Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012), Phillis Wheatley, 1973, bronze and wood
“… [O]ur autonomy, our rationality, inescapably require us to do something more with our lives, to grow, to learn, not just physically but intellectually and aesthetically and morally, to orient ourselves progressively and ever more closely towards the true, the beautiful, and the good. None of this is to sacrifice our autonomy properly understood: rather it is its culmination.
The suggestion that the religious ideal of submission to God’s will is compatible with the ideal of autonomy [notice that this is not how this issue would be formulated in non-theistic religious worldviews] is obviously a controversial one. The term ‘autonomy’ has a long and complex history which there is no space to explore here, other than to draw attention to one particular ambiguity in use of the term: the autonomous person may be construed as either (a) the entirely ‘self-legislating’ being [the paradigmatic model that begins with Libertarian philosophy], who makes up his own rules by a completely independent act of will, subject to no constraints whatsoever—this may be thought of as the extreme existentialist interpretation; or (b) the being who makes decisions independently of the arbitrary will of another, acting in the light of full reason, free from internal or external interference with her rational processes. [….] On this account, to act autonomously is to act rationally and freely; and this seems quite compatible with the religious thought that in making my decisions I have to acknowledge that I live in a world I did not create, which contains other free and rational creatures who are entitled to equal respect with me, and that, whether I like it or not, these facts impose constraints on how I may or may not properly exercise my choice.
Iris Murdoch writes: ‘How recognizable, how familiar to us, is the man so beautifully portrayed in the Grundlegung [i.e., Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten)] who, confronted even with Christ, turns away to consider the judgment of his own conscience and to hear the voice of his own reason … this man is with us still, free, independent, lonely, powerful, rational, responsible, brave, the hero of so many novels and books of moral philosophy’ [from Murdoch’s classic, The Sovereignty of the Good (Routledge, 1991 (1970)]. But this noble Kantian vision, properly understood, is not in conflict with the religious vision of our human destiny, but rather is integral to it. The whole history of humankind’s religious journey is not, as some critics of theism like to portray it, one of submissive deference to alien authority; rather it is the story of progressive moral growth. The ancient story of Abraham and Isaac (despite Kierkegaard’s famous interpretation of Abraham’s faith as involving a ‘suspension of the ethical’), is perhaps best interpreted not so much as an abject subordination of the will as a progression beyond the dark atavistic imperative of human sacrifice to something more morally enlightened—or at least a lesser evil (the substitution of a ram); later there will be an even more enlightened shift, away from blood sacrifice entirely to the moral conduct that alone is acceptable to God: ‘I desire mercy not sacrifice.’”1 — John Cottingham, The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Value (Cambridge University Press,
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I have, intermittently, been doing research on the notion of judgment: epistemic, moral, and political, especially but not only in the works of Hobbes, Kant, and Godwin. My interest in the topic extends to the role of psychology in accounting for what facilitates or interferes with good judgment. Invariably one bumps up against companion notions of “authority,” once more, epistemic, moral, and political. This research first arose some years ago in the context of democratic theory and practice and the role of formal and informal education in preparing individuals and deliberative groups to make sensible, plausible, or reasonable judgments, that is, judgments not clouded or overwhelmed by epistemic vices, cognitive biases and distortions, and sundry debilitating psychological phenomena, be they conscious or unconscious (or somewhere in between), all of which I have increasingly come to appreciate given the precipitous erosion of our country’s already tenuous and now thoroughly fragile Liberal welfare state democracy (a democracy which, at least since the 19th and throughout the 20th century and beyond, has existed in an inverse relationship to capitalism in the sense that the stronger the latter, the weaker the former).
My interest in judgment has since grown to include the comparatively little examined notion of “epistemic authority” as such, which extends well beyond democratic structures and processes into the pursuit of knowledge (or overcoming ignorance) more generally insofar as that occurs within various kinds of human community in which many of us are reared, socialized, educated, ethically formed, and so forth. These communities are the products of traditions and worldviews, often but not exclusively religious in orientation and can make or break a democratic polity if it has forgotten or disavowed the legacy of the European (and especially ‘radical’) Enlightenment. Let me be clear, I do not think, in principle, that there need be any fundamental or intractable conflict between a Liberal and thus secular society and the existence if not flourishing of religious and non-religious worldviews, in part because (thus for other reasons as well) I subscribe to (at least something like) Rawls’s notion of the possibility of an “overlapping consensus” in a plural society. I will leave aside for now the fact that in an affluent world (as well as those countries aspiring to same) suffused with the norms, culture, and imperatives of a hyper- or turbo-capitalist and technocratic ethos, such communities have been weakened and often destroyed, leaving the nuclear or elementary family on its own as it were, as the piecemeal assemblage or accumulation of values, norms, and beliefs take on an inconsistent, haphazard, and often chaotic or contradictory—irrational—character (at times even predominantly ‘mad’ or sociopathic when not simply displaying symptoms of mental illness of one kind or another, symptoms that may be shared by millions of ones fellow citizens). This is not conducive—to put it mildly—to moral psychological and thus rational autonomy. Individuals thus reach the age of reason bereft of the moral, psychological, and social benefits once provided by communities (of a certain kind which we cannot here elaborate), their lifeworlds (that is, the individual or idiosyncratic version of a worldview) often shaped by accident or the necessities and desires of the moment, pervasively determined by a suffocating and hallucinatory capitalist society and culture of conspicuous consumption, one that today has an apocalyptic-like pall hanging over it given the deteriorating ecological and environmental conditions we face, not all of which are simply the product of global warming and climate change. These benefits should include a period of questioning, reacting to, rebelling against, facets or components of the worldview in which one is nurtured and socialized. The outcome of such queries might result in abandoning that worldview (or lifeworld) or in choosing a different one, or perhaps even in constructing a novel lifeworld made up of ideals, ideas, values, beliefs and practices one can rationally or reasonably justify to oneself, assuming one has reached the age of reason or maturity, and a state of (more or less) of autonomy.
There are various dangers in constructing such a lifeworld afresh or from scratch (assuming that is possible), especially if one’s moral psychological autonomy, capacities for reasoning, self-reflection and self-examination are fragile or evanescent (over time, their exercise becomes self-reinforcing, although just when that occurs can vary widely among persons). One such danger comes from choosing that which makes one secure and comfortable with the way things are, with both oneself and the surrounding world; that explains away or ignores one’s faults and shortcomings and/or denies or crudely rationalizes the suffering of others or manifest injustices both near and afar. This occurs when one has resigned oneself to a reality in which there is no longer any gap between what is and what can or ought to be. Another albeit perhaps lesser danger is that this bricolage, if you will, may lack a substantively meaningful coherence and a structural disposition to truth, its inconsistencies and contradictions indicative of persistent cognitive dissonance one can now “live with.” In a world plagued by troubling if not illusory or delusional conceptions of personal and collective identity, addicted to novelty and social status, spellbound by fads and fashions, and unperturbed by the social, cultural and economic dominance of the “pleasure principle,” the personal and piecemeal “construction” of worldviews and lifeworlds, or the subscription by default to the prevailing social ethos, has profound political reverberations and deleterious effects on the democratic polity.
Which brings me back to the subject of “epistemic authority,” and the author of a particular book on same by one of our better contemporary philosophers (the blurbs on the back cover are not at all hyperbolic), Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief (Oxford University Press, 2012). It’s worth noting that Professor Zagzebski is a Roman Catholic and I was raised a Catholic, but am no longer a member of the Church. I do not have any particular fondness for philosophers who happen to be Catholic, although I might mention several others whose works stands apart for me: John Cottingham (who is mentioned in the Acknowledgements to Epistemic Authority), Nicholas Rescher, and Anna Wierzbicka. In the twentieth century, there are a few more formidable philosophers one should read if you have or hope to cultivate a philosophical temperament (I’ve winnowed these from a much larger and indiscriminate list): Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson, G.E.M. (or Elizabeth) Anscombe, Michael Dummett, Charles Taylor, Bas van Fraassen, and John Haldane. Among the most well-known giants in Catholic theology and philosophy, I happen to prefer Pascal over both St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. My Catholic upbringing and primary through secondary education in Catholic schools (much of which I appreciate and am quite grateful for), alongside the fact that I am no longer a member of the Church leaves me at point where, I believe, the actual or possible biases for and against the Catholic worldview are roughly equal in effect and thus at a stalemate. At the same time, and for those adamantly opposed to religious worldviews or strongly motivated by, say, atheism or agnosticism, I would hope we can at the very least depend on the principle of charity2 (assuming belief in the values of impartiality and objectivity) in interpreting and evaluating Zagzebski’s arguments. Be that as it may, what follows is a brief introduction in her words with a comment or two from yours truly.
“Everyone recognizes that some forms of authority are inescapable, but authority in the epistemic domain gets virtually no attention. Moral and political philosophers understandably focus on authority over actions, presumably assuming the authority over beliefs is a topic for epistemology. But epistemologists do not discuss it either. If they occasionally use the term ‘epistemic authority,’ that is only by courtesy. What they mean by an epistemic authority is an expert. Rarely do we get an explanation of what makes an expert authoritative, or any attempt to connect authority with the literature on authority in moral and political philosophy. [Sometimes the notion of an ‘epistemic community’ functions as a de facto if not normative form of epistemic authority. While he was not an epistemologist, the late Douglas Walton dealt with some of the ‘arguments from authority’ in his book, Appeal to Expert Opinion: Arguments from Authority (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997).] [….]
No doubt some philosophers neglect epistemic authority unconsciously, but I think that many find the idea suspicious. Historic experience [in the West] provides one kind of reason for that suspicion. The Protestant Reformation, the political turmoil of the early modern period, and the rise of modern science all contributed to shattering the idea of authority, and epistemologists are not immune to the effects of those events. Distrust of authority is now as pervasive and as invisible as trust in authority once was. I think that when we do philosophy it is important to be aware of what we trust and what we distrust because that affects the lines of inquiry we resist and the kinds of conclusions we applaud. Suspicion of epistemic authority is a natural consequence of the general suspicion of authority we have inherited.
[….] In my opinion, one of the most significant philosophical turns of the modern period for epistemology, as well as for ethics and political philosophy was the development of the idea of autonomy. [I unreservedly and wholeheartedly agree with Zagzebski’s judgment on the emergence of the value of autonomy (a more apt term here than ‘opinion’).] The general distrust of authority might be the cause of the rejection of epistemic authority, but its philosophical defense is its apparent incompatibility with autonomy.
The idea of autonomy is another idea that has a large literature in moral philosophy but is ignored in epistemology. If intellectual autonomy exists, we will want to see how it connects with autonomy in the moral realm and authority in any realm. If we should reject authority in the epistemic domain, there is much work to be done to explain why this is the case. If we should not reject it, then again, we need to find out what it is, why we should care about it, and what we will lose if we ignore it.
One thing we lose is a way to understand the justification of a great number of religious beliefs. [The issue of justification from ‘within’ a religious sensibility has been addressed in a manner that does not directly treat questions of ‘epistemic authority’ as such, but companion questions (and for our purposes, to the extent that autonomy has something to do with the cognitivity and rational dimensions of religion in James Kellenberger’s The Cognitivity of Religion: Three Perspectives (University of California Press, 1995). Unfortunately, this book has not received the attention it deserves.] There have been claims to religious authority for thousands of years, and if there is a religious authority, it is [or should be] both moral and epistemic. More precisely, religious authority includes epistemic authority in the realm of the teaching authority of a given faith tradition, which usually includes both metaphysical and moral teachings. Some religions have an authoritative teaching structure, as does the church to which I belong, the Roman Catholic Church. But given the modern suspicion of authority, it often appears from an outside perspective that a person is unjustified in accepting epistemic authority in her community. From a perspective inside the community, authority is usually justified by reference to other beliefs [it has a web-like structure] that arise from the community (e.g., ‘Christ founded the Church,’ ‘Sharī‘ah law’ [that expression is redundant] was revealed by God,’ etc.), so the justification is circular [from inside the tradition, this is ‘virtuous’ rather than ‘vicious’ circularity, exemplifying, if your will, divinely inspired geometry]. That is not necessarily problematic for the members of the community, but it means that their beliefs are insulated from criticism from the outside. It also makes it easy for those on the outside to disregard [or dismiss] a community’s justification for its authoritative beliefs. I assume that this situation is undesirable.
… I will defend the existence of epistemic authority on grounds that almost all modern philosophers would accept. My argument will proceed wholly from the point of view of the [ideal] subject—a self-reflective person who asks herself how she should get beliefs she accepts on reflection. Is it ever reasonable for her to take someone as an authoritative source of her beliefs? Can she reasonably accept an authority in her community only if she already accepts what the authority proclaims? I will argue that if we make some minimal assumptions about the self, we are all committed to accepting epistemic authority, and authority in religious communities can be defended in the same way. My argument permits both external recognition of the justification of authority in community and external critique of that authority.” — From the Introduction to Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski’s Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief (Oxford University Press, 2012)
Notes
1. Alas, that is why I have a dispositional aversion to Anselm’s (c.1033-1109) famous (or infamous) theological formulation of “substitutionary” atonement in which Anselm states that humanity owes God a ransom of “satisfaction” for sin, a debt, however, that is unpayable owing to our lowly status. This appears to me to represent moral or even spiritual regression, not the kind of progressively enlightened moral awareness that Cottingham describes here. Consider, for example, the unquestionable significance of the Crucifixion: the Incarnation of God through Jesus Christ—innocent of sin and equal to God, so to speak—allows the Son to offer himself (a sacrifice, through suffering) to the Father on humanity’s behalf. In other words, Christ’s Passion, his sacrifice on the cross, was to make amends for our sins. Anselm’s formulation meshes well with the Gospel understanding of sin as a kind of debt that is relieved or forgiven with the expiatory sacrifice of Christ’s death, meaning we need no longer be enslaved by the power of sin. The Catholic Church adopted this doctrine in the 16th century, and the Reformation, ironically, only reinforced its spiritual and moral psychology for those who broke from the Church: “O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood/ to every believer the promise of God/ The vilest offender who truly believes/ That moment from Jesus a pardon receives.” Anselm’s interpretation is sometimes called the penal (or juridical) theory, as Christ has borne the penalty for sin instead of us. Because our sin is an infinite offence against God, it requires a correspondingly infinite satisfaction that only God can make (and did, through Christ).
Anselm’s substitutionary atonement theory was theologically contested by a notion of exemplary atonement, the essence of which goes back to the French theologian Peter Abelard (1079-1142): “The purpose and cause of the incarnation was that God might illuminate the world by his wisdom and stir it to the love of himself.” This theory has been deemed “subjective” in comparison with the aforementioned “objective” theories. What is central to the exemplary theory is the extent to which God’s love is revealed through Christ, most poignantly in Christ’s acceptance of a brutal and unjust death. It is this—God’s unconditional love for us as embodied in the life and death of Jesus—which should move us to repentance. A corporate rather than individualist interpretation of atonement appears in the late 20th century with Liberation Theology that took hold in Central and South America. In this case, atonement is effected as reconciliation which, in turn, must be demonstrated as a living fact, at both the individual and collective levels. Alas, the exemplary theory has never been anything near as popular as Anselm’s formulation in Western Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant.
2. I think it important that we make a sincere endeavor to abide by an analytical and interpretive trinity in philosophical discussion, debate, and argument that involves three overlapping and mutually reinforcing principles: (i) the principle of charity, (ii) the principle of humanity, and (iii) the principle of “intellectual non-violence.” The first is fairly well known (at least among philosophers and students of rhetoric) even if unevenly practiced. The “principle of charity” in general means (some philosophers have formulated slightly different versions of this principle) “interpreting a speaker’s statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation.” The second—and not unrelated—“principle of humanity,” which is perhaps logically prior to the first principle, states, “when interpreting another speaker we must assume that his or her beliefs and desires are connected to each other and to reality in some way (which sounds, if I am not mistaken, like something both Quine and Davidson said), and attribute to him or her ‘the propositional attitudes one supposes one would have oneself in those circumstances’” (Richard Grandy). It is perhaps arguable (if only because we may be mistaken as to the precise propositional attitude, given that a person can have different propositional attitudes toward the same proposition) as to whether or not the goal expressed in the final clause is always (realistically speaking) attainable, but it’s no less worthy an aim. The third principle of our trinity is unquestionably the most arduous, described by the late B.K. Matilal as a “Jain principle,” and one that Jaina philosophers have “surprisingly and conspicuously” evidenced in their own work, namely, “intellectual non-violence,” by which is meant that “any criticism must be preceded by a proper and total understanding of the doctrine one tries to criticize.” This principle of intellectual non-violence in the Jain tradition presupposes and is one consequence of the preeminent doctrinal position of anekāntavāda, which is, in the first instance, both a metaphysical and ontological doctrine, one with intriguing epistemological implications. Matilal characterizes it generally as a philosophy of “non-radicalism” insofar as the doctrine emerged as indicative of the Jaina attempt to synthesize if not reconcile the various philosophical schools in India at the time (it could be said to have been forged in the fire of arguments between the various schools, which were fairly well-developed by this time). This reconciliation, however, and in the end if you will, is probably impossible, if only because other schools will read (or have read) this attempt as a not-so-subtle way to demonstrate the intellectual superiority of the Jain worldview, or because its doctrine of kevalajñāna, which is the Jaina claim for the omniscience of a kevalin, or an enlightened being, such as Vardhamāna Mahāvīra (there is no creator deity in Jainism), is not accepted by the other schools. Nevertheless, a similar claim for “omniscience” of a kind is made for the Buddha (Sara McClintock notes that the Jainism is ‘among the earliest systematic defenders of the notion, probably inspiring some later Buddhist arguments’), as well as, it turns out, deities in several schools (e.g., the Naiyāyikas hold that the creator God, Īśvara, is omniscient by nature, and the Sāmkhyas accorded omniscient status to Lord Īśvara, although he is not a creator deity in this system). In Jain epistemology, there are two kinds of valid methods for gaining knowledge: pratyakṣa or “direct knowledge” and parokṣa or “indirect knowledge,” and only kevalajñāna is considered pratyakṣa, hence it is the prerogative, to date, of only a very small class of human beings, although it “is believed to be an intrinsic quality of all souls,” and thus in principle at least, something attainable by any of us.
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