E-ville?

God and Moral Evil

Kevin Kim is talking about evil, both moral and natural, and I have obliquely suggested that the existence of God raises the possibility that natural evil might be God's moral evil.

This may sound shocking, but it's implicit in theodicies and the like.

Dog Days of War

Dogs: Wikipedia

Yesterday, I was asked by a certain Ms. Lynn Rosa to comment on Dog Wars:

Hello is it possible to speak with you regarding Korea and some health issues relating to the eating of dogs? Thanks, we are making a documentary on this topic, Dog Wars. I am the executive producer, Lynn Rosa... Thank you!

I replied:

Dear Ms. Lynn Rosa, I think that I am too ignorant of the Korean dog meat industry to add anything substantive to the debate. I am on the side of the dogs, of course. I know that some Korean men think that eating dog soup provides them with energy, particularly sexual energy. I know that this is nonsense, and the belief that beating the dog to death increases the energy is evil nonsense. Some Koreans have told me that dog meat is easier to digest because dogs and humans are more closely related than, say, cattle and humans. I tell them that if this is true, then dog meat is more dangerous to eat since we - dogs and humans - share too many similar pathogens. Beyond what I've posted here today, I know nothing.

I suppose Ms. Rosa will find her expert somehow or other, but not through me, unfortunately.

Writer's Block 5: Truth Triumphant?

John Milton

Temple of British Worthies
Stowe

I'm still suffering writer's block, which has inspired another poem, this one drawing upon Milton's Areopagitica and his Sonnet 12, the two of which seem together to conjoin a view of truth as always discernable with a view of truth as not always discernable, a consequence of our rebellious nature:

Writer's Block 5: Truth Triumphant?

If every sort of doctrine were loosed
upon the world, as seems to be the case,
could truth fend truly in that steeplechase
and run unimpaired, even without a boost?

Do not we all misdoubt her doubtful strength,
not having seen her with all falsehood grapple,
for we've seen how, with that one false apple,
sure put to worse was truth, and at great length?

Now good and evil grow inseparably,
and Adam's judgement is this one great doom,
to judge, as twixt twins leapt forth from the womb,

the taste of good and evil from the tree
that brought in death and made the world a tomb.
But still revolts the man whom truth set free.

This is where Milton leaves us -- in a moral quandary, our doom! We judge good and evil by means of the good and evil we experience within ourselves, in what we attain as good or commit as evil. Or so thinks Milton . . .

As the wise old adage has it . . .

Bad and Good
Attract or Attack?

. . . Opposites Attack!

In the Guise of Light?

Angel of Light

"Better the Devil you know than the Angel of Light you don't know."

Which is Badder?

The Flu?

OR

The Floozy?

I have the flu right now, and it's bad, but I've never had a floozy, so I really can't judge, though from the two images above, well, I'll let you decide . . .

Mephisto . . .

Mephistopheles

The novelist Rachel Kushner speaks of "Jonathan Franzen's Crackling Genius" in the New York Times Magazine (October 12, 2015), but also of Mephistopheles:

[A]s I drank coffee and ate toast in Jon and Kathy's kitchen, we discussed Faust and Mephisto, who connect to [Jon's novel] "Purity" by way of its epigraph. Jon had said, the night before, when I asked him why Mephisto wants Faust's soul, "Because that is his nature."

This means that Mephisto's motive is simple, irreducible to more basic components. Here's the epigraph, borrowed from Goethe's Faust, spoken by a part of that power (ein Teil von jener Kraft):

. . . die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft.

This is Mephistopheles introducing himself to Faust, stating that he is a part of that power "that eternally wills evil and eternally creates good," a somewhat ambiguous introduction.

Read Faust and discover if he speaks the truth . . .

Gary Gutting reviews Michael Ruse's Atheism

Michael Ruse
Commonweal Magazine

In an article titled "Michael Ruse's Kinder, Gentler Atheism" (Commonweal Magazine, April 18, 2015), Gary Gutting (holder of the Notre Dame Endowed Chair in Philosophy) reviews Ruse's book Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know, and one passage by Gutting particularly struck me as an interesting twist on the problem of evil:

Consider, for example, the atheistic argument from evil, widely regarded as the main threat to theism . . . . On a purely logical level, . . . it is . . . tractable. Those with lively intellectual imaginations can readily construct non-contradictory scenarios in which even an all-good and all-powerful God has reason to allow virtually any amount of evil. The trick is to cite sufficiently high levels of good that logically require great but lesser levels of evil, . . . human wrongdoing, for example, as a condition for free will . . . . The standard scenarios showing the compatibility of God and evil ultimately appeal to God's knowledge of relevant factors to which we have no access. Given what we know, . . . [the possibility] that God would permit the horrors of warfare for the sake of respecting human freedom or of some other compensating goods [makes no sense]. But what is paltry human knowledge in comparison with divine omniscience? This unbridgeable gap between God and humans is the ultimate trump card against the problem of evil . . . . [However,] a successful defense can lead to a more serious threat. There may be an all-good, all-powerful God; but the promise of Christianity is that . . . God will ensure our salvation, however this is understood. But the solution to the problem of evil shows that God, for reasons unfathomable to us, may be prepared to accept enormous evils in some parts of creation for the sake of the final good of the whole. How, given the gap between our knowledge and God's, can we be assured that God might not need to allow our loss of ultimate happiness for the sake of some higher good . . . [such as] the soul-making of a vastly superior alien race [in contrast to whom, we are expendable]?

This is an interesting argument by Gutting, for it takes the logical solution offered for the fact of evil, namely, that God in His omniscience allows evils that cannot be avoided if we are to be free moral agents who must make morally serious choices and learn from these choices in ways that improve our souls, so long as we learn to make the right choices. This argument normally makes the assumption that our own souls are the souls that God is interested in saving, but what if that's not the case? What if - as Gutting suggests - God is actually interested not in us but in some "vastly superior alien race," for whose sake we must suffer evils that have no soteriological significance for us in order to improve the souls of those aliens?

Rather disturbing to contemplate . . .

Adolf Eichmann: No Exemplar of the Banality of Evil, After All?

Adolf Eichmann
Photograph by Bettmann/Corbis
The New York Review of Books

Sohn Min-ho, in "The 'banality of evil' in Ahn's case" (JoongAng Ilbo, Feb. 19, Page 31), compares Eichmann as banal bureaucrat to the Korean sports officials who inadvertently pushed Viktor Ahn (Ahn Hyo-soo) into the welcoming arms of Russia, for which he recently won an Olympic gold medal. As John Milton would say, this is "to compare great things with small" (Paradise Lost 2.921-922), but I won't get deeply into that particular issue; rather, I want to look briefly at Sohn's view of Eichmann, which is based on Hannah Arendt's depiction of the man:

Arendt, a German-American political theorist, came up with the concept of the "banality of evil" after observing the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a German Nazi war criminal. Eichmann, one of the major architects of the Holocaust, argued he had only followed orders, and Arendt concluded that great evil could be executed by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and, therefore, participated with the view that their actions were normal. She concluded that evil was not the actions by fanatics or sociopaths, but ordinary people who simply followed orders.

Whatever the truth of Arendt's general point about the banality of evil, this turns out not to have been true of Eichmann specifically, as reported by Mark Lilla, "Arendt and Eichmann: The New Truth" (The New York Review of Books, November 13, 2021), who quotes Eichmann:

The cautious bureaucrat, yeah, that was me . . . . But joined to this cautious bureaucrat was a fanatical fighter for the freedom of the Blut I descend from . . . . What's good for my Volk is for me a holy command and holy law . . . . I must honestly tell you that had we . . . killed 10.3 million Jews I would be satisfied and would say, good, we've exterminated the enemy . . . . We would have completed the task for our Blut and our Volk and the freedom of nations had we exterminated the most cunning people in the world . . . . I'm also to blame that . . . the idea of a real, total elimination could not be fulfilled . . . . I was an inadequate man put in a position where, really, I could have and should have done more.

Eichmann's own words convict him of conscious evil, not the banal mindlessness of a mere bureaucrat following orders! I'm indebted to my friend Kent Davy, who Wednesday evening informed me and two other drinking buddies -- Kim Seung-Tae and Kevin Shepard -- of this article by Lilla, among various other fascinating topics of conversation.

The 'Evil' of Material Inequality . . .

Amazon

I owe my friend Bill Vallicella a hat tip for this entry, for he blogged on it first, and I'm borrowing the Dennis Prager quotes from him. According to Prager, Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph (Broadside Books, 2012), there's a reason that the Left has so often entangled itself with totalitarian (and would-be totalitarian) regimes over the past hundred years or so:

The Left's great fight is with material inequality, not with evil as normally understood. Thus, the Left has always been less interested in fighting tyranny than in fighting inequality. That is why Leftist dictators -- from Lenin to Mao to Pol Pot to Ho Chi Minh to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez -- have had so much support from Leftists around the world . . . . (page 29)

This explains the Left's relative disinterest in creating wealth. The enormous and unsustainable debts facing the individual American states and the United States as a country from 2009 on have disturbed the American Right far more than the American Left . . . . The reason is that the Left is not nearly as interested in creating wealth as it is in erasing inequality. (page 29)

I wouldn't say that this understanding of evil as primarily material inequality characterizes all those on the Left, nor all liberals, but it captures well the Left's tendency toward judging the world this way and is thus a useful rule of thumb by which to evaluate Leftist statements. It definitely takes the measure of many Leftist arguments that I read here in South Korea when the 'Progressives' are defending North Korea. Indeed, they at times seem to worry more about inequality emerging from the small markets now permitted in the North than about the people's need for such markets in order to survive. Only yesterday, I proofread an article written by a scholar on the left who actually voiced this concern about rising material inequality if the North truly initiates reforms.

Anyway, as for the rest of Prager's book, I haven't read it and therefore have no opinion to offer . . .

"contra Plantinga's Free Will Defense"?

J.L. Mackie

The Miracle of Theism:

Arguments for and against the Existence of God

Kevin Kim has posted a blog entry, "contra Plantinga's Free Will Defense," promising a future post on the subject but also providing some links to critiques offered by others.

One such link is to a paper by Niclas Berggren titled "Does the Free-Will Defense Constitute a Sound Theodicy?" I haven't read Berggren's article, but the title suggests a misunderstanding of Alvin Plantinga's free will defense of God's omnibenevolence, granted that God is omniscient and omnipotent and that evil is a problematic reality.

Plantinga would agree that his free will defense doesn't constitute a sound theodicy because a defense is not intended as a theodicy.

Plantinga formulated his free will defense simply as a formal argument intended to demonstrate that a logical contradiction cannot be proven in the following conjunction of statements:

1. God is omniscient.
2. God is omnipotent.
3. God is omnibenevolent.
4. Evil exists.

Plantinga argues that God might have a good reason for creating a world in which evil could arise, and he suggests that the gift of morally significant free will might be one such reason. If such free will is a great good, then God might be justified in creating creatures with free will despite the possibility that they would misuse their freedom to choose moral evil.

In his argument, Plantinga notes the special case of natural evil, i.e., evil outside of human agency, e.g., such as the event of a large asteroid striking the earth and causing great suffering (my example). Plantinga suggests that natural evil could have resulted from the free actions of fallen angels, thereby making such evil a consequence of moral evil.

The philosopher J. L. Mackie, unpersuaded by this argument, acknowledges the formal possibility but considers the supposition of fallen angels an arbitrary one. He begins by recalling the problem of natural evil, the moves to his criticism of Plantinga's argument:

But the vast majority of natural evils cannot be ascribed to human choices at all, and it seems, therefore, that the free will defense cannot cover them even indirectly. But Alvin Plantinga argues that it can cover them, since they can be ascribed to the malevolent actions of fallen angels. Formally, no doubt, this is possible; but it is another of what Cleanthes called arbitrary suppositions. While we have a direct acquaintance with some wrong human choices -- our own -- and our everyday understanding extends to the recognition of the like choices of other human beings, we have no such knowledge of the activities of angels, fallen or otherwise: these are at best part of the religious hypothesis which is still in dispute, and cannot be relied upon to give it any positive support.

J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pages 162-163.

Mackie's acknowledgment that "[f]ormally . . . this is possible" -- i.e., that Plantinga's argument that natural evil might result from moral evil is formally possible -- is all that Plantinga needs since the free will defense is no theodicy. All that Plantinga need demonstrate is that there is no proven formal inconsistency in affirming God's omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence despite the fact of evil.

Mackie considers Plantinga's supposition of the "malevolent actions of fallen angels" to be "arbitrary" and incapable of offering any "positive support," but that is irrelevant to Plantinga's limited free will defense, which is basically a negative argument to the effect that no contradiction has been proven in affirming God's omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence despite the fact of evil.

I'd also dispute Mackie's choice of the term "arbitrary." Plantinga hasn't introduced an arbitrary supposition. He has simply noted that the theological view of natural evil as a consequence of moral evil is a long-standing Christian position. Mackie might consider that Christian position a long-standing arbitrary supposition, but that objection would still be irrelevant to Plantinga's limited, formal argument.

Plantinga does not set out to convert the skeptic by finding means to "justifie the wayes of God to men" (John Milton, Paradise Lost 1.26), for unlike Milton, he pursues no theodicy. Rather, he seeks to show that no logical contradiction has been demonstrated in the conjunction of the fact of evil with God's omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence.

In that limited sense, he seems to have succeeded.

The Logical Problem of Evil?

"Satan personifies evil

in

Judeo-Christian doctrines."

(Image and Statement from Wikipedia)

I'm not much of a philosopher, nor am I much of a theologian, so don't expect any great insights from me on this point, but allow me to comment on a discussion that Bill Keezer, Kevin Kim, and others have been having concerning the proposed contradiction between God's properties of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence, on the one hand, and the fact of evil in the world, on the other hand.

The discussion was noted by my friend Malcolm Pollack on his blog, Waka Waka Waka, in a blog post titled "Evil: Still A Problem, Apparently," where he cites Bill Keezer:

In summary, the theodicic question arises from the belief that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent. Once one shows that these are inherently contradictory, one must select one to be less than "omni." This paper argues that the resolution of the theodicic question is to limit God's omnipotence.

I commented on this position, though at Malcolm's blog rather than Bill's:

I've not looked at the link, but there's broad agreement among philosophers who argue this point that no one has proven that the three 'omnis' are contradictory since we might be ignorant of a good reason that God could have for allowing evil.

Kevin then posted a comment requesting specifics:

I'd be curious to know more about the broad agreement you describe.

I supplied a brief response:

Kevin, the point is a narrowly logical one. Some have claimed to find a logical contradiction between God's omnipotence, omniscience, and 'omni-benevolence', on the one hand, and the fact of evil, on the other hand.

But why is this a contradiction? The contradiction needs to be clearly demonstrated, but such a contradiction cannot be demonstratively shown, for God's omniscience and our epistemological situation of limited knowledge leave open the possibility that God has a good reason for allowing evil that we simply do not know and perhaps cannot even understand.

To prove a contradiction, one would need to demonstrate that God can have no good reason, not merely to demonstrate that one can think of no good reason.

That's about all that I'm qualified to say on this issue. For more adequate explanations, here's a good place to begin, for it states my point far more rigorously: William L. Rowe, God and the Problem of Evil.

Satan, of course, is no 'necessary being' in this argument, but I like the depiction above from the Codex Gigas, which makes for a lively personification of evil to lighten the seriousness of a discussion such as this one.

Darcy's Resentful Temper?

Darcy Units

(Image from Wikipedia)

For the scientifically inclined, the permeability of Darcy's resentful temper can be measured using the above formula.

Just kidding.

More seriously, I'm starting one of my breaktime research projects, this time on Darcy's resentful temperament, to which we are introduced in the following bit of dialogue between Darcy and Elizabeth in chapter 11 of Pride and Prejudice, an exchange of views that follows immediately after Elizabeth is asked whether Darcy has survived her examination of his character, to which she replies with irony:

"I am perfectly convinced by it that Mr. Darcy has no defect. He owns it himself without disguise."

"No" -- said Darcy, "I have made no such pretension. I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. -- It is I believe too little yielding -- certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of others so soon as I ought, nor their offences against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. -- My good opinion once lost is lost for ever."

"That is a failing indeed!" -- cried Elizabeth. "Implacable resentment is a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well. -- I really cannot laugh at it; you are safe from me."

"There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome."

What I find interesting in this passage is that Darcy appears to confess a flaw in his character, a "particular evil, a natural defect," and in line with Christian presuppositions even acknowledges that "not even the best education can overcome" such an innate tendency toward evil.

Yet . . . Darcy seems proud of his flaw, affirming that his "feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them," words that appear to be spoken with a notable degree of pride, especially in light of an earlier discussion in chapter 10 concerning the flaw of one whose opinions are too easily swayed by the opinions of others, a disposition that Darcy particularly criticizes.

Several layers of irony will need to be peeled away in my investigation . . . but I've only begun and therefore have little to say at present . . .

. . . other than to note that Darcy's resentful temper does turn out to be permeable.

"Do I dare to eat a peach?"

Ripe Peaches on the Bough

And Eve begat Prufrock...

(Image from Wikipedia)

The Milton scholar Robert Appelbaum has recently directed me to a book, and also an article, in which he argues that Milton believed the forbidden fruit to be a peach:

If I may, please consult the relevant section in my book on food in the Renaissance, where I show that the forbidden fruit was actually a peach. Aguecheek's Beef, Belch's Hiccup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections. An earlier piece I published in MQ also makes this argument.

This sounds interesting. I may need to order the book. At Amazon.com, the product description notes, among other things, that:

We didn't always eat the way we do today. It was only at the advent of the early modern period that people stopped eating with their hands from trenchers of bread and started using forks and plates, that lords stopped inviting scores of neighbors to dine together in great halls and instead ate separately in private rooms, and that Europeans started worrying about dining à la mode, from the most refined nouvelle cuisine.

This reminds me of something similar that Norbert Elias wrote in The Civilizing Process about the process by which Europeans adopted their modern manners, including table manners, so I suspect that Appelbaum draws upon Elias for some of his insights and information.

That piece published in the MQ was an article titled "Eve's and Adam's Apple: Horticulture, Taste, and the Flesh of the Forbidden Fruit in Paradise Lost" (Milton Quarterly, 36.4 (2002), 221-39), an article that I will surely need to read.

Meanwhile, I've gotten an advance look at Appelbaum's book through using "Google Book Search." On page 198, Aguecheek's Beef, Belch's Hiccup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections presents the 'core' of its argument that Milton presented the forbidden fruit as a peach:

But once Eve has eaten the fruit and experienced her intoxication -- wherewith she deludes herself into thinking that she has acquired godlike wisdom -- the fruit itself seems to undergo a change. For the first time, looking at it from Eve's point of view, we encounter the noun "nectar," as well as the adjective "ambrosial" accompanied by "downy." Eve does "reverence" to the tree -- an act of idolatry, among other things:

. . . as to the power
That dwelt within, whose presence had infused
Into the plant sciential sap, derived
From nectar, drink of gods.

And as she brings a sample of it to Adam for him to taste, we are told that she has "in her hand / A bough of fairest fruit that downy smiled, / New gathered, and ambrosial smell diffused." The juice of an apple is never a "nectar," and the smell is never "ambrosial." Those are words, indeed, that mythology applies to the food and drink of the gods; and they are also words generally applied, in Milton's as in many other times, to the peach, the apple of Persia. And it is of course the peach . . . that is "downy" on the outside.

The passage that Appelbaum draws upon for his evidence comes from Paradise Lost 9.834-852, the very moment when Adam comes upon Eve near the forbidden tree immediately after she has eaten from it and bowed down to it in idolatrous worship:

So saying, from the Tree her step she turnd,
But first low Reverence don, as to the power [ 835 ]
That dwelt within, whose presence had infus'd
Into the plant sciential sap, deriv'd
From Nectar, drink of Gods. Adam the while
Waiting desirous her return, had wove
Of choicest Flours a Garland to adorne [ 840 ]
Her Tresses, and her rural labours crown,
As Reapers oft are wont thir Harvest Queen.
Great joy he promis'd to his thoughts, and new
Solace in her return, so long delay'd;
Yet oft his heart, divine of somthing ill, [ 845 ]
Misgave him; hee the faultring measure felt;
And forth to meet her went, the way she took
That Morn when first they parted; by the Tree
Of Knowledge he must pass, there he her met,
Scarse from the Tree returning; in her hand [ 850 ]
A bough of fairest fruit that downie smil'd,
New gatherd, and ambrosial smell diffus'd.

(Luxon, Thomas H., ed. The Milton Reading Room,
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton, August, 2008.)

Now that Appelbaum has drawn my attention to this passage, I have to agree with him that what Milton says hardly describes an apple, whether the cultivated Malus domestica or its wild ancestor Malus sieversii. Milton's words more definitely fit the Prunus persica, which earlier bore a Latin name that Milton would have known: persicum malum -- which translates as "Persian apple," the very "apple of Persia" mentioned above by Appelbaum.

In short, Appelbaum still appeals to an apple-tree evil, which is just peachy with me, for I love a good pun.

Expat Living: "The fruit of all evil"

Michael Pacher, Saint Wolfgang and the Devil (1483)

"Okay, okay, you're right . . . it doesn't say apple."

(Image from Wikipedia)

My most recent language column has appeared in today's issue of the Korea Herald (note: pop-up at newspaper), so I'll now post it here:

The fruit of all evil

In "Areopagitica," that famous 17th-century defense of free expression, John Milton wrote, "It was from out the rinde of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evill as two twins cleaving together leapt forth into the World. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evill, that is to say of knowing good by evill."

Milton's opinion presupposes a sin-fallen world where we necessarily experience evil with good and thereby learn to distinguish these mortal opposites that cleave together -- a clever pun, incidentally, upon the ambiguous meaning of "cleave" as both "cling" and "cut."

Doomed as we are to know good by experiencing evil, Milton infers that any attempt to promote goodness by overly restricting bad speech would be . . . well, fruitless. But why does Milton call the fruit that Eve plucked and offered to Adam an apple? The biblical passage specifies no apple, but leaves the fruit unnamed.

That never stopped the pious from naming it, of course. Biblical reticence invites speculation. The extracanonical "Book of Enoch" calls the fruit grape-like, as do several rabbinical passages. Other rabbis name the fruit a fig, perhaps on the scriptural evidence that Adam and Eve, their fallen eyes first perceiving their nakedness, covered their pudenda with fig leaves. Other speculations about the unnamed fruit abound -- even the wild suggestion "wheat"!

Milton, however, says apple. Why?

He was hardly alone, for the Western Christian tradition in literature and art had largely settled on the apple as the fruit from the tree of knowledge, probably based on a pun in Latin between evil (malum) and apple (malus). The scriptural text in Latin reads "lignumque scientiae boni et mali" -- or, in plain English, "and the tree of knowledge of good and of evil," but the genitive singular form mali can be translated either "of evil" or "of apple." The "tree of knowledge of good and of apple" might sound slightly ludicrous, but we are talking wordplay, hence all in good pun.

Milton, however, might have had other thoughts in calling that fatal fruit an apple, for the word has an interesting history. The most ambitious English lexicon of all, the intimidating Oxford English Dictionary, notes that from early on, the word "apple" included "any fruit." Intriguingly, the English cleric Edward Topsell reveals that the English language held to this broader range of meaning as late as 1607, for in his book "The History of Four-footed Beasts," he refers to the "Apples of Palm-trees," and the book was republished some fifty years later. Moreover, nearly a hundred years after Milton, as late as 1765, the country gentleman Abraham Tucker observed in his multi-volume book "The Light of Nature Pursued" that the "fly injects her juices into the oak-leaf, to raise an apple for hatching her young," thereby demonstrating a still-extant, rather broad range of meaning.

Consequently, when Milton referred in "Areopagitica" to "the rinde of one apple tasted," when he had his narrator in "Paradise Regained" mention "that crude Apple that diverted Eve," and when he showed Satan in "Paradise Lost" tempting Eve with "tasting those fair Apples" and later boasting before the other demons of having seduced mankind "with an Apple," he might not have meant specifically what we today mean by "apple" but more indefinitely what we now mean by "fruit."

Therefore -- no two ways about it -- fear all fruit. You could study hard in school. You could even get a good job. But then, you might unwittingly eat some foreboding fruit . . . and just die!

Originally, the column above was intended for early July, but one of the other columnists who writes on language misunderstood and missed the deadline, resulting in a long delay before the printing of that language-column page, so my article has only appeared in print now, about an entire month later. During that lost month, I had actually sent in a revision of the penultimate paragraph, but the time delay resulted in those changes being lost. Here's what I had intended for the final form of that next-to-last paragraph:

Consequently, when Milton referred in "Areopagitica" to "the rinde of one apple tasted," when he had his narrator in "Paradise Regained" mention "that crude Apple that diverted Eve," and when he showed Satan in "Paradise Lost" tempt Eve with "tasting those fair Apples" and later boast before the other demons of having seduced mankind "with an Apple," Milton might not have meant specifically what we today mean by "apple" but more indefinitely what we now mean by "fruit."

Just for the sake of clarity.

Dark Night of the Nontheistic Soul?

Mother Theresa

Saint, Skeptic, or Both?

(Image from Wikipedia)

The recently publicized letters of Mother Theresa, which reveal her expressing grave doubts about the existence of God, have thrown a spanner into the works and days of some folks, I guess. Other individuals, both theist and atheist, have taken them in easy stride.

I've only skimmed the response in Newsweek by Christopher Hitchens, who never much cared for Mother Theresa when she was still drawing breath and who made a documentary about her back then called Hell's Angel, and I only bothered to skim his certainties on her doubts because I needed the background for some musings of mine.

Hitchens claims that the letters show that Mother Theresa recognized the absurdity of Catholic dogma and despaired over this.

My friend, the Maverick Philosopher Bill Vallicella, posted a response to Hitchens, arguing that "her dark night of the soul was not a crisis of faith, where faith is construed as intellectual assent to certain dogmas, but an experiencing of the divine withdrawal, an experiencing of God as deus absconditus." Bill further suggests that Hitchens lacks a 'spiritual organ' for understanding religious individuals like Mother Theresa.

Bill's 'frenemy' Malcolm Pollack, of Waka Waka Waka -- that's a wacky name for a blog partly dedicated to giving theistic religion a few whacks -- responds to Bill by arguing that Bill doesn't understand that many nonbelievers such as Hitchens do not lack spiritual sensitivity, and he says this about himself in a blog entry titled "Sweet Soul Music":

Where he [i.e., Bill Vallicella] goes wrong, however, is in the further assumption that nontheists lack the capacity for spiritual or mystical experience. I for one have been pulled all my life by the sense that there is in Man a hidden potential for an enlightened inner understanding, for a higher awareness of our deep connection to the Cosmos, for a transcendent consciousness of the numinous beauty and harmony that unites all and everything. To this end I have thoughout my adult life sought this understanding, this awakening, along many different paths, in the belief that behind the veil of ordinary perception, and beyond the sleep of inattention in which we pass our lives, there is a unitary Truth that, with the right sort of conscious effort, it is within our power to apprehend. Because I do think that this truth is not fragmentary, not relative, but One, I imagine that there are many roads to this summit: science, philosophy, music, art, literature, and mathematics, to name just a few. And there are other avenues as well: esoteric and exoteric systems of inner development — some of which I have worked at for many years, and which have offered me priceless glimpses of what is possible for us all.

In turn, I wondered what Malcolm meant by "transcendent" and thus asked him. He replied:

Thanks for asking; I can see how that word might cause some confusion.

I have experiential reason to believe that our customary state of consciousness is fragmentary and narrow in scope, and that with the right sort of effort it can transcend these limitations. It is the difference, roughly, between sleeping and waking.

His reply suggests that he is a more spiritual individual than I, for I've had no 'mystical' experiences (other than a 'miracle' once with a television set), and I suppose that I could inquire further about his experiences, but I was already thinking about a different issue that Malcolm's original post had resurrected in my mind, so I posted a follow-up comment on that:

Thanks, Malcolm. I guess that I understand, roughly, what you mean.

Much of the tone and language of your 5th paragraph sounds 'religious', and I assume that this was intentional. Would you say that yours is a nontheistic, cosmic religion like Buddhism? Buddhism without the accretions picked up over the centuries, I mean.

From your critique of theism, I gather that you're bothered by evil in both its forms, i.e., personal and natural. Does evil pose a problem for what you describe as "the numinous beauty and harmony that unites all and everything." I'm not being snarky, understand. Rather, I think that some of the classic problems confronted by traditional theism -- as understood in the West, anyway, where God is supposed to be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent -- also emerge in nontheistic traditions. Same pattern, different terms.

For instance, I once heard a neopagan 'worshipper' of the 'goddess' that she called "Mother Nature" voice worried thoughts about Mother Nature's cruelty in sending earthquakes, among other things. Earthquakes bothered this neopagan because they weren't something remotely attributable to human causes, unlike hugely ferocious storms such as hurricanes, which might plausibly be blamed on the moral evil of putatively global warming caused by the 'sin' of industrial civilization.

I'm not suggesting that you're a neopagan, of course. I'm just providing an example of a systemic problem that crops up in many religions and wondering if it poses any difficulty in your own personal religious views.

I'll be interested in reading Malcolm's thoughts on this, and when they appear, you can also read them over at his place.

Miltonian Excursus: Chaos and Evil

Satan's Excursion through the Realm of Chaos

"With head, heads, wings, or feet, pursues his way,

And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies" (2.949-950)

(Image from Art Styles in the Industrial 19th Century: Illustrations by Gustave Doré)

I'm still working on my Milton article, which mainly concerns the meaning of "sacred fruit" in Paradise Lost 9.924 (cf. 9.904), which occurs in the passage quoted a couple of posts ago:

Bold deed thou hast presum'd, adventrous Eve
And peril great provok't, who thus hath dar'd
Had it been onely coveting to Eye
That sacred Fruit, sacred to abstinence,
Much more to taste it under banne to touch. [ 925 ]
But past who can recall, or don undoe?
Not God Omnipotent, nor Fate, yet so
Perhaps thou shalt not Die, perhaps the Fact
Is not so hainous now, foretasted Fruit,
Profan'd first by the Serpent, by him first [ 930 ]
Made common and unhallowd ere our taste;
Nor yet on him found deadly, he yet lives,
Lives, as thou saidst, and gaines to live as Man
Higher degree of Life, inducement strong
To us, as likely tasting to attaine [ 935 ]
Proportional ascent, which cannot be
But to be Gods, or Angels
Demi-gods. (PL 9.921-937)

In my article, one of the points that I focus upon is the meaning of "unhallowd" (9.931), which can mean either "made common" or "made impure." I construct an argument (which I won't go into here) for concluding that Adam means it in the former sense but that Milton means it in the latter sense.

This leads by "wandering mazes lost" (PL 2.561) from the link between impurity and chaos into an excursus on "Chaos and Evil," which I render in its sublime impenetrability below.

My view that impurity is linked to the "infernal" dregs of chaos (PL 7.238) touches upon an issue that has received some attention, namely, whether or not chaos is evil. Nearly 60 years ago, A. S. P. Woodhouse located Milton's view of chaos within the Neoplatonic tradition and argued for a basically good chaos but in a footnote acknowledged that "it is difficult to escape the inference ... that this disorder is, or at all events has some affinity with, evil" (A. S. P. Woodhouse, "Notes on Milton's Views on the Creation: The Initial Phase," Philological Quarterly, 28 (1949), 229, n. 30). Over 40 years ago, A. B. Chambers drew upon Hesiod, Plato, Greco-Roman atomism, and Genesis to argue, in "Chaos in Paradise Lost," that "Chaos and Night are the enemies of God" and that "Chaos is as true an exemplar as hell of that state which everywhere prevails when the laws of providence are set, when the ways of God to man are opposed and overturned" (A. B. Chambers, "Chaos in Paradise Lost," Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (1963), 65 and 84). Similarly, Regina Schwartz, in her generally illuminating book Remembering and Repeating: On Milton's Theology and Politics, argues that chaos is evil by virtue of its impurity in not respecting boundaries (Schwartz, 17). Moreover, she argues that God's creation is itself holy:

With [his] ... emphasis upon boundaries, Milton subscribes to that rich category of thinking on the sacred and profane, pollution and purity, that informs Biblical thought. As the creation is first hallowed by separations, so it is remembered and sanctified by observing those original distinctions. (Schwartz, 14; cf. 12: "creation is sanctified by its divisions")

In my opinion, Schwartz's views -- that chaos is impure and that creation is holy -- are mistaken. Creation is not hallowed by separations. It is kept pure in this way, but purity is not synonymous with holiness in biblical thinking, and I see no evidence supporting the view that Milton differed from the Bible on this point. As for chaos, while Milton does present it as not respecting boundaries, this in itself is not enough to qualify it as evil. Chaos does not respect distinctions within its realm because God has not imposed any distinctions upon it, yet only in a system of distinctions can one talk about impurity. This objection also meets the argument presented by Chambers above. God's laws and ways are not opposed by chaos, for they have never been imposed upon chaos. Chaos can be put to evil use, and the great tempter Satan even manages to lure Chaos into league against God, but this simply means that Chaos and his realm can also 'fall' (PL 2.968-1009). Thus, I agree with Robert Adams ("A Little Look into Chaos," Illustrious Evidence: Approaches to English Literature of the Early Seventeenth Century, edited by Earl Miner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 76) and Michael Lieb (The Dialectics of Creation: Patterns of Birth and Regeneration in Paradise Lost (Amherst, 1970), 16-17) that chaos is -- at minimun -- neutral. Milton even calls it "good" in Christian Doctrine (Christian Doctrine, in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, Volume 6, edited by Don M. Wolfe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973), 308), which I take to mean that chaos fulfills God's purposes unless misused. I therefore concur with John Rumrich's rejection of the view, tentatively suggested by Woodhouse and Chambers and asserted by Schwartz, that chaos is evil (John Peter Rumrich, "Uninventing Milton," Modern Philology, Vol. 87, No. 3 (February, 1990), 256).

This excursus deserves an entire article itself, which I might get around to doing next time.

06/06/06

"Damnation! I utterly forgot today's date!"

Gustave Doré's Depiction of Satan

John Milton's Paradise Lost

(Borrowed via Wikipedia)

As a fellow scholar on the Milton List pointed out for the hexakosioihexekontahexaphobic among us, today's date, June 6, 2006, can be written as 06/06/06, which sort of looks like 666.

The Mark of the Beast, Revelation 13:16-18:

16. και ποιει παντας τους μικρους και τους μεγαλους και τους πλουσιους και τους πτωχους και τους ελευθερους και τους δουλους ινα δωση αυτοις χαραγμα επι της χειρος αυτων της δεξιας η επι των μετωπων αυτων 17. και ινα μη τις δυνηται αγορασαι η πωλησαι ει μη ο εχων το χαραγμα η το ονομα του θηριου η τον αριθμον του ονοματος αυτου 18. ωδε η σοφια εστιν ο εχων τον νουν ψηφισατω τον αριθμον του θηριου αριθμος γαρ ανθρωπου εστιν και ο αριθμος αυτου χξς

This Greek is from the so-called Textus Receptus, from which the King James Version is translated:

16: And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 18: Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.

And today is 06/06/06. What a coincidence. Without having been aware of the upcoming date's significance, I've actually been building up to it in my recent posts. In a comment to my June 4th post, "A Universe of death," I cited Paradise Lost, Book 5, Line 666 as the point at which evil first enters into one of God's creatures:

Satan, so call him now, his former name
Is heard no more in Heav'n; he of the first,
If not the first Arch-Angel, great in Power, [ 660 ]
In favour and præeminence, yet fraught
With envie against the Son of God, that day
Honourd by his great Father, and proclaimd
Messiah King anointed, could not beare
Through pride that sight, & thought himself impaird. [ 665 ]
Deep malice thence conceiving and disdain,
Soon as midnight brought on the duskie houre
Friendliest to sleep and silence, he resolv'd
With all his Legions to dislodge, and leave
Unworshipt, unobey'd the Throne supream [ 670 ] (PL 5.658-670)

By stressing the word Deep, Milton is taking special care to emphasize that Satan 'conceiving' of malice amounts to more than a mere intellectual consideration of an evil act. Satan's mental activity is not purely a thought about evil; it is a deeply evil thought.

This is important to Milton's great argument, for he also emphasizes that:

Evil into the mind of God or Man
May come and go, so unapprov'd, and leave
No spot or blame behind: (PL 5.117-119)

By emphasizing the depth of Satan's malice, Milton reveals that the evil entering into the mind of this archangel comes approved, and never goes.

For all concerned about the state of my own soul these past few days, rest assured that the evil entering my mind has come and gone unapproved and has already disappeared down the memory hole.

"A Universe of death..."

"A Universe of death"

(Image from Art Passions: Doré Gallery)

Continuing my theme of excursions through Hell, where some of my plagiarizing students will soon be residing, let us join a band of fallen angels as they explore a universe of death:

Another part in Squadrons and gross Bands,
On bold adventure to discover wide
That dismal world, if any Clime perhaps
Might yield them easier habitation, bend
Four ways thir flying March, along the Banks
Of four infernal Rivers that disgorge
Into the burning Lake thir baleful streams;
Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,
Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;
Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud
Heard on the ruful stream; fierce Phlegeton
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.
Farr off from these a slow and silent stream,
Lethe the River of Oblivion roules
Her watrie Labyrinth, whereof who drinks,
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
Beyond this flood a frozen Continent
Lies dark and wilde, beat with perpetual storms
Of Whirlwind and dire Hail, which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems
Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice,
A gulf profound as that Serbonian Bog
Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,
Where Armies whole have sunk: the parching Air
Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of Fire.
Thither by harpy-footed Furies hail'd,
At certain revolutions all the damn'd
Are brought: and feel by turns the bitter change
Of fierce extreams, extreams by change more fierce,
From Beds of raging Fire to starve in Ice
Thir soft Ethereal warmth, and there to pine
Immovable, infixt, and frozen round,
Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire.
They ferry over this Lethean Sound
Both to and fro, thir sorrow to augment,
And wish and struggle, as they pass, to reach
The tempting stream, with one small drop to loose
In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe,
All in one moment, and so neer the brink;
But fate withstands, and to oppose th' attempt
Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards
The Ford, and of it self the water flies
All taste of living wight, as once it fled
The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on
In confus'd march forlorn, th' adventrous Bands
With shuddring horror pale, and eyes agast
View'd first thir lamentable lot, and found
No rest: through many a dark and drearie Vaile
They pass'd, and many a Region dolorous,
O'er many a Frozen, many a fierie Alpe,
Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens, and shades of death,
A Universe of death, which God by curse
Created evil, for evil only good,
Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds,
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, inutterable, and worse
Then Fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceiv'd,
Gorgons and Hydra's, and Chimera's dire.

(Dartmouth College, Milton Reading Room, PL
2.570-628)

Lines 622-624 call this place a universe of death where all life dies, but we see many apparently living things here and are informed that nature breeds things perverse. All life dies here, and death lives, but what do these statements mean, especially "death lives"? The oxymoronic combination recalls the similarly hellish description "darkness visible" (PL 1.63).

Death appears in Milton's Hell as an amorphous but powerful and even deadly figure encountered by Satan as he approaches Hell's gates to attempt his way out:

... The other shape,
If shape it might be call'd that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joynt, or limb,
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,
For each seem'd either; black it stood as Night,
Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,
And shook a dreadful Dart; what seem'd his head
The likeness of a Kingly Crown had on. (PL 2.666-673)

The formlessness of personified Death (first described, incidentally, starting in line 666) provides a clue, for what nature breeds in Hell is "Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, / Abominable" (PL 2.625-626). The formlessness of Death stands reflected in the perverse forms glimpsed by the band of rebel angels as they fly through Hell. The term "Abominable" recalls the abominations of Leviticus, creatures that do not properly fit into God's classificatory schema and by their improper form incur the designation "unclean," not proper for eating. The formlessness also finds analogue in the fallen angels' deterioration, the loss of their proper form.

Little wonder, then, that Hell's proper place lies deep within the formless realm of chaos.