Sunday, January 25, 2009
Sunday Reflection: Wrong, certain answers
Today the Roundtable Sunday School class had the pleasure of seeing the new book by one of our own, Mary Landon Dardon's Beyond 2020, which collects the opinions of many experts on the future of higher education, a topic many of us care deeply about.
Then we raced into the usual mess, starting with the book of Daniel. I'm not sure how we got there, but we ended up discussing the tendency of those in power to give wrong, certain answers. For example, the leaders of East Germany asserted that there was no pollution there, because the factories were owned by the people, and pollution would hurt the people. Similarly, through several years the leaders of Botswana denied that AIDS existed there, as it was a disease of homosexuals and homosexuality was not a part of Tswana culture. Of course, closer to home, we have heard that waterboarding is not torture when we do it.
There may be a reason that places like East Germany often try to restrict Christianity. At its best (and it is not always at its best), the Christian faith challenges societal conventions and nonsense answers both by educating people to think for themselves and to value something more than the power of the state.
Sadly, however, Christianity itself can become a force which provides wrong, certain answers in support of its own continuing power, such as the Catholic church's longstanding denial of child sexual abuse by priests.
This, perhaps, is one reason, a practical reason, to value the separation of church and state (whether or not that is called for in the Constitution).
Then we raced into the usual mess, starting with the book of Daniel. I'm not sure how we got there, but we ended up discussing the tendency of those in power to give wrong, certain answers. For example, the leaders of East Germany asserted that there was no pollution there, because the factories were owned by the people, and pollution would hurt the people. Similarly, through several years the leaders of Botswana denied that AIDS existed there, as it was a disease of homosexuals and homosexuality was not a part of Tswana culture. Of course, closer to home, we have heard that waterboarding is not torture when we do it.
There may be a reason that places like East Germany often try to restrict Christianity. At its best (and it is not always at its best), the Christian faith challenges societal conventions and nonsense answers both by educating people to think for themselves and to value something more than the power of the state.
Sadly, however, Christianity itself can become a force which provides wrong, certain answers in support of its own continuing power, such as the Catholic church's longstanding denial of child sexual abuse by priests.
This, perhaps, is one reason, a practical reason, to value the separation of church and state (whether or not that is called for in the Constitution).
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I think this has to do with subversion.
Subversion happens when a given value system engenders in itself a "master" position. It claims positions of strength, and therefore certainty. It tells people that in reliance on it everything will be made OK.
Invariably, however, when a master position arises, a slave position defines itself in opposition. It makes virtues of the master morality's flaws.
The problem with master moralities, with certainty, is that they assume two things: one, that the basic ontological state of the world is eternal, unchanging solidity, with change being a defect imposed by temporality; two, that certainty is a desirable thing because it brings the human closer to the eternal.
The "disease" of certainty if you will stems from a very basic philosophical drive, what I call "epistemic worry." It's the pervasive worry that we might be in error, that something is wrong, that we need some firm footing on which to rest our belief structure. The resistance to the understanding of the world as process, as change, or as becoming rather than being, and the understanding of human knowledge as a type of hermeneutics rather than perfect analytics, is the symptom of this disease. Hence, certainty is comforting, and power is often expressed as a matter of possessing certainty or that which will make us certain.
The challenge to this, the subversion, is itself just as problematic, however. The negation of certainty, the assertion of uncertainty, hides the same beguiling error in its rejection. It's not that we're uncertain and that this uncertainty is the "state" in which we exist, forever denied the promise of a moving forward.
Only when we realize that there is no state of certainty or uncertainty but a movement between the two, a fluidity of power relations from master to subversive to new master and new subversive moralities, that no force embodies the unchanging reflection of "truth," but rather that truth is found in process and change can we escape the disease of epistemic modernism.
Subversion happens when a given value system engenders in itself a "master" position. It claims positions of strength, and therefore certainty. It tells people that in reliance on it everything will be made OK.
Invariably, however, when a master position arises, a slave position defines itself in opposition. It makes virtues of the master morality's flaws.
The problem with master moralities, with certainty, is that they assume two things: one, that the basic ontological state of the world is eternal, unchanging solidity, with change being a defect imposed by temporality; two, that certainty is a desirable thing because it brings the human closer to the eternal.
The "disease" of certainty if you will stems from a very basic philosophical drive, what I call "epistemic worry." It's the pervasive worry that we might be in error, that something is wrong, that we need some firm footing on which to rest our belief structure. The resistance to the understanding of the world as process, as change, or as becoming rather than being, and the understanding of human knowledge as a type of hermeneutics rather than perfect analytics, is the symptom of this disease. Hence, certainty is comforting, and power is often expressed as a matter of possessing certainty or that which will make us certain.
The challenge to this, the subversion, is itself just as problematic, however. The negation of certainty, the assertion of uncertainty, hides the same beguiling error in its rejection. It's not that we're uncertain and that this uncertainty is the "state" in which we exist, forever denied the promise of a moving forward.
Only when we realize that there is no state of certainty or uncertainty but a movement between the two, a fluidity of power relations from master to subversive to new master and new subversive moralities, that no force embodies the unchanging reflection of "truth," but rather that truth is found in process and change can we escape the disease of epistemic modernism.
Sounds like Lane is very certain of himself and certain that there is no such thing as Truth. So that must mean he's subverted to his master, the philosophy of uncertainty.
I'd submit that people make wrong "certain" answers because they've failed to inquire. Which, I suppose, is what Lane is partially saying.
But there is Truth. There is Good, and there is Evil. But before we can know, we have to search.
Truth always withstands scrutiny. And those who know Truth, never fear it. Scrutiny, that is.
But positing that Truth does not exist because there are so many opinions in the world is simply wrong.
I'd submit that people make wrong "certain" answers because they've failed to inquire. Which, I suppose, is what Lane is partially saying.
But there is Truth. There is Good, and there is Evil. But before we can know, we have to search.
Truth always withstands scrutiny. And those who know Truth, never fear it. Scrutiny, that is.
But positing that Truth does not exist because there are so many opinions in the world is simply wrong.
Actually Craig, I'm not a relativist. I believe in good, firm, solid truth, and I believe that moral propositions have content, are truth-bearing, and that there are "good" and "bad" moral systems out there.
My philosophical leanings (Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Peirce, etc.) are more ontological in nature. Where I depart from the rationalist tradition is in my rejection of transcendental realism (human knowledge is necessarily bounded by transcendental conditions upon knowledge) and in my embrace of the phenomenological method (qua Merleau-Ponty and Husserl) for philosophical analysis, which is motivated in part by the thinking that a quest for certainty is motivated out of a type of worry, a fear of Becoming. It's your standard Aristotle versus Plato song and dance.
My metaphysics is informed to a certain extent by process philosophy and the Hegelian dialectic (hence all the talk of process and becoming), but I do take a Marxist view of history (and historicity). Observing that cultures throughout history have claimed certainty only to create a subversive "Other" isn't a comment on the truth-status of either the culture or the Other, just a statement of fact.
My philosophical leanings (Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Peirce, etc.) are more ontological in nature. Where I depart from the rationalist tradition is in my rejection of transcendental realism (human knowledge is necessarily bounded by transcendental conditions upon knowledge) and in my embrace of the phenomenological method (qua Merleau-Ponty and Husserl) for philosophical analysis, which is motivated in part by the thinking that a quest for certainty is motivated out of a type of worry, a fear of Becoming. It's your standard Aristotle versus Plato song and dance.
My metaphysics is informed to a certain extent by process philosophy and the Hegelian dialectic (hence all the talk of process and becoming), but I do take a Marxist view of history (and historicity). Observing that cultures throughout history have claimed certainty only to create a subversive "Other" isn't a comment on the truth-status of either the culture or the Other, just a statement of fact.
What worries me is when countries, or other warring entities, claim that God is on their side. This seems to me an insulting use of God . . . and another case in which church and state are better left separate.
# posted by 
: 6:49 AM
: 6:49 AM
Have you read Daniel Taylor's book the Myth of Certainty? It makes similar points, though related more to theology and such than political power. Also talks about the struggles in the dual world of Christian and academic.
It's been a while, but I remember enjoying it when I read it.
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It's been a while, but I remember enjoying it when I read it.
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