Fideism and Rationality
What is Belief in God after all?
Belief: Standard analysis:
·
Beliefs consist of propositional
content and noetic attitude.
·
Content: what the person believes,
given by a proposition
o
E.g. ‘He believes that elephants are grey.’
·
Attitude: that the person believes
o
(as oppose to
doubts, considers, disbelieves etc.)
“That”
beliefs are beliefs that aims at truth:
·
Beliefs are
true or false (unlike desires)
·
To believe
that p is to believe that p is true.
·
To say ‘I
believe that p’ implies that I take p to be true.
Belief-in
But
consider: “I believe in him.”
This could
mean:
·
I believe
that what he says is true.
·
I believe
that he is trustworthy/sincere.
·
I believe that
he will be successful.
What about: “I
believe in God.” It may be a different kind of belief, arguably not a “that”
belief.
·
Consider: “I
believe in love.” “I believe in the American Spirit”
·
Not a that-
belief (no truth claim), but faith, trust, commitment to an individual or an
ideal
Even so, doesn’t
“belief in” God presuppose a “that belief” (i.e. That
God exists)? You can’t believe in a
person if you think he or she exists.
Nevertheless. you don’t have believe that love exists (literally- as a
mind independent objective reality) to believe in love, or the American
Spirit. Believing in the constitution
could continue even if the actual document were destroyed.
·
Which sort of
belief is religious belief?
·
What is more
basic in religious belief?
·
Should
belief-that be analyzed as (really) belief-in or vice-versa?
·
Is ‘God
exists’ a factual hypothesis about reality?
Debates about
the rational grounds for theism often presuppose that the claim expresses a
belief-that. It is statement capable of
being true or false and the meaning of the statement is connected to this.
This view is
what leads Flew to ask:
·
What
circumstances or tests would lead us to atheism?
·
Still can a
statement be a stamen of empirical fact without us knowing what experiences
would show that it is false? (Flew…No)
But perhaps
falsifying conditions is not what gives ‘God exists.’ its meaning.
·
Not tested
against empirical experience
·
Not purely
intellectual
·
Theism not
acquired by argument or evidence
·
Religious
‘belief’ is belief-in, an attitude or commitment, towards life, others,
history, morality… a way of living.
Perhaps “God
exits.” has some other sort of tie to experience.
Fideism:
Fideism is the epistemological position
that faith is independent of reason, sometimes suggesting that reason and faith
are hostile to each other, and faith is a superior means for arriving at particular truths.
The word fideism comes from fides,
the Latin word for faith, and literally means "faith-ism."
Philosophers have responded in various
ways to the place of faith and reason in determining the truth of metaphysical
ideas, morality, and religious beliefs. A fideist
suggests that reason plays little or no role in religious matters and even is
antithetical to true religious sentiment.
The four most well know theists philosophers who espoused fideism are
Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662), Soren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855), William James
(1842 – 1910), and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889- 1951).
Sometimes the label fideism is applied
in a negative sense by their opponents.
To evidentialist like William Clifford, Fideism is irrational (in a bad
way) and immoral. Someone like Daniel
Dennett would say it is intellectually irresponsible at a minimum.
There are a number of
different forms of fideism.
From Pascal we get:
The
God of Christians does not consist of a God who is simply the author of
mathematical truth and the order of elements: that is the job of the pagans and
Epicureans. He does not consistent simply of a God who exerts his providence
over the lives and property of people in order to
grant a happy span of years to those who worship him: that is the allocation of
the Jews. But the god of Abraham, the god of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God
of the Christians is the God of love and consolation; He is a God who fills the
souls and hearts of those he possesses; he is a God who makes them inwardly
aware of their wretchedness and his infinite mercy, who, united with them in
the depth of there soul, makes them incapable of any
other end but himself.[1]
Soren Kierkegaard
Around two centuries later, Soren Kierkegaard
similarly contrasted the God of Christian faith with the God of the
philosophers, in particular, that of Hegel and some of
his Danish followers. The Hegelian
conception of God and history, Kierkegaard thought, at best provides a solution
to a purely abstract problem. What
Kierkegaard desperately sought (and Hegel does not provide) was an adequate
resolution of the problem of personal existence. What is it to be a self-aware being in the
world?
When Kierkegaard claims to be an anti-philosopher,
this is better understood as being an anti-Hegelian. In the philosophical system advanced by
Hegel, without going into too much detail here, the individual was of little or
no importance. The only significance the
individual achieved was as an aspect of constantly unfolding Absolute Spirit. Occasionally some great individual might
arise in history such as Napoleon and embody the “spirit of the age.” But such heroic significant individuals are
relatively rare. The poor schlub in the
field plowing or factory worker at the assembly-line, the common individual,
has little to do with the advance of History and “Geist.” But this anonymizing of the individual mutes
the individual, his struggles, choices, uniquely lived life, his very existence-as-existing.
And while Hegel had thought that all
apparent contradictions (each thesis with its inevitable antithesis) are
subsumed into an evolving dynamic history (synthesis) where both are partially
retained and reconciled, the story of Abraham, Kierkegaard’s own experiences, and, he is willing to bet, the testimony of your own lived
experience as an individual in the world, give lie to this fiction. Kierkegaard the individual, and on behalf of
the individual, wanted to testify to the struggle of choice (Either/ Or) which
is unavoidable in lived life. Abraham
can resolve the conflict, his crisis of faith and paralysis only by making a
choice. Our daily lives are filled with
challenge, hardships, with unrelenting choices to be made.
Both of these criticisms of the Hegelian worldview contribute to
Kierkegaard’s analysis of “Faith.” Also,
it didn’t sit well with Kierkegaard that Hegel is philosophizing about
Christianity while never seriously thinking about being a Christian.
It is
the existing spirit who asks about truth, presumably because he wants to exist
in it, but in any case the questioner
is conscious of being an existing individual human being. In this
way, I believe I am able to make myself understandable
to every Greek and to every rational human being. If a German
philosopher follows his inclination to put on an act and first transforms
himself into a superrational something, just as alchemists and sorcerers
bedizen themselves fantastically, in order to answer
the question about truth in an extremely satisfying way, this is of no more
concern to me than his satisfying answer, which no doubt is extremely
satisfying - if one is fantastically dressed up. But whether a German philosopher is or is not
doing this can easily be ascertained by anyone who with enthusiasm concentrates
his soul on willing to allow himself to be guided by a sage of that kind, and
uncritically just uses his guidance compliantly by willing to form his
existence according to it. When a
person as a learner enthusiastically relates in this way to such a
German professor, he accomplishes the most superb epigram upon him, because a
speculator of that sort is anything but served by a learner's honest and
enthusiastic zeal for expressing and accomplishing, for existentially
appropriating his wisdom, since this wisdom is something that the Herr
Professor himself has imagined and has written books about but has never
attempted himself. It has not even occurred to him that it should be done. Like the customers clerk who, in the belief
that his business was merely to write, wrote what he himself could not read, so
there are speculative thinkers who merely write, and write that which, if it is
to be read with the aid of action, if I may put it that way, proves to be
nonsense, unless it is perhaps intended only for fantastical beings.[2]
Ouch!
From this personal perspective the
conclusions of speculative philosophies and theologies are largely meaningless
verbiage. John Macmurray
explains Kierkegaard’s position well as follows:
The
Danish eccentric, Kierkegaard, discovered that the Hegelian philosophy was
ludicrously incapable of solving - even, indeed, of formulating the problem of
“the existing individual.” If we apply Hegel’s logic to the data of personal
reality, we produce, he showed, “a dialectic without synthesis” for the process
of the personal life generates a tension of opposites which can be resolved,
not by reconciliation, but only by a choice between them, and for this choice
no rational ground can be discovered. He
concluded that we must abandon Philosophy for religion.[3]
To “be” in the world is to be forced to
choose what you shall be, to define yourself. This ultimately compels Kierkegaard to make a
leap of faith.
Faith and the Story of Abraham
Every philosopher we have considered so
far has presumed that what we want is to believe all and only what is rational. Anselm, Aquinas, Pascal, Clifford, James,
Kant, Advocates of the Problem of Evil. What
they would agree upon is that we ought to belief whatever reason most
recommends, whether that is theism or atheism.
By contrast, Kierkegaard says belief in God is not and cannot be
rational, but that doesn’t make it a bad thing.
The time and country he lived in were
largely Christian. His fellow Danes he
regarded as complacent in their religious belief; religious belief amounted to
sort of a daily passionless habit. But
was this real faith? What is
real faith about? Kierkegaard claimed that complacent, thoughtless, routine is
not real faith. Kierkegaard’s philosophy
originated with him brooding over these questions, questions regarding the real
nature of personal faith.
The Abraham Story
Abraham is considered the “father of
faith” by the Abrahamic religions (i.e. Judaism,
Christianity and Islam) because he was held to have had a special relationship with
God. Kierkegaard examines the story of Abraham to discover what “religious
faith” is since those who use the word often point to this story as
illustrative.
http://kingjbible.com/genesis/22.htm
1 And it came to
pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him,
Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. 2 And he said, Take
now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest,
and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering
upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. 3 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took
two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the
burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.
4 Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and
saw the place afar off. 5 And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder
and worship, and come again to you. 6 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the
fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together. 7 And Isaac
spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said,
Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? 8 And
Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb
for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.
9 And they came to
the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid
the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the
wood. 10 And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and
took the knife to slay his son. 11 And the angel of the LORD called unto him
out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here
am I. 12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only
son from me. 13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind
him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of
his son. 14 And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh:
as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.[4]
Story of Abraham
So we see that Abraham had a son, Isaac
whom he loved deeply. How should Abraham
respond to God's apparent command that Abraham take his son out and kill
him? This is a crisis of faith. Further, Kierkegaard cautions us that it is a
mistake to think Abraham merely had to decide whether to do God’s will or
not. Rather, he had to decide what that
“voice in the night” meant. He must interpret the event, give it its
meaning. And various interpretations are
open to Abraham. He must choose to interpret and that choice cannot be “rational” or based
on evidence since it is the making of the choice, the interpretation itself, which
will determine WHAT the “evidence” is evidence of.
"Voice" in the night might
be evidence of:
1. God’s sincere desire?
2. God’s test of Abraham’s morality?
3. A demonic trick?
4. Abraham’s own insanity?
Abraham's choice (and only his choice)
determines what this voice is evidence of.
He MUST choose; his personal choice is the only way to resolve the
issue.
After his choice of interpretation
he must further decide how he will respond to the (newly created) “evidence.”
If this is correct, then, contrary to
what we might initially suppose, we do not base our choices on evidence, at
least not the really important ones, but rather it’s the
other way around; we base evidence on choices.
The voice is not evidence of anything until it is given an
interpretation. What interpretation it
is given is a free (undetermined) choice for
which we are totally responsible.
Further, we can get no rational assistance in making these choices, but
the most important things in our lives rest on them. Nothing is “reasonable” (or unreasonable for that
matter) until after one makes the choices.
This is why in such matters we must abandon
philosophy for faith.
This is why Kierkegaard is considered the founder
of Existentialism.[5]
Existentialism – school of thought founded by Kierkegaard which
stresses individual personal choice and responsibility; major and minor
decisions made in life are your choices; free to choose whatever you will;
complete freedom but therefore total responsibility rest with the
individual. They are matters of creative
self-definition.
Further still, these free existential
choices are the most important choices in life.
Abraham's world, everything important to him (his son, his relationship
with God, his progeny) was riding on this choice. And he is compelled to choose. As Sartre would later say, we are condemned
to be free.
He must therefore make a Leap of Faith
Leap of Faith: a passionate commitment that one makes without regard
to reason, evidence or argument.
This is precisely what Abraham does,
according to Kierkegaard, and this is why he is a hero
of faith. This then is the nature of
true faith. It results from the recognition
of the futility of reason and the necessity for personal unaided choice.
Why then is he, Kierkegaard, a
Christian? The only honest answer anyone
can give is because he chooses to be one- NOT because of supposed evidence for or
against. There is the unknown, and we
can respond to the unknown “God” or “Not God” but this
is a free choice on our part.
“In spite of the
fact that Socrates studied with all diligence to acquire a knowledge of human
nature and to understand himself, and in spite of the fame accorded him through
the centuries as one who beyond all other men had an insight into the human
heart, he has himself admitted that the reason for his shrinking from
reflection upon the nature of such beings as Pegasus and the Gorgons was that
he, the life-long student of human nature, had not yet been able to make up his
mind whether he was a stranger monster than Typhon, or a creature of a gentler
and simpler sort, partaking of something divine (Phaedrus, 229 E). This seems
to be a paradox. However, one should not think slightingly of the paradoxical;
for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without
a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity. But the highest
pitch of every passion is always to will its own downfall; and so it is also the supreme passion of the Reason to seek a
collision, though this collision must in one way or another prove its undoing.
The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that
thought cannot think
But what is this
unknown something with which the Reason collides when inspired by its
paradoxical passion, with the result of unsettling even man’s knowledge of
himself? It is the Unknown. It is not a human being, in so far as we know what
man is; nor is it any other known thing….
“The supreme
paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot
think. This passion is, at bottom, present in all thinking, even in the
thinking of the individual, in so far as in thinking he participates in
something transcending himself. But
habit dulls our sensibilities, and prevents us from
perceiving it”. – Johannes Climacus, Philosophical
Fragments (46)
This quotation explains is found at
the beginning of Chapter 3, The Absolute Paradox. Climacus’ is
explaining paradox in the context of Socrates and human thought. Kierkegaard holds that paradox is “the
passion of thought.” Climacus
believes that at the foundation of all thinking is the idea that the human can
understand and transcend something outside of human rationality. This inherent operating
assumption of inquiry result in humans forgetting the reality that some things,
like God and Christianity, cannot be explained or understood by human thought. Nevertheless, humans still believe they can
comprehend all. (Consider Hegel’s “The rational is the real and the real is the
rational.) The paradox is something that
the mind cannot grasp and understanding that the mind cannot
grasp it is a relevant step in understanding Kierkegaard’s philosophy on
religion.
We want to discover something we
cannot think, even though this will be the downfall of thinking. That which we cannot think is “the unknown,”
and the unknown is God (“the god”). Therefore,
Kierkegaard thinks it foolish to try to prove that God exists, since the very
attempt to do so presupposes that God exists.
We would not try to construct a proof
that something exists if we thought it might not exist. Further, we must begin
with a presupposed notion of the divine nature in order to
attempt any such “proof.” Kierkegaard
argues that the existence of something is never the conclusion of a proof;
rather, it is the starting point. For example, Napoleon’s existence cannot be
the conclusion of an argument starting from his works, because to start with “his
works,” presupposes that he, Napoleon exists and it is
he who performed the works.
Similarly, God’s existence cannot be
the conclusion of an argument based on God’s works. To argue that the events in
the world must derive from an all good being assumes that the events are all
ultimately good and this assumption is based on the belief that there exists an
all-good author of these works. Further
as an a posteriori proof this proof will always leave us in suspense,
give us only a tentative hypothesis as we continue to accumulate more
potentially relevant evidence which may undermine the supposed proof. (Perhaps
a personal tragedy.)
“So let us call
this unknown something: God. It is nothing more than a name we assign to it.
The idea of demonstrating that this unknown something (God) exists, could
scarcely suggest itself to Reason. For if God does not exist it would of course
be impossible to prove it; and if he does exist it would be folly to attempt
it. For at the very outset, in beginning
my proof, I would have presupposed it, not as doubtful, but as certain (a
presupposition is never doubtful, for the very reason that it is a
presupposition), since otherwise I would not begin, readily understanding that
the whole would be impossible if he did not exist.
But if when I
speak of proving God’s existence, I mean that I propose to prove that the
Unknown, which exists, is God, then I express myself badly. For in that case I
do not prove anything, least of all an existence, but merely develop the
content of a conception. Generally speaking, it
is a difficult matter to prove that anything exists; and what is still worse
for the intrepid souls who undertake the venture, the difficulty is such that
fame scarcely awaits those who concern themselves with it. The entire demonstration always turns into
something very different and becomes an additional development of the
consequences that flow from my having assumed that the object in question
exists. Thus I
always reason from existence, not toward existence, whether I move in the
sphere of palpable sensible fact or in the realm of thought. I do not for
example prove that a stone exists, but that some existing thing is a stone. The
procedure in a court of justice does not prove that a criminal exists, but that
the accused, whose existence is given, is a criminal.
OK, so he chooses to be a
Christian. What does that MEAN? He must choose what being a Christian
means. Being a Christian might mean
killing your innocent child. One is not
“done” choosing when one makes a choice to be “X” because, while “X” names a
“kind” you are an INDIVIDUAL. You are
THIS X, and only you decide what being “this X” means. This is the case for any role: father,
mother, son, citizen, Christian, etc. None of these name “fixed essences” or if
they do, then you are not essentially any of them. You are them by choice. (We are all individuals.)
Even one’s assigned features mean
nothing until one chooses for them a meaning.
For instance, I am 5’ 7’’. Some
might say that I did not choose to be this height and there are many other
features that are assigned to me and thus, that I do not freely choose. But the existentialist would counter, and what
precisely does being 5’ 7” mean? I am not “generic” 5’7’ any more than I am
generic philosophy instructor; I am THIS 5’7”
and I choose for myself what that means, that is, what role I choose to
allow it to play in my life.
To further demonstrate the disconnect
between faith and reason, Kierkegaard notes that sometimes Christianity
requires the embracing of two things that are mutually impossible, irrational. For instance, Abraham believed that he would
kill Isaac AND that through Isaac, Abraham would go on to have many
descendants.
Should you be a Christian? Keirkegaard would
ask, “Why are you asking me?” You have to choose what you will be; this is what makes it an “existential”
choice. You create yourself through
such leaps and choices. The idea
that each of us must discover who we “truly are” couldn't be more wrong-headed
from an Existentialist perspective. We
are not a set, fixed anything. We are
the product of our own creation. The real question I must answer is “Who/what
is that I choose to be?”
Kierkegaard claims that religious
faith is of the same character as are any of the really
important decisions we make in life.
They are not made on evidence; they are choices. Religious faith is a non‑rational
commitment irrespective of evidence, argument, or reason. We
believe in God (or believe in NO God) simply because we choose to; such beliefs
can't be based on evidence; what you are looking at doesn't have a meaning
until after you make a choice. Note that
this is not unlike the choice to live a moral or immoral life; this is not
evidence based. We can always
rationalize after the fact, but the reality is that we simply choose to be who
we choose to be. In the end there is
only the “unknown,” and we can respond to the “unknown” and say “God” or say
“Not-God.” Both the Theist and Atheist
are choosing to believe; choice precedes evidence; choice makes
meaning/evidence.
Finally, we must not imagine that once
an existential choice is made, it is over.
Each day requires that we make ourselves anew. For Kierkegaard, the Christian life calls for
constant reaffirmation. Everyday it is a struggle to be a Christian. Similarly, just because I did not cheat the
last time I had an opportunity to, but rather I chose
to be a honest person, does not mean that is the choice I am compelled to make
today. Since every day we are free to
define ourselves, everyday we are compelled to answer
for ourselves “Who am I?” Or perhaps more correctly, who shall I choose to be
today.[6]
As illustrations of the sort of thing
he has in mind, consider two cases; The "Bloody Glove" in the O.J.
Simpson murder case and the Shroud of Turin.
In the O.J. Simpson murder case, a key
bit of "evidence" was a pair of bloody gloves:
Bloody Gloves:
One dark,
cashmere-lined Aris Light leather glove, size extra large,
was found at the murder scene, another behind Simpson's guest house, near where
Brian "Kato'' Kaelin heard bumps in the night.
Mrs. Simpson bought O. J. Simpson two pairs of such gloves in 1990. DNA tests
showed blood on a glove found on Simpson's property appeared to contain genetic
markers of O. J. Simpson and both victims; a long strand of blond hair similar to Ms. Simpson's also was found on that glove.
Prosecution:
Simpson lost the left glove at his ex-wife's home during the struggle and, in a
rush, inadvertently dropped the right glove while trying to hide it; they explained
that evidence gloves didn't fit Simpson in a courtroom demonstration because
the gloves shrunk from being soaked in blood and Simpson had rubber gloves on
underneath.
Defense: glove
behind guest house was planted by Detective Mark Fuhrman, a racist cop trying
to frame Simpson; blood on glove may have been planted by police; underscored
that the evidence gloves didn't even fit O.J. Simpson; (If the gloves don’t
fit, you must acquit.) and the hair analysis isn't sophisticated enough to be
trusted.
What were the gloves
"evidence" of? Well, from a
Kierkegaardian point of view- nothing until you choose to believe. If you choose to believe he is innocent, they
are evidence of a corrupt police plant and frame job. If you choose to believe he is guilty, they
become evidence of his presence at the scene and participation in the
murder. But again, it would be a mistake
to assume the evidence determines what is rational to believe; it is what you
choose to believe that will determine what "evidence" there is.
The Shroud of Turin
The Shroud of Turin is a linen cloth
bearing the image of a man who appears to have sustained wounds and to have
died in a manner consistent with the story of the crucifixion of Jesus. It is housed in the Cathedral of Saint John
the Baptist in Turin, Italy. Historical
records only trace a provenance to about the 1300's. At that time, numerous "holy
relics" and "shrouds" were produced, but whereas these others,
upon closer inspection, could clearly be seen to be fakes, the Shroud of Turin is
intriguing because it was not an obvious fake.
In fact, the image on the shroud could not be made out very well until
it was photographed (circa 1930) and the negative was looked at. When the values are reversed, the image is
much more recognizable and detailed.
Many argued that it was unreasonable to imagine a forger anticipating
the invention of photography. Other
historical accuracies lead many to believe it to be genuine, that is, to be the
cloth that covered Jesus of Nazareth when he was placed in the tomb of Joseph
of Arimathea. Some even suggested that
this image was recorded on its fibers at the time of his miraculous
resurrection.
In 1988, for the first time, the
Catholic Church permitted radiocarbon dating of the shroud by three independent
teams of scientists. Each concluded that
that the shroud was made during the Middle Ages, approximately 1300 years after
Jesus lived. Almost immediately,
spokesmen on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church acknowledged the results,
acquiesced to the judgement of science, expressed their disappointment
and pledged, nevertheless, the take care of the shroud as so many did find it inspiriting,
nevertheless.
Sometime later a group of Protestant
theologians and scientists issued their own statement. They criticized what they thought was an
unnecessary and overly hasty acceptance of this scientific evidence about the
age of the shroud. They argued that if
there were a resurrection (as the Catholic Church and other Christians are
supposed to believe) and if there were at that time a great release of
electromagnetic radiation or the like, (as may seem plausible) then we ought to
expect that the radiocarbon dating process is give us the wrong, much younger,
date.
So, radiocarbon dating suggests that
the shroud is only approximately 700 years old.
What is that evidence of? Does it
prove that the shroud is a fake. Or does it prove that
it is genuine and further is evidence of the resurrection of Christ? Kierkegaard might claim, either. It depends on you. Both require your leap of faith.
Camus' Myth of Sisyphus (Taken
from my notes on suicide)
One reason some people think that
suicide is wrong is because the noble thing for humans to do is to persevere,
even in the face of meaningless pointless suffering and struggle.
(Existentialism/ Camus Essay "The Myth of Sisyphus")
Existentialists believe that we are
totally free in all are actions and that we are totally responsible for all our
actions. When you try to push your freedom off onto others, this bugs
existentialists. For example, when a salesman convinces you to buy something
overpriced and then you blame him when you find a better deal later ("He
talked me into it… etc.") , existentialists will remind you that you chose
to listen to him and it’s your own fault. You can’t pretend it wasn’t your
choice. Now, there are consequences, and
you may not like those consequences, but it was still your choice. Further,
there are some things that are out of your control, such as your height, but
what these things mean to you is under your control. You assign the meaning to these things and that
meaning is something you chose. There is a sense in which you DO
choose to be that height (again not generic 5’7”, but this 5’7”) because
you choose what being that height means.
You live exactly the life you choose to live.
Soren Kierkegaard, founder of
Christian Existentialism. He comes to existentialism as a way
to understand faith. He understands faith as a choice someone makes.
There is the unknown and we can respond to the unknown by saying “God” or “not
God”, but in either case we’re making a choice and in either case it is a
choice undetermined by evidence.
The Absurd
Later existentialists add to this view
that no one’s "keeping score" (There is no God.) and we’re NOT
immortal. Our death is our total annihilation. All these choices for which we
are responsible and with which we struggle, don’t really matter in the long
run. We’ll eventually die
and we will eventually be forgotten.[7] Our
lives only have the significance that we attribute to them and only for as long
as we have the energy to care. The
“absurd” condition of the human person is that we are compelled to choose,
where choice implies preference, all the while knowing that there is no reason
to prefer one choice over another. We
are compelled to look for meaning in what we know to be a meaningless world.
Some people jumped the gun and thought
well, then I should just kill myself, since there’s no point to my life. But
Albert Camus points out that that is merely another meaningless choice. So, existentialists think we shouldn’t kill
ourselves. Our lives may be full of pointless, arduous struggles, but the noble
thing is to struggle on, even in the face of pointless struggle. It is what we make of our selves
(self-creation) in the struggle that is important. That is the source of our nobility and ending
our lives ends the possibility to "be."
To illustrate his point, Camus retells
the story of Sisyphus. Sisyphus was an
ancient Greek king. To test the love of
his wife, before Sisyphus died, he forbade her from burying his body. (The thinking being is that if she really
loved him, she could not obey this command.)
However, his wife did obey and Sisyphus, annoyed, asked for permission
to return to Corinth to yell at her. He
was granted permission only on the condition that he promise to return, which
he did promise. Once back on the upper
world though, he found he did not want to go back to the land of the dead. He refused though Hades sent several messengers.
Eventually he had to be dragged back kicking and screaming to the underworld by
Hermes. As a punishment for his
disobedience and hubris, Sisyphus was compelled to roll a huge rock up a steep
hill, but before he could reach the top of the hill, the rock would always roll
back down again, forcing him to begin again.
Now for the Greeks, this was Hell, to be tied to unending, meaningless
struggled, to be compelled to labor even when one knows that one's labor will
amount to nothing.
But for Camus, Sisyphus is our hero
and emblematic of the human condition.
We are all tied to arduous struggle, meaningless choices from which we
cannot escape. And why? What was Sisyphus' “crime?” To be.
To live. But if this is the price
of existence says Camus, then it is worth it.
For our nobility arises in what we make of ourselves in the struggle. The struggle with the absurd is result of our
freedom and the source of our dignity.
We must imagine Sisyphus happy, he concludes, for "The struggle
towards the heights itself is enough to fill a man's heart."[8]
William James (1842-1910)
William James is another who thought
that philosophical and theological argument could not be the origin of any
significant religious belief. At best it could provide some logical
clarification of knowledge or beliefs gained from religious experience. We
have already examined James’ notion that the important thing about religious
belief is not whether it corresponds to a mind independent reality, but the
practical role it plays in our lives. As
a pragmatist he is suggesting that truth is what it is good to believe where
“good to believe” can be understood in practical terms. All beliefs are “powers to act” and religious
beliefs are powers to act in religious ways.
“But all these intellectual operations, whether they
be constructive or comparative and critical, presuppose immediate experiences
as their subject-matter. They are interpretative and inductive operations,
operations after the fact, consequent upon religious feeling, not coordinate
with it, not independent of what it ascertains.
The intellectualism in religion which I wish to discredit pretends to be
something altogether different from this. It assumes to construct religious
objects out of the resources of logical reason alone, or of logical reason
drawing rigorous inference from non-subjective facts. It calls its conclusions
dogmatic theology, or philosophy of the absolute, as the case may be; it does not call them science of religions. It reaches
them in an a priori way, and warrants their
veracity.” (VRE 433)
In Persons
in Relation John Macmurray echo’s James’
pragmatic read of religious language.
“For the root of dualism is the intentional
dissociation of thought and action; while religion when it is full-grown
demands their integration. From the point of view of any dualist thought
whether in its pragmatic or its contemplative mode whether from an idealist or
a realist attitude religion cannot even be rightly conceived; and the
traditional proofs even if they were logically unassailable could only conclude
to some infinite or absolute being which lacks any quality deserving of
reverence or worship. The God of the traditional proofs is not the God of
religion.
Among James’
targets were certain contemporary British Absolute Idealists, such as F. H.
Bradley (1846 – 1924). However brilliant
their systems of speculative philosophy might be, they could amount at most to
some largely “meaningless edifying verbiage” with little real religious
significance according to James.
When James
concludes his essay “Will to Believe,” he sounds very close to
Kierkegaard. James quotes from Fitz
James Stephen
"What do you think of yourself? What do you
think of the world?... These are questions with which all must deal as it seems
good to them. They are riddles of the Sphinx, and in some way or other we must
deal with them.... In all important transactions of life
we have to take a leap in the dark.... If we decide to leave the riddles unanswered, that
is a choice; if we waver in our answer, that, too, is a choice: but whatever
choice we make, we make it at our peril. If a man chooses to turn his back
altogether on God and the future, no one can prevent him; no one can show beyond
reasonable doubt that he is mistaken. If a man thinks otherwise and acts as he
thinks, I do not see that any one can prove that he
is mistaken. Each must act as he thinks best; and if he is wrong, so much the
worse for him. We stand on a mountain
pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist,
through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If
we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take
the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether
there is any right one. What must we do? 'Be strong and of a good courage.' Act
for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes.... If death ends all, we
cannot meet death better."
Ludwig
Wittgenstein
The fourth and most modern of the fideist philosophers I will mention is Ludwig
Wittgenstein. His position grew out of
his larger claims about language, how it works and what one can and cannot do
with it.
One of his most influential
philosophical works which he completed early in his career was the Tractatus.[9] The major theme of the Tractatus
was an examination of propositions which
express facts about the world.
This is the limit of and the function of meaningful propositions. But even here he seems to agree with 18th
Century philosopher, David Hume, that the mere rational appreciation of facts
is itself, value neutral. The facts are
just the facts and the propositions in themselves are entirely devoid of value.
This is the proper domain of scientific language. Everything else, everything about which we
care, everything that might render the world meaningful, must reside elsewhere.
(See Tractatus 6.4)
So, a properly logical language, Wittgenstein
held, deals only with what is true/factual. Aesthetic judgments about what is beautiful
and ethical judgments about what is good cannot even be expressed within the
logical language, since they transcend what can be “pictured” in thought. They
aren't facts. The achievement of a wholly satisfactory description of the way
things are would leave unanswered (but also unaskable)
all of the most significant questions with which traditional philosophy was
concerned. (Tractatus 6.5)
At the end of the Tractatus Wittgenstein famously
states:
"Whereof One
Cannot Speak, Thereof One Must Be Silent." Tractatus
7)
How this quote is to be interpreted is a
matter of debate among Wittgenstein scholars. Some claim that he believes that math
and science exhausts the domain of meaningful discourse and inquiry,
effectively dismissing anything falling outside. This of course was the view of the Logical
Positivists of this same period. Others argue
that, even here, he thought the most important features of human life, ethics and religion, are beyond the limits of language and
speculative philosophy. Faith, then, is
not something on which philosophy or science can pass judgement.
There are two predominant views of these
final remarks in the Tractatus:
- His
later work Philosophical
Investigations is in fact his own refutation of the position developed
in the earlier work, a rejection the former logical atomist position and
the “picture” theory of language which he in fact held when writing the Tractatus.
- Philosophical
Investigations is a confirmation
of the conclusion that he reaches in the Tractatus; namely, that the
atomist position and the picture theory of language are nonsense and must
be transcended.
Two Views of
Language:
The “picture view of language.” A proposition is a picture of reality true if
and only if it corresponds to the way the world is. Names stand for objects in the actual world.
The “game view of language.” “Language is an instrument. Its concepts are
instincts.” PI #569) There are multiple language games and which language “plays”
are appropriate depend upon which of the varying human practices one is
participating in. Language's meaning is
how it is employed per se in each context: “The question is ‘What is a
word really? is analogous to ‘What is a piece in chess?’ (PI #108).
Wittgenstein switches from the first to
the second. On the first view, what
results is something like the Logical Positivists’ limitation as to what
constitutes “meaningful” uses of language.
Metaphysical, ethical, aesthetic sentences, since they are not expressions
of empirical propositions, are really non-sensible
when examined as propositions.
However, while the mystical cannot be
spoken, it nevertheless still seemed to be of concern, perhaps of most concern,
even to the early Wittgenstein. In a
letter to the publisher Ludwig von Ficker,
Wittgenstein states
"[M]y work
consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have
not written. And precisely this second part is the important one. For the
Ethical is delimited from within, as it were, . . . in my book by remaining
silent about it" (qtd. Monk 178).
This would suggest that the Tractatus
might be seen as a “via negativa” of its own.
Elsewhere:
Now I
often tell myself in doubtful times: “There is no one here.” and look
around. Would that this not become something base in me!
I
think I should tell myself: “Don’t be servile in your religion!” Or try not to
be! For that is in the direction of superstition.
A
human being lives his ordinary life with the illumination of a light of which
he is not aware until it is extinguished. Once it is extinguished, life is
suddenly deprived of all value, meaning, or whatever one wants to say. One
suddenly becomes aware that mere existence—as one would like to say—is in itself still completely empty, bleak. It is
as if the sheen was wiped away from all things, everything is dead.[10]
On the picture view of language
Wittgenstein is then committed to mysticism ultimately. Ethics and God are beyond what language can
speak of sensibly.
On the game view of language, such
questions are answered by living and practice.
Life is to be lived, acted out. Religious practice is one more language
game. The content of religious “propositions” (if they can be called that) is just as
indemonstrable and cannot be defended as rational doctrinal proofs. But that is not called for in the religious
practice. That simply is not a licensed
play.
Superficial and
Depth Grammar
It is common to distinguish three main
domains of linguistic study: syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. “Grammar” is generally associated with the
first of these domains, and is taken to refer to the
study of the structure or form of languages.
But Wittgenstein departs from this convention. He further distinguishes between what he call surface grammar and depth grammar.
“In the use of words one might distinguish 'surface grammar' from 'depth
grammar'. What immediately impresses itself upon us about the use of a word is
the way it is used in the construction of sentences, the part of its use - one
might say - that can be taken in by the ear. - And now compare the depth
grammar, say of the word "to mean", with what its surface grammar
would lead us to suspect. No wonder we find it difficult to know our way about.
(PI 664:).
There is dispute about what, precisely,
he means by this distinction, but a reasonable interpretation might be
this. By surface grammar he is primarily
concerned with the syntactical role the word plan in the natural language. By depth grammar he more or
less uses this interchangeably with the terms meaning (semantics) and use
(pragmatics). For instance, he takes
questions such as "How is the word used?" and "What is the
grammar of the word?" as being the same question.
What is more, he suggests that we can
substitute the phrase "meaning of a word" for "use of a
word" and proposes that the investigation of meaning should go hand in
hand with the investigation of use. This
suggests that the later Wittgenstein‘s concept of grammar breaks with standard
use of the term, and that for him, talk of grammar pervades the different
domains of linguistic inquiry rather than being limited to any particular one
of them.
In his essay “On Certainty,” Wittgenstein
asserts that claims like “Here is a hand.” or “The world has existed for more
than five minutes.” [11] have
the appearance of empirical propositions, but that in fact they have more in
common with logical propositions. While
these may seem to say something factual about the world, and hence be open to doubt, really the function they serve in language is
to serve as a kind of framework within which empirical propositions can make
sense. In other words, we take such
propositions for granted so that we can speak about the hand or about things in
the world. These propositions aren’t
meant to be subjected to skeptical scrutiny in the regular conduct of the
language within which they occur.
Doubting them would be like treating a rook as if it were a pawn. You are violating the rules of the game in
which these sentences occur.
At one point, Wittgenstein compares
these sorts of propositions to a riverbed, which must remain in place for the
river of language to flow smoothly, and at another, he compares them to the
hinges of a door, which must remain fixed for the door of language to serve any
purpose. The key, then, is not to claim certain knowledge of propositions like
“here is a hand” but rather to recognize that these sorts of propositions lie
beyond questions of knowledge or doubt.
Practice is what determines what it makes sense to say and what to “do”
with what is said.
Wittgenstein’s 1929 Lecture on Ethics
can be considered part of a transitional position between the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations. There he holds to the idea that language
which cannot be empirically verifiable is, in one sense, "nonsense,"
but it is also terribly serious and admirable.
So religious language takes its
meaning from religious life. Its surface
grammar looks empirical, (like “Here is a hand.”), but its deep grammar is very
different. One deploys religious
language in a religious form of life and the language is in a sense, some of
the “props” of the religious language game.
He rejects the idea the word and sentences have fixed “meanings”
irrespective to the context in which they occur or the uses to which they are
being put.
What I actually
want to say is that here too it is not a matter of the words one uses or
of what one is thinking when using them, but rather of the difference
they make at various points in life.[12]
(Emphasis added.)
http://www3.dbu.edu/mitchell/wittgensteinassessment.htm
Some Quotes from Wittgenstein
“Religious faith and superstition
are quite different. One of them results from fear and is a sort of false
science. The other is a trusting. (Culture
and Value p. 72)
"A proof of God’s existence
ought really to be something by means of which one could convince oneself that
God exists. But I think that what believers who have furnished such proofs have
wanted to do is give their ‘belief’ an intellectual analysis and foundation,
although they themselves would never have come to believe as
a result of such proofs. Perhaps one could ‘convince someone that God
exists’ by means of a certain kind of upbringing, by shaping his life in such
and such a way."
“Burning in effigy. Kissing
the picture of a loved one. This is obviously not based on a belief that it will have a
definite effect on the object which the picture represents. It aims at some satisfaction and it achieves it. Or rather, it does not aim at anything; we act in this way and
then feel satisfied”
“Queer as it sounds:
The historical accounts in the Gospels might, historically speaking, be
demonstrably false and yet belief would lose nothing by this: not, however
because it concerns 'universal truths of reason'! Rather because historical
proof (the historical proof-game) is irrelevant to belief. This
message (the Gospels) is seized on by men believingly (i.e.
lovingly). That is the certainty characterizing this particular acceptance-as-true, not something else.
“A believer's relation to these
narratives is neither the relation to historical truth
(probability), nor yet that to a theory consisting of 'truths
of reason'. (CV 32)
God is not a ‘thing’ like any
other
‘a religious belief could only be something like a
passionate commitment to a system of reference. Hence, although it’s a belief,
it’s really a way of living, or a way of assessing life. It’s passionately
seizing hold of this interpretation.’ (Culture and Value, §64)