Month: November 2023

“Piss Christ” Revisited

'Pope' Francis has recently given a warm papal welcome to Andres Serrano. Remember him? What follows is an exchange from 16 May 2010 with a doctoral student in Canada who is responding to an earlier post of mine. My comments are in blue. The erudite Hector C. who is better versed than I am in art and aesthetics has been dropping by lately; I am hoping he will weigh in on this.

1. Why do you feel that "Piss Christ" (or Serrano's other works–again, I assume you're referring here mostly to the religious icons and bodily fluids) is (are) a "[violation] of people's beliefs"? The claim that it "violates beliefs" is much stronger than simply saying that it is distasteful, since it ascribes an active quality to the work.

Of course, it is more than distasteful or disgusting, although it is that; it shows profound disrespect and contempt for Christianity.  And it is not the work itself that violates the beliefs and sensibilities of Christians and plenty of non-Christians as well, but the work in the context of its production and public display.  It should be offensive to any decent person, just as "Piss-Buddha," if there were such an 'art work,' would be offensive to me and other non-Buddhists.  Buddha was a great teacher of humanity and should be honored as such.  (That is why decent people were offended when the Taliban destroyed the ancient Buddhist statuary.) The same goes for Jesus and Socrates and so many others.  Christians of course believe that Jesus was much more than a great teacher of humanity, but whether he was or not is immaterial to the point at issue.  Or imagine "Piss-King" in which a figurine of Martin Luther King, Jr. is suspended in urine. Everyone would take that, and rightly so, as expressive of contempt for the black American civil rights leader, as offensive as Southern racists' references to King back in the '60s as Martin Luther Coon.

The decadent art of the 20th century reflects not only the corruption of aesthetic sensibility but also a moral corruption.  So my objection to Serrano is not merely aesthetic but moral.  The purpose of art is not to debase but to elevate, refine, ennoble. 

I'm going to assume, again, that the reason for thinking it a violation has to do with the materials used in its production, whose conjunction might be thought blasphemous (although not, I think, unequivocally so).

We can leave blasphemy to one side.  To make my points I needn't assume that Jesus is divine.

Now, I can understand feeling an initial revulsion to the work–but that's not quite the case, since unless you're told, you have no way of knowing that the photograph was made with urine.

Be serious.  The title is "Piss-Christ."  You are aware, I hope, that such words as 'piss' and 'shit' are vulgar.  They are used to express contempt as opposed to reasoned disagreement. 

In fact, until you read the title or a description, it's just a beautiful image filled with pathos and pointing to Jesus' suffering. Of course, the means of production are (were) deliberately made known, and I can understand a certain revulsion at that revelation. What I don't understand, however, is why your reaction is to qualify it as an assault on Christianity/religious beliefs.

And what I don't understand is your failure to perceive the offensiveness of this so-called 'art.'  First of all, this junk is not art in any legitimate sense of the term.  Its sole purpose is to bring its creator empty celebrity and money.  A vain pursuit of novelty for the sake of novelty — as if novelty as such is a value — it must constantly outdo itself in extremism to achieve any effect at all.  It requires no talent or skill or courage.  Any jerkoff can throw a crucifix into a bottle of urine.  And it is not as if this 'artist' is taking a stand against an oppressive culture or government which disallows this form of puerile self-expression.  Far from it.  The culture is permissive in excelsis and there is no censorship.  And it is precisely because the culture is ultra-permissive, that schlocksters like Serrano, Gilbert & George, and plenty of others can pass their  stuff off as art.  It is worth noting that there is no "Piss-Muhammad."   If  Serrano produced a "Piss-Muhammad," then at least I could credit him with courage.    But our main question is not whether "Piss-Christ"  counts as legitimate art but whether it expresses contempt for Christianity and its adherents.

And of course it does, in the same way that "Piss-Muhammad" would express contempt for Muhammad, and "Shit-Marx' for Marx.  Leftists have their icons too, and if any of them were placed in bottles of urine,  the howls of protest would be unceasing.  The very fact that there are no such expressions of contempt for leftist heroes tells us something.  It tells us that "Piss-Christ and the like are part of an assault on Christianity and religion in general which fits right in with the left-wing agenda. Most contemporary 'art' is left-wing propaganda as Roger Kimball observes:

When the artistic significance of art is at a minimum, politics rushes in to fill the void. From the crude political allegories of a Leon Golub or Hans Haacke to the feminist sloganeering of Jenny Holzer, Karen Finley, or Cindy Sherman, much that goes under the name of art today is incomprehensible without reference to its political content. Indeed, in many cases what we see are nothing but political gestures that poach on the prestige of art in order to enhance their authority. Another word for this activity is propaganda, although at a moment when so much of art is given over to propagandizing the word seems inadequate. It goes without saying that the politics in question are as predictable as clockwork. Not only are they standard items on the prevailing tablet of left-wing pieties, they are also cartoon versions of the same. It’s the political version of painting by number: AIDS, the homeless, “gender politics,” the Third World, and the environment line up on one side with white hats, while capitalism, patriarchy, the United States, and traditional morality and religion assemble yonder in black hats.

2.) This one is much shorter (I promise!) and broader: "Adolescent  purveyors of schlock who delight in offending the sensibilities of the 'bourgeoisie'  or the 'booboisie' in H. L. Mencken's phrase have no right to taxpayer money." Why not?

Taxation is a legitimate, but nonetheless coercive, taking of money from the productive members of society for the purposes of government.  When money that is taken via taxation is used for purposes that are (i) not among the legitimate limited functions of government, and (ii) violate the beliefs and sensibilities of the people who pay the taxes in ways that are crude, offensive, and subserve no higher purpose, but instead contribute to cultural decline, then I say the money is misused.

James N. Anderson’s Presuppositional Arguments

As you may have noticed, I am none too impressed with Cornelius Van Til and his presuppositionalist followers. Intellectual honesty being one of my epistemic virtues, however, I need to be sure that I really understand what they are saying. Now James N. Anderson strikes me as the sharpest presuppositionalist among the professional philosophers. (Among the theologians, I give the palm to Gordon Clark.) So here is a list of Anderson's articles for your, and especially my, perusal.

 

The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God: A First Response to Flood

I thank Anthony G. Flood for his The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God Revisited: Toward a Response to Bill Vallicella.  Herewith, a first installment by way of rejoinder. Convergence upon agreement is not to be expected, but clarification of differences is an attainable goal. In any case, philosophy is a joy to its true acolytes, and in dark times a great consolation as well. Now let's get to work.

Tony introduces the theme skillfully:

Preamble: if the God of the Bible, who created human beings in his image to know and love him and to know, value, and rule the rest of creation under him (hereafter, “God”), exists, then we know one way that the conditions of intelligible predication (IP) can be met. The preceding sentence includes key aspects of the Christian worldview (CW)—the Theos-anthropos-kosmos relationship—expressed on the pages of the Bible.

If no alternative explanation for IP is possible, then Biblical theism is necessarily true (which is what the CW predicts).

[. . .]

If no worldview other than the Christian (CW) can account for IP, if (as I now hold) an alternative to the CW when it comes to accounting for IP cannot even be conceived, then to hold out for an alternative, as though doing so were an expression of rational exigency (“demandingness”)—that to reserve judgment somehow accords with epistemic duty—models only dogmatic stubbornness, not tolerant liberality.

Given the actual fact of intelligible predication, which is not in dispute, and assuming, as we must, the modal axiom ab esse ad posse valet illatio, it follows that intelligible predication (IP) is possible. Necessarily, whatever is actual is possible. So we ask the transcendental question: under what conditions is IP possible? What condition or conditions would have to obtain for it to be possible that there be actual cases of intelligible predication?  An example of an intelligible predication is any true or false statement, such as 'The Moon is presently uninhabited' which happens to be true, or its negation which happens to be false. 

Now I agree with Flood that if the God of the Christian Bible (hereafter 'God') exists, then the condition or conditions of the possibility of IP are satisfied. The existence of God suffices for the possibility of intelligible predication. But here we need to remind ourselves of a couple or three simple points of logic.

The first is  that if X is sufficient for Y, it does not follow that X is necessary for Y. So if the existence of God is not only a sufficient but also a necessary condition of IP, this will require further argumentation. The second point is that to assert a conditional is not to assert either its antecedent/protasis or its consequent/apodosis.  To assert or affirm a conditional is to assert or affirm a connection between antecedent and consequent, the nature of the connection depending on the type of conditional it is, whether logical or nomological or whatever. The third point is that some conditionals are true despite having a false antecedent and a false consequent.

And although it is not self-evident, I also agree with Flood that there is and must be some condition or set of conditions that make IP possible. Let 'TC' stand for this transcendental condition or set of conditions. We agree then that the TC necessarily exists.

We seem to have found some common — dare I say 'neutral'? — ground: (a) there are actual cases of IP; (b) given that they are actual, they are possible; (c) it is legitimate to launch a regressive (transcendental) inquiry into the condition or conditions of the possibility of these actual cases; (d) there must be such a transcendental condition; (e) the existence of God suffices for the possibility of IP. 

This leaves us with the question whether the God of the Christian Bible  = TC. Is God's existence not only sufficient but also both necessary for the possibility of IP? Flood will answer with alacrity in the affirmative: yes, God and God alone is (numerically) identical to the ultimate transcendental condition of all intelligible predication. This of course implies that it is not possible that anything distinct from God be the TC. God necessarily exists, and is necessarily identical to the ultimate transcendental condition of intelligible predication.  

But wait, there's more! Flood tells us that  "an alternative to the CW [the Christian worldview] when it comes to accounting for IP cannot even be conceived." So it is not just impossible that anything other than God be identical to the TC; this is inconceivable as well. 

Here is one of the places where Flood blunders: he confuses the epistemic modality inconceivability with the ontic modality impossibility. Conceivability and inconceivability are tied to the thinking powers of such  finite and limited intellects as ours. By contrast, what is possible and impossible in reality are independent of what we frail reeds are able to think and unable to think.  I will have more to say about this in subsequent posts since it appears to be a trademark mistake of presuppositionalists to conflate epistemic and ontic modality.

In any case, it is very easy to conceive of alternatives  to Flood's candidate for TC status. Here is a partial catalog of candidates in which (B), (C), and (D) are alternatives to Flood's candidate, (A).

A. Intelligible predication  presupposes the truth of the Christian worldview  (Van Til & Co.) as the transcendental condition of IP's very possibility.

B. Intelligible predication presupposes the existence of God, but not the Christian worldview as the Calvinist Van Til and his followers calvinistically understand it, the essential commitments of which include such specifically Christian doctrines as Trinity, Incarnation, etc. as well as the specifically Calvinist TULIP doctrines. Some who call themselves Christians are unitarians and deniers of the divinity of Christ. Our friend Dale Tuggy is such a one.  And those the presuppositionalists refer to as 'Romanists' who do accept Trinity and Incarnation don't accept the specifically Calvinist add-ons.

C. Intelligible predication presupposes the truth of Kant's transcendental idealism according to which "The understanding is the law-giver of nature," and space and time are a priori forms of our sensibility.  For Kant the ultimate transcendental condition of the objective validity of every judgment, and thus of every intelligible predication, is located in the transcendental unity of apperception which is assuredly not God, whatever exactly it is. 

D. Intelligible predication presupposes, not the God of the Christian Bible, but  an immanent order and teleology in nature along the lines of Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos (Oxford 2012). On Nagel's view, the rational order of nature is self-explanatory, a necessary feature of anything that could count as a cosmos. Nagel views the intelligibility of the world as "itself part of the deepest explanation why things are as they are." (17).  Now part of the way things are is that they are understandable by us.  Given that the way things are is intelligible, it follows that the intelligibility of the world is self-explanatory or self-grounding. "The intelligibility of the world is no accident." (17) But neither is it due to theistic intervention or imposition. "Nature is such as to give rise to conscious beings with minds; and it is such as to be comprehensible to such beings." (17) See my overview of Nagel's book for details.

I am not endorsing any of the above-listed alternatives to (A). They all have their problems as does (A). My point is that they are conceivable alternatives to (A). This being the case, Flood's asseveration, "an alternative to the CW [the Christian worldview] when it comes to accounting for IP cannot even be conceived" is false.

It is quite clear that what Van Til & Co. want is a rationally compelling, 'knock-down,' argument for the existence of the God of the Christian Bible calvininstically interpreted.  But they know (deep down even as they suppress the knowledge) that no circular argument is probative.  So they essay the above transcendental argument.

What I have shown, however, is that the transcendental argument is not probative.  It fails to establish that the God of the Christian Bible is both sufficient and necessary for the possibility of intelligible predication. At most, it renders rationally acceptable the conclusion that the God of the Christian Bible exists.

I am not denying that the God of the Christian Bible exists. Nor am I denying that if said God exists, then he flawlessly executes all the transcendental functions that need executing.  How could he fail to? In particular, how could he fail to be the ultimate ungrounded transcendental-ontological ground of intelligible predication?  My point is that the presuppositionalists have not proven, i.e., established with objective certainty, that God alone could play the transcendental role.

 

Biden Too Old?

Wrong question! despite its being asked repeatedly by lemming journos.

Not too old, unfit for office. Physically decrepit. Non compos mentis. Morally corrupt to the core. A fraud and a phony. Rooted in no principles of his own. A mouthpiece for deleterious leftist doctrines. A disaster for the republic and for the world. Those who support him are beneath contempt.

Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, is 94. Listen to his assessment.

Limited Doxastic Voluntarism and Epoché

Are there any beliefs over which we have direct voluntary control? 

I am a limited doxastic voluntarist: I hold that there are some beliefs over the formation of which one has direct voluntary control. That is, there are some believable contents — call them propositions — that I can bring myself to believe at will, others that I can bring myself to disbelieve at will, and still others about which I can suspend judgment, thereby enacting something like the epoché (ἐποχή) of such ancient Pyrrhonian skeptics as Sextus Empiricus.

Note that the issue concerns the formation of beliefs, not their maintenance, and note the contrast between direct and indirect formation of beliefs. Roughly, I form a belief directly by just forming it, not by doing something else as a means to forming it. Suppose the year is 1950 and you are a young person, sincere and idealistic, eager to consecrate your life to some cause higher than a bourgeois existence of conspicuous consumption in suburbia. You have vibrant stimulating friends who are members of the Communist Party USA. They tell you that the Revolution is right around the corner. You don't believe it, but you want to believe it. So you go to their meetings, accept Party discipline, toe the Party line, and soon you too believe that the Revolution is right around the corner. In this example, the formation of belief is indirect. You do various things (go to the meetings, repeat the formulas, hawk the Daily Worker, toe the line, etc.) in order to acquire the belief. But then in 1956 you learn of Krushchev's denunciation of Stalin and your belief in the glorious Revolution and its imminence suddenly collapses to be replaced by an opposing belief. The formation of the opposing belief is direct.

Saturday Night at the Oldies II: Varia

We appear to be back on the Eve of Destruction.  We have Biden and his supporters to thank. Barry Maguire from 1965. 

Gene Pitney, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. A Burt Bacharach and Hal David composition. You cannot reason with evildoers. Nor can you appeal to their (nonexistent or ill-formed) consciences. You have to outshoot them. 

Nashville Teens, Tobacco Road, 1964.  Original performed and written by J. D. Loudermilk, 1960.

Ry Cooder, My Girl Josephine

Ry Cooder, Yellow Roses. Give it a chance. The old Hank Snow tune.

Elvis, A Fool Such as I. Another Hank Snow tune.

 

Saturday Night at the Oldies I: The Seder Scene in “Crimes and Misdemeanors”

"Crimes and Misdemeanors" is Woody Allen's masterpiece. Here is the Seder scene. 

Crimes-and-misdemeanors- seder

The scene ends with Saul saying "If necessary, I will always choose God over the truth."  It works cinematically, but it is a philosophically lame response to the atheist Aunt May. It is lame because Saul portrays the theist as one who self-deceivingly embraces consolatory fictions despite his knowledge that they are fictions. Saul might have plausibly replied along one or both of the following lines.

1) It cannot be true that there is no God, since without God there is no truth.  The existence of truth presupposes the existence of God. Truth is the state of a mind in contact with reality. No minds, no truth. But there are infinitely many truths, including infinitely many necessary truths. The infinity of truths and the necessity of some them require for their ultimate support and repository an  infinite and necessary mind. "And this all men call God." So if there is no God, then there is no truth, in which case one cannot prefer truth over God in the manner of Aunt May.

Nietzsche understood this very well. He saw that the death of God is the death of truth. He concluded that there is no truth, but only  the competing perspectives of mutually antagonistic power-centers. That way, however, can lead to Hitler.

Now the above is a mere bloggity-blog sketch. Here is a more rigorous treatment. Rigorous though it is, it does not establish the existence of God beyond any possible doubt; it does, however, render the existence of God rationally acceptable which is all that one can reasonably expect in these precincts.

2) Saul might also have challenged Aunt May as follows:

You say that it is true that there is no God, that there is no moral world-order, that might makes right, and so on. You obviously think that it is important that we face up to these truths and stop fooling ourselves.  You obviously think that there is something morally disreputable about cultivating illusions and stuffing the heads of the young with them, that morally one ought not do these things.  But what grounds this moral ought that you plainly think binds all of us and not just you?  Does it just hang in the air, so to speak? And if it does, what makes it binding or morally obligatory? Can you ultimately make sense of objective moral oughts and ought-nots on the naturalistic scheme you seem to be presupposing?  Won't you have to make at least a Platonic ascent in the direction of the Good?  If so, how will you stop the further ascent to the Good as self-existent and thus as  God?

Or look at this way, May. You think it is a value that we face reality, a reality that for you is Godless, even if  facing what you call reality does not contribute to our flourishing but in fact contributes to the opposite.  But how could something be a value for us if it impedes our flourishing? Is it not ingredient in the concept of value that a value to be what it is must be a value for the valuer? So even if it is true that there is no God, no higher destiny for humans, that life is in the end absurd, how could it be a value for us to admit these truths if truths they be?  So what are you getting so worked up over, sister? I have just pulled the rug out from under your moral enthusiasm!

Crimes and misdemeanors seder 2