“The God Delusion made me ashamed to be an atheist”

It’s quite often noted that Dawkins and the rest of the fanatical “New Atheists” are not very highly thought of by more ‘reasonable’ atheists. Given that Dawkins has never come across to me as anything other than a complete idiot, however, I still find it fun to read what they have to say about him… if simply as evidence that my own opinion of him is not solely due to my theistic bias, but may actually be because he is – ontologically – an idiot.

As such, I offer the following article at The Guardian, by atheist philosopher of biology, Michael Ruse:

“Dawkins et al bring us into disrepute“

Enjoy!

Sartre: Phenomenology as Re-enchantment

To know is to burst toward…

To be is to fly out into the world, to spring from the nothingness of the world and of consciousness in order suddenly to burst out as consciousness-in-the-world. When consciousness tries to recoup itself… it destroys itself. This necessity from consciousness to exist as consciousness of something other than itself Husserl calls “intentionality”.

Knowledge, or pure representation, is only one of the possible forms of my consciousness “of” this tree; I can also love it, fear it, hate it, and this surpassing of consciousness by itself that is called “intentionality” finds itself again in fear, hatred, and love. Hating another is just a way of bursting forth toward him; it is finding oneself suddenly confronted by a stranger in whom one lives, in whom one suffers from the very first, the objective quality “hateful”.

So it is that all at once hatred, love, sympathy – all these famous “subjective” reactions which were floating in the maladrous brine of the mind – are pulled out. They are merely ways of discovering the world. It is things which unveil themselves to us as hateful, sympathetic, horrible, loveable. Being dreadful is a property of this Japanese mask, an inexhaustible and irreducible property which constitutes its very nature – and not the sum of our subjective reactions to a piece of sculptured wood.

Husserl has restored to things their horror and their charm. He has restored to us the world of artists and prophets: frightening, hostile, dangerous, with its havens of mercy and love. He has cleared the way for a new treatise on the passions which would be inspired by this simple truth, so utterly ignored by the refined among us: if we love a woman, it is because she is loveable […] We are… delivered from the “internal life”: in vain we would seek the caress and fondlings of our intimate selves… like a child who kisses his own shoulder, since everything is finally outside, everything, even ourselves. Outside, in the world, among others. It is not in some hiding-place that we will discover ourselves: it is on the road, in the town, in the midst of the crowd, a thing among things, a man among men.

_{“Intentionality: A Fundamental Idea Of Husserl’s Phenomenology”
In: The Phenomenology Reader, pp.382-384}

Eagleton: Ideology

A poem by Thom Gunn speaks of a German conscript in the Second World War who risked his life helping Jews to escape the fate in store them at the hands of the Nazis:

I know he had unusual eyes,
Whose power no orders could determine,
Not to mistake the men he saw,
As others did, for gods or vermin.

What persuades men and women to mistake each other from time to time for gods or vermin is ideology.

_{From Ideology, xiii.}

Žižek: Ideology

I’m still a relative newcomer to Žižek, having only read him on and off for about a year now. But I found this dialectical discussion of ideology helpful, even if it is very typically Žižekian, simply because it is so straightforward. It comes from the first of his essays in the Mapping Ideology book I mentioned in the last post:

“‘Ideology’ can designate anything from a contemplative attitude that misrecognizes its dependence on social reality to an action-orientated set of beliefs, from the indispensable medium in which individuals live out their relations to a social structure in false ideas which legitimate a dominant political power. It seems to pop up precisely when we attempt to avoid it, while it fails to appear where one would expect it to dwell.

When one procedure is denounced as ‘ideological par excellence‘ one can be sure that its inversion is no less ideological. For example, among the procedures generally acknowledged as ‘ideological’, definitely the eternalization of some historically limited condition, the act of discerning some higher Necessity in a contingent occurrence (from the grounding of male domination in the ‘nature of things’ to interpreting AIDS as a punishment for the sinful life of modern man, or, at a more intimate level, when we encounter our ‘true love’, it seems as if this is what we have been waiting for all our life, as if, in some mysterious way, all our previous life has led to this encounter…): the senseless contingency of the real is thus ‘internalized’, symbolized, provided with Meaning. Is not ideology, however, also the opposite procedure of failing to notice the necessity, of misperceiving it as an insignificant contingency (from the psychoanalytic cure, in which one of the main forms of the analysand’s resistance is his insistence that his symptomatic slip of the tongue was a mere lapse without any signification up to the domain of economics, in which the ideological procedure par excellence is to reduce the crisis to an external, ultimately contingent occurrence, thus failing to take note of the inherent logic of the system that begets the crisis)? In this precise sense, ideology is the exact opposite of internalization of the external contingency: it resides in externalization of the result of an inner necessity, and the task of the critique of ideology here is precisely to discern the hidden necessity in what appears as mere contingency”.

He then goes on to give a number of other examples of how this works, the best being a comparison of the media treatments of the (first) Gulf War and the Bosnian war. With the Gulf War, rather than paying attention to the complex social, political or religious trends and antagonisms which informed the situation in Iraq, in the media the conflict was ultimately reduced to a personal quarrel with Saddam Hussein, “…Evil Personified, the outlaw who excluded himself from the civilized international community” (Žižek, quoting Renata Salecl [nope, never heard of her either]). The true aim of the war, as the media portrayed it, was Saddam’s own humiliation. That this functions ideologically is pretty obvious. Conversely, however, the media coverage of the Bosnian war (other than the occasional vilification of Slobodan Milosevic) consisted predominantly of accounts of the complex ethnic, religious and cultural background to the war, and the many unresolved historical antagonisms which gave rise to it. In contrast to the deeply personalized coverage of the Gulf War, media coverage of the Bosnian crisis, in an apparent reversal, invoked a definite distance from the conflict, the implication being that, “it is not possible to take sides, one can only patiently try to grasp the background of this savage spectacle, alien to our civilized system of values” (Salecl, again). Though this would initially appear to be more a considered, reasonable and informed account than that of the Gulf War, Žižek’s point is that it too functions ideologically. Indeed, it does so with “more cunning”, the evocation of complex circumstances and a certain distance delivering the West from any responsibility: “The comfortable attitude of a distant observer, the evocation of the allegedly intricate context of religious and ethnic struggles in Balkan countries, is here to enable the West to shed its responsibility towards the Balkans…”. The significance is that this latter, even more poisonous, kind of ideology is also better veiled, less obvious, more insidious than the former, almost caricatured kind. Very clearly, Žižek helps us to see how the most pernicious ideology is not always where it’s most expected… far from it, in fact.

_{(Indeed, later in the essay Žižek illustrates how the most [apparently] blatant forms of ideology sometimes fail to function ideologically at all, which obviously ties back in to his first paragraph at the top).}

Of Second-Hand Bookstores

I wandered into the Oxfam bookshop in Nottingham city centre the other day and made two excellent finds:

First, Rousseau’s Social Contract and Discourses, all together in one 350 page volume for just £2.49!! I’ve been reading up on my history of modern political philosophy over the summer, and so I’m quietly on the look out for cheap primary material from the likes of Hobbes, Locke, Hume, John Stuart Mill etc. and so this was a particularly good find given Rousseau’s importance in the field.

To add to that, just as I was congratulating myself on this particular find, I looked down and noticed a decent-sized book called Mapping Ideology, edited by Slavoj Žižek, for sale for a mere £3.49!! On closer inspection I noticed the volume had a bunch of really interesting (and some classic) essays on ideology from figures including Adorno, Althusser, Lacan, Terry Eagleton, Seyla Benhabib, Rorty and Jameson, as well as two pieces by Žižek himself. I also found it funny that there was a picture of a bald eagle on the front. Needless to say I snapped that up too.

Not bad at all.

Anthony Thiselton on Paul Ricoeur

Interesting introduction to Ricoeur from “Mr. Hermeneutics” (excuse the weird synth at the start):

Why America Needs A Monarchy: Some Vague Thoughts On The US Healthcare Debate

I’ve recently been reading a large book on the ‘History of Modern Political Thought’, and came across a section entitled ‘The Federalist’, which refers to a series of newspaper articles published in New York newspapers between 1787-88. The articles sought to persuade New Yorkers to vote in favour of a new constitution drawn up over the previous summer in Philadelphia, which sought to fix problems with the ‘Articles of Confederation’ – the original document defining the collective identity of the new American states following the War of Independence (…or something like that).

Anyway, apparently one of the problems with getting the new constitution agreed to was the general suspicion among Americans with regard to anything resembling strong central government. This suspicion is pretty understandable given that the Americans had just fought a war against the British to GAIN liberty from a strong, central (albeit overseas and imperial) government. The new American States weren’t about to give that liberty away again by acceding to another strong central government, even if it was this time on their side of the Atlantic.

While describing this background, however, the author of my book threw in a random aside which got me thinking about America’s big healthcare debate. (It’s worth noting, if you don’t know, that a lot of opposition to Obama’s public healthcare proposals are on the grounds, broadly, that too much central government power is dangerous and interferes with individual liberty). My author pointed our, that a major contrast between the public perception of governmental authority in Britain and America in the late 18th Century had to do with the recent history of the two countries. I quote:

“Because the British had used the supremacy – or at least the independence – of Parliament twice in the seventeenth century to overthrow royal absolutism, they tended to identify parliamentary supremacy with political liberty itself. Because the Americans had suffered under the actions of an unrepresentative imperial parliament, and had fought against its authority to achieve their liberty, no such identity was possible. Liberty was identified with rights held against government…” (p.204)

Now, I don’t mean to overplay this historical point (fear of an absolutist monarchy is not particularly potent in Britain these days), but it does seem to encapsulate something of the differences between Britain and America ideologically, and perhaps explains a little of the pre-rational, presuppositional ‘background’ which is shaping the American healthcare debate – a debate which has been, at times, quite unintelligible on the British side of the Atlantic.

Summertime Reading

By Choice • For Pleasure

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By Request • For Review

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William Morris’ Socialist Ideal

“…what I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master’s man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain-sick brain workers nor heart-sick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all – the realisation of the meaning of the word COMMONWEALTH.”

from ‘How I Became A Socialist’ (1894), in News From Nowhere & Other Writings, p.379.

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_{N.B. Morris was ambivalent about just how to pursue the ideal, and was caught, it seems, between the Ruskinian hope of changing the system from the inside-out through moral pedagogy, and the Marxist call for overthrow of the system through bloody revolution.}

Some Weber

“The Puritan wanted to work in a calling: we are forced to do so [...] In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the ’saint like a cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment’. But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage [...] Today the spirit of religious asceticism – whether finally, who knows? – has escaped from the the cage. But victorious capitalism, since it rests on mechanical foundations, needs its support no longer [...] In the field of its highest development, in the United States, the pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning, tends to become associated with purely mundane passions, which often actually gives it the character of sport. Of the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said: ‘Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilisation never before achieved’”

(The Protestant Ethic & The Spirit of Capitalism, p.123-4).

SOME COMMENTARY: Max Weber is obviously most well known for the connection he drew between the ‘Protestant Work Ethic’ (notions of vocation, calling etc.; privileging of the active life over the contemplative life; rejection of monasticism) and the ‘Spirit of Capitalism’ (utility; profit as an end in itself). I’ve been reading for review a book by a guy called John Hughes, and he points out that Weber’s account of the connection between these two was not as simplistic or (apparently) reductionist as it is sometimes portrayed. It seems that Weber was at least partially aware of the effect of secularization on the ‘Spirit of Capitalism’. Protestantism may have played a crucial role in the birth of the capitalist spirit, but modern capitalism has ruthlessly thrown off its religious heritage. Even in the worst, most Puritan context, the Protestant work ethic was tempered by a concern for the spiritual. Unhooked from this spiritual dimension via secularization, however, we have slowly emerged into the vulgar, suffocating ‘iron cage’ of the modern capitalist society.

On a related note, the ongoing collusion of the Religious Right with today’s vulgar (stultifying, dehumanizing, profiteering, exploitative) mode of free-market, secular capitalism remains a complete and utter mystery to me, and ridiculously (insanely, absurdly, farcically, disturbingly) hypocritical given all their high-handed and somewhat obsessive moral rhetoric in other areas. I’m of course aware that this is not a new insight.

A Reading Binge

I’ve been on something of a reading binge for the last few weeks in the run up to two essays I have due in May. For the first time in my life I’ve actually got into a reading routine (which has a lot to do with the fact I am otherwise unoccupied throughout the day, as I continue to look for a job that fits round my studies in this stupid recession). Nevertheless, here is the fruit of my labours, both completed and ongoing, and some I will be starting imminently:

Books Completed:

Ivan Illich - Tools For Conviviality. A staple of Illich’s corpus which extends the thesis he set out in Deschooling Society, that the institutionalization of the West – in terms of education, healthcare, transport, technology etc. – has done far more damage than good, acting as dehumanizing forces which make us slaves to the very things that were supposed to help us. Illich was something of a phenomenon in the 70s, but his work was rather neglected from the mid-80s on. However, the theological foundations of his work – the argument that modern society is essentially a corruption of Christianity – has recently been retrieved by Charles Taylor.

John Ruskin – Unto This Last. A scathing critique of the political economy of 19th Century Victorian society from what might be called a ‘theo-aesthetic’ and romantic perspective. Ruskin has been of interest lately to the likes of John Milbank and Jamie Smith, and has been cited as inspiration for the (related) political sensibility known as ‘Red Toryism’, with which Philip Blond is identified. I found Ruskin had much to say to our current economic situation, even though he was addressing a social context quite different (in some ways, not others) from our own.

The Return of Theology – Times article

Just came across this excellent article over at The Times on the return of theology to academia and the public sphere, focussing on Radical Orthodoxy and featuring an interview with John Milbank - <CLICK HERE>

Speed, Noise and the Asceticism of Ivan Illich

Modern life for those of us in the West is lived at breathtaking speed, a speed which would have made little sense in previous epochs, and which still makes little sense to many other cultures around the world. Time is money, and as such Western society seeks to eradicate those portions of time which are not spent productively. Our society is built upon what Charles Taylor has called a principle of ’simultaneity’; society runs like a vast, time-tabled machine of extreme temporal and spatial co-ordination, where many different things (e.g. the turning on of streets lights, opening of shops, collection and delivery of post etc.), must happen simultaneously in many different places for society to function. The speed at which all this takes place has been and will continue to accelerate until we can squeeze the very most out of our 24 hour days. As a result of this, our lives are also lived amidst tremendous noise. As the speed of life increases – as more and more things happen, simultaneously, at faster and faster rates, in more and more places – the background noise which accompanies our lives rises to a deafening clamour. It is hard for us to conceive of life separate from the incessant speed and unyielding noise of modern life.

Ivan Illich, the Catholic social theorist and theologian, was a fierce critic of developments such as these. His work suggests that they are symptoms of the way in which we have become subject to the very tools, processes and institutions which were intended to serve us. For example,

“It has taken a century to pass from an era served by motorised vehicles to the era in which society has been reduced to virtual enslavement to the car.“

_{[Tools for Conviviality, 1973, p.7]}

Our tools and institutions have caused us to become domesticated. From school onwards, our society breeds individuals intended to fit like a cog into the clamourous mega-machine of modern society. And for most of us, we cannot even envision anything different. For Illich, we have been dehumanised, and the only way to rediscover what has been lost is through a process of selective asceticism and renunciation. Asceticism is something of a dirty word these days, but Illich did not mean it in the sense of the needless renunciation of good things (such as sex, certain foods and drinks etc.), of which Nietzsche (and Paul) were critical. Rather, he advocates an asceticism which does precisely the opposite, and enables us to experience and appreciate the good things more fully:

“We have to engage in the asceticism which makes it possible to savour now-ness and here-ness – here is a place, here is that which is between us, as the Kingdom is – in order to be able to save what remains in us of a sense of meaning, of metaphor, of flesh, of touch, of gaze.“

_{[1986 interview - to get the full weight listen HERE]}

Our modern way of living has caged us in a world of breathtaking speed and deafening noise. For Illich, in order to live with hope, meaning and depth in our age, we need to make certain renunciations. Renunciations which enable us to withdraw from the speed and noise and clamour of our modern lives to a place of solitude and quietness, within which the voice of God can be heard (and the voices of our neighbours and friends), and within which the beauty and goodness of life can be properly savoured and reflected upon – and lived.

Ivan Illich was a remarkable man who, though a high-profile academic, sought a simpler existence. He was a traveller who, in an era of jet-age transportation, preferred the measured speed and humbler energy efficiency of the bicycle. He never wore a watch, believing it needlessly forced an artificial structure on life. And towards the end of his life, he sought more traditional treatments for a serious facial tumour, so as not to become a cog in the medical machine. These kinds of renunciation may not be for everyone, but for those of us who sense that the modern ‘rat-race’ drains and degrades life, Illich offers a different way. I get the sense that there is a profound wisdom to Illich’s asceticism, that deliberate and occasional acts of renunciation can give us the space to rediscover and reflect on the ordinary goodness and beauty of life. 

Amidst the speed and the noise of modern life, in order to have hope, perhaps what we need is stillness, simplicity and silence.

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_{[Before reading Illich, I seem to have been echoing these sentiments in} this post _{on the value of Evensong.]}

Reflections on _A Secular Age_

I just finished working through Charles Taylor’s mammoth 800 page tome A Secular Age this week, for one of my classes. Not only is the book 800 pages, but they are pretty big pages and the print is rather small. If I had been Taylor’s publisher I would have told him he had gone over the word limit. The book is a remarkable piece of work, but I reckon the argument could have been summed up in around 150-2oo pages.

Taylor is essentially arguing against the mainstream ’subtraction story’ regarding secularisation, which says that as society has become more enlightened, civilised and rational, religion, with all its superstitious and unscientific belief in God, has naturally declined, and will continue to do so. In contrast, Taylor argues that this account is deeply reductionistic and historically inaccurate. In Taylor’s reading, the objectifying, disenchanting, ‘excarnating’ tendencies within modernity, themselves driven originally by forms of Protestant religion, eventually remove much of the depth and fullness in life. This objectifying drive characteristic of modernity has been accompanied almost from the outset by opposition, in the form of Romantic streams of counter-enlightenment which have sought to recover the lost depth in a whole host of ways, both religious and otherwise. This is no different today, when the spiritual void opened up by modernity is more deeply felt than ever, and is evident all around us. In this ‘waste land’, far from seeing a continued decline of religion, as the mainstream secularisation theorists suggest, Taylor argues for the continued importance of religion in contemporary life. The basic conditions of belief may have changed radically over the last 500 years, so that immanent options which could not have been conceived back then (exclusive humanism, atheism, materialism) are widely accepted today, but the fundamental draw of humans towards sources of meaning and fullness has not. For Taylor, we have an option in our secular age, to look for solutions to this need for fullness by looking ever more inward, or by looking outward to a transcendent source. As a Catholic, Taylor sees the latter as the ‘real thing’:

“Modes of fullness recognised by exclusive humanisms, and others that remain within the immanent frame, are … responding to a transcendent reality, but misrecognizing it” (p.768).

Whether looking inward or outward for fullness, however, the state of belief in a secular age will remain fragile.