Noonan’s Vehemence

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 artices 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 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.

That’s one source of complexity in the relation between substance and surface. There is another which might matter even more. 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. Political excellence requires both. (There was a time when that was fairly obvious. One has only to think of Churchill for instance, or his adversaries. The fact that it is now frequently called into question is very significant.) So substance itself is a very complex thing, even before one considers how it appears in a public forum.

Liberals may despise Palin for her lack of rhetorical skills, but what they really despise her for is her 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 may be that, when all is said and done, the world of ethics and politics is incredibly complex. But it’s one thing to say 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.

The likes of Charlie Gibson are never apt to say that they despise Palin for the reasons I have just given. 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 virture 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.

Some of what Noonan says may be true. But 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 yet remaining to be fully revealed. Talents are gifts. Best not to despise gifts 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.

Is the Culture War Over? An Open Letter to Barack Obama

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.

What is Faith?

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.

Atheism Versus Theism: Part 1

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 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?

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