posted by Guy @ 11:44 PM
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Today in history is Karl Barth 120th birthday. In that spirit I enclose my final paper for ethical theory, and dedicate it to the beloved theologian from Bonn.
Recent criticisms have been leveled against ethical theory, judging that its analysis is superficial, that it cannot account for the human being which it aspires to speak about.1 At the core, the criticisms are of its rationalistic tone and climate. This is not altogether insignificant, however, because a person's presuppositions determine what questions are asked, which thereby limit the kind of answers to be found. Insofar as these are valid criticisms of ethical theory, I would like to suggest four vindications of things lost by this approach and three accommodations of issues untouched or ignored, in order to steer the ship of ethical theory in a more prosperous direction. It should look close to an anti-theory or virtue approach, stricken through with Continental philosophy, aspects of Christian theology, but remain general enough not to stifle a wide variety of questions.
My goal is more to adjust the limits of the questions of ethical theory rather than to offer my disapproval of its particular quality which is all too insipid. I hope through this to nourish the soil of right practice, which all theory exists to do, rather than the sustenance of an isolated ivory tower. In this way, I agree with Aristotle, that virtue cannot be taught or commodified. No man has sole propriety on virtue, but we are her heirs, her gracious recipients. Yet, ethical theory exists as a conversation which is deeply shaped by the concerns of a person's particular kind of attunment, and while diversity of perspectives is welcome, certain questions actually are vicious and unwelcome, albeit destructive. Therefore, diversity for its own sake is not the goal of this endeavor, neither the freedom to be stubbornly wrong, but rather the freedom to ask the more helpful sorts of questions which will lead toward virtue and humanization for all participants.
It is too easy to be caught up in separating the conclusions of a person's inquiry from its process, the ideas from their context, and persons from their words. For while we are doing ethical theory, I propose that we be shaped by our ethical theory, or even better that our character would be purified2 to make us better theorists.3 One of my problems with ethical theory, and modernity in general is its emphasis on the end result, the goal, the answer, while it is the process which stands as the apology and justification for how we arrived there. By examining the journey to a conclusion, we are either inclined and endeared or reluctant and repulsed, because the journey is uniquely human space, rather than decontextualized propositional statements. The journey is unique because it engages the uniquely human capacity to empathize. That said, I will begin with my first accommodation.
It seems as though ethical theory would benefit to begin with man's relatedness rather than his rationality. This does not deny what man is capable of, but rather affirms that he is more properly already in relation to others in the world. He cannot aspire to be related to others, no matter how he exists he is always already in relation to them. Through this inescapable phenomenon, we can agree with Emmanuel Levinas that ethics is first philosophy. We are born as creatures who are cared for and we cannot remember a time when we have not been invoked4. Therefore, rationality is the handmaid of relationality; it serves to teach us how to be properly related, authentically related, rather than inauthentically lost in our own existence.5 Bernard Williams shares this critique of ethical theory, which is caught up in what he calls “the rationalistic conception of rationality” with its truncated notion of the human, spawning inbred, illegitimate, and fragmented progeny (18).
Closely related is my first vindication. I propose what I will call the theory of “mysterious access,” which is the epistemological and relational mode understood by the scholastics through the category of analogy. It is defined against the competing notions of univocity and equivocity. Univocity represents a sort of hyper-imminence that reduces the other into the sameness of the self such that the other is no longer conceived of as other but as myself. It is mastery, complete and full, unadulterated access. This overeager desire to know actually damages the primordial ethical mandate to allow the other to maintain her freedom through her alterity. Yet, equivocity also forges a false relationship, by mandating that the other be wholly other. In this way, I respectfully disagree with John Caputo in his essay The End of Ethics. For if the other was Wholly Other, how would we even know that the other existed? Since the utter alterity of the other is wholly absurd, we are left with a more nuanced approach, that of analogy. The other is always disclosed through a particular means, a context, leaving much to be unseen and unknown. Much of what could be known lies within as potency, unknown until disclosure, but knowable to other human beings, and not easily reducible to a scientific schemata or set of categories which would “objectively” capture what has been seen.
Therefore, mysterious access guarantees real, authentic access, but not mastery, while retaining aspects of what I am calling mystery, that is, something other than myself which moves without my direction, and not always in predictable ways. It is only this posture which enables us to approach another human being fairly. The analogy of being gives us an adequate basis for rules, as it knits human beings together as creatures of like nature. While thinking of rules, we must respect rather than override the other humans which we speak of. For I agree with Caputo that rules and systems are necessary, but always approximate and penultimate, never final.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, in his book Notes from the Underground provides us a helpful and more concrete lens to ask our following questions which seek to redirect contemporary ethical theory in a promising direction. Dostoevsky is a credible source because, to use the words of G. E. M. Anscombe, he had “a sound philosophy of psychology” which has regretfully been missing from the dominant philosophical discourse for at least the past five hundred years (Crisp 30). After all, the Greeks found literature to be a helpful means for expressing ethical dilemmas, because of its unique way to engage the human. In literature a character can exist as a character, with contradiction and confusion, while in philosophy such a character is dubbed irrational and thereby nonexistent, explained away in mere sentences by knockdown arguments.
Thus literature proves to be a more humanizing supplement for applied philosophy in understanding the situatedness of philosophical questions, because as the particulars are intact, an ethical dilemma takes on greater life, and human beings are not so easily flattened to fit a system. Caputo calls this phenomenon singularity, that in a:
multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-lingual world, where immigrants legal and illegal move freely about, where gay and lesbian rights are regularly defended, where medical advances throw us into confusion about who is the parent of whom, where human cloning is foreseeable, things are not so simple. (120)
Such a world does not call us to be conservative, to be moderate, to be hesitant and stingy, but rather it calls us to be radical. This is what Caputo sees in the concept of the gift, which is antithetical to giving someone what they deserve, the notion of justice traditionally put forth. If a gift is genuine, it means that you are willing to give it unconditionally to the other, for the good of the other, without strings attached. A gift is an overflow, an abundance, which is not deserved, and quite often unexpected. Therefore, he would incline us to pursue excessive kindness as the only hope and catalyst for social transformation.
To pause for a moment, change the tone of our prose, and introduce the chosen text. Notes from the Underground is a tragicomedy of a nameless, fictional, “Underground Man” who Dostoevsky says in the beginning footnote “not only may but even must exist in our society, taking into consideration the circumstances under which our society was formed” (5). He writes attentive to the climate of modernity, to the rationalistic philosophies of the good life which have trickled down into the popular awareness and lifestyle. He ultimately shows the fragmentation and absurdity that these unnatural systems inspire, the way they disrupt more human ways of living well. His antihero is a rambling, neurotic man of hyper-consciousness. This means that he is grasping for significance through control, through power, and through mastery. Again and again he shows us that he can get the better of us, that he has outsmarted us, while at the same time boasting in his wickedness which he explains brings him much delight, precisely because it belongs to him, as a genuine act of his freedom to choose. In a sense, this text shows the torment of a person who seeks to live under the teaching of the enlightenment, and evokes the rebellious will behind rationality which fights back when it is told to be suppressed, when the good life is mathematically determined to a tee.
At this point we should introduce our second vindication, the vindication of finitude over against man's aspiration to be infinite, unbounded, and free. It is not necessary to be beyond reproach to find significance in life. This is a dialectic tension which fuels extreme sports, the business world, and even the philosopher. It is the desire for more, to push limits, and to be the king of the hill. Unlike the tormenting aspirations of the Underground Man, we must be content not being the biggest, the best, or the brightest; we must learn to be content in our own skin, taking control of the sorts of things we can which do not cause internal fragmentation. We must get our minds out of the clouds, to flee from the naïve search for perfect, eternal, and internally consistent forms, to consider the ethical issue always at hand: how our actions affect those around us. The Underground Man struggles with accepting his finitude, for he would rather be ambiguous, and undefined. He says:
I never even managed to become anything: neither wicked nor good, neither a scoundrel nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect. And now I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and utter futile consolation that is even impossible for an intelligent man seriously to become anything, and only fools become something. Yes, sir, an intelligent man of the nineteenth century must be and is morally obliged to be primarily a characterless being; and a man of character, an active figure – primarily a limited being. (7)
Thus, what is shocking about this man is how honest he can be. There almost seems virtue in his honesty, something endearing. Yet, he is being mastered by his fear of being something rather than nothing, and has chosen the familiar, undefined state without risk against the great wall of deterministic rationality. For he chose to retire after receiving an inheritance, to live alone in a filthy, corner apartment, where his very existence haunts and torments him. He should be told that he already is something, and that enlightenment reason or arbitrary and defiant will are not his only two options, but that he can be a coherent person in relation to others, without needing to tirelessly justify his very existence. Thus, a proclamation of freedom to the captives of the insipid enlightenment logic.
The third vindication that I propose is a vindication of the ordinary. It is not altogether different than the vindication of finitude, but rather affirms that significance is primarily something which comes from our relatedness with others who are already around us. Rather than neglecting the persons around us as irrelevant in exchange for a solipsistic and idealistic philosophy, we must exorcise our minds of such rubbish and make space in our conception to allow the ordinary life to also be fully compatible with the good life. Thus, too deny the accessibility of the good life to all people, whether they are attuned to receive it or not, would easily promote a kind of suspicious historical snobbery, much less a kind of self-justifying arrogance.6
The fourth vindication to be proposed is a vindication of the sacred. It is not as though the modern person values nothing as sacred, rather that she has too limited and superficial a notion of it. As modern individualism teaches, the self alone is sacred, or that naked, unencumbered rationality is sacred. Yet, there is nothing personal about this. It is like worshiping an idol which stoically ignores all praise and laud. Such emptiness is without depth, and nothing more than dead ritual. The kind of sacred to be redeemed is the sacred personal, quite often also ordinary and finite (with the exclusion of God). When a human life is inclined toward virtue, there is depth and significance involved. To behold something as sacred shows that you are willing to sacrifice for it, that you are willing to endure pain for it, and that you will speak well of it. It shows that you are committed to something rather than nothing. The problem with the Underground Man is that he does not commit to anything except himself, which is dependent upon his mood and situation, depending on how the cards of power are currently stacked, he will be friendly or antagonistic. This, not only is lonely, but self-referentially incoherent. Granted this is not the same flaw as Kant who also would abhor such phenomena, yet it is distinctly modern, and the modern categories are insufficient to help him.
Nothing is more disturbing to behold than the way the Underground Man toys with those around him for his own pleasure, reacting against being toyed with himself by what society would call his superiors. After sleeping with a prostitute, he felt guilty for having sex without love, and proceeded to lecture her until she wept profusely. He spoke to her about dignity, quite passionately and truly, but while he believed what he was saying in his mind, he did not have the character to stand behind his words in his heart. He leaves her with his address inviting her out of her profession to live a life of beautiful monogamy. Yet, for the following days, he could not believe what he had done, and reneged mentally upon his commitment. When she finally arrived at his door expecting him to stand behind his commitment, he hated her for her innocence and purity, for having trusted him, and he took the occasion to humiliate her further. While he initially wept upon her arrival, he then spoke honestly about what had motivated him to speak the kinds of words he did the previous day. In the end, he sent her away from his house with money, to insult her even more, to get the better of her, to win (which ironically was a mutual net loss of trust, significance, and love). As she left, though, she dropped the crumpled money on his kitchen table, and he chased after her, recognizing her purity of character. She had fled so quickly that she was nowhere to be found. The irony of this story is that while he was seeking to dominate her, he had no categories to comprehend the selfless love she was offering him. She did not come to hear his soliloquies. She came bearing a gift. Yet, his immature game kept him from receiving that gift, perhaps the greatest gift anyone had given him, concern, the posture of respect, a belief in his dignity, unconditional love. Instead, he pursued the familiar, knowing that he did not merit or deserve the gift, and thereby shunned it. For the Underground Man, love was only the freedom to tyrannize someone else. He received the gift on his own terms, resented the undeserved grace, and flaunted it only to spite the other and show his superiority and strength of will to dominate her, exposing his insecure and deeply fragmented will to power. Such internal contradiction is not altogether without basis in human experience.
In response to this story I propose the second accommodation which I think ethical theory needs to heed in order to flourish, that is an accommodation of suffering and miserable people. Historically, ethical theory has been authored by the powerful, the strong, the able, and the educated, yet this sort of theory does not necessarily account best for the downtrodden, the ones in misery, and those who are suffering. It is an overly rosy and romanticized ideal which is inadequate to speak to real people who are messy and who do not come out living rationally according to the enlightenment or otherwise. Heidegger's work on angst is supremely helpful here. He says, “[n]ot-being-at-home must be conceived existentially and ontologically as the more primordial phenomenon” than being-at-home (177). This not-being-at-home brings forth the undirected fear called angst which overwhelms and disrupts one's complacency and situatedness. This in a way vindicates (but by no means excuses) human beings in their current, irrational and sinful state, without expecting them to be at home in the world.
Alienation is a more proper place to begin ethical theory, rather than the sort of psychology of enlightenment which sees human beings as born good, and only misdirected or uneducated. The Underground Man's problem was not one of ignorance. He was able to speak truthfully and compassionately to the prostitute. The problem is deeper, and cuts to the core of how we exist. This is not a forced, gloom and doom snapshot of human existence, but rather a realistic starting place to understand how our species exists, how the kinds of atrocities we have committed have made the last century the most bloody century in history. We can run, but we cannot hide. The problem is latent and within, and the solution is external and beyond our grasp. Can we really be strong enough to receive the gift? Can we take it in and be changed to thereby radically overcome the inertia of winning and thereby truly know and experience the other as something beyond my control, as someone sacred in need of love and compassion too? Can I offer this and truly back it up, with the knowledge of my own need and inadequacy to fulfill the ethical mandate of the golden rule7?
Much hinges upon the way one answers these questions. What is at stake is whether one is optimistic about the capability of man to fix his own problems, the solution of modernity, or whether there is something greater and beyond him necessary to help him. Dostoevsky painted this awful picture to point to a moment of hope. Considered alone, this story could just as easily support a nihilistic understanding of the human as the Christian understanding. Russian authorities at that time censored his chapter to which all this fragmentation pointed, where he exposed the “need for faith and Christ” (xviii).
As described earlier, Aristotle describes and defends human nature through the concept of habit. Our character is shaped just as much by our behavior as our behavior is shaped by our character. Therefore, virtue is circular in a way. To be virtuous, we must behave virtuously, and to become vicious is to behave viciously. Action determines habit, and inaction determines habit as well.
The Underground Man prizes himself for not being a man of action, rather his character is shown to be determined by incontinence or a weak will, at times even a vicious will, as he hopes to escape any sort of static or predictable character. Thomas Aquinas, who accepts Aristotle's notion of habit, conceives of grace as only breaking in upon the will through a physical infusion. It is not something which the human can create, but solely exists as a response to prior divine action. In a sense, then, the Underground Man is naturally confined to his misery, but in another sense, God uses means (Thomas saw the sacraments, while Protestants add to the sacraments to see various types of word as the occasions for gracious mediation) to turn the will from vice to virtue; God creates the occasion and sees to it that the conditions for man to receive the gift are properly satisfied.
Man is both responsible and yet not fully the master of his own destiny.8 Yet, misery disappears when the balm of mercy is applied. Therefore, upon sharing the burden of the miserable, the disheveled, and disfranchised, we are, in the words of Jesus, near to the Kingdom of God. Such beauty comes through the gospels, through secular literature, and ultimately through the universal human phenomenon of the gift. It can only be approached, however, by asking the questions which the powerful do not want to ask, thereby disrupting the status quo. For if we are hoping to be ethical people, we have no choice but to associate with the lowly, knowing that we are not far from them, and that they are perhaps often conditioned to be uniquely receptive to the gift. Also, we must not be afraid of disrupting the status quo for the sake of mediating something deeper than words can contain. As recipients of the gift, we are equipped to endure suffering in order to assure that others have the occasion whereby they might actually receive the gift, even if they respond in a way not unlike the Underground Man.
My third and final point of accommodation is to accommodate the phenomenon of play and its close relative, of distraction, into our ethical framework. The enlightenment man, as well as the Underground Man, are busy people. They have no ultimate reason for peace and have no rational basis to rest, unless they are lazy or take the nihilistic turn. The hyper-conscious man sees greater knowledge as what will ultimately save him, what will bring him the kind of consolation which will ultimately let him rest, but like Levinas' infinite obligation to the other, so this man has an infinite obligation to save himself, and an infinite debt which he perceives within the eternal trap of finitude. These are unsatisfactory circumstances, and Dostoevsky knows this as he writes. Karl Barth, however, speaks wisely to us which saves us from endless work, stoicism, and the inclination toward deism. He tells us that because God is God and we are not, we are not to be God to God, which is entirely absurd, but instead we are to be God's children who play and receive with open hands what God has given. This posturing of God's sovereignty, affirms that he is for us, allows us to rest in his goodness, to not spin the wheels of our lives to the point of exhaustion. Paul Metzger summarizes Barth thusly:
When humanity explores and creates from what is already given it, exploring and creating for the sheer joy of doing so, humanity affirms God's good creation. The word most fitting to express this idea is that of “play.” True play is bound up with an understanding of creaturely freedom within limits, which involves a total disregard for self-conscious absorption. Even human work is to be play. Humanity should not take itself too seriously, not be preoccupied with thoughts of self-importance or self-loathing, but should consider its work as play, serious play perhaps, but play nonetheless. When humans simply act within their range of potentialities and respective interests, resting even in their work, simply reveling in, preforming the existence which is theirs, which is given, they affirm God in their cultural endeavors, the God whose work is truly work. (206-207)
This quote sounds exactly as though it was created for the Underground Man, to give him the sort of peace which he so desperately fidgets for. It tells us that as humans, we cannot create this peace, but we can receive it. Our lives are not ultimately in our own hands, but in the hands of Another, and that is okay. The Other has been proved trustworthy through the historic occasions which he has covenanted with humanity, put his name on the line, and been shown faithful.
While we now see the phenomenon of play in its goodness, we need to also understand that distraction is a gift from God, given to help revive us as we play. Therefore, distraction should not always be approached with annoyance and frustration, but sometimes embraced insofar as it refocuses our attunement to the sorts of things we ought to be attuned to. While watching television might be a contestable sort of distraction, the arts, sports, recreation, and human relationships all can serve to reinvigorate and humanize the human. Yet, at the same time, they can also be occasions where the human refuses to receive the kind of rest which was given to revive her, such that she spins her wheels to the point of exhaustion and a crash. Therefore, in our ethical theorizing, we must understand the need to rest, be distracted, and be engaged in the playful dance of creation, such that we can encourage others to be thusly inclined toward the good life, and the whole person will flourish.
In conclusion, ethical theory has too often accounted for the strong, the rational, the ones who have things together, and has not taken into account those who are weak, irrational, and broken. We have asked certain questions: what does living well matter to ethics? What has a philosophy of psychology to do with ethical theory? What has the negative, the warped, the despicable, the miserable have to do with the good and the beautiful? How does our attunement affect our receptivity to those who are broken? How might we be attuned toward wisdom and charity, toward empathy and care for the other? We have recognized that all others are more than we see and that all others are spiritually, to some degree, broken. Therefore, we should never treat an other in such a way that does not humanize her, that by being loved she would find healing to the brokenness and misery bothering her, to find freedom and embrace grace as sweet, as a gift. Until we know what it is like to live in a broken world, our pleasures cannot be anything but superficial, for they are ignorant and stupid. They are fleeting. We who want to love our neighbor must behave in ways that do not level her into the categories which will de facto fit our theories. For if we are so busy speaking and sorting rather than listening and caring in the middle of life's storms, we are no consolation to the ones hurting around us, and our lives prove meaningless. We have a deep obligation to the other, even if the other is not wholly other, and even if the obligation is not infinite. We have this merely as humans, but we become aware of it only as Christians. We have seen the chains of modernity loosed in several accommodations and vindications and ultimately these redefined limits should supply us with the kind of framework and philosophy of psychology to ask and make sense of the questions of ethics. While not mastering them, we now have the kind of space needed to understand the wrenching antinomies of human life such as wisdom and brokenness, love and pain, fear and courage, tears and striving, even suffering and rejoicing. Such a redefinition of ethical theory may be mere baby steps, but after all, each child must learn to take baby steps before she can run a marathon.
Works Cited
Anscombe, G. E. M. Virtue Ethics. Eds. Roger Crisp and Michael Slote. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Donagan, Alan. The Theory of Morality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Notes from the Underground. Trans. Richard Pever and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Everyman's Library, 1993.
Caputo, John. Blackwell Studies in Ethics. Ed. Hugh Follette. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000.
Horton, Michael S. Covenant and Eschatology. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002.
Horton, Michael S. Lord and Servant. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. Joan Stambaugh. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996.
Metzger, Paul Louis. The Word of Christ and the World of Culture. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003.
Williams, Bernard. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985.
1Such criticisms are leveled by G.E.M. Anscombe in her article Modern Moral Philosophy, Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue, and John Caputo in his article The End of Ethics, to name a few.
2Language like “purified”is teleological, reminiscent of concepts like “the good,””the beautiful,” and “the true.” While I am a metaphysical realist, and I do believe in ontological structures, I am closer to a critical realist who does not believe these things come so easily carved up. Thus, requiring immense charity, humility, care, and wisdom to make any progress in epistemology, I would hope to follow Thomas Aquinas and not dislocate such superlative ideas outside of their known particulars.
3Here we can follow the lead of Hans Frei, the famous postliberal theologian. He says, “Someone has rightly said, 'A person either has character or he invents a method.' I believe that and have been trying for years to trade method for character, since at heart I really don't believe in independent methodological study of theology [or philosophy] (I think the theory is dependent on the practice), but so far I haven't found that I'm a seller to myself as a purchaser” (Horton, Covenant and Eschatology 1).
4Interestingly enough, “[i]nvocation, as Levinas has reminded us, is the most appropriate epistemological corollary to an ontology of otherness” (Horton, Lord and Servant 18).
5Martin Heidegger develops this thoroughly in his famous Being and Time with the concept of Mit-Da-sein in Book 1, sections 26-27.
6To give an example of this which I have observed, Mark Noll, world renowned academic and historian of American religion, often works happily “tending his garden” in the nursery of his church. He spends time with the infants during the service so that the other parents can attend without worry. The beauty of this is that he is not too accomplished to appreciate and embrace the everyday significance of children, whether it be holding them, or even changing their diapers. He recognizes that he is not defined firstly by his work or success, but rather by his humanity and relatedness. Love, service, and sacrifice mean more to human beings than titles and accolades. This is as it should be, a model of humility and virtue for us to follow.
7Alan Donagan gives a historical argument for the rationality of the golden rule, which he calls the Fundamental Principle, on pages 57-66 of his classic ethical textbook, The Theory of Morality. His keen observations here ought to be heeded, that this concept is clearly accessible enough to be common to all people, although not all people put it into practice, and many try to defy it. Such defiance goes to only confirm its presence upon their minds, that they would take the time and effort to escape it as what the Underground Man calls the wall of “the laws of nature.”
8Thomas Nagel's article called Moral Luck explains the ins and outs of how this phenomenon can be.
posted by Guy @ 4:43 AM
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Check out E.J Park's article: "A Tale of Two Kitties," in the February 2006 edition of Christianity Today. He argues (counter culturally) that the form of art matters, and that within a particular form there are implicit messages which we should be aware of. His critique is applied generally to films marketed to the evangelical demographic such as The Passion and Narnia, but is not so narrow that it should not be applied to art of all forms. Evangelicals should read and heed Park's warnings or else they will continue sending exactly the messages they so painstakingly preach against, thereby even hindering the manifestation of the gospel to the world. His article ends on a stirring note. He claims that it is not so important to get these things right merely for art's sake, but for the sake of how we image or bear witness to God. Ultimately, every performance manifests some sort of explicit as well as implicit attestation; will we take seriously the implicit, the abstract, the complicated, or will we reduce ourselves to the realm of the "thematic" (Heidegger's term) or the explicit? I think the answer that stirs in my bones is that we can not but engage in understanding the tacit (or the implicit), else what is at stake is the relevance or evocative nature of our performance. For the way we posture others and preform matters, even to the point that the gospel is at stake. How long will we disengage the culture to condemn it before we realize that we are not contributing to the solution, but rather we are the problem?
posted by Guy @ 11:45 PM
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this is mainly a critique on narnia (the film), which i decided to post because it began as a letter to tim keller (pastor of redeemer church, nyc) on his blog. he has yet to respond to it, but if he does i'll certainly link it here. peace,
posted by Guy @ 1:22 AM
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This is the final paper that I wrote for my Phenomenology class :-) Enjoy!
In this paper I will concentrate on making understandable Martin Heidegger's notion of Mitda-sein from part 1, section 26 of Being and Time. Upon having clearly done this, I will analyze the theological dimension for being-with as being-in-the-world for a Christian, drawing from Evangelical theological assumptions. Because this is not a theology paper, there will not be Scriptural citations, merely a grappling with the present state of humanity as recipient of grace. Finally, I will exposit the main contours of section 27 with attention to the authentic-self and they-self to apply Heidegger's understanding of leveling and authenticity to the Protestant doctrine of vocation.
To begin with section 26, Heidegger continues his polemic against the categorical way of understanding Da-sein, and instead argues that we should seek to understand Da-sein primarily existentially. Heidegger here is reacting against the hundreds of years of philosophic tradition which have regarded the world as external and distinct from oneself. His shift moves from examining epistemology for instance in terms of distinct and objectively present subject and object, but instead in terms of how these beings are in relation to each other already embedded in the world of lived experience. Heidegger is an epistemological realist and sees the way we relate to Da-sein as categorically distinct from the way we relate to being-in-itself sorts of objects. For instance, a Da-sein is much more complicated than a table. Where we can speak of a table physically, there is nothing to say of its interior life, which seems to be a distinguishing aspect of a Da-sein.
Heidegger began section 26 by discussing "useful things" or being-in-itself sorts of things which in their essence "point to [the existence of and directing by] others" (111). He uses this pointing to demonstrate that other Da-sein are not additions or foreign members of the world, but that they are organically and existentially already a part of it. Just as "the world is always already from the outset my own," it "is always already the one that I share with the others" (112). This is the theme of the present section, which Heidegger comes back to and repeatedly emphasizes. By saying this, Heidegger does not mean that we are necessarily always with the others physically or that they are ontologically omnipresent, but that the presence of others is necessarily alive to us as we exist and navigate the world.
For instance, when we see a lasagna being heated in the oven of our home that we have no memory of putting there, we think "oh, that must be so-and-so's dinner." Thus, we do not eat or disturb the lasagna, because it is recognizable as someone else's food. However, if it was done cooking, but so-and-so was not around, we would likely turn the oven off so that it would not burn and spoil her effort to prepare dinner. As in this example, Heidegger sees the Da-sein initially finding itself in what it does through the things at hand which it takes care of, as the woman was taking care of her hunger or her family's hunger by preparing lasagna. Yet, it is through my particular attunement to things at hand which makes me aware of the presence of others around me, as I existentially bump into them while going about my business. Incidentally, however, when I do bump into them, I do not take in their essence but instead a particular mode of their being or in Heidegger's language "they are not encountered as objectively present thing-persons" (113). Thus, I can not conclude much about the presumed woman in my house from observing the lasagna except that she is preparing it for someone to satisfy their hunger for a while, whether for herself, for her family, or in benevolence toward the elderly neighbor who has suffered recent medical travails. The limitation of such perspective is typical because we only encounter other Da-sein as they are behaving within a particular context, never without contextual mediation through particular individuated worldliness.
As seen in the above example, "being-with existentially determines Da-sein even when an other is not factically present and perceived," for the "being-alone of Da-sein, too, is being-with in the world" (113). An example of this might be when someone dies and their presence lives on, or when a person is in transit to return home from work and is reliving parts of their day, re-experiencing the shared presence of the others. This sort of remembering and reliving is exploring the past or even the possibilities of being-with another in the future. With an active mind, therefore, no one is ever alone. A soldier at war might be longing for his wife in her absence, remembering her kindness, treasuring it until he returns. While this mode of being-with is possible when another is not present at hand, its opposite is also true, namely that one can be in close factical proximity with an other yet still experience alienation. Think of public transportation where the custom is to not talk with those around you, or as you wait in the lunch line and your attunement is to quickly get your food and be on your way, not to enjoy the presence of the others around you, not to disclose yourself to them. For as you are with others, as sitting at a console in a computer lab or watching the television in a dormitory, "their Mitda-sein is encountered in the mode of indifference" (113). It is distraction from a particular personal attunement to other Da-sein which can project coldness and disrupt being-with another. Ironically, even to attend too much to one's own internal thought-life can serve as a catalyst for sufficient distraction. In some ways this impersonal mode of posturing one another is necessary, in other ways it can be deeply hurtful. As Da-sein desire authenticity, they must be aware of exactly how they are being-in-the-world and attune themselves in ways they find desirable as they seek to affirm and care for the ones with whom they relate.
As stated before, the particular way in which we care for the other Da-sein is distinct from the way we care for mere "useful things." Heidegger claims a fellow Da-sein is not to be "taken care of, but [instead, she] is a matter of concern" (114). This distinction ultimately shows the difference between the permitted commodification of things and the illicit commodification of Da-sein, where one is acceptable because "useful things" really are nothing except that, useful, at the service of the employer, whereas to assign a value to another Da-sein and to treat her as a useful thing would actually damage her by unacceptably disregarding her freedom, autonomy, and interior life. Heidegger articulates that "being for-, against-, and without-one-another, passing-one-another-by, not-mattering-to-one-another, are possible ways of concern" (114). Therefore, as much as positive actions show concern, so do negative ones manifest a disregard or a lack of concern.
The two extreme, positive, possible modes for concern Heidegger notes are: leaping in and leaping ahead. To leap in is to take the other's ability to care for herself away and to thereby take on her care as my own responsibility. This flattens and levels her of her own autonomy. Yet, leaping ahead actually is care being done vicariously on her behalf for the sake of not stealing the reigns away, but maintaining her as the one who is driving the carriage of her own life. It is the borrowing the reigns with an "exit strategy" so as to return them back quickly enough that the carriage does not crash, but instead she learns how to direct it for herself. This mode of concern "helps the other become transparent to […herself] in […her] care and free for it" (115). Thus, freedom is crucial to Heidegger's notion of the authentic Da-sein. "Concern proves to be constitutive of the being of Da-sein which, in accordance with its different possibilities, is bound up with the being toward the world taken care of and also with its authentic being toward itself" (115). In a real way, it is only selfless love which can motivate this second type of concern, because it "is guided by considerateness and tolerance" which wins out over the existential inertia of efficiency and the recognition of being proven right (115).
Heidegger discusses the worldliness of the world as "the referential totality of significance," "anchored in the being of Da-sein toward its ownmost being" (115). He claims that being-toward-others is primordial to the existence of Da-sein, whereby we exist as being-with and for the sake of others. Yet, others are already disclosed in their Da-sein to us not initially as unattached subjects, but as things at hand in the world. Thus it is through our knowledge of our own being in the primordial structure of being-with that we discover others disclosed in their Mitda-sein.
Heidegger helps establish this notion of Mitda-sein by showing the way an alternative phenomenological epistemology renders our ability to know others. This alternative rendition appears very much like Edith Stein's doctrine of empathy. The claim he sees as the inferior notion of empathy is that in order to be-with and toward others, there is an assumed analogy of being which is shared but only disclosed to me through my own self-lived experience such that I must create a projection of our own being-toward-myself 'into an other' to thereby create an existentially imaginary double of myself. It is through this double that I thereby access the other which was initially quite inaccessible. Heidegger refutes this picture by arguing that it presupposes "that the being of Da-sein toward itself is a being toward another" which could at best be called fantastic self-knowledge, but has no more understanding of the other as other than it did before (117). Instead, he reaffirms that the only way for a Da-sein to understand another is (as he has been saying throughout this section) that "Da-sein as being-in-the-world is always already with others" (117). For to Heidegger, "empathy does not first constitute being-with, but is first possible on its basis, and is motivated by the prevailing modes of being-with in their inevitability" (117). This presumably is the purpose of Heidegger's articulation of Mitda-sein the way that he has. By drawing out this difference, he has raised the stakes between these two similar but conflicting phenomenological epistemologies.
Heidegger's notion of Mitda-sein shows the organic and primordial disposition of Da-sein to be concerned with others and oneself through their already active existentially primordial disposition toward being-with. This incidentally bears a unique resemblance to the golden rule1 commanded by Jesus.2 Where Heidegger here is merely describing the way we in fact already behave, Jesus' command is to care a particular way for the other, namely to love them, for the sake of fulfilling with joy our most primordial disposition to care. A difference here between Heidegger's observation and Jesus' prescription is that there is no necessary moral connotation to Heidegger with regard to the form of care: his claim is merely that we in fact do care for ourselves and for others because we experience being as being-with. To care, like being-with, might be expressed by not disclosing oneself or through ignoring the recognized other, although in some capacity this serves as an inferior mode of caring when juxtaposed with the active promulgation of beneficence.
Yet, in his command Jesus presumes that there is already a natural self-interest for loving oneself and therefore he is radically concerned to spread the unnatural love of neighbor to all peoples everywhere as an expression of his kindness to them and for them and as a manifestation of the distinct odor of his kingdom among them. Rather than acting with a mode of indifference to the Da-sein of neighbor or even enemy, after having received the ontological as well as moral condescension of loving care from God as kind and merciful Father, through Jesus as submissive sacrificial substitute, and Holy Spirit as quiet illuminator, how could we not regard all other Da-sein as highly as we regard ourselves simply because of our deep, deep gratitude? As was reflected in the Great Commandment3, God's standard for all of humanity has been impossible to satisfy, leaving all to be guilty with the experience of shame and unworthiness, for no one renders back to God proportionately what has been received. However, this moral depravity actually enlarges the goodness of the grace extended by God to make it even more valuable, because it was authentically and freely given, under no compulsion.
Therefore if such claims are true, then we do not merely reside as beings-in-the-world, but as beings-in-the-God's-world, which significantly modifies our identities, and should mark us as God's-Da-sein so as to reflect existentially the ontological propriety of being marked as his. So then, to be primarily identified through the they-self or merely through our own choices would demonstrate in themselves inauthentic modes for being-in-the-God's-world. Instead our identity must transcend the here-and-now and be affixed through the righteous standing we possess because of our justification by faith alone through the earned righteousness of Jesus Christ alone. Our having-been-bought-with-a-price such that it is our great delight and privilege to embody the gospel-ethics of which we have been thankful to become stewards, has utterly changed us. In so far as we are primordially attuned to the structure of being-with, and in so far as that being-with conveys a moral dimension, we who have eyes to see are obliged to live primarily as being-with God and being-toward God as we also are in-God's-world with other Da-sein. There ought to be no existential conflict between our attunement toward the theological and the human or ordinary modes of existence, but a harmony between the two. We will return to this subject at the end of the paper.
In section 27, Heidegger focuses on "the 'subject character' of one's own Da-sein" (118). In so far as we are public beings who are already in Mitda-sein, there is a presence and a practice evoked by groups of Da-sein in the surrounding world. Heidegger says that "being-with-one-another dissolves one's own Da-sein completely into the kind of being of "the others" in such a way that the others, as distinguishable and explicit, disappear more and more" (119). He calls this public mass the they or the they self. The they promotes the care for averageness, distantiality, and thereby "the leveling down of all possibilities of being" (119). The they spreads by peer pressure, the third person, formal language, and the passive voice such that they can easily receive blame whereby ultimately nobody receives blame. It is contrasted by Heidegger as "the self of one's own Da-sein" and "the self of the others," otherwise known as the they-self and the authentic-self (120-121). Heidegger claims that "the they is an existential and belongs as a primordial phenomenon to the positive constitution of Da-sein" (121). Authenticity, by contrast is the living toward oneself. Rather than toward assimilation with the routines of the they, it "is an existentiell modification of the they as an essential existential" (122). This is to say that we are more or less stuck with our conception of the they within our minds, and we are more or less bound to living out much of our lives as the they, although there are areas which we can distinguish ourselves from the they, it is piecemeal, because no man is an island and we are already being-with each other. The way that the they flattens out is by trading one's allegiance to it for its "coolness" as an unspoken social exchange. One does not immediately realize, however, that as long as they care about the vain image of coolness, they are paying their dues at the expense of their autonomy and of their souls. For, "in this inconspicuousness and unascertainability, the they unfolds its true dictatorship" (119).
As said before, there ought to be no conflict between the simultaneous attunement to the theological and to the human. They are not opposed to each other, but instead actually are mutually up-building. The sacred is not confined to a church and neither is the secular confined outside of a church. The most ordinary things can be done with a particular attunement to the sacred, while the most elaborate liturgy can be done with a particular attunement to the profane. Therefore, as Heidegger gives us these categories of authenticity, he establishes the idea that the manner in which we do what it is that we do greatly stakes out the existential space of freedom or constriction that it leaves on our life. So it is that we do not look toward the materiality of things to discern whether they themselves are sacred but we look to the manner in which they are done. Interestingly enough, this does not flatten out being but actually maximizes it for the sake of its wielder. This applies to the Protestant doctrine of vocation, which asserts that all work is valuable to break down the great divide between the special work of ministry, and the mundane work of the ordinary. Rather than leveling down non-ministry or church-related work, this doctrine actually feeds its earnest seekers who are called to be faithful in their everyday activities, even blue collar jobs, as called to work as unto the Lord. Not only is this empowering for all of God's-Da-sein, but it is also happily the catalyst for leveling away perverse systems created to selfishly wield power through by shackling of God's-Da-sein.
posted by Guy @ 12:39 PM
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Tonight I saw the new Pride and Prejudice (hereafter P&P) with my mother and sister. I have a number of thoughts and questions about it that I'd like to explore. I'm going to interact more with the content of P&P rather than the form or cinematography of it. As a proviso, I must caution that I have neither read the book nor seen any other P&P movies, and hence am not very widely informed on the subject.
posted by Guy @ 1:54 AM
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I'm going to Europe for 11 weeks tomorrow. I'll be there with Youth Hostel Ministry, and we'll be sharing the gospel with vagabonders and stragglers. With me, I'm bringing a few books: F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, and The Constitution of Liberty. I'm also bringing W.G.T. Shedd's Dogmatic Theology, Aristotle's The Nicomachean Ethics, and Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. As you can see, the kinds of books fall into two categories: 1. theological and 2. ethical / economic / virtue - oriented titles. I think that after reading Michael Polanyi (and his contempory, Esther Meek) and learning about his phenomonologically descriptive epistemology, with it's emphasis on tacit knowledge or awareness, I have been turned on to analyzing human relationships through that lens. By seeing and seeking to understand those things which we rely upon to dispose and incline our hearts toward or against certain stimuli, and the manner according to which we maneuver about in the world through such inclinations and values, we become aware of how we are what we are and we become aware of the intimately practical impact of ethics and even economics. It is from this most personal and intimate inquiry that I have begun thinking about institutions larger than the individual. Ayn Rand has really been stirring up some interest in me, but to balance her off I began reading F. A. Hayek who was one of the greatest spokesmen for free-marked economics in the Austrian school. His contention that he demonstrates is that the free-market economy is the best for the inhabitants of the nation-state -- that rational self-interest and human decency give rise to better structures to care for the cocophany of human social needs. When hard work is rewarded more than laziness, I think a nation sets its best foot forward by investing in innovation and thoughtful genius. When healthcare and education are rights, I think that they are abused and underappreciated. This is the fundamental problem in America today -- handouts (which begun in the New Deal and FDR, and Johnson's Great Society). Even if the welfare system is not sinking our ship econmoically with static analysis -- there is need to analyze it more broadly. All such altruistic initiatives begun by the government I believe are vain and threats to the health of our nation. I'll keep you posted in what I find and my travels this summer. Cheers,
posted by Guy @ 3:37 PM
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Yes, it is a bit anachronistic -- and it seems to be that Aristotle has not been interpreted properly in light of the following ill-attended-to section. I want to redeem this, which is quoted to some degree, to what degree I do not know, by the late great Catholic Saint Thomas of Aquinas in his Treatise on Grace -- the second article. So, in the end perhaps we should deem Calvin a Thomist or at least Aristotelian rather than Thomas and Aristotle Calvinists. Calvin was an avid student of Aristotle, even if he didn't always allude to him -- this mainly because of his audience rather than his unfamiliarity and impotency to engage such ideas. To clarify, I'm providing the context -- it's Aristotle on luck, but i'm emboldening the middle section which I find most relevant, with italicized parts I found especially illuminating (the three paragraph separation is mine also). His main point (as far as I'm concerned) is to say that God is not merely the formal cause of all things in the human will, but also the efficient cause. This idea is especially applicable to the issue of faith, such that man's freedom is respected, demonstrating that Aristotle's notion of the relation of the divine and human wills is not synergistic, neither that God is deistic and distant, but near to man and all things. Enjoy!
posted by Guy @ 3:25 AM
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Sorry, this should have been posted a while ago. I copied it from reformed.org's website (which has many such documents); the original link is here.
posted by Guy @ 10:53 PM
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Well, today I received a new book in the mail, William G. T. Shedd's (1820-1894) Dogmatic Theology, newly republished (2003) by P&R (Presbyterian and Reformed) in one volume (instead of three), with translations of French, German, and Latin quotations for the first time, and a new introduction, new glossaries, and new indexes, put together by it's editor, Alan W. Gomes, who teaches at Talbot Seminary at Biola in California (Bible Institute Of Los Angeles -- founded and sustained by Dispensationalists) and completed his PhD in 1990 under the tutelage of Richard Muller, the great expert in the Protestant Scholastics currently at Calvin College. This book came as a "must buy" from a noted Philosophy Professor, and in like manner, I acquired it with great satisfaction.
posted by Guy @ 10:03 PM
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