Five Views on Apologetics

Five Views on Apologetics.

Stephen B. Cowan, gen. red. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000, 398 pg


Leesverslag
door Marianus T. Waang

Inleiding

De natuur van apologetiek.

Het woord ‘apologetiek’ komt van het oorspronkelijke Griekse woord ‘apologia’, dat verdedigen betekent. Het is vooral gebruikt in de rechtbank, bijv. door Aristoteles en Paulus. De eerste voor de rechtbank te Athene en de tweede te Rome (Hand. 24:10; 25:8). Apologetiek heeft te maken met het verdedigen van het Christelijke geloof. Het is een intellectuele methode om de christenen te helpen in hun geloof en als hulp bij de evangelisatie. Men doet het op twee mannieren: negative of defensive apologetics d.w.z. het weigeren van alle bezwaren tegen christelijk geloof en positive of offensive apologetics d.w.z. het aanbidden van positieve argumenten van het christelijke geloof.
Cowan lijkt niet zo blij met Lewis en Ramm in hun methodologische onderscheiding. Daar tegenover bouwt hij een alternatief op, dat Hij argumentative strategy noemt. Dat is to delineate apologetic methods more practically, by looking for distinctive ways of presenting the case for Christianity; distinctive types or structures of argument. (14)


Hoofdstuk 1
KLASSIEKE APOLOGETIEK. Door William Lane Craig.

Deze methode heeft te maken met reden ( = verstand) en met geloof. Bij de eerste gaat het er om hoe je je geloof kunt verklaren of beargumenteren (showing christianity to be true), en bij de tweede gaat het om de geloofskennis: hoe je zeker kunt weten dat het christelijk geloof waar is (knowing Christianity to be true). De basis of de bron van beide is de Heilige Geest. Hij schenkt het geloof uit – knowing- en opent de harten van de ongelovigen wanneer zij naar de argumenten, die een gelovige presenteert, luisteren - showing. (28). Er zijn dus twee aspecten in deze apologetische methode, de reden: showing Christianity to be true én het geloof: knowing Christianity to be true.

De Heilige Geest en de reden zijn in deze methode gezien als ‘partners’. In het weten dat het christendom waar is, speelt de Heilige Geest de eerste rol. Het verstand wordt hier gezien als hulpmiddel. (36), terwijl in het bewijzen dat het christendom waar is, speelt het verstand de eerste rol. Het verstand heeft te maken met het hoofd en de Heilige Geest met het hart. (53-4)

Het weten dat het christelijke geloof waar is, hangt absoluut af van het werk van de Heilige Geest. Hij leert ons om te weten dat ons geloof waar is door zijn innerlijk getuigenis. Hij geeft ons de waarborg dat wij Gods kinderen zijn. (30). Paulus - in zijn brieven – en Johannes – in zijn evangelie en brieven - laten ons zien dat het het innerlijk getuigenis van de HG is, dat ons vertelt dat het christelijke geloof waar is; niet de argumenten en bewijzen van religieuze ervaringen. (32). Toch heb je bewijs nodig om je geloof te beargumenteren tegenover mensen, die feiten of ervaringen vragen om te kunnen geloven. “Faith unattended by evidence will still be unwarranted and irrational. Such faith is a far cry from the spoken of by the New Testament writers” (34). Toch als je je geloof niet kunt verklaren met rationele argumenten, betekent het niet dat je geloof irrationeel is. Want het is het innerlijke getuigenis van de Heilige Geest, dat je geloof garandeert. Dit getuigenis is rationeel. (35). In laten zien dat het christendom waar is, blijkt het werk van de Heilige Geest, dat bepaalt of de discussie partner(s) onze rationele argumenten en bewijzen kan(kunnen) geloven. Ondanks dat het verstand de eerste rol speelt, toch is het werk van de Heilige Geest in de harten beslissend. ( 28; 53-4).

Opmerking:

Ik ben blij dat Craig het werk van de Heilige Geest (h)erkent als beslissend in ‘knowing’ en in ‘showing christianity to be true’. Zonder HG komt niemand tot het geloof in God. HG maakt de mens wedergeboren (Joh. 3:1-6). Hij schenkt het geloof (1 Kor. 12:9). Hij zal de wereld duidelijk maken wat zonde, gerechtigheid en oordeel is (Joh. 16:8-11). Toch werkt de HG niet buiten het geopenbaarde Woord van God om, de bijbel. Ik vind dat de bijbel onze bron en basis of norm is om te weten of ons christelijk geloof en ons christelijk verstand juist is. Dit mis ik in Craigs artikel. Knowing en showing kunnen nooit zonder het innerlijke getuigenis van de Heilige Geest. Dat ben ik met hem eens. Maar het klopt ook dat het innerlijk getuigenis van de HG op Gods Woord getoetst wordt. Dus niet alleen de Heilige Geest maar ook het Woord is beslissend in knowing en showing het christelijke geloof. Habermas’ bezwaar is waar, dat het innerlijk getuigenis van de HG als ‘self authenticating’ kwetsbaar is. Want dat kan heel subjectief zijn. Het Woord is de norm om het innerlijke getuigenis te toetsen. Ik denk dat Frame gelijk heeft als hij zegt dat de HG nooit kan getuigen buiten het Woord om. Daarom is Craigs methode een belemmering voor onze kerk om die te gebruiken. Naar de vraag of deze methode bruikbaar is in Nederland; denk ik dat ze bruikbaar is vanwege haar kosmologisch argument. Bovendien is bij ‘showing christianity to be true’ de ervaring en het morele leven ter sprake gekomen. Dat zijn ook de andere bruikbare elementen in deze methode.

Hoofstuk 2
EVIDENTIAL APOLOGETICS. Door Gary R. Habermas.

In vergelijking met de klassieke methode, die uit two steps bestaat (kalam cosmologisch argument en bewijs(zen)), is ‘evidential apologetic’ one step. Het voornaamste onderwerp van deze methode is het historisch bewijs. Toch is dit bewijs (of zijn deze bewijzen niet vanzelfsprekend.(?) Historische context en menselijke interpretatie spelen ook hier een rol. (92, 94). Daarom is negatieve apologetiek of defensive apologitic onontkoombaar. (95). Het blijft immers onmogelijk om mensen naar God toe te brengen met onze menselijke rationele argumenten of bewijzen. Gods betrokkenheid is beslissend. (96). Hoewel Gods betrokkenheid bepalend is, kan common ground (ontologisch en epistemologisch, 99) tussen de gelovigen en ongelovigen niet miskend worden. De Heilige Geest kan mensen roepen tot geloof via apologetiek, in dit geval evidential apologetic namelijk het geloven door historische feiten. De Heilige Geest kan werken door de rationele argumenten of het historische bewijs. (97). Evidential apologetic is ook eclectic. (98).
Minimal facts is het gebruik maken zo weinig mogelijk van gegevens, die twee kenmerken hebben: 1) they are well evidenced, usually for multiple reasons; 2) they are admitted by critical scholars, who research this particular area.

Hoofdpunten van evidentialist case zijn:
1) Christus’ leer en functie. Zijn claim als de enige weg naar de Vader én Zijn titels als Mensenzoon en Gods Zoon zijn van het grootste belang. Deze claim is uniek omdat niemand anders het ooit gezegd heeft. De genoemde titels en deze unieke claim zijn bewijzen dat Hij God is. Christus openbaart zich als Gods woordvoerder. Hij spreekt namens God en roept God aan als vader. Hier blijkt een unieke relatie tussen Christus en God (105-6).
2) Christus’ dood en opstanding. Dat zijn historische gebeurtenissen. Hij was werkelijk dood. Dat is duidelijk door de manier waarop hij ter dood veroordeeld werd: kruisiging. Bovendien is zijn opstanding ook werkelijk. Dat is duidelijk door wat Paulus schrijft in 1 Kor. 15:3-8. (108). De bewijzen van deze werkelijke opstanding zijn de verschijningen aan de apostelen en aan anderen. Dit maakt het natuurlijke bezwaar (van Hume?) i.v.m. de theorie van Strauss over wonder en hallucinatie onaanvaardbaar.
3) Bevestiging van Jezus’ claim. De wonderen waren bevestiging van Jezus’ claim. Bovendien is zijn opstanding God’s teken van goedkeuring van het werk van Jezus. Jezus’ opstanding is een bevestiging van hem en van zijn leer. De opstanding maakt duidelijk dat Hij goddelijk was, dat hij Gods gekozen boodschapper en de enige agent van het eeuwige leven was. (118-9).

Opmerkingen:

Christus’ opstanding
Habermas zegt dat Jezus’ opstanding mogelijk een wonder was. “So far, I have treated this as simply a possibility – a miracle-claim. (116). Als ik het goed begrijp, dan pakt hij hier een puur wetenschappelijke benadering: eerst twijfel, daarna onderzoeken en dan geloven. Maar de vraag is: wat er zou gebeuren als wat door christelijke apologeten historische bewijzen genoemd worden, onaanvaardbaar zijn? Het blijkt dat het aantal ongelovigen toeneemt. Bijbels historisch-critisch methode speelt hier een opvallende rol. Historische bewijzen zijn belangrijk. Maar ik vind het moeilijk om mijn geloof in Christus’ opstanding op historische bewijzen te baseren. Het geloof is hier belangrijk.

Gods betrokkenheid.
De betrokkenheid van God is wel beslissend in de apologetiek, zegt Habermas. Toch heb ik de indruk dat God afhankelijk is van de bewijzen. Gods Woord – bijbel – wordt als een geschiedenisboek gezien. Daarom is de relatie tussen het Woord en de Heilige Geest in de bespreking van het christelijke geloof niet te vinden in Habermas’ betoog. Zijn minimal facts beginnen niet vanuit het geloof in de inspiratie en de betrouwbaarheid van de bijbel. (187), want, zegt hij, het is niet zo dat alles in de bijbel (wetenschappelijk?) betrouwbaar is. (186). Dat vind ik moeilijk. Ik merk ook dat hij inconsistent is. Aan de ene kant haalt hij de historische verhalen uit de bijbel aan als historische bewijzen, aan de andere kant zegt hij dat niet alles in de bijbel betrouwbaar is. De vraag is dus: hoe kan iemand een verhaaltje van een onbetrouwbare bron geloven? Een cruciaal probleem in Habermas’ apologetische methode is dat het gezag van de bijbel ontkend wordt.

Het voordeel van deze methode is de rol van de geschiedenis. Hoewel onze postmoderne wereld geen aandacht heeft voor de geschiedenis, omdat alles relatief is, toch is het niet zo dat niemand aandacht heeft voor of geïnteresseerd is in de geschiedenis. De Vrijgemaakten kunnen hier nog wat van leren.


Hoofdstuk 3
CUMULATIVE CASE APOLOGETICS. Door Paul D. Feinberg

Er zijn methoden om het theïsme en het christendom te begrijpen en/of te aanvaarden als het ware geloof. Daarvoor zijn een aantal argumenten
1) De ontologische en kosmologisch argumenten. Deze methoden zijn rationeel en aanvaardbaar voor de gelovige. Maar de atheïsten verwerpen hem, omdat theïsme en christendom geloofszaken zijn. (150). Omdat we - de gelovigen - in onze apologetiek, atheïsten tegenkomen als onze gesprekspartners of tegenstanders, helpen de beide genoemde methoden ons niet, want ze accepteren onze argumenten niet.
2) We moeten een andere oplossing gaan zoeken. Deze oplossing vindt Feinberg (en andere aanhangers van de Cumulatieve case methode) in probable case, met het zogenoemde teleologische ontwerp. Probable case betekent ongeveer, dat we ondanks het argument van theïsme (dat God er is) en dat het christendom waar is niet kunnen bewijzen, we toch tenminste kunnen verklaren dat beide mogelijk zijn. (150).
In Feinbergs cumulatief case methode speelt argumentatie voor theïsme en christendom een informele rol. Ervaringselementen zijn van belang in de argumentatie. Alle elementen in onze ervaringswereld zijn gelijkwaardig; niet als die bij de klassieke methode, waar het idee dat God bestaat als voornaamste voorwaarde beschouwd wordt.

Een kleine opmerking: het is me niet zo duidelijk wat Feinberg bedoelt met ‘onze ervaringselementen’ en waarom hij zegt dat deze ervaringselementen gelijkwaardig zijn. Ik vraag me af of zijn oordeel dat het christelijke theïsme gelijk is aan andere theïstische religies en of atheïsme juist is.

Tests Voor De Waarheid.
Om de waarheid te toetsen suggereert de cumulatieve methode de volgende voorwaarden: 1. the test of consistency, d.w.z. dat een geloofssysteem consistent in haar argumenten en bewijzen moet zijn. Inconsistentie en tegenstrijdigheid is ontoelaatbaar.
2. The test of correspondence. Het geloof moet overeenkomen met de werkelijkheid. Het geloof is niet alleen een theorie maar ook een praktijk.
3. The test of comprehensiveness. Hier kiest men liever theorieën of argumenten, die wat meer argumenten kunnen leveren in zijn betoog. In de bespreking met de atheïsten is het beter te beginnen vanuit het bestaan van de duivel dan vanuit het bestaan van God. Want dat bestaan is veelomvattend.
4. Bovendien moeten die argumenten eenvoudig zijn. Dit wordt genoemd the test of simplicity.
5. Daarnaast moet de waarheid leefbaar en vruchtbaar zijn. Leefbaar betekent dat de waarheid moet gepraktiseerd kunnen worden. Niet alleen maar theorie. Vruchtbaar betekent dat de waarheid goede consequenties teweegbrengt in de levenswerkelijkheid. Deze twee zijn test of livability en test of fruitfulness genoemd.
6. De laatste toets is test of conservation. Het gaat er om hoe men zijn theorie bewaart. Als je theorie tekort schiet, dan moet je een verbetering gaan vinden door daar een radicale verandering in aan te brengen. Je kunt het paradigma van je theorie beter veranderen dan een andere nieuwe theorie gaan zoeken.

Het getuigenis van de Heilige Geest.
Hier is er sprake van inwendig en uitwendig getuigenis. Het eerste kan ook subjectief genoemd worden en het tweede objectief. Uit het schema op pagina 157 blijken onderdelen van de bovengenoemde twee aspecten. Bij inwendig getuigenis zijn er gelovigen en ongelovigen. Bij gelovigen is er sprake van illuminatie en zekerheid (certitude), terwijl bij ongelovigen men aangeboren kennis (innate knowledge), overtuiging (conviction) en geweten vindt. Bij uitwendig getuigenis vindt men theïstische argumenten (ontologisch, kosmologisch en teleologisch), religieuze ervaring, moreel gedrag en openbaring (bijbel, profetieën en Christus’ godheid én zijn opstanding).
Het getuigenis van de Heilige Geest is het belangrijkste element in de cumulative case methode. Alle bewijzen en argumenten kunnen de ongelovigen niet overtuigen zonder het werk van de HG. (158-9).

Opmerkingen:

Testen voor de waarheid.
Ik heb een paar bezwaren: 1) test of correspondence: dus de verhouding tussen geloof en dagelijks leven. Dat deze twee met elkaar moeten overeenkomen stoort mij. Want er zijn mensen, in Indonesië bijv., die in hun dagelijks leven wat anders vertonen dan wat er in hun harten leeft over God. Zij geloven echt wel dat Christus God, hun Redder en Verlosser is en zij willen dat verdedigen hoewel dat hun leven zou kunnen kosten. Deze werkelijke ervaring geeft dat ik twijfel over deze test. Het zelfde geldt ook een beetje voor de 5e en 6e testen. Test of conservation tast het gezag en het normativiteitskarakter van de bijbel aan. Ik denk dat Craig gelijk heeft dat ‘test of conservation’ tot een pluralistische en relativistische conceptie over de waarheid leidt. (181).

Het getuigenis van de Heilige Geest.
Na het lezen van dit artikel heb ik de indruk dat Feinberg een ‘twee stappen’ methode (niet in de zin van klassieke methode) heeft: rationele bewijzen en argumenten én de betrokkenheid van de Heilige Geest in met name zijn inwendig en uitwendig getuigenis. Er is dus synergie tussen mens en God. Tussen beide is het werk van de HG beslissend. Hij zegt ergens in zijn artikel dat al onze ervaringselementen – waar het getuigenis van de HG één van is - gelijkwaardig zijn. Toch blijkt dat het getuigenis van de HG het belangrijkste is. Is dit een soort inconsistentie of heb ik hem niet zo goed kunnen begrijpen? Wat opvallend in zijn betoog is dat alle rationele argumenten hetzij theïstisch of kosmologisch of teleologisch niet bedoeld zijn om het bestaan van God te bewijzen, zoals bij eerste twee methoden, maar gewoon bedoeld als wetenschappelijke redenering tegen atheïsme. (151, 160, 167). Hier ben ik het met hem eens. Ik vind dat ik God niet kan bewijzen ondanks dat ik zijn aanwezigheid en betrokkenheid in de wereldgeschiedenis en in mijn leven heel goed kan beargumenteren. Wat betreft het uitwendige aspect heb ik de vraag of er één of meer van de vier objectieve aspecten als norm voor anderen gelden? Ik denk dat het antwoord er op ‘nee’ zou zijn. Want bij cumulative apologetics waardeert men al deze aspecten gelijk. De vragen zijn bijv.: hoe kan men die aspecten beoordelen? Op welke basis bouwt hij zijn oordelen? Hoe kan ik zeker weten dat mijn theïstische argumenten, religieuze of godsdienstige ervaringen, morele gedrag en Gods openbaring waar zijn?
Ik denk dat deze methode ook meer bruikbaar is in westerse landen. Omdat mensen hier altijd denken aan logische of rationele argumenten én bewijzen. Ik vraag me af of deze methode bruikbaar is in de Vrijgemaakte kerken vanwege de rol van de bijbel in deze methode.

In mij land – Indonesië of misschien in Azië – spelen logische of rationele argumenten én bewijzen niet zo’n grote rol. Iedereen gelooft in bovennatuurlijke machten. Bovendien erkent iedereen ook bepaalde normen. Het hangt af van de religie of stamgodsdienst, die hij heeft. Dus ik denk dat ‘het alles is gelijk’ van de cumulatieve methode minder bruikbaar is in Indonesië. Het (h)erkennen van alle geloofs- en ervaringswaarheden als gelijk heel nuttig kan zijn voor het pluralisme. Dus deze methode zou geschikt en waardevol kunnen zijn in een pluralistisch land als Indonesië. Toch vind ik het moeilijk, want pluralisme relativeert het normativiteitskarakter van de bijbel en de uniciteit van Christus als de Redder.


Hoofdstuk 4
PRESUPPOSIONAL APOLOGETICS. Door John M. Frame.

Bijbels epistemologie.
De bijbel heeft veel te zeggen over epistemologie of kennistheorie. De bijbel leert ons dat het vrezen van God het beginsel van wijsheid en kennis is (Ps. 111:10; Pred. 9:10; 15:33; 1:7). Het vrezen in die verzen betekent gehoorzamen. Het berust op de overtuiging dat God de Heer is, en dat we zijn schepselen en knechten zijn. Daarom heeft Hij recht om ons te regeren. Wat God zegt is belangrijker dan wat wij zeggen. De waarheid van Gods Woord moet gelden als de meest fundamentele overtuiging en de grootste basis van onze verplichting (commitment) tegenover God. We kunnen deze verplichting als presuppositie noemen, want we nemen deze commitment in onze gedachten, en proberen om al onze ideeën daarmee in overeenstemming te brengen. We maken iedere gedachte krijgsgevangene om haar aan Christus te onderworpen (2 Kor. 10:5). Dat betekent faith governs reasoning just as it governs all other human activities. (208-09). De vraag is waar komt het geloof vandaan? Naar de oorzaak: van God, naar de rationele basis is het op de realiteit, op de waarheid gebaseerd. Gods rationaliteit is de basis voor de rationele basis van het geloof. Gods rationaliteit het geloof de redenering. De pijl betekent ‘is the rational basis for’. (210).

Een vraag: wat bedoelt Frame met de realiteit en waarheid, waar het geloof op gebaseerd is? Bedoelt hij Gods openbaring (bijzonder en algemeen)?

Het noёthische gevolg van de zonde
Zonde heeft noёtisch gevolg. Hierop ligt de natuur van ongeloof en ongehoorzaamheid. De ongehoorzaamheid aan Gods Woord – door de ongelovige – is niet rationeel of intellectueel maar ethisch. Als zij niet in God geloven of als zij theïstische argumenten en bewijzen niet accepteren, is dat niet vooral omdat het geloof in God irrationeel is. Hun intellectuele problemen voortkomen uit hun ethische onwilligheid om de bewijzen te ontkenen. (211).


Het noёtische gevolg van de bekering.
De bekering kan de denkrichting radicaal veranderen. De ongelovige en de gelovige zondigen. Toch is beide verschil. Het verschil ligt niet in mate maar in richting. Voor de bekering houden we van zonde. Na de bekering haten we haar. Met andere woorden: voor de bekering is zonde onze heer. Na de bekering is Christus onze Heer. Intellectuele verandering is een deel van de bekering. (214).

De waarde (betekenis?: value) van de apologetiek.
Apologetiek is een deel van de evangelisatie (1 Pet. 3:15). Apologetiek is waardevol voor de gelovigen en de ongelovigen, want de gelovigen steeds kampen met hun ongelovigheid. Er zijn drie elementen in apologetiek: 1) proef, de rationele confirmatie voor het geloof; 2) defense, antwoord de kritieken (replies to criticisms); 3) offensive, kritiseert de niet christelijke ideeën. (215). Het belang van de apologetiek is niet dat we niet kunnen geloven zonder apologetiek. Maar dat de apologetische argumenten Godskennis, die we vanuit natuur hebben, kunnen articuleren en confirmeren of bevestigen. (216). Zowel gelovigen hebben ongelovigen hun eigen presuppositie. Hoe kunnen we hun dan vragen om in Christus te geloven met behulp van christelijke presuppositie? Daar zijn enkele punten voor: 1) God vraagt het geloof. Maar het kan niet zonder genade. We kunnen het geloof niet bezitten door onze eigen kracht. Dus het christelijke presuppositie is mogelijk voor de ongelovige, waanneer God het geloof schenkt in het apologetische contact. 2) er is geen neutraliteit. De apologetische argumenten, die op bijbelse presuppositie gebaseerd, draagt de waarheid over. Als we – in onze apologetiek - zeggen dat we neutral zijn, dan zijn we leugenaren. 3) de ongelovigen hebben – in de zin van het Woord (Rom. 1:21) – christelijke presuppositie. Alleen ze erkenden het niet. 4) daarom moet een apologeet Godskennis aan de ongelovigen vertellen dat zij het in hun harten onderdrukken. Dat kan alleen door bijbelse presuppositie redenering. 5) in dit geval moet een apologeet de ongelovigen (legitimately) vragen om hun redeneringen in christelijke presuppositie doen. (217-18).

Apologetische methode
1. het doel: voor de ongelovige is de apologetiek een evangelisatie en voor de gelovige is het een ‘training of godliness’. Het is mogelijk om heel intellectueel te zijn in theïstisch wereldbeeld zonder ‘a real heart commitment’ aan Jezus als Heer en Redder, wel als de Farizeeërs.
2. daarom kan de intellectuele bekwaamheid niet zonder goed gedrag.
3. hoe je God ziet en kent in je apologetiek is beslissend. Hij is de soevereine God van de hemel en aarde, Schepper van alle dingen, Bron van alle betekenis en rationaliteit.
4. dit is een transcendentaal argument. Transcendentaal omdat het de bijbelse God presenteert.
5. dit kan een apologeet doen via bijv. kosmologische argument.
6. een argument moet het idee van de ongelovige niet aanvullen of versterken.
7. onze argumenten kunnen in apologetiek variëren zijn. Dat hangt af van wie onze spreekpartner is.
8. religieuze ongehoorzaamheid is een nuttig beginsel om onze argumentatie te beginnen om te laten zien hoe het verkeerde wereldbeeld van de ongelovigen ontstaat.

Apologetische schets.
Frame begint hier met de oorsprong van alle dingen. Die dingen bestaan niet door een onpersoonlijke, maar door een persoonlijke macht. Vervolgens: hoe kunnen we het weten? Uit de bijbel. Het is de God van de bijbel, die alle dingen geschapen heeft, want de bijbel leert ons een persoonlijke God. Daarna wordt Jezus Christus naar voren gebracht als Heer en Redder; tenslotte komt de uitnodiging om in Christus te geloven. Dus hij begint met ‘ alle dingen hebben een oorsprong’. ‘Die zijn door een persoon geschapen,’ (presuppositie), ‘daarom bestaat God’ (conclusie). Die God kan alleen de bijbelse God zijn, want alleen in bijlbel is er sprake van een persoonlijke God. Daarna Jezus of evangelisatie en bekering.

Opmerkingen:

Frame constateert dat de bijbel Gods Woord is. Daarom moet iedereen naar de bijbel luisteren. De Bijbel is de norm van alle redeneringen en argumenten. Ik ben het met hem eens, want de Schrift is het Woord van God dat zijn eigen gezag meebrengt (Peels, in Gegrond geloof, 1996, 76). Bovendien is de bijbel – in mijn geloof – de norm om allerlei rationele argumenten en levensbeschouwingen te toetsen.
Het radicale gevolg van de zonde is heel duidelijk in Frame’s betoging. Zonde heeft een noёtisch gevolg. Toch is het niet zo dat de zonde de ongelovige minder intellectueel maakt. Zonde maakt de ongelovige onwillig om in God te geloven, hoewel ze er geen rationele argumenten voor hebben. Bovendien brengt de bekering ook een noёtisch gevolg teweeg.
Ik vind dat Frame’s presuppotitional apologetics veel meer overeenstemt met de gereformeerde leer dan de andere methode. Alleen heb ik moeite met hem als hij zegt dat de christelijke apologeet de ongelovige moet vragen om zijn redeneringen in de bijbelse vooronderstelling te doen. Mijn vraag is: hoe kunnen we dat doen? Hij zegt ook dat bijbel de ultieme norm is. Dat ben ik met hem eens. Toch blijft er een vraag: hoe kan ik de ongelovige overtuigen dat de bijbel de norm moet zijn in zijn argumenten?
Deze methode vind ik ‘misschien’ minder bruikbaar is dan de eerste drie in Europa of in Nederland. Het is moeilijk hier in Nederland vanwege individualisme en tolerantie of mensenrechten, – om aan iemand te zeggen dat je dit moet accepteren en dat moet weigeren, etc. of dat je je argumenten op de wijze van mijn geloof of levensbeschouwing moet geven, want de mijne is de enige, die waar is. Zulk een manier van een gesprek zou men wellicht niet accepteren.

Hoofdstuk 5
REFORMED EPISTEMOLOGY APOLOGETICS. Door Kelly James Clark.

Positie: het geloven in God vereist geen ondersteunende bewijzen of argumenten om te laten zien dat het rationeel is. (276). Het geloof zelf is al rationeel. (268).

The Demand for Evidence.
Een verlangen of een vraag naar bewijzen is niet nodig, want er zijn vele rationele argumenten, die je niet kunt bewijzen. Niemand kan de existentie van een persoon ooit bewijzen. Niemand kan de realiteit van het verleden en toekomst bewijzen. Ook kan niemand bewijzen dat de zon morgen zal verschijnen, etc. ‘There is a limit to things that human being can prove’. Het meest van wat we geloven is op geloof gebaseerd, niet op bewijzen of argumenten. Dat betekent niet dat het geloof tegen onze kennis in gaat. Onze ‘cognitive factulties’ vertellen ons vele ware dingen, ondanks dat we die niet kunnen bewijzen. Dus: waarom beginnen we niet met in God te geloven? (270-71)

Zonder bewijs of argument.
Het geloof in God vraagt geen bewijs of argument. Er zijn er drie redenen voor: 1) veel mensen kunnen de theïstische argumenten niet begrijpen of beoordelen. Daarom is het moeilijk om te zeggen dat het vragen naar bewijs een voorwaarde van redenering moet zijn . 2). God heeft iedereen een bewust op hem in zijn haart ingeplant, waarmee niemand van een bewijs afhangt om in God te kunnen geloven. 3) Het geloof in God is meer een geloof in een persoon dan in een wetenschappelijke theorie. (271-72)

Met of zonder bewijs.
Het geloof kan er zijn met of zonder bewijs. Het is mogelijk dat er iemand – vanwege theïstisch argumentatie - tot geloof komt. Tocht is het eigenlijk onnodig. Want – met een beroep op Calvijn – iedereen heeft natuurlijke kennis, die door God in zijn hart is ingeplant. Maar die kennis is door de zonde misleid. Daarom ‘The primary obstacle to belief in God seems to be more moral than intellectual’. (273).

Postmoderne apologetiek.
‘A belief B has warrant for one if and only if B is produced by one’s properly functioning cognitive faculties in circumstances to which those faculties are designed to apply.’ Dit is een bijzonder vermogen, dat het ware geloof naar kennis leidt. Dit noemt Platinga ‘ warrant’ (waarborg?). (277). Dus volgens deze ‘warrant theorie’ heeft iemand een gegarandeerd geloof in God als het geproduceerd is door zijn ‘properly functioning faculties’ in de situaties, waar deze ‘faculties’ voor geconstrueerd (designed) zijn. Deze ‘faculties’ brengen onmiddellijk geloof in God teweeg, vaak zonder hulp van een theïstisch argument. Dat neemt niet weg dat het geloven in God geen grond in de werkelijkheid (experience) heeft of dat het zo’n argumentatie niet kan toelaten of hebben. Maar als het geloof op de ‘cognitive faculties’ gegarandeerd kan worden, dan is een bewijs niet meer nodig. Dus een goede apologetische strategie is ‘to encourage unbelievers to put themselves in situations where people are typically taken with belief in God’, bijv. op een berg, zee, etc., waar ze Gods majesteit en aanwezigheid kunnen ervaren. Er zijn nog andere situaties, die het geloof in God tot stand kunnen brengen, bijv. de geboorte van een kind, het kijken naar de zonsondergang op bergen of op zee, het genieten van mooie bloemen, etc. of moeilijke situaties, bijv. ongeluk, het sterven van de geliefde, etc. (279). We hebben moeite tegenwoordig met problemen van duivel, wetenschap en godsdiensten, ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ (verdenkingshermeneutiek?). De laatste heeft te maken met de hermeneutische kritiek van Marx, Nietzsche en Freud op godsdiensten. Ze vinden dat God niet bestaat en daarom is God nutteloos. Toch blijft dit hermeneutiek nooit kunnen bewijzen dat God niet bestaat, en dat het geloof in God irrationeel is. (280). Het bestaan van de duivel is de grootste belemmering om het bestaan van God te bewijzen. Als er een lieve God bestaat, waarom is er dan zoveel ellende in deze wereld? Hoe we dit kunnen verklaren, is het huiswerk van een apologeet. Toch is de afhankelijkheid van onze argumentatie kwetsbaar. Job leert ons dat ‘we are more likely to go wrong than right in our theodicies.’ (281-82).

Opmerkingen:

Ik ben het met Clark eens wat betreft de beperktheid van onze intellectualiteit en redeneringen om God te bewijzen. Toch vind ik het moeilijk om met hem eens te zijn in wat hij noemt ‘cognitive faculties’. Iedereen heeft deze ‘faculties’ (geest- of denkvermogen?), waardoor hij in God kan geloven. Dat stemt niet overeen met het genadekarakter van het geloof. Het geloven in God is Gods genade. Bovendien wordt het noёtische gevolg van de zonde verzwakt of ontkend als men het geloof vanuit de ‘cognitive faculties’ verwacht. Ook het onzichtbare en noodzakelijke werk van de Heilige Geest is niet zo duidelijk hier. Ik denk dat Frame gelijk heeft dat ‘only the Spirit, …, can create belief from the heart, overcoming the sinful impulse toward unbelief.’ (210).
Clark verwerpt offensieve apologetiek. Hij gebruikt alleen de negatieve methode. In Europa waar iedereen gelijk is en waar tolerantie en/of vrijheid en individualisme een grote rol spelen, is het moeilijk om de negatieve methode te gebruiken. Want niemand zal jouw geloof kritiseren. Hier moet een apologeet creatief zijn om het christelijke geloof met andere mensen te delen. Offensieve apologetiek is hier meer toepasbaar dan negatieve apologetiek. In Azië, vooral in Indonesië, is het wat anders. Elke godsdienst is daar bezig met het verbreiden van haar geloof. Aanhangers van verschillende godsdiensten komen vaak elkaar tegen in het geloofsgesprek. Daar is, volgens mij, negatieve apologetiek meer bruikbaar dan positieve apologetiek.
Het voordeel van deze methode is haar aandacht voor het existentiële leven. Laat maar mensen naar onze gemeenschap komen. Laat zij maar ervaren wat in de gemeenschap de overtuiging is en wat er beleefd wordt. Laat hun hoofden en harten geleid worden door wat zij meedenken, meemaken en meevoelen in de gemeenschap. Dat is – volgens mij – een rationele of logische manier om mensen Gods aanwezigheid te laten vinden. Daar kunnen de vrijgemaakten nog wat van leren.

The Making of the Modern Identity III

Part IV
The Voice Of Nature

Structure: This part is about the third aspect of the modern moral sources: nature. Some critics toward Enlightenment Deism and naturalism, e.g. Kant’s autonomy theory (chapter 19) and Romanticism (chapter 20) are pictured here. Standard Enlightenment view was seen as one dimensional. What makes life significant is absent here. Seeing this, then, on the one hand, Kant came up with his notion of radical autonomy of rational agent. The life of mere desire-fulfillment is not only flat but also heteronomous. We need freedom to manifest ourselves. The fully significant life is the one which is self-chosen. On the other hand, expressivists came up with their second dimension in nature as source. This view attacks the notion of objectifying (or neutralizing nature) wherein nature is seen as a neutral order of things. This is chapter 21.

Chapter 18
Fractured Horizon

But what is the relationship between cultural developments (life goods) and its philosophical formulation (chapter 18)? It is circular. A tendency to give priority to philosophical formulation is because it is a formulation. That is why we cannot consider the life goods in a culture as self-constitutive good. Also that is why we can speak of some articulations as the ones which fit, which capture the spirit of a certain unreflecting practice. Articulations – thus philosophical formulations - can alter practice. The Deism notion of natural order is an important example of this emergence. This Deism appears as the first step toward unbelieving of Enlightenment figures like Helvetius, Bentham, etc., on the one hand, and leads to modern secularization. Secularization is a term used to describe the regression of belief in God, … and the decline of practice of religion. p. 307-09.

But a question comes into mind: what makes moral sources really available? Look for an answer derived from the ancient view points is not enough. Why not? It is because pagan authors and post-Augustinian inwardness fail to capture early modern moral experience. Also it is because Platonic ontic logos or rational order falls increasingly on the defensive before the advancing mechanistic science. This inadequacies help in describing the alternative moral sources which actually do begin to emerge in the 18th century, and which define our contemporary situation. These (alternative) moral sources can be range into two heads or ‘frontiers’ of moral explorations: first lies in the agent’s own powers, those of rational order and control initially, but later, … be a question of powers of expression and articulation; the second lies in the depth of the nature, in what wells up from my own nature, desires, sentiments, affinities. p. 314.

Modern moral culture comes from multiple sources. It can be schematized in three directions: two independents frontiers (he means human’s dignity as rational agent and nature, p.315) and one originated in theistic foundation (theism). But Taylor explicates that these three are problematic by the fact that they exist in a field of alternative. That is why he calls them as frontiers of exploration. The challenge of inadequavy calls forth continually renewed attempts to define what the dignity that inheres in us as rational or expressive beings, or the good involved in our immerse of nature, consist in. These three directions can be seen as rival, but also as complementary. p.317-18

Chapter 19
Radical Enlightenment.

This chapter is about the mutation by which the thought of radical, unbelieving Enlightenment emerged out of Deism. Radical Aufklärer had no use for the notion of providence, or a providence order. Their ethic was purely based on utility. Locke’s hedonistic theory comes up here in radical form together with his notion of rasa tabula. Speaking about ethic needs not to be started with any appeals to Law of Nature, or Law of Reason, Right Reason, Natural Justice, Natural Equity, Good order, or the like. Rather, it must be begun with the fact the people desire happiness or pleasure and the absence of pain. So the only issue here is how to maximize happiness. p. 321.

The radical utilitarians, on the one hand, rejected the constitutive goods of Deism and the providential order, but on the other hand, committed some life good underpinned by them: 1) the ideal of self-responsible reason; 2) the notion that ordinary fulfillment that we seek by nature not only are what we desire but are worthy of being pursued and furthered; 3) the ideal of universal and impartial benevolence. p. 322.

They embraced materialism and atheism in two meanings: 1) as the ultimate deliverance of self-responsible reason; 2) as the way of being integrally true to the demand of nature. p. 325.

Enlightenment naturalism was radical because of her accent of sensualism. The promotion of ordinary life, already transposed by Deists into an affirmation of the pursuit of happiness, is now turning into an exaltation of the sensual. A dispute between Diderot and Orou is an interesting example of this sensual exaltation. p. 329. Enlightenment naturalism tends to make sense of one’s own moral horizon, by defining three life Good: self-responsible reason, the pursuit of happiness, and benevolence. This idea has to do with the notion that the ordinary fulfillments of human beings have a special significance. Someone who lives these fulfillments clairvoyantly and undistortedly is living a higher live than one, say, who undergoes mortifications in the name of some religious ideal. This significance is from and for the human beings. p. 341. It demands a recognizing of the goodness of ordinary desire. This recognizing empowers us to live this goodness integrally (Nietzsche). This Nietzschean idea helps us – according to Taylor – to understand where the naturalist rejection of religion and traditional ethics comes from, i.e. from this sense of empowerment, of releasing nature and desire from a stultifying thralldom, releasing them to a fuller affirmation. This rejection has two sides: the negation of religion and metaphysics, and the affirmation of the goodness and significance of nature. These two sides bring about two routes in naturalism: 1) inarticulated route of the mainstream naturalism. It is because they think that the first side left no place for the second. 2) Articulated route, more direct and open, hence fuller, release of the stultified power of nature and desire. p.343.

Beside the human’s ordinary fulfillments significant, there also is a spiritual significance of (Enlightenment) naturalism, i.e. a believing that thinking beings are part of a vast physical order. This belief awakes a kind of awe, wonder, even natural piety. According to Taylor, this spiritual attitude is in flat contradiction to the Cartesian dualism. Also it helped to foster a new sense of cosmic time, namely a geological time: not only the immense time scale in which the universe has evolved, but also of the cataclysmic changes which have filled this aeons. p. 347, 349-50.

Chapter 20
Nature as Source

Taylor is speaking in this chapter about some counter-movements of rationalized Deism and naturalism, which see nature as moral source. He chooses J. J. Rousseau and Immanuel Kant and some writers of Romanticism (e.g. Herde, Goethe, Hegel) to picture these counter-movements. He describes the latter in chapter 21.

There are two objections to the standard Deism of the 18th century: first, anti-Panglossian, against is rather rosy, optimistic view of the world; second, anti-levelling, against a too simple view of human will, intent simply on happiness. Enlightenment naturalism took up the first. Rousseau is its famous articulator beside Kant. In Rousseau’s teaching there is no place for the original sin. Nature is good and its impulses are always right. This nature is linked to a voice within, conscience. Conscience is our inner guide. It speaks to us in the language of nature. Austerity is here essential to be an integral and free human being on one’s own. p.358-59. The scope of the inner voice is enlarged here. We now can turn from within us, from the impulses of our own being, what nature marks as significant. And our ultimate happiness is to live in conformity with this voice, that is, to entirely ourselves. This is a kind of self-exploration which makes self-determining freedom the key to virtue. This makes Rousseau the starting point of a transformation in modern culture toward a deeper inwardness and a radical autonomy. P. 362-63.

Kant is a defender of human freedom, of a radical autonomy, taking anti-levelling objection, because freedom (or autonomy) has to have a moral dimension. So he is – as Rousseau – articulating a notion of autonomy. Morality and freedom relate to each other closely. Morality is not any specific outcomes. Moral action is not marked as such by its outcomes, but rather by the motive for which it was undertaken. What a moral person wants above all is to conform his action to the moral law. This amounts freedom, because acting morally is acting according to what we truly are, moral/rational agents. This means that we, the moral agents, are the sources of the moral law. So Kant is giving, according to Taylor, a firm but quite new base to the subjectivism and internalization of moral sources which Rousseau inaugurates. The moral law… comes from within; it can neither longer be defined by any external order nor by the impulse of nature in me, but only by the nature of reasoning. Morality can’t be founded in nature or in anything outside the human rational will. So, Kant offers one form of modern internalization, that is, a way of finding the good in our inner motivation. p. 363-64, 368.

Chapter 21
The Expressivist Turn.

This chapter is about Romanticism, which sees nature as moral source. This was a crucial part of the conceptual armoury in which Romanticism arose and conquered European culture and sensibility. The rights of individual, of imagination, and of feeling were crucial justifying concepts of the Romanticism. It is an inner impulse or conviction which tells us of the importance of our own natural fulfillment and of solidarity with our fellow creatures in theirs. This is the voice of nature within us. Thus, if our access to nature is through an inner voice or impulse, then we can only fully know this nature through articulating what we find within us. This articulation is an expression. To express something is to make it manifest in a given medium (e.g. I express my feeling in my face; I express my thought in words I speak or write). Expression is a kind of creation. It is either a bringing about (or a manifesting) of what already exists or of bringing something to be. Fulfilling my nature means espousing the inner élan, the voice or impulse. This makes what was hidden manifest for both myself and other. Poet and art are the medium where the Romantists express their inner voice. This made expressivism the basis for a new fuller individualism.

Kant’s autonomy theory and the notion of nature as moral source are two reactions to the felt inadequacies of standard Enlightenment Deism and naturalism. But they react in different, incompatible ways. Kant wants to recover the integrity of moral, which he sees in an entirely different quality of motivation. Freedom is the key to the autonomy. But his theory of autonomy makes a radical break with nature: a disengagement in a sense more radical than the naturalistic Enlightenment has envisaged. The second takes a different path. It is also meant to rescue the moral the moral dimension, but this is now to be discovered in the élan of nature itself, from which we have to cut ourselves off. These two are on incompatible courses because Kant’s division of nature from reason seems as much denial of nature as source as the standard Enlightenment view; and the exaltation of nature as a source – in Kant’s eyes – must seem as heteronomous as utilitarianism.

The expressivist philosophy tended to develop a theory of history is a spiral form: from a primitive undifferentiated unity, to a conflictual division between reason and sensibility (human and human), to a higher reconciliation between the second two (human and human and nature). This philosophy has its root in the Christian picture of salvation history: from paradise through the Fall, to the redemption.


4. End Notes

My first impress when I saw this book was that it was a good book, though I didn’t really know what it was about. And it is a good book indeed. It is, however, a difficult book for those who are not familiar in the field of philosophy. Besides, it also is annoying because the chapters have absolutely no titles. This makes the readers uneasy to get the points as soon as possible. That is why I have tried to give – when it is possible – titles here and there. According to me, chapter 12 might be put somewhere in the preface. Because it is about the choice that he has made in describing the modern moral source. I don’t have any clear idea whether Montaigne’s self-exploration can be viewed as derived from Augustine. But I think it might be so with regard to Augustine’s radical reflexivity.

This book is about the modern Western moral (and culture) sources, while I am an Eastern people. So reading this book seems to be – in a certain sense – irrelevant to me. On the one hand, I was engaging with a far away moral and culture developments. On the other hand, however, I see my country is struggling with what Taylor is talking about. I would like to analogize my county – and probably all 3rd world countries – as a good big bowl, wherein everything can be thrown. This means – more or less – that we are not immune toward the developments – culturally, morally, economically, politically, etc., which have taken place in the western worlds. I can divide Indonesian people educatively into two categories: (good or high) educated- and (bad or low or even un-) educated people. Most of the formers are those who have traveled abroad (all over Europe and America) and got their study there. They inevitably have had or learned and are influenced by the western picture of culture and morality. The latter are those who were, are and will be the executors of primitive-, modern-, and postmodern culture. So there is and will be an encounter between these two groups. In this meeting, the high westernized educated one try to apply what he has learned to the bad and low and even uneducated one. This means that Western culture and morality will play an important role and – who knows- will sweep away indigenous culture. Seeing this I am thankful reading this book. The three aspects of Western modernity – the inwardness, the affirmation of ordinary life, and the nature as moral sources - really help me to conceive the moral and culture development in my country. It seems to me that we are living in a complicated mixing of these three aspects. Besides, the battle between Enlightenment and Romanticism is really available among the middle class people of my country. So, what Taylor is saying in the first paragraph of chapter 22.4 is already present in the Eastern worlds as well.

It is not easy to see soon the possible contribution(s) of this book with regard to our Gereformeede apologetiek. What is clear in it is that the (post)modern Western self has its root either in the pagan philosophy (and culture) or in the Christianity (and Islam). So it provides only a ‘kennis’. But this ‘kennis’ indeed is very useful in creating methods to approach this (post)modern or post-Christian people. If Taylor is right in that we are living in time of reconciliation between rationality and sensibility (chapter 21.3), or in a battle between Enlightenment and Romanticism (chapter 24), it means then that we are living rationally and naturally: enlightenment rationalism and romanticism. This can be – in my view – a good ‘kennis’ to reach the people through apologetics. If man can think of any nature and acknowledge rationally that it contains anything good, then it is possible to bring them to God by giving some rationally argumentations dealing with the nature. Apologetics methods such as classical and evidential probably are appropriate here.

The moral sources - as they are appearing through Taylor’s book – give me a new understanding how certain culture and morality has become available. As I just said in the previous paragraph, they are from two great different sources: paganism and religions (Judaeo-Christen and Islam). These two have been developed by great people either philosophically or theologically. Through this book I have come to a better understanding of why people since Renaissance have begun to question radically about who they were and who God was. These than, has brought about Enlightenment and Romanticism, wherein many people of Europe began and begin to turn away from God. I really do not have any answer of the question: why has this taken place after the Middle Ages and has taken its full form in the Enlightenment century? Why not before?

I have tried to sketch the development of the (post)modern Western moral sources as Taylor describes them. It is probably not really accurate but I think it will provide a bit help to those who want to read this book. I have left part i and v, but I hope that I will read them later.

The Making of the Modern Identity II

Part III
The Affirmation of the Ordinary Life.

Structure: Taylor is dealing with the second aspect of modern identity here. He does this by explaining the sources of this aspect in chapter 13. In chapter 14 he speaks about the fusion of ethic of ordinary life and the philosophy of disengaged freedom and rationality in the earlier phase (in the beginning of 18th century?). John Lock was one of the earliest embodiments of this synthesis: bringing together of outlook derived from Reformers (partly from Bacon) with Descartes. Chapter 15 is about moral sentiments (of Shaftesbury and his successor, Hutcheson) an opposition to Locke’s disengaged rationality. Chapter 16 is about the Deism idea of God’s providence. He brings this through a short dispute with Hutcheson’s ethic of benevolence. Taylor, then, ends this part by mentioning some changes which have taken place outside philosophy, i.e. through the movement of the culture in the 17th and 18th centuries in Anglo-Saxon and in France.

Chapter 13 “God Loveth Adverbs”

In this chapter, he describes the source of the modern affirmation of ordinary life. This source is found in some strands of the Protestant Reformation: Calvinism and especially Puritanism. But it has its root in Judaeo-Christianity – the pharisaic idea of living the law which thoroughly permeated the details of everyday life – through Augustine. 13.1 is about the transition of hierarchical ethic to ethic of ordinary life and the source of the latter. 13.2 is about the Puritanism influence in the modern affirmation of ordinary life. 13.3 is about Calvinism and 13.4 is about the Puritan theology as the background of Baconian science, which sees the world or things as instrument to glorify God.

There are two major aspects of the modern identity:
Inwardness (Plato, Augustine, Descartes and Locke, part 2)
Affirmation of ordinary life: the rise of our modern notions of nature has its roots here.
What is ‘ordinary life’? It designates (roughly) the life of production and the family (p. 13). It refers to production and reproduction: labour, the making of things needed for life and our life as sexual beings (including marriage and family).

For Aristotle the activities of production and reproduction play only an infrastructural role in relation to good life. There are two other activities that need to be added to these infrastructure elements, i.e. contemplation and participation. According to him then these two are needed to get the good life’. But Plato underestimates the second, and Stoic views human life as sexual is lesser than contemplation: the sage should be detached from the fulfillment of his vital and sexual life. (p. 211-12)

But the influential ideas of ethical hierarchy exalted the lives of contemplation and participation. The former is manifested in the notion that philosophers should not busy themselves … with the crafts. The latter returned in the early modern times (1st in Italia, and then in northern Europe) with the various doctrines of civic humanism (citizen ethic): life as mere household is inferior to one who also involves participation as a citizen). This citizen ethic is in some way analogous to aristocratic ethic of honour. Also found in … the ideal of corteisie in the mediaeval France Romance and in the ethic of generosity in the 17 century sense. (p. 212)

Transition:
1. Critic of scientific revolution in early modern period: the full human life is now defined in terms of labour and production (not contemplation and participation), on the one hand, and marriage and family life, on the other.
2. Critic against honour ethic (the other main variant of the traditional hierarchical view) from Hobbes, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, and Molière. Its (ethic of honour) goals are denounced as vainglory and vanity, as the fruits of an almost childish presumption.

According to Taylor these critics are, however, not new. Plato sees honour ethic as concerned with mere appearance, Stoics rejects it, and Augustine sees it as the exaltation of the desire for power, the libido dominandi. But what gives this new critic its historical significance as an engine of social change is the new promotion of ordinary life: sober and disciplined production took the central place in human life. These two critics cause a transition from the ancient honour ethic (or citizen ethic) to the modern ‘bourgeois’ ethic (view of social order, political stability, and good life). This bourgeois ethic has played a tremendous role in constituting modern liberal society (18th century and beyond), with their: 1) ideal of equality; 2) sense of universal right; 3) work ethic; 4) exaltation of sexual love and family. (p. 214-15)

In the affirmation of the ordinary life man is seen as producer: one who finds his highest dignity in labour and the transformation of nature in the service the life. Marxism is the best known case in this point.

The root of the ethic of ordinary life. The question is then: what was the corresponding account for the various ethics of ordinary life? Or where does the ethic of ordinary life find its root?
· Traditionally, it finds its origin in Judaeo-Christian spirituality.
· In the modern era, it comes from the Reformation (Calvinism and in particular Puritanism (31.2, 3, 4). The puritan idea of the sanctification of ordinary life had analogous consequences for their understanding of marriage. First, this took on new spiritual significance for its own sake; second, it too must never become an end in itself, but serve … God; third, - from Archbishop Cranmer – the avoidance of fornication and the procreation of legitimated children . p. 226

Much of Bacon’s scientific outlook stems from a Puritan background. Some encounter points of both in relation to experience and tradition: 1) Both saw themselves as rebelling against a traditional authority… and as returning to the neglected sources: Scripture and experimental reality. 2) Both appealed to what they saw as a living experience against dead received doctrine. 3) Both rebelled against Aristotelian idea of contemplation.

Bacon’s scientific thesis sounds: the old science (e.g. from Aristotle) is epistemically useless (ending merely in speculative, the verbal, in unresolvable disputes), and it has turned its back on its proper, moral end of enabling beneficent works. This brings about is a shift in the goal of science from contemplation to productive efficacy. This was based on a biblical understanding of humans as stewards of God’s creation. p. 230-31

Chapter 14 Rationalized Christianity

In these chapters (14.1 and ensuing?), Taylor is talking about the fusion of ethic of ordinary life and the philosophy of disengaged freedom and rationality in the earlier phase (in the beginning of 18th century?). John Lock was one of the earliest embodiments of this synthesis: bringing together of outlook derived from Reformers (partly from Bacon) with Descartes. The question is then what does happen with this fusion? 1) In its early form, it retains something of the original theological outlook surrounding the affirmation of ordinary life. 2) Later (toward the end of 18th century), a mutation occurs and a naturalist variant arises (sometimes … anti-religious). p. 234
To a better understanding of this chapter, it seems important to put its contents this way (14.2): 1) the Law of Nature: what is it, and what it contains? 2) God’s revelation: what for? 3) The way to God: reason. 4) Deism, and 5) Grace and natural good.

Ad 1) The content of the Law of the Nature is preservation (in the Second Treatise). Reason (which is the Law of Nature) teaches all mankind not to harm life, liberty and possession of the other. Why? It is because we are made by God. Thus we are his property.

“Everyone as he is bound to preserve himself, and not quit his Station willfully; so by the like reason when his own Preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he van, to preserve the rest of Mankind.” p. 237

Since God gives us life, we go against his will in ending life; unless, of course, this is necessary for its general preservation, which is why we may kill criminals. Locke is following the Protestant affirmation of ordinary life in making human preservation as the central point of God’s will; and that in two aspects: First, Locke integrates into his own thought something like Puritan notion of the calling (as John Dunn has shown). God gives the world to the use of industrial and rational. It is these two properties that God wants us to exhibit. The first requires a hard work, the second, … brings about “improvement”. Second, the Puritan accent on the need to work for the common good appears in Locke teaching as well, i.e. acting rationally: God calls us to act strenuously, and also efficaciously, to meet our needs, but with an eye also to the common good. p. 238-39

Ad 2) God’s revelation (especially in Christ) is inevitable to conceive the Law of the Nature, because human beings have an inherent penchant for irrationality and evil. This is a naturalized variant or form of the original sin. That is why God needs to come. Through his revelation (particularly in Christ), he makes his law known to us; and it is attended by pains (punishments) and reward. So, his revelation helps us to know what is good, and gives us a tremendous shove in the right direction. God gives us some order of life using our self-love (the desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain). There are two kinds of self-love: negative: irrational, destructive and wrong form; positive: rational, moral form.

Ad 3) The question is then: how can human beings come to God? The answer is through reason: the exercise of rationality is the way to take part in God’s plan. While ethic of ordinary life rejects ‘higher’ activities and makes the crux of the moral life depend on the manner in which we live our ordinary life, Locke proposes a kind of ‘higher’ activity: rationality. A shift of adverb took place here: from living worshipfully (pure Puritan variant) to living rationally (Locke). We need moral rationality and intellectual rationality. Both are tied together by a primacy of instrumental, maximizing reason. God uses this to lift up us to our full potential. We are morally rational when we allow ourselves to be so lifted up. But this maximizing reason requires that we are to be intellectually rational.

Reason becomes central in Locke’s idea of serving or following and understanding or participation in God’s plan. By doing this, he was plainly stepping outside the orthodox Reformed Theology. This is in accordance with his rejection of the original sin. But what is it mean to serve God? To serve God means to work for the preservation of the ordinary life.

“The goodness and the providence of God are … for the preservation of its [the world] denizens, …. Eternal life, in a world beyond, is something superadded to this benefit; …”. p. 244.

Ad 4) Locke’s naturalism gives birth to Deism: God relates to humans as rational beings; God purposes fully respect for humans’ autonomous reason. Instrumental rationality is our avenue of participation in God’s plan. Rather than seeing this as an abasement of God’s will to the status of a factor in our game, we see it as the exalting of our reasoning to the level of collaborator in God’s purpose. This form of Christian faith incorporates either modern disengagement and procedural rationality or the moral sources they connect with. What are then the constitutive good for this outlook? They are the goodness and wisdom of God as shown in the interlocking order; and our disengaged reason as our way of participation in God’s purpose.

Ad 5) Grace tends to have no place. Natural good is “the good that non-depraved human beings can discern on their own and at least set themselves to accomplish it”. (Orthodoxically), there are two ways in which the human natural good was seen as needing supplementation by grace: 1) God calls humans to something more than natural good, to a life of sanctity, which involves participation in God’s salvific action; 2) human will is so depraved by the Fall that humans require grace …. (Taylor calls this as hyper-Augustinian). But Lockean Enlightenment Deism suppresses both. See p. 246-46.

Locke’s picture of the ordered human life … prepared the way for the conception of the high Enlightenment for which Halévy coined in the term ‘harmony interest’.
He is … a crucial figure in the evolution of the ethic of ordinary life from its theological formulation to the modern, “bourgeois” naturalist one. Both facilitated the rise of capitalism. His ethical outlook is … against the aristocratic warrior virtues. p. 239-40

Chapter 15 Moral Sentiments

In chapter 14 Taylor has been talking about Lockean Deism. In this and the ensuing chapters (16, 17) he wants to talk about another variant of moral outlook (partly opposition to that of Locke), i.e. moral sentiments or moral sense (from Shaftesbury and his successor: Hutcheson). He does this by pointing out the theological background of Locke and the third Earl of Shaftesbury. But before ascribing the Earl and Hutcheson, Taylor gives some notes on Cambridge Platonists, with John Smith as example figure. So, he is putting Smith between Locke and Shaftesbury.

The rise of empiricist mechanism. The difference between Locke and Shaftesbury can be traced to the kind of orthodox Christianity in which they emerge. Locke has root in Puritan orthodoxy, while Shaftesbury in Erasmian (utilitarianism?).

Locke has – in naturalistic sense - a hyper-Augustinian theology of grace, and shares Puritan theological voluntarism (: God’s law is what he decides it is; it determines the good. It is an extrinsic theory of morality). “In naturalistic sense” means that he recognizes human incapability but not in the sense of original sin. Rather, that human beings have propensity of illusion, folly, and destructive behavior. What we need is not grace but rationality. According to Taylor, Puritan Theology teaches that God’s law is external to us fallen creature. This outlook than pushed us toward the adoption of the mechanistic world view. A disengaged subject of empiricist mechanism objectifies the domain in question and renders it neutral. In the neutralized world of the psyche there is only de facto desire; there is no higher good, the object of strong evaluation, within nature itself.
“whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth good” (Hobbes).

Cambridge Platonism reaction (protest): e.g. John Smith. But in Erasmian utilitarianism, de facto desire is the basis of the ethic: the higher good … is the maximization of de facto goals. Smith proposes religion of love vs. religion of fear; inward Nature Christianity vs. mechanical Christianity. This Inward Nature is another expression which points forward to a central feature of contemporary culture. Smith attacks here the crux of voluntarism, which makes God’s will something quite external to the bent of nature. This inward nature is platonic. Love plays a central part: not only the ascending love of the lower for the higher (Plato’s eros), but also a love of higher which expressed itself in care fore the lower, which could easily be identified with Christian agap­e.

Erasmian orthodoxy. To know this rival moral outlook to that of Locke, however, we better trace it background through Shaftesbury. Two crucial principles of Deism need to brought in mind here: 1) The central place accorded to the human subject as an autonomous reasoner; 2)The sidelining of grace. The key figure of this moral view (moral sentiments) is the third Earl of Shaftesbury. He got his philosophical allegiance to autonomous reason probably from Locke, but his anti Lockean moral views came from Cambridge Platonists. From philosophical view he was close to Stoic (Epictetus and Marcus).

Love and joy: Love and joy are the highest goods for human. The world is perfect and good; the imperfections and badness are in our opinions. But there is an obstacle to this love i.e. our believing that the world is in some way imperfect and bad.

Providence: Right opinions make us capable of loving providence. All disasters fill the order of things in the world: good needs a foil in evil, partial blemishes work for the whole, the universe has to proceed by general law. This idea becomes standard in 18th century providentialism.

God: As in the Stoic, the third Earl sees God as the framer of this order. He is rather different from God of Abraham, of revelation. He is the mind that not only designs but moves and animates the whole. The way (or our path) to God is our grasping of the universe as a single entity, like a tree, whose parts sympathize, and which is ordered for the best. In contrast to Locke, God’s law is not something external. The highest good doesn’t repose in any arbitrary will, but in the nature of the cosmos itself; and our love for it isn’t a commanded under threat of punishment, but come spontaneously from our being.

Intrinsic and extrinsic moral theory: Shaftesbury’s moral sense is an intrinsic moral theory, while a Locke moral view is extrinsic. Both, Locke and Shaftesbury, embrace autonomous reason and sideline grace, but they diverge in moral views. The former finds his moral views in the dignity of a disengaged subject, objectifying a neutral nature; the latter seeks them (moral views) in the inherent bent of our nature towards a love of the whole as good. p. 254

Natural affection: This is the key term which Sheftesbury always uses. This term reflects two features: 1) the internalization, or … subjectivization, of a teleological ethic of nature; 2) the transformation of an ethic of order, harmony, and equilibrium [Plato] into an ethic of benevolence. p.255-59 for further explanation.

Chapter 16 The Providential Order

In this chapter, Taylor is speaking about the Deism idea of God’s providence. He brings this through a short dispute with Hutcheson’s ethic of benevolence. In Judaeo-Christian tradition, God loves and seeks the good of his creatures. This good had always been defined as consisting in some relation to God: in our loving him, serving him, being in his presence, etc. But in the Deist views, the human’s good is self-contained. God’s presence or intervention for human happiness or goodness is subordinate to the man’s self-action.

The idea that God designs things for the human good took the form of a belief in good order of nature. This was providence, i.e. regular disposition of things. There was no more place for the theistic idea of God’s providence as evident in the orthodox. The Deism didn’t hold that God constantly intervenes miraculously in order to make things work out well for us. For them, the age of miracles was past, and NT stories of miracles were groundless. The goodness of God manifests itself in the beneficence of the regular order of things. God can’t intervene to interrupt the regular operation of the world. Hutcheson seems to find a good answer to the problem of theodicy here. In the Deist views, there were geen wonders en geen heilshistorie. p. 272-73.

But what does it mean to live according to nature? The question of what is meant by living according to nature is answered here. In the ancient, it means life according to reason (kata physin = kata logon), i.e. that we are rational by nature, and hence living according to some notions of order for our good. So, there must be some hierarchical order as in Plato or order of goals as also it is with Plato, Aristotle and Stoics. In our modernity, living according to nature means living according to the design of things. A shift has taken place here: from a hierarchical notion of reason to a conception of providential design (marked activities). This underlines a deep change either in understanding of our moral sources or moral psychology. For Descartes and Locke, reason is our moral source, but for Hutcheson feelings. Sentiments become normative. p. 284 (Taylor’s conclusion).


Chapter 17 The Culture Of Modernity

Some changes which have taken place outside philosophy, i.e. through the movement of the culture in the 17th and 18th centuries in Anglo-Saxon and in France are described here. These changes are cultural, i.e. 1) the new valuation of commerce (17.1); 2) the rise of the novel (17.2); 3) the changing understanding of marriage and family (17.3); and 4) the new important of sentiment (17.4, 17.5, 17.6, and 17.7).

Ad 1) The new valuation of commerce happened in the 18th century, where a new value was put on commercial and money making activities. Where did this change come from?
· From ‘le doux commerce’ and business activity: was supposed to make for more ‘polished’ and ‘gentle’ mores.
· From the encounter between the aristocrat honour ethic and bourgeois in the 18th century.
This new valuation gave birth to the very category of the ‘economic’ in its modern sense. The 18th century saw the birth of political economy, with Adam Smith and the Physiocrats. …..

Ad 2) The modern novel stands out against all previous literature in two aspects: 1) its accentuation on the equality. It reflected and entrenched the egalitarian affirmation of ordinary life. Christian tradition provided an influential alternative here: the Gospels treat of the doings of very humble people along with those of the great with the same degree of seriousness. 2) its portrayal of the particular. It breaks with the classical preference for the general and universal. It narrates the lives of particular people in their detail.

This change expresses and reinforces the demise of the view of the world as the embodiment and archetypes, the world of the ontic logos. The nature of a thing is now seen as within it in a new sense.

Ad) 3 Marriage based on affection. Marriage based on love, - thus not on the desire or decision of the parents as it was in the earlier periods - true companionship between husband and wife, and devoted concern for the children was started among the wealthier classes in the Anglo-Saxon centuries and in the late 17 century in France. Individualization and internalization took a great accent. This leads to a greater place for contractual agreement, and even – in some societies - leads to a greater tolerance for divorce. Personal autonomy, intimate personal relation, the demand and the winning of family privacy gain ground in this period.
Ad 4) Sentiments gain ground in 18th century, again in Anglo-Saxon and French. This is linked to the third. Thus sentiments of love, concern, and affection for one’s spouse come to be cherished, dwelt on, rejoiced in, and articulated. Love and care for children gain a great attention as well. Sentiment takes on moral relevance, and even becomes – for some – the key to human good. This has influenced all Western societies. The novels of Jan Lewis, Richardson (Pamela and Clarissa), Rousseau (La Nouvelle Héloïse) contributed to its intensification and propagation. This age of sentiment is also the age of melancholy, that was propagated by English writers such as Young (a poem: Nights Thoughts) and Gray (Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard). The moral important of the sentiment emerges from the growth of the feeling for nature in 18th century. We return to nature because it brings out strong and noble feelings in us, namely feelings of awe before the greatness of creation, of peace before a pastoral scene, of sublimity before storms and deserted fastnesses, of melancholy in some lonely woodland spot. Nature is like a great keyboard on which our highest sentiments are played out. But this relationship with nature is distinct from the ancient one. Here, the affinity between nature and ourselves is mediated not by an objective rational order but by the way that nature resonates in us. In the parallel way, feeling is given a new importance in the religious revivals of the period, among Pietists, Methodists, and Chassidim.

The Making of the Modern Identity I

Book : The Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1989
Author : Charles Taylor.
Pages : 601

Reading Report
By Marianus T. Waang.

1 Preface
Before I give a short report on what I have got from this book, I would like to say something first. This book is a difficult book indeed. It is first of all because I am not at home in philosophy. However, it is really a very good and an important book which provides a very deep and wide insight in understanding Western (post)modern identity. Unfortunately, I am not a Western. But the world in our postmodern era now has become small technologically. So it is not impossible that the Western philosophy and culture already have influenced many in the 3rd worlds as well, e.g. my country: Indonesia. So I was not disappointed reading this book.

In my openion, this is a right book to get what is targeted in the second objective of ‘bijvak filosofie’: “De student neemt kennis van (post)moderne zelfbeeld en kent de filosofisch-antropologische hoofdlijnen die hiertoe hebben geleid.”

I am going to do my reading report this ways: 1) Preface; 2) Structures (of that book); 3) Reading Report; and 4) End notes (evaluation). I have chosen not to give any report on part i. It is important actually, but to me it is not the main point or object of this book. Another reason is that it is quite difficult to get a clear view on this part. Besides, I didn’t have anymore time to read part v and conclusion. My report than will consist only part ii, iii, iv. These three parts have helped me to have wider and deeper understanding of Western modern moral sources. Therefore I would like to thank Mr. Haarsma.

2 Structure (of the book)
The aims of writing: 1) to articulate and to write a history of the modern identity; 2) to show how the ideals and interdicts of this identity shape our philosophical thought, our epistemology and our philosophy of language; 3) to provide the starting point for a renewed understanding of modern identity.

Reason of writing: his dissatisfaction regarding the already available sources which he evaluates as on the hand “upbeat, and see us as having climbed to a higher plateau”, and on the other hand “show a picture of decline, of loss, of forgetfulness.” (ix).

Contents (of the book): Taylor divides his book based on his idea that there are three facets of modern identity, i.e. modern inwardness, affirmation of ordinary life, and expressivist notion of nature as an inner moral source. He analyses these facets in parts II-IV (part ii inwardness, part iii affirmation of ordinary life, and part iv the voice of the nature). Part I is about the relation between self and morals. Knowing this relation is needed for a better understanding of the main body of this book (part ii-iv) (x). Chapter V is about subtler languages. What it really is about, I do not have any clear idea.

3 Reading Report

Part II
Inwardness.

Structure:
Taylor describes in this part the first aspect of our (post)modern moral sources, i.e. inwardness. As the title of chapter 5, Taylor explores the root of this ‘inwardness’ from Plato to Augustine to Descartes and then to Locke. Nevertheless there are great differences among them, one thing enables them to be put in one line by Taylor is their attention on ‘inwardness’ or ‘internalization’ of the self as moral sources. He also puts Montaigne in this group. This is not because his idea of moral source rooted in that of the former four, but because of his accent on the inwardness. He ends this part with some notes on the remark whether his work a historical explanation of modern identity or not.

Chapter 5
Moral Topography.

All part ii is about the conception of ‘in side-outside’ or ‘inner-outer’ differentiation or classification in understanding the modern moral sources. Our modern notion of the self is, according to Taylor, related to or constituted by a certain sense of inwardness. The opposition such ‘in side-outside’ plays an important role here. Our thoughts, ideas, or feelings or our capacities and potentialities are regarded as being ‘within’ – or inside – us, while the objects in the world which they bear on are recognized as ‘without’ – or outside us.

Chapter 6
Plato’s Self-Mastery.

Self-Mastery means to be mastered by ‘thought’ (or reason). ‘Thought’ is offered by Plato as moral source. It is the source of ‘self-mastery’. I am good when my thought rules, and bad when my desire rules. Soul has two parts: higher and lower. The first is reason, the second is desire. To be master of oneself is to have the former rule over the latter. This means reason rules over desire. Through this table we can see the consequences of both when they rule.

Reason
Desire
· there is an order reigns in the soul
· there is a chaos
· there is a stillness or peace, satisfaction
· there is an unstillness, no peace, and no satisfaction.
· there is a self-possession or self-mastery
· there is a lack of self-mastery.

Put in another words: when the reason rules, these three fruits are produced: unity with oneself, calm, and collected self-possession. Reason is, then, a power to see things aright and a condition of self-possession. ‘To be rational is to be master of oneself.’ According to Taylor the ‘self-mastery’ of Plato still influences us (modern people). p. 115-16

But it has found some challenges: 1) in the time of Plato, there were warrior (or latter warrior-citizen) morality and manic inspiration in poets. The former sees fame and glory as the aims of the life. ‘The higher moral condition here is when one is filled with a surge of energy, an access of strength and courage – e.g., on a battlefield.’ The latter sees their poets not as a work of wisdom (reason), but as by some instinct and/or by god, who posses them (as reported by Aristotle). These two challenges cause Plato changing his mind by giving one more part to the soul i.e. spirit (thumos). So, he changes from dichotomy to trichotomy. p. 117. 2) besides, there also were/are challenges from Christianity and romanticism. For Christianity radically conversion is needed and this has to do with the will. ‘Reason by itself could … be the servant of the devil, that indeed, to make reason the guarantor of the good was to fall into idolatry. For romanticism ‘rational hegemony and rational control may stifle, desiccate and repress us.’ Rational self-mastery may be self-denomination or enslavement. p. 116

In Plato’s teaching of moral sources there is dualism: soul vs. body, immaterial vs. material, eternal vs. changing. This dualism appears in any sense in the dualism of Paul, Augustine, Descartes and Locke.

Plato’s localization of tripartite soul and Homeric psychology, which observes a human as a being of psyche and soma, are still evident nowadays. ‘… we are still tempted to talk of special localization but another character: we speak of a person being ‘carried away’, or ‘beside herself, swept off as it were to someplace outside.’ But according to Taylor, there should be no division in the soul. Soul is a single locus. ‘The soul must be one if we are to reach our highest in the self-collected understanding of reason, which brings about the harmony and concord of the whole person.’

Chapter 7
“In Interiore Homine”

In this chapter Taylor talks about Plato’s influence on Augustine. Augustine stands between Plato and Descartes. Christian opposition between flesh and soul derived from Platonic distinction between bodily and non bodily. The Idea of the Good in Plato became God in Augustine. Creation ex nihilo is married with Platonic notion of participation: everything has being as long as it participates in God. Platonic ontology then became Augustine ontology. This idea brings about some consequences: 1) everything is like God. So, participation or likeness is the key principle of everything. But the archetype of likeness-to-God can only be God’s Word itself: begotten from him and of one substance with him: Jesus; 2) the universe is an external realization of a rational order; 3) everything which is, is good; and the whole is organized for the good. A meeting between Jews theism and Greek philosophy occurred here.
Beside the Idea of the Good, Plato’s teaching of the sun as the light giving became God in Augustine as the source of knowledge.

There are some points of junction between Plato and Augustine: 1) Vision of cosmic order is the vision of reason; 2) The good for humans involves their seeing and loving this order; 3) The soul has to change the direction of its attention or desire to get the Good (God).

Alongside these similarities there are some distinctions as well, e.g.:
· For Plato, attention and love prescribe humans’ direction, while for Augustine it is love, not attention, the primarily or ultimately deciding factor. There are two loves: charity and concupiscence.
· Plato distinguishes human in higher/lower, spirit/matter contradiction. Augustine prefers to use inner/outer.
· For Plato, to know the highest principle is to turn to the domain of objects which it organizes: the field of Idea. For Augustine, our principle route to God is not by turning to the object domain, but in ourselves: inwardness, the care for our selves.

Plato’s contradiction of higher and lower similar to Augustine’s two loves, but there is a tremendous difference in the way knowing and loving are related. The way of knowing and loving in Plato is toward, but in Augustine it is inward. In Augustine, perhaps inevitably as a Christian thinker, there is a developed notion of the will. But two important changes have occurred. The first is from the Stoic thinkers, who give a central place to human capacity to give or to withhold assent, or to choose. The second change emerges out of a Christian outlook (rooted in Augustine). This change posits that humans are capable of two radically different moral dispositions: good and bad. Augustine’s doctrine of the two loves implies that there are two possibilities: to do good or to do bad. But because of the Fall, human’s will becomes incapable to choose the good. Therefore we need grace. These two master ideas of the will grow together in the Western Christendom.

Augustine put the emphasis on the radical reflexivity, the importance of cogito, the proof of God’s existence from ‘within’. These notions came up again in Descartes. His language of inwardness produces a radical new doctrine of moral sources: the route to the higher passes within. The doctrine of radical reflexivity takes on a new status here, because it is the space in which we come to encounter God. It is the place where we effect the turning from lower to higher.

Chapter 8
Descartes’ Disengaged Reason

Descartes is Augustine’s successor because he also accentuates radical reflexivity, the important of cogito and the proof of God from within. But he makes a change: the moral sources within us. We are moral sources, not something outside: the Idea of the Good (Plato) or God (Augustine). For Augustine, going inward is moving upward: to God. The agent is lack of sufficient. For Descartes, going inward is to achieve a quite self-sufficient certainty (not by stepping upward but by following the right method). I gain knowledge not when I turn to God in faith (Augustine), but rather it is self-generated. God is a stage in my progress toward science thru certain canons of evident insight: the road to Deism is opened. This new conception of inwardness – an inwardness of self-sufficiency, of autonomous powers of ordering by reason – prepared the ground for modern unbelief.

Descartes and Plato: Plato’s rational order of the cosmos is rejected. There is no ontic logos. The universe is understood mechanically (he follows Galileo). … 144. This way of thinking brings about some consequences: 1) Changing in scientific theory (include anthropology), 2) Galileo’s teaching of representation is accepted: to know reality is to know representation of things, 3) The order of Ideas is not something we find (Plato) but something we build, 4) The order of representation generates certainty, thru a chain of clear and distinct perception.

Descartes’ view of knowledge and cosmos is different from that of Plato (Soul/body dualism): Plato sees things surround me as participating the Idea which gives them being. Descartes sees things surround me as representation. We must free ourselves from them: disengage ourselves from our usual embodied perspective. The material world must be objectified. Body is part of the material world. This means that the material world needs to be observed mechanically and functionally: we know the material world not because we can sense or touch it (they are embodied in us), but because we understand it (objectifying). Material world is no longer being a sort of medium of spiritual world. There is no presence of eternal in the temporal. Cartesian dualism needs the bodily because there is a certain stance (ontological cleft), thru which we can realize our immaterial essence. Plato realizes the eternal nature of the soul by becoming absorbed in the supersensible while Descartes does it by objectifying the body.

This difference (ontology and epistemology) causes a turn in understanding Plato’s notion of self-mastery wrought by reason. There is no rational cosmic order. So, being rational is not being ordered by the Good which presides over the cosmic order. Rather, rationality or the power of thought is a capacity we have to construct orders which meet the standards asked by knowledge, or understanding, or certainty.

Descartes and Stoicism: Descartes’ moral view is … stoically: our conducts are directed by prohairesis exists in us: the will (free will). But there is a radical shift of interpretation:
· For stoicism: the hegemony of reason was that of a certain vision of the world: God’s providence. For Descartes: hegemony of reason means reason controls: it instrumentalizes the desires.
· For stoicism (and also for Plato): the move from slavery to passion to rational sf-possession was … the acquisition of insight into the order of things. Passions are … wrong opinions. For Descartes: rational mastery requires an insight, of course, but this insight is not into an order of the good; rather it is a complete separation of mind from a mechanic universe of matter. Insight is essential to … ‘disenchanting’ the world: neutralizing the cosmos. Thus, the rational mastery or the hegemony of reason is a matter of instrumental control. To free oneself from passions and obey reason is to get passions under this instrumental control (rational mastery).
· For stoicism: passion is opinion. For Descartes: Passions are functional devices (instruments) that the Creator has designed for us to help preserve the body-soul substantial union. Passions are emotions in the soul, caused by movements of the animal spirits … to strengthen the response which the living being requires in a given situation. So, we do not need to be freed from passions (as stoicism suggests).

The shift of the moral sources: The new definition of the mastery of reason brings about an internalization of the moral sources: a move from outside us (traditional) to inside us (on the natural level). The agent’s sense of his own dignity of human being is the source of: 1) the sense of the superiority of the good life, and 2) the inspiration to attain it.


Chapter 9
Locke’s Punctual Self

Plato to Augustine to Descartes: Taylor has been speaking about these three extraordinary key figures in understanding our modern identity in chapter 6, 7 and 8. Plato has rational order (the Idea of the Good), Augustine has inwardness or radical reflexivity, and Descartes has disengaged reason. Now he is coming to tell something about the fourth key figure, i.e. John Locke. The Cartesian disengagement or objectification denies the teaching of cosmic order as the embodiment of Idea (Plato) and the ontology of Augustine (participation or likeness). The subject of disengagement and rational control – which Descartes suggests - develops to its full form thru Lock. Taylor calls this as the ‘punctual’ self.

About John Locke: his teaching of disengagement.

Locke and Descartes: Locke refuses the doctrine of innate ideas. Why? It is because it proposes a kind of authority on reason. Reason must be free from any rule of innate principles. He is following more Baconian or Gassendian model of what science is than … the rationalism of Descartes. (p. 231, 240). He denies teleological view of human nature, of both knowledge and morality: we are not naturally tending to or attuned to the truth, whether in the sense of ancient rational order of things (Plato) or in the modern variety of innate ideas (Descartes and Leibnis). Locke argued that the mind is in fact devoid of all knowledge or ideas at birth; it is a blank sheet or tabula rasa. He argued that all our ideas are constructed in the mind via a process of constant composition and decomposition of the input that we receive through our senses. His notion is that our conceptions of the world are syntheses of the ideas we originally received from sensation and reflection. But under the influence of passion, custom and education, these syntheses are made without good grounds. So, there must be a demolition and rebuilding. Locke proposes a radical disengagement: ideas of experience, sensation and reflection are not the products of activity (reason or mind) at all. Mind is ‘wholly passive in respect of its simple ideas’. Locke reifies the mind to an extraordinary degree: 1) he embraces an atomism of mind: our understanding of things is constructed out of the building blocks of simple ideas. The brain is linked to ‘the mind’s presence room’ or ‘a dark room’. 2) These atoms come into existence by a quasi-mechanical process: a kind of imprinting on the mind through impact on the sense. “Ideas are produces in us … by the operation of insensible particles on our senses”. 3) a good part of the assembly of these atoms is accounted for by a quasi-mechanical process of association. The aim of this assembly is a reassembling of our picture of the world … on a solid foundation.

Locke’s procedure of reason is radically a reflexive one: the first-person standpoint involves here. But in contrast to Descartes, the first person must be disengaged from his own spontaneous belief and syntheses. Why? Because they need to be evaluated or examined. Reason is then exclusive of authority. This anti-teleological objectifying view of the mind: 1) rules out theories of knowledge which suppose an innate attunement to the truth. 2) denies moral theories which see us tending by nature toward the good.

Locke’s hedonist theory: Locke adopts a hedonist theory (and gives a transposition): things are good or evil, only in reference to pleasure or pain. They motivate us. But what moves us is not directly the prospect of the good, i.e. pleasure, but ‘uneasiness’ (e.g. desire, pain of the body, disquiet of the mind). The good motivates us by arising uneasiness in us. This uneasiness determines the will. The will reform our relish so that it will gain motivational weight. This reforming enables us to remake ourselves in a more rational and advantageous fashion: we have formed certain habit, but we can break from them and re-form them. So, radical disengagement bears the way of self-remaking.

Locke’s God: Where is God in Locke’s theory? God is the lawgiver: the natural law. This law conduces to our greatest happiness. We ought to do this law morally. Joys and terrible pains are rewards and punishments of God. The law of God is the highest moral course. Why? That is because it is laid down by a lawgiver who can attach pains to his commands. … 171

Locke’s punctual self: Locke’s rational disengagement is a radical self-objectification: we see ourselves as objects and the power to objectify and remake. Rational control can extend to the re-creation of our habits: re-creation of ourselves. This is what Taylor calls the ‘punctual’ self. But what is the self? The real self is ‘extensionless’. It is nowhere but it is the power to fix things as objects. And where is the place of this re-making power? Consciousness.

Locke’s influence:
· In science: philosophy and psychology
· In practice: Politics and disciplinary practices (bureaucratic control and organization, and military, hospitals, school).

Taylor argues that Locke’s theory of demolishing and rebuilding are not new. It has already being propounded by Plato and Descartes. And also his proposal to reconstruct on the basis of sense experience is not entirely new: Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition has this idea as well. Locke’s theory is the basis of mature Freudian … ego, which belongs to the procedural one (of Descartes). So, there is a transmutation in our understanding of the self: from the hegemony of reason (as a vision of cosmic order: Plato), to inwardness of Augustine, disengagement of Descartes and the punctual self of Locke. The modern teaching of disengagement demands a self-introspection: a (radical) reflexive stance: a stressing on the moral agent responsibility. We need to turn inward and become aware of our own activity and the processes which form us. We have to be responsible for the constructing of our own representation of the world, and the processes by which associations form and shape our character and outlook. The idea of disengagement demands us radical reflexivity: 1) to stop simply living in the body, traditions or habits, 2) to view them as objects for us, and 3) to subject them to radical scrutiny and remaking.

Reflexivity of the ancient moralists brings us toward an objective order. Modern disengagement calls us to a separation from ourselves thru self-objectification. In the ancient world view: object is something there (outside the agent); modern: we are objects as well. The self-objectifying subject or the punctual agent is … the ‘self’, an ‘I’.

Chapter 10
Exploring “L’humaine Condition”

Taylor is describing another branch of thought about the moral sources in this chapter. It is about self-exploring or self-examining from the Franch humanist Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592). So, until now he has been talking about ‘internalization’ (from Plato’ self-mastery Augustine’s inwardness or radical reflexivity Descartes’ disengaged reason Locke’s punctual self). This is one facet of the modern self (e.g. Augustine’s inwardness was tremendously influential in West from Middle Ages to Renaissance). In part 3 he will be speaking about another facet, i.e. affirmation of the ordinary life. But the inwardness of Montaigne is different from the internalization of the former four figures. His going inward means self-explanation.

Montaigne’s l’humaine condition: differences between Montaigne and Descartes.

Radical reflexivity of Augustine which takes it secular form in Descartes has become central to our modern culture. Montaigne has an idea of radical reflexivity as well, yet not in the sense of that of the former two. His reflexivity is a self-explanation to get self-knowledge. It is more than objectifying our own nature. It is the exploration of what we are in order to establish our identity. Why? Because there is an assumption that we do not know yet who we are.

This self-exploration (or explanation) is entirely a first-person study; with a little help from … third-person observation, and none from ‘science’. This is another kind of individualism. It differs from Descartes both in aim and method. Montaigne’s aim is to identify the individual in his/her unrepeatable difference: I need to understand my own demands, aspirations, and desire in their originality; while Cartesian’s aim is to give us a science of the subject in its general sense. Montaigne is an originator of the search for each person’s originality: each turns us … inward and tries to bring some order in the soul. This produces conflict. Descartes argues for an individual’s responsibility: each must build an order of thought for himself, in the first person singular. But he must follow universal criteria: he must reason as anyone and everyone – through certain structure or canon.

The Cartesian seeks for an order of science … as the basis of instrumental control. Montaigne tends not to find intellectual order…, but rather, to find some mode of expression which will allow the particular (individual) not to be overlooked. The Cartesian calls for a radical disengagement from the ordinary life. Montaigne requires a deeper engagement in our particularity.

Montaigne’s idea of self-explanation resonates until now. This provides another reason to think ourselves in reflexive terms: to question our identity. Identity is what I essentially am. This ‘I am’ can no longer sufficiently be defined by some universal description of human agency such as soul, reason or will. The full modern question of identity belongs to the post Romantic period, which marked by the idea that … each person has his or her own original way of being.

Chapter 11
Inner Nature

I think this chapter can be observed as a conclusion of part 2. By the turn of the 18th century something recognizable like the modern self is in process of constitution, holding together two kinds of radical reflexivity/inwardness, both from Augustinian heritage:1) self-exploration (Montaigne); 2) self-control (Descartes). These two facets are the ground of the nascent modern individualism: 1) self-responsible independence (Locke?); 2) recognized particularity (Montaigne). But the third facet must also be mentioned: The individualism of personal commitment: we have power or capability to give or withhold assent ((neo)-Stoicism and Protestant Reformation).

Three Principle Features of the Modern Identity: These three aspects, then, bring together three features of modern individualism:
The first feature is modern localization: in general - concerns modern localizations of the properties and nature of things as ‘in’ the things themselves (but not in the sense of traditional localizations of Plato: ontic logos, and of Aristotle’s Form: forms are in the things they inform; there is no independent existence in some immaterial realm). In particular, it locates the thought ‘in’ the mind. p.186.

He than compares the old and the new, with regard to the location of the ‘thought’ and ‘feeling’. As long as the order of things embodies an ontic logos, then ideas and valuations are also seen as located in the world, and not just in the subject. Thus, their paradigm location is in reality. True knowledge and valuation only arise when we connect ourselves rightly to the significance things already have ontically.
But all this changes when we receive the disengage reason of Descartes (p. 187). This means that we now have not just a new localization of thought, valuation, - even feeling (in chapter 15 and 16) – but a new kind of localization. According to Taylor this new localization then has some implications such as: 1) a new strong localization: a new understanding of subject and object. They are separable entities: subject against object. a new subjectivism came into being here (Heidegger); 2) the fixing of a clear boundary between the psychic and the physical. Our modern ideas of psychosomatic or of psycho-physical correlation depend on this boundary. Ex.: Melancholy is black bile. 3) the nature of a thing localized ‘in’ the thing. But this is not in the sense of Aristotle’s Forms. P. 188-90

The second feature is a new notion of individual independence. Both disengagement and understanding of the nature (and properties) of things as ‘within’ themselves … generate a new understanding of individual independence: the disengaged subject is an independent being. … 192-93.

This bears a new political atomism … in the 17th century. Two kinds of contracts came into being here: 1) social contract (of Grotius, Pufendorf, Locke, etc). But this is not new. It has root in Stoics philosophy, in theories of consent in the Middle Ages (primarily in the church). 2) a contract of association: a universal agreement which founds a political community and confers on it the power to determine a form of government. The shift between these two kinds of contract theory reflects a shift in the notion of the human moral predicament.

This atomist contract theory bears two facets of new individualism: first, consent. Human was no longer understood as an element in a larger, meaningful order: he is his own; politically (and also spiritually?), a human is a sovereign individual, who is ‘by nature’ not bounded to any authority. The condition of being under authority … has to be created. But the question is, what can create it? The answer must be consent. But this was not the only answer offered in the 17th century. This leads to the second facet: personal commitment. The second facet was evident in Calvinist, particularly Puritan, societies: every believer should be personally committed. There was a division between the regenerated and the damned. The society of the godly ought to be one of the willed consent. The central significance of personal commitment meant that all these communities (of godly and of damned) were now understood in a more consensual light. Ex.: marriage comes to be seen more as a free contractual relation between the parties.

The new sense of the role of contract and consent combined with the idea of the free, disengaged individual … has produced the doctrine of consent. P. 194-95
Where doctrines of personal commitment were less developed, there had to be a notion of authority as something natural, something given in the order of things or the community. Ex.: the doctrine of the divine right of the king. But this divine right differs from the medieval doctrines of the divine constitution of authority. Divine right in the modern sense is atomistic, i.e. there were no natural relation of authority among men, but divine power of the king need to taken into account to avoid the chaos of anarchy.

The third feature concerns the ‘poeitic’ powers: the new centrality of constructed orders and artifacts in mental and moral life. This is in a sense identical to the new notion of procedural reason of Descartes, i.e. that knowledge comes not from connecting the mind to the order of things we find (Plato) but in framing a representation of reality according to the right cannons. Because thinking is something we do, we can achieve certainty about it. Thinking is a constructive activity. This leads to a new understanding of language: … see p. 197-98

Chapter 12
A Digression On Historical Explanation.

What Taylor is doing in this chapter is to clarify whether his work a historical explanation of the modern identity or not. His argument is that his work is distinct from a historical explanation, yet relevant to it.

Taylor’s work. (p. 202ff).
Why is Taylor’s work distinct from, yet relative to a historical explanation? Because he is asking different questions:
1) a diachronic causation question: a question to which an explanation is the answer, i.e. what brought the modern identity about? A question about the precipitating condition, for example, of Western civilization, industrial revolution, the rise of capitalism, the rise of representative democracies, or any other major features particular to emerging modern Western civilization. It is difficult to give a satisfactory, fully fleshed-out answer.
2) A less ambitious question: an interpretative one. Answering it involves giving an account of the new identity which makes clear what its appeal was. What drew people to it? What draws today? What gave it its spiritual power? These questions are asking for an interpretation of the identity.

Taylor is primarily dealing with the second, but he acknowledges that they can’t be entirely separated? “The answer to the less ambitious one has an important bearing on the … more ambitious one”. p.203.