Trust, Our Second Nature: Crisis, Reconciliation, and the Personal

Trust, Our Second Nature Crisis, Reconciliation, and the Personal

Thomas O.

Buford

Trust, Our Second Nature

Trust, Our Second Nature Crisis, Reconciliation, and the Personal

Thomas O. Buford

LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, MD 20706 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2009 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this publication 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 prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Buford, Thomas O., 1932 Trust, our second nature : crisis, reconciliation, and the personal / Thomas O. Buford. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 13: 978 0 7391 3231 9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 10: 0 7391 3231 8 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 13: 978 0 7391 3233 3 (electronic) ISBN 10: 0 7391 3233 4 (electronic) 1. Trust. 2. Civilization, Modern Philosophy. I. Title. BJ1500.T78B84 2009 170 dc22 2008042291 Printed in the United States of America

⬁ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48 1992.

Contents

Preface

vii

Acknowledgments

xix

1

Our Problematic Second Nature

1

2

Solidarity: Trusting, Oughting, and Transcending

25

3

Stability

59

4

Reconciliation

87

5

The Personal

111

Bibliography

125

Index

139

About the Author

143

v

Preface

“What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.” Boris Pasternak “The movement of life is not from idea to personality but personality to idea.” H. Richard Niebuhr

The thesis of this book is that only a social personalism and no form of impersonalism can adequately account for the solidarity and stability of what we individuals share with all other members of our society, our second nature. In the ancient world the discussion of society, at least since Plato and Aristotle, began with the social nature of individuals as found in families and proceeded to topics such as the formation and the well ordering of societies according to eternal principles grasped by reason. Since the beginning of the modern world, at least since Hobbes and Locke, the discussion of society began with the relation of persons and society and then moved on to other topics, usually political and legal ones. Their discussion of society assumed social atoms moving through social space. The central problem was to find the basis on which individuals formed societies and how they could do so. Their contract theory of government and society is well known. In this work, however, we shall take a different tact. For reasons that will be developed as we proceed, we shall focus not on the origin of society and the ongoing relation of individuals to what they created. Rather, our concern is with a more basic issue: “What do individuals and society share in common?” or what philosophers since Cicero have called our vii

viii

Preface

second nature, and how best to understand its unity and stability. We shall clarify what we mean by “second nature” as viewed from the topos of persons in triadic relations. Insights generated by that topos will help us grapple with what is properly a secondary issue, the relation of the individual to society. More important, however, it will help us understand what, if anything, provides solidarity and stability for our second nature.

OUR SECOND NATURE What is our second nature? On the one hand humans have a physical nature. Born into the world, they have a natural endowment. As newborns they are little more than bodies that though small at the beginning can grow tall, heavier. Their heartbeat, blood, veins, bones, sinews, synapses, and other natural endowments have been and will continue to be shaped by a DNA structure and their natural environment. That is their natural existence. In addition, they have another “nature.” Interacting with their various environments, humans slowly take on a social existence. The shaping is so deep that it appears to be innate, but is not. It is their second nature. They learn to use a particular language, to eat in ways similar to those around them, use utensils available to them. Though it is learned individually, the core of the shape is shared by other members of society and constitutes their culture. Some aspects of that shared shape seem to remain over long periods of time, for example, learning to read. Others last only a short while, such as using a hammer to help build a Habitat for Humanity house. And others last a long time, slowly changing into different forms, such as the belief about who has the right to vote. Why should we be interested in our second nature? The immediate reason is found in American life, a weakening of solidarity and an erosion of the continuant forces of our social life. Our social life depends on trust, shared norms, and commonly accepted patterns of behavior believed to continue through change. As these are undermined, the solidarity and stability of our social life weakens. Though we may find solace in them and tenaciously hold to them, in practice as their power is lost or diminished our social life loses its stability, and our identity as persons becomes problematic. Trust, shared social patterns, and common values are necessary to solidify and stabilize our identity, yet, trust, shared social patterns, and common values are eroding. We cannot continue to hold to the present unifiers and stabilizers of our society, but we do not know where to turn for replacements. We are in a state of crisis. That may appear to be a problem only for theoretical minds, such as those who read, teach, and write in our colleges and universities, but appearances

Preface

ix

may be deceptive. Though we may not be focally aware of it, may not conceptualize it, and may not know its history, we feel this crisis deep in our bones. The problem extends beyond contemporary American culture. It penetrates to the core of Western culture. This issue lies at the taproot of Western culture, as Heidegger and Wittgenstein pointed out. Both sought to move us beyond Being as the ground of Western culture, beyond Being’s failure to provide solidarity and stability. But if we do, what keeps Western cultural society unified and stable? To what shall we change? If we are beyond the roots of our past, then to what in the future can, should we point? We are in a crisis, one as deep as any previous transition in Western culture.1 The crisis of a culture pointedly manifests itself in our second nature. There the culture in which we live is felt, lived, and shared. It is the juncture of the culture of a society and the members of that society. How shall we lay bare our second nature, revealing the extent of the crisis? What topos best comes to our aid? Our second nature is the form of social actions of persons in triadic relations. There we shall find that trust and causes2 unify a society and institutions stabilize it. And, our solidarity and stability are grounded in what we shall call the Personal.3 How shall we see that, show that? Consider social action. Our second nature is the shared shape of our social actions through time. This shape has a past, present, and future. As past, our second nature is our background; as present, it is our immediate foreground; and as future, it is the suggestiveness of the past and the possibilities of the present regarding what we can, could, may, or should do at a later time. Stable and unified cultures possess both a sense of togetherness and predictable patterns of behavior. In difficult times, such as an economic depression, these provide glue and continuity as the culture and its members find their way. If the difficulty is a fissure running through the unifier and solidifier, the culture faces a crisis that threatens its existence. The unifier and solidifier no longer hold together the actions of persons sharing the culture. Their shared social actions splinter into a background that has little relevance to the foreground. The solidarity and stability of the temporal span of our second nature is weakened or lost. Following the insights of a temporal approach to our second nature, of social action, we shall see that trust and causal norms are the basis of its solidarity, that institutions are the basis of its stability, and that they occur in relation to the Personal. We shall attempt to understand the solidarity and stability of our second nature, the shared social actions of persons. As we proceed we draw on the inspiration and insights of Personalism, first articulated by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819) in late eighteenth century Germany. Personalists argued that the key to understanding reality, both social and natural, is Person. Following

x

Preface

that insight they carefully investigated important aspects of social action, freedom, valuation, and moral responsibility. This group included, among others, such luminaries as Josiah Royce, William Ernest Hocking, John Macmurray, Emmanuel Mounier, and Karol Wojtyla, Borden Parker Bowne, Edgar Sheffield Brightman, Peter A. Bertocci. Collectively they developed the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical views that contribute to understanding our second nature. Collectively, they sought to resist both the stark autonomous radical individualism of disintegrative liberalism and the suffocating heteronomy of collectivism.4 Each was successful, but only up to a point. None adequately accounted for the ontological distinction between the “made” character of culture and the “found” character of physical nature, of the solidarity and continuity through change present in a society, or for the solidarity and stability required by a society that endures more than a short time. They did not help us understand the nature of trust and its place in the solidarity of a culture, and they did not explore how trust helps account for the roots of stable change. Furthermore, none of them accounted for and articulated the nature and structure of the relation of the individual to the group in such a way that the freedom of the individual is fully maintained and the unity, solidarity, and identity provided by society is fully recognized. And none gave us an adequate understanding of how personalism grounds the social world. Nevertheless, shared vision and individual contributions will be included in this work. What needs attention is a systematic understanding of social action. Working toward a remedy from the perspective of social personalism, this work focuses on our second nature, particularly its solidarity and continuity through change. The central claim of social personalism is that trust is the ground both of unity among people and of the stability of their individual and social lives. The strength of trust is central to the integration and continuity through change of our second nature.

TOPOS This essay or “speech” is guided by the topos or root metaphor Persons. But, following Jacobi and later Royce, we shall broaden the topos to include persons in relation, or actions of persons in I-Thou-It relations.5 By viewing social action in this way we hope to reveal trust as the taproot of its solidarity and institutions as the basis for continuity through change. It is one thing to present what the topos reveals to us, an insight we may deeply believe. But it is another thing to explore the implications of the insight and determine if that is the most eloquent speech, the most complete speech we can give. That leads us to the argument for the truth of the belief. The first stage of the argument is to develop the insight provided by the topos. That will, in turn,

Preface

xi

present the major problems we face as we attempt to understand our second nature. Our claim is that the central ingredient in our second nature is trust. The strength of trust plays a crucial part in the integration and continuity through change of our second nature. How shall we develop the insights of this topos or root metaphor? One option is to consider an institution such as education or the state and show how it is formed from the conscious, deliberate resources of free persons. For example, William Ernest Hocking, appealing to psychology and the will, found the root of institutions in will circuits.6 Another option is to show that institutions are the macrocosmic manifestation of the microscopic elements in the physical world. David Weissman, drawing on insights from modern physics and the philosophy of Aristotle, argues that society and its institutions are rooted in the natural world.7 And another option is to show that institutions are “manifestations” of the structure of God’s mind placed in the world for the proper ordering of human life in their relations to each other. According to natural law theory, Aquinas for example and the Stoics even earlier, human law is rooted in natural law, which in turn is grounded in the eternal law of God. For reasons to be developed later, neither view is successful. Though each has its strengths, these approaches rationalize what is essentially an issue in interpersonal relations. Recognizing its temporal roots, we shall examine our second nature by appealing to the history of philosophy. A brief review of philosophical studies of our second nature from the ancient world to the present presents major problems as well as proposed answers. To structure that history of society and culture in the West, we shall show that the second nature of persons formed in individual societies, cultures, and institutions ranges from dyadic cultural objectivism in the ancient and medieval worlds to monadic cultural subjectivism in the modern contemporary world. We make no claim that the historical survey we develop or its conceptualization is exhaustive. Repotting the history of philosophy is beyond the scope of this essay. Rather, taking a historical approach helps us to recognize the emerging Personal and to articulate the problems to be faced, the range of options for understanding our second nature, the strengths and weaknesses of those options, and what must be done to develop a more adequate understanding of our second nature. Having set up the problems in that manner, we shall proceed to argue (ironically, as we shall see) for the Personal and its relation to our second nature.

ARGUMENT How shall we argue for the insight gained through the topos? First, we shall seek to tell the most complete story, to include all that should be included in

xii

Preface

the argument and omit what should be omitted. At bottom, our story must be rooted in the experience of persons, their Lebenswelt. Second, we shall offer a story that provides compelling evidence for the belief in the insight. That story conveys the main ways of understanding our second nature, the central questions they face, and the major answers given to those problems. Rather than beginning with problems and proceeding to their solution, we shall begin with a historical survey and show the central issues deeply rooted in the lives of people. This provides a historical perspective often missing in purely theoretical studies. Beginning with major philosophers in the contemporary and modern world, we shall turn to those in the medieval, and finally to those in the ancient. Each approaches the subject of our second nature from a perspective that is not only distinctive but also deeply influenced by the historical cultural period in which they lived. They also discuss or sometimes simply present a view on (1) the structure of the social lives of persons, particularly the relation of the individual to her total environment, specifically to the group; (2) solidarity and what grounds it; (3) continuity through change, or stability and what grounds it; and (4) the continuant ground of the social ground. Problems in each major view generate an antinomy that sets the challenge for the remainder of the work. We shall grapple with the antinomy by restating the central answers to major issues as questions and proceeding to answer them and offering evidence to show that our answers are compelling. Collectively the argument will show why the insight provided by the topos helps us develop the most eloquent story. How shall we proceed with our discussion? In Chapter One we shall set up the problems through a historical survey of the central ways of viewing our second nature. From the contemporary and modern periods back to the medieval and ancient periods, key topics arise. These include the orientation a philosopher takes in the study of our second nature, the basis of solidarity, and the stabilizer through change in social life. We shall find that the views range between two poles. The ancient period forms one pole, and the contemporary and modern the other. In the ancient world philosophers such as Plato thought of persons as being driven by passions, by desire, and having nothing inherent to themselves as individual human beings to which reason can appeal to correct those sometimes destructive activities. Each social shape they develop, including their status in the social hierarchy, is derived from the capacity of reason to grasp stable patterns that are external to individual persons and that provide values, norms, direction, solidarity, and stability for their lives.8 These patterns are like boxes that define the psychical, spiritual, and social space of persons living inside them. To live outside of society means that one’s way of life is like

Preface

xiii

that of wild animals, giganti as Vico called them, directionless, isolated, capricious, and vulnerable. A society’s culture is the water in which fish swim. It provides norms that give society its purpose, solidarity, structure, and stability. Persons know where they came from, where they are going, what they are to do, and how they stand in relation to each other. Stability and solidarity is purchased at the price of minimum social mobility and personal freedom. However, that view fails to give an adequate description of the lives of individual persons, particularly what bonds them and the stabilizing factors that lend meaning and continuity to social cultural life. Also, the relation of the individual to the group is thought of as a part in relation to a whole, that is, a formal relation. We shall call this cultural dyadic objectivism. In the modern period individual persons turned inward seeking capacities to know themselves and the natural world and to create societies to meet their personal and social needs. Having rejected the ancient and medieval world of cultural dyadic objectivism, they found individual freedom and believed little external to themselves constrains their creative work, particularly the past.9 In this realm of freedom oriented to the future they can choose among options they imagine and can work to bring them to fruition. The freedom of each individual to develop her own psychical, spiritual, and social space seems unlimited. They find their solidarity and stability within their own lives or in a society of their own forming. We shall call this orientation cultural monadic subjectivism.10 Each pole has strong evidence supporting the truth of its position. The ancient pole provides for social order with its cultural norms, purpose, solidarity, and stability. The contemporary pole provides for the freedom of individuals to critique, to imagine a better social order, and to develop their full potentialities as persons. Yet, we find two problems, a logical one and a “lived” one. Logically, we find an antinomy, two true but contradictory claims. The problem stated in this manner presses for a solution. Faced with the incoherence of holding to both claims, we turn to a third alternative, “jumping through the horns of the incoherence,” so to speak. As we develop that third alternative, we must keep the strengths of each pole and reject its weaknesses. Succinctly, in response to the two views, we seek two goals: 1) an adequate description of the lived social order, individual freedom, and their relation; and 2) an adequate ground for both. Attempting to achieve the first goal, the “lived” problem, we shall find that the theorists at each pole and those in between fail to take into adequate consideration the lived life of persons-in-relation. They isolate individuals from the world as lived, from the Sitz im Leben, as some phenomenologists discovered. This means that our second nature has been treated abstractly and not concretely. And, as we seek the second goal, an adequate account, we shall

xiv

Preface

recognize the failure of any form of impersonalism to provide an adequate ground for the lived world of persons-in-relation. We expect a third alternative to overcome the antinomy and to carry the full richness of the Lebenswelt. That is, the first two alternatives, by appealing to one dimension of persons in the Lebenswelt either in their “description” of persons living in the world or in their providing an adequate cause, fall prey to impersonalism. Only social personalism, the third alternative, can do so. In Chapter Two we shall discuss what provides solidarity for a group of persons that allows them to form and maintain a social unit. As we do so we shall also consider the relation of the individual to the group. On the one hand, dyadic societies assume that society is first (in some sense) and individuals both find themselves in them and gain their identity through them. The “space” of individuals is defined by the society in which one lives. By “space” we refer to the psychic, spiritual, and social lives of individuals. That is, individuals are inherently social animals. They find solidarity and stability in the society and culture in which they live. On the other hand, monadic societies assume that individuals precede societies, and societies are the voluntarily association of individuals seeking specific goals. Their space in society is whatever the individuals collectively allow it to be. They have difficulty accounting for solidarity and fail to account for the relation of the individual to the group. Specifically, if solidarity is the key aspect of that relation, what is it, and how can it be accounted for? We shall argue that solidarity consists in trusting, the structure of which is triadic in character, I-Thou-It (or cause). That discussion will provide an opportunity to discuss the troublesome problem of the relation of the individual and the group. We shall show that this problem remains impenetrable due to the logic guiding the study of it. Neither an subject-predicate logic nor an empirically rooted propositional or predicate calculus can solve the problem. In what sense can the part be related to the whole? Neither can answer the problem. However, by stating the problem in terms of understanding our second nature, the juncture between the individual and the cultural group and approaching it from the vantage of social personalism with its triadic social logic, we shall gain a deeper insight into the relation of the individual and the social group. In Chapter Three we shall seek to account for social order, the relation of the individual and the group, and continuity through change in the order of society. In dyadic societies religious leaders often say the gods gave them the order, the laws governing it, and the place of humans in society. Philosophers appeal to a metaphysical entity such as the forms of the Unmoved Mover, and theologians believe in a creator God to account for their social structure and order. Uniformly, they have problems showing in what way such a transcen-

Preface

xv

dent being accounts for order and change in a society, specifically the relation of the individual to the social unit. This is a form of the traditional problems of the one and the many and of permanence and change. We shall show that neither the cultural dyadic objectivist nor the cultural subjective monist can adequately deal with those two problems. Logically, they are caught on the rationalism of their own logic, the relation of the individual and the universal. If we appeal to the universal for answer, how account for the individual? If we appeal to the particular, how can we account for the universal? This is the problem of the part and the whole. Finding neither solution satisfactory, we account for social order by appealing to what we shall call the activity potentials of the triadic relation itself. The social ground of continuity through change is rooted in the activity potentials of the I, the Thou, and the cause each brings to the triadic relation of trust and flowers in the activity potentials of the triadic relation itself.11 The potentials that blossom only in the triadic relation we call the phenomenal ground of society. The potentials manifesting themselves only in the triadic relationship take five forms, possibly seven. These are the educational, the economic, the political, the religious, the familial, the media, and the regulative. We shall call these structures primary institutions. We shall also examine specific institutions, we shall call them “secondary institutions,” formed along the general structures we call primary institutions. That is, we want to understand the “solidar” and continuant through change of a specific family, economy, government, school, or religious group. We want to understand how they are shaped by the potentialities of specific environments such as natural and cultural ones. We shall see the influence of memory and causes (values, norms) on the formation of specific institutions and solidars. In Chapter Four we shall find a legitimate meaning for expressions such as “the government acted on behalf of the disadvantaged,” that is, for institutional action. In that light we shall also examine the points of difficulty of and the basis for reconciliation in a society whose solidar is in crisis and/or whose institutions fail. We shall consider the basis of that failure and what we must do for specific institutions to thrive. Our claim is that only the Personal, as understood here, will provide the solidar and stability through a crisis. We shall also learn that institutions are inherently moral agents. In Chapter Five we shall consider what metaphysically grounds the solidar and continuant through change of primary and secondary institutions. Seeking the most empirically coherent explanation for what we have found in our study of our second nature and having shown that the solidarity and stability of our second nature is phenomenally grounded in a triadic relation of trust among persons and a cause (values) and in the concrete structures of primary

xvi

Preface

and secondary institutions, quasi-persons, found in that relation, we turn to show that social unifiers and stabilizers rest in the Personal. The most empirically coherent explanation for social solidarity, stability, and reconciliation after crisis is the Personal. Ironically the argument rests on trust in The Personal. the Personal cocreates with finite and quasi-persons our second nature, the shape of their lives for the sake of the unity and continuity of persons in triadic relation. Cicero brought the obvious to our attention. “Human culture is itself . . . a ‘second nature,’ whose true aim is not to exploit the rest of nature but to cultivate it, raising the potentials emergent in humanity toward harmonious completion.”12 As we examine Cicero’s insight, we claim that as creatively found stable patterns of cultural life, institutions are rooted in trust and possess a background, a primary structure, and a secondary one. Central to creativefinding are values.13 The highest value is the Personal, and finite persons and quasi-persons model their lives after the supreme Person or God. God’s relation to persons, both finite and quasi, is best understood within the metaphor of dance. God, as creator and choreographer of the natural and social world, dances with persons, a kind of persons in community, where the structure of the dance is the institution. In this way God stabilizes institutions. We seek, then, to understand the problematic of contemporary institutions, the nature of institutions (social ontology), and the basis of determining whether those institutions are forming lives good to live. With the orientation we have sketched out and the issues that arise as we examine our second nature, we face four questions: First, what, if anything, is problematic about our second nature?—Chapter One. Second, what, if anything, provides solidarity of our second nature?—Chapter Two. Third, what, if anything, stabilizes change in our second nature, and how best solve the crisis of our institutions?—Chapter Three. Fourth, how shall we work toward reconciliation amid the crisis in the solidarity and stability of our second nature?— Chapter Four. Fifth, what, if anything, is the continuant ground of those stabilizers, unifiers?—Chapter Five. Now, let's turn to the first question.

NOTES 1. In this study we shall focus on America and Western culture as cases in point. It is our contention, however, that the insights presented here are true for any society. 2. “Causes” is borrowed from Josiah Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty (Vander bilt University Press, [1908] 1995). 3. The Personal is reminiscent of John Macmurray’s “Field of the Personal.” See his Persons in Relation (London: Faber & Faber, 1961), 15 43. Both Royce and Mac murray contributed significantly to this study.

Preface

xvii

4. To grasp disintegrative liberalism, contrast it with what it is not, integrative lib eralism. As presented by John Hallowell, integrative liberalism is: “(1) A belief in the absolute value of human personality and the spiritual equality of all individuals, (2) A belief in the autonomy of human will, (3) A belief in the essential rationality and goodness of man, (4) A belief in the existence of certain inalienable rights peculiar to individuals by virtue of their humanity . . . , (5) A belief that the state comes into ex istence by mutual consent for the sole purpose of preserving and protecting these rights, (6) A belief that the relationship between the state and individuals is a con tractual one and then when the terms of the contract are violated, individuals have not only the right but the responsibility to revolt and establish a new government, (7) A belief that social control is best secured by law rather than by a command . . . , (8) A belief that ‘the government that governs least governs best’ . . . , (9) A belief in indi vidual freedom in all spheres of life (political, economic, social, intellectual, and re ligious), (10) A belief in the existence of a transcendental order of truth which is ac cessible to man’s natural reason and capable of evoking a moral response.” John H. Hallowell, Main Currents in Modern Political Thought (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965), 110 11. 5. This scheme of persons in relation will be clarified later. Here we note that we build on the basis of the work of Giambattista Vico, The New Science of Giambattista Vico, trans. by Thomas G. Bergin and Max H. Fisch (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, [1948] 1984), the Autobiography, trans. by Max H. Fisch and Thomas G. Bergin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, [1944] 1983), and Stephen Pepper, World Hypotheses (Berke ley: University of California Press, [1942] 1970). All rational thought proceeds from a way of looking at things, and that way is provided by a metaphor or image. Vico calls it the master image, Pepper the root metaphor. See Thomas O. Buford, In Search of a Calling (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1995), chapters 5, 6. 6. See Thomas O. Buford, “Institutions and the Making of Persons: W. E. Hock ing’s Social Personalism,” in A William Ernest Hocking Reader, with Commentary, ed. John Lachs and D. Micah Hester (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 2003), 290 304. 7. David Weissman, A Social Ontology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). This goal is central to Plato’s educational curriculum. Cf. The Republic, Bks. II III, and VII. 8. Cf. Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man, and Martin Luther who, when asked by the Diet meeting at Worms to recant his writings, said, “Unless I am convicted by the testimony of Scripture or by evident reason for I trust neither in popes nor councils alone, since it is obvious that they have often erred and contra dicted themselves I am convicted by the Scripture which I have mentioned and my conscience is captive by the Word of God. Therefore I cannot and will not recant, since it is difficult, unprofitable and dangerous indeed to do anything against one’s conscience. God help me.” 9. See Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man and Martin Luther’s defense before the Diet at Worms, April 18, 1521. 10. For two excellent examples of this orientation consult the work of Richard Rorty and James C. Edwards. Both are cultural linguistic solipsists.

xviii

Preface

11. An “activity potential” is whatever a person can do when the occasion calls for it. 12. Robert N. Bellah, et al., The Good Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 15. 13. For a fuller discussion of creative finding see Thomas O. Buford, In Search of a Calling: The Role in Shaping College Identity, Role in Shaping Identity (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1995), 89 118.

Acknowledgments

Philosophers work from a background, as they read the new ideas presented in the conversation. Those who most influenced this essay are Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Giambattista Vico, John Dewey, Josiah Royce, the Boston Personalists, H. Richard Niebuhr, John Macmurray, and Emmanuel Levinas. At crucial points in this study, the writings of Charles Taylor corrected my direction and set me on a more defensible, fruitful path. Randy Auxier, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, pressed me to study Royce, which led to a fuller understanding of the triad, loyalty, and the moral life. James MacLachlan, Western Carolina University, gently kept Levinas in my vision. The work of Richard Beauchamp, Christopher Newport University, on arenas of social conversation influenced my grasp of the nature and place of institutions in society. The work of Richard Prust, Saint Andrews Presbyterian College, on the phenomenology of action and the religious life pressed me to remember the wholeness of individual personality, even though persons live in triads. My thanks to others in my immediate sphere of conversation including Bogumil Gacka, University of Lublin, Lublin Poland; Jan Olof Bengtsson, Lund University, Lund Sweden; Charles Conti, University of Sussex, Brighton, England; and Doug Anderson, Southern Illinois University. My colleagues at Furman University provided invaluable assistance during the preparation of the manuscript. David Edward Shaner, Mark Stone, and David Gandolfo read the manuscript and guided me away from numerous errors, as did Jacquelyn Kegley at Calilfornia State University, Bakersfield; I am responsible for those that remain. Donald Verene at Emory provided invaluable assistance at an early stage of the manuscript and introduced me to the thought of Giambattista Vico. John Lachs at Vanderbilt University read the completed work; his support and encouragement remain a gift for which I am grateful. And my thanks xix

xx

Acknowledgments

to our Department Assistant, Evelyn Onofrio, for removing the tedium involved in a work of this type. Valparasio University and the Lilly Program in Humanities and the Arts provided a sabbatical for study without the normal interruptions of academic life for the academic year of 1997–1998, during which time I was the Senior Fellow. The staff of the Bodleian Library, Oxford University; the Library of Congress; the Folger Institute and Library, Washington, D.C.; Duke Library, Furman University; Valparaiso University Library; and University of Notre Dame Library; provided invaluable assistance researching this book. Furman University provided financial support with Mellon, Kellogg, and Dana grants. Dean Tom Kazee encouraged and supported the completion of this essay during post retirement by providing a study, travel and book expenses, materials, and unencumbered time. Dr. David Shi, President of Furman University, continued the tradition of and financial support for intellectual work. Leopard Forest furnished splendid Zimbabwean Peaberry coffee in an atmosphere conducive to reading, thinking, and writing. My thanks to each. My love to Dee, sine qua non.

Chapter One

Our Problematic Second Nature

Americans seek to live, most to live well, and some to live lives good to live. They want individual space to live as they please, an education to help them prepare for living in their society, to enjoy a family if they so choose, an economy that provides meaningful work and an income they can live on, a government that protects them and acts in their best interests, freedom of religious expression and practice, regulations to structure their practice, and moral principles to guide their practice. Amid their hope, some question whether their dreams can be achieved. Sometimes they stop dreaming. The setting within which they seek to fulfill their aspirations seems to be inadequate to the task, and the way they feel and think of themselves and other people is not encouraging. The promise is there, but we feel discordance deep in “our bones,” possibly deeper than our hopes and dreams. What is it? For some Americans, the events of 9/11 catapulted that felt discordance into bold relief, and they clearly saw it: fear. This is no ordinary fear, such as the fear of going to the dentist. Not everyone fears the dentist’s needle or drill. This fear is cultural fear; we share it with everyone else in our society. We recognized that our culture, our way of life was under attack. Bound by a common fear, we feel singled out, confused, and unstable. Reflecting on the emotions and events that prompt them, we become aware that our culture rests on a relation central to its life, trust. When trust is present we have a basis of community, of hope, and of goals. When it is absent or significantly diminished, fear of others enters accompanied by isolation, instability, and confusion over norms that govern our lives. These emotions and the loss of trust deep within our lives are only partly generated by 9/11. That was only the most recent in a series of events and circumstances in the last century prompting these emotions and the loss of trust. 1

2

Chapter One

We have lived with the slow erosion of trust and the accompanying emotions for so long that they have become second nature to us. We have become a people deeply conflicted within ourselves. We are a trusting people, but a suspicious people; a hopeful people, but a fearful people; a caring outgoing people, but an isolated people; a goal-oriented people, but a confused people. Fear, instability, social isolation, and confused norms are some key manifestations of this cultural malaise, suspicion. The condition is manageable; we are managing it. The suspicion tightly gripping us is relatively new, and for others it is the world into which they were born and grew up. For all of us it has lasted so long that it has become commonplace. Are we destined, then, to live this way? Is there a better way? Is there a basis for trust? Is there any basis in our experience for trust so that fear, instability, isolation, and confusion can be diminished? We can attempt to solve problems in our society. We can consciously, rationally decide to trust in a person, a group, an institution, or a social order. But that, though beneficial, does not address our fundamental issue as a people—suspicion that so pervades our lives that it has become second nature to us. What place should this “new” second nature have in our lives? Should it be embraced? Overcome and rejected? Tolerated? Possibly, a careful investigation of our second nature will help us find the place of trust and distrust in it. To help us orient ourselves and gain the full force of that problem, we shall seek to understand why it is a problem, and to understand some of its salient characteristics. First, we shall clarify what is meant by our “second nature.” Next, we shall examine the influences of events in our recent history that prompt the quandary. Then we shall take a long historical view of our second nature, seeking clarification of the depth and breadth of the problem. We shall find four issues that must be addressed to reach our goal of finding the place of trust in our second nature. If we do so, possibly we can renew our hope for community and continuity through cultural changes. To grasp the full force of this problem we shall consider not only the contemporary events that raise the issue to the forefront but also the historical background, primarily philosophical, that sets those events in context. (In this study we focus on America, however, the fundamental line of reasoning is true for any society.) First, turn to the meaning of “second nature.”

WHAT IS “OUR SECOND NATURE”? Consider the obvious. On the one hand we humans have a primary nature. Born into the world, we have a natural endowment. As newborns we are lit-

Our Problematic Second Nature

3

tle more than bodies that though small at the beginning can grow tall, heavier. Our heartbeat, blood, veins, bones, sinews, synapses, and other natural endowments have been and will continue to be shaped by a DNA structure and a great variety of natural environments. We can call this our natural shape. On the other hand, in addition to our primary nature, we have a second nature.1 In our interaction with our environments, we slowly take on a shape. This lifelong shaping is so deep it appears to be innate, but is not. It is what we shall call our second nature. We learn to use a particular language, to eat in ways similar to those around us, to use utensils available to us, to see ourselves in a social hierarchy. When we relate to others we recognize who has authority over us, who can deeply influence the direction of our lives, as well as over whom we have authority and influence. We recognize those can change over time, as in the student-teacher relation. However, some do not change, as in the relation to the American constitution and judges in courts of law. Consider some of the major characteristics of our second nature. First, our second nature is both individual and social. We learn it individually; each of us develops idiosyncrasies that distinguish us from other persons, giving each of us an individual shape. In American society the possibilities for expressing ourselves individually range from clothing, to automobiles, to food, to work, to education, to religion, to sexual practice, to politics. On the basis of their physical proclivities, early training, and choices, persons develop their own individual shape. However, significant aspects of the shape of each personality are common to other members of society, constituting our shared culture. Though we can choose from a wide range of automobiles to satisfy our transportation needs, all of us drive on the same side of the street. When we eat, we usually use a knife, a fork, and a spoon. When we marry we form a nuclear family. When we make political choices, we do so with a view to filling the posts in a governmental form we call Representative Democracy. We use a currency common to all of us. When we go to school, we attend public schools or choose a private one. Our young are expected to attend school for twelve years, graduate, and receive some advanced education to move into the technologically demanding work force in a market economy. We live within a system of law governing our relations to each other. In the United States all local and state laws are developed under and within the U.S. Constitution. We expect our leaders to set the example by faithfully abiding by the law, and we expect those who break the law to be punished. H. Richard Niebuhr nicely characterizes our second nature: “What we have always believed is what we have been taught in childhood by respected adults and have not been led to doubt by other companions or by personal experience; it is what our community believes without discussion or

4

Chapter One

dissension; it is often the set of convictions that constitute the climate of opinion which even bitter intellectual antagonists share.”2 Second, our second nature is temporal. It is not a static entity; it has a past, a present, and a future. As past, it is our Background. As present it is the now, the present. As future, it points ahead to a time not yet, ready for what comes next. The latter two we shall call our Foreground. The Foreground refers to our daily actions such as getting out of bed at 7 a.m., eating cornflakes and a banana for breakfast, dressing for work, driving to the store, purchasing a bottle of milk, and listening to a lecture on the human brain. As we reflect on these and our myriad actions each day, we recognize our direct, conscious experiences of living in the world as we act on our environment and it acts on us, an active–passive sequence. We also notice that our Foreground is not capricious or willy-nilly. As we choose among brands of milk to purchase from the grocer, we do have options. We could infer that the freedom to choose among genuine options could mean that we are unpredictable. Yet, though we do have options, what we choose is highly predictable. Among the milk options, some of us purchase nonfat milk and do so with regularity. Our predictability signals that more is occurring at the moment of choice than options and our freedom to choose among options. Our choices and actions are deeply influenced by something we bring to them. That something is our Background. What is the Background, what is its structure, and how is it related to the Foreground? The Background can be viewed from two time frames: 1) before the Background, and 2) after the Background. The “before Background” is pre-theoretical, pre-conscious, pre-reflective. The “after Background” is posttheoretical, post-conscious, post-reflective. This distinction helps us realize the place of the Background in our lives. If post-conscious, post-reflective, post-theoretical, we can recall and reflect on the Background. This is the basis for Vico’s recollective imagination or memory. If pre-conscious, pre-reflective, pre-theoretical, the Background is being formed through living now into the future, the life of the Foreground. It receives its form through absorbing living, though some of it is the result of conscious choice among known options in the Foreground. As the Foreground is absorbed, structured by our activity potentials, and retained in our memory, the Background becomes our granted meanings, habits, knowledge. As we consciously develop reasons for what we believe, choose among alternative courses of action, we call on those warrants taken as obvious and lying deep within our Background. We act within the topos of our Background, of our culture; riveted by the beauty of the aria sung by the soprano, the Background recedes to the periphery of our attention.3

Our Problematic Second Nature

5

Next, what is the extent of our Background? It is all that remains with us after we act on, undergo, react to our Foreground. Though in our memory, little of it is recollected. What a person ate for lunch five years ago on August 13th would be difficult to recall, even that one ate a lunch at all. We tend to recall what we continue to use, rehearse, tell stories about, or do. Though we find our place in our individual Background, our Background is also similar to other persons living in our society; it is deeply social and cultural.4 It is historical, ordered, active, and operative.5 Our Background is acquired through past activity.6 In that way we continue the way of life of those who precede us. It is post-conscious, our history. Having a past, a present, and a future, it is temporal. Further, what we acquired is organized into patterns that emerge from our own individual possibilities and those of our natural setting, society, and culture. In this sense habits, attitudes, traits, and practices order our lives. The institutions of our society deeply influence the ordering of our preconscious lives. For example, Americans habitually make community decisions by taking a vote; the majority rules. We pay the grocer with dollars, but we do not pay attention to the complex interrelations that play in the background structuring our economic lives. Also, the Background as post-conscious is active in the sense of preparedness for ongoing activity, and “projecting a context.”7 At the moment this sentence is read, one may not be paying for groceries, but one is confident one can, will, and ought to do so when the occasion arises. One is prepared to do so. And as one enters the checkout line of a supermarket, in one’s Background lies the framework, guidelines, knowledge, skill, and moral pattern for paying for the coffee and milk in the shopping cart. One understands where one is and what one is to do in the circumstances. But, one is not yet carrying out the transaction. That will occur when it is one’s turn. Further, our Background is operative in the sense that we are aware of its presence and its absence; it is both manifest and anonymous.8 From our perspective, thoughts and habits manifest themselves, present themselves in the Foreground and also recede into absence and anonymity in the Background. In learning in a school, we go to class, study, prepare for and take exams. We can be aware of learning in a particular way, a way that works best for us, but usually we simply study Plato’s Apology. Upon inspection, the structure of our learning habits recedes into an anonymous and absent Background, though we know the Background is ours. Next, how are the Background and the Foreground related? Earlier in our discussion of the Foreground we portrayed it as our direct conscious experience in normal living in the world. One important aspect of that experience is the problems we face that disrupt the normal course of our lives. At this point

6

Chapter One

we see clearly a difference between our Background and our Foreground. Our Background forms as our actions are structured from birth by parents, guardians, and significant others.9 At that early age choice is barely involved if at all, our reflective awareness is only beginning to develop and form. Over time our Foreground recedes into our Background, having varying degrees of impact. Though all our direct experiences find a place in our Background, some of them deeply influence the formation of the habits of a person into a distinctive pattern, sometimes referred to as character. As we grow and mature, the Background becomes richly historical and ordered. Further, the Background includes knowledge, skills, procedures, values that are ready for action as we enter into similar or new situations arising in the Foreground. But more, our Background is operative in the Foreground. A problematic situation in the present may range from similar to the past experience (now Background) of others, to radically different, to unanticipated, to unimaginable. One’s habits are challenged; they fail to guide. The problem in our Foreground may be superficial, such as a flavor of ice cream not being available, to somewhat challenging, such as learning how to operate a computer, to deeply controversial, such as gay marriage or the loss of a common system of social norms. At these various levels we realize we cannot continue our customary patterns, but we do not know how to proceed. We continue to act, but our loss of direction deeply disturbs us. At this point we recognize a disconnect between our Foreground and our Background.10 In light of the challenges present in the Foreground we may reflectively recollect our Background, seeking steady guidance for the problematic present and foreseeable future. Or we may lose confidence in our Background, ignore it, and learn new knowledge, develop new skills, form new norms. Or we may challenge some aspects of the Foreground and seek reconciliation, allowing a highly valued habit in our Background to be accepted in the Foreground. For example, a gay person challenges authority, comes out, and seeks equality under the law. In these ways one may begin the process of finding a role for one’s Background as one faces the challenges in the Foreground. If we take positive steps to remedy the problematic situation we may seek to find a way toward solidarity within our Background and between the Background and Foreground, or an integrated personality. In an integrated personality our Background is appropriate to the Foreground. What we know, our established habits and patterns of activity and our skills or values, guide us in the creative venture of living lives good to live in the present and foreseeable future. We seek a unity of our Background and Foreground, one that is not static. A static unity would belie the ongoing character of our experience. Finding solidarity between them is the issue, possi-

Our Problematic Second Nature

7

bly through dependable, empirically coherent values that provide continuity through change.11 Our second nature with its Background and Foreground has many levels. Some are particular, deeply ingrained habits such as being able to swim, to ride a bicycle, to solve mathematics problems. We may or may not share these with other people. In contrast some are culturally and socially shared. Their depth is so great that they define and delineate what it means to be a member of a culture. Americans define themselves by the belief in and commitment to private property, individualism, individual rights. Though a person may inherit wealth and social position, Americans believe that in most cases one’s place in the social hierarchy must be earned (as in education) or granted by the will of the people (as in political office). Furthermore, at the deepest level humans share a belief in and commitment to some form of social control, education (formal or informal), religious life, reproduction, distribution of goods and services. These are shared by all humans; there are no Robinson Crusoes living without these. Our study of our second nature will focus primarily on the latter two senses. If a society is deeply disrupted, if the Background and Foreground are not in sync and conflicts result, the difficulty lies at the level of the deepest beliefs it holds. Every society creaks and groans as new ideas in science, the arts, and morality are brought into the community or as those who are socially disenfranchised demand their rights under the law. Sometimes a crisis occurs. That is similar to young people leaving home and entering a period of study at universities. They often experience a crisis; they cannot go back to being fifteen years old, and they cannot be twenty-five either. They do not know what they want to do with their lives. In the meantime, they find experiences that challenge many of their previously held beliefs and goals. Yet, they work through the crisis and find direction. However, they do so on the basis of deeply held beliefs, such as good reasoning, learning, discipline, coping skills, friendship.12 They also hold to beliefs more basic than those, such as human rights, the law governing our relations to each other, the political system of their country, the economic system of their society, the educational and credentialing systems of society and the professions. And of course, there are those listed above that they share with all other humans. Our interest is in the deepest levels of beliefs. Changes in Western culture from the High Middle Ages of the thirteenth century CE to the enlightenment of the eighteenth century CE were seismic. Its foundations shook and changed. This quaking sent shock waves through its second nature creating fissures between the Background and the Foreground. As it did so, the viability of Western society and culture, Western civilization was threatened. Understanding and accounting for solidarity and stability through the depth of crisis is the focus of this work.

8

Chapter One

We have discussed our second nature as if our focus is on isolated individuals. But individuals live in societies and are deeply influenced by them. The conflicts we experience in our individual lives are all conflicts within the society.13 Third, if we could find and claim them, what would provide solidarity and stability for our second nature, our Foreground and Background? Succinctly, we shall argue that it is trust. As we are habituated into the culture of a society, we learn the norms governing social practices, the patterns of its institutions, and the laws that order its social life. Our habituation takes place in families. There we learn how to behave in society. There the Background is initially formed. Our exploration of the Background reveals that it is historical, ordered, active, and operative. Our habituation is shared as we come into contact with others outside the family. They also are acting in much the same way. The sharing of our culture provides solidarity and the ordered patterns of social life according to norms and laws provide stability. The social system can continue on the basis of confidence that others will be faithful to each other in living according to the norms and laws of the society. The social system can operate only so long as trust is present, unifying the Foreground and the Background. Trust is the glue of a society’s solidarity and stability. That is the conclusion of our search for solidarity. How shall we arrive there? Turn to the problematic character of our second nature. We claim that the central element in the relation between our Background and Foreground is trust. Both shared patterns of behavior and shared stable norms are rooted in it. Our norms, habits, and patterns may linger for a while as their power is diminished or lost through confusion over cultural norms and reasonable causes; our second nature, slowly, imperceptibly loses its cohesiveness and stability. Though we continue to live our daily lives out of habit, we feel deeply the conflict between trusting and suspicion, and we wonder if the Way of our Background is appropriate, should be continued.14 Though we recognize that the patterns and understandings lying deep in our personal stories are tenacious and that their influence may never be overcome, we question their appropriateness, their morality. In contemporary American life, we find a weakening of trust and a strengthening of suspicion. These are followed by an erosion of solidarity, unity, and integrity on the one hand, and stability of our second nature on the other. Consider some events in our recent history that engender our conflicted and eroding second nature.

CONTEMPORARY EVENTS Many examples can be found in the U.S., culminating in Woodstock in 1969. Consider one institution, reproduction, marriage and family, in particular. At

Our Problematic Second Nature

9

the outset of the twentieth century, the institution of marriage (a particular form of the reproductive activities of a society) consisted of well-understood roles of men and women. What was understood was authoritative. Though not everyone practiced it, those who did not were regarded as acting improperly. The man went to work, provided for the family, and protected it. The woman stayed at home, bore and reared children, and cared for her husband. During the Second World War, men were called into service, and women were asked to work in factories to produce the machinery of war. Outside the home, they were dependable, hard workers, and fully capable of doing work that it was believed only men could do. The role and status of women began to change and so did the family. This shift in roles of women in the family and in American society had been occurring since the late nineteenth century. Later as the women’s movement formed and gathered political momentum in the 1960s, as medical discoveries such as “the Pill” provided control over reproduction,” and the legal battle raged over the right to abortion, women had for the first time control over reproduction and control over their own reproductive lives. Further, as divorce lost some of its social negativity, women were no longer locked in an institutional pattern that ignored what many believed to be their full growth as persons. Indeed, the traditional institution of marriage had instructed them what that full growth was and required that they seek only that end and live the life consistent with it. No other option was approved or available. By the end of the twentieth century, the changing roles of women and men and the institution of marriage looked different, felt different. But, what is one to believe about marriage and the family? Should marriage include the legal union of same sex couples? Many different views present themselves, including the traditional one. With the confusion about norms governing marriage, instability entered the institution of marriage and the family. And with the erosion of a socially accepted authority, suspicion arose that there is and can be no authority to guide us in these matters. Suspicion grips our minds and our practices. The significance of this for our second nature is clear. As our young grow amid fear, isolation, and instability something more deep seated occurs. They become suspicious regarding the possibility of any generally accepted pattern of sexual roles, family, and reproduction. They have lost trust in their culture. Experiencing nothing else, their second nature loses the key ingredient of its cohesiveness, trust. It is particularly hard to build in the context of the modern family the kind of trust required for solidarity and stability. Though sex, love, and marriage well illustrate our point, further thought about the other major institutions in society reveals the same weakening or loss of trust. Even though we are free individuals, the early formation of our second nature and the American home that fosters it are deeply affected by the culture of the society in which that formation occurs.

10

Chapter One

This sketch of recent cultural American experience helps us understand that our experiences of fear, social isolation, and eroding norms rooted in the loss of trust are prompted by changes deep within the institutional structure of America in the twentieth century. How should we respond? We can continue to manage, get along, ride out the storm. That could lead to the dissolution of American culture as we know it. As long as there are humans inhabiting the earth, some will live on this land with some kind of culture. Or we could seek to understand our present situation and with that understanding seek to weaken our suspicion and to strengthen trust. Hopefully, as our culture changes we can attempt to guide it in directions that are best for the lives of persons. Seeking understanding of our condition, we can appeal to alternatives that have been presented in recent years. Each promises to provide a basis for trust, social cohesion, and stable cultural norms. (Interestingly, these usually come from representatives of the institutions of education and religion.) It is our contention that an examination of each alternative reveals that each rests within a background, the continuum of which spans from a dyadic cultural objectivity with narrowly conscribed subjectivity to cultural monadic subjectivity with narrowly restricted objectivity. However, the position each alternative occupies within that continuum is accompanied by difficulties that render questionable the help they offer.

SEEKING ANSWERS FROM HISTORY In our recent cultural experience, some encourage a flight to an absolute authority we can trust, that provides both community and stable norms. This solution often stems from the religious vision of born-again conservative evangelical protestant Christians, believing that America’s moral fiber and religious values have been or are being eroded by practices ranging from witchcraft, rock and roll, sexual promiscuity, increased divorce rate, corporate cheating and lying, political immorality, religious confusion, and poorly educated children from public schools. Central to the erosion of each institution is confusion over norms that provide orientation and stability amid change. People seek a standard or moral authority that permeates all institutions and critiques them.15 Properly understood, they claim, our situation is that of a fallen people whose sin has affected every area of our lives. Seeking to fulfill our own self-interest by enhancing ways of life and organizing everything around that way, we have not taken the path God provides for us. God must be the center of our lives, and the way for God to take that position is to repent of our sins, let God enter our hearts and give us a rebirth; we must faithfully trust in God,

Our Problematic Second Nature

11

help our fellow humans, and worship God. This way of life is best achieved through participating in a local congregation, but it can be achieved individually without regular church attendance. How should we go about following this path of conversion into a new life? We must turn to the verbally inspired Word of God, the Bible. The Bible is the final authority in all matters of faith and practice. There we find the stable norms on which to build every institution of our society, to build lives that would prompt God’s smile, to live together in peace and prosperity. Other Christians advance an absolute authority, but for different reasons. Roman Catholics emphasize the authority of the Christian God, the earthly presence of whom is the Catholic Church, and whose earthly representative is a supreme pontiff, the Pope. Through right reason and participation in the life of the Church and its sacraments, people find the right path for living life and ordering society. Interestingly, either vision rests on acceptance by individual believers, or notional assent as John Henry Newman called it. They accept the belief that reality is ordered in a particular way. This believing is the action of individuals, guided by the Holy Scriptures, and meets the demands of reflective rationality. Once the revelation is received, one can argue for the belief and show that it is true. Granted, God reveals what God wants us to know. Some aspects of that belief are left to faith, notional assent, creation, and life after death, for example. Nevertheless, such revelation comes to those exercising at least individual faith. It is not something anyone else can do for you. Once the revelation is received, the believer understands it through reflective rationality. The writings of Paul the Apostle in the New Testament are a good example of accepting revelation and slowly understanding it through careful reflection on its meaning. By following the path God has provided for us we find fellow feeling and common norms with others disciplining themselves to the Way. And the laws of God found in the Bible provide stability for our second nature, our institutions, our culture. Why not rest with the absolute authority of the Holy Bible interpreted along the lines of some Evangelical Protestants and some Roman Catholics? After all they have found a ground for norms that, if adopted and followed, reform (rebirth, born again) our second nature and provide cultural stability and social solidarity. The Bible teaches us all we need to know about education, government, marriage and family, economics, and religion. The immediate reason for not following their lead is that the norms of the Bible are not best understood as absolute moral standards. As we shall see later, such interpretation of Christianity is rooted in the hellenization of Christianity from 100 CE through 600 CE. Talk about absolute norms is at root Greek, not Hebrew or early Christian. Furthermore, the writers of the Old and New Testaments accepted

12

Chapter One

and wrote within the cultural life of their day. They accepted without question a hierarchical view of the political order. Indeed, as Paul discussed the relation of God and Jesus Christ to the Church he did so in terms of an organic view of the Church, and he did so without question. It was obvious. In the twenty-first century, we Americans do not accept a hierarchical view of the social, political order. For us, the power rises from the people and is bestowed for a time on those who have been elected by the people to guide the affairs of the state in the best interests of the people. If we accept the Christian Bible as the verbally inspired Word of God and the final authority in all matters of faith and practice and we read the holy script with discernment, we must admit we must face what biblical scholars call a hermeneutical gulf. Reforming our Background and Foreground on the pattern of Middle Eastern culture in the first century would require a wholesale reconstruction. We would have to reject our wealth oriented second nature that guides our actions by the norms of individualism, human rights, and rule by the consent of the governed and reconstruct our Background and Foreground along the lines required by a limited goods culture whose central norms are honor and force. Furthermore, not everyone has received the revelation of God as understood by Evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics. How can we build a cultural order for all of society, for every member of society, on the basis of the revelation received by only a few? To do so requires that those privileged by special knowledge be placed in directive charge of our society. The only corrective to their actions could come from someone else who had received the privileged insight. That is religious absolutism. Fully adopted, such absolutism is a direct contradiction of the fundamental principles of a democratic order. One principle of democracy is the freedom of each individual to act as she or he chooses without interference from other people, unless that act encroaches upon the freedom of others. If the religious right believes in the freedom of every individual in American society and cherishes their own freedom to advance their cause, that belief is inconsistent with the absolutistic implications of their own view. It is difficult at best to hold both to some form of absolutism and to individual freedom. At bottom, what the religious right advocates rests on private revelations to a chosen few. Gleaned from this examination of the exhortation of Protestant and Catholic Evangelicals we find an important difference between twenty-first century Americans and the people of the biblical period. Though the biblical writers accepted the physical and hierarchical cultural world in which they lived, contemporary Americans do not. How best to understand the worlds in which we live is a matter of intense discussion. We know that though some form of political hierarchy, some form of absolutism such as a monarchy is a possibility, we consciously reject it in favor of a what we argue is a better

Our Problematic Second Nature

13

view. This is our first glimpse at cultural monadic subjectivism. What is the case has narrowed and what we believe to be the case has expanded. That is, resting our cultural life in the arms of the subjective life of individuals carries dangers to our culture. Yet, with our emphasis on individualism and freedom of choice, what else can we do but appeal to some aspect of the experience of individual persons? We could avoid appealing to religious absolutism by following the insights of modern science and an accompanying naturalistic metaphysics. Rejecting an overemphasis on cultural subjectivism implied in the position of religious authority, some seek to expand cultural objectivity and set culture in the context of publicly demonstrated knowledge of the natural worlds. In this way culture can be understood and directed by everyone, not just those privileged to have received God’s directives. This appeal was at the center of the conflict between Galileo and the Roman Catholic hierarchy. In its early stages, modern science challenged the medieval understandings of the natural world, particularly in the field of astronomy and biology. Copernicus and Galileo found through their observations and calculations that the heavenly bodies are best understood as moving in a heliocentric rather than a geocentric manner. Their appeal was to experience and experiment. Back to the things themselves, let them speak, thought Francis Bacon. With these early scientific protesters, science began to study the natural world. But it did so in constant conflict with the authority of a divinely inspired and institutionally held view of the natural world. In the world of biology, Darwin’s studies that found their way into The Origin of Species seemed to many religious people a direct challenge to the authority of the scriptures. How could one hold both to creation and to biological evolution? Building on the success of science in its study of nature, sciences of society and its cultural forms developed in the nineteenth century. Auguste Comte thought society moved from a mythological stage, through a theological stage, and finally to a scientific stage. He founded the field of sociology. In the field of psychology, early scientists such as Wundt, Herbart, and Watson investigated the human mind through experiments that could be verified by other scientists. Studies that founded the other social sciences soon followed. From such studies it was hoped that humans, their society, and their cultures could be understood, eventually enhancing their lives. What is the upshot of the appeal of modern social sciences? Reacting to the individualism and emphasis on the subjective life of humans, these scientists attempted to nestle humans and their culture in the natural world. It can be seen as an attempt to recover the background of cultural objectivity lost as the solidity of the Middle Ages fissured and broke under the stress of the Renaissance and the birth of modern science. This seems a good solution

14

Chapter One

to the excessive cultural subjectivity of the contemporary period in Western life. But is it? The natural world as understood by modern scientists operates within the framework of the goals, standards, and procedures of their discipline. Their goal is to understand the world they find before them. They observe and believe the world is orderly. The order is not best understood within the framework of medieval or ancient science, especially the Ptolemaic view of the universe. Rather, that order is clearer if one adopts a heliocentric view. As science developed it became clear that through experiments scientists can find that order and can best articulate it mathematically in terms of laws. Viewed in this manner, the order of the natural world is highly predictable. From astrophysics to genetics, scientists have increasingly mapped out the structure of the orderly world in which we live. What happens as humans are placed in the natural world as understood in this way? Clearly our bodies are better understood under modern medicine than under ancient medicine. And, so are our brains. But what about our cultural lives? Can education, politics, economics, religion, and family best be understood scientifically? No doubt some aspects of each can be clarified and better understood by bringing it under the view of scientific goals and procedures. However, one aspect of cultural life seems to defy the controlling confines of scientific understanding. Human choice among alternatives cannot be accounted for. Science and the other social sciences present arguments to support their positions. The evidence they present is drawn from controlled experiments. One scientist argues that the view she advances is correct and submits her findings and supporting argumentation to other scientists for their evaluation and judgment. The assumption made by the whole scientific enterprise of argument and counterargument is that humans do have alternatives and can freely choose among them. Galileo’s protest is based on the assumption of metaphysical freedom to choose among alternatives. We find no such dimension in the natural order. Not only do we find the presumption of freedom to be a problem for any scientist who attempts to nestle the whole person within the mathematical, causal order of the natural world, but also we find ourselves alienated from that world. A casual glance at our lives shows that the “world” in which we live is rich in variety from freely given love and generosity; to imagining, conceptualizing, and constructing a business; to feeling the hate of some people who disagree with our politics; to attempting to educate children in a confusing world; to choosing among religious options. Our cultural world seems to us a world of options among which we can freely choose, or would like to have the freedom to choose. Though we are deeply influenced by our culture, we find we can learn to transcend it, to critique it, to offer alternative ways to

Our Problematic Second Nature

15

modify it, and to choose among options. The natural world seems to be very different than our social world. Though we cannot deny that we are intertwined within it, the natural world is strange to us. Somehow, individually and culturally, we do not feel we belong there. Though our psychical, spiritual, and social spaces are broad, and we feel free, we feel isolated from each other and alienated from our natural setting. Ironically, the scientific attempt to rescue us from a cultural subjectivism and to nestle us individually, socially, and culturally in the natural world resulted in an increased cultural subjectivism. Recognizing both the strangeness of the natural world with its deterministic order and the facticity of freedom of choice woven into the fabric of our social and cultural lives, we look to our own subjectivity for meaning, solidarity, and stability. Rather than providing a solid basis for cultural objectivism and saving us from the excesses of cultural subjectivity, science and naturalism have intensified cultural subjectivism! Where, then, do we turn? Following the tradition of the liberal arts, we could attempt to recapture the understandings of the ancient world, from the Presocratics through the High Middle Ages. Resuscitating and reinstating our cultural memory, we could seek guidance from the teachings of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Augustine, and Aquinas. Once their understandings are grasped we could find a way not only to avoid the problems of an expansive cultural monadic subjectivism with its contracted cultural dyadic objectivism but also to find a basis for solidarity and a firm ground for stability.16 If we chose that approach, what could we find to help us? Essentially, we will find an expanded dyadic cultural objectivism and a highly contracted cultural subjectivism. What are the essential elements of that view? Turn to the Presocratics for its roots. Early Greek philosophers began their search within the world of ancient religion, especially Olympian. Central to that religious way is phusis, becoming, birthing. Phusis is common to all that is. It is real, and all things come from it and depend on it. But what is it? Western philosophical speculation started, as far we know, around 600 BCE with Thales. He advanced the view that phusis is water. With that suggestion began a long conversation about the nature of phusis and its relation to the world we can touch, smell, see, hear, and feel. Soon two views dominated the conversation. Democritus argued that phusis is One and Unchanging, and Heraclitus argued that phusis is One and Changing. Democritus’ view became dominant and found its way into Plato’s ideas or eternal forms. Nevertheless, Heraclitus’ view could not be dismissed. After all, change pervades the world around us. But the world is not random change. It is orderly. To account for that orderliness we must turn to the unchanging real. In some way the orderliness of nature and society is rooted in and is a manifestation

16

Chapter One

of unchanging reality, or phusis. For our discussion this means that humans and their world rest finally on an unchanging reality. The solidarity and stability of our lives ultimately find their explanation in that reality. In the nature and structure of reality, the world of orderly change finds an account in something other than itself. Cultural subjectivity gains its content, order, and meaning from the nature and structure of reality outside the lives of individuals or societies. Not only does order derive from reality but also power emanates from reality as well. This is top down, hierarchical power. Individuals, societies, and cultures are dyadic in structure and power. Here we have the essential elements in an expansive dyadic cultural objectivism and a narrow cultural subjectivism. A careful study of the central philosophical figures among the Greeks, Romans, and medievalists shows the many permutations of that metaphysics. Plato’s view will suffice. Adopting the theory of ideas, the view that reality is composed on innumerable forms and that the order among all things in the changing world is found in their participation in those forms, Plato sought to understand both the interior lives of humans and their social cultural lives. In the Republic he speculated that to understand justice and why one should seek to live justly one must see justice writ large. Turning to the formation of the polis, he sought justice there. Having understood it socially and culturally, he returns to its analogy in the lives of individual persons. Each individual person is composed of three elements: the rational, the appetitive, and the spirited. Only the rational is self-corrective and can know the good; the other two must follow its guide both theoretically and practically. Humans are what they are because they participate in the form humanness. Human not only accounts for the orderliness of their lives but also the end toward which their lives ought to move. As a shoemaker makes a pair of shoes he must know that for the sake of which the shoes will be used, their end. Analogously, as a person crafts his life he must know that for the sake of which he does the crafting. Only by knowledge of that end can the person know that he is living well. To account for this knowledge Plato appeals to his famous theory of anamnesis. By recollection the soul moves through stages of awakening, finally arriving at knowledge of the eternal forms and the good. In this way Plato, though describing the interior life of the soul, finds for it a narrow range of social activity and a wide range of knowledge. That is, though a person has little or no social mobility once they have found their place in polis, the excellent persons may be able through knowledge to move through the world of appearance into the depths of the world of reality. Those coming after Plato maintained the narrow range of monadic cultural subjectivity and the broad range of dyadic cultural objectivity. Aristotle provides a more nuanced view of subjectivism and objectivism. Nevertheless, his

Our Problematic Second Nature

17

work in the Metaphysics, in De Anima, in the Nicomachean Ethics, and in the Politics maintains the breadth of one and the narrowness of the other. The philosophers who developed the expanded dyadic cultural objectivism almost to an extreme with little range for subjectivism were the Stoics. The real is rational, and through rational understanding one can learn that humans are a manifestation of that reality and that the only aspect of the subjective life one has control over is one’s attitude to what is happening to one. Their famous story of the dog tied to a moving cart illustrates their view of pervasive determinism. Yet they introduced an understanding of law that found its way into Justinian Law. The One, Reality, the Absolute is ordered by an unwritten law of nature (jus naturale). All humans share this in common and are bonded by their common humanity into a cosmopolis. Jus naturale is the ultimate standard of justice. During the early Roman period Christianity flowed into Greek and Roman culture. With its entry Christianity challenged the accepted view of the range of activity of persons. Early Christians attempting to make their views intelligible to others employed the intellectual tools available. Essentially, they adopted an early form of the Great Chain of Being, the roots of which are in the Presocratics, Plato, and Aristotle. We have seen that for persons of the Greek and Roman mind, the good life is achievable and maintained only through knowledge of the good and the practical knowledge and skills to craft one’s life in terms of it. Clearly humans are rational animals. Virtue is achieved through knowledge and vice through ignorance. This view of the nature of humans fits nicely into the nature and structure of reality and its manifestation in nature and society. However, those Christians believed that wrongdoing and being held responsible for it is a matter of a person choosing that which is wrong, and possibly knowing that it is wrong. As Augustine put it, vice or sin is knowingly choosing that which can be taken away from you against your will. Though others had discussed the nature of sin, Augustine advanced the discussion by locating sinful activity not in ignorance alone but also in willful desiring, libido and concupiscence. On the basis of this desire, humans can freely choose to act contrary to what they know, contrary to the recognized authority and power of that which is higher in the order of reality than reason. That is, humans can freely reject God and act contrary to the way of God. With this analysis, Augustine influenced all subsequent understandings of the nature of humans. They are not essentially rational. They are also free beings in possessing both will agency and will power. With this understanding, the beginnings of a rejection of the narrow range of cultural subjectivism were set in place. Even with Augustine’s great achievement, the dyadic cultural objectivism of the Greeks and Romans found its way into a Christianized form of the Great

18

Chapter One

Chain of Being. Phusis or Being, placed at the apex of the order of being, now becomes the Christian God. Being in the form of Plato’s Ideas is now in the “memory” of God, and the world of orderly change is the created order. Whatever is found in nature and society is ultimately dependent on God and is a manifestation of God. In the order of God, everything has a place and there is a place for everything. If sin had not occurred, the cosmic order would have remained a great symphony where each element performed its proper function. But sin did occur and the order was skewed, warped; it fell. Even so, each human has a place ordained by God. The range of human movement is not found in society. It is found in its relation to God. It can either move to the heights of the beatific vision or to the depths of narcissism. An appeal to Aquinas provides a more nuanced view of human society, but dyadic cultural objectivism remains dominant and cultural subjectivism remains subordinated. Consider Aquinas’s discussion of law and its relation to God. First we find eternal law; this is God’s reason, principles for the best possible ordering of everything in the world God has chosen to create. Eternal law ordains that as humans cooperate, they seek their distinctive potential in the pursuit of the perfection proper to humans. This can be known only through rapture or after death, and only with divine aid. Second, we find the natural moral law. As natural humans we have the capacity to know how to conduct ourselves to achieve natural happiness in this life that is consistent with the life we hope to achieve in the hereafter. We can know what we should do by appealing to our natural inclinations toward happiness. Next, we find divine law. This is the Old Law of Moses, and it concerns our sensible and earthly good, and the New Law promulgated by Christ, that concerns our highest and heavenly good. Finally, we find human law. These are the regulations derived from the natural moral law that help us to achieve common happiness in society. Even with this highly developed view of law, Aquinas continues the ancient tradition of a broad dyadic cultural objectivism and a narrow cultural subjectivism. Aquinas provides the most nuanced view of law and its place in society and within a culture, a view dependent on Aristotle, the Stoics, and Augustine. Nevertheless, it maintains a wide ranging dyadic cultural objectivism and a narrow range of cultural subjectivism. The range of subjectivism is not social in character. It is religious, moving from the depths of hell to the heights of heaven and God. The soul and its life on earth can never be more or less, however, than what God ordained it to be. What are the implications of accepting the wisdom of the ancients and of Christendom? Do we find there a path out of the difficulties of monadic cultural subjectivism? Possibly, but not without difficulties. The philosophy of the ancients, as well as early and medieval Christendom, places humans in an

Our Problematic Second Nature

19

orderly world. God in God’s goodness created the best of all possible worlds. Using reason, one can grasp its order and structure and find the way that is best for humans to act. Since there is a standard, we can determine what actions are right and what are wrong. Morally, we live best under grace and the faith, hope, and love that God bestows on God’s followers. Socially, God has created a social order that humans can find and live within. Under God and the order of law, institutions are stable. Since each person is made in the image of God, persons have a common nature, a basis for solidarity. This view provides both stability and solidarity; but if one adopts it, what weakness must one face? However, if we adopt that metaphysical vision with its promised security and solidarity, we must also accept a hierarchical world view and a narrow range of possibilities for human behavior. We shall see later that it also rests on an inadequate view of persons. In the ancient and medieval worlds the Great Chain of Being slowly took shape. It is based on the notion that reality is necessary, immutable, and eternal and that reality is structured in the order of comparisons and a terminus, which is the best or the good. Within that order power moved from the top to the bottom; the higher can affect the lower but the lower cannot affect the higher. That is, the best can affect that which is less than the best, but that which is less cannot change or modify in any way that which is best. Each aspect of the created order has an end toward which it is moving, or should move. As we have seen, the eternal law is the principle of order in the entire created order and ordains the cooperation of each individual in actualizing the potential of its own nature. A significant aspect of that order, so far as humans are concerned, is the order of society; its institutions are also hierarchical in nature. For example, the best form of government, according to Aquinas, is a monarchy. It is hard to square that hierarchical view with democracy, where the power moves from the bottom up; the lower can affect the higher, and the higher can affect the lower. And in families, husbands should lead their wives. In the Church, only men can be priests. Given the God-given social structures of Christendom, persons who follow that perspective find themselves within narrowly prescribed patterns of social life. That is, their range of cultural subjectivism is limited. Adopting this view of reality and the social order within it is close to moving to the opposite extreme of monadic cultural subjectivism, almost as far as the Stoics.

AN ANTINOMY To help us focus and sharpen the issue, consider the issue as an antinomy. As we search for a basis of trust and hope amid the suspicion and fear present in

20

Chapter One

our culture, we turned to the philosophical resources in Western culture. What we find there spans two poles. On the one hand, the most significant Greek, Roman, and Medieval thinkers present what we call dyadic cultural objectivism. According to this view, who we are, our status and role in society, is provided by our society. We are embedded in a rational order where there is a place for everything and everything is in its place. We can find that order through our rational capacities, it provides the structure by which we can fulfill the potential we have as rational creatures, and knowing the end toward which we should live, we can live well. Trust and solidarity are grounded in our common rational nature, and stability in the rational order of the world. Considering the elegance and rational force of their insights and arguments, what they offer is true. On the other hand, contemporary thinkers present what we call a monadic cultural subjectivism. Human beings are free individuals. Finding resources in the inner life of each individual, and limited in the range of what we can know, we have the ability to know the physical world around us through science and to construct our cultural world through our creative imaginations and rational planning. The rational order of the ancients, rooted in a telically ordered reality, was shown to be significantly limited in its predictive power. Modern science pointed out that teleological explanations have limited value and adopted a mechanistic approach to understanding the natural world. Recognizing that the natural operates in a mechanistic manner and that humans have the capacity to act purposefully and choose among real options, we look for the ground of culture and our second nature in something other than the natural world. We began the search by turning inside ourselves. Since persons can conceivably appeal to different standards to justify their individual actions and they must recognize the dignity and rights of each person, we now question the authority of social norms and wonder if there are such norms to be known and followed. We must be self-reliant, as Emerson argued. Yet, suspicion lives. So it appears that monadic cultural subjectivism is true. Now the antinomy appears in full force. Each alternative has good evidence for believing it is true. But they cannot both be true. They are contradictory. If one alternative is true, the other must be false. How shall we work through this antinomy? Logically, we can take any one of three approaches. First, we can affirm one and deny the other. That is, if we can show that dyadic cultural objectivism is false and that monadic cultural subjectivism is true, no contradiction remains. We are clear to act on the option that is true. Second, if we can show that monadic cultural subjectivism is false and that dyadic cultural objectivism is true, no contradiction remains. We are clear to act rationally on that option. Third, we can search for assumptions on which the antinomy rests. It may be that we hold beliefs that allow the formation of the antinomy,

Our Problematic Second Nature

21

which if we carefully examined them we would no longer be caught in its logical conundrum. There may be other alternatives. Where does that leave us? To provide solidarity and stability for our second nature, is there no other way than monadic cultural subjectivism, dyadic cultural objectivism, or some form of both? I suggest there is, and it is the burden of this essay to present it and argue for it. Now, let's turn to the second question, what, if anything, provides solidarity for our second nature? NOTES 1. The distinction between a primary and a secondary nature is well known. One can find it in the writings of Arnold Gehlen (specifically in his Man: His Nature and Place in the World, trans. Clare McMillan and Karl Pillemer (New York: Columbia University Press, [1974] 1988, 342 43) and noted by Philip Rieff in his introduction to Charles Horton Cooley’s Human Nature and the Social Order (New Brunswick, USA: Transaction Publishers, [1983] 2006), xv. It is implied in Alfred Schutz’s dis tinction between action and behavior in The Phenomenology of the Social World, trans. George Walsh and Frederick Lehnert (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern Univer sity Press, 1967), 52 63. Also Talcott Parsons, “Prolegomena to a Theory of Social Institutions,” American Sociological Review 55 (June 1990): 319 33, assumes that in stitutions are rooted in action and not movement only. We shall contend that the dis tinction between action and movement is justified and that our second nature is prop erly understood in terms of action. Our discussion in Chapter Two, “Solidarity: Trusting, Oughting, and Transcending,” can be understood as an examination of the structure of social action. Though we do not move straightforwardly into a full fledged discussion of action and movement, as the argument unfolds we shall provide reasons for holding to the distinction. 2. H. Richard Niebuhr, Faith on Earth: An Inquiry into the Structure of Human Faith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 33. 3. This distinction is well known. David Hume was well aware of it, Nietzsche rec ognized it and its instability, John Dewey plumbed the depths of habit by working out its relation to the Background (see Victor Kestenbaum, The Grace and the Severity of the Ideal: John Dewey and the Transcendent [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002]), Merleau Ponty focused on it in Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (New York: Humanities Press, 1962), and John Searle noted some of its features in chapter 6 of The Construction of Social Reality (New York: The Free Press, 1995), 127 47. See also Borden Parker Bowne, The Principles of Ethics (New York: Harper Brothers, 1892). 4. Sociologists have long recognized the place of the concept of action in their the ories. The work of Parsons is a good example. Philosophers have focused on it, and the result is a wealth of literature. Alfred Schutz in his The Phenomenology of the Social World (Evanston, Illinois: The Northwestern University Press, [1932] 1967) in vestigates the actions of people through an analysis of the concept of meaning and a

22

Chapter One

rich description of the lived experiences of other people. For reasons to be stated later, we recognize that freedom is central to action and that action is central to the nature of persons. With significant modifications mentioned later, we adopt a voluntarist view of action. The formulation by Myles Brand in his introduction to The Nature of Human Action is satisfactory: “For every person S and every action a, S performed a if and only if: (i) there is a b such that b is the appropriate bit of bodily or mental be havior of S or there is a b such that b is the appropriate bit of bodily or mental be havior of S and the appropriate effects of this bodily or mental behavior; (ii) b oc curred; (iii) there is a v such that v is a volition of (person) S and v caused (behavior) b; and (iv) c occurred.” However, not individualistic, we shall see that action is fun damentally triadic. Myles Brand, ed., The Nature of Human Action (New York: Scott, Foresman, 1970), 6, 8. 5. To help us grasp the structure of the Background we rely on Dewey’s descrip tion of habit in Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology (New York: Modern Library, 1922), 40 41. This description does not compel us to ac cept the rest of Dewey’s position on habit. 6. Albert Bandura, Social Foundations of Thought and Action, A Social Cognitive Theory (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1986). 7. Victor Kestenbaum, The Grace and the Severity of the Idea (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 143. Kestenbaum is helpful in interpreting Dewey’s com ments on habit in Human Nature and Conduct (New York: Modern Library, 1933). 8. Kestenbaum, The Grace and the Severity. 9. Bandura, Social Foundations. 10. John Dewey celebrated the emergence of the practical, of science during the Re naissance and early modern period as the disconnect widened between the tradition based institutions of religious power and the subordinate practical disciplines. See his Reconstruction in Philosophy (Boston: Beacon Press, [1920] 1963), 1 52. 11. Mead claims that “One may say that the attainment of functional differentia tion and social participation in the full degree is a sort of ideal which lies before the human community. The present stage of it is presented in the ideal of democracy. . . . [T]he implication of democracy is rather that the individual can be as highly devel oped as lies within the possibilities of his own inheritance, and still can enter into the attitudes of the others whom he affects.” George H. Mead, “The Ideal of Social Inte gration,” in Edgar F. Borgatta and Henry J. Meyer, Sociological Theory: Present-Day Sociology from the Past (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), 544 45. 12. For habits consult Peter A. Bertocci and Richard Millard, Personality and the Good (New York: David McKay, 1963), 130f. 13. Mead observes, “The changes that we make in the social order in which we are implicated necessarily involve our also making changes in ourselves. . . . Thus the re lations between social reconstruction and self or personality reconstruction are recip rocal and internal or organic; social reconstruction by the individual members of any organized human society entails self or personality reconstruction in some degree or other by each of these individuals, and vice versa, for, since their selves or personal ities are constituted by their organized social relations to one another, they cannot re construct those selves or personalities without also reconstructing, to some extent, the

Our Problematic Second Nature

23

given social order, which is, of course, likewise constituted by their organized social relations to one another.” Mead, “The Ideal,” 543 44. 14. The difficulties we face culturally present themselves within the framework of developmental patterns from birth to death. Those patterns are ably articulated by Daniel J. Levinson, et al., Seasons of a Man’s Life (New York: Ballantine, 1978); David Norton, Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976); Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: Norton, 1993); and William G. Perry, Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years, A Scheme (New York: Holt, 1968). 15. See Jeffrey Alexander, The Civil Sphere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 16. In his Natural Law, Laws of Nature, Natural Rights (New York: Continuum, 2005), 27 30, Francis Oakley takes a similar approach. Whitehead’s distinction in the Adventures of Ideas (New York: Free Press, 1967) between internal and external re lations prods Oakley to situate his own thought between two widely separated views. Whitehead seeks a moderating position and Oakley follows. With Oakley and his predecessor, we recognize the broad gap separating cultural objectivism and cultural subjectivism and seek a moderating position. See also John Wild, “Introduction to Emmanuel Levinas,” Totality and Infinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, [1961] 1969), 15.

Chapter Two

Solidarity: Trusting, Oughting, and Transcending

INTRODUCTION In our search for solidarity and stability for our conflicted, fractured second nature we may consult voices from our history. But, as we have seen, following their advice, though informative, leads into the conundrums of an antinomy. If we choose the dyadic cultural objectivity of the ancient and medieval worlds, we gain an objective superstructure and objective principles binding us into an integrated culture. But, in doing so, we severely limit a person’s freedom to choose the structures she believes will enhance her life and those around her. If we choose the monadic cultural subjectivism of the modern/contemporary world, we gain possibilities such as freely choosing to achieve our own goals or moving within and among social classes. We have difficulty, however, finding a basis for solidarity with other members of our society. If appealing to the options history presents places us in an antinomy, to what shall we turn? Could it be possible to have solidarity without the loss of freedom and freedom without the loss of solidarity? As we begin our search we shall illustrate the argument below with the shift from the ancient/medieval cultures to modern culture during the long period from the High Middle Ages in the thirteenth century to the Enlightenment into the eighteenth century. During that period the alternatives of dyadic cultural objectivism and monadic cultural subjectivism presented themselves in the debate between the ancients and the moderns. Since this study is not intellectual history nor the history of philosophy, our brush strokes will be broad but designed to highlight the issues. We shall begin our search for an answer by starting at a place common to everyone, our human experience. 25

26

Chapter Two

HUMAN EXPERIENCE The Fullness of Practical Life We shall begin our examination of human experience with a reminder from Borden Parker Bowne and William James. Consider Bowne’s words, “We find such common ground in the following postulates: First, the coexistence of persons. It is a personal and social world in which we live, and with which all speculation must begin. We and the neighbors are facts which cannot be questioned. Secondly, there is a law of reason valid for all and binding upon all. This is the supreme condition of any mental community. Thirdly, there is a world of common experience, actual or possible, where we meet in mutual understanding, and where the great business of life goes on.”1 In this Bowne and William James agree. James wrote in a letter to Bowne, “I think we fight in exactly the same cause, the reinstatement of the fullness of practical life, after the treatment of it by so much past philosophy as spectral. . . . [I]t is that our emphatic footsteps fall on the same spot. You, starting near the rationalist pole, and boxing the compass, and I traversing the diameter from the empiricist pole, reach practically very similar positions and attitudes.”2 Bowne and James remind us of the starting point for any philosophical discussion, our Sitz im Leben. It is in the “fullness of practical life” that a philosophical study is conducted. Even though one may apply philosophy by examining arguments for and against a previously stated philosophical claim, if the claim has nothing to do with human life it is abstraction at its worst. Problematic Character of Experience We may agree with Bowne and James that philosophy occurs in the midst of the “fullness of practical life,” but philosophers from the Presocratics through the present also agree that experience is inherently problematic. Though philosophical investigations occur amid everyday living, they originate as our experience becomes problematic, encouraging us to reconsider what to believe and what option to adopt and follow. Though minor issues may prompt the flight of Minerva, most likely conflicts in our everyday lives that have farreaching significance will encourage the reflective search for philosophical wisdom. If a traditional pattern of life harms many and undergoes serious scrutiny with the possibility of being rejected, we seek patterns that are not harmful and that will enhance our lives.3 In contemporary American society some argue that social patterns structured by racism harm both the minority and the majority and that we should structure society on grounds that provide a continuant through change, social solidarity, and a basis for living lives good to live. Such challenges raise the issue of living integrated and soli-

Solidarity: Trusting, Oughting, and Transcending

27

daristic lives in the midst of deep social change; for insight and understanding we turn to philosophy. Any other philosophical activity, though mentally challenging, is only a glass bead game and no friend of wisdom. A quick survey of the problematic character of the “fullness of practical life,” of what we here call experience, is all that is necessary to provide a glimpse of the depth of conflicts within a portion of our everyday social, cultural lives. From the High Middle Ages into the Enlightenment Western culture underwent profound changes. Under the pressure both of skepticism that focused on the worldview of the Church, Aristotelian science, and the Ptolemaic view of the heavens and of the individualistic turn of Pico della Mirandola and Martin Luther, Western society and the culture built on it groaned under its impending dismantling. At the height of the change, those deeply aware of the loss of solidarity sought to work toward a culture resting on knowledge founded less on religion and more on reason, experience. But how should that be carried out? Crisis in Culture Believing that only a new foundation for knowledge, one that is certain, could suffice, they turned to reason and experience, seemingly the only avenues to knowledge open to every person.4 For some who searched for a new cultural ground, the high ground belonged to the skeptic who demanded that, as we form new patterns of living, we do so on grounds that are certain. They believed the way through the crisis lay in rejecting the theological and institutional traditions of the Catholic Church, and in finding a stable foundation based on reason and experience available to everyone. In the seventeenth century, for example, as problems within the culture of Christendom eventually cracked into the Thirty Years’ War and under the impact of the discoveries of voyagers and the new scientists, skeptics demanded a new certainty, not one based on privileged insight into God through a beatific vision but one based on reason available to everyone who followed proper methods. They knew they could not return to the High Middle Ages, yet they did not know what to turn to. Deeply skeptical, the found themselves in a crisis. What should we believe and why? The problem focused on finding the correct knowledge on which to rest Western culture. For help they adopted a foundational theory of knowledge. Search for New Foundations According to the foundations theory, if a claim to knowledge “is to be settled in a philosophically satisfactory way,” one must trace its ancestry to “a class

28

Chapter Two

of claims, cognitions, that are known in a special direct, certain, incorrigible way; and all epistemic authority resides in these.”5 Any questionable claim must be justified by locating its parentage in an “original” unquestioned authority. This meant a turn to experience and reason, where it is believed such authority can be found and known by us directly and in an unmediated way.6 Though other philosophers searched for rationalist and empiricist foundations, Descartes distinguished himself by working out the rationalist foundations and Locke the empiricist ones. By no means did the search end with those two, but the quality of their work distinguished them. Construing the search for knowledge along foundation lines and focusing on first person reason and experience, these philosophers laid a brick central to constructing what we know as cartesianism, or what we call monadic cultural subjectivism. Laying that brick with ample mortar helped solidify the appeal of a new foundation well into the twentieth century. Let’s see how the foundation is construed first by a rationalist, Descartes, and second by an empiricist, Locke. Rationalism Peirce is said to have contrasted “‘the spirit of Cartesianism with scholasticism, which it displaced’ and identified as one of the four main features of the Cartesian spirit the doctrine ‘that the ultimate test of certainty is to be found in the individual consciousness; whereas scholasticism had rested on the testimony of sages and of the Catholic church.’”7 Signaling a new approach to grounding the knowledge of a culture, Descartes articulated and developed the foundations picture of knowledge and its attendant theory of justification. He searched for a foundation by developing a methodological skepticism to answer the skeptic and by showing how all knowledge can be justified by appealing to that foundation. Since these are well known, only the central features of the argument are necessary.8 The skepticism of Descartes’ time was Pyrrhonist, and he developed his own skeptical argument to answer the difficulties to knowledge Pyrrhonism presented. From the dream argument and the evil genius argument Descartes argued that we cannot trust either our sensory testimony regarding corporeal things or the testimony of reason regarding rational things, such as the arithmetical claim that 2 ⫹ 2 ⫽ 4. Neither experience nor reason is trustworthy. These being the only avenues we have to knowledge, and they are suspect, we must suspend judgment regarding any claim to knowledge. If he is to reinstate knowledge, he must rest it on some foundation and then follow a reliable method to reinstate the reliability of both experience and reason.

Solidarity: Trusting, Oughting, and Transcending

29

He finds the answer to the Pyrrhonist skeptic in the intuitively certain cogito. Any attempt to doubt the deliverances of reason or experience is suspect; however, as the gaze of the skeptic focuses on the knower and questions its existence it faces a quandary. Any doubt of the existence of the individual consciousness must assume the existence of the individual consciousness. Following a reductio line of reasoning, Descartes was led to the certainty that he exists. He has located and secured the foundation. Now, how justify other knowledge claims? How can it be shown that knowledge claims in religion and science are justified? It must be shown that they rest on the foundation. Descartes’ procedure is to secure one’s knowledge of God. He does so using ontological and causal arguments. Finding a concept of perfection in his mind that only a perfect God could have placed there, he arrives at the existence of perfection, what we normally call God. And finding no other adequate ground for his existence than God, he concludes that God is the cause of his existence. Next, he shows that since God is perfect and that God created him, he can believe in general the testimony of both reason and experience. He does so through another use of the reductio argument. We shall assume that the conclusion arrived at is false. What if we cannot rely on the trustworthiness of reason and experience? If that is true then God must be a trickster. Anyone who is a trickster leads one to believe what is not the case. That implies that God created us to believe in general the testimony of our experience and reason, but we cannot do so. If that is the case we find a contradiction. It has been established that God is perfect, and we have concluded that God is not perfect. If the earlier line of reason is correct and God is perfect, then we must conclude that we can rely on the general testimony of experience and reason. This means that any knowledge claim about the natural world can be justified by appealing to our senses, to God, and finally to the cogito. In this way the claims of science and religion can both be shown to be true or false, and the skeptic is silenced. Having found a secure foundation, we can proceed to build our culture on it. But at what cost has this new foundation been acquired? Before we consider the implications of the search for this type of knowledge we shall consider an empiricist approach to the foundations picture and the justification view of knowledge. Empiricism Locke located the foundation of knowledge in the individual consciousness with its direct intuitions of the inner and outer senses. The problem is the nature, origin, and validity of knowledge. Until we face these issues we should

30

Chapter Two

not directly concern ourselves with the nature of things, what individuals ought to do, and the ways we communicate what we know with each other. Claiming that the theory of knowledge is the beginning point of philosophical inquiry, Locke moves to find the correct foundation of knowledge and the way to justify knowledge claims in terms of it.9 Rejecting innate ideas, he believed individual consciousness is a tabula rasa that must be furnished. It is done so by experience, the foundation and source of all other knowledge claims. All mental events or ideas come from sensation, supplying sensible qualities, and reflection, supplying the mind with ideas it has of its own operations, such as thinking, doubting, reasoning, and willing. An idea is whatever the mind immediately, directly apprehends. In receiving ideas, the mind is passive. Here lies the foundation. From simple ideas and its active mode, the mind has the power to form complex ones at its pleasure. By bringing two ideas together it can view them and form relations between them, thereby forming ideas of relations. It can also separate ideas as they come together in real existence, the activity of abstraction. The endless ways the mind can combine simple ideas can be placed under three headings: modes, substances, and relations. Regarding the external world that they resemble, some ideas are like the external world and some are not. The power in objects to produce definite ideas in us he calls primary or original qualities, such as solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number. Other qualities such as colors, sounds, tastes are not in the objects themselves and are produced in us by their primary qualities. Now, the issue arises, what is the cognitive value of ideas? Locke thought that ideas should be clear and distinct; confused ideas make the mind uncertain. A real idea is one that has a foundation in nature and is in conformity with or corresponds to a real thing existing outside the mind. The mind believes an idea to be real through a tacit assumption of its conformity to the things outside the mind. But that may be true or false. However, our most certain knowledge is our perception of the relations of our ideas, their agreement or disagreement. Intuitive knowledge is the unmediated perception of the relation. The mind can perceive that green is not red, that they are not the same, that 2 ⫹ 2 ⫽ 4, that 10 is greater than 9. Whatever certainty our mind possesses rests on this unmediated perception. This is intuitive knowledge. Sometimes the mind believes the agreement or disagreement of two ideas is not established intuitively. It can use intervening ideas to mediate between them and indirectly establish the relation. This is demonstrative knowledge. Through a proof and with each step possessing intuitive certainty, the mind can perceive their agreement or disagreement. This is done in mathematics, or in logic through sorites.

Solidarity: Trusting, Oughting, and Transcending

31

What is the empiricist foundation of knowledge as Locke construed it? It is ideas, beyond which our knowledge cannot extend. Interestingly, he believed the only self-evident propositions we have are those of God and ourselves. What about specific knowledge claims? How can they be established to be true? Any knowledge claim that can claim to be true must show its parentage in our ideas. If it can, there is evidence that it is true; if not, it is false. Solipsism It is understandable why the search began and continues. The cultural world they knew was shaken deep into its foundations. This new foundation and justification procedure provided the frame for culture’s book of knowledge, a frame available to every person and not limited to those with Dante’s special guide and insight.10 Consider the implications of adopting the foundation view of knowledge and its accompanying theory of justification. If we direct our search to first person empirical data hoping both to find there an incorrigible foundation and to rest all knowledge claims on it, can we avoid the difficulties of solipsism? That problem appears to be intractable. If we appeal to reason can we avoid solipsism? Descartes’ cogito ergo sum leads us to the certainty of our own existence. His methodological skepticism is a radical form of skepticism that leads us away from our being in the world to being nowhere, alone. It appears the admirable achievement of the foundationalists has further reduced solidarity rather than strengthening it. Rejecting Foundations Why are the foundationalists in such a predicament? It appears that they and the skeptic made assumptions that are carried forward into the foundational picture of knowledge. First, why should one adopt the requirement that all knowledge rests on certainty? We can easily grasp why persons living during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would do so. The rational motivation was empowered by fear of the unknown future and confidence that they could not return to the past. They were in a state of crisis, and they sought to appeal to the best they could know. Certainty would provide the security they needed to navigate the treacherous cultural waters ahead. Consider carefully the search for empirical certainty (the same applies to the search for rational certainty). First, the meaning of certainty varies. Few of those seeking a foundation on the basis of which to rest all knowledge claims, if any, would rest knowledge on emotions or feelings. They are fleeting, varying in intensity, highly unstable, and limited to the interior experience

32

Chapter Two

of a single person. Certainty could refer to that which is the end of the movement of intelligence (intus legere, to see into), in the sense of Dante’s beatific vision. On the assumption of a graded series from evil to good with good being the terminus that cannot be taken away from you against your will, the mind moves through various stages on its journey to the good, to God. Insight into God ends in certainty. In the seventeenth century those were rejected in favor of two others. Certainty could mean that which it would be self-contradictory to doubt, as in mathematics or logic, such as a statement proven to be true using the reductio ad absurdum argument. And certainty could mean incorrigible first person sensory data. In adopting the foundation picture of knowledge, various philosophers in the modern world adopted both senses. But why should they adopt the foundation picture of knowledge? Their reply is that only certainty can silence the skeptic and provide an unassailable foundation on which to rest a culture’s book of knowledge. One supposes that by knowledge they refer to what in their culture can stand securely against the winds of skepticism blowing away the sand-based norms and social structures of the ancient and medieval worlds. That is understandable as Christendom continued to fracture under the impact of the Renaissance and the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War. However, from the certainties of mathematics and logic no necessary conclusions can be drawn regarding existence, as Kant argued. And from the certainties of empirical data no necessary claims can be made regarding mathematics and logic. What we hope to achieve by answering the skeptic is finding a secure knowledge on which to rest the knowledge central to our cultural house. The insights of the ancient and medieval worlds could not sustain the Christendom of the High Middle Ages; they rested on tradition. With high hopes the search began for a rational footing for culture; only in that way could a culture endure. Culture includes highly varied artifacts from language, norms, law, structures, to artifacts of all sorts; it is the way of life of a society. This includes experience, nature, and facts. Assuming the standard of the skeptic was daring, but in the end it could not deliver what was hoped for. It came to rest in a solipsism that spawned the problem of other minds and perception, to name only two. If the search for foundations leads to solipsism, why not be satisfied, rest on that secure foundation, and deal with the problems that foundation generates? Critique of Solipsism One reason for not resting on solipsism is that it is self-contradictory; the solipsist assumes what he rejects. To claim that all experience is first person beyond

Solidarity: Trusting, Oughting, and Transcending

33

which we cannot go assumes a public language and context that allows a solipsistic description. It is the conclusion of the radical skeptic who, adopting the foundation picture of knowledge, finds himself ensconced in the container of doubt denying he knows anything other than himself, and that he knows directly and without mediation. To know the external world he must somehow penetrate the opaque walls surrounding him, and he cannot. Seemingly unaware of what he is doing, he argues himself into such a quandary, using concepts, experiences, reasoning, and language he learned before his odyssey began and without which he could not have arrived at such a destination. He has to accept as true and trustworthy what his arguments led him to deny. He finds himself in a contradiction; he cannot escape assuming the knowledge of his own culture. Any attempt to rest knowledge for a new culture on the secure grounds of reason will be carried out on the basis of and guided by the rational procedures and meanings of the culture believed to be suspect. Descartes, for example, in writing the Meditations, could not avoid either the influence of having been born and reared in seventeenth century France or its language and assumptions. Neurath’s metaphor is appropriate: “We are like sailors who must rebuild their ship on the open sea, never able to dismantle it in dry-dock and to reconstruct it there out of the best materials,”11 to which Frederick Will added, “Indeed, when we think about the matter with penetration and care, we see that we have no clear idea of what returning with this ship to the dry dock, dismantling, and reconstructing it could be.”12 The search for secure foundations for the book of knowledge at the core of an integrated culture that can unite us and steady us through broad and deep change led to an oddity. It is more than odd; it is ironic. The results of the search for a new foundation are the opposite of what its adherents expected. Distrusting the knowledge of their culture with its roots deep in tradition, they attempted to turn completely away from it, to move outside of it for a completely new and secure foundation. The culture of Christendom with its roots in the grand traditions of Greek and Roman learning and of Christian revelation as understood and transmitted by the Catholic Church was deeply flawed. To extricate themselves from tradition and the way of life based on it they turned inward to experience or to the cogito.13 Foundationalists expected to find a secure, incorrigible basis on which to build a new culture. Their skepticism is radical; it is culturally nowhere. But it is secure, free of the untrustworthy tradition that encouraged their skepticism. Their Background must be given up. It could not withstand either the assaults of cultural changes or the internal philosophical critique of the principles on which it was based. They expected to rebuild in the full light of the present, in the Foreground. But could their Background be so easily rejected?

34

Chapter Two

TRIADIC PATTERN OF EXPERIENCE Cultures rest on a body of knowledge they hold as correct and that forms the Background of the culture. But is that the case? We shall see. All claims to knowing made within the culture appeal to warrants justifying the evidence offered for them. That knowledge is the final court of adjudication. To defend that knowledge one could appeal to a foundation to show either that the knowledge is the foundation or that it can be justified by appeal to the foundation. Any attack on that knowledge is a rejection of the foundation of the Background and the knowledge claims based on it. If the Background is filled with anomalies, new foundations are sought on which to save the present culture or to build another one. As the foundationalists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries went about their work of rejecting their Background and searching for new foundations in their Foreground, ironically, they did proceed on the basis of their Background. Consider the skeptical claims of a Descartes. He attacks all branches of learning and the trunk from which they sprang, philosophy. He says, “I will say nothing of philosophy except that it has been studied for many centuries by the most outstanding minds without having produced anything which is not in dispute and consequently doubtful and uncertain. . . . Finally, when it came to the other branches of learning, since they took their cardinal principles from philosophy, I judged that nothing solid could have been built on so insecure a foundation.”14 Descartes doubted that any philosopher has said anything secure and incorrigible. However, in his doubting that their claims possessed such security, he nevertheless knew the language and concepts he learned from them. In his doubting there is a knowing. Though Descartes’ answer to the skeptic led him to a solipsistic nowhere, that which he doubted crept back in. Though battered by the ramrod arguments of the skeptic, the context would not go away. I shall argue that in all our knowing we believe that X, in a Thou, regarding It. Let me explain. In All Our Knowing There is a Believing Other People For any solipsist to secure the claim of epistemic solipsism and overcome it to reestablish contact with the world, as Descartes attempted, contact with the social and nonsocial world must be assumed; we must believe other persons, our companions. As we grow up and live in the culture of our society we learn its language, its knowledge, its ways. Americans learn the English language, science, mathematics, literature, history, civics, how to balance a checkbook, and to believe in private property. As we learn these along with habits and skills, we come to know, to possess the knowledge of our culture.

Solidarity: Trusting, Oughting, and Transcending

35

Our knowledge may be either direct or indirect. Direct knowledge is unmediated; it is “the direct and immediate apprehension of truth.”15 By this we mean that a direct apprehension does not call for evidence to show that what one directly apprehends is the case. In apprehending a contradiction one does not need evidence to show that the law of noncontradiction is the case. To seek evidence for a direct knowledge claim requires that one accept it as one advances the evidence. As one looks at a piece of paper one does not need evidence to oneself that one is observing a piece of paper.16 Indirect knowledge is mediated. Mediation could refer to the work of concepts or first person sensory mental events through which a mind comes into contact with an object. For example, John heard the Messiaen Quartet mediated through his first person sensory mental events. The problems begin to arise as we think of knowing as the relation between a knower and a known, or more specifically, the relation between John’s first person sensory mental events and an object, such as the 1795 English cello in the hands of the cellist playing Messiaen’s quartet. How show that what one is experiencing corresponds to or is identical with what is actually occurring independently of the events in one’s mine? For a philosopher such as Descartes or Locke the problem is how to penetrate the veil of sensory data and grasp directly the external world. If we can only see the external world through our sensory data, how can we check its accuracy? Looking at the problem more closely we find a deeper difficulty. The problem of perception is framed by the solipsism resulting from the search for new foundations. The radical skeptic led us into the thickets of first person sensory mental events without a map to guide us out. After arriving at this destination is it reasonable to ask if we have made a wrong turn? Second, mediation could refer to the relation between knowledge and society. All knowledge is mediated through society. A mind becomes aware only within the language and physical circumstances of a society. Consider our reflecting on knowledge that leads to saying that in all knowing there is a believing other people. Take as an example the traditional definition of knowledge, “Knowledge is justified true belief.” That definition cannot occur in the isolation of solipsism but only in the company of other persons living in a society in a particular locality. All believing is at least a “pro-attitude” about some object. It is easy to think of that attitude being only mine. It is mine, but it is not only mine. Philosophical reflections about my believing arise as questions are raised by me in company of my companions, and I formulate my answers with those companions in mind. The company of inquirers that accompanies me as I reflect on my believing includes those in the past who have thought carefully about believing, those in the present who press the issue, as well as those in the future who may learn something from

36

Chapter Two

my reflections. Further the form of my reflections is mediated through my society in which the form is also guiding the reflections of my companions. Reflecting within the form of Aristotelian logic or modern empirical science is a case in point. The same is the case for my reflection on justification and truth. My reflections are enmeshed in the history of investigations on knowledge, present study, as well as future expectations that occur in society. The process and form of reflection is social, and so is the content of the reflection. Insofar as I attempt to state my reflections and to communicate them to others, I draw on words. Those I choose are those used in my society, those used by others who have engaged in similar reflections. The words carry meanings common to my companions and refer to objects all of us recognize. More occurs than my choosing words from among those used in my society to refer to common objects. I expect that they will also refer to the words in the minds of my fellows, words they use to refer to the same objects and define in the same way. The process, form, and content of reflection also occur in doubting as I develop a skeptical argument. My companions understand what I am saying as I express my doubts about knowledge. They are able to join me in evaluating the strength of a knowledge claim. Whether they agree with me or disagree with me, I and my company share both the process of reflection as well as its form and content. We belong to the same society. A significant conflict may occur between the Background and the Foreground, but conflict can be something for us only within the company of my companions and a common language. Neurath’s plank remains. It is composed of Thous with a common language, a common body of knowledge weaving through the fabric of a culture.17 In All Our Knowing There is a Believing Regarding an It As I and my companions communicate within a common language, we refer to objects directing our collective attention to them. The experience of hearing the Messiaen Quartet is deeply social. As we listen we directly hear the sounds, see the movements of the players, and are aware of the staging of the quartet, the semidarkness of the concert hall and the bright lights focused on the players. Also, we indirectly know that we are in a concert hall, the kinds of instruments being used to play the music, possibly the structure of the Messiaen Quartet. We can read the printed program. The words and concepts I use to refer to objects and events: the concert hall, violin, viola, clarinet, cello, the sounds were communicated to me by the society in which I live. The words and concepts are also social. The ones I use are also used by other members of my society in situations similar to my present one. What I hear refers to the sounds of the instruments, but their meaning refers to my society. As Niebuhr points out, “My knowledge . . . seems to be through and

Solidarity: Trusting, Oughting, and Transcending

37

through a social knowledge, even in its immediacy. It is not social in the sense that society is its object, but in the sense that it participates in the society’s knowledge of objects.”18 Whether my comments about the quality of the performance are only my opinion, are a deeply held belief, or are a knowledge claim generated by thorough study of the Messiaen Quartet, they are mediated by society. Furthermore, the interrelation of the I and Thou always involves a common object. The objects to which we refer include everyday cultural objects such as cellos, violins, sounds, concert halls. Our objects are also norms, standards, values, goals. We shall call these causes.19 Social relations are more complex than I-Thou relations alone. Both Mead and Buber corrected the cartesianism assumed by Schutz, but they ignored the third term in the relation, an It. “Its” are also complex. They include at least causes and norms. Regarding causes, all social relations between two or more people involve that for the sake of which they come together.20 As Tom and Dee share their memories of their children, they are assuming the reliability of their memories about their children. If they discussed a recent biography of George Washington, they would share a third object (in this case a person) to which their statements refer.21 In addition, their conversation is governed by norms. We shall say that a norm is a principle or standard governing activities to which it applies. We can say that a person’s thinking and behavior are governed by a variety of principles. The same is the case regarding the conversation between Tom and Dee. Their love for each other and for their children governs the words they use, the tone of voice, the body language, for example. Social relations also involve norms, including rational and social ones. Consider again Tom and Dee having dinner at their favorite restaurant. That each understands what the other is saying indicates that their conversation is governed by rational principles, such as the law of noncontradiction. Their speech is internally consistent. Though each speaks consistently, they are not conscious of doing so. As they speak they often do so elliptically and metaphorically. Not everything they mean is stated; drawing on their background of growing up in Texas, they speak sometimes using metaphors that only they and others with similar backgrounds would understand. Broader, social norms govern their way of dining. The contrast between their behavior and that of a typical Chinese couple makes the point. Tom and Dee have at least their own napkin, knife, fork, and spoon. Each is served an individual meal on an individual plate. And they sit across from each other, usually at a small square or rectangular table. Dining is individual. In China their counterparts would have a small plate, a small bowl, a small cup, and chop sticks. They would sit at a round table with a large rotating surface in the center. The food would be placed on the rotating surface, and each would take from the various foods. Dining is communal.

38

Chapter Two

Clearly the norms governing dining in China are different than those in the United States. Further, Tom and Dee believe that each person in the marriage has equal rights. In the political process of electing governmental officials, each has the right to vote. Each can own property, such as homes, land, farms. If they lived in other societies, these rights may not be respected. From this we recognize that more is present in the conversation than the I and the Thou; norms, a third element, are also present. Emphasizing the place of norms in social relations, and particularly institutions, Parsons says, “Then in looking for the field of empirical facts with which the theory of institutions should be concerned, I should concentrate on those uniform modes of behavior and forms of relationship which are ‘sanctioned,’ that stand in some kind of significant relation to normative rules to a greater or lesser degree approved by the individuals subject to them. . . . It is in the particular feature of being related to norms that the institutional aspect of these uniformities lies.”22 In addition to norms and causes, the It can refer to the environment in which social relation occurs. To grasp the complexity of the environment, distinguish among habitat, culture, and environment. By habitat we mean the natural setting of human existence, “the physical features of the region inhabited by a group of people; its natural resources, actually or potentially available to the inhabitants; its climate, altitude, and other geographical features to which they have adapted themselves.”23 By culture we refer to “that part of the total setting that includes the material objects of human manufacture, techniques, social orientations, points of view, and sanctioned ends.”24 And by environment we refer to “[humans] . . . in [their] . . . natural and cultural setting.”25 Summary Reconsider James’ “fullness of practical life.” First, it is inherently social. This means that the starting point for all philosophical study is within experience, broadly conceived. But how is this best understood? It is clear that Bowne believes that three elements are always present in experience, an I, a Thou, and a common object, a triad. Human self-consciousness develops only within experience, in the midst of events, of things in the world, of other persons, and their communication, reflection, correction, certification, and guidance. This means that as experience becomes something for us, and is not simply undergone, we find that it is inherently triadic in structure composed of ourselves, other persons, and a third element, things, events, causes, norms: succinctly, I, Thou, and It.26 Skepticism can be formulated only within experience. Though we find ourselves within experience, issues of knowledge and conduct arise as different aspects within experience conflict, requiring recognition, interpretation, and action. In this way this empiricism avoids Cartesian

Solidarity: Trusting, Oughting, and Transcending

39

methodological skepticism, but it does not avoid skepticism altogether. As we listen to the music of Messiaen we are aware of the individual members of the quartet and the audience around us. There can be no conscious reflective experience apart from a social context. Potentials of the Members of the Triad Consider one additional aspect of the triad—the characteristics each member brings to the triad. In a straightforward sense, each I and Thou is a person we meet in everyday life, and the It is, as we have noted, the habitat and culture in which the persons live. Tom and Dee are persons having dinner in a restaurant and sharing their memories of their children. And the four members of the quartet playing the Messiaen are persons interacting musically with musical instruments in their hands in a concert hall. Looking closer we find that each member brings to the triadic relationship a Background and a Foreground. That Background, formed from birth, influenced the Foreground of Tom and Dee as they creatively-find.27 The potentials of the I and Thou are at least what persons as persons bring to the triad. Without developing a full theory of the person, a person has at least potentials, that which a person is able to do in a situation that calls for it. A list of potentials must include at least sensing, reasoning, remembering, imagining, desiring, willing or initiating actions, emoting, oughting, and feeling, and aesthetic and religious appreciation.28 Regarding persons, their potential to will means they can choose among genuine options. As persons they are free; as they develop their activity potentials within the triad their personalities develop. Yet, even though their personalities are highly influenced by the triad; their freedom transcends it, allowing persons to choose to change or modify it.29 Regarding the It, we also find potentials, though they are too numerous to cite. Consider the musical instruments, especially the cello. It came to the hands of the performer from the hands of an artisan who realized that rosewood or boxwood make excellent tuning pegs, ebony for the fingerboard, maple for the neck, maple for the body of the cello, maple for the back (or willow, poplar, or sometimes beech, if the “back is made from a single piece of quarter-sawn wood”30), spruce for the table, and ebony, pearwood, and poplar for the inlay or purfling. The cello maker saw the aesthetic and structural potentials of these woods for an instrument that has the potential to make aesthetically interesting sounds sought after by the discerning cellist. The beauty of the cello movement in the Messiaen is the result of these potentials realized in the hands of the artisan and the musician. It may be bold to say that the It in the triad is the result of the impact of culture on the natural setting, transforming it for the purpose of sustaining and promoting human life.

40

Chapter Two

The Breadth of Social Knowing Before we move on, pause to consider the extent of our triadic relations. For foundationalists of the sort working in the sixteenth century, the barrier to building bridges to other persons, solipsism, is the problem of intersubjectivity or the other minds problem. The argument so far removes the barrier, but in a special sense. Return to the solipsism of Descartes’ radical skepticism and a problem it generated, the other minds problem. Alone in the opaque chamber of skeptical doubt one has only one exit. In some manner she must move through the wall of experience to that to which it refers. Being unable to get outside of one’s experience, how can one nevertheless do so? Consider the skeptic’s formulation of the other minds problem. (1) Any conscious undergoing of an experience is an idea. . . . [Ideas] are data present for a conscious subject and may be called mental events. (2) As mental events they are modifications of an individual mind and, consequently, subjective. (3) Also, mental events are because an individual mind has them. . . . (4) Mental events and physical behavior are different things. . . . (5) Mental events and physical behavior are contingently related, not logically or causally related. (6) Every act of knowing begins and terminates with experience, that is, with the kind of subjective data identified in proposition (1). (7) A necessary condition for knowing either that another person exists or what he experiences is either that I experience his experiences directly or that I infer by some reliable method that he exists and that he is having certain kinds of experiences. It is logically impossible directly to apprehend another’s experience. If I did, it would then be mine and not his and his would be his and not mine. Furthermore, there is no method that is perfectly reliable by which I can make correct knowledge claims about other minds.31 Those who accepted Descartes’ radical skepticism struggled with the intractable nature of knowledge of the external world. In the early years of social theory Cartesian solipsism prevailed. Finding intersubjectivity an intellectual cul-de-sac and wanting to set their discipline on the solid grounds of science, they turned to what is observable, to some form of behaviorism. Yet, this approach fared no better. They could find no explanation for such everyday phenomena as refraining. To do so they reintroduced subjectivity, only to find the other minds problem a thorn in their side they could not remove.32

Solidarity: Trusting, Oughting, and Transcending

41

On the assumptions built into Cartesian solipsism, some social theorists turned to the argument by analogy. Schutz is one who did, calling it simultaneity.33 Our outer lives are a “field of expression” of our inner lives, our bodily presence. If my friend’s bodily movements parallel mine I sense the simultaneity, sense the “other person’s stream of consciousness is flowing along a track that is temporally parallel with” my own.34 This allows a view, though indirectly, of the subjective life of another person. Interestingly, this means that we can “know other people better than we can know ourselves. For we can ‘watch’ other people’s subjective experiences as they actually occur, whereas we have to wait for our own to elapse in order to peer at them as they recede into the past. No man can see himself in action, any more than he can know the ‘style’ of his own personality.”35 Unfortunately, the skeptic’s argument rests on a search for certainty, and Schutz sidesteps the issue of certainty. For such skeptics, the argument by analogy is untenable. One may believe that the experience of others runs simultaneously with one’s own, but what evidence could one cite to show that it does? Only by having directly apprehended another’s inner life could one do so. That is impossible. Unable to show (providing unimpeachable evidence) the characteristics of the inner life of another, claims regarding the existence or content of other minds are only conjecture. What is one to say about that quandary? Consider the other minds problem as an antinomy. We know that other minds exist and their content, and it is false that we know other minds exist and their content. The evidence of everyday life favors the left side of the disjunction; the philosophical demand for evidence supporting any claim about other minds favors the right side (note the skeptical argument above). Both sides are true, but they cannot be, they are contradictory. Thus, we are faced with an antinomy. Resolving an antinomy requires that either side of the disjunction be shown to be false, or showing that the antinomy rests on unacceptable assumptions. The debate has raged over the skeptic’s argument supporting the right side of the disjunction. That philosophical energy, however, has been misdirected. The issue lies elsewhere in the assumptions generating the problem. It is found in the belief that since the knowledge of the past can no longer be accepted, resting as it does on tradition, only certainty can suffice. Rejecting the Background, any step into the Foreground must be taken thoughtfully. Only certainty can replace tradition. Descartes’ approach is well known. Accepting the demand for certainty, he employed methodological skepticism, or radical skepticism, to silence warnings of the skeptic as the first steps were taken to find a solid foundation for knowledge. That approach led Descartes to the certainty of the “thinking thing.” Unfortunately, nothing else could be known with certainty, and the difficulties of showing that we are not alone in the world loomed large.

42

Chapter Two

Again we ask why should one follow the foundationalists and assume the skeptic’s demand for certainty? From our description and analysis of experience, we found that it is triadic in nature, that in all our knowing there is believing, and in all our believing there is knowing. Descartes’ formulation of methodological skepticism rested on a pattern of reasoning that he learned from others in whom he placed trust. He did not invent logic. Though he had the potentiality to think logically, the development and fruition of that potentiality took place under the tutelage of parents, friends, and teachers. Though he had the potentiality to think, the forming of his thinking occurred under the influence of an Aristotelian tradition carried on and taught by his teachers. He would not have been able to formulate the problem in the way he did without having a mind formed in just the way his was. That forming was guided by a logic he knew as taught by teachers he believed. Though he accepted the demand for certainty, that certainty rested on a tradition passed on by individual persons in whom he placed his trust. This does not mean that certainty rests on tradition. Rather, both tradition and certainty are pervaded by believing the language of our society learned from those we believe.36 As we look closer into the social relations implied in the triad, we find it is highly complex. In the triad, I and Thou are related in different ways. They are either direct or indirect. Direct relations are face-to-face, and indirect ones are not.37 As Tom is talking with Dee over a candlelight dinner in a favorite restaurant, their relation is direct. As they share memories of their children, their relation to them is indirect. Living in other states and cities, Tom and Dee see them infrequently. Their relation with them is contemporaneous, as it is with their friends, associates, and other persons living in their society and around the world. They also believe that their grandchildren will live for many years after they have departed. They will be their successors, along with the others who will be born into their society and into others, all finding their place in the population of the world. Finally, Tom’s and Dee’s predecessors lived before them and become part of their lives only through memory. The memories of their long departed grandparents are cherished; it is all they have left of lives well lived that deeply influenced them in their youth. However, they may have formed their memories of their predecessors only through written records and histories. In that way they remember the leaders of their government, local church, synagogue, or mosque. Though their relations to their predecessors, contemporaries, and successors are indirect, Tom and Dee have a more or less close or distant relation to them, as in memories of the lives of their grandparents, of George Washington, and Socrates and in hope and expectations for their lives of their grandchildren.38 Notice at this point what is implied in the types of social relations. Personal living involves those who have gone before, those now living, and those who will come after us. All three become part of the lives of persons now living

Solidarity: Trusting, Oughting, and Transcending

43

through forming and becoming part of their Background. They form their Background and Foreground. In so doing, each person has a past, a present, and a future. That implies that persons have a memory, present experience, and future beliefs and expectations. In the triadic relation, personal experience in the triad is inherently temporal.

SUMMARY From this analysis of our experience we can now see that experience is triadic in structure, that the members of the triad bring potentials to their relationships. The development of these potentials will depend on the agency of an I in concert with the potentials of Thou and of It. As the various woods are selected and gathered by the discerning woodsman and formed by the cello artisan into a cello, the potentials of individual persons are also selected and formed by the individual and the other members of the triad. As no cello without the potentials of various woods developed by the artisan, so no personality without the potentials of the person developed by herself and the other members of the triad. Furthermore, as knowing develops it does so within the triad. In all knowing there is a believing the knowledge of a society, of me and my companions, regarding an it.

TRUST AND THE TRIADIC STRUCTURE OF EXPERIENCE To answer the second question: “what is the place of trust in human experience?” we shall support this claim: “trust is central to that triadic relation.”39 Earlier we simply claimed that we trust experience, as “experience” is used by the radical empiricist, but we have not made good on that claim. To locate trust in the relation, consider one important aspect of the activity of persons, believing. Discussions of believing revolve around two different senses of the term. One is the “feelings of certainty or uncertainty that accompany our action when we hold something to be true; the other is concerned with the activity of trusting in someone or something.”40 This can be further refined: the former is the “conviction of truth or reality of a thing based on grounds insufficient for positive knowledge,” and the other is the “state or habit of mind in which trust is placed in some person or thing.”41 Consider the former meaning. To pursue an understanding of trust into the inner life of feelings of certainty and uncertainty leads us into a realm that is inherently unsteady. Feelings come and go, they are fleeting, and they strengthen and weaken without warning. If we attempt to compare one feeling of certainty with another we find no basis for distinguishing among them. To secure a claim of truth on a belief that in turn rests on feeling is to tie it to

44

Chapter Two

sand. Niebuhr is surely correct that “the inquiry into the nature or degrees or grounds of these feelings seems to involve us in solipsistic inquiries and in the making of arbitrary definitions that do not lead beyond themselves.”42 Turning to the second meaning we find a more fruitful avenue to an understanding of believing or trust. Person A makes a knowledge claim to B regarding C. This claim will be either direct or indirect knowledge. Direct knowledge occurs without mediation, and indirect knowledge occurs with mediation. Direct knowledge of C occurs in the present, as in “I now directly apprehend this piece of paper” from which I read. Knowledge claims are about some persons, events, or states of affairs other than the knowledge claim itself. That is, knowledge claims are inherently contextual and are about some aspect of that context or the context itself. We have seen that little of what we know is direct knowledge, but when direct knowledge does occur it is mediated by my cultural understanding of what counts as a piece of paper. The object I am looking at becomes known by me as a piece of paper as I learn from others language that refers to the object. Though the senses are our avenue to the world and our cognitive powers give us capacity to interpret and organize what the senses give us, the content of the work of our sensory and rational powers, the meaning dependent on that work lies beyond the structured and interpreted mental events and activities; it is derived from the Background and Foreground of the community of which we are a part. That all knowledge claims are mediated by language means that language is deeply social, that any knowledge claim implies other persons. Note at this point that the recognition of our dependence on language for knowledge claims does not imply a cultural relativism or skepticism. It does mean that in all our knowing, the language, definitions, and traditions of our society enter from the beginning. Human consciousness develops only within the Foreground, in the midst of other persons and events, of things in the world, communication, reflection, correction, certification, and guidance. This means that as experience becomes something for us, and is not simply undergone, we find that it is inherently triadic in structure composed of ourselves, other persons, and a third element, things, events, causes, norms: I, Thou, and It.43 Experience also includes both the Background and the Foreground. Consider an important distinction, that between believing and trusting. Up to this point we have used trust and believing interchangeably. We shall use belief in relation to knowledge claims and trust in relation to persons. Each person remains at a distance from what she says. Let me explain. As we discuss knowledge we assume the standard definition, knowledge is justified true belief. In this sense belief is at least a pro-attitude toward the claim. It is

Solidarity: Trusting, Oughting, and Transcending

45

a degree of feeling of certainty. Not wanting to leave belief and knowledge claims in the unformed morass of solipsistic feelings, we seek evidence, in principle available to everyone, that our feelings of confidence are sound. In this way we publicly secure our knowledge claims. When a knowledge claim is made, we either accept or reject the claim. Sometimes we discover new knowledge, but usually we learn what others have learned and pass on to us. The field of science is a case in point. A student learns the field of chemistry that in turn provides the Background for continuing research and discovery. Fortunately, the student does not have to start at the beginning and rediscover the whole body of knowledge that is chemistry. In this sense the student believes the knowledge taught to her and believes the professors who know the field. The professor is the authority for the student. Believing is inherent to knowing any field of science. Trust can be distinguished from belief. What students learn they accept on authority of their teacher. In all acts of believing a body of knowledge on the authority of a teacher, we find an additional attitude, trust. Trust is not placed in a teacher or authority as knower who is believed to be an authority. Rather, it is placed in a person who is a knower. This means that the relation of the teacher to the student is fundamentally moral. The student trusts the teacher, and the teacher trusts the student. In trusting an authority we implicitly acknowledge the presence of a person in whom trust is placed. In the I-Thou relation, I in trusting Thou finds itself in “the reciprocal action of I and Thou in which an I trusts a Thou and so acknowledges the latter as a person—one who has the fidelity-infidelity of moral personality.”44 All knowledge in a culture directly or indirectly occurs within the triad and rests on the reciprocal relation of trust: fides, fiducia, and fidelitas (believing, trust, loyalty). “Trust is a response to an acknowledgement of fidelity.”45 With insight Niebuhr notes that “fides (believing) is the phenomenal element which is largely based on the fundamental interaction of fiducia (trust) and fidelitas (loyalty or fidelity).46 It may turn out that a person or persons are not trustworthy and Its as objects are misunderstood or ephemeral. But distrust and skepticism can be held only within the initial trust placed in persons as persons. Basic to the “conviction of truth or reality,” whether or not supported by sufficient grounds, is placing trust in some person who advances a knowledge claim or thing regarding a person or object. What we have said to this point could be construed as occurring only in the Foreground. If so, one could argue whether an I is justified in placing trust in a Thou. This shifts the argument away from the place of trust in the triad to the problems surrounding justification of initially placing trust in another person. Most commentators on trust take the latter approach.47 However, to do so ignores the underlying interpersonal and moral framework within which

46

Chapter Two

the discussion occurs. The nature and structure of that underlying interpersonal framework is central to the argument of this work. Trust is present in what we call the Foreground, and as we weigh whether to place trust in another we find Hollis’ discussion illuminating. But, we claim, the reciprocal relation of trusting in fidelity pervades the Background. The Background forms from birth, possibly earlier, and continues through change until death. Though deeply influenced by our biological inheritance, our DNA structure, that influence is not determinative for our Background, except in a boundary line sense, like shoulders on the sides of a six-lane highway. That structure is given to us as potentialities. Our potentialities both open us to possibilities but also close us to others. For example, a tone deaf person will not be able to master the cello and play the cello solo in the Messiaen. We have our limits. Our DNA structure is included in the It in the triadic structure. The potentialities of the It are developed in the context of an I-Thou relation. And, as we have seen, that relation is inherently trusting. This means that both the initial formation and the continuance of the Background rest on the reciprocal relation of trusting in the fidelity of other persons. In summary, insofar as a culture exists central to which is a body of knowledge, the reciprocal relation of trusting in fidelity occurs in a triadic relation among persons in relation to objects. Insofar as we hold as true any claim, we do so mediated through the web of our relationships with other persons’ Foregrounds and Backgrounds and our world. A belief about X, insofar as it is meaningful to me, is mediated through language and is inherently social. We learn language from persons with whom we are reciprocally related in fidelity. As we communicate we acknowledge other persons and trust they can and will understand what we are saying. As we add “justified” to true belief, we find that trust is also present. Evidence is something for us only through language, which is also rooted in acknowledging other persons and trusting them. So we see that trust is inherent to persons communicating and knowing their world within the triadic structure of experience.

TRUSTING AND OUGHTING Turn now to the third question: is ought rooted in the relation of trust, and if so, in what way? Trusting is a reciprocal relation of trusting, loyalty, and trustworthiness between an I and a Thou regarding an It. That reciprocity implies promising to be loyal. As the student-teacher relation is trusting, each is obligated to live up to that trust, to be trustworthy, and loyal to the other person. There is no trust apart from fidelity; trust is the response to fidelity. The relation is reciprocal. The student’s trusting the teacher and the teacher’ trust-

Solidarity: Trusting, Oughting, and Transcending

47

ing the student continues as both are faithful, worthy of the other person’s trust, loyal to the other. Responding to trust and acting trustworthily, implies promising; one tacitly assumes an obligation in which one is saying, “I ought to keep my promise to be trustworthy.” As one enters into the reciprocal relation of mutual obligation, one chooses one course of action rather than another. One is exercising freedom to promise, not to promise, or to break a promise, but one is also exercising the potential of oughting. The decision to keep promises also implies a kind of mutual self-renunciation, a self-emptying. This means that perceived self-interest when in conflict with mutual promise keeping must be renounced. In freedom and oughting and the accompanying self-emptying one becomes a moral self, a person.48 Trusting and loyalty are always found together. A baby born to parents has the potentiality to trust that is called forth and formed. At this pretheoretical level, trusting on the part of the child is at the deep level of sensibility, which is often thought of objectively as dependence. That dependent relation is trusted/ promised to be stable. The parent/authority promises to be faithful and the child trusts them. They are its authority and the child trusts what the authority teaches. The trusting relation is a relation of promise keeping. Consider the structure of trust in fides, fiducia, and fidelitas (believing, trust, loyalty). We have noted the place of trust in the interaction of persons in relation to a cause. We trust that the other person is loyal, faithful. In that relation the self can choose to remain faithful or to be unfaithful. If one is unfaithful, a promise is broken. We see this especially as the personality of a person develops within the interrelation of fides, fiducia, and fidelitas. Succinctly, persons become moral persons in the act of freely trusting in the trustworthiness of another and in the act of promising, entering into an obligation. In trust and fidelity or trustworthiness, one is free to choose to be unfaithful, disloyal. In the relation of believing, trust, and fidelity, persons become persons only in the triadic social relation where they believe some authority and the authority is loyal. As long as the parties freely choose to be loyal, trustworthy, and promise keeping, the solidarity of the Background and Foreground of each remains intact, as does that of the society. However, if the fiduciary relation is violated, what one has gained through the trusting relation, now in the Background, is inconsistent with the Foreground. Disunity and instability result, both in society and in the individuals in meeting. In the triadic relation all promises imply ought. As persons make a promise to be loyal to others they imply that they ought to be faithful. There could be no relation of trust without the implication of ought on the part of each self. This means that ought arises and is formed only within meeting, within the triadic relation of I-thou-cause/it.

48

Chapter Two

Compare this view with that of Levinas. Other disruption tends to be individualistic, person to person, at least initially. Rejecting the individualism of Cartesiansim, he grappled with the problem of intersubjectivity and the place of ethics in our lives. Challenging the ontology of totality, the other as exterior confronts the ego with “you ought.”49 Ethics is a relation; ethics is not imposed on a relation. In contrast, we observe that ought is found only in the triad; it does not emerge only as the poor, the widowed, the fatherless address a fully formed person. We have seen that cartesianism is unfounded. Rather, experience is triadic in character. In the reciprocal relation (I and Thou mutually trust each other and are faithful and trustworthy in relation to a cause) persons are formed as moral beings. Individuals bring their potentialities to the triadic relation within which the moral potentials (ought, will, and choice) are formed and grow. Thou potentials are individual; development of them is relational. The emergence of ought and its development is rooted in the triad of “I and Thou ought to X with regard to Y.” Ought rests in the potentiality of the I and the Thou, and finds its particular formation in trust, fides, fiducia, fidelitas, of a society and culture. We act on fides and seek understanding through reflection on and interpretation of our lived world (not radical reflection). In addition, solidarity is rooted in memory and in causes (such as goals) that give us hope. In memory, trust (faith), and cause we find the roots of solidarity.

OUGHTING AND TRANSCENDING Within in the triad of I, Thou, and cause, we find “believing in beings who keep faith.”50 Keeping the faith is oughting, accepting the moral obligation to be faithful to the one who is also faithful. In the reciprocal relation of trusting, the call of another to recognize an It is the beginning of the formation of the moral subject. It is the first manifestation of “oughting.” Pithily, Bowne remarks that “. . . the social order is the only thing which makes individual development possible . . .”51 Trusting calls forth the potentiality of moral ought. Actualizing the moral capacity implies freedom, memory, trust, selfrenunciation for the sake of Thou and cause, and hope (time and change being common aspects of each), all developed in a stable natural world, in the triadic relation of the potentialities of I and Thou in relation to each other and to a cause. Here we also find transcendence deeply rooted in trust and ought. Let me explain. In any act of knowing, such as moral knowing, we believe the moral knowledge of our society through persons we trust. As we learn that other persons should be respected, we do so via persons whom we trust. And in

Solidarity: Trusting, Oughting, and Transcending

49

trusting we acknowledge other persons, specifically the one teaching the moral lesson. Acknowledging another person with whom one has entered a reciprocal relation of trusting and faithfulness implies the freedom of either member of the triad to violate that trust. It also implies the obligation to tell the truth. To violate a trust is to do what one ought not to do, to tell a lie rather than the truth. Further, and here we move closer to transcendence, the freedom of the person to be or not to be faithful is beyond the range of concepts or any formulizing procedure. This is the Achilles heel of foundationalism. In the triadic relation of trust and ought, persons who call or who respond to a call as moral subjects are mutually transcendent. Their personhood as trusting beings who can freely break their promises is beyond the totalizing capability of reason. Since metaphysics, specifically that of rationalism, rests on the rational capacity of the mind and seeks through a concept to gain insight into reality and to say what it is, we can say that metaphysics is totalizing. That approach to what is means that everything, all of reality, can be reduced to metaphysics, whether epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, not to speak of the “fullness of practical living.” If the rational approach were taken to trusting and oughting of the free person, we should expect to come to a full rational comprehension of persons, particularly of moral beings. The triadic relation of trusting and oughting would be reduced to comprehension, understanding, knowledge. The ethical relation would then be a rational relation. Ethics would be a way of knowing. However, if the analysis so far is correct, the act of knowing rests on a prior and more basic reciprocal relation of believing, trusting, and oughting. As the person responds to a call to know, she responds freely, with trust and fidelity to a Thou, bound by mutual promising. “You ought” is a call to enter into the reciprocal relation of co-knowers bound by promises to keep the reciprocal obligations of trusting as each makes or attacks knowledge claims within the book of knowledge of a society. In the I-Thou-It relation, neither member can be brought under a concept and fully grasped by it. Each member resists any attempt of the totalizing power of reason, leaving an awareness of an infinite mysterious moral ought over and against the others. Ethics is more fundamental than any totalizing activity of reason.52 Before we move on, we shall pause to note that this understanding of the relation of ethics and reason provides an interesting insight into some recent attempts to rationalize, to domesticate the infinite, the transcendent. Rationality arises in many forms, among which are classical logic, modern logic, technological reason, and modern biological science. Classical logic appealed to ideas that allow us to group together things having a common characteristic. As the Presocratics sought the nature of phusis they did so using that logic. Phusis is water, Thales declared. And if so, how can fire, earth, and air

50

Chapter Two

find their place within the concept? In what sense can water be the common element in them? Interestingly, motivated by the religious issue of the nature of phusis, he used his intelligence (intus legere) to fully comprehend it, to gain insight into it. Thales’ concern with comprehension ignored the facticity of water, of water as water and its many qualities, and focused on the one characteristic that bound together everything. The one and the many problem, we call it, is framed by the logic of the concept. In the modern period some Europeans, enamoured with Newton’s success of mathematizing the universe, sought to rework logic following the ground-breaking work of mathematicians. The Vienna Circle is a case in point. Hoping to find as much success in the social cultural sciences as mathematicians had in the natural sciences, they developed a powerful tool we know as mathematical logic or modern symbolic logic with its sentential and predicate calculus. The focus of that logic is on relations. What are ignored are characteristics of the x’s and y’s, supposedly persons and their lives in society. Again, the mystery and infinity of the “fullness of practical life” is ignored as it is “comprehended,” dominated through the theory of mathematical logic. Technological thinking fares no better. In the contemporary world the moral self, having been truncated, defined itself in technological terms. Gaining perspective from Descartes’ Discourse on Method, Part Two, humans differ neither in freedom nor reason. Their freedom is without bonds, as it is in God. In contrast, God’s reason is infinite and human reason is finite and can act only within the narrow boundary lines of finitude. In the finitude of their reason all humans are alike; they differ in some possessing fruitful methods and some not. He then outlines his famous four-step methodology. From there the story of reason is the chronicling of substantive rationality “being swept away by the onslaught of formal, practical, and theoretical rationalization processes.” Reason is now dominated by “mere means-ends evaluation of self-interests” and forms the core of human identity.53 Again, the moral self present in the “fullness of practical living” is submerged under the dominance of technological, procedural thinking. Epistemology controls, dominates ethics. Some philosophers resisted institutionalized rationalism, though they could not completely break away. Dewey sought to restore experience but understood it in terms of concepts such as the scientific method, especially biology. The ethical was bound by the methodological, scientific, and epistemological.54 Even the great Personalist, Borden Parker Bowne, spoke of a lower and a higher in the lives of persons. The lower includes physical nature, the instinctive, the animal, the half-humanized. It is the realm of prejudice, passion, likes and dislikes, enthusiasm for worthless objects. Life lived in the lower ranges of human existence has “a strange

Solidarity: Trusting, Oughting, and Transcending

51

deadness towards things revered and worthy. . . . It is the necessary outcome of our nature when uncontrolled by right reason.”55 Though Bowne’s thought centered in the freedom of persons and in ethics, only right reason could guide the free will, and only through right reason can the ethical be understood. Our conclusion that the ethical is fundamental to the rational is similar to Levinas’ view. The central difference is that he assumes cartesianism and finds morality in the call of the other, and transcendence in the face of the Exterior. We reject cartesianism and find not only the I-Thou relation but more fully the I-Thou-It relation. Therein we find the call of the other in reciprocal trust, and transcendence in the mystery of the free Thou in relation to an equally mysterious It. Neither can be totalized by reason. The reciprocal relation is not only “about;” it is also “in.” In the triad, each member resisting the violence of rational Totality is infinite, mysterious, and transcendent in its otherness. Solidarity As we have seen the unity, the solidarity of the second natures of persons is the act of believing the knowledge of one’s society and trusting in persons within the society in which one lives. It is the glue, the core of the fellowfeeling we know as we go about our lives. Specifically, it is trust. But that is what is eroded, causing concern among us. What does our discussion so far have to do with the erosion of solidarity and its reclamation? A great deal. First, our study has found that there are at least two levels of trust, both in the triadic relation. As we are born into a society (or enter a foreign society and culture for the first time), we are addressed by a Thou regarding an It. Early in life the one who addressed us meets our needs in a regular manner, and as we grow and develop that person becomes the authority whose teachings we believe and in whom we trust and recognize as trustworthy. All learning occurs within the triadic relation where we find ourselves meeting Thou, reciprocally believing what is said by the other and trusting in the other as moral person who in her freedom promises to be faithful and is forever transcendent to her saying. On this basic level of trusting we find the early formation of the Background. Though the Background is rooted in trust, the early experiences of trust for the young in relation to their developmental needs could range from not at all to highly regular. The implications of trust for their development are clear. Early learning in the triadic relation of trust transmits the culture and its multifaceted ways. Though all learning presupposes an initial addressing, believing, and

52

Chapter Two

trusting, the solidarity of the Background rests on loyalty in the relationship. Solidarity among the members of the triad, the I and Thou, is dependent on the unity of the Background and the Foreground, and those in turn are dependent on the integrity of society. CONCLUSION We have found that neither the extremes of cultural dyadic objectivity nor cultural monadic subjectivity can provide for the solidarity necessary for society and the individuals living in it. Specifically, they could not provide for the solidarity, unity of the Background and the Foreground, important to an integrated society and for integrated personalities. Since societies rest on a body of knowledge, it seemed reasonable that they turn to knowledge to overcome their loss of cultural unity and solidarity. During the seventeenth century philosophers did so in the form of a foundation and justification theory of knowledge. That they did so was not new. Philosophers and theologians in the thirteenth century did the same. The difference lay in the search for foundations in certainty resting on reason or experience and not on tradition and a metaphysical/theological God. As with the High Middle Ages, hopes of the philosophers of the late Renaissance and early Enlightenment were not realized. Their search issued in a solipsism, radical for Descartes. The social implications were disastrous. Instead of solidarity they achieved disintegration, the social isolation of individuals, and the loss of confidence in their second nature. Though some philosophers took the isolated individual to a social extreme and attempt to articulate the moral relation of an individual to another, Levinas for example, they did not provide an account of solidarity between the two. No doubt their concern was to avoid succumbing to the violence of metaphysics. Heeding that warning and seeking solidarity, we found it in the structure of individuals in relation to each other and to a cause. We found that the I is always related to a Thou regarding an It. The relation is not fundamentally an epistemological one, as in the other minds problem. The relation is moral. It is a relation of belief, of trust, of ought, and of transcendence. In trust we have located the solidar of society and our second nature. Trust is the root of solidarity. But solidarity is not a momentary event. For it to be significant for social relations and our second nature it must continue through a period of time.56 If it does continue, it will have one central characteristic: continuity through change or stability. It appears that for trust to continue through change it must do so on the basis of structures of expectation. We shall explore those structures in the next chapter.

Solidarity: Trusting, Oughting, and Transcending

53

NOTES 1. Borden Parker Bowne, Personalism (New York: Houghton, l908), 20 21. 2. William James, “Letter to Bowne,” August 17, 1908, Representative Essays of Borden Parker Bowne, ed. Warren Steinkraus (Utica, New York: Meridian 1981), 190. 3. This theme is central to Book One of Plato’s Republic. 4. The turn to reason and experience and away from extraordinary modes of knowledge such as the voices of the muses, revelation, and mystical insight was not new in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; in Western culture, it is as old as the Greek Enlightenment of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. 5. Frederick Will, Justification and Induction: An Investigation of Cartesian Procedure in the Philosophy of Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), 142. 6. We shall call this way of viewing knowledge Cartesian. As Will notes, any philosopher who followed this program, which Descartes articulated with clarity and force and that gained wide currency, can be called a Cartesian. A dedicated empiricist such as Hobbes is in this sense a Cartesian. See Will, Justification, 32. 7. Will, Justification, 32. 8. Our concern is to understand the central features of Descartes’ rationalist ap proach to a foundation theory of knowledge and a justification theory. To that end we shall focus only on the Discourse on Method and the Meditations, leaving the Regulae for a fuller statement of Descartes views. 9. In his theory of knowledge it is apparent that Locke approaches the subject with a solid background in the work of both Aristotle and Thomas. 10. Dante, The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, canto 99. 11. Quoted by Will, Justification, 164 65. 12. Will, Justification, 165. 13. An excellent example is Descartes’ Discourse on Method. Humans, he thought, do differ in being rational. They differ in the methods they follow. Part I, “Some Thoughts in the Sciences,” is a rejection of methods and knowledge rooted in tradition; Part II, “the Principal Rules on the Method,” is an outline of the new method he will follow. In the Meditations, through methodological skepticism, he locates that incorrigible basis on which to rest all other knowledge claims, the cog ito. The cogito stands culturally nowhere. The knowledge required for a secure culture will be built on it. As this construction program moves along, one needs to live somewhere, and Descartes provides some provisions for “getting along” in his present culture, provisions that are deeply stoic. Meanwhile in the cogito, Descartes is shipwrecked, location unknowable and attempts to build a culture as he floats on one secure plank. 14. Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations, trans. and introd. Laurence J. Lafleur (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1960), 8. 15. H. Richard Niebuhr, Faith on Earth: An Inquiry into the Structure of Human Faith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 32.

54

Chapter Two

16. The analysis of the “fullness of practical living” reveals the triadic relation and the structures involved in it. This is not a new foundation, a new certainty, un less it is the certainty of our being alive in this place, time, and social circum stance. 17. Compare Josiah Royce’s communities of interpretation. We have drawn on the work of H. Richard Niebuhr in developing this chapter. Niebuhr knew well Royce’s work. See Joseph Pagano, The Origins and Development of the Triadic Structure of Faith in H. Richard Niebuhr (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2005). 18. Niebuhr, Faith on Earth, 36. 19. Here we follow, in addition to Niebuhr, Josiah Royce. See Josiah Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, [1908] 1995). 20. Niebuhr, Faith on Earth, 46 47. 21. We shall see later that the presence of a third participating in the relation also involves trust. 22. Talcott Parsons, “Prolegomena to a Theory of Social Institutions,” American Sociological Review 55, no. 3 (June 1990): 320. 23. Melville J. Herskovits, Cultural Anthropology (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), 95. 24. Herskovits, Cultural Anthropology, 95. 25. Herskovits, Cultural Anthropology, 95. 26. Our experience is inherently social. Buber, Mead, and Vico recognize this, in contrast to individualists, such as Descartes, Mill, and Rorty, who do not. Karol Wojtyla investigated the social relations of persons in community, focusing prima rily on participation. But he did not discuss the triadic character of social life. See The Acting Person, trans. Andrzej Potocki (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1979), chapter seven, 261 300. For a fuller statement of this position see Niebuhr, Faith on Earth, chapters 3 and 4. For the historical background of Niebuhr’s view, see Pagano, Origins and Development. 27. See Thomas O. Buford, In Search of a Calling (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1995), 134 35. 28. One reasonable candidate is the view of Peter A. Bertocci. Considering ac tivity potentials rather than possibilities, he says that an activity potential is that which a person is able to do in a situation that calls for it. Persons have the fol lowing activity potentials: “sensing, remembering, imagining, thinking, feeling, emoting, wanting, willing, oughting, and aesthetic and religious appreciation.” Pe ter A. Bertocci, “The Essence of a Person,” The Monist 61 no. 1 (1978): 29. 29. Peter A. Bertocci, “The Person, His Personality, and Environment,” Review of Metaphysics 32, no. 4 (June 1979): 605 20. 30. Robin Stowell, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Cello (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 3. 31. Thomas O. Buford, ed., Essays on Other Minds (Urbana, Illinois: Univer sity of Illinois Press, 1970), x xi.

Solidarity: Trusting, Oughting, and Transcending

55

32. Some whose work is affected by this quandary are Peter L. Berger, Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, and Jurgen Habermas. See Robert Wuthnow et al., eds., Cultural Analysis (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), 246. 33. See Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World (Evanston, Illi nois: Northwestern University Press, [1932] 1972), chapter 3, 97 138. 34. Schutz, The Phenomenology, xxv. 35. Schutz, The Phenomenology, xxvi. 36. Frederick Will argues in a similar manner that it is odd to attempt to under stand human knowledge by divesting “oneself of as much of this knowledge as one possibly can and then see how much of it, starting from new sure beginnings, and proceeding by new sure steps, can be regained.” Will, Justification, 161. 37. For a rich description of face to face meeting see Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969). Levinas lays bare the “face” of the “Other,” the interiority of the person transcending the violence of metaphysics, the terminus of monadic cultural subjectivity. However, he ignores language as a precondition of interiority, exteriority, and meeting face to face, as well as the solidaristic character of self in relation, individuality, and sociality with regard to Background and Foreground. 38. For the distinctions between direct and indirect, and among contemporaries, predecessors, and successors I am indebted to Schutz . See Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World, trans. George Walsh and Frederick Lehnert (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967), chap. 4. 39. In the following discussion, I am deeply indebted to Niebuhr, Faith on Earth. For a similar view see Michael Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946). In contrast to Niebuhr, Polanyi does not recognize the triadic pattern of experience. Watsuji Tetsuro’s discussion of Rinrigaku places trust at the core of Japanese culture. His view differs significantly from the one presented here by its lacking a triadic structure with the accompany ing freedom of will and individual responsibility. That is, for Tetsuro the individ ual gains her personal identity completely through the group. In our view the indi vidual, though deeply formed by the group (the triad in which she lives), is nevertheless distinguishable through her capacity for transcending the group through reflection and for freedom of choice. Watsuji Tetsuro, Rinrigaku, trans. Yamamoto Seisaku and Robert E. Carter (Albany, New York: SUNY Press, [1937] 1996). 40. Tetsuro, Rinrigaku, 31. 41. Tetsuro, Rinrigaku, 31 42. Tetsuro, Rinrigaku, 32. 43. Our experience is inherently social. Buber, Mead, and Vico recognize this, in contrast to individualists, such as Mill and Rorty, who do not. For a fuller state ment of this position see Niebuhr, Faith on Earth, 43 62. 44. Niebuhr, Faith on Earth, 47. 45. Niebuhr, Faith on Earth, 47. 46. Niebuhr, Faith on Earth, 48.

56

Chapter Two

47. See for example, Martin Hollis, Trust Within Reason (Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1998). For a more circumspect view, and closer to the view developed here see Trudy Govier, Social Trust and Human Communities (Mon treal: McGill Queen’s University Press, 1997). She writes, “Trust in other people is so basic, that it is a condition of our having any experience at all. . . . Such trust can be argued to be a priori because there is a sense in which it is logically prior to expe rience itself.” (Social Trust, 61). Though a penetrating insight, she does not develop the triadic structure inherent in trust. Trusting another person involves the reciprocal fidelity to promises regarding a cause, that is the I Thou It relationship as fundamen tally moral. 48. The place of promising in communication within the triadic relation is noted by Derrida. He says, “Each time I open my mouth, I am promising something. When I speak to you, I am telling you that I promise to tell you something, to tell you the truth. Even if I lie, the condition of my lie is that I promise to tell you the truth. So the promise is not just one speech act among others; every speech act is fundamen tally a promise.” J. D. Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (New York: Fordham University Press, 1977), 22 23. 49. Though the rejection of cartesianism is important to Levinas, the I Thou rela tion is not as stark and isolated as it may initially appear; he acknowledges a third. Levinas writes, “The poor one, the stranger, presents himself as an equal. His equal ity within this essential poverty consists in referring to the third party, thus present at the encounter. . . . The thou is posited in front of a we.” (Totality and Infinity (Pitts burgh: Duquesne University Press, [1961] 1969), 213) Further, he notes, “Everything that takes place here ‘between us’ concerns everyone, the face that looks at it places itself in the full light of the public order, even if I draw back from it to seek with the interlocutor the complicity of a private relation and a clandestinity.” (Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 212). Also, Peperzak notes that “the key to this passage can be found in the apparition of a ‘third’ who is neither the face of the Other as it was described above, nor directly an alter ego, but another other who is beside or behind this one here and now. . . . The third is therefore as much hidden as presented by the one whose face concerns me directly and from the first. The multitude of others including strangers and the wretched is close to me in a second proximity.” (Beyond: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1977), 127). 50. Niebuhr, Faith on Earth, 41. 51. Borden Parker Bowne, Principles of Ethics (New York: American Book, 1892), 139. 52. In this both Kant and Levinas agree, though from different perspectives. See Em manuel Levinas, “Is Ontology Fundamental?” chapter 1 in Entre Nous: On Thinking-ofthe-Other, trans. Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav (New York: Columbia Uni versity Press, 1998), 1 11. 53. Stephen Kalberg, “Max Weber’s Types of Rationality: Cornerstones for the Analysis of Rationalization Processes in History,” American Journal of Sociology 85, no. 5 (1980): 1176. See Thomas O. Buford, In Search of a Calling (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1995), 48 55.

Solidarity: Trusting, Oughting, and Transcending

57

54. John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (Boston: Beacon Press, [1920] 1957). 55. Bowne, Principles of Ethics, 127. 56. How long must trust continue for it to be significant in the life of a social re lation? For associations such as an athletic team, the time may be no longer than a season, such as the fall for American football. For a college it must continue through many years, sometimes hundreds. And for a nation and a culture it must continue throughout its existence, and that could be over a thousand years, as is assumed when we speak of Western culture.

Chapter Three

Stability

INTRODUCTION Regarding our second nature, how account for its continuity through change, its ability to stand firm, to right itself, to be dependable? We have determined that the solidar of our second nature is trust. We do not simply trust, however. We continue to trust in a triadic relation of mutuality. What, then, accounts for the continuity of the solidar of our second nature, of trusting, oughting, and transcending? The issue is to account not only for the continuity or stability of trusting, but also, and more fundamentally, for the stability of social action. No one doubts that continuity through change is present in human social life. But, what is it, and how account for it? The traditional answer is that institutions provide order and stability for a society. However, the claim that institutions provide stability of our solidarity through social/cultural change raises important philosophical questions. If institutions provide stability through change and institutions themselves change, how can they stabilize the nexus of the triad along with its solidarity? How account for the stability of institutions themselves? If the solidar of a society is trusting, oughting, and transcending, how do institutions stabilize it? If institutions provide stability for the solidar of trusting, oughting, and transcending, how can they provide for and maintain the freedom of individuals to accept, modify, or revolutionize their society as well as the order that holds individuals responsible for their actions? The problem of social order and human freedom is deeply puzzling for any society. To guide our search for answers, we ask whether institutions are found, made, or both found and made. Historically there are two sources for answers to our guiding question, dyadic cultural objectivism and cultural monadic subjectivism. According to 59

60

Chapter Three

the latter, societies, their culture, and their institutions are made by individuals who share a commonly agreed on way of life and seek to achieve its goals through stabilized patterns. A society ultimately rests in the individuals composing it. The grounds of stability lie there. That is, the infrastructure of individuals alone, whether physical, psychological, or linguistic, sufficiently accounts for the institutions that stabilize social action. According to the former, humans find a transcendent structure, such as a moral order, the commands of some god or gods, fate, or reason under which persons live, and appeal to it to stabilize and form their way of life in society. The grounds lie in the superstructure, such as the Absolute, Reason, God, Eternal Forms, or Nature. We could appeal to a superstructure or an infrastructure to account for the institutions of a society that stabilize it through change. If, as we have shown, the solidar is trust, how are institutions related to trusting and how do they stabilize trusting? What stabilizes trusting? We shall present a third alternative and argue that it avoids those difficulties and offers a more plausible account for stability of the nexus of the triad along with its solidar.

SOME DEFINITIONS A straightforward answer is that institutions stabilize our second nature.1 Before we proceed it would help us to know what we refer to by “stability” and “institution.” Various definitions of “institutions” have been attempted. For example, Marcus Singer says, “An institution can be thought of as (1) a relatively permanent system of social relations organized around (that is, for the protection or attainment of) some social need or value; or as (2) a recognized and organized way of meeting a social need or desire or of satisfying a social purpose.”2 Emphasizing the place of norms in institutions, Parsons says, “Then in looking for the field of empirical facts with which the theory of institutions should be concerned, I should concentrate on those uniform modes of behavior and forms of relationship which are ‘sanctioned,’ that stand in some kind of significant relation to normative rules to a greater or lesser degree approved by the individuals subject to them. . . . It is in the particular feature of being related to norms that the institutional aspect of these uniformities lies.”3 Though other definitions are available, from these general characteristics emerge. Institutions are relatively permanent social relations, sanctioned by approved norms, that satisfy a social desire, need, and/or purpose. What is the place of institutions in our lives? To answer that question, distinguish among habitat, culture, and environment. By habitat we mean the natural setting of human existence, “the physical features of the region inhabited by a group of people; its natural re-

Stability

61

sources, actually or potentially available to the inhabitants; its climate, altitude, and other geographical features to which they have adapted themselves.”4 By culture we refer to “that part of the total setting that includes the material objects of human manufacture, techniques, social orientations, points of view, and sanctioned ends.”5 And by environment we refer to “man in his natural and cultural setting.”6 To summarize, institutions are relatively permanent social relations, sanctioned by norms that satisfy a social desire, need, and/or purpose, and are situated among the ecosystem, our normative beliefs, and ourselves. It is reasonable to say, then, that a social group shares a way of life that identifies the group and distinguishes it from others. That way of life is its culture. Central to any culture are norms, ideals that guide its common life. These include techniques for securing food from the natural environment and for manufacturing products, beliefs and practices that guide and govern the distribution of goods and services, a web of rights and responsibilities, reproduction and care of children, regulative relationships between groups and among individuals as well as other societies, transmitting the cultural skills and knowledge to the younger generation, a belief system that explains the nature of the universe and the place of persons within it, and a language to transfer and accumulate knowledge. As these social activities become shared, we bond with other members of society, solidarity; as they become recognized and formal, they also become formal and stabilized. We have seen that that felt and recognized unity, that solidarity is trusting. These stabilized patterns are institutions. That is, they stabilize the solidar of a society. Next, what does the word “stability” mean? The word stability is derived from the Latin word stabilis, standing firm. A stable life, whether of an individual or of a society, maintains equilibrium and is self-restoring. It is dependable, predictable, rights itself under pressures that tend to move it off course, and continues a course of action when faced with unacceptable alternatives. The members of a society continue to abide by the solidar and the central norms around which the way of life of a people, a culture, is formed, that is, the moral life of a society. For example, for individuals to live according to the norms of a society and follow its institutional patterns, they must exercise judgment or phronesis/prudence. Having freedom of choice, we really do have alternatives. Cultural, institutional habituation seeks to form persons who keep promises, follow rules, and keep commitments, that is, persons who are moral. That “keeping” is a life that is stable. As we keep on acting morally we make a mark in our relation to other people and to the natural world. We sometimes call this “mark” our cultural character. In light of these distinctions, we shall now restate the question. In that dimension of human social existence that involves trusting, oughting, and transcending,

62

Chapter Three

what guarantees its continuity, its standing firm, its capacity to right itself, and its dependability through change? Or, what stabilizes the culturally habituated moral life?7

TWO POSSIBLE STABILIZERS OF OUR SECOND NATURE Infrastructure For cultural monadic subjectivist societies, America in particular, the answer is clear—the social unity and its stability is found in the people, specifically in each individual. When we ask what about the individual accounts for the social unit and institutions that stabilize the moral life of a society, we assume that something in the infrastructure of the monadic individual does so. What would an infrastructure include? We could point to the physical life of the person. One’s bodily processes, whether viewed in a macro (evolutionary) sense or in a micro (structural, functional) sense, can be cited as that which accounts for the institutions that give equilibrium to social life. This is an appeal to some form of metaphysical naturalism or materialism. The truth of either one is that the human body is necessary for our second nature. The debate is whether it is sufficient to provide for those aspects of our second nature that are distinctive to it.8 The institutional life of humans is composed of habits, activities, traits, and goals. It is purposeful and intentional. Any modern materialism or naturalism gains its explanatory power by calling on a web of cause and effect, in which any event (actions or otherwise) can be adequately accounted for by appealing to a previous event or events and the previous event necessitates the later event.9 Such a schema cannot account for purposive action and for the free choice it entails. The bodily processes in persons cannot adequately account for the purposive and intentional life, and consequently our social life. Why not? The established way to understand the physical/biological world is through modern science. All the sciences assume a deterministically ordered world, and they attempt to understand that order. The orderliness is understood as a relation between two or more natural objects or events, where one or more is recognized as cause and the other as effect. Causality is at least a relation between cause and effect. Having eschewed purposive causes in the Renaissance, modern scientists rest their view on the orderliness of the natural world in the search for efficient causes. That is, to understand B, one must appeal to some event or state of affairs that occurred temporally prior to B, say A. It is said that A is the cause of B. In addition to the cause being temporally prior to the effect, the relation is also spatially contiguous, asymmetrical, and in-

Stability

63

variably uniform (at least for hard causality, or determinism). Scientists recognize a puzzling problem, describe it, and seek an explanation. They hope to find such regularity between two or more events that they can identify one to be the cause and the other the effect and that they are justified in formulating a law. With a law and other descriptions they seek a deductive or hypothetical nomological explanation. Now consider the culturally habitual behavior of persons living in a society. They act habitually out of their background as they live in the present and future Foreground. Social orderliness is occasionally disrupted by events. In an attempt to grasp why the disorderliness arose, social scientists draw on the apparatus of the natural sciences, whether physical or biological, including causality, specifically efficient causation. Following the pattern of scientific investigation and moving toward scientific understanding, social scientists seek law-like orderliness and aspire to nomological explanation. Putting aside the issue of their success in achieving those aspirations, we find that not all aspects of social behavior can be seen under the laser beam of scientific analysis that supposedly illuminates the kind of orderliness that can be expressed in law-like explanation and understanding. Let me explain. Viewed from the perspective of the relation of the microcosm and the macrocosm and their relation to action, one may seek to account for macrocosmic movement (the movement of an arm) by appealing to a microcosmic movement (nerve reflex). This is bottom-up causation. Or one may seek an account for microcosmic movement (brain or otherwise) by appealing to the macrocosmic movement of the arm. This is found in cybernetic systems such as an airconditioning system where an electrical impulse from the thermostat causes the motor in the cooling/heating system to start or stop, coolant to circulate, and fans to turn. The thermostat seeks to maintain an equilibrium that we can think of as a constant temperature in the environment of a house, for example. This is top-down causation. Or one could appeal to both to account for the movement of the whole body. However, neither individually nor together can they account for human social action. We can consider top-down and bottom-up causation together; they suffer from a common problem. For example, Bill’s action of eating lunch cannot be fully accounted for by appealing to causation whether bottom up, top down, or both. Each is a description of events whether microscopic to macroscopic, or macroscopic to microscopic, or both. Having the description, an explanation is sought. The description is not the explanation. However, in the case of Bill’s eating lunch we find a description that is an explanation. For further understanding we could ask Bill why he is eating lunch and he would answer in terms of his own purposes. He would give a teleological explanation. But in the explanation provided by the microcosm we find no purpose

64

Chapter Three

or intention. If we insist on attempting to place all human social behavior under the web of the orderliness assumed for scientific explanation of the natural world and to appeal to science to understand it, we may find a type of stability, but at the high cost of explaining away the life distinctive to persons it is called on to stabilize. Succinctly, for actions in contrast to movement, the description is the explanation. We noted that in scientific analysis the description calls for an explanation where the description is not the explanation. To say, “This piece of copper expanded when heated,” describes an event in the natural world. That description is not an explanation. Once the event is seen as a law-like occurrence, “All copper expands when heated,” we have an explanation. In its deductive nomological form, it can be expressed in this way: All copper expands when heated, this is a piece of copper, therefore it will expand when heated. In contrast, to say, “Bill is asking Sue for a date,” is a description that does not point beyond itself for an account for what Bill is doing. The description does not call for explanation other than the description itself. The description is the explanation. If we ask Bill why he is asking Sue for a date, and he replies, “Sue is a fun, interesting person to be with,” Bill is providing additional insight into his behavior. Further elaboration of Bill’s behavior would require a discussion of his intentions. That is, we must focus the discussion on purposes, that aspect of causality scientists jettisoned as they renovated scientific explanation in the late Renaissance. Purposive explanation is appropriate to human social behavior, but it is not appropriate for physical or biological events. The action of persons cannot be reduced to movement. This does not mean that the occurrence of actions is completely independent of movement. The life of humans is enfolded in their bodies, their brains, and the natural world. We must learn from scientists. That sense of naturalism or materialism, a nonreductive type, is reasonable. Actions and movements though different are related; with that construal, the complexities of the mind-body problem arise. The distinction between action and movement means at least that something is occurring in human behavior that is not found in other aspects of the natural world and that cannot be fully accounted for by an appeal to the web of law-like orderliness assumed by the scientist. If our second nature is understood as action and not movement only, our second nature cannot be fully understood in terms of any type or form of reductive naturalism or materialism. If the physical life cannot fully account for the stability of our social life, can the psychological life be any more successful? To what would we appeal? Aspects of the inner life such as emotions, desires, appetites, feelings, and inclinations could be cited as stabilizers of our second nature. However, those

Stability

65

in the Platonic tradition contend that such an appeal cannot stand up. Why not? Being inherently unstable, emotions, desires, appetites, and feelings have nothing about them that can account for stability. All shift with prevailing inner and outer environmental influences. We will not find the roots of social stability here. Plato appears to have settled that question in his discussions of the moral life in the Republic, the Gorgias, and the Philebus, for whatever shortcomings they may have as an adequate understanding of moral psychology.10 One could attempt to account for the stability of the relation between the Background and the Foreground of our second nature by appealing to an unconscious, such as advocated by Freud. Doing so radically shifts the orientation from a temporal relation between the Background and the Foreground to a hierarchical and causally related conscious and an unconscious, the latter resting on a physical/biological substructure in the body. The relation is hierarchical and not temporal. That Freud’s theory is well supported has been questioned for good reason.11 The evidence is weak and unconvincing, and the theory erected on it teeters. Those issues, however, belong to psychologists, and we leave them there. Our concern lies in the assumption that if we view persons as patients (passive, Latin) we find there stability for our moral lives. Freud’s clinical aspirations rested on his early studies in physics, biology, and neurology. On those grounds he placed the id, the ego, the superego, as well as the repressed instincts and in terms of them sought an understanding of the psychological life of persons. Under Freud’s theory, the second nature of persons loses whatever temporal character of memories, habits, and thoughts it has assumed thus far in our discussion. Rather, it rests on an unconscious and a conscious. That distinction rests on a belief that “all dreams must represent a wish fulfillment.”12 If so, “there clearly must be a ‘censor’ which disguises them so that they do not appear as wish fulfillment.”13 If a disguise is needed by a censor it must be to show that “those wishes cannot be the wishes of our waking self.”14 The generator of these wishes is the libido, the id, some “prepersonal, prehuman source of dark archaic drives, sex and aggression.”15 Sex or sexual instincts, or eros, seek to enhance life through a “greater and greater unity among living organisms.”16 Though aggression leads to instability, its assault is stalled, controlled, and stabilized by the forming constraints of the superego. The superego, “the internalization of social constraints,” provides social stability for the dynamic psychological life of human beings.17 Apart from its weak theoretical foundation, Freud’s theory runs aground on the same shoals as those theories of human behavior that attempt to explain the action of persons, the macrocosm in terms of movement, the microcosm. If persons are viewed as extensions of the natural world, circumscribed by the

66

Chapter Three

same physical laws as trees, animals, and oxygen, humans will enjoy the same stability as all other physical/biological objects and events. But that enjoyment is purchased at a high price. Though stable, humans have lost a distinctive essential to persons, freedom and moral responsibility. Human behavior that manifests itself through the microscopic lens to Freud’s eye and grasped by his scientifically formed intellect is composed of biological and neurological processes.18 And, what does this theory imply for persons, for waking, choosing persons? Persons are the passive product of two impersonal forces, the libido and the superego, a psychological infrastructure and a social superstructure. Kohak drives to the key point when he says, “The Person has in effect become an illusion, a mask displayed by the hidden conflict of impersonal forces.”19 Another aspect of the infrastructure of the person, an aspect deeply embedded in Western thought, is reason and rationality, especially as its powers are delimited in the thought of Immanuel Kant. Kant, seeking to base ethics on science, especially mathematics, found the stability of the moral life in the rational will, the will that is good. As he did so, he attempted to account for the personal, moral life of persons by appeal to principles that are in themselves impersonal. Let me explain. To move quickly to the core of Kant’s view, we ask this question: what are the conditions necessary for an action to possess the stability required by the moral life? The action must originate from a good will and not from inclination. But what are the necessary conditions for a will being good? A good will acts from duty and is determined by principles and not inclination. What are the conditions for the possibility of an action being determined by principle? The condition is reason, the ability to think consistently and to formulate principles applicable to all similar situations. The good will, then, is the rational will, and such a will is self-legislating and autonomous. What then is duty? Duty is the necessity to act out of reverence for the law. That which acts out of respect for law or principle is the rational will. What kind of law can be reverenced? Only a rational law can be reverenced as a command. (We never reverence an inclination.) That which makes a law rational and determines the will is its consistency and universality. Such a law never contradicts itself and applies to all cases in which moral behavior is under consideration. If the maxim that guides my actions is consistently applicable to all rational beings, then it rationally and justifiably commands me. This maxim, or law, constitutes duty and determines the will that is good. Furthermore, we can determine actions to be morally right or wrong by asking if they were performed in accordance with duty; and for Kant the sole principle for determining which actions accord with duty is the categorical imperative. This imperative is the unconditional command of the rational will.

Stability

67

Kant is on to something important. Rule following, consistency, duty, willing are all-important ingredients in the social life that is stable. However, Kant’s view suffers more from what it ignores than what it says. In his appeal to universal and necessary principles to govern conduct, he ignores the richness of the life that is social. He attempts to account for the personal (our ethical lives) by appealing to impersonal principles. Let me suggest what I mean. First, Kant has an inadequate view of the person that is moral. By emphasizing reason and placing the rest of the life of the mind in the background he ignores, for example, the attributes of personal living such as imagining and desiring and their place in the moral life. There can be no moral life without imagining possible courses of action, which can be desired. Coming up with possible actions that allow for the alternatives, good and evil, requires an act of the imagination, and valuing social goods is deeply an act of desire (though that is not all that it is). Second, the stability of the social life is found in the rational will in its reverence for law. But in developing that view he separates the stable moral life from any contemplation of social goods. No social act among persons stands isolated from the rest of life; an action is social precisely because it is related to some value context, and to social patterns, such as institutions. His appeal to impersonal principles to account for the ethical life of persons separates principles and consequences and in doing so he cannot explain the stability of the solidar. If an action involves not only principles but also goods then the stability of that relation must be understood. Thus, Kant’s impersonalism neither gives us an adequate understanding of the stability of moral actions nor provides an adequate view of the person.20 One additional view rests on speech act theory. Asserting a kind of naturalism through the claim that we live in one world, the world of the sciences, Searle addresses the presence of social reality, especially institutions. He argues that we live in a world of two kinds of facts, brute and social. Brute facts have features that exist independently of our representations of them and are intrinsic to the objects themselves. A mountain’s existence has no dependence on our conscious life. Social facts in contrast are rooted neither in overt behavior nor in nonconscious computational rules.21 Rather they are rooted in consciousness, specifically intentionality and speech acts, which exist alongside and independently of brute facts.22 Social facts have features that are not intrinsic to the natural object and are “relative to the observers and users, which are formed by collective intentionality, “we intending.” That is, all social facts are created by “we intending.”23 A college degree exists through consciousness and collective intentionality; it is dependent on our conscious life. How are institutions created? Dependent on conscious intentionality, they come into existence through the causal activity of constitutive rules, which

68

Chapter Three

“come in systems, and the rules individually or, sometimes, for systems collectively characteristically have the form ‘X counts as Y’ or ‘X counts as Y in context C.’”24 That is, a degree from a college is “created by the application of specific rules,” rules for educating and graduating students.25 The constitutive rules concerning education create a completely new kind of entity— colleges as institutional facts; and once in existence, regulatory rules take over and govern them. The creation, maintenance, and hierarchy of institutions that occur through agentive functions, collective intentionality, constitutive and regulatory rules, and within the framework of the “basic ontology of physics, chemistry, and biology” appear to be a deliberate act or set of actions.26 However, he says, “the creation of institutional facts is typically a matter of natural evolution, and there need be no explicitly conscious imposition of function . . . on lower-level phenomena.”27 Though “the structure of institutions is the structure of constitutive rules,” people within institutions do not appear to constitute institutions or try to follow rules, consciously or unconsciously. If we are formed by institutions, what causal roles do the constitutive rules play? To answer this problem Searle appeals to “the Background.”28 The Background is “the set of nonintentional or preintentional capacities that enable intentional states to function.”29 This resolves into the problem of the relation of the microstructure to the macrostructure. Again, purposive behavior in the macro cannot be accounted for by appealing to nonpurposive behavior in the micro. For Searle the Background is the rational structure of evolution. If neither the physical, the emotional, the psychological, the rational, nor speech act theory or literary life help us in accounting for the stability of the moral life, to what can we appeal? Here we turn away from the infrastructure offered by the cultural monadic subjectivist to a superstructure, to a universal other than the individual and in which humans can find their social stability. The fullest development of the superstructure is found among the Greek, Roman, and Medieval philosophers and theologians. Superstructure To what shall we turn as we search for that guarantor of continuity of the solidar through change? The dyadic cultural objectivist calls us back to Plato, to Aristotle, to Cicero, to Augustine, or to Thomas. And for good reason.30 Each lived during deep social change. Plato saw the demise of the power of the Greek city-state and the rise of the Imperial state under Philip of Macedon. Aristotle knew the conflict between Athens and Macedonia and those that developed during Alexander’s conquests. The Stoics witnessed the end of Hellenism and the rise and eventual dominance of Rome. Augustine lived at the

Stability

69

end of the Roman Empire; the walls of his city were under assault on the day of his death. Thomas Aquinas witnessed the conflicts among the Church, the Kings, and the feudal lords. Each thought deeply about stability through changing and conflicting folkways, mores, laws, and institutions. Common to each is a deep belief that the world is rooted in and governed by a rational structure. According to this view, social continuity is stabilized by a universal, transcendent moral order graspable by the insight of a philosophically or theologically educated mind. The classic examples of this are Plato’s Forms, Aristotle’s organic teleological structure of the natural and social world, the Stoics’ Universal Reason, Augustine’s and Aquinas’ God. We shall review the options they offer, followed by a critique. Plato provides a rich analysis of the human condition and a strong defense of the solidarity and stability of our second nature. Working through the issues in the Republic, Phaedrus, Statesman, and the Philebus, Plato comes to rest on four characteristics shared to some extent by all persons, the formal, the material, the active, and the rational. The solidar of a polis is the eternal forms, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful that can be rationally grasped. These ends, the moral core of life, are the ends toward which we craft our lives, if we live virtuously. They stabilize us theoretically. Practically, social stability is achieved through the interdependence of individuals within the social classes, each person and class arranged hierarchically performing its proper function. In this culture, humans gain self understanding through the polis and find their solidarity and stability in it. Humans, having natural gifts and needing the cooperation of others, form a polis in one dwelling place. In that social context they specialize according to their differing natural talents to meet the economic necessities of life. With a growing population and economy, the polis adds activities not required by economic necessities, for example, musicians, poets, tutors, and confectioners. But population growth requires additional land and, on the principle of specialization and division of labor, another class must be formed to focus exclusively on war. Needing to distinguish between their friends and their enemies, these warriors need to be educated. As rational beings they must know the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Only a few have the intellectual power and physical prowess required, and they will be the ruling class. Responsible for the state being virtuous, they are in charge of education. The state is virtuous, just in case it is guided by those who know its true end and model the state in light of the eternal forms. Knowing the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, the Philosopher Kings are responsible for teaching the people, for educating each person to her true end, to recognize her true talents, and to finding and occupying her place in society. Education allows a natural hierarchy to manifest itself and prevail. That

70

Chapter Three

is, society is just insofar as each part performs its proper function, is temperate as the lower is subordinated to the higher, is courageous as it knows what is truly to be feared, and is wise insofar as it behaves according to the Good. Thus, the economic institution is the basis of society with education, political guidance, and control developing later, along with the family (at least among the Philosopher Kings). Though natural needs and endowments reside at the basis of each institution, their proper vertical and horizontal relations to each other are based on the knowledge of the good. This means that the solidars and stabilizers of our second nature are external to us, practically in the structures of society, and theoretically in the eternal forms. For Aristotle dyadic cultural objectivism is located in the polis. The state is a natural society, not a convention as some sophists claimed; only within the state (polis) can humans live a fully good life. Initially humans find themselves in families, existing for the sake of life and meeting everyday needs. As families join together they form a village to meet additional needs. Various villages come together to form a polis. Only there can human life, the good life in a full sense, fully develop its potentialities. The state is a natural society. The life of humans is stabilized initially by the family and an economy and later by the polis. Only the polis can stabilize families as they meet their expanding needs in the pursuit of the development of the potentialities of the persons living in them. However, the stability of the polis is found in the regulatory institution, the law. The relations among institutions and humans in the polis must be ordered justly. The “law is reason unaffected by desire.”31 To follow the rule of law is to follow God and reason. To follow the will of a man, even Plato’s Philosopher King, “adds an element of the beast; for desire is a wild beast, and passion perverts the minds of rulers, even when they are the best of men.”32 Reason and God provide stability for the polis. From Aristotle’s taxonomy of the natural order that places each token under its natural type or natural end, the particular under the universal, we learn that the end of the state exists for the supreme good of persons, their physical, ethical, and intellectual life. The solidar of the polis rests in the rational life exercised supremely as the theoretical intellect achieves insight into the true end of the state, the end of man. In turn the natural end, the teleological structure of the state stabilizes social action, and the second nature of its citizens. Aristotle’s social hierarchy is natural and organic. Those who have the leisure to develop their theoretical reason must exercise their leadership by gaining insight required for guiding the state to its true ends and through the practical intellect doing its work of guiding the state. And those of lesser theoretical ability must exercise their practical understanding, or lacking that, their productive understanding. Stability rests finally in reason, in the Un-

Stability

71

moved Mover, God, that end all things desire and toward which all things move. For Roman Stoicism, Cicero in particular, the origin of society lies in the natural instinctive impulse of humans to associate with each other for mutual benefit, whether economic, educational, reproductive, political, or religious. In all human relationships Nature requires both justice and benevolence. In that sense all humans are kin in the great cosmopolis whose law is the Logos (Heraclitus). All humans live under jus naturale, natural and unwritten. Law written for citizens is jus civile, and for foreigners is jus gentium. Or solidarity rests in the one, in Universal Reason, manifested to us as jus naturale, the touchstone for evaluating both jus civile and jus gentium. The Rational One, God, the Absolute provides stability in its rational order as it exercises itself in an eternal cyclical pattern. “All things work together for good,” is such an appeal. Since all humans are equal under the law of reason and being rational can know nature, each can rule, in contrast to Plato’s Philosopher Kings or Aristotle’s philosophically gifted, with a theoretical intellect. As changes occurring in the human social order create anxiety, fear, distrust, the human community can achieve balance and equilibrium by appealing to the stability of the cosmic order. With Aquinas the rational search for an understanding of the solidar of society and the stability of the solidar reaches its richest treatment of the Ancient, Roman, and Medieval worlds. Aquinas argued that God created the world and ordered it according to God’s reason, the principles for the best possible order. That order manifests itself in the world God created as the natural moral law. Our solidarity rests in Eternal Law, under which all humans live. God provides reason to help humans gain insight into how they should live. The practical reason following the insights of the theoretical reason can correctly guide human lives. In their fallen, weakened condition, they have guidance from the Old Law of Moses that focuses on our sensible and earthly good and the New Law of Christ that focuses on intelligible and heavenly good. While living in society humans need a ruling power to direct its affairs. Human law is derived from the natural moral law and directed to the common good of society. Unlike eternal, natural moral law, or divine law, human law is subject to modification. The solidarity of human second nature is communion with God, and its stability lies in God and God’s laws. In the modern world the central claims of the ancients and medievalists, the existence of a “transcendent order of truth,” modern individualism combined to form a moral/political vision of the social world, which we shall call integral liberalism. Integral liberalism, as a philosophical and political tradition, originated in the thought of Hugo Grotius and John Locke, prominent seventeenth century

72

Chapter Three

thinkers. Among its central tenets, John Hallowell cites these: “(1) A belief in the absolute value of human personality and the spiritual equality of all individuals, (2) A belief in the autonomy of human will, (3) A belief in the essential rationality and goodness of man, (4) A belief in the existence of certain inalienable rights peculiar to individuals by virtue of their humanity . . . , (5) A belief that the state comes into existence by mutual consent for the sole purpose of preserving and protecting these rights, (6) A belief that the relationship between the state and individuals is a contractual one and then when the terms of the contract are violated, individuals have not only the right but the responsibility to revolt and establish a new government, (7) A belief that social control is best secured by law rather than by a command . . . , (8) A belief that ‘the government that governs least governs best’ . . . , (9) A belief in individual freedom in all spheres of life (political, economic, social, intellectual, and religious), (10) A belief in the existence of a transcendental order of truth which is accessible to man’s natural reason and capable of evoking a moral response.”33 In these we find that what needs to be stabilized is the moral/political life of persons and the status of that which stabilizes that life. We find Plato, particularly in thesis ten. Our interest now is in three questions: are we justified in believing with Plato (1) that we can know a transcendent order of universal truth, a realm of perfection, the good existing independently of our individual lives and minds, (2) that a perfect good, a best for all people that, if known, can provide social stability, can stabilize them, and (3) that the good can account for moral responsibility required for the solidarity and stability of a society? The classic response to the first question is well known: human minds are changing and imperfect as are the concepts through which they know; that which they attempt to know is perfect and unchanging, and as any understanding they have of the perfect can only be through imperfect and changing concepts, they cannot know a perfect good existing independently of their minds. Unless they can know such a transcendent order of truth it cannot stabilize their moral lives. But the second question is more to the point. Assuming that we can know such a realm, is it true that a universal good, applicable to all persons everywhere and at all times regardless of their individual circumstances, can stabilize their social action? Can the good provide stability for that soul that knows it and imitates it? If so, a soul that knows and imitates the good could find stability in that which is itself unchanging. However, the good cannot provide what it promises. Let me explain. Consider the Platonic tradition as a paradigm of ancient/medieval thought. According to those who work in it, they have found that which is permanent and good and that provides those characteristics to things other than itself, the

Stability

73

world of orderly change; or, more to the point here, the stability of the moral life. What we have here is a belief in two realms, reality and appearance; and the realm of appearances is dependent on the real for whatever reality it may possess. Plato’s promise can be fulfilled only if his view of reality and appearance and their relations is correct. Unfortunately, that view is so filled with difficulties. It is best to look elsewhere for understanding. Why? F. H. Bradley is incisive and corrective at this point. Bradley contends that any attempt to establish a foundation by designating something as real and all others as appearance runs afoul of “the machinery of terms and relations.” Designating any object necessarily implies distinguishing it from other objects. To assume otherwise is to separate product from process, a logically impossible feat. Designation not only requires marking off some object from others but also saying what it is by relating qualities or elements into a whole. To separate or join requires using terms and relations. The importance of this is not hard to see. Platonists believe they have found in the good a foundation or substance, which is not dependent for its existence or its intelligibility on anything other than itself. Yet if we look closely at the activity of designation or description we find that any substance so designated requires relations for its intelligibility. It cannot stand alone; it requires relations for it to be and to be known. Yet dependent is precisely what the real, the foundation, cannot be; it is independent. The significance of that line of reasoning for the good stabilizing the moral life is clear. Succinctly, sameness through change requires that which is in some sense independent of the change itself. Neither something (the body, feelings, emotions, desires, passions, reason) in the infrastructure nor something in the superstructure (the good) can be independent in the required sense; thus it cannot provide the needed stability. Thus, any attempt to designate and to represent some object as the foundation of the needed stability of the solidar involves contradiction. So, we are not justified in believing that a perfect good, a best for all people and with reference to which they ought to adjust and guide their lives, can stabilize them. The third question, are we justified in believing with Plato that the good can account for moral responsibility required for the solidarity and stability of a society, penetrates the fabric of society to its moral foundation. Any society is held together by a solidar and a stabilizer. As we have seen, that implies promises are made and expected to be kept. One can be held responsible for desertion or treason. Turning to classical and medieval metaphysics to ground the stability of a society, we ask for the basis for responsibility. Each of the cultural figures whose theories we have examined hold to a virtue ethics, the end of which is eudaimonia. To achieve that end we must craft our lives, and to do so in the best possible way we must develop the virtues of

74

Chapter Three

wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. Aquinas would add faith, hope, and love. Though such crafting is an important dimension of individual and social existence, it ignores responsibility. How on the basis of virtue ethics can one justify martyrdom, a “supreme act of loyalty to a cause, or keeping a promise, of responsibility?”34 From this quick rehearsal of Plato, Aristotle, Stoicism, Aquinas, and integral liberalism on that which stabilizes solidarity through change, the centrality of the authority of the rational mind is obvious. Though its persuasiveness lies in its providing a secure framework for blocking and channeling human passions and aggression, that framework severely limits the range of individual self expression and growth. Stability for the solidar is purchased at a high price. Here we find the violence of a rationalistic social metaphysics dominating all other dimensions of the human personality. Essentially, the individuality of persons is lost under the tyrannous regime of rationalism. Our discussion up to this point has led us to recognize that neither of the two time-honored stabilizers of our lives, an infrastructure (the body, the emotional/ conative/feeling life, and the rational) and a superstructure (a transcendent order of truth understood as a perfect good) are adequate candidates for stabilizing our lives. The problem with each is twofold: (1) each finds stability in something that ignores the richness of our background, including our moral lives, and (2) each attempts to reduce the full potentials of persons to something less, thus its partial personalism. Each attempt to understand the stability of our second nature through an appeal to an infrastructure or a superstructure focused on one dimension of the individual or on the structures within a person’s life. If the former, the social structures were problematic, and if the latter, the individuality of persons was lost. Yet, each view calls attention to an important aspect of the stabilizer required to stabilize the solidar. The appeal to external, metaphysical structures points out the importance of public structures for social lives. We need to understand and share in what others members of society are doing economically, educationally, reproductively, religiously, and politically. Those patterns provide for the stability of social life. The appeal to the internal life of individual persons, their freedom of choice, moral life, abilities, and competences is important for the full development of each individual but also for their contribution to a richly variegated society. But more important, the development of their character, the predictable aspect of their lives, is central to the stability of their social action. How, then, shall we proceed in our search for social order and individual freedom? It is apparent from our discussion that we cannot appeal to either dyadic cultural objectivism or cultural monadic subjectivism, to the monad or the

Stability

75

dyad. If the starting point is an individual or an assemblage of them, what about individuals accounts for their relation in society? Logically, if the whole is the sum of the parts, “sum” does not account for the characteristics of the whole apart from the parts composing it. On the other hand, if the starting point is society, what about society accounts for both individuals and their relationship that constitutes a society? Again, the whole does not account for the parts and their relation. Clearly we face the traditional problem of the one and the many, now from a social perspective and the logic underlying it.35 How, then, shall we proceed? If both the cultural dyadic objectivist and the cultural monadic subjectivist fail in their attempt to account for the stability of the solidar through change, to what shall we turn? Let’s turn to the triad and the place of institutions in it. There we may find that which provides continuity for our second nature through change.

INSTITUTIONS AS STABILIZERS OF SOCIETY Institutions, Triads, and Trust We turn now to examine how, if at all, institutions and the triad are related. Is it possible that within the triad we are able to account for the relation of the individual to the social unit and its stability in institutions? Consider the members of the triadic relation, I, Thou, and It. Each individual I and Thou is numerically distinct and triadically related both to other individual agents who possess will agency and to the It. Though we can distinguish each individual person within a triad, we cannot separate them. Anything that can be said about each person, anything that each person becomes, occurs within and is deeply influenced by the other members of the triad.36 Whatever is said about individuals occurs within a triad.37 Consider next the internal relations of the triad.38 First, the triad is intrinsically situational: the It indicates both a habitat and a culture, while the I and Thou indicate psycho-physical beings related to those environments. Second, relations within the triad are stable, enduring, and maintained and others are not stable, enduring, or maintained. Two examples are an Oxford college and a momentary association such as giving directions to a stranger. Why are some relations within the triad stable, enduring, and maintained and others are not? Consider the elements within the triad. Recall not only the possibilities I, Thou, and It bring to the triad but also the needs, purposes, and agencies of I and Thou as well as the exigencies of the It. In so far as the I-Thou-It are natural beings they operate, as best we can tell, according to the

76

Chapter Three

laws of physics and biology; thus, there is a kind of permanency, a high degree of stability in these relations (gravity, for example). Undergirded by that natural context, each element within the triad both undergoes and acts on the other members of the triad. Limited by that environment as well as freed by its value possibilities, I and Thou intend to achieve common purposes, satisfy common needs, and collectively live according to norms built into purposive action. Institutional structures arise, stabilize, and remain within the I-ThouIt triad on the basis of the orderliness of nature and of intending shared needs, purposes, and norms. If there were no interaction within the triad there would be no shared norms, no solidar, or social structures, stable or otherwise. Where there is norm-governed interaction within the triad to satisfy social needs or purposes there are stable, enduring structures, institutions. The institutions that develop in any society rest both on shared needs, the activity potentials of each member of the triad, and causes, that with regard to which persons act. The I and the Thou of the triad bring to the triad needs for food, shelter, clothing, regulation for competing needs, organized understandings of the religious, childbearing and rearing, passing on the ways of society’s culture, and communication.39 In the triad the I, the Thou, and the It interact to fulfill those needs guided by shared norms, or causes. As they do so, seven stable social patterns emerge appearing within the triad and nowhere else: economic, political, religious, reproductive, educational, regulative, and communicative. Here we find that basis of social difference and interdependence. Each I and Thou of the triad brings to the nexus “bents,” or “talents.” Those talents are limited. No one member of the triad can care for all her needs. For example, no one can be her own educator, can provide for all her economic needs, be her own priest, be her own media, set up her own regulations, be her own government. No one is isolated from all others and is talented enough to do everything. The only way one’s needs can be met is to depend on others. The I and Thou bring their inherent interdependence to the nexus of the triad. Here we find in the nexus the basis for social differentiation, both horizontal and vertical. In our discussion of solidarity we found the basis of social unity. Here we find the basis of social differentiation. On the basis of and within the pattern potentials of a nexus a particular society forms specific, concrete institutions. In America they include capitalism; representative form of democratic government; Baptist church; nuclear family; universal formal education K–12, technological schools, colleges, and universities; a constitution; and mass media. Each institution develops on the basis of trust and is differentiated by the talents, giftedness of the members of the triad. Such institutions stabilize social action, including trusting, oughting, and transcending.

Stability

77

These patterns are present only in the nexus of the interacting triad and cannot be reduced to the components of the triad. We shall call these “primary institutions.” Now we face a problem. Institutions form, decay, and die and new ones take their place. For example, in the West the extended family of the ancient world has been replaced in the modern world by the nuclear family. Though individual institutions last for awhile and die out, they are replaced by others of the same type. That is, though the extended family rarely exists, the nuclear family has taken its place. And both are types of family, of the reproductive institutional structure. Now how account for the continuity of the type, such as the reproductive institutional structure, as well as the changeableness of the token, the individual instances of family structure?40 Primary Institutions as Pattern Potentials of the Nexus of the Triad Consider primary institutions. They are stable, enduring, norm-governed social pattern potentials of the triad undergirded by physical laws. The I, Thou, and It interact on the basis of the natural possibilities (including their own bodies, needs, and talents), value possibilities (purposes and goals), and the potentialities each brings to the triad.41 As the interaction occurs, it has a focus. The focus is present only in the interacting connection and is not reducible to the individual participants in the interaction. We shall call this focus of interaction a nexus. As the triadic interaction occurs, pattern potentials appear that are located neither in the individual participants of the triad nor external to the triad. They appear only in the nexus. These patterns are the potential ways of meeting the needs of the members of the triad and are required for the interaction to continue. For example, the possibility of communication occurs only within the triad and is required for the interaction to continue. Without the possibility of communication between I and Thou regarding an It, their social interaction would be severely limited. For I and Thou to relate to each other with regard to an It, they must be able to communicate with each other, to share information, knowledge, methods, procedures, and criteria. It is conceivable that an interaction could occur without communication; however, that would be only within the ecosystem (if at all). As one considers the life of the triad, particularly as it continues beyond its present members, it must be possible to teach members the ways of living generated within the triad, that is, their culture. Further, the potentiality of communication would make possible education, whether informal or formal. In this sense the potential of education is intrinsic to and maintained within the structure of the triad. Here we find a pattern potential of the triadic relation that is not reducible to the individual members of the triad.

78

Chapter Three

Finally, in general each I and Thou possess the same needs. But each brings to the nexus “bents,” or “talents.” As pointed out, no one member of the triad can care for all her needs. For example, no one can be her own educator (even an autodidact can do so only on the basis of previous learning that was not self-taught), can provide for all her economic needs, or can be her own priest. The members of the triad are interdependent. Here we find in the pattern potentials the basis of social differentiation, for social hierarchies. In our discussion of solidarity, we found the basis for social unity, for our horizontal relationships. Here we find the basis for social difference, our vertical relationships.42 At least seven pattern potentials appear in every society: economic, educational, political, reproductive, religious, regulative, and communicative.43 The specific institutions a society forms varies with the possibilities of the habitat and the potentials of the members of the social group to transform the habitat to meet their needs. They could choose a barter system, capitalism, or some other specific economic system. These pattern potentials that arise only in the nexus of the interacting triad are primary institutions, or institutional types (in contrast to universals). The specific concrete institutions a society develops on the basis of and guided by the pattern potentials of the triad we shall call secondary institutions, or institutional tokens. What then is a secondary institution? It is a specific, historically concrete, relatively permanent pattern of social relations (vertical and horizontal) sanctioned by norms that satisfy specific social desires, needs, and/or purposes. A particular school, say Furman University, is a secondary institution. But what is the relation between a primary and a secondary institution? A secondary institution is a particular pattern of relationships made out of the possibilities of primary institutions.44 We claim that secondary institutions are the numerically distinct, specific constructions made as we creatively find and explore the possibilities of primary institutions. In our daily lives we consciously intend little of what actually occurs. For example, as we pay tuition at Furman we sometimes do so with cash. As we look into our purses or billfolds, we consciously identify the bills we need and hand them to the bursar, who hands us our change, if any. In this transaction we do not consciously intend the full range and multilayered complexity of Furman as well as its place and function within the American economy. We participate in the institutional life of Furman, yet we are consciously aware of and intend only a small part of it. It is not hard to find trust here. As we consciously matriculate into Furman’s life, we know that we are obligated to pay tuition and fees, which implies a “holding for true” accompanied by some justification. But that transaction and its implications occur within a framework of trust in other people,

Stability

79

the college, the economic system, and the natural environment. And that framework is the Background. Also, the Background is at least institutional in structure, though it may be more. Institutions and Trust Both primary and secondary institutions stabilize the socially common, our “Second Nature.” The claim here is that trust permeates institutions. But more, institutions rest on ethics. But is that true? To locate the place of trust in relation to institutions, we need to keep in mind the distinction between the activity potentials of the individuals and the pattern potentials of the nexus found only in the triad. Consider trust as an activity potential. Without that potential individual humans could not trust. Trees do not seem to have it, but many animals do. However, without the triadic interrelationship it would make no sense to mention trust, the recognition of an object or cause, and acknowledgement of a person in which confidence is placed or not placed. This means that trust can appear only within the potentials of the interrelationship among the members of the triad. It is here that primary institutions appear structurally possible (the range of these structures is limited by the individual potentials and relational potentials), and the possibility of trust can be made a reality. That is, if an individual remained alone, no trust could be formed. In the potentials of the nexus and the constructions made within it and the basis of those potentials, we find trust as the unifier of concrete institutions. We may add at this point that not only does trust undergird, permeate, and unite institutions, but ethics does as well. Mutuality of trust, as we have seen, implies an obligation to keep promises, the promises to be trustworthy. In the freedom of each I and Thou to choose and keep promises, we also find transcendence of the Thou and I in their mutual relation. This also means that our mutual promising to maintain requires a renunciation of our own self-interests for the sake of fidelity, trust. Implied in trust is kenosis (renunciation of selfishness) for the well-being of others, for the care of others.45 From this we can conclude that institutions resting on trust, obligation, transcendence, and kenosis also rest on ethics. Social stability, insofar as institutions provide it, rests on ethics. Ethics does not rest on social stability. Indeed, trust is found rooted in the potentials of the members of the triad and becomes actualized from primary institutions through secondary ones. Consider some implications of this search for what stabilizes social action. Let’s return to two questions asked earlier, (1) are institutions found or made, and (2) how can a society maintain order and yet hold to individual freedom?

80

Chapter Three

Institutions Are Both Found and Made Are institutions found or made? That secondary institutions are made is clear. But whether primary ones are made or not is problematic. Let’s frame the issue as an antinomy. Consider the conjunction: primary institutions are made and primary institutions are found. Each claim is true. Any examination of the natural world, either by a physicist or a biologist, would supply adequate evidence for the truth of the left side of the conjunct. Searle drives his stakes here, Dewey would as well, and most modern sociologists seem to agree, as does Berger for example.46 However, the right side of the disjunction is true as well. Any record we have of what we would call persons indicates that they both are born into and learn in social-physical contexts. That includes forming and learning language. In that sense humans find institutions pre-existing, in some sense their existence as humans. Thus, both claims are true, but they cannot both be true; they are contradictory. Hence, the antinomy. Our short study has revealed that to attack one side of the antinomy in an attempt to show that it is false and that the other side is true is the approach taken by two metaphysical worldviews that attempt to be exclusive, denying the truth of the other. We found them to be limited ontologies and returned to the puzzle of the antinomy. Returning to experience, not from the point of view of the methodological skepticism of a Descartes but from that of radical empiricists such as Borden Parker Bowne, we searched for structures that are implicit in experience and manifest themselves within it. We learned that experience is essentially triadic, always involving an I, a Thou, and an It. Further reflection on this structure helped us realize three important aspects of it: (1) each of the three elements brings to the triad dispositions or potentialities, if you will, that allow for the formation of human social life (2) the interaction of the potentialities/dispositions are developed in terms of the natural capacities (natural law of gravity, life needs, for example) of all three and the normative life of the I and Thou in relation, and (3) the interaction necessarily involves communication among the three. Together, these provide for stability, endurance, and maintenance within the framework of the triadic structure, the condition for the continuation of the structure itself. Here we find primary institutions. That structure is required for any one individual member of the triad to come into existence and develop. In this sense institutions are found, and they are primary. Institutions are also made. They are made in the sense that they arise only within the interaction of the triad. They are potential within the triad. They come into existence, move beyond potentiality, through the making activity of I and Thou in relation to the It. Here we find not only primary institutions but also secondary ones. Education as an enduring and stable social structure is creatively found. Thus our answers to two

Stability

81

questions Searle raised are that there are primary institutions and that they are neither found nor made; they are both found and made. The antinomy is resolved. Freedom, Order, and the Triadic Nexus It can be argued that a society that stresses order risks limiting individual freedom, and one that stresses individual freedom risks disorder. We have shown that our second nature requires both a solidar and stability to meaningfully relate the Background and the Foreground. That raises the question of the place of individual freedom and social order in our second nature. Succinctly, individuals, though intrinsically social, can act contrary to their second nature, their solidar, and their stabilizers. Each numerically distinct, naturally “bent” individual has the potential to initiate action, to imagine possibilities, and to reflect on their implications. In that sense the individual person though formed in the triad is nevertheless free. The person can imagine, reflect, and act in ways contrary to the culture; but it will always occur in a society with a culture. That freedom is not eliminated by the order of a culture. But it is always formed and informed by that culture. As Martin Luther King, Jr. attacked racism in America and occasionally acted contrary to established law, he did so as an American. We are culturally influenced but not culturally determined.

CONCLUSION We began our discussion with the question, what stabilizes social action through change, through the conflicts in our second nature between our Foreground and Background? We learned that the potential for stability is found in the triadic relation itself, specifically in the nexus. There we found pattern potentials that when acted on form the seven basic institutions that provide the stability of our second nature. We also learned that primary institutions are rooted not only in trust and in the causes of society but also in the needs I and Thou bring to the triad as well as their “bents,” “giftedness,” and “talents.” As potential we can act on them and form concrete institutions of a society at a particular time and place. However, institutions are notorious for not working properly. Crisis is common. First, in our discussion of solidarity we found that social relationships are unified by trust. I mutually trusts Thou regarding a cause, an It. In this sense all humans inherently live in mutual trust, ought, and transcendence.

82

Chapter Three

However, as they form societies the individuals in them speak different languages; their institutions differ. Their common natures differentiate them, one socially outside the other. The conflict between the inside and the outside is a potential point of crisis in their second natures. They are bound by trust, but being outside and the other inside, can they trust each other? Second, regarding our vertical relationships, we found two elements indigenous to the human social condition. On the one hand trust binds us, as we have seen. But on the other hand, we are separated by our individual talents, the freedom to develop and exercise them, and the resulting interdependence of the superordinate and the subordinate relations within stabilizing institutions. Individual freedom and the stable social hierarchy within institutions possess the seedbed for conflict within our second nature. Finally, we glimpse something of the character of humans. They can be generous, kind, trustworthy, and soaringly creative. But they can be miserly, cruel, distrustful, and unimaginatively destructive. How can the solidarity of triadic trust be maintained in a society whose stability is highly differentiated and hierarchical? The origin of individual and social evil is beyond the scope of this essay. However, social organization and culture are the ways humans have devised to protect themselves from themselves, as well as from the sometimes unpredictable (though usually friendly) forces of nature. And, we have seen, there can be no society with unity and stable differentiation apart from trust. The issue becomes reestablishing through trust, solidarity and stability. Facing the power of personal, social, and natural forces that can lead to distrust, we must find a way to trust or disintegrate. What can guide us away from our own social suicide? Only reconciliation can do so. How, then, can reconciliation overcome a crisis in our second nature? To consider that question, we turn to the next chapter.

NOTES 1. This point was recognized early in the twentieth century by Charles Horton Cooley. “An institution is simply a definite and established phase of the public mind, not different in its ultimate nature from public opinion, though often seeming, on ac count of its permanence and the visible customs and symbols in which it is clothed, to have a somewhat distinct and independent existence. . . . Language, government, the church, laws and customs of property and of the family, systems of industry and education, are institutions because they are the working out of permanent needs of hu man nature.” Social Organization (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1909), quoted in Edgar F. Borgata and Henry J. Meyer, eds., Sociological Theory: Present-Day Sociology from the Past (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), 252.

Stability

83

2. Marcus G. Singer, “Institutional Ethics,” in Ethics, A. Phillips Griffiths, ed., Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 35, (Cambridge University Press, 1993): 227 28. 3. Talcott Parsons, “Prolegomena to a Theory of Social Institutions.” American Sociological Review 55, no. 3 (June 1990): 320. 4. Melville J. Herskovits, Cultural Anthropology (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), 95. 5. Herskovits, Cultural Anthropology. 6. Herskovits, Cultural Anthropology. 7. “Moral” refers to the central norms and patterns of behavior of a society. “Moral” is not the same as “ethical.” Moral refers to what is the way of life of a so ciety, and ethical refers to what ought to be their way of life. 8. Three recent attempts are by James K. Feibleman, The Institutions of Society (New York: Humanities Press, 1968); John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (New York: The Free Press, 1995); and David Weissman, A Social Ontology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). 9. Through our study we shall occasionally use “mechanistic causality” to refer to impersonal forces. We are not referring to the Newtonian world. Our meaning is broader; we are referring to an assumption of all scientists that the world is orderly and law like where it is assumed that events can be fully accounted for by those that occur earlier than they do. Causality, especially the relation called a “causal rela tion,” has been thoroughly sifted in recent philosophical literature. For our purposes, there is no need to settle the various debates. We need only to refer to the web of re lations assumed by scientists in their attempt to describe and account for events in the natural world. It is assumed that events in the web can be mathematized and pre dicted, where predictions are based on a law like orderliness among those events. That law like orderliness may be top down, as in cybernetic systems; bottom up, as in the relation between the macrocosmic and the microcosmic; or microcosmic to microcosmic as in the relation of microcosmic physical elements to other micro scopic physical elements. 10. See Republic, Gorgias, and Philebus, 23c 66d. 11. See Erazim Kohak, The Embers and the Stars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 141 42, and R. S. Peters, The Concept of Motivation (London: Rout ledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), 52 94. 12. Peters, The Concept of Motivation, 141. 13. Peters, The Concept of Motivation. 14. Peters, The Concept of Motivation. 15. Peters, The Concept of Motivation, 144. 16. Robert Bocock, Freud and Modern Society, An Outline and Analysis of Freud’s Sociology (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1970), 120. 17. Bocock, Freud. See also Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, In troduction by Louis Menand, trans. James Strachey, and biographical Afterword by Peter Gay (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005). Howard Stein’s analysis, rooted in Freudian theory, fares no better. See his Beneath the Crust of Culture: Psychoanalytic

84

Chapter Three

Anthropology and the Cultural Unconscious in American Life (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004). 18. Freud’s theory has been presented as a psychological determinism. Our con cern is less with Freud than with a determinism that reduces all human behavior to movement and leaves no basis for purposive behavior, choice between and among op tions, and moral responsibility. 19. Kohak, The Embers and the Stars, 144. 20. One other stabilizer for the solidar of our changing second nature is literature. Rejecting all attempts to ground autonomy and the core value structures of a society, its solidar, its moral life in some foundation theory, Richard Rorty finds them in nov els. For the development of autonomy he appeals to Proust and Nietzsche, and for books that “help us become less cruel” he appeals to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Les Miserables, Sister Carrie, The Well of Loneliness, among others. Seeking to move beyond what we have called the violence of metaphysics, beyond metaphysics, beyond theo rizing, Rorty moves us to literature. As he does so he seeks lodging in a cultural lin guistic solipsism, one having little or no connection to the natural world, or a medium, as was argued in Thomas O. Buford, In Search of a Calling (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1995), 97 109. Rorty’s romantic narcissism is cultural monadic subjectivism at its extreme. See Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 21. Rorty, Contingency, 5. 22. Rorty, Contingency, 7. 23. Rorty, Contingency, 10. 24. Rorty, Contingency, 28. 25. Rorty, Contingency. 26. Rorty, Contingency, 41. 27. Rorty, Contingency, 125 26. 28. Rorty, Contingency, 129. 29. Rorty, Contingency, 129. 30. These philosophers engage in prescriptive, not descriptive metaphysics. 31. Plato Politics, book IV, chapter 4. 32. Plato, Politics. 33. John H. Hallowell, Main Currents in Modern Political Thought (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965), 110 11. 34. H. Richard Niebuhr, The Responsible Self (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 70. 35. The subject predicate logic lies behind this discussion. We fare no better by shifting to a propositional or predicate calculus. Both rest on the premise of atomism, individualism. In quantification theory the universal quantifier (x) is a conjunction of all the members of a specific universe. If the universe is composed of three members, a, b, c, F is a characteristic, and Fa & Fb & Fc, then (x)Fx. That is, (x)Fx is logically equivalent to Fa & Fb & Fc. The whole is the sum of the parts. What is not accounted for are the characteristics of the whole, as in “American society is law abiding,” but it is false that each member of American society abides by the law. Neither logic, the S P or either calculus, provides the kind of logical structure needed to deal with the

Stability

85

problems of the one and the many, or the relation between society and its members. Cf. E. J. Lemmon, Beginning Logic (Indianapolis: Indiana, [1965] 1978), 107. 36. Each person brings to the triad activity potentials, at least, that allow her to act. However, the particular personality she becomes occurs in the triadic context. It is crucial to distinguish self, personality, and person: the activity potentials, the way the activity potentials develop and take form in the context of Thou and It, and the one whose these are. See Peter A. Bertocci, “The Person, His Personality, and Environ ment,” Review of Metaphysics 32 (1979): 605 21. See also Niebuhr, Faith on Earth, and Josiah Royce, Outlines of Psychology: An Elementary Treatise with Some Practical Applications (New York: Macmillan, 1906), 1911. 37. The triadic relation can be conceived graphically as a triangle, with I, Thou, and It appearing as the three points. 38. Cf. Theodore R. Schatzki, The Site of the Social (University Park, Pennsylva nia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002). 39. That humans have needs is well established by Gordon Allport, Pattern and Growth in Personality (New York: Holt, Rinehard and Winston, 1961); by Paul Ri coeur, Nature and Freedom: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, part I, trans. Erazim V. Kohak (Evanston: Northwestern University Press [1950] 1966); and by Peter A. Bertocci, Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Prentice Hall, 1951), 191 222. Bertocci’s discussion of needs distinguishes between primary drives (phys iological) and native mental motives, as well as their interconnectedness. Their place in institutions is noted by James K. Feibleman, The Institutions of Society (New York: Humanities Press, [1956] 1968). 40. Cf. Carle C. Zimmerman, Family and Civilization (Wilmington, Delaware: In tercollegiate Studies Institute, [1947] 2008). 41. “Potential” is what can be done when the occasion calls for it. 42. See Jeffrey Alexander, The Civil Sphere (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 206. He says that “In social systems . . . every actor occupies a dual position. He or she is a subordinate or superordinate actor in a whole series of vertical hierar chies and, at the same time, a member of the horizontal community of civil life.” 43. This list is from Alexander, Civil Sphere, 203 4. They are derived from em pirical studies of societies, not logically deduced from axioms. 44. This discussion of institutions as they appear in the triadic relation gains strength through building on the insights of dyadic cultural objectivism and cultural monadic subjectivism. The former recognizes that humans find themselves en meshed in a society; humans are inherently social beings. They need stable hori zontal and vertical structures in which to live. The latter recognizes that humans through their imaginations, power of rational reflection, and free will can and some times must challenge and change established vertical and horizontal institutional re lations that fail to meet their needs. Humans need the freedom to modify or revolu tionize those social patterns that are not responsible and that are unfair. However, the weakness of the former is its resting social structures in a rationalistic, hierar chical metaphysics that limits freedom, social alternatives, and human growth and development. The weakness of the latter is its tendency to reject all social structures that do not meet one’s specific interests and needs. Such a view taken to extreme

86

Chapter Three

can result in disorder. The view outlined here provides for social order in the pat terned potentialities of the triad and for human freedom, imagination, and reflective thought in individual potentials and capacities the I and Thou bring to the triad. Fur ther, this view is a type of “natural law” theory, if one interprets the word “natural” to mean what is inherent to the triad relation, the pattern potentials. Pattern potentials are not the universal, eternal possibilities of reality, Plato’s eternal forms, or the eternal forms of the mind of God that receive existence as the demiurge or God in its good ness persuades the Receptacle to take unto itself their likeness, creating the best of all possible worlds. They exist, however in the pattern potentials of the nexus of the I Thou It triad. 45. Cf.Virginia Held, The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). She recognizes that care is a value and a practice, and she finds trust to be essential to practice. Her analysis, however, assumes an individ ualism and though she sees it as developing within social relations, she does not ac count for those relations. We do so by appealing to the triadic structure of experience and the centrality of trust to that relation. That is, she needs a social ontology to ac count for the ethics of care. 46. Peter L. Berger, The Social Construction of Reality; a Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1966).

Chapter Four

Reconciliation

INTRODUCTION Reconciliation is a problem for any culture; it is a problem for our second nature, of the relation between our Background and our Foreground. We have seen that a culture is a way of life shared by a social group. It provides solidarity and stability within the triad. Individuals in culture have a shared Background. It is our “Book of Knowledge” learned over many generations and stored in our books, oral traditions, habits, and traits. The Foreground is what a people daily confront. Also individuals living in a culture have a Background and a Foreground. Each of us learns within a culture. Guided by a common and individualized Background, each of us forms a personality, as each chooses among the options available in the Foreground. In this way each of us is both cultural and individual. What, then, is a crisis? A crisis is our inability to continue what we have been doing, yet not knowing what to do. A crisis can be generated in many ways. It could range from a momentarily unsettling event to a deep, long-standing state of affairs. For example, a deep drought could require changes in water usage. As the rains return, the accustomed patterns of behavior return. However, global warming requires severely limiting carbon-based fuels, such as the use of coal and oil. Continuing the past patterns, acting on a shared Background, leads to social and cultural disruption. If no viable alternative is available, the society faces a deep and potentially long-standing crisis. It has two foci: the triad and the interrelation of the members of the triad. More specifically, (1) the nexus of the triad that is the site of the way of society, its culture; and (2) within the culture, I and Thou acting out of a 87

88

Chapter Four

Background engage a present and a future. This allows us to make a broad distinction (but not a separation) between the common, the socially/culturally shared and the individual person. Thus, crisis in the culture reverberates in individuals, as crisis in individuals can reverberate in the culture. The need for reconciliation is generated by a crisis(es) in our second nature, in our Background, our Foreground, and their interrelationships. Where reconciliation is required turns on the breakdown of specific relationships: (1) the horizontal interrelationships of individuals and institutions unified by trust, and (2) the vertical and horizontal relationships within the triad. Thus, a crisis in society reverberates in the individuals living in it, as a crisis in an individual reverberates in the shared second nature. Our focus is on the shared crisis of the Background/Foreground. If the shared Background/Foreground is stabilized, the individual’s crisis can be resolved by appealing to the shared. If the shared is in crisis, the individual’s crisis of Background cannot be so resolved. Our concern is about the crisis of the shared, the common in the triad. If the crisis of the shared is to be overcome through reconciliation it must occur between the inside and outside and between individual freedom and hierarchical social order. All social order and unity, in the Background and in relation to the Foreground, rests on trust. Any conflict in that relation is fundamentally a crisis of trust. Thus two dimensions of a shared cultural crisis, of the crisis in the relation between the Background and the Foreground are (1) solidarity (trust and norms: values, ideals) and (2) stability (institutions: orderly ways of meeting needs; and particular and specific causes: norms, ideals). This distinction is in a sense artificial. A crisis in our culture reverberates through every aspect of social life. However, for purposes of analysis we shall distinguish between solidarity and stability. By making the distinction we can achieve a fuller grasp of the complexity of the crisis. A crisis in the solidarity and stability of our second nature rests finally upon distrust; it is a failure to keep our promises, to be responsible. Why do people fail to keep promises? The answer is as complex as the individuals involved. But it is at least the failure of self-renunciation, the failure to keep one’s selfishness in control that denies one’s second nature and its accompanying obligations of triadic trust. To remedy that break, essentially moral, between persons they must renounce their own selfishness and seek reconciliation. The problem of overcoming their self-interest is beyond our study. However, individuals can reconcile, but can institutions do so? Reconciliation implies agency, and that means that institutions must be agents. But are they?1

Reconciliation

89

INSTITUTIONS AND AGENCY The Issue of Social Agency We contend that a crisis in our second nature is the direct result of distrust, a moral failing, unfaithfulness, not keeping promises, and acting irresponsibly. Regarding individual persons this is uncontested. Persons are agents who can without compulsion choose among options. They can and sometimes do act in an untrustworthy manner, break promises, and act irresponsibly. They can set in motion and maintain a crisis in the solidar and institutions of their society. To claim, however, that institutions often fail morally is contested. Can an institution be untrustworthy, fail to keep promises, and be held responsible for its actions? The answer depends on whether it is reasonable to believe that institutions are agents who act and can be held responsible for their actions. Historically, we can identify two positions on the nature of institutions, organicism of cultural dyadic objectivism and individualism of cultural monadic subjectivism. Organicists contend that society is an objective order, and individuals find their identity, solidarity, social position, and stability in them. Individualists, on the other hand, submit that an institution is an organization formed by a collection of individual persons. Institutions gain whatever existence and authority they possess through the actions of the persons who formed them. We can claim that neither view can adequately support the claim that institutions are agents. To begin, consider the argument of the individualist: either institutions are natural persons or they are nonnatural persons. It is false that institutions are natural persons. Therefore, institutions are nonnatural persons. A nonnatural person is an artificial person, a legal entity such as a secondary institution; a business, a government, a school, a synagogue, or a family. Returning to the argument, the reasons supporting the second premise are clear and persuasive. Only natural persons are agents. Institutions are not natural persons; they know and act only through a natural person representing them. They are not agents in the sense that natural persons are. Though the argument is persuasive, we continue to say that institutions perform actions and can be held responsible for them, but on what grounds? Finding those grounds has proven problematic. The individualist reasons from the agency of individual, natural persons to institutions and the organicist reasons from the social nature of institutions to individuals. As noted by commentators such as Wolgast2 and Douglas,3 the individualist view of institutions flounders as it enters social and moral territory. And, it appears that the organicist does so as well.4 If the individualist

90

Chapter Four

considers each person to be numerically one and locates the characteristics of personhood in each numerically distinct individual, the social aspect of individual persons is problematic. And, if the organicist considers institutions as wholes greater than the sum of their parts, the agency of which lies in a single individual, the agency and moral life of institutions become problematic. How can a Louis XIV be the state? The state is a social relation. How can one individual be a social relation? If Louis the individual is one, he cannot be a social relation, implying at least two persons. If Louis is a social relation, how can he be one? Furthermore, if Louis is one person it is understandable how he can perform an action, can act. If Louis is a relation about persons, how can he as a relation perform an action or be held responsible for that performance? Can a relation initiate the action of its own agency? It may be that issues surrounding the moral aspect of institutions rest in part on the makeup of our moral language. Wolgast submits that the solution to our problem rests in reforming that language.5 However, the difficulty in resolving the problem of justifiably believing that institutions are agents and of assigning moral responsibility to them lies somewhere else. As our first step, we bring into bold relief an assumption made in the debate between the organicist and the individualist. The argument that institutions are either social organisms or relations among distinct, individual persons turns on the assumption that persons are individuals and that institutions are universals. The argument is framed by the subject-predicate logic. There are only two options, particulars or universals. The whole discussion is carried on within that logic and any answer must also measure up to it. The organicist settles on institutions as universals and has difficulty accounting for institutional agency. How can a universal act? That is the focus of the problem for the dyadic cultural objectivist. The individualist contends that institutions are relations among individuals and has difficulty accounting for institutional agency. The position of the cultural monadic subjectivist flounders at that point. What alternative do we have? The argument showing that institutions are agents must rest on a triadic logic, reminiscent of Jacobi, and of Peirce’s and Josiah Royce’s theory of signs. The triad frames our way of conceiving the relation among persons and has significant implications for recognizing the agency of institutions. Consider social action. The cultural monadic subjectivist conceives of action in terms of the individual will only. Self-initiation can only occur with individuals. That makes problematic conceiving an action as socially initiated, or institutionally initiated. However, consider that the I and the Thou bring to the triad activity potentials, the central one of which is agency. But that activity potential is actualized only as an action is performed, and actions are performed only in the triadic relation. In that sense actions are inherently social.

Reconciliation

91

Consider an analogy. Persons can reasonably be thought of as a complex time-binding unity of activity potentials governed by regnant ideals. However, these potentials becomes a personality only as the activity potentials are acted on in an environment. In the triadic interaction with a social and physical environment, a person takes on a particular shape, a form, a second nature. Persons from the perspective of the triad are deeply individual, but equally deeply social. Though we can make the distinction between person and personality, they always appear together. If we limited agency to the activity potential, to the person, the personality would only be functionally related to the person. That distinction separates the two, which we should quickly reject. The person-with-personality acts. The activity potentials of an I and a Thou are brought to the triadic relation; activity potentials are present in numerically distinct persons. In the nexus, the focus of the interaction within the triad, we find potentials and actualities, primary and secondary institutions. The nexus is then the actualization of the potentials of the numerically distinct I and Thou, as the actualization of a person’s potentials forms the personality. It makes no more sense to separate the triad from its nexus than to separate person and personality. If person-withpersonality can act, then so can the nexus of the triad act. If this is true, we can make sense of “we decided,” “we initiated,” “we take responsibility.” For example, a school acts to educate its students, and Boston University does a good job educating its students. Clearly, this sense of institutional action is acceptable only if one rejects the framing of subject-predicate logic and appeals to the triadic pattern of persons in relation. Thus, in this special sense institutions act, and if capable of acting, they are capable of being held responsible for their actions. Primary Institutions as Ethical We have seen that at least six patterns appear in the potentials in the interaction within the triad of I, Thou, and It/Cause. We have also seen that essential to the interaction within the triad are trust, oughting, and transcending. This implies that each pattern within the triad is essentially moral, in the way that trusting, oughting, and transcending are moral. This view clearly differs from that of Alexander. He distinguishes between civil and non-civil spheres in a society. Regarding the civil sphere, he says that a society’s “capacity for justice, liberty, and equality and, indeed, its very existence depend upon the creation of a space that can somehow stand outside spheres of a more restrictive kind.”6 By the non-civil spheres he means the seven institutions often mentioned in our discussion. They are not moral in any sense. Their goals are clearly different than that of justice, for example. To cite but one institution,

92

Chapter Four

Alexander says that “the goal of the economic sphere is wealth, not justice in the civil sense; it is organized around efficiency, not solidarity, and depends more upon hierarchy than equality to meet its goals.”7 The non-civil spheres often conflict with each other, sometimes usurping the territory of an adjacent institution, and the civil sphere is appealed to for boundary repair. Though interesting, Alexander’s view ignores the triadic relation and its moral content lying at the base of any society. Moral Patterns of Primary Institutions Each pattern appearing in the interaction of the triad and manifesting itself only in that interaction is rooted in the relation of trusting other persons regarding an It but also in the activity potentials of each person in the triad. That means that as I and Thou work together for the creation and distribution of goods and services, they do so to meet the needs of the members of the triad in the framework of trusting and oughting. Thus, each member of the triad in the economic relation is saying to the other member of triad, “I ought to feed you.” In the context of limited goods and services, that requires that the members of the triad seek to feed the others to the extent possible to meet their needs. At this point regulative institutions form laws governing the relations among individuals within the social group to ensure fairness. The fundamental norm is the dignity of each person in the triad and, in meeting their needs, help them develop their activity potentials to the fullest extent possible, governed by the paradigm of “I ought to feed you.”

CRISIS OF THE SOLIDAR Two Foci We have seen that fundamental to the I-Thou-It triad is reciprocal trust and a commitment to and trust in a common goal, or loyalty to a cause. The trusting relation involves recognition of persons with whom we enter into reciprocal trust and whose statements are trusted. This mutual recognition is a reciprocal obligation to renounce selfishness and to keep promises mutually made by promisers. Not only are we as language users inherently promisers, but as promisers we can fail to keep our promises. We are free and other than the Thou, regardless of our inherent mutuality. Though we become I’s and Thou’s within mutuality, within the triad, we possess as numerically individual persons agency, reflection, freedom of choice among genuine options presented by our common Background and Foreground. In the triad of trusting

Reconciliation

93

each other and the It that binds us to a cause, we find inherent patterns. These patterns are not only present in the nexus of the triad but also rooted in the needs of the members of the triad. From this we can see that the solidar and stability of social action are grounded, respectively, in trust, in the cause of the triad, and in the patterns, both potential and actual, of the nexus, and in norms that govern those patterns. As we examine the crisis in our common Background and Foreground, we shall focus where crisis may occur in both the solidar and the patterns of stability. Fractured Triad: Distrust From our discussion, it could appear that we have presented an ideal, one that we could all wish were the case. But that ideal is not the case. One could agree that trust and stable patterns are ideally what ought to be present in a culture. But any reasonable reading of history, Western, Eastern, or elsewhere shows its weaknesses. Every culture fails to live up to the best it knows, its own causes. Distrust does occur. The roots of distrust are found in the desire of an I or a Thou to forsake the mutual trust of the triad and the renunciation of unbridled self-interest. For example, power, whether political, economic, or religious, usurps all aspects of the society and seeks to control it, subordinating the needs of the members of society to the self-interests of those wielding it. In the feudal system, the King bestows benefits on those needed to maintain power. A King fighting the Church and Christendom in the Thirty Years’ War expected loyalty from his subjects, the vassals who in turn expected it from those under them. Though the King knew he ought to provide an economic system to feed and clothe the people, his self-centered desire for power siphoned resources away from the people to his program for grasping and maintaining power. Centralized wealth and power moves goods and services to the top and away from the bottom, to the already wealthy from the starving poor. There is a discontinuity between the ideal and what actually occurs. Thus, distrust originates with the rejection of self-renunciation, thereby denying the triad of which it is inherently a part and the accompanying moral obligations of trust. Our concern here is with distrust; we must leave the problem of selfcentered activity in its affect on the Thou and the cause. Distrust appears in two aspects of the triad: relations within the triad and relations to the triad. Our concern is with distrust, with the point of its thrust.8 We contend that it fractures the triad; an action that violates trust is distrust. Distrust is breaking promises, not acknowledging others as persons toward whom obligation is owed. In the act of distrust the I-Thou-It relation is fractured; at least one member of the triad becomes isolated from the others. A social inside and outside are generated.

94

Chapter Four

Distrust that fractures the triad takes three forms.9 It could be directed toward a Thou. I could say that I am no longer bound by my mutual obligation to you, no longer acknowledge you as a person. Deserting my fellows in the triad, I move to their outside, to isolation, and in an extreme form to cultural death.10 This could occur as most desert a few who remain faithful to each other and to a cause. Religious or political persecution often takes that form. Or, it could be directed to the It. I could say that I am no longer obligated by the cause and reject it. This is treason. If cause or It is understood as the physical world, It could no longer support the triad. It would no longer be trustworthy. The American Midwest dust bowl of the 1930s is a case in point. Both desertion and treason are acts a member of a triad could perform in relation to the others. Finally, it could be passive desertion or treason. I could be passive toward others and to the cause, staying in the triad but not committing either to Thou or the It. This is triadic submission, parasitic. Distrusting a Thou manifests itself in various ways. In mild forms, it can be valuable. A child growing up in a family forms its own ego through distinguishing itself from the parents and other siblings. Though the distrust rarely penetrates to the level of desertion, the withdrawal of a child who learns that her parents are not perfect is a form of distrust of the parents and possibly of their cause, their deepest valuables. In such circumstances, the child can become submissive and contemplate her own way. This can be seen as a common occurrence and can be important to the development of the individual. However, when the relation moves to rejection of others and their values, the relation is deeply fractured. An individual is now isolated and becomes a law unto herself, autonomous; this is social individualism. Standing alone, the individual as lawgiver occupies a territory she seeks to control and govern for her own well-being, to meet her needs and possibly desires. In relation to the rejected members of the triad, an individual may be powerless. Being isolated from communication within the triad, she becomes fearful, aggressive. Seeking power she objectifies the members of the triad. If she recognizes that to meet her needs she must establish relations with those she rejects, she may attempt to establish some form of relationship with them. If those relations are thought of as agreements, trust reenters the relation. But now, having objectified those she deserted, her question becomes, “Can I reasonably trust those people?” Trust is now ironic trust. For to enter into relations with those she formerly rejected she depends on reason to guide the communication and agreements required to achieve her causes. However, communication, agreements, and common values require that she reenter the relation of trust to determine whether it is rational to trust. Ironic. For there to be a rational solidar she must assume the solidar of trust and causes.

Reconciliation

95

We can see from this analysis that the crisis of our second nature, of the culturally common, of the relation of the Background and the Foreground is a crisis of trust. Desertion, treason, and submission break the relation between the Background and the Foreground. However the distrusting individual, now isolated in individualism, rejects her background to deal with what she perceives as her Foreground. Moving into the Foreground with treason and desertion toward the Background, she finds that she needs what others have and can provide, a Background. She seeks to reestablish relations with those outside on the basis of reason, evidence, claims, good arguments, only to find that to do so she must appeal to the same Background as those with whom she seeks relations. She must assume trust and the cause. That is, she must reenter the triad with its cultural Background and Foreground. This means that the solidar required to meet crisis of the relation of the Background and the Foreground cannot be provided by distrust, isolation, individualism. Present through the crisis is the attempt to meet the needs of the members of the triad. To do so requires both the Background of trust and common causes which we have in a relation of fidelity. This is a crisis of the Personal; ironically, only in the Personal can we find the required solidar.11

CRISIS OF THE STABILIZERS Foci: The Stabilizing Patterns in the Nexus However, crisis in our second nature extends beyond the solidar to include stability. Institutions provide stability for triadic social action. As a culture changes, the solidar of the past often fails in the present as a society faces the perplexing problems of the Foreground. Also, as a society changes, the stabilizers in the Background no longer provide adequate patterns of organization to meet the needs of the society grappling with a perplexing Foreground. For society to stay together over time it needs organized patterns of behavior (horizontal and vertical) governed by agreed-upon norms. If those patterns no longer provide stability, society must possess patterns it can depend on to give a modicum of stability as it finds its way amid the perplexity of the Foreground.12 Forging them takes time. The interregnum is necessarily unstable. But, for society to remain together, it must do so on some organized basis. How can there be stability amid instability? The answer to this conundrum is to recognize that the nexus of the triadic relation is patterned in two distinguishable ways. Primary institutions are pattern potentials in the nexus and found only in the nexus, and they include religion, economics, politics, reproduction, education, regulation, and media,

96

Chapter Four

each governed by cause or norm potentials. We noted they appear as each member of the triad brings its needs to the relation relative to common values and ideals. Secondary institutions are formed as the members of the triad attempt to meet their needs; American examples include the Catholic Church, capitalist economy, representative democracy, nuclear family, statesupported and mandated education, a constitution, and newspapers/TV. As change occurs in any one of these secondary institutions, society seeks to modify them to meet the needs present in the Foreground. Finding itself in an interregnum, it follows the potential patterns of the triadic nexus, the primary institutions. We are now in a position to identify the point of the crisis in institutions. There are two of them. First, the triad rests on trust, ought, and transcendence. Nestled in the nexus of the triad, both the pattern potentials and concrete institutions also rest on trust. This means that a crisis of trust, a disruption of the triad, resounds through the potential and actual cultural patterns based on that triad. If desertion, the crisis of trust focuses on the relation of the I and the Thou. If treason, the crisis of trust focuses on the cause, that for the sake of which I and Thou relate. Institutions are patterns (horizontal and vertical) of activity interrelating I and Thou with regard to a cause, or purpose; they are the ways society fulfills its responsibility to care for each member; and these patterns of relationship are cause- or norm-governed. Desertion, treason, and submission affect both the solidar and the patterns of stable living united by the solidar. Second, a point of crisis is in the secondary institutions and the causes they serve. A crisis of trust is directly manifested in primary institutions. If the triad is disrupted so is the nexus of the triad, the phenomenal ontological ground of primary institutions. The discussion up to this point has focused on the deep uneasiness we feel about our solidarity and social/cultural stability. Focusing on the recesses of our Background with its structure (primary institutions) and its relation to the Foreground (with its perplexing problems) led us to a discussion that appears remote from our everyday lives; yet it is an attempt to bring that remoteness into our awareness. Turning to secondary institutions we find ourselves in the present. Our institutions are changing in ways that are sometimes difficult to determine. The point of crisis is clearest when they are under attack. The one man, one woman view of nuclear family is a good example, one we shall closely examine. Root of the Crisis of Stability During periods of social crisis, our second nature is stressed at the seams of the patterns of the solidar that weaken it to the point of crisis. The solidar is

Reconciliation

97

trust in a cause, that for the sake of which we live our lives in society.13 Causes guide actions among people who are united by trust. Causes and trust provide the solidar for persons in the triad. Within that framework and present in the nexus are patterns we call primary and secondary institutions. We have seen the point at which primary institutions break down. But what is the point of weakness of secondary institutions? It is found at two key aspects of concrete institutions: internally and in their external relations to each other. Consider the internal structure of secondary institutions. Three weakness are clear. First, the institution may fail to fulfill its responsibility to meet the needs of the members of society. Those institutions formed along the guidelines in the nexus of the triad, primary institutions or pattern potentials, focus on meeting different needs of persons in the triad. Persons bring to the triad their needs for food, clothing, shelter; for socialization into the society; for protection from threats and forces outside the society and as well as for regulation of relations among persons inside the society; for control of sexual activity and a way to provide for the young; for religious devotion; for communication among other members of society; and for patterns behavior expected in interpersonal relations. For example, goods and services necessary for living are provided by an economic system. Introducing and forming the young and immigrants into the culture of a society requires informal education and, in some cases, formal education. These institutional patterns are formed with a view of a cause, that to which the members of society are ultimately committed. The cause is that which they value highest. The patterns formed to meet the needs of the members of society are shaped by the cause. For example, if a supreme value is equality, the economic system will seek to distribute goods and services fairly and treat people differently only under necessity. If the institution fails to meet the needs of the members of the triad, the institution is not functioning properly. Second, the secondary institution may fail to fulfill its moral obligation as an institution. One additional aspect of secondary institutions is their inherent responsibility. As we have shown, secondary institutions are built on the lines of primary ones, and primary ones are present in the nexus of the triad, and the triad is formed and united by trust, and trust being inherently responsible collectively implies that secondary institutions are inherently responsible. Institutions are the forms the society follows to fill its responsibility to meet each other’s needs. The form the responsibility takes is determined by the cause. Again, if the cause is equality, and an institution is responsible to meet a specific need, the institution should be structured to responsibly distribute goods and services fairly. This is prevalent in democratic societies. If the cause is that some people are to be treated in a privileged way because of their inherent superiority, an inherent social hierarchy, the society acts responsibly

98

Chapter Four

just in case goods and services are distributed unequally according to the understanding of the cause. This is present in hierarchical societies such as monarchies, the divine right of kings, for example. However, an institution may fulfill its function but not do so in a responsible manner. It may meet the needs of people, but not act responsibly. For example, it may feed people, but pay attention only to the functioning of the institution. This would be the case in a society that is controlled by technical managerial thinking and ignores its social responsibility. For example, in a society that values the dignity and equality of persons, goods and services may be delivered to people so that money is made but with little or no regard for the impact on the lives of other people, for its social obligations. The system lacks virtue, one may say. Third, the final internal weakness is the failure of a secondary institution to meet its social obligation. Secondary institutions seek to meet the needs of persons and to act responsibly in doing so. They also seek to meet those needs responsibly as structured by causes, the most cherished values of society. As a society educates its young and old, its patterns of education must meet the needs of people, it must act responsibly in doing so, and it must structure its educational program to fulfill its highest ideals. The institution of education, for example, seeks an educated citizenry for the well-being of persons but also for the well-being of society. If, however, education turns primarily toward the sciences and mathematics with little attention to the responsibilities of persons toward each other and to the well-being of society, education fails to fulfill that for the sake of which it is formed.14 In the case of the institution of the family, it provides a socially approved expression of the sexual needs of persons, along with norms and sanctions governing them. If the “socially approved expression” sidelines certain individuals from expressing their sexual needs in a legal union, the institution is not aiding each individual to find suitable ways of achieving a fulfilling life. The marginalization of gays and lesbians in American society is a case in point. The expression of their sexual orientation through marriage places them in conflict with the institution of family, understood as a union of one man and one woman. The institution is out of sync with the cause of American life, the well-being of persons and “the pursuit of happiness.” Now let’s turn to the crisis in the external relations of institutions to each other. Institutions are not isolated patterns of behavior. Each is distinct and performs a different function in the lives of persons in society. In seeking to fulfill their responsibilities to the members of society and to society itself they often need help from the other patterns. For example, an industrial economy requires that workers possess an education appropriate to it. Courses in animal husbandry would be needed for an agricultural economy; but mathematics and computer science would be required for a global economy heavily dependent on science for the worldwide production and distribution of goods

Reconciliation

99

and services. Again, political, economic, religious, and educational institutions need communication and media to transmit their activities to society, for political decisions, for generating popular appeal for elections, for informing people of the activities of the religious organization, for educating people through the Internet, for creating a desire for a product and encouraging people to purchase it. If each institution meets the particular needs for which it was formed, fulfills its built-in responsibilities, and is governed by the causes of society, society will fulfill its mission, that for the sake of which it is formed, its cause, the well-being of each member and their relations with each other. However, those institutions sometimes come into conflict, and their disputes must be adjudicated. In the case of education, it could be limited to a sector of society and denied to others, as in the separate but equal doctrine. The regulative institutions must require the educational institutions to treat all children equally, whatever differences there may be among them, such as religion, race, sexual orientation, and gender. In the case of the communicative and media institution, its goal is to communicate the activities of the other institutions. In America freedom of the press is the only institution protected by the U.S. Constitution. If economic interests, such as selling newspapers, are controlled by wealthy individuals who also deeply influence the policies of the political institution, wealth and the economy could overstep its bounds and hinder the reporting activities of a free press. The people would hear through the media what the wealthy individuals want them to hear. That would significantly erode an institution’s responsibility toward the people and an institution’s socially appointed goal of enhancing the well being of all people. And in the case of religion and the reproductive institutions, a particular religion could dictate to the family and reproductive institution what constitutes a family. Religious people who appeal to a particular interpretation of the Bible require that the family be judged by the one man, one woman standard. By doing so, the institution of family is hindered from finding a socially approved expression of sexual needs and care of children that would meet the needs of all the members of society, including gays and lesbians.15 Consider further the implications of these fractures in secondary institutions. We have seen that distrust rests in desertion of others in the triad and in treason rejecting the cause for the sake of which a society does what it does. However, distrust can also occur in an institution that fails internally, partially or wholesale. People do not trust an institution that fails to meet the particular needs for which it was formed, fails to fulfill its built-in responsibilities, and that fails to be governed by the causes of society. The implications of loss of trust in the stabilizing patterns of society are clear. For example, if an economy fails to feed people of a society, leaving them hungry, malnourished, and possibly dying, that economy cannot be trusted. If the

100

Chapter Four

economy continues through the power of political pressure and enforcement, distrust becomes alienation. The economy, for example, becomes a “that,” an “other,” which is over against the people. An inside and an outside is generated. Anomie arises in one or more of its many forms: powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation, self-estrangement.16 And if the society attempts to overcome the alienation and restore trust, particularly in the modern world, it appeals to objectivity, particularly that of scientific rationalism. In so doing it hopes to reestablish trust. But now that trust is ironic. The alienation remains, but now it is on the level of objectivity. This realm of theoria, understood as scientific rationalism, dominates the understanding, forming it and controlling it.17 Under ironic trust we have forgotten and placed it under the canopy of technical reason, including scientific rationalism. Trust, the solidar of the triad, is forgotten. Distrust and alienation can also occur as institutions fail to work cooperatively with other institutions. Education, religion, the economy, the political, reproduction, and the regulative depend on communication. Whether the social order is hierarchical with power concentrated in a few, such as a monarchy, a dictatorship, an oligarchy, or a plutarchy or is egalitarian with power dispersed through the people, communication is required for the society to maintain its solidarity and stability. Those who hold power must have information in order to direct the society. A dictator must know what is occurring in the various parts of the country in order to keep it unified and moving in the direction he dictates. The same is the case for the people. For example, in the case of a democracy, if communication is controlled by a few wealthy persons who in turn control the political process that in turn controls communication, the people will not have the information they need to make a good decision on policy or regarding candidates for public office. In this case both economic institutions and political institutions have committed hubris. If an institution is hindered from achieving that for the sake of which it is formed, it fails, and if it fails, it generates distrust, alienation, rational objectivity, and ironic trust. Institutions also fail in their relations to each other. Relational Breaks or Crisis in Institutions All institutions are interrelated in the life of the nexus of the triad. Though they meet different needs of the members of the triad and the triad itself, they are not isolated from each other. As patterns of the nexus of the triad, trust is central to the internal life of institutions. But also trust is central to relationships among institutions. They trust each other. However, distrust manifests itself in at least three ways. In the interrelations among institutions, what seams tend to become unstitched? We can identify at least three.

Reconciliation

101

First, an institution could exert power over another institution. It could extend its influence and control beyond its legitimate interests. Each institutional pattern in the triad is rooted in the needs of the members of the triad. But also each has a responsibility to refrain from interfering improperly with other institutions. Distrust arises as an institution attempts more than its appointed task. To attempt bringing another institution under its own patterns of behavior and guiding that institution with reference to its own causes leads not only to failing to meet the needs of the members of the triad but also generates disrespect and distrust of the offending institution. Religion could attempt to control the family, or education for example. A church or synagogue could be run according to procedures appropriate to business, such as “run the church like a business.” The offending institution has overstepped its bounds. But it is doing so with reference to its goals and causes. Consider religion controlling education. It could expect education to guide people to the end of forming a religious person rather than allowing education to form persons to live well within a particular society. Religion could use education for the purpose of evangelism and worship. Religion could require that what is learned be winnowed through the air of religious doctrine. The relation of these two institutions is central to the problem of the relation of faith and learning faced by church-related schools and colleges. Second, an institution could desert the responsibilities that all institutions have toward each other. An institution could fail to meet its responsibilities to aid other institutions. Their interpenetration and mutual support extends through the culture as capillaries through the body. The economy depends on the political, the political and the economic depend on education, and education depends on communication, for example. As moral, institutions ought to support each other to the end of the well-being of a society. The political is dependent on communication; no leader, whether a dictator or the people can guide society and maintain order without information, without knowledge gained from communication. And communication, in the sense of formal education, is dependent on the political for orderly relations among members of society. No social order, no education. However, if the political fails to provide social control through laws, values, and coercive activities, formal education cannot take place. Communication could focus on creating desires for products, on entertainment, for example, and thereby fail to provide the leaders (the people, in the case of a democracy) what they need to know to exercise their political responsibilities. In that case, the economic could control communication, overstepping its bounds. Third, in an act of treason an institution could reject the causes of society. It could seek other causes or it could seek no causes at all. An economy could

102

Chapter Four

reject the religious roots of society and seek its own internal technical purposes. This is the root of Marxian communism. Or, under the control of technical reason, education could reject its goal of preparing persons for effective participation in the various institutions of society, such as the political, reproductive, and economic, and prepare persons for participation in a procedural society that depersonalizes persons through ignoring the moral values central to civic life. Finally, an institution could relate destructively to nature and guide others to follow its lead. Institutions are the patterns of the nexus of the triad, whether primary or secondary. The triad is composed of I and Thou as well as It. This interrelationship is social and rooted in values, the cause. It also rests in the natural order that supports the continuity of society but also meets the needs of the members of the triad. Nature is the home of the triad.18 An economy could damage nature through exploiting it and use communication (advertising) to create a demand for products that are not needed but are desired.19 Or education could espouse a view that nature is an impersonal entity that can be manipulated and exploited at will by technical reason. Critique Thus, if an institution is hindered from achieving that for the sake of which it is formed, or it fails in its interrelations with other institutions, it fails. If it does so, its failure rests in distrust creating an inside and an outside, which in turn brings the outside under rational objectivity. If trust is reestablished, it is ironic trust. Distrust leads to rationalism, to the violence of metaphysics, and the field of the personal is submerged in the Background, forgotten. Is it possible to “recollect” and recover trust, thereby recovering the root of solidarity and stability, our second nature? Recovery of the Personal Background/Foreground: Our Second Nature As we begin, our task must be clear. We shall not attempt to show that it is possible to recover nor how we shall go about recovering the Personal and with it our second nature by reviewing every type of institution and its complex interrelations. We shall not focus on the pragmatic, the submissive, or the contemplative. Our concern is directed to recovering the Personal in principle. As we have seen our second nature is in a crisis, fractured by distrust, isolation, fear, objectivity, and ironic trust. In the face of such a formidable opposition, how can our second nature overcome the crisis? The crisis in our second nature is a crisis in our Background and its relation to the Foreground. We have seen that this crisis is the direct result of distrust. The solidar is rooted in trust and the nexus of the triad is based on trust.

Reconciliation

103

Without trust, no triad. Furthermore, stability is rooted in the triad, and of course in the solidar of trust. The implications are clear: no triad no nexus, no nexus no patterns, no patterns no institutions, either primary or secondary. The crisis of our second nature, of the Background and its relation to the Foreground, is a crisis of trust, leading to isolation and the loss of solidarity and stability. How recover solidarity and stability? If trust is the key element, how recover trust? Keep in mind our earlier discussion. We pointed out that distrust can occur only within trust. Distrust never occurs in a social/cultural vacuum. It occurs in the context of a society and culture, with its language, meanings, values, patterns of interpersonal relating that allow for the possibility of distrust. Further we pointed out that any attempt to reestablish trust on the basis of rational, objective thought must assume trust in the standards and procedures governing that thought. Rational trust is ironic trust. Having gained that insight, we can see that present through the crisis of our second nature is trust, though it has been submerged, hidden from ordinary view by distrust, isolation, and the rest. But now that we are reminded of it, we can continue to look for it, allow it to reemerge, and work toward its reestablishment. To become fully aware of trust what can we bring to mind, to our awareness? Consider the central elements of trust. First, trust is essential to the triad of I-Thou-It. Neither an I, a Thou, nor an It could be anything for us apart from trust. Second, the relation of trust is an acknowledgement that the Thou is a person who stands over against me in freedom and promises fidelity. The promise of trustworthiness implies an ought; I ought to keep my promises and expect others to do so as well. This is a relation of responsibility between I and Thou to keep my promises. Keeping the promises I made to Thou in the past implies that the relation is inherently temporal. It has a past, a present, and it points to the not yet, the future. And, the interrelation of I-Thou-It that is the triad is moral, and all other relations are based on it. Distinctive to the triad is a nexus with enduring patterns. As I and Thou enter into a relation with each other regarding a cause, they bring with them physical and mental needs. Their limited capabilities mean that alone they cannot satisfy all their needs. A person may be a gifted farmer but not a gifted shoemaker, or a gifted maker of clothes but not a gifted husbandman. Pulled together by the pressure of their needs and their limited capabilities, they enter into relations under causes. The basic relation is a triad. We have seen that those needs fall into seven groups: religion, economy, political, reproductive, education, communication and media, and regulatory. Collectively these seven meet all the needs of the members of the triad. No society exists without all seven, in one form or another. The nexus of the triad possesses seven patterns that are essential to the triad itself. This means that the

104

Chapter Four

members of the triad do not decide which needs they want fulfilled and which patterns their actions will follow. Rather, they find that the nexus of the triad is structured in seven ways. They find themselves in the triad and realize that the triad is their action, their making. The triad is a creative-finding on the part of the members of the triad. In the nexus of the triad they find seven patterns to meet their needs and guide the formation of their capabilities, but they also form those patterns through their actions toward each other with regard to a cause. Each pattern is a mutual act of creative-finding among the members who enter into relationships of trust. The mutuality of creative-finding, trust, ought, responsibility, and the cause (or It) form its solidarity, and the trusting mutuality of actions of the triad in trust, fidelity, and trustworthiness that creatively-find stable patterns form its stability. The stable action patterns are guided by cause (It), are in sync with the ought of primary and secondary institutions, meet needs of I and Thou, meet those needs in an orderly way, do not conflict with other patterns but work in sync with them. Furthermore they allow for the growth of individuals and the communal human life, they fulfill one’s calling in a society with a stable culture. That is, they focus on the whole personal: society and individual, in contrast to the Limited Personal: reason, emotion, feeling, sensing, security, and physical body. This means that our second nature, its solidarity and stability are rooted in the trusting actions of I and Thou in relation to cause. But, if we could recover the Personal, what would that mean? We shall consider the family, the reproductive institution, particularly its relation to religion. The family is the pattern in the nexus that meets and stabilizes the biological need of the I and Thou for sexual expression with a view of the cause. As a primary institution, this stabilizer controls reproduction, provides a socially approved expression of sex drive or need, provides for the protection and care of children, informally transmits the culture, and ascribes statuses. In its secondary form it appears in various patterns from monogamy to polygamy. Also, authority could vary from patriarchal, to matriarchal, to equalitarian. In America the pattern is monogamy, one man and one woman, where the living patterns are primarily nuclear, but could be extended, as they were in the nineteenth century. This pattern has many sources; a central one is an interpretation of the Bible common to Islamic, Jewish, and Christian practice. Citing passages from the book of Genesis and from the book of Matthew, followers of these three religions believe God requires marriage to be one woman and one man. In that way they believe the institution of marriage and family is rooted in the purposes of God, that is, in the ultimate nature of things.

Reconciliation

105

The stresses on the American family range from the economic, the educational, the political, to the religious. The divorce rate is high, and the number of families in which the participants find well-being is low. Whether the family is an association, a community, or a covenant it can and does break down.20 This does not simply happen to us. We are not the unwilling receivers of pressures that fray the seams of the marriage. Rather, we act in ways that break it, weakening its solidarity and stability. The breaks can occur internally. We could simply desert the family and thereby break trust. This can be done in many ways. The most obvious one is infidelity through adultery. Or it could be done through rejecting the cause of family, and deciding to live alone. The roots are actions that break trusting mutuality between I and Thou or with the cause. Externally, breaks can occur through the relations between the marriage/family institution and another institution. An institution such as religion can rest its own demands on marriage and family, thereby hindering them from meeting the needs of the members of society, both physically and in terms of values, goals. Other institutions could also make demands on marriage and family and weaken it. The economic demands of caring for and educating children could draw the parents away from the daily life of the family to jobs. Latchkey kids caring for themselves with little parental guidance could result. Other instances could be cited, but we shall restrict our attention to the relation to religion. The Family and Religion When marriage and family are restricted by the view held commonly by three major religions, important consequences occur. It is the legitimate activity of the institution of marriage and family to articulate the socially approved ways of expressing sexual needs, of reproduction, of caring for children, of transmitting the culture, and of ascribing social statuses. And it is legitimate that the causes to which these are directed, the well-being of the members of society and society itself, be seen as rooted in the ultimate values of the society, its Causes resting in and supported by the religious. This seems to be the case with the primary institution of marriage and family. However, the secondary institution of marriage and family could be formed under the dominance of the doctrine of a religion such that it fails to meet the legitimate needs of all the members of society. A gay union may have continuity, solidarity, and act responsibly to the rest of society in its care of its adopted children. But it would not be recognized as a legitimate form of sexual expression or a satisfactory context for the care of children. Lesbians and gays could reasonably argue that the one man, one woman practice fails to meet their legitimate needs.

106

Chapter Four

Further, a one man, one woman marriage institution would ignore the other, the suffering of those ostracized. If so, their religion-controlled marriage would fail to meet its moral responsibility as an institution to the members of society. Ironically, religion, deeply moral and value-laced, would not act morally and in terms of some of its deepest values. It would close its mind to unnecessary suffering. By ignoring the other, the suffering other, religion’s relation to marriage and the family would be an exercise in power and engender the rejection of domination.21 The action of ignoring the other, failing to see the other’s suffering through the lens of religious doctrine is a clear example of deserting persons in the mutuality of trust. Such a view and the religion of the Old and New Testament cannot consistently be held.22 What pattern of marriage and family could be held that would care for the Other, minister to that suffering, and would also be properly rooted in the religious? The Personal can do so. The legitimate concern of marriage and family is to provide solidarity and stability in the triad. Sex, reproduction, care of children and the other functions of this institution are rooted in trust and moral relationships. The relationship is not simply physical or emotional. It is part of the matrix of the patterns of the nexus of the triad to care for persons in society, to provide for their well-being. Institutions are formed for persons and not persons for institutions. Regarding homosexual marriage, we must remember the distinction within the Personal between primary and secondary institutions. The conflict arises over viewing the secondary institution (the traditional one) as final, the structure given by God, and ignoring the primary structure. On the grounds of the primary institution, the family is important for reproduction, as well as for sexual expression. It is also a context of trust, for the care and rearing of children, for the growth and development of individuals, both morally and for finding and developing their calling. This means that though the primary institution is for reproduction, normally understood as between one man and one woman, it is also a relationship of personal well-being. In that sense, a secondary institution could be a homosexual union, but that secondary institution cannot be understood or accepted as meaning that it would be the primary relationship and reproductive ones secondary. Religion can commit hubris. All institutions rest on the deepest values held by society; those values are religious in character. However, they are not necessarily the values of any one particular religion, or its interpretation of a particular sacred text(s). If all institutions rest on God, as we shall argue in chapter 5, God and the word “God” are not the same. The word “God” is a human creation to refer to a reality about which the user cannot be logically or epis-

Reconciliation

107

temically certain. The God of the religious is the one in whom persons place their ultimate trust.

SUMMARY Thus, we have reason to believe the Personal can emerge, not in the sense that the Personal existed in some previous culture but in the sense that the Personal undergirds any society, is present in any human society, and is the Cause of that society. We have seen that I is never alone in a cartesian or Individualistic sense. I becomes a person only in a triadic relation of trust to a Thou and a cause. In mutual trust I and Thou acknowledge each other as persons who in freedom can act responsibly to that trust or irresponsibly and break that trust. In a triad in which persons take on their second nature, they are nevertheless in their freedom transcendent to each other. In their mutual trust they also recognize an aboutness, a cause, that with regard to which they relate to each other. Though the cause is found in the triad, it is transcendent to the other members who in their freedom can accept it, reject it, or reform their understanding of it. They cannot eliminate the cause as cause no more than they can eliminate their second nature and exist as persons without it. The cause is then transcendent to the other members of the triad, but not the triad itself. We have seen its presence in the solidar and in the stabilizers of our second nature. In its transcendence, how best understand it? We claim it is that ultimate transcendent in which we place trust. All triads are oriented to a cause, and that cause is Personal; it is trusted. To understand what that means, we turn to the Personal.

NOTES 1. For example Louis XIV claimed to be the state. His actions were the actions of the state. In that sense an institution acts. For example, this view was present in the ancient world in the New Testament view of the church as the bride of Christ. Note particularly Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Early in chapter 1 Paul said that God raised Christ from the dead and set him at his right hand. Then in 1:22 23 he writes that God “put everything in subjection beneath his feet, and appointed him as supreme head to the church, which is his body and as such holds within it the fullness of him who him self receives the entire fullness of God.” (New English Bible). Later in Ephesians Paul refers to the relation of God and Christ to the church as he appeals to a similarity be tween the relation of Christ to the church and the relation of a husband to his wife. Paul writes, “In loving his wife a man loves himself. For no one ever hated his own body: on the contrary, he provides and cares for it; and that is how Christ treats the

108

Chapter Four

church, because it is his body, of which we are living parts.” (Ephesians 5:28 30.) And in Colossians 1:18 Paul writes that “He [Christ] is, moreover, the head of the body, the church.” From these examples we can conclude that Paul held to an organic view of the church and saw the church as a person. 2. Wolgast, Ethics of an Artificial Person, 146 58. 3. Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986), 9 10. See also Frederick F. Schmitt, ed., Socializing Metaphysics (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield), 1 37. 4. For example, see Karol Wojtyla’s discussion of “participation” in Person and Community: Selected Essays, tr. Teresa Sandok (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 241, 243, 244, 247. Though insightful, Wojtyla’s discussion stops short of pinpointing what about the relations among persons accounts for their sociality. 5. Wolgast, Ethics of an Artificial Person, 146 58. 6. Jeffrey Alexander, The Civil Sphere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 203. 7. Alexander, The Civil Sphere. Here Milton would agree. See his “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits,” New York Times Magazine (Sep tember 13, 1970). 8. In this analysis we are not concerned with the origins of distrust. We seek the points of stress in interpersonal, interpersonal and institutional, and interinstitutional relations whose rupture causes a crisis in our second nature. For an excellent analysis of the origin of aggression, consult Albert Bandura, Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1973). 9. Compare John Macmurray’s discussion of pragmatic and contemplative atti tudes. See his Persons in Relation (London: Faber & Faber, 1961), 114. 10. This is Socrates’ view in the Critias. 11. See the “Field of the Personal” in John Macmurray, Persons in Relation (Lon don: Faber & Faber, 1961), 15 43. 12. Apparently Descartes was aware of the necessity of stability through social change. In the Discourse on Method, Pt. III, he said, “In planning to rebuild one’s house it is not enough to draw up the plans for the new dwelling, tear down the old one, and provide stones and other materials useful for building, and obtain workmen for the task. We must see that we are provided with a comfortable place to stay while the work of rebuilding is going on. . . . In order to live as happily as possible during the interval I prepared a provisional code of morality for myself. . . . “ Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations, trans. Laurence J. Lafleur (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1960), 18. 13. Here we continue to follow Josiah Royce and H. Richard Niebuhr. See Royce’s The Philosophy of Loyalty (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, [1908] 1995), and Niebuhr’s Faith on Earth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). 14. See Thomas O. Buford, In Search of a Calling (Macon, Georgia: Mercer Uni versity Press, 1995). 15. For an extensive discussion of the relations among institutions, their overstep ping their bounds, and redressing grievances among them see Alexander, The Civil

Reconciliation

109

Sphere. His insightful and thorough examination is flawed by the distinction between the civil sphere and the non civil spheres. The civil sphere encompasses what we call responsibilities and causes, that for the sake of which institutions are formed. Each in stitution in the non civil sphere seeks to fulfill a different need of the members of so ciety, and it does so without an inherent moral dimension. He separates the moral from the functional, the civil sphere (including all moral norms) from the non civil spheres (the functions of each institution). We contend that trust and responsibility in herent in the triad are also inherent in the potential and actual patterns (primary and secondary institutions) of the nexus of the triad. 16. Melvin Seeman, “On the Meaning of Alienation,” in Thomas O. Buford, ed., Toward a Philosophy of Education (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1969), 61 74. 17. Erazim Kohak, The Embers and the Stars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1984] 1987), 3 26. 18. See Kohak, The Embers, 89 130. 19. Early in the Republic Plato noted the move from a need based society to a desire based one, from a “sow” society to a luxurious one. Republic 372e. 20. Niebuhr, Faith on Earth, 54 56. 21. This is an example of dominating power limiting freedom of choice and hin dering the proper care of the self. See James Barnauer and David Rasmussen, eds., The Final Foucault (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1994), 1 20. 22. In the New Testament, see Matthew 25:40.

Chapter Five

The Personal

THE CLAIM Our claim is straightforward. The relation of our second nature to the Personal is interpersonal, that is, persons are triadically related to the Personal. Central to that relation is trust and care for the other. It is an ethical relation. To bring out the salient characteristics of that interpersonal relation, we shall be guided by the metaphor of the dance. In the trusting mutuality of obligation and otherness, the choreographer provides the (primary) structure and unity of the dance that guide the dancers as they creatively-find (interpret) their own way of dancing the dance (the secondary structures). Furthermore, the choreographer also provides the vision, the theme, the topos of the dance that the dancers seek to grasp as they dance. Guided by that topos, we can see that the Personal, I, and Thou are triadically related in mutual trust, obligation, and otherness. In that relation the personal is faithful, trustworthy, moral agent who as Creator, continuant, and Cause/End grounds our second nature, and on the basis of triadic trust faithfully provides the unity and structure of the triadic action of I and Thou in relation to It. The “argument” supporting this claim is rational, the irony of which points out the presence of the Personal in our second nature and allows one to see it. To assist us we shall call on an argument that allows us to see the presence of the Personal beyond the promised certainty of Rationalism’s logical shell and the arrogance of impersonal constructions. The argument accomplishes more than guiding us to recognize the Personal. As we develop it, we shall address the relation of the Personal to the solidifiers and stabilizers of our second nature. We shall discuss the relation between the Personal and our second nature, with particular attention to (1) the triadic relation of mutual trust and the accompanying mutual obligations to empty oneself (kenosis) to care for the 111

112

Chapter Five

other, (2) the solidifiers, and (3) the stabilizers of our second nature. We shall conclude with the metaphor of the dance. This is the fruition of the ethical root of the triad, the mutual relation of kenosis and care for the other. The ethical points beyond itself as the interpersonal relation of the triad, with solidarity and stability, crisis, and reconciliation point beyond themselves to a relation with the Personal. First, however, a recapitulation.

RECAPITULATION Our second nature is at bottom moral. Any additional characteristic of our second nature rests on and is permeated by the moral requirement to care for the other with regard to causes. Our second nature is social action that is triadic in structure. Occurring and formed in a context, action is free agentive persons performing in a triadic relation of trust and obligation (I-Thou-It/Cause), who in the nexus of the triad find and create structures and core values on the basis of which they recognize they ought to care for the other and to meet mutual needs. Action is also temporal; it has a past, a present, and points to a future. The past is the Background of the actors, and the Foreground their present and future. The relation of the Background and Foreground is more than a temporal series. Action is composed of habits, tendencies, values, beliefs, and knowledge. These form our Background, that on which we draw as we approach and live into the Foreground, both now and future. Action is also governed by regnant ideals, what we have been calling causes, the Its. Analysis reveals that as triads form, within which persons form personalities, mutual trusting is always present. Not only trust, but moral obligation manifests in the trusting relation as well as the transcendence of other persons and self-emptying required for renouncing our self-interests to care for the well-being of other. The I and Thou, though arising only in a triad of trust and moral obligation and gaining the ability to act freely, are mutually other. Here we have the essential rudiments of a society. As temporal, society and the persons formed in it share a Background and Foreground. Social action has both a Background, in the sense of continuing the habits, traits, and beliefs it formed that are consciously recollected, and a Foreground, in the sense of regular and irregular complexity of the present and possible future. In addition, it must be creative in finding its way, guided by both its deepest values and its deepest structures, its institutions. The present Foreground is never exactly like any other experienced in the past, and the Background undergoes modification as new Foregrounds are faced and the person learns new ways and understandings. Some discontinuity between the Background and the Foreground fractures every social action.

The Personal

113

Yet, solidarity and stability are a part of everyone’s life, though short lived for some in deeply troubled societies. Triadic solidarity is rooted in trust and the concomitant obligation to care for the Other in light of their needs and society’s most cherished ideals and values. Stability is found in primary (potential) institutional patterns and in secondary (actual) institutional structures, both of which are based on trust and care for the other with regard to causes, especially their needs and social goals. That is, society’s unifier and stabilizer are morally based and provide togetherness and continuity for society as it finds and creatively charts its way into a future. Social crisis occurs in acting immorally, in breaking trust and failing to care for the other. That disruption attacks the unifiers and stabilizers and fractures the relation between the Background and Foreground. The stress points, the seams fray as trust turns to distrust, to desertion, to treason, and as secondary institutions fail to meet their obligation of caring for the needs of people in an orderly and predictable manner. Under the pressure of a weakened solidarity and stability, society searches its Background and Foreground for solidarity and stability. In the present socalled post-modern world in the West, options present themselves ranging between two poles, cultural dyadic objectivism and cultural monadic subjectivism. The former focused on the structure of social life and found there its solidar and stabilizer. Individuals were defined by that structure and allowed little room for growth outside of it. That is, their social space was limited to their place in the hierarchical structure of society. Whatever growth opportunities they possessed were in the religious realm, their relation to their God or gods. Social structures provided both their solidarity and their stability. As those structures underwent critique and change, Greek, Roman, and Medieval societies appealed to a metaphysical order to undergird the weakening or destroyed solidarity and stability. They turned to the metaphysics of Being and sought to understand it through rationalism, through the concept, believing that in Being they could ground social unity and stability. The latter, cultural nonadic subjectivism, rejected the metaphysical grounding of society, its solidarity and stability in Being, and the power of reason to grasp it. Affirming the freedom of individuals to make their own way in society, the cultural monadic subjectivist attacks the rigid social and cultural structures of the past and seeks freely chosen solidars and stabilizers. These the subjectivist finds in the individuals themselves, primarily in the nature of persons and in their most cherished values. Unfortunately neither approach provides for the unity and stability of triadic action. The cultural dyadic objectivist overemphasizes the social aspect of triadic action to the detriment of the individual persons in the triad. And the cultural monadic subjectivist overemphasizes the individual aspect

114

Chapter Five

of social action to the detriment of the social unity of triadic action. As we have seen, any position between these two poles is beset with the same problem. What is that problem? The problem lies in the appeal to Being, understood in the tradition of Parmenides and Heraclitus, and in the attempt to understand both the solidar and the stabilizer of society within the one and the many problem generated by Being. Dyadicists appeal to the one and seek to account for the many in terms of it. Spinoza is a good modern example. The subjectivist appeals to the many and seeks to account for their unity in terms of them. Leibniz is a good example. Unfortunately, framing the problem in that way leads to the violence of metaphysics, to the violence of the person, to the denial of the meaning of individual personhood, as well as to the failure to grasp social action as the faithful triadic relation of trust, values, cause, and cause. We must move beyond Being as the ground of social action, its stability and solidarity. This issue lives as the root of Western culture, as Heidegger and Wittgenstein pointed out. Both encouraged us to move beyond Being. If we do so, what unifies and stabilizes culture, society, the lives of persons, and triadic action? If we move beyond the deep, all pervading, but now impotent rationalism of our cultural Background, are we left directionless to face and live into the future? We are not. We are in a position to recognize the Personal and allow it to come into full flower. We are now open to the Personal.1

AN ARGUMENT Though our discussion leads us to be open to the Personal, why believe our claim that the Personal exists and possesses certain characteristics? We shall develop an argument to support it. Having presented it, the irony of it will be clear, leading us to recognize the truth of our trusting the trustworthy Personal. We shall proceed by organizing the argument in the manner of logicians, with premises and a conclusion. P1 Actions are agentive, free, temporal (including a Background and Foreground), triadic in structure, governed by a cause (an end), and occur in a world that is friendly to them. Agentive refers to the capacity of persons to initiate non-compelled movement. That is, persons can perform actions. As free, they face in the Foreground genuine alternatives, and their choice is non-compelled. They could have done otherwise. Actions are performed in triads of mutual trust. As such all social actions are moral; they do or do not care for the other with regard

The Personal

115

to their needs and social purposes. This is clear from our discussion of solidarity. And from our discussion of stability, actions are performed by institutions, in the special sense we developed. There are no non-triadic actions. Further, actions, as triadic, are performed with reference to a cause, an end, an ideal. Actions are governed by regnant ideals. Finally, actions are performed in a natural and social world that is friendly to them, in the sense that they support them and are amenable to achieving the various options available for choice. P2 Actions are supported by warrants and backings. In traditional arguments, the truth of a claim (the conclusion) rests on the truth of other claims (evidence) that functionally imply the claim and on the relatedness and relevance of the evidence to the conclusion. But why believe the evidence is related to that claim? We do so on the basis of warrants. That is, the warrant justifies the connection between the evidence and the conclusion. But then, why believe the truth of the warrant? We appeal to a backing to support the belief in the truth of the warrant. Clearly, this is logically an infinite regress. But, as we proceed, we shall seek some stopping place, some backing that can be shown to rest on no further backing, but is the backing, beyond which we cannot reasonably proceed. At that point, we are in the field of metaphysics.2 Consider this example. The behavior we described has certain characteristics: agentive, free, temporal, triadic, norm-governed, and supported by the social/physical worlds. A friend tells me that that behavior is an action. Queried, he answers, “I have seen that behavior before, and it is an action.” If I press the discussion and ask why those characteristics are connected to action behaviors, he appeals to a reason for connecting them in just that way. He appeals to a warrant. All actions are agentive, free, temporal, triadic, normgoverned, and are supported by the social/physical world in which they occur. If pressed for a justification for that generalization, he appeals to a backing. He might reasonably reply that the movement of blood in the circulatory system of the human body and brushing his teeth are different, and the difference lies in characteristics. The circulatory system does not possess them, and brushing his teeth does. The latter is an action, and the former is a movement. And, if pressed for a justification of that belief, he could appeal to his observations of the order and nature of everyday events in his life. And, if pressed further, he would simply say, “That’s just the way things are.” And, if pressed further, he could simply shrug off the question by saying it is unanswerable. Or, he could offer an hypothesis that would best account for “the way things are.” Or, he could claim that the reasoning of his argument so far implies an answer. In those two cases, he would seek backing in metaphysics.

116

Chapter Five

P3 No impersonalism, whether substructure or superstructure, can provide adequate backing for warranted actions. Substructure refers to the order of nature to which actions are related and that can, purportedly, account for the nature and structure of actions. And superstructure refers to an order of pattern or form that accounts for the structure and nature of actions. Neither can adequately account for actions nor for the solidarity, stability, and possible reconciliation of fractured solidarity and stabilizers. More important, neither provides an adequate account of trust, the obligation to care for the other, and the transcendence of the other that permeates our second nature. Consider actions first. According to the substructure, actions are accounted for by appealing to an underlying deterministic order of cause and effect. That is, to account for event B at T2 one must appeal to event A at T1. The relationship could be strong, where it is invariable and uniform, temporal, continuous, and asymmetrical. A weak form would add, “unless there are intervening circumstances.” Another weak form of causality would be hypothetical. In each case, an action can be adequately explained by appealing to the backing of a causal order. Unfortunately, embedding action in a causal order renders meaningless both truth and error. For example, the determinist argues that we should believe that determinism is true. That assumes we are free to choose between determinism and some other view. However, the determinist argues that all actions, including freely choosing to believe that determinism is true, are but functions of a cause and effect system. That system requires that all choices can be fully accounted for by previous events. That is, all choices are caused by something other than the free, self-initiated, noncompelled3 cause (free will) of the agent acting. That contradicts the assumption the determinist who presents arguments to show determinism is true. The determinist must assume the person she is attempting to persuade has a choice between truth and error. Otherwise, why attempt to offer evidence for the truth of the position? If no free choice, there can be no legitimate distinction between truth and error.4 The superstructure fares no better. Actions are best explained by appealing to a reality lying beyond them, categories such as “Being, Cause, Identity, Change, the Absolute, and the like.”5 Actions are but tokens of one or more of those types. All concrete reality can be accounted for through a deduction from first principles. Here we find subject-predicate logic guiding metaphysical understanding of actions. S-P logic is the form of the backing of the superstructure. In Platonism, for example, specific actions are specifications of the class, action. Such first principles are expected to account for the orderly change of actions, for example. But they cannot do so.

The Personal

117

First principles such as being are necessary, immutable, and eternal. Actions are the behavior of agents; they are freely chosen and are temporal in structure. The temporal relation between Background and Foreground in a trust-based triad requires solidarity and stability for the social/personal identity of our second nature. Actions are contingent, mutable, and temporal. Thus the issue is clear. How can two things totally unlike each other be related? If their relation is logical, that leaves unexplained the temporality of action. The superstructure purchases solidarity and stability at the cost of being unrelated to the action it is called on to explain. If actions have whatever reality they possess through being embedded in eternal forms, they lose their moral significance. All good and evil must rest in the first principles. If first principles are good, then evil must also be a good, a contradiction. To claim with Augustine that evil is the absence of the good makes both evil and good actions unreal to some degree. But they are real, at least to the extent that we can be held responsible for them. If being responsible is likewise unreal to some degree we soon discover that life itself is to some degree unreal. If so, the pressing reality of problematic actions that drove us to search for explanation has lost its urgency. Our actions have become abstractions in relation to the reality of First Principles. Ironic. The central difficulty inherent to all forms of impersonalism is their failure to account for the Personal, the life of persons in society. This is also true regarding the social personalism we have been discussing. Whether one appeals to the micro of the physical or the macro of being (understood in the lineage of Parmenides), neither possesses qualities that can account for action. Neither can they account for the characteristics of the triadic structure of social action, at the root of which is trust, obligation (caring for the other), and transcendence; for the solidarity and stability of social action that rest on that ethical base and that are designed to care for the other; nor for the possibility of reconciling fractures in solidarity and stability obligated by the transcendent obligation to care for the other, the cause. If our second nature is social actions in triadic relations of mutual trust, obligation, and transcendence, where triads are solidified by trust, care for the other, and transcendence goals and structured by both primary potentials and secondary institutions, the impersonal possesses nothing within itself to account for trust, care for the other, transcendence, and for solidarity and stability that rest on the ethical triad. Neither can the impersonal be the continuant through actions, accounting for stability. It cannot enter into a trusting relationship that unifies persons in the triad and obligates them to seek through stable structures (institutions) to care for the other. Acting persons in triadic relations, unified by trust and the cause of mutually caring for the other as each renounces

118

Chapter Five

selfishness, form stable patterns to meet those needs. Those patterns may appear to be impersonal, as the U.S. Constitution. That could be due to their stability; but those are formed by and depend on triadic action rooted in trust and its ethical dimensions. Finally, the impersonal cannot account for the ends of actions, the cause in triads. Those are values, ideals, meaningful and functional only for purposive agents in a triad of trust. Potassium pumps in the brain function; it does not choose ends and work to achieve them. Succinctly, no impersonalism can account for unity within and among social triads, for the structures that stabilize social action, and for the obligation for self-emptying in caring for the other on which the social triad rests and that permeates solidarity, stability, and reconciliation. It is possible to allow the iron cage of technological processes to structure social life.6 But those structures seek to replace trust with impersonal, predictable patterns that dehumanize action and turn actions into a compelled causal order. P4 The Personal is faithful, trustworthy agent, who as constant, continuant, and cause (purposive end) solidifies and structures triadic action. This hypothesis best explains, accounts for, and provides adequate backing for trusting interpersonal actions. On the assumption that P3 is true, and in contrast to any form of impersonalism, the best backing is personal, or the Personal. If so, as trustworthy agent, the Personal creates persons in triadic relations and trustworthily sustains solidarity and stability to achieve the cause of self-renunciation and caring care of others. Having shown that no form of impersonalism can account for social action central to our second nature, three questions face us. First, what reason do we have that the Personal exists? Second, how should we conceive of the Personal? And third, what is the relation of the Personal to social action? Here we can only be suggestive and leave to another project a fuller discussion of these problems. With that caveat, let’s turn to the first problem. Does the Personal exist? First, from the discussion so far it should be clear that no form of the traditional arguments for God or Being is acceptable. Each is couched in the context of the metaphysics of Being rejected earlier. Can the Personal or the interpersonal do so? The structure and nature of social action provides ample evidence that the Personal exists. Consider this line of reasoning developed within the life of persons in mutually trusting triadic relation. The experience of persons is always triadic, the relations constituted by faithfulness to other persons and to a cause. The solidar of the social relation is trust, but it is also that for the sake of which persons interrelate, a cause. Not a passing emotion or interest, the solidar remains a steady and predictable

The Personal

119

unifier and the structure (primary and secondary institutions) of the nexus remains through the temporal span of social action. This is found in limited social relations that live in a context of more extensive social relations. Actions are contextualized by actions. Triads live in triads. Contexts have contexts.7 This means that triads point beyond themselves, as persons-in-relation, as transcendent in their freedom, and as mutually obligated to a cause. In the triad we find that mutual trust is essential to it and that trust implies the recognition of persons, their transcendence in their freedom and otherness, and the mutual obligation to care for each other. The mutual obligation of caring is the cause. All social relations are fundamentally moral. In the triad each I and Thou ought to maintain mutual trust, to recognize the otherness of personhood and freedom, and to seek the cause of caring for each other. As moral, the social relation is inherently transcendent. Such contextualization could be seen as pointing to an infinite regress. And it could be seen as a part pointing to a whole, leading us back into the discredited rationalism of being and the one and the many problem. It is true that contexts have contexts, but persons in faithful relation with each other and with a cause live in a context they trust will support and continue to support their lives. As trustworthy and continuing in a trustworthy manner, the context is personal. We shall call it the Personal.8 Is this an infinite regress argument? Are we led from context to context to neverending context? If taken in a logical sense, it is difficult to see how that could be avoided. But, if it is remembered that triads are the structure of action, agency is central to action, triads are essentially moral relations obligated by the cause of caring for others, and that the obligation of triads is inherently transcendent, we gain a way to stop the infinite regress. Transcendence is the cause, the Personal that calls us to mutual trust and to act on the moral obligation to care for persons and their well-being. Next, how best grasp the Personal which we trust? We claim it is the Personal.9 It is Thou, faithful agent, whose agency is self-initiating, original, triadically related to I regarding cause. the Personal as free, self-initiating agent does not point beyond itself, other than to the triad of which it is a part, at least as far as our understanding can take us. How best do we grasp the relation between the Personal and social action? The Personal as agent creates persons in triadic relation of mutual trust, obligation, and caring for each other. As creator the Personal forms social relations other than the Personal. That is, the Personal makes persons who in the relation of mutual trust social action, in their freedom, and their need are other than the Personal. As causal agent, the Personal sustains the relation, and in relation to persons in triadic relations of mutual trust seeks to care for the well being of each person. The relation of the Personal to persons-in-relation is

120

Chapter Five

interpersonal. That is, the relation is a society of persons in relation; the Personal is the transcendent cause. To understand the society of persons, let’s appeal to an analogy. Consider the metaphor of dance. The Personal is a choreographer who creates a dance for dancers. The dancers must dance in relation to each other, trusting each other. They must also trust the choreographer, the choreography, and the context in which they dance. At each step of the dance, the Background is that out of which the dancers creatively find the next step and those that follow. As they proceed, their mutual trusting in the triad of I-Thou-It provides the glue that binds them, their solidarity. Furthermore, the overall pattern is supplied by the choreographer who plans the dance as the potentials of the relation between the dancers. The potentials of which we have called stabilizing structures of the dance are found only in the interrelationship of the dancers. The choreographer could not conceive of dance without the dancers in relation to each other. Here is the pattern potential of the nexus. Only as the dancers dance do they find the pattern potentials of a triad set in place by the choreographer; yet each time they dance the dance outlined by the choreographer, they create along the lines of those potentials the actual dance, they form the dance on the basis of their own activity potentials in relation to the activity potentials of the other dancers, and they do so in relation to the physical and social environment in which they dance. The dancers together creatively-find that which stabilizes the dance. They find stability. Finally, each dancer, in facing the freedom and moral transcendence of the other dancer/dancers, is obligated to meet the needs of those transcendent others and aid them to fulfill their way as dancers. The dance of the choreographer is inherently moral and calls forth from the dancers the deep moral act of the dance. The metaphor of the dance helps us understand the relation of the Personal to the life of persons. And in doing so, it helps us account for the solidarity and stability of our second nature. Therefore, it is true that only the triadic interrelation of persons, specifically the Personal and persons in relation to a cause, can adequately account for the unity and stability of our second nature.

IRONY It should be clear that this argument is deeply ironic. It asks us to believe the claim is true on the basis of premises implying the conclusion. We are

The Personal

121

asked to believe that the Personal exists, that the Personal is moral, the causal agent and the cause of social relations, and that the relation between them is mutual trust. That is, we should believe in a trusting relation with the Personal on the basis of a rational argument. Yet, the rational argument rests on trust, on trust within the interpersonal relation we call the triad, and on trust in a reality that is friendly to us and is faithful and trustworthy. Even if we chose some form of impersonalism that impersonal, whether sub- or suprastructure, is assumed to be trustworthy. We must trust it. It appears that here we find an interpersonal relation with other persons, the cause, and the Personal.10 Our formal argument can be formulated only within the triadic relation of trust, obligation, and transcendence, that is, the Personal. In that sense the argument is subordinate to the Personal. The implications of that insight are important. The metaphysical backing to which we must appeal is neither rationalism nor the metaphysics of Being. It is understandable why philosophers appealed to the metaphor of mathematics and its steadiness and universality in their search for solidarity and stability amid conflicting religious voices and rapidly changing social conditions. Philosophically, rationalism, as the extension of mathematics into the metaphysical realm of Being bolstered cultural dyadic objectivism. Rationalism and the metaphysics of Being were firmly in place. In the Hebrew and early Christian traditions Yahweh was trustworthy and moral and entered into a trusting, moral relation with finite persons. As that tradition moved into the mainstream of Roman and early medieval life it called on the metaphysics of Being and rationalism to provide credibility for its beliefs. Soon, as in the thought of Augustine’s writings, the trusting relation between finite persons and the Personal God was subordinated to Being, a rationalization for that trusting relation. The irony of rationalism was unnoticed. In the modern period with the growth of science and the steady eclipse of religious life, rationalism became scientific and subordinated the Personal to it. The metaphysics of Being and rationalism that alone could know and penetrate Being changed to comply with the new science. New forms of materialism and naturalism appeared. Nevertheless, the Personal, through deeply submerged under the laser light of rationality and universal Being, remained and began to reemerge. Though individualism and the discovery of psychology helped, neither rested its case on trusting relations. Individualism was captured by Renaissance individualism and cartesianism, the political movements in England, beginning with the Magna Carta, and the specificity of British empiricism. The debate between Spinoza and Leibniz kept the Personal encased in the metaphysics of Being and rationalism.

122

Chapter Five

Yet through this long history, the freedom of persons to make choices and the responsibility they must assume for their lives clearly argued for by Augustine in On Free Choice of the Will continued. As a metaphysics, it emerged clearly in the thought of Jacobi and continued through German and British thinkers to Hermann Lotze and to the United States through Royce, Bowne, and Howison. However, still under the influence of the Spinoza-Leibniz debate, they did not free persons or the Personal from rationalism and the metaphysics of Being. Karol Wojtyla’s Personalism remained under the influence of Aquinas and of Max Scheler’s value hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being. A. N. Whitehead’s and Hartshorne’s Personalism was encased in rationalism and process, though the temporal view of persons was an important contribution. It is only in the mid-to-late twentieth century that the Personal emerges in a more pristine form, to date, in Mounier, Bertocci, and Macmurray. Yet, they did not consider the irony of their prescriptive, rational analysis. They ignored trust and obligation on which all interpersonal relations rest. It is that trust we have attempted to manifest. We have attempted to move beyond Being and rationalism and to show the ethical roots of our second nature, trust and the Personal.

NOTES 1. See Macmurray for a comparable discussion of what we call the Personal. John Macmurray, Persons in Relation (London: Faber & Faber, 1961), 15 43. 2. See Stephen Toulmin, Richard Rieke, and Allan Janik, An Introduction to Reasoning (New York: Macmillan, 1979). In their discussion of warrants and backing, they do not place reasoning in the context of the Background/Foreground, neither do they appeal to metaphysics for support of a backing. 3. “Non compelled” means that the action is initiated by an actor and that the ini tiation is brought about by an actor, who though influenced, chooses among options. The actor acting freely causes the action to occur, but the cause is self initiated; the self initiated action does not occur necessarily because it was caused by some previ ous event. 4. See Borden Parker Bowne, Personalism (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1908), 159 216. 5. Bowne, Personalism, 218. 6. See George Ritzer, “The ‘McDonaldization’ of Society,” Journal of American Culture, no. 6/1 (Spring 1983): 100 107, and Thomas O. Buford, In Search of a Calling (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1995). 7. See Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature, a Necessary Unity (New York: Bantam, 1979). 8. H. Richard Niebuhr’s argument, though not without its difficulties, makes the essential point: “The certainty of faith may be stated in somewhat Cartesian fashion:

The Personal

123

I believe (i.e., trust distrust, swear allegiance and betray) therefore I know that I am, but also I trust you and therefore I am certain that you are, and I trust and distrust the Ultimate Environment, the Absolute Source of my being, therefore I acknowledge that He is. There are three realities of which I am certain, self, companions, and the Transcendent. I assume the reality of these three even when I communicate my doubts to another. . . .” H. Richard Niebuhr, Faith on Earth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 61. 9. This is the outcome of triadic trust. However, seen from the vantage point of logic, it is an hypothesis. If it is to be believed, it must be a more reasonable hypoth esis than any other one. 10. Further exploration of the Personal is beyond the scope of our present task.

Bibliography

ARTICLES Alexander, Jeffrey C. “Commentary: Structure, Value, and Action.” American Sociological Review 55, no. 1 (February 1990): 339 45. Arnold, Roger A. “Hayek and Institutional Evolution.” The Journal of Libertarian Studies 4 (Fall, 1980): 341 52. Astin, Alexander W. “Our Obsession With Being ‘Smart’ Is Distorting Intellectual Life.” The Chronicle of Higher Education (September 26, 1997): A60. Bedau, Hugo Adam. “Social Justice and Social Institutions.” Pp. 159 75 in Studies in Ethical Theory, Volume III. Edited by Peter A. French, et al. Morris, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1978. Blau, Judith R. “The Toggle Switch of Institutions: Religion and Art in the U.S. in the Nineteeth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Social Forces 74, no. 4 (June 1996): 1159 78. Brandes, Wolfgang and Peter Weise. “A Synergetic View of Institutions.” Theory and Decision 28, no. 2 (1990): 173 87. Bulger, Roger J. “Covenant, Leadership, and Value Formation in Academic Health Centers.” Pp. 2 17 in Integrity in Health Care Institutions: Humane Environments for Teaching, Inquiry, and Healing, edited by Ruth E. Bulger and Stanley Joel Reiser. Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 1990. Bush, Paul. “The Pragmatic Instrumentalist Perspective on the Theory of Institutional Change.” Journal of Economic Issues 28, no. 2 (June 1994): 647 658. Cameron, J. R. “The Nature of Institutional Obligation.” Philosophical Quarterly 22 (October 1977): 318 32. Caputo, John D. “Deconstructing Institutions: A reply to Dauenhauer.” Human Studies 14 (1991): 331 37. Colander, David. “New Institutionalism, Old Institutionalism, and Distribution The ory.” Journal of Economic Issues 30, no. 2 (June 1996): 433 443.

125

126

Bibliography

Colapietro, Vincent M. “The Reconstruction of Institutions.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 4, no. 3 (1990): 237 48. Coleman, James S. “Commentary: Social Institutions and Social Theory.” American Sociological Review 55, no. 1 (February 1990): 333 39. DiGiacomo, James. “Keep Religion in its Place: A Graduation Address.” America 172, no. 19 (May 27, 1995): 8 11. Doull, J. A. “The Christian Origin of Contemporary Institutions.” Dionysius 6 (De cember 1982): 111 65. Dugger, William M. “Veblenian Institutionalism: The Changing Concepts of Inquiry.” Journal of Economic Issues 29, no. 4 (December 1995): 1013 1028. Edmundson, Mark. “On the Uses of Liberal Education: I. As Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students.” Harper’s Magazine (September 1997): 39 49. Engelhardt, H. Tristram Jr. “Integrity, Humanness, and Institutions in Secular Plural ist Societies.” Pp. 33 43 in Integrity in Health Care Institutions: Humane Environments for Teaching, Inquiry, and Healing, edited by Ruth E. Bulger and Stanley Joel Reiser. Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 1990. Erskine, Andrew. “Culture and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt: The Museum and Library in Alexandria.” Greece and Rome 42, no. 1 (April 1995): 38 49. Faralli, Carla. “Normative Insitutionalism and Normative Realism. A Comparison. Ratio Juris 6, no. 2 (July 1993): 181 89. Fisch, Max H. ‘The Critic of Institutions.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association (1955 1956): 42 56. Honnefelder, Ludger. “Rationalization and Natural Law: Max Weber’s and Ernst Troeltsch’s Interpretation of the Medieval Doctrine of Natural Law.” The Review of Metaphysics 49, no. 2 (December 1995): 275 95. Goldberg, Michael. “Discipleship: Basing One Life on Another It’s Not What You Know, It’s Who You Know.” Pp. 289 304 in Theology Without Foundations. Edited by Stanley Hauerwas, Nancey Murphy, and Mark Nation. Nashville: Abingdon, 1994. Gould, James H. “Philosophy as Institutional Critic.” Fellowship of Religious Humanists 13 (Winter 1979): 19 23. Hodgson, Geoffrey. “An Evolutionary Theory of Long term Economic Growth.” International Studies Quarterly 40, no. 3 (September 1996): 391 411. Kalberg, Stephen. “Max Weber’s Types of Rationality: Cornerstones for the Analysis of Rationalization Processes in History.” American Journal of Sociology 85, no. 5 (1980): 1145 79. Kay, Judith W. “Politics Without Human Nature? Reconstructing a Common Human ity.” Hypatia 9, no.1 (Winter 1994): 21 53. Klein, Philip A. “Ayres on Institutions a Reconsideration.” Journal of Economic Issues 29, no. 4 (December 1995): 1189 97. Kreyche, Gerald F. “The Age of Disrespect: The U.S.’s Uncivil War.” USA Today 124, 2604 (September 1995): 18 21. Leathers, Charles G. “Veblen’s theory of Institutional Change: An Explanation of the Deregulation of Japanese Financial Markets.” The American Journal of Economics and Sociology 54, no. 3 (July 1995): 357 68.

Bibliography

127

Leiter, Brian. “Heidegger and the Theory of Adjudication.” Yale Law Journal 106, no. 2 (November 1996): 253 82. Muller, Gotthold. “Modern Technology and Judeo Christian Ethics.” In Kranzberg: 72 77. The National Prospect: A Symposium. Commentary 100, no. 5 (November 1995): 24 111. Parsons, Talcott. “Prolegomena to a Theory of Social Institutions.” American Sociological Review 55, no. 1 (February 1990): 319 33. Ritzer, George. “The McDonaldization of Society.” Journal of American Culture 6:1 (Spring 1983): 94 101. Rucker, Carnell. “Man and Institution: The Moral Problem.” The Western Humanities Review (Summer, 1965): 225 30. Rutherford, Macolm. The Old and New Institutionalism: Can Bridges be Built?” Journal of Economic Issues 29, no. 2 (June 1995): 443 452. Simmons, John A. “Justification and Institutional Roles.” Journal of Philosophy 93, no. 1 (January 1996): 28 36. Singer, Marcus. “Institutional Ethics.” Ethics, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 35. Griffiths, A. Phillips E., ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Scheppele, Kim Lane. “Legal Theory and Social Theory.” Annual Review of Sociology 20 (1994): 383 407. Scriven, Charles. “Schooling for the Tournament of Narratives: Postmodernism and the Idea of the Christian College. Pp. 273 88 in Theology Without Foundations, ed ited by Stanley Hauerwas, Nancey Murphy, and Mark Nation. Nashville: Abing don, 1994. Sebok, Anthony J. “Misunderstanding Positivism (legal positivism).” Michigan Law Review 93, no. 7 (June 1995): 2054 32. Seeman, Melvin. “On the Meaning of Alienation.” Pp. 61 74 in Thomas O. Buford, ed., Toward a Philosophy of Education. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1969. Selznick, Philip. “Institutionalism ‘Old’ and ‘New.’” Administrative Science Quarterly 41, no. 2 (June 1996): 270 78. Shorris, Earl. “On the Uses of Liberal Education: II. As a Weapon in the Hands of the Restless Poor.” Harper’s Magazine (September 1997): 50 59. Shuklian, Steve. “Marx, Dewey, and the Instrumentalist Approach to Political Econ omy.” Journal of Economic Issues 29, no. 3 (September 1995): 781 06. Simmons, John A. “Justification and Institutional Roles.” Journal of Philosophy 93, no. 1 (January 1996): 28 36. Singer, Marcus G. “Institutional Ethics.” Pp. 227 28 in Ethics, edited by A. Phillips Griffiths. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 35. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Steiner, Daniel. “Approaching Ethical Questions: A University Perspective.” Pp. 53 67 in Integrity in Health Care Institutions: Humane Environments for Teaching, Inquiry, and Healing, edited by Ruth E. Bulger and Stanley Joel Reiser. Iowa City, Iowa: U of Iowa P, 1990, 53 67.

128

Bibliography

Taylor, Charles. “Lichtung or Lebensform: Parallels between Heidegger and Wittgen stein.” Pp. 61 78 in Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995. Taylor, Stanley. “Against the Dark Ocean of the Unknown: The Conceptual System and the Sociology of Art.” Pp.199 213 in Conceptions of Institutions and the Theory of Knowledge. Second Edition. Introduction and commentary by Elwin H. Powell. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1989. . “Choosing as Interpretation: Constructing Objects, Conjuring with the Self as Actor.” Pp. 191 97 in Conceptions of Institutions and the Theory of Knowledge. Second Edition. . “To Create History: Reflections on the Power of the Written Word.” Pp. 183 190. In Conceptions of Institutions and the Theory of Knowledge. Second Edi tion. Toulmin, Stephen. “Medical Institutions and Their Moral Constraints.” Pp. 21 32 in Integrity in Health Care Institutions: Humane Environments for Teaching, Inquiry, and Healing, edited by Ruth E. Bulger and Stanley Joel Reiser. Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 1990. Van Til, Jon. “Facing Inequality and the End of Work.” Educational Leadership 54, no. 6 (March 1997): 78 82. Waldron, Jeremy. “Special Ties and Natural Duties.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 22 (1993): 3 30. Wartenburg, Thomas E. “Foucault’s Archaeological Method: A Response to Hacking and Rorty.” The Philosophical Forum 15 (Summer 1984): 345 64. Weinberger, Ota. “The Role of Rules.” Ratio Juris 1, no. 9 (December 1988): 224 40. Weise, Peter and Wolfgang Brandes. “A Synergetic View of Institutions.” Theory and Decision 28, no. 2 (1990): 173 87. Wolfe, Alan. “A Welcome Revival of Religion in the Academy.” The Chronicle of Higher Education (September 19, 1997): B4 B5.

BOOKS Adams, E. M. A Society Fit for Human Beings. Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1997. Alexander, Jeffrey C. The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology. Oxford: Ox ford University Press, 2003. . The Civil Sphere. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Alford, C. Fred. The Self in Social Theory: A Pychoanalytic Account of Its Construction in Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rawls, and Rousseau. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. Allan, George. The Patterns of the Present: Interpreting the Authority of Form. Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 2001. Allen, R. T. Transcendence and Immanence in the Philosophy of Michael Polanyi and Christian Theism. Edwin Mellen Press for Rutherford House, Edinburgh, 1992. Allport, Gordon. Pattern and Growth in Personality. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Win ston, 1961.

Bibliography

129

Anderson, Charles W. Pragmatic Liberalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Aquinas, Thomas. Treatise on Law. Intro. Ralph McInerny. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing [1956] 2001. St. Augustine. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1991] 1992. . On Free Choice of the Will. Trans. by Thomas Williams. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993. Austin, John. The Providence of Jurisprudence Determined and the Uses of the Study of Jurisprudence. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998. Reprint of the Weidenfeld & Nicholson edition, 1954. Baker, Rannie Belle. The Concept of a Limited God: A Study in the Philosophy of Personalism. Washington: Shenandoah, 1934. Bailyn, Bernard. Education in the Forming of American Society; Needs and Opportunities for Study. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960. Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Va. Bandura, Albert. Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, New Jer sey: Prentice Hall, 1973. . Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Engle wood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1986. Banks, Robert. God the Worker: Journeys into the Mind, Heart, and Imagination of God. Sutherland, N.S.W: Albatross Books, 1992. Barber, Bernard. The Logic and Limits of Trust. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1983. Bateson, Gregory. Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York: Bantam, 1979. Baier, Kurt. The Rational and the Moral Order: The Social Roots of Reason and Morality. Chicago: Open Court, 1995. Basinger, David. Divine Power in Process Theism: A Philosophical Critique. Albany: SUNY Press, 1988. Bayer, Richard C. Capitalism and Christianity. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Univer sity Press, 2007. Becker, H. S., et al., eds. Institutions and the Person: Papers Presented to E.C. Hughes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968. Berman, Harold J. Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983. Bellah, Robert N., et al. The Good Society. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Benjamin, Andrew, ed. The Problems of Modernity. London: Routledge, 1991. Bennett, Curtis. God as form: Essays in Greek theology, with special reference to Christianity and the contemporary theological predicament. Albany: SUNY Press, 1976. Berger, Peter L. The Social Construction of Reality; a Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1966. Bernauer, James and David Rasmussen. eds. The Final Foucault. Cambridge, Massa chusetts: MIT Press, 1994. Bertocci, Peter A. Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. New York: Prentice Hall, 1951.

130

Bibliography

. “The Essence of a Person.” The Monist 61 (1978): 28 41. . “The Person, His Personality, and Environment.” Review of Metaphysics 32 (1979): 605 621. and Richard M. Millard. Personality and the Good. New York: David McKay, 1963. Bisanz, John and Mavis Bisanz. Modern Society: An Introduction to Social Science. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1959. Bockle, Franz, Louis Janssens, and Joseph Selling. Personalist Morals. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1988. Bocock, Robert. Freud and Modern Society: An Outline and Aanalysis of Freud’s sociology. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1978. Borgatta, Edgar and Henry J. Meyer, eds. Sociological Theory: Present-Day Sociology from the Past. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956. Bourdieu, Pierre. “Habitus.” In Jean Hiller and Emma Rooksby, eds. Habitus: A Sense of Place. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005, 43 49. Bowne, Borden Parker. The Principles of Ethics. New York: Harper Brothers, 1892. Boyd, Robert and Peter J. Richerson. The Origin and Evolution of Cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Boys Stones, G. R., ed. Metaphor, Allegory and the Classical Tradition: Ancient Thought and Modern Revisions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Brand, Myles, ed. The Nature of Human Action. New York: Scott, Foresman, 1970. Bremmer Vincent. Speaking of a Personal God: An Essay in Philosophical Theology. Cambridge University Press, 1992. Brightman, Edgar Sheffield. Moral Laws. New York: Abingdon, 1933. . Person and Reality: An Introduction to Metaphysics. Edited by Peter A. Bertocci, Jannett Newhall, and Robert S. Brightman. New York: The Ronald Press, 1958. Brinton, Mary and Victor Nee, eds. The New Institutionalism in Sociology. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Brivic, Sheldon. Joyce the Creator. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. Buber, Martin. I and Thou. Trans. Walter Kaufman. New York: Scribner & Sons, 1970. Buber, Martin. The Kingdom of God. London: Allen & Unwin, 1967. Buford, Thomas O., ed. Essays on Other Minds. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illi nois Press, 1970. . In Search of a Calling. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1995. and Harold H. Oliver, eds. Personalism Revisited: Its Proponents and Critics. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002. Bulger, Ruth E. and Stanley Joel Reiser, eds. Integrity in Health Care Insitutions: Humane Environments for Teaching, Inquiry, and Healing. Iowa City, Iowa: Univer sity of Iowa Press, 1990. Burford, Walter Horace. The German Tradition of Self-Cultivation: ‘Bildung’ from from Humboldt to Thomas Mann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Cairns, Huntington. Legal Philosophy from Plato to Hegel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1949.

Bibliography

131

Canavan, Francis. Edmund Burke, Prescription and Providence. Carolina Academic Press and the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Phi losophy, 1987. Caputo, John and Mark Yount, eds. Foucault and the Critique of Institutions. Univer sity Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993. Carrithes, M., et al., eds. The Category of the Person. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni versity Press, 1985. Carruthers, Mary. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Castaneda, Hector Neri. Thinking and Doing: The Philosophical Foundations of Institutions. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1975. Clark, William Norris. Explanation in Metaphysics: Being—God—Person. University of Notre Dame Press, 1994. Coates, John B. The Crisis of the Human Person. London: Longmans, Green, 1949. Cohen, Avner and Marcelo Dascal, eds. The Institution of Philosophy. LaSalle, Illi nois: Open Court, 1989. Conti, Charles. Metaphysical Personalism: An Analysis of Austin Farrar’s Metaphysics of Theism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Cooley, Charles H. Human Nature and the Social Order. Introd. by Philip Rieff, Fore ward by George Herbert Mead. London: Transaction Publishers, [1902] 2006. Cooper, Burton Z. The Idea of God: A Whiteheadian Critique of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Concept of God. Amsterdam: Nijhoff, 1974. Creel, Richard. Divine Impassibility: An Essay in Philosophical Theology (Suffering of God). Cambridge University Press, 1986. Davis, Stan and Jim Botkin. The Monster Under the Bed. New York: Simon & Schus ter, 1994. Davis, Stephen. Logic and the Nature of God. New York: Macmillan, 1983. Demos, John. Past, Present, and Personal: The Family and The Life Course in American History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Derrida, Jacques in J. D. Caputo. Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida. New York: Fordham University Press, 1977. Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method and Meditations. Trans. Laurence J. Lafleur. Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1960. Dewey, John. Experience and Nature. LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, [1925] 1958. . Human Nature and Conduct. New York: Modern Library, 1933. . Reconstruction in Philosophy. Boston: Beacon Press, [1957] 1963. Douglas, Mary. How Institutions Think. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1986. Durkheim, Emile. Emile Durkheim on Institutional Analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Easum, William. Dancing with Dinosaurs. Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon, 1993. Erickson, Erik. Childhood and Society. 2d ed., rev. and enl. New York: W. W. Norton, 1964. Farrell, James J. The Spirit of the Sixties: The Making of Ppostwar Radicalism. New York: Routledge, 1997.

132

Bibliography

Feibleman, James K. The Institutions of Society. New York: Humanities Press, [1956] 1968. Ferguson, Adam. An Essay on the History of Civil Society. Introd. by Louis Schnei der. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transactions, 1980. Fletcher, Colin. The Person in the Light of Sociology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975. Flewelling, Ralph Tyler. The Person or the Significance of Man. Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press, 1952. Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Harper & Row, [1969] 1976. . The Order of Things. New York: Vintage Books, 1983. Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. Introduction by Louis Menand, translated by James Strachey, and biographical Afterword by Peter Gay. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005. Fuchs, Stephan. Against Essentialism: A Theory of Culture and Society. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001. Fukuyama, Francis. Trust, The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. New York: Free Press, 1995. Gadamar, Hans Georg. Truth and Method. New York: The Seabury Press, [1960] 1975. Gehlen, Arnold. Man, His Nature and Place in the World. New York: Columbia Uni versity Press, 1988. Gill, Donald W., ed. Should God Get Tenure? Essays on Religion and Higher Education. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1997. Govier, Trudy. Dilemmas of Trust. Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press, 1998. . Social Trust and Human Communities. Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press, 1997. Grassi, Ernesto. Rhetoric as Philosophy: The Humanist Tradition. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980. Greif, Avner. Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Hacking, Ian. The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999. Hall, David L. The Civilization of Experience: A Whiteheadian Theory of Culture. New York: Fordham University Press, 1973. Hallowell, John H. The Moral Foundation of Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954. . Main Currents in Modern Political Thought. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965. Hampson, Margaret Daphne. After Christianity. Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 1996. Hand, Sean, ed. The Levinas Reader. Oxford: Blackwells, 1993. Harding, Arthur L., ed. Responsibility in Law and in Morals. Dallas, Texas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1960.

Bibliography

133

Hardy, Lee. The Fabric of this World: Inquiries into Calling, Career Choice, and the Design of Human Work. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdman’s, 1990. Harre, H. R. Theories and Things: A Brief Study in Prescriptive Metaphysics. Lon don: Sheed & Ward, 1961. Hauerwas, Stanley, Nancey Murphy, and Mark Nation, eds. Theology Without Foundations: Religious Practice and the Future of Theological Truth. Nashville: Abing don Press, 1994. Herskovits, Melville J. Cultural Anthropology. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960. Hicks, Robert Drew. Stoic and Epicurean. New York: Russell & Russell, 1962. Hiller, Jean and Emma Rooksby, eds. Habitus: A Sense of Place. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005. Hocking, William Ernest. Human Nature and Its Remaking. New Haven: Yale Uni versity Press, 1918. Hollis, Martin. Trust Within Reason. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Honess, Terry and Krysia Yardley. Self and Identity: Psychosocial Perspectives. New York: Wiley, 1987. James, William. “Letter to Bowne,” August 17, 1908. P. 190 in Representative Essays of Borden Parker Bowne. Edited by Warren Steinkraus. Utica, New York: Merid ian, n.d. Kasulis, T. P. Zen Action, Zen Person. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, [1981] 1985. Kegley, Jacquelyn Ann K. Genuine Individuals and Genuine Communities: A Roycean Public Philosophy. Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Press, 1997. Kestenbaum, Victor. The Grace and the Severity of the Ideal: John Dewey and the Transcendent. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. . The Humanity of the Ill. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982. . The Phenomenological Sense of John Dewey: Habit and Meaning. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1977. Kimball, Charles. When Religion Becomes Evil. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. Kirk, Russell. The Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot. Washington, D.C: Reg nery Publishing, Co., (1953) 1995. Kohak, Erazim. The Embers and the Stars. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Lagerspetz, Eerik. The Opposite Mirrors. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995. Lane, Christel and Reinhard Bachmann, eds. Trust Within and Between Organizations: Conceptual Issues and Empirical Applications. New York: Oxford Univer sity Press, [1998] 2000. Lemmon, E. J. Beginning Logic. Indianapolis: IN, [1965] 1978. Levinas, Emmanuel, “Is Ontology Fundamental?” Entre Nous: Thinking-of-theOther. Trans Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav. New York: Columbia Uni versity Press, 1998.

134

Bibliography

. Totality and Infinity. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, [1961] 1969. Levinson, Daniel, et al. The Seasons of a Man’s Life. New York: Ballentine Books, 1978. Lewis, Michael. Urban America: Institutions and Experience. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1973. Lowen, Rebecca S. Creating the Cold War University. Berkeley: University of Cali fornia Press, 1997. Lyons, John O. The Invention of the Self. Carbondale: SIU Press, 1978. Macmurray, John. Persons in Relation. London: Faber & Faber, [1961] 1970. . The Self as Agent. London: Faber & Faber, 1957. Marc, David. Bonfire of the Humanities: Television, Subliteracy, and Long-term Memory Loss. New York: Syracuse University Press, 1995. Margolis, Joseph. Selves and Other Texts: The Case for Cultural Realism. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001. Marsh, James G. and Johan P. Olsen. Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics. New York: The Free Press, 1989. Maxwell, Mary, ed. The Sociobiological Imagination. Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1991. Mead, George Herbert. Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934. . “The Problem of Society How We Become Selves.” George Herbert Mead on Social Psychology. Edited by Anselm Strauss. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Meeks, M. Douglas. God the Economist. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989. Mellema, Gregory F. Collective Responsibility. Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998. Merleau Ponty, Maurice. Signs. Trans. with an introd. by Richard C. McCleary. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1964. Milbank, John. Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. Oxford: Black well, 1990. Miller, David. Social Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976. Miller, Sumas. Social Action: A Teleological Account. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni versity Press, 2001. Mills, Jon and Janusz A. Polanowski. The Ontology of Prejudice. Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998. Mitchell, Wesley C., ed. What Veblen Taught: Selected Writings of Thorstein Veblen. New York: Viking, 1947. Mounier, Emmanuel. The Character of Man. Trans. Cynthia Rowland. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956. . Personalism. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, [1950] 2004. Muelder, Walter. Foundations of the Responsible Society. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1959. Murphy, John F. The United States and the Rule of Law in International Affairs. Cam bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Bibliography

135

Murphy, Nancey and Warren S. Brown. Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Niebuhr, H. Richard. Faith on Earth. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. . The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy. New York: Harper & Row, 1963. Niebuhr, Reinhold. Christian Realism and Political Problems. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953. Nielsen, Richard P. The Politics of Ethics: Methods for Acting, Learning, and Sometimes Fighting with Others in Addressing Ethics Problems in Organizational Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Norton, David. Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976. Oakeshott, Michael. Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays. New York: Basic Books, 1962. Oakley, Francis. Natural Law, Laws of Nature, Natural Rights. New York: Continuum International, 2005. Outhwaite, William. The Future of Society. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Pagano, Joseph S. The Origins and Development of the Triadic Structure of Faith in H. Richard Niebuhr, a study of the Kantian and pragmatic background of Niebuhr’s thought. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2005. Pailin, David A. God and the Processes of Reality: Foundations of a Credible Theism. London: Routledge, 1989. Parsons, Talcott. The Structure of Social Action. Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1949. Perry, William G., Jr. Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years: A Scheme. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968. Pepper, Stephen C. World Hypotheses. Berkeley: University of California Press, [1942] 1970. Peperzak, Adriaan Theodoor. Beyond, The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1997. Peters, Richard S. The Concept of Motivation. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, [1958] 1967. Polanyi, Michael. Science Faith and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1946] 1964. Ponty, Merleau. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. by Colin Smith. New York: Humanities Press, 1962. Powell, Walter W. and Paul J. DiMaggio, eds. The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Prevost, Robert W. Probability and Theistic Explanation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Rauschenbusch, Walter. Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21st Century: The classic that woke up the church. Ed. by Paul Rauschenbusch. New York: Harper Collins, 2007.

136

Bibliography

Ricoeur, Paul. Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, part I. Trans. by Erazim V. Kohak. Evanston: Northwestern Press, [1950] 1966. Rieff, Philip. The Jew of Culture, Freud, Moses, and Modernity. Edited by Arnold M. Eisen and Gideon Lewis Kraus with an Introduction by Arnold M. Eisen. Char lottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 2008. Rommen, Heinrich A. The Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social History and Philosophy. Trans. Thomas R. Hanley. St. Louis Missouri: B. Herder Book, [1947] 1959. Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer sity Press, 1989. Rotenstreich, Nathan. On Faith. Ed. with a foreward by Paul Mendes Flohr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Rourke, Thomas R. and Rosita A. C. Rourke. A Theory of Personalism. New York: Lexington Books, [2005] 2007. Royce, Josiah. Outlines of Psychology: An Elemental Treatise with Some Practical Applications. New York: Macmillan, 1911. . The Philosophy of Loyalty. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, [1908] 1995. . The Problem of Christianity. Forward by Frank M. Oppenheim, SJ Introd. by John E. Smith. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, [1913] 2001. Russell, Bertrand. Marriage and Morals. New York, New York: Horace Liveright, 1929; Bertrand Russell, 1957. Ruiter, Richard. Institutional Legal Facts. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993. Ryn, Claes G. Democracy and the Ethical Life. Second ed. expanded. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press of America, 1990. Schatzki, Theodore R. The Site of the Social: A Philosophical Account of the Constitution of Social Life and Change. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002. Schechtman, Marya. The Constitution of Selves. Ithaca, New York: Cornell Univer sity Press, 1996. Scheler, Max. Man’s Place in Nature. Translated by Hans Meyerhoff. Boston: Bea con Press, 1961. . The Nature of Sympathy. Translated by Peter Heath with an Introduction by W. Stark. Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, [1954] 1970. Schmitt, Frederick, ed. Socializing Metaphysics: The Nature of Social Reality. Lan ham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Schneck, Stephen F. Person and Polis: Max Scheler’s Personalism and Political Theory. Albany: SUNY Press, 1987. Schutz, Alfred. The Phenomenology of the Social World. Trans. by George Walsh and Frederick Lehnert. Introd. by George Walsh. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern Uni versity Press, 1967. Scott, W. Richard. Institutions and Organizations. 2nd ed. London: Sage Publications, 2001. . Organizations, rational, natural, and open systems. 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, [1981] 2003. Searle, John R. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press, 1995.

Bibliography

137

Slote, Michael. The Ethics of Care and Empathy. New York: Routledge, 2007. Springsted, Eric O. The Act of Faith: Christian Faith and the Modern Self. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 2002. Stein, Howard F. Beneath the Crust of Culture: Psychoanalytic Anthropology and the Cultural Unconscious in American Life. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004. Steinkraus, Warren E., ed. Studies in Personalism: Selected Writings of Edgar Sheffield Brightman. Foreward by Brand Blanshard. Utica, New York: Meridian Publishing Company, n.d. Stoval, Robin, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Cello. Cambridge: Cambridge Unniversity Press, 1999. Strauss, Anselm, ed. The Social Psychology of George Herbert Mead. Introduction by Anselm Strauss. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1934] 1959. Taylor, Charles. Human Agency and Language (Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1). Cam bridge: Cambridge University Press, [1985] 1993. . Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995: 61 78. . Sources of the Self. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1989. . The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991. . A Secular Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. Tetsuro, Watsuji. Rinrigaku. Trans. by Yamamoto Seisaku and Robert E. Carter. Al bany, New York: SUNY Press, [1937] 1996. Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus. Halton, Thomas P. On Divine Providence. London: Newman Press, 1988. Toulmin, Stephen, Richard Rieke, and Allan Janik. An Introduction to Reasoning. New York: Macmillan, 1979. Valdes, M., ed. A Ricoeur Reader: Reflections and Imagination. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991. Veblen, Thorstein. The Instinct of Workmanship. New York: Huebsch, [1914] 1918. . The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Modern Library, 1934. Verene, Donald Phillip. Vico’s Science of Imagination. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981. Vico, Giambattista. Autobiography. Trans. by Max H. Fisch and Thomas G. Bergin. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, [1944] 1983. . The New Science of Giambattista Vico. Trans. by Thomas G. Bergin and Max H. Fisch. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, [1948] 1984. Weber, Max. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Trans., edited, with an intro duction by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press, 1946. . Max Weber: The Theory of Social and Economic Organizations. Translated by A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons. Edited with an introduction by Talcott Par sons. New York: Oxford University Press, [1947] 1950. Weissman, David. A Social Ontology. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. White, Morton. A Philosophy of Culture: The Scope of Holistic Pragmatism. Prince ton: Princeton University Press, 2002.

138

Bibliography

Whitehead, Alfred North. Adventures of Ideas. New York: Free Press, 1967. Wild, John. Human Freedom and Social Order: An Essay in Christian Philosophy. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1959. Will, Frederick L. Induction and Justification: An Investigation of Cartesian Procedure in the Philosophy of Knowledge. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974. Wilson, Edward O. The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. Windelband, Wilhelm. A History of Philosophy. Trans. James H. Tufts. New York: Macmillan, 1926. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Culture and Value. Edited by G. H. Von Wright and translated by Peter Winch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Wojtyla, Karol. The Acting Person. Translated by Andrzej Potocki. Dordrecht, Hol land: D. Reidel, [1969] 1979. . Person and Community: Selected Essays. Trans. Theresa Sandok, OSM. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. Wolgast, Elizabeth. Ethics of an Artificial Person: Lost Responsibility in Professions and Organizations. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1992. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Justice, Rights and Wrongs. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. Wuthnow, Robert, James D. Hunter, Albert Bergesen, Edith Kurzweil. Cultural Analysis: The Work of Peter L. Berger, Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, and Jurgen Habermas. London: Routledge, 1984. Yates, Frances A. The French Academies of the Sixteenth Century. London: Rout ledge, 1988. Young, Iris M. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Zimmerman, Carle C. Family and Civilization. Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Stud ies Institute, [1947] 2008.

Index

absolute authority, 10 13 action, 21 22n4; definition of, 21 22n4; and movement, 64, 115; as non compelled, 122n3 agency: problem of social, 89; social, 89 91 Alexander, Jeffrey, 91 92 alienation, 100 102 American culture: crisis of, viii ix; responses to crisis in, 10 19; suspicion and trust, 8 10. See also crisis anomie, 100 Aquinas, Thomas, xi, 15, 18 19, 68, 69, 71, 74 argument: backing, 115; as complete story, xi xii; warrants, 115 Aristotle, vii, xi, 15, 16 17, 18, 68, 69, 70 71, 74 Augustine, 15, 17, 18, 68 69, 121, 122 Background, 4, 65, 81; and crisis, 88; and evolution, 67 68; extent of, 5; relation to foreground, 5 8; as disconnected, 6; as integrated, 6 7; relation to trust, 46; structure of, 4 5 Bacon, Francis, 13

Being, 18; metaphysics of, 49 50, 121 belief. See trust. Berger, Peter L., 80 Bertocci, Peter A., x, 122 Bowne, Borden Parker, x, 26, 48, 50, 51, 80, 122 Bradley, F. H., 73 Brightman, Edgar Sheffield, x Buber, Martin, 37 Cartesianism, 28 29, 48 causality, 62 63, 116; bottom up and top down, 63 64; description, 64; explanation, 64; forms of, 116 cause, xv, 94, 96 97, 104; and norms, 37 38; and The Personal, 118; in the triad, 37 38 Christian absolutism, 10 13 Cicero. See superstructure; Stoicism Comte, Auguste, 13 Copernicus, 13 crisis, 113; among institutions, 100 102; cultural, 7, 27; definition of, 7, 87; in institutions, 97 100; and reconciliation, 88; rooted in distrust, 96; and solidarity and stability, 88. See also American culture cultural antinomy, 19 21

139

140

Index

cultural dyadic objectivism, 15 19, 20 21, 52, 59 60, 113; defined, xiii culture: in crisis, 27; definition of, 61; and knowledge, 46, 87 Dance, 112, 120 Dante, Alighieri, 31, 32 Darwin, Charles, 13 Democritus, 15 Descartes, 28 29, 31, 33, 34, 50, 80 determinism: scientific, 62 63, 116; types of, 116 Dewey, John, 50, 51, 80 distrust: and cause, 96 97; and crisis, 88; desertion, 94, 96; forms of, 94 95; treason, 94, 96; and violence of metaphysics, 102 dyadic cultural objectivism, 15 18; defined, 20 dyadic society, xiv Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 20 empiricism, 29 31 Enlightenment, 27 environment, 61 ethics: and institutions, 79; and reason, 49 51 experience, 27; ought and transcendence, 48 51; as problematic, 26 27; triadic pattern of, 34; trust and triadic structure of, 43 46 explanation: and description, 63; scientific, 63; fear, 1ff fidelitas, 45 fides, 45 fiducia, 45 Foreground, 4, 65, 81; and crisis, 88; relation to foreground, 5 8; in relation to trust, 45 46 free choice, 14, 59; and natural sciences, 14; and social order, 81; and social sciences, 14 Freud, Sigmund, 65 66

Galileo, 13, 14 Great Chain of Being, 17 Grotius, Hugo, 71 habitat, 60 61 habits, 6, 7; Background and Foreground, 6; scientific explanation of, 63 Hallowell, John, 72 Hartshorne, Charles, 122 Heidegger, ix Heraclitus, 15, 114 Hobbes, Thomas, vii Hocking, William Ernest, x, xi Hollis, Martin, 46 Howison, G. H., 122 impersonalism, 62 68, 116 18; forms of, 62, 68; superstructure, 68 75 infrastructure, 74; evolution and speech act theory, 67; and psychology, Sigmund Freud, 65 66; and reason, 66 67; scientific explanation, 62 65. See also impersonalism institutions: crisis in, 96, 97, 95 102; definition, 60; distrust in, 99; erosion of, 10 11; as ethical, 79, 90 92; and ethics, 79; found and made, 80 81; and institutional facts, 68; as moral agents, xv, 89 91; as natural persons, 89 91; norms of, 60; as pattern potentials of the nexus, 78 79; primary and secondary, xv, 76 77, 78 79, 80, 95, 96, 97, 98; moral patterns in, 92; primary defined, 77; secondary defined, 78; types of, xv, 78, 95 96, 103, 104; and triads, 75 77; and trust, 79, 90 91; types of, 7, 76, 78 integral liberalism, 71 72, 74 Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, ix x, 122 James, William, 26, 38

Index

Kant, Immanuel, 32, 66 67 kenosis, 79, 111, 112 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 81 knowing and believing, 34 36 knowledge: and believing regarding an It, 36 38; breadth of social, 40 43; critique of, 31 32; and cultural crisis, 27 28; as direct, 35; foundations of, 27 34; as indirect, 35; as mediated, 35 36; as reflective, 36; and social causes, 36 38. See also social norms Kohak, Erazim, 66 language and knowledge, 44 lebenswelt, xiii xiv Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 114, 121, 122 Levinas, Emmanuel, 48, 51, 52 Locke, John, vii, 29 31, 71 logic: subject predicate, 116 Lotze, Hermann, 122 loyalty, 45 Luther, Martin, 27 Macmurray, John, x, 122 Materialism, 62ff, 121 marriage and family, 104: crisis in, 8 9; and homosexuals, 106 7; and religion, 104 7 Mead, George Herbert, 37 metaphysics, 115: materialism, 62; naturalism, 62; rationalistic as totalizing, 49, 74. See also Being Middle Ages, 27 Mirandola, Pico della, 27 monadic cultural subjectivism, 12 13, 19 21, 52, 59 60, 62, 113; defined, xiii, 20; and modern science, 15 monadic society, xiv moral life: stability of, 62ff Mounier, Emmanuel, x, 122 natural law, 18; Aquinas view of, 18 naturalism, 62ff, 121

141

needs, 78; and the nexus, 78 Neurath, Otto, 33, 36 Newman, John Henry, 11 Newton, Issac, 50 nexus, 59, 60, 76, 78, 81, 87, 91, 93, 95, 96 97, 100, 102 4, 106, 119; definition, 77; and pattern potentials, 76, 77, 79 Niebuhr, H. Richard, 3 4, 36 37, 44, 45 other minds problem, 40 43 ought: as potentiality of persons, 48 49; and transcending, 48 51. See also trust Parmenides, 114, 117 Parsons, Talcott, 38, 60 pattern potentials, 78 79; number of, 78 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 28 the Personal, xvi; argument for, 114 18; argument for as ironic, 120 21; characteristics of, 111, 119; as choreographer, 111, 120; and Dance, 119 20; existence of, 118 19; field of, 102 personality: and institutions, 91; as integrated, 6 persons: acknowledgement of, 49; freedom of, 49; and natural persons, 89 90; and personality, 91; social, 89 Plato, vii, 15 18, 65, 68 70; critique of, 72 74 Presocratics, 15, 17 Ptolemaic universe, 14 Pyrrhonism, 28 29 Rationalism, 28 29, 114; as ironic, 121; as metaphysics, 49; as rationalized, 50 Reason, 49 50 reconciliation: need for, 88; and points of crisis, 88; in relation to Background and Foreground, 88 root metaphor, xi Royce, Josiah, x, 122

142

Index

Scheler, Max, 122 Schutz, Alfred, 37, 41 science, 62; orderliness, 62; and social understanding, 13 14 Searle, John R., 67 68, 80, 81; and background, 68 second nature, viii, 79; characteristics of, 3 8; and crisis, 87 88; definition of, ix, 2 4; erosion of, 8 10; levels of, 7; and primary nature, 21n1; problematic, 1 21; and recovery of the Personal, 102 7; solidarity of, 8; stability of, viii, ix, 8, 79; trust, x, 79; unity of, viii, ix Singer, Marcus, 60 skepticism, 27, 38; methodological, 28 29 social action, ix x, xv; agency, 89 91, 114 15; causality, 62 66; infrastructure of, 62 68; and The Personal, 119 20 social norms: as causes, 37 38; erosion of, 10 13; and modern science, 13 15 social order, 81 social personalism, vii solidarity, xiv, 26 27, 51 52, 113, 115; crisis in, 92 95; and distrust, 92 93; and stability, 59 60, 96 97 solipsism, 31; critique of, 32 34 Speech Act Theory. See Searle, John R. Spinoza, Benedict, 121, 122 Stability, 113, 154; crisis in, 95 102; definition, 61 62; and distrust, 96 102; role of institutions in, 76;

root of crisis in, 96 102. See also infrastructure; substructure Stoicism, xi, 17 19, 71, 74 substructure, 60; and determinism, 116 superstructure, 60, 68 75; and Aquinas, 71 72; and Aristotle, 70 71; and Plato, 69 70, 72 74; and Stoicism, 68, 69, 71. See also impersonalism suspicion, 2 Thales, 15, 49, 50 topos, x xi; root metaphor, xi triads, xiv xv; cause, 96 97; and institutions, 75 77; potentials of, 77 79; potentials of members of, 39; and social structure, xiv xv; structure of, 34 38, 75 76; and trust, 43 46. See also nexus trust, x; and belief, 44 45; central elements of, 103; and distrust, 93 94; and fear, 1; and Foreground, 46; and institutions, 79; ironic, 94, 95, 100, 103; and ought, 46 48; recovery of, 103 7; stability of, 60; and triads, 43 46; violation of, 49, 88. See also Background; kenosis Vienna Circle, 50 Weismann, David, xi Whitehead, Alfred North, 122 Will, Frederick, 33 Wittgenstein, ix, 114 Wojtyla, Karol, x, 122

About the Author

Thomas O. Buford is the Louis G. Forgione Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. He received his undergraduate education at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas and divinity degree at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Forth Worth, Texas. At Boston University he studied personalism under Peter A. Bertocci and received the PhD in Philosophy. He founded The Personalist Forum and co-founded the International Conference on Persons. Buford authored and edited books in fields ranging from epistemology, higher education, metaphysics, to New Testament studies. He is a certificated flight instructor and played cello in the Hendersonville, N.C. symphony orchestra for 25 years.

143