USUPhilosophy

This article reviews three recent books on the value of a classical education, a dying cause that a few of us still fight with great fervor.

.. and the consequences of how we see time. Just click on this link. (h/t Paul Huenemann)

You may want to take a few moments to check out these portraits by Steve Pyke of influential contemporary (or near-contemporary) philosophers, along with their views of the nature of philosophy. It’s interesting to see the diversity of views; one wonders if the same diversity would be found among practitioners of any other discipline (other than literary criticism, I suppose). (h/t to Brian Leiter’s blog.)

There is an interesting and lengthy discussion here about the causes of our behavior and the (possibly irrelevant?) stories we tell ourselves about the causes of our behavior. The traditional view is something along the lines of this: when we consciously deliberate over our actions, we should be held morally accountable for what we do, since the moral worth of what we do has some connection to the reasons we take ourselves to have for doing it. (Some authors call this a “neo-Kantian” view, which seems to me inapt for several reasons, but set that aside.) But suppose it turns out – as some research suggests – that even when we pause to deliberate, our decisions may have less to do with our reasoning than we commonly suppose. So, for example, some studies say that if you find a dime, or smell fresh cookies, you are far more likely to help someone in need than otherwise. And that’s independently of the reasons you recite to yourself about whether you should help the person in need. If this is so, then do we still consider your reasons for action as morally relevant?

In truth, the issue comes down to acting from causes vs. acting from reasons. Lots of things act from causes, and it seems incorrect to hold anything accountable for what they do merely because of causes (consider blaming a stone for rolling downhill, or blaming a person for being hit by a meteor and splattering an elegant dining party with their bloody innards). But when they act from reasons, we do hold people morally accountable. Maybe this is because actions done for reasons are somehow free, or maybe this is because actions done for reasons issue from the appropriate sorts of mechanisms (I am trying to set aside the question of determinism). But now suppose that any time we find an act supposedly done for reasons, we find causes in the mix that very strongly and reliably influence the action. What effect does that have on our attributions of moral responsibility?

Anyway, have a look at the intelligent debate. Nice work. (Thanks to Rob Sica for pointing the discussion out to me.)

So I just got back from a Fides et Ratio Seminar.  A big theme all week, as we read the “Fathers, Doctors, and Popes” (that was the title of the Seminar) was the meeting of the Christian Biblical tradition with Greek philosophy.  How is this to be thought of and worked out?  Here is a relevant and frankly amusing passage from St. Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses, with a few notes in brackets from me:  (St. Gregory of Nyssa, c335-394)
”
The foreign wife will follow him, for there are certain things derived from profane education which should not be rejected when we propose to give birth to virtue. Indeed, moral and natural philosophy may become at certain times a comrade, friend, and companion of life to the higher way, provided that the offspring of this union introduce nothing of a foreign defilement.

[Gregory of Nyssa comes down clearly on the side of appropriating what we can from the Greek.  Just as the Jews took the Egyptians gold and refashioned it into the tabernacle, so too should we take truth wherever we find it – though we should appropriate it to new and proper ends and should leave behind anything “foreign”.]

Since his son had not been circumcised, so as to cut off completely everything hurtful and impure, the angel who met them brought the fear of death.  His wife appeased the angle when she presented her offspring as pure by completely removing that mark by which the foreigner was known.

I think that if someone who has been initiated under the guidance of the history follows closely the order of the historical figures, the sequence of the development in virtue marked out in our account will be clear.  There is something fleshy and uncircumcised in what is taught by philosophy’s generative faculty; when that has been completely removed, there remains the pure Israelite race.

For example, pagan philosophy says that the soul is immortal.  That is a pious offspring.  But is also says that souls pass from bodies to bodies and are changed from a rational to an irrational nature [Plato’s transmigration of souls].  This is a fleshy and alien foreskin.  … …
”

So am I the only one that giggles at this?  Philosophy’s “generative faculty”?  And the “fleshy foreskin” of erroneous Platonic teachings?  That is some image to use!  Some may prefer the so-called “baptized Aristotle”, but what about the circumcised Plato?!