In my years of teaching, I have only accused four students of plagiarism. In all the cases, I brought the essays they had submitted and, using a bright yellow highlighter, made a direct comparison with another, uncited text. I was able to find the texts myself, but I certainly would have asked other people who were more familiar with a particular subject area if I couldn't track down a source; that is to say, I would both pursue it seriously, and also grant the student the benefit of the doubt. This seems appropriate for a religious community who jokes, "Well, those cows are brown, at least on this side."
I'm not posing an academic question about the nature of truth here (although I certainly recognize that it's not unconnected): this is about being a good Quaker and a good teacher.
Are there any circumstances under which you would accuse a student of plagiarism without having the text from which you think the student has plagiarized in hand?
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Befriending Truth Anthology
In hopes of restarting this blog I'm posting the abstract of my contribution to Jeff Dudiak's anthology on Truth.
"Not Giving Up on Truth"
Philosophy from its beginnings has been a search for truth. It is motivated by a sense that what is taken by society at large to be the truth is not the real truth. And a belief that finding the real truth and announcing it is a radical act that liberates first the individual and finally the world. Lately, however, some have challenged the very notion of truth. In the paper I argue for a recovery of the idea of truth.
We live in a postmodern age and what this means is that there is a consensus that the intellectual synthesis that was the Enlightenment is no longer acceptable and must be replaced. But the consensus does not go much farther than that. The Enlightenment is a complex phenomenon and the debate does not become substantive and interesting until we have identified which elements of the complex we intend to reject and what we intend to offer in their place. The Enlightenment variously stood for many things: laissez faire capitalism, democracy, human rights, the scientific method, individualism, mass education, free speech, cosmopolitanism and progress. Central to all of these is perhaps the belief that truth is to be found by overthrowing tradition and relying on a combination of human reason and careful objective observation. In the 20th century faith that the application of the scientific method to society will yield nothing but progress and justice for all was shaken by war, colonialism and economic depression on a global scale. The vast majority of the world’s poor and powerless remained so and dreams of inevitable progress through reason began to seem at least somewhat hollow if not cynically manipulative. So the most radical postmodern response is to reject the most central notion of the Enlightenment: truth. Philosophically there is a parallel development that pointed to the same result. At the beginning of the modern age Descartes posed the problem of skepticism in a particularly acute form. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries philosophers struggled to exorcise Descartes’ evil demon without success. By the 20th century a weariness with skepticism was leading some to reject the elusive goal of coming to know the objective truth about the world.
But is truth really the problem or is the wholesale rejection of objective truth too radical? The question of truth needs to be divided into specific problems that should each be examined in turn. First there are technical issues. Truth in its ordinary common sense meaning is some sort of correspondence between the world and what we say about it. The sentence “the cat is on the mat” is true if and only if in the real world the mat is the place where the cat is at. This seems plain enough but there are many true sentences where it is hard to identify some fact out there in the world that makes them true. For example, it is true that there are no bananas on the Moon but what exactly does the fact look like that makes this true? Second, how facts make sentences true looks rather mysterious up close. John Locke held that our thoughts were like pictures in the head and that truth was a matching up of these pictures with the world outside our heads. But serious thinking about the nature of thinking makes it look less and less like pictures in the head. Third, the inability of philosophers to agree on any solution to the problem of skepticism seemed to put the world out of reach. If we do not really have access to the world, then how could we ever compare our sentences or our thoughts to see if they really correspond with the world? Fourth, people began to notice how the powerful used their power to project a very self-serving view of what was true and to impose it on the public as the official version of the truth. Looked at in this way, the “truth” begins to seem like a notion designed to protect the privileges of the powerful. Finally, there is quantum mechanics. The investigation of the physical world on the smallest scale began to reveal a deep strangeness about the world in which the objectivity of the physical world begins to look like an illusion.
Can and should the simple notion of truth as correspondence with reality be saved? It can and should. Since the problems with truth are multiple it makes sense that the solution should be complex. There are four main developments within philosophy which point the way. First, we should be fallibilists. Descartes started the modern period with his demand that beliefs be absolutely certain to count as knowledge. This has proven an unrealistic demand and his gambit should be rejected. We do not have to possess certainty in order to know the truth. Second, we should be contextualists. Justification for beliefs comes in varying strengths. How strongly a particular belief must be justified to count as knowledge ought to vary according to context. Third, accept a modest pragmatism. Radical pragmatists went along with the rejection of truth but more moderate pragmatism goes less far. It accepts that concepts are mostly human creations and notes that which concepts we use is up to us. It then recommends that conceptual choice cannot be guided by truth, for that makes no literal sense, but should instead be guided by human values. Finally, we should be metaphysical pluralists. One of the dominating visions of the Enlightenment has been the quest for a theory of everything. Underneath the blooming buzzing confusion of the world as we know it lies, they believed, a very simple world with only a few kinds of things operating according to a few fixed laws. This dream was an illusion. We should accept the fact that the world is so complex that there is in fact no one way the world really is. Instead we must accept that there are many ways the world is and that each way represents an independent truth not reducible to any of the other ways.
"Not Giving Up on Truth"
Philosophy from its beginnings has been a search for truth. It is motivated by a sense that what is taken by society at large to be the truth is not the real truth. And a belief that finding the real truth and announcing it is a radical act that liberates first the individual and finally the world. Lately, however, some have challenged the very notion of truth. In the paper I argue for a recovery of the idea of truth.
We live in a postmodern age and what this means is that there is a consensus that the intellectual synthesis that was the Enlightenment is no longer acceptable and must be replaced. But the consensus does not go much farther than that. The Enlightenment is a complex phenomenon and the debate does not become substantive and interesting until we have identified which elements of the complex we intend to reject and what we intend to offer in their place. The Enlightenment variously stood for many things: laissez faire capitalism, democracy, human rights, the scientific method, individualism, mass education, free speech, cosmopolitanism and progress. Central to all of these is perhaps the belief that truth is to be found by overthrowing tradition and relying on a combination of human reason and careful objective observation. In the 20th century faith that the application of the scientific method to society will yield nothing but progress and justice for all was shaken by war, colonialism and economic depression on a global scale. The vast majority of the world’s poor and powerless remained so and dreams of inevitable progress through reason began to seem at least somewhat hollow if not cynically manipulative. So the most radical postmodern response is to reject the most central notion of the Enlightenment: truth. Philosophically there is a parallel development that pointed to the same result. At the beginning of the modern age Descartes posed the problem of skepticism in a particularly acute form. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries philosophers struggled to exorcise Descartes’ evil demon without success. By the 20th century a weariness with skepticism was leading some to reject the elusive goal of coming to know the objective truth about the world.
But is truth really the problem or is the wholesale rejection of objective truth too radical? The question of truth needs to be divided into specific problems that should each be examined in turn. First there are technical issues. Truth in its ordinary common sense meaning is some sort of correspondence between the world and what we say about it. The sentence “the cat is on the mat” is true if and only if in the real world the mat is the place where the cat is at. This seems plain enough but there are many true sentences where it is hard to identify some fact out there in the world that makes them true. For example, it is true that there are no bananas on the Moon but what exactly does the fact look like that makes this true? Second, how facts make sentences true looks rather mysterious up close. John Locke held that our thoughts were like pictures in the head and that truth was a matching up of these pictures with the world outside our heads. But serious thinking about the nature of thinking makes it look less and less like pictures in the head. Third, the inability of philosophers to agree on any solution to the problem of skepticism seemed to put the world out of reach. If we do not really have access to the world, then how could we ever compare our sentences or our thoughts to see if they really correspond with the world? Fourth, people began to notice how the powerful used their power to project a very self-serving view of what was true and to impose it on the public as the official version of the truth. Looked at in this way, the “truth” begins to seem like a notion designed to protect the privileges of the powerful. Finally, there is quantum mechanics. The investigation of the physical world on the smallest scale began to reveal a deep strangeness about the world in which the objectivity of the physical world begins to look like an illusion.
Can and should the simple notion of truth as correspondence with reality be saved? It can and should. Since the problems with truth are multiple it makes sense that the solution should be complex. There are four main developments within philosophy which point the way. First, we should be fallibilists. Descartes started the modern period with his demand that beliefs be absolutely certain to count as knowledge. This has proven an unrealistic demand and his gambit should be rejected. We do not have to possess certainty in order to know the truth. Second, we should be contextualists. Justification for beliefs comes in varying strengths. How strongly a particular belief must be justified to count as knowledge ought to vary according to context. Third, accept a modest pragmatism. Radical pragmatists went along with the rejection of truth but more moderate pragmatism goes less far. It accepts that concepts are mostly human creations and notes that which concepts we use is up to us. It then recommends that conceptual choice cannot be guided by truth, for that makes no literal sense, but should instead be guided by human values. Finally, we should be metaphysical pluralists. One of the dominating visions of the Enlightenment has been the quest for a theory of everything. Underneath the blooming buzzing confusion of the world as we know it lies, they believed, a very simple world with only a few kinds of things operating according to a few fixed laws. This dream was an illusion. We should accept the fact that the world is so complex that there is in fact no one way the world really is. Instead we must accept that there are many ways the world is and that each way represents an independent truth not reducible to any of the other ways.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Request for Examples
It would assist my critical thinking project if some of you could help me out with a few examples. What I am looking for are examples of statements in the usual forms logicians study but whose content is derived from some academic discipline other than philosophy. I'd also like to avoid the kinds of stock examples from biological classification that logicians are fond of like "All dogs are mammals." The statements could be quite simple or moderately complex.
For example, a very simple statement taken from business is "All budgets are estimates." A somewhat more complex example taken from geology is "All marble is non-foliated metamorphic rock."
So if you could supply me with a couple of examples of categorical statements (A,E, I, O) or conditionals or disjunctions that might actually appear in a textbook or lecture outside of philosophy, it would be of much help.
For example, a very simple statement taken from business is "All budgets are estimates." A somewhat more complex example taken from geology is "All marble is non-foliated metamorphic rock."
So if you could supply me with a couple of examples of categorical statements (A,E, I, O) or conditionals or disjunctions that might actually appear in a textbook or lecture outside of philosophy, it would be of much help.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Critical Thinking
My university decided to give me very generous release time from teaching to work on creating web-based critical thinking units. I will be teaching only one course each semester so that I can devote the bulk of my time to the project. The long range plan, still tentative, is for these units to be assigned in courses across the curriculum so that each one of our 25,000 students will be assigned a short critical thinking unit to do every semester. The implementation of this is a long way off but for this year I have the job of creating eight critical thinking units and have them ready to deploy by next summer at this time. In the meanwhile I will use the units in the one course I am teaching--a section of Critical Thinking.
As I work on this I'd like to try out some ideas on the group and get some feedback. If you have some experience with teaching critical thinking that's great, but even if you don't your perspective as philosophers should be of value. I will provide a link to the webpages themselves so that you can look at them.
The general public and especially employers are asking colleges to do a better job teaching students to think. What I think meets the need most effectively is logic. The logic should be nonsymbolic and practical. I find that categorical logic is useful. I also find that simple sentence logic forms like modus ponens and disjunctive syllogism are good. I am still not completely satisfied with any of the usual approaches to inductive logic, but I do not want to stick wholly to deductive logic. Also I find that specific training in how to object to arguments is both necessary and valuable for students. (For example, asking: "is this an objection to the first premise of the argument or to the second premise?" is surprisingly challenging to ordinary students at first. But once they get used to it their thinking becomes much clearer and more focused.)
That's enough for now. If some of you are willing to help me on this, I will post regular topics for your feedback.
As I work on this I'd like to try out some ideas on the group and get some feedback. If you have some experience with teaching critical thinking that's great, but even if you don't your perspective as philosophers should be of value. I will provide a link to the webpages themselves so that you can look at them.
The general public and especially employers are asking colleges to do a better job teaching students to think. What I think meets the need most effectively is logic. The logic should be nonsymbolic and practical. I find that categorical logic is useful. I also find that simple sentence logic forms like modus ponens and disjunctive syllogism are good. I am still not completely satisfied with any of the usual approaches to inductive logic, but I do not want to stick wholly to deductive logic. Also I find that specific training in how to object to arguments is both necessary and valuable for students. (For example, asking: "is this an objection to the first premise of the argument or to the second premise?" is surprisingly challenging to ordinary students at first. But once they get used to it their thinking becomes much clearer and more focused.)
That's enough for now. If some of you are willing to help me on this, I will post regular topics for your feedback.
Friday, May 23, 2008
More Articles on Last Year's Philosophers' Roundtable
As Jafe mentioned in the last posting, several of us wrote about last year's Quaker Philosophers' Roundtable at the Friends Association for Higher Education conference that was held at Earlham College. Our pieces appear in Quaker Higher Education, Volume 2, Issue 1, which is itself now available online.
So now you can read all three articles, plus other interesting articles in Quaker Higher Education. You can find past issues as well on the Publications page of the FAHE website.
So now you can read all three articles, plus other interesting articles in Quaker Higher Education. You can find past issues as well on the Publications page of the FAHE website.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Some of us who have attempted to get and keep this blog going were invited by Donn Weinholtz to submit brief articles to the online journal "Quaker Higher Education" (www.earlham.edu/~fahe/, select "Publications") on our experience of last year's Philosopher's Roundtable at the annual meetings of the Friends Association of Higher Education. With Donn's permission and encouragement, I am posting my contribution here (and encouraging my fellow contributers to do also) in the hopes of both promoting the Roundtable for this coming year, and engendering further discussion on the blog.
Philoi sophias (Friends of wisdom): Quakerism and the vocation to philosophy
As a lifelong Friend, and a philosopher by inclination and profession, and one who has long had, moreover, a sense that my Quakerism has been an integral, formative (if often tacit) influence upon the fact and the manner of my philosophizing, I find myself - at this awkward moment of mid-life crisis (taking stock of what I have done so far, and what is left to me to do, God willing, for the next quarter of a century) - seeking to more deliberately understand the relationship between my confession and my profession. I have, for a few years now, been moving into a stage where I am increasingly understanding myself and my calling to be that of a “Quaker philosopher” - without knowing quite what that would mean, and without a community of other Quakers in philosophy with whom to work this out. Imagine my delight, then, when - as the pleasantest of interruptions to my largely solitary musings - I was invited by Laura Rediehs to participate in a “philosophers’ roundtable” at FAHE. After forty(-six) years in the wilderness, was I crossing the Jordan at long last?
And a delight it was, as we scurried to expand the circle to accommodate a surprising number of Quakers teaching and otherwise engaged in philosophy, and others with sufficient interest in the philosophical enterprise to show up too. But even as we were introducing ourselves the question arose as to whether we think of ourselves as “Quaker philosophers”, or, alternatively, “Quakers who are also philosophers,” and while we had little time to explore this, my suspicion is that we would have been far from unanimous in our approaches to the question. Leave it to philosophers to fret over who they are even before the introductions are complete! And yet, delving into this would, I think, teach us a lot about how we conceive of both our religious commitments and philosophy itself. I seek here, therefore, to explore this issue a little - in only a preliminary and suggestive way, granted - as a question of existential importance to myself as I attempt to carve out my post-mid-life identity, but perhaps also one with implications both for other philosophers and for those of other disciplines and professions as well, since the question might structurally reverberate with the issue as to whether we might better think ourselves Quaker psychologists, or Quaker biologists, or Quaker business(wo)men, or even Quaker prison reformers, etc., or whether it is rather a matter of our being Quakers (who happen to be, additionally, or incidentally, or tangentially) engaged in some or other vocation.
What is at stake here, and why might some of us, at least, be hesitant to claim the term “Quaker philosopher”? There are indeed reasons to be wary. First, there is the rightful fear of the arrogance of thinking oneself a (self-appointed, no less) representative of a movement, representing Quakers in the philosophical world, or speaking “as a philosopher” to one’s fellow Quakers, as if claiming this title conferred some status. And there is the related concern of whether the adjective “Quaker” attached to something like “philosopher” does not imply an official title, a formal approval from the body thereby referred to, in the manner that “Catholic theologian” means more than a Catholic who is a theologian, but a theologian vetted and approved by Catholicism. If that is the meaning, then none of us should make this claim, because “Quakerism” (even if there were an unified society who could speak for “Quakerism” per se), as a “religious” society, is not in a position to certify any “philosophy” (in the technical sense) over another (just as Quakerism would be wise not to officially advocate for one school of psychology over another, or one political party over another). Another part of the fear of adopting the title, this time more from the side of philosophy than Quakerism, is that we then become, or are perceived to become, parochial and prejudiced in our approach to philosophy, particularly troubling if there is a presupposition of neutrality in the discipline, as is clearly the case for many schools of philosophy. We is not supposed to allow our religious conclusions to function as a starting point for our philosophical reflections; rather we must first, as philosophers, examine these assertions themselves by recourse to some or other non-sectarian standards. Even for those like myself, who are convinced that the Enlightenment’s “prejudice against prejudice” (in H. G. Gadamer’s phrase) is precisely that, and who do not feel the need to philosophically exorcise the particular but to engage it, do not hope to translate this incredulity towards theoretical neutrality into an alibi for uncritical assertion. As “philosophers” we hope to proceed on an equal footing with our professional colleagues, without any claims to special access to the truth, even if we feel at liberty to proceed confessionally in our meetings.
And yet, for me at least, and perhaps for others for whom the relationship between faith and philosophizing is non-incidental, the term Quaker philosopher - if solely for the purposes of self-understanding, and not as the adoption of a title - retains a certain descriptive force. Quakerism is not simply one among a number of aspects that together define us, one that we foreground at certain times but that falls away behind the horizon when we are engaged in others, but is a root qualification, one in terms of which we have been (re)constituted as the people we are, and that therefore radically rather than incidentally affects (or even effects) all of our other engagements. The question, it seems to me, suggested by the terminological distinction in question here, is whether or not one’s Quakerism comprehensively impacts upon one’s vocation, such that the vocational activity could not be the activity that it is if the Quakerism of the practitioner were lacking. This is clearly not a claim that one must be a Quaker to engage in philosophy, or that the results achieved would be restricted to Quakers, but that our Quakerism is non-incidental to both the what and the how of our engagement in it. Philosophy is, on this model, but a specialized aspect of the more general task shared by us all: to “translate” our Quaker spirituality into our worldly activities, or “to bring our Quakerism to life.”
But what more precisely is this relationship between Quakerism and philosophy that tempts me to adopt “Quaker philosopher” as a descriptor? By this I do not mean that Quakerism becomes the focus, or the subject matter, of philosophizing (though this would not be excluded), in the manner that a “Quaker historian” (under one interpretation) studies the history of the Quakers, but without necessarily being a Quaker. Nor do I mean by this that we begin by allowing Quaker presuppositions to either govern the choice of subject matter or delimit, doctrinally or ethically, the possible outcomes of our work, for instance, that we would be attracted to and promote certain philosophers who say things that seem to us to resonate with Quaker teachings and experience, or that we would attempt to make a philosophical case for pacifism (although neither of these would be excluded either). Rather, I think it would mean something closer to taking up the task of philosophizing in a Quakerly manner, being a Quaker in our whole person even while engaged fully in the philosophical task ( while “being a whole man to” philosophy, as J. J. Gurney might put it), such that who we are cannot but thoroughgoingly affect both what we do, and how we do it. A “Quaker philosopher” here would then be one who philosophizes in a Friendly manner, rather than one who is identified with a particular disciplinary focus. Quakerism here would qualify our philosophizing adverbially.
Without pretending to, or seeking any, status official or otherwise thereby, with I hope seemly humility, and while welcoming dissent, for myself the term “Quaker philosopher” (over against the “less integrated” Quaker who is a philosopher) signals a vocation in philosophy motivated and framed by commitments that are self-consciously Quaker, or, again, deliberately engaging in philosophy in a Quakerly manner, such that philosophizing itself becomes a way in which we expresses the love of God and neighbor that our Quakerism (in its various forms and diverse articulations) is itself an attempt to faithfully embody. Or, to adopt and adapt a phrase from the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, a Quaker philosopher recognizes that before it is the love of wisdom, philosophy is “the wisdom of love in the service of love,” and the Quaker philosopher (on the model I am suggesting here) brings the Quaker sensibilities that frame his or her approach to philosophy into his or her vocation as its very heart.
Philoi sophias (Friends of wisdom): Quakerism and the vocation to philosophy
As a lifelong Friend, and a philosopher by inclination and profession, and one who has long had, moreover, a sense that my Quakerism has been an integral, formative (if often tacit) influence upon the fact and the manner of my philosophizing, I find myself - at this awkward moment of mid-life crisis (taking stock of what I have done so far, and what is left to me to do, God willing, for the next quarter of a century) - seeking to more deliberately understand the relationship between my confession and my profession. I have, for a few years now, been moving into a stage where I am increasingly understanding myself and my calling to be that of a “Quaker philosopher” - without knowing quite what that would mean, and without a community of other Quakers in philosophy with whom to work this out. Imagine my delight, then, when - as the pleasantest of interruptions to my largely solitary musings - I was invited by Laura Rediehs to participate in a “philosophers’ roundtable” at FAHE. After forty(-six) years in the wilderness, was I crossing the Jordan at long last?
And a delight it was, as we scurried to expand the circle to accommodate a surprising number of Quakers teaching and otherwise engaged in philosophy, and others with sufficient interest in the philosophical enterprise to show up too. But even as we were introducing ourselves the question arose as to whether we think of ourselves as “Quaker philosophers”, or, alternatively, “Quakers who are also philosophers,” and while we had little time to explore this, my suspicion is that we would have been far from unanimous in our approaches to the question. Leave it to philosophers to fret over who they are even before the introductions are complete! And yet, delving into this would, I think, teach us a lot about how we conceive of both our religious commitments and philosophy itself. I seek here, therefore, to explore this issue a little - in only a preliminary and suggestive way, granted - as a question of existential importance to myself as I attempt to carve out my post-mid-life identity, but perhaps also one with implications both for other philosophers and for those of other disciplines and professions as well, since the question might structurally reverberate with the issue as to whether we might better think ourselves Quaker psychologists, or Quaker biologists, or Quaker business(wo)men, or even Quaker prison reformers, etc., or whether it is rather a matter of our being Quakers (who happen to be, additionally, or incidentally, or tangentially) engaged in some or other vocation.
What is at stake here, and why might some of us, at least, be hesitant to claim the term “Quaker philosopher”? There are indeed reasons to be wary. First, there is the rightful fear of the arrogance of thinking oneself a (self-appointed, no less) representative of a movement, representing Quakers in the philosophical world, or speaking “as a philosopher” to one’s fellow Quakers, as if claiming this title conferred some status. And there is the related concern of whether the adjective “Quaker” attached to something like “philosopher” does not imply an official title, a formal approval from the body thereby referred to, in the manner that “Catholic theologian” means more than a Catholic who is a theologian, but a theologian vetted and approved by Catholicism. If that is the meaning, then none of us should make this claim, because “Quakerism” (even if there were an unified society who could speak for “Quakerism” per se), as a “religious” society, is not in a position to certify any “philosophy” (in the technical sense) over another (just as Quakerism would be wise not to officially advocate for one school of psychology over another, or one political party over another). Another part of the fear of adopting the title, this time more from the side of philosophy than Quakerism, is that we then become, or are perceived to become, parochial and prejudiced in our approach to philosophy, particularly troubling if there is a presupposition of neutrality in the discipline, as is clearly the case for many schools of philosophy. We is not supposed to allow our religious conclusions to function as a starting point for our philosophical reflections; rather we must first, as philosophers, examine these assertions themselves by recourse to some or other non-sectarian standards. Even for those like myself, who are convinced that the Enlightenment’s “prejudice against prejudice” (in H. G. Gadamer’s phrase) is precisely that, and who do not feel the need to philosophically exorcise the particular but to engage it, do not hope to translate this incredulity towards theoretical neutrality into an alibi for uncritical assertion. As “philosophers” we hope to proceed on an equal footing with our professional colleagues, without any claims to special access to the truth, even if we feel at liberty to proceed confessionally in our meetings.
And yet, for me at least, and perhaps for others for whom the relationship between faith and philosophizing is non-incidental, the term Quaker philosopher - if solely for the purposes of self-understanding, and not as the adoption of a title - retains a certain descriptive force. Quakerism is not simply one among a number of aspects that together define us, one that we foreground at certain times but that falls away behind the horizon when we are engaged in others, but is a root qualification, one in terms of which we have been (re)constituted as the people we are, and that therefore radically rather than incidentally affects (or even effects) all of our other engagements. The question, it seems to me, suggested by the terminological distinction in question here, is whether or not one’s Quakerism comprehensively impacts upon one’s vocation, such that the vocational activity could not be the activity that it is if the Quakerism of the practitioner were lacking. This is clearly not a claim that one must be a Quaker to engage in philosophy, or that the results achieved would be restricted to Quakers, but that our Quakerism is non-incidental to both the what and the how of our engagement in it. Philosophy is, on this model, but a specialized aspect of the more general task shared by us all: to “translate” our Quaker spirituality into our worldly activities, or “to bring our Quakerism to life.”
But what more precisely is this relationship between Quakerism and philosophy that tempts me to adopt “Quaker philosopher” as a descriptor? By this I do not mean that Quakerism becomes the focus, or the subject matter, of philosophizing (though this would not be excluded), in the manner that a “Quaker historian” (under one interpretation) studies the history of the Quakers, but without necessarily being a Quaker. Nor do I mean by this that we begin by allowing Quaker presuppositions to either govern the choice of subject matter or delimit, doctrinally or ethically, the possible outcomes of our work, for instance, that we would be attracted to and promote certain philosophers who say things that seem to us to resonate with Quaker teachings and experience, or that we would attempt to make a philosophical case for pacifism (although neither of these would be excluded either). Rather, I think it would mean something closer to taking up the task of philosophizing in a Quakerly manner, being a Quaker in our whole person even while engaged fully in the philosophical task ( while “being a whole man to” philosophy, as J. J. Gurney might put it), such that who we are cannot but thoroughgoingly affect both what we do, and how we do it. A “Quaker philosopher” here would then be one who philosophizes in a Friendly manner, rather than one who is identified with a particular disciplinary focus. Quakerism here would qualify our philosophizing adverbially.
Without pretending to, or seeking any, status official or otherwise thereby, with I hope seemly humility, and while welcoming dissent, for myself the term “Quaker philosopher” (over against the “less integrated” Quaker who is a philosopher) signals a vocation in philosophy motivated and framed by commitments that are self-consciously Quaker, or, again, deliberately engaging in philosophy in a Quakerly manner, such that philosophizing itself becomes a way in which we expresses the love of God and neighbor that our Quakerism (in its various forms and diverse articulations) is itself an attempt to faithfully embody. Or, to adopt and adapt a phrase from the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, a Quaker philosopher recognizes that before it is the love of wisdom, philosophy is “the wisdom of love in the service of love,” and the Quaker philosopher (on the model I am suggesting here) brings the Quaker sensibilities that frame his or her approach to philosophy into his or her vocation as its very heart.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Quakers and Kant: That of God in Everyone
Quakers recommend that, in our relations with each other, we should strive to respond to "that of God within everyone." In my own thinking, I have always related this to a supreme principle of respect. At least part of respect includes believing that everyone is capable of goodness. And at least part of the recommendation to look for and respond to "that of God" within everyone is also to assume that everyone is capable of goodness.
Immanuel Kant proposes something similar in his moral theory. One formulation of his "categorical imperative" is "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means" (Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 429, trans. James W. Ellington, Hackett Publishing Company, [1785] 1981).
For Kant, understanding people as "ends" is the same as understanding them as "rational agents." By this, he means that people set their own goals, and thus are sources of new activity in the world. Kant then connects human rationality to the concept of "goodness" in the following way. Ultimately, the "true function" of our rational nature "must be to produce a will which is not merely good as a means to some further end, but is good in itself" (396). He makes this comment on the heels of just having argued that rationality is not for the purpose of survival alone--instinct can and does aid in the survival of many other living organisms. Nor is the purpose of rationality to ensure happiness--it doesn't do a very good job at that! We cannot really plan for our own happiness (even if we do all desire it). So there is some other purpose for our having rationality: producing a will that is good in itself (that wills good for the sake of goodness alone).
When our will is thus purified, the goals that we set and the activity that results from our trying to fulfill these goals brings new goodness into the world. By treating people "as ends," we respect them as potential sources of new goodness for the world. And by "responding to that of God within everyone," we try, in our relations with others, to encourage them to bring that potential goodness forth.
The early Quakers believed that humans can reach a kind of perfection in life, and they too connected this notion with a kind of purification of will (see for example Barclay's Proposition VIII, in his Apology [1675/1678]). Barclay believed that it is an insult to God to think that God created us so badly that a kind of human perfection is impossible. He also worries that a doctrine that human perfectibility is impossible can make us all too willing to accept our shortcomings.
"What is the purpose of such a strange doctrine? The imperfection of Christians comes either from God or from themselves. If it is of their own doing, it must be because they fall short of using the power of obedience that was given them. In that case, they were capable of achieving God's will with his aid. But our opponents deny this, so they are not to be blamed for continuing in sin since they are incapable of doing otherwise" (Barclay's Apology in Modern English, edited by Dean Freiday, p. 158).
Barclay does not believe that reaching a kind of perfection makes us invulnerable to future sin or error. "If [those who have attained a measure of perfection] are not watchful they may fall into iniquity and lose it. Many good and holy men have had their ups and downs of this kind" but sin "does not destroy him altogether or make it impossible to rise again" (156). He goes on to argue that, "nevertheless a state can be attained in this life in which it becomes so natural to act righteously that a condition of stability is achieved in which sin is impossible" (157).
Do Quakers today still believe that this kind of perfectibility is possible?
Immanuel Kant proposes something similar in his moral theory. One formulation of his "categorical imperative" is "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means" (Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 429, trans. James W. Ellington, Hackett Publishing Company, [1785] 1981).
For Kant, understanding people as "ends" is the same as understanding them as "rational agents." By this, he means that people set their own goals, and thus are sources of new activity in the world. Kant then connects human rationality to the concept of "goodness" in the following way. Ultimately, the "true function" of our rational nature "must be to produce a will which is not merely good as a means to some further end, but is good in itself" (396). He makes this comment on the heels of just having argued that rationality is not for the purpose of survival alone--instinct can and does aid in the survival of many other living organisms. Nor is the purpose of rationality to ensure happiness--it doesn't do a very good job at that! We cannot really plan for our own happiness (even if we do all desire it). So there is some other purpose for our having rationality: producing a will that is good in itself (that wills good for the sake of goodness alone).
When our will is thus purified, the goals that we set and the activity that results from our trying to fulfill these goals brings new goodness into the world. By treating people "as ends," we respect them as potential sources of new goodness for the world. And by "responding to that of God within everyone," we try, in our relations with others, to encourage them to bring that potential goodness forth.
The early Quakers believed that humans can reach a kind of perfection in life, and they too connected this notion with a kind of purification of will (see for example Barclay's Proposition VIII, in his Apology [1675/1678]). Barclay believed that it is an insult to God to think that God created us so badly that a kind of human perfection is impossible. He also worries that a doctrine that human perfectibility is impossible can make us all too willing to accept our shortcomings.
"What is the purpose of such a strange doctrine? The imperfection of Christians comes either from God or from themselves. If it is of their own doing, it must be because they fall short of using the power of obedience that was given them. In that case, they were capable of achieving God's will with his aid. But our opponents deny this, so they are not to be blamed for continuing in sin since they are incapable of doing otherwise" (Barclay's Apology in Modern English, edited by Dean Freiday, p. 158).
Barclay does not believe that reaching a kind of perfection makes us invulnerable to future sin or error. "If [those who have attained a measure of perfection] are not watchful they may fall into iniquity and lose it. Many good and holy men have had their ups and downs of this kind" but sin "does not destroy him altogether or make it impossible to rise again" (156). He goes on to argue that, "nevertheless a state can be attained in this life in which it becomes so natural to act righteously that a condition of stability is achieved in which sin is impossible" (157).
Do Quakers today still believe that this kind of perfectibility is possible?
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