From Isolation to Ignorance: My Life in Philosophy

I was required to include this in one of my applications. I figured it would be nice to share it here.
Kierkegaard, or maybe Socrates, taught me that the pursuit of wisdom is a fundamentally tragic pursuit. Since my exposure to ancient philosophy, I have progressively sought to clear the calculative grime from my mind and articulate this tragedy within myself. Before this, I only had a disinterested and propositional understanding of the human person. In all my years as a philosophy student, I have never found a sufficient answer to the question of “why philosophy?” Philosophers are aware of truth precisely because they are aware of their ignorance. “I know nothing” is not a proposition; it is a condition. A philosophical vocation is a recognized condition born out of the mind’s essential awareness of itself. This is the beginning of wisdom. Wisdom begins with a self awareness which begs the assertion: “I know nothing.” The vulgar do not recognize their ignorance, because truth is not any larger than themselves. Truth is their craft. They are truth, and this is their neglect of a life of wisdom.

My life in philosophical studies has ranged anywhere from petty focuses of in-house theological debates to the existentially unsettling questions more native to ancient and Continental thought. When I first attended Lindenwood University, my pursued interests were still largely influenced by an attempt to philosophically articulate and defend my Reformed beliefs in the moral arena of the world. Wanting to maintain my identity as a Reformed Evangelical, I chose to explore my options within the Calvinist culture of theology. For many years, I busied my philosophical studies with the background of a cultural conflict between Kuyperian theology and re-packaged versions of “Presuppositional” apologetics lingering in my mind. It took a very long time for me to get over this hump. Much of my time was spent confronting theological debates and dilemmas strictly within the Protestant sect of Christianity.

While my philosophical inquiries expanded, concerns about post-enlightenment and pre-enlightenment metaphysics began to demand a new consideration of how I could and should define myself as a citizen of the western world. My failure to first see myself within a western context was the cause of much directionless searching. As many philosophy historians have pointed out, the Reformation presented a paradigmatic shift in the way individuals historically defined themselves. Simply put, the post-Reformation definition of a western identity was now undertaken as an individual project rather than a communal enterprise. This social phenomenon set the platform for a new definition of human freedom to take form.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s more modernized approach to Aristotelian metaphysics helped me respond to this troublesome condition. His portrait of humans as inter-dependent co-authors of their own narrative was a depiction more feasible than many fragmented perspectives I was previously exposed to. This illuminated a deep intuited concern I had with modern depictions of human autonomy and faulty missteps in modern epistemology. Since the Enlightenment, modern intellectuals have continuously sought an autonomous definition of themselves without a presupposed end for their existence. I neither see this as a good or bad approach but a new beginning point we can not avoid in our human narrative.

I do not believe we will ever universally restore the old way of assuming an identity with a cosmologically evident telos (e.g. “eternal communion with God” or “the contemplative life” etc.). Yet, we can still open avenues for individuals to define themselves in such ways. Our human freedom is understood without this assumed horizon, but this horizon can still be offered as an alternative context to articulate our human freedom. This has given me hope that the quest for a religious identity is still not a lost cause. Augustine’s famous principle, fides quarum intellectum, may not be a condition in which we currently find ourselves anymore. The Post-enlightenment rejection of a cosmologically evident human telos has left us with a new creative beginning point.. We can not “believe in order to understand” in the way we once did, because our metaphysical ends are no longer “evident”; they are options in need of analytical exploration and definition. In Charles Taylor’s words, they are no longer “unproblematic”.

People have often suggested that my conversion to Catholicism was due to a loss of identity after my parents’ divorce. I can not deny this personal isolation was often echoed in my frustrations with many modern portraits of the Self. Yet, I also can not deny this personal dilemma revealed a new and tangible landscape of human isolation. As I mentioned above, the first step to wisdom begins with recognizing our condition. My parents’ divorce allowed me to identify that condition in a way many others have not. The best way to interpret a cry is to first recognize that we ourselves are crying. The mourned isolation of thinkers like Kierkegaard, Kafka, Sartre, and Camus is undoubtedly real, and I can not reject this as a universal cry. Divorce is a fundamental expression of this estrangement. It is a cry I fundamentally sympathize with. I have gradually adopted Wittgenstein’s argument that philosophical language is a way of projecting a picture on to our world. The ambiguity of the image we present is often the cause of our modern anxiety. The first misstep of some modern thinkers is their autonomous attempt to paint their identity without first objectively situating themselves within a metaphysical horizon and heritage. There is no landscape to the image in which they see themselves, because they have divorced themselves from this landscape. Hence, they have lost their location.

My conversion to Catholicism contained this very practical consideration. I felt my duty to the West was a recovery of a lost narrative. Before I was ever going to be a Protestant, I was first going to define myself as a Roman Catholic. Since my conversion, the rift and estrangement between the non-Catholic world and the Catholic world has been too strong for me to ignore. I have delved more into the philosophy of language and dialogue in hopes of improving conversation among various cultures. Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger have played a significant role in my understanding of the revelatory aspects of language. Language has a potency that discovers and articulates a problem which is previously unidentifiable. The tragedy is that along with this new articulation comes a new set of problems. It is a very unique condition we find ourselves in, but I do not believe we can ignore it. My interest in cultural dialogue and linguistic concerns is fed by a desire to translate these new problematic concepts.

I have been through many intellectual transitions in my life - from adherence to Calvinist theology as a younger Protestant, to a much larger belief in post-Vatican II cultural dialogue as a current Catholic. Above all, my pursuit of wisdom began after recognition of my ignorance. From the beginning of my philosophical pursuits until now, I have sought to retain and pursue all that has been good and true in my formation as a human being. I am now at the fore of a much longer academic road ahead of me. This same fundamental belief in the Good still drives my search for everything in all things and the contemplation of all these things to be passed on to the universal community.

Working out our economy and our problems

The western world is very disillusioned with the prior dependence it has placed in its economic flow of mind. The greatest difficulty in academia is offering an answer that is right, and theorists are never always right. Life is and never will be a science, as far as we ever understand it to be "life". There will always be metaphysical leaps and bounds, missteps and enthusiastic hops, but we will never give up our attempt to approach our conflicts and problems with inadequate equipment. At times the theorist (whether his title is an economist, scientist, political theorist, or philosopher) projects dilemmas onto a world which was previously much better without them. He sometimes wreaks more problems upon the common man than were already there in the first place. It is part of the drama of our lives and theories about our lives to confront problems, difficulties, and conflicts, and the way that we approach these intuited conflicts is by articulating them. Sometimes we articulate them wrongly, or sometimes we articulate them ineffectively. In other words, nothing is concluded into a productive science at the end of this battle because of too many ambiguous or ineffective words. And yet, we are forced to dynamically engage a world that does not fit under our thumb. We have to approach it with the pen and the mouth as well.

I read an article once by a scientist (I don't care to remember his name) who argued that we are much better off without "philosophy", and that philosophy has never given us anything to hold on to. In short, it has never given us answers, facts. I do not know how to respond to this other than clarifying that the aim of philosophy has always been to pave the way for a clear methodical way to make our lives understandable. Physics was once philosophy. Biology was once philosophy. Economics was, and still is, philosophy. Yet, we always want to blame our philosophers for not giving us a clear-cut science. Alan Greenspan can not be held responsible for economic problems in the West because he got something wrong. Part of his job is to get things wrong. His social role is to theorize, to project frameworks and contexts in which we can articulately sift through our problems of judgment, value, and the network of money flow. Yet, this does not mean we are better without him. It means that we depend upon his mind. And at the end of the day, we can have a president very profoundly say that it's not about "big government or small government"; it's about what "works" and is working. The meaning of Obama's message here is that the old way of articulating our economic crises is not working, and so we need to let go of our attachments to the previously vocalized categories. At the same time, we would not be where we are if we had not articulated the problem this way in the first place.

Not everyone is responsible for a life of study or persistent academic pursuits. We are all situated in a world which demands a type of excellence in whatever condition we find ourselves. The intended life of excellence can not always produce excellence, and this is often very tragic. My life as a philosopher is full of mistakes, misgivings, and words I would have retracted if ever given the chance. Yet, I can not say that I ever regret being a philosopher for the distress and pain I have sometimes caused others, either immediately or intermediately through what I've written or spoken. Sometimes we are wrong, and sometimes we are very right. The wave of postmodern criticism that philosophical theory should be kept as fragmentary as everything else, because of its failure to provide answers to life, is really due to a misunderstanding of philosophy as theory. Theory provides and continues to provide a framework in which the interconnection of all the other sciences and doctrines of these sciences makes the most sense to us and improves our lives. We will always perceive a need to improve our lives as a community. For this reason, we will always keep defining and trying to define what is not yet working but needs to work. It's not an easy job, but it's important to always remain sober and reasonable before we become too intolerant and resort to force.

The Home of Love before Society

The cultural milieu around me is developing too much beyond my categorizations these days; it's difficult to say much of anything about different social groups. The variety of cultural distinctions even in the suburbs is striking to me. An ever-expanding media network provides a market of choices for different people. I would also say that it's a social phenomena demanding a new type of reflective Stoicism if we ever want to adjust to the changes.

While working on my grad applications at the Bread company a couple of days ago, I had the privilege of sitting next to a good ol' home-body group of suburban Pentecostals (and I think they were UPC). I never know what's going to come out of a devout charismatic's mouth, so I'm always on the edge of my seat in settings like these. To my surprise, I developed a certain affection for them, as they continued with their conversation on inward change and transformation. There are too many religious groups trying to focus on contemporary social issues, under the pretense that it's time to start moving "out" and getting things done. It's my opinion that it's the simple pull of the market on these young and ambitious minds. Our excuse is that we must adopt the language of our current market in order to function effectively. We have to situate ourselves in the ever-transforming amoebic wave of society to facilitate some change and movement. Yet, it is one of the last places for us to situate ourselves. In order to spout about the proper political policies which best exemplify our notion of love or whatever, our first responsibility is to return to the kitchen and dining room table. It's the same reason why Aristotle constructs his theoretical society on the functioning of proper friendships. Our souls must first be transformed at home with our closest ones. Our identities must be shaped here in conversation with loved ones, and if we do not choose this priority, our identities will be shaped by a more impersonal and abstract social institution. We can not get caught up in implementing contradictory notions of the most important and complex virtues we have brought with us only half-formed in that place we once called our home. Such is what happens when the conflicting advertisements in the market become our new home. This quote, by Hans Balthasaar, stood out to me tonight as I was reading about the complications of what we mean by "love": "the site from which love can be observed and generated cannot itself lie outside of love (in the '"pure logicity"' of so-called science); it can lie only there, where the matter itself lies–namely, in the drama of love." We are too often satisfied with these half-packaged notions of love under the pretense that "at least we are actually doing something for society" or "living out love". The reality is that we only hurt our society when we are encouraged with unreflective social activity. We must spend time at home before we become marketers. The quiet and reflective pace prevalent in our homes is where we identify the true substance and value of the love we so often seek to find, or even proof that such a concept exists between people. It is at the home and in closest friendships where love actually exists between two people, not between a seller and consumer. This is where the true drama of love is actually played out. It's a social context which provides people in close quarters, where arguments are forced to be confronted and conflicts are in a constant state of repair. This is where we find our most evident forms of love and affection. It is where we can universally identify that fleshed out example we all seek and so often struggle to discover.

Speech, Chatter, Life, and Death

“What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.” - Ludwig Wittgenstein

This was quoted in Richard Neuhaus' essay, Born Toward Dying. It is ironic that I have spent much of the most recent weeks with a chip on my shoulder against unclear speech, but I have continued to mindlessly chatter about it. This essay really opened another chasm behind this unethical concept of unclear speech: the sheer fragility and delicacy of life which allows speech to exist in the first place. For many years now, I have been under a progressive conviction that the proper end, the telos, of all things is the nurturing of life. If I ever found myself at a question of direction or what to do or what to say, I often obligated myself to the reflection, "does this give life?" Yet, it is sadly the case that much of our criticisms and satire are oriented in an unconscious direction toward death. Our own worlds are tied up with our frustrations. Our picture of current affairs, of the religious world, the non-religious world, or the public square, is drawn by a self mostly preoccupied with its own petty concerns. Instead of seeking what to do, we look for something to chatter about. And why do we chatter? Because it is inarticulate, and what is inarticulate is not obligated to follow an articulate train of thought. Chatter kills things. It treats life trivially to avoid treating life delicately. I am reminded of Merton's reflection on solitude; sometimes silence is the most potent language. In a dialogue between the self and the world, the self can appropriate silence when nothing can properly be said. Hence, silence is apart of language, because it is a gesture. It is a gesture that does not resort to the short-sighted killing of a concept to ease one's frustrations. Silence is when the self waits until it sees an opportunity for life. Here, the self can finally choose to speak. It can finally choose to speak ethically and clearly, because it has reflected sufficiently beyond the simplistic divisions of reality that are hammered out by mindless chatter. This is the essence of a philosophical vocation.

Given the similarities between Heidegger and Wittgenstein, I would not be surprised if this stance on clarity, maybe translated as "a way toward Being" (in Heideggerian speech), was some where in the background when Wittgenstein wrote this. Wittgenstein was concerned about the whirlwinds philosophers get themselves in by irresponsible categorizations and philosophical dilemmas with no clear way out of them. Saying something, for both Wittgenstein and Heidegger, was tied in with a concept of showing. That is, when someone said something, their presupposed intent was to present a relatable image to their audience. When the image was not articulated in a relatable enough way, the image was no longer being shown; it was only hiding under the pretense of being shown. That is what we do when we chatter. We pretend, even to ourselves, that we are somehow drawing a relatable picture of life. In reality, we are saying nothing, only perpetuating a problem and busying ourselves with misrepresentations of what life is. It's an ironic way of how we preoccupy ourselves with something other than the respectable and conscious reality of life and death.

The religious landscape amidst gray secular cultures

It’s my first post of the New Year, and there is much to talk about for 2009. But since all the American media really seem to talk about is economics and Obama, why not take a look at education?

I’m reading a book published in 2005 by a Jewish journalist who chooses to explore the structure of religious colleges throughout the United States, prying into the inner workings of a good variety of conservative and liberal religious universities. Naomi Riley’s God on the Quad is subtitled How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation Are Changing America. As one might guess, her main focus is the conservative side of the fence. It’s a great book for anyone curious about the sociological effects of conservative religious education on the young adult mind.

There is a lot of important information packed into it, although she does play around a bit much with personal testimony from the students. But the important aspect of her special take on the issue is her concern with the formative influence of these environments on the student body. The amount of faculty from highly accredited universities, she reports, are no less found here than secular universities. And the schools she visits are widely regarded as the most conservative. Among the many are Bob Jones University, the evangelical school historically known for its racial segregation policies, and Brigham Young University, the staunchly Mormon school. The latter has some of the most rigidly prescribed student/faculty etiquette I personally am aware of.

To accuse these schools of intolerance and imposing “sheltered” environments upon the students is a bit mislead, even though many of them are undoubtedly guilty of racial discrimination and maybe some forms of “homophobia” (which I still don’t exactly know how to define). Naomi’s emphasis is the direction these schools provide and the amount of social responsibility the students’ acquire while staying there. Social responsibility was the biggest one. You don’t find this in secular universities as much, and it is progressively dying. The biggest problem is that secular universities do not offer a definitive social context in which students find their particular role. Even if there is a bit of an amorphous social framework one might be able to identify in secular universities, they’re hardly intelligible. The ones that do are often pigeon-holed as “liberal” or “conservative”, and not much else after that.

The mistake of the secular universities is that they are concerned about providing students with a neutral education, but a “neutral” education isn’t an achievable reality. I don’t have a problem with attempting to be as objective and disinterested and even “neutral” as possible when treating very controversial topics. It’s my conviction that this is an important principle behind Western academia. The difficulty is, however, when the secular institution excludes the possibility of other ideals and values which are typically understood to already be favored or canonized. The Western religious ideals, in turn, receive a stale treatment, and there is no treatment of even medieval ideals (a topic you would expect to be an underdog by now) as anything worth plausible philosophical consideration. I’ve encountered such travesties time and again. At the end of the day, because we have practically assumed this postmodern position in most classroom settings, the less favored still only get a half-baked treatment. What people usually grab is an attractive idea romanticized in all sorts of aesthetically gratifying language; they leave behind everything that home once meant to them, under the impression that it was all just a scam to keep them under mom and dad’s hand. Religious schools, although they many lack the much needed consideration of other cultural ideals in opposition to their own, at least answer a very basic human need. They offer stability and direction, a social framework where explicit criteria is available for them to approach dialogue. And many of these students do end up receiving graduate degrees from schools like Harvard, Yale, and William and Mary.

Maybe religious universities do offer a “sheltered” education, or a “close-minded” approach – however you might categorize it. The point is that the secular universities can not avoid it either. They give up a meaty representation of an important philosophy in their anxious desire to openly respect the other students. Either that, or their curriculum treats most traditional religions with a terribly off-set bias, without the students consciously aware they are receiving such a bias.

There’s more to ask about these religious schools and how much they will actually maintain their intellectual and religious integrity. I imagine much of that will unfold as the U.S. continues with different political and economic policies. Demographics will change, but I do not doubt that the strong religious cultures will continue to prevail in an increasingly fragmented nation.