Month: April 2010

The Conservative Versus the Radical

The following excerpts are from Richard Weaver's 1960 essay, "Conservatism and Libertarianism," reprinted in Life Without Prejudice and Other Essays (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1965), pp.
157-167:

It is my contention that that a conservative is a realist, who believes that there is a structure of reality independent of his own will and desire. He believes that there is a creation which was here before him, which exists now not by just his sufferance, and which will be here after he's gone. This structure consists not merely of the great physical world but also of many laws, principles, and regulations which control human behavior. Though this reality is independent of the individual, it is not hostile to him. It is in fact amenable by him in many ways, but it cannot be changed radically and arbitrarily. This is the cardinal point. The conservative holds that man in this world cannot make his will his law without any regard to limits and to the fixed nature of things. (158-159, italicized in the original.)

 [. . .]

The attitude of the radical toward the real order is contemptuous, not to say contumacious. It is a very pervasive idea in radical thinking that nothing can be superior to man. This accounts, of course, for his usual indifference or hostility toward religion and it accounts also for his impatience with existing human institutions. His attitude is that anything man wants he both can and shall have, and impediments in the way are regarded as either
accidents or affronts.

This is very easy to show from the language he habitually uses. He is a great scorner of the past and is always living in or for the future. Now since the future can never be anything more than one's
subjective projection and since he affirmed that he believes only in the future, we are quite justified in saying that the radical lives in a world of fancy. Whatever of the present does not accord with his notions he classifies as "belonging to the past," and this will be done away with as soon as he and his party can get around to it. Whereas the conservative takes his lesson from a past that has objectified itself, the radical takes his cues out of a future that is really the product of wishful thinking.

Compressing both passages into one sentence: The conservative is a reality-based thinker, whereas the radical is a utopian.

More on Scriptural Revelation

Joshua Orsak e-mails,

I really enjoyed your recent post on various ways to approach revelation. I, too, opt for something like option C. It is similar to Karl Barth's position: that the Bible is NOT the revelation of God, but a record of God's revelation to mankind. I find that shift to be vital. Many Christians engage in a kind of biblolatry, they seek to have a relationship with a book. I don't want to have a relationship with a book, I want to have a relationship with God. I am a minister, I love the Bible, I study it every day and I find it to be an important part OF my relationship with God, but it is NOT the sum total of that relationship.

Let me see if I understand the shift.  You seem to be distinguishing between the (human) record of God's revelation of certain truths to man and God's revelation of these truths.  That is a good distinction and I accept it.  You may also be distinguishing between God's revelation of certain truths to mankind and God's revelation of himself.  It could be that God reveals little or nothing about himself while revealing certain truths to mankind. (In the same way that an anonymous caller to the police could reveal the whereabouts of a bank robber without revealing anything about himself.) The phrase 'revelation of God' can be interpreted as either an objective or a subjective genitive.  Thus one could deny that the Bible is the revelation of God (objective genitive) while maintaining that the Bible is the revelation of God (subjective genitive).  Putting the two distinctions together, I interpret you to be saying that the Bible is the human record of the revelation by God to mankind of certain truths.  If that is what you mean, then I agree.  This allows us to rule out two notions that ought to be ruled out, namely, scriptural inerrancy and the notion that the Biblical revelation is final. Once we admit that the Bible is a human product, though not merely a human product, we will give up preposterous claims to inerrancy.  And if we grant that God does not primarily reveal himself in the Bible, then we will have much less reason to think that there cannot be any further divine-to-human communications.

I think that 'finding God' within scripture takes place because we have access to revelation that is outside scripture. We find some passage, some moment that 'links up' to an experience we have in our own lives, and we say 'yes, this matches, this fits'. It is because the Bible deepens and enlightens my own encounter with God's revelation that it has the weight it does with me. Peter Berger talks about a 'nexus' forming between our own experiences and scripture.

So thank you for your thoughts on this matter. I think they are spot on.  Peace and Blessings.

Writing as Religion

Here is quotation by way of an addendum to my last post.  John Gardner, On Writers and Writing, Addison-Wesley, 1994, p. 227:

What the writers I care most about do is to take fiction as the single most important thing in life after life itself — life itself being both their raw material and the object of their celebration. They do it not for ego but simply to make something singularly beautiful. Fiction is their religion and comfort: when they are depressed they go not to church or psychoanalysis but to Salinger or Joyce, early Malamud, parts of Faulkner, Tolstoy, or the Bible as book.

There are all sorts of false gods.

Poetry as a God Substitute?

From the mail:

Thanks for your blog. It deals with matters of real interest (…using the word 'interest' in its original sense of 'it matters').  [From Latin inter esse, which is suggestive.]

Perhaps you could elaborate on something you mentioned in your (very funny) post on some aphorisms of Wallace Stevens:

After one has abandoned a belief in god, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption. What a paltry redemption! It would be better to say that there is no redemption than to say something as silly as this. Learn to live with the death of God, my friend! Don't insert a sorry substitute into the gap. Don't try to make a religion of what is only a dabbling in subjective impressions. Compare John Gardner, "Fiction is the only religion I have . . . ." (On Writers and Writing, p. xii.)

I doubt you are saying that poetry, perhaps even all art, ‘is only a dabbling in subjective impressions’ because to say that Greek tragedy, for example, is only a dabbling in subjective impressions would surely be saying something even sillier than what Wallace Stevens says. Moreover, you mention that you have ‘nothing against art properly chastened and subordinated to the ultimate dominatrix, Philosophia’. So what did you mean?

Lastly, are there any books of literary criticism/aesthetics you think are especially worthwhile? It seems that apart from Plato and Aristotle, the best treatment of it outside of poets’ letters and journals is Jacques Maritain’s ‘Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry’.

Best wishes, and keep up the great work.

Thanks for the response.  It would indeed be absurdly silly to maintain that all of poetry is "only a dabbling in subjective impressions."  But note that the context is critical commentary on certain aesthetic aphorisms of the distinguished American poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955).  Wallace is the focus of my interest in that post and no one else.  And my focus is not on his poetry but on certain aesthetic (and thus philosophical) observations of his about poetry and art in general.

What I am objecting to in the passage you quote above, and quite strenuously, is the notion that poetry, especially Stevens' sort of poetry, could be an adequate substitute for God, or that belief in poetry could adequately substitute for belief in God.  To my mind that is silly, absurdly silly.  And Wallace's talk of redemption in this context makes a joke of the quest for genuine redemption. No one who understands what the religious yearning for redemption and salvation is all about could trivialize it in such a way as to suggest that the writing or reading of poetry could satisfy it.  That's ridiculous.  Imagine a naked Jew standing before a grave he was forced to dig himself, about to be shot down by a Nazi SS officer.  Imagine telling him that redemption from meaningless suffering is to be had from the poems of Wallace Stevens.

What I'm saying is: be honest and don't misuse words.  You cannot plug the gap caused by the death of God (Nietzsche) by putting some paltry idol in its place.  Poetry in Stevens' style would be such a paltry ersatz.  Better nihilism than idolatry.  The death of God is an 'event' of rather more significance than the discovery that Russell's celestial teapot has been destroyed by an asteroid.  The death of God, as Nietzsche well understood, has grave and far-reaching consequences.  Knock out the celestial teapot and nothing of moment changes. The death of God is the death of truth and meaning.  Everything changes.

As for your question about lit crit recommendations, I'd have to think about it.

The Lefty Lexicon

A U.K reader writes,

You may find this a useful aid for the political side of your blog :

The Lefty Lexicon.

Certain departments of my university are rife with political bias . It was quite the wake-up call  when I heard that my class-representative had been charged with the racist card by one of the professors for addressing complaints of students about the poor pronunciation of an African lecturer.  Surely this is a valid reason for complaint? I was under the impression that a University should provide intelligible lectures and that it is reasonable to discuss whether this is the case or not regardless of the race of the subjects involved.   I am flabbergasted that an ' accomplished ' professor of religious studies is unable to distinguish the separate questions of pronunciation and race . 

[You are flabbergasted because you have common sense, something leftists lack.  Here's hoping that your innate ability to think clearly will not be destroyed by your time at the university.]

But I suppose it is no surprise from a department that forbids and penalizes the use of the term  'Terrorism ' in essays on Islam and the West because it is a ' contaminated ' word. I can't wait to devote more time to the study of philosophy in my second year ; whether it is tinged with soulless 'scientism'  or not! (Unfortunately we are required to study three unrelated subjects in the 1st year)

Thank you for keeping me on the right track.

Do You Want an Academic Job?

Thomas H. Benton, Dodging the Anvil:

Essentially, if you want an academic job, you'd better be really good at what you do. You should be at a top university (although sometimes less-famous institutions can be effective at local placements); have at least a few high-quality publications, preferably in top-tier journals; have a dissertation that's nearly a publishable book, preferably under contract with a university press; be a charismatic and challenging teacher; be socially energetic without being threatening; have well-known and well-connected advisers who will support you without any reservations; be willing to live anywhere; be prepared to work as a visiting professor and move a few times in the first decade of your career; and be willing to live with the possibility that you will always have an itinerant, insecure, poorly compensated existence.

But you knew all that already.

Related posts, and links to two other earlier Benton pieces, are filed under Academia.

Four Slants on Scripture

Suppose you are a theist (classically defined) and are also open to  the possibility of divine revelation. Suppose further that you are  open to the possibility of a written revelation. Call the scripture of  a religion its 'Book.' The three Abrahamic religions, Judaism,  Christianity, and Islam, sometimes called 'religions of the Book,'  each have their Book. Let's not worry about overlap, or translation, or influence, or sectarian squabbles over the canonicity or otherwise of certain writings. Let's think like philosophers in terms of big broad possibilities of interpretation. A philosopher worth his salt goes for the big picture. He is out to reconnoitre the conceptual  landscape, not get lost in details. Off the top of my head, there are four main possible slants on scripture. These interpretations can be arranged on a spectrum from the radically transcendent to the utterly immanent.*

Continue reading “Four Slants on Scripture”

Can a Faith Commitment be Tentative?

Ed Farrell writes,

I greatly enjoy your blog and read it often.

I think your latest post (Mature Religion: More Quest than Conclusions) misses the mark.  For the believer of a revealed religion (I'm a Christian) the issue is not so much quest or conclusions as commitment.  It's true we can't know God in the sense you're speaking of but we can have faith that the biblical revelations are true as far as they go, which is to say in defining our relations to God and the terms of our reconciliation with Him.  The faith that's required here is not tentative but committed, because it will require action and probably sacrifice.  In this arena quest is put behind although theology may remain a kind of quest, for elucidation if not for the meaning supplied by faith.

Thanks for all your thought-provoking posts.

Thank you for writing, Mr. Farrell.  You too have a very interesting website.

You are right to point out the important role of faith.   I agree that faith, if it is genuine, must manifest itself in action and sacrifice.  Faith is not merely a verbal assent to certain propositions but a commitment to live in a certain way.  Where we seem to disagree is on the question whether a commitment can be tentative.  You write as if commitment excludes tentativeness, whereas I tend to think that a faith-commitment can and indeed must be tentative.  A living faith, one that is not a mere convenience, or merely a source of comfort or psychological security,  is one that regularly examines itself and is open to question.  A living faith is one that needs ongoing examination and renewal, with the possibility left open that the faith-commitment be modified or even abandoned.  But that does not imply that one does not act on one's commitments while they are in place.

The point of my post was that religion needs to be rescued from both the despisers and the dogmatists.  I expect that you'll agree that the nincompoops of the New Atheism with their flying spaghetti monsters and celestial teapots have no understanding of religion.  But neither can religion be reduced to doctrinal formulae that finitize the Infinite.  The spirit of my post is adumbrated in these sentences from Simone Weil's Gravity and Grace in the chapter, "Atheism as a Purification": "Of two men who have no experience of God, he who denies him is perhaps nearer to him than the others." (103) "Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith: in this sense atheism is a purification."

 

 

Mature Religion: More Quest than Conclusions

All genuine religion involves a quest since God must remain largely unknown, and this by his very nature. He must remain latens Deitas in Aquinas' phrase:

Adoro te devote, latens Deitas, Quæ sub his figuris vere latitas;
Tibi se cor meum totum subjicit, Quia te contemplans totum deficit.

Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore, Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more, See, Lord, at Thy service low lies here a heart Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.

(tr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, here.)
  
But as religion becomes established in the world in the form of churches, sects, and denominations with worldly interests, it becomes less  of a quest and more of a worldly hustle. Dogmatics displaces inquiry, and fund-raising faith. The once alive become ossified.

Mature religion must be more quest than conclusions. It is vastly more a seeking than a finding. More a cleansing of windows and a polishing  of mirrors than a glimpsing. And certainly more a glimpsing than a comfortable resting upon dogmas.  Perhaps when religion and philosophy are viewed as quests they merge into one another. (But compare Leo Strauss on the tension between Athens and Jerusalem!)

The critic of religion wants to pin it down, reducing it to dogmatic contents, so as to attack it where it is weakest. Paradoxically, the atheist 'knows' more about God than the sophisticated theist — he knows so much that he knows no such thing could exist. He 'knows' the divine nature and knows that it is incompatible with the existence of evil — to mention one line of attack. Aquinas, by contrast, held that the existence of God is far better known than God's nature — which remains shrouded in a cloud of unknowing.

The religionist also wants religion pinned down and dogmatically spelled out for purposes of self-definition, doxastic security, other-exclusion, worldly promotion and political leverage. This is a reason why reformers like Jesus are met with a cold shoulder — or worse.

 

The Bitch Impecunia

Many are the goddesses that tempt the young, the romantic, the idealistic.  Time's alchemy will cause the masks of some to slip and reveal the bitch Impecunia.  Cirmcumstances straitened by devotion to one's art  or one's cause are better tolerated in the days of youth.  I do not advise that you abandon your high aspirations: they may be what is best in you.  Just realize that you have to pay your dues if you want to play the blues.  It don't come easy.

The Pinocchio ‘Paradox’

This curious bagatelle is wending its way through the World Wide WebPinocchio.  The cartoon is supposed to be paradoxical in some way.  The reader who brought it to my attention writes, "A friend and myself actually debated this at length over lunch, and I argued that at best it is a performative inconsistency.  I'm sure you have a more nuanced opinion on this silly meme!"   

Well, let's see.  The salient feature of Pinocchio is that his nose grows whenever he tells a lie.  From this one guesses that the paradox has something to do with lying.  Now a lie is not the same as a false statement; it is a false statement made with the intention to deceive  by someone who knows the truth.  (Or so I will assume for the space of this post.)  If this is what a lie is, then one cannot lie about matters that are not objectively the case and known to be such.  Suppose I predict that tomorrow morning, at 6 AM, my blood pressure will be 125/75, but my prediction turns out false: my blood pressure the next morning is 135/85.  No one who heard my prediction could claim that I lied when I made it even if I had the intention of deceiving my hearers.  For although I made (what turned out to be) a false statement with the intention to deceive, I had no way of knowing exactly what my blood pressure would be the next day. 

Similarly with 'My nose will grow now.'  This  sentence does not express an intention on Pinocchio's part to bring about a nose lengthening by the power of his will since presumably he never has such an intention.  The sentence is a future tense sentence which predicts what is about to happen.  'Now' does not refer to the time of utterance, but to a time right after it.  (If you argue that the presence of 'now' renders the sentence present tense, then the sentence is incoherent, and the 'paradox' cannot get off the ground.) 

It follows that Pinocchio cannot be lying.  Assuming the Law of Excluded Middle and Bivalence, what he says is either true or false.  Either way, no paradox arises that I can see.

But suppose Pinnochio utters the present tense sentence, 'My nose grows now' or 'My nose is growing now.'  Does this issue in paradox?

If  Pinocchio says 'My nose  grows now,' he is either lying or not.   If he is lying, then he is making a false statement, which implies that his nose does not grow now.  If he is not lying, then his statement is either true or false, which implies that either his nose does grow now or his nose does not grow now.  Therefore, either his nose does not grow now or his nose does grow now.  But that is wholly unproblematic. 

Therefore I fail to find any paradox here if a paradox is either a logical consistency or a performative inconsistency. 

What am I missing?  There is a 2010 Analysis article under this rubric.  But I don't have access to it at the moment, and I'm not sure the topic is exactly the same.