ReligiousLeftLaw.com

Is Thinking Like a Lawyer a Good Thing? Is it Humane?

Law schools have traditionally purported to teach students how to “think like lawyers” rather than relying on their intuitions. Monday, without having law schools in mind, the Wall Street Journal offered a number of observations that cast doubt on many beliefs that persist in American law schools. The most important was this pair of observations. The number of calculations that the conscious brain can work on at any one time is one, only one. The number of calculations that the unconscious parts of the brain can work on at any one time stretches into the billions.

This is not new, but many law school professors believe that their main job in the first year is to combat emotions (which are invariably preceded by cognition) and intuitions, by demanding conscious rational analytic thought. Don’t get me wrong. Conscious analytic thought is often indispensable. But it is not the main engine of legal analysis, and it is not the primary form of rational thought.

In law school classrooms, despite their assault on intuitions, professors daily challenge students to confront hypotheticals. The hypotheticals work because the unconscious brain tells us that the “rule” we thought was a sound formulation to explain one case does not work at all in other cases. Our unconscious mind gives us answers to the hypotheticals and we are left with the task of consciously formulating the rules with which our unconscious mind has been operating. It is mind numbing to suggest that students cast aside their intuitions.

There is little that is special about legal thinking except that it takes place in a particular community of discourse with particular conventions and a large body of rules. Learning law-speak is more like learning a foreign language than learning how to think. If thinking like a lawyer means squelching emotions and intuitions, law school should abandon the process of teaching students to think like lawyers. Instead, they should encourage students to think like human beings.

 

Unsteady Halo: The Canonization of Pope John Paul II

Santo subito! -- "Sainthood now!"  That was the urgent plea of the crowds gathered in St. Peter's Square in April, 2005, as Pope John Paul II lay dying.  If the crowd had had its way, he would have been proclaimed a saint the very moment he died.  And in truth, the canonization process has been extremely brisk.  John Paul II has been dead only nine years and the Church stands ready to canonize him on April 27.

The passage of years, however, has allowed for a more sober assessment of his pontificate.  For sure, John Paul II did things that make him worthy of canonization.  There is no question that he was a deeply prayerful man who authored profound reflections on the meaning of Jesus and his mission.  He provided a great witness to courage, first when he was shot in May, 1981, and then, two decades later, as an elderly victim of Parkinson's.  He rallied Poland and Eastern Europe in the Cold War.  Where others might have been intemperate, his messages always encouraged resolute, peaceful, non-violent resistance.

Still, the perspective of time allows us to realize that his pontificate had the effect not of strengthening but rather of weakening the Church in a number of crucial respects.  And we would be a friend to history -- and to the Church -- if we acknowledged these flaws, for they are not insignificant.

First, there was the priestly pedophilia crisis.  It was in the middle 1980s when the public first began to get a sense of its enormity.  In 1983, the national media highlighted the serial abuse committed by a priest of the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, Fr. Gilbert Gauthe.  And two years later, in a report to the American Bishops' Conference, Fr. Thomas Doyle detailed the depth of the problem and predicted that the pedophilia crisis might be the largest disaster to confront the Church "in centuries."

Fr. Doyle was right of course.  And a healthy Church would have responded with shock, yes, but then with a thorough house cleaning.  Regrettably, it has been three decades and the house cleaning is still less than adequate.  Why?  There are many reasons, but one contributing factor was the culture of clericalism that came to dominate the Catholic hierarchy in the 1980s and 1990s.

Priests and bishops were said to be special, set apart for leadership in the Church.  Bishops, in particular, came to see themselves not as men dedicated to service and compassion but as defenders of the Church against her enemies, including, to the Church's great shame, the victims of abuse.  John Paul II set the tone for his bishops.

And the crisis worsened as he aged.  Pontificating excuse-makers duly explained that he lacked the capacity to grasp its scale.  In the Poland of his youth, his apologists recited, many priests faced trumped-up charges of child abuse and now the aged Pope could not accept that these charges were genuine.  Both for the clericalism he promoted and the cognitive dissonance he could not overcome, John Paul II bears at least some of the responsibility for the crisis.

And among the worst cases of child abuse was that of Fr. Marcial Maciel.  The Founder of the religious order, The Legion of Christ, Fr. Maciel enjoyed extraordinary favor all the while he preyed on his seminarians, victimizing dozens over his long reign of terror.He fathered children with various women on at least two continents, and even plagiarized his spiritual autobiography.  A group of former seminarians attempted to inform the Vatican of their mistreatment in the 1990s, but were never given a hearing.  All the while, John Paul II feted Fr. Maciel in Rome and praised him for his devotion to orthodoxy.  The cleansing of this sordid mess fell to his successor, Pope Benedict XVI.

On a very different note, John Paul II was celebrated in his day for the ways in which he defined doctrine.  The post-Vatican-II Church of the 1970s, it was said, had been too experimental.  Scholars wrote about liberation theology.  Church historians examined tradition in path-breaking ways.  Priests explored a variety of ways of doing liturgy.  Yes, there were excesses. Yes, there was naiveté, enough to go around, but there was also genuine excitement and real life to the Church.

John Paul II sought to curb this enthusiasm, mistaking exuberance for heterodoxy.  He craved certainty even while despising intellectual diversity.  The Catholic Church was one and should speak with a single voice.  A generation of Catholic scholars, the best and brightest minds the Church had, were investigated and silenced by John Paul II's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  A trained theologian, he attempted to write into Catholic dogma many of his own propositions, thinking them to be universal truths.

Going forward, these efforts to create a comprehensive uniformity of doctrine may prove to be among the most unfortunate aspects of John Paul II's pontificate.  Take, for example, his theology of the body, which he developed in a series of sermons in the early 1980s and which forms the basis of the sexual teachings found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1992.

Assuming what he wished to prove, John Paul II used the creation account -- "male and female he created them" -- as justification for a sexual ethic that now urgently requires rethinking.  In the Catechism, he described same-sex attraction as "objectively disordered" (para. 2358).  Same-sex relationships, he said were incapable of "proceed[ing] from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity" and so "[u]nder no circumstances can they be approved" (para. 2357).

We know, of course, that same-sex attraction is part of the natural variability of human sexuality.  We recognize from simply observing love-in-action that genuinely self-giving, life-promoting relationships are not only possible but common among gay people.  Gay people love and live, hurt and heal in exactly the same ways as heterosexuals.

Catholic moral theology must come to understand these elementary human facts.  I am confident that it will, since the Church's teaching is always finally dependent upon a proper anthropology of the human person.Doctrine does develop.  But John Paul II's work has made that development a far more arduous task.

Beginning in the middle 1990s, John Paul enlisted as a full-fledged combatant in the culture war.  And this long twilight struggle of his papacy led to a generation of Catholics coming of age who can only conceive of the Church as the guardian of orthodoxy in a hostile world.  Their websites are prolific.  They are hasty to denounce their foes, fast to pronounce anathema, and quick to read people out of the Church.  They rush to defend the Church, but in their misguided zeal, they only weaken it.

John Paul II, in brief, inherited a Church that was intellectually supple and mentally vigorous.  It was a Church that was open to new questions and new experiences.  It understood its mission as the implementation of the Gospel in all its richness -- embracing the poor, welcoming the marginal.  John Paul bequeathed a Church that is inward-looking, defensive and brittle -- a Church that is altogether too quick to abandon whole dimensions of the Gospel message in order to wage a losing culture war.

In retrospect, had John Paul II chosen to do what his immediate successor did -- retire at an appropriate time -- he would have stepped down around 1995.  Our assessment would be different.  But we must assess his legacy in its totality.  And when we do, we realize that recovery from it will be a years-long process.

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/unsteady-halo_b_5188642.html

Civil Same-Sex Marriage: A Catholic Affirmation

That's the title of a new article by Lisa Fullam, D.V.M., Th.D., who teaches moral theology at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley.  Fullam's research interests include virtue ethics, medical and sexual ethics, the intersection of ethics and spirituality, and Ignatian spirituality.

Here's the abstract of Fullam's article:

Many Catholic contributions to the debate over civil same-sex marriage are too broad or too narrow. Too broad:  civil same-sex marriage is sometimes described as parallel to same-sex marriage in the Church.  Too narrow:  some Catholic contributions to the discussion have centered on reproductive capacity, ignoring Catholicism’s rich tradition which values marriage beyond procreation.  Here, I consider Catholic moral tradition on civil law:  civil law is approached in light of the common good, expressed in contemporary societies in terms of equal civil rights.  Second, I examine magisterial contributions to the public debate, which are framed in terms of a reading of natural law based in the Scriptural interpretation of Pope John Paul II.  Such religious arguments may serve as normative for marriage within the Church, but do not reflect Catholic norms for civil law.  Finally, I offer reasons Catholics might advocate civil same-sex marriage.

Guns, Georgia Lunacy, and Constitutional Machinations

Georgia struck a blow this week for the Second Amendment, or so it says. It passed a law permitting owners to carry guns virtually everywhere including bars, schools, churches, and I assume the finish line of any upcoming marathon. The photo op for this law included seven good ol’ boys surrounding Governor Nathan Deal with a woman (or what looked like a poster of a woman) in the background wearing a plastic smile.  

Georgia’s rendition of the Second Amendment goes well beyond that pronounced by the Supreme Court. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Court purporting to apply an interpretation of the original meaning of the Second Amendment held that the People have a right to possess handguns in the home. Some critics have suggested that if some such originalist right should exist, it should cover muskets, not handguns. Or if, the idea of the Second Amendment is that the People have a right to possess weapons that might be used by the militia, the People have a right to possess hand grenades. Justice Scalia maneuvered his way through that swamp with an unpersuasive set of unsupported assertions to the conclusion that weapons not typically possessed by law abiding citizens for lawful purposes are not protected by the Second Amendment.

Whatever the merits of these moves as part of an interpretive method that claims to be faithful to the original meaning of the Constitution, Justice Scalia, writing for the Court, then proceeded to abandon any pretense of following the meaning of the original Constitution by saying that laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in “sensitive” places like schools and government buildings were not in violation of the Second Amendment. I imagine Justice Scalia would not be keen on someone coming into a Supreme Court argument as a spectator or a litigant carrying a firearm. He might think there is good reason for weapons screening there. But he cites no evidence that restrictions on the possession of guns in sensitive places were common at the time of the adoption of the Constitution.

If adherence to the original meaning of the Constitution is the preferred meaning of the Constitution, Georgia might be right in its interpretation of the Constitution. (Under the Scalia approach, Georgia is permitted to pass the law in any event). If Georgia is right, however, it is time to say once again: “So much the worse for originalism.” Our Constitution need not require lunatic legislation. If Justice Scalia favors a manipulative and selective brand of originalism, I favor a brand of interpretation that is not tied to the customs and traditions of white, agrarian, male, eighteenth century slave holders, a brand of interpretation that forthrightly recognizes the wisdom of Justice Clark who was said, “There is no war between the Constitution and common sense.”

   

 

“Act naturally!” “Say what?”

Morning Bell at Mount Jing, Ma Xian (late 18th-early 19th) Qing dynasty

On an existential level, when we recognize the extent to which our lives are molded by social constructs, we become able to free ourselves from a type of emotional entanglement that disturbs our tranquility. The social ambitions that motivate us—money, wealth, power, privilege—lose their grip, become less influential. Other possibilities for a flourishing life may emerge, not determined by manipulative actions and its attendant desires. With the diminishing of the hold of desires and conceptual constructs, one’s mode of engagement with the world will be more accommodating, allowing events to happen without attachment to outcome. Thus the loosening of artifice goes hand in hand with the cultivation of a sort of indifference toward worldly success and failure.—Steve Coutinho, An Introduction to Daoist Philosophies (2014)

“Nothing makes it so difficult to be natural as the desire to be so.”—La Rochefoucauld

Indeed. This is an illustration of a mental and behavioral fallacy that Jon Elster, after the late psychologist Leslie Farber, termed “willing what cannot be willed,” that is, a mental state or state of affairs in the world—like spontaneity or sleep, courage or faith—that cannot be the direct product of willing but is rather a by-product or spillover (thus indirect) effect of other mental states or actions. And yet, invoking an exemplar from the Daoist tradition and after Chris Fraser,[1] I want to show how it might be possible, in some sense, to “will” such a state, in other words, how one might have a “desire” or an intentional project to “act naturally” and yet not be involved in that species of pragmatic contradiction that assures failure in the attempt to act spontaneously or naturally as described so vividly by Elster under the heading of “willing what cannot be willed.”[2] Such personal willing entails an assertive ego and anxious self-consciousness with regard to one’s immediate behavior that makes mincemeat of any attempt to “be natural” or spontaneous. 

In Daoism, we discover how it might be possible to have a desire to act naturally or engage in an “intentional project” to “be natural” (in the Daoist sense), relying here on the notion of wu-wei (lit., non-action). Livia Kohn’s entry on this concept from The Encyclopedia of Taoism provides us with a succinct formulation: “Wuwei or ‘non-action’ means to do things the natural way, by not interfering with the patterns, rhythms and structure of nature, without imposing one’s own intentions upon the world.”[3] The “natural way” is not meant here in the sense of how most of us, most of the time, “naturally” or habitually behave or are predisposed to act, but is intended in the sense that to “act naturally” in the world is to be intrinsically in harmony with or expressive of (in an immanent sense) of the Dao. Less obliquely, it is to emulate the “way of the natural world,” properly understood. Thus wu-wei is not, literally, non-action or not-doing, but refers instead to a qualitatively distinct and uncommon kind of action, what Huston Smith calls “creative quietude,” meaning one acts with a still or clear (‘unmuddied’) mind in a manner that embodies the Dao or acts in harmony with the manifestations of Dao in the world. Such action is characterized by a freedom and spontaneity (ziran) that come from a heart-mind (xin) experiencing, it seems, an ecstatic oneness or identity with “all-there-is.” It is the characteristic and conspicuous action of the sage (shengren), the behavior of the ideal ruler and is, arguably, a direct product of ascetic praxis (or ‘spiritual exercises’ in the Stoic sense) and mystical states of consciousness. In short, wu-wei is acting with a meditative heart-mind (like a polished mirror, to use a prominent metaphor) in harmony with the natural world and tian (‘heaven’) while instantiating the Dao.

Ascetic self-discipline, training in the arts (at least in the Confucian tradition), and meditative praxis are necessary yet not sufficient conditions for wu-wei. In other words, while “making every effort,” “striving,” “working hard” or even “willing” are, in one important sense, truly the antithesis of wu-wei, arduous striving, self-discipline and training the mind are no less integral to the eventual accomplishment of wu-wei. The “acting naturally” that is wu-wei, therefore, does not come naturally to us, hence we are instructed, by way of an “intentional project,” to “return to the uncarved block,” dampen the passions and still the mind, all by way of attaining a “second” nature in Joel Kupperman’s sense, as it requires forms of self-discipline and self-knowledge that are arduous, that involve ascetic or ascetic-like training of the body and the heart-mind (i.e., reason and the emotions).[4] Only then might we prove capable of acting in a timely fashion with the consummate skill, grace and spontaneity befitting alike the exigencies of daily situations and unique circumstance, and in a manner indicative of our ability to “be” one with Dao. In sum, acting naturally in the Daoist sense means cultivating what for us does not come naturally, and thus self-cultivation brings about, so to speak, a second nature, a nature in accord with the natural world, and capable of spontaneously and effortlessly realizing the Dao. The aim of meditation is to attain an “empty” or clear or polished heart-mind such that one’s ego is sublimated or absent, that one’s will is no longer purely personal but individuated through grounding in Dao, which fills the void, as it were, of the empty mind, making it possible for one to act naturally, spontaneously, effortlessly, gracefully, in harmony with the natural and heavenly worlds and (so to speak) thus with Dao itself, the ultimate, impersonal ground of (individuated) willing: “The personal does not exist for him—isn’t this how he can perfect what is most personal?” (Laozi/Daodejing: 7.3)

Art Tatum

More mundanely, we might fill out this notion of “acting naturally” as a by-product or spillover effect from an intentional project in a temporally extended sense, in which the ego and personal will is sublimated or transcended, with an illustration of what is involved in the mastering of any skill, craft, or art, be it surfing or playing the piano. A necessary condition of such mastery is clearly strenuous effort, hard work, perseverance, and so forth, all of which engage the will and ego and what we call propositional knowledge, “knowing that...” After Gilbert Ryle, such knowledge is distinguished from non-propositional knowledge or “knowing how…,” which is typically exemplified in action, in which case we at the same time demonstrate the former kind and prior possession of “knowing.” And so it could be said that the former—“knowing that”—is typically a necessary yet not sufficient condition of the latter—“knowing how”—but possession of the former is often best exemplified by the latter through our behavior, in the form of actions that are conspicuous for their demonstration of ease, of gracefulness, of spontaneity, of a kind of naturalness, and cannot be fully captured in propositional language: like the master surfer riding a wave or the improvisations of the virtuoso jazz pianist Art Tatum.[5] As Steve Coutinho explains, “It is not that we cease to plan, think, and control, or attempt to leave no footprints whatsoever. The only way we could do that would be to disentangle ourselves from the natural world altogether, and to do that we would have to cease to exist. Rather, we optimally minimize our intention to control according to artificially inculcated desires and instead seek to fulfill our wants and needs with the least interference possible. In this way, we watch how nature flourishes and find a symbiotic place in its pattern, enabling both of us to flourish to our natural potential. [….] It is not that [we] do not categorize things or conceptualize the world at all, but [our] understanding is not determined by customary systems of significance. The concepts through which deem things (wei) to be so are no longer thought of as simply what those things are (wei).”[6]

This newfound non-attachment to or freedom from our previous desires and habitual ways of carving up the world into concepts and categories that effectively predetermine our means of “seeing,” thinking, and acting, means there is no longer “only one way to understand the world,” we are able to “see things in a new way,” one in which the world no longer possesses an apparent ontological independence along the lines we previously assumed: “Phenomenologically, we have the capacity to respond to the phenomena of experience with a level of subtlety that remains indeterminate with regard to specific concepts.”[7]

Notes:

[1] Chris Fraser, “On Wu-Wei as a Unifying Metaphor,” Review of Effortless Action, by Edward Slingerland, Philosophy East & West 57.1 (2007): 97–106.

[2] See Elster’s Sour Grapes: studies in the subversion of rationality (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983): 43-66.

[3] Livia Kohn, “wuwei,” Fabrizio Pregadio, ed., The Encyclopedia of Taoism, vol. II (New York: Routledge, 2008): 1067. Notice the definition refers to not imposing one’s intentions on the world, suggesting the possibility that an “intentional project” in the extended temporal sense outlined by Fraser in his review of Slingerland (above), to wit: “If acquisition of an effortless state is understood synchronically, this is indeed paradoxical: one cannot be effortless while simultaneously exerting effort. But as long as the process of achieving the effortless state is understood diachronically, no paradox arises. We can and frequently do acquire the ability to act effortlessly, as when we master skills or regain a physical ability through rehabilitation after injury. Acquisition begins with deliberate exertion, but eventually we internalize the skill and develop the ability to act automatically and sometimes effortlessly.” And yet, a paradox perhaps remains: “On the other hand, if we take wu-wei to refer to the absence of intentional action, as I suggest, then the conceptual structure of intentionality may indeed render the directive to achieve wu-wei paradoxical, even construed diachronically. To cite just one of several potential paradoxes, on some accounts of intentionality, an agent cannot intentionally cause herself to perform actions that are wholly non-intentional, because intentions (unlike effort) remain in effect over time, even when not consciously held in mind, and their scope covers all the subsidiary actions that contribute to their fulfillment. For example, this morning I set to work on this review spontaneously, without consciously forming an intention to do so. Nevertheless, my activity was intentional, because it is part of a project I am performing intentionally. At some level of description, any voluntary movement an agent performs is intentional, merely by virtue of being an action rather than a reflex.” For our purposes, what is important is the possibility that the original intentional project is capable of becoming  “subconscious” or even “unconscious” in Elster’s sense, meaning one attains a state of “relating directly to the world without relating also to the relating,” which he proceeds to characterize as an exquisite piece of moral psychology, “an argument to the effect that the good things in life are spoiled by self-consciousness about them.” For further discussion with regard to the (mystical) state “empty consciousness” (wherein there is absence of either an external or internal object) which is nonetheless a state of awareness, please see my paper, “Daoism: a rational reconstruction of some key terms.”

[4] In his chapter on “Confucius and the Problem of Naturalness,” Kupperman distinguishes among a number of meanings of “naturalness,” and it’s only the Daoist account that interests us here: “Philosophical Daoism was not a monolithic movement, and even within a single work (e.g., the Zhuangzi) a reader can find shifting areas of emphasis. Nevertheless Daoist conceptions of naturalness do have characteristic foci. I may briefly and simply summarize these as being spontaneity in behavior, simplicity in social life, and harmony with the fundamental tendencies of the universe” [here one would need to minimally understand the dao of ‘the ten thousand things’ and tian, as well as the related roles indicated by the concepts of qi and yin/yang in the manifestations of Dao].  Daoist naturalness certainly is not [as with Confucius and in the salons of the Republic of Letters in the French Enlightenment] naturalness within ‘the restraints of decorum,’ which the Daoists considered ridiculous and artificial. The naturalness of the Daoists also did not involve giving general vent to feelings [as in ‘anything goes’ or ‘let it all hang out’]. The Daoists were not wild men: indeed, they believed that certain common feelings such as anxiety should be as much as possible eliminated rather than expressed.” See: Joel J. Kupperman, Learning from Asian Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1999): 26-35 and 79-94.

[5] See the post (and comment thread), “showing versus telling in language” by Mark Lance at the New APPS blog.

[6] Steve Coutinho, An Introduction to Daoist Philosophies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014): 74.

[7] Ibid., 100-101.

References & Further Reading:

• Ames, Roger T., ed. Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998.
• Ames, Roger T. and David L. Hall. Dao De Jing, “Making This Life Significant”: A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine Books, 2003.
• Cook, Scott, ed. Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourse on the Zhuangzi. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003.
• Coutinho, Steve. An Introduction to Daoist Philosophies. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.
• Csikszentmihalyi, Mark and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds. Religious and Philosophical Aspects of the Laozi. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999.
• Elster, Jon. Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
  
• Forman, Robert K.C. The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
• Fraser, Chris. “On Wu-wei as a Unifying Metaphor,” Philosophy East and West, Vol. 57, No. 1 (January 2007): 97-106.
• Gellman, Jerome. “Mysticism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2005 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2005/entries/mysticism/
• Hansen, Chad, “Daoism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/daoism/
• Ivanhoe, Philip J., trans. (with commentary). The Daodejing of Laozi. New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2002.
• Kirkland, Russell. Taoism: The Enduring Tradition. New York: Routledge, 2004.
• Kjellberg, Paul, and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds. Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996.
• Kohn, Livia. Early Chinese Mysticism: Philosophy and Soteriology in the Taoist Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.
• Kohn, Livia. Monastic Life in Medieval Taoism: A Cross-Cultural Perspective.Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003.
• Kohn, Livia. Cosmos and Community: The Ethical Dimension of Daoism. Cambridge, MA: Three Pines Press, 2004.
• Kohn, Livia, ed. The Taoist Experience: An Anthology. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993.
• Kohn, Livia, ed. Daoism Handbook. Leiden: Brill, 2000.
• Kupperman, Joel J. Learning from Asian Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 
• LaFargue, Michael. The Tao of the Tao Te Ching: A Translation and Commentary. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992.
• Little, Stephen (with Shawn Eichman). Taoism and the Arts of China. Chicago, IL and Berkeley, CA: The Art Institute of Chicago with the University of California Press, 2000.
• Moeller, Hans-Georg. The Philosophy of the Daodejing. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
• Mou, Bo, ed. Two Roads to Wisdom? Chinese and Analytic Philosophical Traditions. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2001.
• Mou, Bo, ed. Comparative Approaches to Chinese Philosophy. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003.
• Pregadio, Fabrizio, ed. The Encyclopedia of Taoism, 2 Vols. New York: Routledge, 2008.
• Rosemont, Henry, Jr. Rationality and Religious Experience: The Continuing Relevance of the World’s Spiritual Traditions. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2001.
• Roth, Harold D. Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
• Shankman, Steven and Stephen W. Durant, eds. Early China/Ancient Greece: Thinking Through Comparison. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002.
• Slingerland, Edward. Effortless Action: Wu-Wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Stanley, Jason and Timothy Williamson. “Knowing How,” Journal of Philosophy, 98.8 (2001): 1-40.
• Wagner, Rudolf G. A Chinese Reading of the Daodejing: Wang Bi’s Commentary on the Laozi with Critical Text and Translation. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003b.
• Waley, Arthur, tr. The Way and Its Power: A Study of the Tao Tê Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1934.
• Watson, Burton, tr. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968.
• Wong, David. “Comparative Philosophy: Chinese and Western,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2005 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2005/entries/comparphil-chiwes/
• Ziporyn, Brook, tr. Zhuangzi: The Essential Texts. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2008.

Conscience & Conviction

The Jury, a Norman Rockwell painting, appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post published February 14, 1959.

This is one of several Rockwell paintings that can serve more or less as a civics lesson (cf. the 1964 painting, The Problem We All Live With; from 1965, Southern Justice; and New Kids in the Neighborhood from 1967). I was thinking about it again because it’s the cover jacket art for Kimberley Brownlee’s important new book, Conscience and Conviction: The Case for Civil Disobedience (Oxford University Press, 2012). Brownlee wrote the entry on “civil disobedience” for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP). In the Introduction, she explains why she chose this painting for the cover of her book:

“It captures a charged scene of a jury of 11 men and one woman who are long into their deliberations. We do not know the facts of the case or what verdict they are debating. All we know is that the woman sits in a rickety chair with her back straight and her arms folded while 10 of the men stand or sit around her, leaning over her in united opposition. One man dozes to the side. In this smoke-filled, wood-paneled room echoing of a men’s club where jackets have been shed and tempers are running high, she is entirely alone. She is exposed. And, she might be wrong about what she thinks of the case. She seems to be aware of this since she is listening intently to the men around her. But, she is also unflinching. In her folded arms, straight back, and attentive expression lie the kernels of the conception of conscientious conviction that I defend in these pages.”

The following (sans notes) is from a “teacher’s guide” “developed to accompany the exhibition Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., from July 2, 2010 through January 2, 2011. The show explores the connections between Norman Rockwell’s iconic images of American life and the movies.”

“At the time Rockwell painted The Jury, eighteen states still imposed restrictions on women’s jury service. Jury trials, individual holdouts, and women’s roles were highlighted in television and film in the late 1950s. Greer Garson starred in an episode of the popular series Telephone Time that aired in September 1957, in which Garson’s character campaigns for women to be selected as jurors in a murder trial. Without women, the killer would go free because all available male jurors were either his friends or too fearful to vote for conviction. The most revealing connection between Rockwell’s painting and contemporary popular culture lies in the parallels it shares with the movie 12 Angry Men (1957). In the film, Henry Fonda stars as the holdout on a jury that, except for his dissenting vote, will impose the death sentence on a young Hispanic man charged with killing his father. Each of the other jurors votes to convict—some for personal reasons, some out of prejudice against nonwhite Americans, some because they simply wanted to escape the heat of the jury room and go to a baseball game. One by one, as the Fonda character poses reasonable questions about the value of the evidence presented, the other jurors acquiesce to his arguments. The final ballot results in a unanimous verdict of not guilty. As in 12 Angry Men, the jury deliberation portrayed on Rockwell’s canvas has been lengthy. Cigarette butts and crumpled ballots litter the floor of the smoke-filled room, but the holdout remains unswayed, despite the psychological pressure imposed by her fellow jurors.”

Women being arrested during the Defiance Campaign of 1952 in South Africa.

Additional reading recommendation: A nice complement to Brownlee’s book, owing to its historical focus, is Lewis Perry’s Civil Disobedience: An American Tradition (Yale University Press, 2013).

Group Libel and the Crime of Poverty

In reviewing The Divided by Matt Taibbi in the Sunday New York Times Book Review, Timothy Noah makes the remark that poverty is being criminalized in the United States. He refers to the way that poor people are being treated on the streets, and he observes that while violent crimes have dropped by 44% over the past two decades, the prison population has more than doubled, skewing black and poor.

The remark causes me to reflect on the unity of conservative thought. Their effective opposition to a government safety net for food, clothing, housing, medical care, and jobs guarantees a desperate population that will commit crimes to sustain themselves and their families when necessary. The conservative reaction to this is to cast blinders on the root causes, to throw the rascals in jail, and to throw away the keys, if possible.

Those who are poor are poor because they deserve to be poor think the conservatives. They don’t work hard enough; they are irresponsible. Law violations prove that the perpetrators are morally defective. In addition, to being lazy and irresponsible, they do not respect authority. Their existence requires the softening of constitutional requirements except for the Second Amendment. The existence of a poor population requires an armed population to protect themselves. Never mind that the guns held in households for protection are a leading cause of inter-spousal killings.

The child development and social supports that lead conservatives to be so hard-hearted, angry, and frightened cannot be easily turned around. They are unlikely to be persuaded by facts that are contrary to this social picture. And demonstrations against their views are likely to make them angrier and more frightened. One of the factors fueling their anger and fear is the recognition that they are losing the White Male Christian (read right wing Christian) country they once took for granted. They still have significant power. But their days are numbered.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are slowing progress. They remain reluctant to make poverty an issue though (thanks to the Occupy Movement), they are willing to raise the issue of income inequality. Fortunately, the Pope has made the issue more difficult to ignore. But Democrats can do far more to combat the group libel of poor people, a group libel so often associated with racism. May they muster the political courage to do so.

 

A Joyous Welcome: The Baptism of Umma Azul

Welcoming -- the sacrament of Baptism in the Catholic Church is the sacrament of welcoming. The child is presented to the Church, the community of believers, usually by the parents. The priest calls upon the parents, the godparents, and the entire congregation, to assume the solemn obligation of raising the child in the faith. And then the child is baptized, water poured over her head, as the priest pronounces the time-honored formula -- "in the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

Baptism can be performed privately, of course, especially in danger of death. But it makes most sense when it is done as part of a community celebration. Everyone shares in the delight and the warmth.

On April 5, there took place in Cordoba, Argentina, a baptism that augurs coming change in the Catholic Church. A little baby, two-month old Umma Azul, was baptized into the Catholic faith. That may seem unremarkable until one realizes that the parents were a recently married lesbian couple.

The baptism is in keeping with the spirit of inclusiveness set by Pope Francis. In January, 2014, the Advocate, America's leading gay newspaper, asked the question: "Is Pope Francis Reaching Out to Gay Parents?"

The Advocate left little doubt that he was. The article quoted a speech he delivered before a gathering of religious orders: "Gay unions raise challenges for us today which for us are sometimes difficult to understand." He went on: "I remember a case in which a sad little girl confessed to her teacher: 'My mother's girlfriend doesn't love me.'"

The Italian text of the Pope's speech used the feminine "fiancee," indicating that the Pope was specifically talking about a gay, engaged couple. He advised his listeners to reach out to couples like these, always bearing in mind the children: "We must be careful not to administer a vaccine against the faith to them." These may look like small steps, but in a Church whose leadership just two or three years ago would have struck a much harsher note, this is progress.

And this brings us to Umma Azul. Two young women approached Archbishop Carlos Nanez of Cordoba, Argentina, requesting baptism for their daughter. They were directed to a parish priest who assisted them in preparing for baptism. Archbishop Nanez also made sure to contact the Holy See. While the Holy See did not publicly authorize the baptism, it clearly must have sent a clear "go-ahead" signal.

The Archbishop defended the decision to perform the baptism by referring to the rights of the infant involved: "The Church... demonstrates that she is a merciful and wide-reaching mother, in order to open the doors of salvation." "Baptism is the right of every human person." The Pope, the Archbishop reminded his listeners, believed this himself.

The right wing, it goes without saying, has been in an uproar over this action. Rorate Caeli, the traditionalist website, is probably as good a thermometer as there is for taking the measure of the right wing's fever pitch. Rorate reminded its readers that this baptism seemed to violate canon law: "There must be a founded hope that the infant will be brought up in the Catholic religion," reads canon 868 sec. 1. Rorate harrumphed that this was impossible in little Umma's case.

Clearly, Pope Francis and Archbishop Nanez disagree. They certainly know the canon law and they must believe that, in fact, there is a "founded hope" the child will be raised Catholic.

So what does this mean? On the purely personal level, it means a baby has been brought into the Church. Two young women who, judging by the photographs of the event, must love each other and their child very dearly, have been brought closer to the faith. The community of believers in Cordoba has been enriched by this experience.

On a larger level, it means that the Catholic Church has taken a small (dare I say "baby?") step toward becoming more inclusive. As I have written before, our scientific knowledge of human sexuality has evolved substantially in just the last three or four decades. We recognize now, what we did not fully appreciate in the 1970's -- that being gay is part of the natural range of human sexuality. And civilly, legally, we have come to give effect to this understanding by expanding our institutional structures -- marriage, the family -- to accommodate gay people.

Pope Francis is cautiously moving the Church in the direction of greater accommodation. He does not wish to split the Church. A glance at the right-wing blogs indicates real anger at even these limited steps. So we should not expect abrupt, revolutionary action from Pope Francis.

Still, those are worries for another day. Right now, I just want to say to Umma and her parents -- Welcome to the Catholic Church. I am delighted to be in community with you. And have a wonderful, blessed Easter!

Cross-posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-j-reid-jr/a-joyous-welcome-the-bapt_b_5120120.html

Prosoche in the Daily Life of a Salonnière in the French Enlightenment

(J. H. Lips, Suzanne Necker, ca. 1775–1800, National Portrait Gallery, London)

With the Enlightenment, the very way conversation was thought about changed; it no longer dealt only with the aesthetic preoccupations of a privileged elite but now addressed the basic problems of the new culture. The spoken word had to serve truth rather than merely provide entertainment. In eighteenth-century debate, writes Jean-Paul Sermain, ‘conversation was conceived as a group activity to further the advance of reason by offering an open and attentive method of inquiry into the best subjects and as solid reassurance of social cohesion, so as to strengthen concern for the public good.’ The great intellectual salons of the era—from the Marquise de Lambert’s to Mme Necker’s, by way of those of Mme de Tencin, Helvétius, the Baron d’Holbach, and Julie de Lespinasse—can be seen as so many possible variations of this unique, ambitious project.

The new responsibilities invested in conversation went hand in hand with the evolution of the idea of politesse, which alone made it possible for the esprit de société to be fully realized. Whether it was false or sincere, generous or egotistical, politesse had, at least in principle, introduced into a society founded on ‘rank’ a criterion of distinction and an assessment of merit that were independent of the established hierarchy. People could thus take part in worldly exchange on an equal footing, and as long as the discourse was regulated and solidarity was guaranteed, no other authority was required. When at the dawn of the eighteenth century politesse became the hallmark of the nation and was no longer the distinguishing mark of a gentleman, its pedagogic and moral aims became an integral part of civilization and progress. [....]

Having started life as an idealistic challenge, conversation had gradually developed a system of communication that, by entrusting itself exclusively to the respect for manners, made it possible for society to provide itself with its own forum, what David Gordon calls a ‘free audience “behind closed doors,”’ where it could express its own opinions. So private conversation made up for the lack of representative conversation, opening itself out to egalitarian dialogue and the confrontation of ideas. [....] For the philosophes who assimilated its code of behavior and subscribed to it fully, the art of conversation aimed not merely at promoting the Enlightenment and its popularity, but constituted the very dynamics of intellectual thought.”— Benedetta Craveri (trans. Teresa Waugh), The Age of Conversation (The New York Review of Books, 2005): 357-358

A contemporary philosopher who has endeavored to accord religious praxis far more attention than it has received in philosophical and other circles is John Cottingham. The first chapter of his book, The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Value (Cambridge University Press, 2005), is appropriately titled, “Religion and spirituality: from praxis to belief.” As he states in the Preface,

“There is, to be sure, a cognitive core to religious belief, a central set of truth-claims to which the religious adherent is committed; but it can be extremely unproductive to try to evaluate these in isolation. There are rich and complex connections that link religious belief with ethical commitment and individual self-awareness, with the attempt to understand the cosmos and the struggle to find meaning in our lives; and only when these connections are revealed, only when we come to have a broader sense of the ‘spiritual dimension’ within which religion lives and moves, can we begin to see fully what is involved in accepting or rejecting a religious view of reality.”[1]

Perhaps the most compelling reason to address the praxis dimension of spirituality comes from the fact, according to Cottingham, “that it is in the very nature of religious understanding that it characteristically stems from practical involvement rather than from intellectual analysis” (a fact reinforced by—in the standard case—early socialization into a religious community). Cottingham’s argument for granting primacy or priority to religious “praxis” begins with a brief discussion of Pierre Hadot’s work on the role of spiritual exercises in the ancient Greek world (discussed of course by Nussbaum as well in her volume on Hellenistic ethics) and thus the “practical dimension of the spiritual” in the sense later found in St. Ignatius Loyola’s sixteenth-century Ejercicios espirituales (Cottingham outlines the relation of ‘spirituality’ to religion in a way that warrants the wider application of the former to encompass such Stoic ‘exercises.’). As Cottingham says, with Ignatius, “we are dealing with a practical manual—a training manual—and the structured timings, the organized programme of readings, contemplation, meditation, prayer, and reflection, interspersed with the daily rhythms of eating and sleeping, are absolutely central, indeed they are the essence of the thing.” As Hadot and Nussbaum would remind us, more than a few Stoic treatises were titled “On Exercises,”

“and the central notion of askesis found for example in Epictetus, implied not so much ‘asceticism’ in the modern [or pejorative] sense as a practical programme of training, concerned with the ‘art of living’ [hence the revealing subtitle of John M. Cooper’s recent book, Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus]. Fundamental to such programmes was learning the technique of prosoche—attention, a continuous vigilance and presence of the mind (a notion, incidentally, that calls to mind certain Buddhist spiritual techniques) [in Buddhism, attentiveness is one facet of the meditative practice of ‘mindfulness’].[2] Crucial also was the mastery of methods for the ordering of the passions—what has been called the therapy of desire.”[3]

Among other things, Cottingham has a wonderful discussion of Pascal in this regard as well, allowing us to place the latter’s famous “wager argument” in proper perspective:

“In the first place, though his wager discussion is often called the ‘pragmatic argument,’ he is emphatically not offering an argument for the existence of God (…he regards the question of divine existence as outside the realm of rationally accessible knowledge). In the second place, and very importantly, he is not offering an argument designed to produce immediate assent or faith in the claims of religion; in this sense, the image of placing a bet, an instantaneous act of putting down the chips, is misleading. Rather, he envisages faith as the destination—one to be reached by means of a long road of religious praxis; considerations about happiness are simply introduced as a motive for embarking on that journey.”[4]

I hope this suffices to entice the reader to consider Cottingham’s brief on behalf of the primary importance of spiritual praxis, one that does not, as with fideism, ignore, downplay, or even wholly displace the cognitive dimension of religion, but attempts rather to simply remove it from its pride of place in the philosophical study of religion. Perhaps ironically, while Cottingham’s analysis takes place largely within the context of Christian traditions in which “believers” have accorded creedal beliefs a comparatively strong historical role (e.g., the Nicene Creed, atonement doctrines, etc.), his argument is even more pertinent to an examination of “spiritual” traditions from “the East:” Daoism, Confucianism, Hinduism and Buddhism, for example.

The spiritual significance of prosoche (attention) is likewise seen in the work of the philosopher and writer Iris Murdoch, who is thought to have borrowed it from Simone Weil, although Murdoch was more Platonist than Christian. Murdoch believed that all of our states of consciousness and action presuppose cognitive and affective discrimination and that any such discrimination is subject to moral appraisal, as evidenced here in a passage from her book, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992):

“The moral life is not intermittent or specialised, it is not a peculiar separate area of our existence. [….] Life is made up of details. We compartmentalise it for reasons of convenience, dividing the aesthetic from the moral, the public from the private, work from pleasure. [….] Yet we are all always deploying and directing  our energy, refining or  blunting it, purifying or corrupting it, and it is always easier to do a thing a second time. ‘Sensibility’ is a word which may be in place here. [….] Happenings in the consciousness so vague as to be almost non-existent can have moral ‘colour.’ All sorts of momentary sensibilities to other people, too shadowy to come under the heading of manners of communication, are still parts of moral activity. [….] [M]uch of our self-awareness is other-awareness, and in this area we exercise ourselves as moral beings in our use of many various skills as we direct our modes of attention.”[5]

I came across the subject of “attention” once again in this moral-psychological and spiritual sense in a surprising context: when reading afresh about the Republic of Letters and its salons during the (French) Enlightenment. Suzanne Necker (Suzanne Curchod, b. 1737 – 6 May 1794) was one of the remarkable salonnières of the Enlightenment’s Republic of Letters. Dena Goodman writes that Madame Necker’s

“seriousness, and that of the salon whose discourse she shaped is revealed most clearly in the concern she displayed in all things for paying attention. The word attention dominates the five-volumes of her journals published after her death by her husband. One must pay attention, she reminded herself repeatedly, not get distracted. Her purpose in life was not to distract men from their serious business but rather to discipline herself and her guests so that that business might be carried out. Her concern was to concentrate her own attention and to focus that of the philosophes (her guests); her intent was to be a serious contributor to the social and intellectual project of Enlightenment through the shaping of its discourse in her salon.”[6]

Goodman selects a handful of examples “drawn from the many instances in which attention occurs in Necker’s journals: 1) Attention allows one to find new ideas in the most common things: one cannot read aloud well without fixing one’s attention; in a word, distraction kills, negates all the intellectual faculties. 2) One gets used to inattention in letting one’s mind wander when one is alone. 3) As soon as the attention of men gathered together is distracted for a single moment, one cannot fix it again. 4) The great secret of conversation is continual attention. 5) Virtue, health, talent, happiness, are the fruits of patience and attention.”[7]

As Goodman points out, the notion of “attention” was not foreign to Enlightenment thought, being central to Condillac’s epistemology, serving as well as an epistemic virtue for Diderot. The economist and philosophe, André Morellet,  “identified attention as the first principle of conversation.” For Necker, “attention” was the centerpiece of what we might christen a secular spiritual praxis or askesis that decisively shaped her “art of living” in general and her governance of the salon in particular. Nonetheless, this secular spiritual praxis should be viewed in the light of an upbringing by a father who was a Calvinist minister, as well as her faith in and commitment to both Catholic France and Enlightenment Paris.

According to Goodman, the “ideal woman” of this time and place “was characterized by a lack of ego which enabled her to direct her attention to coordinating the egos of the men around her.” Perhaps needless to say, the fact that these men required this sort of vigorous group coordination and conversational governance, in other words, enforcement of the rules of polite conversation, speaks volumes about their egos and a corresponding lack of the requisite self-discipline needed to properly engage in the type of sophisticated intellectual conversation that salons brought to prominence in the Republic of Letters during the French Enlightenment. It also speaks, at least indirectly, to the “agonistic” character of French pedagogical theory and practice. In the words of Goodman (drawing on the work of Walter Ong): “Since the days of Peter Abelard in the twelfth century, French schools had been steeped in the language of battle.” And this was not peculiar to France: “The primary form the agon took in education of boys and young men from the Middle Ages on was disputation, a form of ceremonial combat.”[8] The salons, in effect, and under the gentle yet firm guidance of Necker and other salonnières, had to counter the deleterious effects of French education on male elites with their steadfast yet subtle enforcement of the informal social norms of polite conversation.

One of the reasons why so few people are to be found who seem sensible and pleasant in conversation is that almost everybody is thinking about what he wants to say himself rather than answering clearly what is being said to him. The more clever and polite think it enough simply to put on an attentive expression, while all the time you can see in their eyes and train of thought that they are far removed from what you are saying and anxious to get back to what they want to say. They ought, on the contrary, to reflect  that such keenness to please oneself is a bad way of pleasing or persuading others, and that to listen well and answer to the point is one of the most perfect qualities one can have in conversation.—La Rochefoucauld, Maximes (1665)

Notes:

[1] John Cottingham, The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Value (Cambridge University Press, 2005): x. For a similar conception of this notion of “spirituality,” see John Haldane’s article, “On the very idea of spiritual values,” in Anthony O’Hear, ed., Philosophy, the Good, the True and the Beautiful (Cambridge University Press, 2000): 53-71.

[2] In Buddhism, there are meditation practices (spiritual exercises) for the cultivation of mindfulness (P. sati; S. smṛti), and thus attentiveness, systematically directed both inward (on one’s own body, mental objects and states) and outward (on objects or phenonomena anlaytically distinct from oneself). As a polysemous term, its fundamental meaning could be described as the ability to focus or concentrate on a chosen object (mental or physical) without forgetfulness or distraction. As Michael Carrithers explains, “such mindfulness” (and ‘self-possession’) requires “the ability to witness here and now with full lucidity the inner and outer states of oneself (and, by extension, the analoguous experience of others),” the “foundations” of such mindfulness being “dispassionate, immediate and clear perceptions of the meditator’s own body, feelings, states of mind, and mental contents.” Such scholars of early Buddhist texts as K.N. Jayatilleke and his student, David J. Kalupahana, would probably find much in Condillac’s radical empiricism reminiscent of and congenial to their interpretation of early Buddhist epistemology (excluding the six types of ‘higher knowledges’ or supranormal powers: chalabhiññā). 

[3] Ibid., 4-5.

[4] Ibid., 7.

[5] Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (London: Chatto and Windus, 1992): 495.

[6] Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994): 79-80. See too Goodman’s essay, “Necker’s Mélanges: Gender, Writing, and Publicity,” in Elizabeth C. Goldsmith and Dena Goodman, eds., Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early Modern France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995): 210-223.

[7] Ibid., 80.

[8] Ibid., 92. A training that was anything but conducive to what is rightly termed intellectual humility (an elusive epistemic virtue regardless). Please see the discussion of this epistemic virtue in Robert C. Roberts and W. Jay Wood, Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology (Oxford University Press, 2007): 236-256. In addition to the effects of the “militancy of learning” or the centrality of agonia in education that affected this male ego, we should not forget, with Goodman, the general (and related) personal and social anxiety or insecurity over rank, privilege, honor, and reputation that likewise infected personal relations with tension, aggression or violence (e.g., the duel), especially in those situations where interpersonal encounters involving individuals of different status, rank or class were not formalized or highly scripted in a manner internalized by the respective parties (increasing the possibility of misunderstanding and thus the risk of insult, which need not have been intentional).

References & Further Reading:

• Blum, Carol. Diderot: The Virtue of a Philosopher. New York: Viking Press, 1974.
• Carrithers, Michael. Buddha: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
• Cooper, John M. Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012.
• Cottingham, John. The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Value. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Craveri, Benedetta (trans. Teresa Waugh). The Age of Conversation. New York: The New York Review of Books, 2005.
• Goldgar, Anne. Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters, 1680-1750. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.
• Goodman, Dena. The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994.
• Gordon, Daniel. Citizens Without Sovereignty: Equality and Sociality in French Thought, 1670-1789. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.
• Grice, Paul. Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. 
• Habermas, Jürgen (trans. Thomas Berger with Frederick Lawrence). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989 (in German, 1962).
• Hadot, Pierre (ed., Arnold I. Davidson). Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1995.
• Harvey, Peter. An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
• Im Hof, Ulrich (trans. William E. Yuill). The Enlightenment. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1994.
• Kale, Steven. French Salons: High Society and Political Sociability from the Old Regime to the Revolution of 1848. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
• Murdoch, Iris. Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. London: Chatto and Windus, 1992.
• Nussbaum, Martha. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.
• Ong, Walter. Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981.
• Outram, Dorinda. The Enlightenment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
• Rinbochay, Lati and Denma Lochö Rinbochay (trans. Leah Zahler and Jeffrey Hopkins). Meditative States in Tibetan Buddhism. Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications, revised ed., 1997.
• Roberts, Robert C. and W. Jay Wood. Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Roche, Daniel (trans. Arthur Goldhammer). France in the Enlightenment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
• Snyder, Stephen and Tina Rasmussen. Practicing the Jhānas: Traditional Concentration Meditation as Presented by the Venerable Pa Auk Sayadaw. Boston, MA: Shambhala, 2009.
• Thera, Nyanaponika. The Heart of Buddhist Meditation. New York: Samuel Weiser, 1965 (Rider & Co., 1962).
• Yolton, John W., et al., eds. The Blackwell Companion to the Enlightenment. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992.

Should We Legalize Political Bribery?

In fact, the Supreme Court in Citizens United and McCutcheon maintains that protection for some forms of political bribery is constitutionally required. The Court in Citizens United said that “The fact that speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that these officials are corrupt: ‘Favoritism and influence are not ... avoidable in representative politics. It is in the nature of an elected representative to favor certain policies, and, by necessary corollary, to favor the voters and contributors who support those policies.’” Get it? Buying influence and access is part of our democracy. The Court calls it democracy. I call it bribery.

Then in a sentence that will serve as a poster child for the extent to which the Court is out of touch, it assured us all that, “The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.” Really?  How does that prediction look now?

Anyone who read Citizens United cannot be surprised by McCutcheon. McCutcheon complained that the law would not allow him to contribute more than $123,200 to candidate and non-candidate committees over a two year election cycle.  I find it hard to feel sorry for McCutcheon’s plight. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of Americans would regard the permitted amount as already excessive and threatening to the democratic process. Not so with the Court. The Court concluded that these limits seriously restrict participation in the democratic process. I wonder if the Court really believes that the electorate has faith in a democracy structured for the wealthiest of the wealthy to spend in ways that increase their already obscene influence and access.

Only the most sunny souls will cling to the view that our political system is legitimate.

 

A Radical, Romantic Conservative: Explaining Vladimir Putin

Sergei Illiaronov informed the press a few days ago that President Vladimir Putin of Russia has an insatiable appetite. He intends to return to Russia's control all of the territory once held by Czar Nicholas II (reigned 1896-1918), including the independent Baltic states, Belarus, and even Finland.

Illiaronov knows Putin well. He served as Putin's chief economic advisor during his first years as President (2000-2005). We should take statements like this seriously, and we should ask what is it that motivates Putin to contemplate a return to czarist conquests.

I submit that what is driving Putin is a radical, romantic conservatism. When Americans think of conservatism, they tend to think of unfettered free markets, expanding opportunities for capital, and free trade. There is a militarist dimension to American conservatism, but it seems increasingly to be a vestigial carry-over from the Cold War. Had September 11 not happened, American conservative foreign policy would most likely resemble the Rand-and-Ron-Paul agenda much more than it already does. At its best, American conservatism takes as its calling card the principles of ordered, virtuous freedom.

Putin's conservatism is not like this. It strongly resembles nineteenth and early twentieth century conservatism. It is much more European than its American counterpart. Putin's worldview is indebted, directly or derivatively, not to Friedrich von Hayek or Milton Friedman, but to thinkers like the Frenchman Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) or the Germans Friedrich von Meinecke (1862-1954) and Carl Schmitt (1888-1985).

There are four elements to this brand of conservatism that appear to have particular appeal to Putin:

1. It is nostalgic, looking backward to past triumphs as a way to repudiate and to remedy the present broken state of affairs. As such, it seeks the restoration or at least the reenactment of a lost and cherished golden age.

2. It celebrates the nation as an ethnic, linguistic, and cultural ideal. National boundaries that do not respect this vision of the nation are seen as arbitrary and in need of tearing down.

3. It strives for a close alliance between church and state, seeking legitimacy in God's favor.  The nation, after all, has a special providential character and is predicated upon old-fashioned morality. 

4. Finally, it relies upon a strong sovereign power that aims at decisive corrective action.

Putin's words and deeds correspond neatly to each of these categories. Putin has made it plain many times that he looks fondly upon a lost golden era, famously saying, nearly a decade ago, that he considers the dissolution of the Soviet Empire to be "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [twentieth] century." And he has made an effort to stir Soviet-era nostalgia, reviving old medals and awards, presiding over war memorials, and minimizing Stalin's atrocities, even while eulogizing his accomplishments. He's even sought to commemorate Leonid Brezhnev's rule.

But it is not nostalgia for the Soviet Union that energizes Putin so much as it is wistful fondness for the grandeur of the czars. His most recent presidential inauguration occurred in the old czarist throne room. He has opened museums to pay homage to the memory of the Romanov dynasty. His yearning for Finland is of a piece with this. The Romanovs, after all, built their dynasty upon steady geographic expansion, from Poland and Scandinavia in the West, to the Bering Sea in the East, even claiming Alaska and colonizing parts of coastal North America. In his reminiscences, Putin is conjuring up some powerful ghosts.

Putin's commitment to the Russian nation as cultural and linguistic ideal is also evident, especially as he ratcheted up pressure on Ukraine. He acted in Crimea, he said, to protect the Russian population there. He has shown similar solicitude for Russian speakers in other parts of Ukraine and in other regions of the old Soviet Union, such as Georgia and Moldova.

Nationhood for Putin is not a diverse, inclusive liberal democracy dependent upon the tidy observance of procedural norms for its strength. No. For Putin, it is the atavistic call of blood and soil, language and tradition. While one must be cautious in drawing parallels with the rise of Hitler, it is not out of place to note that this is the same battle cry that was led to so much grief and suffering in the middle twentieth century.

Perhaps most surprising, given Putin's background as a committed Communist KGB officer, is his new alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church.  Of course, Russian czars always enjoyed a close relationship with the Church and thus it was only natural that Putin should slide into a similar role.  When Putin took the oath of office for the third time in May, 2012, the swearing in was accompanied by prayers by Russian Patriarch Kirill.

This was, however, not some pro forma prayer service that one might encounter in the West.  Putin has expended large amounts of political capital in reconstructing the Russian Church into a semblance of its former glory.  He has rebuilt old church buildings and commissioned new ones.  When the punk rock group Pussy Riot staged a bit of performance theater in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in February, 2012, Putin took a hand's off attitude as the Church sought -- and obtained -- harsh, two-year-long jail terms against the women involved.  Not surprisingly, Patriarch Kirill gushed his enthusiasm over Putin, calling him a "miracle of God."

Recently, as the Pussy Riot verdicts indicate, the Church has been moving in the direction of a militant social conservatism.  Patriarch Kirill has denounced liberalism and feminism as grave threats to the political and moral order.  But he has reserved most of his harshness for gays.  In this, he has enjoyed the full cooperation of Vladimir Putin and the State Duma, which has enacted anti-gay legislation. Indeed, the word "gay" has now become a common slur in Russia, used as shorthand to denounce all sorts of perceived Western "corruption."

Putin has even acted to build alliances with social conservatives in other nations, including the United States.  Personally, I see this attempt at bridge-building as driven by the genetically-encoded instincts of Putin's upbringing.  Always look for a sympathetic following in the West, leftists in the Cold-War days, right-wingers today.

Finally, there is Putin the sovereign leader.  He is notorious in the West for his many athletic stunts -- riding horses, hunting, fishing, hang-gliding, posing bare-chested, equal parts bravado and testosterone.  But there is a method to his seeming madness.  And that is the desire to present himself as the strongman so many Russians crave.  More substantively, Putin's agenda aims to deliver on that expectation, most spectacularly, of course, in the wars he has helped to launch, first against Georgia and now against Ukraine.  He truly aims to be the "Twenty-First Century Czar."

Does Putin really believe in a radical, romantic conservative agenda?  Or is he still the clever KGB operative, manipulating symbols near and dear to the Russian soul so as to consolidate power?  Or is he acting from desperation, fearful that if he does not arouse the passions of nationalism, the Russian people, already in steep demographic decline, will sink into the mire of apathy and ennui?  My own guess is that he is moved by some admixture of each of these elements.  Putin may not even be sure himself where the pose ends and his true political commitments begin.  Still, whether he is posturing or acting from deep, sincerely-held belief, he is playing with fire.

What is the West to do?  Clearly, it was appropriate to suspend Russia from membership in the G-8.  The G-8 is more than a trading bloc, it is a group of nations united by a shared belief in liberal, democratic ideals.  Russia has always been an uneasy fit, its membership reflective more of aspiration than reality.  But continued membership now, in light of Russian conduct in Ukraine, is simply indecent.    More broadly, the West must stand up for liberal values.  We must defend human rights and the equality of all persons.  We should reach out to western sympathizers within Russia, and there are many, in order to build common ground with those who share our values and reject the seductive, self-destructive siren song of Putinism.

 

Cross-posted at: http://www.factsandarts.com/essays/a-radical-romantic-conservative-explaining-vladimir-putin/