Tag: Aesthetics

A Theology of Beauty?

My understanding of Scotus and his historical significance might be headed for a major shift. [For the resolution, see here.]

This kind of change of mind is not unprecedented. I used to read Kant and Hegel’s valorizations of freedom as sophisticated apologetics for some kind of voluntarism. But across many posts, we have seen that better readings of Kant and Hegel can eliminate such worries (see especially Hegel on Willing.) Very recently, I’ve been starting to wonder if what by general consensus is called the “voluntarism” of Scotus might also be read in some other way.

What is called “voluntarism” in the Latin theological tradition has to do with a relatively narrow debate about the priority of “will” and intellect. The will involved in this case is not any definite will, but rather an alleged power of free decision, where “free” is supposed to mean completely unconstrained. Theologians have often wanted to deny that God was subject to any constraint. But is it “constraint” to recognize the better reason? I think not, and many theologians seem also to agree.

Then too, in a scholastic context, those who like Aquinas are called “intellectualist” rather than voluntarist also defended the existence of liberum arbitrium, which technically includes a so-called “freedom” to cleave to the worse reason, or to any arbitrary fancy. But a common argument, also repeated in many variations, is that God’s “absolute” freedom — in effect a freedom to choose the worse — is never really exercised. There is still intense disagreement on this non-exercise means, as also occurs in the debate on absolute versus ordained power.

The pragmatist might advise us that a power that is never exercised does not in any meaningful sense exist. But as we have seen recently, Charles Pierce, the originator of pragmatism, vigorously rejected the reduction of reality to facts. Reality for Pierce is characterized by true — and in principle testable — conditional statements about what “would be” the case if this or that.

Aristotelian potentiality and actuality are often misread as power and fact, which completely loses the valuational significance that they acquire over the course of the argument of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Pierce too seems to follow this diminished reading. But this does not prevent him from making the valid point that scholastic talk about “powers” already goes beyond talk about present fact. In this way it is a good thing, even if (as I would add) it is also deeply tied to non-Aristotelian assumptions about the predominance of “efficient” causality.

Scotus does seem to argue that God in a supernatural way really exercises both absolute power and absolute freedom, and that humans making practical decisions do also in fact exercise absolute freedom. But in recognizing that he makes these claims, we still have to consider what these assertions mean in the total context of his thought, and what other countervailing tendencies there may be that need to be taken into account.

In the case of Aquinas, in spite of many divergences from Aristotle on important points, there is still a substantial extent to which he also defends many good Aristotelian positions that have been sharply contested by some conservative theologians. Overall I think Aquinas played a progressive historical role, by inventing and promoting an Aristotle whose texts mainstream opinion in the Church could allow to be read sympathetically, and thus no longer felt the need to ban. This is in spite of my disagreement on numerous matters of interpretation. Augustine has of course never been mistaken for an Aristotelian, but he too played a historically progressive role by taking philosophical thought seriously and making it theologically respectable.

These achievements of broad respectability — for Aristotle, and/or for philosophy in general — had the immense value of leaving open the possibility that others could read the philosophical texts in an even more sympathetic way. I therefore tend to read Aquinas (and scholasticism in general) in a sympathetic way, even though I harp on various matters of interpretation.

I have been feeling the deep irony that some of what I write nowadays, if taken out of context, could be misunderstood as professing a kind of dogmatic Aristotelianism. While I have always regarded Aristotle’s works with interest and sympathy, the degree of that sympathy and the strength of that interest have increased greatly over the years, as I have gradually overcome prejudicial judgments that I had too uncritically accepted, from the contemporary world’s widely diffused bias against Aristotle.

In any case, from my recent investigations it is beginning to appear that Scotus’s actual writings touching on ethics and natural-philosophical topics do not really at all sound like the working out of the consequences of a radical voluntarism. I do still think that Scotus’s theory of synchronic contingency — as it has been called in recent years — goes way too far in opposing the determinist bias attributed to the Arabic Aristotelians. But the most substantial account yet available of Scotus’s general attitude toward Aristotelian natural philosophy — Richard Cross’s The Physics of Duns Scotus (1999) — says in the front matter that when addressing natural-philosophical questions, Scotus never primarily relies on theological arguments, but only uses them in a secondary and corroborating way. This is actually true of many of the scholastics.

There is a new collection of Scotus’s ethical writings (Williams 2017), which seems to have largely superseded the Wolter 1996 collection mentioned recently. The most substantial secondary work on Scotus’s ethics seems to be Mary Beth Ingham, The Harmony of Goodness: Mutuality and Moral Living According to John Duns Scotus (1996; 2nd ed. 2012). She speaks of Scotus’s “moral vision of relational love and generous living” (p. 7) as rooted in a broader Franciscan emphasis on the beauty of Creation. In her view, Scotist ethics develops and builds on a Franciscan theological aesthetics. Ingham’s account opens up perspectives on Scotus’s ethics that seem far closer to the ethical themes in Aristotle and Hegel than I ever expected,

The case for the existence and importance of such a Franciscan theological aesthetics gains additional support from The Beauty of the Trinity: A reading of the Summa Halensis (2022) by Justin Coyle. He argues that the main document of early Franciscan theology gives beauty a central place in its account of the Trinity that has been little recognized. Schumacher and Bychkow’s A Reader in Early Franciscan Theology: The Summa Halensis (also 2022) translates selections from this same work, which had multiple authors, the most prominent of whom were Alexander of Hales (d. 1245) and John of La Rochelle (also d. 1245). Along with Roger Bacon, Alexander and John are the most prominent of the Franciscan predecessors of Scotus, whom Boulnois partially credits for some of the innovations that have been attributed solely to Scotus.

Gadamer on Hermeneutics

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900- 2002) is another major 20th century German philosopher. Even more than Paul Ricoeur, he was the 20th century’s most widely recognized promoter of hermeneutics, going far beyond what had been developed by the romantic Schleiermacher (1768-1834) and the historicist Dilthey (1833-1911). Gadamer greatly emphasizes the importance of Platonic dialogue and Aristotelian practical judgment (phronesis). He takes the ethics of Plato and Aristotle very seriously. He is significantly inspired by Heidegger’s early work on a “hermeneutics of facticity”, but seems to have distanced himself from Heidegger’s dubious historical claims.

“Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics shows him to be a leading voice of historical romanticism…. Schleiermacher defined hermeneutics as the art of avoiding misunderstanding…. But the question also arises as to whether the phenomenon of understanding is defined appropriately when we say that to understand is to avoid misunderstanding…. We say, for instance, that understanding and misunderstanding take place between I and thou. But the formula ‘I and thou’ already betrays an enormous alienation. There is nothing like an ‘I and thou’ at all — there is neither the I nor the thou as isolated, substantial realities” (Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, p. 7).

Here he already makes several important points. First, concerning definition (or better, the constitution of meaning) — even though differences are constitutive for meaning in general, we do not in general get an adequate (i.e., uniquely applicable) definition of what something positively is merely by saying what it is not. Second, he implicitly emphasizes that dialogue occurs in the second person. But finally, like many of the subtler philosophers, Gadamer refines this position by rejecting any sharp separation between I and thou that would resemble a simple subject-object polarity.

“It is not so much our judgments as our prejudices that constitute our being. This is a provocative formulation, for I am using it to restore to its rightful place a concept of prejudice that was driven out of our linguistic usage by the French and the English Enlightenment…. Prejudices are not necessarily unjustified and erroneous” (p. 9).

This is indeed provocative, because it makes Gadamer’s views hard to separate from Counter-Enlightenment views. It is perfectly true that no real-world interpretation reaches a definite conclusion without some kind of assumptions. But the real challenge is to distinguish what assumptions are valid or unproblematic in any particular context. He seems to be working with an unconditionally negative view of the Enlightenment. I have issues with both the unconditionally positive view and the unconditionally negative view.

A bit less controversially, Gadamer makes a similar move to rehabilitate “tradition”. Pro-Enlightenment writers like Habermas and Brandom tend to use a high-level schematization that gives an unconditionally negative connotation to “traditionalism”. Gadamer would reject this.

“In fact, the historicity of our existence entails that prejudices, in the literal sense of the word, constitute the initial directedness of our whole ability to experience…. They are simply conditions whereby we experience something — whereby what we encounter says something to us” (ibid).

No serious philosophical dispute was ever resolved by recourse to a dictionary. But every dictionary definition of prejudice I have seen explicitly treats it as something that is unjustified. Not every unjustified view is harmful or wrong. But when such a matter is contested, I say that the one who claims that a prejudice is benign should have a strong burden of proof.

“The nature of the hermeneutical experience is not that something is outside and desires admission. Rather, we are possessed by something and precisely by means of it we are opened up for the new, the different, the true” (ibid).

This is quite a long way from Robert Pippin’s insistence that discursive thought must be considered as entirely active, and can admit no element of passivity. On this particular issue, I would side with Gadamer.

“Experience” is another term that can be quite ambiguous. Gadamer discusses historical uses of Erlebnis at considerable length in his magnum opus Truth and Method. Apparently the German word in this form was first used by Hegel. The meaning here is rather far from its meaning in British empiricism.

“The concept of prejudice is closely connected to the concept of authority” (ibid).

Gadamer also wants to rehabilitate the notion of authority. Authority does not mean only an irrational force. Like Brandom, he emphasizes that legitimate authority is grounded in shared understanding. At the same time he highlights the importance of questions and questioning.

“No assertion is possible that cannot be understood as the answer to a question, and assertions can only be understood in this way. It does not impair the impressive methodology of modern science in the least” (p. 11).

Questions are more primary than assertions. He has little use for any kind of technical methodology that could be applied by rote.

“[M]ethodology as such does not guarantee in any way the productivity of its application. Any experience of life can confirm the fact” (ibid).

“How could one seriously mean, for example, that the clarification of the taxation practices of fifteenth-century cities or the marital customs of Eskimos somehow first receive their meaning from the consciousness of the present and its anticipations?” (p.12).

“It is imagination [Phantasie] that is the decisive function of the scholar. Imagination naturally has a hermeneutical function and serves the sense for what is questionable” (ibid).

As might also be said of Heidegger, Gadamer seems to be very strongly on the side of the romantics, and not that of the enlighteners.

I like the emphasis on what is questionable. It helps to moderate the conservative implications of his positive treatment of prejudice, tradition, and authority.

“The real power of hermeneutical consciousness is our ability to see what is questionable. Now if what we have before our eyes is not only the artistic tradition of a people, or historical tradition, or the principle of modern science in its hermeneutical preconditions but rather the whole of our experience, then we have succeeded, I think, in joining the experience of science to our own universal and human experience of life. For we have now reached the fundamental level that we can call …the ‘linguistic constitution of the world’. It presents itself as the consciousness that is affected by history [wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein] and that provides an initial schematization for all our possibilities of knowing… What I mean is that precisely within his scientific experience it is not so much the ‘laws of ironclad inference’ … that present fruitful ideas to him, but rather unforeseen constellations that kindle a spark of scientific inspiration (e.g., Newton’s apple…)” (p. 13).

He leaves a place for modern science in the broader context of human life. Romanticism is not necessarily hostile to science. He points to the universality of hermeneutic interpretation.

“[T]he romantics recognized the inner unity of intelligere and explicare. Interpretation is not an
occasional, post facto supplement to understanding; rather, understanding is always interpretation, and hence interpretation is the explicit form of understanding. In accordance with this insight, interpretive language and concepts were recognized as belonging to the inner structure of understanding. This moves the whole problem of language from its peripheral
and incidental position into the center of philosophy” (Truth and Method, p. 306).

“Moral knowledge can never be knowable in advance like knowledge that can be taught” (p. 318).

I would not myself speak of moral “knowledge”, but the use here is highly qualified. He endorses Plato’s sharp critique of opinion, which I can only applaud. He seems to endorse Plato’s sharp contrast between knowledge and opinion.

“Plato shows in an unforgettable way where the difficulty lies in knowing what one does not know. It is the power of opinion against which it is so hard to obtain an admission of ignorance. It is opinion that suppresses questions. Opinion has a curious tendency to propagate itself. It would always like to be the general opinion, just as the word that the Greeks have for opinion, doxa, also means the decision made by the majority in the council assembly. How, then, can ignorance be admitted and questions arise?” (p. 359).

Honest recognition of what we do not know is the beginning of wisdom.

“[Aristotle] is concerned with reason and with knowledge, not detached from a being that is becoming, but determined by it and determinative of it. By circumscribing the intellectualism of Socrates and Plato in his inquiry into the good, Aristotle became the founder of ethics as a discipline independent of metaphysics” (p. 310).