Tags
Aaron Stalnaker, Augustine, autobiography, chastened intellectualism, Jonathan Schofer, Pierre Hadot, Plato, S.N. Goenka, Xunzi
My previous post discusses the problem that academic philosophy doesn’t do a whole lot to make us better people; its main defence is that it isn’t supposed to. But then what is?
Aaron Stalnaker addresses this point in his book Overcoming Our Evil. It compares Augustine and Xunzi, two thinkers from faraway contexts who share a commonly pessimistic assessment of human nature. I had some serious methodological concerns about Stalnaker’s work in the sixth chapter of my dissertation – basically that the work isn’t as relevant to constructive ethical reflection as it claims to be – but I’ve softened a bit on those concerns since writing the dissertation. While I still don’t think that Stalnaker’s work itself makes the constructive contributions it claims to make, I do think that its categories are helpful for others who do want to make such contributions.
Specifically: what Augustine and Xunzi have in common, according to Stalnaker, is “chastened intellectualism.” While they agree that we can know a great deal of the truth about how we should live, they also agree that knowing the truth is not enough to make us act accordingly – contradicting at least some readings of Plato. Some sort of further practice is required. Pierre Hadot points out that in Roman times such practices were viewed as integral to philosophy. (Jonathan Schofer, on my dissertation committee, kept insisting that I pay greater attention to Śāntideva’s accounts of practices, and now I’m seeing why.)
I’m very sympathetic to such an account, from my personal experience. It was one thing to realize that my own attitudes and behaviours were the big problem in my life. It has been quite another to actually change those attitudes and behaviours.
But then seekers like me face a problem. Augustine and Xunzi recommend practices that are embedded within a particular tradition – Christianity and Confucianism respectively – each of which I find highly problematic. There’s a lot I disagree with in Buddhism as well; I don’t think any tradition has managed to fully grasp truth (though I also certainly don’t claim to have done so myself!) Some traditions of practice (like Goenka’s) claim to be non-sectarian techniques, but nevertheless incorporate a great deal of their tradition’s own teachings. (At the same time, Goenka’s technique didn’t do a lot for me, with one major exception.)
What then are we seekers to do? Should we swallow the practices of an existing tradition whole even while disagreeing with it, as a part of developing a necessary humility? Or should we pick and choose to make our own practice, retaining intellectual integrity but giving ourselves less chance to learn from what’s out there?
Jonathan,
I found your blog after reading your refreshingly honest response to Ed Feser’s political ranting. Like you, I used to enjoy reading his blog for some of his discussions in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, but am reluctantly finding that he really is too much of an ideologue.
Your post here is something that I’ve thought about quite a bit from time to time. On the one hand, I think academic philosophy is quite right to deny that it does or should aim at making us better people, at least on the whole (though it may rightly aim at developing epistemic and intellectual virtues). It plainly doesn’t try to make us virtuous on the whole, but it seems to me that it may be better off because it doesn’t. That said, most of us need to become better people, and our culture tends, by and large, to segregate “self-improvement” from intellectually serious thinking.
The problem you mention has, I think, been noticed since long before Augustine. Plato recognized it as a problem with Socrates’ views of virtue, at least as he himself presented those views. Aristotle was even more thoroughgoing in his critique of Socrates’ intellectualism. Plato and Aristotle seemed to think that it was possible for us to obtain sufficient *knowledge* of the good and the right, but that what all but the rarest of individuals required was to live in a certain kind community that would create and support structures for the practices of virtue. Even an enthusiastic student of ancient political thought like myself doesn’t think that we have much hope of attaining any such thing in our own political world (nor that we should think of it as an ideal for our own political structures). It does show, though, that some of the earliest Western philosophers were well aware of the problem. What their particular attempts at dealing with it also show, I think, is that any good solution can’t just give us *practices*, but has to involve kinds of community in which practices can be structured and supported. You mention the relationship of practices to *traditions*, but you don’t bring out the importance of actual communities.
In our world, traditional religions are the only sources of such practices-in-community. Yet we find it difficult to adhere to traditional religions for all sorts of reasons, both good and bad. I myself am a Catholic, but I have many of the same sorts of misgivings and difficulties that you seem to have. There are several particular points of Catholic doctrine that may eventually make it impossible for me to remain a Catholic. For now, though, the main reason why I *remain* so is that in my present circumstances, participating in my local Catholic community continues to offer me all kinds of rewards (this isn’t a declaration of pragmatism, but an explanation of why my difficulties don’t drive me away). I suppose I’m trying to break down your dichotomy between “swallowing the practices of an existing tradition whole while disagreeing with it” and “picking and choosing and making our own practice.” If you find the right community of people, you can engage with a tradition actively and critically without either abandoning intellectual integrity or the benefits of seeking in common with others. This can be challenging, of course, because, frankly, lots of people who are attracted to spiritual traditions aren’t too interested in being intellectually critical. But it may be the least frustrating route. Perhaps it’s intellectually dishonest; I certainly feel sometimes as though it is. But the only other alternative seems to be to refuse to engage with any tradition of spiritual practice whatsoever, since pretending that we have certain knowledge of the truth of one of them isn’t really an option.
Hi djr, and welcome to the blog. (My name is not Jonathan, by the way; it’s Amod.)
I suppose the question’s ancient provenance can be debated a lot. I’ve heard from reputable scholars a number of times that what was missing from Plato and Aristotle was the concept of will, and that that’s what Augustine added. But I’m no Plato scholar, so it is hard for me to debate the question. I hesitate to assign a critique of Socrates to Plato, since it’s so hard to separate Plato’s own voice from Socrates.
Your point about communities is well taken, too. I’m not sure that traditional religions (however we define such things) are the only sources available – some of the more rigorous hippie communes, say, may well offer a community with practices, as might new religious movements. But the discontinuity of those from everyday practice is significantly greater than what more mainstream religions expect, so the point is an important one.
I may well take the route of getting involved with a particular community and its traditions over the next couple of years. I’m not quite sure I’m ready to go that route yet, though. I belonged to a Unitarian Universalist church for a couple of years, but I found the typical UU church to offer relatively little in the way of spiritual practice, meaning, or personal growth; they’re often places for atheists with children to meet and talk about politics. I met some wonderful friends there, but ultimately it wasn’t helpful in the kind of senses we’re talking about. My girlfriend was raised in an older, Emersonian Unitarian tradition, and I’ve been meaning to try getting involved in that.
Amod,
Sorry about misnaming you; I mistakenly looked up from the bottom of the post and saw the name ‘Jonathan’ and failed to go back to the top.
Whether or not Plato and Aristotle had or lacked a concept of the will is a very interesting question, as is whether or not, if they did, they were worse or better off. In my limited knowledge of medieval thought, I’d say off-hand that the distinctively medieval conceptions of the will create more problems than they solve to the extent that the will is supposed to be some sort of faculty or power that is distinct from reason and other forms of motivation that the Greeks clearly recognized. The question, I suppose, is whether one needs to appeal to such a distinct faculty in order to account for practical irrationality and vice. I’m inclined to think not, but I certainly haven’t given the issue enough thought.
Attributing critiques of Socrates to Plato isn’t as hard as it sounds. Quite independently of whatever the historical Socrates thought, Plato’s Socrates defends uncompromisingly intellectualist conceptions of virtue and action in some of the dialogues (most clearly, perhaps, in the Protagoras). The intellectualist conception compels Socrates to deny that it is possible for a person to act against his or her own better judgment; in other words, ‘weakness of will’ (akrasia in Greek) is incoherent. In other dialogues, Plato clearly departs from the intellectualist model in favor of a view of motivation and action that can account for akrasia and other kinds of vice without attributing them to mere ignorance. Aristotle took a similar route, though with a different theory, and he presents the intellectualist view as the one that Socrates held — thus it is the majority position among scholars that the historical Socrates held an intellectualist view, and the very least that one can say is that Aristotle himself plainly distinguished Socratic and Platonic views on the question.
So, to my mind, the interesting historical question is: does Augustine’s theory of the will really constitute any sort of advance or insight into the problem that you’ve raised? I just don’t know.
I suspect you’re right that there are some non-traditional communities out there that manage to rival traditionally-based ones in scope, but my experience with them has been pretty poor. Besides lacking much intellectual rigor, I’ve tended to find that they lack spiritual depth and stability, as well — but that may just be my experience. Certainly the traditional religious communities are the most well established places where one can go for this sort of thing – whether Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or whatever.
My experience with Universalism has been much the same as yours. In general, the trouble seems to be that communities are either thin in that way or resistant to the sort of critical intellectual and spiritual disposition that you seem to have. And of course, sometimes you just have to get lucky.
I’m looking forward to reading your posts about Buddhism and other topics. Thanks for writing.
No problem on the misnaming. Thanks very much for your many thoughtful posts, djr. I hope very much that you’ll continue reading and commenting.
I agree that Augustine’s theory of the will raises a huge number of problems, and I’ve been increasingly starting to toy with a hard determinist view (this post suggests some of my reasons, though not the only ones). I wonder whether the concept of will is useful if we do not think of it as free will – if we acknowledge its determination by causal factors, but think of it as a decision-making faculty in which reason is frequently overridden. Maybe we don’t need such a concept – we could just refer to the individual motivating factors – but I wonder if it might be helpful as a way of specifying what reason isn’t enough for.
As for Plato, I see – it’s Aristotle’s evidence that makes the difference here. Would you agree that the earlier dialogues tend to represent the positions of the historical Socrates, and the later dialogues are Plato’s independent position?
Well, conceptually, at least, ‘the will’ in the Augustinian sense *should* still make a difference even if a libertarian account of its operations were incoherent or false. My limited understanding of the idea is that the will is supposed to be some sort of faculty for decision that is *not* grounded in reason (you can choose to act contrary to reason, Augustine thinks) or in any sub-rational motivation (e.g., bodily appetites, since you can choose to act contrary to those as well). It doesn’t seem incoherent to suppose that the directives of a person’s will are somehow causally determined while still not being grounded in reason or any other sub-rational form of motivation. Granted, one of the reasons for introducing the concept is, I take it, that we seem to be capable of choosing to act contrary to reason or appetite without choosing on the basis of some other reason or appetites; so our apparent freedom seems to be one of the phenomena for which the theory of the will as a distinct faculty tries to account. But even hard determinists can acknowledge the phenomenon without giving up their determinism — it isn’t the only phenomenon that such determinism has to explain away as mere appearance.
Perhaps there is some way that I’m just missing in which the will as a distinct faculty makes room for a libertarian view of free will that we can’t get otherwise. But it seems to me that it creates more problems than it solves both for the explanation of action and for the ‘free will’ problem in particular. I definitely need to do some more thinking about this.
As for Plato, I’m pretty agnostic about the relationship between any of the dialogues and the historical Socrates, at least when it comes to thee details, but I do find it pretty convincing that the dialogues that many scholars call ‘early’ present Socrates defending positions that the historical Socrates took. If not, then Aristotle must have been completely misled about what the historical Socrates said. That’s not impossible, of course, but it’s pretty far on the other side of implausible. Unlike some, though, I don’t think that Aristotle’s testimony gives us much reason to think that Plato’s representations of Socrates’ arguments for those positions are especially accurate. They may be, but they may also be much more developed. I’m attracted to the view that many of those ‘early’ dialogues are actually written to make Socrates’ positions problematic as a sort of prelude to Plato’s distinctly different way of dealing with them in the so-called ‘middle’ dialogues, but I wouldn’t bet any money on it.
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