The dogma of desire

I think comments such as Franklin's assume a Voltaire-principle: my right to follow my heart (and swing my fist on its basis) ends where it meets another's nose. Unless there was a different context. But in general you're right; as you've phrased it, it expresses the radical subjective relativism which Benedict is so concerned to combat.

Rod, I wonder if maybe you're just in a funk? I know when I focus on some of the negative things around me, everything can tend to look negative.

Well, I hope whatever abbey I have to retreat to when The End cometh, they're brewing ale there. Reserve me and mine a suite at the Chimay abbey, and we'll be fine.

Well,the idea of total economic collapse is pure rot, no matter what the nervous nellies are saying. Contemporary economy simply does not work that way. A serious recession yes, but recessions are not universally disaterous and a lot of money was made in the last one. (When I was selling real estate twenty yers ago I showed a million dollar house that was built in the Depression.) And the consumer goods are going to be there, don't worry about that. And probably a lot more of them because there will be a lot of government intervention to keep people buying them.

That is reality, the rest is about as true as the Mayan prophecy of doom on Christmas of 2012.

Now, about the death of authority. Yes, it's dead, dead, buried and rotting in the dirt. And nothing is going to bring it back to life. That means that the culture is going to change and change and change and nothing is going to prevent that, anymore than monarchy is going to make a comeback. Change is not rot, though it seems that way to the people who don't like it. It is merely change.

Rod,

I have to wonder sometimes: is this so-called culture war the conservative answer to Don Quixote?

What exactly are you upset about? You could stand to be far less obtuse than this essay (and we readers would be far better for it). Is it relativism you're upset about, or is it a breakdown in integrity (the giving of one's word as a promise for a future fulfillment)?

Putting aside all the B.S. about where did this start (who cares, besides Don Quixote and you), what are you intrinsically upset about?

Is it the breaking of the word?
Is it the massive loan defaulting?
Is it the moral relativism?
Is it the promiscuity of post-post-modern society?
Is it the significant rejection of transcendental authority that prevents individuals from taking cues from your faith b/c they think "just b/c you say so" isn't good enough?

WTF is it? What are you really upset about? Do you really live your life as an upset waiting to happen? Or is this column just one more charade of whipped up moral indignation by another conservative who really doesn't care, but has to put food on the table and knows there's a sucker born every 45 seconds in flyover country?

Around here I find that we just keep retreating further and further into our family. I feel like an alien when I'm out and about much of the time. I can carry on conversations with just about anyone and they walk away thinking that I'm smart and whitty, but a bit odd. And I walk away wondering if I've lost my mind or if there really is nothing to most people. I'd never come right out and say it but I don't care about your vacumn cleaner. I don't really understand why you are upset over some perceived failure of your mother from 30 years ago. I can't relate with dying for your kids to go back to school after summer break. I don't actually think it sounds like fun to smoke weed and get wasted when you send your kid off to spend the weekend with your ex. I can't even begin to fathom how you are contemplating pulling your children out of their day care because your illegal immigrant provider wants $100 more a month for your two kids. I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.

We've lost sight of the reality of cause and effect. If we set up our culture in a certain way, we'll get a certain type of person from it. If we give nothing more than lip service to the importance of family, put tv's in our toddler's rooms and drop our 13 year olds off at the mall on Saturdays, there is an effect.

"Narrow is the way, and few find it" - Jesus said it 2000 years ago, so maybe it has always been like this and we have just assumed otherwise. Heaven knows that our predecessors certainly accepted levels of barbarity which we can hardly fathom today. Perhaps those of us to look around and see a world gone mad are no different than those who recoiled at public executions, child abuse and casual disregard for the lives of the lower class in the past. Maybe this is just an odd niche in the what is essentially the human condition that we find ourselves in - nothing new under the sun. I dunno.

jim, I can't speak for Rod, but here's how I see the problem. Now, keep in mind, I am no fan of authority. to be perfectly honest, I can't relate at all to Rod's concern over the lack of respect and deference for authority.

However, ultimately it seems to me that we need to look to some standard outside of ourselves to judge right from wrong. As you point out above, as it stands it is a long, fairly complicated process for the modern person to choose right action from wrong action. And the fact of the matter is that most people just aren't that thoughtful. Especially in a society which prefers sound bites to dialogue. So most people are just winging it, without really thinking. To the extent that they seek an external measure for how to choose their paths, it is generally nothing more than trying to figure out what their neighbors are doing.

It seems to me that we are like people playing racketball on a tennis court. We want to be able to live full-out, but there's nothing to stop us if we start going to far. Some people are skillful enough to figure out how to play tennis, but most people aren't that good. So we spend most of our time looking for our ball out in the bushes. To me, that's what is missing - the sort of boundaries which make it easier to both go about our lives full-tilt and avoid losing the ball we have been given to play with.

And really, what I am talking about is both completely removed from having people who stand in authority over you and tell you what you can and cannot do. And it's essential for us to navigate a world without those sorts of respected authority figures. It seems to me that we need to have some sort of internalized value system which creates norms and sets boundaries for us. Really, in good part this is a primary function of religion and philosophy. But as I said before, more people just aren't thoughtful enough (and have probably never been thoughtful enough) to actively choose and then internalize this sort of value system. For that we have used society and culture. Now that society and culture cannot provide even the most remedial of values and boundaries for people, we have a lot of people who internalized nothing worth having.

So, a large part of the question seems to me to be, can we figure out a set of values and boundaries which we become normative enough that they are automatically internalized by society as a whole - especially in the absense of an authoritarian hierarchy? I agree with Rod that now that religion and traditions no longer serve that role in society, the radical individualism which is inherant to the way our modern society works is a formidable obstacle to coming to some sort of common agreement on values and boundaries. It's all well and fine to propose that radical individualism stops at the point where someone else is being hurt. However, humans have a seriously well developed ability to justify their actions and deny the harm that they are doing. I did prison ministry in college with juvies and many of these kids were genuinely unaware of the pain their actions caused. Or if they did become aware of the pain they caused, they had reasons why it was justified - an unfortunate consequence, but not necessarily something which should have dettered them from what they often saw as a necessary action. Look at the women who get invitro fertilization for a more middle class example of this thinking at work. It sounds nice in theory, but it ignores the reality of how human beings operate in real life.

So, let me throw it back at you - given the fact that we're raising people not to think, that many people are probably not tempermentally inclined to spend much time thinking about things, that humans have an almost limitless capacity to deny the harm they do to others, what ways are available for us to have a society where people internalize a set of values and boundaries which protect themselves and others while also allowing freedom to fully explore life within those boundaries? I say that religion offers one way, but that's obviously not feasible in the short term. Ideas?

BTW, it's late, I'm tire, I hope this made sense.

Rod:

I believe you mean Franklin Jennings, not "Evans," and I have a pretty strong hunch that Franklin is quoting Luigi Giussani, the priest who founded the lay Catholic movement Communion and Liberation.

If you would like to engage Fr. Giussani's understanding of "The heart is infallible," I am sure that Franklin and I would be delighted to begin a dialogue with you about it.

In the meantime, permit me to say that Giussani's thought has nothing to do with relativism. Rather, he was interested in the nature of desire itself -- the way the human heart longs to be satisfied. As a priest and a loyal son of the Church, Giussani was anything but naive about this -- he knew people could desire things that were morally objectionable.

But he believed that desire itself was something good, something that God implanted in us -- and which points us toward the infinite, back toward God himself.

Giussani was critical of forms of religiosity that over-stress concepts like "objective morality" because they often degenerated into Pharisaical rule-following rather than a living experience of faith.

In that sense, Giussani differs radically from many contemporary "orthodox" Christians in that he asks us to follow to the end the positivity of desire -- the trajectory of the heart -- rather than a form of what he called "moralism." And unlike many self-declared orthodox types, he was remarkably successful at actually communicating with people outside the choir.

Anyway, if you're interested, I think you'd find Giussani's vision fascinating. Benedict XVI says that his life was changed by it -- he's very fond of Communion and Liberation.

Cheers,

Greg Wolfe

wow i just read jim's post and i had an intellectual orgasm. as much as i respect rod, jim's post articulates what i have always never been able to express as to why i disagree with him.

"IF the majority of the population cannot handle independent ethical thinking and need's an institutional order above the secular law, then we're already doomed."

Of course we're doomed, but not for the reason you say. Richard Weaver saw the doom coming in the forties when he wrote "Ideas Have Consequences." Modern man is a moral idiot, he said. If all we have is "independent ethical thinking" and the secular law, we're in deep doo-doo. Please allow me to direct you to the gulag...

Its funny that the only person who recognised both the words, the meaning, and the author, is a man I consider a friend who's talent (no offense, Rod) would preclude seeing him here.

Greg Wolfe did a good job. I meant something very specific by "heart", and maybe I should have dropped that last clause.

But yeah, my deepest expectations (that life has a destiny and meaning, a need for infinite truth, beauty, justice, etc) are not, and cannot be, out of line. I did not create my self, nor did I create my heart (none of you did either) and yet I am here and I have a heart (or desire, if you prefer). I cannot manipulate this desire. I cannot negate it. It is, undoubtedly, an infallible criterion for judging the things that occur in my life, so that I may gather experience by judgement, so that the occurences of my life rise above the level of random happenings into encounters and events.

By analogy, to simplify what I am saying, I did not make my feet. They are the objective criterion by which I judge shoes. It doesn't matter how fashionable a shoe is, or how much it costs. These things are completely inconsequential if the infallible criterion of my foot (its, length, width, shape, etc) is not met.

That which tells me my "expectations are out of line" is little more than a tissue of lies. What am I supposed to believe, my very nature, or some ideology based on some French dudes deeply influenced by the discovery there was more going on in Scotland than sheepherding?

Yeah, if I don't stack up to your ideology, its my self that is out of line. It couldn't be modern's precious "idea".

oops, send hit too early.

...It couldn't be some modern's precious "idea".

None of this is offered to convince anyone of theism. It isn't meant to. Only to illustrate the absurdity of being told the essence of my humanity is "out of line".

(I concede I say things that are "out of line" on a regular basis. It is almost a hobby. But the assertion I was answering was little more than a joke, by its very nature. It certainly wasn't anything one could call "humanist", much less useful.)

'Maybe it's because I haven't read Rieff, but if the unraveling of society began with the mass questioning of authority, wouldn't that place "the beginning of the end" at the printing press' invention and the Reformation?'

A bit before the Reformation actually -- the triumph of nominalism over realism among the late Scholastics. As Patrick Reardon has written:

"Nominalism’s denial of the mind’s ability to know anything real above itself quickly led to the disrepute of metaphysics and eventually cut the ground from under everything else to which metaphysics gives rise, such as the prescriptive authority of inherited language, the anchoring of the moral imagination, and the defining validation of law. I have argued elsewhere that

'Nominalism also produced modern materialism. Nothing so turned Western man’s thoughts back to the things of earth than this sudden persuasion of his being unable to grasp anything higher. The denial of man’s ability to perceive transcendent, intellectual realities above himself guaranteed that the Western mind would thenceforth turn ever more completely toward the only reality that remained, physical reality, the world of matter. (“Materialism and the Abdication of Intellect,” Epiphany, 1997)'

Richard Weaver realized this, as does Marion Montgomery, Rene Guenon, and in their own ways, Flannery O'Connor and Wendell Berry.
Can you justify your version of the Truth any better than anyone else? I doubt it. Religion can't reduce the multiplicity of subjectivism any more than our hedonistic culture today can. What is YOUR standard of truth that escapes these problems?

"Can you justify your version of the Truth any better than anyone else? I doubt it. Religion can't reduce the multiplicity of subjectivism any more than our hedonistic culture today can. What is YOUR standard of truth that escapes these problems?"

And herein lies the problem. There is no more "truth" anymore, only versions of it. How can the mind rest in the truth if there's always the possibility that someone else's version of it is better than yours? This is simply the error of the Reformation writ large. Nominalism argued that the human mind cannot access truth directly. Christianity disagrees. What Rod (and other Christians) have difficulty with, is not resting in the truth to the degree that personal subjectivity doesn't matter, but explaining to people who do not believe in truth how this can possibly be.

Moderns see this as limiting, when it is in fact the opposite. Moderns, through accepting the "disrepute of metaphysics" have cut themselves off completely from one entire aspect of human existence. In fact, they have cut themselves off from it so drastically and severely that they no longer believe in its existence. Thus, they have limited their experience to the merely empirical and logical. They look at the Christian faith, therefore, as something binding and limiting, when actually it is like the shed or stable in C.S. Lewis's "The Last Battle" -- infinitely bigger on the inside than on the outside. But it's not until you actually step inside that you realize that.

Weaver really is the guy to read here, folks. And although he was technically a Christian, he wasn't a particularly religious one, so have no fear that he'll try to convert you.

Also, the above article by Fr. Reardon, "Materialism and the Abdication of Intellect," is unfortunately out of print at this time, but I'm hopeful that he may try to have it republished.

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents… some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

- H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulu, 1926.

Franklin (Jennings),
Yeah, if I don't stack up to your ideology, its my self that is out of line.
Oddly enough, that's kinda how I feel when Christians tell me my Gods aren't real and that my faith is a travesty.

By analogy, to simplify what I am saying, I did not make my feet. They are the objective criterion by which I judge shoes.
Except, of course, that this is a completely subjective judgment. You can only judge whether a given pair of shoes is right for *your* feet, not whether they are objectively good or bad according to some absolute standard. Not sure that's what you were going for...

Now that I've had a chance to read through everything, I see the confusion. Mr. Jennings, I did not mean to speak for you in any way, and I admit to more than a bit of admiration for your stated positions, at least in the eloquence you bring to them.

To all of the names mentioned so far, I offer in rebuttal Machiavelli, not because he was wiser or better connected to anything, but because if we are to view all of those people as observers and commentators, Machiavelli deserves a close reading and an examination of the concepts he finds important.

There are and always have been two aspects to authority: theory and practice. We can admire any theory even while tearing it apart in practice.

The history of the early Christian "conquest" of Europe is instructive, methinks. Apologies to my fellow pagans, since I'm about to make assertions that I know some of them will find offensive.

Large-scale conversions to Christianity were primarily imposed by the leadership of the erstwhile pagans. In many cases, political and economic pressure was the first motivation (I will not trade with you if you don't open your borders to our missionaries). The usual chain was the (yes, usually superficial) conversion of the leaders, followed by their (not the Christians!) coercing their subjects to convert.

Note, please, that I am not phrasing this in terms of belief systems. Conversion usually entailed some form of assimilation, whether it was an explicit merging (as with Celtic Christianity) or subtle or gross suppressions of prior practices behind the adoption of Christian practices. Note, also, that culture and mores changed, if at all, much more slowly. Where they already agreed with Christian culture and mores, there was little tension in the transition. A person didn't change his heart because he was swearing his oath to Jesus instead of Odin.

I don't mean this to push us into a History 101 tangent in place of Philosophy 101, but to offer an illustration of the importance in examining both theory and practice together, and to consider a basic truth: a theory is not necessarily debunked because it was applied badly, nor can a belief system be debunked because there were to any extent adherents who in the Machiavellian sense took advantage of vulnerabilities and committed crimes.

The slavery example that Rod brings up raises an interesting question - if revealed religion can provide such direct and simple answers to moral questions like slavery, then how come slavery isn't flatly condemned in the Bible in the same terms as say, homosexuality?

**I don't really understand why you are upset over some perceived failure of your mother from 30 years ago.**

rebeccat:

You and your husband are showing nothing but courage, yet there is still a flaw in your family -- caused by the prejudice from the **outside.** And that, no matter your efforts to shelter from the world's hate (there is much love too, of course, as you share from your personal experience), may eventually affect your home. It already has, from what you relate.

So why the shocked surprise that so many people raised by the come-of-age-in-the-'60s parents CCers love to condemn (rightly, in many cases) bear scars from their childhoods? And -- going back to my theme in the beginning -- no point condemning my parents, because they were living affected by outside influences, too.

Bill Strauss and Neil Howe have noted in their detailed generational studies that the 1970s were the most hostile decade to American childhood of any in our nation's history. I'm about to be 39. You do the math.

Some of the scars are badges of honor today. Others still have the stitches in them and I can barely keep them closed.

"Physician heal thyself?" Well, maybe. But therapy (sorry, Rod) sure has helped, too.

'"But really the whole thing is another bugaboo, as sophie points out:

Your problem seems to be that you feel people cannot agree on values in absence of an authoritarian religion. But I would rather struggle to find consensus about what it in the common good, then struggle to decide which authoritarian abrahamic belief system we should impose on one another.'"

Sophie's comment makes two assumptions, false ones, IMO.

A) an appeal to transcendent values is equivalent to the imposition of an authoritarian religion.

and

B) the struggle for consensus about 'the common good' will necessarily bring about something that will be correct, just, and enforceable.

rebeccat,

"ultimately it seems to me that we need to look to some standard outside of ourselves to judge right from wrong"

I disagree. Mike Huckabee is insisting that his standard (or, more specifically, his faith's standard) of "right and wrong" be written into the Constitution.This, of course, completely ignores the "standards" of other people's faiths not to mention the "standards" of many good people who are of NO faith.

I agree that " this is a completely subjective judgment. You can only judge whether a given pair of shoes is right for *your* feet, not whether they are objectively good or bad according to some absolute standard".

If we are to judge right from wrong, surely harm can be a factor (see above reference to slavery) and for that there need be no "God".

As jim pointed out and you seem to agree, "it is a long, fairly complicated process for the modern person to choose right action from wrong action."

But I absolutely disagree with you that, "the fact of the matter is that most people just aren't that thoughtful."

How can you know this? Or is it just your own gut feeling?

"Especially in a society which prefers sound bites to dialogue."

This very blog proves you are wrong about that.

"So most people are just winging it, without really thinking."

I disagree.

"what I am talking about is both completely removed from having people who stand in authority over you and tell you what you can and cannot do. And it's essential for us to navigate a world without those sorts of respected authority figures."

Huh? The second sentence negates the first. If it's "essential" to navigate "without those "respected authority figures", how can "what [you are] talking about" BE "completely removed from having people who stand in authority over you"? This does not compute.

Kudos to jim and to Erik for sound, cogent and READABLE arguments.

"From where do your transcendent values come? If you would like to try and reach them without treating the bible or the Koran as the final authoritative source then I would happily join you in the search for them."

Read C.S. Lewis's "The Abolition of Man" and see what he means by 'the Tao.' This would be the starting place.

'With ground rules like those which already exist in our society, the search for consensus about the common good will be enforceable. As for whether they are correct, I don't know that there can or should be an objective standard of "correctness". As for just, there are certainly ways to agree on a criteria of what makes a rule just, and to work on meeting that standard.'

Ok, and then what do you do with the folks who reject the consensus, or reject the very notion of the consensus being correct? Are they tolerated? To what extent? What if a larger consensus decides that they don't want the dissidents to be tolerated, but a smaller group does? Which is the real consensus? Is it just, then, simply because it's the consensus? What if the 'vote' comes down 50/50? Who then decides which is the true consensus?

Nope, won't work. If there are no transcendental values, everything devolves to personal desire and will to power.

Note that I changed the original post to reflect that the author of "the heart is infallible" phrase was Franklin Jennings, not Franklin Evans.

Sophie Brown: You are afraid that, in the absence of authoritarian religion, each of us has only our hedonic, selfish desires from which to determine what it right. That is hogwash. I have a wealth of sources and experiences from which to determine right action -- not so different from yours. And I am largely motivated in these desires by my sense of the common good, just like our enlightened forefathers. Do you reject the meaning and power of that idea? Why? It has fallen out of vogue, but I attribute that more to Ronald Reagan and Ayn Rand than to any real weakness in the idea.

Your problem seems to be that you feel people cannot agree on values in absence of an authoritarian religion. But I would rather struggle to find consensus about what it in the common good, then struggle to decide which authoritarian abrahamic belief system we should impose on one another.

Well, it's not "my" problem, it's our problem. I really suggest reading Rieff. He was not a religious believer, but a sociologist and cultural theorist. He said (and wasn't the only one to say it; MacIntyre, for example, draws on Rieff, or appears to) that what holds a culture together is what Weaver called a shared "metaphysical dream." It's the way a given group of people see the fundamental structures of reality -- the kinds of things they agree upon without even having to ask. Once a culture stops sharing a metaphysical dream, it begins to dissolve. One doesn't have to have authoritarian religion to make a culture cohere and thrive, but it does have to have an authoritative one. As Rob Grano has pointed out, Weaver saw the long dissolution of the West beginning with the triumph of William of Occam's nominalism over Scholasticism. Mind you, the West has been through many of its glory days since then, but nominalism planted the seed of the harvest of despair and dissolution we're now beginning to live through.

Rieff taught that there was no going back. Once people quit believing that it's possible to share a metaphysical dream at the level of culture, it's impossible to stop things from unwinding. There becomes no ultimate barrier -- religious or psychological -- to stop people from liberating their base instincts, especially sex and violence. It's been years since I read Walker Percy, but I believe he made a point of highlighting the troubling fact that the most violent and pornographic era in Western man's history -- the 20th century -- was also the era in which the decline of traditional Christian religion and its restraints came to fuller fruition. Percy's point was psychological, as is Rieff's.

Your point, Sophie, presupposes that the "common good" can be determined by democratic debate. That's all that's left to us in pluralistic societies. I would suppose, though, that if you were a resident of Rawalpindi, the democratically agreed upon notion of the common good would obviate many of the rights you take for granted, and which are taken for granted in our culture, because our culture evolved (devolved) from the Judeo-Christian metaphysical dream.

Rod, at what point does the following break down:

You seem to be claiming that the "government of the people, by the people and for the people" is not possible if it is not explicitly government of, by and for God.

I don't see you bemoaning the demise of Christian values. I see you pointing out the inevitable failure of the Great Experiment.

Permitting myself a cynical addendum: acceptance of free will as a valid concept is the downfall of Christain dogma. :-)

""There becomes no ultimate barrier -- religious or psychological -- to stop people from liberating their base instincts, especially sex and violence.""

The lack of barrier also allows them to explore their creativity as well as advancing civilization through medicine, think of the West's Taboo(metaphysical dream) of the desecration of the dead and how long that hindered medicine due to the unavailability of cadavers.

""It's been years since I read Walker Percy, but I believe he made a point of highlighting the troubling fact that the most violent and pornographic era in Western man's history -- the 20th century -- was also the era in which the decline of traditional Christian religion and its restraints came to fuller fruition.""

The flipside, the advances in technology and knowledge due to that same decline. And given current technologies, I don't think the ancient Romans would have been any less violent, and they were already pornographic from what I hear.

Change is both good and bad, it's good to keep perspective.

"The flipside, the advances in technology and knowledge due to that same decline."

One could argue that the advances have come in spite of, not because of that decline. That the latter was caused by the former isn't necessarily the case.

"And given current technologies, I don't think the ancient Romans would have been any less violent, and they were already pornographic from what I hear."

Which proves what? We've come all this way technologically, and the result is that we're able to kill more people more efficiently, while morally, we've gone full circle back to the days of the Coliseum?

Yes, but there weren't 6 billion of us then, either. That's what I mean: in terms of percentage, even including those mass casualties, you're still better off now. Caesar, for example, killed 25 percent of the population of the Gauls. Similar numbers died in the conquest and revolt in Britain. And on, and on...

Correlation ain't causation.

Rob, the way I see it is much as Isaac Asimov saw it in Foundation, the first in his trilogy, where he coined the following:

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."

We seem to be demonstrating our incompetence at every turn, regardless of the advances in technology or the belief systems that have evolved with it, both of which clearly point the way to peace.

Full link:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html

Here are some excerpts of a book review I published in the Review of Politics in late 2006, "Natural Law Without a Lawgiver." You can find the entire review on my website here.

It is a review of a book by my friend Larry Arhnart, Darwinian Conservatism. If you read the entire review, remember that I am critiquing Larry's use of Darwinism to account for morality apart from God. I am not arguing against evolution per se. In fact, I hold no brief against evolution, for I believe that common descent is not inconsistent with Christian theism, as John Paul II and other Christians have argued. Nevertheless, philosophical materialism is in fact inconsistent with Christian theism. And it is that view--philosophical materialism--that is, in my opinion, the controlling premise in Arnhart's case.

I publish these excerpts here because they may help Rod's critics to understand what I think he is defending.

By Darwinian Conservatism, Arnhart means a political philosophy that is grounded in a human nature that gives rise to a spontaneous order that results in customs, habits, and social institutions and arrangements that best lead to human flourishing. Relying on the work of Friederich Hayek, Arnhart offers a defense of natural law that Arnhart claims does not depend on the natural teleology that many of its supporters, both ancient and contemporary, believe is a necessary condition for the natural law. For example, Thomas Aquinas, like Aristotle and other metaphysical realists, argued that human beings have a certain end or purpose (or good) that is intrinsic to their nature. Inhibiting the achievement of that end, whether by accident or by intent, is wrong. But this judgment is only possible because we have knowledge of certain first principles and moral precepts that we call the “natural law.” But “law” implies a lawgiver, and designed natures imply a designer. Therefore, the natural law and our human nature have their source in Mind.

But according to the Darwinian understanding, Mind is not a necessary condition to account for the diversity of natures of the living beings that arise out of the vast eons during which natural selection cooperates with random genetic mutations and perhaps other evolutionary forces. Consequently, living beings do not possess the stable realist natures that Aquinas and Aristotle believed exist. Rather, for the Darwinian, the natures we ascribe to living beings are merely names (or “nominal essences”) that are shorthand ways to label beings that have roughly similar characteristics. So, we may say that resulting from human nature are those practices, habits, and institutions of the tool-using, language-employing, upright bipeds that have DNA similar to our own.But this human nature tells us nothing normative. It merely describes what is statistically ordinary and generally species-preserving. Arnhart thinks that is all that we need to ground natural law.

Although Arnhart’s case is compelling and will no doubt be attractive to many conservatives who have made their peace with the Darwinian paradigm, I believe there are at least two problems with Arnhart’s case that have to be resolved before other conservatives (and many liberals) will sign the truce.

(1) It seems to me that Arnhart is correct that certain sentiments (e.g., love of family, children) are consistent with a conservative understanding of community. But these sentiments themselves seem inadequate to ground moral action or to account for certain wrongs. For example, Tony Soprano’s love of kin nurtures sentiments that lead to clear injustices, e.g., rubbing out enemies, about which Tony and family do not seem particularly troubled. In that case, the wrongness of the act is located not in the sentiments of its perpetrators (or even its victims, if the victims, for some reason, were convinced that they deserved to be rubbed out) but in a judgment informed by moral norms that stand above, and are employed by free agents, to assess acts and actors apart from their sentiments.

(2) As I have already noted, Arnhart’s account of morality is, at best, descriptive, for it does not provide the reason why I ought to follow it. Granted, it may very well provide us with an accurate description of what behaviors in general were instrumental in helping the human species survive. For that reason, it may very well explain why each of us may have certain moral feelings on occasion. But it cannot say why citizen X ought to perform (or not perform) act Y in circumstance Z. For example, it may be that the traditional family, as Arnhart argues, best protects and preserves the human species if it is widely practiced. But what do we say to the eighty-year-old Hugh Hefner, who would rather shack up with five twenty- something buxom blondes with which he engages in carnal delights with the assistance of state-of-the-art pharmaceuticals? Mr. Hefner is no doubt grateful that his ancestors engaged in practices (e.g., the traditional family) that made his existence and lifestyle possible. But why should he emulate only those practices that many people today (e.g., Arnhart and I) say are “good”? After all, some of our ancestors were Hefnerian in their sensibilities, taking on a concubine or two and running off with one of them every once and a while. Perhaps this practice was just as necessary for Mr. Hefner ’s existence and the preservation of the species as were the “good” behaviors practiced by history’s squares. Because we have always had in our population Hugh Hefners of one sort or another, it is not clear to me how Arnhart can distinguish between good and bad practices if both sorts may have played a
part in the survival of the human race, unless there is a morality by which we assess the morality of evolution. But this would seem to lead us back to the old natural law, the one that has its source in Mind and that is not subject to the unstable flux of Darwinian evolution.

Rod is claiming that Pakistan is a real democracy? No further comment needed I think. Our culture evolved from the Judeo-Christian dream? As I remember the Christian countries were monarchies. The country with the weakest monarchy was probably the one we rebelled against. The early Greeks and Romans probably came closer to democracies and they certainly werent Christian.

Given that our founders were mostly Christians in the broad sense it is natural that their decisions were informed by their upbringing. In spite of that it is amazing that they mostly kept mention of religion out of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Even the opening line "We hold these truths to be self-evident" was originally penned as an appeal to the sacred. This country is the big experiment to see if people can rule themselves by law and reason. We argue and debate and then abide by those laws or suffer the consequences. It seems to be working and certainly much of the world has followed our lead.

Most of our problems have occurred when he have departed from the true image of democracy. The 3/5 rule in the Constitution. Not letting women vote. We now have to deal with apathy which I believe may be our biggest obstacle yet. I dont think that necessitates a theocracy as they have in the Islamic countries.

A world where men create their value system? The French Revolution.

Once people quit believing that it's possible to share a metaphysical dream at the level of culture, it's impossible to stop things from unwinding. There becomes no ultimate barrier -- religious or psychological -- to stop people from liberating their base instincts, especially sex and violence.

My friend and I disagree about the West. He thinks we're entering a period of steady decline, but I think we are like Wily Coyote and run off the cliff. I think the collapse will be triggered by a major event, but will be sudden and brief (assuming we don't avoid it) because there is no shared dream. All the ties have been cut, even family bonds. Is it such a big deal to walk away from a house when you can walk away from a spouse or a child?

"I'm ok you ok" always ends up in divorce, full prisons, and riots."

I don't think it "always" ends up that way, Erin, ooops, I mean M_David. My marriage (and those of many of my friends) would refute the first instance.

The "full prisons" are due in large part to strange "3 strikes and you're out" laws (how many are in prison for merely possessing cannabis?) and the inequitable number of people of colour imprisoned vs, the percentage of the general population.

"riots"???!!!

Scare-monger much?

"No problem whatsoever. While I pray that every man meet Christ, and answer yes to the hope and promise contained within His gaze, so that every man might walk without fear the path to our Destiny, it is always very good to meet honest pagans in the meantime.

Pax Tecum"

Hear, hear. While I have the same prayer for all, I'd much rather hang with an honest pagan than a dishonest Christian.

other jim, where do you live? I think you've been watching way too many road warrior movies. no family bonds? this is the age of helecopter parents; my friends and I spend way more attention on our children than our parents did; young adults are much closer to their parents than prior generations. I am not saying we're getting it all right, but the motivations are largely the same as they ever were. As arethe doomsdays prophesies. Hope is still very much alive. And we can feed and nurture it.

Steve: Rod is claiming that Pakistan is a real democracy? No further comment needed I think.

You're totally missing the point. What I'm trying to say is that democracy is a means, not an end. What people in Rawalpindi believe to be the common good is likely to be rather different from what people living in the West agree to, because their metaphysical dream is deeply informed, even defined, by Islam. This is what was so foolish and tragic about the Iraq invasion and the Bush administration's democracy promotion abroad. They really do think that all people pretty much are the same. You shouldn't be surprised when you give the people of Iraq the ballot when they turn around and vote for illiberal people who favor organizing the polis around religious and tribal principles.

Rob G,

I'd really rather not hang at all.

And I'd add "moralistic" and "sentimentalist" as categories alongside "dishonest". All of them come to the same result, a lack of seriousness about our selves, about our identities and our humanity.

No thank you, give me an "anything" that wants to be serious and honest about himself and the world any day of the week.

Wow. I just had one of those rare, intellectual epiphanies. I don't mind admitting to some personal hypocrisy in hindsight.

Free will. I criticized it in the context of Christianity, and failed to see the same logic at work in my criticism of my fellow citizens and their lack of investment in our system of governance. I can now see a direct parallel between the free will choice to reject Christianity and the free will choice to not participate in our republic.

All details aside, and their importance stipulated, that puts me squarely in the shoes of Franklin J's statement I pray that every man meet Christ, and answer yes to the hope and promise contained within His gaze... Of course, his has a tone of loving concern and mine is, well, not, but I'll just relegate that to the aforementioned details.

"But the great chain of being is broken, the days of the sleeping sheep are gone, never to return. Why do you (Rod) like that world? It was a world of ignorance and superstition. Of disease and brevity. I shudder at its lack of medicine, tolerance."

Rod, every time you change religions you seem to be moving toward the more authoritarian and anti-western. Why do you not just cut to the chase and become a Moslem? In your bloviating against Islam you seem to realize that you are looking in a mirror of your own beliefs. Go ahead, Rod you'll feel much better for it.

Larry, thanks for your kind comments. I do understand what you're talking about. My husband and I are both in our mid 30's, so trust me we know where you're coming from. Heck, my husband spent 3 years in the projects in Chicago in the early 80's - it doesn't get much more anti-child than that. And we're not even going into our parents' parenting style.

I was actually thinking about a conversation I had with a woman who was in her mid 40s and was literally in hysteria crying about how her mother hadn't been attentive enough and if she had suffered from a serious food allergy she probably would have died because her mother is an air-head. And this justified her hating her mother. Even though she didn't have a food allergy which required constant vigilance.

I just think that part of the work of being an adult is sorting through the crap that got thrust on you as a child. And learning to be mature enough extend some grace (as in "I know you're only human and have your own struggles and are ultimately accountable to God for your failures anyways") to your parents for their failures. Struggling with stuff past the age of 30 is certainly understandable and it drives my husband and I nuts that we still come across things we are doing or ways of interacting which are dysfunctional and we realize they are traced back to our past. We've had to come to accept that this will probably happen for the rest of our lives, although in ever decreasing levels of intensity. It's when some level of maturity and understanding about the pain of our past isn't even on someone's radar screen past the age of 30 or so, that I just have a hard time being too sympathetic.

Now that we've gone completely off-topic :) I just thought you deserved a response!

rebeccat,

are you saying that people should just live by trying to figure out what jesus would value, as opposed to agreeing to the religious power structure's edicts about what jesus would value? I don't think you can come up with an image of jesus divorced from the power structure. imho, jesus, like history, was written by the victors.

But even if I did have a picture of jesus' values, I would not look to jesus exclusively because I don't accept jesus as my savior (and I am not sure he was looking for the common good -- he was looking to bring his community to god). the only way jesus' values become mine is because someone imposes them on me. it is very different from this to say that I agree to work with others to try to come up with a set of standards reflecting the common good. Then I am agreeing to the process, even if the outcome of the process is not exactly what I would have hoped. There is a big difference between that and having someone else's religious beliefs imposed on me.

"This is why the elite liberal vision of free love and "I'm ok you ok" always ends up in divorce, full prisons, and riots"

All there before "free love". In an authoritarian model all that stuff was still going on: adultry, promiscuity, crime, heresy, et. al., but it was merely hidden. All the social taboos that were so forcefull pressed unto us stopped nothing, convinced no one to refrain, but merely to be more careful, to lie and to be hypocritical. I am a woman of the 50's and I would NEVER go back. Not that I feel pressed to engage in all kinds of outrageous behavior in order to exercise my freedoms, but I sure as hell am thankful that I no longer am terrified that my daughters lives might be ruined if they were to be "knocked up" and that my good friends who are gay must continue to hide in the shadows to survive.

There are other cultural models available upon which to build a sort of "post-authoritarian, non-patriarchal" style of morality that allows some balance between law and order and anarchy: the Native American and Polynesian matriarchies, for example. Not perfect, no human institutions are, but perhaps more livable, with children cared for and an economy allowing free exchange, but without some groups in the society making all the sacrifices while one heirarchy (read "white males") get all the benefits. Why are we so bound to the authoritarian model. Oh, yeah, BOUND is the key word, is it not?

Well, Charles Taylor's "A Secular Age" is the current tome addressing and perhaps indirectly provoking this particular topic and variety of argument. There's a half decent review by Diggins in the December 16 NYT of it.

There's a conceit in the OP argument that what we have now is a permanent and absolute rather than a transitional and situation-bound condition.

The counterproposal to make is Kant's position and argument in "What is Enlightenment?". You start with a general condition of unenlightenment in his times, where the mass of people require a structure of rules and authorities, much as four year old children with their unsorted impulses and desires do. Then there's a process of change in which both demands imposed on and freedoms given to the People increase, during which they make a great many mistakes, go through tantrums and fights, sexual and class and role identity affirmations, and so on. And parental authority slowly transforms from absolute to relative and advisory. The ideal end point is one of negotiated covenant with an adult. Kant, if time traveled to the present, would probably say that we have now reached where American society is to a large extent in a condition of collective adolescence in the mean- abusive of freedoms and abilities, at the same time deeply afraid of them, always seeking out, avoiding, or testing of the real adults among us, and wishing to be on one side or the other of adolescence at different times. Libertine or reactionary, or stagnant/conservative, but rarely liberal with measure. Kant thinks it's obvious that we will reach a condition of adulthood eventually- if some can, all can as obstacles slowly fall away. You can build Freud, Marx, Nietzsche and the rest into the process in pretty obvious ways; the mistake is to see their teachings as absolutes to tangle with rather than solutions to problems that arose, i.e. situational.

As for the 'transcendental values' business, the credibility of any particular source is contingent on demonstrating its ability to create worthy and exemplary lives emanating that quality. American Christianity is not exactly producing deeply compelling public individuals of the kind at present- it's producing politicians and sophists. There are still reserves of credibility built up in the past, but they're declining. Not that they will go to zero, but they will reach the truthful equilibrium level.

"We don't know what we believe in except in ourselves." That seems rather a dismissal of Heschel's triad of mystery, awe, and wonder as the perpetual point d'appui. But yes, in the end the authority that remains is that of what is revealed to us personally.

But that is the underlying authority in religion in the first place. We would not accept the Bible or other sources if we didn't know by experience that its inner truths could be reconciled with our own.

Which is to say, in the end Modernity drives mankind in the direction of reliance on his/her individual spiritual experience. Which is a driving toward the foundation on which organized religion is built- the spiritual journeys of the individual described by the mystics and prophets, and which is the essential content of primary religious texts and forms. The simplified and corruption-riven, high -fallutin' teachings and schemes we call mass organized religion simply do not and cannot sufficiently span and provide. (Underhill rightly calls them the elementary schools of the spiritual life.) The higher schooling has always taken the form of embattled individual or very small group journeys, even when taking place in monasteries or the like under the supposed aegis of a religious organization (which has usually conflicted with and tried to suppress the better ones- Teresa, Eckehart, Hildegard).

True, we are not at the point where that direction is clear. And there are all kinds of hurdles and problems in the present that seem to many insurmountable- the lack of coordination and discipline of the transition, the escapist treating of all past as baggage (or as salvation), the common 'wisdom' of individualistic selfprotection, the lack of sufficient wealth. Throw in relative status considerations, ideas of preeminence and strategies for preeminence like outbreeding seemingly relevant competitors, conquest by war, and wishes for being the recipients of extraordinary revelation and election...dreams that seem invariably to end in the banality and fall of their proponents, and paltry outcomes or near or full desecration of their ends.

As for the walk-away from debt behavior...I first saw the asset pyramid scheme/credit game played with housing in the Eighties. It is parasitical, paid for by in effect by later middle class house buyers but also built on the average American house buyer's idea that everyone's entitled to asset appreciation. Which the mortgage lending banks encourage, and local government likes. This atmosphere for collective cons and toleration of nonproductive economic behavior seems to crop up whenever and perhaps wherever there don't seem to be enough stable jobs in providing actual goods or services.

Amazing thread. Just a couple of comments to our host.

1) Read Karen Armstrong's short book on the life of the Buddha. The historical context of his life, with the destruction of the forests and the end of herding - giving way to farming, the end of Vedic religion - giving way to Hinduism and Buddhism, the end of small town life- giving way to cities, the end of many collectives giving way to mercantilism and monarchies with standing armies - all this rapid changes resulted in a sense of dissolution. Individuals did not feel "real" anymore. A time of great searching. Maybe some familiarity for you. None of your distress is new or unique.

2) The shared metaphysical dream - is a shared metaphysical dream of "nostalgists."

3) Given your experience with the RCC hierarchy and its decades of winking at child abuse, what is with the perpetual cry for a return to authority? Grow up, man.

sophie, you are very much mistaken in thinking that I have said or indicated that I am not willing to agree to a consensus. It seems like you are approaching the conversation with a large number of misconceptions and prejudices in place and viewing what others have to say through those lenses rather than actually dealing with what is being said.

My point is that for any system of values to have any meaning whatsoever we must be willing to submit to those values. Which by definition means that we must accept that value system's authority in our lives. The source of that value system may make it more acceptable to some than others, but the reality is that you are talking about giving authority to a secular common good system. Which I'm not saying would be a bad thing - it would probably be an improvement over what's going on now.

But again, just changing the source of the authoritative (or normative) value system we govern our actions by doesn't change the problems inherent in trying to keep a social contract in a country as diverse as ours. You're stuck on religion while I'm trying to get you to see that religion is really besides the point. It's just one example among many, including your hypothetical secular common good system. The same problems will exist regardless of the sourced of the authoritative value system which underlies our social contract.

And I do think there's something to the idea that we are in a period of transition. In which case these discussions and the input of people like Rod and others here is even more important, not a reason for him to let it be!

You don't understand analogies. I'm not suprised you don't understand the basic claim being made either. It is a shame you don't trust yourself though.

I am not claiming that the heart is an infallible authority, but an infallible criterion. Every occurence, every claim, every scheme, every proposal is something I can judge against my fundamental desire. Does this, or that, correspond to my desire, or does it contradict it? Does it move me? Interest me? Does it wound my deeply, or does it have no effect? By taking my desire, my "self", seriously, I can formulate judgements about the random crap that occurs, making experience and encounter from disjointed garbage. I can learn what corresponds to my humanity and what does not.

And yes, on some level, what I am talking about is universal. You have to follow your heart to reach Destiny just the same as I. You may take a different path than I do. Is that path you take toward or away from Destiny? (That is, Christ.) How am I to know? How is some other Christian to know? I do not suffer if you do not take your heart seriously, and I have no way of knowing if you take your heart seriously.

Notice, the initial comment did not come in response to an assertion that there is no God, or that there are more than one. It came in response to the claim that the human expectation of God is out of line. The human expectation of God is an expectation of destiny, of truth, beauty and justice, of meaning. That is our humanity at the most basic level, this expectation. Rendered plainly, the claim is "humanity is out of line."

As a man, I reject it.

I am sorry you're not going to get to battle with me over whether there's a force, a personal God, many deities running about, etc.

It isn't the point of the discussion I am having, and it isn't of any interest to me. I met a Man once, and I continue to meet Him again and again. He has proven He knows me better than myself and the only real understanding of my self I've ever seen is in His eyes.

Your ideas and objections really are pretty dull by comparison.

Just from Rod's post,

Ok. So the root of our problems lay in Freud and the Vienna Circle. Moral Relativism, Logical Positivism (which Barrack relies on heavily BTW), the loss of objective truths. Sure I've heard that many times. But I'm not sure I get this complete black and white move you made to the American = secular culture.

We're not ALL secularists. Some of us still have community and purpose - although granted it may be diminishing. I think what we see in America is really a cross between two worlds, Secularist [LP's]and those who rejected the logical positivists either knowingly through rational inquiry or unknowingly through simple faith.

Or even just cultural traditions,
Wasn't there a line in "The Departed" that said the only ethnic group impervious to Freudian analysis was the Irish? So maybe some of us are just culturally innoculated from this stuff. ['The empty inner self blahbddy blah.' Vs. Just do what you're supposed to and you'll be fine.
And if you're not, keep doing it anyways.] I'd give the US a 50/50 Relativist/objectivist breakdown.

So to your point, if your saying Secularism is the Emperor with no clothes, an unsustainable cultural value, I could buy that. I could also buy that there is a place for suspension of belief, like in scientific hypothesis and the double-blind study to find physical truths. But even in this scientific suspension of belief it is not a suspension of ALL beliefs. The scientist still believes he can get useful data from his lab equipment. It's not a 100% suspension. Her inquiry requires some physical foundations. Some suspension. And some belief.

It's a balance. And the trouble comes in supplanting the true notion that there are underpinning objective truths with the false belief that we need 100% suspension to get to 'real' truth. Not only a pragmatically impossible quixotic quest but a complete subversion of the notion of experiential/objective Truth decision tree.

One other thing, this 20th century idea of Freedom is not new. It's very very old. See the Galatians 5 Warning: Short version: We are free But... Don't let your freedom become an excuse to live a life of debauchery.

But I do get that the popularity and wholehearted embrace of this eternal temptation of Freedom [hand in hand with the deference of The Good to Wealth] is what's rotting our democracy.

(I think I went a little 101 - but discussing Truth seems so fundamental. I couldn't help it.)

Pax

the heart is infallible

This was pretty much the Marquis de Sade's argument, wasn't it, in the "Philosophy of the Bedroom" (aka "The Bedroom Philosophers")? He argued that his desires could not be termed unnatural, because he was a human and a product of nature, so therefore his thoughts and desires came, by definition, from nature. And so were natural. His heart was infallible.

Erik,

That's alright. But no, it isn't.

I can possess a yardstick without actual being one, can't I?

Rod I think I see what you are getting at (maybe). Islam from the very beginning integrates religion with law and governance. Imagine if Jesus had come as the Messiah the Jews had hoped for, the one who would take up the sword and slay the Romans. Thats what Mohammed did for Muslims. The Turks have run a fairly secular government but pretty much through the constant intervention of their army. Most Islamic societies, will probably integrate religion into their government since it fits with their historical world view.

America is a secular country with freedom of religion. Everyone gets to (and ought to) participate (only recently true and some would dispute it even now). I dont stop being a Christian when I vote or when I go to a school board meeting. Its part of who I am. I dont need to legislate others into my beliefs to make laws with them. We meet,argue then vote. The individual meets the group and a compromise is met. If I choose not to follow those laws I can leave, try to have them changed or take the consequences of breaking them. We have demonstrated that we can do this in a country where some dont believe in any God and some peoples beliefs are so different that in distance they may as well be atheists. I may not be happy with the way power is too concentrated into the office of the president but we cope.

A big problem democracy faces is what happens in times of crisis. Sometimes it makes sense to concentrate power to deal with problems in an efficient and timely manner. Remember Cincinattus? There are unfortunately more instances where giving up democracy has led to abuse. After 9/11 we gave up too much to Bush who made the mistakes you allude to above. I dont think he did this because he was evil but he was negligent. The people around him were arrogant. We stopped functioning as a democracy.

Our current economic "crisis" I believe just represents the constant movement of the pendulum in a democracy. From the New Deal til the 70's business was way overregulated, mostly by Democrats. Reagan came along and (along with major deficit spending) freed business and we have had quite a boom. However unfettered business is not necessarily honest business and with unparalleled speed via computers, now banking, credit and all the derivatives (how do these really differ from gambling?) may lead to big problems. I dont think we are on the edge of collapse. I dont think we need to start looking for a higher leader to put in charge. We are however, slowly losing our economic superpower status. I think this current war may have hastened it but its going to happen anyway. No empire (on earth) lasts forever. But,but,but. We will endure because ultimately the freedom in our country to integrate so many ideas,beliefs,religions,atheists and even the Irish gives us a bigger pot of ideas from which we can sample.

Steve

"So they aren't out of line?"

Franklin jennings:
I think your expectations of destiny, etc. are not out of line with your internal emotional state, but I think they are out of line with the exterior material reality.

Amending last post to add item in italics:
"it lies in this statement, which seems to be the center of your argument - or in my response to it."

In conclusion then, for Rod's unsympathetic secular readers: you are free to malign JudeoChristian values, but PULLEEZE don't claim to use reason and free will as factors in your decision...

Clare, it would seem that Steve saves me from offering a long response in rebuttal to your obviously painstakingly thought out statements -- and I honor your effort, no sarcasm intended -- but for me as a citizen in the pluralism created by the founders, the proof is in the pudding: it is not the beliefs that a person claiming Judeo-Christian values has, it is the actions that person takes.

As a non-Christian, I have only one recourse in dealing with those actions and their consequences: reason. That pluralism defines the scope within which I have recourse, and informs my reason concerning the most appropriate response.

I am prepared to be wrong here, but I get the strong impression that you just slammed the door in my face.

Sig: One of the problems I’m having with this thread in general is the touching, naive faith some people seem to have in laws and commandments. It seems they believe that if a thing is prohibited, people will of course be less likely to do it.

This is emphatically not Rieff's central point. Laws and commandments only have binding force insofar as the lawgiver and commander is believed to have legitimate authority. If God really did give the Decalogue to Moses, as Scripture said, then the Decalogue will have far more binding authority than if that was a neat but fictional story. Rieff's point is that the West no longer believes in the transcendent source of its own laws. That is, it has awakened from its traditional metaphysical dream. We seem to be replacing it with the idea that there is no such thing as a metaphysical dream (which in itself is a metaphysical dream, not by any means the neutral category some seem to think it is). It is difficult to see how a culture propagates itself absent this deeply felt, almost pre-conscious, connection to a transcendent source of moral truth. Rieff believed that Freud provided an answer: you ease the psychic pain of living over the abyss through therapeutic means: better sex, more shopping, polymorphous pleasures.

But what happens when you fall off the hedonic treadmill, or it stops working?

>>>
But what happens when you fall off the hedonic treadmill, or it stops working?
Posted by: Rod Dreher | January 28, 2008 5:23 PM
>>>

Stoicism makes a comeback? Duty for duty's sake?

Rod, I think I understand what Rieff is saying. And it's similar to what Richard Weaver and others have said. But the fact is, Rieff and Weaver DID NOT BELIEVE. As far as I can tell, anyway. They wanted everyone else to believe, so they could live within a culture of the kind they found congenial. But they themselves did not assert the uncontrovertible existence of a divine lawgiver whose thoughts and nature could be known. Nor did they submit themselves to the authority of the earthly representatives of such a God, who would tell them what to think and how to behave. They constructed for themselves, out of their own thought and judgment, rationales for why other people should submit. (And btw, isn't that how Francis Beckwith defined hypocrisy--as professing a belief or virtue one does not in fact hold? (I think this is an erroneous definition, but it is what he said.))

As always, I am puzzled by the assertion that if we don't sign up for this pragmatic if non-believing religion, we have nothing left but the abyss. (you ease the psychic pain of living over the abyss through therapeutic means: better sex, more shopping, polymorphous pleasures.) Uh . . . but I don't find myself to be living over the abyss. I find myself to be living in an astonishing world that I do my best to comprehend. I find myself surrounded by fellow beings that I am free to know and love. I find myself outraged by evils that I am free to contend against, and overwhelmed by gratitude for opportunities that I am free to enjoy. I don't find it necessary to ease my pain by shopping etc. (though better sex is always welcome). When I am in pain, I find refuge in many things that should be congenial to the crunchy--in the love of my family and friends, in the beauty of nature, in the joy of physical activity and creative endeavor, in poetry, music and laughter. Why be so eager to submit to such reductive categories?

I did find a very nice quote about Richard Weaver while checking to make sure I was not doing him wrong by saying he wasn't a believer in the sense you seem to be promoting. Here's what wikipedia says:

Employing ethical rhetoric is the first step towards rejecting vague terminology with propagandistic value. Upon hearing a "god" or "devil" term, Weaver suggested that a listener should "hold a dialectic with himself" to consider the intention behind such persuasive words. Wise words to remember.

"Even by your own ideology, I'm being human. You, on the other hand, would seem to be deconstructing humanity rather than being human."

You make me sound like a post-modernist. Blecch. You may not agree, but I hope I got the point across that it is not an absurd impossibility for our expectations to be out of line with reality if you take an evolutionary perspective.

Sig: Rod, I think I understand what Rieff is saying. And it's similar to what Richard Weaver and others have said. But the fact is, Rieff and Weaver DID NOT BELIEVE. As far as I can tell, anyway. They wanted everyone else to believe, so they could live within a culture of the kind they found congenial. But they themselves did not assert the uncontrovertible existence of a divine lawgiver whose thoughts and nature could be known. Nor did they submit themselves to the authority of the earthly representatives of such a God, who would tell them what to think and how to behave. They constructed for themselves, out of their own thought and judgment, rationales for why other people should submit.

I honestly don't get the logic here, Sig. I'm unsure about whether or not Weaver believed, but Rieff obviously did not. But why was it necessary for them to believe in God in order to understand the social, cultural and psychological dynamics of religious belief? Rieff himself said that as a secular Jew, he would not want the old Christian verities to come back into force. And he said that the therapeutic culture was not entirely a bad thing. Here's the final graf of his introduction to "Triumph of the Therapeutic":

I am aware that these speculations may be thought to contain some parodies of an apocalypse. But what apocalypse has ever been so kindly? What culture has ever attempted to see to it that no ego is hurt? Perhaps the elimination of the tragic sense -- which is tantamount to the elimination of irreconcilable moral principles - is no tragedy. Civilization could be, for the first time in history, the expresison of human contents rather than consolatory control of discontents. Then and only then would the religious question receive a markedly different answer forom those dominant until recently in our cultural history.

Why Franklin (Evans), my dear, no I didn't slam the door in your face!

It's not my tent to open or close - I'm British, I reside in the same tent of pluralities you do with the privileged status of legal alien spouse (no vote).

Since the civil rights era of the 1870s, as a Catholic I am permitted to vote for a Prime Minister of her Majesty's Government of the United Kingdom under the established Church of England, with the condition my progeny may not marry the future King since my faith in my Traditions would preclude a future heir's changing their religion, heresy under the established order on that island (and fraction of territory on a neighboring island).

While I enjoy many benefits of the American Way, I grieve that the chance at life of an American foetus is lower than for a European one (every third pregnancies ends in abortion in the US tent, while in the UK the third foetus lives, its his fourth compatriot that bites the dust). Under the Might makes Right laws of the US there are few ways for me to influence my non-Catholic US husband to support candidates who propose altering such legislation. He will use his vote to promote and defend the candidate that with the BigC tent, who permits a man to marry an alien wife (but not an alien husband) and grants her rights of residence and permit her freedom to soeak what's on her mind and economic autonomy to fund the church charities she desires to dedicate her private wealth to. If no such candidate exists, we shall relocate to that patch of the earth's surface where my civil rights apply (the aforementioned island and fraction of an island), so long as they still promote and defend the rights of my legal alien husband to economic autonomy to dedicate his private wealth as he sees fit (well that's almost moot, since dollars don't amount to much anymore overseas) and speak about liberty and the pursuit of happiness even after it no longer applies since there's no one left to vote for that defends his idea of happiness as having a wife with religious views anathema to the majority. And even this is small degree of freedom could be in jeopardy, since anti-Americanism is rife in Europe, the war costing precious lives and treasure, and folks financial futures are on the block as their fund managers bail out of fiscal products traded in dollars.

As I said, my husband's BigC tent shows many of the characteristics of a littlec tent (save Ron Paul's last gasp appeal last week) while my own expanding BigC tent (European Union) could get blow over by the prevailing winds let loose when the fabric of my husband's BigG tent collapses under its own weight as perimeter poles get substituted for the cracking center poles (contraceptives fatally damaged the fidelity of marriage) since same-sex sustitutes can't bear children (forgive the pun).

Why the tent analogy?

Examine the cultural artefact of Salafist Islam, a nomadic herder securing a home for his harem amidst the sands of Mecca. Check out the architects plans for the massive mosque to be built next door to the London Olympics at the (lamentably named "Abbey Mills" site): www.myaa-arq.com/ [ select Projects --> Religious --> Abbey Mills ] where the key idea promoted and defended is the Dawar principle central to the propagation of Islam - the Invitation to Islam. Their understanding of reason is such that they are so sure of their comcept of rational thought being inherent in a certain PBUH prophet's ideas that once you have been invited to agree, and are irrational enough to choose decline, you are an infidel without a right to life. Need I say, they fall into the littlec tent where desire as an impermissible "good" not to be shared in common.

From my perspective the US constitution more resembles a nomadic tent of Invitation "you're with us or against us" with the shifting sands of time encroaching at a rapid rate in the impending storm, Do I have faith that the authorities in charge of promoting and defending this tent can in fact protect me and my dependents? Honestly, no - you couldn't protect Terri Schaivo from being treated like a piece of chattel at her husband's disposal.

I prefer societies who worship in Cathedrals built to glorify God incarnate, in memory of tent makers like Paul who trode the globe tirelessly preaching and spreading the Good News, to those who were familiar with the democracy of the dead of the ancient GrecoRomanPersian world. That they voted with their feet and embraced the developing Christian creed speaks to me far more eloquently than all Steve' sentimental platitudes of us "coping" with our big pool of ideas and your professed Faith in "pluralism." Who gets to define "coping" and who counts the ideas?

So, please forgive me if my bluntness caused you to feel as if the door was being slammed shut, but I think you may be confusing the rather vacuous extent of your own reflections - slamming up against the wall of fear with only the melody of the star-spangled banner to keep you feeling jolly - with my quite reasonable assertions on the metaphysics of tabernacle building. Christ himself says "I stand at the door and knock." We are the one who close our hearts to his invitation. No scimitars for him if you decline the invitation. He never takes possession of your soul unless you invite him in, by your own free will. The power to tell the difference between the sound of the door being knocked and being slammed shut is a gift of grace, for which I pray fervently may be granted to those who desire it. Desire is a natural faculty that almost intuits what feels good from what feels bad. Our intellect works with these sensory perceptions as we learn the habits of self control and continence. Well, perhaps Freud would say our Psyche is our God, if it feels good "just do it", Only by observing the effect of our choices on those we love, can we determine if our intentions matches the means we chose. If we love our children, we must surely see that the means we have chosen (no fault divorce, vaccinations for STDs, kindergarten picture books featuring homosexual penguins, petrochemical empires built on sand, rampant rent-seeking behaviour of foreign-owned banks that ransoms the homestead to keep the homesteaders in the lap of luxury of garlic-tossed shrimp from China) manifestly do NOT match our intentions.

Nuff said!

Steve, why do you believe that people should have the right to rule themselves? Why shouldn't they be ruled by a caliph, or a czar? Why should people have the right to free speech, and religion?

I'm asking seriously...

other jim, seems like you just reject change. why would that be? can't people -- parents and children, other forms of families -- form strong and loving bonds, even if they bonds don't look the same as they used to? What's wrong with that? You can question the devotion of today's parents, but I am here to tell you that you would be wrong.
I'll tell you what, nostalgia for the old ways really doesn't do it for me. As a woman the past few generations have given me a right of self determination for the first time. It has not stopped me from being a loving devoted attentive parent. Your love for the old may be a knee jerk thing, or it may be a rejection of women's autonomy. But it is not a legitimate fear.

Ah, philosophy time, eh?

The problem is, well, you're all wrong. You see the disintegration of the moral fabric that makes up our culture, I see the slow replacement of it with another. But even if it's just going away: GOOD.

See, the problem was that a lot of our previous 'moral fabric' was completely damn unethical and stupid.

It had slaves, both the people actually called slaves plus women, who had no rights. And indentured servants and and vassals and a hundred ways that everyone but the people at the top of society were prevented from doing things. It had 'police forces' that were basically enforcers for the rich.

It had horrible medicine, due mostly in part to moral taboos against poking around inside people that date back to pagan times when only priests were allowed to do that, and when the priests stopped we were screwed, knowledge-wise.

It's basically, a change from the middle ages, which, even in the best of times, were actually pretty crappy, and not just compared to now. The Roman Republic before it got crazy, Hellenistic Greece, both nicer places.

In Christendom, power got too fossilized at the top, under a very complicated system of royalty, and if not for a 'lucky' plague in the middle of it that reaffirmed the value of workers (Once you got rid of 80% of them, it's hard to miss.), who knows how absurd it would have gotten.

That isn't just some crazy liberal muttering about power, the entire system was nearly completely broken. Not because of absolute rule at the top, which wasn't anything different than before, because of the development of a 'middle management' that started not actually doing the work they were supposed to do (Or, rather, not paying people to do the work they were supposed to pay people to do.), because it was more fun to play at the royal court all day.

It was a switch from a person being placed in charge of something, the appointed governors from Rome and Greece and other societies, to people 'owning' everything, being non-replaceable, and being presumed to want to maintain it. Sometimes it worked okay, sometimes it was disastrous. Some parts of the middle ages were a random lurching joke of a society, the feudal system does not work. So 'we' changed it. (Sometimes outright, in rebellion or overthrow of power, sometimes we forced the established authority to accept the change at gunpoint.)

We are on a long trip. A very long trip. Conservatives wake up at each rest stop, look around, get to like it, and then complain when they have to leave, little realizing there were people complaining when they left the last rest stop, too.

You free-market worshippers need to realize that the free market was first visited on this trip, too. (In fact, the rise of the middle-class merchant, as much as the Enlightenment, was the final nail in the coffin of the middle ages.)

Same with all you 'democracy' lovers. And, paradoxically, people who think they can live without modern society at all...that's a holdover from frontierism, which, wait for it, required a bunch of land not owned by the land lords of the middle ages.

You're all on this trip, you're all accepting of some of the changes, even if you don't get it.

The destination? I'm not sure. We've been consistently stripping away prejudices, and consistently adding things that benefit all individuals at the expense of the rich. (Marx wasn't crazy, you know. He was wrong, but not crazy.) It seems to take about 30 years to do each new thing.

Meanwhile, totally by accident, it turns out that what all individuals want is to not be sick, so we've made a lot of advances there. Oh, and apparently, we like to be entertained, so invented several different methods of that, which incidentally linked the entire world together, and come up with ways to have sex without having children, too.

Susan and Sophie,

No, its not nostalgia, its current affairs with a lot of history thrown in for good measure.

Youthful naiveté may excuse your ignorance of most of the world's population of people of faith "noxiously" deny the very things you assume are entitlements of sentient beings. My cat is sentient, in that she is possessed of sense faculties, I will proudly and noxiously deny her any right to self determination. Only human beings have that dignity as endowed by their Creator,

But jesting apart, one quarter* of the world's population do indeed noxiously deny you the right to freedom of conscience, all those who have professed fealty to the tenets of Islam, see Rod's thread on the very real perils of a "gloves-off" debate with Islam (my five cents worth on the angle from the Vatican got posted at ninth place)

http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2008/01/poking-the-dragon.html.comments.html

* CIA World Book estimate of demographic by confession of faith.

Susan , David TC and Sophie,
I have to second Claire and say that I think you are mistaken in your assumption that what Rod or other conservatives are doing is longing for a more idyllic past. This point gets made each time this subject comes up, so I don't know if you think Rod and other conservatives here are lying or just aren't explaining themselves well enough or if you just can't get yourselves to compute that it is not nostalgia or a desire to turn back which anyone desires.

To use DavidTC's analogy of a trip, which I think is a pretty good one, it's not that conservatives are complaining that we keep moving forward. What is so concerning is that we keep leaving luggage which contains valuables which have served us well behind along with the stinky, crappy stuff. For some reason it seems that those of a more liberal, progressive mindset cannot see these valuable pieces of luggage as being separate from the terrible baggage which we all agree needed to be dropped off. Conservatives look around at the world we've moved into, realize that they once had something which would be useful in improving the situation or preventing it from becoming a problem to begin with and find that those useful things were left behind with the crap. And when they say, "hey - we needed that", for reasons I can't entirely comprehend, liberals seem to think we're talking about returning to sit in the discard pile just to get back things they decided at the last stop they didn't want to keep. And today it seems like we just left all the luggage at the last stop and decided to wing it.

Think of it like being given heirlooms - the fact that grandpa left an autographed copy of Mein Kamf behind as well as an old stradivarius doesn't make the violin less valuable. You lose the book and keep what's worth keeping. That's what conservatives are saying.

It seems like such a reasonable proposition, I'm not sure why the message isn't getting through and the fallacy of nostalgia for the old days persists the way it does. Especially around here where it's been refuted over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

With respect, Clare, you do not understand the principles of the Bill of Rights, nor do you seem to see the flaws in your tent analogy. I regret that I don't have the motivation to offer a more detailed rebuttal, because your effort deserves one.

I am glad to know that you didn't intend the slammed door.

Man! All this hot air took the crease out of my suit.

"Think of it like being given heirlooms - the fact that grandpa left an autographed copy of Mein Kamf behind as well as an old stradivarius doesn't make the violin less valuable. You lose the book and keep what's worth keeping. That's what conservatives are saying.

It seems like such a reasonable proposition, I'm not sure why the message isn't getting through and the fallacy of nostalgia for the old days persists the way it does. Especially around here where it's been refuted over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again."

Nice analogy, Rebeccat. I'd go even further and say that what conservatives are trying to save not just heirlooms, but pieces of the foundation on which our culture is built. To put it another way, conservatives in the process of rebuilding the house try to identify and save weight-bearing walls. Now occasionally they may misidentify a regular wall as a weight-bearing one, but I'd say that it's better to leave some misidentified walls up, than to tear all the walls out, weight-bearing or not, and call it progress. All the expensive remodeling in the world cannot be called 'progress' if it causes the house to fall on top of you.

Rob G, could you give us some concrete examples of keeping the good stuff without the bad stuff in our culture?

I've tried to find a couple for building blocks and I've come up on sandy soil and a sinking feeling.

What made your culture ideas work was an infrastructure based upon inequality.

And now, Kroft reports, you're seeing greedy borrowers who took the free money at favorable rates, but who now owe more money than their houses are worth, just walking away from their commitment, giving their suddenly less valuable houses to the bank, even if they can afford the payment. Rod Dreher

It is interesting that the bad people in this in Rod's mind is the greedy borrower. If they were people of character they'd cowboy up and pay the piper.

What about all the people that enabled this scheme to work? Shouldn't they pony up their ill-gotten loot and contribute to the remedy?

I'm not talking about just the kingpins either. Everyone that worked at a title company, loan office, real estate agents, I mean everyone that profited in their own little way from this scheme shares responsibility, not just the borrowers. And I have no dawg in this fight as far as the loans go.

But it bothers me that conservatives like Rod see the evil in this mass disaster defined by the victims, it was their fault. They should have known better.

There was a lot more evil out there in this than the person wanting a home for their family even though in their heart of hearts they knew it wasn't possible.

Harvey, why ask a question if you're just going to answer it yourself, especially if the answer involves saying that those who disagree with you are bad people?

You seem to know even less about conservatives than you do about Christianity, and that's saying a hell of a lot.

Rob,
whence comes the standard whereby humans determine 'consent' to be a good?

In this case I'd say it comes from the experience of being ruled without consent. Perhaps it's a comparative good rather than an absolute, but I haven't seen anything else so far that comes up better by comparison (IOW, "Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried from time to time.").

If you are going to insist on an absolute standard before calling anything "good", then I fear you're in for a long wait.

You seem to know even less about conservatives than you do about Christianity, and that's saying a hell of a lot. Posted by: Rob G

Rob the difference is perspective. You look at christianity and conservativsm through the end of the telescope and see your version as the version. I on the other hand am using a wide angle lense and see a much broader view. It isn't a pretty picture.

"I on the other hand am using a wide angle lense and see a much broader view. It isn't a pretty picture."

Try cleaning the lens.

"I fervently wish you could see the strawman that is, my friend. The secular transcendent source, by design and intent, is the Constitution. It makes no difference that the prevailing culture and belief system at the time was Judeo-Christian. Locke and Tocqueville had a much more critical and relevant influence than Moses, even while we may rightly point to Moses (and Hammurabi) as at the least inspirations."

That's missing my point, Franklin, which is that almost all the men involved still believed in a transcendent moral order. Whether or not they agreed on what it was, they still believed there WAS one. That is no straw man.

Having brains in one's fingers is not necessarily a good thing. That was supposed to be "Should we also review..."

Rob, I consent to the civic moral order, as defined and maintained by the documents created for it. My responsibility as a citizen is to the civic moral order, and if my religious morality is in conflict, I have three choices:

1) Compromise my religious morality. The Mormon practice of polygamy is an excellent example of that.

2) Work to change the civic moral order to comply with my religious morality. I can't readily come up with an example that isn't also strongly influenced by other factors.

3) Leave, under which I include being sent to prison upon being convicted of a crime as defined by the civic moral order. Civil disobediance; the Mormons who continue to practice polygamy.

As my previous post demonstrates, I hope, I am all for religious morality being a valid contributor to the civic debate. At some, point, though, I'd like to see some acknowledgment (I don't mean that to be personal) that we live with a civic moral order which by definition is not religious.

I'd disagree that they were trying to create a completely and totally secular form of government.

This is where you and I are finding our obstacle.

That they didn't want an established religion is apparent, but to assume from that that they were either anti-religion, or that it was not an issue one way or the other is a false leap, IMO.

You've made a bad assumption concerning the logic, at least about me. I make neither leap, and I stand with you in rejecting the conclusions of those who do make that leap.

The colonies were full of religious groups whose primary motivation in coming here was to escape religious persecution, usually aided and abetted -- if not explicitly mandated -- by the governments of their nations of origin. Many a group was in direct religious conflict with other groups in the colonies. I would not call a deliberately constructed civic moral order intended to prevent religious persecution "anti-religion".

Rod, in defense of those walking away from their mortgages, I don't think you should put too much moral weight on this. When a company gets financing from a bank, sometimes the company goes bankrupt. It happens. The managers and the owners walk away, the creditors reposses the assets of the company, and everyone moves on with their lives. Businesses fail for all sorts of reasons, and creditors accept that risk. It doesn't strike me that mortgage borrowers should act any differently. The borrowers tried something, it failed, and the creditors take their lumps and move on.

Particularly when families are confronting losses in property value into the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, people are making a rational business decision to walk away, just as a business owner might make a rational business decision to close up shop. To ascribe some kind of deep moral meaning to transactions that are, at their base, only about money, is misguided and, ultimately, harmful to everyone's future.

To bring it close to our shared faith, the priest who runs Gallery Byzantium had a story from 8-9 years ago how he first started the business. He got a business loan, bootstrapped the company, which was mostly catalog-based, and began selling his wares. When his catalogs got send to the labeler that printed the names and addresses on the mailing list, there was a major error, and the catalogs couldn't arrive, the owner couldn't recover his money from the labeler, and there wasn't enough money to print another run of catalogs. The business went bankrupt, the loan was written down, and the priest started all over again later. And there were no large moral consequences involved. (The bad guy was the catalog-labeler, who knew that the business would go bankrupt before any court proceedings could recover damages, but that's on him alone. Society went on despite him).

"Nobody planned the global capitalist system, nobody runs it, and nobody really comprehends it. This particularly offends intellectuals, for capitalism renders them redundant. It gets on perfectly well without them. It does not need them to make it run, to coordinate it, or to redesign it. The intellectual critics of capitalism believe they know what is good for us, but millions of people interacting in the marketplace keep rebuffing them." Peter Saunders
And they will rebuff and disappoint the intellectual critics of capitalism again and again regardless if they call themselves liberal or conservative.
This is the trancendental wonder that there is not nothing but everything coming alive in human interaction. And this wonder will survive hedonism and fundamentalism.

"Is it because, apart from God, you can think of no other reason to act morally?"

Well, I can think of reasons to act morally (whatever that means) but in the grand scheme of things, why should I follow my reason in that regard? Why not just eat, drink, and be merry, and to hell with the consequences?

Why, given this scenario, is there any difference between Gandhi and Stalin, or Mother Teresa and Pol Pot?

"... in the grand scheme of things, why should I follow my reason in that regard? Why not just eat, drink, and be merry, and to hell with the consequences?"

Well, why should you do absolutely anything at all? Is it your view that the only valid reason to do anything is, "God told me to"? I think you actually know the answer to your question already -- you just haven't realized it yet: all actions have consequences, and a rational person will consider those consequences -- as far as they can determine them -- and then act accordingly (with their own best interests in mind). But this does not lead to the conclusion that everyone will perceive these consequences in the same way, or decide to act in the same manner as a consequence. Each and every one of us sees the world in our own way, and since this is all that any of us have to go by, we will inevitably make different choices about things. (Please note that doesn't require that one of these ways is right while all the others are wrong ...)

"Why, given this scenario, is there any difference between Gandhi and Stalin, or Mother Teresa and Pol Pot?"

In each of your examples, one person acted out fear, hatred, intolerance, malevolence, while the other acted out of love, compassion, empathy, and a desire to help others. One wanted to subject others to their whims, while the other wanted to honor and celebrate each individual. Do you really not see the differences here, or do you just think that these differences are not, in and of themselves, enough of a reason to act one way and not the other? Without God telling you that one way is "good" and the other "bad", can you not see the correct answer for yourself?

Franklin [Evans] Glad we're still friends!

I'll feign a certain ignorance in matters of law, and grant you that
- "principles" may not be my strong suit, or even that
- the construction of tents may not be my forte,
but if you really must quote political philosophy in support of your arguments, get the dates right, and give credit where credit is due (plagiarism and all that, dude!):

".deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. The explicit philosophical source was John Locke.."

Wrong!

Locke was born almost one hundred years after (and learned from the great wisdom of) (Shock! Horror!) Catholic (say it ain't so! Robert Bellarmine, who wrote (in Book 3 De Laicis, Chapter 4):

"It depends upon the Consent of the multitude to ordain over themselves a King or other Magistrates, and if there be a lawful cause, the multitude may change the Kingdom into an Aristocracy or Democracy'."

see www.catholicculture.org/library/view.cfm?recnum=6607

while I must in all honesty concede you are in good company: scholars recently have tried to rewrite history to obfuscate the intellectual patrimony of your American "principles" see www.allacademic.com/meta/p63480_index.html

Myself, I hate to quibble with original sources. Filmer himself gave Bellarmine the credit thusly (in Patriarcha:

"Thus far Bellarmine; in which passages are comprised the strength of all that I have read or heard produced for the Natural Liberty of the Subject."

Yet Bellarmine wasn't that original of a thinker. In fact his predecessor, by four centuries or so, was he who gave the Bible its books and chapter numbers, Stephen Langton, whose effigy graces the courthouse of Cuyahoga County, Ohio:

siris-artinventories.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?uri=full=3100001~!302313!0

"Stephen Langton (1150-1228), as Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of King John, forced the signing of the Magna Charta"

May the debate, in mutual respect and candour, long continue ...

(with grateful thanks to Rod for plowing through it all, chuckle!)

Without a standard of right and wrong beyond the human,

I think you mean "individual human".

Franklin Jennings,

"It is perfectly legitimate to invent the most base and disgusting motives for people you disagree with."

You charged a 'lefty' with this, but let me remind you that those on the right do it too. A lot!

'They wanna recruit/seduce/corrupt your CHIIILDREN!!!'

'They wanna DESTROOOOY marriage.'

'They wanna upend all of SOCIIIIETY.'

And on it goes. I'll leave it to you to figure out who the "they" are in each scenario, but I certainly disagree with your imagined premise.

"To ask it another way, from whence comes the standard whereby humans determine 'consent' to be a good?"

We take these things to be self-evident ...

Look, at some point you are just going to have to get comfortable with uncertainty. You will never -- never, ever, ever -- find an external, objective, unchanging authority on which to base moral judgments. Never. Things change. Always will. Those who best adapt to the new circumstances flourish (relatively speaking); the rest do not.

So, if you're searching for hook to hang your moral coat on, a hook that will always and forever be in the same spot, of the same shape, etc ... you're going to be searching for all eternity. Enjoy!

"Look, at some point you are just going to have to get comfortable with uncertainty. You will never -- never, ever, ever -- find an external, objective, unchanging authority on which to base moral judgments."

In the immortal words of The Dude: "Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man."

"Things change. Always will."

Of course things change. Eternal verities, on the other hand, do not. I believe in them. You don't. End of story.

"It is called 'self-evident', but what that really means is 'we can't think of any reason that would convince you this is true'."

So what? That's the whole point. Very few people back then, if any at all, NEEDED to be convinced that it was true. It was a given. You can't prove a self-evident truth, else it wouldn't be self-evident.

You also make the error of calling the acceptance of such a truth "a leap of illogical faith." Never mind that such an assertion flies in the face of the obvious intelligence of the founders, as if all they needed were DavidTC to say to them, "Hey guys, you do realize that all this rot about 'self-evident truths' is completely illogical don't you?", to which they would all respond "Geez, you know what? By Jove, you're right!" and the little light bulb could be shown going on above their respective heads, and they would immediately proceed to strike that clause from the DoI.

The main error in calling the acceptance of a self-evident truth illogical is that it is self-refuting. It hoists you by your own petard, since that very criticism itself depends upon a supposed self-evident truth. You cannot prove by logic the notion that the only things we can know for certain are things proved by logic.

Fair enough, Franklin. If my statement implied that context is unimportant, that was unwitting. I always try to remember what one of my old Bible professors said: "A text without a context is a pretext." Of course, this maxim applies to far more than just the Bible.

Rob G
So what? That's the whole point. Very few people back then, if any at all, NEEDED to be convinced that it was true. It was a given. You can't prove a self-evident truth, else it wouldn't be self-evident.

I don't know why you've decided that you disagree with me, as I was saying exactly what you said. Having that statement there is a good thing.

It means that, for all this talk about the foundation of morality and government, we have an endpoint. We don't have to argue philosophy past a certain point, we hit a brick wall: This country 'officially' believes in intangible, undemonstrable, but inalienable rights as a philosophical belief.

It's literally the statement of principle that lead to the creation of this country, existing outside any discussion about how this government should work, what powers states vs. feds or the various branches vs each other should have.

Franklin Evans
This is a Very Good Thing. Its good far outweighs the tension that results from its conflict with the proponents of change. Indeed, as a proponent of change, I cannot overemphasize the value it has to illuminating the dangers of change, and suggesting (and finding) ways to mitigate those dangers... up to and including abandoning the change in question.

I just wish the right would stick to criticizing change. They're good at that, they're needed at that. (As I've pointed out before, the original Progressive movement did a lot of very good things, things no one would dispute were good, like child labor laws...and then got stupid, overreached with Prohibition and other stuff, and vanished until the New Deal.)

Recently, there's been some stupid policies showing up on the right, and even more policies that aren't stupid, but are certainly are 'a change' regardless if you think they're a good or bad one. From the war to immigration to abortion, the right is pushing change, not fighting it.

recovering ex-Pentecostal,

Sorry, my morality isn't informed by what "the right" does. I'm kind of suprised yours would seem to be.

As for what premise you disagree with, I can't say, since your post was borderline incoherent drivel.

But one thing is obvious, you see the world through that myopic "left-right" prism that is so common among modern and post-modern man. Its sad, really, especially since it stops so many with so much promise from taking on reality as it exists, rather than as their tribe says it should.