Tuesday, August 30, 2005

dan (4) - the last word (for now)

here is dan's fourth post. i think this is going to be the last in this series of posts on friendship -in part because the discussion seems to have reached a nice break, and in part because i'm going to be very busy in the next few weeks. so, i give to last word to dan, who has written another excellent post:


This is the third time I’ve started writing this post and I’m having tremendous difficulty in finding something to say. And the reason, I think, might be that there is, from my point of view, very little to say by way of a constructive explanation of the friendship I have with Micah. It is true that I’m the one that initially raised the puzzle about the possibility of friendship between atheists and theists. But, to lay my cards on the table, I think that the puzzle presents a greater theoretical difficulty to the theist than it does the atheist. I would like to think that my life, commitments etc. are close to not-at-all theory driven. That is, I like to think that I, indeed we as people, form our characters from the ground up so to speak; from what we might call simple saliences that arise in our everyday interactions with each other. By ‘simple saliences’ I simply mean basic facts about what people do and don’t like; about the kinds of ways people do and don’t like to be treated; about the kinds of goals and hopes most people have. I take the content of these things to be relatively non-theory, non-ideology guided even if huge theories and ideologies build themselves up from these simple saliences. And, as far I’m concerned, Micah and I find the same kinds of things very salient, even if the theoretical apparatus that flows from our basic commitments varies dramatically in some ways. So, I do think that we share a substantial number of what we’ve been calling practical values. I see, though, that put like this, I am committed to denying that Micah’s own understanding of the role religion plays in his life is right and, admittedly, this doesn’t make me very comfortable. But, when push comes to shove, I suppose I am committed to something like this.

But push doesn’t come to shove very often. And that brings to me to what I really want to say. There’s a way in which the puzzle I’ve presented can itself be seen as furnishing an explanation for our friendship. When I say that push doesn’t come to shove very often I mean that I don’t see myself as deeply entrenched in a theoretical view about the possibility of our friendship. Instead, the fact, the very important fact, that we get along so well provides the occasion for a sense of wonder – wonder about how two people that are so similar in many ways can also be very different; wonder about how my basic commitments and responses to the world hook up with my more theoretical commitments; wonder about the role thick, theoretical, philosophical ideas do, and ought to, play in my life; wonder about how something that seems so obvious to me can seem quite the opposite to someone else. And, if I’m not mistaken, I think the same kind of wonder appeals to Micah as well. It’s important to see that this is not mere intellectual curiosity, but a kind of engagement with one’s very self. And to find someone who, in being so different, is able to engage in these same questions is immensely gratifying and stimulating.

Another way of putting this idea might be to note that to this point, both Micah and myself have been presenting ourselves, albeit implicitly, as two people more or less fixed in their ideas. But what I’m trying to say now is that even if there’s little chance that I will become a theist or Micah an atheist, that still leaves a tremendous amount of room for one’s self understanding to shift. And I think that Micah and I, perhaps, find in each other an occasion for such shifting. We destabilize each other in a very fruitful way. And this way of putting things clearly connects up with Micah’s and Natalie’s ideas about a commitment to truth and the like.

On last thing, and I’m not sure that this shows anything, but there seems something striking in the fact that Micah and I have (I think) very similar, certainly highly compatible, senses of humor. The intuitive way to think of this would be to explain our shared sense of humor in terms of shared deeper commitments, which would result in the shared sense of humor being another manifestation, or prong, of the puzzle. But maybe this isn’t right. Perhaps finding certain things funny is one of the basic saliences I mentioned above out of which character and friendship are built.

Friday, August 26, 2005

micah (4) -friendship, love and enjoyment

my fourth post:

in a recent conversation with a friend, it occurred to me that dan and i have said very little about love in our discussion about friendship. i thought how differently augustine might have approached the topic of friendship: by beginning with the notion of our manifold loves, and then considering the place of friendship within these loves.

rather than providing such an account, however, i want to note briefly another very augustinian point -the connection between love and delight. to love something is to enjoy it, to take pleasure in it, to delight in it. i said earlier that the stuff of friendship is the shared, the common. perhaps it is better to say that the stuff of friendship is the affection that grows out of the shared, and the enjoyment that accompanies that affection. dan is my friend because he is dear to me; and the life in our friendship is the delight we take in each other's company and person.

in thinking about the pleasures of friendship, we can borrow a thought from aristotle: pleasure accompanies unimpeded activity, and it perfects that activity. the enjoyment that a friend finds in another friend seems to be connected to the way friends do things, and do them together. this is not to say that friends can't just sit around and 'do nothing' together; nor is it to say that friendship is merely pleasure, without commitment and resolve. still, the building blocks of a friendship seem to be the activities the friends engage in, such as sports (physical activity) or conversation (a mental activity). this is one reason that friends need to share (at least some) values and beliefs -because these values set the practical goals which determine which activities we pursue and how we pursue them.

two things can be noted about the enjoyment that friends find in their shared activities: 1) the enjoyment is not merely dependent on doing the activity together, but the very together-ness of the activity is part of what is enjoyed. for example, it may be that i enjoy playing tennis, and that i need a another person in order to play. in this sense, playing tennis with someone else is essential to the enjoyment. but in the case of friends, the enjoyment is more than this -precisely the shared nature of activity, the togetherness of the activity, is the very thing which is enjoyed. 2) the enjoyment is not simply in the activity, but is enjoyment of the other person. friends enjoy doing things together, but the delight of friendship is not merely the pleasure of the activities. rather, this enjoyment is somehow taken up into -perhaps transformed into- a delight in the other person.

the place of love and delight in friendship also suggests another aspect of 'mixed' friendships between christians and non-christians. for the christian, every friendship will not only be an occasion for 'natural' enjoyment and delight; the christian will also strive to love her friend 'in god' (a theme developed extensively by augustine). the christian will also strive to love her friend not only qua friend, but also qua neighbor, with an agape love that informs and transforms the love of friendship (a theme developed extensively by kierkegaard). presumably, a non-christian will not understand herself to have the same task in a friendship, and may very well see herself as having alternate tasks. thus, at least in this respect, it seems that christians and non-christians are likely to have different understandings of friendship, and different self-understandings of themselves as friends. (to say nothing about the actual difference in the kinds of love they might have for one another)

Monday, August 22, 2005

micah (3) -nature, grace and friendship

my third post:

the more i have thought about the issues dan raised in his last post, the more i have felt that an adequate response to them would require a fairly extensive treatment of what has been known in christian theology as the 'nature-grace problem', which is the question of how nature (most importantly, unredeemed human nature) relates to grace (most importantly, the grace found through redemption in christ). reflecting on this, i've concluded two things: 1) it will be unfruitful for this discussion, not to mention well beyond my ability, to address the nature-grace issue at an abstract level, and 2) just as different christian traditions offer different responses to the nature-grace issue (e.g. thomism vs. calvinism vs. eastern orthodoxy), so different christian traditions will have different answers to the questions about agreement and friendshp which, as i see it, are directly related to the nature-grace question. thus, without giving much theological support, i am simply going to give a brief sketch of how i think we can think about the issues dan raised. i present it as a (not the) christian view of these matters.

first, it is important to recognize that if the christian claims that the atheist has some proper understanding of value and some degree of virtue, then this claim need not involve the idea that the atheist secretly believes in god, or that the atheist is committed to a belief in god unbenownst to himself. the focus of the christian claim is less epistemic, less concept-oriented. as natalie mentioned in her comment, the christian is committed to the idea that the truth is not merely a matter of concepts or ideas. rather, the truth is, ultimately and mysteriously, the person of Jesus Christ. likewise, my claim for the (partially) virtuous atheist is not (or at least not first and foremost) that she has some concept of god working in her to help you to understand the nature of goodness. rather, it is the more outrageous claim that she has god working in her to help her to grasp what is good, to love the good, and to be good (insofar as any of those things is true of her)

what about dan's point that the theist is "committed to the claim that values relating to goodness etc. are conceptually related to truths about God such that one cannot have the former if one doesn’t have the latter." it seems to me that we have a variety of ways of talking about human goodness and what it means to live well. even within christianity, there are different and inter-related grammars to express the nature of the christian life -following christ as a student, obeying divine commands as a subject, loving god as a child, participating in christ's suffering a fellow-heir, etc. when it comes to general questions about how we should live -about values and practical commitments- i think the christian might say that there are correct ways of answering these questions that are semi-autonomous from reference to god. for example, we can talk coherently about goodness as a kind of proper functioning of the human organism (cf. phillipa foot's wonderful little book 'natural goodness'). this grammar of goodness -and the kind of goodness it picks out- is not conceptually dependent on the idea of god, such that one must employ the idea of god in understanding such natural goodness. in this sense, there are correct ways of understanding value-notions and forming practical commitments that are autonomous of the concepts of christianity.

however, these ways are only semiautonomous, in both an 'conceptual' and a 'metaphysical' senses: 1) conceptually, these ways of speaking will only tell a part of the story about human beings, and about what it means to live well. the fullness of the story is to be found only in the person of christ, and the Story of god's creation and redemption of humanity. thus, to understand completly what it means to live well and to have the right committments, one must go beyond concepts that leave out the divine. 2) metaphysically, the reality of all goodness, including the good for humans, is what it is because of god, whether we recognize this or not. one aspect of this is that even when an atheist has incomplete, 'natural' goodness, her goodness is still dependent on her (unrecognized but real) participation in god (see two paragraphs above).

it seems to me that, when talking about whether or not dan and i share the same practical values or engagements, much depends on the description and degree of specificity of those values and engagements. some descriptions make reference to the theological aspects of our behavior in ways that others don't. for example, we can descibe the same action as, 'she tried to forgive him', or as 'she tried to forgive him as christ forgave her.' the second picture gives us a fuller picture of the agent's motivations and desires, but the first picture is not wrong.

with respect to friendship, the key point is that the agreements which ground friendship don't have to go as far as the second kind of descriptions. that is, friendship doesn't depend on full agreement, but on the kind of partial, practical agreements that characterize so much of our lived interactions and getting on in the world.

at the same time, however, i think this also gives reason to see why there might be limits to the kinds of friendships that are possible between christians and non-christians, or theists and atheists. the basic thought is this: just as the second kind of description gives us more information about the person's beliefs and desires than the first (e.g. that she believes christ forgave her, that she thinks following christ's example is a good thing, etc.), so agreements which can be characterized in a more detailed or in-depth way will be agreements that touch on more of our beliefs and desires. that is, they will be agreements that touch on more of ourselves. and to share those kinds of agreements with another person, it seems, opens the door to being able to share more of oneself with that person. and, crudely put, the more of themselves that friends are able to share with one another, the deeper the possibilities for the friendship.

this point dovetails with my earlier comment about friendship and projects. we have different ways of describing the same project, and some of these descriptions get at deeper or more important aspects of ourselves that are invested in the project. for example, the same set of choices and practices might be viewed variously as part of the project of: 'trying to get a phd' or 'trying to live the examined life' or 'trying to use well the gifts god has given me.' whether or not a person can only understand or participat in the first of these projects, as opposed to the second or third, seems to say a lot about the possibility of me sharing this aspect of my life with that person, and hence the possibility of friendship with that person.

ok. this post was too abstract and too long. i would like to write (at least) one more thing about friendship. next time: love and hell.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

dan (3) - practical engagement and justification

dan's third post:

(Big thanks to Tom for helping me formulate these ideas)

When I told Jenn that Micah and I are having an exchange about how atheists and theists can be friends Jenn quipped (something like), “Who’s arguing that they can’t?” I laughed at the time. But now it doesn’t seem so much like a joke, because I appear to have adopted the role of the critic who pokes holes in other people’s positive ideas about how such a friendship is possible. As such, I’m going to post something constructive…next time. Right now, however, I have one more axe to grind.

I’m intrigued by the idea that it is in virtue of a shared practical engagement with the world that Micah and I can be friends. I think there’s something right about this. But, I want to argue, the more weight we place on the idea, the higher the costs of adopting it. Why?

The rough idea that Micah and Natalie seem to be driving at is that while Micah and I might have taken different routes to get there, we have more or less ended up in the same place, practically speaking. So, one might say, our practical values are substantially similar. But what does it mean to say that we ended up in the same place via different routes?

We might mean that the path we took in arriving at our practical engagements were simply causal antecedents to our being where we are. So, as part of the causal history explaining how Micah and I came to value X, my story will include bits about growing up Jewish in Kingston, Ontario, while Micah’s will include bits about growing up Christian in Georgia. Importantly, these causal facts, if they are merely causal, play no justificatory in why we have our commitments. One way of putting this point is by saying that our end point can be grasped independently of the steps we actually took to get there – the conclusion and the route to the conclusion are conceptually independent. It seems fairly clear that this is not what Micah and Natalie have in mind since, I take it, it is essential to their faith that it stand in a justificatory relation to their practical commitments.

So, then the claim might be that Micah and I share the same practical commitments, but that we justify those commitments in different ways. One thing to note is that there are going to be cases where it looks like people have the same commitment, when in fact they don’t because the justification for the supposedly shared commitment is too different. I think it’s an open question whether the relationship between our atheistic/theistic commitments and our practical commitments is going to provide an example of this, but I’m happy to assume for the time being that it doesn’t.

Crucial to the idea that two people can share the same commitment without sharing a justification for that commitment is the idea that the content of the commitment is graspable independently of the justification. (If it weren’t, then we would have different commitments in virtue of justifying the supposedly shared commitment differently. We’ve already ruled out this possibility). So, for example, suppose Micah and I both think the White Sox are going to make it to the playoffs. Micah’s reason for thinking this is that the team has played so well all year and there’s no sign of them falling apart. My reason for thinking it, however, is that I was visited in a dream by Tim Raines’ Great-grandfather who told me that he was pulling the strings in the afterlife to ensure that the Sox make it to the post-season (and lets add in the proviso that this reason is meant to contradict Micah’s reason). This seems like an obvious case where Micah and I share the same commitment (that the Sox will make it to the post-season) without sharing a justification. It seems absurd to say that in virtue of not sharing the justification we must be talking about different things when we say, “The Sox are playoff-bound.”

Here’s the crucial bit: even though in this case Micah has the right justification, it is only contingently true that this is in fact the justification for the commitment. I might be wrong, and Micah can see that I’m wrong, but he can still imagine that I might be right. There’s nothing conceptually incoherent in my justification.

But then what are we to say about the relationship between the theist’s (to take one edge of the sword here) commitment to certain practical values in relation to his theological values? Is it just contingently true that commitments about how to treat other people etc. are justified by facts about Jesus and his life? If this is the case, then it follows that while I, as an atheist, might have the wrong justification for my practical commitments, I really do understand what it is to be good independently of any thoughts about God. It turns out that I happen to have the justification for those commitments wrong, but that’s just a contingent fact. In another world, I might be right and Micah might be wrong.

This, however, seems like far too weak a construal of the relation between a theist’s theistic commitments and his practical values. Instead, I take it that Micah is more inclined to argue (but maybe not) that one cannot even understand the concepts that provide the content for our practical engagements (concepts like, “goodness” or “forgiveness”) without having certain other concepts. In brief, I take the theist to be committed to the claim that values relating to goodness etc. are conceptually related to truths about God such that one cannot have the former if one doesn’t have the latter.

If this is the case, then we are forced to either 1) abandon the idea that Micah and I share practical values (since I don’t have a grasp on the concepts that inform my practical engagement at all) or 2) claim one side is committed to something other than what that side takes itself to be committed to (I take this to be the idea that Natalie is getting at when she says that the theist will see God as informing the life of the atheist even if the atheist denies it). An unpalatable conclusion no matter which way you go.

I would, however, like to suggest that as unpalatable as the choice is the choice isn’t as bad for an atheist as it is for a theist. Lets assume, plausibly, that it’s more palatable for the theist and atheist to conclude that the other person is actually committed to something other than what he thinks he’s committed to. I think, perhaps wrongly, that this claim amounts to different things for the atheist and theist. The theist, it seems, will be forced to conclude that the atheist has more commitments than the atheist takes himself to have: “You do know what goodness is, but the only way to know what goodness is is to have some understanding of God. So, even if you don’t realize it, you have some concept of God working in you.” The atheist, on the other hand, only need be committed to the claim that the theist actually has fewer commitments than the theist takes himself to have. And not even that – the atheist can admit that the theist has all, and only those, commitments that the theist takes himself to have. The atheist need only deny that those commitments hook up in the way the theist thinks they do: “I know you believe in God and I know you know what goodness is. You’re just wrong to think that you can’t understand the second without the first. You need less, conceptually speaking, to understand goodness than you think you do.” Imagine the theist and atheist are going through a mathematical proof. When they get to what we normally consider the end, the theist says, “We’re missing a premise without which none of this makes sense,” and proceeds to write, “Premise: God exists.” Insofar as the atheist resists this move, the theist is forced to say that the atheist must actually, in some sense, be committed to it because without it, the theist can’t hold onto the idea that the atheist actually knows what is going on in the proof. But the atheist need only say, “I know that you believe in God. But you’re simply wrong to think that that commitment is needed to make sense of these mathematical concepts.” So, it turns out that the idea of shared practical engagement is available at a lower cost, so to speak, to the atheist than the theist.

Saturday, August 13, 2005

micah (2) - shared values, shared lives

thanks to tom and natalie for your excellent comments. although i'm unable to give those comments the attention they deserve, i'm going to try to pick up on some of your points in my post:


dan and i seem to agree that friendship depends on agreement, that the the stuff of friendship is the shared, the common. we also seem to agree that part of what friends share are beliefs and values, and this gives rise to a possible puzzle about how atheists and theists can be friends. i suggest that we can make progress in thinking about this puzzle by keeping in mind that what friends share is, first and foremost, their lives (or, perhaps, their selves) the agreement involved in friendship, then, is not like the agreement involved in pledging agreement to a political creed or supporting a particular school of academic thought. rather, what is shared between friends has to do with particular and specific things about how we are to go about in the world.

in talking about beliefs and/or values, dan raised the point that beliefs and/or values may be 1) peripheral or 2) fundmental in their importance (of course this division is short-hand; i'm sure none of us would deny a spectrum of importance). dan made a further distinction within the idea of 'importance' which, i think, can be faithfully paraphrased or reformulated as the distinction between: 1) important for how we lead our lives, carry ourselves, make decisions; important in a 'practical' sense, and 2) important for how we understand or justify our beliefs and values; important in an 'epistemic' sense.

now, i'm not sure if i understood dan's point correctly, but it seemed to me that there was a worry about what it meant for two people to have the 'same' belief or value if they have two very different sets of beliefs and values. it seems to me that, if this is indeed the worry, then it might have much broader application than the issue of friendship -e.g. did berkeley and johnson both think they were kicking a 'stone'? i suppose that this issue may be connected to fairly deep problems in epistemology and philosophy of langauge (and probably giving the right answer has something to do with saying the word 'holism'), but i'm way out of my depth in trying to tackle this question, and i'm optimistic that we don't need to deal with it at its most general level to talk about friendship (if, indeed, this general worry even was what dan had in mind).

what i do want to say, however, is that it seems wrong to me to think that we don't at allhave the 'same' value simply because our full and final justification or understandings of that value are different, and perhaps even in conflict. it may very well be a physicist has a full and final justification and explanation for her belief 'this is a table' that is very different from the justification and explanation that her ten-year old son has for his belief 'this is a table.' but even so, it seems odd to me to conclude that they don't share the belief 'this is a table.' similarly, dan and i may have different full and final justifcations and explanation and motivations for believing 'cruelty is wrong' or 'patient listening is important', but this doesn't mean that we don't share those beliefs and values at all.

i find myself wanting to say that the fact that the physicist and her daughter have the same belief -'this is a table'- is irreducibly connected to the fact that they both practically respond to the table as a table -they put things on it, they meet there for dinner, etc. similarly, and perhaps even more so, i want to say that dan and i sharing a value has to do with the way we behave, the way we respond to situations, the things we say and do.

along these same lines, it is worth noting that when i began to talk about values i think dan and i share, i was immediately led to talk about values of an especially 'practical' nature -values about the search for truth. these shared values concerning intellectual virtues are ones which are played out in concrete situations, in our conversational practices how we spend our time on a daily basis. (the extent of this practical agreement was also further elaborated upon by natalie in her comment)

my 'answer' to the puzzle, then, is roughly this: people can in some way share a belief or value, even if they have a very different overall set of beliefs and values. and even more important to the question of friendship, it is possible for friends to share values that are of a similar practical importance, even if those values have different epistemic importance in the belief sets of each person. this is so because, as i noted at the beginning of this post, friendship is a matter practical, not confessional or creedal, agreement.

this leads to several other points. i will reserve further elaboration for future posts in order to keep this post from getting too long. but in order to remember them, and possibly to spur others' comments, i will briefly mention them:


1) perhaps we can think about what is shared between friends as certain projects they have. these may be more or less important and more or less encompassing, and the nature of the friendship will vary accordingly. these projects may be described in different ways, and different people may be able to participate in others projects in some ways but not in others -e.g. the project of playing raquetball, the project of being a good student, the project of being virtuous, the project of loving god and one's neighbor.

2) how agreement about values and practices is possible in spite of 'epistemic' disagreement is an intersting question, but one for which no 'nuetral' answer is probably possible. that is, various positions (atheistic or theistic) will have various ways of describing how different people get things right or fail to get them right (see natalie's point on this, and also her own view as an example of one christian way of making sense of non-christian belief and practice)

3) what practical agreement amounts to deserves further attention. there is also the possibility that the 'practical' vs. 'epistemic' distinction may not be so neat, or may especially break down with certain kinds of beliefs (see tom's suggestion about what dis/belief in god amounts to)

4) even if certain agreements are possible, might there be limits to these agreements, and hence limits to the kinds of friendship possible for certain people? (a possibility raised by my friend heath in conversation -that there are different kinds of friendship, and some may be possible between atheists and theists while others are not)

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

dan (2) -central beliefs and the problem of 'shared values'

dan's second post:

In his astute comment Tom has anticipated a number of things that I want to say, so I apologize for any redundancy. As Tom noted, there seems something important and difficult in the idea that it is in virtue of shared values that Micah and I are friends, despite our disagreement about a (the?) fundamental question, viz. Is there a God (for new readers, Micah says “Yes.” I say “No.”)? It seems like explaining a friendship between a theist and an atheist in terms of shared values works because the idea of shared values goes a long way toward explaining how most friendships work. But I don’t think that this kind of explanation will do the trick (without more being said) in this case. Why not?

It seems that there are two broad pictures we might have of what is involved in sharing values with someone. The first is rather intuitive and probably aligns most closely with the kind of things Micah talks about in his post: two people share a substantial set of beliefs, beliefs that guide their actions, how they live etc. The people’s beliefs and the overlap between them can be represented in a Venn diagram as two substantially overlapping circles. We might say that, generally speaking, these two people share the same worldview. Now, when I put it like that, it seems to immediately follow that this first picture cannot accommodate the kind of friendship Micah and I have precisely because it is the fact that we have different worldviews that makes the possibility of the friendship puzzling in the first place. But Micah is right to say that we do share many values. This leads us to the second picture. Here, two people share a number of values, but theses values are at the periphery of at least one of the person’s worldview. The easiest case to imagine is one where the values in question are at the periphery of both people’s lives: Bob and Jack might both love the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, but neither of them structure their lives around that love, so we don’t think that this “shared value” is sufficient to guarantee friendship. Notice that the same is true even if Jack’s love of the team isn’t central to his life while Bob’s is.

But talk of values that are on the “periphery” vs. values that “structure our lives” is ambiguous. Saying that a value is on the periphery might mean that the value doesn’t play an important role in our lives. But we might also mean that while the value does play an important role in our lives, it is peripheral in a structural sense. This just means that the role that the value in question plays in the person’s life can only be made sense of in light of some other, more fundamental, values the person has. Consequently (and this comes right from Tom), while it might look like Bill and Judy share important values, they in fact don’t since the only way to make sense of Bill’s commitment to the supposedly shared values is in terms of his commitment to other values that Judy doesn’t share. They may use the same words in talking about these important, peripheral values, but they don’t mean the same thing by them.


And now the situation looks grim. Our choices are:

a) Micah and I really share some values, but they are peripheral in the first sense (at least for one of us). That is, these values don’t play an important role in how at least one of us leads our life.

b) Micah and I appear share important, peripheral values, but in fact we don’t because (at least) Micah’s commitment to those values can only be made sense of in terms of his commitment to God – a commitment I obviously don’t share since I am an atheist.

Neither ‘solution’ seems satisfying. The first seems totally at odds with the kinds of values that we share, namely those discussed by Micah – our shared values are not peripheral in the first sense. But it also doesn’t seem like we only appear to share these values, while in fact we’re talking about different things. Micah seems absolutely right in saying that the values are both important and shared.

“Then why not say that you share important, non-peripheral values?” I have a longish answer, which I will only hint at here. The problem with this answer presents itself most clearly if we consider Micah’s beliefs as a theist. There is nothing logically wrong with Micah having a set of important values that don’t depend on his Christianity. But it seems unlikely, since this introduces a kind of atomism into his belief system that I’m sure he would reject. Micah need not think that his Christianity structures all his values and beliefs, but surely he must think that it structures his most important values. But if this is the case, the important values that he and I share become peripheral (in either one of the two senses) again. If Micah has a set of beliefs that are important and non-peripheral AND these beliefs aren’t his beliefs about God, Jesus etc., then the idea that his religious beliefs are one kind among many other important, independent beliefs looms as a possibility. But thinking of one’s religious beliefs in this way surely doesn’t do justice to the role they play in one’s life. I suspect that in Micah’s case belief in God is not just another belief. It’s not even a central structural belief. Rather it is the central structural belief. And if this is the case, then an appeal to “shared values” will not solve our puzzle.

Saturday, August 06, 2005

micah - agreement, disagreement and respect

here's my response to dan:

as dan alluded to in his first post, it seems important to our friendship that, although dan and i disagree about fundamental questions, we do so while respecting the fact that the other person holds his beliefs. i think (and hope) that in my friendship with dan, our mutual respect is not simply a willingless to let the other person go his own way - a worldview truce, or a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy. rather, it is a matter of taking seriously, of honoring even, the way in which the other person holds his beliefs, and lives them out. and by extension, it is a way of taking seriously and respecting the other person.

perhaps part of the puzzle dan was discussing has to do with what this respect amounts to. on at least some important issues, its plainly not the kind of respect we give to the truth, because we believe the other person is wrong. but maybe it is a respect for the truth-regarding attitudes and practices of the other person. that is, even the we think the other wrong, we respect his way of approaching questions, of trying to reason carefully, of being open-minded, of listening well and giving the other side its strongest hearing, etc. in this sense, we think the other person is right about certain things -namely, things having to do with how one searches for truth and seeks to understand the world. and behind this are agreements about important values and virtues, such as the value of intellectual honesty and the virtue of conversational humility.

this is not to say that we agree fully about even these matters, especially in the details. for example, i think that careful reflection on scripture is an important, indeed crucial, way for us to understand the truth about the world and ourselves. dan clearly does not view scripture the way i do. even in this case, however, i imagine that there are agreements between us about they way one ought to approach scripture or any other important text. for example, we agree that one ought to read carefully and charitably, that one should be sensitive to wordplay and irony, etc.

interestingly, with respect to our 'ethics of conversation' and our 'ethics of reading', i agree much more with dan than i do with many fellow christians, who may not value carefully reasoned argument or attentive reading the way that dan and i do. (this is not, of course, to say that all, or even most, christians are like this)

i began by talking about respect, and i have quickly slid into talking about agreement. two things can be said about this. first, there is a kind of respect that does not depend on much agreement, and maybe not on any agreement at all, but rather is directed at the person in a different way. examples of this kind of respect include kantian respect for persons-as-ends and christian respect for persons as made in the image of god. i think that such respect plays some role in friendship, but the kind of respect i have been thinking of here is the respect unique to friendship, a respect that is (somehow) connected to affection and shared outlook and experience.

second, my point about agreement has probably just re-formulated dan's initial puzzle about friendship. the question is: how is that people with vastly different views about the fundamental can have the kind of agreements involved in friendship? and relatedly: how is it that people with the same fundamental views can fail to have the kind of agreements involved in friendship?

i take it as fairly obvious that friendship involves important agreements, whether articulated or simply lived out in an unspoken way. at this point, then, it seems to me worth considering what these agreements amount to, and how they related to one's approach to basic questions, such as the existence of god and the meaning of human life.

Friday, August 05, 2005

dan - theists, atheists and friendship

after a series of posts on beauty, i'm going to shift topics and also format. my friend dan and i have talked in the past about trying to write something together. we're now going to use this site for that purpose, authoring a series of posts in response to one another. part of our hope is that putting our responses online will allow others to join the conversation by posting comments. the topic: friendship.


the first post is dan's:


Some time ago, Micah and I had an interesting conversation about friendship generally and, more specifically, the possibility of friendship between atheists and theists. The question, of course, was not whether such a thing could ever happen, but given that it does it happen, how is it possible? This is not just an abstract question or, if it is, it is not just motivated by abstract concerns. Instead, the question flows out my friendship with Micah, since I am a staunch atheist, though not a dogmatic one. While I don’t believe in God, I don’t think that it is irrational to do so, or a sign of stupidity, lack of thought etc. I also don’t claim to understand what it is to believe in God, since belief in God strikes me as the kind of thing that cannot be understood independently of belief. But for all that, at the end of the day, I do think that people who believe in God have a false picture of the world in virtue of having a set of false beliefs. And, of course, the same is true for Micah, who believes that I’m wrong.

The question isn’t simply, “How can people with conflicting views get along?” since Micah and I might have all kinds of conflicting views which don’t really bear importantly on our lives (Micah might think that the American league system of using a designated hitter results in better baseball, whereas I might think that the National league has it right). What is puzzling is how two people with conflicting views that are absolutely central to their lives can get along. And not just get along, but be good friends. For at the end of the day, I think that Micah’s view of the world is importantly distorted and he thinks not only that but also that my soul is in peril. In ordinary circumstances when I see someone I care about in serious trouble, I intervene. If someone I care about it seriously messing with their life, I will step in and do what I can to help her on her way. And yet, I have not tried to persuade Micah that his view of the world is essentially wrong and, more importantly, he has not tried to persuade me that I’m in mortal danger. But why? The question seems especially pressing on Micah’s side – what could be more important than ensuring that a friend’s soul be saved? Given the miniscule length of this life in comparison to the vast stretches of eternity, it seems perfectly reasonable that Micah should devote a good portion of his time with me to trying to help me. And yet he doesn’t.

“Now that’s not fair,” someone might say. “Simply because he doesn’t explicitly try to convert you doesn’t mean that he’s not both concerned for the state of your soul and, simply in being friends with you, subtly trying to bring you around. In fact, it seems undeniable that if he did sit you down and tell you that your soul is in mortal peril if you don’t embrace Christ you would probably run screaming.” I can’t deny the last point, but very little follows from that. First, it seems like a very large gamble to hope that by simply being friends with me, Micah will be bring me around, especially given that there is every indication that such a tactic has utterly failed to this point. The more relevant point, however, and this gets us deeper into the puzzle, is that even though we do talk about our beliefs, it seems not only inaccurate but patronizing to suggest that either one of us is subtly trying to persuade the other person of anything. Instead, we both seem perfectly happy with the fact that we fundamentally disagree and that, chances are, nothing is going to change. And we still get along like a house on fire.

Monday, August 01, 2005

seeking beauty, teaching beauty, contesting beauty

it seems to me that the perception of moral beauty plays an especially important role in both: 1) moral motivation, and 2) moral education. with regard to the former, i think that some actions have a certain 'shine' to them, and it is because of their beauty that we are drawn to do them. likewise, a certain way of life can have that 'shine' and thus motivate us to act in a certain way -e.g. upon being struck by the beauty of st. francis' simplicity and humility, one becomes a fransciscan. or, perhaps more frequently, we also have an awareness of what a certain action 'looks like' -to others and to ourselves- or what a person who does such a thing 'looks like.' this (aesthetic?) sense guides us in our actions, both in seeking to perform particular actions and in avoiding certain kinds of actions (for example, because one would feel 'ugly' or 'gross' if one treated another person that way).

thus, i want to say that, in various ways, moral beauty provides us with reasons for acting. that is, one of the reasons we can intelligibly and appropriately give for doing something is, 'because doing so was beautiful.'

with regards to moral education, beauty's role seems to involve the training of a person to see certain actions and ways of living as beautiful -as having a kind of moral beauty which makes them lovely, attractive, praiseworthy, valuable, in contrast to actions and ways of living that are ugly, jarring, painful even to look at. in shaping a person's moral aesthetic, moral education provides a person with the kinds of perceptions of moral beauty that will then form the basis for moral motivation and moral reasoning.

i suspect that a large part of our education into moral beauty comes from biography (whether of relatives, or famous people, or 'fictional biography' -i.e. a life a character in a fictional story) we first get a grasp on what a good and beautiful life is by learning about lives that are good and beautiful, or evil and ugly. then, even at a young age, we are able to picture a human life as a whole, and this gives us a (pre-theoretical) sense of what a good and beautiful life looks like, and this directs us in the kind of life that we want to live for ourselves.

of course, even if 'acting this way is beautiful' can be an acceptable reason for acting, such a reason can be rejected as illegitimate. in fact, it is one of the features of moral beauty, both as it is ascribed to actions and as it is ascribed to lifetimes, is that it tends to be contested. an action or a lifetime that strikes one person as beautiful may seem unimpressive or even ugly to another person.

and one way to reject someone's evaluation of an action as beautiful is to reject the moral worth of that action. for example:
A: "that was truly beautiful how she put him in his place."
B: "that wasn't beautiful. it was cruel."
that this kind of reasoning is intelligible to us is further evidence that we apprehend a kind of beauty that is irreducibly connected to the morality or virtue of certain actions.

i suspect that many of the most interesting disagreements about how one ought to live -that is, what kind of life is a good life- can be described as aesthetic disagreements. i do not mean to say that the 'moral' or 'ethical' disagreements can be reduced to the 'aesthetic.' nor do i want to say that disagreements about moral beauty can be reduced to disagreements about some kind of 'non-aesthetic moral matters.' and yet, the disagreements between, say, a stoic and a christian and a nietzschean notion of the good life seem to center on disagreements about what kind of life is beautiful. this aesthetic aspect of the disagreement is highlighted, perhaps, when we say that they are competing pictures or visions of the good life.

perhaps it is one of the core insights of virtue-ethics that moral perception precedes the giving of reasons. thus, there is a sense in which moral aesthetics precedes moral argument. and that is why great modern virtue-ethicists (such as nietzsche on the one hand, and c.s. lewis on the other) have been concerned to paint a picture as much as to make arguments -because any acceptable argument will depend on the picture, will 'fall out' of the picture, as it were. and likewise, any moral or spiritual conversion will also mean a conversion into an new moral and spiritual aesthetic.