The Benedict Option: that review at last

 

Scottish nominalist philosopher John Major (1467-1550) denying responsibility for the sins of modernity

Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus...

Which, I should add, is a comment on my labours, not Rod Dreher's.

As I noted in my previous post, I've been putting off reading The Benedict Option. And then, having written that post and having released a flurry of tweets on the first few chapters,

Let's see how this goes. I'll tweet off top of my head reactions while reading. (I'll blog more reflectively later.) Inevitably this means> https://t.co/4CbtJxoFXj

— Lazarus Redivivus (@cumlazaro) May 6, 2017

I put off finishing it. I think that's a confession that I didn't really enthuse over it. But putting all that aside, I'm going to start off by suggesting two ways in which other readers -and indeed myself in part- have done the book a disservice by expecting it to be a different book.

1) It can't provide a detailed answer to everything. It's too short. It's written by a journalist not St Benedict. It has to appeal to a popular audience. Secularization is a phenomenon which has generated a vast academic literature and evangelism to the secularised: this book can't replace that depth of discussion and it's no use blaming it for not doing so.

2) It has to attract attention. This is a book written for the trade press and intended to reach a big audience.These are perfectly reasonable purposes, but it does mean that it has to be exciting and to grab its audience. Again, it's no use blaming the book for not coughing in ink.

Given those parameters, could the book be done any better? Possibly, but it's hard to imagine how. Moreover, I think Dreher's main purpose is simply a wake up call: unless Christians do something now, secularisation of some sort will continue to destroy church attendance and commitment. And I think he's absolutely right about that and I do think that most of us need to face this with greater alarm than we do. The perfect reader for this book is someone who is suspicious that things are going wrong in Christian practice, but who hasn't really thought much about the nature of that going wrong, and who has little idea what to do about it. If this were the first book you were reading about the subject, then it would be hard to better it. The worst reader? Probably someone like me...

Another needful prefatory remark is that this book is primarily (and explicitly) intended to deal with the US situation. Moreover (and this is less explicit) it's a book that works best if regarded at directed at a peculiarly American illusion: that with one big push, we can get a Republican government which will restore a Christian commonwealth. That this is an illusion is made clear by Dreher throughout: big business and big politics have signed up to an agenda that, while it may differ in detail between the two parties, in general offers no prospect of a general drift back to a Christian state. Neither of these two emphases prevents the book from having value for a non-American western audience, but they do mean that some of its focus needs to be critically reflected on in our different conditions. (For example, it is one thing to tell American Protestant Christians not to expect to be in the sort of control of society that they were, say, in the first half of the twentieth century; it is quite another to tell British Catholics to abandon a share in the public space that was crafted not in dominance but already as a despised minority.)

What's good about the book

It gets the broad nature of the challenge right: there are fewer and fewer Christians and they are failing to pass on their religion to their children. It gets the desperateness of the challenge right: we need to wake up and do something.

It presents a smorgasbord of interesting case studies, snapshots of imaginative and promising solutions and communities.

 It provides a proper and central place for cultivation of the self by ascesis in the way that the Orthodox and traditional Catholic would understand it: fasting, prayer, reading scripture, chastity etc.

What I didn't like

This is a personal bugbear. Dreher puts forward a 'it woz the nominalists wot dun it' view of cultural history. In rough terms, modernity is the result of a disenchantment of the universe caused by the rejection of realism of universals, particularly natural kinds, by thinkers such as William of Occam in favour of such universals existing solely in the mind. This is a commonplace of a lot of (semi and serious) scholarship, being popularised by eg Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences. I think it's broadly rubbish (eg: Occam died in 1347 and sexual intercouse began in 1963) but I'm possibly the only one to think this. (Tough. I'm still right.)

A more commonly shared worry might be that this diagnosis of the problem seems to serve no purpose. Unlike, say, Ed Feser's The Last Superstition, which shares a similar point of view, Dreher gives no hint that, if this is the main cause of present difficulties, the key treatment ought to be the restoration of realist metaphysics. Being a cynical soul, I'm afraid that this leads me to wonder if it is just intellectual shimmer, the need to give a sort of intellectual glamour to a brand much in the same way that former polytechnics import dark wood and Latin. (That's over sharp: the book does need to attract attention and part of the way of establishing that needful authority is by giving it an intellectual pedigree.)

Another problem is that, inevitably, Dreher doesn't have the space to develop and defend his solutions in detail. For example, at one point, he suggests that young Christians should think of moving to rust belt industrial areas which are struggling to find skilled workers rather than pursuing the sort of university education that is increasingly anti-religious and also ineffective at generating sufficient income to raise a family. Fine. But if I were a young Christian, I would be asking how long any such skills and industries will survive globalization and new technology. Members of high prestige professions are certainly not immune to such fears. But they do have the advantage of being well-placed to enforce their own self-interest. No doubt Dreher would have responses to worries of this kind. Inevitably, however, unless we attribute omniscience to him, all this book can do is to start a conversation in these areas. And equally inevitably, although some solutions may suit some people, they won't suit everyone, however committed a Christian you might be. A standing niggle I've found in common with a lot of modern Church life is that they seem to require a clubbability of a degree that I and suspect many are quite incapable of. It would be ironical if, in a scheme devoted to bringing Christians back to the depths of their traditions, no room could be found for the eremetical and solitary.

Staying with this inevitable lack of space for detail, the question of 'withdrawal' has figured in a lot of criticism of Dreher. In essence, he has been accused of a pre-emptive exit from the public sphere, instead of struggling to turn back some of the secularising forces. In fairness to Dreher, he is quite specific that this is only a refocusing of attention to building up the Church (rather than attempting to impose it through the Republican Party -see above) and not a complete withdrawal. But because he can't deal with detail, he can't quite flesh out what this withdrawal-but-not-a-withdrawal might look like. For example, in setting up Christian 'classical' schools, my betting would be there would be quite a lot of day to day struggling over the details: my own experience of Catholic groups is that they inevitably pull in people who do not share what I would regard as orthodox belief or practice. It's all very well to suggest 'set up your own school' as a Benedict Option; my guess would be that, in many cases, it will be very difficult to do so without reproducing some of the same difficulties that already plague existing Catholic schools. It's not that it can't (on occasions) be done: it's rather that, because it is so difficult to do, it will succeed in very few cases.

Putting aside the general tendency of a reviewer to recommend the writing of the sort of book the reviewer himself would write, my chief worry about The Benedict Option is that it doesn't provide a new solution. Already there exist small initiatives to 'rescue' gathered communities from the secular world. And that's excellent. We need more monks and nuns, more priests, more lay communities. But what works for the saints is not really the problem: some people in every generation will have both the grace and the virtues to grow to holiness. The problem of secularisation is the rest of us who struggle to survive and need the help of others to carry us. And here The Benedict Option is a bit like the underpants gnomes. Instead of, 'Steal underpants, become rich,' we have, 'Stop being secularised, become holy.'




In sum, Dreher has done a good job in starting a phenomenon of which the physical book, The Benedict Option, is only part. He has presented a forceful wake up call in a way that some who previously have been complacent or overly trusting in Republican politics might well heed to their benefit. But the start of a conversation is just that, a start. And my worry in particular is that the focus should not be on creating small faithful oases in a secular desert -there are many, many examples of organisations like Opus Dei etc etc doing that- but of irrigating the desert. I don't think The Benedict Option takes us very far in that: its recipes, in any case inevitably incomplete, will only work for a few.

The Benedict Option is an option. Fine. But it can't be the only one. Let's think of some more options to go with it.

Plutarch on post truth

          

And why should any one be astonished that men of wanton life lose no occasion for offering up sacrifices, as it were, of contumelious abuse of their superiors, to the evil deity of popular envy...?      To such degree, it seems, is truth hedged about with difficulty and hard to capture by research, since those who come after the events in question find that lapse of time is an obstacle to their proper perception of them; while the research of their contemporaries into men's deeds and lives, partly through envious hatred and partly through fawning flattery, defiles and distorts the truth.

Plutarch, Pericles, 13 (here) (Greek text: here)


Quanquam quid attinet admirari homines instituto vitae satyricos, quique obtrectationes potentium invidiae vulgi, tanquam alcui malo genio, consecrare solerent...? Adeo difficilis investigatu res est historia vera, cum posterioribus praeteritum tempus, cognitionem rerum praeripiat, qui vero aequales sunt ejus, cujus vitam aut actum describunt, ii partim invidia odioque, partim gratificandi studio et adulatione corrupti, veritati officiant.

(Latin translation p192 here)


Notable for the tendency relatively absent in modern discussions to attribute the difficulty in finding truth largely to personal vices. Again, there is an emphasis on the general bad character (rather than occasional loss of control) of those standing in the way of truth, as well as a hint of idolatrous worship of the δαίμονι κακῷ/malo genio ('evil deity'). Moreover the role of 'fawning flattery' is raised: I suspect the role of this desire to please others is an often overlooked part of online dogpiles. (The phrase 'virtue signalling' for example emphasises our expressiveness rather than trying to please the person(s) signalled to.) And, of course, no modern discussion would countenance the idea that much of this is directed against those above us in an objectively existing hierarchy: the Greek uses the word 'blasphemy' (τὰς κατὰ τῶν κρειττόνων βλασφημίας).

The point of quoting this...? Well, the general suspicion that viewing the present through the prism of antiquity can provide a healthy corrective to our own smallmindedness. (And providing a Latin translation...? It's incredibly unlikely that we're ever going to recover the level of familiarity with Greek that previously existed amongst educated people. But a certain familiarity with Latin and a willingness to get more I suspect is achievable, certainly among Catholics. So here's a stone in that particular cairn.)

Russell Kirk

Russell Kirk died on this day in 1994.

Wikipedia does a reasonable job of getting the basics right:


Russell Amos Kirk (October 19, 1918 in Plymouth, Michigan – April 29, 1994 in Mecosta, Michigan) was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post-World War II conservative movement. It traced the development of conservative thought in the Anglo-American tradition, giving special importance to the ideas of Edmund Burke. Kirk was also considered the chief proponent of traditionalist conservatism.

Reactions to Kirk seem to fall between idolatry from young men in five piece tweed suits and carrying what the suspicious might take to be a sword cane to having absolutely no idea who he is. (The latter I suspect is much the most common in Scotland.) So why do I think that it's worth taking him seriously everywhere but especially in Scotland? Here are some suggestions:

1. Suspicion of change.  The Scottish political scene is entirely dominated by self-styled 'progressives' including the Conservatives. (The Independent describing the Tory paper on tax reform:  "the word “progressive” features (a nod to mainstream political discourse in Scotland".) Whatever reality lies behind the narrative, the only game in town is one which talks of bright, shiny futures. The biggest lack in Scottish political discourse is anyone who is even talking along the following lines:

[T]he conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity. It is old custom that enables people to live together peaceably; the destroyers of custom demolish more than they know or desire. It is through convention—a word much abused in our time—that we contrive to avoid perpetual disputes about rights and duties: law at base is a body of conventions. Continuity is the means of linking generation to generation; it matters as much for society as it does for the individual; without it, life is meaningless. When successful revolutionaries have effaced old customs, derided old conventions, and broken the continuity of social institutions—why, presently they discover the necessity of establishing fresh customs, conventions, and continuity; but that process is painful and slow; and the new social order that eventually emerges may be much inferior to the old order that radicals overthrew in their zeal for the Earthly Paradise. [Here.]

2. An emphasis on imagination and 'seeing as' rather than party political success. If all of Scotland is now progressive, we are also all now gripped in a political culture where all that matters is effectiveness. The stream (trickle?) of voters away from Labour to the Conservatives is purely about the most effective opposition party to the SNP. Such calculations are of course inevitable.But unless there are the beginnings of a richer political culture with a greater variety of views and a willingness first to explore the nature of homo politicus before entering into the Machiavellian cut and thrust of day to day politics, Scottish public life will wither.

“Imagination rules the world,” Russell Kirk used to say. He meant that imagination is a force that molds the clay of our sentiments and understanding. It is not chiefly through calculations, formulas, and syllogisms, but by means of images, myths, and stories that we comprehend our relation to God, to nature, to others, and to the self. That is why William Wordsworth referred to the imagination as “The mightiest lever known to the moral world.” And that is why Dr. Johnson, in an earthier definition, quipped that imagination is “The thing which prevents [a man] from being as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as in the arms of a duchess.” [Here.]

3. Kirk loved Scotland (and Scott) and his sensibilities are in many ways much closer to Scottish culture than a Conservatism dominated by the London establishment. (At the very least, it is a relief to read a small town republican conservative rather than a scion of the Bullingdon Club.)

4. An emphasis on the transcendent. Although Kirk expresses this differently over the years, a sense of an order, rhythm or simple presence that stands outside the everyday world is a constant, expressing itself variously in his conversion to Catholicism in 1964, his writingof gothic ghost stories, and his Burkean sense of an organic unity of a tradition. This stands, I think, in contrast to both the mechanical Christianity of much of the modern Right in America and to the cynical pragmatism of much of the Right in Britain.

5. Finally, he is (as much as he presents) a 'patchwork' (to borrow Davila's phrase)  or (to borrow mine) a landscape of the mind. His affinities to post-modernism have been noted in that he created less a body of doctrine to be followed but a landscape to be inhabited. Moreover, it is a landscape that is in many ways highly individualistic: the landscape we inhabit in modernity is no longer a village that we can simply be born into, but one that has to be crafted by each of us as a bohemian:

I did not love cold harmony and perfect regu­larity of organization; what I sought was vari­ety, mystery, tradition, the venerable, the awful. I despised sophisters and calculators; I was groping for faith, honor, and prescriptive loyalties. I would have given any number of neo-classical pediments for one poor battered gargoyle. [Here.]

Plato, democracy and the time in which we live

                                      '... a variety of colours to be of all things most charming'

Donald Trump, the SNP, Brexit...  Although these are in many ways diverse and even contradictory phenomena, Jeremiahs like myself may well seek to trace general patterns of misery therein. I sometimes think that the essential problem in the modern world is a very simple one. On the one hand, we have a democratic culture that feeds us with ever ballooning dreams of autonomy and freedom, while, on the other hand, the increasingly globalisation of the economy and of power means that these fantasies, politically, have less and less chance of being realised. Coupled with decreasing cultural emphasis on self control and the toleration of frustration, we lurch around wildly seeking some remedy for the blocks we meet, creating fantasies of enemies who lie behind the simple brute indifference of the world to our desires.

And so to Plato (here). In Books VIII and IX of the The Republic, he traces the decline of the perfect society into tyranny, the disintegration of order in the state being mirrored (and interconnected with) the disintegration of order in the individual soul.

Then in this kind of State there will be the greatest variety of human natures?

There will.

This, then, seems likely to be the fairest of States, being an embroidered robe which is spangled with every sort of flower. And just as women and children think a variety of colours to be of all things most charming, so there are many men to whom this State, which is spangled with the manners and characters of mankind, will appear to be the fairest of States.

Yes.

Yes, my good Sir, and there will be no better in which to look for a government.

Why?

Because of the liberty which reigns there --they have a complete assortment of constitutions; and he who has a mind to establish a State, as we have been doing, must go to a democracy as he would to a bazaar at which they sell them, and pick out the one that suits him; then, when he has made his choice, he may found his State.

He will be sure to have patterns enough.

And there being no necessity, I said, for you to govern in this State, even if you have the capacity, or to be governed, unless you like, or go to war when the rest go to war, or to be at peace when others are at peace, unless you are so disposed --there being no necessity also, because some law forbids you to hold office or be a dicast, that you should not hold office or be a dicast, if you have a fancy --is not this a way of life which for the moment is supremely delightful

For the moment, yes.

And is not their humanity to the condemned in some cases quite charming? Have you not observed how, in a democracy, many persons, although they have been sentenced to death or exile, just stay where they are and walk about the world --the gentleman parades like a hero, and nobody sees or cares?

Yes, he replied, many and many a one.

See too, I said, the forgiving spirit of democracy, and the 'don't care' about trifles, and the disregard which she shows of all the fine principles which we solemnly laid down at the foundation of the city --as when we said that, except in the case of some rarely gifted nature, there never will be a good man who has not from his childhood been used to play amid things of beauty and make of them a joy and a study --how grandly does she trample all these fine notions of ours under her feet, never giving a thought to the pursuits which make a statesman, and promoting to honour any one who professes to be the people's friend.

As Plato hints at the end here, the chaotic desires of the democratic populace tend to fasten onto any plausible rogue who claims to be on their side. This chaos is mirrored inside the soul of the democatic man:

Yes, I said, he lives from day to day indulging the appetite of the hour; and sometimes he is lapped in drink and strains of the flute; then he becomes a water-drinker, and tries to get thin; then he takes a turn at gymnastics; sometimes idling and neglecting everything, then once more living the life of a philosopher; often he-is busy with politics, and starts to his feet and says and does whatever comes into his head; and, if he is emulous of any one who is a warrior, off he is in that direction, or of men of business, once more in that. His life has neither law nor order; and this distracted existence he terms joy and bliss and freedom; and so he goes on.

One of the blind spots of the contemporary Western world is any criticism of democracy, particularly in progressive thought. That isn't to dismiss democracy as a form of government, perhaps even democracy as the best form of government, but it is to acknowledge (as the ancients were clearly aware) that any form of government has its dangers as well as its advantages. Plato's analysis is that democracies will tend to lurch from one whim to another, from one fancy to another. In part, it is this danger that parliamentary representation and the checks and balances of a republican constitution are supposed to remedy. But there we get the resentment of the 'elite' or the 'Establishment': to the extent that a political class is created which is designedly resistent to that whim, it will be subject to resentment from the electorate and the possibility of the harnessing of that resentment by populist movements.

When a democracy which is thirsting for freedom has evil cupbearers presiding over the feast, and has drunk too deeply of the strong wine of freedom, then, unless her rulers are very amenable and give a plentiful draught, she calls them to account and punishes them, and says that they are cursed oligarchs.
To the conservative mind, there is no complete remedy to the ills of democracy or any other governmental system. But two safety valves at least exist to reduce the effect of those ills (quite apart from, the simple acknowledgement that generally all will not be well). First, there are the spheres of social life which lie outwith government: the associations of civil society and the family provide spaces where the whim and resentment of democratic politics can be escaped. Secondly there is religion. By providing an analysis of the end of human life as one which lies beyond this world -and certainly beyond politics- again resentment and frustration are reduced.

But of course, we have moved beyond this. Vox populi, vox dei. And there is no God anyway. And so we lurch from whim to whim, blaming the oligarchs, desperately willing to believe that sometime someone will deliver the goods, not knowing quite how, but believing with divine certainty that it will be both beautiful and great.

Touch me with noble anger,
And let not women's weapons, water-drops,
Stain my man's cheeks! No, you unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both,
That all the world shall -- I will do such things --
What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be
The terrors of the earth!

(King Lear: Act 2, scene 4)

Ash Wednesday and Stoicism

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent.

I've a vague intention at some stage to assemble a collection of excerpts from classical philosophy which are analogous to Christian approaches. Whether I'll ever get round to this I don't know, but in the meantime, we can start Lent with the Stoicism of Seneca:

5. I am so firmly determined, however, to test the constancy of your mind that, drawing from the teachings of great men, I shall give you also a lesson: Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: "Is this the condition that I feared?"

6. It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress, and it is while Fortune is kind that it should fortify itself against her violence. In days of peace the soldier performs manoeuvres, throws up earthworks with no enemy in sight, and wearies himself by gratuitous toil, in order that he may be equal to unavoidable toil. If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it comes. Such is the course which those men have followed who, in their imitation of poverty, have every month come almost to want, that they might never recoil from what they had so often rehearsed.

7. [...] Let the pallet be a real one, and the coarse cloak; let the bread be hard and grimy. Endure all this for three or four days at a time, sometimes for more, so that it may be a test of yourself instead of a mere hobby. Then, I assure you, my dear Lucilius, you will leap for joy when filled with a pennyworth of food, and you will understand that a man's peace of mind does not depend upon Fortune; for, even when angry she grants enough for our needs.

8. There is no reason, however, why you should think that you are doing anything great; for you will merely be doing what many thousands of slaves and many thousands of poor men are doing every day. But you may credit yourself with this item, – that you will not be doing it under compulsion, and that it will be as easy for you to endure it permanently as to make the experiment from time to time. Let us practise our strokes on the "dummy"; let us become intimate with poverty, so that Fortune may not catch us off our guard. We shall be rich with all the more comfort, if we once learn how far poverty is from being a burden.

[Moral Letters to Lucilius XVIII. 'On Festivals and Fasting' . Full text here.]

Stoicism and Eudaimonistic ethics

                                                                 Where's Zeno...?


After reading a report from STOICON 2015 (ie a conference on Stoicism) (here) I tweeted the following question:

Reading report from STOICON wonder here about relative attractiveness of Stoicism vs Ancient Philosophy in general. Arguably all Ancient Philosophy is therapeutic, but what is it about Stoic therapy that appeals? (Why eg don't we take Platonic injunctions to mathematics or even theurgy as seriously?) For a modern 'therapeutic' Platonism see http://edwardfeser.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/andersons-pure.html …

(That provoked a very helpful exchange mostly with Cathy Barry (@Cathyby) with Jules Evans (@julesevans77) joining in at the end to which I'm grateful for prompting me to further thought.)

The original question wasn't (purely anyway) rhetorical: Stoicism does seem peculiarly attractive to many moderns and I'm not sure exactly why. In the report I linked to above, much of what is valued in Stoicism is common to much ancient philosophy. For example, most ancient ethics is therapeutic in the sense that it offers to improve your life: to make you eudaimon (flourishing). Moreover, it is focused primarily on internal goods (the virtues) rather than external goods (stuff, social status). To the extent that Stoicism tends (more than other schools) to be (at least) deistic, perfectionist, rationalist, suspicious of emotions and utterly dismissive of external goods (you can be as eudaimon on a rack as you can be watching TV with a good whisky), it might well be thought to have particular difficulties that make it less attractive to the modern mind than other ancient ethical approaches.

I'm pretty sure that most of the answer lies in the peculiarities of Roman Stoicism, and in particular the philosophers Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Seneca. Roughly, all of these tend to be much more interested in practical techniques rather than in the more foundational questions raised by the earlier Greek Stoics. Moreover, to the extent that Stoicism in general rejects external circumstances as an element in flourishing to a quite unusual degree (certainly when compared to the Peripatetics), it is peculiarly compatible with any modern lifestyle: why change your life when you can just change your mind?

Now, I have two related worries about this. First, technique without asking serious questions about what purposes those techniques serve isn't philosophy , certainly not in a sense that Socrates or a modern academic philosopher would recognize it. (Indeed, were I to be waspish, Plato might well find a combination of marketable techniques and the promise of success in the everyday world rather more characteristic of sophistry than philosophy.) And to the extent that philosophy, that personal, desperate grappling with truth, is part of the good life, then a focus on technique together with a distraction from the pursuit of truth is at least unfortunate and perhaps harmful. Secondly, to the extent I've reflected on the ethical claims of Stoicism, I'm pretty sure they're wrong. In ancient terms, I suppose I'd count as close to a Peripatetic (ie Aristotelian) with a consequent emphasis on the need for reforming the political space, a focus on good upbringing, the cultivation of appropriate emotions (including anger)  and contemplation of 'divine things' as the perfect life. Whether I'm right in that judgment isn't terribly important: what is important is that many of the specific claims of Stoicism are by no means clearly correct and if the techniques recommended actually do have an effect, they may well be producing vice rather than virtue.

I suppose at the end I'm left with wondering what would be lost or gained if we didn't have conferences like STOIKON or events like Stoic Week, and instead had VIRTUEETHICSCON or Eudaimonia week. What would be lost, I think, is the coherence of a brand: here is something with a fairly coherent message and with immediate, relatively easy instructions for getting involved at once. You don't have to think much: you just have to be attracted and act. And that's not necessarily a bad thing: we all have to start somewhere and most of us have stumbled onto the deeper things that inform our lives by some sort of combination of luck and immediate (erotic) attraction. I'm not sure that any other school of ancient philosophy can do that quite as easily as Stoicism (although Mark Anderson has a damn good go for Platonism) even if I'm pushed to be absolutely clear as to why that's the case. (Another suggestion that crosses my mind is that it is to do with the occasional, conversational style of Roman Stoicism (esp) Seneca, quite apart from the issue of content. Much more engaging than (say) the 'contents of an academic's wastebin' style of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. But anyway...) But I think it would be terribly sad if you stopped there and didn't explore ancient ethics further and, in particular, when examining Stoic claims, ask: Is this true? Is this truly virtuous?

Why does any of this matter, except to those (undoubtedly a minority) who have an existing interest in ancient philosophy? There are a number of possible answers to this, many centring on the general role of classical studies in modern education. But let me give a more narrowly philosophical answer. There is a view (one I largely share), developing from Elizabeth Anscombe and Alasdair MacIntyre that there is something radically amiss with modern moral philosophy. (Anscombe's paper of that name is the locus classicus for this analysis.) In essence, both advise a return to eudaimonistic ethics, an ethics based on human flourishing and the virtues. If anything along those lines is right, then adopting the correct view of eudaimonia and its attainment is of central importance not only to each individual's life, but also to our wider society. Stoicism may well be an excellent introduction to that ressourcement and the general pattern of eudaimonistic ethcs, but it is one that we Aristotelian-Thomists at least would like to see subject to philosophical challenge and ultimate abandonment.

Edith Hall and Classics for the People

The haute vulgarisation of the Classics is currently well served in the UK, and, from a very strong team, I've always rather favoured Professor Edith Hall, in part on the ground that she really does seem to care about how to bring Classics to everyone whilst herself remaining a proper scholar.

Her latest piece for the Guardian is well worth reading. But perhaps the most important part of it is not the eloquent plea for the study of the Classical World, but the claim that a key part of this is the promotion of studies of classical civilization in translations rather than an elitist focus on the study of the Ancient Greek language.

The article makes the following main claims:

a) Studying Classics is very important.
b) Studying Ancient Greece is more important than studying Ancient Rome.
c) Studying Ancient Greeks is more important than studying Ancient Greek.
d) Focusing on language rather than culture (and especially Latin language rather than Ancient Greek culture) is counterproductive and liable, especially in the State sector, to see the complete demise of any teaching of the Classical World.

Frankly, I'm torn. If the question were simply, 'Should children study ancient Greek literature and civilization in translation or have no contact with the ancient world at all?' then her argument is a bit of a no-brainer. And I think it is because she sees, for most pupils in England, certainly in bog-standard comprehensives, that to be roughly the choice, that she comes to the conclusions she does. But I'm not sure that is quite the question, and so I'm not sure hers is quite the answer.

The first thing I'd say is that this sort of dispute is a local manifestation of a wider problem: the lack of depth and quality in modern (especially secondary) education. One of my children, just embarked on a History Higher (the main Scottish exam for university entry) was bemoaning to me the lack of any option before the twentieth century. The syllabus doesn't quite support that view, but like a great many things in Scottish (and I assume elsewhere in the UK) education, the reality on the ground doesn't fit the theory: certainly my experience of history education up till now has been that it's basically Glasgow sewers in the nineteenth century and Hitler. So anything, anything which puts something odd and rich into that gray gloop is welcome, whether it's philosophy classes, Latin classes, Chinese or classical civilization. The possibility of immediate escape for at least some children is to be welcomed, and if that possibility currently exists in the form of classical civilization rather than Attic Greek, I'd grasp it with both hands.

This inspiring past of people’s Greek can help us to look forward. It is theoretically in our power as British citizens to create the curriculum we want. In my personal utopia, the ancient Greek language would be universally available free of charge to everyone who wants to learn it, at whatever age – as would, for that matter, Latin, classical civilisation, ancient history, philosophy, Anglo-Saxon, Basque, Coptic, Syriac and Hittite. But classical civilisation qualifications are the admirable, economically viable and attainable solution that has evolved organically in our state sector. Classicists who do not actively promote them will justifiably be perceived as elitist dinosaurs.

[From her article here.]

Presumably, however, her call is not just to cherish what is already there but to encourage its expansion. And it's there I'm not quite so sure. The root of the problem is what the classics are for. Professor Hall seems to (at leas at university level) emphasize the production of good citizens:

 This means engaging with literary texts fearlessly in translation plus increasing the importance of critical thinking and lowering that of language acquisition. Undergraduate degrees are supposed to produce competent citizens. Traditional classics courses are not making the most of those ancient authors on their curriculum who enhance civic as opposed to syntactical competence.

Study of Greeks is an important component of that because they uniquely (or at least at an unusually high level) embodied critical thought about what it was to be a citizen:

History, [Jefferson] proposed, is the subject that equips citizens for this. To stay free also requires comparison of constitutions, utopian thinking, fearlessness about innovation, critical, lateral and relativist thinking, advanced epistemological skills in source criticism and the ability to argue cogently. All these skills can be learned from their succinct, entertaining, original formulations and applications in the works of the Greeks.

I don't particularly want to challenge her assumption about the purposes of a humane education, although I'd rather put the emphasis on being a good human being rather than just a good citizen. And as part of that -and I suppose the turn to the historical which is part of the 2500 years or so of intellectual development since Classical Greece- I'd want to include a relativisation of that 'being a good citizen': to be a good citizen, it is necessary not just to consider what it is to be a citizen simpliciter, but an Englishman, a Scotsman, a European etc. In other words, you need to say something about the study of our history and thought since Greece. Moreover, Hall's view of Greek attitudes to citizenship is partial:

Socrates dedicated his life to proving the difference between the truth and received opinion, the unexamined life being, in his view, not worth living. No wonder Hobbes thought that reading Greek and Roman authors should be banned by any self-respecting tyrant, in Leviathan arguing that they foment revolution under the slogan of liberty, instilling in people a habit “of favouring uproars, lawlessly controlling the actions of their sovereigns, and then controlling those controllers”.

If Socrates did that, did Plato spend his life arguing that the ignorant should be subject to the wise few? Aristotle that there were natural slaves? Professor Hall has worked on the reception of Greek ideas in subsequent European history: she is well aware that they have just as often been used to justify tyrannies and hierarchies as to undermine them.

I'm am left at this point agreeing with her that classical civilisation studies is a very good thing, but not that it is a uniquely good thing. By all means, if the local situation is favourable, argue for its availability. But I'm not at all convinced that it is more important to argue for it rather than (say) Chinese or philosophy, and am equally not sure that, in fact, it will always be easier to produce students in classical civilisation than these other 'deep and interesting' subjects, even that of the Latin language.

Going back to what is ideal -what we should aim for in a slightly more idealistic way rather than scrambling to rescue whatever shards of culture we find at hand- I can't help thinking that it is the teaching of Latin that is really the crucial point. It is Latin (rather than Greek) which runs as the linguistic thread of culture throughout western history. It is Latin (rather than knowledge of Greek civilisation) which remains a charged cultural marker in our society, between those who have some Latin from a public school education, and those who have no Latin at all from a state education. It is Latin which is the language of Christendom (and thus of a whole layer of civilisation and reflective thought that encountering the Greek will leave aside).

And do we need Latin language rather than (say) a Great Books curriculum in translation? Well, we could certainly do with something like a Great Books curriculum in secondary education. But there remains, I think, something crucial about some Latin, at least for those going to something like a university level education. It is just a matter of historical fact that various civilisations have used a particular language to realise a cosmopolitan culture. By that, I mean they have used a special language to mark a culture which is not bound to the local either in time or place. (The use of Latin I think is clear enough, but the use of Sanskrit in Asia in an analogous way is addressed in Language of the Gods in the World of Men .) Now, certainly, you might wonder whether such a cosmopolitan idea is a good one, or even if having a 'designated' language is the best or only way of achieving it. I'd answer (probably) 'yes' to both questions, even if I'd struggle to articulate fully the reasons for these answers. But the very fact that such a language does exist across many different civilisations (Mandarin, Sanksrit, Arabic, Hebrew, Church Slavonic etc) should at least require a very clear answer as to why we are so sure that nothing is being lost by abandoning it.

In sum, I sympathise with Professor Hall's desire to hold onto and promote, where possible, the existence of studies in classical (Greek) civilisation in translation. But to the extent that we are mobilising our forces for a better, more ideal curriculum, I'd hold out for the wider teaching of Latin as an (almost) essential part of a proper humane education. (And if you're a Catholic, you can probably add the traditional 'and then some' onto the end of that last sentence.)

Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?

                                      So old, it was actually written by Anglo-Saxons..


I have rather a lot of Teach Yourself books lying around my bookshelves, mostly languages. The differences between the older and newer versions are quite striking. Quite apart from the aesthetics of the covers (the old tending to be rather stark, the modern using attractive and colourful images) the contents move from the (old) rigidly grammatical to the (modern) chatty and real life dialogues.

The same transition can be seen in most textbooks: the old tend to be simply texts, often overladen with detail; the modern tend to be busy with 'Did you know?' boxes and illustrations breaking up the text. I suppose both have their disadvantages and their advantages. But they are different.

I raise this point simply as an example of the obvious truth that things have changed quite radically in Western culture. And this is a point that really needs to be understood in relation to changes in the Church. It is not that just the Church has changed dramatically since Vatican II (though it has) but society (at least in the UK) has also changed dramatically. Perhaps this is too obvious to need saying, but I suspect it isn't. For example, no discussion of the place of Latin in the Mass should by-pass a discussion of Latin in society: in 1915, everyone who was considered to be well-educated would have learnt (some or even quite a lot of) Latin. In 2015, that is no longer the case. In 1915, that Latin would have been learned from a traditional grammar such as Kennedy's; in 2015, whatever smattering of a foreign language that is taught would be much more experiential, much more conversational. In 1915, the pupil would have been taught to reverence the past; in 2015, he or she will be taught to argue and critique it.

I've mentioned before that I'm not particularly concerned about the EF versus OF debate (for non-Catholics, roughly the debate between the Latin Mass pre-Vatican II and the modern Mass in the vernacular). That's not because I think it unimportant, but I'm happy to leave the issue mostly to others while I focus (to the extent I focus on anything) to the changes in philosophy and theology over a similar period.  But both these issues within the Church sit within the background issue of the past within Western society. The issue of the abandonment of tradition with Western culture is something that can exercise the non-Catholic just as much as the Catholic. And whatever view the Catholic takes of debates on (say) the Latin Mass or neo-Thomist manuals will have to be located within a view of the wider changes in society.

There are in principle a number of possible permutations here. You might be a conservative tout court, lamenting the loss of tradition within both the Church and society. Or you might regard the issues as entirely separate, lamenting the loss of the transcendent in the modern Mass, but also welcoming the decline of imperialist, Protestant Britain. And so on. But what I think you can't do is to ignore the social changes: an ancient Teach Yourself book handed to a pupil reared on the whizz-bang of modern textbooks won't engage. Analogously, a neo-Thomist manual handed to a modern Catholic will (in general) not engage.

Now, the retort will doubtless come back that this simply isn't true: that modern youth is craving the rigour of a properly thought through text or a properly structured Mass. It's undoubtedly true that some are: personally, I love the old Teach Yourself books and would (aesthetically) much prefer a Latin Mass. But the reality is, I suspect, that I am too old to be typical and too atypical even when I was young (I judge from my children). Back to tradition would doubtless work as a stratagem for some, but we have no reason to believe that it would work for many. (A child formed in the barrage of modern music and ignorant of Latin is at least not coming to these things with the same sensibility as one reared in 1915.)

And so we have (at least) three possibilities. First, there is simply full steam ahead: we just keep on battering at modern culture until it sees the sense of what has been lost and returns to it. (That's been pretty much my position.) Secondly, there is the St Benedict option: we rescue those we can and create islands of holiness. Thirdly, there is the option of acculturation: we adapt in order to meet modernity 'where it is'. None of these strikes me as particularly hopeful. The first seems unlikely to succeed. The second will succeed but only for a few. The latter seems to abandon what is counter-cultural in Christianity.

So where does this leave us? Frankly, I have little idea. It does make me more sympathetic and even enthusiastic about Vatican II which might be regarded as both being realistic about the changes in modernity and trying to find a way to be true to Tradition while engaging with the changes. (That it was succeeded by all sorts of nuttiness is unfortunate but probably inevitable given the nature of the changes in the West since the 1960s.) I watch Pope Francis and I also see a man wrestling with how to encounter modernity. Is he doing it well? I'm genuinely not sure. My children tell me that there has been a radical change in the attitude of non (and even anti) Catholics to the Papacy since Francis replaced Benedict. That strikes me as a very good thing: I have little sympathy with the withdrawal to the monastery for the few. On the other hand, if it is at the expense of diluting the Catholic vision of the world, it needs to be rejected out of hand.

And so the Synod on the Family. How does one engage with a society which seems to think that it's a matter of indifference whether a child is brought up by its biological parents? Which thinks that to suggest there is anything wrong with homosexual activity is narrow minded and bigoted. Which regards an all male priesthood as part of patriarchal misogyny. Which regards science as the only measure of rationality whilst at the same time believing there is something else (even if it is only some hot vampire who wants you to be his girlfriend). Frankly, I don't know. Until I do know, I'm going to keep on throwing lumps of the past at people in the hope that I can chuck enough illud tempus to take down a few zombies before I'm finally consumed. But it would be quite nice to have a back up strategy which isn't analogous to giving modern teenagers a 1940s Teach Yourself book and expecting them to return in six months fluent in Swahili. (Or just giving them a big hug instead and telling them that they'll pick it up somehow and that anyway it doesn't really matter.)

Reflections on New Year

 
                         Dante enters the Pit of Disease where falsifiers are tormented.

I suppose any Scottish blogger's reflections on 2014 and 2015 are likely to be dominated by thoughts about the referendum and the future of the Independence movement in Scotland although I'd quite like them not to be. But there you are: I lack the imagination to find something else...

I like my politics grim and detailed. I remember as a child watching fascinated as the live relay of the TUC conference rambled on with a liturgical language of 'brothers and sisters' (or 'comrades' for variation) structured wave after wave of composite this or composite that. I watched it day after day. I'm surprised my parents didn't take me to a psychiatrist. So the loose, carnivality of modern progressive Nationalism leaves me cold. I wanted to know as much as possible about the price of oil and the likely effects on the economy. I wanted -good Aristotelian that I am- to be afraid of the things the practically wise man is afraid of, and blasé about those he is blasé about. I don't care much about intersectionality, except insofar as it pertains to Lego.

But equally, the sheer disbelief of many unionist commentators that anyone (anyone) might not want to be part of the existing structure of the UK also left me cold. It's not surprising that a northern European nation of 5 millions might have a nationalist movement, rather more surprising if it didn't. It's not surprising that, at the end of a century in which the British imperium has been thoroughly critiqued, not least by the British governing class itself, that some might feel rather doubtful about a State soused in such symbols. It's not surprising that Western Europeans are hacked off with the current position and just want something different.

So we go into the New Year pretending. The 45 pretend that only the mentally ill and Quislings voted No. The attack dogs of Unionism pretend that Yes voters are all methadone crazed Neds. And beneath this obvious crust, further more local pretences. That marriage doesn't matter. (Except when changing its nature as some sort of Situationist prank.) That women and men are the same. That the second rate is the first rate and that Scottish media and artists are the latter. That education in Scotland gets better and better. That power dynamics and considerations of cost in the NHS will miraculously disappear when the State provides 'mercy' killing. And so on.

I think many sense this lie we live, the triumph of the Sophists and face. Truth in human affairs, perhaps above all in politics, is extremely difficult to attain, even to want to go on trying to attain:

Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. As the repository of something suprapersonal and objective, it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true position and their inglorious modus vivendi, both from the world and from ihemselves. It is a very pragmatic but, at the same time, an apparently dignified way of legitimizing what is above, below, and on either side. It is directed toward people and toward God. It is a veil behind which human beings can hide their own fallen existence, their trivialization, and their adaptation to the status quo. It is an excuse that everyone can use, from the greengrocer, who conceals his fear of losing his job behind an alleged interest in the unification of the workers of the world, to the highest functionary, whose interest in staying in power can be cloaked in phrases about service to the working class. The primary excusatory function of ideology, therefore, is to provide people, both as victims and pillars of the post-totalitarian system, with the illusion that the system is in harmony with the human order and the order of the universe. [Vaclav Havel: the Power of the Powerless here]

Havel's phrase the human order and the order of the universe has of course lost all meaning for us progressives, with its tones of essentialism and natural law. But it is only that, the sense that beneath the noise and the half truths and the jockeying for advantage, that there is an order to be discerned and followed in human affairs that will save us, as a society and as individuals.

Happy New Year!

Stoic week and God

We're currently in the middle of Stoic Week (details here). It's an excellent idea and I wish all those participating in it all the best!

When I first read about it, I confess to feeling a little suspicious. Some of the material, frankly, seemed dumbed down cracker barrel philosophy. My contacts with previous online Stoicism had sensitized me to the way that the philosophy could be rewritten to exclude theism (of which more anon). On the other hand, I'm a fairly shameless popularizer: given the general state of Western Europe, getting people to read (eg) comic strip versions of Shakespeare seems to me a quantum leap forward in education, however far it falls short of the ideal of actually grappling with the real thing. The essential thing in popularization seems to me to be the absence of closure: it's important to make clear to the 'consumer' that this isn't the complete story, that there is further to travel and deeper to go. (Even if they don't actually make this journey, at least they should avoid the sense that they know it all. A little learning, provided it is accompanied by humility is a fine achievement. Richard Dawkins and his horde are a terrible example of what happens when it goes wrong.)

Anyway, leafing through the free (only for this week!) Kindle version of the course reader (here), it's clear that the authors have recognized some of these issues before me. An example of this is the debate on the place of God in Stoicism (here). I think this debate shows two things. First, there is a genuine issue about the place of God in Stoicism: there's not a straightforward answer. Secondly, and taking that first point more generally, however much you try and distil philosophical (ie proper) thought into a recipe book, there remains that intellectual incompleteness that (classically at least) is realized in the early, Socratic dialogues of Plato: living well requires a deep pursuit of wisdom that remains, at least in this world, incomplete and unfinished. (I'd say, as an aside, that Catholicism captures this incompleteness centrally through the notion of mystery: the possibility of plunging ever further into a intellectual depth that never ends. But that for another day.)

So what of God and Stoicism? It's important to remember that, for Catholics, the existence of God is not part of revelation, but of reason. In a rough way, classical philosophy represents a real life experiment: how much can you know of God before revelation? And so, for Catholics, it shouldn't be at all surprising that God keeps popping up in Greek and Roman philosophy: why wouldn't he given he is understood (incompletely but still importantly) by natural reason? And (part of the story at least) that's why Stoic Week (and other engagements with ancient philosophy) are good: they allow access to reasoning that has not been distorted (as has so much of modern thought) by a deliberate desire to make God unthinkable. Roughly, the Stoics and other ancients were content to follow the evidence where it led; and for most of them, it led to God.

Tim LeBon argues (here):

Mark Vernon blurs the issue by referring to “God” rather than Zeus in his article. The ancient Stoics did not believe in the Judeo- Christian God. The Stoic god is wholly impersonal – it is just nature, doing its thing. You can’t pray to the Stoic god.

There's a lot that needs to be said here if this were to be dealt with in full. First, the ancient Stoics (key ones anyway) did believe in the God of natural theology: the problem here is that modern atheists misunderstand the nature of the God of Catholicism and the God of ancient philosophy: neither believe in a Giant Nobodaddy throwing hissy fits; the Catholic does not believe in the Jehovah of the Latter Day Church of Snake Juggling any more than Epictetus believed in the Zeus of the peasant down the via. (For a bit on this, see previous blogpost here.)

Secondly -and this is trickier- the God proved by natural reason is still capable of eliciting an emotional, indeed personal, response. The way that the difference between deism and theism is often (imperfectly) explained (ie the former a belief in a rational watchmaker who creates and goes away; the latter a belief in a personal, caring God) somewhat conceals this. This is particularly important, I think, in understanding the Enlightenment. One common (atheist) narrative is that all your favourite Enlightenment figures were deists. And that deist really means: 'I want to exclude God as much as possible from the universe, but, because I was born too early/ am frightened by the Inquisition, I have to sneak the word in somewhere. (But really I'm an atheist.).' Whatever the case for some individuals, I think a truer portrait of many Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment figures would be more like this: 'I have no truck with all the superstitious accretions of popular (ie Catholic) Christianity. But peel these away, and you find at the heart of the universe a loving, caring and rational God. That's the God that I adore and worship.' And that too is the God of most of the Stoics.

Now, as I've said, one of the keys to understanding deep thought is that it doesn't stop there. There is more to be said. More to be argued. Little that can be taken as a conclusive ending. But let me end (temporarily!) with two things. First, let me quote Long on Epictetus:

Epictetus' theological language betokens a personal belief and experience as deep and wholehearted as that of any Jew or Christian or Muslim. (Here, p145.)

Secondly, let me present in full Cleanthes' Hymn to Zeus:


Most glorious of the immortals, invoked by many names, ever all-powerful,
Zeus, the First Cause of Nature, who rules all things with Law,
Hail! It is right for mortals to call upon you,
since from you we have our being, we whose lot it is to be God's image,
we alone of all mortal creatures that live and move upon the earth.
Accordingly, I will praise you with my hymn and ever sing of your might.
The whole universe, spinning around the earth,
goes wherever you lead it and is willingly guided by you.
So great is the servant which you hold in your invincible hands,
your eternal, two-edged, lightning-forked thunderbolt.
By its strokes all the works of nature came to be established,
and with it you guide the universal Word of Reason which moves through all creation,
mingling with the great sun and the small stars.
O God, without you nothing comes to be on earth,
neither in the region of the heavenly poles, nor in the sea,
except what evil men do in their folly.
But you know how to make extraordinary things suitable,
and how to bring order forth from chaos; and even that which is unlovely is lovely to you.
For thus you have joined all things, the good with the bad, into one,
so that the eternal Word of all came to be one.
This Word, however, evil mortals flee, poor wretches;
though they are desirous of good things for their possession,
they neither see nor listen to God's universal Law;
and yet, if they obey it intelligently, they would have the good life.
But they are senselessly driven to one evil after another:
some are eager for fame, no matter how godlessly it is acquired;
others are set on making money without any orderly principles in their lives;
and others are bent on ease and on the pleasures and delights of the body.
They do these foolish things, time and again,
and are swept along, eagerly defeating all they really wish for.
O Zeus, giver of all, shrouded in dark clouds and holding the vivid bright lightning,
rescue men from painful ignorance.
Scatter that ignorance far from their hearts.
and deign to rule all things in justice.
so that, honored in this way, we may render honor to you in return,
and sing your deeds unceasingly, as befits mortals;
for there is no greater glory for men
or for gods than to justly praise the universal Word of Reason.

[Here.]

So, happy Stoic Week. Enjoy meeting some of the finest minds of the classical world. And afterwards, dig further into the God of natural theology, find that rational principle which rules the world. (And don't forget to come back to the Catholic Church to find out, in full, what we can know about that God through his self-revelation in Jesus and his body, the Church.)

Emotions and politics: full of yourself and empty of self

                                  I thought rather more fun than a headless chicken...


Of public matters, the two things that are probably most on my mind at the moment (judging from my recent blogging anyway) are Islam and the Referendum. In both cases, emotions run high and commentary thick and fast. In both cases, one is frequently struck by the omniscience of those proffering a judgment: interior design one day; Scottish independence the next; how to sort out the Middle East in a couple of days thereafter. What next? Cold fusion?

This blog certainly doesn't escape such a temptation to proclaim expertise it lacks. But in  my better moments, I try to confine myself to areas where I might claim some limited expertise, or to subjects where, willy nilly, 'everyman' has got to have some response. An example of the latter is, for example, the Independence referendum where, despite a lack of the full range of expertise required, I am going to have to make a decision on how to vote. (And where, as a result, my deliberative thrashings might have some wider (helpful) echo.)

But behind all this is a general difference of approaching the world. A Catholic, and anyone who inhabits a rich traditional culture, lives in a space that is much wider than the individual. Even in areas where I can claim an expertise, that expertise is dwarfed by what is still out there: the characteristic attitude of an individual here is to wait and listen and be patient (ie to 'suffer' the external reality to fill you up). On the other hand, the 'moderns' have a self which is full and spills over into the world: the characteristic attitude is one of a world which waits to be filled with the organizing endeavour of human beings (and indeed, most often, by me and my emotions).

Now, certainly, much more detail and complexity behind that very binary opposition. But that contrast does serve to illuminate a lot of what does go wrong in public discussion. Taking those two areas I mentioned, for example, the reality is that no one knows precisely the effects of Independence: we may, with care (con muchas pinzas) try to pick out the salient points, or, to alter the metaphor, like an archaeologist, brush off the surrounding earth to reveal the object, but that attempt, by the 18 September is going to remain incomplete. To some extent, we await God's final verdict (or, the Tao's, if you prefer). In the case of Islam, to take a very specific case, we shouldn't be surprised that Muslims struggle to express how they reconcile Islamic teaching with modern challenges: that sense of the current incompleteness and inadequacy of the individual in the face of a reality much greater than him is an essential feature of most complex traditional cultures.

For the moderns, on the other hand, the only thing that matters is internal coherence and force: so long as you've worked out how you feel, the main task is to get that feeling out into the public (and, if you're a bit Nietzschean as well) to get others agreeing with your thumping, emotion laden, view of the matter.

Certainly, it's difficult to imagine day to day politics without something of the tone of the Serengeti: big beasts roaming around, roaring at everything that's made of meat (ie voters). But even if that is unavoidable to some extent (and probably it's not to anywhere near the extent that it's currently practised), when we go home to close the door, we need to admit in the privacy of our own rooms if nowhere else, that we are waiting for reality rather than that reality is waiting for us.

On not understanding politics: Leo Strauss and Gerry Hassan

                               
One of the great advantages of anonymous blogging is that there is little need to pretend to more knowledge than one has. A degree of anonymity reduces (even if it does not entirely abolish) the pride and defensiveness that leads us to claim understanding where we do not understand. 'Blogging' as an activity is essentially ephemeral and experimental: unlike teaching or 'proper' publishing, there is less need to pretend that the product is finalized.

So I'm quite happy to admit that I don't fully understand Leo Strauss. I've been dipping into him for a good few years now. At the beginning, familiar with Myles Burnyeat's hatchet job on him (the original is behind a paywall but the reaction is available here) and the orthodoxy in left wing circles that he was somehow the fons et origo of America's neo-cons -and perhaps more straightforwardly that (almost) no one in the UK reads him- I read him more in the way that I desperately tried to read everything that might be remotely relevant to my area of study. Then I read a bit more and a bit more, in the expectation that I would finally discover the sort of anti-Grail that would reveal him to be the monster or fool that he undoubtedly was.

Well, as I said, that was a few years ago now and I've kept dipping in and I'm still waiting to find that anti-Grail. I'm reasonably convinced now that it doesn't exist and, whatever his pupils may have done, Strauss himself is simply a writer who has much of interest to say about the relationship between politics and philosophy. What precisely he says here is less obvious-and that's what I'm happy to admit I'm not clear about. I think we have a wrestling which embodies (as much as it describes) the inability of philosophy to absorb politics, and the inability of politics to absorb philosophy: a revelation of a tension that has to be lived and engaged with rather than abolished.

All thinking about politics (perhaps all thinking) is in medias res: the conversation has started before you entered the room. If the question is: 'How should I live?' the only philosophically ultimate answer is the Socratic admission of ignorance (which is not, note, the same as abandoning an attempt to answer the question). On the other hand, politicians have to make decisions. Moreover, democratic politicians have to persuade; and just as the teacher cannot teach without putting on a good face and disguising the inner gibbering idiot, so the politician cannot stand on the podium admitting their fundamental incompetence to control the uncontrollable. Strauss (I take it) like Gillian Rose wants us to live with/between that tension. Zizek (and if I do not understand Strauss, I do not understand Zizek and then some) on the other hand wants to escape the tension by some dramatic, revolutionary Act.

Well, as I said, I'm happy to admit I'm less than certain about those readings of Strauss etc. But the two broad positions clearly do exist outside the academy: the pursuit of the revolutionary Act which does not so much reflect as create politics; the pursuit of an uncertain, fully ungraspable reality. And so to Gerry Hassan, Scotland's leading public intellectual etc, who, as so often, raises good questions and then, perhaps, drops them too quickly:


Any successful political strategy has at times to address its weaknesses, and attempt to understand and diminish them. It should get inside the head and heart of its opponent's arguments and understand their emotions, rationale and logic. What it shouldn't do is what a major part of our debate has done: demonise and stigmatise the other side, whether it be Yes thinking the existence of 'Project Fear' is enough to show that all right-minded people should be on their side, to Better Together's inability to understand the legitimacy and appeal of independence (hence bogey words like 'separatism' and 'narrow nationalism').
Imagine if the independence cause were to offer in these last few weeks a different kind of tone and content. Picture Nicola Sturgeon before 18 September having the courage and conviction to stand up and talk about her own doubts and risks on independence. Think of the effect of Sturgeon saying that at times she too has had doubts and has felt uncertain about the project and idea of independence. This would entail her saying that she has at times had anxieties about the risks inherent in independence.

He's clearly quite right to point out the unattractiveness of much of the Nationalist presentation: there's absolutely no point in pretending that Independence is risk free and that fear or the Scotch Cringe is the only reason to vote no. As a political strategy, the public enactment of doubt, humility etc is indeed likely to produce some positive results for the Yes campaign. (There is, of course, another story to be told of the Better Together strategy of suggesting the sheer unthinkability of Independence by sneer and effortless superiority.)

But this misses the point. (Or at least a point.) And this is something that we can find in Strauss. The politician is not a philosopher: to take a position in a political campaign requires a persona, a front. It may well be that a persona embodying more doubt would be more attractive politically, would be more successful. But in the referendum campaign, there can only be two sort of political answer: Yes or No. Doubt, insofar as it figures, is something to be overcome, and the only possible narrative one of how it was slain or faced up to:

If, as is likely the SNP do not change tone and adjust content, irrespective of a Yes/No vote, they are going to have to consider embracing such an agenda post-vote. Here then is a suggestion to the SNP and independence cause. Have courage and believe in your convictions. Embrace the ideas of doubt, uncertainty and talk about the risks. That's what strong, courageous leadership and vision involves. [Hassan here.]

But there is another aspect of politics -not the campaigning, but the thinking about political things (ta politika; res publica) which is not oriented to direct political action. There is political philosophy which is the soil from which the campaign should emerge and be challenged. Here, the 'emotions, doubts and fears' that Hassan seems to want to treat as a therapist become cognitive responses to truth and the absence of truth, to be treated by philosophy.

I've said it before, but Scotland is severely deficient in that philosophical thinking about public things that is not directly oriented towards a campaign. In part, that is diagnosed (by Strauss) as the modern intellectual desert that is reached when the ancient understanding of human nature and the pursuit of its flourishing is abandoned. But it is particularly bad -worse than it need be- in Scotland. Without the background of think tanks, proper journalism, public engagement by the universities and rather better public intellectuals, any political campaign is going to be impoverished: you can't just switch on the public mind every five years or so and then put it back into the box. It's not so much that one can't point to isolated figures or institutions, but they remain isolated: there is a lack of critical mass.

And a fortiori the Catholic Church in Scotland. As Tom Gallagher put it recently:

There is a surprising lack of interaction between people in different branches of Church life, from education to parts of the media and the different offices of the Church. This makes it easier for political forces with their own agendas to muscle in and even try to bend parts of Church life to an essentially secular will.

Although that is, in part, a matter of political campaigning, I think the core of the problem is rather that lack of constant philosophical/theological thinking from which alone effective campaigning can result. And so, for example, the Catholic opposition to same sex marriage emerges from nowhere and sounds shrill and arbitrary even to many Catholics, instead of being the natural, irresistible consequence of our understanding of human beings and their place in society.

I'm reading Weigel's biography of St John Paul II at the moment. Remember that, during the crisis (a far greater crisis than I hope I'll ever have to face) of Poland's occupation by the Nazis and then the Communists, much of his energy was devoted to building up Polish Catholicism's intellectual and cultural life, for example, through amateur theatre. Without that cultural soil, politics and even theology flies around uselessly like tumbleweed.

What is Scholasticism and what sort of Scholasticism?

                                        Angelic proofreaders pointing out typos...

There's been a rather interesting exchange going on between Ed Feser (Thomist extraordinaire) and Michael Sullivan of the Scotist blog, The Smithy on Feser's recent Scholastic Metaphysics: an Introduction. [Feser's latest post on this -with links to further instalments of Sullivan- is here.]

In essence, the debate centres on two points. First, is Feser's version of Scholasticism too exclusively Thomist, particularly at the expense of Scotus? Secondly, is it too ahistorical, smoothing over detailed engagement with actual Scholastic writers in favour of quick neo-Thomist caricatures? The detailed posing (and answering) of these questions is an education in itself -and I'd urge anyone even remotely interested in understanding Scholasticism to read the posts and the combox discussions (as well as Feser's book!).

Behind any detailed criticism of the book, however, stand rather more general issues about the nature of philosophy in general, and Scholasticism within the Catholic Church in particular. To pluck away at a couple of these:

a) Grand narratives vs detailed grappling. There is a tendency in academic philosophy (particularly English language analytic philosophy) to focus in incredible detail on narrow issues. The good (essential) aspect of that is rigour: carefulness in argument and examination is necessary to achieve truth: there are no shortcuts. On the other hand, there are losses. One loss is that of popular engagement. For philosophy to engage outwith the academy, it needs to deal in recognizable issues in recognizable ways: too much technicality and narrowness of focus and philosophy becomes confined to the philosophy department. (Whilst there is clearly more to be said about how philosophy can be both rigorous and popular, I'll leave it with the simple (and I hope plausible) claim that highly technical philosophy can't be popular and that, since some philosophy needs to be popular, not all philosophy can be highly technical.)

Perhaps an even more serious loss is the absence of what I shall style 'narrative imagination'. To take two particular examples, one of the most influential recent-ish works in English speaking philosophy has been that Alasdair MacIntyre, in particular, that of After Virtue. Much of that work involves an historical narrative that, to put it mildly, is open to detailed criticism.: if MacIntyre had stopped to deal with every detailed point that could be raised against his narrative, the force of the work would have been much diminished. A similar point could be made about the (again influential) Radical Orthodoxy movement in theology. If Milbank's Theology and Social Theory -which again contains a rather 'sweeping' narrative- were to grapple with every possible detailed criticism, again, the force of the work would have disappeared.

There are clearly many possible reactions to such a (clearly true) observation. One possibility is simply to abandon the idea of a grand narrative and to concentrate on detailed grappling. I'll simply note that, in my view, such a solution has unfortunate consequences both ethically (in depriving individuals of a sense of their place in an historical narrative) and pedagogically (in depriving pupils of a sense of  shape to an issue which they can then subject to further critical scrutiny). Another (and this I'd favour) is to note that both the grand and the detailed are required: in any healthy intellectual ecosystem, there will be a creative tension between those who produce imaginative narratives and those who subject them to detailed critique.

b) The place of philosophy in Catholicism. As I've made clear over the history of this blog, I'm in general sympathy with the view that the loss of neo-Thomism (ie the sort of Thomism of the nineteenth and twentieth century manuals) as an intellectual tradition in Catholicism is at least as serious a loss as any that has been felt in the liturgy. (Let's not get bogged down in details: there's a problem in liturgy in the modern Church and there's a problem with the destruction of neo-Thomism.) This has (at least) two aspects. First, there is the loss of a focus on St Thomas Aquinas. By taking as alternative paradigms either non-Catholic thinkers such as Levinas, Lacan, Derrida, Butler etc, theologians have cut themselves off entirely from (at the least) an extremely rich intellectual model which attempts to do justice to reason, revelation and ecclesiastical authority. But while this is true of some (perhaps even many) Catholic theologians, it also remains true that Aquinas has not been ignored and yet remains a central figure in theology. (Even the much attacked Tina Beattie has recently published a monograph on him.) From this aspect alone, things could be a lot worse.

Which leads me on to the second aspect. Neo-Thomism had a particular understanding of a number of issues, in particular, the place of philosophy within Catholicism. Roughly put, most neo-Thomists thought that philosophy -reason unguided by revelation- could attain truth, albeit incomplete and albeit with difficulty. Moreover, neo-Thomism was, to a large extent, a creation of teaching institutions and, especially, seminaries: it was a Thomism shaped by the need to be taught and used by those who were not professional and specialized theologians, but who were priests engaging with ordinary people and non-Catholic intellectual challenge. Much modern Catholic thinking even when approaching Aquinas is fideist (ie carried out in terms only acceptable to those who already accept dogmatic teaching) and academic (destined for an audience of other professional theologians or students). In other words, neo-Thomism carried in a narrative imagination an understanding of what it was and how it fitted into the world that is lacking in other Catholic theologies, and indeed other grapplings with Aquinas.

What follows from this? In terms of Feser's book, its characteristics are those (unsurprisingly) of a neo-Thomist: what it foregrounds and what it glosses over are precisely what you'd expect from a neo-Thomist. If this is surprising, it is only because the neo-Thomist has become a rara avis. In more thickly populated intellectual flocks (analytical philosophy, for example) very few stop to wonder why introductory manuals fail to take seriously the details of natural theology: the writing off of an intellectual tradition has taken place as part of the background narrative imagination. If you think his approach is wrong, then the problem lies less in the book and more in the background movement.

More importantly, Catholics (lay and clerical) need to develop an intellectual culture which can function as an ancilla theologiae -a preparation for revelation. That is wider than philosophy, but it includes philosophy. I think that's best conceptualized as a return to neo-Thomism, but I'd be open to (and indeed sometimes personally do) think of it as a return to the philosophia perennis of the Greeks of which Thomism is merely the final flourishing, or (in politics) to the politics of natural right envisaged by Leo Strauss. Each of those conceptualizations is an act of narrative imagination and is open to detailed critique. But I'm pretty sure that, without some such boldness of vision, Catholic intellectual life is going to be steamrollered by the narrative imagination of secularism.

As a coda to all this, let me quote from my current bedtime reading (Garrigou-Lagrange's Le Sens Commun -which primarily contains his refutation of Bergson and I'm reading as a proleptic refutation of post-modernism). In that, he sketches the content of the philosophy of common sense:

[The anthropologist Le Roy obtained from his field studies of primitive peoples] a residue of common elements which corresponds almost exactly to what is, for traditional philosophy, the content of common sense:

1) Distinction between the invisible and visible worlds.
2) A feeling of human dependence in respect to the superior world, particularly in the use of nature.
3) Belief in a Supreme Being, creator, organizer and master of the world and at the same time father of human beings.
4) Belief in independent spiritual beings, some beneficent, some hostile.
5) Belief in a human soul, distinct from the body, conscious, surviving death.
6) Belief in a world beyond, where spirits live and souls survive.
7) A universal moral sense, based on the distinction between good and evil, feelings of justice, shame, responsibility, liberty and duty. Implicit or explicit recognition of conscience.
8) Prescriptions and proscriptions in view of a moral end; a notion of sin with sanctions applied by the authority of the invisible world or its representatives.
9) The organization of culture, prayers and sacrifice.
10) A priesthood charged with sacred duties.
11) Distinction between the sacred and the profane.
12) Establishment of the family as religious and social centre.

[p88 Le sens commun (my translation and slight adaptation)]

Nothing there, I think, to surprise, say, the reader of Plato or Confucius. But remember this is supposed to be the pre-existing foundation on which revelation then builds. To even achieve this level of explicit belief in a secularized public culture is going to be quite an achievement although -and this is the intriguing aspect for me- implicitly I'm pretty sure this is what most people actually do believe even in the West. (Thought experiment: watch reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Battlestar Galactica whilst regarding the above as foolish.)