Psychoanalyze Me

Just as our choice of friends shows something about our own character, so the philosophers we admire reveal something about our own personality as well.

- Alexander Nehamas, The Art of Living (1998), p. 6

I really like this quote. Not just because it may contain insights into the dark workings of the minds of philosophers, but because it suggests how we can often turn subjective questions into objective questions. Let me explain.

Nehamas thinks that the philosophers we admire reveals something about our character. For instance, we may have had particularly acute experiences of ostracization and alienation, and therefore have a great admiration for Michel Foucault; or we may be a person who just loves to play by the rules and to stay at home every Friday night, so have a great admiration for Kant. The implication is that we don’t admire Foucault or Kant because we think their work is particularly reasonable or insightful, but because we feel some sort of emotional connection – something in our character resonates with something in their work. Moreover, these motives may be hidden from us.

This insight need not be limited to the relatively small arena of philosophy. The same thought could be applied to lots of different parts of life. The individuals we admire, the art we fill our lives with, the communities we desire to be a part of, the public image we aspire to, the politicians we vote for. Perhaps even the theologians we admire and the denomination we associate ourselves with? All these could be said to reveal something about our character, about our personality.

I think we mostly think of the answers we come up with in these various domains of our lives as more or less objective. That is, we think that the reason we like certain art is because it is good art; the reason we vote for a certain politician is because we came to the conclusion that she was the best candidate; we admire theologians because they were right etc.

But what if all that is mere facade? What if these reasons we claim to have are a mere chimera? What if all our life is just expressing our tastes, emotions and personality? As a Christian I find this thought quite uncomfortable, and want to be able to say this is in fact not the case, and the objective reasons I thought I had I do in fact have. But why do I have that reaction? I know that humans are complex and shot through with the damage of sin, so why shouldn’t I expect mysterious psychological forces to be at play behind clean claims to rationality?

Troubling thoughts for a Wednesday…

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.

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?

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.

Cornel West on Relativism and Scepticism

Yet to give in to sophomoric relativism (“Anything goes” or “All views are equally valid”) is a failure of nerve, and to succumb to wholesale scepticism (“There is no truth”) is a weakness of the will and imagination.

– Cornel West, The Cornel West Reader (1999), p. xvii

Moral relativism (‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are not a fixed, universal list) and epistemological scepticism (we can’t really know the ‘Truth’) are often thought to be the default position of many. This sentence from the popular African-American intellectual Cornel West (pictured) is instructive in two ways for the Christian wanting to speak to this issue.

First, he rightly points out that wholesale relativism and scepticism are a way of being intellectually lazy and morally indifferent. To shrug your shoulders and say ‘all views are pretty much the same’ or ‘there’s really no way of telling who is right or wrong, better or worse’, is a cop-out. It is a way of not even entering into philosophy. It is a way of not even taking seriously the question or the views of others.

The lesson here is to push back firmly on anyone who holds to scepticism or relativism, and to try to find a way of challenging the relativist or the skeptic out of their apathy. In popular discourse and general conversation with people around us, I think this is an important activity. It is easy to be a relativist or a sceptic. It takes effort (West would say it takes courage and strength) to attempt to hold to conclusions and to believe that other people are wrong in certain ways.

Second, West’s quote reminds me that to be accused of wholesale relativism or scepticism is a serious charge. It effectively amounts to calling someone indifferent, apathetic, and intellectually disengaged. I suspect that these labels get thrown around today by Christians in a careless way; in a way that can be disrespectful and unloving to our conversation partners. Many intellectuals are accused of holding to these cut-and-dry positions, but know full well the implications which West has spelled out above and so have worked out more sophisticated and nuanced positions.

If calling someone a relativist or a sceptic is synonymous with calling them lazy, then it would be unloving to reduce others positions to this when they have deliberately tried to avoid this caricature. Perhaps it would be fruitful for Christians to rethink how to disagree with those who question the strong epistemological and moral claims of Christianity without first relying on the terms relativist or skeptic.

To me, this seems like a more loving thing to do, and a way which does not preclude the Christian being corrected in some way, or changing their mind on some issue.

What do you think of West’s quote? Do Christians rely too much on charging those who disagree with them of skepticism or relativism?

Relativism and Toleration

Toleration therefore gives us only the dictum attributed to Voltaire, that I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it. Relativism, by contrast, chips away at our right to disapprove of what anybody says. Its central message is that there is no asymmetries of reason and knowledge, objectivity and truth. Relativism thus goes beyond counselling that we must try to understand those whose opinions are different. It is not only that we must try to understand them, but also that we must accept a complete symmetry of standing.” – Simon Blackburn, Truth: A Guide (2005)

Toleration and relativism run together in the public mind. It is assumed that when you say to someone ‘I disagree’ you are also saying ‘You need to stop what you are saying’, ‘This conversation is over’ and suppression and force will soon follow. It is assumed that when you say, ‘You are wrong’, you are also saying, ‘I do not respect you’. I like these remarks from Blackburn as he helpfully clarifies that toleration and relativism, or conversely, intolerance and some belief in objectivity or realism, need not always go conceptually hand-in-hand.

Tolerance is the act of treating another as a fellow human being, despite differences in belief, faith or opinion you may hold. Relativism is the view that there are no differences. Framed like this, it seems like practising tolerance and realism is the harder option – genuinely valuing and caring for another with whom you hold serious disagreements. Relativism emerges as the much easier — and I think much soggier — option of saying that you can all get along because there are no disagreements, and if there are they are illusory since neither party has any way of being closer to the truth of things.

Blackburn is right to point out that you have to think someone is wrong before you will tolerate them – otherwise you are not tolerating them, you are just getting along normally. When an act of genuine toleration like this occurs it is a much more significant human moment. It also occurs to me that toleration-as-relativism is more of a conversation stopper then toleration-as-realism since the first throws up its hands in defeat, giving up on the project of either parties in any way being correct, reasonable, true, good or right, whereas the second affirms that each will continue to view the other as a person worthy of dignity as the conversation continues and they debate and attempt to arrive at consensus.

Christianity is often painted as being fundamentally intolerant in orientation, since it makes it its business to disagree with other religions about God, and to disagree with large portions of society about morality. These remarks from Blackburn show that there are no grounds to correlate disagreement and toleration. It reminds Christianity to disagree in a way which is tolerant, and it ought to lead non-Christians to question whether the popular tendency to label Christianity intolerant and race towards relativism is a wise one.