Getting to the Point: relativism

Showing posts with label relativism. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

The Notice Board of Father Brown

“Ah, yes, these modern infidels appeal to their reason; but who can look at those millions of worlds and not feel that there may well be wonderful universes above us where reason is utterly unreasonable?”

“No,” said the other priest; “reason is always reasonable, even in the last limbo, in the lost borderland of things. I know that people charge the Church with lowering reason, but it is just the other way. Alone on earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason.”

The other priest raised his austere face to the spangled sky and said: “Yet who knows if in that infinite universe —?”

“Only infinite physically,” said the little priest, turning sharply in his seat, “not infinite in the sense of escaping from the laws of truth… Reason and justice grip the remotest and the loneliest star. Look at those stars. Don’t they look as if they were single diamonds and sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire. But don’t fancy that all that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a notice-board, ‘Thou shalt not steal…’”

[The other priest said], “Well, I think that other worlds may perhaps rise higher than our reason. The mystery of heaven is unfathomable, and I for one can only bow my head.”

Then, with brow yet bent and without changing by the faintest shade his attitude or voice, he added:

“Just hand over that sapphire cross of yours, will you? We’re all alone here, and I could pull you to pieces like a straw doll.”

GK Chesterton, The Blue Cross

Reflection – The other day I had a quote from GKC’s Fr. Brown stories, and it got me thinking that there’s quite a bit in those stories besides detecting—little moments scattered here and there of Chestertonian wisdom on the lips of his little round priest. So, and as a light change from the somewhat heavy material from Catherine Doherty lately, I thought I’d spend some days mining ‘The Wisdom of Fr. Brown’ for gems. I will try to do so without spoiling the stories for those who haven’t read them.

Here, for example, we have the astonishing (perhaps, to us) statement that God Himself is bound by reason. Furthermore, that the moral law flows from reason. And that therefore the moral law is cosmic and universal and admits of no exception.

It is telling, of course, that the ‘other priest’ (who of course is not a priest at all, but an impostor and thief) is advancing his metaphysical theories about universes above reason and bowing his head in piety before the unknowability of it all, not out of great humility and wise modesty before the mystery, but because he wants to steal the sapphire cross Fr. Brown is carrying.

So often the webs of theories we spin about relativism and the infinite plasticity of the moral law, its endless variation and the provincial and provisional nature of the commandments all boil down to that: we want to do what we want to do. We work up all sorts of ingenious arguments for why we cannot really know what is and what is not, what the mind of God is and what morality might mean in this infinite expanding universe… but really, it’s all in service of our being able to steal this, go to bed with that, lie about x, cheat about y, and so forth.

So Fr. Brown’s notice board ‘Thou shalt not steal’ at the foot of the pearl cliffs is a sharp, square little reminder that all of that is bosh. The moral law springs from the mind of God, who has been kind enough to allow us access to it through our own use of sacred reason (and many, many human beings have used their reason to fundamentally figure it out, at least the main lines of it, with remarkable agreement), and for those of us who may be either too thick or too lazy or too rebellious to use our reason thus (those who just want to take that sapphire cross no matter what) He has revealed it in His Scriptures and entrusted it to His Church, which has faithfully taught that law for 2000 years.

That is the notice board, not some artificial construct imposing some silly arbitrary rule upon us, but a sign telling us what we already know, or should know, but choose to forget or deny or ignore. The Ten Commandments and the moral teaching of the Church are the notice board for our rebellious and dense humanity, and their jurisdiction is universal.

Monday, September 23, 2013

Face the Strange Changes

It is perhaps [the concept of] time which best helps us to understand philosophical idealism in which the human intellect measures the physical world, the whole of reality, the whole of being, and gives it is meaning. Reality has no meaning for an idealist when it is not known; it does not really exist.

This is understandable when we realize that experience, bound to the judgment of existence, primarily regards that-which-is-moved. Now, that-which-is-moved is bound to time, measured by the present moment. Consequently, our intellectual life, the development of our intellect, is conditioned by time. It is easy to conclude, therefore—as some have done—that our intellectual life is determined by time and, by this very fact, that how we know time determines how we know being, how we know that-which-is. Is this not the deepest confusion of our intellect—confusing that which determines the judgment of existence and that which conditions it?

Marie Dominique Philippe, Retracing Reality: A Philosophical Inquiry

Reflection - OK, I haven’t had anything like this on the blog for some time: a genuinely dense philosophical passage that may be a little daunting for those readers not inclined that way (which is most of my readers…). Bear with me, and all shall become clear.

Philippe’s book is about the loss of metaphysics in the modern world, which means the loss of a sense of a reality that is outside of us, undetermined by us, but which is accessible to us as genuine knowledge. In place of metaphysics, philosophy has retreated to analysis of language (analytic philosophy), analysis of experience (phenomenology), and social activism (the various branches of philosophy roughly emerging from Marxist theory).

Now what does this have to do with you and me and the price of eggs? The importance of doing the work of philosophical reflection is that, if we do not do it ourselves, someone else will do it for us. Philosophy happens, whether or not we are inclined that way, and either we have a hand in our own understanding of reality or a pre-fab understanding of reality trickles down to us from lofty heights of academia and is presented to us with all the force of dogmatic certainty previous ages reserved for papal pronouncements.

For example, what Philippe is really referring to here is the one unquestioned dogma of our time, the one thing everyone ‘just knows’, although they can’t tell you why they know it, assume it to such an extent that it can hardly be questioned, even though when you think of it, it is rife with internal logical contradictions to the point of absurdity.

Namely: all things are in constant flux. This is the ‘knowledge determined (not conditioned) by time’ Philippe refers to. The one thing everyone knows today is that the world is in a state of constant change and motion. The stars in the heavens, which in a previous scientific model of the world seemed to be fixed in place, are themselves rushing along in their course, as is the earth in its seeming immobility. The whole cosmos is in motion, and there is nothing fixed, nothing stable, nothing unchanging in this world, and this world is all there is.

This is absolutely accepted today. This is why it is inherently offensive to use the phrase I used yesterday on the blog, that a given action can be ‘intrinsically evil.’ Everything is in flux: just because murder is ‘experienced’ as wrong right now is no assurance that tomorrow’s man, fluxing away, will not ‘experience’ it as quite right and proper. And this is why the march of progress cannot be gainsaid: once the flux of events is moving steadily in a given direction, there is virtually no reason to oppose it; in fact, if anything is an unchanging and intrinsic evil, it appears to be the act of opposing ‘progress’ as it is defined today. ‘Ch-ch-ch-ch changes, face the strange changes’, the prophet Bowie enjoins on us as the one law of post-modernity.

Of course all this is stuff and nonsense and doesn’t hold up to a moment’s serious scrutiny. This is why people are discouraged from thinking very much these days: the philosophy handed out to us is nonsensical in the extreme. Here’s a thought experiment to show this: we are told that all is in flux, there are no immutable moral standards, and that the only moral course is to go with the flow of social progress and evolution.

So, let us posit the world fifty years from now. Europe, that bastion of all things socially progressive and au courant, has largely become an Islamic society (current demographic trends suggest this as inevitable). Now I realize we don’t know what that will look like, but let us imagine that the Muslim population of Europe has continued on the path it currently is on: radical, Wahabist, Taliban-style Islam. Sharia law is enforced throughout Europe. Women are forced to wear the niqab or burka, or be harassed or beaten or worse in public. Gays are arrested and executed. Jews… well let’s face it, there won’t be any Jews left in Europe in this scenario, one way or another. This scenario may or may not happen; for the purpose of the thought experiment, that is irrelevant.

Now, if we are true relativists, believing in nothing but ‘progress’ and going with the evolution of society, we can, logically, have no response to that but to say ‘that’s just great! Sign me up! Boo, Jews!’ If we resist that, if we ‘feel’, at least, that there is something deeply wrong in a society that does these things, we have made the first step to retracing reality, to saying there is something that is not determined by time, by flux, by change.

We have ceased to be relativists, and have begun to acknowledge the unchanging, the immutable, the presence of the true, the good, the beautiful, that lies under and underlies all our experience of change and flux in this world. We have begun, at least a bit, to bow before the unchangeable Law of God in this world.

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Lumbering Along in a Difficult Time

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

Matthew 7: 1-6

Reflection – So now we come to the one part of the Sermon on the Mount that everyone can quote from memory: judge not, lest ye be judged! In our age of moral relativism and sloppy thinking about right and wrong, good and evil, this one verse, taken out of context, has indeed been misused as a way of giving divine sanction to a confused false tolerance that rejects clear moral teaching.

Of course it is not that at all, as a close and careful reading of the text itself reveals. The Lord is not calling into question the existence of sawdust, planks, and specks, but merely pointing out that all of us are suffering from a bit of the old ‘wood-in-the-eye-syndrome.’ He is certainly not calling into question the existence of a binding moral law, real good, evil, and sin (the rest of the sermon would collapse into incoherence if he was), but merely pointing out that none of us are in much position to lord it over anyone else. We’re all a little besmeared and bloodied in the battle of good and evil, and no one is in a position to be harsh and judgmental of anyone else. But we live in a world that either tries to deny that this battle exists or insists on redrawing the lines of the battle in arbitrary or nonsensical patterns.

To stay with the sawdust, etc., imagery, we live in a world that denies the existence of lumber, not simply the relative proportions of planks vs. specks in various eyes. And so the Church and other people of biblical or traditional morality is put into this very difficult position. We are not to judge anyone; but we are also not to deny the material cause of judgment, namely human sin and a moral law that we all violate to some degree.

Some would argue that there is indeed right and wrong, good and evil, but who are we to know what it is, and how dare we tell anyone that this or that action is definitely wrong? But both faith and human reason acting in concert with faith tell us that the God who is author of the moral law must want us to know the moral law. It would be gravely unjust of Him to impose a law on us that we cannot be sure of. Meanwhile, there is a vast sweeping agreement among human cultures and religions about the main lines of the moral law, you know (C.S. Lewis’ Tao, in which he aligns moral texts from multiple religions and cultures, holds up well here).

And in areas where there is some disagreement among world religions and cultures—details about laws of marriage and sexuality, for example—the Catholic Church simply believes itself to be the bearer of God’s Spirit to teach God’s truth in these matters, and presents its teachings as such.

But there is no question that this has all become very anguished and perilous today. When so many reject the traditional moral wisdom of humanity and either embrace outright relativism or (much the same thing) make up their own private moral law, the very teaching of a binding and absolute moral law sounds like, and feels like, judgment. And there is a great call, then, not to water anything down, but to personal humility and holiness in all this. Every human being is my brother, my sister. We’re all in it together, all challenged to rise to a level of justice, purity, integrity that eludes all of us to some degree. Nobody is in any position whatsoever towards anyone else of superiority or haughtiness.

I’m not sure where the ‘pearls before swine’ part fits in. The Lord’s imagery is pretty harsh there (not that I’m criticizing!). It does strike me that we have to be careful about how and even when we present certain teachings to people. If someone is not ready to hear it, it may do them and us more harm than good, as the Lord so strikingly tells us in that verse. But great discernment and wisdom is required here.

The main thing is to humble our hearts before the Lord, to know deeply the truth of our own sinfulness and the deeper truth of God’s infinite mercy, and to strive for purity of heart and righteousness of action first. Then, and only then, will we be able to truly help our brothers and sisters in their own moral struggles in this most difficult and confusing time in which we are all called to live, and preach, the Gospel.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Let the Sun and the Moon Fall From the Sky

The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one willful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse.

St John Henry Newman

Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, Volume 1, Lecture 8

Reflection – I ran across this quote from Newman on Mark Shea’s blog, and immediately knew I wanted to blog about it. What a radical statement this is. What a horror, a detestation, an utter rejection of sin this entails. And how… utterly at variance with how most people, even most Catholics, I would say, actually think about the matter.

We are very quick, most of us, to excuse not only venial sins but grave ones, on the basis that to follow the moral law would entail suffering on the part of the person. We fornicate and commit adultery or sodomy, or tacitly approve these actions in others, because the worst possible thing we can imagine is to be lonely.

We cheat and steal, practice dishonesty in our businesses and work lives, horde the world’s goods to ourselves while others starve, or again tacitly approve these actions in others, because the worst possible thing is to be poor, and we must do whatever it takes not to be poor.

Lying, too – we tell lies to avoid suffering, embarrassment, or inconvenience, because what is the harm of a lie compared to those tremendous evils? What is the harm of any of this stuff—silly old moral rules!—compared to our temporal happiness, our prosperity, our immediate gratification of desire?

Newman is throwing down a tremendous challenge for us, then. Better that the sun and moon fall from the heavens and millions die in agony than one venial sin be committed! Wow. What do you all think about that? I am really interested in hearing from people, so much so that I just changed my comments setting so that people can comment unmoderated.

Personally, I think this is a matter of strict and unavoidable theo-logic. When we admit that any sin, even venial ones, weaken if not sever our union with God, and that (as I said yesterday) this union with God is the whole purpose of the entire cosmos, then it is clear that even a single venial sin is a more serious matter, with more riding on it, than any amount of events and calamities that are not sin.

So all of this is a grand and sweeping condemnation of and a pretty strong theological argument against the moral theory of consequentialism. This theory, which is the ruling operative ethical theory in society at large, is that when evaluating the moral status of an action we do not first look at whether this action is intrinsically good or evil, but on what the results of the action will be.

So if we see a bunch of results that are all rainbows and sunshine and happy happy joy joy—go ahead! Tell that lie! Steal that money! Sleep with that person! And if the results we foresee are all storm clouds and desolation and starving to death in a garret somewhere, well then, don’t let a bunch of old men in skirts tell you there’s anything wrong with breaking them rules! Do what ya gotta do, baby.

The fact is, of course, that the results of any single action we perform are like ripples in a pond, and we cannot foresee any of them beyond the immediate and obvious. Consequentialism fails as a moral theory right there, since the data one must use to evaluate morality is simply not available to us. But Newman goes much further, and argues that the consequence of a single venial sin, insofar as it is a sin, outweighs a universe of temporal benefits.

Of course, moral heroism, which we are all called to, says it is far better to starve to death on the streets than to tell a single lie or break even the least of the commandments of God. We just had this in the Gospel yesterday—if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off… better to enter heaven with one hand than hell intact.

Serious stuff, serious challenge, seriously controversial in our modern day of government surveillance, drone killings, torture, abortion, pollution, and sexual libertinism. (Notice how I include issues bound to offend both conservatives and liberals there!). So… what do you all think of that?