Jason Samuel as Judge Poser

"Homocide Bomber" vs. "Suicide Bomber"

The Maverick Philosopher tells us why "homicide bomber" adequately describes what the NYTs refers to as a "suicide bomber."

Reflections on Benedict's Antropology of the Family

This is the first piece of writing I have read of Benedict XVI since he was elected Supreme Pontiff. While I am aware that Zenit has only released part one today, I find myself amazed and satisfied by the Holy Father’s exaltation, but also explication, of the philosophical anthropology of the family. Part two will prove to be an equal blessing, I am sure.

Benedict begins with a caveat. Do not think of the family as you would many, if not most, other things. It’s not a mere construct, he tell us. As a sociology student, I often struggled with sociology’s method of looking at everything as ‘social construct.’ A large segment of sociology—and by this I mean much of the pervading thought—would have us believe that an idea, which may appear sacrosanct, natural, innate, or properly basic to those who accept it, is in reality an artifact of society: a social construct. This line or reasoning produces the implication that social constructs result from human choice and not something “innate,” or “natural.” We should see easily how God, in this equation, plays no role aside from too being a social artifact.

Benedict begins with disestablishing this corrupting presupposition—he later addresses how such a ‘first principle’ corrupts in how it leads to the hyper-individualist sensuality that plagues our modern-day "family." If we begin with questioning “Who am I? And this question, in turn, cannot be separated from the question about God: Does God exist? And, who is God?” we’re led to the answer that “[m]an is created in the image of God, and God himself is love.” It follows from this that God calls us to love.

[I am reminded of a letter the founder of the Legionaries of Christ and of the apostolic movement Regnum Christi, Father Marciel Maciel, LC, wrote to members of the Legion and the movement entitled “Called to Love.” Fr. Maciel pursues this question—Who am I?—through our vocation to love. As profound as this letter is, I will refrain from giving it more attention that urging you to read it.]

Our God-given composure and vocation gives our bodies, “so to speak,” says Benedict, “a theological character.” Thus, we’re not simply the corporeal. Our sexuality, then, is more than a property of our bodies, it’s responsible, in part, for defining the human person.

Benedict philosophizes that from these two bonds, “man with God” and body and spirit, arises another: the one that exists between person and institution. I wish I could explain this more, but my understanding of this step is thin.  [I welcome comments addressed especially to this point.]

When man makes a choice—particularly one of “yes”—because he lives in space and time, “man's "yes" goes beyond the present moment. . . it constitutes the area of fidelity.”

When Benedict says next, that “[t]he freedom of the ‘yes’ appears therefore as freedom capable of assuming what is definitive,” I believe he means that our free will, properly understood, is oriented to the truth. This is clarified, I too believe, in Benedict’s next statement, which acknowledges that true freedom is not in pursuit of pleasure. This isn’t to say, however, that our choices will not bring us pleasure, but rather that our “yes” is to be to what’s definitive, which in gives us true pleasure.

To form a family, a man and woman must reciprocally affirm “yes,” testifying that we do not belong exclusively to ourselves. We belong to our spouses, should that be our vocation, and to the institutions through which our humanity is realized. Marriage, of course, being one. Marriage, then, cannot be thought of as an imposition, but rather “an intrinsic exigency of the pact of conjugal love and of the depth of the human person.”

Benedict, having constructed for us an anthropology of the family, which follows from our teleological natures, he turns to aberrations of marriage. Each, insofar as it strays from what follows from our natures, offers man a corrupted experience while sometimes appearing “erroneously as man's authentic liberation.” So, what may feel ‘right’ or what may make us ‘happy,’ if it doesn’t comport with a marriage of sexual complementarity and eternal fidelity, just trivializes the body, and, in the end, man himself.

We now come full circle to Benedict’s initial warning that family is not a social construct—it flows naturally from our teleological natures. If all is socially constructed, then “man can make of himself what he likes.” In fact, if all is socially constructed, that is all man can do.

Benedict XVI on the Anthropological Foundation of the Family 1

Zenit translated an address the Holy Father made at the opening of the Ecclesial Congress of the Diocese of RomeHere, delivered Monday in the Basilica of St. John Lateran. This is part one only, part two will appear Friday. I will post it too.

Here's an excerpt:

Marriage and the family are not a casual sociological construct, fruit of particular historical and economic situations. On the contrary, the question of the right relationship between man and woman sinks its roots in the most profound essence of the human being, and can only find its answer in the latter. It cannot be separated from the always ancient and always new question of man about himself: Who am I? And this question, in turn, cannot be separated from the question about God: Does God exist? And, who is God? What is his face really like? The Bible's answer to these two questions is unitary and consequential: Man is created in the image of God, and God himself is love. For this reason, the vocation to love is what makes man the authentic image of God: He becomes like God in the measure that he becomes someone who loves.

After Virtue I

After Virtue makes seven central claims.

Religion Informing Morality Re: Abortion

While I already passed on a link to Eugene Volokh’s recent post on legislating morality, I now want to make a few comments.

First, I read The Volokh Conspiracy (VC) regularly as a consistent source of good commentary and for links for me to pass on through my blog. While I find myself in agreement with, or even molded by, what I read on VC, Eugene Volokh’s posts especially, I need now to make some points of disagreement.

I am not sure Volokh is working with a healthy, let alone accurate understanding of morality. To be sure, anyone who claims that others are trying to “force their moral views on them” does not work with an adequate understanding of morality, but I know Volokh doesn't reside in this camp. 

Such a statement, however, suggests that we can look to morals relatively when we know, or have reason to know, such a perspective is untenable on many grounds.  [If I get comments asking me to elaborate here, I will.]

The suggestion that morals are relative or constructive to some time, place, or people, for instance, puts in play the moral permissibility of atrocious human behavior such as the Holocaust, slavery, or genocide. For their proof, moral relativists often cite our need for tolerance and understanding, our “morally diverse” perspectives, and that reasonable people oftentimes disagree on what they consider morally acceptable.  If only "need" were enough to justify something.

Where these claims risk becoming unclear is when someone claims as fact that different cultures have different moral values or that those different moral values, which each culture claims, are right unto themselves.

Both presuppose a sort of epistemic solipsism because each says, for different reasons, we cannot understand or know with any certainty the validity of moral claims.

While I can gather that Volokh does not necessarily lump himself in this group, some of what he writes later gives support to a morally relativist approach:

But all judgments about when human beings acquire certain rights rest on unproven and unprovable moral calls. . . Moreover, they all force one's moral views on others.

In addition to flirting with moral relativism, he also displays skepticism about what are actually verifiable fetological facts:

Now of course these judgments may be informed by medical observations -- for instance, when the brain develops to a certain level, or when something will end up naturally growing into a born human without any further intervention -- or by pragmatic considerations, gut feel, opinion polls, tradition, views about how precise and clear legal lines should be, or whatever else. But ultimately these judgments rest not on the scientific or social facts as such, but on moral judgment calls about how one evaluates these facts. . . All of us draw lines in this field, whether at conception, viability, birth, or whenever else. None of us can prove the validity of those lines through science or through abstract logic.

These statements suggest that we do not know when life begins.  This is absurd.  Two living cells come together to produce a zygote; life was present from the beginning.  The determinative question is when does human life begin.  I would suggest we have more than adequate reason to place, if we must, the line that determines human life at conception since our medical technology is becoming increasingly sensative to detecting life.  Also, that our definition of "viability" rests on the level of medical advancement, which isn't uniform even in our country. 

The principle of charity, however, has me believe that the nature of a blog post does not allow for the sort of thoroughness that would’ve made clear Mr. Volokh’s statements.

If this topic interests you, I urge you to read Francis Beckwith’s paper, When You Come to a Fork In the Road, Take It?” Abortion, Personhood, and the Jurisprudence of Neutrality. [PDF]  There, he address fully the inadequacy of an approach like Professor Volokh's.

Link: The Volokh Conspiracy - -.

The Anti-Conservative Fallacy

Edward Feser's and Eugene Volokh's recent posted on related topics.

The Trouble with Continental Philosophy #1

If you're interested in the rift between Continental and Analytic philosophy, do check out Professor Vallicella's recent post on the topic.  He writes as a non-Analyitic.

Link: Maverick Philosopher The Trouble with Continental Philosophy #1.

Define your terms. Make an assertion and defend it. Tell us what your thesis is. Say something definite. Try to be clear. Philosophy is hard enough even when one is clear. Avoid name dropping, that mark of the pseudo-intellectual. Go easy on the rhetorical questions. If you ever find something definite to say, employ the indicative mood.

I can become a philosopher

William F. Vallicella, the Maverick Philsopher, posted a letter he recieved, in which the writer asks:

Is it possible for someone who has chosen to not pursue advanced degrees in philosophy to actually develop the same or close to the same acumen as someone such as you?

Hot Abercrombie Chick

While she doesn't update her blog with the frequency my readers have come to expect, it's worth checking out nonetheless: Hot Abercrombie Chick. Also, her photo album.

Dan Herzog's Post

After reading Professor Herzog's post, I want to now share it with you all.  Professor Feser was right to call it glib.  Perhaps we can attribute Professor Herzog's glibness to the context within which he writes (err the blogosphere), or the community to which he writes (err left-of-center academics).

     _____________ is unnatural and therefore wrong.

I hasten to note that I am not any kind of skeptic about moral or political argument.  My conviction that there is no sound way to fill in the blank here is a targeted skepticism.  We have to get along without any appeals to what's natural or unnatural, I think, because those appeals are strictly speaking nonsensical.

Oh, I know we talk this way all the time.  I know how we try to fill in the blank.  With gay marriage.  With anal sex.  With abortion.  And on and on.  All these claims, I assert cheerfully, are just nonsense.  The problem is not that nature is a critical standard that supports right-wing judgments.  The problem is that it supports nothing at all.

To be sure, the we often frame ethical debates as Herzog says.  Where he departs, however, is in using nature as a measure for morality.  Nature, to Herzog, doesn't support anything at all?

And I don't mind talk of natural rights if that means we can argue sensibly about rights without thumbing through the local statute book.  But if it means that Nature bestows us with rights, well, I'm afraid I can't wrap my mind arond [sic] that.  And I suspect that neither can anyone else.

Citing Hume now,

If "natural" is the opposite of "rare" and means "common," it has no critical bite.  Unless you think it's wrong to excel.  If it's the opposite of "artifice" and means "what we haven't altered," it has no critical bite.  Unless you think people shouldn't wear eyeglasses.  If natural is the opposite of "supernatural" or "miraculous" and means "can be explained in the ordinary ways," it has no critical bite.  Unless you think only divine intervention is wrong.

I see such claims to nature as an all too easy and often unconvincing way to argue about the moral value of a behavior if we do not properly contextualize what we mean by 'nature' or, say, 'goodness'.  I am in no position, however, to advocate not making claims of that sort.  I will be rereading Professor Feser's responses for sure.