Shameless speech and the conservative disadvantage

                                            
                                                                      A pundit

There is a sort of Darwinian selection in punditry and indeed academia: those who are too shy or self conscious or simply aware of the strawfulness of their speech will select themselves out of the struggle for publicity, whilst those who lack this basic sense of shame will proclaim their latest thoughts with abandon.

Shame at one's own inadequacies is perhaps only one of a cluster of selective disadvantages that gather around the area of public speech. I remember, for example, thinking while in the middle of a period of postgraduate study that an academic apprenticeship was rather like accustoming oneself to gavage: learning to suppress the natural gag reflex in the face of amounts, or detail or type of work was essential to achieving the academic perspective. Certainly, entry into politics seems to require some highly abnormal personality traits.

But why should conservatives (and I mean by this as normal in this blog the sort of Burkean/Kirkian conservative rather than an adherent of one of the Conservative political machines such as the GOP or indeed the Conservative Party) suffer particularly from this? In politics, the conservative emphasis on the 'little platoons' means that any attempt to articulate their importance in party politics requires individuals to devote all their energies to a field which, ex hypothesi, they think of little importance. A religious sense, a sense which I grow more and more convinced is essential to conservative thought, pushes one to regard the natural end of human life as only of secondary importance to the supernatural end. Moreover the pursuit of personal virtue forces one to confront the shabbiness of one's own contributions sub specie aeterna. Simply a sense of politeness is a grave disadvantage in much contemporary public life.

The thought that conservative values (or perhaps simply civilised values) are selecting themselves out of the market of ideas is one that regularly strikes me. But here are two recent occasions which prompted such reflection. The first was Jordan Peterson's interview with Cathy Newman. Although I thought Newman came off particularly badly in this interview, I don't think Peterson came out of it well either. More precisely, Peterson himself in the interview seemed to endorse the aggressive contest of ideas that the interview itself embodied: whatever else Newman and Peterson disagreed on, they seemed to agree on the fact that disagreeableness (aka 'assertiveness') was a key feature of modern intellectual and social success. This is probably true as a description of modern Western society. It is certainly not  true of all societies (I found myself contrasting Confucian ideas of the junzi with the video while watching it) and not even of our own not so very long ago ('the gentleman').

The other occasion was in this account of the conductor Carlos Kleiber:

In a 2012 documentary, Traces To Nowhere (also the title of the second episode of the first series of Twin Peaks, Lynch fans), it’s revealed by his sister Veronika that Kleiber’s “bedside book” was the Zhuangzi, an ancient text written by Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou. He was particularly consumed by one phrase: “Leave no trace,” or, to quote the line in full, “The Perfect man leaves no traces of his conduct.” In the same film, German mezzo-soprano Brigitte Fassbaender says he gave her a book, probably written by an Indian guru (he’d intentionally ripped off the cover), throughout which he’d underlined many passages, including: “We all know the fearsome emptiness lurking behind the way we live. Convictions give life the content we desire. Work becomes an indispensable drug. For its sake we accept all the depravations and disadvantages, and every illusion is welcome.”

The causality behind the current Western attraction to shameless speech is probably complex. Certainly capitalism with its tendency to convert all goods to the salable, democracy with its emphasis on contest and debate, and social media with the person as a brand are all involved in the mix somewhere. The fact that we do in fact live thus is no reason to believe that in the long term at least we have to and no reason that we should. But certainly, while we do live in such an eristic society, those who are committed to living otherwise will tend to find that they have excluded themselves from contributing to a debate that might be the only way to change it.

Losing my religion...?

No, don't worry (or rejoice). Not me, but the Orthodox philosopher Nick Trakakis (his essay here. Catholic response here. Orthodox response here.)

Trakakis' essay raises a lot of specific issues regarding Orthodoxy and traditional Christianity which, although I wouldn't want to dismiss, seem rather less fundamental than his dismissal of institutionalised religion per se as in tension with the philosophical life:

Part of the reason for Heidegger's separation of philosophy and theology lies in his view that philosophy is more radical in nature than theology. Theology, on this picture, does not allow for radical or genuine questioning: if we start from a position of faith, then our questioning or seeking begins by already having found what it searches - namely, God. Dominique Janicaud, in his criticism of the recent theological turn in French phenomenology, made a similar point: "The dice are loaded and choices made; faith rises majestically in the background."

Philosophy, by contrast, must consist in honest questioning, really following inquiry or evidence wherever it leads. The kind of thinking that has traditionally been regarded as integral to philosophy demands deep and searching questioning and a restless and perhaps even endless exploring, but without knowing where such wondering and meandering will lead (so as not to prejudice the outcome). It is what Heidegger envisioned as a type of thinking that is always underway, travelling "off the beaten track" onto bypaths and even dead-ends, but with no predetermined end in sight.

If we wish to grapple with the ultimate questions of life and death in novel, interesting and fruitful ways, a creative and adventurous spirit is required, one that is prepared to occasionally depart from the conventional and familiar in order to freely roam on roads less travelled, imaginatively constructing speculative theories and experimenting with diverse myths, models and metaphors of, for example, God and world.

It's a position that I've often come across. Religion is about accepting answers while philosophy/rationality etc is about an open ended inquiry which leads who knows where. The closedness of religion is essentially in tension with the openness of philosophy.

It's difficult to know where to start with this. And perhaps that's the first thing to say: it's a deceptively simple claim which really isn't very simple at all. What is philosophy? What is religion? (Are these questions demanding a descriptive answer - 'This is what my experience of Orthodoxy is like' or a normative one -'This is what Orthodoxy should be'?) Does philosophy automatically trump religion? Why? And so on. Reading some of the comments both in Trakakis' essay but particularly those in the combox, I was reminded of the chapter in Newman's Loss and Gain where the prospective Catholic convert is beset by visits from various crackpots all claiming to have the answer to life (nowadays of course neatly expressed on a website).

There is a truth here, one which you find roughly sketched both in Plotinus' claim that life is the 'flight of the alone to the alone' or the existentialists' claim that existence precedes essence, that we are all, inevitably, left in the position of trying to make sense of it all. (To borrow from Trump, I have some sympathy with the general desire just to stop everything 'until we've figured out what the hell's going on'. Unfortunately, we can't.) Even if some sort of radical philosophical rootlessness was the correct stance for PhD educated philosophers, where would that leave the rest of us? Wouldn't we have to trust some sort of academic authority while we earn our daily crust? Wouldn't some sense of the limited nature of our reason and the need to rely on something pre-digested by the smarter or more knowledgeable or simply more leisured be part of what figuring out what the hell's going on is like for most of humanity?

But let's consign the lived reality of most people's search for meaning to the dustbin: what about the purported wise? Shouldn't we remain open to truth in a way that religion closes down? Again, I think there's a rough truth here which is that intellectual exploration does have to be free from extraneous pressures: the search for truth should not be restricted by (eg) the State (and that I take it is the reasoning behind Dignitatis humanae). But that is hardly what Trakakis can mean. He is free to leave Orthodoxy. I am free to leave Catholicism. Nothing will happen except that we have something slightly more exciting than usual for an audience to read about. Moreover, every reflective religious believer is aware, particularly a convert such as myself, that there is in principle the possibility of radical (and unexpected) religious change simply because it has happened  before. Atheist teenage me didn't expect to become a Catholic. Middle aged Catholic me doesn't expect to become a Dawkinsian. But it might happen. Indeed, it should happen if I can no longer stay within a particular institution without sacrificing (again in rough terms) my integrity. There is a point at which change is required, even though specifying that point precisely is not a straightforward matter. (Again, even philosophers have to reckon with the restricted nature of their reasoning. At what point does a temporary local difficulty in one's institutional commitments become the necessity for change?)

All of us find ourselves with commitments and the need for decisions which close down or channel our lives. (The slightly waspish me might suggest that Trakakis might be in greater danger to his intellectual integrity from continental philosophy and the iron laws of the Western academy than he is from Orthodoxy.) There is the detailed, Somme like struggle to answer those specific points that might begin to persuade someone that Christianity is untenable. That simply requires spadework and detailed argument and both Trakakis and I know well enough how these arguments go and go on. But there is the meta-argument about where, while we wait for death, we are better off living out our lives of confusion and search.

To become personal, my conversion to Christianity (initially Episcopalianism and then Catholicism) was intellectually at least affected by at least two broad issues. First, I was plunged into a great deal of Greek philosophy. This lead to a great many intellectual obsessions, but three in particular struck home. One was the strong sense in Plato of the transcendent, of something above and better that beckoned to us. (You can see this both in the Ideas and in the daimon of Socrates.) There is an ethical seriousness about the intellectual, philosophical quest that, frankly, is often better modelled in religious communities than in the Western academy. Secondly, there is the horizon of philosophy in myth and figurative language: Plato frequently stops and goes beyond dialectic to say something that is unsayable. Finally, there is the perennial question of Plato and Aristotle (and Strauss): the relationship between the City and Man (or the community and the person if you prefer). Philosophy exists in a city: how does it live there and how does it engage with that city? Trakakis seems from that perspective to have opted not for the life of the unfettered mind, but for life simply in a different sort of city from that of the Orthodox church. Has he applied the same degree of critical reflection to the exercise of power in that City as he has to the exercise of power in the Orthodox Church? To cut that long story short, I found (and find) those obsessions better answered in the Catholic Church than I do elsewhere. It is a better sort of community to live in while waiting to die. It is a better sort of community to live in whilst pursuing truth, goodness and beauty. To the extent that Foucauldian power inevitably surges through its veins, it seems to me to be better used for the flourishing of its members than the same unavoidable power when surging through the institutions outwith it.

The second aspect of my conversion was having children. Now this might not seem a very philosophical reason for change, but I think it was. For the first time in my life, I was presented with the need to articulate and to persuade someone else. (Academic teaching isn't the same:there isn't the same desperate ethical need to get it right rather than just to explore. Moreover, as a father, one is not producing adult philosophers (who arguably themselves  have a personal responsibility to get it right) but people who are, at least for eighteen years, radically dependent on your lead and, thereafter, quite possibly going to be dependent 'ordinary folk' rather than the autonomous wise.) What does one say to the next generation while, before your eyes, time is running out to say it? In many ways, this is just a dramatic intensification of the preceding aspect: given that someone vulnerable and to whom you have a duty of care is dependent on your getting those answers right, you are forced to think and act much much more seriously. But it is also that most characteristically Greek philosophical question of how do you pass on the good life to the next generation. And the answer, even for the philosophical life, is not itself by philosophy. I don't know whether Trakakis is a parent or not. (To the extent that he reaches people outwith the academy, let alone within it, he is certainly in loco parentis.)  But how does one prepare the ground for philosophical flourishing let alone any other kind? What sort of community is the best preparation (and this is the really tough one) how does one achieve it as a matter of fact, now, before your child reaches eighteen and gets sucked into the void of modernity?

[Just rereading the above, the one issue I don't think I've tackled adequately is the phenomenology of the freedom of search in the Church  (ie what it feels like). Here, I think the abandonment of the sharp distinction between natural reason and revelation in much modern Catholic theology is unhelpful. Qua philosopher, all bets are off. Of course, I expect (based on previous reasoning) to approach certain issues in certain ways. But it is perfectly possible (I keep an open mind) that I will find myself outargued or persuaded to a different conclusion. That is the freedom of philosophy: an intellectual suspension of commitments and a willingness to follow the arguments. But at the same time, as a human being and Catholic, I am subject to certain commitments which may or may not be in tension with the free deliberations of philosophy. Moreover, qua philosopher, I am aware of how difficult these issues are and that a momentary inability to see a way forward in an expected direction is not the final conclusion. All I can say is that, up till now, I have never found an issue in philosophy which provides a clear stumbling block for my Catholicism (as opposed to a difficulty of which there are many) and have found many issues where my Catholicism has helped illuminate philosophical issues. As I said above, that might change. But so far as I can see at the moment, given what I know and given a fairly thorough going over the key issues, that is unlikely to happen.

I also think that (judging from purely external observation) there is something here that needs to be said about the intellectual life within Orthodoxy rather than in Catholicism. I have no wish to indulge in Orthodox bashing here, but it's only fair to record that one of the reasons why I became Catholic rather than Orthodox and remain so (despite occasional bouts of finding myself in angustiis) is the apparent greater openness and philosophical emphasis within Catholicism. Anyway, another issue for another day. As partial penance for this latter observation, I would point you in the direction of Turning East a volume of essays explaining their reasons for conversion from philosophers who became Orthodox Christians.]

Nick Cohen and the atheist enlightenment

Nick Cohen, I think it would be fair to say, has a 'thing' about religion and more specifically Catholicism. Well, fair enough: we all should have a hobby. But his latest jeremiad anent the papacy is worth looking at in more detail as it typifies the sloganizing of much New Atheism as well as a more general problem in modern public debate.

Cohen attacks the pope (or more recently the Osservatore Romano) for daring to criticize Charlie Hebdo.

They were bawling at the Parisian dead before their graves were dug and the loudest bawls came from Pope Francis. Far too few people can see that he is now at the centre of two malign forms of western self-deception. Liberals reveal their absence of principle by treating him as His Progressive Holiness. Equally smug conservatives use him to justify the unearned notion of western religious superiority over other faiths.
[...]
 the true Judaeo-Christian tradition was the 1,600-year tradition of Christians murdering Jews. What civilisation Judaism and Christianity possess came from the outside. They did not reform themselves, which is why calls for a Muslim reformation so spectacularly miss the point. Civilisation came from the battering that religion took from the Enlightenment, from sceptics, scientists, mockers and philosophers, who destroyed their myths and exposed the immorality of their taboos.

Now I actually agree with him in criticizing, 'Cultural conservatives [who] do not want to be reminded that there is no Islamist crime so great the Judaeo-Christian tradition did not once authorise it.' Most of the criticisms of Islam as in some way obviously worse than all forms of Christianity or Judaism strike me as generally misplaced. Islam may not be the religion of peace, but then neither (in straightforward ways) are Christianity or Judaism. Equally, the bloody legacy of the Enlightenment in the French Revolution and Napoleon, let alone in more recent butchery such as Marxism shouldn't be overlooked. Humanity is the problem.

The pope, on any reasonable assessment, is simply reflecting on how people with different views can live together in peace. He's probably right in thinking that brutally caricaturing others' beliefs isn't going to be helpful. (And if he's not, then he might be forgiven for making a plausible mistake.) But Cohen seems to believe that the papacy is at the heart of the problem and rests his case on Kant's essay, 'What is Enlightenment?' (English translation here.)

Unfortunately, Cohen doesn't seem to have actually read the essay or perhaps read it very well. It is not, first of all, a simplistic plea for absolute freedom of speech, let alone absolute freedom of drawing crass caricatures.

We find restrictions on freedom everywhere. But which restriction is harmful to enlightenment? Which restriction is innocent, and which advances enlightenment? I reply: the public use of one's reason must be free at all times, and this alone can bring enlightenment to mankind.
On the other hand, the private use of reason may frequently be narrowly restricted without especially hindering the progress of enlightenment. By "public use of one's reason" I mean that use which a man, as scholar, makes of it before the reading public. I call "private use" that use which a man makes of his reason in a civic post that has been entrusted to him.

To sum up: Kant is concerned not with attack cartoons, but with scholars using reason before a reading public. Moreover, the use of reason outwith this narrowly defined range 'may frequently be narrowly restricted'. In addition, the essay is a plea for an enlightened despot:

But only the man who is himself enlightened, who is not afraid of shadows, and who commands at the same time a well disciplined and numerous army as guarantor of public peace--only he can say what [the sovereign of] a free state cannot dare to say: "Argue as much as you like, and about what you like, but obey!" Thus we observe here as elsewhere in human affairs, in which almost everything is paradoxical, a surprising and unexpected course of events: a large degree of civic freedom appears to be of advantage to the intellectual freedom of the people, yet at the same time it establishes insurmountable barriers. A lesser degree of civic freedom, however, creates room to let that free spirit expand to the limits of its capacity.

Cohen of course notes none of this, not even questioning the oddity of taking but one document as summing up all of the rich variety of that complex cultural event, the Enlightenment. It's worth noting the marginality of the essay and its context. David Hume had completed publishing the Treatise of Human Nature some forty four years before and was eight years in the grave. As noted by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Only late in the development of the German Enlightenment, when the Enlightenment was near its end, does the movement become self-reflective; the question of “What is Enlightenment?” is debated in pamphlets and journals.

Nevertheless, the essay, despite its late date and its German provincialism is taken as a symbol of the Enlightenment. And thus a mere contribution to a debate is turned into an essence; an essay rich in nuance and problematic detail into a slogan.

It's also not all clear what the pope has done wrong, even if we take Kant at Cohen's word. He has not called so far as I can see for an legal restriction: he seems simply lamented a lack of prudence in the exercise of a right. If free debate is an 'Enlightenment Value', is the pope wrong to exercise that right to criticize? Moreover, Catholicism might well be argued to have made its peace with the central Enlightenment value of freedom of thought at Vatican II and especially in Dignitatis humanae . No one has to listen to the pope. No one (not even Catholics) is going to be burned at the stake for thinking him wrong headed. Nothing he says seems to regret the passing of the days when this was possible. (I assume that Cohen on the other hand is still all in favour of the guillotine and the crushing of the Vendee. No? Why not?)

It's an oddity that those who proclaim most loudly their adherence to reason in the modern world are sometimes some of the most irrational. Instead of engaging with the thought of great minds to ascertain how balance can be struck between competing values, they substitute slogans. Instead of treating this or that figure or view as admirable, but imperfect, they turn writers and their writings into emblems to be paraded around rather than critically read. Instead of dealing with what people actually say and think, they parrot prejudices. Or as Kant puts it:

That shows how pernicious it is to implant prejudices: they will eventually revenge themselves upon their authors or their authors' descendants. Therefore, a public can achieve enlightenment only slowly. A revolution may bring about the end of a personal despotism or of avaricious tyrannical oppression, but never a true reform of modes of thought. New prejudices will serve, in place of the old, as guide lines for the unthinking multitude.

The local and the cosmopolitan

I'm not going to say anything specifically about the current drive in the USA to get rid of the Confederate Battle flag: there's too much in that rich soup of racism and local pride for an unwary and ignorant foreigner to choke on.

But combined with my current obsession with the history of Sanskrit cosmopolitanism in Language of the Gods in the World of Men, there is something more general to be said about the interaction between the local and the cosmopolitan. If one takes a broadly Burkean view of society and tradition (so, roughly, the idea that politics should be about preservation of a tradition and change about an organic development of that tradition), one is left with the worry about what happens if it seems that one's tradition is shot through with some essential corruption. (So here, putting aside any question of the truth of the claim, the assertion that the cultural traditions of the South are shot through with racism and nostalgia for slavery.)

Any worthwhile tradition has within it critical and reflective resources. So the South produces (eg) writers such as Walker Percy who is both Southern to the roots, and yet able to take (some sort of) critical stand on the neuralgic issues of race and slavery. It's hard to imagine, given human contrarianism, any large, literate region not throwing up at least some dissident voices. But the Catholic tradition does rather more than this: it institutionalizes those critiques as practices. Thus, as well as the (national) State, you have the transnational Church and the transnational Academy, each realised within a complex exchange of personnel and an international language (Latin). (This general sort of pattern carries on after a fashion well into (Protestant) modernity.)

Catholic nationalism should, therefore, carry within itself not just the theoretical possibility of an internal organic critique, but the internalisation of an external, radical critique: localism is always in a realised tension with cosmopolitanism and not just a theoretical one. Only when (or to the extent that) the nation state hermetically seals itself (by abandoning transnational religion, language and universities) is this internalisation of the external abandoned and reflection turned in on itself.

Localism without the embeddedness of a cosmopolitan critique is liable to grow dumb and dangerous. Cosmopolitanism without the local is liable to grow imperious and theoretical. So where does that leave the modern nation?

Modern cosmoplitanism is perhaps most obvious as Americanism. The language of cosmopolitanism is English. The cultural artefacts that carry cosmopolitanism are primarily Hollywood films and US TV. Putting aside the case of non-English speaking nations, Anglophone countries such as Scotland face a blurring of the local and the cosmopolitan: our values become simply those of every other liberal Anglophone progressive.


We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.


Indeed, modern Scottish progressive nationalism seems to have created a nationalism that, unlike previous ones, is characterised by a revolt against history, an identification of the Past Scotland as the very thing to be sloughed off in favour of a cosmopolitan future. (Something similar might be said of the revolt of modern progressive Ireland against De Valera and comely maidens.) But in doing so, it loses the tension required for an internal critique: it becomes solely a city of monoglottal speech, created by words, but not tested by local traditions. Moreover, it isn't a very deep cosmopolitanism, but one founded on soap operas and thrillers.

And so one surveys possibilities, (Others are available.) The ideal of a rich local tradition, internalising within itself practices which bring in a rich cosmopolitanism and the possibility of a more than organic critique. Or a hermetically sealed culture, not entirely unable to change, but trapped essentially within itself. Or a cosmopolitanism simply of words, free floating, untested by reality or other speech, windy.

Kant vs the Qur'an

                                         Kant vs the Qur'an: you decide


I've always been slightly worried in agreeing with Brendan O'Neill. He is (for example) one of the few commentators to note how appallingly bad same sex 'marriage' arguments are without coming from a Christian point of view. And on a number of issues, I and fellow Catholics have often found ourselves cheering the lad on: 'Go on, Brendan! You tell them!' I've always been slightly uneasy though, not being quite sure whether he is just a genuinely free thinker content to follow the arguments where they go, a clickbait merchant relying on contrarian views to generate, well, views, or some sort of cunning Commie who wants to suck the desperate sad loons like myself in, where, upon waking up, we'll find ourselves living in a caravan and selling copies of the Trotsky Newsletter round social housing ghettos.

Anyway, bit of a relief then to find him talking the sort of rubbish I can disagree with. Much more the natural order of things. In an article entitled, 'Why won’t we tell students that Kant is better than the Koran?' (here) he calls out university teachers for not simply telling students, well, what it says in the title...

Given that their universities won’t stand up for Kant or Mill or the superiority of rationalism over superstition, and considering their identities have been ringfenced from ridicule by a whole host of censorious slurs, is it any wonder some students flirt with non-academic, non-Western ideas? The academy implicitly invites them to, by sending the message that its own values aren’t that great, and it unwittingly encourages them to hold on to their non-academic ideas by safe-spacing them from robust critique.

[...]

We should let everyone speak, including the haters, and we should simultaneously challenge the cult of relativism on campus and strip away every slur that is now used to silence those who criticise superstition or stupidity and who uphold Enlightenment values. We should tell students that, with his call on humanity to grow up, to dare to know, and to use moral reasoning to impact on the world, Kant is worthy of close and serious study. Kant is better than the Koran. And if they cry Islamophobia? Do that thing with your fingers to signify the playing of the world’s smallest violin just for them.


Good fighting talk. Go on, Brendan! You tell them!! But...

First, let's put aside the University of Westminster from where the article which prompted O'Neill's spleen emerged. It's perfectly possible that it's a rubbish university with rubbish teachers. I don't know. But in a wider academic context, I recognize the conversation referred to:

I recall a seminar discussion about Immanuel Kant’s “democratic peace theory,” in which a student wearing a niqab opposed the idea on the grounds that “as a Muslim, I don’t believe in democracy.” Our instructor seemed astonished but did not question the basis of her argument; he simply moved on. I was perplexed, though. Why attend university if you have such a strict belief system that you are unwilling to consider new ideas? And why hadn’t the instructor challenged her? 

So. I've taught Kant. (Not admittedly Kant's Perpetual Peace which I assume is being referred to here.) I've also had students preface their remarks by, 'As a Muslim....' (though not as many as have prefaced their remarks by 'As a Christian...' or 'As a feminist...' or 'As an atheist...' or 'As a gay man..') and then gone on to explain why this or that philosophical position is unacceptable. I think I'm probably good enough at deadpan not show my astonishment (although I have been astonished over the years). I've also sometimes moved on rather than tackle the remark. So I reckon I've probably had more relevant experience in this area that O'Neill, whose response to an outburst of anti-semiticism was to use the hoary old Enlightenment tactic of calling the man a sh*t.

The first thing to remember is that reports of classroom discussions (particularly free flowing ones) are incredibly unreliable: I have been genuinely astonished at what students have thought has been said in such discussions as opposed to my own recollection. But assuming the facts are as stated, there might be any number of reasons why the instructor moved on rather than challenging the view. (Imagine you've got an hour to discuss Kant. How much time do you want to spend refuting Islam for the benefit of one student?) But perhaps more to the point, the challenging of the sort of 'I am an X' remark is pretty commonplace in my experience. You're usually better not calling students 'sh*ts' but trying to get them to set their own beliefs in this or that ideology aside for the moment and try to argue rationally. It's as much about distraction as anything else: 'Well, look, you appreciate that not everyone accepts the Bible/Qur'an/Stonewall as you do, so what might they say without relying on that source?'

I suspect that O'Neill here might retort that this is the sort of lily-livered cowardice that fails to tackle the rot directly: rather than convincing the student that Kant is more important that the Qur'an, the yellow academic sidesteps the issue and allows the student to remain in the position that Kant (at best) is just one more view alongside the Qur'an (and more realistically, just a piffling thought experiment rather than the correct way to see the world). The trouble with this is a) it's impossible; and b) it's a fine example of saloon bar chatter but not really a rigorously academic position.

Let's take a). I don't know how, in an academic debate, you show that 'Kant is better than the Koran'. It's the sort of blithe confidence in the power of reasoning that once made me sure that I could show Christianity is rubbish. Debates do have a role to play in changing people's minds, but perhaps more effective is the institutional sneer: 'You don't really believe in that, surely?' Not exactly quite what we take Enlightenment values to be, but nonetheless, perhaps a realistic example of what they are in practice. Having lots of free speech on a campus won't make any difference: the nuttiest views then just become one more voice in the clamour. (And the institutional sneer doesn't always work either, or at least plenty of Catholics have been through (or even emerged from) the secular Protestant, 'You don't really believe that, do you?' Drink and sex probably are more likely ways of luring people away from a religious background. Now that would be an interesting Prevent strategy...)

Turning to b), the lack of academic rigour in the claim that 'Kant is better than the Koran' really ought to be apparent. Putting aside the tempting alliteration (which I guess this is really what it's about), I suppose this is little more than the claim that the Enlightenment is better than Islam. How is one supposed to assess that sort of claim? Is the university supposed to be turned into some four year balloon debate, in which only one ejectee (an entire culture?) is possible?

I don't always agree with Peter Hitchens but I think his Christian faith does make him seek the truth rather than celebrity. His recent piece is, I think, much closer to the truth:

 As we saw in an interesting poll, these Muslim fellow citizens don’t want to chop our heads off or murder us. They are reasonable, peaceful people who make better neighbours than many indigenous Britons.

But they think differently from us about the world. And they believe in something, which most of us do not. That’s the chief difference between us. And bit by bit, as they become more numerous and find their way into our institutions, helped by their competence, self-possession and sobriety, they will change society into one that suits them.

I don’t see how this process can be stopped now. I sympathise with a lot of their concerns, though I greatly dislike their attitude towards women. Like them, I find our way of life tawdry, immoral and often debauched. I just wish we had found our own British, Christian solution to these problems.

But we turned our back on patriotism and the church long ago. And round about the same time, we opened our borders, so wide that I do not think we will ever be able to close them again.

This thing has happened. We are going to have to try to learn to live with it as best and as kindly as we can, for the alternative is horrible. 

I'm less hostile to immigration and its effects than he is. (The biggest destruction in modern Britain is self-inflected by secularising liberalism.) But putting that aside, the idea that you can just wish away the religion and culture of students by calling them sh*ts or grandly informing them that Kant is better than the Koran is nonsense. I don't quite know what the solution is (although I suspect that MacIntyre's vision of competing institutions teaching from within a deep understanding of a particular tradition coupled with Hitchens' living with this 'as best and kindly as we can' is a far more realistic alternative). But far too much of the response to the perceived 'Muslim problem' is about posturing and fantasies rather than a serious attempt to discuss how people of very different views can live together peacefully.

The cat is on the mat. God is in heaven.

This is going to be one of those 'not quite sure where I'm going on this' ones...

I was flipping through Mark Atherton's Teach Yourself Old English yesterday (don't ask!) when I came across the catchily title Old English poem, Maxims II. (Modern English translation here.) The bit that attracted my attention was this:

A king must be in the hall, bestowing rings

A bear belongs on the heath, old and awe-inspiring. 

A river from the hills must flow flood-gray.

An army must be united, a troop of triumph-tough men. 

Honor must be in an earl; morals, in a man. 

In this world, the woods must bloom with blossoms. 

An embankment must stand green on earth. 

God must be in heaven, judger of deeds. 

A door is necessary for a hall, the wide mouth of the building.

And so on...

Now the point that struck me was that God and his place (heaven) is simply dropped into a long list of things in their own appropriate place: God is just (unselfconsciously) part of a list of things. 

This is (we are told) rank heresy. Perhaps more importantly, it is the sort of thing that a lot of post-modernist theology needs to save us from: that supreme Devil, the modernist heresy. To quote Phillip Blond:

..a world where an account of nature can be given independently of an account of God is for theology a wholly idolatrous domain. Furthermore, this situation appears thoroughly analogous to that of Duns Scotus, who first initiated the thinking that held that an account of God's presence in nature required a prior account of an ontology without God. 

(from the introduction to Post-Secular Philosophy, p.40).

Now, I don't think it will be a surprise to regular readers of this blog that I am rather unsympathetic to Blond's position. (At least to the extent that I can understand it.) The mention of Scotus allows me to link to The Smithy's Radical Orthodoxy and the Underpants Gnomes which is always worth a recommendation. But the general point that Blond is making here is that bad Scotus started the bad modernist habit of setting up a science of Being that then found God within it, rather than doing the proper thing of putting God first and then analysing Being as dependent on him. In case this all sounds a little abstract, the cash value of such a critique appears to be that Christians shouldn't be ashamed of using a thoroughly theological language in the critique of the world, rather than trying to use a secularized language in which God is bracketed out and then (if at all) slotted in as an afterthought.

Which -bad secularized modernist trait- is precisely what seems to be happening in Maxims II. (Eleventh century.) 

Now, of course, this is hardly a knock out blow to Radical Orthodoxy et al. For a start, it's clear that, seeing God as just one more thing in the world is an error: God ain't just a nicer Thor. (See this post for more.) So there is something more that needs to be said to the reader of Maxims II to clear up any misunderstandings that might have resulted. And of course it's perfectly possible that this or that document -although produced in a Christian society- may prove idolatrous or just mistaken. Moreover, even if this 'idolatrous' aspect were found in a poem preceding Scotus, that wouldn't prove that as a matter of philosophy or theology (call it 'abstract university thinking' if you will) it wasn't Scotus (or perhaps Suarez or Wolff or whoever) who started the whole business of secularization there, even if a tendency can be noted elsewhere even earlier.

But. But. When I read in the excellent Artur Rosman's blog (and let me give him a permanent recommendation: he's well worth reading regularly for his engagement with the deeper regions of modern Catholic thought) that the post modern slides into the pre-modern, I can't help think back to the Saxon with his bears and his shield and his rings -and his God. I understand the Saxon's world view. I understand Plato's worldview when he slots God into the Timaeus as one of the three things which make the universe. Is it adequate? No, of course, not: neither on simply philosophical grounds (does anyone think -atheist or theist- that Plato said the last word?) let alone Christian, theological ones.

But when I turn to much post modern theology, I find I have little idea what's happening. (I remember picking up Post-Secular Philosophy back in 1998, flipping through it and putting it back in disgust at the verbiage. I have read much of it since then, but re-reading parts of the introduction just now frankly revived that nausea.) I recognize the rhythms and vocabulary of Lacan or Derrida or Butler, and worry that (quite a lot of the time) there is an existential secularization implicit in the methodology: that rather than referring one's judgments to the Church, one refers the Church to (almost invariably) non-Catholic thinkers. And, in the concrete, that results in an endorsement of same sex partnerships by Blond and his non-Catholicism, whilst (in the case of Tina Beattie) it results in, well, all sorts of (let's say) feminist dissent.

I started by saying I wasn't sure where I was going with this. Well, let's conclude with where I think I've wound up. I don't know what a pre-modern or a modern view is, let alone a post modern view, certainly when it comes to ontology. The idea that there is some great rupture between how (eg) Plato thinks and how we should think is, I suspect, nonsense. The idea that some hapless theologian like Scotus or Occam or Suarez, by a mere slip of the concept, made the modern world is also nonsense. The (pre-modern) Weltanschauung of the Maxims II is more recognizable to me than Phillip Blond's.

And so to finish, let's have that oh-so-famous account from Bede of Edwin's conversion. It is, of course, pre-modern, and therefore completely incomprehensible to the modern understanding of rationality and a Lebenswelt where the Christian God is bracketed out:

This present life of men on earth, in comparison to the time that is unknown to us, is as if you sit with your ealdormen and theigns in the wintertime, and the fire is kindled and the hall warmed, and it should rain and snow and storm outside. There should come a sparrow and it swiftly through-flies that house, comes in through one door and out the other departs. But watch.  In the time that he is inside he is not touched by the storms of winter; but that is the blink of an eye, and the least interval, and he immediately from the winter, into the winter returns. Thus then men’s lives appear as a brief interval; what should there precede, or what should follow after, we do not know. Therefore if this new lore should bring us anything more certain and more suitable, it is worthy that we should follow it.

(Translated by A. L. Reynolds here. With amendments.)

I am so modern, I'm pre-modern.

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.

Blooming buzzing confusion

I'm still not sure if there is a word 'parachronicity' (or even if that is the word I want whether it exists or not). (I had a quick google search which, on a quick scan, threw up one PhD thesis. I suspect that means that it is not exactly colloquial even if it exists.) Anyway, I want a word that suggests the opposite (well, almost the opposite) of synchronicity: the occurrence of two or more events that appear to be meaningfully related but not causally related. So the occurrence of two or more events that don't appear to be meaningfully related (but do, in a way to be discussed, produce meaning).

I've been relatively silent on the blog recently. Mostly, this is simply having a lot of (proper) work to do. But I'd be disingenuous if I didn't admit that the confusion of the Synod on the Family, the aftermath of the Independence referendum, as well as some personal experiences, the month of the dead and the serious illness of a member of the family haven't been in there in the mix. So that's the blooming, buzzing confusion...

And you can add into that the usual fizz of whatever I happen to have come across intellectually in the meantime. Let's pick something I came across this morning:

So where does the opposition to introducing philosophy into the curriculum at GCSE level come from? The people who are afraid of the open discussion of ideas are primarily those who are nervous whether their own faiths and dogmas will not survive scrutiny, and do not want the discomfort of finding that out. But such people are not really interested in one kind of education rather than another. They are the unimaginative forces of reaction and complacency – the enemies of education.

[Simon Blackburn -here]

Now, I don't have immensely strong views on whether there should be a GCSE (or the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence equivalent) in schools. But to the extent I had to give an answer, I'd probably be against it. I'm not against the open discussion of ideas, but (having children of that sort of age myself) I'm aware of the limitations of 'open' discussion at schools. You have the immense difference in power relationship between teacher and student. You have a a social climate which is very open to discussing some 'faiths and dogmas' and very closed to discussing others. You have the difficulty in finding teachers who are sufficiently wise to replace Socrates. You have the ignorance (inevitable) of the young. You have the limited sense of what 'philosophy' involves. (I'd be delighted to think that GCSE philosophy would involve disruptive interventions such as practicals in Iamblichean theurgy or studies of Heidegger's Nazism, but I suspect not...) It's all difficult enough in the context of a full time university degree in philosophy. But squeezed within schools?

I suspect what you'd get (in a phrase I've only just come across but which I intend using a lot) 'philosophes de service': philosophy put at the service of a certain complacent and 'modern'  worldview rather than a true, Socratic search for wisdom. It all reminds me of that ghastly sense which you sometimes (rather too often) get in the Catholic Church that every theologian you meet is a heretic. I wouldn't mind so much if these were intellectuals who sometimes, at least in the dark of the night, wondered if they might, just possibly be wrong. But too often it's some ghastly blend of magisterial phenomenology (compare its near relation, Oxbridge analyticism), a battering of words from which the student emerges dazed and able to be pointed in whatever direction the psychopomp has decided on. Much better, on the whole, I think, to let reality in and let the dearest freshness deep down things speak for itself: Shakespeare, Homer even science can provide a more reliable escape from Plato's Cave for the young...

A moan, then. But the odd thing from all this (and this is the parachronicity) is that I find myself quite unable not to be a Catholic. It's all ghastly, and yet, it's ghastly within that Catholic space. I find myself emotionally confused, and I pray. I find myself intellectually thrown around, and I read Aquinas. I fear death, and I picture myself dying holding onto a crucifix and the image of Our Blessed Mother. These are not so much remedies (in many ways they don't comfort but structure) as bedrock. One discovers, unexpectedly, that, at least for oneself, Charles Taylor is wrong:

Taylor might say: “I am uncertain and sometimes even uneasy about my own religious ‘construal.’ My doubts are only compounded when I realize how easily I could see the world differently. I do have a sense of God’s reality—it seems a compelling explanation of my personal experiences—but I’m not absolutely sure I’m right, especially when I consider the ‘construals’ of non-Christians, some of which are reasonable and which I could adopt without dramatically altering my life.”

[Matthew Rose on Charles Taylor: here]

We enter the world in medias res. We leave it the same way. However well we master a deep intellectual discipline -however well we master philosophy let's say- there is (or ought to be) an incompleteness. So where do we live out that incompleteness? Oh guess...

So 'parachronicity': that clash of events that makes life appear meaningless, and yet, oddly, highlights the meaningful space within which that meaninglessness takes place.

Zizek and Rotherham

I try to avoid talking about Zizek, in part because I have an insufficient grasp of him and his influences such as Lacan to do him justice, but mostly because I can't work out how to get the correct diacritics onto his name. But needs must...

Zizek recently wrote an article for the Guardian on Rotherham in which (roughly) he took the opposite view to mine and argued that we needed to ask difficult questions about patriarchal attitudes to women in Islam rather than (my favoured position) just doing the police and legal work properly in dealing with crime and not worrying too much about the big sociological issues behind the abuse.

The problem according to Zizek:

The crucial feature in all these cases is that the violent act is not a spontaneous outburst of brutal energy that breaks the chains of civilised customs, but something learned, externally imposed, ritualised, part of collective symbolic substance of a community.

To put it simply, this sort of abuse goes to the heart of a culture rather than being an aberration. The solution?


So how are we to deal with all this in our societies? In the debate about Leitkultur (the dominant culture) from a decade ago, conservatives insisted that every state was based on a predominant cultural space, which the members of other cultures who live in the same space should respect. Instead of bemoaning the emergence of a new European racism heralded by such statements, we should turn a critical eye upon ourselves, asking to what extent our own abstract multiculturalism has contributed to this sad state of affairs. If all sides do not share or respect the same civility, then multiculturalism turns into a form of legally regulated mutual ignorance or hatred.

...

This is why a crucial task of those fighting for emancipation today is to move beyond mere respect for others towards a positive emancipatory Leitkultur that alone can sustain an authentic coexistence and immixing of different cultures.

Again, to put it simply, we need to work towards vision of fully emancipated culture within which we can all live. This will, inevitably, involve criticism and correction of unemancipated cultures such as Islam.

Now, I know that many readers have read some of my previous posts on Islam and written me off as an apologist for the religion. And to the extent that I think Islam and Muslims within the UK are being unjustifiably criticized in the media, I suppose I am an apologist. But perhaps my 'apologiae' will become clearer if we take up what Zizek says about Catholicism:


The same perverted social-ritual logic is at work in the cases of paedophilia that continuously shatter the Catholic church: when church representatives insist that these cases, deplorable as they are, are the church’s internal problem, and display great reluctance to collaborate with police in their investigation, they are, in a way, right – the paedophilia of Catholic priests is not something that concerns merely the people who happened to choose the profession of a priest; it is a phenomenon that concerns the Catholic church as such, that is inscribed into its very functioning as a socio-symbolic institution. It does not concern the “private” unconscious of individuals, but the “unconscious” of the institution itself: it is not something that happens because the institution has to accommodate itself to the pathological realities of libidinal life in order to survive, but something that the institution itself needs in order to reproduce itself.

In other words, it is not simply that, for conformist reasons, the church tries to hush up embarrassing paedophilic scandals. In defending itself, the church defends its innermost obscene secret. What this means is that identifying oneself with this secret is a key constituent of the very identity of a Christian priest: if a priest seriously (not just rhetorically) denounces these scandals, he thereby excludes himself from the ecclesiastic community, he is no longer “one of us”.

And we should approach the Rotherham events in exactly the same way...

In other words, just as Catholicism is essentially abusive, so are Pakistani Muslims.

Now I guess at this point, there might be two different reactions.. First, some Catholics may tend to regard Zizek on Catholicism as nonsense, but think he's right about Islam. Or, secondly, secularists and (some) non-Catholic theists will think he's right about both. Well, for me, neither.

When Zizek talks of paedophilia as being a phenomenon 'that is inscribed into its very functioning as a socio-symbolic institution' I struggle to make sense of this. I suspect a) that it is in fact a nonsensical claim (what is the 'unconscious' of an institution?); or at least b) it is a claim that requires long and critical debate before it could be thought plausible let alone true. (Come back and ask me in thirty years when we've all got the requisite work done on Lacan, Hegel and Aquinas.) But very many people are willing to countenance similarly dogmatic claims about Islam after thirty seconds thought: we know that Islam is a violent, patriarchal religion. (I'm afraid that I don't really know what a patriarchal religion is, let alone whether Islam is one of them.)

I conclude from all this what I've been regularly arguing in the past. At best, the sort of theological and sociological arguments about what Islam is or isn't, will take an awfully long time to complete (and frankly, I don't think they are the sort of arguments that ever can be completed: to borrow Bryce Gallie's term, the concepts involved are 'essentially contested'). In short, they are not the sort of arguments that can feed directly into political or legal action. In the meantime, there are all sorts of short term, immediate responses that will help: listen to victims; do evidence gathering properly; don't get complacent about your failings. At worst, the sort of knee jerk reactions to Islam and Muslims in the UK that are being seen at the moment will lead to 'a  positive universal project' that will sweep up everyone in its Black Maria of progress who doesn't buy into every jot and tittle of modish secularism.

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.)