Metaphysics and the sciences

I am reading ch. 14 of Insight, on the relation of metaphysics to the sciences and to common sense: metaphysics conceived as the integral heuristic structure of proportionate being takes the results of science and common sense, reverses their counterpositions, and integrates them.

A very precise relationship between metaphysics and science / common sense.

Also the - perhaps so far unique to Lonergan - idea that forms are obtained, not by (descriptive) common sense, but by (explanatory) science. That the insights of common sense, far from arriving - automatically, as it were - at the forms of things, are actually linguistic insights, and they give us the ability to deal with the world. But that the true understanding or explanations of things is to be obtained by the respective science. (And here, as far as common sense is concerned, plenty of echoes with postmoderns like Rorty.... My feeling that what Rorty says fits in very well with what Lonergan says about common sense.)

How, I wonder, would Radical Orthodoxy conceive of the relationship between metaphysics and science? Or perhaps there is no relationship? Not likely.

Certainly both Lonergan and RO meditate / take seriously the idea of theology as the queen of the sciences. The question is to pinpoint the differences, for differences there do seem to be. RO is aggressively anti-secular, and perhaps also anti-other-religions.

Development of doctrine, hermeneutics, postmodernism

For the best history of the problem of doctrinal development, we have Aidan Nichols, From Newman to Congar. Nichols brings us up to the Council, and, in his conclusion, adds a note on the post-conciliar situation. The work of Newman, Blondel, Congar, Schillebeeckx and Rahner comes to fruition in the Council, but begins rapidly dissolving after the Council thanks to certain developments which Nichols sums up in the words pluralism, hermeneutics and reception.

Nichols conclusion is something like a teaser: he opens up a new problematic, but does not really get into it. Further, writing in 1990, he has no mention at all of postmodernism.

Dan Stiver, in his introduction to Theology after Ricoeur, takes up postmodernism as well as pluralism. His attitude to postmodernism is sympathetic; it is revealing, however, that he includes Gadamer and Ricoeur among the proponents of postmodernism.

Stanley Hauerwas begins with a scathing attack on postmodernism, but does know how to draw out the best in it (it has to be taken seriously, he says), while still insisting on the cognitive component of doctrines.

On hermeneutics, we need to see Claude Geffre.

The post-conciliar Schillebeeckx also begins with hermeneutics, abandons the cognitive meaning of doctrines, and proposes a political and a narrative theology. Caputo, despite drawing from the postmodern Derrida, does not seem to have much more to offer than a narrative theology that sidesteps the question of cognitive meaning to concentrate solely on the constitutive and performative meaning. Felix Wilfred too seems to be largely an Indian reading of Schillebeeckx: the same attention to hermeneutics and the privileging of the hermeneutical position of the oppressed, political and narrative theology, and the sidestepping of cognitive meaning.

Hauerwas calls postmodernism the bastard child of modernity. From what he says, it might not perhaps be too much off the mark to call both modernity and postmodernity bastard children of Christianity, a Christianity that has 'lost its story'. Strikingly attractive bastards, as often happens.

We should probably not find great difficulty in accepting the emphases brought by Schillebeeckx, Caputo,  Wilfred and the like. The key question is: do we need to jettison cognitive meaning in order to incorporate constitutive and performative meaning? And: can we really jettison cognitive meaning, and yet remain faithful to the Gospel? So the key question is truth: how are we to understand this?

Pluralism, hermeneutics, reception, postmodernism

This is an attempt to meet Venny's request. Very offhand, please note. 

Pluralism: the theory that there are not only different but incommensurable universes of discourse, such that communication between universes is impossible. Thus I say X and you say X, but we mean quite different things. I say this is a theory, because we could question whether pluralism is so radical as to prevent any possibility of communication. Wittgenstein himself said: if a lion could talk, we would not be able to understand it. I read this as saying: between human beings, however different we are, we can communicate, because there is something shared, a form of life, a common humanity, at least operatively if not in thought content. 

Hermeneutics: earlier this was understood as the art of interpretation. After Heidegger and Gadamer, it is understood not merely as an art of interpretation, but as the very way we are. We are hermeneutical beings, beings that live as interpreters. Now within such a hermeneutical philosophy, one can opt for a radical pluralism of the sort described above, or else for a not so radical pluralism that still makes space for the common ground of a common humanity... 

Reception: the idea that meaning is created in the receiving. Thus, for example, there would be no abstract 'meaning' of a work of art; rather, meaning emerges in the reception of that work. And so there would be a multiplicity of meanings. Is this multiplicity radical, so that there is no connection at all between different meanings? There would be different opinions here. A radical postmodern position would probably talk about the 'text' (or work of art) as absorbing the 'world' or 'reality', rather than 'referring' to a world or reality. 

Postmodernism: still an umbrella term that covers a wide variety of positions, chiefly those of Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, Rorty, Vattimo. An ongoing contemporary realization of the shortcomings of modernity beginning from Descartes. E.g. there is no 'enclosed subjectivity' but always being-in-the-world. Reason is not supreme; it has to become aware of its fragile, fractured state. There is no such thing as pure reason; reason is always 'engaged', situated, committed, situated, historical, conditioned, traditioned... There are no meta-narratives or grand narratives, or if there are, they should be recognized as 'constructs'; there are only little narratives. Centres are centres only because of power equations; the margins must be respected, looked at, focussed upon, recognized, given their due. Superficiality and play rather than profundity. No common ground, therefore, but a play of a thousand forces and aspects and dimensions. No 'foundations' for truth. Not even 'truth' in the classical sense of correspondence to reality, but existential truth, truth in the living out, pragmatic truth.

The thrust of thinking in Divyadaan

The other day two young philosophy students asked me a good question: why is there so much of Lonergan in Divyadaan, and why is Divyadaan against postmodernism?

Or perhaps they said: people are saying that there is too much of Lonergan, and a distaste for postmodernism.

Is there, and is it, I ask myself.

Perhaps. Naturally, also. I believe that the only way to get out of a religion or a philosophy is to either rise to the heights or plumb the depths. Only when one becomes a mystic or an adept might one arrogate to oneself the right to pass judgment.

So: plumb the depths of - whatever: Lonergan, Derrida, Heidegger, Vattimo, Rorty....

The point is to plumb the depths. The point is to read, really read, and think, allow oneself to be challenged, stimulated, provoked.

Does Divyadaan really read and think? Or is it content to mouth platitudes, commonplaces, Selbstverstaendlichkeiten?

And nothing like the original texts of thinkers to stimulate one's thinking.

We need to recover the art of reading.

Then reading would become an aesthetic experience: something that calls for leisure, in contrast to the hurry and haste to 'finish'.

Then we would have conversation, dialectic, dialogue.

Then there would be life.

Caputo, foremost American postmodern

James Marsh, in a review of John Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), in International Philosophical Quarterly 28 (1988) 459:

This is an important book.... With this book, Caputo takes his place firmly as the foremost American, continental post-modernist, continuing a line of inquiry extending from Nietzsche and Kierkegaard on up through [the] late Heidegger, Derrida, and Foucault.

I am surprised that - probably way back in the late 1980s or early 1990s - I had come across this quotation mentioning postmodernism, Derrida, Foucault, and Caputo.... But it takes time for a stray word to begin making an impact.

Derrida, religion, the slippage

Derrida speaks of 'my religion about which nobody understands anything' 'any more than does my mother,' 'but she must have known that the constancy of God in my life is called by other names.' Caputo comments: God, the name of God, is not dismissed by Derrida, who would not have the authority to dimiss a word that belongs to such a deeply inscribed vocabulary that goes back to time out of mind... (Caputo, Philosophy and Theology 62.)

When we say God is love, does that mean that God is one of the best names we have for love, or that love is one of the best names we have for God? Augustine might have opted for the latter. As for Derrida, "there is an irresoluble slipping back and forth between these names and no place to stand that would give us the leverage to arrest this play." (Ibid. 62-63.)

Here is where the atheist thing comes in. 'So that I quite rightly pass for an atheist.' Why not say outright, I am an atheist? Because that would be to arrest the play, and would amount to what Derrida called 'atheistic theology,' meaning dogmatic atheism. (Ibid. 63.)

And Caputo: there is always an atheist within me contesting belief, and there is always a believer within me contesting my professions of unbelief. That is why Derrida says that the name of God is the name of a secret that is withheld from him. Still, he 'rightly passes' for an atheist - by the standards of the local priest or rabbi. Rightly enough. But Derrida does not want that to harden into a dogma. Echoes of Kierkegaard: I do not pretend to be a Christian; I am only trying to become one. (Ibid. 63.) - Yes, true: our authenticity is bound to be ever a withdrawal from unauthenticity.

Derrida even lets slip that he prays, that his life has been a long history of prayers, that he has lived constantly in prayer, in tears. 'Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.' (Ibid. 63-64.)

He shares Augustine's restless heart, but, unlike Augustine, he cannot bring it to rest upon a singular object of love, like Augustine's God. (Ibid. 64.)

He would speak of a 'pure messianic,' the pure form of hope and expectation, in contrast to the concrete messianisms, both religious and secular. (Ibid. 65.)

So what is the difference between Augustine and Derrida? Not in their faith, nor in their prayer, says Caputo. But Augustine is able to say You, meaning the historically identifiable God in a concrete tradition of faith; and further, he is able to pray within a community of faith, with the words and prayers and stories of that community. Derrida does not have this, does not want to have this; it would be determining the undeterminable, naming the unnameable, arresting the play. (Ibid. 65-66.)

Caputo dares to say: if prayer is a kind of 'wounded word,' then Derrida's Circumfession is even more prayerful than Augustine's Confessions, because he lacks the community and the assurances of Augustine. (Ibid. 66-67.) In another key, Sartre had said: we atheists are the real heroes, for we do good with no assurance whatsoever and without hope of any reward... In fact, it is a poor faith that will act solely for the reward. The parable of the workers of the eleventh hour and the indignation that it provoked and still provokes... Or Tony De Mello's story of the indignant Lay Brother...

So Derrida would have a religion without religion, more heroic, mpre precarious, more pure... (Ibid. 67.) My question is: so is that ultimately a choice? Or is there not the unprogrammable initiative of an Other, the irruption of the Other?

True, as Caputo says: the difference between Augustine and Derrida is not the difference between faith and faithlessness, but between two kinds of faith. But I would add: a world of difference, anyway. True, maybe, as Augustine said, you would not be seeking me if I were not already drawing you to myself... But it is a difference between grace and human effort, human choice. One cannot make it into a theory that the play cannot, should not, be arrested. That cannot be an option.

At any rate, Caputo says that what the author of the letter to the Hebrews called 'the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen' (11:1) is not only the principle of our lives but also a principle of a postmodern faith, of a philosophical theology or of a theological philosophy, that is as old as the Scriptures. (Ibid. 67.)

Derrida and Augustine

From Caputo's Augustinian meditation on Derrida (both, strangely, born in Numidia/Algeria, both attached to their mothers and sons of their mothers' tears, both leaving their provincial places for the great city...):

'So that I quite rightly pass for an atheist.'
Why not simply say, 'I am an atheist?'
Because that would be to arrest the play.

But perhaps here one is committed to the play itself?

To arrest the play: or to let the play be arrested?
'I will pluck out the heart of stone, and put in a heart of flesh.'
The heart of stone does not want to be replaced by the heart of flesh...

And yet the play remains. The play between grace and freedom, between two freedoms. 'Authenticity is ever a withdrawal from unauthenticity.'

Postmodernism and theology

This is interesting, Caputo's own take on postmodernism and theology:

A lot of the postmodern philosophers are thorough-going secularists and their nineteenth-century hero and predecessor is not Kierkegaard but Nietzsche. Their interest in defusing the intimidating prestige of the natural sciences and in gaining a hearing for other forms of discourse is aimed at promoting their interest in art and literature, not religion. But the clear and unmistakable result of what even these very secular thinkers did, the unavoidable implication of what in my view they very successfully accomplished, was to gain a hearing for - God help us - religion and theology, a point that discomforts secularizing postmodernists every bit as much as it discomforts modernist critics of religion. (Caputo, Philosophy and Theology 52.)

He ends like this:

When philosophers really have an axe to grind about theology, that axe trumps the distinction between modern and postmodern. When it comes to theology, some philosophers take no prisoners. (Ibid.)

Postmodernism, scepticism, relativism

Caputo notes that Lyotard put the word postmodern on the map when in 1977 he defined it in The Postmodern Condition as 'incredulity to meta-narratives.'

The French phrase Lyotard used that got translated as 'meta-narratives' was grands recits, 'big stories,' that is, large overarching accounts, 'totalizing stories' (he was thinking of Hegel) that claimed things like 'history is nothing but the unfolding of the absolute spirit,' or 'nothing but the unfolding of the laws of dialectical materialism,' or nothing but the displaced desire for your mommy, or nothing but the resentment of the weak against the strong, or nothing but this, that, or the other thing. (Caputo, Philosophy and Theology 49)

So the debunking even of Marx, Freud and Nietzsche, the masters of suspicion!
Caputo goes on:

Postmodernism thus is not relativism or scepticism, as its uncomprehending critics almost daily charge, but minutely close attention to detail, a sense for the complexity and multiplicity of things, for close readings, for detailed histories, for sensitivity to differences. The postmodernists think the devil is in the details, but they also have reason to think that none of this will antagonize God. For are not the modernists rather like the Shemites, furiously at work on the tower of Babel, on the 'system,' as Kierkegaard would say with biting irony, and are not the postmodernists following the lead of God, who in deconstructing the tower clearly favors a multiplicity of languages, frameworks, paradigms, perspective, angles? (Ibid. 50.)

Whatever the opinion of other postmoderns, Caputo for one seems to allow place for God and in that sense God's point of view. It would be interesting to compare this with the way Lonergan brings together classical and statistical intelligibility in God in chapter 20 of Insight - his transposition of Aquinas' synthesis of the biblical and the Aristotelian worldview.

The postmodern as postsecular

Caputo notes that there are both theological and anti-theological motives behind the emergence of the postmodern, the former having roots in Kierkegaard and the latter in Nietzsche. Whichever way, however, if modernity led to secularization, the postmodern is also the postsecular, and so reopens the space for religion and for theology. (Caputo, Philosophy and Theology 44.)

Kierkegaard and the postmodern

I like this:

Along with Nietzsche - who also made a jest of German metaphysics, those pale morticians, those conceptual embalmers, those chalk-dusty dabblers in the last cloudy evaporating streaks of reality, as he called them - Kierkegaard set the stage for the twentieth-century critique of 'totalization,' of totalizing reason, be it pure or historical, that eventually gave the word 'postmodern' its currency. (Caputo, Philosophy and Theology 43)

Here, the problem is important - far more important - than the answer. The question, stupid! The problem set by Hegel. Hegel's type of totalizing.

"Every philosopher fights against his own demons."

Understanding by application.

Data becomes an answer only when the question is discovered to which it is answer.