Truth Matters: Knowledge, Politics, Ethics, Religion 9780773589971

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Preface
Introduction
PART ONE: TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE
1 How Not to Be an Anti-realist: Habermas, Truth, and Justification
2 Radical Constructivism, Education, and Truth as Life-Giving Disclosure
3 The Jelly and the Shot: Laying down the Law for Pragmatism in Quantum Physics
4 Cognitive Diversity, Conceptual Schemes, and Truth
PART TWO: TRUTH AND POLITICS
5 Exposure and Disclosure: The Risk of Hermeneutical Truth in Democratic Politics
6 Truthfulness, Discourse, and the Problem of Pluralism
7 A Comparative Ethics Approach to the Concept of Bearing Witness: A Practice in Christian Theology and Journalism
8 Narrative Truth in Canadian Historical Fiction: In between Veracity and Imagination
PART THREE: TRUTH AND ETHICS
9 Truth, Truthfulness, and the I-Self Relationship
10 Does Truth Matter to Ethics? Kierkegaard, Ethics, and the Subjectivity of Truth
11 Theories of Concepts and Moral Truth
12 Educating for Truthfulness
PART FOUR: TRUTH AND RELIGION
13 Truth Unveiled: Balthasar and the Contemplation of Christian Truth
14 Truth as “Being Trued”: Intersections between Ontological Truth in Aquinas and the Contemporary Anthropology of Religion
15 Bedevilling Truth: “What Have I to Do with Thee?”
16 A Concept of Artistic Truth Prompted by Biblical Wisdom Literature
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Z

Citation preview

T R U T H M AT T E R S

This page intentionally left blank

preface

Truth Matters Knowledge, Politics, Ethics, Religion

EDITED BY

Lambert Zuidervaart, Allyson Carr, Matthew Klaassen, and Ronnie Shuker

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

iii

iv

preface

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2013 isbn 978-0-7735-4270-9 (cloth) isbn 978-0-7735-8997-1 (epdf) isbn 978-0-7735-8998-8 (epub) Legal deposit fourth quarter 2013 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free. The publication of this book is supported by generous grants from the ics Centre for Philosophy, Religion and Social Ethics, the Calvin Centre for Christian Scholarship, and the Priscilla and Stanford Reid Trust. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Truth matters : knowledge, politics, ethics, religion / edited by Lambert Zuidervaart, Allyson Carr, Matthew Klaassen, and Ronnie Shuker. Based on a conference held at the University of Toronto in August 2010. Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. isbn 978-0-7735-4270-9 (bound). – isbn 978-0-7735-8997-1 (epdf). – isbn 978-0-7735-8998-8 (epub) 1. Truth. I. Zuidervaart, Lambert, author, writer of preface, editor of compilation II. Carr, Allyson, writer of introduction, editor of compilation III. Klaassen, Matthew, writer of introduction, editor of compilation IV. Shuker, Ronnie, editor of compilation bd171.t82 2013

121

c2013-906770-1 c2013-906771-x

This book was typeset by True to Type in 10.5/13 Sabon

preface

Contents

Preface Lambert Zuidervaart vii Introduction Allyson Carr and Matthew J. Klaassen 3 PART ONE

TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE

1 How Not to Be an Anti-realist: Habermas, Truth, and Justification Lambert Zuidervaart 23 2 Radical Constructivism, Education, and Truth as Life-Giving Disclosure Clarence W. Joldersma 46 3 The Jelly and the Shot: Laying down the Law for Pragmatism in Quantum Physics Matthew Walhout 66 4 Cognitive Diversity, Conceptual Schemes, and Truth Olaf Ellefson 83 PART TWO

TRUTH AND POLITICS

5 Exposure and Disclosure: The Risk of Hermeneutical Truth in Democratic Politics Darren R. Walhof 103 6 Truthfulness, Discourse, and the Problem of Pluralism Adam Smith 122

v

vi

Contents

7 A Comparative Ethics Approach to the Concept of Bearing Witness: A Practice in Christian Theology and Journalism Amy D. Richards 138 8 Narrative Truth in Canadian Historical Fiction: In between Veracity and Imagination John Van Rys 155 PART THREE

TRUTH AND ETHICS

9 Truth, Truthfulness, and the I-Self Relationship Gerrit Glas 175 10 Does Truth Matter to Ethics? Kierkegaard, Ethics, and the Subjectivity of Truth Jay A. Gupta 195 11 Theories of Concepts and Moral Truth John J. Park 211 12 Educating for Truthfulness Doug Blomberg 225 PART FOUR

TRUTH AND RELIGION

13 Truth Unveiled: Balthasar and the Contemplation of Christian Truth Gill K. Goulding 245 14 Truth as “Being Trued”: Intersections between Ontological Truth in Aquinas and the Contemporary Anthropology of Religion Pamela J. Reeve 263 15 Bedevilling Truth: “What Have I to Do with Thee?” Jeffrey Dudiak 283 16 A Concept of Artistic Truth Prompted by Biblical Wisdom Literature Calvin Seerveld 296 Bibliography

313

Contributors 339 Index 345

preface

vii

Preface

This book arises from Truth Matters, an interdisciplinary and international conference held at the University of Toronto in August 2010. The conference program spells out our motivation: We live in an age of skepticism about the idea of truth. Contemporary skeptics question the nature and value of truth and the concomitant virtue of truthfulness. Skepticism about truth is not restricted to popular culture. It occurs within the academic world, where deflationists have argued that the idea of truth is not a substantive notion and some poststructuralists have portrayed it as primarily the scene of struggles for power. Such skepticism is surprising, for truth and truthfulness have been central to Western civilization and the academic enterprise. Given both contemporary skepticism and the centrality of truth, the conference organizers believe it is time to reconceptualize truth and to reclaim truthfulness for the academic enterprise. Other motivations lie behind the conference and this book. Both intend to expand the scope of work on truth at the Institute for Christian Studies (ics), which hosted the Truth Matters conference. Both aim to continue an animated dialogue about faith and scholarship among the conference’s co-sponsors. Both also help launch a new venture at ics called the Centre for Philosophy, Religion and Social Ethics (cprse). ics is an independent graduate school for interdisciplinary philosophy affiliated with the Toronto School of Theology (tst) at the University of Toronto. Each year ics’s master’s and phd students take an

viii

Preface

interdisciplinary seminar co-taught by ics’s faculty members. In the two years preceding the Truth Matters conference, these seminars studied the topic of truth: first truth in contemporary thought and then truth in the history of Western thought. The seminars asked whether a new approach to thinking about truth is needed and what such an approach would look like. ics envisioned the Truth Matters conference as an occasion to welcome a wider range of disciplines and scholars into this discussion. This book has a similar aim. ics was founded in the 1960s by a dedicated group of Dutch immigrants who wished to establish a North American university in the Reformed tradition along the lines of the Vrije Universiteit, now known as the vu University Amsterdam (or vu for short). Most of ics’s founding faculty received their doctorates at vu, where they apprenticed in the “reformational” tradition of philosophy established by legal theorist Herman Dooyeweerd and philosopher Dirk Vollenhoven. Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven regarded philosophy as an interdisciplinary enterprise whose insights should contribute to the transformation of culture and society, and they insisted that education and scholarship are not religiously neutral. From its beginnings, ics has been inspired by this reformational vision, at the heart of which lies a dynamic conception of truth. Several chapters in this volume offer glimpses into what a reformational conception of truth might imply. As a faculty member at ics, the director of the Truth Matters conference, and the senior editor of this book, I have a personal stake in working out such a conception. Indeed, that is my current research project, and it has received impetus from ics’s interdisciplinary seminars, from the conference, and from essays such as those by Joldersma and Glas in this volume that take up my first attempts to offer a new and comprehensive conception of truth. I wish to acknowledge with thanks these generative contributions. ics’s partners in putting on the Truth Matters conference included not only vu but also Calvin College and Dordt College in the United States. These four schools share an ethnic and religious heritage that stems from a neo-Calvinian social movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century led by the Dutch educator, journalist, politician, and religious leader Abraham Kuyper. The Kuyperian movement has inspired two traditions of thought in North America: the reformational tradition, already mentioned, and Reformed epistemology, which is associated with such prominent analytic philosophers as Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Since the early 1980s, ics,

Preface

ix

vu, Calvin, and Dordt have co-sponsored several “quadrilateral” conferences to promote dialogue among their faculties on issues of faith, life, and scholarship. Given both the religious affinities and intellectual differences between reformational philosophy and Reformed epistemology, it is not surprising that the first of these conferences, held at ics in 1981, brought together scholars from both traditions, as well as from a Scots Presbyterian background, to examine “Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition.”1 Subsequent quadrilateral conferences have examined the role of worldviews in the social sciences (Calvin College, 1985), tensions between universal norms and particular contexts (vu, 1987), controversies concerning traditional conceptions of creation order (ics, 1992), the role of the arts in a democratic society (Calvin College, 1995), and different ways of knowing (Dordt College, 1998).2 Always in the background of these conferences, and sometimes explicitly in the foreground, were questions of truth: What is truth, and why does it matter? The most recent quadrilateral conference, in 2010, made these questions a central topic. The Truth Matters conference would not have happened without substantial funding from ics, Calvin College, Dordt College, and vu. Moreover, ics and Calvin College have provided publication subsidies for this book via ics’s Centre for Philosophy, Religion and Social Ethics, directed by Ronald Kuipers, and the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, directed by Susan Felch. The editors, all of whom helped organize the original conference, are very grateful for this institutional support. I also wish to mention with gratitude the generous grants the conference and this book have received from the Priscilla and Stanford Reid Trust. The publication of Truth Matters is among the first fruits of ics’s new research centre. Founded shortly before the Truth Matters conference took place in 2010, cprse promotes philosophically primed and religiously attuned interdisciplinary research on leading questions of life and society. It has done so to date by establishing a new Toronto Interfaculty Colloquium for cross-disciplinary discussion and debate among faculty members at ics, tst, the University of Toronto, and other schools; hosting public seminars on monographs authored by ics faculty members and graduates; and organizing crosssectoral conferences for academics, professionals, and the wider public, such as Social Justice and Human Rights (Toronto, 2012) and an upcoming conference on Economic Justice (Edmonton, May 2014). Truth Matters is the first book to emerge from cprse’s work. Specifi-

x

Preface

cally, Allyson Carr, Matthew Klaassen, and Ronnie Shuker did their editorial work as cprse research assistants when I served as the centre’s founding director (2010 to 2012), and Allyson has subsequently become the centre’s associate director. In the final stages of editing, Allyson and I benefitted from the expert research assistance provided by Sarah Hyland and Carolyn Mackie, both ma students at ics. We appreciate the enthusiastic support ics has given to this new venture; personally, I am also grateful for the excellent work done by my editorial teammates and cprse’s research assistants. The four editors also wish to acknowledge several publishers for their permission to reprint essays that have appeared elsewhere. As footnotes in the relevant chapters indicate, the essay by Gerrit Glas and my own essay were first published in Philosophia Reformata, the journal of record for reformational thought established by Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven in 1935; Clarence Joldersma’s essay appeared in the journal Educational Theory, published by John Wiley and Sons; and Calvin Seerveld’s essay is included, with art reproductions, in a volume of his collected writings published by Dordt College Press. We are happy to have received permission from these publishers to include the essays in this volume. Although this book, like the conference that preceded it, arises from interdisciplinary seminars at ics and from an ongoing discussion among faculty members at four schools with roots in the Kuyperian tradition, it includes authors from other schools and traditions and it invites any reader concerned about truth to consider the various perspectives it encompasses. The book does not presume to provide a unified conception of truth. If it offers a central insight, perhaps it is this: although there is propositional truth, and although propositional truth is important, truth is more than propositional. Further, the more-than-propositional character of truth is crucial for understanding why truth matters, not simply in the academy, but throughout culture and society. Some readers will want to challenge the claim that truth is more than propositional. Others will want to explore the purported more-than-propositional character of truth. Still others will wonder whether truth matters in the ways that various authors suggest. The contributors to this volume welcome all such readers to join our conversation, for we believe that, like truth, dialogue about truth truly matters. Lambert Zuidervaart

Preface N OT E S

1 See Hendrik Hart, Johan van der Hoeven, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, eds., Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition (Lanham, md: University Press of America, 1983). 2 See the essays selected from these quadrilateral conferences in Paul A. Marshall, Sander Griffioen, and Richard J. Mouw, eds., Stained Glass: Worldviews and Social Science (Lanham, md: University Press of America, 1989); Sander Griffioen and Jan Verhoogt, eds., Norm and Context in the Social Sciences (Lanham, md: University Press of America, 1990); Brian J. Walsh, Hendrik Hart, and Robert E. VanderVennen, eds., An Ethos of Compassion and the Integrity of Creation (Lanham, md: University Press of America, 1995); Lambert Zuidervaart and Henry Luttikhuizen, eds., The Arts, Community and Cultural Democracy (London: Macmillan Press; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); and John H. Kok, ed., Ways of Knowing in Concert (Sioux Center, ia: Dordt College Press, 2005). Strictly speaking, the conferences were “trilateral” until Dordt College became a co-sponsor for the first time in 1995 and hosted the next such conference in 1998.

xi

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction

T R U T H M AT T E R S

This page intentionally left blank

1 Introduction A L LY S O N C A R R A N D M AT T H E W J . K L A A S S E N

Goodness, justice, knowledge, existence, reality, experience, truth – philosophers have struggled with these concepts for generations. What do they mean? How do they affect human life? Can we understand them, or are they unknowable? Defining such concepts is difficult and has practical consequences. These challenges set high stakes for ensuring theory and practice are well matched and oriented toward social flourishing. Our ideas of goodness and justice directly impact how we treat each other and the laws we set up to govern our societies. Our theories of knowledge and existence affect how we teach, learn, and develop new technologies. Conceptions of reality and experience shape how we understand and interact with the world in which we live. All of these other matters, however, relate to questions of truth. Truth Matters pursues two main questions. The first is, “Does truth matter?” This occupied the authors off stage before we undertook this volume. The 2010 conference from which this collection grew began from the viewpoint that truth does matter, quite a bit, and so the second question is, “What are the matters on which truth touches?” The authors in this volume respond to that question. We implicitly posit that truth does matter, and so discuss the issues that result. We are of the opinion that, given recent academic and social trends, we must rethink the idea of truth if we are to take up the various practical consequences that stem from theories of truth. Truth Matters responds to the question of what matters truth touches and shows why truth matters – why good, well-founded conceptions of truth are vital to public discourse and society in general.

4

Allyson Carr and Matthew J. Klaassen

Notable work has been done in recent times on the importance of truth in the contemporary philosophical context. Michael Lynch’s True to Life, Harry Frankfurt’s On Truth, Gary Gutting’s Pragmatic Liberalism and the Critique of Modernity, Michael Luntley’s Reason, Truth, and the Self, and John McCumber’s Reshaping Reason are just a few attempts, albeit from differing philosophical perspectives, to defend or reconstruct the concept of truth and its importance in response to “irrealist” or “postmodern” accounts. While the underlying motivation behind this book resembles such works, this collection as a whole intends to address issues around truth that are both broader and more practical. It is meant neither as a refutation nor a celebration of postmodernism (in one of its guises) or its analytic, irrealist analogues. Indeed, some of the contributors herein are sympathetic to such positions. Nonetheless, all of the contributors, in different ways and in different contexts, share the concern that issues around truth have significance beyond academic debates, and that those issues cannot simply be ignored. Although all of the following chapters emphasize the importance of truth and its significance, this book does not try to articulate a single, unified theory of truth. Rather, it begins from several different vantage points to offer descriptions of what truth is and why it is important. The chapters here span the divide between analytic and continental thought in the field of philosophy. They also include theological, psychological, and educational conceptualizations of truth, as well as approaches to issues of truth from other areas of the humanities and sciences, such as literature and physics. With that diversity in mind, we have grouped the essays into four thematic sections: truth and knowledge, truth and politics, truth and ethics, and truth and religion. These sections show some of the work being done to re-conceptualize truth for today’s world. While there are differences of opinion among the authors, each suggests that truth is a vital concept for today, that it can be productively spoken about, and that trying to speak truth and to speak of truth has positive consequences for life and society. TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE

It would be presumptuous and out of step with the times to suggest that there is a fundamental philosophical question. If one were so presumptuous and out of step, however, “what is truth” would have to be

Introduction

5

near the top of the list. When contemporary analytic philosophers speak of theories of truth, they usually address fairly specific questions. Is a proposition true if it “corresponds” to a state of affairs in the world? Or is truth simply the best set of justified beliefs we can come up with at any particular time? In the first group of chapters, authors address these two questions even while they challenge some of the assumptions the questions hold. Authors in the three subsequent sections often draw on work done by thinkers engaged with these two questions as sources for their own thought on truth. Some then offer accounts of truth that aim to go beyond or behind both questions. In order to understand the debates that underlie the chapters in the first section on truth and knowledge, it helps to distinguish between a theory of justification and a theory of truth. A theory of justification is an account of when we are justified in believing something given the available evidence. A theory of justification asks about the degree of certainty required, what sort of evidence is permitted, the nature of testimony, and so on. While we commonly call a justified belief “true,” a theory of truth is distinct from a theory of justification. Whereas a theory of justification tells us when it is proper to say that a belief is “true,” a theory of truth attempts to define what truth is. For example, a theory of justification might say what kind and amount of evidence is required for me to decide to believe that the wall in front of me is actually solid and not simply an illusion. By way of contrast, a theory of truth would be about what (if anything) permits me to say that my claim “the wall is solid” is true. Is it a relationship between mind and world? Is it a relationship between proposition and fact? Philosophical debates about foundationalism and skepticism are generally about questions of justification, whereas debates about realism and relativism have to do with theories of truth. Of course, even these juxtapositions may be challenged. In addition, such juxtapositions do not mean that theories of truth and questions of justification are not related. Indeed, one of the ongoing issues in theories of truth is to what extent truth can be separated from justification. Traditional theories of truth assume that truth cannot be defined merely in terms of justification. Such realist theories1 assume that truth has a substantial meaning beyond some particular justification. Non-realist theories,2 by contrast, generally see truth as somehow reducible to justification, or at least to idealized rational justification. Philosophers often call non-realist theories of truth epistemic conceptions of truth. Many different debates sur-

6

Allyson Carr and Matthew J. Klaassen

round this issue as well. Non-realists, for example, question whether a non-epistemic conception of truth does any conceptual work that justification does not do, and often argue that such a conception sets the epistemic bar so high that an untenable skepticism inevitably results (due, for example, to a mind/world gap). Realists, in turn, argue not only that their conception of truth is more in line with how we usually think about truth, but also that it is the only way to avoid an unacceptable relativism. On the face of things, the chapters in the first section of this volume touch on straightforward epistemological matters such as those described above. Yet they also go beyond such matters to consider philosophical and interdisciplinary contexts that exceed issues of the definition of truth, truth versus justification, or conceptual relativism. For example, the first two chapters have social and institutional matters – social theory and educational theory – at the root of their concerns. In his chapter on realism and anti-realism, Lambert Zuidervaart aims to develop a theory of truth that not only overcomes the debate between realists and anti-realists but also would have an emancipatory dimension for social philosophy. Clarence Joldersma draws on Zuidervaart’s theory of truth in order to criticize and transcend the constructivism and relativism found in certain educational theories. Although not engaged in social or educational theory, Matthew Walhout shows the practical import of thinking about truth in a concrete scientific context. He starts from the neo-pragmatist operational account of truth and semantics found in Wilfred Sellars, but finds its significance in elucidating a theory of truth that can do justice to quantum physics. Finally, Olaf Ellefson defends Donald Davidson’s account of conceptual schemes (or the lack thereof) from Stephen Stich, who himself is engaged in experimental philosophy, a new approach to philosophy based on empirical findings. In chapter 1, “How Not to Be an Anti-realist: Habermas, Truth, and Justification,” Zuidervaart takes as his starting point discussions about realism and anti-realism in the last few decades of Anglo-American (“analytic”) epistemology. This in itself is not unusual, but Zuidervaart’s choice of figures to juxtapose is: analytic religious epistemologist Alvin Plantinga and German critical theorist Jürgen Habermas. In Zuidervaart’s account, Plantinga represents anti-realism with a theistic twist, while Habermas’s work moves from a non-realist consensus theory of truth in the early 1970s to the pragmatic realism of his most recent epistemological writings.

Introduction

7

Zuidervaart finds Plantinga’s position problematic in its Platonist aspects. However, while Zuidervaart argues that the development of Habermas’s thinking of truth in the 1990s does a better job of distinguishing between truth and justification than his earliest epistemology, he also argues Habermas’s new theory has its own problems with regard to facts and justification. Developing the theory of truth found in his own work, Zuidervaart argues that understanding facts requires an account that goes deeper than just showing how propositions arise out of a non-propositional context. In turn, this account allows for a better account of justification – as aiming to illuminate truth content – than Habermas’s overly procedural account. Zuidervaart’s account of truth as life-giving disclosure, with his emphasis on articulating the interdependence between intersubjectively connected human agents and the events and entities with which they are concerned, is an intriguing attempt to move away from the realist versus anti-realist debate about the independence of mind and reality. This attempt not only has the potential to bypass stagnant epistemological debates but also has practical import for social and cultural issues. Building on Zuidervaart’s conception of truth, in chapter 2, “Radical Constructivism, Education, and Truth as Life-Giving Disclosure,” Joldersma aims to get beyond a similar epistemological impasse in education theory and offers a critique of the constructivist epistemology of educational theorist Ernst von Glaserfeld. Von Glaserfeld has a laudable motivation: he wishes to give an account of knowledge and learning that does justice to the active role the student takes in the process of education. Joldersma agrees with von Glaserfeld that a traditional correspondence theory of truth is inadequate both epistemologically and with regard to its practical import in education. Nevertheless, Joldersma finds that von Glaserfeld’s own constructivist proposal incorporates too many of traditional realism’s flaws and presuppositions even while it objects to them. Put simply, von Glaserfeld sees the choice as between either the “student’s mind” or the objective world. Both options retain the supposition of what Habermas calls the “philosophy of consciousness.” By turning to Zuidervaart’s account of truth as interdependent, life-giving disclosure, Joldersma hopes to retain the practical insights of von Glaserfeld’s epistemology while giving a more robust account of not only the content of what is learned but also the normative dimensions of education itself. After Zuidervaart and Joldersma’s discussions of truth concerned with social and educational theory, the first section of this collection

8

Allyson Carr and Matthew J. Klaassen

takes a sharp interdisciplinary turn with Walhout’s chapter 3, “The Jelly and the Shot: Laying down the Law for Pragmatism in Quantum Physics.” Walhout, a physicist, finds that contemporary “analytic Hegelianism” (pragmatically inflected), as represented by Robert Brandom and Wilfrid Sellars, has significant insights for an account of truth that respects the findings of quantum physics. Walhout lays out metaphors for some of the dilemmas that quantum physics poses for traditional realist notions of truth. Using these illustrations, he demonstrates that Sellars’s notion of material inference shows how certain traditional ways of speaking about the world may be formally valid but still materially invalid. Rather than worrying about a grand ontology of “the world,” a “pragmatic teleology” allows for our statements and discourse to be adequate to their subject matter so long as they fulfill a function in our inferential networks. Thus, as a physicist, Walhout finds himself attracted to the pragmatism of Sellars’s account of truth as semantic assertibility. Walhout’s Sellarsian notion of truth as semantic assertibility is an epistemic conception of truth tied closely to justification in particular inferential contexts. Echoing Zuidervaart’s and Joldersma’s concerns from a different location, in chapter 4, “Cognitive Diversity, Conceptual Schemes, and Truth,” Ellefson moves in the opposite direction and emphasizes the “primitive” character of our concept of truth. Ellefson’s primary goal is to defend Davidson’s concept of truth as indefinable yet indispensable from the objections of Stich’s experimental philosophy. Experimental philosophy draws on empirical studies from the last few decades in order to show that, rather than being Aristotle’s “rational animal,” human beings are largely irrational and primarily use pragmatic and biased reasoning in particular situations rather than exemplifying “reason in general.” Inspired by these findings, Stich charges analytic epistemology in general, and Davidson’s theory of truth in particular, with assuming too much cognitive unity among humans, based on an idiosyncratic notion of truth. In response, Ellefson argues that Stich has misunderstood the relationships among truth, meaning, and reference in Davidson. While Stich still seems to believe that an account of truth requires an account of reference, Ellefson defends the Davidsonian position that truth must, in some sense, be nonepistemic and its concept must be primitive; otherwise, it is difficult to see how human language learning is possible at all. From Ellefson’s Davidsonian perspective, by prioritizing a theory of reference as a con-

Introduction

9

dition for a theory of truth and meaning, Stich has got things backward: truth and meaning are conceptually prior to reference. TRUTH AND POLITICS

The second section of the volume switches gears and addresses questions more oriented to why truth is important than to what truth is. There are many ways in which truth matters, for how one understands or portrays the concept of truth has real and significant impact on human lives and the world. Some of these are more difficult to trace – which does not make them any less real. The chapters in this section deal with some of the most tangible ways in which conceptions of truth affect our daily lives. Here we bump into truth in the busy public square, where claims to speaking truth can take on life-ordeath consequences. Although these chapters were written before the recent uprisings in the Middle East and Africa and thus do not comment on them, they raise the kinds of questions such protests implicitly pose when, for example, protestors and governments both claim to speak the “real” truth and within either group competing accounts flourish about how matters stand. How can we determine the truth? How does violence square with truth? Can we tell the truth violently, or is there a moral quality to truth that insists on non-oppressive articulation? How can truth claims be adjudicated in a public context? It seems increasingly necessary to do so, and the authors in this section offer examples of ways forward. The picture of truth that emerges stakes a claim for truth’s being reached through mutual interchange or investigation and yet not lost in a sea of relativity. Darren Walhof, Adam Smith, Amy Richards, and John Van Rys portray truth as something arrived at through dialogue or discourse. Drawing on the work of philosophers Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, and Habermas, as well as theories of front-line journalism, the four authors in this section all view truth as dynamic and intensely important to public discussions of such topics as democracy, violence, journalism, and history. In chapter 5, “Exposure and Disclosure: The Risk of Hermeneutical Truth in Democratic Politics,” Walhof immediately situates truth within the public sphere. As he notes, “increasingly, it seems, events are treated not as if there are facts of the matter, but simply as differing ideological viewpoints.” Such a political state of affairs, in which ideology defines “truth,” is really only capable of producing political

10

Allyson Carr and Matthew J. Klaassen

gridlock, in a war of words where none of the competing sides really listens to the others. In such a situation, there is no real public discourse and democracy stands on shaky ground. In order to address this gridlock, Walhof turns to the work of Gadamer, a twentieth-century philosopher of language and meaning. He examines Gadamer’s conception of truth in relation to democratic theory. Gadamer regards truth as the manifestation of our sedimented understandings of the good and as the coming into language of the thing itself (die Sache selbst). This conception, says Walhof, is the key for understanding that truth cannot be limited to ideological production. Rather, in Gadamer’s view, people come to truth through dialogue. This applies to politics, too, where truth is not a possession or viewpoint but is disclosed through deliberation. Walhof acknowledges that political participation is a risky endeavor, since it exposes us to others and to the possibility of transformation through dialogue. Being changed by an encounter with one’s interlocutor usually is not what a politician wants, especially if that interlocutor is a political opponent. Walhof convincingly argues, however, that only through such discursive exposure can we hope to sustain a political culture that allows for the disclosure of truth though democratic deliberation. Smith continues themes of democratic deliberation in chapter 6, “Truthfulness, Discourse, and the Problem of Pluralism.” One of the pressing issues facing society today, he argues, is the issue of pluralism – in particular, the question of how one can convince opponents of pluralism that the best way to proceed is by engaging in public discourse and not by resorting to violence. Smith examines Habermas’s discursive theory and asks how to engage with those not already committed to a pluralist notion of public discourse. He argues that pluralism’s claims to universalism fails. To that extent, the capacity of discourse to secure legitimacy depends on participants being truthful and appealing to the experience of addressing issues through discourse, instead of first trying to legitimate discourse as a method to which everyone should accede. Smith suggests more broadly that “authenticity” (to which truthfulness alludes) is central to democratic legitimacy. The commentary on this section began with a reference to current world events – in particular the spring 2011 protests and revolutions in the Middle East and Africa. The third chapter in this section is quite timely in this regard, though it takes up questions important at

Introduction

11

any time. In her chapter, “A Comparative Ethics Approach to the Concept of Bearing Witness,” Richards addresses the question of truth telling in journalistic practices. How does a reporter tell the truth? Even more fundamentally, how do reporters decide between competing truth claims in contentious situations when lives – their own and others’ – may be in danger? To explore that question, Richards discusses parallel practices of authenticating truth claims and shows how John Howard Yoder’s work on the moral agency involved in bearing witness can help us understand moral agency in journalistic coverage of distant suffering. In particular, she examines the idea that presence, or being there in the face of danger, is a way to authenticate truth claims. She details the practices of three reporters: Malcolm Muggeridge and Walter Duranty, who covered the hunger and mass starvation on Soviet collectivized farms in the 1930s, and John Simpson, who covered the Gulf Wars of the 1990s and 2000s. Muggeridge and Duranty responded to the famine in very different ways, and Richards shows how history confirms that one practiced faithful reporting that could be properly termed bearing witness, while the other failed to tell truth or bear witness at all. Simpson, more recently, covered both recent Gulf Wars. In the second war, he became an “independent journalist,” taking risks with life and limb in order to gain a perspective that did not depend on any one side. In so doing, he raised the valid question of whether journalists who are fed, housed, and supported by troops of a particular side can honestly and truthfully report on a situation. These are not easy questions to address, but they are necessary ones. In a time such as ours, where media hold sway over the court of public opinion, reflection on journalism and truth telling is vital to ensuring that the public square enables people to be well informed. If that ability is compromised, public discourse will suffer. In the fourth and final chapter in this section, “Narrative Truth in Canadian Historical Fiction,” Van Rys tackles a similar question, though from a different perspective. Van Rys examines the genre of historical fiction, a narrative kind of reporting. Such fiction is set within historical events and depicts them as they impact the characters the book portrays. For this genre, too, questions of truth are vital, even though it must mediate between fact and fiction. Van Rys argues that historical fiction often concerns itself with trauma or suffering, and tries to tell the “story” of those whom tragedy has rendered silent. These narratives are frequently a site of contention over the truth, and

12

Allyson Carr and Matthew J. Klaassen

so the genre often must implicitly explore the nature of truth – or more specifically, of truth telling. In order to look at how historical fiction accomplishes this, Van Rys analyzes Paul Ricoeur’s contribution to an understanding of narrative’s potential for truth telling. Van Rys explains how Ricoeur’s theory of narrative offers a “re-figuring of meaning” that can tell truth in such a way that it can be heard in new contexts. This kind of work is important not only for shedding light on history and the truth of particular past situations but also, implicitly, for locating the reader in her or his new place in time. As Van Rys puts it, “The past, through narrative, is removed from its isolating pastness ... and given the capacity to open up future possibilities.” As the reporter in Richards’s chapter is meant to bear witness to atrocities and other events where “the truth” becomes contentious, so also the writer of historical fiction is meant to bring his or her narrative to the reader as a means of telling the truth. The chapters in this section explore ways of speaking truth in public settings. A common thread running through them is that truth is “reached” through dialogue or discourse, whether by means of disclosing meaning already sedimented in language, by bearing witness in present danger, or by creating new narrative worlds that mediate past with present. Truth is understood by means of a back-and-forth movement of communication among persons in the public square. The section also shows how the notion of truth is an important societal good, one in which a properly functioning democracy must rest, and one that should lead to greater social flourishing. TRUTH AND ETHICS

In moving from the second to the third section, we shift from talking about the wider social and political structures in which questions of truth and truth telling take part to intersubjective accounts that focus more particularly on relationships between and among people. This group of chapters deals with normative matters on both a personal and institutional level. Gerrit Glas and Jay Gupta discuss truth in relation to normativity and subjectivity by way of Kierkegaard, Glas with respect to self-relation and “living truthfully” and Gupta in relation to subjective responses to ethical demands. John Park, by contrast, deals with the experience of situations that call for an ethical response and asks what contemporary moral psychology might say about the truth

Introduction

13

of ethical concepts. Finally, Doug Blomberg moves toward the institutional level to see what sort of normative commitments and structures come out of a particular attitude about truthfulness. In chapter 9, “Truth, Truthfulness, and the I-Self Relationship,” Glas takes Zuidervaart’s account of truth as the jumping-off point for a discussion of the existential import of truthfulness. Glas explores the “many-faceted concept of self-relatedness.” While theories of truth (such as those discussed in part I) often deal with the relation between mind and world or language and world, Glas wants to change the angle of approach to focus on the relationship of the thinker to truth itself. Kierkegaard is a fruitful source for such reflection, particularly because of his much-discussed but little-understood technique of “indirect communication.” This technique seems to deny the sort of meta-perspective that is implicit even in philosophers such as the Reformed thinker Herman Dooyeweerd, who otherwise seems to share Kierkegaard’s religiously motivated criticisms of modern reason. Glas suggests that Zuidervaart’s criticism of certain conceptions of truth and objectivity allows for a more productive incorporation of Kierkegaard’s insights regarding truth and self-relation. In chapter 10, “Does Truth Matter to Ethics? Kierkegaard, Ethics, and the Subjectivity of Truth,” Gupta takes a different tack by emphasizing the importance of Kierkegaard’s work for an account of truth’s existential significance. Arguing against what he reads as Richard Rorty’s claim that “ethical imagining” should replace “ethical inquiry” into truth, Gupta finds Kierkegaard’s “subjectivism” not another enemy, as some might suspect, but rather an ally. Certain modern conceptions of the realms of the “subjective” and “objective” see the subjective perspective as “merely subjective” because it is not objectively shared with others in the same way that, for example, the physical world is. In a way that parallels Joldersma’s and Zuidervaart’s criticisms of the presuppositions of realism/anti-realism debates, Gupta finds in Kierkegaard a way to understand the truth of subjective experience that neither drains it of its perspectival particularity nor cordons it off into irrelevance. Understanding the existential significance of ourselves as subjects allows us to understand others as having that same significance. Gupta believes that something like Rorty’s “ethical imagining” is necessary. Yet this ethical imagining is not different from and opposed to recognizing the truth in ethical obligations: it requires recognizing the truth of such obligations.

14

Allyson Carr and Matthew J. Klaassen

At first Park’s approach and subject matter in chapter 11, “Theories of Concepts and Moral Truth,” may seem far removed from the concerns of the previous two chapters. On a deeper level, however, it shares their concern for the truth of ethical norms and their relation to varieties of “subjectivism.” Park criticizes non-cognitivist and subjectivist views of moral reasoning. Both non-cognitivism and subjectivism are claims about the structure of our moral concepts in moral judgments. In claiming that all moral judgments are the expression of our emotions, these two theories assert that emotions primarily constitute the moral concepts in our judgments. Park examines recent findings in moral psychology that show emotions do not always primarily constitute moral concepts. Discussing the famous trolley problem experiments, Park contends that while many moral concepts are non-cognitive, it appears that theoretical reasoning motivates others. He notes that understanding how moral judgments are reached through means that are both theoretically reasoned and emotionally based has manifold implications for how we think about the mind and cognitive science. Since not all moral concepts are derived from emotions and thus subjective, Park claims that at least some moral concepts must be based on objective truths. In the final chapter of the third section, Blomberg pursues a concern with truth both on an individual level (as with Glas and Gupta) and on a larger social and institutional level (as with Zuidervaart and Joldersma). In chapter 12, “Educating for Truthfulness,” Blomberg explores the implications of truthfulness and related virtues for higher education, particularly for those institutions and theorists who see the end of education as “doing justice.” Rereading the parable of the talents and engaging work by philosophers such as Nicholas Wolterstorff, Blomberg explores truthfulness as a whole-bodied response to the multidimensional call of truth. He argues that instead of placing the nurture of individual “talents” at the centre of educational practices, we should explore what our curriculum and pedagogy would look like if we centred them on healing a broken world. On such a paradigm, individual abilities would still be nurtured, but not for the individualistic end of competitive success in academic achievement. Rather, education would have as its impetus the restoration of justice for all of creation. All of the authors in this section deal with truth as it concerns intersubjective relations with other people. They thus take up normative questions of how humans interact with each other, whether in our

Introduction

15

daily living or in roles such as teacher and student. These are important questions for thinking through what it means to normatively relate to each other as humans. The final section continues the exploration of such issues, while also setting them in the context of how humans relate or are related to the divine. TRUTH AND RELIGION

Just as in the “Truth and Politics” section earlier in the volume, the contributors in the final section of this collection touch on topics often under public discussion. Additionally, like those in the previous section, they concern themselves with normative matters and intersubjective questions that frequently stem from groundwork developed by thinkers whose work or ideas fit comfortably in the first section. This is because truth claims in religion frequently bring with them even wider implications about the way we understand not only events and our relations to each other but also the nature of who we are, how we came to be, and our relationship to the divine. Such conceptions get at the core to many of our belief systems. This section begins with chapter 13, “Truth Unveiled,” in which Gill Goulding explores the work of one of the twentieth century’s foremost Catholic theologians: Hans Urs von Balthasar. Balthasar’s work on truth, like that of several of the other major interlocutors for chapters in this volume,3 grew out of an interaction with the work of philosopher Martin Heidegger. Balthasar, however, takes Heidegger’s conception of truth as disclosure in a different direction than do Gadamer, Habermas, and Zuidervaart. As Goulding demonstrates, Balthasar’s conception of truth is located in “God’s act of disclosing or unveiling objective content to the thought of the receptive human person who then awakens to knowing in wonder and amazement.” Discussing Balthasar’s understanding of the Trinity as source of truth, while exploring the human experience of truth as rooted in the Trinity’s inclusivity of otherness (in its tripartite division and unity), Goulding postulates that mystery is intrinsic to truth and cannot be separated from it. Such mystery is only part of Balthasar’s work on truth, though. It also opens into a theory of intersubjectivity. For Balthasar, all truth is disclosed to us directly from God and so, on a Trinitarian conception of God as three in one, a particular relationality attends truth. As persons receptive to truth, Balthasar states, we acknowledge our relation-

16

Allyson Carr and Matthew J. Klaassen

ship to a “divine other.” Such truth is not a “property of knowledge” but rather a relationship that Balthasar terms “love.” Goulding shows how Balthasar sees both the understanding of truth and human action arising out of truth as flowing from prayer and contemplation. In chapter 14, “Truth as ‘Being Trued,’” Pamela Reeve begins from a different perspective. She develops a comparative study involving two thinkers who at first seem an unlikely pair: the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas and the contemporary anthropologist Charles Laughlin. Her comparison leads to very fruitful results on the topic of religious knowledge, hinging on the idea of a deep interrelatedness between human beings and the universe. While Aquinas understands this as a kind of ontological truth, Laughlin and his associates use the metaphor of “trueing” to suggest a dynamic relationship between the cosmos and human experience. In both contexts – the medieval and the contemporary – truth is not just a form of epistemic “correctness,” but is intimately linked with being and reality. As Reeve writes, “the essential idea here is not truth as an epistemic relationship between things and our ideas or statements about things, but truth as a process of our becoming ‘trued’ to the ultimate meaning of human existence.” Reeve also shows that both Aquinas and Laughlin appreciate the religious dimension of ontological truth as expressed in religious narratives and practices. These provide an orientation to life in all its stages, and help individuals and their communities live meaningful, integrated lives in relation to their ultimate telos or end. Despite the centuries intervening between these thinkers, as well as evident differences in their background and concerns, Reeve brings to light striking similarities in their understanding of truth in its existential and religious aspects. In chapter 15, “Bedevilling Truth: ‘What Have I to Do with Thee?’” Jeffrey Dudiak approaches truth not from the direction of a systematic account, nor yet as a way to mediate between reality and our experience of it, but rather as a passageway between the horns of a conservative Christian/liberal Christian dilemma with regard to truth claims. Specifically, he seeks to mark out a kind of truth that admits the truth claims of miracle stories in the biblical account without making them the standard by which all truth claims must be measured today. As his example, Dudiak takes the story of Jesus driving out the demons from a long-possessed man and sending them into a herd of pigs.

Introduction

17

Dudiak bases his understanding of truth on the notion of being appropriate with regards to a context. His truth is neither epistemic nor ontological but what one might call “representational.” It answers to what he calls “serviceability” – that is, the ability of the truth in question to enable flourishing in the lives of those on whom it has impact. Another word he uses to describe this is “faithfulness.” As a case in point, Dudiak makes the comparison between Jesus driving out demons in a context where “demons” were understood to cause certain manifestations of problems, and now, when chemical imbalances in the brain are understood to cause certain symptoms. He contends that it was truly the case that Jesus drove out demons from the afflicted man in the story, and yet also contends that to claim to do so today would not be true at all (in fact, he calls it irresponsible). This is because today, he argues, demonic possession is not understood to exist as it was understood to exist in Christ’s time. What makes Dudiak’s account especially interesting is that he does not claim here that Jesus was “really” correcting chemical imbalances in the troubled man. Rather, Jesus actually did drive out demons, for demons really did exist then – and may again, Dudiak adds, though he insists they do not exist now. Such an understanding of truth, he contends, may be able to jump the horns between the conservative/liberal split and give room for an account of truth that responds to the needs of both groups in a way that is still faithful not just to the lives of people but to the call of scripture as well. His final contention is this: when we find truths that do not aid human living, we have not only every right but also an absolute obligation to dispute them and demand that they be true to life as lived. Hence Dudiak shares the concern of previous chapters to affirm the role of truth in human flourishing but has a different response from authors such as Zuidervaart and Joldersma to the realism/anti-realism debate. The final chapter in the section and indeed the volume is Calvin Seerveld’s “A Concept of Artistic Truth Prompted by Biblical Wisdom Literature.” Seerveld’s definition of truth begins from another point: it rests firmly on a deep sense of “rightness” – not to be mistaken for “correctness,” which is another notion entirely. Rather, the truth of which Seerveld speaks is a value-laden pronouncement that matters are in harmony with each other and with the love of the Creator God. As Seerveld puts it, “truth means God’s blessing presence is in evidence.” He notes that there are many different appropriate kinds of truth: ethical truth, economic truth, political truth, and others. His topic is artis-

18

Allyson Carr and Matthew J. Klaassen

tic truth and what that means. The undertaking of artistic works is different from the undertaking of, for example, political effort, and so the way in which artistic endeavors manifest God’s blessing presence differs from how other areas of creation manifest that presence, though these are all be interrelated as well as irreducible. Seerveld argues that artistic truth has the character of “allusivity.” It is playful, imaginative, and meaningful. It allows knowledge not by rote but by understanding connections and by experiencing the profound depths of the material without claiming to define and limit its shape. This “suggestion-rich” kind of truth follows a creational ordinance, Seerveld argues, which means that it is God-given, but worked out in different ways as befits the historical context. He argues that in order for the interpretations of literary texts and artworks to be true, they too need to embody allusivity as a creational aesthetic ordinance. Where artworks do not embody allusivity, they fail to tell truth in their aesthetic and historical contexts. But where they do embody allusivity and tell truth, they open up the experience of understanding, life, and God’s blessing presence. These four chapters share important similarities but there are also deep tensions between them. Goulding’s chapter is a systematic account of truth that is meant to encompass all kinds of truth; Seerveld’s idea of truth responds to differentiated creational ordinances; Dudiak’s understanding of truth is wholly contextualized and oriented toward faithfully lived life; while Reeve’s conception of ontological truth connects recent advances in the study of the brain with a medieval understanding of the relationship between human beings and the cosmos. All four writers draw on related faith traditions growing out of the Jewish and Christian scriptures and commentary on them, but they come to embrace different perspectives. A common thread among them – and indeed among all the authors in this volume – is that truth is an important concept, one worth not giving up, and one that is still vital for human understanding and action in the world. The tensions among the chapters in this section, and between these and other chapters in this volume, are unsurprising given the nature of religious truth claims. Although it would have been easier to include only essays that agreed with each other on most points, we decided that in collecting and presenting essays about truth, it is important to give a truthful account of the lay of the land in various topographies of academic writing. Thus, while the chapters in this vol-

Introduction

19

ume certainly do not cover every point of view when it comes to matters of truth, we have attempted to include essays that argue from different positions with regards to its nature and purpose. In so doing, we have tried not only to present an illuminating survey of important voices on the matter but also to place those voices in the same “room” in order to get them all talking together. Setting varying viewpoints in conversation with each other will lead, we hope, to fruitful dialogue and mutual questioning founded on the understanding that truth matters to us all and that we all may have something to contribute to, and learn from, such conversations. The need for conversation is perhaps most apparent in the final section, where many deeply held beliefs about truth come to light. We have set out the main contours of the four sections that comprise this volume. Taken as a whole, they argue that truth matters a great deal, and that there is a lot at stake in the discussions surrounding theories of truth. Truth Matters puts forward a set of responses to what truth is and why it is important. As you read the following essays, we hope they will spark further responses.

N OT E S

1 Sometimes in general practice realist is used interchangeably with correspondence, although it is not clear that a realist theory of truth must necessarily be a correspondence theory of truth. 2 Here non-realist encompasses what are sometimes called irrealist and antirealist theories. 3 See for example Zuidervaart’s essay (chapter 1), whose theory of truth grows out of interactions with both Heidegger and Habermas; Walhof’s essay (chapter 5), whose interlocutor is Gadamer, a student of Heidegger’s; and Smith’s essay (chapter 6), whose discussion partner is Habermas, a critical interlocutor with the Heideggerian tradition.

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction

PART ONE

Truth and Knowledge

This page intentionally left blank

1 How Not to Be an Anti-realist: Habermas, Truth, and Justification LAMBERT ZUIDERVAART1

In 1982 Alvin Plantinga delivered a presidential address titled “How to Be an Anti-realist” at the annual meeting of the Western Division (now the Central Division) of the American Philosophical Association (apa).2 He proposed to mediate a dispute about realism encapsulated in addresses given by three previous apa divisional presidents, with Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty on the anti-realist side and William Alston on the realist side. Plantinga argued that contemporary antirealism is “wholly unacceptable” and Platonist “unbridled realism” is “unlovely.”3 The right way to be an anti-realist, he said, is to be a theist in the manner of Thomas Aquinas. Like Plantinga, I think the Anglo-American dispute between realists and anti-realists is significant for how we think about truth. Questions about propositional truth are at the heart of this debate. Plantinga characterizes Putnam and Rorty as “creative anti-realists” concerning propositional truth. He says that, following a line of thought that supposedly began with Kant, Putnam and Rorty think if human minds “can’t settle the question whether a proposition is true, then there’s no truth there to be known.”4 In other words, the truth of a proposition depends on whether the proposition can be humanly justified. Plantinga raises two objections to this apparent reduction of truth to justification. First, Putnam and Rorty tend toward “selfreferential incoherence”: if truth is as they say it is, then their construals are not true.5 Second, their anti-realist views, which “begin by taking fundamental disagreement seriously,” end up “denying its possibility.”6

24

Lambert Zuidervaart

Nevertheless, Plantinga does acknowledge that truths and propositions can hardly be “totally independent of minds or persons.” He is not attracted to “Platonist” realism, by which he means the position that the existence of truths and propositions is completely independent “of minds and their noetic activity.”7 Accordingly, he splits the difference and proposes theistic anti-realism in the style of Aquinas as an alternative to both Platonism and creative anti-realism. On a theistic anti-realist construal, truth must be independent of human noetic activity but cannot be independent of God’s noetic activity. Propositions exist because God thinks them, and they are true if and only if God believes them.8 Undoubtedly this is a bold set of claims to make, especially in a presidential address to the largest professional association of philosophers in North America. Yet whether Plantinga avoids the two problems he attributes to Putnam and Rorty is an open question. Although I agree that what he calls “creative anti-realism” is deeply problematic, I find Plantinga’s epistemological reversion to medieval theism no more acceptable than Plantinga considered the positions of Putnam and Rorty to be.9 To find a better resolution to this dispute, I plan to discuss the theory of truth put forward by German social philosopher Jürgen Habermas. Habermas has moved from an anti-realist to a quasi-realist conception of propositional truth, and this trajectory points in a promising direction. Moreover, he has taken this path in response to Putnam and Rorty. First I describe the development of Habermas’s theory of truth and examine a recent version in greater detail. Then I propose an alternative account of propositional truth, one that critically appropriates Habermas’s insights and aims to resolve the realism/anti-realism dispute. Before I discuss Habermas, let me explain two sets of terms: alethic realism and anti-realism, and nonepistemic and epistemic conceptions of propositional truth. These two sets overlap to a large extent, and I use them somewhat interchangeably: alethic realism is usually nonepistemic, and alethic anti-realism is usually epistemic. Taking a cue from Michael Lynch, by alethic realism I mean the position that propositional truth “hinges not on us but on the world.” Whether a proposition is true depends on whether “things in the world are as that proposition says they are.”10 Correspondence theories of truth, which define truth as correspondence between propositions and facts or states of affairs, are good examples of alethic realism. Alethic anti-

Habermas, Truth, and Justification

25

realism is the position that propositional truth does not hinge on whether things in the world are as propositions say they are. Instead, it hinges on other factors, such as how well the proposition coheres with other propositions (coherence theories) or what consequences follow from employing the proposition in inquiry or action (pragmatic theories). Plantinga’s position straddles these alternatives, since he argues that it is not the world’s existence but God’s noetic activity that makes propositions true. The distinction between nonepistemic and epistemic conceptions of truth pertains primarily to the relation between the truth of propositions and justifications of their truth. A nonepistemic conception claims “whether a proposition is true does not depend on whether anyone is justified in believing the proposition.”11 In that sense, propositional truth is “mind-independent,” as Plantinga holds with respect to human minds but not with respect to God’s mind. An epistemic conception claims that whether a proposition is true does depend to some significant degree on whether someone is justified in believing it.12 In principle, one could subscribe to alethic anti-realism without having an epistemic conception of truth, but usually the two go together,13 as they do in Habermas’s earliest formulations of a truth theory. HABERMAS’S CONCEPTION OF TRUTH

Habermas’s conception of truth emerges from his lifelong attempt to spell out a critical theory of contemporary society that accords with deeply democratic politics. His development of this conception has gone through three stages, which I label consensus theory, formal pragmatics, and pragmatic realism. For more than two decades, Habermas developed an epistemic and anti-realist conception of truth. In the 1990s, however, he began to change his mind, and his current conception incorporates some elements of alethic realism. Consensus Theory and Formal Pragmatics consensus theory Habermas’s consensus theory of truth emerged in the early 1970s.14 Like Rorty and Putnam during that decade, Habermas proposed an epistemic conception of truth. In it, he tries to explicate the concept of truth by saying how truth claims can be justified. His central claim

26

Lambert Zuidervaart

is that truth primarily has to do not with a supposed correspondence between propositions and facts but with the discursive redemption or vindication (Einlösung) of the validity claims that we unavoidably raise when we use language to reach understanding with one another. There are three such validity claims – claims to truth, to rightness, and to truthfulness or sincerity (Wahrhaftigkeit) – and our various speech acts raise all three either explicitly or implicitly.15 The claim to truth arises most explicitly in constative speech acts – in assertions, explanations, descriptions, and the like. To illustrate, say you and I are talking and I tell you, “Alumni Hall is in the Victoria College Building at the University of Toronto.” When I make this assertion, I unavoidably and simultaneously claim that the proposition I assert – that Alumni Hall is in the Victoria College Building – is true. If you are puzzled by my assertion or question its veracity, then I owe it to you to back up my truth claim. Such questioning and backing of claims typically occurs through argumentation, according to Habermas. Argumentation and potential agreement concerning validity claims are what he has in view when he writes about their discursive vindication. On a consensus theory, he says, “The truth condition of propositions is the potential assent of all others ... The universal-pragmatic meaning of truth, therefore, is determined in terms of the demand of reaching a rational consensus.”16 In this way Habermas indexes the truth of propositions to the quality of their justification. formal pragmatics Habermas modifies and deepens his account of discursive justification in his two-volume Theory of Communicative Action, published in German in 1981.17 There he begins to distinguish more clearly between truth and justification by linking justification with meaning rather than with truth per se. In place of a consensus theory of truth, he proposes a formal pragmatic theory of meaning.18 Habermas’s most important move in this context is to embed linguistic meaning – the meaning of sentences – within communicative meaning – the meaning of human interactions that employ sentences to reach mutual understanding. To understand linguistic meaning, he says, we need to understand how people use language to communicate. At bottom, linguistically mediated interaction serves three pragmatic functions: to represent states of affairs, to establish and renew

Habermas, Truth, and Justification

27

interpersonal relations, and to present one’s own experiences. The first function is cognitive; the second, regulative; and the third, expressive. Just as truth-conditional semantics that stem from Gottlob Frege argue that we understand the meaning of a sentence when we know under what conditions the sentence is (or would be) true, so Habermas argues that we understand the meaning of a linguistically mediated interaction when we know the conditions under which it is (or would be) acceptable. Given the differentiation of language functions, however, and the correlated differentiation of validity claims, Habermas says one must expand these acceptability conditions “beyond the truth of propositions” and no longer identify them “on the semantic level of sentences but on the pragmatic level of utterances” or speech acts.19 The acceptability conditions for assertoric speech acts are assertibility conditions. According to Habermas, to understand the meaning of my asserting “Alumni Hall is in the Victoria College Building,” you need to know more than the truth conditions for the proposition asserted. You also need to know when I, as the speaker making the assertion, have “good grounds to undertake a warrant that the conditions for the truth of the asserted sentence are satisfied.”20 In other words, you need to know what would authorize me to claim the asserted proposition is true and what would correlatively motivate you to accept my claim. So, a hearer understands the meaning of a speaker’s act of assertion if the hearer knows two sets of conditions: first, the conditions that would make the asserted proposition true (e.g., what must be the case in order for the proposition “Alumni Hall is in the Victoria College Building” to be true); second, the conditions under which the asserter would have convincing reasons for claiming this asserted proposition is true (e.g., what sorts of additional information I would have to provide to support my claim that the asserted proposition about Alumni Hall is true). Despite the distinction between truth conditions and assertibility conditions, however, Habermas has not really provided a theory of propositional truth. Instead, he has offered a theory of discursive justification. Essentially, truth means “justified” or “warranted” assertibility. As Barbara Fultner pointed out in 1996, however, there is “a patent tension between truth and warranted assertibility.”21 For, as Putnam indicated in 1981, truth is supposed to be a feature “that cannot be lost, whereas justification can be lost.”22

28

Lambert Zuidervaart

Pragmatic Realism Habermas responds to such concerns in a 1996 essay titled “Richard Rorty’s Pragmatic Turn.”23 Emphasizing both the distinction between truth and justification and their internal relation, he argues that “truth cannot be reduced to ... justified assertibility.”24 This argument relies heavily on two claims. The first claim concerns human behaviour: “as interacting and intervening subjects, we are always already in contact with things about which we can make statements” – not despite language but precisely in virtue of the linguistically mediated character of human action. The second claim concerns the presuppositions of communication: participants in communicative action cannot reach understanding with each other unless we “refer to a single objective world” and suppose this world to be “independent of our descriptions.” Whereas Rorty tends to deny both claims, Habermas thinks that linguistically mediated behavioural contact with things and the supposition of an independent objective world are necessary if everyday practices are not to “come apart at the seams.”25 Accordingly, in Truth and Justification, Habermas presents what he calls a “Janus-faced” concept of truth.26 The current version of his theory is (roughly) realist with respect to truth and anti-realist with respect to justification. Habermas’s own description suggests the label “linguistic-pragmatic epistemological realism” or, more simply, “pragmatic realism.” a janus-faced concept Habermas formulates his Janus-faced concept of truth in response to two questions. First, if all forms of human life emerge contingently from natural evolution, how can we account for our unavoidably raising truth claims that transcend the contexts in which we raise them? Second, how can we reconcile the claim that any human access to socalled reality is linguistically mediated with the intuitively plausible realist assumption that “there is a world existing independently of our descriptions of it and that is the same for all observers”?27 If Habermas cannot give satisfactory answers, then he will need to adopt Richard Rorty’s epistemic, anti-realist, and radical contextualism with respect to propositional truth. Habermas responds by introducing several pairs of distinctions: between communication and representation, between lifeworld and objective world, between meaning and refer-

Habermas, Truth, and Justification

29

ence, and, most significantly for our purposes, between justification and truth. Let me summarize these distinctions. To begin with, Habermas insists that representation and communication are equiprimordial functions of language usage. In our speech acts, we communicate with others by referring to “the world and its objects,” and vice versa: “As representation and as communicative act, a linguistic utterance points in both directions at once: toward the world and toward the addressee.”28 Both representation and communication are made possible by “deep-seated structures of ... the lifeworld,”29 and they pragmatically presuppose a shared objective world. The lifeworld encompasses all types of rule-governed action, both linguistic and nonlinguistic and both communicative and strategic or instrumental. The notion of an objective world, by contrast, pertains to the subset of rule-governed actions that aim “instrumentally to intervene in or strategically to influence the course of events.”30 This “performatively established relation to objects,” in turn, has links to “the semantic relation to objects that interlocutors establish in asserting facts about them.”31 Agents and language users pragmatically presuppose “a shared objective world as the totality of objects to be dealt with and judged” and “as existing independently and as the same for everyone.”32 This pragmatic presupposition underlies our truth claims. Habermas links successful reference and propositional truth to “the normativity of successful coping.”33 To explain this link, he introduces a firm distinction between meaning and reference.34 The distinction relies on two claims. First, linguistic practices enable us to “refer to language-independent objects about which we assert something.” Second, any language user, regardless of his or her context, can “refer to a common system of possible referents” and can “identify independently existing objects.” Accordingly, “reference to the same object must remain constant even under different descriptions.”35 This is possible because the purposive contact we have with objects funds the “semantic relations” we “explicitly establish” when we make assertions.36 So, for example, our asserting “this is water, not oil” is rooted in our nonlinguistic actions of drinking water, swimming in it, using it to cultivate crops, and the like. If we were not able, on the basis of ordinary practices, to keep the reference of “water” constant, then we could not use the term successfully in multiple situations. Yet the constancy of reference does not explain the truth of statements or propositions, which “can be justified only by means of other

30

Lambert Zuidervaart

statements” and not by a direct appeal to practical experience.37 To that extent, Rorty’s contextualism is not off base. Nevertheless, Habermas points to three factors that cannot be reconciled with radical contextualism, namely, the assumption of “epistemological realism” in ordinary practices, the “power of learning processes” to revise the contexts in which they occur, and the tendency of truth claims to have “universalist import” that transcends the context in which we raise them.38 In everyday life, when we assert “this is water, not oil,” we assume the statement to be true with respect to the liquid we experience; we can use such a statement to learn something new about our environment; and we consider the statement to be true not just here and now and for ourselves, but also at any relevant time and place and for anyone who could respond to our assertion. action and discourse Habermas’s pragmatically realist conception of truth aims to account for these factors. He does not give up his emphasis on rational discourse as the privileged mode for sorting out truth claims.39 Yet, he says the fact that epistemologically we must connect truth and justification should not mislead us into thinking that truth is simply an idealization of justification. According to Habermas, a nonepistemic concept of truth shows up in everyday action. Ordinarily, in the course of action, we do not doubt the truth of our beliefs. We rely on “certainties of action” in our “practical dealings with an objective world” and naively take the beliefs that guide our actions “to be true absolutely.” As Habermas puts it, “We don’t walk onto any bridge whose stability we doubt.” Implicit in such “realism of everyday practice” is “a concept of unconditional truth.” As soon as our practices fail and contradictions arise, however, we begin to see the truth of the relevant beliefs “as merely ‘presumed truths,’ that is, as fundamentally problematic truth claims.” Moreover, if someone else challenges the truth of what we assert, then our only recourse is to try to justify “the now thematized truth of controversial propositions.”40 In other words, the concept of truth plays a different role in the domain of action than it does in justificatory discourse. In action, we implicitly hold our beliefs to be undoubtedly true and implicitly make truth claims about them when we communicate. At this level we assert facts that concern “objects themselves.”41 In discourse, by contrast, our claims to truth are always and unavoidably provisional. The

Habermas, Truth, and Justification

31

only way to vindicate such claims is via “the convincing power of good reasons,” and even the best reasons remain “under the proviso of fallibility.”42 A discursive agreement authorizes us to accept only the justified claim that a proposition is true, not the truth of the proposition as such. Habermas thinks the nonepistemic concept of truth presupposed in action provides a “justification-transcendent standard for orienting ourselves by context-independent truth claims.” This in turn sheds a pragmatic light on the concepts of objectivity, facts, and states of affairs that figure prominently in more robustly realist conceptions of truth. According to Habermas, the concept of objectivity arises from our failures to cope with the world, when we “experience in practice that the world revokes its readiness to cooperate.” Such failures force us to recognize that “the world is not up to us” and exists independently of our language usage and actions. Moreover, the concept of an objective world enables us to “refer to things that can be identified as the same under different descriptions” and so to regard the world as “the same for all of us.”43 Such pragmatically recognized objectivity sustains the robustly realist claim that true assertions refer to facts about the world or to states of affairs that obtain, a claim that calls attention to “a connection between ... the truth of statements and the ‘objectivity’ of that about which something is stated.”44 Accordingly, truth cannot be a merely epistemic notion. two questions Compared with his earlier consensus theory of truth and his formal pragmatics of meaning, Habermas’s Janus-faced pragmatic realism goes some distance to answer objections like the ones Plantinga poses for Putnam and Rorty. Yet it also raises two new questions that need to be addressed. One concerns the relation between propositions and what we experience as an “objective world.” In what way, if any, does this relation make propositions true? The other concerns the relation between propositional truth and discursive justification. Does argumentation aim only to establish the acceptability of truth claims? Or does it also seek to affirm the truth of propositions as such? I do not believe Habermas has a satisfactory answer to either question.45 Instead, I propose an alternative conception that, reworking Habermas’s insights, promises a post-Plantingian resolution to the debate between realists and anti-realists in Anglo-American philosophy.

32

Lambert Zuidervaart

B E YO N D A N T I / R E A L I S M

My overarching conception of truth is much broader than a concept of propositional truth, and my conception of the authentication of truth is considerably more expansive than a concept of discursive justification.46 I assume, for example, that propositional truth is neither the only nor the privileged mode of truth. I also assume that discursive justification is only one manner of authentication and that it regularly supports and receives direction from other ways of authentication. With those qualifications in mind, I will discuss the concept of propositional truth in relation first to empirical facts and then to discursive justification. Propositional Truth and Empirical Facts In the analytic literature on truth, disagreements about the relation between propositional truth and empirical facts have to do with “truth bearers,” “truth makers,” and the connection between the two. Although Habermas rejects alethic realism as a general position, he wishes to retain aspects of the connection realism posits between truth bearers and truth makers. Specifically, he wishes to retain the realist intuition that the truth of propositions is indexed to the existence of facts or states of affairs. Yet Habermas does not follow the empiricist path of positing facts as experienced objects. Facts are related to what we experience in our practical engagements with the world, he says, but we do not experience them as such. Rather, they are formulated when we assert propositions or, more broadly, when our speech acts employ sentences that have propositional content. If, contrary to standard versions of correspondence theory, the facts that make assertions and propositions true do not “exist” in the “real world,” then Habermas needs to account for how facts relate to the things with which we are “in contact” as “interacting and intervening subjects”47 – what I will call practical objects. Habermas’s view of this relationship is not very clear. However, I posit a two-way process of decontextualization and recontextualization to make sense of how he views the fact/object relation. In the ordinary course of action, I experience a liquid that looks, smells, tastes, and feels a certain way and I say to you, “This is water.” I have no reason to doubt the liquid is water, and so I take the belief I have formulated to be straightforwardly true. In this context, true

Habermas, Truth, and Justification

33

seems to mean that the belief in question is reliable in practice and that my assertion is a reliable articulation of my belief. If you challenge my assertion, you question the reliability of my belief and of what I have said. Such questioning decontextualizes the practical belief and the content of what I have said: “Is it really water?” Only under such conditions of decontextualization does the fact that “this is water” emerge, when the content of what I have said becomes a topic for disagreement and potential agreement. What is reliably believed in practice is decontextualized into what is questionable in fact. Recontextualizing occurs when sufficient agreement is reached for both interlocutors to rely on the belief whose content was questioned. For example, we could end our discussion by both deciding not to imbibe the mysterious liquid. Alternatively, I could offer you a cup of cold water. At this point, whether the liquid is water no longer functions as a fact to be disputed but as the reliable content of what both of us believe in practice. reliability and interdependence I find much to commend this proposed reworking of Habermas’s approach. But there is something missing. What is it about practical objects that allows us to acquire true beliefs about them – i.e., practically reliable beliefs – in the first place? What is it about practical objects that allows us to make truth-claiming assertions about them? Habermas has no answer to these questions. Moreover, I suspect that the linguistic-pragmatic underpinnings to his truth theory would not support his venturing an answer. This is one bridge he is not ready to cross. I, by contrast, think an answer is necessary if we want to give full credence to the correct intuitions of correspondence theories. It is not enough, in my view, to presuppose an independent objective world that is the same for everyone. We also need to presuppose, in both action and discourse, that practical objects lend themselves to our actions and interactions, and do so in ways that are not solely of our own making or choosing. In other words, we need to presuppose an interdependent world, one where the “readiness to hand” or “handiness” (what Heidegger calls Zuhandenheit) of practical objects sustains our projects in ways that supervene on the particular uses to which we put such objects in specific contexts. We can have reliable beliefs about water, for example, because water really does quench our thirst and we can rely on it to do so.

34

Lambert Zuidervaart

One of the ways in which practical objects lend themselves to our actions and interactions is by letting us talk about them. In our talking we refer to them and make predications. I call something “water” and tell you it is cold. If we speak the same language, you probably understand what I mean. To explain how this is possible requires more than theories of reference and predication and more than accounts of speech acts and their propositional content. It also requires acknowledging how practical objects let us talk about them. If, in addition, we want to explain how our talking about practical objects can be reliable and how our assertions about them can be true, then we need to account for the specific ways practical objects support reliable talk and true assertions. Elsewhere I identify this feature of practical objects as predicative availability.48 The predicative availability of practical objects is the way they allow us to assert something about them. To do so, they must let us refer to them when we use language. Practical objects let us establish their identity under referring expressions and via referential uses of language without allowing this referential identity to be the entirety of what they are. Predicative availability is the face that practical objects turn toward us when we call their names – i.e., when we successfully refer to them using language. There is more to predicative availability than linguistic referability, however. To lend itself to reliable talk and true assertions about it, a practical object must also allow its linguistically established identity to be linguistically specified. “The water is cold,” we say, or “Alumni Hall is in the Victoria College Building,” and the water lets itself be specified with respect to temperature, while Alumni Hall lets itself be specified with respect to location. Predication is the linguistically embedded specification of linguistically identified objects, and it is a normal part of everyday language usage. Predicative availability is how practical objects let us refer to them with specificity in language. facts as predicative self-disclosure Reliable talk and true assertions with respect to practical objects require more than reference, predication, and predicative availability. The way a practical object shows itself to us must line up with some other relevant way in which it is available. If I say to you, “The water is too cold,” for example, that which allows me to refer to it as “water” and to speak of it as “too cold” must also allow me to relate this predicate to the water’s nonpredicative availability for, say, swimming. This

Habermas, Truth, and Justification

35

capacity on the part of practical objects is what I call predicative selfdisclosure. Predicative self-disclosure is what the object under reference allows us to specify in relation to at least one other way in which the object is available to us. Here the concept of a fact becomes significant. A fact is simply the predicative self-disclosure of an object or of a range of objects on the occasion of language usage in which reference and predication occur with respect to these objects. A fact is not either real or linguistic – it is both. It is a way in which objects relate to human practices, insofar as these practices include linguistic ones of reference and predication. To this extent, facts are relevant for all reliable talk, and not only for constative speech acts in general or assertoric speech acts in particular. Habermas casts facts too narrowly when he portrays them as what we assert and what makes statements or propositions true. Although he is right to warn us against equating facts with practical objects as such, he fails to see that facts are a mode in which practical objects disclose themselves. correctness and accuracy But how should we understand the relation between assertions and propositions on the one hand, and facts on the other? I agree with Habermas that assertions are speech acts that raise a truth claim and that facts make propositions true. I also agree that propositions are the content of our assertions and that, via analysis, we can assign a propositional content to any speech act, whether assertoric or not. Yet I find implausible his early claim, which he seems not to have given up, that truth “is not a property of assertions” and is rather only something we claim concerning the propositions or statements (Aussagen) we assert.49 For in everyday communication we are just as concerned about the truth of what is asserted as we are concerned that someone’s asserting something is true. If you are not convinced of the water’s temperature when I assert, “The water is too cold,” you could exclaim, “That’s not so!” But you could also ask, “Are you sure about that?” A question or exclamation of the first sort pertains to the truth claimed for the proposition – that it is true that the water is too cold. A question of the second sort pertains to the truth of my asserting this. If my description is correct, then the concept of truth appears to have a double role when we assert propositions. In one role it pertains to the correctness of the practice of making assertions. In the other role it pertains to the accuracy of the result of engaging in this prac-

36

Lambert Zuidervaart

tice, namely, the accuracy of the content of what one asserts – the accuracy of the proposition.50 How, then, do facts relate to both the truth of asserting (i.e., correctness) and the truth of propositions (i.e., accuracy)? From the preceding analysis of facts, it appears that asserting is true (i.e., correct) just in case the practical object about which we make an assertion self-discloses in the manner asserted. My asserting “the water is too cold” is a correct speech act on a specific occasion iff, for example, the water shows itself to be insufficiently warm for us to swim in. The truth of propositions, by contrast, involves a further decontextualization from this underlying assertoric relation. The propositional content of an assertion takes the form “that something is the case,” for example, “that the water is too cold.” Typically, we use this form to take up assertions in discourse. We argue about the content of what someone asserts and seek agreement about whether this or that is the case. Facts also undergo decontextualization in relationship to propositions. They are no longer simply a way in which practical objects self-disclose for linguistic practices. Now they are “state of affairs” that must “obtain” in order for the proposition to be accurate. Due to double decontextualization, the proposition is available for anyone to discuss, and the state of affairs is projected beyond a particular object to encompass any practical objects that would be similar in a relevant way. According to the proposed analysis, the relation that sustains propositional truth is not a correspondence between propositions and facts or states of affairs. Rather, it is one of decontextualized disclosure. In this relation the proposition helps us identify the asserted object as an abiding topic for potential discussion and debate, and the fact as a state of affairs presents the asserted object as nothing other than how it has been asserted to be. A proposition about a practical object is true (i.e., accurate) just in case the asserted object presents itself as nothing other than how it has been asserted to be. Propositions are decontextualized statements of decontextualized predicative identity. Insofar as contemporary truth theories restrict truth to propositional truth, and insofar as propositional truth involves decontextualization, we can understand why theorists such as Putnam claim that propositional truth “cannot be lost.” Apart from its role in assertoric practices and its underpinnings in action, interaction, and their practical objects, however, propositional truth would never be gained.

Habermas, Truth, and Justification

37

Although Habermas’s Janus-faced concept of truth in both action and discourse points in this direction, I hope to have offered a better explanation for the relation between propositional truth and empirical facts. I suggest that we must distinguish three facets of truth – practical reliability, assertoric correctness, and propositional accuracy – and not subsume all three under the notion of propositional truth. Propositional Truth and Discursive Justification Habermas’s pragmatic realism also raises questions about the relation between propositional truth and discursive justification. Although he has revised his conception of truth, the main lines of his account of justification remain the same: discursive justification is a process of argumentation that aims to establish the validity of the claims that are raised with speech acts. The claims it aims to establish are ones whose validity would transcend the context in which a claim arises. truth claims What do we attempt to justify discursively when propositional truth is at issue? According to Habermas, we do not try to justify the truth of the proposition as such. Rather, we try to justify our claim to propositional truth – the claim to truth that is raised with our speech act. We do not argue for or against the truth of the proposition as such, but we exchange reasons for accepting or rejecting the claim that an asserted proposition is true. Our readiness to back up our claims with convincing reasons sustains our assertoric interactions. Here, however, an issue arises that Habermas has not successfully addressed. Does the truth or falsity of a proposition make any difference to the outcome of discourse about truth claims? Intuitively, one wants to say yes, it does make a difference. It appears that even the most convincing reasons I can give would not be good reasons to claim my asserted proposition is true if it is untrue. Habermas, however, is hesitant to say this. In his account, what makes for better and worse justifications is not so much the content of the reasons we give as the manner in which we give them. What matters most for him is the degree to which justification approximates a genuinely democratic process. Hence Habermas’s account of justification poses a challenge for someone who shares his democratic, procedural emphasis but sees a more substantial link between propositional truth and discursive justification and does not endorse a correspondence theory of truth. To

38

Lambert Zuidervaart

explain this link, I view the argumentative justification of assertoric truth claims as a discursive mode of authenticating propositional truth. As I explain elsewhere, authentication in general encompasses all the ways we bear witness to truth, and truth in general requires authentication in order to unfold.51 Accordingly, the argumentative justification of assertoric truth claims is how we bear witness to propositional truth and how propositional truth unfolds. This implies that, although propositional truth “cannot be lost,” it also cannot be static – propositional truth is not eternal or immutable. It also implies that discursive justification is normatively indexed to propositional truth and not simply to procedural norms of argumentation. disclosive insight and logical validity Let me elaborate. The proposition one asserts, if it is true, discloses a fact – itself a mode of self-disclosure – in a decontextualized way. When I assert a proposition, I simultaneously claim that the proposition is true in the sense that it is accurate. The accuracy of a proposition is its ability simultaneously to decontextualize and to disclose a practical object’s self-disclosure. I raise a truth claim not simply to elicit your agreement but also to affirm the insight that the proposition affords. I am not simply saying, in effect, “This is true, don’t you agree?” I am also saying, “This is a reliable insight, correctly asserted, that anyone should be able to share.” Although it is so that discourse unavoidably “fallibilizes” both my claim and the purported insight, such fallibilism can only make sense if we simultaneously expect propositions to be genuinely insightful, albeit in a decontextualized way. Good arguments connect a proposed insight with other insights that are relevant for understanding the matter about which the original assertion was made. Moreover, such connecting of insights occurs in a manner that is distinctive to argumentation. It occurs with reference to the societal principle of logical validity. Although this principle is only one among many that guide human action and interaction, and although in nondiscursive contexts it is rarely the primary principle offering guidance, the pursuit of logical validity plays a leading role in discourse. Argumentation is the best way to justify problematized truth claims because it allows us to disclose propositions within the horizon of logical validity, and thereby to discover just how far their purported insight reaches – i.e., whether they have the universality and necessity we claim for them.

Habermas, Truth, and Justification

39

On this account, the aim of argumentation is not simply to vindicate the truth claims raised for an asserted proposition, but also to bear witness to the truth – i.e., accuracy – of the proposition itself. We raise truth claims and argue about them because we presuppose, when we assert a proposition, that it offers genuine insight and because we want to discover whether this is so. We assume that the insight offered is one anyone, not merely the person or community or organization that asserts the proposition, can understand and accept. We also assume that argumentation itself, when carried out well, either discloses the insight in question or shows it not to be a genuine insight – by linking it with other insights, by opening it to consideration by other people, and by testing its implications. In other words, discursive justification serves to authenticate propositional truth. By enriching the concepts of discourse and propositional truth, I suggest that the concept of truth in everyday practice is not as “unconditional” or “absolute” as Habermas claims it to be, nor is the discursive vindication of truth claims as fallibilistic as he suggests. For in action and discourse our assertoric speech acts orient us to the disclosure of practical objects and the propositional disclosure of such disclosure. We ordinarily understand that not every purported insight is genuine – otherwise we might not bother to make assertions. But we also understand that the claims we raise with our assertions and about which we argue would hardly be worth raising if none of our asserted propositions were accurate. Nor do we need to presuppose ideal justificatory conditions in order to engage in discourse. The principle of logical validity, which is always already in effect in a society such as ours, is sufficient to orient our attempts to give good reasons and better arguments. CONCLUSION

If my critical appropriation of Habermas is on the right track, then the framework of the Anglo-American debate about realism is misconceived. The fundamental question about propositional truth is not whether it exists independently of our knowing it. Rather, it concerns the interdependence between linguistically competent, intersubjectively connected human agents and the events and entities these agents act and interact with and make predicative reference to. Plantinga is right to suggest that Kant’s Copernican revolution disturbs our understanding of this relationship. Yet he is wrong, in my judgment, to pro-

40

Lambert Zuidervaart

pose that locating true propositions in the mind of God will undo the revolution, for Plantinga’s proposal presupposes the problem it is meant to solve. We need to begin instead with the interdependence of “mind” and “object” and with the corporeal multidimensionality of both human knowers and that about which they acquire knowledge. Habermas’s linguistic-pragmatic conception of truth is a postmetaphysical attempt to retain truth’s context-transcending quality in the face of contextualism such as Rorty’s that would deny this quality. Plantinga also wishes to preserve this context-transcending quality, but by reverting to a metaphysical paradigm. And, like Habermas, he ends up with a compromise between realism and anti-realism. To my way of thinking, such compromises indicate problems rather than solutions. I believe the only way to solve these problems is to go beyond the contemporary framework of realism versus anti-realism. What I have proposed could be called post-anti/realism with respect to propositional truth. The key to my proposal is to replace questions of independence with questions of interdependence. Questions of interdependence with respect to propositional truth assume continuity between human agents and whatever they take up in their actions and interactions. For a post-anti/realist, it does not make sense to locate propositions on one side of a mind/object gap and then argue about whether what makes them true is independent of the assertions that raise a claim to truth. Rather, it makes sense to recognize how propositions and truth claims arise within an interrelation between human practices and practical objects that is always already in effect. We also need to acknowledge that the discursive justification of problematized truth claims is unavoidably indexed both to this interrelation and to a societal principle of logical validity that is also always already in effect. How, then, should one not be an anti-realist? I have suggested three ways. One should not be a radical contextualist à la Rorty, for this forces one to give up a substantial concept of propositional truth. One should not be a radically theist anti-realist à la Plantinga, for this compels one to remove the concept of propositional truth from contexts of discursive justification. And one should not be a Janus-faced pragmatic realist à la Habermas, for this reinscribes the gap between propositional truth and discursive justification that his consensus theory and formal pragmatics sought to remove. Instead, one should subsume the insights of contemporary antirealism into a post-anti/realist conception of propositional truth. If we

Habermas, Truth, and Justification

41

follow this path, then we can also recontextualize the concepts of propositional truth and discursive justification within a broader conception of truth and authentication. By sorting out the many matters of truth that go beyond propositions and argumentation, such a conception will demonstrate why truth matters.

N OT E S

1 This chapter was originally published under the same title as an article in Philosophia Reformata 77 (2012): 1–18. 2 Alvin Plantinga, “How to Be an Anti-realist,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 56 (1): 47–70. 3 Ibid., 47. 4 Ibid., 62. 5 Ibid., 64. 6 Ibid., 66. 7 Ibid., 67–8. 8 Ibid., 68–70. 9 Although this is not the occasion to discuss Plantinga’s theistic anti-realism in depth, the positions he took in his 1982 presidential address have remained central to his work. Kevin Diller rightly observes that from the 1980s onward Plantinga has consistently identified “creative anti-realism” and “naturalism” as “the primary contemporary rivals to Christian thought, though sometimes giving more emphasis to the offspring of creative antirealism: ‘relativism and anti-commitment.’” In a lecture given at a 1994 symposium dedicated to the memory of Herman Dooyeweerd, Plantinga forthrightly claimed that naturalism and creative anti-realism not only are inconsistent with Christianity but also “have no place for the notion of truth” – unlike theism, which allows Christian philosophers to make “attractive and useful” contributions to philosophical conversations on truth and knowledge. Plantinga’s positions in “How to Be an Anti-realist” remain important in more recent discussions of truth theory as well. For example, the late William Alston, in a paper prepared for a major analytic anthology on truth, cites Plantinga’s paper as a key backup to Alston’s own “extensional” argument against Putnam’s “ideal justifiability conception” of truth. Similarly, although without citing Plantinga, David Efird’s 17 August 2009 online review of the book Truth and Truth-Making, ed. E.J. Lowe and A. Rami in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, uses Plantinga’s move to explain the (human-) mind-independence of propositional truth: “I propose

42

10 11 12

13

14

15

Lambert Zuidervaart

that a proposition’s being true is metaphysically grounded in, or metaphysically explained by, God’s knowing that proposition.” Hence the 1982 presidential address is a good place to start if one wants to understand Plantinga’s own contributions as well as some central issues in contemporary truth theory. Kevin S. Diller, “The Theology of Revelation and the Epistemology of Christian Belief: The Compatibility and Complementarity of the Theological Epistemologies of Karl Barth and Alvin Plantinga,” phd dissertation (University of St Andrews, Scotland, 2008), 57–8; accessed 9 January 2012, http://hdl.handle.net/10023/497. Alvin Plantinga, “Christian Philosophy at the End of the 20th Century,” in Christian Philosophy at the Close of the Twentieth Century: Assessment and Perspective, ed. Sander Griffioen and Bert M. Balk (Kampen: Kok, 1995), 47–8. William Alston, “A Realist Conception of Truth,” in The Nature of Truth: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Michael Lynch (Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 2001), 59. Michael Lynch, “Realism and the Correspondence Theory: Introduction,” in The Nature of Truth, 9. Ibid., 11. Plantinga holds something like this with regard to divinely known truth, although he speaks only of God’s thinking and believing a proposition, not of God’s offering a justification for thinking and believing as God does. That is one reason why Plantinga frames his criticism of Putnam and Rorty’s epistemic conceptions in terms of their purported “creative anti-realism.” The consensus theory receives its most expansive articulation in the Christian Gauss Lectures Habermas gave at Princeton University in 1971 and in the seminal article “Wahrheitstheorien” (Truth Theories) published in 1973. See “Reflections on the Linguistic Foundation of Sociology: The Christian Gauss Lectures (Princeton University, February–March 1971),” in Habermas’s On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction: Preliminary Studies in the Theory of Communicative Action, trans. Barbara Fultner (Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 2001), 1–103, and “Wahrheitstheorien,” in Wirklichkeit und Reflexion: Walter Schulz zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Helmut Fahrenbach (Pfullingen: Günther Neske, 1973), 211–65. Habermas has never allowed “Wahrheitstheorien” to be published in an English translation. He indicates his subsequent reservations about his “consensus theory” in the 1983 additions he inserted into the footnotes to both the Gauss Lectures and “Wahrheitstheorien” in his Vorstudien und Ergänzungen zur Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984). In the writings under consideration, Habermas identifies “intelligibility” as a fourth unavoidable validity claim, but in subsequent writings he drops it

Habermas, Truth, and Justification

16 17 18

19 20 21

22 23

24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31

43

from the list and treats it instead as a general condition for communicative action as such. Habermas, On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction, 89. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. Thomas McCarthy, 2 vols. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984, 1987). The shift to a formal pragmatics of meaning is apparent in Habermas’s 1976 essay “What Is Universal Pragmatics?” in Jürgen Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984), 1–68, 208–19. Although it does not thematize truth, this essay marks a transition from stage one to stage two in his theory of truth. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action 1, 277. Ibid., 318. Barbara Fultner, “The Redemption of Truth: Idealization, Acceptability and Fallibilism in Habermas’ Theory of Meaning,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 4 (2, 1996): 238. Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 55. Jürgen Habermas, “Richard Rorty’s Pragmatic Turn,” in Richard Rorty and His Critics, ed. Robert B. Brandom (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 31–55. The same essay can be found in Jürgen Habermas, On the Pragmatics of Communication, ed. Maeve Cooke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 343–82. Worth noting is that Brandom chose Rorty’s “Universality and Truth” (1–30), Habermas’s essay, and Rorty’s “Response to Jürgen Habermas” (56–64) to open Rorty and His Critics. Despite their disagreements about truth, Rorty was highly appreciative of Habermas’s democratic politics and his emphasis on the communicative character of rationality. Habermas, “Richard Rorty’s Pragmatic Turn,” 40. Ibid., 41. Jürgen Habermas, Truth and Justification, ed. and trans. Barbara Fultner (Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 2003). With the exception of two essays, this book is a translation of Habermas’s Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung: Philosophische Aufsätze (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1999). My commentary focuses on the book’s “Introduction: Realism after the Linguistic Turn” (1–49). The German title of this essay speaks not of the “linguistic” turn but of the “language-pragmatic” (sprachpragmatisch) turn. Ibid., 2. Ibid., 3. Ibid., 11. Ibid., 15. Ibid.

44

Lambert Zuidervaart

32 Ibid., 16. 33 Ibid., 15. 34 In the passage under consideration (33–6), Habermas does not explicitly mention his formal pragmatic conception of meaning. But it is implied throughout. Habermas appears to have been persuaded by Albrecht Wellmer and especially by Cristina Lafont that one must give up the tendency in the German hermeneutical tradition to think that meaning determines reference. See Cristina Lafont, The Linguistic Turn in Hermeneutic Philosophy, trans. José Medina (Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1999). 35 Truth and Justification, 33. Habermas employs Hilary Putnam’s theory of direct reference in order to account for such constancy of reference. 36 Ibid., 35. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid., 36. 39 “Argumentation remains the only available medium of ascertaining truth since truth claims that have been problematized cannot be tested in any other way. There is no unmediated, discursively unfiltered access to the truth conditions of empirical beliefs.” Ibid., 38. 40 Ibid., 39. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., 40. 43 Ibid., 254. 44 Ibid., 255. 45 These are not the only questions needing better answers, of course. In addition to the writings by Barbara Fultner and Cristina Lafont cited earlier, see James Swindal, Reflection Revisited: Jürgen Habermas’s Discursive Theory of Truth (New York: Fordham University Press, 1999) and Maeve Cooke, “Meaning and Truth in Habermas’s Pragmatics,” European Journal of Philosophy 9 (April 2001): 1–23. 46 I have presented these conceptions on other occasions and do not repeat the details here. The relevant publications, in chronological order, include Artistic Truth: Aesthetics, Discourse, and Imaginative Disclosure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), especially 77–100; Social Philosophy after Adorno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), especially 77–106; “Truth Matters: Heidegger and Horkheimer in Dialectical Disclosure,” Telos 145 (Winter 2008): 131–60; “Unfinished Business: Toward a Reformational Conception of Truth,” Philosophia Reformata 74 (2009): 1–20; and “Religion in Public: Passages from Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” University of Toronto Journal for Jewish Thought 1 (April 2010), http://cjs.utoronto.ca/tjjt. 47 Habermas, “Richard Rorty’s Pragmatic Turn,” 41.

Habermas, Truth, and Justification

45

48 Zuidervaart, Artistic Truth, 88–94; “Unfinished Business,” 10–15. In the vocabulary of older reformational philosophy, the term “predicative availability” points to the “logical object function” of any entity or event about which we can talk and make assertions. In the vocabulary of classical philosophy, it refers to “properties.” 49 Habermas, On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction, 86; cf. “Wahrheitstheorien,” 211–12. 50 Although the content of what one asserts could be called an “assertion,” it is easy to confuse this usage with our using the term assertion to indicate a practice or speech act. So, like Habermas, I adopt the well-established convention of calling the content asserted a proposition. 51 Zuidervaart, Social Philosophy after Adorno, 101–6; “Unfinished Business,” 15–18.

46

Clarence W. Joldersma

2 Radical Constructivism, Education, and Truth as Life-Giving Disclosure C L A R E N C E W. J O L D E R S M A 1

Constructivism in education, an approach that depicts learners as actively constructing their own knowledge, continues to influence content areas such as math and science education as well foundation areas such as educational psychology.2 It is a contested view, with advocates suggesting that it is a better framework for effective education and critics countering that it is relativistic with respect to truth. In this chapter I will agree with constructivist criticisms of traditional epistemologies and their correspondence theories of truth. However, I will also agree with traditional criticisms concerning constructivism’s relativism. Maintaining these two critiques requires developing an alternative understanding of truth. My alternative conceptualizes truth in terms of disclosure, based on the recent work of Lambert Zuidervaart. I believe that this notion of truth gives educational theorists a way to accept major educational insights of constructivism without having to relinquish a robust notion of truth. There are many versions of constructivism in education, including cognitive, critical, and social.3 Rather than attempting to cover this diverse waterfront, I will explore what is arguably its most extreme version, radical constructivism, and limit my examination to the work of its most well-known advocate, Ernst von Glasersfeld. He most clearly combines philosophical discussions of epistemology with elaborations of innovative educational practices. Von Glasersfeld advocates teaching practices that encourage the learner to be an active participant in the learning process.4 He believes that

Radical Constructivism, Education, and Truth

47

learning, a conceptual activity, requires action by the learner, including reflection, verbalizing, and conversation. Although he recognizes memorization as a form of learning, he draws our attention to the activity of conceptualization, which is central to learning. Knowledge, he argues, cannot be transferred from teachers to students simply by teachers putting it into words and students receiving those words. Instead, knowledge develops internally by means of learners’ cognitive self-organization, through which they transcend particular conceptual structures through reorganization.5 This often requires “presenting students with situations in which their habitual thinking fails,”6 which creates settings in which the “student’s network of explanatory concepts clearly turns out to be unsatisfactory.”7 The situation, as devised by the teacher, calls the students’ current conceptual patterns up short so that they can initiate new thoughts. In this approach, the teacher does not transfer knowledge to the students, but creates opportunities for them to reconceptualize their experiences and thereby construct their own knowledge. Von Glasersfeld’s approach to teaching is innovative and inviting. He enhances the role of the teacher in education and gives a central place to the student in the learning process. His ideas help educators move away from a content-driven model of instruction to an active student-driven one. Exploring how students see problems and imagining their possible paths toward conceptual resolutions is innovative. These explorations help educators get beyond judgments about student work in terms of right or wrong and move toward understanding how students come to their particular answers in order to discover hitches in their procedures and conceptualizations. He argues for the need to provide students with opportunities to understand that they themselves need to discover how things do or do not work. Von Glasersfeld does not reduce learning to performance by the student, as the student’s understanding is what counts. But neither does he take learning as mere personal opinion about experienced reality.8 His many educational suggestions often embody what seems exactly right about teaching. Von Glasersfeld’s educational practices are not just practical tips given in a theoretical vacuum. He calls his view radical to distinguish it from the position that learning involves construction but does not imply anything about epistemology. He argues that his pedagogical insights follow from his theoretical approach to knowledge and truth. Moreover, he situates his theoretical approach between the radical environmentalism of the behaviourists and the radical geneticism of

48

Clarence W. Joldersma

the sociobiologists.9 In contrast to both, he argues that humans have only themselves to thank for the world in which they find themselves. By this he means, “epistemic agents can know nothing but the cognitive structures they themselves have put together.”10 The world in which we find ourselves is a function of those cognitive structures. If we wish to improve our understanding, we must investigate the mental processes that construct those cognitive structures. Situating this approach in his understanding of the Kantian tradition, he believes exploring the mind is key to understanding our experience of the world. He argues, “Radical constructivism maintains – not unlike Kant in his Critique – that the operations by means of which we assemble our experiential world can be explored, and that an awareness of this operating ... can help us do it differently and, perhaps, better.”11 Von Glasersfeld’s epistemological stance can be summarized as the process of making more deliberate the conscious construction of the cognitive structures by which the experiencing subject understands.12 For von Glasersfeld, this stance centrally involves a critique of the correspondence theory of truth, which depicts knowledge as a relation between cognition and mind-independent reality. He believes the correspondence theory involves the impossible task of comparing one’s cognitive structures to some mind-independent reality. Von Glasersfeld argues, “God alone can know the real world, because He knows how and of what He has created it. In contrast, the human knower can know only what the human knower has constructed.”13 The best we can claim, as a human knower, is knowledge of our own cognitive constructs. Deliberately revising cognitive constructs is guided by something he calls “fit,”14 which involves “explanation, prediction, or control of specific experiences.”15 When we successfully explain, predict, and control, our conceptual constructions fit our experiences. In his words, “we form concepts and then we try to fit experiences into them.”16 Fit is not a direct relation between mind and some mind-independent reality, but a relation within the mind, i.e., between concepts and experience. Von Glasersfeld uses the idea of fit to mark conscious cognition of the world, i.e., knowledge. The relation of fit means we can best characterize knowledge with terms such as “useful, relevant, viable,”17 determining “what one can and what one cannot do.”18 Fit suggests a set of constraints, experienced in the first person, as we operate in the world, something von Glasersfeld phrases as the idea that “the world is full of obstacles which we do not ourselves deliber-

Radical Constructivism, Education, and Truth

49

ately place in our way.”19 Knowledge is a cognitive construct whose role is to help the individual navigate experienced constraints successfully through a predictable, regular understanding of the world. Knowledge does not represent a mind-independent world, but is a tool within the world of experience – a set of coherent, non-contradictory conceptualizations that negotiate the experienced obstacles.20 The result is “knowledge [that] we ourselves have found useful and thus viable in our own dealings with experience.”21 The notion of addressing experienced constraints puts a practical edge on knowledge construction, where success is associated with organized mental constructs. The world is navigated successfully because the subject has mentally constructed experiences in a particular organizational pattern. For von Glasersfeld, the crucial insight of constructivism requires locating mental activity within the consciousness of the individual subject. He states, “constructivism necessarily begins with the (intuitively confirmed) assumption that all cognitive activity takes place within the experiential world of a goal-directed consciousness.”22 Any particular activity of mental construction takes place within individual consciousness. Thus, central to understanding knowledge production is its location within the individual mind, including its construction of a stable, familiar world by organizing the mind’s experience.23 It follows for von Glasersfeld that “knowledge, no matter how it is defined, is in the heads of persons, and that the thinking subject has no alternative but to construct what he or she knows on the basis of his or her own experience.”24 This epistemological individualism gives rise to his idea that knowledge is relative to each person, involving “constructs that each user has to build up for him- or herself. And because they are individual constructs, one can never say whether or not two people have produced the same construct.”25 Clearly, von Glasersfeld holds to a form of relativism, in which different minds construct different cognitive structures in dealing with experience. Von Glasersfeld’s position on knowledge and truth has been strongly contested by many educational theorists. Although von Glasersfeld appeals to experience in lieu of access to the objective world, Peter Davson-Galle suggests that experience is not an adequate substitute.26 Aharon Aviram goes further, and argues that Von Glasersfeld’s relativism will ultimately be self-defeating in that it entails denying the existence of objective reality.27 Although constructivism must embrace the idea of progress in knowledge development to be a learn-

50

Clarence W. Joldersma

ing theory, William Cobern and Kathleen Loving maintain that von Glasersfeld’s denial of a reality beyond an individual’s construction blocks the possibility of such improvement.28 Derek Meyer, more strongly, concludes that this denial leaves von Glasersfeld with the self-undermining position that knowledge is simply the creation of mental objects and cannot exclude fallacies, psychotic states, or hallucinations.29 These criticisms can be generalized. Michael Matthews’s concern is that von Glasersfeld confuses knowledge with belief, and takes knowledge to involve evidence-based justifications connecting it to a mind-independent reality, in contrast to beliefs, which are merely individual subjective mental constructs.30 These criticisms hinge on von Glasersfeld’s denial of a correspondence conception of knowledge and charge him with a problematic relativism. These are important criticisms of von Glasersfeld. Because for him knowledge is in the mind of each person, making it impossible to tell whether any two people build the same cognitive construct, the charge of relativism seems warranted. Critics such as Matthews come to this conclusion from the perspective of a correspondence theory of truth and knowledge. Matthews appeals to an understanding of knowledge as justified true belief, where knowledge is a belief under particular conditions, namely, that it is true and that the believer has good evidence to judge it as such.31 Although Matthews is critical of von Glasersfeld, they share a basic assumption: both frame their thinking within a representationalist theory of mind, where knowledge is understood as a (mental) proposition about which something is claimed. Matthews argues propositional knowledge corresponds with a mind-independent reality, whereas von Glasersfeld argues it does not. The basic difference is not about the centrality of cognitive states as such, but about the possibility of correspondence. Matthews’s and the other critics’ stances are examples of the realist position in that regard, and von Glasersfeld’s constructivism is an example of antirealism. The debate between anti-realism and realism is an enduring philosophical controversy regarding the relation between knowledge and reality. There are many varieties of realism, but we do not need to adjudicate among them in order to identify the above critics of von Glasersfeld as realists. These critics are what I will call representational realists, a group that includes what can be called semantic and ontological realism. Semantic realism involves the idea of truth as correspondence between mental representation and thing, and ontological

Radical Constructivism, Education, and Truth

51

realism involves the notion of a mind-independent reality with objective, knowable features. By representational realism I mean the general position that portrays knowledge as representational, usually as justified true belief. Knowledge is thus a particular sort of cognitive, mental representation, in other words, one that is said to bear a correspondence to, and is caused by, some mind-independent object with determinate features. The object’s salient properties and features are, or can be, captured as the content of those representations. Here, knowledge involves a set of beliefs that are true because their content formally corresponds with some mind-independent reality, where truth is rightfully claimed because of some justification.32 Thus, a realist such as Matthews frames knowledge as beliefs that have satisfied an “evidence condition.”33 He maintains that this condition creates a correspondence between two extant things, a mental representation and some mind-independent reality, which justifies the claim that the representation is true. Robert Nola points out that the correspondence between a mental representation and some external reality does not need to entail a picture or some other imitative duplication in the mind of objective reality – a more “minimal notion of correspondence” will suffice, such as a Tarskian “one-to-one” pairing between proposition and reality.34 I agree with von Glasersfeld that a realist’s correspondence account of truth is not an adequate answer to his relativism – representational realism is not up to the task. Its basic flaw is its inability to adequately answer the enduring question of how mental representations can be known to accurately depict mind-independent reality, given that one’s access to such reality is through cognitive processes and products. Radical constructivists such as von Glasersfeld are right to argue that evidence and justification are always already mind-dependent, and so cannot establish an independent foothold on the objective features of a mind-independent reality. Michael Lynch gives the classical persuasive objection when he states, “we cannot step outside of our skins and compare our thoughts to the world as it is in itself.”35 To be able to do so, he argues, requires evidence to enter the mind as absolute facts, namely, facts whose contents are not relative to any conceptual scheme. And having such evidence would mean having access to something completely outside of our conceptual schemes and being able to identify it for what it is rather than in relation to a conceptual scheme. Lynch argues that nothing presents itself in this manner, as there are no schema-independent facts.36 Because of this, he

52

Clarence W. Joldersma

rightly concludes, the correspondence theory falters on the criterion of justification. However, von Glasersfeld’s constructivism is also an inadequate attempt to answer this weakness. It fails because he does not go far enough, and merely replaces a “realist conception of truth with some epistemic surrogate.”37 Indeed, constructivism’s “arguments get almost always caught within an old epistemological framework, which constructivism precisely tries to abandon.”38 This applies to von Glasersfeld’s radical constructivism particularly well. Rather than transcend the problems of realism, he retains too much of the realist’s framework while attempting to give a different answer, and hence can rightly be accused of having an epistemic surrogate. Von Glasersfeld’s problem is not that he is too far removed from semantic realism, but that he is not removed enough. Although he wishes to replace the correspondence theory of truth with one of fit, the language of subjective construction means that he continues to accept representationalism’s basic framework as a way to think about the cognizing subject’s relation to the world. His modification is merely to advocate for an epistemic substitute, replacing correspondence with fit, in order to relieve some of the pressure to access mind-independent reality. In short, both von Glasersfeld’s constructivist anti-realism and his critics’ representational realism remain framed by what Habermas calls a philosophy of consciousness.39 This is the idea that our primary contact with the world is as a conscious, individual subject – a mind – that stands in cognitive relation to a world. The argument between educational realists and anti-realists is between correspondence and fit, while both remain framed in terms of consciousness and cognition. The dispute between representational realists and radical constructivists is whether the conscious cognizing mind can access the mind-independent world, or whether it has to make do with conscious experience. What is taken for granted in both is the construal of the human subject as primarily a conscious cognizing mind. Von Glasersfeld does not question this depiction of the subject, and so his stance on the relation between world and mind becomes relativist, for he believes the cognizing mind is not able to access mind-independent reality. The relativism associated with his radical constructivism is a function of remaining within a philosophy of consciousness. Overcoming relativism without falling back into representational realism requires getting more completely beyond philosophy of con-

Radical Constructivism, Education, and Truth

53

sciousness. This alternative involves an expanded understanding of the human subject in its relation to the world. Rather than depicting the subject primordially as a conscious mind, it requires understanding the subject first of all as an embodied being.40 In this view, cognition is always already embodied, where thought emerges from our bodily capacities and actions in the world.41 This expanded understanding of the human subject allows for a more robust notion of truth. To get beyond a philosophy of consciousness, I will expand my critique of von Glasersfeld’s constructivist anti-realism via the work of philosopher of science Joseph Rouse. He holds a view of (scientific) knowledge that follows along Heideggerian lines, where “science [is] a way of acting on the world, rather than a way of observing and describing it.”42 This is an attractive alternative for knowledge development, for it provides a vantage point from which to critique both realism and anti-realism. Rouse’s critique of realism centres on distinguishing between the (embodied) practical success of scientists acting on the world and the validity of the correspondence theory, where realists too quickly equate “practical validity with a realist construal of truth as correspondence.”43 The latter is a claim about the way that scientific theories refer to mind-independent entities, namely, that they “have the characteristics the theories ascribe to them.”44 For a realist, truth is not about practical validity, but about the accuracy of a conceptual picture. A realist construal relies not only on being able to distinguish neatly between observational elements and conceptual ones, but also on being able to tell a convincing story of how observational data connect to real properties of mind-independent objects. Rouse’s central insight is that these issues do not really matter for science. Realists misconstrue science as a theory-generating enterprise, rather than seeing it as a practical engagement with the world. As I have shown, von Glasersfeld readily accepts practical validity without a correspondence theory, which he associates with his notion of fit. Thus his reminder in his interview with Cardellini that “constructivism is definitely anti-realist”45 should be no surprise. Von Glasersfeld maintains that experience constrains a subject’s mental representation of that world and that a subject has access to that experience only through those cognitive constructions. This argument accords with Rouse’s depiction of constructivists as anti-realists, for central is their denial of “sharp distinctions between observational and theoretical statements.”46 But that denial is an in-house argument

54

Clarence W. Joldersma

with realists, according to Rouse, for the anti-realist concern is still at the level of theory or concept formation rather than a truly practical engagement with the world. Rouse’s criticism of constructivist anti-realism comes from a different angle – a Heideggerian one. He argues that, prior to conscious experience (e.g., observing or theorizing), “we are already engaged with the world in practical activity, and the world simply is what we are involved with.”47 Von Glasersfeld supposes no access to the world except through conscious experiences, whereas Rouse argues embodied interaction with the world is primary. For Rouse, the world is not first of all what a mind consciously experiences and represents, but instead that with which the bodily agent interacts.48 Von Glasersfeld’s notion of constraints is too intellectualistic, relying exclusively on conscious experience and cognitive representation as the way to understand human interaction with the world. Rouse’s approach grounds knowledge in our embodied practices in the world, with what we can do as embodied beings.49 We connect to the world not via theoretical constraints (conceptual constructions) but with ordinary, everyday, bodily being in the world, where practical dealings with the world come before conscious conceptualizations.50 Rouse posits a way of engaging the world prior to (self-) consciousness, whereas both the representational realists and constructivist anti-realists have the conscious mind (subject) as the starting point for person/world interaction. For Rouse, the existence of a real world is already implied in our practical, embodied dealings with it, before we might consciously and cognitively represent it. According to Rouse, the world that manifests itself to us in our practical dealings provides an enduring context for any conceptualization. In his words, “instead of saying that we construct the way the world is, we could just as well say that the world shapes the meaning of our words and deeds.”51 For this to work, our interactions with the world must come prior to the dichotomization between conscious subject and represented or constructed object. Active, bodily movement interacting with the world provides the enduring context for understanding the world.52 The notion of interpretation indicates this context. In particular, Rouse argues that “interpretation does not make the world the way it is; it allows it to show itself the way it is.”53 By this he means that interpretation plays the role of understanding the world with which we are already practically involved and in which we already live and move. As such, interpretation is not construction.

Radical Constructivism, Education, and Truth

55

Precisely because our embodied, interactive practices in the world are prior to our conceptualizations, we can portray the latter as interpretations rather than as constructions. To move the discussion forward, Rouse points out that the quarrel between the representational realists and constructivist anti-realists, although significant, remains embedded in a philosophy of consciousness. More particularly, he alerts us to the fact that constructivism, too, still strongly relies on a position in which mind and world are dichotomized into conscious subject and cognized object. Although von Glasersfeld wishes to have the cognitive activity of construction replace realism’s representationalist spectator epistemology, his notion of fit ends up being, as Rouse might say, a kind of realism with scruples,54 where the constraints of experience on construction function as observable entities within consciousness. Rouse, by contrast, advocates a way of being in the world that gives us a better context for thinking about interpretation and alleviates some of the burden that von Glasersfeld’s constructivism places on cognitive activity in terms of constructing the world. In fact, Rouse’s analysis leaves us with the more manageable task of viewing understanding not as construction but as interpretation. This more hermeneutic view of understanding, because it involves an embodied interaction with the world, alleviates the need to choose between representational realism and von Glasersfeld’s anti-realism, leaving the possibility of a more robust understanding of truth. But Rouse provides “a deflationary account of truth,”55 rather than a substantive one. He accepts a deflationary interpretation of Tarski’s semantic notion of the truth but acknowledges that, as a function of ordinary sentences, it “is almost never at issue in debates over realism.”56 Truth, he argues, is something that is applied only to sentences in a natural language, such as English or Dutch, and even then it does not add anything beyond the assertion itself. Instead, he argues that linguistic practices constituting sentence formation are situated in a “field of meaningful interaction ... [which] allows things to show themselves as they are in a variety of respects.”57 Rouse does not develop this idea of disclosure, which allows things to show themselves, with respect to truth, however. Yet I believe that the Heideggerian insight of disclosure is key in developing a more robust conception of truth. The Greek word aletheia connotes a state of affairs that discloses itself as it is. Heidegger appropriates the idea of aletheia for his under-

56

Clarence W. Joldersma

standing of truth as disclosedness.58 Things are not disclosed as pure givens, but rather as able to be concealed or suppressed. As a result, disclosure has a normative function with respect to knowledge. I wish to draw on these two features – disclosedness and normativity – for an alternative notion of truth. To elaborate this idea and develop these two dimensions, I will build on the recent work of Lambert Zuidervaart, who has developed a robust notion of truth by developing Heidegger’s account. Drawing on Heidegger’s concept of understanding, a mode of being in the world, Zuidervaart elaborates his own idea of the notion of disclosure. For Heidegger, understanding is a way that humans are in the world, which he takes as one mode of disclosedness.59 Central to being human is holding ourselves open in our relationship to ourselves, to other human beings, and to the world. Disclosedness through understanding involves what Heidegger calls projections of our potentials and possibilities. I argue, because projections are not conscious cognitive constructions, they are best understood as the way humans are bodily in the world. Understanding as disclosure is closely connected to embodied presence. Zuidervaart argues that understanding involves an encounter with the world. To be human is to be open to the world, and through this openness we can encounter things as uncovered. Moreover, understanding involves interpreting the purposes for which an entity exists, doing so by elaborating its embeddedness in a purposeful whole.60 Thus an entity is disclosed by understanding its interrelatedness with other entities. I would argue that this practice depends on construing the knower as an embodied being, an engaged agent, who is continually open to the world. On that construal, understanding is not a mind constructing a mental representation but an embodied openness to the world, encountering entities as uncovered in their interrelatedness. On the other side, the notion of disclosedness means that entities are in the open, standing in the disclosure associated with understanding.61 Zuidervaart argues that in its discoveredness the entity is available in many ways. In the context of a discussion about constructivism, of special interest is Zuidervaart’s claim that one of the ways an entity becomes available is as accessibility for assertions (say, in propositions). For Heidegger, an assertion involves an abstraction from the multiplicity of relations to the purposeful whole. Zuidervaart goes beyond this view, and argues that not only would it be fair to say that the asserted entity allows itself to be asserted, but also that the asserted entity “calls for the assertion.”62 The language of avail-

Radical Constructivism, Education, and Truth

57

ability, allowance, and call indicates, at minimum, that the asserted is a not a construction by human minds, but instead relies on a kind of disclosure of the entity that has to do with its assertability. Zuidervaart calls this particular mode of being available the entity’s “predicative availability.”63 By this term, he means that entities are available in many ways for embodied human practices, one of which is making assertions; entities are available for humans to make assertions about. Of interest here with respect to constructivism is the status of assertions for Zuidervaart. If someone makes an assertion about something, she or he does not intentionally construct the content of the assertion. We do not impose our assertions on entities and we do not construct the identity of those entities as such. That is, what is asserted is not a mental representation, a state of consciousness with meaning or content.64 The asserted is the entity itself, in a particular mode of disclosure. Zuidervaart’s formulation changes the status of propositions precisely because an embodied human makes the assertion about the world. Instead of cognitively constructing meaning, an assertor lets the asserted stand out as itself in a certain way of its being uncovered. Predicative availability is one way that entities in the world engage us. It is this availability that makes asserting an interpretive, rather than constructive, practice. That is, asserting something is one response to disclosure and to the way entities stand out in the open. Assertion is only one kind of human activity in a whole range of practices that characterize the embodied way that we are in the world. For example, besides making assertions, we manufacture artifacts, organize communities, and govern political entities. To emphasize that asserting is not privileged, Zuidervaart argues for a variety of human practices that constitute our being in the world.65 This is important for him because he argues against privileging a notion of truth associated with assertions as found in the correspondence theory of truth. Yet, his rejection of such privileging does not mean he throws out the truth of assertions. Instead, he embeds a notion of asserted truth in a larger, more comprehensive theory of truth. In all cases, including asserting, Zuidervaart wishes to connect truth with disclosedness. As such, he says, we cannot make propositional validity the key to a general theory of truth. Zuidervaart instead argues for a broad construal of truth as life-giving disclosure.66 This requires, he suggests, a variety of truth-marking

58

Clarence W. Joldersma

principles, each of which discloses something as normative in connection with a particular set of human practices. Norms are principles, which a group of people holds jointly, that obtain or hold for sets of social practices. He suggests principles such as resourcefulness for the practices of production, solidarity for the practices of community building, justice for the practices of governing, and correctness for the practices of asserting – multiple ways of truth as disclosure. That is, “being in the truth” requires faithfulness to these sorts of principles. Each is true because it is life giving, namely, it leads to human and other creaturely flourishing. Thus fidelity to certain principles would shape these human practices toward societal, earthly well-being. For example, being faithful to the principle of justice would lead social practices and institutions toward increases in equity, including better distribution of resources and enhanced prospects for currently marginalized populations. Faithfulness to the principle of stewardship would shape particular social practices toward reduction of conspicuous consumption and environmental degradation. Ultimately, I suggest, human flourishing will involve not only current generations living meaningful lives with adequate resources, but doing so in a way that allows future generations to do the same. The life-giving disclosure through such faithfulness depends, says Zuidervaart, on how well those social practices align with these truthmarking principles. This goes beyond the constructivist critique of truth as correspondence. For Zuidervaart, truth is “a calling that comes to us from beyond ourselves and beyond the entities and people with which we have dealings.”67 Truth is a process of life-giving disclosure that involves an enigmatic call from beyond the self, others, and the entities that populate the world.68 The call involves an unchosen responsibility toward doing what is right. In responding faithfully to the principles discussed above, we succumb to a felt responsibility and so we implicitly acknowledge that the call comes from beyond ourselves without needing to be clear about its origin. Zuidervaart’s alternative gets us beyond the constructivist’s notion that in the development of knowledge there are no truth claims. Von Glasersfeld focuses attention on the mental states of individual conscious subjects instead on something beyond ourselves. Zuidervaart’s theory of truth turns us back to something outside ourselves and our dealings in the world. Zuidervaart’s idea is appealing because of its normative dimension. For him, truth as a call from beyond ourselves gives rise to the possi-

Radical Constructivism, Education, and Truth

59

bility of intersubjective agreement, something people hold in common. Thus, succumbing to the call of the principle of correctness gives rise to possible intersubjective agreement about assertions. Additionally, fidelity to the principle of solidarity makes possible intersubjective agreement about how to live together in community. At the same time, for Zuidervaart, truth is also the call that itself pulls people together in concert and commonality.69 Thus, being held by the principles of solidarity and correctness will bind people together. This double hold – actively coming together in agreement and passively being held in mutuality – is key for Zuidervaart’s notion of truth as normative: “What helps distinguish true disclosure from false is lifepromoting and life-sustaining fidelity to principles that people hold in common and that hold them in common.”70 Fidelity to truth-marking principles implies faithfulness to that which will open up avenues that lets humans and other creatures flourish. However, this is not to say that truth exists, as it were, by itself, in some specialized transcendent (or metaphysical) realm. Instead, it occurs for Zuidervaart in conjunction with the opening that constitutes disclosure. He states, truth “is a calling that urges upon us the necessity and desirability of practices and institutions that are attuned to that which sustains validity.”71 Truth involves the felt responsibility for orienting social practices that sustain human flourishing. Truth does not transcend time and place, but rather it is within the temporalspatial world and directs human practices toward life giving disclosure. But to avoid reducing truth to a merely human response, Zuidervaart distinguishes between disclosure and validity – validity is our response to truth as disclosure. This distinction allows him to assign responsibility to humans for the difference between right actions and unjust ones, sustainable practices and environmentally damaging ones, correct assertions and mistaken ones.72 He argues, “the facts that entities resist and exceed our grasp [what Heidegger calls ‘refusal’] and that entities present themselves as other than they are [what Heidegger calls ‘obstructing’] are humbling reminders of human finitude and fallibility.”73 Humans are the source of misunderstanding and error in our interpreting that which is disclosed. The validity of knowledge claims is on the human side, in response to disclosure. Zuidervaart cautions, “all the human practices and institutions in the world, no matter how well they support discovery, understanding, reorientation, and right conduct, cannot guarantee that what needs to be disclosed is disclosed.”74 Knowledge constituted by

60

Clarence W. Joldersma

particular human social practices consists of human responses that attempt to interpret that which is disclosed. Zuidervaart’s notion of truth as life-giving disclosure, distinct from validity and human practice, is a good alternative to constructivism’s philosophy of consciousness. It is the latter that forces von Glasersfeld to abandon a notion of truth and retreat to a notion of fit to describe the knowledge-world relation. By contrast, Zuidervaart’s notion of truth as disclosure follows from the idea that humans are always already bodily in the world, rather than from the idea that truth must be established through argumentation about how the conscious mind might contact mind-independent reality. Bodily being in the world allows for Zuidervaart’s notion of truth as something that comes as a call from beyond humans, as life-giving disclosure in the world. This approach still makes humans responsible for the development of knowledge since, as previously stated, validity is not the same as disclosure. For example, a particular asserted claim – say, within biology – may be valid according to certain commonly held criteria and yet not settle once-and-for-all questions of disclosure. What appears disclosed – say, the discovery of a new structure in the cell’s cytoplasm – might well be beyond our present grasp, or manifest itself in ways that in hindsight were misleading. The roots of such non-disclosures are not the entities themselves, but the finiteness of the human grasp and the fallibility of human interpretation. That is, invalid claims or practices are not the fault of the world, but fall on the side of human finiteness and fallibility, as von Glasersfeld also would assert. The responsibility for getting things wrong epistemologically lies on the human side of things. Because humans can make mistakes, overreach, and go astray in our engagement with the world, there is a difference between the call of truth in disclosure and the validity of human responses. Zuidervaart’s position thus does not undermine von Glasersfeld’s educational insights. Instead, I suggest that Zuidervaart’s approach can actually form a better conceptual ground for von Glasersfeld’s constructivist learning practices than his own anti-realist epistemology. Zuidervaart’s emphasis on human responsibility conceptually grounds von Glasersfeld’s insistence that students must be active in knowledge development. Yet Zuidervaart’s argument for responsibility in the human response to disclosure, connected to the idea that such responses involve embodied engagement in the world, alleviates

Radical Constructivism, Education, and Truth

61

the need to interpret student learning as cognitively constructing knowledge in the head. Rather, learning involves actively responding in the context of the truth-marking principles that call the student to, for example, correctness in assertions or solidarity in community. At the same time, Zuidervaart’s notion of validity, which recognizes the finiteness and fallibility of human practices, gives a natural place for von Glasersfeld’s emphasis that students can and do make mistakes in the process of developing knowledge. Put more robustly, Zuidervaart’s emphasis on the life-giving character of truth as disclosure gives a normative orientation to education itself, and thereby situates von Glasersfeld’s insights into teaching and learning within education as a normative practice. Education might be a site of particular social practices that responds to a variety of truth-marking principles. The validity of education, in its particular response to truth as life-giving disclosure, might require actively engaging students in multiple projects in which they jointly respond to the call of resourcefulness in production, solidarity in community, justice in governance, and correctness in assertion. That is, education’s task might be to engage students in many ways of being in truth, where teaching might be construed as invitations to fidelity to these sorts of principles. What would make them valid is the evidence of their life-giving orientation. Teaching might then involve questioning, opening, unsettling, and more generally transforming students’ engagement with the world toward such an orientation. This would likely employ many of von Glasersfeld’s educational insights in order to lead students toward practices that foster personal, communal, and other creaturely flourishing. Thus education’s fidelity to normative principles could shape the next generation’s practices toward human flourishing. Since principles for Zuidervaart are themselves historically learned, contested, formulated, ignored, and misunderstood, and truth is thus historical,75 education would also be the site for discourse and debate about the principles themselves. To co-opt Zuidervaart’s insight, normative education could involve a “process of lifegiving disclosure marked by human fidelity, to which a differentiated array of cultural practices and products ... can contribute in distinct and indispensible ways.”76 The principled character of such education is what makes it normative. And the necessary involvement of the student’s active participation is what makes it sympathetic to many educational insights of constructionism.77

62

Clarence W. Joldersma N OT E S

1 An earlier version of this chapter was published as “Ernst von Glasersfeld’s Radical Constructivism and Truth as Disclosure” in Educational Theory 61 (2011): 275–93. 2 See, by way of comparison, Anoop Gupta, “Constructivism and Peer Collaboration in Elementary Mathematics Education: The Connection to Epistemology,” Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science & Technology Education 4 (4, 2008): 381–6; Andreas Quale, Radical Constructivism: A Relativist Epistemic Approach to Science Education (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2008); Greg S. Goodman, Educational Psychology: An Application of Critical Constructivism (New York: Peter Lang, 2008). 3 D.C. Phillips, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Many Faces of Constructivism,” Educational Researcher 24 (7, 1995): 5–12. 4 Ernst von Glasersfeld, “Learning as a Constructive Activity,” AntiMatters 2 (3, 2008): 33–49. 5 Ernst von Glasersfeld, “Cognition, Construction of Knowledge, and Teaching,” Synthese 80 (1, 1989): 136. 6 Ernst von Glasersfeld, “Radical Constructivism and Teaching,” Ernst von Glasersfeld Homepage, 2001, 9, http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/evg/papers/244.2.pdf. 7 Ibid., 10. 8 Ernst von Glasersfeld, “Aspects of Radical Constructivism and Its Educational Recommendations,” in Theories of Mathematical Learning, ed. Leslie P. Steffe et al. (Hillsdale, nj: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996), 307–14. 9 Ernst von Glasersfeld, “An Introduction to Radical Constructivism,” AntiMatters 2 (3, 2008): 5–20. 10 von Glasersfeld, “Cognition, Construction of Knowledge, and Teaching,” 123. 11 von Glasersfeld, “An Introduction to Radical Constructivism,” 6. He goes on to say, “our knowledge can never be interpreted as a picture or representation of that real world [in itself].” His approach builds on Vico’s idea that the human mind can know only what it has made, and he uses Piaget’s genetic epistemology or developmental constructivism to situate his idea of individual knowledge construction. 12 Ernst von Glasersfeld, “The Radical Constructivist View of Science,” Foundations of Science 6 (1, 2001): 36. 13 von Glasersfeld, “Cognition, Construction of Knowledge, and Teaching,” 124. 14 Ibid. 15 von Glasersfeld, “An Introduction to Radical Constructivism,” 8.

Radical Constructivism, Education, and Truth

63

16 Liberato Cardellini, “The Foundations of Radical Constructivism: An Interview with Ernst von Glasersfeld,” Foundations of Chemistry 8 (2, 2006): 181. 17 von Glasersfeld, “An Introduction to Radical Constructivism,” 9. See also von Glasersfeld, “Cognition, Construction of Knowledge, and Teaching,” 124, 126. 18 Ernst von Glasersfeld, “Facts and the Self from a Constructivist Point of View,” AntiMatters 2 (3, 2008): 23. 19 von Glasersfeld, “An Introduction to Radical Constructivism,” 18. 20 Ernst von Glasersfeld, “Why Constructivism Must Be Radical,” in Constructivism and Education, ed. Marie Larochelle, Nadine Bednarz, and Jim Garrison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 24. 21 von Glasersfeld, “Facts and the Self from a Constructivist Point of View,” 23. 22 von Glasersfeld, “An Introduction to Radical Constructivism,” 14. 23 Stephen Campbell, “Constructivism and the Limits of Reason: Revisiting the Kantian Problematic,” Studies in Philosophy and Education 21 (6, 2002): 422. 24 Ernst von Glasersfeld, Radical Constructivism: A Way of Knowing and Learning (London: RoutledgeFalmer, 1995), 1. 25 Ernst von Glasersfeld, “Introduction: Aspects of Constructivism,” in Constructivism: Theory, Perspectives, and Practice, ed. Catherine Twomey Fosnot (New York: Teachers College Press, 1996), 5. 26 Peter Davson-Galle, “Constructivism: ‘A Curate’s Egg,’” Educational Philosophy and Theory 31 (2, 1999): 212. 27 Aharon Aviram, “Beyond Constructivism: Autonomy-Oriented Education,” Studies in Philosophy and Education 19 (5, 2000): 465, 476. 28 William Cobern and Cathleen Loving, “An Essay for Educators: Epistemological Realism Really is Common Sense,” Science & Education 17 (4, 2008): 435, 436. 29 Derek Louis Meyer, “The Poverty of Constructivism,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 41 (3, 2009): 338. 30 Michael R. Matthews, “Constructivism and Science Education: A Further Appraisal,” Journal of Science Education and Technology 11 (2, 2002): 127. 31 Ibid. Of course, not all correspondence theories rely on an “inside the mind” mental representation. Some, such as Frege, locate thoughts in a third realm. However, it is not clear whether this move would escape all of the criticisms rightly aimed at the more traditional idea of knowledge as mental representation. 32 Barry Allen, Truth in Philosophy (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1993); Jerry A Fodor, Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1987), 100.

64

Clarence W. Joldersma

33 Matthews, “Constructivism and Science Education,” 127. 34 Robert Nola, “Constructivism in Science and Science Education: A Philosophical Critique,” Science & Education 6 (1, 1997): 71. 35 Michael P. Lynch, Truth in Context: An Essay on Pluralism and Objectivity (Boston, ma: mit Press, 2001), 145. Comparing our thoughts to the world would require the “priority of nature over culture,” Allen, Truth in Philosophy, 9. 36 Lynch agrees that some facts might appear to be absolute, independent of all conceptual schemes, but maintains that this is illusionary. Instead, these are what he calls virtual absolutes, because they fit within every conceptual scheme. He argues that virtual absolutes always need an appeal to a conceptual scheme in order to understand the fact (proposition), whereas no such appeal is needed for absolute facts, as they are understandable outside of all conceptual schemes. Virtual absolutes always already require concepts to be understood, unlike absolute facts. 37 Ilkka Niiniluoto, Critical Scientific Realism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 11. 38 Raf Vanderstraeten and Gert Biesta, “Constructivism, Educational Research, and John Dewey,” The Paideia Archive, 2004, sec. 1, http://www.bu.edu/wcp/ papers/amer/amervand.htm. 39 Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1987), 138. 40 See Brady Heiner, “The Recorporealization of Cognition in Phenomenology and Cognitive Science,” Continental Philosophy Review 41 (2, 2008): 115–26; Shaun Gallagher, How the Body Shapes the Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005). 41 Mark Johnson, The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding (Chicago, il: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 113; Alva Noe, Action in Perception (Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 2006), 1. 42 Joseph Rouse, Knowledge and Power: Towards a Political Philosophy of Science (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1987), 129. 43 Ibid., 141. 44 Ibid., 127. 45 Cardellini, “The Foundations of Radical Constructivism,” 180. 46 Rouse, Knowledge and Power, 128. 47 Ibid., 143. 48 Shaun Gallagher, “Intersubjectivity in Perception,” Continental Philosophy Review 41 (2, 2008): 164. 49 Rouse, Knowledge and Power, 145. 50 Ibid., 155.

Radical Constructivism, Education, and Truth

65

51 Ibid., 157. See also Johnson, The Meaning of the Body, 10. 52 Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, “Animation: The Fundamental, Essential, and Properly Descriptive Concept,” Continental Philosophy Review 42 (3, 2009): 375. 53 Rouse, Knowledge and Power, 159. 54 Ibid., 147. 55 Ibid., 142. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., 160. 58 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany, ny: suny Press, 1996), sec. 44. See also Anne-Marie Power, “Truth and Aletheia in Heidegger’s Thought,” De Philosophia 14 (1, 1998): 109–20. 59 Lambert Zuidervaart, Artistic Truth: Aesthetics, Discourse, and Imaginative Disclosure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 79. 60 Ibid., 81. 61 Ibid., 106. 62 Ibid., 89. Here, Zuidervaart creatively appropriates Heidegger’s idea that propositions are grounded in the more fundamental notion of disclosure. 63 Ibid., 88. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid., 97. 66 Ibid., 96. 67 Ibid., 108. 68 I have elaborated elsewhere the enigmatic character of such a call; see Clarence W. Joldersma, “A Spirituality of the Desert for Education: The Call of Justice Beyond the Individual or Community,” Studies in Philosophy and Education 28 (3, 2009): 193–208. 69 Zuidervaart, Artistic Truth, 108. 70 Ibid., 207. 71 Ibid., 108. 72 Ibid., 107. Lambert Zuidervaart, “Truth Matters: Heidegger and Horkheimer in Dialectical Disclosure,” Telos: A Quarterly Journal of Critical Thought 145 (2008): 158. 73 Zuidervaart, Artistic Truth, 115. 74 Ibid. 75 Zuidervaart, “Truth Matters,” 158. 76 Zuidervaart, Artistic Truth, 207. 77 I would like to thank Darren Walhof for his helpful critique of this chapter.

66

Matthew Walhout

3 The Jelly and the Shot: Laying down the Law for Pragmatism in Quantum Physics M AT T H E W W A L H O U T

Bertrand Russell is reported to have said that there are two kinds of philosopher: one who sees the world as a bowl of jelly and another who sees it as a bucket of shot. Russell considered himself to have undergone a conversion from the former view to the latter in 1898, when he parted ways with his Hegelian friends and began to focus on quantificational logic.1 He came to believe that in Hegel’s jelly-like world, philosophical analysis did not stand a chance, because things and facts and language were so holistically interconnected and susceptible to dialectical change that no one could get a firm grip on whatever matters might be important. Instead, he came to think the world had to be comprised of shot-like pellets, which could be picked up piece by piece, examined in all their atomistic detail, and represented in clear and truthful language. Besides possibly marking analytic philosophy’s moment of conception, Russell’s conversion can be considered the immediate cause for that tradition’s long-standing boycott against all Hegelian imports. Over the last hundred years, this restrictive policy has not been insignificant to discussions of truth. For instance, owing to what Hegel might have likened to a professionally imposed determinate negation, for a time it was nearly impossible to follow his lead in molding both alethic and axial matters into the same jelly. What truth is and why truth matters had to be considered, not holistically, but as separate questions. This way of dividing up truth has served as a keystone in

Pragmatism in Quantum Physics

67

what has been called the fact/value dichotomy, which lumps the world into at least two distinct pellets, and it has encouraged scientists like me to accept as a given the separability of two important issues. The suggestion has been that we should maintain separate understandings of what we are doing in science and why we are doing it, or that we should not confuse what science is with what science is for. In this chapter, I will suggest that, if these issues overlap and become mutually dependent (as Hegel supposedly would have allowed), then scientific practices can be more satisfactorily taken into account and scientists can gain a more unified understanding of their work. I will begin and end by introducing and then drawing upon certain themes in the pragmatist tradition in philosophy. Between these philosophical sections, I will give three non-technical illustrations of how quantum physicists use and exemplify pragmatist modes of reasoning. So I offer a kind of sandwich here: two starchy slices of philosophy with three meaty (or maybe cheesy) physics-flavoured layers in between. To begin, there are some indications that Hegel’s chances are starting to look good. In a recent book titled Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought, philosopher Paul Redding argues that the spirit of Hegel is indeed on the move.2 As Redding describes, the revival takes many of its cues from Wilfrid Sellars, who criticizes both empiricism and rationalism for perpetuating myths about what is given in perception and in empirical logic. Sellars affirms what he understands to be a Kantian view – that knowledge rests upon understanding and judgment – and argues that judgments themselves must be grounded in reason. That is, for a judgment to be justified, it has to enter into what Sellars calls “the space of reasons,” where it can be affirmed or challenged on the basis of rules and norms.3 Some reasoning is a matter of perceptual experience and inner episodes in the minds of individuals, but much of it involves intersubjective coordination. In giving each other supporting reasons for their judgments, people appeal to logical, grammatical, and ethical norms, and in demanding reasons of each other, we impose these same norms. Through this sort of peer-review process, judgments (and actions based upon them) come to instantiate and reinforce versions of what Sellars calls a world story.4 According to pragmatist interpretations of Hegel, such as those of Robert Pippin and Robert Brandom,5 a similar dynamic of socially embedded and normative reason determines the Hegelian absolute spirit.

68

Matthew Walhout

Whether we discuss it in terms of spirit or story, pragmatists point to the system of thought that is borne in the linguistic articulations, evaluative judgments, and decisive actions of people who live in society. In order to make a move in the world story, a person has to think, speak, or act in a way that makes sense in terms of the story’s implicit rules or norms. A person can remain true to the story only by making correct moves. Regarded in this sense, truth is not simply a matter of correspondence between propositions and worldly states of affairs, but is more generally a matter of propositions that fit into or have implications for the world story. Sellars thinks along these lines when he defines truth as semantic assertibility.6 He thinks that while an objective correspondence relation is a necessary condition of truth, it neither defines truth nor explains what truth is. In his view, truth is the appropriateness of a sentence’s appearance in the context of a world story. In order to be true, a sentence not only has to stand in correspondence relations with objects but also has to matter in the world story. When understood as semantic assertibility, truth is this mattering; it is the property of having implications under the rules of a world story. Later I will take this account of truth seriously, and to do so, it will not make sense to dissociate the question of what truth is from the question of why truth matters, so we can expect to find ourselves in the thick of the jelly that Russell found so distasteful. My general interest in pragmatism is focused precisely on this blending of why questions with what questions, but I also have a specific interest in what a pragmatist philosophy of science has to say about my own field of quantum physics. To serve both levels of interest, I want to keep an eye on certain Kantian and Hegelian themes that Sellars distils into his work on language and empirical reason. Sellars uses the methods of quantificational logic to register an immanent critique against mainstream interpretations of that logic. In fact, his concerns about interpretation would not be discordant with what we hear from continental philosophers. Unlike that group, however, Sellars challenges the dominant analytic interpretations not by dismissing, but rather by using, the analytic tools of his time. One of his specific concerns, which has to do with the issue of quantification itself, will get some play in the illustrations I will get to shortly. For my present purposes, I suggest thinking of quantification as a kind of linguistic move that we can make in order to go from a claim like “physicists are philosophers” to others like “all physicists are philosophers” or “some physicists are philosophers” or “no physicists are

Pragmatism in Quantum Physics

69

philosophers.” The problematic issue is this: categorical definitions have to be assumed as givens in quantified statements, whereas they need not be assumed in unquantified statements like “physicists are philosophers.” The latter may actually draw categorical definitions into question. This problem with quantification will surface at several points in the following illustrations.7 A second issue that will come up is the logic of material inferences, which relies heavily on the (Hegelian) principle of determinate negation. Whereas there is only one way to accomplish a formal negation, there can be lots of ways to produce a determinate negation. For example, the formal negation of the predicate “circular” is the predicate “not circular.” However, the possible determinate negations of “circular” include “triangular,” “square,” and “pentagonal.” The idea is that if a property (such as shape) is determined, or has a determinate value, then it is impossible for it to have a different value. Note that the language of possibility here reveals that the powerful tools of modal logic are at hand. But the most important point is that the logic of determinate negation respects not only the formal properties of predicates and propositions but also the non-logical contents of sentences – the concepts and meanings.8 Only through the contentrespecting material logic of determinate negation can we make so simple an inference as, “The pavement is dry, so it must not have rained recently.” To reason in accordance with such an inference is to understand and endorse the concepts as befitting the material circumstances and to commit oneself to the consequences of the inferred conclusion. There is a bracing realism in this way of reasoning – it is a realism with respect to material consequences, and it accepts physical necessities and puts available possibilities to use. It is a realism for pragmatists. In the framework of material inferences, physical laws have an important logical role to play. But laws come with strings attached: to use them, we have to make a lot of implicit ceteris paribus assumptions about the world. Imagine, for instance, that we infer from the sound of thunder that there was a flash of lightning in the very recent past. In order to make this inference, we assume that laws governing meteorology, electricity, optics, and acoustics are in force. Moreover, along with these assumptions about physical necessity, we rely on a further assumption that the laws (and concepts) we use are sufficient in the given situation.9 We assume that no disturbances will change the situation as we have conceived it.

70

Matthew Walhout

But what is to be done when our inferences go wrong? To take another everyday example, imagine that we hear rain on the roof at night, and so we expect to find worms on the pavement in the morning. But then we find birds on the pavement instead. We have to conclude that something went wrong in our thinking; some of our assumptions must have been materially invalid. But what was our error? Was it a sin of omission? Did we leave something out when we thought it sufficient to regard worms as free from certain kinds of disturbances (like carnivores)? Or was it a sin of commission? Did we overreach by assuming it necessary that a worm has to be a certain kind of thing (the kind of thing that never is inside a bird)? We are faced with the question of where to focus our theoretical reconstruction. Should we rethink our basic conceptions of objects, or should we rework our law statements to express modified relations between known objects? As the illustrations will suggest, this kind of question turns out to be unusually difficult to answer in the context of quantum physics. Before jumping into the illustrations, I should say a bit more about what they are for and how they should be interpreted. They will all be metaphorical representations of actual physics experiments that can be done with particles such as atoms or electrons. You may have heard it said that quantum particles display wavelike characteristics that the everyday particulates in soil and smoke do not seem to have. My first illustration will magnify this kind of quantum strangeness by describing how our macroscopic world might work if grains of sand displayed wavelike properties. But I do not want this mental image to convey the wrong idea about Russell’s jelly and shot taxonomy. There may be inviting parallels between particles and shot on the one hand and waves and jelly on the other, but Russell’s point is not primarily about the physical structures of the world’s fundamental constituents; it is about the logical and linguistic starting points of philosophical analysis. Similarly, these illustrations are supposed to provide not pictorial templates for understanding the “furniture of the world” but, rather, logical and operational templates for understanding the slippery conceptual basis of quantum reasoning. So, on to the first example, which involves a quantum hourglass that has two channels at its waist.10 The channels are arranged side by side and can be separately opened and closed. The amazing thing about this hourglass is how the sand piles up at the bottom: the shape of the pile changes dramatically if both channels are open instead of

Pragmatism in Quantum Physics

71

just one. If just one of the channels is open, the result is the same broad pile of sand usually found at the bottom of a normal hourglass. However, if both are open, the result is not just the sum of two normal piles. Instead, there is a set of finely spaced ridges, as if some gardener has built up a set of parallel mounds and raked away the sand from the furrow in between. This is a strange result because, somehow, opening an extra channel has eliminated the pile-up of sand in the furrow. Now, we might imagine that sand grains in the two parallel streams can collide after they fall through the different channels, and that these collisions are the cause of the pattern in the sand pile. So we might consider what happens when we throw sand into the top of the hourglass one grain at a time; this way, as each grain falls, it cannot collide with any others. But even if we do this, the grains gradually build up the same, furrowed pattern. What is more, if we were to close one of the slits and start over, then the usual, smooth pile would result. Somehow, it is the presence of the two channels that leads to the furrow. There is still another mystery in this hourglass. If we try to monitor which channel each grain of sand traverses, we find that the furrows always disappear – we just get the usual, broad pile of sand. So, it is not just the presence of two channels that leads to the furrows; there is a more general, operational law that can be stated as: Were it possible for us to tell which of the two channels each grain of sand traversed, the furrow would not appear. If we want the furrow, we have to make sure there is no way to answer the which-channel question. We cannot even use familiar quantificational grammar to assert, “Each grain goes through a channel.” It is as if we are unable to think at all in terms of the specific paths of individual grains anymore; we are restricted to thinking of things that can traverse two channels at once, something spread out, like a wave crashing across a wide stretch of beach. Indeed, if we follow this wave metaphor and employ wave-related mathematics, we can understand and predict the pattern of furrows. So, depending on how we set up and monitor the two channels in this quantum hourglass, we are forced to think in terms of either sand grains or sand waves. The bottom line for this example is simply this: the appropriate way of thinking – that is, the way to predict the correct kind of sand pile – is intimately related to whether or not we can say which path each sand grain takes as it falls through the hourglass. The second illustration involves a fictional bowl of alphabet soup.11 Imagine that we have filtered the soup so that the only pieces of pasta

72

Matthew Walhout

in it are B-shaped, and imagine that the pieces are indistinguishable from each other. There is no way to tell them apart. We may be able to arrange them to have, say, ten pieces lined up from left to right; but we cannot keep track of the order of the lineup; we cannot say which piece is in which position. Of course, in everyday alphabet soup, we could keep track of the order by labelling the pieces of pasta with bits of black pepper or other physical markers. But in quantum soup this is impossible. The pieces of quantum pasta cannot be marked in a way that allows us to tell which one we are looking at, or which one is in which place. Once again, as with the quantum hourglass, the which question becomes problematic. In fact, we cannot hold onto our usual ways of using pronouns like which, each, this, and a, because we cannot keep track of or even define the identities of the pasta pieces. The quantum soup has a strange mereological quality and leaves us with linguistic recourse only to plural quantifiers and universals. The pieces of pasta can be grouped and aggregated, but they are not individually identifiable in the sense of being distinguished one from another.12 Statements about them must apply generally to any of the pieces or must relate to groups of such pieces. If we wished to speak about a specific piece (this one, the one that is here, now), we would have to point at it and indicate its relative position in the group. But even then there would be no way to tell whether that particular piece was, say, rapidly trading places (or identities) with other pieces. Nor could we tell if, at any given time, we were actually pointing at a composite mixture of pasta pieces, each one having its identity split up and distributed over various spatial locations. In the end, as we attempt to point at this piece of pasta in the soup, all we can be sure of is that we are pointing at a place defined by an overall spatial pattern formed by objects of a particular kind. There are no quantified factual statements that can specify which place a certain object holds; such statements have become semantically impossible to assert. The payoff for taking this approach is that it allows my theory to account for the quantum soup’s unusual behaviour. For example, under certain conditions adding one more B-shaped piece of pasta to the bowl might prompt all of the other pieces to collapse into a tightly packed ball. This would be an unusual kind of phase change that we would never see outside of the quantum world, and to predict it we have to use an unusual grammatical logic. The bottom line in this example is that the logic of object identification is a linchpin that

Pragmatism in Quantum Physics

73

holds together the counting measurements that we do in the laboratory and the theoretical (statistical) calculations that allow us to predict what we will observe. How we account theoretically has to lead us to the same numerical answers that we get when we count experimentally. In other words, the grammar that we use in statistical reasoning has to lead to statements that are “empirically adequate”; and only the strange grammar of indistinguishability results in a theory that matches up with observation. The third illustration gets at the strangest feature of all in the quantum world.13 Imagine that we study twins who were separated at birth and adopted by different families, and imagine these families do not know each other and never interact. Our aim is to follow up on the work of well-known researchers in the field of neuropsychology, who have claimed that there is a correlation between a child’s aptitude for spatial reasoning and the 2D:4D ratio of the child’s right hand. The 2D:4D ratio, or what I will just call the “finger ratio,” is the number that you get when you divide the length of your index finger (the second digit) by the length of your ring finger (the fourth digit). Now, there is a surprising body of literature related to this ratio, but I am not staking this example on any actual studies of the correlation between finger ratios and spatial reasoning aptitudes. For now, just imagine that some big-time researchers claim to have found the following statistical correlation: those children who have finger ratios of less than one when they are younger than three years old (their ring fingers are longer than their index fingers) also have, on the whole or as a group, above-average aptitude for spatial reasoning in later childhood. Imagine that our study is a follow-up to that earlier study – we want to see whether the conclusion is right, and if it is, we want to know more about it. To keep things simple, we will describe the finger ratio as being either “high” (greater than one), or “low” (less than one); and we will measure spatial reasoning aptitude by way of a standardized test, assigning scores of either “A” for above average or “B” for below average. What the previous study predicts is a trend that involves above-average aptitude for people with low finger ratios and below-average aptitude for people with high finger ratios. Now, given that adoptive parents might know about this prediction, it is possible that children could be given special attention based on their parents’ measurements of the finger ratio during early childhood. Parents could make special efforts either to foster or to compensate for the predicted aptitudes of

74

Matthew Walhout

their children. Or, maybe, finding out what is predicted about their children would make some parents eager and others reluctant to subject their children to aptitude tests. In order to ensure against the possible biases that these factors could introduce in our study, we decide to track thousands of sets of separated twins, only a fraction with parents who bothered to measure the finger ratio in early childhood. When we administer our test for spatial reasoning aptitude (once children reach age six), we do so only for those children whose parents never measured the finger ratio. Thus, by the end of the study, we have the result of exactly one measurement for each child – either the finger ratio measurement at an early age or the aptitude measurement at a later age. This seems like a test that we might actually be able to do in the real world, and maybe we could use the results to learn something about a predicted correlation. But if we did the study in a quantum world, where twins had certain characteristics of what physicists call “entangled” pairs of quantum particles, we might examine our data and come away with the following three observations: 1 In considering pairs of separated twin siblings for whom both adoptive families measured the finger ratio, we find that the measured ratio was low for both twins in 9 per cent of the cases. 2 For cases in which siblings were subjected to the two different kinds of measurements, whenever one sibling exhibited a low finger ratio in early childhood the other sibling later scored an A on the spatial-reasoning test. 3 In no case did both twins score As on the spatial-reasoning test. These results are downright baffling. It seems impossible for all three observations to be valid. From the first observation, we naturally want to conclude that in roughly 9 per cent of all sets of twins, both children will have low finger ratios, regardless of whether their parents measured this quantity. We also want to extend the second observation to say that any twin with a low finger ratio will have a sibling with high spatial-reasoning aptitude, regardless of whether any measurements were performed. From the combination of these two inferences, we naturally expect that in at least 9 per cent of all sets of twins, both siblings will have high aptitude for spatial reasoning. Yet, in our vast set of data, there is not even a single instance of both twins scor-

Pragmatism in Quantum Physics

75

ing an A on the aptitude test. Once again we seem to be having trouble using pronouns. This time we stumble when we attempt to use the quantifiers any and all to generalize our statistical results. In all three of these illustrations, the quantum world forbids certain kinds of assumptions that we usually make in classical physics by way of explicit or implicit ceteris paribus clauses – assumptions that are often encapsulated in the all-things-being-equal shorthand of pronominal grammar. For instance, the laws of Newtonian physics rely on the assumption that – ceteris paribus – every particle has a unique spatial position at any given time. However, as the hourglass and alphabet soup examples show, we can run into trouble in the quantum context if we attempt to track a particle’s trajectory by saying, “it was here then.” The problem arises when the subject we are talking about becomes something to which certain quantifiers and demonstratives cannot be applied. As I mentioned above, this semantic issue is connected with traditional concerns about laws in philosophy of science. In order to use a scientific law, one generally has to make ceteris paribus assumptions of various kinds, and now it should be clear that some of these are embedded in our use of pronouns. Many of our basic assumptions have been challenged by a century of quantum physics, and especially by the twin experiment. That result so defies traditional reasoning that we have had to scramble to conceive of new explanatory laws. Some have held on to the hope of finding an uncontrolled variable that was overlooked in the experiment – a hidden mechanism that can alter one twin’s spatial reasoning ability but is triggered only when the separated sibling’s parents perform a finger-ratio measurement. Others have abandoned the notion of causal triggers and have begun to regard correlated pairs of twins, rather than individuals, as fundamental ontological entities. The list of interpretations goes on, along with much discussion of what makes the twin experiment come out as it does.14 Nevertheless, the equations of quantum mechanics allow very accurate predictions of the final statistical outcomes. This fact allows many physicists to shake off their anxieties about conceptual explanations and turn their attention toward technologies that can use the unusual results of quantum experiments. Such practical applications have become possible not because of explanations about what individual particles do, but because of the operational laws that connect the equations of quantum theory with the statistical sampling procedures of the laboratory. Only these operational laws, and no proposed

76

Matthew Walhout

explanatory laws, have been found empirically adequate, materially consequential, and technologically reliable. So, shall we make a clean break from the tradition of taking explanatory laws seriously? While much of the world has emerged from the shadow of positivism, this question has kept quantum physics in the penumbra. A positivistic operationalism seems to be the only obvious recourse in the quantum world. After quantum objects slip through the fingers of our quantificational grammar, all we can do is shovel them into statistical distributions. These distributions are all that the equations of quantum theory seem to be about. But what about the things themselves? What about particles and the explanatory laws that govern them? What about the scientific ideal of understanding causes and effects at the level of particulars? Is there a grammatical scheme that can help us recover these things? Or is hoping to recover them just nostalgic, wishful thinking? These questions must be understood in their social context – the context of a scientific practice that I have been calling quantum physics. Quantum physics is the space of reasons where physicists offer and demand justifications for their inferences and test the assertibility of scientific claims. The participants are normatively bound to endorse good theoretical arguments and accept the outcomes of experiments. In this context, an individual can offer reasons for following certain lines of inquiry, and by accepting those reasons the scientific community recognizes the individual as one of its own. Thus, a small minority of physicists finds justification for focusing on foundational questions in quantum theory; and within this group, a few still hope to recover explanatory laws. These scientists face the stiff challenge of discovering new rules for the language of physics and simultaneously reconstructing two levels of theoretical discourse: the object level and the law level. Such radical developments are not without precedent, but they are few and far between. One can point to the momentous shifts that Maxwell and Einstein introduced into the world story of physics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I think our historical awareness of such previous revolutions is what allows us to remain open to the idea that future revolutions are possible. At this point it is possible to see how axial questions have a rightful place in scientific practices. Rendering judgment on why and what for questions is a part of what scientists do qua scientists. They ask themselves whether they should pursue this speculative theory or that strategic application. But where does the “should” come from? How does

Pragmatism in Quantum Physics

77

conceptual development become normative? To outline an answer to this question, I will look again at the intersubjective dynamics of scientific practices, particularly at the deliberative processes through which ideas and proposals are evaluated. When scientists admit or deny the appeals and proposals of others, our ethical and ontological commitments become unavoidably entangled. A proposal asks us to render judgments that tie our understanding of what is to our understanding of what is right. To splice these understandings together, we make inferences of two kinds. One is a counterfactual inference, in which we conclude that a possible decision or action would be appropriate if we were to endorse a particular interpretation of an actual situation. By way of this first kind of inference we establish a rule and commit to following it. The rule maps our descriptions of the world onto our responsibilities in the world. Of course, in order to generate the descriptions in the first place, we have to make inferences of different sort. Some form of reasoning – an empirical inference – has to relate our perceptual experiences to our concepts. These inferences, too, require our judgment and endorsement. In order to defend the descriptive claim that “the world is so and so,” we have to be able to justify the normative claim that “it is appropriate to describe the world as so and so.” By way of our judgments we reach two important conclusions: that we should accept certain counterfactual conditional statements as normative rules, and that we should endorse certain descriptions of the world as appropriate premises for our conditional rule statements. In Sellarsian terms, all of this suggests that people have two inseparable sets of evaluative judgments to make when a proposal is placed before them in the space of reasons.15 First, we have to decide what rules and norms we should follow. Second, we have to adopt an appropriate description of the world, so that we can articulate possible verdicts that might be rendered – verdicts that can be thought of as possible moves in our world story. There is an apparent chicken-and-egg problem here. To lay down rules, one needs to describe the world. But to describe the world, one needs to understand its rules. Rather than regard this situation as a problem, however, one might take it to be a basic linguistic fact, so that rule statements and objective descriptions are, simply, so interdependent as to be mutually constitutive. This seems to be the view that Sellars adopted. I take much of his work to warn against the philosophical misstep of assuming quantificational grammar to be the handmaiden of logical atomism – for this assump-

78

Matthew Walhout

tion could have disastrous consequences. An atomistic separation of rules from descriptions, or normativity from objectivity, could derail the process of inferential reasoning and threaten the coherence of a world story. My quantum illustrations help to justify concerns like the ones Sellars had. The breakdown of familiar pronominal grammar in the quantum context is telling. Not only does it reveal our tacit reliance on quantificational logic in scientific practice; it also shows that our interpretations of this logic give shape to our conceptual formulations, explanations, and inferences. We have discovered that our usual object concepts and law-based explanations can fail to support an inferential framework for keeping track of particular things in the world. However, we need not insist that this is anything more than a linguistic discovery. It is not necessarily a discovery of new extra-linguistic things, properties, or kinds. We may only be recognizing that our traditional grammatical methods, which we use to chop our thoughts into specific kinds and objects, can fail to provide practical traction in certain contexts. After all, what I have been calling the quantum world is no different than the everyday world; only our pragmatic use of language differentiates between the two. There is, no doubt, one “real world” in which we encounter material consequences. But now the logic embedded in our traditional ways of speaking about the world has proven insufficient as a universal material logic. If we follow our usual quantificational paths, we can wind up making inferences that are materially invalid. This is a matter of practical concern. To answer the question of how we should describe the world, we have to make normative judgments about possible ways of being objective. What kinds of things and rules should we use as the (onto)logical basis for our reasoning? I will venture to suggest that, in actuality, we usually answer this question in terms of what I will call a pragmatic teleology. We define things in certain ways so that they will do what we need them to do – that is, so that they function in our inferential framework. As long as deliberations can be sustained, we are happy to let sleeping ontologies lie. Of course, we do not define ourselves as if we were impersonal objects; persons are not things to be put to use. Rather, all objective reasoning is done by and for persons as we face material consequences in the real world. Only those logical and linguistic structures that serve our needs will ever be considered adequate or right.

Pragmatism in Quantum Physics

79

Where does this leave the concept of truth? Sellars maintained that the truth (or semantic assertibility) of a sentence is determined by whether the sentence fits within the inferential framework of a language. However, he suggested that only a perfect language user would be able to discern whether the fit is actually perfect.16 Thus, without insisting on universal truths translatable into all languages, he used a robust concept of ultimate truth that relied on the ideal nature of an all-knowing judge. Mere mortals, left to their own best judgments, would be able to make only provisional or conditional claims. Thus, Sellars did not think that deliberations in the space of reasons could decide the ultimate truth or assertibility of statements and proposals. Rather, he thought their main function was to develop and convey conceptual content, to reveal logical implications and material consequences, and to allow for the development of language and pragmatic understanding. If we wish to understand what is meant when people refer to “scientific truth,” we can draw from Sellars’s conception of truth as semantic assertibility. This conception allows truth both to serve as a regulative ideal in scientific practice and also to function as an epistemological concept in meta-linguistic semantics. In scientific practice, to make a claim is to introduce a statement into the space of reasons with the intention that it be assertible within an object/rule framework of scientific reasoning. Whether we make a claim while implementing laboratory procedures or thinking through abstract models, we intend for the claim to fit into the formal and material logic of the context. However, if the fit is drawn into question, the claim can become the object of meta-linguistic debate. Thus, a statement intended for use at one (practical) level of language can become a statement intended for analysis at a higher (theoretical) meta-level. The point of reasoning at the theoretical level is to understand practical language in terms of a formal logic and to determine whether statements are consistent with that logical framework. Such a meta-linguistic theory about the truth of statements is what Sellars calls epistemology.17 This approach provides a helpful way to understand epistemological reasoning as a key – but by no means the only – element of scientific practice. The approach is pragmatic at its core, for a practical intention to use statements is what motivates the theoretical concern about truth in language. We analyze the formal constraints on what makes something assertible only because we want language to align with the

80

Matthew Walhout

material constraints that we encounter in practice. So in science, as in pragmatism, epistemology is the servant of practical philosophy. Scientists in general do not aspire to be perfect language users. While we have to use language in order to clarify concepts and make inferences, we do not aim to speak as God would speak. Nor do we feel the need to do so. Truth is not what we are after in science; it is what we rely upon. We are bound by it, but we can never be convergent upon it. While the regulative ideal of truth puts important constraints on our reasoning, we cannot zero in on truth like we might zero in on the conceptual contents and implications of our understanding. These latter, materially consequential modes of thought are the central concerns of our scientific inquiries and judgments. So, finally, whether you ask me what it is to work as a physicist or why I would do such work, I can offer this single answer: to articulate and heed the demands of reason in a context wherein humans face material consequences. Of course, there are other, broader contexts in which similar questions may be asked about the whats and the whys of work outside of physics. If, in these non-scientific settings, we ask ourselves what we are doing and why we are doing it, perhaps the answer I have just given will suffice. But there is one last point to make, for you might object that my suggested bivalent response trades on a linguistic ambiguity, because “to articulate and heed” could be interpreted as a short form of “in order to articulate and heed.” In other words, my phrasing does not make a distinction between a matter-of-fact definition of scientific work and an axiological explanation of the aim of that work. To conclude, I offer a possible refutation of this objection, albeit a speculative one. Why should we take this possible distinction to be a necessary one? Maybe we should consider our work to be defined by its aims, its essence to be determined by its telos. Maybe the assertibility of my single answer suggests that there is a context in which what and why questions are not separable. Were this the case, we would have to develop a conceptual language for that context, so that we could formulate a single question in order to inquire about our work – a single, assertible question for which we already have a single, assertible answer. Like others who have taken this dialectical route (Maxwell and Einstein, perhaps), we would be responding not to physical necessity but to conceptual possibility. For we would not have felt the force of a decisive negation of any inference; we would only have felt the

Pragmatism in Quantum Physics

81

internal stresses and strains of concepts on the verge of either fusing together or breaking apart – like atomic nuclei or globs of jelly.

N OT E S

1 Bertrand Russell, Portraits from Memory (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956), 17. 2 Paul Redding, Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 3 Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1997), 76. 4 Wilfrid Sellars, “Realism and the New Way of Words,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 8 (1948): 601–34; Naturalism and Ontology (Reseda, ca: Ridgeview, 1979), 128–30; also, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. 5 Robert Pippin, Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Robert Brandom, Tales of the Mighty Dead (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2002), 178– 234. 6 Wilfrid Sellars, Science and Metaphysics (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), 91–115. 7 For more on Sellars’s concerns about quantificational logic and grammar, see, for instance, his Science, Perception, and Reality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 106–26, 247–81; also, Naturalism and Ontology. 8 Wilfrid Sellars, “Inference and Meaning,” Mind 62 (1953): 313–38. See also Robert Brandom, Articulating Reasons (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2000), 53–5. 9 Wilfrid Sellars, “Concepts as Involving Laws and Inconceivable without Them,” Philosophy of Science 15 (1948): 287–315. See also Marc Lange, Laws and Lawmakers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 10 The hourglass illustration is meant to convey the results of double-slit diffraction experiments, which are described in most physics textbooks. 11 The soup example gives a taste of the combinatorial logic of indistinguishable quantum particles. This logic seems to be required in all reliable models of many-particle systems, such as those used to compute probability distributions of electrons in atoms or atoms in cold, dense clouds. 12 For a more technical discussion of this point, see Paul Teller, “From Particles to Quanta,” in An Interpretive Introduction to Quantum Field Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 16–36.

82

Matthew Walhout

13 This example illustrates the effects of quantum entanglement. Early on in the development of quantum mechanics, the notion of entanglement was the focus of an important theoretical debate surrounding the famous epr paper. See A. Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen, “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?” Physical Review 47 (1935): 777–80. That debate simmered for three decades before the physicist John S. Bell came up with a formal argument predicting that entanglement must have strange, empirically observable consequences. See J.S. Bell, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). My illustration of the strangeness of entanglement’s consequences is structurally parallel to another illustration that I have long appreciated. The latter is found in P.G. Kwiat and L. Hardy, “The Mystery of the Quantum Cakes,” American Journal of Physics 68 (2000): 33–6. 14 For more on this subject, see J.S. Bell, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics. There are also more recent books on the subject, including Gregg Jaeger, Entanglement, Information, and the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 2009). 15 Wilfrid Sellars, “Language, Rules, and Behavior,” in Pure Pragmatics and Possible Worlds, ed. Jeffrey F. Sicha (Reseda, ca: Ridgeview, 1980), 125–56. Originally published in John Dewey: Philosopher of Science and Freedom, ed. Sidney Hook (New York: Dial Press, 1950). 16 Sellars, “Realism and the New Way of Words,” 426–9. 17 Ibid., 426.

4 Cognitive Diversity, Conceptual Schemes, and Truth OLAF ELLEFSON

For Donald Davidson, the concept of truth is central to providing an account of meaning, but remains indefinable yet utterly intuitive.1 For Stephen Stich, on the other hand, truth (or at least the concept of truth as used by Davidson, Alfred Tarski, and others) is idiosyncratic, limited, and best understood as a modestly valuable remnant of folk psychology that awaits either elimination or modification by an improved psychology.2 I wish to evaluate and ultimately challenge precisely this contention by Stich – that our intuitive notion of truth (as expressed in T-sentences3 such as “‘the grass is green’ is true if and only if grass is green”) is uninteresting or limited. To do so, however, will require a bit of background to motivate both Stich’s challenge and what I take to be a response that is commensurable with Davidson’s view. STICH’S PROGRAM

The results of numerous studies conducted in and since the 1970s show that subjects consistently fail a variety of basic reasoning tasks.4 This has led some psychologists and philosophers to declare that, far from being rational animals, human beings are largely irrational and reliant not on some well-founded rational decision making procedure, but on pragmatic and often biased strategies to achieve our

84

Olaf Ellefson

ends. Attempts to explain and explore these results have engendered a variety of new lines of research, not the least of which is experimental philosophy. Although the tradition and the programs it generates are diverse, a central theme is that a priori (read loosely) argumentation and thought experiments (i.e., armchair philosophy) are poor contenders to back if we wish to make progress in philosophy. The cognitive diversity that these studies reveal suggests it is a mistake to view human beings as largely rational; subsequently, it allegedly follows that lurking behind many thought experiments, a priori arguments, and so on is a quagmire of faulty reasoning, fallacious inferences, and cultural biases that precludes these arguments from having much credibility. A central figure in experimental philosophy is Stephen Stich, and a key work to focus on is his The Fragmentation of Reason. In it, he argues against analytic programs in epistemology5 (which are potentially flawed as they may contain hidden biases, etc.) and offers a new, pragmatic epistemology that builds on the results of the experiments in psychology and other social sciences. For the purposes of this chapter, what is of most interest is not his replacement candidate for a reformed epistemology, but the arguments he provides in the hopes of making space for a new epistemology that reflects directly on the issue of truth. According to Stich, there are two ways that cognitive diversity might threaten Davidson’s project. First, Davidson’s argument against conceptual schemes is either uninteresting or empirically falsified. Second, theories of meaning that are reliant on Alfred Tarski-style Tsentences are idiosyncratic and so only of moderate use. I find Stich’s criticisms of Davidson to be lacking on several fronts and find the account of cognitive diversity, while most certainly true, to not pose a serious problem for Davidson. To substantiate this claim, I will contend that Stich’s arguments against Davidson – both his argument against Davidson’s criticism of such a thing as a conceptual scheme, and his argument that Davidson’s account of the connection between rationality and belief is vacuous – fail. ON THE VERY IDEA OF A CONCEPTUAL SCHEME

Before I present Davidson’s argument against conceptual schemes, it is worth mentioning that there is an exegetical mistake in Stich’s reading Davidson’s argument against the possibility of conceptual

Cognitive Diversity, Conceptual Schemes, and Truth

85

schemes as geared to support a view that suggests that human beings all reason in similar ways and, for the most part, do it well.6 In many ways, Davidson’s argument has little psychological relevance – he simply is not interested in giving a psychological account of what it is to be a good reasoner.7 Nor does he claim that we all share the same idealized rational conceptual scheme. What he provides is (1) an analysis of the notion of what a conceptual scheme is alleged to be, and (2) an answer to the question of whether radical untranslatability or incommensurability between two languages is coherent. As I will show below, he argues that it is not. In “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” Davidson argues that the notion of a conceptual scheme is fatally confused. A conceptual scheme, supposedly, provides the means by which different peoples are able to understand the world. It suggests there is a neutral and independent realm of content or experience, which language or concepts filter or organize. Strictly speaking, Davidson does not claim that a conceptual scheme is impossible, but rather that the notion of there being such a thing is unintelligible. He does this by first examining the metaphors that are used to support the claim that conceptual schemes do, in fact, exist (and the corollary claim, of course, that these schemes would remain untranslatable). There are two chief metaphors deployed: either conceptual schemes organize experience and the world, or they fit the world and accord with experience.8 The first metaphor collapses quickly under its own internal inconsistency. Davidson notes that only pluralities can be organized; the world and experience, taken as monoliths, are not intelligibly open to organization. Rather, objects in the world, experiences of something, can be organized. Yet once we have that ontology in common with others, what could prevent translation? Even if we have different experiences and ways of organizing the world – and, of course, we do – why should that present a barrier to translation? This recognition of difference explicitly acknowledges the fact that different people will have varying beliefs about what they experience and what is in the world, and even, perhaps, will hold different standards with respect to assessing those claims. Far from denying cognitive pluralism, Davidson’s argument against conceptual schemes can be seen as an acknowledgement and acceptance of it. Thus, he should not be read here as arguing a priori against weak forms of cognitive pluralism, as he never denied the uncontroversial idea that cultures and peoples differ in substantial ways. Instead, he can be read as arguing against

86

Olaf Ellefson

what I will call strong cognitive pluralism, in which we could grant that other beings could have beliefs, be rational, and so forth, but could still remain unintelligible to us. At this stage, irrespective of the argument’s soundness, it should be evident that Davidson has not claimed that cognitive diversity is impossible or that we must all adhere to one true form of rationality to be genuine reasoners. That Stich comes close to endorsing this interpretation is puzzling,9 but I think he needlessly conflates two separate issues. The first is the normative question of how we ought to reason; it seems plausible to me that he is correct in suggesting that better strategies than those that currently exist are intelligible and worth developing. The second issue, however, centres on the notion of what we need to be properly understood as a reasoner and as a believer – the necessary conditions for being described legitimately as a rational being.10 Davidson focuses on this concern, not on the normative question of how we ought to reason. Hence the failure of numerous subjects to follow deductively valid paths to reach conclusions in the selection task and conjunction problem is largely irrelevant with respect to the latter issue; even if they fall short of the deductive ideal, they are rational enough in their beliefs and actions that we are able to ascribe content to their utterances. Furthermore, it is worth asking how genuinely irrational the subjects of these studies actually are, and whether we can substantiate this claim of cognitive pluralism in such a way that it might be a threat to Davidson’s project. It seems that far from being irrational, the subjects of the studies are largely rational – after all, they were rational enough to communicate with their interviewers, read the instructions of the test, make their way to the interview room, etc. Failing a handful of logical questions hardly seems evidence enough to justify the claim that human beings are largely irrational. It does show, uncontroversially, that people do not follow deductively valid inferences most of the time, but it is difficult to find in any of Davidson’s writings the very strong claim that in order to think and speak we must do so unvaryingly when reasoning about daily affairs. To genuinely challenge Davidson’s program, Stich would need to argue that a being could have contentful cognitive states but remain uninterpretable or unrecognizable as having those states. Davidson denies that this is actually a coherent claim, as it would be tantamount to endorsing a distinction between scheme and content. To see why, Davidson’s analysis of the second metaphor is most helpful. To

Cognitive Diversity, Conceptual Schemes, and Truth

87

say that schemes fit the world or face experience amounts to the claim that various sentences are true (or false). The intermediary appeal to “fit” or to “facts” that this metaphor relies upon does not, Davidson states, add anything “intelligible to the simple concept of being true.”11 Moreover, if we grant that the sentences of others can be true – and this is what the advocates of conceptual schemes must do (otherwise the idea of a conceptual scheme does no work) – then the notion of conceptual schemes differing radically amounts to the claim that the sentences of two different languages could be largely true and yet untranslatable. This way of putting it suggests that truth and translation are separable – a claim that Davidson, following Tarski, finds incoherent. T R U T H , T R A N S L AT I O N , A N D I N T E R P R E TAT I O N

In Fragmentation, Stich wants to both “soften up the conviction that true beliefs are obviously valuable”12 and move past intuition-based accounts of truth by revealing the limitations and weaknesses of what he considers the best of such theories. As before, his goal is to create space for the possibility of a radically improved epistemology that does not rely on folk intuitions in the same way that the best scientific theories are not held responsible to folk intuitions about physics, chemistry, and so on. Ideally, he will have the resources to show that Tarskian T-sentences (what he calls the interpretation function) and causal theories of reference à la Putnam and Kripke are inextricably tied to our folk intuitions and, because of this, are limited in their usefulness. In contrast, what I hope to show is that while Tarski (and Davidson) rely on a “folk” notion of truth (although, as I will discuss, the applicability of this claim to Davidson is contentious), that notion is best understood as a fundamental norm of rationality that we simply cannot do without. Moreover, as I will show, even Stich can be read as relying on such a norm, and his blindness to this can be diagnosed by an overly epistemological reading of truth that, I will argue, neither Davidson nor Tarski intended it to have. In short, I will argue that Stich has embraced the second metaphor detailed above – the idea that something is true when it fits the facts. If I am correct in this diagnosis, then Stich’s criticism of Tarski, and by extension Davidson’s truth-theoretic semantics, fails and Davidson’s argument against the intelligibility of a conceptual scheme is left untouched.

88

Olaf Ellefson

To motivate his criticism, Stich intends to cast doubt upon the credibility of the link between truth and translation by suggesting that our intuitive understanding of the truth of T-sentences is simply one out of a multitude of different ways of understanding truth. The core of Stich’s critique of Tarski-style truth theories is that they are (a) limited and (b) idiosyncratic. Their limit is revealed by their non-obvious application to non-declarative sentences. While Stich grants that sentences like “grass is green” and “snow is white” can be given truth conditions via appeal to T-sentences, the application of T-sentences to counterfactual sentences, interrogatives, etc., is not so easily done – which is not to say that it cannot be done, but rather that a straightforward appeal to intuitiveness is not readily available for such sentences. Stich’s second critique – that T-sentences are idiosyncratic – is far more damaging (if it succeeds) and is where he focuses his attention. Davidson aims to arrive at the truth conditions of novel sentences by appealing to the base axioms of a truth theory as those base axioms are also used to generate the theorems employed to express the truth conditions of sentences already known in the language. Similarly, Tarski generates his extensional definition of truth by constructing Tsentences from a large, but finite, set of axioms. For example: 1 (∀ x)(x satisfies “is a philosopher” iff x is a philosopher). 2 “Plato” denotes Plato. Unfortunately, says Stich, “Tarski tells us too little about what it is to get these axioms right. He does not tell us what relationship must obtain between a name and a person for the former to denote the latter.”13 So too with satisfaction. Without a theoretically defensible account of reference to ground T-sentences, their truth (or falsity) remains subject to the whims of our intuitions and what we find intuitively plausible as an account of reference. Thus, Stich’s claim here is that in generating a T-sentence, such as: 3 “Plato is a philosopher” is true iff Plato is a philosopher. the use of the predicate “is true” is warranted, or the concept articulated, by appeal to the theory of reference that makes the assertion of the simple axioms of (1) and (2) epistemically justified. Since Tarski is silent about what justifies such an axiom, we are left in limbo.

Cognitive Diversity, Conceptual Schemes, and Truth

89

Stich suggests that a possible remedy to this problem might be found in a causal/historical account of reference that would make it evident how and why, for example, “Plato” denotes Plato.14 He is quick to note that such a move will quickly flounder on, again, the fact that such theories are held accountable to commonsense intuitions (which certainly have been shown to vary across cultures)15 and, more damningly, are but a tiny subset of possible, although unintuitive, accounts of reference that might be able to generate meaning via alternative T-like sentences.16 To be explicit, there are numerous causal connections (the vast majority of which will not be intuitive) that will link “Plato” to the ancient Greek philosopher, to my former neighbour who ran Plato’s Pizza, or to no one at all. Moreover, Tarski did not tell us which theory of reference was right, and so we have no way to exclude the unintuitive T-sentences such axioms generate. For Stich, this suggests that the meaning we associate with a sentence (if it is given by the satisfaction conditions generated by T-sentences) is but one of a potentially infinite array of other interpretations that different functions (say T*- and T**-sentences)17 might provide. Since the authority that T-sentences are claimed to have rests on their intuitiveness (which may very well be a product of socialization or other factors), we must allow that these other semantic interpretations – which “vastly [outrun] those that our intuitive semantics is prepared to admit”18 – are genuine alternatives. To adapt an example from Stich, within the statement “there is water on the moon” the referent for “water” could be, on one theory of reference, h2o; xyz on another; and h2o and xyz on a third. What Stich wishes to argue is that truth conditions for the statement “there is water on the moon” are dependent on the theory of reference to which we subscribe. Since there is no general consensus as to which theory of reference is correct – only appeals to intuitiveness – we must multiply truth to allow for these non-intuitive, but meaning-generating, truth conditions to be captured (as we have no non-idiosyncratic way of precluding them). To illustrate: 4 “There is water on the moon” is true (on one theory of reference) iff there is h2o on the moon. 5 “There is water on the moon” is true* iff there is xyz on the moon. 6 “There is water on the moon” is true** iff there are h2o and xyz on the moon.

90

Olaf Ellefson

Although I am not interested in discussing the merits of Stich’s entire project, it is worth noting that he intends to develop, once this pluralistic account of truth is well-supported, a pragmatic account of cognitive evaluation that does not require that rational agents (qua rational agents) always (or even for the most part) prefer that their beliefs be true. Perhaps, instead, they prefer that their beliefs are true* or true**. All that really matters is that in being judged successful, a cognitive system is able to achieve its goals – whatever they might be – and true beliefs need not (and ideally would not) play a central role in that achievement. That being said, Stich is correct in remarking that T-sentences say nothing whatsoever about a theory of reference. Still, it remains to be seen whether the “intuitive” concept of truth is idiosyncratic in the way he suggests. If it is not, we are not obliged to allow for multiple conceptions of truth that, consequently, might reveal our “folk semantics” to be somehow impugned.19 Fortunately, in “Reality without Reference,” Davidson anticipates this sort of critique and dissolves the objection. He does so, as I will show, by exposing the desire for a theory of reference that justifies T-sentences as a throwback to the building block theory of meaning. DOING WITHOUT REFERENCE

Interestingly, Davidson grants from the outset that T-sentences and the truth theory they rely on presuppose “a general and pre-analytic notion of truth.”20 It is this pre-theoretical notion of truth that allows us to grasp that T-sentences are in fact true. So there is at least one point of agreement between Stich and Davidson, insofar as they both grant that the truth of T-sentences is in some sense intuitive. Furthermore, Davidson grants, also like Stich, that T-sentences simply do not disclose much about reference.21 He remains uncertain, however, that this is in fact a problem. To see why, Davidson explores what he terms the paradox of reference. In trying to give an account of language and meaning, we have (crudely put) two options. The first, the building block theory of meaning, insists we start with an account of reference to generate the meanings of words and then of sentences. The second and more holistic approach begins with truth to give the meaning of sentences, which can then be used to determine the meanings of individual words (although it does not provide a theory of reference).

Cognitive Diversity, Conceptual Schemes, and Truth

91

The first approach requires that we be able to give some non-linguistic characterization of reference (perhaps the causal-historical one), and it seems likely that something like this view of meaning is harmonious with Stich’s goal. He does grant that T-sentences do generate truth conditions – what he wants is an explanation of what it is to get them right, and an account of reference would provide just that.22 Insofar as sentence-based truth theories are silent on that issue, he thinks they are exposed to criticism of idiosyncrasy. Unfortunately, the reductive account of providing the meaning of sentences via their words has failed, which leaves the holistic or sentential account the only credible alternative. This is because if we want to give an account of the meaning of words, we must recognize that words appear only in (or sometimes are) sentences. Since we begin to interpret another’s unknown language from the standpoint of the radical interpreter (or at least we do in Davidson’s view), we simply do not know what counts as a word for the language under consideration. We must begin with sentences, from which we can move to words once we have constructed T-sentences and have an account of the truth conditions of the base axioms. Thus, we must turn to sentences first and observe the “extra-linguistic interests and activities that language serves.”23 Nonetheless, such sentences tell us nothing of what it is for individual words to refer – but to what extent is this a problem? For Davidson, it is not one at all; the key to recognizing this is to pay attention to the theoretical role that reference plays within a given theory of meaning, and not independently of, nor prior to, a theory of meaning.24 Simplistically, a theory of meaning, if constructed properly, tells us what sentences (and then words) mean. Within that theory, however, we can ask different questions about how and why the internal features of that theory work, how its parts function together, and more.25 But, “it makes no sense ... to complain that a theory comes up with the right truth conditions time after time, but has the logical form (or deep structure) wrong. We should take the same view of reference.”26 While for Davidson reference is theorized about only within a theory of meaning,27 Stich wants to begin with it prior to such a theory’s construction – he has confused an internal question with an external one. Davidson does not deny that there is some relationship between words and objects that might be best characterized by the term refer-

92

Olaf Ellefson

ence. The issue at heart is whether we can determine what that relationship is prior to understanding the role of the sentence that contains those words as uttered by a particular person. And that is precisely what we cannot do. When coming to interpret a speaker, we cannot know in advance what language she will speak or the idiosyncratic ways she might use her words. Therefore, to base T-sentences on an account of the reference of the terms they contain is to ask them to do the impossible: to provide the meaning of a word – which can be put to any use in any language – before knowing the truth conditions or meaning of its sentence. Unless Stich has an argument to suggest that this is in fact possible, we must concur with Davidson when he concludes, “we must give up the concept of reference as basic to an empirical theory of language.”28 At root, I think, the origin of Stich’s misstep is that he has demanded too much of truth (or at least of the conception of truth that is involved in T-sentences). He has incorrectly read into (semantic) truth the need for a deeper theoretical explication of what makes something true true – and he turns to an account of reference to do it.29 But for Davidson, the notion of something making something true is a secondary concern and does not precede a theory of truth. As such, in the sentence “‘grass is green’ is true iff grass is green,” the intuitive notion of truth that the biconditional captures is primitive, and it is a mistake to ask for an account of reference for the terms contained therein. I do not know how or why grass is green; nor is it obvious that I need to know to grasp the conception of truth the T-sentence expresses. T-sentences are intuitive because they do not rely on or require familiarity with a theory of reference to understand that they do, in fact, generate satisfaction conditions. If they did, it would demand too much. If, in order to know what others meant, we had to have a robust understanding of reference and truth, then it seems difficult to imagine how we could ever come to learn a language in the first place. Indeed, both Tarski and Davidson share this non-epistemic interpretation of truth. Davidson states, “To know what it would be for a proposition to be true (or false), it is not necessary to be able to tell when it is true or false (much less know whether it is true or false). If the world will come to an instantaneous and unforeseen end, no one will or could know that it came to an end at that instant. This does not prevent our understanding the proposition that the world will come to an end at that instant.”30 Similarly, Tarski states:

Cognitive Diversity, Conceptual Schemes, and Truth

93

In fact, the semantic definition of truth implies nothing regarding the conditions under which a sentence like [“snow is white”] can be asserted. It implies only that, whenever we assert or reject this sentence, we must be ready to assert or reject the correlated sentence [“the sentence ‘snow is white’ is true”]. Thus, we may accept the semantic conception of truth without giving up any epistemological attitude we may have had; we may remain naive realists, critical realists or idealists ... The semantic conception is completely neutral toward all these issues.31 This is why, as alluded to earlier, I think it best to view the notion of truth as Tarski and Davidson discuss it as something more akin to a fundamental norm of rationality than a concept that requires epistemic justification in order to be correctly deployed. Davidson makes such an interpretation more plausible in light of his comment in “Truth and Meaning”: “I hope that what I am saying may be described in part as defending the philosophical importance of Tarski’s semantical concept of truth. But my defence is only distantly related, if at all, to the question of whether the concept Tarski has shown how to define is the (or a) philosophically interesting conception of truth, or the question whether Tarski has cast any light on the ordinary use of such words as ‘true’ and ‘truth.’”32 While truth remains, for Davidson, primitive, intuitive, and basic,33 its intuitiveness arises not from the pragmatic facility we have with our ordinary concepts – although this likely plays a part – but rather from its essential normative character that grants us a glimpse into how we might be able to make sense of our words meaning what they do – i.e., through the construction of T-sentences. It provides us with a means of distinguishing beliefs and so of specifying the meanings of utterances, and it does so without requiring any theoretical intermediaries (i.e., reference). The above passage shows that Davidson does not engage in ordinary language philosophy; nor does he want to provide an explication of truth as it is used by the folk or even by epistemologists. Nonetheless, his notion of semantic truth remains primitive and intuitive. In some ways, this puts him beyond the reach of Stich’s criticism, as Stich primarily argues against “accounts that assign truth conditions largely compatible with commonsense intuitions,”34 and that does not seem to be quite what Davidson is doing (although it is not miles away, either). Yet, insofar as Davidson deems the semantic concept of truth “obvious,” “intuitive,” or any of other such cognates, he does seem

94

Olaf Ellefson

to be within Stich’s crosshairs – it is just that “intuitive” for Davidson is not synonymous with “commonsensical,” if the latter is meant to capture what people commonly think and to derive justification from it.35 I do not know if the notion of semantic truth as Davidson uses it, in fact, identical to the common sense concept of truth; presumably this is an empirical question.36 I raise these issues solely to point out the threat of a possible equivocation that lurks in these discussions. Not all appeals to intuitions are appeals to folk intuitions, just as not all uses of “truth” are epistemic uses. Finally, and in the spirit of the argument Davidson generates in “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” there is no reason to think that the semantics generated by non-intuitive T-sentences should remain untranslatable into our own language. We can capture them quite nicely by, instead of pluralizing truth, relativizing it to a person, language, and time: 7 “There is water on the Moon” is true as spoken by S1 at t1 in L1 iff there is h2o on the Moon. 8 “There is water on the Moon” is true as spoken by S2 at t1 in L2 iff there is xyz on the Moon. 9 “There is water on the Moon” is true as spoken by S3 at t1 in L3 iff there are h2o and xyz on the Moon. Thus the intuitive notion of truth expressed by T-sentences is not so idiosyncratic. Properly relativized, it can provide interpretations for whatever theory of reference we might come up with. And so the need for an account of reference to ground truth dissolves, once we recognize that Stich’s desire for such an account of what it is for the axioms to be “right” runs in parallel with the desire for sentences to “fit” experience or the facts in giving an account of truth. In short, Stich endorses the second metaphor, which Davidson, in his argument against conceptual schemes, shows to be irrelevant in providing an account of truth. Moreover, Davidson’s view of truth has the theoretical advantage of being substantially simpler than embracing an infinitude of Tlike sentences to capture multiple theories of reference. We need to choose among these possibilities in order to give a determinate meaning to the sentence, but we do not need to turn to reference to do so. Rather, we can appeal to the “human ends and activities”37 that the sentence is put to – we ought to turn to the speaker’s other utterances and actions.

Cognitive Diversity, Conceptual Schemes, and Truth

95

After all, T-sentences alone do not generate meaning. They help set boundaries that a theory of meaning must meet. But we require evidence as well that a person’s vocalizations are genuine utterances – we need empirical data to flesh out our theory – and that, says Davidson, can only be arrived at through the application of the principle of charity. To assign determinate content to another’s utterances, we must locate those utterances in a network of actions and patterns of behaviour that are accessible to us in a shared public world. This gestures to the holistic nature of language and suggests that the meanings of utterances and the contents of beliefs are dependent on their relationships to other sentences and beliefs. We cannot isolate one sentence from the mix and give it determinate content without assuming an atomistic conception of language. Yet it seems that it is this conception of language Stich endorses when he suggests that the meaning of the word “water” could be determined by its referent alone and removed from the actual use of its speakers. Of course Stich is right that we can ascribe to our speaker the beliefs that there is h2o, xyz, and whatever else we might like, on the moon. But we should have the necessary evidence to do so, and that cannot come from a single sentence in isolation, let alone from a solitary word. Nor is it clear that a universally agreed upon theory of reference would provide it. After all, our speaker may idiosyncratically use the word “water” to mean something other than what we would use it to mean in our language. There is no way to determine what language our speaker speaks in advance, and so the fact that Stich bases his criticism on the vagaries of reference in the way that he does seems largely beside the point. In conclusion, in Stich’s attempt to generate an objection to what he (rightly or wrongly) considers to be a largely a priori or intuitive understanding of truth, he makes a misstep. If Davidson is correct in subsuming a theory of reference under a larger and more central theory of meaning and truth, Stich’s move to pluralize reference in the hopes of pluralizing truth is conceptually backward, as we can theorize about reference only after we have a theory of meaning. As such, his plan to reveal the idiosyncrasy of truth and thus question its value can be seen as mistaken and unsuccessful. This leaves the intuitive, primitive, and, admittedly, modest account of (semantic) truth Tarski and Davidson champion untouched and safe from harm.

96

Olaf Ellefson N OT E S

1 See, for example, Donald Davidson, “The Folly of Trying to Define Truth,” in Truth, Language, and History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 19–38. 2 Stephen Stich, The Fragmentation of Reason (Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1990). Stich, of course, changed his mind about eliminativism in Deconstructing the Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) but remains committed to the belief that truth is limited and idiosyncratic – see his “Replies,” in Stich and His Critics, ed. Dominic Murphy and Michael Bishop (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 190–252. 3 The canonical form of a T-sentence is “S is true if and only if p.” T sentences are important because the truth-functional connective (i.e., if and only if, or iff as some philosophers prefer it) that links S with p guarantees that the entire T-sentence is true just in case both S and p have identical truth values. Thus, we know exactly under what conditions S would be true (or false). When confronted with a foreign sentence, we may replace “S” with a description or name of S, because we are discussing the sentence and not uttering it ourselves, while “p” is replaced by S or a translation of S. So, for example, “‘la neige est blanche’ is true iff snow is white.” This allows us to see when the sentence “la neige est blanche” is true, and so we begin to get an insight into how knowing the truth conditions of a sentence can provide an insight into the meaning of that sentence. 4 For example, Peter C. Wason, “Natural and Contrived Experience in a Reasoning Problem,” Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 23 (1971): 63–71 developed the selection task and Tversky and Kahneman developed the conjunction problem in Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Extensional versus Intuitive Reasoning: The Conjunction Fallacy in Probability Judgment,” Psychological Review 90 (4, 1983): 293–315. Richard Samuels and Stich provide an excellent summary of this research in “Rationality and Psychology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Rationality, ed. Alfred Mele and Piers Rawlings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 279–300. 5 As Stich defines it in The Fragmentation of Reason, 91, analytic epistemology “[denotes] any epistemological project that takes the choice between competing justificational rules or competing criteria of rightness to turn on conceptual or linguistic analysis.” As a chief example, he points to Alvin Goldman’s 1986 Epistemology and Cognition (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1986). 6 In The Fragmentation of Reason, 15, Stich states: “So if the [conceptual] argument works, I suppose we would have to conclude that, contrary to appear-

Cognitive Diversity, Conceptual Schemes, and Truth

7

8

9

10

11 12 13 14

15 16

97

ances, descriptive monism and pluralism are not genuine empirical theses. This is, near enough, the view urged by Davidson in his argument against ‘the very idea of (alternative) conceptual schemes.’” Davidson stresses this in “Could There Be a Science of Rationality?,” in Problems of Rationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 117–34, especially 128–34. In giving an account of rationality, by way of interpretation, we do not ask how people interpret others, or how people reason (although those are interesting questions), but rather what could make interpretation possible. Donald Davidson, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 191–2. I say “comes close” because while Stich states that Davidson is a defender of the minimal rationality hypothesis, he also suggests, “there are a number of passages in which Davidson sounds instead like an advocate of the perfect rationality view” (The Fragmentation of Reason, 41). In a way, Stich is right on both accounts as even Davidson’s minimal account of rationality demands a great deal. In his final chapter in Fragmentation, Stich sketches an alternative account of cognitive evaluation that does not engage in conceptual analysis of such terms as justification, truth, and so on, but rather hopes to centre our evaluation of cognitive strategies on their success in meeting our goals. That he sees a priori arguments linking belief and rationality together as an obstacle to this end is evident from Fragmentation’s second chapter. Davidson, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” 194. Stich, The Fragmentation of Reason, 102, emphasis original. Ibid., 108. Stich is not suggesting that he subscribes to the causal/historical account of reference (although he allows that it may correctly explicate the folk concept of reference). Indeed, he is entirely silent, at least in Fragmentation, on what theory of reference he does endorse (if any). Rather, his goal is to show that the best possible accounts of reference and truth are limited and idiosyncratic as, more than anything else, they are the products of intuitionbased theorizing. See for comparison Edouard Machery et al., “Semantics, Cross-Cultural Style,” Cognition 92 (2004): 1–12. “There are indefinitely many possible patterns of formally specifiable causal interactions among mental sentences and thus indefinitely many possible mental sentence constructions, which admit of no intuitively plausible semantic interpretation at all. Most purely formal, syntactically characterizable

98

17

18 19

20 21

22

23 24 25

Olaf Ellefson

patterns of interaction among sentences or well-formed formulas have no intuitively plausible semantics.” Stich, The Fragmentation of Reason, 113; emphasis original. The asterisks here suggest that there might be other conceptions of truth that are unintuitive to us but nevertheless legitimate. We could use these “deviant” notions of truth to arrive at different interpretations for the sentence contained within the T-sentence in question. Ibid. I am not certain that designating Davidson’s program as a continuant of “folk semantics” is entirely correct. Although he does use concepts that derive from folk psychology (such as meaning, truth, and belief), to characterize his theory as a folk psychological theory seems unapt. Davidson, “Reality without Reference,” in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 223. In “Reality without Reference, 218, Davidson writes: “There remains the claim, which I also grant, that the theory does not explain or analyse reference.” In The Fragmentation of Reason, 112, Stich writes: “What Tarski did not provide was any general account of what it was for a name to denote an object or for a predicate to have a certain extension. Thus Tarski did not explain what it was to get the base clause lists right, and without such an account we could not even begin to apply Tarski’s strategy to a newly discovered language” (emphasis original). This suggests to me that what Stich is after is an account of reference that would precede an account of meaning or truth – we would analyze the concept of truth via an account of the concept of reference. Davidson, “Radical Interpretation,” in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 2nd ed., 127. Davidson, “Reality without Reference,” 221. For example, an internal feature of a theory of meaning would be a definition of the theoretical role that reference or satisfaction plays within that theory. But that is all there is to reference – it is a theoretical posit that gets its life from the larger theory of which it is a part (Davidson, “Reality without Reference,” 222). Davidson makes a comparison to physics and the role theoretical physical phenomena play in the larger physical theory – they are important, but not prior. Perhaps as an analogy, this might serve to make things clearer: we search for confirmation of the existence of quarks, neutrinos, and so on in the pursuit of explaining the macroscopic features of reality that we are confronted with. We do not begin with theoretical posits about sub-atomic particles, as such posits are unintelligible without the

Cognitive Diversity, Conceptual Schemes, and Truth

26 27

28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35

36

37

99

larger theory to provide them with content. Similarly, words, satisfaction, and reference only make sense against the background of a theory of truth (or of meaning). Davidson, “Reality without Reference,” 223. Or, perhaps, not at all. He does say, for example, “there is no unique reference of a singular term, nor unique extension of a predicate ... Referring to a unique entity is not an intelligible task.” Donald Davidson, “Pursuit of the Concept of Truth,” in Truth, Language, and History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 72. Davidson, “Reality without Reference,” 221. As noted above, Stich wants to know what it is for one to “get the base clause lists right.” The Fragmentation of Reason, 112, emphasis original. Davidson, “The Problem of Objectivity,” in Problems of Rationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 9–10, emphasis original. This idea is expressed also in Davidson, “In Defense of Convention T,” in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 70. The question is not, “What makes a sentence true?,” but rather, “What is it for a sentence to be true?” T-sentences are meant to help us explicate the latter question, while avoiding the former and the problems it gives rise to. Alfred Tarski, “The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 4 (3, 1944): 361–2. Davidson, “Truth and Meaning,” in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 24. Cf. Davidson’s “The Folly of Trying to Define Truth,” in Truth, Language, and History, 19–38. Stich, The Fragmentation of Reason, 106. To take a cue from Richard Rorty, “Davidson between Wittgenstein and Tarski,” Crítica: Revista Hispanoamericana de Filosofía 30 (88): 49–71, it might be useful to stress the Wittgensteinian flavour of Davidson’s view here instead of the Tarskian influence. The shared judgments that we have about truth are where we reach bedrock and no further justification can be provided. That bedrock allows the generation of normativity. Whether people are cognizant of such a bedrock is irrelevant to its necessity. Interestingly, in “The Semantic Conception of Truth,” 360, Tarski states that he thinks any given T-sentence “does conform to a very considerable extent with the common-sense usage.” He also discusses early research – although he, unfortunately, does not provide a citation – that finds 90 per cent of the folk “agreed that a sentence such as ‘it is snowing’ is true if, and only if, it is snowing.” Davidson, “Reality without Reference,” 222.

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction

PART TWO

Truth and Politics

This page intentionally left blank

5 Exposure and Disclosure: The Risk of Hermeneutical Truth in Democratic Politics DARREN R. WALHOF

Writing in the wake of the furor over her account of the Eichmann trial, Hannah Arendt reflects on why truth and politics are, in her words, “on rather bad terms.”1 Her analysis rests on dividing truth into two different types. The first type, rational truth, is the subject of mathematics and philosophy. It has a long history of tension with politics, going back at least to Plato, who worried about the displacement of rational truth by mere opinion. In the modern age, Arendt says, opinion has generally won the day, rendering rational truth politically irrelevant.2 The second type, factual truth, has to do with the record of events and history. Factual truth remains politically relevant in the modern age, primarily in its capacity to threaten power with its assertion that certain things are true despite what those in power wish. But, Arendt points out, factual truth is terribly fragile and is contingent on our collective witness, and so is always at risk of manipulation and destruction. Under totalitarianism, manipulation occurs through organized lying on a massive scale, including the rewriting of history. In mass democracy, Arendt insightfully notes, it occurs through the reduction of factual truth to partisan belief, mere ideology, or an expression of interest. If truth and politics were on bad terms in 1967 when Arendt wrote her essay, surely the situation is worse today. Increasingly, it seems, events are treated not as if there are facts of the matter, but simply as

104

Darren R. Walhof

differing ideological viewpoints: Do carbon emissions affect the climate? What led to the collapse of the financial system in 2008? Did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction? Does the state of Hawaii have a birth certificate on file for Barack Obama? Answers to these questions are viewed as correct or incorrect only as a measure of which side one is on. There are now entire cable news networks that seem to be devoted to constructing and perpetuating falsehoods, and a growing body of political science research unfortunately shows that citizens in the United States not only are woefully ignorant of accurate facts, but also do not change their beliefs when presented with them.3 The prospects for truth in politics indeed look bleak. Perhaps, however, Arendt’s categories miss something. Is there another kind of truth than factual and rational truth that may fare better in modern democracies? I take up this question by turning to a different student of Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and ask whether his hermeneutical approach to truth holds promise for politics. TRUTH AND LANGUAGE

Gadamer famously argues that our “being-in-the-world is primordially linguistic.”4 Language is not a third thing alongside the world and our thoughts about the world. Instead, he says, “in all our knowledge of ourselves and in all knowledge of the world, we are always already encompassed” by language.5 Thus, language is how we become acquainted with the world, and learning to speak a language “means acquiring a familiarity and acquaintance with the world itself and how it confronts us.”6 This is certainly true of our first languages, when as children we come to know the world as we learn to understand what is said to us and to speak ourselves. But it is also true when we learn another language later in life. Learning a new language does not simply give us an additional set of tools to express what we already know. Instead, it opens another world to us. The new language becomes a means of knowing by making it possible for us to become acquainted with new things. In this way, language is not a possession, but is there from the beginning. As Gadamer’s writes, “we are always already at home in language, just as much as we are in the world.”7 Gadamer argues that the “real being [of language] consists in what is said in it,” which he theorizes by recalling the Greek concept of logos.8 He appropriates this concept, even as he recognizes that it has fallen out of favour in contemporary philosophy. Gadamer laments

The Risk of Hermeneutical Truth in Democratic Politics

105

that the correspondence between logos and being was “destroyed” with the demise of Hegelian philosophy and the subsequent dominance of epistemology. Hegel was the “last and most universal representative of ancient logos philosophy” because he taught that reason was in everything, including history.9 Gadamer wants to return to logos philosophy, though not in a Hegelian sense. Although Gadamer does at times equate logos with reason, he generally casts logos in terms of the truth that resides in discourse or speech.10 Logos, in other words, has to do with “the actual content of what languages hand down to us.” If we ignore this and treat language only in terms of form, “we have too little left” to say anything meaningful about truth.11 The distinction between the form and content of language potentially leads us astray. Gadamer wants to reconnect them by means of the concept of logos, the truth that a language bears in its particular form. To say that truth resides in logos, or that logos bears truth, is to suggest that language acts as a depository of things that we know. Gadamer describes logos at one point as the “communicative sedimentation of our experiential world that encompasses everything that we can exchange with one another.”12 He regards logos as an accumulation of our collective and historical experiences – experiences that we also partake in, in some sense, when we learn a language. In becoming proficient in a language, we do not acquire a set of tools for expressing the truth so much as we become familiar with truth as expressed in language. As language transforms over time with changing experiences and practices, it also accrues truth, almost behind our backs. Truth is sedimented in language; logos is sedimented truth. A simple example of this can be found in the exchange between Socrates and Meno’s slave. Before interviewing the boy, Socrates asks Meno, “He is Greek, and speaks Greek, does he not?” Meno responds in the affirmative, and says the boy “was born in the house.”13 Presumably this means he grew up speaking Greek, and so it is for him a native language. In asking about this, Socrates may simply want to know whether the boy will understand him if he speaks in Greek, but Gadamer makes more of the matter. He explains that the boy’s recognition of the area of the bigger square “implies that he already knows what ‘double’ means – he must know Greek.”14 The boy knows the concept of “double” because he grew up speaking Greek, just like he knows what a line and a square are, even though he has never formally studied geometry. In asking his questions, Socrates draws on the boy’s implicit knowledge of these things, acquired by learning Greek, and

106

Darren R. Walhof

makes them and their connections to each other conscious objects of thought. The truth about lines, squares, areas, doubling, and so forth has accumulated and resides in the Greek language, as it were. One who speaks this language already necessarily “knows” these things. It important to note, however, that truth resides not in the words or concepts themselves, but in their relation to other words and concepts. This is why Gadamer focuses on logos rather than on words and concepts when he talks about the truth that is sedimented in language. Logos is a kind of “relational ordering” among words,15 and “the truth of things resides in discourse ... and not in individual words, not even in a language’s entire stock of words.”16 What we say is always instantiated in and connected to much more that we do not say. “Nothing that is said,” Gadamer notes, “has its truth simply in itself, but refers instead backward and forward to what is unsaid.”17 When we speak, we draw on this truth, but in a different way than a subjectivist or instrumentalist account suggests: “Logos (discourse and speech) and the manifestation of things that takes place in it, is something different from the act of intending the meanings contained in words, and it is here, in speaking, that the actual capacity of language to communicate what is correct and true has its locus.”18 We cannot simply compile a list of truths that constitute logos and choose from among them when we speak or wish to know something. We do not have the distance on truth that would be required to do this, since the truth of logos is not an object for us in the way that the truth of method is. As Gadamer says, this “articulation of the experiential world in logos ... forms a kind of knowledge that ... still presents the other half of the truth” alongside modern science.19 The truth sedimented in language is the truth that escapes method. We inhabit this truth, rather than stand over against it. When using language, and when communicating with others, we do not draw on it as much as we participate in it. Socrates understood this, according to Gadamer. His questioning was a way to bring the truth sedimented in language to light in order to illuminate social and political affairs, and also to examine prevailing public opinions that had not been fully evaluated in light of this truth. This is how to make sense of the perplexity in which most of his dialogues end and which Plato theorizes in the Meno. Not only virtue but also hermeneutic truth is not teachable in a dogmatic sense. It cannot be objectified, memorized, and then applied. It is, instead, called forth in dialogue, as the participants in the dialogue

The Risk of Hermeneutical Truth in Democratic Politics

107

participate in the truth that is sedimented in language – in other words, as they encounter and participate in the logos by being again reminded of that which they know. But the ability to recognize this truth depends on being open to being wrong. We can only see the truth in its new (yet familiar) form when we are able to acknowledge the ways in which our current understandings are flawed.20 Seeing the truth and having it emerge anew requires an acknowledgement that one does not know. But this acknowledgment makes one vulnerable. It places oneself in question. In The Idea of the Good, Gadamer contrasts Meno and the slave in terms of their capacity to recognize what is true. Placing himself in question is precisely what Meno cannot (or will not) do.21 He “wants to acquire the new wisdom as cheaply as possible, and he bolts when he is about to be forced to place himself in question.”22 He has too much invested in the views he already holds about virtue and in his view of himself as one who knows something about it. As a result, Gadamer says, Meno can only follow the dialogue so far before getting frustrated. In contrast, the boy’s recognition that his answers are on occasion false is “not anything that might cripple him.”23 His willingness to acknowledge his errors makes it possible for him, eventually, to recognize the truth. The slave has the wisdom of Socrates: he knows that he does not know. This is the starting point for dialogue that results in truth. Recognition of the new yet familiar truth that resides in logos depends on being open to being wrong and willing to put oneself into question and at risk. At this preliminary point, then, we can see that, based on Gadamer’s account, the possibility of hermeneutic truth in politics will be tied to democratic deliberation. If, as the example of Socrates suggests, the truth sedimented in language emerges only through the back and forth and the questioning and answering that constitute dialogue, then the emergence of truth in politics will depend on healthy deliberation within our political institutions and in the public sphere.24 Such deliberation would require that the participants, like Meno’s slave, acknowledge that they do not already have all of the answers. At least to some extent, they would need to acknowledge that they do not know or that they might be wrong about what they think they know. As I will discuss at greater length below, this appears to be an uncommon trait among political actors today, as citizens and political leaders seem far more likely to assert their views on all kinds of political issues as if it were impossible that they could

108

Darren R. Walhof

be wrong. This is a challenge to the possibility of hermeneutic truth in politics. Another problem arises here as well. Given this picture of truth, it is not clear how Gadamer’s hero Socrates can call dominant opinions into question through his dialogical approach. If truth is sedimented in language, how does this work? Do not the dominant opinions and Socrates’ own questioning draw on the same language and, thus, participate in the same logos? Are these opinions and his questions not drawn from the same set of social and political practices and thus necessarily drawn from the same truths and conceptions of the good sedimented in language? Even if citizens would engage in deliberation with some awareness that they do not know or may be wrong, would this not just result in compromise, consensus, or understanding, rather than something that we can call truth? Even more worrisome, would not these shared understandings also potentially just reflect dominant ideologies, as Habermas alleged in his review of Truth and Method?25 At this point, Gadamer’s approach seems to resemble merely a brand of relativism, with dominant ideologies (and, thus, power) determining what is taken to be true and false, good and bad. T R U T H A S D I S C LO S U R E

My account of Gadamer’s approach to truth so far is partial. He does argue that truth is sedimented in language, but he also suggests that truth is more than this. Truth is not merely the product of language and culture but also has to do with a world or a reality as such. This dimension of Gadamer’s conception of truth becomes clear in his discussion of propositional truth in a 1957 essay. Here Gadamer argues that because history affects both a proposition and its interpreter, understanding the truth of a proposition brings about “a constant synthesis between the horizon of the past and the horizon of the present.”26 The resulting interpretation is actually a merging of the situational horizon of the proposition and that of the interpreter. Thus, although a proposition has meaning in a particular context, it does not contain truth in and of itself. But rather than claim that all interpretations are subjective and that there is, therefore, no such thing as truth per se, Gadamer goes in a different direction. He insists that the nature of propositions reveals that truth is “unconcealedness,” an idea he takes from Heidegger, who developed it through a recovery of the Greek concept of aletheia.27 Heidegger argues that

The Risk of Hermeneutical Truth in Democratic Politics

109

correspondence theories of truth, which treat true propositions as accurate descriptions of the world as it exists independent of thought and language, actually conceal a more primary truth that involves the disclosedness or unconcealedness of being.28 In saying this, Heidegger is, above all, trying to shift the locus of truth away from consciousness and subjectivity and toward truth as a mode of existence. Truth, in other words, does not first and foremost relate to the correspondence between assertions and reality. While assertions can be true and false in terms of being correct or incorrect descriptions of a state of affairs, they are already abstractions from, and therefore derivative of, a holistic context of truth in which they are situated.29 In other words, the truth of assertions “presupposes a prelinguistic, preconventional, precognitive disclosure of beings.”30 Assertions testify to a truth, but they do not contain truth in the way that correspondence theories claim. Instead, they represent occasions for the disclosedness of being. Heidegger thus calls truth unconcealment. Similarly, Gadamer wants to treat truth not as a function of consciousness but more as an event that happens to us. For him, this event takes place because of and in language, particularly speech. In the 1957 essay, he states this starkly: “the meaning of speech [die Rede] is to put forward the unconcealed, to make manifest.”31 Language is the means by which truth is disclosed, but not in the sense of propositions that accurately describe an external reality. Truth is not “in” the proposition but arises out of the interaction between interpreter and text and makes a claim on the interpreter. Gadamer makes a stronger claim in a 1960 essay in which he argues, perhaps a bit tongue in cheek, that we should dispense with the phrase “the nature of things” and instead talk about “the language of things.” To begin the essay, he laments the turn to subjectivity in modern philosophy and praises classical metaphysics for its emphasis on the pre-existing relationship between subject and object, between idea and being. In Gadamer’s view, however, we can no longer rest a classical approach on its traditional, theological grounding, and so he turns instead to language and its capacity to reveal the world to us. Gadamer draws our attention to the inherent relationship between language and things themselves – that is, to the “interconnection of word and thing [Sache].”32 Talking about “the nature of things” implies that we know what this nature is apart from language and that we simply express it in words. In Gadamer’s view, this returns us to the subject-object problem of modern philosophy and to an instru-

110

Darren R. Walhof

mental view of language. Talking instead about “the language of things” highlights the fact that it is only in language that “the primordial correspondence of soul and being is so exhibited that finite consciousness too can know of it.”33 In other words, language unconceals being to us. Or, said differently, the world discloses itself in language. Whoever has language, Gadamer claims in Truth and Method, “has” the world. Or, as he famously puts it, “Being that can be understood is language.”34 Being is never disclosed in a complete sense all at once, however, as Gadamer notes: “That language and the world are related in a fundamental way does not mean, then, that the world becomes the object of language.”35 The disclosure of truth in language does not mean that a “world-initself” is objectified, nor that a thing-in-itself becomes an object for us. This is the mistaken assumption of modern philosophy of consciousness, as well as of those who equate truth in the human sciences with the results produced by method. The non-instrumental nature of language and our fundamental linguistic existence means that language cannot offer us the distance necessary to gain a view of the world-initself. Since we remain “caught,” as it were, in language, only the truth of a thing (Sache), not truth in a comprehensive, objective sense, is disclosed in language. But even here, any disclosure is merely “the experience of an ‘aspect’ of the thing itself.”36 It is only one part of the thing. But notice the scare quotes around “aspect.” Gadamer is not completely comfortable with this locution because he does not want to be understood as saying this disclosure represents an “imperfect understanding” of the thing.37 The thing itself is disclosed, but this truth is always unavoidably partial and historical. Truth is revealed differently in different historical circumstances, or a different aspect of its being is revealed in different moments. It seems, then, that Gadamer wants to have it both ways. On the one hand, he wants to avoid the relativism that follows from a view of truth as sedimented in language by appealing to something disclosed in language. On the other hand, he criticizes philosophies of consciousness that view truth as something outside of language, and language as a mere instrument. So, he insists both that truth involves the disclosure of the world, the thing or subject, and also that this always and only occurs through language. If we accept both of these claims, we are left without external criteria to evaluate an event of disclosure and determine whether or not we have encountered something true. Instead, whatever criteria there

The Risk of Hermeneutical Truth in Democratic Politics

111

might be are internal to the experience itself. As Gadamer admits in Truth and Method, “in understanding we are drawn into an event of truth and arrive, as it were, too late, if we want to know what we are supposed to believe.”38 We are “too late” because it is only with the disclosing event itself that we encounter truth. Truth has an event quality to it, and so “the revealedness and unconcealedness of things ... has its own temporality and historicity.”39 Truth discloses itself in speech, but as a result the event of truth is always tied to the horizon of the present. Gadamer’s discussion of art offers insights into whether and how we can know when truth has been disclosed. One of the characteristics of the beautiful, he says, is that we recognize and value it for its own sake, not as a means to something else. Moreover, this recognition is tied to its character of self-presentation, which takes the form of “radiance” or a shining forth.40 This is the case with truth as well. Like the beautiful, truth shines forth and is recognizable in its shining-forth by making something manifest – by enlightening it. 41 Moreover, like the beautiful, the truth that shines forth has a self-evident quality about it. An event of truth thus involves a moment of recognition, of seeing something in a way that is familiar but also new. As James Risser explains, such an event is a moment of something coming to light, “in the sense that something becomes clear.” This above all involves the appearance of something that we recognize as fitting.42 In a conversation, in reading a text, or in some other experience, a fitting response emerges and captures something precisely. When this happens, what emerges may surprise us, but it is not something that was completely unknown to us before its appearance. In fact, we only recognize it because in some sense we already know it, although it was obscured. As Nicholas Davey nicely puts it, an event of truth “is not a bursting forth from a noumenal realm but a sudden shift of perspective that allows us to see that which we had not anticipated even though the elements of what we now know stood before us albeit in a fragmentary way.”43 Another way to think about this is in terms of disentanglement. As Gadamer claims: “To be this and not that constitutes the determinacy of all beings.”44 An event of truth comes not in seeing (or hearing) everything at once but in distinguishing something from that in which it is enmeshed. Such an event is a moment of clarification in which something comes into focus by presenting itself as distinct from other things. These moments are familiar to us from the per-

112

Darren R. Walhof

forming arts. A play or a movie “rings true” when it brings something to light in a way that distinguishes it from the messiness of everything else. Perhaps an exchange, a character, a relationship, or a moment in the performance brought to the foreground of our attention a truth that we previously could not see because it was caught up in everything around it. In such a case, Gadamer claims, “what is emerges. It produces and brings to light what is otherwise constantly hidden and withdrawn.”45 The what is comes into view as it is disentangled from everything else. This disentanglement is evident not just in the arts but also in the everyday experience of finding exactly the right word to express something. We have all had the experience of not quite being able to retrieve the correct word, of knowing the terms we are using are not quite right and also knowing there is a term that fits, even if we cannot recall it. According to Gadamer, this occurs because “experience of itself seeks and finds words that express it. We seek the right word – i.e., the word that really belongs to the thing – so that in it the right thing comes into language.”46 Finding the right word – and note that we experience it as finding and not choosing the word – has an “aha!” quality to it. The moment it comes to us, we simply know that it fits. In this way, “the truth of speech is determined by the adequation of speech to the thing.”47 The right word disentangles something from whatever else surrounds it. The thing discloses itself in language only through the word that belongs to it. According to Gadamer, this moment of disentanglement is also characterized by fullness or abundance. The truth we recognize is familiar – this is what makes it possible for us to recognize it – but the moment of recognition is accompanied by “the joy of knowing more than is already familiar.”48 The unconcealing of a subject enriches us by giving us a new understanding of what is familiar. We can see this by way of a negative example. Performances that we describe as flat or hollow do not have this character of fullness and, thus, are not accompanied by the joy of knowing more. We say that such performances do not ring true because they do not present the complexity and fullness of experience. In an event of truth, in contrast, something is distinguished or disentangled, but in a way that also points to something beyond itself. Something true is disclosed, but in a way that maintains a connection to the fullness of the world in which it is situated and from which it is drawn. Our recognition includes a sense of knowing

The Risk of Hermeneutical Truth in Democratic Politics

113

something we had not known before. In this way, the disclosure of the thing is a moment of disentanglement but also enrichment. H E R M E N E U T I C T R U T H I N D E M O C R AT I C P O L I T I C S

To summarize, Gadamer’s notion of truth involves the disclosure of something in such a way that we recognize it as distinct, fitting, and enriching, an experience we are familiar with from the performing arts. Although art and politics are distinct, if intersecting, human endeavors, perhaps it is possible to approach democratic politics with the expectation that truth of this sort may be disclosed here too. Now that we have a fuller account of hermeneutic truth, can we expect to see it in politics and, thus, supplement Arendt’s pessimistic account with a bit of hope? A couple of observations are in order here. First, as I noted above, the disclosure of truth is primarily a function of dialogue. Gadamer employs the metaphor of a fusion of horizons in order to emphasize that what happens in dialogue does not entail one participant simply taking on the other’s point of view or position. Rather, the result is a new thing – something that was not present before and that belongs to none of the participants. When this occurs in dialogue, Gadamer claims, “it is something that comes to language, not one or the other speaker.”49 Through the back and forth, the question and answer of dialogue, a common thing or subject is disclosed among us. With the event of understanding, the participants “come under the influence of the truth of the object.”50 In this way, dialogue has a disclosive effect. As I noted above, the possibility of hermeneutic truth is directly related to a healthy, deliberative public sphere. The exercise of power to shut down, artificially manufacture, or manipulate public deliberation works against the possibility of the disclosure of truth. The second observation, related to the first, is that truth of this sort is thus not a possession that one carries into political dialogue and that one has and others do not have. Rather, it is disclosed among us. Recall Gadamer’s concern to shift the locus of truth away from the intended meaning of a particular statement and to its broader linguistic context – to the connection between what is said and what is unsaid. This shift in location means relinquishing the presumption that we already have the truth about political affairs and that the political realm is merely the opportunity to express it, to convince

114

Darren R. Walhof

others, or to impose it on them. This approach also means we have to surrender the fantasy, one particularly prevalent among academics, that if others just listened to us, or just understood our point, the scales would fall from their eyes and they would see what is true. In other words, hermeneutic truth requires that we fight against the presumption that those who differ with us on political questions are confused, stubborn, mistaken about their own interests, or have been taken in by propaganda and manipulation. Third, the disclosure of truth in politics thus depends on being open to others. Recent democratic theory has focused substantially on the kinds of reasons that are appropriate or inappropriate in a democratic public sphere, but this, I would argue, is to mistake political discourse for an academic debate and citizens for scholars. The openness Gadamer’s account suggests is not primarily an epistemological disposition, a kind of skepticism or suspension of conviction that may seem normal to academics but foreign to citizens generally. Instead, it has to do with a willingness to interact with others, to see them as fellow citizens, and to fall into dialogue with them about common concerns and issues.51 It means not surrendering to our instinct to steel ourselves against others, an instinct that is strongest when the other is unlike us. It means seeking out opportunities to fall in with citizens not normally part of the circles we run in. Fourth, this openness is risky because opening oneself to others in dialogue means that one is not in control. Given the interactive nature of dialogue, once we are drawn in – once we fall in with another – we may not escape without being changed. By its nature, truth-disclosing dialogue is unpredictable, and the truth that emerges may not be what we sought or expected. Opening ourselves to others unlike us, and thereby to the disclosure of truth about some subject, thus exposes our views and ourselves. The act of engaging in dialogue with those unlike us may transform our views or even transform us. For most of us, taking this risk cuts against our instincts, as we generally seek control of more dimensions of our lives, including politics. It cuts against our quest to be sovereign. To summarize these observations: when it comes to politics, hermeneutic truth is not a possession or viewpoint brought into the political realm but something disclosed through the risky practice of dialogue, in which we open ourselves to others, especially those unlike us. When stated this starkly, it is not clear we can be more hopeful about hermeneutic truth in politics than Arendt was about factu-

The Risk of Hermeneutical Truth in Democratic Politics

115

al truth. At least in the United States right now, it is hard to find examples of open dialogue among those who do not already agree with each other. Among political elites, ideological and partisan commitments trump attempts to craft good policy, much less pursue open discussions on difficult public issues. The US Senate, once called the world’s greatest deliberative body, has become starkly polarized, with deliberation pushed aside in favour of speeches to an empty chamber, written for the purpose of having snippets replayed on the cable news networks. Anecdotes of Congress’s broken state abound. The private lunchroom in the Senate, where senators from both parties used to take meals, now sits empty. Senators Lieberman and Alexander tried to start a series of bipartisan breakfasts in 2007, but they died out after the 2008 election.52 Bob Shieffer, host of cbs’s Sunday news program Face the Nation, revealed in May 2010 that a congressional leader requested a separate green room before appearing on the show because he did not want to share space with someone from the other party.53 There are few better ways to steel oneself against risky engagement with another than refusing to be in the same room with them. Politically engaged citizens mimic the bad behaviour of elites. A recent study of political bloggers, for example, shows that the vast majority of their references, responses, and links are to other blogs with a similar ideological stance. Only about 15 per cent of their references cut across ideological lines, and about half of these were classified by the researchers as “strawman” arguments rather than as serious, substantive engagement with opposing views.54 Likewise, a study found that an overwhelming majority of blog readers – 94 per cent – visit only websites from one side of the ideological spectrum. While blog readers are more partisan and ideological than other citizens, they are also the most politically aware, the most highly educated, and the most politically active.55 In other words, they are the citizens most prepared to thoughtfully engage with other citizens in dialogue, but they instead insulate themselves, rarely risking an open encounter with others they do not already agree with. When citizens do meet face to face with those unlike them, truth-disclosing dialogue is rare, as demonstrated by the series of town hall meetings in 2009, which were scheduled to foster dialogue about health care but were instead hijacked by groups whose primary aim was to stop dialogue. Given this combination of ideological fragmentation and hyperpartisanship, the prospects for the disclosure of truth in US politics seem grim. In order to remain hopeful about the prospects of her-

116

Darren R. Walhof

meneutic truth, one must take the long view. One example, I will suggest, is the disclosure of truth about the nature of civic equality. Though Tocqueville in the 1830s reported on what was to him an astonishing level of equality in the US, the democracy he saw was of course marred by substantial civic inequality. Women’s suffrage activists had already started organizing at the time, but it would be nearly a century before women won the right to vote nationwide. Likewise, abolitionists were also already at work when Tocqueville visited, but it would be nearly forty years before the Civil War amendments promised civic equality for African Americans, and nearly another century after that before many of those promises began to be fulfilled. In each of these cases, the truths that sex and race are not legitimate grounds for inequalities in public life – in voting rights, property rights, rights to education, access to the judicial system, employment protections, rights to marry (and divorce) whom one wants – were disclosed by means of the members of the subjugated groups tirelessly working their way into the public sphere. Their organizing, speaking, marching, and hounding of local and national officials required those officials to recognize and engage with them. This engagement, in turn, eventually rendered it impossible to hold onto the ideal of equality while also defending differential public standing on the basis of race and sex. The disclosed truth about equality, in other words, has become sedimented in the language of democratic politics. This is not to argue that full civic equality for women and African Americans has been achieved. Actual social, economic, and political conditions may not live up to the truths disclosed in language. Nor is it to claim that racism and sexism have been eliminated. Rather, it is to point out that our language of civic equality is no longer natural to those who wish to subjugate these groups. In a way that was not the case, say, half a century ago, their arguments have become strained and forced as if they are working against that language. I argue that we are witnessing further disclosure of the truth about civic equality, this time with respect to sexual orientation. We have seen some of the same patterns here, though in a more compressed time period, of gaining access to the public dialogue through organizing, speaking, parades, and so forth. The movement began with local efforts to end discrimination in housing, employment, and criminal law, and then set its sights on equal marriage rights and the attendant privileges and responsibilities that go with them. The law has already changed in a handful of Western democracies, but the US

The Risk of Hermeneutical Truth in Democratic Politics

117

remains in the midst of a rapidly evolving public debate, one recently energized by a Federal District Court ruling that California’s Proposition 8, which amended the state constitution to prohibit same-sex marriages, violates provisions in the US constitution.56 Whatever the eventual outcome of the appeals process, the trial itself and Judge Vaughn Walker’s opinion suggest that when fear mongering and demagoguery are held at bay by the constraints of legal reasoning, it becomes difficult to defend the restriction of civil marriage to heterosexual couples in terms that simultaneously hold onto the ideal of civic equality.57 As the conservative columnist and same-sex marriage opponent Ross Douthat acknowledges, long-standing arguments against same-sex marriage are no longer effective, including that marriage has always been defined as the union of one man and one woman, that heterosexual monogamy is natural, and that the nuclear family is the “universal, time-tested path to forming families and raising children.”58 These are now, Douthat says, not just “losing arguments,” but also wrong. He argues that heterosexual marriage should instead be defended on less universalist grounds, as “a particular vision of marriage, rooted in a particular tradition, that establishes a particular sexual ideal” involving two sexually different human beings.59 In other words, in order to defend the denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples, Douthat must explicitly abandon the notion of equality. The only ground left, in his view, is an ideal of marriage that is particularistic and unequal. When this ideal of marriage is no longer dominant, Douthat concedes, same-sex marriage will be not just permitted but “morally necessary.”60 As in the earlier cases of race and gender, the arguments against marriage rights for same-sex couples have become increasingly strained and forced, and seem to work against the truth about civic equality disclosed and sedimented in our public language. Arendt actually concludes her reflections on truth on a somewhat hopeful note at odds with the rest of her essay. While fragile, truth is also resilient, she alleges. Though it will be defeated in a head-on clash with power, truth is nonetheless also less transitory than power, and whatever those in power may contrive, they are unable to discover or invent a viable substitution for it.61 Likewise, hermeneutic truth as sedimented and disclosed in language is fragile. It always stands at risk of being concealed by partisan and ideological echo chambers and by our refusal to fall into dialogue with those unlike us. Over time, however, it too demonstrates a reassuring resilience. As the example of

118

Darren R. Walhof

civic equality suggests, taking the long view can help us see the possibility of the emergence of hermeneutic truth in democratic politics, at least so long as we and others are willing to expose ourselves to the risk of its disclosure.

N OT E S

1 Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin Books, 1968), 227. 2 Ibid., 235. 3 B. Nyhan and J. Reifler, “When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions,” Political Behavior 32 (2010): 303–30. 4 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, ed. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, 2nd ed. (New York: Continuum, 1995), 443. 5 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. David Edward Linge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 63. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., 64–5. 9 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 220. 10 “The tradition of the West ... rendered the Greek word logos as reason or thought. In truth, however, the primary meaning of this word is language.” Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, 59. 11 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 404. 12 Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Beginning of Knowledge, trans. Rodney R. Coltman (New York: Continuum, 2001), 125. 13 Plato, Meno, trans. G.M.A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976), 82b. 14 Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy, trans. P. Christopher Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 55. 15 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 412. 16 Ibid., 411. 17 Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, 67. 18 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 411. 19 Gadamer, The Beginning of Knowledge, 125. 20 Gadamer, The Idea of the Good, 59–60. 21 Gadamer presents a rather harsh picture of Meno, which may not be completely warranted by the text of the dialogue. Nonetheless his contrast between Meno and his slave is useful for putting forth his own understanding of the openness required for hermeneutical truth.

The Risk of Hermeneutical Truth in Democratic Politics

119

22 Gadamer, The Idea of the Good, 52. 23 Ibid., 56. 24 Deliberative accounts of democracy have in recent decades become a dominant strand in democratic theory. For a summary of this literature and an account of the place of Gadamer’s thought within it, see Darren R. Walhof, “Bringing the Deliberative back In: Gadamer on Conversation and Understanding,” Contemporary Political Theory 4, (2, 2005): 154–74. See also Adam Smith’s contribution to this volume, “Truthfulness, Discourse, and the Problem of Pluralism.” 25 Jürgen Habermas, On the Logic of the Social Sciences, trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen and Jerry Stark (Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1988), 172. Although he recognizes the value of Gadamer’s defence of hermeneutical knowledge against instrumental rationality, Habermas argues that Gadamer fails to recognize that language itself is ideological and, thus, that critical reflection is necessary to transcend and criticize ideology. As Grondin rightly notes, the long-term result of the debate was a shift in the position of each and a recognition that they share more than originally thought; Jean Grondin, Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. Joel Weinsheimer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 132–3. 26 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “What is Truth?,” in Hermeneutics and Truth, ed. Brice R. Wachterhauser (Evanston, il: Northwestern University Press, 1994), 45. 27 Ibid., 36. 28 Heidegger’s conception of truth is complex and problematic. Since it is not the main concern here, I only give enough background to help understand Gadamer. Good sources for understanding Heidegger on truth include Lambert Zuidervaart, Artistic Truth: Aesthetics, Discourse, and Imaginative Disclosure (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Barry Allen, Truth in Philosophy (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1993). 29 Zuidervaart, Artistic Truth, 83. 30 Allen, Truth in Philosophy, 86. 31 Gadamer, “What is Truth?,” 36. 32 Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, 77. 33 Ibid., 76–7. 34 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 450, 474, emphasis in original. This phrase, which pithily captures the central argument of Truth and Method, conjures Heidegger’s claim that “language is the house of being.” Gadamer’s indebtedness to Heidegger is obvious here, although there are important differences. In particular, Gadamer gives significant weight to everyday language and speech, while Heidegger is dismissive of “everydayness” and ordinary discourse, privileging instead a notion of “authentic” existence that rises

120

35 36 37 38 39 40 41

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

50 51 52 53 54

Darren R. Walhof

above this; see Zuidervaart, Artistic Truth, 78. Moreover, Gadamer increasingly moves away from talking about “being” as that which is disclosed in language, instead preferring to talk about the “thing” (Sache) disclosed. Weinsheimer has a nice discussion of additional differences between Heidegger and Gadamer on this score; Joel Weinsheimer, Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 213–16. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 450, emphasis original. Ibid., 473. Ibid. Ibid., 490. Ibid., 46. Ibid., 482. See Schmidt’s helpful discussion of Gadamer’s notion of the enlightening (die Einleuchtende) as the self-presentation of the thing in language. Like the power of light to illuminate, language possesses an illuminating quality, which “permits the thing to be seen in its self-presentation in language”; Lawrence K. Schmidt, “Uncovering Hermeneutic Truth,” in The Specter of Relativism: Truth, Dialogue, and Phronesis in Philosophical Hermeneutics, ed. Lawrence Kennedy Schmidt (Evanston, il: Northwestern University Press, 1995), 76. James Risser, Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 146, 152. Nicholas Davey, Unquiet Understanding: Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics (Albany, ny: State University of New York Press, 2006), 120. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 445. Ibid., 112. Ibid., 417. Ibid., 36. Ibid., 114. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter, ed. Diane P. Michelfelder and Richard E. Palmer (Albany, ny: State University of New York Press, 1989), 122. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 378. Walhof, “Bringing the Deliberative back In,” 161–2. George Packer, “The Empty Chamber,” New Yorker, 9 August 2010, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/09/100809fa_fact_packer. cbs, “Face the Nation,” 9 May 2010. Eszter Hargittai, Jason Gallo, and Matthew Kane, “Cross-Ideological Discussions among Conservative and Liberal Bloggers,” Public Choice 134 (1, 2008): 67–86.

The Risk of Hermeneutical Truth in Democratic Politics

121

55 Eric Lawrence, John Sides, and Henry Farrell, “Self-segregation or Deliberation? Blog Readership, Participation, and Polarization in American Politics,” Perspectives on Politics 8, (1, 2010): 146–50. 56 Perry v. Schwarzenegger et al. (US District Court for Northern California 2010). 57 Debates in state legislative chambers can be also be productively constraining, as I argue in a forthcoming article; see Darren Walhof, “Habermas, Same-Sex Marriage, and the Problem of Religion in Public Life,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 39 (3, 2013): 225–42. 58 Ross Douthat, “The Marriage Ideal,” New York Times, 9 August 2010, A19. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Arendt, Between Past and Future, 259.

122

Adam Smith

6 Truthfulness, Discourse, and the Problem of Pluralism ADAM SMITH

In this chapter, I describe pluralism as an approach to securing legitimacy for laws that govern democracies. While I assume that no other approach is acceptable, and that pluralism is a prerequisite for democracy, I argue first that pluralism has a problem. I also argue that the most promising attempt to resolve this problem – Habermas’s theory of discourse – fails to do so. To conclude, I suggest that another Habermasian term – truthfulness – might be developed in a way that addresses the problem of pluralism. THE PROBLEM OF PLURALISM

For the purposes of this chapter, I will define legitimacy as a quality conferred on some authority by citizens recognizing the right to govern. I take the view that legitimacy is simultaneously factual and normative. If citizens recognize an authority’s right to govern, that authority has legitimacy as a matter of fact. At the same time, they recognize that authority’s right to govern because they believe it is legitimate, and this belief is based on norms.1 A good general definition of legitimate is “that which conforms to the law.”2 More distinctive definitions arise when the source of the law is identified. If the law’s source is an extra-legal authority – a king with divine right, for example3 – legitimacy is relatively straightforward. When the source of authority is the law, as in a constitutional democracy, legitimacy is more complex. This is because in constitutional

Truthfulness, Discourse, and the Problem of Pluralism

123

democracies the source of the law is the people, who are simultaneously under its authority. Conflicts between interpretations of this arrangement can challenge the legitimacy of democratic laws. The prevailing view is that the dual author/subject relation of the people to the law requires a distinction between legislative procedure and the content of legislation, and that this distinction secures legitimacy. I will call this the proceduralist view of legitimacy. Non-proceduralist interpretations may blur the distinction and tie legitimacy more closely to the law’s content. For some who hold such a dissenting view, a law cannot be called legitimate simply because it is constitutional or otherwise procedurally sound. Rather, its legitimacy is finally determined by the values that it instantiates. The proceduralist view of legitimation arises from what I will call the pluralist impulse. Conflicts between adherents of competing values have a long history. Consider Europe’s wars of religion, in which all sides tied the legitimacy of a governing authority to the religious values that authority enforced. For many observers, the violence and injustice this produced showed that in some equal way, all sides lacked the legitimacy they claimed. These observers suggested that conflicting religious values need not cause social instability. This is an example of the pluralist impulse.4 Pluralists share a belief about legitimacy, which I will put as follows: disagreement need not threaten the legitimacy of our laws.5 That is, the persistence of disagreement about the values instantiated by laws does not necessarily mean those laws are illegitimate. To many modern ears this seems uncontroversial. But against the context of history – in which wars of religion were far more common than the political coexistence of deeply conflicting values – pluralism appears counter-intuitive. It may also seem counter-intuitive when the pluralist belief about legitimacy is probed a bit further. Non-pluralist beliefs about legitimacy share the assumption that the legitimacy of a governing authority requires an agreement about the values that authority enforces. Totalitarian regimes, for example, often require the ideological allegiance of their citizens, and may punish dissent precisely to maintain (what the regime believes is) legitimacy.6 By contrast, the pluralist impulse to permit or even embrace disagreement grows out of a conviction that eliminating dissent for the sake of legitimacy is wrong.

124

Adam Smith

Yet in another sense, pluralism also demands an agreement of its own. In effect, the pluralist advocates for an agreement about a disagreement. This is not necessarily a self-contradiction; the saying “let’s agree to disagree” does not strike anyone as senseless. But it does raise the possibility that pluralism has a problem. After all, the pluralist impulse to permit disagreement is based not only on the conviction that disagreement need not threaten the law’s legitimacy, but also on the conviction that suppressing disagreement necessarily does threaten the law’s legitimacy. Here then there is the potential for self-contradiction: if a pluralist wants an agreement about a disagreement, and believes legitimacy in some way depends on this agreement, she must be careful what she does when people will not “agree to disagree.” In its proceduralist version, pluralism encounters this problem quite directly. Proceduralism is an approach to making pluralism work – to permitting disagreement while sustaining the legitimacy of authority. It does so by legalizing disagreement in the double sense that the law allows disagreement, and disagreement informs the law (through procedures like elections and deliberation between representatives). Proceduralism insists on the pluralist agreement about disagreement. For proceduralists, the legitimacy of the law’s authority depends on the recognition by the law’s subjects that the law – which is to say, the procedure by which disagreements are decided, not resolved – has the right to govern. Those who disagree – those who do not believe the procedure secures legitimacy – may be considered a threat to legitimacy. For example, Randall Terry is the founder of the radical US prolife/anti-abortion group Operation Rescue. He is not beyond endorsing theocracy. Regarding pluralism, he says: “Let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you ... Our goal is a Christian nation ... we have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.”7 To be sure, Terry’s views do not represent those of everyone who opposes abortion. Nor does he speak for everyone with misgivings about pluralism.8 However, his phrasing here poses the problem I am trying to address. What follows then is not an argument about Terry, but about a position sharply expressed by the words “we don’t want pluralism.” What exactly is it that he does not want? There is an ambiguity between two senses of the word pluralism. In its weaker sense, pluralism mostly denotes the recognition of some

Truthfulness, Discourse, and the Problem of Pluralism

125

sort of diversity, be it cultural or religious or ideological. In its stronger sense, pluralism describes a perspective on that diversity. The weaker sense is merely pragmatic; to recognize diversity is to grant that politics must start with the fact of diversity, and cannot hope to overcome it. The stronger sense is normative; a pluralist perspective on diversity insists that politics should not try to overcome it.9 One may recognize diversity while also bemoaning it. This is one way to read Terry’s words: as a wish that there were no disagreement about abortion, and that everyone shared his view. In this sense, “we don’t want pluralism” registers as a complaint about a social fact, or more seriously as a call to shun political pragmatism. In pluralism’s stronger sense (which seems justified by the remark about equal time), however, Terry’s words clearly express opposition to a belief about that fact. This distinction between the facts of pluralism and a perspective on those facts is helpful, because it serves to clarify pluralism’s problem. The potential for self-contradiction pluralism’s “agreement about disagreement” raises is tested by people, like Randall Terry, who will not agree to disagree. The problem this raises is that the distinction between fact and belief about fact cannot be maintained. If it is possible to disagree with the agreement – the belief – about disagreement, then it seems the belief in pluralism can fall back into the fact of pluralism. The perspective – the “commanding height” – on which the pluralist foundation of legitimacy rests seems unsustainable. For it would seem that to secure legitimacy, pluralism requires that everyone be a pluralist and agree that disagreement need not threaten the legitimacy of our laws. But then legitimation becomes the elimination of disagreement (or at least the exclusion of the disagreeable), which for the pluralist is an alarmingly good definition of illegitimacy. One might say that the problem of pluralism is that pluralism is a problem for pluralism. Again, then, the problem is not that people disagree about abortion, but that they disagree about their disagreements about abortion. The pluralist thinks those disagreements should be allowed to influence the law. Randall Terry does not. The pluralist is obliged to think Terry should not be allowed to influence the law, which is a very unpluralist thing to think. It seems the pluralist is as much of a problem for pluralism as Terry is. Any proceduralist view of legitimacy must address this “problem of pluralism.” It must show that proceduralism works to secure legitima-

126

Adam Smith

cy even when some of the citizens under the procedure’s jurisdiction do not believe that it does. I read Jürgen Habermas’s theory of discourse and discursive democracy as an attempt to meet this challenge. THE DISCOURSE APPROACH

Since the problem of pluralism begins with the persistence of disagreement, its solution must too. A good way to explain the discourse approach to pluralism’s problem is that it tries to distinguish rational from irrational disagreement. If Habermas can be found to make this distinction, he may be able to show that disagreeing about abortion is meaningfully different from disagreeing about our disagreements about abortion. That is, he may be able to show that a disagreement with pluralism is distinct from the disagreements embraced by pluralism. He might keep the belief from falling back into the facts. To do this, he needs a theory of rationality.10 Rationality for Habermas is about criticizability. He explains rationality in terms of the structure of communication (communicative action, to be precise; his is a pragmatic rather than semantic theory of communication). When we use speech acts, we implicitly raise validity claims. These are claims about the objective world of facts, the intersubjective world of norms, and the subjective world of experience. Each world corresponds to a dimension of validity: truth, right, and truthfulness, respectively. To raise a validity claim (which is unavoidable) is to be accountable for it. Others can criticize my claim and ask that I support it with reasons. Crucially, our ability to communicate – to come to a mutual understanding with one another about the world, our relationships, or our selves – structurally depends on this implicit criticizability. When we want to redeem a speaker’s implicit promise that she has good reasons for what she says (or does), we can turn implicit criticizability into explicit criticism. We ask her to provide those promised reasons. We can challenge her if we are not satisfied, and she can challenge us. This critical exchange of reasons is called argumentation. Discourse is a certain type of argumentation. In discourse, we criticize validity claims to truth and right. Claims to truthfulness are not handled by discursive criticism. The reason is that claims to truthfulness are different from the other two kinds of validity claim. Claims to truth and right refer to mutually accessible worlds, and so they are made with “universal intent.”11 We claim that some fact is universally

Truthfulness, Discourse, and the Problem of Pluralism

127

true, or that some norm is universally right. Claims to truthfulness, however, refer to a private world and have no universal intent. We cannot criticize them in the same way. Discourse does not test truthfulness; it tests claims about facts and norms. Or, more precisely: claims about facts and norms are only rational (which is not to say that they are true or right) to the extent that they are discursively criticizable. I have suggested that the discourse approach to the problem of pluralism is to distinguish between rational and irrational disagreements. Disagreements, of course, raise validity claims. Specifically, the disagreements with which I am concerned are disagreements about facts and norms. I have said that validity claims are rational if they are criticizable, and that claims about facts and norms are rational if they are discursively criticizable. It follows that such disagreements (as instances of validity claims) must be discursively criticizable if they are to be rational. This category cannot include disagreements for which I myself can see no “good reason,” because the person who disagrees may offer what he sees as several very good reasons. Such claims can be wrong (on my view) without being irrational. To be precise: rationality does not exactly test whether a claim is correct or not. Rather, the way a claim is tested for correctness can be rational or not. Important to emphasize is that this is a procedural rationality.12 In this way, the discourse version of proceduralism develops the pluralist belief about legitimation. As I have described it, pluralism holds that disagreement need not threaten the legitimacy of laws. Proceduralism tries to make good on this belief by identifying legitimacy with the way a law is passed, not with whether the law is “correct.” The question discourse theory poses is whether it is possible to disagree with this pluralist belief rationally. In other words, does Randall Terry’s disagreement with pluralism test the claim of pluralism in a rational way? There may be an answer to this question, but first I need to explain another component of Habermas’s theory of rationality. This is the idea of learning from mistakes. Learning depends on the willingness to recognize the force of reasons both for and against our own position. Quoting Toulmin, Habermas explains that rationality is demonstrated by “the manner in which [the participant in an argument] handles and responds to the offering of reasons for or against claims.” To argue rationally is to “acknowledge the force of those reasons or seek to reply to them,” while to argue irrationally is to “ignore contrary reasons or reply to them with dogmatic assertions.”13 This is why Habermas describes

128

Adam Smith

rationality in terms of learning from mistakes. To acknowledge the force of reasons against our own position is to acknowledge that we are mistaken. Thus to recognize a mistake may require us to exchange an existing view for another. To recognize our own mistake means to recognize that someone else (or some other part of ourselves) is more correct. To learn, we must be prepared to accept the intrusion of other views, and to give those views the purchase of potential. The idea of learning from mistakes helps to flesh out the idea of accountability that is at the heart of discourse theory. It deepens the definition of rationality as criticizability by stipulating that it is not enough simply to give reasons for a position. If we can give reasons for our views in the course of an argument, but we cannot learn from that argument, then we are only rational in an “accidental” way.14 If the aim is to distinguish between rational and irrational disagreement with pluralism, this is crucial. If rationality were defined simply by justifying claims, then there would be no way to show that opposition to pluralism is irrational. No doubt Terry could offer plenty of “reasons” for his anti-pluralism. Instead, defining rationality in terms of learning may provide a way forward. The concept of learning applies not only at the level of communicative action itself, but also at the level of legislative procedure. At this level, the question of legitimation appears directly. For Habermas, legitimate law is a matter of institutionalized discourse.15 If discourse is not only about giving reasons for positions but also about learning from mistakes, law must also be about learning. A law’s legitimacy will not only be secured by the reasons for the (normative) claim that it legislates; it will also be open to revision. A legitimate law will be informed by – and accountable to – the disagreement that it creates.16 It is potentially in this sense that disagreement with pluralism might be classed as irrational. Pluralism is the claim that disagreement need not threaten the legitimacy of laws. As Habermas formulates it in his theory of discursive democracy, pluralism establishes a discursive procedure through which that disagreement informs what the law becomes. To disagree with pluralism (at least in Terry’s pointblank manner) is to believe that disagreement does threaten the legitimacy of law. More specifically, it is to believe that disagreements must not inform the law’s content, or else the law’s legitimacy is in question. For Terry, no law is legitimate that permits abortion. On Terry’s view, how then could the law be revised if disagreement

Truthfulness, Discourse, and the Problem of Pluralism

129

were prohibited, even if that prohibition were defended with good reasons? THE PROBLEM WITH DISCOURSE

Despite its summary nature, the preceding has explained what it means to be rational according to Habermas. My question is this: does it really matter? I personally believe it does. That is, I believe it matters that we are rational, and I find Habermas’s definition of rationality compelling. I believe it is crucial that we participate in discourse and that we permit disagreement to inform legislation. I will go even further and say that I think everyone should be a pluralist (so far as I have defined it). The question is, what do you think? Suppose you simply do not care about being rational. Suppose you disagree with pluralism, and are quite content to do so irrationally. More to the point, suppose you are a citizen who lives under the same laws that my pluralist friends and I do. After all the admirable work done by the theory of communicative rationality, and by discourse theory in particular, my concern is with a question that remains unanswered. Habermas has compellingly explained what rationality is – but can he also explain why we should be rational?17 To quickly revisit discourse, recall that it criticizes validity claims about fact and norms, which are claims to truth and normativity. These are separated from claims to truthfulness by their universal intent. Yet as a mode of communicative action, the structure of discourse is itself universal.18 When Habermas defines rationality, he makes a claim about the world of fact that has universal intent. He does not think the structure of communicative rationality differs between persons or cultures. He thinks the structure of rationality is an objective, invariable fact about the way human beings communicate. He also makes a normative claim, which also has universal intent. The structure of rationality has a “built-in structure of accountability”; you must be prepared to defend your claims with reasons and learn from your mistakes.19 According to Habermas, if in order to answer the “why” question I were to test these claims, then I would ask him to provide reasons for them and challenge him with some counter-reasons of my own, and otherwise engage in what the claims themselves describe as discourse.

130

Adam Smith

Here then is the problem: an explication of the “structure of rationality” (a fact) urges us to “be rational” (a norm). Yet the why question cannot be answered with claims about facts and norms, because the significance of claims about facts and norms is being called into question. If we entered into discourse in order to determine whether we should engage in discourse, then the why question no longer matters. “Why” only matters before we enter discourse, because it cannot be answered discursively.20 More technically, the objection has to do with Habermas’s contention that speech acts implicitly raise validity claims. He says that there is an “internal relation” between the two.21 This is crucial, because it is in validity claims – specifically in their validity aspect, and its separability from their claim aspect – that Habermas finds rationality. The internal relation between speech acts and validity claims is central to the theory of communicative rationality and to discourse. The problem is that in order to demonstrate this relation, Habermas must “already presuppose [the] possible reference to argumentation.”22 In other words, the internal relation between speech acts and validity claims cannot be demonstrated by the theory; it is assumed by the theory. The why question, as I call it, appears throughout Habermas’s discursive solution to the problem of pluralism.23 The problem of pluralism is such that it is easy to address with discourse theory after that theory has been accepted. There is no problem of pluralism for people who accept that rationality is about criticizability, and that one should be rational and disagree discursively (instead of, say, violently). The problem is only difficult to solve because other people are not already committed to discourse. Of course, the fact that some people are not committed to discourse is precisely the problem of pluralism, at least so far as pluralism is formulated as proceduralism. It seems then that this problem has not been solved by defining rationality and distinguishing rational from irrational disagreement. Yet I believe that this is the most compelling theoretical solution yet proposed. I suspect therefore that legitimacy will have to be secured not by solving the problem, but in spite of it. The problem of pluralism remains not so much because this theory of rationality that tries to address it fails, but because the problem cannot be addressed by a theory at all. The problem persists because two things remain: the pluralist conviction that we have to agree that disagreement need not threaten our laws, and the fact that people like

Truthfulness, Discourse, and the Problem of Pluralism

131

Terry simply do not agree. What remains, in other words, is the fact of pluralism. TRUTHFULNESS

In the face of this impasse, I would like to suggest that if we cannot answer the why question with claims about facts and norms, we may be able to address it with claims about subjective experience – with claims to truthfulness. My argument so far has been that the problem of pluralism is a problem for the possibility of legitimate law, that discourse theory is an attempt to resolve that problem, and that the why question keeps discourse theory from succeeding. Addressing this question is therefore squarely aimed at understanding what secures legitimacy. One objection to this strategy is that using what Habermas calls “truthfulness” to secure legitimacy still ties legitimation to the model of rationality as criticizability. Discourse per se may be unsuited to securing legitimacy, but claims to truthfulness are still validity claims and can be criticized. How will this be any less of a problematic approach? My answer is that claims to truthfulness are more distinct from claims to truth and right than Habermas seems to allow.24 All three kinds of claim are made in relation to a world (objective, intersubjective, or subjective). Regardless of type, the validity claim is “equivalent to the assertion that the conditions for the validity of an utterance are fulfilled.”25 These conditions are established by the world to which an utterance reflectively refers.26 Claims are criticized based on how they “fit” with their respective world.27 The difference between truth/right claims and truthfulness claims, according to Habermas, is the difference between the objective/ intersubjective worlds and the subjective world. The first two worlds are accessible to all and allow for claims with universal intent (the stuff of discourse), while the third world is accessible only to the speaker.28 Claims about the subjective world must therefore involve trust in a way that claims about other worlds do not. Habermas allows that truthfulness involves trust,29 but he also contends that the ability to be criticized defines all three kinds of claim to the same degree: “The possibility of intersubjective recognition of criticizable validity claims is constitutive for their rationality too.”30 Claims to truthfulness can be criticized by comparing expressions against actions and checking for consistency.31 By contrast, I think

132

Adam Smith

that claims to truthfulness involve a moment in which it is impossible to criticize them. It seems to me that it is only possible to accurately assess truthfulness not by comparing actions to expressions, but by comparing actions and expressions to experiences. We can compare actions with expressions but our ability to gauge consistency has a final limit because we do not have access to those experiences. Beyond this limit trust becomes definitive and claims to truthfulness become crucially distinct from claims to truth and right. If I am right about this (and the argument would of course need further development, in close conversation with Habermas’s text), then in my view it becomes possible to address the problem of pluralism with an expanded conception of truthfulness without falling prey to the same difficulty that prevented discourse from solving that problem. That difficulty arose from the so-called motivational deficit: discourse theory cannot explain why we should prefer discourse – why we should disagree rationally instead of irrationally – except by referring to discourse as a presupposition. My version of truthfulness would not suffer this weakness because, by definition, claims to truthfulness refer finally to themselves. We do not have to ask why we should presuppose that someone is being truthful, because that is what we must do by default when confronted with a claim to truthfulness.32 An adequately developed conception of truthfulness would successfully address the problem of pluralism where discourse failed to solve it by describing what really does motivate people to disagree rationally, given that facts and norms cannot. In an exchange of reasons for and against the pluralist belief, what finally motivates the exchange’s participants to disagree rationally can only be the trust they have in the truthfulness of their interlocutor’s expressions about their subjective experience – in this case, their experience of the idea of pluralism, which is an idea about rational disagreement. In Habermas’s words: “This concept of communicative rationality carries with it connotations based ultimately on the central experience of the unconstrained, unifying, consensus-bringing force of argumentative speech.”33 My argument is that it matters for legitimacy that the pluralist belief is correct (something to be established by discourse), but it matters more fundamentally that the belief as expressed is sincere. The problem of pluralism can only be addressed if discourse depends on truthfulness and its final inaccessibility to criticism, its final appeal to trust. Trust is pre-rational, in the sense that what is being trusted is

Truthfulness, Discourse, and the Problem of Pluralism

133

that a speaker is being rational by expressing something that really does fit her subjective experience. I as a pluralist can claim to experience the idea of discourse as convincingly “true” and “right,” and Terry can either trust me or not. Convincing Terry that he should become a pluralist cannot, finally, be a matter of discourse, but of trust. As a concluding thought, I will draw a tentative analogy between the pluralist experience of society and the truthful person’s experience of an idea. A pluralist is defined by her acceptance of disagreement within society. She thinks society can still be society, legitimately, even if the popular will is divided by disagreement. Perhaps a truthful person, truthful with himself and others about how an idea strikes him, is similarly accepting of disagreement within himself. He is comfortable with considering himself as an integrated person, free of hypocrisy, even if his own will is divided by disagreement. To be sure, it is entirely possible for a truthful person to find no internal disagreement. Part of my point is that it is as possible to be a truthful pluralist as it is to be a truthful anti-pluralist (and vice versa). There is more work to be done on this subject. But I am intrigued by the possibility that being truthful with oneself inclines one to be a pluralist when it comes to thinking about public disagreements about abortion, gay marriage, and the like (which is not to say that it inclines you toward one view of the matter or another). Truthfully recognizing multiple points of view within one’s heart and mind makes it easier to recognize multiple points of view within society. Therefore, the viability of pluralism depends on truthfulness rather than on the discursive procedures that, from its point of view, secures legitimacy. But truthfulness might also lead one to become a pluralist. These are not the same thing. When I say that pluralism depends on truthfulness, I mean that we cannot address the problem of pluralism by appealing to pluralism, even the compelling discourse expression of it. Pluralists must be prepared to trust that opponents of pluralism are being perfectly truthful. But when I say that truthfulness might lead to pluralism, I mean that in conversation with people who do not believe in discourse, the only thing to which we can appeal is our own experience of discourse. The hope is that our opponents trust that we speak the truth about that experience. I realize that my argument leaves democracy on a less secure footing than if it could be tied to discourse as a foundation. By going a level below discourse, where claims to truthfulness work pre-rationally, I elevate social trust and individual character to priority over pro-

134

Adam Smith

cedure. I think this is the only way to talk about legitimation in light of citizens who do not believe in pluralism. But I also recognize that while I avoid certain errors, I leave democracy in a more precarious position – yet one I prefer. Over time, democracies are inclined to rely more and more on the apparatus of the procedure because of their precarious dependence on individual character and social trust. They try to mitigate the instability on which they depend. This can pose a danger to their democratic character. By re-emphasizing their fundamental dependence on trust and truthfulness, and showing that the procedure cannot do the whole job of legitimation, I have highlighted the fundamentally pluralist, but not fundamentally proceduralist, character of democratic society.

N OT E S

1 For arguments in support of conceiving legitimacy both descriptively and normatively, see David Beetham, The Legitimation of Power (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), and Jürgen Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979). 2 See Jean-Marc Coicaud and David Ames Curtis, Legitimacy and Politics: A Contribution to the Study of Political Right and Political Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 13. Put another way, “that which is lawful is also legitimate.” See Richard H. Fallon, “Legitimacy and the Constitution,” Harvard Law Review 118 (April 2005): 1,794. 3 While the sanction of divine right was normally explained in terms of “natural law,” this was different from the laws made by the king for his subjects. For an absolute monarch, natural law may be the source of royal authority, but royal authority is the source of the law of the land. 4 One famous observer was of course Montaigne. For a study of the pluralism he developed in response to the wars of religion, see Malcolm Smith, Montaigne and Religious Freedom: The Dawn of Pluralism (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1991). 5 Rawls, then, is what I call a pluralist. See Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 54. Larmore expresses the “pluralist impulse” when he describes “the crucial element of modern experience [as] the realization that on the meaning of life reasonable people tend naturally to disagree with one another.” See Charles Larmore, The Morals of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 12, quoted in Eric

Truthfulness, Discourse, and the Problem of Pluralism

6 7

8

9

10

11 12

13 14 15

135

MacGilvray, Reconstructing Public Reason (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2004), 209. For a study see Juan J. Linz, Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes (Boulder, co: Lynne Rienner, 2000). Quoted in Bob Caylor, “Terry Preaches Theocratic Rule: ‘No More Mr Nice Christian’ is the Pro-life Activist’s Theme for the ’90s,” Fort Wayne News Sentinel, 16 August 1993. Nor are conservative activists the only people who “don’t want pluralism.” I do not mean to suggest by my choice of examples that there are no leftwing anti-pluralists. For example, in a 21 October 2010 article in Slate, David Weigel reported on a conference in Berkeley where academics had gathered to analyze the US Tea Party movement: “‘I wonder if we’re likely to see a Timothy McVeigh situation,’ says Nicholas Robert, an attendee originally from Australia, who basically wonders if any Tea Partiers can be arrested. ‘It seems to me that we’re being very polite. I wonder if there are any legal mechanisms – one that comes to mind are the provisions used to crush the Wobblies.” For example, the weaker sense could describe imperial policies of accommodation (such as those often favoured by the British Empire) in contrast to policies of assimilation (such as those used by Japan in its rule of Korea). The stronger sense often appears in defences of multiculturalism. Bhikhu Parekh argues, “since each [different culture] realizes a limited range of human capacities and emotions and grasps only a part of the totality of human existence, it needs others to understand itself better.” Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2002), 336. I am summarizing from the account of communicative reason Habermas developed in The Theory of Communicative Action, especially volume 1 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984). The Theory of Communicative Action 1, 42. Habermas develops his theory of communicative action in order to show “what we mean by procedural rationality after all substantial concepts of reason have been critically dissolved.” Ibid., 448. Ibid., 18, quoting Stephen Toulmin et al., An Introduction to Reasoning (New York: Macmillan, 1979), 13. See ibid., 18. See Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1996), 431. “The discourse theory of law conceives constitutional democracy by institutionalizing – by way of legitimate law (and hence also guaranteeing

136

16

17 18

19 20

21

22 23

24

25 26

Adam Smith

private autonomy) – the procedures and communicative presuppositions for a discursive opinion- and will-formation that in turn makes possible (the exercise of political autonomy and) legitimate lawmaking.” See Between Facts and Norms, in particular pages 104–18. See also Habermas’s “A Genealogical Analysis of the Cognitive Content of Morality,” in The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, ed. Ciaran Cronin and Pablo De Greiff (Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1998), 3–46. See Charles Taylor, “Language and Society,” in Jürgen Habermas, vol. 4, ed. David M. Rasmussen and James Swindal (London: sage, 2002), 131. Habermas’s approach seeks to identify “the presumably universal bases of rational experience and judgment, as well as of action and linguistic communication.” Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1993), 16. See Joseph Heath, “What is a Validity Claim?” in Jürgen Habermas, 85. This is the so-called motivational deficit. See Habermas, “On the Cognitive Content of Morality,” in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, 96 (1996): 335–8. See also Sharon Krause, “Desiring Justice: Motivation and Justification in Rawls and Habermas,” in Contemporary Political Theory 4 (November 2005): 363–85; and Aresh Abizadeh, “On the Philosophy/ Rhetoric Binaries: Or, Is Habermasian Discourse Motivationally Impotent?” in Philosophy and Social Criticism 33 (2007): 445–72. Language has an “inherent relation to the validity of statements” such that “[we] understand a speech act when we know what makes it acceptable.” Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action 1, 276, 297. Martin Seel, “The Two Meanings of Communicative Rationality,” in Jürgen Habermas, 112. The problem squarely confronts the central claim of discourse theory “that the peculiar predilection for the communicative over the strategic is not grounded in a personal preference, in a belief that this is the way things ‘ought’ to be.” David Rasmussen, Reading Habermas (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 37. I am influenced on this point by Georgia Warnke’s criticism of Habermas’s distinction between normative and evaluative judgment. See Warnke, “Communicative Rationality and Cultural Values,” in The Cambridge Companion to Habermas, ed. Stephen K. White (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 120–42. The Theory of Communicative Action 1, 38. The reference of utterance to world is not direct, but “reflective,” such that “speakers ... refer simultaneously to things in the objective, social, and sub-

Truthfulness, Discourse, and the Problem of Pluralism

27 28 29

30 31 32

33

137

jective worlds in order to negotiate common definitions of the situation.” Ibid., 95, 98. See ibid., 84–94, where Habermas presents communicative action as a synthesis of teleological, normative, and dramaturgical action theories. Ibid., 100. For example, see ibid., 91: “An actor has desires and feelings in the sense that he can at will express these experiences before a public, and indeed in such a way that this public, if it trusts the actor’s expressive utterances, attributes to him, as something subjective, the desires and feelings expressed.” Ibid., 15–16. Here he is equating normative action and expressive presentation with assertions. Ibid. Of course there is a choice: instead of trust, we may choose distrust. At that juncture it is possible to ask “why” we should choose one or the other. My point, however, is that this is not a choice that can be made rationally so far as Habermas has defined rationality as criticizability. The Theory of Communicative Action 1, 10.

138

Amy D. Richards

7 A Comparative Ethics Approach to the Concept of Bearing Witness: A Practice in Christian Theology and Journalism A M Y D. R I C H A R D S

Bearing witness is an ethical act. Whether a person bears truthful witness or false witness, the act involves moral agency. Choosing to testify to an experience or event that others, or the established narrative of a culture, may contest may alter the rest of a person’s life. Witnessing is not without cost to both the agent bearing witness and also possibly to the audiences, the secondary witnesses hearing or observing the testimony. Therefore, deciding to bear or not bear witness has moral and cultural significance. Consider the example of two British journalists working in Soviet Russia and the moral and cultural significance of the witness they provided, which shows that bearing witness is not without cost. In the 1930s, Malcolm Muggeridge, an eager young reporter for the Manchester Guardian, left England for what he believed to be the promised land, Stalin’s Moscow. Muggeridge soon found his hopes for utopia dashed as he travelled the Soviet countryside and confirmed underground reports of the mass starvation of peasants on collectivized farms. In 1933, Muggeridge was one of few journalists to cover the Ukrainian famine, during which conservative estimates report three to three and a half million Ukrainians died.1 Muggeridge did not intend to expose the problems with Soviet communism – he had been a believer in the great possibilities of a socialist state. Instead of protecting his own position, he wrestled through the crisis of ideology

A Comparative Ethics Approach to Bearing Witness

139

and bore truthful witness by reporting on the deadly famine. Muggeridge wrote in his diary, “whatever else I may do or think in the future, I must never pretend that I haven’t seen this. Ideas will come and go; but this is more than an idea. It is peasants kneeling down in the snow and asking for bread. Something that I have seen and understood.”2 Muggeridge chose to “never pretend” that he did not see the Ukrainian people dying of starvation. In contrast, Muggeridge’s contemporary Walter Duranty, Moscow correspondent for the New York Times, denied the famine in the hope of keeping his privileged access to Stalin. Duranty responded to the famine by sticking to the Communist party line, “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.”3 Duranty received the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Soviet Russia’s “five year plan.” Muggeridge felt the cost of bearing witness to a contested narrative; he was eventually forced to leave Russia and the Manchester Guardian. While the 1930s public ridiculed Muggeridge and lauded Duranty, Muggeridge’s testimony is now lauded, especially among Ukrainian communities, and Duranty is called “Stalin’s Western Apologist.” Muggeridge’s claim that he must never pretend he was not a witness to the starvation of the Ukrainian people carries the moral weight that often accompanies witnessing versus other modes of perceiving or ways of coming to know things.4 Muggeridge’s story, and Duranty’s as well, illustrates how being a witness can involve being caught up in a “web of complicity.”5 In this chapter, I will explore truth claims connected to the claim of bearing witness. The concept of bearing witness is evident within many fields of the humanities: theology, law, literature, holocaust studies, media studies, and journalism studies. Bearing witness is an ethical claim because the social practice of bearing witness is tied to making truth claims. Simply being present or seeing something can involve a person as a witness to a contested situation. Witness bearers cannot pretend that they “never knew,” and in some situations are under the moral mandate to “never forget”; to do otherwise is tantamount to bearing false witness. Communication scholar John Durham Peters claims that bearing witness means “being on the side of right.” Peters compares the memoirs of a Nazi soldier as an eyewitness to the events of the Second World War to an account by a Holocaust survivor. The Nazi’s memoir may be accepted as an account of what happened, “but never as a ‘witness’ in the moral sense: to witness means to be on the right side.”6 There are problems with Peters’s

140

Amy D. Richards

bold claim. For instance, the journalist who claims to bear witness to crimes against humanity may become a patsy and report on the atrocities done to a community but not on that community’s crimes of retaliation. Nonetheless, as the opening story illustrates, Ukrainians remember that Muggeridge, not Duranty, bore witness to their experience under Stalin’s government. In order to focus on bearing witness as a moral claim, I will provide a comparative inquiry into a theological and a journalistic concept of bearing witness. In both areas, to bear witness is understood as an ethical act. It is a mode of making truth claims where the claim to veracity, or truthfulness, is contingent on bodily presence. Nevertheless, as I will show, witness is a fragile mode of communication; a person’s life may be at mortal risk, and others may not always interpret risk taking as truth telling. In order to investigate these two practices of bearing witness, I will look at prime examples of how veracity is contingent on bodily presence in each practice: the Christian martyr and the frontline correspondent. BEARING WITNESS: A P R A C T I C E I N C H R I S T I A N T H E O LO G Y

The Christian experience of martyrdom overlaps with other religious and spiritual traditions, but here I focus on the practical moral reasoning associated with martyrdom in the Christian tradition. Bearing witness in the Christian tradition is inextricably linked with the body. The Greek New Testament word for witness is martys, and the English word martyr is a transliteration.7 Witness is a prominent theme in the New Testament; the Greek word “µαρτυρία [marturia] and its fourteen cognates appear over 200 times,” and are most frequently found in the Johannine texts.8 One of those cognates is the word for testimony. The concept of bearing witness in Christian theology includes providing an eyewitness account of the life of Christ and proclaiming the kerygma, the proclamation of salvation through the crucified and risen Christ, as well as the meaning of martyrdom.9 In the Christian tradition, the original witnesses were those who observed the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ first hand. The status of eyewitness was not limited to the apostles, but being eyewitnesses gave the apostles particular credibility. New Testament scholar Alison A. Trites describes that credibility in this way: “To borrow words from the opening of I John, they can speak of ‘that which

A Comparative Ethics Approach to Bearing Witness

141

was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands’ (1 John 1:1), and therefore their testimony is of the greatest importance.”10 The apostles and other eyewitnesses, such as the women whose credibility was contested based on gender,11 engaged all their senses in their interactions with Christ. In the Book of Acts, the apostles self-identify as witnesses: “‘We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard’ (4:20) and ‘we are witnesses to these things’ (5:32).”12 New Testament scholar Peter G. Bolt summarizes “these things” as “Jesus’ death, his resurrection, and the proclamation of forgiveness.”13 Bolt looks at the use of the word witness in Acts and finds, “µάρτυς mostly refers to the twelve (Luke 24:48; Acts 1:8; 1:22; 2:32; 3:15; 5:32; 10:39, 41).”14 In the first chapter, the apostles replace Judas and choose a new disciple based on the criterion that this person has been an eyewitness of Christ within his final years. The apostle Peter speaks to Christ’s followers after Christ’s ascension: “Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection.”15 Eyewitness testimony, as well as being chosen by Jesus, remained a necessary requirement for the position of apostle. Matthias, the apostle chosen to replace Judas, was an eyewitness during Christ’s life, and Jesus chose him through the drawn lot (Acts 1:26). The process emphasized those who participated in the life of Christ as credible witnesses. However, Pilate was an eyewitness to the life and death of Christ, but he is not seen as witnessing, giving testimony, to Jesus Christ because he was not proclaiming the kerygma. Witnesses’ credibility is an important concept with regard to truth telling. The testimony of witnesses is needed when there are conflicting accounts of an event. Both the field of theology and the field of law have a stake in the practice of witness retaining the meaning of reliable and trustworthy because both disciplines are concerned with justice. Both law and theology acknowledge that memory is not always exact, but the witness is not always “unreliable” as a result. Witnesses in a court of law may not remember exactly what happened to them. According to Hastings, Mason, and Pyper, “the ‘whole truth’ they [witnesses] tell may not be demonstrable but we [the legal system] acquit or condemn on its basis without any sense of violating truth. That does not imply that they may not have been honestly mis-

142

Amy D. Richards

taken or dishonestly lying. It does imply we accept their testimony in good faith, because overall we judge them and their memories to be at least good guides to the truth. We respect their characters, and therefore their account of ‘what happened,’ even when their memories are not wholly mutually consistent. So it is in religion.”16 The words witness and testimony are near homonyms in the juridical sense, but Paul Ricoeur, in an article on the hermeneutics of testimony, argues that the juridical sense alone is insufficient when speaking of the religious use of the words. That use moves away from witness and testimony as providing proof and toward the act of witnessing and giving testimony. This is a move from a focus on obligation to one on lived practices. Within the Christian religion, a witness’s testimony is not a simple narration of things, but instead, “the witness seals his bond to the cause that he defends by a public profession of his conviction, by the zeal of a propagator, by a personal devotion which can extend even to the sacrifice of his life.”17 Not all eyewitnesses of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection responded with repentance and faith. As I mentioned above, Pilate was an eyewitness but not a convert and, like Pilate, many observe the Christian narrative but do not become engaged with it. Theologian James W. McClendon writes that those who hear the Christian stories “may be only spectators ... In these terms, hearers of Christian stories have been witnessed to, and their following the witness may affect their lives in some degree. Yet what of the hearer who is not a hearer only, but who joins the action of the story, becomes ‘a doer of the word’ (James 1:22–5)? For these, following has become not mere attentive perception, but life itself; now following is called discipleship.”18 McClendon’s words are similar to Ricoeur’s quoted above. She who joins the action of the story becomes a character herself, and therefore has the credibility of an apostle. The meaning of the word µαρτυρία, as in giving witness, shifted from providing eyewitness testimony of the resurrected Christ to being willing to suffer to the point of death by the hand of the state or other power for conviction of faith. Martyrs included both those who suffered and lived and those who suffered and died because of their confession. By the fourth century, those who suffered but had not died were called “confessors,” and those who died for their confession were crowned with the title of martyr.19 The meaning of µαρτυρία became synonymous with death, although this narrowing of the definition was not the desire of all Christian communities.

A Comparative Ethics Approach to Bearing Witness

143

Third-century theologian Origen wrote, “everyone who bears witness” to Christ “may properly be called a witness [Gr. martur].” He wanted to correct the church practice of reserving the name “martur” only “for those who have borne witness to the mystery of godliness by shedding their blood for it.”20 Origen did not win out; the phrase “bearing witness” remains inextricably linked to martyrdom. In my introduction, I stated that bearing witness is a fragile mode of communication. The link to martyrdom, embodied witness to the point of death, is a straightforward example of such fragility. The fragility goes further. A Christian disciple’s death is not automatically interpreted as a case of testimony to the crucified and risen Christ. Sociologist Émile Durkheim classifies martyrdom as a type of suicide and characterizes it as an “over integration into one’s society.”21 Writing about early Christian martyrdom, Durkheim says: “All these neophytes who without killing themselves, voluntarily allowed their own slaughter, are really suicides ... [T]hey had completely discarded their personalities for the idea of which they had become the servants.”22 Interestingly, in Durkheim’s description of martyrdom, the notion that the person died in service to an idea retains the communicative agency, or proclaiming testimony, involved in bearing witness. The death may not be interpreted as martyrdom, yet it is recognized as service to a belief. Durkheim addresses early Christian martyrdom. What would he make of Christian martyrdom in more recent history? Would he classify the deaths of Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther King Jr as suicides provoked by over integration into the ideas of their societies? These men knew that witnessing to their beliefs could likely lead to their deaths. The concept of martyrdom in the modern church focuses not only on confessing Christ under the threat of death but also on denouncing coercive practices: “Many modern martyrs ... are not killed for admitting to the name of Christian, but for preaching the faith in a way that threatens vested interests.”23 The deaths of Romero, Bonhoeffer, and King may not be interpreted as Christian martyrdom outside of the church, but many recognize the social function of their struggle against hegemonic powers. Their lived experiences bear witness to the truth claim that being present does threaten “vested interests,” regardless of whether they are named Christian martyrs. Thus, while bearing witness through martyrdom is a fragile mode of communication, it still has communicative agency.

144

Amy D. Richards

The practice of bearing witness may play a stronger socializing role for the community than does converting the skeptical. Anthony Harvey, Richard Finn, and Michael Smart argue that first- and second-century stories and texts, such as The Martyrdom of Polycarp, provided a socializing role for the early church. The stories of martyrdom structured “the moral imagination of early Christians, shaping and interpreting the ecclesial experience of persecution so that it became bearable for the community.”24 They claim that martyrdom was creatively interpreted to help transmit the faith to new generations and formulate a past, “as marked by heroic success rather than the often tawdry reality in which a great many Christians kept their heads down, sacrificed or bought fake certificates of sacrifice.”25 The stories of martyrdom allowed the Christian community to create stories of valour to sustain its social experience. Martyrdom still plays a socializing role in Christian communities. Venerating martyrs is a way to express solidarity with the living and the dead of the Christian community. Veneration helps transmit the story and forms the moral imagination. Theologian James Tunstead Burtchaell argues that the veneration of martyrs within the Roman Catholic tradition is essentially popular.26 Catholicism is a bottom-up theology. Burtchaell claims the veneration of local martyrs socializes differing Christian communities in the universal way of Christianity. Nominations to canonize martyrs most often come from the witness’s former community. Burtchaell argues that the wisdom that guides moral reasoning is the experience of the community rather than a fixed moral law. The story of martyrs provides succour to those who are to endure in times of trial. Martyrdom primarily helps to shape the community and cultivate the space it takes up in the world. Martyrdom plays a significant role in the enculturation of Christian communities and in Christian communities today. I have now discussed the efficacy or agency, albeit fragile, that bearing witness has for the community. In order to consider the efficacy of bearing witness as a mode of communication beyond the Christian community, I will consider how Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder employs the concept of witness for Christian social ethics. He claims that the Church’s witness is its ethic. For Yoder, the primary meaning of witness is “the functional necessity of just being there with a particular identity.”27 To “fraternize trans-ethnically,” “share bread,” and “forgive one another” are all visible activities that bear witness to the Church’s identity. In the field of Christian ethics, Yoder

A Comparative Ethics Approach to Bearing Witness

145

argues that witness, as the embodiment of conviction and belief, is a way to make truth claims that emphasizes truthfulness rather than securing claims to the truth. For Yoder, the efficacy of bearing witness is not measured by results but by faithfulness. The social practice of bearing witness is a rich concept in the Christian tradition. From this brief investigation into the practical moral reasoning of bearing witness, I will highlight two important characteristics of the practice. First, bearing witness as a way to authenticate truth claims in Christian practice is a fragile mode of communication because of the mortal risk involved in being present in order to make truth claims. Second, it is a fragile mode of communication because the reliability of a witness is always open to suspicion – the veracity gap. The persistent hermeneutical issue can be summed up with the well-worn aphorism: “One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.” Can the issues that surround the concept of bearing witness and the question of efficacy clarify the claim of journalism as bearing witness? In the next section, I investigate the practical moral reasoning of bearing witness found in frontline journalism. BEARING WITNESS: A PRACTICE IN FRONTLINE JOURNALISM

In Western journalism the foreign correspondent was traditionally a journalist native to the news organization’s country but living long term in another while acquiring fluency of language, developing knowledge about a country’s history, functioning confidently in its culture, and building a network of contacts, often on foundations laid by the previous correspondent.28 Such practices provide a good example of what was involved in becoming a long-term journalistic witness. Changes in modern journalism, however, have altered the kind of witness that journalists working abroad provide. With both technological changes and less attention on foreign news coverage, the practice of a correspondent spending years in a foreign country is becoming less common. News organizations now commonly parachute foreign correspondents from journalistic hubs, such as London, New York, or Tokyo, to foreign locations to cover major news stories.29 In the age of steamboats and trains this practice was not possible, as it took days or months to reach most conflicts. In the age of jets and digital communication this practice is commonplace, and most

146

Amy D. Richards

wars are accessible within a day’s travel. The 1990s conflict in the Balkans, for example, was within a couple of hours by plane for most major European news agencies. Given the ease and speed of international travel, expert foreign correspondents have commonly been replaced by frontline reporters used to bearing witness in many different settings. Though it is not the case for all journalism, increasingly frontline journalism is associated with bearing witness. Why do frontline journalists spend their lives in this peripatetic fashion? In extensive interviews, Howard Tumber and Frank Webster found that frontline journalists who report on conflict were drawn not only by the excitement of such assignments but also by the desire to “seek out the truth” and have a “front-row seat” to history.30 Many of these correspondents perceive their journalistic duty of “truth seeking” as a moral or ethical “vocation.”31 Stuart Allan and Barbie Zelizer believe that the journalistic practice of truth telling rests on the authority of “presence, on the moral duty to bear witness by being there.”32 They suggest in-person presence matters, even if it means regular travel around the globe. Frontline journalism provides “visual authentication as well as personal testimonies, and thereby positions itself (and us the viewer) as ‘bearing witness.’”33 Witness involves the physical significance of being there – in the case of viewers, the journalist being there in the name of the public. Journalistic witness bearing requires presence. In order to investigate how the presence of a war reporter creates credibility, I will consider the experience of the bbc’s world affairs editor John Simpson in covering the beginning of the 2003 Iraq war. Simpson had also covered the Gulf Wars, and in a memoir titled The Wars against Saddam: Taking the Hard Road to Baghdad, was critical of his own reportage. In a report Simpson filed from Baghdad at the end of the first Gulf War, he says, “As for the human casualties, tens of thousands of them, or the brutal effect the war had on millions of others ... we didn’t see so much of that.”34 He wanted the 2003 coverage to be different. In the 1990s, Simpson was frustrated by the US military’s press management. In the 1991 Gulf War, the US military operated by the press pool system, in which only reporters managed by press liaison officers were officially allowed into Iraq. Those who operated as unilateral reporters did not have privileged access to military press briefings or protection. In 2003, for Simpson, embedded journalism seemed to operate along the same lines as press pools.35 He chose to cover the start of the second Gulf War as a unilateral; he did not

A Comparative Ethics Approach to Bearing Witness

147

accept the free US military flight directly into Baghdad or a ride embedded with coalition ground troops. Simpson describes the price of embedded reporting in Iraq: “It became quite difficult for all but the hardest-nosed reporters to be absolutely honest about the soldiers who fed them, transported them, gave them the power they needed for their equipment, and (when necessary) saved their lives from the enemy. That mere word, ‘enemy’, shows how a mind-set was created ... If you are with one side in a war, your fortunes and those of the soldiers you are with are pretty tightly intertwined; deep down, you are praying that they won’t fail.”36 Large media organizations, such as the bbc, were able to send teams of correspondents and their crews as both embedded and independent journalists. Simpson and his bbc crew chose to be unilateral: “We didn’t want to be beholden to the very people whose actions we were obliged to report on impartially. Nor did we think that it was right that the only reporting on this war should come from the embedded correspondents or else from those based in Baghdad.”37 Thus, he declined an embedded slot with coalition forces attacking Baghdad from the south, and instead travelled independently through Kurdish northern Iraq to arrive in Baghdad. Simpson surmised that the credibility of his presence required journalistic autonomy. To bear witness to the Iraqi people’s experiences, he needed to be independent of coalition military forces. To speak truthfully, he needed to be on the scene facing similar risk as the Iraqi people. In a caravan to Baghdad, Simpson and his crew found themselves under accidental friendly fire and were hit by shrapnel from American missiles. One of Simpson’s local fixers was killed and Simpson was injured: “Fourteen pieces of shrapnel hit me altogether, and I was knocked to the ground. Most were pretty small, like the ones that hit me in the face and head, but two the size of bullets were big enough to have killed me. One lodged in my left hip, the other stuck in the plastic plate of my flak jacket right over the spine.”38 With his head, legs, and arms bleeding and his left eardrum “completely blown away,” Simpson gathered himself and his colleagues and started a live broadcast. It is easy to imagine how the broadcast looked and sounded. When it comes to “live-on-the-scene” reportage, television viewers’ aesthetic demands decrease. We have come to expect a kind of cinema verité; we find poor lighting, poor camera work, and poor audio acceptable in exchange for the credibility of someone who is live on the scene. The real-time live exposure portrays the “war reporter as a human figure who is as concerned about being live as about staying

148

Amy D. Richards

alive.”39 This is the excitement of live reporting, and it gives authority to the frontline reporter as bearing witness to actual war. As a result, audiences may assign Simpson credibility for his report, and trust bbc coverage generally and Simpson in particular. After all, he would never put himself and his crew at such risk if the story were not absolutely important and true. Back in the uk, doctors told Simpson they would not remove the shrapnel in his hip; his body would heal around the shrapnel, which is now a permanent memorial in his body he calls “George W. Bush.” Bearing witness is intricately connected to the body. In both Christian practice and frontline journalism, bearing witness is a fragile mode of communication and therefore a fragile method for making truth claims. First, there is mortal risk associated with being present in order to witness war. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a non-profit organization, in 2007 Iraq was the deadliest location in the world for journalists since the US-led invasion in 2003.40 Journalists who bear witness to war, as Simpson asserts, fulfill an important function in a liberal democratic society.41 In order to provide a critical account of a war fought in the name of the public, journalists put themselves at grave risk to be on the scene. They are there because others cannot be. They are also there for those who would not otherwise be represented, as Simpson said he was there to portray ordinary Iraqis. Frontline journalists put themselves at grave risk so others can have their stories told. Both a Christian martyr and a frontline correspondent who dies in the line of duty are often remembered as serving a cause. Human rights or Christian communities often interpret their deaths as the result of threatening vested interests. As Christian communities venerate martyrs, human rights communities retell the stories of journalists who died when they tried to reveal injustices. Human rights communities consider how open or free a country is based in part on how safe it is for independent local journalists or foreign press. Second, journalistic bearing witness is a fragile mode of communication because, like its Christian counterpart, it faces a veracity gap. To what extent did the journalist report truthfully? The hermeneutics of suspicion is alive and well when it comes to the critique of news media organizations. Simpson’s reportage can be accused of being part of the Western military-industrial complex that worked to legitimize the 2003 Iraq war. Reports from the field might be thought of as propaganda, or a limited view of a more complex issue, or too one

A Comparative Ethics Approach to Bearing Witness

149

sided, or guilty of myriad other charges against an objective press. Simpson commended the news organization Al Jazeera for its critique of British and American reporting: “Al-Jazeera, which is a remarkably free organization, broadcasting throughout the Middle East to people who will otherwise only get their own government’s view, acted as a reality-check on the British and American version of events. Its motto ... is ‘Where there is one opinion, there is another one.’”42 Suspicious news audiences could potentially deny that Simpson was really even in Iraq. They could allege that the shrapnel in his leg is the result from some other accident. With regard to Simpson’s claim to be speaking for ordinary Iraqi people, he could be in danger of being a puppet for a particular Iraqi faction. A neo-colonial critique might raise the concerns over the bbc reporter creating an atavistic and distant “other” out of the Iraqi people. These risks and sources of challenge show that bearing witness as a way to make truth claims is fragile. Is journalistic bearing witness to wars and other crisis events effective? Asked another way, did John Simpson’s presence effect any change? He did not stop or limit the war by reporting on the lives of Iraqi civilians. He did document a slice of history. Worth returning to are journalism scholars Allan and Zelizer, who write: “Being there suggests that the violence, devastation, suffering, and death that inevitably constitute war’s underside will somehow be rendered different – more amenable to response and perhaps less likely to recur – just because journalists are somewhere nearby.”43 This statement is a highly qualified, “best-case-scenario” argument for the efficacy of frontline journalism. Journalists’ presence does not stop wars. After many successful years as a war correspondent, Martha Gellhorn, who had been among the first journalists in Dachau after Germany unconditionally surrendered in May 1945, changed her mind about the efficacy of frontline journalism. At the start of her career, Gellhorn valued journalism as a means to public action and reform, but she later valued it as an end unto itself. She writes of the evolution of her motivation for reporting on conflicts, violence, and suffering over a sixty-year span: When I was young I believed in the perfectibility of man, and in progress, and thought of journalism as a guiding light. If people were told the truth, if dishonour and injustice were clearly shown to them, they would at once demand the saving action, punishment of wrong-doers, and care for the innocent. How people were

150

Amy D. Richards

to accomplish these reforms, I did not know. That was their job. A journalist’s job was to bring news, to be eyes for their conscience. I think I must have imagined public opinion as a solid force, something like a tornado, always ready to blow on the side of the angels ... Now I have different ideas. I must always, before, have expected results. There was an obtainable end, called victory or defeat. One could hope for victory, despair over defeat. At this stage in my life I think that this is nonsense ... Journalism is a means; and I now think that the act of keeping the record straight is valuable in itself. Serious, careful, honest journalism is essential, not because it is a guiding light but because it is a form of honourable behaviour, involving the reporter and the reader.44 Keeping the record straight is important for the journalist’s relationship with the public, but it is also important for the journalist’s role of portraying the victims of violence and suffering. In the end, an accurate record better serves public deliberation and those whose story the journalist retells. Perhaps the efficacy of frontline correspondence is first to build the audience’s trust. In Christian martyrdom, there are various ways to measure efficacy, such as through the role bearing witness serves in communities. Martyrdom may do more for the community than for the political situation, but the life story of a martyr can sustain the community and form a platform for future action. Simpson and other frontline correspondents’ reportage may help sustain the human rights community or peace activists, or communities who support free press and media systems. However, such aid also demonstrates the fragility of bearing witness, as it raises journalistic institutional concerns about journalism of attachment (which is more derisively called do something journalism). Some critics describe journalism of attachment as “advocacy journalism,” which suggests it is flawed in several ways. First, attachment to one group of civilians may be at the expense of others. This can result in journalists overlooking atrocities committed by groups to which they are “attached.” Second, advocacy journalism is not as independent from government as it claims. Philip Hammond believes that journalism of attachment is just as susceptible to becoming a tool of propaganda during war as impartial and detached journalism: “Instead of truthful reporting, the agenda of advocacy journalism has sometimes made reporters highly selective, leading them to ignore inconvenient information ... And despite claims to be pursuing a

A Comparative Ethics Approach to Bearing Witness

151

moral, human rights agenda, the journalism of attachment has led to the celebration of violence against those perceived as undeserving victims.”45 As examples, Hammond cites the bombing of Serbian civilians during the Bosnian War and the sending of Hutus from refugee camps back into Rwanda to likely become victims of revenge attacks by Tutsis during the Rwandan Genocide. Journalism of attachment is susceptible to such faults in part because of what Hammond calls a simplistic frame of “good versus evil morality.”46 As for his second criticism, questioning the actual independence of advocacy journalism, he found that such journalism frequently coincides with the perspectives and policies of powerful Western governments. CONCLUSION

Bearing witness is an embodied way to make truth claims. Mortal risk is inextricable from the concept of bearing witness; the body in peril carries weight. While the hermeneutics of suspicion remain, a person who makes a truth claim and risks death or is dead is less likely to be suspected of grasping for power than someone who makes a truth claim from a place of relative safety. A comparative approach to the concept of bearing witness in the practice of the Christian tradition and in frontline journalism brings to light how to understand the efficacy of bearing witness as a way of making truth claims. Bearing witness helps enculturate communities around particular convictions, and helps strengthen particular communities. Persuasive power is found through being present, even in the face of danger.

N OT E S

1 Hennadiy Yefimenko, “Demographic Consequence of Holodomor of 1933 in Ukraine,” ed. Institute of History Kiev (The All-Union Census of 1937 in Ukraine, 2003). Holodomor is Ukrainian for “hunger plague.” 2 Malcolm Muggeridge, Winter in Moscow (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1934), 244–5. 3 Duranty used the omelette line in reference to Stalin’s five year plan. S.J. Taylor, Stalin’s Apologist: Walter Duranty: The New York Times’ Man in Moscow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 222. 4 In Christ and the Media, Muggeridge contends that the television camera is a lying witness: “Not only can the camera lie, it always lies.” Malcolm

152

5

6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Amy D. Richards

Muggeridge, Christ and the Media (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977), 30. I borrow the concept of witnesses caught up in “webs of complicity” from John Durham Peters, Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition (Chicago: The University of Chicago, 2005), 256. John Durham Peters, “Witnessing,” Media, Culture and Society 23 (6, 2001): 714. Walter A. Elwell, ed., Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1984). Allison A. Trites, The New Testament Concept of Witness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 66. Joseph A. Komonchak, Mary Collins, and Dermot A. Lane, eds., The New Dictionary of Theology (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1987). Trites, The New Testament Concept of Witness, 114–15. The Synoptic gospels and John all agree that Mary Magdalene was the first eyewitness, but do reluctantly, according to New Testament scholar Claudia Setzer. She argues that the gospel writers could not violate the fixed tradition that Mary was the first witness, so the gospel writers narrated the story in a way that diminishes the significance of her being the first eyewitness. Claudia Setzer, “Excellent Women: Female Witness to the Resurrection,” Journal of Biblical Literature 116 (2, 1997): 259–72. Trites, The New Testament Concept of Witness, 138. Peter G. Bolt, “Mission and Witness,” in Witness to the Gospel: The Theology of Acts, ed. I. Howard Marshall and David Peterson (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), 199. Ibid., 192. Holy Bible, New International Version, trans. International Bible Society (Nashville, tn: Holman Bible Publishing, 1973), Acts 1:21–2. Adrian Hastings, Alistair Mason, and Hugh Pyper, eds., The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 421. Paul Ricoeur, Essays on Biblical Interpretation, ed. Lewis S. Mudge (London: spck, 1981), 129. James W. McClendon, Witness: Systematic Theology, Volume 3 (Nashville, tn: Abingdon Press, 2000), 356. Joseph F. Kelly, ed., The Concise Dictionary of Early Christianity (Collegeville, mn: The Liturgical Press, 1992), 106. Origen, quoted in David W. Bercot, ed., A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs: A Reference Guide to more than 700 Topics Discussed by the Early Church Fathers (Peabody, ma: Hendrickson Publishers, 1998), 430.

A Comparative Ethics Approach to Bearing Witness

153

21 Le Suicide: Étude Sociologique was published in English in 1951. References are from the following English translation: Émile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology, ed. George Simpson, trans. John A. Spaulding and George Simpson (Glencoe, il: The Free Press, 1951). 22 Ibid., 227. 23 Hastings, Mason, and Pyper, eds., The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, 412. 24 Anthony Harvey, Richard Finn, and Michael Smart, “Christian Martyrdom: History and Interpretation,” in Witnesses to Faith? Martyrdom in Christianity and Islam, ed. Brian Wicker (Hampshire, uk: Ashgate, 2006), 41. 25 Ibid. 26 James Tunstead Burtchaell, The Giving and Taking of Life: Essays Ethical (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989). 27 John Howard Yoder, For the Nations: Essays Public and Evangelical (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1997), 42. 28 Ulf Hannerz, Foreign News: Exploring the World of Foreign Correspondents (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 29 For a discussion on “parachute reporting,” see Hannerz, Foreign News, 23–6, and see also Philip Seib, Beyond the Front Lines: How the News Media Cover a World Shaped by War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Mark Pedelty, War Stories: The Culture of Foreign Correspondents (New York: Routledge, 1995); John Maxwell Hamilton and Eric Jenner, “Redefining Foreign Correspondence,” Journalism 5 (3, 2004): 301–21. 30 Howard Tumber and Frank Webster, Journalists under Fire: Information War and Journalistic Practice (London: sage, 2006). 31 Howard Tumber, “The Fear of Living Dangerously: Journalists Who Report on Conflict,” International Relations 20 (2006): 445. 32 Stuart Allan and Barbie Zelizer, eds., Reporting War: Journalism in Wartime (New York: Routledge, 2004), 5. 33 Simon Cottle and Mugdha Rai, “Between Display and Deliberation: Analyzing tv News as Communicative Architecture,” Media, Culture and Society 28 (2, 2006): 179. 34 John Simpson, The Wars against Saddam: Taking the Hard Road to Baghdad (London: Macmillan, 2003), 287. 35 For further examples of embedded journalism in Iraq see Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson, eds., Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq – An Oral History (Guildford, ct: Lyons Press, 2003). 36 Simpson, The Wars against Saddam, 350. 37 Ibid., 351.

154

Amy D. Richards

38 Ibid., 330–1. 39 Johannes Maier, “Being Embedded – The Concept of ‘Liveness’ in Journalism,” Journal of Visual Culture 5 (2006): 98. 40 The Committee to Protect Journalists is a New York-based non-profit and non-governmental organization founded to promote the protection of journalists and independent journalism. It published the report Journalists Killed in 2007 on its website, www.cpj.org. 41 Simpson, The Wars against Saddam, 352. 42 Ibid., 344–5. 43 Allan and Zelizer, eds., Reporting War: Journalism in Wartime, 5. 44 Martha Gellhorn, The Face of War, rev. ed. (London: Granata, 1993), 373. 45 Philip Hammond, “Moral Combat: Advocacy Journalists and the New Humanitarianism,” in Rethinking Human Rights: Critical Approaches to International Politics, ed. David Chandler (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 180. 46 Ibid., 178.

8 Narrative Truth in Canadian Historical Fiction: In between Veracity and Imagination JOHN VAN RYS

Nothing is sudden. Not an explosion – planned, timed, wired carefully – not the burst door. Just as the earth invisibly prepares its cataclysms, so history is the gradual instant. Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

Of all literary genres, historical fiction is perhaps the most problematic and the most promising in relation to difficult questions of truth. Ostensibly rooted in some form of historical veracity in the traces of actual events or people, its fictional dimensions (from invented narrative to poetic qualities) nevertheless impress upon readers an imaginative truthfulness. In this way, historical fiction becomes a site of contention over truth; in its modern and postmodern manifestations, the genre becomes an exploration of the nature of truth itself. Margaret Atwood captures this tension within historical fiction in her lecture, “In Search of Alias Grace.” Speaking of the history behind her novel Alias Grace, Atwood admits to epistemological uncertainty: “I am not one of those who believes there is no truth to be known. But I do have to conclude that, although there undoubtedly was a truth – somebody did kill Nancy Montgomery – truth is sometimes unknowable, at least by us.”1 Atwood posits both the reality and the limits of truth, particularly under historical conditions, and suggests that historical fiction is a fruitful genre for exploring this territory of

156

John Van Rys

truth. In the end, she claims that works of historical fiction are about much more than past moments: “They are about human nature, which usually means they are about pride, envy, avarice, lust, sloth, gluttony, and anger. They are about truth and lies, and disguises and revelations; they are about crime and punishment; they are about love and forgiveness and long-suffering and charity, they are about sin and retribution and sometimes even redemption.”2 Although she situates her discussion in a decidedly humanist frame, Atwood nevertheless articulates the essential possibilities of historical fiction in Christian language that invokes an ethical paradigm best understood within a biblical metanarrative. As Atwood suggests, Canadian writers have been particularly active in the genre of historical fiction. Perhaps this activity is tied to popular feelings of historical inferiority, or has emerged in light of new theories of Canada’s postcolonial identity and a new metanarrative of Canadian multiculturalism. The Canadian postmodern condition feeds powerfully into historical narratives as revisiting, rediscovering, and rewriting history through a range of cultural lenses, which function as ideological windows onto the truth.3 Narratives such as Timothy Findley’s The Wars, Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road, Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces, and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient explore Canada’s historical record of war, seeking the truths to be told about the individual traumas experienced within national and global traumas. Other narratives such as Guy Vanderhaeghe’s The Englishman’s Boy and The Last Crossing, Rudy Wiebe’s The Temptations of Big Bear and A Discovery of Strangers, and Joy Kogawa’s Obasan and Itsuka explore Canada’s history of racial encounters, which is to say, the truth of traumatic episodes centred on ethnic identity and cultural exchange. In their individual ways, all these writers plumb the historical past for meaningful present truths by establishing a hybrid territory between history and imagination. In this chapter, I examine this in-between territory, tracing the dynamics by which historical traces and imagined narratives work together to express truth and to foreground issues of knowing the truth. First, I will explore Paul Ricoeur’s contribution to an understanding of narrative’s potentialities for truth telling; second, I will elaborate the way historical fiction functions as a hybrid genre that problematizes Ricoeur’s categories but opens up dialogic possibilities for meaning; and third, I will focus the discussion of historical fic-

Narrative Truth in Canadian Historical Fiction

157

tion’s truth-telling potential by examining the genre’s particular concern for traumatic history. R I C O E U R : N A R R AT I V E A N D T I M E ’ S A P O R I A S

Given his deep concern for history and literature, for the narrative practices that link but distinguish them, and for the rhetorical and ethical dimensions at the heart of narrative, Paul Ricoeur offers a particularly helpful pathway toward understanding historical fiction. His writings examine narrative’s nature and its truth capacities, the past/future orientation of narrative, and its ethical openness. For Ricoeur, language is, by and large, a necessary condition for meaning, specifically for the kind of recovery or refiguring of meaning that is at the heart of narrative.4 In “The Poetics of Language and Myth,” he writes, “to rediscover meaning, we must return to the multilayered sedimentations of language, to the complex plurality of its instances, which can preserve what is said from the destruction of oblivion.”5 Ricoeur explains that hermeneutics is concerned with what he calls “the permanent spirit of language,” elaborating that “by the spirit of language, we intend not just some decorative excess or effusion of subjectivity, but the capacity of language to open up new worlds.”6 In relation to the past and to historical narrative, language is what forges the temporal link. As Ricoeur explains in Time and Narrative, “the present is ... indicated by the coincidence between an event and the discourse that states it. To rejoin lived time starting from chronicle time, therefore, we have to pass through linguistic time, which refers to discourse.”7 Narrative discourse, whether historical or fictional, carries tremendous potential for meaning, as it mediates temporal existence. With respect to historical narrative, meaning finds its locus in traces or vestiges left behind by the actions of those from the past. The paradox, Ricoeur explains, is that “the passage no longer is but the trace remains.”8 Such traces are at the heart of historical narrative’s ability to signify: “So the trace combines a relation of significance, best discerned in the idea of a vestige, and a relation of causality, included in the thing-likeness of the mark. The trace is a sign-effect.”9 In narrative, history refigures these traces and shapes them into a type of story that speaks to the aporias of time, that is, its perplexing, doubt-inducing, and impasse-creating dimensions. In Time and Narrative, Ricoeur sum-

158

John Van Rys

marizes his argument this way: “My thesis here is that the unique way in which history responds to the aporias of the phenomenology of time consists in the elaboration of a third time – properly historical time – which mediates between lived time and cosmic time.”10 Historical time is thus humanly meaningful time, so much so that Ricoeur can claim, “the meaning of human existence is itself narrative.”11 For its part, fictional narrative complements historical narrative’s meaning making through the universalizing and figuring properties of imagination. Ricoeur explains, “to this reinscription of lived time on cosmic time, on the side of history, corresponds, on the side of fiction, a solution opposed to the same aporias in the phenomenology of time, namely, the imaginative variations that fiction brings about as regards the major themes of this phenomenology.”12 Later in Time and Narrative, Ricoeur elaborates this discussion of fiction’s “treasure trove of imaginative variations”13 by claiming, “fiction does not illustrate a pre-existing phenomenological theme; it actualizes the universal meaning of this theme in a singular figure.”14 He concludes that the fictional texts and their treatment of time he discusses “possess the principal virtue of revivifying these aporias and even of sharpening their sting. This is why I have so often been led to say that resolving the aporias poetically is not so much to dissolve them as to rid them of their paralyzing effect and to make them productive.”15 In other words, the symbolizing and figuring powers of narrative do not so much erase the puzzles of time as shed light on them. According to Ricoeur, then, the meaning-making potential of fictional narrative resides in its capacity to creatively heal a kind of paralysis in the face of aporias. A distinguishing feature of Ricoeur’s hermeneutic of historical and fictional narrative is its conception of the past’s meaningful relation to the future, as inscribed in narrative itself and actualized in the phenomenon of reading. The past, through narrative, is removed from its isolating existence in history and given the capacity to open up future possibilities. To begin, Ricoeur argues that history functions to create a chain of memories, constructing a bridge “between the historical past and memory by way of an ancestral narrative that serves as a relay station for memory directed to the historical past.” Ricoeur postulates, “if we proceed along this chain of memories, history tends to become a we-relationship.”16 In this way, the present is tied to the past to which it is indebted. However, this relationship finds its fulfillment in narrative’s ability to also posit one or many futures. Ricoeur explains this

Narrative Truth in Canadian Historical Fiction

159

orientation in “The Poetics of Language and Myth”: “To say that narration is a recital which orders the past is not to imply that it is a conservative closure to what is new. On the contrary, narration preserves the meaning that is behind us so that we can have meaning before us. There is always more order in what we narrate than in what we have actually already lived, and this narrative excess (surcroît) of order, coherence and unity, is a prime example of the creative power of narration.”17 Narrative’s ability to be both retrospective and prospective characterizes its essential openness, both in its historical and fictional forms, in that it can supply a surplus of meaning in its creative activity. This is the ideal narrative situation. However, when past and future are cut off from each other the results are destructive, particularly when historical narratives affirm and inscribe oppressive power structures and when utopian future-oriented discourse severs itself from history. As Ricoeur explains, “ideology as a symbolic confirmation of the past and utopia as a symbolic opening towards the future are complimentary; if cut off from each other, they can lead to a form of political pathology.”18 In this way, open historical and fictional narratives fight against ideological rigidity and pave the way toward future possibilities. For Ricoeur, such openness and possibility are situated within the narrative text but are activated only in reading. Ricoeur’s concern in Time and Narrative, then, is with “the configuration between two worlds, the fictive world of the text and the real world of the reader,” with the phenomenon of reading being “the necessary mediator of refiguration.”19 As he teases out the implications of this act of refiguration, he explains that “the reception of a work performs a certain mediation between the past and the present or, better, between the horizon of expectation coming from the past and the horizon of expectation belonging to the present.”20 These horizons, argues Ricoeur, never stabilize: “If we admit that the cognitive value of a work lies in its power to prefigure an experience to come, then there must be no question of freezing the dialogical relation into an atemporal truth. This open character of the history of effects leads us to say that every work is not only an answer provided to an earlier question but a source of new questions, in turn.”21 Ricoeur thus grounds truth temporally within an openly dialogic system – a reading system that in answering posits further questions. Within this rhetorical or phenomenological process, the narrative expresses its “communicative efficacy,” which Ricoeur describes in terms of catharsis and symbolic power, in terms of a freeing resulting from a process of disorientation and reorientation.22 In

160

John Van Rys

this way, the reader’s engagement of the symbolic within the fictional narrative accomplishes a meaning making parallel to the present’s meaning making of the past through a dialectical exploration of its traces. For Ricoeur, the real reader’s reading transforms the text and recovers time. Grounded as it is in this phenomenology of reading and this idea of the past and future orientation of narrative, it is not surprising that Ricoeur’s sense of narrative, both historical and fictional, has a deeply ethical dimension. This moral quality grows directly out of the reading process. “The moment when literature attains its highest degree of efficacity,” writes Ricoeur, “is perhaps the moment when it places its readers in the position of finding a solution for which they themselves must find the appropriate questions, those that constitute the aesthetic and moral problem posed by the work.”23 In History and Truth, Ricoeur explores this ethical dimension particularly as it relates to the Christian faith. In “Christianity and the Meaning of History,” he affirms “meaning,” which is “the fundamental source of the courage to live in history,” while at the same time supporting “mystery,” its meaning hidden.24 In “Truth and Falsehood,” he explains a dialectic by which people develop a stable moral code out of a “sedimentation of choices,” but then experience destabilizing challenges: “The result is an endless questioning which assails the main supports of our ethical actions; and the vertigo of our ethical condition lays hold of us.”25 Suggesting that “this movement of dogmatization and of problematization in ethical truth [may be] the source of all the paradoxes of the moral life,”26 Ricoeur nevertheless goes on to argue that this destabilizing is welcome: “For the Christian, the rupturing of the violent unity of truth is desirable. On the one hand, it indicates the conscious awareness of all the possibilities of truth and the range of man. On the other, it signifies the purification of the truth of the Word.”27 With these possibilities of truth framed within the truth of Christ and divine revelation, Ricoeur concludes, “the ultimate meaning of man’s perilous adventures and the values which they unfold is condemned to remain ambiguous: time remains the time of debate, discernment, and patience.”28 The problem, within this framework of historical time, is the will to a unified, single truth, because when such “enters into history as a goal of civilization, it is immediately affected with a mark of violence.”29 In this context, testimony, historical traces, and art counteract this development of a violating, monologic, and even total-

Narrative Truth in Canadian Historical Fiction

161

itarian vision. Testimony does so by operating as “the ultimate link between imagination and memory”;30 similarly, historical traces preserved within formal and informal archives initiate a “critique of power”31 through historical narrative; and art offers an interpretation of the world and an ethical judgment of human life.32 Taken together, testimony, historical traces, and art thus problematize monologic forces that harmfully seek to contain and wield truth. This ethical dimension of narrative, its rhetorical mediation of past and present, and its meaning-making capacities in both historical and fictional variations are all relevant to an understanding of historical fiction. However, most relevant is Ricoeur’s actual exploration of the relationship between the historical and the fictional. On the one hand, he repeatedly maintains the distinction between the two forms of narrative. For example, at one point in Time and Narrative he argues, “the recourse to documents does indicate a dividing line between history and fiction. Unlike novels, historians’ constructions do aim at being reconstructions of the past.”33 Later, he reaffirms the gap and claims, “between the ‘reality of the past’ and the ‘unreality of fiction,’ the dissymmetry is total.”34 On the other hand, the history/fiction gap is not total; rather, the two forms of narrative “operate in parallel fashion to create new forms of human time, and therefore new forms of human community.”35 Specifically, imagination operates in both narrative realms and functions both to “bring us outside of the real world – into unreal or possible worlds” and to “put memories before our eyes”; it serves “as a kind of mise-en-scène of the past.”36 Ricoeur calls this paradox of the borderline between imagination and memory puzzling, but maintains the division: This crucial issue brings us to the borderline between imagination and memory ... There is a positing act in memory, whereas there is an unrealizing of history in imagination. It is very difficult to maintain the distinction, but it must be kept, at least as a basic recognition of two opposite claims about the past, as unreal and real. In that sense, memory is on the side of perception, whereas imagination is on the side of fiction. But they often intersect ... This is not to ignore the fact that sometimes fictions come closer to what really happened than do mere historical narratives, where fictions go directly to the meaning beyond or beneath the facts. It

162

John Van Rys

is puzzling. But, finally, we have to return to a body count. You have to accurately count the corpses in the death camps as well as offering vivid narrative accounts that people will remember.37 Continuing with this theme of the puzzling intersections of history and fiction, Ricoeur claims, “literature never ceases to challenge our way of reading human history and praxis ... Literary language has the capacity to put our quotidian existence into question; it is dangerous in the best sense of the word.”38 In the end, he resolves this border dispute by arguing that historical narrative is quasi-fictional and fictional narrative quasi-historical: “History is quasi-fictive once the quasipresence of events placed ‘before the eyes of’ the reader by a lively narrative supplements through its intuitiveness, its vividness, the elusive character of the pastness of the past, which is illustrated by the paradoxes of standing-for. Fictional narrative is quasi-historical to the extent that the unreal events that it relates are past facts for the narrative voice that addresses itself to the reader. It is in this that they resemble past events and that fiction resembles history.”39 In this configuration, historical and fictional dimensions of narrative resemble and supplement each other. Each dimension deepens the possibilities that each form of narrative contains within itself, and both forms contribute to the meaningfulness of human time and answer the phenomenological aporias of time. In the end, Ricoeur posits mutually enriching forms of narrative that pay their own distinct debts to the past. H I S TO R I C A L F I C T I O N A S H Y B R I D N A R R AT I V E

Ricoeur takes us thus far in thinking about history and fiction. But can Ricoeur’s thinking extend into the realm of historical fiction? When fiction and history meet in the same narrative, what truth matters emerge? What dynamics of reconfiguring do readers experience when they engage such a text? To begin, the temporal horizons of historical fiction are complex: the narrative itself, which may be extensively multi-temporal, carries traces of past events and historical persons. The imagination then works on these vestiges, which are often documentary and archival, in complex and creative ways. A second temporal horizon involves the historical writer’s moment of authoring the narrative, with its own socio-cultural markers and traces in relation to the historical past of the narrative and with its own rela-

Narrative Truth in Canadian Historical Fiction

163

tionship to literary history. Finally, there is each reader’s present/future horizon in relation to the authorial past and the historically imagined past of the narrative – the retrospective and prospective dimensions. The relationships in the interplay of authorial, textual, and reading horizons open up rich possibilities for dialogic exchange in relating historical traces and tracing past and present relationships expressed through narrative invention and figuration. In historical fiction, the truth potentialities Ricoeur outlines in history and fiction as parallel but separate narrative modes seem to fuse and multiply. Anchored in the exploration of historical traces, the imagination operates on truth matters and deepens and problematizes truth issues. Paradoxically, while understanding becomes temporally and relationally contingent, narrative ends up offering an excess of meaning. Fiction’s communicative efficacy – its catharsis and allegory – fuses in historical fiction with history’s dialectic of indebtedness to the past. Understood in this way, historical fiction is a hybridized narrative genre that combines elements of historical and imagined narrative. It suggests that history itself is by nature a hybrid (imagined, figured forth out of historical traces). As a genre concerned with historical and imaginative truth telling, historical fiction typically involves layering the narrative, searching the archives for gaps, inventing within the spaces left between traces, and figuring forth from the historical vestiges through analogy, metaphor, allegory, fable, and fantasy. By foregrounding the work of history and the play of imagination, historical fiction gives readers a playful workload as it makes them witnesses and moves them imaginatively in relation to history and truth, revivifying aporias, to use Ricoeur’s language, in order to deal with them productively. Readers’ experiences are heightened, confronted as they are with questions of what is and is not historical trace, how invention has “completed” the historical traces, and to what end. As a hybrid genre, historical fiction thus has a zone of contact or intersection where historical traces and invented narrative come together. Within Canadian historical fiction, individual texts offer variations on this hybrid model. Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, for example, focuses on the internment and diaspora of Japanese-Canadians during and after World War II by combining historical traces and imaginative methods through the tension between, on the one hand, Aunt Emily’s documents, letters, and reports, and, on the other hand, the narrator Naomi’s tortured and to a degree repressed memories of the past. The

164

John Van Rys

archival and textual past comes into contact with the remembered, storied past in order to emancipate what is still captive and alienated, and to re-gather what is dispersed.40 In Timothy Findley’s The Wars, the story of Robert Ross is initiated through archival photographs, the narrator an archivist/historian attempting to piece Robert’s story together from photographs, transcripts, and testimonies; at the same time, the novel is deeply imagistic, even cinematic, in its imagined elements that stand beside and flow out of the archival material.41 In a different way, Guy Vanderhaeghe’s The Englishman’s Boy relies on a double narrative: a third-person account of the events leading up to and including the Cypress Hills Massacre, along with a first-person narrative situated fifty years later in which a screenwriter tracks down a still-living witness-participant and convinces him to share his story.42 As a final example, there is Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, in which the character identified in the title, again a fictionalized version of a historical figure, remains deeply attached in his dying days at the end of World War II to a copy of Herodotus’s The Histories into which he has pasted many texts and inscribed his own story without revealing his identity.43 What these briefly described examples suggest is the rich intertextuality of such historical fiction, the polyphony put at the service of imaginatively plumbing that horizon of the past to bring it into contact with the present reader’s horizon. In the diversity of the historical subject matter and in the methods of inventive imagining, the results are typically a meeting of meaning and mystery. H I S TO R I C A L F I C T I O N A S T R A U M AT I C N A R R AT I V E

What is striking about so many of these works of historical fiction is their particular focus – in both subject matter and methodology – on historical trauma, understood in both broadly social and more narrowly personal terms. In psychology, trauma refers to the effects of violent and violating events on the self. Such traumatic events and conditions include not only natural catastrophes but also sexual and domestic violence, combat, and political terror.44 Trauma theory provides some particularly potent concepts for understanding the workings of truth in historical fiction. First, this theory describes the dynamic between little-understood perpetrators; victims who face various forms of dissociation, secrecy, and silencing; and witnesses who are enmeshed in a fragmentary vision. Second, it explains the dialectic of, on the one hand, self-preserving amnesia, and, on the other hand,

Narrative Truth in Canadian Historical Fiction

165

testimony to the trauma. Finally, it addresses the disintegration of human community, trust, and ultimate beliefs through horrific violations, as well as reintegration through healing. Here is how Judith Lewis Herman characterizes the traumatic experience: “Traumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptations to life. Unlike commonplace misfortunes, traumatic events generally involve threats to life or bodily integrity, or a close personal encounter with violence and death. They confront human beings with the extremities of helplessness and terror, and evoke the responses of catastrophe.”45 Herman further discusses what characterizes these responses to catastrophe: “The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.”46 However, she continues, “remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims.”47 This territory of trauma, what Herman calls “the lacerating moral complexities of the extreme situation,”48 is precisely the territory of many works of Canadian historical fiction. Part of the genre’s work, then, involves remembering and reintegrating trauma into collective consciousness. It involves addressing the silence, bearing witness, and offering testimony. In doing so, the genre plumbs the meaning of violence and violation and its alienating and dissociating effects. Listen to the narrator in Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces: “I couldn’t turn my anguish from the precise moment of death. I was focused on that historical split second: the tableau of the haunting trinity – perpetrator, victim, witness.”49 So it goes in many texts: in Boyden’s Three Day Road, the residential school experience of aboriginal people and World War I trench warfare;50 in Kogawa’s Obasan, childhood sexual abuse, internment, diaspora, and a parent lost to the atomic bomb; and in Atwood’s Alias Grace, the psychological head wounds of Grace Marks inflicted by childhood violence, the death of a mother, the botched abortion and death of Mary Whitney, and the amnesiainspiring murders of Nancy Montgomery and Thomas Kinnear.51 The litany of global and personal traumas could continue, but it is enough to see how historical fiction speaks truth to power, though it does so best not ideologically and monologically, but dialogically through its expression of indebtedness to the past and its imaginative intensification of truth that directs readers into the future.

166

John Van Rys

Ricoeur’s notions of “a wounded or split cogito”52 and of “axial moments”53 resonate with trauma theory. In his exploration of the quasi-fictive nature of history and the quasi-historical nature of fiction, Ricoeur isolates traumatic history for special attention. First of all, he argues, the historian initiates a critique of power by giving “expression to the voices of those who have been abused, the victims of intentional exclusion,” and by “providing space for the confrontation between opposing testimonies.”54 Similarly, Ricoeur cautions against amnesty as a type of enforced forgetfulness that prevents mourning and leads to melancholy.55 “It is good,” he writes, “that the wounds of history remain open to thought.”56 Such wounds Ricoeur describes as “boundary situations ... in which the individual or community experiences a fundamental existential crisis,” a destructive threat that presses the community “to return to the very roots of its identity, to that mythical nucleus which ultimately grounds and determines it.”57 In other words, the traumatized face “ultimate questions concerning our origins and ends.”58 Toward the end of Time and Narrative, Ricoeur powerfully articulates narrative’s responsibilities toward historical trauma by meditating on the Holocaust. Discussing epoch-making events, Ricoeur argues that while normally the historian is expected to set aside personal feelings, with events such as Auschwitz that distance is neither possible nor desirable: “In this regard we should recall the biblical watchword (from Deuteronomy) Zakhor, ‘Remember!’ which is not necessarily the same thing as a call to historiography.”59 Ricoeur then goes on to contrast our experience of the sacred and great, tremendum fascinosum, with our experience of the horrific: The tremendum [fascinosum] ... has another side to it, the tremendum horrendum, whose cause also deserves to be pleaded. And we shall see what beneficial aid fiction can bring to this plea. Horror is the negative form of admiration, as loathing is of veneration. Horror attaches to events that must never be forgotten. It constitutes the ultimate ethical motivation for the history of victims ... The victims of Auschwitz are, par excellence, the representatives in our memory of all history’s victims. Victimization is the other side of history that no cunning of reason can ever justify and that, instead, reveals the scandal of every theodicy of history. The role of fiction in this memory of the horrible is a corollary to the capacity of horror, and also of admiration, to address itself

Narrative Truth in Canadian Historical Fiction

167

to events whose explicit uniqueness is of importance ... [H]orror isolates events by making them incomparable, incomparably unique, uniquely unique. If I persist in associating horror with admiration, it is because horror inverts the feeling with which we go forth to meet all that seems to us to be generative, creative. Horror is inverted veneration. It is in this sense that the Holocaust has been considered a negative revelation, an Anti-Sinai.60 As Ricoeur describes the traumatic situation, both history and fiction have deep responsibilities to victims and to memory: there can be no rationalization, no defence of God’s goodness that explains and dismisses the horror. This, too, is the truth territory of historical fiction. Deeply disruptive trauma de-narrates a life and life itself; the writer of historical fiction who inscribes the traces of traumatic history into novelistic narrative while inventing the truth essentially re-narrates and revives the silenced story. The narrator in Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces at one point remembers and meditates on the trauma the victims of the Holocaust experienced, movingly imagining the most profound losses. “But truthfully,” he admits, “I couldn’t even begin to imagine the trauma of their hearts, of being taken in the middle of their lives.”61 In one sense, the narrator speaks the truth, but in another sense the collaboration of author and reader is what allows the hybrid stories told about trauma by historical fiction to succeed, at least to an extent, in this work of imagining. Historical fiction such as Fugitive Pieces, The Wars, Obasan, Alias Grace, and The English Patient can thus make an ethically rich gesture toward imagining the unimaginable, whether that of the Holocaust, trench warfare, internment and diaspora, murder, burning and crashing, or atomic fallout. In doing so, historical fiction, with its attention to historical traces and its imaginative surplus of meaning, fulfills what Ricoeur describes as our responsibilities to victims and to memory. The journey toward understanding historical fiction, then, begins with and comes back to Ricoeur’s explication of historical and fictional narrative as related forms of truth telling. His explanation of the meaning-making capacities of historical and fictional narratives, including their ability to expose and productively sharpen the aporias of the phenomenology of time, clarifies narrative’s mediation of past and present and promotes an ethical understanding of its capacity. While historical fiction as a genre complicates Ricouer’s separation of historical and fictional narrative by presenting a rich hybrid possibil-

168

John Van Rys

ity, Ricoeur’s insights into historical trauma in turn enrich our understanding of the truth-telling potential of historical fiction in relation to traumatic experience. In the end, readers are left with a sense of historical fiction as a genre deeply committed to imaginative truth telling. Rudy Wiebe expresses the ethical responsibility of historical fiction this way: “A life is a sacred story, and if you are going to tell it you must respect it profoundly.”62 Like Christian writers of historical fiction, Christian readers of historical fiction testify to this belief as they struggle to understand the narrative within the larger narrative of faith. Thus, this genre’s hybridity embraces an ethical debt to the past through engagement with its traces and at the same time opens up a surplus of meaning through imaginative structures, intertextuality, polyphony, and figuration, creating the productive ambiguity that Ricoeur associates with meaning, mystery, and living within time. In the end, Ricoeur’s distinction between history and fiction, problematized by historical fiction, is again relevant. “Does not the difficult law of creation,” he asks, “which is ‘to render’ in the most perfect way the vision of the world that animates the narrative voice, simulate, to the point of being indistinguishable from it, history’s debt to the people of the past, to the dead? Debt for debt, who, the historian or the novelist, is the most insolvent?”63 Given Ricoeur’s equation, it is the case that writers of historical fiction – Canadian writers included – are the most insolvent of all authors. As readers, we are deeply in their debt.

N OT E S

1 Margaret Atwood, In Search of Alias Grace: On Writing Canadian Historical Fiction (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1997), 37. 2 Ibid., 38–9. See also Deborah Bowen’s exploration of the relationship between historical fiction, truth, and biblical meta-narrative in Stories of the Middle Space: Reading the Ethics of Postmodern Realisms (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010), 59–98. 3 Particularly relevant here is Linda Hutcheon’s “Historiographic Metafiction,” in The Canadian Postmodern: A Study of Contemporary English-Canadian Fiction (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1988), 61–77. Also significant in this postmodern, postcolonial approach is Herb Wyile’s Speculative Fictions: Contemporary Canadian Novelists and the Writing of History (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), in which Wyile investigates the epistemological skepticism present in the genre. A recent study

Narrative Truth in Canadian Historical Fiction

4

5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

169

emphasizes the Canadian in Canadian historical fiction: the essays in National Plots: Historical Fiction and Changing Ideas of Canada, ed. Andrea Cabajsky and Brett Josef Grubisic (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010) address “the role that history and fiction have played in the formation of national identity” (vii). This is not to say that for Ricoeur meaning resides only in language. Works such as The Symbolism of Evil and The Rule of Metaphor posit certain forms of pre-linguistic meaning. Paul Ricoeur, “The Poetics of Language and Myth,” interview by Richard Kearney, Dialogues with Continental Thinking: Conversations with Contemporary Thinkers (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004), 110. Ibid., 124. The italics are Ricoeur’s. Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 3, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 109. Ibid., 119. Ibid., 120. Ibid., 99. Ibid., 100. Ibid., 99. Ibid., 128. Ibid., 134. Ibid., 139. Ibid., 114. Ricoeur, “Poetics,” 104. “To give people back a memory,” continues Ricoeur, “is also to given them back a future” (109), thus emphasizing the ontological potential of narrative. As he argues in Time and Narrative, within this system of symbolic functioning, ancestors become “the icon of the immemorial” and descendants “the icon of hope” (3:116). Ricoeur, “Poetics,” 111. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 159. Ibid., 172. Ibid. Ibid., 176–7. Ibid., 173. Paul Ricoeur, History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbley (Evanston, il: Northwestern University Press, 1965), 93. Ibid., 173. Ibid. Ibid., 181. Ibid., 182.

170

John Van Rys

29 Ibid., 176. 30 Ricoeur, “On Narrative Imagination,” Dialogues with Continental Thinking, 50. 31 Ibid., 51. 32 Ricoeur, History and Truth, 174. 33 Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 142. 34 Ibid., 157. 35 Ibid., 102. 36 Ricoeur, “On Narrative Imagination,” 50. 37 Ibid., 49–50. 38 Ricoeur, “Poetics,” 106. 39 Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 190. 40 Joy Kogawa, Obasan (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 1981). 41 Timothy Findley, The Wars (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2005). 42 Guy Vanderhaeghe, The Englishman’s Boy (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1996). 43 Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient (New York: Vintage International, 1992). Also of interest are Ondaatje’s Coming through Slaughter and In the Skin of a Lion. For additional examples by other authors, see George Bowering’s Burning Water, Sky Lee’s Disappearing Moon Café, Daphne Marlatt’s Ana Historic, and John Steffler’s The Afterlife of George Cartwright. 44 Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (London: Pandora, 2001), 2–3. 45 Ibid., 33. 46 Ibid., 1. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid., 69. For additional resources that explore, in particular, the relationship between trauma and literature, see the following: James Berger’s “Trauma and Literary Theory,” Contemporary Literature 38 (3, 1997): 569–82; Cathy Caruth’s Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Ann Kaplan’s Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature (London: Rutgers University Press, 2005); and Laurie Vickroy’s Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002). 49 Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1996), 140. 50 Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2005). 51 Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace (New York: Doubleday, 1996). 52 Ricoeur, “Poetics,” 109. 53 Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 108. 54 Ricoeur, “On Narrative Imagination,” 51.

Narrative Truth in Canadian Historical Fiction

55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

171

Ibid., 42. Ibid., 51. Ricoeur, “Poetics,” 119. Ibid. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 187. Ibid., 187–8. Michaels, Fugitive Pieces, 147. Rudy Wiebe, “Walking Where His Feet Can Walk,” interview with Herb Wyile, in Speaking in the Past Tense: Canadian Novelists on Writing Historical Fiction, ed. Herb Wyile (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2007), 73. 63 Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 192.

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction

PART THREE

Truth and Ethics

This page intentionally left blank

9 Truth, Truthfulness, and the I-Self Relationship GERRIT GLAS

I feel sympathy for the attempt to bring together the notions of truth and truthfulness, as was done in the introductory text to the Truth Matters conference.1 It is indeed appealing to try to connect the epistemic concept of truth with moral and psychological concepts like truthfulness and trustworthiness. The power of this appeal can be felt in different contexts. Today we are sensitized for the issue of truthfulness, because of the economic crisis and the loss of trustworthiness in the financial system. The public has lost its trust because the stories that legitimized the economic behaviour of bankers and share brokers have proven to be at least partially false. So, trustworthiness is related to truth, but not identical with it. What has shocked people is perhaps not so much the wrongness of certain (epistemic) truths as the extent to which they have relied on these truths. What appears to be disturbing is the looseness of the relationship between truth and trustworthiness, between reality and belief. In the public sphere there is a similar dissociation, or even gap, between truth and trustworthiness. Reputation has become much more important than epistemic truth. The way authorities relate to truth, especially embarrassing and painful truths, seems much more driven by the desire to preserve the impression of trustworthiness than by the desire to promote truth and veracity. So, there is a new element here, namely, that of intentionally keeping up the appearance of reliability and trustworthiness as a goal.

176

Gerrit Glas

In other practices such as medicine there is a different form of dissociation: medical professionals, in so far as they know the truth about medically relevant facts, are inclined to proportion truth to what the patient can bear. The truthfulness and trustworthiness of the professional comes to expression in the way this is done. To be truthful is not just to reveal everything that is factually true; it is to stay in touch with what the patient can tolerate and to proportion what is said (the truth) to what the patient can absorb. By doing so the doctor expresses another (second-order) form of truth: truth not just about certain facts, but truth as the expression of the professional’s understanding of how the patient relates to those facts. Professionals are qualified in so far as they have the competence to relate sensitively to what the patient can bear. In sum, there are at least four concepts related to truth: (epistemic) truth, here understood as truth about certain states of affairs in the world; trust as the attitude that lets us accept certain (epistemic) truths expressed by others; trustworthiness and truthfulness as attitudes that enable others to accept certain truths on psychological or moral grounds expressed by me (or different others); and truth as the expression of a second order way of understanding, namely, the understanding of how others relate to certain first order, epistemic truths. It is this second order understanding of truth that will mainly concern me in this chapter. As I see it, truth is not only conveyed by reports on certain epistemic truths but often also by the way persons relate to these truths. This second order understanding is relevant not only in understanding others but also in understanding the self. The convictions that emerge in the process of understanding the self and others are mediated and supported by truthfulness and trustworthiness, which provide the psychological and moral grounds for trust. AUTHENTICITY AND TRUTH

Philosophers, too, have discussed truth and truthfulness as societal themes. Charles Taylor is one of the most influential among them, and he has gained a wide audience, even outside philosophical circles.2 Taylor discusses the issue of truthfulness under the heading of authenticity. He does not belong to the critics of authenticity who say it is just the expression of individualistic and narcissistic self-concern, such as Bloom, Bell, and Lasch.3 Authenticity once was a fierce ideal, a way to live according to one’s standards; it was the expression of connectedness with one’s spiritual sources. In the nineteenth century

Truth, Truthfulness, and the I-Self Relationship

177

these sources were searched for in inner life – in hearing one’s “inner voice” and maintaining the standard of individual originality. The individual person was his or her own “measure.” This Romantic ideal of authenticity, however, has been hollowed out by what Taylor calls “weak relativism.” This relativism has at least two features: loss of a shared horizon of meaning, and insufficient acknowledgment of the need for recognition. Basically, the attempt to self-define and live up to self-chosen standards can only be significant if there are things in the world that others recognize as significant. The attempt at self-definition can only have meaning if there is someone for whom what one is doing and what one considers valuable matters. In our individualistic world, however, authenticity is threatened by lack of mutual recognition and easily turns into an empty and vague notion. For Lambert Zuidervaart, authenticity is also characteristic for truth – at least artistic truth – along with significance and integrity.4 He seems less ambivalent about the concept of artistic truth than Taylor, but maybe this is because his use of the term has another focus (authenticity as an element of artistic truth), whereas Taylor talks about an ideal of the Romantic period that in our society is threatened. Zuidervaart sees authenticity as a feature of the subject-object relation between the artist and her work, in the sense that the work of art “imaginatively discloses” the artist’s experience or vision.5 Authenticity, therefore, is a mediated expression (mediated by the artwork), and this mediation contributes to the imaginative disclosing effect of the artwork. Zuidervaart’s work in aesthetics is part of a larger project that will lead to an account of truth in other areas. One of its main thrusts is the search for a concept of truth that is more comprehensive than assertoric correctness and propositional truth, and for a notion of authentication that entails more than just the discursive justification of assertions.6 To be sure, in the end this form of justification should be dealt with. It is this form of justification that Zuidervaart misses in the philosophers who inspired him: Adorno, Heidegger, and Dooyeweerd. Their work lacks a concept of objectivity and of intersubjective validation. D O OY E W E E R D , K I E R K E G A A R D , Z U I D E R V A A R T

This chapter arises from a broader project of the author that consists of rethinking Dooyeweerdian systematic philosophy from a Kierkegaardian perspective. Traditionally, Dooyeweerd and Kierkegaard have

178

Gerrit Glas

been seen as near opposites. I hold, however, that there are strong arguments to suspect that this view is based on an erroneous reading of Kierkegaard as a proto-existentialist or early postmodern thinker. By seeing him primarily as a Christian thinker who searches for transparency in the I-self relationship, one can open a fruitful mutual area of encounter.7 The issue of truth is relevant for both thinkers, since both consider truth primarily as a way to relate to and adopt an attitude toward, respectively, the origin of meaning (Dooyeweerd) and the sustaining and inviting power that opens up the I-self relationship (Kierkegaard).8 Zuidervaart criticizes Dooyeweerd’s theory of truth, first in a lengthy online paper and later in two articles in Philosophia Reformata.9 Both he and Dooyeweerd concur that truth is something to be lived and enacted.10 Zuidervaart’s problem with Dooyeweerd is (among others) that the latter on the one hand suggests that religious concentration on the origin never can be grasped conceptually, whereas on the other hand accounts for truth in terms of an ultimate horizon that encompasses and determines other horizons that, in their turn, structure subjects in their orientation toward this origin. This “structuralization” of the way religion works is at odds with the dynamic, open, and undogmatic way in which Dooyeweerd speaks about religion at other places. As a consequence, the overall impression remains static. Whereas Dooyeweerd speaks of “standing in the truth” as the expression of a presupposed superstructure that consists of God’s call to love and human responses, Zuidervaart is inclined to emphasize the processual and dialogical character of all understanding of truth. For this understanding, metaphors like walking and abiding in truth are more apt than Dooyeweerd’s standing in the truth.11 There are more detailed and technical points of disagreement between Zuidervaart and Dooyeweerd, but I will leave them aside for the present.12 In the background of Zuidervaart’s criticism of Dooyeweerd there is a different conception of norms and of the process of the unfolding of reality in the course of history. Norms are not ahistorical, fixed, and pre-given principles, but are thoroughly historical. Truth is a dynamic correlation between human fidelity to societal principles on the one hand and a life-giving disclosure of society on the other hand. The first correlation corresponds (with modifications) with Dooyeweerd’s claim of accordance between law and human response. The idea of life-giving self-disclosure reflects Dooyeweerd’s idea of the opening process and refers to the telos of this process: “the flourishing of all

Truth, Truthfulness, and the I-Self Relationship

179

creatures in their interconnections.”13 To be sure, the notion of such a telos is lacking in Dooyeweerd’s analysis of the opening process. My focus in the present chapter is on a more limited subject, namely, how truth relates to the I-self relationship. My interest in the notion of self-relatedness has partly arisen from the fact that it offers a natural way to understand how religious dynamics are intertwined with the process of the opening-up of structures of reality.14 Self-relatedness is an important category in Kierkegaard’s writings, and is also important in Dooyeweerd’s understanding of theoretical knowing. One of the reasons Dooyeweerd consistently speaks of the (analysis of the) theoretical attitude of thought is that theorizing implies the adoption of an attitude. This attitude of analyzing and constructing abstract representations in its turn has repercussions for the self. It is for the scientist, for instance, not self-evident anymore to feel embedded in the context of which the object of study forms a part. Objectifying implies taking distance, analyzing, and construing relations underneath the surface of ordinary knowledge. In Zuidervaart’s account the idea of self-relatedness is more implicit, albeit not absent. Truth is a comprehensive notion, implying much more than assertoric truth only. Truth should be lived. It has many modes. By living truth, we can bear witness to truth. This bearing witness may occur behind our backs; it may be lived in non-assertoric ways. Other modes of truth may provide the context and support for the pursuit of assertoric correctness, Zuidervaart says.15 Such statements are consistent with the idea that, like truth, self-relatedness has many modes that may operate in different directions. There may be, for instance, tension between what a person says and what she does. Such statements are also consistent with the idea that self-relatedness co-occurs with and is embedded in other relations – relations with others and with the world. In this chapter, I will employ this many-faceted concept of self-relatedness to acquire a clearer picture of the complexity of the relationship between truth and truthfulness. I begin with Søren Kierkegaard, specifically, with the view of one of his pseudonymous characters (Johannes Climacus) on “indirect communication” as condition for communicating truth. I will frame my discussion of this notion with the broader perspective of a comparison between Kierkegaard and reformational philosophical thinking. This comparison also has something to offer for Zuidervaart’s conception of truth. My question is: how does the thinker, as thinker, relate to truth or to meaning and a life-giving perspective (to use Zuidervaart’s phrase)?

180

Gerrit Glas

I build my account in five steps. First. I discuss Kierkegaard’s thesis of indirect communication. Then I discuss approaches to truth based on reformational philosophical insights. After this, I return to Kierkegaard and his thesis of the subjectivity of truth. Next, I give another reflection on the relation between the reformational and the Kierkegaardian approach. Finally, I return to Zuidervaart and draw some conclusions as to how the exchange of ideas between Kierkegaard and reformational philosophy may be of help in the further elaboration of Zuidervaart’s conception of truth. T H E T H E S I S O F T H E I N D I R E C T C O M M U N I C AT I O N

I start with a discussion of Kierkegaard’s thesis of indirect communication. For Climacus, the pseudonymous character that voices the position of the sceptical humorist, the issue is fundamental. He is convinced that truth allows only indirect communication.16 The term indirect should be read as contrasting with direct, that is, objective, factual, as a state of affairs one can be informed about. Truth does not tolerate such directness; it is no chunk of information, no non-contextual knowledge to be dredged up at will. In other words, truth is not some objective “over against” to be discussed at a distance. Those who try turn truth into an abstraction. In that case truth evaporates and ultimately turns into illusion, according to Climacus. If there be truth, it must come to expression in the manner one lives, for example in authenticity. Such truth is embodied – it presupposes persons of flesh and blood, who in their attitude embody the truth. Whoever is in search of truth should pay attention to style, attitude, and the relationship implied in the communication of the speaker/writer to himself, his message, and his audience.17 In the background we can suspect an allergy to a Christendom that considers itself capable of codifying its truth and whose deeds deny its spoken confession. This allergy left its wounds in Kierkegaard’s own life history. Still, at stake here is not a psychological motive alone. The systematic point is that in her manner of approaching the truth, the thinker must attune to the truth in such a way that content and form are in harmony. Humans relate to truth in a twofold way. The matter of truth is, first of all, larger than us. It is not exhausted by what people desire, feel, or think. The pseudonymous author refers to this matter with terms such as infinity, the eternal, beatitude, power, and, indeed, truth. These

Truth, Truthfulness, and the I-Self Relationship

181

objects of desire and thought cannot be substantialized in any way at all. They escape from every attempt at objectification. Then, secondly, these “matters” are real only insofar as they concern me; more precisely: they are real to the degree that they are lived and made visible in my doings.18 Every attempt to arrive at an “objective” determination of the truth – in thought or doctrine – turns it into an abstraction and thus into illusion. Such attempts are a sign of emptyheadedness; they drive truth to the point where it vanishes. Hegel is Climacus’ favourite example. He built an impressive system but forgot to include himself. He acted like the man who built a large and beautiful home but forgot that he had to live in it and finally found himself sleeping in the doghouse next to his castle. So, what Climacus means when he says that we have a double relation to truth is twofold: we relate to something that cannot be identified because it is larger than us, and this something simultaneously determines us in our relationship to it (truth). Truth is both ethereal and utterly concrete at once; it is both absent and present. This doubling in the relation to the truth can be expressed in another way as well. The appropriation by which we interiorize truth is a movement full of tension and does not end in a state of tranquillity. We relate to the truth in “pathos,” i.e., desire as “infinite interest.” This interest is not extinguished (or: negated) once we find faith; rather, faith retains and deepens it. Faith, therefore, is not a condition of rest and relaxation, but of tension and pathos. The more pathos deepens, the more faith increases. This tension is referred to as a paradox and as a leap. Faith is paradoxical in the sense that the infinite joins the finite in a way that retains the difference between the two. To the degree that faith gains depth, the inexpressibility and absurdity of faith is affirmed rather than reduced. Something similar holds for the metaphor of faith as a leap. In faith, we do not leave the world of doubt and alienation behind. The leap does not end in a world of peace, harmony, and total insight. That is a misunderstanding. In the leap, it is the leaping that counts, rather than the landing. Faith does not pave the way; it holds on to and interiorizes the obstacles. How difficult it is to relate seriously to what one wants to investigate or to say becomes clear in Postscript. Initially this text was meant to be a “serious” concluding statement to Philosophical Fragments.19 Nevertheless, this serious work is presented from the point of view of the

182

Gerrit Glas

critical humorist Climacus. This humorist makes things even harder for himself by saying that at some point in his life he decided never to agree with anybody. Armed with this intention, he goes in search of an answer to the question, “What does it mean for me to be a Christian?” As the text proceeds, it seems that the weapons turn against the author. Time and again Climacus relativizes the beginnings of insight and authenticity that seem to emerge. Consciously fooling himself, the author seems to torpedo the entire enterprise. Still, the text can be read quite differently, too.20 It is the ultimately untenable position of the humorist – who becomes a caricature of himself – that makes clear how restricted the humorist perspective is, and that being a Christian implies an essentially different relation to the truth. The humorist can only describe the conditions of faith in a negative way, namely, by underscoring the absurd and the absence of an object. Especially in the edifying works, Kierkegaard corrects this image. P R E L I M I N A R Y E X P LO R AT I O N O F T H E R E F O R M AT I O N A L P H I LO S O P H I C A L V I E W

Here a question arises about philosophy in general. Can philosophers identify themselves with their own work? Can they talk about “my philosophy?” Traditional philosophy – particularly philosophy of the metaphysical and rationalistic kind – tries to avoid such individualism. After all, philosophy aims to overcome local insight and to address the community of thought across the ages. Reaching beyond themselves and across time, philosophers aim at the universal. In a certain sense, their philosophy is no longer “theirs.” This is what Kierkegaard means when he says that the thinker “loses” himself. He “loses” himself (or his self) in what surpasses him. On the other hand, philosophers do not enter a timeless space; in their claims regarding the universal they remain bound to their own historical and social perspective. The struggle of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy consists in the search for a relationship between the two perspectives, the personal and the universal. This relationship is seldom without tension.21 It seems worthwhile to interrupt my argument here for a moment to consider how Kierkegaard’s posing of the problem is related to reformational philosophy. I see different levels of discourse here: worldview, epistemology, and naive experience. First, at the level of worldview, there is a strong tendency to see context, diversity, and indi-

Truth, Truthfulness, and the I-Self Relationship

183

viduality not as restrictions on a presumed universality but as expressions of our belonging to a world with an intrinsic normativity. Coordinates such as “meaning,” “law,” and “promise-command” indicate this normativity and mark it by a threefold layer. Diversity is inextricably interwoven with coherence; behind these two there is the (transcendental) idea of a deeper unity and wholeness, which in turn points at the idea of origin of meaning. Diversity and socio-cultural determination, therefore, do not detract from the “larger” perspective. All reality, in all its bewildering variety, is, at a deeper, religious level, a whole, a “totality” that we can never completely grasp and understand. The wholeness that humans long for is ultimately a longing for connection, for religious unity, found in the relation to the Christ and not in humans themselves or in human nature or in a given idea of a totality of being(s).22 In contrast to Climacus, main proponents of the reformational tradition do not see a fundamental duality or ambiguity here. If there is a tension at this level, it is due to apostate tendencies in our hearts, which enter into our life and worldviews. Such tendencies lead us to consider a certain aspect or part of reality as absolute. However, and second, at an epistemological level, Dooyeweerd does give rise to the idea of more intrinsic limitations in our relation to truth. I am referring here to what he says about the perspectival structure of knowing truth. This perspectival structure consists of the relationship between four horizons: a religious horizon, the horizon of cosmic time, the modal horizon, and the plastic horizon (or, the horizon of knowledge of individuality structures).23 Each of these horizons seems bound up with a specific epistemic attitude: a religious attitude, an orientation to unity and totality, a directedness to the modal, and an attitude directed to individuality structures (things in terms of their structural and individual identity, respectively). The perspectives relate to distinct ways of knowing. The most important similarity with Kierkegaard is the rejection of the possibility of a theoretical totality view. The wholeness of reality is a background intuition of our daily lives. In theoretical thought it is only given as transcendental idea. Third, whereas the distinction between epistemic attitudes is basic for our manner of knowing, it is not decisive for the definition of the truth, which is ultimately religious. The vertical dimension, the religious directedness of what Dooyeweerd calls the “full” selfhood toward the origin of meaning cuts through all (horizontal) perspectives. This selfhood is the heart. For Dooyeweerd, truth refers especially to being properly attuned to this “vertical” orientation, rather than

184

Gerrit Glas

to agreement between reality and thinking in each of the (horizontal) perspectives. Truth does not first of all consist in the agreement between experience and reality or thinking and being. It consists in something deeper, which he refers to as “being or standing in the truth.” This stance is expressed as the firmness and certainty granted to humans in their earthly life when the selfhood – guided by Word revelation – orients itself to the origin of meaning.24 This last formulation suggests both a noteworthy similarity and a difference from the Danish thinker. The similarity is that both for Dooyeweerd and Kierkegaard, truth first of all needs to be lived instead of thought. This living in truth comes from the depth of selfhood when it opens itself to the fullness of meaning. The difference is that for Dooyeweerd, this “opening-oneself” does not lead to doubling or to exclusion of other perspectives as it does in the writings of some of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authors. For Dooyeweerd, in spite of the perspectival nature of our knowing, it is possible to talk and reflect on the various perspectives from a kind of meta-perspective. In Kierkegaard all of this is far more complicated. For him there exists a fundamental non-transparency in our knowing of the truth, a non-transparency that can only be wiped out in rare moments of religious surrender. If Dooyeweerd sees tension between the various perspectives, this is not the consequence of the existence of these perspectives as such, for such tension is rather due to wrong use of the perspectives, most notably the undue absolutization (reification) of an aspect or part of reality. Dooyeweerd and Kierkegaard concur that truth should be lived and that philosophy should not aim at an overarching totality view. However, they differ with respect to the intrinsic paradoxical quality, doubleness, and non-transparency of our relationship to truth. TRUTH AS SUBJECTIVITY

I turn back to Kierkegaard. What does it mean to say that truth resists objectification? Does it mean that truth completely escapes objectification? Or does it escape complete objectification? What happens to the thinker in the movement of interiorizing and deepening?25 Kierkegaard and reformational philosophers agree with the idea that thinking, by concentrating on truth, deepens and even reverses. Kierkegaard’s passion – belief as passion – shows a more than superficial resemblance with “dunamis,” the term Dooyeweerd uses to indicate the dynamic character of religion, which for him is first of all a

Truth, Truthfulness, and the I-Self Relationship

185

driving force. But does such deepening and reversal break through all continuity? Does the thinker leave everything behind? Reflection on Kierkegaard’s thesis that “truth is subjectivity” may shed light on this issue. I will take as guide two notions: objectivity and system. First, however, I will give a brief explanation about the concepts of self, subjectivity, and self-relatedness, especially the thesis of the subjectivity of truth. In a cautious interpretation this thesis means that truth is always truth in relation to a human being rather than to a truth by itself. The thesis implies more specifically that truth expresses itself in the deepening of the relationship of a human being to him or herself. Subjectivity refers to this interior aspect of the I-self relationship. This interiority does not aim at the inner life of a solipsistic cogito. It is a form of relatedness that is embedded in other relationships. Finally, the thesis of the subjectivity of truth points to the restlessness and passion that is characteristic for subjectivity. The self is a relational category. It is, according to Anti-Climacus (Kierkegaard’s most Christian pseudonym) in The Sickness unto Death, a relation that is related to itself, and that in relating to itself is related to a power outside itself. This power is a dunamis that both hurts and opens. It keeps the I-self relationship open – and so rescues it – for without this power the self-relationship would be passive and would end in an empty mimetic circle in which I and self mirror one another. In the end I and self would coalesce and become a purely “negative unit,” as Anti-Climacus calls it.26 Put differently: if becoming a self consists of the interiorizing of truth, the I-self relation with all its doubt, fear, desperateness, and pride must deepen and transform into an existence that is attuned to that power outside itself. This deepening and this inner transformation do not take shape gradually; they require a leap. I will now flesh out the significance of the thesis that truth is subjectivity in terms of the notions of objectivity and system. Objectivity Why such a strong contrast between objectivity and subjectivity? One answer is that the objectifying approach never will lead to absolute knowledge. However, if there be truth, it must be absolute, according to Climacus. Objectifying approaches to the cosmos and to history are, by definition, approximations. They never picture the totality. Climacus compares the attempt of objectifying the totality (of meaning) with pantheism. The pantheistic position assumes a cosmos in which the

186

Gerrit Glas

eternal God is everything in everything, at every moment. Such pantheism cannot be the starting point for thought, for the human condition is utterly historical. The absoluteness of truth can only become real from the standpoint of subjectivity. In objectifying thought absolute truth is at best a conceivable possibility (or, hypothesis). In actual thinking such truth never will become reality (or, actuality). Here I interrupt the argument. Is Climacus not exaggerating here? Is it true that truth is absolute? Is it true that the objectifying approach “forgets” the subject? Is this not a highly idealized version of theoretical thought as aiming at pure and detached objectivity? Is theoretical thought not by definition bound to a certain subjectivity – in the sense that theoretical thinking is practiced in a context and by taking positions in a scientific debate? Is Climacus not neglecting the more daily practices of objectification that do not exclude subject participation, but presuppose it? Recent approaches in philosophy of neuroscience suggest that our cognitive acts are embodied, embedded, and enacted.27 These approaches strongly resist the idea that objectifying consists of special acts of detached inner representation, even in philosophy. Nevertheless, Climacus repeatedly turns to such absolute views. For instance, he says that abstract thought assumes a completed truth and thus an ideal identity of thought and being. From this ideal identity there is no subsequent return route to the subject, for that road back would imply concretization, application in the here and now. Such concretization would mean that the ideal identity is exposed to the becoming character of temporal being, and in becoming there can be no identity of thought and being.28 God alone, in his actuality, has such identity of thought and being. Hence, in abstract thought, that which is par excellence never entirely abstract must necessarily remain abstract: the subjective thinker her or himself. System Climacus emphasizes, as I have shown, that the subjective and objective approach can never occur simultaneously and can therefore never simultaneously be true. This brings us to the notion of the system. When Kierkegaard speaks about a system, he often means Hegel, who, according to Kierkegaard, tried to think together the subjective and the objective as simultaneous. The concept of mediation is central for this thinking together. Mediation refers to the attempt to join the subjective and the objective in the present. Mediation is annulment and

Truth, Truthfulness, and the I-Self Relationship

187

conservation at once. Kierkegaard comments on this extensively, but his main point is that mediation remains abstract by definition, precisely because it takes place in thought. Thinking together the objective and the subjective, thinking together the existing individual as subject and object, and even thinking together the desire for God and the idea of God all ultimately continues to be a matter of arguing and constructing. In such thinking, the subject by definition turns into something accidental, into a function within the system, something that essentially makes no difference and is doomed to disappear. The system is in essence indifferent; it wipes out all differences. Kierkegaard, in other words, thinks of being human in terms of difference and even, in an intensified form, as paradox. Human beings come closest to this simultaneity of subjectivity and objectivity in passion. Passion is paradoxical in that it keeps a secret, which at the same time escapes because it is transcendent (nonabsorbable). The secret is an “over-against” that never can be objectified or absorbed. Precisely because of this resistance against conceptual appropriation does this “over against” keep exerting its influence on the I-self relationship. Thus, the truth can be radically subjective and yet the subject need not be swamped by subjectivism. The dynamic from the “over against” prevents solipsism. Resistance to this power, however, can surely end in isolation and solipsism. S E C O N D E X P LO R AT I O N O F T H E R E F O R M AT I O N A L P H I LO S O P H I C A L P O S I T I O N

I will compare these insights with views within the reformational philosophical tradition. To begin, I again indicate some points of agreement. Kierkegaard and the reformational tradition concur that philosophy should aim at contact with ultimate truth. Dooyeweerd and Kierkegaard both acknowledge the fundamental significance of religious dynamism in establishing such contact, and they impress us with their persistent search for such contact. Both thinkers are also inclined to an approach from within. Kierkegaard’s dialectical approach displays some affinity with Dooyeweerd’s critique of inner tensions within scientific theories or worldviews (the so-called critique of antinomies). Both thinkers agree that, from the contrast between incompatible points of view, suspicion arises as to the viability of the overall conception. Kierkegaard’s notion of

188

Gerrit Glas

“transparency” or “transparency in being grounded in a power” seems an existential version of the sort of consistency Dooyeweerd looks for in his analysis of paradigms and worldviews. By investigating the tensions within these paradigms and worldviews, the thinker is brought to the point where she or he recognizes the religious roots of these tensions. This recognition is accompanied by an intensification of the I-self relationship. Kierkegaard’s calls this intensification pathos. Dooyeweerd uses the term concentration. A difficult and interesting issue is – next – the theme of doubling. Dooyeweerd has been reproached for the fact that certain modal concepts, such as love and religious desire, are repeated in the transcendent, central-religious sphere. For those who are not familiar with Dooyeweerd’s systematic philosophy, I will briefly explain the terms “modal,” “modal sphere,” and “central-religious sphere.” The term modal (in: modal concepts) refers to modal spheres or aspects, namely, ways in which things in the world exist or function, human beings included. Dooyeweerd discerns fifteen of these aspects (spheres), from the numerical via the spatial, physical, biotic, psychic, and logical/analytical aspect onto the highest moral and pistic aspect (pistis means faith). These ways of functioning (aspects; spheres) might be depicted as horizontal layers crossed by a vertical line representing the religious dynamic that permeates all layers. This religious dynamic is directed at the origin of existence, which transcends created reality. The concept of religion, therefore, does not refer to phenomena that are empirically analyzable, but to a dynamic with a transcendent origin and focus that can only be indicated with boundary concepts (or, religious-transcendental ideas). Religion belongs to what Dooyeweerd calls the central sphere. All human functioning is concentrated in the heart, which directs the totality of existing and functioning to the real or presumed origin of meaning in this central sphere. However, the philosopher can say nothing about how this referring to and expressing of the origin takes place. When she or he nevertheless tries to do so, i.e., when empirical (modal) terms are used to indicate this central dynamic, this leads to a repetition of terms, with the risk of a too anthropomorphic and isolated view on the transcendent sphere. Dooyeweerd always insists that the central religious sphere escapes theoretical conceptualization. This does not mean that nothing can be said about it, but it does mean that whatever is said can never have the status of theory or of philosophical system. This is one reason why the use of a transcendental framework was so attractive to Dooye-

Truth, Truthfulness, and the I-Self Relationship

189

weerd. It also explains why a certain vagueness characterizes terms like love and religious desire when they apply to what is centrally religious. The meaning of these terms transcends their modal sense. In spite of these limitations Dooyeweerd is inclined to speak of central love, religion as concentrated in the heart, and a supra-temporal community of believers in Christ. In Kierkegaard’s thought “doubleness” plays an important role, for instance as a dialectical instant just prior to the leap. I limit myself to the example just discussed, where the absolute paradox doubled such that it no longer indicated only the actuality of my life but simultaneously the actuality of an existence outside of me in the other who takes my place. The point gains even more relevance when considering notions like time and history in relation to the transcendent sphere. I am thinking about notions such as the supra-temporal sphere, the fullness of time. The topic itself is too big for treatment here. Still, it makes sense to point out that the temptation of a “double” use of language arises especially where an attempt is made to conceptualize the nitty-gritty of the religious dynamic in existence and in history, the “togetherness” of the transcendent and the immanent. Doubling, then, emerges in the attitude of concentration/intensification, that is, in the attempt to inquire into the divine mystery of things and events. The perspective can turn about in this concentrated searching and probing in a reality marked by conflict and incompatible facts. Suddenly a new layer of meaning becomes visible and we see matters in a different light. Once again one can wonder whether – notwithstanding all the differences in style and rhetoric – there are also essential areas of agreement between Dooyeweerd’s religious-transcendental approach and the religious-existential one of Kierkegaard. From a Kierkegaardian point of view, we can interpret the doubled terminology in reformational philosophers such as Dooyeweerd and Meijer C. Smit positively, namely, as announcement of the leap, of the possible disclosure of new dimensions of meaning, or of new positions from where philosophizing is possible.29 Except, Kierkegaard moves on from here; his thinking itself witnesses to the ambiguity and conflict that is characteristic of human life. Seen in this light, reformational philosophy, with its emphasis on creation and law and its relative neglect of themes like ambiguity, evil, and brokenness, still gives the impression of a certain naiveté. This philosophy needs to open itself for these darker themes.

190

Gerrit Glas

FINAL REMARKS ON ZUIDERVAART’S ACCOUNT OF TRUTH

Kierkegaard’s thought alerts the philosopher to the delicate character of the relation between the thinker and the truth. There is often a disparity between truth and the way the thinker relates to it. Such disparity comes to expression in a lack of transparency, which should act as warning signal, like inconsistency does in the logical sphere. This message may also have an impact on Zuidervaart’s account of truth. As I said above, Zuidervaart is aware of the multidimensionality and complexity of our relatedness to truth. There is also an implicit awareness that this relatedness involves self-relatedness and that there may be incongruities in this self-relatedness. However, the overall emphasis is on increasing richness and interconnectedness in the course of history and on the telos of disclosure: the eschatological flourishing of all creatures. I am aware that what I am suggesting is more a matter of emphasis than a point of disagreement. What I am suggesting is that by taking into account more explicitly the idea of self-relatedness, as a condition that structures our attempt to embody truth, it is possible to amplify the conceptual space for an account that does justice to the intrinsic ambivalence and ambiguity of this attempt. There is nothing new in saying this. Anglo-American speech act theory and Continental existential phenomenology, each in its own way, have highlighted that the speaker by asserting is not only relating to the theme (the asserted) but also to her or himself. Assertions are acts in which the speaker not only states “something” (the asserted) but also connects her or his own trustworthiness to the occurrence of this “something” (the asserted). When I say that I did something and it turns out after a while that I did not do it, my trustworthiness is compromised. In speaking, there is not only the act of speaking but also the speaker to whom the asserted reflects back. More precisely, in the act of speaking the speaker relates to the speaker’s self, by adopting a certain stance, i.e. an assertoric stance, toward him or herself as presenter of the asserted. The adoption of this stance is an implicit confirmation of the normative relationship the speakers have with themselves as speakers. Zuidervaart’s account of truth could easily be adapted and expanded in this direction. This is important for two reasons. First, it is important because the notion of I-self relationship (or, self-relatedness) helps to elucidate the complexity of the relationship between truth, truthfulness, and

Truth, Truthfulness, and the I-Self Relationship

191

authenticity. These qualities and virtues not only refer to features of certain actions and assertions but also implicitly refer to the manifold ways in which the agent relates to the purpose or theme of these actions and assertions. The notion of I-self relatedness helps to gain a full picture of what kind of rules and norms are implied in these qualities and virtues. In my introduction, I suggested that truthfulness and trustworthiness offer the psychological and moral grounds for the acceptance of certain truths. We can now add that these two qualities are exemplifications of a double sensitivity: sensitivity for how one relates to the theme and sensitivity for how one relates to the context. In another context, I describe this double sensitivity as a requirement for any true philosophy.30 The other reason for taking the idea of self-relatedness more explicitly into account is that it provides the conceptual space for doing justice to the intrinsic ambivalence, inner tension, and brokenness of human life. This is important because pain, doubt, suffering, and inconsistency are undeniably part of our existence. Kierkegaard’s writings are an important testimony to the fact that a certain measure of non-transparency usually marks this self-relatedness, and that it is only at our best (religious) moments that this opaqueness may disappear. I miss this element of almost insurmountable non-transparency in both Dooyeweerd and Zuidervaart. Dooyeweerd recognizes sin, but the concept does not play a central role in his epistemology or in his cosmology and anthropology. Zuidervaart focuses on productive circularity, wholeness, and an eschatology of fulfilled understanding and interconnectedness, not on brokenness and ambivalence. As I said, this is maybe more a matter of emphasis than a point of real divergence. At least, it does not seem very difficult to incorporate the ambiguities of self-relatedness into Zuidervaart’s account of truth.

N OT E S

1 Part of this chapter was originally published as an article in Philosophia Reformata 77 (2, 2012). 2 Charles Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity (Don Mills: Stoddart, 1991). See also Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1989). 3 Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

192

4 5 6

7

8

9

10 11 12

Gerrit Glas

(London: Heinemann, 1976), Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: Norton, 1978). Lambert Zuidervaart, Artistic Truth: Aesthetics, Discourse, and Imaginative Disclosure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 127–34. Zuidervaart, Artistic Truth, 200–1. Lambert Zuidervaart, “After Dooyeweerd: Truth in Reformational Philosophy” (Toronto: Institute for Christian Studies, 2008), section 3.5, http://records.icscanada.edu/ir/articles/20081007-1.shtml. See C. Stephen Evans, Faith beyond Reason: A Kierkegaardian Account (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) and Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006); also David J. Gouwens, Kierkegaard as a Religious Thinker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). S.U. Zuidema belongs to the reformational thinkers who saw Kierkegaard as proto-existentialist. See his “Kierkegaard,” in Denkers Van Deze Tijd (Franeker: Wever, 1957), vol. 1, 11–61. Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). Zuidervaart, “After Dooyeweerd,” Lambert Zuidervaart, “Dooyeweerd’s Conception of Truth: Exposition and Critique,” Philosophia Reformata 73 (2008): 170–89, Lambert Zuidervaart, “Unfinished Business: Toward a Reformational Conception of Truth,” Philosophia Reformata 74 (2009): 1–20. Zuidervaart, “Dooyeweerd’s Conception of Truth,” 187. Ibid., 181. Other points of criticism are that by speaking of a religious a priori that makes experience possible Dooyeweerd runs into difficulty both ontologically and epistemologically: ontologically because, if such an a priori horizontal structure exists, it could only explain how existence is possible but not how experience and knowledge are possible; and epistemologically because this thesis seems to imply that only those who have understood and accepted divine revelation are capable of true experience and knowledge. Then there is the problem that theoretical intuition, which Dooyeweerd assigns a central role in his account of theoretical knowledge, cannot solve the problem of “intermodal synthesis.” Intuition does not achieve synthesis nor does it confirm or disconfirm certain ideas; it at best helps to discover such synthesis and offers suggestions and heuristic ideas. Finally, by construing truth as an accord between law side (horizons) and subject side, Dooyeweerd ignores the issue of objectivity and overlooks the importance of intersubjective validity.

Truth, Truthfulness, and the I-Self Relationship

193

13 Zuidervaart, “Unfinished Business,” 5, 8. 14 See for instance Gerrit Glas, “Christian Philosophical Anthropology: A Reformation Perspective,” Philosophia Reformata 75 (2010): 151–89. See also Gerrit Glas, “Person, Personality, Self, and Identity,” Journal of Personality Disorders 20 (2006): 26–138. 15 Zuidervaart, “Unfinished Business,” 18. 16 Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 72–80. 17 See for instance the first pages of Kierkegaard’s Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987). 18 It is therefore preferable to call Kierkegaard the first philosopher of life rather than to speak of him as founding father of existentialism. 19 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript; Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments and Johannes Climacus, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). 20 For this interpretation see Alastair Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 21 One elaboration of this thought could be that postmodern philosophers are far less ironic – at a distance – regarding themselves than they purport to be (think of Rorty). Postmodern philosophers do not forget themselves; rather, they insert themselves prior to all discourse on the universal and on the community of thought. In Kierkegaard’s terms, they take themselves far too seriously by continually letting their own historical formation and the perspectival character of their perspectives dominate the picture. 22 See Hendrik G. Geertsema, Het menselijk karakter van ons kennen (Amsterdam: Buijten and Schipperheijn, 1992), 130. 23 Herman Dooyeweerd, De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, 3 vols. (Amsterdam: H.J. Paris, 1935–36), 2:491–2; A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, 4 vols. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1953–58), 2:560. 24 Dooyeweerd puts it this way (transl. J.N. Kraay): The transcendent, religious Fullness of Truth which is the condition for all truth within the horizon of time does not touch an abstract function of theoretical thought; it addresses our full selfhoods, the heart of the whole of human life, the heart therefore also of our theoretical thinking ... For the a priori genuine attitude of thought, too, the first condition is that the thinking selfhood stand in the truth, through acceptance (with the heart) of the Revelation of God, which enters our horizon of time only via our faith function, in complete reliance on the firmness of God’s

194

25

26

27

28 29

30

Gerrit Glas

Word. God is the Origin, the source of all truth. Christ, as perfect Divine Revelation, is the fullness of meaning of Truth. Apart from this transcendent fullness of Truth the a priori temporal dimensions of truth have no meaning, no force, no being. It is the transcendent, religious dimension of truth, touching the heart, that confers on all temporal truth the necessary firmness and certainty. Dooyeweerd, De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, 2:504; A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, 2:571–2. See for what follows also Christopher Hamilton, “Kierkegaard on Truth as Subjectivity: Christianity, Ethics, and Asceticism,” Religious Studies 34 (1998): 61–79; Evans, Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self, chapters 2, 7, 10. Here we meet a basic difference with Hegel’s thought, especially his analysis of the dialectic of Anerkennung (recognition). In the recognition of the other (as that which consciousness has outside itself) this is about the Aufhebung (negation) of the otherness of the other. This Aufhebung is made possible through the recognition that the other is another consciousness that consciousness encounters within itself (hence the reference to a doubling of consciousness). Next, this other consciousness is interpreted as my consciousness of the other consciousness; consciousness recognizes itself in the other consciousness (identification). In Kierkegaard’s thought no such identification can obtain. Such Hegelian doubling turns into ambiguity and ultimately a paradox in Kierkegaard – see Mark C. Taylor, Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000). Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1993), Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of the Mind (Cambridge, ma: Belknap Press, 2007). Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, 190–2. See Meijer C. Smit, “Beschouwingen over de geschiedenis en de tijd der geschiedenis,” in De eerste en de tweede geschiedenis. Nagelaten geschriften van Meijer C. Smit, ed. Jacob Klapwijk (Amsterdam: Buijten and Schipperheijn, 1987), 96–117. Gerrit Glas, “Persons and Their Lives: Reformational Philosophy on Man, Ethics, and Beyond,” Philosophia Reformata 71 (2006): 31–57.

10 Does Truth Matter to Ethics? Kierkegaard, Ethics, and the Subjectivity of Truth J AY A . G U P TA

γ νῶθι σεαυτόν (Know thyself.) Unknown

Does truth matter to ethics? Ethical truth is a highly vexed notion. In addition to a virtual chaos of views concerning right versus wrong courses of action in applied issues, philosophers have encountered perennial difficulties in the attempt to theoretically specify what ethical truth could be. As James Rachels notes, whatever it is, it is not like planets, trees, or spoons; ethical truth is not “out there” in the usual sense.1 But then, perhaps it is inappropriate to talk about ethical truth at all. Such considerations prompted the late Richard Rorty to declare that the concept of truth had outlived its usefulness and that other discourses and practices could do a far better job of exciting the ethical imagination. As Rorty says, human solidarity is “not a fact to be recognized by ... burrowing down to previously hidden depths,” but is rather a goal to be achieved.2 Rational reflection or establishing theoretical grounds cannot determine the value of this goal, which is “to be achieved not by inquiry but by imagination, the imaginative ability to see strange people as fellow sufferers.”3 Further, solidarity “is created by increasing our sensitivity to the particular details of the pain and humiliation of other, unfamiliar sorts of people.”4 Thus narrative,

196

Jay A. Gupta

not theory, is important to moral progress. The novel, journalistic report, and movie replace the sermon and the treatise. It seems that if Rorty is right, something like ethical imagining ought to replace a truth-oriented ethical understanding. We usually take understanding to be related to truth in some way; but if we take truth out of the picture, what seems to be left is the free play of the imagination. I want to argue that Rorty is right about the importance of the ethical imagination, but wrong about the advisability of eliminating the concept of ethical truth. Indeed, I believe that his account requires a conception of ethical truth in order to work, and that a proper understanding of ethical truth is crucial to the growth of the ethical imagination. But it is important to be clear about what sort of truth grounds ethical understanding. I will call this truth existential truth, and following Kierkegaard and others in the existentialist tradition I will argue that it has a subjective character. However, lurking in both Rorty’s proposal and my response to it is the bogey of subjectivism. When Jean-Paul Sartre announced over half a century ago that “existentialism is a humanism,” he wished to encourage the view that existentialism was, far from being an unethical nihilistic philosophy of brute self-assertion, in fact deeply ethical. He observed that existentialism was often taken to task for its subjectivism,5 which seems to imply “anything goes”; and certainly this, if anything, is hostile to any conception of normative ethics. But why does subjectivism appear to have this implication? One could make the case that the very idea of subjectivity arose as a formal point of contrast to traditional philosophical conceptions of truth as objective. According to such conceptions, objective truth is defined by fixity and self-standing independence; it pertains to the state of things as they are in themselves, independent of any particular perspective. Further, truth is said to have a kind of Parmenidean absoluteness: it either is or is not. Subjectivity, by contrast, implies the opposite of all this: fluidity, flux, and contingency, as well as the distorting prism of individual perspective. As compared to the fixity of objective truth, subjectivity implies arbitrariness and changeability. Hence, ethical truth will presumably have all the essential characteristics of truth per se, which are in principle divested of the vagaries and distortions of subjectivity; ethical truth will stand in principled contrast to mere subjectivity. Indeed, the three dominant perspectives in foundational ethical theory – deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics – do seem in different ways to honour this precept. Some stable

Kierkegaard, Ethics, and the Subjectivity of Truth

197

conception of ethical truth is used to overrule a resistant or unruly subjectivity and to determine right courses of conduct. What then of Sartre’s existential ethics, which explicitly embraces subjectivism? Does it imply a slippery slope into epistemic and moral nihilism, the aforementioned attitude of “anything goes”? No one more astutely or provocatively elicits what is at issue than Søren Kierkegaard, the thinker who anticipates the existentialist tradition. In the course of attempting to develop a conception of truth that is at the core of ethics, with a canny awareness of the assumptions of traditional philosophy, he declares in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, “subjectivity is truth.”6 This truth may be regarded as distinctively existential truth, something that pertains to the very basic fact or actuality of one’s existence. But what sort of fact is this? In a celebrated essay, philosopher Thomas Nagel discusses the mystery of consciousness and contemporary attempts to explain it in more familiar scientific terms, for example, in terms of brains, behaviours, or software.7 What those attempts all fail to account for is, as he says, “the most important and characteristic feature of conscious mental phenomena”:8 that there is something that it is like to be someone or something. He refers to this as the subjective character of experience, a sphere that is sometimes also referred to in terms of qualia.9 We may therefore ask, for example, what are the facts about a person named “John.” There is John; it is a fact that he exists, he is sitting in that chair, he is reciting poetry, etc. But there is also what it is like to be John, as he exists sitting in that chair reciting poetry. This distinction suggests there are two rather different types of facts about John’s existence. The first type has an objective character: John is material, he occupies space, multiple parties can observe him, and so on. But the second type of fact is quite different, and has a subjective character: John feels a certain way – happy, sad, pained, relieved, and so on, as he sits and recites. Such feelings are elements of the subjective character of John’s experience. One might attempt to explain subjective feelings in objective terms. For example, if John were to experience intense physical pain, we might try to determine the physical causes of the pain, the physical processes that accompany it, and so on; but something crucial remains: the subjective experience of the pain itself, that is, what it is like to be in pain. If it is appropriate to speak of “the truth of John’s pain” in objective terms, it is at least as appropriate to speak of the truth of John’s pain in subjective terms; indeed, it is difficult to under-

198

Jay A. Gupta

stand what theoretical or practical meaning the objective truth of John’s pain could have absent its subjective truth. Thus, it seems reasonable to suppose that the subjective character of experience is a kind of truth, as deserving of the honorific as its objective counterpart. Nagel calls this acknowledgment “realism about the subjective domain.”10 But unlike their objective counterparts, subjective facts “embody a particular point of view.”11 Therefore, to grasp the nature of subjective truth is to acknowledge the actual existence of a particular point of view, one that has a distinctly subjective character or feel. It is, in Kierkegaard’s language, to acknowledge the profound actuality of an existing individual. By contrast, to understand the nature of objective truth is, perhaps paradoxically, to leave particular perspective behind and to aspire to, as Nagel says, a “view from nowhere.”12 As the understanding moves toward objective truth, as it tries to apprehend the states of things, relationships, and processes in space and time, it strives to counteract or even abandon the limitations and distortions of perspective. However, the opposite must be true as regards subjective truth. The experience of these so-called distortions and limitations are the precise focus. If we want to grasp the subjective character of experience, it makes no sense to leave subjectivity out. In these sorts of cases, apart from trying to subjectively understand what it is like to be a certain way – to be in love, to be seeing red, to be hearing the high note C – there is no “truth” to apprehend. I began by saying that Kierkegaard was reaching for a conception of truth that is at the heart of ethics, namely existential truth, which pertains to the very basic fact of one’s existence. But what is the nature of that fact? As Nagel says, it is a subjective fact, that is, a fact that irreducibly pertains to a particular point of view with a particular feel, subjective quality, or character. These are elements that constitute an actually existing perspective. However, Nagel’s phenomenology is too thin and normatively barren to determine whether these considerations have ethical import. Kierkegaard points the way: he says “the existing [human] subject [is] infinitely interested in existence.”13 This is both a constitutive and normative claim about the character of human subjectivity: subjectivity does not merely experience its existence; it is passionately interested in that existence. Or to use the language of Heidegger, who was deeply influenced by Kierkegaard, it cares whether it is or is not. Once again, the central contrast is with objectivity. If subjective truth is in its essence an interested, caring point of view characterized

Kierkegaard, Ethics, and the Subjectivity of Truth

199

by a consciousness of what it is like to exist, strict objective truth is characterized by a lack of any point of view whatsoever. It therefore can only be indifferent to its own existence.14 This indifferent, objective truth exerts a peculiar kind of gravity on the subject; at the level of reflection it contributes to a kind of dissolution and existential amnesia. Kierkegaard says, “The way of objective reflection turns the subjective individual into something accidental and thereby turns existence into an indifferent, vanishing something. The way to the objective truth goes away from the subject, and while the subject and subjectivity become indifferent, the truth also becomes indifferent ... The way of objective reflection now leads to abstract thinking, to mathematics, to historical knowledge of various kinds, and always leads away from the subjective individual, whose existence or nonexistence becomes, from an objective point of view, altogether properly, entirely indifferent.”15 Through the lures of an objective understanding, embodied particularly in modern science, one acquires the sense of one’s own absolute insignificance as an existing individual, a “little self,” an existential speck of dust in what Bertrand Russell calls “the vast death of the solar system.”16 Ultimately I do not count because, objectively speaking, nothing counts. By contrast, the care involved in understanding something as counting, as being significant in some way, is an essential aspect of subjectivity. But I can endeavor to understand my own subjective existence in objective terms, which for Kierkegaard means systematically draining it of the constitutive passion and care that is essential to the existing subject; one begins to forget one’s own being with an indifference to oneself that mirrors the essential character of objective truth. By contrast, the notion of an insignificant person is, from the standpoint of subjective truth, oxymoronic. That is because the very ideas of significance and value, however they may be extended and in whatever direction, derive from the immediate reality of subjective truth – the subjective dimension of individual existence that is characterized by an interested, caring awareness of that existence. An individual’s existence viewed subjectively is a bottomless well of significance. Thus Kierkegaard says in a pointed conflation both “the ethical is and remains the highest task assigned to every human being” and also “becoming subjective is the highest task assigned to a human being.”17 Becoming ethical and becoming subjective are for Kierkegaard the same task. The remark that they are both a task is worthy of special attention. Nagel’s thin description of the subjective character of experience –

200

Jay A. Gupta

that there is what it is like to be someone – is a mere starting point. For Kierkegaard, the ethical imperative built into subjective existence is to cultivate and intensify a certain serious, passionate, caring awareness of that existence; it is, in more familiar language, to become a more fully human self. Only through this process of actualization can one know the intrinsic significance of being a human self. This is, as Kierkegaard says, an “essential knowing [that] is ... essentially related to existence and to existing ... only ethical and ethical-religious knowing is essential knowing. But all ethical and all ethical-religious knowing is essentially a relating to the existing of the knower.”18 This internal deepening in ethical knowing or understanding, with its concomitant increase in the sense of individual human significance, runs directly contrary to the vector of objective knowing, where the knower is left behind, and whose individual significance is, in the best case scenario, eliminated. Accordingly, “the demand of abstraction ... [on the knower] is that he become disinterested in order to obtain something to know; [by contrast] the requirement of the ethical upon him is to be infinitely interested in existing.”19 By attending to this requirement, one begins to grasp one’s own actuality: “Actuality is interiority infinitely interested in existing, which the ethical individual is for himself.”20 Lest all this sound excessively egoistic or even solipsistic, I should address an important question. Is not ethics, in most recognized conceptions, necessarily oriented toward others? This question implies a challenge to existentialist ethics generally, and it is perhaps the primary challenge expressed in charges of subjectivism: how do we move from what looks like a normativity of self-absorption to an ethical regard for others? For Kierkegaard, any outward-directed ethics derives from the “infinite passionate interest” that constitutes one’s selfhood. So the claim must be something to the effect that if one wants to carry through the traditional ethical program of regard for others, one ought to understand the nature of what grounds that regard. Ethical relations to others depend on a certain kind of relation to oneself, which creates the conditions that make possible the kind of “imaginative identification” with others that Rorty urges. Kierkegaard captures this idea: “In order to study the ethical, every human being is assigned to himself.”21 Kierkegaard does not recommend an exotic form of ethical egoism, which is the notion that one ought only to act out of self-interest. Nor does he point to an absolute ethic of self-sacrifice for the good of oth-

Kierkegaard, Ethics, and the Subjectivity of Truth

201

ers. Rather, there are repeated indications that Kierkegaard attempts to outline (to again use the Hegelian trope) what kind of self-relation is requisite for a proper relation to others. To properly regard others as the ethical selves they are requires a full-blooded subjective grasp of what it is like to be a self that values being that self. This can only be accomplished through deepening and actualizing the passionate interest in and radical experience of one’s subjectivity; the attempt to understand oneself is “an absolute condition for all other understanding.”22 But if it is the case that “there is only one ethical observing ... selfobservation,”23 how specifically do we extend our inner ethical understanding outward? The answer pertains to the role of what I have referred to as the ethical imagination; in Kierkegaard’s language, we must regard the actuality of another in the mode of possibility. Apropos this issue, Kierkegaard pointedly invokes Aristotle’s famous contrast in the Poetics between poetry and history: whereas “history presents only what has occurred ... poetry has possibility at its disposal.”24 In response to his great teacher’s uncompromising attack on poetry and its allegedly systematic incapacity to capture truth, Aristotle in the Poetics (Book IX) opens up a distinctive space where the imaginative play of possibility is, he argues, a legitimate mode of revealing truth, indeed “higher” than the mere display of “particulars,” which are the sorts of objective facts that constitute history. Kierkegaard appears to wish to apply this insight to the ethical relation an individual establishes to another: With regard to every actuality outside myself, it holds true that I can grasp it only in thinking. If I were to actually grasp it, I would have to be able to make myself into the other person, the one acting, to make the actuality alien to me into my own personal actuality, which is an impossibility ... This also means that ethically there is no direct relation between subject and subject. When I have understood another subject, his actuality is for me a possibility, and this thought-actuality is related to me qua possibility.25 The only direct actuality for me is my own, that immediate subjective truth that constitutes what is like to be me. The other’s possibility is more or less vivid to me, but remains in the mode of possibility. Thus, the traditional other-regarding imperative of ethics depends on how well I am able to translate my immediate experience of my actu-

202

Jay A. Gupta

ality into a vivid sense of the other’s actuality – in other words, imagine it – within the terminal mode of possibility. My immediate ethical understanding of my own actuality must ground my imaginative identification26 with the other’s actuality, but qua possibility.27 None of this is to deny that certain forms of egoism and subjectivism are rightly the focus of ethical disapprobation. Such forms are expressed in the attitudes of individuals who are unable to grasp how or in what way others count. Perhaps the potential for such attitudes relates to a general uneasiness that we may have acquired here – that by emphasizing the ethical imagination, something that we take to be important to moral theory goes missing. That missing element pertains to the way in which moral rules are generally taken to carry the force of obligation.28 The moral legitimacy of a rule determines its authority over us and obligates us to act in accordance with it. But it is noteworthy that there is an old problem with this picture of moral obligation that prevents a rejection of existential ethics simply based on the observation that traditional moral theory emphasizes obligation. This is the problem of the binding nature of moral rules: what makes a moral rule binding?29 In the absence of literal force, whether or not an individual commits to acting according to the obligatory force of a moral rule is up to the individual herself; or to put it in Kant’s language, her will must determine itself to act in accordance with what the rule necessitates. Hence, even within a rigorous deontic framework there is an irreducible subjectivist moment that determines the moral outcome. The present discussion’s emphasis on the ethical imagination is neither more nor less plagued by the same difficulty, if we want to know what ensures that the ethical imagination will extend outward to include regard for the actuality of others. I believe the Kierkegaardian answer is that, regardless of whether we have some sort of method that ensures an imaginative regard for others, the growth of such regard is radically grounded in a powerful sense of one’s own actuality – in one’s own “subjective truth.” I might raise another objection that is useful to formulate in terms of a familiar problem with “golden rule” ethics: What if whatever it is that I “do unto myself” is recognizably perverse? Shall I go ahead and “do unto others?” To translate this complaint into the present discussion, what if “deepening the self” for me means deepening a rather strange and perhaps destructive self? Should I extend my bizarre internal self-relation outward to others? In general, do we want strange, destructive selves following the golden rule? Kierkegaard implicitly

Kierkegaard, Ethics, and the Subjectivity of Truth

203

recognizes this problem by referring to Don Quixote as “the prototype of the subjective lunacy in which the passion of inwardness grasps a particular fixed finite idea.”30 There is no systematic solution to this possibility offered; however, Kierkegaard does suggest contemplating an alternative objective lunacy to see if it is any more savoury: the “parroting lunacy” of mass conformism that springs from a kind of internal deadness, the only reaction to which can be “cold horror.”31 Based on the above considerations, I tentatively conclude the following: regardless of the infinite array of possible human pathologies and the warped subjectivities they may entail, there is no other meaningful ethical referent than that of subjective truth, which is not merely the ground for understanding my ethical significance, but for understanding ethical significance per se. The danger of not engaging in the highest ethical task of subjectively attending to oneself is objective lunacy, the cultivation of a kind of objective indifference to oneself and others. This is one form of the existential amnesia alluded to earlier. To view oneself objectively means to move in the direction of that absentminded indifference as regards oneself, where the self is understood to be that insignificant “little self” in a sea of other tiny little selves, in society and in history. The consequence of not understanding one’s own ethical significance is not understanding anyone’s ethical significance. But what does it mean to understand one’s ethical significance, and why exactly is it tied to understanding that of others? Kierkegaard reserves special scorn for the (allegedly) Hegelian preoccupation with world history. In this latter conception the ethical is thought to be seen better in world history “where everything involves millions”; but according to Kierkegaard this “incessant quantifying” rather distorts it.32 The reason has again to do with the kind of truth an ethical knowing or understanding must grasp. There is a problem when “the ethical does not become the original, the most original, element in every human being but rather an abstraction from the worldhistorical experience.”33 Kierkegaard argues that to really know the ethical, one must grasp the original element in every human being, that is, the subjective truth of what it is like to be a human being. For Kierkegaard, this original element is the source of ethical significance. However, when dazzled with immense numerical reckonings of human suffering, the order of ethical priority is inverted; in such situations it appears that the primary ethical truth to be discerned is something objective, like a particular quantity of sufferers. Depending

204

Jay A. Gupta

on how many sufferers are involved, actions and events can be weighed for ethical significance, as when a commander says, “The airstrike was well executed; there was a minimum of civilian casualties.” This remark expresses the utilitarian outlook that measures the moral goodness of actions according to weighted distributions that determine sum total happiness over unhappiness. However, if we are inclined to nod our heads with the utilitarian commander, we are victims of the sort of existential amnesia alluded to above – we have forgotten that ethical significance is rooted in a subjective truth, namely, the infinite passionate interest in the existence of the existing individual. To see the incommensurable divide between the objective and the subjective here, alter the general’s comments so that you are the subject of the sentence: “The airstrike was a success, only I and those dear to me were killed.” This admittedly strange locution captures the subjective dimension that is lost in any objective moral calculus. Apropos this sort of scenario, Kierkegaard says, “for me, my dying is by no means something in general; for others, my dying is some such thing.”34 These considerations hearken to remarks made by the philosopher Don Marquis, who I believe offers a distinctively existential argument for the moral wrongness of killing.35 Usually, moral arguments presume in one fashion or another that killing is generally wrong, but do not make explicit why. Marquis argues the reason becomes explicit when asking the question, “Why is it wrong to kill me?” The primary reason killing me is wrong cannot be because it would brutalize my killer, and cannot be because others would experience my absence as a loss. Killing me is wrong quite simply because I would experience the greatest possible loss I can suffer: the loss of myself. All other notions that surround the ethical wrongness of killing must derive from the simple fact that an individual will primarily and irreplaceably value her own life and, if killed, will no longer have the potential and actual subjective experience of being that individual. Ethical positions regardless of stance on, for example, euthanasia, the death penalty, or (Marquis’s particular concern) abortion, are senseless without consideration of this basic existential datum. To return to my initial question: does truth matter to ethics? I have suggested that Kierkegaard’s remarks about existential truth help show in what way truth matters to ethics. The question of whether this kind of existential ethical truth can be of service in what is taken to be an important desideratum of modern moral philosophy – the generation

Kierkegaard, Ethics, and the Subjectivity of Truth

205

of ethical rules or imperatives for right action – remains to be seen. However, I take the kind of ethical truth outlined here to serve a more immediately intelligible function: to guide and regulate the ethical imagination. Through the ethical imagination we will either identify or fail to identify with others; actions follow accordingly. This brings me back to a consideration of Rorty’s suggestion that the ethical imagination is better off when not tethered to a concept of truth, and that goals such as human solidarity are better achieved through “imaginative identification with the details of others’ lives”36 than through philosophically understanding some common human essence like “rationality” or “personhood.” Accordingly, narrative forms such as journalistic reporting, ethnographies, or novels have increased significance for ethical life and moral progress, whereas more traditional discourses in philosophy and theology diminish in relevance. Again, I believe that Rorty is partly right, that imaginative identification, made possible through the dissemination of a wide variety of human narratives, is crucial to the growth of the ethical imagination. But, contrary to Rorty, I believe that such a process remains unintelligible unless we can speak meaningfully of how it is related to the development of a distinctively ethical understanding, accessible in principle to all, that is grounded in the distinctively ethical truth I have been outlining. Indeed, apart from such considerations, it is hard to understand what Rorty means by “imaginative identification with the details of others’ lives.” As an example of what I mean, I will again focus on what most everyone can agree involves ethically catastrophic dimensions, namely, war. The reason we regard war as ethically catastrophic can be made plain with reference to the distinction I have been drawing between objective and subjective truth. The “objective truth” of war is these participants, these military objectives, this number of combatants, this chain of command, this wave of military deployments, these targets bombed, this number dead, and so on. Certainly, “number dead” has immediate ethical significance. But why? This can only be answered with reference to the “subjective” or existential truth of war, namely, the perspectives of those who are killed, maimed, terrified, or traumatized. Rorty speaks of the ethical imagination as being stimulated by effective journalism. But recall that truth telling is understood to be a cardinal virtue in journalism, and whether it stimulates or impoverishes the ethical imagination depends on the kind of truth that is told and how it is told. Despite a reflexive acknowledgement of the ethi-

206

Jay A. Gupta

cally catastrophic dimensions of warfare, many of us have acquired a kind of moral callousness toward its perennial representation in media. We have the distant, detached sense that “wars happen,” and indeed they are happening all over the globe. Facts and figures, troop deployments, political analyses, and so on are meant to represent the objective truth of war, but accordingly, is it not appropriate here to speak of that feeling of objective indifference that accompanies existential amnesia? The objective truth of war is flattened out onto the plane of objectivity in general, where one indifferent fact stands in relation to another. In a newspaper the objective facts of war are typically presented alongside other facts about the stock market, the local arts fair, sports teams, and so on. They are put on par with one another, the psychological effect of which is to generate a feeling of normalcy. Normalization is, in a sense, the arch-enemy of ethical consciousness. Feelings of normalcy refer to statistically “normal” states of affairs: celebrity romances, weather patterns, drops in the Dow – and war. We typically process these kinds of normal facts in a kind of distracted haze, a state of mind that Walter Benjamin once celebrated as marking the critical-emancipatory potential of modern media, a judgment that now seems to be naive.37 Journalism’s truth-telling imperative is unmasked as empty, perhaps even destructive, ideology when distinctively ethical truth is obscured rather than revealed by the principled but ethically decontextualized presentation of objective facts. The ethically out of context, objective presentation of facts, figures, and stratagems pre-interpret war as in some sense normal rather than as the absolute human catastrophe that it is. Journalism’s truth-telling imperative is properly served in accounts and narratives that capture the subjective truth of war, which is the only proper way to ethically contextualize the brute presentation of objective facts. The subjective truth of war is its ethical truth: the truth of what it is like to be in a state of unquantifiable terror and suffering. George Weller’s recently discovered account of Nagasaki in the days following the detonation of the atomic bomb is a case in point.38 Long suppressed by military censors, it challenges the official rhetoric of normalization and “necessary evil” in Truman’s ethically barren utilitarian calculus by providing a firsthand account of the horrifying suffering Weller witnessed. The truth of the hideously cruel effects of the atomic bomb spurs the ethical imagination; the calculus that surrounded their allegedly appropriate use blunts it.

Kierkegaard, Ethics, and the Subjectivity of Truth

207

As another example, consider the possible reactions to the staggering numbers of people displaced and killed by floods in Pakistan in 2010. This seems to be entirely a question of how far our ethical imagination can extend, not to objective facts about which villages are now under water, which dams failed, and so on, but to the subjective reality of what it is like to see one’s village disappear and one’s family with it. I suggest this imaginative identification can only occur with a proper understanding grounded in distinctively ethical truth, in the passionate “what it is like to be” dimension of existence. This is the basis of any imaginative identification with those brutalized by catastrophe. Absent this dimension, a catastrophe is the meaningless (if massive) vibrations in Russell’s vast and dead solar system. To conclude, I have borrowed key notions from Kierkegaard in order to present the beginnings of an account of what kind of truth ethical truth is, how it generates an ethical understanding,39 and how that understanding is important for the growth of the ethical imagination. Contrary to what Rorty suggests, such growth cannot be a substitute for a concern with ethical truth. Rather, the former relies on the latter. To see this, all we must do is ask what precisely is involved in the kind of “imaginative identification” that Rorty advocates. As indicated at the outset of this discussion, such identification involves “the imaginative ability to see strange people as fellow sufferers,” which involves “increasing our sensitivity to the particular details of the pain and humiliation of other, unfamiliar sorts of people.”40 This implicitly acknowledges that ethical empathy is not always forthcoming. Empathy involves the capacity for a close kind of emotional identification, and it tends to be dispensed more easily to those who fall within our familiar range of ethical relations: family members and friends. Where such empathy is lacking, it seems appropriate to speak of the need for an exercise of our ethical imagination to help us identify with those unfamiliar to us, or more precisely, to help us identify with the truth of unfamiliar sorts of people’s pain and humiliation. This truth is subjective truth. But the only subjective truth that we have immediate access to is our own. Therefore, an ethical grasp of the possibility of another’s subjective truth depends upon our own deepened understanding of what Kierkegaard calls our ethical actuality, the subjective truth of our own existence. More precisely, a deepened sense of my infinite passionate interest in and care for my immediate subjective actuality – my existence – grounds my understanding of ethical truth, which

208

Jay A. Gupta

makes possible the extension of my imagination to others who, because they are human beings, have an infinite passionate interest in and care for their subjective actuality. The abandonment of truth by Rorty and other moral skeptics arguably rests on the entrenched philosophical habit of conceiving of truth as objective truth. Rorty does broach the question of subjective truth, but only to reject it as a discourse that is tied to notions of “inner essence” or deep “human nature.” However, Rorty’s rejection is not fully considered, especially in light of what he himself advocates. Though he is right to emphasize the importance of imaginative identification with other people’s suffering, such imaginative identification requires a prior understanding that is grounded in the kind of truth that I have been urging, the truth of what it is like to be an existing individual who has a passionate investment in that existence. A proper understanding of ethical truth as subjective truth provides the very conditions for the possibility of the kind of imaginative identification Rorty advocates. An understanding of ethical truth is required for the growth of the ethical imagination.

N OT E S

1 James Rachels and Stuart Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, fifth ed. (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2007), 44. 2 Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), xvi. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 23. 6 Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, trans. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 204. The following discussion exclusively focuses on Kierkegaard’s sustained attempt in this particular text to elaborate his claim that “subjectivity is truth.” I will follow Kierkegaard’s lead in this text in my attempt to frame an ethical conception that, though it may ultimately imply a conception of God as absolute ethical telos, does not presuppose or assert it. Further, I would like to forestall hermeneutic controversy by acknowledging that my reading is one particular way of reading Kierkegaard’s famous claim, a way that is tied to the goal of developing

Kierkegaard, Ethics, and the Subjectivity of Truth

7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

209

a general ethical perspective for which the concept of truth is important. This ethical perspective is meant primarily to account for our ethical stances toward our fellow human beings; it does not directly account for our ethical stances toward different species, the environment, and so on. If the following account is right, the nature of these latter ethical stances would require either a separate theoretical account(s), or a significant elaboration of the present one. Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?,” The Philosophical Review 83 (October 1974): 435–50. Ibid., 436. There is a whole literature on qualia, specifically as regards issues in the philosophy of mind; such issues are not the direct concern of the present discussion. But as regards the term in the present context, perhaps it is a fair characterization to say that we are interested in the ethical significance of qualia. Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?,” 441. Ibid. Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 317. The “middle” case of organic processes presents an interesting difficulty about the nature of “proto-subjectivity.” To develop this thought here would lead too far into speculative waters for the purposes of the present discussion, which is focused on the either/or phenomenological contrast between subjectivity and objectivity. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 193. Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship,” quoted in Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 53–4. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 159. Ibid., 198. Ibid., 316. Ibid., 325. Ibid., 141. Ibid., 311. Ibid., 320. Ibid., 318. Ibid., 321. Note that this picture of imaginative identification is not meant to model all human relations; For example, in Either/Or, Kierkegaard acknowledges and discusses at length the existence of the “aesthetic” relation, which as one might expect is more sensuously characterized.

210

Jay A. Gupta

27 Kierkegaard’s account goes some way toward explaining why we appear to have ethical responses to fictional characters, and why reading fiction can hone our ethical outlook generally. However, much remains to be said about this. 28 I am grateful to the audience (one audience member in particular) of this paper at the Truth Matters conference (Toronto, 2010) for raising the issue of moral obligation, as well as the issue of “pathological subjectivities,” discussed below. 29 Robert Brandom articulates this problem with great perspicacity in “Some Pragmatist Themes in Hegel’s Idealism: Negotiation and Administration in Hegel’s Account of the Structure and Content of Conceptual Norms,” European Journal of Philosophy 7 (August 1999): 164–89. 30 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 195. 31 Ibid., 195–6. 32 Ibid., 142. 33 Ibid., 144. 34 Ibid., 167. 35 See Don Marquis, “Why Abortion is Immoral,” in The Right Thing to Do, ed. James and Stuart Rachels, fourth ed. (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2007). 36 Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 190. 37 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations (New York, Schocken Books, 1969). See in particular section xv. 38 See George Weller, First into Nagasaki (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2006). 39 By emphasizing “understanding,” I am pointing to an epistemic relation between the subjective truth of one’s existence and a kind of immediate awareness that is grounded in it. Though the relation remains obscure (if only because “immediacy,” strictly speaking, suggests the absence of a relation), it seems appropriate to retain some idea of such a relation in light of Kierkegaard’s comments (discussed above) concerning “ethical knowing.” 40 Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, xvi.

11 Theories of Concepts and Moral Truth J O H N J . PA R K

Concepts are the building blocks of thought. They take part crucially in various aspects of cognition such as categorizing objects, induction, deduction, and analogy making. Non-cognitivism and subjectivism are two meta-ethical views that make claims about the nature or structure of our moral concepts in moral judgments, concepts that are in part the building blocks of such thoughts. By claiming that all moral judgments are the expression of our emotions, such theories conclude that the moral concepts in our judgments are primarily constituted by emotions or sentiments. However, recent findings in empirical moral psychology show that such moral concepts are not always primarily constituted by emotions. Rather, such concepts at times may be primarily composed of theoretical reasoning aspects. If this is the case, then non-cognitivism and subjectivism are false because not all moral concepts in moral judgments are primarily constituted by our emotions, and thus not all moral judgments are the expression of our emotions. In this chapter I first explain non-cognitivism and subjectivism. Next I provide a brief but relevant overview of the concepts literature. Finally I examine recent empirical evidence in moral psychology that shows not all moral concepts in judgments are primarily constituted by emotions. NON-COGNITIVISM AND SUBJECTIVISM

Generally understood, non-cognitivists such as A.J. Ayer, C.L. Stevenson, and Simon Blackburn hold that moral judgments express our

212

John J. Park

emotions and that moral properties do not exist. Generally, for noncognitivists, it is because our moral judgments are primarily emotional expressions that such judgments do not describe the world and thus, strictly speaking, are incapable of being true or false. For instance, Ayer claims that moral judgments are merely the expression of our emotions, where saying that a particular act is wrong does not ascribe a moral property to the act but communicates our feelings.1 Stevenson has a slightly more sophisticated account and claims that moral judgments express the fact that we like or dislike something.2 For example, my claim that “murder is wrong” is factual in that it is true that I do not like murder. However, for Stevenson, the primary function of moral judgments is to express our emotions and enjoin others to share in our same attitude. Blackburn is a modern-day noncognitivist who argues that moral judgments are primarily the expression of our emotions or attitudes. He also attempts to account for the underlying objectivity that appears to exist in ordinary moral discourse.3 Blackburn, strictly speaking, does not believe judgments can be true or false, and so he attempts to explain how or why everyday normal ethical conversations appear to be discussions about what is morally true and morally false even though such truth does not exist. While Blackburn to an extent does allow that reasoning may be involved in moral judgments, he believes that such judgments are still primarily the expression of our emotions. For instance, he states, “denying that X is good or right is rejecting a favourable attitude to X.”4 Allan Gibbard is also a modern-day non-cognitivist. However, he is excluded from the scope of the concepts-based argument because he does not claim that moral judgments are directly the expression of our emotions. Rather, they are the expression of our acceptance of norms for when we should feel emotions such as guilt and anger. In this manner, Gibbard mentions rather than uses emotions in his meta-ethical views on moral judgment. Due to this fact, I will not criticize Gibbard’s specific non-cognitivist view in this chapter, and my concepts-based argument will focus on those non-cognitivists views, such as those by Ayer, Stevenson, and Blackburn, that claim moral judgments are primarily the expression of one’s emotions. Subjectivists in ethics argue that moral judgments stem from our subjective emotions but may be true or false if they successfully report the sentiments of the judger.5 Since this stance adopts a relativistic theory of truth, this is a moral relativism rather than a non-cogni-

Theories of Concepts and Moral Truth

213

tivism because moral judgments may be truth-apt relative to the individual, whereas non-cognitivists hold a deflationary theory of truth in which judgments, strictly speaking, cannot be true or false. Subjectivism allows for the truth-aptness of moral judgments, and so it is categorized as a cognitivist rather than non-cognitivist theory. Both non-cognitivism and subjectivism can be viewed as making a claim about moral concepts. Moral judgments contain mental representations of which the crucial ones are moral concepts. For example, the thought killing is wrong contains three concepts, where wrong is the important moral concept in the judgment.6 If non-cognitivism or subjectivism is true and our moral judgments primarily express our emotions of approbation or disapprobation, then our moral concepts, which are the normative concepts in judgments, must primarily be constituted by sentiments and emotions. Hence, if primarily emotions constitute the moral concepts in judgments, then such judgments express our emotions. T H E T H E O R Y- T H E O R Y O F C O N C E P T S

For my purposes, I do not need to explain all the various theories of concepts. Rather, I will examine only those theories that the relevant moral psychology literature will support. Such an examination will provide the information necessary to understand the given conceptsbased argument. The theory-theory emerged out of psychology in the 1980s and became established based on its power to explain categorization as well as on its capacity to provide a detailed account of concept acquisition. In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin argues that the classification of biological species should not be based on theory-neutral superficial similarities but should be grounded in the causal explanations that underlie the similarities among organisms. In “Natural Kinds,” W.V.O. Quine states that an individual’s psychological development and the development of society in regards to distinguishing and characterizing natural kinds are first based on perceptual superficial similarities.7 However, through continual development and maturation, the individual and society use more sophisticated scientific theories or knowledge to draw such distinctions. Along the lines of, but not necessarily in full agreement with, these thinkers, the theory-theory of concepts states that concepts are themselves theories. Theories contain scientific, causal, functional, and general background knowledge8 about

214

John J. Park

the extension of a concept and can explain things such as categorization in concrete concepts.9 The theory-theory of concepts states that concepts are constituted by theories about the world that can explain things such as how we categorize. The theory-theory claims that theoretical knowledge of the world rather than superficial properties of objects or actions play a causal explanatory role in cognition. For example, Frank Keil ran a study in which researchers asked participants whether an animal in a given scenario was a horse or a cow.10 In the situation, there is an animal that is called a horse, makes horse sounds, looks like a horse, wears a saddle, and eats oats and hay. However, scientists run blood tests and X-rays on it, and they discover that its insides are actually the insides of a cow. Keil found that older children and adults perceived the scientists’ discoveries as relevant for determining natural kind membership. These subjects relied not on superficial similarities but on folk biological theories of hidden essences to decide that the animal was really a cow despite appearing to be a horse. This study provides evidence that some individuals’ concept horse is a theory-theory concept and is constituted by folk theories of biological hidden essences. As an example of the importance and use of causal knowledge in cognition, being curved is an equally typical feature in bananas and boomerangs. However, subjects give more weight to this attribute in boomerangs because they falsely believe that curvature is related to the boomerang’s property of returning to the thrower.11 This relationship between the two features leads subjects to think that being curved is more required for a boomerang than for a banana. Here, theory-theorists do not necessarily deny that we may have in mind superficial features when representing a class, but they do emphasize the importance of background knowledge or theories in providing the underlying causal explanation to such features as well as in deciding what weight such features may possess. Theory-theorists also hold that there are domain differences for types of knowledge where different ontological domains contain different types of central beliefs. For example, while natural kinds are believed to have hidden essences, the analogue for artifact kinds is generally intended function.12 For example, if a hammer’s superficial features are altered such that it cannot properly function and can no longer drive nails into a piece of wood, then theory-theorists no longer consider the object a hammer. This contrasts with natural

Theories of Concepts and Moral Truth

215

kinds where, for example, so long as an animal has cow innards or a cow essence, it is a cow even if it appears to be a horse. To date, the theory-theory has not been experimentally supported for moral concepts. However, if the theory-theory is a viable view for moral concepts, then some moral concepts will be constituted by normative ethical theories. Just as the theory-theory for concrete concepts may be composed of folk scientific theoretical knowledge, the theorytheory for moral concepts claims that such concepts are composed of ethical theory knowledge. Thus, for example, right action may be constituted by the Kantian knowledge that which may be willed to be a universal law. Moreover, it may be constituted by the act utilitarian knowledge perform that act which creates the greatest happiness, or it may be composed of the neo-virtue ethics knowledge that action which the virtuous agent will perform. E P I S T E M I C E M OT I O N I S M

To date, no one has provided a theory to the effect that the emotions constitute concrete concepts. However, Jesse Prinz offers such a theory for moral concepts within his neo-empiricist proxytype concept framework.13 In The Emotional Construction of Morals, Prinz discusses what he calls epistemic emotionism, which contends that our moral concepts are essentially related to emotions. By “essentially related,” Prinz means that moral concepts are related to emotions dispositionally and at times constitutionally. Prinz distinguishes between sentiments and emotions, where sentiments are standing dispositions stored in long-term memory to feel emotions. Emotions are occurrent manifestations in working memory of dispositional sentiments. In making this distinction, Prinz allows for the fact that at times we may make a moral judgment without feeling any emotions, but we are still disposed to feel such emotions. Thus, in such cases of judgment, our moral concepts, which are in part the building blocks of moral judgments, are constituted by our sentiments, which are dispositions to feel emotions of approbation and disapprobation even though we do not presently experience any emotions. In other cases where we feel emotions when making a moral judgment, emotions constitute our moral concept in the moral judgment when activated occurrently in working memory. Thus, sentiments stored in long-term memory compose all moral concepts, but when a moral judgment is actively rendered, emotions constitute the moral concept in the judgment in

216

John J. Park

many but not all cases. Hence, Prinz’s epistemic emotionism claims that moral concepts are related to emotions dispositionally and at times constitutionally. Before I turn to the empirical moral psychology evidence that demonstrates the viability of both theory-theory and epistemic emotionism for moral concepts, I need to make two important points. Most concept experiments in the psychology literature have dealt with concrete concepts such as natural and artifact kind concepts, while very few have dealt with abstract moral ones. The only tests that have been conducted in order to explicitly draw concept-based conclusions for moral concepts have been for the prototype view. However, as I will show in the next section, recent findings in empirical moral psychology that examine the causal nature of folk moral judgments may be used to draw concept-based conclusions even though they are not originally designed to do so. Such studies in this literature examine whether, for example, conscious/unconscious reasoning or emotions affect moral judgment. My insight that the causal judgment literature may be used to infer moral concept conclusions will be essential in making the argument against non-cognitivism and subjectivism. At first it may appear that causation and constitution are two different things. For example, Prinz distinguishes between causation and constitution in the causal moral judgment literature and warns that we cannot reach any constitution conclusions on moral concepts based on causal evidence. He writes, “the fact that emotions influence moral judgments does not entail that moral judgments contain emotions.”14 However, making a moral judgment is an act of categorization, in which a particular moral act is classified as good or bad. In psychology, concepts play a causal explanatory role in functions such as categorization, where concepts are constituted by whatever structure best fills or realizes their role.15 Thus, if emotions cause moral judgments, then emotions constitute concepts since emotions best fill the causal roles. This is the assumed metaphysical reduction in the concepts literature, which is similar to functionalism in the philosophy of mind and how mental states may be identified with the structure that realizes its functional role, since mental states are members of functional kinds. This application of deriving constitution claims for moral concepts based on causal evidence was not foreseen by those working in the causal moral judgment literature. Thus, they have not realized that such studies have implications for the nature and struc-

Theories of Concepts and Moral Truth

217

ture of moral concepts. However, I will uniquely use such an application of the causal judgment literature here in order to reach conclusions about the nature of moral concepts as well as to argue against non-cognitivism and subjectivism. Second, it may not be clear whether epistemic emotionism is distinct from other theories of concepts in that emotions may themselves be made up of concepts that together formulate ethical theory knowledge. If this is the case, then epistemic emotionism will not be a different theory from the theory-theory.16 In the philosophy of emotions, a purely cognitivist theory generally claims that emotions are only constituted by appraisal judgments, which tend to be evaluations related to one’s wellbeing. For example, if someone strikes me in the face, then I experience the emotion of anger. On this view, such anger may be composed of my well-being has been damaged, and his hitting me is morally wrong because it cannot be willed to be a universal law. If emotions are just appraisal judgments, then in this instance the emotion view may potentially be nothing more than the theory-theory. However, purely cognitivist views have come under attack from psychological findings. For example, Robert Zajonc convincingly argues that emotions can be induced without any prior cognitive mental states such as appraisal judgments. For example, a subject can be made to experience emotions through drugs or hormone treatments without any prior emotion-related appraisal judgments occurring in that subject’s mind. Moreover, Zajonc cites empirical evidence for a direct pathway from the retina to the amygdale, an emotional region of the brain, which bypasses cognition regions that are associated with appraisal judgments. For instance, many people have an immediate fear response when we see snake-like coiled objects even before making any cognitive appraisal judgments regarding the snakelike object. Thus, there is strong empirical evidence against purely cognitivist views of emotions, which are untenable.17 On the opposite end of the spectrum, we may claim that emotions contain no appraisal judgments. If this is the case, then the emotion view is clearly distinct from the other concept theories, and the present issue or worry at hand need not concern us. However, a third option is a hybrid view in which some but not all emotions contain appraisal judgments as well as some other component(s) essential to all emotions, such as a felt qualitative “what it is like” component, a somatic component where emotions are perceptions of bodily changes, or an action-tendencies component where emotions are dispositions to act. Such a view may be problematic in

218

John J. Park

that emotions at times may once again be theories, since emotions in some instances are in part constituted by appraisal judgments. But if such a hybrid view is true, then at times an emotion is a conjunction of an appraisal judgment and some other factor(s): x. For the sake of the discussion in this chapter, I need not specify what x is. Thus, according to this theory of emotions, the emotion view differs from the other concept theories due to x, which the concepts that are not composed of emotions do not have. In this respect, emotion-view concepts in some cases have theory-theory components that are appraisal judgments, but they are also made up of x. Due to this conjunction, emotions in this hybrid view still will be different from theories. Appraisals may in part constitute emotions, but emotions cannot constitute appraisals. This difference transcends the worry at hand as to whether epistemic emotionism is still a different theory of concepts from the others, regardless of whether emotions are this specified type of hybrid or whether they contain no appraisal judgments at all. E M P I R I C A L M O R A L P S Y C H O LO G Y

I will now turn to the famous trolley problem experiments in order to demonstrate the viability of both the theory-theory and epistemic emotionism for moral concepts.18 In the lever case of the trolley experiments, imagine that a train is about to run over five people and you may pull a lever to divert the train on a side track in order to save them – but if you do so, there is one person on the side track who will be killed. According to 89 per cent of participants, you ought to pull the lever in this scenario. In the footbridge case, imagine that the same train is heading toward the same five people, but now you are on a footbridge over the track. In your company is a heavyset man whose body mass is large enough to stop the train if you kill him by pushing him on to the track in order to save the five. In this case, 89 per cent of participants state that one should not push the heavyset man.19 Joshua Greene interprets the trolley cases as a matter between act utilitarianism and deontology.20 Studies show that in the lever case most participants make act-utilitarian judgments in which it is permissible to pull the lever in order to save a greater number of lives, while in the footbridge case most subjects make Kantian deontological judgments in which the heavyset man has an individual right not to be pushed regardless of the greater utility that will come from pushing him.21 Act utilitarianism generally states that one must per-

Theories of Concepts and Moral Truth

219

form the action that brings the greatest overall happiness. In the lever case, making the train switch tracks brings the greatest happiness because it saves more lives. Deontology is generally concerned with individual rights that hold regardless of the overall consequences. In the footbridge case, for most subjects, the heavyset man’s right to life is maintained regardless of the consequences of saving more lives by pushing him onto the track. Using brain neuroimaging scans, Greene concludes that utilitarian judgments, such as those in the lever case, are associated with reasoning regions of the brain such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and inferior parietal lobe. Moreover, deontological judgments, such as those in the footbridge case, involve greater activation in the emotion areas of the brain such as the posterior cingulated cortex, the medial prefrontal cortex, and the amygdala. Thus, Greene believes in a dual-process view in which reasoning factors lead to utilitarian judgments while emotional factors lead to deontological judgments. Unbeknownst to Greene, this means that moral concepts may include both theory-theory and epistemic emotionism structures, depending on the situation at hand. If Greene is correct in his analysis concerning the causal factors in the lever and footbridge cases, then there is evidence that moral categorization uses both the theory-theory and the epistemic emotionism concept structures.22 In The Emotional Construction of Morals, Prinz challenges Greene by arguing that the emotion regions of the brain are still activated in a small way when participants decide to pull the lever. Though such activation is not as extensive as that during the deontological judgment, it is still there. Thus, he interprets participants’ decision to pull the lever as an emotion-based decision mixed with rational deliberation due to the large activation of reasoning regions of the brain. In essence, Prinz believes that the emotions are casually most fundamental in influencing judgment. However, the brain scans run by Greene et al. show correlation rather than causation. Thus, even though the emotion regions of the brain for participants in the lever case are activated in such judgments, they do not cause them. With only correlational data, the emotional activation may come after rather than before the judgment is made. This denial of causation from merely correlational data also holds for any reasoning or emotion causal claims for the trolley cases based merely on neuroimaging studies. However, I now turn to further studies on the trolley cases that do show causation and that will be able to address Prinz’s counter-interpretation of this set of trolley cases.

220

John J. Park

Mario Mendez and his associates have run trolley studies on patients with frontotemporal dementia, which involves a deterioration of the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex and anterior temporal emotion areas of the brain.23 These patients have been found to not only show diminished concern for others but they also exhibit emotional blunting or severely diminished emotions. Due to emotional blunting, such patients are prone to committing transgressions such as stealing and physically harming others. Along the same lines, in Descartes’ Error, Antonio Damasio similarly concludes that patients with lesions to the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex have intact reasoning capacities but have affective deficiencies.24 For instance, Damasio describes the case of one of his patients who scored normally and at times above normal on intelligence and reasoning tests, but exhibited diminished emotions. When he discusses his many hardships the subject displays an unusual emotional detachment from them, with no sign of frustration or sadness. Moreover, when shown visually stimulating and emotionally charged pictures of people drowning and individuals in gory accidents, the patient showed no emotional response and remained emotionally neutral. This patient’s everyday life was generally characterized as one of disaffection, which is different from life before damaging the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Michael Koenigs et al. and Elisa Ciaramelli et al. have successfully replicated Mendez et al.’s study with patients that also have lesions in the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex.25 In Mendez’s work, patients with frontotemporal dementia were given the lever case and the footbridge case. In the lever case, patients’ responses matched those of subjects without frontotemporal dementia. For example, most patients stated it is permissible to pull the lever. However, in the footbridge case, patients significantly diverged from the answers from other subjects and stated that it is permissible to push the heavyset man onto the track. With blunted emotions, patients with frontotemporal dementia were more inclined to make utilitarian judgments, while those without were not. This study provides causal evidence that in certain cases, act-utilitarian reasoning influences moral judgment. After all, patients with blunted emotions made the same judgments as those without in such cases, which suggests both types of subjects primarily use the actutilitarian principle in making moral decisions. Here, there is still the possibility that emotions can influence judgment. But by inference to the best explanation, the best account of these findings is that even if reasoning and emotions are both involved in the lever case, reasoning

Theories of Concepts and Moral Truth

221

is the primary driving force due to the fact that some subjects had diminished emotions. However, since such subjects diverged from other participants in the footbridge case by making act-utilitarian rather than deontological categorizations, emotions play a causal role in making judgments for normal subjects in the footbridge case. Emotionally blunted patients did not make the same judgments as other subjects in the footbridge case, which suggests that those subjects are primarily influenced by emotions when making such categorizations. Now, reasoning may also play a role in footbridge case categorizations for such subjects, but by inference to the best explanation I infer that emotions primarily drive such judgments in this circumstance. Mendez et al.’s study repudiates Prinz’s interpretation that utilitarian judgments in the lever case are primarily emotion based, since utilitarian reasoning primarily influences such judgments. Second, this study suggests that the theory-theory and epistemic emotionism are both at work in different circumstances of moral judgment. Since, for subjects without frontotemporal dementia, in the lever case utilitarian reasoning primarily influenced judgments, while in the footbridge case emotions primarily influenced judgments, both types of structures are primarily at work at different times. Thus, in some cases, moral concepts in moral judgments have primarily theory-theory rather than epistemic emotionism structure. Hence, non-cognitivism and subjectivism are false, because it is not the case that all moral judgments are primarily the expression of our emotions. If all moral judgments express emotions, then the moral concepts that constitute such judgments must primarily have epistemic emotionism structure. However, at times moral concepts in judgments primarily have theory-theory structure, which suggests that non-cognitivism and subjectivism are not true. On a final note, this conclusion also establishes the viability of the theory-theory for moral concepts – a new insight that has importance in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of cognitive science.

N OT E S

1 A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (New York: Dover, 1952). 2 C.L. Stevenson, “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms,” Mind 46 (1937): 14–31. 3 Simon Blackburn, Ruling Passions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

222

John J. Park

4 Ibid., 70. 5 Subjectivism is described in Russ Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 18–19. 6 Concepts will be written in italics from this point forward. Second, assuming Bernard Williams’ notion of thick moral concepts, killing may be considered a moral concept as well. 7 W.V.O. Quine, “Natural Kinds,” Naming, Necessity, and Natural Kinds, ed. S.P. Schwarz (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1977), 155–75. 8 By knowledge I mean an information-carrying mental state rather than justified true belief. 9 Susan Carey, Conceptual Change in Childhood (Cambridge, ma: The mit Press, 1985); Gregory Murphy and Douglas Medin, “The Role of Theories in Conceptual Coherence,” Psychological Review 92 (1985): 289–316; Frank Keil, Concepts, Kinds, and Cognitive Development (Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1989); Alison Gopnik and Andrew Meltzoff, Words, Thoughts, and Theories (Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1997). 10 Keil, Concepts, Kinds, and Cognitive Development, 162. 11 D.L. Medin and E. Shoben, “Context and Structure in Conceptual Combination,” Cognitive Psychology 20 (1988): 158–90. 12 Carey, Conceptual Change in Childhood; Keil, Concepts, Kinds, and Cognitive Development. 13 For the sake of brevity, I do not examine Prinz’s full theory of moral concepts, as it takes him his first three books to articulate his view. Instead, I offer a truncated exposition of his theory of moral concepts. 14 Jesse Prinz, The Emotional Construction of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 28. 15 Daniel Weiskopf, “The Plurality of Concepts,” Synthese 169 (2009): 145–73; “Concept Empiricism and the Vehicles of Thought,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (2007): 156–83. 16 To bypass this dilemma, Prinz holds a controversial view of emotions in which emotions are not constituted by any concepts whatsoever. In what follows, I offer a way to bypass the dilemma at hand without adopting Prinz’s controversial view of emotions. 17 Robert Zajonc, “On the Primacy of Affect,” American Psychologist 39 (1984): 117–23. 18 Judith Jarvis Thomson, Rights, Restitution and Risk: Essays, in Moral Theory (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1986); J. Greene, R.B. Sommerville, L.E. Nystrom, J.M. Darley, and J.D. Cohen, “An fmri Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment,” Science 293 (2001): 2105–8; J. Greene, L.E. Nystrom, A.D. Engell, J.M. Darley, and J.D. Cohen, “The

Theories of Concepts and Moral Truth

19

20

21

22

23

223

Neural Bases of Cognitive Conflict and Control in Moral Judgment,” Neuron 44 (2004): 387–400. J. Greene et al., “An fmri Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment,” J. Greene et al., “The Neural Bases of Cognitive Conflict and Control in Moral Judgment.” Some interpret this set of trolley problems as a matter of the doctrine of double effect. This issue is inconsequential in that I will show that the lever case is primarily causally influenced by reasoning while the footbridge case is primarily affected by emotions, regardless of whether the two cases are interpreted as an issue of utilitarianism/deontology or the doctrine of double effect. Moreover, while I consider the lever case to be one of act utilitarianism, it is quite possible that some other principle really is at work, such as, “prevent the most harm so long as there is no self-interested cost to oneself.” While this possibility is right, for my preliminary purposes I will assume it is one of act utilitarianism. For, as I will show, it will not matter what principle is really at work here, so long as it is some reasoning-based principle rather than an affect-based principle. The assumption of act utilitarianism may later lead to a theory-theory moral concept structural claim. However, if some other ethical theory is really at work, then it still leads to a theory-theory structural conclusion. Thus, though it is uncertain what ethical knowledge is in play in the lever case, this fact is inconsequential because the viability of the theory-theory structure is still proven to be true. J. Greene et al., “An fmri Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment,” J. Greene et al., “The Neural Bases of Cognitive Conflict and Control in Moral Judgment.” In his 2001 study, Greene also believes he shows that there is a longer reaction time for making utilitarian judgments than for deontological ones. Given that a longer reaction time is likely for cognitive processing of running a utilitarian calculation, Greene says such evidence shows that utilitarian judgments are caused by cognitive theoretical information. However, the evidence really shows that there is no reaction time effect. In the study, a reaction time effect was only generated by including the reaction times of studies that did not require a utilitarian analysis to come into effect. Such studies skewed the speed of fast deontological judgments. J. McGuire, R. Langdon, M. Coltheart, and C. Mackenzie, “A Reanalysis of the Personal/Impersonal Distinction in Moral Psychology Research,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 10 (2009): 577–80. M.F. Mendez, E. Anderson, and J.S. Shapria, “An Investigation of Moral Judgment in Frontotemporal Dementia,” Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology 18 (4, 2005): 193–7.

224

John J. Park

24 Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error (New York: Penguin Books, 1994). 25 M. Koenigs, L. Young, R. Adolphs, D. Tranel, F. Cushman, M. Hauser, and A. Damasio, “Damage to the Prefrontal Cortex Increases Utilitarian Moral Judgments,” Nature 446 (2007): 908–11; E. Ciaramelli, M. Muccioli, E. Ladavas, and G. di Pellgrino, “Selective Deficit in Personal Moral Judgment following Damage to Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2 (2007): 84–92.

12 Educating for Truthfulness D O U G B LO M B E R G

The challenge of the Truth Matters conference call to “reclaim truthfulness for the academic enterprise” underscores that a commitment to truth is not an abstract principle but a concrete action. As Plato recognizes, philosopher-rulers need not only “the ability to grasp eternal and immutable truth” but also certain “qualities of character”; in describing these, he begins with “love of the knowledge that reveals eternal reality” and follows immediately with “truthfulness” – for how could “a love of wisdom and a love of falsehood” possibly coexist in one person?1 Character thus connotes integrity, because virtuous traits are complementary and coherent. The Apostle Paul shares this concern with truthfulness and its integrality with concomitant virtues, not of course as qualities of an elite, but as characteristics of all the saints. Paul, more clearly than Plato, is motivated by concern for others than by a theoretical vision of abstract ideals: “Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices.”2 Truthfulness is a quality not of isolated moral heroes but of members of a community, for whom Paul’s purpose is that they may be “united in love ... in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”3 And while Paul agrees that truthfulness cannot flourish apart from the virtues that complement it, what confers integrity is love – not of knowledge, as for Plato, but of God and neighbour.4 Relinquishing “the old self” is not a matter of obeying the rational charioteer, of dialectical engagement until one attains an intellectual vision of the Good, but of willfully and will-

226

Doug Blomberg

ingly subjecting reason and all other human capacities to love – not a simple undertaking, as Paul explains in many places.5 While it is evident from the above that Paul does not despise knowledge, he is persuaded that only when we are face to face with love will we know fully as we are fully known.6 The virtues, finding their integrity in the central divine call to love, are “dispersions” of it, in the same way that a prism disperses white light to reveal the spectrum.7 Augustine explains, with respect to the “cardinal virtues” (having learned the lesson of Romans 7): “Temperance is love giving itself entirely to that which is loved; fortitude is love readily bearing all things for the sake of the loved object; justice is love serving only the loved object, and therefore ruling rightly; prudence is love distinguishing with sagacity between what hinders it and what helps it.”8 The “new self” is Christ-like character, the integrity of which is assured by love. From this holistic perspective it is no surprise that, for example, Anselm’s exploration of truth leads him to propose that truth, justice, and rightness are mutually definable, so that truthfulness inheres not primarily in statements uttered but in a whole-bodied response to the multidimensional call of truth.9 Actions speak truth louder than words, and so Anselm values knowledge less than understanding, the capability that informs how one acts in the world at large. Truthfulness – being true – implies being rightly directed on the way of and for life; Jesus of course claims it as a comprehensive value.10 This integrality of the virtues – the singular definition of which Plato unsuccessfully sought in the Meno – is also because they are but embodied expressions of a person’s heart commitment. The institutional incarnations of individuals in community also answer to the call of love, and thus properly respect all modes of normativity, but each does so with a particular value in focus.11 Given that intellectual formation is the defining feature of academic institutions,12 the cultural-cognitive tools therein acquired will be employed in service of truth only if they are infused with love; as Parker Palmer contends, “we must allow the power of love to transform the very knowledge we teach, the very methods we use to teach and learn it.”13 Love connects everyone compassionately with all that God has made, and the knowledge we therefore seek is intimate and respectful. This kind of knowledge is not the comprehension of eternal otherworldly truths or the distanced theoretical control of objective material, but emerges through engagement in historically contingent experience, if we are open to hearing God’s voice.14 Biblically, such knowledge is

Educating for Truthfulness

227

comprised by, rather than opposed to, wisdom; taking a cue from Palmer, we may consider spiritual wisdom to be knowledge transformed by love. It involves sensitivity, vulnerability, empathy, and tact in responsive interaction with other creatures and is accessible to all who have a listening, loving relationship with creation; as Anselm also would say, things themselves, in all their diversity, reveal truth. This conception is at odds with Plato and his heirs, for in this tradition, knowledge “in and of itself,” acquired by a pure, impersonal rationality, yields “worldly wisdom,” a distortion of the wisdom revealed in Christ by the Spirit of God.15 Educating for truthfulness is not, I suggest, a matter of focusing for a time on this particular virtue and then moving on to another, until the list has been covered. I do agree with Plato that wisdom cannot be taught, not at least as a didactic transfer from expert to novice. It can, however, be learned, as a matter of holistic character formation in which students practice using knowledge wisely in loving service of others. To what extent this goal is reflected in Christian higher education, and how it might better be so, I now turn to consider.16 C H R I S T I A N H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N IN NORTH AMERICA

The Council for Christian Colleges and Universities describes its member institutions as “intentionally Christ-centered”; its 111 North American members are also institutions that employ “curricula rooted in the arts and sciences.”17 The council’s mission includes helping its members “transform lives by faithfully relating scholarship and service to biblical truth.”18 A reasonable generalization is that these colleges accept the liberal arts curriculum as the proper model for general education, provided it has a biblically transformational orientation. We may fairly assume that the goal of a Christian liberal arts education is to support the development of well-rounded persons, broadly knowledgeable about society and culture and able to take their place in the world as thoughtful contributors to democratic life and vital members of church congregations. But we may well question whether a broad initiation into the disciplines of the arts and sciences is the appropriate platform for promoting trothful action. If an educational institution is to be faithful to Christ, it must strive to ensure that all facets of its curriculum and pedagogy reflect what scripture would have us value. This requires more than addition to and sub-

228

Doug Blomberg

traction from the received tradition: it demands critical reflection on the taken-for-granted structural conditions of schooling and an ongoing commitment to their reformation. Lives are not transformed, I suggest, merely by relating scholarship, service, and scripture.19 The contributors to a significant recent publication, The Schooled Heart, are deeply concerned about the importance of college students’ moral formation (as for many, and unfortunately, I think, a term viewed as synonymous with “character education”).20 Although the editors observe that the “emergence of academic disciplines ... is an integral part of the story of moral education’s marginalization,”21 they nonetheless argue that the integration of the intellectual (disciplinary) and moral dimensions constitutes a genuine liberal arts education, current practices that for the most part exclude the latter being a distortion of the ideal. The conviction informing the collection is that virtues are best acquired in the very conduct of learning in the disciplines – that is, within the framework of rationality – provided the acknowledged fragmentation of the contemporary curriculum is countered by, for example, the inclusion of an integrated core or interdisciplinary courses. Yet, according to Stanley Hauerwas’s chapter within that volume, if academic excellence is prioritized, “you can kiss Christianity goodbye.”22 Hauerwas believes that American Christians “live in dark times,” one of the symptoms of which is that Christian universities produce graduates eager (if unwittingly) to serve “powers foreign to the gospel.”23 He lifts the discussion of character education out of the arena of personal behaviour and into the comprehensive spiritual, political, and economic environment that is its rightful locus. Citing Alasdair MacIntyre’s claim that the structure of education is itself of moral import, Hauerwas contends that “disciplinary divisions ... reflect as well as contribute to the fragmentary and compartmentalized character of modern life.”24 Universities are committed to being “ahistorical institutions that can serve anyone anywhere” and thus to graduating “people educated to be willing agents of the modern state.”25 They favour knowledge over wisdom. Wisdom is one of the virtues that the authors seek to nurture: “an educated discipline of mind coupled with a skillful practical discernment ... in daily affairs [involving] both theoria and praktika ... never purely one or the other.”26 This description reflects not only The Schooled Heart’s project of integrating the intellectual and the moral,

Educating for Truthfulness

229

but also a more pervasive mindset that, in accepting the inviolability of the theory/practice pairing as descriptor of the terrain of human life, is likely to frame most efforts to assert the primacy of character education within (or with only minor adjustments to) prevailing curricular structures. As Hauerwas intimates, theoretical abstraction promotes the lamented curricular fragmentation. Academic disciplines require the logical-analytical interrogation of experience. Such disciplines are subject to cognitive canons, and that requires the putative expulsion of any form of normativity except the logical.27 Crucial to the deception that colleges and universities can be “ahistorical institutions” is a latently Platonic view of theory as able to penetrate to universal structures, outside a particular time and location. Hauerwas, however, proposes a remedy, the general tenor of which I endorse: hearts are schooled throughout the curriculum, but above all “by the wonderful world opened by learning to see that all that is is God’s burning bright creation.”28 By “all that is,” I understand that everything we experience, in its historically situated particularity and complexity, is God’s creation, even if it is mediated by human hands. Not only – or even mainly – the world of so-called nature, but also every person, relationship, institution, act, event, and the interrelations among them are creational entities. Creation, as God speaks through it, is the primary site of learning. As Anselm says, the things themselves speak the truth. Theoretical reflection, as one mode of experience, ought not to be the lens through which all else is viewed: “discipline of mind” (recalling Jeffrey’s phrase) will be attained in part by schooling in the academic disciplines, but this is only one category among the many disciplines that are necessary. The essential disciplines are fundamentally those of practice, not as complements to or implications of rationality or theory, but as the matrix within which full-bodied life is experienced and out of which theoretical practice arises. The coherence that all things have in Christ cannot be seen in a curriculum that fragments the world into seemingly self-explanatory disciplinary compartments. Neither Hauerwas nor I would counsel that the resources of the academic disciplines be abandoned, but rather the focus should change, so that academic excellence – amounting to the pursuit of “truth” conceived in rationalistic terms – is not a priority. The excellences that should have priority are not those of the head but

230

Doug Blomberg

those of the heart, for where the heart goes, there the head (and hands) will follow. Ultimately, the coherence of all things, their interdependent relationality, is that of love. A CASE STUDY IN CURRICULUM CHANGE

The report of the Calvin College Curriculum Study Committee, entitled Christian Liberal Arts Education, and finalized in 1965, ambitiously purports to investigate “the very basis of all Christian higher education.”29 The committee eschewed what it termed the “pragmatist view ... that the acquisition of knowledge is to be justified primarily in terms of utility for the solution of concrete practical problems in contemporary life,”30 and instead promoted the “disciplinary view”31 that the academic disciplines are not oriented primarily to practical outcomes, but involve systematic and “disinterested ... study of some aspect or segment of reality.” Theoretical investigation will often have practical import, but the primary goal is “to discover how things are and why they are as they are.”32 This is clearly a forceful statement of the view of higher education I dispute in this chapter. More than thirty years later, a revision to the Calvin core curriculum maintained the liberal arts model, but with a significant change in focus. Where the previous core aimed “to introduce Calvin students to the methods, results and approaches of the various academic disciplines,” the curriculum revision committee judged that the core had not “spelled out in convincing detail” how this was connected to the college’s central goal of “preparing students for lives of Christian service in society.”33 The revised core curriculum sees the disciplines as the means rather than the objects of education. While continuing to identify Calvin as “a liberal arts institution,” the disciplines are now explicitly intended to prepare students for their varied callings in life, as “citizens, parishioners, players in a market economy, participants in the culture and members of a society deeply shaped by science and technology,” by providing them “with the insights and skills they will need to be informed and effective agents within these domains of practical life.”34 The reference to lack of “convincing detail” is a courteous understatement: the later committee was not at all convinced that the academic disciplines in their “objectivity” could serve Calvin College’s purposes. The phrase “practical life” underscores how radical the shift in emphasis was meant to be. Also significant in the revised curricu-

Educating for Truthfulness

231

lum is the addition of the virtues to the existing components of knowledge (disciplines) and skills (competences), as “certain traits of character we want to foster in the classroom and in the community at large.”35 There is, however, little conviction that these virtues – primarily attributes of individuals – can be actively taught. As I intimated above, I believe this skepticism is justified when character education is fundamentally an appendage to the liberal arts curriculum. Be that as it may, the Calvin experience demonstrates dissatisfaction with key assumptions of the liberal arts model as previously conceived, and recognition of the need to move in the direction I have espoused. Nicholas Wolterstorff, a prolific contributor to reflection on Christian higher education among many other topics, was chair of the firstmentioned committee. He later concluded that “doing justice and struggling against injustice” – not “personal virtues” associated more with righteousness than with public justice, nor initiation into the academic disciplines – are central to college students’ ethical formation.36 He maintains the importance of a cognitive framework (some components of which will be sourced from the disciplines) for evaluating social justice issues, but he also stresses the significance of empathic engagement with suffering people, either directly or vicariously, the impact of modeling on character development, and the role of narrative. Wolterstorff considers these and other elements necessary if people are to develop not only knowledge and skills but also the disposition to do justice. And a disposition is of course a virtue, if it is directed aright. G R O U N D E D N O R M AT I V E D I S P O S I T I O N S

Character entails both understanding how one should act and also true and just acting; value is thereby realized, in both senses of the latter term.37 Forming the kind of character that will more often realize value in things and actions requires the development of “grounded normative dispositions.”38 The curricular focus is then on the kinds of engagements with the world that best promote dispositions – which, as matters of the heart, are deeper than affections – to act rightly. Such engagements will be rooted in and responsive to historical context and concerned more with concrete particularity than with abstracted universality, with “practical life” and “God’s burning bright creation” in which the Spirit reveals “eternal and immutable truth.”39 Students should attend carefully to the diverse norms that obtain, for God

232

Doug Blomberg

speaks truth through every strand of the world’s fabric, and they should willingly love to act in accord with this truth. John Macmurray succinctly formulated the problem with a “liberal arts plus” pedagogy: theory in itself is powerless to change reality, because “I do” precedes “I think.”40 With respect specifically to moral education, Maxine Greene faults the line of reflection that runs from Kant through Rawls and Kohlberg for its intellectualist emphasis, to the exclusion of concern with “embodied relationships, mutuality, care, and concern,” and thus for driving a wedge between “principled action and sympathetic identification, rational judgment and emotion”; she stresses the necessity of “relationality” as complement to rationality in the struggle for social justice.41 Jean Anyon also points to the significance of active engagement with others in movements for social justice in shaping the beliefs that people come to hold.42 Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat suggest that becoming a Christian occurs in the act of identifying with the Christian community;43 this act is also yada (knowing intimately), in accord with their understanding that truth is a matter of covenantal fidelity (of character and relationality) rather than of propositional accuracy.44 More recently, James K.A. Smith argues for the greater formative power of liturgical practices (whether secular or religious) relative to education in “worldview” and “perspective.”45 Jesus calls his disciples to “follow me, for I am the truth.”46 Just as he points to the good samaritan as the embodiment of love – “go and do likewise” – rather than demanding obedience to a principle, he asks for emulation of his incarnated life – and death. Without taking this action and discipling themselves to him – accepting his discipline, fearing the Lord – they would not have had the benefits of his teachings. Conversion or repentance is not primarily a change of mind, but a change of direction – ironically, the metaphor Plato embeds in the cave allegory, in the physical turning from “image” to “reality” that is the first step on the ascent toward the sun. A TA L E O F T W O PA R A B L E S

This change of direction in biblical terms is, at root, a change of heart. Jesus often employs narrative to invite this change, for narrationality weaves together the strands of life – its interdependent relationality – that rationality so regularly sunders. Narrationality is hospitable to the multidimensional realization of value that is wisdom.47 Jesus was a wis-

Educating for Truthfulness

233

dom teacher – indeed, he is wisdom incarnate48 – who often taught in parables that, rather than being the simple stories they seem, required wisdom on the part of their hearers to be understood. The parable of the sheep and the goats is a prime example of teaching in the wisdom tradition, for it says that one hears the voice of God in the voices of God’s creatures, particularly the underprivileged and oppressed, and that one serves God in serving them – the widows, orphans, poor, and foreigners who are the ubiquitous focus of Israel’s calling to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God. In my experience, the parable to which Christian educators most frequently appeal is that of the talents,49 in order to justify the laudable aim of helping individual students develop their varied gifts. However, there are a couple of significant ways in which this parable is misunderstood. The first is bound up with the very title that has been foisted on the tale. The confusion goes back to the early fifteenth century (and results, ironically, from John Wycliffe’s attempt to render the Bible in plain English), for although the talents in the parable are coins given to the servants in gracious accordance with their different abilities, the word “talent” soon acquired the meaning of a special ability and “talent” and “ability” were conflated. Truer to the parable’s message is a recent educational coining (the pun seems unavoidable), that of a talented environment; in this conception, talents are the opportunities parents, teachers, and the community provide that enable people to develop their abilities.50 Without access to a piano, and most likely a piano teacher, the most musically able person will never be a pianist; even more fundamentally, without being nurtured in a linguistic environment, a child will not learn a language. The unwise servant earns a rebuke not because he has little ability, but because he is unfaithful in not using this ability to take advantage of the opportunity afforded to him by his master. Scripture is one integral revelation, but its division into chapters, verses, and titled sub-sections – or the belief that it is a collection of propositions – can fragment our understanding. The parable is informed by and informs its companions in Matthew 24 and 25: the faithful and wicked servants, the ten virgins, the need to be always busy about the Lord’s work, and the sheep and the goats, which is explicit about what the Lord’s work is. But on the reading of the parable of the talents I have proposed, and as shocking as the juxtaposition of terms will sound, the parable of the sheep and goats says that the suffering and

234

Doug Blomberg

oppressed are the “talents” presented to us; that caring for the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the homeless, and the prisoner is the Lord’s work.51 Again, in serving them, we serve Jesus, and it is significant that Matthew records Jesus choosing this story to culminate his teaching ministry mere days before his crucifixion. This is the second point of educational relevance, for instead of placing the nurture of individual “talents” at the centre, this story questions what our curriculum and pedagogy would look like if the task of bringing healing to a broken world were at the centre and if the restoration of justice, the breaking in of dynamic shalom, were its impetus. Individual abilities would still be nurtured, but not for the individualistic end of competitive success in academic achievement. The faithless servant was foolish; the other two were wiser, for they heard the words of their master and acted on them, increasing the value of the resources with which they were entrusted. Being of good character, they enabled flourishing. Should not the goal of character formation be people who live in service of the flourishing of others, enabling them to realize their value, while themselves living in service of their Master? Is not the pursuit of justice a primary goal of wise living?52 A N A LT E R N AT I V E V I S I O N

How do we create talented environments that afford students opportunities to use their abilities to address a suffering world and construct spaces in which, as Palmer aptly says, “the community of truth may be practiced”?53 In what practices do we invite students to engage, in what narratives do we ask them to live – those that promote disciplinary knowledge or those that invite the wisdom of disciples? The authors of The Schooled Heart note the particular danger that confronts the liberal arts curriculum – briefly, that of being “merely academic.”54 Others in American academia share similar concerns. Elizabeth Coleman, president of Bennington College, says: “The trajectories of specialization, an emphasis on technical mastery, neutrality as a condition of intellectual integrity, leave us unable and disinclined to take on the real world obligations of citizenship. Such obligations are much too open-ended, contentious, messy, value-laden, and dependent on capacities radically different from those of a narrowly conceived and technical expertise ... The aversion within the academy to tackling such problems, no matter how pressing, can scarcely be exaggerated.”55

Educating for Truthfulness

235

In her conclusion, Coleman quotes Ellen Lagemann, former dean of the Harvard School of Education: “Given how difficult it is merely to change a college curriculum ... it is hard even to imagine how one might go about the kind of truly radical change that would be necessary if liberal education were to be reconceived as a means to promote problem-centered ways of thinking and to better combine those with discipline-based styles of thought.”56 Bennington College has taken steps to radically reorient its curriculum; a physical representation of this is the new Center for the Advancement of Public Action at the heart of its campus.57 What do we in Christian institutions consider our goal and purpose? What stands literally or metaphorically at the centres of our campuses? While framed starkly, the choice is as I have already suggested: it is between the disciplines and discipleship. This requires a more radical move than the insertion of virtue ethics into liberal arts education, and it requires a conception of discipleship more comprehensive than a focus on individual piety or intellectual perspective. T H E R H Y T H M O F L E A R N I N G 58

God created the world as a home that we are richly to enjoy as we serve the God who is love.59 Christians are first and foremost to value all that God has made, directly as well as mediately, through human hands: marriages, states, and schools are examples of the latter, for we cannot create ex nihilo, but only give shape to what God offers. We are to engage deeply with “God’s burning bright creation” as it reveals itself to us, not to honour in its stead the insights of physicists, economists, and theologians (though we will honour these in their proper place). We are not to be distrustful of ordinary, concrete human experience, deriding it as mere “practice,” but to revel in creation’s fecundity. Put simply, we are to love the Bible in all its narrative complexity, often challenging and not infrequently puzzling, before we are enamoured of the discipline of theology that seeks to logically systematize scriptural revelation. We are also to love history – the textured unfolding of cultures generation after generation, respecting the achievements and repenting the failings of our and our neighbours’ forebears – before we are to love the academic discipline of history, which would delude us that we are hegemons over that heritage. We are to love literature before we substitute for it literary criticism.60 This “before” is not only or always chronological but ontic, a very con-

236

Doug Blomberg

dition of being human. In other words, we are to play in God’s world, as wisdom did at the very beginning.61 We live in God’s good creation, which yet is fallen. God has entrusted creation to us to administer as stewards so that we may open up the potential that God has gifted. Unfolding creation toward what it can and ought to be is our calling and is the “glory of God” at the very heart of our image bearing.62 Discerning and actualizing these possibilities is the primal sense in which creation poses problems to us and we pose problems to creation. But being fallen adds a second dimension to creation’s “problematic” character. In a suffering world, our task is to bring healing where there is brokenness – not merely to observe, describe, and analyze, but to show mercy in our actions. There has to be continual correction toward greater shalom and cosmic justice. Problem-posing thus passes over into peacemaking: purposeful responses that glorify God by demonstrating God’s gracious rule. We realize value, as wise stewards who reverence the one who empowers and liberates. CONCLUSION

Coleman suggests that academics are fearful of facing real-world obligations – the messy problems that Christians know to be the result not only of creation’s radical state of being fallen but also of the dynamic creation that always calls for our response as those entrusted with shaping it to God’s glory. The Christian academy has no license for such avoidance. We need to create the kind of talented environments that invite students to use their abilities to address a suffering world, and to construct spaces in which students are afforded opportunities to grow and, in another familiar phrase of Parker Palmer’s, in which “obedience to truth [may be] practiced.”63 Like the unwise servant, we are responsible for our own self-formation. But society’s teachers, whether parents, schools, churches, media, or government, have a complementary responsibility for the opportunities they afford to those in their care, the kind of practices in which we invite students to engage.64 Learning that forms character must engage the whole person. Virtues are not predominantly intellectual, and so cannot be taught didactically, but this does not mean they cannot be learned. There are a number of pedagogical practices in higher education that subvert the “liberal arts plus service and/or virtues” model by grounding the

Educating for Truthfulness

237

curriculum in the complexities of concrete experience rather than in the abstract certainties of the disciplines. Each of these approaches can be adapted to focus on service to those who are in need, locally or globally, on “doing justice and struggling against injustice.”65 Certainly, colleges will nurture their students in the disciplines within a Christian perspective, but a way of seeing does not in itself lead to a way of being. The latter is character, not just as personal moral integrity, but as the stamp that persons bear; more actively, character is the whole manner in which people bear themselves, for or against Christ’s Commonwealth a-coming. Character is engendered more by actions than by thoughts, by ways of walking than by ways of talking, by organizational and communal structures that, as talented environments, shape the habits of the heart. Significantly, Paul says that character is shaped by suffering and, I venture, by identifying intimately with those who suffer.66 In suffering vicariously – as Christ did for us – we help to complete “what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions.”67 If true, just, and right action in God’s world for all God’s creatures is at the heart of our curricula and pedagogy, we may hope by the grace of God to graduate people of character who will use their knowledge wisely in loving service of others.

N OT E S

1 Plato, The Republic, ed. Betty Radice and Robert Baldick, trans. H.D.P. Lee (Harmondsworth, uk: Penguin, 1955), 244–6. Williams similarly underscores the complementary nature of these qualities, though he distinguishes them from their corresponding virtues of accuracy and sincerity. See Bernard Williams, Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). 2 Colossians 3:9 (Bible quotations are from the New International Version). 3 Colossians 2:2–3. 4 Colossians 3:14. 5 Not least in Romans 7. 6 1 Corinthians 13. 7 See Herman Dooyeweerd, The Christian Idea of the State (Nutley, nj: Craig Press, 1968). 8 Aurelius Augustine, “Excerpts from The City of God and The Morals of the Catholic Church,” in From Christ to the World: Introductory Readings in

238

9 10 11

12

13

14

15 16

17 18

19

Doug Blomberg

Christian Ethics, ed. Wayne G. Boulton, Thomas D. Kennedy, and Allen Verhey (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 235. Anselm, “On Truth,” in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, ed. Brian Davies and G.R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 151–74. John 14:6. “Being true” to God in Christ is a much different matter than being true above all to oneself, of course. Goudzwaard thus speaks of the need for “simultaneous realization of norms.” Bob Goudzwaard, Capitalism and Progress: A Diagnosis of Western Society, trans. Josina Van Nuis Zylstra (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 69. That is, in the educational dimension of their mission; institutions of higher education also have a complementary research function, a logical-analytical focus on which the emphasis becomes greater from community colleges to liberal arts colleges to universities to research institutes. Parker J. Palmer, To Know As We Are Known: A Spirituality of Education (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), 10. Love is not primarily affective, but undergirds all human responsiveness in the core of humanness that is the heart. The heart is restless, Augustine says, until it finds its rest in God; and it is also to Augustine that we owe the introduction into the philosophical tradition of the biblical insight that we must will the compass of our lives to point toward God – the God who is love. According to Isaiah, farmers, for example, who really have to get their hands dirty, are instructed in their tasks by God, who speaks through soil and seed (Isaiah 28:23–9). 1 Corinthians 2. I will not, however, consider (except tangentially) the essential question of how “biblical truth” (cited in the ensuing paragraph) should be related to scholarship – though I suggest that there is often a suspect notion of truth in play in this respect as well. “About cccu,” Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, https://www.cccu.org/about. Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, “Australia Studies Centre Alumni Gather in Nations Capital for Reunion,” 13 July 2009, http://www.cccu.org/news/cccu_news/australia_studies_centre_alumni _gather_in_nations_capital_for_reunion. It will certainly need to be something other than a “new synthesis of reason and faith, Athens and Jerusalem,” and the models Aquinas and Diderot provide, as espoused by the editor in a journal theme issue entitled “Re-inventing Liberal Arts Education,” for this merely represents the status quo. Oskar Gruenwald, “Renewing the Liberal Arts: C.S. Lewis’ Essential Christianity,” Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 14 (1/2, 2002): 20.

Educating for Truthfulness

239

20 This section draws on Doug Blomberg, “Review: Douglas V. Henry and Michael D. Beaty (eds.), The Schooled Heart: Moral Formation in American Higher Education,” Journal of Education and Christian Belief 13 (1, 2009): 85–7. 21 Douglas V. Henry and Michael D. Beaty, eds., The Schooled Heart: Moral Formation in American Higher Education (Waco, tx: Baylor University Press, 2007), 6. 22 Stanley Hauerwas, “Pro Ecclesia, Pro Texana: Schooling the Heart in the Heart of Texas,” in The Schooled Heart, ed. Henry and Beaty, 112. 23 Ibid., 103–4. 24 Ibid., 110. 25 Ibid., 109. 26 David Lyle Jeffrey, “Wisdom, Community, Freedom, Truth: Moral Education and the ‘Schooled Heart’,” in The Schooled Heart, ed. Henry and Beaty, 119. 27 Cognitive is conceived in conventional psychological terms, in distinction from the affective and conative, rather than acknowledging that the concrete thinking person acts in all three modes at once. Also, the normative or evaluative construction of the logical domain is generally overlooked in favour of a putatively value-neutral calculative or computational conception, as is the case, for example, with cognitive psychologist Howard Gardner, Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century (New York: Basic Books, 1999). 28 Hauerwas, “Pro Ecclesia,” 114. 29 Calvin College Curriculum Committee, Christian Liberal Arts Education: Report of the Calvin College Curriculum Committee (Grand Rapids: Calvin College and Eerdmans, 1970), i. 30 Ibid., 40. 31 Ibid., 47. 32 Ibid., 48–9. Consider the extent to which this conception owes more to the German ideal of disinterested scholarship, which was influential in shaping the American higher education ethos, than it does to the impulses of the gospel. 33 Lee Hardy, “The New Core Curriculum: ‘Engaging God’s World’,” Calvin College, accessed 3 April 2010 http://www.calvin.edu/publications /spark/spring01/core.htm. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 There are echoes here of Anselm’s notion of the convertibility of truth, justice, and right. Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Teaching for Justice: On Shaping How Students Are Disposed to Act,” in Educating for Shalom: Essays on Christian Higher Education, ed. Clarence W. Joldersma and Gloria Goris Stronks

240

37

38

39 40

41

42 43 44 45 46 47

48

49 50

51

Doug Blomberg

(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 135. See also Wolterstorff, “Teaching Justly for Justice,” Journal of Education and Christian Belief 10 (2, 2006): 23–37. “Understanding” here also echoes Anselm. “Realization of value” is Nicholas Maxwell’s definition of wisdom, which I have adopted. For comparison, see N. Maxwell, From Knowledge to Wisdom: A Revolution in the Aims and Methods of Science (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984). See Doug Blomberg, “Ways of Wisdom: Multiple Modes of Meaning in Pedagogy and Andragogy,” in Ways of Knowing: In Concert, ed. John Kok (Sioux Center, ia: Dordt College Press, 2005), 123–46. Echoing the second Calvin Committee, Hauerwas, and Plato, respectively. J. Macmurray, The Self as Agent (London: Faber and Faber, 1969). Herman Dooyeweerd embeds a similar claim in his distinction between naive experience and theoretical thought. Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, trans. David H. Freeman and William S. Young, 4 vols. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1953–58). Maxine Greene, “Introduction: Teaching for Social Justice,” in Teaching for Social Justice: A Democracy and Education Reader, ed. William Ayers, Jean Ann Hunt, and Therese Quinn (New York: The New Press/Teachers College Press, 1998), xxvi–xxvii. Jean Anyon, Radical Possibilities: Public Policy, Urban Education, and a New Social Movement (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2005). Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat, Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire (Downers Grove, il: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 57. Ibid., 117. James K.A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation, vol. 1 of Cultural Liturgies (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009). See, for example, Mark 1:16–20, John 14:1–7. See Doug Blomberg, “Whose Spirituality? Which Rationality? A Narrational Locus for Learning,” Journal of Education and Christian Belief 13 (2, 2008): 113–24. See 1 Corinthians 1:24, 30, for example, as well as the discussion (in the context of an extended and highly relevant justification of a Christian virtue ethics) in N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters (New York: HarperCollins, 2010). Matthew 25:14–30. Sasha A. Barab and Jonathan A. Plucker, “Smart People or Smart Contexts? Cognition, Ability, and Talent Development in an Age of Situated Approaches to Knowing and Learning,” Educational Psychologist 37 (3, 2002): 165–82. Matthew 25:31–46.

Educating for Truthfulness

241

52 Proverbs 1:1–3. 53 Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998), 90. 54 Nicholas Meriwether suggests that in most college ethics courses, the professor assumes a putatively neutral stance in propounding various theories and focuses on students’ intellectual skills. But, because living ethically requires a view of “the good life,” a “neutral” stance is self-performatively incoherent. Meriwether thus proposes that professors take an explicit stand on a particular normative theory. The question remains, however, whether retaining a focus on ethical theories will overcome the perceived threat of being “merely academic.” Nicholas K. Meriwether, “Returning Moral Philosophy to American Higher Education,” in The Schooled Heart, ed. Henry and Beaty, 73–101. 55 Elizabeth Coleman, “The Bennington Curriculum: A New Liberal Arts” (Bennington, vt: Bennington College, 2007), 3. 56 Ibid., 8. 57 The ground was broken for this project in June 2009. Interestingly, there is no reference to this centre in the Campus Plan of June 2004, which talks instead of converting the commons into a “multi-discipline campus center.” The new centre is a more radical innovation, though naturally itself promotes an inter- or trans-disciplinary approach. 58 For an extended discussion, see Gloria Goris Stronks and Doug Blomberg, eds., A Vision with A Task: Christian Schooling for Responsive Discipleship (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1993). 59 1 Timothy 6:17. 60 I owe the impetus for this particular way of framing the distinction between love of concrete experience and love of academic inquiry into experience to R.K. Elliott, “Education, Love of One’s Subject, and the Love of Truth,” Proceedings of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 8 (1, 1974): 135–53. See also Richard Pring, “Liberal Education and Vocational Preparation,” in Beyond Liberal Education: Essays in Honour of Paul H. Hirst, ed. Robin Barrow and P. White (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 49–78. Clinton Stockwell (28 November 2010), director of the Chicago Semester (whom I thank for his insightful response to a late draft of this chapter) commented on this sentence as it originally stood that it was not at all as simple as I had suggested. He also proposed with respect to a related point that “what we need is an experiential interrogation of the academic disciplines.” His own “favorite story” in this regard is to take students “to visit a public housing project, talk to public housing people, then read a book on public housing and critique it from the standpoint of the people and the community visited (which sort of reverses the North Amer-

242

61

62 63 64

65

66 67

Doug Blomberg

ican educational project, especially in seminaries where ‘worldviews’ are dictated).” Proverbs 8. See also Doug Blomberg, “Wisdom at Play: In the World but Not of It,” in The Crumbling Walls of Certainty: Towards a Christian Critique of Postmodernity and Education, ed. Ian Lambert and Suzanne Mitchell (Sydney: Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity, 1997), 120–35. See Wright, After You Believe, 89–95. Palmer, To Know As We Are Known, 69. Important to remember is that theorizing is itself a form of practice, though the theory/practice polarity is so entrenched in common discourse that we often overlook this. Wolterstorff, “Teaching for Justice,” 135. I have explored some of these practices in Doug Blomberg, “New Wineskins: Subverting the ‘Sacred Story’ of Schooling,” in Christian Higher Education in the Global Context: Implications for Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Administration, ed. Nick Lantinga (Sioux Center, ia: Dordt College Press, 2007), 199–213. Romans 5:1–5. Colossians 1:24.

Introduction

PART FOUR

Truth and Religion

This page intentionally left blank

13 Truth Unveiled: Balthasar and the Contemplation of Christian Truth GILL K. GOULDING

SETTING THE SCENE

At the wane of the twentieth and the dawn of the twenty-first century, two successive pontiffs expressed a clear concern for the relationship between truth and religion – or, more specifically, identified the importance of the search for truth and the knowledge of God. The possibility of such a search was seen to involve the use of faith and reason and the fruition of such a search to involve contemplation. The intellectual search for truth illumined by Gospel contemplation and integrating the mystery of faith and reason was a significant focus of attention both for Pope Benedict XVI1 and his predecessor Pope John Paul II, who stated: “Faith and reason seem to be like two wings by which the human spirit is raised up toward the contemplation of truth. It is God himself who implanted in the minds of men and women an inclination for knowing the truth and an inclination for knowing him, so that knowing and loving him, they may likewise attain the whole truth about their very selves.”2 There is then a graced desire for truth within human persons, and it finds expression in a search for truth that brings engagement with God; and contemplation of God also brings increased knowledge of the truth of oneself. Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI were influenced in this understanding and articulation of truth by the work of the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar.

246

Gill K. Goulding

After a substantive introduction identifying key elements of the argument, this chapter is structured into three parts. First, I explore Balthasar’s understanding of the Trinity as source of truth and mystery as intrinsic to truth. Second, I consider the human experience of truth as rooted in the Trinity and inclusive. Third, I explore the way in which prayer is the ground of contemplative engagement with truth and the fecundity of such contemplation for action on behalf of truth. INTRODUCTION

The search for truth and the process of knowing, Balthasar asserts, must be both rooted and grounded in theology: “There is no such thing as a theologically neutral world for philosophy to investigate.”3 For Balthasar “mystery” is intrinsic to truth, not an optional additional extra.4 At the heart of this mystery is the truth of the Trinity. For Balthasar, the reality of the Trinity is the source of a fullness of interpretation of human existence. Because of my understanding of the distinctions within the Trinity – Father, Son, and Spirit – and the fullness of relationship inherent in one God, distinction and otherness as well as communion may all be an integral part of such mystery, bursting the bounds of any subjective identification. Such an assertion is important for contemporary understanding, where attention has been focused on the question of whether the transcendence that takes place in the knowing process and the search for truth is achieved only through the act of the subject or whether it is something that the object being known co-enables.5 The process of knowing for Balthasar is primarily God’s act of disclosing or unveiling objective content to the thought of the receptive person who then awakens to knowing in wonder and amazement. The divine initiative inspires the process of unveiling, and true reception of such disclosure involves the spirit of wonder and gratitude that is, as it were, the “natural” Christian response to God’s gift of self. Through this process, the receptive human subject transcends personal limitations through grace by being opened to an “other” who is beyond the knowing subject. The focus here is on engaged contemplation as the human subject contemplates the divine disclosure in wonder. Receptiveness, an opening of one’s self by grace toward the revelation of God, allows for entrance into the intrinsic mystery of truth

Balthasar and the Contemplation of Christian Truth

247

itself: “This revealed and revealing light, however, is being – the wonder that there is anything at all rather than nothing.”6 Since this knowing subject is only gradually opened to the truth of the object, elements of mystery and obscurity always remain, so that the subject never has total control over the object: “Truth is being’s property of unveiledness, uncoveredness, revealedness, non-hiddenness.”7 This truth in being, for Balthasar, ever remains a gift.8 Truth is not just a property of knowledge – “it is above all a transcendental9 determination of being as such.”10 Balthasar’s premise for this whole process of knowing is that all meaning and all unity lie in God. Individuals can only know God by being “in” God. God alone brings about being, which unveils itself within the world. Therefore, the process of knowing is primarily God’s action of disclosing or unveiling objective content to the receptive person. In this revealing, there is ultimately what Balthasar calls a “poverty of Being and of its sensibility [which] reveals that the sole treasure Being contains, is nothing other than – love.”11 This love is the divine dynamic operative deep within human reality that calls to relationship, and for the believing Christian this relationship is an interaction with the divine life of the Trinity:12 “To say that love is the communion of Christians is not simply to enunciate an abstract principle; rather in the Christian communion of love we share in a personal act of God himself, the tip of which may be seen shining in the person of Christ, but which in its depths contains the interpersonal life of the Blessed Trinity and in its breadth embraces the love of God for the whole world.”13 Here we need to listen to the other and above all the “Other” who is God. In this way, we come to know the truth about ourselves and to truly become ourselves. Above all in the contemplative engagement of prayer do the God-given truth of the human person and divine truth meet. Here there may be the fullest expression of human freedom graced and guaranteed in its lived expression by divine freedom. From this foundation, the salutary practice of speaking the truth can be a grace-filled reality. TRINITY AS SOURCE OF TRUTH A N D M Y S T E R Y A S I N T R I N S I C TO T R U T H

As Aidan Nicholls indicates, Balthasar emphasizes that within his Theo-Logic, “a starting point generous enough to be congruent with its subject can only be the way God’s triune being is reflected in the

248

Gill K. Goulding

being of the world: imago Trinitatis in ente creato.”14 Love is the final truth of being15 – in the divine essence, in the reciprocal self-gift of the persons, and, since God the Trinity is the Creator, in the created world itself, which bears God’s mark. Supremely in human persons made in the image of God, love is the final truth of human existence, for the creativity of divine love pours itself out in a “glorious self-sharing love of its own divine Source.”16 In this graced sharing of divine love, the individual is brought to a deeper expression of the creaturely reality of what it means to be both a creature and a beloved child of God. This lies at the centre of the covenant relationship to which we are invited. For Balthasar, the foundation of the God/human covenant is the paradox of God’s glory as love – the divine desire to exchange love with human beings and to bear fruit.17 In consequence, it is not surprising that Balthasar’s own theological project is inherently paradoxical. Indeed, he excels at accentuating contrary – though not contradictory – claims about God and the world, while holding them tenaciously in tension. His method is one of “integration not evolution.”18 He sees the theological task as always involving a scriptural exegesis attentive to the signs of the times. For Balthasar, this theological task also has a “proper centre” in the kenosis19 of the Son. The kenosis of Christ is where Balthasar’s Trinitarian theology becomes strikingly evident. For Balthasar, the created realm is Christoform, because Christ is the mediator par excellence between God and the world – the way, the truth, and the life.20 And Christ in being the Word made Flesh is the legible form of the Father.21 His very divinity was hidden in his humanity and was revealed in the glorious drama of incarnation, passion, death, and resurrection. Within these events, Balthasar sees the place where manifestation and hiddenness are one – the very model of unveiled/veiled. The incarnation enables us to glimpse something of the reality of the mystery of love at the heart of God. The paschal mystery Balthasar sees as the culminating expression of the divine loving initiative of the Trinity in Christ’s self-surrender and obedience unto death. The Cross, for Balthasar, is the centre of the world’s history – the saving work of God and the gateway to radiant resurrection.22 Accordingly, the resurrection is the ground, in contradistinction to which the icon of the Cross and hence divine glory can emerge. In fact, divine glory emerges most profoundly because it synthesizes (and is simultaneously iconoclastic of) certain Old Testament images.23

Balthasar and the Contemplation of Christian Truth

249

These include the political messiah, the new David who would save the people from their oppressors; the one “coming from above,” the apocalyptic Son of Man who reveals divine power and might; the personification of divine Wisdom herself as co-fashioner of the cosmos; and finally the Suffering Servant, the prophet, whose body and entire being is possessed by God. In the Johannine gospel’s passion drama, the Logos (characterized by sapiential wisdom) who comes “from above” (rooted in apocalyptic tradition) is revealed as king of another realm (related to messianic expectations) raised up on his throne that is the Cross (foreshadowed by Isaiah’s Suffering Servant). The Cross thus becomes the entry point through which humanity encounters a new truth, a new goodness, and the awareness of the most provocative beauty. Christ on the Cross is the “way” to the Father, the eternal source of “life” and goodness as the “truth” of self-emptying love.24 In the drama of the Cross in which God’s heart is broken open and the Trinity is revealed most splendidly, God also hides in the horror of death. In this paradox of revealing as hiding, the truth about God – “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all”;25 “God is love”26 – is revealed. Indeed, Balthasar states, “no philosophy invented by man could dare to make the bold Johannine statement that ‘God is love.’”27 For Balthasar, Christ is the centre of life and reveals the reality of the Trinity. This mystery of the revelation of God involves an ever-greater depth and richness whereby both existence and essence transcend our conceptual grasp of them. This mysteriousness of being Balthasar describes in terms of the interplay of veiling and unveiling as well as in terms of the ground of truth: “Truth is the unconcealment of being.”28 To the extent that being is unknowable, it is already unveiled as such. It is also always unveiled in some particularity, e.g., a human being. There is an ontological confession of particularity by existence itself – as human being and not dog or cat and so on. Balthasar says, “on the other hand, this confession in which things divulge their truth is neither indiscreet nor unlimited. It is bounded by the intimate space in being.”29 Accordingly, things are not only unveiled, they are in equal measure essentially veiled: “This veiling naturally entails a limitation of their unveiling but not necessarily a limitation of their truth.”30 This is because there is not a simple opposition between veiling and unveiling: “Rather, it is more like a form or property that is inherent in the unveiling itself. In fact, things are unveiled as veiled, and it is in this form that they become objects of knowledge.”31 This

250

Gill K. Goulding

paradox of unveiled veiling is akin to St Paul’s contention that in our present earthly situation we see through a glass dimly.32 We glimpse something of the mystery of the Trinity, something of the truth that lies at the heart of all reality, but “precisely the unveiledness of being is as such its deep veiling,”33 for we know there is much more that we do not see and know. Yet what we do encounter can be the source of much wonder, joy, gratitude, and love.34 The unavoidable characteristic of truth is that its essence is always more than its appearance, and this “more” is displayed in the essence of its appearance itself.35 This is also part of the mystery of the Trinity. As Balthasar maintains, “only something endowed with mystery is worthy of love,”36 and love itself demands both unveiling and also reverence and thus veiling. True love is full of the true mystery of being’s intimacy, and in the eyes of love the object itself is always ever greater and never wholly comprehensible. The two movements of veiling and unveiling are inextricably interwoven; the life of love cannot be whole without both, for it involves a self-surrender in which love and truth are one. The mystery of being is essential and ineliminable. As such, it shines forth triumphantly in the full manifestation of truth unveiled. It has to do with the depth, the interiority, and the inestimably precious worth of being. The possibility and actuality of love have their ground in this depth.37 Indeed, insofar as the mystery of love lies “behind” the truth, all truth is reducible to it, derives its meaning as truth from it, and, far from mastering and explaining it as mystery, must fall silent in humility before it.38 At the same time, truth irradiates mystery, and it is the very essence of truth to manifest this radiant mystery through itself. Truth always presupposes a free, personal inner space, and this personal interiority is a vital keynote. The infinite ground appears in the background of every finite truth. Balthasar writes: “Because divine truth, being the truth of an absolute interiority, necessarily remains a mystery in all of its manifestations, all worldly truth has some share in this mysteriousness. Specifically, the mystery inherent in worldly truth is given into the possession of worldly being, which can therefore act freely and spontaneously out of a personal interiority, yet it always remains only a gift, the gift of participation in the absolute interiority of divine truth, from which the creature draws its own mysteriousness.”39 Absolute truth is precisely not the sphere of general, anonymous truth that is accessible to any and everyone. It is rather the sphere of God’s absolute personal freedom and, therefore, also the

Balthasar and the Contemplation of Christian Truth

251

sphere of absolute mystery: “Whatever is unveiled before God is for that very reason hidden and veiled in God ... For this reason alone, the creature knows that it is truly in God’s safekeeping.”40 HUMAN EXPERIENCE OF TRUTH R O OT E D I N T H E T R I N I T Y

With Balthasar’s emphasis on the revealing and unveiling God in nature as the truth within being, the object of the knowing process definitely has an active role and facilitates in the transcendence of the subject. God shares God’s truth with human persons inasmuch as God makes God’s ever deeper mystery visible as mystery; and we in turn share our truth with God insofar as we acknowledge this mystery and give it back to God. The love that God has lavished on the world is thus reciprocated with a response of love. The strength of Theo-Logic is that Balthasar develops a balance between empiricism and Descartes by keeping the “I” and the world in tension: “By an absolute simultaneity, the subject becomes both self-aware and conscious of invasion by the truth of other realities beyond it.”41 Very emphatically, he states: “The subject needs the object in order to unfold itself and attain its own truth. Unless an object displays itself in its receptive space, the subject is incapable of transforming its cognitive potencies into actual knowledge. The stage has been set but remains empty; the drama of knowledge is not acted. It is not until the other enters into the space of the subject that, like Sleeping Beauty, it awakens from its slumber – at once to the world and to itself.”42 For Balthasar, God conducts the unveiling and is the revealer of the mystery of being: “Being’s opening in truth is not a relational ‘opening in itself,’ but an ‘opening for,’ an accessibility that implies that something has been offered to someone.”43 The subject for Balthasar receives and is opened, which leads to transcendence. The ontological unveiling of the creature before God guarantees that the truth of this world is in fact true. Truth is the unconcealment of being, while the full notion of this unconcealment requires someone to whom it is unconcealed.44 This is and only can be God; and in being unveiled to God there is the possibility of being unveiled to other subjects. The creature has its objective truth thanks to its being unveiled before the eternal subject. Balthasar continues to affirm the deep and absolute human reliance on God. God draws this search for truth into the depths of trust

252

Gill K. Goulding

and faith in an eternal search: “On the one hand truth produces definitive certainty, insofar as it puts an end to the tentative groping to know what is, but ... on the other hand, this closure intrinsically awakens trust and faith and, in so doing, always opens the way to eternal seeking.”45 That search is into the depths of God’s ultimately inexhaustible mystery. This is because God’s truth rests on nothing other than itself and its own infinity.46 The premise on which Balthasar grounds his work is Aquinas’ phrase, “‘totius Patris expressio,’ the expression of the Father in his entirety, the Son became incarnate precisely as an act of love ... so all human cognitive possibilities, which, if they are to converge at all, must do so in the service of love.”47 As Robert Doran has pointed out, “Balthasar ... follow[s] Aquinas in understanding the divine mission as the eternal processions of Word and Spirit linked to created contingent, external terms.”48 There is truth in the world, and it is real and can be known because of the divine initiative of love. Balthasar holds that the Trinitarian God who provides, unveils, and gifts all being opens a person to the truth within the world. The subject of knowing can only transcend the self and come to an understanding through the co-enabling of the object itself. Always, Balthasar points to the one God, who is the source of all truth. Temporality is the means through which God’s truth reaches us as creative freedom. Nowhere is this more so the case than when the incarnate Word becomes flesh. In the reality of our lives, though, it is “precisely because this imperishable eternity stands behind the perishable moment” that each moment of our time is so precious, exciting, and demanding.49 Balthasar’s exploration of truth, however, is always made known with an acknowledgement of the communal dimension of the relationship with God: “No creature stands alone before God. It knows that its fellow creature, whose mystery is hidden from it, stands together with it unconcealed and unveiled before God.”50 In this communal reality it is clear that just as individual persons find their full truth only in God, so together a common truth is found in God. To truly know the other, then, it is necessary to contemplate them. For it is only through prayer and self-denial that we are able to see others in their truth – a truth that is in God – and to perceive the common truth that links another with myself in a common humanity.51 This communal relationship with God is, for Balthasar, grounded in love. As he states: “To be sure, God is eternal truth and by this truth

Balthasar and the Contemplation of Christian Truth

253

all other things are true and meaningful. But the very existence of truth, of eternal truth is grounded in love.”52 This love is made most visible in the person and redemptive work of Jesus Christ. Jesus described himself as “the truth,”53 a word that cannot be defined because it refers to something infinite: “It can only be approached asymptotically by countless definitions. He is truth in so far as he is the ultimate higher integration of all God’s individual self-revelations down through history; all of them are centered on his ‘I.’ Whatever truth is it is judged, aligned and instituted from this center. His ‘I’ is the organic and organizing focus of truth.”54 Everything that we might become aware of in terms of objectified knowledge of God is concentrated in Christ’s subject; in his subjectivity, Christ lives out the truth of God so that we may apprehend it. Living out this truth is the prerogative of God’s only Son, who, as his Word, demonstrates God’s truthfulness to the utmost in the unfolding of his passion, death, and resurrection. The ultimate and crucial test is the Cross, where God hides himself sub contrario. The whole organism of the Church in all its parts, in other words, preaching, the sacraments, the conduct of Christian existence, those “truths of faith” of doctrine, are in reality modes of existence of Christ, who is at work in the world through the Holy Spirit.55 Since truth is centred on Christ, then Christians always derive their understanding of truth from what is given in and through Christ. In this reception of truth through faith, worship, love, prayer, and thanksgiving, Christians receive grace. Indeed Balthasar argues, “we need cords and ropes of living, constant prayer”56 to hold us to this centre, which is Christ.57 P R AY E R , T H E G R O U N D O F C O N T E M P L AT I V E E N G A G E M E N T W I T H T R U T H

Glimpsing something of the mystery of human existence allows the necessity of prayer, and especially of contemplative listening in prayer, to become clear. For the relationship between God and human persons is now seen to depend on the marvel of the gratuitous love of God. Prayer, for those who pray, is pregnant with a life of the fullest freedom, if we are able to open and give ourselves to the experience. The rich tradition of the Christian Church points to numerous holy people who have borne witness in their lives to their experiences of the fruitfulness of prayer as a place for contemplative engagement with truth in a dynamic relationship with God. The realization of a

254

Gill K. Goulding

dialogue is fundamental to prayer, as God’s Word speaks in the intimacy of heart as the Word made flesh and the focal point of all revelation: “In seeing and hearing God [the individual] experiences the highest joy, that of being fulfilled in [oneself], but fulfilled by something infinitely greater than [oneself] and, for that very reason, completely fulfilled and made blessed.”58 Such blessedness involves the recognition of the truth about ourselves, as the Word both reveals the intimate core of the individual and also “gives me to myself.”59 In this way, prayer and particularly contemplation continue the work of the Eucharist and the other sacraments in incorporating human persons in the incarnate Word, such that the sphere of our existence is in Christ.60 There is thus a twofold sense of blessing, in prayer and in the gift of grace, both of which are key constituents of the relationship between God and human persons. Balthasar affirms that through grace and in prayer that human persons are given a greater openness to the truth and a concomitant greater free self-giving: “We can now see the twofold presupposition – objective and subjective – of hearing the word of Christian contemplation: the divine truth must be open to [human persons] and the hearts and minds of [human persons] open to God.”61 Fundamentally, the grace of God, primarily in the Father, makes us able to engage in prayer and contemplation. From this grace we derive the power and the freedom to contemplate the truth open to us. In his twofold movement coming from and returning to the Father, in the power of the Spirit, Christ makes contemplative prayer possible. When the Word became flesh God in the created world became more concrete, and in the ascension the whole world was carried back to God. Both these actions were brought about through the Person of the Son, who is from all eternity the Word of the Father.62 Contemplation is also made possible for us through the work of the Holy Spirit. The sending of the Word of God (the Son) and the imparting of the Holy Spirit are but two parts of a single event, in which divine life and truth are brought to humanity. Through the gift of faith, the Holy Spirit teaches us the truth concerning the Son and we can speak of that truth. The Spirit also leads us progressively into the depths, already opened up, of the truth of God present within us. This is, however, no merely individual enterprise: “Contemplation must always be a renewed ‘hearing’ of what the Spirit speaks to the Church,63 a new hearing of what the Spirit unfolds inwardly to the contemplative mind in its own spirit of faith as members of the

Balthasar and the Contemplation of Christian Truth

255

Church.”64 Through the Spirit, the Son’s return to the Father makes him the head and life-giving source of the Church, in the outpouring of the Spirit’s life in the sacraments, scripture, the liturgy, preaching, and in the whole of Christian living.65 Balthasar states, “contemplative prayer is the reception of revealed truth by one who believes and loves and therefore desires to apply to it all his powers of reason, will and sense. Consequently, the form of the truth itself must always determine and prescribe the mode of reception.”66 The preeminent form of truth is found in Christ. The life of the Trinity and the life of Christ are not mere paradigms. Crucial for Balthasar is that Christian action participates in the absolute freedom of God’s interpersonal love. Christ – through the incarnation and the bestowal of his Spirit – imparts to us a participation in the infinite freedom of his divine status as Son, by which we are made capable of taking part in his Trinitarian mission. This is an invitation into the realm of divine freedom, and here the false dichotomy between contemplation and action is overcome.67 Christian action is derived from and sustained by contemplation. The source of such contemplation is the divine action: “What we are looking at when we contemplate the love of God is Christ giving himself in love.”68 In contemplating this action of God, then, we are inspired to play our part in the divine drama. Indeed, the credibility of Christian action as an encounter with God and an inspired action for the life of the world is due to it being a grace-filled likeness to the “folly” of divine love. Preempting the inevitable criticism of such an understanding, Balthasar states: “It will be objected that such a program of action demands the character of a saint. This may well be; but from the very beginning, Christian living has always been most credible, where at the very least, it has shown a few faint signs of holiness.”69 God’s active work impels us to active works. In the act of contemplation, then, we encounter both a centrifugal and a centripetal force. We are drawn deeper into the divine depths, the source of all life, and we are also thrust from that source back into the areas of our own now more fecund activity. Paradoxically, if we engage with that activity, drawing from the life we have received in contemplation, we are then drawn yet deeper into that divine source: “The source contains riches sufficient to bless all our activities in this world with fruitfulness, if – and only if – we keep ourselves alive by abiding in the source and never wander away. For here alone is true fruitfulness, and the more we permit this spring of life to touch and quicken the springs

256

Gill K. Goulding

of our existence, the more we allow this, the supreme Action, to be the principle of all our actions, the more, too, we shall be rich in fruit.”70 “Christian truth is symphonic,” Balthasar maintains, and is grounded in the Trinity as source of truth and reveals mystery as intrinsic to truth. “Symphony by no means implies a sickly sweet harmony lacking all tension. Great music is always dramatic: there is a continual process of intensification, followed by a release of tension at a higher level.”71 The whole paschal mystery reveals this drama. The musical analogy is most apt for Balthasar, who is an organic rather than a systematic expositor of theology. At the heart of the mystery of the Trinity is the divine dynamic of love that operates in the reciprocal self-gift of persons. From this source, God discloses the meaning of being and truth in a process Balthasar depicts as unveiling and veiling. Such disclosure is focused in and through Christ in the incarnation and paschal mystery. Here it becomes apparent that human experience of truth is rooted in an attentive receptiveness to God and is inclusive of otherness in a communal commitment. Foundational to such receptivity is the engagement with prayer that by the work of the Holy Spirit enables contemplative engagement with truth. Such prayer impels toward fruitful activity in a profound union of contemplation and action.

N OT E S

1 Each month of the year, the Pope announces a prayer intention so that people from around the world, not just Roman Catholics, may pray with him for particular needs. These can be found online at www.zenit.org. Pope Benedict’s general prayer intention for February 2010 was “for all scholars and intellectuals that by means of sincere search for the truth they may arrive at an understanding of the one true God.” The connection between the search for truth and a deep knowledge of God could not have been more clearly stated. In October of that same year, the Pope appeared to underline the importance of scholarly activity within universities in relation to this search for truth by emphasizing also the interconnectedness of faith and reason when he asked for prayers “that Catholic universities may increasingly become places where, in the light of the Gospel, people may experience the unity of faith and reason.” 2 Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio. Cited in Restoring Faith in Reason: A New Translation of the Encyclical Letter Faith and Reason of Pope John Paul II

Balthasar and the Contemplation of Christian Truth

3 4

5

6

7 8

9

10

257

Together with A Commentary and Discussion, edited by Laurence Paul Hemmings and Susan Frank Parsons (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 3. Aidan Nichols, Say It Is Pentecost: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Logic (Washington, dc: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 4. For Balthasar, everything that may be known must have some characteristic of mystery, as all objects of knowledge have a creaturely character. This leads to the conclusion that the final truth of all things is “hidden in the mind of the Creator who alone may utter [their] eternal names.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic I: Truth of the World, trans. Adrian J. Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 17. See, by way of comparison, David C. Schindler, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth: A Philosophical Investigation (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004), 4. Peter Henrici, “The Philosophy of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” in Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work, ed. David L. Schindler (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 165. Nichols, Say It Is Pentecost, 12. As a gift, truth’s transcendental nature and its integral connection with goodness and beauty are most appreciated. Balthasar approaches the mystery of Being from the perspective of the transcendental properties of Being: the One, the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Balthasar deals with the transcendentals in his trilogy: The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (beauty), Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory (goodness), and TheoLogic: Truth of God (truth). He writes: “We start with a reflection on the situation of man. He exists as a limited being in a limited world, but his reason is open to the unlimited, to all of Being. The proof consists in the recognition of his finitude, of his contingence: I am, but I could also, however, not be. Many things that do not exist could exist. Essences are limited but Being is not. That division, the ‘real distinction’ of St Thomas, is the source of all the religious and philosophical thought of humanity.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, My Work: In Retrospect (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 112. At this point there may be fruitful intersection with the following chapter in this volume, “Truth as ‘Being Trued’: Intersections between Ontological Truth in Aquinas and the Contemporary Anthropology of Religion,” by Pamela J. Reeve. Transcendental in this sense refers to a scholastic notion of the properties found in the praedicamenta of intelligible being rather than the post-Kantian condition for the possibility of x. Balthasar, Theo-Logic I, 11.

258

Gill K. Goulding

11 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord I: Seeing the Form, ed. Joseph Fessio and John Riches, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982), 407. Also see Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone is Credible, trans. David C. Schindler (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), which clearly explores throughout this short book how love is the leitmotif of Balthasar’s work. 12 Such an interaction, though, is not just focused on a relationship with the Trinity but, in and through that relationship, a renewed engagement with other human persons. “The significant factor in being a Christian is that [one] does all with reference to and in dependence on the ultimate source of [one’s] action, through loving first and above all things, the God who loves us in Christ in order that [one] may then, by means of and together with love, turn [one’s] attention to the needs of those who are the object of the love of God.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, Engagement with God, trans. R. John Halliburton (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 40. 13 Ibid., 41. 14 Nichols, Say It Is Pentecost, 91. 15 Truth is first and foremost a transcendental property of being – rooted in love. 16 Nichols, Say It Is Pentecost, 93. 17 See, by way of comparison, John 15. 18 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord IV: The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity, translated by Brian McNeil et al., ed. John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 18. 19 Kenosis or self-emptying finds its scriptural root in Philippians 2:5–11, which is Paul’s hymn extolling the self-emptying of the Son. For Balthasar, Christ’s kenosis is the supreme expression of the inner-Trinitarian love and the paradigm of God’s participation in the covenant. 20 John 14:6. Important to emphasize here is Balthasar’s understanding of the uniqueness of Christ, whose uniqueness is diametrically opposed to any form of relativism. Balthasar argues that if Jesus claimed to be the Truth then there can be no attempt to relativize this claim: If the claim stands, the whole Truth must possess a ballast, an absolute counterweight, that can be counterbalanced by nothing else; and because it is a question of truth, it must be able to show that it is so. The stone in the one pan of the scales [of justice] must be so heavy that one can place in the other pan all the truth there is in the world, every religion, every philosophy, every complaint against God, without counterbalancing it. Only if that is true is it worthwhile remaining a Christian today. If there were any other weight capable, ever so slightly, of raising up the Christian

Balthasar and the Contemplation of Christian Truth

21

22

23

24

25 26 27 28

259

side of the scales and moving that absolute counterweight into the sphere of relativity, then being a Christian would be a matter of preference, and one would have to reject it unconditionally. Somehow or other it would have been outflanked. To think of [this kind of relativized Christianity] as of more than historical interest would be a waste of time. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Two Say Why: “Why I Am Still a Christian,” by Hans Urs von Balthasar and “Why I Am Still in the Church,” by Joseph Ratzinger, trans. John Griffiths (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1973), 29–30. Balthasar writes: “The Son of the Father allows himself to be born into a human womb, and so the heavens open in a new way and reveal a threefold life in God. Everything proceeds from the Father, who remains invisible in the background. It is not he who becomes man; rather, he sends his eternal Son. But the Son lets himself be disposed of. Therefore it is the Holy Spirit who is active; he accomplishes the will of the Father and bears the Son to where this will can be fulfilled.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Threefold Garland: The World’s Salvation in Mary’s Prayer, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 13. Indeed, John Riches asserts, “perhaps in the end it is in the calling of theology back to its proper task of the unravelling of being, of the tracing out of the lineaments of the reality of the incarnate, crucified, descended and risen Lord that Balthasar’s most valuable contribution will be seen to have been made.” John Riches, The Analogy of Beauty: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986), 193. Here the reader may find congruence with chapter 16 of the present volume, “A Concept of Artistic Truth Prompted by Biblical Wisdom Literature,” by Calvin Seerveld. On the Cross, the eternal divine drama of Love mutually emptied between the Love and the Beloved is exposed for all to “see.” The Father abandons the Son in his death, creating a chasm between them bridged by the one who stretches from Heaven to the depth of Sheol – the Spirit. I John 1:5. I John 4:8. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic III: The Spirit of Truth, trans. Adrian J. Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 445. Balthasar, Theo-Logic I, 206. For a number of readers this statement and what follows may appear very similar to German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s notion of truth, though, as becomes clear later in the chapter, Balthasar develops his understanding in a different direction than Heidegger. It is noteworthy that Balthasar, unlike Rahner, never attended any lectures by Heidegger. Yet as Fergus Kerr makes clear, Balthasar’s conception of meta-

260

29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37

38

39 40 41 42 43 44

Gill K. Goulding

physics, “as well as his massive reinterpretation of the history of Western philosophy in the fourth and fifth volumes of the Glory of the Lord, are deeply indebted to his reading of Heidegger. Balthasar is far more radically ‘Heideggerian’ than Rahner ever was.” Fergus Kerr, “Balthasar and Metaphysics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar, ed. Edward T. Oakes and David Moss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 225. In the final analysis, Fergus Kerr maintains that Balthasar offers a unique version of Heideggerian Thomism. Interested readers might consider Balthasar’s article on Heidegger’s philosophy from the standpoint of Catholicism: Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Heideggers Philosophie vom Standpunkt des Katholizismus,” Stimmen der Zeit 137 (1940): 1–8. Perhaps the most accessible and best rendition of how Balthasar understood the interrelationship of philosophy and theology is Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Philosophy, Christianity, Monasticism,” in Explorations in Theology II: Spouse of the Word, trans. Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 333–72. Balthasar, Theo-Logic I, 207. Ibid. Ibid. I Corinthians 13:12. Balthasar, Theo-Logic I, 208. As Balthasar writes, “moreover, insofar as the appearances emerge from this ontological depth, this depth becomes manifest as the precious and holy mystery of being, whose sheer interiority protects it from absolute alienation and objectification.” Ibid. Ibid., 209. Ibid. Ibid., 213. Also, “we find a further form of the veiling of truth in love – the form of creative forgetting and overlooking ... and self-forgetful, loving attentiveness to the object, to its meaning, and to the preservation of its integrity.” Ibid., 215, 216. Ibid., 223. Also, “but insofar as the mystery indwells the truth itself, insofar as truth is a moment in the self-disclosure of being, the mystery is not something alien to truth. From this point of view, the mystery is not some irrational background from which truth emerges.” Ibid. Ibid., 231. Ibid., 268. Nichols, Say It Is Pentecost, 15. Balthasar, Theo-Logic I, 67. Ibid., 217. Ibid., 269.

Balthasar and the Contemplation of Christian Truth

261

45 Ibid., 227. Balthasar writes, “the trustworthiness and credibility of truth becomes an express invitation to entrust oneself to this promised manifestness, to follow the certitude that truth imparts, and to give oneself over to this movement, which is already underway. We can therefore understand why truth implies total transparency and apprehensibility on the one hand, yet eludes any attempt to nail it down in a definition on the other.” Ibid., 39. 46 “God’s truth is an identity of necessity and freedom: God is freely what he necessarily is and necessarily what he freely is. God grounds himself, and this self-grounding is an expression of his essence and of the fact that he is absolute person.” Ibid., 240. 47 Nichols, Say It Is Pentecost, 68. 48 Robert M. Doran, “Lonergan and Balthasar: Methodological Considerations,” Theological Studies 58 (1, 1997): 577. 49 Balthasar, Theo-Logic I, 244. Also, “the analogy of truth, as participation and revelation, is thus fulfilled in the ever greater obedience of the creature to the decree of the ever greater God as he reveals himself ever anew in each situation.” Ibid. 50 Ibid., 270. 51 Balthasar says: “The confession of one’s own unveiledness before God and the confession of the unveiledness of one’s neighbour before us are both only one aspect within the all-ruling confession of God’s mystery for every creature.” Ibid., 271. 52 Ibid., 272. 53 John 14:6. 54 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Truth Is Symphonic: Aspects of Christian Pluralism, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 34. 55 Ibid., 35. The Spirit who leads us into all truth is at once Christological and Trinitarian; for this person brought about the incarnation of the Word, and the will of the Spirit is that, in the Incarnation, Christ should be believed and acknowledged as a divine person, inseparable from the Father and the Spirit. 56 Ibid. 57 “The seamless robe is a symbol: all attempts to analyze and separate the different aspects of the mystery and so make it more comprehensible break down before the indissoluble mystery of the persona ineffabilis. That is the source of the Church with all its faults, rites and dogmas, which are but an emanation from the heart of the person, poured out in death and in the blood and water.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer, trans. A.V. Littledale (London: spck, 1975), 200.

262

Gill K. Goulding

58 Ibid., 21. 59 Ibid. 60 Prayer enables access to both Christological mediation and the Trinitarian archetype. 61 Balthasar, Prayer, 39. 62 In Balthasar’s words: “The act of faith is man’s acknowledgement and agreement that he has been from time immemorial, encased in the love of the God revealed to him, and this faith comprises everything in the historical sphere that the believer encounters a posteriori as ‘facts [or truths] of revelation.’” Ibid., 51. 63 Revelation 2:7. 64 Balthasar, Prayer, 59. 65 As Balthasar says: “To pray in the truth does not mean to begin by viewing it in a kind of detached way, as if we were first, by reflection, to convince ourselves that the Word of God we are actually contemplating is the truth, and then to assent to it on that ground. It means, rather, to set out from the affirmation of it as something already given long ago, and to give up and reject whatever in us militates against it. It is to live in the knowledge that the truth, which is the Spirit dwelling in us, is more interior to us than we are to ourselves since, in God and in his truth, we were predestined and chosen, before the foundation of the world, before our own creation, to be his children, pure and unstained.” Ibid., 63–4. 66 Ibid. 67 In Balthasar’s understanding, “the life of the Trinity is ... a union of contemplation and action. The three persons exist in an unbroken gaze of love and yet they are supremely active in their mutual self-giving.” John O’Donnell, Hans Urs von Balthasar (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1992), 158. 68 Balthasar, Engagement with God, 47. 69 Ibid., 61. 70 Ibid., 49. 71 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Truth Is Symphonic, 15.

14 Truth as “Being Trued”: Intersections between Ontological Truth in Aquinas and the Contemporary Anthropology of Religion PA M E L A J . R E E V E

True, v. To make true, as a piece of mechanism or the like; to place, adjust, or shape accurately; to give the precise required form or position to; to make accurately or perfectly straight, level, round, smooth, sharp, etc. as required. Oxford English Dictionary1

Truth is usually considered a topic in epistemology, in a philosophical theory of knowledge. The thirteenth-century theologian Thomas Aquinas recognizes this dimension of truth when he defines it primarily as “the conformity of intellect and thing” (conformitas intellectus et rei).2 Moreover, Aquinas held that the intellect is able not only to make true judgments about things, but also to know the conformity of its judgments with things, which is to know their truth. There is also another dimension of truth in Aquinas’s thought, which I will call ontological truth. He considers natural things to be true in relation to the divine intellect, which contains their immaterial likenesses and exists as their exemplar cause: “natural things are said to be true in so far as they express the likeness of the species that are in the divine mind. For a stone is called true, which possesses the nature proper to a stone,

264

Pamela J. Reeve

according to the preconception in the divine intellect.”3 A further aspect of this kind of truth is indicated in another work: something is true in an ontological sense to the extent that it “fulfills the end to which it was ordained by the divine intellect.”4 Clearly, this idea has religious implications. In this chapter, I will explore several intersections between the Thomistic understanding of ontological truth and a related body of ideas in contemporary anthropology. In a series of papers, Charles D. Laughlin and C. Jason Throop propose that religious cosmologies can bring about the trueing of the conscious life of religious practitioners to the hidden order and purpose of the universe.5 As with the ontological meaning of truth in Aquinas’s work, the essential idea here is not truth as an epistemic relationship between things and our ideas or statements about things, but truth as a process of our becoming “trued” to the ultimate meaning of human existence. There has, of course, been extensive development in the physical and life sciences, as well as the social sciences, since the thirteenth century when Thomas lived and wrote. He relied extensively on Aristotle for his understanding of the natural world, and it is likely that he would be most interested in contemporary scientific research and its bearing on Christian theology. The work of Laughlin and his colleagues has the potential to make such an exploration especially fruitful. Over the past several decades, they have developed an interdisciplinary research program that incorporates anthropology, psychology, neuroscience, physics, and phenomenology. While evolutionary biology is prominent in the work of Laughlin and Throop, this idea is not present in Aquinas’s philosophical anthropology. A main purpose of this chapter will be to explore its potential application to Aquinas’s thought. I will first introduce the general framework for my comparison between Thomas and Laughlin/Throop based on the idea of cosmology, and will then discuss certain philosophical aspects of Aquinas’s understanding of cosmology in greater detail. Next, I will discuss his thought on the divine ideas, exemplar causality, and ontological truth. In a further section, I will raise questions about Aquinas’s view that the human body impedes our knowledge of God. This will provide a point of entry for Laughlin and colleagues’ work and the context for a consideration of the application of evolutionary biology to Aquinas’s thought.

Truth as “Being Trued”

265

C O S M O LO G Y: H U M A N N AT U R E I N C O N T E X T

A fundamental concept, present both in Thomas’s theological system and Laughlin and his colleagues’ work, is the notion of cosmology. This is not a strictly physical concept in either case, but expresses the conception that human beings and the universe are interrelated, which has a religious dimension. In Laughlin’s earlier work, Brain, Symbol and Experience, he defines cosmology as: A culturally conditioned, cognized view of reality as a systemic, multicameral, dynamic, and organic whole. A cosmology is an account of all the significant elements and relationships that go to make up the universe, as well as their cosmogonic origins, and occasionally their eschatological demise ... The cosmos, as the term implies, is a great system, a totality ... A cosmology will typically offer explanations for the origin of the universe ... including its constituent elements and relationships ... What we are defining here is a set of universal structures of the cognized environment commonly found among preindustrial, traditional peoples. Cosmologies do not exist “out there” somewhere but are cognized worlds, which inform and are informed by the world of experience as it unfolds in each individual’s sensorium. Cosmologies have their proper ontologies in the developing nervous systems of group members. They are points of view about experience. And they may be expressed in various symbolic ways, particularly through a culture’s mythopoea; that is, through the symbolism embodied in game, myth, ritual, drama, art, tale, and so on.6 An important aspect of Laughlin’s understanding of cosmology here is that it is subject-relative. Cosmology is a cognized view of the world or account of the way the world is. He provides several examples: the cosmology of the Tukano Indians of the Amazon rain forest, that of the Dogon of Berkina Faso, West Africa, the Beaver Indians in northwestern British Columbia, and the cosmos of some Buddhist traditions. While it may seem unusual to think of cosmology as present in “the developing nervous systems of group members,” this idea draws on evolutionary biology and is consistent with the reference to cognized views and cognized worlds – expressions that imply a concept of cosmology as an internal model of reality. I will return to this below.

266

Pamela J. Reeve

Laughlin’s identification of traditional – i.e., pre-industrial – societies as the locus for religious cosmology and the consequent emphasis on myth might seem to make a comparison with Thomas’s cosmology problematic. Although Aquinas lived in a pre-industrial period, Western philosophy extensively informs his thought, and his cosmology is arguably more logos than mythos. Nevertheless, the Christian narrative of the Incarnation and Redemption, as well as key events from the Hebrew scriptures such as the creation story, are deeply embedded in Aquinas’s philosophical theology. This is exemplified in his incorporating the Work of the Six Days from Genesis in his great systematic treatise, the Summa Theologiae (in I.65–74), and in his including the narrative of the Incarnation in the third part of that work. These religious elements are integral aspects of Aquinas’s cosmology as a system of comprehensive meaning. They provide a basis for comparison with the traditional cosmologies Laughlin references, which function as large-scale explanatory structures that articulate the origin, nature, and role of human beings in the cosmos. T H O M I S T I C C O S M O LO G Y

In the following text from the Summa contra Gentiles, Thomas expresses his comprehensive understanding of the dynamic structure of the universe: An effect is most perfect when it returns to its own principle: whence also the circle among all figures, and circular motion among all motions, is the most perfect, because there is in them a return to the beginning. It is therefore necessary for creatures to return to their principle in order for the universe of creatures to attain to its ultimate perfection. However, each and every creature returns to its principle in so far as it bears a likeness to its principle, according to its being and its nature, in which it realizes a certain perfection. In the same way, all effects are most perfect when they are most fully likened to their productive cause – a house when it most closely resembles the art [that produced it], and fire when it is most like the [fire] generating [it].7 An important idea here is that something’s perfection is realized through a process of assimilation or likening to its productive cause. This assimilation, however, occurs in and through the being and

Truth as “Being Trued”

267

nature of the thing. The specific forms and functions of created things are thus integral to the realization of their end, which in Aquinas’s theistic cosmology is the participation in the divine goodness. Moreover, this reditus in deum (return to God) is clearly involved in ontological truth, considered as a process by which something “fulfills the end to which it was ordained by the divine intellect.”8 In the theistic language of Thomas’s cosmology, God creates a world of existing things that they may participate the divine goodness. Individual things, whether purely immaterial (such as angels) or matter/form composites, exist in view of this ultimate end. Aquinas expresses this in the Summa contra Gentiles, again highlighting the role of likeness: “everything tends through its motion or action toward a good, as its end ... Now, a thing participates in the good precisely to the same extent that it becomes like the first goodness, which is God. So, all things tend through their movements and actions toward the divine likeness, as toward their ultimate end.”9 It needs to be kept in mind, however, that the goodness in which a created thing is able to participate is closely tied to its natural form along with its complement of powers. Aquinas emphasizes that natural things are oriented to achieve participation in divine goodness in a manner commensurate with their proper natures and the operations integral to those natures. Since human beings are endowed with the capacity to know and will, the kind of fulfillment of which we are capable is proportionately higher than that of animals. THE DIVINE IDEAS AND EXEMPLAR CAUSALITY

It is important to consider the eidetic basis of the created order in the divine mind before considering Thomas’s understanding of ontological truth. The foundation of the subsequent likeness of created things to God, in which they reach their perfection and realize their highest good, is their prior likeness to the divine essence, which occurs in the divine mind itself. A number of important metaphysical and theological themes converge in this doctrine of divine ideas, which is a form of exemplar causality. Given the plurality of species, there is here the problem of the one and the many in an especially pressing form. The doctrine of divine ideas is also an important locus for the theology of the generation of the Word. Most importantly, for present purposes, the doctrine of divine ideas is the basis for the idea of ontological truth in Aquinas, to which I will return below.

268

Pamela J. Reeve

Thomas treats the divine ideas in several systematic works: his Sentences commentary, the Disputed Questions on Truth, Summa contra Gentiles, and the Summa Theologiae. In the context of examining knowledge in God, he asks how things exist in the divine mind. Exemplar causality, which involves the presence of things in God by way of a likeness, resolves the problem of material and metaphysical composition connected with the real existence of things, which otherwise would compromise the simplicity of the divine essence. Although a real cat, for example, cannot exist materially in the mind of God, which is purely spiritual, it can exist in the divine mind as an eidetic form or immaterial, intelligible species. These exemplary forms are integrally related to the divine essence as causative or productive. The necessity of likenesses, namely intellectual forms or exemplars of things in God, follows from the mode of action of an intellectual agent. Effects caused by such action do not merely emanate automatically as heat proceeds from fire or a falling stone leaves an impression in sand. Rather, an intelligent agent produces a determinate effect through a preconceived idea, concept, or intelligible form, and acts accordingly. Nevertheless, when exemplar causality is considered in God, it is necessary to reduce any implication of multiplicity or diversity that would otherwise compromise the unity and simplicity of the divine essence. This reduction occurs through the principle of final causality, which implies an orientation in the divine intention to the divine being and goodness itself. Thus, the potential fragmentation that a diversity of creatures in the mind of God implies is overcome because they are ordered to the ultimate good of participation in the divine perfection and goodness. While Thomas argues that God creates through forms that are likenesses of the divine essence, further consideration of the ultimate end of creation suggests that precisely this likeness, as a likeness or imitation of God, is what God intends in the creation and ordering of all things. The governing idea in this consideration is that multiplicity and difference are reduced to singularity. As Aquinas puts it: “the one first form, to which all things are reduced, is the very divine essence considered in itself. Reflecting upon this essence, the divine intellect devises – if I may use such an expression – different ways of imitating it; in these the plurality of ideas consist.”10 The eidetic self-specification of the divine essence is thus the noetic foundation of the world.

Truth as “Being Trued”

269

This primordial likeness of creatures to God goes beyond merely external resemblance. The created forms and functions of natural things are rooted in the divine self-concept and are oriented to the participation in divine goodness in which they are destined to realize their perfection and fulfillment. Thomas proposes the idea of ontological truth in this context. Such truth fundamentally concerns the relationship of created things to their exemplar ideas in the divine mind: Now a thing understood may be in relation to an intellect either essentially or accidentally. It is related essentially to an intellect on which it depends as regards its being, but accidentally to an intellect by which it is knowable; even as we may say that a house is related essentially to the intellect of the architect but accidentally to the intellect upon which it does not depend [for its existence] ... Hence everything is said to be true absolutely, in so far as it is related to the intellect on which it depends ... For a house is said to be true that fulfills (assequitur) the likeness of the form in the architect’s mind ... In the same way, natural things are said to be true in so far as they express (assequuntur) the likeness of the species that are in the divine mind (similitudinem specierum quae sunt in mente divina). For a stone is called true, which possesses (assequitur) the nature proper to a stone, according to the preconception in the divine intellect (secundum praeconceptionem intellectus divini).11 This passage indicates that where there is a productive relationship between an intellect and something it has made, the existence of the thing made depends on the intellect. In the three instances above where Aquinas uses the Latin verb assequor to express this relationship, the translation uses a different English word in each case. Thus, something is said to fulfill the likeness of the form in a creative intellect, express that likeness, or possess that likeness. Nevertheless, considering the dictionary meaning of assequor may give further insight into Aquinas’s intention in using the same verb in each instance. Lewis and Short’s Latin dictionary offers the following range of English meanings: to follow, pursue, reach, attain, come up to, equal, match.12 These meanings imply a dynamic process – in the present context, a process of becoming true, together with an aspiration,

270

Pamela J. Reeve

effort, or impetus to truth, relative to the intellectual form. The English meanings above do not consistently capture this dynamic sense. It would be somewhat unusual, indeed, to apply this dynamic aspiration to inert things such as stones. Nevertheless, the active meaning is important in relation to living things, especially human beings, who may aspire to live according to external (or revealed) standards. Moreover, the implication of a process of “becoming true,” which attends the active meaning of assequor, would be consistent with evolutionary biology. In this case, the trueing of a species to its divine exemplar would extend over millennia. How would Thomas deal with the concept of evolutionary biology given the immutability of the divine ideas? I believe he would approach the potential problem of temporal development in natural species in a manner analogous to the way he considers diversity and plurality in the divine ideas. Just as the divine essence is absolutely simple and singular, it is also immutable and unchanging. Nevertheless, incorporating the evolution of natural forms would not necessarily import change and temporal process into the divine knowledge of those forms. Consistent with his way of dealing with diversity, plurality, and composition, Aquinas could approach evolution by observing that divine ideas already imply a developmental aspect, given that natural things are oriented to achieving a participation in divine goodness through the perfection of their natural forms, a process that inevitably must occur over time in the material world. The evolution of created forms over longer periods of time would thus be consistent with other aspects of Aquinas’s philosophical theology. THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IN AQUINAS

Thomas’s theological cosmology, based on revelation in scripture, contains an ordering of human beings to a cognitive participation in the divine mind in the beatific vision, which involves the elevation of human knowing to deiformity.13 Nevertheless, Aquinas emphasizes the impossibility of seeing God in the present life: “God cannot be seen per essentiam by one who is merely man, unless he be separated from this mortal life.”14 Moreover, this impossibility is not only a matter of sin, but arises from embodiment itself. We cannot see God because “the mode of knowledge follows the mode of the nature of the knower” and “our soul, as long as we live in this life, has its being in corporeal matter.”15

Truth as “Being Trued”

271

Thomas is systematically committed to the link between immateriality and cognitivity. This has the consequence that the embodied condition of the human soul is seen as impeding our higher cognitive functions, although indeed knowledge based on sense perception requires embodiment. The idea that cognitivity is a function of immateriality emerges when Aquinas considers the ascending degrees of knowledge from humans through angels to God. Angels, which are immaterial entities, have more powerful minds as a consequence of their disembodied state. Aquinas appears to have derived this principle from Aristotle as the reference in the following passage indicates: “the mode of cognition is according to the mode of immateriality. Thus it is stated in II De anima that plants do not know because of their materiality.”16 Aquinas extends this principle where he notes that the percipience of the senses is a consequence of the fact that they receive dematerialized forms: “Sense is cognitive because it is receptive of species without their matter and the intellect is still more cognitive because it is more ‘separated from matter and unmixed,’ as stated in III De anima.”17 Thus, when we see a stone, the eye is not “lapidified.” To extend this further, Aquinas argues that God is to the highest degree cognitive (in summo cognitionis) because God is to the greatest degree immaterial (in summo immaterialitatis).18 Within Thomas’s philosophical anthropology, human beings, as embodied creatures, are naturally disposed to know the world through sense perception and associated functions such as imagination and memory, which have a material basis. Problems arise, however, from the fact that the human being is ordered to an end, which can be realized not through sensory and imaginal forms, but only through a purely intellectual operation, which must function independently of the body. Aquinas reasons that such disembodied intellectual operation must be possible if the soul is to have any knowledge after its separation from the body at death. In fact, given that the sensory powers cannot then be exercised through material organs, he holds that the disembodied soul knows in a quasi-angelic manner, i.e., through infused intellectual forms. The embodiment issue is foregrounded in Thomas’s consideration of rapture, which he holds is “the highest grade of contemplation in the present life.”19 In rapture, the human intellect is raised to a vision of the divine essence even before death, but only in a transient manner. This idea challenges Aquinas’s anthropology, which is committed to the view that the mode of knowing that is most natural to human

272

Pamela J. Reeve

existence involves understanding by way of sensible forms. At the same time, he also holds that human life is created with a natural desire to know the first cause of things, i.e., God. Moreover, this innate desire reflects the divine idea of the human species, as ordered to a participation in God’s goodness according to its highest operation, the intellect. The tension here is that we are ordered to an end that is inconsistent with the embodied state, while yet we are created, body and soul, for the realization of that end. A major supporting text from scripture, which Thomas frequently cites for the impossibility of the beatific vision in the present life, is the declaration of God to Moses in Exodus 33:20: “no one shall see me and live.”20 In view of this, Aquinas has to interpret the apparent elevation to seeing God before death, which he admits occurred with Moses and Paul and also may occur in the contemplative life. He works around the Exodus stricture by interpreting human life as the condition where we are fully engaged in embodied existence and use senses and imagination, which depend on the material body for their functions. His interpretation suggests it may be possible to see God even before death, if there were to be a suspension of otherwise normal sensory and imaginal activity. Thus, Aquinas addresses the Exodus prohibition by proposing that the soul may be elevated to see God when it is withdrawn from all its normal embodied activities, apart from residual vegetative functions such as respiration. Thomas mentions impedance by the soul’s lower cognitive functions in a pair of articles on rapture in the Disputed Questions on Truth. He argues that one of the main reasons the intellect needs to be withdrawn from its lower functions relates to the materiality involved in sense and imagination. The intellect needs to be as free as possible to operate in a purely immaterial way because the vision of God involves a participation of the intellect in the “most intensely intelligible object” (vehementissimum intelligibile).21 As noted above, Aquinas sees the degree of cognitive capacity being consequent upon, and therefore conditioned by, the degree of immateriality. Consistent with this way of thinking, he proposes in the present context, “the freer (purior) the intellect is from contact with material things, the more perfect it is” in its intellectual operation.22 At certain points, his language has an almost Manichaean tone, for example, where he writes, “the purity of the intellect, in a certain way, is contaminated (inquinatur) by sensible operations.”23 Aquinas has in mind the impedance that arises from the division between intellectual and sensory operations in the embodied

Truth as “Being Trued”

273

state, where each function is hindered by the attention given to the other (impediunt se invicem intellectivae et sensitivae operationes). The essential problem here relates to an apparent inconsistency: the divine idea of the human species, with its natural form and complement of powers, is ordered to an intellectual perfection realized in the vision of the divine essence while, at the same time, that vision is impeded by the human nature designed to achieve it. While grace is able to overcome these limitations in the elevation of the intellect in rapture, nevertheless, this elevation involves the withdrawal of the intellect from the operations of the lower powers, with the consequence that human beings may experience the vision only transiently before death. In another passage, Aquinas states the rationale for this withdrawal using terms that imply that the materiality of the body is itself an impediment (at least prior to the resurrection): “The perfect operation of the intellect requires indeed that the intellect be abstracted from this corruptible body which weighs upon the soul (quod aggravat animam).”24 EVOLUTION OF THE HUMAN SPECIES

It is difficult to separate a possibly dated human anthropology from the strands of theology in the above material. As mentioned initially, it is likely that Thomas, if he were alive today, would want to avail himself of findings in the social and life sciences. It is now known from the fossil record that the human brain has undergone a dramatic development since the genus Homo evolved from its ape-like australopithecine predecessors. As Laughlin, McManus, and d’Aquili point out, this evolution is not just a question of a larger brain in absolute terms, but a “change in the ratio of the brain to body weight” involved in encephalization: Most of this dramatic increase is due to the process known as encephalization; that is, the tendency toward allometrically greater development of the cerebral cortex in relation to other parts of the nervous system. The cortex, a fairly new development in neural evolution, as evolutionary processes go, is the thin layer of tissue on top of the brain ... the part of the brain that mediates the higher cognitive functions, as well as the highest and most complex level of control over lower-order neural networks ... This development provides a rough indicator of the evolutionary

274

Pamela J. Reeve

enhancement of the higher cognitive functions of the brain, an emergence of cognitive operators that is the true hallmark of human evolution.25 The implication is that the evolution of enhanced neural structures has provided the material basis for the development of higher cognitive functions. As a consequence of this material change, there has been “a gradual increment in the abilities of the cognitive operators that organize the cognized environment, factors such as serial planning of action relative to goal, the formation of ever more complex concepts and images mapped onto sensorial events, the complexity and abstraction of operations performed upon concepts and images, and complexity of communication about the cognized environment between conspecifics.”26 The authors note that the frontal lobe in particular “has shown remarkable evolutionary advance in the hominid line” supporting the sequencing of events and ordering of conceptual material, which is “the foundation of the faculty of abstract causal thought.”27 In the context of Aquinas’s cosmology, such development is consistent with the concept of a progressive materialization in the created order of the divine idea of the human species, together with the trueing of the latter to its divine exemplar. The idea of the evolution of neurocognitive capacity might also help resolve the tension in Aquinas’s thought between the materiality of the body and the inception of higher cognitive states. If the human species is considered to be an evolving form, with cognitive capacities that develop over the course of millennia, the limitations attending embodiment, which restrict the inception of the beatific vision to the after-death state, might possibly be eventually overcome. T H E M I N D - B R A I N -T R U E I N G F U N C T I O N OF RELIGIOUS MYTH

In Laughlin’s view, the evolutionary development of higher cognitive operations has a religious end beyond mere adaptation for the purposes of survival. In a series of papers co-authored with C. Jason Throop, he proposes that the religious narratives and rituals of traditional societies are able to function as a “mind-brain-trueing, mythopoetic system” capable of aligning the conscious life of participants with the transcendental order and purpose of the cosmos.28 They are here using the word “true” in a verbal sense, which is similar to the

Truth as “Being Trued”

275

dynamic meaning of ontological truth in Thomas’s work. They go beyond the more usual epistemic meaning of truth, which implies agreement between statements and the way things are, and describe what they have in mind by the verbal sense of true: “Used as a verb, instead of as a noun or an adjective, the word true ... suggests the domain of physical and mechanical activity. In this case, the term implies architectural activity. To ‘true a wall’ means to make the wall accurate in measurement relative to a plan, a plumb line, or a level – the sense of an activity that makes something precise. One may ‘true’ something by adjusting or shaping it into accurate conformation with a pattern or plan.”29 In view of this, Laughlin and Throop propose that in a religious context, “myth operates as a truer of cognitive operations.”30 It operates on “the inherent, epistemic faculty of the brain to produce a cognized world in a dynamic and veridical way in conformation to reality.”31 This “inherent epistemic faculty of the brain” – referred to earlier as the “cognitive operators that organize the cognized environment” – has evolved over time. This evolution implies that the human mind/ brain does not presently begin life as a tabula rasa or blank slate in which our experience and ideas about the world are engendered solely (or largely) from external input. The authors hold that human experience, even in the womb, is already highly organized as a consequence of inherited neurocognitive structures, in other words, “genetically programmed organizations of neurons and support cells.”32 These evolved (and evolving) neurocognitive formations mediate and spontaneously structure the processing of sensory input so that the world of the prenatal and perinatal child is already patterned or modelled in a species-typical manner that the authors call neurognosis. Laughlin and Throop use the metaphor of trueing in this context to refer to our constant cognitive modelling of the world. All human experience of the cognized environment has evolved through natural selection as a consequence of the need to constantly adapt to the external world: “The role of trueing in adaptation is obvious. During the many generations that our brain has been evolving, failure to model the world accurately resulted in a quick death and a continuous selection against nonveridical distortions of cognized reality.”33 Thus, the neurognostic models that (together with external input) produce our organized experience of our environment exist in the body as inherited structures that have allowed human beings to survive, adapt, and develop over the past two million years.

276

Pamela J. Reeve

The authors elaborate on their concept of religious myth and its trueing function within this larger evolutionary context. Myth, in their view, is not just an externally acquired cultural deposit, but is already present, at least formally, in the inherited neural structures by which we are disposed to experience the world in a distinctively human way: “Although myth frequently takes the form of a narrative, we hold that the essential structure of myth is nonlinguistic – it is neurocognitive, a structure of consciousness.”34 These neural models or patterns do not simply facilitate human survival, they also function as schemata, which pattern human experience within the larger social and cultural environment: Mythical stories can be understood as the expression of both the fundamental neurognostic structure of the human mind-brain and the content appropriate to the varying environmental and cultural exigencies characteristic of a particular society. The neurognostic structure of myth comprises what we might call the eidetic cosmology upon which virtually all traditional cosmologies are grounded and of which all are transformations. We argue that it is the neurognostic grounding of this eidetic cosmology that assures the trueing of knowledge. In common parlance, we are “wired” to know reality from a very human, species-typical point of view.35 The authors hold that recurring similarities between elements in the myths of different cultures – as explored, for example, by Claude Lévi-Strauss and Carl Jung – reflect their common, underlying neurognostic origin: “The world views of many of the world’s cultures are informed to some extent by transcultural attributes of an eidetic cosmology – which is to say the inherited, species typical, archetypal knowledge about extramental reality, knowledge that is (so to speak) ‘wired into’ the infant mindbrain.”36 These inherited neurophysical structures, which human beings universally share, are variously operationalized in different social environments, giving rise to the culturally specific contents of different myths and worldviews. The implication, then, is that religion does not merely adventitiously supplement human nature, coming to us from an external source, but also reflects a deeply rooted, innate propensity, which in some sense awaits activation or potentiation by the sacred stories, sacraments, and rituals passed on by a society’s religious tradition.

Truth as “Being Trued”

277

From Thomas’s perspective, created things are embedded in the dynamic procession and return of all things to God. Moreover, this cosmos is not just natural but sacred: it is ordered to an end beyond itself. From our present perspective, Aquinas’s cosmology indicates the possibility of two modes of assimilation to God. The first would have been familiar to him: the assimilation of the human person to God through the vehicle of the belief structures, religious narratives, liturgy, sacraments, pilgrimages, art, architecture, and drama (e.g., the Passion Play) that make up Christian culture. The other assimilation, involving a process of evolutionary development as a long-term, species-level event, could not have been considered during his lifetime. But Laughlin and his associates do not simply add the evolutionary perspective. What is of value in their work is the way they unite these two dimensions of assimilation. They propose that the body of sacred symbols in a religious cosmology may itself potentiate or empower neural structures, which have evolved in the course of millennia. These symbol systems may function as “innate releasing mechanisms for structures in the depths of the human psyche ... The imagery penetrates to the depth of the psyche and activates and potentiates development of those constellations of faculties valued by the society.”37 A religious cosmology thus has a cognitive function based on “correspondences between structures of experience, the structures of consciousness, and the structures of reality.”38 In the context of these correspondences, such a cosmology trues human participants to the ultimate meaning and purpose of the cosmos.39 The authors hold that the myth-ritual complex is “bound to reality” in several respects including an experiential dimension, which facilitates “the direct intuitive grasp of the order of reality.”40 This suggests a kind of knowing similar to connatural knowledge in Thomas’s work – an experiential knowledge of something through innate familiarity, for example, knowing a particular virtue by possessing it as an acquired habit. Laughlin indicates a similar kind of knowing in his understanding of myth. He sees myth not only as a body of religious meaning received from one’s culture, but also as an inherited “neurognostic structure of the human mind-brain.”41 As a consequence, when these innate structures are potentiated by a religious cosmology, participants may experience an intimate familiarity with religious meanings, which may seem to express a reality that is at once both

278

Pamela J. Reeve

“out there” and “in here”: “One of the most common reactions people have to the intuition of truth about reality is to feel as if they knew it already. In a very real sense they do know the truth before they hear it. When the embedded universal structures of myth penetrate to neurognostic networks that are ready for potentiating, the experience may be one of recognition – literally of ‘re-cognizing’ or ‘re-calling’ what the species has known throughout the ages within its collective unconscious.”42 If the divine idea of the human species is not static but includes a temporal dimension, then our bodies may be evolving neurocognitive structures that allow for an embodied intuition of the transcendent, which then could become a living reality. Within a theistic cosmology, the dynamism behind the direction of such evolution can be understood as a kind of grace in which the human brain is being “neurognostically prepared to apprehend the mysteries.”43 CONCLUSION

There is the potential for a fruitful exchange of ideas between Thomas Aquinas’s philosophically informed thought and Charles Laughlin and his colleagues’ social scientific views. The lack of an evolutionary perspective in Aquinas’s work is a main point of entry where Laughlin’s ideas may provide an interdisciplinary updating to Aquinas’s understanding of the natural order. I have indicated a particular application of evolutionary theory, which has implications for Aquinas’s assumption that the relatively fixed material structures of the human body constrain our knowledge of God. The incorporation of evolutionary biology could help to address the tension in Aquinas’s thought that human beings are created to participate intellectually in God’s goodness while yet the realization of the beatific vision is frustrated by our embodied condition. I have argued that the idea of the evolution of species does not inevitably compromise the unity and immutability of God, just as the simplicity of divine essence is not compromised by the diversity and multiplicity of the divine ideas. If the material structures of the body are malleable over millennia, then it seems human evolution in the direction of the beatific vision as a living reality may be intelligible.44 This is not only consistent with Thomas’s understanding of ontological truth, but is perhaps more consistent than a non-evolutionary perspective, which maintains the idea of fixed species.

Truth as “Being Trued”

279

I will conclude with some reflections on the application of these ideas to our present culture. A further question Laughlin and Throop consider concerns the consequences for a society when it loses touch with its religious tradition and shifts to localized, empirical modes of knowing aimed primarily at adapting to the external world. Drawing on the work of sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, the authors propose that Euro-American society has devolved into a monophasic “sensate” culture. This contrasts with the idealistic orientation of polyphasic societies, which are open to modes of consciousness other than the waking state. In their view, materialistic cultures tend to ignore the mystical ways of knowing that are encoded in religious traditions open to the transcendent. Sensate, materialistic cultures lack a living mythology able to give individuals “a field of interconnected meaning in which each of life’s significant experiences has a location, much as a patch has its appropriate place in a quilt.”45 As a consequence, individuals who live in a materialistic society may experience disorientation and insecurity, arising from the sense of not knowing their place in the world: “A society characterized by a sensate culture that has lost touch with its mythological tradition is awkwardly positioned to guide its people to a way of life in keeping with the more unitary aspects of reality.”46 The issues discussed here thus have relevance beyond the academy and touch on the need for comprehensive frameworks of meaning that will be able to address the profound crises that currently afflict humanity on a global scale.

N OT E S

1 Oxford English Dictionary oed 2 Online, s.v. “True v.,” accessed 27 October 2010. 2 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, in Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, ed. Anton C. Pegis (New York: Random House), I.16.2. This work is referred to as Summa Theologiae in the text. 3 Ibid., I.16.1. 4 Thomas Aquinas, The Disputed Questions on Truth, vol. 1, trans. Robert W. Mulligan, S.J. (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952), 1.2. A natural thing (res naturalis) is said to be true “with respect to its conformity to the divine intellect in so far as it fulfills the end to which it was ordained by the divine intellect.”

280

Pamela J. Reeve

5 Charles D. Laughlin is an emeritus professor of anthropology and religion at Carleton University in Ottawa. During the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded a school of neuroanthropology known as biogenetic structuralism with John McManus and Eugene G. d’Aquili. They present their work in the coauthored volume Brain, Symbol, and Experience (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). Laughlin subsequently worked on a special application of biogenetic structural theory called cultural neurophenomenology with C. Jason Throop. Information about biogenetic structuralism is available at www.biogeneticstructuralism.com. 6 Charles D. Laughlin, John McManus, and Eugene G. d’Aquili, Brain, Symbol, and Experience: Toward a Neurophenomenology of Human Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 214–16. 7 Thomas Aquinas, On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: Summa contra Gentiles, book 2, trans. James F. Anderson (Garden City, ny: Doubleday, 1955), 46.2 (translation modified). 8 See note 4. 9 Thomas Aquinas, On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: Summa contra Gentiles, book 3, trans. Vernon J. Bourke (Garden City, ny: Doubleday, 1956), 19.5. 10 Thomas Aquinas, The Disputed Questions on Truth, vol. 1, 3.2 ad 6 (trans. modified). 11 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I.16.1. The English translation is from the Basic Writings; see note 2. 12 Charlton T. Lewis, A Latin Dictionary, rev. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1879), s.v. “assequor.” 13 The Latin word “deiformitas” is used, for one, in Summa Theologiae, I.12.6. 14 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I.12.11. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., Summa Theologiae, I.14.1. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, vol. 2, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947), II–II.180.5. 20 For example, in Summa Theologiae, I.12.8. Aquinas achieved the academic degree of “master of biblical sciences” (magister in sacra pagina) at the University of Paris in 1256. As a theologian, his work is fundamentally oriented to the exposition of sacred doctrine, based on revealed truth. In this context, he draws from the theological tradition and Church Fathers, especially Augustine. Nevertheless, Aquinas recognizes that sacred scripture does not present a systematic understanding of the natural world and human nature. Appreciating the need for such an understanding, he draws

Truth as “Being Trued”

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41 42

281

extensively from the Aristotelian and neo-Platonic works that were available to him. Thomas Aquinas, The Disputed Questions on Truth, vol. 2, trans. James V. McGlynn, SJ (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1953), 13.3–4. Ibid., 13.3 (trans. modified). Ibid., 13.4 (trans. modified). Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I–II.4.6 ad 3. Laughlin, McManus, and d’Aquili, Brain, Symbol, and Experience, 125. Ibid. Ibid., 127–8. Charles D. Laughlin and C. Jason Throop, “Imagination and Reality: On the Relations between Myth, Consciousness, and the Quantum Sea,” Zygon 36/4 (2001): 709–36. The idea of the transcendent is prominent in Laughlin’s work and is sometimes used in a religious sense. Nevertheless, rather than referring to God, he tends to speak of “God Consciousness,” “Void Consciousness,” etc. (see especially chapter 11 on “Mature Contemplation” in Brain, Symbol, and Experience). Regarding the phrase “mind-brain,” which the authors sometimes render “mind/brain” or even “mindbrain,” Laughlin explains in Brain, Symbol, and Experience that his biogenetic structuralist approach mandates a view of the mind and brain as two perspectives on the same reality: “mind is how brain experiences its own functioning, and brain provides the structure of mind,” with each perspective on its own being incomplete (13). Laughlin and Throop, “Imagination and Reality,” 719. Ibid. Ibid., emphasis in original. Ibid., 720. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 721. Charles D. Laughlin and C. Jason Throop, “Experience, Culture and Reality: The Significance of Fisher Information for Understanding the Relationship between Alternative States of Consciousness and the Structures of Reality,” International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 22 (2003): 19. Laughlin and Throop, “Imagination and Reality,” 717. Laughlin and Throop, “Experience, Culture and Reality,” 9. Ibid. Laughlin and Throop, “Imagination and Reality,” 718. Ibid., 721. Ibid., 723.

282

Pamela J. Reeve

43 Ibid., 725. 44 This chapter is a further development of ideas initially presented in Pamela J. Reeve, “Evolution, Neuroplasticity, and the Beatific Vision” (Toward a Science of Consciousness, University of Tucson, Arizona, 8–12 April 2008). 45 Laughlin and Throop, “Imagination and Reality,” 715. 46 Ibid., 726.

15 Bedevilling Truth: “What Have I to Do with Thee?” JEFFREY DUDIAK

THE GOSPEL TRUTH

At the risk of scandalizing my friends and colleagues with whom I live in the modern world, I begin with a story from the Christian scriptures, and if that were not enough, with a miracle story (that of the Gad’arene Demoniac Healed), and if that were not enough, a miracle story whose truth I am, moreover, affirming. I quote from the eighth chapter of Luke’s Gospel:1 26. And they arrived at the country of the Gad’arenes, which is over against Galilee. 27. And when he went forth to land, there met him out of the city a certain man, which had devils long time, and ware no clothes, neither abode in any house, but in the tombs. 28. When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God most high? I beseech thee, torment me not. 29. (For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For oftentimes it had caught him: and he was kept bound with chains and in fetters; and he brake the bands, and was driven of the devil into the wilderness.) 30. And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name? And he said, Legion: because many devils were entered into him. 31. And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep. 32. And there was there a herd of many swine feeding on the mountain: and they besought

284

Jeffrey Dudiak

him that he would suffer them to enter into them. And he suffered them. 33. Then went the devils out of the man, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were choked. 34. When they that fed them saw what was done, they fled, and went and told it in the city and in the country. 35. Then they went out to see what was done; and came to Jesus, and found the man, out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid. Now, before I am too quickly pigeonholed as backwardly evangelical (although I think it entirely possible to be wonderfully and progressively evangelical, as I try to be myself), allow me to assure you that I do not believe in demons. Demons simply do not exist. Moreover, and just to impress upon you the extent of my sanity, I think it irresponsible to believe in them. Yet, let me remind you, I am affirming, as true, the miracle story from Luke I quoted above. Jesus, I am claiming, on a fine Gad’arenes afternoon, in liberating the demon-possessed man, cast his demons, the whole legion of them, into pigs, who in turn cast themselves into a lake. That’s the gospel truth, and were I not a Quaker, I’d swear to it. My topic is truth, and more specifically, the fate this vaunted notion has suffered under the auspices of postmodern incredulities,2 and how Christians, who are committed to a truth that makes us free and is at once our way and our life, are to proceed faithfully in our rightfully skeptical age. I am employing this example as a way to analyze the problem, and to point toward a notion of truth that I hope allows us a way forth in our time and for our time,3 a notion of truth that is both inspired by and, I hope, resonates with at least a certain Christianity. By “a certain Christianity,” I mean one that does not find its bearings in a commitment to some or other metaphysical picture (i.e., a prior commitment to the way things must “be”), but is animated by a living Spirit, the spirit of a living God. TWO VERSIONS OF TRUTH

(THE

MODERN AND THE PRE-MODERN)

But allow me first to return to my illustration, and the aporia I have created for myself in coupling a denial of the existence of demons with an affirmation – though now rather embarrassing, because at

Bedevilling Truth

285

least seemingly contradictory – of the truth of the story of the exorcism at Gad’arenes. This is precisely the kind of intellectual tension that has, over the past couple of hundred years, divided the modern church, and most major denominations internally too, along lines that pit theological conservatives against theological liberals.4 The intractability and viciousness of this struggle, moreover, has been among the motivations, for many of us who find ourselves caught up in these dilemmas, to attempt to find another truth. Might we catch a glimpse of a truth neither liberal and modern nor conservative and pre-modern (dare I call it postmodern?) – a truth not caught up in this battle over truth, a truth whose realization does not have to await the final consummation of knowledge in the resolution of all disagreements, but a truth that makes us free, i.e., that frees us to live faithfully in an uncertain world, and that accords with our role as hearers and doers of the Word and not its possessors? What qualifies liberalism in the sense that I employ here is precisely the aforementioned embarrassment at belief in miracle stories like the one above, founded in a root adherence to, and an even deeper complicity with, modern science, a living of life in the world out of which modern science emerged and that modern science itself recognizes as the real world. This does not preclude a certain spirituality of the whole – the idea that nature is spiritual and so “liberalism” is not simply secularism – but at the level of causation it is the natural rather than the supernatural that is both accessible to inquiry and delimits the range of what counts as real. In the modern world, miracles (not the miraculous, but miracles5), which presuppose or require recourse to the interruption of, or intersection with, a Hinterwelt (a “world behind the world”) of spiritual entities and causes, do not happen. In the modern world – the one in which you and I live – there are no such “supernatural” causal agents. It is not that supernatural causes exist but our modern, scientistic myopia precludes our apprehending them, nor is it that they might exist but that the limitations of our current scientific methodologies force us into agnosticism regarding them.6 Instead, in the modern world, there simply are no such things. Now, what makes me so sure is no epistemological matter. There is no way to prove by means of modern thought that demons do not exist; life in the modern world is in itself their refutation. There is simply no place in the modern world for demons. For example, as someone with a sister diagnosed with schizophrenia who loves her deeply, when she is ill I do not take her to an exorcist but to a psychiatrist, and

286

Jeffrey Dudiak

I am deeply offended when some fundamentalist simpleton suggests that I do the former. Why? Because she is not demon possessed. There are no such things as demons, and it would be as irresponsible as ineffectual, even cruel, to try to help her by ridding her of something that is not there in the first place. If you disagree with me here perhaps we can book you a hospital room next to my sister’s and I can drop in and visit you while I am seeing her. Ça, c’est la vie moderne. Theological liberals, when confronted with the miracle stories, have already performed their own exorcism, and have chased the demons of supernaturalism even beyond the lake of fire into actual nonexistence (and let us not miss the fact that there is something of the miraculous in this feat itself) in a process perhaps most helpfully described as demythologizing.7 For theological liberals want to say not that the miracle stories are not true, but that they are not literally true. They are rather true for theological liberals in the only manner possible for us moderns: in a metaphorical, figurative sense. Here resurrection is taken as psychological reawakening, exodus becomes economic emancipation, and demon possession is understood as mental illness – for which we still need great physicians, though preferably ones who have had the good sense to attend medical school. On the liberal reading, the “exorcism” performed by Jesus may well have “worked,” but it did so as a psycho-somatic phenomenon, explicable on the same terms as the “miraculous deeds” of contemporary faith healers, when the latter are not thought – as is most commonly the case – to be simply charlatans who line their velvet pockets by the desperation of the ignorant downtrodden. This dismissal of the truth of the biblical claims taken on what would at least appear to be their own terms8 (the contemporary arrogance of taking as merely mythological what once passed as gospel truth) inspires conservatives’ reactionary gesture and “reverse ideology critique.” The orthodox are not entirely unwarranted in their objections to the restrictions on truth imposed by a hegemonic and cocksure liberalism that smugly reduces to nothing all that its methodological nets are incapable of snaring and bringing on board. What makes the “scientistic interpretation” the fact of the matter and the “mythological interpretation” a naive overlay? Are these not each interpretations in their turn? How do we know which is the truth, and which the distortion?9 The moderns’ paternalistic head-patting of the ancients may be a kind of intellectual imperialism across the ages, with all of the attendant power plays and coercions, founded in the

Bedevilling Truth

287

same Eurocentrism, and morally no better than any other kind of imperialism. The result is an ideological impasse, where the facts that should be able to mediate between the diverse interpretations turn out to be products of these interpretations themselves. In this context, I characterize postmodernism as the recognition that there are no “facts” that are not produced10 within some context or other and integral with some way of life or other. Needless to say, then, many thoughtful theological conservatives have something of an attraction to a certain postmodernism (even if most conservatives, and most liberals for that matter, fear it like the plague), since it gives them an alibi to believe what from a liberal perspective is impossible, and liberalism is only another perspective, after all. Why buy into the interpretation carved out by secularists bent on excising faith rather than the divinely inspired “interpretation” wrought across the ages by the fathers (sic)11 of faith? And theological conservatives have a point, sort of. Except – and this is the fly in the ointment, or, if you will, the devil in the pig – demons do not exist. FA C T S T H AT A R E

“TRUE

TO L I F E ”:

TRUTH RENEWED

Put in slightly different terms, we can perhaps conceive of postmodernism as the surrendering12 – because either hermeneutically naive or morally suspect or both – of the project of locating a reality outside of interpretations that could effectively adjudicate between competing interpretations of that reality, a neutral, pre-interpretive reality that would itself be thought of, ontologically speaking, as the “truth,”13 or, epistemologically speaking, as the anchor for “truth.”14 The postmodern exigency would then become the re-conceptualization not of what we might take as being true, but of truth itself. And that is what I sketch here: a postmodern revision of truth, one that ties truths as facts to ways of life, but that nevertheless does not abandon truth to whatever happens to be currently believed at any given time and place, that loses truth in the “relativism without compass”15 so feared by lovers of truth, in the incommensurability and indifference between a “Legion” of interpretations each desiring to possess us with its “truth,” and driving us to madness (and out to sea) in the process. To this end, I want to reiterate my claim that Jesus really did16 cast out demons. It is not that what he was really dealing with were the mentally ill,17 but that along with his contemporaries he called their

288

Jeffrey Dudiak

afflictions (knowingly or not) demon possession; he really did cast out demons. But I correlatively want to claim that my best buddy from my college days, psychiatrist Dr Curt Thompson, really does treat chemical/electrical brain malfunctions pharmaceutically and therapeutically. He is not really casting out demons, but along with his contemporaries he calls it medical science; he really does practice psychiatry. It would, therefore, have been as irresponsible for my psychiatrist friend to provide the demoniac at Gad’arene with Haldol as it would be for a quack or fanatic to try to exorcize the demons from my sister.18 In neither case would there have been a context in which these respectively anachronistic performances would have or could have been meaningful; in neither case would such an “other-worldly” action have had anything “real” upon which to work. Put another way: Jesus was not “deluded” (however innocently) when he cast out demons, because there used to be demons (and there may well be so again), but, at present, in the world in which we live, there are no demons. Likewise, there did not used to be synapses traversed by electrical current in the brain (and at some point in the future there may be no longer, as they may go the way of phlogiston), but there certainly are now, and we would be fools – nay, insane – to pretend there are not. Now, to be clear, I am not arguing that the same set of phenomena that were interpreted as demon possession in a mythological framework are today interpreted as chemical/electrical brain malfunctioning, an assumption shared by both liberals and conservatives who then argue over whose interpretation is correct and most faithfully mirrors the facts. Far more radically, I am suggesting that there is no “same set of phenomena” from the ancient world to the modern world,19 and this because “a world” is itself the site of phenomena, of the events that transpire and the entities that appear within it. A world consists of already interpreted things (persons, entities, and events) among which we live our lives. Things only occur in a world. The ancient and the modern world are not two ways of interpreting a single world: the ancient and the modern interpretations each give us a world – precisely, a place to live. If we can get past the idea that there is a bare event that then gets interpreted in one way or another, but instead understand the interpretation of the event as constitutive of the event itself, we can arrive at the conclusion that Jesus drove out demons and we have recourse to psychiatric pharmaceuticals, each necessarily and factually so, without the

Bedevilling Truth

289

idea that one of these versions of events has to be true and the other false. What is true in Jesus’s employment of the discourse of demonology, what makes his discourse on demons really true, and what realizes demons and brings them to life is the manner in which this discourse and communal understanding allowed life to be fully lived, that is, enhanced, deepened, broadened and liberated from death for both demoniacs and for their community. What makes the story of the casting out of the demons true is that, in its age and for its setting, it creates a way forth and makes life possible where there was death.20 This is precisely what makes the truths of modern science true, too. In an age where the exorcism of demons has reached its apogee in their total extirpation, truth calls for other truths, truths that allow us to live our lives richly, fully, and abundantly. Demons are no longer a truth for us because the world in which demons exist is no longer the one in which we can live. This discussion points to a sense of truth that answers not first to the cold neutrality of facts, but to the fragile, needy, and also glorious and infinitely valuable lives of human beings. It requires that we loosen factuality’s grip on our sense of the truth, that we re-index truth to life, and that we understand the factuality of facts and the truthfulness of our truths in the context of a world in which we live.21 Such a truth retains its root meaning as faithfulness – and so this renewed sense of truth is anything but new – but where that which governs truth is not faithfulness to facts but faithfulness to the lives of persons, or the faithfulness of persons to persons. In this sense, what gives a truth claim its bearings, what makes a truth true, has not first to do with what “is” and the correspondence of propositions to it,22 but its serviceability (and so I am never far from pragmatism here), its place in a context of faithfulness to the ones whose lives it serves. I am suggesting, in short, that “being true to” is the core sense of truth, of which facts are subservient matters. But far from bricking us into a modernist world and accepting its truths as necessarily true, the recognition of the requirement that truths prove themselves “true to life” is simultaneously an imperative: our truths, if they are to be true, must lead to life.23 When they do not, we have not only every right, but also an absolute obligation, to dispute them and to demand that our truths be true to life as lived24 – as the gospels say, abundantly. Facts, simply by dint of being facts, do not

290

Jeffrey Dudiak

get a free pass; like the law, they are made for man25 (and by man), man is not made for (or by) the facts. Would this be so very far from what we might hope of a responsibly contemporary, while deeply Christian notion of truth, a truth that we are “in” and that is “in” us, rather than a truth that we have, a living and personal truth (the truth of life for life) rather than an objective and indifferent factuality, a truth that is “spiritual” before it is epistemological? But we are at the wrong end of a very long discussion to claim for this anything more than the status of an inquiry.

N OT E S

1 King James Version. The parallel passages in the other Synoptics are Mark 5:1–20, and Matthew 8:28–34. 2 J.F. Lyotard famously and perceptively defines the postmodern as an “incredulity toward metanarratives [grands recits].” Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), xxiv. For Lyotard, meta-narratives are not merely all-encompassing stories that set the terms of how we tell our own stories, which would make them the narrative embodiment of Weltanschauungen (worldviews), but stories that are told of and along with those we tell to authenticate the stories we tell, including the grand stories that constitute worldviews. If Lyotard is correct, postmodernism is less a disbelief in truth than it is a disbelief in the reign of theory, a disbelief that a truth can finally be founded and authenticated by a universal rationality. In other words, the postmodern is a rejection of this main tenet of modernism, the story that modernism told itself about itself. Nothing else. 3 Indeed, I will argue that this “making a way forth” is the very “essence” of truth itself. 4 These grand, sweeping terms can only be semi-precise. They are caricatures, and name broad trajectories rather than applying without nuance to any particular flesh and blood thinker, but I hope no less useful on that account. 5 A “medical miracle” is no less a miracle because it has a naturalistic explanation, just as one of Jesus’s healings is no less a miracle because it has a supernatural explanation. Though easily confused with magic, a miracle is something else.

Bedevilling Truth

291

6 This is the compromise settled upon by many educated, contemporary Christian “conservatives”: science gives us knowledge of natural events but is set up to perceive only these; for knowledge of the supernatural we have to rely upon revelation. This epistemological duality generally corresponds to an ontological dualism. Christians in science who work professionally within the modernist framework might therefore acknowledge (in their capacity as believers) the possibility of miracles when worshipping on Sunday morning, but would not (and could not, in their capacity as scientists) acknowledge one in their lab. 7 Nietzsche understood this well and deeply with his (in)famous declaration (although, to be accurate, it is uttered by the Madman, a literary persona of Nietzsche’s) that “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him” (The Gay Science, section 125). There is a real temptation to read this claim as a sociological one, as the idea that, by orienting ourselves by means of a thisworldly humanism in which God does not figure as a necessary and integral referent, we have “for all intents and purposes” killed off God as a living, effective presence in our lives, but that the claim actually has nothing to say about the actual existence of God, which continues on the same (or never was in the first place) regardless of our acknowledgment or denial of it. (A temptation to which we should perhaps, in certain contexts, succumb, for example, in those where certain overanxious and overly militant Christians use this obvious “error” in Nietzsche as an excuse to dismiss the important – on my view, anyway – opportunity for self-reflection that Nietzsche offers to traditional theistic belief.) But what if Nietzsche were actually claiming more, and that God really had, literally, ontologically speaking, ceased to exist based upon the vagaries of human belief? What if “existence” were a category (and perhaps not even a necessary one) by which we, in certain historical epochs and under certain circumstances, organized and constituted experience such that the very existence or non-existence of something was a function of whether or not human beings in some area and era or other (and differently from one area or era to another) applied or withheld the term “existence” to or from it? In this case, Nietzsche’s nineteenth-century European contemporaries could in fact kill God, and demons could have once in fact existed (in first century Palestine, for example), but not for us. (Should we be concerned about the extinction rate of mythological species too, or perhaps even of the extinction of the species “mythological”? It strikes me that this was in part also Nietzsche’s concern, for in the speech evoked above, after the accusation of deicide, the speaker goes into a near rage at the presumption and hubris demonstrated by such an act: “How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?” Nietzsche was as iconoclastic

292

Jeffrey Dudiak

as anyone when it came to breaking down myths, but a staunch defender of mythologizing: “What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?”) What counts for me here is trying to get past the claim that God really does or does not exist, and that our claims about that fact are a reflection of it (and so are true or false on that basis), but that the term “existence” is something that we attribute to something, or not, depending upon whether or not that claim, in the longer term, as best we can make out, leads to life or does not. Whereas truth has for the most part been taken as being measured by existence (it is the actual being of something that constitutes or founds its truth), I am suggesting (without denying this for truth qua factuality) that it is rather, or at least more deeply, existence that is to be measured by truth. What we take as existing is a function of what leads to life for us. On my schema, this is as true of anything else as it is of God. “To be is to belong in a life-giving world.” But this does not mean that these things do not really exist, or that this truth is merely subjective. This is what existence means, what truth signifies. See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974), 181–2. 8 One could with some credibility argue that the correspondence sense of truth that is the premise for both liberals and conservatives in their respective attitudes toward the “facts” recorded in scripture simply was not operative, or at least not operative in the same manner, in an ancient culture as it is in ours, and that these accounts were simply not intended to be heard on this level at all but were intended to convey something else. Such a claim, for which I have significant sympathies, does not affect my overall argument here, even if it already undermines (my goal as well) the liberal versus conservative framework in which I here (heuristically) pose it. 9 The options appear to be either to reject contemporary interpretations of the plain facts about demon possession as “modern/humanistic” perversions of the plain facts of scripture (i.e., to take the ancient presentation of the facts as the truth and to therefore reject the modern interpretation), or to accept the explanations of modern science (which rule out demon possession) as what was really going on (then as now), and see the interpretation of demon possession as a mythological overlay required by a pre-scientific society (i.e., to take the modern, materialist presentation as more or less true and therefore reject the mythological as at least factually false). 10 I try to retain the ambiguity of this term, as pointed out by Emmanuel Levinas, wherein its meanings as “making” (an automobile is produced) and of “bringing forth and showing” (a play is produced) are simultaneously preserved. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979), 26.

Bedevilling Truth

293

11 Some mothers too, of course; but with the exception of a virgin, a couple of other Marys, the odd and usually highly suspect mystic or saint, the at least recorded explicit contribution of women was, to our detriment, minimal. 12 Felt by some as despair, by others as emancipation. 13 What in fact is, prior to any interpretation of it. 14 As that to which a true proposition corresponds. 15 A “radical” relativism, one “rooted” in that to which it is relative, is to be applauded, however. 16 Is it true that Jesus actually cast out demons? Was it true that Jesus actually cast out demons? At the risk of being perceived as overly scholastic in the pejorative sense, I, technically speaking, maintain that these two questions are not necessarily the same. For while it was the case (given Jesus’s world, the world in which such an act was not only possible but requisite) that Jesus cast out demons, from the modern perspective (from the perspective of the world in which such acts are no longer possible, and thus most irresponsible) it is no longer the case that Jesus cast out demons. To make the claim that it is true that Jesus cast out demons is to “assume” (in the presumptive sense) a position that transcends the epochs and their corresponding ways of life, as if a single perspective could encompass all others. This presumption is the liberal/modernist perspective. (It is only fair to admit that my attempt to critique this presumption arises from, and is only possible, from within it; I am a participant in the liberal/modern world I am attempting here to delimit.) 17 Is it also not that his “casting out of demons” was really some kind of therapy, or a placebo effect, or simply illusory, or a literary, hagiographic convention. 18 The faith healers of our day have never gotten beyond this model; they are not so much wrong as anachronistic. Whereas the liberals erroneously want to dismiss the truths of the ancients (or “reduce” them to myths), the conservatives erroneously want to absolutize them, to insist upon them as timeless facts. 19 The question about what we would have seen had we had a video camera (or a device for measuring brain activity, or what have you) at the scene of the story – as if that were the measure of truth – is provocative but pointless, because had there been a video camera on the scene by the Galilee then the events would have been different (as they transpired without a video camera). One does not require Heisenberg and the indeterminacy principle (wherein the observation of the results would affect the results) at the level of phusis (nature), but merely a modicum of media savvy, to know that the presence of a camera changes the nature of how events themselves

294

20

21

22

23

24

Jeffrey Dudiak

transpire, of which the “creation” of celebrities is the most obvious if also the most grating example. Certain things are possible in the video age that were not possible previously, and certain things are impossible now that were not before. Modes of perception constitute the realities perceived. “Casting out demons” was the best (meaning most life-giving, meaning most truthful – or at least a candidate for these designations) explanation for the phenomena at the time, remembering that these explanations constitute these phenomena at least to some degree. But “casting out demons” is as untrue in our time as “regulating the electronic firing between brain synapses” would have been in ancient Palestine; there is simply no contemporary meaning context in either case for such claims to ring true. Furthermore, the use of “ring true” here is deliberate, for a truth is, in part, an attunement between some state of affairs and a context in which they can be understood. Where the possibility of this attunement is lacking, truth is an impossibility. To insist that there either are demons, or there are not, and that this governs our notion of truth means that we have already capitulated to the epistemolo-ontological version of truth that has dominated Western thinking; to claim that we already know the truth about truth, to know a priori that the truth about truth is itself already an epistemo-ontological matter. Postmodernism is both the spur and the opportunity to rethink this otherwise dogmatic truth about truth. To claim that our truths are not really true, or are only subjectively true, is to have already made objectivity the meaning kernel of truth and to have allowed a derived and secondary sense of faithfulness (faithfulness of a proposition to a state of affairs) to stand in for its essence. Understanding and expressing states of affairs with accuracy and integrity is – within certain contexts – entirely plausible as a constitutive aspect of faithful relationships, but it hardly exhausts them. Being entirely forthcoming with my wife about my ongoing infidelities to her would not be a mark of “truth,” but its mockery. This is a “meta-”project insofar as I am not suggesting that we can hear with other than modern ears, but that we can hear ourselves hearing with modern ears, and it is this that creates the possibility of a critical distance opened up from within, and thus the perpetual possibility of critique and re-formation. If we shift the locus of truth from “that which we are interpreting” to “the ability of an interpretation to bring life,” we are then able to constitute and live our truths with at once utter seriousness and with a thoroughgoing and humbling sense of their contingency, to constitute living truths that we are

Bedevilling Truth

295

not only responsible to, but as much responsible for. (Here the calling to science is not diminished, but made even more august. Here the “ethics” of scientific practice is not an add on, the course in grad school most likely to be skipped, but at the very heart of science.) 25 Woman too, of course, but I opt for resonance and the euphonic here over the politically correct – apologies due and offered. See Mark 2:27.

296

Calvin Seerveld

16 A Concept of Artistic Truth Prompted by Biblical Wisdom Literature C A LV I N S E E R V E L D

I propose to take a biblically led orientation on the matter of truth, and from that perspective try to elucidate the particular glory of imaginative, literary, and artistic historical truth telling in God’s world. I am self-consciously not presuming to present a universal approach, and I realize my tack as an octogenarian academic is shaped by a certain earthy, philosophical faith-thought tradition called reformational that, with relaxed seriousness, takes the Ruling ordering of God (Βασιλεῖα τοῦ θεοῦ) as a driving focus for communal reflection and action.1 BIBLICAL GIVENS ON TRUTH

The exclamation “Amen!” best signals for me a biblical affirmation of when truth happens. Truth means God’s blessing presence is in evidence. That is why revelation of truth (‫ )אמת‬in scripture is surrounded by mention of God’s covenantal love (‫)חסד‬, God’s doing justice (‫)מׁשפט‬, the occurrence of fullness of peaceful existence (‫שלום‬ ׁ ), joyfulness (‫)ׂשמחה‬, and flourishing life (‫)חיים‬. “True” in the Bible designates what you can trust to actually come through with God’s justifying mercy (‫ )צדקה‬in creaturely affairs. To catch this guiding idea, here is a declaration from the lord God2 in an abbreviated paragraph found in Ezekiel 18:5, 7–9: v5 If a person proves to be true (‫)צדיק‬, that is, enacts justice (‫)משׁ פט‬ and (‫[ )צדקה‬Martin Buber translates the Hebrew as Wahrhaftigkeit (“truthfulness”)] – v7 does not deal harshly with anybody, lets a

Artistic Truth Prompted by Biblical Wisdom Literature

297

debtor get his or her loan security back, does not rob the unsuspecting, gives one’s own bread to a hungry person and covers a naked person with a garment, v8 does not lend to get interest, does not grab for profits, pulls one’s hand back from what is deceitful, works at performing reliable (‫ )אמת‬justice (‫ )מׁשפט‬in man-to-man affairs, v9 [that is,] walks within my providential ordinances (‫ )בחקותי‬and takes care to keep my justice intact (‫)מׁשפט‬ by working out what is truly trustworthy (‫ – )אמת‬that is a triedand-true person (‫)צדיק‬, one who shall surely live, be alive: this is what my Lord, the lord God declares. Human obedience to God’s multifaceted ordinances and Word result, I hear, in what is true, a deed filled with God’s promise to work blessing. No wonder Jesus Christ could say, “I am the Way, that is, the truth, veritably life!”3 recalling God’s “I am” in Exodus 3:13–15 – God’s promised blessing present in fleshly human corporeality. Truth is not presented as a self-subsistent entity or as an abstraction in the Bible, but instead characterizes whatever manifests God’s ongoing gracious, justifying mercy. For example, the inscription over the arch of Victoria University’s campus chapel building, partially obscured by vines – “The truth shall make you free” – in its original biblical thrust means that God’s blessing presence (in Jesus Christ, in the Holy Scriptures, in Holy Spirited acts of just-doing and wisdom) will save you from sin and from the Lie that harbours waste, crookedness, suffering, and death. This peculiarly biblical note of sanctifying holiness as an integral mark of truth, I think, enriches our understanding of what is at stake in the whole range of human cultural undertakings. In his insightful fragment on ethical truth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer argues that it is a betrayal of truth to disclose correct states of affairs to those who are evilminded and untrustworthy.4 Goudzwaard, Vander Vennen, and van Heemst show how political-economic truth – bringing a thrifty, generous justice into citizens’ lives – is threatened by a militaristic ideology bent on distorting “freedom” into a security guaranteed by being stronger in weapons.5 Lambert Zuidervaart’s careful affirmation of propositional truth as assertoric correctness notes the decontextualizing role of logical analysis in our human understanding, and so points out the limits and responsibilities of justifying valid statements in our overall task of knowing truly what we should do in the societal matrix we inhabit.6

298

Calvin Seerveld

That is, it seems to me there are various irreducible, interrelated kinds of truth waiting proleptically for us humans to embody as we try to enact or default in passing on the blessing of God’s ‫( צדקה‬justifying mercy) in ordinary affairs. BIBLICAL WRITINGS MANIFEST A DEFINING LITERARY QUALITY

The Bible itself is uniquely true, in the sense I am using the term. The Holy Scriptures are veritably God-speaking literature, credo, given to us humans historically in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek languages (as Jesus Christ once walked upon the earth as a Jew) to compel our hearing by faith the one true story of the lord’s Rule coming, and providing the contours to inform our task (‫ )מצוה‬of multiple obedient responses.7 I will focus now on the kerygmatic Bible’s literary character, and note the significance of that artistic defining quality to mediate notice of God’s saving revelation. I will then take that prompt, especially by looking at the older first Testament texts of “wisdom” writings, to elucidate the good creational structure which makes such imaginative disclosure of God’s will possible and trustworthy. As Martin Buber writes, the Bible asks to be taken as one book in which its different sections are not closed but open and reverberate with one another.8 Robert Alter cites as “an intrinsic feature of the original texts – their powerfully allusive character.”9 We could well think of the Bible as a literary collage of written texts meant to become oral, to be read aloud, voiced, a story told, and counsel being spoken by God to us humans. The scripted form is not a curse of indeterminacy but is a wonderful, colourful mnemonic with artistic finish and cohesion. The Bible is more like a gargoyle-encrusted cathedral or a cinematic documentary film edited by the Holy Spirit than bulletin announcements from headquarters. God used an Egyptian university-trained scribe like Moses,10 popsong composer and sinful king like David,11 and a born-again Jew with a thorn in the flesh like Paul12 as living ventriloquist dummies, and so the biblical historical and promising narrative with poetry stutters, comments Buber.13 Yet even its verbal stumble is a very artistic, convicting stuttering of God’s creating the temporal world by speaking, selecting a disappointing people to witness to the shalom of obedience, and offering God’s own self bodily to act as pivot in history, I

Artistic Truth Prompted by Biblical Wisdom Literature

299

might add, which tempts all readers and hearers to join the motley band of Canterbury pilgrims on the Way to the eschaton.14 Alter’s many studies document the finely tuned intersectional ironies throughout the Bible that highlight its literary makeup: the story of Jacob deceived by Laban with Leah critically alludes to Jacob’s deceit with Isaac to get Esau’s blessing, so that later we hear the pathos of Isaiah’s quoting God’s agonizing reference to the people of Israel in terms of “Jacob” the deceiver,15 which intensifies the later good news – preposterous – that God loves deceitful sinners!16 The whole laconic biblical tale from Genesis to Revelation, assembled over a thousand years, is replete with near repetitions: Ruth’s sojourn echoes patriarch Abraham’s leaving home to become a progenitive link in the Messiah’s redemptive role on Earth17; Judges 19 even repeats sentences of Genesis 19 in describing a typical scene of hospitality brutalized.18 Joseph flees Potiphar’s wife, but Judah begets a child with his sister-in-law Tamar who Matthew puts in the genealogy of Jesus.19 The key gospel parable of the wicked tenants of the Father’s vineyard20 harks back to Isaiah’s song of God’s vineyard that produced only sour grapes.21 Hebrews 8:8–13 quotes Jeremiah 31:31–4 to make a literate tie in, and is not the result of slipshod redaction. Minute details like the Israelite atrocity of cutting off Canaanite king Adonibezek’s toes and thumbs anticipate the similar end of Israel’s wicked king Zedekiah,22 and give literal historical detail to the narrated events. Such exquisite, subtle, recurrent connections in the one long story intimate an overall providential pattern of sin and deliverance, of grace and judgment under God’s omniscient authorial eye, that proves the recounting is booked with more than an interest in literal fact. The sure literary intensification and configuration of the biblical writings becomes particularly evident in pieces like Proverbs, The Song of Songs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. The dialogue feature of Satan with God, Job, and his erstwhile friends, and between Job and God, asks listeners to discover the meaning in between the set speeches. If you fail to catch the import of the lord’s final literary flourish, the tribute to animals – birds of prey, the monstrous hippopotamus herbivore, the formidable reptilian Leviathan – then you default on the point of God’s Word, which smashes the overly neat universe of rational moral discourse bounded by rewards and punishments Job’s interlocutors uphold. You have also missed the good news that evil is as darkly uncanny, suggests the provident God, as the inscrutable, marvelous, and terrible animal world.23

300

Calvin Seerveld

The book of Ecclesiastes, too, is as synoptically composed a chorus of voices as is The Greatest Song (‫)ׂשיר הׂש ירים‬, and it requires a literary intelligence to plumb its meanings in the parry and thrust of radical questions juxtaposed to a sevenfold refrain that bespeaks God’s providing care in the deepest shadows of life’s failures, death, and cruelty. Even a calculating “wisdom” is called into question by Qoheleth,24 if the wise person thinks to figure out and resolve the unfathomable meaning of mortal creatures subject to God’s mysterious guidance, which reality is best held and confessed in a carefree literary suspension – “Throw your bread out on the face of the water!”25 When the book of Proverbs, headed up by the poem of chapters 1 to 9, is understood to be composed in what I call the “yes, but” rabbinical mode of teaching wisdom26 – not as a list of maxims to be memorized and put into practice – we do more justice to the literary office and focus of the God-breathed, educated court counselors and poets who booked these aphoristic texts. For example, to mine the message of the conundrum found at Proverbs 26:4–5, in the large twelve-verse pericope that assesses foolishness, we need to recognize the allusive “yes, but” catch to its covert literary cast: Never begin to respond to a godless fool like a godless fool; otherwise you will start to be like a God-damning fool yourself. Yes, but! [understood] Answer a godless fool with what befits his godless foolishness, lest he seem to become wise in his own eyes. The directive wisdom presented is this: remain innocent of joining godless foolery, but flummox fools with canny speech. Jesus’ updated version was: be as prudent as snakes, but remain as innocent as doves.27 The collocated paragraphs of riddles in Proverbs are not contradictory logical puzzles so much as far-reaching literary truths that provide playful, imaginative knowledge for the good of those with ears to hear. LITERARY TEXTS ASSUME A C R E AT I O N A L O R D E R O F A L L U S I V I T Y

The defining literary finish of the biblical writings – whether narrative, poetry, or instruction – banks on our responding first of all believingly to its artistry in kind, with an imaginative receptivity. Oth-

Artistic Truth Prompted by Biblical Wisdom Literature

301

erwise we violate the nature of the biblical texts that simultaneously protect God’s mystery yet issue sound authoritative directives with soft edges for our learning how to live, holding onto God’s hand. The ludic, enigmatic quality of the booked revelation is also peculiarly apt for disclosing God’s gracious dealings with us faulty, sinful creatures because our potholed history is not straightforward but continues by fits and starts. Guilty deeds and human repentance are prone to irony, and trusting the Lord whose acts are often beyond our ken begs to be satisfied by only inklings of knowledge. That is, the booked disclosure of God’s great deeds among us is multivocal and roundabout as befits literature – you can recite Israel’s history by both upbeat Psalm 105 and downbeat Psalm 106, as well as by ballad-like Psalm 78, without being duplicit. Literary expression can be truly intimate and present bona fide nuanced knowledge of the deepest sort while remaining elliptical. In the reformational faith-thought perspective of an ordering Word-of-God creational ontic setting,28 given the existing phenomena of texts with a special literary identity, I take the cue and posit that there is a specific creational ordering for distinguishing literary scripts from non-literary dicta or expostulations. Literature, like graphic art, poetry, and music, appeals, in my judgment, to an order in God’s world, a creational ordinance for suggestion-rich allusivity (as there is an order for promise keeping, for generous thrift, for assertoric correctness) – one that can be approximately discovered, is historically formulated and re-formulated, and will be followed in human acts, poorly or well, that will mark such cultured deeds and products typically as artworks. The fact that the biblical writings bear this artistic quality means that truth – God’s gracious working presence – can show up also in this particular creatural channel, what I will call an aesthetic way of being creaturely extant. It would be a mistake to try to take this rich metaphor-sparking kind of literary/artistic truth telling and force its multi-splendored, winsome, if not sometimes whimsical, glory flat to a bare residue of non-imaginative deposits. To work with the philosophical hypothesis of an irreducible creational aesthetic ordinance that calls for its own kind of limited prehensive knowledge can correct several misleading ideas. For example, lingual clarity may not always be the summum bonum for communicating knowledge: a silent twinkle of a wink with a gentle hug and a lingering kiss may say “I love you” more deeply than words could, so you know the troth is certainly true. To think an exact, frontal pass-

302

Calvin Seerveld

port photo – both ears showing – provides literal identification, while a portrait is a distorting, honorific compliment, fails to recognize that Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro rendition of his own face may truly depict the searing depth of his makeup in a way that no replicating description ever could. To pursue a conclusive argument for the existence of God against which there could be no credible retort, and to suppose that a novel like Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment is merely “fiction,” could be a misguided trust in and hope for the power of human reasoning while being blind to the imaginative truth a novel lays bare about the reach of the Holy Spirit to sanctify sinners.29 In other words, artistic truth has its own ontic legitimacy that is not in competition with other modes of knowledge that may also bode epiphanies of God’s blessing to those who are busy thinking, speaking, or doing just deeds. Allusive imaginative knowledge exemplified, Paul Ricoeur would say, in parables like ones Jesus told, with all their complicated, indirect, surprising twists and turns, harbours an arresting potential for telling reliable truth peculiar to its particular aesthetic configuration.30 A T R U E T R A N S L AT I O N O F L I T E R A R Y T E X T S WILL BE ALLUSIVE

To give a little more definite substance to the nature of artistic truth, I will contend that the translation of literature is primarily an aesthetic activity in the medium of language, and therefore will be a true translation if the new (home) language version is a faithfully allusive, in-depth echo of the original foreign language piece voiced again. Such a translation honours God’s presence, insuring an abiding imaginative replica, and the translator’s diaconate service deserves praise. Any language provides idiomatic clarity for a person whose mother tongue it is and who has learned its vernacular. But when the connotative element within a language spoken rises like cream to the top of the bottled milk of lingual communication, lacing even the denotative feature of language with a rhetorical accent, the talk thickens to poetry, which is not ordinarily “clear.” A text can be a record of speech or be directly composed as a document, such as a musical score, architectural blueprint, or written diary to be read. A literary text has a dated and located setting like a speech act, but literary texts seem somehow to bury their authorial historical placement inside the perduring artistic text that is conceived to invite a free-wheeling imagi-

Artistic Truth Prompted by Biblical Wisdom Literature

303

native reading. The tricky task for a translator of poetry or literature then is to carry over and transpose, recreate the earlier nuance-ridden text anew in a different set of worded syntactical language that hosts the source text, and to do the metaphorical transference with equity. Language, and especially literature, has a different nature than formal logic or mathematics, and so good translation does not attempt to get isomorphic equivalence, a literal imitative restatement, but to do justice to the earlier piece. Better, it aims to recapitulate its gestalted body with love – its inimitable nuanceful tenor, purportive thrust, and continuing literate significance. A good translator, says George Steiner, remains selflessly submerged within the original foreign tongue, yet produces a new translucent text in the second language marked by a “deliberate strangeness.”31 The current lingual idiom of the targeted translation deserves to be a little unfamiliar, and could well sport an archaic displacement of the current idiom, so that the foreign import does not seem so strange, but sounds somewhat like a voice remembered out of our own past.32 You may also need dare, adds Buber, in obedience to the task of inventing an allusive reference, to coin new words that the younger generation will adopt and own.33 The principle guiding translation of literature is reciprocal enhancement: you give the primary foreign text outreach and afterlife, and vivify your own lingual-literary culture with supplemental knowledge stretching your home language with unfamiliar rhythms, vocabulary – there are no actual synonyms even within one language – odd emphases, alternative human tempers, and tastes. A true translation of literature honours the original fully, letting its unusual light shine on our doorstep but not be dimmed to our current visibility. Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s poetic rendition of Sappho’s lyric about “the sweet apple ... a-top on the topmost twig” is a true translation: poem for poem.34 I always found W.H.D. Rouse’s racy, “holy moly”35 prose translation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (1938/1937) to be much more imaginatively faithful to the rambunctious original Greek story than Richard Lattimore’s (1951) “free six-beat line” sonority. The gracious rolling British English exposition of Tolstoy’s Russian garrulity in War and Peace by Louise and Aylmer Maude (1942) is also a classic journeyman achievement.36 It is easy, of course, to be unfaithful in a translation of a literary text.37 A translator may misconstrue the primary text through ignorance, haste, or personal insensibility; and if one diminishes or inflates the meaning of the primary source, or settles for a paraphrase,

304

Calvin Seerveld

one has defaulted on the arduous task. The critical guideline, however, is to maintain that translation artistry of literature is true when its struggled-for product redeems the original in kind, resurrects an imaginative hologrammic similation of the piece’s spirited, slanted insight, and is permeated by intriguing obliquity.38 It is not untrustworthy for the translated piece to present a range of meanings limited by the order of allusivity. I believe this thesis also holds for translating the Bible and other texts considered sacred, like the Qur’an. Many adult Bible readers – somewhat like M. Jourdain in Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme, who was surprised to find out he was speaking prose (II,4) – will be taken aback to hear that God’s Word is booked as literature. However, the Reformation dogma on the perspicuity of scripture does not mean the book is a simple sentence telegram. Even the fisherman apostle Simon Peter complained in the Bible that some of Paul’s letters were difficult to understand.39 The dogma of the “clarity” of scripture means its principal message is of the lord’s loving the world so much God sent the Messiah Jesus to save us from our sinfulness, and calls us to thank God together by following Christ’s Way of reclaiming and caring for God’s creatures till the end40: that truth can be heard and accepted by a childlike faith. The core message of the Bible – God’s cosmic creation, our historical human sin, Jesus Christ as Saviour of the world, and the Holy Spirit call for creatures to respond willingly to the Covenantal lord God’s ordinances – is clear; but scripture is still literature, unique for its God-speaking nature, demanding our obedient response. Martin Buber took the God-speaking oral character of the Bible so seriously that he translated it from Hebrew to German by having a rabbi read God’s Word out loud to him so he could hear the sensed articulation of mouthed words, the breathing pauses, the paranomastic Leitwörter sound, and the paragraphing of the text. Buber’s written Hebrew Bible translation is in crabbed, Hebrew-based, contorted German, but Buber squeezes strictly into the German text the minutest iota shade of meaning the Hebrew original brings into play. Written Bible translation tries to park and prime active speaking of the text in a definite nuanced way. One could say that Jerome’s amazing work in translating the Bible into Latin and the subsequent Vulgata, Luther’s brusque folk language version that helped set German writing style, the quietly magisterial

Artistic Truth Prompted by Biblical Wisdom Literature

305

King James translation birthed by Tyndale (1611), minding with italics what was absent in the Hebrew, the Revised Standard Version (1952), and Buber’s contribution are all true with wobbles, failings, and weak spots. Each is a varied, imaginative attempt to keep the surrogate biblical narrative integrated literately, nuanced within the bounds of an allusive intelligence that knew they were transmitting vital, deep knowledge in a parabolic, symbolical convicting form true to the core original message couched in and constrained by a rhetorical order. How to translate Exodus 3:14 truly into English, ‫?אהיה אׁשר אהיה‬ “Taking advantage of the ambiguity of Hebrew verb tenses”41 and approaching the amazing burning-yet-not-incinerated bush episode commissioning Moses to lead God’s descendants from Abraham out of Egyptian slavery: with an aesthetically relaxed care for the context and a nose for nuance, I should like to improve on the traditional rather stentorian, Parmenideian “i am who i am” translation. Buber is correct, I think, to tone down this revelation of God’s proper name – the Bible does not encourage an exercise in theo-ontology – to “I will be who I was, who I always am,” as the next verse says, the everlasting faithful lord of your fathers’ and mothers’ generation, which recalls Genesis 15 and anticipates Exodus 34:6–7. This revelatory incident, notes Buber, exorcizes any move to make God’s name magical.42 Moses could tell God’s faithful ones, “Was-Am-I-Will-Be-With-You” sent me. Remember? And believe.43 The tone of reading scripture can make or break the truth of a translated text, since voice inflection is the primal interpretation of a text. We should not read Psalm 104 as if it is Wordsworthian nature poetry, and an English speaking person should have in mind Gerard Manley Hopkins’ sprung rhythm rather than Walt Whitman’s rolling lines while proclaiming Isaiah. A person goes wrong too, for example, to think conflicted administrator Pilate was starting a deep philosophical discussion with Jesus in John 18. Pilate, in my reading, said, “What’s truth?” the way Hamlet dismissed the verbose Polonius with the line, “Words, words, words.” The ordinance of allusivity admits a penumbra of “itineraries of meaning,” to use Ricoeur’s phrase, but not “anything goes.”44 Whether it be formulating the written version of a biblical translation or speaking it, the operative disciplinary discernment called for is of an imaginative sort which hones in on precise nuances of the insight that stay aesthetically open.

306

Calvin Seerveld

C O N C L U S I O N W I T H T W O I M P L I C AT I O N S

In this chapter, I have made two main suggestions: (1) Beginning with a biblical orientation, we should consider truth to be a gift of God’s blessing of shalom experienced temporally, consonant with our historical nature, rather than conceiving truth as an ontic substance or something humans can achieve which becomes eternally fixed, beyond revision;45 and (2) we should recognize the enrichment and wonderful credibility of artistic truth with its playful elasticity, providing certain imaginative true knowledge next to other kinds of truth, such as the argued correctness of analytic truth or the verified factuality of legal truth. There are also two implications I should like to pose for discussion. First, if the quality of being true will stigmatize human efforts that obey God’s ordinantial injunctions to be allusive, just, consequent, clear, faithful, and the like, that is, to be holy in the whole panoply of modally varied ordinary living circumstances, then it is philosophically erroneous to assume truth is a religious ultimate to which we aspire. Elaine Scarry’s Plato-inspired book On Beauty and Being Just epitomizes what I think is a misdirected attempt – to pull in James Elkins’ deserving project – to re-enchant our post-post-Enlightenment culture with “spirituality.”46 Writes Scarry: “What is beautiful is in league with what is true because truth abides in the immortal sphere.”47 When we pursue beauty, she says, and “other enduring objects of aspiration – goodness, truth, justice,” we “unself-interestedly” enhance ourselves.48 Jaroslav Pelikan’s judgment, however, I find more trenchant: humans intent not on following Jesus’ Word in God’s ordained world, but keen to relate themselves constructively to the Holy One by affirming transcendentals like truth, beauty, and goodness (or striving to experience the wordless Numinous of Rudolph Otto), unfortunately fall into a self-deceptive moralism.49 Second, if the quality of being allusive does indeed define literature and artworks, and their truth is genuine imaginative disclosure of significant meaning that carries God’s presence of blessing, then human responses to literature and artworks should be informed, competent, and willing to “read,” interpret, and critically judge the dated/located artistic contribution, its structural integrity and import,50 first of all imaginatively. Artistic truth is not confined to God’s children, since the lord’s grace is not restricted to confessing Christians (or monopolized by sinful saints).

Artistic Truth Prompted by Biblical Wisdom Literature

307

Although I cannot here spell out a complete hermeneutic, I posit that in our community of aesthetic interpretation, as we absorb and comment on a given artwork or artistic event’s proffered meaning, we do well to stipple in the spirit and perspective found lodged in the object under scrutiny. A visual reader, the interpreter with words, or reflective critic, can honour the ordinance of suggestion-rich allusivity, especially by comparing the piece at hand to the artist’s oeuvre and to other artworks. For example, Inuit carver John Tiktak (1916–1987) from Rankin Island, Canada, sculpted humans out of stone in the 1960s – hardy, ordinary, vital fellows, nonchalant even, hands in pockets, unapologetic mouth – worlds away from the 1968 Paris student revolution or turbulent Chicago. Mother with Child (ca. 1962) strapped to her back is an ancient rite of workaday love, the figures clothed with respect. Tiktak’s Bent Man (1970) exemplifies the corpus of his ’60s artwork: a sincere expression of the burden-bearing chore of life in the cold North. But Tiktak’s artistic testimony to that truth is not fraught with the conflicted Piqtoukun’s sharper struggle lamenting the loss of the Inuit shaman culture and the mythology of polar bear able to morph into whiskered human power. Tiktak’s world is not out of joint: the weather-beaten wizened face (1965) may not even be six inches tall, but its indomitable archaic presence has the incredibly dense mass of wise human perseverance. My favourite Tiktak sculpture (1963), still untouched by any debilitating souvenir commerce, symbolizes the painful joy connecting generations in God’s world: the long-faced mother has a vulnerable but strong, bony, mute glory plodding along with her child trundled like a humpback. The piece makes me remember Psalm 131, where the psalmist is humbled and calmed, imagining himself like a weaned child near the neck of God. Swedish-born Dutch sculptor Britt Wikstrom (born 1948) produced a plaster cast of a man gently cradling an older sick child in his arms, an image which tells with artistic truth that human holding can be healing. Wikstrom’s bronze piece of two wrestlers, placed in a psychiatric sanatorium, shows exquisitely how the struggle of patient and mentor, Jacob and the ‫מלאכה אלהים‬, is like a dance where you have to hold on to one another as you seek to prevail and win a blessing. Henry Moore’s world-class brown Horton stone Reclining Figure (Leeds, 1926) discloses the quiet Mother Earthy reserve and strength of woman – restive, majestic, alone. Wikstrom by contrast usually embeds the social dimension of neighbours into her artwork, like

308

Calvin Seerveld

simply helping a younger grateful man put on his coat – this 2010 piece is placed in the village square of Deurne, the Netherlands, and commemorates Anna Terruwe’s life work of an affirming psychiatry with troubled persons. Wikstrom’s tombstones (1979) also bring the truth of resurrection life, reuniting loved ones, and triumph over our mortality obliquely to the fore. The graphic artistic truth of the dove returning with a sprig of olive leaf after a world disaster (1993) promises the bereft loved ones a softly cheerful solace, with the grace note of a birdbath of rain water cut into the granite top, to be kind, meanwhile, almost like a lay baptism to the birds of the air who flutter around wishing to be clean. Though they are quite different graphic artists, Tiktak and Wikstrom both illustrate, in my view, artistic truth. My interpretive reading reflecting with words on their nuanced sculptured offerings tries to honour their true pluriform presentation of meaning. I claim my reading is true because it recognizes and reaches down to the committed spirit and visionary faith depth of their artwork, and so invokes its coram Deo dimension. There can be other true interpretations too, just as there can be two good sermons from the same Bible passage. Heidegger’s grappling with truth matters as art’s providing a temporary clearing in which we humans are ecstatically open to things’ showing their being, a kind of ungrounded epiphany hiding their mysterious source,51 is at the keyhole of knowledge, I think, but lacks the key. The truth of God’s blessing presence is real and can be historically disclosed and experienced by artists, interpreters, and theorists (and by statespersons, medical doctors, journalists, and leaders in other fields of investigation), always in our earthen-clay-jar fallibility,52 and so would-be truth tellers as artists or interpreters need to be humble enough to be not hesitant, not uncertain, but tentative in their production, especially if their judgment upon occasion must be as severe as the prophetic calls of a Jeremiah. Our day characteristically promotes living without any sense of obligation, said Buber,53 and so it does seem to be important for more academics, teachers, and leaders at large to pay attention to the enriching existence of artistic truth in God’s world, which not only gives wise direction but refreshes life, to use Isamu Noguchi’s phrase, since rightly experiencing bona fide artworks is “like falling in love again for the first time.”54

Artistic Truth Prompted by Biblical Wisdom Literature

309

N OT E S

1 An earlier version of this essay was published as “Import of Biblical Wisdom Literature for a Conception of Artistic Truth,” in Calvin G. Seerveld, Biblical Studies and Wisdom for Living, ed. John Kok (Sioux Center, ia: Dordt College Press, 2013). 2 In this chapter I capitalize the entire word “lord” when it serves as an equivalent for the Hebraic “yhwh,” to distinguish it from “Adonai,” another Hebrew word for which I use “Lord,” in small letters. This follows the convention used in The New International Version of the Bible and in many other English translations. 3 John 14:3. 4 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “What Is Meant by ‘Telling the Truth,’” in Ethics, ed. Eberhard Bethge (New York: MacMillan, 1955), 326–34. 5 Bob Goudzwaard, Mark Vander Vennen, and David van Heemst, Hope in Troubled Times: A New Vision for Confronting Global Crises (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 115–23. Also see by way of comparison the position taken by Thrasymachus in Plato, Republic, book 1. 6 Lambert Zuidervaart, “Unfinished Business: Toward a Reformational Conception of Truth,” Philosophia Reformata 74 (2009): 10–12, 15–18. 7 Calvin Seerveld, “Preface,” in How to Read the Bible to Hear God Speak: A Study in Numbers 22–24 (Sioux Center, ia: Dordt College Press; Toronto: Tuppence Press, 2003), xi–xiii. See also Calvin Seerveld, “A Contribution of Christian Aesthetics toward Reading the Bible,” in Rainbows for the Fallen World (Toronto: Tuppence Press, 1980/2005), 78–102. 8 Martin Buber, “Zur Verdeutschung der Preisungen,” in Die Schrift und ihrer Verdeutschung, Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig (Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1936), 169. 9 Robert Alter, The World of Biblical Literature (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 50. 10 Exodus 17:14, Hebrews 11:23–7. 11 II Samuel 11, Psalms 3–41, and others. 12 II Corinthians 12:1–10. 13 Buber, “Der Mensch von heute und die jüdische Bibel,” in Die Schrift und ihrer Verdeutschung, 28. 14 Hebrews 11:32–40. 15 Isaiah 40–4, 48–9. 16 Matthew 9:10–13, Ephesians 2:1–7, I Timothy 1:12–16. 17 Matthew 1:5. 18 Judges 19:22–4, Genesis 19:4–9.

310

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28

29

30

31 32 33 34

35 36 37

Calvin Seerveld

Genesis 38, Matthew 1:3. Mark 12:1–12. Isaiah 5. Judges 1:4–7, II Kings 25:1–7. K.J. Popma, De Boodschap van het Boek Job (Goes: Oosterbaan & Le Cointre, 1957), 228–35. Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry, 76–110. Ecclesiastes 7:23–9. Ecclesiastes 11:1. Seerveld, “The Relation of the Arts to the Presentation of Truth,” in Truth and Reality, Festschrift dedicated to H.G. Stoker (Braamfontein: De Jong’s Bookshop, 1971), 190–3. Matthew 10:16. Seerveld, “Dooyeweerd’s Legacy for Aesthetics,” in The Legacy of Herman Dooyeweerd, ed. C.T. McIntire (Lanham, md: University Press of America, 1985), 61–2, 76 n 59. Many in the church have been misled by reading Romans 1:21, as the King James Version has it: “but became vain in their imaginations.” The Greek, ἀλλὰ ἐµαταιώθησαν ἐν τοῖς διαλογισµοῖσ αὐτῶν, might more carefully be translated, “but became foolish [cf. Proverbs 26:4–5] in their reasonings.” Paul Ricoeur, “The Bible and the Imagination,” in The Bible as a Document of the University, ed. Hans Dieter Betz and Ann Arbor, trans. David Pellauer (Ann Arbor, MI: Scholars Press, Poleridge Books, 1981), 54–65. George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 310, 319. Ibid., 333–53. Buber, “Über die Wortwahl in einer Verdeutschung der Schrift,” 142–3. This is best seen by laying out the original and the translation side by side: οἷον τὸ γλυκύµαλον Like the sweet apple ἐρεύθεται ἅκρωι ἐπ’ ὕσδωι which reddens upon the topmost bough, ἄκρον ἐπ’ ἀκροτάτωι, A-top on the topmost twig λελάθοντο δὲ µαλοδρόπηες, which the pluckers forgot, somehow – οὐ µὰν ἐκλελάθοντ’, αλλ’ οὐκ Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, ἐδύναντ’ ἐπίκεσθαι for none could get it till now. µῶλυ δὲ µιν καλέουσι θεοί, Οδυσσειας, 10, 305. Margaret Lesser, “Taking on Tolstoy,” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5598 (16 July 2010), 14–15. George Steiner’s wry comment, “Ninety percent, no doubt, of all translation since Babel is inadequate and will continue to be so” (After Babel, 396)

Artistic Truth Prompted by Biblical Wisdom Literature

38 39 40 41 42 43

44

45 46 47 48 49 50 51

311

could be; but he at least struggles persistently with the noble difficulty to alleviate ignorance. The Italian bon mot traduttore traditore (translators? traitors!) seems to me to be simply a trite putdown. Seerveld, “Imaginativity,” in Faith and Philosophy 4 (1987): 50. II Peter 3:14–16. John 3:16–17, Galatians 5:25–6:2. Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry, 131. Buber, “Königtum Gottes,” excerpt in Die Schrift und ihrer Verdeutschung, 341. Van Leeuwen writes: “A direct translator will in a learned and aesthetically appropriate way use the resources of the target language to richly capture the details of the original, even though readers may be challenged by some of the Bible’s foreignness.” Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, “We Really Need Another Bible Translation,” Christianity Today, 22 October 2001, 34. Buber wisely rejects “Gesetz” as a good translation of ‫ תורה‬and settles on “Weisung.” Buber, “Über die Wortwahl in einer Verdeutschung der Schrift,” 158. A good English translation could be “guidance.” God’s law is like an embrace to keep us safe, and is not an ominous threat against misbehaving. Edip Yuksel’s reformist translation of the Qu’ran deals with the same problem of nuanced multiple-meaning words, for example, iDRiBuhunne in Qu’ran 4:34; see, by way of comparison, quran: A Reformist Translation, trans. Edip Yuksel, Layth Saleh al-Shaiban, and Martha Schulte-Nafeh (Brainbow Press, 2007), 17–20. If, as Derrida says, certain words that cannot be decided are “untranslatable into a single word,” this does not entail for me that meaning must remain permanently ambivalent. See Jacques Derrida, “What is ‘Relevant’ Translation?” trans. Lawrence Venuti, Critical Inquiry 27 (2001): 196 n 8. This would be my way of understanding “truth is both structural and directional.” Zuidervaart, “Unfinished Business,” 10. James Elkins and David Morgan, eds., Re-Enchantment (New York: Routledge, 2009), vii–x. Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 31. Ibid., 87. Jaroslav Pelikan, Fools for Christ: Essays on the True, the Good, and the Beautiful (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1995), 80. Lambert Zuidervaart, Artistic Truth: Aesthetics, Discourse, and Imaginative Disclosure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 125–34. Martin Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth (Pentecost Monday, 1926),” in Becoming Heidegger: On the Trail of His Early Occasional Writings, 1910–1927, ed. Theodore Kisiel and Thomas Sheehan, trans. Theodore Kisiel (Evanston:

312

Calvin Seerveld

Northwestern University Press, 2007), 285; “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes,” in Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1957), 41–4; Vom Wesen der Wahrheit (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1943), 15–19, 25. 52 John H. Kok, Vollenhoven: His Early Development (Sioux Center, ia: Dordt College Press, 1992), 233–50, 260–72, 280–90. 53 Buber, “Der Mensch von heute und die jüdische Bibel,” 14. 54 Reported by Diana Apostolos-Cappadona in Elkins and Morgan, eds., ReEnchantment, 239.

3 Bibliography

Abizadeh, Aresh. “On the Philosophy/Rhetoric Binaries: Or, Is Habermasian Discourse Motivationally Impotent?” Philosophy and Social Criticism 33 (2007): 445–72. Alcoff, Linda Martín. Real Knowing: New Versions of the Coherence Theory. Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1996. Allan, Stuart, and Barbie Zelizer, eds. Reporting War: Journalism in Wartime. New York: Routledge, 2004. Allen, Barry. Truth in Philosophy. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1993. Alston, William P. A Realist Conception of Truth. Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1996. – “A Realist Conception of Truth.” In The Nature of Truth: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Michael Lynch, 41–66. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 2001. Alter, Robert. The Art of Biblical Narrative. New York: Basic Books, 1981. – The Art of Biblical Poetry. New York: Basic Books, 1985. – The Book of Psalms. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. – The World of Biblical Literature. New York: Basic Books, 1992. Anselm. “On Truth.” In Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, edited by Brian Davies and G.R. Evans, 151–74. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Anyon, Jean. Radical Possibilities: Public Policy, Urban Education, and a New Social Movement. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2005. Aquinas, Thomas. The Disputed Questions on Truth. Vol. 1. Translated by Robert W. Mulligan, SJ. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952. – The Disputed Questions on Truth. Vol. 2. Translated by James V. McGlynn, SJ. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1953.

314

Bibliography

– On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: Summa contra Gentiles. Vol. 2. Translated by James F. Anderson. Garden City, ny: Doubleday, 1955. – On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: Summa contra Gentiles. Vol. 3. Translated by Vernon J. Bourke. Garden City, ny: Doubleday, 1956. – Summa Theologiae. In Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Vol. 1, edited by Anton C. Pegis. New York: Random House, 1945. – Summa Theologiae. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Vols. 1–22. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947. Arendt, Hannah. Between Past and Future. New York: Penguin Books, 1968. Atwood, Margaret. Alias Grace. New York: Doubleday, 1996. – In Search of Alias Grace: On Writing Canadian Historical Fiction. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1997. Augustine, Aurelius. “Excerpts from the City of God and The Morals of the Catholic Church.” In From Christ to the World: Introductory Readings in Christian Ethics, edited by Wayne G. Boulton, Thomas D. Kennedy, and Allen Verhey, 234–7. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994. Austin, J.L. “Truth.” Aristotelian Society Supplement 24 (1950): 111–29. – “Truth.” In The Nature of Truth: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Michael P. Lynch, 25–40. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 2001. Aviram, Aharon. “Beyond Constructivism: Autonomy-Oriented Education.” Studies in Philosophy and Education 19 (5, 2000): 465–89. Ayer, A.J. Language, Truth and Logic. New York: Dover, 1952. Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Engagement with God. Translated by R. John Halliburton. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008. – The Glory of the Lord I: Seeing the Form. Edited by Joseph Fessio and John Riches. Translated by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982. – The Glory of the Lord IV: The Realm of Metaphysics. Edited by John Riches. Translated by Brian McNeil. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989. – “Heideggers Philosophie vom Standpunkt der Katholizismus.” Stimmen der Zeit 137 (1940): 1–8. – Love Alone is Credible. Translated by David C. Schindler. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004. – My Work in Retrospect. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993. – “Philosophy, Christianity, Monasticism.” In Explorations in Theology II: Spouse of the Word, translated by Brian McNeil, 333–72. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991. – Prayer. Translated by A.B. Littledale. London: spck, 1975. – Theo-Logic I: Truth of the World. Translated by Adrian J. Walker. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000.

Bibliography

315

– Theo-Logic III: The Spirit of Truth. Translated by Adrian J. Walker. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004. – The Threefold Garland: The World’s Salvation in Mary’s Prayer. Translated by Erasmo Leiva-Merkakis. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004. – Truth Is Symphonic: Aspects of Christian Pluralism. Translated by Graham Harrison. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987. Barab, Sasha A., and Jonathan A. Plucker. “Smart People or Smart Contexts? Cognition, Ability, and Talent Development in an Age of Situated Approaches to Knowing and Learning.” Educational Psychologist 37 (3, 2002): 165–82. Beetham, David. The Legitimation of Power. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991. Bell, Daniel. The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. London: Heinemann, 1976. Bell, J.S. Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, 217–51. New York: Schocken Books, 1969. Bercot, David W., ed. A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs: A Reference Guide to More than 700 Topics Discussed by the Early Church Fathers. Peabody, ma: Hendrickson Publishers, 1998. Berger, James. “Trauma and Literary Theory.” Contemporary Literature 38 (3, 1997): 569–82. Bernstein, Richard J. Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983. Blackburn, Simon. Ruling Passions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Blomberg, Doug. “New Wineskins: Subverting the ‘Sacred Story’ of Schooling.” In Christian Higher Education in a Global Context: Implications for Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Administration, edited by Nick Lantinga, 199–213. Sioux Center, ia: Dordt College Press, 2007. – “Review of Douglas V. Henry and Michael D. Beaty (Eds.), The Schooled Heart: Moral Formation in American Higher Education.” Journal of Education and Christian Belief 13 (1, 2009): 85–7. – “Ways of Wisdom: Multiple Modes of Meaning in Pedagogy and Andragogy.” In Ways of Knowing: In Concert, edited by John H. Kok, 123–46. Sioux Center, ia: Dordt College Press, 2005. – “Whose Spirituality? Which Rationality? A Narrational Locus for Learning.” Journal of Education and Christian Belief 13 (2, 2008): 113–24. – “Wisdom at Play: In the World but Not of It.” In The Crumbling Walls of Certainty: Towards a Christian Critique of Postmodernity and Education, edit-

316

Bibliography

ed by Ian Lambert and Suzanne Mitchell, 120–35. Sydney: Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity, 1997. Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987. Bolt, Peter G. “Mission and Witness.” In Witness to the Gospel: The Theology of Acts, edited by I. Howard Marshall and David Peterson, 191–214. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. “What is Meant by ‘Telling the Truth.’” In Ethics, edited by Eberhard Bethge, 326–34. New York: Macmillan, 1955. Botha, M. Elaine. Metaphor and Its Moorings: Studies in the Grounding of Metaphorical Meaning. Bern: Peter Lang, 2007. Bowen, Deborah. Stories of the Middle Space: Reading the Ethics of Postmodern Realism. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010. Boyden, Joseph. Three Day Road. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2005. Brandom, Robert. Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2000. – Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1994. – “Some Pragmatist Themes in Hegel’s Idealism: Negotiation and Administration in Hegel’s Account of the Structure and Content of Conceptual Norms.” European Journal of Philosophy 7 (August 1999): 164–89. – Tales of the Mighty Dead. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2002. Buber, Martin. “Die Bibel auf Deutsch.” In Die Schrift und ihrer Verdeutschung, by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, 276–91. Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1936. – “Königtum Gottes.” In Die Schrift und ihrer Verdeutschung, by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, 338–41. Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1936. – “Der Mensch von heute und die jüdische Bibel.” In Die Schrift und ihrer Verdeutschung, by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, 13–45. Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1936. – “Über die Wortwahl in einer Verdeutschung der Schrift.” In Die Schrift und ihrer Verdeutschung, by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, 135–67. Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1936. – “Eine Übersetzung der Bibel.” In Die Schrift und ihrer Verdeutschung, by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, 300–9. Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1936. – “Zur Verdeutschung der Preisungen.” In Die Schrift und ihrer Verdeutschung, by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, 168–83. Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1936. Buber, Martin, and Franz Rosenzweig. Die Schrift und ihrer Verdeutschung. Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1936.

Bibliography

317

Burtchaell, James Tunstead. The Giving and Taking of Life: Essays Ethical. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989. Cabasjy, Andrea, and Brett Josef Grubisic, eds. National Plots: Historical Fiction and Changing Ideas of Canada. Waterloo, on: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010. Calvin College Curriculum Committee. Christian Liberal Arts Education: Report of the Calvin College Curriculum Committee. Grand Rapids: Calvin College and Eerdmans, 1970. Campbell, Stephen. “Constructivism and the Limits of Reason: Revisiting the Kantian Problematic.” Studies in Philosophy and Education 21 (6, 2002): 421–45. Cardellini, Liberato. “The Foundations of Radical Constructivism: An Interview with Ernst von Glasersfeld.” Foundations of Chemistry 8 (2, 2006): 177–87. Carey, Susan. Conceptual Change in Childhood. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Caylor, Bob. “Terry Preaches Theocratic Rule: ‘No More Mr Nice Christian’ is the Pro-life Activist’s Theme for the ’90s.” Fort Wayne News Sentinel, 16 August 1993. Cherniak, Christopher. Minimal Rationality. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1986. Ciaramelli, Elisa, Michela Muccioli, Elisabetta Ladavas, and Giuseppe di Pellgrino. “Selective Deficit in Personal Moral Judgment following Damage to Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2 (2007): 84–92. Cobern, William, and Cathleen Loving. “An Essay for Educators: Epistemological Realism Really Is Common Sense.” Science and Education 17 (4, 2008): 425–47. Coicaud, Jean-Marc, and David Ames Curtis. Legitimacy and Politics: A Contribution to the Study of Political Right and Political Responsibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Coleman, Elizabeth. “The Bennington College Curriculum: A New Liberal Arts.” Bennington, vt: Bennington College, 2007. Cooke, Maeve. “Meaning and Truth in Habermas’s Pragmatics.” European Journal of Philosophy 9 (April 2001): 1–23. Cottle, Simon, and Mugdha Rai. “Between Display and Deliberation: Analyzing tv News as Communicative Architecture.” Media Culture and Society 28 (2, 2006): 163–89.

318

Bibliography

Dahlstrom, Daniel O. Heidegger’s Concept of Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Damasio, Antonio. Descartes’ Error. New York: Penguin, 1994. Davey, Nicholas. Unquiet Understanding: Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics. Albany, ny: State University of New York Press, 2006. Davidson, Donald. “A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge.” In Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective,137–53. New York: Clarendon, 2001. – “Could There Be a Science of Rationality?” In Problems of Rationality, 117–34. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. – “Epistemology and Truth.” In Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, 177–91. New York: Clarendon, 2001. – “Expressing Evaluations.” In Problems of Rationality,19–38. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. – “The Folly of Trying to Define Truth.” In Truth, Language, and History, 19–38. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. – “In Defense of Convention T.” In Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 2nd ed., 65–75. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. – Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. – “The Inscrutability of Reference.” In Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 2nd ed., 227–41. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. – “Locating Literary Language.” In Truth, Language, and History, 167–81. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. – “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme.” In Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 2nd ed., 183–98. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. – “Preface to the Second Edition.” In Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 2nd ed., xv–xxiii. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. – “The Problem of Objectivity.” In Problems of Rationality, 3–18. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. – Problems of Rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. – “Pursuit of the Concept of Truth.” In Truth, Language, and History, 63–80. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. – “Radical Interpretation.” In Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 2nd ed., 125–40. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. – “Reality Without Reference.” In Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 2nd ed., 215–26. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. – “Replies to Rorty, Stroud, McDowell, and Pereda.” In Truth, Language, and History, 315–27. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. – “The Structure and Content of Truth.” Journal of Philosophy 87 (6, 1990): 279–328.

Bibliography

319

– “Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages.” In Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 2nd ed., 3–16. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. – “Thought and Talk.” In Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 2nd ed., 155–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. – “Truth and Meaning.” In Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 2nd ed., 17–42. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. – Truth, Language, and History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Davson-Galle, Peter. “Constructivism: ‘A Curate’s Egg.’” Educational Philosophy and Theory 31 (2, 2007): 205–19. Derrida, Jacques. “What is ‘Relevant’ Translation?” Translated by Lawrence Venuti. Critical Inquiry 27 (2001): 174–200. Devitt, Michael. Realism and Truth. 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Dewey, John. The Quest for Certainty. Vol. 4 of John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925–1953. Carbondale, il: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988. Diller, Kevin S. “The Theology of Revelation and the Epistemology of Christian Belief: The Compatibility and Complementarity of the Theological Epistemologies of Karl Barth and Alvin Plantinga.” phd dissertation. University of St Andrews, Scotland, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/497. Dodd, Julian. An Identity Theory of Truth. London: Macmillan, 2000. Dooyeweerd, Herman. The Christian Idea of the State. Nutley, nj: Craig Press, 1968. – A New Critique of Theoretical Thought. Translated by David H. Freeman and William S. Young. Vols. 1–4. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1953–8. – De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee. Vols. 1–3. Amsterdam: H.J. Paris, 1935–6. Doran, Robert M. “Lonergan and Balthasar: Methodological Considerations.” Theological Studies 58 (1, 1997): 61–84. Douthat, Ross. “The Marriage Ideal.” New York Times, 9 August 2010, A19. Dummett, Michael. “The Source of the Concept of Truth.” In Meaning and Method: Essays in Honor of Hilary Putnam, edited by George Boolos, 1–15. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. – “Truth.” In Truth and Other Enigmas, 1–24. London: Duckworth, 1978. Durkheim, Émile. Suicide: A Study in Sociology. Translated by John A. Spaulding and George Simpson. Glencoe, il: The Free Press, 1951. Efird, David. “Truth and Truth-Making.” Review of Truth and Truth-Making, edited by E.J. Lowe and A. Rami. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 17 August 2009, http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24127-truth-and-truth-making.

320

Bibliography

Einstein, Albert, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen. “Can QuantumMechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?” Physical Review 47 (1935): 777–80. Elkins, James. On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art. New York: Routledge, 2004. Elkins, James, and David Morgan, eds. Re-enchantment. New York: Routledge, 2009. Elliot, R.K. “Education, Love of One’s Subject, and the Love of Truth.” Proceedings of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 8 (1, 1974): 135–52. Elwell, Walter A., ed. Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1984. Evans, C. Stephen. Faith beyond Reason: A Kierkegaardian Account. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998. – Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006. Fallon, Richard H. “Legitimacy and the Constitution.” Harvard Law Review 118 (6, 2005): 1787–853. Field, Hartry. “The Deflationary Conception of Truth.” In Fact, Science, and Morality: Essays on A.J. Ayer’s Language, Truth, and Logic, edited by Graham MacDonald and Crispin Wright, 55–117. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. – “Tarski’s Theory of Truth.” Journal of Philosophy 69 (1972): 347–75. Findley, Timothy. The Wars. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2005. Fodor, Jerry A. Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1987. Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge. Edited by Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon, 1980. Frankfurt, Harry G. On Truth. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. Fultner, Barbara. “The Redemption of Truth: Idealization, Acceptability and Fallibilism in Habermas’ Theory of Meaning.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 4 (2, 1996): 233–51. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. The Beginning of Knowledge. Translated by Rodney R. Coltman. New York: Continuum, 2001. – Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter. Edited by Diane P. Michelfelder and Richard E. Palmer. Albany, ny: State University of New York Press, 1989. – The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy. Translated by P. Christopher Smith. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. – Philosophical Hermeneutics. Translated and edited by David Edward Linge. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.

Bibliography

321

– Truth and Method. 2nd ed. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. New York: Continuum, 1995. – Wahrheit und Methode. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1970. – “What is Truth?” In Hermeneutics and Truth, edited by Brice R. Wachterhauser, 33–46. Evanston, il: Northwestern University Press, 1994. Gallagher, Shaun. How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. – “Intersubjectivity in Perception.” Continental Philosophy Review 41 (2, 2008): 163–78. Gardner, Howard. Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Geertsema, Hendrik G. Het menselijk karakter van ons kennen. Amsterdam: Buijten and Schipperheijn, 1992. – Om de humaniteit. Christlijk geloof in gesprek met de moderne cultuur over wetenschap en filosofie. Kampen: Kok, 1995. Gellhorn, Martha. The Face of War. Rev. ed. London: Granata, 1993. Gemser, Berend. “The Spiritual Structure of Biblical Aphoristic Wisdom.” In Adhuc Loquitor: Collected Essays of Dr. B. Gemser, edited by A. Van Selms and A.S. Vanderwoude, 208–19. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968. Glas, Gerrit. “Christian Philosophical Anthropology: A Reformation Perspective.” Philosophia Reformata 75 (2010): 151–89. – “Person, Personality, Self, and Identity.” Journal of Personality Disorders 20 (2006): 26–138. – “Persons and Their Lives: Reformational Philosophy on Man, Ethics, and Beyond.” Philosophia Reformata 71 (2006): 31–57. Glasersfeld, Ernst von. “Aspects of Radical Constructivism and Its Educational Recommendations.” In Theories of Mathematical Learning, edited by Leslie Steffe, 307–14. Hillsdale, nj: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996. – “Cognition, Construction of Knowledge, and Teaching.” Synthese 80 (1, 1989): 121–40. – “Facts and the Self from a Constructivist Point of View.” AntiMatters 2 (3, 2008): 21–32. – “Introduction: Aspects of Constructivism.” In Constructivism: Theory, Perspectives, and Practice, edited by Catherine Twomey Fosnot, 3–7. New York: Teacher’s College Press, 1996. – “An Introduction to Radical Constructivism.” AntiMatters 2 (3, 2008): 5–20. – “Learning as a Constructive Activity.” AntiMatters 2 (3, 2008): 33–49. – “Radical Constructivism and Teaching,” 2001. http://www.univie.ac.at /constructivism/evg/papers/244.2.pdf.

322

Bibliography

– Radical Constructivism: A Way of Knowing and Learning. London: Routledge Falmer, 1995. – “The Radical Constructivist View of Science.” Foundations of Science 6 (1, 2001): 31–43. – “Why Constructivism Must Be Radical.” In Constructivism and Education, edited by Marie Larochelle, Nadine Bednarz, and Jim Garrison, 23–8. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Goldman, Alvin. Epistemology and Cognition. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1986. Goodman, Greg S. Educational Psychology: An Application of Critical Constructivism. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. Gopnik, Alison, and Andrew N. Meltzoff. Words, Thoughts, and Theories. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1997. Goudzwaard, Bob. Capitalism and Progress: A Diagnosis of Western Society. Translated and edited by Josina Van Nuis Zylstra. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979. Goudzwaard, Bob, Mark Vander Vennen, and David van Heemst. Hope in Troubled Times: A New Vision for Confronting Global Crises. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007. Gouwens, David J. Kierkegaard as a Religious Thinker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Greene, Joshua D., Jonathan D. Cohen, John M. Darley, Andrew D. Engell, and Leigh E. Nystrom. “The Neural Bases of Cognitive Conflict and Control in Moral Judgment.” Neuron 44 (2004): 387–400. Greene, Joshua D., R. Brian Sommerville, Leigh E. Nystrom, John M. Darley, and Jonathan D. Cohen. “An fmri Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment.” Science 293 (2001): 2105–8. Greene, Maxine. “Introduction: Teaching for Social Justice.” In Teaching for Social Justice: A Democracy and Education Reader, edited by William Ayers, Jean Ann Hunt, and Therese Quinn, xxvii–xlvi. New York: The New Press/Teachers College Press, 1998. Griffioen, Sander, and Jan Verhoogt, eds. Norm and Context in the Social Sciences. Lanham, md: University Press of America, 1990. Griffiths, John, trans. Two Say Why: “Why I Am Still a Christian” by Hans Urs von Balthasar and “Why I Am Still in the Church” by Joseph Ratzinger. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1973. Grondin, Jean. Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. Gruenwald, Oskar. “Renewing the Liberal Arts: C.S. Lewis’ Essential Christianity.” Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies XIV (1/2, 2002): 1–24.

Bibliography

323

Gupta, Anil. “A Critique of Deflationism.” Philosophical Topics 21 (1993): 57–81. Gupta, Anil, and Nuel Belnap. The Revision Theory of Truth. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1993. Gupta, Anoop. “Constructivism and Peer Collaboration in Elementary Mathematics Education: The Connection to Epistemology.” Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education 4 (4, 2008): 381–6. Gutting, Gary. Pragmatic Liberalism and the Critique of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Habermas, Jürgen. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Translated by William Rehg. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1996. – Communication and the Evolution of Society. Translated by Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1979. – “A Genealogical Analysis of the Cognitive Content of Morality.” In The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, ed. Ciaran Cronin and Pablo De Greiff, 3–46. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1998. – Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Translated by Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1993. – “On the Cognitive Content of Morality.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, 96 (1996): 335–8. – On the Logic of the Social Sciences. Translated by Shierry Weber Nicholsen and Jerry Stark. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1988. – The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures. Translated by Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1987. – “Reflections on the Linguistic Foundations of Sociology: The Christian Gauss Lectures (Princeton University, February–March 1971).” In On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction: Preliminary Studies in the Theory of Communicative Action, translated by Barbara Fultner, 1–103. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 2001. – “Richard Rorty’s Pragmatic Turn.” In Richard Rorty and His Critics, edited by Robert Brandom, 31–55. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. – The Theory of Communicative Action. Translated by Thomas McCarthy. Vols. 1–2. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984, 1987. – Truth and Justification. Edited and translated by Barbara Fultner. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 2003. – Vorstudien und Ergänzungen zur Theorie des kommunicativen Handelns. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984. – Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung: Philosophische Aufsätze. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1999.

324

Bibliography

– “Wahrheitstheorien.” In Wirklichkeit und Reflexion: Walter Schulz zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by Helmut Fahrenbach, 211–65. Pfullingen: Günther Neske, 1973. – “What is Universal Pragmatics?” In Communication and the Evolution of Society, translated by Thomas McCarthy, 1–68, 208–19. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984. Hamilton, Christopher. “Kierkegaard on Truth as Subjectivity: Christianity, Ethics, and Asceticism.” Religious Studies 34 (1998): 61–79. Hamilton, John Maxwell, and Eric Jenner. “Redefining Foreign Correspondence.” Journalism 5 (3, 2004): 301–21. Hammond, Philip. “Moral Combat: Advocacy Journalism and the New Humanitarianism.” In Rethinking Human Rights: Critical Approaches to International Politics, edited by David Chandler, 176–95. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Hannay, Alastair. Kierkegaard: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Hannerz, Ulf. Foreign News: Exploring the World of Foreign Correspondents. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Hardy, Lee. “The New Core Curriculum.” Calvin College. http://www.calvin.edu/publications/spark/spring01/core.htm. Hargittai, Eszter, Jason Gallo, and Matthew Kane. “Cross-Ideological Discussions among Conservative and Liberal Bloggers.” Public Choice 134 (1, 2008): 67–86. Hart, Hendrik, Johan van der Hoeven, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, eds. Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition. Lanham, md: University Press of America, 1983. Harvey, Anthony, Richard Finn, and Michael Smart. “Christian Martyrdom: History and Interpretation.” In Witnesses to Faith? Martyrdom in Christianity and Judaism, edited by Brian Wicker, 33–48. Hampshire: Ashgate, 2006. Hastings, Adrian, Alistair Mason, and Hugh Pyper, eds. The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Hauerwas, Stanley. “Pro Ecclesia, Pro Texana: Schooling the Heart in the Heart of Texas.” In The Schooled Heart: Moral Formation in American Higher Education, edited by Douglas V. Henry and Michael D. Beaty, 103–14. Waco, tx: Baylor University Press, 2007. Haugeland, John. “Truth and Rule-Following.” In Having Thought: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind, 291–361. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1998. Heath, Joseph. “What is a Validity Claim?” In Jürgen Habermas, vol. 4, edited by David M. Rasmussen and James Swindal, 285–302. London: Sage, 2002.

Bibliography

325

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: HarperCollins, 1962. – Being and Time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. – “On the Essence of Truth (Pentecost Monday, 1926).” Translated by Theodore Kisiel. In Becoming Heidegger: On the Trail of His Early Occasional Writings, 1910–1927, edited by Theodore Kisiel and Thomas Sheehan, 276–87. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007. – “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes.” In Holzwege, 7–68. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1957. – Vom Wesen der Wahrheit. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1943. Heiner, Brady. “The Recorporealization of Cognition in Phenomenology and Cognitive Science.” Continental Philosophy Review 31 (2, 2008): 115–26. Hemmings, Lawrence Paul, and Susan Frank Parsons, eds. Restoring Faith in Reason: A New Translation of the Encyclical Letter Faith and Reason of Pope John Paul II Together with a Commentary and Discussion. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. Henrici, Peter. “The Philosophy of Hans Urs von Balthasar.” In Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work, edited by David L. Schindler, 149–68. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991. Henry, Douglas V., and Michael D. Beaty, eds. The Schooled Heart: Moral Formation in American Higher Education. Waco, tx: Baylor University Press, 2007. Herman, Judith Lewis. Trauma and Recovery: From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. London: Pandora, 2001. Horwich, Paul. Meaning. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998. – Truth. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998. Hutcheon, Linda. “Historiographic Metafiction.” In The Canadian Postmodern: A Study of Contemporary English Canadian Fiction, 61–77. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1988. Jaeger, Gregg. Entanglement, Information, and the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Berlin: Springer Verlag, 2009. Jeffrey, David Lyle. “Wisdom, Community, Freedom, Truth: Moral Education and the ‘Schooled Heart.’” In The Schooled Heart: Moral Formation in American Higher Education, edited by Douglas V. Henry and Michael D. Beaty, 117–31. Waco, tx: Baylor University Press, 2007. Johnson, Mark. The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Joldersma, Clarence W. “Ernst von Glasersfeld’s Radical Constructivism and Truth as Disclosure.” Educational Theory 61 (2011): 275–93.

326

Bibliography

– “A Spirituality of the Desert for Education: The Call of Justice beyond the Individual or Community.” Studies in Philosophy and Education 28 (3, 2009): 193–208. Kaplan, Ann. Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature. London: Rutgers University Press, 2005. Katovsky, Bill, and Timothy Carlson, eds. Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq – An Oral History. Guildford: Lyons Press, 2003. Keil, Frank C. Concepts, Kinds, and Cognitive Development. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1989. Kelly, Joseph F., ed. The Concise Dictionary of Early Christianity. Collegeville, mn: The Liturgical Press, 1992. Kerr, Fergus. “Balthasar and Metaphysics.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar, edited by Edward T. Oakes and David Moss, 224–40. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Kierkegaard, Søren. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. – Either/Or: A Fragment of Life. Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. – Papers and Journals: A Selection. Translated by Alastair Hannay. London: Penguin Books, 1996. – Philosophical Fragments and Johannes Climacus. Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. – The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening. Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. Kirkham, Richard L. Theories of Truth: An Introduction. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1992. Koenigs, Michael, Liane Young, Ralph Adolphs, Daniel Tranel, Fiery Cushman, Marc Hauser, and Antonio Damasio. “Damage to the Prefrontal Cortex Increases Utilitarian Moral Judgments.” Nature 446 (2007): 908–11. Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 1981. Kok, John H. Vollenhoven: His Early Development. Sioux Center, ia: Dordt College Press, 1992. – , ed., Ways of Knowing: In Concert. Sioux Center, ia: Dordt College Press, 2005. Komonchak, Joseph A., Mary Collins, and Dermot A. Lane, eds. The New Dictionary of Theology. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1987.

Bibliography

327

Krause, Sharon. “Desiring Justice: Motivation and Justification in Rawls and Habermas.” Contemporary Political Theory 4 (November 2005): 363–85. Kripke, Saul. “Outline of a Theory of Truth.” Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975): 690–716. Künne, Wolfgang. Conceptions of Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Kwait, P.G., and L. Hardy. “The Mystery of Quantum Cakes.” American Journal of Physics 68 (2000): 33–6. LaFont, Cristina. The Linguistic Turn in Hermeneutic Philosophy. Translated by José Medina. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1999. Lange, Marc. Laws and Lawmakers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Larmore, Charles. The Morals of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Lasch, Christopher. The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York: Norton, 1978. Laughlin, Charles D. “Imagination and Reality: On the Relations between Myth, Consciousness, and the Quantum Sea.” Zygon 36 (4, 2001): 709–36. Laughlin, Charles D., John McManus, and Eugene G. d’Aquili. Brain, Symbol, and Experience: Toward a Neurophenomenology of Human Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. Laughlin, Charles D., and C. Jason Throop. “Experience, Culture, and Reality: The Significance of Fisher Information for Understanding the Relationship between Alternative States of Consciousness and the Structures of Reality.” International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 22 (2003): 7–26. Lawrence, Eric, John Sides, and Henry Farrell. “Self-Segregation or Deliberation? Blog Readership, Participation, and Polarization in American Politics.” Perspectives on Politics 8 (1, 2010): 141–57. Lesser, Margaret. “Taking on Tolstoy.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5598 (2010): 14–15. Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969. Linz, Juan J. Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes. Boulder, co: Lynne Rienner, 2000. Luntley, Michael. Reason, Truth, and the Self: Getting to Know the Truth about Postmodernism. New York: Routledge, 1995. Lynch, Michael P. True to Life: Why Truth Matters. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 2004. – Truth as One and Many. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. – Truth in Context: An Essay on Pluralism and Objectivity. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 2001.

328

Bibliography

Lynch, Michael, ed. The Nature of Truth: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 2001. Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. MacGilvray, Eric. Reconstructing Public Reason. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2004. Machery, Edouard, Ron Mallon, Shaun Nichols, and Stephen Stich. “Semantics, Cross-Cultural Style.” Cognition 92 (2004): 1–12. MacIntyre, Alasdair. “Moral Relativism, Truth and Justification.” In The MacIntyre Reader, edited by Kelvin Knight, 202–20. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998. Macmurray, J. The Self as Agent. London: Faber and Faber, 1969. McClendon, James W. Witness. Vol. 3 of Systematic Theology. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000. McCumber, John. Reshaping Reason: Toward a New Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. McDowell, John. “Towards Rehabilitating Objectivity.” In Rorty and His Critics, edited by Robert Brandom, 109–23. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. McGinn, Colin. “The Truth about Truth.” In What is Truth? edited by Richard Schantz, 194–204. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002. McGuire, Jonathan, Robin Langdon, Max Coltheart, and Catriona Mackenzie. “A Reanalysis of the Personal/Impersonal Distinction in Moral Psychology Research.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 10 (2009): 577–80. Maier, Johannes. “Being Embedded: The Concept of ‘Liveness’ in Journalism.” Journal of Visual Culture 5 (2006): 96–8. Marquis, Don. “Why Abortion Is Immoral.” In The Right Thing to Do, 4th ed., edited by James Rachels and Stuart Rachels, 85–91. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2007. Marshall, Paul A., Sander Griffioen, and Richard J. Mouw, eds. Stained Glass: Worldviews and Social Science. Lanham, md: University Press of America, 1989. Matthews, Michael R. “Constructivism and Science Education: A Further Appraisal.” Journal of Science Education and Technology 11 (2, 2002): 121–34. Maxwell, N. From Knowledge to Wisdom: A Revolution in the Aims and Methods of Science. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984. Medin, Douglas L., and Edward J. Shoben. “Context and Structure in Conceptual Combination.” Cognitive Psychology 20 (1988): 158–90.

Bibliography

329

Medina, José, and David Wood, eds. Truth: Engagements across Philosophical Traditions. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. Mendez, M.F., E. Anderson, and J.S. Shapria. “An Investigation of Moral Judgment in Frontotemporal Dementia.” Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology 18 (4, 2005): 193–7. Meriwether, Nicholas K. “Returning Moral Philosophy to American Higher Education.” In The Schooled Heart: Moral Formation in American Higher Education, edited by Douglas V. Henry and Michael D. Beaty, 73–101. Waco, tx: Baylor University Press, 2007. Meyer, Derek Louis. “The Poverty of Constructivism.” Educational Philosophy and Theory 41 (3, 2009): 332–41. Michaels, Anne. Fugitive Pieces. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1996. Milbank, John, and Catherine Pickstock. Truth in Aquinas. New York: Routledge, 2001. Misak, Cheryl. Truth and the End of Inquiry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Muggeridge, Malcolm. Christ and the Media. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977. – Chronicles of Wasted Time. New York: Morrow, 1973. – Winter in Moscow. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1934. Murphy, Gregory L., and Douglas L. Medin. “The Role of Theories in Conceptual Coherence.” Psychological Review 92 (1985): 289–316. Nagel, Thomas. The View from Nowhere. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. – “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” Philosophical Review 83 (October 1974): 435–50. Nichols, Aiden. Say It Is Pentecost: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Logic. Washington, dc: Catholic University of America Press, 2003. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage, 1974. Niiniluoto, Ilkka. Critical Scientific Realism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Noe, Alva. Action in Perception. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 2006. Nola, Robert. “Constructivism in Science and Science Education: A Philosophical Critique.” Science and Education 6 (1, 1997): 55–83. Nyhan, Brendan, and Jason Reifler. “When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions.” Political Behavior 32 (2010): 303–30. O’Donnell, John. Hans Urs von Balthasar. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1992. Ondaatje, Michael. The English Patient. New York: Vintage International, 1992.

330

Bibliography

Packer, George. “The Empty Chamber.” New Yorker, 9 August 2010, 38–52, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/09/100809fa_fact_packer. Palmer, Parker. The Courage to Teach. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1998. – To Know as We Are Known: A Spirituality of Education. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983. Parekh, Bhikhu. Rethinking Multiculturalism. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2002. Pedelty, Mark. War Stories: The Culture of Foreign Correspondents. New York: Routledge, 1995. Pelikan, Jaroslav. Fools for Christ: Essays on the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1955. Peters, John Durham. Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. – “Witnessing.” Media, Culture and Society 23 (6, 2001): 707–23. Phillips, D.C. “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Many Faces of Constructivism.” Educational Researcher 24 (7, 1995): 5–12. Pippin, Robert. Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Plantinga, Alvin. “Christian Philosophy at the End of the 20th Century.” In Christian Philosophy at the Close of the Twentieth Century: Assessment and Perspective, edited by Sander Griffioen and Bert M. Balk, 11–53. Kampen, Kok, 1995. – “How to Be an Anti-realist.” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 24 (7, 1982): 47–70. Plato. Meno. Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976. – The Republic. Edited by Betty Radice and Robert Bladick. Translated by H.D.P. Lee. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955. Popma, K.J. De Boodschap van het Boek Job. Goes: Oosterbaan & Le Cointre, 1957. Power, Ann-Marie. “Truth and Aletheia in Heidegger’s Thought.” De Philosophia 14 (1, 1998): 109–20. Pring, Richard. “Liberal Education and Vocational Preparation.” In Beyond Liberal Education: Essays in Honour of Paul H. Hirst, edited by Robin Barrow and P. White, 49–78. New York: Routledge, 1993. Prinz, Jesse. The Emotional Construction of Morals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Putnam, Hilary. Realism and Reason. Vol. 3 of Philosophical Papers. Cambridge: mit Press, 1983.

Bibliography

331

– Realism with a Human Face. Edited by James Conant. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990. – Reason, Truth, and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. – Representation and Reality. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1991. – Words and Life. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1994. Quale, Andreas. Radical Constructivism: A Relativist Epistemic Approach to Science Education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2008. Quell, Gottfried, Gerhard Kittel, and Rudolf Bultmann. Theologisches Wörterbuch zum neuen Testament. Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1933/1953. Quine, W.V.O. “Epistemology Naturalized.” In Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, 69–90. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. – “Natural Kinds.” In Naming, Necessity, and Natural Kinds, edited by S.P. Schwarz, 155–75. Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1977. – “Ontological Relativity.” In Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, 26–68. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. quran: A Reformist Translation. Translated by Edip Yuksel, Layth Saleh alShaiban, and Martha Schulte-Nafeh. Brainbow Press, 2007. Rachels, James, and Stuart Rachels. The Elements of Moral Philosophy. 5th ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Ramsey, Frank P. “Facts and Propositions.” Aristotelian Society Supplement 7 (1927): 153–70. Rasmussen, David. Reading Habermas. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. Rawls, John. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Redding, Paul. Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Reeve, Pamela J. “Evolution, Neuroplasticity, and the Beatific Vision.” Paper presented at Toward a Science of Consciousness, University of Tucson, Arizona, 8–12 April 2008. Riches, John. The Analogy of Beauty: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986. Ricoeur, Paul. “The Bible and the Imagination.” In The Bible as a Document of the University, edited by Hans Dieter Betz, translated by David Pellauer, 49–75. Ann Arbor, MI: Scholars Press, Poleridge Books, 1981. – Essays on Biblical Interpretation. Edited by Lewis S. Mudge. London: spck, 1981. – History and Truth. Translated by Charles A. Kelbley. Evanston, il: Northwestern University Press, 1965. – “On Narrative Imagination.” Interview with Richard Kearney in Dialogues

332

Bibliography

with Continental Thinking: Conversations with Contemporary Thinkers, 33–52. New York: Fordham University Press, 2004. – “The Poetics of Language and Myth.” Interview with Richard Kearney in Dialogues with Continental Thinking: Conversations with Contemporary Thinkers, 99–125. New York: Fordham University Press, 2004. – The Rule of Metaphor. London: Routledge, 2006. – The Symbolism of Evil. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986. – Time and Narrative. Vol. 3. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Risser, James. Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. – “Davidson Between Wittgenstein and Tarski.” Crítica: Revista Hispanoamericana de Filosofia 30 (88, 1998): 49–71. – “Is Truth the Goal of Inquiry? Davidson vs. Wright.” Philosophical Quarterly 45 (180, 1995): 281–300. – “Pragmatism, Relativism, and Irrationalism.” In Consequences of Pragmatism, 160–75. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982. – “Representation, Social Practice, and Truth.” Philosophical Studies 54 (1988): 215–28. – “Response to Jürgen Habermas.” In Richard Rorty and His Critics, edited by Robert Brandom, 56–64. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. – “Universality and Truth.” In Richard Rorty and His Critics, edited by Robert Brandom, 1–30. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. – “The World Well Lost.” In Consequences of Pragmatism, 3–18. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982. Rosenzweig, Franz. “Die Schrift und das Wort.” In Die Schrift und ihrer Verdeutschung, by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, 76–87. Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1936. Rouse, Joseph. Knowledge and Power: Towards a Political Philosophy of Science. Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1987. Russell, Bertrand. “On the Nature of Truth and Falsehood.” In Philosophical Essays, 147–59. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1910. – Portraits from Memory. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956. Samuels, Richard, and Stephen Stich. “Rationality and Psychology.” In The Oxford Handbook of Rationality, edited by Alfred Mele and Piers Rawlings, 279–300. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism Is a Humanism. Translated by Carol Macomber. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.

Bibliography

333

Scarry, Elaine. On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Schantz, Richard, ed. What Is Truth? Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002. Schindler, David C. Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth: A Philosophical Investigation. New York: Fordham University Press, 2004. Schmidt, Frederick F. Truth: A Primer. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995. Schmidt, Lawrence Kennedy. “Uncovering Hermeneutic Truth.” In The Specter of Relativism: Truth, Dialogue, and Phronesis in Philosophical Hermeneutics, edited by Lawrence Kennedy Schmidt, 72–83. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1995. Seel, Martin. “The Two Meanings of Communicative Rationality.” In Jürgen Habermas, vol. 4, edited by David M. Rasmussen and James Swindal, 108–22. London: Sage, 2002. Seerveld, Calvin. “Dooyeweerd’s Legacy for Aesthetics.” In The Legacy of Herman Dooyeweerd, edited by C.T. McIntire, 41–79. New York: University Press of America, 1985. – How to Read the Bible to Hear God Speak: A Study of Numbers 22–24. Sioux Center, ia: Dordt College Press; Toronto: Tuppence Press, 2003. – “Imaginativity.” Faith and Philosophy 4 (1987): 43–58. – “Proverbs 10:1–22: From Poetic Paragraphs to Preaching.” In Reading and Hearing the Word, from Text to Sermon: Essays in Honor of John H. Stek, edited by Arie C. Leder, 181–200. Grand Rapids: Calvin Theological Seminary and crc Publications, 1998. – Rainbows for the Fallen World. Toronto: Tuppence Press, 1980/2005. – “The Relation of the Arts to the Presentation of Truth.” In Truth and Reality, 161–75. Braamfontein: De Jong’s Bookshop, 1971. Seib, Philip. Beyond the Front Lines: How the News Media Cover a World Shaped by War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Sellars, Wilfrid. “Concepts as Involving Laws and Inconceivable Without Them.” Philosophy of Science 15 (1948): 287–315. – Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1997. – “Inference and Meaning.” Mind 62 (1953): 313–18. – “Language, Rules, and Behavior.” In Pure Pragmatics and Possible Worlds, edited by Jeffrey F. Sicha, 125–56. Reseda, ca: Ridgeview Publishing, 1980. – Naturalism and Ontology. Reseda, ca: Ridgeview Publishing Company, 1979. – “Realism and the New Way of Words.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 8 (1948): 601–34.

334

Bibliography

– Science and Metaphysics. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968. – Science, Perception, and Reality. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963. Setzer, Claudia. “Excellent Women: Female Witness to the Resurrection.” Journal of Biblical Literature 116 (2, 1997): 269–72. Shafer-Landau, Russ. Moral Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. “Animation: The Fundamental, Essential, and Properly Descriptive Concept.” Continental Philosophy Review 42 (3, 2009): 375–400. Simpson, John. The War Against Saddam: Taking the Hard Road to Baghdad. London: Macmillan, 2003. Smit, Meijer C. “Beschouwingen over de geschiedenis en de tijd der geschiedenis.” In De eerste en de tweede geschiedenis. Nagelaten geschriften van Meijer C. Smit, edited by Jacob Klapwijk, 96–117. Amsterdam: Buijten and Schipperheijn, 1987. Smith, James K.A. Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. Vol. 1 of Cultural Liturgies. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009. Smith, Malcolm. Montaigne and Religious Freedom: The Dawn of Pluralism. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1991. Soames, Scott. “What Is a Theory of Truth?” Journal of Philosophy 81 (1984): 411–29. Steiner, George. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. Stevenson, C.L. “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms.” Mind 46 (1937): 14–31. Stich, Stephen. Deconstructing the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. – The Fragmentation of Reason. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1990. – “Replies.” In Stich and His Critics, edited by Dominic Murphy and Michael Bishop, 190–252. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Strawson, P.F. Meaning and Truth. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970. – “Truth.” In Logico-Linguistic Papers, 190–213. London: Methuen, 1971. Stronks, Gloria Goris, and Doug Blomberg, eds. A Vision with a Task: Christian Schooling for Responsive Discipleship. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1993. Swindal, James. Reflection Revisited: Jürgen Habermas’s Discursive Theory of Truth. New York: Fordham University Press, 1999. Tarski, Alfred. “The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages.” In Logic, Semantic, Metamathematics, 2nd ed., edited by John Corcoran, translated by J.H. Woodger, 152–278. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983. – “The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 4 (3, 1944): 293–315.

Bibliography

335

Taylor, Charles. “Language and Society.” In Vol. 4 of Jürgen Habermas, ed. David M. Rasmussen and James Swindal, 123–35. London: Sage, 2002. – The Malaise of Modernity. Don Mills: Stoddart, 1991. – Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1989. Taylor, Mark C. Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard. New York: Fordham University Press, 2000. Taylor, S.J. Stalin’s Apologist: Walter Duranty: The New York Times’ Man in Moscow. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Teller, Paul. “From Particles to Quanta.” In An Interpretive Introduction to Quantum Field Theory, 15–36. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Thompson, Evan. Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of the Mind. Cambridge, ma: Belknap Press, 2007. Thomson, Judith Jarvis. Rights, Restitution, and Risk: Essays, in Moral Theory. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1986. Toulmin, Stephen, et al. An Introduction to Reasoning. New York: Macmillan, 1979. Trites, Allison A. The New Testament Concept of Witness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Tumber, Howard. “The Fear of Living Dangerously: Journalists Who Report on Conflict.” International Relations 20 (2006): 439–51. Tumber, Howard, and Frank Webster. Journalists under Fire: Information War and Journalistic Practice. London: Sage, 2006. Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. “Extensional versus Intuitive Reasoning: The Conjunction Fallacy in Probability Judgment.” Psychological Review 90 (4, 1983): 293–315. Vanderhaeghe, Guy. The Englishman’s Boy. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1996. Vanderstraeten, Raf, and Gert Biesta. “Constructivism, Educational Research, and John Dewey.” The Paideia Archive (2004). http://www.bu.edu/wcp/papers/amer/amervand.htm. Van Leeuwen, Raymond C. Context and Meaning in Proverbs 25–27. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988. – “We Really Need Another Bible Translation.” Christianity Today, 22 October 2001, 28–35. Varela, Francisco, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1993. Vickroy, Laurie. Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002.

336

Bibliography

Vollenhoven, D.H. Th. “The Analysis of Knowledge.” Translated by John H. Kok. In Vollenhoven: His Early Development, by John H. Kok, 354–61. Sioux Center, ia: Dordt College Press, 1992. Walhof, Darren R. “Bringing the Deliberative Back In: Gadamer on Conversation and Understanding.” Contemporary Political Theory 4 (2, 2005): 154–74. – “Habermas, Same-Sex Marriage, and the Problem of Religion in Public Life.” Philosophy and Social Criticism 39 (3, 2013): 225–42. Walker, Ralph C.S. The Coherence Theory of Truth. New York: Routledge, 1989. – “Theories of Truth.” In A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, edited by Bob Hale and Crispin Wright, 309–30. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. Walker, Vaughn R. “Perry v. Schwarzenegger et al.” US District Court for Northern California, 2010. Walsh, Brian, and Sylvia Keesmaat. Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire. Downers Gove, il: InterVarsity Press, 2004. Walsh, Brian J., Hendrik Hart, and Robert E. VanderVennen, eds. An Ethos of Compassion and the Integrity of Creation. Lanham, md: University Press of America, 1995. Warnke, Georgia. “Communicative Rationality and Cultural Values.” In The Cambridge Companion to Habermas, edited by Stephen K. White, 120–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Wason, Peter C. “Natural and Contrived Experience in a Reasoning Problem.” Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 23 (1971): 63– 71. Weigel, David. “Radical Shriek: Lefty Academics Convene in Berkeley to Try to Make Sense of the Tea Party Movement.” Slate, 21 October 2010, http://www.slate.com/id/2272097. Weinsheimer, Joel. Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. Weiskopf, Daniel. “Concept Empiricism and the Vehicles of Thought.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (2007): 156–83. – “The Plurality of Concepts.” Synthese 169 (2009): 145–73. Weller, George. First into Nagasaki. New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2006. White, Stephen K. The Cambridge Companion to Habermas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Wiebe, Rudy. “Walking Where His Feet Can Walk.” Interview with Herb Wyile in Speaking in the Past Tense: Canadian Novelists on Writing Historical

Bibliography

337

Fiction, edited by Herb Wyile, 53–78. Waterloo, on: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2007. Williams, Bernard. Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Williams, Michael. “Do We (Epistemologists) Need a Theory of Truth?” Philosophical Topics 14 (1999): 223–42. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. “Teaching for Justice: On Shaping How Students Are Disposed To Act.” In Educating for Shalom: Essays on Christian Higher Education, edited by Clarence Joldersma and Gloria Goris Stronks, 135–54. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. – “Teaching Justly for Justice.” Journal of Education and Christian Belief 10 (2, 2006): 23–37. Wright, Crispin. “Realism, Antirealism, Irrealism, Quasi-Realism.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy VII (1988): 25–49. – Realism, Meaning, and Truth. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. – Truth and Objectivity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992. Wright, N.T. After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. Wyile, Herb. Speculative Fictions: Contemporary Canadian Novelists and the Writing of History. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002. Yefimenko, Hennadiy. “Demographic Consequence of Holodomor of 1933 in Ukraine.” In The All-Union Census of 1937 in Ukraine, edited by Institute of History Kiev, 42–63, 2003. Yoder, John Howard. For the Nations: Essays Public and Evangelical. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997. Young, James O. “A Defence of the Coherence Theory of Truth.” Journal of Philosophical Research 26 (2001): 89–101. – Global Anti-Realism. Aldershot: Avebury, 1995. Zajonc, Robert. “On the Primacy of Affect.” American Psychologist 39 (1984): 117–23. Zimmerli, Walther. “Concerning the Structure of Old Testament Wisdom.” In Studies in Ancient Israelite Wisdom, edited by James L. Crenshaw, translated by Brian W. Kovacs, 175–207. New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1976. Žižek, Slavoj. The Fragile Absolute, or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? London: Verso, 2000. Zuidema, S.U. “Kierkegaard.” In Vol. 1 of Denkers Van Deze Tijd, 11–61. Franeker: Wever, 1957.

338

Bibliography

Zuidervaart, Lambert. “After Dooyeweerd: Truth in Reformational Philosophy.” Toronto: Institute for Christian Studies, 2008. http://records.ics canada.edu/ir/articles/20081007-1.shtml. – Artistic Truth: Aesthetics, Discourse, and Imaginative Disclosure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. – “Dooyeweerd’s Conception of Truth: Exposition and Critique.” Philosophia Reformata 73 (2008): 170–89. – “Religion in Public: Passages from Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.” University of Toronto Journal for Jewish Thought 1 (April 2010). http://cjs.utoronto.ca/tijt. – Social Philosophy after Adorno. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. – “Truth Matters: Heidegger and Horkheimer in Dialectical Disclosure.” Telos 145 (Winter 2008): 131–60. – “Unfinished Business: Toward a Reformational Conception of Truth.” Philosophia Reformata 74 (2009): 1–20. Zuidervaart, Lambert, and Henry Luttikhuizen, eds. The Arts, Community and Cultural Democracy. London: Macmillan Press; New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000.

3 Contributors

doug blomberg, phd, edd, is the academic dean and a professor of philosophy of education at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. He was a teacher, teacher educator, and administrator in Australia before immigrating to Canada in 2003. He has an enduring research interest in how a conception of the structure of knowledge influences views of learning and schooling. His early formulation of a “ways of knowing” thesis has developed in the context of a biblical perspective on wisdom, as addressed in A Vision with a Task (Baker, 1993), Wisdom and Curriculum (Dordt College Press, 2007), and various articles and chapters. allyson carr is the associate director of the Centre for Philosophy, Religion and Social Ethics at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. She received her phd in history of philosophy in May 2012 with work focusing on philosophical hermeneutics, medieval narrative philosophy, and Christine de Pizan studies. She is also interested in feminist ethics and twentieth-century continental philosophy. When not at work or research, Carr enjoys tending her herb garden, writing poetry and fiction, and spending time with her family. jeffrey dudiak is an associate professor of philosophy at the King’s University College in Edmonton, Alberta. His principal work is in the area of continental philosophy of religion and ethics, especially the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, and in Quaker religious thought. olaf ellefson is an instructor at York University in Toronto. His interests lie primarily in the philosophy of language, particularly issues

340

Contributors

related to reference and truth. He recently defended his dissertation, entitled “Truth, Reference, and Intuition,” in which he articulates a Davidsonian theory of reference that can accommodate divergent folk responses to various thought experiments in the philosophy of language. gerrit glas is a psychiatrist and philosopher. As a psychiatrist he is director of residency training in psychiatry at the Dimence Institute for Mental Health in the Netherlands and a practicing psychiatrist there. As a philosopher he teaches and writes on issues at the interface between philosophy, psychiatry, neuroscience, and ethics. He has held several chairs in philosophy and has occupied the Dooyeweerd chair in the faculty of philosophy at the vu University Amsterdam since 2008. sr gill k. goulding cj is a member of the Congregation of Jesus and an associate professor of systematic theology at Regis College, the Jesuit graduate school of theology at the University of Toronto, where she also serves as the advanced degree director. Her primary fields of research are the trinity and ecclesiology and the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. She is currently revising a manuscript on ecclesiology and researching complementarities between the work of Bernard Lonergan and Balthasar on the trinity. Pope Benedict appointed her as a theological expert to the October 2012 Synod of Bishops in Rome on “The New Evangelisation and the Transmission of the Christian Faith.” jay a. gupta is an assistant professor of philosophy at Mills College in Oakland, California. His research background and interests are in nineteenth-century philosophy, with particular emphasis on Hegel. He has done recent work on Hegel’s critique of modern moral consciousness and on the recovery of virtue ethics in the modern age. Both are aspects of a general research program that critically investigates the character and consequences of ethical thought and discourse in cultural modernity. clarence joldersma is a professor of education at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His research interests include philosophy of education, philosophy of mind, embodied cognition, Levinas studies, and environmental sustainability. He has co-edited two volumes of

Contributors

341

essays by Nicholas Wolterstorff, titled Educating for Shalom and Educating for Life. His recent published essays include “A Levinasian Environmental Ethic,” “Putting Arendt’s Work and Labor back in School,” and “Providential Deism, Divine Reason, and Locke’s Educational Theory.” When he is not writing, he can be found working on projects in his woodshop or playing ball hockey with his grandson. matthew j. klaassen is a doctoral student at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, where he has served as a research assistant at the Centre for Philosophy, Religion and Social Ethics. He is working on a dissertation about Immanuel Kant’s theory of reflecting judgment. john jung park is a phd graduate student in the philosophy department at Duke University. His areas of interest are in ethics and philosophy of mind. pamela j. reeve is an associate professor of philosophy at St Augustine’s Seminary, a member college of the Toronto School of Theology. Her research interests include the anthropology of Thomas Aquinas, philosophy of mysticism, and current debates in political theology. amy d. richards received a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh, New College School of Divinity, in 2010. At the time of writing her paper for the Truth Matters conference, Richards was finishing a two-year post at Calvin College as an assistant professor of media studies in the Communication Arts and Sciences Department. Currently she works part-time with the World Affairs Council of Western Michigan, developing programs on international affairs and foreign policy. Much of the rest of her time she and her husband, Jason Duncan, spend in the truth-telling gaze of their new son, Leo. calvin seerveld is an emeritus senior member in philosophical aesthetics at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. A graduate of Calvin College and the University of Michigan, he studied philosophy, comparative literature, and theology in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Italy, and received a phd from the vu University Amsterdam. He taught philosophy many years at Trinity Christian College, Illinois, before specializing in aesthetics. His publications include Rainbows for the Fallen World, a Seerveld reader titled In The Fields of

342

Contributors

the Lord, and a translation from the Hebrew of the biblical Song of Songs arranged for choral reading performance. ronnie shuker is a doctoral student at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, research assistant at the Centre for Philosophy, Religion and Social Ethics, and a freelance journalist with master’s degrees in both philosophy and journalism. adam smith is a phd candidate in the Politics Department at Brandeis University. He has a ba from Olivet Nazarene University and an ma from the Institute for Christian Studies. His research focuses on democratic theory, religion and politics, and American political thought. He lives in Waltham, Massachusetts. john van rys is a graduate of Dalhousie University and a professor of English at Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario, where he teaches Canadian literature. Dr Van Rys does scholarly work on Canadian literature and writes on a range of modern authors, including Al Purdy, Ernest Buckler, Margaret Avison, and Alice Munro. His current work focuses on violence, suffering, and trauma in Canadian literature, especially in Canadian historical fiction. He also teaches expository writing and has co-authored texts on writing, including The College Writer and The Research Writer. darren walhof is an associate professor of political science at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, where he teaches political theory and American constitutional law. Among his research interests are philosophical hermeneutics, democratic theory, religion and politics, and Reformation political thought. In 2010 he was a visiting professor at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Ethics. He is co-editor with Derek Peterson of The Invention of Religion, and he has published articles in political theory, history, and philosophy journals. When not studying political theory he is likely to be found biking, playing hockey, or singing. matthew walhout earned his phd in physics from the University of Maryland, and since 1996 he has served as a professor of physics at Calvin College, where he is currently the dean for research and scholarship. In his main line of laboratory research, he uses laser light to trap atoms and to study the formation of extremely weak molecular

Contributors

343

bonds. He turns to philosophy in order to understand when, why, and how people can become normatively bound by scientific thought and speech. lambert zuidervaart is a professor of philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies and a professor of philosophy, status only, at the University of Toronto, where he is an associate member of the graduate faculty in philosophy. His primary scholarly interests lie in continental philosophy, critical theory, hermeneutics, social philosophy, and philosophy of art, with emphases on Kant, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Gadamer, Adorno, and Habermas. He is currently conducting research into theories of truth and theories of globalization. His most recent books, all published by Cambridge University Press, include Artistic Truth (2004), Social Philosophy after Adorno (2007), and Art in Public (2011).

This page intentionally left blank

Index

advocacy journalism, 150–1 allusivity, 18, 300–5 aletheia. See disclosure alethic realism, 24–5, 32 Alter, Robert, 298–9 Anselm, 226, 227, 229 Aquinas, Thomas, 16, 23–4, 252, 263–74, 277–9 Arendt, Hannah, 103–4, 113, 117– 18 argumentation, 38–9. See also discourse Aristotle, 201, 271 artistic truth, 18, 177, 301–8 Atwood, Margaret, 155–6, 165 Augustine, 226 authenticity, 176–7, 180, 191 Ayer, A.J., 211–12 von Balthasar, Hans Urs, 15, 245–56; on knowing, 246–7 bearing witness, 11–12, 38–9, 179; and Christianity, 140–5, 150; and community, 144, 148, 151; ethics of, 138–40; and frontline journalism, 146–51. See also embodiment; journalism

Bible, the, 141, 232, 298, 299, 300, 301, 304, 305 Blackburn, Simon, 211–12 Bolt, Peter G., 141 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 143, 297 Boyden, Joseph, 156, 165 Buber, Martin, 296, 298, 303–4, 308 Christ, 248, 253, 255 Church, the, 254–5 Coleman, Elizabeth, 234–6 communicative action, 28 conceptual schemes, 51, 64n36, 85–7 consensus theory, 25–6 constructivism, 46, 49–54, 56, 60. See also realism/anti-realism debate contemplation. See prayer contextualism, 30, 40. See also Rorty, Richard cosmology, 265–7, 274–7 Cross, the, 248–9 curriculum reform, 228–31, 234–5 Damasio, Antonio, 220 Davidson, Donald, 8, 83–7, 88–95

346

Index

democracy, 10, 12, 25, 37, 113–18, 122–3 democratic deliberation, 10, 107 determinate negation, 69 dialogue, 12, 106–7, 114–15 disclosure, 36–8, 55–60, 108–18, 249–52. See also truth; veiling/unveiling discourse, 10, 12, 30–1, 126–34; and justification, 34–9, 67. See also argumentation disentanglement, 111–12 Dooyeweerd, Herman, viii, x, 13, 177–9, 183–4, 187–9, 191 Doran, Robert, 252 double-slit experiment. See quantum hourglass Douthat, Ross, 117 dunamis, 184–5 Duranty, Walter, 11, 139–40 Durkheim, Émile, 143 education, 7, 14, 46–7, 60–1, 227–37; Christian education, 227–31, 235–7; of virtue, 225–7, 230–1, 236–7, 241n54 embodiment, 53–7, 60, 146, 180, 270–3, 278. See also bearing witness emotion, 215–21 empathy, 207 epistemology, 79–80, 84, 87–8 equality, 116–17 ethical imagination, 13, 195–6, 201–2, 205–8 ethics, 12, 13, 138–9, 195–200; of killing, 203–4; of war, 205–8. See also moral judgment evolution, 264, 270–6, 278 existentialism, 196–8, 203–4

experimental philosophy, 8, 84 facts, 32–3, 35–6, 287–90 fact/value dichotomy, 66–8, 77, 80 faith, 181, 245, 254 faithfulness, 17, 58–9 Findley, Timothy, 156, 164, 167 finiteness, 59–61, 107 formal pragmatics, 26–7 Frege, Gottlob, 27 Fultner, Barbara, 27 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 10, 15, 104–14 Gellhorn, Martha, 149–50 Gibbard, Allan, 212 von Glasersfeld, Ernst, 7, 46–61 God, 15, 17, 235–6, 245, 249–51, 301; and creation, 229, 235–6; noetic activity of, 24–5, 263–4, 267–70; and truth, 246–7, 250–2, 296–7, 306 grace, 245, 254–5 Greene, Joshua, 218–19 Habermas, Jürgen, 6, 7, 10, 15, 24–40, 108, 126–32 Hauerwas, Stanley, 228–9 healing, 14 Heidegger, Martin, 15, 33, 53–6, 108–9, 259–60n28, 308 Herman, Judith Lewis, 165 hermeneutics, 55, 107–8, 113–14, 157; of suspicion, 148–9, 151 historical fiction, 11, 12, 155–68. See also narrative history, 11, 12, 166–7 Holocaust, the, 149–50, 166–7 horizons: fusion of, 108, 113; in

Index

Dooyeweerd, 183; temporal horizons, 159, 162–3 ideology, 115, 159 imagination, 161–2, 200; imaginative disclosure, 177. See also ethical imagination imitation, 266–9. See also ontological truth indirect communication, 179–82 inference, 69–70, 77 interpretation, 54, 55, 287 intersubjectivity, 67 Iraq war, 146–50 Jesus, 16, 17, 232, 237, 253, 287–9 journalism, 10, 11, 138–40, 145–51; and ethics, 205–6 justice, 14, 231 justification, 5, 23, 25–32, 37–41 Kant, Immanuel, 48 Keil, Frank, 214 Kierkegaard, Søren, 12, 13, 177–91, 196–204, 207 knowledge, 49–53, 246–7 Kogawa, Joy, 156, 163, 165 language, 26–9, 33–4, 78, 104–13, 116–17, 157 Laughlin, Charles, 16, 264–6, 273–9 law, 122–4 learning, 47, 127–8 legitimacy, 10, 122–5, 128, 131–4 life-giving disclosure. See truth logical validity, 38–40 logos, 104–6 love, 16, 225–7, 235, 247–8, 250–2 Lynch, Michael, 24, 51–2 Lyotard, Jean-François, 290n2

347

MacIntyre, Alasdair, 228 McClendon, James W., 142 Macmurray, John, 232 Marquis, Don, 204 martyrdom, 143–5, 150. See also bearing witness Matthews, Michael, 50 meaning, 90–2, 95 mediation, 187 Mendez, Mario, 220–1 Michaels, Ann, 156, 165, 167 miracles, 284–5 modal order, 188 modern world, the, 285–6 moral judgment: deontology and utilitarianism, 218–21; epistemic emotionism, 215–18, 221; noncognitivism/subjectivism, 211–13, 221 Muggeridge, Malcolm, 11, 138–40 mystery, 15, 246–51, 301 myth, 265–6, 275–8; demythologizing, 286 Nagel, Thomas, 197–200 narrative, 12, 157–63, 205–6, 232–3; and morality, 160–1. See also historical fiction neuroscience, 186, 218–21 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 291–2n7 normativity, 13, 61; and science, 77–8; and truth, 93 norms, 58, 178 objectification, 179, 184–6, 199, 203–6 objective truth, 196 obligation, 202 Ondaatje, Michael, 156, 164, 167 ontological truth, 263–4, 269

348

openness, 56, 114, 178–9, 251, 254 Palmer, Parker, 226–7, 234, 236 parable of the talents, 233–4 passion, 187 Paul, 225–6, 237, 250 philosophy of consciousness, 7, 52–3, 55, 60, 109–10, Plantinga, Alvin, viii, 7, 23–5, 31, 39–40 Plato, 103, 225–7; Meno, 105–7, 226, 232 pluralism, 10, 122–6, 128–34; cognitive, 85–6, 90 politics, 9, 104–7, 113–14; of the United States, 104, 115–17 postmodernism, 193n21, 287–8 practical objects, 32–4, 38 pragmatism, 68, 79–80; pragmatic epistemology, 84, 90; pragmatic realism, 28–31, 37; pragmatic teleology, 78–9. See also formal pragmatics prayer, 245–7, 252–6 predicative availability, 34, 57 predicative self-disclosure, 34–5 Prinz, Jesse, 215–16, 219, 221 proceduralism, 123–7, 130 Putnam, Hilary, 23–5, 27, 31, 36, 87 quantification, 68–70, 75–6 quantum hourglass, 70–1 quantum physics, 8, 66–8, 70–6, 78, 98–9n25 quantum soup, 71–2 Quine, W.V.O., 213 Rachels, James, 195 rapture, 271–3 rationality, 83–7, 127–8, 130

Index

realism/anti-realism debate, 5–7, 23–8, 39–41, 50–4, 78; and Habermas, 28, 30–4, 40; post–anti/realism 40–1. See also constructivism, contextualism reasoning: everyday failure of, 83–4 Redding, Paul, 67 reference, 29, 89–92, 94–5 reformational philosophy, viii, 182–3, 187–9, 296 relativism, 6, 49–52, 89, 177, 258n20. See also pluralism religion, 178, 183–4, 188–9, 276–7 responsibility, 58–60 Ricoeur, Paul, 12, 142, 156–63, 166–8, 302, 305 Rorty, Richard, 13, 23–5, 28–31, 40, 195–6, 200, 205–8 Rouse, Joseph, 53–5 Russell, Bertrand, 66, 68, 70, 199 same-sex marriage, 117 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 196–7 Scarry, Elaine, 306 Schooled Heart, The, 228–9, 234–5 science, 53, 67; scientific law, 69, 75; scientific truth, 79–80; social context of, 76–7 self, the, 185 self-relatedness, 178–9, 185, 188, 190–1, 200–1. See also subjectivity Sellars, Wilfrid, 67–8, 77–9 Simpson, John, 11, 146–50 skepticism, 5, 6 solidarity, 195–6 Sorokin, Pitirim, 279 speech acts, 27, 29, 34–6, 190 Steiner, George, 303 Stevenson, C.L., 211–12 Stich, Stephen, 8, 83–4, 86–95

Index

subjectivism, 212–13. See also moral judgment subjectivity, 185–7, 196–204, 207–8. See also objectification; selfrelatedness Tarski, Alfred, 55, 83–4, 87–9, 92–3, 95 Taylor, Charles, 176–7 Terry, Randall, 124–5, 127–8, 131, 133 theology, 24–8, 285–7 theory versus practice, 228–30, 232 theory-theory of concepts, 213–16, 221 Throop, C. Jason, 272–9 Tiktak, John, 307–8 Time and Narrative, 157–60, 166–8. See also historical fiction; horizons; Paul Ricoeur totalitarianism, 103, 123 translation, 85, 87–8, 302–5 trauma, 11, 164–8 Trinity, the, 15, 246–56 trolley problem experiments, 14, 218–21 trueing, 16, 263–4, 274–8 trust, 131–4, 175–6, 190–1, 251–2 truth: correspondence theory of, 24–5, 33–6, 48–61, 109; as event, 111–12; existential, 196, 198–9; human relation to, 180–1, 184, 190; as life-giving disclosure, 7, 57–61, 17–9, 289; and morality,

349

175–6, 195–8; propositional, 23, 27–41, 108–9; as semantic assertibility, 68, 79; theory of, 5–6, 24–6, 88–92, 178. See also artistic truth; objective truth; ontological truth truth claims, 29–30, 37–8 truthfulness, 126–7, 131–4, 175, 176, 225–6 T-sentences, 83, 88–90, 92, 94–5, 96n3 Ukrainian famine, 138–40 universality, 182 validity, 37, 59–61, 126–7. See also logical validity validity claims, 26–7 Vanderhaeghe, Guy, 156, 164 veiling/unveiling, 246, 249–52 Vollenhoven, Dirk, viii wave/particle duality, 70–2 Weller, George, 206 Wiebe, Rudy, 156, 168 Wikstrom, Britt, 307–8 wisdom, 228, 233 Wolterstorff, Nicholas, viii, 231 world story, 67–8, 76–8 world, 56 Zajonc, Robert, 217 Zuidervaart, Lambert, 6, 7, 13, 15, 17, 32–5, 46, 56–61, 177–80, 190–1, 297