Category: Philosophy

A Kierkegaardian Approach to Philosophy: Replacing an Objective Career with a Subjective Relationship

Post author By Jeremy Hadfield
Post date January 21, 2017

Update three years later, 5/14/20: I wrote this before going to college. I had never studied philosophy in an academic context. After spending 3 years studying philosophy, I think this post is too cynical. Academic philosophy is better, more impactful, and more personal than I expected. I still agree with many of the ideas & sentiments I express here though.

Philosophy has been firmly and comfortably institutionalized. It exists primarily to teach useful, marketable, career-building skills, buzzwords like critical thought and complex reasoning and clear writing. Philosophers are another cog of capitalism, mass-produced in university departments to either join the economy or perpetuate the academic study of philosophy. Like physicists and biologists, they are judged by their ability to produce original, peer-reviewed work. Philosophy is a specialized field along with the sciences, practiced in research institutions.

Any ‘serious’ philosopher is found solely in the university; no longer can philosophy be practiced by any audacious questioner. Measured by gross product, philosophy is more successful and productive than at any other time in history. Thousands of philosophers throughout the world produce well-researched, logical papers that engage with the traditional problems. Many of these papers are ingenious marvels of philosophical reasoning. Who can deny the brilliance of Slavoj Zizek’s cultural criticism, John Searle’s philosophy of mind, the late Hilary Putnam’s rigorous analysis, Saul Kripke’s brilliant philosophy of language?

The institution of philosophy.

And yet perhaps we are missing something in this Cambrian explosion of philosophical activity. Philosophy has gained a permanent place in the academy. To paraphrase an introduction to “Socrates Tenured” by Robert Frodeman and Adam Briggle, philosophy has its own arcane language, its hyper-specialized concerns, a network of undergraduate programs, and an ecosystem of journals. Like Bertrand Russell, I wonder whether institutional philosophy is “anything better than innocent but useless trifling, hair-splitting distinctions, and controversies on matters concerning which knowledge is impossible.”

The goal of philosophy is no longer to guide individuals on their attempt to become paragons of wisdom and virtue. Its purpose is not to assist the philosopher in reconciling the absurdity of the world, nor can it instigate the creation of meaning out of this nihilism. It is not meant to be related subjectively to the individual who is actually living the philosophy and experiencing its effects. It is meant to produce knowledge. An honest, valuable task – yes. But it is not enough.

After all, this knowledge is produced in the typical academic fashion. It is based on rigorous, ‘impartial’ research by graduates trained in cleverly analyzing arguments. This research is then applied to produce objective knowledge that has no moral impact. I mean: the knowledge is not meant to make one a better person, but to be used as a “de-moralized tool” for civilizational progress (source). Throughout the process, the producers of knowledge remain separate from the knowledge they produce. It is sterilized, abstracted – without impact.

The philosopher argues passionately for his/her thesis, employing every art of logic available. But what if the thesis is true? No matter. It will not change the philosopher’s life nor anyone else’s. It is merely another postulate verified until refutation, another step on the track to tenure. As Kierkegaard wrote, “not until he lives in it, does it cease to be a postulate for him.” It is ridiculous to imagine the philosophers living by their theses.

All this production and institutionalization is merely disguising a catastrophe. We are facing the same problem in philosophy that Kierkegaard faced in religion: the demise of the subjective relationship. We have lost the duty to philosophy that Socrates felt and in some ways died for, the intimately personal, individual relationship to the content of our study. At his final Apology, Socrates said “as long as I draw breath and am able, I shall not cease to practice philosophy.” He had so fully embraced philosophy that any other form of life was “not worth living.”

Philosophy is not merely a set of practices and shared academic norms. It is a way of living. And if it fails to be a way of living, all its academia will be unmasked as hollow. Then could Nietzsche’s madman declare with certainty that along with God, the Philosopher must be buried as well – “We have killed him — you and I. We are all his murderers” (The Gay Science). Divorced from the lived experience of the philosopher, how can philosophy be meaningful? If philosophy is to have any value, it must be “through its effects upon the lives of those who study it” (Bertrand Russell).

Perhaps no one but Kierkegaard has articulated this problem in all its scope. In his Truth is Subjectivity, he wrote:

Our discussion is not about the scholar’s systematic zeal to arrange the truths of Christianity in nice tidy categories but about the individual’s personal relationship to this doctrine, a relationship which is properly one of infinite interest to him. (source)

To be a philosopher, one must take a radical leap. It is like Kierkegaard’s leap of faith, the jump into the abyss. Namely: one must be willing to live by one’s conclusions. After all, philosophy claims to both describe and prescribe reality, the ethical life, the social sphere. If this is the case, then how should we live differently because of it? If Plato is indeed correct about the immortality of the soul, what then should we do? Every philosophical premise, when carried the full length, has an ethical conclusion. They dictate what should be done.

Make the leap!

But even here we encounter a problem. We are supposed to live by our conclusions, yes, but we are also supposed to live by the method of philosophy. And yet this method questions every conclusion. How can we live by a conclusion that can be called into question and invalidated the day after? Philosophy is built upon the dialectic, the constant shift in thought and relentless doubt of each and every premise. An objector might claim that the dialectical is fundamentally antithetical to the meaningful, as a life cannot be built upon an ever-shifting foundation.

Perhaps, then, Kierkegaard’s approach is only sensical in religion. After all, religion is not dialectical. It remains solid, and thus a subjective relationship can be built. A subjective relationship to religion builds a bridge between rock-solid cliffs; a subjective relationship to philosophy builds a bridge between wind and tossing waves. One must be able to stop somewhere if a meaning of life is to be built, and religion provides the stopping-point.

Philosophy, however, is not incapable of providing meaning. It has merely been so often misapplied that it seems impossible to truly live by. The solution is this: one must be willing to set a direction for the dialectic. Kierkegaard himself did not set a rock of Christianity and declare “now, build a relationship with this!” His project was to advance, not end the dialectic. His intention was to “create difficulties everywhere” (Concluding Unscientific Postscript). He sought to push individuals to recognize the flaws of dogma, and through this to create their own relationship with Christianity independent of the traditional Nicene doctrine. But this dialectic was not unguided: its goal was to become a Christian.

This aim, in a somewhat paradoxical sense, could only be achieved by first negating it: recognizing that I am not a Christian now. Thus, the dialectic became essential to the process. The creation of a true relationship with Christianity was made possible only through destruction – through eliminating the bromides and dependence on institutions.

This same process of guided dialectic applies to philosophy. By focusing on a specific end goal, our dialectic gains a foundation. New information does not destroy the foundation. Rather, it clarifies and polishes the foundation and assists in its construction. For example, I may decide my end goal is to become a virtuous person. When I discover that one of my practices was not after all virtuous, this does not destroy my ability to live by my philosophy. After all, my end goal is not called into question. I still aim to be virtuous. But my process has been refined, as I now know one more thing that I should not aim for.

Therefore, we now have a basis for developing a personal relationship with philosophy. Before anything, an aim must be set as the goal of all dialectic. Then, we must live by this aim, constantly seeking to refine and expand it. The aim cannot be called into question. This aim is the fundamental, subjective truth, one that is lived by the individual so intensely that it cannot be invalidated. It must be of infinite significance to the individual. It should not be taught in universities, but pursued by the individual.

We must assume the end goal in order to justify the process itself. After all, if we open up our end goal to justification – and therefore criticism – how can we truly be devoted to it? It becomes merely another premise among many, one that may be quickly invalidated by a new paper in an academic journal. Only through the powerful, subjective force of faith can we believe in the end goal. (To clarify, I do not at all mean faith in the religious sense. You’ll catch my meaning as I develop the idea.)

Have faith enough, at least, to make the leap.

Faith, after all, is inevitable in life. Over the centuries, the most powerful trend in philosophy has been skepticism. We have certainly not completed Aristotle’s task of classifying and demonstrating everything, but we have made tremendous progress in Socrates’ task of calling everything into question. In a philosophy where there is no convincing demonstration of the possibility of knowledge itself, how can we claim to have a comprehensive system that eliminates the need for faith? Rather, we have merely shown the overwhelming need for faith.

Faith is a teleological suspension of doubt in the face of uncertainty. The need for this suspension derives from three fundamental and undeniable aspects of existence. First, we are uncertain at the most basic level, and unable to make a decision based on the process of systematic reasoning. Second, despite our uncertainty, we must make a decision. Third, and too often ignored, we have ends, desires, dreams – things that we feel we must accomplish or at least strive for. We may know objectively that these dreams are irrational, unjustified – and yet every individual feels a need to search after some aim. In the face of this telos, it is unacceptable to merely deny agency and revoke our ability to make a choice, and it is unacceptable to choose arbitrarily.

How can we reconcile these three facts of our existence – uncertainty, agency, and the telos? Only through faith. We ignore our uncertainty, and make the decision based on the telos, the goal. We decide our ends and believe them by faith. Every decision must be directed by this touchstone. It is constantly refined through the dialectical process, but the telos itself is never subject to the dialectic.

In his Existenzphilosophie, Karl Jaspers wrote, “Philosophic meditation is an accomplishment by which I attain Being and my own self, not impartial thinking which studies a subject with indifference.” The philosopher should be intimately engaged with the philosophy; it should not be an object of study, but a way of living that has infinite impact. The goal of philosophy must be reexpressed in Kierkegaard’s terms, as the search to “find a truth that is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live or die.”

Philosophy Uncategorized

The Agent-Age Problem for Consequentialism

Post author By Jeremy Hadfield
Post date January 12, 2017

Suspend your disbelief for a moment, and imagine the 6-year-old daughter of a major world leader travels with her father to a major nuclear launch site. She is left unsupervised, and happens to wander into the launch room. There, out of curiosity, she presses the big red button.

This launches a nuclear weapon that immediately kills millions of people. Before the weapon has even detonated, other nations have launched missiles of their own. A single launch rapidly escalates to nuclear war. Billions of humans and nonhumans are killed, and the planet is left barely habitable.

This scenario is clearly implausible to the point of impossibility – the big red button, after all, doesn’t even exist. However, it is a useful archetype that raises serious questions for consequentialism. Consequentialism inadequacy in certain moral issues is clear when the accidental action of a small child leads to immense suffering. I’ll add another example that deals with similar issues, but that is far more likely.

A young boy happens to find a few matches on the floor of his family’s garage. While playing with them and scraping them across the rough floor, one of them ignites. In panic, the child rushes to the garbage and throws the match in. Then, losing interest, he walks inside and finds something else to do. The match lights a fire into the garbage which spreads into the house. The house burns to the ground, killing everyone inside. The fire spreads to nearby houses and kills or injures several more people.

This type of counterexample to consequentialism is demonstrably plausible, as there is empirical documentation of similar cases. According to the Washington Post, at least 265 Americans were accidently shot by children in 2015. Many of these shootings resulted in tragic deaths. Meanwhile, the number of American fatalities due to terrorism in 2015 was about 20, depending on certain counting methods.

In a truly consequentialist atmosphere, accidental shootings by children would be discussed far more than terror attacks – precisely 13.25 times as much. Moral deliberation on an action would be indexed to the amount of pain or happiness caused by the action. But in reality, the ethical issue of terrorism is discussed prolifically, while accidental shootings by children are virtually ignored. Why is this the case? I argue that while the amount of discussion on terrorism doesn’t reflect consequentialism, it does reflect our moral intuitions. We assign greater condemnation to actions not based on the numerical impact of these actions, but based on the intention of the actor, the nature of the action, and the emotional impact of the action.

The probability of child accidents will only increase in our modern world, as dangerous technologies proliferate and become more available, the population expands, and systems become more interconnected. A single accidental action by a child can result in unfathomable pain. However, our moral intuitions indicate that accidental actions by children are not blameworthy. Can consequentialism reconcile this problem?

Interpretation

I will use this definition of consequentialism, based loosely on the one from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

“The belief that consequences are the only normative property that affects the rightness of an action.”

Or, in simpler terms, an action is made right or wrong only by its consequences. Consequences are the only morally relevant consideration.

Thus, if this essay shows that there are non-consequential normative properties that affect the rightness of an action, then consequentialism is false. I will use primarily an intuitionist approach to prove this claim – that is, showing that consequentialism is incompatible with clear moral intuitions. I will not touch on whether intuitionism is true; I will just discuss the consequences of its assumed truth.

Normative properties are defined as any ethical aspects of an action. This is a simple and non-rigorous definition that would be considered inadequate by many metaethicists, but it works well for the essay. For example, “rightness of intent” is a normative property, as it is an aspect that could impact the ethics of the action. Furthermore, this would be a non-consequential normative property.

What are the relevant normative properties in the examples above? I will consider the following:

Intent – the actor’s purpose or intended goal in a certain action.
Actor – the individual who commits the act.
Consequence – the morally relevant impacts of the action.

Different moral theories place different emphases on these properties; consequentialism is the theory that only the third property is relevant to the rightness of an action.

In the case of the child pressing the red button, I believe we have clear answers as to the ‘value’ of these properties. The consequences are certainly bad. The intent is morally indifferent, as the child did not intend for anyone to suffer nor for anyone to benefit from her pressing the button.

The most interesting property is the second. Our moral intuitions agree that the age of the actor is morally significant. If a child commits a crime, they are considered less morally responsible than adults. This intuition is ingrained in law – individuals are not usually morally responsible until the age of 18. Some religions have an ‘age of accountability,’ which makes people accountable to God for sins after it is reached. Since children are less capable of complex moral reasoning, they are less responsible for mistakes in this reasoning.

Furthermore, there are also arguments for the moral relevance of the age of the actor that are not based on intuitions. For example, the following deductive argument:

P1. One is not morally responsible for what one does not know.

P2. If one is not morally responsible for what one does not know, then people who know less than others are less morally responsible.

P3. Children know less than adults.

P4. Children are less morally responsible than adults.

Thus, when the child presses the red button, and she does not know that this will fire a nuclear weapon, she is not morally responsible for the nuclear war that ensues. This argument attempts to prove that children in general are less responsible, but it can also be applied in any case where lack of knowledge is involved. If someone does not know the consequences or nature of an action, they are not morally responsible for this action.

Based on clear moral intuitions and the above deductive argument, the action of pressing the button is either (1) less wrong or (2) morally indifferent when the actor is very young or when the actor does not know the consequences. Either case means that the actor – a non-consequential normative property – affects the rightness of the action, disproving consequentialism.

Essays Philosophy

Finite and infinite: the existential wisdom of The Office

Post author By Jeremy Hadfield
Post date November 17, 2016

I love The Office because it juxtaposes absurd, delusional people against unabashed authenticity. This comparison isn’t exactly subtle, but it is never explicitly said. Jim and Pam become protagonists not because they receive the most screen time, or the story is told from their perspective, or they overcome all their challenges and become exceptional – rather, it’s precisely the opposite. They aren’t heroes. They are merely authentic, and we can only relate to them because they are the only real people within this office landscape of hollow appearances.

What I find fascinating is the distinction between Michael’s inauthenticity and Dwight’s – are they truly different? Or just two renditions of the same kind of inauthenticity?

Michael’s relentless scrambling to avoid blame, display virtue, and underscore his own importance always fall flat. Usually, episodes end with a convoluted explanation from Michael about how he didn’t really fail, how he wasn’t really a bad person, or how he was the center of it all. The actual events of the episode, though, create a cringeworthy irony. Michael is never outright condemned as a hypocrite, but he is painted as one by the contrast between his own words and reality.

Dwight indefatigably grapples with the pain of an uncertain existence, where unfortunate realities can’t simply be labeled ‘false.’ He struggles to reconcile lived experience and his emotions with the theoretical constructs he has used to rigorously define the world. For example, he completely misses out on the party while examining the construction of the house. He ignores lived experience if it does not fit his hypothetical framework.

Kierkegaard argued that we should strike a balance between the finite and the infinite (similar to what other existentialists refer to as facticity vs transcendance, but not exactly the same). These two qualities exist in a dielectric relation: they are opposed to each other, but cannot exist without the other. For instance, the two sides of a scale are opposed to each other, but the scale cannot exist without both sides.

“A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two. Considered in this way a human being is still not a self…. In the relation between two, the relation is the third as a negative unity, and the two relate to the relation and in the relation to the relation; thus under the qualification of the psychical the relation between the psychical and the physical is a relation. If, however, the relation relates itself to itself, this relation is the positive third, and this is the self.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening

Diagram I made to illustrate Kierkegaard’s dialectric between infinite and finite.

The Finite – The finite represents our actuality or necessity, the concrete here and now. It is my reality as a definite thing in the world: the room I live in, the hands I hold with, the face I must present to the world, the physical structures I am embodied within.

Sartre and De Beauvoir referred to a similar idea as facticity. This word has many meanings for different thinkers, but these two thought of facticity as all the concrete details that frame our lives, by which human freedom is limited; the cement of our existence. Some examples of my facticity includes the fact that I was born, the time of my birth, the language I was taught, my race and the genetic composition of my DNA, the environment and year I was born into, and the inevitable prospect of my death. Even my own previous choices are factical. These past choices which I cannot change are the background against which I exist in the present moment, and they limit my freedom.

Facticity can also change. I might have a factical situation where I am unable to read. However, if I am given the resources and I make the choices necessary to become literate, this facticity could be transformed.
The Infinite – The infinite represents possibility, the capacity to envisage new thoughts and ideas, bring into existence new creations, change oneself and choose from innumerable potentialities.

This is also known as transcendence for other existentialists. Primarily through the faculty of imagination, we as humans can go beyond what simply is toward what can be. The possible can transcend the factual. See this excellent passage in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the dichotomy between transcendence & facticity in existentialism.

Michael is too immersed in his own experience, Dwight is not immersed enough; Michael is too immanent and Dwight too transcendent. Dwight seems to have a kind of dissociated distance from others, from his world, and from the people around him. Michael is the opposite in many ways, as he is wholly immersed in a solipsistic fictional world he has constructed in which he is the primary character. Dwight is too finite, Michael too finite? I don’t know if that’s true, actually. Maybe both of them are in the same situation of being too finite. I’ll have to think more about that. Either way, both are inauthentic, in a mode of bad faith: they embracing one side of existence while rejecting another.

Inauthentic people – and by that, I mean people in general, because none of us are wholly authentic – use elaborate schemes to portray themselves in certain ways and ignore others. In The Office, these schemes are almost as obvious, hilarious, and pathetic as they are in the real world — the writers just point out how funny and cringey they are, usually through the lens of Jim or Pam. The writers of The Office express a perhaps unconscious understanding of the imperative for authenticity — just as Sartre urges us to reject our bad faith and recognize our freedom to escape any factical situation (which Dwight has difficulty understanding), and as Kierkegaard exhorts us to strike a balance between infinity and finitude (which Michael has difficult understanding). This is the existential wisdom of the show.

“The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. is bound to be noticed.”
Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death

And with that unnecessary overanalysis, back to The Office.

Essays Philosophy

Why Philosophy Should Abandon the Metaphor of Light

Post author By Jeremy Hadfield
Post date June 27, 2016

One of the most commonplace images in philosophy and religion: a light in the darkness.

In the beginning, there was Plato’s cave. There, only shadows without recognizable form existed, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. A prisoner freed himself, and escaped into the light. And he saw the light, and that it was good, and he recognized the origin of the shadows. He returned to the cave of his imprisonment, and said: “Let there be light.”

Entrenched in the core of the Western tradition is the metaphorical narrative of light from the darkness. It is central both in religion, as in Genesis 1, and philosophy, as in Plato’s allegory of the cave. I merged these two narratives together to show their fundamental similarity. They describe a myth in which everything is covered in shadow until an enlightened being – God in Genesis and the escaped prisoner in Plato – brings light to the darkness. But where did this metaphor come from? What does it really mean? Is it a valuable metaphor for society, metaphysics, and epistemology? Should we keep it, modify it, or scrap it entirely?

A History of Light

The first metaphors of light occur in religious texts. The origin myth in the Rig Veda, a founding collection of Hindu verses written around 1500 B.C., sounds almost eerily similar to Genesis:

At first there was only darkness wrapped in darkness.
All this was only unillumined water. That One which came to be, enclosed in nothing,
arose at last, born of the power of heat.
— The Rig Veda

However, this narrative has one crucial difference from the Bible. In the Rig Veda, one of the most ancient texts ever discovered, heat is the first to come into being, not light. This reveals that until the last century, light and heat were virtually synonymous, because almost all light was generated by fire or the sun. Light and heat are the essence of basic physical — and perhaps metaphysical — comfort. The warmth of the fire provided early humans a refuge from the terrors of the cold, menacing night. Most importantly, it protected us from the fear of blindness: the lack of knowledge, the paucity of seeing.

In our ancient history, we feared the night not because of the darkness itself, but due to what darkness was associated with: savage beasts, murder, losing one’s way. Over time, this dread became so fundamental that we became afraid of the night in itself. The absence of light, became a primary cause of fear, not a secondary terror associated with more dangerous prospects. It is no surprise, then, that the metaphor of light has become ingrained in the human psyche, a permanent relic of more dangerous times.

From the golden age of the Indus valley to the founding of Rome, the world’s major religions were hard at work solidifying the metaphorical position of light as good, truth, and piety. The Quran is dotted with the phrase “He bringeth them out of darkness into light.” In the Hebrew Bible, John 8:12 directly connects light to God and righteousness:

“When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light.”
The Bible, John 8:12

In religious iconography from nearly every sect, priests, prophets, and saints are distinguished by a halo of light of some kind.

The Buddha is represented with a halo of light in this ancient Chinese painting.

Muhammad leads the saints in prayer, surrounded by a mantle of light or fire.

Ra, the sun god of ancient Egypt, was almost always depicted with a solar disc on his head.

In Simon Ushakov’s icon of the The Last Supper (1685), Christ and all of the apostles except Judas Iscariot have a halo.

The Lighted Clearing: The Epistemology of the Enlightenment

The metaphor of light is not merely a decorative literary cliché. “Already in Plato,” writes Hans Blumenburg, “the metaphorics of light already has a metaphysics of light implicit in it.” The metaphor is at the core of the idea that the world submits itself to the light of reason. Without the language of light-dark duality, it would be challenging to formulate or understand enlightenment philosophy.

Light-dark dualism is connected with nearly every major European philosophical movement. In Greece, the birthplace of Western philosophy, the Sun was a god – Helios, “the Father of the piercing beams of light” (Pindar). Plato built upon the established iconography of light to represent his epistemology. In The Republic, light is knowledge, while darkness is ignorance. Daylight exposes the night’s filth, untruth, and vice, and therefore light is enlightenment and truth.

Centuries later, Descartes constructed the philosophical meaning of “the natural light of reason,” a phrase coined by Cicero. This light alone, said Descartes, can intuit truth beyond doubt, as it is disconnected from the senses and the corporeal world. He writes:

…for I cannot doubt that which the natural light causes me to believe to be true, as, for example, it has shown me that I am from the fact that I doubt, or other facts of the same kind. And I possess no other faculty whereby to distinguish truth. from falsehood, which can teach me that what this light shows me to be true is not really true, and no other faculty that is equally trustworthy.
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, pg. 14

This light, the lumen naturale, is the intuition of truth. Descartes recognizes that reason is not always a meticulous logical process. Often, he writes, it is simply a powerful intuition, a “spontaneous inclination.” We feel the logical coherence of certain truths, and we feel dissonance if we reject these truths. He recognizes the flaws of this intuition, but ultimately accepts it as the only method for discovering reality. In the preface to the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant writes that truth cannot escape the light of reason:

Nothing here can escape us, because what reason brings forth entirely out of itself cannot be hidden, but is brought to light by reason itself as soon as reason’s common principle has been discovered.

In short, the radiance of reason exposes all knowable things.

Later in the history of light, Heidegger uses the lichtung, or lighted clearing, as the location where being is disclosed. Lichtung, writes Heidegger, “designates a bringing to light which is also a clearing of space” (Garbutt). In the lichtung, truths are revealed. It is a site of revelation and exposure, where our inner selves can no longer be hidden.

Therefore, most philosophical figures of the Western tradition, including Kant, Plato, Heidegger and Descartes, use a conception of truth best described by the ancient Greek word for truth, alethia, which means “unconcealment.” This perspective assumes that everything can be illuminated by light or grasped by reason. This epistemology’s foundations are attacked as the postmodernist movement comes into its own.

The Collapse of the Metaphor of Light

In the 20th century, postmodern philosophers like Levinas and Derrida recognized that the world is not completely intelligible. By contesting the most fundamental imagery of the Platonic legacy, they are counter-philosophical (Sparrow). These deconstructionists are Simba in the Lion King. They are told that philosophy can understand all that the light touches, but this does not satisfy them. Exploring the borders of the epistemology they inherited, the postmodernists reach the edge of the kingdom and realize that there is existence in shadow and darkness.

The totalizing vision of the Western tradition restricts truth and reality to objects that fit the understandable mold of reason:

“what does not enter into form is banished from this world”
(Levinas 1).

This vision fails to see that the light of reason can only reveal objective knowledge. The Enlightenment framework assumes that because reason can only understand objective knowledge, objectivity is the only kind of knowledge. In this way, the Platonic legacy ignores subjectivity. Ironically, the disciples of Enlightenment epistemology are like the prisoners of Plato’s cave – they assume that what they can see is all that exists.

On the other hand, Levinas understood that the most basic fact of our relation with other people is that we cannot understand other people. This is alterity: the infinite otherness of everyone we know. To live is to come into contact with other beings that are fundamentally alien to us, to encounter another consciousness that “wells up inside of us to disrupt and menace the smooth operation of the intellect and the cultivation of a solipsistic identity” (Sparrow). Here, Pythagoras is relevant – in his writings, light represents limits, while darkness is infinity – shadow is associated “with the unexplored, indefinite interior” (Notopulos). Our world, then, is better represented by a dark forest than a lighted clearing. I am subjectivity and I live in the midst of subjectivity – all around me are unexplored selves, and I am an unexplored self.

Derrida made a more political criticism of light-dark dualism. In George Orwell’s novel 1984, the protagonist, Winston, is told he will meet his fellow resistor in “a place where there is no darkness.” He did not know what this meant, “only that in some way or another it would come true.” In the end, oppressive and all-powerful Party imprisons Winston in a cell where inescapable artificial light tortures him for all hours of the day. This demonstrates the political meaning of light as what allows beings to be revealed, manipulated, controlled, and used as tools toward an end. As Derrida wrote:

…the entire philosophical tradition, in its meaning and at bottom, would make common cause with oppression and with the totalitarianism of the same. The ancient clandestine friendship between light and power, the ancient complicity between theoretical objectivity and techno-political possession.
Violence and Metaphysics, pg 91

Derrida argues that the state cannot possess humans if they do not have the philosophy to justify their act of ownership. This justifying philosophy is the Enlightenment, which views subjectivity as penetrable to reason, and thus open to ownership. Light exposes objects so they can be used, while “A philosophy of the night recognizes that form disintegrates in the darkness, objects lose their graspability” (Sparrow).

In absolute visibility, humans become objects. As Foucalt might say, an anatomy textbook exposes the human body completely, which makes the body seem like an object that can be understood if we simply comprehend all the cells that compose it. If we view others in this way, what is the moral significance of owning a human? The state seems to say, a citizen is merely a beast of labor with a different conformation of cells. In reality, we do not encounter the Other as an object, but as an infinite force outside ourselves, with a subjectivity we cannot fully comprehend.

The traditional metaphor of light has failed philosophy. It collapses the moment we step away from our solitary philosophizing and into the world of others. The ancient need to expose, objectify, disclose, and grasp subjectivity causes us to ignore any realities which escape our attempt to understand. We should replace this all-exposing worldview with a philosophy of night that recognizes uncertainty and alterity.

Update: 4/7/20

I originally wrote this post when I was 16. Looking back on it, I’m proud of my intuitions. I still stick by them. I realize that I converged with Laurelle, the non-philosopher. They’re expressed in this (warning – spooky) video, based on Laurelle’s Of Black Universe in the Human Foundations of Color. Thank you to Trent Knebel for introducing me to this work. Laruelle has written here what might constitute a manifesto for the philosophy of night:

A video oratory on Laruelle’s Black Universe.

In the beginning there is Black–man and Universe, rather than philosopher and World…
Surrounding the philosopher everything becomes World and light. Surrounding man everything becomes Universe and opacity…
Light strikes the Earth with repeated blows, divides the World infinitely, solicits in vain the invisible Universe…
Man approaches the World only by way of transcendental darkness, into which he never entered and from which he will never leave…
Black is without opposite: even light, which tries to turn it into its opposite, fails in the face of the rigor of its secret….
Our uchromia: to learn to think from the point of view of Black as what determines color in the last instance rather than what limits it.
Philosophical technology has been withdrawn mimetically from the World, in order to reflect and reproduce it. Such technology is inadequate for thinking the Universe…
Our philosophers are children who are afraid of the Dark…
Philosophy is thinking by way of a generalized “black box”; it is the effort to fit black into light and to push it back to the rear of the caverns…
François Laruelle, founder of non-philosophy

While I don’t claim to understand the full theoretical dimensions of Laruelle’s works, I agree with his intuitions. So even if he has a hard time expressing what he means in clean, terse, and logical philosophical prose (and I’m sure he’s easier to understand if you know French and can read him in his native language), I forgive him because I think he’s got the core ideas right. He’s gesturing at what Nietzsche called das ur-Eine, the primordial unity; the dark, inaccessible, opaque, contradictory nature of the Real which underlies and composes our existence.

Works Cited

Descartes, René. "Meditations on First Philosophy." Indianapolis: Hacket Press. 2000. Print. 

Garbutt, Robert. "The Clearing: Heidegger's Lichtung and the Big Scrub." Southern Cross University. 2010. Print. 

Levinas, Immanuel. "Phenomenon and Enigma." Collected Philosophical Papers. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987. Page 70. 

Notopoulos, James. "The Symbolism of the Sun and Light in the Republic of Plato." Classical Philology, Vol. 39, No. 3. Pp. 163-172. University of Chicago Press. 1994. Print. 

Pindar. "The Odes of Pindar." The University of Chicago Press. 1947. Print. 

Sparrow, Tom. "Levinas Unhinged." John Hunt Publishing. 28 Jun 2013. Print.

Essays Philosophy Religion & Spirituality

The Incompatibility of Kantianism and Christianity

Post author By Jeremy Hadfield
Post date January 24, 2015

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
— Matthew 5:48

I’m about to argue that one cannot be a Christian and a Kantian at the same time. Before I do that, we’ll need some definitions: First, as deontology, or duty-based ethics, is a broad field, I’ll limit it to Kantian deontology, as set forth in the Metaphysics of Morals. Second, Christianity will be defined as belief in Yawheh; the deific nature, atonement, and resurrection of Jesus; and a general belief in the truth of the Old and New Testaments. Now on to the argument.

Summary

1. The Christian God does not act immorally; he is morally perfect.

2. The morally perfect Christian God performed the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

3. The Atonement of Jesus Christ is immoral under a Kantian framework.

4. Thus, Christians may not be Kantians and maintain rational consistency.

Premise one: The Christian God does not act immorally.

As shown in the opening quote, the Bible frequently repeats that God is perfect, and it supplicates God’s followers to strive to be perfect like him (Deuteronomy 18:13 is another good example, though it is ironic, considering the atrocities committed by God in that same book). Furthermore, moral perfection is one of the defining aspects of the concept of God; if God is not morally perfect, then why call him God? Why not just an advanced human? An omniscient being would necessarily know all things, including the nature of morality, and an omnibenevolent being would necessarily follow the nature of morality.

Premise two: The morally perfect Christian God performed the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

This is not very controversial, though it gets slightly strange if you are trinitarian, considering the whole ‘God sacrificing himself and then praying to himself on the cross’ deal. The only controversy may arise around how exactly God went around performing it; was it God who did it, or was it Jesus for the sake of God, or was it Jesus’ singular choice? And how much choice, exactly, did Jesus have? He was most certainly coerced, after all, by the fact that everyone’s souls would be set on fire if he didn’t atone for them. Like the coward that I am, I’ll avoid these questions by simply saying that God caused the Atonement to happen by integrating it into his plan. Again, there is the question of how much choice God had in creating the plan, but regardless, he created the plan, and that inevitably led to the Atonement.

Premise three: The Atonement of Jesus Christ is deontologically immoral.

It is quite clear that Kantian deontology would rule the Atonement immoral. The Atonement distinctly violates the primary principle of Kantianism: we should never act in such a way that we treat others as a mere means to an end. It is using Christ as a mere means to an end, primarily as an instrument for the benefit of the vast majority. I do not mean ‘mere’ as a derogatory term, but rather as a philosophical condition: mere as in ‘little more than as specified.’ The Atonement, after all, was not a mere act, but a pivotal point in Christian theology. However, it is almost universally recognized that Christ was never an end, but that he was always a means. After all, he was called the Lamb for a reason: he was a sacrifice for the sake of others. He offered all of his glory unto his father. This is the type of ‘sacrifice of the minority for the majority’ situation that Kantians condemn. Christ went through horrific tortures, suffering the pain of literally everyone, so that the sins of humanity could be erased. This is permissible under a teleological moral framework, where the means can be justified by its ends, but abhorrent under a deontological, and especially Kantian, moral framework.

Conclusion: Christians may not be Kantians and maintain rational consistency.

One who believes in a morally perfect God must also model his/her morality around this God. Any action that this God performs is necessarily good, and so mortals cannot deny the morality of the action and must, instead, agree with it. It would be irrational and contradictory to say that a morally perfect God did something immoral. If the Atonement is immoral under a Kantian framework, then either God is morally imperfect, the Kantian framework is false, or God does not exist. Only one of these options allows one to retain their status as a Christian, which I defined as one who believes in a morally perfect God, among other things. The other option is to believe that Kantianism is false.

Possible criticisms

1. God and humans have different moral standards. It is justified for God to kill, but it is not justified for humans to do so. It is justified for God to bystand in the face of suffering, but it is not justified for humans to do so. Thus, we do not have to base our morality on God’s.

2. Kant’s morality is only for autonomous wills (Stanford), and God did not have any choice in the Atonement. It was a necessary aspect of the universe. Thus, he was not an autonomous will, and he was not making the sort of act that Kantianism applies to.

References

Deuteronomy 18:13 – Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God.

Kant’s Moral Philosophy. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. First published in 2004; substantive revision in 2008.