Feeling Squished Into a Mould?

For the systematic theological mind the little stories [in the Bible] too awkwardly resist their easy assimilation into an overall plot. There are too many fragments that seem to lead nowhere and too many that seem to point in opposite directions. It is tempting to take the principle of canonical hermeneutic, that the parts must be understood in the light of the whole, as a reason for simply suppressing the not readily assimilable parts. But these inescapable features of the actual narrative form of Scripture surely have a message in themselves: that the particular has its own integrity that should not be suppressed for the sake of a too readily comprehensible universal.

The Bible does, in some sense, tell an overall story that encompasses all its other contents, but this story is not a sort of straightjacket that reduces all else to a narrowly defined uniformity. It is a story that is hospitable to a considerable diversity and to tensions, challenges and even seeming contradictions of its own claims.

– Richard Bauckham, Bible and Mission: Christian Witness in a Postmodern World (2003), pp. 93-94

As far as I can read our culture, one of the main reasons why many thinking, compassionate and interesting people seem to show no interest in the Christian faith is that they believe that if they were to become Christians, they would be forced into a mould. They feel that all their uniqueness – from the trappings of their life to their most treasured sense of themselves and their personality – will be asked to take a back seat as they are told what in fact they are to believe about themselves.

There is a scrap of truth about this, since Christians do indeed hold that there are important objective things to say about human nature and our relation to God.  But this quote from English theologian Richard Bauckham ought to cause Christians to think twice about how strongly they state these views. It seems to me like there may be more room in the Christian faith for originality and particularity then many, on both sides of the fence, constantly represent.

Book Recommendation: Amsterdam

I’m not much of a fiction reader, but this book is just superb! I read it in a single sitting last week, and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it for more than a few hours. Check it out.

Scripture, Authority, and Faith

An an Evangelical Christian, one of the things I just love to say, is that I take the Bible seriously. One of our great-grandaddy’s, John Stott, once said that this is the hallmark of Evangelical Christianity – the disposition to believe whatever the Bible can be accurately shown to teach, and to allow it to shape your life.

However, this statement has its limits. It is clearly polemical, implying that all other Christians don’t take the Bible seriously. It is also not that illuminating. ‘What exactly would it be to take the Bible seriously?’ you might genuinely ask. Here is one of the more thought-provoking treatments of this question that attempts to fill out the notion.

If we need to say more about the Scriptures than that they are authorized, perhaps we may follow John Webster in speaking of their ’sanctification’ for their work. That means simply that God has set them apart. As he  has set apart a particular member of the that race for the salvation of the world, so he has set apart particular  writers to bear a definite and decisive  testimony to what he has done. It was, of course, a human testimony they had to bear, a work performed in human ways by human servants. In a thousand ways, the texts that lie between the covers of our Bibles show that they are the product of painstaking and creative human labor and reception. But we must be careful what we make of that word ‘human’. If we glide from speaking of their humanity into implying some kind of inadequacy in them, as though their being human were a shameful secret we have laid bare, a deficiency we are now in a position to patch up, then it is we, not they, that must stand  charged with ignorance and superstition. The humanity of the Scriptures does not entitle us to patronize them. Just as we speak of the sinlessness of the human being Jesus of Nazareth, and some Christians speak of the immaculate human conception of the Virgin Mary, so we may speak quite appropriately of a perfection of Holy Scripture. Its perfection is sui generis, a fitness for its own assigned task. The perfection of the Psalms does not consist in their being the most perfectly metrical verses or containing the most perfect poetic imagery. The perfection of the letters of Paul does not consist in their being the highest examples of epistolary elegance. Neither does the perfection of the historical books consist in their being the most unambiguous records or the  most discerning evaluation of sources.

The only perfection that counts is this: that God truly attests himself and his deeds through this poetry, these letters, this history. The faith required of the reader of Holy Scripture  is obedience to the testimony that God bears within them, and that is one and the same as the faith that  leads to salvation.

– Oliver O’Donovan, Church in Crisis (2008), p. 55-56

Top 9 of 2009

People are beginning to put together those inevitable “Best of 2009…” lists, so I thought I would jump on board the reflective December mood. Here are my Top 9 reads of 2009: the books and articles that had the greatest impact on my thinking this year.

          1.   Myles Burnyeat, ‘Culture and Society in Plato’s Republic‘, Harvard Tanner Lectures on Human Values, 1997

Bernard Williams once said that you are missing out on something if you only ever read Plato in the latest edition of Mind. These lectures are stimulating and expansive that achieve a pretty rare thing – presenting a faithful and historically informed close reading of an important text from the history of philosophy and making its main point seem more important than ever. Unreservedly recommended to everyone – especially those who may have only read about Plato in the latest edition of Mind.

          2.   Richard Rorty, Philosophy and The Mirror of Nature (Princeton University Press, 1979)

I owe quite a lot to this book, not least the beginnings of an appreciation of the history of Analytic Philosophy, the development of a Wittgensteinian-type approach to philosophical questions, and the resources to find my way around contemporary epistemology. Recommended to those who think that Analytic Philosophy has to be maths/physics in disguise, ahistorical, and complete with ’serious’ metaphysical and epistemological aspirations.

          3.   N. T. Wright, Surprised By Hope (SPCK, 2007)

Not only did the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth actually happen, but it matters quite a lot. Loved Wright’s reflections of the purpose of the church, politics, aesthetics and work, and particularly his ability to constructively dismantle stereotypes to allow the story of Jesus to surprise and energize you. Recommended to christians who think that you go to heaven when you die, so you may as well buy that SUV now.

          4.   N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Fortress Press, 1992)

Wright presents the completely uncontroversial thesis that Jesus was a Jewish Man and that First-Century AD Judaism was a complex and rich culture in a way that opens up the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life and words in a new way. Recommended to any Christian that hasn’t read the Gospels in a long time, or any non believer who thinks that they know basically what the story of Jesus is about.

          5.   John Rawls, Political Liberalism (Columbia University Press, 1993)

Abstract, Confusing, Infuriating, Suprising…and just a little inspirational.

          6. Onora O’Neill, Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant’s Practical Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1989)

O’Neill did a lot to fill in my knowledge of Kant. Whilst every philosopher is caricatured, Kant is caricatured a lot! This book presents a plausible and suprising treatment of Kant’s ethics and politics, and offers a terrific construal of his themes of objectivity, universalizability, and reason.

          7.  John McDowell, Mind and World (Harvard University Press, 1994)

A brilliant example of the kind of Analytic Philosophy I am more and more sympathetic towards. Wittgensteinian in approach, more humanistic than mathematical, and attempting to bring the history of philosophy in touch with current work.

          8. Gary Gutting, Foucault: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2005)

I really don’t know enough about Foucault to judge Gutting’s portrait of him in this book. Perhaps the best thing I can say about this book is that it made me want to read a lot more Foucault. Contains several fascinating presentations of his themes, and seems to shy away from simplification and caricature at every step.

          9. Simon Critchley, Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2001)

The difference between Continental and Analytic Philosophy is the difference in how you read Kant. A bold thesis that I was quite convinced by.

Oliver O’Donovan: In Praise of Relativism?

The New Testament can and should exercise authority over our moral thought at both general and specific levels. Yet there remains a work of moral judgment that is properly relative to agents and situations, and this is what shapes the priorities that prevail in given periods. That is why it is more difficult for us to sympathize with the moral attitudes of earlier Christian generations than it is to share their doctrinal convictions; for with our contemporaries we share a common world with its urgent questions and moral challenges. The logic of human historicity is that living in a given age means having a distinct set of practical questions to answer, neither wholly unlike those faced in other generations nor mere repetitions of them…If we ask why there should be historical differences, the answer is simple: the priorities we hold are the result of shared judgments about the demands of the age in which we live and act.

– Oliver O’Donovan, Church in Crisis: The Gay Controversy and the Anglican Communion (2008), p. 45

Christians are often scared of the word ‘relativism’. Christians are also sometimes ashamed of the proverbial skeletons in their historical closet – Christians from bygone eras who did, what seems to our lights, awful and irrational things. This quote from Oliver O’Donovan throws light on both these attitudes. He surprisingly seems to suggest that there is a sense in which Christians are relativist, and he seems to caution against referring unproblematically to Christian history to shed light on contemporary questions.

Thoughts?

Metaphysical Questions are of Social Importance

But though the question of realism and nominalism has its roots in the technicalities of logic, its branches reach about our life. The question whether the human species has any existence except as individuals, is the question whether there is anything of more dignity, worth, and importance than individual happiness, individual aspirations, and individual life. Whether men [sic.] really have anything in common, so that the community is to be considered as an end in itself, and if so, what the relative value of the two factors is, is the most fundamental, practical question in regard to every public institution the constitution of which we have it in our power to influence.

- Charles Sanders Peirce, ‘Frazer’s The Works of George Berkeley‘ (1871)

I am quite a fan of the philosophical school known as Pragmatism, and the above quote from one of its founders is a good example of why. One of Pragmatism’s central commitments is that the most abstract and speculative philosophical activity is of value because of how it affects social life. This view can lead you to reject a whole lot of metaphysics or speculation if it conceivably makes no difference to the way people find their way around or form communities. This view could also lead you to see what is of value and importance in metaphysical and speculative discussions, and to think about how small changes there could warrant or cause changes in social life. For example, Peirce is suggesting that the views we come to about human nature will inform how we treat others and how we organise ourselves politically, and so much ink is rightfully spilt over trying to explain and argue for certain metaphysical positions.

This is what Peirce is saying in relation to the nominalism/realism debates of the late Middle Ages. Although he has reservations about the arguments and conclusions of the respective views, he think that the debate is important, since it is really asking very important questions about ethics and politics.

As a Christian, I find this view quite attractive. Christians think that their views about God and the resurrection of Jesus branches out into all areas of life, as Peirce would put it.

What I Don’t Love About Rorty

 

Brandom’s favorite philosopher is Hegel, and in this area the most salient difference between Kant and Hegel is that Hegel does not think philosophy can rise above the social practices of its time and judge their desirability by reference to something that is not itself an alternative social practice. For Hegel as for Brandom, there are no norms which are not the norms of some social practice. So when asked “are these desirable norms?” or “is this a good social practice?” all either can do is ask “by reference to what encompassing social practice are we supposed to judge desirability?” or, more usefully, “by comparison to the norms of what alternative social practice?”…Cultural politics can create a society that will find inter-racial marriages repulsive, and cultural politics of a different sort can create one that finds such marriage unobjectionable.

– Richard Rorty, Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers IV (2007), p. 23, 13-14

The above quote is, to my mind, an excellent example of what Christians believe is the poverty of relativism.

Taking Rorty’s example, Christians believe that there is a difference between the society that treats inter-racial marriage as repulsive,  and the society that treats it as unobjectionable, and perhaps beautiful. Furthermore, Christians think that such norms, such recommendations, can be argued for in a more forceful way than saying: ‘this is what works for us.’ To be fair, Rorty’s works are filled with intelligent, fascinating and persuasive replies to just this objection.

But when I ask myself which picture I am more drawn to, which picture I hope more and more people are drawn to, and which picture describes a world I would want to live in, Rorty’s picture begins to look actually repulsive.

The issue of morality and cultural difference is a complex and fragile one; it raises questions and anxieties that aren’t easily answered and relieved through deploying a simple theory. But I find Rorty’s answer of giving up on objectivity and universalizability really disheartening.

Philosophy 101 #2 – The Difference Between Abstraction and Idealization

Abstraction, taken straightforwardly, is a matter of bracketing, but not denying, predicates that are true of the matter under discussion…Idealization is another matter: it can easily lead to falsehood. An assumption, and derivatively a theory, idealizes when it ascribes predicates – often seen as enhanced, ‘ideal’ predicates – that are false of the case in hand, and so denies predicates that are true of that case. For example, if human beings are assumed to have capacities and capabilities for rational choice or self-sufficiency or independence from others that are evidently not achieved by many or even by any actual human beings, the result is not mere abstraction; it is idealization.

– Onora O’Neill, Towards Justice and Virtue (1996), pp.40-41.

Philosophy is often accused of falling prey to the vices of abstraction and idealization. Keeping these two notions separate is very important. Abstraction is a kind of thought that aims to say something true on a general level such that it could be true of many cases. Idealization is a kind of thought that proceeds in the abstract register, though involves premises that skew reality. The first should be the friend of the philosopher, and can be a very handy intellectual tool. The second can be deeply misleading.

Take the examples of milkshakes. An abstract sentence might run as follows, ‘A good milkshake is a milk and cream based drink.’ This sentence is abstract since it says nothing about flavour, temperature, total ingredients, size, deliciousness etc. If you had never seen or tasted a milkshake before, this sentence doesn’t give you that much of an idea of what milkshakes are like. But this in itself is, of course, no vice. In O’Neill’s language, this abstract sentence has simply put those issues to one side – those issues which may be more descriptive, but that can change from milkshake to milkshake – for the sake of achieving a helpful description that will apply to many things that we want  to call good milkshakes.

Compare this with this idealized sentence, ‘A good milkshake is a refreshing milk and cream based drink that leaves the drinker feeling youthful, energized, and like they can take on the world.’ This is still an abstract kind of sentence since you are talking at a level of generality that aspires to describe all milkshakes. The difference is that this last sentence builds what O’Neill calls ‘enhanced predicates’ into the abstraction. Is it really true that  all milkshakes will leave the drinker feeling empowered in such a way?

If you were a milkshake enthusiast, and wanted to come up with a theory of milkshakes, this first would be a helpful starting point, albeit abstract, the second would be a bad starting point since your theory is skewed from the outset, and worthy of the criticism of being ‘idealized’. As I see it, this is one basic job of philosophers working in all fields, and once basic contribution philosophy can make to other  discourses.

So next time when you hear a philosopher being criticized for being way too abstract and idealistic, remember that these are different things, and only one of them is a problem.

Philosophy 101 #1 – Philosophy is Not Doctrinal

We cannot learn philosophy;  for where is it, who is in possession of it, and how shall we recognize it? We can only learn to philosophize.

– Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781), A838/B866

I thought it would be a good idea to run a series of posts entitled ‘Philosophy 101′ – posts which are short and snappy, and will help you curious readers to learn (or be reminded of) the basics in philosophy. Or at least my take on what the basics of philosophy are.

The first basic lesson is that there are no basic lessons. Sheer profundity, I know!

If you were a physics student you would be required to learn certain basics. Force = Mass x Acceleration, E=MC2. If you were a medicine student you would be required to learn certain basics about the human body, surgery and pharmaceuticals. If you were even an English literature or social work student you would learn certain basics about grammar, composition, literary methods and psychological theories. These basic theories than become cemented in these disciplines as doctrines – groups of beliefs which you don’t really question if you want to get by in that discipline.

But here in philosophy 101, there are no basic lessons. Philosophy, more than any other discipline I can think of, is not a doctrinal enterprise. If you were to tell a philosopher: Plato believes such-and-such, or, it is a feature of our world that blah-blah, or, humans beings are essentially rah-rah-rah, than philosophers would unanimously reply: really?

This is a significant first lesson because it is very easy to approach philosophy with this orientation, that is, to find out what ethical theories people subscribe to, or what doctrines great philosophers like Hegel or Wittgenstein held to. Now whilst it is pretty important to get a few of these essentials under your belt, and it is certainly appropriate to deploy labels to get a handle on complex theories, these kinds of questions should never be pursued as if they were the main game in philosophy.

This first lesson also throws light on the tension between theology and philosophy. Theology wants to insist on doctrines in the strongest sense of the word, and so carving out a helpful relationship with another discipline that is always questioning and always being suspicious of doctrine asserting activities is going to be hard work.

p.s. The irony is not lost on me that in making this point I am adopting quite a doctrinaire and parochial tone. Perhaps philosophy is not that free of doctrines after all.

What I Love About Rorty

William James and Nietzsche did for the word “true” what John Stuart Mill had done for the word “right.” Just as Mill says that there is no ethical motive apart from the desire for the happiness of human beings, so James and Nietzsche say that there is no will to truth distinct from the will to happiness. All three philosophers think that the terms “true” and “right” gain their meaning from their use in evaluating the relative success of efforts to achieve happiness.

– Richard Rorty, Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers IV (2007), p.28

Richard Rorty is one of my favourite philosophers. While I completely disagree with many things he says (especially about religion!) I consistently look forward to reading his writings. I think the main reason for this is because Rorty has two abilities which many philosophers whom I have had to read lack. Put simply, these are the abilities to read and write. At his best, Rorty is a brilliantly concise and punchy writer who is able to sum up complicated theories in fresh ways and to distill the heart of the matter in a few words, which often then forces you into re-thinking the entire question.

More than a talented writer, I think Rorty is a talented reader. Despite blatantly caricaturing and ignoring some pretty important figures (e.g. Plato, C. S. Peirce, Edmund Husserl, Christian writers) Rorty always writes with one eye on the history of philosophy; deliberately trying to remind his readers of the significance of those who have written before him and to suggest ways in which they can be understood today. I think I find this so refreshing because many Analytic philosophers ignore the history of philosophy and write as though philosophy began with Quine (ca. 1950s) or, if they are especially adventurous, Frege (ca. 1880s).

The above quote is an example of this kind of writing. In a few sentences Rorty brings together the ethical thought of British philosopher John Stuart Mill with the metaphysical and epistemological thought of German Post-Kantian Friedrich Nietzsche and American Pragmatist William James. He does so effortlessly and the comparison that he draws is quite illuminating.

Further, it implicitly suggests a way of understanding all of Nineteenth-Century philosophy, since he has chosen (arguably) the three most significant philosophers from (arguably) the three most important countries which produce and listen to philosophers. This is not only a handy way of getting handle on what were important philosophical developments of that time, but also dares the reader to try to think through how far philosophy has come since then, and to think through the notorious split between analytic and continental philosophy: ‘If Nietzsche and Mill were sort of talking about the same thing, then perhaps Derrida and Davidson are sort of talking about the same thing?’, ‘If James and Nietzsche came up with a strong perspectival conception of truth some 100 years ago, what have we come up with lately?’

As as synthesizer, an agitator, and a tour-guide of the history of philosophy, Richard Rorty is superb!

If you’re looking for some summer reading, check out Rorty’s popular Philosophy and Social Hope. Though I disagree with much in it, I think it is a great example of what philosophy can be.