Austin Hall Library

A Fundamental Virtue for the Intellectual Life

The most significant substantive impact on my own intellectual life in the last ten years has come through reading the works of St. Thomas Aquinas. The French philosopher Etienne Gilson wrote an in depth and very fine treatment of Aquinas's thought in The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. It may be the best introduction to Aquinas available today in English. Gilson is gifted at explaining difficult concepts, but this book is one to be read more than once.

Chapter three of the book is titled "The Personal Life," and it is a short masterpiece on the application of the virtues to reason and the intellectual life in general. Gilson opens the chapter with these words: "The moral life of man consists in the highest development of the potentialities of his nature by acting at all times and in all circumstances under the direction of his reason." Stated differently, by nature (as designed by God), man possesses a number of potentialities that reach fruition to the degree that man acts at all times and in all circumstances under the direction of his reason and not his passions. This is the expression of man's moral life.

Gilson goes on to note that prudence is "a kind of general moral virtue whose duty it is to guide the other virtues themselves in choosing the means leading to their ends." For example, the virtue of justice has certain ends (goals), and the virtue of prudence guides man in choosing the means best calculated to achieve the ends of justice. Gilson then writes of the life's work of acquiring prudence and states: "[T]his is truly an art. How am I to deal with such and such a man in particular circumstances without humiliating or injuring him? This is the kind of problem which the virtue of prudence places before the understanding."

I would like to think that I always keep in mind the virtue of prudence, but I find myself returning to Gilson and St. Thomas on this issue primarily when I face difficult or complex decisions. I am in one of those periods now, so I naturally thought of Aquinas and turned to him for help. And, I ran across these insightful passages in Gilson and thought of just how fundamental is the virtue of prudence to the intellectual life.

Everything has to be put to work in order to acquire this quality. We must know how to listen, how to follow the advice of those whom knowledge and age have equipped to counsel us. Docility is a part of prudence. But it is not enough to learn from others. We must be prepared to discover on our own how to act in a particular case. This is called address (eustochia, solertia), and is a part of prudence. It is a practical presence of mind. All these qualities demand a well-trained reason, capable of working out the particulars of a problem, of foreseeing the probable consequences of an act, of using powers of circumspection, of weighing the individual circumstances of a situation, of exercising caution lest good intentions ultimately do more harm than good. Reasoning, foresight, circumspection, precaution are all essential elements of prudence, and there is no real prudence without them (Gilson).

Is CNN Really Getting Religion?

I am much less fascinated with CNN's recent multi-million dollar primetime series God's Warriors than I am the gushing interpretation of it by some evangelical Christians and the rush by certain of them to be interviewed as part of the series. It seems to be the "talk of the town," so to speak. Which, in my opinion, would be somewhat warranted if the interpretations of the series I keep hearing were sound. But, they aren't.

CNN, and its chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, did not devote millions of dollars and eight months of full-time travel and filming to achieve better understanding and present an objective view of the world's great religions (although they may have seen their mission in that way). They did so because they believe they see a connection--a philosophical and theological one--between the three religions featured, and they want to expose that connection to public view. The popular concept of that connection is "radicalism" or "fundamentalism" (thus the emphasis on violence and the stretch to imply that abortion violence by Christians was on a similar scale with violence by Muslim extremists). The philosophical connection comes from nominalism, and the theological connection comes from voluntarism. I previously made reference to this here and here.

Some postmodern men and women believe they see religion for what it really is: a radical and dangerous threat to public safety and civil order. Or, they believe that a particular form of religion (fundamentalism) poses that threat. And, unfortunately, some well-intended Christian people may be reinforcing these beliefs by failing to understand the weak philosophical underpinnings of some of their own views, while at the same time clamoring for an opportunity in primetime to show it.

The Impact of Religion in the West

Robert Royal's latest book, The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West, is a very interesting read. Against those who decry the negative impact of religion and minimize its influence, Royal asserts that Christianity essentially created the Western mind. He further contends that religion has cultivated the growth of the individual and of Western civilization itself. He concludes that modern democracies are founded upon the Christian view of the dignity of the human person and the necessity of free institutions.

Royal is a very careful thinker and writer, a Fulbright scholar, and the president of Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His book deserves a serious reading particularly by those who discount the value of Christian faith and/or predict the demise of religion. 

No Need for More "Girly Men"

If you are a man who has somehow lost his way in this understandably confused postmodern era, then you should make your day by reading Harvey C. Mansfield's Manliness. Written by a Harvard University Government professor, this book is hardly right-wing misogynist propaganda. While not in the Great Books of Western Civilization category, Manliness is insightful reading based on sound scholarship.

More could have been written on this topic, and, perhaps much could have been written differently. But, there is one thing for certain. It takes a real man to write a book like this while teaching at Harvard.   

Getting to the Heart of Utilitarianism

Following up on a previous reference to the philosophy of utilitarianism (here), philosopher Stephen Buckle has written perhaps the best short article on the subject I have seen. In the article, he specifically mentions Peter Singer's ethical theory--"preference utilitarianism." Buckle gets to the heart of the matter when he states that what is really at issue in this philosophy "is the nature of the human being." The article is available online here.

What is Your Intellectual Orientation?

I remember a conversation of several years ago with an individual who insisted that he approached subjects with no preconceived notions whatsoever--as an intellectual blank slate, so to speak. My reading of Dorothy Day's autobiography (referenced here) reminded me this is not so.

It is fashionable, particularly among the intellectual elite, to believe that one approaches reading and learning without preconditioning, but the observable facts just don't support that view. Intellectual climates change and ideas gain traction often because they happen to be congenial to the intellectual climate of the times. In the 1920s, skepticism was the intellectual order of the day; in the 1930s, the predominant sympathies were Marxist (just read Day's autobiography); in the 1940s, the intellectual climate was predominantly logical positivist. And, so on, to today's climate of postmodernism and the methodology of deconstructionism, etc. It  never ends.

It pays to know the prevailing intellectual climate that predisposes sympathies in advance, particularly  if one's vocation is the intellectual life. What's the "climate" that is currently caught rather than taught; the instinctive sympathies of individuals in the climate; the arguments that will seem to them immediately appealing; what are the conclusions that they will naturally tend to draw; the views they will regard as old fashioned or nonsensical? In short, what is the preconditioning intellectual framework from which an individual comes, into which some ideas will fit ready-made, while others are rejected out of hand as implausible? We all have such an intellectual grid. We are unique, just like everyone else. The real question is which intellectual framework best comports with reality?

Peter Singer and the Moral Equivalence of Mice and Men

On his website, Peter Singer acknowledges that, if he had to save either a human being or a mouse  from a fire, he would, "in almost all cases . . . save the human being." But, he quickly notes that "it is not because the human being is a human, that is, a member of the species Homo sapiens." To Singer, "species membership alone isn't morally significant."

But, even though Peter Singer does not view himself as having more intrinsic value (except perhaps in some utilitarian sense) than a mouse, I do. Through a repetitive system of conditioning, perhaps you could get a mouse to manipulate a limited set of symbols in response to stimuli--like, ring a bell with his nose for a piece of cheese. Whether this is possible or not, I don't know. But, I do know that the mouse will never stop and say: "This is unnecessary; I can acquire all the cheese I want by simply making a trip to the local grocer." The mouse cannot speak and he cannot reason. Neither can he conclude that it would be wrong to take without permission cheese that belongs to another mouse. The mouse has no capacity for moral reasoning nor regard for moral norms. Furthermore, once the mouse's basic need for cheese has been met, he will not paint a portrait, compose a symphony, or design and construct a Gothic cathedral. The mouse has no capacity for cultural activities and he cannot build a culture.

In short, Peter Singer is qualitatively different than a mouse. Now, he may insist that this difference has no "moral significance," but is that really reasonable? Is it reasonable to treat a species that has no capacity for intellectuality, reason, morality, and meaningful cultural activity with the same moral regard that one treats a species that has none of these qualities? 

Peter Singer on President Bush and Pan Troglodytes

I mentioned here that I was looking forward to reading how Peter Singer distinguished good and evil in the actions of President Bush during his presidency. It turns out that Singer's book doesn't self-consciously focus on the author's own views, but it focuses on a critique of the logic and consistency of many of President Bush's statements throughout his term.

Singer acknowledges that President Bush's Christian beliefs "play an important role in his moral thinking," but seeks to show that Bush is inconsistent, illogical, or simply without an adequate foundation in that "Protestant Christians often look to the Bible, but cannot agree on how to interpret it, nor what priority to give to its varying interpretations." He thus dismisses the Christian ethic out of hand.

But, it appears that at the root of Singer's critique of President Bush's views is his objection to the  President's "intervention in my own field, bioethics, in his first special prime-time televised address to the nation as president on August 9, 2001." Singer really does not like President Bush's "unargued assumption" . . . that "the life of a member of the species Homo sapiens has a greater claim to protection than the life of a member of the species Pan troglodytes, the chimpanzee." In short, it is transparently evident that Singer decided that the President's ethics were in question and in need of critique because he assumes humans have more value than chimpanzees. In scholarly fashion, Singer sees the fact that Bush has not proposed a ban on the destruction of chimpanzee embryos as evidence of inconsistency in the President's ethics.

Now, there was a time when a bioethicist, writing this kind of book, would have evoked widespread ridicule among American people and in the academy. Today, it will get one tenure at a prestigious Ivy League university (Singer is a tenured professor at Princeton). That fact is bizarre enough, but it must be admitted that Singer's straight-faced value equivalence between humans and chimpanzees has had a chilling influence among the intellectual elite that has trickled down to many a person on the street. That person on the street then sees the killing of chickens for food as an immoral act while the killing of a presentient (perceiving or feeling beforehand) human being is not. This is Singer's view and it is the end of Western civilization as we have known it when it gains sufficient traction in popular thought.

Are There Objectively Good Acts Performed by Human Beings?

I read Dorothy Day's autobiography, The Long Loneliness, last week and an event chronicled in its pages brought back a recurring question: is it possible for human beings to perform objectively good acts? This was never a serious consideration for me until I heard a colleague assert its impossibility several years ago. Impelled by the impression that loyalty to his theology required such a view, he insisted that non-Christian people could perform not a single "good" deed, or, in other words, humans could not perform objectively good acts. That idea disturbed me then. It disturbs me still today.

Dorothy Day recounts in The Long Loneliness her wrongful arrest and temporary incarceration (she was staying overnight in the wrong boarding house at the wrong time) for prostitution when she was young. She writes of her shocking memory of the coarse, hard-edged, jeering and taunting women with whom she was locked up for a short time. Her description could not have been better of the hollow-souled and inhibitionless women of the evening stripping off their clothes and casting them aside in the cell.

But, Day notes that some lost children were eventually brought in and placed in the crowded cell (it was the early 1900s) with the women. The women immediately modified their language and put on their clothes. Day mentions that one of the little lost girls had been given money and sent to the store to buy groceries by her parents and had spent the money on a red purse. Fearful of returning to her parents without groceries she had run away and been lost in the city. She was frightened, desolate, and inconsolable at the thought of the penalty for her theft when her parents came to get her. In a powerfully moving few sentences Day tells of one of the prostitutes comforting the young girl in her arms, singing to her, and telling her stories all evening. Several of the women came by and placed money in the little girl's purse to make up for the money she had squandered by her childish actions.

Admittedly, there are many stories today where the actions of hollow-souled people are not so tender toward children. It is thus easy to see how a narrow focus could lead one to conclude that, absent some supernatural stimulus, human beings do not perform objectively good acts. But, how does one explain the hard women of Day's acquaintance? How then does one explain the good Samaritan?

Is it not a concern that by denying the possibility of objectively good acts performed by human beings, we also deny the "humanness" of human beings? And what do we have when we can no longer see the humanity in flawed human beings? What do we become when we can no longer recognize the truly human reflected in the face and actions of others? Any philosophy or theology that cannot see the imago dei imperfectly but objectively reflected in the actions of human beings has more in common with gnosticism than it does with Christianity.    

Syntax Matters

Seen on the way to a meeting in San Diego. This is why one should stay in school and learn one's grammar and syntax (if still taught there). Otherwise, it is quite possible to communicate something unintended. Or, perhaps, the syntax is correct. While I have no first-hand knowledge or experience to support my conclusion, I suspect it is easier for the live dancers to draw a crowd.