Philosophers sometimes understand themselves as that group of people who through reason alone peer behind the transitory world of appearances to understand things as they really are. Apparently, the ordinary poor slobs who compose the vast majority of humanity live in the world of the cave--the world of appearances—and go about their lives altogether oblivious to the deeper reality that holds up or transcends what they perceive. Through thought alone, philosophers appertain reality as it is rather than as the illusory world of appearances that ordinary folks blithely experience.Or so they would have us believe.
But I doubt it. My sense is that people naturally and automatically look past appearances to mentally organize and construct their perceptions into meaningful concepts—into “reality.” They do so without the benefit of philosophy. They do so without trying. In fact, they can’t help but do it.
Any toddler can identify a dog as a dog. But asking the toddler to pull back from the concept of doggyness that she is implicitly relying upon to actually describe the difference in appearance that distinguish various breeds of dogs and that distinguish dogs from, say, cats is to ask something of the child that is well beyond its capacity. It seems we understand what a dog is first, and then only later (maybe) can we note what we perceive about that dog that helps us make that determination. Obviously appearances are critically important for us to recognize a dog as a dog, but it’s remarkable how much variation of appearances allow us to still recognize a dog as a dog. Dogs have legs, true, but most of us can still recognize a two-legged dog as a dog. When I was a boy I was traumatized by seeing a decapitated dog with its head on one side of a railroad track and the body on the other side of the rail. Looking back now at that horrible discovery, I note that when I was looking only at the body I knew the dog was a dog. And looking only at its poor severed head, I knew the dog was a dog. I had never seen a headless or bodiless dog before, but I still recognized it as a dog.
What’s interesting is that by ignoring appearances and going directly to what the thing is (the goal of philosophy) we run the risk of distorting the thing itself. Consider how a child draws a piano. She’ll use one color—black—and basically draw a blocky outline of a piano and then fill in the spaces with a uniform blackness. But then if one looks at a piano as one would find it in a concert hall, one does not see just blackness. One sees odd sheens of light and bizarre and ever changing reflections. True, the piano’s blackness can be seen, but for as much as we see the blackness in the piano we think of it as black simply because we block out what we actually see and allow our concept of the piano to guide our mental constructions.
In so doing we distort the reality of the thing we think we understand. God doesn’t do that. At least most of the time he doesn’t. Psalm 147 says that God names all the stars. Now that’s understanding each thing in an individual way. Persons can’t do that. It takes considerable education in astronomy for a person to understand how differences within stars make a crucial difference for how they behave. That God names each of the stars reveals his staggeringly powerful mind, but making distinctions based upon appearances is even hard for him. For example, in Leviticus Chapter 11, we are told of God’s rules concerning the eating of unclean birds:
"And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray, And the vulture, and the kite after his kind; Every raven after his kind; And the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after his kind, And the little owl, and the cormorant, and the great owl, And the swan, and the pelican, and the eagle, And the stork, the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat."
Okay, so everyone goofs from time to time.
In contrast to philosophy, which discounts the world of appearances, art—especially contemporary art—invites the viewer to attend carefully to what the viewer is seeing. It invites the viewer to not move hastily to a general glib understanding of the thing, but to attend to the particulars of the thing. In interpreting a piece of art (here I’m thinking of paintings in particular) the first thing the interpreter should do is stop, pause, and simply look. She should note what she is seeing and not jump immediately to its “deeper” meaning for what it signifies. What drives so many people “batty” (sorry) about contemporary art is that sometimes (but not always) it does not ask the viewer to look beyond itself for the purpose of telling a story or conveying an idea or making a statement beyond the art world itself. Sometimes (but not always) the artist attempts to prompt the viewer to simply look at the art itself, to appreciate form independently of function. To appreciate it as a composition. Therefore at least to some degree an important goal of the contemporary artist is to simply bring people down back into the cave because, damn it, there’s interesting things going on down there.
Appearances are worth attending to because our senses are worth attending to. We are embodied, and we should have less shame about our perceptions than what philosophy would have us feel. And in fact distinctions of appearance between things matter. Without noting those distinctions, we cannot fully appreciate the mind-boggling variety and diversity of creation itself.
The photo. One thing I love about going to a large city like Chicago or NYC is the remarkable degree of visual replication one sees. Not exactly replication because that would be boring. But visual echoes. Building after building towering over us. And with so much reflective glass one looks into a building and sees what’s behind oneself. We can see the same building by looking in four different directions. It’s fabulous and exhilarating. And yet without the benefit of engaging in platonic dialectic we immediately and effortlessly train our eye to look past these reflections, these images, to see the “real” thing we’re looking at, the building I can touch with my hand. Like painting, photography requires that the photographer be mindful of images and appearances—in effect, to visually convert the three-dimensional world that our mind constructs to the two-dimensional world that we see. Both this photo and the photo below were made by pointing the camera into a window. The “mask” and other objects are inside the building that I’m facing; Harvey and the cars and images of buildings and the sky are “behind” me and captured by the reflection in the window.
No one who was there when I took the picture would mistake Harvey for being on the other side of the window. In fact, most of the time Harvey’s image in the window would be effectually “invisible” to us; we would screen that image out. The mind constructs “reality” fairly effortlessly. Where we need training is not in the realm of philosophy but in the realm of looking.
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9 comments:
i would suggest that our generic sense of "dog" absolutely falls under plato's idea of the folks in the back of the cave staring at the shadows. Our everyday, stumbling through life type of "seeing" is, out of necessity, comprised of a baseline understanding of what everything looks like. If we walked around with a childlike wonder and amazement at the Harveys, mannequins, and mosques reflected in windows, we'd be committed, or at the very least late for our next obligation.
plato's requisite altered state of consciousness, i believe, can refer to something as simple as the "relaxed focus" required to see those ridiculous magic eye pictures of the early 90's. it's a stepping outside of the norm, the everyday, and "seeing" with something other than the rote vision with which we make our way through the world.
wordsworth is said to have endeavored to "give the charm of novelty to things of every day... to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and wonders of the world before us..." now i suppose you could argue that his main focus was people and nature, but it can work with whatever's around you, wouldn't you say?
when we wake up and turn toward the things creating our everyday shadows, whether it's through stopping to see the reflections in windows or engaging in true socratic debate to test those "uncritically held" opinions, we find those forms plato loved to wax on about.
Recently I read Sam Harris’ “Letter to a Christian Nation.” In a way it’s a devastating book against religion, but its devastation, so to speak, is purchased by defining religion by its most rigid and dogmatic expression. Essentially he says that the Fundamentalists have it right: either God’s word is true or it isn’t. But if it’s true, then one ought to read it, as many Fundamentalists do, as inerrant and as literal. The problem is, of course, that thoughtful people who have any respect for the gains in scientific knowledge over the past four hundred years will find this approach impossible. Therefore liberal and progressive self-described believers depart from (i.e. water down) this approach not out of a genuine intellectual commitment to their looser interpretation of Scripture but rather because the traditional account of their beliefs have become an embarrassment to them. Their interpretation, in other words, is tendentious. Its purpose is to save the remaining bits of religion that can be salvaged in light of the scientific revolution.
In other words, Harris’ argument works by sleight of hand. Religion means extreme religion. Extreme religion is extremely silly and therefore extremely dangerous when followed extremely faithfully. Therefore ALL religion is extremely silly and dangerous. Not exactly a straw man argument, but something approaching it. (What is it? Misleading synecdoche?)
I think it’s fair to say that my reflections here on philosophy reflect the same kind of spirit as Harris’. What I’m mocking is an extreme form of philosophical snobbery and having fun with it. Because, you know, I’m not really sure what wisdom or “knowledge” that philosophy has brought us. My own view of philosophy’s influence is not so different from Marx’s, I hate to say: philosophy is a response to and a way of making sense of what’s already going on in the world. Philosophers are too often depicted as people working from an eternal and unfixed vantage point who through the sheer force of their reasoning power change the course of history forever. But my own sense is that philosophers are usually latecomers to the game, and they try to legitimate or denounce events and trends on the ground as they encounter them. Think of the nonsense of crediting Locke with the notion of rights. Not only did he not invent the idea, he hardly presents an argument for them at all. He asserts rather than argues. If we had two parallel universes, one with Locke, the other without, I imagine that “Locke’s America” would look virtually identical. America is not the product of Locke or Rousseau or Hobbes or Montesquieu. Or only marginally so. And certainly no more so than great statesmen, industrialists, inventers, religious leaders, scientists and practical politicians.
When I try to think of what new knowledge that philosophers have contributed to the world in their capacity of philosophers rather than as scientists or economists, I mostly scratch my head and come up empty. Certainly lots of philosophers have made important claims—that the world is all idea; or all matter; or that people have inherent rights; or that democracy is the solution to the problems of democracy; or that history has come to its philosophical end; or that pleasure is the only good; or that ethics is somehow rooted in the law of non-contradiction; and so on—but it seems to me that these claims amount to little more than opinions even if they are advanced with heartfelt appeals to reason. (The exception here, of course, is formal logic.) There is no eternal and pure vantage point by which philosophers can pronounce true judgments. If there were such a point, philosophy would have ended with Plato, no?
I think philosophy’s value is almost exactly as you suggest: it subjects the world in its entirety to rational thought. It does put to the test our uncritical assumptions. But if this is the case, then the analytical philosophers really are right. Philosophy is much better at falsifying opinions than it is at constructing truthful systems of thought. Though many of us have had philosophical “aha” moments that are akin to finally seeing that picture in the ridiculous magic eye posters of the early ‘90’s, it’s been my experience that the “aha-ness” feeling doesn’t last long. The “aha” insight turns out to be not as true as I had originally guessed. The fixed vantage point turns out to be less fixed and less eternally true (and always always always less original) than I had hoped.
I’m pro-philosophy because I believe (but cannot prove) that applying reason to life dignifies life even if it doesn’t provide us with eternal truth. It has other “benefits” as well: the philosophical commitment to rational inquiry welcomes scientific thinking, which comes much closer than philosophy in providing the world with reliable knowledge. It also puts (or gives us the illusion of putting) the philosophical thinker in the driver’s seat of life by giving him or her some area in which one is not entirely subject to the claims custom, fate or superstition. Because of that it allows for intellectual playfulness. Maybe this is a postmodern notion, but I don’t think so. It dates back at least to Plato, right? Subjecting ideas to a variety of different arguments and perspectives is simply fun. Seeing the world from a multiplicity of perspectives is delightful if also potentially maddening. Noting how different philosophers arrive at perfectly opposite views of reality—reality is mind vs. reality is matter; human nature is inherently good vs. human nature is inherently evil; ethics is perfectly relative vs. ethics is perfectly fixed by the claims of reason—makes the world far more interesting. One of the most exciting things about life for me is how the word is irreducible to a single obvious interpretation. I mean, isn’t it fascinating and thrilling that life can be plausibly explained by contradictory beliefs? For example, that life can be explained both by reference to a creator and without such a reference. Or that the world existed forever or that it has a beginning? Or that the world follows rules of law or that we have free will. And on and on and on. It’s fun to make claims in the realm of mystery and then marshal arguments for our claims.
I’m pro-philosophy. I’m just not pro-philosophical snobbery. Philosophical snobbery would have us believe that philosophers see life from the vantage point of truth. Philosophy as I understand it in its best expression suggests that something good and noble and fun happens to me when I make the effort to note carefully my world with rational thought and self-reflection. In this sense I agree with you that attending closely to the world of images can be itself a kind of philosophical enterprise because it forces the thinker to pause and note carefully one’s world. To think about it. But philosophy shouldn’t attempt to leave the world of perception and image. Rather it should deal with that world more thoughtfully. Because it’s the world in which we live, and we can’t escape it.
No?
As a side note, I’ve had two close friends who accuse me—probably rightly—of falling trap to the extreme Sam Harris way of understanding religion. You’ve let Sam Harris, and through Sam Harris the Fundamentalists, to define religion in its most dogmatic and least attractive expression. My obvious struggle with religion can be boiled down to this: I believe in God. But I want to believe that God is good. That He is loving. And that I should love him because he is lovely. But the problem is that I cannot accept the claims of faith as propounded by Fundamentalists and even most evangelicals without also understanding God as arbitrary and cruel and hateful and petty. Therefore because I have purchased the fundamentalist view of biblical interpretation as “all or nothing,” my struggle is between accepting the Bible as literal truth and junking it all. And I don’t want to do either. My friends urge me to pursue a sensible and more open view of religion, say, a modern Episcopal or liberal Methodist perspective. I’d like to do so but it doesn’t come naturally to me. Maybe that’s because I grew up Unitarian, and for me to depart psychologically from Unitarianism (and thereby reject an important part of my devoted and loving parents’ view of things) required a clean break. Dunno. But now Unitarianism strikes me as a sensible and decent and rational approach to life, so maybe I’ve softened up enough to attempt to reconcile the basic claims of faith and the modern world.
"a modern Episcopal or liberal Methodist perspective"
let's start here. what does this mean to you/them?
i ask this in a most sincere and earnest manner, really.
i don't doubt your sincerity. it's a fair question. i need to think the question over before i answer it adequately. what i can say right now, however, is that i mean both an attitude and a theology and maybe an ethics. however, despite my insomnia right now, i need to give sleep another chance. off to bed i go.
later.
Two things. First, I’ve decided not to emphasize anything unique to Episcopalianism or Methodism, or to discuss difference between them. I’m going to address generic liberal mainline Protestantism. Second, I’m going to move quickly. I have deleted a full page of preliminaries and prefaces because it occurred to me that I was beginning to write a dissertation. So I decided to start over and move extremely quickly. I’m willing to elaborate or explain any point in response to questions or challenges.
I’ve decided to limit myself to ten breathtakingly unqualified points because I have to stop somewhere. Here goes. By liberal or progressive Protestantism I mean these things.
1. A Christian faith that accepts the need to recast traditional Biblical interpretations in response to new understandings of reality—i.e. to new scientific claims about the origin of species or the age of the world or the nature of the solar system, and to new philosophical or ethical understandings of human beings, such as political equality.
2. A Christian faith that listens to adherents of different faith traditions for reasons other than as occasions for converting the misguided or for getting behind enemy lines to better exploit their weaknesses.
3. A Christian faith that does not equate Scriptural inspiration with divine stenography.
4. A Christian faith that embraces the good in culture—i.e. art, science, business innovations, and so on--regardless of the faith of those responsible for those advances.
5. A Christian faith that comes down on the side of God’s love when it is seemingly in tension with His sovereignty.
6. A Christian faith that is unwilling to reject out of hand the validity of spiritual experiences even when those experiences run counter to traditional interpretations of the faith.
7. A Christian faith that emphasizes the spiritual rather than the historical or scientific truth of Scripture.
8. A Christian faith that is uncomfortable with (but does not necessarily reject) the exclusivity of Christianity as a true faith system or as the sole path to salvation.
9. A Christian faith that would choose humility and spiritual uncertainty over blessed assurance when accompanied by self-righteous judgment.
10. A Christian faith that is committed to a responsible care of the world and to social justice for the least among us (though shamefully not often enough to the unborn, whose welfare is too often excluded even as part of the discussion.)
Clearly this is not a definitive or exhaustive list. And, yes, it draws a caricatured portrait both of liberal Protestantism and, by implication, conservative Christianity. Obviously I’m emphasizing points of contrast. I recognize that plenty of conservative evangelicals embody the best qualities of liberal Christians while many liberal Christians can be unbearably smug and elitest and self-righteous.
wow. thank you so much for your thoughtful elucidation. it's really quite nice and set me off on all kinds of ponderin'.
how does this view of religion differ from your unitarian upbringing?
are there really episcopal or methodist churches that espouse or even welcome any of this non-traditional thought?
my depiction of liberal christiainity differs a fair bit, actually, from unitarian universalism, at least as i understand both of them. in contrast to liberal christianity, uuism is far less theological and more exclusively ethical in emphasis. it makes few ontological claims except by default and by implication. it is more or less theologically agnostic. there is no sacred text. it welcomes personal searches for spiritual vitality and meaning, but it centers those searches during the church service not through the liturgy or christian worship but through sort of new agey activities.
as for whether my elucidation of liberal protestantism matches the views of any existing churches out there, i would think so. i'm a little taken aback by the question. my point wasn't to depict a radical view of christianity but rather to describe a common (if minority?) view of christiainty that i find attractive yet difficult to embrace given my own "hang-ups." here are concrete examples of what i mean by each principle. (i don't restate the principles.)
1. Accepting that the world is old. Very old. Or embracing evolution as the best model yet articulated to explain biological change over time.
2. Engaging in interfaith dialogues for the sake of mutual understanding and, where possible, reconciliation.
3. Noting, for example, that when Paul says he finds something is a mystery he cannot be merely writing down the words of god, who surely would not say, "I find God's love a mystery." Inspired cannot mean "transcribed."
4. Will explain later "by request."
5. Being open to the idea of prevenient grace (or, gasp, even universalism)instead of reprobation.
6. Acknowledging the call of women to become pastors. Or teachers of Scripture. Allowing women "inside the temple."
7. Understanding (or at the minimum being open to the possibility of)the stories of Job or Noah or Job as instructive stories rather than as historical records.
8. I don't mean here a rejection of Christ--or even his necessity for salvation. What I mean is being open to the reality that "I am the Way" is anything but clear. That perhaps he died for the world no matter what their beliefs are. I would not fail to save my infant daughter because she does not "believe" in me, or have faith in me, or prefer her mother to me.
9. Will return to this by request.
10. Is this in need of example?
to me, most of your ten points which define liberal protestantism, some to a much greater degree than others, represent some type of departure from or questioning of the doctrine (spoken or unspoken)you would find in mainstream church. what i was lamely casting about for was some sense of how one goes about finding a church where this "progressive" thinking is talked about and out in the open, or even just okay. the fact that you were taken aback by my question really gave me pause and caused me to carefully consider what it is that i'm looking for. here it is... when i walk into a church, usually methodist, there is either the traditional service, where the old hymns are sung, the nicene creed intoned, and sermon delivered, or sometimes a non-traditional service, with powerpoint stuff, really loud music, and same sermon delivered but with tie loosened and cuffs rolled up. call me crazy, but i don't see it going over well if i ask my random fellow member if he/she thought we should recast how we see the bible. bottom line, i generally feel as though i'm the only one there with questions, doubts, or musings and that there's not a public face that says, on a daily basis, half of us have questions and doubts as well.
my question about your upbrining in uu was really born out of my curiosity about whether such a church was more accepting of differing theologies, even if of stricter construction than their own,than a traditional church would be of one more to the left of their own.
i think you're right that few churches advertise that they seek to reinterpret the bible anew weekly. i think that perhaps openly gay-friendly churches do (i'm serious and not being glib), but few others do. on the other hand, i think that lots of churches do recast the bible but they do so in line with people's cultural biases--and thus do not seem especially radical. example: ordination of women. or a move to a pro-rights, pro-democracy stance.
i think it's fair to say that many uu's suffer from a prejudice of one group in particular: right-wing fundamentalists and conservative evangelical christians (they don't differentiate). i say this from both personal witness as well as from second-hand accounts of good friends who are uu's. uu's are welcoming of every stripe of religion--so long as it's pluralist and universalists. (yes, that was a little snarky against the poor uu's.)
i actually do think that christianity makes some unique claims that make it especially difficult to collapse into other religious claims. mostly i think that if god did allow (require?) his son to die on the cross, it would be odd if other modes of salvation were possible. wouldn't that sort of make a moral monster of god the father?
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