October 2020 – Maverick Philosopher

Jack Kerouac: Religious Writer?

Beatific October, Kerouac month hereabouts, is at its sad redbrick end once again, but I can't let her slip away without at least one substantial Kerouac entry. So raise your glass with me on this eve of All Saint's Day as I say a prayer for Jack's soul which, I fear, is still in need of purgation before it is ready for the ultimate beat vision, the visio beata. We rest at the end of the road, but don't assume that the road ends with death.

……………………..

The Kerouac and Friends industry churns on, a recent product being Hard to be a Saint in the City: The Spiritual Vision of the Beats by Robert Inchausti, Shambhala (January 30, 2018), 208 pages.

From Scott Beauchamp's review:

The real tragedy of Kerouac’s reception was that the people who should have known better took the en vogue hedonist reading at face value, writing him off as a word-vomiting miscreant. But that’s a caricature of Kerouac that over-emphasizes the most obvious personal flaws of an intensely spiritual writer. It’s an oversimplification by way of calling someone a simpleton. The truth is more complex and so much more interesting: Kerouac was one of the most humble and devoted American religious writers of the 20th century. Robert Inchausti’s recently published Hard to be a Saint in the City: The Spiritual Vision of the Beats makes an attempt at recognizing the heterodox spiritual focus of the entire Beat oeuvre, but it only points the reader in the right direction. Its simple and hodgepodge construction suggests the vast amount of analysis, particularly of Kerouac’s work, which remains to be done in order to change his reputation in the popular imagination.

I'm a Kerouac aficionado from way back. I love the guy and the rush and gush of his hyper-romantic and heart-felt wordage.* He brings tears to my eyes every October. His tapes and CDs accompany me on every road trip. He was a writer who was religious, but a "religious writer"? It's an exaggeration, like calling Thomas Merton, who was a religious writer, a spiritual master. I love him too, especially the Merton of the journals, all seven of which I have read and re-read, but he was no more a spiritual master than I am. And then there is Bob Dylan, the greatest American writer of popular songs, who added so much to our lives, but deserving of the Nobel Prize in Literature? We live in an age of exaggeration. I submit that Flannery O'Connor is closer to the truth about Kerouac & Co.

Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1979), pp. 336-337, in a letter to Dr. T. R. Spivey dated 21 June 1959:

I haven't read the article in PR [Paris Review?] or the beat writers themselves. That seems about the most appalling thing you could set yourself to do — read them. But reading about them and reading what they have to say about themselves makes me think that there is a lot of ill-directed good in them. Certainly some revolt against our exaggerated materialism is long overdue. They seem to know a good many of the right things to run away from, but to lack any necessary discipline. They call themselves holy but holiness costs and so far as I can see they pay nothing. It's true that grace is the free gift of God but to put yourself in the way of being receptive to it you have to practice self-denial. I observe that Baron von Hügel's most used words are derivatives of the word cost. As long as the beat people abandon themselves to all sensual satisfactions, on principle, you can't take them for anything but false mystics. A good look at St. John of the Cross makes them all look sick.

You can't trust them as poets either because they are too busy acting like poets. The true poet is anonymous, as to his habits, but these boys have to look, act, and apparently smell like poets.

This is the only reference to the Beats that I found in The Habit of Being apart from the sentence, "That boy is on the road more than Kerouac, though in a more elegant manner." (p. 373)

Although O'Connor did not read the Beat authors she correctly sensed their appalling side (William Burroughs, for one example) and zeroed in accurately on their lack of discipline and adolescent posturing as 'holy' when they refused to satisfy the elementary requirements of becoming such. But in fairness to Kerouac one should point out that he really did at one time make a very serious effort at reforming his life.

See Resolutions Made and Broken, No More Booze, Publishing, or Seminal Emission, Divine Light, Sex, Alcohol, and Kerouac.

And I wonder what Miss O'Connor would say had she lived long enough to read that book by the Holy Goof, Neal Cassady, entitled Grace Beats Karma: Letters from Prison 1958-1960? (Blast Books, 1993) Grace Beats Karma: what a wonderful title, apt, witty, and pithy!

Arguably, the central figure of the Beat movement was not Kerouac (OTR's Sal Paradise) but Neal Cassady (OTR's Dean Moriarty).

Lucky me, to have been both in and of the '60s. And to have survived.

_____________________

*'Wordage' to my ear embodies a sense between the pejorative 'verbiage' and the commendatory 'writing.' I am reminded of Truman Capote's anti-Kerouac jab, "That's not writing; it's typewriting!"

Addendum (11/5). Vito Caiati writes,

I read with interest your post “Jack Kerouac, Religious Writer?” and it struck me that, with a bit of editing, Flannery O’Connor’s remark on “the true poet” might be applied to the too worldly Merton: “The true monk is anonymous, as to his habits, but this boy has to look, act, and apparently smell like a monk” I feel that Merton’s superiors, who failed to check his wanderings of one kind or another, harmed his rich spiritual potential, which is most evident in the early journals. As the protagonist of Georges Bernanos’ Journal de un cure de la campagne observes, when speaking of monks extra muros, “Les moines sont d’incomparables maitres de la vie intérieur, . . . mais il en est de la plupart of ces fameux ‘traits’ comme des vins de terroir, qui doivent se consommer sur place. Ils ne supportent pas le voyage. ” Monks are incomparable masters of the interior life, . . . but most of these famous ‘traits’ [that they possess] like the terroir wines, must be consumed in place, They do not support the trip.”

Vito,

Very good observation.

While deeply appreciative of monasticism with its contemptus mundi, Merton, desirous of name and fame, was wide open to the siren song of the world, which became irresistibly loud when the '60s came along. Had he been our age, would he have become a monk at all? Had he lived beyond the age of 53, would he have remained a monk?

I love his Journals. That is where you will find the real Merton. As in Kerouac, a deep sincerity of the heart to break the heart.

I am familiar with Bernanos' The Diary of a Country Priest, which is both theologically penetrating and of high literary value. (I would not say that Kerouac's novels are of high literary value, but on the other hand, they are not trash like those of Bukowski.)

There are superb passages on prayer, sin, lust, and confession in Bernanos which I may post.

But I haven't found the passage you cite. Where is it roughly? Near the beginning, middle, end? I don't imagine you have an English trans.

It is always good to hear from you.

In the Absence of Knowledge, May one Believe? Critique of Bryan Magee

According to Bryan Magee ("What I Believe," Philosophy 77 (2002), 407- 419), nobody knows the answers to such questions as whether we survive our bodily deaths or whether God exists. Citing Xenophanes and Kant, Magee further suggests that the answers to these questions are not only unknown but impossible for us to know. Assuming that Magee is right on both counts, what follows?

One inference one might draw from our state of irremediable ignorance about ultimates is that it provides us with 'doxastic wiggle-room' (my expression): if one cannot know one way or the other, then one is permitted either to believe or not believe that we survive and that God exists. After all, if it cannot be proven that ~p, then it is epistemically possible that p, and this epistemic possibility might be taken to allow as reasonable our believing that p. Invoking the Kantian distinction between thinking and knowing (Critique of Pure Reason, B 146 et passim) one could maintain that although we have and can have no knowledge of God and the soul, we can think them without contradiction, and without contradicting anything we know. Does not the denial of knowledge make room for faith, as Kant himself famously remarks? CPR B xxx: Ich musste also das Wissen aufheben, um zum Glauben Platz zu bekommen… "I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith…." (And given that contact with reality is a great good, would it not be better to venture contact with the unknowable portion of it via faith rather than have no contact with it at all by insisting that only knowable truth is admissible truth?)

This inference, however, the inference from our irremediable ignorance to the rational allowability of belief in the epistemically possible, is one that Magee resolutely refuses to draw, seeing it as a shabby evasion and an "illegitimate slide."(408) Thus he holds it to be illegitimate to move from the epistemic possibility of post-mortem survival to belief in it. As he puts it, "What I find myself wanting to drive home is not merely that we do not know but that the only honest way to live and think is in the fullest possible acknowledgment of that fact and its consequences, without ducking out into a faith of some kind, and without evasion or self-indulgence of any other sort." (417) Near the beginning of his essay, Magee cites Freud to the effect that no right to believe anything can be derived from ignorance. (408)

The relevance of the Freudian point, however, is unclear. First of all, no one would maintain that ignorance about a matter such as post-mortem survival justifies, in the sense of provides evidence for, the belief that one survives. In any case, the issue is this: Is it ever rationally permissible to believe where knowledge is unavailable? Magee answers this question in the negative. But I cannot see that he makes anything close to a convincing case for this answer. I will simply present an objection the force of which will be to neutralize, though perhaps not refute, Magee's view. Thus I play for a draw, not a win. I doubt that one can expect more from philosophy.

Probative Overkill?

One problem with Magee's argument is that it seems to prove too much. If we have no knowledge about such metaphysical/religious matters as God and the soul, and so must suspend belief in them lest we violate the putative epistemic duty to believe only on sufficient evidence, then we must also suspend belief on a host of other issues in respect of which we certainly cannot claim knowledge. Surely, the very same reasons that lead Magee to say that no one knows anything about God and the soul must also lead us to say that no one knows whether or not there are cases in which justice demands capital punishment, or whether or not a just society is one which provides for redistribution of wealth, or whether or not animals have rights, etc. Indeed, we must say that no one knows what justice is or what rights are. And of course it is not merely about normative issues that we are ignorant.

Do we know what motion, or causation, or time are? Do we know what properties are, or what is is for a thing to have a property, or to exist, or to change, or to be the same thing over time? Note that these questions, unlike the God and soul questions, do not pertain to what is transcendent of experience. I see the tomato; I see that it is red; I see or think I see that it is the same tomato that I bought from the grocer an hour ago; applying a knife to it, I see or think I see that slicing it causes it to split apart.

For that matter, Does Magee know that his preferred ethics of belief is correct? How does he know that? How could he know it? Does he have sufficient evidence? If he knows it, why do philosophers better than him take a different view? Does he merely believe it? Does he believe it because his fear of being wrong trumps his desire for the truth? Does he want truth, but only on his terms? Does he want only that truth that can satisfy the criteria that he imposes? Would it not be more self-consistent for Magee to suspend belief as to his preferred ethics of belief? Why is it better to have no contact with reality than such contact via faith? Isn't it better to have a true belief that I cannot justify about a life and death matter than no belief about that matter? Does the man of faith self-indulgently evade reality, or does the philosopher of Magee's stripe self-indulgently and pridefully refuse such reality as he cannot certify by his methods?

No one knows how economies really work; if we had knowledge in this area we would not have wildly divergent paradigms of economic explanation. But this pervasive ignorance does not prevent people from holding very firm beliefs about these non-religious issues, beliefs that translate into action in a variety of ways, both peaceful and violent. It is furthermore clear that people feel quite justified in holding, and acting upon, these beliefs that go beyond what they can claim to know. What is more, I suspect Magee would agree that people are often justified in holding such beliefs.

So if Magee is right that we ought to suspend belief about religious matters, then he must also maintain that we ought to suspend belief about the social and political matters that scarcely anyone ever suspends belief about. That is, unless he can point to a relevant difference between the religious questions and the social-political ones. But it is difficult to discern any relevant difference. In both cases we are dealing with knowledge-transcendent beliefs for which elaborate rational defenses can be constructed, and elaborate rational refutations of competing positions.

In both cases we are dealing with very abstruse and 'metaphysical' issues such as the belief in equal rights, a belief which manifestly has no empirical justification. And in both cases we are dealing with issues of great importance to our welfare and happiness. On the other hand, if Magee thinks that we are justified in holding beliefs about social and political matters, something he does of course hold, then he should also maintain that we are justified in holding beliefs about religious matters. There is no justification for a double standard. In this connection, one should read Peter van Inwagen's Quam Dilecta, in God and the Philosophers, ed. T. V. Morris (Oxford University Press, 1994), 31-60. See especially 41-46 for a penetrating discussion of the double standard.

Divine Simplicity and Divine Comprehensibility

From a reader, who is responding to God as Uniquely Unique:

An objection I recently heard to the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) that is novel as far as I can tell. Goes like this: if DDS is true, God is unlike anything in our human experience, not having parts. We cannot comprehend God on DDS because he has no parts to comprehend apart from the whole; we can't comprehend the whole of God, and he doesn't have parts to comprehend, so we can't comprehend him at all. This is unacceptable at least on the Abrahamic faiths, which state we can comprehend some things about God, just not fully. Thoughts?

Here is the argument as I understand it:

1) If DDS is true, then God has no parts.

2) If God has no parts, then we cannot understand any part of God.

Therefore

3) If DDS is true, then we cannot understand any part of God.(1, 2)

4) We cannot understand the whole of God.

5) We cannot understand God at all unless we can either understand some part of God, or the whole of God.

Therefore

6) If DDS is true, then we cannot understand God at all. (3, 4, 5)

7) On the Abrahamic faiths, we can understand something about God.

Therefore

8) DDS is inconsistent with the Abrahamic faiths.

I would say that the argument fails at line (5). We can understand something about God without understanding God himself in whole or in part. If we understand God to be the creator of the universe, then we understand something about God without understanding the whole of God or any part of God. We understand God from his effects as that which satisfies the definite description 'the unique x such that x created the world and sustains it in existence.' We can presumably understand this much about God without knowing him in propria persona or any of his parts. The question whether God is simple would seem to be irrelevant to question whether we can know anything about him.

Mundane analogy: I can know something about the burglar from the size and shape of the footprints he left without knowing him or his parts.

If God is Uniquely Unique, How could He be Addressed in Prayer?

My entry God as Uniquely Unique ended on an aporetic note. I acknowledged the following sort of objection, but had nothing to say in response to it. How could the ontologically simple God be of any religious use to the suffering creature wandering in the desert of the world?

"Such an utterly transcendent God as you are describing is ineffable! He is the God of the philosophers, not the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob. I want a God with a face, a God that can be addressed in petitionary prayer, a God that is a Thou to my I."

The problem can be put like this. The exigencies of the intellect drive us toward the simple God, a God so utterly transcendent as to be inconceivable to us. The exigencies of the heart, however, move us toward a personal God with whom one could enter an I-Thou relation. Is it possible to mediate this opposition?

Is it possible to stand astride Athens and Jerusalem, with a foot in each, and not topple over or be torn apart?

A letter from Robert Deinhammer, S. J., of Innsbruck, Austria suggests a way. Here is his letter followed by my translation:

Ich bin gerade wieder einmal nach längerer Zeit auf ihrem Blog gewesen und finde Ihren jüngsten Eintrag über die einzigartige Einzigartikeit Gottes sehr wichtig.

Ich würde mit P. Knauer sagen: Gott fällt nicht unter Begriffe, er ist absolut unbegreiflich. Wie kann man dann von ihm reden? Antwort: Wir begreifen von Gott immer nur das von ihm Verschiedene, nämlich die geschaffene Welt, die aber auf ihn hinweist und ohne ihn überhaupt nicht sein kann. Geschaffensein bedeutet im Rahmen einer relationalen Ontologie ein "restloses Bezogensein auf …/ in restloser Verschiedenheit von …". Dies ermöglicht auch "hinweisende" Rede von Gott: Die Welt ist Gott ähnlich und unähnlich zugleich; Gott seinerseits ist der Welt gegenüber aber nur unähnlich. Die Relation der Welt auf Gott ist vollkommen einseitig. In diesem Sinne führt natürliche Theologie nur zur Einsicht, dass Gott in "unzugänglichem Licht wohnt" (1 Tim) und wir als bloße Geschöpfe keinerlei Gemeinschaft mit ihm haben können.

Vor diesem überaus dunklen Hintergrund erläutert allein der Inhalt der christlichen Botschaft, wie dennoch Gemeinschaft mit Gott ausgesagt werden kann: Wir sind von vornherein aufgenommen in eine göttliche Relation, nämlich in die ewige Liebe des Vaters zum Sohn, die der Heilige Geist ist. So kann Gott auf die Welt real bezogen sein, ohne dadurch von der Welt abhängig zu werden. Aber gerade weil diese göttliche Liebe nicht ihr Maß an der Welt hat und deshalb auch keine Macht der Welt dagegen ankommen kann, kann man sie auch nicht einfach an der Welt "ablesen" oder durch meditative Versenkung erkennen. Sie ist nur erkennbar im Glauben an die Botschaft Jesu: Der Sohn hat eine menschliche Natur angenommen, um uns in einem menschlichen Wort sagen zu können, das wir an seinem Verhältnis zum Vater Anteil haben. In diesem Sinne wird dann auch Gebet erst möglich: Jesus Christus nimmt uns hinein in sein Sprechen zum Vater.

………………………..

I have just now visited your blog again after a long while and I find your most recent entry on the unique uniqueness of God to be very important.

I would say, with P. Knauer, that God does not fall under concepts; he is absolutely inconceivable or unconceptualizable. But then how can one speak of him? Answer: We conceive of God always only by way of that which is different from him, namely, the created world which points to him and which without him cannot be at all. In the context of a relational ontology, creaturehood means 'a total relatedness to . . . / in total difference from . . . .' This makes possible 'pointing' talk of God: the world is both like and unlike God; God on his side, however, is only unlike the world . The relation of the world to God is completely one-sided or unilateral. In this sense natural theology leads to the insight that God "dwelleth in inaccessible light" (1 Timothy 6:16) and we mere creatures can have no kind of community with him.

But if God so dwells and is unapproachable by us, and we can enjoy no community with him, how are we to explain the Christian message that we nevertheless can have community with God? As follows. We are from the outset taken up in a divine relation, namely, in the eternal love of the Father for the Son, which relation is the Holy Spirit. In this way God can be really related to the world without thereby becoming dependent on the world. But precisely because this divine love has no worldly measure and also cannot be opposed by any worldly power, one cannot simply 'read it off' from the world or know it by non-discursive meditation. Divine love is knowable only by faith in the message of Jesus: The Son has assumed a human nature in order to be able to say to us in human words that we share in his relation to the Father. In this sense prayer is first possible: Jesus Christ takes us into his speaking with the Father.

How is community with God possible given his absolute transcendence? That is the problem. If I understand the above, the solution requires both Trinity and Incarnation. Within the Godhead, the Son loves the Father and the Father the Son. This eternal relation of love is the Holy Spirit. God, in the person of the Son, becomes man. "And the Word became flesh and dwellt among us." Fully human and fully divine, Jesus Christ brings the divine into the creaturely realm. The transcendent becomes immanent without ceasing to be transcendent. God acquires a human face and speaks saving words within the range of human hearing.

The question cannot be suppressed: Is not the solution as problematic as the original problem? The exigencies of the discursive intellect drive us beyond it to the simple God who lies beyond the discursive intellect and is devoid of human meaning. The restoration of such meaning, however, via Trinity and Incarnation, also involves inconceivabilities, as any good Unitarian will be quick to point out.

Diversity Worth Having

Diversity worth having presupposes a principle of unity that controls the diversity. Diversity must be checked and balanced by the competing value of unity, a value with an equal claim on our respect.

Example. One language only in the public sphere makes possible many voices to be heard and understood by all. To communicate our differences we need a common language.

Talking with one another is preferable to shooting at each other. Polyglot 'cultures' are more conducive to shooting than to talking.

Why Write?

I write to know my own mind, to actualize my own mind, and to attract a few like-minded and contrary-minded people. The like-minded lend support, and the contrary-minded – assuming that their criticisms are rationally based – allow me to test my ideas.

Dialectic is to the philosopher what experiment is to the scientist.

A Reason to Blog

Chary of embalming in printer's ink ideas that may be unworthy of such preservation, due perhaps to underdevelopment, or lack of originality, or some more egregious defect, the blogger satisfies his urge to scribble and publish without burdening referees and editors and typesetters, and without contributing to the devastation of forests. He publishes all right, but in a manner midway between the ephemerality of talk and the finality of print.

Simone Weil on False Gods

Despite her infuriating extremism, Simone Weil may well be the purest incarnation of religious sensibility in the twentieth century. "It's not up to us to believe in God, but only not to grant our love to false gods." As Weil understands, essential to genuine religion, though not exhaustive of it, is the realization that nothing here below can satisfy us, and that the things we zealously pursue as if they could satisfy us are false gods. The following statement of Weil's is exactly right:

First, not to believe that the future is a place capable of fulfilling us. The future is made of the same stuff as the present. We well know that what we have that is good, wealth, power, esteem, knowledge, love of those we love, prosperity of those we love, and so on, does not suffice to satisfy us. But we believe that the day when we will have a little more, we will be satisfied. We believe it because we are lying to ourselves. For if we really think about it for a while we know it's false. Or again if we are suffering affliction, we believe that the day when this suffering will cease, we will be satisfied. There again we know it's untrue; as soon as we have gotten used to the cessation of suffering we want something else.

More here.

Edith Stein: Faith, Reason, and Method: Theocentric or Egocentric?

August 9th is the feast day of St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross in the Catholic liturgy. She is better known to philosophers as Edith Stein (1891-1942), brilliant Jewish student of and assistant to Edmund Husserl, philosopher, Roman Catholic convert, Carmelite nun, victim of the Holocaust at Auschwitz, and saint of the Roman Catholic Church. One best honors a philosopher by re-enacting his thoughts, sympathetically but critically. Herewith, a bit of critical re-enactment.

In the 1920s Stein composed an imaginary dialogue between her two philosophical masters, Husserl and Aquinas. Part of what she has them discussing is the nature of faith.

Probably my best answer is that faith is its own guarantee. I could also say that God, who has given us the revelation, vouches for its truth. But this would only be the other side of the same coin. For if we took the two as separate facts, we would fall into a circulus vitiosus [vicious circle], since God is after all what we become certain about in faith.

The course that you have followed has led you to posit the subject as the start and center of philosophical inquiry; all else is subject-related. A world constructed by the acts of the subject remains forever a world for the subject. You could not succeed — and this was the constant objection that your own students raised against you — in winning back from the realm of immanence that objectivity from which you had after all set out and insuring which was the point. Once existence is redefined as self-identifying for a consciousness — such was the outcome of the transcendental investigation — the intellect will never be set at its ease in its search for truth. (31-32)

Moreover, this shift in meaning [of existence], especially by relativizing God himself, contradicts faith. (emphasis added) So here we may well have the sharpest contrast between transcendental phenomenology and my philosophy: mine has a theocentric and yours an egocentric orientation. (32)

David Gordon Reviews Michael Anton’s America at the Point of No Return

Excerpts:

Anton notes that the founders believed that the American Revolution was grounded in universal truths, “but they did not expect their declaration to revolutionize the world—nor were they under any illusion that it, or they, had the power to do so….America is—in the words of John Quincy Adams—‘the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all’ but also ‘the champion and vindicator only of her own.’”

Those who wish to restore these principles face a challenge of unprecedented severity. Anton argues that an elite based in certain blue states disdains ordinary Americans. “The core message of the meta-Narrative is that America is fundamentally and inherently racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, transphobic, and so on. The flaws and sins of America derive directly from those of its founding stock, who are natural predators, inherently racist, and malevolent.”

Elite policy is at its worst in California, now under the near-total domination of the left wing of the Democratic Party. “In modern California, hypocrisy and double-standardism aren’t merely part of the business climate; they’re endemic to the whole society….Sam Francis dubbed this system ‘anarcho-tyranny’: complete freedom—even exemption from the gravest laws—for the favored, maximum vindictive enforcement against the pettiest infractions on the disfavored.” Anton fears that if President Trump isn’t reelected, the Democrats will seek actively to suppress whomever in the red states challenges them, and they will prove very difficult to dislodge from power.

Who are the ordinary Americans the elite disdains, and who are the elite? The ordinary Americans are those whom Hillary Clinton called “deplorables,” i.e., white males who value their family, their religion, and their property, including their guns. “Funny thing, too: a core tenet of modern liberalism is supposed to be the sanctity of ‘one man, one vote.’ Except, you know, not really. The barely concealed presupposition of denouncing Republicans as ‘racists’ simply because whites vote for them is that all votes are not created equal. Votes of color are morally superior to white votes, which are inherently tainted. Which is why the left holds any election won by a Republican to be morally if not (yet) politically illegitimate.”

The elite consists at its core of wealthy financiers and business interests allied with government. It is buttressed by professionals who have attended top universities, especially those of the Ivy League. In a way that readers of Hunter Lewis on “crony capitalism” will recognize, Anton writes: “So-called ‘public-private cooperation’ will increase. This benign-sounding phrase—who could object to ‘cooperation,’ to government and business ‘solving problems together’? —masks a darker reality. What it really describes is the use of state power to serve private ends, at private direction. Hence foreign policy…will be further reoriented around securing trade, tax, and labor ‘migration’ patterns and paradigms that benefit finance and big business.”

If elite dominance continues, Anton predicts that those of us who dissent will be rigidly restricted. “Free speech as we have known it—as our founders insisted was the bedrock of political rights, without which self-government is impossible—will not survive coming leftist rule. The playbook is already being expanded to include banking and credit. Getting on the wrong side of elite-woke opinion is increasingly to find oneself locked out of the financial system: no bank account, no credit card, no ability to get a loan or pay a mortgage. Pay cash? The move to a ‘cashless society’…will obviate that option right quick.”

Anton cites an especially chilling instance of the policy of suppression. “A new regulation in the United Kingdom—which we must assume will be proposed here sooner or later—would allow Britain’s National Health Service to deny non-emergency care to those deemed ‘racist, sexist, or homophobic.’ Government bureaucrats, naturally, will be the ones doing the deeming.” Small wonder that Anton has had enough.

The author seems to me misguided in what he says about “industrial policy,” but I’ll pass over that in silence. He criticizes Murray Rothbard who suggested that the principle of secession has no logical stopping point, down to the level of each person. Anton says, “Every-man-a-government-unto himself is literally Hobbes’s ‘state of nature,’ yet Rothbard appears to approve.” This rests on a misunderstanding: it hardly follows that if you have a right to secede that you will in fact do so, and Rothbard did not favor a world of one-person “nations.” Also, Anton doesn’t understand John Rawls very well.

But enough of criticism. Anton’s rhetorical talents are remarkable, and I urge everyone to read his book.

What is Man?

He is an animal, but also a spirit — and thus a riddle to himself. He reasons and speaks, he objectifies, he says 'I' and he means it. He does not parrot the word 'I' in the manner of a parrot or a voice synthesizer; uttering 'I' he expresses self-awareness. Man has a world (Welt), not merely an environment (Umwelt). Man envisages a higher life, a higher destiny, whether within history or beyond it. And then he puzzles himself over whether this envisagement is a mere fancy, a delusion, or whether it presages the genuine possibility of a higher life.

More than an animal, he can yet sink lower than any animal, which fact is a reverse index of his spiritual status. He can as easily devote himself to scatology as to eschatology. The antics of a Marquis de Sade are as revelatory of man's status as the life of a St. Augustine. It takes a spiritual being both to willingly empty oneself into the flesh and to transcend it.

Kierkegaard writes that "every higher conception of life . . . takes the view that the task for men is to strive after kinship with the Deity . . . ." (Attack Upon Christendom, p. 265) We face the danger of "minimizing our own significance" as S. K. puts it, of selling ourselves short. And yet how difficult it is to believe in one's own significance! The problem is compounded by not knowing what one's significance is, assuming that one has significance. Not knowing what it is, one can question whether it is.

Kierkegaard solves the problem by way of his dogmatic and fideistic adherence to Christian anthropology and soteriology. Undiluted Christianity is his answer. My answer: live so as to deserve immortality. Live as if you have a higher destiny. It cannot be proven, but the arguments against it can all be neutralized. Man's whence and whither are shrouded in darkness and will remain so in this life. Ignorabimus. In the final analysis you must decide what to believe and how to live.

You could be wrong, no doubt. But if you are wrong, what have you lost? Some baubles and trinkets. If you say that truth will have been lost, I will ask you how you know that and why you think truth is a value in a meaningless universe. I will further press you on the nature of truth and undermine your smug conceit that truth could exist in a meaningless wholly material universe.

The image is by Paul Klee, Engel noch tastend, angel still groping. We perhaps are fallen angels, desolation angels, in the dark, but knowing that we are, and ever groping.

People and Their Works

This from a reader:

Your comment about Husserl's picture on your wall reminded me of a line from my notes: "I try to admire works but never people, as people invariably let you down." It's, I think, a line from Peter Hitchens.

People regularly, though not invariably, let one down. True. But being a person, I need persons to show me what is humanly possible and to serve as examples of how best to live. No book can render that service. While I cannot emulate (equal or excel) Husserl or Socrates in all respects, I can hope to do so in some, in respect of intellectual probity and devotion to the truth.

Sometimes we are at fault when others disappoint us. We pegged them too high. To be just in our assessments of others is extremely difficult. No man is worthy of worship and no man of utter contempt. No one is an angel and no one a demon. We regularly go to extremes.

One way to avoid disappointment in one's heroes is by not meeting them in the flesh. Distance permits idealization. Propinquity militates against it.

And if you want to avoid inspiring disappointment in those who haven't met you but will, request of your advocates and admirers that they not sing your praises! Let the former think that you are just an ordinary schmuck schlepping down the pike. And then surprise them.

Thomism and Husserlian Phenomenology: Combinable?

Over the phone the other night, Steven Nemes told me that his project is to synthesize Thomism and phenomenology. I expressed some skepticism. Here are my reasons.

Part I: Methodological Incompatibility

Essential to Thomism is the belief that the existence of God can be proven a posteriori by human reason unaided by divine revelation. Thus the Third of Aquinas's Five Ways begins with the premise that there are contingent beings, "things that are possible to be and not to be." From this starting point, by reasoning we needn't here examine, Aquinas arrives at the conclusion that there exists an absolutely necessary being. "And this all men call God."

The argument moves within what Husserl calls the natural attitude, from contingent beings that are taken to exist in themselves to a causa prima that is taken to exist in itself. Note also that when the Third Way in enacted by a person who works his way through it, in an attempt to arrive at a justified belief that God exists, the particular judgments and inferences made by the person in question are themselves psychic realities in nature that exist in themselves with the earlier following the later in objective time. With the suspension of the natural attitude by the phenomenologist, all of this must be eingeklammert, placed within brackets. This includes the starting point (the existence in themselves of contingent beings), the ending point (the existence in itself of God), and the sequence of judgmental and inferential steps that the person who enacts the argument must run through in order to generate within himself the belief that God exists. No use can be made of any of this by the phenomenologist qua phenomenologist.

It seems we ought to conclude that Thomas's dialectical procedure is unphenomenological both at its starting point and at its ending point. The dialectical procedure itself, the arguing with its judgments and inferences, is also unphenomenological in that the judgments are posited as true in themselves, and the inferences as valid in themselves.

To summarize the argument up to this point:

a) Thomists are committed to the proposition that God's existence is provable, equivalently, that there are sound arguments for God's existence, arguments that move from premises that record what to Thomists are obvious facts of sense perception such as that trees and rocks exist in themselves (independently of us and our consciousness of them), that they exist contingently, that they are in motion, etc., arguments that end in a conclusion that records the existence in itself of a divine first cause.

b) Phenomenologists operate under a methodological restriction: the thesis of the natural standpoint is ausgeschaltet, disconnected, and the objects in the natural attitude are eingeklammert, bracketed. The existence of these objects is not denied, or even doubted; no use is made of their existence. (Cf. Ideas I, secs. 31, 32) Now if we abstain from affirming the existence of contingent beings, then the question cannot arise within the phenomenological epoche as to whether or not they have a cause of their existence. But this is a question that Thomists ask and answer by positing the existence of God.

Therefore

c) Thomism and Husserlian phenomenology are incompatible and cannot be synthesized.

Part II: Metaphysical Incompatibility

Things are worse for the proposed synthesis when we consider that Husserlian phenomenology is not just a study of the modes and manners of the appearing of things, but implies transcendental idealism, a theory about the mode of existence of the things themselves. To state the incompatibility bluntly: Husserl is an idealist; Thomas is a realist.

At its starting point, the argument a contingentia mundi presupposes the existence in themselves of contingent beings. If these beings existed only for (finite) consciousness, then one could not arrive at an absolutely transcendent divine cause of their existence that exists in itself. Phenomenology, however, is committed to transcendental idealism, according to which contingent beings do not exist in themselves but only for transcendental subjectivity. Here is a characteristic passage from Husserl:

Alles, was ich je als wahrhaft Seiendes einsehen kann, ist gar nichts anderes als ein intentionales Vorkommnis meines eigenen — des Erkennenden — Lebens . . . . (Erste Philosophie (1923/24), Zweiter Teil, Theorie der Phaenomenologischen Reduktion, Husserliana Band VIII, S. 184 f.)

Whatever I can recognize as a genuine being is nothing other than an intentional occurrence of my own — the knower's — life . . . .

For Husserl, the very Being of beings is their Being for consciousness, their being constituted in and by consciousness. Their Sein reduces to Seinsinn, and that Sinn points back to the transcendental ego from which all sense derives. So the Sinn is not Original Sinn, pun intended, but derivative Sinn. Therefore, on transcendental idealism, contingent beings have no need for a divine ground of their existence, their existence being adequately accounted for by transcendental subjectivity. And since they have no need of a divine ground, one cannot prove that they must have such a ground.

At its ending point, too, cosmological arguments such as the Third Way are unphenomenological since they posit an absolutely transcendent cause of existence that is not given as it is in itself, and cannot be so given and whose identity and existence cannot be grounded subjectively. It makes some sense to say that the tree in the garden is a unity of noemata the unity of which is brought about by the synthetic, unifying activity of my transcendental ego. But it makes no sense to say this of God. This would be tantamount to saying that the unity and existence of the divine being derives from the synthetic activities of the creature's ego.

The God of classical theism, the numero uno representative of which is the doctor angelicus, is by definition absolutely transcendent. He is not transcendent in relation to our consciousness like the blooming tree in Husserl's garden. He cannot be transcendentally constituted. Even in the Beatific Vision God will not be given to us as he is in himself. His reality infinitely surpasses anything we will ever have evidence for. It should therefore be quite clear that Husserlian phenomenology and classical theism are logically incompatible.

……………………………

Addendum 10/22. A reader comments,

I've just read your post on Thomism and phenomenology. Subsuming Husserl to a Weltanschauung philosophy is to deeply and badly miss the point and much of the value of his work.

This is a just criticism of Nemes' proposed synthesis. Husserl sharply distinguishes between world view philosophy and philosophy as strict science. Thomism is a worldview philosophy. This is another reason why the proposed synthesis is dubious. The issues here are extremely deep and complicated. But to simplify, the specifically philosophical portions of the Thomistic system are in the service of a body of beliefs that Thomas will hold to no matter what sober philosophical inquiry establishes. If unaided human reason can be enlisted in the service of the teachings of the Church, well and good; if not, that is no reason to doubt any of the teachings. Philosophia ancilla theologiae. Perhaps we can say that philosophy in relation to theology is ancillary but not necessary.

For details on the whole messy problematic, see my Genuine Inquiry and Two Forms of Pseudo-Inquiry: Sham Reasoning and Fake Reasoning.

God as Uniquely Unique

I hit upon 'uniquely unique' a while back as an apt predicate of God. But it is only the formulation that is original; the thought is ancient.

To be unique is to be one of a kind. It will be allowed that nothing counts as God unless it is unique. So at a bare minimum, God must be the one and only instance of the divine kind. (This kind could be thought of as the conjunction of the divine attributes.) Beyond that, it will be allowed that whatever counts as God must be essentially unique: nothing that just happens to be uniquely of the divine kind could count as God. What's more, it will be allowed that nothing counts as God that is not a necessary being. Putting these three allowances together, I say that God is not just essentially, but necessarily unique. (In the patois of 'possible worlds,' God is unique in every metaphysically possible world in which he exists, and he exists in every such possible world. By contrast, Socrates is essentially human, but not necessarily human inasmuch as he does not exist in every metaphysically possible world.)

But some of us want to go further still. We want to say that God is uniquely unique. His uniqueness extends to his mode of being unique. He is unique in a way that no other thing is unique. Suppose there is more than one necessarily unique being. The necessarily unique God would then be just one of many necessarily unique beings. In that case he would not be uniquely unique. He would share the property of being necessarily unique with other items. (Fregean Gedanken and Bolzanian Saetze an sich and other platonica are epistemically possible candidates.)

But then something greater could be conceived, namely, a being that transcends the distinction between kind and instance in terms of which uniqueness is ordinarily defined. If I asked someone such as Alvin Plantinga wherein resides the divine uniqueness, he would presumably say that it resides in the fact that the there is one and only one possible instance of the divine nature: this nature exists in every world and God instantiates it in every world. But then God is just another necessarily unique necessary being.

A truly transcendent God, however, must transcend the ontological framework applicable to everything other than God. So he must transcend the distinction between kind and instance. In a truly transcendent God there cannot be real distinctions of any kind and thus no real distinction between kind and instance, nature and individual having the nature.

Now if God transcends the distinction between instance and kind/nature, and is uniquely unique, unique in a way that no other being is or could be unique, then that is equivalent to maintaining that God is ontologically simple. (See my SEP entry.)

But why think that God is ontologically simple and uniquely unique? Here is where the paths diverge.

Some of us feel impelled to say that a God worth his salt cannot be anything other than the absolute reality, the Absolute. So God cannot be relative to anything or dependent on anything or immanent in anything as he would be if he were just one more being among beings. For then he would be immanent to what I earlier called the Discursive Framework. It is rather the case that God transcends this framework. If God is the Absolute, then he must be simple; otherwise he would depend on properties distinct from himself to be what he is.

Again, if God is the Absolute, then he cannot be one of many; he must be the ONE that makes possible the one and the many. As such he transcends the Discursive Framework in which the one opposes the many. The ONE, however, is the ONE of both the one and many. It cannot be brought into opposition to anything.

"But such a God as you are describing is ineffable! I want a God that that can be addressed in petitionary prayer, a God that is a Thou to my I."

What you want is to stop short at a highest finite object, when the religious-metaphysical quest is animated by dissatisfaction with every finite thing. The truly religious quester is a nihilist with respect to every finite object. A God worthy of our highest quest must be absolute, simple, transcendent, and ineffable.

Excerpts from Enzo Paci, Phenomenological Diary

May 30, 1957

Glory has no meaning, power has no meaning, your personal success has no meaning. Vanity. That vanity which Husserl always fought. And he was sincere. He did indeed love truth and live for truth. Glory is the mundane, and the meaning of life reveals itself only in the negation of the mundane, in operating within the world without being prisoner of the world. I firmly believe it.

BV: Me too. Sic transit gloria mundi.

February 5, 1958

Today Father Van Breda arrived. Rognoni and I went to pick him up at the station. In our conversations a slow approach to Husserlian problems, especially through the French interpretations. News about the "Archives." [The reference is to the Husserl Archives in Louvain.]

February 8, 1958

Father Van Breda's lectures: in Milan on the 6^th and in Pavia on the 7th. The difficulty of understanding the problem of intentionality in its proper sense. Van Breda says that until the end of his life Husserl refused to interpret phenomenology as a metaphysics. Perhaps it is a metaphysics, but not of the ens qua ens, but of the ens qua verum. I like the formula, but without the ens. In other words, I think that in Husserl being resolves itself in the intentional horizon of truth and therefore that phenomenology can be considered neither a metaphysics nor an ontology in the traditional sense of the two terms. It seems to me that the problem is that of the relation between time and the horizon of truth of time.

Enzo Paci is characteristically Continental in his lack of clarity. It is almost enough to drive one into the camp of the nuts-and-bolts analysts. The last of Paci's sentences is rather less than pellucid.

But he is on to something important, and deeply problematic in both Husserl and Heidegger: the reduction of ens qua ens to ens qua verum.

See my "Heidegger's Reduction of Being to Truth," The New Scholasticism, vol. LIX, no. 2 (Spring 1985), pp. 156-176. I wrote it in 1980.