Philosophy in Good Times

Just a brief one.

The true philosophy must apply equally to good and bad, happy and tragic, times -- in both joy and suffering, exaltation and despair. Which calls to mind a couple of aphorisms:

The same doctrine must serve in dim light and in bright light. The truth is only what is true without distinction for afflicted or exalted souls.

Nothing is more vapid than truths that mature in the spirit’s temperate zone.

There's a reason why Oprahesque new age philosophies flourish among the AWFULs (Affluent White Female Unmarried Leftists) who think microaggressions, mispronouning, and climate change are traumatic. 

No, traumatic is being kidnapped and raped by Nazi Gazis. Then your philosophy will be tested. It's easy to be a Chicken for KFC until you're in the frier. Only then might you have to rethink your principles.  

There's a subsection devoted to this subject in Wonder Confronts Certainty, called The Test, in which Morson observes that in the Soviet Union "Extreme conditions tested moral outlooks." I'm sure there are still atheists in foxholes, but how many of them would prefer to be captured by Islamists instead of Israelis? 

So let us ask: who behaved better under pressure, imprisoned Bolsheviks or religious believers? Materialists or those who acknowledged absolute standards of good and evil? Who acted nobly and who behaved like a scoundrel? 

Whose philosophy passed the Gulag Test? Turns out it was the believers who "would not do what they regarded as wrong," regardless of consequences. Conversely, "when arrested, Bolsheviks behaved the worst, and the higher up they had been, the more executions they had authorized, the baser they proved" (this according to Solzhenitsyn).  

Reminds me of those bad guys in movies, who turn out to be so pusillanimous when cornered or captured. Or university students who stand strong against Israeli Fascism and Apartheid, until the moment their careers are threatened. 

Likewise in the USSR, where 

"It was all very well philosophizing under shady boughs" or in comfortable university offices, but in the face of Soviet interrogation, "the great materialist's wisdom seemed like the prattle of a child."

Suddenly ethical relativism doesn't seems so sophisticated when you're being subjected to torture by ethical relativists. "How wise it all seems when you read these philosophers as a free man!," only to find out too late that there can be no appeal to "medieval" concepts of truth, beauty, goodness, decency, mercy, pity, etc. 

Among Russian writers, "Time and again, suffering leads to awareness of Truth or apprehension of God."

Just as in Life Itself, undistorted by ideology. To be continued...