Manent Mercredi #10: on the nation

From the Law and Liberty website, a good essay by Guillaume de Thieulloy on Manent's thought, focusing especially on his views on the nation state and on his (comparative) neglect in France:

Accurate glosses of other thinkers and charming writing are the main assets of the writings of my former teacher. Nor is this by chance—for Manent rightly thinks of himself as an heir, as we all are. We received our forma mentis from our ancestors and especially from the classics. Manent, in his latest book (Beyond Radical Secularism), proffered the classic authors as an access point for young French people (including those whose parents were not culturally French) to a shared vision of the world and of the human being. The appeal he made in this 2016 book was very powerful and striking. Unfortunately, the education system in our country worked, and still works, toward the creation of a “new human being,” after the revolutionary tabula rasa. If we are seeking the common good, we need a common language and some common heroes, common legends, and common history. So, the French rulers who pretend to promote the ethic of “vivre-ensemble” (living together)—especially with those who have immigrated into France—while at the same time abandoning education in the classics are deceiving the rest of us, or themselves.

Manent’s public profile is now that of a promoter of the European nation-state—or perhaps more precisely, a defender of that nation-state which is being so harshly attacked by European “elites.” That defense includes, of course, the American “daughter” of the European nation-state. It also includes, in some aspects, the Jewish mother of the European nation-state, which has been for so many centuries a nation without a state. He’s indeed one of the rare influential writers who doesn’t seem to think that “progress” implies the vanishing of this very specific “political form.”

See more here. (The earlier essay by Paul Seaton referred to by de Thieulloy is also worth reading and can be found here.)

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.

Respecting opponents requires moral self-discipline

                                          Perhaps not the best way of regulating disputes...



An article in the New York Times typified a lot of 'progressive' reaction to Trump's election. A Muslim student discovers her roommate -whom she seems to have got along with rather well before- voted Trump and therefore packs up and leaves:

We fought; I packed. This was Tuesday evening, so I headed to my friend’s dorm, where a small group of us, mainly black women, tried to find solace in one another as the country slowly fell to red. I tried and failed to speak, to write. I ignored my roommate’s lengthy texts.

 

Did she really expect me to respect her choice when her choice undermined my presence in this country, in this university, in my very own dorm room? Did she really expect me to shake her hand for supporting a candidate who would love to bar my relatives from this country, who has considered making people of my faith register in a specific database and carry special ID, Holocaust-style?

 

[Here]

 

What the article seems to miss (amongst many other things) is just how difficult it is for people to get along in a civilised manner: it requires virtue and often considerable will power. Certainly, part of this is putting up with other people's irritating personal habits: untidiness, singing off tune, slurping. But even more difficult is putting up with other people's views on important ethical matters. I am surrounded by people who often claim to see nothing wrong in killing unborn children, speak dismissively of God, and are positively foul about the Catholic Church. If I allowed my emotions free rein, I would be running around screaming at them. That I don't is a mix of different reasons. Sometimes it's because, short of ending up starving on the street, I have to get along with them. Sometimes it's because I have special duties to them as, for example, relatives. Sometimes, it's because, despite their views, I can see that they have a basic decency. And so on.

 

I'm not sure how much of this is due to social media, but this sort of recognition of the need for self control to establish civic peace and cordiality seems increasingly to be lost. Given the diversity of today's nation states, we all need to inculcate in ourselves and our children a much sterner self-discipline about knee jerk, emotional reactions. Getting on with other people involves compromise, self-restraint and courage. (I don't dismiss the student's fear of how she will be treated as a Muslim. But taking out that fear on a well-inclined, friendly roommate seems to me viciously self-indulgent.)

 

Self-restraint, civility, simple politeness. Not particularly fashionable virtues in a society where letting it all hang out and stuff anybody else has been the norm of behaviour from the sixties. And, yes, I am only too well aware of the difficulty in reconciling these norms with Donald Trump's behaviour. Doesn't make them any less necessary.

 

 

 

Scottish government goes soft on religious worship?

                       
                                      S6 finding a secular alternative to religious worship...

The never ending guerilla campaign of the various septs of Clan Atheist to undermine religious schooling in Scotland continues.

The latest surge focuses on allowing 16-18 year olds to opt out of acts of worship off their own bat:

A consultation is to be held on whether older pupils should be allowed to opt themselves out of religious observance in schools, the BBC has learned.

 

All young people in Scotland need parental permission to withdraw from religious activities like assemblies.

The Humanist Society of Scotland (HSS) was seeking a judicial review of that policy for older pupils.
The Scottish government is now to consider revising guidance to head teachers.

Religious observance must take place in Scottish schools at least six times a year.

In England and Wales, sixth form pupils - normally aged between 16 and 18 - have the right to make their own decision about opting out.


[From BBC website here]

I confess that up till now, I'd rather naively assumed that the thrust of this campaign was directed at non-denominational schools rather religious ones (ie in Scotland, essentially Catholic). Although I'd lean towards keeping matters as they are even in non-denominational schools, my enthusiasm is tempered in this case by a realisation that, generally, this probably means subjecting youths to the inanities of modern Jesus-lite Presbyterianism. (But, broadly, better that than nothing. A previous post on a related issue probably gives a good sense of my views. My previous suggestion that such non-denominational waffle should be replaced by cultural sessions of metrical psalms and readings from the Authorised Version of the Bible doesn't seem to have many takers either. Shame.)

However, judging from the BBC Sunday Politics Scotland (here: after 1.01) this is also or even primarily directed at Catholic schools. Specific mention is made in the programme of the incident in Motherwell where fifty pupils didn't bother to turn up to an annual Patron's Day Mass (earlier report here) and were punished accordingly. Allowing pupils to opt out of Catholic worship in a Catholic school undermines that school's ability to provide a Catholic ethos. Whilst you're free to regard us Catholics as a bunch of iron age goatherd worshipping paddies or whatever, if you're going to allow us Catholic schools, then you have to allow us the right to run those schools as Catholic schools. And here, unlike the more difficult to resolve issues on, say, the teaching of a Catholic sexual morality at odds with the common-or-garden secular version, this is simply the basic, minimum standard of a Catholic ethos: worshipping God.

Anthony Esolen makes the point about the Mass's centrality to Catholic understandings of social order in his book, Reclaiming Catholic Social Teaching, referring in particular to the teaching in Leo XIII's Mirae caritatis:

This Sacrament, whether as the theme of devout meditation, or as the object of public adoration, or best of all as a food to be received in the utmost purity of conscience, is to be regarded as the centre towards which the spiritual life of a Christian in all its ambit gravitates; for all other forms of devotion, whatsoever they may be, lead up to it, and in it find their point of rest. In this mystery more than in any other that gracious invitation and still more gracious promise of Christ is realised and finds its daily fulfilment: "Come to me all ye that labour and are heavily burdened, and I will refresh you" (St. Matt. xi., 28).

15. In a word this Sacrament is, as it were, the very soul of the Church; and to it the grace of the priesthood is ordered and directed in all its fulness and in each of its successive grades. From the same source the Church draws and has all her strength, all her glory, her every supernatural endowment and adornment, every good thing that is here; wherefore she makes it the chiefest of all her cares to prepare the hearts of the faithful for an intimate union with Christ through the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, and to draw them thereto. And to this end she strives to promote the veneration of the august mystery by surrounding it with holy ceremonies.

 

Undoubtedly, the atheists will regard this as so much nonsense. Unfortunately, it is our nonsense, and if we are to be allowed to run schools to promote a Catholic ethos, the Mass should be at the heart of those schools. If pupils can't accept that, they should leave the school. (And the choice of leaving or staying at a school is one for parents, not children.)

 

But of course, the real question, to which these are but preliminary skirmishes, is whether we are to be left to run schools...

Culture in Scotland: the problem of substance rather than simply institutions

Nicola Sturgeon tames Scotland by Gerard Burns 

There has been a flurry of 'conservative' (I'm never quite sure how to describe this/my approach, but 'conservative' will do as a placeholder) comment on the stifling cultural and political hegemony of modern Scotland. Kenneth Roy's piece in the Scottish Review will do as an example:

This is the nature of the malaise: it seems that everyone has too much to lose by challenging an increasingly monolithic political establishment, particularly when the most influential voices in the arts and media have allowed themselves to become cheerleaders for that establishment. Is this really how a healthy democracy should function? Journalism works best when it is scrutinising and challenging the established order, not meekly acquiescing; the same is surely true of fiction, poetry and the performing arts. But in Scotland the normal rules of engagement have been turned on their head: if we know what is good for us, we sing from the same patriotic song-sheet, picking up our allotted crumb from the breadboard of Creative Scotland, hoping for a good review from Alan Taylor, hearing no evil, seeing no evil, until the last dissenter has been strangled with the last rolled-up copy of the Sunday Herald.

I've got considerable sympathy for this view, but more (and in more detail) needs to be said. First, one of the problems of devolution, let alone the push for more powers and ultimately independence, is that more powers now exist to exercise hegemony than did (say) fifty years ago. In my adult life, I have never noticed a particularly varied political or cultural debate in Scotland.  Anyone who encountered the Labour hegemony that existed until recently would not immediately have thought that they had encountered a Golden Age of intellectual curiosity. But it's undoubtedly true that 'blob' thinking now has more levers to operate in Scotland. So the first observation is that hegemony has always existed in modern Scotland but it now has more power to do damage.

Secondly, it is hardly the fault of the SNP that every other party in Scotland has decided to become incompetent. Although this is (perhaps) slightly overstating the case, the collapse of Scottish Conservatism, UK Liberalism and the Scottish (and perhaps UK?) Labour Party is not the fault of the SNP although they have clearly benefited from it. It is possible that Scottish Conservatism is staging a revival. Personally, I doubt this, but in any case there seems little likelihood in the near future of its being able to mount the sort of serious opposition to the SNP that Labour once was capable of. The resulting hegemony is undoubtedly regrettable, but the fault (and solution) is more to do with the other parties than the SNP.

Thirdly, and remaining with 'conservatism' for a while, at the moment, most criticism of the existing hegemony is on the grounds of a) competence and b) Unionism. That's fine and necessary, but as a long term strategy, it's limited. Issues of competence are difficult to assess in real time and unless Unionism becomes more than a simple economic case ('independence is going to cost you') it's probably going to become increasingly ineffective as people get used to the message as a background noise and certainly is going to lack impact on the wider cultural field.

And it's this wider cultural field that I want to focus on. Modern Scottish Nationalism has, in a remarkably short period of time, managed to convince large numbers of people, perhaps even a majority, that Scotland is progressive. The details of what this means are essentially fuzzy, but as a civil religion it certainly contains a familiar kit of benedictions and comminations. Blessed are the multicultural. Cursed are the homophobic. Blessed are those exploring their own sexuality. Cursed are those who believe in tradition. Etc. Etc. When coupled with a general tendency in the West for cultural elites to be overwhelmingly progressive (the Heterodox Academy is a good source on this), the pre-existing tendency to blob thinking in Scotland, as well as the identification of Scottish Nationalism with the project of becoming (even) more progressive than England, we have a recipe for the sort of stifling cultural control that Roy identifies.

Certainly, I would like to see a more effective political opposition to the SNP, not because I am particularly hostile to the SNP, but because it is unhealthy for any party to feel it is invulnerable. [Let me note here that there is a key issue that rarely seems to be raised: the SNP used to be regarded by most Nationalists I know as a temporary coalition which would dissolve upon independence. The need now to exist as a (devolved) government before independence has put this coalition identity in the background while the sort of effective discipline and clear policies required for electable government are practised. The resulting dilemmas for supporters of independence who are opposed to SNP progressivism have been insufficiently explored.] But until one or more of the other parties manages to pull itself into shape and become presentable as a potential opposition, that's not going to happen. And it's foolish to blame the SNP for that. Part of the solution has to be the creation of a vision of Scotland that is substantially different from the progressive vision of the SNP. (And it's worth noting here that the much of the most effective criticism at the moment seems to be coming from those who think that the SNP is insufficiently progressive.) And more needs to be said here than simply a endorsement of the Union: what sort of society would be better, aside from the question of whether or not that society is better realized within or outwith the UK?

Back to Roy's essay. Imagine a situation ten years in the future when (say) complete independence is off the agenda. The SNP will still be campaigning for a different, more progressive Scotland to differentiate itself from the UK culturally. Other than on economic reforms, the Conservative Party will be as progressive in all essentials as the SNP, and the Corbynite Left and the Greens will be urging even more progressivism. What reason is there to think that cultural life in Scotland will not still be as stiflingly progressive as it is now?

In sum, cultural and political hegemony is a problem in modern Scotland, but breaking the SNP's monopoly of political power is only one (and I think a minor) aspect of that problem. I see no sign that, even without an assured political control over cultural institutions, the dominance of a a certain progressive viewpoint will be abandoned. As I have said many times before, the question of Independence is secondary to the question of what sort of society we should live in, and the sort of progressivism that the SNP promotes is dominant in Scotland far beyond that party.

Three final, concrete illustrations. The current stooshie over the Named Person scheme is certainly the fault of the SNP. But it is also the fault of a cultural and political climate that makes it very difficult to articulate the sort of truth about the central place of the biological family that the Supreme Court judges quoted from international law (section 72):

The Preamble to the UNCRC states:

“the family, as the fundamental group of society and the natural environment for the growth and wellbeing of all its members and particularly children, should be afforded the necessary protection and assistance so that it can fully assume its responsibilities within the community.”

 

Many articles in the UNCRC acknowledge that it is the right and responsibility of parents to bring up their children. Thus article 3(2) requires States Parties, in their actions to protect a child’s wellbeing, to take into account the rights and duties of his or her parents or other individuals legally responsible for him or her; article 5 requires States Parties to respect the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents or, where applicable, other family or community members or others legally responsible for the child to provide appropriate direction and guidance to the child in the exercise of his or her rights under the Convention; article 14(2) makes similar provision in relation to the child’s right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; article 27(2) emphasises that the parents have the primary responsibility to secure, within their abilities and financial capabilities, the conditions of living necessary for the child’s development; article 18(1) provides that:

     “States Parties shall use their best efforts to ensure recognition of the principle that both     parents have common responsibilities for the upbringing and development of the child. Parents or, as the case may  be, legal guardians, have the primary responsibility for the upbringing and development of the child. The best interests of the child will be their basic concern.” (Emphasis supplied)

(When the judgment came out, I remember some Twitter comment describing that commonsense attitude as 'medieval'...)

Unless that sort of 'conservative' viewpoint has access to cultural institutions such as Roy refers to, in sufficient numbers and with sufficient internal variety to give it intellectual heft (another problem just now),  whether inside or outside the UK we are sunk.

Secondly, Roy allows himself a sideswipe at Neal Ascherson. In particular, he mentions Andrew O'Hagan's difficulties with Nationalists after criticizing him. I assume in particular he is thinking of the LRB review by O'Hagan of Ascherson's Stone Voices. (Here.) Now you can think what you like of Ascherson and indeed of Stone Voices. (For what it's worth, I think neither beyond criticism, but am profoundly grateful to Ascherson for over the years of his Observer columns showing something to a younger me of what intellectual life might be like, and to Stone Voices for a stimulating piece of psychogeography, particularly when read (as I did) in Kilmartin Glen.) Of course, Ascherson should be argued with. But note from what perspective O'Hagan does so:

There is, as Nairn puts it, a ‘tantalising sense of redemption which always informs nostalgia’, but the Scottish people cannot afford to get stuck there any longer, and Scotland must go on now to establish its role in bringing about a new United Kingdom within a new Europe. In the manner of Stephen Dedalus, we might do better to see Scotland’s conscience as ‘uncreated’; for while we must admit that Ascherson’s stones are interesting, they are not as interesting as people. Nationalism in Scotland is a place where good men and women busy themselves shaking the dead hand of the past, but the naming of a tradition is not the same as the forging of a nation, and modern Scotland, now more than ever, needs a new way of thinking, a new kind of relation to the old, a way to live, a way to make itself better than the badness that’s been and the badness to come. The question of what the past amounted to can lie about the grass.
 

So Ascherson, the paradigm of a progressive intellectual, complete with endorsements from Hobsbawm and an Eton education, is criticized by being insufficiently progressive, too interested in the past, too conservative. The usual Scottish substantive hegemonic game: you are wrong because I am more progressive than you. Am I really, as a social conservative, supposed to celebrate this iteration of the progressive mindset as an unproblematic example of well placed criticism suppressed by evil Nats? (Just imagine reading the above O'Hagan paragraph to Roger Scruton. With whom do you think his sympathies might lie?)

Thirdly and finally, Roy raises the question of the enforced reading of Scottish texts in Scottish schools. Quite why this should be objectionable is beyond me. (If it were a matter of only reading Scottish texts, that would be different.) From those of my children who had to study English at Higher, I can recall only two Scottish texts: Jekyll and Hyde and Robin Jenkins' The Cone Gatherers. Neither strike me as unreasonable (whatever else I'd like to say about the thinness of the Higher curriculum). Stevenson's text surely earns its place as a world classic. Jenkins', whilst not my favourite of his works (Fergus Lamont, if you want to know), is a Christian parable about suffering and innocence. Again, why should a conservative object a) to some awareness of one's local culture and b) in particular, these books?

Overall, I think the problem lies more in the absence of lively conservative cultural institutions within Scotland capable of articulating and even disagreeing on what is wrong with progressivism. (Alistair Darling makes the point in his introduction to Tom Gallagher's Scotland Now about the absence of " 'think tank' capacity", a lack particularly evident in the reasoned expression of conservative views beyond Unionism.) Too much rests on the sort of campaigning talk along the lines of  'my friend's enemy is my enemy'. The mere fact that a given commentator opposes the SNP  is not enough to endorse their views uncritically; the mere fact that a given view is held by supporters of the SNP is not enough to dismiss them.

Named person legislation and undermining the family

And so the Current Stooshie (there must always be a Current Stooshie) in Scottish politics is that anent the named person legislation.

There's a rough and ready distinction to be made between principled reason and embodied reason. 'Principled reason' describes that aspect of reasoning which can be governed and corrected by principles such as those of formal and informal fallacies. 'Embodied reason' describes the conditions under which we promote reason in real life, concrete circumstances. For example, exercising control over one's temper, trying to see things from another person's point of view, not debating while drunk and restricted to 140 characters are all helpful contributions to embodied reasoning.

I'm obsessing a bit about Russell Kirk at the moment. (That doesn't mean I worship him or think that he's right about everything, but simply that I think he's well worth reading and I've some time to make up on this before I enter my long home.) His (varying) list of ten principles of conservatism are helpful in the way that all principles of reasoning are helpful, in particular, to call to mind externally for the less than wise what the fully wise have already internalized. But an oddity of those principles, at least for the modern western world, is that in general they do not directly refer to issues which exercise much of our current politics such as nationality and gender. More revealing perhaps are the three ends that Kirk claims to have structured his life:

Looking back over his life at the age of 75, Kirk saw that he had sought three ends: to conserve “a patrimony of order, justice, and freedom” and a respectable moral order; to lead “a life of decent independence,” necessary for kindling a rigorous mind and making his voice heard; and “to marry for love” and rear children who “would come to know that the service of God is perfect freedom.”

[Here.]

The two latter ends (a life of decent independence,” and “to marry for love” and rear children) directly concern the formation of the household. And it is that institution, where the individual faces the past and the future in the beginning and the end of life, the encounter between the sexes, and the tension between the private and the public that I am increasingly certain is the hub around which all politics should turn. That sense of its importance was reinforced by reading a recent interview with the (liberal) psychologist, Jonathan Haidt:

As you Jonathan have delved into morality more deeply, are there any examples of something you considered harmless before, that now you think may actually be harmful once second, third, etc., social effects are taken into account?

HAIDT: Oh, yes, yes. When I was younger I remember thinking, “Oh, you know, marriage isn’t so important, all that matters is that you — of course you need to take care of the kids, but people should be free to do what they want.” I’ve come to see — so I started off on the left. In fact I got into political psychology in 2004 precisely to help the Democrats because I thought they were getting their rear‑ends kicked by the Republicans who knew how to talk about morality.

 

Whereas Gore and Kerry just didn’t have a clue. Since I started researching conservatism and then libertarianism, I’ve just found that they make a lot of points that as a social scientist I have to agree, “Oh, that’s a good point.”

 

The overriding importance of family stability, if you’re raising kids with incredible family stability, they just come out better. In fact they’re much more likely to rise economically than if they’re raised with any sort of family instability. So I think I’m more conservative about family arrangements, precisely because of these second- and third-level effects.

 

[Full interview here.]

 

The problem for me with the named person legislation is that it seems to set up an authority which is either superior to or or at least co-ordinate with parental authority. The legislation spells out the duties thus:

 

(1) In this Part, “named person service” means the service of making available, in relation to a child or young person, an identified individual who is to exercise the functions in subsection (5).

 

(5)The functions referred to in subsection (1) are—

(a)subject to subsection (6), doing such of the following where the named person considers it to be appropriate in order to promote, support or safeguard the wellbeing of the child or young person—

(i)advising, informing or supporting the child or young person, or a parent of the child or young person,

(ii)helping the child or young person, or a parent of the child or young person, to access a service or support, or

(iii)discussing, or raising, a matter about the child or young person with a service provider or relevant authority

 

 

Now I agree with Lord Pentland's reasoning in rejecting the petition for judicial review here: (paragraph 52)

In this state of affairs, it would be wrong for the court to declare in these proceedings that any of the Convention rights invoked by the petitioners have been breached by the enactment of the Act. To do so would be to strike down statutory provisions on an abstract and theoretical basis at a stage when the legislative landscape has not been fully formed and when important practical steps and measures likely to be highly relevant to the assessment of compliance with Convention rights remain to be taken and put in place. Moreover, nothing is known about the practical impact of the new system on any individuals. It cannot, as matters presently stand, be said that there has been any interference with any of the Convention rights of the fifth to seventh petitioners. Taking matters a little further, I do not see how it is possible for the court to carry out any adequate proportionality assessment as matters currently stand.

In other words, in principle, the legislation does not necessarily infringe (legal) rights. Whether as a matter of fact it does will depend on the development of detailed guidance and how that guidance is applied. So much for principled reasoning. But what, as a matter of embodied reasoning, is likely to be the effect of giving a state employee a status and a title that grants a supervisory role over a child's welfare? At the moment, there exists a sort of free floating imperfect duty: I, as a headteacher, may notice something which concerns me about a child's welfare. But I am not the only person involved. Others will act if they are more certain. And so, unless I am very, very concerned and very very certain that the concern is well founded, I may well do nothing. (And my concern joins that queue of other perspectives competing for attention, not particularly privileged among a chorus of other voices.) In the future, that imperfect duty is translated into a perfect one: the buck stops with me. Moreover, my voice is privileged among many others: I am the Named Person. (Much better to act than not to act.)

Conservatives ought to be troubled at this point by the absence of a strong statement that parental authority is prior to that of the state or its representatives in family matters, and by the replacement of prudential judgment ('should I exercise on this occasion my general duty of beneficence?') by the strict obligation always to act with a view to protect.

The problem here, of course, is that it is the hesitation, the possibility of cases dropping between competing authorities that is precisely the target of this legislation. As Lord Pentland said:

The advantages of the new service are not difficult to discern: increased scope for early intervention; improved integration and coordination across the public services landscape; reduction in the risk that the needs of vulnerable children will be inadvertently overlooked due to communication difficulties between service providers; and the introduction of a single focal point to ensure that children and their families receive the support and services they need.

(Note that Lord Pentland also states clearly that there is no provision for opting out of the scheme on the part of parents ('would also observe that insofar as the petitioners submitted that the legislation was disproportionate because it did not require there to be consent or allow for opting in or out of the new scheme, it seems to me that to have either of these as requirements would run counter to and be liable to defeat the aim of the measure' (paragraph 53) here.)

The issue is whether we should be more troubled by the possibility of inappropriate intervention or by the problem of inappropriate inaction. (Conservatives will remember the sixth of Kirk's principles: 'conservatives are chastened by their principle of imperfectability'. (No legislation, however good, will be entirely without its harms.)) The ridiculous optimism of 'Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC)'  is part of the problem: nothing will ensure that this occurs. Any arrangment (the superiority of parental authority; the superiority of the state) will always let some cases through. The only question is what does the lesser harm: (a tendency to) constant activist supervision of normal parents or (a tendency to) overlooking those cases where a child is being abused.

And this is where I suspect the unspoken roots of the Current Stooshie lie. I look around modern Scotland and I see a complete progressive attack on the traditional family. I expect that general tendency to be expressed in how this legislation is utilised. Others will see the traditional family as part of the burden progressive modern Scotland wishes to abandon, and this legislation as part of the emancipatory function of the state. The provisions of the legislation itself as dead ink on the page are probably pretty harmless. But as part of a symbolic, embodied apparatus of reasoning and control, I fully expect them to be yet one more element in the unravelling of traditional. biological family structures.

Does one make a fuss now? It's the common sorites problem of politics: where does one take a stand? I completely understand why many are in favour of this legislation: certainly in intent, it has the noble aim of ensuring that genuine need is better served by a fairly clunky bureaucracy. It has, of course, now become part of the Great Game of trying to find a scratch in the SNP's seemingly teflon ability to slip away from any criticism. (And of course as such it offers the possibility that surfing these party political forces, a genuine possibility of resisting the change exists in a way that, say, it didn't with same sex marriage.) I have no doubt that legislation targeted more precisely on families with clear needs would be better legislation. For those reasons, I shall fight against it with all the power of my keyboard and my two index fingers. (Tremble, my masters.)

[A personal coda. There was an occasion in our family when we did (albeit in a fairly minor way) have to negotiate the state bureaucracy for children. In our case, it consisted mostly of trying to ignore a headteacher and finding another state resource who was (frankly) less of an idiot. The existence of competing authorities and centres of power helped us then. In a normal family, there is no one, absolutely no one who can replace a parent with the deeply rooted biological mammalian imperatives to seek help for a child. A parent is the best person to find the best person to help. (Ask any parent who has tried (invariably battled) to get help for a disabled child.) There is no particular reason to think a headteacher, with a specific, narrow professional expertise and hundreds of other responsibilities would be particularly good. No system will be perfect. All will suffer from the unavoidable problem of 'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?' But there is reason to think a parent will (generally) be less problematic than a headteacher or health visitor. Anything that confuses that insight into the final nature of parental responsibility is dangerous. I have no doubt it would have made our lives more difficult. (And yes, I'm aware that's only thin anecdotal evidence, nothing more.)]

 

Citadel Catholicism: the Benedict Option. Not.

                                       Manoeuverable and secure: the Nelly Option

It's entirely understandable -given the SCOTUS decision on same sex marriage and more generally just the times we live in- for those of us attached to past forms of life to feel a little disoriented and to long for a place of security. And so we come to the Benedict option much pushed (eg) by Rod Dreher and amounting to a claim that Christianity (or just Western Civilization) needs to established oases of civilization separate from the dominant barbaric culture and, in essence, make sure we can ride it out while the rest of the world goes to hell in a handcart.

It's named after MacIntyre's famous closing passage in After Virtue (although I suspect it takes on some of the emotional colouring of sharing a name with Pope Benedict XVI who appears, for a variety of reasons, a safe haven in current Catholic turmoil) where MacIntyre urges (or rather hopes for) another St Benedict. The general line of thought here is clear: just as learning was saved for Europe by the monasteries, so must western civilization be saved by similar foundations.

I'm not convinced. First, I'm not convinced because I am convinced that there is no one solution because there is no one problem. It's rather more a case of  how to 'show the fly the way out of the fly bottle' or perhaps unpicking a tangle of wool. So, for example, in my last two posts, I have talked about concrete examples of  the attack on the family in modern TV and the importance of the cosmopolitan as a reflective part of local culture. 'Salvation' at least as far as our natural end is concerned requires unpicking these two knots and a host of others: there is no quick and no single way. (In general, I'm profoundly suspicious of monocausal analyses, whether these are blaming Duns Scotus or Vatican II or whatever.)

Secondly, I'm not quite sure what the Benedict option could be. MacIntyre himself is suitably agnostic:

We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another -doubtless very different- St Benedict.

In the context of his work, I've always taken MacIntyre's own message to be primarily about ensuring the integrity of intellectual traditions. Since modern liberalism is, for MacIntyre, a sort of Mad Max bricolage of philosophies that once made sense, but have since been forced together into shoddy verbal contraptions that rely on brute willpower for their survival, the aim should be to establish (in particular) Catholic educational institutions that teach the integrity of the Thomist tradition rather than simply reproduce the secular mess. (A PDF of an article by him on this is downloadable here.) Certainly, if we are looking at anything close to the historical Benedict, we are looking at the establishment of reservoirs, from which surrounding populations can be watered: a monastery or a university still has to exists in a surrounding culture. Historically, the Benedict option coexisted with (say) a Charlemagne or an Alfred option: some deployment of royal force both to support the monastery's existence and to ensure its influence. You might, I suppose, argue for a dhimmitude option, in which Christians become a barely tolerated minority in a secular state, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't sound very attractive (even if the reality in some places may well end up rather like that).

Well, what's my alternative? Again, let me make it clear: I don't have one. But that is because I am a limited human being with limited knowledge and sensibility: I am not a Moses. I am still less Christ. Even St Benedict didn't have the answer. None of us have to provide the answer or the analysis. Find what you can think of doing and do it. If you can found an Amish like community of Catholics, do so. Certainly, make sure that you pass on Catholicism as far as you can to your own children. Write books. Pray. Fume quietly. None of this will be enough, but each knot at least chewed at will bring us closer to the unravelling.

But let me be slightly more useful and suggest two strategies that I haven't seen suggested. First, there is the Aesopian Catholic. (I owe this thought to my reading of Melzer on Strauss which I hope to come back to.) Learn how to speak so that the surrounding culture leaves you alone but your associates understand you. Become cunning in the same way that dissidents in the USSR became cunning. Live publicly but esoterically. Second, become a Catholic cosmopolitan. Whatever your local circumstances, live intellectually (and really) in the Catholic cosmos. Read foreign Catholic publications. Absorb Catholic culture. Learn Latin if you can. Improve your Romance languages (how many of us learned no French at school?) and follow Catholic thought in that language. (For how many of us have the Cathos of France been a recent inspiration? ) If languages elude you, follow the American Catholic intellectual world. Use MOOCs and online syllabuses to educate yourself. Live as a Catholic cosmopolitan with Catholics across time and space. (Get on that flight to Florence!)

Let me repeat: no one strategy will work and all, moreover, have their dangers. (The Aesopian Catholic will always have a tendency to fall into dishonesty and to allow the dominant culture to rest unchallenged for example.) Those who do possess big cultural guns should use them: there are enough Catholics still in positions of political and cultural importance for us not to abandon that weaponry until we have to. But the rest of us (the guerrilla Catholics perhaps?) must do what we can with pitchforks or at least podcasts.

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.)

Creationism in Scottish schools

I had been trying to keep out of the latest Creationism spat in Scotland. If by 'Creationist' you mean, 'God created everything in 4004 BC in six days', then it's not really a Catholic thing, mainly because reason plays too important a part in Catholic understandings of salvation for such a version of Creationism to sit easily within the Church. Of course, Catholics are creationist if you mean, 'Did God create the Universe?'. But between those two poles there are a variety of positions, and unpicking them is a tricky matter. Moreover, there's a sort of tribal loyalty: I like David Robertson and John Mason MSP who have been prominent on the 'pro-Creationist' side and I've been called a homophobic bigot enough times by supporters of the Scottish Secular Society (SSS) to feel a little out of sorts with that side. So, to be honest, I've rather felt that it's too much work to think about, not really my fight, and I'm happy to leave it to others to deal with. At the weekend, however, I got (by accident more than anything else) into a Twitter exchange with the SSS twitter account which forced me to think about the issue a bit more than I had. It was, I confess, an extremely civilized exchange, even friendly, so thank you to whoever was on the other side of the SSS account!

Anyway, the situation (as I understand it) stands something like this. John Mason MSP has introduced a motion into the Scottish Parliament:

That the Parliament notes that South Lanarkshire Council has issued guidance concerning the appointment and input of chaplains and religious organisations in schools; understands that some people believe that God created the world in six days, some people believe that God created the world over a longer period of time and some people believe that the world came about without anyone creating it; considers that none of these positions can be proved or disproved by science and all are valid beliefs for people to hold, and further considers that children in Scotland’s schools should be aware of all of these different belief systems. [Motion S4M-12149 here.]

This is in direct response to South Lanarkshire's guidance (David Robertson's comment here) and a previous attempt by the SSS to introduce a ban on creationism in Scottish school via a petition (which was rejected by Parliament). The petition wording was:

Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to issue official guidance to bar the presentation in Scottish publicly funded schools of separate creation and of Young Earth doctrines as viable alternatives to the established science of evolution, common descent, and deep time. [Details here.]

The definition of  'creationism' used in the petition is glossed by the background information given to the petition as:

‘Creationism’ here means any doctrine or theory which holds that natural biological processes cannot account for the history, diversity, and complexity of life on earth and therefore rejects the scientific theory of evolution. Pupils should also be taught about the age of the Earth on the basis of established science, and not presented with Young Earth scenarios as credible alternatives.

This guidance is not intended to inhibit discussion of beliefs about the origins of the Earth and living things, such as creationism, in Religious Education and other cultural studies, as long as they are not presented as valid alternatives to established science.

Creationism here means the separate creation of different living kinds. No objection is being raised to discussion of the overall belief in God as the ultimate creator. Similarly, by Intelligent Design we mean the oft-refuted claim that natural processes cannot generate the kind of new information required for evolution. This claim should be distinguished from the respectable philosophical position that sees the operation of the Universe as a whole as the working of Providence.

And:

Pupils must be taught about evolution as firmly based science, and not presented with ‘creationism’ as scientific fact or as a valid alternative to evolution.


OK. Ducks laid out in a line. Where to start?

I think it's perfectly reasonable that science lessons deal with 'established science'. That's a slightly slippery phrase, but I'm perfectly happy to think of it as being roughly equivalent to Kuhn's 'normal science' -ie (roughly) the sort of intellectual framework professional scientists work within at the current time. That means that children should be taught in lessons that assume the earth is a lot older than 6000 years and that the prime driver of the 'history, diversity and complexity of life' is evolution through natural selection. School science should reflect (roughly) university science: it should be part of a process of apprenticeship that allows children to enter into the adult professional world of scientists.

A few things follow from this. Curricula should be set (in substance) by relevant experts and not by politicians. (This applies to history as much as biology.) There might be a limited role for government, but it is essentially subsidiary to that of professional academics. (So although I wouldn't rule out some sort of legal ban on this-or-that position in a science lesson, I'd want to be a) absolutely convinced that there was a real problem to be addressed rather than just a potential problem; and b) I'd want to make sure that the inevitable clumsiness of law and bureaucracy didn't get in the way of the educational prudentia -ie letting teachers exercise their judgment.)

I don't see anything in John Mason's motion that contradicts my view on this: he is not (in any clear way at least) demanding creationism in science lessons. (David Robertson commented on the SSS petition: 'No MSP has been defending creationism within science classes in any Scottish school.' That was written before John Mason's intervention, but I'd be amazed if that motion intended a change to that position.)

So I'd broadly agree with the SSS that 'creationism' shouldn't be taught within science lessons, but disagree that this needs specific legal action: as the Scottish Government argued, "The evidence available suggests that guidance on these matters is unnecessary."

But what about outwith science lessons? The problem here is that teaching about creationism is not just something that might be discussed outside science lessons, but is something that probably must be discussed. Imagine a situation where 'God created everything in six days in 4004BC' were assumed to be false in science lessons, but nothing was said about the wider implications of this. If you have pupils entering the schools from a background that does accept such a creationist view, you'd almost certainly end up with a modern version of the 'two truths' approach: 'This is what you need to say in Higher exams; this is what we believe to be true.' (There appears to be anecdotal evidence of this already happening.) Unless, somewhere in education, the place of science in truth gathering is addressed, then the paradoxical result is that science is undermined: it becomes a dead letter, followed to pass exams, but of no interest in a fuller understanding of the universe.

Now, I suppose there's an argument that this issue -one of the philosophy of science rather than normal science- should be addressed in science classes. Frankly, I think this is nuts. Philosophy of science is difficult enough without cramming it into (say) a Higher class in biology: at best, it would be simplistic; at worse, it might actually be counterproductive by making the position stated clearly ridiculous. (One imagines something at worst like Dawkins on one of his twitter rants.) On the other hand, I suspect it is equally nuts to expect something like a separate undergraduate class in the philosophy of science to take place in a school environment (the nature of science is highly contested and difficult; most secondary school teachers simply don't have the ability to teach it; there isn't enough time in the curriculum). It certainly won't do to impose a highly simplistic scientistic framework on this complex area such as that envisaged by the SSS. For example, would discussions such as Nagel's be banned from reflection? (The prospect of that intellectual powerhouse that is Holyrood pronouncing on some of the most difficult areas of philosophy is, shall we say, troubling...)

So what's left? I suspect the answer to this is that what's left is unsatisfactory: it's inevitable that secondary schools students leave school with a pretty inadequate grasp of epistemology and the philosophy of science. (They will also lack a sure grounding in Akkadian.) What they should be left with is a sense of unease and possibility: that if they come from a fideist, young earth background, they should be aware that the preponderance of educated thought is against them; that if they come from a New Atheist background, they should be aware how difficult these issues actually are.

I pretty much agree with John Mason's motion. I don't agree with: '...none of these positions can be proved or disproved by science and all are valid beliefs for people to hold.' I think that (eg) young earth creationism is disproved by science and is only 'valid' to the extent that people should be free to believe nonsense. But actually to show that is far trickier than the SSS seem to think and isn't something that I'd expect secondary schools to be able to do. The problem here is that schools can only reflect wider society. If wider society (or a minority group) believes nonsense, there is only a limited amount that can be done to remove that nonsense with the schools system, and the imposition of views by authority is actually counterproductive if the aim is to produce children who think critically.

Happy birthday, Cezanne. (Catholic.)

There are a great many things I don't like about blogging (the sound of my own voice -or whatever the correct digital, visual equivalent is- rambling on in feeble imitation of professional commentators can be just as grating for me as it is for you, dear reader), but one of the things I do like is the possibility of bringing out the interplay of the personal and the academic. I am, for example, quite happy to admit that, on most (all?) subjects, I write having entered in medias res and will stop writing ex mediis rebus: we always stand a little unsure of the dimensions of the room we inhabit and we never quite get a firm sense of the contents of that room. (But that doesn't stop us talking. Oh Lord, not in the slightest.)

And so, Cezanne. Brought up in a lower middle class, pretty philistine home, we just didn't do the visual arts. (Actually, I'm not sure we did much of anything except TV.) And not having any natural abilities in that area, I just didn't pay much attention to painting and the like until undergraduate courses on aesthetics forced me to engage. I remain pretty ignorant, not really even knowing what I like. But as I get older, I find the enjoyment of paintings, the sensual enjoyment of seeing, incredibly satisfying. I suppose this is all to say I dabble. And Cezanne, for a variety of reasons, is one of those painters I find most satisfying to dabble in...

When I realized that today was Cezanne's birthday, I turned to the Alex Danchev biography of Cezanne to find something helpful to tweet. And knowing that Cezanne was a daily mass goer, I thought I'd probably say something about that. So to Danchev's index. Nothing. Absolutely nothing on Catholicism. Freud, of course. Heidegger. Hegel. Even Billy Whitelaw. But nothing under 'Catholicism' or 'Mass' or 'God' or 'Christ' and so on. I did (by dint of extensive flipping) find the following exchange (p291) where Danchev contrasts his understanding of Cezanne with that of earlier biographers:

It constructs a helpless, almost childlike Cezanne in his dotage, a political simpleton, a preconscious pilgrim, clinging to le bon droit in all its forms -the Church, the State, the Army -even the Boers...It is tone deaf, to wit and to wisdom. 'I'm going to get my helping of the Middle Ages,' he would whisper, mischievously, near the font. 'To be a Catholic,' he told his son, near the end, 'I think one has to be devoid of all sense of fairness, but to keep an eye on one's own interests.'

And that, so far as I can see, is that: one paragraph exemplifying as much as noting a tone deafness to wit and to wisdom. (If you can't imagine all sorts of ways in which a devout Catholic might mischievously speak thus without stopping being a devout Catholic...) The reviews of the book (the Guardian here; Telegraph here; Waldemar Januszczak here) neither mention religion (which suggests that I'm not missing something in the biography) nor suggest that this is a failing (which suggests that Danchev is not atypical).

All this is particularly strange in that Cezanne is quite clearly an artist who is engaging in that very Catholic thing of trying to find form in the world: a form, not with the accretions of tradition or French bourgeois seeing, but 'the dearest freshness deep down things'. And coupled with a purification of the see-er, we have almost a perfect case study of Catholic art and the encounter of French Catholicism with modernity. (I look up Bernanos, Peguy. They're not there either. Weil gets a one line mention -but a throwaway (and certainly no reference to her religion).)

Googling a little more, I find this essay by Patrick Reyntiens. Reassured to notice that I'm not going mad in noticing something is a little odd here:

An aspect of Cezanne's personal life not much harped upon is that he was a staunch Catholic. He was a daily Mass-goer. Such aberrations are best left unemphasised in the structure of the myth of the Modern Movement. But it explains a great deal. Cezanne's religion, however conventional it may or may not have been, constituted the prime basis for his sense of identity, stability and personal probity. This in turn fuelled his obsession with painting to heroic lengths.

None of this matters much to Catholics, at least educated ones. I guess most of us are used to suspecting the airbrushing that goes on in cultural history (my children tease me for my adding, when possible, 'He's a Catholic' to any passing description of this or that celebrity) and can look (search) past it. But if you enter this world in medias res, unless you're a Catholic on the look out for lacunae, you find yourself in a world that has been scraped of its Catholicism in the same way that Protestant reformers scraped our churches of paintings and colour; and, unless you have it continually pointed out to you, you start to think that the normal state of the world is this barren remnant, smashed ruins being mistaken for the complete original. Cezanne's a small, relatively insignificant case study of that secularization, which is not simply an absence, but an act of positive violence, a distortion of what our Lebenswelt, the cultural environment we inhabit, is really like.

Happy birthday to Paul Cezanne. Requiescat in pace.