Why You Should Care About Philosophy (or, A Lesson In Overstatement)

Ideals ought to aim at the transformation of reality – no less!

– William James, The Letters of William James (1920), II, p. 270

Large claim, Mr. James!

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.

William James on Faith

Faith is belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible. Since doubt is theoretically possible with respect to any belief, we cannot live or think at all without some degree of faith.

– William James, ‘The Sentiment of Rationality’ (1879), p. 79

Christians believe that faith is one of the most significant dimensions of human life. We think that faith ought to colour a person’s whole outlook, such that they can say that they walk by faith and not by sight. We think that faith is more significant than being a good person, since a person is in the end justified by faith alone. We think that faith will actually lead to a person living a loving, selfless and courageous life, since faith without good works isn’t really what we’re talking about. Perhaps most importantly, we think that our faith picks out and latches onto a very specific object – the risen Lord Jesus.

The above quote from Nineteenth-Century American philosopher William James (a founder of the philosophical tradition known as pragmatism, brother of Henry James the novelist, and one of the few philosophers that the great Ludwig Wittgenstein actually read) catches nothing of the richness of the Christian conception of faith, and nothing of its quite specific orientation. But it is a helpful quote since the very idea of ‘living by faith’ is a confusing and laughable notion to many people today. James suggests that every human life has movements of faith running through it.

Christianity doesn’t ask people to give up certainty, to give up questioning, in the name of blind faith. It asks them to have faith in a certain way, and particularly, to have faith in a certain person. It asks people to have faith differently to how they have faith now.

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.

We Don’t Solve Philosophical Problems, We Just Get Over Them.

Old ideas give way slowly; for they are more than abstract logical forms and categories. They are habits, predispositions, deeply engrained attitudes of aversion and preference. Moreover, the conviction persists – though history shows it to be a hallucination that all the questions that the human mind has asked are questions that can be answered in terms of alternatives that the questions themselves present. But in fact intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment of questions together with both of the alternatives they assume - an abandonment that results from their decreasing vitality and a change of urgent interest.

We don’t solve them: we get over them.

– John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays (1910), p. 19

The philosophical approach known as Pragmatism, of which John Dewey was a famous proponent, holds that not every philosophical questions is a good question. In fact, philosophical questions should not be seen as timeless logical problems which demand to be solved, but as issues which arise for a specific people, at a specific time. Philosophy should address the actual felt needs of a society.

In reading this quote it occurred to me how this could be a helpful insight into a possible relationship between Christian theology and philosophy. If we follow this pragmatist kind of method, Christians are free to reject many questions which philosophy may wish to bother it with. Next time a pointy-headed person presents you with a tangential problem which distracts from the actual felt need which Christianity addresses, tell them that you are so over answering questions like that.

This way of thinking is helpful in keeping Christianity from attempting to provide comprehensive answers to every philosophical question – some of which are ridiculous and outdated – and reminds it to keep focused on the present needs of real people. People that Christianity claims to have good news for.