Moral Powers, Fragile Beliefs: Essays in Moral and Religious Philosophy

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Moral Powers, Fragile Beliefs

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Moral Powers, Fragile Beliefs Essays in Moral and Religious Philosophy

Edited by Joseph Carlisle James Carter Daniel Whistler

The Continuum International Publishing Group 80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038 The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX www.continuumbooks.com Copyright © 2011 Joseph Carlisle, James Carter and Daniel Whistler, and contributors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the permission of the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-4031-9

Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in the United States of America

Contents Acknowledgements Contributors Editors’ Introduction Cluster 1: Self/Other Relations 1. Morality, Metaphysics and Religion Raimond Gaita

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3

2. Love, Hate and Moral Inclusion Anca Gheaus

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3. The Discipline of Pious Reason: Goethe, Herder, Kant Daniel Whistler

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Cluster 2: The Fragility of Life 4. On Loss of Confidence: Dissymmetry, Doubt, Deprivation in the Power to Act and (the Power) to Suffer Pamela Sue Anderson 5. The Passionate Life: On Grief and Human Experience James Carter 6. A Ricoeurian Hymn to Humanity: ‘You Are Better Than Your Actions’ Michele Kueter Petersen Cluster 3: Philosophy via Art 7. Love and Transcendence Martin Warner

83 109

131

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8. Philosophy, Morality and the Self: Against Thinness Christopher Hamilton

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9. The Holy Doubt: Jack Kerouac and Postmodernism Joseph Carlisle

202

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Contents

Cluster 4: The Vitality of Belief 10. Religion in Its Material Context: Some Considerations Drawn from Contemporary Philosophies of Place 221 Mark Wynn 11. Play, Psychoanalysis and Feminist Philosophy of Religion Beverley Clack 12. Religious Belief and the Disregard of Reality Brian R. Clack Index

243 261

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Acknowledgements First and foremost, we wish to thank the contributors for their tireless efforts in making this volume happen. We are very grateful for all the help given by the team at Continuum (especially Haaris Naqvi) and also the anonymous readers whose suggestions were invaluable. Thanks to Jenny Bunker, Andrew Teal and Johannes Zachhuber for all their encouragement, and to Pia Carter for her support in organizing the conference from which some ideas for this volume first emerged. Most of all, we owe a massive debt of gratitude for all the support given by Pamela Sue Anderson without whom this volume would not have come into being.

CONTRIBUTORS Pamela Sue Anderson is Reader in Philosophy of Religion, University of Oxford, and Fellow in Philosophy, Regent’s Park College, Oxford. Her books include Ricoeur and Kant (1993); A Feminist Philosophy of Religion: The Rationality and Myths of Religious Belief (1998); Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Critical Readings (2004) (co-edited with Beverley Clack); New Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Contestations and Transcendence Incarnate (2009) (edited); and Kant and Theology (2010) (co-authored with Jordan Bell). She is now completing an Ashgate monograph, Gendering Philosophy of Religion: Reason, Love and Our Epistemic Locatedness, and is also pursuing three other projects on gendered confidence, on a philosophy of love and on Michèle Le Doeuff. Joseph Carlisle is currently completing a DPhil in Theology at the University of Oxford, focusing on the relationship between theology and popular literature. In his doctoral dissertation, The Theological Poetics of Jack Kerouac: A Theological Reading of On the Road, he uses Paul Tillich to unpack the religious motifs in Kerouac’s work. James Carter is completing a doctoral thesis in Philosophy and Theology at the University of Oxford on the later thought of Paul Ricoeur. His main research interests lie in moral philosophy, moral psychology, post-Kantian philosophy of religion and social and political philosophy. He has published in both moral philosophy and the philosophy of religion, most recently on the interface between the two in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant (‘Reconsidering Virtue: Kant’s Moral Religion’, New Blackfriars, forthcoming, 2011). Beverley Clack is Professor in the Philosophy of Religion at Oxford Brookes University. Her publications include Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Critical Readings, co-edited with Pamela Sue Anderson (2004); Sex and Death: A Reappraisal of Human Mortality (2002); Misogyny in the Western Philosophical Tradition (1999); and The Philosophy of Religion,

Contributors

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co-authored with Brian R. Clack (1998; fully revised second edition, 2008). She is currently working on two books which apply psychoanalytic theory to the philosophy of religion. Brian R. Clack is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Diego. He is author of Wittgenstein, Frazer and Religion and An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Religion, as well as coauthor (with Beverley Clack) of The Philosophy of Religion: A Critical Introduction. Raimond Gaita is Professor of Moral Philosophy at King’s College, London and Professor of Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University. He has published widely in moral philosophy, including Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception (second edition, 2004) and A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice (2000). His memoir of his father, Romulus, My Father (2000), has been made into an award-winning feature film of the same name. Anca Gheaus earned a PhD in philosophy from the Central European University in Budapest with a thesis entitled Care and Justice; Why They Cannot Go Together All The Way and now she is a post-doctoral researcher at the Philosophy Faculty of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Her main interests are in ethics, political philosophy and feminist theory. She has published several book chapters and journal articles on the relationship between care and justice in Hypatia, Feminist Theory, Basic Income Studies and Raisons Politiques. Christopher Hamilton is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy of Religion at King’s College, London. He has published papers on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Simone Weil, and in moral philosophy and aesthetics. He is the author of Living Philosophy: Reflections on Life, Meaning and Morality (Edinburgh University Press, 2001) and Middle Age (Acumen, 2009). Michele Kueter Petersen is a PhD student in Modern Religious Thought at the University of Iowa. Her interests include philosophical hermeneutics, philosophical theology and philosophy of religion. Martin Warner is Associate Fellow in the Centre for Research in Philosophy, Literature and the Arts at the University of Warwick, and co-editor of Ashgate’s book series ‘Transcending Boundaries in Philosophy and

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Contributors

Theology’. Relevant publications include Philosophical Finesse: Studies in the Art of Rational Persuasion, A Philosophical Study of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, together with edited volumes on Plato’s literary strategies (The Language of the Cave) and The Bible as Rhetoric. Daniel Whistler is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool. He is also the co-editor of After the Postsecular and the Postmodern: New Essays in Continental Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010). Mark Wynn is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy of Religion in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Emotional Experience and Religious Understanding (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and Faith and Place (Oxford University Press, 2009).

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION

At the Intersection of Moral and Religious Philosophy James Carter and Daniel Whistler

The Structure of the Volume The present volume contains 12 essays intent on furthering the conversation between moral and religious philosophy. They employ either moral philosophy to aid or to criticize philosophy of religion or philosophy of religion to aid or to criticize moral philosophy. All 12 essays are exercises in critical reflection on the moral capacities and religious dispositions needed to traverse the ambiguities of existence. They describe, analyse and evaluate that which empowers us and that which makes us vulnerable – our moral powers and fragile beliefs – in order to arrive at a philosophical understanding of living in the world. The last few years have witnessed a marked increase of interest among some philosophers of religion in developments within moral philosophy, while an increasing number of moral philosophers have conversely appealed to religious resources in order to deepen their conceptual vocabulary. Moral Powers, Fragile Beliefs continues this exchange. It furthers the process of mutual enrichment between moral and religious philosophy that has already begun. Drawing on the insights and innovations of feminist philosophy, literature, art, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, the history of philosophy and, crucially, everyday lived experience, the essays collected herein explore and discover new domains and tools for thinking through the collaboration of moral philosophy and philosophy of religion. The aim is a rejuvenated conception of philosophy as engaged – that is, a philosophy concerned with traversing the complexities of living in the world. This recent exchange between the two fields has come as something of a surprise within Anglo-American philosophy: not only for the general reason that increasing specialization is the norm, but also because over the past century (if not longer) philosophy of religion and moral philosophy in particular have remained in a state of splendid isolation to each other. Moral philosophy feared the pieties of religious traditions to which it was once yoked, while philosophy of religion feared the theological temptations of religious moralism. Both fears were and remain justified; however, such isolation has also bred discontent. In short, there has emerged a pervasive

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sense of dissatisfaction over the growing ‘disregard of reality’1 that, until the 1980s at least, characterized both fields. The present volume is split into four parts, each interrogating the intersection of moral and religious philosophy with the aim of contributing to and developing a mutually formative conversation between the two. The first cluster, ‘Self/Other Relations’, considers what religion has to offer an ethical account of relations between moral subjects. What material, the contributors to this cluster ask, can the analysis of religion provide for moral thought? The second cluster, ‘The Fragility of Life’, turns to what moral philosophy can offer the philosophy of religion. In particular, the contributors assess the value of discourse surrounding moral capability, disability and the emotions for developing new avenues of enquiry in the philosophy of religion. The third cluster, ‘Philosophy via Art’, raises the possibility of appropriating resources from literature and art to advance this conversation. The essays plunder the rich vocabulary and conceptual armoury of the arts for the sake of engaged philosophical enquiry into moral and religious topics. Finally, the fourth cluster, ‘The Vitality of Belief’, offers a critical glance at philosophy of religion as it is currently practiced, arguing that additional concepts and modes of thought from moral philosophy are required in order to energize it. In this Introduction, we wish to give a brief description of the current state of relations between moral and religious philosophy, as well as indicating what we think are the main objectives of a conversation between them. The questions that we sketch a framework for answering are: why do moral philosophy and philosophy of religion need to be brought together? What does philosophy gain from this juxtaposition? What are the historical precedents for this conversation? Our provisional answers to these questions will therefore provide the context in which the subsequent contributions should be placed.

Deepening Moral Philosophy through Philosophy of Religion Since the mid-1980s and the publication of Bernard Williams’ Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985), a new tendency has arisen within Anglophone moral philosophy. Surpassing not only the abstractions and formalism of mid-twentieth century ethics, but also the communitarian ideologies of the MacIntyreans, moral philosophy has taken on a new form. Many of the contributors to this volume focus on the ‘new form’ of thinking practiced by Williams, Raimond Gaita and Martha Nussbaum, for each of these authors offers a revitalized conception of philosophical


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enquiry. Their work marks moral philosophy’s descent from its ivory tower, and subsequent engagement with concrete and complex modes of ethical living in the world.2 Take Williams’ concept of ‘reflection’, a ‘general attempt to make the best sense of our life, and so of our intellectual activities, in the situation in which we find ourselves’ (2006a, p. 182): reflective thinking is not concerned with constructing systems of morality, meta-ethical reasoning or linguistic analysis; instead, it is (at least potentially) a social, historical, political and embodied mode of encountering reality thoughtfully. It discards the clear-cut structures of logic for the ambiguity of existence, and in consequence engages in alternative modes of expression and reflection – including art, drama, psychoanalysis and, above all, religion. In many ways, then, this new wave of reflective moral philosophy represents a challenge to the increasingly abstract, disembodied and disembedded state of what Williams has called ‘the professional self-image of philosophy’ (2006b, p. 202).3 Gaita writes similarly of a philosophy in touch with reality, that leads us towards reality (2000, pp. 164, 173). It is fascinated by ‘the contingencies that have nourished particular cultures, particular forms of living and particular natural languages’ (ibid., p. 285). Similar philosophical preoccupations can be found outside of Anglophone philosophy as well. The late work of Paul Ricoeur, especially, manifests an almost identical concern for reflection – a reflective thinking scrutinizing the specificities and ambiguities of human reality.4 Indeed, the psychoanalytic and phenomenological traditions in which French thought in particular is entrenched are precisely focused upon a ‘delicate empiricism’ (Goethe, 1998, §509) of concrete situations. It should be remembered that as long ago as 1947, Simone de Beauvoir wrote The Ethics of Ambiguity.5

Moral philosophy and the language of religion Reflective and engaged moral philosophy rejects abstractions. In many ways, contemporary moral philosophy is heir to ordinary language philosophy and the later Wittgenstein – but crucially rather than reducing language to a pre-established lowest common denominator, ‘the language of a life rendered ordinary by the subtraction of the imagination’ (Williams, 2006b, p. 208), this is a form of philosophy which revels in the rhetorical twists and turns of natural languages. It is a form of philosophy intensely invested in the imaginative creations of language and the light they shed on how we live our lives. Gaita, for example, is concerned not with the language of the academy, but with ‘particular natural language[s], historically rich and dense, shaped by and shaping

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the life of a people’ (2000, pp. xxix–xxx). Foremost among the natural languages with which moral philosophy has come to engage are religion and literature. Gaita’s work is exemplary in its engagement with religious discourse. His example of the nun (ibid., pp. 17–27) whom he encountered in a psychiatric ward and whose unconditionally loving behaviour towards the patients serves to reveal their full humanity, has become a classic of its kind. We see here both Gaita’s focus on concrete examples as revelatory of new conceptual patterns and also his fearlessness to confront the question of what religion adds to moral philosophy.6 Gaita concludes that while it does not seem likely that it is the nun’s metaphysical beliefs in a transcendent deity which determine her moral outlook7, there is much to be said for the significance of the religious vocabulary in which her moral reasoning (presumably) takes place. He writes, Only someone who is religious can speak seriously of the sacred, but such talk informs the thoughts of most of us whether or not we are religious, for it shapes our thoughts about the way in which human beings limit our will as does nothing else in nature. If we are not religious, we will often search for one of the inadequate expressions which are available to us to say what we hope will be a secular equivalent of it . . . In my judgment these are ways of trying to say what we feel we need to say when we are estranged from the conceptual resources we need to say it . . . Not one of [the secular equivalents] has the simple power of the religious way of speaking.

Gaita goes on to consider why this is the case, Where does this power come from? Not, I am quite sure, from esoteric theological or philosophical elaborations . . . [Rather] because of the place the impartial love of saints has occupied in our culture, there has developed a language of love whose grammar has transformed our understanding of what it is for a human being to be a unique kind of limit to our will. (ibid., pp. 23–4)8

The language of saintly love provides something that human reason when divorced and isolated from its religious traditions fails to. It is not because these traditions are religious that they are important; it is merely a contingent fact of Western history that the vocabularies of religious traditions already possess a depth, richness and density to which other traditions can only aspire. Wynn articulates this conclusion perfectly, While there may be no abstract conceptual requirement that saintly love be conditioned by the language of divine love, it may well be that, as a matter of contingent, historical fact, such love needs the language of religion, since that language offers our richest, most sustained exploration of the thought. (2005, p. 43)


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The upshot is that moral philosophy needs to appeal to religion in order to maximize its potential and crystallize its reasoning to the fullest possible extent. Hence, at a key point in the argument of A Common Humanity, Gaita will appeal to Augustine’s Confessions (2000, pp. 215–17). Ethics needs the resources of religion to complete itself. It is for this reason that the new wave of moral philosophy has entered into dialogue with philosophy of religion – as a means of enriching and deepening its vocabulary. Moral philosophy has plundered religion for resources. This practice of plundering is discussed in the first cluster of the volume, ‘Self/Other Relations’. In ‘Morality, Metaphysics and Religion’, Gaita returns to his example of the nun to analyse more fully the significance of the religious context of her conduct. Gaita claims that standard philosophical concepts alone do not adequately represent the full register of moral philosophy. Rather, there are other forms of expression and attention which perform a philosophically significant revelatory function but do not exist within the conventional vocabulary of philosophers. In particular, the language of saintly love, as embodied by the nun, yields the idea that persons such as the patients in the psychiatric ward can be seen as fully human – in a manner that would not be possible, for example, with the respect- and dignity-oriented language of Kantian ethics. Moreover, Gaita urges that this language can be employed independent of any particular metaphysical framework from which it might originate. As such, moral philosophy has at its disposal a rich array of resources in the various forms of expression available in religious traditions. In ‘Love for Particular Others and Moral Inclusion’, Anca Gheaus returns us to Gaita’s example. She does so in order to raise questions about the nature of impartial love typical of most religious and secular ethical frameworks. She claims that the love which can put us on the path to moral inclusion need not be a universal – for example, Christian – love, nor does it need to be an impersonal love for humanity. In Gaita’s example, says Gheaus, the nun’s love is best understood as impartial – but would not partial love have achieved the same result? Would this love have to be, and could it really be, unconditional? Or is the existence of such love a myth, a necessary idealization? Drawing on feminist ethics’ concerns with care, Gheaus constructs a powerful alternative to dominant religious and secular assumptions about impartiality.

Philosophy, religion and the literary imagination Another rich natural language on which moral philosophy has drawn is the vocabulary and imagery of literature (and the arts in general). Many

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moral philosophers (most famously, Nussbaum) have utilized the resources of poetry, fiction and music to attain a greater ‘density’ in their description of moral concepts.9 This enterprise is considered in the third cluster of the present volume. Christopher Hamilton, for example, pursues this project – but with the added twist of bringing his background in philosophy of religion to bear on such discussions. Moral philosophy, he argues, is almost completely inattentive to notions of an individual’s sensibility, temperament, moods and vitality. He thus appeals to the sensitive languages of literature in order to understand the inner life, drawing on examples to illustrate the means by which we might begin to express that which is inexpressible in conceptual terms. Martin Warner and Joseph Carlisle, meanwhile, consider whether such a plundering of literary sources is valuable within philosophy of religion itself. Art becomes a material for new practices of thought. Both Warner and Carlisle attempt to provide some much-needed density to concepts in philosophy of religion. Warner examines what density can be brought to bear on the concept of love. Beginning with the work of Austin Farrer and Basil Mitchell and setting out on a route that passes by Augustine, Aquinas, Dante and Eliot, Warner builds up a cumulative picture of the legacy of Christian understandings of love, especially the problematic distinctions between eros, philia and agape. Carlisle, on the other hand, considers what the ‘beat’ novels of Jack Kerouac have to offer philosophy’s mediation between the divine and the way we inhabit the world. He shows how Kerouac’s vision of the divine as existing immanently in ‘holy doubt’ can be read as a creative thorn in the side of moral and religious philosophy, inciting them to further insight.

Opening out Philosophy of Religion through Moral Philosophy Given the advances moral philosophy has made in the last two decades, it is of little surprise that philosophers of religion experiencing disenchantment at the way the discipline is currently practiced have turned to these exciting developments for inspiration and stimulation. Philosophers of religion such as John Cottingham, Mark Wynn, Pamela Sue Anderson and Beverley Clack have absorbed many of the practices and insights of Nussbaum, Gaita and Williams into their work. There are two ideals at stake in this ‘opening out’ of philosophy of religion – the imperative for a new content and the imperative for a new style.


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Content When it comes to questions of moral philosophy within philosophy of religion, two topics have traditionally dominated to the exclusion of everything else: theodicy on the one hand and the Euthyphro dilemma and its offshoot, divine command theory, on the other. While these two topics are of course valuable pursuits for the philosopher of religion, they should not be pursued to the exclusion of others. Issues of spirituality and human value (Cottingham), emotions and the sense of place (Wynn), sexuality, death, immanence and transcendence (Anderson and Clack) are now being brought to the forefront of philosophical engagements with religion as well. In terms of content therefore, philosophy of religion has undergone, and still needs to undergo10, something of an ‘opening out’ – releasing it from the dead-hand of the topic, so as to philosophically explore the complexity of religion from an engaged perspective. The rhetoric of ‘topic’ which informs philosophical education and practice in the English-speaking world has, we contend, stifled much of its potential creativity. Philosophers of religion – in order to qualify as ‘legitimate’ or even ‘respected’ – are forced to produce endless variations on the same theme. These ‘topics’ suffocate, and only by opening new windows and doors to allow philosophy of religion to communicate with other fields and modes of thinking can one hope to revive it. Sustained engagement with themes in moral philosophy thus represents an opportunity for transposing philosophy of religion into new domains. It is for this reason we have labelled each of the parts of this volume, ‘clusters’. Such a designation is meant to suggest a looser affiliation of concerns than the more formal ‘topic’; it is meant to promote individual and even idiosyncratic exploration of the intersection between moral and religious philosophy without thereby delineating in advance prescribed areas of interest. Moral Powers, Fragile Beliefs is a volume intent on new voyages and new discoveries.

Style A similar story can be told about style. The majority of philosophy of religion has remained in thrall to the logical argumentation and tools of linguistic analysis which were forged during the birth pangs of analytic philosophy. The question asked by many recent philosophers of religion is:

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are these tools and styles sufficient?11 In asking such a question, they have begun to interrogate the practices we have inherited, drawing in this regard on the critiques already well established within the new wave of moral philosophy. Williams’ attack on the abstractness of linguistic analysis in ethics, for example, surely has weight in philosophy of religion as well: just as goodness and justice in the abstract say nothing about the concrete complexities of ethical living in the world12, so too dissecting abstract terms such as omnipotence, revelation and natural law reveals little about religious phenomena as they are lived. An engaged and reflective response is required by philosophers, instead. At stake in respect to style, therefore, is the possibility of other ways of thinking philosophically, other ways of conceptualizing religion than those we have inherited – yet, always, the same demands on any form of philosophy remain: rigour, clarity and cogency. As Stephen Mulhall has recently written: The point here is not to deny that more familiar forms of critical reflection, of the kind associated with philosophy in general and analytical philosophy in particular, and which tend to focus on questions of inferential validity in the context of assertion and argument, are real and important elements in the human rational armoury. It is simply to point out that there are other forms of critical reflection as well – ones with which we are perhaps more familiar in extraphilosophical contexts, but which are no less concerned to deepen our understanding and enrich our thought by embodying certain kinds of affective response to things, and inviting us to share those responses, as well as to critically evaluate them. (2009, p. 9)

The question therefore arises: are there other forms of rigour, other forms of clarity and other forms of cogency than those embedded within traditional analytic philosophy? What else, in short, is philosophy of religion able to do?13 ‘Getting it right has to be in place [in order to philosophize], and the same thing goes, indisputably, for clarity and precision. But there is more than one kind of all these things’ (Williams, 2006b, p. 203). One always needs to ask: which clarity, which precision, is appropriate for philosophy of religion? Here the appeal of critical reflection becomes obvious. The realization among moral philosophers in the last 30 years that phronesis is not deduction (that moral reasoning is irreconcilable with logical reasoning) has led to experiments with new modes of thinking and writing that are intended to pinpoint the procedure of moral thought and convey it as adequately as possible. As a result, a whole host of meditative, confessional and even literary styles have emerged – all with the same aim of enacting what is at issue in moral reflection without thereby renouncing rigour, clarity or cogency.


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The contributors to the second and fourth clusters, ‘The Fragility of Life’ and ‘The Vitality of Belief’, concentrate precisely on the opening out of philosophy of religion through bringing tools from moral philosophy (and its intellectual allies, like psychoanalysis) to bear on this field of thought as it is currently practiced. The second cluster questions the capacity of philosophy of religion alone to analyse religion in its concrete manifestations. There is a depth to human experience that philosophy of religion in its current guise is ill equipped to address. In ‘The Passionate Life: On Grief and Human Experience’, James Carter draws on resources in moral philosophy and literature to offer a phenomenological engagement with grief and human vulnerability, proposing a new form in which the philosophy of religion might fruitfully come to terms with our moral powers and fragile beliefs. Similarly, Michele Petersen’s reading of Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of contemplative silence opens a hitherto unexplored avenue for philosophers of religion to confront the aporetic depths of human experience. By comparison, the fourth cluster takes the form of a more critical project, questioning what philosophy of religion lacks and how it might be revitalized. By engaging with the phenomenology of space, psychoanalysis and verificationism, respectively, Wynn, Beverley Clack and Brian Clack each pose critical questions to analytic philosophy of religion, while also offering a rich range of suggestions as to how to deepen understanding and enrich thought while still developing a capacity for self-regulation. Mark Wynn considers the idea of space as a springboard from which new philosophical enquiries might begin. Despite the obvious importance of sacred spaces, spaces for devotion and spaces for confession within almost all religious traditions, the neglect of ‘space’ by philosophers starkly reveals their lack of phenomenological engagement with religious practices qua lived. Beverley Clack and Brian Clack both use their essays to suggest the potential significance of concepts drawn from Freudian psychoanalysis to rectify deficiencies in the current practice of philosophy of religion. These appeals to this neglected, yet rich tradition of thought add one more dimension to the engaged philosophy which is in the process of being articulated in this volume. Beverley Clack argues that a notion of play – developed from Freud and Winnicott’s work, as well as that of feminist philosophers – should hold a central place in our philosophical analysis of religious experience. Brian Clack criticizes contemporary philosophy of religion for its patent ‘disregard of reality’; in this context, the Freudian idea of wish-fulfilment becomes a critical tool for exposing illusions. Only through these interrogative procedures can philosophy of religion become an engaged practice once again.

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A philosophy of religion newly opened up in these ways would be a genuinely post-analytic philosophy of religion – testing the analytic tradition so as to discover what is of use for engaged reflection on religion and what is not. It would fulfil the criteria set by Williams in his late essay, ‘What will Philosophy Become?’ (2006b), for a reformed philosophical enterprise, casting off unnecessary scientism to instead engage with imagination and the arts, society and history.

The History of Moral and Religious Philosophy It is this notion of a philosophy of religion which takes history (and especially its own history) seriously that we would finally like to discuss. Until the late eighteenth century, there was little distinction between moral and religious philosophy – ‘religious’ in the early modern period did not name what or whether one believed, but how one acted. By the midtwentieth century, however, philosophy had completely splintered into a plurality of specializations, and so philosophical enquiry into religion was separated out from philosophical enquiry into ethics. There are advantages and disadvantages to specialization. The benefits were and are immense: moral philosophy was liberated from the normative demands religious traditions made on it, and it was now able to consider ethical life freely and disinterestedly. Philosophy of religion, moreover, no longer needed to preach about right and wrong. Specialization was necessary to allow both fields to come into their own. Nothing is more symptomatic of the gulf that now separates the two fields than the position of religious ethics: the philosophical examination of ethical concepts drawn from religious traditions fits neatly neither into philosophy of religion nor moral philosophy; it has in fact frequently migrated to theology to find a home. This volume is not an exercise in religious ethics. The contributors herein are concerned neither with the ethical significance of religion nor the religious significance of ethics. The intersection is between philosophy of religion and moral philosophy. However, even with this proviso, it is still worth asking: while much has been gained by this process of specialization, what has been lost? That is, both philosophy of religion and moral philosophy need to attend far more seriously to the resources concealed and neglected in their joint traditions. There is of course no question of a return to the past; rather, what is at issue is the appropriation of the past for the present. What insights and practices can be rescued from the history of philosophy and put back to use in a post-analytic age?


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Obviously, much work has been done already in moral philosophy to investigate this tradition. Nussbaum’s appropriation of Aristotle in support of a modern, broadly liberal political philosophy (1986, 2006) is perhaps the most famous example, while Susan Neiman’s engagement with a host of figures in the history of philosophy to reconsider the problem of evil (2002) and, more recently, the moral fabric of contemporary Western society (2008) is also exemplary. One illustration of this process within philosophy of religion, on the other hand, is Cottingham’s re-engagement with the work of Blaise Pascal. Pascal is exemplary in, on the one hand, his refusal to dissociate moral and religious philosophy and, on the other, his experimental attempts at discovering new content and new styles by which to mutually enrich both moral and religious philosophy. Pascal notoriously writes, ‘The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing’ (2003, §423). That is, there are forms of thinking distinct from those historically employed in the geometrical and logical traditions. ‘Heart’ here does not designate an irrational (or worse, antirational) principle of religious intuition, but a form of thoughtful judgement – judgement that subtly discriminates between the various ‘sentiments’ stimulated by our worldly existence, rather than analysing disembodied concepts.14 It is an ‘alternative conception of rationality’ (Warner, 1989, p. 31). The esprit juste comprises both an esprit de géométrie and an esprit de finesse – a finesse that delicately traverses the materials of our lives. Moreover, despite that fact that Pascal’s Pensées are an accidental product of a premature death, their style – aphorisms with a sprinkling of dialogue and other non-conventional philosophical forms – is itself an aid in cultivating this finesse.15 Obviously, the traditions shared by moral and religious philosophy go beyond one or two thinkers picked from the last 2500 years. One of the most urgent requirements for a post-analytic philosophy is to recover the depth and resources of all these traditions, so as to reinvigorate and renew contemporary investigation into moral and religious thought.16 In this regard it is worth naming one recent work which provides a template for such an approach: A. W. Moore’s Noble in Reason, Infinite in Faculty: Themes and Variations in Kant’s Moral and Religious Philosophy (2003). The subtitle here tells it all: Moore works to reciprocally enrich moral and religious philosophy through an historical enquiry into Kant’s thought. The two fields begin to complement each other by means of an unlikely, but productive historical grounding. It is in Moore’s footsteps that Anderson and Whistler tread in this volume. They both employ the history of philosophy to deepen the conversation between moral and religious philosophy. Pamela Sue Anderson achieves this by appeal (via Ricoeur) to

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Spinoza’s Ethics, as she develops a conception of (ethical) confidence which requires belief in oneself as part of nature, in which each individual can come to understand both the power to act and the power to suffer. Anderson’s engagement with the history of philosophy thus results in a vision that succeeds in rendering moral and religious philosophy ultimately inseparable. Daniel Whistler’s chapter interrogates the neglect of the concept of piety in both moral and religious philosophy, and identifies the reason for this lack in the eighteenth-century emergence of disinterested fields of philosophical enquiry. Piety – as a form of interest – was excluded from these newly formed disciplines. Moral Powers, Fragile Beliefs is, therefore, a book about possibilities: the possibilities for a moral philosophy that takes religious discourse seriously and the possibilities for a philosophy of religion that learns from moral philosophy. It is a book that not only talks about, but also practices the mutual enrichment of two fields of enquiry.

Notes 1. A phrase explored at length in Brian Clack’s essay. 2. Unfortunately, this is not to say that this new tendency in contemporary moral philosophy has by any means emerged as the status quo. Instead, current debates in Anglophone moral philosophy appear to be drawn, on the one hand, to particular issues in moral psychology that converge with action theory and philosophy of mind; and, on the other hand, to an increased engagement with rational choice theory and other models of analysis drawn from the social sciences. 3. We have no wish to reject ‘analytic’ thought in its entirety. There are many caricatures of this tradition of philosophy (that, for example, it is merely concerned with linguistic analysis) which need to be disputed. Our attitude is rather that of Cottingham’s: ‘Anglophone philosophy is a far richer and more exciting discipline today than it was 40 years ago, when it was largely preoccupied with conceptual analysis. The ship is afloat and sails a wide sea. Yet for all that, there remains a sense that the philosophical voyage has somehow become tamer, more predictable, than it used to be – more like joining a carefully planned cruise than venturing forth on the uncharted ocean’ (2005, p. vii). He continues later ‘The approach to be taken in this book is in no sense intended to be disparaging of the analytic tradition: goals such as conceptual clarity and precise argumentation seem to me important elements of any philosophising . . . [But standard analytic] techniques, even in the hands of the virtuoso practitioner, often seem somehow to miss the mark, or at least to need supplementing, when we are dealing with the phenomena of religious allegiance and its significance . . . Our philosophical discourse about religion may be in need of a certain supplementation or broadening’ (ibid., pp. 2–3). 4. See especially Ricoeur, 2007.


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5. At stake in pointing to the similarities between (say) Ricoeur’s work and Gaita’s is a philosophy indifferent to any sharp compartmentalization into ‘analytic’ or ‘continental’; indeed, the rhetoric of ‘post-analytic’ we employ later in the Introduction is precisely meant to blur such borders. Ideally, philosophy should consist in a multiplicity of perspectives and practices – the logical, the speculative, the engaged, the contemplative and so on – and one of the virtues, we believe, of this volume is its inclusion of many such perspectives and practices, not so as to synthesize them once more into a monolithic whole, but so as to allow the conversation between moral and religious philosophy to take on new, unexpected twists and turns. 6. Conversely, Gaita’s work has no less been invoked as an example of what moral philosophy adds to philosophy of religion. See Wynn, 2009. 7. ‘If the nun were questioned she might have told a religious or theological or metaphysical story about the people to whom she responded with a love of such purity. But one need not believe it . . . to be certain about the revelatory character of her behaviour . . . The purity of her loving proves something, but not any particular religious faith or doctrine’ (2000, pp. 20–1). The problem as Gaita sees it is that metaphysical stories can be true or false, but the quality of her behaviour is indisputable – ‘the notion of a mistake has no clear application here’ (Wynn, 2005, p. 39). 8. See further Gaita, 2000, pp. xxi–xxvi. 9. See in particular Nussbaum, 1990. The term ‘density’ is drawn from Christopher Hamilton’s contribution to this volume. 10. Indeed, in many respects Anglophone philosophy of religion lags behind moral philosophy which has been far more open to engagement with other disciplines and new issues. Philosophy of religion remains dominated to a far greater degree by variations on a small handful of questions largely concerned with the attributes of the God of Christian theism. 11. See in particular Cottingham, 2005 and Harris and Insole, 2005. 12. As Williams markedly puts it: ‘Of much philosophy purportedly about ethical or political subjects (and other kinds as well) one may reasonably ask: what if someone speaking to me actually sounded like that?’ (2006b, p. 206). 13. See Cottingham, 2008, p. 233. 14. See further Warner, 1989, pp. 158–60, 183 and Cottingham, 2005, chapter 1. 15. See Warner, 1989, p. 187. 16. In Warner’s words (1989, p. 3), what is needed are studies that ‘seek to help re-enfranchise a range of voices, procedures and positions which have long been marginalized by the dominance of the geometric method of philosophical argument. [Such] case-studies point beyond themselves to a conception of philosophy as an activity of interrogation (including selfinterrogation) for which the paradigms associated with analysis and systembuilding are inadequate’.

Bibliography Cottingham, J. (2005), The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy, and Human Value. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Cottingham, J. (2008), ‘The self, the good life, the transcendent’, in Nafsika Athanassoulis and Samantha Vice (eds), The Moral Life: Essays in Honour of John Cottingham. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 231–74. Gaita, R. (2000), A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice. London: Routledge. Gaita, R. (2004), Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception (second edn). London: Routledge. Goethe, J. W. (1998), Maxims and Aphorisms, trans. E. Stopp, ed. P. Hutchinson. London: Penguin. Harris, H. and C. Insole (eds) (2005), Faith and Philosophical Analysis: The Impact of Analytical Philosophy on the Philosophy of Religion. Aldershot: Ashgate. Moore, A. W. (2003), Noble in Reason, Infinite in Faculty: Themes and Variations in Kant’s Moral and Religious Philosophy. London: Routledge. Mulhall, S. (2009), The Wounded Animal: J. M. Coetzee and the Difficulty of Reality in Literature and Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Neiman, S. (2002), Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Neiman, S. (2008), Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-up Idealists. London: Bodley Head. Nussbaum, M. C. (1986), The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (1990), Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (2006), Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pascal, B. (2003), Pensées, trans. A. Krailsheimer (revised edn). London: Penguin. Ricoeur, P. (2007), ‘Autonomy and Vulnerability’, in Reflections on the Just, trans. D. Pellauer. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Warner, M. (1989), Philosophical Finesse: Studies in the Art of Rational Persuasion. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Williams, B. (1985), Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Williams, B. (2006a), ‘Philosophy as a humanistic discipline’, in A. W. Moore (ed.), Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 180–99. Williams, B. (2006b), ‘What might philosophy become?’, in A. W. Moore (ed.), Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 200–14. Wynn, M. R. (2005), Emotional Experience and Religious Understanding: Integrating Perception, Conception, and Feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wynn, M. R. (2009), ‘The moral philosophy of Raimond Gaita and some questions of method in the philosophy of religion’. New Blackfriars, 90, 639–51.

CLUSTER 1

Self/Other Relations


Chapter 1

Morality, Metaphysics and Religion Raimond Gaita

In A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice, I wrote about a nun I encountered when I worked as a student in a psychiatric hospital in the early 1960s (2000, pp. 17–28). I have spent much of my life thinking about how properly to describe that encounter and how to place it philosophically. I said that the nun behaved towards patients who were severely and ineradicably afflicted without a trace of condescension, that her behaviour was an example of saintly love, that it revealed, wondrously, that even such people are fully our equals, that they were inalienably precious. I said that I was bound in testimony to what she revealed, and that though it was mysterious, the purity of her love proved the reality of it. I insisted that although she would have believed that the patients are sacred, perhaps that they are children of God equally with all his other children, I need not share that belief to be certain of what she revealed. Despite the obscurities in my account of the nun, many people responded sympathetically to it. They have been sceptical, however, of my claim that what I learnt from her does not need religious support. Some have claimed that my work is religious. I readily acknowledged that a sense of the inalienable preciousness of every human being, that every life is a miracle, had its deepest expression in religious traditions, and that had it not been for the language of saintly love, nourished by the works of saints, we would not have sense of what her love revealed. Without the language of saintly love, the nun’s love would not have had the power of revelation that it did and there would not have been the same thing for it to reveal. That language of saintly love, I argued, is, like other forms of love, revelatory in the individual instance but constitutive of what is revealed because of the generality and historical depth of the language. But I have insisted, with increasing complacency I now believe, that what grew in one place could take roots elsewhere and flourish independently of its origins. But disavowals of a religious impulse in my writings have, as Stephen Mulhall observed, become less than full-hearted over time.1 Embarrassed about the expressions I used to characterize what bound me in testimony to what the nun revealed, I retracted many of them in my preface to the second edition of Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception (2004). In A Common Humanity I had already admitted that if I were

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asked to explain what I meant when I said the nun revealed the patients in that hospital ward to be ‘fully our equals’, I could only say that she responded to them without a trace of condescension and that I could not doubt that she was right to do so. I would say much the same of my claim that she revealed the ‘full humanity’ of the patients. Furthermore, I was embarrassed to use in other contexts the expression I relied on most often to express the essence of what she revealed. Affirming, for example, that even the most radical and unrepentant evildoers are to be kept fully among us, I was disinclined to say that they too are inalienably precious, though I believed only the works of saintly love enabled one to find sense in such an affirmation. A religious person, I acknowledged, would not have such difficulties. She would say the nun revealed the patients to be sacred, and that the most terrible and unrepentant evildoers are also sacred as that idea has been conditioned, in considerable part, by the language of saintly love. In this essay I want to reflect again on how to characterize the significance of the nun’s example, hoping that such reflection will be of more than biographical interest. To do that, however, I must again describe my encounter with her, and it is best to do it as I did originally. First, however, I want to discuss another example – that of my father – as I described him in Romulus, My Father and as he is depicted (to some degree) in the film based on the book. * My father was born in 1922 in a Romanian speaking part of Yugoslavia. When he was 13 he fled his home and trained to become a blacksmith. Just before World War II broke out he went to Germany where he believed he could best practise his trade. Trapped there by the war, he met and fell in love with my mother, Christine, at the time a girl of 16. After the war they emigrated in 1950 to Australia because they had been wrongly advised that the climate would relieve if not actually cure her severe asthma. Already on board the ship and later in a migrant’s reception camp in northern Victoria, my mother had affairs with other men, in part at least because she was already suffering from a form of mental illness – manic depression – of which promiscuity is often a symptom. Because my father was told that I was running wild, he called for me to live with him in a migrant workers camp in central Victoria where he was working on a project to build a reservoir. There he met and befriended two brothers, Pantelimon and Mitru Hora. Pantelimon, whom I called Hora as my father always did, became my father’s dearest friend and a second father to me.

Morality, Metaphysics and Religion

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Mitru, of whom I was also very fond, became my mother’s lover and the father of my two half sisters. He and my mother had a desperate relationship, which ended in his suicide in a small and sad Victorian town, in 1956 at the age of 27. Two years later my mother killed herself on the eve of her 30th birthday. My father and I lived for 10 years together in Frogmore, a derelict farmhouse. It had no electricity or running water. For all the time we lived there, we cooked on one-burner paraffin stove and read by the light of a paraffin lamp. Rats lived under the house when we first moved there; not long after, long brown snakes, among the most poisonous in the world, ate the rats and lived under the house in their place. Only when my father started a poultry farm did the snakes leave, frightened off by our freeroaming hens. Most of the dramatic incidents in the book occurred when we lived there. Of those the most harrowing for me was my father’s descent into insanity. In the migrant workers camp, my father befriended a man whose name was Vacek Vilkovikas. Like my father, Vacek had come to Australia on an assisted passage that required him to work for 2 years in repayment. Soon after the work was finished Vacek lost his mind and he went to live between two large granite boulders on the side of a small mountain some 15 kilometres from where my father and I lived. To protect him from the weather he covered the boulders with whatever he could find and there he lived, contented I believe, for some years. His primitive home looked over one of the most beautiful vistas in the areas. Near to the boulders where he slept he built a small tin shed (I don’t know why he didn’t sleep in it), and there he kept various concoctions that he had pickled, sometimes in his urine. Visibly insane, he talked to himself, though never with the aggressive guttural explosions that mark some forms of insanity. He spoke as gently to himself as he did to others, sometimes barely audibly, furrowing his brow when he asked himself a question or extending his arm, palm upwards, to express helplessness or resignation. After I had written Romulus, My Father, a journalist asked me whether Vacek had seemed ‘weird’ to me when I was a boy. Without hesitation I answered sincerely that he had not. Later, my answer puzzled me. Why had he not? Objectively, after all, he was very strange. The answer that came to me was that my father and Hora behaved towards Vacek without condescension. Had they condescended to him – had it shown in their tone of voice or demeanour, in their body language as we say – the cruel sensitivity children often possess would have made me conclude that Vacek was not entirely ‘one of us’. As it was, the contrary was true. That was not because I was particularly virtuous. It was because I saw Vacek in the light

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of my father’s and Hora’s behaviour towards him, which only later did I realize was something to wonder at. Few people would deny that one should treat people the way Vacek was treated, that is, without condescension; but in my experience, hardly anyone is capable of it. In one way or another our condescension betrays itself in how we speak, in the tone of our voice, in the demeanours of our bodies – in what we call our body language. It is one thing to feel affection for such a man, even to esteem him for some important reasons. ‘Vacek is a good man’, Hora often told me. But to do it without condescension? From where would one get even so much as the idea that that makes sense? Aristotle, to whom many moral philosophers now turn for inspiration, would have thought it absurd, and in a way it is. Earlier, I said that it was not my virtue that enabled me to respond to Vacek as I expressed it, without reflection, to the journalist who interviewed me. For different reasons, I would say something similar of my father’s and Hora’s attitude to him. They were morally extraordinary men, but their capacity to respond so remarkably to Vacek was not a moral feat – a feat of moral character, for example. Indeed, though I make much of the concept of character in Romulus, My Father, the concept of character cannot reach what is at issue here, not at any rate if it is interdependent with virtues of character. Not even charity would of itself distinguish between a kind, benign, condescension towards Vacek and the attitude my father and Hora showed towards him. If one is inclined to say their behaviour expressed the virtue of charity, then it would be a conception of charity already informed by a sense of Vacek as he was revealed by their behaviour towards him: it would not explain that sense of him. The nature of charity or compassion depends on the concepts under which one sees those towards whom one responds charitably or compassionately. The concepts under which my father and Hora saw Vacek were historically constituted, I believe, by the works of saintly love, by the language of love that formed and nourished those works and which was, in its turn, enriched by them. That was their cultural inheritance, although neither would have thought about it as I have just put it. What I knew as a boy, revealed to me in the example of my father and Hora, deserted me when I was an adolescent at boarding school. This is how I put it in Romulus, My Father: My father and Vacek visited me at school in Ballarat. As soon as I saw him [my father] I knew that his illness had again overtaken him. He came dressed in a dishevelled navy pinstriped suit, with a dirty white shirt open at the neck, the collar partly covered by the collar of his jacket. He seemed shrunken, stooped, not with age (he was only thirty-nine), but with the burden of his


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affliction. Most startling was his face: thin, unshaven, his eyes, not dead as is often the case with depression, but burning with the terror of his visions, all made worse by the fact that his almost shaven head made him look as though he had come from a concentration camp. Vacek walked beside him in an equally shabby beige suit and an open dirty shirt, wearing, as ever, his beanie. He no longer had a beard, and his open, amiable, face was covered with stubble. His eyes focused on no one; his lips were hardly ever still, moving in sometimes silent, sometimes audible conversation with himself or imaginary partners. Afterwards a teacher asked me if one of the men had been my father. ‘No’, I replied. I was later tormented with guilt and shame for having denied my father, but I knew not quite why I was ashamed because I also knew that, terrible though it was, my denial was not prompted by cowardice. (Gaita, 1998)

In the German translation, I deleted the last clause of that last sentence – that ‘my denial was not prompted by cowardice’ – because the thought in it is too compressed. It depends among other things on a contrast between shame and guilt that is not explained in the book. Guilt (or remorse, which I take to be much the same thing) is for what we have done; shame is for what our deeds reveal about us – usually about our character. I felt guilty because I had denied my father, but I wasn’t sure what failing of character that had revealed. When I came to write about it in the passage I have quoted, the obscurities in my account were not a function of my wish to deny failings in my character: I was trying to suggest that my denial of my father had a deeper cause than reference to failings in my character could convey, namely, that I was no longer able to see my father, so utterly degraded, under the concepts that as a boy had enabled me to respond to Vacek as I did, and under which my father still responded to him. I was not concerned that I lacked the virtues that would enable me to do what I knew in my heart I should do. Or, more precisely, that was not what was most seriously at issue. Simone Weil says that ‘compassion for the afflicted is more miraculous than walking on water, healing the sick or raising the dead’. Her point and mine, I am tempted to say, is not psychological: it is conceptual. The miracle Weil refers to is not that we are able to resist temptations that threaten the will in its execution of a clearly perceived duty. Nor is it that we are able to resist temptations that would obscure clear vision of our duty. The miracle is that we are able to believe, to retain a sense that it is even intelligible to believe, that even those who suffer the utmost degradation can be the intelligible objects of a compassion that is entirely without condescension. Weil did not think, as the great and noble Immanuel Kant did, that reason could reveal in a person who is physically and psychologically utterly degraded a dignity that is, as we now put it,

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inalienable. ‘The supernatural virtue of justice’, she writes, ‘consists in behaving exactly as though there were equality when one is the stronger in an unequal relationship. Exactly in every respect, including the slightest details of accent and attitude, for a detail may be enough to place the weaker party in the condition of matter which on this occasion naturally belongs to him, just as the slightest shock causes water which has remained liquid below freezing point to solidify’ (Weil, 1977). The demeanour Weil describes cannot be a product of the will responding to Reason’s revelation to it of the metaphysical properties of persons. Later, I hope to make clear why. I am not religious, so I cannot speak as Weil does. But the divide she records when she calls justice a supernatural virtue – a virtue that, by the way, she believes should not be distinguished from charity – is real, I believe. It is between two conceptions of the ethical – one is overwhelmingly natural and the other is in some way mysterious, if not actually an offence to reason. Both go together – indeed, are interdependent – with a conception of what it is to be a human being and therefore with the kind of compassion that it is intelligible to show to a human being. One is an ethic of assertion or, at any rate, an ethic for the relatively fortunate. Its defining concepts vary culturally and historically, but they cluster around autonomy, integrity, courage, nobility, honour and flourishing – and when it is limited by these, the concept of character. Sometimes nobility is the focal concept, as it was for Aristotle, but autonomy seems now to be the prized virtue. The second kind of ethic is an ethic of renunciation. It was expressed first by Socrates when he said to his incredulous interlocutors that it is better to suffer evil than to do it, and later in our tradition it was deepened by an affirmation that every human life is sacred in a sense that implies that every human being is infinitely precious. Sometimes it was expressed in stories and parables that tell us that we are all, without exception, God’s children, or that we are all created in God’s image. Goodness rather than nobility is its focal concept – goodness as revealed in the lives of saints and which invites a capital ‘G’. Only the latter ethic, I believe, can find words to keep fully among us those who suffer severe, ineradicable and degrading affliction, as the nun showed is possible and necessary. My father understood the terror of mental illness long before he fell victim to it. One of the most vivid of my childhood memories is of the time he conveyed this to me. This is how I put it in Romulus, My Father. I have seldom seen such affliction as I saw my father suffer in those last years in Frogmore, and I saw it again only when I worked as a student in psychiatric hospitals. He understood it before he became its victim. Some years before, while we were travelling on the motorbike, he talked about Vacek and said,


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‘There is no sickness worse that mental sickness.’ I remember his words clearly. I remember the exact point where we were on the road. Most of all, I remember his strong, bare, sun-darkened arms on either side of me as I sat on the petrol tank. For me to remember his words and our surroundings so vividly, the authority with which he spoke them must have impressed me deeply. The sight of his muscular arms protected me against their terrible meaning. (Gaita, 1998)

The authority of the words to which I refer in that passage was an expression of how deeply my father’s life was shaped by what I call in the book his ‘compassionate fatalism’. Metaphysical doctrines of determinism are far from my mind when I speak of my father’s fatalism. I mean that for him the human condition was defined by our vulnerability to misfortune. Indeed his demeanour to the whole of life was shaped by something like the same attitude. Certainly it was to the animals he raised and cared for. He took great pleasure in them, but always his attitude to them was coloured by pity for their vulnerability and especially for their vulnerability to human cruelty. His pity extended to all of living nature, to the trees he cared for when they were stricken with disease, and even to the countryside when it was parched by drought, the grasses normally golden in summer, bleached white, and the earth with large cracks in it, some as wide as 6 inches and as deep as 10 feet. It could hardly fail to show in his attitude towards my mother. His goodness showed in his compassionate responsiveness to her and to Mitru, to their need that was constant and to their desperate relationship for which he pitied them because he knew it would consume them. His compassion went deep. I have known no one who felt so visibly the pain of others. But it cost him. He was born into a culture in which honour was, at least for men, the focal ethical concept, the value under which other values were organized. For that reason, few of his compatriots had much sympathy for his attitude towards my mother and Mitru. Some despised it, though not him, I am glad to say. It was bad enough, they thought, that a good friend had cuckolded him, but it was shameless for him to compound the dishonour by paying their rent when they were threatened with eviction. In my father, the two conceptions of the ethical I sketched earlier lived in considerable tension. That is partly why he was such a complex and interesting man. Though not at all a sensitive new age guy, he responded to his friend Mitru who had cuckolded him and to my mother who had many times betrayed him, with an open hearted, generous concern for their welfare. He even paid their rent when, as often happened, they were threatened with eviction because my mother was unable to control her spending – a symptom,

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like her promiscuity, commonly associated with her illness. His compassion, as I said, went deep but did not prevent the humiliation he felt because his friend had cuckolded him. Socrates would have said that my father should not have been humiliated by the wrong done to him by Mitru – that only wrongdoers are shamed. And a saint, exhibiting to a greater degree the kind of goodness that showed in my father, might say the same. But, although he was truly a man who, like Socrates, would rather suffer evil than do it, my father was not a saint. He suffered hurt and humiliation, but he was good to an astonishing degree and his goodness showed in how he treated my mother and Mitru. When I reflect on the many comments I receive about the book and the film, I am struck by how often people praise my father’s integrity, his courage in the face of much misfortune, his sense of honour and his nobility. These are heroic virtues. When people say that he was a good man, they usually explain what they mean by saying that he possessed those virtues to an exemplary degree. If these had been his only virtues, important though they are, I’m not sure whether I would have written the book. I wrote it to celebrate his goodness as that showed in his attitude to Vacek and to my mother. But his compassion for my mother and Mitru was of a kind that could exist in him only, I think, because he was someone for whom, at least much of the time, goodness rather than nobility or honour was the concept that determined his ethical perspective. Or, to put it another way, it was because he was a man whose understanding of integrity, courage, honour and nobility were transformed in the light of an ethical conception in which goodness is the focal concept. Many people have written admiringly of my father as a man of strong, though sometimes rigid, principle. Perversely, it might seem, I resist such praise of him. It was not principle that informed his behaviour towards my mother and Mitru: he found it impossible to turn his back on their need. Hora was sometimes critical of his behaviour towards my mother and Mitru, but his reply was always (in effect) that there was nothing else for him to do. His compassion went deep, but one should not think of it as an emotion – the passion of compassion, Hannah Arendt once called it – that overwhelmed him with its force. If his compassion had been an emotional force that simply overwhelmed my father, then when he said to Hora that he could not deny my mother’s need, Hora might have urged him to try. But Hora never did because he knew that to do so would be to betray a serious misunderstanding of the kind of impossibility my father had expressed. An ethically necessitated responsiveness to his understanding of what it meant for my mother and Mitru to suffer as they did was essential to the


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nature of my father’s compassion. That is a necessity different in kind from physical or psychological necessity. Indeed, it is a condition of saying truthfully of someone that she labours under psychological or physical necessity that she could not do or resist doing what is in question even if she tried. Sometimes, of course, when physical or psychological necessity is at issue, we know that a person could not do something even if they tried. At other times we are not sure, nor we might think, can she be. Then we might suggest that she try. But it would, as I have already suggested, betray serious misunderstanding of the necessity that governed my father’s compassionate behaviour towards my mother and Mitru to suggest that he might try to overcome it, to do what he said he could not do, or to resist doing what he said he had to do. Only a jokester or someone who was tone deaf would say, ‘Why not try. Give it a go. It might be easier than you think’. * Intrinsic to my father’s compassion as I have just characterized it is a necessity of a kind that Hume cannot allow in his moral psychology and that Kant cannot allow to operate in the realm of inclination. Compassion, as it showed in my father’s response to my mother and Mitru, is not, as Hume would have it, an emotional addition to his recognition of their suffering: it is a form of the recognition of their suffering. It is an ethically necessitated responsiveness to the perception of what it meant for them to suffer as they did. In much of my work I have tried to dissuade my colleagues in moral philosophy from a preoccupation with principles of conduct – with trying to establish what they are or should be and their relation to reason – by showing the importance to moral philosophy of some of the ways we speak of the meaning of what we do, feel and think. I have in mind the kind of elaboration one would offer, or perhaps more often gesture towards, if one were to say, as my father did to Hora in response to Hora’s criticism and his behaviour towards my mother and Mitru, ‘Don’t you understand what it means for them to suffer as they do?’ Or if one were to say, ‘Don’t you understand what you are doing – the meaning of what it is to suffer the degradation you are causing this person’. Or, if one were remorseful, as I know Mitru was: ‘What have I done? Only now do I fully understand its meaning’. Elaborations of the kind I just mentioned often impress – indeed they often move us – because of the form in which they are presented. Their authority for us almost always depends on their tone, taken broadly to

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include what people do as well as what they say. Often, we may appeal, directly or indirectly, to art that reveals more perspicuously what we are fumbling for, to film or poetry or novels perhaps or painting or sculpture. Think of how much of our sense of religious depth and authenticity is a function of our appeal to things in which we believe that form and content cannot be separated – art of course, but also prayers, hymns, religious rituals and so on. Appeals such as these and reflection upon them occur in what I have called ‘the realm of meaning’. Understanding that is sought and achieved there is defined by the concepts to which we are answerable when we are moved by what others say and do whether in life or in art, when we are called to seriousness in conversation and so on. We are, of course, answerable for errors of fact, for muddle of one kind or another – for all those errors that science and philosophy, separately or together, are good at exposing. But it is important to note that we are often also answerable for our sentimentality, our vulnerability to pathos and our tendency to cliché, to deafness to tone and more. That is relatively uncontroversial, I think. Writing about things that affected me profoundly – my mother’s suicide and my father’s madness, for example – I had to resist, as much as possible, all dispositions to pathos or to sentimentality. That’s not a merely personal remark. Anybody in similar circumstances should do the same. But in resisting these, I was not trying to get feeling out of the writing. I don’t think anybody who has read Romulus would say that it lacks feeling. I was trying to make the feeling true, though I don’t mean that I wanted it to be sincere. Sentimentality is sincere more often than not. In resisting sentimentality I wasn’t so much trying to feel right as trying to see things right, to understand things right. To help myself, I listened often to Bach. I need him to keep me truthful. I can find no better way of putting this than to say: I was trying to see things as they were, rather than how, succumbing to various common human failings, they were constantly appearing to me. And what else are efforts to see things as they are rather than as they appear because one wishes them to appear thus, or because one’s perspective is limited, or because one’s judgement is distorted by, for example, vanity or sentimentality or because one is tone deaf to irony and so on – what else are such efforts if not efforts towards truth? That should not be controversial, I think. But now I will enter a controversial claim: it is a mistake to assume that when we struggle against dispositions to sentimentality or to pathos, for example, in order to see things as they are, that we must be struggling against them conceived as psychological causes of error and muddle. Sometimes we should think of them as forms rather than causes of


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falsehood. As concepts that mark forms rather than causes of the false, sentimentality, pathos and so on define a distinctive realm of understanding, one that is interdependent with notions of truth, truthfulness and the objectivity appropriate to it. That realm is what I have called the realm of meaning. When sentimentality, pathos are causes of the false, they are psychological states that can cause thought to go astray more or less as tiredness, drunkenness, fearfulness or recklessness can. When the influence of sentimentality (to take only it as an example) is conceived like that, then it makes sense to wish – as philosophers so often have – that one were the kind of creature who could rid itself of those psychological states that disable our capacity for clear, true thought. Important to such an ideal is a conception of thought, of what makes it succeed or fail, that can be articulated without reference to sentimentality, or similar afflictions – a conception of the true, the false and the muddled, that we would have if we had never heard of sentimentality or similar states. Being the psychologically complex creatures we are (this thought continues), we must reluctantly acknowledge our vulnerability to such states and we must sometimes refer to them when we speculate about causes of human error. Considered merely as psychological causes of error and muddle – causes of the false, as I shall say, for the sake of simplicity – sentimentality and the other afflictions I have listed, are of no more intrinsic interest to philosophers thinking about the nature of thinking than headaches, tiredness, drunkenness, fearfulness, vanity, cowardice – the list, sadly, is very long. That is why philosophers have given almost no attention to these concepts outside of aesthetics. Attention to them has played no serious role in an account of what it means to try to think objectively, to try to see things as they are, in the philosophy of religion or in ethics more generally. Sometimes, however, the idea that we should try to extract muddled or false cognitive content from the form that makes us suspect that sentimentality is the cause of the muddle or falsehood, seems to make no sense. Suppose someone says: ‘I don’t care whether some of the beatitudes are sentimental; all that matters to me is whether they are morally true or false’. Or, ‘I know the Job or the Jesus of this translation seems sometime to be sentimental or banal, but that does not matter. I’m interested in truth, not literature’. What, in such examples, does the demand that we should extract genuine cognitive content (truth assessable content) from misleading literary form, come to? In such examples, reference to sentimentality is not intended to appeal only to what we would call a merely ‘aesthetic’ sensibility: it refers to a form of the false. Taken as a form rather than cause of the false, reference to it and to the other failings I listed earlier – a

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vulnerability to pathos, a tin ear for irony and so on – mark out, as I suggested earlier, a distinctive cognitive realm. The effort to overcome them is an effort to see things as they are, an effort oriented to truth, but it is an effort in which feeling and thought, form and content are inseparable. When it is a form of the false, vulnerability to sentimentality is not a contingent obstacle to lucidity; it is intrinsic to the very content of our thought. In such a case, that we must make efforts to overcome sentimentality if we are to see things as they are is internal to our understanding of ‘things being as they are or not being as they are’ in a particular realm of reflection. Or to put it in another way: when sentimentality is a form of the false, then that we are creatures vulnerable to sentimentality is intrinsic to the cognitive character of the claim that is judged to be sentimental. It is part of the very idea of religion, at least within the Judeo-Christian tradition I think, that someone who professes a religion, who bears witness to it, must believe that it deepens rather than cheapens what human beings care for, whether they are religious or not or whether they care a fig for religion. We may think they are wrong, of course, but they cannot say: ‘I know this is sentimental, banal, tone deaf to irony, riddled with cliché, disdainful of the world, but there it is my religion. I’m not interested in aesthetics. I’m interested in truth’. If that is so, then we must find in philosophy space for a conception of the cognitive that enables us to understand what counts as depth and shallowness in the realm of the religious and, indeed, of the ethical more generally. We need it if we are to make sense of the distinction between the God of religion and the God of the philosophers. This is especially true of religions like Christianity, Judaism and Islam because they are religions in which reflection on the examples of people’s lives, deeds and words deepens understanding of what is of religious significance and indeed of what it is for something to be of religious significance. The omniscient God of religion knows all our sins and woes. The omniscient God of the philosophers knows them and also our email addresses. Whatever else may be said against the claim that if God is really to be omniscient, he must know our email addresses, it is the banality of it that compromises it fatally. To be able to tell what is banal, one must have, among other things, an ear for tone. But one way of identifying the God of the philosophers is that claims about him and his properties aspire to be made and assessed in an essentially tone-free zone. Prima facie, this implies that what it means to believe in God, to affirm his existence, will be different according to whether that affirmation is of the God of religion or of the God of the philosophers.


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What I have said about the realm of meaning enables one to make more than merely metaphorical sense of talk of depth and shallowness in religious discourse. It is true that in the realm of meaning understanding is achieved by making one’s thought answerable to a critical vocabulary that is much more like the vocabulary used in the critical appreciation of literature, though not in the denigratory sense in which the person in my example meant it when she said ‘I’m interested in truth, not literature’. Reflecting on that critical vocabulary, it becomes evident that much of our moral thought is answerable to a set of critical concepts that define, for that kind of thinking, a distinctive kind of seriousness, and of course, distinctive failures of it. It becomes apparent that one’s subject matter is of a kind whose description and reflective assessment must admit as indispensable, as intrinsic to its content, judgements that this or that is sentimental, or overtaken by pathos, or banal, deaf to irony and, perhaps, in ways defined by those concepts, shallow. The realm of meaning conceived as a cognitive realm whose distinctiveness is marked by the fact that we are answerable for our sentimentality, pathos and so on as forms rather than as causes of the false offers, I believe, a richer conception of what it is to think well or badly about matters of religions than does the relatively thin conception that is often advocated by people who speak of reason supporting faith. But, as I have intimated, though I have not said it explicitly, there is no such thing as reason; there is only thinking well and thinking badly about this or that particular subject matter, and the concepts that tell us what it is to think well in one domain have no application in others. Propositions in physics or mathematics cannot be undermined by cliché, or because only someone tone deaf to irony or banality would advance them. When I speak of the God of the philosophers, therefore, I mean the God whose existence and properties are the subject of the kind of speculation that would, if only it could, retreat to a tone-free zone; one in which accusations of sentimentality, banality and so on, are as inappropriate, unsuitable to the subject matter, as they are in mathematics or physics. The language of love, reflection on it and on the God who informs it is, inescapably, in the realm of meaning. Something similar is true of rationality: it is an indispensible intellectual virtue, but one with limited application. When one tries to be lucid about one’s mortality or vulnerability to misfortune, for example, to achieve what we call an understanding of the heart rather than just of the head about them – to achieve the kind of understanding I claimed for my father when I was so struck by the authority of the words he spoke to me about Vacek – one must, of course, try to be rational. But one must also avoid

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sentimentality, a disposition to pathos and so on as forms of the false that, in this kind of case, constantly betray one’s efforts to be lucid. This richer conception of what lucidity requires is not so much a richer conception of rationality, but rather one that marks the limits of the natural application of the concept of rationality. One can, of course, insist that anything that counts as an effort to see things as they are, as an effort to overcome sentimentality and so on, is an exercise of rationality, richly conceived. But that is as unhelpful as saying that when we try to see things as they are we always try to see what is the fact of the matter, albeit according to an enriched conception of the factual. Both rest on the assumption that to overcome sentimentality, pathos and so on is to eliminate them as causes of the false. The concept of the realm of meaning that I have sketched here and developed elsewhere is intended to offer more than an account of the nature of practical thought in the domain of the ethical and the religious: it is intended to offer an account of a distinctive form of discursive thought. Philosophical and other kinds of reflection – theological reflection, for example – should, I believe, occur mostly in the realm of meaning. Without the conception of discursive thought that is rendered distinctive by the way it is answerable to the critical concepts that define the realm of meaning, we will be bereft of an adequate sense of the subject matter of philosophical anthropology, conceived broadly to include the philosophy of religion and theology and of how to think about it. When I wrote about the nun I was therefore mistaken, as Stephen Mulhall has pointed out, to run together metaphysical thought about the God of the philosophers and reflection that informs what I called ‘doctrine’ (Mulhall, 2011). One way to understand what I mean by the realm of meaning that bears on something I want to say later is to think of it as a cognitive realm that enables us to understand why people have sometimes said there is a form of understanding in which head and heart are inseparably combined. My father’s necessitated responsiveness to my mother’s and Mitru’s need was the form in which he understood their need, a form of understanding with which the necessity that marked his response is interdependent. Clearly, that is neither a Kantian nor a Humean thought, but it acknowledges what is important to both of these traditional oppositions. * I come now to my other example, more dramatic, but continuous with what I have been saying about my father and Hora’s response to Vacek.


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It is the nun to whom I referred at the beginning of the essay. I will present her more or less as I did in A Common Humanity. In the early 1960s when I was 17 years old, I worked as a ward-assistant in a psychiatric hospital. Some of the patients had been there for over 30 years. The ward was an old Victorian building surrounded by a high iron fence. White gravel lay on all sides between the fence and the building. There was no grass. One or two scraggy trees provided mean shade. It reminded me of some of the enclosures at Melbourne zoo. When patients soiled themselves, as some often did, they were ordered to undress and to step under a shower. The distance of a mop handle from them, we then mopped them down as zookeepers wash down elephants. The patients were judged to be incurable and they appeared to have irretrievably lost everything that gives meaning to their lives. They had no grounds for self-respect insofar as we connect that with self-esteem; or, none that could be based on qualities or achievements for which we could admire or congratulate them without condescension. Friends, wives, children and even parents, if they were alive, had long ceased to visit them. Often the psychiatrists and nurses treated them brutishly. Vacek, when he was living among his boulders, was recognizably leading one kind of human life. He did not bear the marks of the incurably afflicted, nor was he constantly and visibly in torment. It would be hard for anyone to say that the men in the hospital were living a life of any kind. They were not suffering an affliction that they could overcome with help and courage. No edifying stories of adversity defeated would come from that place. A small number of psychiatrists did, however, work devotedly to improve their conditions. One of them, I remember, spoke, against all appearances, of the inalienable dignity of even such patients. I admired those psychiatrists enormously. Most of their colleagues believed that they were naive, even fools. Some of the nurses despised them with a vehemence that was astonishing. One day a nun came to the ward. In her middle years, only her vivacity made an impression on me until she talked to the patients. Then everything in her demeanour towards them – the way she spoke to them, her facial expressions, and the inflexions of her body – contrasted with and showed up the behaviour of those noble psychiatrists. She showed that they were, despite their best efforts, condescending, as I too had been. She thereby revealed that even such patients were, as the psychiatrists and I had sincerely and generously professed, the equals of those who wanted to help them; but she also revealed that in our hearts we did not believe this. I wondered at her, but not at anything about her except that her behaviour should have, so wondrously, this power of revelation. She showed up the

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psychiatrists, but if I were asked how, exactly, then I would not elaborate on defects in their character, their imagination or in what would ordinarily be called their moral sensibility. Of course her behaviour did not come from nowhere. Virtues of character, imagination and sensibility, given content and form by the disciplines of her vocation, were essential to her becoming the kind of person she was. But in another person such virtues and the behaviour that expressed them would have been the focus of my admiring attention. I admired the psychiatrists for their many virtues – for their wisdom, their compassion, their courage, their capacity for self-sacrificing hard work and sometimes for more besides. In the nun’s case, her behaviour was striking not for the virtues it expressed, or even for the good it achieved, but for its power to reveal the full humanity of those whose affliction had made their humanity invisible. Love is the name we give to such behaviour. The nun almost certainly believed that the patients with whom she dealt were all God’s children and equally loved by Him. I need not share such a belief, or find it plausible, even intelligible. My commitment to what the nun in the hospital revealed is not conditional upon my believing something like she believed. My thought is not that it would be rational to respond without condescension to those patients if it is also true that they were God’s children. Nor do I wish to say that the wondrousness of her behaviour gives strong prima facie grounds for believing in God or for attributing metaphysical properties to the patients or any other properties that could be specified independently of her behaviour and provide rational grounds for it. As someone who was witness to the nun’s love and claimed in fidelity to it, I have no understanding of what it revealed independently of the quality of her love. If I am asked what I mean when I say that even such people as were patients in that ward are fully our equals, I can only say that the quality of her love proved that they are rightly the objects of our non-condescending treatment. But in response to someone who demands that I justify my affirmation that they are rightly the objects of such treatment, I can appeal only to the purity of her love. For me, the purity of the love proved the reality of what it revealed. I have to say, for me, because one must speak personally about such matters. That, after all, is the nature of witness. From the point of view of speculative intelligence, however, I am going around in ever darkening circles, because I allow for no independent justification of her attitude. Nothing I can say will diminish the affront to reason that her behaviour represents. Nothing I can say can justify the idea that the deeply compassionate behaviour of the psychiatrists was shown up because it betrayed condescension towards people who appeared to have nothing


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seriously to live for, whose affliction had rendered them incapable of being counted as peers to any of the psychiatrist or nurses, let alone counted as their friends. That more or less is how I first described my encounter with the nun. Now, I would say that I was foolish to say that her demeanour proved something to me – something about those patients – for that seems to be implicit in my claim that her love proved the reality it revealed. I said that because I had not fully escaped from the idea that I had to specify what it was about the patients that could, independently of metaphysical or religious commitment, render her behaviour right or even appropriate rather than merely explicable in the light of her beliefs. Had I said that the patients possessed, each of them, the property of inalienable dignity, a metaphysical property accessible to reason, then I would have given the kind of answer for which one part of me was still hankering. To say, however, that her behaviour proved to me the reality of what it revealed, but that I had to speak personally, is to give with one hand while taking with the other and to render the concept of a ‘proof’ vacuous. Perhaps therefore, rather than saying that I am certain that her behaviour to those patients was right or was appropriate, I should simply say that I cannot doubt the wondrous goodness of it. Wittgenstein was right to say that in philosophy, one of the hardest things is to know when to stop. My affirmation is as firm and unreserved as it is rationally groundless. And as fragile as testimony is. The difficulty I had in saying what the nun revealed should have alerted me to the fact that I ought not to have said that she revealed that the psychiatrists did not believe in their hearts what they had sincerely professed – namely, that the patients were fully their equals. Characteristically, when we say that a person knows something in her head but not in her heart, we have no difficulty in specifying what she believes only in her head. Young people, we often say, know in their heads but not in their hearts that they are mortal. Or, to take another example: we all know in our heads that at any moment misfortune could deprive us of everything that gives sense to our lives, leaving us as severely afflicted as the patients in that hospital were, or worse. It is true that when we do come to say what we think we now know in our hearts, we often find it hard to find the right words. Even so, it is fundamental to cases of this kind that we are able to say that, for example, until we were such and such an age we did not know in our hearts what it is to be mortal. Simone Weil, it is true, says that compassion for the afflicted is a miracle because we can acknowledge their condition, see it for what it is, only when we are able to know fully (in one’s heart) that at any moment we can also be in that

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condition. But such knowledge alone cannot, I think, take us further than the calm pity tragedy shows for the affliction it depicts, which is, of course, a long way indeed. My father understood our vulnerability to affliction in this way. Weil does number some Greek tragedies among the handful of works in Western culture that have (miraculously) been truthful to the reality of affliction, but she also takes them to be intimations of Christianity. It is therefore natural to read her as saying that knowing in one’s heart that one is radically vulnerable to misfortune is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition of acknowledging that even those who are utterly wretched and despised are sacred. * Recall that one of the psychiatrists spoke of the inalienable dignity of the patients in his care. The dignity to which such ways of speaking refer is not the dignity people seek to retain when they ask to die with dignity, spared the humiliations that attend some illnesses. That dignity is alienable because it depends essentially upon a person’s demeanour in the face of suffering. The connection between dignity and a person’s demeanour can, of course, carry over to situations in which a person no longer has a demeanour, when he is dead or in a coma, for example, and in which we are concerned that nothing should be done that would in the ordinary circumstances of living constitute a humiliation for him. It is not always that way, of course. It is one thing to be careful to cover a person’s genitals when he is washed, though he is in a coma, or even when he is dead. It is another to condemn people who dance on the corpses of slain enemy soldiers. We will strike the wrong tone if we try to capture the revulsion that the second case provokes by appeal to the concept of a dignity that preserves its ties to dignity that is essentially alienable. So at any rate it seems to my ear. For that reason, people often speak of a dignity that is inherit in every human being, or of inalienable dignity, to which we owe, not esteem, but respect that is unconditional. Talk of inalienable dignity, but more often of ‘inherent dignity’ has played an important part in Judeo-Christian, especially Catholic, thought. The role it plays varies, but I think it is true to say that the idea generally is that all human beings possess inherent dignity because, as Pope Benedict put it in a Message for the Celebration of World Peace Day, ‘as one created in the image of God, each individual human being has the dignity of a person’. Often the idea is that because human beings or persons possess inherent dignity on account of their relation to God,


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they constitute a distinctive kind of limit to the will of others and, very importantly, to themselves. The conceptual structure of the point becomes clearer if we think about the claim that all human beings are sacred. Someone who believe this will think that it plays an indispensable role in forming his sense of the terribleness – the kind of terribleness – of the evils that are done to human beings, including of course those evils that alienate them from their alienable dignity. It is far from clear, however, why people so often think that the concept of dignity should always appear when we elaborate on what someone has done when he has seriously wronged someone. ‘How could you do this? Did you not understand, could you not see, what you were doing?’ The incredulity that such tones express relies on the thought that the wrongdoer did not see his victim as a limit to his will, of the kind we mark when we say that this or that is morally impossible. But, if as seems plausible, that modality is interdependent with a full elaboration of what he has done, and so of what his victim has suffered, then it is by no means obvious that dignity should figure saliently, or at all, in that elaboration. Sometimes it will, sometimes it will not. It may not do so even when the idea of violation is the first to come to mind when we are struck by serious wrongdoing, not even when we are inclined to speak of an ultimate violation, as we are when we try to express the evil done to victims of torture. Indeed, paradoxical though it might at first seem, it is often (not always) in just those cases where we are tempted to speak of an ultimate violation, that reflection will reveal that what has been violated is something precious, and precious in a way that the concept of dignity is too shallow to reach. That, I think, is the case when people say that the foetus possesses dignity from the moment of conception. It seems like a parody of a mother’s tender love for what she is carrying when she is pregnant – a love that might reveal to an observer that she carries something precious – to say that it is informed by her sense of the dignity of her unborn child. The patients in the hospital had lost much of their alienable dignity. But that is exactly why the expression ‘inalienable dignity’, as it was used by one of the psychiatrists in the hospital, can appear to work so powerfully to tell us how we should behave towards them. Like the expression ‘unconditional respect’, it seems, as I remarked earlier, to break yet to retain its essential connection with esteem. Though it is often invoked when a person has lost or is threatened with the loss of all visible dignity, it seems to keep that person in the same conceptual and moral space as the concept that marks what he has lost – for it is, as I said, an expression in the key of the noble, of the heroic. That being so, it is easy to see why it is often

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deployed in discussion of radical affliction, either when it has natural causes or when it is the result of oppression. As a student, it was the expression ‘inalienable dignity’, as used by one of the psychiatrists, that impressed me, but it is striking, I now realize, that I did not use it to characterize what I took the nun to have revealed. In the preface to A Common Humanity I say that the nun’s behaviour gave living meaning to words I had heard often enough, but which I had thought could never refer to anything real – ‘goodness’ – of a kind that invites a capital G, ‘love’, ‘beauty’ and ‘purity’. Instinctively, but not at all clearly, when I wrote about the nun, I realized that to say that the nun had revealed their inalienable dignity was to speak in the wrong key – to oversimplify a little, it would have made her seem like a Kantian heroine, a doer of such superlatively supererogatory deeds that even the psychiatrists seemed like mere foot soldiers in service to her noble cause. The mainstream of the philosophical tradition brings saints and heroes together, interchangeably indeed for the most part, under the concept of a supererogatory act. But the deeds of saints should be characterized in the light of a conception of the ethical that has goodness rather than nobility as its focal concept. My point, as it was when I discussed my father, is not that a conception of value that has goodness, rather than, say, nobility, as its focus is unable to appreciate the heroic. It is that within that conception what we make of the heroic, the noble, the honourable, the value of autonomy and so on, is transformed by the light that saintly deeds have cast on what it means to be a human being. I have called these expressions like ‘inherent dignity’, ‘inalienable dignity’, the ‘unconditional respect’ that is owed to it, or to people as ‘ends in themselves’ – terms of the middle ground, or, for short, middle terms. On the one side are ways of speaking which are steeped in a sense of the importance of our humanity to our moral and political thought, and of different forms of human fellowship – as when we speak of a common humanity, or say that to do such and such would be to treat someone as less than fully human, as when we speak of the human family, or when, in political contexts, we speak of brotherhood or sisterhood and so on. These are ways of speaking whose resonances and tones derive from the riches of a natural language and the art made possible by it, language shaped by and shaping the lives of peoples. Their use and reflection on their use is necessarily in media res, because they are in the realm of meaning. The middle terms mingle well with ways of speaking that draw more obviously on the importance of the concept of the human to our moral thought, as will be evident to anyone who has read the preambles to the Declaration of Human Rights and other instruments of international law like the Convention on


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Torture. But not only do they mingle well. There is reason to think that the fact that they mingle so well is a significant part of the reason why they have acquired their undeniable power. On the other side of the middle terms are the expression that aspire to their philosophical elaboration, elaboration intended to make their real content, and therefore the proper basis of their authority, perspicuous to reason. In the Kantian tradition the elaborations refer to rational agency and the kind of respect that is owed to it. That tradition looks with suspicion, if not actual hostility, on the power the middle terms have achieved on account of their engagement with ways of speaking that express and celebrate human fellowship. From the perspective of that tradition, that power looks like rhetorical power in the pejorative sense of that phrase. Deep though that thought goes in philosophy, it misrepresents things. Our use of the expressions in our natural language from which, I believe, the middle terms gain their power, is subject to the discipline achieved by the application of a range of concepts that tell us, in the realm of meaning, when we can trust the ways we are moved by them. They are the concepts that define thought in the realm of meaning. Alan Donagan says, in his interesting book The Theory of Morality (1977), that Kant’s most famous formulation of the Categorical Imperative – that one should never treat persons merely as means to our ends, but always as ends in themselves – is an attempt to render perspicuous to reason the basis of the biblical injunction to love one’s neighbour. Donagan argues that the philosophically correct form of the imperative requires that we treat every human being, oneself included, with the respect owed to a rational creature. It is a profound question whether Kant succeeded or was even on the right track, or whether, as I have suggested – in this essay and in much of my work – that this great philosopher got things quite backwards. Perhaps it is the biblical injunction, stories and parables that enable us to make sense of the idea of a person as an end in herself. Indeed, I think it is so. Or at least that it is so in contexts where the word neighbour carries resonances that derive from the belief that all human beings are sacred, insofar as that belief has been nourished by the works of saintly love. Earlier I drew attention to the importance of the concept of the human to our moral and political thought, as that shows itself in, for example, the Declaration of Human Rights and other instruments of international law like the Convention on Torture. The moral work done by appeal to the concept of humanity (as when I said that the nun saw the patients as fully human) will often be different according to whether it is essentially connected with Kantian notions of respect or with a compassionate

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responsiveness to the sacred, to the inalienable preciousness of every human being, according to whether, indeed, it is embedded in one or the other of the two conceptions of the ethical that I sketched earlier. The works of saintly love, I claimed, have, historically, created a language of love that yields to us a sense of what those works reveal in any individual instance, in, for example, the demeanour of the nun towards the patients in the hospital. But because the power of Kantian rhetoric is characteristically in an heroic key, it belongs more properly to the first of the conceptions of value that I sketched earlier – the one that I claimed does not have the conceptual resources to keep among us, fully among us, people who are degraded by radical affliction. Yet that is exactly what that noble psychiatrist who spoke of the inalienable dignity of even those patients tried to do: instinctively he found the phrase that, if Donagan is right, was designed to render perspicuous to reason what saintly love revealed but also distorted. He and his colleagues were conceptually estranged from – and perhaps, as the secular humanists that I know some of them were, actually hostile to – the language of saintly love in whose absence, I believe, we would never have had so much as even the idea that people who are degraded, who suffer severe and ineradicable affliction, might intelligibly be the recipients of anything more than a benign, but condescending, compassion. I have acknowledged a number of times that to say that all human beings are sacred is better, often less embarrassing, than saying that they are inalienably precious. It may also be revealing how often in this essay I have appealed to the word when illustrating a point. It can apply to the severely afflicted as the nun revealed them to be and also to Adolf Eichmann and Saddam Hussein. But note that I said, ‘to the patients as the nun revealed them to be’. Is there something like that to be said about how people like Eichmann and Hussein have been revealed to be? Someone who finds unsatisfactory, for reasons I have discussed, the Kantian answer that reason revealed them to be owed unconditional respect, may believe that we have only the reply that, historically, the love of saints has revealed even such people to be as the nun revealed the patients to be. But the affirmation that those patients were inalienably precious is, I believe, internal to her sense that they are God’s children and therefore (or perhaps, in that way) sacred. If that is so, it cannot be detached from an account of what she revealed them to be. That is why I say in the preface to the second edition of Good and Evil: ‘It is clear, I think, why one turns naturally to Kantian idioms when one speaks of what is owed to Eichmann – when one says that even he is owed unconditional respect, for example. It sounds grotesque to say that Eichmann is infinitely precious


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(though a saint might say just that)’ (Gaita, 2004, p. iv). And in A Common Humanity, I say that though Kant is right to insist that we have obligations to those whom we do not, and perhaps could not, love, it does not follow that we would find them to be the intelligible objects of even the kind of obligation he speaks of if we did not see them as the intelligible objects of someone’s love (2000, p. 26). In the case of radical and unrepentant evildoers that is the love of saints. In the more ordinary, and in the saintly, cases, we have tried to render the works – especially the constitutive works – of love more tractable to reason and more congenial to the first of the two ethical perspectives, in part, as I shall suggest, because we are fearful of, and sometimes find distasteful, the otherworldly implications of an ethics of renunciation. * In the preface to the second edition of Good and Evil, I discuss a question put to me by Stanley Hauerwas. Stephen Mulhall has argued, rightly, I think, that I perversely misunderstood Hauerwas’s question as a demand for a rational justification for what the nun had revealed, rather than as an invitation to look more attentively to the language of love as it exists in the religious life of people like the nun, actually to be patiently attentive to that language, as I had said one should be (Mulhall, 2011). Hauerwas has responded to my discussion of the nun and the question I put to him. I shall quote him at length because he elaborates on the question and, in doing so, writes in the language to which he had invited me to attend. Gaita acknowledges that religious traditions have spoken most simply and deeply about such a view by declaring all human beings sacred. But he contends that the language of love nourished by the love of saints can stand independently of speculation about supernatural entities. What grew in one place can flourish elsewhere. He reports, however, that there is one question put to him by a theologian whose answer he is not sure of. The theologian asked him whether the kind of love shown by the nun could exist in the prolonged absence of the kind of practices that were part of her religious vocation. In response Gaita says: ‘Iris Murdoch said that attention to something absolutely pure is the essence of prayer and is a form of love. If she is right, then the answer to Hauerwas’ question will depend on whether with the demise of religion, we can find objects of attention that can sustain that love, or whether they will always fail us. I don’t know the answer.’ Nor do I know the answer. I certainly have no reason to suggest that Gaita’s account of goodness as non-condescending love is unintelligible if God does not exist. But then the question has never been about God’s existence – but ours. Gaita is quite right to think that if Mother Teresa and

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Moral Powers, Fragile Beliefs the nun he encountered at seventeen did not exist we quite literally would be less human. They did exist, however, and it at least makes sense to ask if and how they and the goodness they reveal makes sense if the God they worship does not exist. That may well be a far too abstract way to put the question. For the God they worship is not some abstraction but rather a reality known though participation in a community across time and space. What I suspect Gaita misses is the role that friendship plays in lives like that of Mother Teresa and the nun he so admires. In particular, Mother Teresa and the nun Gaita admired were not afraid to be befriended by those they served. To suggest why friendship is so important for the development of such goodness I want to introduce another life that exhibits the kind of love Gaita thinks so defining of goodness. The name of that life is Jean Vanier. Jean Vanier is the founder of the movement known as L’Arche . . . in which people who are called mentally handicapped live with those who are not. L’Arche home is first and foremost just that, a home. The core members of the home are the mentally handicapped. Those who are not mentally handicapped are called assistants. Assistants do not live in the home to care for the mentally handicapped. Rather they are there to learn to be with the core members in the hope that they can learn to be friends. The wonder Gaita suggests Mother Teresa should elicit in us is not to be directed at her but rather is the wonder that human life could be as her love reveals it. Jean Vanier would not wish that we wonder or react with awe in response to his life. Any wonder would rightly be in response to the humanity revealed through those who have befriended him. He and his friends reveal our humanity, a goodness, that we could not have known possible without their showing. Jesus did not answer the young man’s question concerning what deed he must do to inherit eternal life. Instead he commanded him to sell his possessions, give the money to the poor, and follow him. To learn to follow Jesus is the training necessary to become a human being. To be a human being is not a natural condition, but requires training. The kind of training required, moreover, has everything to do with death. To follow Jesus is to go with him to Jerusalem where he will be crucified. To follow Jesus, therefore, is to undergo a training that refuses to let death, even death at the hands of enemies, determine the shape of our living. To learn to live without protection is to learn to live without possessions. To be dispossessed, however, cannot be willed. To try to be dispossessed is to be possessed by the will to be dispossessed. Rather, as Jean Vanier’s life reveals, to be dispossessed comes by being made a friend of those who have no possessions. They have had to learn to live without possessions. Jean Vanier had to learn from them how to live without the protections we think possessions provide. (Hauerwas, 2010)

I hope that it will now be clear why I began my discussion with the example of my father. He was, as I said, not a saint, but he befriended Vacek. No doubt that is the fuller reason why, as a boy, I accepted Vacek


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so readily and in such a way that I was able to say sincerely and spontaneously to the person who interviewed me that Vacek had not seemed weird to me. Now, having read Hauerwas, I am sure that his capacity to do that was inseparable from the role that the ethic of renunciation played in his life. It showed in his preparedness to suffer the humiliations of his compatriots who thought his compassion towards my mother and Mitru was shameful because it was unmanly. It was possible for him, I think, only because he was the kind of man who could respond as he did to Vacek, which was, in turn, possible only because he was prepared to suffer the humiliations that he did. In what I hope is not an intrusively didactic moment in Romulus, My Father, I say: ‘I have never known anybody who lived so passionately as did these two friends (my father and Hora) the belief that nothing matters so much in life as to live it decently. Nor have I known anyone so resistant and contemptuous of the external signs of status and prestige’ (Gaita, 1998). Though I have here and elsewhere emphasized that the ethic that made possible my father’s response to Vacek is an ethic of renunciation, until I read Hauerwas’s writing on Varnier, I did not realize how different that ethic is even from its Socratic form when it is transformed by lives like Varnier’s and by the language that developed from such lives – the language of saintly love. In Good and Evil I marked the kind of gap that exists between the limits to which a non-reductionist humanism (nonreductionist versions of the first ethical conception) can go towards valuing compassion for the afflicted, and the love shown to the afflicted by someone like the nun, by calling the latter an expression of ‘ethicalotherworldliness’. In the preface to the second edition I retreated from that expression. Mulhall says that was a mistake. He is right. * When Romulus, My Father was first published I read from it at a refuge for homeless people, reluctantly for I was aware that they came there for lunch, not for literature. At one stage a man, obviously mentally ill, called for me to stop. He raised his head, which he had held in his hands, and exclaimed ‘God is in this book!’ I remembered the times when, as a student, I worked in mental hospitals, and was anxious about what he would do next. ‘I mean’, he explained, ‘that it’s filled with love’. On that same day, five or six girls, prostitutes in the area, not one of them yet 20, asked me to read, again and again, about my mother. I read to them passages I had not read before or have since in public because it pains me to do so. In my mother’s troubled life they saw something of their

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own and, I think, they saw her suffering, and what she shared with them, in the light of the love that the man who spoke before them said filled the book. I am certain they would not repeatedly have asked me to read about my mother if they had detected in my portrayal of her what one critic called ‘a morally bankrupt woman’. The spiritual hunger that showed in their recognition that my mother was, like them, a deeply troubled soul, and the tribute by a man destitute of all worldly goods and achievements, bereft of all status and quite mad, moved and gratified me more than all the accolades the book and the film have received.

Note 1. See Mulhall, 2011.

Bibliography Donagan, A. (1977), The Theory of Morality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Gaita, R. (1998), Romulus, My Father. Melbourne: Text Publishing. Gaita, R. (2000), A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice. London: Routledge. Gaita, R. (2004), Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception (second edn). London: Routledge. Hauerwas, S. (2011), ‘God and goodness: A theological exploration’, in R. Grant (ed.), In Search of Goodness. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Mulhall, S. (2011), ‘The work of saintly love: The religious impulse in Gaita’s writing’, in C. Cordner (ed.), Philosophy, Ethics and A Common Humanity: Essays in Honour of Raimond Gaita. London: Routledge. Weil, S. (1977), The Simone Weil Reader, ed. G. A. Panichas. New York: David McKay.

Chapter 2

Love, Hate and Moral Inclusion1 Anca Gheaus

Introduction Love for particular people, and the partiality it necessarily involves, is a moral asset – it is the basis of our ability to respond morally to others. In arguing for this, I rely on two arguments – one philosophical and one psychological. The philosophical argument shows that we can engage in moral reasoning by invoking people’s relationships and need for each other, rather than invoking their intrinsic characteristics. This argument is not unfamiliar. Religious love for humanity, which is universal and impartial, has sometimes been considered to facilitate an ability to see the equal moral worth of all human beings. Here, by contrast, I am concerned with personal and partial love for particular individuals. We all have loved ones for whom we want the best, and cannot help but relate differently to them than we do to strangers: we love them, while we do not love strangers. Why, then, should we be morally concerned for strangers? Because strangers are, among other reasons, also – at least potentially – somebody’s loved ones. The argument is similar in structure to the age-old argument that everybody is owed moral respect because everybody is like us: rational, sentient, vulnerable and so on. It has the advantage of taking, as a primary reason, the relational fact that we are creatures who need to love others, and who need others’ love rather than focusing on the attributes in virtue of which people have been traditionally said to deserve equal moral consideration.2 The psychological argument is meant to appease the resultant worry that if our ability to and need for love are good bases for moral inclusion, then our ability (and, perhaps, need) to resent and to hate could provide equally compelling bases for moral exclusion. In reasoning from love to morality, I rely on two different sources. The first is the work of Raimond Gaita who, in one of his books discusses the revelatory power of a nun’s love towards very destitute people. In discussing his example, I argue that the love which can put us on the path to moral inclusion need not be a universal – for example, Christian – love, nor does it need to be an impersonal love for humanity. Moreover, I show

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why an example of secular, rather than religious, love would make his case more convincing. My second source is a stream of feminist ethics couched in a language of care, needs and relationships. Sara Ruddick (1989) argued that mothers are in the best position to understand the value of peace, since they can see, in each soldier – in fact, in each human being – somebody else, a mother, or perhaps, more generally, a parent, whose love and work has created that individual. Violence is always directed against the creations of such love and work, which are systematically wasted by war. In the same spirit, Eva Kittay (1999) argued that every individual is ‘some woman’s child’, meaning that each and every autonomous, relatively independent adult, started out as an utterly dependent being, in need of care. One expression of this dependency is that children’s and parents’ interests and hence, wellbeing are – interdependent. Kittay uses this idea to justify moral concern for all human beings: most of us have parents or children whose well-being is dependent on how we are treated, and this constitutes yet another ground for treating morally even those people whose moral status we might otherwise doubt. Both Ruddick and Kittay indicate a way of reaching universalizing moral conclusions from the existence of particular, personal bonds of love. Throughout this chapter, I use the term ‘love’ rather than care. They overlap partially, and some of the things I will say about love stem directly from the discussions around care. ‘Care’ has been defined, most generally, as a disposition and activity of meeting needs (Tronto, 1993). Since many of our needs are emotional, some caring relationships come in the shape of individualized love for concrete others.3 I do not qualify ‘love’ in any way other than as being personal and partial, that is, directed towards a particular individual.

Universal Moral Inclusion A common assumption in contemporary ethics is that all human beings are worthy of equal moral respect and therefore of equal inclusion in the sphere of morality. This is such a basic assumption that some philosophers would say that we do not need to argue for it – rather, that the burden of proof is on whoever thinks that some human beings should be excluded from moral concern. However, this claim has only recently become so extremely obvious; until not too long ago, enormous numbers of individuals (like women, indigenous people, slaves, the mentally disabled) had not been acknowledged as full members in the moral sphere. Moreover, current work in bioethics

Love, Hate and Moral Inclusion

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is concerned with whether individuals with severe intellectual disabilities should enjoy full membership in the moral community or not.4 The issue, it seems, is still worthy of discussion. Traditionally, philosophers have argued for universal moral inclusion by referring to certain intrinsic features of human beings. Some are capacities that define personhood – such as superior intelligence, rationality (Locke), autonomy (Kant), self-consciousness, a sense of purpose or the ability to respond to moral reasons and to behave morally (Rawls). Other philosophers have stressed the features which define us as creatures with interests, for example, sentience (utilitarians). Of course, these features are highly relevant for morality. It is impossible to see how morality would make any sense to us if, for example, most people were unable to reason and to respond to reasons – including specifically moral reasons. Also, in the absence of some kind of autonomy, it would be hard to distinguish moral from non-moral reasons or to pass judgement of praise and blame on individuals. But delimiting the scope of morality by referring exclusively to any of these features is problematic because it either excludes individuals whom most of us recognize as fellow human beings or inappropriately includes non-humans (inappropriately at least according to widely shared intuitions). At the same time, grounding moral inclusion on the above mentioned intrinsic features can also be criticized for displaying a certain shallowness: do characteristics such as rationality or autonomy, no matter how exclusively human and praiseworthy, fully capture the reason why we (should) feel moral concern for all people?5 I answer the above question negatively. For reasons of space, I do not elaborate further on what is problematic with exclusive reliance on the traditional candidates for reasons for moral inclusion; but I shall briefly return to the issue of intrinsic features. More recently, there have been attempts to define the proper scope of morality by reference to our relational identity and capacities; the argument I advance here supports this approach. Eva Kittay (2005) suggests that human beings’ ability to love others, and to respond to others’ love, as well as the relationships they forge with their families, including the entire cultural, social and emotional significance these relationships entail, are grounds for including all people, even the severely disabled, as equal recipients of moral concern. Because of their connectedness and interdependency with their families, the exclusion of some would inevitably harm not only the excluded individuals but also those related to them. This is a way of making sense of the fact that an infant with very severe intellectual impairments, for example, has the moral status of a human being in spite of scoring less than a chimp on rationality or autonomy. Kittay has not

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(yet?) addressed the closely related questions of how we should then think about the electively solitary adults, who choose to lead highly independent and lonely lives, and asocial people, who cannot relate emotionally to other people, for example, because they suffer from some kind of impairment themselves. People’s ability to love others and respond to others’ love, and their existing relationships with family members, may be very good grounds for moral inclusion. But if the argument stops here, it is unclear whether and how it works for the unloved and the disconnected. Furthermore, Kittay makes a forceful case that her approach does not resemble racism or nationalism. But her argument does not say much about ruling out other kinds of moral divides, like the ones just pointed out or like enduring boundaries of exclusion, based on long-term hatred and historical conflict between families, or groups of families. (As I discuss later, this kind of divide is very important if emotions are given a foundational role in delineating the scope of morality.) It is not clear that actual connectedness can be reason enough for moral inclusion, if those whose inclusion is under consideration are related to people who are not themselves already part of the moral realm. True, in her argument, Kittay does not rely entirely on ongoing relationships, but also on the norms that shape individuals within social and familial relationships, and which set moral standards. Thus, to take her example, an anencephalic infant is part of the moral realm (although it lacks intrinsic features such as rationality and autonomy) because this child is ‘someone’s child’, and with that social relationship comes a series of appropriate emotional and moral responses. The trouble, however, is that the normative standards embedded in social relationships are not universally inclusive – they range from full inclusion on equal terms to callous traditions of excluding the weak or the ‘defective’ (such as disabled people, or frail elderly) by at best relegating them to the margin of the moral realm. There are social contexts in which severely disabled infants have never been considered as full members of the moral realm – not even by their own parents – in spite of being someone’s child. Also, there are historical contexts – for example, those of ongoing ethnic conflict – in which relational identities have been defined by morally antagonistic groups of people. Thus, in certain times and places people are socially defined as either one of ‘us’, thus worthy of full moral inclusion, or one of ‘them’/‘the enemy’ who is represented as, in the best case, less than morally equal to ‘us’. The fact that each one of ‘them’ is also somebody’s child does not redeem her or him as a full member of the moral domain as long as she or he is one of ‘their’ children. To criticize these moral divides, one has to go beyond the normative function of social


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relations which are historically variable. Moral imagination, as I shall indicate, can help us reach such a standpoint. Arguing for moral inclusion by pointing to the relational nature of human beings is not, as such, a new way to define the scope of morality. Its dangers are well known. If the reason to treat other human beings morally is that they are in some way related to us, do we not run the risk of at least unfairly giving moral privilege to some: to those from the same family, same race, same nation-state, same sex and so on? More generally, if we allow personal relationships and emotions to be part of the arguments that inform morality and its scope, how can we avoid the perils of partiality (parochialism, prejudice and harmful forms of paternalism)?6 I shall not be able to address all these questions, and, as I explain in the last section, I do not believe moral reasoning can make itself immune to these dangers. I aim, however, to show how imaginable, that is, intelligible, emotional connections (which I call here ‘love’), based on the universal need people have for each other, can do the work left unfinished by the argument from actual connectedness. The dangers of partiality are some of the most powerful grounds for criticisms raised by feminists themselves against feminist moral reasoning in terms of care. Representative of typical worries about the ethics of care is Claudia Card’s (1996, p. 73) remark about the exclusion of strangers: Resting all of ethics on caring threatens to exclude as ethically insignificant our relationships with most people in the world because we do not know them and we never will. Regarding as ethically insignificant our relationships with people remote from us is a major constituent of racism and xenophobia. [My emphasis]

I will engage directly with Card’s claim and argue that universal moral inclusion may indeed be founded on partial love. Although we need to be treated morally by all people, and lovingly only by some, the need and capacity to love another person are nevertheless necessary for our ability to identify people in general as appropriate objects of concern. The abilities that make it possible for us to love are also conditions of possibility for acquiring a sense of morality. Philosophers have already explored the claim that the ability to form emotional bonds with others is motivationally necessary for morality.7 I claim that, furthermore, reflection on love can add an important building block in justifying universal moral inclusion. A consequence of the importance of emotional attachments for morality is that morality makes sense to us as human morality – as opposed to whatever kind of morality might bind gods, angels, extraterrestrials or

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other imaginable creatures which have minds similar to ours but who do not need each other emotionally. By contrast, human morality is that of beings who need each other in order to lead meaningful lives. Like the philosophers who endorse a high ideal of impartiality in ethics, Card doubts the moral credentials of love – and, with it, of care – because we are able to give love and care only to a very limited number of people. The requirement to love everybody in the same way as we love a few would obviously set too high a standard – perhaps even a confused one, since discrimination is one of the main conceptual features of what we call ‘love’. Since we cannot love everybody, how can our love for a selected few be relevant for universal moral claims?

Love . . . In his book A Common Humanity, Raimond Gaita (2000) suggests an answer to this question. Instead of starting with establishing universal obligations and then wondering what might be the place of personal love and partiality in morality, as other philosophers do8, he tackles the issue from the other end. Gaita invites us to think how our commitments to those whom we love are relevant for the obligations we have towards people in general. According to him, it is precisely because we are able to love some individual human beings that we can gain full understanding of the moral value of people in general. Thus, someone’s moral status is partially determined by the fact that he or she is the imaginable object of another person’s love: We have obligations to those whom we do not and could not love, but that does not mean that we would find it even intelligible that we should have those obligations if we did not also find it intelligible that someone could love them, and more fundamentally, if we did not see them as having the kind of individuality [which] is in part constituted by our attachments, of which the forms of love are the most important. (2000, p. xxii)

Gaita illustrates his point with the story of a nun’s visit to a psychiatric hospital, where Gaita himself was working as an intern during his youth. The moral responses of the regular employees towards the patients were diverse. Some of the nurses in the hospital treated patients in a brutal, demeaning manner while the doctors – as well as a few other nurses – were kind and compassionate. However, the nun alone could relate to the psychiatric patients as equals, acknowledging their full humanity. Most importantly, Gaita could not see any trace of condescension in the nun’s


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behaviour – and this lack of condescension was the sign of her accepting the patients as full equals. The contrast between the nun’s behaviour and that of the doctors and (kind) nurses taught the young Gaita that the latter’s attitude had, by contrast, been condescending in spite of their good intentions; their condescension was part of an attitude that fell short of full moral inclusiveness. Moreover, the nun’s non-condescending treatment of the severely impaired patients ‘revealed’ to the young Gaita the inalienable moral value of these patients. Her attitude was made possible by her love for the patients – in this case universal, Christian love. The revelatory power of this love is, according to Gaita, independent from one’s belief in the metaphysical (religious) background which, supposedly, inspired and supported her attitude. He argues that, once the full moral worth of the patients is ‘revealed’ by this love, this piece of moral knowledge is equally accessible to those who do not embrace its metaphysical foundations. I shall not discuss here the latter, controversial claim.9 Instead, I shall point out that the nun’s love is best understood as impartial and unconditional. Would an expression of partial, and more conditional, love – for example, that of a parent, a lover or a friend – have been able to bring about the same moral revelation? The answer to this question is important, since the universal love of the nun, because it is impartial and unconditional, already engenders a moral component. By contrast, in this chapter that ordinary love, which as such is free of moral characteristics, can offer an entry into moral thinking. Why is the choice of the nun, with her Christian love, so appealing? The unconditional love of the nun is more sustainable, as a general attitude, than it would be, if coming from any of the nurses or medical doctors from the example above. It is not a mere coincidence that, in Gaita’s story, the daily hands-on care for the patients was done by the non-compassionate nurses, the ongoing responsibility for the patients was borne by the compassionate but condescending doctors while the nun was just a passer-by. Unconditional love is difficult, if at all humanly possible, to sustain in the context of everyday challenges. Moreover, impartial love, disentangled from knowledge of the particularities of the beloved, is more easily amenable to being unconditional. By contrast, an example of ordinary, partial and thus more fragile love would be more convincing for two reasons. First, because this is the love which most of us experience. And second because, as already noted, this ordinary love, unlike the impartial and unconditional Christian one, is not, as such, a moral emotion. In what follows, I argue that, indeed, love for those to whom we are personally connected can bring about universal

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moral inclusion because of its power to reveal that people in general are as valuable as those whom we love. Presumably, we do not love people for the sake of the particular characteristics they possess; however, love makes their characteristics visible and particularly significant to us. Once we come to love a particular individual, her features – at least some of them – become valuable too. And these features are not unique to her. Like our loved ones, strangers are needy, vulnerable, delightful, purposeful, sometimes silly and so on. Most importantly, their existence and well-being is essential for other people’s sense that life is enjoyable and meaningful. Thus, strangers are in the same class of valuable individuals as the particular individual we love. This recognition can serve as a basis for the moral inclusion of people who are, and will remain, strangers to us. Perhaps one cannot extend one’s love to all of humankind, but one can recognize that any individual could become the object of someone’s love. This thought will help identify all human beings as part of the moral realm and acknowledge them as worthy of full moral inclusion. To me, this seems to be an accomplishment of imagination put to moral use. As an illustration, think of the following situation. Suppose a child is being constantly, and meanly, teased at school by a classmate, and you want to give her reasons why she should not retaliate by bullying her irritating mate (call this second child Tony). You may, of course, refer to Tony’s responsiveness to reasons (which in the current case is obviously not very high) or to her having interests of her own, among which is not to be bullied. You may encourage the child to be friends with Tony, but she might understandably resist the suggestion. In a final attempt, you may tell the child that Tony, with whom she might never want to be friends, is however, in many respects just like your child’s own best friend, whom she would be unhappy to see bullied (even in response to ‘provocation’). For this argument to work, it is not necessary that the child in question and Tony be friends. And it is not necessary that Tony has any friends at all (although this fact could make the reasoning even more compelling); it is enough that the child with whom you try to reason has at least one friend, and that she can see the many similarities between her friend and Tony. The idea that we identify moral agents by identifying those of the same kind as those whom we love is particularly compelling when rephrased in terms of needs, as Gaita himself does in a different book, The Philosopher’s Dog (2002). Our need for close relationships makes the value of others plain to us: ‘The need we have – often unfathomable – of other human beings is partly what conditions and yields to us our sense of their preciousness’ (2002, p. 17). Just like our dear ones, anyone can be needed


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and this can help us understand the moral value of those to whom we are not directly connected by need. The child in the example above can understand that there could be someone who needs Tony just like she needs her own best friend.10 But one can also love, and need, for example, cuddly animals. A teddy bear might fulfil a need for comfort (as it often does in the case of small children); however, it would be absurd to think that whatever we love and need ought to become an object of direct moral concern in the same way that people do. What singles people out, among all objects of love, is their ability to respond to love and to love back; something the cuddly animal cannot do. A second part of the argument connecting love and moral recognition should be made from the perspective of receiving and responding to love. By being in loving relationships with a few, we can come to understand that all people are potential lovers for someone. This is relevant because human neediness is universal and the need for receiving individualized love has a particular significance. Like all fundamental needs, it carries normative moral implications. Additionally, the fulfilment of this need is closely linked to people’s sense that they are leading a meaningful life, since much of the meaning of most people’s lives comes from relationships with their loved ones.11 As creatures with relational needs, human beings relate to each other differently than creatures whose identity is not constituted by relationships and who do not have emotional needs for others. Examples of these other kinds of creatures must remain speculative or fictive. Reptiles or gods (as the Greeks imagined them) do not need emotional relationships. For this reason, it is hard to say what ‘morality’ could possibly mean for the latter. Personal, partial love is therefore constitutive of our morality in two ways. Human morality is the morality of beings who need each other, which means that moral agency is in part determined by our need to be in (loving) relationships. Those who fulfil such needs cannot but be placed at the centre of the moral realm. At the same time, love has an epistemic role: our love for particular others can reveal to us the value of our common humanity and the ‘preciousness’, as Gaita calls it, of people in general. The latter claim is more controversial, since it presupposes a moral realism which is not strictly needed for the general argument of this chapter.12 In Gaita’s words, again: ‘The person who has rid himself of the need of others, who longs and grieves for no one, is not someone who is positioned to see things most clearly’ (2002, p. 18). Along the lines of this argument, one may wonder if someone who has never been able to love and to care in a personal way for anybody else would be able even to make full sense

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of the requirements of morality as having any application to concrete cases. (Supposing such an individual could exist – this particular counterfactual, I believe, seriously overstretches the limits of one’s imagination. Some people do, indeed, never reach anything like mature forms of attachment to others, properly called ‘love’, but even those individuals would have felt infantile forms of attachment to those who cared, well or badly, for them during their infancy. I shall come back to this in the last section.) This argument about reasoning from partial love to universal moral value is, obviously, not empirical. While there are instances of love that carry this kind of insight – for instance, Ruddick’s maternal subjects – many people who have loving attachments do not recognize the moral worth of human beings in general. But it is enough to say, I believe, that one’s love could, under ideal circumstances (such as reasoning with a child), reveal how those who are not the object of that love – or who are not the object of any love – are nevertheless morally worthy individuals. To conclude this section, the ability to love, as well as the actual love we feel for certain human beings, serves as two grounds among others13 for valuing moral concern for distant others and for identifying people in general as worthy of moral treatment. Without the ability to recognize others as moral agents, many of the requirements of morality would become idle, even unintelligible. Some philosophical work on how the inability to relate to other human beings impairs one’s moral abilities reinforces this hypothesis. John Deigh (1995), for example, has argued that psychopaths’ inability to relate to anybody in a loving and trusting way and the resultant lack of empathy is the key to understanding their morally abhorrent behaviour. In spite of their otherwise normal cognitive and volitional faculties, psychopaths’ imperceptibility of moral feeling leads to a cognitive impairment: they are unable to perceive other people’s goals as worthy. Therefore, argues Deigh, they are unable to identify others as appropriate objects of moral behaviour. Abilities to give and respond to love need not be necessary grounds for all cases of moral inclusion, but I believe they are necessary in order to make sense of the richness and complexity of moral relationships. Thus, it may be that we have enough grounds for respecting the rights of benevolent creatures endowed with rationality and autonomy but no emotions. But much of the moral vocabulary we usually employ would not make sense in describing our relationships with them. If one of them became mentally impaired and was to be treated in a psychiatric hospital, the question of whether condescending behaviour towards this creature was wrong would not be raised.


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Thus, models of moral agents who do not need others or whose need for others is contingent for their moral identity14 are not just unrealistic idealizations; even if such individuals existed, they would also lack an essential insight into the moral value of human beings in general. Although we cannot and should not universalize love in the sense of aiming to feel partial love for everybody, love for some people is a promising basis for conceiving a universal morality capable of including all people.

. . . and Hate? Going back to the story of the child from the previous section, what should we tell her if she comes home the next day willing to continue the conversation, and arguing that Tony is also like a much feared and indeed widely hated other classmate – say, the big bully of the school? If love can pave the way to universal moral inclusion, can perhaps hate lead to moral exclusion? If one accepts the argument developed above, does one not also have to accept the reasoning that leads from hate of particular others to misanthropy and further to the inability to see why human beings have any moral worth? Indeed, the very needy nature of human beings, which makes the bonds of love between us so valuable, also makes us vulnerable and often leaves us deeply harmed and (rightly) resentful. Others can humiliate us, be cruel, abusive, or simply be neglectful and indifferent. They hurt us; even worse, they hurt the ones we love. We respond with resentment, sometimes with hate. But if one hates a person, how should one fail to notice how similar the hated ones are to others, to the large numbers of strangers for whom one has no feelings? And if strangers are similar to the people one hates, is there any safeguard against the temptation of misanthropy? Is it really possible for the one who looks at people and notices mostly – or only – cruelty, meanness, indifference, irresponsibility, moral stupidity and ugliness to see all human beings as fundamentally worthy of respect and moral treatment? I believe that we have indeed to acknowledge this possibility, and that philosophy has no internal resource to answer this challenge. At the end of the day, allowing love a place in moral reasoning is risky even when it is put to good moral use, as it were. The argument can always be turned on its head, love be replaced by hate, and invite universal exclusion rather than universal inclusion. Indeed, it is often moralists, and lovers of humanity, who give into the deepest and most enduring misanthropy. Why is misanthropy such a danger? Why engage in an imaginary conversation with someone who, by rejecting humanity as a whole, has

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excluded herself or himself from the conversation in the first place? The answer, I suggest, is that hate and the moral exclusion it can entail are widespread realities, and therefore represent permanent dangers one should not simply ignore. Just like with love, we can fall in and out of hate over time, rather than belonging clearly to one side of the moral divide (the ‘moral inclusivists’ and the ‘misanthropes’). As already noted, misanthropes – people whose moral disgust extend to all of humanity and who therefore find it impossible to see people as worthy of moral treatment – are often the same individuals who used to love human beings. Some people who (rightly or wrongly) acquired the reputation of misanthropes, like Jonathan Swift, Montaigne or Céline, for instance, started out by caring a lot about human beings in general. Perhaps the ability to relate to others can be lost through hate by the normal human being. Leaving aside the question of which comes first chronologically, it is difficult to see how somebody who lost the ability to even imagine others as objects of one’s love could still recognize anybody’s full moral worth. And if someone perceives others as essentially unworthy, how should she or he continue to value something like a noncondescending attitude? One might be tempted to rush into saying that, after all, the entire endeavour of reasoning for moral inclusion from feelings is perhaps a lost cause. (Is it not better to divorce morality and emotion, and tell the misanthropes they can hate all they want, but they still have independent reasons to behave morally? Because: ‘human beings are rational . . . autonomous . . . and . . . purposeful . . .’) Remember the argument of this chapter started with a relative disenchantment with the reasoning that takes characteristics such as superior intelligence, rationality, autonomy or a sense of purpose as defining humanity and thus providing a basis for universal inclusion. This disenchantment might be reinforced if one sees the dangers of misanthropy: one might think the traditional arguments for moral inclusion will fare, if anything, worse. Note that the misanthropist might well acknowledge that all people are moral equals. This will not be enough, however, to take him morally off the ground, as long as he believes all people are equally morally unworthy. On pain of incoherence, he might well include himself in the assessment, and not expect moral treatment from others; but from someone already convinced of the impossibility of a world ruled by moral rules this is not a very high price to pay. Perhaps the problem lies with the choice of the markers of humanity: the intrinsic features connoting morality have been traditionally chosen to emphasize disconnectedness rather than relatedness. These are the very


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features that enable us to pursue egoistic goals and, when such a pursuit is not compatible with social cooperation, they give us the power to harm others. Intelligence, autonomy, the ability to set goals and to make plans are often precisely those features that enable people who harm us deliberately or not – in different times, they would have been called ‘our enemies’ – to harm us really badly. Even the capacity to respond to reasons, probably the most successful traditional marker of a common humanity, can be instrumental in magnifying rather than avoiding moral harm. A being who responds to reasons will likely respond to a variety of reasons, some of which are a-moral or immoral. And causing moral harm while being (able to be) aware of it arguably magnifies this. The misanthrope will not have her or his heart changed merely by having human characteristics pointed out. For this reason one might feel more able to recognize the humanity, and moral standing, of people of mediocre intellectual abilities or less, of those who are leading lives which are confused or without particularly clear goals, let alone high goals. A Kantian will never condone a reduced ability to harm as having any moral merit, but it is not difficult to see why one might place moral value on those unable to do harm, especially if one is oneself part of the least fortunate lot of humanity. Illustrations can be found in many of Dostoevsky’s books: Raskolnikov’s hatred of Alena, his inability to see her as a potential source or recipient of love, leads him to a crime he justifies by her inhumanity; her purposefulness or rational nature do nothing to challenge his reasons. And some of Dostoevsky’s characters have a propensity to like, side with and ultimately morally glorify ‘the insulted and humiliated’ not in spite of, but in virtue of being the less intelligent and purposeful. From all the non-relational characteristics that have been used to define the scope of morality, only the propensity to be moral could save the day from the challenge of misanthropy. A belief in human beings’ ultimate ability to be good is the only antidote of the disenchantment with humanity which often creates misanthropy. On its own, however, this is a very thin ground for universal moral inclusion, because it requires a huge leap of faith. The problem with saying that all human beings deserve moral consideration because they are able to behave morally sits very uncomfortably with the (I assume, very widespread) reality of people’s moral failures. The schoolgirl might wonder how she could possibility believe that the school’s big bully could, stop humiliating and brutalizing the other kids. And, even if she could, why should this matter as long as the humiliation and brutalizing goes on? Moreover, beyond the relatively protected space of the school grounds, many (maybe most) people live in social worlds where inequality, humiliation, various forms of violence,

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often wrapped in a halo of cynicism, are the rule, not the exception. Why should one try to respect all others as equally worthy fellow humans, especially if doing so actually limits one’s ability to protect oneself and dear ones? Indicating all human beings’ potential responsiveness to morality does not seem, in itself, convincing enough. The illustration of the problems of connecting morality with partial emotions is not exhausted by the individual misanthropist. An additional challenge comes from some particularly deep moral divides between groups of people. One can understand, along the lines sketched above, feelings of hate for entire groups. Enduring resentment could be directed at families, races, classes, the opposite sex and so on, because of their members’ similarity with former perpetrators of damage. Moral exclusion often happens not in virtue of features these people lack – rationality, autonomy or superior intelligence – but in virtue of how they remind one of those whom one cannot forgive, and with whom one cannot see as a potential recipient of one’s love. In a world that became radically divided into classes of people who never intermingled and who were in perpetual conflictual relations (for instance, between the haves and the have-nots), individuals from each group might reach the point where they would find it impossible to even imagine individuals from the other group as potential objects or sources of love. In an extreme example, is somebody, or some group, who has been betrayed, abandoned and/or exploited by all other known people, still under the obligation to recognize the humanity of the oppressors? To include them in the sphere of her moral concern? If the damage is so significant that the person in question cannot imagine ever relating to anyone outside her group of outcasts, it is difficult to see on which grounds one can claim that this person is still bound to the rest of humanity by common moral standards and allegiances. Let me illustrate this with a fictional story. Over the last few decades many children in Romania have grown up on their own, living and dying in the streets with no protection and guidance from any adults. Most of these children (born as a result of aggressive pronatalist policies including abortion bans, unavailable contraception, and encouragement of crass ignorance concerning sexuality and reproduction) were abandoned at birth by their parents; they spent the first years of life in appalling state institutions, from which they eventually escaped. Some are orphans. Other children run away from abusive parents. From pre-school ages, they lived without any parental figures except for older children – who are often themselves extremely violent and abusive – begging or stealing, sleeping in public parks or in undergrounds. Usually,


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they do not attend school. Most of them routinely get high by inhaling paint vapours and, when they have access to them, other drugs. Many are infected with AIDS. These children are extremely difficult to rehabilitate: once institutionalized they run away from their new homes back onto the streets. Social workers find it almost impossible to bond with them and to establish even minimal trust. It seems that, if anything, only a wellconcerted investment of enormous resources could make these children accept the basic care they lacked so extremely throughout their lives. A few years ago a warning circulated, by word of mouth and email, that people should be careful with public seats in places such as film theatres: street children had allegedly planted HIV-infected needles as a form of revenge. This story is most likely a creation of public guilt and fear. The cruel revenge it imagines is certainly an immoral act. But would it be accurate to say that the street children have any moral duty towards the majority who betrayed them? Attempts to reason with these children in terms of an inclusive morality appear impossible due to the seemingly unbridgeable divide between them and the larger society. What explains this impossibility is not an alleged lack of rationality, or even of a sense of moral obligation, in these children. Their instrumental rationality is often very well developed – indeed, it is an important tool for survival – and their lives are often informed by a sense of duty towards each other. I suggest that what makes the moral divide unbridgeable is the same thing that often makes it impossible to socially rehabilitate the children: their lost ability to relate emotionally to people from mainstream society. I believe there is no good answer the philosopher can give to this challenge, no reason that could convince the misanthrope to somehow transcend misanthropy and see human beings as worthy of moral concern – which is to give precedence to moral reactions over misanthropic ones. (If misanthropy were an infectious disease, and most people were to become solitary misanthropes unable to feel love for anybody, morality would become idle. More than that: with the death of the last non-misanthrope, morality would cease to make sense.15) This does not necessarily mean that there is nothing more to be said on this issue. Although philosophy might be unable to dispel the danger, I believe that theories from outside philosophy can sustain the hope that widespread misanthropy is not going to lead (even under very antagonizing social circumstances) to a morally dead world. This is, in the final instance, a hope for sanity, and will have to come from the field of psychology, rather than philosophy.

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Reparation To this end, I suggest we look very briefly at Melanie Klein’s work on love, hate and reparation.16 In this last section, I draw on her theory, one of the foundational theories of object-relations psychoanalysis. Not incidentally, object-relations theory defines us as being mainly relationoriented (and only secondarily pleasure-seeking) creatures, and gives primary relationships a key constitutive function in the creation of human selves. Klein studies the significance of the fact that from the beginning of our lives we have to confront and resolve emotional contradictions between loving and hating. In most cases of psychological development – in those cases we call ‘sane’ as opposed to ‘psychotic’ – love ends up having the upper hand and hate is compensated – and tamed – by the urge for reparation. According to Klein, the very young infant, even before developing a sense of itself as separate from others, creates relationships with partial objects, such as parts of others’ bodies, with which it has regular contact. Thus, it feels – indeed, it is dominated by – love and hate for those objects which it perceives as sources of pleasure and pain, respectively. The paradigmatic example is the breast of the mother, which sometimes feeds it, offering gratification, while at other times is painfully absent, leaving the baby pray to frustrating hunger. At first, the baby cannot know that these two are one and the same object. To manage the psychological confusion produced by its strong feelings of love and hate the baby tends to identify, in fantasy, all that is ‘good’ – that is, gratifying – with a part of itself (i.e. to introject the good objects) and all that is bad – that is, frustrating – with realities outside itself (i.e. to project the bad objects). On this basis, the label ‘paranoid-schizoid’ is given to this stage of the infant’s development. This stage is superseded, in normal development, by a further stage in which the baby is able to identify whole – as opposed to only partial – objects and, in this context, to understand that frustration and gratification come from the same source. This also brings about the realization that both one’s love and one’s hate have been directed towards the same object – that is, the mother. Hate is accompanied by fantasies of aggression and destruction, which now the baby understands it has directed towards the object of its love. Since it is still unable to differentiate between reality and fantasy, this realization comes with feelings of guilt and anxiety about the damage its fantasized attacks might have caused. This is why Klein calls this stage ‘the depressive position’. If the infant is strong enough to face its guilt and anxiety, it responds with the desire to make up for, to repair,


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the damage. When it is not strong enough, it tends to revert to the previous stage. Supposing we accept Klein’s account (perhaps it would be enough to accept some of it, the phenomenology if not the entire metaphysics), how could it be relevant to this chapter’s discussion? Why should we believe that the above dynamics might be similar when it comes not to the unconscious emotional life of infants, but to the conscious moral processes of adults? The conflict between love and hate for one and the same object, together with the mature ‘solution’ that involves reparation, remains, according to Klein, a constant of the psychological life of adults. Hate is difficult to bear: it is accompanied by persecutory fears, since it always evokes the ambivalent feelings towards the primary object (the mother) upon whom the infant was utterly dependent.17 In the end, being able to love – and make reparations for previous hate – rather than revert to full hate, is in the psychological interests of the individual. This becomes a major source of moral motivation. (But, unfortunately, not of moral reason . . . This argument gives hope in morality because, being mediated by love, it is ultimately the only way to aspire to individual well-being.) Love opens the door to sanity and to possible well-being, while hate opens the door to sure misery and to possible insanity. It is ultimately about mental sanity: as long as love dominates hate, one can still pay enough attention to the reality of another and to possible cues to common understandings and to the potentially moral nature of that other. As long as we retain a realistic position that recognizes both the goodness and badness of the other, the desire to prevent or mitigate harm might contain the destructive impulses of hatred. By contrast, the danger of insanity consists in the misanthrope’s denial of all goodness of objects and ultimately loss of contact with (other individuals’) reality. The reason for this difference is again psychological: we seem to be better able to sustain love for something we see as imperfect – a mixture of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ – than sustain hate for something in which we recognize a good side. Thus, the alternative to accepting ambivalence is to revert to the schizoid-paranoid position where one can only recognize parts of objects which can be perceived as all-good or all-bad. This is a form of insanity. This analysis of mature love as ambivalent, with love having the upper hand over hate, as offered by object-relations theory might not be fully reassuring or philosophically satisfactory. It does not rule out the risk of full blown misanthropy, although it portrays it as a very uncomfortable (and thus unlikely) situation for the individual. And, to the philosopher seeking firm moral foundations, psychological theory cannot provide an entirely moral, as opposed to prudential, reason why love, more

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than hate, should shape our moral perception of human beings. It is only a hopeful analysis, which reunites morality and well-being, without conflating them.18

Conclusions An argument left at this stage of generality can hardly have definite practical implications. However, if our ability to feel partial love does indeed have moral worth (since it can guide us towards universal moral inclusion), this speaks in favour of certain social arrangements. It gives us a reason to avoid all kinds of ghettoization and to encourage social mixing of people who belong to different races, ages, classes and even cultural traditions, especially if they have been traditionally antagonistic. This general desideratum can translate into more concrete policies concerning housing, education, public transportation and various forms of interaction in civil society. It can also provide additional reasons in debates such as those on multiculturalism or on laws on hate speech and, more generally, in attempts to determine the best compromises in cases where different rights, perhaps even different values, come into conflict. A great amount of moral psychology would of course be needed to determine under which circumstances people are more likely to form and sustain caring relationships across various divides. An example of a currently ‘hot’ moral issue on which the argument of this chapter may bear is proper uses of genetic technology. Some worry that unrestrained ‘enhancement’ of some individuals, especially against the background of enormous differences in access to new technology can lead over time to the creation of different subspecies of human beings. Would individuals be able to form close emotional ties with those from different groups, and what is the moral significance of the answer? I have argued that partial love and care can serve as reasons for the moral inclusion of people very different from ourselves, whom we can nevertheless imagine as objects of our love and as sources of love. But imagination cannot be stretched over any kind of difference: beings devoid of emotional needs, who cannot form any kind of bonds with other human beings, might be out of the reach of the present argument. Finally, if partial love and the need for caring relationships are indeed proper tools for drawing the limits of the moral domain, it can be easier for non-utilitarians to make sense of the powerful intuition that we should treat different animals in morally differentiated ways. Various animals have extremely different capacities to form emotional bonds with people.


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This ranges from animals (like spiders19) who never form emotional relationships with certain individuals to animals (like dogs) who form relationships that take on many anthropomorphic features, and in the middle there are cases in which the imagination does indeed have an essential role in determining the nature of the connection (as with mice).

Appendix: On Reptiles and (Mad?) Dictators This account of moral inclusion has obvious limitations. Some are clearly unfortunate. There will still be humans whom we cannot even imagine as objects and subjects of love, but still want to include. One example is people who are in a permanent vegetative condition, which prevents them from any form of caring interaction with others. Even if we have no good reason to do it, we might want to hold onto a myth, in virtue of which we can include them – maybe the hope (which can never be entirely eliminated by scientific knowledge) that the apparently unresponsive person might retain a level of awareness or that she or he will recover, or perhaps a story about the past, about what an individual used to be like before entering the vegetative condition. In the cases of individuals born in such a state, nothing short of a metaphysics of the soul might do. There is another, even more difficult, illustration of the limits of this path towards moral inclusion. Every now and then there are individuals whose image becomes the seat of so much public fear and hatred that one cannot imagine them as fellow human beings any more.20 Sometimes they are previously anonymous individuals – psychotic or not – who have committed atrocious acts, maybe over a long period of time: lifelong serial killers and child abusers, or parents who have locked away and tortured members of their families over the years. But they can also be public figures, most notably evil dictators, who inflicted so much suffering over time, and did it while sending such a clear message that they knew and did not care about this suffering (or that they were criminally unaware of it) that they managed to exclude themselves from humanity. When I happen to read, or hear, stories meant to demonstrate that former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had ‘humane’ features I feel as if such stories are about a member of an entirely different species than the human one.21 This is paradoxical, because the explicit aim of the stories is to show his humanity; however, no matter how hard I try, I cannot stick these features to that face. Like oil and water, they resist all attempts at mixing. This is certainly a matter of limited imagination: most likely, had I not been contemporaneous with him, I could have formed a picture of the

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man in which some of these features found a place. I believe the mechanisms that limit my moral imagination in this case start with my inability to imagine any human relationship between me, or anyone I can understand, and Ceausescu. Like reptiles22, his image – and now his memory – can inspire fear, disgust or sheer hatred, but no amount of understanding or empathy. These are not the fear, disgust or hatred one can occasionally feel for a fellow human being. From all I know, I am not a singular case. Nobody I know could make sense of Ceausescu’s humanity during the last years of his regime. Even as a subject of discussion, it was unimaginable. I cannot – nor could anyone I knew on the 25th of December 1989, when he was illegally executed in cold blood – imagine him as the object or subject of love. All this in spite of the fact that we know he probably was: like everybody else he had parents, he had children when he died, and he had a similarly hated wife. This story also has something to do with insanity: whether it is true or not, ‘we’ tend to believe the presidential couple of Romanian dictators were paranoiacs, or schizophrenics, or both. To many people of my generation, Nicolae Ceausescu appears as an embodiment of insanity beyond good and evil, and beyond any stretch of imagination as to what ‘humanity’ could possibly mean. Not incidentally, much of the hatred against him was accumulated in the context of an aggressive and totally excessive personality cult. The entire media was dominated by photos of him, by his speeches and by news concerning his deeds. Generations of artists and poets made their names painting his portraits and glorifying him in odes. All schoolbooks (as well as many other books) had his portrait on the first page, and the walls of all pubic institutions displayed the same portrait. The infliction of his image upon us, daily, automatically and in all public places, has concomitantly achieved many things: it induced fear and obedience; it fuelled hatred; it ensured most people’s disengagement from all public symbols and a deep-seated sense that those who hold political power must somehow belong to a (sub)species different from normal humans. And thus, eventually, it achieved Ceausescu’s own exclusion from humanity – it was not the image of a human being we were seeing in the end, but that of a self-proclaimed and self-imposed idol, too powerful to ever look ridiculous in his self-glorification. Just like the Greek gods in the counterfactual examples I mentioned above, Ceausescu ceased to be perceived as a human being who needs others, and who could be seen (at least in theory) as emotionally needed by other human beings. When he was shot, almost anonymously, at Christmas after a simulacrum of a trial, more religiously inclined people deplored the timing. More legalistic people deplored the procedure. But no one I know wasted a sigh on the outcome or on the


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demeaning and inhumane manner in which the execution took place. And several people who are otherwise particularly sensitive to moral issues, people who reflect and write books on ethics and who occasionally agonize over moral questions, said they would have killed him with their own hands had the occasion arose. I suspect that would have been, in a strange way, a dispassionate killing, totally unlike the murder of someone with whom the murderer could possibly be personally connected. Watching Ceausescu’s death back then, but also seeing it on tape again over the years, I have had no moral feelings whatsoever, not even self-righteous revenge. It was only relief – albeit spoiled by horror – and the sense that I was witnessing a welcome and inevitable event; like nature taking its course in rejecting a foreign body. Are these limits of love and need in the case of reptiles and mad dictators regrettable? Probably yes. The philosopher will not fail to note that if Ceausescu was indeed insane, and if various dictators who fit his profile inflicted suffering without being aware of it – maybe because they were insane – then these individuals were certainly themselves extremely damaged, unfortunate and possibly not responsible human beings. We are justified to protect ourselves from them; but are we also justified to exclude them from the scope of morality, and respond to the harm they inflict as if it was a natural cataclysm?

Notes 1. I am grateful for comments to Pamela Sue Anderson, Raimond Gaita, Susan James, Bogdan Popa, Adina Preda, Anders Schinkel, Nicole van Voorst Vader, the participants in the Graduate Conference on Philosophy of Religion Oxford, September 2008, and audiences at Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin. During the last stage of writing this paper I have benefited from a post-doctoral grant from the Dutch National Science Foundation (NWO). 2. I hope to make clear in due course why my argument does not collapse into the old utilitarian idea that it is wrong to harm somebody for whom a person cares because this is an indirect way of harming the person herself. 3. I do not attempt to unpack here the connections between love, care and need. 4. For an argument that people with severe intellectual disabilities are not owed duties of justice, see McMahan, 1996, 2002. For an argument that we do have duties of justice towards such people, see, for example, Nussbaum, 2006. 5. Cora Diamond, 1978, for example, criticizes as shallow the inability to see why eating animals and eating people are not comparable subjects of moral enquiry, even when the people in question do not posses any of the features which have traditionally been understood to qualify us for moral membership. 6. Philosophers deplore many aspects of the interference of partial emotions in the moral life, most prominently the way they act as an obstacle to realizing

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7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

Moral Powers, Fragile Beliefs procedural justice – petty or large-scale corruption, favouring some without good (moral) reason and so on. (Furthermore, can we forgive everybody equally? Can we be equally generous and kind with everybody? and so on. Whatever we deem to be supererogatory will also be partial.) But most importantly, our partiality is in practice not compatible with an egalitarian world based on luck, that is, a world in which people’s comparative fates, their comparative chances to have good lives, and the distribution of whatever it is that matters for human life, does not depend on things which are outside our control. For several reasons, love and care are among the things that should be fairly distributed; but in fact their ‘distribution’ is a matter of luck, luck embodied in the different people who love (and hate?) us very partially indeed. The disadvantages of partiality are clear; could there be any moral advantages to it? The present chapter is a positive reply to this question. See, for instance, Deigh, 1995. For instance, Barry, 1995, especially chapter 10. See Wynn, 2003. An interesting question here is whether anything is gained by adding so many characters to the story. Is it not enough to tell the child that Tony is just like her (e.g. she would hurt if she were bullied)? I believe it is easier for us to see how strangers are similar to those we love rather than to ourselves (we see both the beloved and the strangers ‘from outside’). In some cases – like those involving people with severe mental impairments – the crucial step in reasoning for inclusion is the ability to see the similarities. In other cases (like those about including people we resent, dislike, against whom we are prejudiced or who have seriously transgressed moral norms themselves) the crucial step is to let resentment be outweighed by the understanding that the people in question are nevertheless potentially connected to us by their (and our) need, and thus share with us a common humanity. It is not difficult to see why my love for, and caring about, my friend is contingent: we could not have met, or could have been alienated from each other from the start by some circumstance. It is conceivable, maybe easily so, that other people, even those who are the object of my rightful anger, would under different circumstances have become my nearest and dearest. In these cases, the mere similarity between the person under consideration and myself would not provide a reason. See, for example, Frankfurt, 1999; Raz, 2001. And which Gaita himself does not seem to endorse. As already explained, I do not claim they are sufficient grounds. Such as individuals who only need others for things that could, in principle, also be delivered by machines. Some misanthropes see animals as objects of moral concern – and, indeed, continue to love animals while they cannot love human beings (any more). I assume the genesis of their love, and moral concern, for animals is parasitic on love, and moral concern, for human beings. This very rough sketch of Klein’s thought is based (apart from on Klein’s own work) on a very clear, concise and at the same time much richer rendering of Klein’s thought by Sarah Richmond. See Klein and Riviere, 1937, and Richmond, 2000.


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17. Love is also more agreeable because it evokes the ‘good object’, that is, the gratifying aspects of the primary figure, on whose introjection depends one’s psychological well-being. In Sarah Richmond’s words: The theory of the depressive position accounts for a . . . motivation for moral behaviour that approximates more closely to altruism. The motivation here isconcern for the internal good object rather than for oneself, and involves depressive guilt (in relation to one’s harmful impulses) rather than persecutory fear. This second source of moral motivation . . . allows for greater recognition of personal responsibility. (2000, p. 81) 18. On an optimistic note, however, it may offer a plausible interpretation of Ancient ethics’ ultimate identification of eudaimonia with a morally led life. 19. But, as my colleague Nicole van Voorst Vader pointed out, emotional relationships with spiders have in fact been imagined, as in the much loved children’s book Charlotte’s Web by Elwyn Brooks White. 20. The explanation might be that in the case of human-scale evil, but not in the case of extraordinary evil, we can try to understand the agent as attempting to meet her own needs in a way that is morally wrong, and probably prudentially misguided. We can stipulate that a jealousy crime was a morally wrong and unsuccessful way of keeping the object of one’s love, that various forms of violence are perpetrators’ attempts to protect themselves. But in the case of atrocities that exclude the perpetrators from the sphere of humanity we either cannot understand the need which would allegedly engender the evil (such as cold-blooded mass murder) or are not able to represent it to ourselves as human need (the tyrant who sets Rome on fire for the aesthetic pleasure he gets from the sight). Of course, further exercises of imagination, aided by theories that aim to explain human behaviour by reference to unconscious processes, keep expanding the scope of what we can make sense of as a response to a human need. (‘The coolness of the murderer might be a disguise for . . .’, ‘The tyrant is under a spell of megalomania that . . .’) 21. Readers only vaguely familiar with recent Romanian history can replace ‘Ceausescu’ with ‘Hitler’ without missing the spirit of the story – which of course does not imply that Ceausescu and Hitler were morally equivalent. 22. Carl Jung, for example, believed that reptiles are, par excellence, creatures with whom we cannot imagine empathizing, with whom we cannot establish any psychological connection. They can inspire fear or awe in us, but hardly any ‘humane’ reaction, that is, reaction based on some sort of commonality. The choice of reptiles to symbolize creatures to whom we cannot extend any sense of commonality can of course be debated.

Bibliography Barry, B. (1995), Justice as Impartiality. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Card, C. (1996), Unnatural Lotteries. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

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Deigh, J. (1995), ‘Empathy and universalizability’. Ethics, 105.4, 743–63. Diamond, C. (1978), ‘Eating meat and eating people’. Philosophy, 53, 465–79. Frankfurt, F. (1999), Necessity, Volition and Love. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gaita, R. (2000), A Common Humanity. Thinking about Love and Truth and Knowledge. London: Routledge. Gaita, R. (2002), The Philosopher’s Dog. London: Routledge. Kittay, E. F. (1999), Love’s Labour. Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency. New York: Routledge. Kittay, E. F. (2005), ‘At the margins of moral personhood’. Ethics, 116, 100–31. Klein, M. and J. Riviere (1937), Love, Hate and Reparation: Two Lectures. London: Hogarth Press. McMahan, J. (1996), ‘Cognitive disability, misfortune, and justice’. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 25, 3–35. McMahan, J. (2002), The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life. New York: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, M. (2006), Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality and Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Raz, J. (2001), Value, Respect and Attachment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Richmond, S. (2000), ‘Feminism and psychoanalysis. Using Melanie Klein’, in M. Fricker and J. Hornsby (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 68–86. Ruddick, S. (1989), Maternal Thinking. Towards a Politics of Peace. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Tronto, J. (1993), Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. New York: Routledge. Wynn, M. (2003), ‘Saintliness and the moral life: Gaita as a source for Christian ethics’. Journal of Religious Ethics, 31.3, 463–85.

Chapter 3

The Discipline of Pious Reason: Goethe, Herder, Kant Daniel Whistler

At the heart of the Critique of Pure Reason stands the chapter, ‘The Discipline of Pure Reason’. Here, Kant portrays philosophy as an instrument for the suppression of reason’s desires. Desire must be fought in the interest of truth. This essay describes a parallel disciplining out of which the discipline of philosophy of religion emerged. I argue that Kant’s well-known critique of the dangers of fanaticism and enthusiasm are part of a larger ‘discipline of pious reason’ occurring in Germany during the late eighteenth century. Pieties were to be restrained in the name of philosophy. Yet, far from leading to a critical philosophy of religion aware of its own pieties, this religious disciplining resulted in a renewed dogmatism.

The Invisibility of Piety Piety should be a central concept in philosophy of religion. It designates the process by which we select what matters most and maintain a relationship to it. Such value-selection is a crucial condition for all thinking. Piety is not the only condition of thought of course, but, as the arbiter of that to which thought is ultimately directed, it is both a necessary and universal condition. Pieties and impieties colour all thought. A philosophy of piety therefore would describe and analyse the appropriate and inappropriate practices by which one attends to what is valuable.1 Nevertheless, the silence of contemporary philosophy of religion on piety is quite deafening. Piety seems to elude the critical gaze. It is for such reasons that I will speak at the end of the essay of the anti-transcendental nature of contemporary philosophy of religion; it has suppressed the conditions which made it possible. The obvious question is therefore: What reasons can be given for philosophy of religion’s suppression of the conditions of its own possibility? This question structures the present essay. I ask how and why piety ‘became invisible’ and I do so by describing three ‘scenes’ from the history of ideas which take place at the intersection between philosophy of religion and moral philosophy: two early poems by Goethe (Ganymed and Prometheus) a short essay by Herder (Liebe und

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Selbstheit) and the closing sections of Kant’s Metaphysik der Sitten. All three dramatize the effacement of piety from philosophy of religion. In these ‘scenes’, Goethe, Herder and Kant confront the dominant pieties of their day and stutteringly articulate alternative, often improper models for relating to what matters most (i.e. ‘God’). All three are uneasy over how piety is usually conceived, so try to conceive it differently. The piety being challenged was essentially neoplatonic and itself had only recently come to dominance as a by-product of the Plato-renaissance in post-1750 Germany. This neoplatonic piety was tethered to the figure of the One and postulated a future fusion with the divine. The impiety of Goethe, Herder and Kant focused, on the contrary, on the multiplicity of existence. This concern for multiplicity was often mediated (oddly enough) through Spinozist ethics. Neo-Spinozistic impiety designated the manner in which the individual relates to God as individual, released from the bonds of fusion, mysticism and apotheosis. Impieties of the multiple were pitted against pieties of the One. More concretely, Goethe, Herder and Kant set limits to and posited restraints against the dangers posed by a neoplatonic thinking which exhibited too great a familiarity with the divine. The latter was too interested, and with such interest came the danger of being overwhelmed and ultimately engulfed by the deity. Impiety therefore took the form of an inhibition of reason, locking down its capabilities in favour of what Kant termed a pudor pietatis. Out of this restraint, philosophy of religion (or, at least, one form of it) was born. In late eighteenth-century Germany, philosophy of religion was engendered as a disinterested enterprise: to philosophize one must keep one’s distance from the divine. While the philosopher is to be forever tempted by the divine, she must vigilantly thwart and frustrate such a desire. As such, she must struggle towards an improper indifference to the divine. The impieties stutteringly articulated by Goethe, Herder and Kant ultimately became ‘apiety.’

Goethe: Pious Desires and Impious Revolts I begin, then, with two of Goethe’s poems – Ganymed and Prometheus. Both written in the early 1770s, they are testament to an emergent dialectic between an attitude of succumbing to the divine and one of resisting it.2 The final stanza of Ganymed runs as follows, Hinauf! Hinauf strebt’s. Es schweben die Wolken Abwärts, die Wolken

The Discipline of Pious Reason

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Neigen sich der sehnenden Liebe. Mir! Mir! In euerm Schoose Aufwärts! Umfangend umfangen Aufwarts an deinen Busen, Allliebender Vater! (1919, I/2:79–80) Upwards, drawn upwards, The clouds float down, The clouds descend To my love and my longing, To me! To me! Upwards, carried in their womb, Embraced and embracing! Borne aloft to your heart, Oh father, lover of all! (2005, p. 9)

Ganymed treats romantic love, love of nature and love of god. It is this last, theological level which is my present concern. Ganymede climaxes in divine love; the consummation of his existence (both its terminus and perfection) is to be absorbed back into the womb of the divine. Human desire is fulfilled in theosis. The telos of individual life occurs at the moment when the god descends, humanity ascends and the two are fused together, so that all finite individuality is dissolved. Although Goethe adds romantic and pantheistic overtones, his model is therefore a traditional Christian one: blessedness is achieved by means of a dialectic of descent and ascent. God descends to Ganymede to embrace him (emptying Himself in the process), and in that embrace human and God ascend back in glorification. There is no moment of equality. The underlying model of Ganymed can be further determined as neoplatonic; indeed, the poem bears the imprint of the neoplatonic renaissance which was spreading through Germany at this period.3 For both the Goethe of Ganymed and the neoplatonists of his day, proper human desire is desire for a return to unity with the One. It is no accident that later in his life ‘Goethe discovered in the thought of Plotinus something very congenial to his own’ (Beierwaltes, 1972, p. 93).4 The Goethe of Ganymed could have agreed as early as 1774 with Plotinus’ comments concerning ‘the love innate in our souls’: Every soul is an Aphrodite . . . As long as the soul stays true to itself, it loves the divinity and desires to be at one with it, as a daughter loves with a noble love a noble father . . . Only in the world beyond does the real object of our love exist, the only one with which we can unite ourselves. (1964, VI.9.9)

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It is important to note that Goethe conceives the One not as transcendent to the world of sense, but (in part, at least) identical with it; yet, despite this shift in emphasis, the desire to be borne ‘upwards . . . embraced and embracing’ remains the same. The claim that ‘love unites beings’ (Herder, 1994, 4:407; 1993, p. 111) is, as we shall see, the premise of all neoplatonic piety of the late eighteenth century. The naturalness of this desire to return to the One is a central component of the imitatio Dei and the imago Dei, both of which Goethe here flirts with. Desire for union is the natural inclination of humanity: humanity lives to ultimately become like God. This natural inclination is also the effect of the divinity implanted in humanity from the beginning.5 In line with this implant, the individual strives to revert to her source and, in so doing, rise above the finite realm. For all these doctrines, fusion is the appropriate goal of human striving. The proper – or pious – relation to God is one that puts an end to all relations by merging God and humanity together into the One. In consequence, it also puts an end to all piety and to finitude altogether. This is a self-destructive form of piety.6 Contemporaneous with Ganymed, Goethe wrote the poem Prometheus. Its second stanza reads, Ich kenne nichts Ärmeres Unter der Sonn’, als euch, Götter! Ihr nähret kümmerlich Von Opfersteuern Und Gebetshauch Eure Majestät Und darbtet, wären Nicht Kinder und Bettler Hoffnungsvolle Toren. I know of no poorer thing Under the sun, than you gods! Wretchedly you feed Your own majesty On sacrificial offerings And the breath of prayers, And you would starve If children and beggars Were not fools full of hope.

The narrator (Prometheus) goes on to narrate his own childish and ‘deluded’ faith in divine mercy, before continuing later in the poem, Ich dich ehren? Wofür? Hast du die Schmerzen gelindert


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Je des Beladenen? Hast du die Thränen gestillet Je des Geängsteten? Hier sitz’ ich, forme Menschen Nach meinem Bilde, Ein Geschlecht, das mir gleich sei, Zu leiden, zu weinen, Zu genießen und zu freuen sich, Und dein nicht zu achten, Wie ich! (1919, I/2:76–8) I should respect you? For what? Have you ever soothed The pain that burdened me? Have you ever dried My terrified tears? Here I sit, making men In my own image, A race that shall be like me, A race that shall suffer and weep And know joy and delight too, And heed you no more Than I do! (2005, pp. 11–13)

While it might be slightly hyperbolic to claim with Boyle that ‘neither Nietzsche or Feuerbach will add anything of emotional or intellectual significance to this outburst of an Antichrist’ (1991, p. 164), it is certainly correct to assert that the metaphysics, theology and ethics underlying Ganymed are here rejected in their entirety. Prometheus forms a race of men in his own image – the image of revolt and autonomy. Humans are hardwired to impiety. Desire for God is transformed into desire against or despite the gods. This is what is natural to humanity: to remain selfsufficient, liberated from divine aid and divine demands. The human individual is born free of the gods – and this is something to be celebrated, since the gods are despicable creatures, feeding on sacrifice, prayer and hope only to give slavery in return. We are far away from the pious desires of Ganymed. The allure of the theological has been neutralized. If ‘philosophy of religion has no higher task than to question dominant pieties’ (Goodchild, 2002, p. 3), then Prometheus is a crucial text in the genesis of philosophy of religion. If Ganymed is the offspring of the neoplatonic renaissance, whence comes Prometheus? Although it might sound initially odd to modern ears, to some of its first readers Goethe’s Prometheus was a manifesto of Spinozism. Indeed, Prometheus became one of the most famous documents

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of late eighteenth-century neo-Spinozism, owing to the part it played in F. H. Jacobi’s 1785 Über die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn7. Jacobi’s Briefe, containing a reported confession of Spinozism by G. E. Lessing, sparked the Spinozismusstreit, the repercussions of which were felt for three decades in German philosophy. Moreover, it was, Jacobi claimed, a copy of Goethe’s Prometheus which gave rise to Lessing’s admission. After Lessing praises the poem, the conversation continues (as reported by Jacobi): Lessing: I mean [Prometheus] is good in a different way . . . The point of view from which the poem is treated is my own point of view . . . The orthodox concepts of the Divinity are no longer for me, I cannot stomach them. Hen kai pan! I know of nothing else. That is also the direction of the poem, and I must confess I like it very much. I: Then you must be pretty well in agreement with Spinoza. Lessing: If I have to name myself after anyone, I know of nobody else. (Jacobi, 1994, p. 187)

Beginning from Goethe’s Prometheus, Lessing proceeds directly to a confession of his own allegiance to Spinozism. Just like Goethe, he claims, ‘I too am a disciple of Spinoza.’ What is strange is why Lessing should think Prometheus is obviously Spinozist or promotes in any way a Spinozist worldview.8 Lessing’s own explanation that the hen kai pan of Spinoza’s monism is somehow implicitly present in the poem seems, on the face of it, patently false. The poem speaks of gods and is imbibed with the polytheistic worldview of the Greeks. It in no way questions the existence of these multiple divinities.9 What Prometheus interrogates is not so much the metaphysical assumptions of theist or even polytheist worldviews, but their ethics. The gods obstruct humanity’s joyous pursuit of its earthly existence with their ressentiment; Prometheus’ stealing of the heavenly fire is a symbolic liberation from dependence on the gods – freeing humanity to increase its joy through its own activity. Prometheus allows the individual to desire as individual, free from the gods. Some of this may just about sound Spinozist; however, to those involved in the early stages of the Spinoza renaissance in 1770s and 1780s Germany (like Lessing) it was the very essence of Spinozism. It is, however, crucial to stress that the Spinozist reading is one Lessing imposes on Goethe’s text; there is no evidence that Goethe at this period subscribed to Lessing’s ‘ethical neo-Spinozism’ or intended Prometheus to be Spinozist in any way, shape or form.10 Indeed, in 1785 he firmly reprimanded Jacobi for implicating his poetry in this controversy (1919, IV/7:212–14). What


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complicates the picture somewhat, however, is that in the early 1780s (around 7 years after writing Prometheus) Goethe did become an important figure in the German Spinoza revival; this is one of the reasons why, in fact, Jacobi employed Goethe’s poetry in his critique of contemporary Spinozism. However, it is important to note that, despite the fame Prometheus was to have as a manifesto of Spinozism, it was most likely not intended as such. This of course merely adds to questions why Lessing did call Goethe’s Prometheus Spinozist and hopefully this will become clearer as the essay progresses. In the meantime, we can preliminarily conclude from the initial juxtaposition of Ganymed and Prometheus that Goethe’s early poetry exhibits two distinct lines of thought: one, in line with the neoplatonic revival of his day, conceives the appropriate relation to God to reside in fusion. The other line of thought, however, contests this: Prometheus asserts the need to rebel against such a pious ethos, to keep one’s distance and remain free as human. Prometheus rebels against the all-embracing oneness of Ganymed in the name of the multiple.

The Herder/Hemsterhuis Debate The next ‘scene’ I explore furthers this tension between neoplatonic piety and neo-Spinozist impiety. In 1781 J. G. Herder wrote a short appendix to a 1770 work by François Hemsterhuis: Liebe und Selbstheit (Ein Nachtrag zum Briefe des Herr Hemsterhuis über das Verlangen)11. At issue was the monopoly neoplatonism held on the God/human relation. Herder takes Hemsterhuis (as representative of this neoplatonism) to task for advocating a self-destructive conception of piety, and in its place Herder begins to articulate an alternative, neo-Spinozist model of friendship.

Hemsterhuis’ Lettre sur les désirs To begin, therefore, it is worth summarizing the argument of Hemsterhuis’ Lettre sur les désirs.12 Like all Hemsterhuis’ work, this piece consists in (what one critic has called) ‘a mixture of empiricism and Platonism’ (di Giovanni, 1994, p. 47). Hemsterhuis is very influenced by the mechanistic sensualism of his French contemporaries and his vocabulary is theirs, but beneath this empiricist terminology there resides a neoplatonic metaphysics. While, it must be admitted, Hemsterhuis’ neoplatonism is crude, his work was still perfectly recognizable to his contemporaries

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as providing an eighteenth-century reworking of neoplatonic thought. Indeed, Herder’s Liebe und Selbstheit is exclusively concerned with Hemsterhuis’ neoplatonism. At the beginning of the work, Hemsterhuis states, ‘The absolute goal of the soul, when it desires, is the most intimate and most perfect union of its own essence with that of the desired object’ (Hemsterhuis, 1846, p. 54). Again, the comparison with Plotinus is revealing: as for Plotinus so for Hemsterhuis, to desire something is to desire to become one with it. Moreover, and also in line with Plotinus, such desire is a force of attraction inherent in all matter. A tendency towards oneness forms the essence of all beings – animate and inanimate. Whenever there is more than one discrete object dispersed in the world, the natural inclination will be to rid the world of the multiple until only the One remains. The ultimate goal of this tendency is ‘that two substances will become united to such an extent that any notion of duality will be destroyed’ (ibid., p. 53). As Herder summarizes, ‘Hemsterhuis demonstrated that love unites beings and that all longing, all desire, strives only for this union, as the only possible pleasure of separated beings’ (1994, 4:408; 1993, p. 112). The similarity to Ganymed is immediately obvious: ethics is ruled by the One. Lettre sur les désirs can be read as a theoretical elaboration of many of the philosophical and theological presuppositions behind Goethe’s poem; in fact, Hemsterhuis’ work is representative of the neoplatonic renaissance as a whole which was then sweeping Germany.13 All ethics, even our relation to God, remains bound to the model of union. Just as in Ganymed, piety is the natural desire for all-embracing oneness. Every mental and physical event can be explained by striving for union. Much of Hemsterhuis’ account here is explicitly dependent on Aristophanes and Socrates’ myths of desire in the Symposium. All the physical behaviour of animate organisms is directed towards sexual union, or, as Hemsterhuis puts it, ‘all the physical means the soul has at its disposal are used in its tendency towards a union of essences’ (1846, p. 58).14 Moreover, again, following traditional Platonic thought, Hemsterhuis goes on to distinguish such sexual union from intellectual union and assigns the telos of reality to the latter. The fusion of mind and world (or, even better, mind and mind) provides the ultimate standard for all activity. It explains (among other things) art, friendship, love and religion. In fact, Hemsterhuis ranks these different phenomena on the basis of their capacity for unification: One will love a beautiful statue less than one’s friend, one’s friend less than one’s mistress and one’s mistress less than the Supreme Being. It is for this reason that religion gives rise to more intense enthusiasts than love, love


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more than friendship and friendship more than desire for purely material things. (ibid., p. 54)

The reasoning behind this hierarchy is to be found in the maxim, ‘The degree of attractive force is always measured by the degree of homogeneity to the desired object, and this degree of homogeneity consists in the degree to which perfect union is possible’ (ibid., p. 54). The extent to which I desire an object is determined by the likely union I can achieve with it. Hence, friendship is inferior to love because the complete fusion of two beings into one is more the preserve of love than of friendship. Friendship is, on this account, merely an imperfect form of love; a less intense desire for complete union. The above also provides Hemsterhuis with the beginnings of an account of the relation between humanity and God (and so of piety). God is the being into which one can be most easily absorbed without remainder. Through religion, desire can be most easily consummated; it is thus the most proper channel for human desire. Here, ‘homogeneity appears perfect’ (ibid., p. 55). In consequence, religion is the very paradigm and the most natural form of human behaviour. There is nothing more proper to humanity than fusing with God. However, Hemsterhuis ends his Lettre having hit a snag. If all tends towards ‘coagulation’ (and the human/God relation is the paradigm example of this), why then do there still remain discrete, individual entities? The question, as Hemsterhuis notes, is even more problematic with respect to creation: if love is a tendency towards union and God loves his creatures infinitely, why then did He disperse them into isolated individuals when creating them? Hemsterhuis has no answer to such questions; instead, he concludes as follows, I conclude from this that everything visible and sensible is in fact in an artificial state, since, tending eternally to union but remaining always composed of isolated individuals, the nature of everything continues to be eternally in a state of contradiction . . . Since everything tends naturally towards unity, then there must be a foreign force who has decomposed the total unity into individuals and this force is God. It would require the most extravagant madness to want to penetrate to the essence of this impenetrable being. (ibid., p. 68)

In the end, individuation remains an insoluble, divine mystery for Hemsterhuis. The force of inertia which impedes the desire to unite is a surd he is unable to theorize. It belongs to the suprarational realm of the divine which human thought cannot access.

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Herder’s postscript Herder’s Liebe und Selbstheit picks up the thread of Hemsterhuis’ argument precisely at this point. Herder takes it upon himself to provide an answer to this mystery, a theoretical basis to the question of why there are individuals. In so doing, he ends up contesting the very neoplatonic model of piety Hemsterhuis was attempting to justify. Herder’s essay is explicitly intended as a mere ‘postscript’, filling in the gaps of Hemsterhuis’ description of reality. Yet, as we know from other postscripts (such as Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript), such a genre of writing not only adds to the original but tends to end up supplanting it. This is the case here: in providing a theory of the pleasure of individual existence, Herder ultimately invalidates Hemsterhuis’ neoplatonism. Herder, that is, depicts a competing view of reality – in place of Hemsterhuis’ metaphysics of the One, he describes an alternative ethics of friendship. The crux of Herder’s disagreement is contained in the following claim, The more spiritual the pleasure, the more it endures and the more its object also endures outside of us . . . [the more] an object exists and continues to exist outside of us and can only really become one with us metaphorically, that is, hardly or not at all. (1994, 4:409; 1993, p. 113)

Hemsterhuis asserted that desire for union (and so the possibility of union) increased the more spiritual the desire became; Herder here – under the pretext of summarizing Hemsterhuis’ thought – gives a diametrically opposed analysis. The more spiritual a desire, the less explaining it by means of fusion makes sense, for such fusion is, in fact, less possible here. Moreover, in a complete disregard for Hemsterhuis’ actual position, Herder suggests this is a good thing: pious desire for union is not something to be positively valued, but is rather merely the model for ‘crude’ desires. Desire for union is a ‘brief, deceptive illusion’ (ibid., 4:416; p. 116). Spiritual desires are to be valued more highly precisely because they obey a very different model and are not determined by the figure of the One. The reason for this is the self-destructiveness of neoplatonic piety. As Aristophanes already noted in the Symposium, when one unites with the object, all pleasure is at an end, for the subject/object relation is annulled. The same problem holds for Hemsterhuis who follows the Symposium closely: desire for the One destroys desire. ‘It is impossible for man to flow together with everything like mud’ – and stay man, Herder writes (ibid., 4:422; p. 119). Hence, Herder argues that spiritual pleasures are an improvement upon carnal ones precisely because there is no union and so


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the desired object goes on persisting. It is for this reason desires, pleasures and even ways of relating to God that do not tend towards unity are to be preferred – and at this point Herder leaves Hemsterhuis far behind him. In opposition to Hemsterhuis, Herder introduces his alternative: friendship, which will go on to become the key motif in what follows. Friendship! What a . . . holy bond it is! It links hearts and hands together into one common purpose . . . It [unlike love] is ongoing and arduous . . . Love destroys either itself or its object with penetrating, consuming flames, and both lover and beloved then lie there like a pile of ashes. But the fire of friendship is pure, refreshing, human warmth. (ibid., 4:410–11; pp. 113–14)

In a reworking of Classical and humanist discourses on the eros/philia distinction, Herder maintains that, while love designates those desires that tend towards union, friendship is the name of another, preferable ethical relation – which does not destroy its object, but allows it to persist. In friendship, desire does not obliterate itself. The crucial word is ‘ongoing’: friendship is the pleasure between individuals as individuals; unlike love, such pleasure is not premised on the ultimate dissolution of the desiring subject and desired object – but on their perpetuation. Unlike love which is caught up in the self-destructive paradox that desire is for an end of desire (that, in other words, the individual desires her own dissolution), friendship maintains the integrity and distinctness of the subject and object even in the achievement of pleasure. Friendship circumvents the One in favour of the multiple. Friendship is ‘endless’ – an infinite, ‘arduous’ task which never reaches completion. Herder elucidates friendship through opposing ‘common purpose’ to union. What is sought is not for two individuals to become the same, to meld into one another, but rather collaboration – the mutual and reciprocal interchange of ideas that helps form each individual in divergent ways. Herder writes, ‘The two flames on one altar play into one another, they jubilantly lift and carry one another . . . In general a life in common is the mark of true friendship: the disclosing and sharing of hearts’ (ibid., 4:412; p. 114). Perhaps we could gloss Herder’s comments anachronistically by quoting Michèle Le Doeuff’s allusion to the collaborative relationship of John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor. She writes in The Sex of Knowing, However far we go back in the history of their relationship, Harriet Taylor never was a disciple of John Stuart Mill. Still less was she his creation . . . Each stood up to the other, neither was completely under the ‘influence’ of, or ‘incorporated’ by, the other, but each had to defend her/himself against the other, each had a slight tendency to want too much from the other. (Le Doeuff, 2003, p. 217)

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Just as for Herder, so too for Le Doeuff it is not the ‘incorporation’ of one individual into another which provides the ethical telos of life, but rather collaboration between two distinct and competing individual thinkers – not discipleship but friendship. It is the pleasure the individual as individual takes in another. Thus, having begun with the intention of providing a mere ‘postscript’ to Hemsterhuis’ Lettre sur désirs, Herder can conclude after only two pages, ‘Even love serves friendship . . . Friendship appears to me to be the climax of every desire’ (1994, 4:413; 1993, pp. 114–15). In direct opposition to Hemsterhuis, instead of seeing friendship as an imperfect form of love, Herder conceives love as an imperfect form of friendship! And this is precisely because friendship is directed to other things than union: friendship is grounded in the mutual interchange of individuals (‘this pulse of passive and active’ (ibid., 4:420; p. 118)), rather than in an illusory and unhealthy ideal of becoming one. As Herder’s concludes, Where the destruction of the other ends there first begins a freer, more beautiful pleasure, a cheerful coexistence of many creatures who mutually seek and love one another . . . Consonant, not unisonant, tones must be the ones that create the melody of life and pleasure. (ibid., 4:420–1; pp. 118–19)

In a matter of pages, the self-destructive piety of Hemsterhuis is thoroughly transformed into the impiety of the burgeoning philosophy of religion. Desire for fusion must be tempered by a respect for multiplicity. Discipline is privileged over consummation: what is truly ethical is that which battles against desires for union in the name of the individual will. In Liebe und Selbstheit, however, Herder is not only directing his attack outwards against Hemsterhuis, he is also interrogating his own tendencies to neoplatonic piety. Just like with Goethe, there is an internal conversation being pursued between piety and impiety. The ideal of friendship is pitched in combat against Herder’s own attraction to a neoplatonic ethics of universal attraction. Not only are there examples from elsewhere in Herder’s work of him enthusiastically embracing this doctrine, even in Liebe und Selbstheit itself there are neoplatonic flourishes. Herder apostrophizes, for example, To whom can I ascend . . . except to you, great universal Mother, tender supreme Father! . . . Who ought not but to love you, for every creature draws toward you, points to you? And yet who can love you as one should, since one drowns in the sea of your thoughts and your presentient feelings and sinks into the deepest depths only beyond oneself . . . This eternal pull of your heart to mine is for me an innate guarantee of my eternal affection for you. (ibid., 4:417–18; p. 117)


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Liebe und Selbstheit is therefore not only a polemic against Hemsterhuis, but also a self-examination. Enacted within the very text of the essay is the struggle between friendship and love, impiety and piety. Hence, immediately after the above rhapsody, Herder insists, ‘Even in the current of divine love, the heart remains a mere human heart’ (ibid., 4:419; p. 117). This claim is at the centre of Herder’s interpretation of piety and, more specifically, of his attempt to apply his ethics of friendship to the human/God relation. Religion should not be directed towards a unio mystica or ascent to the divine, in which the human self is annihilated and absorbed into the Godhead. Rather, religion should insist that the individual relates to God as individual – on a purely human level, without need for apotheosis or transfiguration. ‘We always remain creatures,’ Herder insists (ibid., 4:423; p. 120). Humanity’s finitude can and should never be overcome. In relating to God, the individual must insist on remaining separate and retaining her integrity: We are individual beings, and we must be so if we do not want to give up the ground of every pleasure – our own consciousness of pleasure – and if we do not want to lose ourselves in order to find ourselves again in another being that we never are and never can be. Even if I were to lose myself in God, as mysticism strives to do, and were to lose myself in God without any further feeling or consciousness of myself, then I would no longer be experiencing pleasure. The deity would have devoured me; and instead of me, the deity would have experienced the pleasure. (ibid., 4:419; p. 118)

To affirm the neoplatonist notion of piety is to affirm a ‘devouring God’ who puts an end to all individual existence. It is to affirm self-destruction. Hence, instead of desiring union with God, we should desire to coexist with God and ‘peacefully and mutually seek to take pleasure in one another’ (ibid., 4:420; p. 118). We should exist autonomously and separately. The ideal is for friendship with God, rather than love of God. It is the ideal for ‘the way we are in this world’ (ibid., 4:422; p. 119) – a refusal of the utopia of apotheosis in favour of continuing ethical work in the finite. Even with regard to God, therefore, humanity must achieve a ‘modulation and balance’ (ibid., 4:420; p. 118). We will see Kant make very similar claims below. Friendship with God (as well as other finite individuals) is ‘not possible except between creatures who are mutually free and consonant, but not unisonant, let alone identical’ (ibid., 4:423; p. 120). Only by restraining our desires and holding up alternative ideals than union can ‘the most dangerous dream’ of infinite oneness be avoided. Neoplatonic piety and the increasing engulfment of God on which it is premised should be thwarted, in favour of keeping God at a distance. Humanity should strive for an artificial and improper relation to the deity which does not

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succumb to natural attraction. Moreover, by means of his ethics of friendship, Herder claims to have explained the mystery of individuation Hemsterhuis was unable to solve: individual existence is necessary for the experience of a different, more valuable relation than that which unification brings. Individuation is necessary for friendship, and so Herder concludes, ‘The supreme good that God could grant all creatures was and is individual existence’ (ibid., 4:423–4; p. 120).

‘Ethical neo-Spinozism’ The dispute between the superiority of friendship and love is, as I have mentioned, of classical origin and was preserved in the humanist tradition. However, surprisingly, it is not on this tradition that Herder draws (at least explicitly); instead, Liebe und Selbstheit is littered with allusions to Spinoza’s Ethics. For example, Herder writes, By giving and acting, rather than receiving and being passive, our existence necessarily will become ever freer and more effective from stage to stage, our pleasure will become less damaging and destructive, and we will learn to taste ever more joy. (ibid., 4:423; p. 120)

This juxtaposition of joy, activity, pleasure and freedom is extremely Spinozist. For example, Spinoza writes, ‘By joy, therefore, I shall understand . . . that passion by which the mind passes to a greater perfection’ (1994, IIIP11D), and by ‘greater perfection’ Spinoza means the becoming more active of the mind (ibid., IIIP11) as well as its becoming freer (ibid., VP36). Linked here is Spinoza’s understanding of conatus. When Herder exclaims, ‘You are indeed a limited, individual creature . . . Pull yourself together and strive on!’ (1994, 4:420; 1993, p. 118), he alludes to Spinoza’s claim that ‘the striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing’ (1994, IIIP6). Just like Herder, Spinoza conceives of individuals in terms of an endless striving; moreover, such desire is not for something that would annihilate the individual – such as fusion with or apotheosis into the divine – rather the desire is essentially finite. It is a desire to be as active and joyful as possible within the limits of finitude. However, (as with Goethe’s Prometheus) to call Herder’s model ‘Spinozist’ seems strange – for is not Spinoza the ultimate philosopher of the One, the most rigorous and extreme monist known to Western philosophy? How then can Herder’s defence of the multiple against the One be characterized as Spinozist? Herder, I seem to be arguing, is using Spinoza to argue against monism. Moreover, it is clear that Herder is unconcerned with historical and philosophical accuracy here. For example,


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the implicit contrast he establishes between Spinozism and neoplatonism, while plausible in some respects, cannot be maintained as sharply as he intends. Moreover, to align Spinoza with an ethics of friendship in opposition to an ethics of love is once more puzzling: since love (especially ‘the intellectual love of God’) plays a crucial role in the latter parts of the Ethics, while the concept of friendship does not (1994, IIIP59S, IVP37S1). Herder’s Spinoza is therefore inaccurate; indeed, ‘Spinoza’ is little more than the name of a ‘heretic’ whose attack on Orthodoxy Herder is here repeating (on a smaller scale). Spinoza is an ideological ally in the destruction of traditional neoplatonic forms of piety and the establishment of a new, modern alternative based on autonomy, separation and ultimately indifference towards the divine. To comprehend this ‘ideological’ employment of Spinoza, we must turn to the context of Liebe und Selbstheit – a burgeoning ‘ethical neoSpinozism’ in 1770s and early 1780s Germany. There were a number of German thinkers at this period (including Herder and Lessing) who took part in a recovery of Spinoza’s thought, but did so by ‘reading the Ethics back-to-front’. Instead of concentrating on Parts I and II of the Ethics with their stress on metaphysics and the ultimate unity of all reality, this ‘ethical neo-Spinozism’ sought to reinvent Spinozism by appropriating insights from the latter parts of the work on human desires and emotions. Avoiding Spinoza’s pantheism, these thinkers were far more interested in his accounts of conatus and joyful passions. Therefore, prior to the pantheism controversy in 1785 – when Jacobi published his Briefe and so when Spinoza-reception went mainstream – there was a period in which Spinoza was used as a resource for moral philosophy.15 During the 1770s and early 1780s, Herder frequently makes clear his adherence to the later portions of the Ethics. For example, he writes, Without doubt Spinoza was no Christian and no enthusiast. But take the purely ethical part of his Ethics, quite separately from his metaphysics, and see . . . in the simplest and most powerful way [Christian ethics] confirmed by facts, and grounded in its whole design. (Quoted in Bell, 1984, p. 55)

Or again, J. G. Müller reports the following conversation that took place between him and Herder in 1781: We talked of Spinoza . . . The first, theoretical part was, [Herder] said, the heretical one, but the second, ethical part contained the purest, most sublime ethic. (Quoted in Bell, 1984, p. 67)

Prior to 1785, therefore, the German Spinoza-reception is dominated by ethics – concentrating on Spinoza’s doctrines of conatus, joyful passion

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and freedom, at the expense of his monism. During this initial phase, the Ethics are read back-to-front.

The neoplatonic renaissance The argument of this essay necessitates a further claim: ‘ethical neoSpinozism’ was generated in reaction to another more prominent renaissance of the time – a revival of neoplatonic philosophy. That is, while a renewed interest in Spinoza was, it is true, characteristic of German thought in the 1770s and 1780s, even more noticeable is the significance neoplatonism took on during that period. Indeed, Herder himself was profoundly influenced by both movements and, as such, his work of this period bears the scars of the struggle between these two competing renaissances. Let me flesh this out by returning to François Hemsterhuis and his context. Hemsterhuis was the leading thinker of the ‘Münster circle’ – a group of mystics and theologically inclined thinkers residing in Münster on the patronage of the Princess Gallitzen. ‘A neoplatonist in the tradition of the Cambridge Platonists and Shaftesbury’ (Gusdorf, 1976, p. 280), Hemsterhuis’ blend of empiricism and neoplatonism became representative of this group’s work. The circle was particularly influential during the late eighteenth century: Hamann moved to Münster in the last year of his life to participate in the group, Jacobi was also closely involved and Goethe and Herder were regular visitors.16 As late as the 1790s, Novalis claimed Hemsterhuis as his favourite philosopher and devoted a ‘study’ to his work (1988, 2:360–78). Indeed, Gusdorf has concluded, ‘Through the intermediary of Jacobi [among others], Hemsterhuis’ influence spread to Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller and the young Romantics’ (1976, p. 281). Hemsterhuis’ legacy was so great, I contend, precisely because his neoplatonism chimed in so well with the intellectual currents of the time. As Arthur Lovejoy has claimed, ‘a revival of the direct influence of neoplatonism was one of the conspicuous phenomena of German thought in the 1790s’ (1936, pp. 297–8)17; however, this revival should be antedated by at least 30 years. Beiser, for example, has shown how the German reception of Plato began in the 1750s: It was in 1757 that Winckelmann read Plato who became one of the central influences on his aesthetics. By the 1760s interest in Plato had grown enormously. The writings of Rousseau and Shaftesbury, which were filled with Platonic themes, began to have their impact. It was also in the 1760s that Hamann, Herder, Winckelmann, Wieland and Mendelssohn all wrote


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about Plato or Platonic themes. By the 1770s Plato had become a popular author. New editions and translations of his writings frequently appeared. (2002, p. 365)

Bearing this context in mind, Herder’s Liebe und Selbstheit provides a fascinating microcosm of the times. In it, burgeoning ‘ethical neo-Spinozism’ is pitched in battle against the far more established neoplatonic renaissance. In this text, what is more, it becomes clear precisely why Herder rejects the prevalent neoplatonism interpretation of piety. It is because it could not account for the desire the individual experiences as an individual. Instead, the neoplatonism of the time merely saw individual existence as a transitory epiphenomenon of the One. Neoplatonic piety was self-destructive. Herder uses Spinoza to ground an ethics of the multiple so as to resolutely counter such neoplatonism. He uses Spinoza to sketch the ethical figure of ‘the notOne’ in which the mutual interchange of discrete individuals is the telos of life. He moves therefore towards a very different mode of piety. Herder’s Liebe und Selbstheit stages the ethical conflict of the period between love and friendship, between Plato and Spinoza.18

Kantian Pudor Pietatis Kant’s late philosophy – despite the notoriety of the pantheist controversy – takes place in a very different context. As he admitted when the controversy broke out, he had never really read Spinoza’s Ethics. It would be futile then to wish to discover Spinozist elements in his thought. However, despite this lack of direct influence, there are very interesting parallels between what Kant says about friendship and the human/God relation in the Metaphysik der Sitten and ‘ethical neo-Spinozism’. Kant too attacks the prevalent self-destructive piety preserved in neoplatonic thought in favour of an alternative based on friendship. What is more, Kant stresses the disinterested quality of this alternative; he insists that his new form of piety keeps its distance from God. Indeed, the parallels between Herder and Kant’s alternative become even more noteworthy if one bears in mind what Blumenberg has dubbed, the ‘late anti-Platonism’ of Kant’s thought (1987, p. 56). Kant’s 1796 essay, On a Recently Prominent Tone of Superiority in Philosophy, is evidence of this. It responds to the ever more prominent neoplatonic renaissance of late eighteenth-century Germany, and berates ‘the new Platonists’ and their ‘latest mystico-Platonic idiom’ (2002, 8:399).19 Directly, Kant is reacting to J. G. Schlosser and F. L. Stolberg, yet, more generally, this work is a ‘polemic

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against a contemporary neoplatonism’ (Blumenberg, 1987, p. 53), a reaction against the neoplatonic renaissance in general. Like Herder and Goethe before him, Kant is uneasy with his era’s increasing use of neoplatonic philosophy and turns against it. While the concerns of On a Recently Prominent Tone are for the most part epistemological, this turn away from Plato is also prevalent (if implicit) in the Metaphysik der Sitten and other late ethical writings. It results in an obsessive concern for limits – especially limits on love and piety. Moreover, it also results in an alternative model for ethics based on friendship.

The trouble with love In the lectures Kant gave on the Metaphysik der Sitten, he introduces the concept of pudor pietatis (modesty of piety), and this idea of limiting one’s piety or love is a central refrain throughout the lecture course. For example, the final section devoted to ‘Duties to God’ is shot through with the rhetoric of discipline. Its focus is the appropriate methods for the veneration of God: on the one hand, Kant insists, ‘Love towards God is the foundation of all inner religion’ (1997, 27:720); yet, he is equally insistent that such love must be understood in an extremely attenuated fashion: Love of God can be known only through our reason . . . There can be no sensuous feeling of love without a concurrent pathological effect; to love practically means merely to perform one’s actions from duty . . . Love God tells us no more than to base our observance of laws, not merely on obedience, which produces the coercion and necessitation of the law, but on an inclination in conformity with what the law prescribes. (ibid., 27:721)

While not the main focus of Kant’s attack (the Pietists of his youth probably hold that honour), contemporary neoplatonists like Hemsterhuis are implicitly condemned here. Kantian love of God should not be confused with a desire – either sensible or intellectual – for increasing unity with the deity; rather, ‘love’ is diluted so as to ‘mean merely’ a willing performance of duty. Kant goes on to distance his own interpretation of love from ‘enthusiastic’ conceptions of ‘fanatical love’ or ‘the claim to an immediate, intercourse, fellowship and social connection with God’ (ibid., 27:726). Love must be freed from its dependence on desire, especially carnal or natural desire. Only desireless love – love which thwarts our pious temptation to approach God – is moral. A new impiety is here in the process


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of emerging, an impiety concerned with disciplining desire and becoming disinterested about God. Indifference replaces interest as the motivating theoretical force. Moreover, such restrictions on love of the divine lead also to limitations on piety itself, for Kant, like Herder and Goethe before him, identifies piety with a constant desire for union with God and a consequent withdrawal from the finite. Kant therefore makes clear, in opposition to all ‘religious fanatics’: ‘In practising religious we do not . . . find ourselves in a state of devotion, i.e, in a mood directed to the immediate contemplation of God, and withdrawn from all sensible objects’ (ibid., 27:731). Fanaticism involves a withdrawal from the world, an attempt to live on a divine plane instead of a human one. Such fanaticism, Kant continues, runs the risk of bigotry and hypocrisy, for there is no means of distinguishing genuine and fake mystic experience. In all these problematic forms of religious display, there is ‘an ostentatio pietatis’, a shameless display of religious feeling. On the other hand, Kant recommends a ‘pudor pietatis which consists in a bashfulness about avoiding in one’s actions any suspicion of bigotry’ (ibid., 27:732). Religion consists not in the cultivation of piety, but instead in restraint of piety, the limitation of desire for God and of any ‘delusion’ concerning humanity’s ability to fuse with Him.20 Kant makes a similar point in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. He berates the individual who believes that ‘to become a better human being . . . [he must] busy himself with piety (which is a passive respect of the divine law) rather than with virtue (which is the deployment of one’s forces in the observance of the duty which he respects)’. Instead, Kant advises, ‘It is this virtue, combined with piety, which alone can constitute the idea we understand by the word divine blessedness (true religious disposition)’ (1998, 6:201). Kant here almost falls into contradiction: the correct religious disposition and so the way to achieve divine blessedness is not through piety! Piety is not the appropriate manner in which to relate to God; instead, it should take a role subordinate to the cultivation of virtue and only then is the ‘true religious disposition’ attained. Blessedness is not reached by means of piety alone. Kant’s central objection is the passivity of piety. Just like Ganymede, the pious individual waits expectantly to be embraced by the divine, whereas the virtuous individual is like Prometheus actively pursuing the ends dictated by human reason – not in the hope of some future apotheosis, but with the goal of living ethically in this world. The enthusiast, who expects a future fusion into the divine and escape from this world, renounces virtue. Eschatology here trumps ethics.21

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Friendship beyond love In the published Metaphysik der Sitten itself, Kant goes even further – albeit implicitly. Friendship is here crowned as the ethical ideal in a manner extremely reminiscent of Herder’s reaction to Hemsterhuis’ neoplatonism.22 The Metaphysik der Sitten concludes with the highest form of relation that can exist between two subjects, and, Kant makes clear, this is not love but friendship. Friendship is the ideal for intersubjective relations. Just like Herder, Kant reverses the traditional neoplatonic hierarchy to assert friendship as a higher form of ethical relation than love. Friendship, Kant insists time and again, checks and frustrates love. That is, Kant – following the neoplatonists – explicitly conceives love as a desire for union, but insists that ‘respect’ is a necessary supplement in order to limit such unity. The neoplatonic ideal of two subjects fusing together in love is explicitly rejected by Kant in favour of a more temperate balance between unity and separation which he labels ‘friendship’. There are three fundamental reasons Kant prefers friendship to love. First, friendship, unlike love, is necessarily reciprocal: ‘There can be amor unilateralis; but strictly such well-wishing changes into friendship (amicitia) through a reciprocal love, or amor bilateralis’ (1997, 27:676). Second, friendship, unlike love, requires equality between the parties: ‘inter superiors et inferiors no friendship occurs’ (ibid., 27:676), for friendship demands ‘reciprocal esteem . . . among equals’ (ibid., 27:680). Finally, and here Kant is most insistent, friendship, unlike love, keeps the other at a distance. He writes in the Lectures, we ‘cannot permit the other to come too close . . . In this lies the mutual restriction of reciprocal love among friends’ (ibid., 27:682). In consequence, one of Kant’s ‘rules of prudence’ reads, ‘To keep sufficiently at a distance from our friend’ so as to prevent ‘rash communication and . . . unrestrained love’, for ‘Too deep an intimacy detracts from worth’ (ibid., 27:684–5). Kant returns to this topic in the published version of the Metaphysik der Sitten. There he writes, Love can be regarded as attraction and respect as repulsion, and if the principle of love bids friends draw closer, the principle of respect requires them to stay at a proper distance from each other. This limitation on intimacy, which is expressed in the rule that even the best of friends should not make themselves too familiar with each other, contains a maxim that holds [in all cases]. (1996, 6:470)

The other must always be kept at their proper distance; pious fusion in love is to be avoided in favour of a relation of friendship in which the subject works at maintaining a barrier between her and her friends.


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Kant therefore stresses the artificial nature of friendship. While love ‘already lies in human nature’, friendship ‘is not a natural inclination’ but a task (1997, 27:682). Love and piety might be natural to humanity, but pudor pietatis and the restraint of love require work – they involve an unnatural, forced operation on ourselves. This, indeed, adds to their ethical value for Kant.23 The artificiality of impiety is necessary to avoid the natural lure of the neoplatonic One. And of course the religious implications of such a move must always be kept in mind: our desire for God and for apotheosis must be suppressed. Only friendship with God safeguards the requisite pudor pietatis. This aspect of Kant’s ethics obeys a model parallel to that which guides Kantian philosophy as a whole: we must thwart and frustrate our natural desires in order to do good philosophy. Reason may desire to illegitimately transcend the realm of possible experience, but it is the task of the philosopher to restrain such natural desires. Just as neoplatonic piety disregards the integrity of the individual, metaphysical reason ‘tear[s] down all those boundary-fences and . . . seize[s] possession of an entirely new domain which recognizes no limits of demarcation’ (1929, A296/B352). Such unrelenting transcendence is ‘the natural predisposition of our reason’ (2001, 4:353) which the philosopher must labour tirelessly at frustrating through conceptual work. Reason must be kept dissatisfied.24 The God/human ethical relation is one more example of this same model – a pudor pietatis. Both theoretically and ethically, the human individual requires ‘discipline’ – ‘a system of precautions and self-examination . . . by which the constant tendency to disobey certain rules is restrained and finally extirpated’ (1929, A709-11/B737-9). In fact, in On a Recently Prominent Tone, Kant goes so far as to speak of ‘the police in the kingdom of the sciences’ who regulate ‘the philosopher of vision’ (2002, 8:403–4). Reason’s ethical demand is to thwart the desire so natural to humanity to fuse with the deity and so put an end to individual life. God must be held ethically at the same distance that the noumenal is theoretically. Only through restraint and ‘bashfulness’ can good philosophy and correct living occur. Such is Kant’s anti-Platonic ethics.

A Genealogy of Piety In this essay, I have brought together three ‘scenes’ from the interface of moral philosophy and philosophy of religion which all originate from late eighteenth-century Germany and are all concerned with developing alternatives to dominant neoplatonic conceptions of self-destructive piety.

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They are not identical by any means25, yet all three do illustrate a similar transition. In this final, concluding section, I now want to place this description within a larger theoretical framework. It is here that I finally answer the question I posed in my Introduction: why has contemporary philosophy of religion forgotten piety? There is no doubting the current hostility to Kant among analytic philosophers of religion.26 As a result, bold metaphysical truths are articulated without due attention to the philosophical conditions underlying them. Contemporary philosophy of religion names God, the afterlife and theological dogmas, but neglects that which makes such naming possible.27 This is not a new trend, however. Indeed, what I have implicitly argued in this essay is that such hostility to criticism (in the Kantian sense) within philosophy of religion has a long historical tradition reaching back to the late eighteenth century. It is a tradition that features Kant himself! Kant’s philosophy of piety (along with Herder and Goethe’s) is antitranscendental – a philosophy of piety that reverts to dogmatism in order to combat its opponents. The dogmatism of the analytic theology movement is merely the culmination of this tradition. Goethe, Herder and Kant all attack neoplatonic piety on the grounds that it gives into its desire for God. On the contrary, they argue, this desire must be thwarted. Philosophy of religion needs to be a disinterested enterprise, exhibiting indifference to the divine. God must keep his distance. Yet, the problem with such a move is that it forecloses self-examination. Disinterest in God is disinterest in piety itself. The condition on which philosophy of religion emerges as a disinterested discipline is suppressed in the very act of self-constitution. Therefore, Goethe, Herder and Kant inaugurate a form of philosophy of religion that neglects its own conditions. They formulate a new piety of thought which prohibits any talk of piety. Philosophy of religion here takes on dogmatic form. I want to explore this twist further in terms drawn from Philip Goodchild’s genealogy of piety.28 Among the many lines of thought running through Goodchild’s Capitalism and Religion, one charts piety’s disappearance from philosophical scrutiny.29 Why has modern reason effaced its own pieties? The answer concerns the nature of these pieties. There are two: to the question, ‘what is the appropriate way to relate to God?’, one type of piety responds: ‘God is to be approached and fused with’; while the other responds: ‘God must be held at a distance’. Thought must either possess God or exalt Him from afar. These two poles exist in a dialectic which circles between yielding to the desire to fuse with God and cultivating a will which thwarts such desire. Desire must be both satisfied and unsatisfied. What is crucial is that both moments (despite their antithetical relation)


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have an identical result – the suppression of piety. Both pieties put paid to any further critical discussion of piety as a concept. It is here we have the reason for philosophy of religion’s silence on this issue and in consequence the reason for its incessant dogmatism. This ‘dialectic’ is of course just an abstract summary of the transitions involved in the three ‘scenes’ I have described in this essay. To begin with, piety is a desire for God. Such is the fundamental principle of the neoplatonic piety against which Goethe, Herder and Kant were reacting. Moreover, they attacked it because it is self-destructive: piety is itself destroyed as soon as God is obtained. It obeys the logic of desire elucidated by Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium – the fulfilment of desire is the end of desire. Goodchild writes similarly, The offence of piety that claims to identify its divinity, whether through ascending to heaven, or by the divinity ascending to earth, is that it abolishes the temporal existence of piety, and, with it, piety itself. (2002, p. 7)

In the beatific vision, piety becomes redundant to itself. On this view, the goal of philosophy is the elimination of all talk about piety, for once the desire on which philosophy is founded (fusion with God) is achieved, a critical philosophy of piety is unnecessary. Dogmatic philosophy of religion is the end to which such philosophy strives. On the basis of this failure, piety is transformed, and such a transformation is precisely what I have been describing in detail in this essay. Goethe, Herder and Kant react against self-destructive piety and establish another, alternative (im)piety in its place. This is the second moment of the dialectic. Now, desire becomes something to be thwarted and infinitely deferred. Philosophies form ‘defences and shields against the absolute’ (Goodchild, 2002, p. 13) – sites of discipline and restraint. Crucially, however, here too piety disappears. By thwarting desire for God, piety neutralizes its own efficacy – becoming indifferent to itself. This conception of piety is therefore self-neutralizing: piety is conceived in a manner which invalidates all talk of piety. Again, therefore, philosophy is told to ignore the conditions which made it possible. This anti-transcendentalism marks Goethe, Herder and Kant’s philosophies of religion. The pieties underlying philosophy are not worthy of the philosopher’s disinterested gaze. Philosophy is disciplined to be dogmatic. This transition from self-destructive to disinterested piety is intimately bound up, moreover, with the genesis of philosophy of religion. Philosophy established itself as a discipline (in both senses of the word) through disinterestedness. Goethe, Herder and Kant enact this anti-transcendental

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turn in modern philosophy of religion. While neoplatonic philosophy postulated the suppression of the conditions of its existence as a future ideal, Goethe, Herder and Kant’s philosophies of piety posited such suppression as an urgent necessity. Piety – as one of the transcendental conditions of thinking – became (even more) invisible; it disappeared from the critical gaze. Insofar, therefore, as both neoplatonic and neo-Spinozist pieties fail to grasp their own transcendental conditions, neither the modern nor the premodern succeeds. Piety is caught in a vicious circle between self-destruction and self-neutralization. Both pieties annul themselves; both moments remain complicit in philosophy’s silence about piety. It is thanks to both these traditions that philosophy of religion is still dogmatic and awaits its Copernican Revolution. What is needed, therefore, is a genuinely critical philosophy of religion. If, as Johnson (2010, pp. 377–8) has recently argued, the philosopher of religion should attend to ‘the conditions of naming’ what matters most (rather than to the act of naming itself, which is the preserve of the theologian), then the necessary precondition (and so preliminary work needed) so as to make possible such attention to these conditions is the making visible once more of the pieties which condition philosophy. Philosophy of religion must first overcome its own dogmatism. In other words, Kant’s ‘discipline of pious reason’ failed: it did not give rise to criticism, only a renewed dogmatism. And so new experiments in such disciplining are ultimately needed so as to reveal (not conceal) pieties. What is required therefore is, as Goodchild sums up helpfully, ‘a creative rereading of the philosophical tradition, drawing out the dominant pieties, reasons and processes that determine our present age, and reorienting them in a new direction’ (2002, p. 9). This essay is a small contribution to that end.

Notes 1. As will become clear as the essay progresses, these formulations owe much to Goodchild, 2002. Indeed, this essay takes the form of a philosophical reconstruction of the first few paragraphs of Goodchild’s book. 2. Goethe considered these two poems as a complementary pair: when he finally published Prometheus in 1789, it was only on the condition that Ganymed was printed alongside it. 3. I describe this renaissance in more detail in a later section. 4. Translations of sections from Plotinus’ Enneads appeared in Goethe’s later writings: most famously, the beginning of the Farbenlehre (1919, II/1:xxxi)


5. 6.

7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18.

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and Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (ibid., I/48:196). Goethe also writes in a draft of his autobiography, Dichtung und Wahrheit, ‘All at once [in 1782] – and as if by inspiration – Neoplatonic philosophers and especially Plotinus emotionally appealed to me in a quite extraordinary way . . . [and] for a long time [afterwards] Plotinus still clung to me’ (ibid., I/27:382). For more on the imitatio Dei in late eighteenth-century German thought, see Whistler, 2010. It is often claimed that Ganymed is Spinozist in inspiration; however, it is crucial to my argument that this is not the case. Goethe’s acquaintance with the neoplatonic tradition before 1775 was long and deep. In Dichtung und Wahrheit, he recalls a philosophical system he dreamt up in 1768. Of this systema emanativa, he writes, ‘Neoplatonism was its basis’ (1919, I/27:204; 1987, 1:261). During the 1760s, Goethe was also fascinated by the work of the minor Roman Platonist, Marcus Manilius (see Keller, 2002, p. 445). On the other hand, Goethe only encountered Spinoza’s Ethics in a cursory manner in May 1773 (see 1919, IV/2:75). Even if this encounter somehow gave rise to Ganymed, the Spinozism of the poem was very likely to have been understood (not entirely unjustly) through the lens of the neoplatonic tradition (see further Bell, 1984, pp. 149–51). It is for this reason (as I go on to argue) Prometheus too was unlikely to have been intended as a Spinozist poem by Goethe at the time. In English: On the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Moses Mendelssohn. I will refer to this work as the Briefe. This even seemed strange to some of Lessing’s contemporaries. An anonymous reviewer wrote in 1786, ‘To say that the Gods are wretched beings, that man saves himself, that the Gods do nothing but sleep and we need not revere them – none of this yet amounts to agreeing with Spinoza . . . That Lessing had found Spinozism [in Goethe’s Prometheus is a] mystery’ (Quoted in di Giovanni, 1994, p. 68). ‘Zeus . . . is for Goethe-Prometheus an enemy, not a nonentity’ (Boyle, 1991, p. 168). See note 6 above. In English: Love and Selfhood, A Postscript to Hemsterhuis’ Letter on Desire. I provide more detail about Hemsterhuis and his context in a later section. Although Hemsterhuis wrote in French, he was based in Germany – specifically in Münster, as we shall soon discover. Such speculation leads Hemsterhuis into some murky waters. He finds it difficult on this basis, for example, to discriminate against ‘pederasty and other monstrous couplings of men and animals’, for ‘it is evident that these abuses are born naturally from this universal attractive force’ (1846, p. 59). I am here closely following Bell, 1984, p. 171. For Goethe’s account of his relation with the Münster circle, see 1919, I/33:230–45; 1987, 2:709–35. See also Abrams, 1971, p. 146, for a similar claim. Of course, I am not claiming that Spinoza and Plato, love and friendship, were universally considered incompatible. One need only look to the Jena Romantics and Idealists (or even Goethe’s later writings) to dispute this.

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19. 20. 21.

22.

23.

24. 25.

26.

27. 28. 29.

Moral Powers, Fragile Beliefs Here, as so often, the younger generation of the 1790s attempt to synthesize what previous generations had believed to be incompatible. All volume and page citations are to the Akademie edition, except in the case of the Critique of Pure Reason where references are to the A and B editions. For more on the language of fanaticism and its role in Kant’s philosophy (as well as in philosophy more generally), see Toscano, 2010. It should be pointed out that while Herder attacks neoplatonic piety because of its lack of relationality between humanity and God, Kant attacks it for the opposite reason: ‘Pathological love would betray an equality or felt unity of the lover with God . . . collaborating in the production of the highest end’ (1997, 27:725). Such ‘collaboration’ is precisely what Herder advocates. To repeat, there is no evidence of Herder’s direct influence on this section and it is clear that Kant’s conception of friendship (as well as the rest of his moral philosophy) bears no direct trace of ‘ethical neo-Spinozism’. Compare Kant’s remarks on marriage (1997, 27:683). See also On a Recently Prominent Tone (2002, 8:390) where Kant insists on the ‘labour’ necessary to overcome neoplatonic thought. See Kant, 2001, 4:351. The naturalness of Goethean impiety contrasts with the artificial work needed to achieve Herderian and Kantian friendship; Herder’s call for collaboration with God jars with Kant’s attempt to safeguard God’s absolute transcendence. Examples can be found throughout the oeuvres of Swinburne and Wolterstorff (to take the two most obvious examples). See further Wood, 2009, pp. 952–4, on the ‘intense anti-Kantian rhetoric’ of recent analytic philosophy of religion. This characterization owes much to Brian Clack’s essay in the present volume. Goodchild is the exception to the rule given at the beginning of the essay that contemporary philosophy of religion does not speak of piety. ‘Modern reason eliminates access to piety’ (Goodchild, 2002, p. 6). ‘Piety became invisible’ (ibid., p. 247) because modernity ‘arises from a disavowal of the determinate practices of directing attention’ (ibid., p. 250).

Bibliography Abrams, M. H. (1971), Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beierwaltes, W. (1972), Platonismus und Idealismus. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. Beiser, F. C. (2002), German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781– 1801. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bell, D. (1984), Spinoza in Germany from 1670 to the Age of Goethe. London: University of London Press. Blumenberg, H. (1987), The Genesis of the Copernican World, trans. R. M. Wallace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Boyle, N. (1991), Goethe: The Poet and the Age, volume 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


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Di Giovanni, G. (1994), ‘Translator’s introduction’, in F. H. Jacobi, The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, pp. 3–167. Goethe, J. W. (1919), Werke: Weimarer Ausgabe, 5 series, 133 volumes, ed. S. von Sachsen. Weimar: Böhlau. Goethe, J. W. (1987), From My Life: Poetry and Truth, 2 volumes, ed. and trans. T. Saine and J. Sammons. New York: Suhrkamp. Goethe, J. W. (2005), Selected Poetry, trans. D. Luke. London: Penguin. Goodchild, P. (2002), Capitalism and Religion: The Price of Piety. London: Routledge. Gusdorf, G. (1976), Naissance de la conscience romantique au siècle des Lumières. Paris: Payot. Hemsterhuis, F. (1846), Lettre sur les désirs, in L. S. P. Meyboom (ed.). Oeuvres. Leuwarde: Eekhoff. Herder, J. G. (1993), Against Pure Reason: Writings on Religion, Language and History, ed. and trans. M. Bunge. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Herder, J. G. (1994), Werke, 10 volumes, ed. U. Gaier et al. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag. Jacobi, F. H. (1994), ‘Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza in letters to Herr Moses Mendelssohn’, in G. di Giovanni (ed. and trans.), The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, pp. 173–261. Johnson, B. A. (2010), ‘Making all things new: Kant and Rancière on the unintentional intentional practice of aesthetics,’ in A. P. Smith and D. Whistler (eds), After the Postmodern and the Postsecular: New Essays in Continental Philosophy of Religion. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, pp. 360–79. Kant, I. (1929), The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. K. Smith. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Kant, I. (1996), ‘The metaphysics of morals’, in M. J. Gregor (ed. and trans.), Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 353–604. Kant, I. (1997), Lectures on Ethics, ed. and trans. P. Heath and J. B. Schneewind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (1998), Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, ed. and trans. A. Wood and G. di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (2001), Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics (second edn), trans. J. W. Ellington. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Kant, I. (2002), ‘On a recently prominent tone of superiority in philosophy’, in H. Allison et al. (ed. and trans.), Theoretical Philosophy after 1781. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 427–45. Keller, W. (2002), ‘Variationen zum Thema: “Wär nicht das Auge sonnenhaft . . .” ’, in P. Alt et al. (eds), Prägnanter Moment: Festschrift für Hans-Jürgen Schings. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, pp. 439–57. Le Doeuff, M. (2003), The Sex of Knowing, trans. K. Hamer and L. Code. London: Routledge. Lovejoy, A. O. (1936), The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Novalis (1988), Schriften, 5 volumes, ed. P. Kluckhohn and R. Samuel. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.

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Plotinus (1964), The Essential Plotinus, ed. and trans. E. O’Brien. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Spinoza, B. (1994), Ethics, in E. Curley (ed. and trans.), A Spinoza Reader. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 85–265. Toscano, A. (2010), Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea. London: Verso. Whistler, D. (2010), ‘Kant’s imitatio Christi’. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 67.1, 17–36. Wood, W. (2009), ‘On the new analytic theology, or: the road less traveled’. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 77.4, 941–60.

CLUSTER 2

The Fragility of Life


Chapter 4

On Loss of Confidence: Dissymmetry, Doubt, Deprivation in the Power to Act and (the Power) to Suffer Pamela Sue Anderson

Introduction: Capability and Loss of Confidence My contribution to contemporary philosophy of religion in this chapter will not be directed to traditional Christian theism. My explicit references to ‘God’, especially, are not to a personal Christian God to whom human subjects (must) submit in suffering. Rather I will argue for an ‘intellectual love of God’ synonymous with belief in ‘Nature’ as eternal, infinite and active being.1 This argument is informed by the history of a conception of power, or ‘capability,’ going back to Spinoza, but revived in the last century by European philosophers who appropriate the Spinozist notion of conatus.2 My argument will highlight a feminist issue (though not only a concern of feminists): that is, ‘loss of confidence’. The conception of (ethical) confidence to emerge will require (moral) belief in being part of nature as active, infinite power, in which each individual can come to understand both the power to act and the power to suffer; at the same time, (ontological) confidence in the infinite power of capable humans to affect and be affected productively will reverse personal doubt with belief, interpersonal dissymmetry with the practical goal of mutuality and social-material deprivation with the regulative ideal of fullness of life. At this early stage, I would like to mention a ‘disability’ which will play a critical role in coming to understand loss of this confidence. In one of his last published essays, ‘Autonomy and Vulnerability’, the European philosopher Paul Ricoeur asserts that ‘To believe oneself unable to speak is already to be linguistically disabled to be excommunicated so to speak’ (2007, pp. 76–7). This lost confidence due to decisive damage done to the ability to speak may seem an odd example for work on moral and religious philosophy. Nevertheless, it is on the topic of confidence that a relationship between our ‘moral powers’ and ‘fragile beliefs’ can be uncovered; that is, the moral power of human capability can be seen in relation to the fragile belief of human confidence. Confidence can be lost; or, it cannot be acquired to the ‘right’ degree, whether in a lack or in an overconfidence. I will aim to locate the ethical confidence of capable human subjects in the right amount of recognition, or in Ricoeur’s terms, in ‘the [actual]

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power to act’ and ‘the [non-passive] power to suffer’. I follow Ricoeur in finding a certain power of being affected by suffering; but this should not be confused with a contentious conception of ‘power’ coming ‘out of’, or ‘through’, suffering as in a Christian version of human submission to divine power.3 I will argue that even ‘affliction’ as an extreme form of social deprivation can, when productively attended to, help us to make sense of human powers and/in a loss of confidence. In addition to the assertion about disability (quoted above), Ricoeur boldly asserts that ‘The confidence I place in my power to act is part of this very power. To believe that4 I can is already to be capable’ (ibid., p. 76). On its own, this is an equally odd assertion. Ricoeur’s meaning is especially difficult to work out, if one doesn’t share his assumptions about either ‘power’ or ‘reflexivity’ – details of which I will go on to explore. Ricoeur’s conception of power is highly complex, deriving from both Aristotle and Spinoza. Ricoeur also relies upon French phenomenology in assuming the reflexivity of both confidence5 as a mutually empowering relation between subjects and ‘I can’ as a self-certain capability. In my current research for feminist philosophy (of religion), I have endeavoured to figure out how much Ricoeur’s understanding of confidence is dependent upon a cognitive–conative capability6, and specifically, upon a Spinozist conception of conatus as a rational striving for life in its fullness.

Human Capability as Required for Ethical Confidence: On Disability In ‘Autonomy and Vulnerability’, Ricoeur focuses on a specific cognitive incapacity and social disability; that is, loss of speech in a highly significant context of life. His precise example is the accused whose speech is disabled in a legal court case: What immediately comes to mind is the fundamental inequality among human beings when it comes to mastering [‘the universe of the trial process, that is, the debate made up of a confrontation of arguments, a war of words’], [this is] an inequality that is not so much a natural given as a perverse cultural effect, once the inability to speak well results in effectively being expelled from the sphere of discourse. (2007, p. 76)

Remember that, according to Ricoeur, a loss of confidence in the power to speak means that ‘To believe oneself unable to speak is already to be linguistically disabled, to be excommunicated so to speak’ (ibid., p. 77). This disability gains a decisive, social factor when this excommunication

On Loss of Confidence

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uproots the speaker and takes possession of the unspoken reality of (a) human life.7 Ricoeur’s hermeneutic phenomenology helps to elucidate the process of human loss through increasing degrees of personal doubt, interpersonal dissymmetry and social deprivation. This will also be explained, with the aid of Gilles Deleuze on Spinoza, as loss in the power which we have – potentia (actuality or the capacity for affecting or acting) – but also in the power which an infinite and fully active being would not have – potestas (productivity, or the capacity for being affected) of suffering (Deleuze, 1988, pp. 97–9). My contribution is to offer a philosophical response to the condition of decreasing amounts of active power which is indebted to various contemporary appropriations of Spinoza’s conatus; that is, a rational striving to be and to persevere in life.8 For another example of a loss of confidence, but this time due to material deprivation and interpersonal dissymmetry, consider those women who have been identified as ‘the impoverished providers’ (O’Neill, 2000, pp. 143–4). Individual women across the globe are marginalized today by being not only deprived materially, but socially disabled, while still needing to persevere in life, even when unable to provide for their dependents.9 Actual deprivations deliberately inflicted by, and on, other humans are significant in the sense of generating an increasing degree of dissymmetry in human interaction. Inflicted deprivations together with personal doubt and interpersonal dissymmetry (will) undermine ‘the power’ to act but also ‘the power’ to suffer; for Ricoeur, these two powers differ qualitatively. A complete loss of power both in the sense of the actuality, or potentia, to act and in the sense of the productivity, or potestas, to suffer ultimately appears synonymous with extreme affliction – taking possession of and enslaving the capable human. Further on, I will explore an extreme situation of loss of confidence, in a failure to recognize human capability, that is, in Simone Weil’s conception of ‘affliction’. This conception captures a complete loss of any positive human power in attending to an independent reality, including loss of being affected by, but also affecting appropriately the reality of another. Metaphorically speaking, in affliction, ‘the soul’ of the innocent is seized by an alien power: life is gradually degraded socially, damaging the person psychologically and physically, too (Weil, 2001, pp. 67–9). In response to such an increasing loss of active power, I argue that losing confidence in the power to act and also in the power to suffer can be reversed through one’s understanding of a cognitive–conative capability. I draw on Spinoza (as read according to Ricoeur’s post-Hegelian Kantian philosophy) in order to attribute to women and men a rational striving for

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life in its fullness as persevering in being.10 A fundamental ontological – or, dare I say, ‘metaphysical’ – quality of being a capable human subject remains necessary.

History of a Concept of Power: Human Capability Admittedly, what I call Ricoeur’s post-Hegelian Kantian use of Spinoza, which he used to understand moral powers (on the grounds of human capability) and fragile beliefs (or, confidence in human capability) did not suddenly appear. Ricoeur spent years working out his philosophical account of selfhood, notably as ‘oneself inasmuch as other’ in Oneself as Another (1992). After this, Ricoeur turns explicitly to power. Highly significant for the development of a relational ontology is his return to Spinoza’s metaphysical conception of dynamic matter.11 Reciprocal human relations presuppose a more fundamental power of dynamic matter, or capable flesh. Confidence, then, is conceived as (human) power affirming itself: Power, I will say, affirms itself . . . this connection between affirmation and power needs to be emphasized. It governs all the reflexive forms by which a subject can designate him- or herself as the one who can . . . [This] affirmation of a power to act already presents a noteworthy epistemological feature that cannot be proven, demonstrated, but can only be attested . . . a confidence in one’s own capacity, which can be confirmed only through being exercised and through the approbation others grant to it . . . other people may encourage, accompany, assist by having confidence in us – by appeal to responsibility and autonomy. (Ricoeur, 2007, p. 75)

With Ricoeur I urge that we, philosophers, take more seriously this connection between the affirmation of life and the power to act and to suffer. Affirmation and power as critical concepts have great potential for metaphysics, ethics and politics, including feminist ethics and politics. Equally, Ricoeur’s appeal to attestation in the power to act confirms the necessity of a subject’s confidence in her own capacity; but this confidence, in turn, can be confirmed only if it is both exercised and approved on the basis of a fundamentally shared human capability. The question which begins to emerge here is: how do we cultivate ‘power-in-common’ corporately and corporeally?12 Ricoeur uncovers ‘corporeality’ phenomenologically at the point which links memory and imagination: The dialectic of acting and suffering, along with the visceral and emotional aspects of the latter may be more easily discerned at the point of articulation


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that links memory and imagination, the former intending a passed past, the latter a possible non-reality. It is also at this primordial level that the junction between the narrative function and corporeality takes place, as well as the multiple fashions of the act of corporeality inhabiting or dwelling within the world. (Ricoeur in Joy (ed.), 1997, p. xlii)13

This ‘act of corporeality’ could be explored in much greater detail in Ricoeur’s similar assertions about memory in the first few pages of Memory, History, Forgetting. In both the above text and the latter, Ricoeur brings Spinoza into discussion of how the two intentions – that of memory and of imagination – meet in articulating the role of ‘the visceral and emotional aspects’ of suffering.14 In another, later context, Ricoeur recognizes the role of the imagination in Spinoza as a mode of knowledge:15 Imagination, considered in itself, is located at the lowest rung of the ladder of modes of knowledge, belonging to the affections that are subject to the connection governing things external to the human body, as underscored by [Spinoza’s] scholia that follows: ‘this connection happens according to the order and connection of the affections of the human body in order to distinguish it from the connection of ideas which happens according to the order of the intellect’. (2004a, p. 466)16

So Spinoza locates the imagination at the lowest level of cognition – the mind will recollect what has been imagined due to affections – due to things external to the human body. Beth Lord explains how Spinoza connects imagination-passivitydecreasing-power and understanding-activity-increasing-power to conatus here: As we imagine more, we are more passive to external things and we feel more sadness and passive joy. But as we understand more and gain more adequate ideas, we are more active, which involves more active joy . . . the conatus of the finite mode – increases in size as it moves . . . towards greater activity. Conatus strives to move increasingly in power and activity. (2010, p. 102)

All too briefly, these technical points in Spinoza about increasing power and knowledge are matters on which I myself continue to work in order to understand better the possibility of increasing, with confidence, the powers to act and to suffer even in speech-prohibition; this increase comes about as suffering decreases and understanding increases. Significant technical points include Ricoeur’s additionally delineated categories of action in the powers ‘to do’, ‘to narrate’ and ‘to be accountable’. Making conatus the

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line of continuity running through the relation of activity (potentia) as an actual power and of the productivity (potestas) to be affected enables the capable human to express her own nature and not merely react to the nature of another; and increasing activity is an expression of freedom (Deleuze, 1988, pp. 97–9). Notice the relation of actual power (potentia) plus productive capacity (potestas) to a fundamental condition of conatus. Following Spinoza, Ricoeur claims to connect the ‘desire to be’ and ‘effort to exist’ in a human, cognitive–conative capability, and this is manifest in the distinct powers of acting and of suffering (1992, pp. 315–17). This ‘effort to exist’ is an always unsatisfied desire; but this ‘desire’ gives power in the sense of productivity to the subject, even to individual suffering. In his chapter, ‘What Ontology in View?’ in Oneself as Another, Ricoeur appropriates Spinoza’s conatus to make a ‘connection between the phenomenology of the acting and suffering self’ and ‘the actual and potential ground against which selfhood stands out’ (ibid., p. 315). Making this connection in terms of conatus crucially means that power is not merely potential or actual doing in everyday life; it is productive (ontologically): empowering life. Moreover, Ricoeur claims that ‘the priority of conatus’ is crucial to ‘the ethical’ form of confidence, and ‘the ethical’ must also be understood in a Spinozist sense. Domenico Jervolino explains Ricoeur’s Spinozist use of ‘ethics’ here: What we are given is the task to exist in time, to live historically our liberation as humans, to live by thinking and think by living. To carry out this task of transforming the human desire and effort to exist into an active, responsible human practice is what can be called an ‘ethics’, following Ricoeur, who, in an original fashion, joins a motif of Spinoza’s with the inheritance of ‘reflexive philosophy’. (Jervolino in Hahn (ed.), 1995, p. 538)

But Ricoeur is doing more here than an ethics. Our cognitive–conative capability is bound both to Ricoeur’s relational ontology and Spinoza’s description of ‘God’, engendering infinite power and/or life. Supporting this, Ricoeur quotes from Spinoza’s Ethics, ‘particular things are modes whereby the attributes of God are expressed in a definite and determinate way [that is . . .] they are things which express in a definite and determinate way the power of God’ (Ricoeur, 1992, p. 316, citing Spinoza, 1982, p. 109). Next, Ricoeur interprets Spinoza as follows: There is a close connection between the internal dynamism worthy of the name of life and the power of the intelligence . . . we are powerful when we understand adequately our horizontal and external dependence with respect to all things, and our vertical and immanent dependence with respect to the primordial power that Spinoza calls God. (1992, p. 316)


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Ricoeur explains further that, on the one hand, ‘it is in man [sic] that conatus or the power of being of all things, is most clearly readable’, and on the other hand, ‘everything expresses to different degrees the power or life that Spinoza calls the life of God’ (ibid., pp. 316–17). Once expressing full understanding, the Spinozist subject would seem to face no problem with confidence. Nevertheless, in this chapter I have chosen to focus on loss of confidence. Now, Ricoeur himself finds this loss a significant problem. It emerges acutely in his thinking late in his own life, in a conative disability, as if a sense of loss, a loss of his striving in creativity or genius. I am intrigued by this,17 and so focus on the question of confidence in the cultural and historical forms of so-called disability.

Capability and its Relation to Power-in-Common: Spinoza after Kant As seen in the previous section, conatus is the concept (or, in Jervolino’s terms, ‘motif’) which Ricoeur appropriates from Spinoza, in order to express the desire to be and an effort to exist; these are Ricoeur’s formulations of Spinoza’s rational striving to live fully by increasing the active power of individual subjects (or ‘modes’) – and, Ricoeur at least adds, even while persevering in life’s suffering.18 However, what needs to be added to, or made clear in this picture, is that striving to realize human capability is not only about replacing what Ricoeur calls ‘power-over’ with the ‘powerto-do’. Instead he seeks to unearth a power-in-common. To see this addition, consider Ricoeur’s salient example of power-over in Oneself as Another, which Ricoeur distinguishes from ‘power-to-do’ and ‘power-in-common’.19 The sexual violence of rape and of wife- or child-abuse as one of power-over is, admittedly, underdeveloped by Ricoeur (1992, pp. 220–1). Yet it is worth recognizing how the concepts set out in his French 1990 and English 1992 editions of this text anticipate Ricoeur’s later work on loss of confidence. Consider the distinctions of ‘power’ in the following: The power-over, grafted onto the initial dissymmetry between what one does and what is done to another – in other words, what the other suffers – can be held to be the occasion par excellence of the evil of violence . . . Even in the domain of physical violence, considered the abusive use of force against others, the figures of evil are innumerable, from the simple use of threats, passing through all the degrees of constraint, and ending in murder. In all these diverse forms, violence is equivalent to the diminishment or the

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Moral Powers, Fragile Beliefs destruction of the power-to-do of others. But there is something even worse . . . what is called humiliation – a horrible caricature of humility – is nothing else than the destruction of self-respect, beyond the destruction of the power-to-act. Here we seem to have reached the depths of evil. (1992, p. 220)20

In the above, reference is made to the ‘self-respect’ lost ‘beyond’ the destruction of the power-to-act, essentially, beyond autonomy. This is ‘beyond’ autonomous agency in ‘the humiliation’ of being cut off as well, from the power-in-common. Roughly, self-respect is lost in a political and metaphysical domain which is more Spinozist than Kantian, since it is no longer a question of either autonomy or heteronomy. It is the significant stress on human interaction and power-in-common which renders the Spinozist tones to Ricoeur’s account of confidence in the powers to act and to suffer: confidence requires both the right level of approbation of the confident agent and the disapprobation of the overly confident agent, to be granted by others. Power-in-common, then, springs directly from the capacity people have to join with one another, making full expression of basic capacities as grounded in a more fundamental human capability. In everyday cases, confidence requires both other-approbation and selfaffirmation of life’s relations in their many dimensions; that is, it requires both power-to-act and power-in-common. When these requirements are not met due to injustice, affliction is likely to ensue. To recover from affliction, the capable subject needs (the miracle-like emergence of) a fundamental conative power; that is, the afflicted needs to recognize (herself in) a non-individuated being in a dynamic nature, as in ‘being-with’21. Although Ricoeur’s positive account of the mutually affirmed capacities of the capable subject focuses on abilities and disabilities, my own critical concern treats the nuances or hidden dimensions of a conative ‘power’ implied in social-psychological-physical loss.22 An assessment of the different historical and cultural forms of human abilities/disabilities and capacities/incapacities should force recognition of the autonomy and the vulnerability of each woman (or man). In turn, and crucially, the striving which cannot be separated from the perseverance of the capable and yet autonomous–vulnerable subject should force recognition of the (complex) philosophical nature of an ideal political life, in Ricoeur’s own words, in ‘action with and for others within just institutions’.23 There is a crucial social-ethical dimension here, but there is also a political and metaphysical dimension to life’s power. To persevere in autonomous action with and for others is to strive in full recognition of capability, but damaged cognitive–conative power can play upon human vulnerability due to natural, cultural and historical forms of suffering.24


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Thus, we return to the central problem (for this chapter): loss of confidence in the powers to act and to suffer, especially in what humans inflict on one another.

On Relating Infinite Power and Bodily Life: Or, On Appropriating Spinoza If we take suffering to include the most extreme form of sadness and passivity, Spinoza’s way to conquer this misfortune lies in the use of reason to understand the operations of the imagination and the passions. However, this ‘reason’ is different from Kant’s moral reason which strives to order reality and to control the emotions. For Spinoza, the power of reason rests in understanding the passions, and so, increasing one’s freedom, and hence, in my terms, achieving confidence in infinite power and in bodily life. Spinoza’s imagination is only a first kind of knowledge, but it constitutes a necessary step in the education of the passions. More adequate knowledge comes in understanding the errors or fictions which make up socially embedded illusions.25 Debilitating fictions as in believing oneself unable to ‘X’ when one can ‘X’ are bound up with a lack of reflexive awareness of one’s ability and, on a more profound level, with a failure of belief in (human) capability. For example, the fiction of a free will for Spinoza exhibits an awareness of one’s actions but an ignorance of their causes. An ability to exercise an ongoing critique of illusion, which would include illusions of fixed-gender ability, generates the highest exercise of philosophical thought. Note also that understanding of the mind itself as ‘infinite’ with the love of God or Nature as its cause becomes highly significant in the conclusions of Spinoza’s Ethics.26 What becomes increasingly significant – in my argument – is a consistent and strong thread weaving together the notions of power, being-able and conatus.27 The thread begins in Spinoza’s Ethics and connects Ricoeur’s early focus on a phenomenology of being-able to his later concern with the metaphysics of a dynamic being-able and, finally, to his ethics of capability. As Ricoeur admits in an interview in 2003/2004 with Richard Kearney: We find a dynamic notion of being as potency [ability; capacity] and action (Spinoza reformulates substance as [dynamic matter]28) which contrasts sharply with the old substantialist models of scholasticism or the mechanistic models of Descartes. This is a matter of dynamism versus mechanism – the idea of a dynamic in being that grows towards consciousness, reflection, community. Here I think it is important to think of ontology in close rapport with ethics. (Ricoeur, 2004b, pp. 166–7)

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Ricoeur explains that this ontology and his interest in a metaphysics of ‘being’ include new notions of being-with, being-faithful, being-in-accompaniment with one’s community or people (which is precisely what Yahweh promises Moses when he says ‘I am he who will be with you’). (ibid., p. 166)

Ricoeur refers to Yahweh, but also to ‘God’ as singular or unique and as ‘a primary affirmation of life’. In the same interview, he admits: I am not sure about the absolute irreconcilability between the God of the Bible and the God of Being (understood with Jean Nabert as ‘primary affirmation’ or with Spinoza as ‘substantia actuosa’). (ibid., p. 169)29

For moral and religious philosophers, to understand Ricoeur’s Spinozist conception of dynamic being and being’s affirmation of life, even in a very basic metaphysical sense, it is necessary to bear in mind the role of affections of the body and the idea of (including the body itself as an idea in) the intellect in seeking to live well corporately and corporeally. It is what we – both the affections of our bodies and the idea of the intellect – can do which determines what counts as our living: the more we do – as opposed to undergo – rationally and corporately the better we live together. In this context, ‘to love God’ is not to trust in the benevolent purposes of a transcendent creator – the purposes for which we await satisfaction. Instead it is the mind’s joyful recognition of itself as corporate, that is, as part of the unified whole of nature which expresses an intellectual love. So, it is God or Nature (Deus sive natura).30 Thus, the core of love in all its forms is the joy of continued bodily existence. That joy is vulnerable, and yet it is a more certain grounding for our loves than the glorification of unsatisfied desire for a wholly transcendent and disembodied divine (Spinoza, 2000, pp. 106–12). The common thread of power, for Ricoeur in both acting and suffering, is in fact the thread of ‘life’. The goal of human striving is complex, since including distinctions of power, or powers, for life lived in its fullness. Being fully productive, or capable, and acting fully actual is, one could say, life’s telos. In Ricoeur’s own words, ‘to say “life” is also to say “power” ’, and ‘power’ to suffer seems to be productivity which like the actuality of an act must be understood as a specific ‘degree of the power of existing’ (1992, p. 317). Ultimately, ‘God’ in this context, as in Spinoza, names ‘an infinite power’. Ricoeur also calls this power ‘acting energy’ (ibid., p. 315).


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Gender Injustice, Nussbaum’s ‘Capabilities’ and Confident Choice At this stage, I would like to begin to sketch the complexity of the question of specific, sexual-gender disabilities which are inflicted on women and men by ‘bi-genderism’. Fixing heterosexual gender types results in doubt, dissymmetry and deprivation for persons who fail to fit one of the two fixed, sex/gender identities. Stereotypical images of women, say, as the ‘sex’ which suffers in life, in childbirth, at the death of loved ones, clearly damage not only women but the ability of men to suffer loss productively, failing to recognise their own mortality. From a close reading of Ricoeur’s writings from the last 10 to 5 years before his death in 2005, it is clear that capability and confidence become increasingly significant. Confidence, on the one hand, becomes actual power with both self-affirmation and other-approbation; capability, on the other hand, generates a productive power when bound together with confidence in mutual interactions. In this way, capability has an inextricable connection to ‘belief in’ one’s own power. Or, differently construed, ‘the degrees of our power of existing’, both of acting and of suffering, are bound together by our fragile belief(s) in the life of the subject in (her) activity and passivity. In this context, life gains ethical power, insofar as conatus connects to a fragile belief in oneself. Confidence is a selfempowering belief in acting but one’s confidence must, to be ethical, still be approved in its right degree by others before achieving full actuality and full productivity in mutual interaction. Overconfidence is a social problem as much as loss of confidence; in fact, it is often the case that the overconfident subject disables the power of another subject resulting in a loss of confidence. In other words, the ideal would be a mutual interaction of confident subjects (something like a Kantian regulative idea). Elucidating the structure of Ricoeur’s phenomenology of confidence includes uncovering how reaction is replaced by action in ‘responsible human practices’ (Jervolino, 1995, p. 538). Recognition of the highly significant role for responsible practice of increasing activity (decreasing reactions) renders confidence an ethical and social phenomenon: it matters that confidence can be either learnt or lost. Feminist philosophers, notably Miranda Fricker, have begun to see the role of confidence as an ethical and social phenomenon for our epistemic practices (2007, p. 50; Anderson, 2010a, pp. 170–7). Although I am indebted to Fricker for my conception of confidence and examples of gender injustice, I am not explicitly speaking about epistemic injustices

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here. Instead, I am focusing on ethical and ontological confidence; or, put differently, on moral powers and fragile beliefs. So, when cultivated, confidence’s ethical relation to a fundamental (ontological) capability will reveal a rational striving for life in its fullness; that is, it reveals conatus. As well as this conative power, confidence in a cognitive power to X manifests itself in various everyday abilities and capacities. A loss of confidence is evident in specific human incapacities on an interpersonal level: this means, in Ricoeur’s words, ‘a specific form of power, a power-over that consists in an initial dissymmetric relation between the agent and the receiver of the agent’s action’ (2007, p. 76). To develop further our critical understanding of ‘loss of confidence’, I direct you to Martha Nussbaum’s rather different approach to ‘capabilities’ which, for example, seeks to realize women’s ‘confidence’ in concrete social and political settings. In Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach, Nussbaum writes: Education obviously plays an important role here . . . as a source of images of worth and possibility, and also as a source of skills that make possibilities real. [The use of more ‘concrete strategies’] aims to produce confidence . . . by showing women what other women like themselves have done. (2000, p. 288)

But is the picture so simple? It may not be simply a matter of ‘showing’ and making ‘possibilities real’ for women to be confident; there seem to be more hidden obstacles. Ironically, the bond of confidence to a fundamental capability which, in turn, is bound to cognition and conation is manifest most clearly in loss of confidence. By this, I mean loss of belief in one’s own capability is lacking in, or threatened by, human interactions, resulting in any range of specific incapacities or disabilities. In other words, I agree with Ricoeur’s Reflections on the Just that the significance of mutual human interaction appears most sharply in the incapacities, or disabilities, which we inflict on one another. Ricoeur insists, to paraphrase his words, that ‘more significant’ than any ‘more fundamental’ fragility having to do with ‘finitude’, and calling for ‘more thought’ than ‘any talk about the finitude of language’ are ‘the historical forms of fragility’ which appear as ‘the incapacities humans inflict on one another’ (2007, p. 76). Roughly bringing together the terms of Ricoeur and Nussbaum, the ‘finitude’ of language elicits ‘images of worth and possibility’, and ‘skills that make possibilities real’ (Nussbaum above); however, the real in terms of Ricoeur’s ‘historical forms of fragility’ is ‘inflicted’. In other words, disabilities and loss of confidence are not merely problems solved by educating our choices and skills.


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The fact that cultural and historical forms of suffering are due to incapacities humans inflict on one another suggests that these must include the incapacities inflicted by distortions and destructions of human power in its different forms.31 Loss of confidence is not merely a problem for a solitary subject. To repeat, it results from what we inflict on one another. For example, the violence of sexism, or bi-gender-ism,32 constitutes a power-over the lives of all (those) humans who are specifically and significantly incapacitated and abused by the imposition of fixed, binary sexual identity. There is violence in the power-over their body-subject’s existence, including the infliction of specific incapacities. Yet extreme violence also cuts the sexually abused off from recognition of their shared human capability, and so of power-in-common. Nussbaum gives examples for a distinctively liberal political concern asserting that ‘the issue of homosexuality cannot easily be isolated from larger issues about the root cause of women’s subordination’ (2000, pp. 291–2); but for her, the root cause is domination or ‘power-over’. To quote Nussbaum: Feminists [who critique sexual domination and changing socially constructed gender roles] believe that binary gender divisions and ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ lie at the root of women’s economic oppression, and that any approach that doesn’t stick up for lesbian choices is therefore ultimately self-subverting. They would say that the homophobia of India is not just accidentally related to its patriarchal treatment of women: the fear that women can be sexually self-sufficient, and thus unavailable as sexual outlets for men, is what inspires homophobia, so homophobia is patriarchy’s reaction to a deep threat . . . It seems reasonable to think that on the issue of causality [that these] feminists are correct: there is a long tradition in India (as in most of the world) of regarding women as men’s sexual property, and the fear that this system would be upset is very likely to lie at the root of many people’s fear and hatred of lesbianism. It may well be that in the long run the treatment of women as property cannot be combated without combating the system of heterosexuality that has defined women as sexual property. (ibid., pp. 291–2)33

Of course, Nussbaum is right that the imposition of an exclusive system of heterosexuality must be combated. However, in contrast to Nussbaum’s list of universal capabilities which women should choose to have in order to overcome their subordination by patriarchy, Ricoeur demonstrates how sexual violence diminishes and destroys both the power-to-do and the power-in-common of the abused. Such violent loss of power is more extreme than loss of autonomy due to power-over – that is, due to patriarchal domination. The destructiveness of sexual violence breaks down the very relation of self (in affirmation) and other (in approbation) necessary

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for confidence as a social and ethical phenomenon. Admittedly, in his original account of the capable human subject who loses confidence in the power to act, Ricoeur also refers to ‘the figures of fragility’ which subordinate subjects (2007, p. 76; 2005a, pp. 186–7, 191). He takes the ‘historical forms of fragility’ to represent the distinctive suffering of those women and men whose power ‘to speak’ (as in the example already mentioned) has been disabled by self-doubt and lack of approbation (2007, p. 77). However, this loss of ability to act can become even more extreme in the loss of the very power to suffer; that is, an ultimate state of total disability, or affliction. This state is ultimate in that the subject has lost all productive power to help herself, or to be helped, out of affliction: mere education of skills, or a showing how, is not enough.

Affliction: Exposing the Ethical and Ontological Dimensions of Capability For a phenomenological example of extreme loss, I propose that Simone Weil’s phenomenology of ‘affliction’ be understood as the most extreme form of deprivation in human interaction, and that this is not simply suffering due to a failure of an educated choice to develop ‘capabilities’.34 Although bound up with a very different (theological) context than mine here, Weil’s phenomenological account of the distinctiveness of affliction supports the idea that affliction damages the desire to be in relation to others: In the realm of suffering, affliction is something apart, specific, and irreducible. It is quite a different thing from simple suffering. It takes possession of the soul and marks it through and through with its own particular mark, the mark of slavery. (2001, p. 67) There is not real affliction unless the event that has seized and uprooted a life attacks it, directly or indirectly, in all its parts, social, psychological and physical. The social factor is essential. There is not really affliction unless there is social degradation or the fear of it in some form or another. (ibid., p. 68; emphasis added) The great enigma of human life is not suffering but affliction . . . [I]t is surprising that God35 should have given affliction the power to seize the very souls of the innocent and to take possession of them as their sovereign lord . . . Affliction is something specific and impossible to describe in any other terms, as sounds are to anyone who is deaf and dumb. (ibid., p. 69)

A loss of confidence incapacitates and begins a process of suffering that can lead to affliction. Yet affliction is not only doubt of oneself; it seems to


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be more than material dissymmetry in one’s relations to others, or suffering due to natural deprivations of disease, disaster and dying. Those deprivations, which are ‘natural’ in the sense of ‘the way the world is’, are arguably less significant for my philosophical and political discussion on loss of confidence. Now let us return to Nussbaum in light of Weil’s profound account of affliction, in order to locate where Nussbaum fails to understand the depth of loss of power (for instance, as power-in-common). Nussbaum proposes certain concrete ways in which confidence can be achieved, or revived, while her distinctive ‘capabilities approach’ (differing from Ricoeur’s assumption of a fundamental human capability) addresses women whose ability to ‘bargain with patriarchy’ is impaired by a loss of self-worth due to their social and political positioning (2000, pp. 283–90). Nussbaum’s distinctive proposals for the powers in practical reasoning and other human capabilities, including literacy, are also constructive here. However, my contention is that those feminist and political theorists who turn to Ricoeur’s work on the powers of acting and suffering, of affecting (potentia) and being affected (potestas), will find additional and necessary conceptual tools for articulating the nature of confidence in, and belief that there is necessarily, a fundamental capability; this is the ontological condition for human subjects. Obviously this condition can be disputed, but this is what makes it philosophically interesting. In learning to understand loss of confidence in both human acting and human suffering, we need to find conceptual and political tools for transforming the violence and humiliation which mark the lives of women and of those men decisively damaged by the dissymmetric relations of patriarchal abuse. But we also have a fundamental ground against which selfhood (always) can be recovered, and so, can ‘stand out’. This will depend on a rational striving – that is, on the desire to be and the effort to exist – for life in its fullness. With her capabilities approach, Nussbaum also assesses the human value of suffering in life. But Nussbaum builds her approach on Aristotle without anything like Spinoza’s conception of power (or, for that matter, Weil’s) which supports Ricoeur’s capable subject. Nussbaum defends certain universal human values. She calls these universals, ‘central human capabilities’ (2000, pp. 70–96). Although the capabilities which Nussbaum proposes must be properly functioning in order for the life possessing them to be ‘fully human’, her political concern is on the capabilities and the choices for fulfilling them, which will determine the shape and fullness, or not, of a human life.36 Nussbaum’s distinctive (or, in contrast to Ricoeur, her ‘post-Hegelian Aristotelian’) conception of human functioning

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establishes certain capabilities which can be chosen and should be shared by all human beings universally (ibid., pp. 86–7). In contrast, Ricoeur’s ontological conception of a generic capability – that is, capable being – is the necessary ground on which the contingency of social abilities and capacities are to be understood and addressed. For Ricoeur, the power to act will always vary culturally and historically according to one’s abilities and capacities, while the capable being in herself is the constant ground ensuring that the ‘lost’ power – whether to act or to suffer – can be restored (Ricoeur, 2005a, pp. 69–72, 89–109).37

Critical Questions for Ricoeur: On Consistency and Lost Confidence Crudely put, how constructive is Ricoeur’s approach to loss of confidence for cultural and historical forms of suffering and/or affliction, especially for those women and men who are ‘oppressed’, or significantly impoverished because of their gender, sexual orientation, say, in the world’s religions? In his account of the disabling of the productivity to suffer, Ricoeur is not overly positive. Yet his account of disability and lost confidence is true to life. In reality, dissymmetry in relations of ‘the agent and the receiver of the agent’s action’ opens the way to intimidation, manipulation and corruption of relations between humans, ultimately, and to the loss of powers of affecting and being affected. Inertia sets in. The critical question concerning the coherence of Ricoeur’s position is another matter. When he attempts to locate power in mutual human interaction, is there an inconsistency in his otherwise post-Kantian account of power-to-do? So much of what Ricoeur writes about the ethics of confidence, of the power-to-do as opposed to power-over, but also the power-in-common, seems to add Spinozism to Kantian philosophy. Can this be done coherently? Consider Ricoeur’s summary of the problem: Let me say something about the . . . figures of fragility. If the basis of autonomy can be described in terms of the vocabulary of ability, it is in that of inability or a lesser ability that human fragility first expresses itself. It is first as a speaking subject that our mastery appears to be threatened and always limited . . . we cannot overemphasize this major incapacity. Does not the law rest on the victory language gains over incapacity? . . . [The alternative is] violence or discourse. To enter in the circle of discourse [means entering] the domain of agreements, contracts,38 exchanges . . . the universe of the debate made up of a confrontation of arguments, a war of words. What immediately comes to mind is the fundamental inequality among human beings when it


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comes to mastering such language, as inequality that is not so much a natural given as a perverse cultural effect, once the inability to speak well results in effectively being expelled from the sphere of discourse. In this regard, one of the first forms of the equality of opportunity has to do with equality on the plane of being able to speak, explain, argue, discuss. Here the historical forms of fragility are more significant than the basic, fundamental ones, having to do with finitude in general, which means that no one ever completely masters the use of language. These acquired, cultural, and in this sense historical acquisitions call for more thought than does any talk about the finitude of language . . . The picture becomes even more complex if we take into account the connection between affirmation and ability. The confidence I place in my power to act is a part of this very power. To believe that I can is already to be capable . . . To believe oneself unable to speak is already to be linguistically disabled to be excommunicated so to speak. And it is just this dreadful handicap – of an incapacity redoubled by a fundamental doubt concerning one’s ability to speak, and even tripled by a lack of approbation, sanction, confidence, and aid accorded by others to speak for oneself – that . . . attorneys and judges are confronted with: being excluded from language is a handicap that we can well call basic. (2007, pp. 76–7; emphasis added)39

The philosophical significance of Ricoeur’s rich insights into human acting and suffering is crucial to his legacy – much of which I’ve discussed elsewhere in critically Kantian terms (Anderson, 2002, pp. 15–31). The many critical points raised by Ricoeur remain ripe for wider debate and analysis of his philosophy as a whole. So-called handicaps due to historical–cultural and personal corruption, and not just due to the natural givens of human finitude, take Ricoeur’s philosophy beyond his earliest concerns with ‘finitude’ and ‘guilt’; but this is ironically ‘beyond’ Kantian ethics and metaphysics in going ‘back to’ Spinozist conceptions of capable being and active power. It is well known that the first book in his second volume on the philosophy of will, Fallible Man, was always the work which Ricoeur himself thought of as the heart of his philosophy; this is Kantian. Yet Ricoeur also describes the distinctiveness of human being (i.e. l’homme; ‘man’) as ‘the Joy of “yes” in the sadness of the finite’ (1986, p. 140), recalling Spinoza’s definition of sadness as a passion due to which the soul moves to a lesser perfection (2000, 4P45S1).40 The latter is developed in his later writings when the vulnerability of an autonomous subject turns into a loss of ethical confidence; Ricoeur could no longer restrict his philosophical explanation to finitude alone. Ethical confidence, as I’ve tried to demonstrate in this chapter, means the right degree of power, rendering neither too much nor too little confidence to reciprocally and mutually related subjects. Ricoeur is forced to recognize

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‘acquired’ incapacities which ‘humans inflict on one another, on the occasion of multiple interactions’ (2007, p. 77). Today I submit that such acquired incapacities – as both cultural and historical – appear in forms of what we would call, institutional racism, sexism, homophobia, ethnocentrism and so on. These ‘isms’ are only meant to serve as labels to mark the ground of the deeper affliction, including the disabling imposition of bi-genderism, evident in (but greater than) a loss of confidence in acting. At least the latter can be addressed, if not redressed, on the grounds of what Ricoeur names human capability. I continue to wonder whether affliction can be similarly recognized and overcome on the grounds of a Spinozist understanding of human power, capability and conatus. But Kant would not be much more help on this question than Spinoza. So, what do I offer the moral and religious philosopher from this exploration of loss of confidence for contemporary philosophy of religion?

Conclusion In the end, this chapter on loss of confidence has encouraged (however implicitly) a change in contemporary philosophy of religion away from an exclusive focus on Christian theism to a philosophy which is open to the mutual empowerment of human subjects. Here ‘religion’ has been treated as ‘that which binds us together’ in being capable. With an appropriate understanding of our capability as human in joy, activity and affliction, we can confront the dissymmetry, doubt and deprivation of human life. Striving together as individual beings (or Spinozist modes), human subjects actively move towards life in its fullness. My talk of ‘God’ has not referred to a specifically Christian God to whom human subjects must submit, especially, in supreme suffering. Instead joy is generated in an ‘intellectual love of God’, meaning the infinite power of Nature – of which we all play active parts. This, then, constitutes an active nature in which we become confident in this life – we are confident in what we are capable of: goodness and mutually empowering activity (2000, 4P20-21). The joy characterizing Spinoza’s conatus enhances our efforts to persevere in being, empowering us as we act and suffer in this life. Each and every individual moves forward in striving for a joyful continuation of the bodily existence which she or he expresses. In this light, we might agree that an intellectual love of Nature would complete what philosophers seek in a phenomenology of being-able, as confidence; that is, to understand power in its various degrees and its various senses, in order to increase knowledge consistent with Nature as dynamic forms of matter. Restoration of confidence depends not only on the power to act of


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autonomous subjects, but on the power-in-common which joins self- and other-directed action for and with others in just institutions. Personal doubt, interpersonal dissymmetry and social deprivation must be addressed with full awareness of a rational striving for life. Or, in Ricoeurian terms, we must acknowledge that the human subject with her desire for life in its fullness, and her effort to exist, faces an arduous journey. But it is in this philosophical journey that moral powers and fragile beliefs meet. One lesson to be learnt from studying loss of confidence in the powers to affect and be affected is that self-affirmation and other-approbation can be restored with proper ethical recognition, that is, reciprocally in mutual interactions; and this restoration is due to belief that the ‘I can’ asserts a fundamental human capability. This lesson moves us away from an overly formal Kantian, or liberal, view of power and patriarchal domination. The later Ricoeur himself moves away from his own early account of the self who makes voluntary choices over and against ‘the involuntary’ of nature. Instead of a too narrow conception of individual confidence, such as that implied in a choice from a list of capabilities, it is the rational striving to affirm life and persevere in being which will ultimately enable vulnerable women and men to confront the problem of too much or too little confidence; this will also mean moving through affliction productively as a capable human subject.41 To add a final note, the non-Kantian dimension of my argument here needs to be developed in future work on the loss of the power to suffer. Conative power, in Ricoeur’s conception of a human capability, would be more fundamental than the subject’s activity or passivity. This seems to be something we can be helped to understand from reading Gilles Deleuze42 on Spinoza: conatus is prior to both passivity and activity; it is a plane of power to be discovered in immanent life. Deleuze captures this plane in the possibilities of movements and intensities as follows: On the new plane, it is possible that the problem now concerns the one who believes in the world, and not even in the existence of the world but in its possibilities of movements and intensities, so as once again to give birth to new modes of existence, closer to animals and rocks. It may be that believing in this world, in this life, becomes our most difficult task, or the task of a mode of existence still to be discovered on our plane of immanence today. (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994, pp. 74–5; emphasis added)

Notes 1. Cf. Spinoza, 1982, 1P14C1, P40S1. 2. Cf. Ricoeur, 2007, pp. 75–7. 3. For this view in Christian philosophy of religion, see Coakley, 2002, pp. xii–xiii.

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4. ‘To believe that . . .’ in this quotation, appears to be what Ricoeur calls a ‘doxic belief’, which differs significantly (for Ricoeur at least) from ‘to believe in’; the former possesses a specific kind of certainty, that of a proposition (1992, p. 21). So, if he is being consistent with his earlier work, the ‘to already be capable’ cannot be understood in the hermeneutic terms of ‘attestation’ which he employs to describe ‘ontological assertions’ like belief in my power to X; the latter have a different kind of testimonial quality from the empirical or existential certainty of ‘belief that’. By his definition, attestations like ‘belief in’ – and I guess, ‘confidence in’ – ‘are made with the “ontological vehemence” of a conviction’ (ibid., p. 301, also see pp. 21–4, 297–302); and this belief-in is confirmed by being exercised and approved (2007, p. 75). In this light, Ricoeur’s assertion contains a significant distinction between confidence I place in my power to act and to believe that I can is already to be capable. Also, see the quotation on page below from Ricoeur, 2007, p. 75. In the latter essay, Ricoeur links attestation with Kant’s glauben (for to believe in) as opposed to wissen (knowledge or to believe that). 5. Previously I have explored ‘confidence’ in phenomenological terms as a function of a capable body encountering historical and cultural resistance in order to uncover the (gendering of the) lived body, see Anderson, 2010, pp. 163–80. 6. Roughly, here ‘cognitive’ describes the knowledge element in a rational power to act; ‘conative’ describes the striving element in the life of a suffering, yet still capable subject; so, my conception of a cognitive–conative capability is meant to capture at least two of the elemental powers of the human subject, which Ricoeur derives from a Spinozist tradition of French reflexive philosophy, see Nabert, 1992. 7. Miranda Fricker gives an example of what I would say is excommunication due to a decisive social factor of racial injustice. Fricker illustrates the ‘testimonial injustice’ of racial prejudice with a ‘historically truthful fiction’ (set in 1935 United States of America) from Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1996), of the young black man, Tom Robinson, who is entirely innocent, but accused of rape; this becomes an example of the ‘inability’ of speech to be ‘heard’, when the truth is spoken by Tom and clear evidence of innocence is presented by the white defence lawyer, Atticus Finch, the jury still finds Tom guilty of rape, see Fricker, 2007, pp. 23–9. 8. For some of these contemporary appropriations, see Anderson, 2008; Le Doeuff, 2006; Rorty, 2002; Gatens, 1996, pp. 108–12 and Lloyd, 1996, pp. 89–98. Lloyd in particular demonstrates how this ‘striving’ in Spinoza is also a ‘thriving’; that is, bound up with virtue and distinctive joy. Also see Deleuze, 1998, pp. 97–104. 9. For the conception of ‘impoverished providers’, see O’Neill, 2000, pp. 143–67. 10. See Ricoeur, 2005, pp. 69, 91, 257; 2007, p. 75; cf. Spinoza, 2000, pp. 239–42 (4P18D1, P20D1, PD1, P22D1C1). 11. See note 28 below. 12. For discussion of ‘power-in-common’, see the section entitled ‘Capability and its relation to Power-in-Common’, below. 13. Compare Ricoeur, 1992, p. 316; 2004a, pp. 5–7 and 2005, pp. 114–15. 14. Cf. Joy, 1997, p. xlii 15. Ricoeur expresses surprise that Spinoza does not relate memory to the apprehension of time and to the ‘what’ of the past with its claims to the truth of


16. 17.

18.

19. 20.

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suffering (2004a, p. 466). Unlike Spinoza, Ricoeur insists that remembering our debt to those in the past who have suffered raises questions about responsibility. Cf. Ricoeur, 2005a, p. 114 The lived body can become ‘captive’ in blindness due to social and material injustices. The loss of the body’s ability to express itself with the right amount of confidence is one way in which social ties, and so, power described by Spinoza can be cut off. However, an interesting counter-example which should be given further reflection is one that Rachel Jones (Dundee University) suggested to me – that is, loss of confidence can also lead to a hypersensitivity where the capable subject who has lost self-confidence can ironically both lose the sense of her own capability and nevertheless become more acutely aware than ever before of other people; this hypersensitivity, then, seems to develop precisely out of an increased insecurity with others. On the fine distinctions in Spinoza concerning potentia as act, active and actual (i.e. the essence of an individual mode) and potestas as a capacity for being affected, see Deleuze, 1988, pp. 97–8. See Ricoeur, 1992, pp. 101, 194, 220. To fill in the excerpt from Ricoeur’s account of power in Oneself as Another here are a few more lines: We termed power-to-do, power to act, the capacity possessed by an agent to constitute himself or herself as the author of action, with all the related difficulties and aporias. We also termed power-in-common the capacity of the members of a historical community to exercise in an indivisible manner their desire to live together, and we have been careful to distinguish this power-in-common from the relation of domination in which political violence resides, the violence of those who govern as well as that of the governed. (Ricoeur, 1992, p. 220; emphasis added)

For a highly significant text for the phenomenology of torture, see Scarry, 1985. 21. There seems to be a change in Ricoeur’s last writings whereby he turns to consider a metaphysics of ‘being’ informed to some degree by his re-reading of Spinoza, see Ricoeur, 2004b, pp. 166–9; 2005, pp. 114–15. 22. Here I am generally not speaking about a subject who is ‘the abuser’. Power would still be an issue, but it would be different, depending on whether it is a matter for the abused or the abuser. 23. See Ricoeur, 1992, p. 172f. 24. At the end of his life, due to illness (including blindness in one eye) and old age, Ricoeur himself suffered being bereft of ‘the power to act’. On Ricoeur’s suffering, or ‘lucid depression’, at the end of his life, see Goldenstein, in Ricoeur, 2009. Was this purely natural-physical suffering? Or, is his process of dying also inflicted by the imposition of a specific cultural and historical form of suffering in isolation? Alternatively, should we turn to a different thinker to address this sort of question? Again, a comparison between Weil on affliction and Ricoeur on ‘living up to death’ in the very last days of his own life would be revealing. 25. The critical question is: What, if any, role the imagination might play in striving for and achieving intellectual knowledge of God?

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26. See Spinoza, 2000, pp. 309–16; cf. Gatens and Lloyd, 1999, pp. 23–40. 27. This is restated in The Course of Recognition (Ricoeur, 2005, pp. 114–15). 28. The phrase substantia actuosa is translated as ‘dynamic substance’ by one of Ricoeur’s translators. Instead I have preferred the translation ‘dynamic matter’ in order to avoid certain historical connotations of ‘substance’ in western philosophy. 29. Nabert, 1992; and Ricoeur in Capelle (ed.), 2003, pp. 143–5. 30. Moral and religious philosopher could decide to drop ‘God’ for ‘Nature’ here, in order to avoid confusion between Spinoza’s one substance and the Christian theistic God. A feminist philosopher of religion may find this alternative to ‘God the Father’ liberatory. 31. For a recent discussion of the deprivation (inflicted on one another) and denial which characterize the suffering addressed by black feminist thought, and a possible Ricoeurian response to this, see Davidson and Davidson, 2010, pp. 173–80. Particularly significant is the Davidsons’ focus on the problem of ‘self-esteem’ for black feminists and how Ricoeur’s account of the capable human could address this problem (cf. hooks, 2003, pp. 145–73). This discussion overlaps with my work on loss of confidence, except that I impose onto the account (which, I suggest, Ricoeur himself was still developing) a stronger distinction between a fundamental human capability and the incapacities or disabilities which arise even while a subject remains capable; and so I make a sharp distinction between Ricoeur’s concept of human capability and Nussbaum’s list of capabilities. For an earlier essay on the memory of suffering which brings together Ricoeur and black feminist thought, see Anderson, 2001. 32. I have only begun to learn the terminology of, and arguments against, ‘bi-genderism’. See further Gilbert, 2009, pp. 93–112. 33. Nussbaum also addresses the case of homophobia in this context (2000, p. 292), offering two different feminist readings of the issue. According to an alternative to the above feminist interpretation, Some feminists vigorously deny this, holding that the issue of women’s equality within the heterosexual family is utterly unrelated to the morality of homosexual conduct: one may be intensely homophobic and yet vigorously feminist. But Nussbaum concludes that ‘[these] feminists are refusing to discuss an issue that may ultimately be absolutely central in understanding women’s inequality’. 34. Implicit here is a contrast between Nussbaum and Ricoeur, but also between Nussbaum and Weil, on the power (given) to suffer. It would be interesting to explore further the distinctiveness of ‘affliction’ and its relation to belief in God for Simone Weil. On different terms for power (potentia) as actuality of acting, or affecting, and power (potestas) as productivity, or being affected, see note 18. I have been asked whether one can be deprived of the ability to listen. Affliction seems to require a positive answer to this question (at least in extreme cases), in cutting the afflicted subject off from ‘the social’, and so the content of every human exchange, including listening. This, then, threatens the power


35.

36.

37. 38.

39.

40. 41.

42.

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to suffer and perseverance in life. For Ricoeur, the most disabling affliction, in the failure of the power to ‘hear’, is that which those persons having the power to act inflict upon others; this increases the dissymmetry and damage done to the human capacity for acting and reacting socially, psychologically and physically. It should be noted that although I am appropriating Weil in this context, her reference to ‘God’ here is not to Spinoza’s conception of Nature or an infinite, eternal and active being; but Spinoza’s conception remains my focus in this chapter. Nussbaum draws her examples from the lives of women in developing countries and addresses the lack of women’s flourishing due to the loss of their basic human capabilities (2000, pp. 235, 239–45). For example, she considers the question of the veiling of women, ‘of purdah . . . and the choice women increasingly have in non-traditional societies to wear the veil or not’. Cf. Deleuze, 1988, pp. 99–104; Gatens, 1996, pp. 110–13. Le Doeuff addresses the serious problems with the sexist social contract implicit in Jean-Paul Sartre’s conception of the subject’s domination over an Other: Le Doeuff exposes in Sartre’s account of bad faith (self-deception) a shocking assumption concerning the role of woman as the Other in the formation of the great philosopher (le grand philosophe); but she also demonstrates how this domination has a source in a certain metaphysical order which can be seen in Rousseau’s account of moral education in Emile. See Le Doeuff, 1994, pp. 60–9. This account of the ability and inability to speak has a direct application to the question of legal contexts in which subjects are expected to have a certain level of power to speak, to do, to give an account and to be accountable; see Ricoeur, 2005, pp. 18–20 (publication of an interview of 10 March 2003). Also see Anderson, 2010b, pp. 141–50. Cf. Deleuze, 1988, pp. 99–102. First, I would like to thank the members of the Keele University Political Philosophy Research Seminar (25 November 2009) for their lively discussion of the very earliest version of this chapter; in particular, I am grateful to Monica Mookherjee and Sorin Baiasu for their informative insights on Nussbaum, liberal morality, Kant and Sartre. Second, I would like to thank the three editors of this volume, Joseph Carlisle, James Carter and Daniel Whistler, for their incredibly incisive criticisms of the draft of the chapter which each of them read. Finally, I must thank members of the Philosophy Department Seminar at Dundee University (24 March 2010), especially Rachel Jones, Beth Lord, John Mullarkey and James Williams, for their patient attention to a previous version of this chapter; their highly critical comments on my use of Spinoza in relation to loss of confidence enabled me to make major and final revisions to this chapter. In the end, any remaining misunderstandings or confusions surrounding Spinoza, power and confidence are my own! For a discussion on where Ricoeur and Deleuze meet: on something more than a phenomenology of being able, and something more fundamental in metaphysical terms, that is, in a creative power and immanent life, out of which we ‘author’ our souls and, in so doing, the divine, see Sheerin, 2009, pp. 106–29.

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Bibliography Anderson, P. S. (2001), ‘An ethics of memory: Promising, forgiving and yearning’, in G. Ward (ed.), Companion to Postmodern Theology. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 231–48. Anderson, P. S. (2002), ‘Ricoeur’s reclamation of autonomy: Unity, plurality and totality’, in J. Wall, W. Schweiker and W. D. Hall (eds), Paul Ricoeur and Contemporary Moral Thought. London: Routledge, pp. 15–31. Anderson, P. S. (2003), ‘Autonomy, vulnerability and gender’. Feminist Theory, 4.2, 149–64. Anderson, P. S. (2008), ‘Liberating love’s capabilities: On the wisdom of love’, in N. Wirzba and B. E. Benson (eds), Transforming Philosophy and Religion: Love’s Wisdom. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, pp. 201–26. Anderson, P. S. (2010a), ‘The lived body, gender and confidence’, in P. S. Anderson (ed.), New Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Contestation and Transcendence Incarnate. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 163–80. Anderson, P. S. (2010b). ‘Ricoeur and women’s studies: On the affirmation of life and a confidence in the power to act’, in S. Davidson (ed.), Ricoeur Across The Disciplines. London: Continuum, pp. 142–64. Capelle, P. (ed.) (2003), Jean Nabert et la question du divin. Postface de Paul Ricoeur. Paris: Editions du Cerf. Coakley, S. (2002), Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender. Oxford: Blackwell. Davidson, M. and S. Davidson (2010), ‘Ricoeur and African and African American Studies: Convergences with black feminist thought’, in S. Davidson (ed.), Ricoeur Across the Disciplines. London: Continuum, pp. 165–80. Deleuze, G. (1988), Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. R. Hurley. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books. Deleuze, G. (2005), Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. M. Joughin. New York: Zone Books. Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari (1994), What is Philosophy?, trans. G. Burchell and H. Tomlinson. London: Verso. Fricker, M. (2007), Epistemic Injustice. Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gatens, M. (1996), Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality. London: Routledge. Gatens, M. and G. Lloyd (1999), Collective Imaginings: Spinoza, Past and Present. London: Routledge. Gilbert, M. A. (2009), ‘Defeating bigenderism: Changing gender assumptions in the twenty-first century’. Hypatia, 24.3, 93–112. hooks, b. (2003), Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem. New York: Washington Square Press. James, S. (1998), ‘The power of Spinoza: Feminist contentions. Susan James talks to Genevieve Lloyd and Moira Gatens.’ Women’s Philosophy Reviews, 9, 6–28. Jervolino, D. (1995), ‘The depth and the breadth of Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy’, in L. E. Hahn (ed.), The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. La Salle, IL: Open Court, pp. 533–43.


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Le Doeuff, M. (1994), ‘Mastering a woman: The imaginary foundation of a certain metaphysical order’, in A. B. Dallery and S. H. Watson with E. M. Bower (eds), Transitions in Continental Philosophy. Albany, NY: SUNY, pp. 59–70. Le Doeuff, M. (2003), The Sex of Knowing, trans. K. Hamer and L. Code. London: Routledge. Le Doeuff, M. (2006), Hipparchia’s Choice: An Essay Concerning Women, Philosophy, Etc. (second edn), trans. T. Selous. New York: Columbia University Press. Lee, H. (1996), To Kill a Mockingbird. London: Folio. Lloyd, G. (1994). Part of Nature: Self-Knowledge in Spinoza’s Ethics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Lloyd, G. (1996), Spinoza and the Ethics. London: Routledge. Lloyd, G. (2002), ‘Le Doeuff and the history of philosophy’, in G. Lloyd (ed.), Feminism and History of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 27–37. Lloyd, G. (2005), ‘What a Union!’. The Philosophers Magazine, 29, 45–8. Lord, B. (2010), Spinoza’s Ethics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Matheron, A. (1969), Individu et société chez Spinoza. Paris: Minuit. Matheron, A. (1977), ‘Spinoza et la sexualité’. Giornale Critico della Filosofia Italiana, 8.4, 436–57. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968), The Visible and the Invisible, trans. A. Lingis. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Nabert, J. (1992), Éléments pour une éthique. Préface de P. Ricoeur. Paris: Aubier. Nabert, J. (1994), L’Expérience intérieure de la liberté. Préface de P. Ricoeur. Paris: P. U. F. Nussbaum, M. C. (2000), Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Neill, O. (2000), Bounds of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ricoeur, P. (1966), Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, trans. E. V. Kohak. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Ricoeur, P. (1986), Fallible Man, trans. C. A. Kelbley. New York: Fordham University Press. Ricoeur, P. (1992), Oneself as Another, trans. K. Blamey. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, P. (1997), ‘A response’, in M. Joy (ed.), Paul Ricoeur and Narrative: Context and Contestation. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, pp. xxxix–xlv. Ricoeur, P. (1999), L’unique et le singulier. Brussels: Alice Editions. Ricoeur, P. (2002), ‘Ethics and human capability: A response’, in J. Wall, W. Schweiker and W. D. Hall (eds), Paul Ricoeur and Contemporary Moral Thought. London: Routledge, pp. 279–90. Ricoeur, P. (2004a), Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. K. Blamey and D. Pellauer. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, P. (2004b), ‘The creativity in language’, ‘On life stories’ (in dialogue with R. Kearney), in R. Kearney (ed.), On Paul Ricoeur: The Owl of Minerva. Basingstoke: Ashgate, pp. 127–44, 157–70. Ricoeur, P. (2005a), The Course of Recognition, trans. D. Pellauer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ricoeur, P. (2005b), ‘Memory, history, forgiveness: A dialogue between Paul Ricoeur and Sorin Antohi’. Janus Head, 8.1, 14–25.

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Ricoeur, P. (2007), ‘Autonomy and vulnerability’, in Reflections on the Just, trans. D. Pellauer. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 72–90. Ricoeur, P. (2009), Living Up To Death, trans. D. Pellauer. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Rorty, A. (2002), ‘Spinoza on the pathos of idolatrous love and the hilarity of true love’, in G. Lloyd (ed.), Feminism and the History of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 204–26. Scarry, E. (1985), The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sheerin, D. (2009), Deleuze and Ricoeur: Disavowed Affinities and the Narrative Self. London: Continuum. Spinoza, B. (1958), Tractatus Politicus, in The Political Works, ed. and trans. A. G. Wernham. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Spinoza, B. (1982) Ethics, trans. S. Shirley. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Spinoza, B. (2000), Ethics, ed. and trans. G. H. R. Parkinson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Weil, S. (2001), ‘The love of God and affliction’, in Waiting for God, trans. E. Craufurd. New York: HarperCollins.

Chapter 5

The Passionate Life: On Grief and Human Experience James Carter

Almost 40 years ago, Bernard Williams said: Writing about moral philosophy should be a hazardous business, not just for the reasons attendant on writing about any difficult subject, or writing about anything, but for two special reasons. The first is that one is likely to reveal the limitations and inadequacies of one’s own perceptions more directly than in, at least, other parts of philosophy. The second is that one could run the risk, if one were taken seriously, of misleading people about matters of importance. While few writers on the subject have avoided the first hazard, very many have avoided the second, either by making it impossible to take them seriously, or by refusing to write about anything of importance, or both. (1972, p. xvii)

Right up to his death in 2003, Williams remained adamant that philosophy’s task should be understood as humanistic. The role of philosophy, as he saw it, should be seen in coming to terms with, containing, and making sense of, the difficulty and complexity of human life.1 Forty years later, Williams’ words provide a cautionary reminder to both moral and religious philosophers that much critical work in their respective fields fails to meet that task. While Williams’ primary target at the time of writing was the narrow formalism of the moral philosophy practiced by his contemporaries, his comments could be applied equally to dominant debates in Anglophone analytic philosophy of religion, which focus on the abstract compatibility of divine attributes, or arguments for and against the existence of the disembodied God of Christian theism.2 Abstracting philosophical debate from concrete experience,3 he argued, leads to a gross simplification of human life, which risks overlooking the tension between reflection and practice, the ‘local perspectives and idiosyncrasies’, the tragic dilemmas, and the emotional insights and reactions that make up a great deal of lived human experience (1985, p. 197; 2006, pp. 180–99). Needless to say, the philosophical landscape has changed considerably since Williams’ comments first appeared in print. Following the initial

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resurgence of neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics in the 1970s and 1980s,4 there has been a steadily increasing interest in moral psychology, which has in turn led to the exploration of issues far beyond the parameters of the particular forms of Utilitarianism and Kantianism so derided by Williams.5 The wealth of philosophical literature now available on the emotions, and moral philosophers’ increasing willingness to engage with psychoanalysis, are but two examples of this.6 And analytic moral philosophy’s expansion beyond the narrow confines of formalism can be attributed, in part, to the formative critical work laid down by the likes of Williams. Analytic philosophy of religion has arguably been slower to broaden its horizons, as evidenced by the standard debates which still dominate the field (see note 2). However, in recent years, there have been a handful of works by philosophers of religion and theologians which have engaged directly with human experience in relation to religious themes, developing what might even be called a ‘humanistic’ trend in the philosophy of religion.7 Nevertheless, there remains an alarming tendency among philosophers to shun one issue in particular that lies at the heart of lived experience; namely, vulnerability. Vulnerability is an inescapable and undeniable fact of human existence. It is most readily recognized in our experience of embodiment and our familiarity with our physical limitations; and yet it underlies certain integral human experiences typically overlooked or undermined by philosophers – including grief in response to mortality, misfortune, loss and suffering. For too long, philosophers have attempted to ignore, deny, or, worse, immunize us from these most basic and integral aspects of human existence. Such attempts – whether the narrow formalism of the moral philosophy criticized by Williams, or philosophy of religion’s seemingly exclusive preoccupation with conceptual analysis – are of catastrophic consequence for moral and religious philosophy. For in failing to take into account that which is most basic to human life, they fail to address their subject matter adequately. And vulnerability is basic to human life: a life without it would not amount to anything we recognize as human. This chapter argues that human experience is incoherent apart from an awareness of grief. This is a fact that has not typically been addressed adequately in philosophy. Indeed, far more vivid insights are often found in art, literature, drama and even music. Williams was acutely aware of this. Indeed, he saw little point to philosophy – as a humanistic discipline – unless it strove to attain the standards of human insight evident throughout the arts. Accordingly, if moral philosophers in particular – and philosophers

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of religion generally – intend to take as their subject matter the human condition, they will not simply shy away from the fundamental fact of human vulnerability and, consequently, human suffering. For as Martha Nussbaum has commented, it is a consequence of mortal, finite human existence that ‘the valuable things in life don’t come apart so neatly from the fearful and terrible’ (Nussbaum, 1990, p. 368). In what follows, then, I offer a portrayal of the human as an emotional and rational being seeking value; and I argue that such beings cannot seek – let alone attain – a good life without the concrete conditions of vulnerability, which necessitate an openness to suffering and grief. This leads me to propose a conception of the good human life as what Robert Solomon has called ‘the passionate life’: defined by ‘its sometimes vehement emotions, by its impassioned engagement, by its ardent quests, grand but futile ambitions, and embracing affections’ (2007, p. 263). My argument centres on a philosophical exploration of a central – albeit uncomfortable – phenomenon at the heart of human experience; namely, grief. I claim that without grief, human flourishing would be entirely incoherent. For human life is always contingent on factors beyond a person’s control; consequently, immunity to misfortune and grief would also entail immunity to any kind of fortune (love, say, or pleasure), including anything valuable the loss of which would lead to suffering, but without which, I argue, lived experience is incomplete. I then turn to the thorny issue of philosophy’s famously insufficient treatment of grief in relation to mortality and loss. I argue that philosophy’s shortcomings here come into sharp focus when considered alongside the long legacy of artistic expressions and articulations of these basic aspects of lived experience. Engaging in particular with Martha Nussbaum’s writing on this subject (1986; 1990), I consider what philosophy might glean from the arts as a heuristic device in developing a more satisfactory account not only of grief, but of human vulnerability generally. Finally, I conclude by sketching my proposal: that human existence, despite its many obstacles and endurances, can and should still be embraced as the pursuit of the good life; and that vulnerability, as that which endows human experience with meaning, is an indispensable aspect of that good life. In sum, I advocate Solomon’s ‘passionate life’: an active embrace of human mortality with all of its ‘riskiness and incompleteness’ (Nussbaum, 1990, p. 380) which affirms the value of human life as mortal in spite of (and yet because of) our vulnerability to suffering and grief. If philosophy is to meet the criteria demanded of a humanistic discipline, then it must demonstrate an attentiveness to that which makes us most human: our

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vulnerability, and the manner in which we respond, and ought to respond, to that constitutive condition of our humanity.8

Grief (i): On Mortality Mortality – along with birth – is the most fundamental fact of a human being. We will all die, just as surely as we were all born. Mortality thus strikes us as the most obvious instance of human vulnerability. Yet mortality is also a source of remarkable value. Consider the following example from Homer’s Odyssey. Here, Odysseus refuses the offer of an eternity with the beautiful goddess Calypso: an immortal and ageless existence where he will ‘avoid all the troubles that await’ him, being ‘beyond the reach of death’. Instead, he opts for a finite mortal life with his beloved Penelope. As he explains to the goddess, ‘my desire and longing day by day is still to reach my own home and to see the day of my return. And if this or that divinity should shatter my craft on the wine-dark ocean, I will bear it and keep a bold heart within me’.9 Odysseus’ choice may initially appear a strange one: he has opted for a human life – a vulnerable life, open to misfortune, loss and grief – over a life of immortality – an ageless, invulnerable life. Yet upon reflection, it is worth asking whether we would choose differently. For in choosing a vulnerable life, a life where one’s projects and desires are forever tainted by uncertainty, Odysseus has chosen a life in which one’s fortune may be fragile, but which is endowed with value precisely because of its fragility. In other words, he has chosen a life where the rewards of labour are all the sweeter because they might not have been attained; where success is valued precisely because we have experienced failure; where goodness is treasured because we know what it is to experience grief and pain. Compare this with the immortal life offered to him by Calypso, a life free from failure but also, to the same degree, free from success; a life free from human suffering and grief but also, to the same degree, alien to what we understand as human (emotional) experience. For godly invulnerability, as Mark Wynn explains, ‘means that there is nothing to be achieved, no object of striving, and accordingly in such a life, there is no intelligible place for deeply felt emotion’ (2005, p. 60). Wynn argues that Odysseus not only chooses a life in which human vulnerability – and the accompanying experiences of suffering in grief – will serve to reveal certain values; he also chooses a life in which emotional experience, which is itself incompatible with immortal invulnerability, can

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help to constitute certain values. Odysseus’ feelings toward Penelope stem not from her outward qualities – her beauty, say, or her intellect – but from the ‘deeply felt’ emotional attachment which they share. And those feelings are intensified by the knowledge that their bond is fragile: that life can be unpredictably cruel, and that she may be snatched from his tender embrace at any unforeseen moment. And again, by contrast, such feelings will presumably have no part in the life of the gods: for ‘their invulnerability extends to their emotional lives, and accordingly their good cannot be put at risk by developments in the lives of others in this (or any other) way’ (ibid.). Indeed, this is precisely the observation made by J. M. Coetzee’s character, Elizabeth Costello, when she comments: ‘Of the two, gods and mortals, it is we who live the more urgently, feel the more intensely’ (Coetzee, 2003, p. 189).10 Upon reflection, then, a life of godly invulnerability appears both undesirable and incoherent. We may often speak of a longing for immortality and agelessness, for a world in which those we love would never die. Yet critical reflection questions the coherence of such longing – for surely the value we place upon the things we treasure most dearly derives in part from the fact that our grasp on them is always insecure? And surely their value would diminish in our eyes if they confronted us as immutably eternal (much like the life Calypso offers Odysseus)? It would appear, then, that we value the things that we value precisely because they are structured by the limits of mortal, human existence. Fellowship, virtuous activity and love, those ends we strive to attain as sources of intrinsic value in human life, derive their value as much from the fact that they are sought in the face of limitation, and the possibility of failure and disappointment, as from the fact that they enhance and enrich the good life lived. Or, as Nussbaum puts it, human limits ‘structure the human excellences, and give excellent action its significance. The preservation of the limits . . . is a necessary condition of excellent activity’s excellence’ (1990, p. 378). Accepting mortality, in other words, provides a framework for lived experience; it makes our decisions meaningful. Yet it is just this, the acceptance of mortality, that philosophy seems so prone to resist. And we might say that this is a problem not exclusive to philosophy, but reflective of a wider epidemic in Western society. This is not to say that death is outright ignored (either by philosophers or in wider society). But there is a relentless striving to avoid death, predicated upon the belief that it need not occur. Beverley Clack is a philosopher of religion who has been particularly sensitive to this trend. She attributes this view to the prevalence of what she calls ‘an insurance culture’: the idea that by

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taking out a particular insurance policy, it is implied that one can protect oneself from the transience of life, with the consequence that death is objectified and placed in a category that makes it more manageable, and ultimately distanced from the individual subject, thereby safeguarding us from the suffering to which grief is a direct reaction. Death is viewed as an accident that, if one adopts a suitably careful lifestyle, one might avoid. This creates ‘an illusion of control over death . . . My existence seems permanent, even necessary’ (Clack, 2002, p. 129–30). Indeed, it is for this very reason that Clack rightly cautions against the claims of some feminist philosophers that the paradigm of natality can simply replace that of mortality for defining human being. For it risks overlooking that fact that human life is inherently and inescapably vulnerable. As she movingly explains: Human life does involve the joy of birth, of love, of human relationship. But it also involves the sorrow of death, of loss, of rejection. In this sense, I would argue that human life is always potentially tragic. We find the loved one only to risk losing them to death/the other. There is a vulnerability associated with human life that must be addressed . . . we are mutable beings, subject to death, open to loss. (ibid., pp. 130–1; emphasis added)

The attempt to immunize human experience from vulnerability to misfortune, then, is tantamount to abandoning the constitutive conditions of humanity itself. For as Clack has demonstrated, an exclusive emphasis on the paradigm of natality risks overlooking the tragic, and thus omitting an essential component of our lived experience. We are all inescapably mortal, and we will all necessarily be confronted at various stages in our lives by mortality – not just our own, but of those around us, including those whom we value, those whom we love. For loss, and grief’s response to loss, are inevitable – and painful – components of any human experience. And yet, it would be overly hasty to construe grief entirely in negative terms. For, like mortality, it is also a source of considerable value.

Grief (ii): On Loss Grief is an emotion most commonly associated with serious loss. It is consequently a painful emotion, signifying the loss of someone11 to whom we have formed a deep attachment. We grieve the death of loved ones, but also sustained separation, the end of a significant relationship, or a disabling illness. But grief is also revelatory; it reveals to the fullest degree the value of those whom we have lost. This is well illustrated by Nussbaum’s

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appropriation of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, where Marcel’s grief brings him to the realization that he in fact loves Albertine: Françoise brings the news: ‘Mademoiselle Albertine has gone.’ Only a moment before, he believed with confidence that he did not love her any longer. Now the news of her departure brings a reaction so powerful, an anguish so overwhelming, that this view of his condition simply vanishes, Marcel knows, and knows with certainty, without the least room for doubt, that he loves Albertine. (Nussbaum, 1990, p. 261; cf. Proust, 1934)12

On the basis of this example, we can argue that while grief may involve a serious loss, it also presupposes – and, to the extent that it presupposes, reveals – love for that which has been lost. Grief, we might say, is inconceivable apart from love. Yet it would be a mistake to equate grief exclusively with the pain of losing a loved one, and with bemoaning the loss. Grief and love are bound tighter than that. For as Solomon has argued, grief is also a way of keeping love alive. We too readily think about grief as concerned strictly with the past. But it is also ‘about the present and the future . . . [p]eople dedicate novels, name buildings . . . in order to maintain the memory of those they have loved and lost’ (2007, p. 74). Indeed, it is this commemorative aspect of grief that serves to reveal its intrinsic value.13 For how desirable would a world without grief, a world where people die without an emotional trace, really be?14 Despite our efforts to avoid it, to overlook it, we value grief, and are better off with it than without it. Consider the fact that a failure to grieve appropriately is often met with outrage in our society. We are appalled by a failure to adequately demonstrate, let alone possess grief, to the extent that it is expected not only as the appropriate reaction to loss, but is in a strong sense obligatory. Solomon illustrates this fact by reference to the character Meursault, in Albert Camus’ novel, The Stranger, who is condemned as ‘inhuman’ because he fails to grieve for his dead mother at her funeral. Now, if grief were nothing more than a negative reaction to a loss – something best overlooked or avoided – Meursault’s condemnation would be incomprehensible. Indeed, such a person would be considered fortunate, like an athlete who has a high threshold of pain, or a glutton with a remarkably high metabolism. But Solomon points out that grief is not merely ‘normal’ or ‘natural’, nor is it only customary or appropriate. Rather, it is seen as morally obligatory ‘because grief like love is woven deeply into the fabric of our moral lives. Meursault does not grieve because he does not (cannot) love, and this is what condemns him’ (ibid, p. 75; emphasis added; cf. Camus, 1989).

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Grief is thus neglected not because it is unimportant but ironically because it is so ubiquitous and hence unavoidable. To a certain extent, the tendency to avoid grief is understandable. Its very presence indicates loss and suffering of some kind. Yet attempts to avoid grief are often based on the mistaken pretext that to avoid grief is to avoid suffering. But this inverted logic misses the fact that grief is a reaction to suffering. We may speak of grief as a ‘painful emotion’, but the pain comes from the loss and suffering to which the emotion reacts, not from the emotion itself (ibid., pp. 74–5). And as a reaction to loss and suffering, grief can be seen as efficacious. For it signifies a particularly acute form of vulnerability, namely, the fragility of a loving relationship, which may be broken at any moment, and which is contingent on so many factors beyond the individual’s control. Therefore, as stated above, grief serves to reveal the value with which a particular loving relationship has enriched my life. As Wynn helpfully explains, my affective attachment to an other leaves me vulnerable to the kind of disruption that is implied in grief; and it is this vulnerability which, in part, constitutes the value the other has for me, by ensuring that she is of irreplaceable worth. Indeed, returning us to the issue of grief’s relation to mortality, and the example of Odysseus, it is the idea that there is some such connection between emotion, vulnerability and value that helps make Odysseus’ choice more intelligible (Wynn, 2005, p. 84). For as Nussbaum argues, our preference for Odysseus’ life with Penelope over his life with Calypso stems from ‘this more general uneasiness about the shapelessness of the life Calypso offers: pleasure and kindliness on and on, with no risks, no possibility of sacrifice, no grief, no children’ (1990, p. 366). Much like the immortal life, then, a life invulnerable to loss and grief is ‘shapeless’, lacking in evaluative structure, since events cannot be marked out as having a positive or negative significance for my well being. And this suggests that grief is a valuable and indispensable component of the good life: for it reveals the extent to which vulnerability is connected to ‘a most profound value, a value which seems to be foundational for all others: namely, the value of things mattering at all’ (Wynn, 2005, p. 84). But grief does not simply reveal value. For there is a significant way in which it is also bound up with the way emotions constitute value. We are social animals: we form deep attachments to others, investing value in them, and consequently need time to recover from the pain that the severing of these attachments inevitably brings about. Consequently, it follows that the loss of someone I love will disable me, at least for a time: I will feel grief, and by its nature, grief involves an incapacity to take on new kinds of meaning-sustaining activity. And to this end, we can say that

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this proves the beloved to have irreplaceable value. For even if there are others who are qualitatively very like my beloved, she remains irreplaceable insofar as the tearing-away of the bonds that tie me to her leaves me unable to take on other relationships that might substitute for my relationship with her.15 So in this respect, grief not only reveals the value of an other to me, but is also bound up with the role of emotions in constituting the value of an other. For in realizing the extent of the other’s value to me, I come to find her irreplaceable; and my grief is an enactment of this fact, for it leaves me so bound up with the thought of the other that I am unable to ‘move on’ (cf. ibid., pp. 83–4).16

Fragile life Needless to say, the philosophical tendency to avoid vulnerability generally, and grief in particular, has a long and well-documented legacy. Its most famous articulation is found, of course, in the Stoic assertion that the most important thing in life is one’s own reason and will – what the Roman Stoic Epictetus calls one’s ‘moral purpose’ (Nussbaum, 2001, pp. 356–7). This faculty, the Stoics argue, is possessed by all humans, regardless of their external fortunes, and is fully within the control of each and every individual. And it is for this reason, they continue, that it ought to be prized above all else. Consequently, the Stoics demonstrate a wariness of emotions (including grief), which they define as judgements which ascribe value to worldly items beyond the individual’s control. Indeed, they reject emotions on the basis of what they see as a false evaluative structure which acknowledges as important that which has no true importance (namely, external factors beyond the individual’s control).17 This obviously runs directly counter to the view I am defending, that sees human value as contingent on events in the world (often beyond the individual’s control), and that acknowledges the sources of human goodness as deriving in part from their vulnerability. We will return to the Stoics and related views below, but it is worth at this stage reiterating the central theme of this chapter: that human experience is incoherent apart from the experience of what it is to suffer. And grief is indispensable to this end, revealing to us the true extent of our attachments to our sources of value.18 As John Cottingham explains: Joy would not be human joy without the possible yield of pain of which Keats spoke so elegantly – the pain of potential loss which dwells in the very ‘temple of delight’. Without that special human dimension, all that can remain as positive ‘joy’ for the Stoics is simply a calm ‘expansion of the soul’

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signalling the presence of what reason perceives as worthy of pursuit, namely a purely moral value. It is, if not exactly a chilling picture, at least a strangely colourless one which takes us to the very edges of recognizable human emotion. (1998, p. 57)

Grief thus reveals our vulnerability and our sociability to be inextricable. For we are social animals, and this opens us to the possibility of loss. To live with and among others is to be vulnerable, as we form attachments that can only be characterized as fragile. Yet without that fragility, we lose the possibility of forming loving attachments that could genuinely be classified as meaningful. What is valuable in human life is thus inextricable from that which is vulnerable. For while loving, human relationships are the source of much suffering and grief, they are equally the source of much value and joy. And much of that value derives from our shared experience and knowledge of what it is to suffer. For where would we find sympathy in a world without suffering? Where would we find compassion? Indeed, what is morality, if not a response to the fact of suffering? Grief also serves a strategic purpose in responding to the fact of suffering. For it is grief that attracts responses of sympathy and compassion from those around us during difficult times. Grief functions as an important social good, albeit one that finds scant expression in Western society. Indeed, this significant fact is alluded to by Solomon who, focusing in particular on the United States, cites the relative non-existence of grief as a form of public and social expression. He contrasts this with cultures in which the public expression of grief – otherwise known as mourning – operates as a powerful social function. He explains: In some societies, for example, among the Maori in New Zealand, grief is not considered an interruption of life but rather a continuation of the rhythm of life. A Maori funeral lasts three or more days. In America it may take less than an hour. Maori grief is tightly communal and really shared, and not just a matter of sympathy. The loss is everyone’s loss, a loss to the community as well as to the next of kin. Accordingly, the logic of grief gets entangled with the social structure of mourning, as opposed to the common American attitude that grief is antisocial withdrawal. (2007, p. 78)

Grief’s social function thus lies not only in enabling grieving parties to rejoin the larger community, but also in reminding all concerned of their own mortality – of the vulnerability of their finite existence. For as Solomon’s Maori example indicates, the communal process of grieving serves to remind those present that they are ultimately significant not simply because they exist as individuals, but also because they form a people that will outlive the existing community and give its members’ lives meaning.

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Grief bestows a renewed sense of solidarity upon members of a community, as well as a new sense of what needs to be done, not just for those who grieve, but for the memory of those lost and the community they share together. The loss suffered in grief may be enormous and irredeemable, but as Solomon warns, the further loss suffered by ignoring or denying the importance of the grieving process and the significance of public expressions such as mourning ‘only amplifies, and does not ease, the suffering’. The denial of grief, as the Stoics saw so clearly, first requires the denial of love, ‘and that is a price that most of us are unwilling to pay’ (ibid.).

On the Power of a Story In one of his last books, Solomon observed that ‘when misfortune strikes, philosophy is notoriously inept’ (2002, p. 74). And it has indeed been the case that philosophy’s capacity to express, analyse and explain human tragedy has seemed severely limited when compared to the wealth of vivid, moving, memorable accounts available throughout the arts. In part this is a stylistic shortcoming. Phenomenologically speaking, philosophy’s task is descriptive and, in order to be effective, requires a certain distance from the particular felt experience it may be describing. I will not be as well placed to offer a philosophically accurate, step by step account of the cognitive and visceral processes involved in my feeling anger if I am overwhelmed by anger at the time of writing. Philosophical writing benefits from (a degree of) emotional distance. But equally, there is a certain sense in which philosophical accounts of human suffering are alienating. They deal not with the suffering undergone by particular persons, but rather with suffering itself as a phenomenon, in abstraction from any particular suffering person. The result is a de-humanized account of suffering – the very thing Williams would have rallied so ardently against. Graham Nerlich’s comments on the nature of grief offer a particularly useful illustration of this difficulty: A priori, it might seem that a person could just accept the fact of death and irrecoverable loss, and turn to a new life and new values. But the problem is not like that of accepting new sentential information. Grieving is valued because of facts on which the abstract picture of personhood sheds no light. Conversely, understanding the concept of a person gives no hint why we may be chilled at the absence of grief in one who appeared so attached to another who has just died. Grief can do no obvious service to the dead. It pays its due to the deep and complex array of threads that tie one to a beloved. It is a human debt, paid because we are, quite contingently to personhood,

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creatures who need time for recovery from the tearing-away of those manifold connections. But it is also personal, in the sense that many of these inarticulately forged connections constitute the value placed on the person for whom one grieves and were a part, perhaps quite dimly perceived, of the process of coming to value her. (1989, p. 164; emphasis added)19

I have already discussed at some length how the grief one feels at the loss of an other serves to reveal the value of the other to them (in addition to being bound up with the role of the emotions which constitute the value of the other). But Nerlich’s argument appears to be directed at the inadequacy of discursive – philosophical – reflection in enabling us to arrive at this realization. Consider in particular his comment that ‘many of these inarticulately forged connections and judgements constitute the value placed on the person’. For, as Wynn observes, the thought that the judgements may be ‘inarticulate’ implies that the content of affectively constituted judgements (including grief) ‘cannot be rendered, in full, in “notional” terms’ (2005, p. 83). Very well. But what is it that the arts can provide us which philosophy cannot? What is it about stories, about narrative accounts or enactments in particular, that enable us to explore and express those tragic aspects of human life that a philosophical text might be able to omit or avoid? In part, we are dealing again with a stylistic issue. Where a philosophical text might be expected to describe and explain, a story simply has to express. And given that the themes with which we are dealing are undeniably ubiquitous (the basic fact of human vulnerability having been established above), stories simply have to tap into shared experiences that often resist philosophical clarity. This is not to say that obscurity, difficulty or sheer inexplicability are legitimate reasons to suspend philosophical exploration. Philosophers naturally seek clarity in their explanation, but clear obtuseness does not contribute anything to human life. And it is for this reason that the example of Greek tragedy is still of such timely significance to us today. For as Nussbaum remarks, a tragedy ‘does not display the dilemmas of its characters as pre-articulated; it shows them searching for the morally salient; and it forces us, as interpreters, to be similarly active’. Interpreting a tragedy, she continues, is a ‘messier, less determinate, more mysterious matter’ than assessing a philosophical example; and ‘even when the work has once been interpreted, it remains unexhausted, subject to reassessment,’ in the way the example does not (1986, p. 14). Interpreting a tragedy, we might say, is much like interpreting a human life. The effectiveness of stories over philosophical explanation can also be reflected in their appeal to the imagination. Many of us will have experienced the power of a portrayal of an individual’s ordeal as so vivid that it

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causes the reader or listener actual discomfort. (Indeed, as an especially squeamish viewer, I often find myself averting my gaze and plugging my ears in cinemas during particularly vivid and violent depictions of pain.) And to this end, we can argue that stories can perform a powerful social function, focusing on aspects of human vulnerability (that most universal aspect of lived experience) in order to encourage recognition and empathy. Indeed, tragedy provides us with an especially potent example of the social power of a story. For as Nussbaum’s comments above suggest, tragedy – whether experienced directly or through the medium of art or drama – represents an indefatigable reminder of the inexplicability of the world, of our vulnerability to chance, and of the poverty of rationalistic attempts that attempt to reduce everything to the level of the explicable. Indeed, ancient Greek tragedy’s evolution within the tradition of mimesis is significant to this end. For the vividness of a mimetic work functions to directly affect its audience, drawing them into a strong engagement with the possibilities of the experience that they depict; it actively engages its audience’s empathetic capacities. In speaking of the actions and agents represented by a play, say, we do not speak descriptively of the work. Rather, we experience it through an understanding that depends on the terms we use, and we respond to it with evaluative judgements. Tragedy does not just confirm its audiences in pre-existing comprehension of the world. It provides them with imaginative opportunities to test, refine, extend, and perhaps even question the ideas and values on which such comprehension rests (Halliwell, 2002, p. 201). Given the effectiveness of the arts in bringing to light the tragic dimension of human experience, we might well wonder why certain philosophers have been so resistant to engage with these forms of expression, as has certainly been the case – in the English speaking world – with many contemporary philosophers of religion, as well as those moral philosophers on the receiving end of Williams’ critique, discussed at the outset. Granted, philosophers will have to forsake a certain degree of clarity, both to engage with subject matters and modes of expression that are by their very nature diabolically complicated, obscure or mysterious. But the primary reason for certain philosophers’ resistance to both artistic forms of expression and their tenuous subject matter is not methodological. It is rather a matter of what they see as the goal of philosophy. For there has been a tendency – that can be traced right through the history of western philosophy – to locate the source of the human good in that which transcends our embodiment, our locatedness, our interdependence and all other sources of human vulnerability – namely, in bare human reason. For by locating the human good in reason alone, philosophers thereby immunize us from all contingencies

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and vulnerabilities. This is the view most famously expressed by the Stoics. The pursuit of the good life is ultimately something the individual qua individual must undertake alone. And it is philosophical thinking that provides the surest path to the good life, which culminates in complete self-sufficiency. Needless to say, proponents of this view are likely to object to the forms of artistic expression discussed above. For the emphasis on human reason is coupled with a wariness of any forms of expression, explanation, communication that appeal to the emotions (as we saw most clearly with the example of Greek tragedy). Now, it is important to emphasize that this wariness is not to be attributed to some crude dismissal of the emotions as irrational upheavals entirely lacking in cognitive content. The Stoics in particular saw the emotions as judgements attributing value to certain worldly items beyond the agent’s control. But it is for this precise reason that emotions are seen as dangerous, drawing the agent outside of herself to such a degree that she becomes dependent on things beyond her control. The Stoics see emotions, explains Nussbaum, as ‘webs of connection and acknowledgement, linking the agent with the worth of the unstable context of objects and persons in which human life is lived’. So fear, for example, involves the belief that there are important things that may damage us, and that we are powerless to prevent that damage. Love involves the ascription of value to someone separate from the agent and not fully controlled (it cannot be love if the response is fully controlled). And grief arises when the world damages or takes from us someone that we love (Nussbaum, 1990, p. 387). The view discussed here thus seeks to immunize the human good from any factors beyond the agent’s control. It is for this reason that this view seeks not only to do away with the emotions (which contain value judgements according to which the agent is dependent on the world beyond her control) but will demonstrate wariness of any forms of (artistic) expression, explanation or communication that risk provoking an emotional reaction. But can such a philosophy really be called humanistic? Where is the humanism in denying the most fundamental aspects of lived human experience? Instead, might we question the aspiration to immunize human happiness from any and every contingency beyond the individual’s control? For surely we have already established that a life bereft of all contingency and vulnerability cannot coherently be called ‘human’ in any sense that we understand the term? Indeed, what we see in such a philosophy is an aspiration toward what Nussbaum has called ‘transcending humanity’ – an attempt to defy (to deny?) human mortality which we

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have already exposed as self-defeating: for it runs directly counter to the constitutive conditions of our very human existence.20 And in doing so, it risks overlooking the rich resources available to us in alternative forms of expression, explanation and communication, as demonstrated by the power of a story. She explains: Confronted with . . . Odysseus’ story, [the proponents of this view] would surely say that that’s the result you get, if you let stories and their emotional structures into philosophical argument. You get a merely human nontranscending philosophy. A philosophy that is mortal and thinks mortal thoughts. That, of course, was exactly what they did not want philosophy to do or to be . . . But suppose, on the other hand, we are not so enamored of the pursuit of transcendence . . . Suppose we think that there is something to the suggestion that, being mortal, we should think mortal thoughts. Then we might well conclude that philosophy, as the art of our thought and the pursuer of truth about us, had better speak mortal speech and think mortal thoughts. In this case, we will instruct the philosopher not to be seduced by the lure of the unaided intellect – for one can surely speak of seduction here – and to think and speak more humanly, acknowledging in speech the incompleteness and neediness of human life, its relations of dependence and love with uncontrolled people and things . . . This would mean . . . that the emotions, and their accomplices, the stories, would be not just permitted, but required, in a fully human philosophy. (1990, p. 388–9; emphasis added)

How can these alternative forms of expression, explanation and communication aid philosophy as a humanistic discipline? To begin with, they can perform a therapeutic and social function that philosophy in isolation can provide only to a limited extent,21 enabling us to come to terms with the vulnerability to suffering that is an inevitable consequence of our mortality. And in doing so, they can also connect us with others who, like us, are struggling to find a way through the inevitable suffering of human life. As I claimed above, stories, artistic and dramatic representations, pieces of music – these can all encourage empathy and recognition through their appeal to the imagination. We recognize our selves and our own challenges in these forms of expression, and our relationships are strengthened through the recognition of a common humanity faced with the same obstacles and endurances as us. And this recognition can connect us more deeply with one another. ‘Joy and sorrow meet [in such forms of expression], just as they meet in the day-to-day experiences of being human’, notes Clack (2002, pp. 131–3). Accepting, rather than resisting, the vulnerability that comes with our humanity may lead to a deeper, more profound engagement with life, and with each other, than that which resists such ideas.

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The Passionate Life: Embracing Human Experience Philosophy as a humanistic discipline should seek to contain and make sense of the difficulty and complexity of human life. It should reflect on mortal existence. And it should draw from the arts as forms of expression, explanation and communication both to deepen its reflections on the human condition, and to enable us to confront our existence in all its joy and sorrow, all its ‘riskiness and incompleteness’. It is my contention, in this concluding section, that philosophy should endorse a form of what I have already called ‘the passionate life’: a particularly vivid, expressive and engaged pursuit of the good life. Solomon describes it as follows: The passionate life is sometimes characterized (e.g. by Goethe in Faust and by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche) in terms of frenzy, vaulting ambition, essentially insatiable goals, and impossible affections. It is what Nietzsche in particular referred to as a ‘Dionysian’ temper, a life captured in dynamic rather than static metaphors, notions of ‘energy’, ‘enthusiasm’, ‘charisma’, even mania. The passionate life embraces the values of Romanticism and the image of the suffering but sometimes manic artist. It may well be occasionally weighted down with despair and weltschmertz, but it will probably be buoyed by joy and exuberance as well. I want to make room for such ‘perverse’ conceptions of the good life in contrast to . . . the life of mere contentment and satisfaction. (2007, p. 264; emphasis added)

The passionate life, then, constitutes an embrace of mortal existence in all of its indeterminacy and contingency. It is tied to romantic notions of ‘joy’ or ‘enthusiasm’, but framed ultimately by an all-embracing reflection on one’s life as a whole as rich and fulfilled, encompassing all experience. The passionate life thus necessitates a holistic view of one’s life (as much as this is possible from one’s necessarily limited perspective). For it is such reflection upon one’s life as a whole that completes human value. To be human is to be vulnerable. But it is also to derive great joy from life: from attachments we form, from goals we pursue (and sometimes attain) – none of which would constitute sources of joy were our grasp on them not always exceedingly fragile. As Paul Ricoeur once noted, to live a human life is to negotiate a torturous dialectic, always already torn between the limitations of embodiment and the excesses of the imagination. But that dialectic can also be a source of untold possibilities. And it is precisely these possibilities that lie at the heart passionate life: an embrace of human being as ‘the Joy of the Yes in the sadness of the finite’ (Ricoeur, 1986, p. 140).

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Conclusion I argued above that, much like interpreting a tragedy, interpreting a human life is a necessarily complex, messy affair. And I believe this was what Williams had in mind when he wrote that moral philosophy ‘should be a hazardous business’. For too long, both moral philosophy and philosophy of religion in the Anglophone world have largely been preoccupied with reductive and evasive conceptual analysis, forsaking genuine insight in the name of philosophical accuracy and clarity. They have thus fallen prey to both of the pitfalls cautioned against by Williams, namely, revealing ‘the limitations and inadequacies of one’s own perceptions’ and, especially, ‘misleading people about matters of importance’. Although Williams claimed that moral philosophers had generally avoided the second of these pitfalls – by avoiding writing about anything of importance – it is my contention that both philosophers of religion, and moral philosophers in particular, have been deeply guilty of misleading people. For by avoiding the most important issues, they risk implying that these issues are in fact of little, or no, importance at all. And this is, of course, dangerously misleading. This is especially significant in the case of the philosophy of religion, where debate is all-too-often conducted strictly at the level of abstract argumentation. For religion in particular demands a philosophical approach that is humanistic. Religious belief is far more than assenting to a particular truth-claim; it will not be adopted or buttressed on the basis of knockdown arguments alone. Instead, religious belief is informed and enhanced by very human relationships, commitments, communities and narratives which are often deep and interconnected, and apart from which it appears as empty as it does incoherent. As Cottingham puts it: [There are] rich and complex connections that link religious belief with ethical commitment and individual self-awareness, with . . . the struggle to find meaning in our lives; and only when these connections are revealed . . . can we begin to see fully what is involved in accepting or rejecting a religious view of reality. (2005, p. x)

Thankfully, Cottingham is one of a handful of philosophers of religion (including the likes of Clack and Wynn22) who have recently begun to address these concerns – an indication of the fruitful avenues of exploration available in their field which, one hopes, will continue to attract increasing interest.

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If philosophy’s claims to be a humanistic discipline are to be validated, then it demands to be practiced as one. And this means attending to human existence, to human experience, in all of its incompleteness and indeterminacy, by whatever means necessary (including an engagement with related forms of expression, articulation and communication in the arts). It is an urgent task. And one that both moral and religious philosophy will be all the weaker for evading.23

Notes 1. See Williams’ posthumously published essay, ‘Philosophy as a humanistic discipline’ (Williams, 2006). 2. A selection of titles from a recent edition of the philosophy of religion journal, Religious Studies (45.4, December 2009), is exemplary to this end. They include Timothy D. Miller, ‘On the distinction between creation and conservation: A partial defence of continuous creation’; Jeremy Gwiazda, ‘Richard Swinburne’s argument to the simplicity of God via the infinite’; and Richard Swinburne, ‘How the divine properties fit together: A reply to Gwiazda’. 3. This is not to dismiss abstract thinking in and of itself. Needless to say, philosophical thinking will always presuppose a degree of abstraction. The claim here is rather that abstraction becomes dangerous if it leads to idealized views which are cut off from any kind of foothold in concrete experience. On avoiding idealizations in abstraction, see Onora O’Neill, Bounds of Justice (2000, p. 70–9). 4. Although a wealth of literature is now available in this field, Philippa Foot’s Virtues and Vices (1978) remains a paradigm (and influential) example. For a comprehensive and critical discussion of the development of ‘virtue ethics’, see Nussbaum, 1999. 5. See Williams, 1972, 1985. See also his Problems of the Self (1973) and Utilitarianism: For and Against (with J. J. C. Smart, 1973). 6. Comprehensive philosophical accounts of the emotions include Peter Goldie, The Emotions (2000), Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought (2001) and Robert Solomon, Not Passion’s Slave (2003). For recent philosophical engagements with psychoanalysis, see John Cottingham, Philosophy and the Good Life (1998). 7. Notable examples which will feature in this chapter include Beverley Clack, Sex and Death (2002) and Mark Wynn, Emotional Experience and Religious Understanding (2005), both of which demonstrate an admirable analysis of the human experience of religion that eschews any kind of yearning for transcendence (which, I will argue, is a common feature of much philosophizing that attempts to abstract from everyday concerns). Additional examples of note include John Cottingham, The Spiritual Dimension (2005), which approaches philosophy of religion from the starting point of human spirituality, and the argument for ‘theological humanism’ put forward in David Klemm and William Schweiker, Religion and the Human Future (2008).

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8. Moreover, this vulnerability is not properly addressed if it is projected onto the vulnerable ‘other’; for example, women and non-dominant groups of human subjects. This issue is touched on in Clack, 2002 and, more substantially, in Mukta, 1997. 9. The example is drawn from Nussbaum, 1990, p. 365. 10. The quote in full reads: ‘Love and death. The gods, the immortals, were the inventors of death and corruption; yet with one or two notable exceptions they have lacked the courage to try out the invention on themselves . . . In marking us down for death, the gods gave us an edge over them. Of the two, gods and mortals, it is we who live the more urgently, feel the more intensely. That is why they cannot put us out of their minds, cannot get by without us, ceaselessly watch us and prey on us . . . the sexual ecstasies of mortals, the frisson of death, its contortions, its relaxings . . . They wish they had that inimitable little quiver in their own erotic repertoire, to spice up their couplings with each other. But the price is one they are not prepared to pay. Death, annihilation: what if there is no resurrection, they wonder misgivingly?’ (Coetzee, 2003, p. 189). 11. I use the term ‘someone’, instead of something, since I take grief to be bound up with interpersonal relationships. Granted, people often grieve over the loss of non-human animals with whom they have formed relationships, which might not fall strictly under the term ‘someone’. However, I find the term ‘something’ most directly implies an inanimate entity of some kind. And while people may well lament the loss of a particularly treasured item – a family heirloom, say – I do not believe it is strictly appropriate to conflate this lamentation with what we understand as ‘grief’. 12. Nussbaum, of course, adopts this passage as the basis for her critique of knowledge claims which are grounded in emotional experience. She cautions against deriving any claims to knowledge from emotional experience, rightly noting that the forcefulness of the experience alone does not immunize it from error. While her concern is valid, however, it seems more directed at the veracity of claims to objective knowledge about the world derived from particular emotional experiences. By contrast, we are dealing with what emotional experience might reveal to an individual about his or her subjective feelings. Marcel inferring from the strength of his grief that he loves Albertine is quite different from Barry inferring from the strength of his fear that the Apocalypse is nigh. So Nussbaum’s objections need not concern us here. 13. Although it is important to recognize that there is often a traumatic aspect to grief – a shock that resonates so deeply that it cannot be assimilated into the way we think about something. 14. As Solomon bluntly puts it: ‘Think about your own funeral, and just imagine that no one bothered to come’ (2007, p. 74). 15. Although there is of course a danger here that grief may manifest itself in an unhealthy form of what we might call ‘nostalgia’: an obsession with this previous value to the exclusion of the overcoming of our present disability, and so to the exclusion of future value-forming ability. I thank Daniel Whistler for drawing my attention to this concern. 16. An even stronger argument is put forward by Judith Butler, who claims that grief reveals not only something about the other whose loss I grieve, but also,

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17.

18.

19. 20.

Moral Powers, Fragile Beliefs in the process, reveals something about me; namely, that I am partly constituted by my relation with the other. As she explains: ‘It is not as if an “I” exists independently over here and then simply loses a “you” over there, especially if the attachment to “you” is part of what composes “who” I am. If I lose you, under these conditions, then I not only mourn the loss, but I become inscrutable to myself. Who “am” I, without you? When we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do’ (2004, p. 22). It is important to recognize that the Stoic wariness of emotions, and emotional investment in external factors, is not a matter of cold indifference, but is firmly rooted in the belief that the faculty of ‘moral purpose’ or moral choice is an important source of human equality, shared by all (male and female, slave and free). As Nussbaum explains, ‘[i]ts dignity outshines all circumstantial differences and renders them trivial. Vastly superior in dignity and worth to any other good thing, it suffices all by itself, well used, for a flourishing life’ (2001, p. 357). I realize that in making this claim, I am laying myself open to two charges. First, I might be accused of apathy: of an apolitical, resigned acceptance of our fate. Second, and more strongly, I might be accused of glorifying something which many would argue ought to be eradicated; namely, human suffering. In response to this, I should stress that my insistence on the value of grief is emphatically not elevating suffering or vulnerability as some sort of ideal. On the contrary, I like to think that my largely descriptive approach to vulnerability and grief grounds a praxis that can ultimately constitute an engaged response to, and attempt to overcome, human suffering. A descriptive approach to vulnerability need not amount to a resigned acceptance, even justification of it. On the contrary, if we’re going to do something about it, if we’re going to try to prevent vulnerability always manifesting itself in actual suffering, then we need to begin with an adequate understanding of it. And to understand it, we first need to accept that it exists in the first place – that it is an inescapable aspect of our existence. Once we accept that, we can begin to understand it; and once we understand it, we can begin to attend to it – to do our best to prevent it always leading to suffering. Accepting and understanding seems to me a better basis for praxis than denial. This position is mirrored by no less an engaged voice than Judith Butler, who argues: ‘Mindfulness of this vulnerability can become the basis of claims for non-military political solutions, just as denial of this vulnerability through a fantasy of mastery . . . can fuel the instruments of war. We cannot, however, will away this vulnerability. We must attend to it, even abide by it, as we begin to think about what politics might be implied by staying with the thought of corporeal vulnerability itself, a situation in which we can be vanquished or lose others. Is there something to be learned about the geopolitical distribution of corporeal vulnerability from our own brief and devastating exposure to this condition?’ (2004, p. 29). A detailed engagement with the political dimension of suffering and grief, however, requires another essay (for a notable analysis, see Mukta, 1997). Cf. Wynn, 2005, p. 82. In this respect, one might criticize contemporary Anglophone analytic philosophy of religion for its aspiration to ‘transcend humanity’, given the lack of attention

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it devotes to human experience. This strikes me as a curious phenomenon for a philosophy devoted to religious concerns, given that religion is, of course, a human construct. Indeed, of the ironies of analytic philosophy of religion is the huge gulf that exists between the God of the philosophers over which so much ink is split, and the God of faith which holds a central role in the lives of millions of religious people (including, presumably, many analytic philosophers of religion). And given that the God of faith is inseparable from human experience, and human emotional reactions, it is plausible that by engaging with the forms of artistic expression discussed here, philosophers of religion might begin to bridge the gulf that currently exists between the central topics of their research and the actual lived experience of religion. 21. This is not to say that philosophy’s role in this capacity is so limited as to be useless. A philosophy that ‘thinks mortal thoughts’ has often been regarded as a powerful therapeutic device, as demonstrated, for example, by Pierre Hadot’s exploration (1995) of ‘spiritual exercises’ in Hellenistic philosophy. But these alternative forms of expression, explanation and communication offer a powerful alternative that can only be of benefit to philosophy. Put another way, I am not suggesting that we should dispense with philosophy in favour of these alternatives. It is rather that philosophy is better off with them than without them. 22. In addition to their aforementioned works (see note 7 above), see Clack and Wynn’s chapters in this volume. For a broader commentary on contemporary philosophy of religion, see the introduction to this volume. 23. My thanks to Pamela Sue Anderson, Joseph Carlisle, Beverley Clack and Daniel Whistler for comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.

Bibliography Annas, J. (1993), The Morality of Happiness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Butler, J. (2004), Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso. Camus, A. (1989), The Stranger, trans. M. Ward. London: Vintage. Clack, B. (2002), Sex and Death: A Reappraisal of Human Mortality. Cambridge: Polity Press. Coetzee, J. M. (2003), Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons. London: Vintage. Cottingham, J. (1998), Philosophy and the Good Life: Reason and the Passions in Greek, Cartesian and Psychoanalytic Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cottingham, J. (2005), The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy, and Human Value. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Foot, P. (1978), Virtues and Vices. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goldie, P. (2000), The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gwiazda, J. (2009), ‘Richard Swinburne’s argument to the simplicity of God via the infinite’. Religious Studies, 45.4, 487–93. Hadot, P. (1995), Philosophy as a Way of Life, trans. A. I. Davidson. Oxford: Blackwell.

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Halliwell, S. (2002), The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems. Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press. Klemm, D. E. and W. Schweiker (2008), Religion and the Human Future: An Essay in Theological Humanism. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Miller, T. D. (2009), ‘On the distinction between creation and conservation: A partial defence of continuous creation’. Religious Studies, 45.4, 471–85. Mukta, P. (1997), ‘Lament and power: The subversion and appropriation of grief’. Studies in History, 13.2, n.s, 209–46. Nerlich, G. (1989), Values and Valuing: Speculations on the Ethical Lives of Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (1986), The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (1990), Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (1999), ‘Virtue ethics: a misleading category?’. Journal of Ethics, 3, 163–201. Nussbaum, M. C. (2001), Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Neill, O. (2000), Bounds of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Proust, M. (1934), Remembrance of Things Past, 2 volumes, trans. C. K. Scott Moncreiff. New York: Random House. Ricoeur, P. (1986), Fallible Man, trans. C. A. Kelbley. New York: Fordham University Press. Solomon, R. C. (2002), Spirituality for the Skeptic: The Thoughtful Love of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Solomon, R. C. (2003), Not Passion’s Slave: Emotions and Choice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Solomon, R. C. (2007), True to Our Feelings: What Our Emotions are Really Telling Us. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Swinburne, R. (2009), ‘How the divine properties fit together: A reply to Gwiazda’. Religious Studies, 45.4, 495–98. Williams, B. (1972), Morality: An Introduction to Ethics. New York: Harper and Row. Williams, B. (1973), Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, B. (1985), Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. London: Fontana. Williams, B. (2006), Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline. Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press. Williams, B. and J. J. C. Smart (1973), Utilitarianism: For and Against. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wynn, M. R. (2005), Emotional Experience and Religious Understanding: Integrating Perception, Conception and Feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 6

A Ricoeurian Hymn to Humanity: ‘You Are Better Than Your Actions’1 Michele Kueter Petersen

Let me begin my essay by mentioning an aesthetic action – an imaginative, enigmatic portrayal of movement – that of the dance entitled Caught. Conceived and choreographed by David Parsons in 1983 (and performed by the David Parsons Dance Company on the Hancher Stage at the University of Iowa during the Dance Gala several years later), it is a haunting exploration of sensuality and light. It probes, too, the relationship between technology and movement. The dance as performed by Parsons is one of apparent suspension in mid-air. The artistic lighting for the dance simulates that of a flash bulb on a camera, lighting up every few seconds. The alternations between light and darkness capture him in various positions high in the air against a darkened background. At one point in the dance, both of his legs are stretched out so wide that he is entirely parallel to the stage. All the audience sees is Parsons moving through the air. As the light flashes, he continues to move across the stage from upstage to downstage. Visually, it is as if his being is suspended and moving in light and thin air. He appears only in the moments of illumination. In moments of darkness, he stands on stage, hidden from view. His act of dancing is entirely subsumed under the oscillating appearances of light and darkness. The dance is transformed into temporal moments of light and darkness. Everything is in the timing. Consequently, we see both dance and Parsons in a new light. The experience of Caught transforms us as viewers by allowing us to transcend ourselves and to return to ourselves, changed in the recognition that being is a gift, which is ours to bestow alike on others. In this essay, however, I want to speak not about dance, but about contemplative silence. The likeness between them, which is necessary for my argument, is the centrality of timing in the practice of contemplative silence, and the consciousness of time in the subsequent act of interpretation. Hermeneutics, I propose, has a goal that is illustrated both in my reference to the dance and in contemplative silence. In understanding contemplative silence, there is a temporal transformation of our being that is ethical and spiritual at its core. Through interpretation we may be enabled to receive the word of the other, to carry the other, insofar as we

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remain mindful of the other. We are moved in the direction of aesthetic justice, insofar as we recognize the claim the other makes on us in the medium of poetic language. In so doing, we experience a renewed relationship with language, as reflexive thinking is transformed (Klemm, 1983, p. 103).2 My thesis is that a hermeneutics of contemplative silence (understood as a practice) has an intentionality of its own, namely, illuminated moments of self-recognition, which transform reflexive consciousness in the course of time. The words of the philosopher, Edith Stein, in her work, Finite and Eternal Being, help illustrate my point: We have now learned to understand this personal life in its temporality, i.e. as a nondimensional actuality continually illuminated by flashes of light. But this temporal existence is not pure actuality: In my nondimensional present there is simultaneously actual and potential being. I am not in the same manner and degree everything that I presently am. (2002, p. 41)

Stein’s imagery of intellectual light illuminates in and for our time creative possibilities for articulating a trans-critical consciousness with the integrity of life as its measure and goal (Klemm and Schweiker, 2008). Trans-critical consciousness takes place within what Ricoeur calls the ‘conflict of interpretations’ (1974, pp. 3–24). Trans-critical consciousness is aware of the originality in each ‘now’ point of internal time-consciousness; it is also aware of an array of critically differentiated, dialectical identities, which reflect our relational realities in the ‘present’ moment of internal time-consciousness as well. Let me explain. We make meaning by recalling our lived experiences in the past, so that they can interpret and inform the living experience of the present, for the sake of imagining new possibilities for the future. Trans-critical consciousness is the critical reflection on the temporal ‘arc’ of interpretation in its entirety and wholeness (Ricoeur, 1976, pp. 92–3). It illuminates selected moments of life experience, which have already been critically mediated into consciousness, and critically mediates them into new contexts and situations of thinking. By ‘critically differentiated identities,’ I refer to these selected moments of experience, which are given to or chosen by consciousness to enter into a new dance of interpretation. Like the illuminated moments of the dance by Parsons, as mentioned above, critically differentiated identities are lifted out of the dark reservoir of memory to become significant elements in the practice of contemplative silence. These critically differentiated identities reflect our relational realities, insofar as they are given or chosen for the sake of our relations to others. The exercise of trans-critical consciousness in hermeneutics also illuminates the depth of interpretation by revealing the claims that these relational realities

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ultimately make on our existence. Trans-critical consciousness, in bringing forth originality out of familiarity, in this sense grounds itself on a depth principle that emerges through the textual encounter and in critical thinking (Klemm, 1987, pp. 292–4).3 The depth principle is that language, in its depth, carries with it the ethical claim made on us as interpreters by others in our lives. Emergence of this depth principle is one criterion by which we become aware, in turn, of our participation in deeper reality. I will focus these core ideas by a brief study of contemplative silence.

A Hermeneutics of Contemplative Silence In this essay, I assert that contemplative silence manifests a mode of being in which we have an awareness of the awareness of the awareness of being with being whereby we can constitute and create a shared world of meaning(s) through poetically presencing our being as being with others. Contemplative silence manifests a mode of being, one which creates the conditions of the possibility for what I call integral thinking, which is the hermeneutical expression of trans-critical consciousness. Integral thinking includes an experience and understanding of the proper ordering of our relational realities. My claim is that integral thinking can and should accompany contemplative silence in order to appropriate the meaning of a silence embodied in the here and now, through the hermeneutical endeavour. Integral thinking elicits movement in thinking, and involves the ongoing exercise of rethinking our relational realities in and for the world. The continuous movement of rethinking our relational realities, including our relation to the idea of God, is itself integral to ethical action, insofar as we are thereby open to new motivations and intentions for acting in relation to others. In appropriating contemplative silence, we can recreate authentic human dwelling in and through our living (Irigaray, 2008, 2002). Integral thinking is so named because it unites oppositions without annihilating them. In it, polarities (such as good and evil) are held in creative tension. In integral thinking, we withhold judgement, allowing both sides of a dialectical opposition to remain open. Mediating polarities in this way creates space for both the self as other and the other person to appear in his or her own individuality. Contemplative silence and integral thinking can both be brought to discourse and action to express and reveal the depth of language wherefrom we hear the claim of the other on us. In raising the depth of language to conscious, intentional awareness, there is a concomitant awareness of the depth of reality and the reality of depth.

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Through this depth, we appropriate the surrounding silence by breathing, listening, hearing, feeling, speaking and responding to the silence. This appropriation is an embodied deepening of silence as well as of the creative word. Through it, we can deepen our self-presence. In the act of selfconsciously appropriating silence, the silence becomes communicative. Its voice is embodied as deeply as the human heart can feel. Integral thinking also can include theological thinking in that we can choose to think the claim that the idea of God makes on us, and thus be open to an infinite reference in the openness of our thinking. I consider contemplative silence to be a practice of trans-critical consciousness as it articulates itself reflexively in integral thinking. It is a bodily practice; indeed, it completely suffuses the body. It might seem odd for me to be reflecting on contemplative silence in an essay that enjoins the complex activities of hermeneutics. What I am proposing, however, is precisely a rehabilitation within the context of modern hermeneutical philosophy of the ancient religious practice of contemplative silence (Shannon in Downey, 1993). I want to recover the meditational space of this ancient practice as itself integral to hermeneutics. The activities of meditation and contemplation are themselves interpretations of what it means to be human. Interpretation, as a primary expression or existential structure of human being, is itself essentially a meditation on meanings. In the temporal arc of interpretation, we select some meanings for understanding – I call them critically differentiated identities – and we contemplate what they have to say to us, what claim they make on us, in new contexts of relational realities. Hermeneutics is a mansion with many rooms. We can distinguish different levels of consciousness in interpretation. They all apply to contemplative silence as well. I suggest thinking of hermeneutical activity as contemplative silence, and thinking of contemplative silence as hermeneutics, for the sake of deepening both practices. The structure of contemplative silence is comprised of four contextual levels of awareness, each of which are distinct and yet part of a single structure: (1) awareness of being, (2) awareness of being with being, (3) awareness of the awareness of being with being, and (4) awareness of the awareness of the awareness of being with being. The first level is our immediate, unreflected awareness of being, defined as the activity in thinking and feeling that connects a universal with a particular, a concept with a manifold of sense perceptions (or with other concepts) (Scharlemann, 1989, pp. 18–19). The second level is our immediate, unreflected awareness of our own being with being, that is, our self-awareness. In being aware of being with being, we are aware of our own ‘I’ as the origin of


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being, the finite source of the connections that make up the meaning of the world. The third level is our reflected awareness of our immediate awareness of being with being. At this level of critical reflection, we are aware both of our own thinking activity as the source of being, and of the world of being, in which ‘I’ am embodied. At this level, critical thinking turns to the reciprocal activities of thinking awareness (the subjective pole of a relation) and the presentation of the world to the mind and senses (the objective pole of a relation). The fourth level is reflexive self-awareness that is concomitantly a theological awareness. This level is our fully reflexive, trans-critical awareness of the temporal arc of interpretation. At this level, we become aware of the arc as a changing and regrouping whole made up of critically differentiated identities, summoned by and appearing to consciousness, for the sake of interpreting our relational realities. The mode of being disclosed by contemplative silence involves a letting be or Gelassenheit, as Heidegger has developed it (1966, pp. 54–6). Trans-critical consciousness, which is effective at the fourth level of contemplative silence, sees its own mode of being as a manifestation of being itself, because it sees its own activity of thinking about being as an appearance of its own being – the being of thinking (consciousness). To elucidate this point, following Descartes, when ‘I’ think, ‘I’ am. My being is one of thinking. The being of thinking is the connecting activity between universals and particulars. When I think, that is what is happening – I am connecting universals and particulars. Anything that is in the world is so as it is thought. The truth of thinking lies in making correct connections between universals and particulars – namely, ones that correspond to the intrinsic connections that empirically given things have to concepts. The statement, ‘This chair is hard,’ makes a connection in thought between a concrete particular (‘this chair’) and a universal (‘hardness’). The sentence is true when it corresponds to what we can ascertain when we look and see whether what is said is so. Because anything that is has its being in its intrinsic connection as a particular to a universal, and the being of thinking is to make these connections in language, the being of thinking is a manifestation of being itself.4 When this manifestation of being is also seen and comprehended as a symbol that is given to us, trans-critical consciousness may call it a symbol of God. For example, take the case of the manifestation of being itself in and through the thinking activity, striking us as a universal phenomenon of illumination – the event in which things emerge from the darkness of unintelligibility and appear in the light of intelligibility as what they really are. If the phenomenon of light takes on symbolic meaning in that way, then we have reinstated the symbol of light as a manifestation of being

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itself (O’Dea in Downey, 1993). Light can, in this way, become for us a symbol of God. In other words, consciousness at the fourth level has two forms: the first form is an active one, in which we grasp the being of thinking as a manifestation of the mode of being itself; the second form is a responsive one, in which we can respond to this mode of being as something actual in the world – as a symbol of God. Contemplative silence is capable of unifying and distinguishing the manifestation of being itself and the symbol of God. The criteria for doing so are: (1) The manifestation of being itself and the symbol of God both intend ultimacy – that than which none greater can be conceived; (2) a symbol of God is distinct from the manifestation of being itself, however, in that it takes the activity of thinking as a concrete particular object in the world to which the viewer responds. At this point, I want to say a few words about the moment of recognition and its significance in light of transformation. At this fourth level of awareness, reflexivity is deployed as a purely descriptive term, as a necessary ingredient of integral thinking. The real events, in which both one’s consciousness and one’s being are appropriated reflexively, happen to us at a bodily level. Recognition is a crucial feature within the real event of transformation, and recognition initially takes place at a bodily level. Recognition, however, also occurs at the level of reflexive awareness, where the event of bodily recognition is conceptually appropriated. While we become reflexively aware, it is recognition that is the conceptual work that occurs. I will develop the notion of recognition more fully in relation to contemplative awareness. The word contemplative as employed within this study refers to the enacting of silence as we become attuned and attentive to reality. The practice of contemplative silence is a passive action insofar as we commit time to acquiesce to reality. This acquiescence entails accepting ourselves and our relational realities as they currently are. We let go of any thoughts of attempting to dominate or compete with others. We accept ourselves for who we are in the present moment. We also exercise detachment in the practice by distancing ourselves from any previously held intentions, motivations, desires and goals. We empty our minds of any racing and judgemental thoughts that might impinge upon our capacity simply to be. It is a thoughtful practice in the sense that we do not wrestle with the intruding thoughts that disrupt our orientation. Rather, we acknowledge the thoughts and release them. There can be an intensity to the practice insofar as we experience a heightened sense of awareness. The practice of contemplative silence can expand our awareness and be unitive in that we can reach new understandings of the depth of our connection to all of


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reality. One way to think universally of contemplative silence is in terms of an intentional, interpretive, theoretical practice in presencing our being in being-with the other. This way of thinking about the practice of contemplative silence is one that both acknowledges and affirms a close connection between contemplation and action. Along with recognizing the sacredness of the human mind, and the raising to conscious awareness the depth level of language, comes the importance of choosing what and how we think, and how we are attuned and attune ourselves in our thinking. We sometimes can experience joyous and expansive moments that are effervescent and extravagant, if fleeting – those exquisite moments of truth and beauty, of love and light so original, glorious and dazzling. But those moments are brought into sharp relief by the experiences of darkness and of death, of grief and of loss, and which through suffering can bring constriction in our thinking as we do the work of mourning. We live our fragility, temporality and finitude at the personal level as part of our human existence. What we choose to think, or not to think, of these discrete experiences within the whole of lived experience is of enormous import in terms of our capacity to be present to ourselves and to each other. It is of great significance how we choose to exist and live together with each other, and with ourselves in our inmost selves, and as participants in multiple and myriad communities of discourse. What we choose to communicate and how we choose to communicate are expressions of what we value. How we relate to words and meanings and stories of creation, for example, is the stuff of our lives together. Poetically presencing our being in being-with others entails an awareness of the presence of future relational possibilities, as well as the recognition of mystery and the incapacity to finally access each other given the inviolability and dignity of our personhood. Contemplative awareness takes place through our breathing, thinking, acting and feeling. It pulls these strands together and constitutes an integral attentiveness. Our present awareness is attuned in such a way that through attentive listening through the embodied thinking of silence, we can extend hospitality to and welcome the word of the (textual) other in openness and vulnerability. This study maintains that as persons we are surrounded by silence both within and without. Silence can be thought of as a voiced stillness of existence. Silence in its givenness, reception and appropriation is, I assert, part of our human nature. We participate in silence in all of our relationships to living nature. As living and rational beings, we are aware that we receive silence – that silence is part of our awareness. Silence knows no bounds; it reaches from the prison cells of deep despair to hope in stem cell research, and trust in the communicative exchange that is the cell

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phone. Silence is at once universal and particular, it is ours to share together and to personalize in relationship. Silence is given to individuals, appropriated in personal terms, and is reflective of our relational realities. Space is created in time, as we choose how and what to carry forward in our thinking. We are aware of living the moments of meaning-creating and context-making activities. We become perceptually aware that we are interpreting reality as we live reality; we can experience eternity in time, in the depth of movement that is the opening generated and personally appropriated, through the awareness of new contexts of meaning (Ricoeur, 2005, pp. 117–26). There is at once a freshness of and a familiarity with the reality that accompanies contemplative awareness. In the interpretive process, we create not just new meanings, but also new contexts of meaning in our expressions of lived reality. The practice of contemplative silence can empower us increasingly to respond to pressing human needs – and to life itself. In contemplative awareness, our capacities are called forth in a constructive way to rethink our relational realities, as we foster movement between different contexts. The work of Paul Ricoeur is exemplary for the study of contemplative awareness, as he creates, carries, shifts, expands, explodes and reconfigures context in his mediation of philosophy and life. His philosophical anthropology embraces both critique and conviction. Silence, for purposes of this study, has the following definition: in linguistic terms, silence can be understood as a medium for the transmission of meaning in the absence and/or presence of language and sound. With respect to thinking, experiencing and understanding the being of our relational realities, silence can therefore be understood in terms of an emptiness and/or a fullness. Silence has many modes of appearing. Silence can mean to keep quiet or still, to be at rest or to refrain from activity. Silence can mean the absence of noise or clamour. But silence also can communicate what is unspoken. It can mean the presence of inaudible voice, insofar as silence expresses or manifests meaning. In fact, sometimes there can be no more resounding silence than a pregnant pause or break, in the movement of spoken words, to allow for what is unsaid to register and develop. The meaningfulness of silence in written speech is captured in the phrase ‘reading between the lines’. Words may come to presence as words, or they may remain unarticulated, and nonetheless have their meanings communicated as such. We make communicative claims on one another. The manifestation of contemplative silence expresses and reveals the depth of language through our joint meaning-making activity as we interpret our time together. We not only create and share meaning but we carry meaning as well. As we


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become more fully present to each other, we become more fully present to ourselves, and vice versa in this exchange. Saints, mystics, and all holy women and men can be understood as imaginative and creative beings whose radiating appearance, manifestation and shining forth are communicative in pointing beyond themselves to other persons whose lives, in turn, are mirrored and carried in their own. It is important to keep in mind an insight from phenomenology and the work of Edmund Husserl. He discusses the way in which we come to understand ourselves as separate and distinct individuals, as persons in relationship with others. According to Husserl, we cannot actualize for ourselves the ‘hyletic’ sense data of what already has been appropriated by another person in our own primordial, spatio-temporal position (1999, p. 149). Husserl makes a distinction: the human person has both a natural physical body with sensory capacities, centred in the natural, passive ‘I’, as well as a living, embodied personal manner of being, centred in the transcendental ‘I’ that actively constitutes experience by appropriating the sense of a conscious, autonomous, countervailing agent whose actions and discourse are unpredictable (ibid., pp. 146–59, 354; Ricoeur, 2005, p. 59; Ricoeur, 1992, p. 335). The natural, passive ‘I’ receives the hyletic data signifying another mind with a distinct will and disposition. This phenomenological evidence is synthesized by the active, transcendental ‘I’ into the intentional object who is another person with a mind-body composite. Ricoeur says that ‘the lived experience of the other always remains inaccessible to me’ (2005, p. 157). That is, we each occupy a unique, relational and situational standpoint in our living world as we engage both in the practice of contemplative awareness and in hermeneutical activity. To illustrate this point, imagine that while practicing contemplative awareness we remember a recent altercation we had with a friend that continues to weigh heavily on our minds. In a moment of frustration and impatience, our friend made a rash comment and said something hurtful. We experience a moment of illumination. In remembering and rethinking the lived experience, we recognize that immediately prior to that rash comment, we made a statement that could have been taken the wrong way. In truth, if it was interpreted in the way that has occurred to us just now, it is a wonder that our friend remains our friend. In this moment, we recognize the vulnerability of our friend, but in acknowledging the vulnerability of the other, we also experience a moment of self-recognition in experiencing our own vulnerability in relationship as well. We understand at a new level how dependent we are on each other. We have made a connection between our insensitivity and the other by thinking the concept of fault: ‘We were insensitive, and we are to blame.’ Our friendship is

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strained – there is an awkwardness in our relationship now. We may feel unworthy. In the practice of contemplative awareness, we can practice an active forgetfulness of this past action. We become aware that we can extend the benefit of the doubt to the other, and speak words of forgiveness to clear the space between us. We also can recall all of the wonderful times we have spent together, and the possibilities we have in the future, which can serve as an impetus to speak words of forgiveness. There is a transformational quality of appropriating this moment of recognition in which we go beyond self-recognition and recognition of the other by opening up the space of hermeneutical activity for transformation. This space is the dimension of a new relationship that we have with ourselves and the other. I want to follow the above example by concentrating on the contemplation of evil in silence. I will do so by first engaging in a discussion of Ricoeur’s thought. I will focus, in particular, on his philosophical anthropology with its emphasis on capability, which is integral to understanding the capacity we have for recognition, and the recognition involved in forgiveness of fault. Second, I will discuss the concept of recognition. To recognize that ‘we are better than our actions,’ which is taken from the epilogue of Ricoeur’s Memory, History, Forgetting (2004, p. 493), is to confront and contend with evil and disparaging negativity in ourselves and in our own thinking. Reflexive consciousness is transformed through challenging evil and derogation by responding to it through acknowledging and accepting it, as well as releasing it. This transformation requires that we practice an active passivity in order to allow the deeper self to manifest itself in and through the ego. Recognition is critically important. We have the capacity for recognition at the fourth level of awareness, and generating this capacity is what it means to be spiritual and a human being. The practice of contemplative silence produces truth for those with eyes to see. As Ricoeur says, ‘The question of truth is no longer the question of method; it is the question of the manifestation of being for a being whose existence consists in understanding being’ (1974, p. 10). To assert that ‘you are better than your actions’ in the light of a hermeneutics of contemplative silence is to assert that we are capable of acting more and more mindfully. The third task will be to identify two polarities in Ricoeur’s work in order to elicit movement in thinking, and thereby mediate his thought in such a way that it augments his concern for duration in human action, and reveals hermeneutically the priority he accords to the continuation of action. Finally, I will enter into dialogue with Ricoeur as I discuss the practice of contemplative silence as seen, or recognized, as a creative response to evil and derogation. Contemplative silence manifests a mode of being that contributes depth to our committed interactions and


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exchanges in our world. I want to acknowledge that silence itself shrouds a variety of forms of human abuse; however, our relationships can point to the possibility of living deeper by intentionally appropriating silence in a hermeneutical context. This study rests on the premise that as persons we can make meaning out of our living experience. We have the capability at once to participate in, and with a greater degree of awareness, create shared reality, which lies at the heart of meaning and the mystery of what it is to be human. Consideration of what it is to have a reality involves a discussion of Ricoeur’s philosophical anthropology.

The Thought of Paul Ricoeur The notion of human capability is, for Ricoeur, ‘the cornerstone of philosophical anthropology’ (2002, p. 280). The capacity to act is his central concept, as in the modal verb ‘I can’. Ricoeur’s hermeneutic of the self is inclusive of the capacities of the ‘I can’ (2005, p. 151). He says that the benefit of beginning with this verb is that we can connect it to a multitude of verbs that entail a type of ‘actualization, a variety of potentialities or capabilities’ (ibid.). In taking a retrospective view of his masterful book Oneself as Another, he says that we can read this work as employing the ‘I can’ in four ways: I can speak, I can do things, I can tell a story, and I can be imputed (ibid.). According to Ricoeur’s philosophical anthropology, the human person is thought ‘through composition’ in the dialectic between ‘original affirmation’ and ‘existential difference’ (1986, p. 140). This ‘mixture’ which increasingly appears as a ‘fault’ affirms as well as negates (ibid.). We are, for Ricoeur, ‘the Joy of Yes in the sadness of the finite’ (ibid.). This sadness is regarded as ‘a primitive affection’ or ‘sufferance’ that focuses on the negative through a constricting of consciousness (ibid.). This joy is the exhilarating, felt knowledge and exuberance of simply being aware that we are alive, of being in love with life, which results in an expansiveness of consciousness. Feeling discloses the fissure, the split that we are as ‘primordial conflict’. We are, Ricoeur says, ‘this non-coincidence of self to self’ (ibid., p. 141). The combination of joy and sadness reveals a disproportion of the finite and infinite which makes evil possible. We appear as a synthesis – fragile mediators of reality who are forgetful of our origins. As human beings we are ‘mediating mediations’ as the finite ‘I’ mediates between the finite pole of appearances and the infinite pole of meaning at three levels – thinking, willing and feeling (ibid., pp. 140–1).5 We traverse the enigma of evil in the leap from fallibility to fault, from the possibility of evil to its

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actuality. Imaginatively, we can understand evil insofar as we understand good; goodness is even more primordial than badness. Acknowledging his debt to Kant’s work Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Ricoeur unequivocally affirms goodness as originary, a constitutive part of the ontological structure of the human person (2002, p. 284). That we are fallible and capable of failing is due to our weakness – the limitation from which our capacity for evil derives; this is so only in positing it (1986, p. 146). In discussing the good life in Oneself as Another, Ricoeur explains that we should act in conformity ‘with the maxim by which [we] . . . can wish at the same time that what ought not to be, namely evil, will indeed not exist’ (1992, p. 218). He refers to the experience of suffering as ‘evil,’ ‘a problem’ and ‘irreducible’ (2007, p. 18).6 He is haunted by suffering in his thought, and addresses, too, the concern with duration in human action (2002, pp. 289–90).7 Ricoeur says that we can engage in an ongoing effort to understand freedom and evil, each in terms of the other (1986, p. xivi). It is through the exercise of our freedom that evil is made manifest. Yet the locus of the manifestation of evil becomes clear to us only if we recognize it as such (ibid.). To recognize it is to intentionally decide to attempt to understand evil in light of freedom – it is our conscious decision to contend with evil (ibid., pp. xivi– xivii). The decision is this announcement of a freedom, an avowal of evil that acknowledges responsibility to see that it is not perpetrated (ibid., p. xivii). Awareness of freedom and the ethical view of the world come into being concomitantly. The ‘grandeur’ of the ethical vision consists in our continually striving to comprehend evil and freedom by each other – to move as far as we possibly can in this direction (ibid.). Freedom, in undertaking responsibility for evil, arrives at self-understanding laden with meaning (ibid.). The avowal of evil is the condition of conscious awareness of our finite, limited freedom (ibid., p. xlix). Furthermore, this avowal is significant in that it holds the past and the future together in the fragile bond of self, the acts that the self engages in ‘of non-being and pure action in the very core of freedom’: This is what the ethical vision entails for Ricoeur (ibid.). Ricoeur places hope in ‘a re-creation of language,’ and in the second naiveté as a critically interpreted immediacy (1967, p. 349). The disclosure of a new mode of being gives the interpreter a new way of understanding herself (1976, p. 94). He says that daily life can be viewed in a hermeneutical way whereby introspection can be seen to be ‘an interpersonal practice’ (Changeux and Ricoeur, 2000, p. 68). The dialogue of the soul with itself, this interpersonal practice, includes the intrapersonal practice involving ‘one’s heart of hearts – literally a “forum” in which one speaks to oneself’ (ibid., p. 69). This deep interiority or ‘heart of hearts’ has its


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own particular standing that eludes scientific knowledge (ibid.). In the interactions between self and self as other on the one hand, and between self and other on the other hand, interiority is cultivated. I want to add here that this interiority paradoxically can have the affect of drawing us out of ourselves into living more public lives; we see this affect not only among many mystics and saints, but among ordinary persons who live with a great degree of intentionality.

Recognition The capacity to undergo a transformation of reflexive consciousness, and the concomitant transformation of one’s being, has to do with the moment of self-recognition. The practice of contemplative silence may choose to focus on moments of recognition. First, I will briefly adumbrate several different forms of recognition, which provide a basic structure for thinking about recognition. I want to specify that as I do so, I will use Kantian language. Second, I will explain the conceptual work of the moment of recognition, and how self-recognition works. The first form of recognition is the apprehension of the sensory manifold in intuition. Sensation is the domain of immediacy which is not yet mediated by thought. Here we are mediating a manifold of sense impressions into a singular intuition or perception of an object. The second form of recognition is the recognition of a concept in intuition, or the concept in perception. Kant claims that knowing is a synthesis of two elements: on the one hand, there is intuition, a synthesized perception; on the other hand, we have concepts. Knowledge is a justified synthesis between a concept and an intuition. Consider this example: I see something growing in my garden, and I say, ‘This is a flower’. ‘This’ denotes the sense perception, the intuition, and ‘a flower’ is a concept. ‘Is’ marks the synthesis that produces objectivity. The synthesis is performed by the transcendental imagination. With it, I recognize what I see in my garden as a flower. When I think ‘this is a flower’, I subsume the sense perception under the concept; I unite the percept and concept in thought. The thought, as expressed in language, is either true or false. The truth or falsehood of the sentence must be determined by an independent act of verification. Recognition of the other person over time is the third form of recognition (Ricoeur, 2005, pp. 66–7). Let us consider this example: We go to meet a friend at the airport whom we have not seen in a few years. As he steps off the airplane, we can say ‘There he is! I recognize him!’ We may remark to our friend, ‘You look the same! You haven’t changed!’ Ricoeur develops

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this understanding of recognition in the notions of idem-identity and ipse-identity (1992). He writes of our idem-identity or sameness, which has to do with our temporality in terms of permanence over time, in that we have physical bodies (2005, p. 101). We also have an ipse-identity, which has to do with temporality in terms of a constant, in that we possess character. Ipse has to do with a changing identity as the self is situated ‘with its historical condition’ (ibid.). Change happens, Ricoeur explains, although in a certain regard we have not changed (1992, p. 117). Let us consider once more the example of meeting our friend at the airport. This time, however, it has been 25 years since we last met. Our friend has undergone much life experience, and his appearance has changed, to be sure, with the greying of hair and the deep lines in the face; however, there are the familiar gestures and expressions, the facial features and definite personality traits that enable us to recognize this person once more as our dear friend. Recognition of the self in the other is the fourth form of recognition. This kind of recognition has to do with mutual dependence. It is recognizing the sameness and difference in the relationship between the self and other. A good example of this form of recognition is the master/slave relationship in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. To begin with, the master and slave are conceived as utterly different (2009, pp. 86–92). They are, however, both dependent on each other: without the slave, the master cannot be the master, and without the master, the slave cannot be a slave. Hegel explains that both the master and slave discover that they serve a mediating role for each other, ‘through which each mediates and unites itself with itself; and each is to itself and to the other an immediate selfexisting reality, which, at the same time, exists thus for itself only through this mediation’ (ibid., pp. 87–8). Consciousness discovers its own selfexistence in the other’s self-existence, and Hegel says, ‘They recognize themselves as mutually recognizing one another’ (ibid.). The fifth form of recognition is the recognition of the otherness of the other. This recognition is different from that of seeing the self in the other, because it involves recognition of the transcendence of the other, following Levinas. The ‘face of the other’ summons us, elicits our response, and places a demand on us to extend hospitality in welcoming the other; the self as other is infinitely transcendent (1969, pp. 75, 77, 194). We are absolutely convicted by the face of the other (ibid., p. 75). The face is directly apprehended such that the other demands recognition in its otherness (ibid.). It enjoins, arouses and provokes responsibility for evil deeds. In recognition, there is the abjectness of the seeing of ourselves, and our own miserable deeds and fault in the light of the other. We maintain self and freedom through encounter of the face of the other (ibid., pp. 73–4).


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The sixth and final form of recognition is theological recognition, or recognition of the divine in the non-divine. Theological recognition can be recognition of the divine in the human, or of the human in the divine. In the final chapter of Memory, History, Forgetting, Ricoeur discusses forgiveness. He claims that the person is the source of the way in which the admittance of wrong-doing emerges from what is the impenetrable profundity of the self (2004, p. 467). Forgiveness signifies seeing the divine in the non-divine, or as Scharlemann says, ‘the being of God when God is not being God’ (1989, p. 53). Forgiveness signifies that there is an infinite, mysterious depth to our humanity, and that we cannot definitively understand ourselves or others. Forgiveness signifies a rich and vast reality and points the way to that reality by teaching us to be open to its possibility. We can rethink this mystery in our felt knowledge of the experience of forgiveness, and assign theological meaning to it. In the moment of self-recognition, the two movements, recognition of the self and other, and recognition of the other as other, are important. In the example of friendship previously cited, recognition of the self and other occurred in the moment in which we recognized our own vulnerability as well as the vulnerability of our friend. Recognition of the other as other occurred when we did not expect words from the other. The other was remembered in freedom. The transformational quality of the moment of recognition occurred in extending the benefit of the doubt, and for the sake of the sheer joy of friendship, we spoke words of forgiveness. Integral thinking is the hermeneutical expression of trans-critical consciousness as we rethink our relational realities in the light of our experience. In our consciousness of time, we can bring selected moments of interpretation to bear within this hermeneutical activity. This space can become the origin of the new relationship into which both we and other are brought. A new relationship (relational reality) commences in self-recognition so that there is a transcendent possibility embedded in recognition. At the very least, the hope of community and being together is possible or, awareness of our being in being-with others. Minimally, there is the transformation towards we (as we consider new motivations and intentions for acting, in relationship with others) and towards the awareness of the wholeness of being and possibility of new being. There is a disclosure of a new possibility for the illuminating process. This process is not only the opening of intelligibility, but also is the appearance of something brought about in the world, and that appearance is a symbol of God. This is theological recognition. Moments of self-recognition open us to the possibility of transcendence in our relational realities and open up new and fresh ways of dwelling in the world.

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Mediating Evil in Ricoeur’s Thought Ricoeur continually mediates polarities in his thinking, and I want to focus initially on two of them. In doing so, I hope to accentuate the overriding concern in his thought with the continuation of action. In the epilogue to Memory, History, Forgetting entitled ‘Difficult Forgiveness,’ he discusses the polarity of the ‘depth of fault’ and the ‘height of forgiveness’ (2004, p. 457). Fault refers here to the recognition of my fault. He says that we are paralyzed in our capacity to act due to the ‘enigma of a fault’, and yet the lifting of this very incapacity is the ‘enigma of forgiveness’ (ibid., p. 456). Forgiveness, while difficult, is not impossible, according to Ricoeur (ibid., p. 457). The possibility of forgiveness stands within the common, if elusive, horizon of memory, history and forgetting (ibid.). In formulating this polarity between avowal and hymn, that is, between fault and forgiveness, he takes the tension between them close to the point of rupture. How impossible forgiveness is when someone has carried out an unpardonable act, and yet, it is the guilty who are most especially due our consideration! (ibid., p. 458). To be sure, paralysis and inertia can plague us and prevent us from taking action which would lead to re-establishing and healing relations. Suffering can also be an impediment to forgiveness. In Oneself as Another, Ricoeur characterizes suffering not only in terms of physical and mental pain, but also as a ‘reduction’ or ‘destruction,’ of the diminished ‘capacity for acting, of being-able-to-act,’ which in experience, he says, is ‘a violation of selfintegrity’ (1992, p. 190). When suffering harbours resentment and the desire for revenge, the possibility of forgiveness is often stifled. Spanning the polarity of fault and forgiveness are two speech acts. The first speech act is the avowal of imputability, the acknowledgement or admission of agency – the ‘I can’ which ‘binds’ the agent to the action – in recognition of being accountable as an agent (2004, pp. 457–58). The second speech act is a hymn to forgiveness which, he says, is captured in the celebrative love and joy of sapiential poetry, and which exudes, I would add, a generosity of spirit: ‘There is forgiveness, this voice says’ (ibid., p. 458). It is in the practice of contemplative silence that ‘conscience’ exerts its force. Conscience is the voice of the claim of the other (relational reality) on the self at the depth of language. The second polarity is formed by placing into tension the notion of origin from The Symbolism of Evil and the horizon of eschatology from Memory, History, Forgetting. With regard to the first pole, Ricoeur says that ‘The symbol gives rise to thought’; it gives us something to think about (1967, p. 348). Symbol stands close to the origin of consciousness, arising, as it does, out of immediacy in life experience. However, when we think,


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we bring presuppositions with us. Thinking necessarily expands from thinking about what is given to recognizing and remembering where we come from (ibid., p. 349). Modernity, Ricoeur says, gives us the dynamics of emptying language through technical and formal usage, as well as filling language by remembering the fullness of meanings that are connected with sacred presence in our lives (ibid.). In his call for a re-creation of language, he comments that even though ‘everything has already been said enigmatically,’ it is not fully known and understood by us; we start with an interpretation that takes account of the original enigma contained in the symbol and that advances and shapes the meaning in the freedom of thought (ibid.). We have to bind ourselves to the immediacy of the symbol and at the same time, freely mediate our thought (ibid., p. 350). We do this as reflexive relational realities who, by virtue of correlating thought with understanding, can understand our understanding (Scharlemann, 1981, p. 48). This act of interpretation is an original appropriation, and an event of language as Heidegger explains (1971a, p. 59). The presencing of meaning is a ‘happening of truth’ through the language-event (Heidegger says the ‘world worlds’), in which the context of meaning presents itself in a way that bestows upon us direct and recognizable understanding as language is understood (1971b, pp. 44, 69). This event is one of poetic presencing, insofar as future possibilities are made present, in language. Through this process, the symbol has the power and force to disclose and unveil reality. Interpreting symbols, Ricoeur says, augments our self-awareness (1967, p. 356). A philosophy that has been taught by the symbols has the work of transforming reflexive consciousness, of understanding ourselves in a way that situates ourselves to a greater degree in being (ibid.). The other pole is the horizon of eschatology. Following Kant, Ricoeur says that philosophy of religion has the forward-moving agenda of setting free the original ground of goodness in human nature. He calls this task ‘the restoration . . . of the original predisposition to the good’ (2004, p. 491–2). ‘Restoration’ is Kant’s term for redemption from evil. The agenda of restoration should occur in the ‘optative mood,’ insofar as one expresses a wish or a choice (ibid., p. 493).8 After all, a person who is guilty, Ricoeur says, is capable of so much more than his or her offences or faults. The agent should be released from those very acts (2004, p. 489). To be rehabilitated, the guilty one must ‘be restored to his capacity for acting, and his action restored to its capacity for continuing,’ he says (ibid., p. 493). This latter notion of the capacity for continuing action is drawn from Hannah Arendt’s argument in The Human Condition regarding the dialectic of binding and unbinding under the law (Ricoeur, 2004, pp. 486, 493; 2002, p. 290). Unbinding the bound one requires forgiving

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and promising (2004, p. 487). Promising engages the capacity for acting (ibid., p. 493). Forgiving permits the continuation of human action (2005, p. 131). This dialectic of binding and unbinding takes place within the ultimate horizon of an anticipated and projected restoration of goodness – a horizon of hope (2004, pp. 493–4). The practice of contemplative silence can be considered as the space within which we may mediate the meaning of ultimate origin with the meaning of ultimate goal – symbols of creation are trans-critically interpreted in terms of the speculative language of the coming Kingdom of God, of utopia. In this space, we hold polarities open, self-consciously link them while withholding judgement, and listen to the voice of conscience. The goal is both to find the evil we would ascribe to others in ourselves, and to recognize that the goodness toward which we strive is already present as the presupposition of the projection of hope. Only if there is a moral discipline can we have a spiritual discipline of contemplative silence, because otherwise we will reach only the unreflected in the four levels of awareness. A false warrant would be given to reflection because we would have objectified reality. We can manifest this mode of being and this kind of thinking in and for the world. We come to recognize ourselves in this movement and we see truth emerge in the process. We can appropriate ‘the Joy of Yes in the sadness of the finite’ through the practice of contemplative silence, by allowing the depth of language to manifest itself in and through the activity of interpretation. Take, for example, the activity of rethinking a wrong that has been perpetrated. Let us say that in immediate response to the wrong, we suffer pain. The underlying unreflected thought is ‘I am in pain’. We may recall and recognize the fact of our lived experience, that we fired back at this pain in anger, resentment and fear. In contemplative silence we recall our (1) being at that moment as one of unjust victimhood by connecting the idea of injustice with the pain we face. Furthermore, we recognize our (2) being with being as one of blaming the other, the one to whom we impute the cause of the injustice. This level is also one of unreflected immediacy. At the third level we understand that (3) we made the connection between blame and the other by thinking the concept of fault – ‘she is guilty’. The relational reality we establish is one of moral fault (a rift between us). At the fourth level, (4) we enter contemplative practice. We hold open blame and innocence, withholding judgement so that we may become aware of new possibilities of interpretation. We may reflect that the wrong we have suffered is itself a response to our own prior actions within a competitive cycle whose origin is unknown. We may seek the symbols of


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the origin of tainted relational realities in the Adamic myth, which speaks of the first sin as a broken relationship with God, the loss – through misused freedom – of primordial trust in being. We apply not only phenomenology of symbols but also a critique of hidden ideologies: is our view skewed because of sexism, or racism, unconscious repressions, or distorted economic conditions? Once purified of systemic distortions, our practice of contemplative silence may further bring us to project our image of the day in which this relationship – and all others – will be mended and goodness restored. We might think of what action would be required to bring about the desired reconciliation – namely, words of forgiveness. In trans-critical consciousness, we are aware of the entire arc of interpretation, a complex act of selectively recalling, working through, and re-imaging the identities that reflect our relational realities.

A Delayed Conclusion: A Song of Hermeneutical Existence We confront evil in ourselves. Hermeneutical activity can help us work it through in a way that enriches our humanity, and our humanity is brought into integrity. Thus, hermeneutical activity can be integrated into contemplative silence and contemplative silence can be enriched by hermeneutics. We ought to think of hermeneutical activity as ethical activity; it is not just an activity of formal thinking. Hermeneutical activity is an ethical action, and its aim is the ethical transformation of my being. Contemplative silence applied to ourselves and our life circumstances has ethical import. In the spirit of Ricoeur who is always probing the mystery of existence, that is, of what it is to be human and the meaning of being human, I shall delay a conclusion by relating an enigma of hermeneutical existence: let us circle back once again to the epilogue to the epilogue of Memory, History, Forgetting. Ricoeur says that ‘recognition is . . . the small miracle of memory . . . in the silent evocation of a being who is absent or gone forever, the cry escapes: “That is her! That is him!” ’ (2004, p. 495). A moment of recognition. One can think, ‘Who can say, who can see . . . who I am?’ (Ricoeur, 1986, chapter 2)9. A moment of truth. We can respond with our Yes to life, our Yes to acting and to suffering in the acceptance of all that is which makes us capable of transcending paradox and contradiction, as we understand our manifestations of lived experience in a new way. In changing our relationship to language we change our relationship to ourselves; in changing our relationship to ourselves we change our relationship to language, and integrally so.

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A hermeneutics of contemplative silence manifests a deeper level of awareness as a poetics of presencing our human solidarity ‘In which being there together is enough,’ in the words of Wallace Stevens (1990, p. 524). We recognize ourselves in a new light as we understand more and more continually so, the responsive words: There is forgiveness (Ricoeur, 2004, p. 466), or you are better than your actions (ibid., p. 493). We can remember the uniqueness to the way in which the voice proclaims the words of forgiveness, which come from above (ibid., p. 467). Ricoeur explains: It is a silent voice but not a mute one. Silent, because there is no clamor of what rages; not mute, because not deprived of speech. An appropriate discourse is in fact dedicated to it, the hymn. A discourse of praise and celebration. (ibid.)

A hymn to humanity is sung, and can be sung and sung again: we can continually refer truth claims back to our existence as we strive to live our life with integrity, and in greater depth. Given the Ricoeurian ‘I can’ and our capability, we can, indeed, continue to make meaning out of, and interpret our lived experience – in harmony with the lovely poetic words of the song of songs: ‘Arise, my love . . . the time of singing has come . . . let me hear your voice’ (Song of Songs, 2:10–4).10

Notes 1. I wish to express my thanks and appreciation to David Klemm, not only for his critical comments on this essay through several drafts, but for his warm and generous humanity. 2. In connection with Ricoeur’s hermeneutical theory, Klemm explains that ‘reflexivity is a subjectivity that understands its own understanding and could just as easily be called the hermeneutical subject’ (1983). 3. See Klemm, 1987, p. 292–4. Klemm discusses the ‘word-event’ in the experience of language in terms of the surmounting of the finitude of existence, as the ‘I’ is taken up into a disclosure that raises the level of subjectivity and unites it, while at the same time keeping a sense of awareness of one’s identity as the locus of being. He also states, ‘The experience of the transcendence of finitude within finitude is the experience of what is wholly other than finitude’, and the ‘hidden resource for testing the truth . . . [is in the] formal correspondence between assertions and their referents. The hidden resource is the self-negating element in the image of otherness: otherness is other even than itself’ (ibid.). 4. My thanks to David Klemm for this point. 5. See Klemm, 2008, p. 54. 6. See Reagan, 1998, p. 135. 7. See Reagan, 1998, p. 135.


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8. See also Ricoeur, 1992, p. 218 in which Ricoeur explains that ‘Human (free) choice appears to carry with it an original wound that affects its capacity for determining itself for or against the law; the enigma of the origin of evil is reflected in the enigma that affects the actual exercise of freedom. The fact that this penchant is always already present in every opportunity to choose but that it is at the same time a maxim of (free) choice is no less inscrutable than the origin of evil’. 9. See also Klemm, 2002, pp. 100, 107–8. In this essay, Klemm explains that ‘Here thinking mediates between seeing (involving singular representations arising from bodily receptivity) and saying (involving general representations arising from conceptual determinations in language) by means of the transcendental imagination.’ Furthermore, he explains that ‘critical thinking, we remember, always combines opposites – such as singular representations of reference with universal representations of meaning. Religion unites and transcends these opposites, because religious power combines saying and seeing (or meaning and reference): the meaning of religious discourse is itself its real reference in the world. In other words, in religious discourse what is said is also seen. The image does not refer beyond itself to the perceived world, such that its truth is its correspondence between the image and perception. In religious discourse the image is more real than the perceived world. The meaning of the religious image instantiates its own being’. Finally, Klemm, in discussing Ricoeur’s theory of metaphor, explains the importance of feeling in that ‘when the imagination forms an image of the new predicative congruence, the emergent meaning is not fully objectified but is also felt. The hearer or reader is thereby assimilated to the meaning precisely as she or he performs the predicative assimilation’. 10. Ricoeur remarks (1998, pp. 184–6) that ‘between the aesthetic and the religious . . . there is a zone of overlap’, continuing, ‘one of the richest examples of . . . overlap of the religious and the aesthetic is, undoubtedly, the Canticle of Canticles’. This poetry contains the verticality of the divine and human relationship, and yet, at the same time, love brings with it reciprocity ‘that can imply crossing the threshold between the ethical and the mystical. Where ethics maintains the vertical dimension, mysticism attempts to introduce reciprocity; the lover and loved occupy equal, reciprocal roles. Reciprocity is introduced into verticality by means of the language of love and thanks to the metaphorical resources of the erotic’. He also refers to ‘its capacity to introduce tenderness in the ethical relation’.

Bibliography Abel, O. (2008), ‘Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics: From critique to poetics’, in D. M. Kaplan (ed.), Reading Ricoeur. Albany, NY: SUNY, pp. 183–96. Arendt, H. (1998), The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Changeux, J. P. and P. Ricoeur (2000), What Makes Us Think?: A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher Argue about Ethics, Human Nature, and the Brain, trans. M. B. DeBevoise. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Descartes, R. (2007), Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Lexington, KY: BN Publishing. Downey, M. (1993), The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press. Gadamer, H. G. (1986), ‘The relevance of the beautiful’, in R. Bernasconi (ed.), The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–53. Hegel, G. W. F. (2009), Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. J. B. Baillie. Lavergne, TN: Digireads.com Publishing. Heidegger, M. (1966), ‘Memorial address’, in Discourse on Thinking, trans. J. M. Anderson and E. H. Freund. New York: Harper and Row, pp. 43–57. Heidegger, M. (1971a), ‘The nature of language’, in On the Way to Language, trans. P. D. Hertz. New York: Harper and Row, pp. 57–108. Heidegger, M. (1971b), ‘The origin of the work of art’, in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. A. Hofstadter. New York: Harper and Row, pp. 17–86. Husserl, E. (1999), The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology, ed. D. Welton. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Irigaray, L. (2002), The Way of Love, trans. H. Bostic and S. Pluhacek. London: Continuum. Irigaray, L. (2008), Sharing the World. London: Continuum. Jervolino, D. (2008), ‘Rethinking Ricoeur: The unity of his work and the paradigm of translation’, in D. M. Kaplan (ed.), Reading Ricoeur. Albany, NY: SUNY, pp. 225–35. Kant, I. (1997), Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. and ed. M. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (1998a), Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and ed. P. Guyer and A. W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (1998b), Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, trans. and ed. A. W. Wood and G. D. Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kearney, R. (2008), ‘On the hermeneutics of evil’, in D. M. Kaplan (ed.), Reading Ricoeur. Albany, NY: SUNY, pp. 71–88. Klemm, D. E. (1983), The Hermeneutical Theory of Paul Ricoeur: A Constructive Analysis. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press. Klemm, D. E. (1987), ‘The rhetoric of theological argument’, in J. S. Nelson, A. Megill and D. N. McCloskey (eds), The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences: Language and Argument in Scholarship and Public Affairs. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 276–97. Klemm, D. E. (2002), ‘Searching for a heart of gold: A Ricoeurian meditation on moral striving and the power of religious discourse’, in J. W. Wall, W. Schweiker and W. D. Hall (eds), Paul Ricoeur and Contemporary Moral Thought. London: Routledge, pp. 97–116. Klemm, D. E. (2008), ‘Philosophy and Kerygma: Ricoeur as reader of the Bible’, in D. M. Kaplan (ed.), Reading Ricoeur. Albany, NY: SUNY, pp. 47–69. Klemm, D. E. and W. Schweiker (2008), Religion and the Human Future: An Essay on Theological Humanism. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Levinas, E. (1969), Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. A. Lingis. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Marcel, G. (1973), Tragic Wisdom and Beyond including Conversations between Paul Ricoeur and Gabriel Marcel, trans. S. Jolin and P. McCormick. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.


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Reagan, C. E. (1996), Paul Ricoeur: His Life and His Work. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Reagan, C. E. (2008), ‘Binding and loosing: Promising and forgiving, amnesty and amnesia’, in D. M. Kaplan (ed.), Reading Ricoeur. Albany, NY: SUNY, pp. 237–48. Ricoeur, P. (1966), Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, trans. E. V. Kohák. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Ricoeur, P. (1967), The Symbolism of Evil, trans. E. Buchanan. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Ricoeur, P. (1974), ‘Existence and hermeneutics’, in The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, trans. K. McLaughlin. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, pp. 3–24. Ricoeur, P. (1976), Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University Press. Ricoeur, P. (1977), The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. Robert Czerny. London: Routledge. Ricoeur, P. (1978), ‘The metaphorical process as cognition, imagination, and feeling’. Critical Inquiry, 5.1, 143–59. Ricoeur, P. (1986), Fallible Man, trans. C.A. Kelbley. New York: Fordham University Press. Ricoeur, P. (1988), Time and Narrative, volume 3, trans. K. Blamey and D. Pellauer. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, P. (1991), From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, trans. K. Blamey and J. B. Thompson. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Ricoeur, P. (1992), Oneself as Another, trans. K. Blamey. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, P. (1998), Critique and Conviction: Conversations with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay, trans. K. Blamey. New York: Columbia University Press. Ricoeur, P. (2002), ‘Ethics and human capability: A response’, in J. Wall, W. Schweiker and W. D. Hall (eds), Paul Ricoeur and Contemporary Moral Thought. London: Routledge, pp. 279–90. Ricoeur, P. (2004), Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. K. Blamey and D. Pellauer. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, P. (2005), The Course of Recognition, trans. D. Pellauer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ricoeur, P. (2007), Evil: A Challenge to Philosophy and Theology, trans. J. Bowden. London: Continuum. Scharlemann, R. P. (1981), The Being of God: Theology and the Experience of Truth. New York: Seabury Press. Scharlemann, R. P. (1986), ‘The question of philosophical theology’, in A. Kee and E. T. Long (eds), Being and Truth: Essays in Honor of John Macquarrie. London: SCM, pp. 3–17. Scharlemann, R. P. (1989), ‘The being of God when God is not being God: Deconstructing the history of theism’, in Inscriptions and Reflections: Essays in Philosophical Theology. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, pp. 30–53. Stein, E. (2002), Finite and Eternal Being, trans. K. F. Reinhardt. Washington, DC: ICS Publications. Stevens, W. (1990), The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. New York: Vintage.


CLUSTER 3

Philosophy via Art


Chapter 7

Love and Transcendence Martin Warner

A Proposal ‘The philosopher who approaches religion through moral thinking’, Austin Farrer memorably declared, ‘finds his feet on the beaten track to a mare’s nest’ (Farrer, 1957, p. 14; 1972, p. 119). With perhaps a touch of irony, when posthumously republished, his chapter was retitled ‘A moral argument for the existence of God’. This ‘argument’ sought to avoid the mare’s nest by veering off the beaten track, conceived in terms of the search for rigorous demonstrations in the Kantian manner and/or the seeking of authoritative theological warrant for particular ethical judgements, as in Plato’s Euthyphro. Instead, it is suggested, a starting point for the philosophical examination of theological belief might be the scrutiny less of contested evaluative judgements and priorities than of the ‘sense of regard’, at the heart of morality, proper to ‘human beings, and any other beings we can regard in the same way’ (1957, pp. 15–16; 1972, p. 120). The scrutiny in question should take the form of a series of persuasions, none of them coercive, which takes the platitude (a platitude, at least, in our culture) that there is a sense of ‘regard’ in which regard is universally due to our neighbours, that my neighbour’s very existence exercises a claim on me, ‘in deadly earnest and follows it as far as it leads’ (1957, p. 27; 1972, p. 130). The proposed persuasions start, appropriately, with a question. If all human beings are in this sense to be regarded, what is it about them in general in virtue of which they are all the proper objects of regard? Given that it is not tautological to affirm ‘Man is a proper object of our regard’, nor absurd to suggest that we might establish communication with creatures of another species who would be fit objects of our regard, we should neither see the claim as tautological nor characterize regard as ‘coterminous with the race-consciousness of a species’. Following tradition, ‘rational agency’ might be offered as a substantive answer to the question but this, though no doubt relevant, is too narrow in that it excludes the senile, other diminished lives and infants; further, it is with the insurance agent that I do business; it is irrelevant that he is Mr Jones and that he loves his children or plays the piano. It is not similarly

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the rational agent that I regard, but Tom, Dick or Harry; and regarding any one of them I abstract from nothing that makes the man . . . Rational agency cannot waken my regard, Henry may. (Farrer, 1957, p. 18; 1972, p. 122)

But this presents a puzzle. Henry should move my regard in the sense that I ought to value him and respond to him, but all that he thinks, says and does, good, bad or indifferent, expresses what he is. Of course we may hate the sin and love the sinner, sympathizing with a person who succumbs to temptation, but such a distinction may not always do, for if we sympathize with a man for failing to pursue a good which he does not value in the least, it is difficult to see what we are sympathizing with . . . I am to love my neighbour, not my idea of my neighbour. (Farrer, 1957, p. 19; 1972, p. 123)

If the absolute worth of our neighbours lies in nothing else than what they actually are, if membership of a species cannot of itself bestow worth, and if the agency through which they express themselves may be unworthy, then it appears that we require a richer account of the objects of our regard than one constructed solely in terms of biology and agency, even rational agency. The challenge is so to describe human beings ‘as to regard them worthily’, and the depth of the quandary is such that, it is suggested, we may reasonably be persuaded to consider seriously traditions for which persons transcend their behavioural and other empirical qualities and properties. Given that language is grounded in the empirical world and learnt through experience, it appears that any such descriptions may need to use language in ways that go beyond the literal. Farrer’s proposal is that we use language parabolically, employing relational predicates, thereby enabling the characterization of our neighbours in Christian terms as objects of divine making and redemption; our neighbour’s worth indeed lies in what he or she actually is, since it is this very person whom I know that is the subject of divine redemption, and whose worth is determined by his or her place in God’s purposes, which in no way hide or palliate imperfections, ‘for it is measured by the infinite cost at which God is willing to redeem him from them’ (Farrer, 1957, pp. 20–1; 1972, pp. 124–5). For present purposes there are four features of this series of persuasions worth highlighting. First, the platitude which forms its starting point is itself an affirmation of which some may need to be persuaded. It is represented as recognition of a claim, which itself sponsors other claims such as that ‘drowning strangers are to be rescued, not laughed at’. Where there are cultures whose members generally think otherwise (as there have been

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from before the time of the Spartan krypteia to the present) then we may seek to encourage them to think differently, and if they wish to return the compliment then ‘let’s see who can open the others’ eyes to more’ (Farrer, 1957, pp. 28–9; 1972, pp. 131–2). Second, the presuppositions embedded in our conceptual structures may help or hinder us to see things as they are. That my neighbour’s existence exercises a claim on me is something we may properly experience as ‘given’, and part of the value of language which enables us to articulate how men and women may transcend their observable properties is that it may enable us to grasp how this could be. Third, the parables invoked open up a world wider than just that of our neighbour; they include God and ourselves, thereby enriching and rendering more specific the so far somewhat formulaic notion of ‘regard’, with practical and self-involving dimensions. ‘Christianity . . . commands us to carry regard for our neighbours to the point of loving them as we love ourselves; and it teaches us how to do this by directing us first so to worship God that we love him with all our mind’ (Farrer, 1957, p. 20; 1972, p. 124). And finally, the platitude about regard applies generally, but its grounding is in particular experiences of individual people involving sympathetic attention and a form of, ideally mutual, recognition, a grounding which seems to be more than simply a function of some biological or psychological drive. ‘The first step to regarding our neighbour as ourself is to see that he is as real as ourself, and that his reality has the same sort of actual structure and quality as our own’ (Farrer, 1957, p. 23; 1972, p. 126). Without some such recognition the injunction to love one’s neighbour as oneself would be somewhat thin gruel. Farrer is fairly short with those who quibble about the initial platitude – those who seek ‘to make an issue of the question, whether it is good that we should care for other men’ are, he remarks, ‘intolerable’ (1957, p. 14; 1972, p. 118) – but Basil Mitchell’s finessing of his proposal treats this first stage of persuasion with more patience, focusing on Stuart Hampshire’s question, ‘What is the rational basis for acting as if human life has a peculiar value, quite beyond the value of any other natural things?’ (Hampshire, 1978, p. 20). Mitchell notes that our culture’s emphasis on, and ‘intense feeling for the value of the individual human personality has a JudaeoChristian origin and simply has not developed to the same extent in other traditions’ (Mitchell, 1980, p. 123). He remarks Kant’s claim (1987, §71, p. 366n.) that this fact does not of itself show that the moral law with its ideal of respect for the rational agent requires any theological backing, but

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points to what may happen when the related metaphysics has ‘crumbled entirely’, citing Iris Murdoch’s account of Sartre. The value of the person is detected by Sartre, not in any patient study of the complexity of human relations, but simply in his experience of the pain of defeat and loss . . . It is as if only one certainty remained: that human beings are irreducibly valuable, without any notion why or how they are valuable or how the value can be defended. (Murdoch, 1967, pp. 81–2)

Not only has that sense of irreducible value shifted yet further from its original Judaeo-Christian moorings than in Kant, but ‘if man is what Sartre takes him to be . . . there is not enough to being a man for the notion to be attached to’ (Mitchell, 1980, pp. 123–4). This leaves the notion open to the objection that the value of human beings, like that of all else, depends on their qualities, sponsoring the Aristotelian thought that people should be loved on account of their virtue or other positive quality. Freud, for example, stigmatizes the injunction ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’ as irrational, for ‘If I love someone, he must deserve it in some way . . . He deserves it if he is so like me in important ways that I can love myself in him’; fulfilling the injunction is anyway ‘impossible’. One of the central ‘pure concepts of morality’ of Kant’s religion, which on his account are freely assented to by reason, is for Freud in no better standing than Credo quia absurdum (Freud, 1963, pp. 46, 80, 48). In this context Mitchell considers the way that McTaggart distinguishes between an important conception of love, ‘as we find it in present experience’ and all other emotions on the ground that while such love may be ‘because of qualities’, it is ‘never in respect of qualities’. Love, like other emotions, ‘is not necessarily proportional to the dignity or adequacy of the qualities which determine it’. A trivial cause may determine its direction – he instances birth in the same family, childhood in the same house, physical beauty and ‘purely sexual desire’ – but while with other emotions we condemn the result if the cause is trivial or inadequate . . . [with love] we judge differently. If the love does arise, it justifies itself, regardless of what causes produce it . . . This would seem to indicate that the emotion is directed to the person, independently of his qualities, and that the determining qualities are not the justification of that emotion, but only the means by which it arises.

McTaggart is not, of course, so unrealistic as to deny that even love of this sort can be destroyed by perceived alteration of qualities in the beloved. But while such a result would be accepted as the only reasonable course with any other emotion, it is felt here as a failure . . . Love is for the person, and not for his qualities. It is for him. (McTaggart, 1921–1927, vol. 2, pp. 152–4)


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It is noteworthy how deep-rooted positive evaluation of a love such as this, which is ‘never in respect of qualities’, appears to be in our culture. We find evidence of it in Shakespeare’s 116th Sonnet (‘Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds’). McTaggart is more realistic, but no doubt a sonneteer is not upon oath. Perhaps equally telling, Wilbye found it so much a commonplace that he could mock the idea in his madrigal ‘Love me not for comely grace’. Which returns us to Hampshire’s question about the value of human life, for if human beings as such have, to use Kantian terminology, a dignity which may not be traded, it seems that we are endorsing a value that does not alter when we alteration find, save perhaps in the limiting case of death. Mitchell invokes Farrer’s proposal that the regard we owe our neighbour is unqualified because it ‘is owed to God through him’ (Farrer, 1957, p. 20; 1972, p. 124), remarking that ‘it is not difficult to see how a religious frame of reference makes the concept of the sanctity of life intelligible or how some non-religious schemes fail to do so’ (Mitchell, 1980, p. 132). Freud himself concedes that someone might have value for him if, though not directly related to him, he was the son of his dear friend, and it is by an extension of just this kind that Christians have come to see all men as worthy of regard. For they are all children of one God who loves them equally. (Mitchell, 1980, p. 133)

No doubt this claim stands in need of further refinement, but the central proposal, of both Farrer and Mitchell, is that a serious attempt to articulate what is at stake in claiming the absolute, rather than conditional, worth of our neighbour points to the need for a conception of the human person as in some way transcending empirical properties, and that religious traditions whose language is structured to allow some form of transcendent reference, however parabolically, enable us to do this less inadequately than the available secular alternatives. It might reasonably be objected, however, that the range of examples and considerations adduced are too diverse to provide a coherent case. Farrer’s ‘regard’, which initially appears to have affinities with Kantian ‘respect’, is modulated through religious parable into ‘love’ in a way that seems non-Kantian, and the love in question – involving as it does love of God – seems rather different from the love of friends, family and spouse of which McTaggart writes, the one universal, the other very particular; further, we may ask whether any of these can really be taken to include the erotic love of Shakespeare’s sonnet or Wilbye’s madrigal. The short answer is that these all interconnect; Farrer’s regard could not have the claim on us it does if it could not be evoked by individuals, but it is nevertheless

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universally due to all our neighbours, and the particularities of loving relationships, at their best, seem to transcend, while also acknowledging, those very particularities. As for ‘respect’, Since it is men’s capacity to love one another and to love God, rather than their powers of self-legislation, that make men proper objects of respect, and since love involves the entire person, this doctrine escapes the intellectualism which bedevils Kant. (Mitchell, 1980, p. 134)

Mitchell maintains that where erotic love involves a concept of fidelity as unconditional demand, as in the sonnet and in McTaggart, eros needs to be reinforced by agape, with the gloss that In the Christian tradition to treat another man as having unconditional worth is to show him love in the sense of agape . . . We have in effect been asking what men would have to be like to be appropriate objects of such love. (Mitchell, 1980, pp. 136, 124)

The interconnections in our culture of particular and universal loves, together with their cross-bearings on eros and agape, have a complex history, and it may help in understanding what is at stake to consider certain aspects of it.

Concepts of Love ‘We live with love’, remarks Jean-Luc Marion, ‘as if we knew what it was about. But as soon as we try to define it, or at least approach it with concepts, it draws away from us’ (Marion, 2002, p. 71). In part, no doubt, this is a phenomenological matter but the available concepts, together with the history that has shaped their configuration in relation to each other, are also relevant. In the first place, the main terms in Greek, Latin and modern European languages that may plausibly be used for ‘love’ all seem to cover a wide but remarkably similar range of phenomena. We have seen that McTaggart classifies love as an emotion, but for Martha Nussbaum ‘the term “love” is used equivocally, to name both an emotion and a more complex form of life’ (Nussbaum, 2001, p. 474). Catherine Osborne provides a more detailed account of the way we may use it ‘to mean somewhat different things in different contexts, [quite independently] of any attempt to classify different types of love’, for it ‘can be used to designate an emotion, a relationship, a certain sort of behaviour, or a person or power responsible


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for initiating those things’; elsewhere she suggests that we may helpfully see love as a kind of attitude ‘that changes our whole outlook and response to the object or person whom we love’ (Osborne, 1994, pp. 51, 219). From a very different perspective, Paul Ekman (1992, p. 194) has characterized love as an ‘emotional attitude’, being more sustained than, and typically involving more than one, ‘basic emotion’. Nevertheless, Osborne argues that ‘equivocation’ is not the right term here ‘since the meanings are all evidently related’. She toys with the Aristotelian concept of what has been termed ‘focal meaning’, whereby different meanings cluster round a single focus, but ‘there is little agreement as to where the focus of the cluster lies’; rather, ‘Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance characterizes the situation better, since the meanings are all on an equal footing and none seems more primary or more central than the rest’ (Osborne, 1994, pp. 49–50). Little wonder that when we try to define love ‘it draws away from us’. Historical considerations come into play when we attempt to distinguish different types of love, which for present purposes may usefully be related to three interconnected concepts related to the Greek nouns philia, eros and agape, as used in certain influential texts. Philia is often translated ‘friendship’, but Gregory Vlastos roundly declares that ‘ “Love” is the only English word that is robust and versatile enough’ to cover it (1981, p. 4). Writing with Plato and Aristotle primarily in mind, he argues that philia overlaps with eros but the latter ‘is more intense, more passionate . . . more heavily weighted on the side of desire than affection . . . and more closely tied to the sexual drive’. Vlastos also suggests that in Plato’s account of love eros is the term used when it is primarily evoked by or related to beauty, and philia when it relates to that which is physically or spiritually ‘useful’ (ibid., p. 26), though this hardly fits parental philia as Plato brings out in his Lysis. However, one should not anachronistically assume that Plato’s various discussions of these terms ‘together constitute a Platonic theory of “love” as a unitary phenomenon’ (Sheffield, 2006, p. 156). The propensity of scholars to interpret philia in terms of ‘friendship’ or ‘love’ may well be indirectly influenced by the way that St Thomas, in resetting the terms of discussion of Christian charity, draws on Aristotle’s analyses of philia, translates the term as amicitia, which is itself standardly translated as ‘friendship’, and integrates it into his overall account of caritas (see, for example, Aquinas, 1964–1981, vol. 34, 2a2ae q.23 a.1). The hermeneutic colour, one might say, flows back. In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle maintains that ‘perfect philia is the philia of men who are good, and alike in excellence; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves . . . Their

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philia lasts as long as they are good’ (1984, 1156a–b). This sort of ‘love’, one notes, while it may be for the sake of the one loved is nevertheless, in McTaggart’s terms, ‘in respect of qualities’. Further, while philia requires benevolence it also involves a degree of reciprocity and active commitment (ibid., 1167a–b). The practical dimension is crucial for philia in Aristotle’s account, leading Osborne (1994, pp. 144–7)1 to characterize it as ‘alliance’, whether political, civic, economic, social or domestic. A philos is ‘someone who takes the interests of another as a goal in her own deliberations and behaviour’. It is because Aristotelian philia is ‘not primarily about affections or feelings towards others, but rather the active commitment to the well-being of the other’ that, despite the obvious differences, it proved serviceable in St Thomas’ account of the love commanded in the New Testament. The motif of the god of love, Eros, striking the unsuspecting lover in the heart is traditional in Greek literature; eros typically causes desire but its own cause is inexplicable. This played a significant role in Origen’s aligning of eros with agape in his Commentary on the Song of Songs; he reads the bride’s ‘I am wounded with love’ (5:8) as meaning that she has been struck with God’s arrow, affirming that ‘wounding the soul in this way is proper and fitting for God’ (Osborne, 1994, pp. 71–4). He was neither the first nor the last Christian theologian to use Greek traditions of eros to illuminate Biblical agape, and overwhelmingly the most influential Greek thinking here was that to be found in Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus, often as filtered through Plotinus’ reading of these dialogues. What particularly caught the European imagination was the account provided by Socrates of the way the erotic impulse can, suitably guided, provide the creative power to ennoble and transform the lover. On this account, while initially we may experience intense desire for another person perceived as beautiful in some way, eros points us beyond the initial urge towards an aspiration for possession of that which will make us happy, enabling the lover to become a flourishing and complete person, ideally in perpetuity. Underlying this aspiration is the power of beauty to unlock our creativity, at the bodily level in the production of children but, when sublimated, in works of the imagination and intellect which, like physical offspring, can provide a simulacrum of immortality. First, we need to realize that what we are really seeking is that which is good and truly desirable, that it is these qualities in the attractive person which really matter to us, thus we need to respond to these qualities wherever encountered, not remain tied to that mixture of good, bad and indifferent which makes up any given human individual. Ultimately it may lead, in Nussbaum’s memorable expression, to ‘a love that embraces the


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entire world with even-handed joy’, recognizing that all that is beautiful and noble is rooted in a single ‘radiance’ (2001, pp. 496, 468), being thereby enabled to bring to birth and nurture ‘true virtue’ (Plato, 1998, 212a). What is notably missing from this account is mutuality; it is only the lover, not the beloved, who is consumed by desire and, analogously, the unitary radiance which is ultimately the proper object of love cannot itself love. However in the Phaedrus we are presented with a reworking of creative erotic transformation with the truest form of eros portrayed as a reciprocal relation between lover and beloved, inspired by beauty and leading to the joint seeking of wisdom (Plato, 1986, 252e–253b). The Socratic ‘ladder of love’ has retained its relevance into modern times. However, Vlastos (1981, pp. 31–3) finds it deficient in the light of the Christian tradition which has a central place for love of the imperfect, and makes sense of love for ‘the individual, in the uniqueness and integrity of his or her individuality’. This tradition not only incorporates insights associated with philia and agape, but also an aspect of Plotinus’ enlargement of the Platonic account. In the Symposium Socrates represents the god of love as the child of Penia, personifying poverty or lack, and of Poros, representing at once cunning resourcefulness and a way of overcoming an obstacle. Thus, eros has a sense of lack at its heart yet its dynamic is directed towards resourcefully overcoming it. But in Plotinus a further sense, already implicit, of poros comes to the fore, that of resource or abundance, conceived as ‘the Reason-Principle of the Universe’ (Plotinus, 1956, III.5.8–9) – and thus, from our perspective, ‘the fullness resulting from the descending Reason-Principle from the One into the Soul’ (Duer, 2003, p. 15). On this account, poros possesses beauty and goodness of which eros, forever seeking the fullness of the One in perfect union, has only partial possession. Augustine’s reworking of this vision has resonated down the centuries: ‘You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you’ (Augustine, 1991, I.i.1).2 Notoriously, Anders Nygren diagnosed any such aligning of the love of God, or more generally of Christian love, with the traditions of eros as fundamentally flawed, setting Platonic eros in opposition to Christian agape, for such eros represents the striving of man towards God whereas agape represents the reaching of God towards man.3 Plotinus’ vision (1956, III.5.9) of ‘the downflow of the Nectar’ should be sufficient to put us on guard against any such clear-cut opposition, as should the Septuagint’s use (admittedly historically late) of agape to represent the erotic love celebrated in the Song of Songs which, as we have seen, was elaborated by Origen. In the Hebrew of the Old Testament it seems that ‘it is quite impossible to express the difference between eros and agape’ (Quell and Stauffer,

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1949, p. 5). The Hebrew root aheb occurs well over 200 times, covering, inter alia, ‘God’s love to men, men’s love to God, and love between men, seen as a religious duty’ (Cranfield, 1957, p. 131), and also the ‘love strong as death’ of the Song of Songs (8:6); the Septuagint usually uses agape in its various forms to translate it. Although the noun is apparently unknown in classical Greek, the corresponding verb is familiar enough, stronger than merely to like or be friendly (Barr, 1987, p. 8), with a certain indistinctness of range covering family affection and also the love of rational preference with particular weight given to its practical dimension, bringing with it obligations of loyalty and hence particularly appropriate in the Biblical context of a covenanted relationship, whether marital or between God and his people. The New Testament writers take up this Septuagint usage (as well as that of the Koine), the systematically ambiguous expression ‘the agape of God’ being used to indicate love for God, love by God and love from God (as expressed in love for others). Often this ambiguity is theologically important, Paul’s unique preference for the noun enabling him to ‘make clear the connection between love by God and love from God’ (Osborne, 1994, p. 29); it also opens the possibility that love from God might also be love for God. Often, also, Paul moves easily from agape to philia in exhorting love of others (e.g. Rom. 12.9–10). The Synoptic Gospels bring together two Old Testament passages to represent Jesus’ ‘summary of the Law’: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’ (Mt. 22.37–8)4. The verb agapan is used for loving both God and neighbour, and since the second commandment is said to be like the first it appears that the word is to be taken as having the same meaning in each case. ‘As thyself’ indicates that we are to treat the fortunes of our neighbour as being as important as our own, and the gloss on ‘neighbour’ given in Lk. 10.33 uses a very strong word (esplanchnisthe) for the compassion felt by the Good Samaritan for the one fallen among thieves, indicating that he is moved inwardly; he acts, as we might say, ‘from the heart’. The same parable makes it clear that the range of ‘neighbour’ is potentially universal in scope; one remembers the Dominical command, ‘Love (agapate) your enemies’ (Mt. 5.44; Lk. 6.27, 35). In the teaching of Jesus, love by God provides the pattern of agape in God’s indiscriminate goodness, free forgiveness for the repentant sinner, and going out to seek and to save; according to Burnaby (1986, p. 355) we are similarly ‘bidden to imitate the divine love by doing good to all without distinction, by forgiving as we have been forgiven, and by ready response to every call of need’.


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But some care is needed here. God’s pattern of agape needs to be adjusted to take account of our status as creatures, and Burnaby’s ‘doing good to all without distinction’ is ambiguous. If read as indicating that our beneficence should not take account of distinctions irrelevant to the ‘call of need’, as the Samaritan ignored hereditary enmities, this is indeed enjoined. But not if read as suggesting that our various relations of proximity (social, familial, erotic, spatiotemporal etc.) should have no bearing on our benevolence or beneficence. Such an aspiration is not merely psychologically implausible, even dangerous (Freud’s criticism perhaps in part relates to such a misinterpretation), but would render irrelevant the way the Samaritan was moved by the victim’s plight. Our attitude, no doubt, should be of benevolence to all but, as David Oderberg puts it, drawing on St Thomas (1964–1981, vol. 34, 2a2ae q.26 a.6), ‘the closer the relationship and the more severe the need, the greater the obligation of charity’ (2008, p. 64). Love of others may follow God’s universal pattern, but it is always ‘rooted in particular circumstances’ (Cottingham, 2008, p. 248). Later Christians, educated in an intellectual context where Platonism was a significant force, united this model of love by and from God with the love for God expressed by the ‘thirst’ for God of the psalmists.5 This sense of unsatisfied longing was read in terms of the Plotinian ascent so that the Neoplatonist union with the One was identified with the Gospel’s promise of eternal life. For Nygren this was a wrong turning; he plausibly construes Augustine as attempting to achieve a synthesis of eros and agape, in which the restless longing for God in the human heart – a longing implanted by God himself – is met by the descent of the divine love in the incarnation, so that the union with God which is the object of desire is participation in the selfless love which is the very nature of God. (Burnaby, 1986, p. 356, summarizing Nygren, 1969)

He objects that desire and selflessness cannot be thus combined (for seeking the fulfilment of desire is a form of self-love) and that historically this acquisitive element in the synthesis trumped the selflessness – inspiring what Luther denounced as ‘works-religion’. He fails, however, adequately to take into account Bishop Butler’s distinction (1970, Sermon 11) between reasonable self-love and selfishness. The quest for self-perfection indeed lies at the core of the Classical Greek ethical project, being taken up by Augustine and others in developing the concept of caritas, but the perfection is one of virtue; one should remember that at the summit of his ascent the Socratic lover is enabled through his vision of beauty’s transcendent radiance to bring to birth and nurture true virtue. Further, on Socratic principles selfishness often stands in opposition to self-love, for in harming others one

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harms oneself, while in Christian terms our happiness comes from conforming our will to that of God’s self-giving love. Behind Nygren’s critique lies a long history of misinterpretation. St Thomas seeks to integrate caritas with amicitia (Aristotelian philia), as the willing of a person’s good for his own sake, and ‘the friendship we call charity (amicitia caritatis) rests on a fellowship of eternal happiness (beatitudinis)’ (Thomas Aquinas, 1964–1981, vol. 34, 2a2ae q.25 a.12). For St Thomas this beatitude is charity’s condition, but Duns Scotus interprets the claim as concerning charity’s motive rather than condition, and on that basis condemns it. It is this flawed reading of the traditional synthesis which lies behind its Lutheran rejection of which Kierkegaard and Nygren were heirs, as also the famous debate between Fénelon and Bossuet concerning whether the aspiration to the state of ‘pure love’ in which the soul is indifferent even to her own good, wholly unmotivated by self-interest, is to be commended as a counsel of perfection or condemned as presumptuous (cf. Burnaby, 2007, chapter 9).6 Remembering that deformation of agape captured in the expression ‘cold as charity’, we may do well to remind ourselves of Charles Williams’ (1943, p. 182) salutary admonition: ‘Eros is often our salvation from a false agape, as agape is from a tyrannical eros.’

Dante’s Transformations For present purposes the ‘purity’ of caritas is of less moment than the place it gives to ‘the individual, in the uniqueness and integrity of his or her individuality’ (Vlastos), and to love which is ‘never in respect of qualities’ (McTaggart). For Augustine one should love the whole human being, a sinner like oneself, not just the good qualities as in Plato, but since in loving one’s neighbours ‘what one loves above all in them is the presence of God and the hope of salvation’ it is, as Nussbaum remarks, ‘a little unclear what role is left . . . for loving real-life individual people’ (2001, p. 549). However, with Dante ‘love can move outward to embrace humanity while retaining intense attachments to particular individuals’ (ibid., p. 577). The Florentine girl whom Dante loved from the first moment he saw her appears transformed in the Commedia as an image of caritas and revelation of the presence of God, but there is real continuity; in the poem Dante exclaims on encountering Beatrice on the summit of Mount Purgatory ‘There is not within me / one drop of blood unstirred. I recognize / the tokens of the ancient flame’ (2003, Purg. XXX.46–8), the poet commenting that he was smitten as in ‘boyhood’s days’. A few lines on she


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addresses him by name (the only time the word ‘Dante’ appears in the poem). As Nussbaum puts it: It is as if Dante is being addressed in all his individuality for the first time. And the object of his passion, she who sees him with loving particularity of vision, she too draws attention to her own individuality. ‘I really am, I really am Beatrice’, ‘Ben son, ben son Beatrice’. The name is so placed in close relation to its rhyme felice, ‘blessed’ – indicating, once again, that it is in the context of Christian salvation, and of worldly love seen in the context of salvation, that individuality is most truly realized, and loved. (Nussbaum, 2001, pp. 559–60)

The context is that of the departure of Virgil. As pagan reason leaves the poem we enter the new world of grace in which ‘the very hairs of your head are all numbered’ (Mt. 10.30). Dante did not have direct access to Plato’s dialogues on love, but he was well acquainted with the main lineaments of the Augustinian tradition, as well as the way St Thomas sought to integrate Aristotelian thinking into it. Thoroughly eclectic, although in many ways a Thomist, when considering the love of God he is much more in the Augustinian tradition of the Franciscan St Bonaventura for whom God creates ‘out of no motive but love’, and our beatitude consists ‘not, as the Dominicans taught . . . in the intellectual vision of God, but in the act of loving Him’ (Bickersteth in Dante, 1965, p. xlii). Dante also came under the influence of Classical thinking about eros through the influence of Ovid and Neoplatonism on the culture of courtly love and the Troubadours, and hence, ultimately, on the works of the poets of the Dolce Stil Nuovo of which Dante was one (Duer, 2003, part 2). This latter influence is not always sufficiently noticed. Part of Nussbaum’s critique of the Dantean ‘ascent of love’ relates to the relationship between Beatrice and Dante which is seen as inadequately reciprocal, ‘for love, in the context of dogma, infantilizes him’, Beatrice in her famous rebuke becoming ‘a scolding mother’ (2001, pp. 581–2). But though Dante indeed uses the image of the scolded child (2003, Purg. XXXI.64–7), it is one familiar from the courtly tradition of the feudal midons in relation to her knight (see Duer, 2003, pp. 181–3, 271). And as was normal with feudal ideals reciprocation was integral to the relationship, the knight dedicating his service in hope of blessing or reward (guerdon). Throughout the tradition, from Plato to Dante, a distinction is drawn between ‘earthly’ and ‘heavenly’ loves, only the latter providing the dynamic for ascending the ‘ladder’. In Augustine, amor is taken as the genus with

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cupiditas representing the earthly and caritas the heavenly dimension, while in the Commedia’s Italian typically amore is the preferred term, the context indicating how it is to be taken. The love between Francesca and Paolo as recounted in the fifth book of the Inferno represents the lower love of irrational erotic desire, and its characteristic feature is passivity. Francesca is ‘led’; she surrenders to passion rather than acting as co-agent with the beloved, Paolo (who weeps rather than speaks) being a mere cipher in her account, and bids fair to mislead Dante himself through sympathy – he faints and has to be rescued by Virgil. His will needs to be transformed by his journey through Purgatory before he is ready to meet the transformed Beatrice for, although requiring the aid of divine grace, the ascent upwards must be of one’s own volition. Virgil’s last words to Dante are thus fittingly: ‘Lord of yourself I crown and mitre you’ (2003, Purg. XXVII.143). As well as poetry, Virgil represents human reason as untouched by grace; the Platonic upward path, combining reason with eros, can yield this form of autonomy. But while necessary for Dante it is not sufficient, for the sphere of grace is through and through reciprocal, requiring free subordination of one’s own will to that of another – who must to the lover be no cipher – in the exchange of love. This has already been imaged in Dante’s dream of Purgatorio IX. In the Symposium, as we have seen, the proper object of love cannot itself love, but in Dante God is at once lover and beloved, while the mutuality of Trinitarian love incorporates la nostra effige (2003, Par. XXXIII.131), the image of Christ, who, in the words of the Athanasian Creed, has taken ‘the Manhood into God’. Thus it is not inappropriate that Dante should dream of himself as Ganymede, the beloved of the divine lover; the Christian conception of love as, at its deepest, involving mutuality is grounded in the New Testament vision of God as love as well as beloved. In the poem the beloved Beatrice has already taken the initiative, encouraged by Heaven but with tears in her own eyes, to beseech Virgil to rescue Dante from the trap of the Dark Wood. As Nussbaum points out, it is a major task of the poem to show how it is possible to have ‘the susceptibility of the gentle heart without its sinful passivity . . . [The transformed] love exemplifies the new combination of agency and susceptibility, wholeness of will and receptivity’ (2001, pp. 566–7). In such a relationship it is essential that each seeks to see the other for who they really are. Aristotle’s ‘perfect’ philia focuses on merits, but for Dante true love must ‘take in the whole history of the individual, the whole particularity of that history, with its defects, its body, its flaws and faults’ (Nussbaum, 2001, p. 574). Beatrice is reminded that Dante ‘loved thee so / that for thy sake he left the vulgar crowd’ (2003, Inf. II.104–5), but she is well aware


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also of his failings; once she had died, Dante ‘turned his steps aside from the True Way, pursuing the false images of good’ (ibid., Purg. XXX.130–1). It is a particular relationship with its distinctive history which is being transformed through Dante’s seeing the damned, entering into the experience of those being purged, and ultimately showing true penitence in response to Beatrice’s rebuke, a rebuke at once personal and angry which reveals a ‘passionate emotionality’ (Nussbaum, 2001, p. 576). It is clear, though, that the anger does not cloud her judgement; Dante’s response shows that she has indeed truly understood him, her love discerns not just the outward actions but also his inwardness. Further, the love is not simply à deux; Beatrice’s descent to ‘the portals of the dead’ on Dante’s behalf is prompted by St Lucia, an image of the divine light of grace, and she in turn is prompted by the compassion of ‘a Lady in Heaven’, the Mother of God herself. Nussbaum sums up this dimension vividly: This is a love that is not narrowly partial, but all-embracing in its concern, moved by compassion for all of fallen humanity. All people are really equal in its sight, and all are really people. There is no text in all of literature that has more sheer love and curiosity about a wider range of human lives. It really does embrace the world with love. (2001, p. 577)

In this light we can begin to see how a love that may well in an individual case be ‘because of qualities’ or specific features of a beloved’s history, such as that ‘for thy sake he left the vulgar crowd’, ideally transcends them; the virtue of caritas, so understood, is ultimately never exercised ‘in respect of qualities’. Nussbaum’s critique of the Dantean vision does not touch this.7 We have in Dante, then, a vision of love, grounded in eros, which combines the reciprocity of Aristotelian philia, respecting each other’s freedom and agency, with the unselfishness and universal scope of agape, expressed in terms of a narrative that places a particular relationship of love between two individuals in a context which enables us to see its value as transcending any specific qualities or details of the lovers’ histories. It makes sense of Shakespeare’s exaggeration, ‘Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds’.

Eliot and the Communication of Inwardness One doubts that Shakespeare had Dante in mind in writing his sonnet. Rather, he was writing in a context on which the medieval effort to bring eros, not least as imagined and practised in the culture of courtly love, into a positive relation with the Christian virtue of charity had had a powerful

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impact. And Dante’s synthesis, widely recognized as exemplary, fed in a variety of ways into European culture, though significantly loosened from theological leading strings in Protestant countries after Luther’s rejection of what Nygren termed the ‘caritas-synthesis’. There remained the widespread valuing of a form of love which could, but need not, be erotic in the conventional sense, which was reciprocal, involved serious attention to each other’s inwardness, and echoed God’s love for us in that it was unconditional, aspiring to fidelity no matter what the vicissitudes. Relatedly, unconditional love so understood was widely seen as something we should aspire to more generally, ideally to each and every human being we encounter as our neighbour though this was widely seen as a counsel of perfection. In various transformations both versions are still with us. The question remains, whether either is intellectually defensible, or even intelligible, without presupposing that the human individual in some way transcends his or her specific history and empirical properties, without some form of transcendent reference such as that which is provided by relating to our beloved or neighbour as a child of God. A little noticed cross-bearing on this issue, focusing on the ‘sympathy’ that enables the required reciprocal concern for each other’s inwardness, is provided by T. S. Eliot’s lifelong engagement with the possibility of the transcendence of subjective experience. A negative, even solipsistic, assessment of the aspiration is at first glance embodied in a quotation from F. H. Bradley (1930, p. 306), whose work had been the subject of his doctoral dissertation, in a note to line 411 of The Waste Land: My external sensations are no less private to my self than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it . . . In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul. (Bradley, 1930, p. 306)

This note is juxtaposed with the terrifying evocation of being permanently immured within a perimeter, closed on the outside, from Dante’s Inferno (2003, XXXIII.46–7), thus inviting a negative reading of Bradley’s claim. Closer attention, however, reveals greater complexity. The notes are to the penultimate command from the Upanishads: DA Dayadhvam: I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison


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Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus (lines 410–16)

The turning key is Eliot’s rather than Dante’s, and the doom-laden night vision of the latter’s broken Ugolino contrasts sufficiently with Eliot’s ‘aethereal rumours’ to put us on our guard. Again, the note is to the poem’s penultimate command from the Upanishads; dayadhvam is glossed as ‘sympathise’ and ‘DA’, one notes, is not only Sanskrit but also the Russian affirmative. Further, the passage quoted forms part of Bradley’s attempt to correct the ‘natural mistake’ that ‘the outer world of experience is common to all’, unlike our inner worlds, thereby making communication possible; if the world is regarded ‘as an existence which appears in a soul’, then the outer one is as private as the inner. The underlying error is to regard the world in this way; we can indeed communicate because, while people’s experiences ‘are all separate from each other’, the contents of these experiences may be ‘identical’ – indeed, ‘to be possessed directly of what is personal to the mind of another would in the end be unmeaning’. For Bradley solipsism is ‘the apotheosis of an abstraction’, that of my ‘private self’ set up ‘as a substantive which is real independent of the Whole’; however, though false, it points to an important truth: ‘My way of contact with Reality is through a limited aperture. For I cannot get at it directly except through the felt “this” . . . Everything beyond, though not less real, is an expansion of the common essence which we feel burningly in this one focus’ (1930, pp. 303–6, 229). Given this context, the questions Eliot’s note press upon us are whether the ‘essence we feel burningly’ can indeed be ‘common’ if it is unintelligible ‘to be possessed directly of what is personal to the mind of another’, and hence whether we can indeed ‘sympathize’ (‘feel with’) others as the Upanishad demands since our experiences ‘are all separate from each other’. The fear that subjective experience cannot thus be transcended is expressed in the images of key and prison; Bradley’s assurance that the picture which gives rise to the fear merely embodies ‘a natural mistake’ may perhaps be included among the ‘aethereal rumours’ which revive Coriolanus, but only ‘for a moment’. So far as The Waste Land goes it is no more than a rumour, not finally vivifying, for assurances about identity of content in experience do not touch the ‘natural’ horror at the thought that its quality is forever private, that full ‘feeling with’ is unmeaning. Yet, paradoxically, the poem itself evokes the sense of that ‘sympathy’, delicately conveying the quality of the despair that we are ‘each in his prison’. The poem itself challenges

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Bradley by making so vivid the experience resulting from what to him was but ‘a natural mistake’ that the credibility of his proposed resolution is put in doubt, while by its very poetic power showing that transcendence of subjective experience is indeed possible. In the third of the Quartets we once again encounter such aethereal rumours, ‘At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial, / Is a voice descanting’ (‘The Dry Salvages’, III). This voice is indeed credited, but it goes beyond Bradley. In a philosophical article written as he prepared his dissertation Eliot had made clear his conviction of the need to do so. ‘Bradley’s . . . Absolute responds only to an imaginary demand of thought and satisfies only an imaginary demand of feeling. Pretending to be something which makes finite centres cohere, it turns out to be merely the assertion that they do. And this assertion is only true so far as we here and now find it to be so’ (1916, p. 570). As Moody aptly puts it: ‘He gave up philosophy, in 1916, because you cannot attain the Absolute simply by taking thought’ (1980, p. 76). For Eliot the way forward lay through poetry’s capacity to capture and enforce the immediacy and actuality of experience, exploring the possibilities of its authentic unification through testing any proposed patterning of experience against the lived reality. For a time the way seemed blocked, and The Waste Land displays the result: ‘On Margate Sands. / I can connect / Nothing with nothing.’ (lines 300–2) All the poet has is ‘fragments . . . shored against my ruins’ (line 430). It was re-opened by his engagement with the symboliste poet Valéry in whom Eliot found a kindred spirit and a model for philosophical poetry. Of La Cimetière Marin, he declared, ‘it has what I call the philosophic structure: an organization, not merely of successive responses to the situation, but of further responses to his own responses’; and of Valéry’s poetry more generally, ‘the approximation between the two modes . . ., the conceptual and the poetic, comes closer than in the work of any other poet’ (1985, p. 20). This offered the possibility of a contemporary form of unification of thought and feeling through a poetry with a ‘philosophic structure’ which allows reflective and comprehensive organizing of both the content and the quality of significant experiences or ‘responses’ that might otherwise be fragmentary and incommunicable, by actualizing the meaning perceived in experience as itself an immediate experience. In the words of ‘The Dry Salvages’ (II), ‘We had the experience but missed the meaning, / And approach to the meaning restores the experience / In a different form . . .’ By the time of Four Quartets Bradley had fallen into the background, and we find prefixed to them Heraclitus’ claim that it is not Bradley’s ‘outer world of experience’ but the logos that ‘is common to all’; the poems themselves


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seek to show that without this recognition (in which the logos of Heraclitus is united with that of the Fourth Evangelist) each is indeed ‘in his prison’ and what counts as understanding (to continue the epigraph) is merely ‘a private possession’. They aim to achieve this recognition, to make it experientially present and, at least in the later poems of the sequence, to do so through actualizing the meaning found in experience in such a way that it indeed becomes more than ‘the experience of one life only’ (‘The Dry Salvages’, II). Such a project presses urgently the problem of the relation between poetry and belief. In minimalist vein Eliot claimed that it is not necessary to believe what Dante believed in order to appreciate his poetry as poetry (1951, p. 258), and that ‘What poetry proves about any philosophy is merely its possibility for being lived . . . For poetry . . . is not the assertion that something is true, but the making of that truth more fully real to us: it is the creation of a sensuous embodiment’ (quoted in Moody, 1980, p. 362). Given the Bradleyan problem this is itself philosophically significant. But Eliot also pointed to a possibility beyond this. The term ‘understand’ he suggests is ambiguous. In one sense one can understand without believing. But in another sense, ‘if you yourself are convinced of a certain view of life, then you irresistibly and inevitably believe that if anyone else comes to “understand” it fully, his understanding must terminate in belief. It is possible, and sometimes necessary, to argue that full understanding must identify itself with full belief’ (1951, p. 270). ‘Full’ understanding of a view of life, presumably, involves a grasp of ‘its possibility for being lived’ and its being made ‘fully real to us’ – and so no doubt its openness to the developments of further awareness. In the case of the view of life pointed to by the Quartets belief is internally related to reverence and, ultimately, to love. Full understanding would thus involve recognition of these conceptual relations. This remarkably Dantean series of poems take their starting point in the erotic ‘heart of light’ experience of The Waste Land (lines 31–42). There joy turned to torment, the citation of Tristan und Isolde associating the poem’s deepest moment of mutuality with the artifice of a love potion. In the opening movement of ‘Burnt Norton’, the first Quartet, the experience in the rose-garden again leads to loss, but now it is unclear whether it is simply chimerical or points to an elusive reality. It is the work of the poetic sequence to render imaginatively compelling the possibility of moving from the disappointment of The Waste Land: ‘Quick now, here, now, always – / Ridiculous the waste sad time / Stretching before and after’ (the final words of ‘Burnt Norton’), to the positive final movement of the concluding poem, ‘Little Gidding’: ‘Quick now, here, now, always – / A condition

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of complete simplicity / (Costing not less than everything)’. And opening the coda to the depiction of this condition we have a haunting invocation from The Cloud of Unknowing, in which a soul is oned with God: ‘With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling’; through responding to the calling of the divine love, the sensuous rose of ‘Burnt Norton’ is united with Dante’s spiritual rose of the conclusion, where ‘the rose and the fire are one’. The imaginative quest for the possibility of authentic concern for each other’s inwardness, as seems to be demanded by that tradition of love I have sketched, ultimately pushes the poet back to a version of the Heraclitean logos, common to all but transcending each, envisaged in Johannine terms as calling each one of us to be united with it in love.

Love and Transcendence The metaphysics of the ‘authorities’ evoked in ‘Burnt Norton’, among them Heraclitus, Plato and Aristotle, are not identical or even compatible, which suggests that the poetry is not concerned to endorse any particular philosophical articulation, but rather to evoke forms of experience for the understanding of which different philosophers provide rival forms of intellectual framework. To the extent that these diverse forms of our intellectual inheritance all variously point to a transcendent Logos, are in various non-pejorative ways ‘logocentric’, the Erhebung of ‘Burnt Norton’ is confirmed in its aspiration to a universal significance but, reciprocally, we are invited to interpret and ‘place’ the rival metaphysics in the light of what the poetic sequence has shown us through its own ‘musical’ searching of experience, its poetic phenomenology. The proposal of the first section of this chapter is that we should do something rather similar with our experience of that ‘absolute regard’ (Farrer) we have learnt to call ‘love’ (Mitchell), universally due to our neighbours but at its richest involving deep forms of mutuality of which The Waste Land almost despaired, where the regard is primarily for the person rather than for his or her specifiable empirical properties. In contemporary philosophy the work of Raimond Gaita has been as significant as any in pressing the claims of the concept of unconditional love as the fulcrum round which understanding of our ethical relationships should turn, shedding an instructive light on the proposal. In a brief account which has become something of a classic, he tells of his experience working on a psychiatric ward for patients who ‘appeared to have irretrievably lost everything which gives meaning to our lives’, lacking any qualities for


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which we could admire them without condescension. A few of their psychiatrists nevertheless worked devotedly to improve their condition, speaking ‘against all appearances, of the inalienable dignity of even these patients’, but they were not able ‘to make [the patients’] humanity visible’. One day a nun came to the ward and everything in her demeanour towards them . . . contrasted with and showed up the behaviour of those noble psychiatrists. She showed that they were, despite their best efforts, condescending, as I too had been. She thereby revealed that even such patients were, as the psychiatrists and I had sincerely and generously professed, the equals of those who wanted to help them; but she also revealed that in our hearts we did not believe this . . . Her behaviour was striking not for the virtues it expressed, or even for the good it achieved, but for its power to reveal the full humanity of those whose affliction had made their humanity invisible. Love is the name we give to such behaviour. (Gaita, 2002, pp. 17–20)

Gaita cites with approval Simone Weil’s contention that those so afflicted ‘depend on the love of saints to make their humanity visible’, and the contrast between the nun and the psychiatrists may remind us of that of ‘The Dry Salvages’ (V) between the apprehension which is ‘an occupation for the saint – / No occupation either, but something given / And taken, in a lifetime’s death in love’, whereas ‘For most of us, there is only the unattended / Moment’ – in this case, perhaps, the moment of the nun’s visit to which Gaita has been seeking to attend ever since. He concedes that the nun may have believed that ‘the patients with whom she dealt were all God’s children and equally loved by Him’, but insists that ‘one need not believe [this] or substitute any other metaphysical story in its place to be certain about the revelatory quality of her behaviour’. His point is that the concept of a mistake can get no foothold in seeing her behaviour as revelatory, whereas it certainly can with any metaphysical or religious claim. ‘The quality of her love proved that [the patients] are rightly the objects of our non-condescending treatment, that we should do all in our power to respond in that way’; nevertheless, ‘from the point of view of the speculative intelligence . . . I am going around in ever darkening circles, because I allow for no independent justification of her attitude’ (2002, pp. 20–2). But perhaps the darkening circles are related to the ‘mare’s nest’ that Farrer was concerned to avoid through substituting ‘persuasions’ for demonstrations and eschewing justifications for particular ethical judgements. Farrer was concerned to make sense of ‘absolute regard’ as Gaita is of ‘love of such purity’; Farrer found it ‘intolerable’ to make an issue of the

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question of whether it is good that we should care for others, as Gaita dismisses any suggestion that it might be a mistake to see the nun’s behaviour as revealing that the patients share our common humanity. For Farrer and Mitchell it is not a matter of seeking ‘independent justification’, but of how best to relate such certainties to Gaita’s ‘speculative intelligence’, somewhat as the Quartets were concerned to reconfigure metaphysical and religious language in the light of their own searching of experience. Eliot’s underlying model is a suggestive one, that of seeking to construe a text with only an imperfect command of the language in which it is written (Eliot, 1951, pp. 237–8). As one progresses linguistically one’s understanding becomes fuller, and eventually one may be in a position to construe the text almost as well as an educated and sensitive native speaker; and though in the case of poetry the range of acceptable interpretations may be open-ended, one’s understanding may be sufficient to distinguish between these and those which are clearly misconstruals. Since Heidegger we have become familiar with the application of this hermeneutic model to the interpretation of human experience more generally. No doubt here as elsewhere Eliot’s ‘full understanding’ is no more than a regulative ideal. As with a recalcitrant word or phrase, so with Farrer’s ‘regard’ or the love that transcends empirical properties of which McTaggart and Gaita variously write, we seek to understand items through locating them in networks of possibility; as in the linguistic case so in the religious or metaphysical, we have no guarantee that possibility represents actuality (this is the relevant force of Quine’s indeterminacy of translation doctrine), but we may have the best of, defeasible, reasons for believing our interpretation to be at least along the right lines. Such endeavours are not merely of speculative interest, for Gaita’s concern, regarding the nun’s behaviour, that ‘we should do all in our power to respond in that way’ raises with some force the issue of what sorts of imaginative, intellectual and emotional formation facilitate, though never enforce, such responses. Rejection of such ‘schools of love’ as those associated with the various traditions of eros and caritas may diminish our potential to respond as we should, yet to subject oneself to one for purely instrumental reasons would, one suspects, self-defeatingly place inauthenticity at the heart of any love so developed. Of course, even if the practical importance, and indeed plausibility, of this sort of approach is admitted, all sorts of problems still remain. Most immediately, if one were to follow Mitchell’s suggestion that ‘it is men’s capacity to love one another and to love God . . . that make men proper objects of respect,’ one might well ask what we are to make of Gaita’s patients.


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To the underlying challenge Mitchell offers what is, perhaps, the only tolerable Christian response: Problems still arise as to where the limits of humanity are to be drawn. Here we can only rely on the conviction that what is there to be saved God will save and, where there is doubt, treat with respect all who share the human form. (Mitchell, 1980, p. 134)

An injunction which, one suspects, may have been implicit in the nun’s spiritual formation – that she might, in the words of the Common Worship collect, ‘discern thy likeness in all thy children’. The traditions of theory and practice associated with caritas make sense of those forms of love which are of the person understood as transcending any specific history and empirical qualities. When we ask ourselves what sorts of controls are available here in distinguishing insight from fantasy, Mitchell offers a suggestive analogy. Eliot’s claim that a great artist partially creates the standards by which he or she is to be judged has had considerable critical impact. The thought is that great and innovative works of art characteristically emerge from traditions with which the artists are wrestling and, if successful, may come to be seen as transforming them, providing new ways of engaging with past works and even of seeing the world; ‘the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted’ (Eliot, 1951, p. 15). These readjustments provide new standards, which may indeed sometimes show that a new masterpiece is flawed, but not just for the old reasons. Mitchell suggests that something analogous can happen with moral understanding. In encountering a morally impressive individual, whether Socrates, Christ or Gaita’s nun, it may happen that the model, by its sheer impressiveness, demands our imitation and in doing so not merely develops, but radically revises, our previous notions about what is worth imitating. If such acceptance is not to be uncritical fanaticism it must be possible for us to justify it, although it is evidently not necessary, or possible, for us to justify it wholly in terms that were available to us before we encountered the new paradigm. (Mitchell, 1980, pp. 152–3)

If this analogy is along the right lines, it suggests that simply rejecting a ‘paradigm’ that has taken cultural hold may be a little like rejecting The Waste Land or Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring; of course one can do so, but unless the rejection takes account of the new critical or moral geometry in non-question-begging fashion it is an act of closing down

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one’s imagination, blinding one’s sensibility to real possibilities, and hence humanly diminishing. Such a diagnosis would fit very well Gaita’s resistance to speculation about whether the purity of the nun’s compassion was justified; if the speculative intelligence can make nothing of it then either one should accept her example, and seek to imitate it, while acknowledging that it presents an ‘affront to reason’ (Gaita, 2002, p. 22), or else seek to enrich what is to count as ‘reason’ or ‘speculative intelligence’. Similar considerations apply more generally to forms of love which are not ‘in respect of qualities’. But it is problematic to seek to imitate such examples while nevertheless insisting that they affront reason. Gaita (2002, p. 19) ponders on how the nun’s behaviour ‘should have, so wondrously, this power of revelation’, which should remind us that for Plato’s Socrates and for Aristotle ‘philosophy begins in wonder’, stimulating us with a desire for understanding. It is one thing to aspire to Keats’s negative capability, living in mysteries without any irritable reaching after fact and reason, but quite another to live what one recognizes as an affront to reason. On Aristotle’s account such puzzlement reveals to us our ignorance, and one philosophizes in order to escape it. Our problem is, perhaps, that our dominant models of what it is to philosophize are too impoverished to do justice to the phenomena, and here Pascal’s abductive strategy in defending the Christian tradition of Gaita’s nun may be relevant. His procedure involves presenting a series of observations of human life and challenging the reader to recognize their uncomfortable accuracy, representative nature, and apparent incoherence. There are also religious perceptions designed to fit in with these observations, so that we may be led to see how revelation completes our best fragmentary intimations in ways that satisfy the most deep-seated aspirations of our understanding and will. Thus far, one might think, the best that the procedure can deliver is culture-relative, but Pascal invites us to interrogate ‘all the religions of the world’ (Pascal, 1966, p. 76), and the context makes it clear that non-religious philosophies are included; any which fail to make sense of the full range of our apparently paradoxical experience are to be rejected. His claim that Christianity alone does this is of course based on a very restricted range of alternatives, but the procedure is open ended. It is similar to that of Eliot’s Quartets, where it is claimed that ‘The whole earth is our hospital’ (‘East Coker’, IV) and there is serious engagement with the Bhagavad-Gita which informs the final poems of the sequence. Peircean abduction is primarily a heuristic tool, suggesting what may be the case (the surprising fact, C, is observed; but if A were true, C would be a matter of course; hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true), but it suggests constraints as to what we should be looking for in


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seeking and ranking candidates for ‘A’, while if we can only find one place filler for ‘A’ then that greatly increases its plausibility. With the case in hand, the Dantean modulation of the tradition of caritas provides an immensely influential filler for ‘A’ with respect to the phenomenon of a love that transcends empirical qualities by seeing all human beings as beloved of God. Like any instantiation of a tradition, it is subject to challenge, development or reinvention but, if the analogy with Eliot’s recreation of standards is apposite, only in terms that take full account of what that modulation has to teach if we are not to be humanly diminished. Alternatively, one might challenge this tradition with another, but if such a challenge is to be credible it too will need to be articulated and interrogated in the light of the relevant phenomena. Further, if Farrer is right the latter go beyond the traditions of erotic and agapic love, for they include the apparent need for the availability of language with some form of transcendent reference if we are to make sense of due regard for our neighbour, Hampshire’s ‘rational basis for acting as if human life has a peculiar value, quite beyond the value of any other natural things’, a distinctive perception of our culture which has grown out of its Judaeo-Christian origins. If we are to retain such perceptions without at least implicit reference to an ‘ontology of the human’ involving some transcendent reference (Taylor, 1989, p. 5), it remains to be shown how this can be done.

Notes 1. Cf. also ibid., pp. 157–63. 2. Cf. Plotinus, 1956, VI.7.23; see also III.5.9. 3. The classic riposte to Nygren is Burnaby’s Amor Dei. See also John Rist’s claim (1964, pp. 79–80 and 204–7) that in both Plotinus and Origen we find a non-appetitive type of eros which will not fit Nygren’s model. Osborne (1994, chapters 3–4) indeed argues that the appetitive model does not even fit Plato’s account of eros, reading the Symposium as presenting an account in which eros causes desire rather than being motivated by it. 4. Cf. Mk 12.30–31, Lk. 10.27. 5. Cf. Pss. 42, 63. 6. An illuminating sorting out of the conceptual issues involved can be found in Adams, 1987. He endorses the traditional claim that ‘Christian love ought to be completely free of self-interested desire, but not completely free of self-concern’ (ibid., p. 185); he further argues that, as well as a benevolent desire for the good of the beloved, ‘one of the distinguishing characteristics of Agape is the kind of Eros that it includes’, this being a desire for relationship with the beloved ‘for its own sake’ (ibid., p. 190). See also Outka, 1972, and Oderberg, 2008.

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7. Curiously, although Nussbaum is happy to take into account later developments of the tradition in defending aspects of Dante’s social vision, she ignores such considerations in the main criticisms she presses with respect to Augustinian ‘shame’ at our ‘independence’ and Dante’s ‘image of Heaven as a place of self-sufficiency’ (Nussbaum, 2001, pp. 556, 590).

Bibliography Adams, R. M. (1987), ‘Pure love’, in his The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 174–92. Aquinas, T. (1964–1981), Summa Theologiae, 60 volumes, trans. T. Gilby et al. London and New York: Blackfriars, Eyre & Spottiswoode and McGraw-Hill. Aristotle (1984), The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, 2 volumes, ed. J. Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Augustine (1991), Confessions, trans. H. Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barr, J. (1987), ‘Words for love in biblical Greek’, in L. D. Hurst and N. T. Wright (eds), The Glory of Christ in the New Testament: Studies in Christology. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 3–18. Bradley, F. H. (1930), Appearance and Reality (ninth impression). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Burnaby, J. (1986), ‘Love’, in J. F. Childress and J. Macquarrie (eds), A New Dictionary of Christian Ethics. London: SCM Press, pp. 354–7. Burnaby, J. (2007), Amor Dei: A Study of the Religion of St. Augustine. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock. Butler, J. (1970), Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel and a Dissertation of the Nature of Virtue, ed. T. A. Roberts. London: SPCK. Cottingham, J. (2008), ‘The self, the good life and the transcendent’, in N. Athanassoulis and S. Vice (eds), The Moral Life: Essays in Honour of John Cottingham. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 231–74. Cranfield, C. E. B. (1957), ‘Love’, in A. Richardson (ed.), A Theological Word Book of the Bible. London: SCM Press, pp. 131–6. Dante, A. (1965), The Divine Comedy: Text with Translation in the Metre of the Original, trans. G. L. Bickersteth. Oxford: Blackwell. Dante, A. (2003), The Divine Comedy, trans. J. Ciardi. New York: New American Library. Duer, A. (2003), The Dialectics of Eros: From Plato to Dante. PhD Thesis, University of Warwick. Ekman, P. (1992), ‘An argument for basic emotions’. Cognition and Emotion, 6, 169–200. Eliot, T. S. (1916), ‘Leibniz’ monads and Bradley’s finite centres’. The Monist, XXVI.4, 566–76. Eliot, T. S. (1951), Selected Essays. London: Faber and Faber. Eliot, T. S. (1963), Collected Poems 1909–1962. London: Faber and Faber. Eliot, T. S. (1985), ‘Scylla and Charybdis’. Agenda, 23, 5–21. Farrer, A. (1957), ‘A starting-point for the philosophical examination of theological belief’, in B. Mitchell (ed.), Faith and Logic: Oxford Essays in Philosophical Theology. London: George Allen and Unwin, pp. 9–30.


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Farrer, A. (1972), Reflective Faith: Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. C. C. Conti. London: SPCK. Freud, S. (1963), Civilization and its Discontents (revised edn), trans. J. Riviere and J. Strachey. London: Hogarth Press. Gaita, R. (2002), A Common Humanity: Thinking About Love and Truth and Justice, London: Routledge. Hampshire, S. (1978), ‘Morality and pessimism’, in S. Hampshire (ed.), Public and Private Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–23. Kant, I. (1987), Critique of Judgment, trans. W. S. Pluhar. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Marion, J-L. (2002), Prolegomena to Charity, trans. S. E. Lewis. New York: Fordham University Press. McTaggart, J. (1921–1927), The Nature of Existence, 2 volumes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mitchell, B. (1980), Morality: Religious and Secular. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Moody, A. D. (1980), Thomas Stearns Eliot: Poet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Murdoch, I. (1967), Sartre: Romantic Rationalist. Glasgow: Fontana. Nussbaum, M. C. (2001), Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nygren, A. (1969), Agape and Eros, trans. P. S. Watson. New York: Harper and Row. Oderberg, D. S. (2008), ‘Self-love, love of neighbour, and impartiality’, in N. Athanassoulis and S. Vice (eds), The Moral Life: Essays in Honour of John Cottingham. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 58–84. Osborne, C. (1994), Eros Unveiled: Plato and the God of Love, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Outka, G. (1972), Agape: An Ethical Analysis, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Pascal, B. (1966), Pensées, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Plato (1986), Phaedrus, ed. and trans. C. J. Rowe. Warminster: Aris and Phillips. Plato (1998), Symposium, ed. and trans. C. J. Rowe. Oxford: Aris and Phillips. Plotinus (1956), The Enneads, trans. S. MacKenna and B. S. Page (third edn). London: Faber and Faber. Quell, G. and Stauffer (1949), Love: Bible Key Words, ed. G. Kittel, trans. J. R. Coates. London: Adam and Charles Black. Rist, J. M. (1964), Eros and Psyche: Studies in Plato, Plotinus and Origen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Sheffield, F. C. C. (2006), Plato’s Symposium: The Ethics of Desire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taylor, C. (1989), Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vlastos, G. (1981), ‘The individual as an object of love in Plato’, in his Platonic Studies (second edn). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 3–42. Williams, C. (1943), The Figure of Beatrice: A Study in Dante. London: Faber and Faber.

Chapter 8

Philosophy, Morality and the Self: Against Thinness Christopher Hamilton [A]ll is obscure that takes place in the mind. Virginia Woolf (2008, p. 71)

Moral philosophers talk about duty, obligation and imperatives; of welfare, utility and pleasure; of happiness, flourishing and well-being; of virtue, vice and character; of desire, emotion and need. These concepts are inescapable. Philosophers are right to talk about them and investigate them. But many philosophers at least give the impression that they think that these concepts – sometimes plus a few more; sometimes minus a few – are pretty much all we need to talk about the self in its daily transactions with itself and the world from a moral point of view. Yet I am sure that I am not the only philosopher to feel that this leaves out something terribly important, that this vocabulary is far too thin to get at the full reaches of the self in all of its endless forms of attraction to, and repulsion from, itself and the world. What, for example, of the concepts of an individual’s energy and vitality, style, manner and spirit? And how about an individual’s sensibility, temperament, pattern of moods, and turn or cast of mind? Then there is the unconscious, so fruitfully explored by psychoanalysts and many others, but largely ignored by philosophers. And again, there is what one might call an individual’s basic feeling for himself and for life, his life force, or vigour, or potency, his dynamism, vivacity or drive – or lack thereof. Here and there some of these notions are discussed, but they can hardly be said to be at the centre of moral philosophy. Perhaps I could put the point this way. The human soul is a fantastically subtle and sensitive instrument, and it is in a more or less permanent state of attraction to, and repulsion from, both itself and the world in ways that are extraordinarily obscure and elusive, even when, on the surface, they seem fairly easy of comprehension. Our inner life is made up of innumerable cross-currents and undertows that give us a sense of leading a pointful or decent life, and which contribute to our relations with one another. We are at pretty much every waking moment living in complex and subtle interaction with others, responding to their gestures and tone of voice, to the look in their eyes, to their manner and manners, to their way of dressing, to their facial expressions, to their style and so on. We live also

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in the same kind of interaction with the environment around us, responding to the weather, to smells, to the light cast at different times of the day, to the change of seasons, to cultivated and uncultivated land, to the look of buildings, roads and towns and so on. Our inner life is in state of continual flux, adjustment, readjustment, enquiry, attraction, revulsion, curiosity, concern, solicitude, defiance, acceptance and so on to all that we find about us. Most, if not all, of that escapes the vocabulary and conceptual repertoire of moral philosophy when it explores the inner life.1 Consider an example. In W. G. Sebald’s novel Die Ausgewanderten [The Emigrants], the narrator visits a graveyard in the town where the mother of a friend of his had grown up. Concerning one gravestone, of a woman he does not know, he writes: I was moved, in a way I knew I could never quite fathom, by the symbol of the writer’s quill on the stone of Friederike Halbleib, who departed this life on the 28 March 1912. I imagined her, pen in her hand, alone, bent breathlessly over her work; and now, as I write these lines, it feels as if I had lost her, and as if I could not get over the loss despite the many years that have passed since her departure. (2008, pp. 236–7; my translation)

This passage is deeply revelatory of the narrator’s sensibility, and is replete with meanings of – with a spirit of – loss, waste, death, melancholy and fellowship – human fellowship and the fellowship of those who write. It also expresses a deep mood on the narrator’s part – his mood, and a mood we might come to share. There is here an immensely subtle, almost wholly elusive movement of the soul, an incredible moment of stillness suffused with agitation, rebellion permeated by acceptance, anger contained within resignation. It could easily be – indeed, in the context of the novel is – a moment which reveals wholly the inner life of the narrator, the deepest springs of action and thought he possesses – or which possess him – and which expresses, as one might put it, a whole moral universe, a whole way in which things can matter to a human being and his sense of what he is doing. I think it is clear that very little, if anything, of what the narrator experiences here, and what we gain through reading of his response, could be captured in the type of vocabulary and style typical of moral philosophy. It might be said that this is because the response that Sebald’s narrator evinces is too personal, that it is a matter of something that he may not share with others and, indeed, that others cannot be expected to share. No doubt it is true that, in one way, this is a highly personal experience, since it takes place for this person at this time and place, and someone else may not react as he does in the same circumstances – though it is not at all clear

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why that should make it unfit for philosophical exploration. But in another way it is not personal at all, since it is clear that we each of us have experiences that are like this – that we can be moved in ways that we do not fully understand but which are deeply revelatory of the kind of person we are and of our moral sensibility. If philosophy is interested in what the moral life is, there is no obvious reason why it should not investigate such experiences. But that, in my view, is just the problem: moral philosophy is not really – not really – interested in how people actually are, even if it supposes to the contrary, as it usually does. As Bernard Williams has said, it is astonishing how much philosophy – especially moral philosophy – spends its time telling people what to feel (2006, p. 337) and, as he somewhat acidly puts it, trying to make the world safe for well-disposed people (1996, p. 52). It is, in general, more interested in telling people how they ought to be – according to this or that philosopher – than in how they already are. Moral philosophy is not, for example, interested in how people are in the way that Shakespeare is, so well brought out by George Orwell: [In Shakespeare there] is a sort of exuberance, a tendency to take – not so much pleasure, as simply an interest in the actual process of life . . . Even the irrelevancies that litter every one of his plays . . . are merely the products of excessive vitality. Shakespeare . . . loved the surface of the earth and the process of life – which . . . is not the same thing as wanting to have a good time and stay alive as long as possible. (1984, p. 419)

In speaking of him in this way, Orwell is, among other things, clearly trying to capture a sense of Shakespeare’s massive humanity – what George Steiner has called his ‘compendious being’ (1996, p. 540) – the sense in which there is something immensely capacious about him, about his response to life. Of course, Shakespeare is, without doubt, very rare in terms of the magnitude and nature of his response, which is why he is a permanent presence for us, but there are plenty of other thinkers and writers who share the same humanity, if in a more attenuated, though nonetheless immensely valuable, form. Yet it is striking, in my view, that there are very few moral philosophers – there is very little moral philosophy – about whom – about which – one can say that. As Hannah Arendt has remarked: ‘Nothing is perhaps more surprising in this world of ours than the almost infinite diversity of its appearances, the sheer entertainment value of its views, sounds, and smells, something that is hardly ever mentioned by the thinkers and philosophers’ (1971, p. 20). One aspect of philosophy’s lack of deep interest in how people actually are and in the surface and process of life comes out in its very impoverished


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conception of the body and of the way in which the body is profoundly revelatory of the soul – for the body is part of the surface of life. There is almost no living sense of the body of the kind we find in this comment of Virginia Woolf’s: All day, all night the body intervenes; blunts or sharpens, colours or discolours, turns to wax in the warmth of June, hardens to tallow in the murk of February. The creature can only gaze through the pane – smudged or rosy; it cannot separate off from the body like the sheath of a knife or the pod of a pea for a single instant; it must go through the whole unending process of changes, heat and cold, comfort and discomfort, hunger and satisfaction, health and illness. (2008, p. 101)

What philosophy lacks is any adequate sense of the way in which the soul is constantly troubled or clogged by the body, of the way in which the body constantly makes demands on the soul and renders it, as it were, turbid in various ways, as Woolf well brings out. It has no real sense of the way in which the body is the soul. And the most obvious way in which our attention is drawn to the relation between body and soul in this regard is through the experience of illness, but even here philosophy is inattentive, since it has, with one or two exceptions, little that is of interest to say about the profound experience of being ill. The moral agent, for example, that ubiquitous character who makes his appearance in so many of the stories that philosophers tell, is, to my knowledge, very rarely if ever ill and does not possess a body vulnerable to illness, even though it is obvious that these are central to the human condition. This may not be so surprising if we remind ourselves that this agent seems of indeterminate age and neither male nor female (or is he never female?). Yet a 15-year-old male is not very likely to have the same (moral) outlook as a 45-year-old female – to take one obvious contrast among many that are possible – and that would be, in part, because of the different embodied experience – experience of the body – of these different individuals. (I am, of course, asking about what would be a realistic account of the – or a – moral agent. It is, I am suggesting, far from clear that we have such an account in philosophy.) And the form of reflection which arguably has most to say about the soul’s relation to the body is sculpture, which has as one of its central aims an exploration of precisely the soul’s intense exposure to, and in, the body. It may not be a coincidence that there is very little philosophy of sculpture. In fact, philosophy does not even have much real sense of quite ordinary ways in which the body reveals the soul. Consider, for example, a scene in Henry James’s What Maisie Knew. Maisie is with her stepfather, Sir Claude, when her mother, Ida, suddenly appears. Sir Claude and Ida are estranged

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from one another, and the encounter is a moment of intense confusion. James describes Maisie’s view of the two adults: ‘Both her elders remained stiff as tall tumblers filled to the brim and held straight for fear of a spill’ (1987, p. 167). The fineness of the observation of the adults’ physical being reveals profoundly their inner state, as well as Maisie’s own intense sensitivity to her environment – and thus her inner life. James reminds us here, as he so often does, of the immense subtlety of our perceptions of, and responses to, those around us, and of the way in which all that depends so intimately upon our experience, and perception, of the body. It is a subtlety that escapes the vocabulary of moral philosophy, which simply does not have the finegrainedness necessary to capture such movements of the human soul and the way they are revealed in, so intimately bound up with, the body. Part of the problem for philosophy in this area is well suggested by another comment of Woolf’s: One can’t write directly about the soul. Looked at, it vanishes; but look at the ceiling, the Grizzle, at the cheaper beasts in the Zoo which are exposed to walkers in Regent’s Park, and the soul slips in. (Quoted in Auden, 1989, p. 415)

The difficulty for philosophy is that, in general, it aims for the explicit and the manifest. It is, officially at any rate, unfriendly towards metaphor, and it thus has a strong tendency towards being literal-minded and reductive. And since the soul, for the most part, cannot be spoken of directly, but, rather, needs metaphor and the like to be understood, it drops out, leaving the body. And because, as I have already suggested, philosophy has a poor understanding of the body, both body and soul become lost to an adequate understanding within philosophy. One way to put this point about the relation between the body and soul, and about philosophy’s ungenerosity towards metaphor, is to draw attention to the fact that it does not notice that it is often through metaphors drawn from the natural and built environment around us that we are able to describe and understand the soul. A fine example of the use of images of the natural and man-made environment being employed to describe the soul is to be found in Philip Larkin’s novel A Girl in Winter. The central character of this novel, Katherine Lind, has been living in London for some time, away from her home abroad. Working in a library, she is bored and lonely. Somehow or other she has been supposing that she will return to her former life. Then she suddenly grasps that even if her old life had been waiting for her, she no longer wanted to return to it. And truly she did not realize this for a long time. In strange


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surroundings one was bound to have strange thoughts, that perhaps did not go very deep: such fancies as this she dismissed as wish-fulfilment: since she could not go back, she did not want to. But as time passed she could not ignore it any more than she could have ignored a dislocated bone. Somehow, without knowing it, she had broken fresh ground. For she knew, now, that in most lives there had to come a break, when the past dropped away and the maturity it had enclosed for so long stood painfully upright. It came through death or disaster, or even through a loveaffair that with the best will in the world on both sides went wrong. Certainly there were people to whom it never came . . . But once the break was made, as though continually-trickling sand had caused a building to slip suddenly on its foundations so that perhaps one single ornament fell to the floor, life ceased to be a confused stumbling from one illumination to another, a series of unconnected clearings in a tropical forest, and became a flat landscape, wry and rather small, with a few unforgettable landmarks somewhat resembling a stretch of fenland, where an occasional dyke or a broken fence shows up for miles, and the sails of a mill turn all day long in the steady wind. (1975, p. 183)

It would be impossible to capture in the standard vocabulary of moral philosophy this profound experience because it just does not have the resources available to do so. Katherine’s elusive and subtle experience of her inner state in terms of a certain kind of landscape could not possibly be redescribed in terms of the concepts that the moral philosopher has at his or her disposal – and even if one went some way towards an account in such terms, they would draw all their real vitality and meaning by being brought into contact with the description they are trying to elucidate; the weight would be carried by the original metaphorical description. But that just leaves moral philosophy dumb in the face of such crucial human experience. I have already suggested that one reason why philosophy has an inadequate understanding of the inner life is because it is heavily invested in telling people how to be. But I think there is another reason, and we are invited into this way of looking at things by Iris Murdoch’s comment that it is always appropriate to ask of a philosopher what he is afraid of (1985, p. 72). She meant, I think, that any given philosopher will have his or her own particular fears, and I am sure she is right about that. But I think also that we might wonder whether the discourse of philosophy as such – at least in the area with which we are dealing here – is the expression of a fear. In fact, I suspect there are two fears here. The first, I want to suggest, is fear in the face of subjectivity. Philosophy has, in general, a very poor understanding of subjectivity – this is what I am arguing, of course. And one reason for this, I think, is that philosophers are, as a type, in flight from their subjectivity. What I have in mind is not that this or that philosopher

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flees in this way, but that the discourse of philosophy represents such a flight. Each of us is a confused and confusing mass, and mess, of need, longing, wish, despair, neurosis, fantasy, hope, dream, anxiety, disappointment, desire, reverie and much else. As Raymond Geuss has reminded us, ‘most human agents most of the time are weak, easily distracted, deeply conflicted, and confused’ (2008, p. 2). Everyone knows these things. To look inside can be painful. As Virginia Woolf said: ‘Confronted with the terrible spectre of themselves, the bravest are inclined to run away or shade their eyes’ (2008, p. 5). Perhaps a great deal, or even most, intellectual reflection aims to disguise the true nature of the self, but, in my view, the discourse of philosophy has made a speciality of this, and its thought about the self captures very little, if any, of what it is really like: from the works of most philosophers one would have the impression that the inner life is a great deal more clean-lined and ordered than is the case. But that discourse serves a purpose: it allows the philosopher to avert his gaze from within, and even, perhaps, to try to make his inner world more like the view of it that his theory tells him it already is. Perhaps it is even true, as Simon Critchley has suggested (2007, p. 99), that the philosopher is by temperament especially given to neurosis – is especially ill or sick – and thus has even more of a need than most to avert his gaze. (This would suggest a particular reason for philosophy’s inattention to illness.) And it is certainly true, as I have already noted, that philosophers are weak, as are all human beings, but that they need to be reminded of their weakness, as Michael McGhee points out (2000, pp. 8–10). As is well known, weakness often manifests itself in fantasies of control and omnipotence. This is why philosophers need to remember that their practice, as McGhee puts it, rides on an acknowledgement of their – of human – weakness. But that is an acknowledgement that is usually hidden from view. The second fear that is deeply characteristic of the philosopher as a type is a fear of not knowing. The philosopher is someone who has an extreme anxiety in the face of this fear. Keats said of his friend Dilke that he, Dilke, was someone who did not feel he had a personal identity unless he had made up his mind about everything, and that captures, I think, something of the philosopher’s temperament: when he investigates, he has to know, to arrive at a conclusion, and cannot rest in a sense of mystery. It is far from clear that Nietzsche was wrong when he said that there is something irritated in the philosopher’s temperament. Keats’s own ideal, which was to make up one’s mind about nothing at all and be, as he put it, a thoroughfare for all thoughts – this is his notion of negative capability – is very far removed from that of the philosopher – despite the noble exception of our Socratic-Platonic inheritance which is deeply aporetic, and the sceptical


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tradition, which has always remained marginal to philosophical practice. But the philosopher, in my view – and Keats said the same thing – can only really achieve this by ignoring that which makes for too much confusion and mystery, in other words, by being reductive. This is why it is that again and again one has the feeling – or, at any rate, I have the feeling – that, when one turns from philosophy to literature, life streams through the pages of the best novels, poems and plays, whereas in the works of philosophers it is largely stunted and held in check. Putting the point that way invites us into acknowledging the importance of keeping in view those features of an individual’s moral identity to which I drew attention when mentioning the notions of a person’s life force or dynamism or drive and the like. It should be obvious that these are features of a person that are deeply relevant when we are thinking about notions of well-being or leading a good life or finding life worthwhile. To be full of vitality or to live a life with drive and energy are clearly things which we have good reason to want, yet, oddly, philosophers pay little attention to them when thinking about human flourishing or well-being or happiness, notions that are usually understood these days, as they have traditionally been, largely in terms of the possession of the virtues. In fact, it may well be that philosophers who think in this way have reason to ignore those features of a person’s inner life which I am now discussing since it is obvious that they may well be only marginally hospitable to virtue itself: a person may be admirable, indeed, leading a kind of exemplary life, because he is full of get-up-and-go or a kind of thirst for life, yet it does not follow that he is completely morally admirable. One can put the point the other way round: a wholly morally admirable person – a virtuous person, if you like – might well be someone who is nonetheless lacking in any real dynamic energy, somehow insipid or unable to live with any real intensity. Again, someone’s virtue may well be paid for at the price of the depressing or suppressing of a dynamic, vital energy for life – in fact, I agree with Freud and Nietzsche that, to a greater or lesser extent, it always is – just as a certain dynamism may well be acquired at the cost of a loss of virtue, partial or complete. As I have said, these are uncomfortable thoughts for many moral philosophers, especially virtue theorists, who like to think that the best kind of life is a life of virtue. The truth, as it seems to me, is that if we pay attention to the richer concepts to which I have drawn attention in understanding the inner life, then we will see that things are more complicated than the virtue theorists wish to suppose. Looked at from one point of view, when one speaks of a person’s energy or dynamism and the like, what one is talking about is a particular form of what Jacques Berthoud has called ‘the instinctive egoism of every positive

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assertion of individual life’ (1978, p. 47). I have already said that this force may not be hospitable to virtue, and, indeed, probably never wholly is. Nonetheless, it is often the very energy that underlies much virtue and moral goodness, the egoistic force that animates and nourishes love, friendship, creative activity in various forms – artistic, scientific, sporting and so on – attachment to this or that noble or decent project, the desire to please, and the like. Indeed, without this egoistic energy, those things we value so much, such as love, would not be possible. As W. H. Auden said: ‘Every artist knows that the sources of his art are what Yeats called “the foul rag-and-bone-shop of the heart”, its lusts, its hatreds, its envies’ (1968, p. 118). What is true of the artist’s art is true also of the rest of the things we value in life. An excellent example of this kind of thing is to be found in C. S. Lewis’s wonderful little book A Grief Observed, in which he sought to come to terms with his agony at the death of his wife, whom he calls in the book ‘H’. What Lewis sees again and again in the book is the way in which his love for his wife was in many ways deeply egotistical. About a quarter of the way into his notes, for example, he writes: For the first time I have looked back and read these notes. They appal me. From the way I have been talking anyone would think that H’s death mattered chiefly for its effect on myself. Her point of view seems to have dropped out of sight. (1966, p. 16)

Again he worries that ‘[t]he notes [he has been making] have been about myself, and about H., and about God. In that order. The order and proportions exactly what they ought not to have been’ (ibid., p. 52). And: What sort of lover am I to think so much about my affliction and so much less about hers? Even the insane call, ‘Come back’, is all for my own sake. I never even raised the question whether such a return, if it were possible, would be good for her. I want her back as an ingredient in the restoration of my past. Could I have wished her anything worse? Having got once through death, to come back and then, at some later date, have all her dying to do over again? They call Stephen the first martyr. Hadn’t Lazarus the rawer deal? I begin to see. My love for H. was of much the same quality as my faith in God. I won’t exaggerate, though. Whether there was anything but imagination in the faith, or anything but egoism in the love, God knows. I don’t. There may have been a little more; especially in my love for H. (ibid., p. 36)

Yet, despite – or perhaps because of – his self-interrogation, no one could seriously doubt that Lewis loved his wife with a love that was deep and noble: that is obvious to anyone reading his book. Lewis himself no doubt


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thought – and not least because of his Christian faith – that his love would have been better had it been less egotistical. But this is not true, even if it is nonetheless true that his dissatisfaction with the egoism of his love was partly responsible for making it the inspiring and noble thing it was. The fact is that human love – the best kind of human love: real, full-blooded, profound and inspiring – is an egotistical thing: without that egoism it would not be the magnificent thing it is. The same may be said, as I have already suggested, for much else that we value in life. I used to think that last point I made – roughly speaking, that moral goodness is held in place by something that that very goodness wishes to deny – was obvious, as it was obvious to many, such as La Rochefoucauld and others, in the tradition of the great French moralistes, to Machiavelli, Mandeville, Nietzsche, Adorno, Lacan, Auden and no doubt to others. But very few people seem to accept it – at any rate, that is so if silence on the matter is to be taken as its rejection, since there is, for example, as far as I know, no acknowledgement of, or serious discussion of, the points I have been making in the work of those philosophers in the mainstream who reflect on the nature of the virtues. Of course, virtue theorists often grant that, as the thought is often put, the virtues benefit their possessor, and in that sense claim that there is a kind of egoism in being virtuous. But the thought that one gets something out of being virtuous is clearly not the same idea as the thought, which I am pressing, that the virtues are nourished by the vices (greed, envy, vanity, lust, hatred and so on) and that, therefore, the virtues and vices differ only in degree, that, as Nietzsche put the thought with respect to action, good deeds are sublimated evil ones, and evil deeds coarse good ones. There are, no doubt, many reasons for the lack of attention to the points I am making among those philosophers who reflect on the virtues. One is, I am sure, the inability clear-sightedly to see one’s own love, and one’s own desire for that which is good and decent, as being held in place by egoism, greed, vanity and the like. C. S. Lewis’s love for his wife brings that out clearly: his egotistical need of her was central to his love, but he could not see things that way and, indeed, as I have already suggested, his not being able to see things this way was probably part of what made his love the fine thing it was. There is a kind of double-mindedness here in morality, a way in which we cannot see things steadily and at the same time see them as they really are. More generally, there is in this area, among philosophers, and no doubt others, a desire not to see morality as resting on double-mindedness. I have already adverted to one form of this double-mindedness in the first-person case, but there are second- and third-person forms too. For example, when we educate children, we have good reason to be glad that our best efforts to make

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them completely morally good fail, since we know that various forms of envy, greed, vanity and the like stand one in good stead in life, stimulating people to much that is good and valuable. But we could never wish to encourage these in those we educate. I suspect that the truth is that, the self being what Freud says it was – that is, at origin, and always, to a greater or lesser extent, antisocial, sexually aggressive and narcissistic – we have to do pretty much all we can to educate children to be morally good, since we shall never succeed wholly in eradicating these from the soul. Yet, as I say, we can be glad of this, since, as long as they do not become overwhelming, they stimulate to life. If Murdoch is right that ‘our fantasies and reveries are not trivial and unimportant, they are profoundly connected with our energies and our ability to choose and act’ (1985, p. 84), as I am sure she is, then if one were to get rid of these fantasies and reveries completely one would come to a stop. This is why Hannah Arendt made the point that perfect or pure goodness is destructive of the world (1958, p. 77). The issue is not one of removing completely the egoism of the self, but of using it productively; it is not a matter of removing all fantasy and reverie, but these becoming forces that are at the very least not inhibiting of the self and at best nurturing of its better possibilities. Murdoch seems to assume that there is only one form of moral objectivity, namely, that in which the self is wholly free of egoism. Each self perfected in virtue would be just like each other on this account. But there are different forms of objectivity in morality: Dostoyevsky sees things as they are and so does D. H. Lawrence: but they do not agree with each other. Tolstoy is in touch with reality and so is Shakespeare, but they disagree with each other. There are many different truthful ways of looking at the world – many different truthful moral visions of the world – and these will reflect and express something of the peculiarities, needs and desires of individual personalities or temperaments, themselves far from being stripped down in Murdoch’s sense, but not objectionable for all that. There are, after all, ways and ways of being truthful and of not being fascinated by oneself – by one’s self. The concept of reality is much more complicated than (even) Murdoch supposes. A related though somewhat different way of thinking about the relation between virtue and egoism that I have been exploring – it is a way of thinking of it that clearly manifests the same spirit as my comments so far – was offered by Williams when he remarked that ‘[n]othing is more commonplace to us than that particular virtues not only coexist with, but carry with them, typical faults’ (2006, p. 44). I note in passing that, for all Williams’ claim that ‘nothing is more commonplace’ than such a thought, it remains one, nonetheless, far from what most virtue theorists wish to focus their attention upon. Be that as it may, we find examples of Williams’


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point everywhere: Wittgenstein’s immense integrity carried with it a certain blindness to human frailty and weakness; William Hazlitt’s impressive and vital energy was the very thing that led him often to be foolish, stubborn and unforgiving; Samuel Johnson’s depth and insight brought with them much arrogance and the desire to dominate; Kafka’s sensitivity rendered him incapable of certain ordinary forms of love and so on. Of course, you could reply: this is all very well, things are like that, but they ought not to be and we ought to seek for virtue which is not thus compromised (which is not the right word, as I have been arguing). Some philosophers even think that it is their job to stop the world being like that. But to respond in this way would be to miss the whole point of all that I am saying: human beings just are such that virtues bring with them weaknesses and vices. That is simply the way things are. Not to accept that is not to accept that life, at least in part. Of course, it goes without saying that one can wish to escape all that, and it may well be true that, in some sense, human beings cannot but long to be other than what they are – angels or animals. It may even be, as I have already intimated, that they would be much less impressive, including in their virtue, if they did not wish to be so much more than they are. As I have already said, it may not be possible to see reality both steadily and as it is – and that that makes up part of human greatness. That would be a way of saying, of course, that the human condition is irreducibly tragic – a view which I accept but which, I think, need not exclude, indeed, might invite one into, seeing the human condition as also deeply comic. But to pursue that thought would be a distraction in the present context.2 Of course, working in the background to all these thoughts is the powerful influence of Christianity which has always thought of moral goodness as utterly pure, something that is perhaps a reaction, among other things, to the recognition that the human mind is in many deep ways an inhospitable location for goodness, as Williams (ibid., p. 178) reminds us – itself an idea, as I have been implying, whose absence, or whose lack of emphasis, is notable in much moral philosophy, including in the work of those who think about the virtues. For example, it is clear that Christianity conceptualizes true love as wholly free of any egoism. And Christianity has the example of Jesus, who symbolizes pure love – though Christianity itself, in my view, has nearly always fought shy of this and made its peace with the world too easily. Socrates had his version in the claim that the good man cannot be harmed, because the only thing that matters – matters to him and really matters in itself – is being virtuous. If you think that, then I doubt any argument will dislodge that belief. But you cannot just say you think it and then live in such a way as to show that you really think other

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things matter, like material comfort or success. But that just brings out that, in one sense, no one does believe it literally, because no one could seriously believe that, say, bodily health does not matter. If someone says he believes that virtue is the only thing that matters, then he must mean that it is the only thing that really matters, and then everything will turn on what he takes really to mean here. The point about Jesus’ immensely impressive life is that he got about as close to not really caring as one can, and ended up on the cross. I think that that is what you ought to expect if you are not naïve and you really do try to believe that virtue is the only thing that really matters. Simone Weil, who is one of the very few individuals who have sought genuinely to live a Christlike life, would certainly have agreed, and she was willing to be destroyed by it. But I do not think that Weil – or Jesus for that matter – was wholly selfless, had no vanity or envy or greed. Jesus might symbolize pure goodness, but his psychology, insofar as we can reconstruct it, was a messier business: he often displayed what one might describe as a kind of magnificent egoism, as in Mary’s anointing of his feet with very costly nard (Jn 12.3–8). Even Jesus’ goodness was held in place by much which that goodness denied. One problem in this area in seeing these points is, I think, the fact that much philosophy lacks an adequate account of sublimation, of – in this case – the way in which psychological drives which we very much value, such as love, are, or contain, sublimated forms of drives we value less, such as vanity, which continue themselves to be present, but subtly dispersed, as Nietzsche put it, and are only with difficulty seen still to be there. Certainly there is, to my knowledge, no detailed account of sublimation in any of the virtue theorists. Actually, Simone Weil did make some remarks here and there which show that she had some thoughts about sublimation – as in, for example, her claim that sexual lust is really a desire for God’s goodness – though she certainly did not work out such a theory in any detail. This is because she had a strong tendency, as the Christian tradition has had more generally, as I have already said, to conceptualize its favoured moral notions as having a source outside of mundane reality. In any case, Weil had another reason to miss the importance of sublimation and thus the ways in which goodness is (in part) a sublimated form of that which it denies, which is that she developed a point of view on the soul according to which psychology turns out to be superficial – in a sense, she was not interested in psychology. Thus, she believed that there were laws that governed the movements of the soul directly analogous to the laws of physics that govern the behaviour of material objects. These laws, which, she said, we did not really understand, but in principle could, she thought of as laws of gravity. She often


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spoke also of force or power in this connection. I do not think that one has to agree with her claim (I have discussed it in Hamilton, 2005, 2008) that there is, as it were, a physics of the soul in order to accept the idea that, at some very deep level, psychological understanding of human beings becomes superficial. Weil is inviting us into an understanding of the self as, ultimately, mysterious. One way in which I would express my agreement with the idea that the self is a mystery – though there are other ways, as we have already seen Virginia Woolf suggest; they may not, in the end, be different – would be to advert to the way in which there is no one narrative of a human being’s life that reveals the meaning of that life. That is, there is no single narrative of a life that is privileged for revealing that meaning: the meaning is essentially contested, and there is always more than one narrative of a life which reveals the life under different aspects of meaning or as having a different meaning. There is a sense, then, in which who one is escapes one – and others – since there really is no answer to the question. The self is among the least well-known items in the world.3 I have in the back of my mind here, in making these remarks, an important essay by Susan Sontag on the films of Robert Bresson, an essay in which she explicitly draws on the work of Weil to understand Bresson’s films. She defends Bresson’s formalism, his emotional distance, by suggesting that the reason for it is that ‘all identification with characters, deeply conceived, is an impertinence – an affront to the mystery that is human action and the human heart’ (1966, p. 181). Later in the essay she says what Bresson is saying: ‘Why persons behave as they do is, ultimately, not to be understood (Psychology, precisely, does claim to understand)’ (ibid., p. 188). Philosophy is typically very impatient with such a way of speaking: it will tend to baulk at the idea that the self is a mystery, at those phrases ‘deeply conceived’ and ‘ultimately’, wanting these to be made clear, tractable to reason, something that can be defended as a thesis with argument, rather than gestured towards through art or one’s own experience of life. But they cannot be made amenable to the philosopher’s desire. Therefore, he or she will typically suspect that something vague and wishy-washy is being said, something that simply covers up a lack of understanding. No doubt it is true that for some purposes, perhaps many, such a way of speaking is inappropriate: it will hardly do in a court of law, for example. But I am sure that one can, say, through reflection on the more intimate events of one’s life, see the point of so speaking and that it is appropriate there: as when, to pick up Larkin’s earlier point, one is faced by death or disaster, or by the failure of a love affair that went wrong despite the best will in the world on both sides. It is in such moments that one is faced by

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the sense of the mystery of the self, of the way in which the meaning of all this seems elusive. In these remarks, I am saying nothing new: the same points were made long ago by St Augustine, especially in Book X of his Confessions, which is the locus classicus. Indeed, the effect of that book is to instil a sense of vertigo over the self, such is the brilliance of Augustine’s writing and his sense of what is at stake in all these things for one’s total vision of life. Again and again he comes back to the thought that ‘there is something of the human person which is unknown even to the “spirit of man which is in him” ’ (2008, p. 182). I myself cannot grasp the totality of what I am. Is the mind, then, too restricted to compass itself, so that we have to ask what is that element of itself which it fails to grasp? Surely that cannot be external to itself; it must be within the mind. How then can it fail to grasp it? This question moves me to great astonishment. (ibid., p. 187)

Of course, Augustine thinks that God knows him as he does not, cannot, know himself. This is not a view widely held among philosophers today, which is, in general, a deeply secular enterprise. But you do not have to accept Augustine’s view of God, or even believe in God at all, to accept the idea that the self is deeply unknown to itself. Indeed, Arendt suggested (1958, p. 185) that God is an idea to which we resort to explain our perplexity in the face of the self’s darkness to itself: if I am not the author of my life, as she puts the thought, then someone else must be because the alternative – that no one is – is unbearable. Perhaps it is that unbearability, along with the rejection of God, that makes modern philosophy so ill adapted to accept the mystery of the self. Be that as it may, it is, in my view, a deep loss to philosophy that it does not know what to do with the idea that the self is a mystery, because inattention to such an idea encourages philosophers to rush in too soon with a set of critical concepts that are, as I have been arguing, too crude to do justice to the self. So I could say that it is the very sense of the mystery of the self, bearing this mystery in mind, that is one route to opening up a space in which one might be able to find conceptual resources for understanding the self that do better justice to it than philosophy usually does. It is the very sense of the mystery of the self that allows us to see all the better the need for a richer vocabulary in this area. Another way to put the point – or a related point – about the danger of too precipitate a move towards speaking of the self is, I think, to remind the philosopher that, in speaking of the self, he is bound in the end to be evoking the form of his own subjectivity, which can easily be deformed in


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that very process. A bad theory of the self disables one from being able to see what one’s inwardness is, and it becomes an act of, at best, indifference, at worst, hostility – implicit or explicit, as the case may be – towards oneself and towards the other, the one who reads or hears what one says and is unable then to listen to his subjectivity because his mind is filled with concepts that cloud rather than enlighten. A sense of the mystery of the self invites one into thinking of what McGhee has drawn our attention to, or reminded us of, namely, the silence at the centre of the self, a silence that is there anyway and yet needs to be cultivated, a silence that, whether one knows it or not, influences profoundly one’s philosophical reflections, be it only in flight from it – which would, of course, be a way of influencing them by denying it. Thinking is, I am saying, too often about, and a form of, noise; which is another way of saying that it is not really thinking after all, or, at any rate, not the most helpful form of thinking. Almost everything in the way philosophy is practised militates against silence and against the virtues to which silence is hospitable: gentleness, tenderness, kindness, humility – unheroic virtues. Philosophy in its practice and in its usual conceptual repertoire for understanding the self – I have been suggesting that these nourish, or deform, each other in various ways – makes ordinary life seem much more heroic than it is, and there is something self-aggrandizing in that. That goes hand-in-hand with the deeply combative and confrontational way in which philosophy is so often conducted. One way in which one might think about thinking as noise is in terms of a notion that I have mentioned before, namely, that it is typical of philosophical discourse that the philosopher presents himself as one who knows. Robert Nozick remarked on this in saying that ‘the usual manner of presenting philosophical work puzzles me. Works of philosophy are written as though their authors believe them to be the absolutely final word on their subject’ (1974, p. xii). Nozick proposed to deal with this problem by indicating at various points in his own work where he had doubts – as it may be, through the use of footnotes. But that is clearly inadequate as a response, as he later came to appreciate. The issue here is really a matter of the style or manner of the thinking, or of the spirit that animates the thought. What gets lost in much philosophy is Wittgenstein’s sense that ‘[w]orking in philosophy . . . is really more working on oneself. On one’s own interpretation. On one’s way of seeing things. (And what one expects of them.)’ (1980, p. 47e). What gets lost is the sense that one does not know. Collingwood expressed a similar idea: Every piece of philosophical writing is primarily addressed by the writer to himself. Its purpose is not to select from among his thoughts those of which

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he is certain and to express those, but the very opposite: to fasten upon the difficulties and obscurities in which he finds himself involved, and try, if not to solve or remove them, at least to understand them better. (Quoted in Williams, 2006, p. 343)

That brings us up once more against the thought that in philosophical writing one’s own subjectivity is at stake, and that an impoverished account of subjectivity is likely to impoverish one’s own subjectivity. One’s own inner life is, after all, not something that is simply given: rather, it depends for what it is, at least in part, on the narrative account one gives of it. Each time one thinks about that life, one (partially) remakes it: one is not simply responding to something that is, as it were, inertly there. One way in which I would bring together these notions of the self and of philosophical thought – specifically, philosophical thought about the self – would be to say that, just as the narrative of one’s life, and thus any final account of the meaning of one’s life, escapes one, so too a philosophical text will be what it is partly because it cannot wholly say what it wants to say, that anything it says always gestures to something else which was part of what one really wanted to say – though one does not know precisely what that is. This is a thought one finds pre-eminently in Nietzsche, and suggests that philosophy is irreducibly about movement, and not about finding solutions to problems that would put an end to reflection. It is expressed in Arendt’s distinction between cognition and thought, the former having a definite aim, while the latter ‘has neither an end nor an aim outside itself, and . . . does not even produce results’ (1958, p. 170). Nietzsche captures this sense of philosophy through the deeply self-questioning, self-undermining quality of his work. Of course, no one can successfully imitate Nietzsche, and it would surely be a mistake to try. But, in my view, philosophy shows its most generous side when the philosopher seeks to find a style which evinces his puzzlement – even if, at the same time, he offers his own more or less formed views for consideration. Such an approach might, perhaps, help the philosopher better to explore the elusive nature of the self.4

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

I have taken this paragraph largely from Hamilton, 2001, pp. 11–12. I have tried to say something about it in Hamilton, 2009. Cf. Arendt, 1958, pp. 181–8. An earlier version of this chapter was given at the University of Prague in summer 2009, and I thank the participants at the conference for their comments on my work.


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Bibliography Arendt, H. (1958), The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Arendt, H. (1971), The Life of the Mind. New York: Harcourt Brace. Auden, W. H. (1968), Secondary Worlds. London: Faber and Faber. Auden, W. H. (1989), Forewords and Afterwords. New York: Vintage Books. Augustine (2008), Confessions, trans. H. Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Berthoud, J. (1978), Joseph Conrad: The Major Phase. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Critchley, S. (2007), On Humour. London: Routledge. Geuss, R. (2008), Philosophy and Real Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hamilton, C. (2001), Living Philosophy: Reflections on Life, Meaning and Morality. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hamilton, C. (2005), ‘Simone Weil’s “Human Personality”: Between the personal and the impersonal’. Harvard Theological Review, 98.2, 187–207. Hamilton, C. (2008), ‘Power, punishment and reconciliation in the political and social thought of Simone Weil’. European Journal of Social Theory, 11.3, 315–30. Hamilton, C. (2009), ‘Desire, tragedy and gladness’, in C. Hamilton et al. (eds), Facing Tragedies. Wien: LIT Verlag, pp. 45–58. James, H. (1987), What Maisie Knew. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Larkin, P. (1975), A Girl in Winter. London: Faber and Faber. Lewis, C. S. (1966), A Grief Observed. London: Faber and Faber. McGhee, M. (2000), Transformations of Mind. Philosophy as Spiritual Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Murdoch, I. (1985), The Sovereignty of Good. London: Ark. Nozick, R. (1974), Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Orwell, G. (1984), The Penguin Essays of George Orwell. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Sebald, W. G. (2008), Die Ausgewanderten. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. Sontag, S. (1966), Against Interpretation. New York, Picador. Steiner, G. (1996), ‘Tragedy, pure and simple’, in M. S. Silk (ed.), Tragedy and the Tragic. Greek Theatre and Beyond. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 534–46. Williams, B. (1996), ‘The Women of Trachis: Fictions, pessimism, tragedy’, in R. B. Louden and P. Schollmeier (eds), The Greeks and Us: Essays in Honor of Arthur W. H. Adkins. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 43–53. Williams, B. (2006), The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy, ed. M. Burnyeat. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1980), Culture and Value, trans. P. Winch. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Woolf, V. (2008), Selected Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 9

The Holy Doubt: Jack Kerouac and Postmodernism1 Joseph Carlisle

Suspicions abound within Anglo-American philosophy of religion in regard to postmodern thought. While the analytic practices of this strand of philosophy of religion have given rise to the capacity for clarified and critical analysis of religious beliefs and doctrines2, such a position also often forces philosophers of religion to become semi-apologists, defending or dismantling the logic of a certain religious tradition. Its framework of analysis has meant that different, alternative approaches and strategies have failed to get the attention they deserve.3 What is more, AngloAmerican philosophy of religion’s insistence on the analytic approach often means ignoring literary accounts of religiosity. Yet such literary accounts do help to demonstrate the complexities of faith, providing thick accounts of religious experience which can often be flattened out by analytic readings. At issue here are the tools and vocabulary needed to adequately account for the lived experience of religion; it is only by means of an appeal to literature (and Kerouac is my example) that moral and religious philosophy can come to terms with being-religious-in-theworld. This chapter will seek to draw postmodernism and literature into discussion with moral and religious philosophy in the hope of uncovering a religious imagination. The study will isolate the religious motifs within three of Jack Kerouac’s texts, in order to show how Kerouac articulates the complexities and ecstasies of religious belief. The goal is to highlight the benefits Kerouac’s motifs may have for the philosophy of religion and moral philosophy. To put anything into dialogue with ‘postmodernism’ is a problematic task: postmodernism contains no manifesto, no clear, uncontested definition, only a diverse selection of concerns and critiques which vary greatly from thinker to thinker. The aporia are multiplied by the fluidity of postmodern thought and the divergence of postmodern thinkers on how their critique should translate into action in the world. Thus, it is tempting to argue that if any word should be enclosed within the scare quotes so often used by postmodern thinkers, then perhaps it is the word ‘postmodern’ itself. Postmodern thought revolves around a series of motifs which we shall briefly describe. The first is signified by its very name: postmodernism sees

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its project as one of making a break with modern discourse. A persistent aspect of postmodern thought, then, is critique; witness much of postmodern thought emerging and flourishing in critical theory. Thus, postmodern thought is parasitic and symbiotic in its relationship to modernism, developing criticisms of dominant Western discourses. Succinctly, we may describe modernism as the interconnecting structures of thought developed in the West since the Enlightenment. Postmodern thought seeks not only to undermine modern epistemology, but also highlights its transformation, to signify its alterations and convulsions in the realms of the social, economic, political and philosophical. It is possible to point to a passage from Kerouac’s journals which articulates the sensibility behind many postmodern stances: But when the child grows up and learns that his father knows little more than the child himself, when the child seeks advice and meets with fumbling earnest human words; when the child seeks a way and finds that his father’s way is not enough; when the child is left cold with the realization that no one knows what to do – no one knows how to live, behave, judge, how to think, see, understand, no one knows, yet everyone tries fumblingly. (2006, p. 144)

The father represents modernism, with its reassuring Enlightenment metanarratives of progress and rational self-discovery, while the child represents postmodernism, with its suspicion that behind the confidence of modernism lies a lack of foundation and a set of aporia which remain unexplored. While this is both a rather simple reduction of the motives of postmodernism and also a rather speculative reading of the above passage, it certainly reveals some of the emotional stimuli that have given rise to postmodern thought. My thesis is that Kerouac goes beyond the wide-eyed confusion (and resultant cynicism) of the child to recover an affirmative mode of religious life crucial for developing a moral and a religious philosophy.

Kerouac: Caught between Two Modernities Kerouac first came to public attention with the success of his second novel On The Road (henceforth OR), which poetically retold his adventures travelling across America and eventually Mexico, with his friend and inspiration Neal Cassady. Even though it took 7 years to be published, the novel became a huge success, propelling Kerouac to fame as the ‘king of the Beat Generation’. Famously the myth emerged that Kerouac wrote the text in 3 weeks on a long stream of teletype paper in one long paragraph; however,

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Kerouac’s notebooks attest to many previous attempts at writing the novel and once it was submitted many alterations and edits were made. Indeed, one of the versions of OR would go on to become Visions Of Cody (henceforth VC), a deeply experimental text which used long discursive sketches of everyday life, imagined visions of Neal Cassady’s past, poetic meditations and excerpts of tape recordings. Also written contemporaneously with these texts were Kerouac’s various notebooks which would eventually be edited and published in 2006 under the title of The Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947–1954 (henceforth WW). The three works form a constellation of textual relationships and will be at the centre of the following analysis. In many ways, OR is a classic novel offering a clear narrative and a clear Romantic vision of the world emerging out of an individual’s quest for adventure. However, it also contains passages which disrupt such clarity and tell a more troubled story about the failure of quests for absolute truths and idealistic notions of freedom. VC is a powerfully postmodern text (avant la lettre); it is a fractured work which remained unpublishable during Kerouac’s lifetime. Finally, WW contains notes and thoughts taken directly from the period when Kerouac was writing these texts and helps expand on his underlying religiosity. Kerouac has often been dismissed as a writer whose image is more important that his work, yet this itself can be construed as a symptom of an emerging postmodernity. Through his fame as icon of the Beat Generation, his image or simulcrum replaces and erases the original, becoming more ‘real’ than its source. Hence, journalist David Halberstan is able to dismiss the work of Kerouac and the Beats because ‘their lives tended to be more important than their books’ (1993, p. 122). However, Kerouac’s status is rising within the academy (mainly through the championing of Ann Charters). Within the emerging field of Kerouac scholarship it is his relation to postmodern thought which is most contested. Ellen G. Friedman argues that ‘master narratives seem strangely more alive in the beats’ work than they do in the works of modernity’ (1993, p. 250). However, this chapter is in agreement with Ronna C. Johnson’s claim that Kerouac is ‘neither modernist ephebe nor postmodern innovator but luminal and transitional’ (2000, p. 24). Kerouac’s texts stand between the metanarratives of modernism and the fractured, playful, ironic motifs of the postmodern. His work exists between modernism and postmodernism. Yet, what is absolutely crucial to my present purposes is that at the centre of this conflicted corpus lies a real sense of divinity – a divinity that is both immanent and transcendent. This will be the first focus of the study. I will consider how the divine is immanentized through the Otherness

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of Cassady in whom Kerouac found friendship and a new model of individuality. We shall then turn to the transcendent reading of the divine which helps Kerouac maintain his sense of self – a sense of self that allows him to ground morality while remaining committed to critique, irony and suspicion. This notion of the divine is supplemented by a deep commitment to a mode-of-being which Kerouac famously names ‘Beat’. In opposition to the commercialization and parody of this crucial concept, this chapter will attempt to restore its theological nature.

The Divine: Immanent and Transcendent For Kerouac the divine is situated both within the world and outside it. This allows him to eschew many of the traditional problems of onto-theology. Although his religious imagination is erected on a strong Catholic tradition, Kerouac did not allow that tradition to dominate his religious narrative, although in later life he would return to a simplistic version of his family’s traditional faith. Instead of being restricted to one tradition Kerouac has a diverse notion of divinity. Postmodernism is also characterized by a concern for diversity over universality. This means it rejects not only the Cartesian quest for self-presence but also all other metanarratives of Western thought, such as Hegel’s philosophy of Spirit, Marx’s dialectical reading of history or any form of scientific absolutism. Postmodernism emphasizes that difference is vital to any ethical conception of the world and attempts to defend it from the totalizing discourses of modern culture. Kerouac uses a variety of religious sources to construct his model of divinity. When asked in an interview to whom he prayed Kerouac answered ‘I pray to my little brother, who died, and to my father, and to Buddha, and to Jesus Christ, and to the Virgin Mary’ (1959, p. 65). Kerouac’s understanding of faith, and to whom he prays, proceeds from his deceased immediate family (including his older brother who died when he was young and whose ‘saintly’ life was to have a great impact on his morality) to Buddha, Jesus and Mary. No one religious metanarrative is given precedence. In Mexico City Blues, Kerouac expands his constellation of divinity: I believe in the sweetness of Jesus And BuddhaI believe In St. Francis Avoloki

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Tesvara, The Saints Of the First Century India A D And Scholars Santivedan And Otherwise Santayanan Everywhere. (ibid., p. 15)

This poem bears witness to Kerouac’s commitment to plurality. He does not remain content with the metanarrative of Christianity, but is inspired by the visions of other religious traditions, especially those of Buddhism. Even more significant, however, is the additional fact that Kerouac’s God is located in the realms of doubt and uncertainty, in a void which rational discourse cannot access: One has to learn history and the stupid cause and effect to enter into an understanding of eternity so far as we may know it. Cause-and-effect is also a prurience of the mind and soul, because it pettishly demands surface answers to bottomless matters, though it is not for me to deny the right of men to build bridges over voids. But why walk on such a bridge; an elephant can do that; only a man can stare at the void and know it. (2006, p. 233)

Kerouac rejects the legitimating narrative of cause and effect, of origin and resolution; rather, he envisages a lack of certainty, a void of instant answers. However, while postmodernists sometimes employ a similar appeal to doubt and uncertainty in order to flatten out the world into the play of simulacra, Kerouac does not read the situation as revealing a lack of depth but rather an excess of depth. The depth he perceives, but cannot classify, is what he terms God – the one who ‘waits for us in bleak eternity’ (ibid.). Kerouac comes to terms with this depth by means of a religious reading of the world. This is built on a twofold understanding of the divine as, on the one hand, transcendent and breaking into the world through events, and, on the other hand, immanent. This second aspect is exemplified in Kerouac’s attitude to Cassady. Cassady’s Otherness is the Otherness of the divine itself. Yet, at first glance, Kerouac might be accused of precisely the opposite, of divesting Neal Cassady of any Otherness in OR. That is, it seems that in OR Dean Moriarty’s (Cassady’s) identity is projected onto him by the narrator, Sal Paradise (Kerouac). Dean is ‘a young jailkid shrouded in mystery’ he

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represents the ‘West’ and other ideals Sal has about America. And yet such a conception of Kerouac’s treatment of Cassady would be too superficial. Sal undercuts such seeming divestment of Otherness by admitting that his understanding of Dean is built on a ‘con,’ a pretence in which Dean plays the young rebel learning how to write from Sal, the wise writer. However, what is crucial is that this is not a rigid binary between modernity’s appropriation of all otherness into the same and postmodernity’s resigned acceptance of the insincerity and ultimately illegitimacy of all such acts of appropriation. In short, for Kerouac, this pretence does not exclude authenticity – and this is admitted by both Paradise and Moriarty: ‘He was conning me and I knew it . . . and he knew I knew it . . . but I didn’t care and we got along fine’ (2000, p. 6). It is precisely because such pretence does not prohibit sincerity that Dean’s main function in Kerouac’s texts is to offer an immanent vision of the divine through his Otherness. Following Levinas’ ethical philosophy, Dean’s face can be interpreted as the Other which disrupts the assumptions and foundations of Sal’s thinking (and therefore our thinking). Just as Kerouac sees divinity in the face of Dean, so Levinas states that ‘the dimension of the divine opens forth from the human face’ (1998, p. 78). In VC, Kerouac gives Cassady (this time under the pseudonym, Cody) a more expanded role as window to the divine, thereby undercutting Kerouac’s self assurance and stability, and pushing him out of the comfort zone of realism. Cody breaks that mechanism that forever transforms reality into the Same (Levinas, 1996, p. 12): It was as if he was a superhuman spirit walking, or that is racing in flesh sent down to earth to confound me not only in my actions but in my thoughts: wild, wild day I suddenly looked from myself to this strange angel from the other side. (2001, p. 342)

The divine as immanent in Cody points Kerouac away from his ego towards the truly Other – the first moment of real ethics. Kerouac attains ethics by means of the Otherness of Cassady. This is an essentially embodied mysticism recurring throughout OR, VC and WW. Neal Cassidy becomes a cipher through which spirituality emerges – a spirituality which is vital, sincere and corporeal. Towards the end of OR Dean is consumed with a new religiosity which is as self-assured as it is ecstatic: All this time Dean was tremendously excited about everything he saw, everything he talked about, every detail of every moment that passed. He was out of his mind with real belief. (2000, p. 108; emphasis added)

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For Dean, connection with the divine is total immersion in the universe; his faith lights up the world, fills it with a joy that demands attention and exclamation. There is almost a complete erasure of mediation in Dean’s transformation. He exists in the middle of a Face-to-Face encounter with the divine and this gives him an unshakeable conviction of its reality. The divine is immediately present. As he explains: ‘And of course no one can tell us there is no God’ (ibid.). Dean then goes to contend that after passing through all forms of abstraction, suspicion and structural criticism the human being must eventually return to an ethic of the divine: ‘We’ve passed through all forms. You remember, Sal, when I first came to New York and I wanted Chad King to teach me about Nietzsche. You see how long ago?’ (ibid.). Despite his awareness of the critique offered by a master of suspicion, a ‘founding father’ of postmodern thought, Dean remains assured that this world is a warm meaningful world: ‘Everything is fine, God exists, we know time. Everything since the Greeks has been predicted wrong. You can’t make it with geometry and geometrical systems of thinking’ (ibid.). This is absolutely crucial to what follows: not only is Kerouac’s literature established on an immediate divine vision, this vision provides his characters with the certainty necessary to dispel mere criticism and mere suspicion as childish and immature. The human who reaches maturity is the one who practices an ethics of the divine. The route to the divine is not through metaphysics neither is it through the critique of all metaphysics, rather it is in the very carnal reality of embodied existence that the divine is revealed: ‘ “It’s all this!” He wrapped his finger in his fist’ (ibid.). Dean makes a symbol for sexual intercourse: meaning is to be found in a form of intersubjectivity that entails risk, involves power, pleasure and desire – an immanent realm that is truly made flesh. Yet even Dean’s sexual symbol is not enough, even it cannot reveal the intense religiosity which Dean is trying to convey. He continues, ‘And not only that, but we both understand that I couldn’t have time to explain why I know God exists’ (ibid.). Dean’s language is unable to communicate his faith. Dean’s God is not an atomic fact, something graspable by language, rather, it possesses an ‘excess of meaning’ which Dean not only attempts to express in words and symbols but also in his physical behaviour, which is one of total captivation to the divine. The divine is therefore pushed out of the realm of language and is instead found in the face of the Other; indeed, it is found in the body and physicality of the Other. Kerouac sees divinity in the face of Cassady. ‘Dean’s rocky dogged face as ever bent over the dashlight with a bony purpose of its own’ (2000, p. 211). Dean’s singularity and otherness are not dissolved by the divine; they are charged by it becoming the sharp edge of a dynamic universe. Divinity and the significance of

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reality are now to be found in the smallest of movements and the subtlest of facial expressions: religion is not about propositional content; it is about the ambiguities of lived existence in the world – ambiguities which only a literature centred upon the capacities of bodies in interrelation could ever hope to convey. Moreover, Cody’s corporeal spiritualism impels him to respond to the world with an affirmative ‘yes!’. There is no deferral of meaning, nor even play – all there is is full, ecstatic embrace of what is, despite any theoretical doubts: ‘A thousands manifold yeses and that’s right’ (2001, p. 392). Cody insists, pace Derrida, that it is possible to be fully present to the moment. This is what Cody terms the ‘IT’ – a pure event outside language, a shared moment of communion: What is IT, Cody? I asked him that night. We’ll all know when he hits it – there it is! He’s got it – hear – see everybody rock? It’s the big moment of rapport all around. (ibid., p. 407)

This belief in the moment of revealed presence, which postmodernism so sternly denies, allows Kerouac to endorse a world capable of fully authentic love, not simply a love that is deferred but a love present to both the Self and to the Other; moreover, it is present to them both in communion. This has moral value because it builds bonds; it makes possible a redemptive affirmation of the world and the Other: ‘All realise they’ve got it, IT, they’re in time and alive together and everything’s alright, don’t worry about nothing, I love you’ (ibid., p. 409). Cassady as Dean/Cody goes beyond scepticism and beyond cynicism. He points to a divinized world which offers moments when ‘yes’ is the only appropriate response.

The Transcendent Divine Kerouac saw Cassady as the physical embodiment of the immanent Other. However, the transcendental Other, or in Derrida’s words ‘wholly Other’, is also present in Kerouac’s work. Kerouac does not make the mistake of transcendentalism by positing the other as his only source of the divine. This is because Kerouac sees Cassady as structured by sin as well as divinity. Thus, in VC a dialectic of Cassady as both good and evil emerges: he’s an angel, I’m his brother, that’s all. But enough of my greatest enemy – because while I saw him as an angel, a god etcetera, I also saw him as a devil, an old witch, even an old bitch from the start. (2001, p. 345–6)

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The Other is also flawed: this is what Kerouac adds to Levinas’ description of the Other. Kerouac warns that to invoke the Other might be more problematic than it is helpful: it could be a ‘fix,’ or an idol onto which the burdens of the Self are passed. Having a belief in something transcendent which is not situated in the Other is not just a criticism Kerouac unknowingly makes of Levinas, it also has value for moral philosophy in general, because it forms a ground upon which the self can be sustained after critique and an age of suspicion. Yet, once again, it is not that Kerouac merely opposes postmodernism here, for he also agrees with their critique of the integral self. Throughout his texts, there can be found gestures towards the decentring of the self, where the self is fractured, duplicitous and prone to disappearance: I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that once distinct time in my life, the strangest moment all, when I didn’t know who I was . . . I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of the ghost. (2000, p. 15)

Here the self is shown to be inherently unstable, the ego is not fixed for Sal but capable of disappearance or replacement. However, absolutely crucially, the I remains (or rather an I remains) to notice this loss. While the self is decentred, some I-ness remains intact. The decentering of the self requires a first-person point of view on the process. As Kerouac phrases it in his diaries: ‘It’s hard to really understand the tremendous sense of self that people have because to understand it completely, is to leave one’s self’ (2006, p. 35). The self is a lie, but it ‘may be a necessary lie’ (Eaglestone, 1997, p. 81). How then is the paradox of a self without self to be solved? The transcendent may offer one answer: it might provide a foundation for the self and the other that does not rely on dishonesty. Lack of a self is extremely dangerous for moral relations, because it makes it impossible to say whether, instead, human relations are only a set of fluctuating transient relations without genuine shape or character. Such a model is not a secure basis for moral action. To counter this, Kerouac posits a transcendent aspect of the divine which calls the self into fellowship and responsibility with the other. The divine saves morality once more: At the junction of the state line of Colorado, its arid western one, and the state line of poor Utah I saw in the clouds huge and massed above the fiery golden desert of eveningfall the great image of God with forefinger pointed straight at me through halos and rolls and gold folds that were like the existence of the gleaming spear in His right hand, and sayeth, Go thou across the ground; go moan for man; go moan, go groan, go groan alone go roll your

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bones, alone; go thou and be little beneath my sight; go thou and be minute and as seed in the pod, but the pod the pit, world a Pod, Universe a Pit; go thou, go thou, die hence; and of Cody report you well and truly. (2001, p. 342)

God is revealed through nature; however, this is God in his traditional patriarchal form, commanding Kerouac to accept his temporality. Hence the negative element of God, her abyss, is signified in the passage’s emphasis of the smallness of Kerouac, how he is to ‘be little beneath my sight’. Yet, on the other hand, he is also given a role as the ‘great rememberer’. Kerouac must attend to the Other and of ‘Cody report you well and truly’. The ambiguities of life are not shattered by his religious encounter but rather the ambiguities are found to be a source of meaning and an ontological condition. It is Kerouac’s duty to ‘moan for man’. It is in this intense state of estrangement that Kerouac is consumed with grace for the Other. Divinity once more does not annihilate ambiguity and suspicion, but makes it possible, and yet it makes it possible as something to be affirmed and celebrated, not treated with fear or cynicism. All this is to be contrasted therefore with the postmodern ethic of the Other which is grounded in a vacuum, in constant deferral of meaning which offers no mediating form or connection. Kerouac does not merely wallow in irony, he calls for a new mode-of-being which is oriented towards humility and attentiveness. This new mode-of-being he names ‘Beat’.

‘Beat’: A Semantic Innovation The concept Beat is central to Kerouac’s religious sensibility; it is an essentially theological concept. Kerouac appropriated the term from his friend Herbert Huncke whose drug addiction and proximity to the transgressives on the fringes of New York society gave him a mode of being-in-the-world which Kerouac found authentic and religiously powerful: The hipsters, whose music was bop, they looked like criminals but they kept talking about the same things I liked, long outlines of personal experience and vision, nightlong confessions full of hope that had become illicit and repressed by War, stirrings, rumblings of a new soul (that same old human soul). And so Huncke appeared to us and said ‘I’m beat’ with radiant light shining out of his despairing eyes. (1995, p. 443)

In Huncke, Kerouac felt he had found an authentic ‘fellaheen’ (a label taken from Oswald Spengler, who argued the ‘fellaheens’ would be the bringers of a new culture, due to their outsider status and their lack of

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contamination from decadent Western culture (1928, p. 186)). Huncke is a fellaheen due to his liminal ambiguity, and he will, according to Kerouac, shake America out of its addiction to metanarratives of power and consumption. Fellow Beat writer John Clellon Holmes describes such shaking as a form of kenosis: Beat means not so much weariness, as rawness of the nerves; not so much being ‘filled up to here,’ as being emptied out. It describes a state of mind from which all unessentials have been stripped, leaving it receptive to everything around it, but impatient with trivial obstructions. To be Beat is to be at the bottom of your personality, looking up. (1979, p. 369)

The values which Kerouac read as authentic (such as spontaneity and freedom) had been rejected or disfigured to serve an ideology – a false, cultural ideology, demonizing the USSR. All the values rejected by this problematic ideology were pushed onto the streets and so became represented by the social rejects, the ‘beaten down’. It is to these beaten individuals and communities that Kerouac looks for orientation and for new alternatives for reality: I mean, being right down to it, to ourselves, because we all really know who we are, and a wariness with all the forms, all the conventions of the world . . . It’s something like that. So I guess you might say we’re a beat generation. (1995, p. 231)

Hence, the subject is Beat because she is on the receiving end of the metanarrative of American consumerism, is not enamoured by its offers and instead, is shaken by it and is wrought low enough to engage with the divine. The collapse of metanaratives, rather than simply revealing an horizontal plane of play (as Derrida implies), actually reveals the transcendent as that which is not graspable by any narrative: ‘The late-day glow reveals the original concerns again, reveals a beatific indifference to all things that are Caesar’s . . . a yearning for, a regret for, the transcendent value, or God’ (ibid., p. 561). A new community emerges, one not lost in the machinations of power. Rather, this is a community which is rational, spiritual and poetic. A communitas will emerge from the Beat of society: I’m going to write ceaselessly about the dignity of human beings no matter who and or what they are, and the less dignity a person has the fewer words I’ll use. It’s the sheer humanness of a man which comes first, whether geek, fag, ‘Negro,’ or criminal . . . I don’t care who or what – and that I should have cared before is an insult to Dostoevsky, Mellvile, Jesus and my fathers. (2006, p. 56)

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Jesus is grouped with other literary sources, but also with Kerouac’s ‘fathers’ (i.e. his French-Canadian heritage). This is a list so defined by difference that it is tolerant of all forms of difference. OR and VC are explorations of, and quests for, this Beat orientation, a quest to find the people across America who live this Beat existence, not because they need saving but because they offer a model of salvation. Beat, in describing this orientation, becomes a multilayered theological construct in which there is a ‘surplus of meaning’ (Ricoeur, 1976). So as well as Beat being the modus operandi of a ‘generation of crazy, illuminated hipsters suddenly rising and roaming America, serious, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere, ragged, beatific, beautiful in an ugly graceful new way’ (Kerouac, 1958, p. 32), it is also a prophesy, a vision of the rebirth of American culture through those outside of the meta-discourse of post-war America. Beat is a poetic or theological set of strategies which could break the structures of repression of modernism, ‘a new incantation’ (ibid., p. 33). However, as it is new, it is also fragile and must be protected from violent misreadings: Woe unto those who think that Beat Generation means crime, delinquency, immorality, amorality . . . woe unto those who don’t understand that America must, will, is changing, now for the better I say. Woe to those who believe in the atom bomb . . . who deny the most important of the ten Commandments . . . who don’t believe in the unbelievable sweetness of sex love . . . woe to those who are really dreary sinners that even God finds room to forgive . . . woe unto those who spit on the Beat Generation, the wind’ll blow it back. (Kerouac, 1995, pp. 572–3)

This is a castigation of what Kerouac sees as distortion and violence done to the concept of Beat. Hence, those who interpret Beat as a form of delinquency (a charge which came up repeatedly in conservative and mainstream critiques of Kerouac), in fact offer an erroneous image of Beat. Beat is a movement of compassion, a mode-of-being which is sympathetic. This is why ‘incantation’ is used to protect the concept of Beat from association with what Kerouac views as the greatest moral trespass – violence. ‘A routine murder took place in North Beach, they labelled it a Beat Generation slaying although in my childhood I’d be famous as an eccentric in my block for stopping younger kids from throwing rocks’ (ibid., p. 571–2). Kerouac’s abhorrence of violence stems from the words of his ‘saintly’ older brother Gerard. ‘I have never had anything to do with violence, hatred, cruelty, and all horrible nonsense which, nevertheless, because God is gracious beyond all human imagining, he will forgive in the long end’ (ibid., p. 572). Kerouac’s rejection of violence implies a call for

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justice, a justice which can be enacted now – unlike the justice which Derrida proposes. For Derrida deconstruction is justice (2002, p. 243). Justice is a normative ideal which is so total it cannot be deconstructed. Yet this exclusion from deconstruction means that justice becomes an overly opaque and undefined concept, greatly reducing its moral power in the world of action. Although Derrida envisages a moral faith, his unwillingness to determine it in any way makes it difficult to understand what justice or faith means for him or how they would influence his actions. This is the danger in Derrida’s philosophy of religion: ‘That undecidability threatens to turn into indecision’ (Benson, 2008, p. 237). Such an emphasis on undecidability is at the centre of Kerouac’s mistrust of academics or ‘thinking men’: He [the thinking man] seems to enjoy unsolvable dilemmas which are not challenged again – a kind of private mental masochism, a secret personal drama of knowing joylessness . . . The thinking man does not act on his judgements but lets them ride into space and disappear. He paralyzes his actions. He loves defeat. What he really deep-down thinks I can’t find out, he won’t tell me. He is not serious enough with me ever to truly tell me. (2006, p. 148)

Derrida is Kerouac’s ‘thinking man’: not serious enough to say what he truly feels about love, justice and hope. The moment calls for decision, not deferral: What’s your road, man? – holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road . . .? (2000, p. 229)

The moral agent must pick a road, and not simply point to the multiplicity of roads. Here Latour’s critique of Derrida is useful. Derrida remains within the linguistic; the world of material and physical objects is always left outside the text. Whether in discussions of justice (2002), nuclear war (2007) or Europe (1992), Derrida focuses on the linguistic and, while such analysis is illuminating, it also falls short: such readings are void of any allusion to the real, the practical and personal consequences of ethical concepts and concerns. While language is without a doubt a fundamental system of human thought, it is not the only form of reality. Kerouac persistently points towards the world, persistently demands that we venture out into this world. His emphasis on music, on the spontaneous and on the physical all point to strategies of overcoming linguistic myopia and to the fundamental fact that this itself is a moral task.

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Thus, postmodern ethics and politics are too vague, too discursive to offer any normative and practical guidelines for praxis. While Kerouac offers a poetics which emphasizes the instability of meaning, certain normative positions emerge from his work: the world is holy and demands celebration, yet this celebration is coupled with pacifism and humility. The orientation of Beat implies an openness to the Other, an acknowledgement of, and solidarity in, suffering that can form a non-metaphysical basis for morality.

Conclusions Kerouac challenges both the philosophy of religion and moral philosophy. Kerouac reveals to philosophy of religion the inconstancies of any approach which attempts to reduce religion to a set of logical arguments. Kerouac offers a God whom he makes supplications to, who lights up the world but refuses definition, a God who is both immanent and transcendent. Thus, for Kerouac faith is beset by doubt, faith is not the overcoming of doubt but its incorporation and supplication. Faith exists alongside doubt, faith remains faithful to doubt, it holds it as an act of humility Moral philosophy often reduces moral action to a series of propositions. Moral action may well be aided by such propositions but it is more complex than that. Narrative ethics help expand such models by building more complete and powerful descriptions. The work of Martha Nussbaum certainly shows the power of close readings of literature – so too here a close reading of literature has helped us move beyond the abstractions of much moral philosophy. Kerouac’s attention to the complexity of beingin-the-world develops a powerful analysis of the intellectual, emotional, memorial and social ambiguities of each situation. The greatest risk to moral action is a failure of imagination, and Kerouac stands here alongside postmodernism in his creative quest. Yet while much postmodernism stops at the bare acknowledgement of the other, Kerouac envisages a divine realm working within and behind the Other. Such a vision allows him to affirm certain normative positions – sincerity, spontaneity, love and nonviolence. Kerouac’s writing sets moral philosophy the task of listening to literature, so as to risk an account of the world as enmeshed in optimistic ambiguity. At the beginning of this chapter I used Kerouac’s metaphor of the child who realizes his father is not the epistemological certain ground he thought he was. However, in the next paragraph, Kerouac argues that this is not the

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place to stop – even though postmodern thought often prefers to stop at precisely this point in a state of detached cynicism. On the contrary, Kerouac goes on to hint at a divinity that exists in holy doubt: But the children and fathers should have a notion in their souls that there must be a way, an authority, a great knowledge, a vision, a view of life, a proper manner, a seemliness in all the disorder and sorrow of the world – that is God in men. That there should be something to turn to for advice is God – God is the ‘should-be’ in our souls. No matter if actually there is nothing that should be done, no matter if science shows us that we are natural animals and would do better living without ‘unnatural qualms,’ without inner stress without scruples or morals or vague trepidations, living like the animals we are, without guilt or horror – that we believe that there should be something, that we are guilty thereby is God. (2006, p. 144)

Notes 1. I would like to thank James Carter and Dan Whistler for their invaluable input and advice. 2. This is brilliantly demonstrated in Brian Clack’s chapter in this volume. 3. Consider, for example, the relative lack of phenomenology as a method of analysis in Anglo-American philosophy of religion (an exception to this is, of course, the work of Mark Wynn – see his chapter in this volume).

Bibliography Benson, B. E. (2008), ‘Continental philosophy of religion’, in P. Copan and C. Meister (eds), Philosophy of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Issues. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Derrida, J. (2002), ‘The force of law: The “mystical foundation” of authority’, in Acts of Religion. New York: Routledge. Eaglestone, R. (1997), Ethical Criticism: Reading after Levinas. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Friedman, E. G. (1993), ‘Where are the missing contents? Modernism, gender and the canon’. PMLA, 108.2, 240–252. Halberstam, D. (1993), The Fifties. New York: Villard. Holmes, J. C. (1979), ‘The philosophy of the Beat generation’, in J. Kerouac, On The Road: Text and Criticism. New York: Viking, pp. 360–76. Johnson, R, C. (2000) ‘ “You’re Putting Me on”: Jack Kerouac and the postmodern emergence’. College Literature, 27.1, 22–38. Kerouac, J. (1958), ‘About the Beat Generation’. Esquire Magazine, March. Kerouac, J. (1959), Mexico City Blues. New York: Grove. Kerouac, J. (1995), Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters, 1940–1956, ed. Ann Charters. New York: Viking.

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Kerouac, J. (2000), On the Road. London: Penguin. Kerouac, J. (2001), Visions of Cody. London: Flamingo. Kerouac, J. (2006), The Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947– 1954, ed. B. Douglas. London: Penguin. Levinas, E. (1996), Basic Philosophical Writings, ed. A. T. Peperzak et al. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Levinas, E. (1998), Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. A. Lingis. London: Kluwer. Ricoeur, P. (1976), Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University Press. Spengler, O. (1928), The Decline of the West, volume 2, trans. C. F. Atkinson. London: Allen and Unwin.


CLUSTER 4

The Vitality of Belief


Chapter 10

Religion in Its Material Context: Some Considerations Drawn from Contemporary Philosophies of Place Mark Wynn

Introduction It is a striking feature of contemporary philosophy of religion that it has shown very little interest in the significance of ‘place’ for an account of religious life. After all, many religious practices are very obviously place-relative, and any anthropological or sociological appreciation of the phenomena of religious life would very quickly have recourse to the relationship between religious beliefs and the character of the places in which they are realized or acted out. We might say the same of ethical theory: it too has paid little attention to questions of place, although sensitivity to ‘placial’ context is very obviously important for the question of how we should comport ourselves practically in moral and other terms. I shall say more about the case of ethics later, but let us begin by thinking about the bearing of questions of place on the philosophy of religion. Why should it be that philosophy of religion has not paid more attention to these questions? There are two reasons broadly speaking, I suggest. First of all, this neglect reflects the kinds of strategy that have been used to justify religious belief. First, there is the inferential strategy. For example, the regularity of the world in some respect may be taken as evidence of the purposes of a transcendent intelligence. Arguments of this kind do make some reference to the material order, but typically they focus upon some general or structural feature of the world: its orderliness in some respect, or its susceptibility to change, or whatever it may be. So the conceptual framework that is typical of these approaches tends to pass over the particularity of individual places. Secondly, philosophers of religion, and perhaps most famously the ‘reformed epistemologists’, have been interested in the possibility that God might be encountered directly in experience – so that religious belief comes to be justified or warranted in the way that our belief that there are tables and chairs in a room is justified, that is, not by way of any inferential argument, but instead ‘basically’ or foundationally.

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This sort of approach has quite often appealed to non-sensory experiences of God, and such experiences, if there be such, will simply bypass the material world. (See for instance William Alston’s concentration upon the case of ‘direct’ experience of God in his book Perceiving God (1991).) Moreover, when God is said to be perceived, or recognized, in the data which are supplied in some other kind of experience (rather than being identified in some non-sensory intuition), it is often moral experience which forms the focus of discussion, or some other kind of experience which is devoid of any obvious placial reference. So the bulk of discussion in recent epistemology of religion has not been very hospitable to the idea that knowledge of place might figure importantly in our knowledge of God. In addition – turning to the second point – philosophers of religion have tended to understand the idea of God’s ‘presence’ in the world in the terms supplied by the idea of divine omnipresence. Of course, the idea of God’s omnipresence is a deeply rooted commitment of all the major monotheistic traditions, and I am not proposing that this commitment should be compromised. But unless it is elaborated in the requisite ways, the idea of divine omnipresence can easily issue in the thought that God’s relationship to space is devoid of any differentiation, and this thought might in turn suggest that individual places cannot be of any fundamental importance for a person’s understanding of God or relationship to God. I suspect there is also a less philosophical reason for the neglect of the category of place in recent philosophy of religion. If we are thinking about these matters from a Christian point of view, then our perspective may well be conditioned by the particular Christian tradition within which we stand. And many of the most influential writers in the philosophy of religion in recent years have belonged to the reformed tradition, and this tradition is, famously, less involved in place-based religious practices than is, for example, the Roman Catholic tradition. From a Catholic perspective, pilgrimage, for instance, is a highly conspicuous and perfectly licit form of religious practice – and pilgrimage is very obviously a place-focused kind of activity. To put the point more broadly, the Catholic tradition is committed to what we might call, rather loosely, a sacramental conception of the world, and this conception is, I take it, rather more receptive to the idea that ‘place’ has a significant part to play in religious life and thought than are some alternative, non-sacramental conceptions of the material order. Anyway, I have said quite enough about the intellectual and social context for the neglect of place in recent philosophy of religion. More importantly, we might ask: what would a place-sensitive approach look like? How might it proceed? Which sources might it use?

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Knowledge of Place One obvious starting point would be the emerging literature in the ‘philosophy of place’. Central works in this literature include Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space (1958; first published in English translation in 1969), Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space (1974; first published in English in 1991) and Edward Casey’s Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World (1993). Also deserving of mention are Jeff Malpas’ Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography (1999), a work which is written in a rather more analytical mode, and Katya Mandoki’s essay ‘Sites of symbolic density: A relativistic approach to experienced place’, published in a 1998 collection on the philosophy of place. A recurring theme of this literature is the idea that, in the normal case, knowledge of place is not to be understood as a kind of inferential knowledge; and no more is it a case of simple observational knowledge. So drawing on these discussions, we might suppose that the standard approaches in religious epistemology have tended to work with an unduly restricted typology of kinds of knowledge: in addition to the kind of knowledge that is achieved, if it is achieved, in the traditional theistic proofs, and in addition to the kind of knowledge that is involved in religious experience on the usual construal of such experience (when it is understood basically as a matter simply of ‘looking’ at a divine object, or of ‘looking’ at a set of mundane phenomena and non-inferentially recognizing that they have their source in God), there is a further kind of knowledge, which is not inferential but is, equally, not just a matter of observation, because it is realized in an enacted, engaged relationship to some material context. Ordinary life is full of examples of such knowledge – and perhaps it is the very pervasiveness of such knowledge that prevents us from recognizing it more readily. Aristotle famously observed that the person of virtue is the one who can regulate their feelings appropriately – where this implies ‘having these feelings at the right times, about the right things, toward the right people, for the right end, and in the right way’ (2007, p. 678). We might add that the person of virtue is also the one who has these feelings in the right place. For the appropriateness of feelings can be assessed in these terms too. Indeed, we might see the capacity to have feelings in the right place as a kind of meta-capacity, one which holds these other capacities together. It is no good having a certain feeling ‘at the right time’ but at the wrong place; or to put the matter otherwise, it may be that what constitutes the right time (or the right way and so on) can only be specified in place-relative terms.

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It is also true that judgements about behaviour, including moral judgements about behaviour, are inherently place-relative. This is not least because one and the same stretch of behaviour can count as a variety of actions depending upon material context. To take a trivial example, my applying paint to a wall will count as one kind of action, and will have one kind of normative significance, when I am at home in my living room, and it will constitute another kind of action with another significance if I am daubing paint on the walls of a public building (assuming that I have not been given permission to do so by the relevant authorities!). So when we make our way through the world, we are all the time making judgements about the significance of the places in which we find ourselves, and adjusting our behaviour accordingly. There is no more basic way of orienting oneself in the world from a practical and affective point of view than this. And the kind of insight that guides our behaviour here is often enough not dependent upon any inference. I do not standardly look around a space, gather relevant data and then set about inferring what the significance of the space might be. (This sort of inferential approach is most likely to arise when a person is removed from their normal cultural context, and needs to reason towards certain insights that would otherwise be directly evident.) But neither is our grasp of place-relative significances standardly produced simply by looking, or viewing a scene neutrally. To the extent that this kind of insight is grounded in an observation of some kind, it will be embedded within a perceptual field which is already normatively structured, so that certain items in that field are assigned a degree of salience, while others are consigned to the periphery of our awareness. Much of the recent literature on the epistemic significance of emotional experience has been concerned with the character of this sort of insight. Suppose I see a large dog racing towards me, its teeth bared. If my faculties are functioning appropriately, I will not need to rely on any explicit inference of the form: this dog is large and its jaws powerful; it will soon be upon me; if it should sink its teeth into my flesh, I will experience a degree of discomfort; I had better move away or take some other kind of selfprotective action. Nor is my knowledge of what is to be done here rooted in some neutral perception of the scene. Instead, as I see the dog approach, I am likely to feel fear, and this fear is not just a matter of registering the scene neutrally, or thinking to myself ‘this dog is dangerous’, and at that point experiencing some twinge of feeling as a result. In other words, fear in this case is not to be construed simply as a thought plus a feeling which is consequent upon the thought, where the feeling is understood as a kind of thought-induced sensation. Rather the fear that I feel is, in standard


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cases, the primary mode of my recognition that I am potentially at risk and need to respond accordingly. So fear on this view is not a purely inward experience, or an experience simply of stomach-churning, for example. Instead, it is realized in a certain organization of the perceptual field – one which foregrounds the dog and its behaviours, and assigns a secondary importance to the colour of the linoleum floor on which I am standing. In standard cases, my fear will also involve some awareness, though not normally a focal awareness, of the tensing of my muscles, as my body makes ready for action. We have here, then, an integrated kind of intentionality, which involves some reckoning with the practical demands of a situation, and which is realized in a certain ordering of the perceptual field, and a correlative state of feeling and of bodily arousal. We might reasonably speak in this context of my knowing the dangers that are presented by the dog, and knowing what is to be done therefore. But this sort of knowledge is, manifestly, not of the kind that features in standard discussions in religious epistemology: it is not inferential, and it is not merely observational. It is, rather, an embodied, action-orienting, affectively infused, perception-structuring appreciation of the practical demands of a particular material context. Of course, the example of the dog is a rather dramatic one. When we make our way through the world from a practical point of view, and appreciate which behaviours are congruent with a given place, we are not ordinarily subject to such extremes of emotion! But we might reasonably say, nonetheless, that the kind of knowledge that arises here is, in the standard case, neither inferential nor merely observational. It is, rather, engaged – and bound up with, or realized in, a practical disposition of the body, and a correlative set of world-directed emotional feelings. It might be said: granted that there is such knowledge, and that it has not been of much interest to philosophers of religion, why should we suppose that it is of any relevance for the philosophy of religion? Let’s approach this question by turning to some of the phenomenological literature on the experience of sacred space.

Knowledge of Sacred Space The phenomenologists of sacred space tend to suppose that there are, broadly speaking, three ways in which particular places can acquire special religious significance, and they agree that these three kinds of significance recur across faith traditions (Barrie, 1996; Jones, 2000). First of all, unsurprisingly,

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places can be deemed religiously important because of their histories. Perhaps a place matters because of what happened there, in the life of a saint or holy person, or because of some miraculous event which once occurred there. Or perhaps a site comes to acquire special historical significance at one remove, because it is now the place where certain relics are preserved – here it is the history of the relics that matters in the first instance, and then the site as the place where those relics are lodged in the present. This sort of significance is of course also familiar from non-religious contexts. A rather striking example from recent years is provided by the debate which has been unfolding in the United States concerning what kind of building, for what kind of purpose, it would be appropriate to erect at the site of the 9/11 attacks. Smaller-scale examples are evident all around us, for instance, in the practice (familiar from the United Kingdom anyway) of marking the site of fatal traffic accidents with flowers. In these and many other ways, we find that places store up the significance of their histories, so that those histories exercise an enduring ethical claim, requiring those who are present at the site at later times to give due practical acknowledgement to what once happened there. A certain kind of empiricist is likely to find these practices of dubious rationality. Bruce Hood, a professor of psychology at the University of Bristol, has argued that our habit of assigning as we say a ‘sentimental significance’ to certain objects, such as a wedding ring, or a teddy bear, reflects a deep-seated tendency of the human mind which is connected to the propensity of religious believers to form superstitious beliefs.1 Opinions will differ on these matters. Suppose you discover that a jumper you have recently acquired was worn by a murderer at the time of the murder. Some might say, in the spirit of Professor Hood’s approach, that changing your attitude to the jumper on making this discovery is irrational: after all, the jumper has the same empirical properties of colour and feel and so on after the discovery as before it. But for most of us, the history of the jumper ought to shape our attitudes towards it. And for most of us, our knowledge of the jumper’s history will not just lead us to judge abstractly that we would rather not wear it, but will enter into the perceptual appearance of the jumper, so that we now, quite literally, see it differently. (Compare how the taste of some foodstuff can change once you know its source – as when you discover that what you are eating derives from the carcass of a favourite pet.) So a site’s history provides one way in which it can acquire a special religious significance. Most obviously, if this history involves events which are of religious significance, then the site will ‘catch’ some of that significance,


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and conserve it, so that it can then shape, quite properly, our practical choices in the present, when present at the site. Secondly, the literature on sacred space concurs that holy sites often exhibit special sensory qualities, especially qualities which pose a challenge to the body in some respect. For example, it may be that a sacred site is somewhat inaccessible, as when it is set on a mountain or island. In Britain, a number of the best-known sacred sites have this property. Lindisfarne, Iona and Mount Saint Michael are all set on islands. So none of them is the sort of place one is likely to arrive at simply in passing, en route to somewhere else. In each case, in normal circumstances, getting to the place depends therefore upon an explicit intention to go to this site in particular, and in each case, a degree of resolve is required, since it is necessary to leave, at least for a short time, the more established and better maintained thoroughfares. Other places may present a challenge to the body because of the need to traverse various thresholds, or because of their minimal lighting, or their scale. In all of these ways, the believer can be required to approach a sacred space with a degree of seriousness: such sites are not available for casual inspection. And in each case, the deployment of light and scale and, in general, the presentation of bodily challenge is designed, it would seem, to elicit in the believer a response of focused, reverential attentiveness. Of course, what precisely is signified by darkness, or by the scale of a building, will vary from one tradition to another, depending upon the concepts which a given tradition supplies for making sense of these things. But it is also true that such elemental features of our experience can have a relatively brute or theory-independent impact upon the senses, and the significance of the sacred space can therefore be communicated, to some extent, in these terms. Obviously, these various aspects of the sacred site signal that it is, among other things, a place set apart, removed from ‘profane’ space, and therefore requires of the believer a different set of attitudes and behaviours from those which befit everyday life. This second way in which places come to acquire special religious significance is evidently different from the first. On the second account, what matters is the sensory appearance of the place here and now. On the first account, what matters is what happened at the place in the past. The second account but not the first is consistent with the thought that a replica of a sacred place could carry just as much significance as the original place. It is worth noting that some Christian traditions are hostile to the idea that there is any sharp distinction between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’. These traditions tend to suppose that God is rendered present in our everyday social relations, especially when those relations are informed by the ideals

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of love and of justice.2 In fact, the construal of sacred places that I have just been presenting need not be flatly opposed to this perspective. What it seems to require is the thought that at the sacred place we can encounter certain values that are not so readily encountered elsewhere. But it does not require us to say that these values belong only at the sacred space, and have nothing to do with the way we comport ourselves in the world otherwise. It may be, for example, that one’s commitment to the ethical life, or some other set of everyday practices, is grounded in a sense of the nature of things that was initially or most compellingly disclosed at a sacred site. In this way, the values of the sacred site can infuse our appreciation of the world more broadly, and to this extent the sacred site need not stand in a sharply antithetical relation to ‘profane’ space. Lastly, the literature on sacred space suggests that places come to acquire special religious significance when they are considered as in some sense at the ‘centre’ of the world, or when they are thought to present a microcosm of reality. Here the thought seems to be that the sacred site has a representative function: it stands for the nature of reality more broadly, so that when we attune ourselves properly to the site, we can acquire thereby a sense of the significance not simply of this site, but of the human condition, and the human calling, more broadly defined. Evidently, this account also has a tendency to subvert any over-sharp distinction between sacred and profane space. Again, there are ready secular analogues for this sort of idea. If we review our past, most of us will find that our sense of the broader significance of our lives is keyed to our relationship to certain places. It is when at these places that we have felt most ‘at home’ in the world, or have felt most ‘ourselves’, and given opportunity, it is to such places that we return if we want to refresh our sense of the overall direction of our lives. These three accounts of the sacred meaning of particular places can of course inform one another. My knowledge of a place’s history can enter into the way in which it appears to me, so that phenomenologically it takes on a new significance for me. And the third account can easily provide a way of drawing out the sense of the first two: a place may come to assume a representative significance for me because of its history, or because of its sensory qualities.

Bringing the Accounts Together We got into this discussion of the phenomenology of sacred place because we were wondering how the kind of knowledge that typifies knowledge of place might be related to religious knowledge. Drawing on the three


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accounts we have just surveyed, we can see now how place-relative knowledge, realized in a relevant ordering of the perceptual field and so on, can indeed assume religious importance. Most obviously, the second of the approaches that I distinguished seems to depend upon the sort of place-relative knowledge that I was describing earlier in the chapter. To say that the meaning of a site is relative to the kind of challenge that it poses to the body, or to note that a site is structured so as to elicit a certain kind of bodily appropriation, is at least to imply that the kind of knowledge of place-relative meanings that arises here is not fundamentally inferential, or merely observational, but is instead realized in our active, embodied, engaged relationship to the site. This is the kind of knowledge that is achieved in an appropriate organization of the perceptual field, together with a correlative posture of the body and set of emotional feelings. When the believer responds to the shrine with a sense of hushed wonderment, for example, her apprehension of the meaning of the place is woven into certain feelings, together with a particular expressive posture of the body, and a correlative organization of the perceptual field. So we have found one way of linking the kind of knowledge that I have suggested is distinctive of knowledge of place, and one kind of religious knowledge. But a critic might still complain that the particular kind of religious knowledge which we have been discussing, knowledge of the sacred site, is after all a rather specialized kind of knowledge, important perhaps in traditional societies, but not of any great significance for the thought and practice of the contemporary believer who lives in an urban setting and who only occasionally, if at all, has any contact with ‘sacred sites’. Let’s consider this challenge now. I noted earlier that standard philosophical accounts of religious experience tend to proceed as though God were presented to the believer as a particular item of experience, and encountered rather as we encounter tables and chairs, albeit that God is revealed, when experienced directly, in a non-sensory kind of experience. This approach to the epistemology of religious experience is allied, I suggest, to a certain conception of God – namely, the thought of God as a kind of transcendent individual. But of course large swathes of the theological tradition have expressed, to say no more, a degree of reserve about this way of conceiving of God. Thomas Aquinas, for example, famously represents God as subsistent existence – which is to say that God is not to be conceived as a particular thing, which can be classified by kind (1964–1974, 1a.3.5; 1a.4.2). This philosophical perspective can be related to the ancient tradition of speaking of God, and specifically the second person of the Trinity, as the Logos, where the Logos is God’s agent in creation. To speak of God in these terms is to say that

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God is the meaning which infuses all things, which accounts for, and which just is, the ultimate significance of the material order. Some such perspective is also evident in the writings of contemporary Christian pastors. Consider, for example, John Paul II’s remark that ‘In the incarnation of the Son of God . . . the Whole lies hidden in the part’ (1998, section 12). Similarly, Rowan Williams, another philosophically literate Christian teacher, has written that talk of God ‘is structurally more like talking about some “grid” for the understanding of particular objects than talking about particular objects in themselves’ (1984, p. 15). Here again, we can see a concern to associate God with ‘the Whole’, or with a ‘grid’ in terms of which we can reckon with the significance of individual things, rather than thinking of God as simply another individual thing. So we have here, potentially, a difference concerning the concept of God, and a correlative difference in religious epistemology. On one view, God is to be conceived as a transcendent individual. On the other view, God is to be understood as a world-infusing meaning. This second perspective lends itself to a different account of the nature of religious experience. If God is the meaning of ‘the Whole’, then we might conclude that God can be known, at least sometimes, in our apprehension of the meaning of particular material contexts, where these contexts bear a representative significance, because they stand for, or body forth, the meaning of the wider context which is the cosmos or the created order in its entirety. The first of these approaches naturally issues in the standard conception of divine presence as omnipresence. How is a transcendent, non-material individual to be present within the creation? It is natural to respond: by virtue of its causal power, where this power extends to all places. And where, we might ask, is such an individual to be encountered? It is natural to reply: anywhere in principle, since its presence need not be mediated in material terms, and since it is after all equally present, in terms of its causal activity, in all places. The second approach, by contrast, lends itself much more directly to the idea that our relationship to particular places can be religiously important, given the variability in the capacity of places to bear a microcosmic significance. These two perspectives are not flatly opposed to one another. Indeed, it is not difficult to imagine someone wanting to affirm both: perhaps God is a transcendent intelligence, and in this sense an individual, and perhaps God is standardly known even so ‘sacramentally’, that is by way of our relationship to particular people and places. But while there is no strict logical opposition between the two ‘pictures’, it remains true that they tend to push our thinking in rather different directions.


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The reader will already have noticed that I am proposing to use the third of our models of sacred space to address the challenge which I posed just now: how might the kind of knowledge that is characteristic of sacred sites be relevant to an account of the nature of religious knowing more broadly defined? Let me try and develop that answer a little further. According to the third of our models, a site can acquire special religious meaning when it carries a representative significance – when it stands for the nature of things in general. We can align this approach with a certain tradition of thinking about God – namely, the tradition which has represented God not so much as an individual, but as a meaning which infuses the sum of things. Putting together these two themes, one drawn from the literature on sacred sites, and the other taken from theological tradition, we might say that a site can acquire special significance when its localized, place-relative meaning images a wider meaning which infuses the sum of things, since this latter sort of meaning will count as divine. Again, this approach generates a rather different model of religious experience from the one which has tended to prevail in the analytic philosophy of religion literature, which has typically thought of experience of God in terms of an encounter with a transcendent individual. Instead, we might say, we recognize the divine understood as a pervasive meaning which infuses ‘the Whole’ – or as a supra-individual ‘grid’ which enables us to assign a sense to individual things – when we non-inferentially recognize that meaning as bodied forth representatively in a localized, place-relative meaning. And in turn that localized, place-relative meaning is apprehended, we have reason to say, in an embodied, engaged, action-orienting, feeling-infused appropriation of the relevant site. Now, to move closer to our question, this sort of recognition of placerelative meanings is a pervasive feature of human life. Whenever we recognize how to conduct ourselves in a particular place, or grasp how a site shapes the significance that will attach to various behaviours, by constituting them as certain actions, then we have understood a place-relative meaning. It is for this reason, I suggest, that our account of sacred sites carries a broader significance. It is not only explicitly sacred sites, of the kind that are marked out by religious traditions, that afford us a knowledge of placerelative meanings. This sort of knowledge is a recurrent feature of our relationship to the world. And such knowledge is always capable, at least in principle, of opening out into a knowledge of God, when a place-relative meaning is assigned this wider representative significance. So the model we have been exploring need not imply some anti-Reformed bias, for example. It may be that a person’s sense of the larger meaning of things

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is mediated though their relationship to places that are quite unlike the sites described in the literature on sacred space. What matters, I suggest, is not so much that the place should have the particular qualities described in that literature – that it should be inaccessible, or associated with events in the life of a saint, or something of that kind. What matters, more fundamentally, is that the place should be the sort of place where we feel ‘at home’, or where we feel ‘ourselves’, or where we take ourselves to be attuned to what really counts in a human life. Such places, which may or may not be sacred sites in the conventional sense, can provide a window on to the meaning of the sum of things, and thereby they can mediate to a person some sense of the nature of the Logos. The account I have been sketching can be expressed concisely, using a vocabulary that has largely fallen out of use, by saying that in our relationship to particular places, we can encounter a localized genius loci, where this genius is the meaning of the place. This way of talking might sound rather ‘spooky’ or metaphysically speculative but, again, what is involved is an utterly familiar fact of everyday life. And God we might say can also be conceived as a genius loci, only in this case the relevant meaning will correspond, of course, to a particularly wide-reaching locus, namely the locus that is the world, or the created order in its entirety. So in brief, we can say that in encountering a localized genius loci, we can also encounter a divine meaning or genius mundi, in so far as we non-inferentially recognize this divine meaning in recognizing the localized, place-relative meaning. Again, the idea of such a relationship is not a matter simply of theoretical speculation, but corresponds to a familiar fact of experience. For most of us, there are places which carry this sort of representative significance, places which epitomize for us the significance of our own and the broader human life story. Unsurprisingly, these are often the places of childhood – for our sense of the world was first laid down here, and once established, such a sense of things is apt to shape the significance that we find in places and situations thereafter. This thought is confirmed, of course, by the strong emotional resonance that often attaches to the places of childhood.

Knowledge of Place and the Saintly Life This perspective upon the place-relative character of at least some forms of religious knowledge naturally points towards a place-relative account of the nature of the spiritual life, or the nature of saintliness. The saint we could say is the person who can take proper stock of localized, place-relative


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meanings, and who at the same time is sensitive to a particularly wideranging or encompassing meaning. In practice, this is likely to be a dialogical relationship: our sense of localized, place-relative meanings can help to shape our sense of the sum of things; but at the same time, our sense of the meaning of our ultimate context can help to shape the significance that we can find in localized contexts. Again, this sort of relationship is familiar from secular experience. Contexts are nested within each other, and the significance that we associate with further-reaching contexts can interact with the significance that we find in more immediate contexts. To take a simple example, my sense of how I should behave when on a beach in Devon may be relative not only to my sense of the character of this beach – its history and sensory qualities, for example – but also to my understanding of the larger context within which this beach is situated, where that context might include, for example, the fact that it is only here that a certain variety of shellfish can be found, so that picking up such creatures here turns out to be inappropriate given this larger context. So the saint is like the rest of us in grasping place-relative meanings, but the saint is distinctive in being especially responsive to a set of meanings that derive from our ultimate context, and in being able to bring those ultimate meanings into proper relationship with localized, place-relative meanings. The saint will of course construe the meaning of the world not just in the light of her own personal history, but also in terms of salvation history. On the Christian scheme, for example, her knowledge that God became incarnate will enter into her sense of the significance of the world. On this account, God’s agency, in relation to persons anyway, is not fundamentally a matter of God pushing us around as it were. Instead, that agency is transacted at the level of meaning. The saint comes to see which behaviours are congruent with the place which is the world by appreciating, among other things, its history, including here the story of what God has done in creation, reconciliation and redemption. It is in this way that divine action is able to govern human action. Given this account, we should say that the dispute between believers and non-believers is not best represented, or at any rate it is not solely to be represented, as a dispute concerning the cogency of certain inferential arguments, or the possibility and epistemic significance of certain special states of consciousness of the kind that we might associate with the idea of a supra-sensory encounter with God. Rather, this dispute has much more a practical and this-worldly reference. It is a dispute about the meanings which are to be encountered in places, and how those meanings are to be brought into relationship with one another, and which are to be taken as fundamentally normative. A disagreement of this kind will not be resolvable by

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appeal simply to the discursive intellect, or to some special faculty of non-sensory intuition. Instead, the whole person will need to be engaged, because such meanings require for their identification a commitment of the person in their intellectual-practical-affective integrity. Recent discussion in the philosophy of religion has quite often been dependent upon discussion in ethics. For example, our understanding of the role of the emotions in guiding normative thought was, for the most part, defined first of all in relation to ethical issues and only then applied to questions in the philosophy of religion. However, the understanding of practical decision making which I have just been sketching suggests that in reality, if not always in the order of enquiry, the philosophy of religion enjoys a certain priority over ethics. In general, we might say, actionguiding reasoning is concerned with the question of what behaviour is congruent with, or required by, a given context. Ethical reasoning is, clearly, one case of such reasoning. As traditionally conceived, it is that case which is concerned with human beings, and with their happiness, or their entitlement to be treated as ends and not merely as means and so on. But ethical reasoning so understood attends simply to some features, albeit some particularly important features, of a wider global or metaphysical context. So such reasoning is always open, in principle, to being relativized once it is inserted within a larger context, for as we have seen, the meanings which attach to localized contexts are nested within and conditioned by the meanings which attach to wider contexts. By contrast, actionguiding reasoning of a religious kind is defined by its attentiveness, ideally, to the meaning of our ultimate context. As Gerardus van der Leeuw (1938) has put the point, ‘the religious significance of things . . . is that on which no wider nor deeper meaning can follow. It is the meaning of the whole’. On this perspective, the person of ethical wisdom is sensitive to a relevant set of localized person-focused meanings, while the person of religious wisdom, the saint, is sensitive not only to these meanings but to the meaning of ‘the whole’, and to the relationship between this global meaning and localized meanings of the kind that are the concern of ethical understanding. Religious wisdom is, then, the more encompassing kind of understanding. We might wonder whether ethical theory, as standardly conceived, could be re-focused along these lines. In the first instance, it might pay closer attention to the role of ‘place’ in determining the appropriateness of certain feelings and behaviours, so that feelings, for example, are assessed not only in terms of their fittingness in time, and in respect of their object, but also in placial terms. And taking a further step, ethical theorists might also give clearer acknowledgement of the


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importance of questions of context in shaping the range of applicability of familiar ethical intuitions. We might wonder, for example, whether these intuitions depend for their validity upon certain, perhaps tacit, assumptions concerning the nature of our cosmological and metaphysical context.

Conclusion I began this chapter by noting that philosophers of religion have shown comparatively little interest in the place-relative character of much religious practice. I hope that the account which we have been exploring here provides some intimation of how we might make philosophical sense of a place-relative practice such as pilgrimage. On this account, pilgrimage need not be assigned a purely psychological significance. For instance, we need not follow the example of certain nineteenth-century Anglican pilgrims to Palestine by supposing that the point of the practice consists in its capacity to revivify our imaginations, so that we can, for example, bring the pages of scripture to new life, by reading them with a new appreciation of the appearance of the Palestine of Jesus’ time. (This is an interesting attempt to combine a place-relative religious practice with a determination to privilege scripture as the fundamental source for our knowledge of God.)3 Nor need we suppose that the significance of the practice is at root ‘metaphysical’ in the sense that it depends for its point upon the expectation that God will work miracles at the pilgrimage site – most obviously perhaps, miracles of healing. Rather than thinking of the meaning of pilgrimage practice as exhausted by these psychological and metaphysical kinds of reading, we might suppose that its sense is relative to, among other things, a site’s past, where that past exercises an enduring practical claim in the present. On this account, the significance of the pilgrimage site is mediated, most fundamentally, not psychologically, or metaphysically, but by way of the spatial relationship which obtains between the site and the pilgrim’s body. While the perspective we have been exploring can help, I hope, to throw some light on explicitly religious place-based practices such as pilgrimage, my aim more fundamentally has been to suggest that the recognition of place-relative meanings is basic not only to the ethical life, and our everyday relations with other human beings, but also to our lives considered religiously. Our knowledge of the history of a place, and our active engagement with its sensory qualities in the present, can allow us to encounter its genius. And that encounter can bear a religious significance, whether or not the place has some officially sanctioned religious importance, above

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all when the place functions microcosmically. So an appreciation of the significance of explicitly religious place-relative practices should open us to the possibility that religious understanding is in general, and not only in these special cases, tied to a reckoning with place-relative meanings. In these ways, we can see how religious knowledge is of its nature implicated in questions of how to comport ourselves in the world, and of its nature tied to our perceptual and emotional responsiveness to the world. Pre-reflectively most of us would acknowledge that there are such connections. Yet these truths about the character of religious apprehension do not emerge at all clearly, I suggest, on some standard approaches to religious epistemology. This is one reason for persevering with, and trying to further refine, the kind of account that we have been sketching here.

A Phenomenological Coda In the main body of this chapter, my reflections have been developed in a relatively theoretical idiom. I would like to close with a biographical text in which some of these same ideas are set down in existentially denser terms. The reader will find that the discussion of New College cloister, in particular, tracks the idea that the religious significance of a place can be grounded in its conservation of historical meanings, in its capacity to bear a representative meaning, and in its presentation of various challenges to the body. The text also explores how particular places may provide the focus for our sense of the world’s significance in ethical and social terms. So I hope the passage confirms that the core concerns of the chapter are not of theoretical interest only, but recognizable from familiar life situations. The text is an excerpt from a passage which was written by a friend of the poet Edmund Cusick, who died in January 2007. It was written at his request, to recall this friendship, and concerns their time together as students.4 ………………………………………………….…………………………….…….….… December 2006 We got to know one another at no. 11 Norham Gardens – a large Victorian house on the northern boundary of the University Parks and a place we sometimes referred to simply as ‘the premises’ – so as not to give away the fact that our place of residence was a Sacred Heart convent – attached to which was a student annexe with about 20 rooms. For us the emotional geography of Oxford was built around the convent and 2 or 3 other places of special significance to which we would make regular forays. Although we never really said as much, so far as I remember, it was common ground


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between us that by visiting such places, and attuning ourselves to them, we could set other matters in proper perspective. So these were the places in which we tried to root ourselves, and when we later spoke of Oxford, it would be these places that we would recall first, and that would give shape + vitality to whatever else we had experienced there. One such place of significance was Port Meadow. It mattered I think that to reach PM from Norham Gardens you had only to travel W – so there was no need to go through the city, + negotiate the bustle of student life + city traffic – instead we would move away from all of that, and since these visits were often made in late afternoon or early evening, we would be heading into the setting sun. So Port Meadow was always a kind of portal to another world, a world removed from the everyday concerns of traffic + commuting + even of study. As we approached we would often pause at the railway bridge, to survey the meadow below, to look back along the railway line towards the station (so for this reason too, PM must have seemed to us a stepping off point, for movement away from Oxford + its characteristic concerns – it was here that I would often farewell Edmund, standing on the platform as he departed N for the summer, each waving to the other, + anticipating our next meeting in the hills around Aberdeen . . .) and we would also pause to lay our hands against the southern face of the bridge, and to feel the accumulated heat of the sun which had soaked into the brick . . . I remember the surprise occasioned when we first made this discovery. It was here too that we discussed Edmund’s departure from the University Press, + agreed that no judgement could be reached on whether this development was for bad or for good until we knew what lay ahead. So PM was for us a kind of liminal zone – at the margins of the city, suspended between night and day, somehow storing up the energy + bustle of the day and releasing it in the form of a gentle suffusing warmth that would kiss our faces as we gazed W, and seep into our fingers + bones as we sat astride our bikes with arms outstretched towards the bridge, and passing beneath our feet would be others being swept to or from Oxford, and also the canal boats, the dwellings of people who had made the margins a way of life. After absorbing these things, in my case only subliminally I think, we’d push off, always at Edmund’s bidding, and swoop down towards the meadow. We’d feel the air rushing past our faces and hear the clang of the sprung gate closing behind us – all the senses partook in this sense of being released from the world we were leaving behind – a world which was even for a student in Oxford in the 1980s, one of responsibilities, of appointments to be kept, and particular paths to be followed, to navigate the traffic of ordinary living – whereas the meadow was all open expansiveness, flat and at times flooded, + even frozen over, so that its surface would collect + throw back the light of the sky. In its way it was a place of transfiguration – where even the motes suspended in the evening air, stirred up by the passage of our bikes across the dusty tracks of the meadow, would be caught + irradiated so revealing their true nature, and giving them the appearance of their own kind of life + their own kind of glory. And we would look back at the city + see its spires irradiated in the same light – and, often without articulation, we would set the business and congestion of our lives there against the open airiness of the meadow,

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and feel our ordinary concerns transfigured – a kind of disengagement in the name of a deeper, more compassionate re-engagement with the objects of those concerns. If there was one point on the meadow for which we would make it would be the point at which the Thames or Isis divides – after rattling over the wooden boards of a first bridge, we would then pause before crossing over a second bridge, + place ourselves on the concrete pontoon projecting out into the flow of the stream. From here you could see the sweep of the meadow to your right, and ahead you could see the river snaking across the meadow bound for the city and the sea. This too was a kind of liminal zone – on the one side the solidity + permanence of the meadow, and on the other the lapping of the waters of the river, itself at that point undergoing a change of identity as it was channelled to left + to right. Again what I remember most, though we did not really advert to it at the time, are the sensory qualities of the place – the breezes coming from the exposed N and playing upon the surface of the water and upon our faces, and disturbing the image of the moon. Lastly, though again we never really said as much, it mattered I think that Port Meadow was common ground, endowed in perpetuity to the citizens of Oxford. Although our reflections here only rarely had any political reference, we knew the expansive embrace of the meadow to be not just spatial but also social. By contrast the grounds of the colleges could only be entered by passing a sign setting out the conditions of entry. And this was true of the second focus of our wanderings – New College cloister. We would normally approach the cloister from Holywell St., so would have to pass the porters’ lodge – as members of the University we had a right to entry, but even so we preferred not to be challenged, so we would strike out with a rather forced confidence as we crossed the gaze of the college officials. We would then pass through the old city wall where the royalist forces had once been besieged – here again there was a contrast with the meadow, and a powerful sense of being admitted to a space that was not common ground but hedged about by restrictions and by the intimation of danger. Often we would visit this place by dark – commonly on our return from some engagement in the city – most likely at the cinema. Although there was no necessity to do so, we found ourselves stooping, self protectively, as we pressed on through the passageway leading under the wall, and into the quadrangle beyond. Here we found ourselves already in a kind of ethereal world of manicured lawns and a gentle diffuse light which was thrown upon the yellowing crenellated walls of the quad. If we spoke here at all it was in hushed tones. Bearing right we would then exit the quadrangle, passing I remember a rose bush trained against the wall . . . If Port Meadow was about the open expansiveness of nature, here we found ourselves enclosed in a world of human making where nature itself seemed to have taken on the disciplines of the order of a human design. But these disciplines for their part served a suprahuman purpose, which came into view as we rounded the corner into the cloister set beside the college chapel. Again this was typically an experience of visual obscurity – the cloister was not lit by artificial means and our eyes would strain to pick out the lineaments of its walls. At times the experience was more auditory than


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visual – if we could hear music from evensong or a rehearsal for evensong, or the crazy chiming of the clocktower which stands at the corner of the cloister. But most often our approach would be in silence. Turning right and diagonally we would feel as much as see our way to the opening from the cloister on to the lawn. Here we knew ourselves to be in the centre of the city – at the heart of a college which stands at the heart of the University, around which stands the modern city. The overwhelming sensation was one of stillness – no breeze could reach us here, nor the sound of any traffic, and the stones looked on motionless. Here we felt ourselves at the centre of a community centuries old – it was here that scholars in the 14th century and later would have come to collect themselves – before departing for the neighbouring spaces reserved for their communal life – of worship and dining and study. It was here that the significance of their lives in these other respects would have been scrutinized and set in due order. Where Port Meadow stood at the margins of the University + the city, here we were at its epicentre – but this too was a kind of liminal space, one set apart from ordinary experience, not now because of its openness + expansiveness, but because of the contraction and concentration of the structures of ordinary experience into an image of integration and a stillness that was not mere stasis but the stillnessin-movement of the graceful lines that wound themselves sinuously around the stretch of lawn that stood at the centre of the cloister. If there was any doubt that this image was of an order deeper than any of merely human making this was dispelled by the tree, an evergreen oak, that stood in the corner of the cloister, spreading its branches across a region of bare earth. The tree too was motionless, always the same in appearance regardless of season, but stretching up into the night sky it brought the order + integration of this particular space, itself symbolic of the wider order of the University and surrounding city, into unity with a still wider, cosmological order that would gaze back at us from the night sky. Here we knew that this larger order was not one that we could encompass – even the siting of the tree offcentre from the point of view of the humanly constructed symmetry of the cloister spoke of that – but it was one in which we could participate, and especially here at this still point not simply apart from but in and through all the bustle and hubbub of the city beyond. In notes to me Edmund would sign himself with the image of a tree like this (very roughly!) and though I did not consciously rehearse the identification during our time in Oxford, at some level I am sure my image of Edmund and of the oak in New College cloister were mutually informing (it was Edmund after all who introduced me to the cloister, and whose gestures as much as his words set out its meaning) and that these images spoke of one and the same underlying reality – not itself directly conceptualisable but known in these moments of stillness, by gesture or ostensive definition, more than by speech. At the cloister we rarely spoke at great length as we did at the Meadow – even time itself seemed to be compressed here, in a duration that was not punctuated by any event, until the next chime of the clock revealed that time had after all passed. Typically we would not wander on to the lawn, or if we did we would keep ourselves to the margins, as though afraid of disturbing some symmetry which we were invited to witness + to be shaped by rather than to shape.

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So our life in Oxford was framed by a point of integrated dense singularity on the one side and by a sweep of unconstrained unconfined space on the other. And standing between these places, or supra-places, each of which undid the normal conventions of place, whether in the direction of concentration or diffusion of structure, stood the place that was our home, the convent. ………………………………………………….…………………………….…….….… In these circumstances Edmund stood for an ideal + a method. His ideal was that what endured from this flux should be measured by the imperatives of the inner life – extraneous, contingent context could not enduringly define him, whether that context was the Scottish evangelicalism of his undergraduate years, or his work for the O. E. D. on behalf of its search for rigorously public, shared meanings. So with time Edmund became ever more emphatically Edmund and less and less the product of contingent outward circumstance. His method, in terms of his research and his personal reflections, was in many ways a matter of applying Jungian language about the unconscious. But to my mind, in retrospect at least, his method was as much about recognizing that places such as Port Meadow and New College Cloister had the status of ideas – only their intelligible content had to be apprehended not so much by means of discursive prose as by embodied encounter – this is why it was necessary, as the demands of various visions of the good were weighed, repeatedly to visit these places. But so far as their content can be set down in words, what they showed us was that our world of flux was destined to pass away – this we knew from the dying embers of the day and the dissolution of form that we found at Port Meadow. But the meadow also showed us that when viewed in their true nature, some fragments of our experience anyway had a kind of ultimate brilliance. And in the darkness + obscurity of the cloister we came to sense that these fragments might somehow be integrated into a larger, enduring order – and that even our inimitabilities might somehow fall into place within a set of further inimitabilities. To reach Edmund’s room it was necessary to penetrate into the furthest corner of the convent – no. 20 (is that right?) lying at the very end of the upper corridor facing the University Parks. And sitting there with him talking over various matters, I often had the sense that we were touching upon the things that mattered most of all – though I doubt now that many of those early conversations would withstand close analytical scrutiny. In any case, in thought we often felt ourselves to be pushing as far as we could – until we both felt ourselves against a limit, and at that limit could at last find occasion for retiring to bed. On one such occasion I remember we were struggling to think over the respective claims of particular + universal, + stumbling over Platonic + other categories along the way. But more importantly as I now see, Edmund came to embody this connection – as he pressed on in the direction of ever greater singularity, allowing extraneous attachments + allegiances to


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fall away, but without thereby choosing mere eccentricity – and in this he was faithful both to the gentle afterglow of the meadow’s light and to the obscure tree-rooted wisdom of the cloister.

Notes 1. Hood’s presentation to the 2006 British Association Festival of Science is summarized in The Australian newspaper, 6 September 2006. 2. See Harold Turner’s distinction between the church as a domus dei and as a domus ecclesiae, in Turner, 1979. 3. For an account of the attitudes of these pilgrims, see Thomas Hummel, 1995. 4. This passage is reproduced from Wynn, 2009, p. 19–26. Its significance is explored more fully there.

Bibliography Alston, W. (1991), Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Aquinas, T. (1964–1974), Summa Theologiae, 60 volumes, ed. and trans. T. Gilby et al. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode. Aristotle (2007), Nicomachean Ethics, trans. T. Irwin, in R. Shafer-Landau (ed.), Ethical Theory: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell. Bachelard, G. (1969), The Poetics of Space, trans. M. Jolas. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Barrie, T. (1996), Sacred Place: Myth, Ritual, and Meaning in Architecture. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Casey, E. S. (1993), Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Hummel, T. (1995), ‘The sacramentality of the Holy Land: Two contrasting approaches’, in D. Brown and A. Loades (eds), The Sense of the Sacramental: Movement and Measure in Art, Music, Place and Time. London: SPCK, pp. 71–85. John Paul II (1998), Fides et Ratio. Sydney: St Paul’s Publications. Jones, L. (2000), The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture: Experience, Interpretation, Comparison. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Leeuw, G. van der (1938), Religion in Essence and Manifestation: A Study in Phenomenology, trans. J. E. Turner. London: George Allen and Unwin. Lefebvre, H. (1991), The Production of Space, trans. D. Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell. Malpas, J. (1999), Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mandoki, K. (1998), ‘Sites of symbolic density: A relativistic approach to experienced place’, in A. Light and J. Smith (eds), Philosophy and Geography III: Philosophies of Place. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 73–96.

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Turner, H. (1979), From Temple to Meeting House: The Phenomenology and Theology of Places of Worship. The Hague: Mouton. Williams, R. (1984), ‘Religious realism: On not quite agreeing with Don Cupitt’. Modern Theology, 1, 3–24. Wynn, M. (2009), Faith and Place: An Essay in Embodied Religious Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 11

Play, Psychoanalysis and Feminist Philosophy of Religion Beverley Clack

Introduction Feminists working in the history of Western philosophy have consistently drawn attention to the tensions that surround the notion of ‘Woman as philosopher’. As Genevieve Lloyd (1984) famously noted, philosophers have persistently associated ‘Man’ with the life of the mind and reason, while ‘Woman’ has been associated with desire and all that distracts the philosopher from a serious engagement with reality.1 Given this gendered division of qualities and experiences, a ‘woman philosopher’ can be seen as something of a contradiction in terms. Rather than rehearse the well-known arguments that feminists have produced to support the identification of this dualism, it might be more interesting to consider some artistic representations of the effect such gendered constructions of reason and desire have upon the vision of philosophy as a form of practice. For example, Gerard van Honthorst’s (1590–1656) ‘The Steadfast Philosopher’ portrays a bearded philosopher struggling to read a great tome of philosophy. His intellectual endeavours are made particularly difficult by the half-naked woman standing to his right. She seems to have appeared from nowhere – as if she has leapt out of the clothes that lie in folds around her – and her pale alabaster arm is reaching out provocatively to him. In order to philosophize, this painting suggests, one needs a strong constitution that can resist the demands of the passions – particularly the desire for sex – exemplified here by the tempting body of a woman. In case we think that this account of philosophy and the perils that face its practitioners can only be found in works of the distant past, consider Edward Hopper’s (1882–1967) ‘Excursion into Philosophy’. Painted in 1959, this picture portrays a middle-aged man sitting on the edge of a bed. Behind him can be glimpsed the half-naked body of a sleeping woman; at his side is a discarded book which Hopper identifies as by Plato (Wagstaff, 2004, p. 16). The mood is bleak, exacerbated by a harsh, cold light. The man is dejected, seemingly torn between his desires and the pursuit of a knowledge that might enable him to avoid being subsumed in the female flesh that he is trying, resolutely, to ignore. Both paintings portray philosophy as an activity which enables an escape from worldly concerns, exemplified in both cases by the desirable

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and distracting bodies of women. Feminist philosophy in the Continental tradition has sought to play with such images, utilizing the disruptive power of the female body in order to challenge stereotypical and habitual claims about the nature of the sexes and, indeed, human life itself. The aim of this chapter is to develop a not-dissimilar model of philosophical practice through exploring how the notion of play might illuminate the philosophical engagement with religion. In order to do this, I shall employ sources drawn from psychoanalysis which see play and rationality not as activities opposed to each other but as part of the same attempt to make sense of our environment: an approach that facilitates, I shall argue, a more subtle account of the significance of religion than one which focuses primarily upon establishing the coherence of religious belief.

A Playful Feminist Philosophy: Luce Irigaray and Michèle Le Doeuff The idea that philosophy might not be viewed as an altogether serious activity but, instead, as something playful can be found in the work of two very different French feminist philosophers. Luce Irigaray, philosopher and psychoanalyst, notably employed play as a method for disrupting the misogyny present in key philosophical texts. She argued that the reader should not feel obliged to accept the negative views of women and their abilities contained in such texts, but neither should they be forced to construct detailed arguments against prejudices put forward as reasoned truth. Rather, feminists could develop a playful engagement that highlights the inanity of such ideas by refusing to take them seriously. This method she describes, with typical humour, as akin to having ‘a fling with the philosophers’ (1985, p. 150). Through the act of mimesis or mimicry the ridiculous nature of the views about women advocated in such texts can be exposed. Resisting the urge to mimic the good behaviour of a ‘wife’ who accepts meekly the philosopher-‘husband’s’ unacceptable ideas, the feminist can adopt the playful and altogether more autonomous attitude of a ‘mistress’ towards the words and concepts unthinkingly used by philosophers. By mimicking such ideas, the feminist-mistress reveals the fallacious and erroneous ideas about women that are being presented as ‘truth’. According to Irigaray, such an attitude has a radical political affect: To play with mimesis is thus, for a woman, to try to recover the place of her exploitation by discourse, without allowing herself to be simply reduced to it. (ibid., p. 76)

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This playful and ironic view of feminist philosophical method is also present in the work of Michèle Le Doeuff. While critical of Irigaray’s feminism of difference in particular and psychoanalytic ideas in general, she too suggests something of the disruptive possibilities of a playful feminist philosophy. In part, she suggests that such an approach arises from the struggle of women to be taken seriously as philosophers in their own right. An example is provided by Simone de Beauvoir who resisted applying the term ‘philosophy’ to her work. Le Doeuff traces this mental block to one particular event: the demolition of her ideas by her lover and fellow student Jean-Paul Sartre. Her sense of herself as philosopher never recovered from this intellectual assault; both staggering and sad when one considers the importance of The Second Sex as a key text for feminist thought. Examining the breadth of this work which offers historical, sociological and psychological perspectives on the plight of Woman leads Le Doeuff to consider what she calls ‘the possibility of underground or secret philosophical work, which does not label itself philosophy’ (2007, p. 156). She elaborates with a wry comment: ‘philosophy may also exist where it is not particularly obvious. In some works by ladies, for example (but not only there)’ (ibid.). The use of the rather patronizing term ‘ladies’ for comic effect masks the painful reality of the struggle to be taken seriously as a woman philosopher. But what Le Doeuff goes on to suggest is that the secret philosophizing that is not read as ‘philosophy’ need not be seen as a mark of defeat on the part of women struggling to be taken seriously by other (invariably male) philosophers. Indeed, she stresses the creative possibilities of what is and is not ‘philosophy’. Out of this discussion develops a more open philosophy which is not understood in terms of commitment to a particular school of thought or set of conclusions, but is instead viewed as a dynamic movement. Philosophy conceived thus is a process of thought and a way of being that involves ‘an effort to shift thinking from one state to another’ (ibid., p. 168). Introducing the idea of movement leads to a philosophy that ‘exist[s] in the mode of that which has neither completion nor beginning, but is rather impulse and movement’ (ibid.). Philosophy becomes, as Nietzsche proposed, a form of dance. As he notes in the Gay Science: ‘I wouldn’t know what the spirit of a philosopher might more want to be than a good dancer’ (2001, §381). Understood in these terms, philosophy shakes off some of its pretensions and pomposity. Debate is no longer restricted by setting up boundaries that are rigorously policed by practitioners and which cannot be crossed. Philosophy as a form of practice becomes something altogether more democratic, where all can be involved in the quest for greater understanding,

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not just the professional trained in its methods and jargon. For Le Doeuff, such intellectual openness lies at the heart of the philosophical enterprise, where ‘groping and stuttering [are] contained in the project to produce philosophy: many clumsy attempts and much improvisation are needed before a clear and distinct idea is formed’ (2007, p. 222). Philosophy conceived as a form of play offers, then, an important way forward for some French feminists confronted with the gendered construction of what being a philosopher means.

Play and Religion How might these ideas relate to the development of a distinctively feminist approach to the philosophy of religion? With Irigaray, I want to suggest that psychoanalytic ideas can prove useful for such an enterprise. But my focus is rather different from hers. I intend to consider the claims of psychoanalysts who suggest play as a key category for understanding the construction of thought and the experience of reality. In this context, religion itself can be seen as a form of play, for it offers ways of making sense of our world. In this way, the kind of feminist method I have outlined meets with that formulation of religion as play and offers, perhaps, an important way of investigating the impulses that might lie behind religious theorizing. Of course, we might resist the idea that play could provide an appropriate framework for understanding religion. Play seems a rather trivial matter: infantile and childish, something to be put aside as we grow older. Religion, in contrast, may be viewed as something serious and profound, something that attempts to get to the truth that lies at the heart of the universe. This perceived distinction between play and religion is most clearly expressed in St Paul’s contention that the religious life involves ‘putting aside childish things’ (1 Cor. 13.11). Yet in psychoanalytic theory, there is no easy distinction between what is serious and what is playful, for play itself is a serious business. As Michael Parsons notes, for Freud the process of thought was visualized as ‘playing with possibilities’ (2000, p. 129). The analogy of play, albeit the play of the adult, informs Freud’s description of how thought works: Thinking is an experimental action carried out with small amounts of energy, in the same way as a general shifts small figures about on the map before setting his large bodies of troops in motion. (Freud, 1933, p. 89; my emphasis)


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Later psychoanalytic theorists developed Freud’s ideas about the relationship between the structure of thought and the child’s ability to play.2 Not only does play establish creativity and the imagination, but it also enables the development of rationality and questioning itself. Why? Because in play the child seeks to negotiate its place in the world that lies outside of its own body and that of its mother. In Freud’s account of this relationship, play is seen as allowing the child to experience external reality as something that can be mastered. This idea is most famously formulated in his observations on the ‘fort-da game’ played by his little grandson. Taking a cotton reel on a piece of thread, he proceeds to throw it away from himself, saying ‘fort’ (‘gone’), and, as he draws it back again, ‘da’ (‘there’) (1920, pp. 14–17). Freud interprets this game as an attempt to master the absence of the mother: her comings and goings are, in the game and thus also in child’s ‘reality’, dependent upon his actions. Play in this context is, as Hanna Segal puts it, ‘a way both of exploring reality and of mastering it’ (2003, p. 211). And this attempt to engage with the world that the child is beginning to enter is not simply put aside as the child grows up. Elsewhere, Freud links the child’s play with the processes determining adult creativity (1908, p. 143). In much the same way as the child seeks to master reality by playing at controlling the mother’s independence, so the creative writer extends the world of daydreaming by creating imaginary worlds. There is common ground between child and writer, for both rearrange ‘the things of his world in a new way that pleases him’ (ibid., p. 144). Creativity, like religion, is thus a form of wish-fulfilment (1927, p. 30).3 In both activities, the facts of the world are made to fit with our hopes and desires. Making this connection suggests one way of understanding religion: the religious impulse is located in the activities that shape the child’s attempt to move out of its original narcissism into a broader engagement with the world. Art, philosophy, even religion, can, according to this Freudian model, be seen as attempts to feel ‘at home’ in the world. When Freud describes the world in which we find ourselves, he focuses attention on the fears associated with our first engagement with the external world. The world is experienced as something hostile and threatening, and the purpose of play (and, indeed, creativity) is to make oneself feel safe in such an environment. There is, of course, a tension in Freud’s work. He may link ‘wishfulfilment’ with both creativity and child’s play, but he also believes (1927) that the infantile theories about reality maintained in the beliefs of the religious should be put aside in the light of scientific discoveries about the nature of the world and our place in it. It has been left to later analysts to

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suggest that Freud’s scientific positivism is not the only way of reading the religious impulse.4 Donald Winnicott, like Freud, suggests that religion, with art and philosophy, might be seen as a form of creativity. And like Freud, Winnicott sees play as the attempt to manage the loss of the mother. However, there is a subtle but important parting of the ways here, for Winnicott identifies what is being managed with the sense that the child has lost the mother’s total attention. The child attempts to manage this loss through the use of a ‘transitional object’, an object that seeks to create an internal breast that will satisfy his needs in the way in which his mother’s breast has heretofore satisfied him (1953, p. 13). This object can be a blanket, a cuddly toy, a word, a tune or a mannerism. The variety of forms that the object can take includes things we would not ordinarily describe as ‘objects’ – namely, tunes or mannerisms – and this supports Christopher Bollas’ contention that Winnicott’s object is best understood as a process (1987, p. 14). The child is using the object as a way of managing the anxiety that comes with separation. So, for example, the child may not be able to sleep without its ‘blanky’. For Winnicott, the object replaces the child’s illusory sense that the mother is conjured up by its thoughts. It is important that the child has this experience of ‘omnipotent thought’, for such a belief facilitates a healthy attitude to the world: the world is experienced as a safe rather than threatening place that can support the child and its desires. Yet the child has to move beyond this illusion of omnipotence, and the transitional object enables this shift (Winnicott, 1953, p. 16). The developing relationship between the child and reality is established through the use of the object. The object itself is not understood simply as a part of the infant’s body, but neither is it experienced as completely separate from it (ibid., p. 3). Indeed, the object is important precisely because it enables the child to experience something as both ‘me’ and ‘not-me’. In this way, the object provides the possibility of moving out of the experience of the body/mother and into an engagement with external reality. A similar notion informs the accounts of ‘triangularity’ offered by Julia Kristeva (1987) and Ronald Britton (1989). According to Kristeva and Britton, play opens up the space between child and mother, thus enabling relationship. For there to be relationship there has to be recognition of a third: the actual or symbolic ‘father’ who breaks the stifling symbiotic union between mother and child. For there to be play, there has to be space. What is particularly important for the account of religion I wish to develop is what Winnicott says happens to the object as the child grows up. Gradually, it will be ‘given up’; but Winnicott is at pains to point out that


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this does not mean that the object’s meaning is simply taken inside or repressed. The object is not forgotten but neither is it mourned. Rather, its meaning is ‘spread out over the whole intermediate territory between “inner psychic reality” and “the external world as perceived by two persons in common”, that is to say, over the whole cultural field’ (Winnicott, 1953, p. 7; my emphasis). At this point Winnicott makes an explicit connection with religion. This movement on the part of the child he links with ‘religious feeling’ (ibid.), a claim that suggests religion arises in the space between internal and external reality. This feeling is particularly important for the development of the symbolic, and he uses the example of the Eucharist to explore this connection (ibid., p. 8). The bread and the wine both ‘are’ and ‘are not’ sacred objects: they remain physical objects yet also work to open up the internal world; what we might want to call the domain of the spiritual. For Winnicott, then, religion is part of the continuing strain of negotiating inner and outer reality (ibid., p. 18). This activity does not end with infancy, and in religion, the importance of playing with our place in the world and all that that entails is continued. Religion, far from being merely an infantile response that must be given up – the position that Freud espouses – is in Winnicott’s theorizing a response to reality that tells us much about the continuing need to engage with the hopes and fears of being human in a world like this.

Shaping a Feminist Philosophy of Religion How might these ideas help feminists working in the philosophy of religion? In what follows I want to explore something of the creative potential that the model of play provides for thinking about a form of philosophical practice that avoids eliding desire and the emotions from a discussion about the meaning of religion and its relationship to the experience of being human. I have suggested something of the significance of play for understanding the way in which we engage with and construct our experience of the world. Play is an activity that refuses to limit the connections that we make between self and world, offering the possibility of new connections and different ways of seeing ourselves and of experiencing that world. In this sense, it can be seen as the human activity. As Juliet Mitchell notes, ‘the learning of difference is the learning of humanity (one’s humanness)’ (1974, p. 382), and the ability to play would seem to be crucial to this process, for play resists the acceptance of only one kind of reality. It is this feature which suggests a certain difference between play and games. Making too

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conclusive a distinction between these categories would be somewhat mistaken, and Parsons notes that ‘play’ and ‘games’ exist on a spectrum with play at one end, games and sports at the other (2000, p. 131). Games may be ‘playful’ to varying degrees, but the possibilities for spontaneity tend to be limited by the rules that inform them. Play, by way of contrast, is a potentially subversive activity: nothing is excluded. From a feminist perspective a more playful philosophy such as that suggested by Irigaray and Le Doeuff follows this subversive model, not least as it enables the allegedly destructive and disruptive role of the female to be reclaimed. Considering the values and experiences that have been attributed to the female in positive rather than negative ways enables new visions of the world to emerge that are not dependent on oppressive and restrictive accounts of human relationships. A more playful philosophy also allows for a re-visioning of reason which refuses to limit its formulation to one activity or one procedure for exploring experience. Hanna Segal has argued that there is no straightforward distinction between the creativity of play and the structures of rational thought. When Freud developed the idea of the ‘reality-principle’, he saw this as arising from the realization that one’s desires are not always met. The experience of disappointment enables the child to engage with the reality that lies outside of itself and its desire. Thus, Freud (1911) sought to distinguish between the reality- and pleasure-principles. Segal’s account is rather different, and she emphasizes the overlap of facts with wishes or ‘phantasies’5 which together contribute to the construction of experience. Like Freud she suggests that play is important for establishing thought; but as a child psychoanalyst, she offers a more sustained investigation of what this might mean for how we distinguish reality from phantasy. Indeed, she contends that if there is insufficient capacity for play, thought can become overly rigid, thus restricting the possibility of engaging appropriately with reality. Segal (2003, p. 213) provides a telling example of what can happen if the ability to play is restricted by an overly constraining literalism. One of her child patients identified himself with a particular toy car. When the car was broken, the child became distraught for he could not disconnect himself from the identification he had made with the car. For the car to be broken meant that he, too, was broken. Segal uses this example to suggest that a healthy mental life is partly dependent upon the possibility of being able to play and to use one’s imagination. While she argues that the distinctions between reason and imagination, reality and illusion cannot be discounted (so the boy’s identification with the car has to be subjected to reality-testing in order that he can distinguish between himself and


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the car), she also stresses that reality is shaped as much by what we bring to it as how it ‘actually’ is. A more playful reason then – the kind of playing the fool that Le Doeuff identifies at the heart of the Socratic construction of philosophy – might offer a similarly creative way of structuring the content and approach of a critical feminist philosophy. Such an approach is particularly helpful for feminist philosophies of religion. Psychoanalytic theory opens up the possibility of likening religion to a form of play that offers ways of negotiating our place in this world. This model suggests that feminist philosophers of religion are right in their contention that the investigation of religion cannot be restricted to the discussion of beliefs, for more is involved in the construction of religious ideas and experience than rational articulation.6 But perhaps the model of play holds out more, even, than that. Investigating the notion of play psychoanalytically uncovers the centrality of the loss of the mother for the development of the psychic realm.7 Engaging with loss is crucial for the attempt to maintain a sense of the world as a safe and hospitable place, an endeavour that lies at the heart of the religious engagement with reality. Now, for Freud and Winnicott, play is linked with the attempt to master reality. How better to make the world safe than to master it? Interrogating this notion of mastery goes some way to explaining the French analyst André Green’s unease with Winnicott’s rather benign characterization of play. Green (2005) contends that Winnicott fails to take seriously the darker side of play. Because play arises from the attempt to manage anxiety, it need not always be a creative activity, for it is also found in acts of bullying and destruction. Bullying and destruction are, after all, particularly powerful ways of attempting to master the world and others. Moreover, in forms of sadism there lurks a disturbing kind of creativity: a darkly sophisticated form of play that seeks to find elaborate and innovative ways of causing suffering and pain. We need not look far in the history of human cruelty to find examples of what Green has in mind here.8 But we do not need to look only at extreme forms of cruelty such as torture. Small acts of calculated unkindness reveal the dark creativity of play to which Green alludes. Consider, for example, Schopenhauer’s story (1974, p. 214) of the prisoner who, to ease the loneliness of solitary confinement, tames a spider. His jailer, having noted this laborious task, takes pleasure in watching this process and then crushes the spider under his foot. Green’s point is thus significant and should not be overlooked when attempting to utilize play as a form of philosophical practice. Indeed, by highlighting the darker side of play Green provides material that supports the possibility of an account of religion which moves beyond simplistic constructions which only connect

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faith with happiness, or religion with flourishing and well-being. Religion can contribute to health or to sickness, to the construction of a good life or to the furtherance of ignorance and prejudice. It is, if you like, something ambivalent, something that cannot be constructed as an unambiguous good. As a way of engaging with the world that emerges from our deepest hopes and fears, it can take on any number of forms, for good or for ill.9 In suggesting a rather more complex account of the possibilities of play, Green returns to Freud’s ‘fort-da’ game, and reads the concerns which underpin the child’s play in a way which is rather different from Freud’s analysis. Freud’s interest is with the ‘da’ of the game, drawing his reader’s attention to the mother’s return which the child greets as a personal triumph for he has procured her presence. By way of contrast, Green identifies the original loss: the ‘fort’ that underlies, and perhaps undermines, the sense of victory that greets the mother’s return (1993, pp. 5, 181–2).10 For Green, the creativity of play arises from an initial loss: the transitional space opened up by the object may bring with it the possibility of love and relationship but it also involves the pain of having to give up the intensity of closeness with the mother. It is interesting in this regard to consider the move that Kristeva makes from this recognition of the loss that underpins relationship to an understanding of the sources of religion. According to Kristeva, we are all ‘melancholy mourners’, forever mourning the loss of ‘the maternal paradise’ that had to be affected in order that language and entrance into the symbolic realm could be attained (1987, p. 41). In religion, we are attempting – albeit unconsciously and, inevitably, abortively – to return to the heavenly pleasure of our earliest days. The dream of a return to the mother which Kristeva identifies at the heart of religion highlights the desire for safety and unity, a desire that can be identified in religious claims for an eternal life, a heavenly justice and a higher harmony. Moreover, that vision of a safe world has, all-too-often, been seen as achievable through the exclusion of difference: there is only one truth, one way of seeing that world. In such a context, the difference opened up by play becomes problematic, not to say heretical.11 Laurel Schneider’s recent work (2008) locates the frequently oppressive nature of religion in the mono-thinking of monotheism. The concern with establishing one ‘correct’ way of thinking has, to a greater or lesser extent, shaped the central concerns of analytic philosophy of religion. Philosophers approaching the subject of religion have tended to focus on the analysis of belief, applying philosophical method to determine the truth – or falsity – of religious discourse.12 Like Grace Jantzen, I am not convinced that this fixation on belief gets us very far if we are seeking to understand what drives religious


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commitments (1998, pp. 18–26).13 Seeking to engage with the impulses that lie behind religion might, by way of contrast, move beyond the attempt to feel safe and towards an engagement with our fundamental vulnerability. The playwright Dennis Potter’s thoughts on religion are particularly interesting in this regard, as they challenge us to think more deeply about the phenomenon of religion. When asked what he thought religion was, Potter responded: ‘Religion to me has always been the wound, not the bandage’ (1994, p. 5). Contrary to Freud’s critique, religion need not be characterized as providing an illusory sop for human suffering or an answer to the problems of life. Quite the reverse: religion, Potter suggests, arises from the deepest hurts of life (that primeval loss of the mother perhaps). Religion understood in this way confronts us with the necessity of facing the terrors and disappointments of existence. Through attending to these features we might come to accept that we are not the centre of the world but part of its ebb and flow. (A not dissimilar move to that of the child giving up that illusory belief in his omnipotent thought.) Freud’s own philosophy of life suggests a similar willingness to engage with the loss that is a part of life in order to find some kind of acceptance. In his paper ‘On Transience’, he sees fragility and the possibility of loss as a fundamental part of that which makes something beautiful or important. We value that which is passing precisely because it is not fixed and unchanging. An object of this kind – in his example, a flower – has, he comments, ‘transience value [which] is scarcity value in time’ (1916, p. 305).14 If we are to find any kind of contentment in this life, we have to accept that, in order for there to be beauty, there has also to be loss. In the final section of this chapter I want to explore a way of thinking about religion that coheres with this kind of approach to the change and flux of life. The example that I am going to use comes from the artistic world, and might help bring illumination to the feminist philosopher of religion struggling to understand her subject.

Religion, Play and Loss: An Artistic Illustration At the beginning of this chapter, we saw something of how feminist philosophers have used play as a means of critiquing and creating different forms of philosophical practice. In the final part of this chapter, I want to focus on how this kind of approach might be utilized for the study of religion through considering the relationship between play and loss. As we have seen, in Winnicott’s work, the transitional object that facilitates the opening up of space between child and mother enables play to develop,

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and this creative space lends itself to later adult forms of creativity. If Winnicott emphasized the creativity possibilities of play, Green was at pains to stress the relationship between play and loss: play and creativity are, for him, melancholy activities which arise from the attempt to deal with the loss of mother. For Kristeva, the human enterprise is to find ways of coping with that loss: a loss which gives rise to the coping strategies of religion. These psychoanalytic views suggest that the experience of loss and displacement is fundamental to being human, and that religion lives in the troubling and anxious space that accompanies these experiences. What might it mean to visualize religion as a form of play which engages with loss? What creative possibilities open up as a result of exploring this connection? In order to suggest some possible answers to these questions, I want to consider one of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s (1907–1954) paintings. Choosing art as the medium fits rather well with the trend of this chapter. Whatever forms psychoanalytic theory has taken, its fundamental contention is that there is an unconscious element that structures human concerns and activities, and in different forms of art it is possible to get a sense of what constitutes these unconscious impulses.15 This may be true for what drives the artist, but it is perhaps also the case that in contemplating a piece of art a space opens up between the concerns of the artist, represented in their work, and the concerns that the viewer brings to their viewing. Freud thought in similar terms: most famously he argued that Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex had a profound effect on audiences because the concerns of the play’s protagonists were also the concerns of the audience. For Freud, the play works its magic because we are all Oedipus; all working out, albeit in less dramatic form, the desires and fears that structured our earliest relationship with our parents (1897, p. 265). Let us consider, then, one of Frida Kahlo’s last paintings. Kahlo’s paintings are intense, personal pieces that bring together her own life-experiences with images drawn from Mexican popular culture and the kind of Catholic iconography that emerges out of its synthesis with the indigenous religions of South America. In ‘The Love-Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Me, Diego and Mr Xolotl’, painted in 1949, Kahlo seeks to illustrate her own religious perspective by combining images drawn from her personal life with religious images drawn from her native Mexico. The magical painting which results offers a vision of the religious that illuminates the lost mother who has been such a feature of this chapter. At the centre of the painting is Frida, holding her husband Diego Rivera in her arms. Frida is herself held by an Aztec Earth Goddess, who is similarly cradled by a rather shadowy Goddess, representing the Universe itself. As is often the case


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in Kahlo’s work, images are doubled: so the Cosmic Goddess, that almost transparent figure at the outer ages of the painting, embraces the altogether more earthy vision of the Earth Goddess who represents Mexico and who dominates the structure of the painting. This double embrace is mirrored by the embrace which the Earth Goddess gives Frida, who is herself portrayed in the posture of a mother, cradling her husband, the artist Diego Rivera. This is a somewhat poignant posture for Frida: she experienced considerable difficulties and disappointments in her attempt to become a mother (an attempt which was never fulfilled), while the relationship with Rivera was far from idyllic (he seems to have done all in his power to break her heart, including having an affair with her sister). But perhaps it is precisely these conflicting and ambiguous elements that make the painting so remarkable. At the heart of this painting is the image of the mother: in the monotheistic traditions she may be forgotten and excluded, or used to provide impossible stereotypes for women to follow (Warner, 1976). Yet here she is in all her ambiguous power: she is both light and dark. She is the one who provides all; yet she is also the one who can withdraw her sustaining presence, thus threatening the child with annihilation.16 She is the one whose loss has to be managed. In Kahlo’s eyes, all is included in the mother’s embrace; and that includes that which is good and bad, light and dark, joyous and sorrowful. In the terms of the painting, soft vegetation and prickling cacti – things that bring sweetness and comfort, and things that bring pain and disquiet – are all to be held in the embrace of the universe. Considerable humour pervades this vision of the religious. Play may emanate from loss but it also offers the possibility of laughter. Diego is portrayed as a big baby (an interesting way of representing a serial philanderer). And alongside the grand and the cosmic is the ordinary and mundane Mr Xolotl, named in the title of the painting. This may sound terribly grand but is, in reality, Kahlo’s pet dog, asleep at the foot of the painting. Seen through Kahlo’s eyes, religion is not primarily a system of belief that offers a better, happier world than the one we inhabit. If we return to Potter’s image, religion does not provide us with a bandage to cover the wounds of human experience. Rather, religion is something that arises out of the space that is created when the child attempts to move beyond its mother. There might be pain involved in that move, but there is also the joyful possibility of creativity and play. In Kahlo’s work, the religious framework allows us to engage with the inevitable pain of being a vulnerable human creature. But that does not mean that this life is devoid of meaning or without joy. Life is a complex mix of joy and pain, excitement

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and monotony, loneliness and companionship. The challenge of the religious life is to find ways of weaving the different elements of experience together. We might not like the mix of experiences that life throws up, but if we are to live so that we are not broken by those experiences, we have little choice but to try to weave them into the pattern of an integrated life. Kahlo once said, ‘For me, everything has a natural mixing together’ (quoted in Dexter and Barson, 2005, p. 28). It is this idea that informs her religious paintings.17 In them, religion becomes something that is grounded in everyday realities: a failing relationship; a loyal pet; the land around us and the experiences of our own hearts. In her vision, nothing is left outside the embrace of the divine. The lost mother forms, for Kahlo, the starting point for the religious experience of humanity. Vulnerability, rather than safety, forms the basis for her account of the religious life.

Conclusion This chapter has suggested some sources that support the construction of philosophy as a form of play. In particular, I have focused on how a playful philosophy might enable an approach to religion which takes seriously the psychoanalytic claim that religion, as with other forms of creativity, emerges out of the space that has to develop between child and mother in order for growth and relationship to be possible. The model of philosophy of religion that emerges from an engagement with this idea is one that is less preoccupied with analysing belief per se, and more concerned with exploring and investigating the emotions, fears and desires that might lie beneath the secondary construction and articulation of those beliefs. Arguably, religion takes on considerably more importance if we see it as arising from these earliest developmental experiences. Rather than a set of beliefs that can be adopted or rejected, religion is identified here as something which is fundamental to an understanding of the experiences that shape our humanity. Connecting religion with the impulses that give rise to human creativity gives it a broader significance than one that isolates it from the ordinariness of human life. Consider, in conclusion, some words from D. H. Lawrence (not an obvious choice for a feminist but a writer who understood much about the sources of creativity): Eat and carouse with Bacchus, or munch dry bread with Jesus, but don’t sit down without one of the gods. (Quoted in Pope, 1991, p. 155)


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I’m not sure what those words really mean, although I’m pretty sure that trying to discover their truth or falsity won’t capture what Lawrence is getting at when he considers the religious significance of human creativity. There is, however, something profound in this wonderfully evocative depiction of the sacred nature of our existence, where the divine lies just beneath the surface of our most basic of activities. What matters for Lawrence is that we strive to engage with that divine impulse, and it matters little whether we identify it with the asceticism of Jesus or the orgy of Dionysus. The religious impulse is located in the deepest aspects of our humanity; those things that cannot be escaped and which demand to be heard. Religion emerges from the attempt to engage with our most basic hopes and desires, fears and anxieties. In the play of creativity we find ways to struggle with the messiness of being human, to find ways of feeling at home in the world. It is this playful view of life that we might best seek to explore and emulate, and it is one that I would commend for any feminist engagement with the disturbing and creative phenomenon that is religion.

Notes 1. See also Clack, 1999 for examples of this construction. 2. See Segal, 2003; Winnicott, 1971. 3. See also Freud, 1908, p. 151. Note the extent to which wish-fulfilment plays an important role not only in Freud’s discussion of religion and creativity but also in his account of dreams (1900, pp. 550–72). Similarly, wish-fulfilment is seen as the motivating force behind the child’s play: ‘A child’s play is determined by wishes: in point of fact by a single wish – one that helps in his upbringing – to be big and grown up’ (1908, p. 146). 4. This is also an early criticism made of Freud’s approach by his friend and correspondent Oskar Pfister: ‘Your substitute for religion is basically the idea of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment in proud modern guise’ (‘Letter to Freud, 24 November 1927’ in Freud and Pfister, 1963, p. 115). 5. Note the spelling here: in psychoanalytic discourse ‘phantasy’ is ascribed to the desires and fears which are now unconscious; ‘fantasy’ to the active and conscious exercise of the imagination. Although it should also be noted that for analysts like Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, 1968, this distinction can ignore the extent to which unconscious fears and desires shape the concerns of the conscious imagination. 6. See Jantzen, 1998; Anderson, 1998; Hollywood, 2002. 7. See Jonte-Pace, 2001, for discussion of the lost mother missing in discussions of religion. 8. See Mannix, 2003, for details of the creative cruelty of which humans are capable.

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9. For a similar point, albeit from law, see Edge, 2002, chapter 1. According to Edge, the identification of religion by politicians as something that automatically promotes social cohesion has, in recent years, had the unintended consequence of ignoring the extent to which religious perspectives can support violence. Religion is neither good nor bad: it depends upon the use to which it is put. 10. See also Parsons, 2000, p. 183. 11. See, for example, a recent collection of essays: Quash and Ward, 2007. 12. This is such a commonplace understanding of what philosophy of religion involves that it seems unnecessary to footnote examples of this method. 13. Jantzen is not alone in this contention: see Hollywood, 2004. 14. A similar approach can be found in Nussbaum, 1990, p. 368: ‘the valuable things in life don’t come apart so neatly from the fearful and terrible’. 15. A number of Freud’s papers involve just such an engagement. See, for example, 1907, 1910, 1914. 16. For development and further discussion of this idea, see Clack, 2009. For ambivalence surrounding the mother, see Welldon, 1988. 17. See also ‘Moses and Monotheism’ (1945) for a further example of Kahlo blending together the good and the evil, the apparently inconsequential and the important in her art.

Bibliography Anderson, P. S. (1998), A Feminist Philosophy of Religion. Oxford: Blackwell. Bollas, C. (1987), The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known. London: Free Association Books. Britton, R. (1989), ‘The missing link: Parental sexuality in the Oedipus complex’, in D. Breen (ed.), The Gender Conundrum: Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Femininity and Masculinity. London: Routledge, pp. 82–95. Clack, B. (1999), Misogyny in the Western Philosophical Tradition: A Reader. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Clack, B. (2009), ‘Violence and the maternal in the Marquis de Sade’. Feminist Theology, 17.3 May, 273–91. Dexter, E. and T. Barson (eds) (2005), Frida Kahlo. London: Tate Publishing. Edge, P. (2002), Legal Responses to Religious Difference. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Freud, S. (1897), ‘Letter 71 to Fliess’, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud (hereafter ‘SE’), trans. and ed. J. Strachey. London: Hogarth Press, volume 1, pp. 263–6. Freud, S. (1900), ‘The interpretation of dreams’, in SE, volume 4, 5. Freud, S. (1907), ‘Delusions and dreams in Jensen’s Gradiva’, in SE, volume 9, pp. 1–95. Freud, S. (1908), ‘Creative writers and day-dreaming’, in SE, volume 9, pp. 141–53. Freud, S. (1910), ‘Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood’, in SE, volume 11, pp. 57–137. Freud, S. (1911), ‘Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning’, in SE, volume 12, pp. 213–26.


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Freud, S. (1914), ‘The Moses of Michelangelo’, in SE, volume 13, pp. 209–38. Freud, S. (1916), ‘On transience’, in SE, volume 14, pp. 303–7. Freud, S. (1920), ‘Beyond the pleasure principle’, in SE, volume 18, pp. 3–64. Freud, S. (1927), ‘The future of an illusion’, in SE, volume 21, pp. 3–56. Freud, S. (1933), ‘New introductory lectures on psychoanalysis’, in SE, volume 22, pp. 5–182. Freud, S. and O. Pfister (1963), Psychoanalysis and Faith: The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Oskar Pfister, ed. H. Meng and E. Freud, trans. E. Mosbacher. London: Hogarth Press. Green, A. (1993), The Work of the Negative, trans. A. Weller. London: Free Association Books. Green, A. (2005), Play and Reflection in Donald Winnicott’s Writings. London: Karnac. Hollywood, A. (2002), Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference and the Demands of History. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hollywood, A. (2004), ‘Practice, belief and feminist philosophy of religion’, in P. S. Anderson and B. Clack (eds), Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Critical Readings. London: Routledge, pp. 225–40. Irigaray, L. (1985), This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter. New York: Cornell University Press. Jantzen, G. (1998), Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Jonte-Pace, D. (2001), Speaking the Unspeakable: Religion, Misogyny, and the Uncanny Mother in Freud’s Cultural Texts. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Kristeva, J. (1987), In the Beginning was Love, trans. A. Goldhammer. New York: Columbia University Press. Laplanche, J. and J-P. Pontalis (1968), ‘Fantasy and the origins of sexuality’, in R. Steiner (ed.), Unconscious Phantasy. London: Karnac, pp. 107–43. Lawrence, D. H. (1964), Studies in Classic American Literature. London: Heinemann. Le Doeuff, M. (2007), Hipparchia’s Choice: An Essay Concerning Women, Philosophy, Etc, trans. T. Selous. New York: Columbia University Press. Lloyd, G. (1984), The Man of Reason: ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Western Philosophy. London: Methuen. Mannix, D. P. (2003), A History of Torture. Stroud: Sutton Publishing Ltd. Mitchell, J. (1974), Psychoanalysis and Feminism. London: Pelican. Nietzsche, F. (2001), The Gay Science, ed. B. Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, M. (1990), Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Parsons, M. (2000), The Dove That Returns, the Dove That Vanishes: Paradox and Creativity in Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge. Pope, K. (1991), Stanley Spencer. London: Collins. Potter, D. (1994), Seeing the Blossom. London: Faber and Faber. Quash B. and M. Ward (eds) (2007), Heresies and How to Avoid Them: Why It Matters What Christians Believe. London: SPCK. Schneider, L. (2008), Beyond Monotheism: A Theology of Multiplicity. London: Routledge.

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Schopenhauer, A. (1974), Parerga and Paralipomena, volume 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Segal, H. (2003), ‘Imagination, play and art’, in R. Steiner (ed.), Unconscious Phantasy. London: Karnac Books, pp. 211–21. Wagstaff, S. (ed.) (2004), Edward Hopper. London: Tate Publishing. Warner, M. (1976), Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary. London: Vintage. Welldon, E. (1988), Mother, Madonna, Whore: The Idealization and Denigration of Motherhood. London: Karnac. Winnicott, D. W. (1953), ‘Transitional objects and transitional phenomena’, in Playing and Reality. London: Routledge, pp. 1–34.

Chapter 12

Religious Belief and the Disregard of Reality Brian R. Clack

It has become routine to read declarations that philosophy of religion is experiencing a renaissance and that this revival is in no small part due to the demise of verificationism. Andrew Dole and Andrew Chignell, for example, write that verificationism ‘collapsed’ in the middle of the twentieth century, enabling philosophers of religion fruitfully to reopen lines of inquiry that had been blocked by logical positivism (2005, p. 7), while William Lane Craig has spoken of a recent ‘resurgence’ of interest in traditional metaphysical and theological problems which had been ‘suppressed’ by verificationism (2007, p. 69). Dole and Chignell observe that ‘discussions of the nature of “God-talk” and its capacity to refer’ have been supplanted by a return to a more traditional way of doing philosophy of religion, in other words, by a return to substantive analyses of God, not merely as a linguistic phenomenon, but as ‘a genuine metaphysical entity’ (2005, p. 11). This change is one which has been enthusiastically welcomed by a great many philosophers of religion, who may agree with James Ross’ verdict that verificationism was a ‘horrendous mistake’ (1998, p. 118). Evidently, these pronouncements have a celebratory tone, and – at the risk of dampening the prevailing party atmosphere – it is surely in order to ask whether these celebrations are premature or even inappropriate. One might properly enquire, first, whether the discussions which occurred within philosophy of religion during the heyday of verificationism really were fruitless, and whether the middle part of the twentieth century genuinely was a ‘dark ages’ in the philosophy of religion. Secondly, the claim that verificationism was simply an error (and a particularly bad one at that) requires calm investigation. And thirdly, it should be considered whether philosophy of religion really has benefitted from the abandonment of discussions of language, meaning and verifiability; whether such a development actually does constitute a renaissance or whether in fact the most important (if unsettling) questions about religious belief are simply being disregarded. The purpose of what follows is to consider these questions, and to draw out from the verificationist challenge to theological utterance one notable feature of religious faith: namely, that there is a disregard of reality in the formation and holding of religious belief, or (to put this another way) that

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religious beliefs appear to be, as it were, cocooned from reality and untouched by those features of the world which seem to count against them. For the verificationists, this disregard of reality manifested itself in the absence of verification (or falsification) conditions in theological statements. While the conclusion drawn by the verificationists concerned the cognitive meaninglessness of religious discourse, here attention will be directed instead towards affinities between the verificationist censure of theology and the psychoanalytic account of the psychical origin of religious beliefs.

I In 1930, Moritz Schlick – founding father of both the Vienna Circle and the philosophical movement known as logical positivism – wrote that philosophy was at a decisive turning point. Thanks in part to the groundbreaking work of Bertrand Russell, Gottlob Frege and (most of all) the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus of Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosophers were in possession of a set of tools which once applied could resolve all conflicts within the subject, and these tools were specifically concerned with the analysis of linguistic meaning: ‘philosophy is that activity through which the meaning of statements is revealed or determined’ (1959a, p. 56). Schlick and the positivists put their own twist on philosophy’s ‘linguistic turn’ by contending that meaning is tied to – and established by – verifiability: famously, ‘the meaning of a proposition is its method of verification’ (Ayer, 1959, p. 13). The verifiability principle was employed to distinguish those statements which had cognitive (or factual) significance from those which lacked such significance, and (as we will examine in more detail shortly) the contention, broadly speaking, was that if sensory experience cannot confirm (or disconfirm) a particular statement then that statement lacks factual significance, is devoid of cognitive content. Once such a principle of meaning was accepted, disaster followed for much of what traditionally passed as philosophy. Metaphysics took the brunt of the positivists’ ferocious onslaught: its ‘alleged statements . . . [were] entirely meaningless’ (Carnap, 1959, p. 61)1, its utterances ‘nonsensical’ (Ayer, 1971, p. 56). The reason for this was clear enough. Metaphysical declarations – such as ‘Spirit descends from its universality to individuality through determination’ (Hegel, 1977, p. 413) – cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed by any observations or sensory experiences (for how could one go about observing the descent of Spirit?). As by a magic bullet, then, the entirety of metaphysics was felled. Viewed through the positivist lens ethics likewise

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became a problem (for how could a judgement such as ‘stealing is wrong’ be confirmed by observations?);2 and – most importantly for our purposes here – the language of religion and theology faced the same fate as metaphysics. For, it was said, no possible observations could be marshalled to demonstrate the truth or falsity of the theological claims that God is three persons in one being, that God loves humanity, that God takes a guiding role in the development of human history and so on. And if no such possible observations can indeed be marshalled then, by the principle of verifiability, these claims (like the claims of the metaphysician) lack any cognitive content.3 The sceptic now possessed a new potent weapon in the struggle against religion. It was not merely that religion was a false or mistaken hypothesis about the world, its nature and origin. Religion did not even get so far as to be false: its fundamental ideas, beliefs and doctrines lacked content altogether; religious utterances assert nothing, say nothing. It was this development in the theory of meaning which cast its long shadow over the work of philosophers of religion in the middle part of the twentieth century, and it was precisely this challenge – a challenge to the very meaningfulness of religious discourse – which they sought to address, to reinforce or defuse. So it was that the verificationist questions of A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic, as well as the complementary falsificationist challenge laid down by Anthony Flew in his contribution to the seminal ‘University Discussion’, set the tone for a couple of decades of sustained exploration of the nature and significance of religious language. Positivists tried further to refine and sharpen their attack, while other philosophers and theologians pursued diverse ways of defending religion. Strategies were various: some sought to show that religious utterances did in fact possess verification conditions and were thereby, even by positivist standards, meaningful; others accepted that verificationism had succeeded in showing that religion was bereft of cognitive content but that it might have other significant (perhaps emotive or poetic) functions; still others turned their fire on verificationism itself.4 Throughout this period of controversy, a most diligent attention to language was evident. The peculiarities of religious utterances were noted and confronted; justifications for the employment of theological talk were offered; from a somewhat different quarter the Wittgensteinian school carefully explored the grammar of religious discourse and how it differed from (for want of a better word) ‘ordinary’ uses of language; in short, close attention to the question of linguistic meaning was the order of the day. What has just been described as diligence is, however, now not uncommonly regarded as something approaching the status of a neurotic fixation.

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For example, Dole and Chignell (following Peter Byrne) speak of the ‘religious language obsession’ which ‘seized many philosophers of religion’ during the middle part of the century, resulting in ‘the so-called Problem of Religious Language becoming a staple in textbook and classroom surveys of philosophy of religion, and often being treated as the major problem in the field’ (2005, pp. 9–10).5 Gradually, though, this concentration on linguistic matters abated, flaws in verificationism became highlighted and ‘Wittgensteinians were slowly . . . marginalized’ (ibid., p. 10).6 The fruits of this return to a pre-‘linguistically obsessed’ style in the philosophy of religion can be seen in how the issue of religious language is treated in some recent introductory textbooks. A student could read Tim Mawson’s Belief in God or Michael Murray and Michael Rea’s An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion without thinking that there were any significant problems associated with religious language, still less that the very meaningfulness of such discourse had ever seriously been called into question.7 The ostensible cause of this alteration in the content of philosophy of religion was, as earlier stated, the perceived failures of the verificationist account of meaning. Alvin Plantinga was one of the first to stress the frailty of verificationism as a challenge to theism and in God and Other Minds he did this by pointing out weaknesses in the principle of verifiability itself: The fact is that no one has succeeded in stating a version of the verifiability criterion that is even remotely plausible; and by now the project is beginning to look unhopeful . . . If the notion of verifiability cannot so much as be explained, if we cannot so much as say what it is for a statement to be empirically verifiable, then we scarcely need worry about whether religious statements are or are not verifiable. (1967, pp. 167–8)

As a challenge to religious belief, then, verificationism was laughable, as were ‘the dizzy gyrations of those theologians who accept[ed] it’ (ibid., p. 168). If Plantinga’s judgement is accurate (as a great many philosophers of religion seem to think), an entire generation of thinkers was captivated by a theory which was suitable only for ridicule. But is that judgement accurate? Was verificationism really refuted, or might the questions it raised still be worth considering? We must now turn to these purportedly redundant questions.

II What is the principle of verifiability, what were its various formulations and what motivated the logical positivists to put forward such an austere


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criterion of meaning? The motivational root seems to have been the desire to rid intellectual inquiry of spurious questions. Ayer, indeed, had begun Language, Truth and Logic with just such a statement of purpose: ‘The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful’ (1971, p. 45). As an example of an ‘unfruitful’ philosophical problem one may note the familiar hypothesis of the inverted spectrum, in which one person’s sensations of colours might be systematically different from those of another person. What I see as green, you see as red. The problem centres, of course, on the point that there is no way in which one could ever resolve experimentally whether you and I experience the same colour. We both point to the same object when asked to identify ‘the green book’; we both answer ‘green’ when probed as to the colour of grass and so on. But while our outward, public behaviour is uniform, our inner, private experiences might differ. It should be clear to most people that any sustained investigation into the problem of the inverted spectrum would be unwarranted and futile. And it might thus reasonably be contended that what is lacking in this issue – testability and empirical confirmation, the lack of which makes the matter of the inverted spectrum empty and meaningless – is precisely what might constitute the meaningfulness of a real problem. In other words, a real problem is one which can be resolved by experiment or by observation. It is from here but a small step to a theory of semantic meaning: a (non-analytic) statement is meaningful if and only if the truth-claim it expresses can be confirmed experimentally. Amid all the various formulations of the verifiability principle, it can be seen that its essence, quite straightforwardly, is the claim that some kind of observation must be relevant to the determination of the truth or falsity of any statement if that statement is to be regarded as cognitively significant. This can be put in terms of observational evidence supporting the truth of the statement (verification or confirmation), observational evidence undermining the truth of the statement (falsification or disconfirmation) or a combination of both (and it is noteworthy that Rudolf Carnap preferred the simple term ‘testability’ (see Feigl, 1969, p. 6)). The first attempts by the logical positivists to condense these thoughts into a principle of meaning resulted in what is now spoken of as strong verifiability. For sentences other than those of a purely analytic nature (an example of such an analytic statement being ‘a bachelor is an unmarried male’), a sentence makes a cognitively meaningful assertion if it can in practice be conclusively shown to be true or false. In his discussions with the Vienna Circle, as recorded by Friedrich Waismann, Wittgenstein voiced one of the very strongest formulations of strong verifiability: ‘If I can never verify the sense of

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a proposition completely, then I cannot have meant anything by the proposition either. Then the proposition signifies nothing whatsoever’ (Waismann, 1979, p. 47). Weaknesses were quickly detected in strong formulations of this type. Universal statements (e.g. ‘all men are mortal’, ‘all ravens are black’) cannot be conclusively verified, and would thus be labelled meaningless; while if an emphasis is placed on verification in practice then all sorts of plainly meaningful sentences would become unverifiable and hence cognitively insignificant (the sentences ‘Ulysses S. Grant drank two glasses of cognac on the evening of 30 July 1861’, and ‘The star Sirius has five planets’, for instance, since they cannot at this time be verified, would have to be regarded as factually meaningless, surely an unfortunate result). Indeed, as Karl Popper pointed out, conclusive verification of statements expressing universal generalizations would require the completion of an infinite number of tests, and that is a logically impossible requirement. Popper’s alternative was to stress falsifiability as the mark of a genuine scientific statement, but those philosophers wanting to replace strong verifiability by strong falsifiability encountered insuperable problems also. Although the meaningfulness of universal generalizations is preserved (a universal statement could be conclusively falsified by the production of just one counter-example), certain existential statements, though obviously meaningful, are rendered otherwise by the falsifiability criterion. To use Richard Swinburne’s example, the existential statement ‘there is, was, or will be a centaur (somewhere)’ can never conclusively be falsified, but clearly such a statement is factually meaningful (1977, pp. 23–4). A positivist keen to preserve conclusive testability might offer a mixed criterion of meaning (a statement must be either conclusively verifiable or conclusively falsifiable in order to possess factual significance), but this too fails, since such a clearly meaningful universal/existential statement as ‘all badgers die at some time or other’ can be neither conclusively verified nor conclusively falsified (ibid., p. 24). Problems of this nature led to the abandonment of strong (conclusive) testability and its replacement by the weak verifiability principle, the version of verificationism famously propounded in the pages of Language, Truth and Logic: We say that the question that must be asked about any putative statement of fact is not, Would any observations make its truth or falsehood logically certain? but simply, Would any observations be relevant to the determination of its truth or falsehood? And it is only if a negative answer is given to this second question that we conclude that the statement under consideration is nonsensical. (Ayer, 1971, p. 52)


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In such a manner as this, conclusive testability is replaced by confirmability and disconfirmability. A statement is confirmable when observations can count as evidence for it, raising its probability; a statement is disconfirmable when observations can count against it, lowering its probability. By the adoption of this weaker criterion of meaning, the problems attending strong verifiability are ameliorated, while replacing in practice testability with in principle testability consolidated still further its candidacy as a workable principle of meaning. The promise of the weak verifiability criterion, therefore, was that a theory of meaning had been found which did not deny significance to universal generalizations and statements of scientific laws, nor to existential statements and statements about the past. At the same time, weak verificationism performed the desired task of stripping metaphysical and theological utterances of cognitive significance. Statements concerning the nature and activity of a bodiless being transcending space and time can neither be rooted in observations nor confirmable (or disconfirmable) by observation. To take but one example, consider the theological statement ‘God is three persons in one being’. What experiences or observations could lead a person to put forward this claim, and what experiences or observations could be used either to confirm or to disconfirm it? Evidently, there are no such experiences or observations, and thus theological language is rendered (at the very least) suspect. Even the weaker formulation of verifiability, however, did not escape criticism. Some of those criticisms could be easily answered. For example, it might be objected that in order to subject a statement to verification one must already know the meaning of the statement in order to know what counts either for or against it. Moreover, it is surely implausible that millions of religious people have centred their lives upon something which is literally meaningless. Statements about God cannot plausibly be placed in the same category of meaninglessness as the utterance ‘lupithif om mizig’. This worry is misplaced. All that those espousing the verifiability principle wanted to show was that certain statements, once properly analysed, could be seen to lack factual significance. The utterances of metaphysics and theology might, though factually meaningless, have some other kind of meaning. Carnap, for instance, thought that metaphysical utterances lacked ‘theoretical content’ but nonetheless expressed an attitude towards life (1959, p. 78); and some theological types who accepted verifiability sought to show that religious language was non-cognitive in character, that the meaning it possessed was emotive or poetic (see Braithwaite, 1971). This point should be emphasized. Verifiability is intended to distinguish different kinds of sentences, and the criterion of demarcation concerns the

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possibility of observational confirmation: a factually significant statement must be (in some sense) confirmable; those sentences which cannot even in principle be confirmable cannot be included in the category of ‘the factual’, though they may possess some other kind of (perhaps very powerful) meaning and significance. Other criticisms of verifiability are less easily dismissed. Four objections seemed particularly damaging. The principle of verifiability, it was said, was an arbitrary criterion of meaning; the principle was too restrictive, even in its modified, weak form; conversely, it might be regarded as too broad, granting patently nonsensical utterances factual meaning; and it was a self-defeating theory of meaning. We shall take each of these objections in turn and note the verificationists’ responses to each objection. Once this has been done we will be in a position to judge whether verificationism really was simply a mistake. The arbitrariness objection has some force, at least at first sight. John Passmore (1969, p. 83) has presented this objection clearly. Our language contains commonly used words and expressions, words and expressions which are well established in our society’s linguistic practices and which have, indeed, found their way into dictionaries and university courses in (such subjects as) philosophy and theology. A philosopher propounding positivistic criteria of meaning now declares that such words have not satisfied the minimal entrance requirement for being intelligible expressions. What right, one might naturally ask, has the positivist to set up such an entrance examination? Is it not being laid down, purely arbitrarily, that a sentence lacks significance if it is unverifiable? This objection gains still further force when one reflects on how myopically entranced by science the positivists seemed to be. It might justly be suspected that it was an act of the most prejudiced and arbitrary scientific imperialism to put forward a semantic theory which granted significance to scientific statements alone, banishing all other utterances to the realm of meaninglessness. The force of the arbitrariness objection is diminished somewhat when we recall, once again, that the verifiability principle only seeks to strip unverifiable sentences of cognitive significance. Theological utterances, on this view, do not lack meaning altogether; it is simply that they cannot be regarded as fact-asserting utterances. Hence, the principle is used to distinguish within the class of meaningful sentences those which make factual statements from those which do not. Moreover, both Kai Nielsen and Michael Martin – the two most vocal contemporary advocates of the continuing relevance of verificationism for debates within the philosophy of religion – have convincingly argued that as a criterion of factual meaning, the verifiability principle is not arbitrary at all, for it merely makes explicit


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the criterion implicitly used by all reflective people when they seek to decide whether a statement really is factual in content: [T]he philosopher . . . reflects on what sort of criterion we in fact normally employ for deciding whether a statement really is a factual statement; he notes that those statements which have an unquestioned status as factual statements or factual assertions are all at least confirmable or disconfirmable in principle . . . Noting these linguistic facts, a philosopher can suggest, as a criterion for factual intelligibility, confirmability/disconfirmability in principle. This is not an arbitrary suggestion and it would, if adopted, not be an arbitrary entrance requirement, for it brings out the procedures which are actually employed in deciding whether a statement is indeed factual. It makes explicit an implicit practice. (Nielsen, 1982, p. 41)8

Far from being arbitrary, the verifiability principle merely states ‘in capsule form’ (ibid., p. 42) a repeatedly used method of demarcation. And if this is not itself justification enough, the verificationist can also point to the practical usefulness of confirmability: ‘if we have such a requirement, it can be used in deciding on borderline and disputed cases’ (ibid., p. 41).9 At the very least, a challenge can be thrown out to those wishing to reject confirmability as an adequate criterion of factual meaning: ‘Can we give a case of a statement whose factual status is accepted by all parties as quite unproblematic which is not at least confirmable or disconfirmable in principle? I do not think that we can’ (ibid., p. 182). The arbitrariness objection can in this manner be dismissed. Other criticisms might still, however, fatally wound the verificationist challenge. Plantinga’s central criticism was that every formulation of the verifiability principle ‘has been so restrictive as to exclude statements the verificationists themselves took to be meaningful, or so liberal as to exclude no statements at all’ (1967, p. 163). Although this judgement has been largely accepted and oft-repeated by philosophers of religion, it would appear that it has been fully answered and refuted. Against the charge that the verifiability principle is too restrictive, it can be said that the replacement of conclusive verifiability by mere confirmability should go some way to ameliorating those concerns. The principle under consideration now is simply that ‘some experiential events, processes or states, if they were to occur or obtain, must count for or against the truth of a factual statement’; that ‘some thing which is differentially experienceable must be relevant to its truth or falsity’ (Nielsen, 1971, p. 59). Universal generalizations and scientific hypotheses are not restricted by this proposal, while spurious claims (such as the idea of the inverted spectrum) are banished. Swinburne, of course, has objected that there are plenty of sentences which some

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people judge to be factually informative even though they cannot be confirmable or disconfirmable, and he provides the following example: ‘Some of the toys which to all appearances stay in the toy cupboard while people are asleep and no one is watching, actually get up and dance in the middle of the night and then go back to the cupboard, leaving no traces of their activity’ (1977, p. 27). By weak verificationism, this statement would be stripped of factual significance, and one may cite this as an example of the overly restrictive nature of verificationism. But it is important that Swinburne’s example is precisely a borderline case, and not an example that everyone would agree has genuinely cognitive content; it might indeed be seen as a virtue that verificationism can expose the hidden emptiness of what is actually a spurious statement.10 We are still left with Nielsen’s challenge ‘to provide a single counter-example of a statement not so confirmable or infirmable which is unequivocally taken to be a factual statement by a fair sample of native or fluent speakers of the language in which the statement is expressed’ (Nielsen, 1971, p. 60). It can be submitted, then, that the verifiability principle is not too restrictive (the statements it restricts deserve to be restricted). But what of the other part of this criticism, the part which alleges that the verifiability principle is too liberal? There are a number of ways in which this claim could be made. Some of these are fanciful. If our criterion for factual meaningfulness is simply that a statement must be in principle confirmable or disconfirmable, an example can be adapted from Edward Erwin (1970, pp. 37–8; Lycan, 2000, p. 123) to show that every statement – even the most nonsensical and empty-sounding – is confirmable and therefore factually significant. Suppose that a machine has been developed which is a marvellous predictor of truth; it has never to our knowledge been incorrect about anything. Whenever a sentence is typed into it, the machine processes the sentence, and produces the verdict ‘TRUE’ or ‘FALSE’. Remember: the machine has never been wrong. It would, therefore, serve as a confirmation of a sentence (it would, that is, significantly increase its probability) if the sentence were typed into the predicting machine and pronounced ‘TRUE’; on the other hand, its probability would be decreased if the verdict were ‘FALSE’. For any sentence, then, we have a set of in principle verifiability conditions. The criterion of verifiability must, therefore, be too liberal, since every statement is in principle verifiable and nothing is disallowed. Erwin’s objection is ingenious, but we should be wary of its science-fiction character. Counterfactuals of this nature are so drastically removed from actual procedures of human inquiry and investigation that by itself his objection may simply be too fanciful to compel us to reject confirmability as the mark of the factual.


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There is another, less whimsical way of claiming that the verifiability criterion is too broad and liberal. One purpose of verifiability is to demarcate genuinely factual language from more spurious areas of discourse (such as metaphysics or theology), and it does this by contending that only the former is in principle confirmable or disconfirmable. But this, so the objection goes, fails in its intent. For on a broad account of confirmability – such as is required to allow for statements of scientific laws and universal generalizations – theological statements are confirmable or disconfirmable: certain features of the world (its order and beauty) and of human life (the existence of love and morality) can be seen to confirm theological utterances, while other features of the world (diseases and natural disasters) and of human life (cruelty and pettiness) might be offered as observations which lower the probability of (i.e. disconfirm) theological claims. Religious and mystical experiences might further be appealed to as examples of (at least something akin to) observations grounding theological doctrines and beliefs. This objection is significant and should not be downplayed. But nor should it be overstated. Religious experiences do not possess the kind of intersubjective testability requisite for genuine confirmability11, while our general, shared experience of the world will at best only provide us with a foundation for the barest claims about the existence and nature of a god, and not the detailed descriptions of the divine nature or the outpourings concerning divine love so cherished by the believer. We will return to this point shortly, but should simply here note that it does not seem to have been established that every formulation of the verifiability principle has been either too restrictive or too broad, while the version of the principle ultimately emerging from the work of Nielsen and Martin – namely, that ‘for any statement S, S is factually meaningful if and only if there is at least some observational statement O that could count for or against S’ (Martin, 1990, p. 50) – does not obviously fail in its purpose of isolating the cognitive meaninglessness of metaphysical and theological sentences while simultaneously preserving the factual meaningfulness of scientific statements. The last objection to verificationism is probably the most familiar. As every freshman philosophy student can attest, the principle of verifiability is self-refuting. Since no observations can count either for or against it, the principle falls victim to its own strictures and must be rendered meaningless. Much crowing ensues. But this is in reality not a damaging criticism at all and would be so only if the criterion of verifiability were advanced as a factual statement. On Nielsen’s account, however, it is not a statement but rather a proposal about how to distinguish factually meaningful from factually meaningless statements; its significance lies in

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its success in performing this task. As with the other objections we have considered, the self-refuting argument is somewhat toothless. One can only wonder why it might be that an entire generation of philosophers of religion has en masse shelved a genuine problem regarding religious language. For this seems to be the truth of the matter: verificationism has not been refuted, but merely dropped.

III Kelly James Clark’s verdict on verificationism would appear now to be standard fare among philosophers of religion: ‘Logical positivism has been shown for the will-o-the-wisp that it was: prejudice masquerading as cool and detached reason’; it was ‘rooted in intellectual imperialism’ and offered up a merely ‘facile dismissal of religious belief’; it has ‘died a well-deserved death’ (2008, p. xiii). If the argument of the previous section is correct, however, such a death notice is premature, since the questions raised by verificationism concerning the factual meaningfulness of religious belief have not been decisively laid to rest. Moreover, to speak of logical positivism as a ‘will-o-the-wisp’ is inaccurate and rests on the erroneous presupposition that logical positivism had no progenitors and left no descendents. Note Cheryl Misak’s words on the matter of the jaded reputation of the movement: Today students are often taught to think of logical positivism as being an unfortunate and crude interlude in an otherwise glorious philosophical tradition . . . [However,] logical positivism was not a break with tradition, but was, and still is, very much a part of the Anglo-American (for want of a better term) attempt at understanding human inquiry in a world not altogether of our making. (1995, pp. xv–xvi)

That Misak is right about this can be shown by taking a glance at the history of verificationism as mapped out in her lucid study of the subject. The founders of verificationism were not the members of the Vienna Circle, but rather prior thinkers of an empiricist and pragmatist persuasion, philosophers including (but not limited to) Berkeley, Hume, Comte, Mill, Pierce, Mach and Russell; in other words, thinkers who are by no means marginal figures in the history of philosophy and who all shared the view that experience is our only route to knowledge and that a belief which is not connected with experience is in some sense illegitimate. Berkeley, for instance, contended that unless a person can specify how what it is they believe in is connected up with a sensory-produced idea, then ‘you will not


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so much as let me know what it is you would have me believe’; the virtue of such an approach being that it is ‘a sure way to extricate myself out of the fine and subtle net of abstract ideas which has so miserably perplexed and entangled the minds of men’;12 Mach’s question in opposition to the atomic hypothesis – ‘Haben Sie einen gesehen?’ (Have you seen one?) – could be employed to criticize belief in any unobservable entity; while the final words of Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding are so familiar that they require no introduction: When we run over libraries, persuaded of these [empiricist] principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. (1975, p. 165)

Just as logical positivism fits into a well established and respectable tradition in philosophy, and cannot therefore be regarded as a merely transient aberration, so it would be untrue to say that its influence is not still present in contemporary philosophical work. Misak documents the work of a wide range of philosophers who can properly be seen to be pursuing a verificationist agenda, including but (again) not exhausted by: Michael Dummett’s theory of linguistic meaning; Bas van Fraassen’s ‘constructive empiricism’, elaborated in his work in the philosophy of science; Richard Rorty’s attack on philosophical claims as claims which ‘make no difference’; Daniel Dennett’s view that we must become verificationists in the philosophy of mind or else ‘we will end up tolerating all sorts of nonsense: epiphenomenalism, zombies, indistinguishable inverted spectra, conscious teddy bears’ (1991, p. 461); and – my, this revenant is hard to kill – David Wiggins’ criterion of legitimacy in which a belief must be sensitive to ‘the ins and outs of some reality or other’ and must ‘automatically resign in the face of recalcitrant experience’ (Misak, 1995, p. 173).13 Pointing out the lineage, persistence and variety of verificationist ideas is not, of course, equivalent to a demonstration of their cogency (there is insufficient space to discharge that task here). But two things become immediately apparent. First, attention to the historical antecedents and descendents of logical positivism gives the lie to the theologian’s repeated claim that verificationism was some kind of perverse anomaly in the history of philosophy, one which has now conclusively been refuted. Plantinga, Clark and the massed ranks of philosophers of religion would have us

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believe that verificationism was the philosophical equivalent of the theory of phlogiston, a mistaken and laughable relic of the past. But in truth it is not like that at all, and the idea at the heart of the principle of verifiability – the idea that to be factually significant a statement must be open to testing and confirmation – is alive and still at work. A will-o-the-wisp it most definitely is not. Secondly, it is vital to recognize that logical positivism was only one variety of verificationism and that verificationist theories come in a wide variety of forms and flavours. ‘There is no monolith to rail against here’ (ibid., p. xii). Even if the version of verificationism advanced by the logical positivists (the verifiability principle) has been discredited, there are other extant and powerful varieties which should not be ignored. It is as though a city were laid siege by an enormous army and the beleaguered citizens declared outright victory having felled just one advancing soldier. There are plenty more to take his place. The tone adopted by John Hick would seem to be more appropriate and defensible than the one of riotous celebration taken by Plantinga and Clark: ‘In the 1920s and 1930s the logical positivists had tried and failed to formulate a rigorous verification criterion of meaning. But nevertheless the basic insight which inspired them continues to be valid and to be relevant to the philosophy of religion’ (1989, p. 177). We will return to the force of this ‘relevant basic insight’ shortly, but we should first note the rather deplorable sleight of hand at work in the theologian’s dismissal, not merely of the positivist challenge, but of ‘the religious language problem’ in its totality. Logical positivism was (as we have seen) only one of a number of broadly verificationist theories, and was only one of many approaches to find problematic elements in religious discourse. Difficulties were detected in the positivists’ principle of verifiability, and these problems (though probably exaggerated) were deemed sufficient to undermine the challenge stemming from the Vienna Circle. But by a crafty sleight of hand, the principle of verifiability along with every other critical approach to religious language were merged together and swept from the agenda of philosophy of religion, the (exaggerated) faults of positivism being used as a pretext to drop sections on ‘the (so-called) problem of religious language’ from courses and textbooks. In other words, the perceived failures of just one (perhaps extreme) version of verificationism were used as the justification for a complete revival of rampant metaphysical speculation about the nature of the divine. It was as though logical positivism had been the only obstacle to theological and metaphysical excess – as though Hume, Kant, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein had never written, or as though their concerns could be subsumed within (a bankrupted) logical positivism – and with the demise of the principle


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of verifiability we could (thankfully) resume business as usual. The truth of the matter is that this is merely a matter of taste and fashion. With ‘the advent of Christian philosophy’ (Dole and Chignell, 2005, p. 13), and with a great many practitioners of the subject appearing to share Plantinga’s sentiment that ‘working at philosophy is one way . . . of serving the Lord’ (1999, p. xi), it was inevitable that critical, suspicious questions would be sidelined and marginalized. The questions raised by verificationism may indeed be uncongenial and uncomfortable to those wishing to serve the Lord, but uncongeniality alone is not a sufficient reason for allowing what Hick rightly calls ‘valid and relevant’ issues to fall into abeyance. Principal among these issues is the thought which Misak says remains resilient, even after the demise of positivism: ‘a belief with no connection to experience is spurious’ (1995, p. ix).14 The emphasis on verifiability stresses only one way in which a belief might be connected to experience. Other connections include: how the belief (or the statement expressing that belief) arose from experience and observations; what it helps us to explain; what it enables us to predict. The presence of just one of these experience-connecting features would serve to lift any statement out of illegitimacy, but a statement which arises from no observation, explains no phenomenon, has no predictive power and does not admit of confirmation or disconfirmation is a serious candidate for spuriousness. Another way of expressing this broader notion of experience-connectedness might be to stress that to acquire legitimacy a statement requires some kind of empirical anchorage (Nielsen, 1982, p. 141); or (to adapt a famous image from Plato’s Meno) a statement must be tethered, otherwise – like one of Daedalus’ unruly statues – it will get up and run away. The suggestion that a legitimate statement must be empirically anchored need not lead to a blanket dismissal of theological discourse. Some (albeit fairly bare, minimal and certainly arguable) claims might be rooted in an observation of the orderliness and very existence of the universe (Wynn, 1995, p. 416). However, one should not extend far beyond such claims as ‘the universe might well be the work of some powerful designing being’ or ‘a personal being might have been the first cause of the universe’. While such statements are at least anchored in some experience of the world, a philosopher of religion wanting to say something more substantive about (for example) the divine nature or the intentions of God is (in Hume’s apposite words) left ‘to fix every point of his theology by the utmost license of fancy and hypothesis’ (1998, p. 37). Those wishing to trumpet the demise of verificationism and the renaissance of philosophy of religion must say why this notion of anchorage is not an entirely reasonable requirement for a statement’s legitimacy. After all, if a news channel were, as a matter

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of policy, to cease to require its journalists to check the facts of their stories, or even to make observations before reporting an event, would one here speak of a ‘renaissance of journalism’? Would one not rather cease to take seriously the claims made by that channel’s journalists, and instead tell them to ‘quit making stuff up’? The dangers of ignoring issues of anchorage are clearly visible in much contemporary philosophy of religion, principally among those authors who have dismissed the challenge of verificationism. Here, for example, is Swinburne, writing about the differences among religious believers, differences which sometimes lead to conflict: God is very anxious that human understanding of God should develop through human experience, effort, and co-operation, and should not always be revealed by divine intervention; yet he is also very anxious that at any time in history men should live and die by the ideals which they then have. (1979, p. 273)

It is not unreasonable to suspect that something has become untethered here. For what possible observations could have led Swinburne to declare that God is anxious that men live and die by their ideals? What predictive power does that claim possess? Can it be tested? It is a sign neither of naivety nor of prejudice to ask these questions. I know what leads me to state that ‘Adam is anxious’ (I reach this conclusion from what he tells me or from his behaviour), but no such observations are possible in the case of God. There is thus no anchorage in Swinburne’s statement about divine anxiety and his statement therefore falls into the category of the merely spurious. Similarly, here is Mawson, telling his readers what the afterlife is going to be like: [O]ur life in Heaven will not be a disembodied one or one where we float around as ethereal ghost-like figures. It will be an embodied one, where we eat, drink, and sing. Of course there will be intellectual, moral, emotional, and spiritual fulfilment, but there will also be physical fulfilment. (2005, p. 86)

Anchors aweigh! It would be fruitless to ask what observations led Mawson to make these comments. When such speculative and fanciful claims are reflected upon, one is surely left to wonder what has been gained by the easing of verificationist restraints on the outpourings of philosophers of religion.

IV One of the things which was brought into prominence by falsificationist critiques was the peculiar resistance of religious beliefs to pieces of empirical


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evidence patently appearing to disconfirm the truth of those beliefs. So, to take the most obvious and frequently used example (Flew, 1955, pp. 98–9; Martin, 1990, p. 40), theists will typically contend that God loves human beings as a father loves his children. As with any statement concerning the love of one person for another, however, this contention should be open to testing and possible refutation. In such a manner, for instance, the claim that a particular mother loves her children would (presumably) be falsified by the production of evidence that she consistently belittled them in front of other people, thwarted all their plans, inflicted physical harm on them and so on. We would not understand a person who accepted all of that evidence and yet persisted in claiming that this mother loves her children; indeed, we may suspect that in such a case the word ‘love’ had been misunderstood, or had lost all of its meaning. Likewise, the theological claim that ‘God loves human beings as a father loves his children’ would appear to be falsified by the overwhelming data of pervasive human suffering, suffering which an omnipotent loving god would really not permit. And yet this evidence seems to have no impact on the contention that God loves us, which believers persist in proclaiming, even in the face of the most horrific events.15 But, so the falsificationist case goes, since the statement ‘God loves us’ is compatible with any state of affairs, it then asserts nothing and is thus cognitively meaningless. Even if we are reluctant to embrace that falsificationist conclusion, the disregard of reality-testing is a highly striking feature of religious belief, and one which deserves to receive more attention than it currently does within philosophy of religion. Moreover, if we do attend to this notable characteristic then we may find a surprising confirmation of elements of that most derided of atheistic critiques of religion: the Freudian account. Indeed, the term ‘disregard of reality-testing’ is taken from Freud’s description of unconscious mental processes, and in what follows, we will consider this aspect of the unconscious and its manifestation in dreams and religious beliefs. In such a manner, we can see how attention to issues concerning falsification-imperviousness may do something other than advance a case regarding factual meaninglessness.16 A good place to start is with Freud’s important paper ‘Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning’. Here Freud investigates the development of the relation of neurotics – and of humanity in general – to reality. This he does by considering unconscious mental processes, which he claims to be ‘the older, primary processes’ of the mind, ‘the residues of a phase of development in which they were the only kind of mental process’ (1958, p. 219). The governing purpose obeyed by these primary processes is what Freud famously refers to as the pleasure principle: the mind seeks to gain pleasure and draws back from any event that might cause unpleasure.

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In earliest childhood, happiness is sought by means of wish and hallucination: for example, the child is distressed and desires to be comforted, and the mother, sensing the child’s distress, provides immediately that which was desired; or the child manifests his hunger and the breast appears; in these cases, the child experiences the satisfaction it has hallucinated. The child’s belief in the power of wishes is only halted by the non-occurrence of an expected satisfaction, and the disappointment generated by this ‘bitter experience’ (Freud, 1953a, p. 566) leads to the abandonment of hallucinatory satisfaction. The mind then has to form a conception of the real circumstances of the external world, and a new principle of mental functioning is introduced, one which represents to the mind not just what is agreeable but what is real: Freud dubs this the reality principle. It would be wrong to conclude from this that the reality principle entirely replaces the pleasure principle. Not only does the reality principle seek to ensure a pleasure (a deferred one, rather than an immediate one), but certain aspects of mental activity remain entirely under the rule of the pleasure principle. Freud contends that it is the activity of the mind during sleep which most explicitly demonstrates this since dreams show to us how the mind operates when the demands of reality have been withdrawn. Once sleep occurs and the stimuli of the external world no longer act upon it, the mind returns to ‘the dominance of the ancient pleasure principle’ (1958, p. 225), and gives full license to the demands of its wishes. Hence Freud’s familiar judgement that dreams represent the fulfilment of wishes which have remained unsatisfied during waking life. The dreams of children are ‘simple and undisguised wish-fulfilments’ (Freud, 1953b, p. 644), while the dreams of adults, due to the pressure of repression and censorship, are ‘disguised fulfilments of repressed wishes’ (ibid., p. 674). Dreams provide evidence of the mind’s perennial inclination towards wishful impulses, and these impulses are observable also in waking mental activity – for example, in daydreaming and (with a number of qualifications) in artistic creation.17 It is, Freud maintains, science which has been most successful in making itself independent of the wishful impulses of the pleasure principle. Indeed, it is science’s engagement with reality which marks it off so strongly from what he sees to be ‘the strangest characteristic’ of unconscious mental processes, namely ‘their entire disregard of reality-testing; they equate reality of thought with external actuality, and wishes with their fulfilment’ (Freud, 1958, p. 225). It is easy to see where the connections lie between Freud’s description of the wish-driven nature of unconscious mental processes and his account of religious belief. His explanation of religion, found within the pages of The Future of an Illusion, is well known. Religious beliefs, he contends, are the


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expression of deeply held wishes and these beliefs have been built up out of the memories of childhood, principally a memory of feeling loved and protected. The child is helpless, and yet feels completely safe, protected from all harm by its strong and powerful father. However, powerlessness against the world is not merely an infantile stage to be overcome, for we are for ever to be at its mercy, and the longing for protection is thus never entirely outgrown: ‘The terrifying impression of helplessness in childhood aroused the need for protection – for protection through love – which was provided by the father; and the recognition that this helplessness lasts throughout life made it necessary to cling to the existence of a father, but this time a more powerful one’ (Freud, 1964, p. 30). Belief in God is thus representative of a desire to return to an infantile condition in which we felt completely protected. Religious belief is at heart, therefore, an illusion, which in its specific Freudian sense means, not that it is necessarily false, but simply that ‘a wish-fulfilment is a prominent factor in its motivation’ (ibid., p. 31). And the character of the wish lying at the root of theistic belief is clear to see: it is the wish to be loved and protected. Given the appalling amount of suffering in the world, it is hardly credible that there really is such a loving, protecting supernatural father. It doesn’t matter: the wish is so strong that it overrides all evidence to the contrary. And here one can recognize that characteristic feature of wish-centred primaryprocess thinking noted earlier, and, indeed, the selfsame feature highlighted by falsificationism: the entire disregard of reality-testing. Turning a blind eye to the contrary evidence of actuality, religious belief constitutes precisely a refutation of the world as it really is: ‘We shall tell ourselves that it would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent Providence, and if there was a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be’ (ibid., p. 33). Considered from within this Freudian perspective, the hitherto puzzling nature of Mawson’s astonishingly concrete account of the afterlife, noted earlier, becomes clear. One might wonder how a philosopher can make such a confident assertion that there will be an afterlife, still more that it will be of an ‘embodied’ and physically fulfilled variety, one in which we will ‘eat, drink, and sing’. The assertion cannot be tested, and it cannot have arisen from any possible set of observations. How, then, might it have arisen? Freud has supplied us with one possible solution: the wishful impulses of the mind are so dominant that even in the case of that apparently most rational of individuals – the philosopher – they can override evidence and experience. At bottom, Mawson believes in an afterlife of physical fulfilment because he wants it to be true, and the same thing could

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be said for any theological utterance lacking anchorage while simultaneously expressing a view of things as we would like them to be. The conclusion which may be drawn from the foregoing argument is that criteria of verifiability and falsifiability, while still unvanquished as markers of cognitive significance, are nonetheless not best understood as being arbiters of meaningfulness, but are supremely useful, rather, in distinguishing claims which genuinely relate to external actuality from those which are merely the expression of wishes. Hence, for any theological statement, we may properly ask: (1) are there any observations counting in favour of the statement; (2) are there any observations which would be admitted to count decisively against the statement; and (3) in the absence of supporting evidence, does the statement conform to how the speaker would like the world to be? If negative answers are forthcoming in response to the first two questions and a positive answer in response to the third, then we may justly conclude that the theological statement under investigation is a wish-fulfilling illusion. The verdict need not be that theological claims are meaningless. Freud’s words in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life may provide us with an alternative: [A] large part of the mythological view of the world, which extends a long way into most modern religions, is nothing but psychology projected into the external world . . . [and] is destined to be changed back once more by science into the psychology of the unconscious. One could venture to explain in this way the myths of paradise and the fall of man, of God, of good and evil, of immortality, and so on, and to transform metaphysics into metapsychology. (1960, pp. 258–9)

It is understandable that many will be reluctant to embrace Freud on these matters, or indeed on any other. All that has been done in the foregoing pages is an attempt to insert the issue of testability back into discussions within philosophy of religion, and to challenge philosophers of religion to consider whether their theological truth claims do not merely exhibit traits of their own minds and a wish-driven disregard of reality.

V A characteristic feature of the logical positivists’ approach to theology is to treat all theological utterances as being defectively alike. Such blanket dismissals are encountered in the work of both Ayer18 and Carnap,19 but no such universal censure is found in the critique of theology outlined above. Untestability is just one indicator of the possibly spurious nature of any


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particular putative statement; what really indicates spuriousness is untestability plus correspondence with wishes. When both of these features are present, we can confidently declare that the belief/statement is spurious, that it manifests a complete disregard of reality, and its candidacy as a description of the way things really are should be dismissed. To recall, it is not the untestability alone of Mawson’s description of the afterlife that makes it somewhat suspect, but the additional factor of it marching so closely with what human beings would want the afterlife to be like.20 Our concern, therefore, is precisely the Freudian concern: namely, a suspicion that religious beliefs, cocooned from the demands of reality, constitute merely wish-fulfilling illusions. In the face of such a criticism, one might simply wish to ask whether there might be religious beliefs which can escape being censured as illusions, whether there can be religious beliefs which face up to reality, accept it, and do not retreat into wish-fulfilling fantasy. Such beliefs would not fall victim to the test of spuriousness outlined above, and would do something other than offer compensatory and yet ultimately empty words about (such things as) a loving, personal God providing us with fulfilment in an afterlife of bliss. To see sketches of what such a thing could look like, we may briefly note the pregnant conceptions of religion offered by Michael Oakeshott and John Stuart Mill, respectively. Oakeshott’s view of faith, as adumbrated in On Human Conduct, is particularly pertinent here, since he deftly connects religious belief with the difficulties of the human condition (just as Freud does), but without seeing religion as merely being some kind of compensatory device, operating in the optative mood. Oakeshott contends that ‘the gift of a religious faith is that of a reconciliation to the unavoidable dissonances of a human condition’ (1975, p. 81), referring to such matters as ‘the pain of disappointed expectations, the suffering of frustrated purposes . . . the sorrows of unwanted partings . . . calamities of all sorts’ (ibid.). The tools offered by faith for dealing with the difficulties of existence will be various, and will function in a whole range of ways, not just the tranquillization of woe offered by illusory wish-fulfilments. Oakeshott lists these possibilities: ‘a grim fortitude, a hope of compensation in the hereafter, or a graceful acceptance’ (ibid., p. 83). Note that only the second of those listed possibilities would be rendered suspect by our test for spuriousness. Oakeshott contends, moreover, that the central concern of religion is with a particular problem of the human condition, which he describes as ‘the hollowness, the futility of that condition’ (ibid.). The proper role of faith is that of reconciling us to nothingness, and it does this, he holds, predominantly by evoking sentiments which allow us to see the transience of all things under

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the aspect of eternity, sub specie aeternitatis. As he says, ‘the sharpness of death . . . and the transitory sweetness of a mortal affection, the tumult of a grief and the passing beauty of a May morning [are] recognized neither as merely evanescent adventures nor as emblems of better things to come, but as themselves encounters with eternity’ (ibid., p. 85). Mill’s description of a ‘Religion of Humanity’ (1874, p. 109), outlined in his Three Essays on Religion, is similarly useful for us, since Mill includes strident denunciations of the wishful thinking involved in much religious belief before elaborating his own (divergent) view of faith. Mill speaks of ‘the tendency of the human mind to believe what is agreeable to it’ (ibid., p. 166), warning the theologian that ‘it is not legitimate to assume that in the order of the Universe, whatever is desirable is true’ (ibid., p. 165). Given the appalling character of the natural world into which we have each been thrown,21 it is not credible that the author of all things should have an omnibenevolent character, and the conclusions of natural theology must therefore be minimal: we perhaps arrive at the conception of a very powerful being, but ‘any idea of God more captivating than this comes only from human wishes’ (ibid., pp. 194–5). Though critical of the common form of faith, Mill recognizes that religion serves an important purpose in human life, functioning as ‘a source of personal satisfaction and of elevated feelings’, and meeting our ‘craving for higher things’ (ibid., p. 104). He denies, however, that one must ‘travel beyond the boundaries of the world which we inhabit’ (ibid.) in order to have these needs met: ‘the idealization of our earthly life, the cultivation of what it may be’ may provide all the materials required for our religious impulses, even when ‘the short duration, the smallness and insignificance of life’ is fully recognized and accepted (ibid., p. 105). There is no belief in heaven here, no personal immortality; but though our individual lives are short, the life of our species is long, and by taking our moral duties seriously – and by feeling a sense of the significance of life through the hold those duties have on us – maybe human beings could ‘live ideally in the life of those who are to follow [us]’ (ibid., p. 119). Undeniably, much more needs to be done in order to flesh out what has here merely been sketched. But in both Oakeshott and Mill there can be seen an unflinching acknowledgement of the terrors and difficulties of life – its transience and natural savagery – and yet even within this stark and realistic understanding of life a religious attitude is preserved, even perfected. Stripped of the wishful beliefs in a loving God and an afterlife of personal bliss, and eschewing empty and fantastical theological utterances, this very earthly religion might satisfy our craving for higher things by developing a cultivation of our collective moral powers, and a recognition of the world around us as itself an expression of the eternal.


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Notes 1. See also Carnap, 1935, pp. 9–38. 2. It is, of course, to be noted that the positivists treated ethics with greater seriousness than they did either metaphysics or theology. See, for example, Schlick, 1959b and Stevenson, 1944. 3. Hence Carnap’s words: ‘In its metaphysical use . . . the word “God” refers to something beyond experience. The word is deliberately divested of its reference to a physical being or to a spiritual being that is immanent in the physical. And as it is not given a new meaning, it becomes meaningless’ (1959, p. 66). 4. See Clack and Clack, 2008, pp. 100–09 5. The choice of words in Dole and Chignell’s description really should not go unremarked. To be ‘seized’ by an ‘obsession’ with a ‘so-called’ problem is a mental disorder, as when a person finds him/herself in the grip of an alien and irrational fear of contamination from doorknobs. Obsessions do not relate to legitimate worries, but are focused rather on problems which are far removed from real life. To describe the problem of religious language in these terms – as an illegitimate ‘so-called’ problem – is, for reasons to be supplied later, scandalously inaccurate. 6. ‘Marginalized’ is another interesting choice of word: it does not suggest that Wittgensteinianism had been shown to be an unfruitful approach, but that it had simply been, as it were, elbowed out of the club. 7. This change of emphasis can perhaps most dramatically be seen in the two editions of Baruch A. Brody’s anthology, Readings in the Philosophy of Religion: An Analytic Approach. In the first edition of 1974 considerable space was devoted to selections concerning religious language; in the second edition, published just 18 years later, all these selections had been removed, and Brody’s relief concerning this is palpable: ‘The issue of verificationism, which still exercised some influence on the first edition, is now completely and thankfully dropped’ (1992, p. ix). 8. See also Martin, 1990, pp. 47–9. Wittgenstein’s comment in Philosophical Investigations might also here be noted: ‘Asking whether and how a proposition can be verified is only a special form of the question “How d’you mean?” ’ (1953, §353). 9. We can take as an unquestioned example of a factual statement the sentence ‘Barack Obama won the 2008 US Presidential election’. This statement is clearly confirmable or disconfirmable. All such factual statements appear to have this feature. When we move from this to a disputed sentence, such as ‘God loves his creation’, we find that it cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed by any observations and it therefore lacks that very feature the possession of which makes a sentence not just meaningful but factually meaningful. 10. It might also be noted that if such an example as the dancing toys statement is the best parallel that can be found for religious utterance (a form of speech that is already somewhat suspect), then the theologian really is on very shaky territory indeed (see also Nielsen, 1971, pp. 69–70). 11. See Ayer, 1971, pp. 155–8; Clack and Clack, 2008, pp. 45–6. 12. The quotations are from Berkeley’s Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous and Principles of Human Knowledge respectively, quoted in Misak, 1995, p. 3.

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13. A. J. Ayer’s judgement on the legacy of logical positivism seems thus to be as fitting today as it was when he wrote these words in 1977: ‘The verification principle is seldom mentioned and when it is mentioned it is usually scorned; it continues, however, to be put to work. The attitude of many philosophers towards it reminds me of the relation between Pip and Magwitch in Dickens’s Great Expectations. They have lived on the money, but are ashamed to acknowledge its source’ (1977, p. 156). 14. The term ‘spurious’ (along with the similar ‘illegitimate’) is preferable to ‘meaningless’ as a way of expressing the nature of a statement or belief with no connection to experience; in such a fashion, moreover, one can draw useful connections between verificationism and other approaches critical of metaphysics, such as the Kantian approach, which regards claims about non-empirical objects as ‘cognitively defective’ (Gardner, 1999, p. 210). 15. This is not to deny the considerable energy expended by the theologian in producing defenses of God in the face of evil. But even those (notably Basil Mitchell) who have pointed to the theological engagement with the problem of evil as showing that religious believers do recognize potentially falsifying evidence have admitted that the believer will not allow anything to count decisively against his or her belief in God (see Mitchell, 1955, p. 103). 16. Some readers may be astonished to find in an article concerned with testability an appeal to Freud of all people. Have not the claims of psychoanalysis themselves been shown to lack the conditions of verifiability and (more crucially) falsifiablity that have here been demanded of religion (see Popper, 1983, pp. 162–3; Stevenson and Haberman, 2004, pp. 167–72)? While there is insufficient space here to respond in full to these claims, it should simply be noted that psychoanalytic claims are not cocooned from reality in the way that religious utterances seem to be (psychoanalytic notions arose from the clinical experience and observations of Freud and others, and are – indeed, have been, as the history of psychoanalysis shows – revised and amended as a result of clinical experience). For a thorough consideration of the verifiability objection to psychoanalysis (and a vindication of Freud in the face of it), see Levy, 1996, pp. 83–128. 17. Freud is not alone in stressing the human animal’s immersion in wish-driven thoughts, though few thinkers have wanted to press this point as hard as he does. In her recent text on the philosophy of religion, for example, Linda Zagzebski, 2007, pp. 22, 228–9, has noted the dangers of wishful thinking, dangers which philosophy needs to combat. For Freud, however, wishful thinking is not merely a potential danger which one must be on one’s guard against; rather, wishful impulses constitute ‘the core of our being’ (1953a, p. 603), a conclusion he reaches by means of the interpretation of dreams. A dream just is what the mind produces when the demands of external reality have been put to one side; in other words, once attention to the external world is sidelined, the mind simply delights in its wishes. Any time reality is disregarded in a person’s beliefs, therefore, one can be justified in suspecting that what is believed is simply the product of a wishful impulse. For those with a total aversion to psychoanalysis, however, the words of Francis Bacon in the Novum Organum of 1620 may show that the emphasis on wishes is not merely a Freudian idiosyncrasy: ‘The human understanding is not composed of dry light, but is


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subject to influence from the will and the emotions, a fact that creates fanciful knowledge; man prefers to believe what he wants to be true’ (2000, p. 44). 18. For example, ‘[T]he term “god” is a metaphysical term. And if “god” is a metaphysical term, then it cannot be even probable that a god exists. For to say that “God exists” is to make a metaphysical utterance which cannot be either true or false. And by the same criterion, no sentence which purports to describe the nature of a transcendent god can possess any literal significance’ (Ayer, 1971, p. 152). 19. See note 3 above. 20. Mawson’s Belief in God is positively littered with examples of wishful illusions. Another example relating to the afterlife runs as follows: If Rachel has a desire to see her sadly deceased pet hamster again, then . . . it would be less than ideal for Rachel were she to find in Heaven that her hamster had not been brought back to life too . . . So I see no reason why if there were a God, he would not bring back Rachel’s pet hamster for no other reason than that Rachel, as by then a resident of Heaven, wants him to bring it back. (2005, p. 102) Well, that’s nice to know. What a pity that we have no evidence for this, that we live instead in a world in which the creator withholds such benefits from us, a world which seems to be characterized less by an all-encompassing love than by – in Richard Dawkins’ chilling turn of phrase – ‘blind, pitiless indifference’ (1995, p. 133). So, in Mawson’s example of the heavenly hamster we have a statement of belief which is in no way testable, cannot have arisen from any set of experiences (indeed runs counter to all experiences), and which is written entirely in what Freud (1953b, p. 647) would call the wishful ‘optative mood’ (Oh, if only . . .). It is therefore a prime example of a spurious statement, and its only value lies in giving us insight into the wishful impulses of the believer’s mind. 21. ‘Nature impales men, breaks men as if on the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, burns them to death, crushes them with stones like the first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick or slow venom of exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths in reserve, such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed’ (Mill, 1874, p. 29).

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Index Aquinas, T. 163, 164, 167, 168, 169, 229–30 Arendt, H. 10, 147, 186, 194, 198, 200 Aristotle 6, 8, 84, 97, 163–4, 169, 170, 176, 180, 223 Auden, W. H. 188, 192, 193 Augustine, St. 165, 167–9, 198 Ayer, A. J. 262–3, 265–6, 280 Bradley, F. H. 172–5 Card, C. 33–4 Carnap, A. 263, 265, 267, 280 Cassady, N. 203–5, 206–9 Ceausescu, N. 47–9 Chignell, A. 261, 264, 275 Cottingham, J. xvi, xvii, xxi, 117–18, 125, 167

Gaita, R. xii–xv, xvi, 3–28, 29, 34–8, 176–80 Goethe J. W. xiii, 53–9, 60, 64, 66, 68, 70, 71, 74–6, 124 Goodchild, P. 57, 74–6 Green, A. 251–2 Hampshire, S. 159, 161, 181 Hauerwas, S. 25–7 Hegel, G. W. F. 85–6, 97, 144, 205, 262 Heidegger, M. 135, 147, 178 Hemsterhuis, F. 59–61, 62–6, 68, 70, 72 Herder, J. G. 53–4, 56, 59–60, 62–9, 70, 71, 72, 74–6 Homer 112–13, 116 Hume, D. 16, 272–3, 274, 275 Irigaray, L. 133, 244–6, 250

Dante 168–71, 172, 173, 175, 181 Deleuze, G. 85, 88, 101 Derrida, J. 209, 212, 214 Descartes, R. 91, 135 Dole, A. 261, 264, 275 Donagan, A. 23–4 Dostoevsky, F. 41, 194 Eichmann, A. 24–5 Eliot, T. S. 171–6, 178, 179–80, 181 Farrer, A. 157–9, 161, 176, 177–8, 181 Flew, A. 273, 277 Freud, S. xix, 160–1, 167, 191, 194, 246–54, 277–81 Fricker, M. 93–4

Jacobi, F. H. 58–9, 67, 68 James, H. 187–8 Kahlo, F. 254–6 Kant, I. 7, 11, 16, 22–5, 31, 41, 53–4, 65, 69–73, 74–6, 85–6, 89–91, 93, 98–101, 110, 142, 143, 147, 157, 159–62, 274 Kerouac, J. xvi, 202–16 Kierkegaard, S. 62, 109, 124, 168, 197, 258 Kittay, E. 30, 31–2 Klein, M. 44–5 Klemm, D. 132–3 Kristeva, J. 248, 252, 254

290 Larkin, P. 188–9, 197 Lawrence, D. H. 194, 256–7 Le Doeuff, M. 63–4, 244–6, 250–1 Lessing, G. E. 58–9, 67 Levinas, E. 144, 207, 210 Lewis, C. S. 192–3 McGhee, M. 190, 199 McTaggart, J. 159–61, 164, 168, 178 Martin, M. 268, 271, 277 Mawson, T. 264, 276, 279–80, 281 Mill, J. S. 63–4, 281–2 Misak, C. J. 272–3, 275 Mitchell, B. 159–62, 176, 178–9 Mulhall, S. xviii, 3, 16, 25, 27 Murdoch, I. 160, 189, 194 Nielsen, K. 268, 269–70, 271–2, 275 Nietzsche, F. 57, 124, 190, 191, 193, 196, 200, 208, 245, 274 Nussbaum, M. xii, xvi, xxi, 93–5, 97–8, 111, 113–17, 120–3, 162, 164–5, 168–71, 215 Nygren, A. 165, 167–8, 172 Oakeshott, M. 281–2 Pascal, B. xxi, 180 Paul, St. 166, 246

Index Plantinga, A. 264, 269, 273–4, 275 Plato 60, 62, 68–9, 70, 75, 157, 163, 164–5, 167, 169, 170, 176, 180, 190, 243, 275 Plotinus 55, 60, 165, 167 Ricoeur, P. xiii, xix, 83–108, 124, 131–53 Ruddick, S. 30, 38 Sebald, W. G. 185–6 Socrates 10, 190, 195 Solomon, R. 111, 115, 118–19, 124 Spinoza, B. xxii, 54, 57–9, 66–9, 83–92, 97, 99–101 Swinburne, R. 266, 269–70, 276 Weil, S. 7–8, 19–20, 85, 96–7, 177, 196–7 Williams, B. xii–xiii, xvi, xviii, xx, 109–11, 119, 121, 125, 186, 194–5, 200 Winnicott, D. xix, 248–9, 251, 253–4 Wittgenstein, L. xiii, 19, 163, 195, 199, 262–5, 274 Woolf, V. 184, 187, 188, 190, 197 Wynn M. xiv, xvii, 112–13, 116, 120, 125, 221–42, 275

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