On Loving Philosophy

Themes: Critique, Philosophy, Society

I’ve rediscovered my love for Philosophy.

I’ve taken up reading Foucault again with the idea of writing a short review of The History of Sexuality, and rediscovered what I loved about reading his work when I studied it at Uni. Foucault has a freshness of style and a willingness to have a crack at thinking things through from a completely new angle – it’s an attitude that is the heartbeat of all that is good and right in Philosophy.

During the last few years I’d started to absorb the general skepticism towards Philosophy that is pervasive in our culture. Philosophers are regarded as intellectual hippies, dropouts in search of a justification, destined to bludge, in some way or another, off the Responsible Adult World.

What a genuinely sad society we have built., where we no longer have the aspiration to know things differently.

Philosophy holds the mirror of critical reflection up to our thoughts. It is thought thinking about itself. All the other sciences seek to know the world, only Philosophy seeks to know how we know.
For this reason, Philosophy is the queen of the sciences. All the other disciplines of knowledge are arrayed about her as her offspring. (The only science above Philosophy is Theology: theology draws upon all other forms of knowledge in pusuit of the One who is the fulness of all Being and Knowledge.)

A society that has no regard for Philosophy can only be moments away from childish gullibility, intellectual sterility, and is defenseless prey for would-be dictators.

… Coming soon to a country near you.

So I fell in love with Philosophy again, when I read this:

There are times in life when the question of of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all. People will say, perhaps, that these games with oneself would better be left backstage; or, at best, that they might properly form part of those preliminary exercises that are forgotten once they have served their purpose. But, then, what is philosophy today – philosophical activity, I mean – if it is not the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself? In what does it consist, if not in the endeavor to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already known?
Michel Foucault The History of Sexuality: The Use of Pleasure, p.9

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Australian Values

Themes: Critique, Ethics, Society

Here is a proposal for a large scale investigation which I don’t have the time to do.

Would it be possible to work out the moral dimensions of our culture through a study of the words we use to convey a sense of ‘good’?

By ‘moral dimensions’ I mean the shared values, ethical imperatives or prohibitions, aspirations, etc, which are generalisable through our society, i.e., shared by nearly everyone. I’m open to the possibility that no such values exist.

It certainly seems the case that references to ‘Australian Values’ never seem far away from the lips of politicians or the headlines of the Media. For this reason, many people have rightly raised and debated the question, what are ‘Australian Values’?

While, I think it’s a questionable assumption that there would be such a thing as values which are uniquely Australian, what would be the methodology for engaging in a descriptive rather than a prescriptive study of morality.
Put simply, how would you work out what people actually think ‘good’ is, rather than simply saying what people should think ‘good’ is.

Could you study the range of words used in our public discourse as a reflection of public values?
For example, there is a sense of ‘goodness’ within words such as ‘useful’, ‘beautiful’, ‘positive’, ‘nice’, ‘elegant’.

If we were to go through an edition of the Sydney Morning Herald and pull out words that are used to describe something favourably, would this tell us something about our values?
Is there something particularly significant about words that are being employed in unusal ways, such as, ‘cool’, ‘wicked’, ‘sick’, ‘mad’?

Maybe I’ll start reading a section of the SMH, I’ll let you know what I find…

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Lest we forget

Themes: Critique, Personal, Society

Going to the Anzac Day Dawn service was an important tradition for my family as I grew up. My grandfather (Dad’s father) fought on the Malayan Peninsula and was one of the many soldiers imprisoned after the fall of Singapore in the notorious Changi prison. He grew vegetables for the other prisoners, and had his back broken (or badly damaged) with the butt of a rifle. That’s all I know. He died when I was about 12 years old. I don’t think he talked much about that time with my father. He always had a stooped back.

Going along to the Anzac ceremony was a time to remember that struggle, the suffering of those men. My father would wear his father’s medals. I think I may have worn them once or twice. It connected us with a man that I didn’t really know.

I remember walking together with Dad and our family to the Canberra Dawn service a couple of years ago.
The air at that time of morning feels like it can lift the skin from your face. The altitude and lack of humidity make the stars dance. Around you everything is dark. There is a great crowd of people walking through this dark. No one talks, except in a whisper. You walk together and join the crowd of thousands standing silently in the dark.
I can’t remember the exact details of the service from year to year.
We hear the same words every year.
The bugler standing above us on the wall of the War Memorial plays the Last Post. We remember our mates who didn’t come home that day. We even remember when we have nothing to remember. Some of us remember that we have no stories – there was nothing that happened in those days that could ever be spoken about.
We hear the ode, the words proclaiming the immortality of those who died, ‘age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.’
We make the pledge, ‘lest we forget’.
The dawn touches the face of the bugler and the Reveille rings out – the call to rise for another day of carnage in which some men will see nobility, and others will see the face of God.

Anzac Day is an observance worth remembering.
As a National observance it skirts twin dangers. On the one hand, from being trivialised into a jingoistic celebration of national identity – talking up ‘Australian Values’ and ignoring the warning in the phrase, ‘Lest we forget’.
And on the other, from being over solemnised – a rosy tint cast over the events which ignores our responsibility to remember, by distorting the memories.

The duty to remember is the one great obligation placed upon us by those who have gone into the past. It’s the final wisdom and warning from those who are no longer with us to speak. There is a moral dimension to memory which is at the heart of any National memorial.

For the Christian, we must remember that our citizenship is in heaven. We seek the welfare of this society, but our national memorial is the breaking of bread and the sharing of a cup.

As Australia has become an increasingly ‘post-Christian’ nation, Anzac has become steadily more ‘sacred’. Although the numbers of the original veterans continually diminish, there has been a steady increase in the number of people attending the dawn services. Australian secular society still experiences an irrepressible desire for experience of ‘feeling the sacred.’ I suppose its an experience of feeling connected to something larger than you are, something transcendant. Secular society cuts people off from any connection with God. Morality is framed in terms of values that will benefit the national or household economy. Human purpose is articulated in purely material terms. For beings created to know God this creates a situation of terrible spiritual hunger.

And so, Anzac Day becomes more and more important as a ‘spiritual’ experience. Increasing numbers of young people are undertaking pilgrimage to Anzac Cove in Turkey. The Anzac Dawn service is a Christian service forced into the service of a humanist religion. The language and even theology of Easter has been transplanted onto Anzac Day – note the language of substitution and sacrifice that has been appropriated to talk about the actions of those soldiers.

Anzac Day needs to be reclaimed for Australians! (How’s that for a jingoistic phrase). It matters because we have an important duty to remember – one that those who fought and suffered during those years bound us to undertake. It matters because remembering the past is the key to understanding the future.

But for Christians, travelling through this country, Anzac Day is not really our Day.

We observe a different memorial in the Kingdom of Heaven.
There was a battle that was fought for our freedom;
There was catastrophic suffering that shaped our identity;
There was victory and vindication.
And Jesus Christ is Lord.

“For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: on the night when He was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and said, “This is My body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.”
In the same way |He| also |took| the cup, after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” (1Cor 11:23-26 HCSB)

Lest we forget

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Tyndale and the Bible Reading

Themes: Critique, On Language, Scripture, Tyndale

There is an interesting piece of research that featured in the Sydney Morning Herald recently. The central finding is that our brains have a limited capacity to store information in working memory (similar to the RAM in a computer), i.e., there are only so many memory-tasks that we can perform simultaneously. Since, reading, listening, verbalising, all require some of this working memory, if we are engaging in too many of these activities at the same time we become less effective at any particular one of them.

[This] questions the wisdom of centuries-old habits, such as reading along with Bible passages, at the same time they are being read aloud in church. More of the passages would be understood and retained, the researchers suggest, if heard or read separately.
Sydney Morning Herald

I was particularly interested in the application by the application of this research to the Christian practice of reading along with the Scripture passage being read out in a Church service. It struck true with me – my experience is that either listening or reading the Bible is likely to be more effective for absorbing what I’m studying than doing both at once.

Which makes me think that next time we do Bible study, I might suggest that one person read while the rest of the group simply listens. Perhaps we could discuss together whether this is more effective for absorbing the meaning of the text.

However, while I think that it’s appropriate for us to try this out at Bible study, I won’t be going down the same path at Church.
You see, reading along with the passage in Church is not simply about seeking to absorb the passage. There is the rest of the sermon for explanation and checking over the text (if the sermon is any good). The whole point of a good sermon should be to explain and encourage us to absorb the meaning of the text.

Even if reading along with the passage isn’t the quick absorbtion method for Bible understanding, I’d be worried if we stopped this practice. Not least because it might lead us to stop bringing our Bibles to Church.

Reading along with the passage is a crucial means of holding the Minister accountable for his words.

People like William Tyndale struggled and were killed so that men and women would have free access to God’s word in their own language. Their fight was not solely motivated by the belief that God speaks to each of us directly through Scripture.
Tyndale and others believed that the Church was best guarded against heresy when the members of a congregation are able to check the words of the preacher against the words of the text.

On 6th May 1536, King Henry VIII of England ordered that a copy of the newly translated English Bible be placed in every Church throughout the country. The people of each parish were to have free access to this Bible at any time of the week for their own reading.
This is the piece of history that lies behind those great big old Church Bibles you can still see around in older Churches. It was possibly the greatest piece of legislation ever passed.

So I’m all in favour of anything that helps us to absorb and understand the Bible better. But keep taking your Bibles to Church. Check the reading against the text, hold the preacher accountable for his words.

If the people stop taking their Bibles to Church, the Church will fall.

Do Tyndale proud…

I defie the Pope and all his lawes. If God spare my life, ere many yeares I wyl cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture, than he doust.
William Tyndale
As quoted in the Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, touching Matters of the Church (Foxe’s Book of Martyrs) by John Foxe

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The Tragedie of King Lear

Themes: Critique, Poetry, Shakespeare, Sin

“Shakespeare pictures the potential depravity of a godless world. I think it’s no accident that the gods are referred to that number of times.

“The other prediction that’s made in the play is ‘if the gods don’t come down and intervene then it must come, humanity will prey upon itself like monsters of the deep’.

“We are at the moment daily aware of the seemingly limitless possibilities of human cruelty, of human certainty that gods are on their side and therefore any amount of human sacrifice is permissible in the name of the gods.

Trevor Nunn quoted in Sydney Morning Herald.

One of the deeply troubling aspects of Lear is that human cruelty appears to win the day. The continual appeal to the gods is met only with a bronzed silence. Within the world of the play either there is no God, or, there is no just God.

(or, one might conceivably say that the play demonstrates the terrible justice of God – a justice which is demonstrated in the pile of bodies at the end – after all, none of the characters are particularly morally upright…)

‘if the gods don’t come down and intervene then it must come, humanity will prey upon itself like monsters of the deep’.

This is an appeal for divine intervention, for a divine act of revelation and justice tied together – what we call ‘theodicy’. It is an appeal for God to do justice for humanity and thereby to vindicate himself.

In the world of the play, the appeal to the blank face of heaven is haunting, it plays upon a deep fear we all feel, it lends Lear incredible power.

And it is a good appeal – God save us from ourselves!
It is an appeal that relies on the character of God.
What does it mean for an appeal like that to go unanswered?
What would that mean for God?

The truth of Nunn’s observation that we are, ‘daily aware of the seemingly limitless possibilities of human cruelty’ is easily proved from a reading of the rest of the pages of the newspaper.

Nunn appears to agree with Shakespeare on the ‘potential depravity of a godless world’ and indeed, to believe that this is no longer a potential, but the reality of the world we inhabit.
Who could argue?

But Bard never fails to see more clearly than his interpreters – even those as brilliant as Trevor Nunn.

(I think it must be the combination of Shakespeare’s careful ambiguity and the incredible freedom of play within his language which leaves ample room for the reader to be read into the text.)

What would an intervention from God look like? How would God act to do justice for humanity?

Well, if the world is as Nunn describes it – full of the ‘seemingly limitless possibilities of human cruelty’, a possibility that finds some refuge in every human heart, and some expression to a greater or lesser extent – I wonder very much if the kind of intervention for which we appeal might not end up looking something very like the end of King Lear?

…Blindness, Bodies, and Madness…

That’s what we would properly expect.
That’s the natural narrative trajectory and there isn’t anyone with a better ear for narrative than Shakespeare.

Which is why the gospel is a NewsFlash. A piece of information that breaks into the storyline, coming from outside, interrupting, changing completely the natural progression.

The gospel is the twist in the story which makes our world something other than the world of King Lear.
(sadly, it is possible that for Trevor Nunn our world is nothing other than the world of Lear)

The coming of God in Jesus knocks the human narrative off its rails. God acts to do justice for humanity by condemning human depravity in the person of one man – he takes our position at the end of the play.

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More Dawkins

Themes: Critique

On the topic of Dawkins, check out this very funny parable.
Does Richard Dawkins Exist?

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