About those ultimates: they involve little things such as what man is, what the cosmos is, and what history is. Turns out these three are interrelated in surprising ways, but then again not: for knowledge of what man is clearly has cosmic implications, nor does history exist in the absence of man. As for the cosmic implications, one has only to ask onesoph -- or one's oaf, depending -- in what sort of cosmos is man even possible?!
Voegelin observes that "The movement that engendered the saving tale of divine incarnation, death, and resurrection as the answer to the question of life and death is considerably more complex than classic philosophy."
This is true for a number of reasons, but in particular because it poses a challenge to the otherwise merely rationalistic mind to dialogue with and assimilate what grounds and transcends it.
In Other Word -- the Ultimate Word of the Absolute Other -- the gospel transcends reason in confronting us with the very source and ground of reason, AKA the Logos. It also challenges the mind to reconcile other limit categories and complementarities such as subject and object, person and cosmos, man and God, vertical and horizontal, etc.
But the real trick -- and a mark of its divine provenance -- is how the movement is "broader by its appeal to the inarticulate humanity of the common man" (emphasis mine). Let's see you come up with a metaphysic that makes as much sense to the unlettered as it does to a translettered being such as Thomas Aquinas. Here it is important to bear in mind that there is an "unarticulated knowledge" that can far surpass the merely articulated kind.
As it so happens, this is one of the recurring themes of the book I'm currently re-re-reading, Sowell's foundational Knowledge & Decisions. I don't want to veer in that direction, because it will hijack the post for the next six months.
Suffice it to say that articulated knowledge tends to be highly overrated, in particular, when intellectuals (the vulgar middlebrow kind) are dealing with complex systems such as the economy. This is not in any way opposed to reason; rather, it simply recognizes the limits of reason. And what could be more reasonable than that?
It is simply a recognition that the weight of generalized but unrecorded experience -- of the individual or of the culture -- may be greater than the weight of other experience which happens to have been written down and spelled out.
Consider the example of, say, Marxism, which presumes to be a total explanation of economics. However, the sum of all the articulated knowledge of every single Marxist who has ever existed is utterly dwarfed by the unarticulated knowledge that is spontaneously conveyed to and from free agents in the complex system of the market. Marxism isn't just wrong in the details but in principle.
Another example would be science; see Michael Polanyi for details. Now that I think about it, only a handful of thinkers have been with me on the bus since the beginning, and Polanyi is one of them. If you are one of those people who is enclosed and limited by what you pompously call reason, Polanyi is your way out; he is a portal to infinity, at which point other nonlocal operators will take your hand. Whom would I raccoomend once you cross that threshold?
Good question, BoB. Wouldn't it be interesting to describe the cosmic ladder by assigning a particular thinker to each rung? I suppose I did that in the book, albeit not consciously. The Cosmic Ladder... Let's think about it and get back to you.
Back to the Sowell quote: the philosophy of rationalism
accepts only what can "justify" itself to reason -- with reason being narrowly conceived to mean articulated specifics. If rationalism had remained within the bounds of philosophy, where it originated, it might be merely an intellectual curiosity. It is, however, a powerful component in contemporary attitudes, and affects -- or even determines -- much political and social policy.
Boy and how. Leftists routinely accuse us of being "anti-science" when we are plainly trans-scientific. They level the same charge when we are being ultra-scientific, for example, with regard to climate change hysteria. For to be ultra-scientific is to recognize the fatal conceit of pretending their articulated models actually describe the complex system of climate.
As the appropriately humble Richard Feynman put it, "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." Your climate model may well be a beaut, but since it can't even account for the present or retrodict the past, what makes you think it can predict the future? That's not good science, just bad religion.
Back to our main attraction -- and attractor: "the gospel agrees with classic philosophy in symbolizing existence as a field of pulls and counterpulls" (Voegelin). Christ says -- and how did he know? -- that "he will, when he is lifted up from the earth, draw all men to himself."
In John 6:44 "this drawing power of Christ is identified with the pull exerted by God." And "To follow Christ means to continue the event of divine presence in society and history." God's in-carnation is our ex-carnation; again, God's way in is our way out (and vice versa).
Yes, the good news implies the bad: there is a diabolical presence in "the man who has contracted his existence into a world-immanent self and refuses to live in the openness of the metaxy" (which refers to man's existence in the vertical space between the horizons of immanence and transcendence).
Oh, good. The end.
37 comments:
Well, there’s climate change. I could instantly tell an evangelical by their views on that one.
It was never that any negative climate change effects are debatable, or that government mandates will be expensive and possibly counterproductive, or that American Way Of Life as we know it could change radically, but the whole denier thing. They’d deny it all because it snowed that day.
And then if it wasn’t sun spots then it’d be broken hockey stick graphs or broken scientists or a hoax or always something. That’s how you know a professional denier. The grasp at anything and everything to deny the simple reality that CO2 and methane holds heat.
Such views are turning off our young adults, and being linked with Christians, from that reality as well.
Consider the example of, say, Marxism, which presumes to be a total explanation of economics. However, the sum of all the articulated knowledge of every single Marxist who has ever existed is utterly dwarfed by the unarticulated knowledge that is spontaneously conveyed to and from free agents in the complex system of the market.
Pretty much everyone can learn that 2+2=4. If they are never taught anything beyond that, even if everybody knows that much, nobody knows that much. The sum of all articulated knowledge of every single Marxist adds up to very little when they all only know the same couple of wrong things.
The entire climate is explained by CO2 and methane!!111!1!
No other factors matter.
Including Black lives.
Anyone who disagrees is a racist.
Reality is complex and nonlinear. Knowing this alone would put an end to much of the left's idiocracy. There are always trade-offs and unintended consequences. For which the left will propose new policies to remedy. Ad nauseam. At least they'll always be in business, treating the diseases to which they give rise.
Someone has a twitter account featuring aphoristic quotes from Sowell. For example,
"The whole political vision of the left, including socialism and communism, has failed by virtually every empirical test, in countries all around the world. But this has only led leftist intellectuals to evade and denigrate empirical evidence."
I'm reminded again of Cuomo's stupid ideas about farming, which are right in line with Stalin's, if we followed them.
As Polanyi says, the great majority of knowledge is tacit. Farmers knew all about farming long before the science of agriculture.
Consider the example of, say, Marxism, which presumes to be a total explanation of economics. However, the sum of all the articulated knowledge of every single Marxist who has ever existed is utterly dwarfed by the unarticulated knowledge that is spontaneously conveyed to and from free agents in the complex system of the market. Marxism isn't just wrong in the details but in principle.
That is about the worst argument against Marx I've ever heard. Marx doesn't offer "a total explanation of economics" any more than Adam Smith does.
Hm, I bet you are taking Hayek's calculation argument against central planning (a reasonably good argument) and garbling it, because you aren't actually interested in thinking about it, you're just using it as a weapon to bash the eternal enemy.
You can always tell the ideologues (certainly plenty of them on the left) from the actual intellectuals, who are interested in the substance of ideas.
Disagree. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.
Besides, your ideas are nothing more than material relationships grasped as ideas.
Karl, you're making me look like an idiot. I'm on your side!
Whatever. The deeper question is, what's my fair share of what you've earned?
The entire climate is explained by CO2 and methane!!111!1!
No other factors matter.
Including Black lives.
Anyone who disagrees is a racist.
I believe in exactly none of those things. But I bet you wish I did.
"The whole political vision of the left, including socialism and communism, has failed by virtually every empirical test, in countries all around the world. But this has only led leftist intellectuals to evade and denigrate empirical evidence."
Names and quotes?
The deeper question is, what's my fair share of what you've earned?
Ah, but I didn't earn it. My people did. And I got there because I knew all the right ones. After spending my excess loot buying politicians, I'm gonna send your job to China just for asking that question. Money is power. And there's not a damn thing you can do about it because you aint got none! Go protest with all the other losers. Bwahahahaha!
The theory of communism may be summed up in the single sentence: abolition of private property. In more practical terms: what's yours is mine, and what's mine is mine.
Over at Ace's,
Republicans, as usual, correctly intuited what Democrats believed, but Democrats, also as usual, were completely out-to-sea about what the Average Republican thinks.
Demonstrated on a regular basis by at least a couple of Anons here...
We've never yet had the troll who actually understands what Bob is talking about, hence the straw man and ad hominem arguments. However, being that we were all once young, stupid, and in college, we have no difficulty understanding them.
Well, that's a coincidence: the next essay in the book we've been discussing is called On Hegel: A Study in Sorcery, which will give us an opportunity (tomorrow) to delve more deeply into Marx, whom I have so gravely misrepresented, exposing for all the world to see my idiotic and fascistic -- worse, bourgeois -- ideology.
The subject is more interesting and timely than you might imagine. In the meantime, I denounce myself for my deviation from orthodoxy.
Meanwhile American Christianity continues to die. But who cares when there's always going to be "a left" to blame.
Sometimes correlation is causation.
Besides, Christianity doesn't die, only people do.
1. Google "Christianity dying".
2. Feel free to go all those places in the results and comment.
I hope it'll change things. I really do.
That settles it. The internet has never been wrong.
Also, there are more profitable ways to waste time than commenting on the internet, such as pissing in the wind.
The left wants to make bad men/women/whatever "good", but Jesus wanted to make dead men live.
Anon, what makes you think going to internet comment boxes and "debating" about dying Christianity will have any positive effect whatsoever? Can you force people to see things the way God would have them see? Or Bob, or anyone else who comments here?
Ted, you and JoanofArgh are on the same page. She shared this quote elsewhere yesterday:
"Christ was sent not to mend wounded people or wake sleepy people or advise confused people or inspire bored people or spur on lazy people or educate ignorant people, but to raise dead people."
--Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly
Some of those previously dead dug tunnels for when the surface Church needs old roots.
Only natural. Seasons and such.
I recently worked for a family of nice and decent Catholics. Honorable conservative parents. The teenaged kids in the fireplace mantle photos are all clean cut and stable looking. Lots of inspirational religious books around.
Then after 30 years of job stability the breadwinner had to scramble to find work, 3000 miles away.
Today as young adults, the eldest is obese. The second has granola-liberal dreadlocks and body décor. The youngest is a high school dropout getting stoned every day in his car seemingly wearing his hoody hooded 24/7.
Some would blame “the left”. But I do think I know better. It’s obvious signs of hopelessness.
They were upper middle class. I hope you all will do better with your own families.
You say all that as though every member of that family is hopelessly lost.
Please.
Their situation sounds a lot less dire than my family's, back when I was a teenager and young adult. We all grew up, and to varying degrees we all have grown wiser, and grown in faith not in spite of our screwups, but often because of them. Life isn't what any of us expected, but it's a lot more hopeful than things seemed when we were younger.
You don't know what that family has really been through, and you don't know the state of any of those people's hearts. You don't know what the future holds for them, and you don't know at what point they might hear the Master's voice and return to Him. To write them off as though nothing will ever get better is, dare I say it, deeply unChristian.
If it bothers you so much, pray for them.
Call no man hopeless who is not dead.
Yes I know Julie, minding my own business is the way of things today. Unless you're a Karen. Or a BLM.
What I say has little to do with being Christian. I know Christian families whose kids are doing quite well. What seems to make all the difference isn't the upbringing, but wisdom regarding dealing with a dying American Dream. Maybe sometimes fortune which the parents are able to send the kids way.
I know another Christian couple who met at their nondenominational megachurch and conservative Jesus is very important in their lives. Both have done well with their 2 year college degrees despite a childhood of poverty. One owns a business successful enough to have employed 12 last year. The other is a medical accountant making six figures.
Their four adult children, average age 30. The first is in prison from an uncontrollable meth addiction. The second lives in his van with his pregnant wife. The third did have a home in St. Louis, but had financial troubles and divorced and is now living with her parents, with her two daughters. The youngest is renting with a bunch of friends and works construction.
Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes, well, he eats you.
I can’t be worrying about that shit. Life goes on, man.
What did you folks think of Obama's eulogy for John Lewis?
What did I think of Obama's performance?
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