- …
ORCID iD
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0039-8453
Academic Researcher
- …
ORCID iD
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0039-8453
Academic Researcher
Independent Researcher in
Philosophy, Theology & The Humanities
Allan M. Savage, D.Th., D.Litt.
Scroll down for a list of 44 publications
by
Allan M. Savage
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1. BOOK
Metropolitan Community Church: An Appraisal of Queer Consciousness and Religious Expression
As a new theory in the humanities and social studies, Queer Theoryis not limited to matters sexual. Queer theory is a broad understanding which encompasses any understanding that is anti-normativity and anti-fixed identity. It is often discussed as identity politics by contemporary academics, philosophers and social commentators. It it within this overall context of identity politics that I discuss the Metropolitan Community Church. Queer Theory needs an antecedent straight theory from which to fashion its alternative perspective. Thus, the MCC needs a theory of straight Western ecclesiology to fashion its alternative perspective. in this sense I content that queer theory presents itself as a negative philosophy, which has ironically been transformed into a positive philosophy, for the purposes of religious inclusion. These essays explore various aspects of this queer understanding, or identity politics, of religious expression.
[pdf download Knowledge Commons]
2. BOOK
Faith and Queer Consciousness: Philosophical Thinking in a New Key
This book offers a series of reflections on queer issues particularly for religiously inclined individuals. These reflections are intended to reduce the tension between one's religious faith and one's sexuality that may be in conflict. It can serve as a "self-help" book for gay individuals or anyone interested in Queer or Gay issues from a philosophical point of view. It is not a commentary or investigation through the social sciences of queer sexuality as a contemporary phenomenon.
[pdf download Internet Archive]
3. BOOK
Faith, Hope and Charity as Character Traits in Adler's Individual Psychology
Part One discusses the Christian virtues in light of Adlerian Psychology. Part Two is an exercise in "critical collaboration" between Allan Savage and Erik Mansager. Plus additional essays in Adlerian Spirituality. (University Press of America, 2003) [Internet Archive]
4. BOOK
The "Avant-Garde" Theology of George Tyrrell
My contention for many years has been that theological problems are first, and principally, philosophical problems and need to be addressed as such. It is unfortunate that, all this time, and in the development of religious ideas in the Western context, the place of philosophy in relation to the theology seems to have been usurped to a great extent by sociology and psychology. I hold that a reasoned philosophy must be a reasoned philosophy, but one that is not necessarily rooted in Greek classical thought.
[pdf download Internet Archive]
5. BOOK
On Posthuman Theism: "God Consciousness" and Leslie Dewart (1921-2009)
This book discusses the philosophy that supports the changing view of theistic belief as it moves from a classical humanist perspective to a posthuman (Dehellenized) point of view. It highlights the phenomenological philosophical attitude to consciousness as proposed by the religious philosopher Leslie Dewart.
[pdf download Internet Archive]
6. BOOK
A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ATTITUDE TO LAW, STATE, AND LAÏCITÉ: Products of Human Consciousness
The world of Platonic idealism will not be satisfactorily imported into the world of phenomenological consciousness. The task of phenomenological philosophers is to return to the interpretation of experience itself and seek to recast meaning not in terms of theoretical idealism, but in terms of existential meaning. The phenomenological philosopher adopts an alternative attitude to interpretation of inherited philosophical concepts. All interpretation necessarily involves achieving an acceptable balance between objective and subjective poles of interpretation. Phenomenology, as posthuman philosophy, is post human in the chronological sense that it transcends the limitations of both renaissance humanism and modern secular humanism by means of the evolution of human consciousness.
[pdf download Internet Archive]
7. BOOK
Philosophy is a Destabilizing Inquiry
I take as a “jumping off place” for this reflection the Conclusion that Werner Brock, (DPhil) made to his lectures published as An Introduction to Contemporary German Philosophy (1935, Cambridge University Press). Following the observation of J. H. Muirhead in the Foreword, that “readers will draw their own conclusions from his presentation of his subject in this book,” I am sufficiently convinced of the merit of Brock’s lectures that I quote the Conclusion in its entirety as a foundation for the philosophical thinking I develop in this brief book.
[pdf download Internet Archive]
8. BOOK
Philosophical Monographs Vol. 1
The essays collected into this volume represent an attempt by the author to philosophize creatively on three different topics; Video Gaming, God, and Philosophical Thought, in light of a posthuman understanding. Each has been written from a “dehellenized” point of view which makes them somewhat unconventional in their construction and presentation.
[pdf download Internet Archive]
9. BOOK
Philosophical Monographs Vol. 2
The essays collected into this volume represent an attempt by the author to philosophize creatively on four topics: Philosophy, Posthumanity, Ecology, and Adlerian Psychology in light of a posthuman understanding. Each has been written from a “dehellenized” point of view which makes them somewhat unconventional in their construction and presentation.
[pdf download Internet Archive]
10. BOOK
Philosophical Memoires: Constructing Christian Theology in the Contemporary World
I discuss my personal process of re-constructing a Christian theology in this book from a subjective point of view. Therefore, by re-constructing a Christian theology I mean engaging dialectically with the world I have inherited and the world that I subsequently create for myself. Within this process, in fact, I am in dialogue with two subjective worlds, as it were. The world that I have inherited is subjectively interpreted; the world I construct is subjectively created. In the process of constructing Christian theology, I contrast contemporary theological understanding to traditional theological understanding that has become inordinately influenced by Hellenistic, or Ancient Greek philosophical understanding. Leslie Dewart’s efforts at dehellenization are an attempt at a new philosophical construction within theological knowledge. Drawing on his insights, I concentrate in this work on the way belief has been shaped by relational, as opposed to merely ideological, forces.
[pdf download Internet Archive]
11. BOOK
Dehellenization and Dr Dewart Revisited
This book is not an introductory text. It presumes some philosophical background and interest in reasoned thought. I have written it as I approach my “retirement years,” as it were, and thus it does not contain reference to the latest scholars who may be writing on this topic. I have reverted, for my own ease of memory, to names with which I was made familiar in my formative philosophical years.
[pdf download Internet Archive]
12. BOOK
A [Doctoral] Dissertation on Phenomenology and Social Construction Within Orthodox Theology
[Sacrae Theologia Doctor (2007) St. Elias School of Orthodox Theology]
Even though philosophy is of secondary importance with Orthodox theology, the philosophical perspective held by the theologian affects the theological interpretation given to experience. The philosophical understanding that supports Western contemporary interpretation and social construction of experience is no longer sustainable given the outdated perspective scholasticism that is dominant in the West. I suggest that an alternative view, a phenomenological method of interpretation, is not only more sustainable for Orthodox theological interpretation but that is reflects more accurately the Patristic perspective upon which Orthodox theology depends.
[pdf download Internet Archive]
13. BOOK
Phenomenological Philosophy and Reconstruction in Western Theism
This book arises from a personal reflection. It is a suggested reconstruction of Christian theism arising out of phenomenological philosophy, which appears to be gaining acceptance in Catholic theological circles since Vatican II. Henri Bergson (1859-1941) has influenced my thinking in this regard. He observes that philosophy is the study of becoming in general and, as a continuation of science, is not a new scholasticism that has grown up during the latter half of the nineteenth century around the physics of Galileo, as the old scholasticism grew up around Aristotle. Although this monograph arises within a particular Catholic theological perspective the ideas and notions discussed, I believe, have significance for an ecumenical Christian theology. This book is based on a phenomenological philosophical reflection, as opposed to a presentation of an uncritical exposé of ideas. That is to say, the ideas I present here have been reflected upon, considered and re-considered.
[pdf download Internet Archive]
14. BOOK
Reconstruction in Western Theism: A Phenomenological Approach
NOTE: This book is a Revised Reprint of the book immediately preceeding and published in the same year.
I have preserved the first-person point of view wherever possible in this edition. Although many individuals have influenced my thinking over the years the appearance of my ideas in print is solely my responsibility. The development of one’s theistic understanding is an intensely personal act of faith. Our understanding of God cannot be identical to our neighbour’s understanding. However, a similarity in understanding that allows for our individual capacity to receive God’s revelation is morally possible. I was conscious of this existential reality as I wrote the book yet I have no expectation that all readers will agree with all that I have said.
[pdf download Internet Archive]
15. BOOK
Beyond the Breakwater: Venturing into Posthuman Philosophical Waters
A presumption I make in this book is that Western philosophy has stagnated. To date, it has failed to achieve sufficient independence from the scientific attitude to attract the attention of the bright minds that contemplate upon the mysteries of life. I hold this perspective to be adequately demonstrated, through the work of Leslie Dewart, to justify accepting it as a point of philosophical fact.
[pdf download Internet Archive]
16. BOOK
Leslie Dewart (1922-2009) Canada's Forgotten Theological Philosopher
In the course of my presentation of Dewart’s philosophy in this book, I shall note particular insights of two other thinkers, whose religious philosophy I accept as dehellenized in Dewart’s meaning of the term. Auguste Sabatier (1839-1901) and Paul Trudinger, (1930-2023) never employ the term as far as I can determine. Both Sabatier and Trudinger base their philosophical interpretation on experience. Both suggest that one must decide against what one had been taught by religious authorities of their day. Trudinger gives examples from his belief in the Christian Creed and Sabatier gives examples from the philosophy and theology of the Church in his time. For Trudinger, the decision against one’s earlier instruction is a “shift in faith,” not a “loss of faith.” For Sabatier, “autonomy, in action, transforms authority by gradually displacing its seat. So much the more does authority contribute to the development of autonomy. From their interaction results the progress of humanity.” To my mind, both philosophical attitudes, Trudinger’s “shift in faith” and Sabatier’s “active autonomy,” are what Dewart describes as dehellenization of the philosophical attitude, in a positive sense. [pdf download Internet Archive]
17. BOOK
The Ecology: A "New to You" View: An Orthodox Theological Ecology
The ideas presented in this book, in fact, are not new. They represent problems arising from the new orientation of the Western World that followed the Great War of 1914-1918. Much contemporary theology still deals with issues that have been identified as "Modernism" by the ecclesiastical authorities of an earlier day. What is new in this book, however, is a phenomenological theological consideration in the context of a contemporary global ecology, and not in the context of the traditional ecclesiastical politics of Eastern and Western Churches.
[pdf download Academia.edu]
18. BOOK
A Future for Disbelief: Philosophy in a Dehellenized Age with Implications for Theology
In this work, the author retraces his philosophical and theological background, sharing with us, essentially, his conclusions with respect to his personal, spiritual journey. Having found himself in a world being propelled forward by social, cultural and religious change and being unsatisfied with the answers provided by his classical formation, he came to find a home in existential, phenomenological philosophy. Within the Western school of scholastic philosophical thought, he viewed the answers to his questions regarding his personal, contemporary experience as rooted in a static past, one with authoritarian answers assumed to be relevant for all time. Influenced by the "ressourcement" partisans of Vatican II as well as by the ‘dehellenization’ of Western philosophy advocated by his teacher and mentor, Leslie Dewart, Savage came to the conclusion of existential phenomenological philosophy providing a method by which his spiritual life was both revitalized and evolutionary. Here he is able to continuously construct his present and future life-world in which are incorporated his relationship with God and with his faith community.
[pdf download Knowledge Commons]
20. BOOK
Reflections on Ecological Philosophy in Light of Dehellenized Western Theism
This book is intended for the serious reader of Western philosophy. It is not an introductory text to philosophical interpretation, but a reflection by a philosopher who accepts that he is living at a threshold of a posthuman philosophical movement in the Anglo-American context. This book has been written from a phenomenological perspective, rather than an ontological perspective rooted in Hellenistic metaphysical philosophy. It is written to illustrate an alternative approach to understanding a contemporary social issue – the treatment of the human environment – from a philosophical perspective rather than from that of the modern sciences. It is divided into two parts that initially may seem unrelated. The first part is an introduction to the background that has given the rationale for writing the second part. Together, from reading both parts, one may recognize that the treatment of the environment must include the spiritual as well as the physical aspect that constitute the human environment. Such is a premise of this book.
[pdf download Academia.edu]
21. BOOK
Theology Outside the Church: Foundations for the 21st Century
The modern discipline of Sociology, as understood in the West, has evolved into a socio-philosophy from within an existential system of theology. Two systems of theology confront one another in the contemporary world, i.e., classical theology based on the authority of Hellenistic philosophy and an existential theology based on the authority of experience. Each discloses methodologies that are opposed to each other as dogma is opposed to modern science. The problems I discuss here concern humanitarian theology and are investigated through the hybrid notion of socio-philosophy, thus they neither belong to sociology alone nor to philosophy alone.
[pdf download Humanities Commons]
22. BOOK
Theology Outside the Church: Foundations for the 21st Century
The purpose of this little book is to view critically the dialectic between two disciplines: philosophy and theology. This book presents a point of departure for reflection for the reader. A long tradition of human reflection records the dialectical relationship between philosophy and theology. By reflecting upon human life and experience in the context of a philosophical and theological relationship humanity has learned something of the divine. Those readers looking for an exhaustive treatment of the philosophical and theological disciplines will not find in this book. Those seeking to discount, debunk or replace theology with a secular philosophy will be disappointed. The aim of this book is not to debunk, defend or criticize either discipline. It is to examine the relationship between philosophy and theology and thereby to develop an understanding that gives meaning to human activity.
[pdf download Knowledge Commons]
23. BOOK
Philosophical Consciousness and Christian Humanity: Five Contemporary Essays
This book is not a set of introductory essays. It has been written with the more seasoned philosopher in mind. I follow Leslie Dewart’s general understanding of consciousness as a means of personal adjustment based upon the unique experience of a human being. He notes that consciousness as “human adjustment differs from the animal kind in that man’s relations to his environment are mediated by a special kind of experience: the sort, as we have seen, that endows him with a sense of selfhood and a sense of reality.” In this book, I contemplate consciousness, or the sense of selfhood and reality, as socio-philosophical phenomena. That is to say that I write each essay from a different perspective of Christian philosophical consciousness. The first essay revolves around certain philosophical insights that have become evident during Vatican II. The second explores some of the thought of Ludwig Feuerbach with respect to the specificity of human consciousness. And the fourth examines the French notion of laïcité, as a positive philosophical concept concerning religious belief as it relates to Gaudium et Spes, the “Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World.” The fifth essay is an application of the preceding essay which deals with one aspect of laïcité abstracted from the notion of secularization current among Western Anglophone philosophers. Each essay pertains to the human existential experience in the 21st Century.
[pdf download Knowledge Commons]
24. ESSAY
The Decline of Ecclesiastical Hellenization and the Rise of Democracy
This is a particular work focusing on an aspect of the Catholic Church in Europe, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, concerning the rise of democracy during the so-called Modernist Crisis. I view the Modernist phenomenon as an historical lens through which to understand the politics, often characterized by artful and dishonest practices, between the Church and the State, and through which to evaluate their polity as a form or constitution of political organization of the Church and the State. Chapter One addresses Modernism as an internal ecclesiastical phenomenon, that is, a movement within the Roman Church but not of the Roman Church. Given that internal movement, in Chapter Two I discuss the resistance of the Church’s aristocratic hierarchy to a developing democracy. In Chapter Three I focus on the contemporary period and discuss a philosophical and theological issue related to Modernism, that was ultimately derived from it, but was unknown to the Modernists themselves. That is, the phenomenon of modern French laïcité which has appeared as a development of the the Catholic religious experience following upon the evolution of the separation of the between Church and State.
[pdf download Knowledge Commons]
25. ESSAY
A CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND HUMAN SPECIFICITY
After a general philosophical introduction that outlines my current thinking, I advance the premise that the inverse of traditional Western philosophical understanding, that is, that the concept of divinity as uniquely created through human culture denotes the specific unique status of humanity, and is sustainable in light of contemporary phenomenological philosophy. Readers expecting a conventional treatment of divinity will be disappointed. I present an unconventional philosophical perspective which may cause many readers to reevaluate philosophically the role of a divine presence in the affairs of humanity. [pdf download Humanities Commons]
26. ESSAY
HUMAN NATURE: 20th Century Philosophy in a new Key
This essay is a précis (for which I take full responsibility) of Chapters One and Two of Leslie Dewart’s seminal book consisting of Nine Chapters. The perspective he presented here, to my mind, sets a fresh intellectual trajectory for philosophical contemplation. Written towards the end of the 20th century the book is not an easy read, but since it introduces an alternative and refreshing philosophical interpretation, I offer this précis in the hope that it may inspire readers to read the entire book in the context of the 21st Century experience. His “single mosaic” is not the unified intellectual fruit of classical Western philosophy, but rather is an insightful statement of the alternatives (described in the epilogue of the book) consciously available to the human species of the future.
[pdf download Knowledge Commons]
27. BOOK
A Christian Phenomenological Culture: A "New to You" Matrix
This essay is a précis (for which I take full responsibility) of Chapters One and Two of Leslie Dewart’s seminal book consisting of Nine Chapters. The perspective he presented here, to my mind, sets a fresh intellectual trajectory for philosophical contemplation. Written towards the end of the 20th century the book is not an easy read, but since it introduces an alternative and refreshing philosophical interpretation, I offer this précis in the hope that it may inspire readers to read the entire book in the context of the 21st Century experience. His “single mosaic” is not the unified intellectual fruit of classical Western philosophy, but rather is an insightful statement of the alternatives (described in the epilogue of the book) consciously available to the human species of the future.
[pdf download Knowledge Commons]
28. ESSAY
Secular Polity at Vatican II
This article concludes with the following observations. First, there is a demonstrable shift from monarchical government to democratic governance in the Church as a product of the evolution of ecclesial polity. But it must be acknowledged the secular polity is incompatible with divinely inspired government as is most evident from a phenomenological philosophical perspective. Secondly, from this same perspective, it appears that the traditional monarchical understanding of the Church’s presence in a future world will not be sustainable. That is to say that, ironically, the Church’s polity may “evolve” to its previous pre-Constantinian status and engage life alongside political organizations fashioned through humanitarian values.
[pdf download Knowledge Commons]
29. ESSAY
A Monograph on “Laïcité”: A Phenomenological Perspective
My intention in this brief monograph is to stimulate a re-assessment of laïcité by philosophers and theologians, particularly within the Anglophone academic world. Often the term is understood by Anglophones not quite as accurately as its French advocates intend. The translated texts are copied from the official French Government website, as indicated, and they are supportive of my philosophical perspective. I understand laïcité as a positive concept, that when properly understood, is not an adversary of religious belief. Laïcité is an evolving concept, not a static one, and it is philosophically contingent upon a societal consciousness of the place of religion in the world.
[pdf download Humanities Commons]
30. ESSAY
GAUDIUM ET SPES and LAÏCITÉ: A Philosophical Understanding in Anticipation of Posthumanity
My intention in this brief monograph is to stimulate a re-assessment of laïcité by philosophers and theologians, particularly within the Anglophone academic world. Often the term is understood by Anglophones not quite as accurately as its French advocates intend. The translated texts are copied from the official French Government website, as indicated, and they are supportive of my philosophical perspective. I understand laïcité as a positive concept, that when properly understood, is not an adversary of religious belief. Laïcité is an evolving concept, not a static one, and it is philosophically contingent upon a societal consciousness of the place of religion in the world.
[pdf download Knowledge Commons]
31. ESSAY
Creed of Life as Realized Through Books Reviews
This book is a compendium of book reviews reflecting my “Creed of Life.” The fact is that my Creed of Life has been fashioned through these authors, as well as others not mentioned here, whose works were personally important to me and significant to my intellectual development. This list is continually being lengthened as authors, living or dead and previously unknown to me, are added. Only authors profoundly influencing my Creed of Life are mentioned here. Other authors, whose works were interesting, but not highly influential, were rejected for purposes of this account. My rejection of them, however, is no judgment on their significance in the formation of a Creed of Life by other individuals. The authors I have selected were significant in my work as a theologian whose task is to interpret doctrine and religious belief to the faithful. The point of departure for an exposé of my Creed of Life is the interpretive shift that occurred in the doctrinal and pastoral documents issued by the Second Vatican Council. To my way of thinking, hidden in the doctrinal and pastoral philosophical interpretations by the Council’s theologians and philosophers are significant resources for philosophical and theological reflection on the fashioning of a personal Creed of Life. It has been my experience, arising from conciliar doctrinal and pastoral interpretation, that a contemporary approach towards self-knowledge as well as an entry into and a deeper appreciation of contemporary wisdom may be established. The reader will appreciate that these reviews may be identified with the various moments of my intellectual discontinuity with the past when I, in effect, “stopped believing that, and began believing this.” The books reviewed here, written by others, and the books that I have written reflect these moments.
[pdf download Knowledge Commons]
32. Book
Critical Thinkers on the Threshold of Posthumanity
Cover: 2006 Trafford Edition - Out of Print
In this book I contemplate the possibility of posthuman philosophy within the religious and theological schools of thought. In doing this, I do not focus on the traditional philosophical humanism which characterizes the scholastic and neo-scholastic approach within Western philosophy. Rather, I focus on a dehellenized philosophical way of thinking that, I hold, characterizes the thresholds of a new philosophical consciousness. That is to say, the Hellenistic philosophical principles that support Western humanism, are not used to support my understanding of a philosophy appropriate to posthumanity. My views have changed. Having begun as an existential philosopher, with a view to evolving into a posthuman philosopher, I evaluate aspects of the philosophical consciousness of William Gladstone (1809-1898) politician and George Tyrrell (1861-1909) theologian in terms of both humanism and posthumanism from a phenomenological philosophical perspective. I realize that the phenomenological notion of humanity (in contrast to the classical idea of humanism) may not be adequately grasped by all philosophers. It seems to me that although many professionals appear to be somewhat conversant with general philosophical and theological notions that are pertinent to humanity, they nonetheless are struggling to clarify their understanding of an emerging posthuman philosophy. Yet, despite the growing popularity of research into posthumanism in academia, most academics, have but a general and somewhat sketchy knowledge of the significance of posthuman philosophy. Not all research into posthumanity is undertaken as philosophy. But rather most research is undertaken as a dramatic exercise of human imagination or of fantastic reasoning. Thus, it is understandable that some researchers lack an adequate philosophical vocabulary to express their thoughts for a philosophy on the threshold of posthumanity.
[pdf download Knowledge Commons]
33. Book
A Phenomenological Understanding of Certain Liturgical Texts
The Collect is the opening presidential prayer of the RomanCatholic and Anglican Eucharistic liturgies. This is a study that discloses an understanding of the texts in contrast to an interpretation of the texts. The latter employs theoretical models of interpretation, whereas phenomenological philosophy emphasizes an existential understanding of the texts rather than a theoretical interpretation of the texts. It is not so much how we accurately we interpret the texts theoretically but rather how authentically we understand the text vis-à-vis our experience.
(University Press of America, 2001)
34. Book
Leslie Dewart (1922-2009) Canada's Forgotten Theological Philosopher: A Review of his Major Works
In the course of my presentation of Dewart’s philosophy in this book, I shall note particular insights of two other thinkers, whose religious philosophy I accept as dehellenized in Dewart’s meaning of the term. Auguste Sabatier (1839-1901) and Paul Trudinger, (1930-) never employ the term as far as I can determine. Both Sabatier and Trudinger base their philosophical interpretation on experience. Both suggest that one must decide against what one had been taught by religious authorities of their day. Trudinger gives examples from his belief in the Christian Creed and Sabatier gives examples from the philosophy and theology of the Church in his time. For Trudinger, the decision against one’s earlier instruction is a “shift in faith,” not a “loss of faith.” For Sabatier, “autonomy, in action, transforms authority by gradually displacing its seat. So much the more does authority contribute to the development of autonomy. From their interaction results the progress of humanity.” To my mind, both philosophical attitudes, Trudinger’s “shift in faith” and Sabatier’s “active autonomy,” are what Dewart describes as dehellenization of the philosophical attitude, in a positive sense. [pdf download Knowledge Commons]
35. ESSAY
Theological Reflections on E. O. Wilson's "Consilience" [Reprinted]
This book is a tease, an exciting read, and makes a valuable contribution to the continuing scientific efforts to understand ourselves. However, the book's journalistic style leads the reader, at times, to appreciate its popular rather than scientific character. My theological reflections are more accurately ‘theological reactions.’ They are a more or less impromptu assessment of and reaction to Wilson's ideas.
[pdf download Knowledge Commons]
36. ESSAY
Wholism or Holism in Individual Psychology and Theology [Reprinted]
Psychologists and theologians use the notions of wholism and holism in discussing the individual in a secular and/or religious context. The works of certain Adlerian psychologists show that the terms are neither used nor understood in any conventional manner by these authors. A conventional use of these terms by Adlerian psychologists and phenomenologically-minded theologians could assist in establishing a collaborative approach to understanding the individual in context.
[pdf download Knowledge Commons]
37. ESSAY
The Changing Perspective of Pastoral Practice [Reprinted]
From an ecclesial understanding the term pastor designates a particular office originating in the first generation of the Church Pastors are gifts to the church. The pastoral office derives its purpose and significance from God Its revealing source. The historical ecclesiastical model of pastoral practice requires that a pastor be ordained In order to guide and govern the Christian community, the church. There are no pastors without a flock. Contemporary developments in ecclesial understanding and governance create the opportunity for lay individuals to assist the clergy in pastoral practice. This ecclesial development has implications for the office of pastor and the ministry of the laity. To be faithful to its revealed tradition the ecclesial community must retain the distinction between the ordained and laity in pastoral practice.
[pdf download Knowledge Commons]
38. ESSAY
Social Interest in the Thinking of HRH The Prince of Wales [Reprinted]
The Prince of Wales is a visionary thinker. The Adlerian fifth life task is reflected in his visionary thinking. He seeks to discern meaning in life through the tasks of individual and collective stewardship and spiritual leadership. His vision has the potential to place him among the foremost promoters of social interest in Western culture as it enters the next millennium. In tune with the times, HRH The Prince of Wales will most likely make a positive social contribution to his country and the world. His personal spiritual journey, interpreted in terms of Adlerian principles, suggests this. [pdf download Knowledge Commons]
39. ESSAY
Phenomenology Without Religious Motives: The Philosophical Context of Adler's Individual Psychology [Reprinted]
This essay has several aims. First, it intends to show that Adler was a product of one of the philosophical systems of the time, namely, German existentialism which discusses the existential aspect of Adler’s thinking as a “contextual philosophy.” Such contextual philosophy is determined by the events constituting the individual’s life. Second, phenomenological philosophy throws light on Adler’s Individual Psychology and this takes his work out of its German context as it addresses itself to individual experience. Third, the religious roots of existentialism are a strength, not a liability, in understanding the human condition and ought not to be forgotten by Adlerian psychologists.
[pdf download Knowledge Commons]
40. ESSAY
Alfred Adler's Social Interest: A Holistic Pastoral Psychology [Reprinted]
I argue that Social Interest constitutes and distinguishes our human nature such that Social Interest is more than mere civil association. Social Interest reveals a transcendental understanding in its more developed stages. This transcendental understanding invites an individual to future spiritual development.
[pdf download Knowledge Commons]
41. ESSAY
Future of Traditional Ecclesiology [Reprinted]
Options are needed in the institutional re-ordering of the Eastern and Western Church's ecclesiastical government. There is doubt that the traditional territorial schemata, that is, the status quo of the ecclesiastical understanding of the East and West can continue as the philosophical understanding that supports them evolves from a Hellenistic to a phenomenological perspective. In the future, the “architectural” form of ecclesiastical government most likely will be replaced by an “organic” form of ecclesial governance. The organic form of governance cannot be derived from any pre-existing philosophical or political principle. Organic governance, which is phenomenologically constituted, is based on the natural inclination of the faithful to remain together forming their ecclesial frameworks that are appropriate to the cultural, traditional and economic contexts of public life. Faith communities, will be constituted as living organisms that evolve. They will not be constructed as juridical philosophical or political structures, based on territory, that are meant to exist for all time. The organic church of the future will present the possibility for a new governance model of the faithful to meet its needs as constituted through a phenomenological philosophy, to meet just as the current architectural government was constructed through a classical (Hellenistic) philosophy to meet the needs of that time. [pdf download Knowledge Commons]
42. MTh Thesis
Faith, Hope and Charity: An Adlerian Perspective
This thesis began by reflecting on the experience of contemporary life – on my experience in life in particular. In my reflection it occurred to me that philosophical thinking was gradually being replaced by psychological thinking. In 1991, while on sabbatical in Dublin, my earlier suspicions were confirmed. During the time I spent there my philosophical and theological thinking underwent a process of becoming more critical and, as a result, became more helpful to me. Through this critical and helpful fine turning, as it were, I came to realize that the relationship between culture and belief was undergoing a re-assessment by philosophers and theologians as the Newtonian understanding of the universe and its derivatives were being replaced by dialectical notions less dependent fixed on traditional philosophical concepts. To me it was becoming clear that psychology was gradually replacing philosophy and this led me to appreciate a new intellectual approach in the interpretation of Catholic theological concepts. I concluded that faith, from an Adlerian perspective may be understood as a pastoral theological attitude arising out of an innate disposition described by Alfred Adler as social interest; Gemeinschaftsgefühl. Faith, traditionally considered as capable of “moving mountains” may now be understood as a creative power exercised by healthy individuals living in community. Similarly, hope finds its realization, not in a future idealized world, but in one’s present existence of a higher social interest cultivated on the part of the individual. Following Adler’s insights, charity being out-ward directed strengthens co-operation and reduces competition among individuals living in community.
[pdf download Knowledge Commons]
43. S.T.D. Thesis
Phenomenology and Social Construction within Orthodox Theology
Even though philosophy is of secondary importance within Orthodox theology, the philosophical perspective held by the theologian affects the theological interpretation given to experience. The philosophical understanding that supports Western contemporary interpretation and social construction of experience is no longer sustainable given the outdated scholastic perspective that is dominant in the West. I suggest that an alternative view, a phenomenological method of interpretation, is not only more sustainable for Orthodox theological interpretation but that it reflects more accurately the Patristic perspective upon which Orthodox theology depends. To demonstrate this, I investigate two contemporary Orthodox theological issues, Ecology and Canon Law, from a phenomenological perspective. Within these topics I investigate language as participatory, not descriptive; epistemology as being, not knowing; and interpretation as continual, not fixed. For reasons summarized in Part Three of the Dissertation I conclude that a phenomenological philosophical approach is proper for the interpretation of Orthodox theology. Avoiding the scholastic perspective, the phenomenological approach prevents misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the Orthodox religious experience. Misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the Orthodox religious experience is avoided through the proper social construction of the ecclesia that mediates and provides the locus for Orthodox theological understanding.
[pdf download Knowledge Commons]
44. Book
The Catholic Faith and the Social Consruction of Religion: With Particular Attention to the Quebec Experience
This book presents an understanding of the social construction of religious activity from both a phenomenological philosophical point of view and the traditional point of view; readers can expect to be presented with arguments favouring both perspectives. Being faithful to the Catholic tradition, both authors express their personal convictions. Both have interests in the flow of civilization, especially as it pertains to the place of faith, religion, politics, and a variety of social phenomena, including economics, culture, gender, ethnicity, the family, money, power, property as articulated throughout history.
(Westbow Press, 2011)FURTHER INFORMATION
Leslie Dewart (1922-2009)
Complete overhaul of Roman Catholicism is proposed by Prof. Leslie Dewart in a new book, Religion, Language and Truth. Dewart, 47, teaches philosophy at St. Michael's College of the University of Toronto and has already made a name with an earlier book, The Future of Belief, published in 1966, which claims that there is no fixed truth. Dewart now argues that people's religious beliefs are determined by their language.
© 1970 Toronto Star
RECENT BOOK REVIEWS
Scroll down for the review.
1. BEYOND THE SEA: NAVIGATING BIOSHOCK - Felan Parker & Jessica Aldred
2. POSTHUMANISM: A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED - Peter Mahon
3. PHILOSOPHY THROUGH VIDEO GAMES - Jon Cogburn & Mark Silcox
4. I AM NOT A BRAIN - Markus Gabriel
5. DOING PHILOSOPHY: From Common Curiosity to Logical Reasoning - Timothy Williamson
6. TECHNOLOGY AND THE VIRTUES: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting - Shannon Vallor
7. JOURNEYS: The Impact of Personal Experience on Religious Thought - Gregory Baum (editor)
8. HUME'S CHALLENGE AND THE RENEWAL OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY - Leslie Dewart
9. AN INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY GERMAN PHILOSOPHY - Werner Brock
10. THE RIGHTS REVOLUTION - Michael Ignatieff
11. MODERNISM: Its Failures and Its Fruits - Maude D. Petre
12. THE UNIVERSITY OUTSIDE STATE CONTROL - John Kersey
13. PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE HUMAN SCIENCES - Stephan Strasser
14. A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE - Charles Davis
15. THE GRAVE OF GOD - Robert Adolfs
16. SHADOWS IN THE CAVE - Mario Valdes
Review 1. BEYOND THE SEA: NAVIGATING BIOSHOCK - Felan Parker & Jessica Aldred
Judging by the book’s index and the copious notes and references this book is clearly intended as an academic text. The ample detail in some of the essays about the plot, purpose and criticism of Bioshock will appeal to those who know the series well. But I am a philosopher, not a gamer. While philosophizing about gaming, I thought about how the various aspects of posthuman humanity have made themselves explicit in gaming and if these aspects of posthuman humanity concealed any philosophical unity behind their creations. (In general philosophical activity, in contrast to gaming activity, has purposes that are non-manipulative, and as such does not directly change the experienced world.) I suggest that the reader may want to keep in mind this “Player’s Creed” while assessing my review/critique of Beyond the Sea: Navigating Bioshock.
I make the gaming world. There is no overall system which determines what I make.
I choose what kind of world I want to make. My actions show what things I regard as valuable.
I create value and do not participate in value already given.
I make what order there is. I am not made by it. I am independent, not bound by any dependence more powerful than myself.
I am free because what happens in the world depends on me; not a providence beyond my control.
My fate is in my hands. I, and only I, create history.*
*Cf. Grant, George P. (1966:40) Philosophy in the Mass Age, Copp Clarke Publishing.
I cannot look back upon the gaming life as others of a certain age may be inclined to do as “anything other than exaggerated nostalgia or bemused dismissal” (Keogh). I read this collection of essays conscious that I have never played video games of any sort. I believe, however, that a philosophical inquiry into the games and their construction might yield some unifying factors concerning the notion of posthuman humanity that has developed within the games via Western technology. Thus, I put emphasis on the subjectivity, not the objectivity, of game interpretation as it developed in new directions. My review accepts the political and social themes of gaming in this particular set of games as representative of the themes of present gaming culture. I concentrate on those issues that impinge on the understanding of the human player engaging with the game. (Other reviewers will no doubt make other choices.) There are, to my mind, philosophical presumptions in the development of video games which are rooted in Hellenic philosophy, and I question their appropriateness for the posthuman player. Programming catering to an earlier consumer logic, has come of age and is “self-evidently worthy of study to those outside the field,” (Parker & Aldred) thus providing a much-needed renewal of critical perspectives involving interdisciplinary conversations – particularly with respect to what it means to be human. More than the game’s status in a hypercapitalist industry, the game’s conception of the human player invites philosophical discussion. As Parker and Aldred state: “Issues of power, identity, and representation relating to gender, race, secularity and class run through the book, and this by editorial design.” (Brown’s essay which appears later in this collection is of particular importance in laying out some pertinent philosophical perspectives that may be used to question the underlying presumptions and ideologies that characterize the notion of the human being.)
Part One: Unity and Metamorphosis: Making and Braking Family Bonds in Bioshock.
The philosophy of Ayn Rand, identified as “Objectivist philosophy,” is introduced into the collection describing “a capitalist society free of religious and government interference, where any citizen could achieve for their own gain, rather than for the altruistic fulfillment of the wants of others” (Strang). This resembles Marx’s understanding of the proletariat as accounted by Grant. “The proletariat consists of those who have no creative responsibility for the society through their work, because they do not own the means of production with which they have to work. They are employees serving the private interests of their employers” (George Grant, 1966:63, "Philosophy in the Mass Age.") Such an objectivist philosophy is rooted in Hellenic ideals that have been modernized and often without their limitations for the current context being recognized. Many theories constituting understanding the human being, including feminist psychoanalysis, continue this objectivist approach and may present a “deployment of a specific analytical instrument across a body of video games that reveal a cultural problematic unfolding across media” at large (Vanderhoef & Payne). Because of this objectivist philosophy the theme of “co-creation” is inadequately developed in posthuman gaming which continues to rely on a classical understanding of the person. In classical philosophy humans can be nothing but “creatures” of a transcendent creator-God, characteristic of the Judaic, Islamic and Christian tradition. There is much food for thought in preparation for the posthuman future of gaming as it tries to solve the tension that now exists “between wanting to constrain and protect the game experience for the player, versus opening up the experience to co-creation with the player” (Schrier). Co-creation, as an approach to game programming, cannot but result in novel interpretation, I suggest. The opening essay in Part Two in this collection has attempted a “queer” interpretation of game programming, where “queer” is in opposition to heteronormativity in sexual matters and “does not necessarily refer to a particular gender or sexuality, though it often does” (Mejeur).
Part Two: To Seduce the Ear and Delight the Spirit: Bioshock, Gender, and Sexuality.
Although some research into heteronormativity is occurring, “a reconsideration of the familiar is just what queer theory, particularly as applied to game studies, needs right now” (Mejeur). Game programming requires a philosophy that enlightens programmers who struggle in constructing games based on current social conventions to hold the illusion of gaming together. Lacking such a philosophy of creativity, “Bioshock proves itself unable to fully rupture the frames of both gametime and reproduction, leaving us bound once again to a repeatable, recognizable future” (Youngblood). Following the mind of the religious philosopher Leslie Dewart, I suggest that a recognizable future of gaming activity is to be expected because the classical philosophy that underpins game programming remains operative. What goes unrecognized here is the static ideology of Hellenic (Platonic) philosophy that limits the options of authentic co-creativity in the gaming experience. These hidden Hellenic philosophical roots are forces that facilitate “the repeated inability of games to imagine plots outside the existing structures that have governed game design for years” (Youngblood). A critical philosophical interpretation may allow for radically and distinctively new endings for gaming’s posthuman experience. The highly relevant topic of violence as part of gaming is critiqued in one essay in the collection via “a subjectivity,” that is, another way of identifying the gamer. From the point of the view of the player and the programmer, violence manifests “the paranoia of political structures, the constant need to control all resources, to stop rebellions, to prompt fear about violence while mobilizing sanctioned institutions of violence” (Ante-Contreras). Given that gaming will most likely continue to be influential in understanding humanity it needs an adequate philosophy of interpretation of what humanity is to assess correctly the violence done to humans by paranoid humans in the posthuman age.
Part Three: The Flesh Becomes Clay: Technology, Humanity, and Embodiment in Bioshock.
Posthumanism “takes the position that actions of both human and nonhuman entities affect situation outcomes, often in ways one might not expect,” (Henthorn). A concern for posthuman interpretation of the games’ outcomes, as I see it, is that classical humanism has not been adequately understood or explained from a phenomenological point of view so as to act satisfactorily as a basis for posthuman understanding. That is, there is little in contemporary philosophy to definitely specify (or to achieve consensus) in what it means to be a human being, from which posthuman thought may draw, outside the foundational thought of ancient Greek philosophy. This leads Henthorn to observe that when “posthuman analysis does not accept the border between human and machine, and instead critiques the structures that maintain humanity in the face of a progressively posthuman world;” I question what concept of humanity is being maintained – one that is classical or one that is fictional? Or, in George Grant’s phraseology, what human concept discloses “the progressive incarnation of reason?” If indeed, reason specifies what it means to be human ("Philosophy in the Mass Age," 1966:vi). The philosophical ideas expressed in current gaming programming lead me to affirm that many gaming programmers continue to create architectural backdrops that extend “ideas pursued by a particular scientific paradigm effective during the first half of the twentieth century” (Schott). Thus, it follows that an alternative philosophical understanding has the potential to take game programming into new paradigms of postmodern experience — including what it means to be human without technological intervention, but merely in a context that is no longer classical, but techno-digital. However, it may be safely said that currently the status of humanity is in a quandary as it transitions from an enlightenment humanism to posthumanism. “The human in relation to Bioshock 2 is a decaying, undead thing that continues to act on the world despite it being no more important or powerful than anything else it is relating to” (Kunzelman). But this decaying, undead thing is a product of science fiction need not remain the standard. A new conception of humanity, without technological addition, but rather interpreted through a dehellenized philosophy may afford a more positive set of optional endings to gaming activity. Naturally, this interpretation would require any philosophy of what it is “to be,” in the Western sense, to re-examine itself in light of the non-western cultural philosophies of the human experience.
Part Four: There’s Always a City: The Many Histories of Bioshock.
Gaming predominately incorporates the American political experience. “These failed utopias [Rapture and Columbia] were created during periods of social and political transition in America” (Zaidan). Hers is an historical interpretation which accounts for “how we got here,” through exploring player biases, not simply rehearsing a chronology of events. A challenge for the future presented by the essays in this collection might be how to explain an authentic human presence in a posthuman world that has been altered by technology. What might then result, then, is a game catering less to science fiction and more to philosophy and afford more of a “globalized” experience open to the player, since philosophical thinking is a habit natural to the human, not requiring a Western intellectual framework. This is not an impossibility since the game experience, “holds the potential to incite player reflection upon their role as citizens and about their own agency and choices of the doomed yet timeless worlds of Rapture and Columbia” (Zaidan). Game design need not confine itself to the inspiration that arises from Western technological philosophical interpretation. Rather, there is potential for a game programming theme to be presented as floating “in a quantum state, in which its definition remains simultaneously unclear and has the seeds of its failure as well as the seeds of its success inbuilt” (Fuchs). Quantum mechanics views the universe as a “wave” function which cannot be experienced at a quantum level, only macroscopically through choices made by the player. Quantum mechanics’ influence notwithstanding, however, current experience is that “the same economic and creative challenges that frustrate characters in [Bioshock and Aliens] are often at work on the very designers, programmers, and producers who bring those games to life” (Arnott).
Part Five: All That’s Left Is the Choosing: Rethinking Agency in Bioshock and Beyond.
Those who programme games differ from those who author books. The task of the authors of books is to make their readers subject to them and to the books’ plot in order to evoke a critical reflection from the plot, or simply to provide entertainment. In gaming, however, “the challenge for developers is to find a space for critical games in an industry that is driven by player demands” (Thorne). The “involved” choices on the part of the player ultimately result in “the ever-fluctuating definition of the human” (Brown) which often departs significantly from traditional Western understanding. “Humanity has been called an inherited deposit, and we only become "fully" human as we make that deposit our own” [my emphasis] (George Grant, 1966:2, "Philosophy in the Mass Age." Copp Clarke Publishing). While this perspective may be tenable in Modernity, it is likely not to be so in the Posthuman age. The reason for this, I suggest, is that Modernity, and its variants, has not succeeded in satisfactorily specifying (identifying) what is to be human. Thus, some philosophical work remains to be done before Posthuman gaming can accept a specificity of the human as the foundation upon which to design its games. (Perhaps, to be human means to lack, or defy, such specificity.) From my point of view, as in the initial age of the computer in this age of gaming, “garbage in: garbage out” remains a force that cannot be ignored except to the players’ and game’s peril. Improvement (not progress) is required and is, in fact, built into the gaming experience. Improvement, being built-in to the experience, begs the moral question of a human definition. “The fact that players do not have consistent agency or control over the character or gameplay does not limit play or meaning – in fact, it defines them” (Wysocki & Brey). Hence the need for an appropriate interpretive philosophy of gaming as this collection of essays demonstrates.WORLDCAT Link: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1099930915
Review 2. POSTHUMANISM: A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED - Peter Mahon
Like all worthwhile traditional travel guides not all the sights available are covered in one tour – just the most significant – leaving us to explore the side streets on our own. Mahon’s guide highlights the various sights of interest for the contemporary philosophical inquirer whose vision has been whetted to explore further what Mahon has introduced in this deeply researched and copiously noted book. My review is limited to a few observations that from my perspective I hope will encourage others to consider his research. It is not the last word on posthumanism, as he has noted, but is certainly cutting-edge thought, as I understand him.
There is more that constitutes us humans than just ourselves, as traditionally understood from a classical Western philosophy, if Mahon’s exposé of “concrete” posthumanism is correct. Religion, politics and philosophy are being rewritten as we enter the posthuman stage of an evolutionary process, he has suggested. In this evolutionary process, his “unit of analysis” is “humans + tools,” not just humans. In analyzing this unit, he has placed emphasis on the boundary between “human” and “tools,” which is increasingly becoming blurred. What is significant is that such blurring of boundaries (not merely a shifting of boundaries) opens the possibility for us to do consciously, in the posthuman stage of evolution, what we thought nature did unconsciously in the classical stage of evolution. In short, we as “humans + tools” consciously direct our evolution in the posthuman world. That is one conclusion I draw from his essay. Secondly, the unit “humans + tools” constitutes a changed status (within a philosophical point of view) of human beings from that of being mere creatures of another entity or entities to being “co-creators” of themselves.
Active engagement, not passive representationalism, is the key here as I understand Mahon. He writes: “I have been endeavouring to give you a concrete sense of posthumanism that actively seeks to avoid getting stuck at the superficial level of ‘representations’ or ‘images’ or ‘metaphors’ of science and technology through an insistence on engaging actively with actual techno-scientific developments and research” (p. 155). Representations, images and metaphors constitute the classical philosophical perspective, (inspired by Hellenic philosophy) whereas, engaging actively with actual techno-scientific developments and research characterize the posthuman context (inspired by attempts at existential dehellenization) as I see it.
Has he succeeded with this guide? I asked myself this question in preparing this review. What overall success there may be that I do not know. But he has succeeded in clarifying for me some of the same issues that I had been pondering. The follow-up question (to myself since I am retired and no longer engaged in active teaching) was: So, what’s next? To write this review I answered. On the presumption that a review is to assist the potential reader in making a decision for or against reading a book, I offer the following suggestions to potential readers. 1) Readers and future reviewers should note the subjunctive tense throughout the guide – nothing is truly fixed and options remain. 2) Brush up on classical or humanist philosophical concepts (if needed) to bring Mahon’s understanding of concrete posthumanism into sharper relief. 3) Heed his advice to persevere with the difficult concepts he discusses; the more information the better the understanding. 4) Read this guide as the author’s attempt to put order into chaos – which was the same purpose made by classicists at their particular stage of human evolutionary self-knowledge. 5) Mahon’s presentation of concrete posthumanism suggests engaging techno-scientific “reality.” Deeper probing and further clarification are needed into techno-scientific reality in the critical style of Leslie Dewart, particularly for the more philosophically minded reader, which considers the possibility of reality “beyond being.” In critiquing our Hellenic heritage Dewart has suggested that “being” and “reality” are not always to be identified. Reality may be conceived of as that which is somehow “beyond being,” and not being itself, which to my mind is characteristic of a posthuman stage of self-knowledge. As I understand him then, “to be, or not to be (human),” characterizes the posthuman context that his guide encourages us to navigate.
WORLDCAT: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1123964502
Review 3. PHILOSOPHY THROUGH VIDEO GAMES - Jon Cogburn & Mark Silcox
Clearly this book is intended for professional academics. However, it can serve as a point of departure to introduce anyone knowledgeable about the gaming phenomenon but lacking a philosophical background the book serves it purpose well in this regard.
I came across the book by happenstance and was captured by the authors' approach from the beginning especially since I am totally unfamiliar with the genesis of the contemporary gaming phenomenon. In light of gaming’s popular interest, I did expect more than one philosophical review for the book on Amazon. But perhaps that speaks to the status of philosophy in contemporary North American culture. In their Preface the authors note that not all individuals are philosophically inclined and state clearly that they draw upon the resources of Western philosophy, i.e., the analytical tradition. Although, as I read through the chapters there seemed to be moments when a phenomenological understanding (not phenomenalism) was given some expression. This review is from the point of view of a phenomenological philosopher and hopefully my observations will bring out some valued differing approaches to the interpretation between the analytic and phenomenological (Continental) ways of thinking. Naturally, not all that could be said, has been said in this review.
Chapter One, I, Player: The Puzzle of Personal Identity (MMORPGs and Virtual Communities) discusses personal identity through statements about the person, rather than inquiring into the constitution of the person as a living organism. The authors “focus on issues about the metaphysical status of the self that arise specifically in the status of video games.” For the phenomenologist, the problem here is the same for the analytical philosopher, i.e., does the metaphysical status of the self always equate to the person? Rather than an epistemological approach to this problem the phenomenologist properly focuses on human understanding as a psychological phenomenon but interpreted philosophically. That is to say, where the epistemologist encounters a puzzle in life, the phenomenologist encounters the mystery of life. While both approaches are grounded in individual experience, a Hellenic-grounded interpretive philosophy may not be the only viewpoint for a satisfactory personal understanding. A phenomenological philosophy of consciousness interprets the individual’s “life in progress,” not a static “state” in life. Gaming has the potential to disclose a philosophical anthropology of the person, not only a philosophy of human functional abilities, it seems to me.
Chapter Two, The Game Inside the Mind, the Mind Inside the Game (The Nintendo Wii Gaming Console) discusses the “tools” of gaming in light of the unsatisfactory theory of phenomenalism. The authors suggest that enactivism as a theory is the better approach, thus remaining within the Hellenic epistemological tradition which attempts to ascertain the manner in which experience represents the way things are in themselves. The phenomenologist attempts to disclose the way things are in the experience of the person, but through the medium of consciousness, not the classical perspective of knowledge. Hence, the phenomenologist (a philosopher of the mind) attempts to transcend the limitations of analytic philosophy by identifying a different starting point for reflection, rather than develop further the scientific one that remains dominant in Western culture. The phenomenological starting point of conscious interpretation has been influenced more by Continental philosophy than by scientific methodology.
Chapter Three, “Realistic Blood and Gore”: Do Violent Games Make Violent Gamers? (First Person Shooters) discusses the heritage of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical understandings in approaching the design of games, particularly with respect to violence. The authors’ Hellenic and thus Christian interpretation makes their conclusions and preferences predictable concerning the ethical norms to be considered when designing games. (I wonder: Is there any significance to be drawn that Chapter Three ends with a “Concluding Homily,” and Chapter Seven with “The Games We Choose;” whereas all the other chapters, save Chapter Four which has no “Conclusion,” end simply with “Conclusions?”)
Chapter Four, Games and God’s Goodness (World-Builder and Tycoon Games) clearly reveals the traditional approach to understanding God within Western culture with all its attending problems and contradictions. The authors, being analytical philosophers, accept reason as the faculty that specifies the living organism as a person – an epistemological perspective rooted in classical philosophy. Many phenomenologists however, consider possessing a self-reflexive function of consciousness as specifying the living organism as a person – a psychological perspective considered philosophically, not scientifically. Here the focus is on the person; not on principles or propositions of knowledge. Terminating their discussion, the lesson to be learned the authors state is that to understand God even as “a being with unimaginably vast knowledge, power, and goodness, decisions about when and how to interfere with the natural order…,” would have to be atrociously difficult and demanding. The phenomenologist does not understand such difficulties arising from God interfering with the natural order, but such difficulties arise from our self-conscious relationships within the natural order.
Chapter Five, The Metaphysics of Interactive Art (Puzzle and Adventure Games) hint, as I see it, at a phenomenological understanding which is not evident in the classical heritage of Western philosophy. That is, the creative participation of the observer in what is observed is a novel perspective with no antecedent in Hellenic philosophy. This changes the overall paradigm from a purely Hellenic one, where Fate rules the day, to a phenomenological one, where humans contribute to the determination of their future. The authors speak of “The Objectivity Argument,” which is an active process and not to be confused with “objectivism” which is an ideal concept. (When philosophizing in English, individuals often confuse “- ity” words with “-ism” words. Although addressing the same phenomenon, they do not always mean the same. Consider this statement: “I respect your nationality, but I am suspicious of your nationalism.” In short, the latter is less than the former and can be interpreted negatively.) Such distinction is often not clearly made or understood by contemporary philosophers. The objectivity argument attaches to the person, not an external norm. In fact, I can learn much from understanding “your personal psychology” (p. 95). In short, for the phenomenologist intersubjectivity (an activity) replaces external norms (objective ideals). Drawing on Stanley Fish the authors speak of a player’s actions and decisions understood as “coconstituting the work of art” (p.100).
Chapter Six, Artificial and Human Intelligence (Single-Player RPGs) treats of AI in the context of time. Predictably, a Hellenist approach to time is accepted without question. That is, time is linear, not cyclic. Philosophically, cyclic time has no beginning, nor ending as linear time does. As well, the correspondence theory of truth is accepted as the norm. In explaining the development of CRUM (Computational-Representational Understanding of Mind), it is presumed that the rules of the English language (or Western idiom, if you prefer) are operative and these have contributed the basics of a “computer language.” The discussion of the phenomenon is undertaken from this perspective. Given that the ontic culture of the West and not a phenomenological culture has given rise to computer science, this is not surprising. After acknowledging that the “flexible adaptive behavior characteristic of human cognition,” to use the authors’ words, is an activity, not a fixed reality, the authors then ironically enter on a discussion of “fixing” the content of thought. For the contemporary philosopher content is dynamic, not fixed. Flexible adaptive behavior has not, to date at least, been replicated by computers as I understand. At present, most phenomenologists do not hold out any expectation that a non-living entity ever will spontaneously “adapt” itself to its environment. The “I’m sorry, Dave I can’t do that” remark of 2001 Space Odyssey fame remains in the imagination and as a puzzle to the analytical philosopher. It presents, however, as a possible mystery for the contemporary philosopher who questions the “fixity” of content.
The final chapter, Epilogue: Video Games and the Meaning of Life sums up the whole thrust of the authors' purpose which, as I understand it, is to investigate the games as a means to introduce philosophical thinking. This enterprise has considered only the Western analytical perspective, which is not surprising since it is highly doubtful that the computer phenomenon could have arisen in any context but the Western scientific tradition with its roots in Hellenic philosophy. This is similar to the notion that atheism could only have arisen with the Christian culture, (due to modern scientific criticism) and not in any phenomenological culture. As it reads the whole book, to my mind, is an exercise in the “fine tuning” approach to classical philosophy through gaming. But there is more. The authors remark: “And perhaps, therefore, philosophical questions about the meaning of life are better re-phrased as questions about what we are to do with ourselves after we have finished all of our basic, unalterable biological 'functions'” (p. 154). I would suggest that this to do question could be replaced with a who am I question inquiring into the meaning of life. That is, the awareness of the time spent gaming is not as revealing philosophically in the contemporary culture as who is gaming, it would seem to me.
WORLDCAT: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/443273453
Review 4. I AM NOT A BRAIN - Markus Gabriel
Gabriel’s book amounts to presenting a threshold for posthuman philosophical thinking. My review of his book is limited to one significant concept: that of human consciousness and his contribution to the understanding of it. Since it is after consciousness that all else about the human mind follows. Referring to human consciousness, he writes: “We are once again dealing here with old wine in new bottles” (p. 130). Consciousness belongs to the mind and, there is no objective solution to the question of the mind, according to Gabriel. However, subjectively, the mind has the capacity to create self-conceptions, he maintains. Besides material realities, “immaterial realities” also exist which cannot be investigated by the natural sciences. Nor do these immaterial realities belong to another world. They are part of this world. Here his perspective is reminiscent of that of the religious philosopher Leslie Dewart (1922-2009) that is, only one world exists, the one in which we currently live. There is no other transcendent world affording humanity a better life. Gabriel’s view supports a duality since he holds that there is no mind (an immaterial thing) without a brain (a material thing). Mind and brain are distinguishable but not separable. From my perspective this view amounts to a preservation (although altered) of Hellenic metaphysical principles, interpreted phenomenologically, which are often somewhat forgotten in philosophical modernity. Gabriel insists that contemporary sciences cannot avoid a role for philosophy in the interpretation of technological social experience.
Influenced by the Continental tradition in philosophy, Gabriel distinguishes philosophy of mind from philosophy of consciousness. He avoids thinking of the mind as equivalent to consciousness. However, such equivalency often occurs in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition. Unless I have misread him, he thinks it is a misguided effort to view the human mental life as part of the directionless world of the natural sciences. Human mental life always has motives, and he suggests that Hellenic inspired metaphysics (reflecting fixed conceptual thinking) is “just another form of superstitious overextension of one model of explanation over the entirety of the cosmos, a modern form of mythology” (p. 44).
Knowing that we are conscious is not equivalent to knowing what consciousness is (a moment’s reflection confirms this) and human consciousness allows the human being the unique capacity to say “I.” However, philosophically, the form needed to manifest this “I” is not clearly understood, as yet. In our techno-scientific age the classical concept “animal rationale” no longer specifies the human being as it had in classical times, he believes. Rather, the human being is a conscious “self” that knows some “thing” and able to communicate it to others and to itself. Leslie Dewart had much the same notion earlier when he distinguished between thematic and non-thematic speech. “We shall see, however, that the ability to experience meaningfully is the basis of self-definition, the creation of a self that is meaningful to itself: therefore, the thematic consciousness may be best referred to as the “self-defining” mode of conscious life” (Evolution and Consciousness, 1989:118). Gabriel’s whole work is a subtle appeal to retain philosophy (of consciousness) as a legitimate concern in itself, countering the tendency in the English-speaking world to “outsource philosophical issues from philosophy to natural science, which is a fundamental mistake” (p. 176). Gabriel notes that a “realm of ends” specifies the conscious human being. In the “realm of ends” there is no Hellenic sense of an “essence” needed for a posthuman understanding of the individual human being. Rather, “the realm of ends is a system of concepts that we use to make conscious human action understandable to ourselves,” which is characteristic of posthumanity, according to my view (p. 206).
While I am sympathetic to Gabriel’s overall assessment of the current situation constituting a threshold of posthumanism, I cannot help but conclude that he is less optimistic about the future of posthumanity than I am. “It is a central task of philosophy to work on an avatar of the human mind that can be led into the field, in the sense of an ideology critique, against the empty promises of a post-human age” (p. 220).
WORLDCAT Link: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1086008629
Review 5. DOING PHILOSOPHY: From Common Curiosity to Logical Reasoning - Timothy Williamson
As I evaluate it, this is a book on ideas philosophically understood from within the analytic tradition which seriously tries to avoid the ultimate problem of skepticism. In the Introduction, Williamson notes Descartes’ “radical strategy of doubting what he could, including the whole world outside his mind, in order to rebuild science on the firm foundation of the few remaining certainties” (p. 1). Prior to its professional status in academia, philosophy is already in our lives both in trivial and important ways, the author maintains. In other words, philosophy is there as common sense. With this observation, I have no quarrel. But having read Leslie Dewart’s (1922-2009) Hume’s Challenge and the Renewal of Modern Philosophy, published posthumously, I do not concur with many of Williamson’s conclusions, since I am a philosopher who favours the phenomenological perspective. He seems to be aware of such a possibility when he writes: “Many philosophers will hate my picture of how to do philosophy. I leave the reader to judge” (p. 5).
I am not convinced that contemporary philosophy’s stagnated state (as Dewart described it) is solved by philosophers embracing the “appropriate scientific methods for answering their questions, which are questions of the traditional ambitious kind” (p. 5). However, that is not to say that the book is not worth the time taken to read it. In Chapter 9 Williamson advances some ways by which philosophy “learns from elsewhere” (p.111). He concludes the book by expressing the hope that philosophical methods can be improved, (possibly with the assistance of a future reader of his essay) just as scientific methods have been improved over time. I share a similar hope for the development of philosophy but, in light of Dewart’s insights, my hope is expressed through a phenomenological perspective.
WORLDCAT Link: (review form failure; 21 October, 2019)
Review 6. TECHNOLOGY AND THE VIRTUES: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting - Shannon Vallor
"While ethics has always been embedded in technological contexts, humans have, until very recently, been the primary authors of their moral choices, and the consequences of those choices were usually restricted to impacts on individual or local group welfare. Today, however, our aggregated moral choices in technological contexts routinely impact the well-being of people on the other side of the planet, a staggering number of other species and whole generations not yet born" (p. 2).
Comment: I fail to understand how in their “aggregated moral choices” humans do not remain primary authors of their moral choices, as the author seems to imply.
"Such complexities [of the contemporary human situation] remind us that predicting the general shape of tomorrow’s innovations is not in fact, our biggest challenge: far harder, and more significant, is the job of figuring out what we will do with these technologies once we have them, and what they will do with us. This cannot be done without attending to a host of interrelated political, cultural, economic, environmental, and historical factors that co-direct human innovation and practice" [Vallor’s emphasis] (p. 5).
Comment: The human being is the only consciously deliberate agent in moral ethical situations. I see no reason to posit any conscious deliberate initiative on the part of human environmental factors, unless it is another human being, of course. I distinguish between movement and action. While parts of the human being’s environment may move, they do not consciously act.
"To see what relational understanding is and why it is essential to the practice of moral self-cultivation, it helps to recognize how classical virtue traditions conceive of the human person: namely, as a relational being, someone whose identity is formed through a network of relationships. While some virtue traditions regard one’s relationships with other living things, objects, places, or deities as part of one’s unique identity, all virtue traditions acknowledge the central importance of our formative relationships with other human beings: our family, friends, neighbors, citizens, teachers, leaders, and models" [Vallor’s emphasis] (p.76).
Comment: It is a bit of a stretch, I think, in classical virtue ethics to recognize a person’s identity as formed by relationships. (Perhaps she means character.) Her suggestion of relational formation, in fact, belongs to a distinct contemporary philosophy of consciousness that requires the rejection of the Hellenic concepts of essence and existence, characteristic of classical philosophy in forming personal identity.
In discussing “competing visions of human (or Posthuman) flourishing” on page 231 she opts not to expand on the clarification and significant difference between “transhumanism” and “a coming posthuman era” for reasons of space, as she admits in an endnote (p. 277).
"For reasons of space, this [discussion] passes over two key distinctions: the first is between the strong transhumanist program for enhancement and more modest enhancement goals that stop short of radical alteration of the human species. The second is the distinction between “transhuman” and “posthuman” philosophies; some transhumanists explicitly call for a posthuman future, that is, one in which humanity has been surpassed. Others … reject the notion of leaving our humanity behind, while simultaneously regarding the nature of our humanity as almost infinitely malleable. Finally, there are uses of “posthuman” in literary theory, gender, and culture studies … that do not map neatly onto the transhumanist conception of posthumanity. Both distinctions are important but fluid and contested.
Comment: To my mind, the very reasons she cites to pass over in this distinction ought to merit a deeper and more serious study. A return to classical principles, no matter how successfully “tweaked” cannot do justice to this contemporary philosophical question. Our human experience already indicates that the products of digital technology are not impossible fictions in many cases, and we experience the boundaries of such products, not as “fixed” (as is Hellenistic philosophy) but as fluid (as in phenomenological philosophy). Since human experience has not ceased to evolve, since the human being has not ceased to evolve, it follows that to be human is not a static state, but a fluid one subject to further evolutionary development — under the direction of a conscious human agent — unlike the previous process of pre-conscious biological evolution. That is to say, “pre-conscious humanity” has been surpassed by a “conscious humanity,” which, potentially, may be surpassed again in the future. That there are “uses of ‘posthuman’ in literary theory. gender, and culture studies” that do not integrate well with our present understanding is no reason to opt for an up-dating of the classics, and ignore an alternate philosophical approach that is likely to be more fitting to contemporary human experience. To my mind, this rejection is a major weakness of Vallor’s approach to the whole challenge of technology and virtues, which cannot be resolved by a sophisticated return to traditional thinking.
A note for the theologically erudite: It might be advantageous to view Vallor’s perspective at updating classical philosophy to meet the experience of the contemporary age as similar to that of the ecclesiastical authorities’ attempt at updating theology to meet the experience of the modern world. They opted for an aggiornamento, rather than for a ressourcement of philosophical thought, the latter being the more resourceful.
WORLDCAT Link: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1073862407
Review 7. JOURNEYS: The Impact of Personal Experience on Religious Thought - Gregory Baum
With the presumption that our early biography influences the way we think, Baum sought to detect “styles of theology” of notable American theologians during the 1970’s. Their stories, he writes, “persuade us that hidden in our lives are resources for reflection.” (p.2) This review supports Baum’s conclusion. However, the reader may assess the stories differently.
Being somewhat a contemporary of these individuals, I read with interest their recollection of their histories that unfolded within the American religious context of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Studying theology in the 1960’s and 1970’s, I was aware, by reputation only, of some of the individuals Baum invited to tell their story. However, I had read the work of some others more deeply as part of my own course work.
I first became aware of Baum’s book in 2019, not knowing it existed since 1975. I discovered a common attitude in the contributors’ accounts which I believe reflected accurately “the sign of the times,” to use a Vatican II expression. Despite their diverse starting points, they all arrived at the common conclusion of looking towards an optimistic future that, in fact, never materialized, or at least has yet to unfold. I summarize their respective visions below.
- Gregory Baum’s personal revelation was that, after a traditional education: “The study of this ‘new’ theology was extraordinarily liberating for me. I readily followed the new theological perspective, even though it took me many years to work out for myself the many implications of the new view point. What was demanded of me was a total rethinking of the theology I had studied: there was not a single topic that remained unaffected by the new perspective. Eventually the very doctrine of God would have to be rethought, for if the divine mystery is present in man’s discovery of herself as situated in the human world, and is operative in man’s ongoing creation of her future, then God is not extrinsic to human life but the gracious presupposition of man’s humanity and hence in no way, however qualified, a possible object of the human mind.” (p.22) Anyone familiar with Leslie Dewart’s perspective on the philosophy of human consciousness will recognize the significance of Baum’s comment.
(Note: Baum died in 2017 at the age of 94. He left the priesthood in 1974 and subsequently married without ecclesiastical permission. In his last book, The Oil Has Not Run Dry he recounts his first homosexual experience at the age of 40.)
- Somewhat naïvely, it seems to me, Rosemary Radford Ruether confirms her tenacity to Catholic Christianity at the end of her story. “Catholicism, for me, is my paradigm for the human dilemma. I relate to it, not as a repository of truth by which to make a fixed identity, but as a terrible example of what we all are. It is in much the same way that I am passionately an American. It is impossible for me to do otherwise. This is my history, my people. It might be more pleasant to be a Quaker or a Canadian, with less time, less opportunity, less power for evil, but perhaps also more dull.” (p. 55) She engaged in an “exciting” life in the Church via women’s studies and related activities.
- Admitting that the American religious and secular loyalty was shaken in his time David J. O’Brien still was able to pen these words. “Throughout my life, people in and out of the Catholic community have constantly helped me to discover unknown parts of myself. I continue to believe that we in the Catholic community could do great work in the world if we could constantly offer one another a challenge and an invitation. The challenge — to change our lives to become more fully a people living for others — and the invitation — to be part of a community of people trying to do the same — both derive from a continued faith in Jesus Christ, whose promises remain ever before us, calling us to be better than we thought we could be, together, all of us, with him.” (p. 85)
- Charles Curran concludes his essay on a personal note after discussing his theological development “in terms of events and the thoughts of others” that had influenced him. (p. 114) Reflecting on his personal situation, he had come to recognize that, “although I am constantly impatient with the rate of change in the Church, the recognition of my own sinfulness and of how slow I am to change has made me more patient (perhaps too patient at times) with regard to progress and change in the Church.” (p. 114) Despite his criticism of the Church he remained a true supporter on a very profound level, but he said that there is a stubbornness in him that also contributes to his willingness to take controversial stands. He sums up his reflection by this significant and psychologically accurate description: “In fact, my own experience in writing this essay has made me even more conscious of the influence that personality, events, personal history, and the thoughts of others have had on my theological development.” (p. 116)
[Note: In 2009, a reviewer for the National Catholic Reporter wrote: “Curran is unusual. Too many scholars serve narrow factional interests, be they national, political, economic or religious, all the while denying that social and political responsibility has anything to do with their pursuit of truth. … Curran, in contrast, takes all these responsibilities seriously.”]
- Monika Hellwig’s participation in a “multidimensional” community gave her an opportunity “to observe some very extraordinary Christians, as well as some of the great European scholars far beyond the small circle [she] met earlier at the Notre Dame Summer School of Theology.” (p.142) This allowed her to draw the conclusion: “When I reflect on what theology is for me now, I realize that first of all it is not a career I have chosen but a task that somehow landed in front of me to be done. Secondly, it is a task that is done primarily from the resources of my own life experience within a great tradition that I am very happy to have internalized, for which I have the deepest affection and respect, and for which I consider myself co-responsible. Beyond that it is a task in which intellectual endeavors are only the tip of the iceberg that shows. The reason I engage in it is mainly that it gives me great satisfaction and that it seems to meet a need as basic as those I set out to meet in Liverpool and had hoped to meet in India. In particular, it seems to me that there is great confusion, uncertainty, and a crisis not only of understanding but also of confidence among Catholics today. I do not think Catholicism is the only way to live. I believe I would have found the same kind of deep-rootedness had I been raised Jewish or Hindu, but of my own tradition I know unfailingly from the inside that it makes total sense. I want to draw on my experience to assure my fellow Catholics that the mandalas do not break.” (p. 145) As I understand her contribution to these essays, ultimately from a small circle of theologians through to a multidimensional religious experience she internalized a larger, but still particular Church.
{Note: Monika Hellwig died in Washington, DC in 2005, aged 75.]
- As an exception to the earlier contributors, Eulalio Baltazar’s piece does not end in a sense of particular community, church or otherwise. His experiences and reflections have brought him to appreciate a sense of transcendence appropriate to the human community. “My present state of philosophical and theological reflection is one of transition from process thought to poetic and mystical thinking. There is profound truth in the saying that a philosopher is a frustrated poet. Having been educated in the West, my thinking has been for the most part scientific, logical, and rational as opposed to the imaginative and poetic ways of Eastern thought. Process thought and philosophy are the products of conceptual, rational, and logical thinking. But reality is deeper than what can be grasped by rational, conceptual, and philosophical thinking. … But today, with the increasing interest in the occult, the mysterious, in the religions of the East, perhaps a theology based on the imagination and expressed in poetic form would be a more effective means of leading the modern mind to a communication with the Transcendent. We must insist here however that Transcendence is not found by an escape from the world, but through the world, and the world where the Transcendent is found is in the suffering, the sick, the oppressed, the exploited, the poor.” (p. 164) Like Baum’s perspective, anyone familiar with Leslie Dewart’s perspective on the philosophy of human consciousness will recognize parallels in his story.
- Andrew Greeley remarked that his accomplishments outlined in this essay are aliquid (something, but not very much) and the things in which he invested his selfhood “have all failed.” With respect to his contribution to religious life he concluded: “My life, as well as my thought, has been empirical, pragmatic, ad hoc. I have thought and lived playing it by ear. When faced with a new opportunity or a new idea or a new project, I have for the most part said, why not? And when it was a question of speaking out or holding my tongue, over the last ten years I have rarely done the latter.” (p. 204) With respect to serving the Church (blemishes and all) he wrote: “I became a sociologist to serve the Church, but it became apparent that I had acquired the skills mostly in vain. The choice was clear: I could go on being a sociologist and become more and more excluded from the Church, or I could give up sociology and come in out of the cold. I said to hell with them.” (p. 193)
[Note: Andrew Greeley died in 2013 at his home in Chicago.]
- Neither a reassessment, nor a deeper investigation into philosophical consciousness is the outcome of Anthony Padovano’s essay. His contemporary and future Church is characterized by poetry, not philosophy. In his acceptance of a poetic Church he does not explicitly deny the existence of a philosophical Church. He writes: “I wrote Free to Be Faithful as a symbol for those who needed symbols to sense their aliveness. In that book, I left forever the Ptolemaic universe and I ended my acceptance of Aristotle as the norm for my thinking. I had no regrets for the passage or the parting nor any remorse for the former association. But I required a freedom not from my past thinking but for my future work. … Fidelity to this task demanded the freedom to make symbols as the rational universe collapsed and to express hope as the Church I once knew died a long overdue death. It was time for the twentieth century to dawn and to enlighten a new Church with its grace. It was time for the Church to go on a journey, with meager means and provisional priorities. It was time to abandon rigidity and to make symbols in the pale light of a new age.” (p. 134) In hindsight and in light of one’s own experience Padovano’s optimism may be questioned as to if it was ever fully realized by a large number of the faithful.
- Gabriel Moran seems to have found a raison d’être outside the theology of institutional Christianity. He appears, in his thinking, not to be that far from the thinking of many 21st Century Christians. “In conclusion of the first part of this essay I wish to note that all three of the [previously mentioned] communal influences come together in the feminist movement. Since the late 1960’s I have been acutely aware that the women’s movement is the key to both the deficiencies of Christian theology and the kind of imagery and language needed in future religious bodies. … In recent years my religious interest has continued to grow, but I am no longer able to call myself a Christian theologian. Not that I became some other kind of theologian or that I joined some other religion. I am a Roman Catholic to the marrow and even if I wished to ‘leave the Church’ (which I don’t) it would take decades of work to do so. Nonetheless, I consider the word theology to be etymologically and historically unsalvageable. I am interested these days in the metaphors, symbolism, imagery, and words that people use in trying to be religious. I find it neither necessary nor helpful to introduce the word theology into the discussion. Many people find my position arbitrary if not unintelligible, but I see no way to explore today’s religious questions within the restrictions of Christian theology.” (p. 244 & 253) Theologians of a certain age (and experience) may view his personal insight into contemporary issues as prophetic.
[Note: Gabriel Moran left the Brothers of the Christian Schools, (De La Salle Brothers) whom he joined in 1954, and was given a release from his religious vows in 1985 by the Holy See. In April 1986 he wed his colleague, Maria Harris, who had left the convent in 1973. They remained married until her death in 2005. In 2020 he was invited to re-join the Brothers as an affiliated member.]
- Interestingly, Richard P. McBrien sates: “I am reasonably certain that I would never have gone into theology had I not been ordained, from the earliest years of my conscious existence, to the Catholic priesthood.” (p. 256) He later explains, “Undoubtedly, my longstanding interest in politics and political philosophy has nourished and sustained my academic and pastoral concern for ecclesiastical reform. If I had an opportunity now to become something other than a theologian, I should probably choose to be a United States senator, a college president, a constitutional lawyer, and a nationally syndicated political columnist, roughly in that order — or any combination thereof.” (p. 269) His dissatisfaction with the ecclesiastical political order (particularly in Catholic universities) prompted him to see a possible solution, not in institutional reform directly, but in reform of the thinking of the theologian. That is, that theologians must think critically and not parrot popular trends in Catholic cultural experience. In conclusion, he writes: “What the theologian — and the systematic theologian in particular — requires is insight, judgment, and decisiveness. The sooner he or she is liberated from the sheer mechanisms of bibliographic exploration, the sooner he or she can do theology. For too long we have celebrated the mechanics (those with wide command of languages and even wider chunks of privacy and free time), and deplored our thinkers. … The systematic thinker, on the other hand, probes, criticizes, diagnoses, and prescribes. And the bureaucracy marginalizes him. … If this situation perdures, the Catholic Church will continue to forfeit the services of some of its most creative people.” (p. 270)
[Note: Fr. Richard Peter McBrien died in 2015.]
Finally, I draw any future reader’s attention to the fact that these authors wrote at a time when two significant events had yet to take place in the Church which subsequently effected the world-wide presence of the Catholic Church. They are the Internet, as a digital cultural phenomenon, and the global media-disseminated sexual scandals of the clergy and religious within the Church. However, whether either of these events would have had an influence on the stories presented here must remain speculation.
WORLDCAT Link: (review form failure; 26 October, 2019)
Review 8. HUME'S CHALLENGE AND THE RENEWAL OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY - Leslie Dewart
This book is a final version of Dewart’s notes prepared for posthumous publication by Cajetan J. Menke (done very faithfully preserving the author’s style of writing as I read Dewart.) This work, to my mind, will be of interest to the seasoned and perhaps disaffected philosopher tired with the variations on a classical theme in Western philosophy. In short, the book is an attempt to be a prelude to a new approach within the Western philosophy of mind. “Representationism,” in which perception transfers the contents of reality into the mind, is rejected as an outdated legacy of ancient Greek philosophy. Rather, Dewart suggests that “the philosophers invented the institution of scholarship ab initio, by taking advantage of the characteristics of the human mind” (p. 91). Based on experience, this results in a contemporary understanding of philosophy to mean using the mind in a disciplined reasoned manner to arrive at a better explanation of human experience. To arrive at a better understanding first requires a probe into the failure of modern philosophy to understand the human mind, followed by an attempt to re-conceive, or re-interpret, contemporary experience without the aid of Greek metaphysics. Like all Dewart’s works, this book is not an easy read. However, perseverance will certainly reveal philosophical insights to the reader’s benefit. As Dewart admits: “Now, if this is true, it follows that, if modern philosophy should manage to re-orient itself, reject representationism, and develop a sound understanding of human nature and its cognitive powers, our culture might conceivably embrace secularity in a consistent and healthy manner and abandon the insanities and idiocies that have been fostered by its confusions about itself and its relationship to the world” (p.203). This investigation into the stagnation of Western philosophy, though not presented as a polished project by Dewart himself, is a valuable contribution within the historic development of Western philosophical thought.
WORLDCAT Link: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/957955542
Review 9. AN INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY GERMAN PHILOSOPHY - Werner Brock
The book consists of three revised lectures originally presented in 1934 which are “contemporary” to that era between the two world wars. An underlying presumption in Brock’s presentation of post-Hegelian German philosophy is that it is “the work of those who felt themselves bound to give the men of their age an interpretation of the world and an explanation of the principles of conduct, and who, for this double purpose, sought after truth” (p. xv). An overall question Brock addresses is whether or not philosophy is but one of the particular schools of thought or is it also universal. He begins by outlining the beginnings of contemporary German philosophy by acknowledging the separation of the sciences in contrast to the philosophy of German Humanism of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This separation led to the insight of the limitation of the separate sciences and the deeper and specialized tasks of philosophy. There is a brief discussion by Brock of the significant contributions by Husserl, Dilthey and Weber to German philosophy at the inauguration of the age of autonomous science. The unique issue and danger of Husserl’s method is that the choice of philosophical problem rests entirely with the individual investigator. From Dilthey’s philosophical fragments he suggests that the self-knowledge of philosophy and all branches of learning are conditioned by historical human life having originated from it and having reacted to it. In the case of Weber, Brock believes a correct interpretation of his perspective is that science does not show the way to true values but offers clarity for choice in human decisions. In short, science can give “no dogmatic or authoritative advice” but it “offers ‘clarity’ in the universal sense that it awakens the feeling of responsibility and respect for the freedom of the individual” (p. 42). The second revised lecture consists of thoughts on Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and their importance for German philosophy in promoting a new understanding of autonomy in the separate sciences. More or less influenced by Nietzsche, he notes the work of Simmel, Scheler, Spengler, and Klages as it reflected the meaning of a philosophy of life in their time. Kierkegaard reflected on the same, Brock maintains, but predominately from a Protestant Christian viewpoint. However, his importance to contemporary German philosophy is as an existential thinker as opposed to an abstract speculator; the abstract speculator neglecting philosophy due to the influence of autonomous science. The third lecture involves a brief investigation of the “philosophical and scholarly culture [that] has seriously declined among the younger generation, especially since 1925” (p. 87). Through the contributions of Jaspers and Heidegger, Brock outlines how they carried the question of the essence and tasks of philosophy a little further, although they do so by different approaches and methodologies. I consider “the forces which must be expected to determine human life in the future” (p. 118) to be playing themselves out in our 21st century global culture. Brock lists them as technique which brings humanity in closer contact than ever before; economic processes which links humanity within a nation and within the world; the single State which internally has power over numberless human beings and externally possess power which cannot be foreseen or directed by any individual; and peoples outside Europe desiring to make their own civilizations effective and independent. Brock concludes that the question that remains unanswered is what will be the role of philosophy in the future. The book contains an annotated bibliography of all the philosophers mentioned in his essays.
WORLDCAT Link: https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/908457
Review 10. THE RIGHTS REVOLUTION - Michael Ignatieff
My review is from an unconventional perspective in that I do not critique the content of these lectures, but rather the philosophical framework that is presupposed, consciously or unconsciously, by Ignatieff in delivering these lectures which were subsequently published in print. There are five lectures in which he has told the (political) history of Canada since the 1960’s through the struggles of different groups of citizens (p. 112). However, to my mind he has actually undertaken a study of the “rights movement” within the State of Canada during that time. The lectures amount to an intellectual movement within the classical philosophical perspective of the West and are presented as if “rights talk” has ideally transformed all of us as to how we think about ourselves as citizens, as men and women, and as parents (p. 1). Ignatieff’s particular philosophical perspective is inadequate, to my mind, for a useful contemporary understanding of what he labels as a “revolution” in our thinking within our life time. One problem in appreciating his perspective is that he presents his ideas within printed lectures. Lectures are a discourse given to an audience, often in a classroom setting, and are intended “for the ear,” and not “for the eye.” That is, from a critical perspective they are to be heard and not read. Lectures, being heard, do not allow for an “on-the-spot” critical re-examination as is possible with a printed text. The interpretation of a lecture as it is being heard most likely will differ somewhat from a lecture as print being critically read. When read, the interpretation is better conducted phenomenologically than classically. I suggest that most readers, not being phenomenological philosophers, will interpret Ignatieff’s political position from the lectures in the perspective within which it was composed, that is, a classical Western philosophical perspective. My suggestion is that, should his political position be interpreted from a phenomenological or Continental perspective, this interpretation will throw a different intellectual light on his insights which may be realized more appropriately in our contemporary global situation. That will allow the reader to conduct a re-assessment of the “rights talk revolution” which occurred since the 1960’s without accepting Ignatieff’s classical conclusions which are in fact predictable in a classical context. Phenomenological conclusions are dynamic and on-going compared with classical conclusions which are static and thus are limited to a “fixed” ideological understanding. Interpreted phenomenologically these lectures afford more intellectual flexibility and novel value than understood from a classical perspective.
Another fact for the reader to understand is that these lectures were printed in the year 2000. (The actual date of the ideas that constitute these lectures must remain unknown.) This is significant because, as I write this review, twenty-one years of political development and human experience have taken place which are not, nor can be, acknowledged in these lectures. In short, the lectures are dated. Yet, they record much that remains pertinent to contemporary human experience and interpretation of political philosophy. A phenomenological philosophical interpretation can appropriately re-contextualize these examples of human experience to the present moment, and new existential insights may be revealed. There are many opportunities for such re-interpretation throughout these lectures but I mention a select few. In discussing the context of Native peoples, the word “Internet” is mentioned only once (unless I have misread the text) as a linkage element introduced by the labour of the secondary possessors of the land, thus giving them a fair claim to the land (p. 123). The significance of this observation of the Internet, to which must be added mass “social” media (in contrast to the “legacy” media) and techno-digital advancements, cannot be satisfactorily interpreted as presented in an inadequate classical garb. However, a phenomenological approach, not being classical, can interpret these developments more appropriately. Another example is that “rights” as a process of engagement is a phenomenological notion, and not an ideology, a classical concept, and is the better interpretive approach to my mind. “The idea of rights implies that my rights are equal to yours,” [p. 55] is a classical philosophical concept that holds little water in phenomenological interpretation, I maintain. The concept of “rights” is a fluid human intellectual construction upon which there is no universal agreement. A phenomenological philosopher reading these lectures will find many similar examples of a narrow, traditional and classical accounting in these lectures of Ignatieff’s “rights talk.” To my mind his concluding paragraph contains a good reason to adopt a phenomenological, as opposed to a classical interpretation, of his “rights talk.” He writes: “So the unity and coherence of a liberal society are not threatened because we come from a thousand different traditions, worship different gods, eat different foods, live in different sections of town, and speak different languages What is required of us is recognition, empathy, and if possible, reconciliation” (p. 141). These latter experiences require an existential philosophical interpretation. To my way of thinking, understanding these lectures traditionally is tantamount to attempting an aggiornamento of classical political values. An aggiornamento of classical values is not adequate to the contemporary task at hand. Rather, I suggest to the reader that nothing less than a ressourcement of the understanding of human nature is needed. Translated into phenomenological terms, this means that not a change in understanding political rights is needed, but a change in attitude in understanding nature of the human being who constructs its “rights talk” such as is not possible in classical understanding. As Leslie Dewart noted: “The phenomenological method is not the diametric opposite of the ontological; it is a more comprehensive one than the latter, whose merits it preserves and whose inadequacies it tries to remedy.”
WORLDCAT Link: https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/237199009
Review 11. MODERNISM: Its Failure and Its Fruits - Maude Petre
Maude Petre’s opening words; “This is a pre-war book; finished and set in type in 1914” tells the reader its topic is free from the intellectual effects of a war-torn Europe. My review is a synopsis of some of the significant points of the Modernist movement in her day. This is the study of a cause or movement in theological thinking that appears to have gone underground as a subject of interest in the contemporary religious world. However, interest remains within some universities and its existential presence is discernable within existential religious practice. In Maude’s words Modernism “was out for the liberation of religious life from the exaggerated claims of religious forms” (p. ix).
Modernism was a movement in the Church, but not a Church movement. Nor was it confined to the Catholic Church. According to Petre the Church exists (politically) to serve religion; religion does not exist to serve the Church. Religion is universal to humanity; whereas the Church is particular to humanity. Modernist theologians sought to defend the Church by methods that did not demand a particular allegiance to traditional Catholic understanding, she concludes.
Charity and the Church’s pastoral concern for “the poor” and the unbeliever, according to Petre, impeded the development of the philosopher and historian within the Church. It thus became a learned movement within the theological schools. However, history shows that its concerns were common among the unlearned long before Modernism received its name. Maude, in her context, acknowledges the problem of the two learnings within Modernism; the secular learning of humanity and the learning of theology.
She selects some representatives of Modernism for consideration who discuss the consciousness of this crisis within particular ecclesiastical corporations as well as the general mass of the Christian faithful. Loisy’s main issue as a participant in the movement was personal in that he was asked to be untrue to his consciousness. George Tyrrell’s main issue as a participant was that he viewed the Church as a means, not an end, to the spiritual life. Modernism, as a movement within but not of the Church, tried to Christianize the emergence of democratic government. As an external political movement, Modernism attempted to advance social progress within society at large. Even though the gospel contains no formal declaration for or against the constitution of society then or in the future, in any case, the Church had to decide if the classic model of government was essential to her own existence, from Petre’s perspective.
Modernism was not a united effort of groups working in concert. It was not a cartel. Rather differing perspectives within the Modernist movement focused on the difficulties between science and the religious understanding of revelation. Church authority is the root problem of the whole modernist controversy in the opinion of Petre.
Modernism has not completely failed, Petre suggests. Rather, Tyrrell’s hope, which was that modernism was in tradition into something else, was showing some signs of life. What is needed, she suggests, is a sound philosophy of rightful authority not antagonistic to the intellectual and social condition of modern humanity. What will a philosophy of rightful authority look like? Maude answers: “Here a certain variety of opinion may prevail, while the actual issue will probably be different from all that has been guessed or predicted” (p. 205).
WORLDCAT Link: https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/877734428
Review 12. THE UNIVERSITY OUTSIDE STATE CONTROL - John Kersey
A Very Helpful Background
This book is a study, at the root, of authority in education and schooling understood in the broadest sense. It discusses issues in the context of Academia as arraigned before the forces of the State, domestically and internationally.
The book is composed of papers written in lecture style which makes for a non-stressful reading experience. Kersey covers the topics clearly and without unnecessary discussion prolonging the points made in presenting a “radical philosophy of education” (p. 23). Where necessary, an historical background is supplied to the issue under discussion in the (then) contemporary context and with an eye to future development.
There are many examples of legal case studies, national and international which are directly and indirectly, related to the tension between established university jurisdictions and a free enterprise philosophy.
After reading this selection of “writings on independent universities, non-traditional education and related matters” it becomes clear that the author is a polymath and his perspectives contain lessons that can be applied to other topics and contexts with similar fruitfulness.
“Education – so much more than mere training – is as much an article of individual faith as is religious belief; it is equally as worthy of treatment with sensitivity and an understanding of the complexity of the issues involved” (p. 104). This quote touching on the spiritual dimension of Kersey’s educational philosophy, finds support in another religious context in which faith and education are addressed. Readers of Maude Petre’s, “Modernism: Its Failures and Its Fruits” will recognize a similar philosophy at work.
My only quibble is with the technical presentation of the book. There is an amateurish look to the interior layout. This is due to what I see as a lack of attention to formatting and standardization of style. However, this does not take away from the insights offered. I have no hesitation in recommending the book to anyone of a libertarian mind.
Interior Notice: "This book is sold on the basis that the author and the University Press derive no monetary profit from it, and the price charged for it reflects solely that established by the publisher to cover the costs of its printing and supply."
Available online at Lulu Publishing
Review 13. PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE HUMAN SCIENCES - Stephan Strasser
This is an unconventional review in that I relate what I have taken away, as a phenomenological philosopher, from an initial reading Strasser’s book. This review is not exhaustive of the contents of the book but highlights only those notions that struck me as particularly significant at this time. Others may discover different “take-aways” as I no doubt will in future readings.
As a discipline phenomenological philosophy treasures “science” in a pre-technological and pre-digital sense, even though the modern sciences, which are dominant in academia today, do not necessarily appreciate phenomenological philosophy. Pre-technological and pre-digital science does not characterize humanity in opposition to nature as some modern sciences do in desiring to overcome the limitations of nature. Phenomenological philosophy recognizes that contemporary philosophers studying human nature somehow change nature as they study it due to an appreciation of human values which determine their choices.
The subject of a phenomenological investigation is the individual who organizes the experience by selecting the data and subsequently participating in the inquiry. Objectivism is an attempt to eliminate the human perspective from what is an anthropological investigation. Objectivity, however, is the qualitative activity of human consciousness positing a transcendent “other” with respect to knowledge. Human consciousness does not simply acquire external ideas, which give facts but no interpretation. Further, interpretation of the facts suggests a secret desire for humanity to be like God therefore there is no need to seek something else beyond external being.
Human consciousness affords a choice for absolute creative freedom (which differs little from divine freedom). Humans intuitively recognize each other’s being, thus pre-dating conceptual thinking which cannot be derived from intuitive thinking. Conceptual thought is derived from reason. Intuitively, humans have a “vision” of the unique presence of the other which transcends the objective experience of their meeting.
Objectivity is a process of discovery by the intellect, whereas objectivism is an invention of the intellect. Objectivity, not objectivism, is necessary for humanity to heighten the development of consciousness and freedom. The process of objectivity, i.e., personally naming an experience, amounts to “a philosophical anthropology on a phenomenological basis” (p. 62). That is to say that one participates in the existence of the other, and shares in the being of the other. Objectivity also includes reflexive knowledge on one’s own being-a-subject. This is not possible except in human consciousness.
The process of human evolution has not yet reached its final term. Present day humanity lives an “ex-animal” life which dominates nature making it subservient to humanity. Humanity gives meaning to nature which is to say that “outside the meaning of being there is no meaning” (p. 213). God, then, has no meaning in a phenomenological philosophical sense since God is not a being.
The plurality of visions in phenomenological philosophy is inevitable. Thus, a single philosophical vision can never supply the norm to judge other visions in a definitive and universal manner. Only particular perspectives exist which account for the differing opinions among philosophers which potentially reveal horizons or visions of higher intelligibility to assist in interpreting the meaning of the human being in the world.
WORLDCAT Link: https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/476934832
Review 14. A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE - Charles Davis
This is a difficult book upon which to write a review. It is a highly personal account of an individual’s faith offered to the public at large in the context of the religious spirit of the times. At the time Davis was a high-profile priest/theologian of the Catholic Church in England. His book is divided into three parts, 1) A Personal Decision, 2) Faith and the Church, and 3) Prospect for the Church. This review covers only issues that relate directly to Davis’ decisions of individual conscience.
“The purpose of this book is to take stock of my present position as a Christian,” he writes (p. 13). He maintains that he is right in deciding to leave the Church because he wanted to remain “faithful to certain positive values” (p. 17). The decision to leave the Church reflected the unhappiness he experienced in the Church. He made the radical decision, in conscience, as a free man. He does not suggest his decision applies to everyone in the Church.
Life in the Church impeded his desire to know, he tells us, since he experienced no intellectual growth there. He could no longer accept the Church’s authoritative profession of faith (p. 42). The issue of clerical celibacy played no direct part in his decision to leave. Faith, not reform, was at the heart of his decision to leave.
His objections to the Church are as a social structure, a visible entity through which the Roman Catholic Church makes its claims, particularly the claim to divine institution. (This perspective most likely accounts for Gregory Baum’s book “The Credibility of the Church Today: A Reply to Charles Davis.”) An eagerness for renewal, not doubt, became clear to him during the time he spent at the Second Vatican Council proceedings which shifted his appreciation of long-held traditional beliefs.
He thus committed himself to Christ as revealed, not as he or anyone else may have conceived him to be (p. 166). But this does not mean he need pay no attention to others in seeking the truth. “Certainly we need to be linked to areas of truth beyond what happens to be personally meaningful and personally liberating to ourselves” (p. 175). These areas of truth are expressed in a Church of renewal, not one of obstruction to the faith. In light of his experience, Davis concludes that “the faith lost by the average man was an imperfect faith, what might be called a cultural faith” (p. 186). This awareness requires a new self-understanding of the faith, both in its internal and external expression, which potentially could bring about a change in its social counterpart, the Church. His vision is yet to be realized from my perspective.
WORLDCAT Link: https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/12369335
Review 15. THE GRAVE OF GOD - Robert Adolfs
“Essentially, the Council was a little more than a professional discussion between administrators of the Church, but popular imagination turned it into a spiritual rebirth of the Church,” writes Adolfs (p. 9).
The Council was an adaptation of the Church to the present, not to its future in the modern world, he maintains, which has yet to be achieved. (That is, the Council attempted to catch up with developments that had already taken place.) The Church viewed itself in the context of a secularism that rejected both myth and metaphysics. The difficulty really is to determine the mode of existence for the Church of the future in a world dominated by science and necessity.
The present social context is a product of revolutions which belong to the past. This present context might be better understood as a “growing estrangement from the traditional patterns of life and thought” (p. 45). Social revolutions belong to politics and science, not to philosophy and theology which evolve through a process of metanoia, that is, thinking differently.
Contemporary patters of life and thought are heavily scientific and technological and they attempt to develop a society in terms of the masses, rather than of individuals, who are in fact responsible for the course of history. The Church is, in fact, outside the forces that are determining the world of the future. Adolfs writes: “If the Church continues to be and to do what she is now and what she has done up till now, then she has no future. She will come more and more to perform functional duties within a social order which is essentially tied to an unchristian ideology. In this way, she will gradually dig her own grave, which will at the same time be the grave of God” (p 84). The movement of Christianity in history illustrates that it cannot be synchronized with secular developments of the future, he contends.
His critique remains legitimate, in light of the times, but one must realize that the book written before the present world-wide sexual scandals of the Church and the World Wide Web and the Internet. Their arrival must, no doubt, be taken into consideration when evaluating his conclusions today.
WORLDCAT Link: https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/556829146
Review 16. SHADOWS IN THE CAVE - Mario Valdes
This book recalls to my mind Leslie Dewart’s remark, “The phenomenological method is not the diametric opposite of the ontological; it is a more comprehensive one than the latter, whose merits it preserves and whose inadequacies it tries to remedy.” To remedy classical literary interpretations is what Valdes is trying to accomplish. However, classical philosophers will find little, if anything, in this book supporting their position.
Valdes’ novel theory of literary criticism (based on Hispanic texts) reflects a new heuristic model of enquiry which allegedly establishes a new literary class and the need to locate it in literary history. He achieves his purpose through both a synchronic analysis and a diachronic analysis within heuristic models of enquiry into a structure of human action. This requires an understanding of history as phenomenologically interpreted. “Experienced reality concerns change and replacement of elements in time in a process we call history (a process that is only discernible from a considerable distance of generations if not of centuries because it is also hypothetical order.) Consequently, we seek to find rules of change concomitant with the assumption that there are constant elements involved [in a structure of action]” (p. 173). This is a thoroughly critical, but not definitive work of philosophy which philosophers of phenomenology will find most helpful. The endnotes provide a valuable wealth of additional information on the phenomenological method and Valdes’ thinking.
WORLDCAT Link: https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/10020704
A Monograph on Laïcité
A Phenomenological Perspective
Posted 6 February, 2022
My intention in this brief monograph is to stimulate a re-assessment of laïcité by philosophers and theologians, particularly within the Anglophone academic world. Often the term is understood by Anglophones not quite as accurately as its French advocates intend. The translated texts are copied from the official French Government website, as indicated, and they are supportive of my philosophical perspective. I understand laïcité as a positive concept, that when properly understood, is not an adversary of religious belief. Laïcité is an evolving concept, not a static one, and it is philosophically contingent upon a societal consciousness of the place of religion in the world.
CONTENTS
Laïcité summarized briefly as understood in this monograph.
Laïcité as particular republican value in contemporary France.
Laïcité viewed from a phenomenological perspective as a cultural phenomenon.
Laïcité an evolving political theology.
Laïcité and the practical workings of its freedoms and prohibitions.
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Laïcité 1
Summarized briefly as understood in this monograph.
This monograph is a presentation of my understanding of the phenomenon of laïcité as it has evolved up to 2021. Throughout this essay I retain the French term because, to date, I have not found an English equivalent that adequately reflects the various and nuanced meanings of the French understanding of the matter. However, the English term secularity, understood as a positive concept, comes closest given my present perspective. To my way of thinking, Albert Keller gives a very satisfactory description upon which the phenomenological philosopher can contemplate. He suggests that laïcité (secularity) may be understood as the whole of human life ceasing "to be determined by religion. The result, secularity, then means independence and adulthood with regard to religion." 2 Laïcité, as a philosophical phenomenon, cannot be adequately understood without knowing the history of its relationship to religion as a societal phenomenon.
Laïcité, as a contemporary political phenomenon, cannot be understood without a critical evaluation of the political development from “Church and State” to that of “Religion and World,” as introduced by Vatican II. 3 The former concerns the the relative political autonomy of the State vis-à-vis the Church, whereas the latter concerns the contemporary moral authority of religion in the world. In the current era, the philosophical contemplation of many phenomenologists has shifted focus from politics to morality in which modern laïcité has its roots. Laïcité, as a moral phenomenon, cannot be examined to see what it is “in itself” without reference to the matrix of human life which constitutes its environment. Like all moral phenomena laïcité needs a concrete context to establish its reality. Just as the reality of justice can only be seen in the actions of a just person and the reality of truth only seen in the actions of a truthful person, etc. Laïcité, like justice and truth, is thus relative to its context in phenomenological philosophy.
Within phenomenological philosophy, laïcité discloses a reconciliation between individual freedoms (which are subjective) with the collective values of a republic (which are objective). This notion was born within the politics of the French Revolution. And it is easy to understand that laïcité could have arisen only within a Christian monarchy. The political rejection of the Western concept of the Divine Right of Kings is an historical confirmation of this simultaneously societal and religious doctrine. The Divine Right of Kings asserted that the monarch was subject to no earthly authority, but derived the right to rule directly from the will of God, and thus was not subject to the will of the people, the aristocracy, or any other estate in the realm, including the church. Interpreted strictly, the Divine Right implied that any attempt to depose the monarchy, or restrict its powers, was contrary to the will of God and could constitute treason. Laïcité, as currently understood, cannot be incorporated into the essence of a monarchical or hierarchical system of thought since it rejects the religious aspect and accepts the neutrality of the State. Laïcité is truly a republican concept that allows monarchy and religion only a celebratory status outside the apparatus of governance. The celebratory status originated with, and is tolerated by, the will of the people.
Laïcité is, at present, applicable only to public officials authoritatively representing the State (an objective notion) and who are in direct contact with the public. The nation (a subjective notion) is free to be religious, unless such “freedom” undermines cohesion and harmony within the State. Otherwise, laïcité does not apply to a nation’s non-administrative culture. Further, laïcité as it applies to public officials in the State and laïcité where it applies in the worlds of national culture may be distinguished as two different philosophical realities. Laïcité in the worlds of national culture, usually where Christianity dominates, means that philosophers may abandon the Hellenic idea of a religious universe such as Thales, a pre-Socratic philosopher (circa 585 B.C.) held, and conceive the world as a particular locus and environment solely of human activity. 4 The abandonment of a religious universe is held by many contemporary philosophers to be a positive decision born of the evolutionary development of human consciousness and existential philosophy. However, in the sense of rejecting or deleting from consciousness, a religious universe and subsequently a religious State, laïcité is considered by many contemporary philosophers and politicians as a negative concept. Yet, properly understood, I maintain that laïcité is a positive notion appropriate to the evolutionary and intellectual maturing of humanity as a species. Concerning the Christian view of secularization, I follow Albert Keller’s observation that “the true relationship between the Christian notion of God and a divinized world is precisely the opposite [of what is traditionally understood]: ‘to Christianize the world means to secularize it.’” 5
As I conceive it, laïcité, as a modern notion, is also a contemporary political theology historically arising out of a pastoral theology that came to formal religious consciousness, perhaps unwittingly so, in the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council. As political theology one might say that laïcité is the practical solution that modern Europe generated in order not to repeat the past and to escape contemporary civil wars over religion. Originating within Christianity the notion of laïcité is a peaceful measure to prevent national civil strife over religion. It is a theology that continues to evolve from the classical power of the Sacerdotium and Imperium to the modern unencumbered democratic powers (freedoms) of the Church vis-à-vis the State. As a Christian political theology laïcité is a doctrine concerning the independence and adulthood of the faithful in the presence of God. As a pastoral theology laïcité may be understood as an internal ecclesial power influencing an authentic secularity within the world, but not encouraging secularism, which is its false counterpart. Thus, laïcité as authentic secularity, exercises jurisdiction only over those who in civil governance authoritatively influence public policy, formally, informally or casually. Laïcité, in this expanded sense, is thus required of: 1) public officials, employees and volunteers who are in direct contact with the public, 2) professionals who intervene in the public space, 3) professionals who have a relationship of service to the population and elected officials. It makes no claim of jurisdiction over one’s religious convictions or lack of religious convictions in the celebratory culture of the nation.
It may be recalled that laïcité, as a philosophical notion, originated as a negative concept. The negative aspect developed within an earlier principle of the separation of Church and State in France that eventually evolved into their reciprocal independence which became enshrined in law on December 9, 1905. At that time, France, as a political entity, considered herself as an indivisible, secular, democratic and a social Republic (cf. article 1 of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic). Yet, as an ethnic identity, or nation, France also considered herself as a religious entity existing independently of the new Republic. That is, the Nation and the State are not phenomenologically co-terminus entities. The philosophical question of laïcité, as an issue of religion vs. secularity, both within and without France has been studied regularly since the end of the 1980s. In in French society, as within global society, each notion remains a controversial subject that is often mistakenly understood or misinterpreted. To my mind it would be of assistance to view the relationship between religion and secularity in a “both/and” perspective and not in an “either/or” perspective.
Thus, many questions arise for public officials in particular and citizens in general, on what is to allowed or not to allowed, by the principle of fundamental freedoms in religion, in respect of the public order, and in the neutrality of the different societal contexts. With absolute respect for the individual freedom of conscience, laïcité is the guarantor of a French-style of society “living together,” a concept recognized by the European Court of Human Rights, which appears to be evolving towards a political and theological universality.
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Laïcité
A particular republican value in contemporary France.
In France, laïcité guarantees freedom of conscience. From this derives the freedom to practice one’s beliefs or convictions respecting the lawful conditions of public order. Laïcité implies the neutrality of the State and recognizes the equality of all before the law without favouring, or supporting, any religion or belief system. Laïcité guarantees believers and non-believers the same right to freedom of expression of their beliefs or convictions. It ensures the right for an individual to be religious, to be an atheist (but not an anti-theist) or agnostic, and to convert from one religion to another. It guarantees the free exercise of religious public worship. With respect to the freedom of religion laïcité means that no one can be forced by the State to embrace theological dogmas or religious doctrines. In other words, laïcité repudiates the Constantinian notion of the temporal political power intervening in religious affairs. Laïcité thus recognizes the political order as founded solely on the sovereignty of the people as the citizens of the State. The sovereignty of the citizens of the State legislates legal equality of all before the administration of the Public Service. That is to say that the sovereignty of the people is not determined by divine right.
Laïcité is not merely one philosophical opinion among others, but rather, it is the freedom to have a philosophical opinion of one’s own without religious interference. In law, then, it is not a philosophical conviction subject to cultural contingency, but an objective principle, which permits all religious opinions that are not opposed to public harmony and order within the State. As a cultural phenomenon, laïcité is the glue of a united France, as advocated by the current Prime Minister, Mr. Jean Castex. But it is not a view shared by all the politicians in France. However, laïcité being a living principle, must adapt in order to retain all its original political significance. Recently, as part of the bill consolidating the principles of the Republic, which President Macron has called for, the parliamentarians, as representatives of the Nation, have had many debates on the changes to be made to the principle of laïcité. In 2021 the Government moved further to protect the balances enshrined in the French model of laïcité which is arguably unique in the world as it reconciles individual freedoms with the cohesion and unity of the Republic.
Currently, the government is up-dating and re-enacting the principles of laïcité inherited from the 1905 declaration by adapting them to the challenges of France’s contemporary society. Upon completion the new declaration will ensure that the principle of laïcité is respected and promoted regularly by all those who are its officers. That is to say by all administrations, public services and organizations that are responsible to the government. No spirit contrary to the Republic is to be tolerated in the re-enactment of the principle of laïcité. In the re-enactment, freedom of worship will be properly re-affirmed with the intent of achieving harmony and cohesiveness in the public order of the Republic. Thus, religions will be able to manage their legal and financial responsibilities for optimum benefit of the community.
The re-enactment suggests to me that a shift in the overall philosophical/political understanding of the 1905 notion of laïcité is taking place. The French government’s re-enactment will focus on several points of investigation to be overseen by the general secretariat of the Interministerial Committee, newly created within the Ministry of the Interior. It will also provide up-dated support systems to all those, administrators and public officials, required to implement these measures. Clearly, then, in the mind of the current French government laïcité is not a fixed ideological concept immune to evolutionary forces. Rather, French laïcité constitutes a dynamic and fluid approach to religion in the modern Republic that reflects a phenomenological philosophy rather than a classical one. It is highly likely than political administrations outside France will follow suit.
With Anglophone philosophers in mind and for the sake of precision of thought, the following French text is a summary of the points covered throughout this monograph which may not be as precise as the French text.
La France est une République indivisible, laïque, démocratique et sociale. Elle assure l’égalité devant la loi de tous les citoyens sans distinction d’origine, de race ou de religion. Elle garantit des droits égaux aux hommes et aux femmes et respecte toutes les croyances. Nul ne doit être inquiété pour ses opinions, même religieuses, pourvu que leur manifestation ne trouble pas l’ordre public établi par la loi. La liberté de religion ou de conviction ne rencontre que des limites nécessaires au respect du pluralisme religieux, à la protection des droits et libertés d’autrui, aux impératifs de l’ordre public et au maintien de la paix civile. La République assure la liberté de conscience et garantit le libre exercice des cultes dans les conditions fixées par la loi du 9 décembre 1905. Au titre de la laïcité, la République ne reconnaît, ne salarie ni ne subventionne aucun culte, ce qui implique qu’aucune religion ou conviction puisse être, ni privilégiée ni discriminée. La laïcité repose sur la séparation des Églises et de l’État, ce qui implique que les religions ne s’immiscent pas dans le fonctionnement des pouvoirs publics et que les pouvoirs publics ne s’ingèrent pas dans le fonctionnement des institutions religieuses. Les élus de la République ont la charge de faire respecter la laïcité. Elle suppose un engagement fort et constant de la puissance publique pour assurer sa pédagogie et sa promotion. La laïcité, parce qu’elle est une des conditions fondamentales du vivre ensemble, requiert une lutte constante contre toutes les discriminations. La puissance publique doit garantir à tous et sur l’ensemble du territoire la possibilité d’accéder à des services publics, où s’impose le respect du principe de neutralité, à côté d’autres services d’intérêt général. Tout agent d’une administration publique, ou du gestionnaire d’un service public a un devoir de stricte neutralité. Il se doit d’adopter un comportement impartial vis à vis des usagers du service public et de ses collègues de travail. Les manquements à ces règles doivent être relevés et peuvent faire l’objet de sanctions. La République laïque garantit l’exercice de tous les droits civils quelles que soient les convictions ou les croyances de chacun. Aucune religion ne peut imposer ses prescriptions à la République. Aucun principe religieux ne peut conduire à ne pas respecter la loi.
The following translation of the Declaration for laïcité (Paris, Septemeber 22, 2016) is provided by the Observatoire de la laïcité.
DECLARATION FOR LAÏCITÉ*
*“Laïcité” is usually translated by “secularism”; in view, however, of its particular status in France, as a cardinal principle enshrined in the Constitution, guaranteeing the same rights and duties to believers and non-believers alike, Laïcité will be retained in this Declaration.
Laïcité is our common good. It must be promoted and defended. It must unite us, not divide us. In the present times, when there is much questioning and also a tendency to be over-zealous, it is the responsibility of the Observatoire de la laïcité to recall what is meant by Laïcité, as defined in the Constitution of the Republic and organised by the law of December 9, 1905.
Laïcité is first the freedom of conscience, the freedom to believe or not to believe. The freedom to believe implies the freedom to practice a religion, in private or in public, as long as the manifestation of the practice does not disturb the peace.
In the public interest, there are limits set to the freedom to manifest one’s convictions. To start with, it is forbidden for public servants, and all those who have public service duties, to display their own religious faith: public service must be neutral, so that users are treated equally, regardless of their convictions. In 2004, in order to protect schoolchildren against any form of pressure, the ostensible manifestation of a religion through insignia or dress was banned in all state-run primary and secondary schools. In 2010, for public security reasons, concealing one’s face in public was prohibited (burka, niqab, hoods, helmets, etc.)
It is possible to impose limits, but freedom must remain the basic principle. General prohibition of any outward religious sign in public or in private collective areas would not strengthen Laïcité, but would denature it, by turning a freedom into a prohibition.
LAÏCITÉ GUARANTEES RESPECT FOR THE PRINCIPLE OF EQUALITY
Laïcité, which implies the separation between the Churches and the State, guarantees equality among all citizens, regardless of their philosophical or religious convictions. Atheists, agnostics, believers of all creeds enjoy the same rights. The law cannot distinguish among citizens according to their convictions. No religious obligation can be imposed by law. Religions cannot intervene in the affairs of State, and the State must respect the independence of religions.
Stigmatising a religion, imposing restrictions on the religious practices of one particular religion, would be an attack on the Republican principle of Equality, and would be discriminatory.
LAÏCITÉ CONTRIBUTES TO THE REPUBLICAN IDEAL OF FRATERNITY
As the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen proclaims, “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights”. And yet they are not all alike. They are free to express their own particular convictions and what they adhere to.
Adhering to the values of the Republic helps to bring citizens together and to accept their differences. Laïcité federates and reinforces the unity of the nation. It guards against all that divides or separates. It is a factor of national union and concord, and thereby contributes to the Republican ideal of Fraternity.
Laïcité must be defended against all those who fight it or deny it. Those who do not respect its rules must be sanctioned.
But a Laïcité based on exclusion and prohibition would weaken itself by denying its founding principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
After centuries of religious conflict, Laïcité, born of the 1789 Declaration of the rights of man and the citizen, of the legislation secularising education at the end of the 19th century and the law of December 9, 1905, has enabled France today to strike a balance that is a precious asset. We must neither allow it to be brought into question, nor succumb to excessive zeal, even if the difficulties encountered in applying it in a new social and international context call for greater vigilance.
Observatoire de la laïcité
99, rue de Grenelle – 75007 Paris
Mél: secretariat.laicite@pm.gouv.fr / Site Internet: www.laicite.gouv.fr
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Laïcité
Viewed from a phenomenological perspective as a cultural phenomenon.
Inspiration for this section came from “The Phenomenology of White Identity” by Linda Martín Alcoff in Race as Phenomena: Between Phenomenology and Philosophy of Race (ed. Emily S. Lee, Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, pp 175-188). My philosophical conclusion is that contemporary laïcité is an evolutionary phenomenon appearing uniquely in those European cultures claiming a secular identity.
What does it mean to assign oneself a secular identity to describe a way of being in the world as an attitude or disposition in lieu of a religious life? Secular identity, from a phenomenological perspective, refers less to a set of empirical facts about a person and more about the observable aspects of personal subjectivity, that is, individual behaviour. The phenomenological concept of secular identity acts as a positive and cohesive force in determining individual and group societal values in the world. The notion of secular identity, then, can help to balance the essentialist and determinist conceptions of society often linked to, and dominated by, the historical influence of religion. Secular identity, arising from an individual’s orientation towards the world, is contingent, variable, and dynamic and its realization evolves, upon reflection, by disclosing the hidden and subtle motives for the choice of a religious life, or the choice not to be religious.
To assign oneself a secular identity is to accept responsibility in evaluating experiences that may seem to be highly individual or, transcendental and universal. Phenomenologists understand human experience as inescapable in the world. But there are many personal worlds, not merely one, which overlap disclosing complex interrelationships. One thing that is clear is that secular identity is an historically acquired identity, not a natural one. Humanity is not naturally irreligious, but culturally religious with each nation believing its gods as superior to others. The notion of assigning oneself a secular identity emerged out of the historical strife over religious experiences and the state-enforced political advantages in favour of a particular religion over other religious bodies. In this sense, secular identity evolved as a result of a particular Western historical experience and its efforts at power politics.
The lived experience of secular identity by a significant portion of Western society has produced some large-scale societal changes, as well as introducing some particular state legislative policies. Numerous scholars, particularly sociologists, social psychologists, political scientists, economists, and historians, have spent much time studying secular identity within Western culture. And, as a result, to assign oneself a secular identity has become a desirable goal for many individuals as an option in life. Secular identity remains an important constituent of many state and ecclesiastical societal patterns. Beyond secular identity as a constituent of the social environment, there is the distinct first-person human consciousness, or the personal experience of secularity. Among the various personal secular experiences, philosophers discern similarities. In distinguishing these similarities, the work of social psychologists has been most important in revealing significant patterns of secular identity in the perception, judgment, affect, and response in the individual. Secular identity can also disclose not only how we live in our world but how we participate in fashioning our world as agents. Whether liberal or conservative, urban or rural, poor or middle class, secular identity may discredit (incorrectly) certain alternatives in living life, i.e., living life religiously. To overcome religious ignorance today requires more effort than it perhaps did in times past, given how many people live in urban areas and often with a high degree of information overload.
Today’s secular identity discloses new practices and takes new forms, and cannot maintain the anti-religious stance of former times. Secular identity, just as all identity formulations, is multidimensional and dynamic and in constant process of reproduction, regeneration, and transformation to more updated forms. Upon philosophical reflection, the assignment of a secular identity need not be the necessary end result of a process of deliberation over religion. The retention of a religious identity, or its cultural equivalent, may be the result. In the temporal order of priorities, the acquisition, or acceptance of a religious identity, must logically precede the assignment of a secular identity. The process is similar to that of an atheist who needs the presence of a god, or gods, in which not to believe. Further, the assignment of a secular identity is not an arbitrary act on the part of the individual, but is existentially and thoroughly thought out. Nor is it, in any sense, a belief system, but secular identity expresses an overall orientation or attitude to the world that organizes and unifies the individual’s experience in the world. A phenomenological recognition of secular identity requires knowledge of the variety of optional personal and societal values available to human beings. In actuality, the assignment of a secular identity always involves the individual’s past experiences, or memories that are retained of them, and how this affects the individual’s orientation in the present world and attitude towards a future world. In that light secular identity has no independent ontological status. It does not denote that which is outside of culture, but precisely that which is within culture that has been rejected. Rejection notwithstanding, however, secular identity is a positive human value when understood in terms of a contemporary laïcité. Secular identity simply illustrates an option of human behaviour vis-à-vis religious experience, often taken for granted without critique or questioning.
Although an exceptional occurrence, the self-assignment of a secular identity by an individual is indicative of the uniquely human and rational ability to define existential cultural values. The self-assignment of a secular identity is a distinctly human function that makes the individual free to re-invent itself without any religious historical encumbrance. In contemporary laïcité the State ensures the ability of individuals to acquire a secular identity, without interference from religion, through political and economic opportunities in their particular cultural context.
The possibility of republican democracy and national cohesiveness being characteristic of the assignment of a secular identity is the result of the particular context of European history. Some philosophers, particularly of the Anglophone tradition, doubt that laïcité will ever succeed as a significant political and cultural phenomenon. However, the secular state never set itself the agenda of creating a nation that could unite and stabilize groups with disparate experiences and histories. The agenda of the State, particularly evident in France, is harmony and cohesion within governance of the Nation while allowing the the assignment of a secular identity by its citizens. Within the French understanding of governance, when there is no longer the possibility of a secular identity, alongside a religious one, there will no longer be a republican democracy that has something unique to offer the world. Rather, Christendom (or its equivalent in pagan experience) will have been restored in some fashion and the world will be once more in an imbalance due to religious strife.
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Laïcité
An evolving political theology.
From a phenomenological perspective, laïcité may been consciously envisioned as an evolving Political Theology. What, then I ask, is antecedent to contemporary laïcité in the French political experience? The 1905 French law separating the Church and the State is over a hundred years old. The dynamic principle of laïcité it defined, despite the term not being mentioned in the text, is unique in the world and is an integral part of France’s contemporary political apparatus. This principle is, however, protected neither by the fact that it is legal nor by its relatively old age. Indeed, it is controversial both 1) at the national level, where it is subject to contradictory debates, and 2) at the international level, where France is often accused of having an intolerant and discriminatory system of the separation of Church and State.
Laïcité is the product of the long evolution of the relationship between the Church and the State. As Rome’s authority was universal, to all intents and purposes, in Western Europe up to the Reformation, France particularized its authority as it broke away from Papacy with the rise of the Capetian monarchy. From the beginning of the 14th century, Philip IV of France opposed the Pope’s interference in the kingdom affairs. He inaugurated a policy of autonomy, which somewhat reduced the ecclesiastical establishment in political affairs and posited that, in its order, the civil jurisdiction did not recognize any superior jurisdiction.
The Gallican movement reached its peak under Louis XIV with the Declaration of the Clergy of France of 1682. This movement favoured the independence of the king in the temporal order and supported the superiority of an ecumenical council over the Pope. Affirming implicitly that the Church’s influence was limited to spiritual representation outside of temporal realities, enshrined in national patrimony the idea that political power precedes religious authority. The Enlightenment, as a French movement, took advantage of this principle during the Revolution promoting its acceptance within the French Republic. Today, the Republic must continue work towards liberating religious organizations from State regulation, including Protestantism and Judaism, and strive for the autonomous freedom of belief in the public forum. If ministers of religious affairs have public authority and support, they must remain under government control, to which they are obliged to swear their loyalty. Ministers of autonomously free religious bodies are not subject to this particular rule.
Avoidance of both interference in and discrimination of by either authority in the other’s jurisdiction was the guiding principle of the 1905 law. Article 2 of that law dictated that (as a negative notion) “the Republic neither recognizes nor employs nor subsidizes cults”, and (as a positive notion) it guaranteed the freedom of particular religious organizations, as long as they did not violate the public order. The State abolished the earlier particular rights granted to institutions or religious congregations, and confined religion to a personal and private subjectivity. However, the notion of personal and private did not mean, and did not intend, that there be no relationship to the public sphere of life in the Nation. The State only intended to recognize individuals as citizens, irrespective of their background, whether it be religious or ethnic. In short, the State applied a phenomenological epoche or “bracketing out” of certain human characteristics in defining its notion of citizenship. However, despite the fact that the State desired politically to neutralize communitarianism within its borders (in order to prevent divisive faction) it did not seek to neutralize community within the public sphere of the life of the Nation. Yet, the 1905 law was not devoid of its weaknesses. The State acted, inspired by an optimistic ideology, according to which its future depended on the emancipation of religion from the State. But to the contrary, this early laicism, where religion had no influence of the citizenry, had the effect of provoking the loss of a cohesive cultural identity in France. Further, the two World Wars, each in its own way, disrupted the political apparatus of France. Thus, the Fifth Republic opted, once more, for a “healing” policy during the years from 1945 to 1975. 6
The conception of laïcité as a shared and accepted modus vivendi was destabilized twice in France from the 1980s onwards: the first by the diversification of faiths caused by migration to France, and the second by the “return of God” movement in politics, spreading globally. This unsettled the French Republican elites like nothing had done before. For them, rethinking religion while at the same time retaining its founding principles, became a matter of urgency. Confronted with the rise of extremisms, in particular radical Islam, and with increasing communitarian political claims, the Republic acted sternly. Religious symbols at schools were restricted in 2004, and concealing one’s face in public spaces was forbidden in 2010, and, one thing leading to the other, Nativity scenes were proscribed in town halls in 2016.
The Republic and the Church are still part of the national identity of France. But they are not exempt from criticisms of their respective positions. In France, the political milieu and the media coverage between supporters of a strict version of laïcité, such as is evident in pre-Vatican II theology, and supporters of an open version of laïcité, such as is evident in Vatican II theology, are a sign of the times. It is reasonable to expect that there is a similar experience on a global scale as a sign of the times. Since quarrels over laïcité go beyond the country’s borders, France is regularly accused of initiating and exporting religious intolerance by many in the international community. In my interpretation, on a global scale it is becoming evident that political debate has disclosed two differing perspectives which illustrate the deep cultural differences between a strict laïcité (characteristic of the French version of laïcité) and an open laïcité (characteristic of Anglo-Saxon communitarianism).
Thus, contemporary laïcité, in its strict or open form, is not readily, nor easily, understood outside of France. Often neglected in the debate is the theological antecedent to secular politics. Contemporary laïcité transcends French politics. Contemporary laïcité may also be understood as a global phenomenon akin to a non-religious function, not of Christianity only, but of any religion being a necessary quality of human existence. Laïcité is subject to misunderstanding of bracketing out any form of religion. The truth is that laïcité is tantamount to a non-revealed religion generated from a maturing political human consciousness. As I philosophically envision it, accepting non-revealed religion, as a necessary quality defining human specificity, is a next step in understanding human evolution.
In light of the shift in Vatican II theology from “Church and State” to “Church and World,” as Karl Rahner has acknowledged, a re-fashioning of Christian cultures appears to be necessary in the minds of many of the faithful and religious devotees. 7 Indeed, such a change is taking place and is profoundly altering the philosophical understanding of the unity of humanity. Reason alone is no longer sufficient to define human specificity. On one hand, as a contemporary societal phenomenon, laïcité challenges the political reasons for recognizing any religion. On the other hand, as a philosophical (theological) phenomenon, laïcité challenges the classical principle of reason as defining humanity, and favours historical dynamism, influenced by evolution, as the philosophical principle of human specificity. The globalization of Western culture and philosophy, has re-fashioned particular cultures to favour modern democratic and individual rights over traditional monarchical and aristocratic rights. Thus, laïcité, realized as a globalized political/theological theory and praxis, is able to guarantee both freedom and equality with respect to religion and the world. 8
§
Laïcité
The practical workings of its freedoms and prohibitions.
FREEDOMS AND PROHIBITIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF "LAÏCITÉ"
(CONSTITUTIONAL SECULARISM)
[English translation provided by Observatoire de la Laïcité]
The last decades have seen the emergence, in a fragile social context, of new phenomena, such as the rise in communitarian demands and the misuse of secularism for the purpose of stigmatisation; the Observatoire de la Laïcité has therefore decided to issue a succinct, precise reminder of what Laïcité means in terms of freedoms and prohibitions.
1. PROHIBITIONS AND LIMITS TO INDIVIDUAL FREEDOMS IN THE FRAMEWORK OF “LAÏCITÉ”
The principle of secularism means that the State and religious organisations are separate. There is therefore no state-run public worship. The State neither recognises, nor subsidises, nor salaries any form of worship. Exceptions and adjustments to the ban on funding are defined in the legislation and case-law; they concern in particular chaplaincies, which are paid for by the State. 9
No religion can impose its prescriptions on the Republic. No religious principle can be invoked for disobeying the law.
PROHIBITIONS AND LIMITS IN SPECIFIC AREAS
In the administration, public services, and firms and associations with a public service mission, employees and agents are not allowed to manifest their religious, political or philosophical beliefs by signs, clothes or proselytism. Agents and employees represent in fact the nation as a whole, and must therefore adopt a neutral and impartial attitude, both towards the public and towards those they work with. Infringements are recorded, and can be sanctioned.
In private enterprises with no public service activity, manifestations of religious beliefs may be restricted or prohibited by the company’s regulations, if this is justified by the nature of the work and on condition that the limitation is proportionate to the desired objective. 10
In the public area, in the sense of a common space (public streets and areas open to the public or used for public services), the Law of October 11, 2010 prohibits concealing one’s face. The law is not based on the laïcité principle, but on public security considerations and the minimum demands of life in society. 11
PROHIBITIONS AND LIMITS IN PUBLIC SERVICES
Under the law of December 9, 1905, patients can practice their faith in public health institutions as long as they do not impede the functioning of the department, and subject to the requirements of public order, security, health and hygiene. The freedom to choose one’s doctor does not apply in emergency situations (a doctor cannot be challenged by a patient). Nor can freedom of choice run counter to the doctors’ duty roster or the organisation of medical consultations required for ensuring the continuity of public service. In the case of a patient’s refusal to accept treatment (a blood transfusion, for instance), while the patient’s consent remains the basic principle, entailing therefore his or her right of refusal, the courts accept that for performing an act essential for survival doctors may disregard the rule. 12
For mass catering in public institutions, the responsible authority, necessarily neutral, must not take into account religious prescriptions concerning food, (halal or casher [kosher]), but can offer a choice of menus, with or without meat, for instance. However, in certain closed public institutions (for example prisons, boarding establishments or hospitals) or in the army, in application of Article 2, paragraph 2 of the Law of December 9, 1905, 13 the supervisory authority must take into account the fact that certain persons may not have the opportunity to practice their faith elsewhere. In such cases, the laïcité principle requires that steps be taken to enable such persons to comply with the food prescriptions of their religion, as long as they do not disturb the functioning of the public service and do not constitute a form of pressure on the members of the group who do not wish to follow suit. 14
In public sector primary and secondary schools it is forbidden for pupils to manifest ostensibly their religious affiliation by signs or clothes. 15 In such places, and at an age when the foundations of knowledge are acquired and critical faculties developed, the aim is to protect children from pressures aimed at making them wear such a sign, and to prevent conflicts between those wearing the sign and those who do not.
In public sector higher education establishments, although all faculty members enjoy freedom of expression, all staff members charged with a mission, including individual contractors, whether or not they are in contact with students, are subject to the rules applicable to all officials and public servants and to private sector employees providing a public service. However, such obligations, including that of neutrality, cannot be imposed on outside speakers invited to give a one-off lecture in a public sector establishment. Furthermore, teachers cannot refuse to give a class on the grounds, for instance, that one or several students are wearing religious signs.
SPECIFIC BEHAVIOURS AND PROSELYTISM IN VARIOUS AREAS
Specific behaviours can arise, such as refusing to shake the hand of a person of the opposite sex, to be with such a person in certain collective areas, to work with such a person or to be examined medically by such a person. While there is no rule imposing a given form of politeness, as practices vary according to country, age and social status, forms of behaviour contrary to the equality between women and men and to human dignity are unacceptable, and can be considered to be discriminatory.
In public service areas (sports facilities, public swimming pools, etc.), requests for single-sex schedules can be refused, not on the basis of the laïcité principle, but on the grounds of gender equality and non-discrimination. 16
Religious proselytism, consisting in attempting to convince someone to join a religion other than simply by clothes or religious signs, 17 is forbidden in public services in the name of neutrality.
The same holds true in private firms when, through the means employed or the message conveyed, they disturb the peace or the normal functioning of the enterprise. The same applies when communitarian pressure forces individuals to engage in religious practices, or practices presented as such, which they had not personally expressed the desire to abide by.
2. FREEDOMS AND RIGHTS GUARANTEED BY LAÏCITÉ
Laïcité guarantees freedom of conscience for everyone; this includes the freedom to believe or not to believe, to practice a religion, to be atheist, agnostic or to be an adept of humanist philosophies, to change religion or to cease to have any religion. A distinction must be drawn, however, between the freedom to believe and the freedom to express one’s beliefs. There can be no restriction to the freedom of belief. The freedom of thought from which derives the freedom of conscience includes the freedom to criticise any idea, opinion or belief, subject only to the legal limits of the freedom of expression. The freedom to express one’s religious convictions, however, can be limited for the sake of public order, under conditions defined by the law (see the first part of this note). Freedom must however always be the rule, and the limitations the exception, in view of the constitutional principles enshrined in our Republic and France’s international commitments, with which such legal restrictions must be compatible.
Laïcité guarantees the neutrality of the State, local authorities and public services, thereby ensuring their impartiality towards all citizens, regardless of their beliefs and convictions.
The Republic neither recognises, nor salaries nor subsidises any form of worship. No religion or conviction can be either privileged or discriminated against. Laïcité is based on the separation between the Churches and the State, which means that the Churches cannot intervene in the functioning of the public authorities and that the public authorities do not manage the functioning of religious institutions.
Laïcité is an emancipating factor in two ways. On the one hand, the State is emancipated from any form of religious control. Laïcité in France is based on the same principle as democracy: in neither case is the legitimacy of political authority founded on a supernatural basis, but on the sole sovereignty of the people of citizens. And secondly, laïcité emancipates religions from any form of State control. It guarantees believers and non-believers and agnostics the same rights, in particular the same right to the freedom to express their convictions.
Laïcité guarantees freedom of religion, but also freedom vis-à-vis religions: no one can be forced to respect religious dogma or prescriptions.
With laïcité, the Republic guarantees the exercise of all civil rights, regardless of individual persuasions or beliefs.
FREEDOMS AND RIGHTS GUARANTEED IN VARIOUS AREAS
In the public area, in the sense of a common space (such as streets, public gardens, beaches, etc.), a person is free to wear religious signs, like any other sign expressing a person’s convictions. For reasons of public security and in accordance with the minimum demands of life in society, it is however forbidden to conceal one’s face.
It is important to distinguish clearly between what constitutes an objective disturbance of the peace, which sets a legal limit to religious practices, and a subjective perception which does not in itself warrant a limitation of the “fundamental freedoms of movement, of conscience and personal freedom.” 18 Dress codes, forms of physical appearance or behaviour, presented or perceived as expressions of religious affiliation, are liable to provoke reactions of hostility or suspicion. 19 Prohibition of all signs reflecting a person’s religious or other convictions in public areas (in the sense of the common space) would be an attack on the fundamental freedom to express one’s convictions (in the realm of religion, politics, trade unions, philosophy). Under the French Rule of Law, characterised by the principle of freedom, one does not forbid all that one disapproves of.
In a more general sense, in all areas, and with the exception of agents or employees carrying out a public service mission, people can dress as they wish, as long as they avoid forms of exhibition forbidden by law and abide by the rules concerning professional wear and the restrictions that may be imposed by requirements of public order, decency or hygiene, and by those justified by the nature of the task, and on condition that the limitation is proportional to the aim pursued.
FREEDOMS AND RIGHTS GUARANTEED IN BOARDING ESTABLISHMENTS, HOSPITALS, ARMED FORCES, PENITENTIARY STRUCTURES AND IN THE SCHOOL SYSTEM
The application of the laïcité principle must take into account the fact that certain persons are unable to practise their religion elsewhere, if they find themselves in boarding establishments, hospitals, the armed forces or in a penitentiary structure. That is why the Law of December 9, 1905 specifies that chaplaincies, paid for by the State, should be set up in such places.
The Republic guarantees that public education be governed by the laïcité principle.
In public higher education institutions, which are areas of debate and freedom of expression, the students, who have freely chosen their course of study, are free to manifest their convictions, within the limits of the proper functioning of the establishment. 20 However students’ dress should be adapted to the requirements in terms of hygiene or security of certain activities or courses (physical or sporting activities, practical work in chemistry, manipulation of dangerous instruments, etc.) During examinations, in order to prevent fraud, students may be asked not to conceal their ears, so that the absence of communication devices can be checked. Furthermore, contestation of lectures in the form of threats, pressure or attempts to challenge the lecturer, or to exclude some of the students, can lead to disciplinary action, in addition to possible legal sanctions. Students of the teacher training colleges (Écoles supérieures du professorat et de l’éducation - ESPE), who have passed the competitive examination for entering the teaching profession, are ipso facto trainee civil servants, and thereby subject to the obligation of neutrality - whether they be already teaching or still students. Lastly, while the departments organising examinations are invited to avoid, as far as possible, sessions on religious feast days, if it proves materially impossible to do so that does not constitute a violation of the religious freedom of the candidates.
RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION IN THE PUBLIC AREA AND RELATIONS WITH THE CHURCHES
Ceremonies, processions or other external collective manifestations of worship are possible as long as they do not disturb the peace. Mayors can however impose a route or a location for such religious demonstrations, for reasons of security or road traffic.
Religions are free, like any other social group, to express themselves on matters of society, ethics, politics or social affairs, as long as they do not preach discrimination, hatred or violence, or civil disobedience.
Any citizen or organisation can express, by lawful means, hostility towards a draft bill, or even a law duly voted, on the grounds that they consider the text to be contrary to their convictions. However, once the bill becomes law they are bound to obey it and refrain from hindering its application. No one is however obliged to make use personally of a freedom granted by law. Expression of one’s convictions cannot go so far as to question, in the name of principles considered to be “of a higher order”, the legitimacy of decisions taken by democratic bodies.
While the laïcité principle distinguishes between the Churches and the Republic, it does not prevent the public authorities from consulting representatives of the religions and the main philosophical schools of thought.
*******
[1] Some Catholic readers may be familiar with Giuseppe Alberigo’s understanding of the term as outlined in <> in Revue des Sciences Religieuses, tome 74, fas. 2, 2000, in which he writes in a footnote: “Ce mot est utilisé dans le sens du processus de ‘déclericalisation’ à l’interieur de l’Église et non pas pour indiquer une orientation pour l’autonomie de l’État vis-à-vis de l’Église.” [Translation: This word is used in the sense of meaning the process of ‘declericalization’ within the Church and not to indicate an understanding of the autonomy of the State vis-à-vis the Church.] My approach is the opposite. I accept the term in a positive sense as used in the current political discussions indicating the societal phenomenon of the separation of Church and State. Laïcité, formulated by the Council, indicated a different understanding than the one evident in in modern political usage. The Council, according to Alberigo, recognized laïcité as indicating one element in the Church’s internal aggiornamento with respect to the participation of the laity in ecclesial governance. The term evolved from “laicism” as introduced by Pope Pius XI in the encyclical Quas primus (1925).
[2] s. v. ‘Secularization’ in The Encyclopedia of Theology: The Concise Sacramentum Mundi (ed. Karl Rahner) Burns and Oates (1975:1554).
[3] Vatican II expanded the Church’s political presence as a human value beyond the visible structures of the ecclesiastical corporation. Not the ancient, nor the medieval, but the technically scientific world is to benefit from Church’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. The astute phenomenological philosopher will, no doubt, contemplate the Constitution’s benefits for a postmodern and posthuman world.
[4] The idea of Thales that “all things are full of gods” … meant that “the divinities are not actually found in peculiar or sacred places or times, as mythology. … The divinities lie immediately before us, in things themselves.” Leslie Dewart (1969:54) The Foundations of Belief Herder and Herder.
[5] s. v. ‘Secularization’ in The Encyclopedia of Theology: The Concise Sacramentum Mundi (ed. Karl Rahner) Burns and Oates (1975:1559).
[6] J. Middleton Murry, an early 20th century literary critic, suggested that a problem for modern philosophers was the understanding of the new Western world that followed the Great War of 1914-1918. However, optimistically, he noted that “it is really not a new world, but the old one clearly seen for the first time. But it is a new world for them in which the lines of cleavage were entirely different from what they had seemed to be; a world which seemed cold and alien and hostile, yet afterwards appeared to have at least the attraction that discoveries might be made in it and new lessons learned.” The Evolution of an Intellectual (1927:171) London: Jonathan Cape.
[7] cf. ‘Church and World’ in The Encyclopedia of Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi (ed. Karl Rahner) Burns & Oates, 1975.
[8] In this section I have relied heavily on the article, “Laïcité: Why French Secularism is So Hard to Grasp,” published by Institut Montaigne (Articles – 11 December, 2017) a nonprofit, independent organization based in Paris, France. The author, Dr. Anastasia Colosimo is a professor of political theology at Sciences Po, Paris. Both organizations are accessible via the Internet.
[9] In accordance with Article 2, paragraph 2 of the law of December 9, 1905.
[10] Article L 1121-1 of the Code du travail; Article L 1321-2-1 of the Code du travail; Directive 78/2000 CE of the Conseil d’État, November 27, 2000.
[11] Decision of the Conseil constitutionnel, n° 2010-613 DC, October 7, 2010.
[12] Conseil d’État, October 26, 2001. Senanayaké
[13] Expenditures incurred by chaplaincies for ensuring that religions can be freely practiced in institutions such as primary and secondary schools, hospices, mental homes and prisons, may however be included in the corresponding budgets.
[14] Conseil d’État, February 10, 2016, n°385929, M.B.
[15] Law of March 15, 2004, regulating the application of the laïcité principle to the wearing of signs or clothes manifesting a religious affiliation in public sector primary and secondary schools.
[16] However, Article 225-3 of the Code penal lists several exceptions, justified by “the protection of victims of sexual violence; considerations related to respect for privacy and decency, and the promotion of gender equality or the interests of men and women; and the freedom of association and the organisation of sporting activities”.
[17] Conseil d’État, November 27, 1996; n° 170207, 170208.
[18] Conseil d’État Order 402742, 402777, August 26, 2016: Ligue des droits de l’homme et autres - association de défense des droits de l’homme collectif contre l’islamophobie en France.
[19] Such forms of dress, of physical appearance or behaviour, may be presented as signs of a common affiliation, but also of marks of respect or modesty. Such signs concern both men and women, but reservations mainly target women’s clothes. Reservations or expressions of hostility mainly spring from the feeling that such manifestations are a symbolic aggression on the part of a religion seen as practising proselytism in the collective space. In the case of women’s clothes, such signs are seen as an infringement of women’s freedom, of their right to equality, even of their dignity, in violation of the principle of equality between men and women.
[20] See the report of the Stasi Commission, 2003: “The situation of the Universities, although they belong to the public education system, is very different from that of the schools. University students are adults. Universities must be open to the world. There can therefore be no question of preventing students from expressing their religious, political or philosophical convictions. On the other hand, such manifestations must not lead to transgressing the institution’s rules. It is not admissible for faculty members to be challenged owing to their sex or supposed religion, nor for teaching to be obstructed on principle.”
SECULAR POLITY AT VATICAN II
A Shift towards Democracy
Posted 20 February, 2022
Introductory Remarks
I write this essay from a phenomenological philosophical perspective. It arises from a pastoral, or communitarian appreciation of the documents of Vatican II, and not a dogmatic one. However, these documents are particular to a specific domination. Yet, the communitarian pastoral solution to an issue in Canada will not be the same as the communitarian pastoral solution to the same issue in Argentina. Laïcité, as a political concept, and the four Constitutions of the Church as concepts of polity represent “powers of authority,” secular and religious respectfully, that each possesses. These powers of authority disclose the physical, mental and moral capacity to act administratively upon a collection of individuals, (i.e., the State composed of citizens, etc.) and to receive administrative direction, to varying degrees of acceptability, from these individuals, (i.e., as Nations, etc.). [1] As a phenomenological philosopher, I envision the State as presenting itself as an artificial political construct (a phenomenon) observed and identified mainly by borders (among other attributes), and the modern Church to present itself as an artificial political construct (a phenomenon) observed and identified mainly without borders (among other characteristics). The Peace of Westphalia in 1648, as Western polity, to my mind, inaugurated the phenomenon of the evolution of the modern state which premised sovereignty on the conquest of global territory.
As yet, within Anglophone philosophy there is no satisfactory translation for Laïcité. Translations, such as “secularism,” are usually inadequate because they imply scepticism or hostility rather than neutrality towards religion as is characteristic of contemporary laïcité. Within its particular history, each country composed of Anglo-Saxon political values needs to balance the authority of the State with the authority of religion. As a concern of national polity, laïcité is attracting the attention of the current French citizenry, but this time seen from a different perspective than from the French Republic of 1905 at which time the Church and State were legally separated. Further, the meaning of laïcité is currently evolving beyond that which was incorporated into the French Constitution of 1946. As a modern political principle, it applies to all religions within a given State on how secular and religiously-minded individuals may live together (i.e., le vivre-ensemble). A Professor of French in Modern Languages, Michael Kelly, identifies the phenomenon of “global decolonization” as a cause of the present-day tension that laïcité engenders in establishing le vivre-ensemble, particularly in contemporary France. [2] To my mind, as a phenomenon evolving outside of the French experience, it is doubtful as to how long laïcité can characterize exclusively the identity of the French Nation/State. As a democratic value laïcité is becoming recognized as the property of humanity.
Laïcité explicitly discloses republican values.
Laïcité guarantees freedom of conscience. It allows a societal freedom to disclose one’s beliefs or convictions given a regulated respect for public order. Laïcité supports the neutrality of the State and recognizes the equality of all before the law without deference to religion or philosophical belief. Given its neutral stance, laïcité also guarantees that no one can be forced to accept religious dogmas or teachings.
The order of polity of laïcité implies the separation of the State from all forms of religious organizations. The political order is based on the sole sovereignty of human beings, thus eliminating the previous authority derived through the “Divine Right of Kings” philosophy. Contemporary laïcité does not apply to a Nation in its cultural identity. It applies to the political governance of the Nation (as a cultural identity) but as incorporated into Nation-State and ensuring equality of the citizens vis-a-vis the administration and the public service, regardless of the convictions or beliefs of the citizenry. Laïcité is not the enemy of religions: it protects them and because it is a living principle, must also adapt in order to retain all of its original insight. Laïcité is not a fossilized concept.
On July 15, 2021, with the installation of the Inter-ministerial Committee for Secularism the French Government began re-evaluating how to balance the French model of laïcité with the intention of reconciling the exercise of individual freedoms with the necessity of republican cohesiveness. This Committee, which replaced the Secularism Observatory created in 2013, in fact, makes it possible to effectively coordinate the policies of all government ministries concerned with the current cultural experience of the citizens. In effect, the Committee desires to restore the principles inherited from 1905, (through a ressourcement), and adapting them to the experience of contemporary French society. Nothing contrary to the spirit of the French Republic will be enacted through this restoration. There will be, no doubt, lessons to be learned here by the Committee from those outside the influence of France. One lesson is that freedom of worship will be guaranteed in order to maintain respect for order and harmony among the various religions and philosophies evident within the public forum. All religious organizations of whatever description will be accorded the legal and financial status appropriate to their legitimate constitutions. [3]
In light of the role cultures play vis-à-vis laïcité I paraphrase from Edward Bell (Brescia College, University of Western Ontario).
It has long been believed that there is a relationship between a society’s culture and its ability to produce and sustain democratic forms of government. The ancient Athenians maintained that their democracy depended, in part, on the fostering of “civic virtue” or democratic culture. Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and J. S. Mill also maintained that culture and democracy were related, and a wide variety of social scientists have come to broadly similar conclusions. Over the years the Church has followed a strategy much like that of any other organization in the secular political realm. It has preferred a position of dominance for itself, but where that was not feasible, it was willing to enter into a democratic compromise. And like other groups involved in power struggles in which domination by a single contender is unlikely, in reaching a compromise the Church came to adopt a democratic ideology regarding secular political practice, awakening to the fact that it could survive and even flourish under liberal democracy. [4]
The unacknowledged issue arising in Bell’s rendering, as I see it, is that the Church’s monarchical history is being (consciously) overlooked. This suggests to me that move to a democratic self-conception will likely threaten the monarchists who believe that the Church is necessarily constituted as sacred institution and not dependent on the general will of the people. Trusting in a liberal democracy can be conceived, from a theological point of view, as indicating a lack of confidence in divine providence. However, to me, form a philosophical perspective it suggests something more positive. The shift to a democratic understanding requires a philosophical re-thinking of the contemporary role of the divine in human affairs. In short, a re-conception of God in the Western tradition is required.
Again, but in relation to the polity of human rights and society, I paraphrase the Conclusion from Paolo G. Carozza and Daniel Philpott. [5]
As Pope Benedict XVI’s December 2006 address to the Roman Curia suggests, the Catholic Church’s relationship to human rights and democracy has long been ambivalent. The Church endorsed human rights as early as the sixteenth century in pronouncements on colonization in the New World. Through a dialogue with the modern world, including with philosophers of the Enlightenment, and through the parallel evolution of the state-system the Church’s teaching converged more and more with the norms of human rights and democracies found in these secular institutions. This convergence was consolidated at Vatican II. [I am not sure that “convergence” is the best description of what actually happened. If the term is taken to mean the act of moving towards a union or a uniformity, I would disagree. From my philosophical perspective, I see a parallel evolution of Church and State occurring at Vatican II that discloses more influence of the modern State upon the Church than the influence of the contemporary Church upon the State. Put colloquially, there is more “world” in the Church than “Church” in the world. The authors continue:] But Vatican II did not dispose of the differences between the Catholic and secular understanding of human rights and democracy, either in theory or in practice. In the case of long established or newly minted democracies, entirely new forms of divergence between the Church’s teachings and democratic practice have arisen. Such divergence is likely to persist, even as the Church is likely to remain enthusiastic about the core norms of constitutional democracies. Though the Church’s teaching has evolved—or, better yet, “developed,” to use the concept that John Henry Newman articulated in the nineteenth century and that the Church had embraced in the twentieth—there is nevertheless continuity and consistency behind the Church’s ambivalent stance toward human rights, democracy, and the modern state. The common thread running through centuries of teaching and practice consists of the Church’s commitment to upholding the transcendent dignity of the human person and affirming that the legitimacy of any political authority lies in its accountability to the common good, understood as a moral order grounded in this human dignity, rather than in state sovereignty or even democracy as such.
Philosophically, human dignity need not be a transcendental concept (as the Christian Church maintains) in the 21st Century. It can be founded upon deep anthropological insights and secular societal values that are compatible with a contemporary understanding of laïcité. Human dignity need not be assigned by the divinity, but is an innate status arising within the autonomous and unique specification of the human being. Discussing the evolution of secular polity within the Church, Carlos Thiebaut, in an insightful article entitled, Secularizing Traditional Catholicism: Laicism and Laïcité, provides another perspective demonstrating the need for a philosophical re-assessment of the relationship between Church and State. [6] The Abstract reads:
Some cases of countries and cultures in which traditional Catholicism has played a major role in defining public culture are undergoing accelerated secularization processes; the result should be relevant for the diagnoses underlying contemporary post-secular proposals. It is argued, first, that in these countries (Spain has been taken as a main example), where the Catholic Church lost its institutional power, it is also losing its ethical hegemony. While public and political debates still retain the sense of symbolically laden, communal ethical accord, they are no longer understood with religious overtones. It is suggested, second, that laïcité – a non-aggressive stance concerning religion – could adequately describe this predicament, though it retains a trait of self-defence vis-à-vis the Church that is normally attached to the term ‘laicism’. It is proposed, third, that secularization takes place at the ethical level, in which no sense of loss can be attached to the secular citizen. It is at this level, where the conflicts around meanings and values, which can be framed in religious or secularized terms, set the agenda for legal and political discussions, and where the equal standing of religious and secular interpretations should be assessed.
Clearly, in light of these three articles the move towards democracy within the monarchical Catholic Church is a two-edged sword, as it were. For traditionalists the monarchical understanding of the Church appears to be “under attack” from progressive liberal thinkers. They fail to recognize the positive phenomena in human evolutionary development that have arisen from within modern countries, cultures and human rights movements. Traditionalists notwithstanding, it is apparent to critical philosophers that laïcité is explicitly disclosing republican political values both in secular society and within religious institutions.
Vatican II Pastoral Constitution (Gaudium et Spes) explicitly discloses communitarian values.
Pastoral theology, or communitarian practical philosophy, deals with the Church as a present reality with a societal and historical structure. It is a present reality of human existential life. Accordingly, then, I choose to focus on the practical philosophical polity disclosed in Gaudium et Spes which I take to be a modern task of philosophy. In this instance, as a phenomenological philosopher, I view theology and philosophy as focused on the same existential experience. Their distinction is only of theoretical academic importance as Vergilius Ferm has noted. [7] I interpret Gaudium et Spes, then, within the phenomenological philosophical tradition by “bracketing out” this academic distinction and focus on the observable human historical experience of meaning.
The world is the theatre of human history disclosing the meanings of individual and collective human endeavour. In human history the Church is no threat to laïcité in that it “is not motivated by earthly ambition.” [8] The contemporary material world, being accomplished through modern scientific inquiry and techno-digital progress, is expanding further to include the conquest of extraterrestrial space. This expansion and the need for an appropriate polity is noted in Gaudium et Spes (para. 9). “Meanwhile there is a growing conviction that humanity is able and has the duty to strengthen its mastery over nature and that there is need to establish a political, social, and economic order at the service of humanity, to assert and develop the dignity proper to individuals and to societies.” In today’s secular context of governance, the appropriate polity is not to be found in religious revelation, but rather in solutions that are fully human. Nevertheless, within its shift from the exclusivity of Christian Revelation the Church “sincerely proclaims that all men and women, those who believe as well as those who do not, should help to establish right order in this world where all live together” (Gaudium et Spes, para. 21).
A political community is necessary for the evolutionary development of humanity in the modern world. The existential evolutionary development of humanity takes place on an individual and historic level. “The social order and its development must constantly yield to the good of the person, since the order of things must be subordinate to the order of persons and not the other way around” (Gaudium et Spes, para. 26). Contemporary Christian polity is to safeguard basic human rights under every political system by educating its citizenry to a higher degree of culture. I suggest that a means to a higher degree of culture is the modern scientific attitude which, in fact, understood as a contemporary Western philosophical phenomenon, (as a techno-digital culture) renders all previous cultural attitudes traditional. A modern scientific culture produces, by its own investigations, many solutions that in former times were expected from the “heavenly powers,” as it were. As a result, the Council notes that: “We cannot but deplore certain attitudes, not unknown among Christians, deriving from a short-sighted view of the rightful autonomy of [modern] science; they have occasioned conflict and controversy and have misled many into opposing faith and science” (Gaudium et Spes, para. 36).
A policy of laïcité, not hostile to the Church, can readily accept the Church’s teaching that: “By its nature and mission [by its polity, in other words] the church is universal in that it is not committed to any one culture or to any political, economic or social system. Hence, it can be a very close bond between the various communities of people and nations, provided that they trust the church and guarantee it true freedom to carry out its mission” (Gaudium et Spes, para. 42). The political notion at play here, it seems to me, is that the Church’s variable visible social structure, disclosed by its natural and missionary bond can act as a cohesive bond. Further, this bond may be enriched by the evolution of societal life within whatever culture it is found on the face of the earth. The democratic polity of Gaudium et Spes is “unity within diversity.”
A human value found in contemporary political life is the guarantee of the rights of the person and the rights of the citizen; person being the moral concept (favoured by the Church) and citizen being the political concept (favoured by the State). The former is a member of a national community and the latter is a member of a political community. Personhood is a universal concept, whereas, citizenship is a particular concept. The Council’s polity in no way discourages the civil community’s purpose to work for the implementation of the common good. Within the State system, it acknowledges that “the political community, then, exists for the common good: this is its full justification and meaning and the source of its specific and basic right to exist” (Gaudium et Spes, para. 74). In this capacity, the State exists as a moral force of authority based on freedom and a sense of responsibility, the document states, leaving the choice of political structure and appointment of officers to the free decision of the citizens. It is to be noted, however, that in the separation of Church and State which “are autonomous and independent of each other in their own fields,” does not terminate in two equal human jurisdictions. The Church claims divine assistance which the secular State lacks. Gaudium et Spes (para. 76) states that “humanity’s horizons are not confined to the temporal order; living in human history they retain the fullness of their eternal calling.” It appears that the “eternal calling” has been renounced in the establishment of the secular State.
Although rarely advocated in the public forum, this Constitution continues to support the theory of a just war based on human values. “State leaders and all who share the burdens of public administration have the duty to defend the interests of their people and to conduct such grave matters with a deep sense of responsibility. However, it is one thing to wage a war of self-defense; it is quite a different matter to seek to conquer another nation” (Gaudium et Spes, para. 79). Ideally, however, the Church envisions the outlawing of war through the establishment of a universally acknowledged public authority vested with the effective power to ensure security for all nations.
With respect to the Church’s polity, then, from a phenomenological philosophical perspective, explicitly disclosing pastoral, or particular communitarian values, it should be clear that the Church and State share the same goal for humanity’s evolutionary democratic development. However, the contemporary distinction between Church and State preserves the Church’s presumption of faith in divine involvement to achieve its ends. As the document’s conclusion reads:
Faced with the wide variety of situations and forms of human culture in the world, this conciliar program is deliberately general on many points; indeed, while the teaching presented is that already accepted in the church, it will have to be pursued further and amplified because it often deals with matters which are subject to continual development. Still, we have based our proposals on the word of God and the spirit of the Gospel. Hence we entertain the hope that many of our suggestions will succeed in effectively assisting all people, especially after they have been adapted to different nations and mentalities and put into practice by the faithful under the direction of their pastors [my italics] (Gaudium et Spes, para. 91).
To my mind, divine involvement as an active agent in the affairs of global humanity (politically and morally) may be legitimately and existentially doubted by those faithful, as well as others, who fashion a communitarian polity for the future of humanity. The phenomenological philosopher, then, is prompted to question the necessity for divine involvement in modern democratic affairs. As Paolo Carozza’s has noted in his 2012 article, The Catholic Church, Human Rights, and Democracy: Convergence and Conflict with the Modern State (pg. 23): [9]
The Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, did not refer to “democracy” as such, but rejected despotic governments, affirmed the freedom of people to choose their type of government and their leaders, and appealed to the importance of political participation, which in turn it said required the rule of law and separation of powers. True to tradition, the document endorsed human rights far more strongly and explicitly. By that time, though, the political landscape of the world meant that to endorse human rights was effectively to endorse democracy since human rights were realized most effectively in states with democratic constitutions. Finally, Gaudium et Spes continued and extended the Catholic tradition of viewing the common good as worldwide in scope, and stressed repeatedly that international solidarity, coordination, institutions, and law are necessary to secure peace, development, and human rights.
As I see it, the above quote stresses human agency as the operative force in establishing democracy worldwide. Divine agency is not needed.
By way of a summation, I have succinctly charted the points considered in this presentation concerning laïcité and communitarian (pastoral) values in table below, which to my mind, suggests a parallel development of each under their respective titles. From these historical developments I conclude with the following observations. First, there is a demonstrable shift from monarchical government to democratic governance as a product of the evolution of ecclesial polity. But it must be acknowledged the secular polity is incompatible with divinely inspired government as is most evident from a phenomenological philosophical perspective. Secondly, from this same perspective, it appears that the traditional monarchical understanding of the Church’s presence in a future world will not be sustainable. That is to say that, ironically, the Church’s polity may “evolve” to its previous pre-Constantinian status and engage life alongside political organizations fashioned through humanitarian values.
The polity of laïcité and of communitarian values compared in chart form.
Polity of Laïcité
Polity of Communitarian Values
1. The modern administrative State
functions within its scope defined by borders.
1. The contemporary Catholic Church functions as a State outside the scope of borders.
2. Laïcité presents as an authority of democratic political power.
2. Communitarian values present as an authority of moral power.
3. Laïcité employs secular understanding in advancing a universal concept of le vivre-ensemble for the contemporary global community.
3. Communitarian values employ particular theological understandings in advancing the concept of global harmony.
4. Laïcité guarantees freedom of conscience of the citizens of the State.
4. Communitarian (pastoral) values guarantee the freedom of conscience of the faithful.
5. Laïcité may be understood as a transnational universal political concept.
5. Communitarian values may be understood as transcending their cultural origins.
6. Laïcité (particularly in France) is presently undergoing a political ressourcement.
6. Communitarian values (globally experienced) are undergoing a political ressourcement.
7. Laïcité posits the
autonomy of the State within its temporal jurisdiction.
7. Communitarian values posit the autonomy of the person as a member of the human race.
8. Laïcité defers to the rule of law.
8. Communitarian values defer to the rule of law.
ENDNOTES
[1] Gaudium et Spes, paragraph 4 notes: “Ours is a new age of history with profound and rapid changes spreading gradually to all corners of the earth. … We are entitled then to speak of a real social and cultural transformation whose repercussions are felt at the religious level also. A transformation of this kind brings with it the serious problems associated with any crisis of growth. Increase in power is not always accompanied by control of that power for the benefit of humanity. In probing the recesses of their own minds, people often seem more uncertain than ever of themselves: in the gradual and precise unfolding of the laws of social living, they are uncertain about how to plot its course” [my italics]. Flannery, Austin Vatican Council II Costello Publishing & Dominican Publications (1996:165).
[2] Cf. https://theconversation.com/frances-la-cite-why-the-rest-of-the-world-struggles-to-understand-it-149943
[3] Further information at https://www.gouvernement.fr/laicitegouvfr
[5] Cf. https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1888&context=law_faculty_scholarship
[6] Cf. (PDF) “Secularizing Traditional Catholicism: laicism and laicité”, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 36, 3-4 (2010) 365-380. (researchgate.net)
[7] “Theology need not have any necessary reference to religion; it may be a purely theoretical discussion about God and God’s relation to the world on a disinterested plane of free inquiry.” s. v. “Theology” in Dictionary of Philosophy: Ancient, Medieval, Modern Littlefield, Adams (1963).
[8] Gaudium et Spes, paragraph 3. All quotes are taken from Flannery, Austin (1996) Vatican Council II Costello Publishing, Dominican Publications.
HUMAN NATURE
20th Century Philosophy in a New Key
Author: Allan M Savage, D. Litt.
Created: 17 April, 2022
[approx. 5000 words]
“Very few of the observations and concepts I have used in this investigation are original, most are not even new. What I have tried to accomplish here – the sort of task that philosophy had always deemed among its chief responsibilities, though in the anglophone world as I gather no longer – is mainly to arrange a large number of tesserae that, if taken one by one, are very familiar, into the single mosaic of a fairly comprehensive and unconventional philosophical synthesis.” [1]
This essay is a précis (for which I take full responsibility) of Chapters One and Two of Leslie Dewart’s seminal book consisting of Nine Chapters. The perspective he presented here, to my mind, sets a fresh intellectual trajectory for philosophical contemplation. Written towards the end of the 20th century the book is not an easy read, but since it introduces an alternative and refreshing philosophical interpretation, I offer this précis in the hope that it may inspire readers to read the entire book in the context of the 21st Century experience. His “single mosaic” is not the unified intellectual fruit of classical Western philosophy, but rather is an insightful statement of the alternatives (described in the epilogue of the book) consciously available to the human species of the future. And unless otherwise noted, all italics are in Dewart’s original text.
Dewart immediately states that “the purpose of this inquiry is to develop a philosophic theory of the origin and the subsequent prehistoric development of the specifically human characteristics of human beings.” We could facilitate improving human conditions today if we could understand sufficiently well how human nature came into being. Undertaking a philosophical review illustrates that “the explanations of human evolution devised so far by science are neither as satisfactory nor as useful as they might be, and that philosophy might help remedy those defects.” However, in undertaking this task he also acknowledges that philosophy in exercising “its jurisdiction on the subject [has] likewise been wanting.”
Further, earlier philosophic explanations of human evolution often depended on some sort of “force” from within or “direction” from without. These theories are incompatible with the concept of Charles Darwin’s natural selection and have been justifiably dismissed by scientists, he observes. The process of natural selection allows an organism to survive until it reaches reproductive age. As survival characteristics accumulate “the species changes; a new form of life appears, embodying a particular way in which organisms can be adaptively related to their world.” In this process unfavourable characteristics are self-eliminating.
“If this, however, is how evolution comes about – if this interrelation [of survival characteristics] is the cause of the transformation of species – then the supposition of evolutionary forces is superfluous.” And since this is true of both natural and supernatural forces, the result is an innovative conception of causal explanation without the presumption of the notion of a necessitating force. Thus, the application of a simple extension of the theory of evolution to human beings without allowing for the peculiarities of human nature is questioned. “The conception of natural selection may be applied to human evolution only if it is first transposed into a human key.” This transposition is necessary because human life is more than the genetically conditioned physiology of the human organism which many non-critical thinkers mistakenly assume to be the cause of human life. A re-evaluation of the inherited idea of the nature of causality is required to overcome the inadequacies of this notion. To be re-evaluated is the idea that “according to the Greeks, a cause was a source of ‘necessity’ (anankē), that is, the exertion of a compelling force that brought about change, and without which no change could take place.”
Before the advent of Scholasticism, Christian philosophers had developed a system of natural forces recognized as a hierarchy composed of causes and effects rooted in the “all-necessitating power of a transcendent First Cause.” With the advent of Scholasticism, “in the theology of Aquinas, God creates by exercising his efficient causality so as to bring into being out of nothing, and to continue to maintain in being, an entity’s act of existing; the entity’s characteristics, including the way in which it operates and causes effects, are in turn the effect of its act of existing.” However, creaturely causes, according to Scholastic reasoning, can only bring about a re-configuration of what already exists since only God can be a creative cause. Dewart notes that “in time it would become clear that a world so conceived was not simply a deterministic system, but a closed one.” Even though modern science eventually emancipated itself from theology, common sense reasoning in Western philosophy maintained “that effects can be ‘nothing but’ what their causes have compelled them to be.” Eventually, modern scientific predictability was introduced into human affairs which questioned this presumption. That is, to understand the effects of natural causes is to understand what these phenomena really are, and what reality really is. [2]
Dewart then asks: “Why then, did the reductionistic concept of causality survive in science?” He answers his own question: “In considerable part for the same reason it was also preserved, albeit confusedly, in our secular culture’s common sense: because, although ideas have no measurable mass, they exhibit cultural inertia and acquire historical momentum.” In other words, the “force” of cultural inertia and of historical momentum can impede an evolutionary understanding of the advancement of human knowledge. Further, Dewart notes that it was a failure of the early scientists “that they did not always realize the religious origin of some of the concepts they took for granted as part of the conventional wisdom of their age.”
But is it true that things and events are nothing but the effects of their causes? Does human experience support this conclusion? Dewart thinks not. “The procedure that a strict and consistent empiricism prescribes is thus the opposite of what many scientists continue to assume. One should not expect to discover what a thing really is by ascertaining its causes; on the contrary, one should first ascertain what it really is, so that one can then reliably recognize the causes that explain it.” Thus, causes are made subordinate to the “explicandum” which “is the heart of the procedure that the jargon calls phenomenology.” Dewart gives two examples of phenomena that have not been sufficiently philosophically criticized and are readily accepted in common sense understanding. They are, in fact, examples of the failure on the part of biologists to determine the specificity of human life. “I refer in particular to the ideas of consciousness and human selfhood echoed upon occasion by science, such as the conception of thought that has enabled some scientists to believe that computers can think, and the conception of selfhood that has enabled others to conclude that chimpanzees have a self-concept comparable to that of human beings.” To correct this misunderstanding, Dewart maintains that contemporary philosophy’s primary task must be to develop a theory of evolution that determines the nature of an organism of the human kind. This particular theory of evolution will compensate for the scientific method which makes no provision for reflecting upon what human beings experience themselves to be.
Contemporary philosophers rightfully inquire into the nature of human specificity. And among Dewart’s conclusions is “that the essence of human life lies in its conscious quality; for being conscious is what we immediately experience ourselves to be.” Humans experience their own “otherness” to the world and its reality which allows for them to learn something of their own selfhood and act as agents of their own behaviour. In short: “The ability to experience reality as such and oneself as real is the essence of human conscious life.” But this does not mean that consciousness is the equivalent of the human biological process, but only its effect. Consciousness as an effect is not reducible to a physical cause. Further, human evolutionary adaptation differs from non-human evolutionary adaptations. Dewart writes: “Human adjustment differs from the animal kind in that man’s relations to his environment are mediated by a special kind of experience: the sort, as we have seen, that endows him with a sense of selfhood and a sense of reality.” This special kind of experience, or evolutionary adaptation, ultimately results in human society and culture.
Dewart’s examination of human consciousness addresses a series of propositions. One, to be human is to have conscious life and selfhood. Two, the entirety of human life is a consequence of consciousness. Three, consciousness characterizes the functioning of the human organism, which cannot be reduced to its functioning processes. Four, the capacity for becoming a self is acquired, rather than innate. Fifth, the ability to speak precedes the acquisition of consciousness and selfhood. As he informs his readers: “This investigation will thus be guided by the hypothesis that, through speaking, the individual human organism converts its inborn ability to experience into the acquired ability to experience consciously – though once the latter has been developed it is no longer necessary actually to speak in order to experience consciously.” All this is to maintain that consciousness comes into being as a direct effect of speech. He guides his hypothesis through three focal points; how speech originated out of infrahuman communication, how its emergence characterizes conscious human life “and how consciousness would have thereafter continued to evolve in accordance with the properties of speech, until human nature became what it is today.” That is to say that speech is communication of the assertive kind, determined by cultural causes of a specific sort, and particular to human beings. Communication is inborn, whereas the ability to speak is acquired socio-culturally.
Human consciousness has disclosed that an evolutionary mechanism has become apparent to the observer/philosopher. The human observer notes “that through the operation of nothing but natural selection, a specifically human evolutionary mechanism that was not reducible to the natural selection of genes may have emerged. … [Further,] what emerged was more than a new and higher form of communication: it was also a new form of reproduction.” Thus, conscious life reproduces itself in successive generations through the transmission of the uniquely human ability to speak. That is to say that speech changed the rules of natural selection when it came to the type of evolutionary adjustment to a human organism’s environment. “The interaction between adjustive characteristics and reproduction was no longer screened by the criterion of mere organic survival; evolution now selected for characteristics that contributed to the value that the conscious life of human beings had for them; evolution protected … the satisfaction of the individual and collective needs of human organisms insofar as they were selves.”
Dewart notes that art, law, politics, economics, science, religion, philosophy, etc., “have traditionally institutionalized the means to satisfy the requirements of the specifically human form of adjustment.” And the human means of adjustment can only be undertaken by some sort of self-interpretation and world-interpretation that renders the reality of the world and humans themselves meaningful. But rendering the reality of self and the world meaningful has both a positive and negative result. “For when evolution brought forth consciousness, it eventually produced not only the sort of organism that individually and in groups could achieve a life-promoting adjustment to self and world, but also the kind that could become dangerous to itself. … A theory of human evolution would be incomplete unless it explained the origin of some of the unhealthy, neurotic forms that human life has observably taken in the past, and continues to take, down to our own day.” Thus, I would add an engagement in war to the means whereby humans adjust to their environment.
The theory of evolution through natural selection is not a cause of the variety of the forms of life on the earth today. Rather, it is “an attempt to explain the outcome of the evolutionary process.” As Dewart elaborates: “Thus, from an analysis of human nature as we can observe it in ourselves, we should find it possible to determine the conditions that alone can explain how, given its infrahuman point of departure, it could have become what it now is.” Among my colleagues this comment has led some to conclude that, in the final analysis, Dewart was an atheist. I cannot agree in light of my understanding of his philosophical career. My perspective is that he did not see the need for God in his non-conventional philosophy. In the concluding words of Chapter One he writes: “In capsule form, then, the answer that will be proposed here in reply to the question of human evolution is: human nature originated through the interaction between the functions of experiencing and speaking, which created consciousness, and thereafter it continued to evolve – as it has to the present – as a result of the interaction between the properties of conscious experience and the properties of speech.”
In Chapter Two Dewart discuses eight topics concerning the nature of human consciousness. 1) The ontological and the phenomenological approaches to the study of human nature. 2) The human specificity. 3) The self-presence of consciousness. 4) The experiential base of consciousness. 5) The consequences of consciousness for the human mode of life. 6) The relationship between consciousness and the human organism. 7) The assertiveness of consciousness and 8) The potential of consciousness for self-misinterpretation. I offer a brief description of these salient points.
- The ontological and the phenomenological approaches to the study of human nature.
Dewart notes that the inherited biological approach to the evolution of consciousness in insufficient, “but also that phenomenology – a procedure that philosophy has long used but which has been especially developed in the twentieth century – is essential to understanding human evolution.” The advantage of phenomenology, he suggests, is its willingness to take into account the presence of the observer to that which is observed. In the older pre-phenomenological philosophical tradition, ontology and objectivity describe the same methodological approach. Both approaches seek the nature of things in themselves. These methods pretend that the nature of things can be observed as if it were not being observed by an interpretive agent. [3] However, it is true that the presence of the observer to the observed is not that significant when the subject of philosophical consideration is not human nature. Reflection on human nature (i.e., on the “self”), however, changes the experience of the philosophical understanding of the self, allowing for self-consciousness. Thus, a philosophical interpretation of the self requires an alternative approach appropriate to addressing human self-consciousness. This is so because the human self-observer brings something unique to the interpretation of the experience of human nature that infrahuman experiencers do not bring to the experience of their nature.
The modern scientific presumption “of supposing that prejudice can be avoided through scrupulous observance of the canons of objectivity” is to be avoided in a philosophical (ontological) solution in the interpretation of human nature. In the phenomenological interpretation of human nature, the observer assigns meaning to the inherited culture and history in the interpretation of human nature. Thus, Dewart observes that “when an individual tries to understand man and world, it is too late for him to do what his ancestors did when they first became human: to begin at the beginning. For he has already been taught to think and inquire by a developing tradition that he did not create, but that on the contrary created him.” Dewart then reminds us that “anyone who should be disposed to study human nature as if it were alien to him, abstracting from the privileged information that he can as an insider obtain immediately about himself, would have in effect prejudicially assumed the reducibility of the human to the non-human; for he would have pre-supposed that the non-human, being what was first and best understood by him, provided the standard against which he could measure himself.” In fact, in a phenomenological approach the opposite occurs. Since humans have direct access to themselves, their self-understanding need not be mediated by their prior understanding of anything else. “In the study of human nature, thus, renouncing introspection is more than an unnecessary, self-decreed hobble: it is an impossibility.”
- The human specificity.
“The characteristic that makes human beings human is the conscious quality of their experiential processes” which is never found in a disembodied state because the human organism is an essential part of human nature. Further, with respect to non-human animals, one must conclude that any similarity to human experience is by way of inference “since we have no immediate access to animal experience, we cannot answer of the basis of observed fact” as a methodological approach. “But the nature of human life must be understood from what it shows to itself about itself. That humans and animals differ in kind – or for that matter, that they do not – is rather a conclusion we may draw, if we can, from comparing what we know immediately about ourselves and what we can infer about animal life.”
Thus, the specifying feature of humanity is how humans actively process and interpret their experience. Events that are processed consciously do not have any independent reality from the processing subject. Conscious events are assigned a noumenal reality in the activity of processing by an agent. To think in terms of subject and predicate is a specifying human characteristic. “The observable fact, however, is that subjects are never found except in the state of undergoing the events that happen to them and of activating those events that make them happen.”
Further, Dewart holds that human consciousness, or subject/predicate activity is one of many processes that flow from human nature after it has acquired the capacity to speak. “We therefore seek for the explanation of consciousness in an antecedent human nature,” before speech as motivation for an unconventional philosophy.
- The self-presence of consciousness.
An “invariable element of experiencing an object consciously consists in experiencing, moreover, that the object is being experienced.” However, humans often fail to be aware of the fact that they are aware simultaneously of experiencing an object and the act of experiencing it. That is, “in every conscious experience the act of experiencing is present to itself.” From this understanding Dewart concludes that non-conscious experience is not self-revealing, but conscious experience reveals something of the subject/agent. It is possible, however, for humans to wonder whether the object being experienced is real or not. But there can be no doubt about the act of conscious experiencing by a conscious subject either in the imagination or in sense experience.
“Consciousness qualifies experience.” Humans experience before they evaluate their experience through the use of different intellectual criteria and methodologies to qualify their experience. Infrahuman animals appear to the lack intellectual criteria and methodologies to qualify their experience. Further, “selfhood necessarily follows from the conscious quality of human experience and how it lies in the background of all consciousness once the organism develops selfhood.”
- The experiential base of consciousness.
Experiential processes begin with sensation, that is, the reception of information. “By information I mean the effect wrought on sentient organisms by the efficient causality of objects of experience.” The conscious quality of human experience depends solely on how the information is processed. Thus, an adequate interpretation of consciousness depends on an adequate explanation of the causal process whereby an organism acquires information. However, in the active process of an organism being informed, under no circumstances is information, as some “thing,” transmitted from reality to the organism, and no “thing” is received by the organism.
Sensation involves a causal process. Within an archaic perspective, however, “most of us assume that it consists in the exercise of a ‘power’ that resides in causal agents, which they bring to bear upon a patient as ‘energy’ or ‘force’ so as to compel or ‘necessitate’ the effects.” Change or effects in things is not due to to any forceful agent but is due to the mutual spatio-temporal relations which constitute movement. That is, “to say that a thing has certain properties is rather to say that it can make a certain difference to other things.” In short, deterministic causality has been philosophically replaced by relativistic causality. The latter requires no force or necessitation.
The conscious human being has observed that adaptive evolution has given rise to an active self-determination in life. Which is to say that higher organisms also made use of information from the experience of others in addition to information from its own experience. Conscious organisms not only recognized what they needed from their environment, but also sought after it and selected it from their environment. In other words, conscious higher living organisms have a specific self-relating ability that lower living organisms lack. [4] As Dewart has noted: “For the organism now enjoyed not only the ability to participate in the events that determined its life, but also the ability to determine how to take part in such determination; it was responsible for the quality of its adaptive responses.”
- The consequences of consciousness for the human mode of life.
There are three direct consequences of consciousness for human life according to Dewart. “First, the conscious experiencer is able to appreciate the reality of the real.” Second, one is able to experience one’s own reality as a self. “Third, appreciating both his reality and that of the world, he can give himself a positive identity by interpreting himself in relation to an interpreted world; this self-given identity I shall call the self-definition of the self.” All other manifestations of humanity follow from these three. That is to say that the consequences of human consciousness are the foundations of human culture, i.e., the institutionalization of experience by which individuals define themselves.
The self is originally devoid of all identity. “The conscious organism awakens to its own reality by experiencing itself merely as the ‘something else’ to which real objects are relative; the self is, to begin with, nothing but other-than-the-object.” The self acquires its identity negatively, that is, by not being the other that is experienced. “Thus, conscious organisms possess their own identity only because they construct it; they are persons only because they develop personhood.” The human person does not pre-exist its development. “Thus, selfhood is not the antecedent, but the consequent, of conscious experience; the only antecedent required by selfhood is an organism that can function consciously, though not yet a person.”
The succession of an organism’s experiences, as human, does not merely remain a series of biological and behavioural events. Rather: “Under the concept of reality they are organized as world.” This world is open to interpretation and re-interpretation and constitutes the human situation in which the organism lives as a self. As a further consequence of consciousness, how organisms make use of tools differentiates the human animal from the infrahuman animal. “Some animals may use tools, and a few may even learn to make tools; but for us the world itself – whatever is real – is a tool.” [5] Dewart continued to assert that the “world” is a tool and the peculiarly human environment, the non-natural, non-physical world that humans create for themselves is a consequence of their being conscious. Two of the more ancient idiosyncrasies of human consciousness are human society and human culture, both of which are artificial, and to which a contemporary third may be added, equally artificial, i.e., virtual reality. The human artificial environment is increasing in importance. “The fact that this environment is artificial, and that human beings manufacture it out of nothing more tangible than their experience of themselves and each other, makes it no less real than the natural, physical environment.” The human artificial environment offers a more serious challenge to the adjustive abilities of contemporary humans than the biological adjustive abilities shared with infrahuman life, according to Dewart.
The adjustive abilities of contemporary humans follow no predetermined pattern. In the 21st Century not a determinist causality, but a relative causality, is recognized as effecting the human condition. Thus, the various dimensions of experience that make up 21st Century, society, cultures and virtual reality must be re-imagined. That is to say humanity “must be imaginatively invented … not only individually, but above all socio-culturally, [humans] must create their identity for themselves.” A religious human identity, (i.e., its society, culture and virtual reality) in the broadest sense of identification, is one whose social institutions “embody the response of human beings to their own questions concerning the meaning of human life and death.”
- The relationship between consciousness and the human organism.
The intellectual tradition from the ancient Hellenists to our day conceives individual humans and humanity collectively as a type of unity, usually expressed in the form of some sort of dualism. However, individual human beings are not reducible to either their organic experience or their conscious experience. Consciousness depends upon an organism but is not a function of an organism which is to say that “it can attach to any modality of inner or outer experience: we hear consciously, see consciously, imagine consciously, reason consciously, and so on.” Since the basis of consciousness is not organic according to Dewart, “we should look instead to the way in which the human organism, unlike the animal, can process whatever information it may receive from objects.” In short, he concludes that “consciousness is a quality that may colour the experiential functioning of the human organism.” Dewart’s ‘colouring’ of the experiential function of the human organism is an acquired function, not an inborn one. Further, the introspective activity of consciousness appears to introduce a contradiction into the functioning of being. “In other words, [the consciousness person] appears to itself simultaneously as having an organism and as being had by it, and it is difficult to imagine how that which possesses the organism can itself be the possession of the organism.”
Consciousness is not an independently existing conceptual object. It is a dynamic function with qualitative characteristics that require an appropriate organism in order to appear. Thus, consciousness, or the conscious person, is its own agent. “Consciousness has phenomenal autonomy; it is the quality of an organic function that needs no other function than itself, and no substratum other than the organism, in order to be present to itself. But this is not autonomy from the organism or its experiential functions; it is the self-sufficiency of those functions to become present to themselves.”
- The assertiveness of consciousness.
“When the ability of consciousness to introduce opposition between itself and the object is thus envisioned, … it reveals that, whenever an object of consciousness is experienced, the object is thereby asserted as being itself and as being whatever it is. From this coign of vantage, then, consciousness is definable as assertive experience.” An assertive experience is the recognition of the real by the experiencer and it does not involve any transfer of data from the object to the experiencer’s consciousness. An assertive experience is an act on the part of a conscious individual and “is a result of the experiencer being informed by the fact that he has been informed by the object itself.” In short, the experiencer has become conscious of an object.
When humans speak, they assert their experience in and through the uttering of audible sounds (words) that communicate what they have experienced both constructively and destructively. As Dewart notes: “We must, therefore, determine not only how consciousness operates normally, but also why it can work defectively and how its defective functioning can interfere with human life.”
- The potential of consciousness for self-misinterpretation.
Human understanding and reasoning are fallible as experience shows, but this cannot be the full explanation for misinterpretation. “For as we have seen, consciousness perceives itself immediately, prior to all reflexion and all reasoning; in this unique case, therefore, where the object to be understood is identical with the consciousness that understands it, understanding should be, if not infallible, at very least easily self-correcting.” Dewart thus accounts for self-misinterpretation by stating that “the self-presence of consciousness must be deemed to admit of variations in quality.” To overcome the deficiencies of self-misinterpretation one has to overcome the understanding of such dualism “that inclines us to misinterpret the duality as if it were constituted by (a) an object in reality, and (b) the same object, but in experience. That is, the act of experiencing is misconstrued as the creation of a mental equivalent of the original in reality, and consciousness is mistaken for the coincidence of two different contents: (a) the contents of reality in itself, which exist in reality, and (b) the contents of the experience, which exist in the mind as a repetition of reality.” From this perspective, Dewart philosophically rejects the repetition of reality in the mind, symbolically or in any other sense.
So ends this précis of Chapters One and Two of Leslie Dewart’s book. Chapter Three, “The nature of speech” leads into the section of his book entitled, “The Origin and Development of Human Nature.” There is an Epilogue, entitled “The evolutionary significance of the emergence of consciousness in variant forms” in which Dewart offers some interpretive conclusions to his unconventional philosophical investigations. My only comment is that they are significant for a 20th Century interpretive context appropriate to his time. However, to my mind, his evaluative philosophical approach, leading up to his conclusions becomes significant for 21st Century philosophers, making appropriate allowances and adaptations for the Internet, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. These latter social media platforms cannot be ignored today by any serious phenomenological philosopher contemplating human nature.
[1] Dewart, Leslie (1989: xi) EVOLUTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS: The Role of Speech in the Origin and Development of Human Nature University of Toronto Press [my italics].
[2] This question arose within Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) philosophy. Cf. Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics that will be able to Present Itself as a Science (Peter Lucas, ed.) Manchester University Press (1959).
[3] My italics.
[4] Herein lies the philosophical mistake by some who believe that computers “think” for themselves. First, computers are not alive. Second, they lack any self-relating capacity, unless they have been programmed to function as such by a living human agency. Simply put, computers compute, they do not think.
[5] Since Dewart wrote in 1989 much has changed in the understanding of the use of tools. “Virtual reality” has become a conceptual tool for conscious use by humans. Virtual reality, conceived as an all-enveloping artificial and fully immersive experience, was in its initial stages of evolution at the time Dewart wrote. Virtual reality (VR) obscures the experience of the natural (physical) world ordinarily experienced through the five senses. VR is not to be confused with augmented reality (AR) which is a hybrid notion which describes an enhancement of the user’s real-world views with digital overlays that incorporate artificial objects.
ECOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY
A “New to You” View
(Abridged Edition)
Allan M Savage, DTh, DLitt
© 2023
D.I.M. Publishing
Posted 4 January, 2023
Note on the abridged edition
This abridged edition sets forth the main concepts and ideas of the original edition published by Trafford Publishing in 2006. This précis was undertaken by the author who accepts sole responsibility for its content.
This abridged edition does not contain the Addendum in the original entitled: “Integrating Eco-Philosophy and Theology: The Thought of George Tyrrell (1861-1909).”
Table of Contents
Preface
CHAPTER ONE
WHAT IS ECOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
- 1. The key to understanding ecological philosophy
- 2. The subject-matter of ecological philosophy
- 3. Methodology in ecological philosophy
- 4. The design of an ecological philosophy
- 5. The normative character of ecological philosophy
- 6. Critical understanding in ecological philosophy
- 7. A phenomenological understanding of ecological philosophy
- 8. Humanitarianism and ecological philosophy
- 9. The philosophical evolution of ecological awareness
- 10. The socio-cultural origin of ecological awareness
- 11. Summary
CHAPTER TWO
AN ECOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH
- 1. A phenomenological eco-philosophical approach
- 2. An eco-philosophical theological inquiry
- 3. An eco-philosophical reflection: Scholastic interpretation shifts to phenomenological apprehension
- 4. An eco-philosophical reflection: Dichotomous knowledge shifts to unitary knowledge
- 5. An eco-philosophical reflection: Idealistic language shifts to participatory language
- 6. Summary
Preface
The ideas and notions presented here for discussion are, in fact, not new. They have been discussed for a very long time. They may appear “new to you” as a thinker exploring, for the first time, or continuing to explore, the philosophical relationships that give meaning to our life in the cosmos. Whatever “newness” there is in this book arises in the reader’s subjective awareness or consciousness of what the mind has come to apprehend in place of its previous understanding. The reader may find much that is familiar in this book but at the same time will be presented with a re-casting of the ideas that call for a new conception of those ideas and offer the possibility of a new interpretation of philosophical understanding.
The purpose of this little book is to view critically the dialectic between two disciplines: philosophy and theology. Dialectic is the art of discussion that involves the asking of questions and the giving of answers as first practiced by Socrates. This book presents a point of departure for reflection for the reader. A long tradition of human reflection records the dialectical relationship between philosophy and theology. By reflecting upon human life and experience in the context of a philosophical and theological relationship humanity has learned something of the divine.
Those readers looking for an exhaustive treatment of the philosophical and theological disciplines will not find in this book. Those seeking to discount, debunk or replace theology with a secular philosophy will be disappointed. Conversely, those who seek to defend philosophy as a God-given but human wisdom supported through theological revelation will also be disappointed. The aim of this book is not to debunk, defend or criticize either discipline. It is to examine the relationship between philosophy and theology and thereby to develop an understanding that gives meaning to human activity.
The reflections in this book represent my personal rendering of the dialectical relationship between philosophy and theology that makes life humanly and spiritually enriching. It is my hope that in these reflections others will discover for themselves, through their own personal experience, that life which is humanly and spiritually enriching. To that end I invite the readers to put aside, for the time being at least, all inherited opinions about philosophy and theology and ponder the relationships that I present here only when our thinking becomes intentionally self-reflective it set us on our way to knowledge that illuminates our place in the cosmos.
Gathering the ideas from a variety of authors whom I have read over the years I have grafted their ideas on to my own understanding. Readers who are familiar with the writings and thought of Freidrich von Hügel, Albert Schweitzer, David Rasmussen, Ken Wilber, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Karl Marx will recognize their ideas grafted into this presentation of ecological philosophy and Christian theology. This book enquires into the unity of ecological philosophy and Christian theology. In this unity a critically thinking humanity may come to see its purpose as congruent with the élan vital of evolution and that human meaning is part of a larger emergent meaning within the cosmos.
CHAPTER ONE
WHAT IS ECOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
1.1 The key to understanding ecological philosophy
The ideas discussed here are a part of an emerging ecological philosophy. Ecological philosophy, construed broadly, is an intended Ecological philosophy, construed broadly, is an intended friendly approach to the environment and knowing why; it intends to be friendly with other forms of creation, living and inert, and knowing why. Further, it intends to be friendly with our own minds and bodies and knowing why. Ecological philosophy is a rich philosophical system with its own understanding of metaphysics, epistemology and theology. It is a philosophy of becoming, not being, in which evolution is at the center of its development. In short, ecological philosophy is a new philosophy which is holistic and ecologically sensitive, relevant to life and which can be used for healing the planet and healing ourselves.
Where does the key to understanding ecological philosophy lie? If we examine the global ecological situation from a philosophical perspective, we recognize that the key to understanding an ecological philosophy lies in the philosophical reconstruction of our involvement with the total environment. A conscious philosophical reconstruction aims at ending the exploitation of one part of the ecological system by another and at directing the efforts of society towards an intentional and sustainable interaction with the total environment.
We live in a time when the relationship between philosophy and science is changing. The sciences have separated themselves from the need for a uniform view of the cosmos and no longer insist upon shaping their methodologies in light of this uniform view. That is, they no longer shape their methodology presuming that a simple, non-compounded and fixed purpose or goal unites the cosmos. They are embracing an ecological point of view. Ecological philosophy does not compartmentalize knowledge but addresses the entire domain of human knowledge comprising all components of the environment in a holistic relationship. Without ecological philosophy, no becoming is possible; without becoming, no material and spiritual evolution of the cosmos occurs.
It profits us nothing, however, to attempt an uncritical return to the perspective of classical philosophy, but it does profit us to turn critically to ecological philosophy; nor, does it profit us to follow uncritically and blindly any new-age philosophy but it does profit us to embrace a specifically new philosophy with open eyes concerning philosophy and science.
Science is the ceaseless seeking of knowledge, the restating of facts, and the discovery of error in order to substitute in our understanding something nearer the truth. The entire point of an ecological philosophical perspective to science is to ensure that philosophers do not impose their own value system on scientific thinking. Rather, ecological philosophers simply demonstrate, or disclose, in a non-invasive and hermeneutic (interpretive) fashion, an awareness of the relationships among the constituents of the environment.
Steady scientific and technical progress has caused an unprecedented growth in our interactive relationships with our environment and vice versa. We have built societies that continue to alter, either negatively or positively, our inherited environment. We are now literally capable of moving mountains, reversing rivers, creating new seas, and transforming huge deserts into fertile oases. In general, we are in a position to interact with our environment without limit, radically remaking the ecological context. However, we cannot and must not interact with our environment without self-imposed restrictions, without being prepared to compensate for the possible negative consequences of our activities. The more deeply and widely we interact with our environment and manage its components, the more certainly we begin to recognize that we cannot treat our environment as an inexhaustible treasure house without caring how it is altered.
As philosophers of science strive to reach a rationale to express all knowledge of the finite and contingent, both philosophers and theologians feel the call to organize all these scientific and philosophical movements into one worldview. The philosophical approach to ecology reflects more and more a synthesis, or integration, of previously separated areas of scientific knowledge and social practice. Philosophical knowledge and technical science are now jointly taking our environmental interests more seriously into account. They become increasingly concerned for the preservation of the environment through all possible means.
1.2. The subject-matter of ecological philosophy
Ecology, like many other scientific terms, has two different senses. In the first sense, ecology means the process or activity of interactive relationships within the environment. In the second, it means the theoretical scientific discipline itself. The context determines the intended sense. An ecological philosophy is essential in understanding a systems approach to life. This is so since every system is objectively related; in fact, an eco- system is composed of various elements or sub-systems acting in relation to or in the context of all other elements, or sub-systems, that make up the eco-sphere. Given this understanding, each element may be conceived as a system and each system may function as an element in a broader system.
Ecological philosophy ponders the conditions of existence of living organisms and the mutual relations between organisms and the world they inhabit. Charles Darwin’s conception of the evolution of species encourages the notion of an ecological philosophy. Within his thinking, natural selection plays an important role in an ecological philosophy. The concept of natural selection claims that the interactive relationship between a species and its habitat is one of the primary factors governing biological evolution. In 1866, Ernst Haeckel, while studying the evolutionary character of natural selection, proposed the term oecology to describe his study. Oecology, or ecology, comes from the Greek, οικος, meaning house, dwelling or habitat.
When a new understanding of the environment is experienced there often follows a new construction of an ecological philosophical stance towards the environment. Hardly anything has a more urgent claim on us today than this. Only when we conceive ourselves at home in the cosmos and not estranged from it can we create a cooperative society reflecting the unity of the experience of being at home. However, an ecological philosophical stance is far from a homogeneous understanding and does not always reveal the sources out of which it has been constructed. If we look around us, or if we analyze our own selves, we find many types of activity. We find an interaction, a tension, a giving and taking, a hostility and a friendship. We also experience a bridging and a breaking between the material and the mental, between the present and the past, and between the individual and the collective. We find claims of our bodies on our minds and claims of our minds upon our bodies. As well, we find the claims of other personalities or of our own personalities upon our present condition and disposition. Finally, we experience the claims of our own individuality upon the family or society or nation, race, or church to which we belong.
Within an ecological philosophy we organize ourselves not only as social creatures but also as intellectual ones. As a result of this organization the alteration of the environment is effected by our intentional activity. An ecological philosophy that is the basis for an intentional evolution of our environment examines the relationships of all social activity. Ecological philosophy ponders the environment qualitatively. Ecological philosophy brings about changes in the technology and philosophical thinking of our existing socio-political relationships. To think sub specie machinae replaces the view of the infallible God as well as the view of fallible humanity. Technology belongs to our being as much as eating, breathing, and thinking. The important thing is to learn from technology an expanded way of living.
However, an ecological philosophy that keeps contact with reality must look objectively to the cosmos. The cosmos existed long before we came upon it. Concerning our future, Albert Schweitzer remarked, “Who knows but that the earth will circle round the sun once more without man upon it?” [1] We must, therefore, not place ourselves at the center of the cosmos, but understand ourselves in relation to it, somewhat as artists experience their place within modern technology, somewhat as participants in an all-embracing activity that develops our abilities. We need to remember that all significant pre-Christian philosophers, especially those of ancient Greece, regarded life as an art, and science only as the theory of that art.
1.3. Methodology in ecological philosophy
Here, I discuss some of the basic methodological principles of an ecological philosophy. These principles are rooted in scientific knowledge and social activity or praxis. Scientific knowledge and social activity deepen our understanding of an ecological philosophy and help shape a more effective strategy for environmental interaction. The basic principle is that of dialectics. By relying on dialectics, we can distinguish the evolution of our social relationships, from their simplest to their highest forms. We can further distinguish the self-organized, objective patterns of interaction of a society and of the individual. The dialectical principle is a most useful philosophical principle in disclosing the unity of the social sciences and the environment.
It is important for us to realize that our consciousness does not embrace reality fully and cannot alter or abolish the objective patterns of nature, society, or formation of the human personality. Nor can our consciousness alter its own patterns of coming to awareness, functioning, and developing. These patterns operate objectively and independently whether they are recognized or not. The general course of events always contains elements of the conscious and the unconscious, the realized and unrealized, the foreseen and unforeseen, in a historically changing relationship. The participation of our consciousness and the facts of experience condition our intentional activity, creating a greater role in society for consciousness and for its relationship with the environment. We account for a creative role in society through the two disciplines of the existential and spiritual life; philosophy and theology. Each gives to and takes from the other. Moreover, the single human consciousness relates to and includes both philosophy and theology.
The emergence of a holistic view of life within our present experience challenges theology to face the issue of joining with philosophy in raising our consciousness through a phenomenological methodology. A phenomenological methodology discloses the necessity of the notion of co- creation within the environment. The methodology of ecological phenomenological philosophy involves the creative notion of holism in the integration of life sustaining values within the human subjective consciousness.
1.4. The design of an ecological philosophy
Our interactive life is constantly changing, extending and perfecting itself within our environment. Overall, one can note that our invasive interaction upon the environment is disclosing the variety of its life forms. This variety arises from the fact that in its beginnings life is not consciously experienced as a unity but as a multiplicity. We live with a number of social, theoretical, ethical, and moral purposes whose conscious unity is not our starting point but rather our intended goal which is, in fact, our pre-reflective consciousness. Ecological philosophy, in order to free itself from the constraints of the scholasticism of the Middle Ages, finds it necessary both to understand life itself and to conceive an anthropology that re-constructs the modern subject in terms that are essentially different from those of the Middle Ages. A Marxist interpretation of the subject in the modern social environment is one such example of the design of an ecological philosophy.
In designing an ecological philosophy based on our experience, the question arises: Do we need to return to nature as experienced in its pre- scientific state? The notion that we need to return to pre-scientific experience is not new and is, in fact, quite common. The high degree of interest in new age spiritualities is an example of this. This desire to return to pre-scientific experience may be interpreted in various ways. With hindsight, we see that ecological philosophy has passed through various evolutionary phases. Among them was Darwinism. Darwinism, as a philosophy, gave rise to an evolutionary understanding of the environment. It conceived the content of ecological philosophy to be the evolutionary science of relationships of an organism with its environment; the same attitude has characterized the biological sciences to the present day. Darwinism, in its various expressions, understood the human population as a purely biological and social phenomenon within an environment. Marxism presented a social scientific phase in the evolutionary understanding of the patterns of society’s interaction with the environment. These patterns identified the human population as a materialistic, social, and biological phenomenon, a conception distinct from that of Darwin’s evolutionary perspective.
For it to function as an epistemological system, one has to understand ecological phenomenological philosophy in a double sense. First, ecological philosophy discloses the expression of an integrated understanding of the subject’s own experience. Second, an ecological philosophy is but part of the whole of our collective experiential outlook. In its design, an ecological phenomenological philosophy takes into account both senses.
1.5. The normative character of ecological philosophy
Ecological philosophy constitutes a normative, or ethical, character of human activity. An phenomenological philosophical stance, or way of interpreting experience, provides for thresholds that disclose further knowledge and meaning of ethical social activity. We formalize, in our thinking, such thresholds that arise within our experience because only then will the intended purpose of our actions be recognized. Much formal Western philosophizing is preoccupied with the discussion of secondary issues. It has lost touch with the elemental and existential questions regarding life and the world, becoming theoretical and finding satisfaction in discussing problems of a purely academic nature. Our Western philosophy has occupied itself with elucidating itself, instead of struggling to achieve a cosmic view that would lead to real change in the environment and in ourselves. Western thought has not been governed by the notion that the one thing needful is the relational unity of ourselves with the cosmos. Rather, it has emphasized the dichotomy between the cosmos and ourselves. We are, thus, in danger of being satisfied with lowered ideals and with an inferior conception of the cosmos.
To prevent satisfaction with lowered ideals and an inferior conception of the cosmos ecological philosophy has an important role to play in the development of society. An ecological philosophy discloses a norm of integrity within both the individual and society, so that neither the individual nor society reduces to the particular terms of the other. Within an ecological philosophy, we realize that all the sciences freely admit that their normative disclosures of reality are subject to reconstruction. In addition, within an ecological philosophy both philosophy itself and theology might admit to a final good or end that has always managed to elude, but not falsify, their formulations.
Normative development arises quite naturally within an ecological philosophy due to the possibility of transforming the reality around us. An ecological philosophy transcends the constraints of Hellenistic thought, providing further thresholds for development and philosophical criticism. Transcending Hellenistic constraints represents a new stage in the evolution of human thought. Ecological philosophical evolution is an extremely complicated and many-sided activity requiring a restructuring of our understanding of the environment and social restructuring of its components. In place of classical analytically constructed thought, phenomenological thinking discloses the intended purposes of social and ethical development.
Within the normative character of an ecological philosophy, various questions arise. Shall I relate only to myself and not care for others? Shall I like only my kind and dislike all other kinds? Attend only to humans and ignore other species? Attend only to sentient beings and thereby omit that which is divine? It is becoming apparent to enlightened thinkers that ecological philosophy, along with knowledge derived of spirituality, gives us a chance to add a dimension of depth, growth, and development to these questions arising within our environment.
1.6. Critical understanding in ecological philosophy
During human history, significant crises have arisen more than once in our relationships within the cosmos. Further, in recent decades, qualitative shifts have occurred in our relationships within the environment. Today we have reached several critical points in areas affecting the environment, such as water and air pollution, greenhouse gases, and sustainability of resources. The present ecological context presents a unique opportunity for the critical understanding of the environment. A critical understanding of modern society discloses opportunities for improved relationships with our environment; philosophical contemplation has an influence on the construction of the social and existential systems that form these relationships. Therefore, it is expedient for us to contemplate the subject- object relation in more detail from a phenomenological perspective. It is also very important to understand as phenomena the processes of our interaction with the environment and to develop methods for a comprehensive and fundamentally new approach to the future. One aspect of this assessment is to contemplate the dynamics of the environment as organism and the transformation therein caused by human intervention. In that connection, it is no accident that some people talk of a new philosophical revolution aimed at taking into greater account the ecological principles of development beyond the biological sciences.
The need to understand our phenomenological connection with the environment is beginning to take hold of the Western mind. Philosophers realize that the principles of an ecological phenomenological understanding of the environment depend on the social conditions that satisfy the spiritual and ecological needs of the individual. In this context, we can distinguish the collective mind from the singular mind. Our collective mind is crafted out of the activity of singular minds. The collective mind continues a dialectic with itself, as well as with the singular mind; this dialectic constitutes part of our cosmic environment.
However, the collective mind of the public and the singular mind of the individual may intend good or ill. In the human existential context, we find only one true epistemological object, that is, the subject who experiences. Critical understanding in ecological philosophy takes place within the national and economic culture and within other features of the environment. Thus, we are subsequently presented with a considerable variety of philosophical opinions. We then experience a need for further philosophical contemplation to disclose the integrated understanding of ecological philosophy. Such an understanding serves as the basis for a democratic involvement with the environment and, at the same time, deepens our awareness of social consciousness.
The global character of ecological difficulties calls for an intended re- evaluation of philosophical perspectives on an international scale. Philosophers who remain within the classical metaphysical modes of thinking cannot envision a re-evaluated approach. Not understanding the dialectics of a new philosophical understanding, classical metaphysical thinkers presume the new dialectic to be error and the cause of many epistemological problems. Failing to understand that philosophical thinking was evolving before the scientific era, they have underestimated the potential for a new philosophical point of view arising out of the old point of view. A new philosophical point of view requires a revolution in epistemological thinking, replacing the former, quantitative philosophical thinking with a contemporary, qualitative philosophical thinking. Through the former quantitative philosophical approach we “conquer” nature and sap the natural foundations of our own life by disrupting the interaction between society and the environment. In short, we must evolve out of a scholastic philosophy into phenomenological philosophy.
Our environment stimulates and evokes an intellectual response from philosophers. An intellectual response becomes effective only when apprehended as constant activity or evolution of ideas. The intellectual response is conditioned by the results of the many discussions that have gone on beforehand about the environment. Yet, when critically evaluating any new views and subsequently abandoning inadequate ideas we must not forget that the truth is not exclusively, nor ultimately, apprehended through philosophical understanding. That is why, when trying to solve certain problems, we also have to be extremely critical of our philosophical understanding, treating it only as an opportunity for further reflection. Philosophical thresholds of understanding reveal themselves only over the course of the ages and then only to individuals who have been experiencing and reflecting over generations on what they feel or do. Philosophy, as such, has not been able to do more than evaluate and clarify convictions and find within its own domain certain limitations and requirements that tend to emerge from and converge towards a critical consensus.
1.7. A phenomenological understanding of ecological philosophy
Since Descartes, Western philosophers have divided our environment into parts and elements in order to understand it more conveniently. They contrast and compare one part with another so that what appears as a total understanding will satisfy the inquirer. Today, however, it is necessary to study our environment not through compartmentalizing it, but by apprehending it holistically and interpreting the knowledge gained of it with the intent to understand the immanent and transcendent relationships of all its constituent parts. In that respect, it is reasonable to ask what philosophical stance or approach may become the point of departure for an integrating ecological philosophy. A phenomenological approach is the answer. The methodology of a phenomenological approach leads us to understand our experience from a coaxial perspective. We must interpret our experience with respect to both the vertical and horizontal perspectives, as it were, of the appearance of our environment. Truth is disclosed through a phenomenological knowledge of a coaxial subjective and objective world.
A phenomenological apprehension rejects a metaphysical dichotomy or ontological separation between subject and object. Ontologically, subject and object are distinguishable but not separable. A relational unity of subject and object appears within their environment through a phenomenological apprehension. A relational unity discloses human life within a unity of the highest form of social existence in an ecological system.
The most important principle of a phenomenological ecological philosophy is the interaction between that which is perceived as subject and that which is conceived as object in dialectical relationship. We must understand this dialectic as enveloping process, rather than as static and fixed state of affairs. In this conception, interactivity necessarily constitutes the unity of the social life and the environment within the cosmos. We shall not resolve our philosophical and environmental problems by blotting out the dualism we experience within our universe, but only by conceiving our relationships as a unity that no longer has any divisive or dichotomous power over or within our experience. In other words, from a phenomenological perspective, we conceive ourselves to be at home in the universe and as co-creating constituents of the universe.
1.8. Humanitarianism and ecological philosophy
The necessity of a humanitarian view of the world emerges from our experience of the environment as the place in which the needs and the aspirations of humanity, both individually and collectively, enter our consciousness. Because of technical advancement, the material world that constitutes our environment has already become the product of humanity’s activity. This transformation of the environment by means of modern technique demonstrates the necessity to balance the factors of humanity’s physical, social, inner, and transcendental world. This balancing or harmonization of relationships is one of the most important aspects of modern humanitarianism. Our relationship within the environment occupies a major place among the philosophical issues of contemporary research. However, no matter how great the significance of the material environment is to us, we must not underestimate the importance of the transcendental aspect of our environment. The disclosure of the transcendental aspect of our environment is truly of global significance.
The transcendental aspect of our environment not only concerns our individual intellectual and emotional outlook; it also embraces all the collective forms of relationships beginning with the family, through all types of communities, all gradations of social levels, classes, nations, states, and countries that regulate human activity. Humanitarian philosophers pay much attention to what Western thinkers sometimes call the identity crisis, that is, our loss of a sense of our place in a modern, constantly changing world and a loss of our own self-esteem and intrinsic value. We are faced with the danger of forgetting something that is, ultimately, a most important point. When surveying global problems affecting the broad population and even humanity as a whole, it is the single person, the unique personality, which must be considered as primary.
Ecological philosophy is often directed to the external environment, with a concern for the preservation of the environment. Nevertheless, life calls our attention to an “inner medium” of the human personality and to the deeper aspects of community life in order to discover how to avoid the disasters that often threaten our environment. In the search for the most effective forms of philosophical understanding, our attention is naturally concentrated on problems affecting the masses of people. The attention given by philosophers to epistemology has a long history. Their attention to epistemology is complex and varied and takes into account many factors closely interwoven with the issue of human behaviour. Thus we need to think about the individual as he or she relates to the transcendental dimension within the cosmos. The ecological philosophical crisis is of special concern to epistemology.
What do we mean by saying that human reason makes life better and transcendentally richer? One may say that it is a matter of our understanding of our own identity in relationship to our environment. A proper understanding of human identity, which is the illuminative purpose of all philosophies, will resolve the root conflicts within all our interactions and the conflicts within our environment. In other words, it is in understanding our place in the finite collection of things in the cosmos that human reason makes life better and transcendentally richer. We humans resemble, but differ from, other things in the environment. Identity is the understanding of our significance in the context of our existence. Identity issues arise from individuals and the group within the environment. Identity, as disclosed by ecological philosophy, is not an ultimate, nor a self-subsisting notion. Rather, it is the notion of an evolving, living subject, a becoming, not a being. Identity, for humans, arises from the self-reflexive activity of the individual in the environment, or in transcendental activity, or both. The phenomenological philosophical disclosure of human identity leaves no room for a transcendental vacuum. Human identity serves as the basis of life and a unique positive personality of true worth. Thus, the task of an epistemological ecological philosophy is to make a deep unprejudiced evaluation and to seek ways of overcoming any cause that may result in de-personalization and de-identification resulting in a socially and transcendentally impoverished existence. Failing to undertake this humanitarian evaluation leads to an identity crisis and to despair and self- annihilation.
1.9 The philosophical evolution of ecological awareness
To some, philosophers have merely interpreted the world in various ways; however, according to Marx in his 11th thesis on Feuerbach, the point is to change the world. This point is a new posing of the ecological problem. The Marxist perspective has had revolutionary significance in developing new views of the relation of society to the environment. To my mind, its importance is yet unrealized.
The notion of an ecological philosophy has evolved comparatively recently. Global ecology and social ecology have become contemporary expressions of our concern and are among the most publicly recognized global issues of modern times. We have become aware of the significance of ecological issues as the planet has ceased to be an unlimited absorber of the wastes of industry. Signs of irreversible degeneration in the environment began to appear as the scale and intensity of abuse of the environment increased. For many of us, this has turned our attention to the
dialectical principles uniting the social life and the environment, and to an effort to revise and improve our social relationship with the environment.
A phenomenological understanding of the evolution of ecological relations between society and the environment discloses the proper pattern of the interaction of subject and object in the cosmos. Humans engage in the highest form of reasonable activity known to us, that is, in social activity. In a cosmos that discloses an inter-subjective transcendental our physical environment is at a lower level in the hierarchy of the forms of activity. With this realization in mind, the French paleontologist and Christian evolutionist, Teilhard de Chardin, remarked that if humanity had had unlimited opportunities to spread and settle from the very beginning its development would have been something unimaginable. The thresholds of interaction of humanity within the cosmos need to include a transcendent understanding. Thresholds of interaction that include a transcendent understanding present the possibilities to establish goals and promote the evolution of our human activity.
1.10. The socio-cultural origin of ecological awareness
Philosophers trained in the socio-cultural philosophical systems of their day have reflected upon the relations between humanity and the environment. The building up of practical philosophical systems based on the thinking of René Descartes and the use of philosophical principles of understanding introduced by Francis Bacon furthered science’s dominant position in the environmental system of connections and relationships. The French materialistic thinkers, when analyzing the relationship between humanity and the environment, often based their thinking on the anthropological and ontological notions of Ludwig Feuerbach, Immanuel Kant, and Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Their contributions introduced into philosophical thought various forms of the idea that an abiding universal divinity unites humanity and the environment.
The attempt at integrating scientific knowledge and art in order to satisfy the individual’s social and spiritual needs pre-dates contemporary philosophy. Integrating scientific knowledge and art for this purpose continues within ecological philosophy. Ecological philosophy, enriched by a dialectical approach, discloses the vertical and horizontal elements of the structure of knowledge. This philosophical approach makes it possible to make a critical evaluation and to understand the environment in a manner appropriate to any given culture. Through a coaxial understanding of vertical and horizontal knowledge, we can carry out a global program to create integrating principles within modern cultures and their environment. Historically, by the 1980s a reciprocal relationship between ecology and culture was becoming more and more understood and accepted. Through an awareness of their reciprocal relationship, we have come to understand the totality of spiritual and social values uniting this relational entity. Through a holistic understanding of this unity, which is greater and other than the sum of its individual parts, the environmental systems act as a complex set of socio-cultural processes within the ecological context.
1.11 Summary
Our contemporary experience confirms that an understanding ecology cannot do without a re-evaluation of philosophical and scientific methodologies. The entire point of an ecological philosophical re-evaluation is that philosophers not impose their own value systems upon the environment. The philosophical approach to ecology increasingly reflects a synthesis, or integration, of the previously separated areas of the experience of scientific knowledge and social practice. A profound evolutionary difference looms between an ecological philosophy that helps one comprehend the environment and an ecological philosophy that helps one transform the environment.
Ecological philosophy ponders the conditions of existence of living organisms and the mutual relations between organisms and the world they inhabit. Ecological philosophy takes the stance that no single interpretation of reality can compel a rational consensus of all minds, and that philosophy cannot convincingly support a single value system. Within an ecological philosophical stance, we organize ourselves not only as social creatures but also as intellectual ones. An ecological philosophy that keeps contact with reality must look objectively to the cosmos. We do need, as well, to experience ourselves somewhat subjectively as artists within modern technology and somewhat as participants in an all-embracing activity that develops our abilities.
Theology has need of the phenomenological methodology of ecological philosophy as its methodology so that theology may become conscious of its true purpose. A phenomenological methodology discloses the central notion of co-creation within the environment. Ecological phenomenological philosophy, as a methodology, involves the creation of wholeness, the integration of life sustaining values within the human subjective consciousness. Ecological philosophy finds it necessary both to understand life itself and to conceive an anthropology that re-constructs the modern subject in terms essentially different from those of the middle Ages. Depending upon the epistemology, the development of an understanding of the depth and the mystery, the drama and the pathos, and the spirituality of the whole experience of life, of the world and of God, will vary accordingly.
Philosophers realize that the principles of an ecological phenomenological understanding of the environment depend on social conditions that satisfy both the spiritual and temporal needs of the individual. The global character of ecological difficulties calls for an intentional re-evaluation of philosophical perspectives on an international scale. The whole human intellectual enterprise hangs on how we relate to experiential facts and offer an appropriate philosophical interpretation.
A relational unity of subject and object is disclosed within their environment through a phenomenological apprehension. The most important principle of a phenomenological ecological philosophy is the interaction between subject and object in a dialectical relationship. In other words, from a phenomenological perspective we conceive ourselves to be at home in the universe and as co-creating constituents of the universe.
CHAPTER TWO
AN ECOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH
2.1. A phenomenological eco-philosophical approach
One intended purpose of an ecological philosophy, or eco-philosophy, as I speak of it in this chapter, is to construct methods of thinking that will assist us in our understanding of the activity of the spirit in the world. An eco-philosophy attends to the transcendental, the spiritual, as well as to the material aspects of our environment. Traditionally, in the West, the scholastic philosophical method, or some variation of it, has been used to evaluate our transcendental or spiritual experience. In modern times, however, other interpretive options have become available, such as the phenomenological method. Scholastic philosophy is no longer the primary supporter of theology in the interpretation of the cosmos. The sciences have become partners in the interpretive dialogue with theology and their particular methods have had to be considered in the interpretation of the environment. It is now phenomenology's turn to become a partner in the interpretive dialogue.
A phenomenological eco-philosophical approach is increasingly preferred by many in interpreting their experiences. A phenomenological method of interpretation is qualitatively different from the scholastic method of interpretation in that phenomenological interpretation apprehends authentic notions of personal subjective consciousness in contrast to absolute ideals. A phenomenological methodology does not merely apprehend a theoretical pre-understanding. When supported by a scholastic philosophy, theology is required to conceptualize its mental objects as epistemological ideals susceptible to a pre-understanding. But when supported by a phenomenological eco-philosophy, on the other hand, theology is required to inquire into the subjective meaning of religious experience and presence in the world. Such inquiry into subjective meaning is not limited to the description of religious experience and presence, but is an acknowledgment of that which is transcendent and spiritual in all experience. Phenomenological apprehension is particular to the agent and, thus, not bound to the objective intellectual constructs of any single culture but is characterized by the cultural context of the agent. Modernism, as an identifiable Western intellectual construct, has provided a phenomenological threshold for such philosophical interpretation. In their respective approaches, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger sought ways of philosophical understanding that would be more authentic in giving meaning to human experience than traditional Western metaphysics. In the theological inquiry below, I suggest a phenomenological eco-philosophical approach that engages the subject’s immediate, total and holistic perception of the environment.
2.2. An eco-philosophical theological inquiry
A phenomenological eco-philosophical theological inquiry concerns itself with the notion of becoming, an evolutionary term, more than with the notion of being, a scholastic term, in the interpretation of experience. In a dialectical manner, it concerns itself with these notions of being and becoming simultaneously. However, such an inquiry about being and becoming is not a philosophical metaphysics of the type that has been elsewhere described as the “Queen of the Sciences.” [2] Rather, the intention of phenomenological theological inquiry, according to Laycock, is to reach “God without God,” a phrase coined by Husserl. [3]
Phenomenological theological inquiry interprets a present, pre- reflective human experience in a manner similar to the way in which poets and artists interpret experience. The style of theological interpretation adopted by the phenomenological method of apprehension reflects an existential, not an idealistic, approach to life. Sören Kierkegaard was among the first to initiate this style of inquiry into life’s experiences. Other philosophers have had similar thoughts. J. G. Fichte, W. J. Schelling, Martin Heidegger, G. W. F. Hegel, L. Feuerbach, K. Marx, and F. Nietzsche also adopted an existential approach in their philosophical inquiries.
The scholastic method of philosophy was common to both Roman Catholic and Anglican theology. Daniel Liderbach tells us that Modernists insisted upon the importance of apprehended phenomena as the starting point to describe and interpret the givenness of experience. [4] George Tyrrell (1861-1909) and Alfred Loisy (1857-1940) are significant representatives of Modernist theological thinking and their work consisted of an existential evaluation of the expressions of religious understanding appropriate to their day. Within the Anglican tradition, the Modernist theologians were known as “modern churchmen” and the most influential among them were H. D. A. Major and W. R. Inge. Cyril Garbett has noted that large numbers of the churchmen of the day regarded the claims of Christianity as inconsistent with modern ways of thought. Phrases like the Fatherhood of God, Salvation through Christ, and Life after Death seemed to them to have been meaningless platitudes. [5] New theological understandings based on a new philosophy needed to be constructed to prepare the way for the future of belief. In the future, and for some of us today, belief must take on the new form of an existential phenomenological eco-philosophy characterized by Leslie Dewart’s notion of de-Hellenization. [6]
Theological de-Hellenization reflects an apprehension of experience through a phenomenological activity that has replaced the scholastic method of interpretation. As such, de-Hellenization presents a new threshold of activity in theological interpretation. Unfortunately, philosophical de-Hellenization has been discounted and subsequently abandoned by many thinkers within Western philosophy. As a result, many of us have missed the opportunity to encounter a new threshold of theological inquiry typified by the Modernist movement. In scholastic thinking, theoretical questions and answers are formulated and governed by a Hellenized and fixed idea of nature and being. The approaches of the various philosophical schools of thought are culturally and historically identifiable. That is, schools of philosophical thought have evolved. They are a product of their times and environment. Philosophical terms change to reflect a new apprehension within the historical development in epistemology. By way of example, in phenomenological thought, existence, which is a classical term, is re- conceived in terms of becoming. Union, a classical term, is re-conceived as unity, a relational term; necessity, a classical term, is replaced by the phenomenological notion of freedom.
Theologians continually search for new and meaningful ways to understand religious experience. No hidden or ideal meanings are disclosed in phenomenological theological language which assists in the interpretation of experience. Notions come into form only in light of the subject’s intent. John Morreall concludes that appealing to hidden meaning in theological language is a negative undertaking since no hidden meanings exist. Our words are based on our intentions and if theological language is possible then theological intentions must also be possible. We should not spend our time trying to appeal to hidden meanings that do not exist in theological language. [7] Rather than attempt to identify hidden meanings, phenomenological theological thinking attributes religious meaning to phenomena. Phenomenological theology is thus freed from all allegorical limitations in its language. That the phenomenological method presents new thresholds for theological inquiry can be demonstrated to philosophers and theologians, but whether phenomenologists of religion have accurately grasped what is demanded by these methods is doubtful. [8]
Within contemporary thinking, a renaissance is in the making as phenomenological apprehension reveals new thresholds of understanding within Western culture. Thomas Ryba notes that many observers, both inside and outside the Roman Catholic Church, make the inference that the church's theology may be on the verge of another grand synthesis that might supplant Thomism. [9] This grand synthesis would be contingent upon the abandonment of traditional theoretical thinking, according to Anna-Teresa. Tymieniecka. [10] A way forward for contemporary interpretation, I suggest, is through a phenomenological understanding conceived as an eco- philosophical activity. In what follows, three phenomenological thresholds present an opportunity for the eco-philosophical activity or reflection.
2.3. An Eco-philosophical reflection: Scholastic interpretation shifts to phenomenological apprehension
According to Langdon Gilkey, in Western theological understanding, debate has moved from the question of the structure of religious language (an issue of scholastic interpretation) to the more radical question of a mode of meaningful discourse (an issue of phenomenological apprehension) in which the interpreter is part of the experience. [11] Scholastic theological understanding does not falsify the interpretive task. Rather, scholastic understanding is inadequate for the contemporary interpretive task. Phenomenological theologians continue to look to new apprehensions to replace scholastic ideology. Theological interpretation is undergoing an aggiornamento, an up-dating, or better, a ressourcement, a return to the sources, and becoming disengaged from a culture that no longer exists as it encounters new thresholds of interpretation. The environment to be interpreted is changing. A co-responsible and co-creative relationship is disclosed in a phenomenological apprehension of this environment. This is significant because persons now may accept themselves as co-responsible and co-creative agents with the divine life. In a scholastic ideology, this understanding of co-creatorship is not tenable. Maurice Merleau-Ponty offers a criticism of the scholastic ideology in that Catholic critics wish for things to reveal a God-directed orientation of the world and wish for humanity, like things, to be nothing but a nature heading toward its perfection. [12]
In theology, no hermeneutic, no clear method, no set of rules secures a certainty of apprehension and understanding of religious experience. However, a relational approach suggests participatory activity within phenomenological philosophical apprehension. This participatory activity is the difference between scholastic interpretation and phenomenological apprehension. In phenomenological understanding, the Christian’s life- world provides the theologia crucis for the religious experience. The theologia crucis is an existential threshold for the phenomenological apprehension of experience. For most Western Christians, modernity is the context of the theologia crucis, and modernity can and will no longer borrow the criteria from the models supplied by another epoch. It creates normativity out of itself. [13] According to Gordon Kaufman, in the phenomenological existential apprehension of the theologia crucis, theology becomes fundamentally an activity of construction and reconstruction, not one of theoretical description or exposition, as it has ordinarily been understood in scholastic theology. [14]
2. 4 Eco-philosophical reflection: Dichotomous knowledge shifts to unitary knowledge
Another threshold of interpretation reveals a philosophical shift in epistemological thinking from a scholastic to a phenomenological way of thinking. Frederick Sontag suggests that when philosophy regains its rightful place, asking questions that no science can determine for it, it becomes less certain, but also more flexible--so that theology can once again utilize its support.[15] In the shift from static, scholastic knowledge to active, participatory knowledge certain terms are not to be confused. Subjectivism and objectivism are terms that denote specific doctrines or systems of knowledge, whereas subjectivity and objectivity are terms that connote a phenomenological and relational apprehension of the life-world or environment. In Western ideology, characteristics modeled after anthropomorphic concepts are predicated of that which is divine. Further, when applied to deity, these predicates are often interpreted as real in the collective mind and as constituting deity in se. That such divinity is believed to exist or to be Other, or is understood as an Other, does not reveal anything of the divine construction or even whether God, or gods, exist. In contrast to Western ideology, phenomenological thinking does not present a separate, but common, or detached but universal, objective reality. Scholastic philosophy/ideology posits that a true, absolute being, one who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and transcendent, personally exists over and above the temporal world, imparting knowledge to the knower. As a result, in scholastic philosophy absolute being lacks the potential for any development or evolution. This contrasts with phenomenological philosophy in which an evolutionary understanding of becoming as opposed to absolute being is disclosed and relationships are socially intended and constructed rather than imposed and determined by external theoretical categories.
A relational epistemology is an epistemology that discloses a phenomenological existential apprehension of those social and cultural symbols that have not lost their power to convince us, according to Paul Tillich. [16] Since phenomenological apprehension is socially constructed, Gordon Kaufman notes that we must see human existence in terms of these symbolical constructions that form a phenomenological unity, not dichotomous union. [17]
2.5. An eco-philosophical reflection: Idealistic language shifts to participatory language
I follow Willam F. Zuurdeeg’s interpretation that theological language is convictional language of a special type. [18] However, for Chris Botha, [19] theological language is not necessarily confessional language. I suggest that theological convictional language is unique due to its participatory, not merely descriptive, character. Further, theological language defies conventional semantics, according to Carl Raschke, and is self-consciously revelatory. [20] In identifying the field of participatory theology, Hans Küng tells us that it includes common, human, and ambiguous experiences. [21] Further, Gregory Baum observes that many Christians desire to speak about reality in continuity with ordinary experiences of their lives. [22] All this presents an opportunity for us to encounter in our daily lives new thresholds for theological apprehension from an eco-philosophical and phenomenological perspective, not an idealistic one. Charles E. Winquist suggests that apprehending existence through the word of God shifts our idealistic language to a participatory language. [23] Leslie Dewart suggests that the Berkeleyan view esse est percipi (being is perception) may be rendered esse est referri (being is relational) within our contemporary threshold of experience. [24] Esse est referri, as participatory language, is preferred to esse est percipi, which is idealistic language.
2.6 Summary
Scholastic philosophy is no longer the primary supporter of theology in its interpretation of the cosmos. A phenomenological eco-philosophical language is preferred by many to interpret their experiences. A phenomenological eco-philosophical inquiry concerns itself with the notion of becoming in the interpretation of experience. Theological de-Hellenization reflects an apprehension of experience through a phenomenological activity that has replaced the scholastic method of interpretation. As such, de- Hellenization presents a new threshold of activity in theological interpretation. Unfortunately, the activity of de-Hellenization has been discounted and subsequently abandoned by many thinkers within Western philosophy. As a result, many of us have missed the opportunity to encounter a new threshold of theological inquiry typified by the Modernist movement.
Scholastic theological understanding does not falsify the interpretive task. Rather, scholastic understanding is inadequate for the contemporary interpretive task. Phenomenological theologians continue to look to new understandings to replace scholastic ideology. Many Western-educated individuals understand themselves as faithful, co-responsible agents and seek new thresholds for theological inquiry that will express their participatory role in the religious interpretation of the life-world. In theology, no hermeneutic, no clear method, no set of rules secures a certainty of apprehension and understanding of religious experience. However, a relational approach suggests the assurance of participatory activity within a phenomenological philosophical understanding.
Scholastic philosophy/ideology posits that a true, absolute being, one who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and transcendent, personally exists over and above the temporal world, imparting knowledge to the knower. Thus, in scholastic philosophy, absolute being lacks the potential for any development or evolution. This contrasts with phenomenological philosophy, in which an evolutionary understanding of becoming, as opposed to absolute being, is disclosed and relationships are socially intended and constructed rather than imposed and determined by external theoretical categories.
[1] The Spiritual Life: Selected Writings of Albert Schweitzer (Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1996).
[2] Etienne Gilson, “On Behalf of the Handmaid,” in Renewal of Religious Thought, ed. L. K. Shook (Montreal: Palm, 1968).
[3] “Introduction: Toward an Overview of Phenomenological Theology,” in Essays in Phenomenological Theology, ed. Stephen William Laycock and James G. Hart (New York: State University of New York Press, 1986), 1-22.
[4] “Modernism in the Roman Church,” Explorations: Journal for Adventurous Thought 20 (2001): 17-36.
[5] The Claims of the Church of England (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1947).
[6] Armand Maurer, “Dewart’s De-Hellenization of Belief in God,” The Ecumenist 5 (1967): 22-25.
[7] “Can Theological Language Have Hidden Meaning?” Religious Studies 19 (1983) 43-56.
[8] Thomas Ryba, The Essence of Phenomenology and its Meaning for the Scientific Study of Religion (New York: Peter Lang, 1991).
[9] The Essence of Phenomenology, ix.
[10] Phenomenology and Science in Contemporary European Thought (New York: Noonday, 1962).
[11] Naming the Whirlwind: The Renewal of God-Language (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969).
[12] Sense and Non-Sense (Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 1964).
[13] Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992).
[14] An Essay on Theological Method (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990).
[15] The Future of Theology: A Philosophical Basis for Contemporary Protestant Thought (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969).
[16] Ultimate Concern: Tillich in Dialogue, ed. D. Mackenzie Brown (New York: Harper and Row, 1965).
[17] Essay on Theological Method (1990).
[18] “The Nature of Theological Language,” Journal of Religion 40 (1960): 1-8.
[19] The Cave of Adullam or Achor, a Door of Hope? A History of the Faculty of Theology of the University of South Africa (Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 1990).
[20] The Alchemy of the Word: Language and the End of Theology (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1979).
[21] Theology for the Third Millenium: An Ecumenical View (New York: Doubleday, 1988).
[22] Man Becoming: God in Secular Language (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967).
[23] The Communion of Possibility (Chico, Calif.: New Horizons, 1975).
[24] Evolution and Consciousness: The Role of Speech in the Origin and Development of Human Nature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989).
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