Antipathy and Propathy
I was planning in any case to say a few things about the case for the other side. In a laborious attempt to be fair, to avoid groupthink and confirmation bias, etc. No not really, that’s only a joke – there actually are some things to be said for the other side that I find persuasive. Not for the basic truth claims of religion, but for the idea that religion can be a good thing in some ways. (Not much of an admission, believers will think, but it’s the best I can do.) I was planning to do that today in any case and then by pure coincidence I got a reminder or reinforcement from Chris Bertram at Twisty Sticks. He cites as his reason for not sharing my antipathy to religion, the very thing I was going to talk about.
One of the reasons I can’t bring myself to share the antipathy to religion that is expressed by someone like our esteemed regular commenter Ophelia Benson, is that, at its best, religion succeeds in a symbolic articulation of universal moral concern that secular morality finds it hard to match up to (motivationally, I mean). Secular morality is a thin gruel compared to the notion that, as children of God, we are to think of ourselves as brothers and sisters.
I know. I wish I didn’t, I wish it were otherwise, but I do, and it isn’t. At least not generally, not here and now. There have been times and places where secular or mostly-secular forms of morality in fact did motivate people to be good. Stoicism, Epicureanism and other Hellenistic schools did do that kind of work, and I think so did Confucianism. And then of course there is Marxism. Now there’s a secular motivator that’s not thin gruel! But the dire effects of some of that motivation spring to mind and one has to wonder if motivation and irrational conviction are entirely inseparable, and hence dangerous. Can one have the motivation without the tendency to seize the bit and run blindly off into the land of revenge, cruelty, ruthlessness and massacre? I really wonder. That ‘at its best’ that Chris has there is crucial – one couldn’t even have that sentence (not honestly) without it.
But all the same I do know. A thought about this that struck me fairly recently has to do with loyalty, and how that is probably a large motivation factor. A more familiar factor is the one about judgment and punishment or reward – that’s the factor that James Mill had some harsh things to say about, to mention only one critic. But that doesn’t have to be the only one. To the extent that people are able to feel love for whatever deity they believe in – love, as opposed to fear – then they want to do what they think will please the deity. If they think of the deity as kind and loving (which is a bit of a trick, given the world as it is, but never mind that for now), then they will want to be kind and loving. They will feel not just squalid, self-regarding, calculating reluctance to do mean, cruel, pain-causing things, but more generous, other-regarding reluctance. And that does happen. Which comes first, which causes which, is a nice question – whether people who would be like that anyway are the kind who have that view of the deity, or whether such people actually become better than they would be otherwise. But some sort of link seems at least possible.
So that’s one item, and I can think of others, having to do with community and so on. I’ll save them for later.
Here is another article which seems pertinent to all of this discussion, especially what someone was saying recently about religion’s tendency to adapt to social norms instead of shaping them (Is that what he said?):
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/29/magazine/29ESSAY.html?pagewanted=print&position=
This article describes the permutations of American Christianity so far and the one that seems to be coming next.
PS– Maybe since it’s a new month, the religion threads can converge here– I’m getting confused jumping from one thread to another, these past few days. But the conversation has been interesting.
Hmm. As an argument it does seem to teeter precariously towards becoming ‘atheists cannot be moral.’ Chris is certainly correct to observe that many of the philosophical notions atheists would wish to perserve. For example. equality can certainly be said to stem from the christian tradition, though it is worth considering whether the notion would be as valuable if people like Locke had not found a means of divorcing it from a relgious context to some extent – to a great extent the importance of equality in christian theology is something that I suspect is most prominent when viewed from a progressively more egalitarian context overall; consider how opposition to slavery stemmed both from freethinkers and evangelicals – rather than being led by evangelicals overall. On the other hand, many other notions had nothing to do with the christian tradition (democracy, I think I can say).
More specifically, he also neglects to observe some aspects of the post-christian genealogy of morals; namely that it has always seemed to me that JS Mill was rather more influential in this respect. Given that, our morals today tend to be liberal and permissive whereas christian morals tended to be restrictive and abstinence-based. When churches consider such matters as gender and sexual orientation they are largely doing so as a concession to those secular ethics more than out of anything specifically christian. If that is thin gruel then I can only say that I suspect thicker stuff might prove pretty indigestable.
Incidentally, I find the appeal of Joan Osborne’s ‘One of us’ utterly inexplicable; it’s one of the most sinister songs I know and never fails to set my teeth on edge. Probably because christianity makes it so abundantly clear that god is most certainly not one of us.
At the risk of making sweeping generalisations from personal experience – pretty much all adherants of evangelical christianity that I have come across (the form of christianity in the ascendant at the moment, with all the wealthy young middle class parishes) have pretty much taken Pascal’s wager. At root their belief is self interest, they’re scared of dying and would really quite like to go to heaven – probably why the right is so enamoured of it, it fits in with their outlook.
Thanks for link, Marijo. Sorry about confusion – but in a way I sort of like that, because it fits. There are (not surprisingly) a great many aspects to all this, so I think having several discussions going on at once is all to the good.
Richard, I know, about the perilous teetering. And that’s something that’s implied or even stated all too often, and I despise it. But I can’t help it, I do think Chris has a point about the motivation factor.
I suppose what I’m saying is that when there is some personal cost to being good, it helps to have a beloved ideal or illusion of some kind – a perfect deity, utopia – to motivate most of us to be good in spite of the cost. At least that seems plausible.
I think you’re right about Mill; I keep wanting to bring him in more. I’m very fond of Mill.
“For example. equality can certainly be said to stem from the christian tradition, though it is worth considering whether the notion would be as valuable if people like Locke had not found a means of divorcing it from a relgious context to some extent – to a great extent the importance of equality in christian theology is something that I suspect is most prominent when viewed from a progressively more egalitarian context overall…”
Yes. This gets back to a point I made earlier, that the egalitarian strain of modern religion has more to do with the advance of secular thought than from anything flowing inexorably from the religious tradition, itself. Of course, people who favor these trends view them in the light of their religious traditions, as do those who oppose them. And once the ideas become associated with religious tradition, they do tend to motivate people.
Something about all of this has reminded me what the historian Eric Hobswawn (sp?) said about the “invention of tradition.” It’s the basic idea that cultural novelties tend to gain wider acceptance when we can see them as part of a long-standing tradition. One example of this would be the celebration of Christmas, which has really only existed as a sacred, family-oriented holiday for a couple of hundred years, but it’s presented as if it were always practiced exactly as it is today. (Read the book “The Battle for Christmas” – pretty fascinating stuff).
Something analogous happens with these changes in religious morals. The liberal Christian tradition is only as old as the liberal tradition itself (the 18th century, more or less), but it’s presented as if it’s always been there. This may have helped liberal theists adapt new moral ideas to their existing religious beliefs, and almost certainly helped the cause of spreading these beliefs through society. I don’t see any reason not to acknowledge this. But I do think it’s important to keep the true origin of these ideas in mind,lest we confuse the efficacy of religion for motivating ethical behavior with statements about the origin of the ethical behavior.
Phil
Richard:
“The Battle for Christmas,” by Stephen Nissenbaum, is in print and available. Ready to ship in 24 hours, in fact, or most likely available at your local Borders. Head over this way:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679740384/qid=1078184165/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-0352453-2359809?v=glance&s=books
The book examines the way the modern celebration of Christmas evolved. Specifically, it looks at the way Christmas changed from a baudy, New Years-eve style celebration to the wholesome, and very commercial, holiday it is today. Here’s a review from amazon.com:
“This scholarly analysis of our modern celebration of Christmas pulls together a thoroughly convincing case for the widely accepted notion that it is a 19th-century creation, indeed a deliberate reformation and taming of a holiday with wilder pagan origins. Christmas was set at December 25 in the fourth century, not for any biblical link with Christ’s birth, but because the church hoped to annex and Christianize the existing midwinter pagan feast. This latter was based on the seasonal agricultural plenty, with the year’s food supply newly in store, and nothing to do in the fields. It was a time of drinking and debauchery from the Roman Saturnalia to the English Mummers. The Victorians hijacked the holiday, and Victorian writers helped turn it into a feast of safe domesticity and a cacophonous chime of retail cash registers.”
The book is amazing – easily one of the best books on cultural and social history of any kind I’ve ever read. It’s meticulously researched, well-written and always interesting.
Phil
“This gets back to a point I made earlier, that the egalitarian strain of modern religion has more to do with the advance of secular thought than from anything flowing inexorably from the religious tradition, itself.”
Oops. More backwards theorizing. In fact the advance of egalitarian thinking in secular thought was only possible against the background of Luther’s revolt against the church hierarchy. In the popularization of his idea that all Christians have a direct access to God, and need not depend upon a priest’s interpretation of the Scriptures, Luther laid the foundations for democracy, abolition, women’s rights, and possibly, homosexual marriage. It was no longer possible to heirarchically arrange the souls of the world from lower to higher (and the ‘divine right’ of kings to rule also came into question). This realization, naturally, has taken a while to sink in.
“Oops. More backwards theorizing.”
Not quite. You’re assuming, I think, that Luther’s revolt was purely a matter of religious doctrine. Luther just woke up one morning with the idea that all Christians have direct access to God, and “poof”: the Protestant Reformation. Not the case at all, though – the Protestant Reformation was an extremely complex event that was tied to myriad social and political changes of the time. There are some good scholarly treatments of the subject that make that fact abundantly clear. So again, the “backwards” label only makes sense if we know what direction we should be starting from. I don’t think you do.
You’ve chosen an interesting historical example, though. And I’m not saying that the Reformation is unrelated to the greater secular changes of a few centuries later, or that Luther was just a puppet being yanked by social forces, or that his genuine convictions didn’t have lasting historical effects. I’m also not saying the causality only flows one way, from social changes to religous changes. Religious ideas feed back upon the social changes, affecting motivation for or against them (as I suggested in an earlier post).
But the proto-egalitarianism of Luther, or the later liberal egalitarianism of the secular era, were not always parts of the Christian tradition. They developed for good historical reasons much later, for reasons ultimately having less to do with theology and more to do with history. Of course, once the changes occur, the theology find some way of dealing with them, and making it look like the changes led inexorably from someplace within the religious tradition itself. It’s a messy, complicated process rife with contingency, but it doesn’t look that way in many standard church histories.
Phil
‘Secular morality is a thin gruel, compared to the notion that as children of God, we are to think of ourselves as brothers and sisters.’
I suggest that, certainly for the parts of morality that concern suffering, acting from respect for a Creator is hardly “moral” at all compared to acting from compassion.
Widening one’s sympathies to encompass one’s fellow man, acting with the consciousness of being part of a brotherhood of mankind — our origin has little to do with that. To the extent to which belief concerning our origin is the sole reason for them, those moral feelings are open to the charge of cold emptiness or selfishness.
Morality stemming from religion is little edifying. If wrong consists merely in divine decree, it is valueless and cold. If God decrees because things are good or bad, the believer has as difficult a task as the atheist in struggling with what good and bad are and how to act accordingly.
Marco
“I think I was arguing more with Chris than with you – largely because I think he overstates the extent to which the influence of religion has been moral and not invidious.”
Yes, I tend to think so too. I do think he has a point, but I would hedge it a good deal more than he did. In fact I think I will.
“In fact the advance of egalitarian thinking in secular thought was only possible against the background of Luther’s revolt against the church hierarchy.”
Oh? Are you sure? How do you know that?
I for one don’t think it’s true. I think it was one factor, but only one among many, and I don’t know of much reason to think it was determinative. There has always been egalitarian thinking, but since most of it for understandable reasons took place among the people on the bottom, whose thoughts are less likely to be preserved than those on the top (mass literacy being a new thing and all), we have a distorted view of it. We think, for instance, the way Homer deals with Thersites is the way everyone thought of people like Thersites. But ask Thersites, and things look a bit different.
“I suggest that, certainly for the parts of morality that concern suffering, acting from respect for a Creator is hardly “moral” at all compared to acting from compassion.”
Yup, I agree with that. It’s just that I think it can happen (and I don’t have evidence for this, I’m only guessing and perhaps extrapolating from experience, anecdotes etc.) that when compassion requires a lot of effort – that for some people, religious emotions of loyalty, love etc. can provide that extra shove.
There has always been egalitarian thinking, but since most of it for understandable reasons took place among the people on the bottom, whose thoughts are less likely to be preserved than those on the top (mass literacy being a new thing and all), we have a distorted view of it.
Oh? Are you sure? How do you know that?
What “other factors” do you think were important? Luther’s revolt led almost immediately to sweeping chnages, such as the translation of the Bible into the vernacular, after centuries of people thinking that the only way to God was through their Latin-speaking priests. The education of the middle class, such as it was, led to the possibility of revolution against the monarchies and Catholic Church. Certainly the rise of the merchant class was also a factor, but look around a bit and you’ll see that merchants aren’t particularly interested in equality. The masses learned to read so that they could read the Bible, and the Bible talks about God the father without much mention of that ‘father’ wearing the collar. I think people really used to believe that their proper place in the world was defined by their social class, which was handed down through the generations– a boy learned to do what his father did, and a girl learned from her mother. The king had a commission from God to rule, and no one else had much chance of taking his place. Roles were quite rigid and equality was unthinkable. Authority was respected, revered even. And it is only in that context that one can understand why “acting from respect for a Creator” was precisely what it meant to be moral. The conservative mindset of today draws a lot from that vision of society, and you will never understand the religious right until you can get inside the idea, if only briefly, that an hierarchical society is preferable to one in which all are treated equally. They may talk a lot of equality, but they mean rather what the Greeks meant: equality for white men of a certain class who speak our language, so long as they abide by the prevailing sexual mores.
Many of the “sweeping changes” that Marijo claims were caused by “Luther’s revolt” were already well underway by the time of Martin Luther. For example, the first English translation of the Bible was produced by John Wycliffe, about two hundred years before Luther. Much of
Wycliffe’s motivation was explicitly the notion of non-hierarchical equality.
Similarly, the tradition of literacy among the middle classes was well-established by the time of Luther’s revolt (why else would he have written his theses and published them?) A printing press (available for over fifty years) is only practical in a literate society with a demand for books (and a supply of paper, ink, and whatnot) — fortunately, these had been established by the university culture for a hundred years or so. Even the books published in the 13th century show a demand for non-religious thought : the first book on surgery was written in 1360-ish. Romances and light entertainment was also popular among the educated laity.
Similarly, I strongly doubt your statement that “the merchants aren’t interested in equality.” That was one of their primary demands against the privilege of the aristocrats, and led to the development of the guild system, the chartered city, the elimination of feudal rights and serfdom inside city walls, &c.
Fairly sure, Marijo. There are bits of evidence – peasants’ revolts, for instance, and the things that are on record as being said by the revolters. It seems reasonable to extrapolate from the evidence there is (which indicates that when the voices of peasants or workers happen to get recorded they do indeed have egaliatarian ideas – for obvious reasons!) to the probability that a lot of people on the bottom had such thoughts.
And there’s Montaillou. A lot of radical ideas were being kicked around there, including egalitarian ones, at least if LeRoy Ladurie wasn’t exaggerating (which I think some historians say he was, so I offer this up with due caution).
“What “other factors” do you think were important? Luther’s revolt led almost immediately to sweeping chnages, such as the translation of the Bible into the vernacular, after centuries of people thinking that the only way to God was through their Latin-speaking priests. “
Hmmm. I’m having a hard time seeing the larger point in this post. Perhaps a quick recap is in order to locate some of the sources of my confusion.
This whole discussion of social vs. religious origins of moral changes started due to an analogy implicitly claiming religion was valuable because it was the arena for expressing love and charity and sweetness and light. That led to some discussion about the merit of making that particular demarcation, and then to consideration about whether moral ideas could properly be said to come from somewhere inherent in the religious traditions themselves, or if it might be more accurate to see them gain acceptance for understandable social and cultural reasons. That pretty much brings us up to the present, I think.
So then, here’s a question. Is our modern, Western, defanged model of religion as the engine of liberal virtue and brotherly love exactly like Luther’s moral vision? Is modern secular political thought in general directly derivable from Luther’s thought? The answer seems to be a resounding “no.” Luther was a rabid anti-Semite, especially in his later years. He also claimed that faith in Jesus, not virtuous acts, were the main preequisite for earning God’s mysterious gift of grace. Not very modern, enlightened ideas, are they?
There is also a claim made that Luther’s reforms led directly to the flowering of modern secular thought. But that begs the question of why it took roughly 300 years for these “direct” influences to be felt. The Protestant Reformation did NOT directly lead to separation of church and state, protection of civil liberties, or modern constitutional democracy. It did NOT lead directly to the sophisticated secular moral thought of someone like J.S. Mill, for instance. The Reformation did cause some tentative but important steps in that direction, but did not conclusively determine the direction. And as I and another poster have indicated, the social and political changes associated with the Reformation were already well in motion sometime before it happened, and so cannot be wholly attributable to them. So these contemporary, harmless models of religion as empathy and interminable cheek-turning don’t seem to have quite as much to do with Luther, or quite as much origin in religious ideas as you think they do.
I’m also a bit confused by the mention of the conservative Christians around today, and their religious resistance to social change. You’re right to point out that these people invoke a religious model of the world, where everybody has their established place in the hierarchy, in order to justify the stratification of society. But two points seem to be in order. First, we have to consider whether the social ideology follows directly from the religious beliefs, or whether the religious beliefs simmply express and strengthen pre-existing ideology. And I think the evidence points to the second hypothesis. After all, we can test it, by observing if both religious and non-religious people in a given socioeconomic strata tend to share the same social ideology. And they do seem to – look at Milt Rosenberg, a relatively wealthy, older secular humanist who shares many of the same neo-conservative opinions as his religious peers. And religious and non-religious American liberals not only share the same socioeconomic demographics, but also the same political ideals.
But this brings me to the second point – which is really what seems to be confusing me. I don’t understand why you’d bring up the example of conservative Christians if you’ve been trying to argue that religion is properly construed as love and virtue. Because these conservative Christians seem to be the opposite of that. Maybe you brought them up because you think their religious beliefs determine their ideology? But that begs the older question of what religion is actually good for if it can motivate selfish behavior as well as virtous behavior. And it also begs the question of why we feel so sure that religion has had such beneficial effects on society, and why we seem so willing to believe that all of our moral convictions flow from religious ones.
Phil
Better answers than I expected all around. Well done. But I’m still not convinced. (Or at least, I’m not done stirring up trouble. There really is too little dissent over here, you know.)
First of all, you misunderstand me, but this is probably my fault. As a philosopher, rather than an historian, I tend to represent the history of ideas through references to the major spokespersons for the relevant ideas. Thus, when I say something like “Luther’s revolt against the church hierarchy”, I really mean a larger group of events than one person’s tacking a paper on a door one day. (Likewise, one might say, “Jefferson’s vision of democracy”, when obviously his ideas were shared by many, many people: he simply gave them the most memorable expression in the Declaration of Independence and his other writings.) I don’t mean to say that Luther singlehandedly changed the religious climate of a continent, any more than I would say that Jefferson was reponsible for the American revolution.
I do believe, however, that the changes in the religious views of the continent preceded and made possible many of the later political changes which were to come. There were also economic changes in the 14th through 16th century which were important, but I believe that the development of ideas about the equality of all people was more the result of the flattening of the church hierarchy than the introduction of the middle class of merchants and their ilk.
I could well be wrong, however. Looking through one of my references tonight, I see that Erasmus, More, and Machiavelli were writing at roughly the same time as Luther. I would have thought that they came later, that the rise of humanism followed upon the criticisms of the church (and maybe there were other criticisms which laid a path for Luther, also, of which I am unaware). In any case, I think that the ideas of equality which were bubbling up in culture in those 100 years or so (1450ish to 1550ish)laid a foundation for the democratic thinkers who came centuries later. Certainly they were expressed in the reformation, but you are right– that does not prove that they began with it. But I still do not think there was “always” egalitarian thinking (as OB stated).
Patrick’s statement,
A printing press (available for over fifty years) is only practical in a literate society with a demand for books (and a supply of paper, ink, and whatnot) — fortunately, these had been established by the university culture for a hundred years or so.
overlooks the fact that at first, runs of books surely did not produce any great numbers of texts, and that printing also fostered literacy, especially when (some of) the books printed were guides to salvation in the spoken languages of the people. Also, in terms of an innovation in communication methods such as printing, 50-100 years is about the minimum amout of time it would take for the new method to take hold. The first computers were built more than 50 years ago, and there are still only a minority of people in the U.S. who are computer literate. Finally, I think the romances were probably sung, not read, in the 1300’s.
And Phil, you’re attributing arguments to me which I never thought I was making, this one for example: “you’ve been trying to argue that religion is properly construed as love and virtue”, and this one: “There is also a claim made that Luther’s reforms led directly to the flowering of modern secular thought”. Take care. I’m picky about this kind of thing.
As for the religious right and the liberal religious folk, you say: “First, we have to consider whether the social ideology follows directly from the religious beliefs, or whether the religious beliefs simmply express and strengthen pre-existing ideology”, but, for the religious, social ideology and religious beliefs are the same, and non-religious people could (coincidentally) have the same social ideology for reasons of their own– perhaps because it reinforces their economic interests, or perhaps they are frightened of the poor people and think that they are all criminals and must be kept under control.
And finally (and I really will be done for tonight) I actually don’t have a pre-set agenda. I’m not at all sure what I think about religion today, except that I’m pretty sure by now that it doesn’t make much sense to characterize all religious people as if they share any single characteristic, becasue there is so very much variation even within American Christianity. “Religion” is an illusion– there is no unified thing which goes by that name. Religions, and religious people, probably have a “family resemblance” kind of commonality, like the games in Wittgenstein. There is nothing which they all have in common, and so all questions like these: “… what religion is actually good for if it can motivate selfish behavior as well as virtous behavior…. why we feel so sure that religion has had such beneficial effects on society, and why we seem so willing to believe that all of our moral convictions flow from religious ones” are nonsensical, they are not specific enough.
Marijo,
I think you may have answered your own argument with your observations concerning Erasmus and More to some extent. The hierarchical nature of medieval society had been decaying due to a variety of reasons long before the reformation, due to a combination of causes. Firstly, political causes such as the war of the roses did the initial damage to such notions as the divine rights of kings (as did trivial matters like executing Mary Queen of Scots). Secondly, the rise of a merchant class challenged the nature of a fixed hierarchy (the nature of their own beliefs not being especially important). Beyond that, I think you have to consider how Luther was able to find a receptive audience if the episteme he created was so unprecedented; why him and not Wyclif or Savonarola years before? I don’t imagine anyone wants to disregard the role of protestantism in the history of equality, but it’s perfectly possible to envisage this role as being both cause and effect rather than only one or the other.
Incidentally, one of the further problems is that it was quite common for Protestant sects to establish a notion of universal spiritual equality before god in theory but in practice this was not so clear; certaily someone like Calvin, following genesis, saw women as being inherently subordinate.
Marjo,
If romances were only sung, and not read, then why do we have manuscripts of them in the British Library?
“And Phil, you’re attributing arguments to me which I never thought I was making, this one for example: “you’ve been trying to argue that religion is properly construed as love and virtue”, and this one: “There is also a claim made that Luther’s reforms led directly to the flowering of modern secular thought”. Take care. I’m picky about this kind of thing.”
OK, Marijo, that’s a fair point. But I did admit I was confused about the point you were working toward, and was trying to explain why I was confused. You’ve clarified things, now. And if you go back and reread your earlier post, it does seem, at least to me, that you were arguing that Luther’s reforms were in themselves the bedrock for all the secular changes that followed: “Luther laid the foundations for democracy, abolition, women’s rights, and possibly, homosexual marriage.” But misunderstandings happen.
“First, we have to consider whether the social ideology follows directly from the religious beliefs, or whether the religious beliefs simmply express and strengthen pre-existing ideology”, but, for the religious, social ideology and religious beliefs are the same, and non-religious people could (coincidentally) have the same social ideology for reasons of their own– perhaps because it reinforces their economic interests, or perhaps they are frightened of the poor people and think that they are all criminals and must be kept under control. “
I think you and I are saying some of the same things. I say “I think,” because we both seem to agree that social and cultural ideas are bound up with religion, and that religion takes different forms in different societies. No disagreement, there. But then I don’t know why you would use a word like “coincidentally” above for the beliefs of non-religious people. If both religious and non-religious people in a certain social demographic share similar cultural beliefs, it’s probably not a “coincidence” at all. The beliefs of both the religious and non-religious are influenced strongly by their social identity – it’s just that the religious folks convince themselves that the beliefs are theologicially valid. A post hoc explanation, if you will.
“”Religion” is an illusion– there is no unified thing which goes by that name. Religions, and religious people, probably have a “family resemblance” kind of commonality, like the games in Wittgenstein. There is nothing which they all have in common, and so all questions like these: “… what religion is actually good for if it can motivate selfish behavior as well as virtous behavior…. why we feel so sure that religion has had such beneficial effects on society, and why we seem so willing to believe that all of our moral convictions flow from religious ones” are nonsensical, they are not specific enough.”
You have a point there, to be sure. But to my mind, your analogy linking “religion” with “love” did use religion in a specific sense, which is why I felt compelled to argue toward a position similar to what you just expressed above. Part of my point all along has been that that the specificity is illusory, because religion is different things to different people at different times.(By the way, have you ever heard of Wilfred Cantwel Smith’s book “The Meaning and End of Religion?” He argues that the rigid entities we call “Christianity” or “Buddhism” or “Hinduism” don’t really exist – they’re just labels we’ve imposed on shifting, changing traditions. I don’t agree with all of it, but it’s an interesting read.)
And I don’t think that the question of why we want to believe that all our moral convictions flow from religious ones is nonsensical. Because the fact is, most people do seem very eager to make a specific connection between religion and morality, and that eagerness causes all sorts of problems in a secular democracy like ours. In fact, it causes problems everywhere. I think we do need to think about the reasons why people do this, and subject those reasons to carefully scrutiny.
Phil
” I don’t imagine anyone wants to disregard the role of protestantism in the history of equality, but it’s perfectly possible to envisage this role as being both cause and effect rather than only one or the other.”
Very well put, Richard. I’ve felt obliged to emphasize the role of religious changes as effects in this particular discussion (largely because others seemed to be deemphasizing them), but I completely agree with your statement above. Except I’d say it’s not just “possible” to see things this way, but greatly preferrable.
I think one of the main points here is that it’s probably a mistake to ever reduce intellectual history to a chronology of great thinkers and their innovative ideas. These thinkers and ideas didn’t exist in a vacuum, they were situated in a particular culture at a particular time. At the same time, not everything about their ideas is ever determined solely by the cultural/social climate – that’s where their individual creativity comes in. And once the ideas are formulated, they do feed back on the culture and change it, which then feeds back on the ideas, and so the cycle continues.
My ongoing beef is that so few people seem to know anything about history except, well, historians. But to really understand the development of philosophy, or science, or religion, or any other social institution, we really do need a firm grasp of history.
Phil
I’ve been meaning to get back to this, but various things have intervened.
“But I still do not think there was “always” egalitarian thinking (as OB stated).”
Well there’s no way to know for sure, and that’s – for sure. But it seems to me not completely unreasonable to extrapolate from the evidence there is and think that it’s possible or probable that egalitarian ideas are not brand new, and were not brand new in 1517 either. There is abundant evidence of egalitarian ideas kicking around in 5th century Athens, for example.
And we have to keep in mind that the people on the bottom (the ones with the most motivation to entertain egalitarian ideas) did not have as much access to printing, or writing, or papyrus scrolls, as the people on top did. There is less evidence of their opinions left.
One way of looking at it is the notion that all that endless emphasis on the great chain of being, on homilies on obedience and subservience in the Elizabethan church, on God’s will and everyone happy in her station and so on – wouldn’t have been necessary if it had been true. There’s no point (as Basil Fawlty told Sibyl) in nagging people to do what they’re already doing. All that nagging seems to be to be a sign of anxiety. “Don’t you rebel, now! Don’t you look at my stuff! Don’t you get any big ideas! Don’t you leave the plow and learn to read and get uppity!”
People just aren’t naturally all that submissive. They’re ornery and resentful, and I really doubt that’s a novelty. It’s true that I don’t know for certain though.
“There is abundant evidence of egalitarian ideas kicking around in 5th century Athens, for example.”
Well, I certainly know that lots of egalitarian ideas are kicking around in my head right now, having just returned from seeing Bob Dylan perform here in Chicago.
But yes, the idea of egalitarianism, or democratic governments, or something in that general direction, was alive and well in Athens millenia ago. And the idea was certainly well-known in the Roman era, as well as in at least some of the nations surrounding Greece in the time of Herodotus.
According to Herodotus'”Histories,” the Persian Darius was well aware of the basic idea, and used a kind of sophistry to convince people they really didn’t want that kind of thing after all. He told them that democracies are invariably corrupted by opportunistic politicians (like Darius himself), so it’s best to pick a benevolent monarch (like Darius pretended to be) to rule over them. It’s been a while since I took my Newberry Library seminar on Herodotus, so I don’t remember the exact section, and don’t have the book at my immediate disposal. It’s in there, though.
Like much that Herodotus said, the story itself may or may not be true. But it does establish that a) some kind of egalitarian ideals were well-known at that time, and b) displays a very modern notion that people have to be snared into a kind of false consciousness in order not to pursue their personal liberties. That is, we need an ideology like the “great chain of being” you mentioned above to convince people they really don’t want any more than they already have. The fact that Herodotus discussed these ideas strongly suggests they were not unknown to his audience.
Of course, the modern secular government with its system of checks and balances and separation of powers would not develop until much later. And in order to understand why democracy only sporadically worked in the ancient world, and why it eventually took its modern, stable form, we have to look at the long complicated social and cultural history of the last two millenia or so. And that’s too much for me right at this minute – I’m off to bed.
Phil