Philosophy at the Gnu's Room
A brief presentation for a philosophy club meeting at AU tonight.
Religion and Philosophy: The Tension
Category Archives: religion
Unbelieving Believers: The Intended Audience of Concluding Unscientific Postscript
Keeping his intended audience in mind is perhaps the most difficult thing to do when reading Johannes Climacus’ Postscript. He writes, neither to those who deliberately reject Christianity nor to genuinely faithful Christians. He is not writing to those who are caught in the throes of becoming a Christian. Each of these audiences can of course find much in Postscript, but it is not written to them. And, far too often, Postscript is criticized as if it had been written to these audiences. (As a result, the book is criticized as if it were apologetics (God forbid!) or as if it were evangelistic).
Now I realize this may seem a strange claim, especially in the case of the last group, those in the throes of becoming a Christian. “After all,” an objector might say, “Climacus’ controlling question is: ‘How do I become a Christian?’ So isn’t he writing to that group?”
No. Climacus’ interest in his controlling question is retrospective, not prospective. He asks the question, and answers it, not as an exercise in evangelism, not as a tractarian, but for the sake of his intended audience, those who believe that they are believers, but who fail to believe. His interest in his question is retrospective because, given the confusions of his intended audience, they will think of themselves as on the far end, as it were, of the question, not on its near end. They need to realize that the way in which they believe they became believers is not a way of becoming believers. I will call the intended audience the unbelieving believers.*
This intended audience is not wholly homogenous. Some of the unbelieving believers account for their becoming Christians by believing it as a historical truth; some account for their becoming Christians by believing it as a speculative truth. But both sub-groups have treated becoming a Christian as coming to be objectively convinced of the truth of Christianity. To the extent that they have been worried about their subjective relationship to Christianity, their appropriation of it, they have taken it to be precipitated from objective conviction. But appropriation does not precipitate from objective conviction. Even worse, objective conviction makes appropriation even more difficult than it already is. Objective conviction requires the inquirer to discipline out of her inquiry all questions of subjectivity, of how she is related to the object. That very disciplining out tends to attenuate or destroy subjectivity.—This is one reason why the unbelieving believer who worries about appropriation expects appropriation to precipitate from objective conviction–the conditions of acquiring objective conviction are hostile to appropriation, so if it is to happen, it will look to those who pursue objective conviction but worry about appropriation like something that really can happen only once objective conviction occurs.
In showing what is really involved in becoming a Christian Climacus aims to shock his audience into recognizing that they are unbelieving believers. Their account of how they became Christians, once they are clear about it and about the way one does actually become a Christian, reveals that they are not Christians. They may be objectively convinced of something–it is unclear it really counts as Christianity–but they are not really believers, appropriators of Christianity.
That unbelieving believers are the intended audience is part of the story why Climacus is not much concerned about answering the objective question about the truth of Christianity. (It is not the full story, but I am unsure I can tell the full story.) His intended audience takes that question as settled. They expect settling it to have settled the question of their faith too. Climacus aims at unsettlement. He will begin with an invitation: “Tell me, and tell yourself, how you became a Christian…”
*NB I use this phrase to suggest the simultaneous similarity and dissimilarity between Climacus’ intended audience and the father of the son possessed by a spirit (in Mark 9; cf. especially 9:24).
More On Emerson’s Incarnational Method
I intend to get to Emerson on Montaigne, really to get to it, soon. But I find myself wanting, needing I guess, to say more about what I turbidly called “Emerson’s Incarnational Method“. I was drawn to that phrase because it seemed, and still seems to me to educe something deeply important in Emerson, something both inspiring and difficult. I addressed the inspiring last time. I want now to address the difficult. I do so with hesitancy, for reasons that should be apparent momentarily.
A common complaint about Emerson is that he lacks a sense of tragedy. There is something to that. Recall the awful scene of Emerson having Waldo exhumed, so that he can see that Waldo is dead, that Waldo’s dust is returning to dust. Emerson wants to think and write Incarnationally; he wants to live that way. But he cannot manage it resolutely. (Can anyone?) When writing to read in public, he tends always to see the relationship of fact to morals, to see the heavens in the earthly world. And this makes him, and his urging his readers toward self-reliance and self-obedience, too Docetist. He has a hard time with the hard facts, with the facts in relation to sensation. He writes from a luminous sense of omniscence, of omnipotence: everything is transfigured, aglow with uncreated light. But in his writing for himself, in his living, he finds that he is a dwarf, omni-nescient, powerless. He is too Ebionite. His son is taken from him in the sixth year of his joy, but Emerson cannot accept that. Death, in particular the death of Waldo, seems like the triumph of sensation over morals, a putting-out of the uncreated light, darkness. As he puts it in a journal entry (the one I am weaving into this post), he knows himself defeated constantly, but believes he is “born to victory”.
It strikes me that Emerson lacks a true sense of the sacramental. (I believe this shows itself in Emerson’s (mis)understanding of religious ritual.) For Emerson, creation itself is and should be sacramental, and the Incarnation he is and strives better to be is itself an instance of the sacramental, and is oriented toward the fullness of the sacramental. The Incarnation finishes the sacramental activity of creation. Emerson needs to see the material as itself what realizes the spiritual, the tangible as what itself what realizes the moral. But he all-too-often sees the material as opposed to the spiritual, the tangible as opposed to the moral. So seeing, he all-too-often confronts facts divided, divided into the side that is related to sensation and the side that is related to morals. So seeing, he becomes overwhelmed with the material, with sensation, and cannot find his way out of the darkness. He would have Waldo immortal; he cannot imagine Waldo resurrected: he is left with Waldo dead. –How can someone born to victory be so defeated?
Climacus on The Reason and The Paradox
I’ve been puzzling over Johannes Climacus’ handling of “the Reason” and “the Paradox”. Part of what is puzzling is what Climacus means by the Reason. Clearly, he is echoing Kant in various ways, particularly the famous opening lines of CPR:
Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.
One feature of those famous lines that must have attracted Climacus is that they concern human reason. What Climacus discusses in Philosophical Fragments as the Reason is human reason. For Climacus, human reason is created reason, not uncreated reason. That is, that human faculty is itself creaturely in the way that all human faculties, indeed humans themselves, are. Although the point can be muted by the way in which the Teacher is contrasted with Socrates, and the way in which the Teacherly Moment is contrasted with the Socratic moment, Climacus believes that, from the point of view of Christianity, the notion of human reason as divine, and the (related) notion of human immortality, are pagan. Immortality is not something given in human nature as such; it is a loving gift of God, made possible by Christ (the Teacher). Human reason is given in human nature as such, but is not divine, is not of itself immortal.
The Paradox, we must keep in mind, is the Teacher himself: he, the God-Man, is the content of his Teaching. And the Teacher provides the condition for the content of his Teaching: Faith. (The way is prepared for Faith and for the Paradox by our discovering our own error, that is, Sin; and, having discovered it, having taken leave of it, that is, Repented.) But among those things for which we must repent is the arrogance of the Reason, of its complacent assurance that it is all-in-all, that it is divine, immortal. We have to come to see it as limited; its powers can be transcended. –If the Reason views itself correctly, it will see that in fact it asks questions which outstrip its own competence–Climacus will say that the Reason wills its own downfall, that the Paradox is its passion. The Reason will be able to set itself aside, to humble itself before the Paradox. If that happens, then the Reason and the Paradox relate happily to one another in Faith. If the Reason does not view itself correctly, if its sees itself as unlimited, as all-in-all, then the Paradox will be an Offense to the Reason, and the Reason’s relationship to the Paradox will be unhappy. (For Climacus, the Paradox offers the Reason only one of these two relationships–Faith or Offense, tertium non datur. The Reason cannot be indifferent to the Paradox.)
I guess that most of us, and most of Climacus’ readers, have a tendency to fall into a picture of the Reason as divine, as immortal. The philosopher-in-us-all is decidedly pagan. And that makes the relationship between the Reason and the Paradox seem fated for unhappiness, as if it were a collision of the divine with the divine, the immortal with the immortal. Understood that way, it is hard to see why the Reason should set itself aside so as to make room for the Paradox in Faith. Indeed, it is hard to see why the Reason should tolerate faith at all. But if we think of the Reason as creaturely, we can more easily understand that it might need itself to repent, so to speak, that it might be such as not to be all-in-all, that it could set itself aside so as to take its place alongside the Paradox in Faith. Faith then could be seen as that which allows creaturely reason to cast off the burdensomeness of unignorable but unanswerable questions. Not because the Paradox is the answer to those questions, exactly, but because the Paradox reveals that the point of the questions is not to find answers, but rather to allow the Reason to discover what it is (and to keep discovering it): human reason, creaturely reason–call it the Reason, Ltd. In making room for the Paradox, it casts off the burdensomeness of its questions, and accepts a new burden, a new yoke–but this yoke is easy, and this burden is light.
What Chalcedon Meant? (Florovsky)
“And was made man.” What is the ultimate connotation of this creedal statement? Or, in other words, who was Jesus, the Christ and the Lord? What does it mean, in the language of the Council of Chalcedon, that the same Jesus was “perfect man” and “perfect God,” yet a single and unique personality? “Modern man” is usually very critical of that definition of Chalcedon. It fails to convey any meaning to him. The “imagery” of the creed is for him nothing more than a piece of poetry, if anything at all. The whole approach, I think, is wrong. The “definition” of Chalcedon is not a metaphysical statement, and was never meant to be treated as such. Nor was the mystery of the Incarnation just a “metaphysical miracle.” The formula of Chalcedon was a statement of faith, and therefore cannot be understood when taken out of the total experience of the church. In fact, it is an “existential statement.” Chalcedon’s formula is, as it were, an intellectual contour of the mystery which is apprehended by faith. Our Redeemer is not a man, but God himself. Here lies the existential emphasis of the statement. Our Redeemer is one who “came down” and who, by “being made man,” identified himself with men in the fellowship of a truly human life and nature. Not only the initiative was divine, but the Captain of Salvation was a divine Person. The fullness of the human nature of Christ means simply the adequacy and truth of this redeeming identification. God enters human history and becomes a historical person.
This sounds paradoxical. Indeed there is a mystery: “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness; God was manifested in the flesh.” But this mystery was a revelation; the true character of God had been disclosed in the Incarnation. God was so much and so intimately concerned with the destiny of man (and precisely with the destiny of every one of “the little ones”) as to intervene in person in the chaos and misery of the lost life. The divine providence therefore is not merely an omnipotent ruling of the universe from an august distance by the divine majesty, but a kenosis, a “selfhumiliation” of the God of glory. There is a personal relationship between God and man.
George Florovsky on the “Existentialism” of the Fathers
The main distinctive mark of Patristic theology was its ‘existential’ character, if we may use this current neologism. The Fathers theologised, as S. Gregory of Nazianzus put it, ‘in the manner of the Apostles, not in that of Aristotle’ -αλιευτικώς, ουκ αριστοτελικώς (Hom. 23. 12). Their theology was still a ‘message,’ a kerygma. Their theology was still ‘kerygmatic theology’, even if it was often logically arranged and supplied with intellectual arguments. The ultimate reference was there still to the vision of faith, to spiritual knowledge and experience. Apart from life in Christ theology carries no conviction and, if separated from the life of faith, Theology may degenerate into empty dialectics, a vain polylogia, without any spiritual consequence. Patristic theology was existentially rooted in the decisive commitment of faith. It was not a self-explanatory ‘discipline’ which could be presented argumentatively, that is αριστοτελικώς without any prior spiritual engagement. In the age of theological strife and incessant debates, the great Cappadocian Fathers formally protested against the use of dialectics, of Aristotelian syllogisms’, and endeavoured to refer theology back to the vision of faith. Patristic theology could be only ‘preached’ or ‘proclaimed’-preached from the pulpit, proclaimed also in the words of prayer and in the sacred rites, and indeed manifested in the total structure of Christian life. Theology of this kind can never be separated from the life of prayer and from the exercise of virtue. ‘The climax of purity is the beginning of theology’, as S. John the Klimakos puts it: Τέλος δε αγνείας υπόθεσις θεολογίας (Scala Paradisi, grade 30).
Faith Seeking Understanding?
What happens when faith seeks understanding? Is it an attempt by faith to change, to become something new, higher–say, knowledge? Is it an attempt to understand something that is held by faith but held in, say, incomplete understanding, but where complete or at any rate more complete understanding would not change my relationship to what is understood (it would remain faith)? Or is it an attempt to secure knowledge that could be somehow ranged alongside faith without turning that faith into knowledge? Or is it an attempt to come to know something that could only be known by first having faith in it, so that the subsequent knowledge has to be regarded as faith-having-molted-into-knowledge, not as faith-replaced-by-knowledge? (I take it that not all knowledge is required to begin in faith. But how would we understand the distinction between knowledge that is so required to begin, and knowledge that is not?) Or should understanding here be juxtaposed with knowledge (say, in a Cavellian way) so that faith seeking understanding cannot be taken to put faith in relationship to knowledge (at least not straightforwardly)? Would the sense of ‘understanding’ here be factive or quasi-factive? If so, how far could we keep it from knowledge? If not, what then is understanding? (A set of propositions expressed, a la Frege, in the That p form–showing that the propositions are entertained but not asserted? Something else?) –Questions, questions, questions.
You knew it was coming: What is Anselm doing?
The Logic of Apophasis?
A little neo-Socratic essay on the cataphatic/apophatic distinction. Still in progress (still…one of these years I may decide it is finished or may write it off as hopeless).
O. K. Bouwsma on Ecclesiastes (1958)
Consider the life of the professor. He studies. He reads. “Of the reading of many books there is no end and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” He talks. He, fortune favoring, learns to understand a few things. He teaches young people, who again, fortune favoring, learn to understand a few things. He teaches young people who, again fortune favoring, praise him at lunch and quote his words, sometimes correctly. They may think he’s bright. He writes a book, or more than one book, and once more, fortune favoring, he receives a check for royalties, twice each year, invests this money in common stocks and eventually buys his wife a fur coat. He makes his mark in knowledge, in praise, and some money. He serves on committees. He wins a prize. He has his say at faculty meetings. Once he gave a public lecture. There was applause. He is known as a solid citizen. At sixty-five he says that he has had enough, and perhaps some others join him and say that they have had enough, too. So he retires. He grows old and dies.
Is there any special way of adapting the words of the Preacher to the life of the professor? It is common, no doubt, and in the name of Aristotle to give special honor to the intellectual life. What about that?
The point of Ecclesiastes is certainly that how you go on in life seeking to achieve distinction, the immortality, you so much set your heart upon, in this world, makes no difference. You may leave your name in the rock, but your name in the rock will mean nothing to anyone. How you carve it, what initials you write after it, Ph. D., will not keep it alive. The harm in your life, your mistake, your sin, does not consist in your becoming rich, or in your being famous, or in your knowing so much. It is in your expectations, in your esteem of any one of these, in your expecting a profit. So we are back to the original corruption. Why should your life, your labor, serve you? If you look upon your life in these terms, then, of course, you must see that your labor will not serve you. Your labor can serve only greed, to make you more greedy, insatiable you. Must you be paid for your life, which is a gift to you?
“Your life is not your own.”
A Thought or Two on Augustine’s Book of the Interior
Augustine’s Confessions opens and is an opening upon the vastness of God, a vastness that somehow is contained in even while it contains our inwardness. Augustine’s opening paragraphs vault toward God and are the vault of the book’s lexicon: Thou (Lord, God), I, pray, praise, power, wisdom, man, creation, desire, nature, death, sin, witness, pride, satisfaction, restlessness, rest, know, understand, believe, preach, seek, find, call, faith, gift. The book opens in search and closes in rest. It moves, like Plotinus’ Enneads, simultaneously inward and upward. Plato’s dialogues end in aporia, wholly stymied by Socrates; Augustine’s confessions begin in aporia, absolutely humbled before God. Augustine is born early in the book. But his later new birth, at its center, represents the book’s true autoboiographical beginning.
The inwardness of the book fascinates me. Has anyone so opened himself to himself? Who has more searchingly charted the interior? Who before him knew that prayer was the proper vessel for such exploring? Confessions is The Art of Travel Inward.
I directed myself to myself and to myself I said, “You, who are you?” And I responded, “A human being.”
What am I, then, my God? What nature am I? My life is many and various and violently without measure.
Augustine will know who and what he is. He will know himself as person and as nature. What he will know he can ask provisionally of himself but must ask ultimately of God (since being a person is in some sense a function of being a human being, and the provenance of our being a human being is God).
Montaigne writes, “I do not portray being. I portray passing.” What he portrays is a passing being. Augustine wants to portray that too; but only against the backdrop of a unpassing being, with whom there is no shadow of turning.
Quantum Est In Rebus Inane 