"Cover Your S, Ms. Hepburn, or Mr. Grant will!"

Big Ho Grandiose
"And the lightning's pink glare,
aplomb bursting from lair,
went poof in the night,
proof the Banner was there!"
The Banner Edition!

My frenemy Kevin Kim has recently posted a "Hiss" in the direction of Bill Vallicella and me:

Dr. Vallicella and Dr. Hodges both write blog posts in which an "s" is surrounded by parentheses. See here for Dr. V's post, and here for Dr. H's.

Wherefore the urge to lock the "s" inside concave walls? I suspect that the letter "s" can be rather unruly, so it's only natural to want to take it aside every now and then to give it a proper beating, followed by strict confinement until it comes to its (s)en(s)e(s).

Actually, though I can't speak for Bill, my reason rather differs from Kevin's inference. The parentheses noted by Kevin appear in my blogpost title for February 22nd: "Taking North Korea at its (S)word." Here's my own reasoning:

People are always threatening to kick some S. Well, let them try! They'll first have to kick through those shields!

Now, you know . . . and here's Hepburn and Grant!

Too much of nothing . . .

Professor Leon Horsten

(You were expecting somebody?)

University of Bristol

With a hat-tip to my friend Bill Vallicella, I read Leon Horsten's article on "Angst and the Empty Set: We can experience nothingness, but does it actually exist?" (Nautilus, Issue 16, August 28, 2014), which opens with an experience we've all had and that has long puzzled me:

Suppose you open your handbag one day expecting to find your wallet there, but don't. Do you literally see the absence of your wallet in your handbag? If you do, it means something important: Absences have a positive presence in your perception that you can grasp, independently from all ordinary things.

Think about the experience and the questions it raises, then read the article. Afterwards, check out Dylan's lyrics. And here's the song sung. Eh, you were expecting somebody else?

William Kilpatrick on Exempting Islam from Criticism

William Kilpatrick
Crisis Magazine

My friend Bill Vallicella posted on an article by William Kilpatrick about "Islam's Religious Exemption From Criticism" (Crisis Magazine, July 23, 2014), and since the article reflects some of my own thinking, I'm excerpting it here:

[The defense of Islam by non-Muslims] comes in the form of "vouchers" for Islam's good character: assurances by world leaders that Islam is a peaceful religion, assurances by religious leaders that it is a model of interfaith tolerance, and assurances by educators that "jihad" is an interior spiritual struggle . . . . Western critics of Islam often find themselves facing fines or even jail time. In most of Europe, you can safely wave a "Behead Those Who Insult Islam" poster in the face of a policeman, but if you are a non-Muslim and you observe that Islamic law allows for beheadings, you'll be standing before a magistrate the next day on hate crime charges . . . . One of the primary arguments . . . [in defense of] Islam is that it's a stabilizing force in the Middle East and elsewhere. But if that's not the case, should we still want Islam to succeed? If Islam is a destabilizing force, wouldn't the world be better off without it? And since Muslims are the primary victims of Islamic violence, wouldn't they also be better off without it? . . . Islam is looking more and more like a world-threatening ideology, but it is . . . immune to criticism . . . because it is a recognized and long-established religion. To challenge it is to court charges of anti-religious bigotry. In addition, something in our conscience makes us . . . . conditioned to have a favorable view of religion -- especially other people's religion . . . . [T]o contemplate Islam's failure ["somehow doesn't seem right"] . . . . [S]ome critics of Islam contend that it is nothing but a political ideology and ought to be labeled as such. But this rebranding effort is a difficult sell because, by most standard definitions of the term, Islam does qualify as a religion. To most people, moreover, it certainly looks like a religion . . . . [with] centuries-old observances . . . . When people prostrate themselves in prayer five times a day, . . . [a critic can hardly] make the case that what they're doing is nothing more than a power play . . . . [In fact,] Islam is a hybrid: it's both a political ideology and a religion . . . . [T]he religious side provides considerable protection from criticism. Because of its religious nature, it seems improper to engage Islam in . . . ideological warfare . . . . Yet the threat to the West and to the rest of the world is, by all appearances, increasing . . . . Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has proclaimed the creation of a new caliphate state, declared himself caliph, and has called on Muslims worldwide to join him in waging war against infidels . . . . [T]he idea of the caliphate is that there should be only one unified Islam . . . . [T]he caliphate is intended to be a borderless community -- a trans-national and ever-expanding empire of true believers . . . . Islam aspires to be a universal belief system . . . . Islam has the advantage of conducting its proselytizing activities under the banner of religion . . . . [But] Mosques are not just places of worship; they are often centers of political activity and, not infrequently, of jihad activity. As a popular Muslim poem puts it, "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the faithful our soldiers" . . . . Of course, for a non-Muslim to even hint at the possibility that mosques might serve such purposes is to invite accusations of Islamophobia and bigotry . . . . Which goes to prove the point: Islam's religious status puts it beyond criticism. You can criticize very radical Islamic radicals and very extreme Islamic extremists -- just as long as you add that, of course, their activities have nothing to do with the religion of Islam . . . . [T]he theology/ideology of Islam has some very large weak spots. But our sense of propriety, which is nowadays governed by the rules of political correctness, won't allow us to even talk about them. In effect, the sensitive areas are protected by a large sign that reads "religion -- do not touch."

I've long recognized Islam as both religious and political. That dual nature confuses modern people, who usually expect religion to stay in the private realm as a personal piety that doesn't seek to influence politics. Even in its own founding years -- or should I say especially in its founding years -- Islam was deeply involved in politics, as well as in war -- politics by other means, as Clausewitz observed.

In fact, I would argue that Islam -- in its synthesis of religion, politics, and war within an all-encompassing legal system for the total regulation of society -- is a throwback to one of the earliest forms of organized religion: a theonomic state in which the leader combined the roles of priest and king . . . and, of course, of military general.

Happy with Utilitarianism? Most Folks Aren't!

Bill Vallicella
Probably on the Right
Google Images

Yesterday, as I was looking at Dr. Boli's blog, I saw a joke about "Utilitarianists," to which I added my own joke:

Opinion polls reveal that most people are unhappy with utilitarianism.

The humor hinges upon knowing Jeremy Bentham's "fundamental axiom [of utilitarianism, namely], . . . the greatest happiness of the greatest number . . . is the measure of right and wrong" (A Fragment on Government, London, Preface, 1776, 2nd para.). I was so proud of my joke that I sent notice to my philosophical friend, Bill Vallicella:

Here's a philosophical joke I came up with just this morning:

"Opinion polls reveal that most people are unhappy with utilitarianism."

But some wag must already have coined this piece of witty wisdom . . .

Bill replied:

That's good, Jeff. Variants:

a. Opinion polls reveal that most people are unhappy with eudaimonism.

b. Opinion polls reveal that most people are displeased by hedonism.

Greetings from Arizona . . .

I replied:

Those are good, too.

You see? Philosophy is useful, after all . . .

Prose Sent on a Poetic Errand?

John Niemeyer Findlay
In, but not of, our quotidian world . . .

Google Images

My online philosopher friend Bill Vallicella, who always posts something interesting, recently offered an intriguing passage from a book by the philosopher John Niemeyer Findlay:

And it [a sound phenomenology or existentialism] will surely find room for a phenomenological characterization of the brotherly, the sisterly and the cousinly, and will perhaps find room for a special chapter on aunts, that interesting transitional category between maternity and random femininity, devoting perhaps a special study to the romantic aunt, who, dark, interesting, and beautiful, brings into the nursery the rumour of strange voyages and amazing encounters, as well as sympathies almost unbearably touching. (Findlay, The Transcendence of the Cave, Allen and Unwin, 1967, p. 218)

Although composed by Findlay, the very fact that Bill found it worthy of drawing attention to demonstrates the truth of an observation I once made with reference to Bill as "a philosopher with the soul of a poet," though he and I would both agree that one doesn't send a poem on a prose errand -- although John Milton's Paradise Lost offers something of a rebuttal to that!

Bill doesn't explicitly say why he likes Findlay's philosophical views, nor does he explicitly clarify why he likes this passage, but he does say that if he were "banished to the moon tomorrow, and forced to choose . . . [between Findlay and some philosophical opponent of Findlay as his] sole philosophical reading matter, the choice would be an easy one," which is a rather romantic way of putting things, even more so than to imagine being sent off to some by-now-surely-overpopulated desert isle!

But why do I like this passage? Well, partly because it sounds like prose sent on a poetic errand, partly because it makes me curious as to what that errand is, and partly because it spurs me to considering whether or not I know any women who might fit Findlay's phenomenological interest: single, singular women of dark beauty who have traveled abroad on those strange voyages with amazing encounters and whose married siblings have small children.

My wife might have been one of those if I hadn't first captured her . . .

Bill Vallicella on Islamist Beliefs and Islamist Actions

Bill Vallicella
Maverick Philosopher

My metaphysical friend, Bill Vallicella, has posted an excellent reflection on Professor Scott Atran's 'belief' that Islamist beliefs have no effect on Islamist actions, assuming that Atran's views have been adequately reported (and if one is doubtful, Bill adds, "substitute 'Atran*' for 'Atran'"). Whatever the resolution of that issue, here is Bill's analysis:

If we are to be as charitable to Atran as possible, we would have to say that he holds his strange view because he himself does not believe in the Muslim paradise and he cannot imagine anyone else really believing in it either. So Muslims who profess to believe in Paradise with its black-eyed virgins, etc. are merely mouthing phrases. What makes this preposterous is that Atran ignores the best evidence one could have as to what a person believes, namely, the person's overt behavior taken in the context of his verbal avowals. Belief is linked to action. If I believe I have a flat tire, I will pull over and investigate. If I say 'We have a flat tire" but keep on driving, then you know that I don't really believe that we have a flat tire.

Same with the Muslim terrorist. If he invokes the greatness of his god while decapitating someone, then that is the best possible evidence that he believes in the existence of his god and what that god guarantees to the faithful, namely, an endless supply of post-mortem carnal delights. This is particularly clear in the case of jihadis such as suicide bombers. The verbal avowals indicate the content of the belief while the action indicates that the content is believed.

Whatever Atran's views might actually be (and see this), Bill's analysis of the link between belief and action is significant, especially in the context of the rest of his post.

Not that I think Bill's position irrefutable: Islamists might be suffering from what the Left used to call "false consciousness," thinking they believe what they really don't believe. Indeed, this is the Left's view on Islamists.

But I know from experience that religious belief is real, regardless whether that belief corresponds to any real thing, and religious belief is a powerful motivator of action.

Update: Some statements by Islamists on paradise as motivation for martyrdom.

Vallicella on Existence . . .

Sartre's Nausea

Maverick Philosopher

My cyber-buddy Bill Vallicella has an excellent post on the use of "is" as copula and "is" as existence, which he gets at via Jean Paul Sartre's novel of metaphysical ideas, Nausea, with its famous scene in which the protagonist, Roquentin, experiences an epiphany on the reality of "existence":

Never, until these last days, had I understood the meaning of 'existence.' I was like all the others, like the ones walking along the seashore, all dressed in their spring finery. I said, like them, 'The ocean is green; that white speck up there is a seagull,' but I didn't feel that it existed or that the seagull was an 'existing seagull'; usually existence hides itself. It is there, around us, in us, it is us, you can't say two words without mentioning it, but you can never touch it. (p. 127, tr. Lloyd Alexander)

Bill then explicates this insight of Sartre's protagonist:

'The sea is green' and 'The green sea exists' are logically equivalent. But this equivalence rests on a tacit presupposition, namely, that the sentences are to be evaluated relative to a domain of existing items. The reason we can make the deflationary move of replacing the latter sentence with the former is because existence is already present, though hidden, in 'The sea is green.' 'The sea is green' can be parsed as follows: The sea is (exists) and the sea (is) green, where the parentheses around 'is' indicate that it functions as a pure copula, a pure predicative link and nothing more. The parsing makes it clear that the 'is' in 'The sea is green' exercises a dual function: it is not merely an 'is' of predication: it is also an 'is' of existence. Therefore, translation of 'The green sea exists' as 'The sea is green' does not eliminate existence . . .

Bill is an analytic philosopher, but he's here taking the side of continental philosophers, arguing for a "thick" theory of existence ("is" as existence) against the analytic philosophers' "thin" theory of existence ("is" as copula). This distinction is interesting in itself, at least for some of us poor souls, but it has larger philosophical implications, particularly for ontology and theistic questions.

Clearly, Bill is more than logician; he is metaphysician. Go to his blog post for more, or to his book, A Paradigm Theory of Existence, for even more.

Francis Beckwith on Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens 2011

The Catholic Thing
Friday, December 23, 2011

The Catholic philosopher Francis J. Beckwith, writing "The God-Haunted Atheism of Christopher Hitchens" for The Catholic Thing, inquires about the source of the ethical values affirmed by Hitchens:

Hitchens writes that he and other atheists "believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion," thus implying that he and others have direct and incorrigible acquaintance with a natural moral law that informs their judgments about what counts as an ethical life.

But to speak of a natural moral law -- a set of abstract, immaterial, unchanging principles of human conduct that apply to all persons in all times and in all places -- seems oddly out of place in the universe that Hitchens claimed we occupy, a universe that is at bottom a purposeless vortex of matter, energy, and scientific laws that eventually spit out human beings.

I wouldn't have chosen the image of nature spitting out human beings since that manner of speaking likely denigrates the way in which Hitchens would have referred to the process of nature by which human beings came into existence. No need to cast aspersions on the universe!

But Beckwith has a point. Note that he does not accuse Hitchens of being some sort of moral reprobate. What he argues, instead, is that Hitchens implicitly appeals to moral purpose:

[T]o speak of an ethical life is to say that morality is more than rule keeping, that it involves the shape and formation of one's character consistent with a human being's proper end. But proper ends require intrinsic purposes, just the sorts of things that a theistic philosophy of nature affirms and Hitchens' philosophical naturalism denies.

Taking as a given that Hitchens does appeal to philosophical naturalism -- and let's infer that he does, since Beckwith is a scholar who ought to know what he's talking about -- then Hitchens was inconsistent in arguing both for philosophical naturalism and the ethical life, if he meant that both affirmations are objectively true.

This is the sort of problem that I was getting at in yesterday's blog entry. For better musings than my own on this issue raised by Beckwith, see what my friend Bill Vallicella has to say about ethics and philosophical naturalism.

As for me, I now have a lot of editing to do . . .

Late to the Wake . . .

Steve Jobs Proffers Apple

(SF Gate)

My friend Bill Vallicella has already posted this passage from the 2005 Stanford commencement address by Steve Jobs, but I recall being impressed when I first read it back in 2005, so I'm posting it anyway:

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

That photo above can serve as an ironic memento mori, an iconic image of a young, healthy Jobs proffering an apple, the logo of his brand before the bite has been taken, before we realize that we are mortal, naked . . . except that from where we stand, we now know for certain the radical contingency of life. I'm late to the wake, but here I stand, knowing that I'll be on time for my own.

I would say, "Requiescat in Pace, Steve," but that somehow doesn't seem to fit a relentlessly restless man like Mr. Jobs, so I'll instead echo his own words and say, "Wherever you are, man, 'Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.'"

Oh, just one more thing: "So long, and thanks for all the Apples . . ."

Fallenness in a Darwinian World?

St. Augustine

Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510)

(Wikipedia)

The painting above dates to 1480 and is said to depict St. Augustine at prayer, though his eyes are open. They are, however, directed upward, as though contemplating spiritual realities. This saint, however, also observed earthly realities, such as the radical evil of human beings, which he thought due to the enslavement of the human will by our sinful nature, which he argued was biologically inherited from Adam and Eve, who had fallen from innocence into evil by their violation of God's command not to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

My cyberfriend Bill Vallicella has been blogging on human evil, as I noted in a recent blog entry of my own -- "Fallenness as the Human Condition" -- on an article about "original sin" in the journal First Things:

I'm indebted to my friend Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, for the link to the First Things article. Bill has been discussing several of the logical conundrums confronting those who take original sin seriously, and he would be well worth reading on the subject, though I've had too little time lately to do so myself, being immersed in teaching and editing.

I emailed Bill to let him know of my implicit 'hat tip' to him, and in noting an intriguing argument presented in the First Things article, I posed a query:

I liked the interesting argument that the consequences of belief and nonbelief in original sin are both bad and thus evidence of our fallen natures. But I do wonder what either original sin or fallenness mean in a Darwinian world . . .

Bill has since responded to my query with another blog post, titled "Original Sin in a Darwinian World." I cannot do justice to his argument by a summary, so I urge interested readers to go directly to his own post, but I can indicate some of his argument as it relates to my query.

Bill rejects Augustine's view that guilt is inherited, so he absolves us of any guilt due to inheritance, what he calls "originated original sin" (following Kant), basing his view on our moral intuition that we are only morally culpable for actions or inactions over which we have control, i.e., libertarian freedom. In place of Augustine's view, Bill offers what he calls "originating original sin" (again following Kant), by which he means that the fact of our evil actions or inactions can be understood as due to our fallenness -- and Bill cites Kant explicitly on this point -- "as though the individual had fallen into it directly from a state of innocence." This distinction is presented in more detail in Bill's post on Kant's distinction "between originating original sin (peccatum originale originans) and originated original sin (peccatum originale originatum)."

Bill also rejects a literal reading of the Genesis account of Adam and Eve, for he takes seriously the evidence for evolution. Hence his response to my query radically reinterprets the meaning of the Biblical account, and he follows Kant in this:

Man enjoys dual citzenship. As a physical being, and thus as an animal, he he is a member of the phenomenal world, the world of space-time-matter. In this realm determinism reigns: everything that happens is necessitated by the laws of nature plus the initial conditions. But man knows himself to be morally responsible, and so knows himself to be libertarianly free. Since everything phenomenal is determined, and nothing free, man as moral agent is a noumenal being who 'stands apart from the causal nexus.'

Kant sees with blinding clarity that nothing imputable to an agent can be caused by factors external to the agent: only that which the agent does or leaves undone freely and by his own agency is imputable to the agent. It follows that sinfulness, guilt, and desert of punishment cannot be inherited: there is no originated original sin. For what is inherited is caused to be by factors external to the agent. So . . . [the claim that there is a universal propensity to moral evil in human beings that is not inherited] is true. But the predisposition to moral evil is nonetheless innate in the sense that it is not conditioned by events in time. It is logically prior to every action of the agent in the time-order.

How is the predisposition imputable? It is imputable because it is the result of a free noumenal choice. And so there is originating original sin. Each of us by an atemporal noumenal choice is the origin of the radical evil which is at the root of each specific evil act. So . . . [the claim that there is a universal propensity to moral evil in human beings that is imputable] is true.

If I understand Bill, then our fallenness, which follows from original sin, is to be understood as a state into which we have fallen due to an originating original sin that each one of us commits by acting (or 'inacting') wrongly at some first time in our lives, an action (or inaction) over which we had free control.

If I have understood Bill correctly, this seems to leave open a question that still requires an answer: Why do we, in our original innocence and freedom, choose evil? Admittedly, the same question can also be posed about the traditional story of Adam and Eve.

Fallenness as the Human Condition?

Fallenness?

(First Things)

A couple of days ago in a comment on the common Muslim dismissal of Christian "inconsistency" -- namely, the charge that Christians are inconsistent in granting legitimacy to a secular sphere when they ought to realize that God is ruler over all -- I wrote the following in response to a point that I recalled in the writings of Seyyed Hossein Nasr:

Yes, I recall his criticism of Christian 'dualism' -- as I think he called it -- echoing the typically Muslim critique of Christianity's 'inconsistency' in distinguishing between the sacred and the secular as two legitimate spheres.

In my opinion, the Muslim critique radically underestimates what Christians call human fallenness. Integralist visions always do underestimate our human capacity for evil and attempt to construct an ideal society subsumed under one big idea. The result is always Hell on Earth.

I suppose there's much more that should be said about this, but I will simply cite a bit from other thinkers who take 'fallenness' seriously, though they use the expression "original sin." Edward T. Oakes, in a November 1998 article for First Things, "Original Sin: A Disputation," accepts that the critics of original sin have a point in their criticism of the negative consequences that at times result from a belief in original sin, but then argues that this very harm is evidence of original sin's validity and that worse harm results from a commitment to what is called "progressivism":

It might sound intolerably paradoxical to say this, but it is precisely the very harm that sometimes comes from the doctrine of original sin that proves its validity. This is a point made time and again by Leszek Kolakowski, the Polish emigré intellectual now at the University of Chicago, author of a three-volume history of Marxist thought and a man who therefore knows something of the harm visited upon the human community by doctrines of progressivism. In his recent book of essays, Modernity on Endless Trial, he shrewdly notes how this third objection to original sin can be turned into a supporting argument . . . .

The "harm" referred that results from belief in original sin varies from a morbid obsession with one's individual guilt to a fatalistic acceptance of injustice in society, and Oakes goes on to cite Kolakowski's concession on this point, along with his observation that the denial of fallenness has even worse results:

The possible disastrous effects of the concept of original sin on our psychological condition and on our cultural life are undeniable [because of its use to keep people “in their place” and not alter unjust social structures]; and so are the disastrous effects of the opposing doctrine, with its implication that our perfectibility is limitless, and that our predictions of ultimate synthesis or total reconciliation can be realized. However, the fact that both affirmation and rejection of the concept of original sin have emerged as powerful destructive forces in our history is one of many that testify in favor of the reality of original sin. In other words, we face a peculiar situation in which the disastrous consequences of assenting to either of two incompatible theories confirm one of them and testify against its rival.

I take it that Kolakowski means that if a belief in fallenness has such consequences as a morbid obsession with personal guilt or a fatalistic acceptance of social injustice, such improper reactions are only to be expected of fallen creatures, but that the consequences of affirming human perfectability are even worse because such an affirmation raises the standard of expectations -- both individual and social -- far beyond what human beings are capable of and results in such utopian monstrosities as the Communist totalitarianism of the Soviet Union, which tried to scale the heights of heaven upon a mountain of corpses. In my opinion, Islamist integralism leads to the same result.

I'm indebted to my friend Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, for the link to the First Things article. Bill has been discussing several of the logical conundrums confronting those who take original sin seriously, and he would be well worth reading on the subject, though I've had too little time lately to do so myself, being immersed in teaching and editing.

Bill Vallicella quotes J. R. Lucas "Against Equality"

Maverick Philosopher

Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

(Image from Maverick Philosopher)

My friend Bill Vallicella, who blogs at his site Maverick Philosopher and does his ontological thinking at such abstract altitudes that I get intellectual nosebleed, also posts on other topics where the air is not so thin. A couple of weeks ago, he quoted a passage from John R. Lucas that I found particularly insightful, and I've been intending to return to it and post it here, and I know that Bill won't mind, especially if I alert others to his fine website. Bill's post was titled "Money, Power, and Equality" and quoted Lucas, to wit:

Since men value power and prestige as much as the possession of wealth -- indeed, these three 'goods' cannot be completely separated -- it is foolish to seek to establish an equality of wealth on egalitarian grounds. It is foolish first because it will not result in what egalitarians really want. It is foolish also because if we do not let men compete for money, they will compete all the more for power; and whereas the possession of wealth by another man does not hurt me, unless I am made vulnerable by envy, the possession of power by another is Inherently dangerous; and furthermore if we are to maintain a strict equality of wealth we need a much greater apparatus of state to secure it and therefore a much greater inequality of power. Better have bloated plutocrats than omnipotent bureaucrats. (J. R. Lucas, "Against Equality," in Philosophy, 40, 1965, p. 305)

Bill calls this "a penetrating passage from a penetrating essay," and I agree. Bill offers his own commentary:

If the egalitarian wants to equalize wealth, perhaps via a scheme of income redistribution, then he will need to make use of state power to do it: the wealthy will not voluntarily disembarrass themselves of their wealth. But state power is of necessity concentrated in the hands of a few, those who run the government, whose power is vastly greater than, and hence unequal to, the power of the governed.

But Bill also notes an objection:

"Wealth is convertible into power since the wealthy can buy their way to political influence, whether legally or illegally."

And deals with it:

True, but the seriousness of this problem is a function of how intrusive and overreaching the government is. A government stripped down to essential functions offers fewer opportunities for the power-hungry. Note also that the wealthy may feel it necessary to buy influence just to protect themselves from regulatory zeal.

This is the problem with a powerful government. Since, as Lucas points out, "men value power and prestige as much as the possession of wealth," then the inequality of power attracts men and lends itself naturally to abuse, for the feeling of power is experienced not so much in its legitimate use as in its illegitimate use. Who has power? The man who can abuse it with impunity.

But what size is a "government stripped down to essential functions"? I don't know. It must be large enough to protect its citizens from those who seek power over them, whether the enemy be foreign or domestic. It therefore needs a military and a police force. But these set up a differential of power. Those powers of government must therefore be subject to the rule of law. Law must be consistent with a basic constitution. The constitution must establish the equal rights of citizens under law. The government so constituted must be run by elected officials responsive to the people, and thus be democratic. And so on . . .

One will therefore notice that while government is necessary, even this best of governments sets up differentials of power, and since "men value power and prestige as much as the possession of wealth," then the wealthy will attempt to use their wealth to gain power through government. But the wealthy would attempt that even without government. Corruption is endemic to human society, and the best we can do to protect our liberty is to maintain vigilance, or as John Philpot Curran put it in 1790:

"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance."

Let us therefore remain alert.

Martin Heidegger: Nazi Philosopher?

Martin Heidegger

(Image from New York Times)

In a recent article for The New York Times (April 29, 2010), "The Jewish Question: Martin Heidegger" (perhaps better titled "The Nazi Question"), senior editor for The New Republic, Adam Kirsch, reviews two recent books on this tarnished German philosopher, who joined the Nazi Party, served as rector of Freiburg University from 1933-34, and told the student body, in a November 1933 speech, that "the Führer and he alone is the present and future German reality and its law."

The more interesting of the two books would appear to be the one originally in French by Emmanuel Faye, The Introduction of Nazism Into Philosophy in Light of the Unpublished Seminars of 1933-1935 (translated by Michael B. Smith), for Kirsch writes that Faye argues not just that that Heidegger was a philosopher who happened to join the Nazi Party, nor that Heidegger was a Nazi who just happened to be a philosopher, but that Heidegger was, crucially, a "Nazi philosopher":

Faye, an authority on Descartes, is driven to this pitch of accusation by his study of the seminars, till now untranslated or unpublished, that Heidegger taught during 1933-35, in the first flush of his Nazi enthusiasm. In these classes, Faye proves beyond doubt, we do witness "the introduction of Nazism into philosophy," the outright transformation of Heidegger's thought into a tool of Nazi indoctrination. The more familiar a reader is with Heideg­ger's work, the more shocking it will be to see him employ his key terms -- being, existence, decision -- as euphemisms for nationalism and Führer-worship. Thus we find him, in the winter of 1933-34, declaring that "the question of the awareness of the will of the community is a problem that is posed in all democracies, but one that of course can become fruitful only when the will of the Führer and the will of the people are identified in their essence." At the same time, Heidegger tells his students -- "many of whom," Faye points out, "were to become combatants at the beginning of the following decade on the Eastern front" -- that "to a Semitic nomad," the "nature of our German space" is inherently foreign.

This is complex material, for a proper critique demands that one deal not merely with nationalist ideas, ideologies of blood, and the concept of the leader, but that one engage in philosophical thinking and its distortion, not an easy labor. At the conclusion of his article, Kirsch suggests a similar task:

[W]hat makes Heidegger's Nazism a challenge -- as opposed to merely a scandal -- is the fact that he did not drift into evil, but thought his way into it. And once we acknowledge the powerful attraction of his work, we are morally and intellectually bound to explore what part of that attraction is owed to ideas with a potential for evil . . . . [T]hat more difficult questioning . . . asks us to confront not just Heideg­ger but ourselves.

I'd be interested to know what my philosopher friend Bill Vallicella thinks about this matter, for I can mostly just direct attention to a matter outside my expertise. Heidegger's personal culpability is beyond question, but the question concerning the culpability of his philosophy remains, and I think it an important one, intellectually, for Heidegger the philosopher is considered a major thinker of the 20th century, and his ideas have influenced the intellectual left, continental philosophy, literary criticism, theology, and many other fields.

As noted, I can mostly just call attention to this matter of culpability, but I'm still willing to hazard a guess. In a statement quoted above, Kirsch observes:

The more familiar a reader is with Heideg­ger's work, the more shocking it will be to see him employ his key terms -- being, existence, decision -- as euphemisms for nationalism and Führer-worship.

Kirsch isn't being very precise here in reporting on Faye's evidence, for he offers three different Heideggerian terms used for two different fascist characteristics, but none of the former seems to correspond with either of the latter. Perhaps Kirsch means "euphemisms associated with nationalism and Führer-worship"? But even if "being, existence, decision" are used by Heidegger in his seminars from 1933 to 1935 as euphemisms for Nazi concepts, Kirsch's term "euphemism" suggests that Heidegger is employing some intellectual sleight of hand, using more innocuous terms to hide something less reputable, a form of equivocation. If Heidegger is equivocating in his use of key terms from his philosophy, then his core concepts might not be essentially evil but merely corruptible.

But I haven't read Faye's book, and I would be in deep waters even if I had, so I leave this intellectual sea for better, more experienced sailors to navigate and chart . . .

UPDATE: My friend Bill Vallicella has offered his view of the matter.

Burrowing into borrowed Holbrook Jackson

Holbrook Jackson

(1874 - 1948)

(Image from Wikipedia)

I initially learned of Holbrook Jackson from my cyber-friend the Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella, who seems to have learned of Jackson from another acquaintance in the cybersphere, that "praiser of time past" Michael Gilleland. Memes travel fast in cyberspace, but Holbrook travels 'slow', for Bill first blogged about Jackson on August 7, 2007. I read the post, taking merely cursory notice. Only when he blogged again, on August 23, 2009, did I sit up and take notice sufficient to get myself interested enough to order the book by Jackson that both Bill and Michael were praising.

Jackson apparantly had a somewhat messy personal life, for he set up house in 1908 with the wife of his friend Alfred Richard Orage, a British 'intellectual' whom he had met in a Leeds bookshop eight years earlier and with whom he had founded the Leeds Arts Club in 1903. At the time, Jackson was working in the lace trade and Orage was employed as a school teacher, but both had separately left Leeds by 1906 or 1907 to work as journalists in London, where their lives remained temporarily intertwined as they together bought and edited The New Age, a literary magazine with socialist leanings. Jackson and Orage moved in the same radical circles but seem to have parted ways after the latter's wife left him for Jackson without the then still ambiguous sanction of divorce. That, anyway, is what I have managed to piece together from the unutterably reliable Wikipedia.

The book praised by Bill and Michael was The Anatomy of Bibliomania, and quite a lot of it can be viewed online at Google Books, but the true book lover will want to personally heft its entire 668 pages, as I have been doing for the past two days since it arrived. I have reached only page 20, but let me borrow what Bill quoted two years ago from some 19 pages further along:

My purpose in the following work is to discourse of the nature, excellences, uses, and diseases of books, and particularly to anatomize this humour of Bibliomania, through all his parts and species, as it is an habit, or a disease; and philosophically and medicinally to show the causes, symptoms, signs, expressions, meanings, manifestations, eccentricities, vanities, impudences, and, where expedient, the cures, for 'tis plain to conceive that it is often a genial mania, less harmful than the sanity of the sane, and most happy when endemic with moderation in the constitution of a man.

In doing so, I have described and opened up, as by a kind of dissection, not only those peccant humours (some of them) which have given impediment to the proficiency of learning and occasion to the traducement of the love of books, but also those more robust passions which are proper to bibliophilia: wherein, if I have been too plain, it must be remembered, fidelia vulnera amantis, sed dolosa ocula malignantis ['Faithful are the wounds of a lover, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.' Proverbs xxvii, 6]: to be true to any subject without frankness is impossible. These methods and motives at this present have induced me to make choice of the subject. (page 39)

As Bill observes, "It is indicative of the leisurely pace of this work that this explanation of purpose is to be found only after 39 pages of close print." This leisurely pace, I might add, appears to be in marked contrast to the apparently frenetic pace of Mr. Jackson's life . . . from what I can glean of it. My own life is far too frenetic for my sedentary tastes, but such are the circumstances of those who must make their way in this world, so I will perhaps be too quickly reading what ought to be perused in a manner "conducive to slowing down, taking one's time, and enjoying the moment," as Bill suggests. He himself is reading Jackson that way, for two years after those words, Bill has quoted further along in the book in his post on how "a youth spent cultivating the delights of study pays rich dividends as the years roll on" by drawing upon the interest accumulated from an intellectual fund saved up against the potential mental debilities of old age. I again borrow from Bill's hard work of typing:

No labour in the world is like unto study, for no other labour is less dependent upon the rise and fall of bodily condition; and, although learning is not quickly got, there are ripe wits and scholarly capacities among men of all physical degrees, whilst for those of advancing years study is of unsurpassed advantage, both for enjoyment and as a preventative of mental decay. Old men retain their intellects well enough, said Cicero, then on the full tide of his own vigorous old age, if only they keep their minds active and fully employed; [De Senectate, 22, tr. E. S. Shuckburgh, 38] and Dr. Johnson holds the same opinion: There must be a diseased mind, he said, where there is a failure of memory at seventy. [Life, ed. Hill, iii, 191] Cato (so Cicero tells us) was a tireless student in old age; when past sixty he composed the seventh book of his Origins, collected and revised his speeches, wrote a treatise on augural, pontifical, and civil law, and studied Greek to keep his memory in working order; he held that such studies were the training grounds of the mind, and prophylactics against consciousness of old age. [Op. cit. 61-62] (pages 120-121)

I am not in the same league as Cato, Cicero, or Dr. Johnson, nor of Bill or Michael, and I fear that my own poor memory indicates what Johnson termed "a diseased mind" . . . though not from want of trying to hone razor sharp my mental skills over the years. I do try, and as I told my wife the other day, "Mine is a second-rate mind that occasionally does some first-rate work." If I recall correctly, I was referring to an upcoming article of mine on Don Quixote for Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society, in which I had to analyze some Spanish . . . and I don't know Spanish. Bold and audacious of me, I admit. Bodacious, even, like this vaunting of mine via periphrastic apophasis. But a man's reach should exceed his grasp, else what's a noetic haven for? But let us return to Jackson, borrowing from Michael Gilleland's post of July 23, 2007, wherein he quotes:

I close this volume and affirm that bookmen, men of letters, students, and all manner of passionate readers are a species apart finding their sustenance in the printed word as plants imbibe air and fishes animalculae; they do not look upon life with their own eyes, but through the eyes of books as through an optical glass, magnifying, intensifying, distorting or glorifying, according as they fancy it; or sometimes they eschew all common affairs and use books as kaleidoscopes to make for their own delight fantastic patterns which they use as substitutes for life. They become natives of a world of books, creatures of the printed word, and in the end cease to be men, as, by a gradual metastasis, they are resolved into bookmen: twice-born, first of woman (as every man) and then of books, and, by reason of this, unique and distinct from the rest. (page 333)

Who would have guessed that Jackson was "born again"! But he does appear to have been baptized in the word . . . or, rather, words. But if you infer that the man was about to dam up his own verbal stream, then think again, for by his reference to closing "this volume," Jackson meant merely Part 15, for the book goes on another 17 parts, unto Part 32, and finishes with the end of its index 335 pages later!

As for me, I have reached only page 20 -- already noted above -- but I will continue to burrow . . . and borrow.

"ontological wonder-sickness"

William James

"in wandering mazes lost"

(Image from Wikipedia)

I have to prepare a response to a couple of papers being given next week at an international conference on "mysticism" -- a fraught term -- and one of the two papers, by Nobuo Kazashi (professor of philosophy at Japan's Kobe University), is titled "The Young William James and Ontological Wonder Sickness."

I've not read James in a long time, so I returned to one of his most famous books, The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, and Human Immortality (Courier Dover Publications, 1956), where James describes what he calls "ontological wonder-sickness":

Our mind is so wedded to the process of seeing an other beside every item of its experience, that when the notion of an absolute datum is presented to it, it goes through its usual procedure and remains pointing at the void beyond, as if in that lay further matter for contemplation. In short, it spins for itself the further positive consideration of a nonentity enveloping the being of its datum; and as that leads nowhere, back recoils the thought toward its datum again. But there is no natural bridge between nonentity and this particular datum, and the thought stands oscillating to and fro, wondering "Why was there anything but nonentity; why just this universal datum and not another?" and finds no end, in wandering mazes lost. Indeed, [a certain Professor] Bain's words [affirming the end of mystery in the complete vision of science when all has been encompassed within the most general of scientific laws] are so untrue that in reflecting men it is just when the attempt to fuse the manifold into a single totality has been most successful, when the conception of the universe as a unique fact is nearest its perfection, that the craving for further explanation, the ontological wonder-sickness, arises in its extremest form. As Schopenhauer says, "The uneasiness which keeps the never-resting clock of metaphysics in motion, is the consciousness that the non-existence of this world is just as possible as its existence." (pages 71-72)

In the reference to finding no end but being "in wandering mazes lost," James quotes from Milton's epic Paradise Lost, Book 2.561, where the more philosophical of the fallen angels apparently fall into a type of wonder-sickness -- and James is probably punning between "wandering" and "wondering" -- though Milton does not explicitly state that these erring angels pose the ultimate ontological question. They perhaps don't suffer from James's peculiar illness.

But what is the symptom of "ontological wonder sickness," anyway? The "oscillating to and fro, wondering"? Or the "craving for further explanation" itself? James is not entirely clear on this point.

Be that as it may, I suspect that a fear of nothingness lies at the heart of James's concern, for the Schopenhauer quote emphasizes "that the non-existence of this world is just as possible as its existence."

Perhaps I should ask my friend Bill Vallicella.

On two virtues developed through blogging...

Personification of Virtue (Greek Arete)

Celsus Library in Ephesos

(Image from Wikipedia)

A cyber-friend of mine, William Vallicella, maintains the blog Maverick Philosopher, which was one of my inspirations for getting started on blogging. This past spring, Vallicella took a month-long break from blogging, so I was somewhat alarmed to see a recent post of his titled "Four and a Half Years Into It: Why Blog? " My fear that he might be stopping for good was ungrounded, however, for he went on to briefly elaborate several good reasons to take up and continue blogging.

Some of what he wrote could be understood as a variation on developing what Thomas Acquinas called the virtue of studiousness:

"Properly speaking, study denotes keen application of the mind to something." (Aquinas, Summa Theologica, "Question 166. Studiousness," Article 1)

Or as Vallicella explains:

We studious types are not about to abandon study. It is is just too richly satisfying. Now if you read, you ought to study what you read, and if you study, you ought to take notes. And if you take notes, you owe it to yourself to assemble them into some sort of coherent commentary. What is the point of studious reading if not to evaluate critically what you read, assimilating the good while rejecting the bad? The forming of the mind is the name of the game.

But nurturing the virtue of studiousness is not the only reason to blog. One can also note progress toward inculcating the old philosophical virtue of ataraxia:

Many are the reasons to blog. To develop a thicker skin is another of them. A thick skin is an attribute conducive to negotiating this world with equanimity. Since I've taken up blogging, I have noticed a definite uptick in the fitness of my psycho-armor. Nasty e-mails and the like roll off me. The scum of humanity offend me less. And one day, to cop a line from Nietzsche, "my only negation shall be to look away."

To assist me in joining Vallicella and Nietzsche at looking away, I've found trash icons very helpful. A mere click trashes the nasty email or the trolling comment far more succinctly than wasted words.

Of course, one need not become a blogger to develop the virtues of studiousness and ataraxia. One can read Maverick Philosopher instead and learn from a man who, despite having a doctorate in philosophy, actually is a philosopher.

Or go directly to his book: A Paradigm Theory of Existence: Onto-Theology Vindicated.

Biblical Inerrancy?

Holy Bible

"inerrant in the originals"

(Image from Wikipedia)

My philosophical friend Bill Vallicella has occasionally broached the issue of "scriptural inerrancy" -- such as in a blog post of over a year ago, when he informed his readers that he subscribes to the journal Philosophia Christi but does not belong to the Evangelical Philosophical Society (EPS), for even if he intended to violate his policy of "study everything, join nothing," he could never join this particular society, for to do so, he would have to sign the following statement:

I subscribe to the "Doctrinal Affirmation" of the EPS as follows -- "The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and therefore inerrant in the originals. God is a Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory."

Bill could not sign the Affirmation because as he understands inerrancy, the Bible cannot reasonably be viewed as inerrant "in its entirety." Being a reasonable, philosophical sort of fellow, however, he notes that he might have misunderstood the meaning of "inerrancy," and he therefore passed the issue to his readers for comment, asking if someone could define the term and explain it putative reasonability.

The EPS statement on "inerrancy," by the way, reminds us of Ted Olsen's summary of what the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) requires of its members:

ETS membership has only two doctrinal requirements: you must affirm the Trinity and the inerrancy of Scripture.

The ETS website is perhaps a more authoritative place to look:

The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs. God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory.

Clearly, the members of these two societies -- the EPS and the ETS -- belong to the same subset of Christians. Moreover, this requirement by these two societies implies that evangelicals affirm inerrancy. Perhaps most do, but not all ... though "evangelical" is a slippery term.

Anyway, my posts of the past few days have remined me that I don't know what the term "inerrancy" precisely means -- though I could check out what Wikipedia has to say on this issue and follow up its links to more scholarly sources. One could also peruse The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which asserts that the Bible "is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches" and "is without error or fault in all its teaching, ... in what it states about God's acts in creation, ... [and] about the events of world history," which is pretty far-reaching but which also does not state precisely what would consitute an "error."

Several of Bill Vallicella's commentors provide definitions of inerrancy, as I now see from the blog entry, and one of the commentors mentions J. P. Moreland's view indicating that "he does not believe in six twenty four hour periods of Creation," which I suppose means that Moreland would consider a literal reading of the Genesis creation account to be in error.

This has aroused my curiosity about Moreland's view of inerrancy, so I've now taken a look at the article mentioned yesterday: "The Rationality Of Belief In Inerrancy" (Trinity Journal 7.1 (Spring 1986): 75-86). I don't find an explicit statement of what inerrancy means for Moreland, but I did find his statement on why he thinks that "one is within his or her epistemic rights" (page 75) in holding to inerrancy:

[I]nsights from the philosophy of science show that one can be rational in affirming inerrancy in the presence of a number of anomalies even if this involves suspending judgment or using ad hoc hypotheses. This activity can be rational because: 1) hypotheses are not formed or tested by enumerative induction (where cases are evaluated in their own terms) but by hypothetico-deduction or abduction (where the particular cases are judged against the backdrop of the hypothesis); 2) the fact/interpretation distinction, though a genuine one, is not always easy to draw; the rationality of theory change, therefore, is not a simple matter of falsification, but rather a very complex affair that defies simplistic treatment; and 3) problem cases are not treated qua particulars but qua members of a class and, thus, the evidence of this whole class must be overthrown before the case can rationally be judged as a falsifying instance of that class. (page 85)

Without going to the trouble of explicating this passage in its entirety (which I'll leave for readers as homework), I'd simply like to note that this gives an inerrantist considerable leeway for maintaining belief in biblical inerrancy despite what 'errantists' might consider evidence against that belief.

Note to my students: don't try to defend the 'inerrancy' of your essays with Moreland's arguments, for you can be within your epistemic rights, yet still be wrong.

"Islamic ethics tends toward extreme theological voluntarism."

Qur'an, Ninth Century

إِنَّمَا قَوْلُنَا لِشَيْءٍ إِذَا أَرَدْنَاهُ أَن نَّقُولَ لَهُ كُن فَيَكُونُ

"For to anything which We have willed,

We but say the word, 'Be', and it is."

(Yusuf Ali, translator, Ayah 40, Qur'an)

Small Telyashayakh Mosque, Tashkent

(Image from Wikipedia)

The heading to this day's blog entry comes from an article by Daniel W. Brown.

You may recall that I cited him yesterday on Islamic divine voluntarism. Who, therefore, is Daniel W. Brown, and what are his credentials? According to Cultural Encounters: A Journal for the Theology of Culture, Dr. Brown has the following credentials:

Dr. Daniel Brown has lived in Egypt and in Pakistan where he was born and spent his first eighteen years. In 1993 he received his Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the University of Chicago. He has been a visiting scholar at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, the Institute of Islamic Culture in Lahore, and Cairo University and has taught Islamic Studies at Mount Holyoke, Amherst and Smith Colleges.

Since 1997 he has been Pastor of Stony Brook Community Church in South Hadley, Massachusetts. He is the author of Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought (Cambridge, 1999) and A New Introduction to Islam (Blackwell, 2003).

From this information, I'd say that Dr. Brown appears reputable and trustworthy.

With that in mind, let me return to the passage that I cited yesterday, within the context of the passage in which it occurs:

Islam might be considered the defining case of ethical voluntarism. Among most Sunni Muslim scholars, past and present, voluntarism has been an undisputed assumption of Islamic ethical theory, finding reflection in Islamic credal formulations.

We confess that the decision concerning good and evil wholly depends on Allah. For whoever should say that the decision regarding good and evil depends upon another than Allah would thereby be guilty of unbelief regarding Allah, and his confession of the unity of Allah would become invalid. (Wasiyat Abi Hanifa, art. 6. Cited in A.J. Wensinck, Muslim Creed: Its Genesis and Historical Development (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1965), 126)

Ibn Hazm (d. 1064) offers the following stark elaboration of the majority position:

If God the Exalted had informed us that he would punish us for the acts of others . . . or for our own obedience, all that would have been right and just, and we should have been obliged to accept it. (Ibn Hazm, al-fisal fi'l-milal wa-l-ahwa' wa-n-nihal, 5 vols. (Cairo, 1890-1903), 3:92. Cited in Hourani, Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 174)

As Ibn Hazm's statement implies, and as Hourani points out, Muslim theologians, including al-Ash'ari (d. 935), Ibn Hazm and al-Ghaziili (d. llll), did not shy away from the most extreme consequences of voluntarism: Should God have commanded theft and idolatry it would have been right for humans to commit them. (Hourani, Reason and Tradition, 59)

Ethical voluntarism reinforces and is reinforced by the general tenor of Ash'arite theology, with its characteristic emphasis on the overwhelming power and sovereignty of God at the expense of human freedom. In the words of a standard credal formulation: "Allah has created the creatures, who are devoid of power because they are weak and impotent, whereas Allah is their creator and their sustenance; as He says: 'It is God who created you, who fed you, who, later, will cause you to die, and then will make you alive'" (Wasiyat Abi Hanifa, art. 12, in Wensinck, Muslim Creed, 126). Voluntarism accords well with such a view of the overwhelming power of the creator and the utter dependence of the creature. Further, voluntarism grants to God complete freedom -- He is unbound by any external standard of good, evil or justice. (Daniel W. Brown, "Islamic Ethics in Comparative Perspective," The Muslim World, Volume 89, Number 2, April 1999, pages 183-4)

Dr. Brown was writing this in 1999, two years prior to September 11, 2001, so he had no obvious axe to grind, and since he seems to have credentials and to be trustworthy, I see no reason to discount his presentation of the standard Sunni Muslim view of Allah's ethical directives as voluntarist and his treatment of Ibn Hazm's view as normative.

Now, this does not mean that a Muslim can do whatever he pleases, so I don't entirely agree with my friend Bill Vallicella's formulation of the problem:

The Muslim view is quite 'chilling' if one thinks about it. If God is not contrained by anything, not logic, not morality, then to use the words but reverse the sense of the famous Karamazov passage, "everything is permitted." In other words, if the Muslim god exists then "everything is permitted" just as surely as "everything is permitted" if the Christian god does not exist. In the latter case, everything is permitted because morality has no foundation. In the former case, everything is permitted because morality's foundation is in Absolute Whim.

To put it in another way, a foundation of morality in unconstrained and unlimited will is no foundation at all.

To 'feel the chill,' couple the Muslim doctrine about God with the Muslim literalist/fundamentalist doctrine that his will is plain to discern in the pages of the Koran. Now murder can easily be justified, the murder of 'infidels' namely, on the ground that it is the will of God. (William F. Vallicella, "Islam and the Euthyphro Problem," Maverick Philosopher, November 5, 2007)

Although one can conclude from Islamic divine voluntarism that 'everything is permitted' to Allah, one cannot infer that 'everything is permitted' to those who submit to Allah. Muslims must follow Allah's ethical directives . . . whatever they happen to be.

As to precisely what Allah's ethical commands entail . . . well, that is the 72-virginal-houri question.

Divine Voluntarism: Ibn Hazm Not Normative for Islam?

al-Ghazali

Against divine voluntarism?

(Image from al-Ghazali Website)

Time is short, but scholarship is long.

I'd have more to say, but I have to prepare for my day, so let me just cite a few sources for us all to chew on.

I received a courteous rejoinder from a certain JDsg, who took issue with the view that Ibn Hazm's opinion is the normative one in Islam:

No, in fact, it's the other way around. One of the things that irritated Muslims about the Pope's speech was that he was using the position of a very marginal scholar to represent Islam as a whole. As the open letter to the Pope, signed by 38 Muslim scholars, points out:

"In the Islamic spiritual, theological and philosophical tradition, the thinker you mention, Ibn Hazm (d. 1069 CE), is a worthy but very marginal figure, who belonged to the Zahiri school of jurisprudence which is followed by no one in the Islamic world today. If one is looking for classical formulations of the doctrine of transcendence, much more important to Muslims are figures such as al-Ghazali (d. 1111 CE) and many others who are far more influential and more representative of Islamic belief than Ibn Hazm."

Which is why I was a little surprised by this post and the other, where you were relying fairly heavily on Ibn Hazm for your argument.

To this, I replied:

Thanks, JDSG, for the comment. I relied on Ibn Hazm because he was cited in the articles and because Aref Ali Nayed seems to have accepted Ibn Hazm's view on the 'nature' of Allah as correct.

Nayed doesn't dispute Ibn Hazm's views (not in what I've read), but argues instead that the Christian view of God is also just as voluntarist as the Muslim view of Allah.

On this point, I think that Nayed is wrong -- but he's right that one also finds these voluntarist strains in Christianity. That's the danger inherent in what the Pope referred to as 'dehellenization'.

I'll continue looking into this issue. You mention al-Ghazali. Is al-Ghazali's view actually less voluntarist than Ibn Hazm's? Or does he simply prefer not to express himself so radically as Ibn Hazm does?

Aside from the extreme manner in which Ibn Hazm expressed himself, are Muslim views on theology any less voluntarist?

Can you cite a specific statement by al-Ghazali to clarify this?

I've not had much time to look into al-Ghazali's position on divine voluntarism, but I've located some tantilizing passages by scholars.

I've found a quote attributed to Daniel Brown, "Islamic Ethics in Comparative Perspective," The Muslim World, 89 (2) (1999), 181–192, which states:

"Ibn Hazm and al-Ghaziili ... did not shy away from the most extreme consequences of voluntarism: Should God have commanded theft and idolatry it would have been right for humans to commit them."

I will have to locate the precise context of this quote and see what Brown says more generally about this issue, but it certainly appears to narrow the difference between Ibn Hazm and al-Ghazali (assuming that al-Ghaziili is not a different figure).

I have also located a passage from a different scholar, Anver M. Emon, "Natural Law and Natural Rights in Islamic Law," that provides more context and notes that al-Ghazali interests himself in the normative value of nature but nevertheless affirms a voluntarist view of Allah:

The normativity of nature is established in the light of a voluntarism that maintains the willfulness of God, denies any obligations on God, yet upholds a teleology linked to a normative nature whose normativity is the product of a willful divine grace. Maslaha [i.e., Arabic مصلحة, 'public interest'] thereby fuses both the empiricism of nature and normative value without indulging in a natural teleology that has the theological implications of imposing on God obligations to do the good. Under al-Ghazali's version of nature, God is not bound to do the good. But He does so out of His choice and will. We as humans can rely on the constancy that is elemental to God's grace, and fuse fact and value to create legal norms through a rational assessment of empirical reality. But we are also aware that God can alter His grace if He chooses. (Anver M. Emon, "Natural Law and Natural Rights in Islamic Law" (pdf), Journal of Law and Religion, Volume 20, Number 2 (2004-2005) 378-379)

I'll have to return to these fascinating passages when I have more time, and I'll also want to address their significance for something that my friend Bill Vallicella has written on this issue over at his blog, Maverick Philosopher.

A beef with poetry?

Wallace Stevens

Sending the latest freed man on a prose errand?

(Image from Wikipedia)

My friend Bill Vallicella has a beef with poetry ... or maybe just with the occasional poem that sends a line or two on that prose errand that John Ciardi reportedly -- perhaps in How Does a Poem Mean? -- warned against.

Vallicella chooses "The Latest Freed Man," a poem by Wallace Stevens, to make his point:

Tired of the old descriptions of the world,
The latest freed man rose at six and sat
On the edge of his bed. He said,
"I suppose there is
A doctrine to this landscape. Yet, having just
Escaped from the truth, the morning is color and mist,
Which is enough: the moment's rain and sea,
The moment's sun (the strong man vaguely seen),
Overtaking the doctrine of this landscape. Of him
And of his works, I am sure. He bathes in the mist
Like a man without a doctrine. The light he gives --
It is how he gives his light. It is how he shines,
Rising upon the doctors in their beds
And on their beds . . ."
And so the freed man said.
It was how the sun came shining into his room:
To be without a description of to be,
[. . .]

I've not read this poem by Stevens, nor could I locate it online to read in its entirety. For the source, Vallicella cites The Palm at the End of the Mind (Knopf, 1971, pp. 165-166), but I don't plan to order this since I already have too many unread books groaning in their lonely multitudes upon my burdened shelves.

Anyway, Vallicella acknowledges that:

Stevens is a very good poet indeed. And like most good poets, he knows enough not to send a poem on a prose errand, to borrow an apt phrase from John Ciardi. So one will look in vain for a clearly stated philosophical thesis packaged poetically.

So far, so good. However, remarks Vallicella:

There is nonetheless philosophical content here. Speaking of the sun, Stevens says that "The light he gives -- It is how he gives his light." The light is its giving: the being of the light is its appearing. The appearing of the light is not the appearing of something that does not appear or is irreducible to its appearing; the appearing of the light is its being.

Despite all this light, I remain in the dark, for I understand neither Stevens nor Vallicella. I would need to read more of the poem, more of Stevens, and more of what Stevens was reading before venturing an opinion on this specific line. Vallicella suggests that:

This is the phenomenological conception of the phenomenon as found in Heidegger and Sartre. It points back to Husserl, but even more so to Nietzsche. In the Twilight of the Idols, we read:

The true world — we have abolished. What world has remained? The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one!

The true world and the apparent world are the same.

Yes, perhaps that's what Stevens was getting at, if there's any true world left after having "Escaped from the truth." But what's Vallicella's specific beef? This:

To come directly to my beef with poetry: what's the ultimate good of suggesting momentous theses with nary an attempt at justification? Of smuggling them into our minds under cover of delectable wordcraft?

This isn't so much a stated beef as a loaded question or two. Vallicella implies that Stevens has in fact sent this poem on a prose errand from which it never returns with the proper -- or properly formulated -- exposition. We are left with a lacuna, an ex-position -- or better (worse), an x-position. With nothing.

I suppose that I could reply to Vallicella that Stevens is inviting us to fill in the 'x-position'. That we are to provide the justification ... or not to. Do we want to play this language game, or not? I don't think that Stevens is 'smuggling' -- the man was too proper and legally minded to act the role of smuggler ... except, perhaps, as one too smug in his opinions. But I don't sense that in Stevens.

I'm not convinced, anyway, that Stevens has sent his poem on a prose errand, for he stops well short of attempting to demonstrate the truth of claims made in his poem. Indeed, poetry is not a medium readily suited to a rigorously logical demonstration of truth. Analytical philosophy of the sort that Vallicella is very good at requires that language define its terms very strictly and stick to those definitions. Prose can do that. But poetry? Poetry usually plays with language in ways that preclude the sort of rigor that analytical philosophy expects.

Vallicella concludes:

Poetry is a delightful adjunct to a civilized life, but philosophy rules. It would be very foolish, however, to try to convince any poet of this.

Rules what? The way to expository truth? Yes, if one is writing essays, I'd tend to agree. Philosophy does that far better than poetry. But Vallicella's critique of poetry is a bit like dismissing jazz because it doesn't prove any mathematical theorems.

Okay, I exaggerate. But so does Vallicella.

But if Vallicella would like to read a poem that does go off on a prose errand from which it returns, then I invite him to read John Milton's "logical epic," Paradise Lost.