a circle in the fire

this blog has ended

2011-07-21T09:31:00.000-07:00

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milosz

2009-05-19T06:28:00.000-07:00

i have been reading a collection of poems by czeslaw milosz. i read them in the morning before i start the days work.

i find his poetry hard to grasp, but here is a stanza i especially liked. it is from "throughout our lands", written after milosz had moved to the united states from his native poland:

If I had to tell what the world is for me
I would take a hamster or a hedgehog or a mole
and place him in a theater seat one evening
and, bringing my ear close to his humid snout,
would listen to what he says about the spotlights,
sounds of the music, and movements of the dance.

a new slogan for the catholic church?

2009-03-27T11:24:00.001-07:00

i am part of a NT/early christianity reading group at the university of chicago. we are currently reading augustine's "on the trinity."

here is an especially nice phrase from today's reading (book ii):

"The Catholic Church Only is the Place from Whence the Back Parts of God are Seen."

can't you see that on a church sign?

2009-03-08T21:08:00.000-07:00

this is the sign above the drinking fountain in the men's locker room at the university of chicago gym.

i have always been impressed with the bold punctuation choices made by the sign's designer -four kinds of punctuation in such a small space! including a semicolon!

too bad the sign-maker couldn't find a place for an exclamation mark.
(nb: a mistake i have not repeated in this post.)

all of which reminds me that "semicolon" should be spelled "semi;colon".

thank you.

my neologism

2007-12-27T15:56:00.000-08:00

so, i think this might be my best ever contribution to pop culture jargon:

yupster: a person who is, economically speaking, a yuppie (e.g. owns a nice condo in a trendy part of town, fancy gadgets, etc.), but has a hipster aesthetic.

in my own town of chicago, the best place for yupster sightings is probably wicker park/bucktown. they are also frequently spotted in logan square.

remembering that special day

2007-11-27T08:25:00.000-08:00

this was the actual news photo accompanying an article on iraq with the title, "Insurgents Disguised as Bride and Groom".

and people say there is nothing funny about an insurgency.

oddly enough, my friend zach, who is getting married next month, is using the exact same wedding photographer. he and his fiancee also chose the ply-wood backdrop.

Moses

2007-11-05T21:00:00.000-08:00

this poem was partly inspired by a recent sermon at my church, st. barnabas.

Moses

the difficult question as to why the murder of the Egyptian,
a human being made in God’s image,
did not disqualify Moses
from leading the Hebrews out of bondage,
whereas the striking of the rock,
inanimate wood on inanimate stone,
could not be forgotten, and kept him
from entering the Promised Land.

the strange fact that it was God, not the Hebrews,
who buried Moses,
and God, having performed the funeral service and
understanding the privacy that friendship can require,
did not see fit to mention to anyone
where the body had been laid,
so that to this day
no one knows where Moses is buried.

learning our lines

2007-10-17T21:39:00.000-07:00

here is another poem. once again, i couldn't get the spacing to come out as i wanted, but i think don't think it affects it too much.

learning our lines

(or, the love song of richard moran)

can you give me the first word?
-i forgot my line.
“this is just a conversation: there is no script,
so its up to you alone.”

in that case i need a moment
to decide what i should think.
i must consult my reasons: whatever the result,
i’ve only me to thank.

if i am set on course by none but me
that seems good grounds for boasts,
but is a single me directing me: the me-in-me, or
a thousand little beasts?

i suppose there is a something in me
that is not there in my dog,
though where this author lives and works: i cannot find the place,
no matter how i dig.

“this philosophic joking
is plain attempt to stall,
and though it makes me smile: i don’t forget, and
i wait your answer still.”

you know i want to watch you smile
as long as we might live,
from back to front
from mind to gut
there is no part or piece of me, that fails to say:
it is you i love.

dissertation frustration #472

2007-10-03T17:54:00.000-07:00

here's a poem i wrote recently. i couldn't get the indenting to come out as i wanted, so it doesn't look quite right. but you get the idea.

dissertation frustration #472

which of us has not thought
that the mind of the analytic philosopher
is as insipid as it is precise,

his demanded clarity
a fog obscuring our human life,

his pen a razor-
not for separating soul from spirit, joint from marrow-
but concept from concept
and yet, for all its sharpness,
all that distinguishes his distinctions is their dullness:
their persistent ability to provoke a shrug, and
the sense that the important thing has somehow been missed,
that all this makes no difference
or, worse,
is uninnocent distraction?

two poems about children

2007-07-20T19:09:00.000-07:00

the girl smiled a proud smile,
looked up at her mother
and announced:
"i'm going to dance all the way to the door."

and she did.
with hops and half twirls,
turning her way to the place
where her mother took her
by the hand,
leading her onto
sidewalk, chicago winter.

- - -

casual, with unthinking tenderness,
the mother's hand moves across
the head of the six-year old boy
at her side
gently running her fingers through his
fine, light hair:
messing it up,
smoothing it down again.

movement unremarked and unremembered
product of no chain of reasoning,
equally unnoticed by actor and acted upon
as both stare ahead
pondering ice-cream choices.

an unconsidered gesture,
holding what is purest and deepest and best
in human life.

the big 1-0-0-0-0 (the personal holiday of the future!)

2007-07-09T13:52:00.000-07:00

yesterday was a major milestone for me -my 10,000th day (ex utero). which i guess makes me 40 minutes old in god years.

we had a party on the evening of day 9,999 and we rang in day 10,000 with champagne and sparklers at the stroke of midnight.

i was thankful to be able to celebrate with good friends, and also to get so many good wishes from friends who couldn't make it to the party.

perhaps best of all, a friend composed a wonderful poem for the occasion.

if you're interested in celebrating your own 10,000th day (or 15,000th, or 20,000th, etc) a google search will quickly turn up some day calculators, which will save you time figuring out the leap years.

a few pics from the party:

2007-06-04T10:18:00.000-07:00

sometimes we slay the giant
sometimes fall on our swords,
mostly feel a bit confused
then do the best we can.

so remember Jebediah
remember his cromulent words,
and that "a noble spirit
embiggens the smallest man."

-ml
june 2007

give me liberty, or give me grandchildren

2007-05-28T08:05:00.000-07:00

this past week i spent a few days with my family in richmond, virginia. my brother lives there with his wife, elizabeth, and son, turner. and my parents drove up from atlanta for the week.

my brother lives in a neighborhood named 'church hill', so called because there is a church on a hill. and the church, it turns out, is the one where patrick henry delivered his famous speech.

for my nephew's part, fun was had with a wheelbarrow full of dirt. here are a few of my favorite pics of that:

a few new places on the world wide web

2007-04-16T20:45:00.000-07:00

i have some great friends doing some interesting things online.

so, i wanted to call everyone's attention to a few new sites:

tommyheartsally

lisabethanderson

ampolo

its an eclectic bunch. but each is worth some time.

thoughts on loneliness, part II

2007-01-20T21:37:00.000-08:00

varieties of loneliness

in spite of the fact that loneliness is a kind of pain, it can also have a certain appeal. it is perhaps not too strong to say that loneliness can at times be almost pleasant. part of the pleasure, i think, is that loneliness can somehow make one feel important or significant. i am thinking of the connection between loneliness and the 'romantic hero' -the person who, because of his uniqueness or greatness, must somehow struggle on alone, isolated and perhaps misunderstood. that picture, of course, is a bit overblown. but when we feel lonely, i think we can pretty easily see ourselves along similar lines, or at least feel that there is something special about us in our isolation. and perhaps that is part of the pleasure of loneliness: it can make us feel important, individual.

"happy being lonely...
lonely being happy..."
-b.m.

that said, we can also distinguish between a "light loneliness", in which these kind of pleasures may be present, and a "heavy loneliness" in which there are no such pleasures. by "heavy loneliness", i mean a loneliness is that is utterly oppressive, a loneliness in which we lose contact with the things that bring us joy, with the things we love, with our best selves. the contrast between "light loneliness" and "heavy loneliness" is similar to (perhaps even the same as) the contrast between "melancholy" and "depression." while both melancholy and depression are kinds of sadness, the former can be somehow attractive, while the latter holds no attraction. in melancholy, one can feel important or even ennobled. melancholy can make you feel serious, important. in contrast, depression reduces a person. it makes you feel insignificant, lifeless, less yourself, less a person. the same sort of dynamic can be present, i think, between light and heavy forms of loneliness.

so, what should we make of the pleasures that might accompany a "light loneliness"? for one thing, i think it suggests that loneliness can be a temptation. insofar as loneliness does involve the sense of one's own grand individuality, indulging in loneliness runs the risk of giving into pride. when we are lonely, it might be some consolation to cultivate the feeling because it reminds us of some exalted view of ourselves in which we are somehow above others -"brilliant but misunderstood, etc" i don't at all mean to say that feeling loneliness is a "sin." rather, i mean that there is a posture that we can take towards loneliness, and towards the pleasures in it, that can express a distorted, even sinful, view of ourselves.

at the same time, however, i think its all to easy to scoff at the romantic hero, or to write him off as adolescent and self-involved (no doubt this is part of our desire to distance ourselves from our own adolescence). but isn't there, after all, some truth in the much-maligned notion of "individualism"? what i mean is this: in some deep way, we live alone and we die alone. in some deep way, we make our choices alone and we alone bear responsibility for ourselves. that is (part of) what it means to be a self. so, perhaps we can say: the pain of loneliness is a reminder of the weight we bear as individuals, the weighting of being a self. moreover, perhaps we feel that there is something wonderful in the fact that we are each individuals, that i am a free and rational person. and insofar as loneliness reminds us of this, the pain of loneliness reminds us something profound about ourselves, and it carries with it something sweet, something inspiring.

loneliness and truth

i'm not sure if the above paragraph makes sense. and to the extent that it does make sense, i don't know ifs ultimately a fruitful way to think about loneliness. but i do think that we should be thinking seriously about the question "how should we deal with our experiences of loneliness?" and i think the case of "romantic loneliness" shows how our answers to this question will ultimately depend on whether or not we think there is a truth in our loneliness, and if so, what that truth is.

what i mean is this: if loneliness is a kind of pained perception -of oneself and one's situation- then we ought to be asking: "is this an accurate perception?" answering that question, of course, involves making lots of fine-grained distinctions in our experience of loneliness, and figuring out just what a given experience of loneliness is claiming. in the case of romantic loneliness, my thought was that this kind of loneliness might be a perception built around a picture of oneself that has some truth in it. if that were the case, then this kind of loneliness would be truth-tracking, as it were. and a truth-tracking kind of loneliness, it seems, is something that we should attend to.

on the other hand, it might be that certain experiences of loneliness represent distorted perceptions of ourselves and our situation. for example, it might be that an experience of loneliness makes us feel that we have no important connection to anyone in the world, and that feeling might simply be false. in that case, the correct approach to this feeling might involve (among other things) recognizing to ourselves that what we are feeling is not a truth-tracking emotion or mood.

of course, this suggests that it will be hard to say some things about loneliness without resorting to our broader view of things. that is, in trying to figure out whether an experience of loneliness tells us something true or false, or is healthy or unhealthy, we will be drawing on our ideas of just what a human being is, and what good human action and feeling involves. i am thinking of such questions as: what does it mean to say that human beings are social animals? what kind of isolation is upbuilding for a person, and what kind of isolation is destructive? and in the grand scheme of things, just how alone are we?

as christians, i think all this means that we need something like a "theology of loneliness." such a theology would address, among other things:

-what is the relationship between loneliness and our fallen human nature?
-can all loneliness be removed this side of heaven? should we strive for that?
-in what ways can loneliness be a part of our redemption as individuals? as a community?
-was jesus lonely? if so, what is the meaning of jesus loneliness for us?
-what light does the fact of loneliness shed on the meaning of the church?
-how does loneliness relate to our confession of the trinity -to our belief that in God's very being there is a society of persons?

these are, for the most part, just some questions of the top my head. i don't have much constructive to say in this area, though it seems to me that the church would do well to think more deeply about loneliness, not least because of how quickly loneliness often besets us, how pervasive it is, and also how much time and effort we spend fending it off. that said, it may also be that the best way to begin in this area is to think more deeply about the good things for which loneliness longs -intimacy, presence, love.

thoughts on loneliness, part I

2007-01-06T22:27:00.000-08:00

not that long ago i was in a discussion about the topic of loneliness. what struck me most about the conversation was how this group of fairly intelligent and thoughtful people had so little to say on this topic that was worthwhile or insightful, and so much to say that was confused or flat-out wrong. and i include myself in that criticism. it was as if we weren't quite able to get our bearings for reflection, or we lacked a grammar for the topic. that experience prompted me to ask a number of other friends for their thoughts on loneliness, and also to attempt some more helpful lines of thought.

loneliness and aloneness

to be alone, it seems, is a description of one's relation to other people. to be lonely, in contrast, describes one's perception of that relation, or one's attitude about one's situation. so, it is possible to be alone without feeling lonely. and, perhaps more interestingly, it seems to be possible to feel lonely without being alone. i have in mind times when we feel disconnected to the people around us -we have family, friends, lovers, but we still feel isolated, disconnected, lonely.

"i'm high
high again...
i'm in love, but i'm so lonesome..." -b. m.

but loneliness isn't just the perception that one is alone. it seems closer to say that loneliness is the awareness that one is alone combined with the desire not to be alone. so far as i know, we don't have a specific word in english for times when one is alone, is aware that one is alone, and is happy to be alone, or contented, satisfied to be alone. loneliness, in any case, seems to carry with it a dissatisfaction, a frustration of desire. this inclines me to say that loneliness can be thought of as a kind of pain, insofar as pain is (roughly) a conscious awareness that something is going wrong, that proper function is being disrupted.

however, i think its important to note that, on a given occasion, the difference between being aware that you are alone and feeling lonely is often subtle, and just what one is feeling might not even be fully clear to the person who is feeling it. there are times when i'm not sure if i'm enjoying my afternoon alone, or starting to feel lonely. on the mild end of the spectrum, the feelings shade into each other -"do i feel like calling somebody, or would i rather just enjoy the movie by myself? i can't decide."

this way of talking makes it sound like loneliness is an emotion. maybe it is, but i'm not sure. perhaps what we call loneliness is sometimes less of an emotion and more of a mood. that is, perhaps it is less episodic and more diffuse, less focused on something in particular and more like a coloring of everything. in either case, loneliness is something that can come and go over a fairly short period of time -"i felt really lonely last night, but i feel much better now." but it is also worth noting that loneliness can be something that characterizes larger stretches of time. thus we can say, "that summer was lonely for me", or, "my teenage years were lonely ones", or even "he lived a lonely life." in these cases, i don't think we mean merely "there were lots of episodes of loneliness during that stretch of time" (though its probably part of what we mean).

loneliness, proximity, absence

to be lonely is to be discontent. in feeling lonely, we are not at rest. this has to do with the fact that loneliness -as the pained awareness that one is alone, seen through the desire not to be alone- is also a reaching, an outstretching. this is not to say that when we are lonely we actually do reach out. we may choose to sit at home alone. but internal the feeling of loneliness, i think, is a longing for something outside oneself, a striving. when we are lonely, we are 'crying out' to someone.

this inclines me to say that part of loneliness is the feeling of absence. we sense an empty space that ought to be filled. we are aware of what is not there. this is closely connected, i think, to the desire to be heard, and also to listen, as well as the desire to be seen and also to see. to feel lonely is to want to be able to gaze meaningfully at someone else, to have one's attention filled by another person. to feel lonely is also to want to be seen, to be the object of someone else's attention.

our experience of loneliness, then, is deeply rooted in the fact that we occupy bodies, and that we live in space and time. because we are thus bounded, we can be set apart from others, we can be isolated and alone. and thus we can have the painful desire that things not be otherwise, that we be brought close to another person, that this lack be filled.

less abstractly, it seems to me that there is a close connection between being lonely and missing someone. when we miss someone, we might say that we are lonely for that person -that we have a pained awareness of our isolation from that particular person, that we desire the presence of that particular person. of course, one can also be lonely without really missing someone in particular. perhaps we can say, then, that with generalized loneliness, we simply miss some-one, though not a particular one. with both missing and loneliness, there is the sense of lack, of absence, and the longing that it be filled.

in this way, i think, intimacy makes possible new and deeper forms of loneliness: to know someone is to have a new bit of yourself come into existence, a new stretch of ourselves in created in our important relationships. if the person is gone, that space within yourself that the person created is no longer filled. what remains is an empty space -a lack that is made real in memory, in expectation, in longing. so, to experience intimacy means that there is more of you, and to miss someone is, in part, to feel an emptiness in that part of you.

a new year's prayer

2007-01-03T06:47:00.000-08:00

o lord jesus,
pass your wounded hands over the year that is past
and bless it,
forgive what is sinful
heal what is broken.
and with your hands
hold us in the year to come,
protect us from disbelief, despair and indifference
strengthen us and preserve us
in your kingdom
by your life
to your glory
amen.

seen around town -a bunch of fur

2006-09-28T13:48:00.000-07:00

the other day i was out walking and came across a big wad of fur. this picture hardly does it justice -it was a lot of fur!

give me that old time a-religion

2006-09-16T11:57:00.000-07:00

in my last post, i tried to say something in favor of the kind of worries that gripped tolstoy's character levin (and tolstoy himself). there are a number of issues here, and my thoughts came out a bit jumbled, so i want to try again.

part of what interests me about levin's predicament is that it raises the question of nihilism. levin becomes preoccupied with the possibility that there is no meaning to life, no reason why he exists. or rather, he is troubled by the fact that his answer to the question of why he is alive -a scientific, materialistic answer- provides no guidance for how he should go about living his life. in fact, it undercuts other forms of guidance he has relied on, most importantly the orthodox christian faith of his youth.

from our vantage point, levin's encounter with nihilism may seem especially typical of the nineteenth-century (and perhaps especially in russia). we can think of ivan karamazov's quip that without god everything is permissible, or of lermontov's hero pechorin. we can also think of nietzsche's efforts to avoid a collapse into nihilism. in all of these cases, nihilism appears as a problem -perhaps the problem- for humanity, especially in the wake of the demise of religious belief.

now, what strikes me about many contemporary people -even very thoughtful people- is that nihilism no longer appears as a problem. it is not that we have solved levin's worries, but we have seen that these are not legitimate worries after all. either the 'death of god' does not lead to nihilism, or nihilism turns out to be not so bad after all. there is something quaint about getting all worked up about the (non)meaning of everything. nihilism, when it appears on the radar of many, does so mostly as a joke:

as christians, what ought our response be to this posture? i mean this as an intellectual question, but also as an interpersonal one. with regard to the former: do we think that belief in god -in the christian god?- is really necessary to keep one from failing into nihilism? or that if people just reflected more, they would be troubled the way levin was troubled? with regard to the latter: what does one say to a friend or neighbor who believes that there is no 'grand meaning' to life, but who is also untroubled by this?

i confess, i have a soft spot for old-school nihilism. but not everyone does. dietrich bonhoeffer, for one, seemed quite skeptical about the idea that as christians we should try to first provoke a crisis in people, and then use that as a way of leading them to faith. in his letters and papers from prison, he spoke of the 'world come of age.' part of his thought seems to be that christians should simply accept that humanity has 'grown up', so to speak, and no longer needs religion. i'm not sure, however, how to relate what bonhoeffer means by 'religion' to the kind of belief that levin arrives at as the solution to his personal crisis. for bonhoeffer, 'religion' is something private. it is also a kind of deus ex machina brought in to fill some gap in one's life. on at least one reading of bonhoeffer, his point is that modern people can now say of god in their personal lives what laplace said of god in his model of the solar system -'i have no need of that hypothesis.'

on the surface, it sounds as if bonhoeffer is rejecting precisely the kind of faith that levin arrived at, where religion comes in as the solution to a personal crisis. but maybe bonhoeffer's point is that religion ought not to fill any particular 'gap' in one's life, in the sense that it ought not be 'brought out' at weddings and funerals and then tucked away. that sort of religion is like the god of newton's solar system -it accounts for minor corrections to system. and that sort of religion is the kind that the world is better without. but levin's religious faith is not like that. rather, it is something that reshapes his whole way of understanding himself, the world, and how he should live.

"that bubble is -me", or, levin's worries

2006-09-07T13:08:00.000-07:00

i recently finished reading anna karenina. it is no secret that, with respect to a number of features of his life and outlook, the co-protagonist of the book, konstantin levin, mirrors his author, leo tolstoy:

in book eight, in we find levin in a troubled state:

" 'without knowing what i am and why i'm here, it is impossible for me to live. and i cannot know that, therefore i cannot live,' levin would say to himself.
'in infinite time, in the infinity of the matter, in infinite space, a bubble-organism separates itself, and that bubble holds out for a while and then bursts, and that bubble is- me....'
and, happy in his family life, a healthy man, levin was several times so close to suicide that he hid a rope lest he hang himself with it, and was afraid to go about with a rifle lest he shoot himself.
but levin did not shoot himself or hang himself and went on living."

what should we make of levin's position? i suspect that many contemporary readers may think that someone like levin is suffering from some sort of mental illness -perhaps he is depressed? but tolstoy tells us levin is happy and healthy. moreover, his life is rooted in caring relationships and honest work. for levin, this crisis in his thought and life was born from his encounter with death:

"from that moment when, at the sight of his beloved brother dying, levin had looked at the questions of life and death for the first time through those new convictions, as he called them, which imperceptibly, during the period from twenty to thirty-four years of age, had come to replace his childhood and adolescent beliefs, he had been horrified, not so much at death as at life without the slightest knowledge of whence it came, wherefore, why, and what it was."

i'm not certain why levin's experience of death leads him to ask such questions about life, and to be troubled by his lack of ability to answer them. perhaps the point is that in encountering death, and the prospect of one's own death, one comes to see one's own life as a whole, as something bounded, and thereby one comes to ask questions about the whole of life. that is, one asks not only what? and why? about things within one's life, but what? and why? about one's whole life.

levin's questions are those that have traditionally been answered by religion and philosophy. indeed, in his search for answers levin reads plato, kant, hegel and schopenhauer. in contemporary academic philosophy, however, there is something decidedly unfashionable about levin's predicament. one way to see this is to note that, in spite of the volumes and volumes that is written about what is right or good, there is little said about the meaning of life. and the unspoken assumption seems to be that we can adequately address questions about acting well without facing the questions that so troubled levin.

i would guess that many contemporary philosophers might think that levin has made some sort of mistake in his thinking. it turns out, after all, that it is possible for him to live; in fact he does so. doesn't that suggest that levin was wrong to think he couldn't live without an answer to the question of why he exists? and even if there answer were just 'you are a bubble that will burst', one could still live perfectly well; there is no need for the different or deeper answer about life for which levin is searching.

i'm not sure what to say about this, except that i am skeptical about the too-easy manner in which levin's predicament seems to be brushed aside by otherwise thoughtful people. its as if 'we' have all somehow come to see that there is something adolescent about levin's concerns, something that one outgrows -that it is enough to simply enjoy the things within one's life, to find them worthwhile, and that asking for more is a sophomore's mistake.

but i want to resist this attitude. i want to say that there is something artificial and unsatisfying about attempts to do moral philosophy without addressing the very questions that preoccupy levin. and, moreover, it seems natural to expect that whatever answers one gives to those questions will have a direct impact on how one understands living well. if there is something adolescent about levin's worry, i think most of us would, in the words of a friend, do well to 'mind our adolescence a bit more.'

new digs

2006-09-07T12:43:00.000-07:00

good-bye north paulina

hello north wolcott

well, i moved. a big thanks to all the fine folks who helped me, some of whom are pictured below.

the new place is alright, though i miss the old place. i especially miss the better views and outside space. but i'm sure i'll like the new place the more i get used to it and make it my own. in spite of its many hassles, at least moving is a good reminder (=warning) of how much stuff you've accumulated, and its a good incentive to cull one's material possessions.

fair warning

2006-08-24T13:16:00.001-07:00

in my experience, this sign was true. that water was gross!

seen around town

2006-08-16T19:29:00.000-07:00

as the dates on the entries show, i haven't been able to find much of a voice for posting the last few months. instead of just silence, however, i've decided to start putting up some photos from my camera phone.

i think the camera phone photo is best thought of as belonging to its own genre. of course you can't do things with phone camera that you can do with other cameras, but the phone camera also has its own charm and unique possibiliites.

view from my back porch, stormy evening

eggs on sunnyside

anxiety and dispassion

2006-05-24T11:21:00.000-07:00

in my last entry, i talked briefly about notion of 'dispassion' in eastern christian spirituality. recently, i have been struggling with some fairly serious anxiety, ranging from a mild stress to a gripping, panic-like kind of worry. in trying to get a handle on what i've been feeling, the notion of dispassion has become very appealing to me.

the prospect of being free (note the enslavement connotations) from this anxiety has seemed like a heaven to me, especially when the anxiety has been very strong. i find myself longing for peace. and the idea of peace seems to me to be quite close to 'dispassion'. the anxiety sends my thoughts to and fro, racing from one idea to the next. this can be exhausting. and from the perspective of such exhaustion, the state of 'dispassion' does not sound like boredom or apathy, but sweet rest.

in the extreme case, my anxious thoughts have raced so quickly that they seem to be barely "thoughts" at all: there is just a rapid succession of impressions, images, half-formed notions or wishes. in thinking about such anxiety taken to its limit, i find myself wanting to say -if it is not too dramatic- that my self, my "I", is somehow lost. there is a kind of breakdown in my normal dispositions, perceptions, feelings. my usual way of encountering and responding to things gets dissipated or washed out. and at least in that sense, the "I" that is in the grip of serious anxiety seems not to be "me" at all -it is not the me of my best thoughts, my deepest enjoyments.

but of course, it is also the case that I am the one who is feeling anxious. and, more strangely, I seem also to be the ground, or cause of the anxiety. that is, the anxiety isn't really coming to me 'from the outside', though it can almost seem like that. rather, the anxiety arises up from within me, in a way that makes it possible to disown it as something merely 'alien' to me. i am, as augustine, says a problem for myself. there is something puzzling about this: i am miserable when i feel anxious, but isn't it myself who is making me anxious? why, then, am i making myself miserable? and how can i want not to be anxious, but also be the one who keeps me anxious?

in the context of such anxiety, dispassion can be seen as coming back to oneself, of finding oneself again. it is not that in dispassion one is solipsistic or withdrawn in such a way that one is cut off from the world. rather, the self is drawn into itself in such a way that allows precisely for it to attend to things outside itself, and to attend to them in a loving way. such attentive love is precluded by anxiety, which throws the mind this way and that.

having said all this, i am not sure how exactly to go about shaking off the anxiety. maybe the point is that i cannot do anything.

from the noon devotion in the book of common prayer:

"O God, you will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are fixed on you; for in returning and rest we shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be our strength."

(isaiah 26:3; 30:15)

sin, dispassion and freedom

2006-05-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

i am part of group that meets once a week for discussion and prayer. we are currently beginning a series of discussions based on the seven deadly sins, and this has given me occasion to read john cassian's 'on the eight vices.' (i have been looking at the version which appears in the english translation of the philokalia)

cassian was a roman who moved to egypt and became a disciple of evagrios pontikos. evagrios was a disciple of the cappadocian fathers, who later moved to the desert of egypt and became one of the second generation of 'desert fathers.' after spending time in with evagrios in egypt, cassian traveled to constantinople and then back west to rome and to gaul. he eventually founded two monasteries, one for men and one for women, and he is generally credited with bringing the spirituality of the eastern monastics to the west.

evagrios is usually thought to be the originator of what eventually became the seven deadly sins. evagrios actually had eight vices on his list, as did john cassian. a couple centuries after cassian, the western monk, theologian and pope gregory the great adapted cassian's list and gave us the seven deadly sins as we more or less have them now: pride, envy, anger, gluttony, greed, lust and despair/sloth (acedia)

it interesting to note that this list of sins or vices does not list actions (such as lying or murder). rather, what the list picks out are more or less desires (at times cassian focuses on instances of these desires, and at other times on the disposition to such desires). this focus on desire is understandable if we recognize that the original context for the seven deadly sins is the spiritual practice of the desert fathers. the early eastern monastics (and much of eastern christian spirituality since then) understands the spiritual life largely as a struggle to achieve a state of dispassion (απαθεια).

this focus on dispassion can be a bit hard to swallow; witness the meaning that now attaches to the english word 'apathy', a word derived from απαθεια. the monastic notion of dispassion has much in common with the stoic notion of aπaθεια, and most of us, i suspect, are much more attracted to the aristotelian picture of desire and emotion than the stoic picture: desires and emotions should be trained rather than extinguished, and, properly trained, emotions are not a hindrance to living well but rather a play a central role in living a good and praiseworthy life. moreover, isn't this negative view of the passions part of the (much referred to) 'christian hatred of the body'? and doesn't it reflect a kind of irresponsible and escapist 'otherworldliness'?

to be fair to the monastics, it should be stressed that dispassion actually has little in common with the english 'apathy' -it does not mean a lack of concern or indifference. it is consistent with (indeed, requires) compassion for others and suffering on their behalf. it is also involves intense love for god:
'when, however, through great attentiveness the soul begins to be purified, it also begins to experience the fear of god as a life-giving medicine which, through the reproaches it arouses in the conscience, burns the soul in the fires of dispassion. after this the soul is gradually cleansed until it is completely purified; its love increases as its fear diminishes, until it attains perfect love, in which there is no fear, but only the complete dispassion which is energized by the glory of god.' -diadochos of photiki

that said, it remains that the ideal of dispassion conflicts with many of our common-sense intuitions about what desire and emotion are appropriate. consider the fact that anger is listed as a vice. for aristotle, anger itself is not a vice; rather, one must feel anger at the right times and in the right way, etc. and most of us are inclined to think that there are occasions when one should feel angry at others, and that a lack of anger is a sign of insufficient concern for justice or low self-esteem. in contrast, cassian insists: 'in saying 'all', he (Paul) leaves no excuse for regarding any anger as necessary or reasonable...similarly, anger, whether reasonable or unreasonable, obstructs our spiritual vision. our incensive power can be used in a way that is according to nature only when turned against our own impassioned or self-indulgent thoughts.' this is a radical view about anger, and one that virtually not of us support, not to mention succeed in living out.

several notions are central to the monastic understanding of passion and dispassion. one of the most important is that of illness. the passions are a disease in the soul, the spiritual life is a program of treatment in which the soul is brought to a state of health in dispassion, and god is the great physician who brings about this healing.

another key idea is that of being a slave to one's passions. this, i think, gets at the heart of the monastic ideal of dispassion: what is ultimately at issue is freedom. the passions seize control of a soul. they take over the soul, tossing it to and fro. in this way, a person's freedom is diminished, if not destroyed. (this notion of enslavement is closely connected to the metaphor of illness. with a physical illness, one is passive and out of control. i do not choose to have the flu, and when i get the flu i lose a measure of control over my body and what i am able to do. similarly, the passions seize the soul and control it.)

once we see this, we can recognize that the monastic ideal of dispassion is not as alien to our values as it might have first seemed. nor is it an unmotivated, or driven simply by a 'hatred of the body' or 'denial of this life'. at the risk of gross anachronism, we might even say that the monastic ideal of dispassion is driven by the value of agency. of course, the monastic notion of freedom is importantly different from most contemporary notions of freedom, either common-sense or philosophical. but for that very reason, it may turn out that we can find in the monastic view a notion of freedom that offers a critique or corrective of our own views.

nevertheless, it remains that there is something 'otherworldly' about monastic spirituality, and there is also a deep suspicion of the body. how exactly to construe these elements is not easy, and i think they are frequently mischaracterized. still, consider the following passage from cassian's discussion of the demon of unchastity or lust: 'indeed, he who has trampled down the pleasures and provocations of the flesh is in a certain sense outside the body. thus, no one can soar to this high and heavenly prize of holiness on his own wings and learn to imitate the angels, unless the grace of god leads him upwards from this earthly mire.'

i, for one, am not sure what say about the ideal of being 'outside the body', or seeing this life as bogged down in an 'earthly mire.' partly i think that something has gone seriously wrong with monastic spirituality at this point, but i am also wary of the current fashion of easily dismissing this way of thinking.

truth, opacity and community

2006-04-09T18:50:00.000-07:00

to tell a lie is to attempt to cover over a piece of reality. in lying we try to hide something. sometimes we try to hide something that has happened, or something that will happen. but everytime we lie, i think, we also try to hide some piece of ourselves. frequently what motivates us to hide is fear; dishonesty and fear often go hand in hand.

in contrast, to tell the truth is the make something apparent. that is not to say that every truth which gets spoken will be clear to every listener, or easily grasped. but the truth as such puts us in confrontation with reality, and telling the truth makes something present, manifest. hence the appeal of metaphors of light to describe truth-telling -e.g. 'bringing something into the light'.

in telling the truth about ourselves, what is made manifest is our selves. but when i go to tell the truth, i find this difficulty: i am not transparent to myself. i am unable to tell the truth about myself, unable to make myself apparent, because i do not know the truth about myself. i am opaque to myself. and moreover, it seems that this opaqueness is greatest when it comes to the most important things about myself -my deep motivations for choosing to be one kind of person rather than another, the source of my guiding loves, of my persistent fears. these are the very things that are hidden from me, or that i understand only dimly.

to my mind, no one understood and expressed the self's opaqueness to itself better than augustine. for augustine, i think, this opaqueness brought forth both frustration but also awe. i am tempted to say that with augustine the self's hiddenness from itself comes to be constitutive of the self -that is, part of what it is to be a self is to be the kind of thing that is a mystery to oneself. but perhaps that is too strong. in any case, one of augustine's most valuable insights is that the self is implicit in its own opaqueness. that is, part of why i am hidden to myself is that i am, perhaps without realizing it, actively hiding -from others, from god, from myself. (this augustinian theme is wonderfully developed in c.s. lewis' last and, in my opinion, best work, the novel 'till we have faces)

what the opaqueness of the self means is this: if we are to tell the truth about ourselves, then such truth-telling is for us a task. to be able to tell deep and imporant truths about oneself is an accomplishment, an acheivement.

it seems to me that one of our greatest needs is to be able to tell the truth about ourselves. it also seems to me that we need others both to be able to know the truth about ourselves, and to develop the capacity for truth-telling. we need, in short, a community of truth.

there are a number of things that could be said about what such a community would look like. one important thing that bethany brought out in her comment on the last past was that the virtue of truth-telling needs to be shaped by the virtue of humility. what i would like to stress here is that a community of truth is much more than 'keeping others accountable' or 'calling each other' on our lies. more fundamentally, it is a making space in which the other person can come to know and to tell important truths, including truths about herself. this 'making space' need not be something abstract or vague. rather it involves familar features of conversation and time spent together -it is a matter of the questions we ask, the comments we make, the smiles or frowns we offer to each other, the silences we let stand.

truth, respect and freedom

2006-04-02T18:06:00.000-07:00

'and this potion won't help anyone,
to try and tell the truth...'

to tell someone an important truth about oneself is an act of trust in the other person. or, better, it is an act of entrusting oneself to the person. to withhold the truth about oneself, or to lie outright, is frequently a way of putting up a wall between the 'real me' and the me that is seen and perceived. thus, to withhold the truth, or to lie outright, is a common strategy for keeping oneself from being exposed and vulnerable.

conversely, to tell an important truth is to make oneself vulnerable, and hence to express faith that the other person will respond correctly to one's vulnerability -that the other person will show the proper care, make the right effort, not betray one's trust. and to have such faith in others is to respect them. this is one reason why we can be hurt if we feel that a friend is withholding from us some important truths about himself: it can seem that the friend is not willing to entrust himself to us, and hence it can seem that he does not trust us to respond correctly, that he lacks faith in our ability to understand or respond to him.

if what is at issue is not a truth about oneself, but something more general or a even truth about the other person, then truth-telling can be connected to respect in other ways. in talking about her own resolution to tell the truth, a friend recently put the point to me this way: other people are worth it. they are worthy of the truth, no matter how difficult that may be. to tell someone else the truth is to respect her as someone who is able to work out her own life in confrontation with the full truth, whatever that might turn out to be.

another friend put it to me like this: to tell someone is a lie is to cut him off from reality, if only in a small way. insofar as another person accepts my lies, then i have put up a barrier between them and what is actually the case, a wall between them and the real world.

behind both if these formulations, i think, is a point about freedom. it is fitting that a human being be free, and that freedom is a great value. to be free is to be able to direct oneself, to determine one's course rather than be determined from without. moreover, a freedom that is truly valuable (and, we might say, a freedom properly so called) involves one's ability to direct oneself in the right way, to choose for the right reasons. what makes something the right reason, however, is its connection to the good. and the kind of freedom we value is the freedom to choose what is good. at this point, however, the role of truth is crucial: the good cannot be chosen as such unless we know the truth about ourselves and our situation. the point is so obvious that it is strange to say: we cannot choose what is good -and hence we cannot be truly free- unless we know what is good, and we cannot know what is good unless we know what is truth. hence, we cannot be truly free unless we know the truth. thus, to tell someone the full truth, to allow her a confrontation with the whole truth, is to respect her as someone worthy of freely choosing for herself.

the above paragraph is painfully abstract, but what i have in mind is commonplace, even ubiquitous. don't we often fail to give people the whole truth, because we think they could not really handle it? because they wouldn't be able to understand? because the lie helps them to cope with life?

of course, the fact that something is true about another person doesn't in itself give us good reason to tell it to him. and every child learns quickly that telling the truth can easily be an act of manipulation or domination or cruelty. but what i am saying is this: to the extent to which we withhold important, relevant truths from other people, we deny them the privelage of fully and freely confronting what is real. and in doing this, we may quite likely be patronizing them and tacitly disrespecting them as a rational, free beings.

in thinking about what truth to share with another person, a good test might be this: if such a truth were not shared with us, would we feel disrespected or patronized? and if we have a reason for not sharing the truth with someone, is that a reason we would accept for ourselves if we were in his place?

telling the truth

2006-03-26T15:52:00.000-08:00

perhaps the three most famous statements about truth all occur in the gospel of john. jesus tells his audience: 'you shall know the truth, and the shall make you free.' later jesus claims: 'i am the way, the truth, and the life.' and in his conversation with pilate, jesus explains that his kingdom is not of this world, but that all who are the side of truth are on his side. pilate responds with a rhetorical question: 'what is truth?' (is pilate earnest? mocking? annoyed? -it is hard to be sure in what tone we should hear the question)

one of our strongest associations with the word 'truth' comes from the courtroom: 'do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?' to ask a witness to swear to this oath is in effect to have him promise to follow one of the ten commandments: 'thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.' it strikes me as a little odd that we have people swear to tell the truth -is this, as it seems, an effort to secure their honesty while on the stand? but if a person is willing to lie on the stand, why will he not be willing to break his promise to the court, to lie in taking the oath?

not longer ago, a friend of mine described a mutual friend of ours by saying: "i think that she is especially open to the truth." i took this to be a tremendous complement, and i think the person who said this meant it as such. (i also agreed with her assessment of our mutual friend).

most of us, i think, value truthfulness in other people. wouldn't we all say that 'honesty' is a virtue? and few of us, i think, would be willing to describe ourselves as 'dishonest.' we may be willing to admit lying on certain occasions (almost all of these lies, of course, being of no real consequence). not many of us would say of ourselves: 'i can be quite a liar when it serves my purposes' or 'i can be a deeply dishonest person.'

but what does the virtue of honesty or truthfulness amount? what does it mean for us to be people who are receptive to the truth, and also who speak the truth, to ourselves and to others?

i have been mulling over the phrase, 'the whole truth.' in the context of a trial, what counts as 'the whole truth' is determined by its relevance to the question(s) at hand in the courtroom. it may be true that i am wearing green underwear, but telling this to the jury is not likely to be necessary (or even appropriate) in order to fulfill my commitment to speak the whole truth. in the case of our ordinary lives, however, it is harder to know what counts as 'the whole truth', and it is harder to specify when and why and how we should speak the whole truth. this is particularly hard in the case of ourselves -there is a great deal about us that we could reveal to family, friends, strangers. what does it mean to speak the whole truth about yourself to those around you?

there was a time when i thought that transparency about oneself was a great virtue. i remember discussing this my freshman year of college with a friend who thought otherwise. i insisted that we should be striving for complete openness with others, and that there was something christian about this way of being: fully sharing ourselves with others, self-disclosing with nothing to hide and nothing to fear. i am now much less certain about what transparency ought to look like, or what value it has. however, i have also been troubled lately by the thought that i may be a liar.

perhaps we might say: what it means to speak the whole truth is to speak all the truth that is demanded by the situation or context. formally, this seems right, but materially it leaves the question essentially unanswered. how much truth about oneself is called for by a given friendship? how much truth about oneself is demanded in virtue of being someone's son or daughter? brother or sister? maybe the answer to depends on the kind of relationships we think are best or worth pursuing -if you think a relationship like this is choiceworthy, then you will have to reveal this much truth about yourself to realize such a relationship. even saying this, though, we have not really answered the question of what is choiceworthy. and don't we all feel that our relationships might be very different if we told more of the truth about ourselves? don't we suspect that if we told that person such-and-such about ourselves, the whole relationship would change? don't we hope that it would change for the better, and fear that it would change for the worse? but how could i tell them that?

doubtless one reason we often don't tell others 'the whole truth' about ourselves is that we are afraid of being misunderstood. this, i think, may well be a reasonable fear. there is little that feels as bad as being misunderstood on an important point about oneself. and few things are grosser and unhappier than a scene of deep misunderstanding between two people. we want to tell the truth but we also know not to throw our pearls before swine, and we know that the truth about ourselves is precious indeed.

but we must present something of ourselves to others. and if we don't offer them the deep truths about ourself -if we don't tell them 'the whole truth'- it seems that this can come close to telling a lie.

welcome to the world, william turner lott

2006-03-17T14:09:00.000-08:00

i usually do not use this space for reporting on my personal life, but this is a particularly special occasion:

earlier today i got a call from my brother nathan. this morning at 3am, my sister-in-law elizabeth gave birth to a healthy baby boy: william turner lott. he weighed in at 5 lbs, 1 oz.

so, congratulations to nathan and elizabeth. i'm sure that you will be fantastic, loving parents.

and welcome to the world, william turner. if you only knew what you've gotten yourself into...

how strange, wonderful and beautiful life is.

thanks be to god.

gender and beauty

2006-03-11T08:52:00.000-08:00

not long ago i was at a concert where the opening act was a gay white rapper. during his performance, i heard a person in the audience call out something like "down with all gender!" it struck me that for this person, and perhaps many others, their experience of being a gendered being was bound up with pain and strife to such a degree that a gender-less world seemed to represent a kind of liberation. that someone should feel like that is very sad, and our first reaction to someone calling out like this should probably be one of compassion.

at the same time, i find myself quite unsympathetic to the idea that a gender-less world might be a kind of liberation or advance for humanity. it seems to me that such a world would be comparatively boring to our own. in imagining a gender-less human experience, it seems to me flat, untextured. that is, something would be lost in such a world. now, perhaps this is just a failure of imagination on my part. whether or not it is, i think what lies behind my aversion to the prospect of a gender-less world is the sense that even if gender has been a source of pain or even oppression, gender nevertheless adds a richness and complexity to our experience as humans.

and i wonder if the kind of richness that is at issue here is not best thought of in aesthetic terms. that is, perhaps what i sense is that human life without gender would be somehow less beautiful, or that our experience of beauty would be impoverished in a gender-less world

with all this in mind, i have been trying to think a bit more about the relationship between gender and beauty. one way in which gender seems to be connected to human beauty is through erotic desire: gender is bound up with our experience of erotic desire, and erotic desire is closely connected to our experience of human beauty. to be drawn erotically toward another human being is characteristically (always?) to see him or her as beautiful in some way.

it is possible, of course, to see human beings as beautiful without being drawn to them erotically -think of the way we find children or the elderly to be beautiful. but it is hard to imagine being erotically moved toward another person without finding that person beautiful or attractive. moreover, erotic desire is characteristically structured around gender. that is, it is typical of humans that in being erotically attracted to another human being we are attracted to them as male or as female. the obvious fact here is that the majority of humans are erotically drawn to members of the other gender. but the point works the same, i think, for homo-erotic attraction: here as well erotic desire is someone keyed in on the gender of the other person. erotic attraction is different in this regard from other ways we might be attracted to or delight in someone -for example, being attracted to someone as an excellent conversationalist, or delighting in them as a good tennis partner.

in addition to this, it seems that there is something about gender that contributes to human beauty in a way that doesn't have this same connection to erotic desire. i am not sure what to say about this, except that the reality of gender contributes to a diversity and complexity in human life that is beautiful. that is, gender is bound up with the diverse ways that humans express themselves -the way they work and play and carry themselves. especially in areas of creativity and artistic expression, it seems that human activities -dancing, singing, telling jokes, etc.- are fuller, more elaborate, more intricate and more lovely because of the way that gender figures into those activities.

genders, values, norms

2006-02-23T17:01:00.000-08:00

in the two weeks since my last post, i've had the good fortune of participating in several interesting conversations about gender. there were also some interesting things said in the comments on the last post. furthermore, i have been trying to do some more thinking on my own about the topic. in spite of all this, however, i'm still mostly at a loss for what to say on these issues.

in her comment on the last post, natalie expressed some skepticism about giving 'gendered' descriptions of the virtues. i share this skepticism. she asks: "where would such a description come from? and how would you protect against these lists being used normatively (as, historically, they always have)?" i think her concern about normativity may be instructive. in one sense, what i am trying to imagine is precisely a normative description of 'maleness' and 'femaleness', insofar as the description i am interested in is value-laden, and would play a role in our grammar of human excellence. i think we can distinguish this (general, vague) sense of normative from a sense of normative that conveys something like 'this is the only acceptable way of proceeding' or 'this is the best way of being.' i take it that natalie's primary concern is that gendered descriptions would be normative in the second sense.

a central worry about this kind of normativity has to do with saying that an excellence is both gender-specific and an expression of humanness. in particular, if we think of a certain trait as being expressive of 'masculinity', and also of that trait expressing something important about human excellence, then there seems to be some pressure to conceive of 'femininity' in a way that characterizes women as somehow less than fully human. i have in the mind the following sort of example:

i find in myself an association between a certain ideal of 'manliness' and decisiveness. (i am not saying i consciously endorse this ideal, but no doubt it exerts some influence on me). behind the value of decisiveness is, i think, the value of a kind of self-direction -the value of being not merely the subject of forces acting on oneself, but rather the origin of action. and what is involved in this kind of self-direction is closely connected to, or perhaps is even constitutive of, what goes into being an agent. to be self-directed, we might say, just is what it means to be a person; if one were fully the subject of forces, one would not be a self at all. now, if decisiveness is connected to 'manliness' then we seem dangerously close to an unwelcome implication: 'womanliness', especially if it is conceived as somehow the mirror image of manliness, may involve something less than being a full agent or self. of course, what corresponds to 'manly decisiveness' will probably not be described as 'womanly indecisiveness', but it may well be described in terms of 'receptivity' or 'passivity'. and the worry is that such descriptions push us toward regarding womanliness as expressing something less than full humanness, toward regarding women as less than full selves.

with these concerns about gender and normativity in mind, i have been trying to think about other ways of describing and evaluating value and may give some direction as to how to think about gender in a way that is value-laden but avoids such pitfalls. perhaps the case of architecture will be helpful. in describing various buildings, we can evaluate them with an eye toward their style or period. and it seems that different terms of praise will be characteristic of different style. for example, we may say that a certain gothic cathedral is ornate and grand, or that a particular church in the romanesque style is elegantly simple and quietly sturdy. interestingly, different terms can be ways of praising different buildings, even if the qualities they pick out are incompatible -e.g. we might praise one building for its lavishness and another for its sparseness. both of descriptions, however, are value-laden and both are positive. both pick out something of excellence and beauty in design and construction of the building. in the case of architecture, diverse and incompatible qualities can all express and embody value.

unfortunately, i'm not sure how to apply this example of value to the question of gender. nevertheless, there are several features of the case i find interesting. one is the way that the judgments of value are made relative to a particular style or period, and yet the judgments are all about the beauty of buildings -there are significantly differences in the standards of excellence, but it isn't that the subject has simply been changed. another interesting point is that we have no problem saying that architectural styles and periods were formed by historical and cultural forces, but recognizing that doesn't cause them to lose their value. we don't think the 'constructed-ness' of architectural styles and standards someone calls into question their beauty or value. i wonder if there isn't a hint here for thinking about gender that is neither 'essentialist' nor merely biological.

male and female he created them

2006-02-09T10:37:00.000-08:00

some friends of mine have been keeping a group blog as a forum for discussing leon kass' book "the genesis of wisdom" (www.genesiswisdom.blogspot.com). a recent post there on the nature of resurrected bodies has got me thinking about gender, and about the meaning of 'maleness' and 'femaleness.'

here is a thought i have had (and expressed) more than once before: many of us want gender to be meaningful, and we want it to matter not merely at a biological level, but at a human level. that is, we want 'maleness' or 'femaleness' to carry some significance not just as a fact of anatomy, but as something important to the things we care about and the way we live. at the same time, however, in trying to characterize the meaning of gender, it is hard to know how to proceed without just relying on stereotypes -e.g. lists of 'male' or 'female' traits or qualities. its seems that such stereotypes are likely to be not only inaccurate, but also biased and even destructive. how then, can we think about gender as something more than anatomy without falling back on vague generalities about 'what men are like' or 'what women are like'?

before tackling that question directly, its worth saying a bit more about what i mean by saying that we want gender to be meaningful at the human level. part of what i have in mind is that we want being male or female to play some role in what it means to live well. one way to think about this role is the idea that there are 'masculine virtues' which capture what it is for a man to live well, and there are separate 'feminine virtues' that capture what it is for a woman to live well. this is a very old idea. but its rejection is also very old, and can be found in more than one philosopher from ancient greece. this is also an idea with persistent appeal, and it it my sense that many people still hold something like this to be the case, though perhaps not with much consistency.

the idea that there are separate virtues for men and women is tightly connected to the idea that there are distinctive roles for men and women. the virtues corresponding to each gender are what they are in virtue of the gender's respective roles or functions. courage, then, is a masculine virtue, because it is the man's role to protect the family and city from harm. gentleness is a feminine virtue, because it is the woman's role to nurture the children. to many of us, the idea of such fixed roles seems outrageously misguided, because: 1) it frequently, if not always, is grounded in (or at least implies) the notion that women are somehow inferior to men in terms of important human functions, such as rational decision-making, 2) it overlooks the variety of capabilities that both men and women have with respective to the whole range of human activities, 3) it leaves too little room for individual choice and creativity in structuring human lives -e.g. that some men could flourish as 'stay-home dads', while some women may flourish in non-domestic roles.

i have no sympathy for the idea that the genders have separate virtues. however, a related view that is more appealing is this: there are not separate lists of virtues for men and women, but the virtues will be inflected differently for men and for women. thus, courage is not a 'masculine virtue' -it is a virtue for all humans, but in men courage will be displaying or realized in a distinctly masculine way, and likewise women will display a distinctly feminine form of courage. there is, i think, something intuitive about this view. we are used to thinking of a distinctive ways in which a man or a woman will 'get the job done' or successfully navigate a situation. this is a frequent theme in movies and tv. on reflection, though, i'm unsure if it actually makes sense to say that virtue can actually be 'gendered' in this way, or what this really amounts to.

perhaps our wanting gender to be meaningful can also be expressed this way: from a first-person perspective -in looking at our own lives- we feel that our gender is important, and we when we think about living well we want to live well as men, or as women. we want to be good human beings, be we also want to be good men, or good women. that is, we do not imagine ourselves as gender-less, and in the way we carry ourselves and the way we plan our lives, we are (somehow) aware that our 'maleness' or 'femaleness' is important. thus, to say that gender is 'merely anatomy' is to miss something about our own (perhaps inchoate) sense of the importance of our own gender.

the enduring desire that gender be meaningful is testified to everywhere in our culture. not to long ago, some friends were telling me about the popularity of a series of books written by an evangelical christian about the meaning of 'manliness' and being a 'real man.' these books, it seems, probably fall into the very trap i am wary of -turning shallow (and possibly prejudiced) generalities into the basis for a theory of gender and its importance. at the same time, the popularity of these books (and others like them) suggests to me that people are unwilling to think about gender as mere biology, and they are hungry for a way to make their own maleness or femaleness a considered part of their self-understanding.

i would like to add two of my own reasons for wanting gender to be meaningful. first, the vast, vast majority of human cultures throughout history have understood maleness and femaleness to be significant in our understanding of what it means to be a human and what it means to live well. i am wary of dismissing such a widespread human practice and outlook, even if it we think it was infected with bias and ignorance and must be examined critically.

second, the church has historically understood gender to be meaningful. even if we think this understanding has been misguided in certain ways, and even if we do not agree with how this has always played out (e.g. not allowing women to be ordained ministers), it still seems that there are deep theological reasons for wanting to take gender seriously. if nothing else, we have the basic formulation from genesis that god created humans male and female. it rings false to me to suggest that this creation was merely a matter of biology, just as god could have created us with three legs instead of two.

beginning my studies

2006-01-28T12:26:00.000-08:00

here is a lovely poem by walt whitman:

Beginning my studies

Beginning my studies the first step pleas'd me so much,
The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion,
The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,
The first step I say awed me and pleas'd me so much,
I have hardly gone and hardly wish'd to go any farther,
But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.

it seems that certain kinds of reflection often help us to love life. much good writing, both fiction and non-fiction, does this. there is something about talking about life that helps us to love it. in telling a story well, in hearing a scene described with skill, we come to appreciate and to enjoy what is there. by sitting back and reflecting on life (whether real or imagined), we may come to see what is good and beautiful in it. i think the poem above works this way.

the visual language is instructive: good writing helps us to see what is before us, but which we have somehow missed. perhaps this is because such writing slows us down and thereby allows us to attend to things. perhaps it is because such writing is written from a perspective of attending to things, a perspective of concern and sensitivity toward what is being described, and in reading we are drawn into this perspective. and in being thus drawn in, we find our own souls transformed, infused with the same sensitivity to the things before us. this is part of what makes maryline robinson's novel 'gilead' so wonderful to read, and why the novel has a devotional quality: the reader unconsciously begins to adopt the narrator's way of seeing the world, and that way of seeing is infused with tenderness, exquisite care, and love of life.

at the same time, of course, abstract and theoretical reflection can also kill any wonder we have. probably all of us have experienced the way that academics can take something one finds instinctively fascinating and turn it into something dull and dreary. and we feel that there is something wrong about this. i think that is why we find whitman's poem to be charming, and why something in us wants to say "yes!" when we hear the poem. we feel that it is right to have a sense of wonder at the objects of study; we believe it is good to be pleased by nature and by life. and we sense that to lose this pleasure is to lose something deep and true in our way of engaging the world.

the propensity of theoretical reflection to destroy our delight in things may have something to do with the distance between ourselves and what we are studying. abstract reflection somehow separates us from the thing. we step back from it, we keep it at arm's length, we put it under the microscope. whitman's point, i think, is that such a stance of distanced reflection can cause us to lose track of the feel of the thing, the sense of it. the point is not that we should just feel the world, rather than think about it, but that there is a kind of thinking that maintains a connection to a sense of wonder, that is infused by such wonder, whereas our "studies" often give us knowledge at the cost of our ability to wonder and delight in the objects of study.

perhaps the issue is one of objectivity, of taking up the view from nowhere. if this is our goal, then insofar as we achieve it, we disappear. but wonder and awe involve feeling our place in things -our smallenss, our ephemerality, our connection to what is around us. we are awed at something else, but this involves a sense of ourselves before the object of our awe. thus, insofar as we pursue a knowledge given by the view from nowhere and we do not step back from nowhere into the somewhere of human life, into the somewhere of our own particular life, to just this extent we may find ourselves unable to wonder and delight at what we are studying.

and what, finally, is the good of a wonder-less knowledge? here, i think, is the fundamental challenge of whitman's poem: are not our studies valuable because they are a part of living well, and if they destroy our sense of wonder and thereby cause us to live poorly, why should we have anything to do with such studies? what, after all, is the kind of life we want for ourselves -one of dreary, joyless study, or a life of ecstatic songs? if we have, at the expense of wonder, discovered some truths about the world, we will have paid the price of living truly, of being truly human.

of course, whitman's poem is not as ornery and argumentative as i am sounding now. it is a simple burst of happiness, playful and alive.

the reverend john ames

2006-01-16T12:16:00.000-08:00

there is a connection between loving life and sensing the mystery of life. this is true for loving one's own life, and also for loving the life of others.' in moments when we feel a deep love for life, we also sense the mysteriousness of our lives, and the strangeness of life itself. but by 'mystery' i do not simply mean that we are puzzled by what life is, or that we are at a loss to explain its cause. rather, what i have in mind is a puzzlement that is filled with wonder and with appreciation.

it seems to me that marilynne robinson's novel 'gilead' is an extended meditation on the wonderful mystery of life, and on what it means to love life, even as one prepares to leave it. the book's narrator, the reverend john ames, returns again and again to the mystery and sacredness of living things, especially other people. this sacredness is inseparable from the particularity of things.

wonder and mystery and sacredness and particularity are bound together:

"there is a reality in blessing, which i take baptism to be, primarily. it doesn't enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is a power in that. i have felt it pass through me, so to speak. the sensation is of really knowing a creature, i mean really feeling its mysterious life and your own mysterious life at the same time."

"any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it."

"when people come to speak to me, whatever they say, i am struck by a kind of incandescence in them, the 'i' whose predicate can be 'love' or 'fear' or 'want', and whose object can be 'someone' or 'nothing' and it won't really matter, because the loveliness is just in that presence, shaped around 'i' like a flame on a wick, emanating itself in grief and guilt and joy and whatever else.'

there is also a connection between our sense of mystery at something -our awareness of its sacredness- and our attending to it. in 'gilead', this attention pervades reverend ames' descriptions of the 'ordinary' things in his life and the life of his town. his descriptions and observations are rarely given in elevated language, but they are full of such care and tenderness that they often gave me shivers of delight when reading.

perhaps it is impossible to sense of the mystery of something and not wish to see it, to observe it, to experience the existence of the thing. and there is something holy in this kind of attending, and i think this is why ames is a kind of saint. perhaps what is holy in this sort of attending is the self-forgetfulness it involves (again, i am thinking of simone weil here). but perhaps what is holy is precisely the delight in things that is behind this way of attending to things. it is a love of existence itself, a love of the existence of this particular thing. as ames says in his letter to his son:

"your mother could not love you more or take great pride in you. she has watched every moment of your life, almost, and she loves you as god does, to the marrow your bones. so that is the honoring of the child. you see how godlike to love the being of someone. your existence is a delight to us."

learning to love life

2006-01-08T19:57:00.000-08:00

"for the ones who had a notion,
a notion deep inside
that it ain't no sin
to be glad you're alive..."
-b.s.

last week i turned in a paper i had been working on for the past six months. the paper looks at some of Socrates' statements about death and the fear of death. as i was working on the paper, i kept thinking that the fear of death couldn't be really understood apart from the love of life, and that it wasn't possible to grasp why death is an evil without seeing how life is a good.

we each seem to love our lives in a way that belongs to our biological, or animal, natures. i'm thinking here of our instinctive recoil from death and danger, our "pre-reflective" tendency toward self-preservation. to say we love our lives in this sense is to acknowledge a kind of drive or force within us. but its also true that, at least for humans, there is a love of life that belongs to our rational, and not merely biological, natures. this kind of love of life can be shaped by reflection and by habit. it is not like a blind force that we encounter within ourselves, but it is a kind of desire that shapes, and is shaped by, how we think about and perceive ourselves and the world.

what i have in mind is the idea that love of life, including the love our own lives, is the kind of thing that can be done well or poorly. it can appear in either virtuous or vicious forms. thus, it is not something that we are simply born with, but something that must be learned. of course, the idea of loving one's life may turn out to be so diffuse and complicated that it doesn't shed much light on the question of how to live well. i suspect that this is not the case, however, and that considering the proper way to love life may prove quite helpful.

when i think about a proper love of life, several things come to mind:

-it is possible to cultivate a love of life, and it is important that we do so. this was part of what i appreciated about don quixote: i felt it helped me to love life more. as i read, i found myself taking an appreciative pleasure in things i think i would have otherwise ignored. i was thankful for human life -including human silliness- in a new way.

-there is the issue of self-love. doesn't jesus say that the one who loves his life will lose it? aren't we all inclined to love our lives too much, and isn't love of our lives precisely what the gospel calls us away from, toward love of god and love of neighbor? of course self-love is a very tricky question, but i'm inclined to say that we ought to think that there is a love of life implicit in proper love of god and our neighbor, and that what we are called to is a truer way of loving our lives.

-connected to the previous point, there seems to be a connection between love of life and humanism. by 'humanism' i mean a conscious appreciation and affirmation of human existence, a cultivation of human possibility and celebration of human excellence. increasingly, i am inclined to say that what christians should work toward is a more vibrant christian humanism -the recognition that what the gospel proclaims us to is not the negation of humanity, but rather the possibility of being truly human. to think of christianity as the true humanism is not to downplay the notions of sin, repentance and judgment, but it is to make those notions secondary to -in the sense of being understood in terms of- the concepts of creation, redemption, new creation.

-in thinking theologically about the love of life, i keep returning to the incarnation. the life of god joined to the life of humanity, that the life of humanity might be raised up into the life of god. i grew up in a theological tradition that thought of redemption first in foremost in terms of atonement, and that understood in the incarnation in terms of the atonement. such an outlook tends to stress the forensic notions in scripture (law, debt, etc.) , and to overlook or downplay the organic notions (living water, fruit, etc.). but it is possible to think of redemption in a way that foregrounds the incarnation rather than the atonement, or, better, think so the atonement in terms of the incarnation.

-one of my first posts on this blog was about our responsiveness to the world, and to the feel of things. this point about how to feel the world seems connected to the love of life. i think the connection is at least two-fold. first, there is a point about delight. to love something is to delight in it, and when we love life we delight in being alive, we respond in a joyful way to the things within our life. (i am thinking here of augustine, but also of what aristotle says about the pleasure of perception and the pleasure of knowing that you are alive.) second, there is a point about attention. to love something is to attend to it, to focus one's concentration on it. (i am thinking here of simone weil). a love of life somehow seems to spill forth into a desire and an ability to attend to things, whether this means looking at a beautiful tree or building, or attending to one's own life.

-for a human, to love life well means that one does not love only one's own life, but also loves and values the life of others. this is true, of course, for other human lives. but it is also true, i think, that for a human to love life well means recognizing the value of non-human life. perhaps this is an instance of some more basic principle -that flourishing life spills out beyond itself, and it spills out in a way that is appreciative and upbuilding of what surrounds it.

my thoughts here are clearly quite scattered, and what is here is pretty much the first things that come to mind. but i would be quite interested to know if any of this resonates with other people, or what thoughts others might have.

the life in don quixote

2005-12-31T11:57:00.000-08:00

several days ago i finished reading don quixote. i have been reading it since september, and i now i am somewhat sad that it is over. more than once i have found myself remembering the voices of quixote and sancho. i thinking about what they might say in a situation, and i miss those voices.

it took me awhile to begin really enjoying the book. in fact, it took about 200 pages. thankfully, this left about 800 pages more to enjoy. i think started out reading incorrectly. i was waiting for things to happen in the story, and i was reading too quickly. i was missing much of the playfulness and creativity that makes cervantes so delightful to read (and which, apparently, comes through even in translation, at least in part). i was skimming over lines i should have savored.

thinking back on don quixote, what stands first in my mind is the way that life fills its pages. and not just life at its noblest or grandest, but life in the mundane and commonplace as well -the life of village peasants and shepherds, soldiers and prostitutes, religious pilgrims and pirates. in the situations he sets up, and even more so in the dialogue he writes, cervantes somehow captures the rollicking abundance of human life. cervantes, of course, is a master of poking fun at human folly, whether the folly of knight-errants or inn-keepers. but in making fun he is also celebrating life. in the laughter there is an acceptance of life, an affirmation.

augustine made much of the connection between love and delight. i wonder if something similar is not at work here: cervantes seemed to delight in life, and that sense of delight pervades don quixote. that is why the joking, in the end, does not give way to cynicism or despair, but rather expresses and builds up a love of life.

at the same time, however, there is also a subtle but unshakable melancholy in don quixote. perhaps it is the melancholy of time's passing: the sense that the age of chivalry is over, the feeling of a world grown old. in feeling this melancholy, we recognize that something wonderful is passing, and that the wonder which is our own lives will also pass. such melancholy is not the negation of the love of life, but rather its companion. it is because we love life that the awareness of life's impermanence fills us with sadness. this sadness is not the same as fear or despair. it is mixed with pain, because it a recognition of loss. but it is also mixed with thanksgiving, because this fleeting life is so unspeakably beautiful.

a christmas reflection: the silence of zechariah

2005-12-24T20:05:00.000-08:00

in the gospel of luke, the angel gabriel takes away zechariah's ability to speak for the entire time his son, john the baptist, is in the womb. the reason zechariah is struck dumb, it seems, is that he expresses doubt when the angel tells him that his wife elizabeth, who is advanced in years, will bear a son. the scene is reminiscent of the divine announcement to abraham and sarah that she will bear a child, where sarah laughs and is rebuked by the divine visitor. when gabriel tells mary that she will have a child, she too is incredulous, because she has never been with a man. curiously, however, her doubt does not earn her a rebuke, but rather an explanation that the child she will bear will not come by a human father but by the holy spirit. i am not sure why gabriel responds differently to each of them.

zechariah's silence is a rebuke, and it is a forced silence. nevertheless, i find myself feeling that there is some meaning to his silence, and that if this silence is a curse, it is also somehow a blessing. the first words zechariah speaks after his silence are praises to god after john has been named. (lk 1:64) two verses later, luke records the psalm, or canticle, of zechariah (1:67-69). this hymn of praise is part of larger network of hymns and canticles in luke's narrative about the births of john and jesus. there is also mary's song, the magnificat (1:46-56) , and the song of the angels to the shepherds (2:14), and the song of simeon when jesus is presented to the temple (2:29-32). unlike these other hymns, the hymn of zechariah is referred to specifically as a prophecy.

as these chapters illustrate, there is more music in the scriptures than we tend to realize. when we read the new testament, it is easy to read over the hymn fragments and quotations from the psalms. in doing so, however, we miss out on moments of lyric force and suppleness. moreover, we also fail to catch the rythm of the text, fail to discern the music that is always just beneath the surface of scripture. i once had a teacher who spoke about the need to read the scriptures in a doxological way -aware that the writers are always on the edge of song, that they can hardly keep themselves from praising. the texts of scripture are saturated with music and we must learn to read them musically.

it seems to me that zechariah's silence finds its meaning in this context of song, in the symmetry of of his long silence followed by his joyful singing. there is also silence in mary, as she stores up the things that happen and ponders them in her heart. (2:19) i know nothing about buddhist practices of silence, and i know very little about christian ones either. but perhaps mary is a figure for christian silence: she begins with the words of the angels and of the shepherds, but then she takes these words and them ponders them in silence. thus christian silence is not the silence of a void -not a blank, or a zero- but the silence of the heart in meditation on the words, and ultimately the Word, of god.

likewise, when zechariah is stuck dumb, he is given the gift of silence. not a blank silence, but a silence filled with the word that has been spoken to him by the angel concerning john, a silence filled with the words of scripture he has prayed his whole life. it is a silence in which he is able to ponder and to pray. it is not the silence of pascal's infinite spaces, but a word-filled silence. and it is from this silence that his prophecy and praising come forth.

this christmas and new year, may god grant us the grace of good silence, and ears to hear the music of the Word made flesh.

o come let us adore him, christ the lord.

a christmas reflection: the slaughter of the innocents

2005-12-16T11:31:00.000-08:00

for the past several years, i have tried to spend some time during advent reflecting on the gospel narratives of jesus' birth. this year, i have once again found myself drawn to the story of jesus' flight to egypt, and herod's slaughtering of the innocent children. the story is found only in matthew's gospel, and it occupies a mere six verses (2:13-18). but it is brimming with images and emotions that stick in the mind: the frightened family escaping in the night, the power-mad and murderous ruler, the women weeping for their children and refusing to be comforted.

as a trip to many art museums will attest, the slaughter of the innocents was a story that captivated the imaginations of people in the medieval are early modern periods. it is not nearly so popular today. most every christmas pagent has its shepherds and wise men, but how many have you seen that include herod's rage and rachel's weeping? granted, this probably has something to do with the fact that the parts in our pagents are mostly played by children, and few parents want their child to play a murderous soldier or a slaughtered baby. but this story also cuts against the grain of the sentimentality and cheerful consumerism that form the core of our contemporary approach to christmas. there is little heart-warming about a tyrant's willingness to kill children in order to maintain his power. it is difficult to imagine a gift-bag of any sort that could incorporate a depiction of this event.

of course, christmas is a time to celebrate the incarnation and birth of the savior, and not a time to mourn. in this sense, the slaughter of the innocents is peripheral to the meaning of christmas. but in another way it is central, because it shows us without flinching a picture of the world that the Son has come to redeem. it is not the world of our advertisements and shopping malls. it is not a world without pain or despair. it is not a world that knows only how to be clean and bright. rather, it is a world of greed and fear, of pathetic hatred, and of lust in all its forms. it is world where power is abused, the weak are exploited, and suffering goes on without relief. in short, it is a world of sin and death. and it is into this world that the eternal logos comes with light and love beyond comprehension.

we are, i think, invited to find ourselves in the story of jesus' birth, as we are invited to find ourselves in the other stories of the gospels. we are invited to come to jesus as shepherds or wise men, worshipping him and singing songs of praise. but we are also invited to come to him as weeping mothers, offering him our suffering, even as we know the suffering within is so great we are not yet willing to be comforted.

and we may also come to jesus, if not as herod, as persons who know we could be herod, as persons who have a herod living within them. for we not only live in a world where all is not yet right and good, but we live with souls not yet fully freed from sin and death. in great and small ways, we are not only the victims of evil, but also its perpetrators. and thus christmas gives us occasion not to sit back and be thankful that, when all is said and done, we are good people after all. rather, christmas is a time to celebrate that we are people who, along with the whole world, are being redeemed. and our redemption has come through this beautiful absurdity: that the second person of the trinity has taken flesh as a human being -as an eating and shitting, screaming and laughing, helpless baby boy.

pregnancy as a practice

2005-10-08T11:21:00.000-07:00

an under-discussed feature of abortion is the fact that it is the interruption of a process. this is an obvious fact, and is reflected even in our other uses of the words 'abortion' and 'abort' (e.g. "mission aborted"). to abort something is not simply to do something, but is to stop something else from happening. when a pregnancy ends in abortion, what is stopped is the process of development of whatever is in the womb. in this sense, people commonly speak of 'aborting a fetus.'

but we can also think of abortion not only as ending the process of development for a fetus, but as ending the process of the pregnancy. that is, the pregnancy itself is a process -including, among other things, things that the mother is doing and things that are happening to the mother- and this process is ended by an abortion. some people, it seems, even prefer to speak of abortion with reference to the pregnancy rather than with reference to the developing human in the womb, as when pro-choice advocates commonly speak of a right to 'terminate a pregnancy.'

when pregnancy is discussed with reference to abortion, there is sometimes a tendency to think of pregnancy as a merely biological phenomenon -for example, focusing on what is happening physically at various stages of a pregnancy. while pregnancy is no doubt a biological phenomenon, a human pregnancy is also a distinctly human phenomenon. that is, a pregnancy is more that just a set of biological changes or developments, but it is something that can be conceptualized in certain ways, something that can be valued and express values, something that can be done in a particular way with particular intentions. thus, we can speak of a pregnancy as 'going well' in a merely biological sense -e.g. no physiological problems for mother or child. but we can also speak of a pregnancy going well or going poorly in a different, distinctly human, sense -e.g. with reference to the attitudes of the mother and father to their child, how they are preparing themselves to be parents, etc.

what i have in mind here is that we can think of a pregnancy something like what alasdair macintyre has called a practice, by which he means a rule-governed activity with goods internal to it. macintyre has pointed out that dying, far from being a merely biological phenomenon, can also be a practice -that there are ways to die well and ways to die poorly, that there are various goods at stake in the activity of dying and understandable ways of securing or failing to secure those goods, etc. what macintyre has in mind for the end stages of human life, i suggest, can also be applied to the beginning stages of human life.

my hope, moreover, is that we might be able to make progress in our thinking about abortion if we begin by thinking about pregnancy as a practice. in doing so, we will ask about the kinds of goods that are internal to a pregnancy, and about what sort of attitudes and beliefs and activities underlie a good pregnancy, as well as what attitudes and beliefs and activities can be destructive of a good pregnancy. we will also want to know how a good pregnancy relates to living well in general. my suspicion is that in thinking this way about pregnancy, we might be able to unearth and explore some of our commitments and intuitions related to humans at the very early stages of development and what our proper response might be to such developing human beings.

i see no reason why this strategy of inquiry ought to seen as biased toward either side of the abortion debate. in fact, one of the strengths of such a strategy may be that it keeps in view things that each side are eager to stress: for pro-lifers, it keeps in view the fact that we are dealing with a developing human being, and for pro-choicers, it keeps in view the fact that we are dealing with a woman who sustaining that developing human being. moreover, beginning with pregnancy as a practice allows us to keep in mind that this practice is a social one, inevitably structured various aspects of a given society and culture, and inevtiably connected to a host of other practices -most notably sexual practices and child-rearing practices.

this post, unfortunatly, is only something of a promissory note. i will try to post something soon that is more concrete, something that looks at various aspects of pregnancy and actually does what i am here proposing we should do. of course, i also would be very interested in what other folks might have to say about this.

a note on viability

2005-10-02T19:40:00.000-07:00

much is sometimes made about the issue of 'viability' in talking about abortion. for example, both the roe and casey decisions by the supreme court make reference to the notion of 'viability.' and many people seem to feel that if a developing human being cannot survive outside the womb, then abortion is permissible.

when saying that something in the womb is not viable, many people seem to have in something like this: there is something in the womb that is alive, and if we were to take it out of the womb and hold it in our hands, or put it on a table, it would die very quickly.

in general, viability seems to involve the idea that a living thing is able to sustain its own life, given the proper context. a healty, adult human being would seem to be a paradigm of viability. but such an animal can survive only given the proper environment -a human being is not 'viable' on the surface of the moon wearing only a t-shirt and shorts. likewise, a one-week old baby is not able to sustain its own life if left on a table to fend for itself. on the other hand, some adult human beings are unable to sustain their own lives without the aid of various medicines or complex equipment, such as ventilators.

because human beings go through various stages of development, the specific things required for them to survive change over time. typically, a human baby at 6 weeks is dependent on others to a greater degree than a human at 6 years, and in that sense we might even say that a human baby at 6 weeks is 'less viable' -that is, less able to keep itself alive on its own. at the same time, a healthy human baby at 6 weeks is perfectly able to keep itself going, given the proper environment, and in that sense is fully viable.

what, then, about a developing human being at 8 weeks in utero? what is the proper environment for a developing human at this stage? surely, the proper environment is a healthy womb. and, given a healthy womb, a healthy human at 8 weeks gestation is perfectly capable of sustaining its own life. this is not to deny, of course, that at 8 weeks in the womb a developing human is incredibly dependent -in particular it is dependent on its mother (although, dependent in a secondary sense on many other people -doctors and nurses, as well as the people on whom the mother is dependent for her survival). the point, however, is that at 8 weeks gestation, a devoloping human may be dependent in a unique way on something outside itself, but it is not unique in being dependent on something outside itself.

my aim here is not to suggest that there is somethign non-sensical or unintelligible about the notion of 'viability' typically invoking in discussions of abortion. rather, i want to ask: why should that notion matter very much in helping us to determine our response to developing human beings prior to birth? of course, there may be good reasons for thinking that such a notion of viability is important for guiding our response to such humans, but i can't as yet see how this could be.

how to think about what is in the womb

2005-09-25T08:20:00.000-07:00

thanks to everyone for the excellent comments and for making this a good discussion.

in thinking about the morality of abortion, i find myself wanting to say two things:

1) it is impossible to begin to think rightly about abortion without dealing with the question of what this thing is which that gets aborted. it is fairly obvious, i think, that an abortion destroys something, and also that the moral status of abortion depends heavily on the nature of whatever is destroyed. hence the conflict about what to call whatever is in the womb -to destroy a 'bunch of cells' or even a 'fetus' seems very different from destroying 'an unborn child' or a 'baby in the womb.

2) there is something wrong-headed and unproductive about centering our thinking about abortion on questions like 'when does a human life begin?' or 'when is a fetus a person?' these seem to me especially vexed questions, and i am skeptical of starting with the most difficult questions. moreover, these questions seem to take us into fairly abstract debates about personal identity, and to lead us away from some of our most helpful moral concepts -concepts such as virtue and vice, human activities and human goods.

a friend recently pointed out to me that these two points might stand in tension: how can we deal with the first issue -the status of what is in the womb- without dealing with precisely those questions of which i am wary? i offer the following line of thought as a response to that question, and as a suggestion for how we might begin to think about what is in the womb in a way that doesn't start with a question such as 'when does a human life begin?':

most people, it seems, feel that abortion is more objectionable the later it occurs in a pregnancy. the pro-choice case is much harder to make when what is in the womb is something that looks and acts so much like a baby, and perhaps could even survive outside of the womb. likewise, the pro-life case is harder to make when we are talking about the very early stages of a pregnancy, when what is aborted doesn't look or act much like a baby. so as not to start with a case that seems to stake the deck too much for either side, let us begin with a pregnancy at 8 weeks gestation. about 88% of abortion in american take place between 6-12 weeks gestation, and about half take place at 8 weeks or later.

at 8 weeks, this thing in the womb is about 3/4 of an inch long. it has a heartbeat and brainwaves. it has arms, legs, fingers and toes. and it moves around on its own. you can see a nice picture of it here.

now, what should we call such a thing? it seems fairly clear that, whatever it is, it is alive. it seems equally obvious that whatever it is, it is human -it certainly is not some other life form, such as a plant or non-human animal. is it a human person? is it a fully human? these are much trickier questions, in part because the nature of personhood and personal identity is much debated. let us set these question aside, then, and not insist either way about the question of personhood. what is plain, i think, is that this is a form of human life at the very early stages of development. whether we wish to refer to it as a 'fetus' or an 'unborn child', then, what is in the womb at 8 weeks is clearly a developing human being. this strikes me as an obvious and non-contentious way to get clear about what we are dealing with. after all, if it is not a developing human being, what else could it possibly be?

having said that what is in the womb is a developing human being, we have not had to answer any questions such as 'when does human life begin?' or 'what constitutes personhood?'. moreover, we have not yet said anything about how we ought to respond to a developing human being. nor have we said anything about the rights or interests of either developing human beings or pregnant women who are carrying them.

however, by recognizing that we are dealing with is a developing human being, i think we are now in better shape to start asking the right sort of questions, such as: what are our responsibilities to developing human beings? what place to human beings at the very early stages of development have in the community of other human beings? what is the proper response for an adult human being to have toward a developing human being?

likewise, we can ask: what virtues might come into play in helping us this about our posture toward developing human beings? how does our attitude toward developing human beings reflect our understanding of what does it mean to live well as a human being? how to it reflect and our understanding of the specifically human needs, capabilities, and excellences?

the psychology of the abortion debate

2005-09-21T07:09:00.000-07:00

as i suggested in my last post, i think that pro-lifers ought to remember that their long term goal is not to change the courts, or even the laws, with respect to abortion. rather, the true goal is to change the attitudes and decision-making of individuals, such that abortion becomes something people choose not to do, perhaps even something unthinkable. this is not to say, of course, that courts and laws will play no role in this, but that their role might not be as big as many people (both pro-life and pro-choice) seem to think.

the idea that such a change is possible no doubt seems naive to many people, probably most people even. nevertheless, that seems to me to be the goal, and i see no reason why pro-lifers should lose their nerve or despair.

in attempting to bring about such change, one thing that pro-lifers will need to do is think more seriously about the psychology, and not just the morality, of abortion. in the past, many pro-lifers seem to have allowed fervency of ethical conviction to substitute for astuteness of psychological observation. the psychology of abortion is important with respect to both: 1) why and how people choose to have an abortion, or encourage others to do so, and 2) how people reason and debate about the morality of abortion. setting aside #1 for now, here are a few observations about the psychology of the abortion debate and some of its unique features:

1) many american women have had abortions. the pro-choice group, national abortion federation, reports on their website that: "If current rates continue, it is estimated that 35% of all women of reproductive age in America today will have had an abortion by the time they reach the age of 45." this means that most all of us know someone who has had an abortion, perhaps someone very close to us. perhaps we have had an abortion, or encouraged someone else to have one. and this means that it will be very difficult for many of us to say that we think abortion is wrong. it is hard to accept that one has done something wrong, or that one's mother or father or sister or brother has done something wrong. it important for pro-lifers to recognize, then, that for many people to admit that one ought not have an abortion is not to make just another concession in a discussion, but to admit something very difficult about oneself or one's loved ones.

2) related to the first point, the sheer prevalance of abortion means that many people who we would otherwise consider to be fine, decent people have had abortions. for this reason alone, it may be hard for us to consider abortion a serious wrong: after all, how could so many kind, thoughtful people do something that was very bad? this point is made even stronger when we recognize that the core reason why abortion is wrong -because it is the destruction of a human life (or, if you prefer, a developing human life)- is such that, if abortion is wrong, it would seem to be a very grave and serious wrong. by the very nature of the case, it is hard to see how one could formulate the pro-life position in such a way as to make abortion a minor wrong, something that one could easily forget about. this makes it all the more difficult, then, to admit that abortion is wrong at all: surely so many decent people couldn't do something that bad, could they? of course, i don' think this stands up particularly well as an argument; history is full of otherwise decent people doing bad things on a large scale, whether those bad things were minor or truly heinous (e.g. slavery, subjugation of women). still, there is something to this point and this way of reasoning, and pro-lifers would do well to take it seriously and address it.

3) as lisa pointed out in her comment, many people are no 'pro-life' or 'pro-choice' as a matter of the subculture into which they were raised. to be pro-life or pro-choice is part of a package deal that might include being republican or democrat, catholic or evangelical or agnostic, rural or urban, etc. thus for many people, the idea of being 'pro-life' carries with it a host of negative associations and a variety of other moral and political commitments. and that means that being pro-life is something that many people haven't even considered, something that is not on their radar screen. it also means that many people will be resistant to adopting a pro-life view not so much because of specific arguments about abortion, but because of their opposition to other things which they associate with the pro-life view, such as being religious or anti-feminist or pro free market. any many people will be pro-choice out of an even vaguer sense that 'this is the kind of person i am.'

i wish that i had something more constructive to say about how an appreciation of these factors might shape a pro-life strategy, or at least contribute positively to the abortion debate. but, i think i will leave it at this for now.

let's talk about abortion

2005-09-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

in my last post, i noted the strangely undemocratic way that certain debates -such as abortion- get played out in the supreme court, thus creating the impression (if not the reality) that the lives of millions are in the hands of very few. upon further reflection, i am inclined to say that what is strange about the current situation is not just the undemocratic nature of the supreme court, but also the way in which the court has now become so politicized. as i understand it, the court's undemocratic nature is meant to work in tandem with it being above the fray of legislative politics; its unique power is meant to be balanced by a unique objectivity and a unique disinterest. what is odd about the current situation, however, is that supreme court appointees seem increasingly to be treated as political players, and thus the court gets drawn into the political fray, while still retaining its undemocratic powers. it is at this point that the situation seems odd: after all, if there is debate and disagreement over issues, then let's debate and disagree and vote and make laws, rather than spend so much of our energies to acheive our ends in a back-door way by trying to get our people onto the court.

and the point here is not that the court hasn't and won't do good things, or that the δεμος is especially reliable. rather, the point is about the way in which we believe that decisions ought to be made in a democracy, and how the mode (not just the result) of the decisions does (or does not) reflect our self-understanding and commitments as a democracy (or, democratic republic if you prefer). perhaps this will seem naive and 'un-political' to many, but i am unsure about the end-justifies-the-means reasoning that seems to be accepted by many people of good will with respect to the court.

that said, i also suggest that those of us who believe that abortion is wrong have special reasons to avoid a situation in which the supreme court distracts us from a broader discussion of abortion. the core of those reasons is this: 1) we (pro-lifers) are chiefly interested in women not having abortions, and in not doing so for the right reasons. 2) we do not need a supreme court decision for this to happen, and it is not even clear what impact a supreme court decision would have in this regard. 3) we have the best arguments in the debate; our is the position with the clearest and most compelling reasons.

what follows from these points is that we who oppose abortion ought to resist anything that will table an actual discussion of the practice and morality of abortion, even if that thing is a discussion of abortion and the courts. we ought to try to get people to talk about abortion, to consider the nature of the situation, to examine critically the positions of both sides. and we ought to do this with the hope that, eventually, our position will win acceptance among many people, including many women who might otherwise have decided to have an abortion. we ought always to remember that our goal is not a supreme court decision, but a sea-change in people's thinking and attitudes about abortion -just as our country has had not only a series of political decisions about race, but a phenomenal shift in mindset and orientation (not to say, of course, that this shift is perfect or complete).

one organization that seems to be engaging in just the sort of debate i am commending is feminists for life.

of course, if our actual goal is to reduce the number of abortions, and to do so for the right reasons, what is needed is not only debate but action on a number of fronts -e.g. providing financial support for pregnant women without means to support a child, offering flexible schedules and childcare so that women will not have to choose between a child and a career, etc. in this post i have focused on the importance of debate and discussion as something of unique value for the issue of abortion, but not of exclusive value, and certainly not at the exclusion of other pro-life activities (which, of course, may well form a type of argument in their own way)

democracy, abortion and the supreme court

2005-09-10T10:42:00.000-07:00

following discussions of the lovely topics of beauty and friendship, a return to the world of politics:

after the recent death of the chief justice rehnquist, there has been renewed concern and speculation about president bush's second supreme court nominee. with regard to any number of controversial issues, many people on all sides seem convinced that bush's decision is tremendously important, possibly more important than anything else bush will do during this term in office. because of the close nature of many of the courts decisions, it is argued that whoever is appointed to the court may well transform our legal rights and our way of life for years to come.

perhaps no one feels this way more than those fearful that the supreme court may one day overturn its decision in roe v. wade, thus taking away the court's protection of a woman's legal right to an abortion. to hear many pro-choice advocates tell the story, the person who will replace justice o'conner will single-handedly determine the fate of women's rights (and lives) in america. likewise, many pro-lifers seem to feel the same way: that the life or death of thousands, even millions, of unborn children may be determined by whomever bush appoints to the court.

surely some of this talk is an attempt by each side to galvanize their base, a way of mobilizing energy for the political fight over the next appointee by convincing their fellow combatants of the singularly important nature of this particular fight. but i do not think that all of this talk is just rhetorical flourish. rather, i think many people honestly believe that a single person on the supreme court could radically alter the politics and practice of abortion in america. and perhaps they are right.

but there is, i think, something very strange about this situation, and what is strange is how very undemocratic it seems. of course, the whole process is in many ways democratic: the president who makes the appointment was democratically elected, as are legislators who must vote to approve the appointment. and if the people do not like these appointments, they can vote against the people who make and approve them. at the same time, the justices are not elected directly, and once a justice is appointed he or she cannot be voted out. it is no secret that, for both of these reasons, the supreme court is the least democratic branch of our government.

what is strangely undemocratic about the current abortion situation, however, is not only that the decisions are made by people who were not directly elected and who cannot be voted out. it is also that there are only a handful of people making the decisions, which gives rise to the situation in which one person could be the deciding vote, thus giving the impression that the rights of millions (of women and/or unborn children) rest in the hands of a single individual.

it a curious thing, i think, that neither side of abortion side seems especially concerned to point out this undemocratic state of affiars. granted, there is a traditon of pro-life concern going all the way back to justice white's dissent in row which points out that the roe decision overturned the democratic majorities of the state legislators in an act of 'raw judicial power.' still, many pro-lifers today seem ready to let the court decide the issue, optimistic no doubt that they can win through the courts, with an overturning of roe v. wade possibly just around the corner. likewise, pro-choicers, no doubt recognizing that many, perhaps most, states would enact more restrictive abortion laws were roe overturned, seem eager to keep the abortion issue out of the legistatures and in the courts.

the undemocratic character of abortion politics in america strikes me as troublesome for several reasons. to begin with, it seems to stifle debate and information about the actual nature of abortion. when abortion become a 'court issue', it is easy for it to get drowned in legal-ese, to become something remote and abstract. but abortion is as concrete as any political issue could be -it is literally a matter of flesh and blood. surely, then, if there is disagreement among honest and thoughtful people, we ought to debate the issue in a way that is most open to the concrete realities, most responsive to local, communal, and personal concerns.

but the idea that the court has, or even could, simple 'decide the issue', gives rise to a kind of complacency in people's thinking -abortion becomes something for old people in robes to rule on, not something that can be understood and debated in the public square. moreover, that abortion has become a 'court issue' helps to explain, i think, why there has been so little productive debate on the issue; the nuances and complexities of argument are of little concern, because each side is simply holding out for the court to hand it victory (or reaffirm the victory handed to it earlier).

finally, and most generally, isn't there a value in debating and deciding the issue of abortion as communities, rather than handing the issue over to a few individuals and pinning our hopes on them? this value, i think, has something to do with the value of actually persuading our fellow citizens of what is right, rather than simply defeating them politically. this is something that martin luther king jr. seems to have understood: that a legal victory would be a hollow one unless accompanied by a transformation of heart and vision. thus real change must be democratic in a deep sense; not just a political or legal change, but an actually transformation of the δεμος, the people.

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

2005-08-30T19:07:00.000-07:00

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.

micah (4) -friendship, love and enjoyment

2005-08-26T15:35:00.000-07:00

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)

micah (3) -nature, grace and friendship

2005-08-22T15:15:00.000-07:00

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.

dan (3) - practical engagement and justification

2005-08-20T13:00:00.000-07:00

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.

micah (2) - shared values, shared lives

2005-08-13T10:05:00.000-07:00

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)

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

2005-08-10T15:19:00.000-07:00

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.

micah - agreement, disagreement and respect

2005-08-06T10:50:00.000-07:00

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.

dan - theists, atheists and friendship

2005-08-05T06:30:00.000-07:00

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.

seeking beauty, teaching beauty, contesting beauty

2005-08-01T10:30:00.000-07:00

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.

beautiful lives

2005-07-29T11:15:00.000-07:00

i have tried to say something about (or rather, to point at) a kind of beauty that attaches to actions in virtue of their being morally/spiritually excellent. just as we can perceive actions to be beautiful in this way, it also seems that we can perceive/describe lives to be beautiful in this way.

my initial suspicion is that in describing a life as beautiful, we will inevitably be making a kind of narrative judgment about that life. that is, we will be viewing the life as a story, a narrative whole. and what makes a life (perhaps we should say lifetime) beautiful will be features of that lifetime viewed as a narrative -e.g the way that earlier actions and events can be frustrated or redeemed by later actions and events.

perhaps the basic thought here is that beauty is a matter of proportion, or relation between parts, and thus the beauty of a lifetime is a feature of how the 'parts' of that lifetime fit together into a coherent (narrative) whole. but then seems too broad, because there is a kind of coherance to a very evil and very ugly life -we can construct meaningful narratives of cruel and petty lives as well as kind and noble ones.

on the one hand, lifetimes which are beautiful seem to be ones which are long and full and well-lived. this fits with the idea that moral beauty is connected to the human τελος -a long, full, well-lived life is one that involves many of the goods internal to a human life, a life that realizes the over-arching human good of happiness (in the aristotelian sense). such a life, we might say, 'looks' the way a human life ought to look, and that it looks this way is what makes it seem beautiful to us.

to call such a life 'beautiful' is (in part) to express our sense of the fittingness or appropriateness of such a life. as an illustration of this sense, consider the following burial practice of the people of ghana (as told to me by a ghanaian man in chicago): if the deceased is 70 years or older, it is customary to wear white as a celebration of the person's full life. if the deceased is much less than 70 years, it is customary to wear white, as an expression of mourning over the fact that the person did not receive his full complement of years.

on the other hand, however, it also seems that a life can be beautiful even if it is cut short. for christians, the paradigm case is surely jesus. and in addition to jesus, we can look also to the lives of the martyrs and saints, whose lives we find beautiful, even though many were cut tragically short. in fact, in these cases, it the nature of their deaths seems to contribute (somehow) to the beauty of their whole lives.

thus, if a long and full life has a kind of beauty, a life cut short does not seem to be ugly so much as tragic (though, perhaps not ultimately tragic). and a life that is tragically short may also be beautiful, if it is well-lived.

a life that is poorly lived, however, may be ugly. this is especially the case, i think, if the life is marked by: 1) selfishness, small-minded focus on oneself, or 2) cruelty, coldness, bitterness toward others. for example, a life whose culminating moment was the betryal of a loved one or a selfish power grab seems to me to be especially unattractive. (note: these two qualities are more-or-less the opposite of the qualities of actions which in my last post i said seemed to have a particular beauty).

perhaps our perception of the beauty of a lifetime depends of the kind of moral evaluations that we see as 'basic' or 'fundamental' to the person's character as her character was expressed in the various parts of her lifetimes. such evaluations will be connected to (part and parcel of?) the narrative description of a person's life. thus, reflecting on a lifetime, including both mundane and major events, we can ask was did she become a caring and thoughtful person, and do the parts of her life reflect this? or did she grow increasingly into a very bitter and heartless, and did this come out in the most important moments?

there also seems to be a close connection between living a beautiful life and living a meaningful life. it is hard to know what 'meaningful' means here. but it is strange to imagine a life being called beautiful if that life seemed absurd, or we thought of it as a 'wasted life.' and part of what makes the lives of the saints beautiful is the way they are connected to a process of redemption that is larger than themselves. isn't one reason the life of christ is beautiful is what that life means?

'she has done a beautiful deed for me'

2005-07-25T09:15:00.000-07:00

in thinking about the beauty of the soul -moral beauty, beautiful lives, living beautifully- perhaps we can gain some insight by thinking about specific actions which strike us as expressing or exemplifying some kind of beauty.

there are certain human actions which, in virtue of their moral or spiritual goodness, strike us as beautiful. that is, they may not always appear to us as beautiful, but when they do appear to us in their fullness -when we really see them and are moved by them- then the word we reach for, if we reach for a word at all, is 'beautiful.' as examples of this, consider the stories of the prodigal son and the good samaritan. in my experience, the atonement is also a paradigm instance of this kind of beauty.

to describe such actions as 'the right thing to do' or even 'virtuous' somehow seems to miss something about the power and attractiveness of these actions. and yet, in seeing these actions as beautiful, part of what i feel is a deep sense that acting in this way is right, is proper, is an expression of the true way to live as a human being. also, it is as if the beauty of the action is connected to something else -something beyond itself, something abiding and real.

i am inclined to say that the beauty of such actions cannot be understood except in terms of the τελος of a human life. that is, if you try to understand what makes them beautiful without making reference to the end of a human life -and hence to what it means to live well- then you won't get very far. put another way, it is in virtue of their virtue that such acts are beautiful. we might say, then, that the kind of beauty they have is moral beauty.

at the same time, however, it seems that not all virtuous acts strike us as beautiful in the same way. perhaps all virtuous activity partakes of the καλον (beautiful/fine/noble), but perhaps not in an equal way. for instance, we take moderation to be a virtue, but there seems to be little that is especially beautiful about the moderate person. it may be good to have an appropriate desire for food and drink, but is not taking the second piece of cake a beautiful thing?

my intuition is that beautiful actions tend to be especially associated with: 1) self-sacrifice, or courage, and 2) reconciliation, or forgiveness. there is something moving, something beautiful, about a person who goes to great risk for others -e.g. the central characters in 'hotel rwanda' or 'schindler's list. there is something similarly beautiful about reconciliation and forgiveness -e.g. the father's acceptance of the prodigal son.

perhaps both of these things are beautiful because they are connected to love, and to an especially great love.

both self-sacrifice/courage and reconciliation/forgiveness seem to involve something excessive, something extraordinary. there is a kind of lavishness to them. in this sense, they are connected to being great-souled, and to generosity. i am not sure exactly what this lavishness consists in: perhaps the lack of concern for oneself, perhaps the single-minded focus on what is of most value.

this kind of lavishness seems to be involved when jesus is annointed by the woman at bethany (mark 14:3-9) what the woman has done seems like an impractical waste to the onlookers; jesus understands her action to have been done out of great concern for himself; and he calls her action beautiful (καλον εργον).

maybe, though, this way of thinking runs the risk of putting too much weight on 'extraordinary' actions. it seems that 'mundane' things can also be beautiful, and that some actions are even beautiful because they are so 'ordinary' -e.g. an evening walk between a couple that has been married for 40 years, and who has taken an evening walk together for as long as they can remember.

also, i don't want to identify beautiful actions with heroic actions, though there does seem to be some important connection. actions or expressions can be beautiful without being what we would call heroic. two examples: listening and laughing.

grammars of beauty (or, is everyone beautiful?)

2005-07-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

thanks to natalie, dan and michael for your excellent comments on the last post. so many interesting points, and so much to think about.

here is a question i am not sure how to answer: is every person beautiful? if i take 'person' to mean something like 'self' and beauty to be non-physical beauty, then i don't know what to say. but even if i take beauty to be physical beauty, then i'm still not sure how to answer the question.

on the one hand, it seems to make perfect sense to think of physical attractiveness as a kind of spectrum: on one end, some people are beautiful, and on the other end some people are ugly, and then most people are in the middle somewhere between the two extremes. on the other hand, however, part of me also wants to say that all people are beautiful -physically beautiful- just in virtue of being people. if one just looks at a person in the right way -whether they are young or old, pale or dark-skinned, fat or skinny- then you will see that the person is truly (physically) beautiful.

i am not sure what to make of these competing intuitions. as a first approach, perhaps we can say that we have two different 'grammars' of physical beauty, two different ways of speaking about physical beauty that are somewhat separate from each other. the first way of speaking allows us to make distinctions between what is 'beautiful' and 'ugly,' and to make all the other familiar evaluations of appearance -cute, handsome, pretty, dreamy, etc. the second way of speaking allows us to say things like, 'everyone is beautiful' and 'you can find beauty in every face.'

i have the suspicion that it isn't easy to reconcile these two grammars of beauty, that behind each of them is a different set of criteria, a different way of making judgments. i also have the suspicion that each of these two grammars is consistent in its own way, and thus that its not easy to show that one is 'wrong', or for adherents of one grammar to 'disprove' the adherents of another (and perhaps most of accept both in some way).

these two grammars of (physical) beauty seem to be attached to different ways of seeing people. to adopt a certain way of speaking about physical appearance is to adopt a way of looking at people, of approaching their bodies, of allowing their bodies to appear to you in a certain way. to speak/think about physical beauty in a certain way is to be alive to, or closed off to, certain aspects of the bodies (and via the bodies, the selves) of those whom you encounter.

one consequence of this connection between speaking and seeing is that we can, without contradiction, recognize that our way of speaking/thinking about beauty might be wrong, simply because we cannot see properly. that is, it might be that we are not in a position to critique our own ways of speaking about physical beauty because our whole way of seeing and experiencing physical beauty is distorted.

beauty and τελος

2005-07-19T10:08:00.000-07:00

thanks to bethany, nathan and dan for your insightful comments on my last couple posts. its wonderful to get such thoughtful contributions to the discussion. its given me a lot to consider and made me realize how little i've really thought about beauty in the past.

in my previous post, thinking about the production/marketing/consumption of beauty in our culture led me to think about the distinction between 'using' and 'appreciating' beauty, and the question of whether or not beauty is or should be 'for' something.

this seems to relate directly to the issue raised by dan in his comment of the connection between beauty and τελος (end, goal). with at least some kinds of beauty, it seems that what makes the thing beautiful is connected to the excellence of that thing defined with respect to the thing's end. for example, it seems that we might say that a space shuttle taking off is beautiful, or a tiger running at full speed is beautiful. and in these cases it is the proper functioning of the thing (defined in terms of the thing's end) that contributes to (or grounds or constitutes?) the beauty of the thing. however, if we take the beauty of niagara falls or of a fresh snowfall, then the role of function seems to come into play less, if at all.

even in the case of the space shuttle or the tiger, though, we can make a distinction between: 1) the beauty of the thing being connected to a τελος and 2) the beauty itself having some other purpose or τελος. i'm more ready to accept the first than the second, though i'm not sure what to think about bethany's suggestion that the purpose of beauty might be to foster worship. (i wonder: could we say that to see something as beautiful in a certain way just is to worship that thing? this, i think, takes us into the very interesting set of questions about the connection between beauty and delight and love -i'm thinking especially of augustine here)

what about the beauty of a human body? or a human soul? i am inclined to agree with dan that there is a very promising line of thought which understands the beauty of a body to be connected to the beauty of a soul in terms of the human τελος -that is, in terms of what the goods/ends of a human life are, how a human ought to live, and what kinds of things a human ought to be doing. the idea is that there are certain goods and excellences of a human soul that depend on or involve a certain kind of body. a human body can therefore be excellent because of the way it contributes to the excellence of the person's life. and a beautiful body is the kind of body that contributes to a beautiful life.

but is this quite right? it seems to make sense if we are thinking in terms of well-formed limbs, muscles of appropriate size for accomplishing tasks, the right number of toes, etc. but what about the beauty of a face? it seems that you can have a face that functions very well -sees, hears, smells well- but that is nevertheless not beautiful, perhaps even ugly.

there is an old tradition that thinks of beauty in terms of symmetry or proportion. this way of thinking about beauty can be made to fit with the notion of τελος -a thing's being well-proportioned is defined in terms of its parts fitting together as a whole in such a way that the whole acheives its end.

can a corpse be beautiful the way that a living thing is beautiful? is there a distinct kind of beauty to living things -e.g. the beauty of a bumble bee as it buzzes around flowers, vs. the beauty of a bumble bee pinned to a table and seen through a microscope?

perhaps we need to distinguish between: beautiful bodies, beautiful lives and living beautifully.

beauty and consumer culture (again)

2005-07-18T10:10:00.000-07:00

the point of my last post was to distinguish between two different kinds of beauty -the beauty that is proper to a physical object vs the beauty that is proper to a human being with a rational soul- and to suggest that some of our (consumer) culture is based on the confused notion that we could get the latter (which we deeply want, even without realizing it) by bringing ourselves into close physical proximity to and/or enjoyment of the former. this does not mean, of course, that its wrong to appreciate the beauty of physical objects. rather, just that there is an important difference between appreciating the beauty of things (e.g. clothes, cars, tables, etc.) and thinking that one, qua human being, could become beautiful in and through those things.

relatedly, our consumer culture also raises a question about the use/consumption of beauty vs the detached-appreciation of beauty. my friend natalie has pointed out to me how much much our contemporary experience of beauty occurs in the context of consumption. when we encounter beautiful things, it is frequently, perhaps typically, in a situation where those things are being sold to us and we are being invited to buy them, to consume them.

likewise, i am tempted to say that a strikingly large amount of our consumption occurs in the context of beauty. things are sold to us because they are attractive; they are sold to us by beautiful people; they are put in boxes and covered with that are made to look sharp and appealing. but at the same time, it certainly isn't the case that our consumer culture has left us awash in beauty, is it? aren't we, somehow, surrounded by so much ugliness, cheapness, kitsch?

perhaps the notion of 'beauty' isn't helpful here, or in any case we need some more terms. maybe what is behind most advertising isn't so much beauty as the notion of the 'cool', but i'm not sure how to relate the form of the cool to the form of the beuatiful (the true, the good and the cool?)

in any case, what should we make of the use of beauty in producing and selling things? on the one hand, it seems good that in making things -whether clothes or cars or chairs- we should try to make these things well-designed, aesthetically appealing, even beautiful. to bring artistic craftsmanship and beauty into our everyday lives seems a worthy goal, especially if the alternative is cold, 'functional' material culture epitomized by much office furniture.

on the other hand, isn't there something essentially misguided about trying to 'consume' beauty? isn't part of the wonder and mystery of beauty that it has no 'use'?

perhaps we should say that beauty is not 'for' something else in the sense that, qua beauty, it is not the means to some other end. and yet, this need not mean that the only appropriate venue for the experience of beauty is a museum, where one sits and 'does nothing' but appreciate the beauty of something. rather, we can create and appreciate beauty in contexts of consumption and use -such as a meal or a building- while recognizing that the beauty of such things is valuable and wonderful in a way that cannot (or ought not) be seen as merely a means to an end, even if in some way the object itself is a means to an end.

shopping for beauty

2005-07-11T12:20:00.000-07:00

most of my recent posts have focused on politics, broadly defined. i now intend to shift gears a bit, and begin a series of reflection that are, in one way or another, about beauty and the beautiful.

shortly before christmas last year, i was walking along michigan avenue in downtown chicago. the street was packed with people doing their christmas shopping, going in and out of the expensive stores along the magnificent mile. the store windows were filled eye-catching product displays. many people carried packages of the things they had purchased.

as i took in this scene, the following thought occurred to me: the stores were full of beautiful things. the things for sale -clothing, jewelry, household items, etc.- were made to be beautiful, pleasing to the eye, well-proportioned, eye-catching. and all of the people crowding the stores wanted to be beautiful, to make themselves and their lives beautiful. and so they were trying to get these beautiful things from the stores, and to bring them close to themselves. they were going take the beautiful things and put them in their homes, in their offices and on their bodies, as if by doing this they might somehow become more beautiful themselves.

what struck me about this attempt to become beautiful is that it involves a kind of confusion, perhaps even a category mistake. the attractiveness of a shirt may be a matter of its physical proportions, or the loveliness of a dress might be a matter of its color. but the beauty of a human being is the beauty of a human soul. and what makes a soul beautiful is not its physical shape or color, just as what makes a symphony beautiful is not a matter of how it looks and what makes an oil painting beautiful is not a matter of the way it sounds. trying to become beautiful by hanging beautiful things on one's body is like trying to become virtuous by putting books about virtue on one's bookshelf.

of course, one might think that physical shape and color are what make a human body beautiful, and that the shoppers on michigan avenue were just trying to get beautiful bodies and not beautiful souls. to some extent, this is probably the case. i think, however, that something more than this was going on, and is typically going on when we buy things for ourselves and for our material environment. moreover, even our attempts to get beautiful bodies -by going to the gym, or eating well, or using any of the innumerable number of lotions now available- seem to be motivated by more than the desire to have a beautiful body. the desire for a beautiful body is somehow connected to a more basic desire to be beautiful people, to have our selves be beautiful, to personally partake of beauty in some deep way. and insofar as our goal is to have beautiful selves or to live beautiful lives, then both shopping and working out (those two symbols of contemporary american culture) seem poor means to this end, because the kind of beauty they can give us is not the beauty proper to a human soul.

"every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is a foreign country"

2005-07-03T16:08:00.000-07:00

on the theme of christian cosmopolitanism, my friend sean sent me the following passage. it is from a work known as the letter to diognetus. it probably dates from the second century, and the author is unknown. it is quite beautiful, and expresses almost exactly what i was trying to capture in speaking of an ethos of christian cosmopolitanism:

For the distinction between Christians and other men is neither in country nor language nor customs. For they do not dwell in cities in some place of their own, nor do they use any strange variety of dialect, nor practice an extraordinary kind of life. This teaching of theirs has not been discovered by the intellect or thought of busy men, nor are they the advocates of any human doctrine as some men are… They dwell in their own fatherlands, but as if sojourners in them; they share all things as citizens, and suffer all things as strangers. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is a foreign country. They marry as all men, they bear children, but they do not expose their offspring. They offer free hospitality, but guard their purity. Their lot is cast “in the flesh,” but they do not live “after the flesh” (2 Cor. 10.3). They pass their time on earth, but they have their citizenship in heaven (Phil. 3.20). They obey the appointed laws, and they surpass the laws in their own lives. They love all men and are persecuted by all men. They are unknown and they are condemned. They are put to death and they gain life. “They are poor and make many rich” (2 Cor. 6.10); they lack all thing and have all things in abundance. They are dishonoured, and are glorified in their dishonour; they are spoken evil of and are justified. “They are abused and give blessing” (1 Cor. 4.12), they are insulted and render honour. When they do good they are buffeted as evildoers, when they are buffeted they rejoice as men who receive life. They are warred upon by the Jews and persecuted by the Greeks, and those who hate them cannot state the cause of their enmity… what the soul is to the body, that the Christians are to the world. The soul is spread through all members of the body, and Christians throughout the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, but is not of the body, and Christians dwell in the world but are not of the world.

christian cosmopolitanism, part III -two kinds of patriotism

2005-07-03T14:30:00.000-07:00

on the eve of the fourth of july, it seems fitting to add another installment to this series of reflection on christian cosmopolitanism.

as the last two posts suggest, my real contrast for cosmopolitanism has not been localism or traditionalism, but patriotism. i have been suggesting the need for a christian cosmopolitanism as an alternative to christian patriotism. but is there anything that can be said in favor of patriotism? or can christian cosmopolitanism and christian patriotism somehow co-exist?

it seems to me that any acceptable account of patriotism must deal with the following problem: one ought always to support the course of action that is just and good. thus, if one's country does what is just and good, then one should support one's country. if, however, one's country does what is unjust or bad, then one should not support one's country. either way, one's ultimate support is for what is just and good, and one's support for one's country is only 'incidental' or derivative of this basic commitment. therefore, when it comes to one's support for one's country,if one's commitments are already in the right place, then there is nothing left for patriotism to do.

one way of getting around this problem and retaining a space for patriotism is to adopt a form of patriotism which advocates loyalty or commitment to one's country and its course of action regardless of what one's country does. such patriotism sees loyalty to country as more basic than support for the just and good course of action -this is the attitude of those who say we must support america no matter what, or support america simply because it is our country and regardless of what it does. this form of patriotism, i think, is quite clearly unacceptable for christians. our most basic loyalty is not to our country but to god and to the gospel, and thus if our country does what is unjust or bad, we cannot support it in this action.

at the same time, however, we can think of patriotism not as unconditional support for one's country, but rather as a matter of special responsibility, and perhaps also special affection, for one's country. on this view, patriotism is not a matter of undying loyalty to one's country, but of special concern and focused attention on one's country. the basic idea is that each of us has certain spheres of influence, and hence spheres of responsibility. for example, i am able to impact things in america in a way that i am not able to impact things in france, because i live in america and not france, i can vote in america but not in france, i speak english but not french, etc. thus, i am responsible for what goes on in america more than i am for what goes on in france. and thus it is right for me to be concerned about america in a way that i am not concerned about france.
along the same lines, it seems proper to have a special affection and fondness for one's own country -such affection seems to correspond naturally to concern, and it is the fitting acknowledgment of the fact that being a citizen of a particular place is a part of who one is.

while i don't have an account of 'christian patriotism' to offer, i think that a form of christian patriotism could be developed. i suggest that any acceptable form of christian patriotism would be along the lines of this second notion of patriotism rather than the first -one that centers on the notions of influence and responsibility rather than unquestioned loyalty. such an account might even compatible with christian cosmopolitanism, if one's focus on one's own country did not preclude (or occlude) one's concern for other countries and cultures, including the desire both to benefit and to learn from countries and places other than one's own.

any acceptable form of christian patriotism will be especially aware of the dangers of idolatry. one of the great ironies of christian patriotism in america is that in the name of giving thanks to god, patriotism itself becomes a form of idolatry. i remember driving across the country in the days after september 11, 2001 and seeing people hanging patriotic banners from bridge overpasses on the interstate. many of these were religious in nature, the most common of course being 'god bless america.' one banner which especially struck me read: 'america forever.' while those who made this banner may have been very well-intentioned, i think that the message says something that we who are christians cannot endorse. first, we know that america will not last forever -the kingdoms of this world will all pass away. second, and more importantly, we should not want america to last forever! america, like all of this world, is full of sin and corruption, and as christians we look for a new heaven and a new earth which will be perfect in a way that america could never compare.

of course it is possible for a cosmopolitanism as well as patriotism to be idolatrous, with the idol of country being replaced by the idol of the world. thus, just as any proper christian patriotism would not make an idol of country, so it is one of the chief distinctives of a christian cosmopolitanism that it does not make an idol of the world.

christian cosmopolitanism, part II -cosmos and community

2005-06-23T13:11:00.000-07:00

more thoughts about christian cosmopolitanism:

i think that the ideal of 'cosmopolitanism' is sometimes seen as standing in opposition to a way of thinking that views tradition as valuable, even essential, to good living and good thinking. similarly, cosmopolitanism is sometimes seen as an ethos of 'bland universalism' in contrast to an outlook which values the 'richness of particularity.' cosmopolitanism might be associated with a kind of skepticism or rationalism. worse still, the cosmopolitan individual might be seen as rootless and detached from any concrete community: a lover of humanity who never loves any particular human being.

for those who take such a view of cosmopolitanism, the notion of a 'christian cosmopolitanism' is likely to seem an oxymoron: to be christian is already to be committed to a particular tradition, a particular set of beliefs, a particular way of life, and such commitment is antithetical to the core sensibility and outlook of a universalistic (and, perhaps, skeptical) cosmopolitanism.

it is not necessary, however, for us to think of cosmopolitanism this way. rather than taking skepticism about tradition or rootlessness as the core of cosmopolitanism, we can understand its core to be a commitment to the idea that what is most important about a person cannot be captured by reference to her particular national or cultural situation. what is deepest and most important in ourselves and in other human beings -and what ought to govern how we relate to ourselves and to others- is not something limited to our national or cultural heritage. moreover, our loyalties based on our membership in a particular nation or group are subservient to our loyalities based on things common to all humanity. on this way of thinking, it makes sense to speak of christian cosmopolitanism, because it is a specifically christian outlook which leads to cosmopolitan conclusions about what is most important in a human beings and about the limits of our local loyalties.

this is not to say that the picture of cosmopolitanism sketched earlier has no basis in the history of cosmopolitan thinking, or to deny that some forms of cosmopolitanism have failed to appreciate the importance of tradition and particularity. rather, i think that christian cosmopolitanism may be valuable precisely because it is able to correct some of the mistakes of other forms of cosmopolitanism. a christian cosmopolitanism, for example, is able to delight in the particularities of a culture -because they reflect divine creativity and beauty in their own unique way- while at the same time resisting the temptation to idolatry or sentimentality -because no culture is god and every culture is tainted by sin.

likewise, a christian cosmopolitanism will critize 'rootless individualism' as inconsistent with the command to love, the call to live as part of the body of christ, and the fact that we were created to live in real community with one another. thus, a christian cosmopolitanism will have no problems stressing the importance of local communities for human flourishing. and yet, a christian cosmopolitanism will also understand that the very significance of a local christian community depends on the fact that they are part of something more important and more mysterious than themselves -the kingdom of god. because the kingdom of god is not limited by cultural or national boundaries, our communities ought never to give in to the 'us vs. them' mentality which is the hallmark of so much human thinking.

christian cosmopolitanism

2005-06-21T00:14:00.000-07:00

diogenes the cynic lived in greece in the 4th century b.c. and was a contemporary of plato. it is said that when diogenes was asked where he came from, he replied: 'i am a citizen of the world' (κοσμοπολιτης). thus, diogenes is perhaps the originator of the term, if not the idea, of cosmopolitanism.

it is interesting to contrast diogenes claim to be a κοσμοπολιτης with the new testament's claim that christians are not of this world, that 'our citizenship (πολιτευμα) is in heaven' (phil 3:20). at first glance, it might seem that christians are anti-cosmpolitan: whereas the cosmopolitan individual is a citizen of the world, christians are citizens of no place in this world, citizens of another world entirely.

in another way, however, the 'other-worldliness' of the gospel opens up the space for a new kind of cosmopolitanism. precisely because the christian has a citizenship in heaven, his basic loyalty is not to any particular place or culture; his heart is to be in heaven (matt 6:19-21) moreover, the christian's loyalty is not to any local or national diety, but to the god who is the creator and redeemer of the whole world. and the christian is to be like his father in heaven, who treats all people, both the good an evil, with impartiality (matt 6:43-48). thus, the christian is free not to define himself in terms of any particular place or culture, and free also to care impartially for the whole world.

in our culture, it seems that christian cosmopolitanism is fairly uncommon. rather, christian patriotism is the order of the day. the signs of christian patriotism are ubiquitous, from 'god bless america' bumper stickers to american flags in churches. even among those of us christians who might not think of ourselves as 'patriotic' in any strong sense of the word, we are, i think, more influenced than we realized by the fact that we are amerian citizens. this influence includes the way in which our discussions and debates about world affairs are typically framed in terms of america's interests. perhaps even more importantly, this influence also includes the our general lack of knowledge and concern about what is going on outside of america -including the 30,000 children who die every from hunger-related causes or preventable diseases.

for example, how many american churches mourned, prayed and held services in response to september 11? many, if not most. and how many american churches have given a moment's thought to the civil war in congo, which has killed millions in the last few years? my point is not that we shouldn't have mourned and prayed for the victims of sept 11. on the contrary, as christians we are called to respond to and share in the suffuring of others, and sept 11 was clearly an example of great suffering that demanded a response. my point, rather, is that our sense of the suffering in the world is exceptionally blinkered. and the narrowness of our vision is connected to habits of mind and behavior which embody a view of ourselves as americans first, and christians second, rather than the other way around.

what we need, i suggest, is a renewed ethos of christian cosmopolitanism. such christian cosmopolitanism is rooted in a delight in the human world as the field of god's presence and redemptive activity. and it is marked by a resistance to anything which would, in the name of national or local loyalities, stand in the way of our love for all people. the christian cosmopolitan is at home in every place in the world, precisely because he is aware that no place in the world is his true home, while every place is the site of god's grace and love.

the one campaign

2005-06-18T23:01:00.000-07:00

i encourage everyone to check out the "one campaign." it is a plan for international debt-relief and increased humanitarian assistance to the world's poorest peoples. the website is: www.one.org. you can also learn more it about through the website of world vision, which is one of the founding organizations of the campaign. the basic idea of the campaign is that it is possible to drastically reduce, even eliminate, extreme poverty around the world if the wealthiest nations would change some of their trade/economic practices and increase their international aid budgets by a relatively small amount. in addition to being promoted by many of the world's leading development organizations, the campaign has also received a large, and strikingly diverse, amount of support from religious leaders and celebrities -its supporters include bono and rick warren, billy graham and brad pitt.

the other day i wrote a post in which i argued that we ought to see development as a matter of freedom, and that if we do so, it quickly becomes clear how skewed our budgetary priorities are when it comes to promoting freedom -e.g. over $200 billion spent promoting freedom through the war in iraq, and $3 billion dollars a year in annual aid to africa, where millions are unfree because of extreme poverty and lack of resources. (june , freedom and development). in our current social-political discourse, the language of freedom is closely connected to the language of sacrifice. it is acceptable -socially and politically- to call on people to make a sacrifice in the name of freedom. the chief example of this is way in which we call on our soldiers to be willing to sacrifice their lives in order to protect our freedom and promote the freedom of others. however, because freedom and development are seen as distinct issues, it is not similarly acceptable to call on people to make sacrifices for the sake of development. when has president bush -or any other politician- talked about our moral responsibility to sacrifice so that others can have their basic needs met? even to make fairly small sacrifices -e.g. having fewer new roads- so that other people can have drinking water or enough to eat?

although the one campaign is asking developed countries to make significant increases in their humanitarian assistance, i'm not sure if what is being asked for even counts as 'sacrifice.' if the plan were adopted, development aid would still only account for one percent or less of the budgets of developed countries. yet, even if eradicating poverty meant making more serious sacrifices, what could possibly be a better reason for us to make a sacrifice? it is estimated that 30,000 children die every day from hunger-related causes and preventable diseases. what could possibly be a better reason than saving the lives of children for us as individuals, and as a country, to make a sacrifice of our energy and resources?

epicurus and christ: divine life and the meaning of suffering

2005-06-15T11:15:00.000-07:00

this past week i've been reading epicurus, philosopher of pleasure. epicurus lived in the fourth century b.c. and was more or less a contemporary of aristotle. he argued that happiness, or living well, consisted in a life of pleasure. he described pleasure as the first and innate good, and argued that things were good or bad in virtue of the amount of pleasure and pain they produced. he was, it seems, the forerunner (perhaps grandfather) of many later versions of hedonism, and also utilitarianism.

even during his own day, epicurus had trouble convincing people that when he claimed that pleasure was the goal of life, he didn't mean the pleasures of drink, music or sex (either separately or together). it isn't that epicurus forbade such pleasures, but rather he argued that real pleasure was the absence of pain in the body and the absence of disturbance in the soul. and this state could only be achieved by doing philosophy and physics (which were, of course, much less distinct from one another in his time). moreover, epicurus insisted that true pleasure was inseparable from the virtues, including temperance and justice.

so, it seems that epicurus was not in fact a resident of some kind of attic bourbon street, as our english word "epicurean" might suggest. interestingly, epicurus' project was also heavily theological (which, incidentally, meant that it was also heavily meteorological). epicurus thought that much of the disturbance in his neighbors' souls was caused by their fear of the gods, including a fear that the gods would send some calamity upon them or punish them after death. epicurus argued against the latter fear by trying to demonstrate that after death the soul, which is made up of atoms, dissipates, and so after death one experiences nothing. with regards to the fear of divine-sent calamity, epicurus insisted that the gods were perfectly blessed and indestructible. such beings, he argued, would not be subject to angers and whims, and thus they would never send destruction onto humans. what is more, if humans followed the way of philosophy and freed themselves from disturbance of the soul, then their existence could be somehow divine. that is, the epircurean life of pleasure and virtue is also a life of the kind of self-sufficiency, calm and blessedness which are hallmarks of the gods' life. thus, at the end of one of his letters outlining his philosohy, epicurus says that it is possible for mortal humans to live a life that is fit for immortal gods.

in thinking of a well-lived human life as being in some way divine, epicurus was, it seems, making a fairly common move for a greek philosopher. for example, diogenes the cynic is reported to have called good men images of the gods (θεων εικονας). and at the end of his nicomachean ethics, aristotle suggests that through contemplation it is possible to imitate, in a way, the life of the gods (who, for aristotle, spend their time in contemplation) and thereby to achieve a kind of immortality for mortals.

there is, of course, something related going on in the pages of the new testament. in the nt it is christ who is first and foremost the image of the invisible god (εικων του θεου του αορατου, Col 1:16), but also we (as christians) who are being renewed in his image. likewise, jesus, in the sermon on the mount, invokes god's impartiality as the model for his disciples, and the author of ephesians urges us to be imitators of god.

interestingly, however, paul's picture of how we participate in a kind of divine life comes close to being the opposite of epicurus' account. for epicurus, the mark of the gods is their freedom from pain and disturbance, and it is by becoming free from pain and disturbance that humans can have a sort of divine life. in contrast, it is precisely the suffering of christ which paul strives to imitate and in which he longs to participate: 'to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made like him in death, that i might somehow reach the resurrection of the dead' (phil 3:10). likewise, for john, it is precisely in his suffering, death and resurrection that the glory of jesus is most displayed (e.g. john 12:23), and his suffering and death are the model for christian discipleship (12:24-26).

in the new testament, then, it seems that suffering has come to have new significance -to have, we might say, meaning. it is not that greek philosophers could not see some value in suffering; more than one talks about how his sufferings and trials were a benefit, because they brought him to philosophy. but here, the redemption/salvation found in philosophy is redemption from suffering, and suffering is 'meaningful' because it leads to that which removes it (or at least minimizes it). with christianity, however, it is almost as if the redemption in christ is redemption to suffering -the call is to share in his suffering, which is suffering even unto death. and in christianity, suffering itself is a locus for contact with the divine, a locus for imitation of the divine in christ.

perhaps, then, this is near the core of the christian message: that one is redeemed not (only?) from suffering, but in and through suffering. and that god is indeed blessed and indestructible, eternal and unseen, but in such a way that godself can be seen in and throuhg the sufferings life of our lord jesus, a man of sorrows.

freedom and development

2005-06-10T10:50:00.000-07:00

the new york times reports this morning that mr. bush and mr. blair have reached an agreement on debt remission for a number of (mostly african) nations. this seems like good news, though unfortunately it looks like the bush administration has yet to agree to the plan for increased african aid which the britains favor.

it is well known that bush has made the spread of freedom a central theme of his presidency. and the buzz about freedom's march has been fueled by the recent push for democratic reforms in ukraine, eygpt, lebanon and elsewhere. however, it seems that we have failed to connect our concerns about freedom with our concerns about development/poverty/disease in the world's poorest nations. or rather, the connection between the two frequently takes the following form: countries that have democratic freedoms and working democratic institutions tend to be able to support development, overcome poverty, etc. this way of connecting freedom and development takes "freedom" to be a matter of political practices/institution and then stresses that freedom is a kind of condition (necessary? sufficient?) for development.

this is surely a very important point. but there is another way of connecting freedom and development. this second way takes "freedom" to be not only a matter of political institutions, but an expression of a person's ability to lead a self-directing, flourishing human life. that is, "freedom" is not merely a matter of free elections and free markets, but a way of characterizing a certain kind of human life -a life that is able to pursue in a self-directed way the goods which make up a human life. here, to be free is to be able to engage in the sorts of activities that make up a distinctly human life, and an excellent human life. whereas on the first way of thinking about freedom, freedom is a condition for development, on the second way of thinknig about freedom, development is a condition for freedom. to be terribly poor -unable to find work, unable to feed oneself and one's family, unable to find adequate healthcare- is to be prevented from pursuing the goods which make up a flourishing human life. in this way, it is not live as a free person. thus we speak of the "bondage" or "prison" of poverty and disease.

i think it is obvious that this second sense of "freedom" is at least as important as the first sense. in fact, the second sense is more important, because it is the importance of this notion of freedom that grounds the first notion. that is, political/economic freedom is important precisely because it enables persons to live as self-directing agents in pursuit of the goods which make up a flourishing human life.

why is it, then, that our discourse of freedom focuses so heavily on the first notion of freedom? doubtless this has something to do with the fact that this is largely a "political" discourse, and it focused on fairly narrow "political" concerns. but it is a great mistake for us to focus on the first notion of freedom at the expense of the second, and hence for us to direct our efforts at the political/economic freedoms while neglecting the needs of millions for even basic freedom in the second sense -freedom to eat and drink enough, to have a job, to get medicine for one's children, etc.

we ought, I suggest, to see development precisely as an issue of freedom and not simply as an issue for "charity" or "helping out the less fortunate." this is not because there is something wrong with charity, but because thinking of development as charity fails to see what is ultimately at state in development efforts -whether or not millions of people will be free to live flourishing human lives.

moreover, once we recognize the cause of development as the cause of freedom, we will be able to see how one-sided and imbalanced our efforts in promoting the spread of freedom truly are. for example, consider the following numbers:

amount of debt to be relieved by bush/blair agreement: $17 billion
amount of annual u.s. aid to africa: $3.2 billion
cost of iraq war: over $200 billion.

my point here is not to argue about the legitimacy or wisdom of the iraq war. rather, i think that even if we see the iraq war as part of the "spread of freedom" -perhaps especially if we see it as such- then it become apparent how lopsided our pursuit of freedom's spread truly is. are not those people "unfree" who suffer from crushing poverty, who lack adequate drinking water, who have no access to healthcare? surely these people are just as "unfree" as those who live under oppressive regimes, if by "freedom" we recognize something more than just free markets and free elections.

let us, then, take up mr. bush's challenge to promote the spread of freedom. but let us think seriously about what freedom means and why freedom is something worth pursuing in the first place. the language of freedom, it seems, is singularly inspiring (in spite of being overused and misused), and for this very reason we should not surrender the term "freedom" to those who would define freedom in such a way that obscures or overlooks the places in the world where freedom is most badly needed.

p.s. it seems that u.s. political discourse on freedom has not always been as narrowly focused as it is now. as i recall, didn't a former u.s. president (and an academic, i believe) have something to say about different kinds of freedom? something about four...

how to feel the world

2005-06-07T10:45:00.000-07:00

one of the things i like most about summer is the way that one's senses seem to come alive along with the everything else in creation. in the summer you feel more. you feel the air and the sky. you feel the trees full of leaves. you feel your body -your feet in the grass, the air in your lungs.

it a commonplace (and an good one, i believe) for philosophers to talk about virtues and vices in terms of responsiveness to a given situation. the virtuous person sees/feels the right way to respond in a given situation and she responds that way, whereas the vicious person responds incorrectly. we do fairly well at thinking about how to respond in lots of paradigm 'moral' cases -what to do if you're taking a test (don't cheat), what to do if you see a stranger in distress (help him), etc. it striking, though, how much of our life is spent responding to less obviously 'moral' situations and objects-responding to the sky above us as we drive, responding to strangers that pass us on the sidewalk. responding to novels and movies, to a new song on the radio, to the tree outside our window, to the squirrel on the lawn, to the feeling of our tennis shoes.

on the one hand, it seems hard to say how one ought to feel or act in some of these 'less-moral' situations. we can say that one ought to be pained at the sight of injustice, but how ought one to feel at the sight of a particular shade of blue on the lake? joyful? content? it seems strange to say that there is some definite way one ought to respond to many 'less-moral' situations. on the other hand, it also seems strange to suppose that there is no better or worse way to respond in these situations. one's response to these situations seems to express or embody what it means to live well, in the same way virtues like courage or compassion embody living well. it seems that a life full of joy and wonder at the world is a better life than one full of boredeom and half-hearted attention to things, even if one responds 'correctly' in all the 'moral' contexts.

how, then, ought one to see/feel a tree, or a frisbee, or a bicycle? perhaps the answer is that we must begin by seeing and feeling them at all. we must cultivate an awareness, and an appreciative awareness, of all that is around us. there is something about wonder which seems important here. something about having a taste for the strangeness or the specialness of ordinary things. a sense too of how fantastic things are.

i don't think the idea is that we all need to think like annie dillard (though i think she could be a good influence, even a guide, in this whole discussion). and its not that we need to spend all of our time stopping and looking instead of feeling the world by doing stuff (though i think stopping and looking more might be part of cultivating the capacity for the right kind of responsiveness).

christianly speaking, it seems that the proper responsiveness will involve, perhaps even center on, a sense of thankfullness and joy in creation viewed as such. that is, a joyful viewing of the world not as brute fact, but as the handiwork of our loving Creator.

summer sun

2005-06-01T15:00:00.000-07:00

at some point during my first winter in chicago, it began to dawn on me that there was a particular, though hard to describe, look to things. objects and scenes around town had a characteristic "chicago" feel to them, a feel that was hard to pin down, but nevertheless undeniable. at first i thought this look/feel had something to do with the objects themselves that are found around chicago -older brick buildings, rusty american cars, salt-stained streets and sidewalks. eventually, however, i realized that the look/feel i was noticing wasn't the result of particular objects, but of the kind of light that chicago gets in the winter. it is a pale, northern winter light. the sun never gets very high, staying low in the southern part of the sky even during midday. and this means that our winter light is drained from its oranges and yellows, so that we are left with a thin and sickly light, a light which lacks not only physical but also emotional warmth. and so, the "chicago feel" i had noticed was simply the way the city looks illuminated by this pale winter light.

having endured this winter light, i feel especially delighted and thankful for days like today. there is a warm summer sun, high in the sky, shining a full and luscious light. what is more, we now have wonderfully long days. may favorite light of all, i think, is the light that begins in late afternoon on a summer's day, and then grows increasingly soft and colorful through the course of a long summer twilight.

i have been trying to spend as many evenings as possible sitting by the lake in the evenings as the sun goes down. one of the great pleasures of doing this is having one's visual field filled almost entiredly by the changing shades of water and sky. i have find myself thinking that my capacity to enjoy, my capacity to delight, is much too small for the beauty of world.

on a day as beautiful as today, it seems fitting to celebrate with St. Francis' Canticle:

Most High, all-powerful, all-good Lord,
All praise is Yours, all glory, honor and blessings.
To you alone, Most High, do they belong;
no mortal lips are worthy to pronounce Your Name.

We praise You, Lord, for all Your creatures,
especially for Brother Sun,
who is the day through whom You give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor,
of You Most High, he bears your likeness.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Moon and the stars,
in the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.

We praise You, Lord, for Brothers Wind and Air,
fair and stormy, all weather's moods,
by which You cherish all that You have made.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Water,
so useful, humble, precious and pure.

We praise You, Lord, for Brother Fire,
through whom You light the night.
He is beautiful, playful, robust, and strong.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Earth,
who sustains us
with her fruits, colored flowers, and herbs.

We praise You, Lord, for those who pardon,
for love of You bear sickness and trial.
Blessed are those who endure in peace,
by You Most High, they will be crowned.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Death,
from whom no-one living can escape.
Woe to those who die in their sins!
Blessed are those that She finds doing Your Will.
No second death can do them harm.

We praise and bless You, Lord, and give You thanks,
and serve You in all humility.

amen and amen.

cardinal newman, universities, the goods of the thinking

2005-05-31T19:50:00.000-07:00

i have recently begun reading john henry newman's "the idea of a university." i was surprised to find that newman draws a sharp distinction between "academies" and "universities." the former exists to promote the advancement and discovery of knowledge, while the latter exists to teach knowledge to students. in his preface, newman suggests that those who make discoveries and advance knowledge are not necessarily good teachers, and vice-versa. he also argues that advancing knowledge is a characteristically private enterprise, the work of the lone scholars in their respective studies. he notes (thankfully) Socrates as a potential exception.

there is certainly something to newman's distinction between advancing knowledge and teaching knowledge. it is certainly an academic commonplace that professors famous for "advancing knowledge" in some area turn out to be poor teachers. at the same time, however, i find myself wanting to resist making too sharp a distinction between these two kinds of activities. isn't there a way in which teaching characteristically -and not only occasionally- helps the teacher to learn, and perhaps to learn in a way that she couldn't otherwise? i suppose this depends a lot on the difference in capability between teacher and student. a prof might learn quite a bit from her grad students, but a grade school teacher probably doesn't learn much about spelling from her students...

its interesting to note that the terminology seems to have shifted from newman's time to our own (or, at least, in making the trip across the atlantic). we now think of a university as a place that focuses on the advancment of knowledge, in contrast with a "college", which focuses on teaching undergrads. and it is, of course, a very popular thing these days for colleges to remake themselves into universities, even if this change seems to be mostly in name. why is this, we might well ask? certainly it is connected to some sense that being a "real" place of learning inolves producing scholarship -i.e. generating experiments, articles, books.

there is, i think, a kind of madness that accompanies the contemporary academies obsession with the "production" of knowledge. it is not clear who is benefiting, or if there is any benefit at all, from the flood of articles that comes out month after month. what's more, it seems clear that the pressure to produce results in a lot of rushed, and therefore shallow, thinking, as evidenced by the tons of low-quality articles that are constantly appearing in print. what, then, is the impetus behind this rush to "advance" knowledge? perhaps it is the desire to have something tangible to hold onto, to show for all our efforts (including our fund-raising efforts). if there is an article in hand, then we can be sure that we've done something, that we've made progress. and then we can be sure that this whole enterprise was worthwhile, that is was good. perhaps behind this is a picture of learning as another form of production -just as we produce goods and the more goods the better (more cell phones, more cars, more dvds, etc), so we produce academic "goods", and the more we can produce the better the good of learning.

but there is another conception of learning -or at least humanistic learning- in which progress can't be displayed by pointing to an article, precisely because one never actually makes "progress." the enterprise of learning isn't worthwhile or good because it results in something; rather, learning (perhaps we should say contemplation) holds it good within itself. on this view of the matter, we never get "beyond" the man sitting beneath a tree and thinking hard about why there is anything at all. that man already has, so to speak, the good which there is to be had from thinking, and no amount of published articles will give him a better good from thinking. which is not to forget, of course, but is exactly to remember, that there are many goods which cannot be gotten just by thinking.

remembering soldiers, pursuing peace

2005-05-30T17:30:00.000-07:00

as a christian with deep sympathies for peace theology, i find it difficult to know exactly how to think about memorial day. by "peace theology" i mean a theology which sees non-violence and reconciliation as central to the message of Jesus and the New Testament. on the one hand, i have a strong desire to take seriously -and to honor- the sacrifices of those soldiers who gave their lives fighting for this country. and it is not only that i feel a sense of obligation to honor these soldiers. rather, i geniunely find their stories and their sacrifices to be profoundly moving. there is somethng about the virtue of courage, about the willingness to sacrifice or even die for others, that i find almost singularly awe-inspiring. no doubt i run the risk of romanticising what is horrible, and no doubt i have no real conception of how horrible and unromantic war actually is. neveretheless, when i imagine a soldier who willingly risks his or her life in battle, i feel that i am in the presence of something deep and beautiful. on the other hand, insofar as i am a person committed to a theology of peace, i see war -including the acts committed by the soldiers who are remembered at memorial day- as antithetical to the way of Jesus, which is the way of hope and salvation. not only this, but many of those soldiers who made sacrifices, even sacrificing their lives, were also people who harmed and destroyed, who killed and maimed.

there are, then, at least two points of tension here. the first tension is about a death in war. is such a death noble and powerful and valuable? or is it a kind of mistake -an offering made to a false god of war? if it is the later, then it is an act that may ultimately be redeemed, but it is not itself a force for redemption; it will only be redeemed in spite of itself. the second tension is about how to construe the soldiers themselves. do i think of them as heroes -people who understood the deepest things in human life? or as well-meaning but mislead, and perhaps even as villains? these two contstruals don't seem to sit well together. i'm not sure how to put them together, and i'm not sure i want to give up either of them.

whatever the right way to think about all of this is, i suspect that it will involve what a friend said to me yesterday: 'at the heart of the gospel is the experience of suffering. at the heart of what Jesus taught us is how to suffer.'

when st. francis received his first vision, he was on his way to battle as a soldier. he abandoned his career in the military, and fell in love with Lady Poverty. and once, after preaching to his sisters the birds, he blessed them, and they flew away in four directions, thus making the sign of the cross.