Wednesday, October 7, A.D. 2009

Rising of the Republic

For most of Western philosophy’s history, the learned considered Plato’s Timaeus to be his most important work. It is clear that the Republic figured prominently, as well. Consider its influence on Cicero with his De Re Publica. However, it was not until recently that the Republic passed the Timaeus in its received importance. I wonder why.

Along with most contemporaries, I share the view that the Republic is one of the finest, most well written, and profoundest works ever created. It is a landmark piece in the history of philosophy for most of its disciplines. Earlier this week, I linked to the web site of Dr. John Mark Reynolds from Biola University. In its list of recommended books, his site has the following:

The two years spent with this book and Al Geier were the most academically productive of my life. Since then, I have come to find almost every truth needed in the pages of this book, saving only the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I do not find such to be hyperbole. Granted, the Timaeus is brilliant, but it does not appear superior to the Republic. Why should our age’s estimation differ so from that of the past?

The Timaeus is basically a work on physics and metaphysics. It concerns the nature and order of creation. While the Republic touches on these topics, its concern is more worldly in its focus on man. I suspect that the nobler object of the Timaeus rendered it more esteemed than the Republic for the medieval world. Moreover, the central themes of the Republic became so accepted in the intellectual framework and world view of the Christian world that the dialogue perhaps did not seem as valuable. I am not sure. Yet, with the coming of modernity and with the peculiar experience of the modern democratic West that has entered into a state of decay, the Republic has come to present us with a formidable challenge to modern assumptions. For me, at least, it is a light in the darkness. In our postmodern, nominalist world, I might add that the darkness comprehendeth it not.

There were individual philosophical thinkers and teachers who helped to make the Republic better known. Leo Strauss and his intellectual progeny rehabilitated the Platonic political tradition. I wonder if we could detect a similar phenomenon among the Aristotelians. Like the Straussians with the Republic, the Laws, and the social and civic concerns of the dialogues, have the neo-Thomists reinvigorated the study of Aristotle’s Politics? I can imagine that similar political reflections in reaction to modernity would have led to a renewed interest in premodern thinking about man and his place in community.

If you have never read the Republic and if you have philosophical tendencies, I highly recommend reading it and rereading it. Like most of Plato’s works, it is a dialogue, not a treatise. The work invites you to participate in the discussions of Socrates and his interlocutors. Do not assume that the flow of the conversation is all that the dialogue suggests. For there are many roads not taken because of the interlocutors’ answers and choices. For example, it is up to you to think about why the “healthy city” is not as discussed as the feverish city. Furthermore, read carefully. The Straussians get a lot of grief from many folks in “the profession of philosophy,” but their recommendations of how one approaches Plato’s texts make excellent advice. Approach the works of great thinkers as a student willing to learn—a critical and questioning student, but one willing to invest much time and thinking to understand and to wrestle with the text. Having read the Republic several times, I realize with each new reading major insights that I never before saw. Yet, I am aware of how many bright people in academic philosophical fields fail to read the text. I read their articles and books and wonder how they can write what they write when the text so clearly contradicts their interpretation of it. I suspect that they just have not read it carefully. People project rather than listen. They do this in discussion and they do it in their reading. Perhaps, we should call such a hermeneutic of obstinate ignorance. Do not read that way. Rather, open your mind and enter into the dialogue. You will learn much.

Posted by Joseph on Wednesday, October 7, A.D. 2009
Aesthetics • Anthropology • Epistemology • Ethics • Metaphysics • Physics • Politics • (0) Comments • Permalink

Monday, September 14, A.D. 2009

Cleese on the God Gene

I want to wish everyone who follows the old calendar a happy new year!

To celebrate the new year with jollity, I offer a spendid short video that my friend Andrew sent me: “The Scientist at Work.” It is brilliant!

I have never seen the retortion argument demonstrated so entertainingly. John Cleese deserves his fame; he is one of the funniest people around.

Posted by Joseph on Monday, September 14, A.D. 2009
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Monday, July 20, A.D. 2009

Apollo 11

Forty years ago, fellow Ohioan Neil Armstrong of the Apollo 11 mission stepped onto the moon, marking a new stage in human exploration.

Here is N.B.C.‘s Time & Again episode on Apollo 11:

There are many views about space exploration, its costs, and its consequences. However, I still find the space race of the 60’s rather spectacular. In such a short time, Russians and Americans achieved so many milestones of mankind’s embarking upon the great black sea.

So, here’s a cheer for Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, and all the scientists, engineers, politicians (especially President Kennedy), support staff, and others who made the moon landing possible (from the ancient mathematicians and physicists to the grunts who poured coffee at the Mission Control Center in Houston). Though not a Cartesian and admittedly somewhat of a Luddite, I celebrate the amazing feat accomplished four decades ago. Indeed, a giant leap for mankind . . .

Posted by Joseph on Monday, July 20, A.D. 2009
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Wednesday, June 24, A.D. 2009

Meyer’s Intelligent Design

Yesterday, I was fortunate to attend a short lecture at the Heritage Foundation by Dr. Stephen C. Meyer of the Discovery Institute on the evidence of DNA for intelligent design. You may watch the lecture on the Heritage Foundation’s site.

I do not believe that I have addressed Darwinism on Arimathea, yet. Though it is a “hot topic,” I do not have a firm opinion on the matter. However, I am interested in the issue, and I wanted to see what Dr. Meyer had to say. I was a bit skeptical going in because the Discovery Institute is held in such low regard by people whom I respect, such as John Derbyshire. However, I found the discussion interesting and Dr. Meyer most affable.

You ought to watch the lecture yourself or read Dr. Meyer’s book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, but his basic argument is that the naturalistic explanations of chance, natural law, or a combination of the two cannot account for the biological information in DNA. Using Charles Lyell’s and Charles Darwin’s scientific criteria of “inference to the best explanation” when seeking causes in remote prehistory, Meyer argues that we should attribute causation of biological information to the only thing that we know to be the cause of information—namely, intelligence. Watch the video and read the book for the details.

I have no problem with acknowledging that mind is behind the order of the cosmos. I think that it is glaringly evident that the world demonstrates intelligent design. However, I think that such design underlies all reality. The very structure of the cosmos gives rise to the complex, ordered, and beautiful universe that we behold. I therefore think that intelligent design is an obvious metaphysical truth that undergirds physical truth.

What is the alternative? Chance? Chance is ultimately a non-explanation; chance is the impious’ “god of the gaps”—the doctrinal mantra of nihilists. For what is chance other than simply admitting that at a given level of reality, the causality of an event is not intended by agents operating at that level? However, if we push back our inquiry further and further, we realize the emptiness of chance as an explanation. It is ignorance posing as wisdom. Atoms in the void? But whence the atoms? Whence the void? And why the movement such as it is?

My concern with the intelligent design movement is not that it advocates intelligent design but, I worry, that it confuses the level at which such intelligence operates. In Aristotle’s terms of causality, I fully admit that God operates on the world and holds it in being through final, formal, and even material causality (in the sense of creating and sustaining matter), but the issue that so vexes the scientific community is God’s acting in efficient causality. Meyer’s position is not simply that God starts the process of motion (like Aristotle) and holds the universe in being as it moves, but that God—an intelligence—operates on the level of efficient causality in the cosmos as a being in the cosmos. Meyer did not claim this, but it appears to be the consequence of his position. It seems to me, by contrast, that efficient causality is something like a shadow of formal reality, and God’s influence on events works in this manner—of the eternal’s unfolding in time. Obviously, I do not understand metaphysics, and this issue is extremely perplexing. However, I find it aesthetically and intuitively repugnant to have God act like another being among beings. We Christians have a name for such a mystery, and it is called the Incarnation. I suppose that it is possible that all of providence operates in the same way, but such makes nature inaccessible to man’s reason. It is because of this that the scientific community so strenuously objects to the intelligent design movement. How can we, through natural reason—through natural philosophy, through science—understand the natural world when an agent beyond natural understanding frequently injects itself into the mechanism of nature and we cannot detect any sort of regularity or law behind that injection?

I told Dr. Meyer that I had an aesthetic objection to his system. Imagine a factory that produced goods. It is obvious to any sane man that an intelligent designer was behind the coming to be of that factory. It did not come to be on its own. Yet, the intelligent design movement wants an intelligence to interject itself at indiscernible times in the production of the goods, whereas I would prefer a factory in which everything runs smoothly according to the design. On a metaphysical level, I believe that God still holds the world in being through all its operations, but that universal and regular involvement does not make our natural understanding of the world problematic. Dr. Meyer’s system appears to do so.

Dr. Meyer responded that my objection was a matter of metaphor rather than substance. If we used cooperative instead of interruptive imagery, then it does not appear as objectionable. Yet, such does not address the peril in which such a view puts natural science. Dr. Meyer argues that we must follow the evidence where it leads. One cannot argue much against that point, but I would like to hold out for a currently unknown natural force or set of forces that direct evolution besides the currently accepted and rightly criticized Darwinian explanation. Genetic reductionism, the great improbability of random mutation’s having produced the multiplicity of life on earth even given its great age, and the abundant evidence of teleology call Darwinism into question. Yet, what other natural forces can explain the history of biological evolution? I would like to believe that we still have not found such forces but they do exist.

I posed my concern to Dr. Meyer with an analogy to particle physics. Before the twentieth century, no one could explain how atoms maintained their structural integrity. If the atomic world behaved just like the macrocosmic world of the solar system, then the violent interactions of forces would cause all atoms to collapse. Yet, atoms maintain their structures, and scientists eventually discovered the strong and weak nuclear forces in addition to the force of gravity that explains planetary motion. Couldn’t another unknown force be active in directing biological evolution? Dr. Meyer responded that natural laws are mathematical relationships that could not account for the irregularity of life. Again, such a response seems reasonable, but how do we, in ignorance, know what could not be? I do not want to incur the argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy, but I think that it is better to wait for better answers than to adopt an answer that unravels natural philosophy. Perhaps, with positive evidence rather than negative evidence, I may see a reason to adopt intelligent design. Lacking such, I’ll hold my hopes.

Nonetheless, I wish that the people would debate these issues rather than simply shutting down “heterodox” dissent. All men dedicated to finding truth should welcome an occasional challenge to reassess their assumptions. If the intelligent design movement awakens scientists from their dogmatic materialist slumber, much good could result.

Posted by Joseph on Wednesday, June 24, A.D. 2009
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Saturday, April 25, A.D. 2009

Ideology

Recently on Auster’s View from the Right, there was a fascinating thread on Ayn Rand and Objectivism. The discussion occurs on three pages: “How a Randian website replied to [a] polite explanation of traditionalism,” “Continued thread on Randianism, reductionism, and more,” and “The totalitarian Ayn Rand cult.” Therein, Auster and company tackle the question of ideology, and I wish to offer some great passages.

Oddly for someone with a natural and developed affinity for Nietzschean thought, I have never read anything by Rand. I considered myself a libertarian in my adolescence, I received materials from the Cato Institute for research papers and essays in grade school, and I had many friends who were into Objectivism. It is therefore strange that I never entered the Randian cult. Perhaps like some of Auster’s readers, I had no taste for the overtly anti-Christian tendencies of a group that extols “the virtue of selfishness.” I make an exception for Nietzsche because I find him wonderfully but dreadfully insightful.

Auster’s thread focuses on the question of ideology. Auster points out that people use the term in various ways. In one sense, an ideology is simply a set of opinions—a world view. He does not find that usage very useful; we already have many good words for systems of thought.The other meaning for ideology—one that conservative thinkers have used for generations—is a way of thinking that reduces one’s awareness of the world to the level of a particular and limited interpretive key. One of Auster’s Randian critics states that Auster’s Christianity is just as much an ideology as Objectivism. In this, he means a system of beliefs. In response, Auster and his Christian supporters have an interesting discussion about how traditional cultural and religious thought wrestles with the messy world as it is, whereas modern ideologies force all phenomena into a few choice categories. In this sense, all ideologies are reductionist; all ideological description of the world lies.

On the first page, Auster writes,

There you have the unabashed, unembarrassed avowal of a reductive ideology: “Objectivism values reason alone.” ONLY reason. NOTHING else. All the world, in all its dimensions, is reduced to JUST reason.

But such is the power of ideology. Ideologies have the great attraction they have to their followers because of their simplifications. Communism reduces all values to equality of economic outcome. Modern liberalism reduces all values to the equal right to choice and satisfaction of desire. Islam reduces all values to the will of the totalitarian god Allah. Anti-Semitism reduces all values to Jew hatred. Randianism reduces all values to reason. In a complex world, having such a simple, all-inclusive answer allows people, in Andrew Dalton’s words, “to avoid exposing many of their doctrines to rational scrutiny.” The followers of the simplistic ideology can simply hate and dehumanize everyone who doesn’t follow their simplistic formula.

As I read Auster’s description of ideology, I thought of Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences—not because Husserl is yet another profound Jewish Christian, but because Husserl argues that modern scientists tend to reduce all reality to their own discipline. The physicist thinks that reality is fundamentally matter in motion, and his field stands as the foundation—and the judge—for all other sciences. The same holds true of the dominant cultures in other modern scientific disciplines: chemists, biologists, anthropologists, economists, psychologists, political theorists, and so on. For Husserl, the various scientific enterprises are species of philosophy, and only a unifying philosophical perspective can assign the various philosophical investigations their rightful but limited domains without reducing them and the phenomena that they examine to something other than what they are. The misologists among us will surely accuse Husserl of hypocrisy, but we friends of philosophy come to his defense. Unlike the other disciplines that largely take much of their foundation for granted, philosophy alone constantly questions itself as a discipline. Its methods, proper objects, and every other conceivable component are perpetually examined. Only philosophy questions human knowing and human reason per se. One could argue that philosophy enlightened by theology even comes to recognize its own insufficiency in understanding all that can be “known” by mankind, but let us save such questions for other posts. Regardless, true philosophy is the best example of an anti-ideological orientation toward the world.

Kristor, a frequent commentator on View from the Right, crafts the following in response to Auster:

Yes. And scientism reduces everything to matter. The problem of reductionism is that it’s a form of idolatry; of loving the map more than the territory, the tidy ideal more than the wild anfractuous concrete being. It is the error of thinking that our ideas about things can ever be completely adequate.

What a remarkable image! I think that his “loving the map more than the territory” offers much insight into the intellectual psychology of modernity. The proud rationalism of the Enlightenment is not so much an exaltation of reason—for what age could hold reason in higher esteem than medieval Christendom?—as a deification of particular systematic methodologies. The modern mind lusts after laws that can explain all phenomena. Yet, like all lust, the desire for all encompassing explanatory systems tends toward perversion. Otherwise sincere seekers of truth misuse the evidence (i.e. the world and our experience of it) in order to make it fit their working explanatory theory. The messiness of reality, the complicated and unwieldy explanations needed to account adequately for the world, and the omnipresent reminders of the degree of human ignorance all intensify the modern hunger for a clean, comprehensive answer to all.

Christendom had its own such answer, but it did not dare assert human mastery over it. For how can mortals understand the majesty of God? Modern rationalists dismiss the Christian attitude with disgust . . . the God of the gaps is for superstitious primitives. Yet, there is greater wisdom in acknowledging ignorance than in falsely reducing, perverting, or ignoring the complexity of the world that does not easily fit into one’s pet theory.

Auster further points out that ideology does not simply reduce the world as it seeks to understand it, but it approaches the world with the intent of changing it:

Thus, using this second meaning of ideology, it is a truism among conservatives that (say) Jacobinism, Communism, liberalism, feminism, etc., are ideologies, because they reduce the world to one thing or set of things, and aim at transforming the world; but that conservatism is not an ideology, because it accepts and seeks to understand the world as is. It has no driving purpose toward some transformative goal. (This would not apply to some modern forms of conservatism, such as economism, which reduces the human world to the economy, or neoconservatism, which narrows the world to democracy and universal human sameness and seeks to create a single world of democracy loving people, ignoring everything that doesn’t fit into that scheme.)

Here’s a classic example of ideology. Marx said (approximately): “The idea is not to understand the world, but to change the world.”

In response to Marx’s idea, the conservative writer and thinker Thomas Molnar once said to me in conversation, “The idea is not to change the world, but to understand the world.”

The (traditional) conservative tries to understand the structure of the world and to harmonize his own being with it. The ideologue is profoundly dissatisfied with the world as it is and seeks to transform it.

Ideology is modern. In it, knowledge is power, and power is for making the world conform to the human will. It is not much of a reductionist move to say that modernity qua modern is a playing out of the Cartesian project to master nature. Men, as Lewis reminds us in The Abolition of Man, are part of nature, and the modern project at its root involves the transformation of mankind into something other than it is. Modernity is, as thinkers as diverse as Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Shestov, Lewis, and Schmemann all note, the story of Christian redemption reduced to the horizontal narrative. All “isms” are indeed decadent Christian heresies.

Posted by Joseph on Saturday, April 25, A.D. 2009
Anthropology • Epistemology • Metaphysics • Physics • Politics • (0) Comments • Permalink