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Reflections on The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Value by John Cottingham (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 October 2008
Since critical standards impose restraints, inappropriate standards can over-restrain. Might there then be claims we can only assess satisfactorily with the aid of a less restrictive and detached approach than is current among philosophers of the present day? This article takes up a particular suggestion, put forward by John Cottingham, that this is indeed the case – that there are regions of thought, particularly in regard to religion, which we can only explore with the aid of emotional sensitivity and immersion in practices. I argue that sensitivity and immersion of this kind would be all too apt to lead us astray, and that the promised gains in what is (rather dubiously) called religious understanding would hardly be sufficiently interesting to be worth the risk.
1 I confine my remarks to religious belief, this being the subject of this paper, but it is important to see that what I have just said could also be said in regard to our view of the world in its broadest features. Religious belief need not be seen as particularly out on a limb in this matter.
2 This seems to have been the view of Richard Rorty. The phrase comes from his article about Williams, Bernard, “To the Sunlit Uplands”, London Review of Books, 31 October, 2002, p. 14Google Scholar.
3 Logic one might have thought to be beyond the reach of parochial enlistment. But don't bank on it. A book catalogue (a different one!) was once sent to my philosophy department which included a section devoted to “Catholic logic”.
4 “My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit and a bridle. What do I care about knowledge? All I want is to answer to my blood, direct, without fribbling intervention of mind, or moral, or what not.” (The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, James T. Boulton, ed., (Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 503.) I do not know to what extent such remarks expressed in a letter should be taken as a considered opinion.
5 Professor Cottingham is able to offer a more edifying and literary example to illustrate this commonplace, calling on Martha Nussbaum's work on “love's knowledge” (10).
6 The controversy over abortion is bound to provide instructive materials. Consider Elizabeth Harman's article ‘The Potentiality Problem’ Philosophical Studies, (2003). It was written, with exemplary academic care, in order to put to rest awkward thoughts about “the moral significance of potentiality”, thoughts which she says had initially “terrified” her (p. 194). It seems that she might have had to agree with her opponents. Of course everything turned out well in the end. This sort of philosophy is that sort of subject.
7 “Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of witches or hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence? I never knew of anyone, that examined and deliberated upon nonsense who did not believe in it before the end of his enquiries”. The Letters of David Hume, Vol 1, J. Y. T Greig, ed., (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), p. 350.
8 “Science must proceed not by experimentally testing all imaginable theories (although scientists like to talk as if they did proceed in that way), but by rejecting all but a very small number of theories as a priori too implausible to be worth testing”. Putnam, Hilary, ‘Language and Philosophy’ in Philosophical Papers, Vol 2, p. 25, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), italics in textGoogle Scholar. Occasionally, we might note, such an offhand rejection will be of a theory later accepted. That in no way undermines Putnam's claim.
9 Since it is important to be accurate, even at the cost of tiresomeness, the picture here might have to be a little more nuanced. Although Cottingham suggests that “a strategy of praxis is required by the nature of the material” (12 italics added, see also the unqualified 112) he is also inclined to use the word “characteristically”: “It is in the very nature of religious understanding that it characteristically stems from practical involvement” (6). So we would have to say that characteristically one would be in no position to reject any one of a hundred religions unless one had immersed oneself in their practices etc.
This qualification must be important. There must surely be some scope for rejecting a religion or version of a religion in which one has not participated. A total abstainer in matters of praxis could at least reject the Cartesian version of Christianity. Christianity requires trust in revelation, and Descartes was prepared to allow that a benevolent God might benevolently lie. So many crucial elements would thus become doubtful. (“I would not want to criticise those who allow that through the mouths of the prophets God can produce verbal untruths which, like the lies of doctors who deceive their patients in order to cure them, are free from any malicious intent to deceive”. ‘Second set of replies’, Cottingham, J., trans., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. II, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1984, p. 102Google Scholar, italics added.)
10 This judgment does not come to you via The National Secular Society. I found it in Knox's, Monsignor Ronald book Enthusiasm (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950, p. 65)Google Scholar.
11 The invitation to be more tolerant, more open, imaginative and many dimensional, might seem hard to resist. In this discourse-of-charity more or less anything which is said in academic mode will be treated with respect, apart of course from something rude. We need not be thinking of matters religious. If Stephen Hawking seems to want to tell us about theories which are so compelling as actually to bring about their own existence, well, Cottingham will take this at face value (110). And if, sometime later, Hawking has second thoughts about such an irruption into being, apparently brought on by the contemplation of Godel's theorem, this too (110–1). One is nowhere allowed to say “poppycock!”, even in a whisper. An open door however simply brings in all the dirt.
12 Sadly, Kant offers with great confidence the popular and superficial view on this point: “If someone is aware that he has acted in accordance with his conscience, then as far as guilt or innocence is concerned nothing more can be required of him”. The Metaphysics of Morals, trans Mary Gregor, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 202.
13 And there is supposed to be something reasonably well defined called “religious language” and “a religious stance” (167). It is assumed that there is a specific kind of understanding called “religious understanding” (6, 18). Would understanding this phrase itself involve religious understanding? And there is supposed to be a single thing called “humankind's religious journey” (45). There is of course much use of that wholly indeterminate phrase “religious experience”. We also hear talk of “perceiving the world religiously” (86). One wonders whether this breaks down into different subspecies, perceiving Buddhistly, perceiving Mormonly, etc.
14 These passages are surely to be pondered by those who are troubled by “the hiddenness of God”.
15 According to some translations, as far back as The Wycliffe Bible of (around) 1388. The New English Bible with perhaps greater accuracy translates this famous line: “God's peace for men on whom his favour rests”. I will shortly consider the anxieties this version might cause.
16 Church Dogmatics, Sec. 17. 2. See also Sec. 31. 1: “It was no mere fabrication when the Early Church was accused by the world outside it of atheism, and it would have been wiser for its apologists not to have defended themselves so keenly against this charge. There is a real basis for the feeling, current to this day, that every genuine proclamation of the Christian faith is a force disturbing to, and even destructive of, the advance of religion, its life and richness and peace. It is bound to be so. … There is no more room now for what the recent past called toleration.” (Vol 2, Part 1, T and T Clark, 1957, p. 444). Compare Peter van Inwagen, who claims that the concept of a “religion” itself, together with the list of world religions, is what he calls a piece of misdirection intended to advance an Enlightenment agenda (God, Knowledge, and Mystery, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995, p. 206).
17 We should notice the word “purely.” It is often included without much thought in such pronouncements, on the principle that you never know when it might come in handy. Its role seems to be: to suggest in some unspecified way the absence of a rationale, as in the complaint “I was prosecuted purely on account of my saying certain words” – hinting, without actually asserting, that content or context had no part to play.
18 See the first three chapters of his Providence and Evil, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
19 I have had more to say on this in ‘Good-bye to the Problem of Evil. Hello to the Problem of Veracity’, Religious Studies, 2001.
20 What would it be for a rational agent to issue an arbitrary command? Perhaps we envisage a command the sole purpose of which would be to see whether it would be obeyed. I think however that unease at the thought of “arbitrary” commands is connected with the thought that morality is perpetually directive. God must either be commanding you to do what you ought to be doing anyway, or he is (outrageously) commanding you to do what you ought not to do – the use of “arbitrary” suggesting this last, or at least carelessness about the all important distinction. (“Arbitrary from a moral point of view” it might be said.)
21 Cottingham's language here comes from Iris Murdoch.
22 Cottingham repeats the old injunction, often claimed to be Socratic, that “we should follow the argument where it leads” (ix). This advice taken as a rule of reason is not well thought out, for plausible premises can validly lead to absurd conclusions. There is after all such a thing as a reductio. “Followers of the argument” when Olbers was alive might have found themselves having to believe, for example, that it never got dark at night. All we can safely say is something rather banal: that we should often be slow to reject an argument on the mere ground that its conclusion is surprising or disagreeable.
23 ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’, Sec. 6, in From a Logical Point of View, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953). Cottingham too talks of a web, with a nod to Quine. Quine's web however is a web of belief, it is made up of items with a truth value. Cottingham's web by contast is made up of logically quite disparate items – a praxis, a symbol, a narrative, a belief, and a commitment – “among other elements” (99–100). One is reminded of the bowsprit which occasionally got mixed up with the rudder.
24 See for example the essays ‘Is Theology Poetry?’, ‘The Funeral of the Great Myth’, and ‘Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism’.
25 Gregers: And what treatment are you giving, Hjalmar?Relling: The usual. I try to keep his life-lie going.
26 I say “in human life” for the beliefs of the devils who believe and tremble (James, 2.19) are presumably to count as religious though not presumably morally improving. It is of course irrelevant here to claim that there are no devils.
27 “The word ‘supernatural’ conveys to us something outside the ordinary operation of cause and effect, but it may not at all have that sense for primitive man. For instance, many peoples are convinced that deaths are caused by witchcraft. To speak of witchcraft being for these peoples a supernatural agency hardly reflects their own view of the matter, since from their point of view nothing could be more natural… To die from witchcraft is to die from natural causes.” Evans-Pritchard, E. E., Theories of Primitive Religion, Oxford, 1965, p. 110Google Scholar.
28 Cottingham mentions Aquinas in this connection, but gives no reference, scholarly habits here abandoned where they really matter. People think that God's existence is self-evident to them, says Aquinas, simply as a result of teaching from childhood on and the customs of where they live (SCG, I, ch. XI). That hardly suggests the “space” for belief or its rejection which Cottingham mentions. Aquinas indeed teaches that any child has the space to act badly as soon as it passes a certain age (ST I-IIae, q. 89, a.6). Even here the capacity to do so in any respect can be made difficult to exercise by the action of divine providence (De Ver., q.24, a. 9.)
29 Cottingham seems half to acknowledge this, but what is considered of interest would seem to be the persistence of the word “God” (77–8, quoting a fancy passage from Rahner). And why isn't it also remarkable that we still have the words “goblin” and “ghost”?
30 This was for Durkheim a matter of “definition”. ‘Concerning the Definition of Religious Phenomena’, trans in Pickering, W. S. F., Durkheim on Religion, (London: Routledge, 1975), p. 93Google Scholar. For Hume's opinion on the nonexistence of atheists, see Mossner, E. C., The Life of David Hume, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), p. 483Google Scholar.
31 The next verse says almost exactly the same in case the message did not get across the first time.
32 But occasionally too, impoverished by. This possibility goes unnoticed in our present enthusiasm for inclusion. Not every edible ingredient thrown into a stew makes it a better stew.
33 Durkheim managed to maintain that every religion was true (The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Introduction, Section 1.) The ultimate put-down, I would have thought.
34 Cottingham is a compulsive spiritualiser – always a bad sign – and even spiritualises here in regard to the down-to-earth prayer for daily bread. It is somehow made to express the wish that we shall become more “compassionate and healing” (95). Well, wouldn't you know?
35 The Sermon on the Mount, by my rough reckoning, offers sixteen “bribes”. (And about ten “threats”.)
36 ‘The Nature and Significance of Theistic Belief’, Ratio, 2006, first quote p. 403, second quote p. 411. The abbot of Ampleforth's actual remark seems to have been “Congratulations! That's brilliant news. I wish I was coming with you.” (The Times, 25th June, 1999). Of course, we may presume that this was not all of what was said or thought.
37 Collected Philosophical Papers, Vol. 3, (Oxford: Blackwell 1981), p.108.
38 The God Delusion, (London: Bantam Press 2006), p. 356.
39 People who suppose that it is a somehow a necessary truth that choice must be a matter of the pursuit of the agent's own welfare would have difficulties in the thought that God could act at all. For God's welfare could be never be less than completely taken care of already.
40 Compare Barth's provocative aphorism: “Only God has hands; not paws like ours” (quoted in White's, Roger article, ‘Notes on Analogical Predication and Speaking about God’, in Hebblethwaite, B. and Sutherland, S., eds, The Philosophical Foundations of Christian Theology, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1982), p. 224Google Scholar.) We might also think of Aquinas, ST, I, q. 13, a. 6, “Are words predicated primarily of God or of creatures?”
41 Human Knowledge, its Scope and Limits, (London: Allen and Unwin, 1948), 251–2.