Per Caritatem

I recently found out that a paper that I submitted for an upcoming conference at Baylor called, “The World and Christian Imagination,” has been accepted. In case anyone is interested, I have copied my abstract below and would appreciate any recommendations as to books/articles that are a “must” given what I have stated in my abstract as the “direction” of my paper. (Also, if you are a UD student who is planning to attend this conference, please contact me, as myself and a few others are working out the details for carpooling and lodging—in graduate student language—splitting costs between us : )

Abstract:
The Anti-Enlightenment Nature of Jazz: Reconsidering Suffering, Syncopation, and Improvisation in Light of the Christian Metanarrative

In his book, The Dialectic of Enlightenment, co-authored by Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, presents a rather negative picture of jazz and suggests that jazz harmonizes well with the mass culture industry of sameness in which the individual is subsumed in the universal. Though as a whole, I found the book extremely helpful and stimulating—particularly the authors’ criticism of the totalizing tendencies of the Enlightenment, and the thesis that Enlightenment rationality becomes purely functional—i.e., a functionalized reason with no content, I do, however, strongly disagree with Adorno’s conclusions regarding jazz. In light of Adorno’s pessimistic view of jazz, I shall attempt to paint a significantly different picture of jazz and hope to show that in fact, the heartbeat of jazz, viz., improvisation and syncopation, finds great continuity with the heartbeat of Christianity. Moreover, when one examines the history of jazz, one finds that jazz not only has deeply spiritual (i.e., Christian) roots, but it was likewise birthed in a context of unjust suffering experienced by African Americans—something that not only parallels the suffering of the Hebrews of the Old Testament, but ironically has much in common with that which Horkheimer and Adorno experienced in the 1940’s.

Though this paper will have its own “improvisatory elements” along the way, its structure will consist roughly of the following: I shall begin by discussing a brief genealogy of jazz that finds its origins in Christian roots, and will introduce us to one of the most well-known jazz artists—Duke Ellington—who openly expressed the deep union between his music and the Christian faith. With this, I am in no way suggesting that jazz is Christian music, but rather that certain elements that “define” jazz (i.e., as far as music can be “defined”) and which have shaped and influenced its history, resonate well with the Christian metanarrative of creation, fall, redemption in Christ through the communion of the Holy Spirit, and the final consummation of all things in Christ. Moreover, in continuity with Jeremy Begbie, I believe that “music [and jazz in particular] can serve to enrich and advance theology, extending our wisdom about God, God’s relation to us and to the world at large.”[1] Given that improvisation and syncopation are as I have suggested, the “heartbeat” and “lifeblood” of jazz, I shall discuss these concepts at length as well. In the end, contra Adorno, it is my contention that the fusing of the type of creativity involved in improvisation with syncopation, i.e., accenting the “weak” or “off” beats, originally arose primarily from a people who were themselves oppressed by those who would want to stress the static, (in Horkneimer and Adorno’s language—reduce all particularity to universality), yet just as is the case with vibrant Christianity, jazz by definition resists the reduction of particularity to universality and is fueled by a living hope which celebrates diversity and dynamism within a given “structural framework,” thus embracing unity-in-diversity rather than privileging one at the expense of the other.

Notes
[1] Begbie, Theology, Music, and Time, p. 3.

My lecture last Tuesday (an intro to philosophy summer course) included a discussion on Anselm’s ontological argument. During the course of the lecture, some excellent objections were raised, which caused me to further reflect on Anselm’s argument. The following is an edited summary of exchanges that I had with a few friends in regard to some of the questions that came up in class. Any additional thoughts, comments, or criticisms that anyone would like to add (that are of course related to the post—I am starting to receive a number of comments that have nothing to do with posts, which I have had to delete—I’m all for digressions, but there has to be a limit : ) are welcomed—though I do reserve the “despotic right” to delete what seems off topic or that “smells” like you just kindof like to argue as an end in itself—if you know what I mean.

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On the one hand, it seems to me that Karl Barth makes an insightful observation when he analyzes the first four chapters of the Proslogion in terms of its literary quality. That is, Barth argues that Anselm is not giving a philosophical argument for God, but that this is really a kind of extended prayer—there is good textual support for this, just take a look at the text.
Regarding Anselm’s argument itself, a key moment seems to be when he says in his prayer something the effect that we believe (i.e., Christians) that you are “that than which nothing greater can be thought/conceived” (let’s call it “A” for short). The negative way in which the argument is formulated seems important and often overlooked—God is that than which nothing greater can be thought. As this point in the argument, (bracketing Barth’s point for the sake of argument), one doesn’t have to believe in God, but one does have to understand the definition. Anything and all else will be lesser than what we mean by definition by the word, “God.”

One of the students pointed out that Anselm is begging the question, which led to a brief discussion of Kant’s critique of Anselm’s argument. Kant (and others) seem justified in asking, “But does this mean that God exists in reality?” Anselm, wanting to know why the Psalmist calls the person a “fool” and not simply mistaken or ignorant who says that “there is no God,” points out that the fool says that this God whose definition I understand, (presumably “A” which has been agreed on by all parties—fool included) doesn’t exist. So why is the fool a fool? Because, Anselm’s claim (which seems intuitively true to me as a believer) is that to exist only in the mind is not as great as existing in the mind and in reality. Thus, the fool contradicts himself because by definition this God must exist in reality. Since the fool understands the definition, and yet denies that God exists in reality, he contradicts himself.

In a sense, Anselm seems to want to say something similar to St. Thomas (and for good reasons), viz., granted that we have the Christian faith as true and revealed by God, God is at least rational (and a whole lot more), but he is not less than rational or reasonable (though supra-rational to be sure). Therefore, we can find the reasons why the faith is true—not because we can “figure out the faith,” but because once it is revealed, we can see that it must be rational—reasonable. Yet, I sense a slight moving away from St. Augustine here—though of course, Anselm is a follower of Augustine and quite influenced by him. For example, Augustine’s “motto” so to speak was, credo ut intelligam, “I believe in order that I may understand.” Augustine had claimed that the philosopher makes an act of faith in reason when he claims, e.g., that the best life is the philosophical life—this claim rests on a sheer act of faith, in fact, Augustine would say, an irrational faith! Augustine himself will make an act of faith, but his act of faith is in something that transcends reason—that is above reason. So the wisdom that the philosopher seeks cannot be attained by him, i.e., by his (pretended) “autonomous” approach. Anselm takes this understanding and modifies it with his “slogan,” fides quaerens intellectum, “faith seeking understanding,” i.e., faith seeking the necessary reasons why it must be so.
So back to Anselm’s argument—as we said above, Anselm says that if that being “A” doesn’t exist, then it isn’t that being “A” because something could be greater. So if I can conceive of God as non-existing, then he is not “A.”
Then he goes on in the next section to make a further argument. It is not just that this being would lack self-referentiality if it did not exist, but one cannot even conceive of God as not existing. So the fool is the fool because he tries to deny that which cannot literally be conceived. So in this section, he seems to be saying that atheism is not only false—but impossible—i.e., it cannot be thought any more than a “square-circle” (so they say : ) can be thought.

Then regarding the question as to whether God can be thought not to exist, Anselm says, if not, then what can be thought to exist is greater than it. One can think of a horse or human or even a unicorn and this does not mean that these things exist because they are contingent/possible beings, not necessary beings. To speak of that being “A” means it must exist; it is a necessary being. Why? Because the very definition of such a being includes and must include and cannot not include his existence, which is existence in the “highest degree.” In the same way that one cannot conceive of a circle with unequal radii, “A” necessarily entails existence. Unlike the horses or human or things that may or may not exist—the point being focused on the definitional aspect—i.e., if there is a horse, it must be a non-rational animal. If there is a human, it must be a rational animal. A non-rational human is a contradiction in terms so this line of thought goes. Thus, accordingly, when I conceive of God as “A”, then “A” must include existence and existence in the highest possible way (unqualified existence). Thus, the possibility that this being does not exist involves a contradiction. [N.b., Anselm avoids the objection of what about a “super human being” by giving a negative definition of God].

Guanillo of course disagrees with the argument. He says that the fact that I can conceive the being “A” in my mind proves nothing in reality—a proto-Kantian response of sorts? He claims that Anselm is making a totally illicit leap from the order of thought to the order of reality. In other words, Anselm is saying that because conceptually I cannot deny it, it must exist in reality. Guanillo then counters with the “Lost Island, the blessed Island.” Does this mean that the blessed island might exist because I can conceive it? No. Likewise, just because I can conceive of a unicorn doesn’t mean that it exists. Interestingly, though when Guanillo summarizes Anselm’s argument, he puts the argument positively, which Anselm did not do—as we have pointed out—his argument is stated negatively.

Anselm then responds and says, first, Guanillo, you have taken a finite being in your counter example (the island is a contingent, finite entity, and thus it is a bad analogy). For example, with contingent beings, if there is a human, he must be a rational animal. But such things/beings as humans and islands are not “A.” Why? Because I can always conceive of something greater than any contingent being/thing. This doesn’t prove anything. When I say “A”, I am talking only about God, that being which exists and necessarily exists and cannot not exist. Just as I cannot conceive of a hill without a valley, in the same way “A” necessarily involves existence. The others (contingent things/beings) do not necessarily involve existence. So his response to Guanillo is that his blessed island counter is irrelevant.

In sum, the basis of Anselm’s argument is that God as “A” necessarily involves existence. Existence in excelsis is a necessary predicate of God—to conceive of God, there is no other way to “define” him but with necessary existence.
Objections by Kant and Aquinas that existence cannot be put on the same level as other perfections is to me compelling. Perhaps this is where Anselm goes astray. Some say the ontological argument is not helpful and not very convincing for anyone who does not already believe that God exists. In other words, believers see the truth of the argument, but this is because they already know something of God and already believe that He exists (N.b. Van Til would have some interesting commentary to add here in light of Rom 1—viz., that all humans do in fact know God (gnotes ton theon), but they in unrighteousness willingly suppress that truth, but we will forego that for now). Perhaps some of the difficulties involving in Anselm’s argument brings us back to Augustine’s point and the whole issue of needing faith in order to understand (aright)—faith must attune reason or it will go astray (it will become mis-directed as Dooyeweerd says). At this point in my theological/philosophical journey, I am strongly inclined to think that is case. If that is a fideism of sorts, then so be it.

In the last section of his essay, Schindler returns to the original problem posed by fundamental theology, viz., by affirming the “genuine gratuity of revelation,” we are admitting a discontinuity with human reason; whereas, going the other way and upholding reason’s integrity and its natural desire for the ultimate, we must admit continuity between human reason “in its ‘natural’ functions and reason in its grasp of revealed truth” (p. 607). Balthasar’s dramatic notion of truth seems to solve our dilemma by allowing for both aspect of continuity and discontinuity. Moreover, this dramatic notion of truth serves as the basis for all thought (not merely for fundamental theology). Though the following is an exceedingly long quote, it is worth repeating in full, as it sums up the essay quite well:

“the event of revelation—and we might say the advent of grace, the moment of the act of faith—can take reason wholly by surprise, even shatter its expectations, demand a rethinking of everything it previously thought from top to bottom, and yet remain perfectly rational, or indeed show itself to be even more intensely rational, on one condition only; that it is the very nature of reason in its normal, everyday constitution, to be taken by surprise. If this is the case, then on the one hand no matter how discontinuous revelation is with respect to the ‘horizon of human reason,’ no matter how radically surprising, it will represent a fulfillment of what reason is by nature. Insofar as reason in its natural functions aspires to know what is other than itself, it expects to be ‘overturned’ to some degree—as slight as the reversal may happen to be in ordinary circumstances—by the object it seeks to know. And in aspiring to ultimacy, it naturally aspires to be overturned by what is ultimate. On the other hand, this reversal, though it corresponds in some respect to the nature of reason, is in no way reducible to the immanent structure of reason, because what reason itself demands is in fact the priority of the object to be known, and in the supernatural order, it is the priority of faith. There is thus something analogous to faith operating in every act of reason, which is precisely why its being surprised by faith is a perfection of its nature. Faith corresponds, we might say, by not corresponding.

Moreover, the same paradox explains how Christianity can lay claim to the assent of reason, can lay claim, in fact, to the very roots of reason, while at the same time arriving as a sheer gift of grace. Understood dramatically, the inner spontaneity of consciousness is constituted in the advent of a gift, namely, the mother’s smile. If this is the case, the advent of revelation, as a gift from above, recapitulates the constitutive aspiration of reason and in this sense directly ‘speaks to’ reason in its most inward core precisely as an unanticipated event” (pp. 607-608).

Before finishing out the Schindler series, I thought I’d add a little dash of humor : )

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1. Because he had only one major publication.
2. And it was in Hebrew.
3. And it had no cited references.
4. And it wasn’t published in a refereed journal or even submitted for peer review.
5. And some even doubt he wrote it himself.
6. The scientific community has had a very rough time trying to replicate his results.
7. He rarely came to class, just told students to read the book.
8. He expelled his first two students for learning.
9. Although there were only ten requirements, students failed his tests miserably.
10. His office hours were infrequent and usually held on a mountain top.

http://www.as.miami.edu/phi/jokes.htm (slightly modified)

Continuing with the second section of Schindler’s essay, we turn to further explore the dramatic aspect of truth, i.e., what does drama have to do with this conception of truth? A good drama always exhibits a “dramatic reversal,” containing moments of both surprise and resolution. Likewise, a good plot is said to “unfold” and is not merely a linear sequence of events. Rather, as an organic unity, the plot must birth a reversal or turn of events that unifies the seemingly incongruent parts. When this reversal moment occurs, it takes us by surprise because it shows us how all the parts and other events come together in a meaningful whole. “There is a discontinuity that nevertheless preserves a continuity, though that continuity gets recast by the dramatic reversal” (p. 603).

Relating the aspects of a successful drama to our current topic, Schindler says that in order for a true surprise to occur, a state of anticipation arising out of the prior events must exist. However, “the moment of reversal cannot simply be deducible from the prior events: it has to interrupt the claim, thwart or even shatter expectations. But—and this is the key—the moment cannot shatter the dramatic form of the whole without undermining the very surprise it initially effected. Instead, this reversal must recast the meaning of the parts and the anticipation they produced in a manner that brings them all to a definitive fulfillment. Here is the great paradox of great drama: anticipation is fulfilled by what it cannot have expected; the turn of events that ‘shatters’ the progressively developing intelligible form ends up crystallizing that very form in a startlingly radiant whole. The form does not become less intelligible by the disruption, but in fact it becomes far more intelligible than one could have anticipated at the outset or along the way” (p. 604).

In contrast to the traditional epistemologies described earlier in his essay—those which by definition exclude surprise because the mind can only receive that which it is already (in some sense) prepared to take in—Balthasar’s view allows for surprise to be “built into the very heart of consciousness” (recall that the child’s smile arises as a gift in reception of the mother’s smile not prior to it). Moreover, contra more modern epistemologies, “the potential for the reception of the mother’s smile does not precede that address as an a priori condition of possibility but arrives with that address; it is part of the original gift itself” (p. 605). The child of course does not respond to the mother’s gesture before she initiates the act, but rather responds to her in the moment that he receives her address. Thus, with Balthasar’s account, we can agree with the Aristotelian/Thomistic view that act precedes potency “without already anticipating all possible actualities within the soul’s immanent capacities, for now the act that precedes potency occurs as an event, a simultaneously immanent and transcendent encounter, in which the soul is already outside of itself in its reception of its other” (p. 605).

With this, we have an answer to the Meno paradox: we affirm that the soul anticipates its object, yet deny that the object is derivable from the soul itself. Moreover, the soul’s anticipation in the dramatic reversal is recast, which allows for both surprise and fulfillment to take place. Lastly, as the soul grasps that which is “other,” we see that every act of knowledge involves this element of surprise. Given that Balthasar’s notion of the Gestalt is concrete rather than abstract, we are not forced into a reductionistic view that equates acts of knowledge with mere intellectual acts. As we have seen, the soul must in some sense transcend itself in order to receive its object. In addition, instead of passively receiving the object according to a prior capacity, the soul actively conforms itself to the object and in some sense receives the capacity for the object from the event itself (p. 606). Its active role of responding to the initiating movement of the object/other involves an act of the will. “This spontaneity on the part of the soul, then, is not merely spontaneous but is a constitutive aspect of a more comprehensive receptivity. This is why the soul’s spontaneity is not an imposition on the object—as it necessarily is, for example in Kant. But precisely because the spontaneity is an aspect of a more basic receptivity, the active anticipation it entails does not unilaterally determine the object’s final meaning. Instead, the expectation is surprised by that meaning, and precisely in the surprise finds its expectation fulfilled, insofar as it sought to know the object—its other—and not merely itself or its own experience. The moment in which the soul moves beyond itself is the moment in which the object finally discloses itself. The intellectual grasp of meaning thus turns out to be an irreducibly distinct part of a more comprehensive whole, which includes a perceptive, affective, and volitional dimension as well” (p. 606).

Though the “dramatic moment” in Balthasar’s work is usually connected to the theological, viz., “the encounter of divine and human freedom,” what Schindler wants to highlight is that “if this moment itself is to be intelligible at all, we must understand that every cognitional act—insofar as it involves the advent of meaning that includes the soul’s capacity without being reducible to it—is something like an encounter between two freedoms. There is, in other words, from the outset an analogy between the theological and the properly philosophical act, and indeed between the act of faith and every use of the intellect, even the most rudimentary” (pp. 606-607, italics added).

In the second section of his essay, “Surprised by Truth: The Drama of Fundamental Theology”[1] Schindler begins to map out Balthasar’s dramatic notion of truth by considering two governing principles: (1) the mother’s smile and (2) the identity of freedom and form in the Gestalt. [Gestalt in German literally means “shape” or “form.” However, I take it that Schindler and Balthasar are using the word to describe a kind of holism or something like a organic paradigm—something the opposite of anything reductionistic. In fact, later in the essay, Gestalt is said to include, “the concrete shape of a life or the intelligible wholeness of an action or an event” (p. 602)].

First, Schindler says that a common response to the “Cartesian problem,” i.e., the difficulty of explaining how the mind is able to connect with the world (its “other”) is to simply to say that “the self is always already in contact with the world, and develops its own immanent structures from […] within this contact” (p. 597). In Balthasar’s conception of the dramatic structure of truth, part of his aim is to give an account that upholds (instead of doing away with) the “otherness” of that which is outside the soul. For Balthasar, the soul’s connection with the world is rooted in more basic “contact,” viz., the “mother’s smile.” In his essay, “Movement Toward God,” Balthasar writes, “[t]he little child awakens to self-consciousness through being addressed by the love of his mother.”[2] The mother’s smile is of course a very personal gesture addressed to and inviting the child (the “other) to respond, and is that which gives rise to the child’s response. In differentiation from Kant’s account of consciousness, “the soul’s conditions of possibility are not fixed prior to and thus independent of the (receptive) encounter with what is other than consciousness, but instead occurs in the encounter. The conditions of possibility arise, as it were, not wholly from below, but as a gift from above, which, precisely because of its generosity, creates the space for the ‘from below’ capacity to receive it” (p. 598). In footnote 24, Schindler adds an important clarification, viz., there is, however, a prior capacity involved. This prior capacity is “by its nature a capacity to be surprised, which is to say that the prior capacity cannot suffice on its own to account for the possibility of encounter (as it necessarily does in Kant). It is […] a capacity that is originally and ontologically receptive: it is received from God, and also from the parents, and the former reception is mediated through the latter” (p. 598). The following passage from Balthasar helps to elucidate the differences between his conception and Kant’s, “it is not thanks to the gracious favor of the ‘I’ that space and the world exist, but thanks to the gracious favor of the ‘Thou.’ And if the ‘I’ is permitted to walk upon the ground of reality and to cross the distances to reach the other, this is due to an original favor bestowed on him, something for which, a priori, the ‘I’ will never find the sufficient reason in himself” (p. 599).[3]

Returning to the “mother’s smile” in connection with providing an alternate response to the Cartesian problem, Schindler notes that in the mother’s gesture of love, the child’s first experience of both himself and the world is at the same time personal and ontological (p. 599). This simultaneity of the event being both personal and ontological is crucial. As Schindler explains, “the true identity that occurs between the soul and being does so at the very same time within the irreducible and generous opposition of freedoms.[4] Indeed, the difference of the opposition makes the unity possible and vice versa; the unity and difference are inseparable and irreducible aspects of the very same event. Moreover, from the beginning […] being has a personal face, and the personal always has an ontological depth” (p. 600).

Secondly, and in a sense, following from what we have just described is Balthasar’s identification of form and freedom in the Gestalt. For Balthasar, form is not an abstract, universal essence, but is rather a concrete Gestalt, “a visible manifestation of non-appearing depths, in which the particular and the universal, the sensible and the supersensible, the outward and the inward, the historical and the transcendent, are all bound together at once” (p. 601). The intelligibility of this Gestalt is found in its irreducible unity—a unity that though composed of parts is not reducible to its parts, and is a unity that “gathers” up the parts into a meaningful (concrete) whole (p. 601). In this account, the soul does not abstract the meaning of concepts according to our mode of knowing. Rather, being a “manifestation of meaning” and external to the soul, it “calls upon the soul to conform itself to it, the concrete Gestalt. That the manifestation of meaning transcends the soul in no way bars its access. Rather, what is required in the act of understanding is the soul’s self-transcendence, “and in this act the difference between spontaneity and receptivity effectively falls away: the soul receives the meaning of the Gestalt by indwelling it, which means by moving ‘spontaneously’ beyond its prior state—or, if you will, its preconceived expectations” (p. 601). Balthasar’s concrete Gestalt is neither Plato’s static Form/Idea, nor the forma of scholasticism, but includes “the concrete shape of a life or the intelligible wholeness of an action or an event” (p. 602).

Having described in more detail Balthasar’s concrete Gestalt, Schindler then returns to the mother’s smile and the child’s awakening of consciousness example. In smiling at her child, the mother presents him “with a Gestalt in which she makes her person accessible to him as a loving gift.” In this gesture, “the whole has a meaning because of ‘something’ that is both not any particular part of what she shows him and at the same time transparently present everywhere within it, namely, herself, i.e., her freedom. […] The intelligibility of this event is thus grounded in this center that is both above and within the sensible phenomena” (p. 602). Here we should note that the smile is an action—a personal invitation that is received only when reciprocated. In fact, the child only receives the “intelligible form” of the smile when he or she smiles—i.e., in the act of smiling him/herself. Here we see the identification of form and freedom—the child’s smile being the reception of the mother’s smile, and the child’s giving back of freedom in receiving the mother’s gift. This then implies that the moment of action comes neither before nor after understanding, but is “an intrinsic part of the understanding itself” (p. 602). Thus, we see in Balthasar’s concrete Gestalt a union in beauty of the two moments of the true and the good as explicated in the Aristotelo-Aquinas tradition—the former being “the soul’s taking the object into itself while the good is the soul’s movement beyond itself toward its object” (pp. 602-3).

Notes
[1] By “Fundamental Theology,” Schindler has in mind that which has as its two central themes revelation and the credibility of revelation (see footnote 2, p. 588).
[2] As cited in Schindler, p. 598, Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Movement Toward God,” in Explorations in Theology, vol. 3, Creator Spirit (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 15-55.
[3] As cited in Schindler, p. 599, Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Movement Toward God,” p. 16.
[4] Here “opposition” simply indicates that the two freedoms “face” each other.

Having summarized Schindler’s introduction, we now proceed to the first section of his essay. Here Schindler briefly runs through certain crucial epistemologies in order to show how they tend toward immanence. The heart of the matter begins with Plato and the Meno paradox—i.e., that according to Socrates, learning is impossible, as nothing essentially new can be introduced into the soul. In other words, the bottom line is that in Plato’s account, reason cannot be taken by surprise because the soul already possess what it knows and must simply recollect that knowledge. As Schindler provocatively puts it, “reason can have access to what transcends it only if it is already built into reason, which means only if it does not in fact transcend reason” (p. 592).

Schindler then turns to Aristotle, whose “epistemology” when its all said and done results in the same problem (in spite of its empirical flavor). For Aristotle, the particulars can only be learned on the basis of a universal, which is already known (p. 592). As Schindler explains, for Aristotle, knowledge is “an actualization of the soul. Every actualization presupposes not only a general potentiality for knowledge, but a specific potential for this particular actuality. But to be disposed, of course, presupposes the actuality itself. Thus, act is prior to potency. The soul cannot take into itself in other words, anything that it does not already have “space” for, a prior disposition for. […] If reason were able to know something, it would after all already have the capacity for it, and the capacity is derivative of the completed act. […] Any apparent surprise turns out to be nothing more than an unfolding of the soul’s already latent potential. Whatever the human soul knows is necessarily humanly knowable” (pp. 592-93).

According to Schindler, Aquinas as well does not escape these difficulties. Aquinas’ definition of truth offered in De Veritate is adequatio intellectus rei (p. 593). Though of course presenting only a summary version for the present purposes of his essay, Schindler explains that in Thomas’ view, “insofar as the adequatio is a joining of two terms, the object’s measure must be accommodated by the soul, and is therefore to that extent determined by the soul’s intrinsic capacities” (p. 593). As Aquinas himself says, “the fulfillment of every motion or operation lies in its end. The motion of the cognitive power, however, is terminated in the soul. For the known must be in the knower according to the mode of the knower” (De Veritate, 1.2). For Aquinas, truth must agree with or “fit” the intellect—i.e., it must harmonize with the intellect’s own structure in order to be true (p. 593). More could be said, but I shall for brevity’s sake move on to Schindler’s summary of modern epistemologies, which in contrast with the former, attempt to do way with what Schindler positively refers to as a “certain open ‘undecidedness’ at the deepest level of the question of reason’s relation to its objects” (p. 594).

With Descartes, we have the principle that ideas are true to the degree that they can be derived from reason itself (p. 594). Stated from another angle, the clarity and distinctness of the ideas that Descartes takes to be the criteria of truth comes from the immediacy of their relation to the thinking subject (n. 16, p. 594). Moving quickly to Kant and his critical philosophy, we have the “subject’s conditions of possibility” determined “prior to any encounter with what lies outside of the subject” (p. 595). In other words, that which counts as intelligible is determined by the that which can be received within the understanding’s a priori conditions, and that which transcends these a priori conditions simply cannot be received. What this means is that rather than being that which one understands, the “world” becomes the “mere occasion for understanding” (p. 595). Moreover, the soul is limited to “encountering” only the physical [matter being the activity that the soul receives]; “beyond the physical is nothing but the pure spontaneity of reason” (p. 595). Interestingly, Kant’s experience of the sublime turns out strictly speaking not to be an experience at all. That is, “because the sublime is infinite, it cannot be encountered anywhere in the world, and turns out to be reason’s ‘encounter’ with itself” (pp. 595-96) [!]. Given this construal, it is not surprising that Kant denies the possibility of genuine supernatural revelation—for Kant, one could not recognize the God of revelation as God “unless he corresponded to our a priori notion of what it means to be God. Revelation can be true only if it reveals to us what we already know” (p. 596). So we are back “full-circle” to Meno’s paradox, and we are still faced with the extremely difficult question, “how, indeed, can reason have a capacity for what lies beyond its capacity?” (p. 597). This question, of course, presses us to contemplate the very nature of reason, which no doubt includes all its functions and acts.

Schindler closes this section by pointing out that if reason can understand revelation without doing away with its revelational character, then we must conclude that reason is somehow able to transcend itself. If this is the case, the implications would extend beyond the problems of fundamental theology [1], to more broadly speaking, the problem of knowledge itself, and hence, to philosophy in general.

Note
[1] By “Fundamental Theology,” Schindler has in mind that which has as its two central themes revelation and the credibility of revelation (see footnote 2, p. 588).

As Schindler explains, both theology and philosophy are logoi, i.e., rational discourses about God, and are thus human activities. However, what distinguishes the two is that theology has (or should have) its ultimate foundation “not in reason’s own exigencies” but in revelation—that which transcends human reason. Schindler then presses us to consider whether admitting that revelation transcends the bounds of reason would force us to relegate revelation to the realm of the irrational. We could of course take the alternate route of “reducing revelation to its universally accessible ‘sense,’’ (p. 588); however, revelation is then more or less rendered superfluous. In order avoid the problems inherent in both options, Schindler seeks an analogous understanding of the relationship between revelation and reason, i.e., he wants to find a way to affirm “both the discontinuity of revelation with respect to reason as well as a certain continuity” (p. 589). The path that he carves out is what he calls the “dramatic notion of truth.”

According to Schindler, the present problem of fundamental theology [1] also applies to philosophy. This statement will become clearer as the essay unfolds. Turning first to theology, Schindler says, “we ought to see that the character of theology will be determined to some extent by the view of reason operative within it. If the ‘revelational’ dimension of Christianity remains simply extrinsic to reason, theology will not possess the capacity to see Christianity as an organic whole, but will tend instead to reduce it positivistically to some aspect, for example, to a collection of propositions of faith. It will be unable to penetrate into dogma or reflectively appropriate it but will inevitably collapse into mere history, fideism, biblical positivism, moralism, or a program of social justice and political action. […] To be genuinely contemplative, theology must be what Balthasar has called a ‘seeking theology,’ and this requires taking reason’s needs as in some sense its own” (pp. 589-90).

This of course compels us to consider the nature of reason itself, and whether in regard to the relation between reason and revelation, philosophy has not overstepped its bounds. Philosophy itself, as Schindler points out, is still grappling with the more modest issue of the possibility of obtaining knowledge of the world—not that which transcends the natural order. However, Schindler’s claim is that both quests—knowledge of the natural and knowledge of the supra-natural are not wholly un-related. “[T]here is a certain analogy between reason’s capacity to know the world, which as its ‘other’ lies in some sense beyond reason itself, and its capacity to have access to what transcends it altogether. Moreover, if reason were capable of grasping the altogether transcendent, this would represent its highest act. If the possibility of this act were excluded a priori and as a matter of principle from philosophy’s scope, it would undermine the impulse that all the great thinkers have recognized as reason’s defining feature: an eros ordered to the ultimate, the original, and the comprehensive” (p. 590). In other words, to a priori place a limit marking off that to which reason can strive, will result (as Nietzsche predicts in the context of speaking about love) in reason’s self-destruction or internal demise.

So as to more fully explicate the dramatic notion of truth, Schindler begins by briefly summarizing certain crucial epistemologies in order to show how they tend toward immanence. In the second part of the essay, Schindler presents the principles (mined from Balthasar’s thought) of a dramatic notion of truth. In the third and final section, Schindler explains how this dramatic conception of truth provides a coherent and satisfying way to avoid being pierced by the horns of the dilemma at the basis of fundamental theology, viz., either relegating revelation to the irrational or making it unnecessary by reducing it to that, which is universally accessible.

More to come…

Notes
[1] By “Fundamental Theology,” Schindler has in mind that which has as its two central themes revelation and the credibility of revelation (see footnote 2, p. 588).

(This article first appeared in Communio 31 [Winter 2004]: pp. 587-611)

In jazz, something like square-circles are quite acceptable and even beautiful. Often square-circles are the typical example used to illustrate a contradiction, something to avoid at all costs philosophically speaking. However, in jazz we find chords and scales that are the musical equivalents of square-circles. For example, a C major-minor chord consists of the notes C, E flat, G, and B (natural). Normally, the B which is the 7th tone in a C minor scale would be B flat; however, raising the 7th tone sounds quite beautiful and adds a new dimension to the harmony. The first part (or basic triad) of the chord is minor, but the last part with a raised 7th produces a major (7th) quality—so in essence we have a musical square-circle, as the chord is both major and minor simultaneously. The C harmonic minor scale is the linear expression of the C major-minor chord. This scale is neither simply minor nor simply major but happily both. Again, the sound is quite beautiful and even mysterious as major and minor tonalities are woven together as one though the different sound qualities can be discerned. Other examples could be cited—bi-tonal harmonies such as C/D (C major with a D major chord on top, which could also be expressed as a C major #4, added 9 and 13). Perhaps this is an indication that what we find in music provides a better model for explicating theological and Scriptural ideas (which often contain numerous both/and’s) than say mathematico-scientific analogies.

Below is a summary with added comments here and there of a lecture given by Dr. Peter Enns of Westminster Theological seminary on Chronicles and intrabiblical interpretation.

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When we look at the Bible itself, we see evidence of intrabiblical interpretation. The book of Chronicles is an excellent example of intrabiblical interpretation. Though our (Protestant) canonical order follows the LXX, in the Hebrew Bible the book of Chronicles is last. Chronicles is not simply the “extra stuff” that the Samuel/Kings books failed to use, rather it is a theological statement, a theology. In some respects, Chronicles is a theology of the OT, and that is precisely why it is placed last. In fact, Chronicles something different about the same event. When you compare 2 Samuel 7:16 with 1 Chronicles 17:14, the natural question to ask is, “Whose house/kingdom is in view? Is it David’s or God’s?” Harmonization is a common approach used by many evangelicals to “solve” this “problem.” (Here we might ask as to whether the ancients would even see a problem?) Instead of the harmonization approach, Enns suggests that we should look for theological reasons for why these apparent discrepancies are found. To be sure, it is logically possible for one event to be told from various points of view, yet without contradiction. So instead of harmonization, we might consider exploring the ancient way. Chronicles is a post-exillic book, i.e., it is written after the return from exile. Samuel/Kings is a pre-exillic text. The pre-exillic Israelite world had confidence in David’s everlasting reign. In contrast, the post-exillics came back to a land that God had said that they would have forever—a land now with no king, no temple, no sacrifice, no forgiveness etc. So, as you would imagine, one of the first things they did was to rebuild the temple. Being without a temple in the ancient world was something of a crisis and caused God’s people great confusion and dismay. Given the seriousness of the exile for God’s people, it is rather strange that it is often so quickly dismissed. I Chronicles 17 transfers the ultimate fulfillment of 2 Samuel from the earthly transitory realm and locates it in the unchanging heavenly realm. This is an extremely significant theological point, viz. the emphasis is that God is on the throne. The Israelites have come back after the exile and they are asking, “Are we still the people of God? Is the God of the past still the God of the present even though we do not have what we used to have?” The reason why Chronicles is last in the canon is that it is a statement of Israel’s self-identity in view of their circumstances. This is why it begins with a genealogy, and the first name in the genealogy is Adam. Why Adam? The people want to emphasize that their identity goes back to the very beginning—they are God’s people and have always been God’s people.

Chronicles (and the Scriptures in general) also help us to see that God’s revelation progressed through history. The ultimate basis of hope is based in heaven with the kingdom of God, not with the kingdom of man. In Jesus, the two dimensions are fused such that the kingdom has come with Christ. The “spin” that Chronicles puts on the earlier texts is that we now have to understand our past in light of present circumstances. This is why it is inadequate to look at these texts (Samuel and Chronicles) and ask, “Which is right?” (Interestingly, this is the question of both the modern critic and the fundamentalist). Instead, the biblical question is, “Why are these different accounts given to us?” As Enns points out, Chronicles is one of the most Messianic books in the OT. That is, Messianic in that we are looking for a future that will restore the glories of the past—where a king is on the throne, a priesthood is established, Jerusalem is a safe haven, boundaries are extended, there no threats from the outside, and so on,. This is the Messianic hope of the OT. Christ comes and fills that hope and much, much more.Lastly, Chronicles raises the issue of the relationship between text and event. The whole issue of the relationship between text and event brings us into dialogue with modern biblical scholarship. For example, instead of asking, “What did x actually say, or which of the gospels gets it right,” perhaps a better question is “What is this gospel trying to say?” In other words, we want to consider what each corpus of material is attempting to say. Then we can begin to look at the various points of view and see how they relate. Enns closed the lecture by reminding us that we should also ask, “What does this tell us about what God is like?” Given God’s comfort with history and all its vicissitudes, not to mention that the Bible that we have is that one that God has chosen to give us, we must continually strive to have a doctrine of Scripture that Scripture itself can actually support. All to often we instead find ourselves ardently defending a doctrine of Scripture that fits more comfortably with our modern presuppositions and that in the end that forces us into explaining away what Scripture is actually doing.

As we have observed in previous posts, Heidegger thinks that it is a mistake to understand nihilism as a simply negative consequence of the Enlightenment, as nihilism (or the seeds of nihilism) came much earlier in the Western philosophical tradition. In his essay, “The Word of Nietzsche,” Heidegger interprets Nietzsche as saying that nihilism is a “devaluation of all values.” So Heidegger asks, “What is a value?” Heidegger (interpreting Nietzsche) says, “the essence of a value lies in its being a point-of-view. […] Through the characterization of value as a point-of-view there results one consideration that for Nietzsche’s concept of value is essential: as a point of view, value is posited at any given time by a seeing and for a seeing. This seeing is of such a kind that it sees inasmuch as it has seen, and that it has seen inasmuch as it has set before itself and thus posited what is sighted as a particular something” (pp. 71-72). Heidegger goes on to say that value “counts inasmuch as it posited as that which matters. It is so posited through an aiming at and a looking toward that which has to be reckoned upon” (p. 72). Aim, view, etc., have a meaning that come out of the Greek tradition, viz., a seeing and that which is seen, but the meaning has been transformed from idea (eidos) to perceptio. “All being whatever is a putting forth […] The essence of everything that is—an essence thus possessed of nisus [the impetus to come forward] lays hold of itself in this way and posits for itself an aim in view. That aim provides the perspective that is to be conformed to. The aim in view is value” (p. 72). Moreover, a value is not a phenomenon that arose in the 19th century. Understanding reality in terms of value is a much broader phenomenon. To approach reality from the point of view of value makes reality manipulable. In other words, the world is seen in terms of enhancing our existence. Instead of unleashing Being as being, this approach reduces Being.

Then Heidegger asks, “How does Nietzsche further explain this point of view?” This approach has its root in the “will to power.” For Nietzsche, everything is “will to power.” Heidegger interprets Nietzsche’s will to power as the “will willing itself.” For example, “What the will wills it does not merely strive after as something it does not yet have. What the will wills it has already. For the will wills its will. Its will is what it has willed. The will wills itself. It mounts beyond itself. Accordingly, the will as will wills beyond itself and must at the same time in that way bring itself behind itself and beneath itself” (p. 77). In sum, we might simply say that the will is completely self-reflexive; hence, it wills itself. The nature of a technology-centered rationality is that it has no telos and limit outside itself. In contrast to say the medievals, to be “fully” human is when one’s nature is fulfilled, and this is something that occurs only in glorification or as the medievals would say, in the beatific vision (the point being that the telos transcends the self). The moderns in contrast paint a different picture and say that the self is autonomous, which results in a self that cannot sustain or bear that burden it has created for itself. Enlightenment rationality is in essence completely self-reflexive, and this results in a self that self-destructs.

Heidegger’s next major claim is that truth becomes a function of will to power. “Truth is now, and indeed through an essentially historical origin out of the modes of its essence just mentioned, that which—making stably constant—makes secure the constant reserve, belonging to the sphere from out of which the will to power wills itself” (p. 85) The phrase “constant reserve” is synonymous with “standing reserve” in Heidegger’s essay, “What is metaphysics?” I.e., it is nature understood as material. Truth is not understood as telos, but only as a factor in the unfolding of this self-reflexivity. However, Heidegger wants to leave behind the value talk. “If, however, value does not let Being be Being, does not let it be what it is as Being itself, then this supposed overcoming is above all the consummation of nihilism” (p. 104). So Nietzsche with his revaluation of values culminates nihilism. Thinking in terms of value is a “killing” of the most radical sort. “God is dead, we have killed him.” This is perhaps the most misquoted and misunderstood statement of Nietzsche’s corpus. It is not a rally cry for atheism, rather the idea is that we have killed the ideal whom we thought was God.

How does understanding in terms of value manifest? According to Heidegger, through the forgetfulness of Being and in trying to eliminate the mystery that necessarily faces us in reality. In myth, people want to express being in a straightforward way. Philosophy, however, as Heidegger points out has developed into science (the study of beings as objects) and continues to fragment. So what Heidegger seems to suggest is that the grid that we (in our scientific age) have imposed upon reality in order to understand it has actually obscured reality, i.e., we have constructed and imposed a web of scientific reality so tightly woven that it has become a blindfold through which reality cannot appear. E.g., the will willing itself intends only itself and thus excludes otherness. Heidegger suggests a possible alternative, viz., we must open ourselves up to the mystery of Being. Here again the “clearing” ( = aleithia, i.e., un-concealment) is essential to Heidegger’s discussion. In other words, the clearing is aleithia, which is the clearing of a self-concealment being torn away. Paradoxically, there is an opening or clearing only with an element of obscurity (which is reminiscent of a negative theology move of sorts). Truth (aleithia) here as we have stated in other posts is the non-forgetting—the unconcealment. Aleithia is not a static meaning, but is something dynamic—truth is the stripping away of something from leithia ( = concealment, forgetfulness); hence, it is a dynamic notion.

The insight that Heidegger majors on time and again—there is something—is connected with the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” By asking this very fundamental question, we are in fact listening to Being (as opposed to attempting to master nature). According to Heidegger, the task of thinking is surrender, not mastery. Here is it helpful to contrast Aristotle’s view of being with Heidegger’s view. In Metaphysics Zeta, Aristotle says that all metaphysics is concerned with is “what is being,” and that this is more or less the same as to ask, “what is substance?” Heidegger flatly disagrees. For him, to ask “What is Being?” we would have to ask the poets or simply be silent. With Heidegger, as was the case with the presocratics and even up into the 13th century, mystery held more of a “respected” position. Today, however, this is not the case, as our logico-scientific “stories” more often than not prefer to explain mystery away.

Recently, I have been discussing with a few friends the topic of the divine ideas, the relation of the divine ideas to creation and to our minds and so on. An analogy that came to mind after several conversations on this topic is the following. Perhaps the divine ideas are like jazz “lead sheets,” and our various and multi-layered understandings of them are like the different ways that jazz tunes can be performed. First of all, I should explain what a jazz “lead sheet” is—basically, it is something like a musical score for a classical piece; however, only the melody is written out and chord symbols (not actual notes with specific voicings) are written above each measure giving the pianist or guitarist, as well as the bassist a significant among of creative freedom in performing the tune. With a jazz lead sheet, one is in a sense “tied to” the “score,” (meaning the melody and to a certain extent the harmonic structure, though both can be altered, new chords and notes can be added and subtracted and so on); yet, in other sense, one’s own personality, skill level, and creative sensibilities also come through making each performance something unique (but not unrelated given the “set” structure of the melody and basic harmonic contour). If the divine ideas are conceptual limitations of God’s essence created by God to imitate him in a multitude of diverse ways (perhaps with multi-layered “depths” that we could never exhaust) and to serve as the models of the created order, then perhaps our understanding of the created order is likewise multi-layered and instead of attempting to “get back” to the divine original (in a univocal kind of way and in so doing claiming that true knowledge is only of the universal, thus de-valuing particularity), we are to be more like jazz improvisers and are called to creatively re-interpret God’s various “lead sheets,” which themselves were never meant to produce a one-to-one, univocal meaning in the first place. Just as in no way is it the case that when a jazz piece is performed/interpreted by various musicians from different time periods, a kind of free-for-all takes place in which the “original” melody is somehow destroyed, would it be the case that our interpretations have no strictures whatsoever and no relation to God’s multi-layered ideas. Though it is the case, that each performance is different (one might argue that even with classical music where all the parts are strictly defined and written out, the same piece played by the same group or musician is strictly speaking never played the same way twice), there is a common, yet dynamic range that “grounds” each performance such that the tune is recognizable when played in a wide range of styles (from traditional to more “out” styles). If one simply ignored the melody or distorted it such that it was completely unrecognizable, clearly one is no longer playing the tune in question. Certainly, I am not suggesting that, but I am wondering whether the analogy might be “headed in the right direction” such that both a kind of universality and particularity might be upheld.

Thoughts?

In preparing for my lecture this week on Plato (for an introduction to philosophy course), I was reviewing the famous allegory of the cave from the seventh chapter of the Republic, and was struck by Plato’s emphasis on the explanatory power of narrativity over strict definition. Though there are numerous aspects upon which one could focus in regard to the allegory of the cave, two themes that seem to jump to the surface are Plato’s view of the structure of reality, as well as his take on what true education is.

The allegory is of course quite familiar—the prisoners are chained to their chairs in a subterranean cave such that they can only look straight ahead at the wall directly in front of them. Behind the chained prisoners, we have a fire and between the fire and the bound individuals there is a path along which we find a low wall. Other people are walking down this path, carrying various objects and small statues that can be seen over the top of the wall. What the prisoners see in actually are the shadows of these things projected on the back wall of the cave. Yet, given that this is all that they have ever been exposed to, they take the shadows to be reality. Then one day a prisoner is freed and eventually experiences the real world outside the cave. At first the light hurts his eyes, not being accustomed to its brightness, and he is blinded . Little by little he adjust to the light, first seeing the shadows (outside), then the images of things reflected in water, and eventually the things themselves. Finally, he is able to look at the sun itself. After his experience, he realizes that the shadowy world in which he had lived was unreal, and goes back to the cave to tell the other prisoners of his findings. However, the still bound prisoners do not share his enthusiasm and mock him and eventually want to kill him.

Given Plato’s metaphysics and epistemology, we understand the cave as the world perceived by the senses and its shadows as the things of the world of the senses. The world outside the cave is the true world, the world perceived by the mind, which is also the world of Ideas/Forms. The objects outside the cave symbolize the Ideas/Forms. Lastly, the sun symbolizes the Form of the Good.

Of course as Christians, we would want to reject Plato’s dualism, his negative view of the sense world as quasi-reality, etc.; however, Plato’s view of what true learning or education is and entails, viz., a “conversion” that brings with it a desire for that which is good, true, and beautiful is highly attractive. Education is not mere “information exchange,” as is unfortunately so prevalently taught and modeled today in our universities (and even in seminaries). Rather, true learning involves a passage from darkness to light that changes the whole person. In presenting these truths in the form of narrative, Plato seems to suggest that certain philosophical themes (such as the nature of learning) are best expressed by story or drama and cannot be scientifically or mathematically defined. Plato, who is often labeled a “rationalist,” is certainly not a rationalist of the modernist variety, as he values narrativity, mythic accounts and in so doing allows for mystery.

By Stiv Fleishman

1. Thales: Drowning
2. Parmenides: It wasn’t anything at all
3. Ockham: Cut while shaving
4. Russell: Cut while being shaved by one who did not shave himself
5. Descartes: Stopped thinking
6. Spinoza: Substance abuse
7. Leibniz: Monadnucleosis
8. Darwin: Natural causes
9. Hume: Unnatural causes
10. Kant: Transcendental causes (although it was his own idea)
11. Paley: By design
12. Heidegger: By Dasein
13. Meinong: Climbing accident
14. Neurath: Boating accident
15. G.E. Moore: By his own hand, obviously
16. Sheffer: Stroke
17. Sartre: Nausea
18. Pascal: Became despondent after losing a wager
19. Wittgenstein: Tried to see if death was an experience one lived through. (Alternate: fell off a ladder)
20. Hegel: Collision with owl at dusk

“From the Editor,” Ethics, Volume 104, Number 2 (January 1994), page 225.

http://www.as.miami.edu/phi/jokes.htm

Commenting on John 5:36, “but the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the father has sent me,” Ridderbos says the following in regard to the self-legitimation of Jesus’ greater testimony:

“Jesus bases himself on the ‘works’ that the Father ‘granted’ him ‘to accomplish’ […] this term [works, τα εργα] refers to the content of Jesus’ entire mission, his miracles and his words; for the words, Jesus’ speaking with the authority of God’s Son ‘to make alive’ and ‘to judge,’ also belong to that which the Father has ‘granted’ Jesus (cf. vss. 22, 26, 27). Implied in this, however, is that Jesus’ legitimation does not consist only in something outside his own actions, or in some additional verification from without, as the Jews desired (cf. Mt. 12:28ff.; 16:1ff.; 1 Co. 1:22), something that would furnish to everyone an ‘objective’ proof of his heavenly origin. No person who cannot recognize the work, voice, and revelation of God in Jesus’ work itself will be persuaded of it by some other independent means” (The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary, p. 203; bold added).

This seems to me to be the same point that Calvin and other Dutch Reformed apologists have made in regard to the self-attesting nature of Scripture (though I don’t think that Ridderbos advocates the latter). The self-attestation of Christ and of Scripture seem to go hand in hand and any attempt to appeal to some external authority or additional verification seems to place that thing or person or group of people above the canon or above the God of the canon. Some circles do seem necessary, but not all of them are vicious.

In the second part of his essay, Heidegger addresses the question, “What task is reserved for thinking at the end of philosophy?” The thinking that he has in mind is neither science nor metaphysics, but is something new. “This thinking in question here necessarily falls short of the greatness of the philosophers. It is less than philosophy. Less also because the direct or indirect effect of this thinking on the public in the industrial age, formed by technology and science, is decisively less possible for this thinking than it was for philosophy” (p. 436). So this thinking is something that will appear to us as something very humble. It will not have the grandeur of the philosophy of the past. Moreover, in a technological age, it will seem to have no effect. Nonetheless, it is the highest possibility for human thought.

About what will we be thinking? Here Heidegger writes, “When we ask about the task of thinking, this means in the scope of philosophy to determine that which concerns thinking, is still controversial for thinking, and is the controversy. This is what the word Sache [matter] means in the German language. It designates that with which thinking has to do in the case at hand” (p. 437). Usually this leads us to a certain class of objects (e.g., geometry which thinks about figures). But if we take a certain realm of beings, then this will already be some subordinate mode and not the primordial Being.

On pages 437-440, Heidegger says that both Hegel and Husserl fail to think what comes first. After this discussion, Heidegger gives his own answer, viz., the “clearing,” as to the matter that we must think, “But what remains unthought in the matter of philosophy as well as in its method? Speculative dialectic is a mode in which the matter of philosophy comes to appear of itself and for itself, and thus becomes present [Gegenwart]. Such appearance necessarily occurs in luminosity. Only by virtue of some brightness can what shines show itself, that is, radiate. But brightness in its turn rests upon something open, something free, which it might illuminate here and there, now and then. […] We call this openness that grants a possible letting appear and show ‘clearing’” (p. 441). Past philosophy has been speculative dialectics in which the matter of philosophy comes to appear and becomes present. Those from Plato on, have made things become present to themselves. They let something appear, but there is something that has to precede that presencing. So what Heidegger wants to say is that the philosophers of the past were not getting to the highest things. Something had to make present this presencing—this something is the “clearing which allows the movement of speculative thought to become present in the first place. There must be a brightness, a light to come forth in the clearing. Clearing refers to a clearing in the forest—in the clearing, the light can shine in and things can become present.

The problem in Western philosophy is that it will only allow presencing. The clearing, however, is not a thing; it is the openness that allows the rocks and trees to become present. So Heidegger says, “it is necessary for thinking to become aware of the matter here called clearing. […] What the word designates in the connection we are now thinking, free openness, is a ‘primal phenomenon’” (p. 442). Philosophy as metaphysics is trying to make things present to us and that philosophy has reached its natural end in giving itself over to the sciences. The task now is to abandon that type of philosophy and embrace the clearing. As Heidegger points out, the natural sciences and philosophy depend on this “primal phenomenon,” but they are unable to recognize it because they only think of what is present.

According to Heidegger, only Parmenides thought and spoke of the clearing. Heidegger then quotes Parmenides’ poem, On Nature, where the goddess says, “but you should learn all: the untrembling heart of unconcealment, well-rounded, and also the opinions of mortals who lack the ability to trust what is unconcealed” (p. 444). So the goddess advises Parmenides to learn of the unconcealment [aleithia] and the opinion [doxa] of mortals. Heidegger is interested in the unconcealment which is another way of talking about the clearing. Interestingly, these are both negative terms—they are defined by the absence of something. In other words, the clearing is where the trees are not, and likewise unconcealment is the absence of what conceals. Parmenides, Heidegger thinks, made that unconcealment explicit for thought. However after him, it was covered over and we must make it explicit again.

As mentioned previously, the Greek word aleithia means unconcealment, yet it has come to be translated at “truth.” “Why is aletheia translated with the usual name, with the word ‘truth’? […] Insofar as truth is understood in the traditional ‘natural’ sense as the correspondence of knowledge with beings, demonstrated in beings, but also insofar as truth is interpreted as the certainty of the knowledge of Being, aletheia, unconcealment in the sense of the clearing, may not be equated with truth” (p. 446). Truth for us has become associated with the problem of presencing—“the correspondence of knowledge with beings.” So traditionally understood truth is when the knowledge present correspondes to being. However, this is not what unconcealment is. The word truth cannot be used to describe the clearing. In sum, the task of thinking at the end of philosophy is to make explicit what was explicit at the beginning. For Heidegger, the whole course of Western history from Plato onwards is a progressive concealment of what is truly first—what the Being of beings is—this stems from the attempt to make things present to us. One might even say that by the time we get to Kant, presencing is the only thing that we have. So to overcome this, we have to think of something that is not “presence-able”—something not graspable. We have to think about Being in the sense of clearing—the Being which is also a nothing. The clearing is only recognized by the fact that it excludes certain things—like darkness—so that light can be seen.

Well, I finally made it out to a Starbucks, and am checking my email for the first time in three days. Unpacking is going fairly well execpt for the fact that this is the first time in my life that my body is actually sore from moving (ugh). On the bright side, I now have my own office and it is set up and looks great–with all my book completely organized topically.

Below is a continuation of the Heidegger post with more to come, so long as I can find another Starbucks. I begin teaching my summer course tomorrow night, so I probably won’t post again until Thursday.

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Heidegger begins his essay with two questions: (1) To what extent has philosophy in the present age entered into its end? (2) What task is preserved for philosophy?

Regarding the first question, Heidegger begins by stating what he thinks philosophy (i.e., philosophy of being) has been traditionally in the West. Being in the West has been understood in a particular way, not in the most primordial sense, but instead as “presencing.” In the West, we think about what is present to us. That is, we think that things exist when they are present. So being and presence become inextricably bound together. Plato, according to Heidegger, will talk about the most real things being Forms/Ideas (eidos). This term itself indicates presence, i.e., how something looks. In the essay, Heidegger will explore how is it that this term has come to mean presence. This way of being has conditioned all of Western philosophy and has contributed the end of Western philosophy. Something is, when it is present to me.

According to Heidegger, when “presencing” takes over philosophy then turns into science, i.e., the study of beings, not Being. In “presencing,” instead of seeing what is mysteriously beyond us, we study beings and become natural scientists. Though this process begin in ancient Greece, the movement of philosophy into the natural sciences is now almost complete. Consequently, philosophy in present age is moving into its end. In his essay, “Metaphysics,” Heidegger also takes up a variation on this theme when he says that the sciences are interested in beings and nothing else—i.e., they ignore the nothing. However, as philosophers we want to pay attention to the “nothing else” that lies behind the beings. Interestingly, Heidegger explains, “the sciences still speak about the Being of beings in the unavoidable supposition of their regional categories. They only do not say so. They can deny their provenance from philosophy, but never dispense with it. For in the scientific attitude of the sciences the certification of their birth from philosophy still speaks” (p. 435). So the sciences want to talk about beings but they cannot help to derive beings from Being. Being though is never present; it never appears to us—only beings do; hence, philosophy moves toward science. “The end of philosophy proves to be the triumph of the manipulable arrangement of a scientific-technological world and of the social order proper to this world. The end of philosophy means the beginning of the world civilization that is based upon Western European thinking” (p. 435). So what began as a philosophical position, moved the whole of Western thought toward its end. Then Heidegger asks, “Have we seen every possibility for philosophy in Western history? Is there something that was a first possibility that we have not fully realized?” Heidegger will say that there is another task for philosophy—one concealed in the history of philosophy—because we never realized our task and perhaps at the end this can be made explicit (p. 435). So philosophy has entered into its end (its collapse). Is there still a task for it? Yes. What task is it? This is what he will address in part II. More to come…

We are full-force in process of moving to our first new home (!), so it is likely that I won’t be blogging for a couple of days. Also, we found out today that our DSL connection at the new place will not be connected until Thursday (#@!_^#&!), so I will not have email access ready-at-hand. However, I do plan to slip out to Starbucks or some public place with an internet connection until ours kicks in on Thurs (June 5th). Until then, here’s a marvelous quote to savor by D.C. Schindler–a new favorite thanks to Dr. Michael Hanby.

“The event of revelation [...] can take reason wholly by surprise, even shatter its expectations, demand a rethinking of everything it previously thought from top to bottom, and yet remain perfectly rational [...] on one condition only: that it is the very nature of reason in its normal, everyday constitution, to be taken by surprise.”

D.C. Schindler, “Suprised by Truth: The Drama of Reason in Fundamental [not fundamental-ist] Theology”

Cheers,
Cynthia

Commenting on John 5:24, “Truly, truly I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life,” Ridderbos writes the following:

“for the one who hears his word and believes God who sent him eternal life has already begun, the judgment of God has lost its fearsomeness, and death has been superseded. What makes this pronouncement special is, of course, that the final decision that determines the life and future of human beings and that is spoken of here and in what follows in eschatological language is transferred from the future to the present, in accordance with the word that Jesus speaks as the one sent by the Father and with the answer people give to it. The distinction between present and future is not thereby canceled out […], but eternal life does begin qualitatively in the present. Death also gains a different content than what it usually has for humans: already in this life it is experienced as a passage to true eternal life and thus loses its all-threatening, ultimately critical character for the future. It is no longer ahead of a person but behind him or her” (The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary,p. 197, emphasis added).

Then in the next verse we read, “Truly, truly I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now hear when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live” (John 5:25). Here Ridderbos says that verse 25, though seemingly paradoxical concretizes verse 24, and being “an expression of Jesus’ messianic consciousness, it may perhaps be considered the most powerful pronouncement in John’s Gospel” (Ibid. , p. 197). The dead spoken of here is not a reference only to the future dead, “for the voice of the Son of God that calls the dead to life resounds now. Those who hear his voice will not just live in the future, therefore, but now already they will ‘pass out of death into life,’ delivered from the power of death by the voice that calls them to rise” (cf. 1 Jn 3:14; p. 198; emphases added).

Слава Богу!

Human beings always have access to being because we all live in the world. But how is that world understood? Plato articulates the world in the way that it shows itself to the Greek mindset just as Aquinas did in a way understandable to medievals. Instead of emphasizing these as “mere” subjective interpretations of Being, perhaps we should consider the notion that these are diverse ways of Being showing itself in the conceptual categories of particular historical periods. Since Hegel, there is the attempt to take history seriously (time has entered into being). Taking Hegelian insights to heart, our focus moves from asking which view is superior to how did we get from here to there. In other words, we analyze how human beings have access to reality in various historical phases. Here we might say that since Hegel and with many postmodern thinkers, a fundamental shift has occurred in philosophy. Prior to Hegel, each individual philosophy aimed at the articulation of the truth within a system. That is, they present their account of reality, e.g., St. Thomas,’ Summae. The Hegelian insight is that being cannot be understood outside of time. Thus, with thinkers like Heidegger or Nietzsche we do not find the definitive account of reality, but the unfolding of ideas in history. The point of Heidegger’s version of historicism is to read how Being showed itself in the thought of a particular author. E.g., Heidegger transforms the notion of truth—it is unconcealment (aleithia); yet, truth remains the goal. There is no being outside time; being and time are intertwined. Consequently, to study the Western tradition is to understand its unfolding as a whole.

For Heidegger, “mythos” is the unity of everything (it is not myth in the sense of Zeus et al). Mythos was storytelling, which was truth to the people of the time. In other words, mythos opens up or discloses reality. As Heidegger tells the story of the Western tradition, with Plato, though his dialogues employ mythic accounts, we eventually get myth vs. philosophy, and then narrative vs. philosophy. When Aristotle comes on the scene we get extreme divisions of philosophy into various fields and this continues as the Western tradition unfolds. Then in the Middle Ages, philosophy becomes separated from theology. We see this “splitting” accelerated today in the many divisions simply within philosophy itself. We also see this in other fields such as medicine where we have a different doctor for every part of the body. Thus, there is an extreme division of reality into individual fields in order to master reality. As Heidegger tells the story, philosophy comes to its end because it tries swallow up mystery—an extremely insightful observation. Today we have fallen into the illusion of thinking that we grasp things because things today are so specialized. We have forgotten about the whole because there is no longer any mystery. This is what Heidegger means by philosophy “coming to its end.”

More to come…