The Inescapable Question of Human Nature

I think of us as essentially normative beings, that what sets us apart from the other animals is our capacity to commit ourselves, our worrying about whether we are entitled to those commitments, whether it’s a cognitive commitment as to how things are or a practical commitment as to how things shall be. I think of us as discursive beings… We’re beings who engage in practices of giving and asking for reasons. And I think these two dimensions—the normative dimension and the rational dimension—are what set us apart from beings that can feel but can’t think. And I think of logic and philosophy as having the task of making explicit what is implicit in those normative and rational practices.

– Robert Brandom, Interview at The University of Leipzig (June, 2008)

This quote from the American philosopher Robert Brandom shows how inescapable the question of human nature is. Much Twentieth-Century philosophy was influenced by two related and significant movements: logical positivism and the linguistic turn. To over-simplify, these movements were characterized by attempting to set up strict boundaries about what it was sensible for philosophers to try to explain, and the method by which they would go about coming up with philosophical explanations was primarily through analyzing language – that is, sentences, words, arguments etc. This was, in some part, a reaction to a previous style of philosophizing that was metaphysically extravagant, postulating all sorts of entities, and taking diverse and slippery phenomena to be the subject matter of philosophy.

Any-hoo, a comprehensive theory of human nature that explained what a person is at essence, is exactly the kind of metaphysical and speculative theory philosophy tended to shy away from after positivism and the linguistic turn. What I like about the above quote from Brandom, a linguistic philosopher among linguistic philosophers, is that he tries to justify this focus by an appeal to human nature. To paraphrase, he says, ‘Look, focusing on language is the best way to philosophize, because at root, what separates humans from animals is the ability to communicate; to articulate, criticize and accept reasons.’

It is interesting to see that even within a philosophical movement that eschewed coming up with theories of human nature, and indeed often criticized Christianity on exactly this point, there were latent substantive metaphysical assumptions about what a human being really is.

Does Language Constrain or Liberate?

Christianity is sometimes criticized for the language it insists on employing. For example, Christians are expected to assent to, recite, and perhaps even memorize, certain carefully formulated Creeds. Christian leaders are often conservative with their use of language, insisting on employing a central list of locutions and phrases from by-gone eras (e.g. phrases like ‘of one substance with’), and being wary of new ways of speaking and of new methods of explanation.

I do not think that this is a very powerful criticism, since every philosopher since Wittgenstein has acknowledged that people are socialized into a language, and every community and field of inquiry has certain semantic horizons within which it gets by and communicates. But it does raise the interesting question: Do you think language constrains or liberates?

This may be a way too abstract question to have any bite on you, so here are two quotes representing the two sides of the issue to try to bait your interest.

Foucault suggested that what you are is dependent upon the categories you are required to use to describe yourself in…which are not self-chosen, but accepted on the authority of ‘experts’.

– Gary Gutting, Foucault: A Very Short Introduction (2005), pp. 93-94

As it happens, I am still committed to the idea that the ability to think for one’s self depends upon one’s mastery of the language.

– Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1967), p. 123

Foucault thought that as long as society, or really anyone other than yourself, invents the terms, concepts and categories which you use to describe yourself, you are in some sense constrained. Author Joan Didion thought that the only way for pathetically under-equipped youth to flourish and develop meaningful communities and lives was to learn the language which everyone is speaking and within that learn to think for themselves.

These quotes, although not on the subject of religion, are a good catalyst for philosophizing about Christianity’s conservative use of language. Do you think that learning and insisting upon using a certain vocabulary is limiting or freeing?

God is Spirit

That God is spirit, generally, does not mean simply that his is not material but that he is able to encompass both what we call spirit and what we call matter. To have spirit is to be open to the other – God, the human other and the world; to be spirit, as God is, is to be able to cross the boundary between creator and creature, even to the extent of God the Son’s becoming identical with Jesus of Nazareth by the power of the Spirit. In scripture, God’s being spirit appears to refer to the capacity of the creator to cross ontological boundaries: to interact with and become part of that which he is not.

– Colin Gunton, Act and Being (2002), p. 115

In this confusing little passage, Colin Gunton attempts to suggest a way in which Greek Philosophy needs to be filtered out from the Christian understanding of God. The Bible states that God is spirit (John 4:24) and that he is creator. Gunton suggests that Christianity, fascinated with Greek Philosophy as it was in it’s early days, has then rushed into trying to erect neat theological categories in which to express these propositions – spirit contrasted with matter, creator contrasted with creation, self contrasted with other. These seem like helpful little categories, but Gunton suggests that what is more fundamental to God than being spirit and not matter,  or to being creator and not creation, or to being other and not one of us, is God’s inability to be bracketed in such dualisms, and his unique ability to cross between these categories.

Far from undercutting any sensible attempts to speak of God accurately, I think Gunton suggests that this has the possibility to allow for the development of a uniquely Christian vocabulary which aspires to speak truthfully and deeply about God. Gunton suggests that this ‘ontological modesty’ is actually a unique and fundamental hallmark of Christianity: that is makes sense of believing that God became human, that God died,  that God is knowable by those on the other side of the divide, and that God is more deserving of worship than any other being.

Rowan Williams on Religious Language

I had a conversation yesterday with a friend who is researching the nature of religious language – questions like whether it should be taken seriously as trying to communicate truth in the same way science is, or whether it is closer to expressing emotions that need not be referring to any object. I came across this YouTube video of Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Cantebury, presenting his thoughts on the matter. He describes religious language, like the classic Christian creeds, as being like footprints left by a large animal. From it you are able to tell a great deal about the animal, but it is in no way exhaustive.

Do you agree?