Yes, Virginia, There Is Metaphysics

Although most commemorations of the jolly old elf, at least in the US, are past, the Church continues to celebrate Christmas. In that spirit, I want to share a bit of text I am ashamed to say I only recently read: the 1897 editorial from the New York Sun which includes the famous line, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

I recall, as a child, watching one of the films of the same name. I do not recall the precise age at which this occurred, but it was one of those awkward years of elementary school during which most of the students had come to discover the truth about Santa, but several children - frankly, the slower and more childish - still persisted in their belief. This placed teachers, administrators, and the unbelieving majority of students in the position of having to profess at least agnosticism, in spite of their own better knowledge. In such a climate, my young rationalist self found this film and its catch phrase a poor rearguard defense of ignorance, a blatant lie in the face of the evidence.

But a few weeks ago a Dominican student brother brought to my attention the actual text of the Sun editorial. It takes Santa as its ostensible subject, but is about much more. Specifically, it is a defense of the idea that there may be more than that which can be measured or physically identified. I find this terribly refreshing, particularly in an age which frequently indulges in a rationalist denial of all that is immaterial.

To be fair, this editorial offers an incomplete argument. As my wife points out, belief in things unseen, any and all manner of things, can be terribly dangerous. Such unseen objects of belief, in addition to being false, can be horrifically evil. Thus, let us not fall into the fideist belief that belief itself, irrespective of the essential truth of its object, is virtuous. Nevertheless, I think the editorial, now more than a century old, may offer some interesting opportunities to engage with our culture and raise important questions about the limits of our knowledge what lies behind the physical world.

We take pleasure in answering at once and thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun.

"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

"VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET."

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Ernst Jünger on Technology (2)

In The Worker Jünger makes three key points about technology. Before going any further, however, I should add that while I disagree with Jünger’s positive evaluation of technology, I do agree in many respects with his analysis of technology.

The first point is the key to understanding Jünger’s analysis of technology: technology is “not a neutral power” (keine neutrale Macht). In most discussions of technology today, however, the key premise is exactly the opposite: technology is neutral, and everything depends on what use one makes of it. Indeed, this common starting-point makes some intuitive sense. Most people tacitly define technology as a machine or tool that gives us a method for doing X in the quickest, most effective way. Technology is simply a means to an end. Everybody wants to achieve their own ends, and they want to do so as soon as possible. If the same technology can be used to achieve two opposed ends, then the technology itself is neutral. By this view, the two opposing armies in a war have distinct ends, but both armies use guns. The guns themselves are neutral. It is the goodness, or evil, of the goal of the war which makes the guns either good or evil.

The best way to understand why technology is not neutral is through an analogy. On at least one occasion Jünger compares self-identification with technology to “mastering the language of the worker.” The idea is that technology pervades and shapes how we view the world, just as language does. This was certainly the case in Nazi Germany. Both Eric Voegelin and Josef Pieper laid great emphasis on the fact of the Nazis’ perversion of everyday language in the Third Reich. The importance of language should be obvious to any American who observes how PC language has penetrated into politics and academia in this country. Certain words that were in common use fifty years ago are now banned from polite conversation and neologisms deployed to change public opinion. When, for instance, was the last time a prominent politician or academic characterized sex acts between two members of the same sex as “sodomy”? Removing that term from the public vocabulary normalizes same-sex sex acts, as well as eliminates one more vestige of Christianity in our culture. (The exception proves the rule: One summer, while working on petitions for the involuntary commitment of sexually violent persons, I was struck by the number of times I came across the term “deviate sex” in the psychological reports.)

This does not mean that if technology is bad, then every discrete act that employs technology is necessarily bad. To take the analogy of language one step further, even if a language has become corrupted it is not evil to use that language at times. Or, to use a different analogy, even if a government has been thoroughly corrupted, not every action it takes is necessarily bad, though a government has tremendous power to shape its citizens’ worldviews and to implicate them in its crimes. And that is the important point for Jünger: technology is not neutral because it has a worldview of its own and shapes worldviews.

Second, technology has the power to shape worldviews because, as Jünger says, it has a “seductive logic” of its own, which is not a “pure” logic (keine Logik an sich)but one which leads to specific ends. The logic of technology alters our relationship to the world and to ourselves. For Jünger, the purpose of technology is to “mobilize matter.” (Note the similarity to Descartes’ desire to use science to make men “masters and possessors of nature.”) Matter becomes something that is to be put at the service of man or, for Jünger, the new man, the worker, so that the worker can attain power. The technological worldview demands submission of nature to man. The process of submitting nature to the worker’s rule does not end until the distinction between technology and nature is eliminated, until technology becomes our second nature. Technology must become something that seems obvious (a Selbstverständlichkeit) for the ordinary man. Indeed, Jünger goes one step further and says that the logic of technology will ultimately lead to the merger of man and machine.

This merger of man and machine no longer sounds as fantastic as it did when Jünger wrote The Worker. The manipulation of genes, the implantation of computer chips into the nervous system, the cloning of entire human beings—all of these may very possibly be realized within our lifetimes. And yet technology’s seductive logic has been at work among us for much longer with technologies that are much more familiar and that seem innocuous in comparison to modern biotechnology. For instance, mechanical clocks have been around for centuries. They were used in the Middle Ages primarily to help monks say the canonical hours at the correct time. However, clocks have ceased to be a tool which we use to measure time and are now machines that shape how we experience time in ways that are contrary to nature, such as standardized time zones and daylight savings time. Another example of the power of technology to make men conform to their machines is urban planning in the wake of the automobile. Most cities in the 20th century were laid out on the assumption that its inhabitants would be driving, rather than walking, through their streets. For those who live in big cities with rush hour traffic jams, the conception of how much time it will take to go somewhere depends on what hour one is leaving one’s house—the “distance” to one’s destination is further at rush hour.

Third, for Jünger technology is anti-Christian because it possesses its own “cultic origin” (kultischer Ursprung). Before dismissing this as mere hyperbole, one should at least consider an example of the cult of technology: Apple products. Apple’s laptops and phones are immediately identifiable because of their minimalistic, futuristic aesthetic. These devices have become objects of devotion among the masses of loyal Apple customers, much of whose success is due to the fact that they keep the modern worker connected to his job at all times. Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, was practically canonized after his early death from cancer. (Part of this is due to the cult of the entrepreneur in America.)

But, even if it is true that technology has acquired certain cultic features in contemporary America, the question still remains: What exactly does it mean to say that technology has a “cultic origin”? The answer lies in the essence of religion. If technology has a “seductive logic,” and is a system capable of changing our relation to nature and to ourselves, it has a totalizing worldview. Just as Marxism is often characterized as a religion despite its atheism, so too the “technological way of thinking” can be called a religion because it subsumes widely varied areas of human activity under a general worldview.

If technology is a new cult, it necessarily sets itself at odds with Christianity. Jünger says that the orthodox Christian views technology as the “dominion of Satan.” And Jünger’s statement, while extreme, is defensible when we keep in mind that technology tries to eliminate nature or reconfigure it so that it changes in its very essence. When viewed this way, technology is another form of Gnosticism (as used in a broader way by Eric Voegelin): a deep-rooted dissatisfaction with creation that leads to the hubristic attempt to refashion the world.

Jünger in The Worker got many things wrong, and was in favor of many things a Christian should oppose. But, in some instances—and technology was one of them—his analysis should force us to consider some of our basic presuppositions about the modern world.

Ernst Jünger on Technology (1)

It is impossible to discuss the life and thought of Ernst Jünger briefly. Nearly 103 years old when he died in 1998, Jünger led an eventful life: he served with distinction as an officer in the German army in both world wars. He became known as a writer after World War I when he published his journals, In Storms of Steel. In the 1920’s he studied zoology, and in later life become an avid entomologist. He earned his living as a journalist until World War II, when he spent much of his time stationed in Paris. After the war, he moved to Wilflingen, but also continued to travel, often to Africa and Asia. Throughout his life he wrote about his varied experiences. Besides his wartime journals, Jünger also published an account of his early experiments with LSD, as well as a series of futuristic novels, most notably Eumeswil.

Jünger is a controversial figure because of his political views (as well as the delight he often takes in describing violence). Always a man of the right, he was a staunch opponent of the Weimar Republic. Today he is often grouped among the leaders of that amorphous movement in interwar German called the “Conservative Revolution,” who opposed the new democratic ethos and parliamentary system of government. One of his more ardent admirers in the 1920’s was Hitler, but after 1933 Jünger found polite ways to decline the dictator’s advances. The novel he published in 1939, On the Marble Cliffs, is usually interpreted as a disguised call to resistance against the Nazis. After World War II, he refused to fill out the British occupation authorities’ questionnaires about his political activities under Nazi rule and was therefore forbidden to publish. He moved to Wilflingen, in the French zone, to escape the British censors. After the war, he continued to oppose democracy. In his 1951 essay, Der Waldgang, Jünger develops a theory of resistance, implying that the Federal Republic of Germany needed to be resisted, just as the Nazis should have been resisted.

For most of his life Jünger elaborated his positions from a secular viewpoint. It was simply assumed that Christianity was dead and was merely of historical interest; any resistance to democracy must come from elsewhere. (This changed only late in his life—he converted to Catholicism when he was 101.) Jünger’s “conservative revolution” was essentially an anti-Christian conservatism, which he tried to elaborate in a few books, particularly The Worker, published in 1932.

The Worker is a difficult book to summarize because of its vagueness. (A decent summary of the main idea, though, can be found here.) Jünger sometimes explicitly refuses to give concrete examples of the social phenomena he is describing, instead giving tautological definitions and telling his readers that they must be blind not to see what he is pointing out. Of course, things which may have been clear to a German in 1932 are not necessarily clear to an American in 2012, especially when it requires plowing through pages of dense German prose. Essentially, Jünger is trying to give an outline of the new social form (Gestalt), the new type of man, he saw rising to predominance. The worker he describes is not a member of Marx’s proletariat or simply even a working man. Rather, he is a man for whom work is his form of existence, who lives in a “total work world.” (Incidentally, some of the phrases which Jünger employs in a positive sense are later used in a pejorative sense by Josef Pieper in Leisure the Basis of Culture.) Most importantly for this post, this new man, the worker, identifies with technology. For a significant portion of the book (§§ 44-57), then, Jünger tries to define technology as the way in which this new man realizes himself in history. What will follow soon are a few reflections on what Jünger had to say about technology, or rather reflections on technology occasioned by a reading of The Worker, since I make no guarantee that I have understood this book perfectly.

Herodotus, Thucydides and The Idea of History

Earlier this year I read R. G. Collingwood's The Idea of History. The book is quite insightful, a "must read" for any philosopher of history. On the whole, I quite enjoyed it.

However, one passage hit me hard, like watching one friend knife another friend. You see, Collingwood insists that Thucydides is not really a historian. Herodotus gets the honor, but not Thucydides.

Ever since I first read Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War I have been a fan. Not a historian? No, Collingwood explains, Thucydides is really a philosopher. Historians, Collingwood says, recreate the thoughts of past men. That is their task. It is a fundamentally particular task, dealing with men individually. Philosophers, on the other hand, are primarily concerned with the general, those things which are true of all men. Herodotus is often criticized for repeating legends and hear-say, and he deserves the criticism. However, his approach is fundamentally particular, asking here about the Persians and there about the Egyptians; though he makes connections across cultures, he is also willing to accept them with their differences.

Thucydides has a rather different approach, though the difference is not always obvious. In his introduction, Thucydides notes that when he had no report of a given speech, he has filled in the gap with what must have been said. In other words, if we know the speech was preceded by A, and followed by C, the speaker must have said something along the lines of B - it's the obvious way to get from one to the other. Thucydides' method is broadly sound; after all, we infer things all the time, in history and in life. However, this method reveals a disregard for the messy details of life, and leans on broad statements about men generally. Why do men go to war? Thucydides asks. Only three reasons: fear, greed or honor. This is profound insight into the human person, but it is not history. History is more concrete than that.

Must history simply involve disconnected facts? Can it never approach the general? The philosophic historian - and by that I do not mean one that belongs to the discipline of philosophy, but one that desires the deepest truths - must constantly hold together the tension between the particularities of history and the desire for general knowledge. To stray too far from this tension produces something other than good history. The unthinking particularist becomes a kind of antiquarian, collecting factoids and minutia, content never to connect them to one another. This person has no concept of or desire for knowledge of mankind as a whole or justice as a virtue. The more thoughtful man who becomes a particularist is likely a kind of agnostic, someone who recognizes that history cannot produce complete knowledge of general things, but concludes that there is no reason to try to hold together the tension. He is typically a bitter soul, someone who longs for general knowledge but does not believe it possible. The unthinking generalist becomes a Whig historian in the most pejorative sense of the term, shoehorning the complications of the past into broad categories that are inadequate to describe it. The thinking generalist is ultimately a philosopher, someone who realizes that history is always bound up with the particular and lays it aside in favor of another vocation.

History, then, is a curious thing, with one foot in the mud of earth and another on the clouds of heaven. It's not for everyone, but I'm rather happy with that tension.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to read some Herodotus.


Today's image of R. G. Collingwood comes from Ovi Magazine.

Reclaiming Metaphysics from the Mushy-Headed

One of the "problems" with a UD education is that the UD graduate likes to use certain "fancy" words that not many other people necessarily understand. (I write this as a UD graduate, but I'm sure anybody with a decent liberal arts education has encountered this problem too.) When he leaves "the bubble," he sometimes forgets that these words are not in everybody else's vocabulary. The careless UD graduate in his conversations occasionally lets drop a word which for him is rich in associations and encapsulates his point nicely but which only confuses his interlocutors; pretty soon he finds himself re-formulating his entire argument in order to make himself understood. One such fancy word is "metaphysics," and I recently ran up against the problem of trying to use the word in a conversation with someone from "outside the bubble."

After a lecture event sponsored by a certain libertarian-conservative student group, I went out for a drink with some other members of the group. In the ensuing discussion, I told a libertarian that one of my disagreements with libertarians is that they draw too rigid a distinction between the individual's private life and the public realm, and that this stark dichotomy has its roots in libertarians' arbitrary distinction between ethics and politics, on the one hand, and metaphysics on the other. I thought I had made my point relatively clear, but when my libertarian interlocutor heard the word "metaphysics" come out of my mouth, he looked at me as if I had just grown a nose in the middle of my forehead. He was under the impression that I was referring to old ladies with crystal balls charging me a few dollars to read my fortune, or maybe to some New Age fad. He thought I had a head full of mush!

When I saw his face, I hastened to explain that I was talking about a branch of philosophy. He replied, "I have zero background in philosophy. Why don't you just say 'reason' or 'logic'?" For half a second I entertained the idea of explaining that logic and metaphysics are distinct branches of philosophy, and for another half-second I considered mentioning something about "the study of being," but then I remembered that I had a train to catch. So, I just answered, "Yes, reason!" Of course, his conception of reason was probably a purely modern, instrumental conception of reason...but that was a discussion for another night.

Do so few people understand what "metaphysics" really means? What will happen to public discourse when members of a "learned profession" (yes, I actually am referring to lawyers) who believe they have a special calling to study and resolve the most pressing questions concerning men's relations with one another have no clue what "metaphysics" means?

It probably was always the case that the majority of lawyers were not familiar with philosophy. But, to hear such an open avowal of ignorance from someone who appeared to be interested in larger questions of philosophy was frightening. It wasn't so much his ignorance that frightened me, though, as his lack of shame at his own ignorance.

This ignorance and this lack of shame do not bode well for public discourse. We are left, then, with only one choice: We must reclaim the word "metaphysics" from the mushy-headed!

Nietzsche on Marriage

A friend recently directed my attention to the 20th chapter of Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which pertains to marriage and children. I reproduce it here in its entirety because it is that interesting:

I have a question for thee alone, my brother: like a sounding-lead, cast I this question into thy soul, that I may know its depth.

Thou art young, and desirest child and marriage. But I ask thee: Art thou a man ENTITLED to desire a child?

Art thou the victorious one, the self-conqueror, the ruler of thy passions, the master of thy virtues? Thus do I ask thee.

Or doth the animal speak in thy wish, and necessity? Or isolation? Or discord in thee?

I would have thy victory and freedom long for a child. Living monuments shalt thou build to thy victory and emancipation.

Beyond thyself shalt thou build. But first of all must thou be built thyself, rectangular in body and soul.

Not only onward shalt thou propagate thyself, but upward! For that purpose may the garden of marriage help thee!

A higher body shalt thou create, a first movement, a spontaneously rolling wheel--a creating one shalt thou create.

Marriage: so call I the will of the twain to create the one that is more than those who created it. The reverence for one another, as those exercising such a will, call I marriage.

Let this be the significance and the truth of thy marriage. But that which the many-too-many call marriage, those superfluous ones--ah, what shall I call it?

Ah, the poverty of soul in the twain! Ah, the filth of soul in the twain! Ah, the pitiable self-complacency in the twain!

Marriage they call it all; and they say their marriages are made in heaven.

Well, I do not like it, that heaven of the superfluous! No, I do not like them, those animals tangled in the heavenly toils!

Far from me also be the God who limpeth thither to bless what he hath not matched!

Laugh not at such marriages! What child hath not had reason to weep over its parents?

Worthy did this man seem, and ripe for the meaning of the earth: but when I saw his wife, the earth seemed to me a home for madcaps.

Yea, I would that the earth shook with convulsions when a saint and a goose mate with one another.

This one went forth in quest of truth as a hero, and at last got for himself a small decked-up lie: his marriage he calleth it.

That one was reserved in intercourse and chose choicely. But one time he spoilt his company for all time: his marriage he calleth it.

Another sought a handmaid with the virtues of an angel. But all at once he became the handmaid of a woman, and now would he need also to become an angel.

Careful, have I found all buyers, and all of them have astute eyes. But even the astutest of them buyeth his wife in a sack.

Many short follies--that is called love by you. And your marriage putteth an end to many short follies, with one long stupidity.

Your love to woman, and woman`s love to man--ah, would that it were sympathy for suffering and veiled deities! But generally two animals alight on one another.

But even your best love is only an enraptured simile and a painful ardour. It is a torch to light you to loftier paths.

Beyond yourselves shall ye love some day! Then LEARN first of all to love. And on that account ye had to drink the bitter cup of your love.

Bitterness is in the cup even of the best love: thus doth it cause longing for the Superman; thus doth it cause thirst in thee, the creating one!

Thirst in the creating one, arrow and longing for the Superman: tell me, my brother, is this thy will to marriage?

Holy call I such a will, and such a marriage.

Hat tip to ClassicAuthors.net for posting this and other passages and to Paul Heimann - who is himself getting married today - for recommending it.

Learning from the Free Imperial Cities

I have been known to write about Christian political mythology before. The whole notion might be considered problematic for a number of reasons (as the comments on the above post suggest). However, I find myself continuing to desire some sort of framework for thinking about Christian political philosophy precisely because Scripture provides so little.

To be sure, Scripture tells us a great deal about how to treat our neighbors: we are to love them, give them our coat, pray for them (even if they are our enemies). But Scripture does not tell us what form of government to have or how society should best serve the least among us. There are good reasons for this paucity of policy prescriptions: Scripture is primarily a theological account, not a political one. While Christianity has political implications, it is a religion, not a political party. Moreover, Scripture provides no single blueprint because there is more than one way to organize a just society. Still, I would like a little more to hold onto...

In the medieval era, many thinkers argued that the state should be organized as a monarchy, in imitation of the divine order, wherein Christ is King of the universe. This makes good sense: man is made in the divine image (Gen 1:27), is called to divine perfection (Mt 5:48) and love in imitation of God (Jn 13:34). Why, then, should man not also organize his polities in imitation of the divine?

There are, however, any number of problems associated with monarchy, as America's Founding Fathers pointed out. But does republican government necessarily undermine our understand of ourselves as subjects of Christ the King? I think not. The Cristeros of Mexico, though animated by a keen sense of divine kingship - best exemplified in their battle cry, "¡Viva Cristo Rey!" - were not bent on establishing a monarchy in Mexico. Instead, they wanted a republic that would accord with God's law and His Church.

A medieval model may here prove useful. In the Holy Roman Empire, there were free imperial cities, cities which received their charter directly from the Emperor and owed their allegiance to no intervening lord or margrave. Such cities were often governed by a municipal council. While conditions varied considerably from one city to the next, these councils usually had some sort of republican character, representing the leading families and guilds of the city, frequently through elections. Though they enjoyed extensive privileges, usually including exemption from taxation, such cities were essential to the Emperor, facilitating trade in his Empire and providing loans and other financial services to his imperial administration. Similar cities could be found throughout medieval Europe, sometimes called communes; in England, London enjoyed a similar status.

It strikes me that the notion of a "free imperial city" is a good way for Christians to think about how we organize our polities. On the one hand, the insights of republican government, checks and balances and other modern (and frequently secular) insights should not be discarded. On the other hand, we should never forget that our ultimate allegiance is to our Sovereign, from whom our charter for free government comes. In this light, there is a certain medieval flair to the Founders words: All men are created equal,... endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.... To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.

Against the Great Books?

The Great Books are not the solution to the problems of higher education in this country. In fact, the Great Books are enemies of wisdom.

How could a proud graduate of the University of Dallas like myself say such a thing? Such a statement practically amounts to blasphemy!

But, before you dismiss me as some crazy liberal, let me point out that I am not the one who made those statements. They were made by Patrick Deneen and Fritz Wilhelmsen--hardly crazy liberals. If anything, they are usually described as crazy conservatives. And indeed, both men make their critique of Great Books programs from a conservative perspective. Last week Deneen wrote an article "Why the Great Books Aren't the Answer" which has sparked some lively discussion on a couple Internet forums. Deneen's concerns, though, are not entirely original; they were voiced years ago by one of UD's very own, the late Fritz Wilhelmsen, in his essay "The Great Books: Enemies of Wisdom."

There is a lot to think about in Deneen's and Wilhelmsen's articles, but I would like to focus on one interesting issue they both raise, and one which is, I believe, at the heart of their critique of Great Books programs: the role of tradition in a proper education.

Deneen identifies two potential effects that Great Books programs will have on most students. On the one hand, making students read a "potpourri of conflicting views"--from the ancient Greeks through the 20th century--can easily lead a student to adopt relativism or to despair of ever finding the truth once he realizes that all the great thinkers he has read disagreed radically with one another. On the other hand, many students enter college with a progressive theory of history in their mind: all of history has reached its culmination in the present, therefore the present is the best. Instead of relativism, these students will simply be confirmed in progressivist dogma. But more worrisome than either relativism or progressivism by itself is the possibility that students will combine these twin dangers of relativism to form a single monster: the dogmatic relativist. The dogmatic relativist will believe that history, and therefore truth, has culminated in relativism.

To fend off these dangers, universities, in Deneen's view, need to give students a framework within which to read the Great Books, and not simply approach them with neutrality. Ultimately, Deneen (a professor at Georgetown) believes it is necessary to teach "in the light of the standards that the Catholic tradition would provide."

Wilhelmsen in his article focuses less on the conflicting content of the Great Books and more on the inadequacy of the Great Books in fostering in students the virtues necessary for the philosophical life. For Wilhelmsen, following Aristotle, philosophy is a way of knowing; it is not found in books, but rather in the philosopher's virtues, the habits of the mind, "through which things are understood in their causal structures." Philosophy, though, also requires that a master educate a beginner in these virtues. This approach to philosophy--which Wilhelmsen describes as it used to be practiced in Catholic universities in America--is at once both traditional and personal. Each student (and teacher) submits to the tradition, but is also able, thanks to his own virtues, to contribute to that tradition. Wilhelmsen at one point even uses the word "apprentice" to describe a student's relationship to his teacher. A philosophy department at a university, then, should in this respect quite literally resemble a craft guild.

For Wilhelmsen, one of the chief follies of the typical Great Books program, besides only teaching students what others said rather than to philosophize themselves, is to teach certain texts with no regard for the historical context in which they were written. Students are expected to cope with the most varied authors "without having the faintest hint of the kind of world within which these men lived and thought." In other words, the typical Great Books program utterly neglects the importance of tradition.

Deneen's and Wilhelmsen's critiques of Great Books programs, though they emphasize different aspects of education, both rest on the assumption that a student cannot learn the truth unless he is embedded within a craft and a tradition.

This insight that has been developed by Alisdair MacIntyre in the area of virtue ethics, especially in Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (in particular, chapter III: “Too Many Thomisms?”) According to MacIntyre, tradition embodies the claim that “reason can only move towards being genuinely universal and impersonal insofar as it is neither neutral nor disinterested, that membership in a particular type of moral community, one from which fundamental dissent has to be excluded, is a condition for genuinely rational enquiry and more especially for moral and theological enquiry.” This claim would sound preposterous to most people today, especially in a discussion of higher education, since most people conceive of higher education as “free enquiry." MacIntyre, however, defends the rationality of tradition by pointing to two things an apprentice in any craft has to learn:

[First,] the apprentice has to learn, at first from his or her teachers and then in his or her continuing self-education, how to identify mistakes made by him or herself in applying the acknowledged standards, the standards recognized to be the best available so far in the history of that particular craft…[Second,] the apprentice has to learn to distinguish between the kind of excellence which both others and he or she can expect of him or herself here and now and that ultimate excellence which furnishes both apprentices and mastercraftsmen with their telos.

But, how does an individual’s membership in a craft connect with a larger historical tradition? “The standards of achievement within any craft are justified historically. They have emerged from the criticism of their predecessors and they are justified because and insofar as they have remedied the defects and transcended the limitations of those predecessors as guides to excellent achievement within that particular craft.”

To conclude before I quote the entirety of Three Rival Versions, I would like not to provide a complete justification of tradition--that would require me to write books I am not capable of writing--but simply to draw out three implications which Deneen, Wilhelmsen, and MacIntyre's position has for higher education, particularly Catholic higher education.

First, we must take the historical aspect of learning within a tradition much more seriously than we do now. Many of the problematic aspects of a Great Books program arise from false philosophies of history--especially, as Deneen notes, relativism and progressivism. The solution is a proper understanding of education as initiation into a craft, into a tradition. And a tradition's standards, as MacIntyre reminds us, are justified historically.

Second, if we want to restore this understanding of education as initiation into a craft, we cannot make students fumble in the dark reading all the Great Books yet expect them somehow to figure out how to philosophize on their own. And realistically, we cannot expect students to find their own way into the tradition in the four short years of their undergraduate education. College is, in many cases, already a late stage to enter into a tradition. This means we have a lot of work to do in restoring the educational craft, not only at the university level, but also in high schools, and even in elementary schools.

Third, if any healthy tradition necessarily excludes fundamental dissent in order to teach students to philosophize, we have to radically rethink our notion of academic freedom. More specifically, we have to rethink the relationship of education and religion. Academic freedom today is often portrayed as the freedom to ignore or even disparage religion. But academic freedom is not the freedom to mock what is holy, or even to read the Great Books; academic freedom--as Wilhelmsen explains--is really the freedom of a craftsman working in a tradition.


Note: For further comments on Deneen's article, see Front Porch Republic and First Things.

Celebrating Goodness

Thanksgiving will be here in just a few days and many of us will find ourselves sharing with family and friends those things for which we are thankful. I have noticed that, from time to time, people will formulate their thanks in a negative way. That is, instead of saying, "I am thankful for my health," they will say, "I am thankful for not getting sick this year." This is rarely intended and I probably ought not read too much into it, but it seems to be illustrative of a problem we sometimes have.

St. Augustine, when confronting the problem of evil, argues that evil does not exist. Literally. He contends that being is itself good. All things that are are good. If something seems to be evil, it is deficient in being; it does not as fully exist as a proper, good thing. If I have not yet entirely bastardized Augustine, we might put his concept into colloquial terms by saying that goodness is like heat: there is no such thing as evil (or cold), only the absence of good (or heat).

However, being thankful for "not getting sick" represents a kind of anti-Augustinianism. It places the emphasis on evil (in this case, sickness), and suggests that goodness is only the absence of evil, and not a thing in itself. This is a very dreary form of thanks, since it implicitly says, "The world is full of evil, but I have been lucky to avoid most of it." Such a statement says nothing about goodness, implicitly denying that one is thankful for it.

Last month I was in Dallas for the wedding of two of my classmates. After the reception a gaggle of alumni went out for drinks together at the Gingerman. One classmate suggested that we play a drinking game. I think mine were not the only eyebrows raised just a little. Drinking games, really...? But as our colleague explained, this "game" was different. The concept was simple enough: taking turns round the table, each person would sharing something they enjoy. The speaker, along with any others who enjoy the same thing, would take a swig of beer. Most drinking games are built on coercion: if you fail to do X, you must drink. This, it was explained to us, is a mistake. Drinking should be a joy, and should be associated with joyful things. It should be a celebration, not a punishment.

And a celebration it was. We shared joys from our undergraduate days together and from our more recent adventures in various places. Stories quickly came to the fore, stories about classes and pranks and epic road trips. We toasted academic nerdery and cute children, beloved friends and favorite places. It was more than mere thankfulness for the absence of ill in our lives: it was a celebration of real, active, vibrant goodness in our lives.


Photo credit: Today's picture comes from jypsygen's Flickr account. It is, admittedly, not from our trip to the Gingerman. But it is an authentic Dallas Gingerman photo, which counts for something, I think.

Natural Law Theory: George and Arendt

The St. Thomas law school recently hosted Robert P. George, fellow at Princeton and natural law theorist, to receive the Humanae Dignitatis award and speak on “Natural Law, God, and Human Dignity.” His theory of natural law is that it is only known to us humans when we experience it. Knowledge of natural law is not innate, but rather experienced – something that we do rather than that is done to us. Through experience, we come to understand basic moral norms of natural law. The one he cited was a variation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative: Act so that your action furthers the fundamental reason for man’s existence. Virtue he defined as the habit of acting in accordance with these moral norms.

Yet he did not seem to answer what sort of experience we must make. While it might be assumed that man will always act reasonably, and therefore always act in pursuit of his good, George also noted that whole societies have been misled as to the nature of the good and yet have continued to act entirely reasonably. In fact, as Hannah Arendt describes in her study The Banality of Evil: Eichmann in Jerusalem, the entire German society in World War II seemed to have turned conscience on its head, and accepted that state of affairs. She writes: “[C]onscience as such had apparently got lost in Germany, and this to a point where people hardly remembered it and had ceased to realize that the surprising ‘new set of German values’ was not shared by the outside world.”

Supporting her theory was the fact that Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the “Final Solution,” was an ordinary man with an ordinary sense of morality, who had initially experienced great aversion to the idea of “liquidating” the Jews. Until that order was given, he had simply assumed the “Solution” was to make Germany judenrein by expelling, exporting, and otherwise physically removing Jews from the country.

He felt these twinges of conscience for approximately 10 weeks, Arendt reports. At the end of that time, he attended the conference at Wannsee, devoted to the particulars of the Final Solution. Everyone, without exception, states Arendt, spoke as though the immorality of the plan was not even in question: it was a nonissue. Since his superiors had adopted this position, and, indeed, everyone Eichmann knew, he gave it no further thought. (Eichmann stated that no one, not even the local religious leaders, ever pointed out to him the evil he was engaging in. Instead, they worked within the “law,” obtaining “exceptions,” but never directly challenging the law.) Eichmann had corrupted Kant’s principle (“act so the principle of your action can become the principle for general laws”) to mean “Act so that the Fuehrer, if he knew what you were doing, would approve.” Hitler’s will was substituted for Eichmann’s and was regarded throughout Germany as having the force of law.

The horrors of the Holocaust are well-known. Following the end of World War II, at the Nuremberg Trials, international law began to adopt a minimum moral standard that would apply regardless of what the law of the individual country had been at the time the crime had been committed. The source of this moral standard was to be what all nations regarded as moral. But, again, there remained the question, which is coming back in the recent debates about medical conscience clauses, whether the conscience can be relied upon to define an objective morality, or whether, particularly if knowledge of morality is predicated on experience and habits of acting, conscience is simply relative and dependent on individual experience, cultural norms, and other subjective and changeable criteria. If the latter, there is no guaranty that something like the Holocaust will not happen again.

Questions in the Dark

Murder mysteries can be fiendishly difficult things to unravel. However, there are certain assumptions we often take for granted: the laws of physics are constant, time moves linearly, the human perception of reality is - by and large - an accurate representation. But what if these basic rules of existence could not be assumed?

What constitutes a human being? More specifically, what makes a human being act? The Marxists tell us that class and the economic realities of society condition our behavior. The chemists, pushed to their farthest extremes, might tell us that chemicals in our brains explain all our actions. Likewise, the psychologists would tell us that past experiences condition our behavior in the present. But are any of these answers fully sufficient?

Do those who possess great power know how to utilize it? This is frequently our assumption, but what if those with superhuman powers could only exercise them clumsily?

These questions may seems quite disparate, but Alex Proyas' Dark City (1998) manages to address all of them, and quite artfully. Set in a surreal 1940s-esque future, Dark City might seem confusing or disjointed at first - or even just plain weird - but the loose ends pull together in a way that is quite satisfying. Visually compelling, intellectually rich and narratively satisfying, Dark City is a winner.


(Sadly, I think the trailer fails to quite capture the feeling of the film. Think more noir and less techno.)

Seeing Beyond the Human

One day, while eating lunch at the National Archives (pictured left), I heard the next table over discussing the Bible. My ears immediately perked up, since matters of faith are hardly normal lunchtime conversation material in such quarters. I was disappointed, however, to realize that the discussion was strictly about translations of Scripture, and not matters of faith or theology.

I have complained before about the inability of contemporary culture to consider the Highest Things. Recently I have observed another dimension of this problem.

Outside the confines of the Quincy House - whose dining room alone contained a dozen religious images at last count - and similar circles, I have frequently observed that the Church is viewed as a strictly human institution. More to the point, even the Church's claims to being more than human are overlooked. This often - though not exclusively - focuses on the Church's failures and the crimes that have been committed in her name. Admittedly, the Church's failures are real and not to be overlooked; aside from historic massacres and torture, in our own day there are many who have been profoundly hurt by injustices committed by the sons of the Catholic Church.

In light of such visible shortcomings, I would expect one of two responses. The first, which you can hear from the Church's adherents, is that the Church is both human and divine, always sanctifying while herself in need of sanctification. Moreover, not all who call themselves Catholic, or are even visibly joined to the Church, are in fact members of Christ' mystical Body and animated by His Spirit (cf. St. Augustine's City of God). The other response I would expect would be to argue that a loving God would never allow such injustices and therefore Christ' presence must not reside in the Catholic Church (or, for that matter, any human institution. If you really want to get picky, you might even call into question the Incarnation or the notion of divine self-revelation, both of which are bound to get mixed up in human messiness).

Oddly, I rarely hear this second response. Instead, the Church's supernatural claims are usually ignored. Rather than denouncing the Church for failing to measure up to perfection, she is simply castigated for being a tad lower than other human institutions, which are thereby deemed better. (By extension, on the days when the Church is perceived as doing good - feeding the hungry, caring for orphans - she may rise to the top of the heap, but it is nevertheless a low heap.) Nowhere is there a consideration of the Perfect, the Absolute, something that might circumscribe all human institutions and activities.

Perhaps this is simply a result of the fact that much of my time is spent with fellow historians, who are some of the more practically-minded members of the liberal arts family. But I think the problem is far more widespread than that, and it has a name: materialism.

Materialism is by no means new. The First Vatican Council condemned it in its First Canon: "If anyone is so bold as to assert that there exists nothing besides matter: let him be anathema" (section 2). Of course, most people would not be so bold as to say that. It is fairly difficult to prove that nothing but the material exists, so most folks are intelligent enough to concede that the spiritual may be out there. But aside from this single concession, the same people will elsewhere ignore the possibility of the spiritual, both in their thought and in their actions.

What then are we to make of this rampant materialism? What are we to do in such times? I am afraid I have no genius answers, other than to throw generous quantities of salt about and pray for the best.


Incidentally, if you would like a tshirt with today's Vatican I quotation on it, just steer your browser over to anathemasit.com.

Conversation by Factoid

Much has been written about the way that reading is quickly changing in the internet age. Consider, for example, a fairly standard internet news story: it consists of a paragraph or two of information, with a large, glossy picture. There may be further text stashed away somewhere, but you have to click on a link to find it. Meanwhile, the key points have been summarized for you with bullets. Related stories are linked somewhere in the margin. At the bottom of the screen, perhaps, are unrelated but highly popular stories, usually involving celebrities, nakedness or both. And then there are the omnipresent advertisements. (I would have included a screen shot of such a thing, but you've all probably seen it before; and if you haven't, the Guild Review more or less reproduces the phenomenon, though without the ads or naked celebrities, and somewhat more text.)

Critics point out that this format is changing the way that we read, shortening our attention spans and making it harder for us to follow narratives, arguments or anything more than a paragraph in length. Moreover, it seems the phenomenon is spilling over into spoken conversation as well. Rather than telling stories or laying out a line of reasoning, conversations often consist of factoids, one-line arguments and the briefest of anecdotes. Frequently these come from television programs such as The Daily Show or Mythbusters. All things considered, both programs are fairly intelligent, but the snippets that get cited the following day are frequently the witty lines or the (literally) explosive conclusions, rather than the thoughtful discussions that went with them. Perhaps the most grating form of this phenomenon is conversation which consists wholly of movie quotations. While a certain amount of intellectual power is required to memorize and string together such quotes, the heights which can be reached by such discourse are fairly low and no given topic can hold the collective attention for terribly long. In all of these cases, the result is an intellectually choppy outcome, incapable of moving from A to B to C and on to D, either narratively or philosophically.

Short intellectual attention spans manifest themselves in other ways as well. Even the intelligent and well-educated can be woefully incapable of discussing such things as literature. Interesting comments may be given, but they focus on poignant moments or arresting characters, things which are often emotional and subjective and are usually perceived in a single instant. Much more rare are considerations of an author's world-view or his opinion of virtue. Such rational arguments require the review of multiple episodes within the work, the discovery of common elements between them, and the refutation of episodes which would seem to undermine the argument at hand. Such discussions are by no means impossible today, but much more difficult for those who cannot hold their nose to the grindstone of a single topic for more than a passing moment.

In addition to frustrating college professors, does this phenomenon really have significant consequences? Who cares if our conversations are becoming shorter and choppier? Does it really matter? In point of fact, it does. Financial investing, political decisions and life-long vocations all require more than a moment's consideration. But perhaps most importantly, our ability to consider the Highest Things, the First Principles of the cosmos, is seriously compromised if we cannot think outside a jumble of factoids. Christ' words to Martha seem particularly apt: "Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary..."

Caritas in veritate: On Cultural Eclecticism

In section 26 of Caritas in veritate, Benedict XVI describes two dangers facing the modern world, modes of thinking which "separat[e] culture from human nature." The second of these is fairly straightforward: "Cultural leveling, [the] indiscriminate acceptance of types of conduct and life-styles." We all see this, probably every day. In a world of cultural leveling, Benedict writes, "one loses sight of the profound significance of the culture of different nations, of the traditions of the various peoples, by which the individual defines himself in relation to life's fundamental questions."

But the second danger against which he warns is more subtle: "cultural eclecticism, [by which] cultures are simply placed alongside one another and viewed as substantially equivalent and interchangeable." I must confess, this is the danger by which I am more tempted. (As you may have noticed, my interests include pow-wowing with Afghans, praising obscure African peoples and observing esoteric regions of post-Soviet republics.)

Following Paul VI's Populorum progressio, one of Benedict's major themes throughout Caritas in veritate is the importance of integral human development: the economic, political, educational, social and spiritual must all go together. Likewise, I think cultures are unitary things as well. The philosophy or world-view of a people does not simply exist alongside their literature and political institutions, but infuses them; moreover, ideas may exist in their most pristine form in treatises and high culture, but they are usually transmitted through earthy rituals and low culture. Though Benedict does not elaborate to this degree, I think one of the potential pitfalls of cultural eclecticism is that cultures are often broken into pieces which are then viewed as interchangeable, when in fact they usually are not. This phenomenon can be seen in the cultured agnostic who attends a high liturgy and is overwhelmed by the ceremony of it all, but misses that which the believer considers most important. Likewise, the same phenomenon is at play when a certain economic model which works well in one culture is exported to another culture, often with disastrous results for families or traditional ways of life.

Benedict warns that cultural eclecticism "easily yields to a relativism that does not serve true intercultural dialogue; on the social plane, cultural relativism has the effect that cultural groups coexist side by side, but remain separate, with no authentic dialogue and therefore no true integration." Superficial cultural dialogue says, "I eat X for breakfast; you eat Y? How interesting..." But more profound cultural dialogue considers the way in which various elements of a culture interact with one another and the functions they fulfill in society. True cultural dialogue must consider cultures as a whole and ask about their end. Put another way, authentic cultural dialogue must look beyond the mere elements of a culture and even beyond culture itself, to that outside culture, the philosophic and theological truths it supports.

But relativism says that there is no truth, or at least that all claims to the truth are equal. Thus, relativism stymies authentic cultural dialogue by preventing any consideration of what cultures really mean or the ends which they truly serve. Coupled with cultural eclecticism, the result of such relativism can be that the bits and bobs of different cultures are generously intermixed, but to no meaningful end.


Many of the pictures used on this blog are uncopyrighted or just too plain boring to credit. But oceanic's Flickr account deserves a shout-out for this great find.

Windows Rather Than Mirrors

I must confess: I am not a philosopher. Neither am I a literary theorist. But a couple months ago I was reading this review of a collection of essays by and about Umberto Eco. I admit, the review was not easy for me to follow, but I plodded through it, reading sentences two and three times if needed. Near the end, this passage really jumped out at me:

If anything marks the personality and writing of Umberto Eco, it is an insatiable curiosity, love, and sense of wonder about the world. He’s having a good time, to be sure, but good times aren’t the point. It’s rather that the world itself — in all its intractable, intricate, deliciously ambiguous, quotidian reality — is to Eco so astonishingly rich. It’s there on every page: this man is mad to know about things, not as a projection of his needs or wants, but as having their own intrinsic interest, indeed dignity. Kant was like that, come to think of it, and Aristotle too.

In contrast, the [Richard] Rorty I find as model author of this text, taking his random walk through life, tossed this way and that depending on the books he’s most recently come across, seems such a tepid character. He position is consummately worked out, but it seems so boringly inward-directed, with every book a mirror, instead of a window.

As a PhD student, I have spent the last nineteen years of my life in school. (Twenty if you want to count that half-day kindergarten class.) In spite of that, I am afraid that I spend most of my time with a pre-arranged plan plan for my studies, lining up the evidence to fit my personal predilections. It is a rare day when I approach the evidence with a genuine desire to follow where it leads me.

I think it was in my very first class at UD that I was told about the philosophic cast of mind. More than a discipline, philosophy is a way of thinking, and it requires three things: (1) withdrawal from the distractions of everyday life, (2) a sense of wonder about the world, in all its forms, and (3) a firm commitment to inquiry over whatever system one has constructed. I usually possess genuine wonder about the topic on which I am working, but too often I ignore neighboring topics of potentially great value. I am withdrawn from the world in the sense of being in the ivory tower of academia, but that is itself a very hustle-bustle kind of world. And it is a rare day when I am willing to overturn my whole system of thought if further inquiry proves it inadequate.

Thus, the piece about Eco was quite refreshing, for the simple reason that I had to struggle to follow it. Once I was in it, I was driven by the simple desire to understand the ideas being communicated, not to put them in one of my pre-labeled boxes. I really should pick up philosophy more often...

Josef Pieper, Agnosticism & "The Sense for Mystery"

At the end of his post on the movie Pi, Aaron briefly mentions agnosticism, and suggests that most self-declared agnostics have simply never made any effort to ask the big questions about the meaning of the cosmos. Even if we will not reach conclusive answers, we need to ask the questions, and not take the easy way out by calling ourselves agnostics. This brought to mind a book I read recently, which made precisely this point: Josef Pieper's For the Love of Wisdom: Essays on the Nature of Philosophy.

Pieper was a 20th-century German Thomist whose work has been discussed on this site before, and who always deserves more attention. What made Pieper stand out from many of his fellow Thomists was that while he always maintained a realist outlook, he placed great emphasis on the limits of knowledge. For instance, in The Silence of St. Thomas, Pieper demonstrated how Aquinas incorporated the via negativa of Pseudo-Dionysius into the core of his own work. Pieper always placed in the foreground of his writing the paradox that things are intelligible in themselves because they have been created by God, but are not comprehensible by our intellect because God's intellect surpasses ours by so much. Here is a quotation from part VI of "A Plea for Philosophy" that explains this paradox:

The sentence "omne ens est verum" [everything that is is true]. . .has two aspects. The one enables us to recognize an ever deepening access to all existing things; the other, the impossibility of ever reaching rock bottom. Both aspects. . .are empirically verifiable facts. That, however, both may be traced back to the same origin; that they are even in a certain sense identical; that, more specifically, the things are, taken for themselves, knowable in their ultimate constitution because they originate in the infinite brightness of the divine logos and that they are at the same time unfathomable to us precisely because they originate in the infinite brightness of the divine logos--this is not empirically verifiable.

This paradox leads Pieper to the conclusion that, in the face of our inability to comprehend the meaning of the cosmos, agnosticism is not enough. This paradox should instead lead us to wonder, awe, and a "sense for mystery":

Now, what is meant here by mystery is not something exclusively negative and more than simply what is obscure. In fact, when understood more precisely, mystery does not imply obscurity at all. It connotes light, but a light of such plenitude that it remains "unquenchable" for a knowing faculty or a linguistic capacity that is merely human. The notion of mystery should not suggest that the effort involved in thinking runs up against a wall but rather that this effort exhausts itself in the unforeseeable, in the space--the unlimited breadth and depth--of creation.

We never will find all the right answers to the big questions. Nevertheless, that should not prevent us from setting out on the journey.

Pi, etc.

We recently lost the internet at my house for several days. One realizes just how much it has become a part of everyday life when it is gone. Rather than listing all the things I could not do, suffice it to say I found something I could: watch movies. So I did.

Darren Aronofsky’s Pi is a story about the search for meaning in the universe. It tells the tale of Max Cohen, a mathematician obsessed with finding patterns to explain phenomena around him. More to the point, he is interested in finding the pattern which will explain, well, everything. In the course of the story we encounter Wall Street types who are interested in such patterns primarily for the ability to predict the stock market, but we also meet kabbalists who seek to decode the Torah and find the long-lost name of God which will help usher in the messianic age.



The film reminded me of Eric Foner’s Story of American Freedom, a text I had to teach this past semester. Foner’s objective seems simple enough: to explain the changing definition of freedom from the time of the American Founding to the present day. However, as I tried to point out to my students, implicit in his presentation was another message. To help them tease that out, I gave a (very, very, very!) quick-and-dirty history of western philosophy, since such courses are not required at A&M.

Plato argued that there were such things as forms, things in heaven which embody ideas. Or rather, more to the point, are ideas, which are imperfectly embodied in particular occurrences. There is the form of the Tree, in which all trees participate, and by that participation they have something in common. There is the form of the Cat as well, along with abstract – but no less real – concepts such as Justice, Truth and Freedom.

Aristotle, though he spoke of substance and accidents, rather than forms, broadly agreed with Plato that there are fundamental categories at work in the cosmos, categories which transcend physical characteristics and abide in the very fiber of a thing’s being. But in the Middle Ages a fellow named William of Ockham denied that there were categories at all. Yes, he said, we can point to this fuzzy thing with whiskers and that fuzzy thing with whiskers, and we can call them both cats, because that would be a very useful thing to say. But in the end, Ockham argued, each is a unique object without anything fundamentally in common with the other. We apply labels for our convenience, but they do not correspond to any deeper meaning in reality.

Some centuries later Immanuel Kant tried to steer a middle course between these two positions, contending that there may be categories to the cosmos, but we cannot know them. Thus, in practice, he was an Ockhamite, arguing that the labels we affix may be handy, but may not actually correspond to the fundamental being of things. Finally, the nihilists – most famous among them being Friedrich Nietzsche – contended that there is no meaning to the cosmos at all, categorical or otherwise, a far cry from the ancients.

How did all this connect to Eric Foner and American history? While charting the changing meanings of “freedom” over the years, I would submit that Foner assumes – and implicitly argues – that there is no meaning to the term “freedom”; it does not really exist. Yes, Foner is willing to talk about it as a label we place on things, even a very convenient label, but in the end, does it correspond to anything in reality? Is there a right answer to the question, “What is freedom?” Foner demurs and – I would argue – ultimately denies.

Returning then to Mr. Aronofsky’s film and the pressing question it asks: Is there meaning to the cosmos? And if there is, what is it, and what does that meaning demand of me?

Agnosticism, exceedingly vogue in the ivory tower of academia, seeks to avoid these questions. Perhaps the answers simply are unknowable, though I doubt most have ever truly sought them. And if the point of all our academic endeavors is to know the truth, what does it say about us that we have abdicated any responsibility for knowing the highest truths?

This post first appeared yesterday on True. Good. Beautiful., a forum about entertainment and the film industry.

The Truth Will Set You Free

Truth is a strange thing. In spite of using the word all the time, it is easy to forget just what it is, or that it exists at all. Too often, when we talk about truth we mean something provisional or superficial, something that is not really capable of inconveniencing us, and something that is easily observed.

But while reading an unfinished homily by Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP, I was reminded just how transcendent and profound the truth really is. I was also reminded how much I miss hearing Fr. Philip's preaching. So turn off your music, put away the distractions and click on the link above.

Welcome, Peter and Emma!

I wanted to give a special shout out to a pair of new contributors who will be joining our blogging team.

As the About This Blog section says, "the blog's contributors are a variety of graduates and friends of the University of Dallas." Peter Kromhout, is not, in fact, a graduate of UD, but he is very much a friend, having graduated from Christendom College, a like-minded institution.

Originally a native of the Twin Cities - one of my favorite metropolitan areas - Peter moved to Washington, DC, after finishing his BA in Philosophy and is currently studying for an MA in Statecraft & National Security at the Institute of World Politics.

Peter is a fan of Jane Austen, fine beer, the ancient Greeks, Irish music and getting himself into tight places in Arabic-speaking countries or our nation's capital.

Neither is Emma Zimmerman a UD graduate. However, this native of the great state of Arizona is a student of the liberal arts and can doubtless run circles around me when it comes to conjugating Latin. In addition to her interests in the humanities, Emma has managed to master the intricacies of science as well: she received a BA in Bioengeineering from Arizona State University and will complete an MA in the same field this spring before heading off to Montreal in the fall to begin a PhD.

Emma's interests include traveling to Turkey, reading long novels (including Kristen Lavransdatter and The Brothers Karamazov, neither of which I managed to finish), throwing dinner parties and listening to This American Life.

So, please, everyone, a warm round of applause for Peter and Emma!

A Christian Political Mythology

A while back I was reading a blog post and got to thinking about how we, as Christians, view the world. Is this life a place of exile or a pilgrim land, through which we merely pass? If we are merely passing through, we would do well to ignore the world, even hide from it, and focus on the end goal, our return (reditus or nostos) to the Lord. On the other hand, if this present life is a gift from the Lord, then it should not only be noticed, but cherished. How we understand the Christian response to politics is largely colored by our understanding of our present state. (I have recently been reading Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy, which has perhaps fueled my interest in legitimacy, law, subversion and such questions.) So what exactly is our present state? I have been trying to piece together a few archetypal insights into what you might call a Christian political mythology. Here it is:


Once upon on time there was a great and glorious kingdom, ruled by an ancient and wise King. Though His dominions were vast and rich, one day He decided to create a new land for His kingdom. Yes, create. Somewhere in the distant seas He decided to raise an island. He drew up plans, dispatches the greatest engineers and landscapers in the kingdom and a lavish island world was made. Legend had it that some of the most spectacular wonders of this land were the product not of His servants' hands, but of the King's own mental powers.

On this island He chose to settle some of His leading citizens. But in spite of choosing only the finest of settlers, and in spite of the lavish world He had created for them, the island settlers revolted against the King. And so, He decreed, their island home would no longer be a place of privilege, but of exile.

As the years passed, the distant King became increasingly relegated to the stories of legend. There were rumors among the islanders that at some distant time His armies had come and smashed the greatest wonders of their island home. But many of them doubted that these stories were true. They began to doubt that there were other lands, a splendid capital city with streets of gold, or a great and benevolent King Who ruled there. Some of the islanders even began to doubt that there were such things as greatness or benevolence.

But then a very curious thing happened: the King returned to His island. At least, that is what certain small gatherings of people began to claim. First they whispered it in the dark, but soon some were shouting it in the streets. He had returned, showing Himself to those of His subjects who were still faithful. He assured them that greatness and benevolence and love were indeed real, and He was the embodiment of them all.

But then something as curious as the King's return occurred (or so the story was told). He left. The King left the island once again. He had ordered those willing to listen to live as His faithful subjects and then He had left. But not without promising to return again (and this time, He said, there would be no confusion: He would come in power and might with all the royal armies). Moreover, He promised that those who remained faithful citizens of the kingdom, who proved themselves in the midst of this rebellious land, would be taken with Him back to His capital city, where they would rule with Him.

But what, the faithful asked, were they to do in the meantime? Should they seize control of the island, making war on their fellow islanders? Many doubted that had been the King's intention. Indeed, from time to time secret messages would be smuggled back and forth between the King, on the mainland, and His faithful subjects on the island. Though He exhorted them to love one another and remain faithful to Him, He never spelled out exactly how the island should be governed. While a handful of the islanders proclaimed themselves to be in open rebellion against the King, most simply doubted His existence. Some even stated publicly that they wished there was a King beyond the seas, but - alas - they were convinced there was none.

Some of the small number of open rebels, denouncing the tyranny of the King, demanded a government of the people, a democracy. The vast majority, doubting there ever had been a King, did not see themselves as rebels, but nevertheless thought this a good idea. Could they too, the faithful wondered, enter into such a government? Or would it be treason, a betrayal of their beloved King? Some said they should have no dealings with rebels. Other insisted that by sitting in council with the doubters, perhaps the faithful could win them over. And, after all, the King had left no governor to rule the island in His stead. Was it really treasonous to form a democracy, which might try to govern according to His will, in His absence? Some insisted the faithful should band together in one corner of the island, where they might live according to the King's laws, abandoning the rest of the island to the rebels. Other thought the King would want them to extend His reign across the whole of the land.


This, it seems to me, is the basic place of the Christian: we live in a world which was once a gift, became an exile, but has been transformed into a rite of passage, a preparation for some great reward and responsibility to come. How do we, Christians, live in the midst of a secular world? Do we abandon the political realm to the secularists? Do we try to seize government to impose virtue upon the unbelieving? Can we compromise with those do not share our moral views?

Insofar as the world is in rebellion against God, we are subversives in such a world. But we are also restorationists, traditionalists, loyalists trying to defend the monarchy of Christ the King. We are revolutionaries, insofar as we are called to change the world. But we are also pilgrims, ever called to remember that something greater lies beyond this world, and in our future.

These, it seems to me, are the conundra of Christian political philosophy. Relating them in a single story does not solve them but it does, I hope, at least bring the questions into slightly sharper focus, by bringing them into relation with one another.


This post first appeared on the Quincy House blog a few days ago.