Why Should I Care About Morality?

Philosophy

WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT MORALITY? By Arnold Zuboff, University College London Let's inquire into the nature of morality--and, more particularly, into the authority that it seems to have in the judgments of most of us. I think a certain story can help us in raising the question of where it gets that authority. Imagine that someone we shall call Gyges, after the character similarly used by Plato in a basically similar story, is seated at a table. Just before him on the table is a small console with a single button on it. Let's say he knows that if he pushed that button a distant stranger, who would otherwise be fine, would be killed. Gyges also knows that if he pushed that lethal button, he, Gyges, would be given £10 that he otherwise would not have. We are going to look into whether Gyges has any reason based purely on morality not to push the button. It is vital that we rule out of our story, if it is to be useful to our questioning of the authority of morality, any possibility that Gyges be punished if he pushes the button or that he in some way be rewarded if he doesn't push it. For if we give him the fear of punishment or the hope of reward as reasons not to push the button, we have not then clearly isolated whether he has a reason not to push the button in its being morally wrong to do so. We are wanting to know whether morality in itself has an authority here for him, but his own punishment or reward carries only the authority of the sort of obvious self-interest that is often distinguished from moral motivation. Therefore we shall say something like Gyges can be sure that the death he might choose to cause would have the perfect appearance of an accident having nothing to do with Gyges. So Gyges would be perfectly safe. Let us add that the remoteness of the stranger insures that there would be no other possibilities of personal loss or gain for Gyges in either the stranger's death or his continued life. The question, then, is this: Gyges has a slight but undeniable reason to push the button, the self-interested reason that he will by doing so acquire £10 that he otherwise would not have. But does he have a reason not to push the button? Let me now mention that I have often had occasion to pose this question to people with some interest in philosophy, since I have often used this problem as a topic for discussion in interviews with applicants to our department. In these interviews, after I have described the situation in which Gyges finds himself, I add that, although he perhaps sounds a bit nasty, in that he is sitting there considering whether to kill someone 2 for £10, Gyges can at least be credited with being open-minded: and he will always be genuinely interested in any advice he may be given about whether it makes sense for him to behave one way or another. And, I continue, my interviewee is now to have an opportunity to offer to Gyges (for whom I will be speaking) any such advice that seems appropriate. In a small number of cases the interviewee will say at the start that Gyges only has reason to press the button and collect his £10. In a still small but larger number of cases the interviewee will arrive at this conclusion after some attempts to come up with a reason for Gyges to refrain from the killing. But most people will first make attempts to explain how Gyges has a reason not to push the button and then, while more or less confidently retaining the belief that there is such a reason, will feel forced to quit trying to find it. These people, and some of the others, often seem not just surprised but also somewhat relieved when I say I can offer my own answer to the challenge. And I shall do so here after I have first considered the sorts of attempts people make and my criticisms of them. These criticisms take two general forms. Sometimes I argue that an attempted solution amounts to merely reintroducing the problem in other terms. Perhaps the simplest example of this is when the interviewee points out that the killing of the remote stranger is morally wrong. In response to this I bring out that Gyges knows that pushing the button would be a sort of action that is regarded as morally wrong. Let's say he himself regards it as "morally wrong". But what he wants to know is whether this description of the action carries with it for him a reason for not performing the action. If it does, that reason has yet to be explained. Similarly, if the interviewee has said something about violating rights or the sanctity of life, I say on behalf of Gyges that he is extremely interested in these as possible sources of a reason for him not to push the button, but he still needs to have explained to him not only what such alleged rights or sanctity are, what they consist in, but how they are supposed to compete with the straightforward self-interested motivation of £10 by giving him a reason not to push the button. So these are just ways of raising the main question again without yet answering it. Some other ways of merely reintroducing the question inspire a response from Gyges that illuminates further the character of the challenge. For example, the interviewee might simply claim that Gyges should refrain from pushing the button. This demand leads Gyges to distinguish between moral and non-moral uses of the word 'should'. Gyges says he understands very well how the advice that he should take up skiing is pointing out that he has some sort of reason to do so. The idea would be that Gyges himself would benefit from skiing. That gives 3 him his reason. This use of 'should', however, has no moral significance and carries none of the supposed authority of morality. But the command (rather, it seems, than advice) contained in saying that Gyges should refrain from pushing the button bids him to sacrifice a benefit, the £10, in order that a remote stranger not suffer a loss. Why should Gyges do that? How could he have a reason to do it? Also illuminating is his reply to the following attempt to give him a reason not to push the button: The interviewee asks Gyges to put himself imaginatively into the shoes of the remote stranger he might kill. "How would you like it if someone pushed such a button on you?" Gyges replies that he'd hate to have someone do that to him. But that's just the point. In this case it would be somebody else, not Gyges, who died and it would be Gyges, not somebody else, who received the £10. Of course, Gyges would have every reason not to want someone else to push the button on Gyges. But how can that fact possibly give Gyges any kind of reason not to push the button on somebody else? He can put this in a somewhat different way. It is obvious why it is bad for the remote stranger if Gyges pushes that button. The stranger loses his life. But how does this being bad for that stranger somehow (perhaps magically?) spread itself across to it being bad also for Gyges if he pushes the button? Gyges understands the force in the non-moral uses of 'good' and 'bad', but not yet the moral use. An interviewee will sometimes say that the enormous value to the stranger that the rest of his life is likely to have, and perhaps also the value of his continuing to live for the stranger's family and friends, can be presented to Gyges as giving him a reason not to push the button-especially when in pushing it Gyges would be gaining only the relatively microscopic value of £10. Gyges replies to this that he completely agrees that the value of the stranger's life for the stranger would be likely by far to outweigh the value to Gyges of getting £10. Yet, Gyges asks, how is such value for the stranger to be counted as any value at all for him, for Gyges? The value of the £10 isn't much, but its value would be value for Gyges. And, if the enormous value of the stranger's life cannot be counted as any value at all for Gyges, then how can that value in itself give Gyges any reason to be acting with regard to it? Often an interviewee will make a point in some ways related to the one about putting oneself in the other's shoes: Is it not a good thing for Gyges himself that at least many others in his society are not as dismissive of morality as he is considering being, even in cases where they could get away with being immoral? How would Gyges like it if he lived in a society of self-centred schemers? Gyges replies that he would hate living in such a society. He is very happy if other people are 4 somehow so respectful of morality that they would not push the button on him. Moreover, he sees the advantage to himself in making others think that he too subscribes to morality; they'll tend to treat him better if they think that. But how does any of this give him a reason not to push that button when he can do so with perfect impunity? Since the killing will seem like an accident, there is not even the extravagant worry that it would somehow add to a general undermining of the moral values he is happy for others in his society to hold. What he does regarding the button is simply distinct from any question of how society will treat him. Perhaps one wants to try the point that the morally good behaviour of others makes it unfair for Gyges to ignore morality. One might want to claim that it places him under an obligation. But this just raises the questions, how does otherwise being unfair or betraying an obligation give Gyges a reason for not pushing the button and giving up £10? So far I've criticised attempts to provide such a reason for Gyges on the ground that instead of meeting the challenge they merely encourage Gyges to ask his question about the authority of morality in somewhat varying terms. But there is a second kind of criticism that I often find myself making. It applies already to one element in the lastdiscussed attempt, the anyway mistaken notion that Gyges somehow is in danger of losing the benefit of living in a society in which others wouldn't push the button on him. My criticism is that the interviewee is smuggling into what is supposed to be a reason for not pushing the button that is based purely on morality a threat of punishment or a prospect of reward, the sort of obviously self-interested motivation that we have been trying to eliminate from our story in order to see what authority morality in itself may possess. Sometimes an interviewee points out that such killing as Gyges is contemplating seems to be against the will and commandments of God. (Occasionally God is brought in as standing behind rights, obligations or the sanctity of life.) My response is that the involvement of God seems to me to take two possible forms. It may be that God is thought to give Gyges a reason not to push the button because to do so would bring down punishment from God and count against receiving God's rewards for the good. But this is precisely the sort of self-interested motivation that distracts us from the question of morality's own authority. This kind of calculation has no more to do with the authority of morality than would Gyges being worried that the devil might punish him for not pressing the button if he thought that the devil was more powerful or more interested than God. So we must eliminate this distraction by adding to the story that Gyges has a special deal with God, who will be turning a blind eye to whether Gyges presses the button. But the other form that God's involvement might take is that one 5 might think that there is a reason for obeying God in that God has a perfect understanding of morality. But that point just returns us to my criticism that we have not yet explained how morality itself gives Gyges any reason not to push the button. A very common attempt to give Gyges a reason not to push the button is an appeal to his conscience. How can he live with himself if he takes a life? My response to this has the same double character as my response to invoking the will of God. The pain of conscience might be meant here as nothing more than an internal punishment that Gyges may inflict on himself. Fear of that is not moral motivation. It may be that I would love to eat a luscious dessert but I know that if I do I will suffer from indigestion. That would give me a reason to refrain from eating the dessert. But if I had a pill that would fend off indigestion I would no longer have that reason for not eating the dessert. So we need something like a pill that Gyges could take to forestall the pain of a bad conscience if we can regard that as nothing more than an internal punishment that distracts us from considering purely moral motivation. And I have just the pill we need. There is a hypnotist standing by who can hypnotise Gyges into forgetting perfectly that he pushed the button. The result could be Gyges finding £10 in his pocket and not remembering, ever, how it got there. Or Gyges could have the hypnotist make him believe, after he has pressed the button and done the killing, that by pressing the button he had saved someone's life and then also received the £10 as a reward. So Gyges could end up with £10 and a warm glow of virtue, while, as would then be unknown to him, the remote stranger is dead. What reason could Gyges have for passing up that? On the other hand, conscience might have been invoked with a deeper significance. It might be thought that Gyges somehow has a reason not to do away with a properly informed conscience because his conscience connects him with morality and morality in itself must have importance for him. But such an invoking of conscience in a reason not to push the button depends, of course, on the very understanding of the authority of morality that has so far eluded us. So this deeper involvement of conscience falls into the category of merely reintroducing the challenge. But what if Gyges is the sort of person who tends to feel sympathy for others? That could give him a rather powerful reason for not pushing the button. Now, it may be, as Hume argues, that when I deal with others purely on the basis of a feeling of sympathy (also referred to by Hume as "disinterested benevolence"), I cannot be thought of as acting from what we usually call "self-interest". If, for example, I give my life for others out of sympathy for them, is that naturally described as acting from selfinterest? Yet, as Hume himself stresses, it is merely an accident of my 6 character whether, and to what extent, I possess such motivation. And that is why Kant, unlike Hume, rejects sympathy as accounting for the authority of morality. In the case of Gyges, for example, we want to say that he has a reason not to kill the stranger that is based purely on morality quite apart from whether he happens to feel sympathy for the stranger. Let's approach this consideration of sympathy from another angle. Does Gyges have a reason to indulge any feelings of sympathy he may have when doing so would stand between him and acquiring £10? Recall that there is a hypnotist standing by who could hypnotise Gyges into forgetting he has acted against his sympathetic responses or, better yet, who could hypnotise him into thinking that he has indeed indulged his sympathetic feelings and also received £10 for doing so, though the stranger is dead. If sympathetic desires for the good of others are thought of as really aiming at nothing more than a feeling in the desirer that the desires have been gratified, then the option of the hypnotist would always be preferable to not pushing the button even for a strongly sympathetic Gyges. But this conception of the aim of sympathy seems to me crucially incomplete. I have a strong desire that my brother, who lives on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, be doing well in his life. I also would like to know that he is doing well--and knowing this would make me feel good. But it is a mistake to think that the real point of my wanting my brother to do well is that a consequent thinking he's doing well will give me a nice feeling. Imagine that I am asked to choose among the following possibilities (and that immediately after my choosing I will be hypnotised into forgetting that I was asked to make a choice): I can choose between, on the one hand, my brother doing well while I am guaranteed always to believe falsely that he is doing badly, and, on the other hand, my brother doing badly while I am guaranteed always to believe falsely that he is doing well. Now, my feelings do have some value in these matters. By far the best situation would be my brother doing well and my believing that and feeling good about it. But from the less appealing choices I have been given, it makes perfect sense for me to choose my brother doing well while I suffer thinking he is doing badly. This is because my sympathetic desires don't have to be aimed at producing some gratification in me. They can be aimed directly at a situation outside me-in this case the situation of my brother. In fact, if the only point of my desiring good for my brother was that I come to feel the gratification of the desire (and that I escape a feeling of its frustration), that strikes me as degenerate. 7 So, if Gyges happens to be a sympathetic sort, he could have a reason not to push the button even if he'd not only lose the £10 but be hypnotised into thinking falsely, and painfully, that he did push the button. The reason could be simply the desire that the stranger not suffer harm. But, once again, that reason is dependent on whether Gyges happens to be sympathetic--and sympathetic in the non-degenerate way, in the way that aims directly at the good of the stranger. He might just as well be disinterestedly malicious in a way that aims directly at the harm of the stranger. And that could give him a reason beyond the £10 to push the button. So we have not yet arrived at a reason for not pushing the button that is based purely on morality. Our consideration of how desires can aim directly at objects outside of us, however, is, I would maintain, turning us at last in the right direction. I'll begin my account of Gyges' reason not to kill the stranger by using another example. Imagine that I have before me on a table a cup containing a thick, brown, steaming liquid. I want to drink that stuff because I think it is hot chocolate. But it is really hot mud. Well, in that case I don't really desire to be drinking that stuff. And neither is it in my self-interest to do so. This example brings out the way in which desires depend on beliefs. I only ever desire a thing because of what I believe it to be. And since beliefs are correctable, so are desires. From this observation I arrive at a sweeping principle: My only real desires are those I would have if I had a perfect grasp of everything involved. If there is any desire I have only because my grasp of what's involved is less than perfect, then that cannot be among my real desires. And gratifying that desire cannot be in my real self-interest. The principle going along with this that governs my actions must tell me to act, as far as possible, as I would want myself to be acting with a perfect grasp of everything involved. This perfect grasp that defines my real desires and my best course of action, what is it like? It would have to be like the all-penetrating knowledge that is often attributed to God. It would have to embrace not only the full experience, from behind the eyes (or other sensors), of every sentient being but also every potential development of experience. It would include within it, then, all the motivation of all of the various systems of desire, but it would also have the correction of all that motivation in light of the perfect grasp. The overall result must be a desire for the reconciliation of all systems of desire. And that, I would claim, is the concern that defines morality. What I am saying, then, is that everyone's real self-interest merges together as what would be wanted in the single perfect grasp of 8 everything. What Gyges really wants, whether he realises this or not, is to do what he would want to be doing if he were grasping the full value of the life of the stranger as well as £10. And even from the actual, limited perspective of Gyges, he may easily calculate the overwhelming likelihood that a perfect grasp would reveal an immeasurably greater value in the life. That life isn't Gyges' life, but in the perfect grasp of things that must define what Gyges really wants, all lives are equally included. Let me try to deal with a couple of problems people have with this view. "Surely we can't have the perfect grasp that you claim is so desirable." I am not claiming either that a perfect grasp is desirable or that we can have it. What I am saying is crucially more subtle than that. I am saying that what is really desirable now, for me with my limited grasp of things, is what I would recognise to be desirable if I did grasp everything perfectly. But we can know that the perfect grasp itself would not be discovered within itself to be desirable, since it would have to include within it all actual and potential miseries. The perfect grasp would rather discover that many a limited grasp would be far more desirable than the perfect grasp as a state to be in. But only the perfect grasp could define the set of real desires that must belong to any being with any grasp. "Many things are desirable only because my perceptions are limited. Crossword puzzles would be no fun if I already knew the answers, and there are good foods that I couldn't enjoy with too vivid an awareness of what they were or where they came from." Yes, and a perfect grasp would have to include a perfect appreciation, as I've already indicated, of the values of limitations on awareness. Such limitations are part of what would be recognised as desirable in a perfect grasp. For a much fuller discussion of the view I am presenting let me refer you to my paper, "Morality as What One Really Desires", which can be found in volume 20 (1995) of the journal Midwest Studies in Philosophy. Let me briefly draw together some of the parts of what I've been saying. The nearly universal approach of philosophers to the question of the nature and authority of morality is to assume a contrast between, on the one hand, the concerns in individual systems of desire (including, perhaps, not just self-interested desires but also disinterested desires like those expressing disinterested benevolence and disinterested malice) and, on the other hand, the concerns of morality. Self-interest, they think, may be brought into line with moral concerns through threats of punishment 9 and prospects of reward; but in circumstances in which these cannot operate it must seem impossible to give a reason to be moral, unless, perhaps, a motive of disinterested benevolence happens to be present. This usual view contrasting individual systems of desire and morality represents the individual systems of desire as containing tough indissoluble cores. What I have argued is that, since desires must be thoroughly based on beliefs, systems of desire, down to the centre of their cores, are correctable with those beliefs. And the corrected, real desires belonging to all those systems simply are the concerns of morality. Two passages from "Morality As What One Really Desires" (Midwest Studies in Philosophy, volume 20) By Arnold Zuboff, University College London FIRST PASSAGE Now let's ask, should I scratch my badly itching sunburned back with this backscratcher I am holding in my hand? A perfect grasp of possible experiences such as those that are relevant to this decision about scratching must include a comprehension of what those experiences would be like for the possessor (or possessors) of them. This part of having a perfect grasp of such possible experiences must be subjectively just like having the experiences themselves. The perfect grasp of everything relevant to this decision about scratching must include at once a perfect grasp of the way it would be both if I don't scratch and if I do. It must include the full frustration that goes with not scratching and also the great but brief relief from the itch that I'll 10 have if I do scratch as well as the terrible pain that would follow that relief while the itch was returning. Such a perfect grasp would thus have to comprehend at once, and perfectly, states of consciousness that essentially exclude one another. Perhaps this means that our hypothetical perfect grasp of reality is logically impossible. But, possible or not, omniscience is the inevitable ideal of our knowledge and the perfect grasp of reality is the inevitable hypothetical basis of an appropriate responsiveness to reality, which is the whole point of action. The perfect grasp need not be logically consistent to have this significance. Let me mention a further feature of the perfect grasp that may make it impossible. Even as the grasp is perfectly comprehending the possible future experiences of scratching and of not scratching, it must comprehend also that these are as yet merely potential experiences and that only one could become actual. And the perfect grasp must appreciate fully that what is important in the actual world is that the better possible experience become actual. In other words, although each potential experience must be fully grasped with all its compelling character, it must still be valued with regard to whether it should be made actual through action, as though the experience has not yet been had, as, indeed, it has not. In my actual limited state of consciousness, of course, I shall experience the pain only if I first have had the relief of scratching, or else I shall experience the frustration of not scratching but also be spared the pain that would have followed scratching. And let us just say that in the perfect grasp of all these experiences I would have found that the relief from the itch was not in fact worth the pain that would follow it. This hypothetical judgment within a perfect grasp would, then, define my best real action, or in this case inaction; I should refrain from scratching. Notice, by the way, that it would be ridiculous to regard the possession of the perfect grasp as a particularly desirable state to be in. In the actual, limited state of consciousness I happily have the option of avoiding any close acquaintance with either the frustration of not scratching or else the pain that follows scratching. The perfect grasp, however, must comprehend fully all the things I might want to avoid, combined, perhaps impossibly, with a full appreciation of all the escapes from them that might be had. So the principle of best action is badly misunderstood if it is taken to be recommending an actual perfect grasp or an actual feeling of one's real desires, which would anyway be unattainable for us and perhaps contradictory. Neither does the principle, considered in itself, recommend truth, knowledge or an increased perception, appreciation or grasp of things in any degree whatsoever. Though an increased grasp of things will 11 often be useful in deciding which actions are endorsed by the principle, and in carrying them out, and some increases in grasp would be discovered in a perfect grasp to be inherently desirable, the purely hypothetical perfect grasp that is mentioned in the principle is merely employed for its aptness in defining the best course of action for an actual, limited consciousness. An ideal grasp of reality only lends itself to defining ideal actions because having a grasp of the sort here invoked would constitute being fully and correctly responsive to reality. It is this responsiveness to reality and nothing else about the perfect grasp that gives it such relevance to action. Let me therefore paraphrase what I earlier said about rationality: perception, appreciation and grasp are not worshipped here. In fact, though a perfect grasp is necessary in the hypothetical state that would define best action, knowledge that is merely propositional will often be far preferable as a basis for the actual carrying out of such action, as I shall now explain. Returning to my itch, let's say that I with my ordinary state of consciousness do know propositionally that "the relief from the itching would not be worth the pain", but I find that I still want to scratch because the insistence of the itch is exerting a disproportionate force in my actual state of consciousness at this crucial time of my decision. The possible pain is now not fully grasped; it is now not fully perceived in all its power; and possessing the propositional knowledge that "the relief from the itching would not be worth the pain" may not be all that I need to make myself behave appropriately. A genuine perfect grasp of a pain, since it would contain within it the pain itself, would have all the motivational force of that pain. By contrast, the mere entertaining of a proposition, which only refers to or describes the pain with its words, will not in itself carry such motivational force. Yet there is a way I could try to bring to bear on my actions at least some of the absent force in the perfect grasp. I could try to oppose the current insistence of the itch with a vivid imagining of the pain I would be feeling soon after scratching. I would be creating an image of a missing content of the perfect grasp of what was relevant to my choice so that this missing content might yet throw some of its weight against the actual temptation in my current perspective. But rather than to attempt such unpleasant efforts of the imagination, it should be open to me as a rational agent simply to allow the mere proposition that "the relief from itching would not be worth the pain" to function in my motivation as though it were itself the perfect grasp of these experiences. For if such a proposition can claim the special authority of representing reality as the basis of my actions, it may enter among my motives like a referee, slight yet capable of settling a fight among 12 heavyweights. And perhaps, because I am rational, I can behave as though motivated by a pain that I do not have. I claim that the same kinds of consideration apply to a decision about whether I shall hand the backscratcher to a child suffering from a similar itch. But in this case I should act as though motivated by a pain I not only do not but will never have because it is another's. In a perfect grasp of the arena of my actions that pain would be assessed in the same way as one of my own. Although any boundaries of persons would be perfectly grasped, that what I had called "I" lay within only one set of these boundaries must be unimportant in the perfect grasp. "I" just refers to one among the conscious beings each of whose full reality would be equally comprehended there. Who I am in my ordinary consciousness is, as would be discovered in a perfect grasp, not relevant to my real desires. SECOND PASSAGE Socrates in Plato's dialogue the "Protagoras" claims that all virtues are really knowledge. As an example he uses courage, a virtue that may have seemed instead to be emotional. The coward, says Socrates, makes a mistake in judging the real importance of the objects of his choices. Consider how one's own hand, because it is closer, will fill much more of one's vision than will a great but distant mountain. The cowardly soldier mistakenly judges the dangers that are close to him to be greater in importance than the truly greater danger of the temporarily more distant lifetime of shame that is the consequence of his cowardice. The courageous soldier is exercising the art of measuring, says Socrates, much as the man who is rational in his visual judgments exercises the art of measuring regarding the sizes of the objects he sees, by correcting for the effects of perspective. What I have done is to extend horizontally Socrates' art of measuring, so that it reaches into the lives of others as well as the future. This is the dimension of morality. Morality amounts to dealing with other conscious beings in a way that corrects for the perspective of an individual's experience. What I have been describing in this paper is what all of us do when we practise consideration for others from the motive that it is morally right to do so.


Philosophy

Mysticism and Traditional Philosophy in Persia, Pre-Islamic and Islamic by by Seyyed Hossein Nasr Source: Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Autumn, 1971). © World Wisdom, Inc. www.studiesincomparativereligion.com TO speak of philosophy (in its traditional sense) and mysticism and gnosis in their original sense which in Arabic and Persian is (taṣawwuf and ʽirfan) during the long span of Persian history, is to speak of tradition, of continuity, of transcendent principles and of forms of wisdom of celestial origin. It is also to speak of two distinct spiritual worlds, the Mazdean and the Islamic, governed by different spiritual principles yet related in many ways because they issue from the same Divine origin and also because of certain profound morphological resemblances between them. The question of the relation between the sapiental doctrines and methods of spiritual realization during these two phases of Persian history cannot be solved solely in the light of an historicism blind to the genius of both Mazdaism and Islam and of necessity impervious to the transcendent dimensions wherein resides the most profound relationship between them. To deny the transcendent and archetypal world as the origin of certain doctrines, forms, images and symbols which are manifested in both these worlds, is to overlook the main causal nexus between them. It is to search in the shadows, in the historical and purely horizontal relationships in time, for a reality which resides in the luminous world of the spirit above time, although it has manifested itself in different times and places. The study of the religion, philosophy and mysticism of the different epochs of Persian history is synonymous with the study of the traditions[2] mainly Zoroastrian and Islamic, which have dominated various phases of that history. Although these traditions are of different nature and structure, they are related most of all by the fact that they are authentic traditions and not something else, that is, they are messages from the world of the spirit differing in their outward form but united in their inner essence.[3] The emphasis upon the inner unity of traditions has in fact been one of the characteristics of the world view of the religious elite throughout Persian history and as every student of comparative religion knows some of the most sublime and beautiful expressions of the "transcendent unity of religions" are to be found in Persian Sufi poetry from ʽAṭṭâr and Mawlânâ Jalâl al-Dîn Rumî to Hâtif Iṣpahânî. The result of this traditional character of the different epochs of Persian history, which distinguishes all of it from the anti-traditional character of modern civilization, is an emphasis upon the spiritual world, the orientation of human life towards the life beyond, a sensitivity to earthly beauty as an image of the beauty of paradise, and so many other spiritual attitudes which run throughout the periods of Persian history. Besides elements of historical borrowing and the ethnic continuity which certainly exists along with all that such a continuity implies, the main stream of continuity that is observed in Persian history in the domain of religion, mysticism and philosophy is due more to the similarity between the "vertical" causes of the traditions in question than just to the continuation of a series of "horizontal" and historical factors. It is as if a series of flashes of lightening were to illuminate the earth continuously in such a way that were one to neglect the source of the light, one would simply observe a continuous lighting of the earth one moment after another. * * * With this image in mind and also considering certain elements of purely historical borrowing and continuity that have certainly existed on the side, we now turn to a few basic doctrines and themes which have appeared in one form or another in the religion, mysticism and philosophy of Persia throughout its history and which characterize the intellectual and spiritual life of the Persians in their totality. Let us begin with the concept of the Divinity itself. In both Zoroastrianism and Islam, despite the difference in accent in the two cases and the dualism of the one that can be contrasted with the unitary emphasis of the other, there is a definite similarity in the concept of the Divinity as a transcendent principle that stands above creation and is distinct from it. The subservience of the material order to a spiritual principle and the created nature (in the theological sense) of this order which sets limits to it in both time and space is shared in Mazdaism and Islam, in contrast, let us say, to the Greek cosmologies where an indefinite repetition of cycles beyond a limited boundary is emphasized, at least in the general philosophical interpretations of these cosmologies as they have reached us. For the Persians, throughout their history, the material universe has been conceived as bound in both time and space, as having an alpha and an omega, both of which are themselves above the created order and belong to the realm of divinity. Closely connected to the theological conception of creation is the belief in its goodness which has been emphasized by Zoroastrianism and Islam, although not of course by Manichaeism. In Zoroastrian cosmogony the material order was created by Ahura-Mazda but Ahriman did not create a corresponding material world of his own in the way that he created the order of demons. Likewise in Islam creation is considered as a domain of reality which plays a definitely positive role in human life, for, in referring to the world, the Qur an says, "Verily we did not create this vain" (mâ khâlaqnâ hâdhâ bâtilan). The Persian joy for life and appreciation of the beauties of the created order in both the sensuous and the spiritual sense is closely related to the emphasis placed upon the positive role of the created or natural order in man's religious life by the two major religious traditions that have dominated Persian history, namely the Mazdean and the Islamic. Life on this earth has also been considered to possess an ultimate meaning beyond this world in all of the religions that have dominated Persia. Of course one might say that all religions in general emphasize the importance of human actions in view of man's final end. But the Iranian religions have a conception of human action, morality, final judgement and eschatology as related to man's life on earth that is more akin to the teachings of the Semitic religions than to what is found in the religions of India and the Far East. Not only the concept of the created order but also that of man's life in this world and its relation to the worlds above presents a constancy and permanence throughout Persian history made possible by the repetition of certain teachings of the different religions that have ruled over this land. In Islam, no less than in Zoroastrianism, the effect of both good and evil upon the soul of man and their role in moulding the soul in such a way as to influence its posthumous life is very much emphasized, and constitutes one of its central teachings. Naturally, this conception of human life in which actions have an ultimate value in the eyes of God is closely related to the belief in the Day of Judgement emphasized so majestically in the Quran and mentioned also in Zoroastrian sources. Even details of the "landscape" of the other world presents certain similarities in the two religions, especially in the image of the bridge over hell, without there being the least question of historical borrowing. Likewise, the belief in a saviour before the Final Judgement is common to Islam and Zoroastrianism as it is of course to other religions as well.[4] Especially in Shiʽite Islam belief in the coming of the Mahdi, who is the Twelfth Imam, and the effect of this belief upon daily religious life can be closely compared with the Zoroastrian belief in Saoshyant and the idea of "expectation" which is contained in certain Zoroastrian teachings. Other elements of eschatology and concepts of hell and paradise (which in both European languages and in Arabic in the form "firdaws" is derived from Avestan) present striking similarities and reveal the common origin of all these teachings in the single luminous source of all revelation. As far as the imago mundi is concerned, again there are profound morphological resemblances and sometimes historical borrowings as in the case of the seven keshvars of the ancient Persians which found their way into the Shâhnâmah, the writings of Bîrûnî, Yâqût and other Muslim sources.[5] In cosmology also there are similarities that derive most of all from the traditional view of the cosmos based upon the notion of hierarchy and grades of being. Throughout his history, the Persian has always seen himself in a universe composed of multiple states in which he stands at the bottom of a scale leading in an ascending and sacred order (therefore a true hierarchy) to the Divinity. This hierarchic conception of reality with all its artistic as well as social and practical implications is one of the most profound features of the very structure of the soul of the Persian as it has been moulded over the ages by the religious and cultural forces at play in his life. This hierarchic order is of course inseparable from the angelic order that stands between man and God. Of the older religions, none has emphasized the angelic world and its purely spiritual character as much as Zoroastrianism, which could in fact be called in a sense a "religion of angels" rather than directly of God. Islam also places a great deal of emphasis upon angels and belief in the angels is a part of the definition of imân or faith. As a result of this correlation in emphasis upon the angelic world, the Persian has lived throughout his history in a world always dominated, ordered and controlled by spiritual or angelic substances belonging to the higher levels of being. He has always been aware that this world and man's life in it are the shadow of the angelic world, that they are transient and ephemeral yet reflect the abiding beauty of paradise. In art as well as in philosophy and theosophy-where in the ishrâqî school Suhrawardî even incorporated Mazdean angelology into his Islamic scheme[6] the dominion and power of the angelic world is so great that it can hardly fail to be noticed by any perceptive student of things Persian. * * * Despite the presence of these and many other themes, doctrines and symbols that are common between the Mazdean and Islamic traditions, there is a contrast observable in the relation between religion, philosophy and mysticism during the pre-Islamic and Islamic periods of Persian history. During the pre-Islamic period, philosophy, in its traditional sense, was contained completely within the bosom of religion. If we search for the sources of the sophia or khirad of the ancient Persians which in fact the Greek philosophers and sages sought, we would be mistaken to expect to find works like the Metaphysics of Aristotle or even the Dialogues of Plato, that is, works similar to those belonging to a period of Greek history when religion, philosophy and science had become separated from each other. In ancient Persia, as in all other Oriental civilizations, the separation between religion and philosophy that one observes in ancient Greece and Rome and again in post-medieval Europe never took place except in rare cases which remain of secondary importance. If we search for the "philosophy" of the ancient Persians or for what Suhrawardî called the khusrâwânî theosophy (ḥikmat-i khusrawânî) we must delve into such religious works as the Bundâhishn and the Shkand gumânîk vichâr and be aware of the oral teachings which must certainly have existed along with the written texts. We should not search for works similar to the books of the Greek philosophers and then, when we are not able to find them, consider such works as having existed but having later been destroyed. During the Islamic period the situation is certainly different. Islamic philosophy, although definitely of an Islamic character despite its having taken over elements of older traditions, [7] developed as an independent discipline and school within Islamic civilisation and was not contained, especially during the early centuries, within any of the theological or mystical schools. It is only later, after the attacks of Ghazzâli against the Peripatetic school and the rise of the school of Illumination or ishrâq, that philosophy or theosophy becomes wed to the theological and mystical schools to a certain extent. But even in the case of Mullâ Sadrâ, the great Safavid sage of Shiraz who achieved the final synthesis of philosophy, mysticism, theology and religious law, a clear distinction remains between the different schools within Islam. The school of Ḥikmat has remained throughout the Islamic period a distinct discipline within the Islamic intellectual universe. The relation of philosophy to religion during the Islamic period, therefore, presents a contrast with what one finds in the pre-Islamic period despite certain profound morphological resemblances alluded to above. The case of mysticism is the opposite of that of philosophy. During the pre-Islamic period, the distinctly mystical schools and disciplines such as the religion of the Magi or the "mysteries" of Mithra were distinct from Zoroastrianism although of course even within Zoroastrianism there must have existed an esoteric teaching. In the Islamic period, however, mysticism is nearly identical with the inner dimension of Islam known as Sufism,[8] and also exists within Shiʽism. There has never been during the Islamic period a genuine mystical school in Persia outside of the matrix of Islam and mysticism in all its forms has been connected in one way or another with the inner and esoteric dimension of Islam. There is, therefore, again a reversal of relationship between mysticism and religion during the pre-Islamic and Islamic periods in comparison with the situation of philosophy. Yet, many of the profoundest themes concerning man's quest after the Divine are repeated throughout the history of this land with almost the same language in such a manner as to remind man of the eternal nature of both the mystical quest and its goal. Because it was destined to be the last religion and the seal of the prophetic cycle, Islam possesses a unique power of assimilation and synthesis. This characteristic enabled Islam to remain fully itself and yet allow the Persians not only to participate in its life and to contribute fully to its elaboration but also to enable them to contemplate in its vast firmament the shining stars of the most profound elements of their ancient religious and spiritual past, a past which far from dying out gained a new interpretation and became in a sense partly resurrected in the new spiritual universe brought into being by the Islamic revelation. NOTES [1] The substance of this article was presented at a conference in the International Congress of Iranology held in Shiraz, 13th-15th October 1971, in conjunction with the 2500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire. The theme of the Congress was the continuity of Persian Culture. [2] By tradition we do not mean custom or habit but principles of celestial origin and their applications in time and space along with the sacred forms, rites and doctrines which make the realization of these principles possible. Tradition, therefore, corresponds to religion understood in its most universal sense. See the numerous writings of A. K. Coomaraswamy, R. Guènon, F. Schuon and T. Burckhardt. [3] See F. Schuon, The Transcendent Unity of Religions, trans. by P. Townsend, London, 1948; and S. H. Nasr, Sufi Essays, London 1972. [4] See H. Corbin, En Islam iranien, vol. I, Paris, 1971. [5] See H. Corbin, La Terre céleste et corps de résurrection, Paris 1961, pp. 40ff; and S. H. Nasr, "La Cosmographie en Iran pré-islamique et islamique" Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honour of Hamilton A. R. Gibb, Leiden, 1965, pp. 507-524. [6] See H. Corbin, En Islam iranien, vol. II, Paris, 1971; and S. H. Nasr, Three Muslim Sages, Cambridge (U.S.A.), 1964, chapter II. [7] We have discussed this matter extensively in many of our writings; see Three Muslim Sages, introduction and chapter I; also S. H. Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, Cambridge, U.S.A., 1964, Introduction. [8] See F. Schuon, Understanding Islam, trans. by D. M. Matheson, London, 1963, chapter IV; S. H. Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam, London 1966, chapter V, and S. H. Nasr, Sufi Essays.


Natural Religion

Philosophy

IS NATURE ENOUGH? TRUTH AND MEANING IN THE AGE OF SCIENCE by JOHN F. HAUGHT Cambridge University Press, 232 pages, $19.99

          JOHN HAUGHT ASKS, "IS nature enough?"--which naturally elicits the question, "Enough for what?" Indeed, one way to understand the age-old debate between science and religion is to see it as an argument as to whether there is something about nature that nature is not enough to explain.

          Among contemporary theologians, Haught is one of the few scientifically serious enough to come up with a case that scientists could take seriously--even if only as a philosophical proposal. The Landegger Distinguished Research Professor of Theology at Georgetown University, Haught addresses them by continuing the long career he has made of advocating engagement between theology and modern science (as opposed to the easier and more popular options of "conflict" and "separation"). ..

/13/2021 Citation: Michael Liccione, "Natural Religion," First Things 170 39-42. 2007. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/02/natural-religion 1/6 NATURAL RELIGION by Michael Liccione February 2007 Is Nature Enough? Truth and Meaning in the Age of Science by John F. Haught Cambridge University Press, 232 pages, $19.99 John Haught asks, "Is nature enough?"-which naturally elicits the question, "Enough for what?" Indeed, one way to understand the age-old debate between science and religion is to see it as an argument as to whether there is something about nature that nature is not enough to explain. Among contemporary theologians, Haught is one of the few scientically serious enough to come up with a case that scientists could take seriously, even if only as a philosophical proposal. The Landegger Distinguished Research Professor of Theology at Georgetown University, Haught addresses them by continuing the long career he has made of advocating engagement between theology and modern science (as opposed to the easier and more popular options of "conict" and "separation"). In a series of books for dierent if overlapping audiences, Haught has endeavored to show that 1/13/2021 Natural Religion by Michael Liccione | Articles | First Things https://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/02/natural-religion 2/6 Christian theologians have nothing to fear from evolution, understood as the emergence of species of living beings by random mutation and natural selection over the course of "deep time." Nothing, that is, unless they insist on upholding certain ideas such as the literal truth of the two creation accounts in Genesis. If his 1996 address to the Pontical Academy of Sciences is any indication, John Paul II would have agreed with Haught on the matter of the evolution of living bodies, including the human body. So does Benedict XVI-or so, at least, his recently republished Munich homily series In the Beginning seems to show. In Haught's view, theologians have nothing to fear because modern science, especially evolutionary biology, supplies only observable facts, theories more or less experimentally testable in terms of what they predict, and techniques based on such facts and theories; it is not equipped to show that only what can be known scientically can be known at all. That would be scientism-an epistemological thesis of philosophy, not science. Scientism's metaphysical correlate is naturalism, according to which nature, the most general object of scientic inquiry, is "all there is." Haught calls the familiar, fashionable combination of scientism and naturalism "scientic naturalism," and he never tires of repeating that it is not science itself but the philosophy of scientic naturalism that he opposes. The key to the distinction is found in what Haught terms "layered explanation" and "wide empiricism." For example, he considers how one might answer the question why a re is burning in one's backyard. For a budding physicist, one answer would be to describe, at the molecular level, the processes of combustion and heat convection. A more common explanation would be to say how the wood got there and caught re to begin with. But the sort of question that most often arouses our interest is, "But why did you set the re?" A perfectly good answer of the kind that most often interests us would be, "To toast marshmallows to eat." Haught's point is that neither the rst kind of explanation, which is roughly what Aristotle called material causation, nor the second, which is ecient causation, implies or excludes the last, which 1/13/2021 Natural Religion by Michael Liccione | Articles | First Things https://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/02/natural-religion 3/6 is nal causation: the purpose of the thing. The point holds generally: There is no good reason to believe that even a true, complete scientic account of material and ecient causes in nature-an account that some neo-Darwinians seem remarkably condent about proclaiming "in principle"- would rule out a philosophically teleological account of nature's existence as a whole. Thus to the question "Why does the cosmos exist?" one can give a theological answer that does not substitute for a scientic one. Both could be true, the latter being "layered" within the former. God as nal cause would not, of course, show up within the layers of scientic explanation. He could not do so without becoming the rightly dreaded "God of the gaps" that theists have too often allowed themselves to invoke. So Haught gives no aid and comfort to advocates of Intelligent Design. Citing God as nal cause does not ll in answers that current science has yet to discover; rather, it picks up where the characteristic methods and questions of science, as that range of disciplines is now understood, must leave o-just as the question why I set a re picks up where citing the processes of making a re and of combustion must leave o. By the same token, no theory of evolution, no matter how well conrmed, can show that biological life either developed or exists without some grand-scale purpose manifested by means of them. What can appear only random in material and ecient causes-which are, stochastically, enough to produce their eects but cannot be shown to necessitate them-can be seen as intentional from the standpoint of nal cause. The explanations are layered and compatible, not mutually competitive. Indeed, Haught argues that the contingency of evolution-a process that takes an awfully long time, includes many dead ends, and is fraught with struggle, suering, and death-is itself some evidence of how the purpose of the cosmos is being fullled. That's an intriguing notion, which Haught developed at greater length in his 2001 book God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution, using the kenosis of the crucixion as his model. Regardless of how persuasive one nds such speculations, however, Haught's main thesis is more 1/13/2021 Natural Religion by Michael Liccione | Articles | First Things https://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/02/natural-religion 4/6 clearly supported by his advocacy of a "wider" or "richer" empiricism than emphatically empirical naturalists-such as Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Richard Lewontin-seem willing to allow. In the much-publicized views of such thinkers, the realities of subjectivity are not so much explained as explained away. "Fields of meaning" such as "aectivity, intersubjectivity, narrativity, beauty," and even "theory" itself appear accidental epiphenomena of interactions among lifeless, publicly observable things. What is, in terms of cosmic evolution, "later-and-more" is thus seen as exclusively the product of what is "earlier-and-simpler." Such is the "ontology of death," as Haught (following Hans Jonas) calls it, and it's no accident that its many adherents tend to see nothing wrong with a concomitant moral culture of death. The ontology of death results from elevating to rst rank a certain type of explanation that has its proper place only at a certain level, so all other sorts of explanation appear as candidates for eventual scientic debunking. Believing otherwise is seen as somehow weak-minded. Readers exposed to a typical, secular Anglo-American philosophy department will be familiar with the attitude, and Haught is right to attack both its hubris and its inability to do much with consciousness other than reducing it to something less interesting. But even for the empirically minded, the universal human questions that religion and philosophy address, and the answers they give, cannot be reasonably reduced to mere adaptive (or maladaptive) formations. Evolutionary reductionism-today's favored brand of scientic naturalism-does not so much answer the biggest questions as shunt them aside. What weakens Haught's otherwise cogent arguments are the elements he derives from two twentieth-century Jesuits: Bernard Lonergan and Teilhard de Chardin. Lonergan was perhaps the cleverest of the Transcendental Thomists who came out of the neo-scholastic revival during the decades between the two Vatican councils. The most characteristic argument-form of that school is retorsion. In eect, retorsive arguments aim to show that being a principled atheist is 1/13/2021 Natural Religion by Michael Liccione | Articles | First Things https://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/02/natural-religion 5/6 "performatively" self-contradictory: One cannot consistently obey such imperatives as "be faithful to the desire to know" and "be responsible" while denying that they truly "anticipate" an "innite horizon" of being, truth, and value by which one is also grasped, which of course turns out to be God. I have always found such arguments logically problematic. That retorsive arguments have had little impact outside Jesuit-educated circles, despite having been circulated among Catholic philosophers and theologians for several generations, is one indication of that weakness. The facts cited by such arguments certainly do show that it is unreasonable to quash or explain away the kinds of questions to which the God of classical theism can be oered as a suitable answer. But one doesn't need retorsive arguments to become convinced of that, and the entire class of arguments has managed to function largely as an academic sideshow. Haught's use of Teilhard is even more questionable. Teilhard thought of creation as God's gradual "unication" of what is inchoate and multiple; thus the nihil of creation ex nihilo appears as-how to put it-perhaps "a scattered and otherwise unconceptualizable something-or-other." A metaphysics that treats nothing as something does not comport with orthodox Christianity. Worse still, the work that Haught most often cites is Christianity and Evolution, a collection of essays in which Teilhard calls even moral evil a "statistically inevitable byproduct of evolution." Once the Fall occurred, of course, its eects did ensure that moral evils became "statistically inevitable," meaning that some-or-other actual, freely committed sins are inevitable even though no particular one is. But Teilhard's cosmology all but forces him to say that even the rst sin, the Fall itself, was bound to occur at some-or-other point given the general, evolutionary order of creation. That is not orthodox Christianity either, and one needn't be a fundamentalist to see as much. Even so, the broader concern for Haught's work is whether many scientists will take note of this 1/13/2021 Natural Religion by Michael Liccione | Articles | First Things https://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/02/natural-religion 6/6 book. It will certainly be consulted more by theists seeking a philosophical response to naturalism than by naturalists looking for the best arguments against their philosophy. Given that naturalism is a dogma entrenched in secular academia today every bit as much as theism was in medieval Catholic universities, that too is only to be expected. But one can reasonably hope that Haught's project will get enough attention among scientists to be pursued. Michael Liccione earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania and has taught at six Catholic institutions.