Obit here. Turn on Your Love Light was a 1961 R & B to Pop crossover hit climbing high in both charts. It certainly got my attention back in '61.
Month: June 2013
Anthony Flood on Philosophy as Misosophy, Part I
I wrote an entry on the main sorts of motive that might lead one who takes religion seriously to take up the study of philosophy. I distinguished five main motives: the apologetic, the critical, the debunking, the transcensive, and the substitutional. But there is also the move away from philosophy to religion and its motives. One motive is the suspicion that philosophy is a snare and a delusion, a blind alley; there is the sense that it cannot be what its noble name suggests, namely, the love of wisdom, and that he who seeks wisdom must forsake Athens for Jerusalem. There is the sense that philosophy is, in truth, misosophy, the hatred of wisdom. An ancient theme, that of the irreconcilable antagonism between religion and philosophy, one traceable back to Tertullian at least. (See Étienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages, Charles Scribners, 1938, Chapter One.)
Anthony Flood has been an off-and-on correspondent of mine since the early days of the blogosphere: I believe we first made contact in 2004. I admire him because he "studies everything" as per my masthead motto. As far as I can judge from my eremitic outpost, Tony is a genuine truth-seeker, a restless quester who has canvassed many, many positions with an open mind and a willingness to admit errors. (The man was at one time a research assistant for Herbert Aptheker!) Better a perpetual seeker than a premature finder. Here below we are ever on the way: in statu viae. Tony's views have changed over the years I have known him and it is his present attitude toward philosophy that I wish to examine here. In particular, I will evaluate his claim that philosophy is misosophy. Is this right? Or is it rather the case that religion when opposed to philosophy is misology, the hatred of reason? Is philosophy misosophy or is religion misology? That is a stark, if somewhat inaccurate, was of defining the problematic. I will quote liberally from Tony's position statement and then comment.
The position I've come to has been percolating in my mind for years. It intruded upon my thinking intermittently, but until recently I was unable to remove certain obstacles to my assent. [. . .] The critique of philosophy worked out by Gregory L. Bahnsen . . . however, has at last won my allegiance . . .
[. . .]
The gist of Bahnsen’s critique is that philosophy as it has been practiced is virtually at enmity with Christ, who is the Wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24). To the degree that it is op-posed to Christ, to that degree it is misosophy, the hatred rather than the love of wisdom. For the Christian, wisdom is not an abstract virtue, but a divine person. To pretend indifference to Christ is pretend indifference to the only Wisdom worth having; to hate Christ is to hate wisdom, that is, to hate him in whom all the treasures of wisdom are hid (Col 2:3); and to hate wisdom is to love death (Prov 8:36). Christians may continue to use “philosophy” and its cognates, but they reserve the right to qualify that usage. Between the philosopher and the misosopher, covenant keeper and covenant breaker, there is antithesis.
Tony hasn't given us the "gist" of Bahnsen's critique but the conclusion at which he arrives; the gist of the critique would have to contain a summary of the reasons for the conclusion. Setting that quibble aside, I move to a substantive point. While it is true that for a Christian Christ is the source of all wisdom and therefore, in a sense, wisdom itself, saying this is consistent with maintaining that philosophy is the love of wisdom. The philosopher qua philosopher seeks wisdom using his unaided reason, unaided, that is, by the data of revelation. It is not that the philosopher qua philosopher rejects the data of revelation or the very idea that there could be such a thing as divine revelation; it is rather that he makes no use of it qua philosopher. (To save keystrokes I won't keep repeating the qualification 'qua philosopher' but it remains in force.) To borrow a term from Husserl, the philosopher 'brackets' revelation. I see nothing in the nature of philosophy to prevent a philosopher from arriving at the conclusion that wisdom is ultimately a person. So my first question to Tony would be: Why must philosophy be opposed to wisdom when wisdom is taken to be a divine person?
Admittedly, philosophy cannot bring us to Wisdom in its fullness, especially if wisdom is a divine person, but it hardly follows that it cannot serve as a propadeutic to a participation in this Wisdom. Here is a crude analogy. The menu is not the meal. But the menu is not opposed to the meal. The menu provides access to the meal via verbal description, the very same meal that one goes on to eat. It is not as if there are two meals, the meal of the menu writer and the meal of the eater. There is exactly one meal accessed in two ways, the first obviously inferior to the second. If you don't get the analogy, forget it.
There is an important point of terminology that we need to discuss. Tony claims that Christians have the right to use 'philosophy' in their way as meaning the love of Christ. (After all, if wisdom is Christ, then the love of wisdom is the love of Christ.) I deny this right. 'Philosophy' means what it means and that is to be discerned from the practice of the great philosophers beginning with the ancient Greeks. To know what philosophy is one reads Plato, for starters, and not just for starters. Philosophy is what is done in those dialogues and what has arisen by way of commentary on and critique of what was done in those famous discussions. "Philosophy is Plato and Plato philosophy." (Emerson) I characterize philosophy here. The characterization begins with this sentence: "Philosophy is not fundamentally a set of views but an activity whereby a questing individual, driven by a need to know the truth, applies discursive reason to the data of life in an attempt to arrive at the ultimate truth about them."
The Christian, therefore, is not free to use 'philosophy' and cognates in an idiosyncratic way. Or rather he is free to do so but if he does he causes confusion and makes communication difficult if not impossible. 'Philosophy' does not and cannot mean 'love of Christ.' This is not to say that one cannot move beyond philosophy to Christian faith. One can, and perhaps one should. But nothing is to be gained by tampering with the established sense of 'philosophy.'
Tony writes, "Between the philosopher and the misosopher, covenant keeper and covenant breaker, there is antithesis." I object to this sentence because of the misuse of the word 'philosopher.' Tony has decided that the philosopher, in his sense, is a lover of Christ, and that a philosopher (in the proper sense) is a misosopher and thus a hater of Christ. But he has no right to hijack the terminology, nor, as regards the substantive question, has he shown that philosophy is opposed to Christian wisdom.
Autonomy versus Heteronomy/Theonomy
We now come to the crux of the matter: the tension between the autonomy of finite reason and the heteronomy of obedient faith. This is, in essence, the tension between Athens and Jerusalem. Whether this tension is an opposition or contradiction, as Tertullian thought, and as Tony seems to think, remains to be seen, and cannot be assumed at the outset. (I set aside the tension between Athens and Benares, the discussion of which does not belong here, even though that too is a tension between philosophy and a kind of religion.) Finite reason, reason as we find it within ourselves, presumes to judge heaven and earth and everything in between; it would play "the spectator of all time and existence," to borrow a beautiful line from Plato's Republic. But it must be admitted that the results have been meager. Has even one substantive philosophical question been resolved to the satisfaction of all competent practioners in two and one half mllennia? No. What we have instead are endless controversies and the strife of systems. Magnificent in aspiration, philosophy is miserable in execution. Philosophy has proven impotent to provide us with the knowledge we seek, the knowledge of ultimates, and in particular salvific knowledge, knowledge that caters not merely to our theoretical needs but to our deepest existential ones as well, knowledge that does not merely inform us, but transforms us.
To make up for the infirmity of finite reason we must look elsewhere to a source of succor lying beyond the human horizon. And so reason, while remaining within the sphere of immanence and autonomy, raises the question of the possibility of revelation, the possibility of an irruption into the sphere of immanence from beyond the human-all-too-human. The possibility is entertained that the true nomos is theonomos, and that what at first appears as heteronomy is in reality theonomy. The possibility is entertained that the prideful intellect must fall silent and humbly submit to God's Word.
But at this juncture we encounter what Josiah Royce calls the religious paradox or
The Paradox of Revelation. Suppose someone claims to have received a divine communication regarding the divine will, the divine plan, the need for salvation, the way to salvation, or any related matter. This person can be asked, "By what marks do you personally distinguish a divine revelation from any other sort of report?" (Josiah Royce, The Sources of Religious Insight, 22-23) How is a putative revelation authenticated? By what marks or criteria do we recognize it as genuine? The identifying marks must be in the believer's mind prior to his acceptance of the revelation as valid. For it is by testing the putative revelation against these marks that the believer determines that it is genuine. One needs "a prior acquaintance with the nature and marks and, so to speak, signature of the divine will." (p. 25) But how can a creature who needs saving lay claim to this prior acquaintance with the marks of genuine revelation?The paradox in a nutshell is that it seems that only revelation could provide one with what one needs to be able to authenticate a report as revelation. Royce:Faith, and the passive and mysterious intuitions of the devout, seem to depend on first admitting that we are naturally blind and helpless and ignorant, and worthless to know, of ourselves, any saving truth; and upon nevertheless insisting that we are quite capable of one very lofty type of knowledge — that we are capable, namely, of knowing God's voice when we hear it, of distinguishing a divine revelation from all other reports, of being sure, despite all our worthless ignorance, that the divine higher life which seems to speak to us in our moments of intuition is what it declares itself to be. If, then, there is a pride of intellect, does there not seem to be an equal pride of faith, an equal pretentiousness involved in undertaking to judge that certain of our least articulate intuitions are infallible?Surely here is a genuine problem, and it is a problem for the reason. (103)
Is it a genuine problem or not? Can the church's teaching authority be invoked to solve the problem? Suppose a point of doctrine regarding salvation and the means thereto is being articulated at a church council. The fathers in attendance debate among themselves, arrive at a result, and claim that it is inspired and certified by the Holy Spirit. But by what marks do they authenticate a putative deliverance of the Holy Spirit as a genuine deliverance? How do they know that the Holy Spirit is inspiring them and not something else such as their own subconscious desire for a certain result? This is exactly Royce's problem.
The problem, then, is this. Reason is weak and philosophy, whose engine is unaided reason, cannot deliver the goods. The salvific wisdom we seek it cannot supply. It remains an interminable and inconclusive seeking, but never a finding; it remains forever the (erothetic) love of wisdom, not its possession. So we look beyond philosophy to the data of revelation. But how do we authenticate such data? How do we distinguish pseudo-revelation from the genuine article? By what marks is it known? We are thrown back upon our infirm reasoning powers to sort this out.
So, while confessing in all humility the infirmity of reason, we have no option but to rely on it as we do when, by its means, we come to admit the infirmity of reason. Though weak, reason is strong enough to acquire a genuine insight into its own weakness and limitations and the need for supplementation ab extra. But this supplementation by revelation cannot go untested. Tony may be right that we need to "repent" and submit our wills to God's, but what that will is has to be discerned, and there is no way around the fact that it is up to us to do the discerning using the God-given equipment we possess, as infirm as it may be.
But let's hear what Flood has to say:
From 1969, when I first began to read philosophy (as it is commonly called), I had very rarely questioned the presumption of autonomy exhibited by my models in that field, whereby the human mind posits itself as the final judge of what is real, true, and good. I did not question that presumptive stance even when the provisional conclusions I arrived at were professedly Christian-theistic and therefore incompatible with it. The way I approached “God” did not ethically comport with wanting God. I played it safe, hedged my bets, looking for nothing more than a piece of metaphysical furniture to complete the interior design of my latest philosophical mansion. The irony of this discrepancy was lost on me, at least until recently.
What Tony seems to be saying here is that when we approach God via philosophy, i.e., via finite discursive reason, relying only on those evidences that can be validated from within the sphere of immanence, eschewing any such exogenic input as the data of revelation, what we arrive at is not the true God, but 'God,' a mere furnishing in the mansion of immanence, a mansion that is perhaps better compared to a doghouse. Tony thus seems to be sounding a very old theme, that of the opposition of the God of the philosophers to the the God of Sbraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I myself do not accept this opposition for reasons I supply in Pascal and Buber on the God of the Philosophers.
To revert to the crude analogy presented above, there are not two meals, the meal of the menu-writer and the meal of the eater. One and the same meal is 'accessed' in two different ways, via description and via 'ingestion.' What the menu-writer describes, assuming the accuracy of the description, is not something that exists only in his mind, a bit of mental furniture, but something that exists in reality. Similarly, when the philosopher speaks of God , he is not speaking of something that exists only in his mind, but of something that exists in reality. But let's hear some more from Tony:
As I now see it, that loss was not innocent and my present insight is wholly of grace. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10), however, not something tacked on at the end of one’s system. (Part V of Whitehead’s Process and Reality comes to mind. So does Chapter XIX of Lonergan’s Insight.)
Human beings, Christian and non-Christian alike, do know things. They do reason. They do calculate, induct, deduce, plan, accuse, exonerate, interpret. They do write histories, novels, and plays. They do compose symphonies and conduct experiments. They do creatively improvise on canvas, in the sculpture studio, and on the band stand. But their attempts to account for these facts apart from their dependence upon God have been marvelous failures, for they cannot secure the experience-transcending universal claims on which they rely when they engage in any of those activities. They ought to acknowledge the laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, moral absolutes as gifts of God. Unless God grants them the spirit of repentance, however, this they will not do, for it is offensive to their posture of autonomy. But they pay a price for this posture in the coin of rank foolishness.
Ironically, such a critique of philosophy is what one would predict professing Christian philosophers to produce, informed as they are by their awareness of the covenantal relationship they bear to God. Historically, however, what comes under the label “Christian philosophy” is compromised. Christian philosophers have generally given their blessing to pretenses of neutrality and autonomy, content to conjecture how far the human mind can go under its own steam before grabbing the supernatural rope to take them the rest of the way.
They can give that blessing, however, only by suppressing awareness (that they otherwise happily acknowledge) that the human being is a created, covenant-bound bearer of the image of God. That is, Christian philosophers join their enemies in “testing” the hypothesis that Christian theism is at least as “reasonable” as anything else on offer in the marketplace of ideas. As though any inference at all could be reasonable if Christian theism were not antecedently true. As though an impersonal matrix of possibility were Lord of all. I understand why Christianity’s opponents “load” the argument against Christian theism. But why do Christians follow them?
In this last paragraph, Tony raises a couple of fascinating questions. One is whether (to put it in my own way) the necessary truth of the laws of logic presupposes the existence of God. There are those who have argued such a thing, but, if Tony is right, why bother? If Jerusalem supplies all the needs of man, who needs Athens? If reason cannot be relied upon to bring us to any truth at all, then it cannot be relied upon to show that logic presupposes God. The other question concerns the relation between the modal framework, standardly artculated in terms of 'possible worlds,' and God. Analytic theists standardly maintain that God exists in all possible worlds. Does such talk subject God to the modal framework, thereby compromising the divine sovereignty? Is God lord of all, including the modal framework, or is God subject to the modal framework? Or neither?
These questions cannot be pursued here, but one comment is in order, and an obvious one it is: Tony seems merely to beg the question against his opponents. For example, he just assumes that Athens and Jerusalem are irreconcilably anatagonistic and that the whole truth resides in Jerusalem. He is free to make these assumptions of course. No one is compelled to remain within philosphy's smoky rooms. The door is unlocked and one is free to pass throught it. But then one should not attempt to explain or justify one's exit. For any such attempt will entangle on in the very thing one is trying to get away from.
There is of course more to be said — in subsequent posts.
Gay ‘Marriage’ Meets Gallic Defiance
I've been a tad harsh on the French in these pages over the years. But they seem to be showing some backbone in resisting Islamization and such destructive items on the leftist agenda as same-sex marriage. More than the PC-whipped Germans to be sure. In any case here is the story:
After the passage of same-sex marriage legislation in France, one mayor is refusing to comply. Jean-Michel Colo of Arcangues rejected an application for marriage from a gay couple in his village. Guy Martineau-Espel and Jean-Michel Martin tried to compromise with the major, taking vows outside the traditional marriage hall. Nevertheless, the Arcangues mayor still refused. “When people close the door at home, they do what they want. For me, marriage is for a woman and man to have children. I am not discriminating as a same-sex couple is sterile. It’s a parody of equality, it’s a big lie,” he reasoned.
Another way to respond to the same-sexers is to concede discrimination but then point out the obvious: not all types of discrimination are bad. The following is a non sequitur: 'Opposition to X is discriminatory' ergo 'Opposition to X is morally unacceptable.' We don't allow the under 16 to drive or the under 18 to vote. That is discriminatory. But for a good reason. There are under 16s and under 18s qualified for the respective activities, but most aren't. The law can't cater to individual cases. Further examples can be multiplied ad libitum. We all discriminate all the time and with perfect justification. Not all discrimination is illegimate.
I lay out part of my case against same-sex 'marriage' in detail in the entries cited below.
'Same-sex' can be added to our list of alienans adjectives when it is used to modify 'marriage.' Same-sex marriage is no more marraige than a decoy duck is a duck, faux marble is marble, or derivative intentionality is intentionality.
A Modest Epitaph
Here lies Professor X. As he is buried here, his name is buried in the scholarly apparatus of the enduring, though rarely consulted, annals of scholarship. Indeed, he has already become a forgotten footnote to a debate itself teetering on the brink of oblivion. And yet it can be said that he made a contribution, however minor, to the transmission of high culture during a time of decline. More importantly, he had the wisdom to appreciate that his playing of this role was enough.
Be Kind . . .
. . . but know how to reply in kind.
German Home Schoolers Seek Asylum in USA
Home-schooling is illegal in Germany. So, "In 2008, Uwe and Hannelore Romeike left Germany with their five children and came to the United States asking for refugee status as an oppressed minority."
So they left Germany to seek asylum in Left-Fascist Amerika. There is a touch of irony here. Well, we are not as far gone as the "land of poets and thinkers." (Heinrich Heine) Not yet, leastways.
The reason for the disallowance of home schooling is that the powers that be don't want the formation of "parallel societies" (Parallelgesellschaften). That's a real knee-slapper given the green light to Muslim immigration and the Islamization of Germany. No "parallel societies" unless they are politically correct parallel societies.
The Pee Cee, you see, are 'inclusive.' Even unto their own extermination. The Germans seem especially PC-whipped.
It is perhaps not irrelevant that the Romeikes are Christians. Nor that ". . . one of the oldest universities in Germany inaugurated the country's first taxpayer-funded department of Islamic theology. The Center for Islamic Theology at the University of Tübingen is the first of four planned Islamic university centers in Germany." (Ibid.)
Read about the Romeikes here. It turns out that their request for asylum was denied.
Lest We Profile . . .
Well, we are all equally apt to engage in terrorism, right?
Wise up, liberals. To help you, I wrote the article below. PeeCee can get you killed. (Image credit: Sam Harris)
The New American Enemies List
Victor Davis Hanson writes yet another report on the Decline of the West. This owl of Minerva catalogs and explains from the comfort and security of his Hoover Institution perch, but I would like to hear some suggestions from him as to what can be done to stop or slow down the slide. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps all we have are the pleasures of scribbling and understanding. Hanson and I are now old men who have it made. Twilight time is not so bad as long as health and eyesight hold out, as long as one's faculties permit the enjoyment of the vita contemplativa. The life of otium liberale is delicious indeed. It ain't dark yet, and we have a few years left. We can hope to be dead before unbearable night.
But what about the young? What can they do, Victor? And how can we help them?
Next Stop the Twilight Zone: Forbidden Descriptors
Here. Hardly a day goes by without a half-dozen new examples of willful liberal stupidity. It has to be willful: nobody could be this inherently devoid of common sense.
Hodges on Vallicella on Harris versus Atran on Islamist Beliefs and Practices
Here. Scott Atran enters the ComBox.
Nietzsche and the Genetic Fallacy
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, Book I, sec. 95:
Historical refutation as the definitive refutation. — In former times, one sought to prove that there is no God — today one indicates how the belief that there is a God could arise and how this belief acquired its weight and importance: a counter-proof that there is no God thereby becomes superfluous. — When in former times one had refuted the 'proofs of the existence of God' put forward, there always remained the doubt whether better proofs might not be adduced than those just refuted: in those days atheists did not know how to make a clean sweep.
This passage, which is entirely characteristic of Nietzsche's way of thinking, strikes me as a text-book example of the genetic fallacy.
Every (occurrent) belief has an origin: it comes to be held by a person or a group of persons due to certain causes. Thus I came to believe that there are nine planets by reading it in a book as a child. Is Nietzsche suggesting that every belief is false just in virtue of its having an origin? That would be absurd. Is he suggesting instead that only false beliefs have origins? That too would be absurd. My belief that our solar system consists of nine planets, counting Pluto, orbiting one mediocre star is true despite its having an origin.
Given that both true and false beliefs have origins, it follows that one cannot refute a belief, i.e., show it to be false, by tracing its origins. To think otherwise is to commit the genetic fallacy.
People who commit this fallacy fail to appreciate that questions as to the truth or falsity of a belief and as to the reasons for its truth or falsity are logically independent of questions as to the origin (genesis) of the belief in question. Herr Nietzsche is therefore quite mistaken in thinking that accounting for the genesis of a belief renders "superfluous" (ueberfluessig) the question of its truth or falsity.
Far from being the definitive refutation, historical refutation is no refutation at all. A belief's loss of widespread acceptance and existential importance says nothing about its truth.
Nietzsche was subjectively certain of the nonexistence of God. But this was merely a fact about his psyche, a fact consistent both with the existence and the nonexistence of God. Similarly, the "death of God" — in plain English: the waning of widespread belief in God among educated people — is merely a cultural fact, if it is a fact. As such, it is consistent both with the existence and the nonexistence of God.
What Nietzsche and his followers do is presuppose that there is a way things are: There is no God, no moral world-order; truth is a matter of perspective, a "vital lie"; the world at bottom is the will to power; and so on. Armed with these unargued presuppositions, they set out to debunk countervailing positions. What they seem not to appreciate is that debunkers can be debunked and psychologizers psychologized; bullshitters of the decadent French form can themselves be bullshat. Deny truth and you presuppose truth. Turn everything into flux, and you flux yourself up as well. The river into which you can step only once turns out to be a river into which you cannot step at all. Logic, rendered super-fluous, gets its revenge in the end.
Does Anyone Really Believe in the Muslim Paradise?
I dedicate this post to Peter L. and Mike V. with whom some of the following ideas were hashed out over Sunday breakfast at a Mesa hash house.
Sam Harris reports on the curious views of one Scott Atran, anthropologist:
According to Atran, people who decapitate journalists, filmmakers, and aid workers to cries of “Alahu akbar!” or blow themselves up in crowds of innocents are led to misbehave this way not because of their deeply held beliefs about jihad and martyrdom but because of their experience of male bonding in soccer clubs and barbershops. (Really.) So I asked Atran directly:
“Are you saying that no Muslim suicide bomber has ever blown himself up with the expectation of getting into Paradise?”
“Yes,” he said, “that’s what I’m saying. No one believes in Paradise.”
This post assumes that Harris has fairly and accurately reported Atran's view. If you think he hasn't then substitute 'Atran*' for 'Atran' below. Atran* holds by definition the view I will be criticizing.
If we are to be as charitable to Atran as possible, we would have to say that he holds his strange view because he himself does not believe in the Muslim paradise and he cannot imagine anyone else really believing in it either. So Muslims who profess to believe in Paradise with its black-eyed virgins, etc. are merely mouthing phrases. What makes this preposterous is that Atran ignores the best evidence one could have as to what a person believes, namely, the person's overt behavior taken in the context of his verbal avowals. Belief is linked to action. If I believe I have a flat tire, I will pull over and investigate. If I say 'We have a flat tire" but keep on driving, then you know that I don't really believe that we have a flat tire.
Same with the Muslim terrorist. If he invokes the greatness of his god while decapitating someone, then that is the best possible evidence that he believes in the existence of his god and what that god guarantees to the faithful, namely, an endless supply of post-mortem carnal delights. This is particularly clear in the case of jihadis such as suicide bombers. The verbal avowals indicate the content of the belief while the action indicates that the content is believed.
Now compare this very strong evidence with the evidence Atran has for the proposition that "No one believes in Paradise." His only evidence is astonishingly flimsy: that he and his ilk cannot imagine anyone believing what Muslims believe. But that involves both a failure of imagination and a projection into the Other of one's own attitudes.
The problem here is a general one.
"I don't believe that, and you don't either!"
"But I do!"
"No you don't, you merely think you believe it or are feigning belief."
"Look at what I do, and how I live. The evidence of my actions, which costs me something, in the context of what I say, is solid evidence that I do believe what I claim to believe."
Example. Years ago I heard Mario Cuomo say at a Democratic National Convention that the life of the politician was the noblest and best life. I was incredulous and thought to myself: Cuomo cannot possibly believe what he just said! But then I realized that he most likely does believe it and that I was making the mistake of assuming that others share my values and assumptions and attitudes.
It is a bad mistake to project one's own values, beliefs, attitudes , assumptions and whatnot into others.
Most of the definitions of psychological projection I have read imply that it is only undesirable attitudes, beliefs and the like that are the contents of acts of projection. But it seems to me that the notion of projection should be widened to include desirable ones as well. The desire for peace and social harmony, for example, is obviously good. But it too can be the content of an act of psychological projection. A pacifist, for example, may assume that others deep down are really like he is: peace-loving to such an extent as to avoid war at all costs. A pacifist might reason as follows: since everyone deep down wants peace, and abhors war, if I throw down my weapon, my adversary will do likewise. By unilaterally disarming, I show my good will, and he will reciprocate. But if you throw down your weapon before Hitler, he will take that precisely as justification for killing you: since might makes right on his neo-Thrasymachian scheme, you have shown by your pacific deed that you are unfit for the struggle for existence and therefore deserve to die, and indeed must die to keep from polluting the gene pool.
Projection in cases like these can be dangerous. One oftens hears the sentiment expressed that we human beings are at bottom all the same and all want the same things. Not so! You and I may want "harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding" but others have belligerence and bellicosity as it were hard-wired into them. They like fighting and dominating and they only come alive when they are bashing your skull in either literally or figuratively. People are not the same and it is a big mistake to think otherwise and project your decency into them.
I said that the psychologists classify projection as a defense mechanism. But how could the projection of good traits count as a defense mechanism? Well, I suppose that by engaging in such projections one defends oneself against the painful realization that the people in the world are much worse than one would have liked to believe. Many of us have a strong psychological need to see good in other people, and that can give rise to illusions. There is good and evil in each person, and one must train oneself to accurately discern how much of each is present in each person one encounters.
Could God and the Universe be Equally Real?
Not by my lights.
God is self-existent. The universe is not. As Hugh McCann puts it, unexceptionably, "the universe is directly dependent on God for its entire being, as far as time extends." (Creation and the Sovereignty of God, Indiana UP, 2012, p. 27.) God is a sustaining causa prima active at every moment of the universe's existence, not a mere cosmic starter-upper. Now if God is self-existent or a se, while the universe depends for its entire being (existence, reality) at each instant of its career on the self-existent creator, then I say that God and the universe cannot be equally real. God is more real, indeed supremely real. The universe is less real because derivatively real. The one has its being from itself, the other from another. I say that there is a difference in their mode of existence: both exist but they exist in different ways. McCann, however, will have none of this:
Existence does not admit of degrees. A world sustained by God is . . . as real as it could [would] be if it sustained itself. (Ibid.)
Let's see if we can sort this out.
0. To keep this short, I will not now worry about the difference, if any, between modes of existence and degrees of existence.
1. The underlying question is whether it is intelligible to posit modes of existence or modes of being. I maintain that it is intelligible and that it is simply a dogma of (most) analytic philosophers to deny the intelligibility of talk of modes of existence. See my "Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis" in Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, eds. Novotny and Novak, Routledge Studies in Metaphysics, forthcoming. But not only is it intelligible to posit modes of existence, in several areas of philosophy it is mandatory. The present subject is one of them.
2. One thing McCann and I will agree on is that there is a sense of 'exist(s)' according to which God and the universe exist in exactly the same way. This is the quantifier sense. Let 'g' be an individual constant denoting God and 'u' an individual constant denoting our universe. We can then write
For some x, x = g
and
For some x, x = u.
Removing the individual constants and replacing them with a free variable yields the predicate expression 'for some x, x = y.' I grant that this predicate is univocal in sense regardless of the value of 'y.' In plain English the predicate is 'Something is identical to ___.' So in the quantifier sense of 'exist(s),' God and the universe exist in the same way, or rather in no way: they just exist. In the quantifier sense of 'exist(s),' it makes no sense to speak of modes of existence or degrees of existence. Is-identical-with-something-or-other does not admit of degrees. So in the quantifier sense of 'exist(s),' It makes no sense to say that God is more real or more existent than the universe.
In the quantifier sense of 'exist(s),' then, existence does not admit of degrees and no distinction of mode or degree can be made between a universe sustained by God and a self-sustaining universe. If this is what McCann is saying, then I agree.
But please note that the quantifier sense presupposes a first-level sense. It is trivially true (if we are not Meinongians) that Socrates exists iff something is identical to Socrates. This presupposes, however, the singular existence of the individual that is identical to Socrates. Now while there cannot be modes of quantifier or general existence, there can very well be modes of singular existence. (The arguments aginst this are all unsound as I argue in my Routledge article.) God and Socrates are both singular and both exist. But they exist in different ways. The same goes for God and the created universe as a whole
That was but an assertion. Now for an argument.
3. McCann tells us that the universe U has the same reality whether it is self-existent or entirely dependent on God for its existence. But then what would be the difference between U as self-existent and U as non-self-existent? The things in it and their properties would be the same, and so would the laws of nature. Perhaps I will be told that in the one case U has the property aseity while in the other case it does not. But what is aseity? Aseity is just the property of being self-existent. Existence, however, is not a quidditative property, and neither is self-existence: they do not pertain to what a thing is. U is what it is whether it exists from itself or from another. It follows that aseity is not a quidditative property. The conclusion to draw is that aseity is a way of existing or a mode of existence.
In sum: there is a difference between U as self-existent and U as non-self-existent (dependent on God). This difference is not a quidditative difference. The nature of U is the same whether it self-exists or not. Nor is it a difference in general or quantifier existence: both are something. The difference is a difference in mode of singular existence. God and the universe exist in different ways or modes. These three questions need to be distinguished: What is it? Is it? How is it?
4. Could one say that the difference between U as self-existent and U as non-self-existent is that in the one case U is related to God but in the other case U is not? This cannot be right since God confers existence upon U. (McCann very plausibly argues that secondary or natural causation is not existence-conferring; primary or divine causation is and must be, as McCann of course maintains.) U is nothing apart from divine existence-conferral. It is not as if God exists and U exists, both in the sdame way, and they are tied by a relation of creation. Creation cannot be a relation logically subsequent to the existence of G and U: U has no existence apart from this relation. It is siply nothing apart from God. But this amounts to saying that U exists is a different way than G. U exists-dependently while G exists-independently. One can abstract from this difference and say that both exist in the general or quantifier sense, but that is a mere abstraction. U and G in their concrete singularity exist in different ways.
5. God is not a being among beings, but Being itself. This is a consequence of the divine simplicity affirmed by McCann in his final chapter. God is self-existent in virtue of being Existence itself. McCann's commitment to the divine simplicity is logically inconsistent with his claim that "A world sustained by God is . . . as real as it could [would] be if it sustained itself."
In his excellent book McCann resurrects and defends certain Thomist themes without realizing that some of these themes are inconsistent with key tenets of analytic orthodoxy, chiefly, the dogma that there are no modes of existence.
The PC-Whipped Germans
This is unbelievable. (HT: Mike Valle)
H. L. Mencken on the Perfection of Democracy
"As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron." – – H. L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920 (Via Bill Keezer, via Keith Burgess-Jackson)
The great and glorious day is come, my friends, and we finally have the president we deserve. God help us.
According to Snopes, the above quotation is not verbatim, but it is accurate in the main. See Snopes for context.