Update 9/14/07: Per Caritatem has a new post on the Orombi’s article here.
So much has happened this week in several blogs that we all frequent, not to mention outside or prodigious circle. Moreover, several noteworthies from the summer escaped my mention one way or another. Take this posting as my unofficial and abridged “I Don’t Know What You Did This Summer, But Here’s What You Should Have Been Reading.” I reserve the right to add to this list, to expect you all to follow up on the items herein, and to mock the many, dare I say most, of you who don’t. We’ll start with this week and work backward.
August 8. Fr. Edward T. Oakes published a charming and timely piece on the First Things blog on Wednesday called “On Canons”. If you’ve been keeping up with Janet and the most recent discussion over at Deep Grace of Theory, or you’ve been following the discussion on the nature of Christian philosophy or the comments under the Balthasar podcast, or you haven’t had your head buried in the sand, you might find his article illuminating. You’ll at least be tickled by such lines as: “No one disputes Hegel’s status as a canonical philosopher; but anyone who has tried to work through his rebarbative prose quickly comes to see how little literary merit counts when it comes to admittance in the ranks of canonical philosophers.” Ok, that’s hilarious to me. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I didn’t know what “Rebarbative” means. Hell, my spell checker doesn’t even recognize it. So, for all you playas out there -
Rebarbative: adjective; from French rébarbatif, from Middle French, from rebarber to be repellent; REPELLENT, IRRITATING
Here’s the really salient bit, especially for Janet. “To add to the problem [of defining what’s canonical in philosophy and what’s not], there is the fact of Western intellectual history that no one fails to notice: Science makes progress, philosophy doesn’t. The repetition of both errors and truths embarrasses the history of philosophy when compared to history of science, where - according to the standard modern (as opposed to postmodern) narrative - error is corrected by truth and does not recur.” Contentious enough for you, yet? Well, how does Oakes propose we deal with this problem of how to determine our philosophical canon. It’s not quite as easy as picking and choosing our favs and our despised: “I think Etienne Gilson gets close to my point when he drolly says in his book The Unity of Philosophical Experience: ‘There is more that one excuse for being Descartes, but there is no excuse whatsoever for be Cartesian.’ Nearly all philosophers of whatever stripe are united in contemning Cartesianism; yet there Descartes sits, like the Cheshire cat perched on his branch in the canonical tree, smiling at all the derision he gets from behaviorists, Thomists, Aristotelians, animal psychologists, neurologists - undislodgeable!” 
The answer - Scott will love this - is Thomism.. well, not quite, but in another bad nutshell, the problem with philosophy today is that, while having all the earmarks of Christian tradition, it is constantly trying to get away from reacting to, and making ample use of Christianity. In the words of Mortimer Adler, “Christianity has made problems for [philosophers] which they can not solve without faith, but which they will not refrain from discussing in rational terms.” But are Thomists dealing with the current problems of philosophy? Oakes: “The temptation for the Thomist here is to made Thomism a filly coherent, internally cohesive, locked-in while, a sealed-off bathysphere or an impregnable siege engine, impermeable to the lessons, both good and bad, that modern philosophy teachers … Good luck trying to overcome that prejudice. Because of the influence of seminary Thomism before Vatican II, the impression often arose that Thomism is a fully formed system… Are Thomists being trained in the history of modern philosophy to take up where, for example, James Collins left off in his magisterial God in Modern Philosophy?” Please read his entire article.
Next, the August 6th New Yorker rings the alarm we rang on May 30th (thanks to Salon.com.) Apparently, the honey bee decline is getting so bad that California is eventually going to have to rent the entire honey bee population currently in North America just to pollinate its almond crop. Where that leaves the needs of the rest of us is anyone’s guess.
Now, for the summer:
Archbishop Rowan Williams was interviewed and had his mug featured on the cover of Time magazine. You can read the interview here, and you can listen to the podcast here. Williams expresses his view that both sides must come together in compromise for the sake of the church. The article does a nice job of couching the issue not only in terms of the sexual ethics but, but also in terms of stability for the countries involved.
On the flip side, First Things published the Ugandan Archibishop Henry Luke Orombi. Orombi argues that the decisive element of Anglicanism, pace Williams, is not liturgical practices and mutual respect in dialogue. Rather, it’s martyrdom and evangelization, all aimed at advancing “The Word of God.” All tools of communion must be oriented toward “holding each other accountable to Scripture”. He then describes how the call to the Scripture in Ugandan society has transformed cultural practices there. In his eyes, backing down from the demands made on TEC would be comprimising on sexual ethics, thereby denying the transformative power of Scritpure and its effects in his own society. Yet, reading the article, one wonders at his seemingly black and white understanding of cultural issues and how he argues through examination of cultural norms and transformation in Uganda for what he expects to be the common Anglican element. The Church of England certainly didn’t get its start with conservative sexual ethics, and I doubt that stances such as Orombi’s will change many minds. Moreover, when we look at what has really been common to the Anglican church, and then read Orombi’s article, something is suspiciously amiss- what happened to The Book of Common Prayer. Hmmm. The real common anchor of Anglican life has been a liturgical one all along. Go figure!
just wanted to add my two cents, that though i am not a philosopher, everything i have read of Hegel has seemed so beautifully eloquent. guess i haven’t been reading the rebarbitive stuff, or the best rebarbitive translations. (i especially love Hegel’s synthesis, outdated though it may be, and his explanation of the familiar)
yes, the honey bee essay is deeply, deeply disturbing.
And this same charge, poet my friend, is made against Heidegger, that he is a terrible writer. As if there were another way to write — as though one could make an elegant and effective statement in philosophy of something, except when it ALREADY corresponds to what people are thinking conventionally. If you are trying to change the very deep structures of how we think and of the things we think about, then it takes either poetry or a practice of philosophy that doesn’t sit right with philosophers….
And that, as Scott suggests, can be poetry too.
Aquinas was quite unsettling in his day.
3quarksdaily on the honey bee
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2007/08/stung-where-hav.html
Poet, thanks for joining the dialog. I haven’t read enough Hegel, but I have read a fair amount of Kierkegaard on Hegel. You get lots of great lines like the following:
“Lessing and the systematist [Hegel], both talk about a persistent striving; only that Lessing is stupid or honest enough to call it a persisent striving, while the systematist is clever or dishonest enough to call it the System…”
Okay, I knwo what is bothering me so much.
Scott manifests the latent modernist dualism — and Descartes should never win — by assuming that spirituality and the life of the mind are two separate things.
Prior to the scientific revolution, salvation is the Mind’s Road to God!!(Anselm, Bonaventure)
My students would protest vehemently, “but then only smart people know God and be saved.” No, no, no. Cognitively transformed people know God, and God can do that through an single mundane experience or a revelation or a life-time of theological study. It’s all the same thing — being able to see, know, and love the truth. The mind is the whole human person, enfleshed soul and ensouled body. Read Joe Sachs on Aristotle’s De Anima — he is so deep into the Greek vocabulary, like Heidegger and Aquinas were….
I just can’t bear this dichomotmy between “mind” and everything else in the human person. Dante looks along the mother’s line of sight because Mary’s “mind” recognizes and knows her son in a special personal way…. This is truly knowledge.
Janet: “And this same charge, poet my friend, is made against Heidegger, that he is a terrible writer.”
Are you saying Oakes makes this claim? I don’t see it in the article anywhere?
Do I manifest a Cartesian duslism? I don’t think so. I haven’t stated or affirmed substantial dualism (this is a point I similarly disagree with Henry and Scotus on).
The reason I don’t directly hitch my metaphysical explanation to salvation as such is simply b/c if I did, then I would be saying that my metaphysical acct. as such just is _the_ salvific path, and I don’t want to say that e.g. metaphysical acct. x (whoever’s) is binding on all Christians for their salvation; I would want to tie Scripture and Church life as more binding, and the metaphysical acct. is something the believer track down for a better understanding. I just don’t think that Aquinas, or Bonaventure or Scotus, or Suarez have the corner on the salvation market.
On the other hand, I do think that by studying these metaphysical accts. of doctrine, etc., that it can become for the one studying a part of their sanctification. I for one have been immensely enriched by studying medievals, AND Vanhooer’s work, and Treier’s work. After all, this concern about ‘binding’ or ‘non-binding’ accts. was given to me by Dan Treier. It is a point I have felt to be fruitful as I engage with the texts I do. I don’t want to say that if you want to love God and be a Christian, you must read X philosopohical-theologian, although, reading X may indeed be quite beneficial.
So I reject the notion that theology and spirituality are unrelated. it is just that I construe this connection in a way not yet mentioned here. Namely, God can and does use such things for the sanctification of his creatures. I just don’t think it is written into the very fabric of Christian nature that you must read X. You could read Y, Z, or B and sanctification could happen through those.
And… what do you mean by saying that Aquinas was ‘quite startingly in his day?’ Do you say this b/c of his Aristotelianism?
Scott, you’re still doing the same thing! (Or so it seems to me.) The same thing my students were doing when they said salvation doesn’t depend on being smart (i.e. on knowing and thinking through these accounts) You’re putting the emphasis in all this on theology as an “account.” What I’m saying is that what matters is what the account is of. No, that is still too subject-verb-object and that’s what I mean by Cartesian. Seeing and touching the other that transfigures you IS salvation. You don’t get to God through accepting some “account.” You get to God by getting to God, and that happens, ultimately when all is said and done, through a change in your own capacity for seeing and knowing. Any Christ-event, including what an account might carry you toward, is transforming. Again, the concentenaity of the knower and the known. Theology then is a way of being changed as a knower. Like any other way of knowing is. I’n not talking about what the mode of knowing might be. I’m talking about encountering the what-is-to-be-known toward which these point. Hence, for instance, humility might be a better sign that one knows God than knowing X and Y and Z theologians, if the humility is born of an encounter with God and God’s grace, however it was mediated. Because only God as the soul’s other changes the soul into a lover of God. Theology is an act of worship and praise and may contribute to one person’s sanctification or to another person’s salvation.
See, this misunderstanding here between you and me has to do with what we are thinking that thinking is. This whole notion of thinking as making a true account is post-Cartesian, I believe. I think for the medievals it was a way into knowing the Truth toward which accounts only gesture and then lose themselves in the inexhaustible richness and mystery. Thinking is a chance to growth and be made stronger in what the thinking is moving toward. In this sense, spirituality and thinking are the same thing. But growth doesn’t have to depend on thinking because the mind can be renewed in other ways. It’s just one glorious way! What’s at stake here is not Aquinas versus Scotus as the “correct” account or the one “right” propositional exposition of God wherby we must be saved. What matters is our own mind’s journey (our whole da-sein)toward what they too were journeying toward. Theology is a path that we make for one another collectively and not disjunctively as Christians. It’s power, it’s onlyl and sufficient power, is to allow the Other of thought to change us into knowers and lovers of that Other.
(Yes, because of his breaking ground with use of the alien pagan, Aristotle.)
I said ‘theology’ in the sense I have been using it is an ‘account’ b/c it is work that tries to explain what goes God is and does in the Christian life and in creation in general. If you think I am using ‘account’ as though its function is a-teleological, then I would disagree.
We could put this in terms of asking the question: is theology subjective or objective? Doubtless, with Heidegger to-hand you’d want to dispute this. Nevertheless, at some point it is necessary to distinguish btwn. one’s own experience and feelings, and the explicit ideas in their mind that they believe and act on. Thus far, I have been emphasizing the objective side of theology–in other words, I think it is true to say that if theologian A were contemplating the Incarnation and trying to work through a metaphysical description of it, this theologian could be in a state of sin and yet still understanding the truth and beauty of the incarnation. But if we consider the subjective side of theology (what I’ve described as spirituality), this theologian could be doing theology for his or her own good–as in contemplating the incarnation while penitent and adoring God in Christ. There can be people who do (more) orthodox theology and themselves live as pagans. There can be people who do orthodox theology and exemplify it in themselves. It would be like the difference btwn. knowing that Dan has a fever, and yourself having the fever. The best scenario would be for a person to both have a fever (=objective theology) and known the fever (=subjective theology). And furthermore, sometimes the person doing both can employ the subjective side to clarify or help the objective side, and vice versa.
if you think ’subjective/objective’ is a Cartesian thing (and therefore is anathema), then just replace it with Anselm’s consideration of something ‘in itself’ (objective) and that something ‘for oneself’ (subjective). This sort of distinction of course goes back to Aristotle when he discusses the difference btwn. theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge.
So-perhaps the real issue here is whether ‘theology in itself’ (objective theology) happens? Dan, (JT) and I once had a debate about this long ago—JT argued for the sola subjective side, and I argued for the both/and view. JT has since flopped and goes with a sola objective side view. I still maintain, along with most people, that there are two sides, or two things to consider. I wonder whether or not you construe me as holding the sola objective p.o.v. or that I think these two happen, but that there are no real connections btwn. these. I think there are real connections btwn. these, b/c people are often influenced by the ‘objective theology’ that they believe. This is why Aquinas holds that God finds it fitting to include human persons’ intellect and will in the process of sanctification. I very much agree with this. I just happen to think of the ‘real connection’ btwn. the objective and subjective sides as contingent, precisely b/c both are parts of creation. A theology is about God, but if you look at it by material supposition, theology is a bunch of qualities that inhere in a person’s intellect, and thus are created. And it is the distinctive mark of the Beatific Vision that human literally are united with God (which is what Aquinas and others mean when they say that the divine essence itself is present to the human intellect in the BV).
Apologies for typos. And a correction follows:
>The best scenario would be for a person to both have a fever >(=objective theology) and known the fever (=subjective theology).
‘Having a fever’ would be equivalent with subjective theology.
‘Knowing the fever’ would be equivalent with objective theology.
Scott says: “We could put this in terms of asking the question: is theology subjective or objective? Doubtless, with Heidegger to-hand you’d want to dispute this. Nevertheless, at some point it is necessary to distinguish btwn. one’s own experience and feelings, and the explicit ideas in their mind that they believe and act on.”
Doubtless, I would want to dispute this!! You are right.!
It absolute is NOT necessary to do this. How do I know? Because no-one before the 17th century thought like this. (you might be able to pull out little pieces that sound like this, but you have to take the thought-world as a whole and follow its main lines of force to interpret the small pieces in context.)
It is actually quite an unusual standpoint to think that we human beings “believe and act on explicit ideas in the mind.” But not on our experience and feelings? This is pure Descartes.
I believe that we must think our way back into earlier theology by putting that kind of worldview and its system of terms entirely out of your mind and letting the texts speak to you. This is where I think the literary texts can often carry us into a different thought-wrold more experientially and fully and then we can read the philosophical and discursive texts more attentively to the things that were important to them and that they were attending to. And the fiction of medieval scholars like Tolkien and Lewis helps too to enter that very different and very liberating imaginative universe or thought-world.
By saying people act of experience and feelings AND on explicit ideas they have, I was trying to indicate a difference btwn. lived experience and understanding of that lived experience. There are people who (a) live Christianly, but haven’t contemplated the mystery of the Trinity. There are people who (b) have contemplated the mystery of the Trinity, and perhaps have a good understanding of it, and don’t live and think Christianly. There are people who (c) live Christianly and contemplate the mystery of the Trinity. I would want to say that (a) and (c) are Christians. B/c I think both are ‘Christians’, I don’t want to say that a certain contemplation, or as I’ve been saying, a certain explanatory of the Trinity (e.g. are the divine persons distinguished by opposed relations (Aquinas)? by an order of origin (Richard of St. Victor)? by an order of origin of love (Richard)? by an order of origin by intellect and will (Henry of Ghent, Scotus), is identical with whether one counts as a Christian. This is a fine distinction btwn. creedal orthodoxy and theological opinions that explicate that creedal orthodoxy. I want to avoid saying that certain theological opinions (cf. list of diverse accts. of the Trinity) are necessary for Christians to understand or believe. So, no, I don’t think Christians are necessarily smart theologians (opinions re: objective theology). On the other hand, I want to say that Christians ought to understand what they profess (creedal orthodoxy)–for it is one way for the mind to love God. As much as I appreciate the enriching nature of the above sorts of accts., or opinions, of the Trinity, I don’t want to pick out one and hold it up one and say, ‘if you don’t study and believe this-you are not loving God’.
I hope this clarifies some of the ambiguity about what I mean by an account of e.g. the Trinity.
Re: your claim that nobody before the 17th c. made distinctions btwn. subjectivity and objectivity–I won’t attempt sort of historical case for this here. What I will do is say ‘perspective’ was und. given your own example from Dante. Different signs meant or counted as different things to different people. Umberto Eco tried to show in his book on Aesthetics in Aquinas that the aesthetic vision was co-constituted by the individual’s own perception of the beautiful object. So, perception played a role— but what determines the content, the perceiver (and/)or the perceived thing? In his section on the ’symbolic world’, Eco tried to show that Aquinas went against the notion that people could validate their own (subjective) claims that e.g. the three leafed leaf symbolizes the Trinity, by claiming that things have meanings in themselves (though based on divine ideas), which we can’t know in this life–at least not UNTIL the beatific vision when we shall know the divine essence (=the total Trinity). In other words, Aquinas was arguing against the common view that such spurious (subjective) experience/claims are valid, unless determined by the thing itself. So, no, I do think debates about subjectivity and objectivity occurred, even in the 13th century; even if not precisely with the words ’subjective’ and ‘objective’.
Nevertheless, the distinction btwn. binding and non-binding accounts I still maintain. Not on the basis of whether Aquinas or Scotus thought this way (no doubt they were creative interpreters of authoritative Church statements, which shows that they didn’t just submit to binding theses, but actually tried to work them out for themselves), but because I think it is a good contemporary insight into how to think about Theology. On my view, theology is done by lay people as well as professional theologians, it is just that their particular dialogue partners might be different. Some of these dialogue partners might be more or less insightful and helpful, and critiques of these are necessary and important for the flourishing of a Christian life (e.g. The Purpose Driven Life might’ve done some people actual good, for others it might’ve done actual harm–and it is the discerning minds to help those in either situation out). I just don’t want to equate ’smart Christian’ with a Christian who knows and has memorized most of the Summa Theologica (e.g. Anthony Kenny, though now an agnostic). No doubt some theological opinions are deeper and more profound than others, but this is for the individual peregrinations of Christians to sort out. Perhaps then, I am just wanting to affirm Augustine’s hermeneutics of love.
Scott says: “There are people who (b) have contemplated the mystery of the Trinity, and perhaps have a good understanding of it, and don’t live and think Christianly.”
No, this is an impossibility for Aquinas et alia, Scott. The persons you are referring to have “scientia” (speculative or theoretical knowledge) on the mystery of the Trinity, but they have NOT “contemplated” it. Their scientiae or liberal arts have not feed and changed them into seers of the mystery. Yet this change is the ultimate end or telos of the liberal and theological arts.
This is why we shouldn’t think of “a way of knowing” as “knowledge.” Even though our modern translations say “knowledge”!!! The pesons you describe may have lots of knowledge but not have advanced very far into the scientia as a way of knowing that makes us that kind of knower.
Plato and Aristotle also have this understanding of knowing. The arts and sciences have the potentiality for a person to become one who can contemplate the Forms and become “wise,” but it is just a potentiality. So valuable, though, that it’s worth educating all the citizens in the arts just so some of them might become wise!
Scott says: “I just don’t want to equate ’smart Christian’ with a Christian who knows and has memorized most of the Summa Theologica”
Janet says: Scott, you are not hearing me. I haven’t succeeded in offering you a different way of looking at this in the slightest degree. This is why I make my readers do the whole thing on Plato’s Ion. If they have that much commitment and try that hard, they will end up with a new way of knowing that they can test on these authors to see if it illuminates them…because these authors were using it, or so it seems to me…. But I’m an old lady….