Obama's politically correct complacency about the threat is well-argued by Victor Davis Hanson.
Bob Beckel, liberal, shows for once that even a liberal can on occasion display common sense.
On the question of terminology I am pleased to see that Horace Jeffery Hodges and I are in agreement. It is a pleasure to be so well understood by someone.
I have been re-reading Thomas Nagel's seminal paper, "The Absurd," which originally appeared in The Journal of Philosophy, October 1971, and is collected in Nagel's Mortal Questions (Cambridge UP, 1979, 11-23.) Damn, but it is good. Nagel is one of our best philosophers. He's the real thing.
Nagel's central contention is that human existence is essentially absurd. Thus the absurdity of our predicament is not in any way accidental or contingent or due to some remediable (by God or man) disproportion or 'disconnect' between the demands of the human heart and mind for meaning and intelligibility, on the one hand, and the world's 'indifference' to our concerns, on the other. In this regard Nagel's position is far more radical than Camus' as the latter presents it in The Myth of Sisyphus. For Camus, something is dreadfully wrong: the world ought to meet our demands for meaning and intelligibility but it doesn't. For Camus, absurdity is rooted in the discrepancy between demand and satisfaction, a demand that in some way ought to be satisfied and therefore in some sense could be satisfied. (The 'ought' in question is non-agential; here is some discussion of such oughts.)
Camus protests that things are not the way they are supposed to be, but they are, alas, the way they are, and so all we can do is shake our fists at the universe in defiance. Nagel's posture is less heroic and more ironic.
For Nagel there is no non-agential ought to have been otherwise or could have been otherwise with respect to the meaning of human existence: our lives are necessarily absurd because there is in us a conflict that is unavoidable, a conflict between our limited, perspectival, situated, individual points of view and the transcendental point of view from which we observe ourselves and everything else sub specie aeternitatis. The general and philosophical sense of absurdity arises when these two points of view come into conflict. Nagel speaks of "the collision between the seriousness with which we take our lives and the perpretual possibility of regarding everything about which which we are serious as arbitrary or open to doubt." (13)
Immersed as I am in in my quotidian toilings and moilings, I take my life and its projects with utmost seriousness. For example, the other day I went back into my archives to correct a minor mistake I had made in a post from years ago. But while I was very concerned to make this correction and make it right, I was also aware of the 'absurdity' of being worried about such a bagatelle. Who cares? As transcendental spectator even I don't much care. It is easy to detach oneself in thought from one's projects and purposes and very life and see them as arbitrary, contingent, and without objective meaning or purpose or significance. What matters greatly from our situated perspectives can seem to matter not at all when we ascend to the transcendental perspective. But of course I am not just a transcendental spectator of "all time and existence" (Plato, Republic) but also this here measly chunk of animated aging flesh with a very personal history and fate and a reputation to maintain.
It is most marvellously true that I am a conscious and self-conscious being, projective of plans and purposes, sensitive to reasons as opposed to causes, and alive to the full range of the normative; but I am also an embodied conscious and self-conscious being with all that that entails: I can be crushed, blown apart, invaded by microorganisms, . . . . Human existence cannot be reduced to the existence of specimens of a highly evolved zoological species, but I am a specimen of such a species. Thus when we ask about the meaning of life we are really asking about the meaning of embodied consciousness. I believe this is a very important point. For it implies that the question cannot be addressed in a a wholly objectifying manner.
As I read him, Nagel is telling us that the root of absurdity is in us as embodied consciousnesses, not in the world or in any disproportion between us and the world. It is an ineradicable root. Both POVs are available to us — and we must avail ourselves of both if we are to live fully human lives — but they are necessarily in conflict. Or so it seems. If I am to live my life with zest and passion and commitment, then I cannot live the detached life of the transcendental ego who merely observes while his physical vehicle negotiates the twists and turns of this gnarly world. (This is a deep and complicated theme requiring much more discussion.) Borrowing some Heideggerian jargon we can say that for Nagel the sense of the absurd is constitutive of human Dasein. To be a fully awake human being, one who avails himself of both POVs, is to live with the sense of the absurd. The only way to escape our absurd predicament would be by causing the cessation of embodiment (suicide) or by somehow– via meditation perhaps– emptying the 'I' out into something pre- or non-egoic.
I think it is important to point out that for Nagel and in truth the absurd exists only as the sense of the absurd. This is another way of saying that the absurdity of the human predicament is not a merely objective fact if it is a fact: it involves consciousness/self-consciousness.
Is the absurdity of human existence a problem to be solved? It cannot be a problem that we can solve since it arises necessarily from the collision of the two POVs both of which are essential to being human. If the problem arises for a person, then that person cannot both solve the problem and continue to exist. (This is not to say that the problem must arise for every person since not everyone exercises his capacity to reflect on matters under the aspect of eternity.) Nor is absurdity a predicament. To call a state of affairs a predicament is to suggest the possibility of extrication. But there is no escape from absurdity. So it is neither a problem nor a predicament. What is called for is not the defiant posturing of an Algerian existentialist but irony: "If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair." (23)
As for Peter Lupu, he seems to be maintaining the exact opposite of what Nagel maintains. Peter's thought seems to be that the meaning of an individual life is constituted by the power to reflect. Every agent of a life has this power essentially even if not all choose to exercise it. Meaning is therefore not bestowed by the agent upon himself or by something or someone outside the agent such as God. Existential meaning inheres in the agent's power to reflect on his life, his values, desires, and purposes. For Lupu, meaning is not subjective . Nor is it externally objective, imposed from without. Every life is meaningful just in virtue of the agent's power to reflect.
I questioned whether existential meaning could be both objective and subjectively appropriable by all. Lupu thinks he can answer this by saying that meaning is objective albeit internally objective in virtue of every agent's having essentially the power to reflect; but meaning is also subjectively appropriable by each agent if he chooses to actualize his power to reflect. Here again is my aporetic tetrad:
A. If life has a meaning, then it cannot be subjective.
B. The meaning of life must be subjectively appropriable by all.
C. There is no meaning that is both nonsubjective and subjectively appropriable by all.
D. Life has a meaning.
Lupu solves my tetrad by rejecting (C) while accepting the remaining limbs. Nagel, I would guess, would solve the tetrad by rejecting (D) while accepting the other limbs.
There are several questions I need to pose to Lupu, but for now let me just pose a Nagelian question/objection. Nagel is surely on to something when he underscores the power of reflection to undermine the seriousness of our projects and make them appear arbitrary, contingent, and dubious. When this power is exercised it collides with our tendency toward straighforward unreflective living under the guidance of taken-for-granted norms and values imbibed uncritically from the circumambient culture. How can Lupu accommodate Nagel's point? Is it not more plausible to hold that it is absurdity, not meaning, that is the upshot of reflection?
He who can follow an argument will also know how not to be led by it.
. . . you'll like my blog. If you don't like to think, you need my blog.
In the nine years I have been blogging I have been careful to distinguish between Islam and radical Islam (militant Islam, Islamism, Islamofascism, etc.) I can't say I have had any really good reason for this charitableness on my part. Perhaps it is that I just didn't want to believe that 'moderate Muslim' is as much an oxymoron as 'moderate Nazi.'
In "Calling Islam 'Islam'," Bosch Fawstin argues against distinguishing between Islam and radical Islam (militant Islam, fundamentalist Islam, etc.) But if one doesn't make this distinction, and radical Islam is the enemy, then Islam is the enemy. This seems to have the unpalatable consequence that 1.5 billion Muslims are the enemy. Surely that is false. As I understand Fawstin, he avoids this inference by distinguishing between Muslims who take Islam seriously and those who don't. Actually, he makes a tripartite distinction among Muslims who take Islam seriously, and are a grave existential threat to us; Muslims who do not take Islam seriously and are a threat to us only insofar as they refuse to condemn the radicals; and Muslims who, unlike the second group, practice Islam, but an 'enlightened' Islam. This third group, however, is empty. According to Fawstin, "There’s no separate ideology apart from Islam that’s being practiced by these Muslims in name only, there’s no such thing as 'Western Islam'."
If Fawstin is right, then to speak of Islam having being 'hijacked' by radicals makes as little sense as to speak of National Socialism as having been hijacked by radicals. Islam and Nazism are radical and militant and murderous by their very nature: there are no moderate forms. If you are Muslim or a Nazi then you are a radical since these ideologies admit of no moderate forms; if you are not a radical Muslim or Nazi, then you are not a Muslim or a Nazi at all.
Whether or not you agree with Fawstin's parsing of the terminology, the radicals do pose a real threat both 'explosive' (as in the Boston Marathon bombing) and 'subversive' (as in the building of the ground zero mosque). Curiously, in the case of GZM, the site of the subversion is the same as the site of one of the main 'explosions.'
Why is it that Jay Sekulow perceives the threat clearly while Juan Cole does not?
In Terrorism and Other Religions, Cole argues that "Contrary to what is alleged by bigots like Bill Maher, Muslims are not more violent than people of other religions." Although we conservatives don't think all that highly of Bill Maher, we cheered when he pointed out the obvious, namely, that Islam, and Islam alone at the present time, is the faith whose doctrines drive most of the world's terrorism, and that the Left's moral equivalency 'argument' is "bullshit" to employ Maher's terminus technicus. Why should pointing out what is plainly true get Maher labeled a bigot by Cole?
So I thought I must be missing something and that I needed to be set straight by Professor Cole. So I read his piece carefully numerous times. Cole's main argument is that, while people of "European Christian heritage" killed over 100 million people in the 20th century, Muslims have killed only about two million during that same period. But what does this show? Does it show that Islamic doctrine does not drive most of the world's terrorism at the present time? Of course not.
That is precisely the issue given that Cole is contesting what "the bigot" Maher claimed. What Cole has given us is a text-book example of ignoratio elenchi. This is an informal fallacy of reasoning committed by a person who launches into the refutation of some thesis that is other than the one being forwarded by the dialectical opponent. If the thesis is that Muslims who take Islam seriously are the cause of most of the world's terrorism at the present time, this thesis cannot be refuted by pointing out that people of "European Christian heritage" have killed more people than Muslims. For this is simply irrelevant to the issue in dispute. (I note en passant that this is why ignoratio elenchi is classifed as a fallacy of relevance.)
Someone born and raised in a Christian land can be called a Christian. But it doesn't follow that such a person is a Christian in anything more than a sociological sense. In this loose and external sense the author of The Anti-Christ was a Christian. Nietzsche was raised in a Christian home in a Christian land by a father, Karl Ludwig Nietzsche, who was a Lutheran pastor. Similarly, Hitler was a Christian. And Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, was a Muslim. But were Ataturk's actions guided and inspired by Islamic doctrine? As little as Hitler's actions were guided and inspired by the Sermon on the Mount. Here is a list of some of Ataturk's anti-Islamic actions.
Having exposed the fundamental fallacy in Cole's article, there is no need to go through the rest of his distortions such as the one about the Zionist terrorists during the time of the British Mandate.
Why do leftists deny reality? A good part of the answer is that they deny it because reality does not fit their scheme. Leftists confuse the world with their view of the world. In their view of the world, people are all equal and religions are all equal – equally good or equally bad depending on the stripe of the leftist. They want it to be that way and so they fool themselves into thinking that it is that way. Moral equivalency reigns. If you point out that Muhammad Atta was an Islamic terrorist, they shoot back that Timothy McVeigh was a Christian terrorist — willfully ignoring the crucial difference that the murderous actions of the former derive from Islamic/Islamist doctrine whereas the actions of the latter do not derive from Christian doctrine.
And then these leftists like Cole compound their willful ignorance of reality by denouncing those who speak the truth as 'Islamophobes.'
That would have been like hurling the epithet 'Nazi-phobe' at a person who, in 1938, warned of the National Socialist threat to civilized values.
This had to be said and Judge Pirro does a wonderful job of it. What I love about the Fox ladies: beauty, brains, and balls — or the female equivalent thereof.
"We should not be required to breathe the same air as you, we should not be required to share the indignity of your presence" says Judge Jeanine Pirro in her opening statement to the Jihadi mother of the Boston bomber, as she exposes the facts that are being brought to light behind the terrorist attack in the Boston Marathon.
Before getting on to tonight's scheduled presentation, we pause to remember George Jones who died Friday at 81, his longevity proof of the human body's ability to take a sustained licking from John Barleycorn and keep on ticking. I don't believe Jones ever had a crossover hit in the manner of a Don Gibson or a Merle Haggard. He was pure country and highly regarded by aficionados of that genre. Here are two I like:
…………….
Bob Dylan, Love Minus Zero/No Limit (1965)
Orleans, Still the One (1976)
Doors, Love Me Two Times (1967)
Jimi Hendrix, Third Stone from the Sun (1967) "You will never hear surf music again . . . ."
Lucinda Williams singing Dylan, Positively Fourth Street. This is a great cover!
Cream, From Four Until Late
Bob Dylan, Obviously Five Believers (1966)
Bob Dylan, From a Buick 6 (1966), from Highway 61 Revisited with Al Kooper on organ and Mike Bloomfield, lead guitar.
Lovin' Spoonful, Six O'Clock (1967). More proof of the vast superiority of the '60s over every other decade when it comes to popular music. No decade was more creative, engaged, rich, relevant, and diverse. Generational chauvinism? No, just the plain truth! But you had to be there.
Johnny Rivers, Seventh Son (1965)
Byrds, Eight Miles High (1969)
The Clovers, Love Potion #9 (1959). Written by Lieber and Stoller.
Bruce Springsteen, Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
For present purposes, an aporia is a set of propositions each member of which has a strong claim on our acceptance, but whose members are collectively inconsistent. Like many a philosophical problem, the philosophical problem of the meaning of life is usefully approached from an aporetic angle. So consider the following aporetic tetrad:
A. If life has a meaning, then it cannot be subjective.
B. The meaning of life must be subjectively appropriable by all.
C. There is no meaning that is both nonsubjective and subjectively appropriable by all.
D. Life has a meaning.
Good though not absolutely compelling reasons have been given for both (A) and (B). But they are in tension with one another, a tension recorded in (C), the third limb of our aporetic tetrad. One who inclines towards compatibilism with respect to existential meaning inclines toward the rejection of (C). Unfortunately, (C) is not easily rejected, as I will try to show in this post. The main difficulty concerns the subjective appropriability of an objective purpose by all even if it is granted that there is an objective purpose applicable to all.
First of all, one cannot appropriate an objective purpose unless one knows or at least has good reasons for believing that there is one. More importantly, one must know what the purpose is and what one must do to live in accordance with it. Three different questions: Is there an objective purpose? What is it? How do I live in accordance with it? Countless millions of people, however, have lived who lacked the abilities or the opportunities to form reasonable beliefs about these matters, let alone to come to have knowledge about them. It is not enough that the objective purpose be knowable by some; it must be knowable by all. This was argued earlier. But for the countless millions just mentioned there was no real possibility of appropriating the objective purpose. By ‘real possibility’ is meant something far stronger than a mere logical possibility or even a nomological possibility. It is logically and nomologically possible for a human being to run a four-minute mile. But it is not possible for me and plenty of others to run that fast. So even if it is logically and nomologically possible for all human beings to know the objective purpose of life, it does not follow that all have any serious possibility of knowing it. It is as impossible for the countless millions just mentioned to know the objective purpose of life, supposing there is one, as it is for people like me to run a four-minute mile. It follows that the objective purpose of life, supposing there is one, is not subjectively appropriable by all, which is to say that it is not subjectively appropriable in the way it would have to be for life to be objectively meaningful. Again, if life has a meaning, it has a purpose, and the purpose must be the same for all and appropriable by all. Redemption from absurdity must be possible for all if it is be possible for any. If the world is so arranged that you are barred from redemption through no fault of your own, then my redemption is not a redemption from absurdity.
Those with the abilities and opportunities to investigate the three questions just mentioned are not in a much better position. For they are confronted with a welter of conflicting doctrines. The fortunate have the leisure to inquire and the intellect with which to inquire, but our intellects are weak and the problems stare us down with a face of seeming intractability. If all we have to rely on are ourselves and the resources of this world, then the conclusion to draw is that human life has no meaning that is both nonsubjective and subjectively appropriable.
Some will reply that what we cannot supply has been supplied by divine revelation. But this is no real solution. Even if God has revealed the purpose of human existence to us, together with the means of achieving that purpose, and in a way that respects our freedom and dignity, this will not do us any good if we do not know the purpose and how to achieve it. That, however, is precisely what we do not know as is clear from the conflicting accounts of the content of revelation, not to mention conflict over whether revelation is actual or even possible. All of these are ‘up for grabs’: the existence of God, the possibility of divine revelation, the actuality of divine revelation, not to mention its content and interpretation. If I merely believe in the content of a particular (putative) revelation, the Christian revelation for example, as interpreted in a certain way by a certain ecclesiastical authority such as the Roman Catholic magisterium, that is not good enough for it leaves me with reasonable doubts. But as long as I doubt the meaning of life and must continue to inquire, I have not yet subjectively appropriated the objective meaning of life. The subjective certainty of faith is not enough. What is needed is the objective certainty of knowledge. And it must be available to all – which is not the case for those who lived before the time of the historical revelation.
D. Life Has a Meaning
A case has been made for each of the first three limbs. Should we therefore conclude that life has no meaning? That would be hasty. It is arguable, though not compellingly arguable, that the living of a life presupposes the objective meaningfulness of life. E. M Adams writes,
Just as belief in the intelligibility of the world is presupposed by our quest for understanding, the meaningfulness of life is presupposed in living a life. We have to believe that life is not absurd, that it is not a tale told by an idiot, that it makes sense, in order to keep on with the struggles of life. (“The Meaning of Life,” International Journal of the Philosophy of Religion 51, 2002, pp. 71-81.)
I take Adams’ point to be that we cannot live without presupposing that our lives have meaning, objective meaning, a meaning whose source is external to us. One who believes, not just in his study, but throughout the activities of his life, that his life and its activities have only the meaning that he gives them must suffer a loss of motivation. If he does not, he is simply fooling himself about what he really believes and lives in a state of self-deception, or else he conveniently forgets his theoretical conviction when it comes time to act. He maintains at the level of theory that his life has only the meaning he confers upon it, but he ‘contradicts’ this theoretical belief by the energy and passion with which he pursues his projects and perhaps also by the passion with which he tries to convince the rest of us that nothing matters except what we make matter. For if he fully appreciated what his subjectivism amounts to he would see that his acts of meaning-bestowal are as meaningless as everything else in his life. You could say that such a person has not subjectively appropriated his subjectivism. This is true whether the subjectivism is extreme or moderate.
Living our lives with zest and vigor and passion and commitment, we presuppose that they are objectively meaningful. One who denies this I would suspect of self-deception or a lack of intelligence or spiritual superficiality. One who responds, “I live a rich and full life despite my conviction that life has no objective meaning applicable to all” simply does not appreciate the existential implications of what he believes. This is a bold assertion, many will disagree with it, some will be offended by it, and I cannot prove it; but it is reasonable to maintain it. It must also be conceded that, even if we cannot live full lives without the presupposition of objective meaningfulness, it does not follow that there is an objective meaning. It is not easy to exclude the possibility that what we must presuppose does not hold in fact. We must presuppose the intelligibility of the world if we are to embark seriously upon the arduous quest for understanding, but it is logically and epistemically possible that the world is unintelligible in itself. Likewise, we must presuppose the objective meaningfulness of life if we are to live rich and full and committed lives, but it is logically and epistemically possible that our lives are objectively meaningless nonetheless.
But if these possibilities are actual, then all the more are our lives meaningless, for then the way things are thwarts us: there is a ‘disconnect’ between what we need and must presuppose and what is true. Given that we cannot know that this is the case, we are entitled to believe that it is not the case. It may be that the ultimate nature of the world is such as to frustrate our purposes. But we cannot know this and there is no point in believing it, while there is every point in believing that the presupposition of meaning is true. Our very lives are the ‘proof’ of it. When it comes to life and its living it is reasonable to hold that the ‘proofs’ will be vital and pragmatic rather than theoretical. We are participants first and spectators second. We are parts of the world-whole and we are beings of meaning; it is reasonable to extrapolate that the world-whole of which we are parts is also a world of meaning and intelligibility. If we are wrong and the truth thwarts us, then why should we value truth? With this I conclude my case that life has meaning, whatever that meaning might be. It has some objective meaning or other and part of what contributes to the zest and passion and subjective meaningfulness of a life is the quest for that objective meaning.
Impasse
The limbs of the aporetic tetrad are all of them defensible, yet they cannot all be true. I leave it to the reader to find his way forward if he can. If nothing else, I have elucidated the philosophical problem of the meaning of human existence and have blocked some facile (non)solutions.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, tr. E. F. J. Payne, vol. II (Dover, 1966), p. 162. This is from Chapter XVII, "On Man's Need for Metaphysics" (emphases added and a paragraph break):
Temples and churches, pagodas and mosques, in all countries and ages, in their splendour and spaciousness, testify to man's need for metaphysics, a need strong and ineradicable, which follows close on the physical. The man of a satirical frame of mind could of course add that this need for metaphysics is a modest fellow content with meagre fare. Sometimes it lets itself be satisfied with clumsy fables and absurd fairy-tales. If only they are imprinted early enough, they are for man adequate explanations of his existence and supports for his morality.
Consider the Koran, for example; this wretched book was sufficient to start a world-religion, to satisfy the metaphysical need for countless millions for twelve hundred years, to become the basis of their morality and of a remarkable contempt for death, and also to inspire them to bloody wars and the most extensive conquests. In this book we find the saddest and poorest form of theism. Much may be lost in translation, but I have not been able to discover in it one single idea of value. Such things show that the capacity for metaphysics does not go hand in hand with the need for it . . . .
We who thrive get used to being alive, and forget we have our lives on loan, a loan that can be called on the spot without advance notice. Compare James 4:13-17 (NIV):
13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
He who is ever on the make will never have it made. He will never be a 'made man.' There is a time to strive, and a time to be. Is the universe trying to get somewhere? It already is everywhere. Are you any less cosmic? If you think you have a Maker, is he not a 'made man'? And aren't you a chip off the old block?
If a relationship has a troubled past, no future, and a present that is merely the transition from the one to the other — let it lapse.
Tony H asks:
Your procreation argument for heterosexual marriage is consistent with polygyny, so if it is sound, it may rule out homosexual marriages, but be of great use to defending polygynists since it maximizes procreation and the perpetuation of the state quantitatively. What is the state's interest in monogamy?
I was afraid my argument could be misinterpreted as promoting increased procreation. But I took no stand on that. My argument does not "maximize procreation." It says nothing about whether there should be more procreation or less. Here is what I wrote: "The state has a legitimate interest in its own perpetuation and maintenance via the production of children, their socializing, their protection, and their transformation into productive citizens who will contribute to the common good." Let me break that down paratactically.
We collectively need some offspring; they need to be socialized and instructed in the rudiments of our culture; they need to be protected; they need to be educated to the point where they can function as productive citizens. No one of those coordinate clauses, or their logical conjunction, entails that levels of procreation should be increased, let alone that the state should have a hand in such an increase.
Is my argument logically consistent with countenancing polygyny? I suppose it is as it stands; but that is only because my argument was restricted to only one aspect of this multi-faceted issue. I was just assuming that marriage is dyadic in order to focus on the question of why the state shouuld recognize opposite-sexed dyadic unions but not same-sexed dyadic unions. The issue of the 'adicity' of marital and quasi-marital unions was not on the table. One cannot talk about everything at once.
Why should the state have an interest in monogamy over polygamy (whether polyandry or polygyny)? I have no answer to that at the moment. I have only started thinking hard about these questions recently and I have an open mind on them.
As a conservative, I of course subscribe to the quite general principle that there is a defeasible presumption in favor of traditional ways of doing things. But I am open to the possibility that the presumption in favor of traditional marriage (dyadic, between humans only, permanent, exclusive, opposite-sexed, open to procreation) can be defeated. For while I am a conservative, I am also a philosopher, and you can't be a philosopher (in the strict sense!) if you simply assume dogmatically this or that.
I should also add that I play for a draw, not for a win. It sufficies to 'neutralize' the liberal-left arguments. All I have to do is show that they are not compelling. I don't have to refute them. There are precious few refutations in philosophy, and none of them pertain to 'hairy' issues like same-sex 'marriage.'
James N. Anderson writes,
To grant that marriage could be redefined is to capitulate to a postmodernist anti-realism according to which all social structures and institutions are mere human conventions and there is really no such thing as human nature, understood in traditional metaphysical terms. We must insist that marriage is not something that can be defined and redefined as we see fit. Marriage is a divine institution, not a human social construction like chess or money that we invented for our own purposes. There wasn’t a point in time at which humans ‘defined’ marriage in the way that, say, a foot was once defined as 12 inches. Marriage was bestowed upon us, not created by us.
1. It is certainly true that if marriage is a divine institution, as Professor Anderson says, then it has a nature not subject to human definition or redefinition. For if there are natures, then they are what they are whatever we say about them or think about them. They are what they are whether we frame definitions of them or fail to do so, or do so accurately or inaccurately. But that marriage is a divine institution is a premise that won't be granted by many and perhaps most of the participants in the current debate over same-sex marriage. It is therefore futile to use this premise in the current debate. Or as the pugnacious Irishman Bill O'Reilly said the other night, "No Bible-thumping." Defenders of marriage ought to invoke only those premises that secularists could accept, assuming that the goal is either to persuade them that the traditonal concept of marriage ought not be revised, or to show them that traditionalists have a principled stand that does not arise from biogotry or a desire to discriminate unjustly.
Suppose I want to convince you of something. I must use premises that you accept. For if I mount an argument sporting one or more premises that you do not accept, you will point to that premise or those premises and pronounce my argument unsound no matter how rigorous and cogent my reasoning. I am not saying that marriage is not divinely ordained; I am saying that the claim that it is has no place in a discussion in which the goal is to work out an agreement that will be acceptable to a large group of people, including theists and atheists. (Not that I am sanguine that any such agreement is in the offing.)
2. Whether or not marriage is a divine institution, it can have a nature. That is: the question whether marriage has a nature, and the question whether there are natures at all, are logically independent of the question whether God is the ultimate ontological ground of natures. Or at least this is prima facie the case. Jean-Paul Sartre famously maintained that man cannot have a nature because there is no God to give him one; but it is not at all clear that a godless universe must be one bereft of natures. Aristotle believed in natures even though his Prime Mover was neither the creator nor the ontological ground of natures.
3. Let's assume that there is no God, and that therefore marriage is not divinely instituted, but that some things have natures and some things do not. Water, to coin an example, has a nature, and it took natural philosophers a long time to figure out what it is. Chess, by contrast, does not have a nature. It is a tissue of conventions, an invention of man.
4. Does marriage have a nature? If it has a nature, and that nature requires that marriage be between exactly one man and exactly one woman, then there can be no question of redefining 'marriage' so as to include same-sex 'marriages.' If marriage has the nature just specified, then it is impossible that there be such a thing as same-sex marriage. And if same-sex 'marriage' is impossible, then one cannot sensibly be for it or against it. 'I am for same-sex marriage' would then be on a par with 'I am for carnivorous rabbits.'
'Should homosexuals be allowed to marry?' for traditionalists is like 'Should cats be allowed to philosophize?' The nature of cats is such as to rule out their doing any such thing. Similary, on the traditionalist understanding, marriage has a nature, and its nature is such as to rule out tlhe very possibility of same-sex 'marriage.'
5. Any talk of redefining 'marriage' therefore begs the crucial question as to whether or not marriage has a nature. Such talk presupposes that it does not.
6. If the same-sexer goes POMO on us and adopts antirealism across the board, then he opens himself up to a crapstorm of powerful objections. But needn't go that route. If Anderson is suggesting that the same-sexer must, then I disagree with him. The same-sexer need not embrace antirealism along the lines of a Goodmaniacal worldmaking constructivism; he might simply claim that while there are natures, and some things have them, marriage is not one of those things.
7. Can I show that marriage has a nature? Well, there is very little that one can SHOW in philosophy, so let's retreat a bit. Can I make a plausible case that marriage has a nature? Well, man has a nature and certain powers grounded in that nature, one of them being the power to procreate. The powers of human beings are not like the 'powers' of the chess pieces. It is by arbitrary human stipulation that the bishops move along diagonals only, capture in the same way they move, etc. But the power of a man and woman to produce offspring is not a power that derives from arbitrary human stipulation. It is a a power grounded in the nature of human beings.
Now if 'marriage' refers to what has traditionally been called marriage, i.e., to that the definition of which the same-sexer revisionists want to revise so as to include same-sex unions, then 'marriage' refers to a relation between opposite-sexed human animals that is oriented toward procreation. Of course there are social and cultural factors in addition to this natural substratum. There is more to human marriage than animal mating and care of offspring. But if you grant that human beings have a nature and a procreative power grounded in this nature, then it seems you have to grant that 'marriage' refers to a union between opposite-sexed human beings, a union that has a specific nature. If so, then it is senseless to want to revise the definition of 'marriage.' Marriage is what it is; it has a nature, and that's the end of it.
UPDATE (4/26): Professor Anderson responds here.
