Posts
Before I start this post, I must apologize for the 2 week delay in posts. We have had a flu bug in the house, and our weekends have been busy. My hope is to publish one post a week, every weekend. I will try to stick to that, but occasionally things come up that delay publishing. The saying of Peter Kreeft comes to mind, when asked what the best book he ever wrote was, he answered, "The one I didn't write when my kids were little." My blog may follow that, but I will try to be here once a week.
With the pope stepping down, one of his most famous sayings has been on my mind as of late. At the funeral oration of John Paul the Great, then Cardinal Ratzinger coined the phrase, "the dictatorship of relativism." Today we are going to look at relativism vs. relativity. I am going to argue that there is relativity in morality, but not relativism. Is this just a sophistical play on words? We shall see.
First, what is relativism? Numerous of my previous posts have highlighted the quiddity or "whatness" of relativism. It is our dominant social ethic, coming from the elites and spoon fed to us daily by a sycophantic media preying upon our desiring element. In a nutshell, relativism is the claim that there is no moral truth, that actions are socially constructed, and the rightness or wrongness of actions is impossible to determine. What is right depends on personal preference, i.e. do I think it is right? Obviously, on a social scale this is a very dangerous ethos as it realizes itself in the domination of the weak by the strong. Basically, relativism says there is no right and wrong; nothing is absolutely impermissable if it feels right. Obviously, when talking about actions or theories of actions, you really have to involve all of the powers of soul, things like sex drive, food consumption, sight, hearing, growth, nutrition, etc. all contribute to the conversation.
The question that ethics ask are, "What is good for the human being to do? Is there such a thing as good? If so, is it pleasure or something else?" Many wish to associate what is good with pleasure, but as Plato questions, are there pleasures that are not good? If so, pleasure cannot be the good. Following Aristotle and Aquinas, though, we can say that pleasure is concomitant with good, and when someone is truly good they have the best taste in pleasures. What does this mean?
For Aristotle, the virtuous man is the happiest man and virtue is something that needs to be lived. The virtuous man, in light of his virtuous character, knows what the best pleasures are and therefore chooses what is truly good for himself. Virtue, on Aristotle's definition, is a state of character that consists in the choice of a mean as made by the practically wise man. In other words, virtue is a rather permanent state in someone's character that has been developed through practice. They practice that by continuosly choosing the mean in ethical situations, and it is the practically wise man who consistently chooses the mean. What is the mean?
We will use the virtue of temperance as our example. The virtue of temperance has as its object (that which it aims at or its goal) pleasures of touch. Basically, temperance involves sex and food, as these are the two pleasures of touch. The temperate man will, through habit or practice, always choose what is a temperate action relative to him. So, Milo the wrestler (Aristotle's example) has a different mean than a 100 pound woman. Milo needs to eat 10,000 calories per day to maintain his physical conditioning to have the ability to compete. If a 100 pound woman were to eat that, she would fall into the excess of over indulgence, because relative to her and the context in which she lives, 10,000 calories per day would be excess. You and I can look and say that an NFL athlete who consumes 10,000 calories per day is not acting immorally, while anyone else, not involved in physical training, could be said to be immoral for eating that way. This is what I am calling relativity.
Relativity in ethics simply means that there is a right way to act in moral situations, but what that right way to act is depends upon the context in which it is realized. This is to be distinguished from relativism, which says that there is no right way to act in moral situations, all that is right is what I feel is right. Reason easily says otherwise. This is why we find it morally repugnant when people are morbidly obese, it is a lifestyle of over indulgence; a lifestyle of sin that has gotten them there. We wouldn't have that innate reaction to sloth or overindulgence if reason didn't tell us that this person was acting immorally.
The dictatorship of relativism, then, tells us we cannot make judgment calls in ethics because no one ethical system is superior rationally to any other. Some people do things their own way, and others do it theirs, no reason to judge. Except that we do and there is a reason we do. It's called the natural law, which is the ultimate ground, or context in which human beings can make judgments about what is moral or what is immoral.
In short, virtue is realized in a context, as our wrestler and small woman demonstrate above. The ultimate context we have is the natural law as it governs how every single human being behaves. Not in the Kantian sense of an external tyrant dictating all that we do, but an internal prompting that draws us to what is true and good. We can judge other cultures based on whether their actions contradict the natural law. We'll discuss the precepts of the natural law at a later date.
It is clear that context matters in morality, as was shown above with temperance. We can make that same claim with the other virtues. Is it courage that drives a man to save his comrades in war? Or is it something else? It depends on the context. If he jumps in foolishly, thinking that he can win because he's overwhelmed his enemy every time, but then realizes he is overwhelmed, and runs scared, then it wasn't courage, but expectation of success that drove him. We can do this for the other virtues as well.
So, for Aristotle, and I think he's right, virtue is realized as a mean. So temperance is the mean between the excess of overindulgence, and the defect of insensibility. What is over indulgence, and insensible, depends upon the context; but there is sin for all of us. Choosing what is temperate is realizable for all of us, again relative to the context.
In Catholic circles, this means we ought to try to hit the mean through communication with God. We see in a mirror darkly, but then face to face. Now, what is right is sometimes cloudy, but virtue theory at least gives us a map in which we can aim at the mean. In shooting golf, if you hit the green and not a hole in one, you're still doing pretty well. The same goes for us. The next question is how to be virtuous? Find someone who is virtuous and mimick them. Or, simply think as Christ taught us to think, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." This simple phrase will make you practically wise in the gamut of the infinite activity we find ourselves in.
So I'll let you be the judge, relativity vs. relativism. Which coincides more with our natural knowledge of right and wrong? It is as if our morality copies the very universe in which we exist. Einstein's Theory of Relativity says that the measurement of quantities are relative to the velocities of the observers. Measurements of morality are relative to the contexts they are realized in. Yet there is moral right and wrong. We all know it inherently; it's time we start thinking and living that way.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Sunday, January 27, 2013
The real nihilism....
A few days ago, my wife was perusing Facebook and came across a story about a waiter in Texas who heroically asked a family to leave his restaurant because they were complaining about a child with mental disabilities. The story went that, a family with a young child that is mentally challenged, was at the restaurant to eat, and another family began complaining about the behavior of the child. The waiter told the complainers that he would not be able to serve them. Bravo.
I reiterate this story, not because it is a feel good story of a man behaving virtuously, but because of some of the comments that were left after the fact on the Facebook page. There were a number of posts that read to the like of "These mongoloids are dragging down our species," "This is why Hitler had his eugenics right. No one should have to put up with these apes." "Maybe I should bring my chimp to restaurants with me, I garuantee they are more intelligent than this child that these people had to put up with." They were, quite frankly, some of the most offensive things I've read in a long time. It angered me because of the injustice of it, but it shows you where the intellectual trajectory of our culture has gone post Darwin; nihilistic atheism.
As I tried to root out the philosophy that would praise Hitler, as disgusting as that is, my thought turned to Nietzsche as well as the introlocuter Thrasymachus, who makes his appearance in the first book of Plato's Republic. Will to power is an intriguing philosophy, and it has tricked minds for millennia. It perhaps was never so well articulated as it was by Nietzsche, but we shall in the future check on a) Whether it is fair to say Nietzsche is the represtantive of modern culture, and b) after showing this we will challenge his thinking with the aid of classical philosophy. In my mind, the whole debate comes down to Aquinas vs Nietzsche. Whose philosophy is more commensurate with reality? Aquinas is the fulfillment, or the last great page in the classical tradition, and Nietzsche, unlike most modern philosophers was actually a philosopher. I read geniuses like Hegel, or Kant, and think of them as creative geniuses, not interpretive ones. Nietzsche, like Aquinas, was more of an interpreter of reality, i.e. more of a philosopher than a poet. But the question comes down to, whose philosophy explains reality better? We'll put them up against each other regularly here.
So what is this truly nihilistic philosophy we face with the downgoers, the arguers for non-human dignity? Nietzsche accused the "ascetic ideal" as a nihilism of his day; he accused Judaism, and the Cross, of being Europe's disease; its nihilism. This imagined nihilism has given way to a real bloody nihilism, in an age that is everything Nietzsche envisioned, one of a will to power ethic, where justice is what Thrasymachus called it, "justice is simply what is good for the stronger." These eugenics proponents, are just the voice of a nihilistic relativism that destroys humanity; drugs women to eliminate children; murders children; chooses the barren desert of homosexuality; experiments on human beings; de-humanizes women and children; in short, a bloody philosophy, an ideology of evil that tends to nothingness - which is the essence of evil!
The eugenicists may question the idea that they are Nietzscheans. They may say that I am unfairly classifying them. But in stating that we have to destroy mentally challenged human beings, they bury themselves deep in the will to power ethic. And, if they are going to be consistent in such an ideology, they must accept all of the precepts laid down by Nietzsche. Basically, if the eugenicists want to be at their best philosophically, they need to be in the Nietzschean catalogue. In fact, if we parsed it out, we could place them firmly there. I'd be happy to have that conversation with them.
My first question for the nihilists who threw epithets at this defenseless child, would be, "where do we define human dignity, according to you? At what point is the threshold? Where is the line in the sand?" Obviously, according to them, being mentally challenged is below the threshold of holding intrinsic worth as a human being, although, we might ask them to define human being; I'm not sure you can define a mentally challenged person as anything other than human. If we look to "science", we will be given a definition that will lead us to human being. Ultimately, a biological human can only be defined as a human being, and ought to be afforded the dignity of intrinsic worth.
What if, we decided, the eugenicists themselves were below the threshold, say, for being too short, or being too fat, or being too tall, or having the wrong color eyes, or wrong color skin, or wrong religion, etc. Suddenly, the idea that justice is what is good for the stronger does not look so appealing. Suddenly, like lightening the natural law strikes at the heart; bursting onto the scene is the inevitable self-preservation. Those who would define the human based on mental capacity, ought to be ready if they were ever the weaker, to accept the same conclusions. The fact is, they never consider themselves the weaker. These same haters are probably the first to shun racism or sexism (rightly so), but based on their eugenic principles they cannot define a proper threshold except that which those in power make it. As such, do not shun sexism or racism if you like eugenics, because arguments can, and have been made for women or certain races to be less human. Simply put, the principle of justice being what is good for the stronger, means hoping that you are always in the class of the stronger, which at bottom means you really don't trust your principles.
These folks, praising Hitler, are your neighbors; your godless neighbors; your nihilistic neighbors. What they miss in their eugenics is that power is the outcome of justice; the political, military, and economic strength of the West has been the result of the recognition of human dignity. Our great inheritance from Greek philosophy, and upgraded to infinite levels through Christ, is that every human being has dignity. That one idea has given rise to the idea of natural rights, to natural justice, to national democracy. That one idea was a gift from heaven, a gift that Christianity gave to the socio-political world; a gift that the human dignity deniers use to defeat human dignity. After all, their opinion wouldn't matter if we did not think human beings were willed for their own sake. See the contradiction? They affirm human dignity in one breath, and deny it in the other if they are held to their principles. Affirm it for themselves based on self-preservation, but deny it for others. Seems like a check-mate, except that Nietzsche says that existence is contradiction. So to be contradictory in statements is ok. You can't argue with someone who denies non-contradiction, but you need to decide if you can live with the idea that there is no truth, that everything you argue for is simply a chimera in a cosmic game. Do you have an opinion on something? Well, on Nietzsche's philosophy that is nothing but a mask for a will to power. Can you live with the idea that all of your thoughts are meaningless, that opinions are meaningless, that arguing is meaningless? Then you can be Nietzschean. I would like to ask Nietzsche why arguments at all? A biological process for survival? Ok, then why do thought processes help us survive? Why does reality correspond to our thought? Perhaps truth is layered in reality? Herr Nietzsche, why did you spend so much time arguing if they are pointless? Ultimately, the question we face is, truth or no? Nietzsche or Aquinas?
Socrates does well in defeating the arguments of Thrasymachus and shows that, no matter outcomes, to be just means to do good to those under your power. The just soul is the happy soul. We need really to question the dominant thought process of our culture, which is a will to power relativism that leaves tyrants in charge of us. The failed pagan ideas that we are reinventing in the guise of secularism, will of course destroy the good thing we've had going, where the rule of law reigned triumphant. We will suffer through it, remake the bloody mistakes, come back to God, and then fade away again. The slaves already rule the herd; the nihilists are everywhere in their anti-God psuedo-sophistication. We could hope these eugenicists return to reason, but to do so would mean returning to God. Unfortunately, to understand God's power, we have to experience His absence. We are a sickly bunch.
I reiterate this story, not because it is a feel good story of a man behaving virtuously, but because of some of the comments that were left after the fact on the Facebook page. There were a number of posts that read to the like of "These mongoloids are dragging down our species," "This is why Hitler had his eugenics right. No one should have to put up with these apes." "Maybe I should bring my chimp to restaurants with me, I garuantee they are more intelligent than this child that these people had to put up with." They were, quite frankly, some of the most offensive things I've read in a long time. It angered me because of the injustice of it, but it shows you where the intellectual trajectory of our culture has gone post Darwin; nihilistic atheism.
As I tried to root out the philosophy that would praise Hitler, as disgusting as that is, my thought turned to Nietzsche as well as the introlocuter Thrasymachus, who makes his appearance in the first book of Plato's Republic. Will to power is an intriguing philosophy, and it has tricked minds for millennia. It perhaps was never so well articulated as it was by Nietzsche, but we shall in the future check on a) Whether it is fair to say Nietzsche is the represtantive of modern culture, and b) after showing this we will challenge his thinking with the aid of classical philosophy. In my mind, the whole debate comes down to Aquinas vs Nietzsche. Whose philosophy is more commensurate with reality? Aquinas is the fulfillment, or the last great page in the classical tradition, and Nietzsche, unlike most modern philosophers was actually a philosopher. I read geniuses like Hegel, or Kant, and think of them as creative geniuses, not interpretive ones. Nietzsche, like Aquinas, was more of an interpreter of reality, i.e. more of a philosopher than a poet. But the question comes down to, whose philosophy explains reality better? We'll put them up against each other regularly here.
So what is this truly nihilistic philosophy we face with the downgoers, the arguers for non-human dignity? Nietzsche accused the "ascetic ideal" as a nihilism of his day; he accused Judaism, and the Cross, of being Europe's disease; its nihilism. This imagined nihilism has given way to a real bloody nihilism, in an age that is everything Nietzsche envisioned, one of a will to power ethic, where justice is what Thrasymachus called it, "justice is simply what is good for the stronger." These eugenics proponents, are just the voice of a nihilistic relativism that destroys humanity; drugs women to eliminate children; murders children; chooses the barren desert of homosexuality; experiments on human beings; de-humanizes women and children; in short, a bloody philosophy, an ideology of evil that tends to nothingness - which is the essence of evil!
The eugenicists may question the idea that they are Nietzscheans. They may say that I am unfairly classifying them. But in stating that we have to destroy mentally challenged human beings, they bury themselves deep in the will to power ethic. And, if they are going to be consistent in such an ideology, they must accept all of the precepts laid down by Nietzsche. Basically, if the eugenicists want to be at their best philosophically, they need to be in the Nietzschean catalogue. In fact, if we parsed it out, we could place them firmly there. I'd be happy to have that conversation with them.
My first question for the nihilists who threw epithets at this defenseless child, would be, "where do we define human dignity, according to you? At what point is the threshold? Where is the line in the sand?" Obviously, according to them, being mentally challenged is below the threshold of holding intrinsic worth as a human being, although, we might ask them to define human being; I'm not sure you can define a mentally challenged person as anything other than human. If we look to "science", we will be given a definition that will lead us to human being. Ultimately, a biological human can only be defined as a human being, and ought to be afforded the dignity of intrinsic worth.
What if, we decided, the eugenicists themselves were below the threshold, say, for being too short, or being too fat, or being too tall, or having the wrong color eyes, or wrong color skin, or wrong religion, etc. Suddenly, the idea that justice is what is good for the stronger does not look so appealing. Suddenly, like lightening the natural law strikes at the heart; bursting onto the scene is the inevitable self-preservation. Those who would define the human based on mental capacity, ought to be ready if they were ever the weaker, to accept the same conclusions. The fact is, they never consider themselves the weaker. These same haters are probably the first to shun racism or sexism (rightly so), but based on their eugenic principles they cannot define a proper threshold except that which those in power make it. As such, do not shun sexism or racism if you like eugenics, because arguments can, and have been made for women or certain races to be less human. Simply put, the principle of justice being what is good for the stronger, means hoping that you are always in the class of the stronger, which at bottom means you really don't trust your principles.
These folks, praising Hitler, are your neighbors; your godless neighbors; your nihilistic neighbors. What they miss in their eugenics is that power is the outcome of justice; the political, military, and economic strength of the West has been the result of the recognition of human dignity. Our great inheritance from Greek philosophy, and upgraded to infinite levels through Christ, is that every human being has dignity. That one idea has given rise to the idea of natural rights, to natural justice, to national democracy. That one idea was a gift from heaven, a gift that Christianity gave to the socio-political world; a gift that the human dignity deniers use to defeat human dignity. After all, their opinion wouldn't matter if we did not think human beings were willed for their own sake. See the contradiction? They affirm human dignity in one breath, and deny it in the other if they are held to their principles. Affirm it for themselves based on self-preservation, but deny it for others. Seems like a check-mate, except that Nietzsche says that existence is contradiction. So to be contradictory in statements is ok. You can't argue with someone who denies non-contradiction, but you need to decide if you can live with the idea that there is no truth, that everything you argue for is simply a chimera in a cosmic game. Do you have an opinion on something? Well, on Nietzsche's philosophy that is nothing but a mask for a will to power. Can you live with the idea that all of your thoughts are meaningless, that opinions are meaningless, that arguing is meaningless? Then you can be Nietzschean. I would like to ask Nietzsche why arguments at all? A biological process for survival? Ok, then why do thought processes help us survive? Why does reality correspond to our thought? Perhaps truth is layered in reality? Herr Nietzsche, why did you spend so much time arguing if they are pointless? Ultimately, the question we face is, truth or no? Nietzsche or Aquinas?
Socrates does well in defeating the arguments of Thrasymachus and shows that, no matter outcomes, to be just means to do good to those under your power. The just soul is the happy soul. We need really to question the dominant thought process of our culture, which is a will to power relativism that leaves tyrants in charge of us. The failed pagan ideas that we are reinventing in the guise of secularism, will of course destroy the good thing we've had going, where the rule of law reigned triumphant. We will suffer through it, remake the bloody mistakes, come back to God, and then fade away again. The slaves already rule the herd; the nihilists are everywhere in their anti-God psuedo-sophistication. We could hope these eugenicists return to reason, but to do so would mean returning to God. Unfortunately, to understand God's power, we have to experience His absence. We are a sickly bunch.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
The unexamined Life....
Socrates, in the apology he made before Athens prior to his sentence to death, made the claim that the unexamined life is a life that is not worth living. Born and raised in a culture enslaved by lower desires, I used to think it was particular to post-modern existence to be surrounded by non-inquirers and non seekers; to be surrounded by slave moralists pursuing death. The words of Socrates, shine light on the fact that it is an entirely human condition to avoid thought to allow for perversion of the will. The classical philosophical tradition repeatedly and forcefully laments the sophistical and rhetorical relativism that accompanies every human epoch; it is easier to wallow in the mire than to think and challenge the lower desires. Hence, why philosophers, priests, and saints tend to be the most hated of men. They offer a very distinct challenge to run of the mill humanity.
Of course, if we are going to examine life, as Socrates bids, then we ought to ask whether the life of base pleasure is the truly human way of living. We ought to ask if relativism, rhetoric, and sophism are the truth?
First, though, we must preface this. You all know that I shun relativism and think it is a failed morality that leads to individual and ultimately corporate slavery for humanity. The lust for power, domination, money, sex, are what deny peace to the human race. With my perspective being apparent, and knowing who I think is the enemy, you can judge whether the opinion is adequately liberal, or detached from prejudice enough to be an honest seeking of the truth. Having lived the existential lifestyle, my negativity towards it comes from having been a slave myself; indeed, we are all slaves in that we are fallen.
So why does relativism, the claim that there is no moral truth, draw so many into unwitting slavery? There must be some truth in it if it draws our beings, as by nature (yes, I know, I use that ugly teleological word) we must see something as true and good in order to pursue it. In modern philosophy, casuistry or situational ethics, has taken the day. Following Descartes' methodical doubt, we have demanded clear and distinct, i.e. mathematical precision, even in ethics. Ethics are contingent, they depend on an infinite number of circumstances, so to demand mathematically precise answers in moral situations amounts to demanding the impossible. Yet, Enlightenment philosophers tried to do so, and in so doing failed. Nietzsche, of course, said that meant morality had failed.
For instance, Kant gave us the categorical imperative, which is "only will that which you can will to be a universal maxim," and this golden rule could govern every moral situation. So, if I willed to steal my neighbors car because it was a nice vehicle, I have to ask myself "Can I will that anytime someone has a nice vehicle, I can steal it? Can this be a universal maxim?" You cannot will it, on Kant's account, because it would be a contradiction. I would say, "In my own personal situation, it is ok to steal the car, but in the universal situation, it is wrong to steal a car." Thus, I would contradict myself. Kant's maxim is applicable to any moral situation. If you're in a life boat and its going to sink because of too many passengers, you let it sink. Why, outcomes do not matter and you cannot will to commit suicide nor can you will to kill anyone else as these would violate the categorical imperative. Anyone with common sense looks at that and says, "that's insane and wrong." What is the common sense that beckons us in this way (here's a hint: it's a cardinal virtue and their prince -- prudence)?
Similarly, a utilitarian like Mill, would have another one way to answer every ethical dilemma. He would ask, what does the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people? In the lifeboat situation, you kill someone as that would save the rest. Utilitarianism is a dangerous relativism because it rules out nothing as per se evil. So murder becomes ok if it benefits the largest amount of people.
Of course, the classical tradition and Aristotle don't demand mathematical precision in ethics. They are wise enough to understand the contigent nature of ethics, and that for virtue to be realized a context is necessary. So, in the life boat situation, the Aristotelian says, exercise prudence. Are there women and children on the boat? Is there someone who is willing to give his life for the sake of another? Is there terminally ill or elderly who won't survive on the boat in the weather, etc.? With Aristotle, there is a right course of action, a moral course of action, but it requires that you think. And it is not mathematically precise, although neither is ethics.
The real draw of relativism, though, is its allowance of personal preference morality. Essentially, justice, truth, virtue, is what you make it. Being so drawn by our sexual instincts, and power seeking instincts, relativism gives us a free pass to do whatever we want, so long as it doesn't infringe upon the rights of others. The question is, is such a view of the world correct? It seems, since it draws so many people in, and tempering the passions is something that is often distasteful to us, (think of how hard it is cutting yourself off from that large piece of pie to lose weight,) it might be the case that simply satisfying the passions is the right way to live. (Hume, Mill, Nietzsche and others would concur with this sentiment.) Indeed, if these are our "instincts," it follows that they may accord with our nature, and thus be right and true.
The first questions we should ask then, is, a) is pursuit of what the passions direct us to always the correct course of action? and b) is there good and evil? If you look at question (a) and say with some emphasis "No way" you're on the path out of relativism. If you look at question (b) and say, "there is definitely good and evil," you're on the path out of relativism. If you look at them both and say, "Passions always lead us in the right direction," and "There is only my good and my evil," then you are a relativist. In the next post, I will finally examine the existence of evil, and we can all ruminate on if it is purely perspectival, or if there are really ontic (grounded in being) and moral evils.
In closing, I will simply ask, would it be right if we all sought to be children our whole lives? If the draw of the passions, bereft of reason, is the right way for us to live, then we ought to all remain children. Indeed, it would be better than to be less than that. It would be better to be swine. Do we want to say that a pig is better off than a man? The new pagan morality, while not outwardly stating such a thing, inwardly whispers to itself such a reality. We are a culture worthy of swine. A culture worthy of an unexamined life.
Of course, if we are going to examine life, as Socrates bids, then we ought to ask whether the life of base pleasure is the truly human way of living. We ought to ask if relativism, rhetoric, and sophism are the truth?
First, though, we must preface this. You all know that I shun relativism and think it is a failed morality that leads to individual and ultimately corporate slavery for humanity. The lust for power, domination, money, sex, are what deny peace to the human race. With my perspective being apparent, and knowing who I think is the enemy, you can judge whether the opinion is adequately liberal, or detached from prejudice enough to be an honest seeking of the truth. Having lived the existential lifestyle, my negativity towards it comes from having been a slave myself; indeed, we are all slaves in that we are fallen.
So why does relativism, the claim that there is no moral truth, draw so many into unwitting slavery? There must be some truth in it if it draws our beings, as by nature (yes, I know, I use that ugly teleological word) we must see something as true and good in order to pursue it. In modern philosophy, casuistry or situational ethics, has taken the day. Following Descartes' methodical doubt, we have demanded clear and distinct, i.e. mathematical precision, even in ethics. Ethics are contingent, they depend on an infinite number of circumstances, so to demand mathematically precise answers in moral situations amounts to demanding the impossible. Yet, Enlightenment philosophers tried to do so, and in so doing failed. Nietzsche, of course, said that meant morality had failed.
For instance, Kant gave us the categorical imperative, which is "only will that which you can will to be a universal maxim," and this golden rule could govern every moral situation. So, if I willed to steal my neighbors car because it was a nice vehicle, I have to ask myself "Can I will that anytime someone has a nice vehicle, I can steal it? Can this be a universal maxim?" You cannot will it, on Kant's account, because it would be a contradiction. I would say, "In my own personal situation, it is ok to steal the car, but in the universal situation, it is wrong to steal a car." Thus, I would contradict myself. Kant's maxim is applicable to any moral situation. If you're in a life boat and its going to sink because of too many passengers, you let it sink. Why, outcomes do not matter and you cannot will to commit suicide nor can you will to kill anyone else as these would violate the categorical imperative. Anyone with common sense looks at that and says, "that's insane and wrong." What is the common sense that beckons us in this way (here's a hint: it's a cardinal virtue and their prince -- prudence)?
Similarly, a utilitarian like Mill, would have another one way to answer every ethical dilemma. He would ask, what does the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people? In the lifeboat situation, you kill someone as that would save the rest. Utilitarianism is a dangerous relativism because it rules out nothing as per se evil. So murder becomes ok if it benefits the largest amount of people.
Of course, the classical tradition and Aristotle don't demand mathematical precision in ethics. They are wise enough to understand the contigent nature of ethics, and that for virtue to be realized a context is necessary. So, in the life boat situation, the Aristotelian says, exercise prudence. Are there women and children on the boat? Is there someone who is willing to give his life for the sake of another? Is there terminally ill or elderly who won't survive on the boat in the weather, etc.? With Aristotle, there is a right course of action, a moral course of action, but it requires that you think. And it is not mathematically precise, although neither is ethics.
The real draw of relativism, though, is its allowance of personal preference morality. Essentially, justice, truth, virtue, is what you make it. Being so drawn by our sexual instincts, and power seeking instincts, relativism gives us a free pass to do whatever we want, so long as it doesn't infringe upon the rights of others. The question is, is such a view of the world correct? It seems, since it draws so many people in, and tempering the passions is something that is often distasteful to us, (think of how hard it is cutting yourself off from that large piece of pie to lose weight,) it might be the case that simply satisfying the passions is the right way to live. (Hume, Mill, Nietzsche and others would concur with this sentiment.) Indeed, if these are our "instincts," it follows that they may accord with our nature, and thus be right and true.
The first questions we should ask then, is, a) is pursuit of what the passions direct us to always the correct course of action? and b) is there good and evil? If you look at question (a) and say with some emphasis "No way" you're on the path out of relativism. If you look at question (b) and say, "there is definitely good and evil," you're on the path out of relativism. If you look at them both and say, "Passions always lead us in the right direction," and "There is only my good and my evil," then you are a relativist. In the next post, I will finally examine the existence of evil, and we can all ruminate on if it is purely perspectival, or if there are really ontic (grounded in being) and moral evils.
In closing, I will simply ask, would it be right if we all sought to be children our whole lives? If the draw of the passions, bereft of reason, is the right way for us to live, then we ought to all remain children. Indeed, it would be better than to be less than that. It would be better to be swine. Do we want to say that a pig is better off than a man? The new pagan morality, while not outwardly stating such a thing, inwardly whispers to itself such a reality. We are a culture worthy of swine. A culture worthy of an unexamined life.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Moral neutrality...a preface to talk of evil.
In previous posts I have used the language of "moral neutrality," and a comment here is necessary on what I mean by that term. It ties in so fluidly with the classical definition of good and evil, that I thought I should explain the notion before ruminating on evil and whether it exists. Post modern thought, in succumbing to moral relativism, has failed to recognize evil, but I think we should question the idea that there is no moral evil. Indeed, we all recognize that there are crimes against justice; there is moral and even natural evil, but our shepherds have told us to shy away from such strong language because of our cultural (read Christian) perspective.
So what is moral neutrality? One of the greatest expositions of it was put forth by Montaigne in his famous essay "Of Cannibals." In a nutshell, this essay makes the claim that we only call things barbarism that are not familiar to our own cultural standards. So, when we accuse those who practice cannibalism from distant cultures of immorality, we are simply imposing our own cultural standards on a people that do not share those standards. We must, and this is how the lie goes, accept differing cultural standards, even if they are in our perspective evil, simply because we make that judgment based on unfamiliarity with distant cultures. If we saw it through the cannibals eyes, we would think it strange to not eat the bodies of our slain enemies. It would be immoral not to do so. If you notice, though, there is a moral imperative behind the seemingly innocuous claim that we ought not judge cultures differing from our own. We must not critique different cultures for being wrong, they are simply different. In this line of thinking, it didn't take long for the truth silencers to silence those who accept that there is moral truth, simply by telling those who can see there is moral truth that they are "closed minded" for questioning differing cultures. A very cute trick, and a nice, noble lie.
The gist of moral neutrality, then, is that we cannot exercise judgment on moral action because we are completely engrained in a perspective that may be false. We have to stay out of the arena of judging action, because our cultural standards are simply that, self-made cultural standards without any objective morality behind them. (I'm hesitant to use the terminology "objective" as it brings in notions of categorical commands and Kant, which I think have no place in truly philosophical ethics.)
We can also see this moral neutrality at work in how our president refuses to use the terminology "terrorist" for Islamic radicals who are bent on killing innocents based on their "infidelity" to Islam. "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," as the saying goes. Whether or not a "terrorist" is a "freedom fighter" we would have to examine his specific actions and what he is fighting for. In the West, we judge them terrorists, and rightly so, as they specificially target innocent people and murder them in cold blood. This is not the action of just war, or virtuous military action. Terrorism is the right term. Similarly, America acted as a "terrorist" with the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan. It is immoral to target innocent people.
So moral neutrality is a false perspectivism, which on one hand claims there is no moral truth, but on the other, commands that we follow the morality that says there is no moral truth.
Of course, as my previous post attests, there is perspective in moral inquiry, and it does play a role in how we see moral truth (when we start discussing virtue theory, we'll expound upon how perspective plays a role in moral action). At the same time, there are the precepts of the natural law, which allow for cultural differentiation, but at the same time give us a means to critique actually immoral action. In short, perpective plays a role in how we see the world, and there are legitimate cultural differences that should not be called immoral simply because they are different, but there is moral truth. That is, there is perspective in moral inquiry, but there is also moral truth. We live in a culture that goes to one of the two extremes, either there is no moral truth and only perspective, or there is no perspective and only moral truth. Both of these are false extremes. (The former view is represented by our elites, and leftist politicians, the latter by misguided Kantian Christians and right-wing politicians.)
The greatest lies always start with a hint of the truth. Moral neutrality is Enlightenment liberalisms greatest lie. So what does all this have to do with evil? In short, moral neutrality gives us no grounds for calling anything evil. Yet, when a tragedy happens like the one that occured in Newtown, Connecticut, we all step back, as a world community, and say, "that is evil." We are such sick creatures that it takes the murder of innocent children for us to recognize there is moral truth. I wonder what our shepherd relativists in academia, or our president, would say if we pushed them on whether this was evil? I would guess they would probably admit it was, although their own philosophy disallows them to make that statement. After all, if there is no moral truth, this disturbed young man was simply acting on some perpectival good (on a side, this is precisely where classical philosophers would recognize there is evil, a perspectival good being realized, but a good that is not actually good. In other words, evil only exists in and of the good, so this murderer beheld an apparent good in his actions, but it was not a real good. This is the essence of moral evil. More on this later). "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," hard to imagine moral neutralists would hold to their morally neutral principles in the face of real evil.
This only serves to show that we are a Nietzchean culture. We have heard the term "cafeteria Catholic" in commenting on Catholics who pick and choose which principles of the Church they will follow based on their own wills. Well, the West is made up of "cafeteria moralists" with no principled approach to issues they take stands on, but only personal preference. Self-justification of my own will. In a Nietzchean world where there is no truth, we, like Obama, can just pick and choose what we call moral or immoral based on situations and our personal preference. Although, the very principles of moral neutrality serve as a critique of simply choosing to say some individual action is evil, our non-contradiction deniers will tie themselves up in contradiction and continue to be impossible to argue with. And they will get away with it because as a culture we have stopped philosophizing.
So, coming away from this post, I'm hoping my readers will have a better understanding of moral neutrality. It is the lie that we cannot make judgments about moral activity because the claim is there is no moral truth. Our human nature, stamped into our very being, of course, detests this, and we can't help but call the murder of children evil. That simple statement beckons to the idea that, even if we pretend there is no moral truth along with our academic shepherds, we inherently know that there is. Discovering it becomes our biggest problem. Luckily, classical philosophy, namely Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, have given us a roadmap. We'll follow that map in the coming posts. Stay tuned for the inquiry into evil.
So what is moral neutrality? One of the greatest expositions of it was put forth by Montaigne in his famous essay "Of Cannibals." In a nutshell, this essay makes the claim that we only call things barbarism that are not familiar to our own cultural standards. So, when we accuse those who practice cannibalism from distant cultures of immorality, we are simply imposing our own cultural standards on a people that do not share those standards. We must, and this is how the lie goes, accept differing cultural standards, even if they are in our perspective evil, simply because we make that judgment based on unfamiliarity with distant cultures. If we saw it through the cannibals eyes, we would think it strange to not eat the bodies of our slain enemies. It would be immoral not to do so. If you notice, though, there is a moral imperative behind the seemingly innocuous claim that we ought not judge cultures differing from our own. We must not critique different cultures for being wrong, they are simply different. In this line of thinking, it didn't take long for the truth silencers to silence those who accept that there is moral truth, simply by telling those who can see there is moral truth that they are "closed minded" for questioning differing cultures. A very cute trick, and a nice, noble lie.
The gist of moral neutrality, then, is that we cannot exercise judgment on moral action because we are completely engrained in a perspective that may be false. We have to stay out of the arena of judging action, because our cultural standards are simply that, self-made cultural standards without any objective morality behind them. (I'm hesitant to use the terminology "objective" as it brings in notions of categorical commands and Kant, which I think have no place in truly philosophical ethics.)
We can also see this moral neutrality at work in how our president refuses to use the terminology "terrorist" for Islamic radicals who are bent on killing innocents based on their "infidelity" to Islam. "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," as the saying goes. Whether or not a "terrorist" is a "freedom fighter" we would have to examine his specific actions and what he is fighting for. In the West, we judge them terrorists, and rightly so, as they specificially target innocent people and murder them in cold blood. This is not the action of just war, or virtuous military action. Terrorism is the right term. Similarly, America acted as a "terrorist" with the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan. It is immoral to target innocent people.
So moral neutrality is a false perspectivism, which on one hand claims there is no moral truth, but on the other, commands that we follow the morality that says there is no moral truth.
Of course, as my previous post attests, there is perspective in moral inquiry, and it does play a role in how we see moral truth (when we start discussing virtue theory, we'll expound upon how perspective plays a role in moral action). At the same time, there are the precepts of the natural law, which allow for cultural differentiation, but at the same time give us a means to critique actually immoral action. In short, perpective plays a role in how we see the world, and there are legitimate cultural differences that should not be called immoral simply because they are different, but there is moral truth. That is, there is perspective in moral inquiry, but there is also moral truth. We live in a culture that goes to one of the two extremes, either there is no moral truth and only perspective, or there is no perspective and only moral truth. Both of these are false extremes. (The former view is represented by our elites, and leftist politicians, the latter by misguided Kantian Christians and right-wing politicians.)
The greatest lies always start with a hint of the truth. Moral neutrality is Enlightenment liberalisms greatest lie. So what does all this have to do with evil? In short, moral neutrality gives us no grounds for calling anything evil. Yet, when a tragedy happens like the one that occured in Newtown, Connecticut, we all step back, as a world community, and say, "that is evil." We are such sick creatures that it takes the murder of innocent children for us to recognize there is moral truth. I wonder what our shepherd relativists in academia, or our president, would say if we pushed them on whether this was evil? I would guess they would probably admit it was, although their own philosophy disallows them to make that statement. After all, if there is no moral truth, this disturbed young man was simply acting on some perpectival good (on a side, this is precisely where classical philosophers would recognize there is evil, a perspectival good being realized, but a good that is not actually good. In other words, evil only exists in and of the good, so this murderer beheld an apparent good in his actions, but it was not a real good. This is the essence of moral evil. More on this later). "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," hard to imagine moral neutralists would hold to their morally neutral principles in the face of real evil.
This only serves to show that we are a Nietzchean culture. We have heard the term "cafeteria Catholic" in commenting on Catholics who pick and choose which principles of the Church they will follow based on their own wills. Well, the West is made up of "cafeteria moralists" with no principled approach to issues they take stands on, but only personal preference. Self-justification of my own will. In a Nietzchean world where there is no truth, we, like Obama, can just pick and choose what we call moral or immoral based on situations and our personal preference. Although, the very principles of moral neutrality serve as a critique of simply choosing to say some individual action is evil, our non-contradiction deniers will tie themselves up in contradiction and continue to be impossible to argue with. And they will get away with it because as a culture we have stopped philosophizing.
So, coming away from this post, I'm hoping my readers will have a better understanding of moral neutrality. It is the lie that we cannot make judgments about moral activity because the claim is there is no moral truth. Our human nature, stamped into our very being, of course, detests this, and we can't help but call the murder of children evil. That simple statement beckons to the idea that, even if we pretend there is no moral truth along with our academic shepherds, we inherently know that there is. Discovering it becomes our biggest problem. Luckily, classical philosophy, namely Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, have given us a roadmap. We'll follow that map in the coming posts. Stay tuned for the inquiry into evil.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
A note on the title of the blog...
I feel a little explanation for the title of this blog would be beneficial to readers, since I actually have them now :). I orginally envisioned this blog as being a sounding board for a critique of modern culture and it's disassociation with any kind of moral truth. I, following the writing of Nietzsche, envisioned writing in his biting style, but with Thomistic truth. I named the blog with rhetorical terms like "soldier" and "warrior" because I felt we needed a more masculine Catholicity to confront modern paganism, so I originally used the rhetoric of power. That may still seep in as it is fun to write that way, but in recent readings I realized to reach more people, I needed to be clearer and less metaphorical. Once my readers are up to speed on how I am using terminology, I will probably delve back into that rhetorical stance. Ultimately, writing is an art, and even philosophy is more fun for readers if it is presented in a mysterious and beautiful way. I say that with some caution, as philosophy is meant to present ideas and terminology as precisely as possible. When we let poetic rhetoric creep in, we can sometimes lose precision and ultimately the truth we are pursuing. So, long story short, I want this to be artistic, but philosophical too. In the beginning, then, I will be as clear as possible, I will teach, and as a grasp of the terminology grows amongst readers, the rhetoric of Catholic power will reappear. Of course, I reserve the right to allow the muse to inspire me, so there may be poetic/rhetorical posts along the way.
Given this new perspective on how to present this blog, I have change the name of it to "Lights through Diamonds." This is a metaphor for how we approach truth. The question of Pontius Pilate to Christ, "Quid est veritas?" (what is truth) echos more strongly today than in any other epoch. Nietzsche perceptively caught that there was an element of perspective in all the philosophies presented by philosophers, but he wrongly assumed that there was no truth and that the deliberations of philosophers were merely prejudices of people who sought to dominate others. MacIntyre, who in my mind is the most important moral philosopher since Nietzsche, has given greater credence to the idea that we approach moral truth through a perspective. All activity requires a context to be intelligible, and virtues are only realized in an infinite number of contingent circumstances. Thus, moral truth is not relative, but the right thing to do in all situations requires prudence and deliberation. There is not one mathematical or categorical answer to ethical dilemmas, and our cultural history will influence how we react to moral situations.
So, following Plato who spoke of the good as light, and Christ who spoke of it as such, I have chosen the language of "Light" as the symbol of the transcendentals that are found in God, i.e. Being, the True, the Good, the Beautiful, and so on. Diamonds, then, represent the prism through which we see the light. We all have perspective, a material, efficient, final, and formal cause. Our cultural, familial, religious and cultural heritages inform how we percieve the world. It's time to move away from the Enlightenment lie that we can be completely above and beyond perspective in inquiry. On the surface, this is a seemingly innocuous fancy, but it is a dangerous chimera that has careened us into the dictatorship of relativism we live in today. For example, atheist physicists often present themselves as having no agenda, but to just let the science do the talking. They claim to be following science, but then ignore all indicators that there is intelligence behind the very rational structure of reality. This "scientism" then lends itself to a doubt about all things moral as it puts reason to war with religion, even though it is a false dichotomy. There is no real antagonism between science and religion so long as neither side over steps its realm of understanding; indeed, science is unified by the existence of God, by Being.
In this blog, then, I do not pretend to not have perspective in looking for truth. The perspective is meant to be open ended and dialectical, following my heroes of Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, I plan to circle around questions posed for debate. I plan to spin the diamond in my hand, to locate all perspectives and look for the most direct route to the source of the light. Through my intellectual and moral meanderings, I have encountered many perspectives, but the one that spoke most powerfully to my nature, and I believe will speak to all human being's nature, is the truth I found in Catholicism. Indeed through reason I have come to believe the Catholic faith is the most consistent and rationally grounded way of approaching existence; through faith I have come to accept all that she teaches. What I have discovered is that her faith and morals, while handed down from above, always have rational justification for themselves, we just need to be open to studying what she teaches. I have found that the Church is like a laser that cuts through the diamond and opens us to the light without having to spin the diamond in our hands. The prism has been shattered and the light given to us. Nonetheless, we were created as seekers of knowledge, as door knockers for truth, so even though it was given to us, we must continually search to strengthen our faith. Reason upholds the faith, the second wing on the great bird taking us to heaven.
So the perspective presented here is one of a Catholic convinced of the truth of the Church through rational inquiry. When I earned my first Masters Degree in Catholic Studies, it was the first time I was given perspectives. I was shown for the first time dialectic, by being taught what those opposed to the Church's teaching held. Of course, I had been given these same perspectives as an undergraduate, but the opposing views were not presented. I was spoonfed a existentialist relativism without dialectic. It was one relativist viewpoint, and by reason of it's lack of giving perpectives, extremely unphilosophical. Catholic Studies wasn't presented as "Here are the enemies of the Church," it was presented dialectically, "Is this true what this person argues? If this is true, then the Church is wrong." This affirmed my faith because the Church basks in the stronghold of truth. She didn't fear criticism or silence opposition; she listened, and rebuked with reason. Her rebukes spoke most profoundly to my inner nature. Was what she taught uncomfortable? At times, yes. But truth is often uncomfortable, so even the hard teachings beckoned my nature.
Following Socrates and the classical tradition, then, this blog will be dialectical. It will question the Church, it will question post-modern Enlightenment dogma, it will question all. There is no fear of the truth here. So, the truth comes to us in perspectives, but there is Truth. We will look at the light through diamonds, in open ended inquiry. My hero Aquinas left his great theological works open ended, they weren't meant to be the final say on truth, but were truly dialectical. We will do the same here.
Given this new perspective on how to present this blog, I have change the name of it to "Lights through Diamonds." This is a metaphor for how we approach truth. The question of Pontius Pilate to Christ, "Quid est veritas?" (what is truth) echos more strongly today than in any other epoch. Nietzsche perceptively caught that there was an element of perspective in all the philosophies presented by philosophers, but he wrongly assumed that there was no truth and that the deliberations of philosophers were merely prejudices of people who sought to dominate others. MacIntyre, who in my mind is the most important moral philosopher since Nietzsche, has given greater credence to the idea that we approach moral truth through a perspective. All activity requires a context to be intelligible, and virtues are only realized in an infinite number of contingent circumstances. Thus, moral truth is not relative, but the right thing to do in all situations requires prudence and deliberation. There is not one mathematical or categorical answer to ethical dilemmas, and our cultural history will influence how we react to moral situations.
So, following Plato who spoke of the good as light, and Christ who spoke of it as such, I have chosen the language of "Light" as the symbol of the transcendentals that are found in God, i.e. Being, the True, the Good, the Beautiful, and so on. Diamonds, then, represent the prism through which we see the light. We all have perspective, a material, efficient, final, and formal cause. Our cultural, familial, religious and cultural heritages inform how we percieve the world. It's time to move away from the Enlightenment lie that we can be completely above and beyond perspective in inquiry. On the surface, this is a seemingly innocuous fancy, but it is a dangerous chimera that has careened us into the dictatorship of relativism we live in today. For example, atheist physicists often present themselves as having no agenda, but to just let the science do the talking. They claim to be following science, but then ignore all indicators that there is intelligence behind the very rational structure of reality. This "scientism" then lends itself to a doubt about all things moral as it puts reason to war with religion, even though it is a false dichotomy. There is no real antagonism between science and religion so long as neither side over steps its realm of understanding; indeed, science is unified by the existence of God, by Being.
In this blog, then, I do not pretend to not have perspective in looking for truth. The perspective is meant to be open ended and dialectical, following my heroes of Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, I plan to circle around questions posed for debate. I plan to spin the diamond in my hand, to locate all perspectives and look for the most direct route to the source of the light. Through my intellectual and moral meanderings, I have encountered many perspectives, but the one that spoke most powerfully to my nature, and I believe will speak to all human being's nature, is the truth I found in Catholicism. Indeed through reason I have come to believe the Catholic faith is the most consistent and rationally grounded way of approaching existence; through faith I have come to accept all that she teaches. What I have discovered is that her faith and morals, while handed down from above, always have rational justification for themselves, we just need to be open to studying what she teaches. I have found that the Church is like a laser that cuts through the diamond and opens us to the light without having to spin the diamond in our hands. The prism has been shattered and the light given to us. Nonetheless, we were created as seekers of knowledge, as door knockers for truth, so even though it was given to us, we must continually search to strengthen our faith. Reason upholds the faith, the second wing on the great bird taking us to heaven.
So the perspective presented here is one of a Catholic convinced of the truth of the Church through rational inquiry. When I earned my first Masters Degree in Catholic Studies, it was the first time I was given perspectives. I was shown for the first time dialectic, by being taught what those opposed to the Church's teaching held. Of course, I had been given these same perspectives as an undergraduate, but the opposing views were not presented. I was spoonfed a existentialist relativism without dialectic. It was one relativist viewpoint, and by reason of it's lack of giving perpectives, extremely unphilosophical. Catholic Studies wasn't presented as "Here are the enemies of the Church," it was presented dialectically, "Is this true what this person argues? If this is true, then the Church is wrong." This affirmed my faith because the Church basks in the stronghold of truth. She didn't fear criticism or silence opposition; she listened, and rebuked with reason. Her rebukes spoke most profoundly to my inner nature. Was what she taught uncomfortable? At times, yes. But truth is often uncomfortable, so even the hard teachings beckoned my nature.
Following Socrates and the classical tradition, then, this blog will be dialectical. It will question the Church, it will question post-modern Enlightenment dogma, it will question all. There is no fear of the truth here. So, the truth comes to us in perspectives, but there is Truth. We will look at the light through diamonds, in open ended inquiry. My hero Aquinas left his great theological works open ended, they weren't meant to be the final say on truth, but were truly dialectical. We will do the same here.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Seeing so well we are all blind....
In the age of scientific discovery we have become blind. We do not have a religious problem, we have a thinking problem.
Chesterton, in critiquing the religious - or rather, skeptical view of religion - of Dickens, once said that Dickens accepted the religious ethos of his day, which was one of anti-dogmatism. Chesterton said, what anti-dogmatism actually is is unexamined dogma, which brings me to the topic for today - the thinking problem the West has found itself in. Sure, we are pragmatic. Sure, we have technology that is so profound it often frightens us (think of the myriad of movies designated to the topic of technology ultimately exceeding our control - Wall-e or the Matrix Trilogy come immediately to mind); even with such marvelous acheivements, we are seeing so well we are blind.
Pragmatic without prudence, the summation of our culture. I once heard a biology professor, in speaking about the status of a human embryo, state that he didn't put value into whether the thing he was experimenting with was human or not. He said he was not a philosopher or priest and didn't operate in the realm of pure speculation, but in the realm of pure data. He said he didn't represent an ethic, but rather "allowed the science to lead the way without speculating about the status of the embryo. I do not introduce morality into my subject, but rather let the science do the talking." I paraphrase here as the exact words escape me. The point was, he was a scientist and not a philosopher, and therefore in his eyes he was eschewing morality and dealing purely with science. No wonder we fear our technology! If science dictates the ends, science dominates us like the worst of tyrants. At any rate, this is the 20/20 scientific vision that has blinded us all. Morality is about theories of actions, it is a speculative endeavor that seeks to understand how we ought to behave. This unphilosophical scientist, because he had little or no philosophy training, actually put forward a morality while denying morality. This is the Western thinking problem in a nutshell.
His theory of action was to let science lead the way. Seeing so well with instrumentation he forgot to look without it. It's akin to using a telescope to walk down the street, sure you can learn a lot about the stars with it, but it's not a good guide to walking down the street. If you don't get run over, you'll certainly run into things along the way.
This is the moral landscape we find ourselves in today. We hear talk of science vs. religion, and how they are incompatible. We hear of certain religious nuts, following their own wills to carnal or destructive ends, and we decide it is better to not examine dogma than actually see what motivates such people. Of course, the shepherds of the slave morality want us to think religion is for the unsophisticated or the crazy. Our groupthinking professors, all with existentialist Nietzschean ends (more on this later), have convinced us that religion is the problem. They tend to gloss or not even cover the institutionalized versions of their very own ethic. We shant look at the scars of atheism because alas, it is "scientific" and "sophisticated." Let's just prima facie take a glimpse at institutionalized atheism. Communist Russia -- how many millions was Stalin alone responsible for taking, 10? Nazi Germany -- 6 million Jews, and the propagation of World War II. How about modern China, where women are forcibly taken from their homes, their children murdered, all for a false understanding of overpopulation? Atheism is nihilism in a very real sense; not an imagined or hated weakness of a Christian nihilism as Nietzche envisioned, but a real nihilism, spattered in blood; carved out in blood of the innocents. Of course, our existentialist groupthinkers in academia do not shed light on this. Instead, they point to Galileo, or the executions for heresy in the Middle Ages, which amount to maybe tens of thousands of deaths. This is no justification for the murders over dogma in the Middle Ages, but to show you that the hands of our groupthinking shepherds (academics, media, secular politicians) are not as clean as they pretend. Indeed, their laundry is much dirtier.
American politics has long been an arena of competing wills; of will to power politics. Unfortunately, lately it has taken a turn for the worse, because it has instantiated the dictatorship of relativism. Our president and his ilk all portray a love of freedom, brotherhood, and equality, but they define them on their own terms. Freedom is accepting their view. Freedom of speech is now hindered because we are threatened with "bigotry" if we even question their morality. Governments, without a barometer of truth, detach themselves very quickly from recognition of human dignity and the natural law, and quickly descend into tyranny. We are witnessing this in American politics today. According to our leaders, the truth is there is no moral truth, but our politicians have a truth. Their moral neutrality is the key that unlocks the gate and lets the wolves and leopards in. It goes like this, "We are open minded, but do not contradict our openmindedness. You think gay marriage is problematic, you are a bigot. Do not bother to speculate about it or question our truth. If you do you are a bigot. Do not ask if homosexuals are happy, if you do so you are a bigot. Bigot, bigot, bigot!"
Or, "Do not ask about the status of an embryo. Embryonic stem cell research is for the good of humanity. If you think it's a human being, it is religious standpoint and therefore unreasonable. Do not question us and our sophisticated moral neutrality. If you do, you are opposed to science and freedom. You are opposed to discovery. You are an ignoramus or bigot. Yes, bigot!"
Or, "You are opposed to abortion. That is based on your religion and therefore not reasonable. We believe in a woman's freedom. Do not ask if the tissue inside her womb is human. Do not question us or you are opposed to women's rights. You are a freedom hater if you question us. You are a bigot!"
See how moral neutrality works? Christian morality cannot take a dogmatic approach - in the shadow of Kant - to issues because our culture says that no one knows what is truly moral. Our shepherds tell us that Christian morality is archaic, outdated, and unreasonable. They tell us it is based on blind fideism, (we will deal with the philosophical arguments stemming from the Christian perspective later - we do not need to allow them this debate silencer any longer). It is very open minded, of course, to silence opposition by not even hearing the reasons they have for their ethics.
So Christian morality makes you a bigot. Secular morality makes me open minded. No need to inquire. The wolves are shepherding us with relativism, and they will soon feast on us. With Obama holding the keys, it is only a matter of time before their "truth" silences any and all inquiry in the name of moral and scientific sophistication - all the while silencing true inquiry and destroying sophisticiation! The spiritually minded are all clued into this. We can no longer ask questions because the morally neutral are dictating to us our morality by means of intimidation!
It would do us all good to examine more closely, to ruminate about the dogma's we are so adament to hate. We do not examine dogma and fear dogma because if there is Truth, there may be demands on our wills. Do we fear Truth? Do you fear Truth? If you must examine your own behavior, will there be skeletons? In the dictum of Aristotle, we ought to love truth more than our friends. To see that we naturally fear truth, because ultimately we by nature realize how dirty we are, one needs to just look at even our whitest of lies. Someone asks you if you saw them walking down the street, when indeed you did, but avoided them because you didn't want to stop to talk. You tell them you did not see them to avoid the discomfort of explaining that you didn't want to stop to talk. A fear of the truth.
In this blog I plan to unmask the dogmatism of our agnostic society. Agnosticism is practical atheism, and it realizes itself in this way. All it takes for evil to triumph is for the good to do nothing; the good will do nothing if they recognize nothing as good. This is precisely where agnosticism and religious skepticism have placed us. Because we as a culture have accepted that there is no truth, we find nothing good worth fighting for, but then the wolves spoon feed us the slave morality of childesh pleasure, which individually enslaves us, and ultimately corporately enslaves us.
In this blog I plan to inspire thought. I will question the unchallenged dogma of existentialist liberalism. It's genius stroke was to play itself off as neutral and antidogmatic. But it is dogma.
It is right to question everything, so let's together inquire and disallow the "morally neutral" to dominate and intimidate us into non thinking. Forget tolerance. We should question all! (I can use the imperative "should" because our foundation is the natrual law, but we will argue for it in the coming posts. We won't simply assert it and then intimidate all those who question it by calling them bigots.)
So let us question Catholicism. Let us question Islam. Let us question Atheism. Let us question Judaism, Buddhism, pantheism, polytheism, etc. Let us question existence! In other words, let us wonder....let us inquire.
We are dogmatic creatures. If we must be dogmatic, then what dogma?
It's time to remove the masks.
Chesterton, in critiquing the religious - or rather, skeptical view of religion - of Dickens, once said that Dickens accepted the religious ethos of his day, which was one of anti-dogmatism. Chesterton said, what anti-dogmatism actually is is unexamined dogma, which brings me to the topic for today - the thinking problem the West has found itself in. Sure, we are pragmatic. Sure, we have technology that is so profound it often frightens us (think of the myriad of movies designated to the topic of technology ultimately exceeding our control - Wall-e or the Matrix Trilogy come immediately to mind); even with such marvelous acheivements, we are seeing so well we are blind.
Pragmatic without prudence, the summation of our culture. I once heard a biology professor, in speaking about the status of a human embryo, state that he didn't put value into whether the thing he was experimenting with was human or not. He said he was not a philosopher or priest and didn't operate in the realm of pure speculation, but in the realm of pure data. He said he didn't represent an ethic, but rather "allowed the science to lead the way without speculating about the status of the embryo. I do not introduce morality into my subject, but rather let the science do the talking." I paraphrase here as the exact words escape me. The point was, he was a scientist and not a philosopher, and therefore in his eyes he was eschewing morality and dealing purely with science. No wonder we fear our technology! If science dictates the ends, science dominates us like the worst of tyrants. At any rate, this is the 20/20 scientific vision that has blinded us all. Morality is about theories of actions, it is a speculative endeavor that seeks to understand how we ought to behave. This unphilosophical scientist, because he had little or no philosophy training, actually put forward a morality while denying morality. This is the Western thinking problem in a nutshell.
His theory of action was to let science lead the way. Seeing so well with instrumentation he forgot to look without it. It's akin to using a telescope to walk down the street, sure you can learn a lot about the stars with it, but it's not a good guide to walking down the street. If you don't get run over, you'll certainly run into things along the way.
This is the moral landscape we find ourselves in today. We hear talk of science vs. religion, and how they are incompatible. We hear of certain religious nuts, following their own wills to carnal or destructive ends, and we decide it is better to not examine dogma than actually see what motivates such people. Of course, the shepherds of the slave morality want us to think religion is for the unsophisticated or the crazy. Our groupthinking professors, all with existentialist Nietzschean ends (more on this later), have convinced us that religion is the problem. They tend to gloss or not even cover the institutionalized versions of their very own ethic. We shant look at the scars of atheism because alas, it is "scientific" and "sophisticated." Let's just prima facie take a glimpse at institutionalized atheism. Communist Russia -- how many millions was Stalin alone responsible for taking, 10? Nazi Germany -- 6 million Jews, and the propagation of World War II. How about modern China, where women are forcibly taken from their homes, their children murdered, all for a false understanding of overpopulation? Atheism is nihilism in a very real sense; not an imagined or hated weakness of a Christian nihilism as Nietzche envisioned, but a real nihilism, spattered in blood; carved out in blood of the innocents. Of course, our existentialist groupthinkers in academia do not shed light on this. Instead, they point to Galileo, or the executions for heresy in the Middle Ages, which amount to maybe tens of thousands of deaths. This is no justification for the murders over dogma in the Middle Ages, but to show you that the hands of our groupthinking shepherds (academics, media, secular politicians) are not as clean as they pretend. Indeed, their laundry is much dirtier.
American politics has long been an arena of competing wills; of will to power politics. Unfortunately, lately it has taken a turn for the worse, because it has instantiated the dictatorship of relativism. Our president and his ilk all portray a love of freedom, brotherhood, and equality, but they define them on their own terms. Freedom is accepting their view. Freedom of speech is now hindered because we are threatened with "bigotry" if we even question their morality. Governments, without a barometer of truth, detach themselves very quickly from recognition of human dignity and the natural law, and quickly descend into tyranny. We are witnessing this in American politics today. According to our leaders, the truth is there is no moral truth, but our politicians have a truth. Their moral neutrality is the key that unlocks the gate and lets the wolves and leopards in. It goes like this, "We are open minded, but do not contradict our openmindedness. You think gay marriage is problematic, you are a bigot. Do not bother to speculate about it or question our truth. If you do you are a bigot. Do not ask if homosexuals are happy, if you do so you are a bigot. Bigot, bigot, bigot!"
Or, "Do not ask about the status of an embryo. Embryonic stem cell research is for the good of humanity. If you think it's a human being, it is religious standpoint and therefore unreasonable. Do not question us and our sophisticated moral neutrality. If you do, you are opposed to science and freedom. You are opposed to discovery. You are an ignoramus or bigot. Yes, bigot!"
Or, "You are opposed to abortion. That is based on your religion and therefore not reasonable. We believe in a woman's freedom. Do not ask if the tissue inside her womb is human. Do not question us or you are opposed to women's rights. You are a freedom hater if you question us. You are a bigot!"
See how moral neutrality works? Christian morality cannot take a dogmatic approach - in the shadow of Kant - to issues because our culture says that no one knows what is truly moral. Our shepherds tell us that Christian morality is archaic, outdated, and unreasonable. They tell us it is based on blind fideism, (we will deal with the philosophical arguments stemming from the Christian perspective later - we do not need to allow them this debate silencer any longer). It is very open minded, of course, to silence opposition by not even hearing the reasons they have for their ethics.
So Christian morality makes you a bigot. Secular morality makes me open minded. No need to inquire. The wolves are shepherding us with relativism, and they will soon feast on us. With Obama holding the keys, it is only a matter of time before their "truth" silences any and all inquiry in the name of moral and scientific sophistication - all the while silencing true inquiry and destroying sophisticiation! The spiritually minded are all clued into this. We can no longer ask questions because the morally neutral are dictating to us our morality by means of intimidation!
It would do us all good to examine more closely, to ruminate about the dogma's we are so adament to hate. We do not examine dogma and fear dogma because if there is Truth, there may be demands on our wills. Do we fear Truth? Do you fear Truth? If you must examine your own behavior, will there be skeletons? In the dictum of Aristotle, we ought to love truth more than our friends. To see that we naturally fear truth, because ultimately we by nature realize how dirty we are, one needs to just look at even our whitest of lies. Someone asks you if you saw them walking down the street, when indeed you did, but avoided them because you didn't want to stop to talk. You tell them you did not see them to avoid the discomfort of explaining that you didn't want to stop to talk. A fear of the truth.
In this blog I plan to unmask the dogmatism of our agnostic society. Agnosticism is practical atheism, and it realizes itself in this way. All it takes for evil to triumph is for the good to do nothing; the good will do nothing if they recognize nothing as good. This is precisely where agnosticism and religious skepticism have placed us. Because we as a culture have accepted that there is no truth, we find nothing good worth fighting for, but then the wolves spoon feed us the slave morality of childesh pleasure, which individually enslaves us, and ultimately corporately enslaves us.
In this blog I plan to inspire thought. I will question the unchallenged dogma of existentialist liberalism. It's genius stroke was to play itself off as neutral and antidogmatic. But it is dogma.
It is right to question everything, so let's together inquire and disallow the "morally neutral" to dominate and intimidate us into non thinking. Forget tolerance. We should question all! (I can use the imperative "should" because our foundation is the natrual law, but we will argue for it in the coming posts. We won't simply assert it and then intimidate all those who question it by calling them bigots.)
So let us question Catholicism. Let us question Islam. Let us question Atheism. Let us question Judaism, Buddhism, pantheism, polytheism, etc. Let us question existence! In other words, let us wonder....let us inquire.
We are dogmatic creatures. If we must be dogmatic, then what dogma?
It's time to remove the masks.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
The loss of God....
Let me tell you about the loss of God
Let me tell you about the heartache
Of realizing that this life is endless pain
Let me tell you about the tragedy
Of thinking that existence has no deity
The recent massacre in Connecticut highlights the essence of godlessness. Tragic, death obsessed, lusting, power, control. The blond beast prowls seeking its next victim. It's easy when senseless murders happen like this to look to heaven and wonder, what God is this who allows such tragedy? Why moral evil? Why natural evil? Why evil at all?
Seeing as we are the most pragmatically wise, but most philosophically ignorant culture that ever was, it's no wonder no one even asks these ultimate questions. In the coming days our politicians will tell us enough is enough, but you can bet the policies that come of the most recent worship at the alter of moloch and the other spirits of death will only throw newspaper over the dung, meanwhile the real cesspool, godlessness and anti-Christianity will quantititatively increase. The 2nd amendment is sure to be attacked and limited; we will stupidly cover the dung while increasing its stench. Stopping guns will not stop massacres, giving back to the people a metaphysic that recognizes the inherent dignity of the individual; giving back to the people their God, will cleanse and purify. Even if, like the atheist and agnostic modern anti-dogmatic dogmatists we cannot accept the so called ignorance of religion, a healthy fear of hell would spare our nation the heartache of an atheist existence; of a tragic existence.
We will continue to see massacres because we devalue humanity in its weakest form. The murder committed by a young man who is now rotting in hell - be sure, he did not escape justice by taking his own life - is only an echo of an entire existentialist ethos. It is the dark reflection of a consumerist, spoiled, vampire culture; the offspring of a death culture.
Obama will most assuredly let the blood out of the Constitution to build his false panacea as a result of this tragedy. He will, with his Hegelian relativism in hand, speak to us on our terms, but drain us of life in his policy. He will take away guns, but feed moloch and the other beasts with our children. He will fund Planned Parenthood, cow to the masculinist "feminists", dehumanize sexuality with homosexual "marriage"; he will, like all other atheistic regimes that were the spawn of Hegel, slowly, innocuously, methodically deaden everything. Religion will be silenced and with it reason. He will claim to be objective, outside of the intellectual fray, with no perspective, all the while dogmatically, tyranically, eliminating all color from being. His is a will to power atheism, his is existentialism. Our comedy as Christians is that those are blessed who hunger and thirst for righteousness' sake, God satisfies all justice. He is the ultimate knight in shining armor, He makes all things right.
Until we recognize the inherent dignity of the human being from conception to natural death, the murders will continue. Until we look back to God, we will not see an end to the death culture.
Ours is a society spirited by death; a society dominated by moloch; an agnostic culture realizing it's practical atheism. Tears streamed down my face as I saw the images. It could have been mine; it could have been yours; ultimately, it was someone's child.
So what can be said of the evil that sunk its teeth into all of us this past week? First, we point at God, but we should point at the enemy. God allows, the devil perpetrates. This reflection of the death culture is the devil's handiwork, a fortaste of hell. This is love for the devil - children murdered. The weak and defenseless murdered in cold blood. What of God though? If He is all powerful, then why allow this? These are good people this happened to, it could have been any of us. That's the nub of Christianity, the narrow path on the way. We are none of us guiltless, none, not one. So it's true, the children murdered could've been mine or yours, no one "deserves" it, but some good will come out of the evil. As Christians, the outcome is determined. Atheists don't have that comfort.
It's time we put aside our practical atheism and instead of pretending to be anti-dogmatic, actually examine dogma. As humans we must have perspective because we are social beings. Culture forms us; the prime target of this Catholic is the didactic atheistic Enlightenment liberalism that claims no dogma, but is tyrannically dogmatic. It's time to question them on their perspective. No more of the silent hegemony.
In the coming posts we will examine evil, as that is the biggest obstacle to acceptence of the existence of God. To restore a culture of life, we need to let God back into our lives. We need to restore our families. We need to love truth more than our friends. We need no longer be afraid of the "something in the air," of the speech silencing truth haters, and speak truth. So in the coming posts we will examine evil, especially in the face of such tragedy. Can a good God allow evil and if so why?
Let me tell you about our Comedy
Let me tell you about the greenery
Found in essences beyond what is seen
Let me tell you about the heartache
Of realizing that this life is endless pain
Let me tell you about the tragedy
Of thinking that existence has no deity
The recent massacre in Connecticut highlights the essence of godlessness. Tragic, death obsessed, lusting, power, control. The blond beast prowls seeking its next victim. It's easy when senseless murders happen like this to look to heaven and wonder, what God is this who allows such tragedy? Why moral evil? Why natural evil? Why evil at all?
Seeing as we are the most pragmatically wise, but most philosophically ignorant culture that ever was, it's no wonder no one even asks these ultimate questions. In the coming days our politicians will tell us enough is enough, but you can bet the policies that come of the most recent worship at the alter of moloch and the other spirits of death will only throw newspaper over the dung, meanwhile the real cesspool, godlessness and anti-Christianity will quantititatively increase. The 2nd amendment is sure to be attacked and limited; we will stupidly cover the dung while increasing its stench. Stopping guns will not stop massacres, giving back to the people a metaphysic that recognizes the inherent dignity of the individual; giving back to the people their God, will cleanse and purify. Even if, like the atheist and agnostic modern anti-dogmatic dogmatists we cannot accept the so called ignorance of religion, a healthy fear of hell would spare our nation the heartache of an atheist existence; of a tragic existence.
We will continue to see massacres because we devalue humanity in its weakest form. The murder committed by a young man who is now rotting in hell - be sure, he did not escape justice by taking his own life - is only an echo of an entire existentialist ethos. It is the dark reflection of a consumerist, spoiled, vampire culture; the offspring of a death culture.
Obama will most assuredly let the blood out of the Constitution to build his false panacea as a result of this tragedy. He will, with his Hegelian relativism in hand, speak to us on our terms, but drain us of life in his policy. He will take away guns, but feed moloch and the other beasts with our children. He will fund Planned Parenthood, cow to the masculinist "feminists", dehumanize sexuality with homosexual "marriage"; he will, like all other atheistic regimes that were the spawn of Hegel, slowly, innocuously, methodically deaden everything. Religion will be silenced and with it reason. He will claim to be objective, outside of the intellectual fray, with no perspective, all the while dogmatically, tyranically, eliminating all color from being. His is a will to power atheism, his is existentialism. Our comedy as Christians is that those are blessed who hunger and thirst for righteousness' sake, God satisfies all justice. He is the ultimate knight in shining armor, He makes all things right.
Until we recognize the inherent dignity of the human being from conception to natural death, the murders will continue. Until we look back to God, we will not see an end to the death culture.
Ours is a society spirited by death; a society dominated by moloch; an agnostic culture realizing it's practical atheism. Tears streamed down my face as I saw the images. It could have been mine; it could have been yours; ultimately, it was someone's child.
So what can be said of the evil that sunk its teeth into all of us this past week? First, we point at God, but we should point at the enemy. God allows, the devil perpetrates. This reflection of the death culture is the devil's handiwork, a fortaste of hell. This is love for the devil - children murdered. The weak and defenseless murdered in cold blood. What of God though? If He is all powerful, then why allow this? These are good people this happened to, it could have been any of us. That's the nub of Christianity, the narrow path on the way. We are none of us guiltless, none, not one. So it's true, the children murdered could've been mine or yours, no one "deserves" it, but some good will come out of the evil. As Christians, the outcome is determined. Atheists don't have that comfort.
It's time we put aside our practical atheism and instead of pretending to be anti-dogmatic, actually examine dogma. As humans we must have perspective because we are social beings. Culture forms us; the prime target of this Catholic is the didactic atheistic Enlightenment liberalism that claims no dogma, but is tyrannically dogmatic. It's time to question them on their perspective. No more of the silent hegemony.
In the coming posts we will examine evil, as that is the biggest obstacle to acceptence of the existence of God. To restore a culture of life, we need to let God back into our lives. We need to restore our families. We need to love truth more than our friends. We need no longer be afraid of the "something in the air," of the speech silencing truth haters, and speak truth. So in the coming posts we will examine evil, especially in the face of such tragedy. Can a good God allow evil and if so why?
Let me tell you about our Comedy
Let me tell you about the greenery
Found in essences beyond what is seen
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