Aquinas the Pragmatist?

It is worth pausing to make comparison with a similar moral antinomy, much discussed in the Scholastic period: Is it right to obey a mistaken conscience? On the one hand, obeying one’s conscious is, apparently by definition, something it is always right to do. On the other hand, a mistaken conscience is, again by definition, a conscience that instructs you to do the wrong thing. So doing what a mistaken conscience tells you is to do right and wrong at the same time. There is a lesson to be learned from the deft way Aquinas, confronting this paradox of “perplexity”, thrusts it aside. “One can withdraw from the error”, he tells us (Summa Theologiae II. 1.19 ad 3). Commentators have expressed bewilderment at this, for it is, of course, not an answer to the question, but an evasion. It does not tell us what to do when our conscience is mistaken; it tells us  not to have a mistaken conscience. Is Aquinas merely saying, “If that was where I wanted to go, I wouldn’t start from here” – always a bad answer to practical questions, since “here” is where all practical questions start from? No: he means that there is something that the framing of the question has left out of account; the alternative is wrongly posed. It beguiles us into imagining a helpless innocent pathetically trapped between the devil of dutiful wrongdoing and the deep blue sea of guilt-ridden right-doing. Moral reality is simply not like that.

– Oliver O’Donovan, Church in Crisis: The Gay Controversy and the Anglican Communion (2008), p.31

In this passage, profound Christian ethicist and theologian Oliver O’Donovan points out a little lesson in philosophy, which I always thought was given voice by Ludwig Wittgenstein and Pragmatists like John Dewey and William James. O’Donovan surprisingly points out that the same move can be seen in the work of the medieval theologian Aquinas (ca. 1225-1275). Perhaps proof that there is, after all, nothing new under the sun.

The lesson is: rejecting the question. A philosophical stance towards questions, or a least a philosophical stance informed by Wittgenstein, Pragmatism (and Aquinas!) holds that not every question is a good question. Questions can be loaded and so naturally push you towards one answer; questions can set up false dichotomy’s and distinctions and so obscure other relevant options or ideas; questions can be motivated not by the neutral task of pure inquiry but by mysterious and complex psychological and political reasons.

The difference between O’Donovan’s point as sourced via Aquinas, and this idea of scrutinizing questions (and indeed the very act of asking questions), is that Christians believe that there is an objective, concrete reality which can be obscured and manipulated by bad questions. O’Donovan concludes, ‘Moral reality is simply not like that’, a phrase Wittgenstein and the Pragmatists wouldn’t want to be caught saying. However I think this moral (and probably metaphysical) realism provides a greater incentive to reject bad questions, since they genuinely can hide features of an independent reality, they genuinely can fail to latch onto the way things are.

Wittgenstein was interested in what about the human psychology motivates people to ask philosophical questions, Pragmatists were worried about how allegedly neutral questions could be political and ethical questions in a Groucho Marx disguise. O’Donovan and Aquinas are concerned that certain questions simply fail to carve out reality at the joints, to capture the richness and complexity of reality.

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?

Know Thyself

 

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

– Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (1938)

 

Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.

– Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (1797)

 

Humanity never achieves a clear knowledge of itself unless it has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating Him to scrutinize itself.

– John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion (1560)

Taken together, these three quotes paint a rich picture of the importance and the challenge of self-knowledge. Kant suggests that having a correct and detailed knowledge of yourself is necessary for living well, but warns that gaining such knowledge is often the outcome of prolonged and painful periods of introspection. Periods in which we may come face to face with a realistic image of ourself that grieves us, disappoints us, or demands much of us. 

Wittgenstein adds that such knowledge is elusive and hard to come by. It is hidden behind a misleading web of images that we construct about ourselves, and in order to grasp it we need to stop lying to ourselves. It is as though we know that coming face to face with ourselves very well may cause us pain like Kant suggests, and so our minds grab readily onto deceit to avoid this pain. 

Calvin suggests that the most important way in which can free ourselves from such deceit is by ensuring that we do not engage in introspection without first considering our being and place compared with God, and indeed not before contemplating God alone. If we do this, Calvin envisions us coming to terms with our smallness, our finitude, our limits and our weaknesses which we try to keep from ourselves. Without contemplating God, there is little hope of our escaping the deceit Wittgenstein suggests is our default position.

What I love about these three quotes taken together is the similarity between Kant and Calvin in emphasising the ethical direction of self-knowledge, and the sober warning from Wittgenstein. Do you think these quotes establish the importance of introspection and frame it in the right way? Is a right knowledge of oneself necessary for living well, and so something we ought to be chasing after?

Wittgenstein on Soul and Body

The human body is the best picture of the human soul.

- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953), II.iv

A caricature of the Christian hope paints Christians believing that when they die, their souls turn into angels, and they float off to heaven to play the harp. A caricature of the Christian faith paints Christians believing that the spiritual things, such as prayer and a personal experience of God, are more important than the physical things, such as health and work for political reform.  Real Christianity is far from either.

What I like about this brief remark from the great Twentieth Century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is how it latches onto something closer to the Christian hope and faith then these caricatures. In the New Testament, there are very few distinctions drawn between a person’s soul and body.The sharp contrast between the soul and the body is something more at home in Greek Philosophy then Christianity.  It is more common for the writers and figures of the New Testament to address people as whole people – soul and body.

In fact, the New Testament often blurs the lines between soul and body in a way that is suggestive that perhaps the human body is the best picture of the human soul: Paul encourages some new Greek converts to Christianity to stop going to pagan temples and using prostitutes because as they take part in these physical activities they damage their soul (1 Corinthians 5-6, 10-11); Jesus insists that the character of a person can be known through their actions (Matthew 7:15-20, 15), physically being dunked in water as well as eating some bread and wine is unreservedly said to affect a persons spirituality, and Paul clearly lays out the Christian hope as being the physical, bodily resurrection from the dead – that is, the way Christians in the future will experience spiritual reconciliation with God is through a resurrected body (1 Corinthians 15).

If you’ve never read any of these bits of the Bible I encourage you to check them out. They make it impossible to believe that Christianity is a religion that cares only about the spiritual, and they are suggestive of a way to understand the interrelatedness of the material and mysterious parts of the person through a simple holism. A holism I think Wittgenstein sums up nicely.