A Preface to Existentialism

On The Book, they have posted W. H. Auden’s 1944 review of Either/Or by Søren Kierkegaard. In part because Either/Or is Keirkegaard’s most stereotypically existentialist work (in my opinion), Auden’s review, though entitled A Preface to Kierkegaard, might as well be titled A Preface to Existentialism. It provides a great introductory lesson on existentialism. It’s analysis of the work is also spot-on. I finished reading the piece with a feeling of euphoric thanksgiving. It was an honor to read that review. I encourage all of you to go enjoy it.

From the review:

As Augustine says: “I am and know and will; I am knowing and willing; I know myself to be and to will; I will to be and to know.” There is, therefore, no timeless, disinterested I who stands outside my finite temporal self and serenely knows whatever there is to know; cognition is always a specific historic act accompanied by hope and fear. To realize this is not, again, to abandon as hopeless the search for common sharable truth and surrender to a subjective relativism: on the contrary, it is precisely in the interest of such a common truth, that it is necessary for the individual to begin by learning to be objective about his subjectivity, “to know his station,” to become conscious every time he asks calmly of an object or an event, “What are you?” of his urgent, simultaneous aside, “Be this. Don’t be that.”

And from the text:

When love is conceived as it is in the romances, the individual is merely brought to the point where he will open—with that it ends; or he is about to open but is interrupted. Pride can very well be represented [by Art], for the essential point in pride is not succession but intensity in the moment. Humility is represented with difficulty, because here if anywhere we are dealing with succession . . . and when it is shown in its ideal moment, the beholder senses the lack of something, because he feels that its true ideality does not consist in the fact that it is ideal in the moment but that it is constant. Romantic love can very well be represented in the moment, but conjugal love cannot, because an ideal husband is not one who is such once in his life but one who every day is such. If I would represent a hero who conquers kingdoms and lands, it can very well be represented in the moment, but a cross-bearer who every day takes up his cross cannot be represented either in poetry or in art, because the point is that he does it every day.

Does the Bible condone a form of government?

Recently, on Russell and Duenes, I was asked:

Does biblical authority and teaching supercede and inform your “philosophical anarchism?” You would need to justify biblically your view that “everything should be legal.” Frankly, I don’t think you can.

Just to get it out of the way, I want to clarify what is meant by “philosophical anarchism”. If somehow given our world as a tabula rasa, I would choose anarchy as the form of (non) government. Ergo I am forsaking all concerns of practicality – that is what is meant by the “philosophical” designation. Why exactly I choose that form is not pertinent now. I am simply clarifying that my practical political views, ones I would hold in voting or influencing policy, are different than my philosophical ideals.

Now, to the main question. The basic issue is: Does the bible justify any form of government? I firmly believe that it does not.

First, there are multiple forms of government presented in the Bible. The Roman Empire as an Autocracy, Israel as a Monarchy, and the Hebrews as a Theocracy (or Federalized Aristocracy or tribal government, depending upon your view of the rule by the “judges” and God’s inspiration of them). The only time God explicitly condoned a form of government is when he warned Israel that switching from judge-rule to a monarchy would cause problems. However, as documented by many political scientists, monarchy brings some benefits over localized tribal government. God wasn’t giving the Israelites a treatise on political theory so that they could weigh the costs and benefits of their decision. Their decision was not based on political theory; their decision was based on childish passions. They were tired of Samuel’s crooked sons (note: it is very natural for change of form of government to be called for after a poor administration) and they wanted to be “like all the other nations.” I Samuel 8:5. God warned them that they will have even more personal problems with a king. In other words, a king will mismanage as much as, if not more than, God’s prophet-appointed/prophetic judges. Also, a king will demand more resources and servitude. If the Text could be seen as supporting a specific theory of government (which I do not believe it does), it would definitely be promoting limited government. Seeing as restoration of the judge-ruled Theocracy was never called for by Jesus, Paul, or the other New Testament writers, I do not think the point of I Samuel 8 was to promote a specific form of government.

Next, the Bible never seems to call rulers good and bad based upon the effects of their policies. The Bible seems to condemn certain rulers based on the purpose of their policies, not the results. There is, to my knowledge, no example of a king who, while trying to serve God by instituting a policy, was condemned for some result of his policy. There are times when certain characters in the Bible, like Lot, for instance, have a moment of poor judgment (choosing to move to Sodom), and they are sinners, as we all are. But let us remember that even Lot was considered a righteous man. II Peter 2:7-8. It always seems to matter much more that the leaders of Israel follow God, rather than enact certain policies. The Scriptures label those kings evil that fell prey to the worship of false Gods and to building shrines on mountain tops. The Bible also condemns those leaders that enact a policy that has the explicit purpose of being evil (like David sending Uriah to be killed on the front lines so that David could take Bathsheba as his wife). Basically, when the Bible tells rulers to be Godly, it means in their goals and purposes, not in their decision-making. Of course, the decisions must be made to the best of their abilities and in holy service to the One True God, but God does not expect the content of those decisions to conform to a specific political theory.

Finally, the Bible cannot consistently condone a single form of government along with its other messages. More specifically, the New Testament provides continuous examples of the notion that human government is of no import in matters of salvation. Roman Centurions, part of the military that enslaved and ravaged peoples on three continents, became Christians. Roman officials became Christians. Jesus told believers to continue to pay taxes. Paul instructed believers to be good citizens/subjects in so far as it does not conflict with living out the Christian life. There is a clear separation between matters of human institutions and matters of the Christ-fulfilled kingdom. I believe this separation exists because all government is flawed. One of the central messages of the gospel is that we are all sinful. Thus, any government run by us will be incredibly flawed – no matter what form of government it happens to be.

Therefore, because the Bible never favors a specific form of government as inherently better than others, because governors are not judged by their policies but by their purposes, and because all forms of government have the same potential to be equally horrendous, I have concluded that the Bible does not favor a specific form of government.

You may ask, “Why then should Christians participate in government at all? Shouldn’t we support democracy? Isn’t a republic better than Hitler’s Germany? And why is this ‘Joshua House’ guy an anarchist/libertarian/crazy-person?” Excellent questions these all are. However, they are just that – questions, for another day. I will try to answer one of them soon. Stay tuned.

On evidence for demons

Over at Russel and Duenes Blog, I have commented on an intriguing discussion about demon possession. Check it out!

Nationalism v. Patriotism

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Professor Ilya Somin has posted a response to Jonah Goldberg’s Thanksgiving post at National Review Online. Goldberg’s post reads,

[I love Thanksgiving because it is] America’s only nationalist holiday. The Fourth of July, President’s Day, and even Veterans’ and Memorial Day are celebrations of the nation-state created by the American founding. In short, our other holidays are about patriotism, not nationalism. Thanksgiving meanwhile celebrates a pre-constitutional relationship with the Almighty. I wouldn’t quite say it’s a pre-modern or blood-and-soil holiday, but it is about Providence and the great gift being here, in this place, is. A little mystic nationalism is a good and healthy thing because it provides the emotional sinew that helps us hold onto our patriotism. This country is great and good for many reasons. But one reason for its greatness, too often forgotten, is that it is ours.

Professor Somin responds to Mr. Goldberg by criticizing nationalism in typical libertarian fashion. In short, he says that nationalism is not only unnecessary but also often leads to repression, economic protectionism, and irrational politics.

Rather than offer my own thoughts on nationalism (though I should say that I tend to agree with Professor Somin more than I do with Mr. Goldberg), I want to examine a common problem with this debate. Mr. Goldberg hints at the issue in his statement; the problem is that there is a blurry line between patriotism and nationalism. I often say that most arguments in the world would be immediately solved if people were using the same words to describe the same things. I feel that this is yet another disagreement exacerbated by a definitional mismatch.

First, notice that Mr. Goldberg distinguishes nationalism and patriotism by saying that “celebrations of the nation-state” are patriotic, not nationalistic. It seems likely that Mr. Goldberg thinks that celebrations of the nation, i.e. the people or ethnicity, are nationalistic, while celebrations of the state, at least when tied to the nation, are patriotic. Conversely, Professor Somin defines nationalism as “loyalty to one’s own nation-state based on ties of language, culture, or ethnicity”. We can immediately perceive that Professor Somin’s definition, while including the concepts of language, culture, and ethnicity referred to by Mr. Goldberg, is drastically different because it includes the nation-state.

I think that Professor Somin’s more political concerns (economic/policy-related) are not relevant to Mr. Goldberg’s discussion. Mr. Goldberg is not talking about loyalty to a political entity but rather to a nation or people. However, Professor Somin’s concerns regarding ethnic and cultural bigotry are certainly still pertinent.

Next, I would like to present my own views on the distinction between nationalism and patriotism.

From a purely etymological standpoint, nationalism seems to more accurately refer to loyalty to the nation-state, a political entity with a relatively homogenous culture or ethnicity. The root ‘nation’ is derived from the Latin ‘natio’ which means ‘to be born’. Therefore, a nation is a people with common ancestry. Ties to a nation are based on birth. ‘National’ means ‘of, or relating to, a nation’. Nationalism is a movement or school of thought that a political entity or state should be defined by relations to a nation. Thus, nationalism refers to loyalty to a nation-state, or perhaps loyalty to any state, based on ties of ethnicity or culture.

On the other hand, patriotism can exist, at least in its classical definition, without a state. Patriot is derived from the Latin ‘patriota’, meaning ‘fellow countryman’. ‘Patriota’ was originally derived from the Greek ‘patrios’, which means ‘of one’s fathers’. It follows that one can define patriotism in two ways: Either it is a movement completely based on ties of ethnicity or culture and is a synonym for ‘nation-ism’ or it is a movement based on some kind of figurative meaning of being ‘of one’s fathers’. The first meaning is common usage in our vernacular, while the latter is popular among those who wish to avoid association with a government’s actions.

I tend to agree with the latter, not only because it provides the closest description of my own sentiments, but also because it seems to be the definition the Greek philosophers and poets used. In his Funeral Oration, Pericles (the famous Athenian politician) speaks of the pride of the patriots of Athens. Such patriotism is based on the ideals of justice, law, open foreign policy, and equality of opportunity. Patriotism, in this sense, is related to loyalty to a philosophy and conception of the good, not a state. Thusly, our society developed the idea that a patriot can exist even if he is civilly disobedient (civil disobedience, coincidentally, also has roots in Greece via Socrates).

In sum, the nationalist supports America because it is America and he is American, while the patriot supports America because he agrees with its founding fathers’ goals and ideals. The patriot supports the American state only if it continues in the same traditions proclaimed by its fathers and he has no need to do so, indeed might be required not to, if it were to stray from the ideals of its founding. What those ideals are is an entirely separate debate.

Does humanity teach us something?

Do we all instinctively know something about the universe or each other simply by being human?

The ultimate competition of ideas, if there indeed exists one, is between existentialism (previously called irrational skepticism) and positivism (of the universalist tradition). The first says that, even if objective truth exists, our humanity cannot know it fully; the latter suggests that, because we are all human and universally share the same ability, or lack thereof, to perceive truth, there are some universals knowable to all. The conflict between these two is one everybody experiences, most of the time without awareness.

For example, when discerning others’ feelings after a tragedy and in attempting to figure out the best method to console them, we must decide between treating them as we would like to be treated or treating them in a way that society/common sense/scholarship dictates is the normal and best way to console.  The first is an existentialist outlook while the latter is a positivist one.

It might be that the conflict itself is the one truth we all experience – the single human universal.

Yes, I am still thinking.

You all might have expected that my blogging would temper off once law school started. The predictions were true, law school is sucking up my life. That being said, I am still philosophizing at lightning-speeds, as is evidenced by this weekend. You see, this weekend I finally outlined and began writing a work that has been in the making for about 2.5 years.

It all started with a fish my freshman-year college roommate brought home one day. He really, really loved his beta fish. Who would have thought that that fish would be the single most important inspiration in what really is the only large project I can claim to be working on (and have claimed to be doing so for like 2 years)?  Here is the basic theme to the beginning chapters of the work – it assumes a level of philosophical education, though I am not sure whether or not the final work will do so.

Teleology should not be limited to a consequentialist outlook. It is one thing to say that an action is justified because its end purpose is good (as in utilitarianism) and another to say that an action is good because it comports with the agent’s purpose. In the latter, I am not qualifying the purpose as good or bad; the purpose exists outside of the realm of “good and bad”. “Good” and “bad”, in this second form of teleology, are defined by whether or not either, in the form of actions, comports with a given purpose.

Fool or God?

Christ cannot be a good moral teacher. His teachings were so anti-religious that it cannot be said that he espoused good rules for the rest of us to abide by. No, in fact, Christ came preaching that he, not religion, saves. He came preaching that following the rules will get us nowhere. How, then, do those who claim he is only a good moral teacher, not God, resolve this contradiction? They cannot. Christ is either illogical, contradictory, and worthy of no moral merit; or he is Lord. Take your pick.

Salvation for the Gospel-less?

Over on “Russel and Duenes” podcast, I have done an obscene amount of commenting.  The podcast and ensuing discussion is definitely worth checking out!

Patriotism

I am not pro-America, I am pro-freedom. It just so happens that I see America as its greatest conduit.

Why can’t anyone see God?

There are countless times that I feel angry that I can’t see God. I resent the Creator for His supposed hiding. Of course, in doing this, I make two errors. First, and most obviously, I am forgetting all the ways in which He has revealed Himself to me. I am forgetting that I know His character through nature, through love, through revelation. Yet, there is another mistake I make in my resentment of God. It is not the “how dare you question God” sentiment shared by so many, though it may be thought of as a more in depth form of it. I make the mistake of forgetting the beauty of the human condition. There seems to be something beautiful in our lifelong journey to experience God; life is beautiful because we are searching. Much like a yin and yang principle, we can know God better because we lack so much of Him. We come to know the Creator through our journey in this world. Yes there is much pain and suffering, but we see the beauty in the sacrifice, love, and reconciliation that pain and suffering can produce. We yearn to experience the divine and part of that experience is searching for it.