Protestantism, Privacy, and the Rise of Secularism

Charles Tayor’s Secular Age is one of those rare books that are nearly a thousand pages but demand close reading. At the center of his narrative regarding the rise of secularism is the rise of privacy. Ironically, as with much of the origins of European secularism, privacy was a creation of Protestantism. In contrast to the Catholic model where one was saved by being part of the visible community of the Church and physically entering the local church to confess one’s sins and receive communion, Protestantism held up the individual reading their Bible and discovering that they are sinners who can only be saved through Jesus.

As a matter of practical application, a church service came to mean something different for Protestants. The Eucharist became incidental. Instead, one came to church to reinforce the lessons that proper Bible reading should have provided. One sang hymns that explained the basic message of sin and salvation and listened to a sermon provided by a minister to explain the Bible. This provided our Christian with the proper tools and frame of mind to go home, read the Bible, and be saved.

This focus on the private individual had unintended consequences. If we require this personal acceptance of Jesus as the only source of salvation, what is the use of religious coercion? For that matter, why bother having the state involved with religion at all. If people are not going to be saved as a community, what is even the use of public displays of religion that might provide a sense of a community bonded by faith. Ultimately, once we make the individual alone with their private thoughts deciding what to believe the central player in the narrative of salvation, we are on a straight path to Kant's Enlightenment where each individual is answerable only to their own reason for what they believe.

The ultimate danger of privacy is that it allows for the process of secularization to unfold without people realizing what is happening. One simply decides to take a more private approach to religion, first taking religion out of the public sphere into one’s home and then into one’s head. This is easy to do because all of this can be justified on religious grounds. One can honestly believe that they are not abandoning their faith but, on the contrary, are deepening their faith and becoming more spiritual.

This claim is quite plausible for the individual. The problem comes when we insert children into the equation. Religious belief is going to be of little use if it is not passed down to the next generation. Any break in the chain and it becomes difficult for the faith to be recovered. What happens to a kid raised in a society in which the public sphere is free of religion. At best, religion becomes a quirky hobby that their parents engage in that the younger generation is free to abandon when they grow up and become their “own people.” The parents might believe that they are raising their kids in a religious home and will not realize until it is too late that their faith was something in their heads and not something they ever bothered to seriously share with their children.

Protestantism is particularly vulnerable to this as it fundamentally rejects works and, therefore, cannot demand adherence to ritual practice. All too easily a Protestant can lead a completely secular life except for the hour a week they spend in church and, since that can never be made mandatory, even that can easily be dropped.

Orthodox Jewish religious practices obviously offer their own challenges as they create more head-on conflicts with secular society that children will become conscious of at an earlier time. Judaism does not let me watch Saturday morning cartoons and eat McDonalds; I, therefore, hate Judaism. That being said, the children lost in this fashion will likely be lost anyway. What ritual offers though is precisely the ability to make the conflict clearer and avoid slipping away without realizing, at an early stage, what is happening. The Christian freshman who stops going to church can pretend that they simply are looking for one that fits them. The Orthodox Jewish freshman who starts eating the regular cafeteria food knows that they have crossed a red line.

The process of secularization gains even greater power through people seeing it as inevitable. If parents do not really expect their children to follow them in their faith it becomes all too easy for parents to Pontius Pilate themselves of any blame. If no one’s kids are religious, then I cannot be blamed if my kids are not either. I can do my private religious thing without having to do something out of my comfort zone like actually trying to engage my kids.

Keep in mind that very few people have ever lost their religion because of a book they read. Losing one’s faith to a book would require actually reading a book as well as coming to that book without any preconceptions as to what the book contained. The number of people throughout history who have read through the Origin of Species after innocently pulling it off a shelf has to be somewhere around zero. People who have read Darwin have presumably done so because something caused them to pick up his work. Furthermore, judging by membership, ideological secularists remain a minority even as most people today are assuredly secular. Most secular people never lost their faith. Instead, they, or their immediate ancestors, were raised in homes that were de facto secular without their parents realizing it. As such, they became adults who took secularism as a given and never even needed to go through the trauma of abandoning a faith.  

What Does It Mean to Think Critically?

 

Ideological battles are usually won or lost based on who can control the language in use. In the struggle against critical theory, one of the disadvantages we in the opposition are saddled with is that the supporters of critical theory control the word "critical." In my education classes, people like Paulo Freire are presented as supporting "critical thinking." From this perspective, who can oppose critical theory? Clearly, students should not simply take what they learn at face value. A teacher's job is to give students the tools to question what they read and see. The problem is that the word "critical" can mean very different things depending on whether you are coming from the classical liberal tradition of the Enlightenment or from critical theory. 

Enlightenment critical thinking can, perhaps, best be seen in Kant's famous "What is Enlightenment?" essay. Kant's Enlightenment is about the power of the individual to challenge the claims of established social and political institutions. For example, if my priest waves his Bible at me and insists that I obey him, I have the right to read the Bible for myself to decide how the Bible should be interpreted or even if it should be accepted as an authority at all. In this, Kant was the heir to the Protestant tradition that placed the individual as the primary actor in the drama of salvation as opposed to the community. It is the individual who reads the Bible and chooses to believe. 

Whether you are a Protestant or an Enlightenment philosopher, critical thinking is something carried out by individuals. Furthermore, the entire foundation of critical thinking presupposes the existence of autonomous individuals existing separate from institutions. It is only from this outside perspective that it is possible to critique institutions. It is only possible to attack Catholicism, for example, if you can first imagine yourself as a non-Catholic. If a person cannot conceive of joining another religion or rejecting all religions, then their arguments will never rise above criticisms of particular Catholics and calls to reform the Church to make it better match Catholic ideals. 

It is here that science becomes important. Science is fundamentally a process through which one can make objective statements about the nature of the world that are disconnected from any kind of traditional authority. As such, science provides a platform outside of any particular culture by which that culture can be critically judged. For example, I can tell my priest that I do not believe that the Earth was created according to the Book of Genesis because I have science that tells me that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Furthermore, the truths of science are, theoretically at least, equally accessible to the Pacific Islander as the European. A native can be a perfectly competent scientist without European science missionaries coming to him with a science textbook to "believe" in or demand that he accepts a wider set of European cultural values.   

The classical liberal placement of the individual as the one engaged in critical thinking explains the importance of freedom of thought. Since one of the ways we develop ideas is by talking to (and arguing with) other people, the primary manifestation of freedom of thought is freedom of expression. People have the right to come up with their own narratives of how the world works. This even includes people with absurd ideas like the sixteenth-century Italian miller Menocchio, who was murdered by the Inquisition for the crime of telling people that the universe was like a giant piece of fermenting cheese. Trying to make sense of the universe, no matter how bad we are at it, is a fundamental part of our humanity. As such it is a right that cannot simply be sacrificed merely based on a utilitarian calculus as to what is to the public benefit.   

Because critical thought is the product of individuals, there can be a distinction between words and physical violence. Assuming you are not engaged in a conspiracy to commit physical violence, your words cannot be violence. I can speak and write every blasphemy against the Christian religion without harming any individual Christians in the slightest. As long as we assume that only individuals are truly real as moral units, there can be freedom of expression because no individual can be harmed by words. The moment we accept that a collective entity like the Catholic Church possesses an objective moral reality then this distinction between speech and violence collapses. The Church can be harmed by my blasphemy, which would make blasphemy an act of violence. Hence, all speech potentially becomes violence. This renders freedom of expression, the right to be wrong and even offensive, a dead letter.  

Contrary to the classical liberal notion of critical thinking, which is based on the autonomous individual, critical theory comes from Marxism. As such, its foundational moral unit is the group. This changes the meaning of critical thinking. For example, in classical Marxism, to think critically means to come to a recognition that economic classes and not individuals are the fundamental structure of society. The worker comes to know that he is oppressed not by his boss and landlord but by this entity called capitalism. It is capitalism that is responsible for the many seemingly disconnected problems he sees in the world. The practical implication of this is that a fundamental revolution in the nature of society is necessary. It might be possible to fix the problem with the boss and the landlord through negotiation or even legal reform. Capitalism, as something that infuses everything in society, can only be defeated through revolution. 

This basic structure of Marxist thought evolved, in the 20th century, into critical theory, which placed culture at the center of the story instead of economics. This came to include issues like race, gender, and sexuality. Hence critical theory functions as a methodology of coming to the realization, for example, of how one is oppressed by the entity of cisgender heterosexual white men and it is this structure and not just capitalism that needs to be overthrown.  

In a sense, classical liberal critical thought and critical theory mean opposite things. Classical liberal critical thought is premised on the individual coming into the consciousness of their individual reason and using it to challenge established power structures (or simply to argue with random strangers on the internet). By contrast, critical theory maintains that autonomous individual thought does not really exist. There are only forms of group thought. For example, my beliefs are not my own but are the products of my bourgeois upbringing. My classical liberalism is merely a cover for my capitalist ideology. My defense of free speech is merely an apology for the right of capitalists to use their economic power to promote their ideology.

We see this in Freire, where one is either a member of the oppressor or the oppressed class. Critical for Freire, is the idea that oppressors cannot, simply, through the power of their own reason, reject their oppressor nature and join with the oppressed. A wealthy person cannot study public policy, decide that there is a lot of oppression, and work with poor people to advocate for better laws. Even if the laws on the ground are changed, the fundamental oppressive structure would remain and might even be strengthened now that the wealthy liberal can plausibly claim to be a humanitarian and justify his continued hold on power. The only way for the wealthy to be redeemed is through the revolution which will fundamentally refashion the very structure of society as well as human nature itself.

A similar pattern can also be seen in Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility. It needs to be emphasized that the white racist villains of her narrative who use their emotional fragility to avoid talking about race and, therefore, prop up the system of white supremacy, are not Klansmen or even Trump voters; they are the seemingly well-meaning white liberals who attend her diversity workshops but insist that they are not racist and are even offended by the idea. White people need to accept that, by virtue of growing up in American society and benefiting from white privilege, they are racists. The structural racism that permeates all aspects of American society will not disappear until white people confess their complicity in racism without even asking black people to forgive them. To ask for forgiveness is to imply that it is possible for white people, as individuals, to atone for racism without the revolutionary restructuring of society. 

DiAngelo's version of white complicity in structural racism has a lot in common with Protestant notions of total depravity where humans are so caught up in Original Sin that even their reason is tainted. A person must simultaneously accept that they are sinners, without the power to change their way, and that it does not matter because Jesus has atoned for them. For DiAngelo, it is impossible for a white person to reason themselves out of the web of privileges that they have grown up taking for granted and the prejudices used to defend them simply through rationally thinking that people should not be judged by the color of their skin. Instead, critical thinking becomes the exercise in which the white person recognizes that their reason cannot redeem them from the sin of racism.   

One of the implications of critical theory is that it undermines freedom of thought. Since we are no longer concerned with individuals but abstract forces that are granted a moral reality, words now become a form of violence. While it is axiomatic for a classical liberal that even the vilest racist taunts should be tolerated because words are not violence and people have the right to be wrong, for critical theory, the merest disagreement becomes an act of violence. If you believe that white people are not so bad, it is not just that you are wrong. Such words allow white supremacy to persist and cause blacks to die at the hands of the police. Therefore, if you reject the principles of critical theory, you are literally murdering black people on the street and deserve to be treated as a killer. 

If non-tax-payer-funded schools wish to teach critical theory, that is their right. That being said, intellectual honesty demands that those teaching critical theory be clear as to what critical theory is and how it is distinct from critical thinking. Critical thinking relies on the rationality of individuals to challenge established ways of thinking. Critical theory, on the other hand, is the very denial that such a thing is possible. Critical thinking teaches that people can be wrong in their ideas and that is fine because words are not violence. For critical theory, it is precisely words that are the true form of violence as words have the power to undermine group identities.                    

Tocqueville on the Post-Religious Moment

 

For Alexis de Tocqueville, religion is important for liberty as an extension of society. What keeps a government in check, particularly a democratically elected government that can plausibly claim to represent the "people," is the existence of a distinct social sphere. Religion protects the social sphere by granting a moral authority that the government lacks. The opposite is also true that government needs to keep religion hemmed in within the social sphere so that it evolves to focus on the non-physical and that clergymen learn to value the respect they gain precisely by not being tainted by politics more than the power they could gain through politics. From this perspective, religion and politics, while maintaining their separate spheres can have a positive influence on each other. Religion keeps government away from society and the government keeps religion out of politics. Hence government and religion render each other suitable for liberty.

Removing religion from the equation would start an avalanche that would eliminate reason and ultimately liberty. According to Tocqueville:

When religion is destroyed among a people, doubt takes hold of the highest portions of the intellect and half paralyzes all the others. Each person gets accustomed to having only confused and changing notions about the matters that most interest his fellows and himself. You defend your opinions badly or you abandon them, and, since you despair of being able, by yourself, to solve the greatest problems that human destiny presents, you are reduced like a coward to not thinking about them.

What I find fascinating about this passage is how well Tocqueville diagnosed the post-modern condition. Following Kant's famous dictum of sapere aude (dare to know), we tend to think of reason as something done by individuals without any reference to tradition. In truth, even as individuals are the only meaningful moral unit, reason is fundamentally a social activity that works across generations through the process of tradition.

The reason for this should be obvious to anyone familiar with the free-market tradition. Individuals by themselves are not capable of doing much beyond eking out a mere hunter-gatherer subsistence existence. Economic production and ultimately civilization is only possible through large-scale cooperation. If individuals are so lacking in economic wisdom, how much more so must it be when it comes to the higher truths of the world such as morality and the meaning of life.

Just as we cannot expect people to literally reinvent the wheel or the lightbulb (contrary to Ayn Rand's hero in Anthem), we should not expect people to construct their own philosophies from scratch without reference to tradition. For example, I can accept that Euclidean geometry is TRUE even as my understanding of mathematics is rather rudimentary. Whether or not Euclid or other mathematical claims can be considered objective facts at the end of the day, the critical issue is whether they have greater authority than my personal "lived experience" of oppression. I live my life under the assumption that there are things outside of me that are objectively TRUE and, unlike divine revelation, knowable to human beings regardless of their time, place, race, or religion. 

It is a fair question as to whether or not the truths of reason, such as mathematics, can offer transcendent meaning. My suspicion is that any attempt to do so is going to eventually start to look a lot like a religion. (One thinks of the example of the Pythagoreans.) What happens to someone stripped of transcendent meaning transmitted through society and ultimately tradition? They will have to retreat into their own heads, a place too small for either faith or reason.

This has implications for democratic government. Democracy is not a license for people to do whatever they want. On the contrary, democracy requires great personal discipline. This is possible if there exists an independent society outside of politics and backed by religion to train people to stand on their own feet. The moment a person starts to ask "who will feed me" they are already are slaves in their hearts even before any master shows up and one certainly will.

What happens when people lose their religion? Tocqueville anticipates Hannah Arendt in predicting that an atomized nihilistic society would be ripe for totalitarianism.  

Such a state cannot fail to enervate souls; it slackens the motivating forces of will and prepares citizens for servitude. Then not only does it happen that the latter allow their liberty to be taken, but they often give it up.

When authority no longer exists in religious matters, any more than in political matters, men are soon frightened by the sight of this limitless independence. This perpetual agitation and this continual mutation of all things disturbs and exhausts them. Since everything shifts in the intellectual world, they at least want everything to be firm and stable in the material order, and, no longer able to recapture their ancient beliefs, they give themselves a master.

For me, I doubt that man can ever bear complete religious independence and full political liberty at the same time; and I am led to think that, if he does not have faith, he must serve, and, if he is free, he must believe.

Just as reason requires a sense of being part of a larger tradition such as a religion, so does liberty. A person without religion who retreats into their own head without any sense that there are larger truths beyond his personal feelings will also not be able to justify standing up for liberty. If man cannot engage in higher truths such as reason, what does he need liberty for? If the truths of mathematics cannot stand against one's personal feelings then it will also fail to stand against the physical reality of the dictator in power. 

Shylock’s Dilemma: To Judge Is to Be Judged

In Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, the Jewish moneylender Shylock demands a pound of Antonio’s flesh as payment for a debt. Considering that Shylock is the villain and a rather unpleasant character (whether or not he is also an anti-Semitic caricature), it is easy to lose sight of how formidable a challenge Shylock presents. His argument is unchallengeable. Antonio freely entered the contract knowing the risks and failed to pay back the loan. Shylock has every right to his pound of flesh and no power on Earth can stop him. Not even the Venetian Court can refuse Shylock as to do so would undermine the very notion of contract, the foundation of the State. To say no to Shylock would simply be to destroy the State and leave Shylock’s right to revenge unharmed. This is similar to the White Witch’s claim to kill the traitor Edmund. For Aslan to deny her a kill would be to go against the Emperor’s magic and destroy Narnia. 

Antonio’s flesh was valuable to Shylock as an excuse to kill Antonio but also to strike at the Christian society around him. It was not be enough for Shylock to knife Antonio in a dark alley with the authorities privately deciding to not pursue the matter. Shylock needed to kill Antonio in public with the court’s full agreement that he was right and that they were powerless to stop him. Thus, any attempt to argue with Shylock or ask for mercy simply demonstrated that he was right and brought him ever closer to his moment of glory when he would be able to sink his knife into Antonio's body with the full consent of a defeated court. This enflamed Shylock's desire for revenge and made him less likely to compromise. 

Portia is able to defeat Shylock, in the end, precisely because she refuses to fight him on his chosen ground. She acknowledges that he has the right to cut a pound of flesh from Antonio’s body. The catch is, of course, that Shylock cannot shed a drop of Antonio’s blood. Portia’s insight is that Shylock, by pursuing Antonio, has also made himself vulnerable to the charge that he is trying to murder Antonio. If Shylock is going to put Antonio on trial for his pound of flesh there is no reason why Shylock should not be on trial for attempted murder, particularly as it was Shylock who decided to initiate this case in the first place. Here lies Shylock's dilemma. He might be perfectly justified in claiming Antonio's flesh but he cannot do so without convicting himself of murder. Thus, it is not enough that Shylock is right. He still loses. (My father should take note that I am conceding a point he has long tried to make to me that sometimes being right is not enough.)

One could ask, how foolish is Shylock to believe that a Christian court was actually going to let him kill one of their own. Of course, they were going to find an excuse to turn this around and punish the Jew. Shylock was blind to this possibility because he thought that Venetian society simply hated him as a Jew even as they needed him as a moneylender, demonstrating their hypocrisy. Since he believed that Venice had no intellectual case against him, it made sense that all he needed to do was come with facts and logic and he would smash through any opposition. No amount of prejudice could deny that Antonio freely entered this grisly bargain and that the State needs contracts to be enforced even unpleasant ones.

What happens, though, once we acknowledge that Venice was not run by hateful Christians, who deep down had a guilty conscious for their intellectually indefensible prejudice? What if it was something far more dangerous; people with a well-worked out narrative in which Shylock the Jew was a harmful outsider and that Venice was better off without him? All of a sudden, Antonio's murder was not an incidental part of Shylock's quest for justice, but the primary issue as it fits into that preexisting narrative about the Jew. Now Shylock was no longer someone who offered a necessary service, but a devil who tricked good Christians into mortgaging their very flesh. Such a Shylock cold be denied his bond with a clear conscience. One could even rob him of his wealth and threaten to kill him if he did not convert and believe that one was righteous for it. On the contrary, it was the people who thought that Shylock had a point and should be shown mercy who were guilty of murder and the moral corruption of the city.

Here the issue of whether Shylock was part of Venice or an outsider becomes important. If Venice could operate without him then Shylock, even if he was unpleasant and disliked, was part of the society no different from, if not the heart, perhaps the large intestine within the political body. As a part of Venice, all promises to him were sacred and must be followed even to the point of death. If Shylock was a foreign parasite then all promises were null and void and he could be lied to much in the same way that, except for radical Kantians, we accept that it is ok to lie to Nazis. Nazis are outside the web of moral responsibility so there never was an obligation to be truthful with them in the first place. By pursuing his pound of flesh, Shylock reminded Venice of why they might consider him an outsider in the first place. Thus, Shylock's argument, though correct, created a catch-22 and was invalidated by his very act of making it.

Shylock is important to our political discourse because all claims of absolute justice amount to a demand for a pound of flesh. The danger of demanding a pound of flesh is that, even when you are right, you are placing yourself on trial with your enemies, those who already possess a narrative to justify killing you, as the judges. To pursue such justice, therefore, requires a mind-blindness to not see that your enemies honestly believe that they are right to kill you and are not simply haters whose prejudices can be overcome by your carefully selected facts. 

Requiring Racism: The Tyrannical Implications of Democracy

What I am about to argue should not be seen as a defense of racism. As an individualist, I accept the individual as the only meaningful moral and political unite. As such, I do not believe that racial groups exist in any objective sense. Furthermore, readers should remember that I am an anarcho-capitalist who believes that individuals have the right to secede from any government they do not actively support. The fact that democratic governments require some form of chauvinism in order to function is simply a reason why people should be allowed to secede from even democracies. Just so we are clear, racism is not okay because it is democratic. On the contrary, democracy is a problem because it requires racism or some closely related form of bigotry. As to what should replace national governments, I am totally ok with anything that does not require violence as, by definition, that would be an improvement. If this means people freely deciding to set up socialist communes, so be it. You own your body; you are allowed to submit to any government you choose as long as you do not force me to go along with it.

The foundation of any state is "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" (it is sweet and proper to die for the fatherland). Any state that cannot rely on some class of people to sacrifice their lives will not be able to defend a border, will cease having a monopoly on violence over its territory, and will eventually collapse or fall prey to a state that can call on such people. The basic problem with democracy is that the moment you give everyone equal rights no one has any reason to be loyal to the state even to the point of dying for it. Regardless of any foreign invaders, a democracy requires that all of its citizens use their vote to promote the national good as opposed to their personal interests. So for example, I would clearly benefit from a government program to fund bloggers. That being said, I should not vote for such policies because if everyone thought like that the entire country would eventually go bankrupt. In practice, democracies, when left unchecked, quickly devolve into attempts by all of its citizens to live off of everyone else, an unsustainable system. 

Aristocracies did not have this problem. Imagine that you were part of the ten percent in most civilizations for whom life was not dreadful and I was to tell you that you needed to go to war and that there was a good chance you would not come back alive. You could refuse to fight but, if you did, your children would be reduced to working themselves to death like everyone else. Fight and you have a chance to preserve your children in a life of luxury. Aristocrats have had the further advantage that they were a small minority trying to live off of the rest of society. As long as they did not push things to the extremes of 1789 France, they could succeed quite nicely without causing national collapse.

The classic example of this democratic problem was the Roman Empire. It was built by recruiting a small elite in every province and putting them in power. These people then had an incentive to be loyal to Rome and keep their people in line. Think of the High Priest Caiaphas, in the passion narrative, pushing for Jesus' crucifixion. People joined the Roman legions to earn citizenship. One of the things that helped bring down the Empire was the fact that, in the 3rd century C.E., Rome expanded its citizenship rolls. Instead of winning people gratitude, this made people not want to fight to protect the empire. Why put your life in danger for citizenship now that it was worthless?

As someone who lives in California, why should I be willing to fight and die so that California remains part of the United States and does not revert back to Mexico? For that matter, why should I care if the United States ceased to exist? America is a modern creation that has not existed for most of human history and, presumably, the human race will continue after this country is no more.

The democratic answer to this is ideology. If I associate my country with a particular ideology, such as Liberalism, and associate any invader with the negation of what I believe, such as Fascism, it becomes reasonable to sacrifice myself even for people I do not even know or like. It is possible to argue that there is something special about the United States, as the defender of liberty, that mankind would lose without it. Historically the United States has come closest to making this argument work. The United States was born as a unique experiment in large scale republican democracy. During the late 18th and for much of the 19th century, it was reasonable to believe that if the country were to fall, that would be the end of democracy for the entire world. As such, any serious democrat, anywhere in the world, should be willing to die for America.

A critical part of the United States' cultural success has been its ability to use democratic ideology as a glue to bring the country together. Even today, with the possible exception of Canada, this country is better than anyone at absorbing immigrants from totally foreign cultures. No matter your religion, race or where you live, if you believe in liberal democracy and free enterprise, you already are an American. You may need to get to this country and learn the language, but those are formalities. This goes beyond laws on the books to the nature of the culture. I could move to France, learn French and become a French citizen but I could never be truly French. The reason for this is that turning non-Frenchmen into Frenchmen plays no role in France's sense of self. 

The problem with relying on ideology is that it can hardly be taken for granted that the supporters of particular ideas are going to be found solely on one geographic area. Republicans and Democrats both have radically different visions for this country and speak of each other in language suited for a foreign invader. Would either of them be worse off if they had to deal with the citizens of a different country instead of each other? Does it make sense for members of either party to sacrifice themselves for the other side's America, particularly if another country could offer them a better partisan deal?

I have utter contempt for both Republicans and Democrats. If California were to revert back to Mexico and I was to become a Mexican citizen, that would hardly mean that I have betrayed the cause of liberty as Mexico is also a liberal democracy, one whose political institutions are not obviously worse than ours. Furthermore, would it necessarily follow that I would find the particular policy positions of the Mexican government worse than our current administration's? Particularly if I could negotiate with Mexico before treasonously helping them capture California, I am sure we could come to a suitable arrangement regarding tax rates and guarantees of personal liberty. So Mexico might want me to learn Spanish and salute their flag; what is the big deal?

What is needed is an ideology that guarantees that we should have more in common even with our domestic political opponents than with foreigners. Such an ideology would, by definition, be bigotry and its success would depend precisely on our willingness to embrace all of its worse elements. Imagine that Mexico has invaded and has been greeted as liberators by the Left eager to not be ruled by Trump. Declaring Republicans a menace to the world, the United Nations is working on a plan to divide the country into districts to house refugees from different countries. If you are a racist who believes that the United States is the world's only hope for a "white man's republic," the thought of your daughter having to go to a Mexican public school where she will learn Spanish and to hate the "oppressive" American Empire would fill you with dread. Throw in the prospect of some big Hispanic boy sitting down next to her and offering "protection" and you will be running toward the front with whatever weapon you can lay your hands on. Rather you should die and your children should know what it is to be an American than passively accept "white genocide." If there is not a drop of racism or national chauvinism in your body, why should you object to any of this let alone be willing to shed blood over mere lines on a map?

It was not a coincidence that modern democracy was born alongside the nation-state. As long as nation-states were not directly competing against each other but against crown and altar conservative governments, one could pretend that nation-states were not ideologies of group supremacy. As soon as the nation-state became the dominant government ideology in the West, nation-states found themselves locked in a zero-sum struggle for dominance. If Germans were to be a great people, it could only be because Poles and Slavs were not.

The United States' transnational sense of self protected it from ethnic chauvinism as, besides Native Americans, there has never been an American ethnicity. That being said, white supremacy was at the heart of the American democratic experiment. Working-class Americans could be the equals of the wealthy and both could be relied upon to sacrifice for the good of the country because they were bound by their sense of being white. Slavery made the early republic politically possible and segregation allowed the United States to absorb millions of European immigrants at the end of the 19th century. It was not for nothing that Booker T. Washington opposed immigration. The United States could either embrace blacks as fellow Americans or European immigrants as fellow whites.

Activists like Colin Kaepernick are on solid ground, in terms of history, when they find the Star-Spangled Banner and the Betsy Ross flag to be objectionable. The problem is that by openly putting themselves in opposition to American History, they are only making matters worse for themselves. By contrast, part of the genius of the civil rights movement was its ability to call out American racism while still placing itself within the American tradition. As a white person, I can believe that American democracy has never given blacks a fair deal but that certainly does not make me suddenly trust Kaepernick to give his life for this country and not stab it in the back. Regardless of whether a Red Dawn scenario ever happens, the same logic applies to public policy. The same Kaepernick who I assume would gladly betray me (perhaps rightfully so) cannot be trusted to refrain from conspiring to use welfare programs as political cover to force white people like me to pay the "reparations" that he feels I owe him. Under such circumstances, neither of us can be trusted to act in the kind of good faith necessary for an honest democracy.

Israel is another great example of this nationalism problem. What allows it to function as a democracy and even to absorb large numbers of immigrants is its Jewish identity. If you consider some ethnic chauvinism to be an inevitable part of the human condition to be laughed at then Israel can still be legitimate. The moment we accept, as the modern left does, that even soft bigotry is some kind of original sin at the heart of all that ails civilization then Israel stands guilty of racism, particularly once we acknowledge that Israel's continued existence comes at the expense of the Palestinians.

To be clear, being a nationalist does not mean that you a Nazi willing to send people to concentration camps. That being said, nationalism requires the rejection of principled universalism along the lines of Stoicism or Kantianism and stands guilty of soft bigotry in the sense of preferring "your" people to others. Note that this is not necessarily such a bad thing. There is something to be said for a Chestertonian form of tolerance. Our group is the best. Other people probably think the same thing about themselves so we should just agree to disagree and leave each other alone. Yoram Hazony makes a powerful argument as to why nationalism, for all of its flaws, is a necessary antidote for the illiberal implications of universalism.

I am not a universalist. I want the state reduced to a point that all citizens willingly consent to a social contract to die even for their political/ideological opponents. Conservatives, if you are not willing to die to keep California in the Union even knowing that it will help lead to an America dominated by liberals, you should support partition. The micro-states that would likely replace the Federal government would consist of petty chauvinists. (Long live the Norwegian Lutheran Farmers Republic of Lake Wobegon.) I can accept such intolerance as long as these microstates make no claim to ruling over anyone who does not wish to be part of their group. Since we are allowing all of our internal opponents to secede, we are not forced to claim that even our opponents are superior to foreigners. If you are not willing to accept the comically soft bigotry of micro-states, you certainly cannot accept a large national government, which cannot represent all of its citizens in good faith without coming to claim that they are superior to foreigners.     

My Very Rational Approach to Love and Dating and Why It Has Not Worked (So Far)

The common adage that you hear about Aspergers is that we do not have emotions and we are therefore incapable of falling in love and pursuing romantic relationships. This is absolutely false. I have, for one, been in love many times, all failures to one degree or another, often with the other person not even willing to talk to me. In contrast, in circumstances where the situation has been reversed and I was aware that another person had feelings for me my position has been, whether or not I felt able to return those feelings, that the person had given me one of the nicest things possible, the knowledge that someone else cared about me, and that I, in turn, owed them something. Even if for various reasons I felt unable to return their affection, they deserved their chance to make their case and I owed it to them to hear them out with an open mind; above all else, I feel the need to avoid doing something that might hurt the other person. Following the author of Psalms, I see returning good with evil as the most unforgivable action one can do in this world. If one is to go based on my life experience it is neurotypicals, living inside their own feelings, who seem incapable of love.

Part of my problem, I have come to recognize, lies in how I conceive of love and the logical conclusions I take from it. Much as I despise Ayn Rand's concept of sexuality, there is something to be said for her notion of love as a rational decision that one chooses to make. For me, love is essentially an offer of loyalty in this difficult world. What I want is very simple; give me a girl that I am attracted to, can get a decent conversation out of and operates within traditional Jewish practice and I would be willing to offer this girl absolute loyalty. Obviously, there is more to a relationship than just this, but give me this to work on and I will figure out a way to take care of everything else. I am a rational and tolerant person, who respects the fact that other people have different and equally valid personalities from mine. Assuming that this other person is equally rational we should be able to meet each other half-way. I am also not bad looking and perfectly willing to allow the person I am dating to take charge of my wardrobe and my beard as best suits them.

So where does this entire process go wrong as it has so many times for me? For one thing, this is a very quick process for me. I should be able to figure out whether a girl fits my criteria in a matter of minutes; a few days if I really want to be sure. This creates a situation in which I have fallen in love and am willing to go all out with someone whom I have just met and who likely, at best, sees me as an interesting person. Furthermore, my instinctual reaction to falling in love is to take it very seriously. For me, there is no such thing as a person, particularly a girl, that I just casually talk to. If I am talking to a person on a regular basis at all then, by definition, the relationship is important.

This sort of relationship does not work with most girls, even the intelligent eccentric ones that catch my attention. They are likely to be turned off by my unreciprocated intensity. In this day and age, such affections are generally interpreted as marks of instability rather than honorable commitment. Also, most girls are looking for something with more empathetic depth to it. This is not something that happens in the short time schedule that I operate on. Furthermore, even in those situations in which I fail to turn someone away very quickly, the relationship still fails in the long term once the person realizes that I am not capable of developing such an empathetic relationship. What I understand is wanting something from someone else (in this case sex and affection) and making the logical assumption that the other person might want something from me (likely just for me to get out of their hair). The logical conclusion from this is that we should use reason to negotiate a mutually beneficial agreement (say if I am affectionately told to get packing). This is the extent to which I understand how to relate to people. Any relationship outside of this framework is meaningless to me.

At a philosophical level, my approach to dating suffers from the same problem as all Kantian relationships in that it is ultimately impersonal. In Kant's moral philosophy, one always acts from universal principles and not from particular feelings. So one is not kind to a friend because you like their friendship. The friend as a person is irrelevant, just an object of categorical imperatives. Similarly, with my dating, the girl I am with may mean the world to me but is of little relevance in of herself. She is a person who happens to fulfill a set of categories. She could just as easily be replaced with someone else who also fit my categories and that person would mean the world to me.

Oddly enough, my approach to dating would likely work very well if I operated within the Haredi framework. For some Haredim, the practice is for the guy to meet the girl for the first time for a few hours in the girl's home with the platters for an engagement party already in place. In such a world it would come down to the girl being faced with a very simple calculation: "This Benzion guy comes from a good family, he is smart and funny. Even if he is a little odd, he is clearly not the abusive sort so why not just say yes."

I do have my sight on a girl (not actually dating her though). Let us see if, this time around, things work out differently.

Doing What is Right in One’s Own Eyes: Yigal Amir and Judge Walker

As I am sure most of you know by now, last week Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California's Proposition 8 ban on legalizing gay marriage. In terms of gay marriage itself, I have no objection. I am no more opposed to gay marriage than I am to changing the tax code or inheritance law; these are things that I have no personal stake in, do not really care about, and am perfectly willing to be convinced one way or another, particularly as part of a negotiated agreement to gain something that I actually do care about, say the destruction of the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Education. If homosexuals are excited about a piece of paper from the government saying that they are married and gives them a tax break then I am hardly about to begrudge them it and wish them well.

Whatever my feelings about gay marriage, what I am truly concerned about is the larger picture of maintaining the covenant of law and order. A foundational principle of law is that we agree to submit ourselves to abstract universal laws even when and, in a sense, precisely when they cause harm in specific situations. You support law not because you believe that it will always offer beneficial or just results, it will most certainly not, but because you believe that whatever harm is caused by following the law pales in comparison to the overthrow of law. As such, one embraces the harm as simply the necessary price to be paid to live under Law.

Take the example of Yigal Amir. Contrary to what was generally reported about Amir, he was not some crazed fanatical settler, but a veteran paratrooper and law student, who decided that the Prime Minister of the State of Israel, Yitzchak Rabin, had engaged in an ill-considered course of foreign policy, the Oslo Accords, which had cost the lives of Israeli citizens. As such Amir deemed Rabin a rodef, someone who was endangering the lives of others, and shot him. Now it would be absurd to respond to Amir's claim by arguing that Rabin's policy did not endanger Israeli lives because he and millions of people on the right believe it and are unlikely to change their minds. As long as the debate is about Oslo, Amir wins because we would be conceding to his cardinal premise that if a politician pursues a line of policy that costs the lives of citizens and if killing that politician will save lives that politician can be killed. Our argument has to be in support of abstract Law. Rabin, as the lawful head of government, had the legal right to sign the Oslo Accords regardless of the negative consequences and every Israeli citizen, including Amir, is obligated to accept that fact. Either there is a lawful Israeli government with the power to sign peace accords and hand over territory that it is the sovereign power over or there is no Israeli government and every man has the right to do what is "right in his own eyes," including murdering any "prime ministers" as well as their neighbors.

What would Judge Walker say if tomorrow he is confronted by a sane rational philosophically inclined man with a gun who believes that Walker has done something so bad that he now deserves to die and even that there would be a utilitarian benefit to society to kill him? Obviously, it would be useless and counterproductive to debate our philosopher gunman about his fundamental premises. Clearly, he has thought these through and is not likely to be convinced, and furthermore to even allow such a debate is a victory for his side. What Judge Walker would need to do is appeal to the man's sense of Law. He could start by telling the man about Hobbesian warfare, (see Jack Bauer's Last Hobbesian Battle) show him clips of the massacres in Bosnia and Rwanda and explain that whatever good he believes he is doing by committing murder will be outweighed by having the entire country following the same logic and turning into Bosnia and Rwanda (see Slouching to Bosnia). Next Judge Walker could speak of John Locke and how citizens sign contracts to form governments and follow the law. Finally, Judge Walker could introduce his assailant to Immanuel Kant and suggest that he submit himself to Universal Law. Our formally state of nature gunman would see the light, the possibility of living in a world where people of different races, creeds, and political ideologies live together without murdering each other. Now a believer the man throws away his gun and allows Judge Walker to take him by the hand as they both fall to their knees in submission to Universal Law (essentially the same thing as God, but do not let the atheists know), followed by pledging allegiance to the flag of the manifestation of Universal Law in their geographic area, their sovereign State. Afterward, the cops could come to take the man away and put him in jail for several months for trespassing and threatening a judge, during which time the man could preach the gospel of Universal Law to his fellow prisoners.

Oh, wait a minute. Judge Walker does not believe in submitting himself to Universal Law. The people of California decided to define the theoretical concept of marriage as something between members of the theoretical categories of men and women. They never claimed that homosexuals could not marry. Thus, their actions did not in of themselves discriminate against homosexuals. The fact that this was de facto something detrimental to homosexuals would have been a plausible reason to oppose it while it was being passed. Once passed, however flawed, it must be respected as in keeping with Universal Law. Judge Walker believes, though, that it is his duty, as a judge, to step in when following the law gives a "wrong" result and "correct" it thus he has betrayed Universal Law.

One wonders as to either his hypocrisy or naiveté. Is he unaware that he has handed a moral blank check to every private citizen with a gun? The fact that their "corrections" of the system might involve blood and bodies and not paper is a matter of little consequence. Gay marriage did not win the day; the real victors are the millions of potential Yigal Amirs, from both the left and the right, sane and intelligent people who make the reasonable calculation that they can advance their legitimate cause by committing crimes, even murder, for the sake of what they believe is right. (See Does Michaeli Makovi Support Anat Kamm?) Either everyone submits themselves to Law, particularly those laws they disagree with, or we will fall into Hobbesian war.

Your Bell-Bottoms Are in Such Bad Taste (As Is Your Slave Trading)

Is religion or some sort of belief in a higher power necessary for morality? Atheists are fond of arguing that one can be moral without God and there is a lot of truth to this. The theoretical belief that there is someone looking down at us waiting to punish us with hellfire is not going to keep us moral. Decades of experience with televangelists and Republican "family values" politicians and their moral lapses should be enough to convince us of that. Human beings, in the short moments while in the grip of temptation, are simply too good at rationalizing their actions away.

Following C. S. Lewis, though, I do believe that there is something to be said in terms of needing some sort of deity, not in order to be moral, but in order to make meaningful statements about morality. To give an example, I believe that plaid and bell-bottoms are out of fashion and in bad taste. These beliefs are solely the product of my imagination and in no shape or form can be traced back to any universal law, higher power, or God. The consequence of this is that I have no moral authority to enforce these beliefs upon others. When I tell people that bell-bottoms are just "wrong," what I mean is that I personally do not care for them. This is for no good reason and they should feel free to carry on with their bell-bottoms safe in the knowledge that their sense of fashion is just as valid as mine. To push the issue, even to simply say that I do not wish to associate with "unfashionable" people, would be close-minded and bigoted on my part.

Now, what happens to us when we turn from something as arbitrary and meaningless as fashion to morality? What do I mean when I tell slave traders that they are "wrong?" Presumably, what I mean is that there is some sort of universal "good," "justice," or standard of fairness that they themselves recognize, but are violating. There are practical implications to such judgmentalism; even our very "tolerant" society would be willing to endorse my decision to ostracize slave traders. Not only that, but they would even endorse the use of government force to end slavery (such as fighting the Civil War and passing the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution) and even, perhaps, to personally kill perpetrators of slavery.

If all I mean is that I am "personally" opposed to slavery and find it in bad "taste" then I have lost the debate even before it begins and might as well go home. When I say that slavery is wrong, I am not just saying that I, "personally," do not care for slavery. I am saying that they are in violation of a universal moral law. I may be wrong and I may not be able to prove the truth of this belief, but at least I am making a coherent statement. Of course, once I admit to some sort of universal law, I find myself hard-pressed to explain how my universal law is distinct from the Judeo-Christian deity or at least the Enlightenment one. Atheists wish to have it both ways. They wish to be able to make meaningful moral statements but refuse to pay the entrance fee for them. (I have yet to hear any atheists refraining from using words like "good," "just" and "fair" on account that they are gibberish. Nietzsche came closest to this.)

Despite the major differences in culture throughout the world and throughout history, there are remarkable similarities in their morality. This may very well be due to evolution. Evolution still does not explain why this morality holds any authority. We can travel from ancient Greece to modern-day Tahiti and the people we meet would agree on a number of things in terms of morality. Honesty is a good thing; one should not repay good with evil and do unto others as you would have them do to you. People may not always live up to these standards and recognize certain exceptions, but this does not change the fact everyone accepts the validity of these values. This is what allows us to even talk about morality.

You do not need any scriptures for this morality. They are knowable through reason once one accepts the notion that there is something called right and wrong as opposed to what I want or do not want. The two most basic statements of morality are Kant's two universal ethical imperatives. For ethics to be meaningful it must be universal hence you must always act according to principles that you would have as a universal rule. Also, ethics assumes the existence of ethical responsibility hence the need to treat all humans as ends, not as means.

I am not claiming that we need a higher authority to be moral. One can be an atheist and perfectly moral. The issue that I am raising is slightly different. Can one make coherent moral statements like "x is unjust" without assuming some form of moral law outside of our own collective minds? Without some sort of outside authority, statements of morality devolve into statements of taste. This does not mean that people will not hold of them. It simply is an issue of our ability to make moral statements that actually mean something and which we can expect others to take seriously.

My Ironic Jewish Journey

On the Contrary has a post up about "Ironic Orthodoxy," outlining a form of Orthopraxy, which, while skirting the boundaries of traditional belief is deeply committed to Jewish practice and is fairly knowledgeable in terms of Jewish texts.

The Ironic Orthodox generation is the generation that comes after the Great Post-1967 Orthodox Awakening. The Ironic Orthodox are largely day-school and yeshiva educated. With their grandparents they share a certain comfort in their own Orthodox skin; to them, Orthodoxy is familiar, natural, and organizes their lives. With their parents they share a familiarity with the world of Jewish learning and are even able to access that learning to a large degree.

The Ironic Orthodox generation does not buy into the apologetics: not about the status of women, not about the integrity of the transmission of the Oral Law, not about the "timelessness" of obviously time-bound religious laws, customs, and ideas, etc. This generation is hard to inspire; its demeanor is skeptical and ironic, somewhat aloof and dispassionate. Their irony is not a dramatic irony - like Statler and Waldorf observing and criticizing the show yet remaining very much a part of it - but a jocular or sarcastic attitude or perhaps even a post-irony that simultaneously adheres to and mocks traditional religious structures. Yet it's not a bitter or angry mocking. It seems to be more of a taking-for-granted of life's absurdities and of the failure of ideology to explain or animate the full gamut of practice. It does not necessarily advocate or seek change.

 The most strident example of this sort of thinking on the Jewish Blogosphere is Modern Orthoprax, who denounces traditional claims of God giving the Torah and the possibility of proving the existence of God yet claims to be traditionally observant.

 In my own way, I see myself as falling under this category, if in a more moderate vein than Modern Orthoprax. While Modern Orthoprax comes and flat-out opposes divine claims for the origin of the Torah and proof for the existence of God, I believe that one can make a very plausible case for God's existence and that actively accepting God's existence is less problematic than assuming that he does not exist and I even hold out some hope for their being some historical truth to the Exodus narrative and the revelation at Sinai. That being said, I actively accept the fact that we live in a post-Enlightenment world and am not about to ignore the fact that the Enlightenment happened. To paraphrase Dr. Alan Brill, I am not about to rewrite Saadiah Gaon and the Kuzari in plain high school English as if there never was a Hume or a Kant. This means that all attempts to claim that God exists as an unchallengeable fact are out. For example, in a post-Darwinian world one can no longer simply trot out the argument from design as an end to all argument. Regardless of whether you believe in evolution, Darwinian evolution defeats the argument from design simply by existing as a plausible theory. All the intelligent design arguments in the world are not going to change the fact that there is an alternative to theistic creation. Thus, while our intelligent designer might very well exist, he can no longer be accepted as unchallengeable fact. Similarly with biblical criticism, one might be able to produce an army of Rabbi Joseph Hertzes to answer the arguments of Julius Wellhausen and his intellectual descendants (something that Orthodoxy has not done) but it will not change the fact that there is now an alternative to accepting the Bible as the literal word of God.

In a sense, faith is like innocence, once exposed to an alternative and made open to doubt something has been lost even if outward behavior remains the same. The child given a decent suit of clothes, a wallet full of cash, and left to spend the night on the doorstep of a brothel is going to lose his innocence even if he does hold onto his virtue. For this reason, there is a certain logic to the Haredi attempt to hold onto the faith and innocence of their members even if it is futile. 

As I said before, I still see the debate for God as being in favor of God even if by a smaller margin and even if it is more the God of the philosophers and not the God of Abraham. The God of Abraham might exist, but to believe in him requires absolute faith. The very act of doubting him changes the relationship to one with a philosopher God. Similarly with the Bible, it requires absolute faith. The very act of putting it before the bar of critical analysis changes the relationship and, whether you like it or not, it makes you one of the skeptics.

In the end, I like to think of myself as a theistic ethical humanist (I believe that intelligent life, human or otherwise, has value, that one has ethical obligations to humans as part of a universal law placed into our hearts by a universal lawgiver), who has jumped on board the train of Hirschian Judaism and managed to make himself comfortable. I still hold out some hope for the Bible to be the true word of God and for the Exodus to have happened in a direct literal sense but I accept the reality that I cannot take it as a given. The evidence is strong enough against it that it cannot be used as a foundation for living one's life. If I did not strongly believe in God, I probably would abandon Jewish practice. As a believer in God, though, I seek some form of practice to relate to him. Judaism, even as the creation of Jewish philosophers, would still be better than any religion that I might decide to make up for myself; our Jewish philosophers can still offer tradition and community. Even if I were trying to create my own religion, it would probably end up looking a lot like Judaism anyway, just without an elaborate mythology.

As a Muppets fan, I accept for myself the role of being Judaism's Statler and Waldorf as a mark of honor (Unlike most Ironic Jews, I am theatrical and love the dramatic). If I am a heretic, so be it. I still wish to be part of the show.

Neurotypical Mental and Emotional Handicaps (Part III)

(Part I, II)


Neurotypicals do not think of human beings as isolated minds. They operate on an Aristotelian "man is a political animal" model. Of course, even to talk about models, when dealing with neurotypicals is misleading because their method of thinking is a rejection of precisely the sort of abstract universal rule creation necessary for models. Neurotypicals tend to only think of human beings in terms of their interrelationship with others and the society building that results from this. This method of thinking emphasizes, not abstract rules, but arbitrary codes of behavior that serve to further the desired relationship. The neurotypical does not ask whether an action is in keeping with universal ethical imperatives, but whether it is good manners, whether, given one's place in a given social structure, it is acceptable to do something to someone else who in turn occupies their place in the social structure.

It should be obvious from this that, one, the neurotypical mind sets itself up for hierarchal non-democratic social structures. There is no reason for a neurotypical to reject hierarchy particularly as he strives to gain a favorable position in it. If one wonders as to the slow progress of democratic reform it can be placed on neurotypicals. It is the Asperger mental universe that insists that the world be governed by universal rational law applied equally to everyone as much as possible. All beings capable of a certain baseline of rational thought (including neurotypicals who reject their mental heritage) are welcome to this society as equals. Equality is inherent in that one is either capable of a baseline of reason or one is not. People like Thomas Jefferson, Immanuel Kant, and Adam Smith were most likely Aspergers; whether or not they were in fact, their thinking was distinctively Asperger. Even today, most people struggle with the notion that political rights only exist in so far as man is a creature of reason, capable of contemplating universal laws and thus coming to form rules for all to live by. Modern liberalism is an attempt to force the concept of rights into a neurotypical social thought structure. Rights are said to belong to groups and defend social relations. For example, we now have the concept of gay rights and that they have some sort of right to have their social interaction of getting married recognized by the government and society. (Not that I object to gay marriage in of itself.)

The other thing that should be clear is that the neurotypical mindset is incapable of a "theory of mind." In the neurotypical mental universe, there is no such thing as individual minds. All minds exist in relationship with other minds. I have lived my life with the realization that other minds are not like mine. If I have one thing it is a theory of mind. With no hope of understanding other minds, I place my faith in reason as the only thing that can allow for the meeting of minds necessary to build a society. Neurotypicals, living in a world where people, at least on the surface, have similar minds, are not confronted with the life experiences to tell them otherwise and have no reason to form a theory of mind in the first place. Confident in the belief that everyone else is fundamentally like them they hoist their emotions on other people. These similar emotions are the product not so much of the similarity of minds, but the relationship network that passes on otherwise arbitrary sets of rules and expectations.

I would like to end with a word about emotions. Why should I not strive to be sensitive to other people's emotions? To an extent obviously, I do make an effort. To do otherwise would be social suicide. What I refuse to do is grant moral legitimacy to emotions. One has no right to consider emotional hurt as a legitimate wrong or to counter with physical actions that could not otherwise be justified. I grant that this is an extreme position, but to say otherwise would set me up for blackmail. I am outside the relational thought structure of neurotypicals and do not understand the emotions that come from it. To say that I have to take such things into account means that I have to live my life jumping at the shadows of things I do not understand and being forced to accept whatever value other people put on their own emotions. To make things worse, since my emotions run on such a different track, as they are outside of a relational thought structure, I can never expect other people to take them into account. Thus, I would find myself enslaved to other people's emotional concerns at the same time as everyone else becomes exempt from taking my emotional concerns into account. I would de facto be relegating myself to a subhuman station; my emotional concerns being of less value than that of others. Either my emotions count the same as everyone else's or no one's emotions count. Since the former is not practical, the only ethical solution is to say that no person's emotional concerns are of any value outside of their own head.

The only thing that can create meaningful relationships between people and ultimately create a just society is reason as we submit ourselves to universal laws that apply to all people in all times. This is not Asperger supremacy. On the contrary, the authority of reason comes from the fact that it is universally accessible. This includes neurotypicals. Neurotypicals, despite their mental defects, are not beyond the saving grace of reason and are welcome to join the society of reasonable and rational beings.

The Ethical Case Against Sex Outside of Marriage (Part I)

Ever since the sixties, those of us who profess an opposition to sexual activity outside of marriage have been on the defensive. Sex outside of marriage has always been common, but now those of us who actually live up to this standard seem to now be in a heavy minority. Those of us pushing abstinence education are in a difficult position. We cannot directly use religious arguments to make our case so we resorted to making it a health issue. The problem with this is that, by the normal standards of safety, sex done in the manner prescribed by social progressives, with condoms and birth-control pills, is not physically particularly dangerous; certainly no more so than skiing or teenage driving. There is a heavy stench of dishonesty hanging over this whole issue. The reason why conservatives want to spend millions of dollars promoting abstinence programs in schools is not because they are in a panic about STDs. It is because religious Christians believe that pre-marital sex is a sin and they do not want teenagers engaging in it. Conservatives have fumbled the ball and left the moral case wide open for the liberal side. Within the context of the sixties narrative, liberals have been able to make the moral argument that conservatives, by focusing on sex and ignoring the racism of the culture around them, were the immoral ones. From this perspective, any act of "sexual liberation" becomes not only morally acceptable but a moral positive. This argument has been updated in recent years to include homosexuality. With all this under consideration, I do believe it is possible to formulate an argument against extra-marital sex meaningful to the most ardent secularist, one that could justify moderate government interference to discourage students from engaging in such behavior. The argument I offer is no less than sex outside of marriage is fundamentally unethical.  

When most people hear about the immorality of sex they conjure images of repressed hypocritical Victorians. Therefore it is all the more important to define what we mean by sex outside of marriage being unethical. Sexual activity is problematic in that the action itself, by definition, involves physically using another person's very body as a means for gaining pleasure for one's self. This is a very basic violation of Kant's categorical imperative that all humans must be treated as ends and not as means. (Kant even took this to the extreme position of saying that masturbation was unethical because it involved using yourself as a means.)

To put this into concrete terms, you go off to a bar, pick up a girl, take her home, sleep with her and then send on her way. You have taken another human being and used them as a means to procure your own pleasure. Now you have to ask why she agreed to do this. Is it not possible that she did this because she believed that she could get you to agree to a long-term relationship and there was even falsehood and manipulation involved? This would still be an issue even when both sides have made it clear that this is supposed to only be a one night stand. Two wrongs do not make a right; two unethical people objectifying each other and using each other as a means to give themselves pleasure is simply double the unethical behavior. Furthermore, maybe one of the parties merely said this because they believed that with their talent and personality they would be able to convince the other to stay on. (You see a similar line of logic in regards to gambling. There are many rabbinic authorities who argue that gambling is a form of theft because the losing party only made the bet on the assumption that he would win. So to take the money from him involves taking something of his against his will.)

This is not just some ethereal issue, only relevant to students of Kantian thought; it is the foundation of all intellectually honest liberalism, explaining why all forms of tyranny are inherently unethical. Any system that views individual people as simply means to serve the larger good or the good of the elites is unethical. Ask a liberal why slavery and segregation are by definition wrong and even evil. If that liberal is a Kantian he can explain that these institutions violate a categorical imperative; it places blacks in situations where they cease to have inherent value as beings in an ongoing process of becoming more rational and only serve to benefit whites. Without this Kantian imperative, we are left with vague mutterings of taste and personal feelings. If my arguments against white supremacists carry the same universal validity as my arguments against their stylistic choices in neckties then I have lost the debate.

(To be continued …)

Maimon on Hasidim: Are Haredim Capable of Acts of Virtue?

In earlier posts, I discussed the importance of an ethical God as the basis for a truly monotheistic religion. I am not a big fan of Solomon Maimon. As with Voltaire, I find Maimon to have been a miserable excuse for a human being. His autobiography is useful mainly for its “how I became an apikores” and “how I gave my rebbe a heart attack” hilarity. In the following passage from his autobiography, though, he does say something of value.

But as these people [the Hasidim] have false ideas of religion itself and their virtue has as its basis merely the future rewards and punishments of an arbitrary tyrannical being who governs by mere caprice, their actions in point of fact flow from an impure source, namely the principle of interest. Moreover, in their case this interest rests merely on fancies; so that, in this respect, they are far below the grosses Epicureans, who have a low, to be sure, but nevertheless genuine interest as the end of their actions. Only when it is itself founded on the idea of virtue can religion yield a principle of virtue.

Haredi apologists, such as Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz of the Yated, often point to the willingness of individual members of their community to perform acts of kindness even to random strangers. Such things are obviously commendable and I acknowledge that the greatest strength of this community is the personal goodness of its individuals. That being said the source of such goodness makes any claim to virtue problematic. Haredim are very open about the fact that the source of their morality is their belief that they are commanded by God to behave in such a manner and that God will reward or punish them based on their actions. I do not challenge the proposition of divine reward and punishment either in this world or in some future world, but to have it as the primary motivation for one's actions negates any virtue.

There is the classical Kantian quandary of if my friend is sick, do I visit him and why. If I am a Kantian then I must visit my friend in keeping with a universal ethical imperative, but if I act out of such a universal imperative I am not acting as a friend, out of any sense of emotional attachment. On the reverse side, if I go as a friend than I am not acting according to a universal imperative and am therefore as a Kantian. This requires one to redefine friendship as something apart from emotional attachment. I recognize that it is physically impossible to live up to the full extent of one’s ethical imperatives to the entire human race. For example, I could not possibly go visit every sick person in the world even though they would all, in theory at least, be deserving of my attention. The solution is to pick a limited number of people and devote one’s efforts in fulfilling one’s ethical imperatives with them. These people are labeled friends. As an Asperger, this understanding of friendship works perfectly for me and I have no problem understanding love I these terms.

If a Haredi person comes to visit me because I am sick, I have to assume that he is not doing it out of any actual concern for me or any desire to be virtuous. The only reason why he is visiting me is because he believes that he is earning points with his god, which can be cashed in for goodies in this world and in the next. If this Haredi person’s god, or whomever this Haredi person takes as speaking for god, tomorrow tells him to spit at me and laugh at the fact that I am incapacitated and that he will score special bonus points for doing so then I have every reason to assume that he would spit and laugh at me. In the end, the only people who can be virtuous are those who act out of the principle that what they do has innate value as a virtuous action, regardless of any divine command, offer of reward or threat of punishment.

History 112: Final

Here is the final I gave my students. It consisted of two sections, identifies, where they had to give the proper context for a given person or term, and a pair of short essays for them to write. With the exception of a few disasters pretty much everyone did well on this final. The average for this final was about an 84. My philosophy is that I demand more than most from my students, but I am a fairly generous grader.

Identifies – 70 pts (Pick 7)
1. Friedrich Engels
2. John Calvin
3. Thomas Hobbes
4. Spanish Armada
5. Versailles
6. Immanuel Kant
7. Schlieffen Plan
8. Ribbentrop-Molotov Treaty
9. Six Day War
10. Maximilian Robespierre

Bonus: Deborah Lipstadt


Essays – 130 (Pick 2)
1. What is the Whig narrative? Give specific examples from the material we covered in class such as the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. How would a Whig view these events? Is the Whig narrative particularly useful? What might some alternatives?
2. What are primary and secondary sources? How does each of these things contribute to an understanding of history? Give specific examples from the reading and your non-fiction book.
3. What were some of the major implications of the Scientific Revolution? Did the Scientific Revolution mean an end to faith? Discuss the religious beliefs of at least three major figures from the Scientific Revolution (e.g. Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Bruno, Newton)
4. Describe some of the methods used by the Nazi and Soviet Regimes to promote their views. Can brilliant art be put into the service of totalitarian regimes? What is the moral responsibility of the artist for the uses of their work? Can one separate art from the historical context in which it was created?

History 112: Candide and Kant (Q&A)

1. During his lifetime how did the public react to the works of Voltaire? Was he praised or like many others was it not until many years later, possibly after his death was his works recognized for what it was?
2. Did Voltaire get in any trouble with the Church for this work? It seems to have some negativity toward religion?


Voltaire is another good example of what I have said previously: you can get away with being heterodox as long as you know how to play your politics. Voltaire flipped back and forth from being successful and unsuccessful in this political game throughout his life. At various times he was imprisoned and exiled and at other times he wined and dined with kings and nobles. This is the contradiction of Voltaire; he made a name for himself as this anti establishment figure and he cashed in on this notoriety to become an international celebrity. (This is not that different from artists who denounce big corporations and then attend events sponsored by big corporations.) Candide itself was a major bestseller in its day. Unfortunately for Voltaire he did not reap the financial awards as there was not much in the way of effective copyright laws in the eighteenth century. Before the nineteenth century almost no one was able to make a living from being a writer.


3. Do you know, or have any guesses, as to which STD Pangloss is talking about in this section?

"O my dear Candide, you must remember Pacquette, that pretty wench, who waited on our noble Baroness; in her arms I tasted the pleasures of Paradise, which produced these Hell torments with which you see me devoured. She was infected with an ailment, and perhaps has since died of it; she received this present of a learned Franciscan, who derived it from the fountainhead; he was indebted for it to an old countess, who had it of a captain of horse, who had it of a marchioness, who had it of a page, the page had it of a Jesuit, who, during his novitiate, had it in a direct line from one of the fellow adventurers of Christopher Columbus; for my part I shall give it to nobody, I am a dying man."

Dr. Pangloss has syphilis, a “popular” disease during the eighteenth century. Voltaire goes with the popular assumption, still being debated to this day, that syphilis came from the New World. Notice the clergymen involved in this "genealogy" of transmission. You have a Franciscan giving it to Pacquette. (One assumes while doing other things besides for confession.) And you also have a pedophile Jesuit. Voltaire sticks all sorts of subversive material most of it between the lines to avoid censors.

4. Kant praises Frederick II for the tolerance within his country. Was he Kant's patron, or was Kant giving him acknowledgment and using the state as an example simply because it was a good example at the time?

One assumes that Kant had Frederick II of Prussia in mind when he talked about the tolerant ruler. I do not think that Kant was directly funded by Frederick II, but Kant was a professor at the University of Konigsberg, so he was not in a position to mouth off against the government. Voltaire actually was personally very close to Frederick II.

5. In Kant's essay when he is discussing how the restrictive phrase "Do not argue" always comes up in the context of everyday relations with others, he says, "Only one ruler in the World says, "Argue as much as you want and about what you want, but obey!" Who is the ruler he is referring to?

I assume that he is referring to “Reason.” Reason is the authority against which everything must be judged. We have been discussing the move away from traditional authority based on ancient books and religious leaders. This essay by Kant is one of the classic statements of this transition.

6. Ok, maybe I'm not understanding the reading correctly. But does Kant believe that there should be no government because government obstructs/discourages our ability to think and reason? And that Enlightenment can only happen when people go against their government (aka "emergence from his self-impost immaturity")?

As we have already seen, particularly with Rousseau, the Enlightenment search for liberty has an ironic tendency to turn into apologies for authoritarian forms of government. If you read carefully Kant is mainly interested in religious freedom, political freedom seems to fall by the wayside. This is particularly important within the context of Frederick II, who was very tolerant in terms of religion but maintained a highly authoritarian regime in all other regards. As one Enlightenment philosopher commented: your Berlin freedom consists of saying any nonsense about religion. Let someone stand on the streets and talk about liberty and you will see that you live in the most oppressed land in Europe.
Kant’s emphasis on Duty is also going to have repercussions in terms of individual freedom as nineteenth and twentieth century German history will show.

7. Has enlightenment, as Kant describes it, ever been achieved? He warns that it is a slow process, because if it happens too quickly, the masses will cling to a new set of prejudices and never work past their "immaturity." I cannot think of a time when there was not some sort of great unthinking mass, as Kant call's the general public, clinging to some sort of prejudices or popular ideology. What are your thoughts?

As Kant states: "Do we presently live in an enlightened age?" the answer is, "No, but we do live in an age of enlightenment." I do not think that any era could ever live up to Kant’s standards. Being an enlightened individual, committed to challenging authority and finding things out for oneself is difficult; the alternative is just so tempting. This is one of the first things that one has to realize when trying to follow this path. If you think that it is some slogan you can choose to adopt you are probably not one of the enlightened. Enlightenment is something that only a few people in any generation could ever hope to achieve.