Category: Emotions

Comments on and Questions about a Passage in Vohanka’s “Love or Contemplation?”

Vlastimil Vohánka’s  article Love or Contemplation: Hildebrandian and Aristotelian Ways to High Happiness  is surpassingly excellent,  and smooth-sailing for me until I came to the following passage on pp. 10-11 about which I have some questions.

Following Conway and the Aristotelian Josef Pieper, I say that the contemplation of God’s existence and qualities is not to be understood as the process of inquiring whether God exists and what his qualities are.

BV:  I agree. It would be better, though, to refer to Pieper more specifically as a Thomist.  No Aristotle, no Thomas. But there is more to Thomas than Aristotle.  There is a decided Platonic and neo-Platonic strain in Thomas. Ratzinger, the last pope worth his salt, would back me up on this.

Rather, the contemplation is an attentive beholding or seeing that God exists and what God is like. Aristotelians typically depict the contemplation as monologic rather than dialogic, as argumentative rather than intuitive or even non-discursive, and as propositional rather than non-propositional.

BV: The first sentence is fine, but I struggle with the second. What do you mean by ‘monologic’ and ‘dialogic’?  The first from ‘monologue’ and the second from ‘dialogue’?  Admittedly, one cannot have a dialogue with the Prime Mover whereas one presumably can with the personal God of the Judeo-Christian tradition. You seem to be saying that in Aristotle contemplation is a form of argument, and therefore discursive, and not intuitive.  You may be right, but some citation of Aristotelian texts would be helpful. That you are right is suggested by the contrast in Aristotle between the vita contemplativa (bios theoretikos) and the vita activa.  Accordingly, both reasoning about God and directly apprehending God by intellectual intuition (visio intellectualis) — assuming that Aristotle while in a Platonic mood would admit such a thing —  would fall on the side of contemplation.

Suppose some person attentively rehearses, step by step, the soundness of an argument that God exists, which she has seen to be sound many times before. She is contemplating in a typical Aristotelian manner. But, following Pieper, we can understand the contemplation more broadly: as possibly non-argumentative, non-discursive, non-propositional, or non-monologic.  Suppose that the person attends to the putative fact that if God exists then he is omnipresent, and finds it, as she has done before, intuitively self-evident or obvious. Even now she is contemplating. Later she dwells non-discursively (i.e., without elaborate thinking, imagining, remembering, or inner or outer talking) and also without any argumentative or self-evident assurance — but with an assent of faith — on the putative fact that God exists and is omnipresent. She is contemplating, too. Later, she dwells non-discursively on a non-propositional idea of God, or of someone omnipresent. Even so she is contemplating. She is also contemplating when she attentively observes whatever obtains in or outside of her in the present moment (her breath, sensations, feelings, thoughts, outer events or objects) as something caused or enabled by God.

BV:  I am somewhat sympathetic to this broad understanding of ‘contemplation’ which embraces both reasoning, which is discursive, and direct insight/intuition, which is not. Both are epistemic procedures. But faith is not knowledge. So I balk at the notion that an act of faith can be booked under ‘contemplation.’  I would also point out that talk of assent implies assent to a proposition, as opposed to faith in a person. Faith in God is trust in God, and thus non-epistemic.

Later still, she regards herself — attentively and non-discursively — as addressing God from a dialogic, second-person Thou-perspective (although perhaps her message cannot be translated accurately into literal descriptions and can only be described in metaphors or gestures). Or she regards God as addressing her from the same sort of perspective. Or she regards herself and God as aware of each other and also of their mutual awareness. In all these latter cases, the person is praying to God, but contemplating God as well.

BV: If one enters into a person-to-person, I-Thou relation with God, that relation in and of itself is not an act of contemplation, although one could, apart from that relation, also contemplate God.

Suppose my wife and I are sitting in the same room. She is immersed in a book, and I am contemplating her lovingly.  That contemplation is not an I-Thou relation. If I were to initiate an I-Thou relation by addressing her, I would thereby cease to be contemplating her. Contemplation involves a certain objectification which is foreign to the I-Thou relation.  Or so it seems to me.

“Familiarity breeds contempt”

‘Familiarity’ is from the Latin familia, family. The pith of the well-known saying is purchased in the coin of exaggeration, since familiarity needn’t breed contempt; the exaggeration does however rightly point to the ambiguity of human relations.

Although family ties hold one in bonds of love, it is a holding which is too often a holding in contempt, whether mild, moderate, or murderous.  We know our family members too well  to respect them easily, though we ought to.

To maintain respect where there is no fear is a moral challenge. When love is present, it is easy. But true love is rare. In most situations, however, fear suffices. So that you not violate me, it suffices that you fear what I will do to you if you do violate me; whether you respect me is moot.  Hence the logic of deterrence. “An armed society is a polite society.” “Peace through strength.” Si vis pacem, para bellum. (“If you want peace, prepare for war.”)

Since respect is often fear in disguise, it is often an open question how much the respect one is being shown is really fear.

Respect requires distance.  So in every relation with anyone, inside or outside of the family circle, one ought to maintain a certain amount of distance. How much depends on the circumstances and whether one possesses good judgment (phronesis).

There is social distance and physical distance.  Social distance is maintained by the observance of conventional forms of polite behavior both verbal and non-verbal.   “Excuse me, sir” is an example of the former; knocking before entering, an example of the latter.

‘Family’ narrowly defined implies consanguinity.  Consanguinity, however, is no guarantee of spiritual affinity. Sad, but true. On the other hand,  there is no comity without commonality. One form of commonality is consanguinity.  Although consanguinity contributes to commonality, I am spiritually affine with none of the people to whom I am blood-related.  That is my experience; perhaps it is also yours. And yet it is said with some truth that “blood is thicker than water” a saying that points to our dismal rootage in the animal and the tribal.

This is why it is folly to regard the human race as one big happy family. It is not even potentially so. Social harmony is possible only among those who, at a minimum, share a common language and a common culture. Wide-open immigration is therefore a recipe for disaster. A flourishing multi-racial  society may be possible; a flourishing multi-cultural society is certainly not.    If most of our time is spent tearing each other apart, little time will be left over for ‘flourishing.’ A house divided against itself cannot stand.

The political consequences of the above are obvious.

Familiarity is a species of propinquity (social proximity) but not all propinquity is familiarity.   Spiritual affinity requires neither consanguinity nor propinquity.  There is spiritual affinity. This is a fact that, to my mind, points to our higher spiritual nature.

We humans are a hybrid ‘species’ drawn upward toward the aethereal but held fast by  blood and soil, the tribal and the animalic.  Or is that too Platonic a way of putting it?

The Fearful are Easy to Control

Is the sheep your totemic animal? A sheep in a mask? A dose of Emerson may help if it is not too late.

"He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear." (Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay "Courage")

(I note that the pronoun as it functions in the quoted line has neither an antecedent nor a gender. So while grammatically it is a masculine pronoun, logically it is neither.) 

Emerson courage

The Tree and the House

A parable about envy.

Substack latest.  Opening:

A man planted a tree to shade his house from the desert sun. The tree, a palo verde, grew like a weed and was soon taller than the house. The house became envious, feeling diminished by the tree’s stature. The house said to the tree: "How dare you outstrip me, you who were once so puny! I towered above you, but you have made me small."

Can Rigorous Philosophy be Therapeutic?

Is philosophical analysis relevant to life as she is lived? 

Richard Sorabji:

Stoic cognitive therapy consists of a package which is in part a philosophical analysis of what the emotions are and in part a battery of cognitive devices for attacking those aspects of emotion which the philosophical analysis suggests can be attacked. The devices are often not philosophical and are often shared with other schools. But I believe it is wrong to suppose that they are doing all the work. The work is done by the package and the philosophical analysis is an essential part of the package. Admittedly somebody who just wanted to be treated passively as the patient of a Stoic therapist would not have to understand the philosophical analysis. But anyone who wants to be able to deal with the next emotional crisis that comes along and the next needs to learn how to treat themselves and for this the philosophical analysis of emotion is essential. What is under discussion here is the role of philosophical analysis as relevant to life.

I am indebted to Bernard Williams not only for expressing a diametrically opposite view but for discussing it with me both orally and in print.1 His case demands the most careful consideration. His claim . . . is that rigorous philosophy cannot be therapeutic.

Read more.