Some have the religious sensibility (inclination, predisposition, call it what you will) and some don't. Here is one of several possible tests to see if you have it. Get hold of Augustine's Confessions and Pascal's Pensées. If you read these books and they do not speak to you at all, if they do not move you, if they leave you cold, if they do not in any measure inspire you to reform your life, then it is a good bet that you don't have a religious bone in your body. It is not matter of intelligence but of sensibility.
"He didn't have a religious bone in his body." I recall that line from Stephanie Lewis' obituary for her husband David, one of the most brilliant American philosophers of the postwar period. He was highly intelligent and irreligious. Others are highly intelligent and religious. Among contemporary philosophers one could mention Alvin Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen, and Richard Swinburne.
The belief that being intelligent rules out being religious casts doubt on the intelligence of those who hold it.
Levi Asher kindly linked to my Flannery O'Connor on the Beats and I return the compliment by pointing you to his Dirty Hippie Lit which will inform you of some recent developments in the world of Beat arcana.
Nirvana, n. In the Buddhist religion, a state of pleasurable annihilation awarded to the wise, particularly to those wise enough to understand it. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)
Although intended sardonically, there is a serious point here to which Maurice Blondel alludes in the following quotation:
. . . if there is a salvation it cannot be tied to the learned solution of an obscure problem. . . It can only be offered clearly to all. (Action, p. 14)
It might be fruitful for someone to develop a comparison of Buddhism and Christianity on this point. Buddhism is a religion of self-help: "Be ye lamps unto yourselves, etc." Trouble is, how many attain the Goal? And if only a few renunciates ever attain it, how does that help the rest of us poor schleps? By contrast, in Christianity, God, in the person of the Word (Logos) made flesh, does the work for us. Unable ultimately to help ourselves, we are helped by Another. And the help is available to all despite their skills in metaphysics and meditation. (By "do the work for us," I of course do not mean to suggest the sola fide extremism of some Protestants.)
Obviously, what I have just written is but a crude gesture in the direction of a whole constellation of problem-clusters. For example, a thorough comparison would have to go into the role of the Bodhisattva as a sort of helper of samsarically-bound 'schleps.'
The collectivist agenda is antithetical to America’s premise, which is: Government — including such public goods as roads, schools and police — is instituted to facilitate individual striving, a.k.a. the pursuit of happiness. The fact that collective choices facilitate this striving does not compel the conclusion that the collectivity (Warren’s “the rest of us”) is entitled to take as much as it pleases of the results of the striving.
Warren’s statement is a footnote to modern liberalism’s more comprehensive disparagement of individualism and the reality of individual autonomy. A particular liberalism, partly incubated at Harvard, intimates the impossibility, for most people, of self-government — of the ability to govern one’s self. This liberalism postulates that, in the modern social context, only a special few people can literally make up their own minds.
The place of philosophy in college curricula is often defended on the ground that its study promotes critical thinking.
Now I don't doubt that courses in logic, epistemology, and ethics can help inculcate habits of critical thinking and good judgment. And it may also be true that philosophy has a unique role to play here. So, while it is true that every discipline teaches habits of critical thinking and good judgment in that discipline, there are plenty of issues that are not discipline-specific, and these need to be addressed critically as well.
What I object to, however, is the notion that philosophy needs to justify itself in terms of an end external to it, and that its main justification is in terms of an end outside of it. The main reason to study philosophy is not to become a more critical reasoner or a better evaluator of evidence, but to grapple with the ultimate questions of human existence and to arrive at as much insight into them as is possible. What drives philosophy is the desire to know the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters. Let's not confuse a useful byproduct of philosophical study (development of critical thinking skills) with the goal of philosophical study. The reason to study English literature is not to improve one's vocabulary or to prepare for a career as a journalist. Similarly, the reason to study philosophy is not to improve one's ability to think clearly about extraphilosophical matters or to acquire skills that may prove handy in law school.
Philosophy is an end in itself. This is why it is foolish to try to convince philistines that it is good for something. It is not primarily good for something. It is a good in itself. Otherwise you are acquiescing in the philistinism you ought to be combating. Is listening to the sublime adagio movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony good for something? And what would that be, to impress people with how cultured you are?
To the philistine's "Philosophy bakes no bread" you should not respond "Yes it does," for such responses are patently lame. You should say, "Man does not live by bread alone," or "Not everything is pursued as a means to something else," or "A university is not a trade school." You should not acquiesce in the philistine's values and assumptions, but go on the attack and question his values and assumptions. Put him on the spot. Play the Socratic gadfly. If a philistine wants to know how much you got paid for writing an article for a professional journal, say, "Do you really think that only what one is paid to do is worth doing?"
Admittedly, this is a lofty conception of philosophy and I would hate to have to defend it before the uncomprehending philistines one would expect to find on the typical Board of Regents. But philosophy is what it is, lofty by nature, and if we are to defend it we must do so in a way that does not betray it.
It might be better, though, not to stoop to defend it at all, at least not before the uncomprehending. It might be better to show contempt and supercilious disdain. Not everyone can be reasoned with, and part of being reasonable is understanding this fact.
So they are in favor of open borders, presumably so that exotic Third World peasants can perform the labor to which they are noticeably averse. Of the 13 items on that “proposed list of demands,” Demand Four calls for “free college education,” and Demand Eleven returns to the theme, demanding debt forgiveness for all existing student loans. I yield to no one in my general antipathy to the racket that is American college education, but it’s difficult to see why this is the fault of the mustache-twirling robber barons who head up Global MegaCorp, Inc. One sympathizes, of course. It can’t be easy finding yourself saddled with a six-figure debt and nothing to show for it but some watery bromides from the “Transgender and Colonialism” class. Americans collectively have north of a trillion dollars in personal college debt. Say what you like about Enron and, er, Solyndra and all those other evil corporations, but they didn’t relieve you of a quarter-mil in exchange for a master’s in Maya Angelou. So why not try occupying the dean’s office at Shakedown U?
Those who play lotteries, by the very fact that they play, demonstrate the irrationality and lack of financial understanding that in many cases would ruin them were they so 'lucky' as to win. And yet people persist in the illusion that everything would be fine if a huge sum of money were suddenly dumped on their heads: money that they do not deserve and have done nothing to earn; money that has been taken from their fellow rubes on false pretenses by an illegitimate state apparatus the net effect of which is harmful.
Primum non nocere: first do no harm. That ought to be, but is not, the first principle of government.
In your recent post My Relation to Catholicism, you write; "For a religion to take root in a person, the person must have a religious nature or predisposition to begin with."
If this is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition of becoming, let's say, a Christian, it seems very close to the idea of predestination. Those who have the necessary (and inherent?) predisposition are among the few who have been "chosen" by God. Many others who neither have nor can acquire such a disposition, have no hope of salvation because they cannot will themselves to believe. This seems like an affront to divine justice. Maybe you'll say a few words about the "affront" of predestination as you expand on your religious views.
The truth of what the reader quotes me as saying was brought home to me once again yesterday over lunch with a friend. He is the same age as me, comes from a similar background, and also has a doctorate in philosophy. From the ages of 6 to 16, he attended a school run by Jesuits . So, starting as an impressionable first-grader, he was exposed to the full-strength pre-Vatican II Catholic doctrine sans namby-pamby liberal dilution. And this was in the '50s when distractions and temptations were much less than they are now. He was an altar boy, indeed the 'head' of the altar boys; he memorized all the Latin responses, and was so good at this that he was paid for his services at weddings and funerals. But despite the rites, rituals, and indoctrination from an early age, none of it took root in his inner being. It is not just that he sloughed it off later when pretty girls and other earthly delights proved to be irresistible; he told me that he never took it seriously in the first place. It was all just a load of hocus-pocus and mumbo-jumbo.
And now I am reminded of Tony Jones from high school days. He like to invert a favorite saying of St. Dominic Savio. The saint said, "Death before sin." Tony wrote in my graduation year book, "Remember my motto, 'Sin before death!'"
So I say that to take a religion, any religion, seriously one must possess an inner disposition, an inner religious sensibility. Some people are just inherently irreligious in the way others are unmusical or illogical or amoral or not disposed to appreciate poetry. No amount of indoctrination can make up for the lack. If you are illogical, no logic course can help you; all such a course can do it is articulate and make explicit the implicit logical understanding that must already be present if one is to profit from the formal study of the subject. If you cannot think in moral categories, if you have no nascent sense of right and wrong, no ethics course can help you.
One consequence of this is that there is no point to discussing religion with the irreligious. It cannot be anything other than superstitious nonsense to them. You may as well discuss colors with the color blind, music with the tone deaf, modal logic with those who are blind to modal distinctions.
Since my point is a general one, applying as it does to any religion, it is distinct from any Christian predestination doctrine. But if the religion in question is Christianity, then the reader makes an excellent point. Suppose that salvation is predicated upon one's acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Obviously, one cannot even begin to take such a notion seriously in the interior manner alone here in question without having the religious predisposition. In a theistic framework, a providential God is responsible for whether one has the predisposition or not. So what I am saying, when situated in a Christian context, does seem to smack of predestination. I'll end with a quotation from G. R. Evans, Augustine on Evil, Cambridge UP 1982, p. 134, emphasis added:
Augustine sets out for their [certain semi-Pelagians'] inspection the obvious truth that many people hear Christian truth expounded to them, and while some believe, others do not. There must be a reason why their responses differ. Augustine suggests that the reason is that God has prepared some but not others (De Praed. Sanct. vi 11). Those who receive the truth are the elect, and those who do not have not been chosen to be Christians.
That there is predestination, however, strikes me as morally dubious as that guilt is inheritable.
A musician needs a muse. George Harrison and Eric Clapton found her in Pattie Boyd. Here are five of the best known songs that she is said to have inspired. If you don't love at least four of these five, you need a major soul adjustment.
This from a graduate student in philosophy who describes himself as a theologically conservative Protestant who is toying with the idea of 'swimming the Tiber':
In a recent post you say this: ""Study everything, join nothing" means that one ought to beware of institutions and organizations with their tendency toward self-corruption and the corruption of their members. (The Catholic Church is a good recent example.)"
Until I read this comment, I, for some reason, was under the impression that you were a Catholic. I was wondering if you would be willing to elaborate on this comment, say more about your take on the Catholic Church, direct me to a post in which you say more about these issues, or direct me to some literature on this topic that you think would be useful.
This request allows me to clarify my relation to Catholicism. (This clarification may be spread over a few posts.) I was brought up Catholic and attended Catholic schools, starting in the pre-Vatican II days before the rot set in, when being Catholic was something rather more definite than it is now. Many with my kind of upbringing were unfazed by their religious training, went along to get along, but then sloughed off the training and the trappings as soon as they could. For a religion to take root in a person, the person must have a religious nature or predisposition to begin with. Only some have it, just as only some have a philosophical predisposition. Having the former predisposition is a necessary but not sufficient condition of a religion's taking firm root. Another necessary condition is that the person have some religious and/or mystical experiences. Without the predisposition and the experiences, religion, especially a religion as rich in dogmatic articulation as Roman Catholicism, will be exceedingly hard to credit and take seriously in the face of the countervailing influences from nature (particularly the nature in one's own loins) and society with its worldly values. For some Catholics of my Boomer generation, the extreme cognitive dissonance between the teachings of the Church and the 'teachings' and attitudes of the world, in particular the world of the '60s, led to radical questioning. For example, we were taught that all sins against the 6th and 9th Commandments were mortal and that premarital and extramarital sex even in those forms that fell shy of intercourse were wrong. The 'teachings' of the world and the surrounding culture were of course quite the opposite. For many brought up Catholic, this was not much of a problem: the cognitive dissonance was quickly relieved by simply dropping the religion or else watering it down into some form of namby-pamby humanism. For others like myself who had the religious predisposition and the somewhat confirmatory religious/mystical experiences, the problem of cognitive dissonance was very painful and not easily solved.
And, having not only a religious, but also a philosophical predisposition, it was natural to turn to philosophy as a means of sorting things out and relieving the tension between the doctrines and practices that had been the center of my life and the source of existential meaning, on theone hand, and the extramural wide world of sex, drugs, rock & roll, and the secular values of 'making it' and getting ahead, on the other. The sex bit was just one example. The fundamental problem I faced was whether any of what I was brought up to believe, of what I internalized and took with utmost seriousness, was true. Truth matters! As salutary as belief is, it is only true beliefs that can be credited. This brings me to a fundamental theme of this weblog, namely, the tension between Athens and Jerusalem. I see this as a fruitful tension, and I see the absence of anything like it the Islamic world as part of the explanation of that world's inanition.
It is a fruitful tension in the West but also in those few individuals who are citizens of both 'cities,' those few who harbor within them both the religious and the philosophical predisposition. It is a tension that cannot be resolved by eliminationof one or the other of the 'cities.' But why is it fruitful?
The philosopher and the religionist need each other's virtues. The philosopher needs reverence to temper his analytic probing and humility to mitigate the arrogance of his high-flying inquiry and overconfident reliance on his magnificent yet paltry powers of thought. The religionist needs skepticism to limit his gullibility, logical rigor to discipline his tendency toward blind fideism, and balanced dialectic to chasten his disposition to fanaticism.
So am I a Catholic or not? Well, I am certainly a Catholic by upbringing, so I am a Catholic in what we could call a sociological sense. But it is very difficult for a philosopher to be a naive adherent of any religion, especially a religion as deeply encrusted with dogma as Roman Catholicism. He will inevitably be led to 'sophisticate' his adherence, and to the extent that he does this he will wander off into what are called 'heresies.' He will find it impossible not to ask questions. His craving for clarity and certainty will cause him to ask whether key doctrines are even intelligible, let alone true. Just what are we believing when we believe that there is one God in three divine persons? Just what are we believing when we believe that there once walked on the earth a man who was fully human but also fully divine?
I distance myself both from the anti-Catholic polemicists and the pro-Catholic apologists. Polemics and apologetics are two sides of the same coin, the coin of ideology. 'Ideology' is not a pejorative term in my mouth. An ideology is a set of beliefs oriented toward action, and act we must. So believe we must, in something or other. Religions are ideologies in this sense. But philosophy is not ideological. For more on this, see Philosophy, Religion, and the Philosophy of Religion: Four Theses.
I am skeptical of organizations and institutions despite the fact that we cannot do without them. The truth is something too large and magnificent to be 'institutionalized.' The notion that it is the sole possession of one church, the 'true' church, is a claim hard to credit especially in light of the fact that different churches claim to be the true one. Also dubious is the notion that extra ecclesiam salus non est, that outside the church there is no salvation. And note that different churches will claim to be the one outside of which there is no salvation. That should gve one pause. If it doesn't, then I suggest you are insufficiently critical, insufficiently concerned with truth, and too much concerned with your own doxastic security. Why do I need a church at all? And why this one? Why not Eastern Orthodoxy or some denomination of Protestantism?
Now if you are a philosopher this is all just more grist for the mill, along with all the things that Catholic apologists will say in defense of their faith. They will say that their church is the true church because it was founded by Jesus Christ (who is God) and has existed continuously from its founding under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit whose inspiration guarantees the correctness of the teachings on faith and morals.
They will tell me that a church is necessary to correct the errors of private opinions. Now it must be frankly admitted that thinking for oneself, treading the independent path, and playing the maverick can just as easily lead one into error as into truth. If thinking for oneself were the royal road to truth, then all who think for themselves would agree on what the truth is. They don't. But let us not forget that that church dogmas often reflect the private opinions of the dominant characters at the councils. The common opinion is just the private opinion that won the day. You say Augustine was inspired by the Holy Spirit? That is a claim you are making. How validate it? Why don't the Protestants agree with you? Why don't the Eastern Orthodox agree with you?
This only scratches the surface, but one cannot spend the whole day blogging. This may turn out to be a long series of posts.
A device of literary bluster. When one is unsure about something, or sure about what one has no right to be sure about, one writes 'surely.' Example: "Vallicella links to Dinah Washington here. But surely Peggy Lee's version is better. A voice like no other, and the little piano break at 1:13 is exquisite."
I confess to using 'surely and 'of course' promiscuously.
Original Sin, Trinity, and Incarnation are three Christian dogmas. There are others as well. Here is an off-the-cuff taxonomy of possible attitudes towards such dogmas.
1. They are just nonsense to be ignored or even a sign of deep mental dysfunction. When I first started blogging about the Trinity, John Jay Ray commented (6 January 2005):
The blogosphere is an amazing place. Over at Maverick Philosopher there has been an extensive discussion going on about the doctrine of the holy Trinity! Generally sympathetic to Christianity though I am, I cannot see that particular doctrine as anything but the most awful load of codswallop. It is a self-contradictory formulation that arose out of the controversy among early Christians about whether Christ was God or not. [. . .] It is conventional to describe the doctrine as a mystery but it is no such thing. It is just a theological compromise that sacrifices logic for the sake of keeping all parties to the debate happy. How anybody can take it seriously is beyond me.
And then there is that other Australian, the neo-positivist David Stove, who thinks that something has gone dreadfully and fatally wrong with the thoughts of anyone who takes Trinitarian speculation seriously, in particular the debate over the filioque clause. See The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies, Basil Backwell, 1991, p. 179.
2. They are false and/or incoherent, but worthy of study as concrete points of entry into various logical, metaphysical, and ethical questions that are salient for all, including atheists and materialists. What is identity? Is it absolute or sortal-relative? What is personhood? Can guilt be inherited? Scores of such questions arise when these dogmas are carefully thought through.
3. They are false and/or incoherent but worth studying as part of the history of ideas, or the sociology of knowledge, or the psychology of belief. Ideas have consequences, whether true or false, coherent or incoherent, sane or insane.
4. The are false and/or incoherent in many of their formulations, but hide nuggets of truth that can excavated and refined and reformulated in ways that are rationally acceptable. An example of this is Kant's project in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone.
5. The dogmas are coherent and indeed true as formulated and promulgated by some particular church such as the Roman Catholic church or the Eastern Orthodox church.
I reject the extremes of this spectrum of opinion. Thus I reject #1 and #5. My approach is closest to #4, though I feel no particular commitment to the Kantian variant. Although the main reason to take seriously Original Sin, for example, is that it expresses something deep and true about the human predicament, the reasons supplied in #2 and #3 are also good ones. The notion that blacks are owed reparations for slavery, for example, is one that is closely related to the notion that guilt is transmissible from the perpetrator of a crime to his descendants. This gives rise to the suspicion that the demand for reparations is a secularization of certain Christian dogmatic themes. How then can the evaluation of the reparations demand proceed without any consideration of the theological doctrine?
On CNN this morning, two subtitles included the phrases "Jobs death" and "Job's global influence." The man's name is Steve Jobs. To form the possessive you must add an apostrophe and put it in the right place: "Jobs' death."
Can we blame this one on liberals too? Is there perhaps something to the 'definition' of a liberal as a person who has never met a standard he didn't want to erode?
