Sex (and Aristotle)

Mudblood Catholic (Gabriel Blanchard) is currently doing an excellent series of posts (first here) in response to Ed Feser's equally excellent natural law analysis of sex (best to start from this blogpost here accompanied by reading Feser's paper referred to in the article).

As Gabriel has not yet finished his series of posts and because I simply don't have the Lenten patience to give the topic a complete response, what follows is inevitably incomplete. Instead I'm going to focus on some key features of an Aristotelian reaction to what I've read so far, on the grounds that the Aristotelian background is sometimes assumed rather than stated by Aquinas' position (and thus sometimes overlooked by later Thomist thinkers) and, in any case, is of interest in itself. (It is of course anyway the privilege of an analytic Thomist not to be consistently Thomist and sometimes to try on the mantle of analytic Aristotelianism instead.) I'd stress that the following is simply a reflection on some points in the existing analyses: it claims neither completeness nor aspires directly to correct or refute either Feser or Blanchard.

The first thing to note is that Catholicism allows and even requires philosophical thinking in morality. There is a widely held non-Catholic suspicion that philosophy dies with Catholic dogmatic religion: that answers, being laid out and decided, form a telephone directory of morality rather than, say, the desperate existential, but open-ended quest that seems to typify the earlier dialogues of Plato. This is simply false as both the Blanchard/Feser exchange shows as well as does even a passing familiarity with the internal disputes of mediaeval scholasticism. Quite why this is so is a different matter and one that would require a much more extended discussion than I can provide here. But in any case (an insight I think I owe to Leo Strauss) unlike the legalised reasoning of Islam and Judaism, Christianity to a great extent can embrace the fluidity of the philosophical life in a way that these other revealed religions cannot: roughly, the tension between Athens and Jerusalem is one internal to Christianity and external to Judaism and Islam. So the first point is that understanding sex and the morality of sex for Catholics involves hard philosophical thought: it is not something that can be simply read off the page of a dogmatic codex. (I should note in passing that this philosophical requirement is not necessarily one for each individual but for the Church as a whole. I however pass over the details of this for the present.)  To translate this into Aristotelian terms, the tentativeness about moral reasoning that is found throughout the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics is one that is not foreign to Catholicism. To translate this into Blanchard/Feser terms, the debate between them is entirely to be expected and welcomed. As Gabriel notes:

I started having problems with it immediately, which was delicious. People don’t usually realize how spacious Catholicism really is. Seeing it from the outside, they perceive the dogmas merely as boundaries—and they are in one sense, but they are much more like LEGOs: the defined structure is what lets you do all the fun stuff.

The second thing to note is that, coupled with this philosophical openness is indeed a dogmatic certainty. In the present case, for example, homosexual intercourse is clearly morally wrong: I won't attempt to defend that here except to note that, for 2000 years, that's been the clear teaching. Whatever the philosophical openness, there is also a dogmatic closure. This element of brute assertion is also typical of Aristotle:

That is why in order to be a competent student of the noble and the just, and in short of the topics of politics in general, the pupil is bound to have been well trained in his habits. For the starting point is the fact that a thing is so; if this be satisfactorily ascertained, there will be no need also to know the reason why it is so. (EN I 1095b)

The combination of these first two points is that moral philosophy will have to deal with some moral truths being clearly established and yet the precise reasoning for those truths being open to the sort of fluidity of debate typical of philosophical discussion.

Related to those points is a third point: that what is clear to the wise (moral) person (phronimos) will not be clear to those who are not.

Virtue then is the settled disposition of the mind determining the choice of actions and emotions, consisting essentially in the observance of the mean relative to us, this being determined by principle, that is, as the prudent man [phronimos] would determine it. (EN II 1106b-1107a)

Consequently the unproved assertions and opinions of experienced and elderly people, or of the prudent [phronimoi], are as much deserving of attention as those which they support by proof; for experience has given them an eye for things, and so they see correctly. (EN VI 1143b)

To sum all this up, there will be limits in what philosophical reasoning can establish, both in terms of coming to clear conclusions and in terms of coming to conclusions which might overthrow the common sense of the wise person. (At this point, we might add as Catholics, the certainties of revealed teaching will help. But the space for certainties intruding into philosophical reasoning from external wisdom has already been made by Aristotle.)

More specifically, in relation to the Blanchard/Feser debate, at some points, what will be clear to the clear sightedness of the moral will not be clear to those of us who are not so gifted. We may remain unconvinced by their arguments. But that does not mean that we are right not to be so convinced: such a failure is a result of our lack, either because we are corrupt or because we are in some other way impaired. As the modern neo-Aristotelian Rosalind Hursthouse puts it:

Aristotle's view allows that his answer will not work for everyone. It fails for two different sorts of people. One is the sort of person who has been sufficiently corrupted by their upbringing not to be able to see anything amiss in the life of the person who is 'successfully' non-virtuous...The other sort of person for whom Aristotle's answer may not work would be an 'unnatural' human being... (Hurthouse in Warburton, 2005, pp182-183)

Given the Catholic understanding of the effects of original sin, particularly on concupiscence, all of us are likely to find ourselves constantly wondering how many of our own judgments are thus impaired.


I now move on to a different aspect of the debate. One may be an Aristotelian either in believing that Aristotle has usefully set out a basic framework of approaching ethics, and/or in believing that how he applies that framework has produced useful results. So, for example, one might accept that the basic Aristotelian approach sketched above (and perhaps adding such matters as teleology) is a good approach to sexual ethics, while denying that the sort of traditional Aristotelian conclusions on such ethics are actually necessitated by such an approach. Aristotle's own treatment of sex, for example, is primarily set out in Books VIII and IX of the Nicomachean Ethics where it is seen as part of the overarching concept of philia (friendship) rather than through, say, the prism of Lewis' The Four Loves. It would be perfectly possible to argue that Aristotle is correct in his basic approach to ethics while suggesting that the treatment of sexual ethics in the Nicomachean Ethics is inadequate. Indeed, it would be hard to argue that sexual ethics is adequately treated by Aristotle because he says very little indeed about it. That said, I am going to argue that what Aristotle does say provides a rather more helpful starting point than (say) Lewis' divisions between the four various types of love (which form an important part of Blanchard's analysis).

Aristotle's analysis of friendship divides it into three main types: that of virtue, that of pleasure and that of usefulness. The friendship of husband and wife is, in terms of its function, one of pleasure (obvious), one of usefulness (both in procreation and other support) and also potentially of virtue 'if the partners be of high moral character' (EN VIII 1162a). A number of points emerge from this analysis.

First, a philosophical analysis can be useful for what it leaves out or passes over as well as for what it includes. I confess that Aristotle's rather brisk way with sexual feelings and romantic attraction attracts me. As he says elsewhere:

We must therefore be content if, in dealing with subjects and starting from premises thus uncertain, we succeed in presenting a broad outline of the truth...for it is the mark of an educated mind to expect that amount of exactness in each kind which the nature of the particular subject admits (EN I 1094b).

That many writers over the years have agonised over the nuances of romantic sensibility does not mean that every nuance so produced is worthwhile: in addition to the erratic nature of the sensibilities of fallen humanity, in general some oversensitivity to detail will tend to disguise the core of the matter. (I find for example the erotic hesitancies and wanderings of Iris Murdoch's characters often intensely irritating in this way and long for a brisk sensibility such as that of Flora Poste.)

Secondly, sex is analysed primarily through the household and the nucleus of that household, the man/woman couple. In essence, this is because the tele (ends) of the organism and parts of the organism make sense within an overall ordering of the cosmos: the species imitates eternity by its eternal existence while its members undergo a cycle of birth, procreation and death. The individual's life takes place within the social units of (eg) the state and the household, which themselves have goals and to which the individual's actions are subordinated and contribute. In other words, sexual activity and the proper use of the sexual organs forms part of an ordered structure of the universe and cannot be understood or even noticed apart from that structure.

Why does that matter? Well, take Blanchard's following observation:

Thirdly—and this is a lesser point, but it’s important, given the claims made by Neo-Scholasticism for what shows something to be natural—it must be pointed out, as a matter of historical record, that romantic love was not regarded as a dignified or spiritual phenomenon until the twelfth century, at least in Christendom and its Euro-Levantine predecessors—except, in Greece and later in Rome, for homosexual Eros. To revere romantic love, that fanatical, self-abasing, inconstant, reckless, and involuntary phenomenon, was as ridiculous to our Christian ancestors of the early Middle Ages as it was to their pagan ancestors of the classical era. Nor, until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was the romantic tradition linked to marriage even by Romantics; for the Troubadours who originated the tradition of courtly love, adultery was of its essence. The idea that Eros is shown by actual human habits to be naturally directed toward marriage is an artifact of a long and localized cultural development—or, more bluntly, pure moonshine.


Now I take an Aristotelian response here to be something along the following lines. People have all sorts of desire for pleasure. To the extent that romantic love is just a desire for pleasure, it hardly matters. (One might as well worry about the finer points of playing tiddly winks. Even if you are very keen on tiddly winks, it still doesn't matter that much.) It does matter to the extent that it is directed or can be directed towards one of the great ends of human nature. The most obviously relevant one here is that of creating the household (and thus ensuring the continuity of the species by procreation and education of the children). The erotic disorder of romantic love needs to be canalised to that end. (And despite the received wisdom that in long term marriages, such romantic intensity burns low after the initial turbulence, as a member of such a long term relationship, I think I'd have to say that, in many ways, though undoubtedly canalised towards sustaining a childbearing household, its intensity has grown to an extent I never would have dreamed of as being possible those many years ago.)

But in addition to that creation of the household, Aristotle would also have pointed to the greatest end of human beings as being relevant here: that of the contemplation of divine things (EN X 1177a). That contemplation is easier with a few co-workers (1177b) but in general requires minimal external help.

But the friendship of the good is good and grows with their interaction. And they seem actually to become better by putting their friendship into practice, and because they correct each other's faults, for each takes the impress from the other of those traits in him that give him pleasure -whence the saying:

             Noble deeds from noble men.

(EN IX 1172a)

The telos of contemplation is aided by having a few friends. That is possible within a good marriage (although it is certainly not either exclusive to marriage or indeed necessary to marriage). The household by its other directedness of procreation and education of children disciplines romantic love towards the second best life of active moral virtue (EN X 1178a). In the best scenario, it can also discipline romantic love towards the end of contemplation. Both those ends matter because they fit into the wider pattern of the cosmos (through the imitation of eternity in procreation and death, and in the imitation of god by contemplation of the divine). To the extent that romantic love can be turned towards those great ends, it matters. But to the extent it cannot, it is only a constellation of bodily pleasures, the precise nature of which hardly matters at all. (So to take up Blanchard's point, that romantic love is only a comparative late comer to our cultural imaginary and to our understanding of marriage is really neither here nor there: only to the extent that it fits in with the understanding of human teleology sketched above should it be be attended to. However marriage as the possible site of important and virtuous friendship is there in Aristotle, and. I'd suggest, it is this rather than the focus on romantic love which provides a sounder base for the analysis of marriage's (and hence sex's) importance.)


Let me try to sum up the main points of this post:

1) An Aristotelian analysis of love (and of other things) will not always be obvious to all people (or indeed in parts to anyone!) It requires hard philosophical thought and debate. (And may need to be resolved by the assertion of the wise or revelation.)

2) Aristotle's own analysis of romantic love is quite coarse grained and leaves out a lot of detail that later thinkers might introduce. This may well be an advantage.

3) For any human activity, it is always necessary to ask towards what goal it is directed. That direction in turn will fit into a wider, teleological understanding of the universe as a whole. Without that understanding of the whole, it is likely that the telos (and thus nature) of the part will be misunderstood.

4) Sexual attraction is to be analysed primarily in the context of the procreating household and the establishment of the male/female pair. Other cases are of marginal importance.

Stoicism and Eudaimonistic ethics

                                                                 Where's Zeno...?


After reading a report from STOICON 2015 (ie a conference on Stoicism) (here) I tweeted the following question:

Reading report from STOICON wonder here about relative attractiveness of Stoicism vs Ancient Philosophy in general. Arguably all Ancient Philosophy is therapeutic, but what is it about Stoic therapy that appeals? (Why eg don't we take Platonic injunctions to mathematics or even theurgy as seriously?) For a modern 'therapeutic' Platonism see http://edwardfeser.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/andersons-pure.html …

(That provoked a very helpful exchange mostly with Cathy Barry (@Cathyby) with Jules Evans (@julesevans77) joining in at the end to which I'm grateful for prompting me to further thought.)

The original question wasn't (purely anyway) rhetorical: Stoicism does seem peculiarly attractive to many moderns and I'm not sure exactly why. In the report I linked to above, much of what is valued in Stoicism is common to much ancient philosophy. For example, most ancient ethics is therapeutic in the sense that it offers to improve your life: to make you eudaimon (flourishing). Moreover, it is focused primarily on internal goods (the virtues) rather than external goods (stuff, social status). To the extent that Stoicism tends (more than other schools) to be (at least) deistic, perfectionist, rationalist, suspicious of emotions and utterly dismissive of external goods (you can be as eudaimon on a rack as you can be watching TV with a good whisky), it might well be thought to have particular difficulties that make it less attractive to the modern mind than other ancient ethical approaches.

I'm pretty sure that most of the answer lies in the peculiarities of Roman Stoicism, and in particular the philosophers Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Seneca. Roughly, all of these tend to be much more interested in practical techniques rather than in the more foundational questions raised by the earlier Greek Stoics. Moreover, to the extent that Stoicism in general rejects external circumstances as an element in flourishing to a quite unusual degree (certainly when compared to the Peripatetics), it is peculiarly compatible with any modern lifestyle: why change your life when you can just change your mind?

Now, I have two related worries about this. First, technique without asking serious questions about what purposes those techniques serve isn't philosophy , certainly not in a sense that Socrates or a modern academic philosopher would recognize it. (Indeed, were I to be waspish, Plato might well find a combination of marketable techniques and the promise of success in the everyday world rather more characteristic of sophistry than philosophy.) And to the extent that philosophy, that personal, desperate grappling with truth, is part of the good life, then a focus on technique together with a distraction from the pursuit of truth is at least unfortunate and perhaps harmful. Secondly, to the extent I've reflected on the ethical claims of Stoicism, I'm pretty sure they're wrong. In ancient terms, I suppose I'd count as close to a Peripatetic (ie Aristotelian) with a consequent emphasis on the need for reforming the political space, a focus on good upbringing, the cultivation of appropriate emotions (including anger)  and contemplation of 'divine things' as the perfect life. Whether I'm right in that judgment isn't terribly important: what is important is that many of the specific claims of Stoicism are by no means clearly correct and if the techniques recommended actually do have an effect, they may well be producing vice rather than virtue.

I suppose at the end I'm left with wondering what would be lost or gained if we didn't have conferences like STOIKON or events like Stoic Week, and instead had VIRTUEETHICSCON or Eudaimonia week. What would be lost, I think, is the coherence of a brand: here is something with a fairly coherent message and with immediate, relatively easy instructions for getting involved at once. You don't have to think much: you just have to be attracted and act. And that's not necessarily a bad thing: we all have to start somewhere and most of us have stumbled onto the deeper things that inform our lives by some sort of combination of luck and immediate (erotic) attraction. I'm not sure that any other school of ancient philosophy can do that quite as easily as Stoicism (although Mark Anderson has a damn good go for Platonism) even if I'm pushed to be absolutely clear as to why that's the case. (Another suggestion that crosses my mind is that it is to do with the occasional, conversational style of Roman Stoicism (esp) Seneca, quite apart from the issue of content. Much more engaging than (say) the 'contents of an academic's wastebin' style of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. But anyway...) But I think it would be terribly sad if you stopped there and didn't explore ancient ethics further and, in particular, when examining Stoic claims, ask: Is this true? Is this truly virtuous?

Why does any of this matter, except to those (undoubtedly a minority) who have an existing interest in ancient philosophy? There are a number of possible answers to this, many centring on the general role of classical studies in modern education. But let me give a more narrowly philosophical answer. There is a view (one I largely share), developing from Elizabeth Anscombe and Alasdair MacIntyre that there is something radically amiss with modern moral philosophy. (Anscombe's paper of that name is the locus classicus for this analysis.) In essence, both advise a return to eudaimonistic ethics, an ethics based on human flourishing and the virtues. If anything along those lines is right, then adopting the correct view of eudaimonia and its attainment is of central importance not only to each individual's life, but also to our wider society. Stoicism may well be an excellent introduction to that ressourcement and the general pattern of eudaimonistic ethcs, but it is one that we Aristotelian-Thomists at least would like to see subject to philosophical challenge and ultimate abandonment.

Welcoming gay orientation?

I was going to put aside any direct and general consideration of the Synod at least for the moment: as the Blessed Leonard Cohen said, 'It did some good/It did some harm.'

But the contrarian in me still wants to tackle one specific issue summed up in paragraph 50 of the relatio:

 Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community. Are we capable of providing for these people, guaranteeing [...] them [...] a place of fellowship in our communities? Oftentimes, they want to encounter a Church which offers them a welcoming home. Are our communities capable of this, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?

I'll also couple that with the question of welcoming people who identify themselves under the description of 'gay'. Indeed, let's go for broke: I'm going to argue that we can and should 'accept and value' a gay orientation.

Before I get stuck into that, some ground clearing. 99.9% of the time you hear someone arguing that the Catholic Church should 'accept and value a gay orientation' it means something along the lines of that pushed by Martin Pendergast: the Catholic Church should simply accept active homosexuality as another valid expression of sexuality alongside heterosexuality. One reason many orthodox Catholics are hostile to a claim worded in the way I have ('we can and should accept and value a gay orientation') is that activists like Pendergast send up a cloud of words and theology which covers up a fundamental change in morality under a lot of fluff about valuing and welcoming. (Reading his latest article, you wouldn't/needn't find anything that insisted he be free to have sex with another man, but that is simply what he really means.)

So let's rule that out immediately: I'm not arguing that. I straightforwardly accept that any sexual action between the same sex or indeed outside marriage is sinful. And, as a result, 99.9% of the time, when claims such as 'we can and should accept and value a gay orientation' are made, in terms of the substance of the argument, I disagree. But although it would certainly be simpler -and perhaps often less misleading to stick with this rough and ready rejection- I think it's worth pushing a little deeper, in part to do justice to the 0.1% of times when you hear people who are genuinely not trying to undermine Catholic teaching by making the claim, and, perhaps more importantly, to extract the nugget of truth that is expressed on those occasions.

The Catechism (para 2358) says:

The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial.

(It's also worth noting (just to get the ducks up in a line) that para 2359 refers to 'homosexual persons'. That's worth stressing because it's sometimes argued that describing yourself as having a homosexual identity is, in itself, wrong, rather than (say) describing yourself as having (or even 'suffering from') same sex attraction.)

Two aspects then:

1) Is the substitution of the word 'gay' for 'homosexual' a change to be avoided?
2) Is it right to accept and value a gay/homosexual orientation?

On 1), I'm beginning to think that insisting on 'homosexual' rather than 'gay' in every context is beginning to be distracting. The Catechism -as noted- mandates the use of the phrase 'homosexual persons'. Now that perhaps is where the objections should be made: I'm not at all convinced that talking about 'homosexual persons' (or indeed heterosexual persons) doesn't essentialize an identity which is purely accidental. But, from the Catechism, that boat has already sailed. And if it's a toss up between 'homosexual persons' or 'gay people', I think that in many situations (not all), insisting on using 'homosexual persons' is beginning to make you sound flaky: rather like insisting on calling women 'the ladies' (or that use of 'homosexualists' that certain loons used to go in for about a decade ago). (Indeed, the ill motivated might well point out that, judging from my children's peer group, since the ordinary meaning of 'gay' is 'a bit rubbish', it's rather their look out if homosexuals insist on using the term...)

Anyway, putting that question aside, can a 'gay/homosexual orientation' be rightly accepted and valued? And there I think we have a truly difficult issue. IF (and let's stick with 'gay'), IF 'a gay disposition' just means a disposition to commit sinful acts with a member of the opposite sex, then it clearly can't be valued/welcomed in itself. (But even there, it might bring you into situations where, as an accidental consequence, good came of it: you might fall in love with a man who ran a Catholic charity for example, and thus end up getting involved in its good works.)

But does it just mean that? I rather dislike the use of 'heterosexual orientation', but, if one accepts it as a legitimate usage, it surely means more than just wanting to have sex with women. It involves finding women attractive,and that means valuing certain aspects of female physiology and psychology. Equally, finding the same sex attractive involves more than just an inclination to copulation. Moreover, if we do stick with 'gay', it has got aspects that are even wider than homosexual/heterosexual. What precisely these are is difficult to pin down (we shouldn't assume that there is a neat definition for every English word). But it certainly has connotations which go beyond 'wanting to have sex'. In fine, to gave a 'gay orientation' is more than just wanting to have sex with your own gender; and to that extent, it is possible to value and welcome that orientation. (And, a fortiori, it is of course clearly right to welcome gay people: that simply isn't in question. The only question is whether that welcome directly extends to their orientation.)

The above is really all quite theoretical and, to orthodox Catholics, probably looks like a silly attempt to wriggle into a less countercultural position, while, to non-Catholics, probably looks like a scholastic analysis of beating puppies to death. So let's get concrete. When I look at Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten, it strikes me as clearly as anything can that a) their relationship made them both the artists they were; and b) Britten's homosexuality, in particular, deeply affected his work. Now I suppose one can imagine a *Pears-Britten couple which is identical to the real Pears-Britten couple, except that they make the changes to meet Catholic teaching. (So they could live together, but in a chaste friendship etc.) I think I can imagine that (indeed, one might actually wonder quite how important the sex act was in the partnership certainly as they grew older). But still one would want to say, would one not, that their love for each other and the orientation that made it possible were valuable precisely because they weren't and wouldn't be just about the desire to have sex with that other person?

[Having thought about this after drafting, I'd add that the one question the modern mind fails to ask -or rather just assumes the answer is going to be copulation- is what are friendships objectively for?  (Within the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition, you have the general choices of bonum simpliciter, delectabile and  utile (Aquinas' Commentary on the Ethics -ad 1538): ie the good simpliciter, the pleasurable and the useful.) The Pears-Britten friendship is for the sake of art; the (Catholic) heterosexual marriage is for the sake of procreation. Both aims take the participants towards the transcendent good. God help either heterosexuals or homosexuals who answer 'sexual pleasure'. And that is to say, God help most of us trapped in the secular mindset.]

I think this sort of line of thought is what the Synod was (or at least should be) striving for. But it is dependent on a corresponding clarity: an orientation towards love for one's own sex isn't a bad thing, indeed can be a good thing, precisely so long as it contains elements that go beyond the sex act. An orientation towards love for the other sex isn't a bad thing, precisely so long as it contains elements that go beyond the sex act, although here, provided it is open to procreation, this too can be redeemed. It's that clarity which is lacking and, given past performance particularly from many Western churches, is unlikely to reappear even, indeed, especially, if a pastoral approach is developed which allows the above valuing of a gay orientation. The modern Western Church just doesn't do fine distinctions any more, certainly not in the parishes. From that point of view, it might just be better to stick with an unsubtle rejection of the orientation rather than offer an unsubtle welcome holus-bolus...?

In the end, this all goes back to the idea that 'finding someone sexually attractive' is self interpreting. Well, it hasn't been for me. (I can think of lots of occasions in my youth where I hadn't been sure what I felt about a woman: not (just) because of a lack of self-awareness, but also because the distinctions between different types of interest in another just really aren't clear (ontologically as well as phenomenologically one might say).) In particular, sexual attraction doesn't come in a neat compartment separate from attraction tout court. If someone has a tendency to find their own sex attractive, that isn't reducible to simply sexual attraction. And even sexual attraction isn't simply reducible to wanting sex. That bundle of confusions is at least a big a problem in our society as anything to do simply with homosexuality.

[And a final post drafting thought. When did bishops and priests become just pastors? The Church has always been a teacher -a Rabbi- as well as a prophet: both require clear effective speech in the public sphere. Protestant Churches -particularly the national ones- often have built into their DNA the Erastian idea that they're there merely to comfort citizens after the State has done all the really important cultural stuff like legislation, education etc. When did Catholics buy into that nonsense?]

Politics isn't therapy

 
                                                         Do not be afreud!

I'm not sure if Gerry Hassan's piece on admitting and overcoming doubt is responsible for this (the rejection of Project Fear has been a noticeable trope of pro-Independence rhetoric for most of the campaign), but there have been a number of pieces recently which treat the highly political choice on 18 September as a therapeutic choice, where the aim is less a rational assessment of the Common Good, but rather an overcoming of the Scotch (or a more individual) Cringe.

A prime example of this is Val McDermid in the Guardian:

What I don’t respect are the “fearties” – the ones whose reason for voting no is that they’re afraid we’ll turn out to be incapable of managing our own country. I don’t want us to stay in the union because we’re scared of what the future holds if we strike out on our own.

Now, frankly, this is nonsense. The idea that we need to cleanse ourselves internally of unpleasant emotions is (admittedly a rather jejune version of) psychoanalysis: we are neurotic; by therapy, we cleanse our neuroses. We are cured. But appropriate fear can be a perfectly rational response to a danger: the virtue of courage, as Aristotle would put it, is the mean between cowardice and rashness -the feeling of the correct amount of fear at the correct objects of fear. If we are not to be 'feart' at the prospect of Independence, it is only because the objective dangers of such Independence are not appropriate objects of fear. If, to take the Domesday scenario, there was a realistic prospect of every large corporation making a dash for Berwick upon Tweed on 19 September, together with an abandonment of post NATO Scotland to some sort of alliance with, at best, Samoa, I'd be quite afraid -and rightly so. It is only because the future is unlikely to be quite so clear cutly awful, that Independence is a possibility. For those who, on the best assessment, think that Independence will wreak economic and social havoc, fear is the appropriate response. For those who do not, there will certainly (ought certainly) to be some fear, but such as will be met by the virtuous agent with courage. A certain amount of self assessment is required for virtue: am I more or less likely to feel fear than the practically wise person ought? But the point of such assessment is to have 'figured plain/As though upon a lighted screen': when one has purified oneself, one sees dangers correctly and fears them correctly. Therapy is to allow oneself to fear rationally, not not to fear at all.

Politics is, essentially, the projection of ethics beyond one's own life and those of one's immediate circle. The virtuous person can be trusted to have the correct affections to react properly to everyday circumstances, but in planning and assessing the life of the City, hard rational thought is required. Both campaigns rely on rhetoric: the manipulation of emotions to serve their campaign aims. To resist that requires rational reflection and character: to recognize the correct place of fear in the good life rather than the childish desire not be be shamed in front of one's peers. Moreover it requires the analysis of language. When McDermid talks of our being 'scared of what the future holds if we strike out on our own' (my emphasis) again I must ask: Which we? If she means me, I'd be terrified: any country which put me in charge would be a country I'd like to leave. If she means 'progressive Nationalists' then again, I see every reason for being terrified. I presume she means something like 'the sort of people who'll be thrown up in any realistic scenario in a medium sized country' -a much more plausible perspective. But even here, it would not be unreasonable to fear that there will be a process of formation of governing expertise which undoubtedly would be a transition cost of Independence.

I'd originally intended blogging today to a similar purpose on the political response to IS and Islam in general. Perhaps soon. But in short, politics is too important to trust your emotions. (And I say that holding in my mind the shock and outrage that I felt seeing, albeit only for a split second, the decapitated corpse of James Foley when I clicked on a twitter link. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.) The sifting of pride, fear, confidence etc etc are, roughly, a matter of therapy: that spiritual therapy which all of us who aspire to virtue should be undertaking every moment of our life (and where, let us remember, the theological virtues of faith, hope and love are a matter of being open to grace more than effort). Thereafter, think. Hard. And that applies whether it is  the Yes Campaign telling you not to fear, or the No Campaign telling you that no right thinking person could ever envisage splitting the Union.

What is Scholasticism and what sort of Scholasticism?

                                        Angelic proofreaders pointing out typos...

There's been a rather interesting exchange going on between Ed Feser (Thomist extraordinaire) and Michael Sullivan of the Scotist blog, The Smithy on Feser's recent Scholastic Metaphysics: an Introduction. [Feser's latest post on this -with links to further instalments of Sullivan- is here.]

In essence, the debate centres on two points. First, is Feser's version of Scholasticism too exclusively Thomist, particularly at the expense of Scotus? Secondly, is it too ahistorical, smoothing over detailed engagement with actual Scholastic writers in favour of quick neo-Thomist caricatures? The detailed posing (and answering) of these questions is an education in itself -and I'd urge anyone even remotely interested in understanding Scholasticism to read the posts and the combox discussions (as well as Feser's book!).

Behind any detailed criticism of the book, however, stand rather more general issues about the nature of philosophy in general, and Scholasticism within the Catholic Church in particular. To pluck away at a couple of these:

a) Grand narratives vs detailed grappling. There is a tendency in academic philosophy (particularly English language analytic philosophy) to focus in incredible detail on narrow issues. The good (essential) aspect of that is rigour: carefulness in argument and examination is necessary to achieve truth: there are no shortcuts. On the other hand, there are losses. One loss is that of popular engagement. For philosophy to engage outwith the academy, it needs to deal in recognizable issues in recognizable ways: too much technicality and narrowness of focus and philosophy becomes confined to the philosophy department. (Whilst there is clearly more to be said about how philosophy can be both rigorous and popular, I'll leave it with the simple (and I hope plausible) claim that highly technical philosophy can't be popular and that, since some philosophy needs to be popular, not all philosophy can be highly technical.)

Perhaps an even more serious loss is the absence of what I shall style 'narrative imagination'. To take two particular examples, one of the most influential recent-ish works in English speaking philosophy has been that Alasdair MacIntyre, in particular, that of After Virtue. Much of that work involves an historical narrative that, to put it mildly, is open to detailed criticism.: if MacIntyre had stopped to deal with every detailed point that could be raised against his narrative, the force of the work would have been much diminished. A similar point could be made about the (again influential) Radical Orthodoxy movement in theology. If Milbank's Theology and Social Theory -which again contains a rather 'sweeping' narrative- were to grapple with every possible detailed criticism, again, the force of the work would have disappeared.

There are clearly many possible reactions to such a (clearly true) observation. One possibility is simply to abandon the idea of a grand narrative and to concentrate on detailed grappling. I'll simply note that, in my view, such a solution has unfortunate consequences both ethically (in depriving individuals of a sense of their place in an historical narrative) and pedagogically (in depriving pupils of a sense of  shape to an issue which they can then subject to further critical scrutiny). Another (and this I'd favour) is to note that both the grand and the detailed are required: in any healthy intellectual ecosystem, there will be a creative tension between those who produce imaginative narratives and those who subject them to detailed critique.

b) The place of philosophy in Catholicism. As I've made clear over the history of this blog, I'm in general sympathy with the view that the loss of neo-Thomism (ie the sort of Thomism of the nineteenth and twentieth century manuals) as an intellectual tradition in Catholicism is at least as serious a loss as any that has been felt in the liturgy. (Let's not get bogged down in details: there's a problem in liturgy in the modern Church and there's a problem with the destruction of neo-Thomism.) This has (at least) two aspects. First, there is the loss of a focus on St Thomas Aquinas. By taking as alternative paradigms either non-Catholic thinkers such as Levinas, Lacan, Derrida, Butler etc, theologians have cut themselves off entirely from (at the least) an extremely rich intellectual model which attempts to do justice to reason, revelation and ecclesiastical authority. But while this is true of some (perhaps even many) Catholic theologians, it also remains true that Aquinas has not been ignored and yet remains a central figure in theology. (Even the much attacked Tina Beattie has recently published a monograph on him.) From this aspect alone, things could be a lot worse.

Which leads me on to the second aspect. Neo-Thomism had a particular understanding of a number of issues, in particular, the place of philosophy within Catholicism. Roughly put, most neo-Thomists thought that philosophy -reason unguided by revelation- could attain truth, albeit incomplete and albeit with difficulty. Moreover, neo-Thomism was, to a large extent, a creation of teaching institutions and, especially, seminaries: it was a Thomism shaped by the need to be taught and used by those who were not professional and specialized theologians, but who were priests engaging with ordinary people and non-Catholic intellectual challenge. Much modern Catholic thinking even when approaching Aquinas is fideist (ie carried out in terms only acceptable to those who already accept dogmatic teaching) and academic (destined for an audience of other professional theologians or students). In other words, neo-Thomism carried in a narrative imagination an understanding of what it was and how it fitted into the world that is lacking in other Catholic theologies, and indeed other grapplings with Aquinas.

What follows from this? In terms of Feser's book, its characteristics are those (unsurprisingly) of a neo-Thomist: what it foregrounds and what it glosses over are precisely what you'd expect from a neo-Thomist. If this is surprising, it is only because the neo-Thomist has become a rara avis. In more thickly populated intellectual flocks (analytical philosophy, for example) very few stop to wonder why introductory manuals fail to take seriously the details of natural theology: the writing off of an intellectual tradition has taken place as part of the background narrative imagination. If you think his approach is wrong, then the problem lies less in the book and more in the background movement.

More importantly, Catholics (lay and clerical) need to develop an intellectual culture which can function as an ancilla theologiae -a preparation for revelation. That is wider than philosophy, but it includes philosophy. I think that's best conceptualized as a return to neo-Thomism, but I'd be open to (and indeed sometimes personally do) think of it as a return to the philosophia perennis of the Greeks of which Thomism is merely the final flourishing, or (in politics) to the politics of natural right envisaged by Leo Strauss. Each of those conceptualizations is an act of narrative imagination and is open to detailed critique. But I'm pretty sure that, without some such boldness of vision, Catholic intellectual life is going to be steamrollered by the narrative imagination of secularism.

As a coda to all this, let me quote from my current bedtime reading (Garrigou-Lagrange's Le Sens Commun -which primarily contains his refutation of Bergson and I'm reading as a proleptic refutation of post-modernism). In that, he sketches the content of the philosophy of common sense:

[The anthropologist Le Roy obtained from his field studies of primitive peoples] a residue of common elements which corresponds almost exactly to what is, for traditional philosophy, the content of common sense:

1) Distinction between the invisible and visible worlds.
2) A feeling of human dependence in respect to the superior world, particularly in the use of nature.
3) Belief in a Supreme Being, creator, organizer and master of the world and at the same time father of human beings.
4) Belief in independent spiritual beings, some beneficent, some hostile.
5) Belief in a human soul, distinct from the body, conscious, surviving death.
6) Belief in a world beyond, where spirits live and souls survive.
7) A universal moral sense, based on the distinction between good and evil, feelings of justice, shame, responsibility, liberty and duty. Implicit or explicit recognition of conscience.
8) Prescriptions and proscriptions in view of a moral end; a notion of sin with sanctions applied by the authority of the invisible world or its representatives.
9) The organization of culture, prayers and sacrifice.
10) A priesthood charged with sacred duties.
11) Distinction between the sacred and the profane.
12) Establishment of the family as religious and social centre.

[p88 Le sens commun (my translation and slight adaptation)]

Nothing there, I think, to surprise, say, the reader of Plato or Confucius. But remember this is supposed to be the pre-existing foundation on which revelation then builds. To even achieve this level of explicit belief in a secularized public culture is going to be quite an achievement although -and this is the intriguing aspect for me- implicitly I'm pretty sure this is what most people actually do believe even in the West. (Thought experiment: watch reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Battlestar Galactica whilst regarding the above as foolish.)

The difference between sleep and death

                                                         Not really...

OK!! This is a slightly self-indulgent post. My interest was piqued by a really interesting question on Jess’ blog from Quiavideruntoculi (which I reproduce below). In essence, it is about the difference between the mental life experienced during sleep and that after death but before the bodily resurrection. It’s probably of limited interest to anyone other than me and QV, except in that it underlines the fact that, for a Catholic, life after death is not simply like one of those Jehovah Witness eternal picnics, but something much stranger and better.

[Relevant Catholic Encyclopedia articles: Immortality; Resurrection of the Body.]

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Why, given that we hold de fide that every soul will be conscious after death of the Particular Judgement, and be capable of enjoying the beatific vision, enduring purgatory, or suffering the torment of the damned, even before the Resurrection – that is, before the soul’s reunion with the body – do we all become utterly insensible during deep sleep every night?

How is it that we can seem to be the more ‘dead to the world’ while alive and asleep, than we will be when we are actually dead? What is it about the integration of body and soul that so limits our consciousness? Is this even a question that we can hope answer?

 The first part of the answer here depends on the nature of sleep. Aristotle holds sleep to be the result of a physical disablement:

Aristotle’s perspective in these essays is single-mindedly rationalistic. In On Sleep and Waking he identifies sleep and waking as diametrically opposed phenomena characterized, respectively, by the absence or presence of perception. Physiologically, Aristotle posits, sleep and waking result from the disabling and activation of the body’s primary sense-organ, which Aristotle took to be the heart. He describes how sleep is induced by the “exhalations” of ingested foods which thicken and heat the blood, rising to the brain where they are cooled before coalescing in the heart. Similar effects are ascribed to soporific agents, states of fatigue and certain illnesses. Aristotle distinguishes sleep from temporary incapacities of perception, such as fainting, and describes sleep as a form of “seizure.” [Joseph Barbera,  ‘Sleep and dreaming in Greek and Roman philosophy’, Sleep Medicine, Volume 9, Issue 8, December 2008, pages 906–910 ]

So the state of consciousness (whether dreaming or simply unconscious) during sleep is the result of a suspension of perception due to physical causes. (Our understanding of the nature of the physical causes has of course changed since Aristotle, but the principle remains the same.)

In his commentary on STh Ia, q.84, a.7, Anthony Kenny summarizes the position thus:

…the thesis…is that phantasms are needed not only to take the intellect from potentiality to first actuality, but also from first actuality to second. Without the jargon, the thesis is that intellectual thought is impossible apart from a sensory context. (Aquinas on Mind, p.94).

To summarize, in sleep, the ability to think is suspended due to the suspension of our ability to perceive as a result of the disabling of the physical functioning of our body. (Dreams are the result of other physical disturbances. (See Barbera, citing De Insomniis.) As, absent our body, these could not occur, I put them aside.)

Turning to thinking post mortem, I think Ed Feser expresses the situation clearly:

HD [ie hylemorphic dualism –the Thomist understanding of the relationship between soul and body] explicitly denies that the soul thinks after death in the same way that it does when conjoined to the body.  For our intellectual powers only operate when we are alive because of the data we get from the senses and the mental imagery this gives rise to; as Aquinas says, “the soul united to the body can understand only by turning to the phantasms” [where for the sake of simplicity a “phantasm” can be thought of, roughly, as a mental image] (Summa Theologiae I.89.1).  That is its natural mode of carrying out intellectual operations.  And for HD, sensation and imagination, unlike intellect, have a material basis.  (This is why for HD neural activity is -- as I have explained in a previous post -- a necessary condition of everyday cognitive activity despite the immateriality of the intellect, even if it is not a sufficient condition.)  Hence, while we are alive it is only body and soul together which think, and not the soul alone.

Now, after death the soul no longer has available to it its normal input from sensation and imagination.  If it is to think while disembodied, then, it must do so in a very different manner.  What this involves, for Aquinas, is “turning to simply intelligible objects” rather than to phantasms, as an angel (a wholly disembodied intelligence) would.  (Think of pure concepts divorced from sensation or imagination.)  And this entails a difference as well in the kinds of things the intellect can know after death.  As George Klubertanz says in a once widely-used manual of Scholastic philosophy: 

Knowledge of singular material things will be naturally impossible for the separated soul, and likewise existential judgments about material or sensible things.  It will also be impossible to acquire knowledge of previously unknown material objects…  On the other hand, in this life the soul has no actual direct knowledge of itself, because it is the form of a body.  Once separated in death, it will be actually intelligible in itself, and so the soul will directly know itself as an actually existing singular spiritual substance… Communication between separated souls and between souls and angels should be possible, at least in so far as states of mind and will are concerned… Whatever other knowledge is necessary will be given by God, in a fashion similar to the mode of angelic knowledge.  (The Philosophy of Human Nature, pp. 317-18)

To borrow and develop an analogy from an earlier post, you might think of the postmortem soul like a hand which has been severed from the body and which is not only kept alive artificially, but caused to move its fingers (and in this way to carry out something like its normal operations) via electrical stimulation of the muscles.  The normal state of the hand is to be connected to and controlled by the body in such a way that it is the entire organism, and not the hand alone, that moves the fingers.  But that does not entail that the hand might not also move them apart from the body, after being severed, by non-natural means.  Similarly, the normal state of the intellect is to be connected to the body in such a way that it is the entire organism, and not the intellect alone, which thinks.  But that does not entail that the intellect might not also think apart from the body, after death, by non-natural means.

[Feser’s post here. ]

To summarize, in the absence of the body, the soul thinks in a different way.

In short, death is not like sleep. In sleep, the mind is deprived of its normal way of thinking by a disabling of the physical means of thought. (And being still embodied, it cannot avail itself of non-natural means of thought.) When it is dead, it is able to think in a non-natural way (but with the consequence that its mental life is very different from that of an embodied human being).

Law, religion, Sir James Munby and Gorns

                                       The Judge in the Hampstead Coffee Shop.... 


Although I'd been vaguely aware of Sir James Munby's ruminations (PDF here) on the law and religion, I'd filed it mentally under the heading 'another sign of things falling apart' without giving it much attention until the Law and Religion blog got its teeth stuck into it. That blog gives it quite a respectful hearing. I'm afraid my reaction is rather different.

My overall impression of Sir James' speech is frankly disbelief that a senior legal figure should come up with something quite so superficial. I might hope it's simply rubber chicken syndrome: like many of those in the great world, he finds himself yet again invited to one of those annoying dinners where the price of entry is getting up on your hind legs and speaking; he puts something together at the last moment, utters forth to the accompaniment of soothing noises from rhubarbing middle aged men; and then settles down to wrestling with an indifferent fowl bathed in some sort of gloop. It's only a speech, you  might suspect he would say if challenged...

I fear however since it is dubbed 'a keynote address' that it must be held to rather higher standards. Much of his argument centres on the disputes between John Stuart Mill and James Fitzjames Stephen in the nineteenth century,  and Hart and Patrick Devlin in the twentieth. Both have taken on the status of symbolic struggles between a broadly libertarian view of the law as promoting the maximum amount of negative liberty subject only to the avoidance of harm (Mill and Hart) versus a view of the law as embodying substantive moral content (Stephen and Devlin). (A very brief summary of the key issues is given here.)

Now oddly enough, I'm rather on the side of Mill and Hart in this. Given the nature of our society, I'd rather have the legal protection to carry on (in Mill's terms) my experiments in living, rather than having government or other agents stepping in to curtail my negative liberty. Do I think that's an ideal state? No, but it's better than one where I -as a member of a minority (Catholic) group- am subject to state coercion to restrict or change my views or behaviour. Mill bases his view on the great importance of liberty; living your life according to your own lights is, for Mill, the central aspect of long term human happiness which he, as a utilitarian, is intent on promoting.

This rather grand and bracing vision of human nature is completely ignored by Munby who turns a debate centred on liberty into a debate centred on religion. There is little in Munby's speech about the importance of autonomy, free speech and experiments in living. Instead, we have:

Today, surely, the judicial task is to assess matters by the standards of reasonable men and 
women in 2013 – not, I would add, by the standards of their parents in 1970 – and 
having regard to the ever changing nature of our world: changes in our understanding 
of the natural world, technological changes, changes in social standards and, perhaps 
most important of all, changes in social attitudes.  (p7: PDF)

Now, according to Mill and Hart, the simple answer to this would be no: the judicial task is to make sure that I have as much negative liberty as possible subject to the harm principle:

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

On the other hand, 'the standards of reasonable men and women in 2013' reads as though Munby is channelling Devlin:

How is the law-maker to ascertain the moral judgment of society?...English law has evolved and regularly uses a standard which does not depend on the counting of heads. It is that of the reasonable man. He is not to be confused with the rational man. He is not expected to reason about anything and his judgment may be largely a matter of feeling. It is the viewpoint of the man in the street -or to use an archaism familiar to lawyers -the man in the Clapham omnibus. (Devlin: The Enforcement of Morals.)

It is this blindness to the real nature of the Mill/Hart and Stephen/Devlin dispute that is most worrying about Munby. It is one thing to note that we live in an extremely fragmented society where there is no real shared substantive view of the good. For such a society, there is much to be said for Mill's view of maximizing personal liberty, the negative liberty of freedom from interference, particularly by government. In the sort of recent 'hot button' cases concerning religion, that would mean that religious minorities would have a strong presumption in favour of their right to act as they like unless clear and direct harm was being caused to others. (So B&B owners would be almost certainly be able to discriminate against unmarried couples and registrars would be able to negotiate exemptions from carrying out same sex 'marriages' etc.) It is quite another thing to suggest that, now the man on the Clapham omnibus has changed his views, we should be imposing a religion-free morality in the same way that Devlin and Stephen would have imposed a religious morality.

Of course, there may well be arguments in favour of such a Devlin-like position: Frank at Law and Religion seems to endorse Lord Justice Laws' view which is that

the conferment of any legal protection or preference upon a particular substantive moral position on the ground only that it is espoused by the adherents of a particular faith, however long its tradition, however rich its culture, is deeply unprincipled. It imposes compulsory law, not to advance the general good on objective grounds, but to give effect to the force of subjective opinion. This must be so, since in the eye of everyone save the believer religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence. It may of course be true; but the ascertainment of such a truth lies beyond the means by which laws are made in a reasonable society. Therefore it lies only in the heart of the believer, who is alone bound by it. No one else is or can be so bound, unless by his own free choice he accepts its claims.

In essence, the claim is that morality based on religion is subjective and the law deals only with objective morality. Frankly, this is utter tosh. The philosophical debates in this area ought to be well known, but, in short, the taking of such a view would have to respond (at least) to Macintyre's analysis of all moral thinking as taking place within a particular tradition, and the Catholic understanding of reasoning about our nature and its flourishing taking place within an Aristotelian conception of ethics rather than one based on faith. There's absolutely no sign that either Laws or Munby have even started to grapple with such considerations.

In fine, we are left with the irony that Munby is defending a position like Devlin's whilst under the apparent impression that he is supporting Mill and Hart. (It is merely that the test is now the judge in the Hampstead Coffee Shop rather than the man on the Clapham Omnibus.) If one assumes that there is one commonsense moral opinion that can, in rough terms, be discerned by the mind of the passenger on the omnibus, then the imposition of that view may be possible, even if it leaves open the further question as to whether that view (and its enforcement) is actually morally good. But the deeper challenge of post modernity -or, perhaps more narrowly, the challenge of a society that no longer coheres around a particular institutionalized worldview (such as that of the Church of England or Church of Scotland) is that there is no longer such a single worldview. There is no such thing as one secular worldview that remains after religion is subtracted.

The unnoticed confusions in the speech over the relationship between Mill's views and James' championing of a Devlin like test based on a social coherence which no longer exists suggests two conclusions. Either our great and good are too dumb to understand what they are arguing; or they know quite well what they are saying and are simply covering up their real intentions under a smog of verbiage. We can immediately reject the first possibility as too bizarre to be worth considering. I am therefore going with the assumption that our country is being run by giant alien lizards who are engaged in a worldwide conspiracy to impose secular (ie Gorn) standards on us.

You read it here first...

            A member of the judiciary proposing a toast to the overthrow of  Christianity 

Basic Catholic philosophical reading list

                                                      I have been thinking...

This is going to be one of those posts where I mull to no good purpose whilst sticking up some points so that I don't lose sight of them in the future. You have been warned....

I've previously mentioned my conviction that the most serious problem facing the Church is a lack of basic religious education. Let's split that into theological education and philosophical education. The absence of theological education can -to some extent- be remedied by using the Catechism. Either read it (and keep on reading it) yourself or do one of the numerous courses available on it. It's not  perfect solution, but at least it should stop most of the daftnesses of the 'It doesn't matter whether you go to Mass or not' and 'Vatican II abolished that' sort. (If you want a more straightforward summary without any concessions to modernity, keep a copy of either the Penny Catechism or the Baltimore Catechism as a back up.)

That leaves philosophical education. Well, OK, first question: why do we need philosophical education as Catholics? (And here I'm talking primarily about reasonably intelligent laity, not priests or religious.) Why aren't the above Catechisms enough? Roughly, this is because the theology of the Catechisms stands on philosophy: without that background, it is often reduced to simple fideistic statements. The Catechisms mostly sort out the what we believe; but they usually do not sort out the why, particularly that part of the why which is based on natural reason rather than revelation.

Catholic philosophy's status as the 'ancilla theologiae' (the handmaid of theology) is particularly important when we're dealing with a society that is post-Christian and post dead white males. The average (fairly intellectual) Victorian convert would have been a Christian of some sort with a background in Greek and Latin literature: to someone who is worrying about whether to be a Catholic or an Anglican or even a Platonist the sort of material in the Catechism is probably going to be most important. The average (fairly intellectual) modern convert probably thinks that Xena Warrior Princess is genuine history (or at least a genuine post modern jouissance) and that Galileo disproved Aristotle by dropping him off the Tower of Pisa. Nothing in the Catechism is (directly) going to touch  that sort of worldview. (And note that this isn't just a matter of apologetics: what is played out in a public space between individuals has its analogue inside the mind when individuals wonder if Catholic teaching makes sense to them: not only will converts fail to be made, but practising Catholics will start to believe that individual doctrines -or even the whole system- fails to make sense.)

Without a background in that sort of shared classical philosophical Ideenraum which characterizes all Catholic theology, key elements of Catholic teaching are going to look increasingly bizarre. For example, in the recent debate over same sex 'marriage', failure of even many Catholics to understand (in Aristotelian terms which have their analogues in Platonism) the concepts of a nature, embodied in a form, or of potentiality which is actualized, makes it very difficult to explain arguments against same sex 'marriage' which embody claims about the true purpose of marriage. (And those metaphysical points are in addition to the problems which arise from a failure to make clear the classical philosophical assumption that politics is about the promotion of flourishing rather than simply the creation of negative liberty.)

So we need a way of Catholics and others to grapple with the philosophical worldview on which revealed theology stands. (And that way has to be cheaper than (eg) the courses at Maryvale.) There is (to my knowledge) no one single book that even fully explains such a worldview, let alone tries to justify it. (And that of course is in part because philosophy can't as neatly be separated out into the what and the why: to philosophize is to engage critically with the views, not just to know what they are.) What books would I therefore recommend? My answer here is very much a work in progress: what I'm going to say is not right, but it's my best stab at the moment. (So any further suggestions gratefully received.)

Peter Kreeft's reading list won't do (however excellent it is): it's too long and wouldn't serve my main purpose (which is, roughly, to provide an introduction to the philosophical background of Catholic theology which explains primarily the what but enough of the why so that the what retains a plausibility which can be built on if you wish to pursue more detailed studies). There is, for example, not much point in grappling with the intricacies of Descartes and Mill when the absolutely key thing to know about them is that they are wrong and why.

Here's a tentative short leet:

Peter Kreeft: Socratic Logic. One to live with rather than to read through in one sitting.

Edward Feser: The Last Superstition. Polemical, but does make clear why the claim that Plato and Aristotle are still relevant isn't just an antiquarian fancy.

John Vella: Aristotle: A Guide for the Perplexed. Makes Aristotle sound like a neo-Thomist (which is fine for present purposes even if I think Vella oversystematizes the actual Aristotle). I have no idea why I can only find this on Italian Google books! The text is in English (and is still in print).

Leo Strauss: Natural Right and History.  I know Leo Strauss is supposed to be the Neo-Con devil incarnate whose followers eat babies and started the Iraq war. I'm not a Straussian, but this simply strikes me as a good, quick introduction to an approach in politics which is recognizably in keeping with classical models.

John A .Oesterle: Ethics: the introduction to Moral Science. Out of print -so I'm not totally happy about recommending this. But does give a short but clear account of moral philosophy from a Catholic perspective.


I've tried to cover analogues to a three volume traditional cursus philosophiae: typically, logic, metaphysics and ethics. For trying to bash sense into a hostile atheist, I'd try John Haldane's Atheism and Theism, just because Smart and Haldane model what a reasonable encounter between theism and atheism should look like. (If you just want to have fun and don't mind irritating your atheist, give them Feser's work above!)

Perhaps MOOCs will provide an alternative strategy?

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Putting all that aside and coming at it from a completely different direction, I came across some discussions on Continuing Anglican websites about what a reading list in orthodox Anglican theology might look like. Both because there are some analogies between our purposes -ie how do individuals with limited resources get a basic grasp on orthodox religion- and because it begins to touch on a question that the Ordinariate will have to wrestle with (ie what is the Anglican intellectual patrimony that can be brought across the Tiber), I include some links below:

The New Contining Anglican: The advantage of a short reading list for study.
                                               Building an Anglican library. (Probably the most useful.)
                                               Anglican Theological Education I
                                               Anglican Theological Education II

Anglican Continuum: See combox on this post for a debate about reading material.

I'd stress that these links aren't to Catholic sites: I'm only including them as a convenient list for some analogous thoughts on what an 'unofficial' education in orthodoxy might look like and how it might be achieved. (And for any Anglicans dropping by!)

Thomism and system: getting the whole picture:

                                            

In our own age, Thomism has become one of the only plausible contenders left that  offers an authentic vision of the  sapiential  unity  of human knowledge  amidst the diversity of  university disciplines.  Politically, our situation is one of cultural disenfranchisement, to be sure. We are complete outsiders, an underground movement frequently unwelcome in the university. But the rivals who today are offering either the Church or the modern world a plausible narrative of  the intellectual life are diminishing and are not having such an easy time themselves. As a Dominican friar of the Toulouse province said in the 1970’s during an episode of particular turmoil: “Brothers, things are bad here, but by the grace of God, they are worse elsewhere.” If your goal is to win over the larger culture today, inside the Church or outside of it, it is not much easier today to be a Kantian, a Balthasarian, a Marxist, a logical positivist or a Derriddian, than to be a Thomist. In this heterogeneous landscape, there is an increasingly level playing field, and in that case its not bad to have Aquinas on your team. 

(Fr. T. J White O.P, Thomism after Vatican II. H/T The Smithy.)

One of the oddest things when reading a neo-Scholastic manual is the insistence on system. For example, Harper's The Metaphysics of the School (pp. liv-v) (published 1879):

Hence it comes to pass, that our modem Metaphysics is a thing of shreds and patches ; — here a Logic, — there a sort of Psychology, — in another work, an Ideology, — sometimes an essay on causes, — or a dissertation on final causes,— or a discussion on the primordial constituents of primordial substance. There is no order or completeness, but a general disintegration; and the disintegrated parts receive their respective names in token of their individuality. Accordingly, we read of Teleology, Aetiology, Morphology, and other imposing clones without number, which remind one of Job who  'openeth his mouth in vain, and multiplieth words without knowledge.' 

The simple fact is, that the educated men of our time, owing to the prepossessions which they have imbibed from their cradle and to the specimens of philosophy which have fallen across their path, have not as yet realized the fact that Metaphysics is a science,— with its own terminology and its own first principles, — most difficult of acquisition — requiring long continued, patient, devoted, laborious study. They seem to imagine that they can jump into it all at once with as much ease as they can get into a new suit of ready-made clothes. 

This emphasis on systematic, careful study is even more at variance with the typical modular pattern of modern education in the humanities: a bit of Derrida here, a bit of a language here, a bit of psychology there.

Without the ability to articulate -but perhaps even more importantly to see- the world coherently, the averagely educated, non-specialist in the humanities is flung upon the tide of fashion. Pumped up with the desire to be open minded, but without a thorough enough formation to retain an intellectual integrity through that open-mindedness, those external fashions sweep opinions before them. One year we're in favour of free love and encouraging children to express their sexuality. The next year we're in favour of keeping children in a sort of sexual purdah for fear of abuse, whilst plying them with contraceptives and pornography. One year, we're laughing at funny effeminate men. The next we're abolishing marriage to respect their dignity.

System is important in two ways. It is important because Catholics are rationalists: because the world has been made by intelligence, it is discoverable by intelligence. The rational structure of systematic philosophy and theology reflects the systematic structure of the world. But system is also important morally. Without a coherent Weltanschauung to inform and structure your life and personality, it is hard to see how a person can develop character, that wholeness of being that allows one to deal with the world as an agent rather than as a piece of flotsam.

For Catholics who are intelligent enough to need the structure of academic philosophy and theology, but who are not specialists in those areas, there is a need for a basic systematic understanding: for many reasons, not least historical, Thomism looks best placed to provide that basic structure. That isn't to say that specialist theologians or philosophers within the Catholic tradition have to be Thomists, or have to adopt a particular form of systematic Thomism. But it probably does mean that we should all be starting from that sort of firm formative foundation, and continue on to work within a sort of scholastic Ideenraum, a space which is structured by the inputs of the various philosophical and theological schools of scholastic and patristic Catholicism, in turn built on foundations of classical Greek philosophy and classical Jewish thought.

Fourth of July, the education of the Founding Fathers and scholasticism

Oh, you must have done it... You're busy. Things happen. And then you come home to find a glowering spouse sulking because you've forgotten an anniversary.

This, of course, does not refer to Mrs L, who continues to bask in the finest attentive care that I can provide, but to the 4th of July which I forgot. Sorry to all of you in the US! Yesterday really was busy.

Anyway, in celebration of your anniversary I provide, first, the above photo of veterans of the Revolutionary War. The rather striking images are taken from daguerreotypes of survivors who were still around in the 1840s. Full article here.

Perhaps more importantly, it gives me an opportunity to bash on again about the benefits of scholasticism as a philosophical and educational system. I recently read Education of the Founding Fathers of the Republic: Scholasticism in the Colonial Colleges by James J. Walsh, (Fordham University Press, 1935), free online version available here. Walsh's book is not, in itself, exactly a good read: it has one theme and it bangs on about it in relentless detail. However, that theme is a fascinating one:


Scholasticism, the philosophy of the Schoolmen and of the medieval universities, the group of subjects which occupied most of the attention of European university students for a thousand years or more, is usually thought to have gone out of vogue at the end of the Middle Ages or to have disappeared with the New Learning at the Reformation. That almost universal impression is entirely mistaken. The proof of the serious fallacy that has gained acceptance in this matter is to be found in the easily ascertainable fact that Scholasticism continued to be the philosophic teaching of European but also American universities and colleges down until well on in the nineteenth century. 

The evidence for this is abundant and convincing in the archives of our colonial colleges. A set of very precious official documents attest it. On Commencement day the candidates for the degree of B.A. were required in all the colleges of this country in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to defend a series of propositions, about one hundred more or less, that were printed at the expense of the students and were distributed to such of the audience as cared to take part in the public disputation which was held, as Cotton Mather tells us, on Commencement morning. These propositions summarized the studies in philosophy which represented the principal occupation of the students during the last two years of their college course, and for a considerable portion of the preceding two years. 

This fact which is manifest at once and is quite indisputable when our American colonial college theses are studied especially in connection with the college regulations as regards the holding of disputations regularly every week, is the most surprising revelation that we have had in the history of American education for several generations. It seems quite impossible to the great majority of our educators that Scholasticism should have continued to maintain its foothold in European and American colleges down to the beginning of the nineteenth 
century. Scholasticism has always been looked upon as a thing of the distant past, but as a matter of fact the men who organized our government of the people, by the people and for the people in its present form, were most of them trained mentally in accordance with this medieval mode of thought and teaching. 

The Founding Fathers of our republic, then, were educated according to the academic traditions which had been formulated in the earlier Middle Ages by Boethius, sometimes hailed as the father of Scholasticism, developed under St. Anselm in the eleventh century, reaching their culmination in the mind of Aquinas and the group contemporary with him in 
the thirteenth century when there came the conciliation of Scholastic doctrines with Aristotle, thus welding together the whole course of philosophic thought. 

Walsh rather underplays the fact that he is dealing with a Protestant scholasticism, one that (to a Catholic eye at least) is less firmly rooted in Aristotle and philosophic reasoning about human nature and more based on a foundation of axiomatic truths derived from revelation. (The general history of Protestant scholasticism, particularly in ethics, and a positive re-evaluation of its worth can be found here.)  As a standard work on ethics of this kind (quoted in Walsh, p.198) had it:


As we are reasonable creatures and obliged as such to yield unto God, the author of our 
beings, a reasonable service, it may be of very good use for us as far as it will go, with an implicit submission to Him for the rest, to exercise our reason upon these great and important subjects...As our reason in these things is, at best, but very dark and weak it is of the greatest importance to us that we diligently study the holy oracles in which we have the sublimest and most advantageous instructions and incentives to practice with regard to these matters 
which are of the utmost importance to our true and everlasting happiness.


The book goes through the curricula of various of the early American colleges. At the end, it's quite clear that the Founding Fathers of the US were schooled in a rigorously structured and reasoned system of ethics, explicitly based on the assumption of the relevance of divine guidance and revelation in Christianity, and regularly applied to the burning issues of the day such as revolution against an unjust government (generally in favour) and the existence of slavery (generally against). That's probably not surprising to anyone who's familiar with (eg) the Scottish universities of the time, but it's worth repeating in an age where there is a myth of the Enlightenment as simply a revolt against religion rather than in many ways a movement within Christianity. And it's also a useful reminder in what we've lost by abandoning a system of Higher Education that was truly systematic, and which was oriented towards producing a thoughtful and reflective citizenry, aware of its duties towards God and fellow human beings:


My duty and happiness must in general consist in the union of my will with His; in sincerely choosing what He chooseth and delighting in whatsoever He delights in ; in submitting to whatever instructions He shall think fit to give or whatever laws He shall think fit to enjoin either by nature or revelation ; and in resigning to the whole system of constitution which He hath established both natural and moral; and consequently in patiently bearing whatever He is pleased to allot and in conducting toward every person and thing as being what it really is and what He hath made it as He Himself 'doth and in governing myself and my whole temper 
and behavior by all those rules which promote the general weal of the whole system as God doth Himself ; always avoiding what is wrong or hurtful as being contrary thereunto; and doing what is right or beneficial as being agreeable to it on all occasions as they offer.

(Samuel Johnson, Elementa Philosophica 1752, quoted in Walsh, p.200).


Readers on both sides of the Atlantic may pause and weep at what we have lost.