. Zen seeks to go beyond this delusion, to find true genuine experience. But such an experience cannot be contained within a philosophical system, for this is mediated and a step away from true experience. It is not found in the worship of a deity, for deities are rather notoriously absent from direct experience, and the conventional understanding of God requires one to distinguish between God and the created world. Truth is found in the direct experience of the moment, a moment in which one ceases rational thought which tirelessly and artificially unites and divides, and simply is. This is why zazen is practiced. But what is it to practice zazen? We already have the answer: “to think not-thinking.” How is this achieved? “Nonthinking.”

We have seen that it is possible to develop an epistemology which addresses the nature of the self and the world, and of true and false knowledge. Yet in the end, this epistemology is a negative one. One is directed away from delusion, but not given a positive description of truth. This is necessary, for to give a positive description would be deceptive. In order to avoid deception and experience truth, it is necessary to simply practice zazen. To use a saying Shunryu Suzuki was fond of: “That is all.”

iShunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginners Mind, (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2006), p 123.

iiDogen, Moon in a Dewdrop, (New York: North Point Press, 1995) p. 29.

iiiDogen, 30.

ivDogen, 30.

vSuzuki, 25.

viDogen, 69.

viiSuzuki, 29.

viiiSuzuki, 32.

ixSuzuki, 33.

xSuzuki, 34-35.

Spinoza on Necessity

2007-11-08T19:42:00.000-08:00

Since the time of the Greeks, the specter of fatalism has loomed in the minds philosophers. The notion that events are outside our control is troubling even when applied only to physical events such as earthquakes and landslides. But that we are at the mercy of an all encompassing chain of causes and effects, indeed that we are not merely bound by, but do not escape this chain at any point even with our innermost thoughts, is not a position that is generally regarded as optimistic. Free will, it seems, is what give our actions meaning, it is what allows us to make ourselves who we are. Yet, to paraphrase Camus, what is true is not necessarily what is desirable. The apprehension with which people generally regard fatalism (and the solutions proposed by the Stoics and other fatalists) does not determine the truth or falsity of the proposition that all events are necessarily determined, rather it brings to the fore the psychological need to provide an answer to the question of determinism. Benedict Spinoza provides one such answer in his Ethics. In this essay we will provide a brief overview of his metaphysical scheme as it is essential to understanding why he believes everything is necessary. We must examine Spinoza's view of substance, God, the structure of the universe, and the ontological status of individual things as they are explicated in Part I of the Ethics. Finally, we will examine the shortcomings in his approach.

The Ethics are a geometrical proof of Spinoza's philosophy. He begins with axioms and definitions, and then attempts to derive from these the propositions which constitute his system of philosophy. He does not bury his arguments in attractive prose, and he attempts to avoid ambiguity at every point so that, if one grants his axioms, one is compelled to assent to the entirety of his system. The Ethics has an air of certainty about it; it appears as an exhaustive account of God and nature. He does not begin with a justification of his method, nor an account of how his axioms come to be known. We begin with his definitions.

The entirety of his system of philosophy is derived from his notion of substance, in his words: “By substance I mean that which is in itself, and conceived through itself: in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception.”i As Heidegger noted, western philosophy – at least after Aristotle – can be loosely characterized as permutations of the idea of substance. Nowhere is this more evident than in Spinoza. Substance is the grounding of his metaphysics, it is both ontologically and epistemologically primary (given the correct philosophical method). Attributes are defined by Spinoza as “that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance.” A mode is a modification of substance, something which “exists in, and is conceived through, something other than itself.”ii Finally, God is “a being absolutely infinite—that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.”iii

According to Spinoza, a substance cannot be caused by another substance, because by definition a substance is understood only through itself. But an effect is known through its cause, and so nothing external can cause a substance. Spinoza concludes from this that a substance must be its own cause, and that this proves that existence belongs to the essence of a substance. Spinoza does not consider that perhaps cause and effect are expressions which apply only to particular things, and are rather a poor analogy when applied to the totality of things. Neither does he consider that cause and effect are things we project on experience, which are not actually perceived in experience. Spinoza moves on to argue that substance is necessarily infinite. A substance cannot share an attribute with another substance. If a substance existed finitely, it would be limited by another substance of the same kind. However, this is absurd, for then the substances would share attributes. Once Spinoza has achieved this, it is only a small step to equate substance with God. God necessarily exists as the sole substance, and he possesses infinite attributes because he is infinitely perfect.

If there is only one substance (God), what of everything else? They cannot themselves be substances, yet they must participate in substance to exist. Spinoza's first axiom states that something either exists in itself or in something else. Therefore, the only things that exist are substances and modes. Something must either be a mode or attribute of God. One thing alone exists: God, and in him is everything. Spinoza puts it this way: “Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, nor be conceived.” This proposition is the most representative of Spinoza's metaphysics, and it is from this that all else follows.

God is not separate from the world. Properly speaking he does not stand above or behind it, he simply is it—or more precisely, it is in him. It is Spinoza's understanding of everything as belonging in God, either as an attribute or a mode, that guides his thought. Accordingly, it is from the necessity which belongs to God that all things are determined irrevocably. In order to establish necessity in the workings of the world, Spinoza must establish necessity in the nature of God. More precisely, by showing God's nature as necessary, he can demonstrate the necessity of events, because they are not distinguished from God.

Spinoza recognized the use of the term God is misleading. When one thinks of God, it is difficult to separate the God of the Old Testament, the historical figure, from the God of rationalist philosophers, where he is transposed entirely to a metaphysical expression. God is often spoken of as being angry, or in terms which seem to indicate cupidity; he is spoken of as acting in history, as willing this and not that. If God has free will, in the sense of a will which is not bound by necessity, then everything would not necessarily be determined. Therefore Spinoza must argue against the “anthropomorphic” conception of God.

The traditional Judeo-Christian notion of God holds that he has free will in that he is able to refrain from creating things. The universe is not necessary, but contingent on his will. God could have chosen not to create the world, or he could have chosen to create the world differently. There are generally limits to this; for instance, God could not make 2+3=4, as it is true analytically. But he could have created unicorns, or elves, or the made us all characters in a world resembling South Park. Possibility does not move to actuality necessarily, but as God freely wills it.

Spinoza conceives of God's freedom differently. God exists by “the sole necessity of his nature,”iv and it is solely in this that his freedom consists. He addresses the Christian view in this way:

Others think that God is a free cause, because he can, as they think, bring it about, that those things which we have said follow from his nature—that is, which are in his power, should not come to pass, or should not be produced by him. But this is the same as if they said, that God could bring it about that it should not follow from the nature of a triangle, that its three interior angles should not be equal to two right angles; or that from a given cause no effect should follow, which is absurd.

Every event follows necessarily from God's nature. Even if something so seemingly random as a person choosing heads rather than tails were different, God would not be God (which is only to say, nature would not be nature). Spinoza alleges that Christians do not believe that God could bring everything he understands into actuality, for this would destroy God's power:

If, they contend, God had created everything which is in his intellect, he would not be able to create anything more, and this, they think, would clash with God's omnipotence; therefore, they prefer to assert that God is indifferent to all things, and that he creates nothing except that to which he has decided, by some absolute exercise of the will. However, I think I have shown sufficiently clearly (by Prop. xvi.) That from God's supreme power, or infinite nature, an infinite number of things—that is, all things have necessarily flowed forth in an infinite number of ways, or always follow from the same necessity; in the same way as from the nature of a triangle it follows from eternity and for eternity that its three interior angles are equal to two right angles. Wherefore the omnipotence of God has been displayed for all eternity, and will for all eternity remain in the same state of activity. This manner of treating the question attributes to God an omnipotence in my opinion, far more perfect. For, otherwise, we are compelled to confess that God understands an infinite number of things of creatable things, which he will never be able to create, for, if he created all that he understands, he would, according to this showing, exhaust his omnipotence, and render himself imperfect.v

Spinoza probably misrepresents the traditional opinion here. God is not unable to create all that he understands to be possible, he chooses not to. Spinoza assumes there must be a reason beyond the simple choice of God that all things possible are not actualized. Here he simply assumes God doesn't have free will. Why does God not create all he understands to be possible? Simply because he chooses not to, that is the only answer to a free choice. If there were another, it wouldn't be a free choice. Spinoza's God achieves omnipotence in the annihilation of free choice: all that he understands is, there are no possibilities left unactualized.

Proposition XXIX reads: “Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.” Spinoza proves this by saying that all things are “in” God, and that God exists necessarily, not contingently. “Further, the modes of the divine nature follow therefrom necessarily, and not contingently (Prop. xvi); and they thus follow whether we consider the divine nature absolutely, or whether we consider it as in any way conditioned to act.” God not only causes modes to exist, but causes them to act in particular ways, because modes cannot condition themselves. At this point in the Proposition, Spinoza distinguishes between “natura naturans” and “natura naturata.” Natura naturans is the active component of nature, and is conceived through itself, in other words God “insofar as he is considered a free cause” and his attributes. Natura naturata is the passive component of nature, which “follows from the necessity of the nature of God, or of any of the attributes of God.” More precisely they are the modes of the attributes of God, which cannot exist or be conceived with God.

The final step in establishing the necessity of everything is to deal explicitly with will. Proposition XXXII reads: “Will cannot be called a free cause, but only a necessary cause.” Spinoza claims “will is only a particular mode of thinking.” He says will is either finite or infinite. If it is finite, it is caused by something other than itself, and that cause is caused by something else, and so on ad infinitum. Therefore, the finite will is not contingent. If it is an infinite cause, it is one of God's attributes, for it cannot exist outside God. Therefore, the will is not free. The immediate corollary is that not even God has free will. Spinoza now can make explicit his absolute determinism:

All things necessarily follow from the nature of God (Prop. xvi.), and by the nature of God are conditioned to exist and act in a particular way (Prop. xxix.). If things, therefore, could have been of a different nature, of have been conditioned to act in a different way, so that the order of nature would have been different, God's nature would also have been able to be different from what it now is; and therefore (by Prop. xi.) that different nature also would have perforce existed, and consequently there would have been able to be two or more Gods. This (by Prop. xiv., Coroll. i.) is absurd. Therefore things could not have been brought into being by God in any other manner, &c. Q. E. D.

Simplistically stated, if everything is God, then changing even one aspect of a thing changes the composition of God. All things follow from God as the necessary attributes of a triangle follow from the triangle. It is at this point that Liebniz attacks Spinoza. “He give no proofs of his assertion, that all things follow from God, as properties from a triangle...”vi Liebniz is correct, this is too crude. Spinoza provide a way for distinguishing between God as substance and attributes, and the modes within him. The manner of necessity differs depending on whether we are talking about God's attributes or infinite modes, or if we are talking about finite modes (this or that particular thing).

Infinite modes follow necessarily from God or his attributes. Proposition XXIII reads: “Every mode, which exists both necessarily and as infinite must necessarily follow either from the absolute nature of some attribute of God, or from an attribute modified by a modification which exists necessarily, and as infinite.” These modes follow necessarily from God's nature, and are understood though God's nature. Yet finite modes are not understood as following in the same way. Finite modes are conditioned to act by God, but they do not necessarily follow from his substance or attributes—if they did they would be infinite. Therefore “it must follow from, or be conditioned for, existence and action by God or one of his attributes, in so far as the latter are modified by by some modification which is finite, and has a conditioned existence.”vii This is merely pushing the problem back one step. How are individual things caused? Where do they arise from? Individual things are modes of God;viii they are not infinite, and so they must be finite. Therefore, they do not follow necessarily from God or his attributes, yet they follow “insofar as the [attributes] are modified by some modification which is finite.” This is a tautology. Spinoza merely says that finite modes follow from attributes insofar as attributes are modified by finite modes. There must be a cause for a finite mode following from an attribute of God. Spinoza's answer is that a finite mode is caused by another finite mode, which is caused by another finite mode, and so on. This does not rescue us from our difficulty. The individual finite mode does not follow necessarily from God, but from its prior cause. Yet these causes, taken as a whole, must arise from God, for “God cannot properly be styled the remote cause of individual things, except for the sake of distinguishing these from what he immediately produces, or rather from what follows from his absolute nature. For, by a remote cause, we understand a cause which is in no way conjoined to the effect. But all things which are, are in God, and so depend upon God, that without him they can neither be, nor be conceived.”

If we take finite modes as a whole chain of causes and try to determine the cause of this chain as a whole, then we cannot locate the cause within the chain of causes, for then the totality would be self-caused. Therefore, the totality of finite modes must be caused by God. God cannot cause these through a free will divorced from his nature, so he must cause this by virtue of his nature. “All things follow from the nature of God.” These things must either follow necessarily or contingently. If they follow necessarily they are infinite. Therefore, they must follow contingently. This, given Spinoza's system, is impossible. Within the parameters of his metaphysical system, Spinoza cannot account for the origin of finite causes. If everything follows from God's nature, there may only be infinite modes, and there cannot exist finite modes. The starting point of Western ontology (though this has changed in recent times, as in Martin Heidegger and others) is particular things. These are generally referred to as substances, and these are precisely the things that cannot be accounted for when Spinoza's definition of substance (along with his definitions of modes and attributes) is granted.

Spinoza's system can be attacked from another vantage point. He claims that will is only a particular mode of thinking, and so it must have a cause. Since it has a cause, it must not be free. His treatment of the will here is grievously insufficient; he does not consider that the laws of cause and effect which we presume operate in the world may not operate in the same way within a person's thought. The notion that causes exist in the world in a real way is suspicious enough (though it was later, in the work of Hume, that this received particular attention). But although one may accept skeptical view that causes are nowhere perceived in nature, it is difficult to deny that experience operates in a law-like fashion. But what of the psyche? When we think about our emotions or our thoughts, do we perceive a cause? When a pleasant memory from childhood appears, and is not triggered by anything apparent, what causes that? The undulations of our emotions seem to be often tied to inner-worldly events, but sometimes they are not, as in the case of true anxiety. And even thoughts and emotions, as unlawlike as they may be, do not compare to the lawlessness of the will. On introspection, it seems the will lies behind our faculty of perception, emotion, and reason. It is more primordial, in that it can affect the other aspects of the mind, and more difficult to approach through introspection. What justification is there for declaring there are necessary causes and effects in every mental event?

This is more than merely an issue of Spinoza's notion that causes and effects are the same under the aspect of thought as they are under the aspect of extension. In even posing this question, we are active in the question in such a way that we cannot separate ourselves from it. We are not merely a mode among other modes in a philosophical system, we participate in the question by asking it so that we have no vantage point from which we can address it as a problem. This is expressed beautifully by Martin Heidegger in the introduction to Being and Time. Heidegger recognized that when we ask what being is, there is a particular being which asserts itself in the question, without which we cannot consider the question. It is not Heidegger's particular ontological question which is relevant here, merely his recognition of his involvement in the question. For a more concrete way of delineating the significance of treating a question which concerns the being of the questioner, we turn to Gabriel Marcel.

In Marcel's The Philosophy of Existentialism he distinguishes the problematic from the meta-problematic. In the problematic, things are considered objectively, as something which does not concern us, something which does not affect ones being (or in which ones being is not involved). This is the level on which Spinoza engages, his system is the same whether or not we are involved. We exist merely as a finite mode, and this does not sufficiently take into account our inextricable involvement with metaphysical questions. This manifests itself particularly in the treatment of will. Our will is tied up in the question of whether the will is determined, and our very asking of that question depends upon a movement of the will.

The meta-problematical is, according to Marcel, a problem which encroaches on its own data. In other words, it is a problem in which our being is at issue. As the being posing a question which concerns that very being, the problematical is transcended, or more precisely, left aside. Objectivity is compromised. The question cannot be considered apart from the questioner. (This, perhaps, is the definitive insight of existentialism.) The question of the freedom of the will is properly on the plane of the meta-problematic, it cannot disengage itself from its subject matter in order to gain the proper vantage point from which to consider it rationally and objectively (that is to say, as a problem).

Thus, the problems in Spinoza's proof take occur both from within his system, and with his approach as a whole. Within his system, he cannot account properly for how finite modes proceed from the necessary nature of God. More broadly, and more importantly, his account of necessity depends on a particular understanding of will which he does not have the proper vantage point to obtain.

i. Baruch Spinoza, “The Ethics” in On the Improvement of the Understanding, The Ethics, and Correspondence, trans. R. H. M. Elwes, (New York: Dover Publications, 1955), p. 46

ii. Spinoza, 46.

iii. Spinoza, 46.

iv. Spinoza, 60.

v. Spinoza 60-61.

vi. Gottfried Liebniz, A Refutation Recently Discovered of Spinoza by Liebniz, (Edinburg: Thomas Constable and Co., 1911), p. 143.

vii. Spinoza, 67.

viii. Spinoza, 66.

Quote of the Day

2007-11-01T21:53:00.001-07:00

The more the sense of the ontological tends to disappear, the more unlimited become the claims of the mind which has lost it to a kind of cosmic governance, because it is less and less capable examining its own credentials to the exercise of such dominion.

It must be added that the more the disproportion grows between the claims of the technical intelligence on the one hand, and the persisting fragility and precariousness of what remains its material substratum on the other, the more acute becomes the constant danger of despair which threatens this intelligence. From this standpoint there is truly an intimate dialectical correlation between the optimism of technical progress and the philosophy of despair which seems inevitably to emerge from it--it is needless to insist on the examples offered by the world of to-day.

Gabriel Marcel, The Philosophy of Existentialism

Problems and Meta-problems

2007-10-30T15:31:00.001-07:00

The French philosopher Gabriel Marcel's treatment of the problematical and the meta-problematical is relevant to Heidegger's distinction between what is at hand and what is to hand (mentioned in this post) . In Heidegger's Being and Time the fundamental structure of the world is called "ready-to-hand." It is of the utmost importance not to think of world as a spatial and temporal region that we are "in." Heidegger tries to get away from any subject/object distinctions. Instead, think of the world in somewhat Kantian terms: as something we generate. The role of our generation of the world in Heidegger is even more active. For Kant, there are categories through which we mediate experience, and which are uniform from person to person. For Heidegger, the world shows up differently for us depending on what our intentions and mood are. The world is fundamentally contexts of significance, not substances as in the Aristotelian tradition. When the world is ready to hand, it is engaged in, and not viewed abstractly. Substances do not really reveal themselves as independent things, instead we accomplish things. Depending on ones goals (and ones mood, which he regards as an existential condition) different things show up. These things do not show up primarily as substances with certain properties; in fact, they don't show up in any explicit way (as objectively present) at all. Our understanding of things is enabled by the contexts of significance, though this understanding is not an intellectual one--it is knowing the use for something. Turning a doorknob to exit a room or using a brake to slow down a car are examples of this sort of understanding, and these require no explicit awareness of the doorknob or the brake. Instead one is conscious of a purpose, and uses tools to accomplish that purpose without particular attention to those tools. Explicit awareness arises as a tool malfunctions and becomes an obstacle to ones task. This breakdown of worldliness allows an explicit consideration of a thing, it causes one to rend the object from its place in the web of ones purposes so that one may look at it (and in doing so allows it to become an object). When a pencil, for example, breaks down while one is writing, it becomes possible to consider the color of the pencil, its texture; it manifests itself as an enduring substance. It is important to note that substantiality comes about as a fissure in the primordial world. In this fissure we move from what is to hand to what is at hand. The earlier post quoted Heidegger on objective presence not being the fundamental constitution of the world. Heidegger deals with the consequences for science and philosophy at length, but I won't deal with his position here. Instead, we can use this distinction between what is ready to hand (the primordial world structure) and what is present at hand (the explicit awareness that arises out of the rupturing of the world) to turn to Marcel.

In Marcel's The Philosophy of Existentialism he distinguishes the problematic from the meta-problematic. In the problematic, things are considered objectively, as something which does not concern us, something which does not affect ones being. This has many parallels to "objective presence," but refers even more broadly the mode of consideration one employs in regard to the relation of the one who asks the question and the question itself. The problematic requires a distance between the questioner and the question, this is what allows one to consider the matter rationally and objectively. The problems dealt with do not contain the being of the one who is considering them. One views the problem from the outside. Ones objectivity is compromised if one has a personal stake in the question. An interesting question which arises here is whether any problem can be considered apart from one's own being--the phenomenological position is that there is not. I will neglect this question, for now.

The meta-problematical is, according to Marcel, a problem which encroaches on its own data. In other words, it is a problem in which our being is at issue. As the being posing a question which concerns that very being, the problematical is transcended, or more precisely, left aside. Objectivity is compromised. The question cannot be considered apart from the questioner. (This, perhaps, is the definitive insight of existentialism.) At the very least, all of the questions that matter to us are meta-problematical--they are mysteries. Marcel claims despair arises from the incapacity of the problematical to address these questions meaningfully:

Despair consists in the recognition of the ultimate inefficacy of all technics, joined to the inability or refusal to change over to a new ground--a ground where all technics [means of resolving problems]  are seen to be incompatible with the fundamental nature of being, which itself escapes our grasp (in so far as this grasp is  limited to the world of objects and this alone). It is for this reason that we seem nowadays to have entered upon the very era of despair; we have not ceased to believe in technics, that is to envisage reality as a complex of problems; yet at the same time the failure of technics as a whole [on the level of meta-problems] is as discernible to us as its partial triumphs. To the question: what can man achieve? we continue to reply: He can achieve as much as his technics; yet we are obligated to admit that these technics are unable to save man himself, and even that they are apt to conclude with the most sinister alliance with the enemy he bears within him. [The Philosophy of Existentialism]

Consider the question: "Is there meaning to life?" If this question is posed rationally, that is: as a problem, it must be posed objectively as something in which we are not involved. Yet our involvement in the question is manifest even as it is asked. When considered as a problem, there is no meaning to life--precisely because to pose such a question as something which does not affect us completely obscures the investigation. This is not because there is no meaning to life, but because the meaning of life lies is a meta-problem. It is a mystery. When the meaning of life is posed as a problem, it is lost.

Thus these questions must be taken up as meta-problems, in which we participate rather than simply ask. Our questioning is not carried out solely by the intellect, it is explored through our engagement in the world. Mystery is not absolutely inaccessible; it is only inaccessible to pure reason. The differences between Heidegger and Marcel will be explored another times, it is the similarities that interest us here. The insight of Heidegger and Marcel is that the important questions are the ones in which we are involved; ones which we cannot separate ourselves from. We have no vantage point from which we can reduce meta-problems to problems without losing their meaning, and we must understand that fundamental truths are truths which are lived.

Who Am I?

2007-10-24T23:13:00.001-07:00

What do we mean when we refer to the "I"? What is the self fundamentally? Nietzsche instructs us: "become who you are." But how is this possible? In becoming, I am changing, and thus I am different after I change than I was before. But it was I who changed, and so the I is in some sense a constant.

Descartes says, "I know that I exist; I seek now who is this "I" whom I know?" This is the essential question. Descartes goes on to suppose that the"I" is a thinking thing; no more, and no less. (Incidentally, the I is not the same thing as a human being, and so he is not saying that a human being is a mind.)

But am I a mind? Some people identify with their body, and Descartes supposes this is incorrect. Is it similarly incorrect to identify with the mind? Descartes observes his mind, and a distance -- a distinction -- is required to see. But what is it that sees? It cannot be the mind, for the mind does not have a vantage point with which to see itself. Further, the mind is constantly changing, but the I that considers the mind seems to have a strange calm, a continuity. In the Yoga Sutras they call the "I" at the most fundamental level the seer. But this seeing "I" seems to be able to catch no glimpse of itself. It is like a man in isolation without a mirror. It looks without, but it cannot consider itself. What, then, am I? Is it possible to ever know?

God, ethics, and charity

2007-10-23T22:53:00.001-07:00

Returning to the issue of ethics and charity:

It is established to my satisfaction that ethical systems as an end (whether categorical or derived from divine dictates) are destructive to true charity, because they use people as a means to another end. Further, charitable actions need no metaphysical justification such as a God who dictates them, their value is intrinsic and readily apparent in the performance of the act--though perhaps not in an explicit way. With this said, what possible relation can God have to charitable actions?

It could be proposed that the ethical rules given by God in themselves are not ends but means: they teach us how to live charitably. Thus the performance of a charitable act is not done in order to satisfy an ethical guideline; instead the ethical guideline is given to bring about charitable acts. This should not be understood as forcing charitable acts with the threat of punishment, but as teaching people how to benefit others. In this understanding of ethics one does not help another person in order to be ethical, one is ethical in order to help other people. In this way, ethical systems need not be destructive to charity. (Additionally, the issue of incongruities between ethical systems is not quite so troubling.)

But is this all that can be said? There seems to be little room for God as anyone is capable of generating ethical laws (and indeed, ethical laws are not necessary for charity). Further, stopping here seems to limit us to mere humanism. I will attempt a phenomenological investigation.

In an act of charity, love is manifested. However, it does not arise as an effect arises from a cause. If this were the case, love could not supersede charity, but would be dependent on it. Love, properly speaking, does not arise from charity, yet it is present in it. In charity, love is not a relationship between two people, because then it would be in some sense divisive--it would be between them. Rather, it is what precedes charity as a precondition. Phenomenally, it is an "opening" which allows people to truly experience one another. It is an existential possibility, one which is actualized through charity, one which opens us to charity, and one which allows us to be authentically present with one another. In Heideggerian terms, love is what allows authentic "being-with-others." This deserves more thought, and to be worked out more precisely.

Quote of the Day

2007-10-22T22:01:00.001-07:00

From Moon in a Dewdrop, by Master Dogen, in the section entitled: Regulations for the Auxiliary Cloud Hall:

Do not be concerned with the faults of other persons. Do not see others faults with a hateful mind. There is an old saying that if you stop seeing others faults, then naturally seniors are venerated and juniors are revered. Do not imitate other's faults; just cultivate virtue. Buddha prohibited unwholesome actions, but did not tell us to hate those who practice unwholesome actions.

Charity and Apologetics continued...

2007-10-21T21:50:00.001-07:00

A few more thoughts on the last post concerning the role of ethics and charity, specifically on the supposed need for a metaphysical foundation for ethics. Let's consider those who act ethically for the sake of an ethical law or religious duty, and those who act ethically simply for the sake of the act itself. What is more admirable? A person who desires the well-being of his fellow man, and acts accordingly? Or a person who acts to benefit his fellow man for other reasons? More specifically: who is it that is best able to see the innate value of charity, and who is more likely to miss it? The answer seems obvious: those who act charitably without ethical compulsion are best able to understand the value of charity.

The difference here seems to be the starting point. In every day life, a person does not generally contemplate metaphysical justifications for helping his wife take out the trash, or helping an elderly person who is falling down. One simply wishes to help, to bring happiness. And this, really, is enough. Those who act and do not need justification are those who understand charity the best.

This is not to say that those who do argue that justification is needed for everyday charity are uncharitable. Their confusion probably is not even rooted in day-to-day events. The philosopher who argues God is necessary to know right from wrong probably does not really consider this as he helps a girl who has dropped her books, or a man whose car battery has died. He, too, acts charitably without philosophical mediation. The need for justification is therefore not an obstacle in everyday life, but an obscuring that is only manifest once one stands back from ones actions to understand them explicitly. The virtue of an action is not understood primarily in abstract ethical theory, but in practice.

The Tao Te Ching on Ethics (Or, Does Ethics Subvert True Piety?)

2007-10-19T12:02:00.000-07:00

When the great Tao is forgotten,
Kindness and morality arise.
When wisdom and intelligence are born,
The great pretense begins...
[Tao Te Ching,18]

Give up sainthood, renounce wisdom,
And it will be a hundred ties better for everyone.

Give up kindness, renounce morality,
And men will rediscover filial piety and love
[Tao Te Ching, 19]

A common apologetic method is questioning how ethics can be grounded if there is no God to issue decrees. This relies on several questionable assumptions: is it really correct to say that what is good is simply good because God says so? What if God called cannibalism good? And why must ethics be grounded in God anyway? Why can't it be a production of humanity which, like art, needs no further justification. More damningly, isn't it selfish to love your fellow human being only because if you don't there are eternal consequences? Shouldn't an act of charity be done for its own sake?

The above excerpt from the Lao Tsu's Tao Te Ching quite strikingly proclaims morality is a form of degeneracy, one which inhibits true piety and love. When one acts charitably towards another because of some abstract ethical law, or some compulsion from above, true charity is lost. The act is not done for its own sake, for the unity it brings between two people, but for something else entirely. The recipient is only incidental to the moral agent's true purpose; he is a tool. He is used by the moral agent for his own selfish purposes, even if the agent recognizes the secondary benefit to the recipient. This can be seen in those evangelists who preach not primarily to save souls, but to use the act of saving souls for their own gain. Though the act appears to be the same as an unselfish act to the outside observer, it is subverted and corrupted. Therefore I submit: when charity is performed out of duty to an ethical code, or to a deity, true charity is lost. Only the outward shell remains.

Nietzsche on the Nature of the Universe

2007-10-19T10:12:00.000-07:00

The total character of the world, however, is in all eternity chaos--in the sense not of a lack of necessity but a lack of order, arrangement, from, beauty, wisdom, and whatever other names there are for our aesthetic anthropomorphisms. Judged from the point of view of our reason, unsuccessful attempts are by all odds the rule, the exceptions are not the secret aim, and the whole music box repeats eternally its tune which may never be called a melody... But how could we reproach or praise the universe? Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is neither perfect nor beautiful, nor noble, nor does it wish to become any of these things; it does not by any means strive to imitate man. None of our aesthetic and moral judgments apply to it. Nor does it have any instinct for self-preservation or any other instinct; and it does not observe any laws either. let us beware of saying that there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is nobody who commands, nobody who obeys, nobody who trespasses. Once you know that there are no purposes, you also know that there is no accident; for it is only beside a world of purposes that he word "accident" has meaning. Let us beware of saying that death is opposed to life. The living is merely a type of what is dead, and a very rare type. [The Gay Science 109]

A Summary of Descartes' Ontological Argument and a Consideration of the Kantian Critique

2007-10-19T00:03:00.000-07:00

Of the various arguments for God, the ontological argument is the most intriguing. Though it has always engendered criticism even by those who accept its conclusion, it has been reformulated, reasserting itself again and again in different form. It has great appeal to theists because it is an a priori argument, one which is understood to be true analytically on its own terms without an appeal to experience. Because it does not depend on empirical findings, it – if it is valid – is absolutely certain. Furthermore, the argument intends to prove a supreme being, one which is good and omniscient, and not merely a vague “first cause.” We shall examine this argument as it is formulated by Descartes in particular, and examine the Kantian objection to it.

Anselm is credited as the first thinker to formulate the ontological argument, though earlier thinkers promulgated elements of it. His formulation was simple: God is that than which no greater can be conceived; it is greater to exist than to not exist; therefore God must exist. The very definition compels the acceptance of his existence. This frequently is noted to be peculiarly unconvincing; even when one grants the argument's validity it does not really seem to compel assent. St. Thomas Aquinas asserts in the Summa that the existence of God is not self-evident, we can argue for his existence only a posteriori. Consequently, he questioned the way in which the argument defines God, noting that not all people define God in the same way. Further, the argument proves only God's “mental existence” not his actual existence. Here he is all too brief, but what he is getting at is probably the same sort of thing that Kant says more extensively; Thomas just didn't have a sufficient philosophical apparatus. A monk named Gaunilo dealt with Anselm's argument more thoroughly. He attempts a reductio by positing the perfect island. It is more perfect to exist than not to exist, and therefore our perfect island must exist. His intention was to demonstrate that the type of move from conceptual reality to tangible reality that the ontological argument makes is unjustifiable. The criticism that the ontological argument inappropriately moves from definition to reality was regarded as convincing, and the argument lost much of its influence.

Descartes resurrects the argument, and his reformulation of it is central to his system. He claims, at the beginning of the Meditations, that his purpose is to demonstrate that the knowledge of God is more certain than the knowledge of corporeal things. His ontological argument cannot be understood without reference to his philosophical method in the Meditations.

The Meditations is one of the most influential works of philosophy, and is the beginning of the modern era of philosophy. In it, Descartes invites his readers to participate with him in a thought experiment in order to discover what is absolutely certain, and to rid oneself of error. Descartes uses the method of hyperbolic doubt to discover the absolute foundation of truth: that one truth which cannot be doubted. He finds that he can doubt sensory experience and even the reflexive truths of mathematics, but he cannot doubt that he is doubting. Elucidating further, he may be deceived about everything, but he cannot be deceived about the fact that he exists. One cannot be deceived unless one exists. Cogito ergo sum. Here Descartes finds his epistemological foundation from which he can build the entirety of his philosophy. Having found something beyond doubt, he can now expand to other certain truths.

In order to get out of his self-imposed solipsism, Descartes must prove that a good God exists. Otherwise, some evil genius may be deceiving him even when he asserts mathematical truths. Thus, the second step after he is to prove the existence of God. Before he does this, he begins to organize his ideals, to find which thoughts may err and which may not. Strictly speaking, ideas in themselves are not true or false. It is only when the added step of judgment is performed that the potentiality for error arises. For example, the idea of a centaur is neither true nor false. The positive judgment that a centaur exists is false. But why do we believe that our ideas come from some analogous thing in the world? Descartes says that it is nature that compels us to believe this.i The natural belief that our mental representations of things come from without is quite compelling—especially when one considers that some of these ideas are not the sorts of things that we would create voluntarily. The world we perceive is certainly not the world we would create, and it seems reasonable to suppose from this that the world is not generated by us. At this point Descartes distinguishes between what he has a natural impulse to believe, and what is revealed to us by the “natural light.” What we have an impulse to believe – that external bodies exist, for example – is open to doubt. What is revealed by the natural light is not open to doubt.ii “This is because there cannot be another faculty both as trustworthy as the natural light and also capable of showing me that such things are not true.”iii After this point, Descartes uses what is revealed to him by the natural light as certain. Yet this is little more than sheer assertion. Until the existence of a good God is demonstrated, Descartes' method required us to doubt even truths which asserted themselves so strongly that doubting them seemed absurd.iv Descartes suspends his method of hyperbolic doubt for these truths, probably because they are necessary to demonstrate the existence of God and escape solopsism.

Meditation 3 is devoted to proving the existence of God. In the first and longest proof Descartes maintains that the idea of God is of such a nature that we could not generate it from ourselves, rather it must come from God because he is the only being great enough to bring about such an idea. This argument will not be dealt with in depth in this essay, except to note that it presupposes a relationship between ideas of things and things themselves which is entirely tenuous. Descartes next uses a form of the cosmological argument to demonstrate a “first cause.”

In Meditation 4 Descartes attempts to establish a more distinct method for determining truth and falsity. He declares that he has proven the existence of a God that would not engage in deceit and that gave him his faculty of judgment, ensuring that if it were used properly it would function without error. Yet Descartes did not gain any ground in Meditation 3. He was already using his faculty of judgment as if it functioned properly, if in a limited way, and he had previously dodged the question of whether an evil genius could deceive him even in things he regarded as most certain (i.e., what is revealed by the natural light). So in a way, Descartes position in Meditation 5 is not all that different from his position in Meditation 3.

The ontological argument is dependent upon the proposition that whatever one clearly and distinctly apprehends is true. The summary above should make it evident that this premise should itself be justified by the existence of God (a God that does not deceive). Here Descartes can be accused of circular reasoning: whatever is clearly and distinctly perceived is true because a good God would not make us in such a way as to be deceived in simple things, and we know a good God exists because of our clear and distinct perception. Whether or not the accusation is true is incidental to our purpose in this essay. However, it is significant to note that, whatever the order of reasoning between the truth of the clear and distinct and the existence of God is earlier in the Meditations, if these two things are inextricably related then the ontological argument is superfluous. The ontological argument requires one to assume the principle of clear and distinct truths, and at this point in the meditation Descartes has demonstrated this by already proving the existence of God. Though his principle of clear and distinct truths and his proofs for God perhaps do not meet the high standard for certainty set out in Meditation 1, this does not mean that they are useless. An argument for the existence of God which is as certain as the truths of mathematics is certainly a sufficient one.

Here is Descartes' ontological argument for the existence of God:

But if the mere fact that I can produce from my thought the idea of something entails that everything which I clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to that thing really does belong to it, is this not a possible basis for another argument to prove the existence of God? Certainly, the idea of God, or a supremely perfect being, is one which I find within me just as surely as the idea of any shape or number. And my understanding that it belongs to his nature that he always exists is no less clear and distinct than is the case when I prove of any shape or number that some property belongs to its nature. Hence, even if it turned out that not everything on which I have meditated in these past days is true, I ought still to regard the existence of God as having at least the same level of certainty as I have hitherto attributed to the truths of mathematics.

The ontological argument is first presented as an analogy. I distinctly perceive in the idea of a triangle that it has three sides, and that the largest side is opposite the widest angle. Therefore, this inherently belongs to the triangle. So it is with God. I distinctly perceive in the idea of God that he necessarily exists, and I perceive this just as clearly as I perceive the geometrical properties of a triangle. An initial criticism might be that an analogy is not an argument: what holds true with a triangle, which exists only conceptually, may not be true of an existing being. Descartes anticipates something along these lines. He is aware that one is to distinguish existence and essence in things, yet in God, he argues, there is no such distinction. Therefore, when one understands God's essence, he understands his necessary existence.

Descartes was probably aware of the criticisms directed at Anselm, and was careful to point out that in his formulation of the argument a definition was not “imposing” reality on things: “But from the fact that I cannot think of God except as existing, it follows that existence is inseparable from God, and hence that he really exists. It is not that my thought makes it so, or imposes any necessity on any thing; on the contrary, it is the necessity of the thing itself, namely the existence of God, which determines my thinking in this respect.” Here Descartes is further emphasizing the unique relation between God's essence and his existence. Guanilo directed a reductio ad absurdum against Anselm in which he asks his readers to imagine the most perfect island. The most perfect island must exist since to not exist impinges upon its perfection. Guanilo's point is that existence cannot be arbitrarily inserted into a definition. Descartes avoids this by saying that part of Gods essence is to exist necessarily, and this feature he does not share with created things. God's special fusion of existence and essence is what makes the ontological argument work. When one grasps his essence, one grasps the necessity of his existence.

Descartes' argument can be understood as being based upon a fundamental intuition. Instead of merely arguing from premises, he was primarily relating an encounter with the concept of God. By simply understanding the concept of God, he understands the existence of God prior to any of the methodological content or formal arguments of the Meditations. Descartes is not convinced by an argument, but by an experience. “But whatever method of proof I use, I am always brought back to the fact that it is only what I clearly and distinctly perceive that completely convinces me.”v While this experience is not of the same kind as one experiences sunlight or a tree, being rather a rational exercise, it is a direct rational exercise (rather than a rational exercise directed at something external), and one in which understanding necessitates consent.

The definitive critique of the ontological arguments is generally considered to be that of Immanuel Kant. In his Critique of Pure Reason he examined a priori reasoning and attempted to establish its limits. In the course of this work, he determined that the ontological argument was invalid, an example of a priori reasoning attempting to go beyond its limits. Kant inquired into what it is that makes the existence of a being necessary by virtue of its definition, or more precisely what prohibits one from asserting the non-existence of a necessary being. If, in our examination of the idea of something, we find that it necessarily includes existence, does this add anything to the concept? Or is this saying nothing at all?

Kant takes up the analogical form of the ontological argument:

Thus the fact that every geometrical proposition, as, for instance, that a triangle has three angles, is absolutely necessary, has been taken as justifying us in speaking of an object which lies entirely outside the sphere of our understanding as if we understood perfectly what it is that we intend to convey by the concept of that object.” All the alleged examples [such as the triangle] are, without exception, taken from judgements, not from things and their existence. But an unconditioned necessity of judgments is not the same as an absolute necessity of things.vi

When we speak of a triangle as necessarily having three angles, we are referring not to whether it exists or not, nor the manner of its existence, but to its definition alone. If a triangle exists, then it has three angles. This is not derived by a posteriori considerations, but by virtue of the definition of the triangle, and nothing else. When something is true by its definition, it is true analytically, and is metaphysically certain. Kant continues, “The above proposition does not declare that three angles are absolutely necessary, but that, under the condition that there is a triangle (that is, that a triangle is given), three angles will necessarily be found in it.” It does not follow that because a triangle has three angles, that three angles must exist, only that if a triangle exists, it has three angles. The definition of a thing does not necessitate anything actually existing in reality. Here we see something akin to Hume's fork: a strong distinction is made between the analytic a priori of the definition and the synthetic a posteriori of a thing's actual existence. This distinction must be erased in order for the ontological argument to work, because it acts as a barrier preventing one from moving from definition to reality.

The ontological argument requires that when one posits the definition of God, one also posits his existence. The idea of the ontological argument is that we contradict ourselves if we deny God's existence (though this is more ambiguous in Descartes' formulation). But Kant points out that though we contradict ourselves if we say a triangle does not have three sides, we do not contradict ourselves if we reject the triangles necessary attributes, we reject the triangle as well. The same holds true of God. “If its existence is rejected, we reject the thing with all of its predicates; and no question of contradiction can the arise.”vii

Kant further maintains that there is an internal contradiction in inserting existence into a concept:

We must ask: Is the proposition that this or that thing... exists, an analytic or a synthetic proposition? If it is analytic, the assertion of the existence of the thing adds nothing to the thought of the thing; but in case either the thought, which is in us, is the thing itself, or we have presupposed an existence as belonging to the realm of the impossible, and have then, on that pretext, inferred its existence from its internal possibility—which is nothing but a miserable tautology.viii

Existential propositions cannot be analytic, for either they would not allow a distinction between a thought and its object, or they would amount to tautologies as the predicate is already posited in the subject. Therefore, existential propositions must be synthetic. But if this is the case, then it is possible to deny “God exists” without contradiction. Kant is not content to end his criticism here.

Kant examines the syntax of what it means to say something “is:”

The proposition “God is omnipotent” contains two concepts, each of which has its object—God and omnipotence. The small word “is” adds no new predicate, but only serves to posit the predicate in its relation to the subject. If, now, we take the subject (God) with all its predicates (among which is omnipotence), and say “God is,” or “There is a God,” we attach no new predicate to the concept of God, but only posit the subject in itself with all its predicates, and indeed posit it as being an object that stands in relation to my concept. The content of both must be one and the same; nothing can have been added to the concept, which expresses merely what is possible, by my thinking its object (through the expression “it is “) as given absolutely. Otherwise stated, the real contains no more than the merely possible.ix

Though the earlier stages of Kant's refutation appear to me more oriented toward Anselm's version of the ontological argument, here Kant seems to have Descartes in mind. Adding existence (necessary or otherwise) to the concept “God” does not actually add anything at all conceptually. To say something exists is to say something about the object of a concept, not the concept itself. To further elucidate this point, Kant asks us to consider the difference between a hundred real thalers (a coin) and a hundred possible thalers. Though these make a difference materially, there is no ideal difference between the two.

For as the latter signify the concept, and the former the object and the positing of the object, should the former contain more than the latter, my concept would not, in that case, express the whole object, and would not therefore be an adequate concept of it... For the object, as it actually exists, is not analytically contained in my concept, but to my concept (which is a determination of my state) synthetically; and yet the conceived hundred thalers are not themselves in the least increased through thus acquiring existence outside my concept.x

Existence, therefore, cannot be contained analytically in a concept, but is a synthetic addition in which we must distinguish between concept and object. Kant's argument as a whole is certainly damning for Anselm's ontological argument, because Anselm intends to demonstrate that one who denies God contradicts himself. Kant's careful analysis reveals this as clearly erroneous. But what of Descartes? Descartes' ontological argument is constructed to avoid some of the criticisms which were directed towards Anselm's. He does not argue from the definition of God, accusing his opponents of self-contradiction. He deals instead with the idea of God, which he clearly and distinctly perceives. Once one perceives the idea of God, which contains necessary existence, assent is compelled. It is here that Descartes is vulnerable to the Kantian critique: necessary existence is not present in an idea, for it adds nothing to the idea analytically, and God and his predicates can be denied to exist entirely.

iRenee Descartes, “The Meditations,” in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes: Volume 1, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Toothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) 26.
iiDescartes, 27.
iiiDescartes, 27.
ivDescartes, 14-15.
vDescartes, 28.
viImmanuel Kant, “Critique of Pure Reason,” in The Existence of God, ed. John Hick (New York: The Macmillen Company, 1964), 41.
viiKant, 42.
viiiKant, 43
ixKant, 44.
xKant, 44.

True Knowledge and Theory: Excerpts from Martin Heidegger

2007-10-18T23:40:00.001-07:00

Is water fundamentally H2O? The answer at first seems obvious: of course. Perhaps this should be rephrased: do we understand water best by specifying its molecular makeup? Is this what water fundamentally is? Again the answer seems obvious. However, this is a peculiarity of our age. Our adoration of science as the supreme mode for understanding the world requires us to look at the world this way. This way of looking at the world seems to leave something out psychologically. Is water merely its chemical components? Is Earth simply a speck in the backwaters of the Milky Way Galaxy? Are humans a member of the ape family, with an evolutionary legacy? These are all no doubt true, from a certain way of looking at the world. This is the scientific expression of these things. The real question is whether this expression is more "true" than any other expression. Martin Heidegger argues this detached way of looking at the world is distanced from truth, and contests the "correspondence" model of truth:

If we now ask what shows itself in the phenomenal findings of knowing, we must remember that knowing itself is grounded beforehand in already-being-in-the-world which essentially constitutes the being of Da-sein. Initially, this already-being-in-the-world is not solely a rigid staring at something merely objectively present, there must first be a deficiency of having to do with the world and taking care of it. In refraining from all production, manipulation, and so on, taking care of things places itself in the only mode of being-in which is left over, int the mode of simply lingering with.... On the basis of this kind of being toward the world which lets us encounter beings within the world solely in their mere outward appearance (eidos), and as a mode of this kind of being, looking explicitly at something thus encountered is impossible. This looking at is always a way of assuming a definite direction toward something, a glimpse of what is objectively present. It takes over a "perspective" from the beings thus encountered from the very beginning. This looking itself becomes a mode of independent dwelling together with beings in the world. In this "dwelling" -- as the refusal of every manipulation and use -- the perception of what is objectively present takes place. Perception takes place as addressing and discussing something as something. On the foundation of this interpretation in the broadest sense, perception becomes definition. What is perceived and defined can be expressed in propositions and as thus expressed can be maintained and preserved. This perceptive retention of a proposition about...is itself a way of being-in-the-world, and must not be interpreted as a "procedure" by which a subject gathers representations about something for itself which then remain stored up "inside" as thus appropriated, and in reference to which the question can arise at times of how they "correspond" with reality.

Interesting Snippets

2007-10-18T23:14:00.001-07:00

From Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dogen

For some people their own views are primary; they open a sutra, memorize a word or two, and consider this to be buddha-dharma. Later when they visit with an awakened teacher or a skilled master and hear the teaching, if it agrees with their own view they consider the teaching right, and if it does not agree with their old fixed standards they consider his workds wrong. They do not know how to abandon their mistaken tendencies, so how could they ascend and return to the true way? For ages numberless as particles of dust and sand, they will remain deluded. It is most pitiable. Is it not sad?

Nietzsche on Conservatism

2007-08-16T11:39:00.000-07:00

When people in France began to attack the Aristotelian unities, and others therefore began to defend them, one can see once again what can be seen so often but what one hates to see: one lied, mendaciously inventing reasons for these laws, simply to avoid admitting that one had become used to these laws and no longer wanted things to be different. The same process occurs, and has always occurred, in every prevalent morality and religion: the reasons and purposes for habits are always lies which are added only after some people begin to attack these habits and to ask for reasons and purposes. At this point the conservatives of all ages are thoroughly dishonest: they add lies.

Benedict on Evolution... Again

2007-07-25T19:31:00.001-07:00

MSNBC reports that Pope Benedict reiterated the Church's attitude toward evolution again, calling the conflict between evolution and creationism an "absurdity":

“They are presented as alternatives that exclude each other,” the pope said. “This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”

Protestant denominations should follow the lead of the Pope by not fearing the advanced of science or the dictates of reason.

The International Association of Fire Fighters

2007-05-21T13:09:00.001-07:00

Harold A. Schaitberger, the IAFF President, discusses the way Giuliani treated the New York City fire fighters. His opinion on Giuliani in a nutshell: "Not no, but hell no."

AACS Key Broken

2007-05-01T13:39:00.001-07:00

The AACS protection on HD-DVDs has been hacked. The licensing administrator is serving take down notices to any blogs or sites that published the take down request, under the assumption that one can own a letter/number sequence. Obviously this is an absurd abuse of intellectual property laws. One wonders if the descendants of Brahmagupt will claim that the entire number system cannot be used without permission, since it was, after all, his idea, and since numbers apparently can be owned. Here is the key. Write it down. 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-58-88-C0

Why Is the Conservative Media Ridiculing the British Captives

2007-04-05T10:23:00.001-07:00

Media matters has the video.

Sean Hannity: Cafeteria Catholic

2007-03-15T22:28:00.001-07:00

Sean Hannity has made something of a big deal about his Catholicism. Unfortunately, though he repents when he accidentally eats meat on Fridays, he has no such reservations about getting into a verbal scuffle with a priest. The priest, Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, was taking Hannity to task for publicly spouting "heresy" on the dogma of contraception. While I generally agree with Sean Hannity on the issue of contraception, as a Catholic (and one who has made a big deal about his Catholicism) he must not publicly oppose settled doctrine. Further, and perhaps more importantly, he should -- whether Catholic or not -- show respect to a priest. Instead, he implied the priest was responsible for the child abuse that went on in some parts of the Church. What did it have to do with the discussion? Nothing, Hannity felt threatened by the priesthood, so he decided to take a shot back. He was saying that Priests made mistakes, and thus could not point out his own. This is odd for a Catholic to say; if he doesn't want the priesthood to be his spiritual authority, he should find someplace else. Here is the video:

Sean Hannity was taken aback in the end of the discussion when Fr. Euteneuer said that he would not give Hannity communion if he did not renounce his heretical views. But good for Father Thomas.

Pew Reports 41% of "Gen Nexters" Approve of Pot Use

2007-03-12T15:05:00.001-07:00

Pew Research reports:

Fully 41% of Gen Nexters (those ages 18-25) say it is okay for other
people to smoke marijuana in a recent Pew survey. Among Gen Xers and
Boomers, 35% agree. Seniors take a more skeptical view of smoking
marijuana; just 11% find it acceptable for others to smoke pot. In
spite of the fact that it is illegal, smoking marijuana is actually
more acceptable to Gen Nexters overall than drinking a lot.
Three-in-ten Nexters and 27% of Xers say it is okay to drink a lot of
alcohol. This compares with 14% of Boomers and 8% of Seniors.

This should be obvious to anyone who has been around those who are intoxicated for any amount of time. Inebriation from marijuana is far more difficult to achieve, and even very heavy use has no dangerous medical effects- either short term or long term. Alcohol is quite a different story. It is not only possible, but relatively easy to consume potentially fatal doses of alcohol. To make any moral division between moderate alcohol use and moderate marijuana use is untenable. Pot is probably the weakest of any psychoactive drug, and alcohol is one of the strongest. And it seems that newer generations are wising up to this - obvious - fact.

"1/2 Hour News Hour" is Torture

2007-03-07T14:13:00.001-08:00

The success of the Daily Show and its spinoff the Colbert Report has led -- rather belatedly -- to conservative imitation. The influence of the Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert among the populace is growing steadily, and some maintain it was Comedy Central's news department that was partly responsible for the Democratic success in 2006.

And so we have the "1/2 Hour News Hour," and it is painful. Joel Surnow, the mind behind 24, is responsible for the show's creation. Of course, one may wonder how Surnow would handle a show that does not have a format that would allow him to indulge his sadistic penchant for torture. The answer is that "1/2 Hour News Hour" is in itself torture. Think of how poorly Christian contemporary music apes popular "secular" music, and you will have some idea of how bad Surnow's show is.

The jokes are trite and predictable, and they are all aimed at liberals. A humor show should always keep humor first, and politics second. 1/2 hour news forgets this. The politics of the show are cheap and shallow, and the humor is mired in the political ideology. The delivery is even worse than the jokes. It is unbelievably stiff, and neither the anchors nor the correspondents betray the hint of any personality

Perhaps some conservatives will find the show funny, but I suspect all the laughs are forced by a feeling of duty to laugh with ones ideological compatriots. After all, some people find Andrew Dice Clay humorous. So you judge for yourself.

Here are some youtube videos with much of the show (some of the videos overlap a little):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-El3c8eCC3Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5CL8SbPRVc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMB6pFy10u0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxRbJehIE8I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjIfaMwIFxU

"Scooter" Libby Found Guilty

2007-03-06T11:33:00.001-08:00

CNN reports "Scooter" Libby has been found guilty on four of the five counts he was charged with. He was found guilty of obstruction of justice, making a false statement, and two counts of perjury. The charge he was not deemed guilty of was making a false statement about a conversation he had with a Time magazine reporter. CNN reports that he will probably go to jail. The president is reported as being saddened by the verdict.

Unfortunately it does not appear as if Fitzgerald will investigate further into the VP's office, though he says he will keep an eye out for new information. This has been pointed out, but it is quite ironic that the administration most obsessed with state secrets (that obviously have more to do with controlling public perception than keeping the nation secure) is the one who leaks confidential information for political gain?

In any case, this shouldn't be the end of the Bush administration's legal troubles. With any luck, a light will be shown on the manner in which the neo-conservatives manipulated the war intelligence, on the decision to exempt prisoners from the Geneva convention and the torture that has been allowed, and on the war crimes in Fallujah and other places.

Jesus Loves Osama?

2007-02-16T20:50:00.000-08:00

Having just discovered Google's rss reader, I was looking for some feeds to put in the nifty little program, and I stumbled across a blog promising "Intellectual" Conservativism, in the realms of both Politics and Philosophy, with a touch of libertarianism. Being socially conservative, politically libertarian, and interested in both politics and philosophy, this looked like quite just the thing for me. However the first thing I saw come into my reader, was a blog from the site criticizing the idea that "Jesus loves Osama."

In case you haven't heard, there has been some controversy over an Australian Baptist church who put a sign in front of their church proclaiming "Jesus loves Osama." The complaint against these zealous Christians appears to be somewhat reasonable: the church could have used a less "controversial" way of spreading the gospel.

It is to be expected that the Richard Dawkinses of the world indignantly voice their disdain for the irrationality of the Christian religion, and to use an example such as this as evidence of their obnoxious claims. But for a blog that claims to be conservative, one would expect a familiarity with Christianity. Instead Ben-Peter Terpstra informs his readers that Jesus was a "military hawk," and that when Jesus said to love one's enemies, he meant only in peacetime, in "social situations." But not "child killing terrorists." This is war.

It shouldn't have to be pointed out that it wouldn't be unusual for Roman soldiers to kill a child, and that Israel was under the occupation of Imperial Rome, and that Jesus was not only physically assaulted, but unjustly murdered by Romans soldiers. And it wasn't only Jesus who would be tortured and murdered by the Roman machine, but many of his followers as well. And yet, knowing this, Christ still followed his dictum: "love your enemies." There is no qualification to this. It is a categorical, and not a hypothetical, command. This does not mean that just war is ruled out. Just war theory is firmly ensconced in Christian tradition, and does not necessarily conflict with the command to love. But as firmly established as just war theory is, the universal command to love is even better established. In fact, it is at the heart of Christianity.

This command seems counter-intuitive and impractical. Much of what Jesus said was: that was the whole point. Nietzsche called it a moral "slave revolt." And unlike some curious things Jesus had to say -- hate your mother and father, for instance -- the command to love ones enemies is straightforward. Interpretations such as the one on the "Intellectual Conservative" blog can only come about when one's politics are more important than ones Christian faith. And while it is unfortunate that any interest should supersede one's faith, it is another thing entirely when an interest turns ones Christianity upside down.

The Problem of Evil in "The Brothers Karamosov": Interpretations by Peter Kreeft and David B. Hart

2007-02-16T17:33:00.000-08:00

I. Introduction.
The most effective argument against the existence of a good God is the existence of suffering. There are many other arguments against theism, but none of them reach beyond the intellect into the emotions with such tremendous impact. Few believers would lose their faith because of the argument that the term “God” is not cognitively meaningful, nor because some modern scientists might claim to have rendered God obsolete by explaining the world more consistently and completely than Christianity ever could. Though the problem of evil begins in the intellect as a logical dichotomy, it finds its emotional force in the pains of every day experience. Intellectual life may often be so strongly divorced from practical life that an ordinary person may recognize the strength of an argument, but not accept it because it lacks emotional appeal. That is not so easy with the argument from pain. Suffering is one aspect that enters into every aspect of our life, so much so that Thomas Hobbes characterized life as “nasty, brutish, and short.” While this is an overly pessimistic view of life, there is no denying the staggering ubiquity of suffering and death throughout the world.

Here is the most simplistic form of the problem: either God is all-good and not all-powerful, or he is all-powerful and not all-good. To illustrate how this works in practice, let us take the case of a child dying of leukemia. God either wills that the child die, or he wills that the child does not die. In the first case he is not good. In the second, he does not have the power to execute his will. This is the problem of evil in its simplest form.

II. Rebellion.
The most sophisticated and gut-wrenching version of this argument appears in Dostoyevsky’s book The Brothers Karamazov. The chapter entitled “Rebellion” (or in some translations, “Mutiny”) is the account of a conversation between two brothers; one an intellectual named Ivan, and the other a devout Orthodox monk named Alyosha.

Ivan unrelentingly narrates horrific stories of human cruelty and suffering to Alysha. Ivan collects stories of various atrocities from the newspapers (which happen to be actual stories Dostoyevsky collected). With an almost maniacal fervor, Ivan relates the atrocities committed by the Turks in Bulgaria. He tells of unborn children torn from inside their mothers, tossed into the air, and caught on the points of bayonets in full view of their mothers for the demented pleasure of the Turkish soldiers. He tells how these soldiers would entertain another baby, while it was held in its mothers arms. They would laugh so that the child would laugh as well, and as the child laughed, a soldier presented his pistol to the baby. The child, entranced by the metallic luster of the weapon, reaches out, and the soldier pulls the trigger.

Even the more “civilized” people of Western Europe have their cruelty, Ivan contends. He retells a story he read in a pamphlet from France of a man named Richard. Richard was sold as a slave when he was young by his parents to a group of shepherds. As he grew, the shepherds treated him like a beast, and did not even deem him fit to eat the food of pigs. As an adult, he left the shepherds and, to survive, became a thief. Eventually, his life of crime escalated, and he murdered an old man. He was caught, put on trial, found guilty, and sentenced to death. While in prison, he was converted by a group of Christians. They taught him to read, and convinced him to confess his crime. He did, and the whole town embraced him as a fellow Christian, and he was often referred to as a “prodigal child.” He had found his way home, to Christ, and to the love of his Christian brethren. Like the father in the Biblical story of the prodigal child, they rejoiced of his return home, they wept tears of joy, and they praised the redeeming grace of God. Unlike the father of the prodigal child, they chopped off poor Richards head. He had shed blood, they said. They were not sad, but celebratory, for today he was going to the Lord. One wonders why, if this were such a happy occasion, those righteous villagers did not follow suit.

Ivan notes that this seems incomprehensible to Russians such as himself and Alyosha, so he continues with stories native to Russia. He begins by relating a trial of parents who used corporal punishment on their daughter. They beat her with a birch rod, often for excessive periods of time. Their defense attorney argued that all Russian parents beat their children -- as if this justifies anything -- and the jury agreed. Ivan proceeds to the story of other parents, “most worthy and respectable people”[1], who also punished their daughter of five. But they had more cultivated, artistic methods than most Russian parents. “They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for no reason till her body was one bruise.”[2] Then they moved on to more “refined” methods of torture. They shut her out all night in the outhouse during the Russian winters because she soiled herself. As punishment, her mother forced excrement into her mouth. “And it was her mother, her mother that did this.” At night, the child cried out, but her parents did not let it disturb their sleep. Ivan asks Alyosha: “Can you understand why a little creature, who can’t even understand what’s done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek uneventful tears to dear, kind God to protect her?”[3]

Ivan tells one more story. A former military general retires to his country estate with many slaves in tow. One day, an eight year old slave boy was throwing stones, and accidentally hit one of the generals hounds in the foot. The general noticed that his dog was limping, and he soon found out why. He ordered the boy to be taken from his mother, and to be locked up all night. In the morning he assembled all his court, his hunting party, and his servants. He made sure that the mother of the boy had a front row seat. He ordered the boy to strip, and then to run. And as the boy ran, the general set his hunting hounds upon him, and the dogs tore him to pieces.

Ivan explains his purpose in telling these stories to his visibly shaken brother. He is addressing the human suffering, the problem of evil. He chooses children as his primary subjects because while one may claim solidarity for men in sin and in retribution, children may not be counted as part of that number. Children are innocent, they have not yet “bitten into the apple,” and it is not just to make them pay for their fathers sins. Ivan’s argument is not intended to argue against the existence of God, but against the existence of a good God. It is often argued that a good God allows these things to happen because they bring about a future paradise and an eventual end to suffering. One cannot know good unless one knows evil, or so the saying goes. The theodocists argue that God allows these things to happen for to purpose of a final restoration, when all will be forgiven. Ivan freely acknowledges that perhaps someday the murdered child will forgive his murderer, and the tortured girl her parents. Everyone will cry out “Thou art just, Lord” as his plan is finally revealed, and the reason for these sufferings is finally understood. In a way, Ivan wants this restoration, he wants universal forgiveness and love. But he cannot accept the price of paradise, “for the love of humanity I don’t want it.”[4] For Ivan, the end does not justify the means. Richard was still executed, the girl of five was still tortured horribly, the boy of eight was still torn apart by dogs. These things are unjust, and no effect they may bring about makes them any more just. If the price for eternal bliss or for knowledge of good and evil is the suffering of a child, then Ivan says it is not worth the price.

Ivan freely admits that he cannot love his neighbor well, and he makes no claim to be as righteous as his monastic brother. But as much as he desires cosmic peace and universal harmony, he has enough love for his neighbor that he cannot accept another’s suffering as the price in good conscience. If God uses the suffering of children to bring about His purposes, then he cannot love men even as much as Ivan does. Ivan’s objection is not out of some squeamishness, it is a fundamentally moral objection. And Ivan is not even a particularly moral man, but if God did indeed allow (or especially cause) the sufferings of children for His purposes, then a fortiori even Ivan is more moral than God. Finally, Ivan asks Alyosha:

“Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature--that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance--and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell me the truth.”
“No, I wouldn’t consent,” said Alyosha softly.[5]

III. Making Sense of Suffering
Peter Kreeft is a popular Roman Catholic apologist, and a professor of philosophy as Boston College. His book Making Sense Out of Suffering concerns itself with the problem of evil. The first chapter of the book is replete with stories of suffering, and here he includes Ivan’s complaint as “the most powerful argument for atheism“ that he has ever encountered.[6] He concludes his initial recitation of Ivan’s remarks by saying “the case against God can be quite simply put like this: ‘How can a mother trust and love a God who let her baby die?’”

Kreeft identifies Ivan Karamazov as an atheist such as Camus. It should be noted that Ivan is not necessarily an atheist in the strong sense of the term. He never positively affirms that he believes that there cannot be a God, since this goes beyond the limits of our finite, Euclidian minds. He seems to not believe in God, but he also seems to recognize his own belief as mere opinion.

Peter Kreeft sees in Ivan Karamazov an articulate and powerful expression of the problem of evil, but little more. For Kreeft, Ivan (or Dostoyevsky) has simply stated the problem more powerfully than anyone else. Unfortunately, Kreeft does not spend much time putting Ivan’s argument into context, which is very important to understanding what Ivan is saying.

Ivan is living in Russia in a time when Western modernity was invading a more traditional -- and traditionally Christian -- Russian culture. He was heavily influenced by Western thinkers, and in his intellectual life (which can be distinguished from his practical life) he was perhaps more Western than Russian. Therefore his idea of God was one influenced by Western theology. It is critical to understand that the Eastern Christian idea of God differs very strongly on important theological points from western Catholic or especially Protestant conceptions of God. One of these is that the Russians believe in the possibility of a universal reconciliation, where all are eventually saved, and even pray for the salvation of the devil in their liturgies. One can see the traces of this idea in Ivan’s tirade, in his conception of the final restoration, though he still objects to the this restoration on moral grounds. This and other beliefs that the Russian Orthodox profess lead to a far more kind version of God than the -- perhaps caricatured -- juridical Judge of the West.[7] The Western conception of God tends to -- at least at first glance -- attribute to Him a certain causal link to evil which is not often found in Orthodoxy. It is this assumption about God, that He necessarily uses suffering to bring about his plan, which Ivan finds revolting. This assumption seems to be shared by Kreeft, but it would not be by most Russian Orthodox.

Kreeft makes no mention of these difference between the Christian East and West, and so he seems to conclude that Ivan is not significantly different than a typical western atheist. Consequently, he does not spend an exorbitant amount of time on Dostoyevsky, and finds in The Brothers Karamazov no unique formulation of the problem of evil, nor any answer to it. This is peculiar, because, as Kreeft notes, Dostoyevsky was a fervent believer. It would be quite peculiar for a believer as fervent as Dostoyevsky to create such a gripping case for atheism, and not adequately answer it (though some critics have said he does precisely this).

In any case, Kreeft declares the problem of evil to have no simple answer. He spends the rest of his book attempting to give an answer to the problem of evil. Despite his claim in the beginning of the book that the book was written to atheists (as well as believers and agnostics) the arguments in the book suffer from the flaw that they are only convincing if the reader is a Christian. And not only a Christian, but one whose beliefs are compatible with Kreeft’s own moderate Catholicism. Kreeft’s answer to the problem of evil heavily depends upon a prior belief in the existence of a good God. Therefore, in order to deal with Ivan’s argument, he must first “demonstrate” the existence of this God. However, he makes no extensive attempt at arguing for the existence of God, though he alludes to “at least fifteen different arguments for God.” Presumably no atheist would be convinced merely by the claim that there are good arguments for the existence of God without at least seeing them. But Kreeft only mentions one: that the existence of evil proves God. He says it proves God in five ways.

The first way is that if there is no God, then the universe would be eternal.[8] Since, in the absence of God, evolution would have “provided our world” (whatever that means), since evolution continually improves the universe, and since evolution has had an infinite time in which to accomplish its work, the very existence of evil disproves atheism. This argument contains a number of bewildering assumptions. First, scientists do not maintain the universe is eternal, but that it originated about 13.7 billion years ago. Second, by evolution Kreeft means biological evolution, which requires life before it can even begin its process. The idea that evolution acts on planetary systems shows either incredible ignorance (considering Kreeft is a professor) or outright disingenuousness. Even if the universe were eternal, life would not necessarily be eternal, and so evolution does not have to stretch back across an infinite period of time. Kreeft also does not bring up the possibility of eternal recurrence popularized by Nietzsche, and suggested by some physicists. Cyclical time would render Kreefts argument irrelevant. Furthermore, no reputable evolutionist would claim that evolution proceeds towards any moral perfection. It is disappointing that such an embarrassingly inept argument comes from a professor of philosophy. Even if his assumptions were correct, he could only infer that some cause began the universe (as Hume would be quick to note), but certainly nothing approaching the Christian God (a good God) that takes a continued interest in the universe.
The second way is that spiritual, moral evil cannot arise from “blind matter.”[9] This is probably his strongest argument, in that most people (even many atheists) believe in the existence of evil. But here one may easily object that their view of morality has no need of any spiritual evil to exist in its own right, but only events that cause humans to suffer (David Hume explains evil quite satisfactorily in this way). One may call these events “evil” without any need to appeal to the separate existence of any spiritual evil. Further, this argument is odd, in that Kreeft gives evil some metaphysical status. Evil, he says, “arises,” therefore it is a thing which has a cause. This thing, evil, cannot have arisen from matter, but has a distinct spiritual existence. However, Kreeft elsewhere explicitly refuses to grant that evil has any metaphysical status. “Evil is not a thing, an entity, a being.”[10] And the testimony of the whole of Christian tradition is in agreement on this point. For Kreeft’s second argument to have any force, evil must be a thing with a cause.

The third way Kreeft attempts to argue for the existence of God is a variant of St. Thomas Aquinas’ fourth way.[11] He says that because we can distinguish good from evil there must be some supreme standard of good which we must have to base this judgment on. This argument is tenuous at best, as it may easily be argued that there is no need for the standard to actually exist outside of the mind. As long as men have an idea of perfection, there is no need for this idea to exist as an attribute of a being (or in this case, a super-being). The argument does not establish the actual existence of this supreme standard, only its mental existence. Ironically enough, this is St. Thomas Aquinas’ criticism of Anselm’s formulation of the ontological argument. This idea does not even need to be a perfect one, it only requires people to think that it is perfect. And if man creates his own gods, it is no stretch to say he may derive from these his morality. Furthermore, even if one grants that there must be some independently existing standard, there is no need to ascribe to it omnipotence, will, or any other attributes of God.

The fourth way does not really appear in the form of an argument. Kreeft claims that atheism is cheap, as anyone who has sat by the deathbed of a child who desire hope and meaning can tell you. Atheism, he says, cannot explain death. This assumes that there is something that can be explained, and it is no stretch to say that death is an absurdity. Many, if not most Christians maintain this. His argument proves no more than that people generally desire meaning in a religious way, and this in no way proves (or even indicates) the existence of the afterlife, or of God, only the desirability of these things. And as Albert Camus said, “seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.”

Kreeft further claims that atheism is cheap because it strips meaning from life. However, many existentialists have maintained that it is religion that actually strips meaning from life by having people place their hopes in some future world at the expense of this one. And if there is no afterlife, they are surely correct.

In any case, Kreeft fails to prove or even indicate the existence of God. His arguments assume things even he himself does not believe. This is critical not only because he would fail to persuade any atheist or agnostic reader, but because, without proving the existence of God, his answer to Ivan’s atheism is carries no weight.

Kreeft finally attempts his answer to Ivan close to the end of his book. He says:

Because of resurrection, when all our tears are over, we will, incredibly, look back and laugh, not in derision, but in joy. We do a little of that even now… Remember St. Teresa’s bold saying that from heaven the most miserable earthly life will look like one bad night in an inconvenient hotel!
Why then does Ivan remain an atheist? Because though be believes, he does not accept. He is not a doubter, he is a rebel. Like his own character in the Grand Inquisitor, Ivan is angry at God for not being kinder. That is the deepest source of unbelief: not the intellect, but the will. [12]

Kreeft makes no explicit note that Ivan has already dealt with this answer. Ivan explicitly acknowledges that there may be a time when the victims of his stories forgive and embrace their assailants, a time when he too will shout with the multitude “Thou art just, Lord.” But while he is on earth, while he sticks to the facts of human suffering, he cannot accept with a clean conscience these sufferings as God’s plan. “It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to 'dear, kind God'!” Even hell for the murderers would not right this wrong, as the suffering of the guilty would serve no purpose. Kreeft characterizes the objectors such as Ivan’s as “a little child with tears in its eyes looking up at Daddy and weeping, ‘Why?’”[13] If suffering is a part of God’s plan, as Kreeft supposes, it might be more accurate to say that objectors to God are like children who are allowed to be tortured by a careless or even malevolent father for purposes which they know nothing about.

It is safe to say that Ivan would not accept Kreeft’s answer. Kreeft did not refute Ivan’s argument, nor did he seem to understand its complexity. There is something in the heart of Ivan’s tirade that is not simply to be discarded as atheism which lacks an eternal perspective.

III. The Doors of the Sea
David Bentley Hart is a prominent Eastern Orthodox theologian who has taught at a number of universities, including Duke Divinity School and St. Thomas Aquinas University. He wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Tremors of Doubt” soon after the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake in 2004 which probably killed almost 250,000 people. The article was a response to the triumphal cries of atheistic journalists who were all to happy to declare that a disaster on this scale proves the non-existence of God. In the article he wrote that the Christian God, unlike the Deist God, could not be held responsible for the earthquake nor for the lives taken. He did not “cause” the earthquake with any intent to further his hidden plans. Hart wrote that, as Christians:

When confronted by the sheer savage immensity of worldly suffering--when we see the entire littoral rim of the Indian Ocean strewn with tens of thousands of corpses, a third of them children's--no Christian is licensed to utter odious banalities about God's inscrutable counsels or blasphemous suggestions that all this mysteriously serves God's good ends. We are permitted only to hate death and waste and the imbecile forces of chance that shatter living souls, to believe that creation is in agony in its bonds, to see this world as divided between two kingdoms--knowing all the while that it is only charity that can sustain us against "fate," and that must do so until the end of days.

The article cause as much of a stir among Christians as among non-Christians, and he followed it with an article in First Things magazine, and finally, once more, with the book: The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God During the Tsunami? In this book, Hart places Ivan Karamazov as a peculiarly powerful form of the problem of evil, and the key to the Christian understanding of the solution to that problem.

Hart’s project in The Doors of the Sea is not necessarily to convince any atheist to accept Christianity, though the atheist outraged at Christianity because of the idea of a malevolent God who causes suffering for His glory would find his anger quite misdirected. He simply attempts to expound on the Christian understanding of suffering. In doing this, he does not need his readers to assume that Christianity is necessarily true, nor does he need to prove the existence of God (the probably impossible burden that was necessary to Kreeft‘s argument). Hart’s only motive was to clarify the Christian position on the subject.

David Hart emphasizes that Ivan does not represent himself as an atheist, but as a rebel. Ivan can accept that there may be a God who is guiding all things towards an eternal restoration. But he cannot assent to this world, nor this process of restoration, nor the Heaven that comes with it. As Hart says, “the terms of the final happiness God intends for his creatures are greater than his conscience can bear.”[14] Ivan wants this final happiness, and it is not heaven itself that Ivan rejects, but the it is the cost he cannot accept with his moral integrity intact. Hart continues:

I am convinced that Ivan’s discourse… constitutes the only challenge to a confidence in divine goodness that should give Christians serious cause for deep and difficult reflection. Those readers who have found it easy to ignore or dispenses with the case that Dostoyevsky constructs for Ivan have not, I submit, fully comprehended the case (or, alternatively, have comprehended it, but adhere to so degenerate a version of Christian doctrine that they can no longer be said to understand the God revealed in Christ). The reason for this (which is so vital that one should understand) is that, at base, Ivan’s is a profoundly and almost prophetically Christian argument.[15]

In Hart we find a sharp divergence from Kreeft’s opinion. Kreeft considered Ivan’s argument to be inherently atheistic, Hart considers it to be, at its core, Christian. One possible reason their views so sharply diverge is that Hart is Orthodox, as Dostoyevsky was. Kreeft, on the other hand, demonstrates little knowledge of Orthodoxy.[16]

But Hart’s claim is, on its face, exceedingly puzzling. Ivan said he rejects God! He says that he willingly returns his ticket to heaven! This is not a man who -- at least at first glance -- bears much of a resemblance to a Christian.

Hart takes a brief intermission from talking specifically about Ivan, to discuss what is unique about the Christian worldview, and, more specifically the nature of the God to his creation. He is not himself a being, but the source of being. Therefore, in a technical sense, God does not exist, but he is the source of all things that do exist. Furthermore, he has given the universe its own being; dependant upon him for existence, but with its own processes that are not determined directly by God’s will.

What then are we to say of Divine providence? Certainly Hart does not advocate a Deist concept of God; he does not give up his power over creation. Yet, the triumph of sin has put creation under powers hostile to God. Hart cautions Christians to equate power and control. Despite God’s transcendent government of all things, he does not will sin and death. “Providence,” Hart says, “is not the same thing as a universal teleology. To believe in divine and unfailing providence is not to burden ones conscience with the need to see every event in this world not only as an occasion of God’s grace.” Providence operates at a higher level than that of immediate causes. It preserves created freedom, while at the same time not ultimately allowing that freedom to prevent God from accomplishing his purposes. This is not to say that there is some mysterious method whereby God, not bound by finite, worldly mechanisms of cause and effect, can still transcendently cause human decisions while at the same time preserving human freedom. Whether God is a being among others or the source of all being, free choice is compromised if the choice of an agent is pre-determined. In this case there is no true choice, and this scheme is just a dressed up version of determinism. Providence, according to Hart, does not cripple human free will, but rather works through good choices and despite bad ones. Hart stresses -- citing Aquinas -- that the particular events brought about by free beings may be in themselves contrary to God’s will, yet he maintains that God, in his omnipotence, can still bring about his purposes.

This distinction is important, because Hart goes on to maintain that the New Testament contains a radical dualism, in which this world, as a result of an ancient cosmic catastrophe, is a shadow of the world God intended. This catastrophe -- the fall -- was not willed by God (as Calvin unfortunately asserts), but came about as the result of an angelic fall, which in turn resulted in the human fall. The fall alienated the cosmos from God and itself, and subjected it to a distorted and newly dangerous “nature”. Humans were created to be a sort of link between the natural and supernatural realms, being both a spiritual and material creature. The original sin, freely chosen, severed this link, and the natural world lost its order and descended into chaos. This disaster was contrary to God’s intentions, and God began the work of Redemption, to redeem the cosmos. This message has been somewhat garbled in modern times, particularly by Protestants influenced by Calvin, but there can be no doubt this is no deviation from the original Christian doctrine.[17]

Furthermore, the notion that God wills evil is a priori incorrect. It would be contrary to what has been revealed about the nature of God -- to the admittedly meager and insufficient “definition” of God -- to say that he does. Hart points out “[God’s] freedom is the impossibility of any force, pathos, or potentiality interrupting the perfection of his nature… To require evil to bring about his good ends would make him less than the God he is.” The argument has been made that it is not an incapacity in God, but in man that requires evil in order that the greatness of God be made more evident. But this still requires a deficiency in God’s greatness, a dependence for his own visibility on something entirely antithetical to it. Furthermore, it would mean that God created creatures not entirely good, with a certain need for evil. More bizarrely, eventually, sin is rewarded, and humanity is granted a greater reward than if they had never fallen. Finally, on a metaphysical level, that view must grant evil substance, and -- since God is the source of all things -- requires God to be a source of evil.

Hart says -- summarizing the basic theme of Christian tradition -- that Christians are engaged in a cosmic battle over the earth, between Satan and his forces, who Hart thinks of as all to real, and God and those aligned with him. The forces which cause human suffering, death, and waste are those God is combating, and he is doing so in a way that does not destroy human freedom, which would essentially destroy what makes men human.

This is the way he answers the dilemma of the problem of suffering. God is all-powerful, and he does not wish suffering. However, by using sheer force to destroy suffering, he would also have to destroy the source of that suffering: the free will. Yet freedom of will is what makes us human, it is a part of the image of God within us.

Hart argues that Ivan’s rage is not really directed at God, but to the more immediate principalities of this world: the forces of evil which attempt to use destruction and suffering for their purposes. His revolt is the revolt of the Christian, the rebellion against pagan necessity. Hart says:

This is why I say that, within Ivan’s arraignment of God’s design in creation, one can hear the suppressed but still prophetic voice of a deeper, truer, more radical and revolutionary Christianity. For if indeed there were a God whose nature -- whose justice or sovereignty -- were revealed in the death of a child or the dereliction of a soul or a predestined hell, then it would be no great transgression to think of him as a kind of malevolent or contemptible demiurge, and to hate him, and to deny him worship, and to seek a better God than he. But Christ has overthrown all those principalities that rule without justice and in defiance of charity, and has cast out the god of this world, and so we are free (even now, in this mortal body) from slavery to arbitrary power, from fear of hell’s domination, and from any superstitious subservience to fate. And this is the holy liberty -- the gospel -- that lies hidden but active in the depths of Ivan’s rebellion.[18]

VI. The Application of Ivan’s Argument to Reformed Theology.
Though Ivan’s argument is aimed at metaphysical optimists such as Gottfried Liebniz, it is particularly applicable -- albeit in a different way -- to traditional reformed theology. Liebniz’ God allowed suffering because it was necessary in this, the best of all possible worlds. One can clearly see, in the language of Ivan Karamazov a familiarity with Liebnizian philosophy. However, the target of his diatribe could have just as easily been Calvin, and those who followed in his footsteps. In fact, whereas the criticisms of those such as Voltaire and Ivan are not truly aimed at the traditional Christian God, who does not bear responsibility for all the events in the world; Calvin’s conception of God does just that, and therefore those criticisms are directly applicable.

This rigorous Reformed position, typified by Calvin, does not make the distinction between primary and secondary causality, and thus conflates God’s will with creation. Because Calvin confines God to the realm of secondary causality (what we typically think of when we think of a “cause“), everything that happens is God‘s will. Everything. This is clearly seen in the writings of B. B. Warfield: “For when we say God, we say control. If a single creature which God has made has escaped beyond his control, at the moment that he has done so he has abolished God. A God who could or would make a creature whom he could not or would not control, is no God. The moment he would make such a creature he would, of course, abdicate his throne. The universe he had created would have ceased to be his universe, or rather it would cease to exist - for the universe is held together only by the control of God.” For one who does not make the distinction between primary and secondary causes God’s power is limited solely to control, and he is insufficiently powerful to create truly free creatures.

Though some distinction may be attempted between the way God causes things and their proximate physical causes, the result is still determinism. Everything that happens in the universe must happen in that particular way and no other. Thus, the responsibility for evil rests squarely on the shoulders of God, even though it may be shared by others. Any attempt to insulate God from evil by claiming exemption for him due to his transcendence is mere sophistry, and is incoherent.

John Calvin was aware of God‘s supposed involvement in the fall. “I admit that in this miserable condition wherein men are now bound, all of Adam’s children have fallen by God’s will.”[20] It is somewhat common practice to note that God’s justice is not like ours, and that his ways are above ours. This is no doubt true, but it is also an abuse of language when used to justify the idea that God wills suffering. It strips words of their meaning. To say that God is good is not to say that his goodness is identical to ours, but that it is in some way analogous (or perhaps even, in Platonic terms, to say our good is derived from the Good). To say that God is responsible (even if not solely) for the all the suffering in the world, would not mean that we should call him good, even though are terms are hardly even approximations, but evil. All the platitudes in the world about his other-ness are meaningless, for he would truly be our enemy. If Calvin is correct, God would be the cause of the little girl crying out in misery from her Russian outhouse, and of the slave boy torn to pieces. Worse, these things would be done not even be primarily for a future paradise for long-suffering humanity, but for God’s glory. What do the shrieks of suffering children profit God?

Between the God of Christian tradition and the much younger God of Reformed theology the difference lies not merely in fine ontological distinctions. It is the nature of God himself at stake, and there may be no reconciliation. Ivan shows in a compelling and dramatic manner, that one may not believe in a God which causes the suffering with their moral sense intact. A God that would torture a baby is not a good God, yet his sheer power and incredible animosity would compel all but the most courageous of us to submit in fear of eternal damnation. Only a man like Ivan, a man whose conscience is stronger than his sense of self-preservation, would have the courage to stand futilely against that hideous strength, and bear the consequences of his rebellion.

VII. Conclusion.
Peter Kreeft and David Hart’s understanding of the Ivan Karamazov’s argument in Rebellion differ radically. For Kreeft, Ivan is the prototypical atheist, one with which a Christian apologist such as himself must lock horns with in opposition. Kreeft does not consider Ivan to have the understanding of the problem of evil that a Christian does, since he lacks the proper perspective on the nature and plan of God.

David Hart sees much more in Ivan. Ivan is not a Christian, but within him there is the spark of Christianity; in fact, Hart says, the spark of the Gospel. Ivan’s rejection of fate, of death and waste, is an inherently Christian act. He chooses to follow his conscience, even if it leads him to eternal damnation, because he cannot stomach a transcendent but malevolent power that causes, exults, or even uses the deaths of children. He does not need to euthanize his intuitive moral sense, as many theologians have done to blind themselves to their God‘s crimes. His mistake is in fact confusing God with Satan, the god of this world.

Hart’s analysis shows a far deeper understanding of Dostoyevsky, and his character, Ivan. His view explains why Dostoyevsky, a Christian, would have created such a powerful case for -- at least at first glance -- atheism. Further, his view of Christianity appears far more deep, and more deeply rooted in Christian tradition (his intimate knowledge of the breadth of both Eastern and Western philosophical and theological traditions is impressive, to say the least). Finally, he allows those who are nauseated by the idea -- so often put forward by many some Christians -- of a God who in some way causes or glories in the horrors of human suffering to be reconciled with Christianity. The Christianity that Hart clarifies and recommends does not require one to smother their moral sense in order to believe in a God who, by any reasonable standard, is positively wicked.

Endnotes:

1 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (New York: Signet Classics, 1999), p. 286.
2 Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, p 287.
3 Ibid.
4 Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, p 291.
5 Ibid.
6 Peter Kreeft, Making Sense out of Suffering (Cincinnati: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 1986) p. 8.
7 For an interesting picture -- though one overly polemical in tone -- of the Orthodox reaction to the juridical nature of much of Western theology, one may look at the text of Dr. Alexandre Kalomiros’ speech “River of Fire” which can be found at http://www.orthodoxpress.org/parish/river_of_fire.htm
8 Kreeft, Making Sense out of Suffering, p. 30-31.
9 Kreeft, Making Sense out of Suffering, p. 31.
10 Kreeft, Fundamentals of the Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988) p. 55.
11 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Prima Pars, Question 2, Article 3.
12 Kreeft, Making Sense out of Suffering, p. 139-140.
13 Kreeft, Making Sense out of Suffering, p. pg 129.
14 David B. Hart, Doors of the Sea: Where was God During the Tsunami? p. 39.
15 Hart, Doors of the Sea: Where was God During the Tsunami? p. 42.
16 This is evident in Kreeft, The Fundamentals of the Faith, p. 262.
17 For a more broad example of the Christian conception of the cosmos and the fall, it may be enlightening to read St. Athanasius’ On the Incarnation of Christ.
18 Hart, Doors of the Sea: Where was God During the Tsunami? p. 92.
19 Jean Calvin, Institutes, bk. 3, ch. 23, s. 4.

The UK Kernel and Murdering Civilians for Convenience

2007-02-16T13:15:00.000-08:00

At the end of January, the UK campus paper published an editorial by Wes Blevins which proscribed as the solution in Iraq an escalation in violence on the civilian population. I found the advocation of an attack upon innocents particular disturbing, especially given the racist undertones of the editorial, and so I penned a guest editorial and emailed it to the opinions editor. It didn't run, which could have been because it wasn't up to Kernel quality. But I suspect it had more to do with the editor's personal politics. The editor is Wes Blevins. Here is the unpublished editorial:

-Guest Editorial-
Genocide is not a Morally Legitimate Option in Iraq

Now that the war in Iraq has failed, those who supported it have two options. They can either admit their error, or they can criticize the way in which the war was carried out, implicitly asserting that they would have done better themselves. No one likes to admit their own errors, especially in the realm of politics, where everyone feels they possess a right and a duty to vociferously pronounce their opinion, and so it is inevitable that the second course of action is the most popular.

Of course many criticisms may be made of the war in Iraq. Some may be made on principle, as, for example, the argument that the war does not satisfy the criterion for a just war. Others are made on more utilitarian grounds. This is the path most often taken by those pertinacious war supporters. And many legitimate points may be made here: for example, the inexpediency of the destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure.

This second option is the one that Opinions editor Wes Blevins adopted here in the pages of the Kernel. The reason we are losing in Iraq is because American soldiers are not fighting back “forcefully” enough. More specifically, in the information age, the ugliness of armed conflict is displayed in graphic detail, and the public is too squeamish to do what is necessary to win a war. For an example of how it should be done, we should look to conflicts such as World War II. We should be waging “total war,” Churchill style. Our examples should be “Dresden, Tokyo, Berlin, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.” All of these, we are told, are legitimate targets because they contain military infrastructure. Because it is ostensibly acceptable to attack military targets, the presence of military infrastructure legitimized the wholesale slaughter of civilians in the surrounding areas. Besides being a blatant example of the fallacy of composition, it is clear that Blevins approves of those acts precisely because of the civilian cost, not in spite of them, because they disheartened the enemy. He certainly admits that “no-one with a conscience” wants to see innocents die in war, yet it is precisely this conscientious objection among the general populace that has led to the deplorable attempt to minimize civilian casualties. The moral qualms must end, and the killing must begin in earnest. If an enemy is hiding in a populated area, he may be taken out without regard to the innocent civilians nearby (Blevins recommends the destruction of the whole building). Better yet, bombs should be dropped from high in the air on the unsuspecting heads of a civilian populace unfortunate enough to be in the proximity of where insurgents are suspected to be.

Blevins gets to the real question with surprising frankness. “For far too long, the question has been: Whose life is worth more, an American soldier's or an Iraqi civilian's? The answer should be clear, and prior to the information revolution, it was.” Though the candor is refreshing, the motivations behind it are quite disturbing. Does one's citizenship really affect the value of their life? Is a Frenchman worth more than a German? 2 Italians worth a Dutchman? Or is it just that Americans are superior to everyone else (in something other than narcissism)? Or perhaps it is not so much about nationality. Would Blevins say that an American soldier is worth more than a Swiss civilian? Or is it easier to express superiority over those of a different race? How exactly the answer to his question should be “clear” is itself opaque. Certainly, to one with a Christian conscience, the answer is clear: the nationality of a person has no bearing whatsoever on the (infinite) value of their life.

Since we are to take instances of genocide such as Dresden to be our example, why not just bomb whole cities until there is nothing left? Make every city that dares to oppose us another Fallujah. That would scare the Iraqis into submission. Then with the Iraqis bloodied, battered, and cowering before our ruthless military prowess, we could declare – again -- “mission accomplished!” But what is the nature of our victory? What precisely would we have won? Aren't we fighting for the Iraqis? We saved them from the murderous rule of Saddam, and now we are – the White House tells us -- to free them to live happily ever after in a Western style democracy. We are either fighting for the Iraqis or against them, it cannot be both.

Whether the increased slaughter of Iraqi civilians would be expedient is debatable. What is not, however, is that we will lose what moral high ground we have in Iraq. America will become what all mighty military power is without justice: murderous tyranny.

Thomas
Sophomore
Philosophy and Classics