Incarnate Sensibilities

Truth or Tolerance? Part II

2011-01-11T17:29:00.000-05:00

By T. J. Pia

Several years ago, Dr. Peter Kreeft gave a lecture entitled “Moral Theology and Homosexuality” to Saint Michael’s College. As always, Dr. Kreeft took questions after his lecture. He was asked by one student whether or not he would agree that government officials should not seek to recriminalize such things as homosexual activity and certain forms of birth control. Kreeft responded, “Yes [I agree with you] for practical political purposes…we’re living in a pluralistic society. Even if all of those acts are seriously sinful, to criminalize them would be a bit like the Inquisition. That is, using physical force to compel people to behave morally, which does much more harm than good and is a total misunderstanding of morality which has to be free” (the entire lecture can be listened to here: http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio/11_moral-theology/peter-kreeft_moral-theology.mp3). Kreeft agrees that these acts should not be recriminalized because of the situation that the modern West is in, NOT because he condones the actions. Let us examine the qualifications that Kreeft makes for why these acts need to remain legal. He says that it is only for practical political reasons because we live in a pluralistic society. He also says, however, that morality must not be forced upon people, but that they must freely choose to act morally. Does the “moral sphere” exist separately from the “public sphere”? Or, to return to my previous question in the first part of this essay, must the moral-self search for truth while his public-self tolerates everything?

When Kreeft says that for practical reasons we cannot enact laws that would criminalize certain, currently legal, actions, he is not agreeing with Steven Moffat that the modern world is a nice place with no disapproval. Kreeft is suggesting that because of something very fundamental in the modern political structure, calling certain actions “criminal” would only be one party imposing its ideas on another. He says that we live in a “pluralistic” society, what does that mean?

With the acceptance of “social contract theory” as the model by which political freedom is judged, came the inability to judge any action according to an objective standard. An action could only be considered criminal if it were to threaten another’s freedom—each and every individual needs to have the most amount of freedom with the least amount of external interference. A political community, then, simply becomes individuals who are bound to one another in only a negative way. Each individual is free to pursue his own individual good so long as he does not interfere with any other individual’s freedom to pursue his own good. Goods, thus, become completely subjective.

I do not need to contrast this with the classical model again. It is only necessary to show that when Kreeft speaks of the “pluralistic” society that we live in, what he means is what I have shown above. Namely, modern society means a plurality of equal ideas—it is very important that they are equal even though I did not go into this above. How could there be any inequality in such a political model? Each individual has just as much right to pursue his individual good as the next guy. There is nothing unifying the people of such a society except the desire to be left unharmed.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, however, says that “A social life cannot exist among a number of people unless under the presidency of one to look after the common good; for many, as such seek many things, whereas one attends only to one” (ST I, q. 96, a. 4). To Saint Thomas, then, “pluralistic political society” is simply a contradiction in terms. Social life requires that the many be moved in one direction. A multitude of free and equal individuals cannot accomplish this. A multitude of free and equal individuals do not make up a political society.

But, if all of the individuals of a political society were moved in one direction would not they be in the same position as slaves? Well, no, and this actually brings us to Kreeft’s final point. He says that the choice to act morally has to be made freely. Because of the baggage that comes with being a citizen of the modern world, we cannot be compelled to do anything—that would be against our “rights” as human persons. This is not because it is appropriate for each individual to act however he wants; it is because the modern citizen is a frog who was born into boiling water. We are conditioned not to realize that it is really hot in this pot, and that we ought to jump out.

The modern citizen believes that he must have the “freedom” to act in whatever way he sees fit or else he must surrender his human dignity. To this citizen, the enactment of a law based on “moral” standards is enslavement of his “free” person. This must not be, because, as Kreeft says, the decision to act morally must be made freely—no one can be forced against his will to be morally good. What about the quote from Saint Thomas, then? How can he say that the multitude need to be guided by the one?

Well, what if political society were not simply for the sake of ensuring each individual’s freedom? What if the union of individuals into a political community was for the sake of one objective good? This “objective good” would be the good of each individual, and they would come together in order to pursue it together. What if instead of a collection of autonomous individuals, political society was a unity of human persons all pursuing the same end? If it could be granted possible that each individual shares some end in common with every other individual, then he does not need protection from those other individuals. He needs only encouragement to pursue it with them. The pursuit of virtue would, then, be the end of political society. The whole would act for that end, and the multitude would be guided by the one toward that end. To criminalize actions that are “seriously sinful” would never be forceful, it would simply be assisting the citizens toward their end—virtue.

The guidance of the multitude by the one to an end could only be considered a form of enslavement if that end was against the nature of the multitude. Is the movement toward virtue enslavement? I suppose we could consider this, but I will leave it to you to wonder about. Returning to Mr. Moffat’s statement, then, is the modern world a “nice” place because the assumptions of its political order require it to tolerate every “harmless” action? Or are modern citizens frogs in boiling water?

Truth or Tolerance?

2011-01-06T20:29:00.006-05:00

By T. J. Pia

Like most people, I enjoy Sherlock Holmes stories quite a bit. I was thus excited to hear about Sherlock, BBC’s modern day take on the world’s most famous detective. Though I enjoyed all three of the available episodes, something bothered me about the first one, “A Study in Pink”. This introductory episode, written by co-creator Steven Moffat, forces the issue of homosexuality upon its audience. Throughout the episode, Holmes and Watson are nonchalantly mistaken for a couple; after one such misunderstanding, the following exchange between the two takes place:

Watson: You don’t have a girlfriend then?

Holmes: Girlfriend, no, not really my area.

Watson: Alright, [pause] do you have a boyfriend?—which is fine by the way!

Holmes: [quickly] I know its fine!

The dialogue continues with the same type of awkward tone, Holmes explaining that he is not interested in Watson, Watson explaining that he knows and he is not interested in Holmes either. Leaving aside my own opinions on homosexuality for the moment, what frustrated me about this theme in the introductory episode is the forced quality of it. That is, why bring in the homosexual tension at all? Through Wikipedia, I came across Moffat’s answer, “in this nice modern world it leads people to saying, ‘Oh, are they a couple?’ And that’s nice. I thought how the world has changed, there is no disapproval. How much more civilized the world has become”. Thank you Mr. Moffat for your hackneyed statement; it represents exactly what I would like to argue against.

What is so ridiculous about this statement is Moffat’s use of that most awful of words, “nice”. “Nice” means that there is no standard by which anything or anyone can be judged, “nice” means that there is no longer objective truth. We are asked to be blind in the modern world; no one is to recognize anyone else’s color, sex, sexual orientation, height, weight, facial hair, etc. This is what is “nice” about the modern world—everyone is equal. Is this type of equality a good thing? Is it true that all men are equal? If so, in what way?

Saint Thomas Aquinas argues that even in a state of innocence, even in the Garden of Eden, men would be unequal in a certain sense (see Summa Theologica I, Q. 96, a. 3 for his full argument). This may sound shocking, but the reason for it is not; I am shorter than my brother. I am smarter than my three year old Godson. I am younger than my father. My mother is a better painter than I am. My friend John knows how to play the guitar and I do not. Certainly someone will argue that this type of inequality is irrelevant, but let me explain why it is not. In fact, there could not be a more relevant point. These inequalities do not make me less equal in dignity than anyone else. The reason that, even without sin, there would be this type of inequality among men is that man was made for society. We do not/cannot function autonomously. I need bread to survive, but I do not know how to bake bread, therefore, I must either learn how to bake bread, or find a baker. I need shelter, but I do not know how to build a house, therefore, I must either learn how to build a house, or find a builder. The list of my needs will grow, so that in order to have all that I will need, I will either have to know many different skills and have a lot of time, or I will need to enter a community.

Aristotle opens his Politics by saying that “every city is some sort of partnership, and…every partnership is constituted for the sake of some good”. This is a strikingly different premise for political society than the premise that American equality is based on. In fact, I would argue that modernity began, in a certain sense, when this Aristotelian understanding of the city was abandoned. The modern understanding of the city was developed (at least primarily) by those who are called the “Social Contract Thinkers”; the most famous of these are Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I do not need to give a lengthy summary of each thinker’s theory; it will suffice to say that each thinker claims that the entrance into society is negative. Rousseau romantically opens his The Social Contract with “man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains”. In short, the social contract theory is as follow, men are all born with complete license do whatever they wish to do—absolutely no constraints whatsoever. The problem is that this actually allows for a limitation on each person’s freedom because, basically, there is no assurance that someone will not kill me for me stuff—thus removing my freedom. Individuals thus compact into a society in order to insure the most amount of freedom with the least amount of interference.

Let us briefly compare the two. The former imagines that man finds himself in need and thus joins society for the sake of practical needs, but also for the sake of some end—some “common good”. The latter imagines that each man stands against every other and joins society only to insure that he and every other member are left as “free” as possible. If the Aristotelian model is correct—if society aims toward a common and objective good—Mr. Moffat is absolutely wrong because the modern world is actually becoming less “civilized” without any objective standard. If the Social Contract model is correct—if autonomous license is the final cause of society—Mr. Moffat is absolutely correct and a lack of “disapproval” of others is exactly what society is supposed to accomplish. If the Social Contract Theorists are embraced, each individual is entitled to do whatever he will as long as he interferes with no other individual’s freedom. The question, then, is simply, Truth or Tolerance?

To be continued...

The Modern Misunderstanding of Man: Introduction

2010-12-30T19:01:00.002-05:00

By T. J. Pia

Modernity—this word is used very often, but what does it mean? In everyday usage, the word “modern” is usually used to express that something or someone is up to date or of the times, that is, “modern” is usually used in this way in order to differentiate something or someone from what is “traditional”. The use of the word “modern” implies that there has, at some point in the past, been a break with the way in which things were; what is “modern” is not what was “traditional”, but different and new. Moreover, what is considered “modern” is always considered to be not only preferable to what was traditional, but preferable in the most obvious of ways—so much so that no tone shift in speech is needed to convey this preference, the very word “modern” simply means better than what was. I believe, however, that modernity—the age in which all things “modern” exist—must be overcome. The question is then raised as to why I believe something so contrary to popular opinion. Why can it even be argued that modernity is something to be overcome? My thesis is short but will need some expounding upon—all things modern are at least built upon a faulty premise if not faulty in and of themselves.

Modern means the automobile rather than the horse and carriage, a thermostat rather than firewood, television rather than books, the computer rather than pen and paper. I in no way mean to argue that these technological advancements need to be destroyed in lieu of some old way of life. Technological advancements are only accidental to the modernity that I wish to speak of. These advancements, however, are often the very reasons why most people simply believe the modern world to be best.

It would be ridiculous to argue against the fact that everything in the last hundred fifty years, or so, is radically different than it had been for the rest of human history. We often boast about this, but are secretly afraid by it. Why are things so different? Why do I have to spend the entirety of my day registering my vehicle in such a complicated manner that neither I nor the employee of the state who is registering the vehicle could properly explain to you the procedure by which the vehicle became registered? Why am I unsure that I would be able to survive if indoor heating ceased to exist when every ancestor of mine lived without it? Why do I knowingly waste my time flipping through hundreds of channels on television for hours at a time? Why do I allow so much of my life to depend upon my personal computer to the extent that I will threaten to destroy it if it continues to fail me? There is something that scares us about the modern world, especially about its technological advancements—if you disagree with me, type “movies featuring robots taking over the world” (or anything like that) into Google, and start counting.

Now, I do not wish to spend the entirety of this series dwelling on the technological advancements of the modern age, I simply wish to make the point that no matter how much we recognize the goods that technology has brought to us, we also are secretly afraid that we are going too far. Let us, then, begin an examination of the more fundamental flaw of modernity. It is up to me to prove that the premises of modernity are flawed, and up to the reader to raise any objections. I believe quite simply that modernity began when man began to misunderstand himself. Let us proceed by searching for this misunderstanding.

On the Creator Part III: Eternity

2010-11-11T21:24:00.002-05:00

By T. J. Pia

In the last post I spoke of God’s priority to time, and concluded that we cannot speak of God as temporally prior to Creation because of the absurdity of such a claim. I mentioned that there are four other ways in which Aristotle says that we can speak of priority (prior in sequence, prior in order, prior in honor, and prior as cause), and said that we would next discuss whether or not God can be said to be prior to Creation in any of these ways. I have since decided that it will be more fruitful to here begin a discussion of eternity, and then to speak of causation (which will cover Aristotle’s fifth sense of priority).

In the final chapter of The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius says that “[e]ternity…is the complete, simultaneous, and perfect possession of everlasting life” (Bk. V: Ch. VI). He then distinguishes eternity from temporality. Even if time could not be said to have a beginning, and even if it were to extend into infinity, it would still not be eternity. Eternity is not an infinite span of time (as I have said before), nor should a being who exists in eternity be thought to have an infinity of past behind him and an infinity of future before him. Anything which exists in any stretch of time, even an infinite stretch of time, “still lacks the future while already having lost the past” (Ibid.), and thus is not eternal. The eternal being loses nothing of the future nor of the past; all is present to him. Eternity, then, is a state of pure being. That is, as in contrast to the temporal realm in which all things are in a constant state of becoming. Time necessarily entails movement toward an end; God, however, in His state of eternity, “sees all things in His eternal presence”.

What this clear distinction between eternity and time allows us to do is what we have set out to do from the beginning of this series—properly understand the first five words of the Book of Genesis, “in the beginning God created”. Boethius says that “the infinite changing of things in time is an attempt to imitate this state of the presence of unchanging life, but since it cannot portray or equal that state it falls from sameness into change, from the immediacy of presence into the infinite extent of past and future” (Ibid.). The eternal presence in which God exists is mimicked in the temporal realm by the “small and fleeting moment”. I will leave it at that instead of attempting some further metaphor by which God’s eternal presence is related to the temporal fleeting moment. Next we must consider what Boethius means by “the infinite extent of past and future”. Is “infinite” used here as some type of hyperbole? Or does this mean that there is no beginning that we can properly speak of? As always any feedback (even if it is just to say ‘change the direction of the way in which you are progressing, because I am bored’) is very much appreciated.

How It All Started, Part I: Formless Earth

2010-10-29T15:58:00.000-04:00

A Post by John:

JMJ

     "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters" (Genesis 1:1-2).

     “Where the heck did all this stuff come from!?” At one and the same time, a frustrated father stumbling into the rubbish-ridden room of his child and the 20th century philosopher Martin Heidegger are asking the same question.

     No, I’m not being a philosophical cop-out by turning to Revelation for answers. Revelation is a perfectly valid starting point for inquiry.

     Giving the verse of Genesis a thoughtful reading, we might wonder, what is the "heaven and earth" that God created? Leaving aside ancient cosmology, I would venture to say that the heavens and the earth are our immediate objects of experience. One might also say that the earth is what we experience while the heavens, being out there, are the things beyond experience—those things we can only postulate about through seeing their effects by means of numbers and equations and computer readings of the spectrum of light. Whether we can experience it or not, God made it.

     Now the verses also speak of what we cannot imagine: the earth was void and without form. There are many, many difficulties with this—what is it talking about? If something doesn't have form, it is not actually "some-THING" properly speaking. The "formless earth" may be some reservoir of potential for things, that from which everything was made, even though it cannot be said to exist, properly. It is unclear—things void and formless usually are.

     Speaking about the “formless earth” may make a distinction for us, however. This formless void is still called "earth", still having some relationship to the material things we experience. As we see later on in the chapter, in this void, God creates order. But why call it a “void” or “formless earth” if it doesn't exist as any particular thing, but as kind of a potential for things?

     This seems to be the point: God totally transcends matter. God created everything from nothing, but the material world isn't made of the same "stuff" as God. That which He ordered was something different from Him, and it exists as created, not uncreated—even before it existed as any particular thing. He is completely different, and if we think of Him in terms of our own words and imagination, we cannot even scratch the surface. That is the first point, that God and matter are different.

     The second point is in passing: while everything we might say about God cannot even scratch the surface, has no chance to plumb the depths, we can actually speak about Him that way. In fact, the Bible does. So there's a wonderful condescension at play here, where God speaks to us in our own words about Himself--and we get to play the game of trying to hear what He is saying. And this justifies our whole project.

On the Creator Part II: God Before Time

2010-10-23T15:24:00.000-04:00

By T. J. Pia

I would like to continue here with the implications of “[i]n the beginning God created”. In Part I of this series, I said that time did not exist prior to Creation, and I said that we would consider the different senses of “prior”. I want here to consider the ways in which we can say that God is prior to time. In the Categories, Aristotle gives five senses of the word “prior”. They are: prior in time, prior in sequence, prior in order, prior in honor, and prior as cause.

With regard to the first, namely, temporal priority, I say that God is not prior to time. For, to say that He is prior to time in this sense would be to say that God is prior to time with regard to time, which is absurd. We must, however, consider this distinction despite its absurdity. We often say things like, God is “older than time”, or He is “the most ancient of beings”. This is part of the anthropomorphism of God that I warned against earlier. It is easy to have difficulty grasping what we can not imagine. Consequently, in order to understand what we can not imagine, we often distort the truth of what is unimaginable by imposing our imaginations onto it. With regard to the case at hand, we can not imagine a state without time. Even when we accept that there is a Being who exists outside of time, we still impose temporality onto Him. The statement “before time” is absolutely absurd, but we imagine a “before time” in order to imagine God as Creator of time. We therefore impose falsehood on truth so that we may imagine what is unimaginable.

If God is temporally prior to time, then, time existed prior to time; this is absurd however, and thus not true. We may be able to argue that as soon as God creates time, He becomes temporally prior to it, but since this would be a ridiculous, unnecessary and unhelpful tangent, we will not. I say that with regard to God’s priority over time, we should simply forget about temporal priority. God is not temporally prior to time, nor is time temporally prior to God.

I will treat the other senses of “prior” in my next post, and then I will take up a discussion of eternity.

Genesis: How it All Started, Preface

2010-10-20T09:35:00.000-04:00

JMJ

A post by John:

Let's talk about where it all started. There's plenty going around these days about evolution versus creationism, the big bang theory, and so on. And here comes a young buck who wants to talk about the Bible. But where do we start that discussion?

     What's the kind of thing we're looking into? First, it is a philosophical interest. We want to know where all this came from, and why.

     But a problem! No one was there! At least, no one I've met was there. By the time most of us got here, everything had been around a while. And like every person of the billions of people who came before us, we wonder where everything came from, because we sort of found it. We didn't see how it got here. We want to know about the beginning; but where do we begin?

     We have two sources: philosophy and theology.

     Science, taken in the modern sense as empirical science, is not actually a source for inquiry about the beginning of things, because it assumes things which is the proper realm of philosophy-unity, genus and species, causality, logical relationships, substance, accidents, change, order, and so forth. Science can inquire into these sorts of things, but cannot ask about whether or not they are, or what they are. Science can look at stuff and measure stuff and see what's going on, but it can't inquire into form, or the good, or essence, or value.
     Philosophical inquiry into the beginning, if I am to take the authority of Aristotle and a young seminarian and a tradition from the Aristotilean east, is not helpful, because based on pure reasoning, we can't tell whether or not the universe is eternal, or if it had a beginning.

     Philosophy from scientific facts and theories is legitimate inquiry into the beginning of things, although it doesn't seem to get us much further than Aristotle. And even less people seem to understand those theories. At least, no one's ever really been able to explain them to me. So if someone could explain to me the Big Bang theory and other such "origin of the universe" theories, I would be grateful! But to sum up, philosophy doesn't seem to get us too far.

     Now, theology is a better bet for me. And I'm talking about Christian theology, so I'll be looking at the book of Genesis. I've found the starting-point! But another question... why is that a better bet than science and philosophy, especially considering a) the intellectual class of the modern world tend to cling to a scientific account and b) religious belief is often held in contempt as childish and c) there is such a little possibility of good interpretation of scripture. One at a time, now.

      a) A lot of people within the intellectual class disagree about scientific theories, and everyone who's not part of today's intellectual class can at best believe their accounts. So if I were to believe instead the accounts of Churchmen or religious folk, I'd be doing the same thing as most people, and starting with belief.
     b) Religious belief is held in contempt as childish, but is in turn substituted for scientific belief. Theories are, in fact, always being broken, and new models constructed, and data changing, and microscopes seeing smaller, and the math getting more complicated, etc. All the while, the sort of inquiry which is exalted in science does not shed any light at all on the most important questions: how am I to live? What is love? What is good? What is truth and what does it mean to seek it? Why am I here? How am I to treat others? And so forth. Whereas Christian belief not only provides answers for these questions, but I have seen, in the lives of Christians, examples far more beautiful and plentiful than among the scientists. So belief is necessary, and Christian belief makes more sense to me than the alternatives.
     c) The possibility for good interpretation of scripture has been radically diminished ever since the Reformation in the 1500s. But here are a few parameters which will guide my inquiry.

     First, the book of Genesis is true. Second, the teaching authority of the Church has the final say. Third, I will try to stick close to the text and to try not to bring in prejudices and preconceptions. Fourth, I'll ask God's help, Who's a lot smarter. Fifth, when I remember, I'll try to have my girlfriend proofread my entries so she can prevent me from being ridiculous.

     Sixth, I'll write much shorter entries.

     Ok, now we can start.

On the Creator Part I: the Beginning

2010-10-17T15:06:00.000-04:00

By T. J. Pia

“In the beginning God created” (Gen. 1:1); let us begin our inquiry here since this is where the account of Creation that we are investigating begins. If we are to accept that God is the Creator of everything (and we actually must do so here in order to proceed; we can/will consider the problems of other creation accounts later) then we must accept that there was some beginning to His creating. This may seem like a silly point, but really, what is meant here by “beginning”?

In Book XI, Chapter 30 of The Confessions, Saint Augustine says of men asking such questions as we here in this series are asking, “let them see [Lord]…that there can be no time without creation”. He goes on to say that God is “the eternal creator of all times, and that times are not coeternal with [Him]". God the Creator did not, therefore, exist in time, nor did time exist prior to the first moment of Creation (though we will talk of the different sense of "prior" later). What is this “first moment of creation”? Since there is no “prior to creation”, we can posit that God did not choose to create, at least, not in the way that I choose the shirt I wear. That is, the idea to create did not arise in the mind of God. To quote once again from Augustine, “ ‘in the beginning [God] made heaven and earth’ without any difference in [His] activity".

Outside of time, and without any change to Himself, God creates. I can only make sense of this if, somehow, creation was the natural product of God’s essence rather than the product of an activity of creating. The challenge here is to explain a way in which creation was the natural product of God without saying that it was NECESSARY for Him to create (“necessary” is a problematic word). The reason that we do not want to say that Creation was necessary is that we can not later say that God “freely” created out of “love”. I believe, with what I have laid down thus far, we will be able to say later that the universe was gratuitously created by God. I am going to stop here for now because I do not want to rush ahead too quickly.

On the Creator: Introduction

2010-10-09T01:04:00.000-04:00

By T. J. Pia

As a child I heard the Creation account at the very beginning of the Book of Genesis and took it quite literally (as I imagine most children do). This was, quite factually, the way in which everything was created; it was to me an accurate account. As I grew a little older and heard different theories it became somewhat clear to me that Genesis 1 is not, nor does it intend to be a literal account of Creation. There are several difficulties that this presented me with. Firstly, if this is not exactly what happened, what exactly did happen? Secondly (and this is more difficult to express), I still imagined God to be as humans are. That is, I did not believe that God had human limitations, but rather I could not imagine him otherwise. For example, I knew, know, believed, believe that God does not exist in time but in eternity, but how am I supposed to imagine Him any other way? Even though I know it not to be true, I still imagine God spending a long period of infinite time alone and then for some mysterious reason deciding to create stuff. Infinity does not have points on a line, however, so God did not at some midpoint in eternity decide to create. Moreover, if God created time at the first moment of Creation, then there can not be any “before Creation,” for that is a temporal term.

Further, God is perfectly good, and omniscient. How, then, did he will to create? Can it be possible that God chooses to act the way that I choose to act? Did God present Himself with two options? ‘To create or not to create, that is the question’. If so, how did this choice take place outside of time? Somehow, it seems that God’s acting must be simultaneous with His willing.

These are all very honest questions that John and I will be reflecting upon in this series.

On the Creator: Preface

2010-10-09T00:57:00.000-04:00

By T. J. Pia

And so after a relatively long sabbatical, we are back, and having returned I have proposed to John we try something new. We are actually here beginning a series that will be carried on indefinitely (it will of course be interrupted by the more typical post) and that we will be working on at least somewhat together. Right now, in the above introduction, I am just proposing some questions (admittedly big ones). We are attempting to come to the truth that will answer these questions. Because of the format of this project, feedback is more appreciated than ever. With that said this is not to be some silly philosophical word game. John and I are very well aware that some of the few people who read this blog are more well read than we are. If you leave a comment that serves only the purpose of stroking your own ego, than most likely it will just be ignored. We do, however, really want comments that are going to steer us in the right direction. As a side note the posts in this series will but much shorter than the typical post on this site, for it seems that brevity will be more conducive to reflection. With that all said, scroll up to read the actual introduction of this series entitled “On the Creator: An Introduction”.

The thought of a great man

2010-08-18T01:15:00.000-04:00

For you to try and figure out whether or not this is true, and tell me why it is or isn't.

"Meanwhile I was reading Gilson, Maritain and Aquinas, finding there a philosophy that made everything I had studied at Oxford look like the work of barbarians. It seemed clear that most of modern philosophy was the result of a systematic failure to understand (or even to read) what had already been achieved in the Middle Ages." --- Stratford Caldecott.

A quick thought

2010-07-21T23:49:00.000-04:00

JMJ
By John:

Interrupting the liturgy series with a quick thought. "Nature" refers to those things which have principles of motion or rest in themselves, and not accidentally. Sounds good, but our sensibilities smell something fishy when we apply it to inanimate objects. A rock moves and rests according to its nature?

Ask anyone on the street. Or at the mill. Why does a rock fall? Gravity. Not because it has some "interior principle of motion" which causes it to fall. Gravity pulls it down. The rock doesn't move "according to its nature."

Alright. Gravity exerts a force on the rock, pulling it down, such that the rock is moved "externally."

But what is gravity? We measure it in pounds and kilograms. That's a measurement of how much force is going down. We measure it as 9.8 m/sec. That's the speed at which a body will accelerate in its motion downward due to the force of gravity, as long as no other forces, such as those of friction, hinder the body's movement.

But what [i]is[/i] gravity? What [i]is[/i] this force, its origin and source? We take for granted that it is "motion which occurs between bodies." It's a name we put on a force we observe. We see things fall and call the force at which they are drawn to the ground "gravity." But what is it? We don't know! If you know what it is, [i]why[/i] it is, please tell the rest of us!

Gravity is a name we give to a force we empirically measure. It is a starting point, something we take for granted. When you say "gravity makes the rock fall," however, it sounds like gravity is some exterior thing pulling the rock from the outside.

In reality, gravity exists as a motion we observe between bodies. That is to say, [i]it is in the nature of bodies to move toward each other[/i]. Gravity isn't some invisible hand pulling the rock. The rock moves according to its nature. It is in its nature heavy. Heavy things have intrinsic principles of motion and of rest.

Gravity does not pull the rock. The rock falls because that's what it's supposed to do. And you can't explain why any more than you can explain why bodies exert some force on each other that we call gravity. They do because its in their nature to do so. So it must be good for them. Good bodies, yes, very nice. Good job falling and stuff.

Liturgy III: Going Green with God

2010-07-10T22:06:00.000-04:00

JMJ
A post by John Martin:

Justice toward the Creator II

Harmony. This was a Platonic account of justice from The Republic. Justice is when everything in society's in harmony: the masses are subjected to the guardians, and the guardians are guided by the philosopher king. It all works out.
When my guitar's not tuned, it sounds terrible. No one throws me money. The harmony isn't there. When me and my girlfriend aren't getting along, it's not good for either of us. It's mutually detrimental. The harmony's gone. When I was little and my brother got a way bigger piece of cake than me, well, I wasn't feeling the harmony there either.

     Harmony's in a relationship between things. "You sing the tune, I'll sing the harmony." You can't have harmony with one thing. A rock can't be in harmony with itself. But if it's a rock set in a breathtaking iconic mosaic, it exists in harmony with all the other rocks and makes something beautiful.
     So harmony's about good relationship between more than one thing. The parts come together to form a whole. A harmonious union isn't harmful. "Harm" is part of "harmony," but it's completely accidental. Seriously. Usually weird etymological connections mean something profound--especially in the hands of a philosopher or poet--but here, it's purely coincidental.
     We talked about justice in the last post and how it governs right action between people, ordering out relationships properly. So you could say justice is about existing in harmony with other people.

     We can even use the language of justice to understand this harmony issue: we want harmony with the whole world. The green movement, hippies, and the more traditional eastern philosophers--not to mention the Pre-Socratics--all are examples of a desire for harmony with everything, not merely other human beings, although that is usually at the top of the list. Harmony with "nature," whatever we mean by that word, is also high on the list. This is particularly pressing these days. The industrial revolution has, in many places, ravaged nature. Pollution is a huge problem. Residual chemicals so unnatural that our body can't even deal with it is effecting people's health in many ways. People are running around freaking out about Global Warming and oil spills. Our relationship with nature has been harmful, not harmonious, and there have been counter-movements seeking the right relationship: Romanticism, the Green Movement, and so forth.
     These movements are supposed to be corrections for abuses. Which means, judging from the amount of people who take up these causes, we have a desire in our very nature for the right relationship with nature, "justice toward nature" we could say.

     Now we are going to make a big, Catholic jump. Catholics always make jumps, you know. We're good at being human, but we jump because grace elevates nature. Catholics understand nature in light of God the Creator, who created nature. Romanticism and the Green Movement still run into disorders because the most fundamental part is missing, the foundation: regard for God the Creator.

     Hence Josef Pieper says, "To experience and live out a harmony with the world, in a manner quite different from that of everyday life - this, we have said, is the meaning of ‘festival.’ But no more intensive harmony with the world can be thought of than that of ‘Praise of God,’ the worship of the Creator of this world" (p. 50, Leisure, the Basis of Culture).

     And hence David Clayton shouts his battle cry of "Harmony and Proportion!" with his artist's eyes fixed on the Liturgy, the sacred worship of God, the heartbeat of the Church. You should check him out on his blog and his articles on New Liturgical Movement.

     Why is this the case? What does God have to do with harmony with nature? We'll start simple. God is the origin of everything we encounter. As the Creator, it is He Who established the order of things: the motions of planets, the passing of night and day, the week, the month, weak and strong nuclear forces, gravity, ROY G. BIV, the color spectrum, the perfect correspondence of charge in subatomic particles, the material requirements for life, that animals must eat and sleep and sexually reproduce, that men must live in society and be just. All of creation is ordered in its nature according to the plan of the creator. And because it is in our hearts to live in this right order--to have the right relationship with other people and to have the right relationship with nature--then we must know the Creator. For if we do not know the Creator and His plan, we cannot know what the right order is.

     This lack of knowledge of the right order causes the movements we talked about to fail. "Save the seals, kill the unborn babies!" Exploitation of nature has spiked our water, and with overexhaltation of nature, human life is subordinated to clean air. The value of nature must be in its right place.

     We experience the world as good, and a gift, as we spoke of in our first entry on the liturgy series. The end of work is enjoying the fruit of work. But the world is not merited, neither is our existence. Both are freely given to us. Being created puts us in a certain relationship with the Creator. We receive from Him everything. Everything we receive from everyone else is nothing compared to the gift of life, hence a special justice we must fulfill toward our parents. But the greatest debt of all is owed to God.

     Worship of God, recognition of God as the Creator, of His infinite greatness compared to our nothingness, of His infinite goodness, is not only the best thing we can do, it is what we as humans must do. Not just we as Christians! We as human must worship God. For without putting Him first, the Creator of everything, everything else falls into disorder. All our other relationships are ruined. A proper relationship with God orders all other relationships and puts them in their proper place. Justice toward the Creator, then, is the first part of justice, necessary for a harmonious relationship with nature, and essential for being fully human.

Liturgy Part II: What Justice Has To Do With It

2010-07-08T23:27:00.000-04:00

A Post by John Martin:

JMJ

Justice toward the Creator

This second part in the series on the Liturgy is called "Justice toward the Creator." But we're working from the ground up here, so let's talk about justice first and our experience of justice.

One time a fellow was arguing with me about justice, saying it was completely relative to culture. We have this idea of justice, but hey, the Aztecs did not have any problem cutting out people's hearts with a stone knife on a regular basis. I say this is unjust, you say it is just. There is no "absolute justice."

I did not think to tell him then, as I would now, that even though people do not agree on what justice is, not many people disagree that there is justice. Argument over what things are and whether this particular thing has the character of that universal thing is just what people do. We have words and can speak, so we argue.

We all have justice in our stomachs. Our stomach lurches every time someone does something "unfair" or every time we're denied our "rights." A lot of us feel like life owes us something, and we feel it in our stomachs, a tightness and discomfort, when we feel as if justice isn't being done toward us. This isn't to say that there aren't disordered aspects to these reactions, but the reactions, those involuntary reactions which come from our stomach--or our heart--shows that we recognize that there should be an order to things, a right way for someone to treat someone else, which often gets violated. We want people to be just toward us.

Another example that justice is a reality everyone recognizes is contained even in an atheistic objection. "I can't believe in a God who would let the innocent suffer." Which means, essentially, "There is an objective standard of justice which is breached in the suffering of the innocent, and since God could do something about it and doesn't, He is not just and good." Even the atheists recognize justice, although they would dispute the source.

Now, let's draw a line. There are two types of men. This is a real line, too, and is important in determining who is really a man and who is doing a poor job of being a man. One sort of man does what he feels like whether it's good or bad, whatever he feels is advantageous, pleasurable, worthwhile, or meaningful to himself. The other sort of man, who is really a man, tries to conform his heart and actions to the objective demands of justice. Justice is only important when it is convenient for the first, and justice is a guiding principle of action for the other. One man will get away with what he wants to when he can, the other will always do what is good. Or at least the man in the second group tries and strives.

Now, people in the first group may be reading this and want to defend themselves. That's fine. We should argue about these things. But I think most of us reading this recognize that the second kind of man, the real man who doesn't live merely for himself but does what is good, is more admirable. These men hunger and thirst for justice and do great things, because it's the right thing to do. They see something wrong with the world and try to do something about it, because hey, someone should. Or they may be simpler than that. A just man might be the quiet guy next to you at the paper mill who treats everyone well, doesn't gossip about everyone, does a good job, and is really enjoyable to talk to. He's easier to work with than the buttheads who only think of themselves.

So we distinguish two types of men: the men who do things because they feel like it or because they're self-interested, and the men who do something because it's the right thing to do.

If we were to ask ol' Aristotle what he thought, he'd say something about how justice is that virtue which governs right action between persons. It's person to person stuff. And that's enough from Aristotle to let me ramble. Why is it worthwhile to have a right-ordered relationship with people? Because we are by nature social beings. That means it is good for us to live in relationship with others. If we don't, we're hardly human. We're Cyclopses in our caves, beasts. Imperfect. Because things are so, we need to act in a way that protects good relationships and fosters mutual perfection in a community. That's what law exists for: to protect the community. Often we think law is only about protecting me, but no, it's really for the community. You could just buy a lot of guns to protect yourself. But to protect the community, our actions toward each other need to be regulated so they they are beneficial. If we didn't have laws prohibiting violence against the innocent, stealing, rape, damaging others' property, and murder, there wouldn't be much of a community left. It would be anarchy, which never lasts long, for, Deo gratias, we are social animals and are inclined to political society with law, because it is better for us than disorder, chaos, and selfishness.

So following a standard of justice fosters a right ordered relationship with all other human beings, which is good for us!

These things aren't too hard to agree on. There is justice and it governs our relations with others and with the human community, because it is good for us to live in harmony and cooperation and mutual support with others.

This may be easy to agree on, too, that acts of justice happen in cases where someone owes something to someone else. A just action is an owed action. Paying for something you take out of a store is just, because you owe money for the stuff you take. Taking care of your parents is just, because they took care of you. Being loyal to your country--not to be confused with loyalty to particular actions of particular governmental leaders, although due respect must be paid to his office--is just, because you benefit from the laws and the cultural identity. Treating people with respect is just.

But why is treating people with respect just, simply speaking? Shouldn't I only treat people well if they treat me well? That's a temptation, but another part of us knows better. When someone snubs us for no particular reason, we experience clearly the injustice and see something lacking in their character.

Here is a proposal: the demands of justice are rooted in the truth of the being of things. "It's ontological, honeybuns!" as the great Thomas Howard said. There is an objective demand of justice on us apart from any actions of any human being. Simply by virtue of the fact that a person is a human being, I must treat them with respect. My justice toward them must be a response to the value I recognize in their being. I must will their good as human beings--because it is the just thing to do! The demands of justice are profoundly fundamental. Again, you could say, the good of justice, the good of treating people well by virtue of the fact that they are human beings, is a good which flows from our nature as social animals. Treating people justly is part of my perfection.

This does not mean avoiding inflicting punishment when we must, being hard on people, or the sometimes necessary "shovel-to-head" treatment. On the surface, they don't look like "treating people well." But because of the disorders in our heart, things must be done to dissuade us from and make recompense for evil. Therefore punishment and being hard on people when it is necessary is actually for their good: if it weren't, we would be doing something selfish, and we call that vengeance. Appropriate punishment is for the good of the punished. Think purgatory. Or think me beating the heck out of you up because you were attacking my girlfriend. It prevented you from doing something terrible.

Let's sum up real quick. We experience the reality of justice as a gut reaction and as an objective demand. Acting justly orders our actions toward others properly by giving them what we owe, first because of value of their being as human persons, and second because of action and transaction, and justice is always for the other's good--even if it means depriving them of a lower good, like using violence to prevent someone from killing someone else, or like taking away someone's driver's license because of irresponsible behavior. Justice, then, is the prerequisite for a properly-ordered relationship with other people. Without justice, no good relationship. Without justice, no community, and, finally, no human perfection. No human life, really. An unjust life is very unfitting for a human to live.

On the Liturgy, Part I

2010-06-24T16:56:00.000-04:00

By John Martin

JMJ

Starting on the Liturgy

There is a strange phenomenon which we will try to understand better: Catholics go to a building--some are beautiful, some are ugly--every weekend, Saturday or Sunday, and do this thing they call "Mass", which involves a guy in a sort of dress standing around a table, a lot of talking, sitting, standing, kneeling, strange hand gestures, and bread and wine. They sing, talk back and forth with the guy in the robes, and chat as they leave, doing so rather quickly. Then they do it again the next week, some of them out of habit, some because they have to, and some because they love it.

There are two aspects which we will explore on the Catholic liturgy, two claims which they make on this extraordinary action: they call it perfect worship of God, and they call it the very center of the Christian life. Let's inspect these things. We'll do the best we can to start from the ground up.

First, the phenomenon of worship.

We find ourselves in a world which is troublesome, but which, if we are honest, we recognize as good. We did not put ourselves here. Those who do not confuse the empirical sciences with philosophy and who give credence to common intuited knowledge recognize that nothing we encounter in this phenomenal realm is self-caused, and hence cannot be eternal, and hence must have come from somewhere, must have been caused by something.

But leaving aside the causality train, we experience the world as something good. The proof? Our love of leisure, that is, enjoying things for their own sake. Although lines have gotten blurry of late, it remains that most of us work for the sake of leisure. Our work is a means to an end. This is true in many cases. Manual labor is satisfying because the expenditure of energy is felt and the effects seen: the brush is cleared, the stone is moved, the wood is chopped. There's a double satisfaction there, in our limbs and in our eyes, which is the purpose of our work.

Working in a paper mill, I can see this characteristic of work clearly: it is only a means to an end, not an end in itself. Because it is a mill, the satisfaction of seeing the effects of the work is taken away in large part. And no one works there because they love the work. Everyone there is merely there for the sake of the leisure it affords them: the pay is good, and you can enjoy your days off. In fact, working twelve-hour shifts at the mill makes you really appreciate your days off.

Now, because is a means to the end of something else, it follows that the "something else" is in itself better activity than work. Or so we all regard it. And these are the fruits of work: provision for your family, for instance, a good meal, a day off spent enjoying time with ones you love, or maybe some reading, or maybe a hike, or if you do a lot of sitting around at work, maybe stacking wood is leisurely for you.

What if work was just for the sake of working more? If one is restless and unable to enjoy the fruits of his labor? We find often that this is a "running away" from oneself and reality. Pieper mentions this in his book Leisure, the Basis of Culture. "Restlessness and Despair are 'sisters'... there can only be leisure, when man is at one with himself, when he is in accord with his own being. Acedia [spiritual sloth, restlessness], therefore, is 'disagreement with oneself.'" (p. 30)

In true leisure there is a sort of silence which prepares us to encounter reality as such. As soon as we ask questions about reality, about what things are and mean and what is good, we are outside the realm of mere work as means to an end and into the realm of leisure. Leisure is about being, simply, and not constantly effecting things. It involves a letting go and letting be.

In addition to an of encounter and union with reality, leisure also has the characteristic of celebration. For instance, there is something celebratory about a good meal with friends. There is joy present because a good is being enjoyed, a good which is the fruit of the prior work. As Pieper says poetically, "Leisure lives on affirmation. It is not the same as the absence of activity; it is not the same thing as quiet, or even as an inner quiet. It is rather like the stillness in the conversation of lovers, which is fed by their oneness" (p. 33). Joy is an affirmation in our hearts of what is good.

Pieper goes on to say that the highest form of leisure is festival, which is at heart "an affirmation of the basic meaning of the world, and an agreement with it, and in fact it means to live out and fulfill one's inclusion in the world, in an extraordinary manner, different from the everyday" (pp. 33-34).

So we would call leisure the best things we do, not because of their usefulness, but because the useful things we do are for the sake of leisure. In leisure is an encounter with reality which does not happen in the ins and outs of everyday work--those times are mostly consumed by questions of use and activities which are merely means. Finally, in true leisure, there is a rejoicing in the good of oneself, the world, and, yes, God.

If festival is at the heart of leisure, Pieper argues, worship is at the heart of festival. In fact, true leisure is not possible without worship and festival. If we encounter reality and affirm it as good, we must also recognize the goodness of the Creator Who is the source of reality. This is always historically the case, too. High leisure was always bound to religion of some sort. Perfectly useless, and the best thing we can do.

"To experience and live out a harmony with the world, in a manner quite different from that of everyday life - this, we have said, is the meaning of ‘festival.’ But no more intensive harmony with the world can be thought of than that of ‘Praise of God,’ the worship of the Creator of this world" (p. 50).

In worship, times, days, and resources were taken and offered to the gods. A temple sectioned off sacred space. A day was taken and devoted to sacred things. There was an offering of something good, some fruit of labor, in honor of the source of those good things.

Let's take a step back. We work as a means to an end, and when we work for work's own sake, we run into all sorts of disorders. Once we pick our heads out of the practical, we encounter reality as such, and we encounter it as good! Our heart rejoices in it. Now, if we did not work, we could not have leisure, because our basic needs being fulfilled is a prerequisite for higher activity. So leisure is also the fruit of work.

And it's something we do again and again! So there's something in us that recognizes that this end of leisure is worth going back to work for--worth going back to the mill for. We recognize that it is inherently good and we complain that the mill keeps us so long from it.

Since leisure lives on affirmation of goodness, it seems fair to say that worship, recognition and celebration of the Creator of this good world as absolutely good and absolutely higher than us, is the highest affirmation and the highest leisure. So worship, from this standpoint, is the best thing we can do as humans, the ultimate end in itself. We alone among creation can step back from our practical needs and rejoice in the goodness of creation. No other animal can do that. We alone have festivals to celebrate good things. We alone can worship God.

This is all to say that worship of the divine is essential to being a good human, such that a human life lacking time devoted to worship is not a fully human life. Yes, the stakes are high.

This is part one. Next time we will give another argument for why worship is essential for a fully human life.

Let Be: Free Will and Divine Providence in Shakespeare's Hamlet Pt. II

2010-06-16T18:09:00.000-04:00

By T. J. Pia

Upon his return to Denmark, Hamlet is first seen with Horatio in a graveyard. He grows irritated by a gravedigger tossing about the skulls found in the grave that he is digging. The skulls could have belonged to men who were important on earth, and their remains deserve respect according to Hamlet. The gravedigger then presents Hamlet with the skull of Yorick, and Hamlet’s tone changes. “Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him Horatio.” Very early in the play Hamlet stated his unlikeness to his father, who was a type of warrior king. Despite his constant mourning, Hamlet could not properly mourn his father because he did not know him (his over zealous mourning may even be a compensation for this). Yorick, a jester who bore the young prince on his back “a thousand times”, Hamlet knew; Yorrick, Hamlet could mourn properly. This is more of a rejoicing for Hamlet, for he realizes the mortality of man; even the greatest of men (Alexander, Caesar) die and their flesh decays. What Hamlet encounters is the reminder given on Ash Wednesday taken from Genesis 3:19 “for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return.” Hamlet states this (in his speech about the remains of Alexander becoming cork) as he holds the skull—a memento mori (reminder of death). The day young Hamlet was born is in this scene announced by the grave maker as having taken place thirty years ago.This aforementioned sudden maturation in age (Hamlet is a college student meaning he should be in his early twenties at most) represents the interior maturation of the prince. Perhaps even more metaphorically Hamlet has exited the temporal chronos and entered the Divine chairos; regardless, he has reached full maturity.

It is after this memento mori and new found maturity that to virtually all known (still living) characters, Hamlet unveils himself: “This is I, Hamlet the Dane”. The infinitive “to be” of the soliloquy of Act III is responded to here with Hamlet’s equating himself with the definitive “I”. There is no longer a long melancholic question of existence, only the “I” of the present moment. This existential question is united with Divine providence in Hamlet’s last word’s before going off to his death: “There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows what is’t to leave betimes, let be.” This is the most important speech delivered by the Dane, and gives a full incite into the peace that he has found in aligning his will to the will of the Divine. The first line of this is a reference to the gospel of Matthew: “And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” (Mt 10:28-30). Death is not something to be feared for it is only the death of the flesh which will die and rot inevitably; it is the soul that one must be concer
ned with. Hamlet has come to understand the providence of God as something to embrace, for there is no controlling it otherwise, one can only be constantly prepared for death. There is no such thing as leaving “betimes” for God’s plan stands outside of time and always was, is, and will be, thus a man’s time is always set.

It the final two words of this speech, Hamlet announces “Let be”, echoing the “be it done unto me” of the Blessed Mother. He has accepted his inability to control his destiny, and his power to be prepared in every present moment. Hamlet understands that his will is not infringed upon by God’s omniscience, only that the conception of the freedom of will is not what he once understood it to be. The will is free and by accepting providence, and remaining ready in every moment the will is most free—“the readiness is all”. Hamlet understands as Christ understood at Gethsemane—“not as I will but as You will”. The will of God is in how each event will ‘play out,’ the will of man is in casting off the conception of “the will to power” and instead remaining always ready. Man always has the complete power (and thus license) to act as he wishes; his true freedom is in the ability to choose the good through God’s grace. God knows our destiny, and we have the power to change it, yet as St. Augustine demonstrates, we simply will not. After the acceptance of this one must necessarily reject “to be or not to be,” and proclaim the simple “let be,” for it will be regardless.

Let Be: Free Will and Divine Providence in Shakespeare's Hamlet Pt. I

2010-06-12T15:31:00.000-04:00

By T. J. Pia

In the gospel of Luke after the announcement to Our Lady by the angel Gabriel that she shall bear the Messiah, Mary replies “be it done to me according to thy word” (Lk 1:38). In this famous statement the Blessed Mother embraces her burden and what it entails. The profundity of her simple response is that she aligns her will with that of the Father’s. For this reason, Mary gives the only proper response that one could give to an angel bearing a message from the omniscient God. Her response demonstrates the same mystery of happiness that is revealed by Christ in the Agony in the Garden when he prays “My Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me. Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” (Mt 26:39). This mystery is that happiness in the temporal world lies not in the gain of our own will, but rather the acceptance of the will of the Father, for in aligning our wills as such, we may gain eternal life. William Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark, presents the title character in a crisis of his will. Hamlet fears to act in the first four Acts of the play as he is attempting to calculate a chain of events with hopes of bringing about the best possible result—he believes he can control his end. The final Act of the play reveals a new enlightened Hamlet, foreshadowed in his departing soliloquy of Act IV. “Act V Hamlet” understands the message of the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation, and of Christ in Gethsemane.

In his “to be or not to be” soliloquy of Act III, Hamlet, while still in his fit of melancholy, demonstrates his opinion of why man restrains his own will. Hamlet does not begin this speech ‘to live or not to live’, for he is asking a deeper question—one of existence. “Pre-Act V Hamlet” seems to foreshadow the existentialists of the 19th century; he lacks the confidence, however, to become atheistic in this mindset. In The Possessed, Dostoevsky’s character Kirillov presents the logical end for the existentialist’s assertion of the will—suicide. Hamlet, through his soliloquies, demonstrates that he wishes to be a Kirillovian, but that he holds onto an abstract belief in Christianity that prevents him from being so. The “to be or not to be” soliloquy should be taken as a speech by a melancholic man attempting to romanticize the burdens that he has piled unto himself. “Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,/ Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,/ And by opposing, end them” (Hamlet Act III sc. I). Whether by suicide, or by death, Hamlet in the above passage equates action with death; the alternative that he offers is bearing the burden on the mind.

What Hamlet is attempting to do in Acts I-IV is to calculate a loophole that will allow him to act without letting God’s omnipotence get in the way. His frustration is in the inability to see where there is a right option, for the only two that he sees are “to die” or “to sleep”. It is only out of fear of the last things that Hamlet claims to not act: “To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay there’s the rub,/ For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.” This is not a statement of belief in God and thus His judgment over Hamlet’s soul, rather it is a fear that there is a possibility of an afterlife, and thus better not to do wrong, ‘just in case’; for this fear of the unknown “puzzles the will”, and thus eventually “conscience does make cowards of us all”.

The “to be or not to be” soliloquy speaks to man, for Hamlet speaks in the third person plural thus including the reader and all of mankind. It can be read almost satirically, for it presents a weak minded argument regarding the point of existence is. By the end of the soliloquy Hamlet has stated that he does not (truly) believe in anything (though he thinks he does)—that is, he believes neither in God nor in the will firmly enough. The only logical conclusion presented by this soliloquy is that one must do nothing but waste time avoiding death and the possibility of the possible punishments in the possible afterlife. The soliloquy, in a way, is a satire on the arguments of the lukewarm of the world. Hamlet chooses neither “to be” nor “not to be;” he remains “neither cold, nor hot” and thus will be vomited from the mouth of the Lord.

The act that Hamlet so questions—that of vengeance—can begin a debate over whether Hamlet is hero or anti-hero; but such a debate is irrelevant, for it is not the subjective act, but the question of how to act that is important here. Hamlet was given a command by his father, the validity of which need be forgotten for a moment so to come to the question of free will and Divine Providence. Toward the end of Act IV the twenty-something year old Hamlet leaves the scene not to return again for a few weeks (chronologically speaking) when he is somehow thirty years old. This sudden maturation is no accident but will be discussed later. In his departing soliloquy “How all occasions do inform against me,” the young Hamlet foreshadows the adult that he will return as. Hamlet demonstrates in this soliloquy his readiness to believe, and the beginnings of an understanding of how one is to act. Upon learning of young Fortinbras leading his men to sure death in a battle over some small plot of land for the sake of honor, Hamlet realizes his own cowardice in his contemplation. The wasting time until death found in the “to be or not to be” soliloquy is rejected in this departing speech: “What is a man, / If his chief good and market of his time / Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.” The inspiration to act is realized here, but young Hamlet still fails to accept God, and His guiding providence over man’s actions—Hamlet still believes that he can control his outcome. For a proper perspective, he must first encounter the graveyard and the wisdom of the gravedigger in Act V, only then is Hamlet ready to assert his own existence, for then he will understand truly what it is to be man.

On Remembering Great Men of Our Day

2010-05-30T15:10:00.000-04:00

Since it is nearly Memorial Day, in addition to honoring the memory of those great men who gave their lives to preserve our political liberty from foreign enemies--I must make that distinction, because it may not be foreigners who take it away--let us also honor the memory of the great academics, who shone forth both in intellectual excellence and great deeds, forever changing the world for the better. I invite everyone to remember these great men with me.

You know, those great men in the universities who always strove for truth and mirrored it in their lives through great virtue. Those men of letters who entered the public life or received a holy calling and moved the hearts of many. Those men who, after doing us a great favor which changed our lives forever, who when asked why they would do such a thing, said they did so because their time in academia convicted them of a great truth, and they could only respond with generosity.

You know, those great teachers of ethics in the colleges who lead impeccable lives and raised virtuous children. Those professors of political science who sent off graduates, graduates who in turn opposed every abuse and malignance and tyranny, who strenuously overturned bad laws, who fought for justice. Those great teachers of science who always had the greater human good in mind.

Those teachers of economics and business who pushed for reform in large corporate companies, restoring the priority of the human person to its proper place. Those teachers of philosophy who restlessly sought the truth and heroically held to it. Those teachers of theology who held with magnificent holiness to the person of Jesus Christ, who they always understood to be at the center.

And all the students of all these heroic teachers, who went on to be good human beings, from whom flowed many virtuous actions, who took their vocations as fathers, mothers, husbands, wives seriously, who, coming from such great and eminent professors, learning from them also how to change the world for the better, acted as beacons of light for the world in dark times.

You know. All those admirable men and women of academia.

What, you cannot remember them? But they surely must be there. What’s the fruit of academia if not great deeds? What’s the point of formally pursuing truth if it is not to be lived? It’s not as if a man would boast of his brilliance without showing it in the good and worthy conduct of his life.

So remember them with me! There have been many academics, many universities. Since there can’t be any reason for their existence other than truth, then how could it not be that every true academic becomes a man of great deeds? So remember them with me! List in your head those men and women of academia who moved you to live better lives, to love the truth, to be ever more human.

Finally, remember with me those graced teachers who were Christians, who knew that their devotion to truth was devotion to a Person, and so who loved Christ as much and more than they loved their intellectual pursuits. Those Christian teachers who always knew Christ was united to all knowledge as the Eternal Logos, and that He Himself was the perfection and completion of all knowledge.

Remember them with me, all great men and women who united contemplation and action.

You can remember them, right?

Suspicion of Nature, Part I: The Anti-Hippie

2010-05-18T20:42:00.000-04:00

A post by John:

What if a baby’s initial attitude upon entering the world was suspicion? If he regarded his mother with wary eye and disbelieved everything his father said? If he took nothing for granted and always suspended approval, unsure whether virtuous actions he observed were true or false? It would be an odd way for a child to start, would it not? He would probably end up an odd fellow, too.

Yet in modernity, suspicion is an acceptable starting point. A young man’s posting of “Question Society’s Gender Norms!” on Facebook has its roots in the Enlightenment, where fifteen hundred years of tradition was dismissed with the wave of a hand. No longer could any truth be taken on the authority of a teacher or father. Simply, authority was seen an inhibition to freedom, both of mind and action. But the suspicion of modernity did not stop at teachers and parents. It extended to nature itself.

Immanuel Kant is a prime example of this suspicion, both with regard to his questions of how we come to know things, and his ethics. Because of David Hume’s denial that we could know the principles of nature from experience, and because of recent advances in the physical sciences, Kant decided he needed to find a new starting point for philosophy. Grounded on these presuppositions, his whole philosophy reeks of a suspicion of nature.

Taking his cue from the successes of science, he lists several scientists and what they discovered about nature: Galileo, Torricelli, Stahl. And then comes his summary: “What all these investigators of nature comprehended was that reason has insight only into what it itself produces according to its own plan” (Critique of Pure Reason, 19). He goes on to say that inquiry into nature must proceed, not to be instructed as a pupil by a teacher, but “in the capacity of an appointed judge who compels the witnesses to answer the questions that he puts to them” (19). Natural science was set on a secure path by means of this method: the principles proved by experiment held with a certainty hitherto unrealized. However, nature is compelled as a witness by a judge, as something which has seen a crime and which must be forced to speak.

Kant’s resolution to the problem posed by Hume, the challenge to find out how knowledge of principles is possible, is this: he says, as a "thought experiment", that instead of our mind receiving form from the things we experience through the senses, it happens instead that sensory information comes to us in a formless mass and our own understanding gives the form. So I can know about the form my mind is imposing on that tree, but I can never really know what that tree is in itself. But the resolution ends up throwing further suspicion on nature. Neither our immediate experience of nature nor our natural way of knowing is sufficient for knowledge of what things are. The principles are not in nature or operative in nature. The result is a split and opposition between rational and material nature.

Carrying over from his questions about knowledge, the separation of physical nature from rational nature saturates his ethics. His concern there is to preserve an account of the freedom of man, which he sets in direct opposition to man’s material nature. Flowing from his acceptance of the Newtonian account of physics, he regards all of material nature as determined by laws. “Everything in nature acts in accordance with laws” (Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, p. 66), and here he means laws of external physical forces. Everything in nature moves by natural necessity from exterior principles. However, man certainly finds himself living in this realm of phenomena which act according to laws of nature. So how can he be said to freely act on his own volition?

For an action to have moral worth, Kant says, it must be an action done for the sake of law, in obedience to law. Kant calls the will practical reason, reason being that part of man which recognizes -- or produces -- a priori laws. But a priori laws must be universal, necessary, unconditional; as he says, categorical. If the purpose for which I do an action cannot be a purpose I could turn into a law, it is not really an act of practical reason. It is rather some sort of participation in the completely determined realm of nature. So it is not free, and therefore does not have moral worth.

What he is setting his system of ethics against is precisely an ethics which flows from the whole nature of man. Riddled throughout his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals is arguments for the insufficiency of natural desires and inclinations, rooted in man’s animal nature, to give moral law. Objects of desire cannot justify an action or give it moral worth. The value of an object of desire is, as far as Kant is concerned, dependent on our desiring them. An action from desire cannot have been done from the command of law, for desire cannot give universality. If I act because I desire some object, then I do not act out of unconditional obligation, or because I ought to--if the object of my desire were not present, I would do no such action. Because of the contingency in play, such a maxim cannot have the form of universality. Inclinations from nature, then, cannot give law and is opposed, in fact, to action according to law.

Another argument for the insufficiency of nature is that if we are “acting according to our nature,” we are acting, according to Newton’s account, on pre-existing laws of nature, outside of our control, independent of our own volition--laws which do not have their source in the rational being. Therefore, actions according to human nature are not free actions.

For these reasons, there are many critical lines in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals expressing doubt as to whether or not a real action is moral. There is the classic example of the shopkeeper: honesty is the best policy. But if it is to his advantage, who is to say whether or not he did it from self-interest rather than duty? For actions which are in conformity with law but at the same time actions toward which we are inclined, it is very hard to tell whether we do it from duty or inclination; and the difference is whether or not it is a good action. The honest shopkeeper may not actually be acting dutifully.

Nature remains, then, an enemy to be resisted, a risk to our freedom. Kant even goes on to say that “[man] does not hold himself accountable for [inclinations and impulses] or ascribe them to his proper self, that is, to his will” (104). Further, “inclinations themselves, as sources of needs, are so far from having an absolute worth, so as to make one wish to have them, that it must instead be the universal wish of every rational being to be altogether free from them” (101). But this would be to cease being human. Kant, working with Newton’s partial view of nature presented as the whole, effectively divorces knowledge and morality from having its source in nature.

Philosophy as the Path to God Part II

2010-05-12T12:55:00.000-04:00

By T. J. Pia

This is the second part of a two part post. If you have not already read part one please do so below before proceeding. Enjoy…

As I demonstrated in the first part of this essay through the example of Aristotle, it is advantageous to take into consideration those with whom one is at a point of contention with. Marcus Berquist, in his address to the student body of Thomas Aquinas College entitled “Where Philosophers Disagree” discusses exactly what the title suggests; “[t]o study philosophy” he says, “is to study disagreement” (p. 9). Berquist’s argument is that philosophers disagree “about what comes first” (p. 13). If one considers Plato and Aristotle, Berquist’s thesis is completely evident. The greatest difference between these two thinkers is that Aristotle begins with the material world, Plato with a type of metaphysics. If I begin my inquiry with a first principle such as the material world is an illusion and exists only within the imagination, I am only going to become progressively more in disagreement with Aristotle. It is this first principle that I need to discuss with the Aristotelian in order for the two of us to come to agreement. “[P]hilosophers do not move from disagreement to agreement;” Berquist points out, “they move from disagreement to further disagreement” (p. 9). This is why Aristotle engages his predecessors in the fashion described already. A person who finds it necessary to “swim against the tide” needs to be engaged in order to find any truths in his demonstration, and to attain a fuller understanding of the truth through grappling with him. Working backward toward first principles allows one to do this best.

The first principle also can not stray mindlessly toward whatever end arises. As was noted in the passage from St. Thomas Aquinas, the end of the intellectual creature is to understand God. In The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Charles Darwin asks the reader to assume that “if the first and chief [fact] be not rejected, the others, from being supported by various physiological considerations, will not appear very improbable”. The primary concern with such a sentiment is that it requests that we follow Darwin down a road of assumptions supported only by plausibility. He does not seem to be claiming to make an attempt at moving toward the type of certitude that Aristotle taught in his treatises on logic. Secondarily, with the admittedly limited understanding that have I of Darwinism, it does not seem to have an end in mind. That is, through proposing the possibility of some type of evolutionary process, Darwin seems only to be attempting to remove meaning from the universe by destroying the idea of an omniscient creator (ironically, many neo-Darwinians have been forced by reason to admit an intelligent design theory). The Darwinian account would hold that nature only seems to be moving toward an end, when in fact it is participating in the “survival of the fittest” (though I understand that this was not a phrase that Darwin himself coined). For two reasons, then, there can not be any type of “end” for the Darwinian intellectual creature; first because ends do not really exist, and secondly because man is only an “intellectual creature” through a series of random evolutionary accidents.

In the Metaphysics, Aristotle describes in more detail than in the Physics how it is that man comes to know. He begins with “[a]ll men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses” (Metaphysics I: 1). From here, Aristotle demonstrates the nobility of man by showing how from sensation memory is produced, and then from memory experience. Aristotle then shows that wisdom is eventually acquired through experience insofar as it is the “knowledge about certain principles and causes” (Metaphysics I: 1). Experience leads to artistry which in turn leads to mastery and finally to theoretical knowledge. In this way, one sees the intention of the “natural path to knowledge” given in the Physics. Theoretical knowledge, which deals with those things more knowable to nature than to man (metaphysics), though the highest form of wisdom, can not be attained without progressing on the natural path by beginning with sensory perception. We must begin with what we know through our senses because they are the first things we know—Charles Darwin examined fossils with his sense of sight, Richard Rorty enjoyed wine with his sense of taste, etc.

The “scientific revolution” in philosophy which began with Descartes, seeks to find a controllable order in the universe instead of seeking the Orderer. With Newtonian physics this is made quite clear. Take for example, Newton’s First Law of Motion which claims that objects in motion will remain in motion unless impeded upon by an external force. This law has proven to be true in a certain sense, but it does not seem to quite line up with human experience. That is, if I throw a baseball in a completely open field, it will not continue in a straight line forever, rather, it will reach its apex and then start heading back to earth. Newton would, then, treat the air resistance (or gravity) as the impeding external force. Again, there is a truth to this law, and actually it is completely true; but it is not the complete truth. That is, Newton’s first law of motion can be practically applied, but must not be isolated and understood as the entirety of reality.

With such a scientific view man seeks to become lord of the universe; he seeks to find an order in nature that can correspond to algebraic and geometrical equations so that he may gain control over nature. Pope Benedict XVI warns against this in his book Crisis in a Time of Upheaval; “Science is an immensely good thing,” he says “precisely because it is a controlled form of rationality that is confirmed by experience. But there exist also pathological forms of science that deprive man of all honor, when science capabilities are put at the service of power” (Crisis Ch. 1). What the Holy Father acknowledges, then, is that science (and we can say in the broader sense all of philosophy) actually does no service to man when it is not ordered toward the proper end. We can not merely discount Newton as a philosopher if we are to follow MacIntyre’s qualifications for a philosopher. He has contributed to the dialogue, and all those who follow him must consider and grapple with what he says. Unlike Darwin or Rorty, Newton seems to have an end that he hopes to achieve, but, he miscalculates.

The “that for the sake of which” of philosophy must be a fuller understanding of God, for “all creatures…are ordered to God as an ultimate end” (Summa Contra Gentiles III: 25). As Aristotle demonstrates in his On the Soul, there is a sense in which the soul is the end of the human body, “[f]or Nature, like mind, always does whatever it does for the sake of something, which something is its end. To that something corresponds in the case of animals the soul” (On the Soul II: 4). In the same way, all of creation (both as a whole and individually) is for the sake of God. God, then, is both the principle of Creation, and its final cause; so too, there is a way in which God is the principle and the end of philosophy. Aristotle’s “natural path to knowledge” begins with sensing Creation, and moves toward “theoretical knowledge” of God. It is God that all men seek to know, and it is qua seeker of God that man is philosophic.

Philosophy as the Path to God Part I

2010-05-11T16:06:00.000-04:00

By T. J. Pia

In the first Chapter of his Physics, Aristotle says that in natural science, as in the other forms of science and understanding, “one must try to determine what concerns the principles” (Physics I: 1). He goes on to show that because of this, one can see that the natural path of knowledge is to “go from the things which are more known and certain to us toward things which are more certain and more knowable by nature” (Physics I: 1). Man, then, grows in knowledge through beginning with those things that are most present to him toward those things which are most “distant” (that is, insofar as they are the “most unknowable”) from him. What, then, is the final cause of this knowledge? What does man seek to know in this most distant sense? What is most knowable by nature? In the Summa Contra Gentiles, St. Thomas Aquinas says, “Since all creatures…are ordered to God as to an ultimate end, all achieve this end to the extent that they participate somewhat in His likeness. Intellectual creatures attain it in a more special way, that is, through their proper operation of understanding Him. Hence, this must be the end of the intellectual creature, namely, to understand God” (Summa Contra Gentiles III: 25). Man moves toward God; using that which he can know naturally (that is, through sensory perception), man seeks to understand God. It is as desirer of God that man becomes a philosopher.

What, then, of those so-called “philosophers” who claim to have absolutely no interest in “truth”? Richard Rorty is such a “philosopher,” he claims that nothing has an intrinsic nature, and that because of this, there is no “human condition”—there is no “truth”. In what sense is Rorty, then, a philosopher? I would answer in the sense that he is a man. The path that Aristotle claims man follows he calls “natural”, or intrinsic to man. In this sense, philosophy is somewhat like the tide of an ocean. That is, man naturally moves in a particular direction. If he does nothing, he does so slowly and may not make much progress before he drowns; if he swims with the tide he will advance with the natural direction of the tide quickly; but what happens when someone tries to swim against the tide? He will struggle with great difficulty, and will never get to where he wants without at least some influence from the tide. This is the position that even Richard Rorty is in—in his struggle against truth, he is at least affected by truth.

Very often Aristotle takes into consideration pre-Socratic philosophers with whom he is at a point of contention. There are two reasons why Aristotle does this. First, he grapples with his predecessors in order to profit from any truth in their argument. Secondly, Aristotle seeks to trace any false assumptions made by those who have written before him back to their problematic presuppositions. In his essay “The Ends of Philosophical Enquiry,” Alasdair MacIntyre discusses philosophy as an open dialogue. In order to demonstrate this, he places both St. Thomas Aquinas and John Stuart Mill in the same positive category, and calls them both “exemplary practitioners of a particular kind of philosophy and their examples enable us to say a little more about the kind” (p. 130). MacIntyre gives three reasons why these two very different thinkers are considered together, I will examine each of these three points below.

“First both were engaged by questions about the ends of life as questioning human beings and not just as philosophers” (p. 130). MacIntyre’s point here supports Aristotle’s claim that there is a “natural path to knowledge”, and my point above made via the “tide analogy”. That is, if philosophy is only a “word game” as Wittgenstein calls it, then what is the point? Philosophy is not “love of wisdom” if it is pursued as a type of esoteric demonstration unconcerned with reality. MacIntyre’s first point, then, shows that philosophy is for the sake of man; man philosophizes because his encounter with reality calls him to question. In the books collected under the title Organon, Aristotle demonstrates how it is that a logical argument is constructed. Beginning with two premises priorly known (that is, either through demonstration, or “experience”), a third premise necessarily follows. In algebraic terminology this is most easily exemplified with, A equals B, and B equals C, so that A must also equal C. This logical exercise is not limited to a gnostic group of “philosophers”, it is actually the way in which all men develop knowledge. It is how I know that I am man, it is how I know that I am male, it is how I know that that plant is an oak tree, etc. “Man is a rational animal,” and so every man is called to use his reason in order to know. The distinction that MacIntyre makes between “as questioning human beings” and “just as philosophers” allows for every man, as such, to be classified also as “philosopher”.

The next point that MacIntyre makes regarding Aquinas and Mill is that “both…understood their speaking and writing as contributing to an ongoing philosophical conversation” (p. 130). MacIntyre emphasize that this conversation ought to, and in fact will, remain open always. That is, no philosopher should seek to close the conversation. Why is this? If philosophy seeks to know truth, should it not seek to know the whole truth? As we said above, the end of philosophy—the end of human life—is to know God, and it is, in fact, good to do so. Man, however, can not reason to the whole truth insofar as this would be a logical absurdity—the containment of the infinite (God) within the finite (the human mind) is impossible. St. John the Evangelist explains how it is that man does come to know the fullness of truth in the first chapter of his Gospel. For hundreds of years Greek philosophy sought the λογος {word, account}, and then, as St. John says, “Καί ο λόγος σάρξ εγένετο καί εσκήνωσεν εν ημιν” (“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” --Jn. 1: 14). The dialogue of philosophy was consummated with the Incarnation. Man has continued the dialogue even after the Incarnation because he is still limited by finite human reason, and must continue to pursue the λογος. As Msgr. Robert Sokolowski points out, there is a sense in which the method of philosophy makes distinctions. Prior to the Incarnation these distinctions were made only from experience and toward the completely unknown realm of metaphysics. The Incarnation gave the complete account that philosophy seeks, but human reason still needed to work from experience (which can include those things already known from the preceding philosophical demonstrations) toward a fuller understanding of the Account. In conclusion, the philosophical dialogue needs to be kept open because man’s rationality is finite and is seeking the infinite.

The final point that MacIntyre makes is that “it matters that both the end of the conversation and the good of those who participate in it is truth and that the nature of truth, of good, of rational justification, and of meaning therefore have to be central topics of that conversation, as both Mill and Aquinas insisted” (p. 131). It does not take an extensive study of Mill and Aquinas to figure out that they are approaching their projects from quite different perspectives. What MacIntyre has in mind as their common ground, however, is their pursuit of truth. That is, neither takes the position of Rorty, namely, a disinterest in truth. MacIntyre’s intention by using Mill and Aquinas as his examples is to show that the philosophical project has room for diversity. That though there is only one end that all true philosophers are moving toward, there are plenty of different methods of getting there. MacIntyre can see how even a philosopher such as Mill, whose project is quite problematic, can still be viewed as a man trying to come to the truth.

In summary, the qualifications that MacIntyre lays down as necessary in order to be a philosopher are; questioning the ends of life qua man, partaking in the human dialogue, and pursuing the truth. He does not include a PhD, tenure, and the publishing of esoteric books on his list of qualifications because MacIntyre does not want to limit the title of “philosopher” to “academics”. He is not juxtaposing the philosopher with the common man, but in fact with those post modern philosophers who see philosophy as only a word game. The next question that seems to be raised is: what is to be done with these obscure post moderns? They are classified as philosophers, so ought they to be engaged, or ignored?

To Be Continued...

Acting for Ends

2010-05-05T16:47:00.000-04:00

JMJ

A post by John:

“Dad, what does ‘disenfranchised’ mean?” It’s fun when you have a little kid who has no idea what any words mean, because he’s got a vocabulary of about three hundred, and even though you’ve got a vocabulary of at least twice that, you can’t define a word. If you say, “disenfranchised means to take someone’s rights away,” then the kid will ask, “what’s a right?” And then you’ll be clueless what to say, because no one ever defined “right” for you, since you took it for granted. So you putter through and eventually pop open Thomas Aquinas and find enough to say, “Well, right is the object of justice.” And then the kid asks, “What’s justice?” Oh boy. Your kid just asked a question philosophers have been arguing about for three thousand years. At this point you probably just say, “Where the hell did you hear the word ‘disenfranchised’ anyway?”
There are a lot of clichés which really meant something at one point, but which have now lost their meaning. Like saying per se. Who knew it meant “through itself” in Latin? And what does that even mean, through itself? I suppose it’s a way of distinguishing that which is accidental from that which is essential: he wasn’t being mean per se, but she totally took it the wrong way. Essentially, his comportment wasn’t mean, but it happened that she was offended. In itself, it is something, but it happens to have different effects, appearances, and so forth.
And what about “the ends don’t justify the means!” Which is an ethical statement, of course, but who talks about ends anymore? Well, we’re talking about ends now. Let’s talk about whether ends matter.
What is an end? Let’s try this definition; it is the fulfillment of an action. Not merely in the sense that the action is “done,” it’s “over,” it has “ended,” but the end of an action is more than its temporal completion. Every action has an end, that is, it’s for the sake of something. Take eating. Simple one. We wouldn’t say the end of eating is merely when eating is over, that’s not the right use of the word. The end of eating is to restore nutrition to the body. That’s the fulfillment of eating: nutrition, and ultimately, health. In this way we say that eating is ordered to health.
Now, the statement “every action has an end” is pretty controversial. That’s to say that every action has a fulfillment. The growth of a seed has its fulfillment in the fully grown, reproducing tree. My punch is fulfilled in inflicting harm on your stomach. Those are easy to see. But things seem ambiguous later. Say, rain falling: there doesn’t seem to be any particular end which it is ordered to. But it waters the field of grass, and the grass grows because of it. So rain falls for an end. There is a “fulfillment” of rain falling.
Nowadays, people like to think that things have resulted by chance. That there was a big explosion at the start of time, and things went flying at random. But it remains, that is, we can see, that those “random” forces actually acted for ends. Look at the world we’re living in now. It’s certainly more perfect than a mess of subatomic particles swirling around in a void. In fact, all change has always been toward some end, toward some fulfillment. Even if there were no order at the beginning of all things, there is order now. And that’s a fulfillment! That’s a greater perfection! Even those “blind forces,” the power of Random, acted for an end.
But we don’t need to reach too far for this entry. There’s more coming later, to be sure. But I’m simply laying down this thesis: that every action is ordered to some end. Every action of nature, from eating, to the growth of a seed, to a punch, to rain falling, to forces flying around at the beginning of time, is ordered to an end. It’s easy enough to see, no? A squirrel does stuff for an end. He scampers around and stores nuts and reproduces. He does stuff for a purpose, even though he can’t see it. Nature acts for an end.
It’s easy enough to see, but it’s extremely controversial, because it lies in direct opposition to the power of Random. But with our reason, we can see that some actions cause certain things to happen, and realize that the action was for the sake of that certain thing happening. That squirrel definitely eats for the sake of its health. That rain definitely waters the meadow.
So there it is. An end is a fulfillment of an action. And every action has an end. We’ll see where it takes us next time.

On the Purpose of Political Society

2010-04-24T22:43:00.002-04:00

By T. J. Pia

I went down to a coffee shop the other day and a group of old men with long grayish white beards sat wearing red suspenders over T-shirts and discussing America. I see these men often, and for some reason always get frustrated at them. “The government…blah blah blah”, that is about what I usually hear. I have been thinking since this last visit, however, why do old men meet in coffee shops and talk about government control? The other day I ran into a young man wearing a T-shirt that had “Legalize Gay” written across it. Although I could have guessed the intention of the phrase, it was not completely coherent, so I asked what he meant; “equal rights…blah blah blah”. The young man’s argument became less coherent than the phrase on his shirt, but the word “right” caught me. It seems to me that the old conspiracy theorists would have had a different understanding of the word “right” than did the young activist. A distinction needs to be made as to what these “rights” are, and where they come from.

The “social contract” thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries greatly contributed to the way in which man perceives his “rights”. In 1651, with the publication of his work Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes laid the foundation for this “social contract theory”. Hobbes uses the term “state of nature” (later used also by John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau) in order to refer to the (theoretical) pre-societal state of man. In this state, Hobbes says, man is in a “war of all against all”; that is, no one is secure in his person or property from external threats (that is, any other autonomous person). Hobbes says that for this reason, man is driven most of all by fear of violent death at the hands of his friends. Man thus joins the social contract, and surrenders some of the licenses that he had in the state of nature in exchange for protection from the collection of individuals; this protection we call "government" . Although there are some variations (and in fact some significant ones) in the other social contract thinkers, the explanation of Hobbes’ conception of the social contract will suffice

One can see, then, that Hobbes claims that the government exists for a negative purpose. I ought to exist as my own law giving body. The government’s existence is negative because it actually reduces my freedom—it is necessary for me to surrender certain of my “rights” in order for other people to feel more secure. Hobbes’ view makes the government's end security. While this still represents a type of “pursuit of the good”, it is limited to the relatively low good of self-preservation of the flesh. And even this “good” is actually more accurately only an “avoidance of a bad”.

I was recently reading John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, and found the same “negative end” that Hobbes had laid down; Mill, however, goes on to develop an even more subjective approach. Mill agrees with Hobbes that the government exists solely for the sake of self-protection of each member; more individually, however, Mill holds that man ought not to be “coerced” to any end other than that which would bring harm to another. “[Man] cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise or even right”. What Mill seems to be doing is absolutely removing any possibility that the government exists for the sake of some objective good—man can not be persuaded even to cooperate with his own good, but only to not harm his fellows. This seems to have greatly influenced the modern libertarian view which sees no reason why the government should have the “right” to ban anything on moral grounds.

In An Essay on the Restoration of Property, Hilaire Belloc writes that “[t]he family is ideally free when it fully controls all the means necessary for the production of such wealth as it should consume for normal living”. That is each family should exist independently of every other person; it should not have to rely on any one else for its survival. Belloc calls this ideal, however, inhuman by referring to Book I of the Politics in which Aristotle says that “man is a social animal”. For Belloc, man’s ontological status as a “social” animal brings him out of isolation and into community. This is a positive view of the development of government. Belloc sees that man ought to be completely autonomous, but that he can not be because he must exist among his fellows. It is not that he joins a community for the sake of protection from his fellows, but that he joins a community because he naturally desires companionship.

Belloc’s view is “positive”, because the collection of individual’s within the community can move together toward the good. That is, quite contrarily to the Hobbesian view, Belloc sees community moving toward a common good—an ideal. After explaining that the ideal of familial autonomy is inhuman because man is a social animal, Belloc explains that the ideal must be pursued nonetheless. This demonstrates how the community as a whole moves toward the “common good”. Individual units can not seek their own good (for as was demonstrated above this is “inhuman”) so they seek the human good together within community.

The conspiracy theorist’s meetings and the activists T-shirts do not consider first principles. In order for one to intelligently explain why the government ought to or ought not to do something, he must account for why the government exists to begin with. The social contract view laid down by Hobbes seems quite unattractive to me. In March 1799 Patrick Henry famously declared, “United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs”. If one were to take the Hobbesian interpretation of this, he would paint quite an ugly picture of the American project. We must not regard one another as otherwise enemies accidentally united for the sake of self-preservation, but as a community of individual’s who have naturally come together for the sake of the good. With such a first premise, the truth will naturally follow, and we will find that there are causes worth believing in for the end that they bring us to—the good.

On Mediocrity

2010-04-19T10:47:00.000-04:00

JMJ

A Post by John:

This is follows up my last post on the possibility of an intellectual conversion, and how it can come to be.

Mediocrity. I used to watch The Weird Al Show on Saturday mornings. It was hilarious. Although if I watched it now, I’d probably scratch my head and be kind of confused and wonder why I laughed at it when I was 10. Anyways, he had a “Wonder Hamster” named Harvey, and one time there were some miners who for some reason were demonstrating against him with signs that said, “Harvey is Mediocre.” And I thought, what the hell does mediocre mean?
Then you go to college and read Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche, and your teacher throws around the word “mediocre” and “herd mentality” so much that you can’t remember what it means. Then you read Diary of a Country Priest and live a little bit in the world and look into your own heart and the word “mediocre” comes crushing down on you like a hammer, like a huge weight. And you pause for a second during the day when so many anxieties are pressing on you concerning things that don’t even matter, but keep you from doing things you really want to do, such that your fear and weakness are the only things between you and the desire of your heart, from being the person you want to be, and you just keep doing the same thing every day. And Harvey probably is mediocre. But you don’t wonder about the word anymore, because you see the reality which it refers to. It's shallow living. It’s like a big black blanket that lays over the whole world and mutes it.
And the world is muted. You wouldn't think so from looking at our big cities, screaming lights and blaring sounds. The world seems rather loud and exciting, and moreso than it used to be. The past hundred-fifty years or so have been incredible. A little white stick the size of a peanut can play three weeks worth of music to you, cars look like spaceships, and every room in every house has a screen with moving pictures on it. Booting up a computer is as easy as breathing.
With technology came countless ways to do things more efficiently, more production, and more things to produce. Now, we live for new things and gadgets, which come out of nowhere. You can walk to WalMart and pick up the new thing. We live for new things so much that we understand ourselves as "consumers", and we don't in fact have to work very hard to acquire the things we consume. But what does that do to our hearts?
Think about this. Back in the day, before the technological revolution, people had to make things by hand and had to grow their own food. You had to be out in the field working, otherwise you wouldn't eat. There was a more involved process and more effort and time in between working and enjoying the fruits of work. On the one hand, it was more difficult. On the other hand, you loved the fruits of your labor more, and enjoyed them more.
Now, because of the technological revolution, we can enjoy a plethora of things with very little effort. In addition, the time spent working to enjoy those things is a lot less. So we have all the time in the world, and instead of using it well, we play video games.
Basically, we have a lot more leisure time to pursue higher things, and we spend all the time distracting ourselves. Basically, we're more connected with the whole world than we ever have been by means of invisible wires, and we have less initiative and ability to take responsibility for others or communicate meaningfully. Basically, modernity has made living a shallow life a lot easier.

But enough analysis of the problem. The question remains: how does a movement from shallowness of life to real life, something very much related to intellectual conversion, come about? And it seems in this modern context that there are is one usual way, and another similar but not-so-usual way.

It seems that a person has to hit a wall. That is, he has to come to a point where he realizes that what he's doing is not satisfying, or be bored to the point where distractions fail. He has to be attentive to those points when his heart starts hurting, and then he has to decide to do something about it.
Maybe some of you remember my post a little while ago on walls. I think of hitting a wall as that event in which what you took for granted fails you, or what worked stops working, and you are forced to make a decision. You have to make a decision, either to give up or to try something different. You could also say, when a certain end is not being accomplished by the present means, I must either change the means or abandon the end.
The philosophy of Plato and Aristotle was the fruit of Athens hitting a wall. Much modern or so-called postmodern philosophy is the result of the scientific revolution hitting the wall. This blog is like a particle sent flying from that very explosion when the scientific worldview hit a wall.

So each heart has to hit a wall and make a decision: do I really live, do I really engage life, or do I distract myself some more?

Latent in this thesis is the idea that real, true, and deep desires are already in the heart, but covered over, or “run-away from”. But that's a topic for another issue. It seems to me that to snap out of mediocrity, a guy has to make the right decision when he hits a wall and when his distractions run out. He can't be convinced out of it by argument or reason. He has to feel the call in his heart. But it seems that hearing this call is only possible when there is a momentary stay against distraction. Then, finally, snapping out of it means using his freedom fruitfully.

Nietzsche's Ethical System & Christianity

2010-04-17T11:36:00.003-04:00

By T. J. Pia:

“God is dead”, Nietzsche proclaimed, and for over a hundred years the general public has isolated this catchphrase (along with a handful of others) from Nietzsche’s opus, and interpreted it as they saw fit. In the preface to his posthumously published semi-autobiographical work, Ecce Homo, Nietzsche warns against such interpretations “Above all, do not mistake me for someone else.” (Ecce Homo I: 1). What, then, does he exactly mean by proclaiming the death of God? As Walter Kaufmann suggests, the death of God is a “diagnosis of contemporary culture”. That is, Nietzsche is not attempting to systematically prove that God does not exist, rather, he is suggesting that God need not exist, for man can replace Him. Nietzsche’s diagnosis begins (in a sense) with the realization that “They are rid of the Christian God, but still cling to Christian morality” (Twilight of the Idols XI: 5). Nietzsche thus finds himself living in a world full of men who follow an empty value system—Christianity without a Christian God. The following of such an empty value system he calls the “herd instinct”, for those who follow do so as blindly as a herd of animals. The actual virtues that Nietzsche praises do not seem to be any different than those that he seeks to destroy, but, as Fr. Copleston points out in Volume VII of his History of Philosophy, the difference is in the motive; or in Nietzsche’s own language, in the “revaluation” of the values.

Like Plato, Nietzsche’s method involves philosophic dialectic—he inquires into the presuppositions made on false assumptions. Nietzsche believes that according to this method, he must call into question any and every starting point. Therefore, he can not admit a God, for that would involve building a system on an assumed premise. He instead suggests what Kaufmann calls “existential experimentalism”—'questioning' by 'living through each problem'. Nietzsche finds that man can be his own master and creator, and thus needs no God. His concern is not with the truth of whether or not God exists, but let us say whether or not God “needs” to exist. “God is dead” because the world no longer really believes in God, yet they still follow the value system rooted in Him—Nietzsche seeks to change this. In his essay “Good and Evil: Epilogue to Nietzsche”, Hans Urs von Balthasar points out that “in his struggle against a secularized Christianity…Nietzsche unwittingly rediscovered some of the most genuine and frequently disregarded Christian values, and he portrayed them as the fundamental demands of human ethics.” Through a “suprahistorical” (symbolic) lens, Nietzsche recounts a seemingly self-referential “genealogy of morals” in order to account for the current problems in morality. “We need a critique of moral values, the value of these values themselves must first be called in question” (Genealogy of Morals I: 6). Again, the existence of Christian morality without a Christian God needs to be destroyed, and he later reveals, “No new idols are erected by me…overthrowing idols (my word for ‘ideals’)—that comes closer to being part of my craft” (Ecce Homo I: 2). Nietzsche’s “revaluation of values” primarily intends to destroy the current mediocre moral system, not to construct a new one.

In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche begins the project of giving a suprahistorical account of morality, more clearly developed immediately after in Genealogy of Morals. “Moral designations were everywhere first applied to human beings and only later, derivatively, to actions” (Beyond Good and Evil IX: 260). In this same section, he distinguishes “slave morality” from “master morality”; the distinction lies in the respective value systems of “good and bad” and “good and evil”. The value system of “good and bad” (or “master morality”) existed first; this value system was one of human beings, those who were noble were “good” those who were weak, “bad”. In Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche offers an etymological proof for this; namely, the similarity in the German words “schlect” {bad}, and “schlicht” {plain, simple}. Kaufmann supports this claim by demonstrating that this similarity also exists in Greek, most notably that the word άγάθος means “good” but also “noble” and “well born”, while κάκος means “bad”, but also “ugly” and “ill born”. Nietzsche suggests that there was eventually a “slave revolt” by the κάκοι because of their “resentiment” against the άγάθοι. The weak damn the noble and classify everything that they are into “evil”. The nobility of these supposedly “evil” men, however, is inherent, “They rule not because they want to but because they are; they are not free to be second” (The Antichrist 57). As an afterthought, the weak then place all of there own qualities (again, which are inherent) into what they call “good”. Thus develops, according to Nietzsche, the value system of “good and evil”.

Because of his emphasis on destroying old idols (or ‘philosophizing with a hammer’ as he suggests in Twilight of the Idols) the question is posed as to whether or not Nietzsche actually develops any type of positive ethical system. I say he does, and that the key to understanding it lies in his conception of “sublimation” of the passions. “All passions have a phase when they are merely disastrous, when they drag down their victim with the weight of stupidity—and a later, very much later phase when they wed the spirit, when they ‘spiritualize’ themselves” (Twilight of the Idols VI: 1). Every passion causes a type of energy that seeks to be released most impulsively in the action of that particular passion. Nietzsche believes that Christianity demands this energy to be destroyed (“And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out” ~Mt.18:9) which he says in no way creates a moral person. For how is a person to be moral if any desire to be otherwise is to be destroyed rather than conquered? Nietzsche believes that this breeds only weakness. The passionate energy must be “sublimated” (spiritualized); that is, the “spirit" (or reason) must divert the impulse of this energy, concentrating it instead toward a moral end.

Nietzsche’s purposely provocative repudiation of Christianity has too often been emphasized, and his whole intention has too often been ignored. As Balthasar points out, the type of Christianity that Nietzsche struggles against is mediocre and secularized. The revaluation that Nietzsche develops is quite reminiscent of a true Christianity; I do not mean this only with regard to the virtues that he praises, but most especially with regard to his conception of sublimation. Much of Christendom has developed into a type of herd instinct within which Christians do not consider the importance of being moral, but instead follow a convenient value system. Nietzsche’s “atheism” grows out of his commitment to questioning so as to avoid following this type of empty value system, “I am too inquisitive, too questionable, too exuberant to stand for any gross answer. God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers” (Ecce Homo III: 1). In order to respond to Nietzsche, we need to take seriously his condemnation of mediocre Christianity. We must consider the ethical system that he proposes, but we need to re-root it into Christian metaphysics. We need not ignore Nietzsche, nor ought we allow his message to be lazily interpreted. In order to destroy the very dangerous problem of mediocrity, we must obey the hammer’s command and “become hard” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra III: 29, Twilight of the Idols XIII: 1). Unlike Nietzsche, we do not need to claim only destruction, for when we “philosophize with a hammer”, we will reveal the Christian truths that are covered by so many lukewarm “idols”.

On Movements of the Heart

2010-04-11T11:39:00.000-04:00

JMJ

A Post by John:

Unhappy are the impure of heart, for they won’t see anything. On the other hand, the pure of heart see God. At the very least, they perceive reality more deeply, because they can see what’s true and good and beautiful. To the pure, everything’s pure. And it’s simple: everyone is either persevering in purity or meddling in impurity. There aren’t any more complicated categories than that. But before we get too carried away, we want to ask a pressing question: this is a blog which implicitly claims to be concerned with the truth about things. It’s on the internet, and we want people to look, and to converse with us, and so forth.
But the thing is, only a few people will do that--join with us in our search for truth--and those few from a category which is very small: people who consciously seek the truth, or at least think that their opinions accord with reality. Or rather, people who think that their opinions according with reality is a good thing. Or rather--you get the idea.
The fact of the matter is, this category of people from which only a few people would participate in the conversation is very small compared to the opposite category, people who do not really or consciously care about truth as such. But let’s distinguish these categories before we go on.
The difference between these two groups of folk is that they order their lives differently. The first group, truth seekers, as a matter of the heart desire truth and also desire to abide by it. So their seeking includes a desire to order their lives according to the truth of things. Which is a huge deal! These people don’t make it up as they go along. They don’t consider what they merely think to be more important than reality. They’re brave enough to be always open to the “disclosure of being,” the revelation of truth, to the possibility that they might be wrong, or that they might not fully understand. And as lovers of truth, they’re willing to give up old habits and old ways of looking at things for the sake of what is true. We can see that loving truth is an insecure business. You keep having to change.
The other folk are mostly honest, but a little bit dishonest. They like a secure business, rooted in conventions which don’t need to be questioned. Some of them would probably proclaim they love truth, but it’s a love that has its ears and eyes closed. That is, what they consider true is good enough, and their understanding of what they consider to be true is good enough. Or, as my mother says, “close enough for government work.” Which describes the essence of the country’s present administration.
Please allow me to rearticulate something here. This second group likes doing over being. This phrase is pretty much unintelligible unless you’re one of the cocky folk like me who thinks they’re in the group of truth seekers but who really still have a long way to go. The second group all have something they want to do; and their limited understanding of what they consider to be true is enough to justify what they want to do. Because their desire for this particular action is primary, openness to truth is secondary. I have my end, I have what I want, I see what I desire, and so I try to justify it, and manipulate “truth” to justify it and say it's good. In fact, that’s what some crude followers of Nietzsche understand language to be: simply a way of manipulation for the sake of power. Doing over being. Truth serves my ends, not vice versa.
This is most obvious in politics. If a politician wants to get elected, he tells people whatever they want to hear, he gets elected, and then he does what he wants. Then, Godwilling, his term ends. It's also clear in communism and revolutionary psychology. The Marxist thesis that we can change man's nature by changing his mode of production has no reference point in reality at all. Neither does the plausibility of abolishing private property with a fruitful end have any reference point in reality.
It's also clear in the inability of people of different religions and political persuasions to speak with each other. Like how liberals and conservatives can't seem to communicate. The understanding of truth for each party is so complete, so they think, that there's no point in reconsidering, no point in trying to understand the other person's language.
Finally, a perfect modern example: Francis Bacon in his "Great Instauration," while promoting a philosophy of science and technology, used Biblical language from Genesis to support his plan of action. The movement he began was to obtain perfect mastery over nature, like Adam had in Paradise, through technology--hence the scientific revolution. So he used Biblical language to support a salvation without Christ. Doing over being.

We see again what I mentioned in the last post: you have to serve yourself or something more important. Doing over being describes the second group well. And I think it’s most of the people on earth, and probably a good deal of the people who think they’re in the first group.
Actually, I take that back. There’s probably very few who are purely a member of either group. There are very few saints and there are very few monsters running around. There’s probably a huge middle group. But the tension is this: should action serve truth, or should truth serve action? Should I act according to truth or should I find just enough “truth” to justify what I want to do?

Now that we’ve made that distinction, we can ask the pressing question. How does someone who doesn’t care about truth come to care about truth? You can’t convince them by argument. They don’t care. It’s not truth they want. How do they come to want it?
This is my opinion, so don’t take it too far---but I don’t think you can ask the question “How can I make people want truth?” because you can’t. I can’t. It happens first in their hearts, and then voluntarily. And if you do in fact challenge someone enough such that they begin to seek it, it was already there.
But you can still ask, what moves people? It seems appropriate to call this movement an intellectual conversion. I would like to hear what everyone who reads this has to say about this question. So please leave a comment telling us what you think. And I’ll offer a some thoughts in my next post, probably.

On God in the World

2010-04-05T15:11:00.003-04:00

By T. J. Pia

When asked what he would say to God if he were to find that God did in fact exist, Bertrand Russell replied that he would ask “why was there not more evidence?”. This is at least an appropriate question for a logician who has spent his career refuting the existence of God to ask, but it seems to be more universal than that. Russell’s question may seem obnoxious to anyone with any faith in God, but being that annoyance would not be a valid tone for this essay, let us instead explore the validity of the question. If God does exist as the omnipotent, and all loving creator of all, why does He not show Himself to His creation so that it will be clear to us to Whom we are indebted? Why is there at least not enough evidence for Bertrand Russell to come to faith in God? Or is there? Twice before here I have spoken of Kirillov’s little flame in Dostoevsky’s The Possessed. Here I would like to quote a passage at length of a different (though similar) little flame in another novel. This little flame burns in front of a tabernacle in Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited. Kneeling in front of it at the end of the novel, the once agnostic artist, Charles Ryder, says the following: “something quite remote from anything the builders [of the chapel] intended has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time: a small red flame”. It is the intention of this passage that I would like to explore in this essay in order to search for the face of God in the world.

Perhaps the most persuasive argument that I have heard against God is given by Ivan Karamazov in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. His argument refutes God as all loving, or at least as all powerful by questioning the suffering of innocent children. Ivan admits that he can understand why we have to suffer for our sins, but will not accept the suffering of completely guiltless children. He recounts a story of a little girl who was abused by her parents and locked in an outhouse with her hands folded in prayer to God. Ivan then poses the following question to his brother Alyosha, “Tell me straight out…imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale…but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature…and raise your edifice on the foundation of her unrequited tears…would you agree to be the architect on such conditions?” The persuasiveness of Ivan’s argument is that no human being with an ounce of love in his heart could possibly answer ‘yes’ to his question. How could an all-powerful God allow for even one innocent human being to suffer for the sake of ultimate happiness for the whole of humanity? It is as I have posed the question (not as Ivan has) that I would like the reader to keep in mind for the remainder of this essay.

I believe it was C. S. Lewis who once suggested that instead of attempting to understand God’s love through human conceptions of love, we ought to understand love as God loves. That is, instead of projecting a human idea of love onto God, it seems that we need to try to love as God loves. While this seems relevant only to those who at least accept God in some form, it also serves as a response to those (like Ivan) who can not accept God because it seems as though he does not love man. I must now unpack this a bit because I am sure that it seems as though I am saying something like: God is love so that how he loves I must love, BUT God imposes suffering on the innocent, SO I must impose suffering on the innocent. It is the fragment after the “BUT” that needs to be omitted. It is never the intention of God that man suffers; it is man who imposes suffering on man.

There are a few more references that I would like to make before responding to Ivan, and then unpacking Charles Ryder’s meaning of the presence of the little red flame. The first reference I would like to make is to what is probably the strangest book of the Bible, the Book of Job. In brief, Job is a loyal servant of God’s whom God permits Satan to torment in order to show to Satan that even when tempted by evil, even when every gift from God is taken away, man can still freely choose God. I will not here go into to much detail regarding the content of the book other than to say that Job is tormented, and grows frustrated at the insistence of his friends that he must have done something to offend God. Job’s eventual contention with God is answered by the Lord, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (Job 38:4) God asks Job, and then later, “Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be justified?” (Job 40:8). It is the “foundation” that Ivan calls into question, but he never considers God’s latter question. Ivan condemns God so that he may be justified; that is Ivan’s argument against God assumes that Ivan has a better conception of love than does God. I am not trying to prove God’s existence to Ivan’s argument; rather, I am suggesting that Ivan’s argument is built on a ridiculous premise. If God is the Creator, then He is greater than His creation. His conception of love (as He is the source of love) is, then, greater than His creation’s conception of love. His creation, then, can not deny Him on the grounds that He does not love, for their conception of love is less than His.

In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, the once Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl writes “suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice”. Later in the book he talks of the dangers of teachings that man is some type of random creation of natural selection. That is, if man is a random biological creation, then there is absolutely no meaning in his life at all (never mind the lack of meaning in any suffering that he must endure). What Frankl emphasizes is that man’s meaning comes from whence man comes. If man is only a biological matter of fact, then his suffering is an accident of a biological matter of fact. If, however, man comes from a higher all loving Being, then so too does his suffering come from such a Being. Then there is meaning in his suffering. It is those that understood themselves as meaningful that Frankl says he saw “defying and braving even the worst condition conceivable”. Moreover, there is an innocent human being that God “allowed” to suffer in order to give meaning to our suffering, but not the one that Ivan spoke of. God “allowed” this (as he “allows” all suffering) only insofar as He allowed man to have free will. With our free will, we imposed suffering and death onto this innocent human being. In return He gave meaning to our suffering, and three days later showed us that meaning.

Finally, Charles Ryder’s little red flame that unexpectedly came out of the human drama that he participated in. The presence of God’s providence had been ignored by Charles throughout the entire novel; it is not until he acknowledges it that he finds his meaning. From his subjective perspective, the suffering that he endured makes no sense. It is not until he acknowledges the presence of the small red flame that he can find meaning in his life, and thus in his suffering. When Charles views the events of his past from this different perspective, they no longer seem empty. The evidence that Mr. Russell sought exists in the world. His perspective was off, however, for he was searching for God in the gold ceilings and marble floors. He never thought to search for “evidence” in the little red flame.

On Simplicity and Integration

2010-03-26T15:55:00.000-04:00

JMJ

A post by John:

Complications, complications. If we let our hearts be ruled by worldly desires, we are subject to many complications. The things we want change often, are only conditionally achieved, and making living with others difficult. Further, we don't do anything on purpose, but whim instead rules us. Without there being a reason to our actions, things get very complicated.

But what kinds of desires are we talking about? Desires for real goods, to be sure. There are three classes of goods that are good for us: external goods, goods of the body, and goods of the soul. We'll find, however, that a life spent in pursuit of any of these ends up being enslavement, if the last is taken in a certain sense.
Take the first issue we mentioned, the constantly changing desires. That means all our efforts in procuring things, especially external goods and goods of the body --- food, sex, alcohol, money, social status, health --- don't add up to anything beyond themselves. So there's no continuity. My life becomes entirely involved with beating a video game; well, once that game is beaten, then what? I become obsessed with this sports team -- well, once everything there is to know about this sports team is exhausted, then what? The first two classes of goods, objects of desire, change very quickly, and it's pretty tiring keeping up with it.

Satisfying our desires is pretty contingent, too, and the means can get iffy. If my energies are consumed by a drug addiction, well, I'll often need to do a lot of things I wouldn't do otherwise to procure those drugs. Same if I only want good social status, want people to think well of me in a certain way. That gives the people who are thinking of me an awful lot of power over me, power to give or withhold the object of my desire; and maybe I'll just do what they want, whether or not it's something I really want. If my happiness is dependent on something so fragile as the satisfaction of this or that petty desire, it wouldn't take much to plunge me into the depths of misery.

Being consumed by my desires also makes community very difficult. Because if my mind is completely preoccupied by "my needs" and "my desires," and all my life is ordered by selfishness, then I'm going to have a hard time learning how to love and take responsibility for other people. If I'm always giving in to my desires and I don't have any self control, how am I going to be able to sacrifice for another person?
Finally, the rule of whim is unpredictable, demanding, capricious, and dangerous. Especially if unchecked. Who knows when it'll creep up and pounce on you. And if it is your master and you've never stood up to it, well, you should hope it doesn't come at an inconvenient time!

Remaining subject to our desires makes us closer to animals than men. Of course, we are animals, and we can't forget it (Kant!). But we are rational animals. Ask any old Philosopher and he'll tell you: reason needs to be in charge, not desire. Not the many-headed monster of Plato's Republic. So the last jab at desire-slavery is this: it's not worthy of men. That's why women can get away with it. Just kidding, just kidding, please don't hit me... it's not worthy of women either.

So now you're asking, "Why did you make that distinction between the classes of goods? Weren't you going to say, 'And this all applies to the first two classes, goods of the body and external goods, but it's certainly worth living your life for the sake of goods of the soul'?" Well, those goods of the soul, according to Aristotle's distinctions, would be virtue, intellectual and moral. But I don't think they're worth living for in and of themselves. Per se, as they say. We all know cocky fellows who think they know everything, who have spent all their life working on their "intellectual virtues" and want you to know about it.

Basically, the other option isn't "goods of the soul" as in virtues, moral and intellectual. And this is because we have Christianity in our psyche. I don't know many fellows who'd say, "I turned away from slavery to desire to embrace prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance." People these days turn away from sin and embrace Christ. If not, they're playing the same game, they just have a slavery to goods with a higher value. (Plus, it's questionable to me as to whether there can be any true virtue without grace. Even just natural virtue. I think the consensus from Augustine and Aquinas is "no," and I've never seen anyone move from vice to virtue without grace, so it's probably safe to assume that grace is necessary.)

Now, desires are many, but Christ is one. And we always have to be serving something. It's inevitable. Think about how excited young people get about a cause these days. They give themselves to certain ends. (Sometimes the ends are silly, but they are still really "serving" that end.) We either serve our desires, spend ourselves and order our life for the satisfaction of desires, serve ourselves, or we serve God.
It's pretty simple. Actually, it's almost disappointing how simple it is. Because when we want to serve ourselves, things are rather complicated: the objects of desire are many. We go a lot of different places, up and down, to serve them. But when we turn to God, things get way too simple way too fast. Of course, that means peace, security, unconditionality, and joy with that simplicity. But it's simpler than we'd like it to be. And because it's simpler, it's harder, because we like to complicate things.

Now I'm finally starting to get where I want to get. We'll work out more of the implications of simplicity in taking God as an end later. First we probably need to talk about means and ends.

On Hope in the Human Drama

2010-03-20T22:31:00.002-04:00

By T. J. Pia

Two thousand years ago the Son of God hung on a cross and died. His death is the archetypical second act of the three act “human drama”. Every drama follows a pretty simple formula of beginning, middle, and end. First the characters are introduced and a distinction between good and evil is made; next, the battle between good and evil is ostensibly won by evil; finally, good defeats evil despite apparent probability. Unfortunately, from an existential perspective this formula does not seem to correspond with experience. The clear distinction made between good and evil in the above first act seems in “reality” to be much vaguer. That is, the individual has trouble determining which worldly things are to be avoided, and which are to be pursued. Sure, the average man has some abstract conception of “good and evil”, but these conceptions seem far removed from him. He may consider some government agency evil, and some religious leader good, but he gets overwhelmed and thinks ‘what does that have to do with my life? What am I supposed to do?’ Because of this overwhelmed conception of good and evil, it may seem to such an individual that there is no third act. He feels as though evil has trumped good and that there is nothing that he can do about it. The archetypical drama that is recorded in the gospels is forgotten, and with it the understanding that its formula is true for the entirety of Providence. From the Providential perspective the drama plays out as follows; the first act is creation, the second act is the fall, and the final act is redemption. These universal terms (creation, fall, and redemption) also have an existential significance; it is this type of significance that I am concerned with here. Redemption, as I said above (in the definition of the third act in general), comes surprisingly; we await redemption, but we also must prepare ourselves for it. We must not forget this anticipation and believe that the second act is the finale; we must endure; we must hope.

I have noticed that there is a growing tendency in current American films and novels to present to the audience the ugliness of the world. I was bothered by this most recently when noticing that the good guy does not really win anymore in the movies and it is because he is up against something that is too difficult to understand, and thus he can not (at least entirely) defeat it. Another tendency is to just ignore “good and evil”, and to instead portray the bleak, amoral mediocrity of the world as it is found. It seems that this is an attempt to more accurately portray “reality”—is it though? What does “reality” even mean? Someone once explained to me the difference between the account of Creation given in the Book of Genesis and that typically given by the modern Darwinian scientist as being analogous to the difference between a lover looking into the eyes of his beloved, and a doctor examining those same eyes. There are different ways that one can look at anything, and from one perspective the world is an ugly place, but the lover sees the world as a beautiful place always. By right these lovers are supposed to be the artists of the world—they are supposed to remind everyone of Creation’s beauty.

The last century has offered a foundation of cynical art for the contemporary artist to build upon. This seems to have developed out of the growth of atheism in the 19th century, for the artist no longer seems to have a sense of the transcendent (see James Joyce’s “non serviam” in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). In the 19th century, thinkers such as Feuerbach and Nietzsche rejected God believing that to do so was to exalt man. Henri de Lubac comments on this in his book The Drama of Atheist Humanism saying “If man takes himself as god, he can, for a time, cherish the illusion that he has raised and freed himself. But it is a fleeting exaltation! In reality, he has merely abased God, and it is not long before he finds that in doing so he has abased himself.” The denial of God has led the artist to see the world as he does, because without some greater Being in whom there is greater purpose, the world is an ugly place. From this perspective it is easy to cynically dwell on the evil corporations, governments, and leaders; that is, it is easy to believe the world is ugly. From the perspective of “the lover”, however, the world looks quite different. I do not mean some type of naïve belief that evil does not exist, rather, I mean the humility to endure what you are given—nothing more.

One of the most beautiful images that I remember from a novel is the little flame that burns in front of Kirillov’s icon in Dostoevsky’s The Possessed. Unfortunately this flame is eventually extinguished. Kirillov represents the 19th century intellectual atheist; he believes that he must assert his will to demonstrate that he is a divinity by committing suicide (will over even life). Why has he not already done this, why does he just talk about it? Because the small flame of hope still burns. In a gut wrenching scene, this flame is mocked and “extinguished” by a type of satan figure, and Kirillov despairingly takes his life. He does not die as prophet of the will, but as a pawn in evil’s game. Kirillov represents exactly what de Lubac warns against, the eventual despair attached to denying God.

A great deal of current anxiety concerned with the "evils of the world" results from believing that we are gods. We believe that we must fix the whole mess that exists outside of us. Ironically, this is largely why the world is such a mess. In his encyclical Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI writes, “Redemption has been given to us in the sense that we have been given hope, trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can face our present”. He goes on to explain that we face our present through acknowledging our goal (redemption). This life can not be endured otherwise, otherwise the world is bleak. We must not become overwhelmed by the large evil entities that seem to destroy the good in the world. The third act has not yet come, and so of course redemption seems impossible (for an explanation, see the definition of second act above). By remembering our goal, let us protect our little flames from the storms of evil that attempt to extinguish them. Let us hope. “Spe salvi facti sumus”—“In hope we are saved”.

On Walls

2010-03-11T22:31:00.000-05:00

JMJ

A post by John:

JMJ

“If it doesn’t break your heart, it isn’t love.” --Jon Foreman, taken from the song Yet

There’s something about walls. We say our backs are against the wall. We talk about pushing through. We talk about hitting a wall. Walls define a space. In a sense, they create room for things to happen. In another sense, they break our hearts. These seem to be the two extremes about walls.
There are things we want deeply, desires that take over our hearts, and we can’t have them, because we hit a wall. And then what? It’s interesting how revealing it is to hit a wall. Because when someone hits a wall, everything inessential is stripped away. We see our hearts: the love and the pain. When someone’s tricks run out and they’re at the end of their rope, you see--or they see most of all--what they’re really like, whether they’re selfish or loving, despairing or joyful.
Sometimes you see people who are just so hard-hearted, so thick and so persistent in their poor choices--or to use traditional language, sin. And you may have the chance to talk to them as a friend, try to convince them to stop harming themselves and others, and so forth. But they don’t listen to reason and don’t change, despite you. And you think, that person really needs to reach a low point before they decide to change. They need to hit a wall.
Limitation! We don’t like it. We rebels, we revolt. Locke on LOST screams, “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” Our heart desires an ideal which is beyond our reach, behind a wall, and we can’t break through. I can’t be that person. I can’t find it in me. I’ve run out of gas. That energy, it’s gone. I’m pushing against a wall of bricks, and I’m pushing, but it won’t budge. And so my heart breaks.

It’s interesting how revealing it is to hit a wall. It breaks your heart. So we try to evade it. Maybe that’s what Kant is doing. He, like almost everyone else, doesn’t like the idea of our freedom being contingent on nature, or on some external object which we call good--no, we have to conceive of ourselves as autonomous, self-legislating, wills giving universal law and participating in a possible realm of ends. We write the rules for ourselves. It’s a way of evading the wall. But, I’m afraid, those walls assert themselves. Nature asserts itself. It moves itself from the inside, you know---there’s no stopping it.

There, there. Let your heart be soft. Think about in love, hitting a wall, and your heart breaks. Or in life; you have your heart set on something, and it seems like the powers of heaven are stacked against you, and your heart breaks. In that moment, a deeper part of you surfaces, a part you didn’t know was there. The deepest part of your person, the origin of your every “yes” and “no”. There’s something about walls that, while you cry out because what you wanted wasn’t consistent with reality, or your obtaining it wasn’t consistent with reality, you still get to make the most important “yes” or “no” of your life, each time.
In love, when you hit a wall, that’s when you know, not just feel or hope or believe, that’s when you know whether or not you love someone. And in life, when your heart breaks, you’re placed in relation to God.

Suffering places us in relation to God. If we shun all limitation, conceive of ourselves as of absolute worth, self-legislating universal laws consistent with that supreme moral principle which is determined by the absolute goodness of our freedom preserved as freedom, well, then, we’re basically making ourselves God. But when we suffer, when that charade breaks, when we hit a wall, God asks us to be a creature again.

Sometimes we like to pitter-patter around, pretend, keep placing that false value of autonomy, imagine we’re in charge, and play captain for a little while. Make play decisions about unimportant things while we leave off decisions about the most important things. But thanks be to God, we hit a wall--the game ends, even if for a little while. Suffering visits us and all our power is taken away, be it physical suffering, spiritual, mental, psychological… hormonal, whatever kind. The suffering comes, and our hand is forced--we have to make a decision, say “yes” or “no.” Reality catches up with us.

And while we may scream, “Why God, why?”, the answer may be as simple as this: that God wants us to remember that we’re creatures. After all, it’s only as creatures that we can know we were created in love and for love.

So here’s to walls.

On the Importance of Community

2010-03-09T14:03:00.002-05:00

By T. J. Pia

Where has Hope gone? It seems that the stories that are being told today are permeated with a dreary sense of despair; it seems as though we are watching the world through a gray lens. I have noticed myself sometimes feeling as though the world is just an ugly place that can not be saved. It is certainly true that man has grappled with this type of world view for as far back as we can tell, but there seems to be something new in the modern view. Modern man no longer seems to be grappling, he seems to have accepted the ugly world—he has given up. I am disturbed by this theme in story telling; it suggests that good can not really beat evil, that there is no fixing the world, and that redemption is unattainable.

Toward the latter half of the nineteenth century the pace of the world was speeding up ever more rapidly. The industrial, technological, and political changes of that century mark the brink of modernity, and that is where the roots of our contemporary problems can be traced back to. In Dostoevsky’s The Possessed (a novel written in and very much about the early modern period), there is a beautiful exchange between Shatov and Stavrogin. The former is trying to help the latter attain redemption; “You’ve lost the distinction between good and evil because you’ve lost touch with your own people” he tells Stavrogin. Isolation from one’s community would have been a very important theme to Dostoevsky as a Russian in the late 19th century. There is, however, a much more universal warning against such “isolation” in the above conversation.

“Man is a social animal,” Aristotle tells us in his Politics, without community, he falls into despair. Later in the aforementioned conversation from The Possessed, Shatov suggests three redemptive tasks to Stavrogin; seek spiritual assistance, kiss the earth, and attain to God by work. What is common to these three tasks is that they all require Stavrogin to recognize his reliance on others. The individual’s need for community is not merely political; he needs the community to hold him accountable, to require something of him. Without being held accountable in such a way, despair eventually follows. The individual can not reach his good be acting for himself and according to his own judgment.

As in all things, this communal life is a mean that can not be exceeded in either direction. The opposite extreme is that the individual (instead of becoming isolated) loses his human identity and becomes only a body. This is the “herd instinct” that Nietzsche was reacting against. The problem of the “herd” is essentially the same as the problem of “isolation”; that is, both lack the proper end. Community’s proper function is to institute an ethical order that each individual is held accountable to. When, instead, the order of the community is an unsubstantial value system that each individual blindly follows, there is no struggle in being a member. The human struggle is essential to a properly ordered life; we must tame our passions so to strengthen our wills. When the values of a community lack substance, there is no real need for a strong will. What I mean is that if the values of a community lack strong roots they are liable to change, so I need not worry too much about why it is that I act in such and such a way.

The Industrial Revolution brought man into the factory, and transformed him from a human being into a mechanical part. Sure, in the factory each individual has a role, but it is no longer a human one; he becomes a disposable mechanical part. This mentality has carried over from the factories into communal life. Man is now a “social animal” in a very different sense then Aristotle intended; in fact it would perhaps be more true to say that man is now a “social machine”. Relationships have become very utilitarian; we expect the human beings that we interact with to move fast, and to act flawlessly. The type of relationship that I have in mind is a business relationship (that is, either customer to worker, or worker to worker). I am a human being when I wake up, I am a human being when I work, I am a human being when I am driving, etc.; thus, I am entitled to act like a human being, and to make human mistakes.

Contrary to the mechanical expectations that we have of others within the workplace, we often have animalistic expectations of others with regard to their ethical actions. We may judge others in gossip, or we may excuse them, but rarely do we hold them accountable. Both extremes of community (“isolation” and “the herd”) lack what is essential to communal life—human accountability by one’s fellows. The community ought to love each member as brothers love one another. The community does not exist for my profit, at least the way in which “profit” is commonly understood. The profit that I gain from community is in being directed toward my good, and I will help direct you toward your good because you are my communal brother. If I am isolated from the community I will follow Shatov’s advice, because it will rejoin me to my community, and it is in my nature to exist within such a community.

In “Meditation XVII”, John Donne famously wrote, “no man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main”. Without a properly ordered community, within isolation and also within the herd, man is required to be his own island. The bleak worldview that I mentioned in the first paragraph of this essay comes from such a disordered community. “How can there be hope if I must stand against the evils of the world on my own?” one may ask. Of course there is always hope in God, but it is hope in the world that we feel so overwhelmed by, and this anxiety can lead one also to lose hope in God. A properly ordered community is the only answer to the isolated man’s question, for without it, a good man standing alone may forget hope.

On Wanting

2010-03-07T09:37:00.001-05:00

JMJ

A post by John:

A lot of people seem to get troubled sometimes about the fact that it seems we can't but be selfish. It seems like there's no selflessness; people doing charitable work are just making themselves feel good, people who are ready to do kind things for others just seem like they're insecure and want people to like them, or that anyone who compliments or encourages anyone else is really just trying to get on their good side and manipulate them, and so on. That suspicion's a mistake, though.
The case is, we can't but desire. Desire doesn't mean selfishness. We can actually want, actively desire the good for another person. And doing such is good for us, too. In real love, everyone wins. That we want the good for ourselves doesn't mean we want it at the expense of the good of others. There is such a thing as a common good, and there is such a thing as love and communion and sacrifice for the sake of the other where, really, the person who sacrifices for the sake of love gains almost more than the one they love. In sacrificing for love, they acheive a higher perfection than if they had stayed comfortable and not loved.
So I'm saying that we can't but desire, and that it's a good thing, not simply selfish. We're saying this as a premise. And I'm also saying that every time we act, we're acting for some good for ourselves, even in the case of acts of self-sacrificial love, we're desiring our good. We can't but desire.
As a human person, an essential part of us is our heart---which we're understanding to be the center of desire and affectivity. When we act, when our will moves us, when we determine our own actions---forgive me for the lack of precision---when we move ourselves, we act as a whole person. The will, the mind, and the heart can't be separated. We don't act as part of a person, but a whole person. This in my mind is one of Kant's big mistakes, that he's only regarding parts of the person instead of the whole. It seems that he wants to speak about a perfect freedom. Well, we're not perfectly free, and there isn't anyone who is perfectly free, because of our human nature. We can't cut our body off of our soul, as if there was some real distinction. Descartes.
Desires always have some object. So acting as a human person, we're always directing ourself toward some good. So here's the question, remembering other things we've considered. There's a hierarchy of values, an order of goods, and things are best--we are happiest--when we recognize and desire things according to the real order of goods. Directing ourselves according to truth.
I casually dropped a pretty sweeping statement there. We're happiest when we direct ourselves according to the real order of values. There are some obvious objections here.

Listen. It's rediculous to say that the same thing is going to make everyone happy. Just place two people next to each other and ask them what they enjoy and they'll give completely different answers. Ask them what makes them happy in their life, and they'll not only say different things, but probably even conflicting things.
Further, you can't just force yourself to "act according to a real order of values" as if you're a machine. What if you don't want to? How is it going to make you happy if you don't do what you want?

These objections stem mostly from a disagreement about what happiness is, and especially whether or not it's the same for every man. That doesn't make sense at first. But I'll offer a couple comments before turning to Augustine.
We should talk about nature at some point, but here's a quick one: if human nature is a real thing, and every human being shares in it, and if there is a good for humans as humans, and if it makes sense to call this good happiness, then there must be something that makes humans happy as humans. Those are a lot of "ifs", of course, and we can talk about those later.

For Augustine, your love is your weight; it is that which draws you. I haven't inspected whether its accurate to say it or not, but it seems so: your love is what you set your heart on, what you desire to make you happy. It's what moves you from the moment you start your day until the end.
Now there are two options here, really. You can either set your heart on passing things, or on eternal truth. What your heart is set on becomes your ordering principle; that for the sake of which. That is, what you set your heart on ultimately shapes why you get up in the morning and why you do what you do. It's what your life is adding up to. You move yourself according to this desire.
Now think about the person who's heart is set on worldly desires and passing things. We all know them. Their day is moved by whim, they have a very hard time taking responsibility for themselves and for others, they like their play time more than anything else, and so forth. What they set their heart on can be as damaging as drugs or sex addiction or just playing video games. But what happens is, because of the nature of their heart and the things they set their heart on, they become slaves. Our desires are constantly changing; the things which we desire become more or less difficult to get, and come at a higher and higher cost. Think of people who's lives have been ruined because their love for worldly things outweighed their love for their family, and that, when the time came, they weren't able to choose the people they loved over the substances they loved. Taking as an ordering principle, that which moves you, your weight to be "fulfillment of passing desires," results in slavery.
Whereas, if the love is for truth, very different things happen. Actually, I'm not obliged to talk as a philosopher here, I can talk as a Christian. What if someone set their heart on fulfilling the command "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength" and "you shall love your neighbor as yourself"? I don't know how many people we see who have really succeeded in doing so, but there are a few examples that stick in our minds, like Mother Teresa, or Father Damian of Molokai. But it's a very different thing that happens than when the prupose of life is set on the fulfillment of passing desires.

All this is for a simple thesis, I suppose. We can't but desire, and that is a good thing. It flows from our nature of human beings that we can't but desire. However, we need to be careful what we want.

Hopefully we can talk more about desire, what we want, simplicity, freedom from passions, and so forth, next time.

On the Modern Conception of the Will

2010-02-23T18:25:00.004-05:00

By T. J. Pia

In the Summa Theologica, St. Thomas demonstrates how man’s will is given to him by his Creator, and that the natural inclination that man has is to pursue the good (See ST I-II , Q. 94 for this discussion). This assertion is evident in the excuses that one hears when questioning another regarding his actions—the response to ‘why did you do that?’ will always be ‘because it {seemed, looked, felt, sounded, smelled, tasted, etc.} good’. The natural inclination that every human being has is toward some good; often the individual’s conception of the good is flawed, and sometimes an individual attempts to reject the “objective good” and instead pursues his own “subjective good”. These flaws are why man’s “natural inclination” toward the good does not result in all human actions being good. In summary, St. Thomas says that the human will is part of the natural law given by God, and inclines man to pursue the good—to pursue God. This means that man’s freedom is bound up in God; he is only free when he follows his God-given will toward God. With the growth of atheism in the 19th century, this conception of a Divinely reliant will was rejected. The German philosophers of that century, most notably Nietzsche, sought a system that allowed for man to rely on nothing transcendent. The theory of evolution, which was enhanced in the 19th century by the popularity of Darwinism, gave a foundation for such a system. Despite some very significant holes in Darwinism, it promised a system in which there is no Divine Creator to whom all of creation is indebted.

In Feuerbach’s work The Essence of Christianity, he proposes that the Christian conception of God is actually the essential and best qualities of man that he has abstracted from himself and projected on to a divine being whom he can worship. Feuerbach argues that man must regain these qualities that he has removed from himself. He wanted to replace faith in God with faith in man; to show man that his fate was dependent only upon himself instead of upon a transcendent force. The ideologies that followed from Feuerbach’s ideas aimed to “unbind” man from God; true freedom was to be understood as something completely independent for each individual.

That this existential conception of the will began in Germanic countries is no surprise, for it is a reaction to the Lutheran understanding of Christianity that began in Germany. The tension between some type of divine fate and man’s will pre-dates Christianity; we find the Greeks grappling with Fate in much of their literature. With Christianity, however, the stakes were enhanced, for an option in the afterlife did not exist in the pre-Christian world; for good or for worse all souls went to the same place (this of course refers only to the belief systems that held the soul to be immortal and passing beyond this life). The Christian holds that somehow his life earns him either salvation or damnation. I have written before on this subject, and so here I need not parse it out, rather I wish only to lay down the historical difficulty within Christianity on the subject. Lutheranism (and then Calvinism in France) emphasized God’s grace as granting salvation to man, thus discrediting man's own will.

Feuerbach’s conception of God as an artificially created leach on man’s greatness was very much a reaction to the reduction of man’s will in post-Reformation Germany. 'Man needs to take back what he has credited to God'. As I said earlier, Nietzsche further developed the foundation that Feuerbach laid out for him. He (Nietzsche) found in Germany what he called “the herd instinct”, that is, a group of people following a “morality of mores”—a traditionally safe value system for a group of people to act by. In summary what Nietzsche saw in late 19th century Germany was a culture of mediocrity. In the earliest days of the modern world “equality” was on the lips of many in the political sphere; this “equality” brought man down to his lowest common denominator so that everything was fair. Political equality put every man (no matter his actual greatness) at the same standard, requiring little of him, and not allowing him to exercise his will. This is what Nietzsche saw; he saw that belief in God no longer even inspired man to greatness. “God is dead” he proclaimed, man killed him with his pity, he tells us. The death of God is something tragic because man killed that which was an embodiment of his greatness. Nietzsche does not announce this joyfully as Sartre did when greeting newspaper reporters; he mourns it because he saw this type of nihilism as the ultimate form of mediocrity. Nietzsche thus requested that man be courageous enough to step away from the crowd and to “stand alone”.

Feuerbach and Nietzsche were ultimately reacting to the developing reduction of the will in Lutheranism, and in the spread of democracy. Lutheranism decreases the power of man’s will, and democracy grants a bare minimum equality that requires little of it. In response Feuerbach removes the power of God to assist man’s will with His grace, Nietzsche, then, develops his existential “will to power”. Man (as represented by this thinkers) wants to be completely responsible for his actions, and to steer them toward whatever end he desires. The “mediocre will” which was widespread in the 19th century simply was not sufficient, but neither was the transcendently bound will of St. Thomas. 'My actions must not be judged relative to the value system of “good and evil”, rather only I can judge my actions, because I will them, I move them toward their end'. (NOTE: the “end” that Nietzsche lies down is not really an end, it is an eternally recurring “becoming” which I do not have room here to discuss, but the general idea in the previous sentence suffices).

Man remains mediocre despite the attempts found in 19th century ideologies, but now with a misconceived notion that his will is arbitrarily licensed to act. The will is a very real quality that man possesses, but, as I have noted elsewhere, its freedom is in directing its actions toward the good; that is it is not free because an individual can direct it to do whatever ridiculous thing he wants. I will not again emphasize my conception of freedom, but will again refer the reader to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”. The will as a quality of the soul naturally is inclined to move toward that which it was created for. The perennial problem of original sin prevents the obviousness of this inclination toward that which infused the soul (and thus the will) into man; it remains true, however, that the soul finds only restlessness until it moves toward the good.

On Hope and Wasting Time and Being Decisive

2010-02-08T09:10:00.001-05:00

JMJ

A post by John:

There are a variety of reasons a fellow gets out of bed in the morning. Sometimes he gets out of bed aware of some great mission; other times, because he's slept as much as he can and can't sleep anymore, and is bored. Usually something mundane like the necessity of work gets people up. Every once and a while there's a fellow who gets up for the sake of love.

For everyone who gets up, however, there is a single, common principle moving them: hope. And this hope rests on a variety of things. Hope in what the day will bring, that work will be fruitful, that waking will be less boring than sleeping, that I may see a certain someone, that I will be happier, that I may accomplish something, that I go to bed again satisfied in some way.

Although, for some, hope is very hidden, hardly conscious. Some creep out of bed with a sigh and groan, driven by some unconscious thing at the root to live another day, although every other day has been more of a burden than a joy. A lot of these people know pain all too well, and for some of them, it has hardened their hearts.

The best and most real hope, of which a few people are conscious of enough to be able to get out of bed with the most perfect confidence, is hope in the Providence of God and of Salvation. For these people who really practice that virtue, a day is simply a another chapter in a long story of love between them and Christ. Further, their hope is not contingent; it rests on something that doesn't change.
They get up in the morning aware that their nature is mutable, and so that which pertains to their nature is changing; the conditions of the fight change every day. The one thing that they can count on about themselves is that they'll be different tomorrow. Which is actually a very hopeful thing, if you're having a crappy day. In this realm of mutability and falleness, attachment to God is the only way to ensure real continuity.

These hopeful hearts are also grateful. When they get out of bed in the morning, their hope isn't that the day will be painless, or that they won't have troubles, or that their house won't get struck by lightning and burn down. Which would suck. Rather, the most perfect realization of their hope happens after they die. Which may make them seem oblivious. "Dude, your house was struck by lightning and burned down, and I alone have escaped to tell you!" "Oh well, at least there's the Resurrection to look forward to."
But their hope is realized even in this life. Every trouble turns into another hole that can only be filled by love. Every pain and weight on the heart can be turned into a prayer for the whole Mystical Body. And God isn't just mean all the time. He gives plenty of consolations to go along with the desolations; sometimes even more. For these few people who really practice hope well, even a day of suffering can be a day of joy; and a greater magnitude of joy than most of us experience.
A hopeful heart is grateful because it recognizes everything, the good as well as the bad, as a gift, or potentially a gift, from God, that everything that happens in a day can be caught up into love.

Having said all this and set out an ideal, so to speak, I just want to say a couple short things. One is on wasting time. We waste a lot of time when we don't have hope. We waste a lot of time worrying about things that we can't control, or just as bad if not worse, worrying about things we have to do, and can do, instead of actually doing them. Granted, what we should do and what is out of our control isn't always clear, and in those cases we need to consider things carefully. But to pitter-patter about being wishy-washy when things are clear is really a waste of time. Our happiness shouldn't be so contingent.

And because it isn't good to waste time--we only have so much of it--it's better to stop worrying and, when we have sufficient clarity, act decisively and simply. For example. When trying to do my reading, I am plagued by countless distractions and worries making a circus in my head. Things I'll do later, things I maybe should do but I'm not sure about, and so forth. Plenty of mental energy wasted toward a future which does not yet exist. But here, very clearly, is a responsibility I have right in front of me. And so, in hope, I can leave what is currently out of my grasp to Divine Providence, and do my work. Worry about the other things as I come to them. God will give me time enough to do what I need to.

That being said, I damn well better practice this, huh?

So hope saves time on top of making you happy. That seems to me to be the meaning of "active hope." That you act decisively based on hope, hope in God's providence, hope that good things are possible. That what moves you isn't fear, but hope; that what gets you out of bed is not instinct, but hope that this day can be beautiful.

Unrestrained Choice

2010-02-08T00:14:00.003-05:00

By T. J. Pia

Continuing with the theme of free will and the various perspectives from which it can be considered, I would like to now cover the free will of the individual living in a providentially guided drama. Each individual, while acting freely, also influences the whole of humanity in such a way that it can be easily demonstrated how each man completely changes the whole. The post 17th century mind (which has been highly “mathematized” by the Newtonian/Cartesian view of the world) may have a tendency to view the providential model of the world as completely negating the possibility of free will. To such a mind (and again thinking within a providential model) human interactions mirror a lengthy algebraic equation. This is a true way of looking at the “human drama;” as in all mathematical views of nature, however, it must be recognized as only one strand of the truth that can not stand on its own.

The mathematical view of providence would be something like this: Adam and Eve were created directly by God; contained in them some type of chemical information which God implanted in them. This “chemical information” held the entirety of the “human drama” within it, for the chemical information that God placed within our first ancestors was that which would create our next ancestors, the chemical information handed to them was then passed onto their children, etc. This giving of chemical information continues up to me and you; we will then give it to our children so that this gift of “DNA” which began with God will not cease until the end of time.

How does this relate to the individual working within a providential scheme? I will begin to answer this question with another question—what causes one to choose a particular choice? More specifically, what leads an individual to choose his first choice? It seems that every child in the womb does not act in exactly the same way (not every child kicks at the exact same length of time from their conception). Movements in the womb, which seems to be the only apparent choices that one makes prior to birth, could be explained as responses to one’s environment. It is not clear, however, why a specific response is chosen. The reason for my interest in one’s first choice is that every other choice can be said to necessarily result from those choices and conditions leading up to the choice; for example I choose to buy a bag of chips while I am at the gas station because I am hungry, I am hungry because I chose not to eat dinner, I chose not to eat dinner because I was in a bad mood, I was in a bad mood because my co-worker skipped out on his duties leaving me with more work, etc. My choices, then, result from previous choices, as well as natural conditions, and the choices that others have imposed upon me. In this way, my choice is not necessarily determined, but limited to such a degree that I am inclined to move toward a particular choice.

The first choice that one makes, however, has no previous choices to have been formed by. An individual creates habits of sorts that assist him in making a choice (I got gas at this gas station because I like the snack shop, I picked this brand of chips because I have had and liked them before and I like regularity, etc). The “pre-choice” individual has natural conditions to base his decision on, as well as imposed choices of others, but he has no choice record. There is, then, necessarily something “natural” in the individual that inclines him in some way. This “nature” combined with natural conditions and imposed choices of others combine, and thus the first choice is made. What is this implanted “nature” of the individual? It seems that it is the chemical data handed down from Adam and Eve in whom it was implanted by God. Since every individual choice can be traced back to this chemical data originally implanted in man by God, every human choice is just an effect of God’s first cause. Since every human action is traced in this way, then all choices (both my own and those imposed upon me) happen exactly as they do because they were determined to when God implanted the cause in Adam and Eve. Natural conditions, such as the weather, which are variables in the choice making equation, can easily be credited to God. It seems, then, that man is completely fated, for every choice made is, then, analogous to a machine moving because the gears were constructed a certain way.

I would like to remind the reader here that the entire argument above has been an exploration of the view which a mathematically minded individual would have of providence. The negation of free will in such an understanding is problematic. To solve such a problem, one must consider the above as a reductionist view. In my essay “On Pleasure Seeking ii” I used the example of Newton’s First Law of Motion to explain how post 17th century man removes essential qualities of nature in order to formulate nature into an equation that can be solved. There I demonstrated how such a view is also true of modern psychology; the above explanation that I have tried to reason out employs such psychological reductionism. The question, then, is what is being removed from nature (I here am using “nature” as synonymous with “creation”) in the above explanation? Well, as circular as it will sound, freedom is removed.

As I demonstrated in “On Creation and Free Will”, God created out of love, and there is no reason to believe that men are puppets of His that He just enjoys playing with. While God has knowledge of Creation as a whole, He does not impose every choice on us, nor is He some type of watchmaker who wound up creation, and left it to play out as He constructed it to. In the aforementioned essay of mine, I called the Fall necessary, and it was, but only insofar as God knows it. For pre-Fallen man, the Fall was something that existed in potency—man, not God, actualized it. The fruit did not have to be eaten, Adam and Eve both chose to eat it. This was not the only act that they had the potential to choose, it is simply the one which they chose to choose. Mysteriously, this choice, as well as every choice in the entirety of the “human drama” is known eternally by God.

Returning to my reaction to the mathematical explanation of individual choices, even the above argument’s limitation on choices does not determine choices. I can always act against my inclinations. For example, my tendency to lose my temper as a reaction to particular situations can be restrained. If I am hungry, I do not have to buy a bag of chips at a gas station just because it is in my “nature” to react this way, I can choose to go to bed hungry, or eat leftovers, etc. I can choose to act “out of the ordinary”, and we do find ourselves doing this. Perhaps there could be an argument made that even these reactions against one’s natural inclinations are part of one’s chemical construction, but I imagine it would be a weak one. I am unrestrained from Creation’s construction because I know I am. An omniscient mind may know how my tomorrows will play out, but I do not, and so I am free to choose.

On Freedom as the Pursuit of the Good

2010-01-31T14:42:00.002-05:00

By T. J. Pia

In reviewing my last post “On Creation & Free Will”, I realized how necessary it is to look at the concept of free will from several different perspectives. The resolution of one perspective creates holes if the idea is looked at from another. There is an obvious tension between “free will”, and “God’s will”, this creates the problem of resolution. In my last post I attempted to give a broad view from the perspective of God as Creator on how it is that man is free; in this post, I would like to discuss what “free will” is from the perspective of man as individual, and then as a participant in the “human drama”. The most obvious course of action is to begin with a discussion on what exactly freedom is, and then to discuss how it is that the freedom of individuals plays into the providential human drama.

More than in any culture both past and present, Americans identify themselves as both possessing, and having an entitlement to freedom. In perhaps the most celebrated document of our founding, Thomas Jefferson describes the separation from the British crown to be based on “self-evident” truths, namely “that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain [inherent and] inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (The Declaration of Independence with exclusions from the published draft in brackets). Because this passage is one that every American at least is familiar with, or else has memorized, the claim does not seem very controversial. The statement that all men have an entitlement to equality and freedom, however, should be looked at in a broader context. Aristotle, for instance, in his Politics, says “he is a slave by nature who is capable of belonging to another…and who participates in reason only to the extent of perceiving it” (The Politics Bk. I: Ch. 5). There are, then, for Aristotle persons who have no right to what we call “freedom and equality”.

The concept of political freedom that is at the very foundation of the American system came out of late 17th and early 18th century political philosophy. Most notable of these influential political philosophers is John Locke, whose claim that all men have a right to “life, liberty and property” is almost quoted verbatim in the above passage from The Declaration of Independence. In The Second Treatise of Government, from which this conception of liberty comes, Locke claims this right comes from the “state of nature”. He goes on to say, however, that “though this be a State of Liberty, yet it is not a State of License” (John Locke Second Treatise of Government II: 6). I have laid down this example in order to contrast liberty, with license, so that we may better understand freedom.

The above examples have all been used in order to demonstrate that political freedom and equality all were relatively new concepts at the time that they became the foundation of American government. The passage from Aristotle demonstrates that it was not always believed that every man was entitled to absolute freedom in political society. The modern American man who is given (or at least believes he is given) absolute liberty, understands freedom to be absolute license. Obviously, he understands that there are certain restrictions according to the law which he must not disobey, but he is not entirely concerned with whether or not laws make him any less free. Whenever some ignorant “teenager” (I include those from the age of 13 to about 65 under this title) utters “It’s a free country man” he is never defending his right to murder a person, rather he is usually justifying his right to waste time. “Freedom” has become understood to mean absolute license to do whatever is not blatantly forbidden in the law. This is not the freedom that Jefferson says comes from the Creator and which justified secession from England.

Within Plato’s Republic, Socrates recounts the famous “Allegory of the Cave” in which prisoners, who are bound in a dark cave, believe the shadows cast on the opposite wall to be reality. One prisoner escapes and ascends out of the cave, eventually; he comes to the sun which he adjusts his eyes to stare into. The sun here, represents “the good” and Socrates continues to explain that once he has ascended he must not be allowed to remain staring at the good, but that he must be required to return to the cave and speak to the prisoners in shadows, trying to bring them as close to the good as they are able. Excuse my very rough recounting of this here, but I am only laying down what is significant in this allegory for my own point.

True freedom, for Plato, was the freedom to pursue the good, so much so that once a man is truly free he will have no desire to do otherwise. As I have mentioned in my previous posts, modern man is so driven by pleasure, that he has no interest in the good—or believes he doesn’t. Modern man stares at shadows and calls them reality. He then evaluates what is good and what is bad in this pseudo reality that he forbids anyone from condemning. This is not true freedom, but whoever comes to him and points out that he is bound is condemned. When one has been in the dark his whole life, the light hurts his eyes so much that he refuses to look at it.

Freedom, then, is not license to prioritize within some pseudo reality; that in fact is slavery. True freedom is not bound to evil, or mediocrity, but pursues the good in all things. When we are given a choice between good and evil, we will often choose the evil choice out of comfort. We do not choose the good, because it is painful; so instead, we do not bend our inclinations, but make the comfortable choice because we can—because “it’s a free country”. Upon making habit of choosing badly, the choice of the good becomes so much more foreign, it seems ridiculous and outside of the reality that we know. Gradually, however, one must adjust his eyes (though they will never in life be completely comfortable) and ascend toward the good, for this is true freedom.

Having taken up too much room, I will save my discussion on the individual as free within God’s Providence for my next post.

On Things Adding Up

2010-01-23T12:10:00.000-05:00

JMJ

Your love is your weight. You are drawn toward it, and you move toward it. Here we see the wonderful meaning of freedom. Its meaning is not in itself; the only unconditionally good thing is not, as Kant would have us think, a good will. A will is good if it is directed toward the correct object. Likewise, inclination, or any sort of desire, does not negate the goodness of the will, but can either help or harm it. Let's slow down, though.

Freedom means we can direct ourselves according to what is good, what we perceive with our reason to be good. And this connection between freedom and reason is inseparable. With our reason, we can see what's better and worse, what's more and less important; that is, we see an order of values in being, and as seekers of truth we strive to see truly what the order of things is. If we can understand with our reason what is truly good, than we can order our actions accordingly.

Ordering our actions. The thing is, what we do adds up. This little choice here, that little choice there, it all adds up. What we do through the day adds up. How am I treating this person? Well, it affects them. If I treat this person kindly, several things can happen; they can intuitively realize, by receiving my action, that they are of worth, that their life is worth living, that they are worth something to someone, and that may give them the confidence to live well. Or it may simply cheer them up, or keep them in good cheer, such that they have a happier day. If I am unkind to someone or treat them badly, it could discourage them, weigh on them, make them angry, and so forth.
Further, the cheerful person and the angry person treat people differently, if they're a regular person. The saints who experience a certain freedom from their passions will probably live and act well no matter what they're feeling, but for the rest of us, we tend to treat people worse when we're in a bad mood, or treat people better when we're feeling well. Those ways of treating people have similar, further consequences, such that our one act has effects which ripple farther than we can conceive of.
But it is not just a matter of how we treat people, it's how we spend our time, generally, and in what manner we spend it. Set a person determined to experience the love of God and seek after beautiful things and enjoy real silence as the content of a given day next to a person who plays video games and watches too much TV as the content of a given day. And say each of them perseveres in these practices for many days. Doesn't it seem like the people will turn out differently? Their minds will be different, their attitudes, their hearts, their ability of be creative, the sorts of things they desire, and so forth.
Things add up. Not only does the way we interact with people ripple across the fabric of being and change the whole world in some way, but the way we act in general determines who we are as people. The adding-up of actions in unavoidable.

Now it seems to me that there are two ways that this adding-up can happen, subjectively: either the person orders his actions to a certain end on purpose, or he doesn't. We all know the latter kind. We call them “floaters” sometimes. We often float ourselves. We go with the flow, do what seems nice, eat, play, sleep, and so forth, trying to get what we want, but not always sure what we want. This kind of life, this kind of day adds up, too. To be honest, I'm terrified of floating.
But there is another kind of adding-up of actions that happens on purpose. It happens small-scale and large-scale. We pick an end: to be healthy. We order our actions accordingly: daily exercise, careful diet, avoidance of certain bad habits, development of good habits, and so forth. All these habits and actions “add up” to the end of health. Or, we choose a certain career: we take the right classes, we study hard and organize our lives such that it is conducive to accomplishing that study well, and so forth. Those are small-scale things, and things most people, even the most notorious floaters, accomplish.

But there's still the big picture. There's the question of, “what's my whole life going to add up to?” How do we live on purpose large-scale? That's what our freedom's for.

Freedom in its relationship to reason is our ability to live such that everything we do is ordered to what really counts.

As humans, we don't operate on just cold, hard reason. People play with that idea in science fiction movies all the time. I, Robot, Terminator: Salvation, Star Trek. The robot's the bad guy because, although its perfectly logical, it just doesn't get it.

Further, we were just reading Richard Rorty saying that no one's ever convinced by argument. It's always some sort of experience that convinces or converts us. And there's an element of truth to that, I think. I'm not Catholic because someone convinced me by logical demonstrations. Of course, once someone has an intellectual conversion, they will be convinced or converted by arguments. Rorty probably wasn't thinking about people who care about what's true, and probably because he's not one of them. But does the intellectual conversion happen through argument? It doesn't seem so. Something makes you love truth before you love it.

And now we broke the word out, love. We've said enough this time, probably. But we don't need to say a lot on this last point.

It seems to me that there isn't anything strong enough to move us to order our entire lives to one end other than a very strong love. And now we'll end with a question. What might be worthy enough of such a great love, that we'd order our whole lives toward it?

On Creation & Free Will

2010-01-11T15:47:00.003-05:00

By T. J. Pia

The inspiration for human action has been the broad subject that I have attempted to introduce in my previous two essays. Having discussed (in a very brief sense) that which we attempt to avoid (pain), and that which we seek (pleasure), I would like now to discuss the freedom of any of our choices. In the gospel of Matthew, Christ says “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29-31). There is much packed into this passage, perhaps most notably God’s omniscience; that is it is said that the Father is aware of even the most minor of occurrences happening in time. It is not simply stated that He has a broad knowledge of these happenings, but minor details (the fall of a sparrow, and the hairs on an individual’s head) are listed as things that the Father has very specific knowledge of. The attention given to the sparrow’s fall demonstrates that this seemingly insignificant event is not accidental. That is, even the most minor episode on earth is absolutely essential to whole of time.

If we are to accept the all-knowing; all-powerful; creative God, then we must also accept that at the first moment when time began—that is, when God performed the first creative act making the heavens and the earth (according to the account in the Book of Genesis)—God already had knowledge of all of time. As creator of all that exists, He must also have created time, for all that we know to exist exists in time. There perhaps are those things that were created prior to time, but the world as it is known to man, again, exists in time, meaning, at least, that time must have been the first of things to have been created of those which are known to man. The question would be whether or not anything could be created outside of time, for it would seem that the first breath of the “Let there be…” would also necessarily create time. Returning to my original point, however, whenever it was that time was created, all that would occur in this time must have been known to its creator if He is omniscient.

What exactly does this knowledge of all temporal events mean? It would seem that His authorship of these events would make Him also author of each of our actions—how can we act freely if there was One who knew every decision we would make far before we even knew we existed. If this account is accepted it would seem that free will is just an illusion—that human beings are fated. If this is completely true, if every individual’s every action is completely controlled, then why did the omnipotent, omniscient Being, become creative—why did He create man? If everything were controlled by Him, then His creative act would be simply for the sake of amusement. It does not seem likely that an all-knowing, all-powerful Being would need to amuse Himself. The Christian response to the question of why God created man is that He did so out of His infinite love asking to be loved in return. I say “asking” because He gave man the ability to choose to love him. It is necessarily true that he gave this ability to man because if He created man so to be loved, yet gave him no free will, then either all men would love Him, or else certain men would have been created to not love God. The former is not true, and the latter is illogical, for why would a Creator who desires to be loved with complete control over human actions create humans to specifically not love him. It follows, then, that either… (1) God did not create man, or (2) God does not desire to be loved, or (3) man does have complete freedom of choice.

Of the first possibility, being that it would be the topic of some other discussion, I will only briefly say that there must necessarily be some creative force in the universe. Whether or not the Big Bang theory or evolution are true is irrelevant—it does not matter what the creative act was or how it began, only that upon tracing backward, eventually there was some omniscient architect to creation. The method of creation is not known, but basically, there must have been some being that began a chain of events which led to the creation of man. It is only logical that the creation of man was not accidental, that is, it would be ridiculous to assume that some creator began a chain of events that accidentally led to the creation of man. The Creator, then, can be said to have created man willfully. I am using the terms “God” and “Creator” interchangeably because they are.

Of the second possibility I have already discussed this at some length, but to reiterate in case I was not clear, there must have been some reason that the Creator chose to create man. Perhaps the clearest way to demonstrate this would be to ask why it is that a man and a woman choose to create a life; the answer seems to be out of love for one another, yes, but also out of love for the uncreated life. The parents desire that their love for the child will be returned by the child, but can in no way force the child to love them. There seems no other reason to create a life being that (as I said above) otherwise it would only be for the sake of amusement. It also seems logical that the creator of man would put in him a creative quality which is inspired by that which led Him to create. It seems clear, then, that it is most probable that it was out of love that the Creator created.

Being that the first two of the three possibilities have been disproved, only the third is left to consider; namely, ‘man does have complete freedom of choice.’ How, though, is this reconciled with the omniscience of God, how is it that our actions can be completely freely chosen if they have been known prior to our own existence—how are “fate” and “free will” reconciled? It seems that the best way to reconcile these two terms is through the third dually inclusive term “providence”. This term ought to be used in order to convey the idea that individual actions, while freely chosen, are part of a larger whole. When an author sets out to create a novel, he begins it knowing what the end result will be, but in the process of writing may “lose control” of the characters. That is, having given human qualities to his characters, their actions may necessarily follow from the characters qualities more than they are chosen by the author.

At the Creation of man, it can not be suggested that God chose for man to Fall, but rather that the Fall necessarily followed from the character qualities of (following the account in Genesis) Adam, Eve, and perhaps most importantly, Satan. All of human creation was always heading toward some end (known only to the Father). Sin being brought into the world was not the intention of the Father, but the good end will be brought about despite it. This means that just as the author must bring his novel to the originally intended close despite the uncontrollable actions of his characters; so to the Creator will bring about the end originally intended for man despite sin being brought into the created world by the free will of men.

On the Reality of Freedom

2010-01-05T22:11:00.001-05:00

A Post by John:

JMJ

A lot of people have fought and died in the name of freedom. They thought it was so worthwhile, they sacrificed everything for it. Of course, they weren't able to enjoy the fruits of their sacrifice themselves, but that makes it more noble. It means they died for love, for the sake of other people who would enjoy the freedom they won.
On the other side of the coin, many people deny--theoretically, but not practically--the very existence of freedom. They like to bring all kinds of determinism into play.
Marx's economic determinism: all of our ideas spring from our mode of production. The only reason I am who I am and I do what I do is because I live in a capitalist society. The way to perfect man, then, is to change the mode of production and so change man into what we will. Well, that didn't work.
Some sort of Newtonian determinism: Kant was responding to this. If everything is reducible to atoms, then all movement, all action, everything that happens, is merely reducible to the actions of atoms according to the laws of nature. I do what I do because, as a body and therefore a vehicle for the forces of nature, some external force moves me. I don't decide it, it's just a result of a complex of forces and reactions that move me. Don't ask me how to account for thought.
Some sort of brain determinism: all thought, action, emotion, desire, and so forth, are the results of chemicals in the brain interacting. The way they interact, in all the many complex ways the chemicals do interact, determines what I think and therefore what I do.
Psychological determinism: eros and thanatos. The drive to create, the drive to destroy, and the complications which flow forth from these conflicting desires. Everything we do is reducible to and flow from these two instinctive drives. That's probably a over-simplified form of a Freudian understanding.
A simple expression of this sort of psychological determinism which we are familiar with is this: "He's just a product of his raising. It's just the conditions of his birth and life that made him do this." It's a similar denial of freedom. We're bound by our most immediate influences, and we will necessarily act that way. This is a complicated matter, of course, since different instincts, ways of being educated, and the influences we have in our life all do play into our action and is inseparable from why we do what we do. But it's a denial of freedom to say that our actions are reducible to the sum of external factors.

These are just a few examples determinisms. But here's the thing. If there's no freedom, then there's no moral good, no moral evil. Nothing we do is of any merit, and nothing we do can incur guilt. It's never anyone's fault, and no one is ever great. So I think we should honestly inspect our hearts. We can deny freedom in theory, but not in practice.
We all want to do something of worth, whether we're ever able to or not. And we all feel guilt, and we all feel angry at other people for bad things they've done. We feel wronged sometimes. We feel like we deserve some sort of treatment, but we're upset when other people don't respect our value. Further, we know we're justified at feeling angry at people for bad things they do--and we couldn't feel this way unless we understood that they freely chose to do bad. Otherwise they'd just be following the course of nature, and nothing would really matter anyways.

That's what it comes down to; if there's no freedom, nothing anyone does really matters. It just is what it is.

But prior to intellectually convincing ourselves that nothing anyone does really matters, there's a deep inner knowledge that things really do matter. We start out knowing this; and then if we encounter some theory of some sort of determinism, we have to move against our common sense to believe it.
Things do matter, and we are free. We'll start with this thesis. We're free. We are free creatures who can direct our actions according to our own intentions, with or against instinct and inclination and desire. If you deny this thesis, then what does it matter? Why would we two completely determined people have a conversation about it? You didn't freely choose to deny the thesis, if you did in fact deny it. You were determined by something else; maybe a chemical in the brain. So we're free.

Now that we've determined self-determinism, that we ourselves determine our actions, perhaps with the help of outside forces and influences, but not reducible to them, what's next?

Well, there's the epistemological conversation now. The reality of freedom is, we can do what we like. That means we can do what seems good to us. This is an extremely important point, the relationship between our freedom and our reason. Precisely because we have reason, we can be free. It is our reason which perceives truth and value, perceives things as “good” or “bad”, and then with our free will, we choose what seems good to us against what seems bad.

But the terrible and wonderful question! What is actually good? We spoke about in one of the last entries an objective order of values in being which we need to be attentive to in order to choose the right things. Knowing the good is prior to our doing good. But because our reason is impaired by many things and our minds darkened by sin, there's wiggle room. I might think eating twelve pizzas for lunch everyday is good for me. But I'd probably die after a month. That would suck.
There are two classes of these things: what seems good to us, and what's actually good for us. It's a great task of philosophy to try to align those two things. And it's difficult. There's this problem of disintegration. We want to know what's actually good for us. What does it mean to know, though? And what's actually good for us?

Here's a problem. Say it seems to me that drugs are good, so I use 'em. And then I use 'em a lot and get addicted. And then it starts killing me and I go broke and all my relationships are ruined, but I'm still addicted. In my addiction I realize that doing drugs is not one of those things that are actually good for me, and I'm miserable have been riding the fence between mere misery and total despair for a long time, rather than happy and joyful, which I would like to be. I realize that stopping the drugs would be good. But I've been addicted for so long and my life has been so formed around my addiction, that I can't bring myself to stop.
In this case, by choosing for so long what was not actually good for me but seemed good for me, I became less capable of choosing what was actually good for me. I am less free. And I know I am less free. By “using my freedom”--but not “fulfilling our freedom”--to choose what was actually harmful, I moved farther away from “fulfillment” and screwed up the relationship between freedom and reason even more.

So the epistemological issue remains, and the admonition to philosophy remains: seek the truth and live accordingly. Look beyond opinion to truth. This should wrap up this entry. Next time we’ll look at the meaning of freedom in relation to what we’ve already said.

On Pleasure Seeking ii: A Response

2010-01-02T17:33:00.003-05:00

By T. J. Pia

The following is a response to patm718's comments on my essay "On Pleasure Seeking":

Pat, thank you for your criticism, I believe that it allowed me to clarify things in my essay which were vague. The first clarification that I would like to make has to do with the final point that you made: “The brain *is* very physically mathematical. Even assuming it is created by a God, the physical intricacies of the brain are not usurped by whatever metaphysical powers may lie in it. It would be one in the same.” The word “psyche” comes from the Greek word “ψυχή” and means “soul”. The Ancients certainly had a different understanding of what the soul is than, say, a Christian does, but basically they believed it to be an animating force of some sort. This is important because it was evident to them that there was something in man that was more than physical, something which was immortal.

Gradually, as history moved past the medieval period, the sciences began to split off from the field of philosophy. This was because there was less and less need of wondering at the universe; for example, there was less and less question as to what shape the earth was. With the development of Newtonian physics in the 17th century, the end of science ceased to be wonder at the obvious order of the universe. It began an attempt at conforming nature to algebraic and geometrical proofs. The purpose of this was so that man may become ‘master and lord of the universe’. That is, the point was no longer a search for the actual order in nature, but rather forcing things that are actually found in nature out of the ‘equation’. An example of this is the removal of air resistance in Newton’s various mechanical experiments. Take for a clearer example of what I mean part of Newton’s famous First Law of Motion, that is “…an object in uniform motion tends to stay in uniform motion unless acted upon by a net external force.” This is, of course, not how we encounter nature, for if I throw a baseball it will be apparent to even the naked eye that the ball does not move in any type of uniformity. The reason for this, Newton would argue, is that the air resistance in nature is an “external force”. External from what?

Well, Newton’s experiments are, obviously, very useful, and there certainly is truth to them, for they are the principles that have allowed for the great scientific advancements of the last hundred and fifty or so years. Newtonian physics, and the sciences that have followed, desire most to solve nature, sometimes this means removing things from nature (such as air resistance) in order to find things that occur 100% of the time. There is absolutely no problem with this, for it does allow for advancements that are good. There is a problem, however, when the new subtracted form is called nature as if the subtraction existed separately. What I mean is saying “nature-air resistance=nature” is as false as saying “4-2=4”. This seems like a digression, and of course it is, but I believe it is a necessary one.

Before I move on to demonstrate how this relates to psychotherapy I need to make a very important clarification that I thought was clear enough in my essay when I said “I am not claiming that there are not people in need of medicinal treatment for mental disorders (nor am I interested in such a discussion)”. That is, I absolutely believe that there are people with mental disorders (chemical imbalances) such as depression that call for medicinal treatment. My point is that often people are treated for things that are not results of chemical imbalances.

Returning to my original point, in the field of psychotherapy the treatment of the human being as ONLY a mathematically physical brain is wrong. That is, a person can not be figured out and given enough medication to make him “normal” because there is no such thing as “normal”. What I mean is that psychotherapy (OFTEN) acts as if there is an archetypical human “psyche”, and that patients can be treated to conform to this archetype. I am not even saying that there is a single therapist who believes this concretely, but only that this is the way in which this field (OFTEN) acts.

The metaphysical soul, like air resistance in Newton’s first law of motion, is cast aside as an unessential variable. The brain is the constant that can be, supposedly, “figured out”. The reality is that there is a constant; it is not the brain, however, but the soul. In this soul, there is a priori knowledge of truth. The child who raises himself is no different then the child who is raised by his parents except that he has different conventions, but in both there is something (subconsciously because it is in the soul) that knows when wrong actions are before him.

When we expose ourselves to these “wrongs” we do not necessarily punish ourselves consciously. A person who does wrongs that he does not consciously recognize may suffer the same symptoms as a person with a legitimate chemical imbalance. He will not relate the wrong-doing with the symptoms, of course, and will instead seek treatment. A society, such as we live in, that does not allow for any institution to enforce the “natural laws of truth” permits for wrongs to be done. The individual loses his conscious recognition of things being wrong because no one holds him accountable. The pleasurable desires are overwhelming, so that without anyone restricting them it is near impossible to resist them. We do punish ourselves though, in some form (and I should have been clearer on this); we may punish ourselves with anxiety, depression, etc.

Atheists certainly can lead perfectly tempered lives as persons with religion can lead perfectly indulgent lives. This, I believes only proves my point, the reason an atheist has any desire to live a tempered life is because he has innate knowledge that it is wrong to act otherwise. Why else would someone resist the greatest pleasures? I never claimed, even mildly that religion was necessary in order to have a soul with truth embedded in it, for that would be completely contrary to my point.

Thank you again for your comments.

On Pleasure Seeking

2009-12-27T16:56:00.002-05:00

By T. J. Pia

Aristotle tells us in Book III of the PHYSICS that every thing has a final cause, the final cause of human action, he says, is happiness. What exactly this happiness is and how it relates to human actions is the discussion of his NICOMACHEAN ETHICS. The purpose of this essay, however, is not to recount Aristotle’s argument there, but rather to explore modern pleasure seeking, and to find where its deepest roots seem to be. We avoid at all costs any type of pain in the modern world, and not just physical pain. It is the avoidance of psychological pains that leads to pleasure seeking. The most logical way to do this would seem to be by avoiding those things which cause such pain. This is not, however, the route that we find the average modern citizen taking; instead, he tries not to care about any consequences of his actions. That is to say that an individual seeks pleasure because it is the opposite of that which he desires most to avoid—pain. Any consequences that result from his pleasurable actions are, then, exterior and thus oppressive. Institutions that try to prevent the individual from seeking the pleasures that he desires most (even if the individual is by right subject to this institution) is thus wrong to him, for the human good is now believed to be completely subjective.

In the 2nd century AD, St. Justin Martyr proclaimed “if it is true, it is Christian”. What this early Church Father meant by his statement is very relevant to the discussion at hand. The Church is one of the most, if not the most, targeted “oppressive” institution in the modern West for its social teachings on such controversial political issues as homosexual union, abortion, pre-marital sex, euthanasia, etc. The reality is that these positions are taken by the Church simply because they are true. That is, there is an objective truth that is imbedded in the human psyche, and when this truth is disobeyed there are psychological ramifications. When every institution is either given no authority to punish, or else refuses to recognize the need for punishment, man will punish himself. The reason that the Christian world teaches against certain actions which man finds pleasurable is not to oppress him, but rather to free him from the animal impulses that he has as a result of the Fall, and which end in suffering.

Pleasures are continually sought despite the psychological pains that follow from them because we no longer associate the psyche with the metaphysical soul, but rather with (what modern science believes to be) the very mathematically physical brain. This brain can be ‘corrected’ through medicinal treatments so that the patient gets pills, and the doctor gets dollars. I am not claiming that there are not people in need of medicinal treatment for mental disorders (nor am I interested in such a discussion), but that the modern man loves a quick fix, making modern psychotherapy right up his alley. Man no longer needs to work through his problems because there is a pill that will fix them.

Man is selfish, and there is no reason to believe this to be a modern problem, but what is modern is that selfishness is encouraged—everything is subjective making no one’s actions wrong. The individual is encouraged by popular culture to do all of the things that irrational animals desire most. Man sees himself as capable of determining his own good. This means that he believes the outcome of his action is in direct proportion to the pleasure he receives in the moment of the act. Any type of damage done is unrelated or accidental. Anxiety and depression are said to be some type of chemical imbalance in the brain. Guilt does not seem to exist to the modern man, at least in adults, unless the individual changes the subjective beliefs that he held at the time of committing the act.

Contrary to the single currently held popular belief, there is objective good in direct relation to the objective truth. We may disregard this, follow our pleasure-seeking impulses, and pay as much money as we want on prescription pills, but we will not escape the mark on our souls. This mark is not permanent—we are given the grace to accept the eraser, but this eraser only can wipe clean that which is repented against. This repentance is not some type of oppressive self-flagellation; it is simply the decision to be happy, and a recognition that this means perusing the good—the good which is truth.

On Language

2009-12-23T18:34:00.000-05:00

A Post by John:

JMJ

What are you talking about? Seriously. I mean, really. Dude, what are you even saying? Can you hear the words that are coming out of your mouth?
Or, you're making this up! No way! Yeah, right.

Those would seem to be reactions to a rediculous statement. We can imagine a case in which someone would use those expressions: say, some distinguished man claims he was attacked by a rabbit, while canoeing, and insists it's all true, the whole story. Well, it sounds rediculous. But why do we have a problem with someone saying something like that? It seems to be because the story doesn't measure up to reality.

In fact, that's what we hope language does, describe reality, and when it doesn't measure up, and we realize it doesn't measure up, we're dissatisfied. Sometimes we can't find the right word for a certain feeling. Sometimes when we say "I love you" we say it with a feeling that not even these words describe accurately my disposition toward you, but fall short. People are always inventing new words and terms to describe certain things that reflect a state in reality, but cannot be described otherwise. Like, "meh," or "owned!" or "ek-sistent."
Language is also wonderful in that it communicates things to others. When I say, "motion," you know what I'm talking about. Everyone sees things moving and changing. It's another testament to the reality outside of us, that we're all perceiving the same objective thing, such that we can use a word to refer to this reality, and others know what we're talking about. The possibility of interpersonal communication also makes Kantian epistemology difficult, I think, and various forms of subjectivism. If we're all perceiving the same things such that we can accurately speak about them with each other, and we care a lot about speaking of things accurately with others and understanding what other people are talking about, then it seems we naturally consider objective reality to be important.

So we want language to reflect reality. And I don't think this limits language to something merely utilitarian. Language also carries within it a celebration of reality. We don't sing joyful songs to define things; rather, we're using the beautiful sound of language to rejoice in something real. Sometimes we even just rejoice in language itself. There are plenty of songs that are great that don't mean anything.

Early philosophy was immensely concerned with language. Parmenides was caught up in language. Plato's theory of forms came from trying to understand language: we have words for things like "justice itself", and so the word to have meaning must correspond to something real. Aristotle starts with language: the Categories is a book about those kinds of things which simple terms refer to.
Further, their philosophy was concerned with trying to understand those things which our words refer to. Think of Plato's Euthyphro. Euthyphro boasts to Socrates that he knows everything about holiness. So Socrates stops him and asks, "What is the holy?" In the end, Euthyphro can't give a good account of what the holy is.
Aristotle in the Physics speaks about the "natural way of knowing" as moving from those things more immediately knowable to us but less knowable in themselves to things more knowable in themselves. For instance, take the notion of motion: we all have some idea of what motion is. We experience things moving, see things changing. But who can say for sure what motion is? I don't think I would have arrived at Aristotle's definition very easily: "the fulfillment of the potential as potential." Good one, Aristotle. I still don't know what that means. The point is, we all have an idea of motion, but it's not something we can account for easily; it's not as knowable in itself as this or that particular aspect of motion, like local motion as movement from this place to that place.

Where is this going? Let's think about scientific language for a second. Say, physics. What sorts of things can physics account for? Many things, to be sure, concerning physical forces and the movements of bodies. But for mathematical physics to have a starting point, it cannot ask what motion is. Or, if modern theoretical physics is highly mathematical, it depends on the notion of "one." You can't have math without "one." But what is oneness? Physics, as having to assume oneness, cannot say what oneness is. It's like trying to look at your own eyeballs.

There's still a notion floating around that science and the scientific method is the only, or at least the highest, criterion of truth. This seems to be true of the sciences of physics and psychology especially. In fact, some think the only questions worth asking are those you can answer with physics. Or at least the only questions that can be definitively answered are those you can ask with physics, and the rest of the questions should be answered with whatever you feel like.

Now let's think for a second. If language is for the sake of describing reality, does it seem that such a limited language could account for my whole experience of reality? I don't experience things as merely physical; things have value and meaning for me. Some things I care about, and some things I don't really. Should I regard a language which cannot properly speak of things emotional, intentionality, valuable, even causal, spiritual, or even qualitative as able to account for the whole of reality?

We just read about Galileo and all his elaborate proofs by which he discovered many things about uniform motion. It sounds great. But the trouble is, uniform motion doesn't actually exist in reality. So... what's he talking about? Anyways.

This is a plug to open the epistemological door and recognize that the precision of scientific language first of all doesn't account for everything worth knowing, and doesn't even necessarily describe reality accurately. The latter portion can be resolved by experiment; we do a test to see if this particular theory holds up. But sometimes science gives us a false confidence, that we know something to be true, just because it sounds scientific. It's like every other language, though. It either does or doesn't measure up to reality.

Let's ask about what motion is, what oneness and unity is, what a body is, what matter is. About what's good and bad. About what's better and worse; are we the best things, or is there Something better than us? Causality, reality as a whole, and so forth. And for these questions, we'll need a language. And for that language, we need to start simple, as we first come upon things and experience them. I want to be just; well, what is justice? I can't ask that question with physics.

This entry is getting far too out of hand. Language. Worth talking about.

On Order of Values

2009-12-10T20:28:00.000-05:00

A post by John:

JMJ

Cake is better than crackers. And a cow is probably more important than cake: if you had a live cow standing there and you had to either throw the cow or the cake off a cliff, you would probably throw the cake. And your sister is more important than the cow, although perhaps more annoying. But that doesn't make her less important than the cow, which may be less annoying.
It seems that every honest person could agree with these statements. They're value judgments on things in relation to each other. Some things are in and of themselves better than other things. Gradation in being, some of us would call it; or maybe order, or maybe hierarchy of values. Cake is good; a cow, as an animate creature, is better; your sister, as a rational (or maybe almost rational) being is best of the three.
Now maybe some people would argue that cake is better than cow, especially if they had to decide between beef and cake for dessert. But I think we'd all say there is something wrong with a fellow who prefers a cow to his sister, in general. It just doesn't make sense. A sister is a much more precious thing. Now, if there was a fellow who preferred a cow to his sister (spending time with it to her neglect, giving it all the choice grass and not feeding her anything, thinking of it affectionately more than he does of her, speaking more kindly to it than to her), we would all say that something is wrong with that situation.
This is because values are ontological. They're in the things themselves. The sister, because she is as a human person, has a higher status in the order of being than a cow, which neither has freedom nor participates in a rational principle. And participating in a rational principle means being able to use reason as a means of accessing reality, knowing reality and things as they are and acting accordingly. Because the value resides in her person itself, no opinion or misconception can take the value away.

We have to say the last part because it seems sometimes that people think opinions about values replace values in the things themselves. For instance, in the case of moral values. “You think that's wrong? Well, that's your opinion and I have mine, and I say it's fine. Mind your own business.” Let's talk a little bit about moral values, too. This brings us closer to the next part.
Moral values are also rooted in the values in things themselves. Take the instance of the sister and the cow again. If the fellow prefers the cow such that he neglects his sister, the neglect being emotional or physical or psychological or something, then we would say his preference for the cow was morally wrong, which means its not the kind of thing a good person does. But why is this? There could be many grounds for the moral wrongness of the action.
Let's try to think of reasons why it would be wrong to neglect your sister. You could say, perhaps, because she would feel bad; well, that would mean if neglect made her feel good, it would be good to neglect her. Another account may be that it would be wrong to neglect her because it is harmful to your relationship with her; well, in that case, even if doing something good for her, like chasing a bad and harmful boyfriend away, would not actually be good if it hurt your relationship with her. They're not bad reasons in themselves, but they don't seem like sufficient grounds for saying that the neglect is wrong.

Here is another account, one that regards objective values in the order of reality. By neglecting her, he was choosing something less than her and and offending against her person in the process. She exists objectively. “Object” comes from Latin, objectum. Ob-, in the way, jacere-, to throw. She's “thrown in your way,” something outside of you which you “run in to”. She can't be brushed off as some construct of your mind or something. In addition, she has a value in herself, and not a value you determine. You can't decide how important she is objectively. The value is there, and demands a response. The reason why neglecting her is wrong is because neglecting her is not a proper response to her inherent value. That's the grounds for moral evil in this case. It would be good to give her the proper attention and love she needs because as a person she is only worthy of love and as your sister you have an even greater responsibility to show her a certain kind of love.

So let's look at what we have going on here: among existing things, some things are in and of themselves more important and more valuable than others. In other words, there's order in being and a hierarchy of values in being. When we make choices, what makes them wrong is their disjunction with the real order of values in being, and right when they are in accordance with being.

I hope this account is clear as to why mere opinions about what is morally wrong or right should hold any weight if the opinions don't accord with reality. Right and wrong choice depend on the truth. This brings into play one of the biggest difficulties we've had since the Fall: epistemological wiggle room. To act according to truth we have to perceive it. To be good, we have to see what is really good. Yet we also know that we perceive imperfectly. Therefore being good requires that we practice those virtues which make us attentive to the truth about things.

In Aristotle's treatment of the virtues in his Nicomachean Ethics, he says that practical wisdom, or prudence, is inseparable from the virtues of character, or the moral virtues. The latter are those virtues which incline us to do the right thing in any given situation, aware that it is the right thing to do. Prudence's work is to determine how to do the right thing in a given situation. It is the virtue of being attentive to the truth of the situation so that it may direct action accordingly. At the same time, it depends on the virtues of character to provide the right end of the action. If one possesses the virtue of justice, then one desires to be just in this given situation; prudence then is the virtue in considering how to be just in this given situation, which is really different from every other situation. Justice makes us want to be just in a general way, and prudence finds the specific way in a particular situation. But, if the person isn't just, and doesn't want to be just in this situation but unjust, then it isn't prudence that determines how to be unjust. The end has to be right, the purpose of the action has to be right for prudence to do its work correctly. And the standard for rightness of action is truth.

We've probably tried to cover way too many things in this entry. I keep starting these entries wanting to talk about one thing and finding myself talking about something else which seems necessary because it's more fundamental, and it seems like we need to cover certain things before other things make any sense. But let's take a glance at what we've said.
First, there is an order of values in being, among all existing things. Living things are better than non-living things, and personal things are better than non-personal living things, and God is best. And moral action depends, not on arbitrary opinions about morality or values, but on the real order of values in things themselves. Rightness of action is appropriately responding to things according to their true value. Nietzsche was probably the one who gave us, or at least articulated in the form we have it now, the idea that we could make up our own values. Well, we can. It's just not very cool and doesn't make for happiness. And it's a departure from reality.

Alright. This sets up some good reflections for next time, most of which we'll owe to St. Augustine. Ordering, truth, wisdom, love, passions... and how this fits into our sensibilities discussion.

On the Necessity of Pain

2009-12-07T21:00:00.002-05:00

By T. J. Pia

There is a type of movement in modern culture that seeks the destruction of worldly pain and suffering. The most obvious sign of this is in the field of medicine in which the “final cause” seems to be the creation of a painless immortal life for man on Earth. The intentions and consequences of this movement need to be called into question. It seems that, as in many aspects of the modern world, the final cause is no longer the ‘good of man’, rather it seems that medical advances are made for the sake of man asserting himself as omnipotent—‘ man can fix what God is not able to’. The modern psyche feels no need for (and thus allows no possibility of) a superior Being; man can take care of himself, and so he needs no God. Here Nietzsche’s assertion that God has been murdered seems accurate, but he was wrong to say it was by Pity, rather it seems that Pride murders God. The psychological effects on this modern “Godless” man run quite deep, for can man really exist without pain?

Though this topic is being treated as it is made manifest in modernity, at its roots it is no modern problem. The Fall of Man, as well as the Fall of the Angels, occured because of because of pride. Adam and Eve at the temptation of the already fallen Satan sought equality with God (as did their tempter). Both Falls occurred because of a tainted desire for existence separate from the Eternal Being’s. In its modern form, this recurring fall attempts to not acknowledge or even to falsify the existence of our Creator. Man no longer simply wants separate existence from the eternal Being; he now wishes that God did not ever exist, for man is under the illusion that existence without God would somehow make man more significant. How do we attempt to do this? One way is by attempting to remove the consequences of our Fall. The Fall of man gave to him both pain and suffering while upon Earth. If we can fix these consequences, then we can return to Paradise without any type of Divine assistance, thus proving that man has no need for his Creator.

Where does this pain that is being removed from the world go? I read an interesting observation in Peter Kreeft’s book Making Sense Out of Suffering; there he says that there has been an interesting phenomena in the last 150 years or so in which there have been tremendous advances in the field of medicine allowing for us to live a relatively painless life, but psychologically we suffer more than ever. The word “psychology” comes from the Greek root “ψυχή” meaning “soul”. What we call psychological pains are, actually, pains of the soul. Where do such pains come from? I believe that the large number of people seeking various form of therapy do so because they desire to remember what it is to be man. We try to rid man of pain and consequently we have taken away part of man. Without “animalistic” physical pains that are God-given, man inflicts psychological pains upon himself by seeking happiness in animalistic physical pleasures.

In a time of great internal suffering over his wife’s death, C. S. Lewis once wrote that either God was not all-good and omnipotent, or else he (Lewis) needed this suffering. After syllogistically proving that God was both all-good and omnipotent, Lewis concluded that he must need this suffering. Human pain and suffering are not punishments because of the Fall, but they are consequences of the Fall. Man, because of his weakness, needs assistance; pain is a God-given form of assistance, one that is given to us when we need it the most. I in no way mean that advances in medicine are intrinsically evil (in fact they are very good), but that the final cause which allows for such advances needs be the good of God’s creation. Any advances made are done so by the grace of God, not in spite of Him. There is in fact no way to rid the world of pain and suffering, so let us embrace our pains in order to feel alive, let us see them as God-given elements of the Providential plan—a plan that no mortal mind can comprehend, never mind surpass.

On Sensibilities in General

2009-12-01T16:53:00.000-05:00

JMJ

A Post by John:

This topic relates to a million others worth reflecting on on this blog. But we'll start slow and only take reasonably bite-size pieces. If we take a bite too large, not only will it be hard to chew, but it will be hard to swallow, and this stuff is worth digesting.

First some preliminary things on sensibilities and imagination. To start this discussion, it seems that a couple things happen when we learn.

There is learning facts about things: that elephants are gray, that men grow beards and women don't (thank God), that adenine is an element of DNA, that mom went to the store yesterday, that Mount Everest reaches the highest point above sea level, and so forth. These are simple ideas we receive through the senses; you see something, or hear about something, or discover it yourself. Sometimes the facts are useful, such as the steps for changing a car's oil, and sometimes they're mostly useless, such as the fact that Jolt had 40 seconds of screen time in the latest Transformers movie. This can all be called “information.” It's an important part of learning, of course. You have to know details about things. Even in philosophy and theology: you have to know where Aristotle and Kant fall in history, and you have to know that the Trinity is one in substance. The facts are important. A lot of focus is put on acquisition of facts in education, too, especially in the sciences.

But perhaps more important is the question of meaning and the interpretation of the facts. Facts do not interpret themselves. Mark and Alissa broke up, as a matter of fact (whoever Mark and Alissa are). But knowledge of this fact does not carry meaning within itself. Is it a good thing? A bad thing? An absurd thing? When you receive the knowledge of a fact, you judge it, its value and meaning.
So there's a distinction in the process of learning: we learn simple ideas and facts, and then there is a secondary process by which we judge them, determining value and meaning. This particular fact I have in my head corresponds to something in reality that is either a good thing or a bad thing, or a significant thing or an insignificant thing. Their meaning is realized in context and surrounding conditions as well as by the perceiving mind. The perceiving mind says, “Oh, that means something!”

This secondary process that is attentive to value, significance and meaning takes place through the imagination, present in which are various sensibilities. I am being very loose here so please forgive me. I will say it in a few different ways. Reason, upon perceiving various beings, makes value judgments and tries to find meaning, inevitably. It also finds connections and deduces things logically. I see him nervous the night before; I see her very happy with the ring on her hand the next day; I realize he must have popped the question. So the facts are present to me, but my knowledge goes deeper as I recognize the meaning in them and their connection; and I don't observe these things completely objectively, but I recognize the value—this is great!—and I rejoice in my heart.
The secondary process is extremely important and extremely varied, and mistakes happen here more than in the acquisition of facts. For values and significance are things that can either correspond to reality or not, so long as there is an objective good. For instance.
Mark and Alissa broke up. If we know Mark and Alissa and that the relationship was pretty serious prior to the breakup (arbitrary conditions I know, but bear with me), then it would be inhuman to say, “oh, well. Whatever.” No, you make some sort of value judgment, either intuitively or after consideration and say, “This (that they broke up) is a good thing.” Now, all things considered, this statement either corresponds to reality or not. It is either actually the case that Mark and Alissa's breakup was a good thing or that it was a bad thing. That is, good or bad for them, for those around them, for their families, etc. This means that value judgments are either true or false, if there is an objective good. That's another huge question, but it's reasonable to think there is an objective good, because everyone has a notion of it, even though they can't agree on what it is.

Now, facts are either true or false; Mark and Alissa either broke up or their didn't, so the statement of fact “Mark and Alissa broke up” is either true or false. Further, value judgments and judgments about the meaning of facts are also either true or false. I hope this paragraph is enough to sum up what we've talked about so far. In the process of learning, the learner first receives fundamental data (the facts) on the basis of which he judges and searches for meaning; two processes. And both processes are in the realm of truth and falsity, of correspondence to reality.
With regard to education, again, this part is just as important: the formation of that secondary process, which we can call the formation of imagination or sensibilities.

Now that we've made some distinctions, lets look some more at the secondary process. It operates on presuppositions and fundamental assumptions about the meaning of reality and an order and system of values. There is the fact: “It is probable that my tax dollars will go to elective abortions.” In this fact, you either rejoice or become dismayed depending on the system and order of values you possess in your understanding (or imagination). The assumptions underlying your imagination effect how you take things; how you interpret facts and make value judgments. And when we say “sensibilities,” we are referring to basically the same thing. You have sensibilities which effect how you take things.
This idea of sensibilities and imagination encompasses more than just the intellectual sphere. It also involves the sphere of the heart and of action. I see or hear something; I see how it relates to everything else and understand its meaning in some way; I understand how it is either good or bad; I respond: it makes me joyful, or angry, or confused, or frustrated, or despondent, or serene; I act: I rejoice, I think, “oh, that's cool,” I say something to my mom, I lash out in retaliation, I sit back in my chair, I hug a beautiful lady, I start an organization for the sake of remedying some ill. And so forth.

Again, some emphasis on reality. We are taking into account the subjective aspect of coming to know reality. It is very important for sensibilities to lend themselves toward a proper interpretation of reality; an interpretation of factual knowledge we receive in accord with reality. Knowledge of reality is not just given simply all at once in its fullness. People perceive reality partially and reflect on it with an imperfect reason. In fact there are many subjective limitations and obstacles to knowing reality. But the task is necessary; and there are probably more blog entries coming later on this topic.

Alright. Hopefully it's clear enough to agree on that there is the initial perception of facts and then a secondary process by the faculty of understanding or imagination which judges and understands the facts, the judgments being based on the sensibilities of the person perceiving and understanding, and the sensibilities being those underlying assumptions about values and the order and importance of things. A “world-view,” you could say.

A person's sensibilities are mainly inherited from the culture and climate of opinion. Usually things seem like “common sense,” but I think we'll find that our common sense is rooted in a lot of senseless things. Or maybe not! We can talk more later.

On Thinking Too Much

2009-11-25T21:22:00.000-05:00

A Post by John:

JMJ

An overreflective life is not worth living either, Socrates. That’s not to say one should not reflect on anything for the sake of avoiding the danger of reflecting too much, but rather, that there’s a delicate balance--or order, if you prefer. There’s a proper order of things.
Von Hildebrand was just talking about this in Transformation in Christ in the chapter on “True Consciousness,” which is quite an amazing chapter. Very reminiscent of Pieper’s treatment of the cardinal virtue of prudence as well. There’s a tendency many of us have to overly objectify and analyze a situation or object such that we remove ourselves from the obligations the situation places on us. By “obligations” is meant simply the demands objective reality places on us. It demands a response from us according to how it really is, and not what we pretend it to be.
Overreflectivity can take a lot of forms, of course. There’s overreflectivity in making decisions, in responding to situations (situations ranging from her beautiful eyes to a fellow who needs help to handling an angry brother-in-law), and then the pastime of overreflectivity, which is just annoying. I’m sure there are more, but we’ll reflect on these a little bit right now.
In trying to make a decision, we’ll try to figure out every risk, try to prepare in every way, try to work out every kink in the plan so as to eliminate risk. But if we’re not careful, this can become an endless game. All the factors we worry about serve only to complicate the situation, and it is never the case that we can eliminate all risk. But “trying to figure things out” and refusing the neglect “the very real difficulties” seems like a good excuse neither to make a decision nor commit to anything. We love our freedom. But we can’t keep it forever; we have it for the sake of making choices, ultimately for the sake of love. (Sidenote: does Kant set up freedom as an end in itself, rather than a means? Is that where we got that idea?)
Situations are many and varied. Of course. No day has ever really been like the last one. Sometimes we dupe ourselves into thinking that, but a day is always completely new (and gratuitous!), and our freedom gives us more power that we know to make it different. Divine Providence gives the opportunity, but He’s expecting us to use our freedom. (It’s with that freedom that we can make the day pleasing to Him.) But anyways. So we encounter many and varied situations, from her eyes, to a fellow who needs help, to the angry brother-in-law. And all these situations require different responses. Maybe you need to kiss her, help him up, and calm him down. But the point is, you need to do something, and something appropriate. But if you’re standing there as if not even in the situation anymore, staring at yourself and analyzing the dynamic between the two of you as you look at her eyes, or thinking “That guy’s in bad shape. I wonder how much pain he’s in? I’ll have to be a hero now... but can I deliver? What if he needs more help than a few minutes’ worth? I don’t have a lot of time today...” and so forth, well, you might as well just not be there. You need to do what’s good; that’s what every other existing thing begs of you with your freedom and reason.
Pastime overreflectivity seems to bear fruit in mopey-ness. And it’s really contained in the other two kinds of overreflectivity. This kind is just done as a pastime when nothing is really pressing. But, of course, you do it when you could be doing something else--that is, actually doing something. The person who overreflects just to pass the time will sit there for an hour wishing things were better, or that he were more of a man, or that the hour was over, or coming up with ridiculous plans without any intention of fulfilling them. A lot of them are steeped in self-pity, too. Little do they realize that by turning out, looking at something else other than themselves, they would become much more happy. It’s a neat trick.
Now, don’t take this as too harsh. There seems to me to be a root cause, a very definite source of the problem of overreflectivity that separates it from healthy reflection. The problem is that overreflectivity complicates things. Probably from fear, we want to find excuses, or we want things to be more difficult than they actually are so we don’t have to act, or to find a good reason not to act. So in complicating things, it destroys the fruit of both action and clarity.
In the overreflective complications, the greatest thing we suffer is a departure from the real. For instance, if you’re asking the question, “should I say something to this person?” whose behavior is harmful but may not know any better, and you think you better not because it would not only be awkward, but would impinge on their freedom or something--well, those aren’t really significant factors. You can’t pretend their well-being is more important than avoiding awkwardness, or that the situation has anything to do with their “freedom,” whatever that means. This is just a loose, random example. The real considerations are, should I say something, is it my place to say something, and if so, what is the best way to say it such that it would serve their well being? Pulling in other false factors causes a departure from the real situation and real considerations.
Reality should always have precedence in such matters, and reality is always much more simple than we’d like it to be. We’d like to think we don’t have freedom, that for a variety of reasons we can’t really change, but we can. We’d like to think Christianity is more complicated than the fact that God loves us and that we need to respond to His love according to His will, that is, we’d like to set other conditions to the response to His love and so forth, but it’s simple, and He’s told us how He wants us to respond. We’d like to think patching up relationships are more complicated--that there are real excuses for not having to swallow our pride, forget ourselves, and do the long, hard work---but love isn’t really that complicated. Reality always ends up being more simple than we’d like it to be.

Alas, we need to finish up. Overreflection seems usually to spring from fear and tends to complicate things in order to give us an excuse not to act, not to change things, and so forth. So it’s not helpful. The good news is, we have this day and this moment, and we’ve been given freedom for the sake of love by a loving God who provides thoroughly for those who wish to please Him--so actually acting and changing ourselves and loving others and estimating things according to reality are very possible things. Very possible. Hopefully I did it just now.
A final note: picking on Socrates at the beginning to warn against overreflectivity, and mostly discussing reflection before action, it seems that what Socrates means when he says “an unreflective life is not worth living” probably has wider implications than those we’ve reflected on. But it probably mostly applies to those simple, immediate questions such as, “what am I doing with my life? What do I really want? What’s good for me? What’s good for the people I love? Why do I get out of bed in the morning? Do I have any definite, sure principles according to which I order my life, or am I just floating through?” and so forth. It seems that most of what we said pertains to those questions. But I don’t want to do Socrates any injustice. It was enough that they made him drink the hemlock.