In my last post I described how faith is generically like opinion, because it involves both reason and will. Faith and opinion are both perfectly compatible with reasonableness, but the reasons for holding something by opinion or faith are formally different from the reasons on account of which we can be said to know something. The former are reasons for a choice — because we choose to hold what we hold by faith or opinion –, whereas the latter are reasons by which we simply see something.

The scientism which grew up in the last few centuries, but which is now recognized by many to have been misguided, was essentially the result of an excessive faith in our power to know, along with a concomitant (and self-contradictory) disdain for faith and opinion. One of my readers suggested that I was foolish to say that we could reasonably hold anything that we didn’t simply know, as if it were possible to entirely dispense with faith and opinion. This was surely a naive suggestion (an opinion), but it was, quite essentially, just what the new atheist scientism is really based on, if it is based on anything. What the new atheism fails to see, before all else, is that the vast bulk of human thought is not, in fact, in the realm of knowing, but rather in the realm of opinion and faith. And there is nothing wrong with this; it is simply the nature of human beings to live by opinion and faith. What would be (and often is) wrong, evidently, is to fail to make our faith and opinions be adequately guided by both reason and good will.

But the far deeper truth about this demands that we go further, by observing not only what opinion and faith have in common as against knowledge, but also how they are different. It is not by accident that English has two different words, faith and opinion. So how are they different?

What is perhaps most obvious is that faith entails a connection with other persons, while opinion need not have any such connection. One can have the opinion that digging a well right here will be successful or not; but this is not faith, unless it involves submitting to someone else’s judgment. Faith is thus commonly associated with trust, whereas opinion may be entirely independent of, or even contrary to, what anyone else proposes.

The Cartesian revolution was, before all else, a crisis of faith. Descartes’ entire philosophy was motivated by a desire to withhold trust in others, on the ground that such trust was apt to be misleading. No one can reasonably doubt that trusting others sometimes does cause us to be misled. But Descartes’ unexamined presumption was that one could do better by dispensing with such trust entirely. One of the results of this was that philosophy — intellectual life — had to begin anew every time anyone proposed to himself to undertake it. Philosophy and intellectual life thereby came to be seen as radically solitary activities; instead of “philosophy,” there could now be no more than a lame creature described as “my philosophy” and “your philosophy.”

What this really means is that truth was no longer understood as a common good. This was the Machiavellian-Hobbesean view of human nature transported into the realm of intellectual pursuit. In the latter view, to trust another can never be understood as anything but a calculated risk, and to regard it as anything else is thought to be, by definition, gullibility. Often one does not recognize that this involves a profoundly false redefinition of human nature. There is, obviously, such a thing as gullibility; but the view that mistrust is the normal and virtuous stance vis-à-vis other persons is a view pregnant with dire consequences. Among other things, it entails treating every fellow person as no more than a circumstance for our choices. The world thus becomes an absolutely lonely place, in the deepest imaginable sense.

There is a deep interior contradiction within the new atheist scientism, precisely with regard to its attitude to this question of the interpersonal nature of faith. The new atheism inherited — indeed is defined by — the Cartesian attitude of mistrust, as its articulated philosophical attitude. But the contradiction, lost upon the adherents of this view, consists in the fact that contemporary science is replete with acts of faith too.

Many defenders of religious faith have pointed out that both contemporary science, as well as the attitude of scientism, require their own faith. But more often than not this is made into an ad hominem argument pointed in the wrong direction; as if the authors of the argument wanted to say, “Why blame us for our faith when you have yours too?” But there is a deeper truth which this argument entirely misses.

The science of the last few centuries has, by all accounts, grown by astonishing leaps and bounds. From the wonderful mysteries of the quantum structure of the atom, to the vast expanses of space-time, to the vast history of cosmic evolution, we now know about a world which was simply lost upon our ancestors.

But we must focus our attention on this phrase, “We now know.” In what sense do we now know? Many an adherent of religious faith might be quick to point out that we don’t know — for as I just observed above, it is really faith by which “we” claim to know the many things science tells us. The scientist who actually uses the Hubble telescope may (perhaps) claim to know, but the rest of us believe.

Is it simply wrong, then, to say, “We know?” It will surely be wrong it we adopt the Cartesian attitude of fundamental mistrust. But our spontaneous and natural habits of discourse (expressed in the phrase “we now know”) belie this false attitude. The fundamental mistrust of Cartesianism is based on the assumption that truth cannot be an interpersonal common good, and that therefore I cannot share the knowledge you possess, by a kind of participation.

We rightly, and spontaneously, reject such mistrust in matters of science. It is only when we try to philosophically articulate our view about truth itself that some of us fall back on the old Cartesianism. But our more natural and spontaneous inclination gives the lie to our bad philosophical habits. It is only because these old philosophical habits remain inadequately examined that some of us — most notably the naive adherents to contemporary scientific atheism — continue to practice them.

[To be continued....]

Here are some refreshing words to recall, after the idiocy emerging lately from Congress and the White House. In view of the latter, the admonitions at the end of this talk were clearly prescient and wise.

~~~~~~~~~

Ronald Reagan’s Farewell Address to the Nation

Oval Office
January 11, 1989

This is the 34th time I’ll speak to you from the Oval Office and the last. We’ve been together eight years now, and soon it’ll be time for me to go. But before I do, I wanted to share some thoughts, some of which I’ve been saving for a long time.

It’s been the honor of my life to be your president. So many of you have written the past few weeks to say thanks, but I could say as much to you. Nancy and I are grateful for the opportunity you gave us to serve.

One of the things about the presidency is that you’re always somewhat apart. You spend a lot of time going by too fast in a car someone else is driving, and seeing the people through tinted glass–the parents holding up a child, and the wave you saw too late and couldn’t return. And so many times I wanted to stop and reach out from behind the glass, and connect. Well, maybe I can do a little of that tonight.

People ask how I feel about leaving. And the fact is, “parting is such sweet sorrow.” The sweet part is California, and the ranch and freedom. The sorrow–the goodbyes, of course, and leaving this beautiful place.

You know, down the hall and up the stairs from this office is the part of the White House where the president and his family live. There are a few favorite windows I have up there that I like to stand and look out of early in the morning. The view is over the grounds here to the Washington Monument, and then the Mall and the Jefferson Memorial. But on mornings when the humidity is low, you can see past the Jefferson to the river, the Potomac, and the Virginia shore. Someone said that’s the view Lincoln had when he saw the smoke rising from the Battle of Bull Run. I see more prosaic things: the grass on the banks, the morning traffic as people make their way to work, now and then a sailboat on the river.

I’ve been thinking a bit at that window. I’ve been reflecting on what the past eight years have meant and mean. And the image that comes to mind like a refrain is a nautical one–a small story about a big ship, and a refugee and a sailor. It was back in the early ’80s, at the height of the boat people. And the sailor was hard at work on the carrier Midway, which was patrolling the South China Sea. The sailor, like most American servicemen, was young, smart, and fiercely observant. The crew spied on the horizon a leaky little boat. And crammed inside were refugees from Indochina hoping to get to America. The Midway sent a small launch to bring them to the ship and safety. As the refugees made their way through the choppy seas, one spied the sailor on deck and stood up and called out to him. He yelled, “Hello, American sailor. Hello, freedom man.”

A small moment with a big meaning, a moment the sailor, who wrote it in a letter, couldn’t get out of his mind. And when I saw it, neither could I. Because that’s what it was to be an American in the 1980s. We stood, again, for freedom. I know we always have, but in the past few years the world again, and in a way, we ourselves rediscovered it.

It’s been quite a journey this decade, and we held together through some stormy seas. And at the end, together, we are reaching our destination.

The fact is, from Grenada to the Washington and Moscow summits, from the recession of ‘81 to ‘82, to the expansion that began in late ‘82 and continues to this day, we’ve made a difference. The way I see it, there were two great triumphs, two things that I’m proudest of. One is the economic recovery, in which the people of America created–and filled–19 million new jobs. The other is the recovery of our morale. America is respected again in the world and looked to for leadership.

Something that happened to me a few years ago reflects some of this. It was back in 1981, and I was attending my first big economic summit, which was held that year in Canada. The meeting place rotates among the member countries. The opening meeting was a formal dinner for the heads of government of the seven industrialized nations. Now, I sat there like the new kid in school and listened, and it was all Francois this and Helmut that. They dropped titles and spoke to one another on a first-name basis. Well, at one point I sort of leaned in and said, “My name’s Ron.” Well, in that same year, we began the actions we felt would ignite an economic comeback–cut taxes and regulation, started to cut spending. And soon the recovery began.

Two years later another economic summit, with pretty much the same cast. At the big opening meeting we all got together, and all of a sudden, just for a moment, I saw that everyone was just sitting there looking at me. And one of them broke the silence. “Tell us about the American miracle,” he said.

Well, back in 1980, when I was running for president, it was all so different. Some pundits said our programs would result in catastrophe. Our views on foreign affairs would cause war. Our plans for the economy would cause inflation to soar and bring about economic collapse. I even remember one highly respected economist saying, back in 1982, that “the engines of economic growth have shut down here, and they’re likely to stay that way for years to come.” Well, he and the other opinion leaders were wrong. The fact is, what they called “radical” was really “right.” What they called “dangerous” was just “desperately needed.”

And in all of that time I won a nickname, “The Great Communicator.” But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: It was the content. I wasn’t a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn’t spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation–from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in principles that have guided us for two centuries. They called it the Reagan revolution. Well, I’ll accept that, but for me it always seemed more like the great rediscovery, a rediscovery of our values and our common sense.

Common sense told us that when you put a big tax on something, the people will produce less of it. So, we cut the people’s tax rates, and the people produced more than ever before. The economy bloomed like a plant that had been cut back and could now grow quicker and stronger. Our economic program brought about the longest peacetime expansion in our history: real family income up, the poverty rate down, entrepreneurship booming, and an explosion in research and new technology. We’re exporting more than ever because American industry became more competitive and at the same time, we summoned the national will to knock down protectionist walls abroad instead of erecting them at home. Common sense also told us that to preserve the peace, we’d have to become strong again after years of weakness and confusion. So, we rebuilt our defenses, and this New Year we toasted the new peacefulness around the globe. Not only have the superpowers actually begun to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons–and hope for even more progress is bright–but the regional conflicts that rack the globe are also beginning to cease. The Persian Gulf is no longer a war zone. The Soviets are leaving Afghanistan. The Vietnamese are preparing to pull out of Cambodia, and an American-mediated accord will soon send 50,000 Cuban troops home from Angola.

The lesson of all this was, of course, that because we’re a great nation, our challenges seem complex. It will always be this way. But as long as we remember our first principles and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours. And something else we learned: Once you begin a great movement, there’s no telling where it will end. We meant to change a nation, and instead, we changed a world.

Countries across the globe are turning to free markets and free speech and turning away from ideologies of the past. For them, the great rediscovery of the 1980s has been that, lo and behold, the moral way of government is the practical way of government: Democracy, the profoundly good, is also the profoundly productive.

When you’ve got to the point when you can celebrate the anniversaries of your 39th birthday, you can sit back sometimes, review your life, and see it flowing before you. For me there was a fork in the river, and it was right in the middle of my life. I never meant to go into politics. It wasn’t my intention when I was young. But I was raised to believe you had to pay your way for the blessings bestowed on you. I was happy with my career in the entertainment world, but I ultimately went into politics because I wanted to protect something precious.

Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with three little words: “We the people.” “We the people” tell the government what to do, it doesn’t tell us. “We the people” are the driver, the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. Almost all the world’s constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which “We the people” tell the government what it is allowed to do. “We the people” are free. This belief has been the underlying basis for everything I’ve tried to do these past eight years.

But back in the 1960s, when I began, it seemed to me that we’d begun reversing the order of things–that through more and more rules and regulations and confiscatory taxes, the government was taking more of our money, more of our options, and more of our freedom. I went into politics in part to put up my hand and say, “Stop.” I was a citizen politician, and it seemed the right thing for a citizen to do.

I think we have stopped a lot of what needed stopping. And I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.

Nothing is less free than pure communism, and yet we have, the past few years, forged a satisfying new closeness with the Soviet Union. I’ve been asked if this isn’t a gamble, and my answer is no because we’re basing our actions not on words but deeds. The detente of the 1970s was based not on actions but promises. They’d promise to treat their own people and the people of the world better. But the gulag was still the gulag, and the state was still expansionist, and they still waged proxy wars in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Well, this time, so far, it’s different. President Gorbachev has brought about some internal democratic reforms and begun the withdrawal from Afghanistan. He has also freed prisoners whose names I’ve given him every time we’ve met.

But life has a way of reminding you of big things through small incidents. Once, during the heady days of the Moscow summit, Nancy and I decided to break off from the entourage one afternoon to visit the shops on Arbat Street–that’s a little street just off Moscow’s main shopping area. Even though our visit was a surprise, every Russian there immediately recognized us and called out our names and reached for our hands. We were just about swept away by the warmth. You could almost feel the possibilities in all that joy. But within seconds, a KGB detail pushed their way toward us and began pushing and shoving the people in the crowd. It was an interesting moment. It reminded me that while the man on the street in the Soviet Union yearns for peace, the government is Communist. And those who run it are Communists, and that means we and they view such issues as freedom and human rights very differently.

We must keep up our guard, but we must also continue to work together to lessen and eliminate tension and mistrust. My view is that President Gorbachev is different from previous Soviet leaders. I think he knows some of the things wrong with his society and is trying to fix them. We wish him well. And we’ll continue to work to make sure that the Soviet Union that eventually emerges from this process is a less threatening one. What it all boils down to is this. I want the new closeness to continue. And it will, as long as we make it clear that we will continue to act in a certain way as long as they continue to act in a helpful manner. If and when they don’t, at first pull your punches. If they persist, pull the plug. It’s still trust but verify. It’s still play, but cut the cards. It’s still watch closely. And don’t be afraid to see what you see.

I’ve been asked if I have any regrets. Well, I do. The deficit is one. I’ve been talking a great deal about that lately, but tonight isn’t for arguments. And I’m going to hold my tongue. But an observation: I’ve had my share of victories in the Congress, but what few people noticed is that I never won anything you didn’t win for me. They never saw my troops, they never saw Reagan’s regiments, the American people. You won every battle with every call you made and letter you wrote demanding action. Well, action is still needed. If we’re to finish the job, Reagan’s regiments will have to become the Bush brigades. Soon he’ll be the chief, and he’ll need you every bit as much as I did. Finally, there is a great tradition of warnings in presidential farewells, and I’ve got one that’s been on my mind for some time. But oddly enough it starts with one of the things I’m proudest of in the past eight years: the resurgence of national pride that I called the new patriotism. This national feeling is good, but it won’t count for much, and it won’t last unless it’s grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge.

An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn’t get these things from your family, you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed, you could get a sense of patriotism from popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-’60s

But now, we’re about to enter the ’90s, and some things have changed. Younger parents aren’t sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven’t reinstitutionalized it. We’ve got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom–freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It’s fragile; it needs protection.

So, we’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but what’s important: Why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant. You know, four years ago on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, I read a letter from a young woman writing of her late father, who’d fought on Omaha Beach. Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, “We will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did.” Well, let’s help her keep her word. If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. Let’s start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual. And let me offer lesson No. 1 about America: All great change in America begins at the dinner table. So, tomorrow night in the kitchen I hope the talking begins. And children, if your parents haven’t been teaching you what it means to be an American, let ‘em know and nail ‘em on it. That would be a very American thing to do.

And that’s about all I have to say tonight. Except for one thng. The past few days when I’ve been at that window upstairs, I’ve thought a bit of the “shining city upon a hill.” The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we’d call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.

I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it and see it still.

And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that; after 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she’s still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.

We’ve done our part. And as I walk off into the city streets, a final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who for eight years did the work that brought America back. My friends: We did it. We weren’t just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger. We made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all.

And so, good-bye, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

Anyone who really wants to understand the health care bill should watch this — both parts. Then after that, watch this.

The United States of America used to be thought of as a beacon of freedom, the “great experiment” of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Most Americans still profess their pride in being part of that great experiment.

What about you, dear members of Congress? Do you profess that also? Or do you prefer the methods of ancient tyrannies?

Why is the so-called “health care” bill now being underhandedly forced through the Senate? Why is there talk of passing it on Christmas Eve, when the least attention might be paid to what is happening? Why does Senator Reid seem to prefer to hide one of the most life-changing bills ever proposed in Congress? Why do democrats prefer ignorance over knowledge of what the health care bill is really about? Why all the surreptitiousness?

When slavery was a matter for contention among Americans, Abraham Lincoln had the wisdom to see that the maintaining of lawfulness was imperative; for whatever the merit of arguments for or against slavery, he saw that no side would win if lawfulness itself came to be compromised. You, dear members of Congress, have the opportunity now to exercise similar wisdom, not with respect to lawfulness, but with respect to the very concept of government of a free people.

Tyrannical and underhanded tactics are the very antithesis of such government. They are the antithesis of a thoughtful and free national conversation about such important issues as abortion. This will be especially true if American citizens, the majority of whom in conscience oppose abortion and similar measures deceitfully placed under the category of “health,” are forced to support them.

Do what is right. Forcing Americans to do something that they oppose in conscience is not right. Forcing socialism on the American people is not the “change” that they want. If the truth were told, everyone would openly acknowledge that the fundamental issues here are not economic — despite the monumental price tag attached to this bill. What we are now witnessing is an experimentum crucis concerning our very conception of self-government.

It is not, one must suspect, as easy as many people think to separate ancient cosmology from what it called the “perennial philosophy.” The unfortunate thing, though, is that many “perennial philosophers” aren’t too interested in even trying to separate them. They are quite content with the good of fictional verisimilitude. It does not occur to them that the full good of traditional philosophy might never be found if it is not seen in the context of the historical entity called the real world.

If my theses concerning the truth about local motion and “force” are correct, then we must say several important things by way of corollary.

The primacy of “local motion” may remain intact, but it is not the “act of the potential” that everyone imagines. I do not say that it is no act of the potential; but we can have a much richer and more concretized notion of what this means, now, if we only care to look into it. Doing so will also raise many new questions. We will see, if we look into it, that becoming is not the extrinsic feature of reality which it must have inevitably seemed to be from an ancient perspective (even after the Aristotelian discovery of potential as a principle). Despite the interest the ancients had in seeing a universal cosmic order, local becoming could not, for them, be adequately seen in its true relation to substantial becoming. Time inevitably had to have, in the Aristotelian tradition, a semi-geometrical, and consequently extrinsic, aspect.

The history of the universe is coming to be seen as one of its essential features. It is far from being a merely accidental feature. The motion spoken of in Aquinas’s First Way ought to be understood in this way, rather than in the old way where it was conceived of as a quasi-geometrical, and quasi-eternal, feature of the world.

The notion that the inanimate world is a “merely passive” world is also no longer tenable. There is even more reason now than there was in the past to understand life as interiority, rather than as mere activity (as opposed to passivity). All levels of being take part in activity, much more than the ancients could see. Interiority itself is therefore a greater perfection than could before have been conceived.

Hamlet, in a state of agitation, speaks of “words, words, words” when asked what he is reading. We have arrived at a world where Hamlet’s agitation might well be ours: a world where “words” are overused and abused. The preciousness of silence is often forgotten. This is (at least one reason) why this blog tries to be sparing in words.

But there are things I must write about. The response I have had in the last couple of years to my work on the concept of force has been matter for comedy. With a few exceptions, my work has simply met with indifference or skepticism. A few have said or implied that I really don’t understand anything, or that I should “consult” with someone who understands physics. Underlying their judgment has been the presumption, taken as self-evident, that I wanted to publish my work merely for the sake of publishing, or to get a name for myself.

I have spent too long being preoccupied with this. A world is waiting to be discovered and articulated. Its articulation will constitute a rebirth in the philosophy of science, and perhaps a consequent rebirth in philosophy itself. The exploration of what a renaissance could look like in science, once the old paradigm is gone, is begging to be undertaken. I will do my tiny part, and hope others will contribute.

I wrote before that the implications of a deeper understanding of where “mechanistic” science came from could be immense. What implications am I talking about? Let me start by proposing one point which might illustrate the power of paradigms.

Where did the Hobbesean – Machiavellian politics come from? No doubt it originated, in significant part, from properly political experience, and interpretations to which that experience gave rise. But that experience could not have been interpreted in the way it was if it were not for a more universal postulate: the postulate that there is such a thing as “force” understood not only as a political reality, but as a principle of politics and ethics. But it became a physical principle (articulated to various degrees at various times) before it became a political or ethical principle. If the former had not happened, the latter very likely would not have happened either. The difference that might have made is so vast that it is hard to conceived.

We have now built an entire civilization on the separation of final causes from efficient causes. Many noble souls still hope that the good will still prevail, and they act accordingly. But if one assumes that the good is brought about as an epiphenomenon from agencies which are at bottom blind, tyranny and not freedom will inevitably be the result. We see this in many different ways, in places ranging from the psychological to the ethical to the political.

Peggy Noonan has written a rather vehement article in the Wall Street Journal, so that nobody will be unsure about where she stands concerning Sarah Palin. There’s something rather disturbing about this article. It implies that there is an intellectual elite who alone have what it takes to lead this country, among which elite Noonan, but not Palin, is supposed to be included. The question here isn’t about egalitarianism; it’s about whether the real varieties of endowment line up with Noonan’s vehement protestations.

Noonan may be smart, but some of her recent articles reveal some other characteristics as well, and three in particular. First, she tends to emote too much, where reasoning would be more appropriate; second, she is maybe just a tad full of herself; and third, she judges too much by surface rather than substance. One needs to notice that these are interrelated. In a column published just before the election, she wrote with a fair amount of passion that the country needed to unify behind whoever would be elected, that was more important than anything else. If we are to look for evidence that Noonan has far superior political judgment to that of Palin, we didn’t find it there. What we found, instead, was the superficial, self-congratulating but slightly insecure emotion of the day, caught up in the suave but vacant elegance of Obama, and embarrassed at the relative stiffness of the chosen representative of Noonan’s own party — a stiffness which, for all its embarrassing qualities, might have hidden at least a little substance worthy of respect.

The problem of substance versus surface is admittedly much more complex than some make it out to be. I do not mean to say that surface doesn’t matter. It matters because national public office is a world stage. An ability to thoughtfully articulate important things is both a sign and a condition for actually being able to have important thoughts, and for then being able to impart them to others. George Bush was generally incapable of articulating his thoughts, even if he had some. What was often more troubling was the suspicion that he didn’t have many deep thoughts because he couldn’t articulate them even to himself.

So surface and substance depend on each other. There are those who would have us believe that government is an amoral exercise. That is pure nonsense. Government is the paramount moral exercise, the one where the moral character of individuals and the society is most revealed and most formed. It will therefore never be true — no matter how much one pretends — that excellence in a political leader has nothing to do with moral dispositions. Moral dispositions are what constitute the very substance of statesmanship; without them statesmanship devolves into something grotesquely referred to nowadays as “politics,” which is as lamented as it is common.

While liberals pretend to despise Palin for a lack of intellectual subtlety, what they really despise her for is her soul, a completely non-”political” soul, a soul which unhesitatingly confesses some very simple truths: that there are good and bad ways of being, that too much government is apt to destroy us, that we are a Christian nation, or that socialism is a threat. One doesn’t have to be a simpleton to confess such simple truths. It’s true, when all is said and done, that the world of ethics and politics is very complex. But it’s one thing to acknowledge that; it’s another to attach oneself to the view that nothing is simple. Liberals despise Palin for the same reason that they despised Reagan (at least at the beginning): namely for understanding and saying that some things are simple. Maybe, in different ways, Reagan and Palin have both understood something else as well: that greatness of soul is perfectly compatible with — no, rather, inseparable from — the acknowledgment of a few simple truths. Without an acknowledgment of principles, the complexities of political life become hopeless.

The likes of Charlie Gibson are never apt to confess that they despise Palin for her virtue of understanding and living by principles. They are more likely to say that they despise her for her lack of intellectual subtlety. We are deceived, though, if we don’t notice that those two accounts are related in the liberal mind, because in the liberal mind subtlety is the very essence not only of intellectual virtue, but of moral virtue as well. And because no one likes to be thought unintelligent, this way of thinking tends to be contagious, especially among those who are a little too full of themselves — which Sarah Palin is not.

An unavoidable weakness of the American form of government (since every form has its weaknesses) is that it encourages a tendency in everyone to want to appear talented and impressive, precisely because our government allows the possibility of some degree of participation in public life to all — but a participation which depends on the approval of others. In that circumstance, the temptation to care about surface more than substance is even greater than it would otherwise be.

By her vehement protestations, Noonan has revealed nothing but her own insecurity. There are times when the best judgment is no judgment, but rather a willingness to sit tight and let reality as it unfolds be the measure, instead of one’s hubris. That’s especially true when one is talking about a person’s talents, such as those of Sarah Palin, yet remaining to be fully revealed. Talents are gifts. Best not to despise them before one finds out what they are, so that one can be both humble and grateful towards one’s fellow human beings for their generosity.

Christmas Eve, 2008

Dear Mr. Obama,

In a speech before Planned Parenthood in 1997, you suggested that the “culture war” is a worn out debate  (“so nineties,” as you put it) that America needs to put to rest for once and for all. And you said that you would help to make that happen by signing the Freedom of Choice Act as one of your first acts as president.

But the premise of your thought is profoundly mistaken. It is imperative that you understand this, lest by signing FOCA you accomplish the very opposite of what you hope to accomplish.

To explain what I mean, I have to address something else you said in your speech to Planned Parenthood. You referred a number of times to “ideology” in that speech, and you suggested that ideology is the problem. By “ideology” you seem to mean ideas advanced for the sake of selfish ends, to the detriment of society. You apparently take the battle against abortion as the quintessential ideological battle, as thus understood.

But in the final analysis, none of this will wash; it’s far too facile and presumptive. Not that there is no such thing as ideology. Surely you are right that ideology is a huge problem — perhaps even the problem. But the real question is what to do about it. We won’t know what to do about it if we don’t understand it.

What is ideology, and what is the solution to ideology? Everyone may agree on this much: ideology is ideas proposed in a willful, self-centered, unjust manner, ideas proposed to the detriment of society. But there is something more fundamental than this, which is the real crux of the issue: Ideology is essentially dishonest, because it is a subordination of the pursuit of truth to ulterior, superficial, and often base motives. And so one must ask: is the solution to get rid of ideas, to forget about finding out what is true? Should we, for instance, not care what the truth is about when human life begins? Should we resort to verbal tricks to talk about that, with the implication that we are too modest to have positions on the things that matter most in human life? Is this the only real alternative to the challenge of learning the truth on the one side, versus self-interest masquerading as truth-telling on the other? Or is the real solution not rather to get beyond the selfish and superficial motivations, both personal and societal, that turn the pursuit of truth into ideological manipulation?

Obviously, everything turns on what one thinks of ideas themselves. That, in turn, is intimately connected with what one makes of of the phenomenon called humanity. And this is just what the fight over abortion is about.

There is more here to write about than I can manage now. My children — dear children, fortunate to be born and not destroyed — are clamoring to celebrate the Christ-child, not as a myth or a political ploy, but as the deepest of realities, and the deepest of mysteries too.

Some ideas are expressions of the deepest of realities. Some are, indeed, genuine attempts to discern the deepest realities, which for all that prove to be false. The great idea called tolerance is about the discovery that human beings need to give each other room to be mistaken in their yearning for the truth — not so that we can go back to being selfish, but so that we can submit to the truth in genuine freedom. This is a responsibility of both individuals and societies. The most important personal ethical decisions, as well as the most important societal customs and laws, are in the final analysis about submitting ourselves to the truth not ideologically (which after all is no submission to truth) but with the best of our power of discernment. This requires humility — not the false modesty which pretends to be able to dispense with all judgment.And an extreme disposition to impose abortion on a whole society bears the earmarks not of any such humility, but of hubris. Forcefully keeping important ideas, religious ones especially, out of the public forum is not tolerance, but the corruption of tolerance.

And so for now there is only time to say this: we agree about ideology. We have to get beyond that. But you must understand that signing FOCA won’t help with that. It won’t end the culture war. It won’t end the culture war because some ideas are much more than political ploys or personal selfish agendas. If ideas weren’t so important, ideology wouldn’t be such a problem either.

Flying directly in the face of the right to seek out, nourish, and cherish the truth won’t end any culture war. What it will do is start one … in earnest, in a manner not yet seen. In the name of Peace, let us avoid that.

With a heartfelt prayer for you, on this Most Holy Eve.

I shall describe faith in five parts:

1. How faith differs from knowledge

2. How it differs from opinion

3. How it is related to common and private goods

3. How it is related to knowledge in matters of religion

4. How faith in Divine things is different from faith in human things

1. How Faith Differs From Knowledge

The verb “to assent” is equivocal; that is, it has two meanings which bear an analogy to each other. I say I “assent” to the proposition that the whole is greater than the part, or that 2 + 2 = 4, because understanding what realities “whole” and “part” and “greater than” refer to, I understand that a whole must be greater than its part; or likewise that 2 + 2 = 4, from understanding the elements of this proposition. Or, to use yet another example, from understanding the demonstration that a triangle has two right angles, I can understand that the conclusion is true, and I assent to it. In all three of these examples, “assent” refers to an act of the mind.

In its other meaning, “assent” refers again to an act of the mind, but involves the will as well. This other meaning seems to be connected historically, in fact, to the word “consent”. This is the meaning of the word which is operative every time someone holds an opinion. Opinions are about things which we do not know, but nevertheless hold. Because we do not know what we assent to in this case, we cannot hold it through an act of the mind exclusively. Yet, at the same time, we understand that there is a difference between an opinion and a surmise or suspicion. Surmises or suspicions are not held in the mind in the stable manner of an opinion, because in their case as well, we do not have the means to know that they are true. How is it, then, that opinion is like knowledge in the stability with which we hold it, but like surmise or suspicion in the fact that we lack the wherewithal to claim that we know? Opinion must, clearly, involve an act of will as well as an act of mind; for we will to hold a position.

It must be understood that to say that the will is involved is not to say that the act of opining is either unnatural or forced. Often people are accused of holding a position “willfully,” as if to suggest that this is wrong. But what is wrong is not willing itself, but some sort of inordinate willing. (This is perhaps a little like what is meant when someone is accused of being “selfish.” Does that mean that we should act in a way that involves completely ignoring our own good? Of course not. It means that we should act in a way that involves an inordinate and misapprehended good of self, which excludes the good of another.) There is no other way but through an act of will that an opinion can be held in a stable fashion.

On examination, indeed, we must realize that our lives are necessarily chock full of opinions, much more than they are full of knowledge. No one, or very few people, can be said to know who his mother or father is, who his president is, how many planets there are, whether viruses cause illness, whether viruses exist, whether Japan exists, whether he has a stomach, whether he will be alive tomorrow or in ten minutes, whether there ever was a Shakespeare, whether the Declaration of Independence is a forgery, etc. In each of these cases and thousands of others, what we recognize is that “it would be unreasonable” to hold otherwise than what we hold. Yet that does not prevent someone from doubting, now and then, an opinion such as one of these. In doubting, he relinquishes his opinion, in a way that true knowledge could never be relinquished.

But to say that “it would be unreasonable” to doubt such things is to say that opinions have reasons too, just as knowledge does. But we must be very clear about the difference between what we mean by “reasons” in each case. It is a different question to ask, “Why do you think the sun is hot?” than to ask, “Why is the sun hot?”; or again, “Why do you think that triangles have two right angles?” than, “Why do triangles have two right angles?” In the first of each of these pairs of questions, what we are seeking through the question is not, precisely, what makes it to be true, but rather, what makes us think it is true; in other words, the question seeks a cause of the thought, and not a cause of the reality. But in the act of knowing (for example, when we prove a geometric proposition) we come to know an effect precisely through our knowledge of its cause. Then what makes us think that the thing is true is the same as what makes it be true. When this is achieved fully, there is no longer a need for an act of will to think what we think; we simply understand, via an act of mind, that what is is.

We hold an opinion, therefore, when we apprehend (more or less consciously) that reasons for holding something justify our opinion, that is, justify our holding what we hold. Formally speaking, the reasons must be reasons for holding something, not reasons for the thing itself. To the degree that we make ourselves see that the reasons are reasons for the thing itself, we can change our opinions into knowledge. Yet most of our intellectual furnishings are seen, on reflection, to be opinions — reasonable ones indeed. Perhaps we can even see, on still further reflection, that this is simply the human condition, because the aspiration of reason is higher than the senses, and yet reason must always start out from what the senses offer; and that makes a kind of faith or opinion inevitable right from the start. To imagine that we might dispense with opinion and make judgments about things only as far as we know them is, if I may say so, a completely unrealistic opinion.

Faith, then, is generically like opinion. One might even think (opine) at first that it simply is opinion, since in either case one holds what one holds by a natural act of willing, through reasons deemed appropriate for making such an act. But in my next post I will try to describe how it differs from opinion.

My apologies to any readers who have patiently been waiting for me to carry through with my intention to write about the question of theism versus atheism. Today, at last, I shall try to make a start at this. As I said before, this is a long-term project. The current rise in popularity of atheism is the result of many misunderstandings, and they won’t be cleared up in a day.

Let me start with some fundamental misunderstandings about what faith and religion are. Today many presume, incorrectly, that religion and God are essentially and exclusively matters of faith. When this is compounded with the common presumption that faith is an irrational act, an act of pure emotion as opposed to reason, it can hardly be surprising when many conclude that atheism is the better alternative. So let me begin by briefly considering each of these assumptions in turn.

First: is affirming God’s existence essentially and exclusively a matter of faith? Obviously, one could beg the question about this, and hold that it must be because God is a fiction, and fictions can only adhered to by an act of faith. But then this could hardly be an argument for denying God’s existence, since it would be presuming what it intends to prove.

The beings of our experience are full of contingency. One day my friend is alive and well, and the next day he is dead and gone, from circumstances no one could foresee. One day we feel as if all is well, and the next day our world is shattered by acts of terror, or by illness, or by the destruction of an economic order which no one thought would be destroyed.

We could give a thousand examples of this sort of thing. On reflection, we realize that there was never any ground for thinking, in any of them, that what we took to be permanently enduring really was so. Indeed, on more careful and deep philosophical reflection, we can come to realize a very remarkable truth: There can be no such thing as a perishable being that exists forever. This proposition is not subject to revision upon further examination; it is an absolutely necessary truth, like the truth that 2 + 2 = 4. Being forever is a category which simply cannot be realized one day after the next; it will only be realized, if at all, through necessity, a necessity which is present either right now or not at all. Just as with 2 + 2 = 4, these are propositions which one can fail to understand, but one cannot fail to affirm them once they are understood.

A brief interlude: When thinking about this, I am always reminded of a great learning moment which took place in my childhood. It happened one day when I was reading about logical puzzles, and came across the question, “What happens when an immovable object encounters an irresistible force?” After I and my friends grappled with this question for a while, I took it home and posed it to my father. My father was no fool. But he looked at me as if I was acting like one, and said, in reply, “Well, obviously that’s impossible, isn’t it?”

What I understood at that moment is that our words refer to intelligible realities, upon which there follow consequences. If we fail to grasp this, we deprive ourselves of the wherewithal to judge anything. And I do mean anything. Perhaps some reader will want to suggest to me that the meanings of our words are up to us, so that logical consistency has no connection with real being. But such a claim will fall under the category of anything; it is a judgment about reality which cannot be made, once granted the very hypothesis it supposes. Or, if the judgment is made, it can have no significance, again by that same hypothesis.

Unfortunately, the doctrine of nominalism is everywhere today, and it is one of the most fundamental, but also thoroughly rotten, underpinnings of the contemporary atheism. I will say more about it in a future post.

For now let me go back to where I was. Once we undersand that what is contingent must pass away, the question forces itself upon us: why does anything at all exist? If the sum total of what exists is contingent, then there can be no accounting for the existence of anything. Or, to say it another way, there must be something whose being is not contingent at all, some being for which “to be or not to be” are not possible alternatives. Only on the basis of such a being can we answer the famous question, “Why is there something and not nothing?” This non-contingent being must be one which does not receive its being, but which has being from itself. This is the very being which God refers to himself as in both the Old and New Testaments: I Am Who Am. And Before Abraham was, I Am.

But note well, dear reader, that I have not used Scripture to argue to God’s existence. What I have done is argue from what reason can know, that there must be a God. And this is certainly not the only argument for showing that God exists. In future posts I shall suggest some others. And so the existence of God is not essentially a matter of faith. Neither indeed is religion the same thing as faith. Religion is natural, before it ever comes to be a matter of faith.

But it would be a mistake to infer that I mean to suggest that faith itself is not natural. Contemporary atheism rests on the largely unexamined assumptions that religion and faith are inherently and by definition outside the realm of what is either reasonable or natural. I shall say more about why these assumptions are false in my next post, beginning with what faith is.

Undecided voters should read this before tomorrow’s election, especially if they care about Christianity or the family.