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. . . the whole of the religious impulse arises from the profound sense we have of a gap between how we are and how we would wish to be . . . .

This is not quite right, as it seems to me. The sense of the gap between 'is' and 'ought' is undoubtedly part of the religious impulse, but there is more to it than this. It must be accompanied by the sense that the gaping chasm between the miserable wretches we are and what we know we ought to be cannot be bridged by human effort, whether individual or collective. Otherwise, the religious sensibility would collapse into the ethical sensibility. There is more to religion than ethics. The irreligious can be aware of the discrepancy between what we are and what we should be. The religious are convinced of the need for moral improvement together with a realization of their impotence in bringing it about by their own efforts.

But now, if I may be permitted to argue against myself:  "Haven't you maintained more than once that Buddhism is a religion?  And isn't Buddhism a religion of self-help?  And haven't you quoted the 'Be ye lamps unto yourselves' verse?  So something has to give.  If Buddhism counts as a religion, then it cannot be essential to a religion that it invoke 'other-power' for moral improvement.  And if the latter invocation is essential to religion, then Buddhism is not a religion."

Well, my man, it looks like we are going to have to think about this some more. 

"And another thing.  You say that there is more to religion than ethics. This implies that ethics is an essential component of religion.  But doesn't Kierkegaard speak of the teleological suspension of the ethical?  Might it not be that one can have religion without ethics?"

A religion worth having cannot be decoupled from ethics.  See Abraham, Isaac, and an Aspect of the Problem of  Revelation and  Kant on Abraham and Isaac.

A correspondent, responding to Weil's Wager, has this to say:

[. . .] What worries me when I turn to Weil’s argument is that she seems to be trying to replace Pascal’s serviceable scale of goods with a dichotomy of illusory and absolute goods. I have no idea what it means to say ”health and fitness are illusory goods” or “only God is absolutely good.” The former seems to me just some metaphysically tricked-out term of abuse. I have no idea at all how to unpack “God is the absolute good” (despite your remarks in Part IV ). Pascal at least talks about salvation and an eternal afterlife. Is that what is supposed to be absolutely good for me? And so God as the provider is somehow also valuable or “absolutely good” for me? All of this dark and murky to me in Weil’s argument, while I think I understand what Pascal is proposing.

I agree that the whether-or-not version of (7) is incompatible with (1), but otherwise I remain lost at sea in her attempt to argue that I must pursue the only thing that is “absolutely good” whether or not it really exists. [. . .]

Central to Weil's thought is the notion that the goods of this life are unreal: "Things of the senses are real if they are considered as perceptible things, but unreal if considered as goods." (Gravity and Grace, p. 45) To understand this one must see it in the light of Plato, Weil's beloved master. It has been said with some justice that every philosopher is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian, and there is no doubt that Weil is a Platonist and was hostile to Aristotle. My correspondent, however, is an Aristotelian (to force him into our little schema) and so it comes as no surprise to me that he is at a loss to understand what it could mean to say that such things as health and fitness, food and drink, property and progeny, are illusory goods.

Continue reading “Simone Weil and the Illusoriness of Worldly Goods”

See Ed Feser's outstanding post on this topic.  For background on libertarianism, see Stephan Kinsella, What Libertarianism Is.

Excellent commentary by Thomas Sowell. 

Not only do we fail to live up to the ideals we have, we fail to have the ideals we ought to have. There are two problems here, the first pertaining more to the will, the second more to the intellect, or rather to the faculty of moral discernment.  Let us consider the second problem.

It is not enough to have ideals, one must have the right ideals. This is why being idealistic, contrary to common opinion, is not always good. Idealism ran high among the members of the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the Schuetzstaffel (SS). The same is true of countless millions who became Communists in the 20th century: they sacrificed their 'bourgeois' careers and selfish interests to serve the Party.  (See Whittaker Chambers, Witness, required reading for anyone who would understand Communism.) But it would have been better had the members of these organizations been cynics and slackers. It is arguably better to have no ideals than to have the wrong ones.  Nazism and Communism brought unprecedented amounts of evil into the world on the backs of idealistic motives and good intentions.  Connected with this is the point that wanting to do good is not good enough: one must know what the good is and what one morally may and may not do to attain it.

Continue reading “Ideals”