Month: July 2020

The Problem OF Philosophy

Obligations are currently limiting my free writing time to the books I’m working on; lately, and unfortunately, that has meant republishing older posts. Today’s falls into that category. At the end of it, I’ve appended a list of links to posts germane to the problem OF philosophy. I hope to generate fresher material soon.—Anthony Flood

Aristotle’s School

There are problems of philosophy, which philosophers have perennially asked and attempted to answer.  What really exists? What can (and do) I know?  What is the nature of the good, the true, and the beautiful?

But there’s also the problem of philosophy, one that philosophy raises implicitly but cannot answer directly. That’s the problem of worldview. Do my answers to those philosophical questions comport or clash with one another? How much about the world must I “take for granted” when I ask my first question? Can I query those takings?

When one is adverting to the problem of “background” worldview one is not trying to solve problems that arise on its terms. And one’s worldview must be able to acknowledge worldview-diversity. But where is one standing when one entertains that problem?

As my interest in the worldview problem has increased, that in philosophical problems has decreased.  That’s because philosophical problems now seem to me a function of one’s basic, non-negotiable stance toward the world. When philosophers pay attention to it, they’re not “doing” philosophy.  When they don’t, their philosophical work is exposed to worldview-level criticism.

It’s not that philosophical questions are unimportant. The almost fifty years I spent studying them were not wasted time. Philosophical questions are endlessly interesting culturally and historically. But worldview questions have supplanted philosophical ones in my mind, perhaps because my worldview is of paramount importance to me and, going forward, I wish to advert to it explicitly. Worldviews assign various values to cultural and historical importance and hence to philosophy.

Philosophers who profess the same worldview can agree or disagree fruitfully about, for example, the veridicality of sense perception. Those who do not profess the same worldview, but are not conscious of that disparity, may misunderstand both their agreements and disagreements, even if when they use the same natural language correctly.  If they are conscious of that disparity, then it is not clear what their apparent agreements or disagreements could mean. “God exists,” affirms the Christian, who thinks the idea of God important. “Yes, God exists!,” answers the Buddhist, who deems it a distraction from the main issue of living.

If philosophical problems are embedded in a worldview, then worldview conflict-adjudication is not a philosophical problem. The attempt to resolve the conflict also operates at the level of worldview. There is no worldview-neutral stance from which to make that attempt.

That one’s philosophical system is one’s final court of appeal for all questions was my assumption. Glancing at my life’s clock and calendar, however, I no longer care to do that. I’ve achieved enough clarity about my position to give myself permission not to.

The implications of the Christian worldview, the one that permeates the pages of the Bible, exhausts my philosophical interests. I’ve come to the conclusion that it is the only worldview that makes possible what philosophers do. (Indeed, what we all do at the inception of our every predication, even our silent ones.)

I further claim (as an implication of my worldview) that everyone, even those who claim to be anti-Christian, operate implicitly in terms of the Christian worldview.  It’s the birthright of all those created in the image of God.

I prefer exploring the Christian worldview, as Biblical exegesis reveals it, to burrowing down the tunnel of worldview-justification. For life is short, and justification tends to be a long-winded if not also interminable affair. Still, as my position is in need of clarification, I will try to clarify it in future posts.

Postscript, July 21, 2020: Here are those “future” posts, i.e., subsequent to November 26, 2018, when the essay above was first published:

The Apostle Paul preaching to the philosophers. Acts 17:16-34

The spiritual preconditions of rational debate: Eric Voegelin’s diagnosis revisited

The “national conversation” Leftists urge us to have about social order is about as genuine as  Mao Zedong’s Hundred Flowers Campaign and, for patriots tempted to participate, about as safe. Debate has spiritual conditions, and the Left-dominated academedia complex guarantees that they’re rarely, if ever, met (except perhaps among family, friends, and trusted associates, at least for now).

No one made that point with greater profundity and learning than Eric Voegelin. On November 2, 2018 I posted a vignette of my interaction with the great philosopher of consciousness, enriched by extensive quotes from his classic essay, “On Debate and Existence.” Our perilous times call for reposting it. Those who vaguely remember it should take another look; it’ll be new for those who don’t.—Anthony Flood

Eric Voegelin: no debate without accord on existential order

(First published November 2, 2018)

“What ‘banged’?”

That was the derisive reaction of Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) to someone’s mentioning the prevailing cosmology, the Big Bang theory (not to be confused with the television comedy whose theme song’s lyrics encapsulate the disordered cosmology Voegelin analyzed*).

He asked that rhetorical question on March 26, 1983 in Newton, Massachusetts during a Friday night-Saturday afternoon conference arranged by organizers of the annual Lonergan Workshops. (During that year’s meeting in June I’d meet Bernard J. F. Lonergan, SJ, whose mind I revered as much as Voegelin’s.)voegelin

Being a Rothbardian libertarian, I could hardly resist asking Voegelin about the seminars that Ludwig von Mises led in Vienna in the twenties. Smiling, Voegelin said he appreciated learning from Mises that inflation is not an increase in prices but rather the central bank’s increase in the money supply not commensurate with an increase in production of commodities. (A government may politically “freeze” prices, but then the economic effect of the inflation, that is, of the physical increase, is a shortage of the goods whose prices were frozen.)

At the cocktail hour I asked Voegelin (I paraphrase from memory) how he could communicate with scholars whose grasp of the historical material was far below his (among whom he did not number Father Lonergan, but I certainly include myself). “With a kind of controlled irony,” he deadpanned.

Continue reading “The spiritual preconditions of rational debate: Eric Voegelin’s diagnosis revisited”

Brand Blanshard on wisdom

Brand Blanshard. Photo by Richard P. Lewis, published in “Man of Reason: In Memoriam Brand Blanshard.” “A memorial service in honor of Brand Blanshard was held December 16, 1987, in Dwight Memorial Chapel of Yale University. The memories and appreciations spoken that day and some from letters are printed in this booklet,” which Roberta Yerkes Blanshard, his widow, mailed me on May 5, 1992.—Anthony Flood

The wisdom that American philosopher Brand Blanshard (August 27, 1892-November 18, 1987) sought was not intelligible in terms of his rationalism and determinism. (Of course, wisdom is no more intelligible in terms of the empiricism and indeterminism Blanshard opposed.) In the perennial pendulum swing between the static block universe of Parmenides and the endless flux of Heraclitus, Blanshard unambiguously favored the Eleatic thinker over the Ephesian. As Van Til memorably put it, however, one chooses between these anti-theistic options as one chooses hats.[1]

His doctrines could not help him account for the epistemological (or metaphysical or ethical) “hat” he chose. He gave reasons for his choosing, but the deterministic worldview to which he was committed could not ground an account for reason-giving itself.

Nevertheless, it is ironic, pleasantly so, to note that Blanshard articulated precisely and elegantly almost everything one might want to say about wisdom. Today I want you to know, in his own words, what I think he got right.

In my opinion, what he got wrong (and in this he was not alone) was his presupposing, as all non-Christians do, that pursuing wisdom occurs in an impersonal context (rather than in a divinely personal creation). For Blanshard (again, not just for him) wisdom is a possible achievement of the human being. The human being, in turn, is regarded as the ultimate point of reference (or background or “atmosphere”) of that pursuit (or, indeed, of any predication whatsoever). This presupposition of autonomy leads only to one or another species of foolishness.[2]

As followers of this blog know, my work-in-progress is entitled “Philosophy after Christ”—after not only in the sense of temporally subsequent to Christ’s earthly ministry, but also in the sense of “according to” the Wisdom and Truth that Christ is. This post may be taken as another occasional progress report. Continue reading “Brand Blanshard on wisdom”