Re: Are You an Apatheist, too?
Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2019 7:35 am
Thanks very much Harry for mentioning Isaiah Berlin. I read his biography by Michael Ignatieff a few years ago, and remain impressed by his pellucid wisdom. His famous Fox and Hedgehog essay is available here, with summary here. Apathy towards religion seems more aligned with the fox attitude of variety than with the single-mindedness of the hedgehog, although I think the religious attitude can incorporate both.Harry Marks wrote:I guess I am fine with fox thinking, to borrow Isaiah Berlin's terms, and view hedgehog thinking with suspicion.
My own view on systematic thinking, reflected in my recent Jung essay, is that an emerging New Age Aquarian Christianity can integrate the best elements of the fox, knowing many things, and the hedgehog, knowing one big thing. Knowing many things in a Christian framework links closely to the moral framework that the meek shall inherit the earth, as an ethical basis to respect diversity. In my view the one big thing, which has been my preoccupation all my adult life, is that zodiac ages are the scientific basis of systematic philosophy. I know that may sound outrageous, but it is not to argue for belief in astrology, rather that the empirical planetary cosmology of precession can explain the memetic evolution of culture in a coherent way.
I agree with your suspicion about the tendency to monomaniacal ideology that Berlin critiqued in hedgehog thinking, but there are ways to address this problem. Combining the scientific respect for evidence and logic with the Gospel respect for diversity and love suggests how an integrated path can emerge. The integrating theme should be the primacy of planetary existence. The systematic cosmology emerging from planetary studies can then serve as a coherent basis for ethical action and interpretation of history. That for me is incompatible with an apatheic attitude.
I agree that all alleged systems to date have serious weaknesses, but that does not mean a future system is impossible. The problem always rests in the foundational assumptions, the attitudes about what is real. For example, Christian systematic theology builds vast edifices of thought, but if its axiomatic beliefs about God, Jesus and the miraculous are wrong, then the entire framework is built on sand. I studied Martin Heidegger, the founder of systematic existentialism, who grounded his systematic ontology in the Greco-Hindu idea that all is one, but his coherence collapsed due to his emotional political commitments to German primacy. My view is that as we grow into the reality that we have one planetary cultural world, the underlying long term orbital drivers of evolution will emerge as the primary framework for systematic thinking.Harry Marks wrote: A systematic worldview is a good thing as far as it goes, but all the systems are incomplete and the more they strive for unearned completeness, as with Jordan Peterson, Hegel or perhaps Sam Harris, the more likely that they uncover inconsistencies.
Speaking of Sam Harris, he argued in The Moral Landscape that neuroscience provides a basis to integrate facts and values in a systematic ontology. I did not find that a coherent argument. My own view is that a better basis to ground values in facts emerges from cosmology, not from biology, interpreting cosmology at terrestrial scale to analyse how human existence connects to the universe.
That is a complicated and valuable statement Harry for deconstructing the problems with an apatheist attitude. “The measuring sticks we use for self-esteem” are mainly about success in the world, in money, relationships, career and public and personal achievements. Against that hyper-individualised mentality, the big religious questions of what is intrinsically good for the world are matters of distracting indifference. Hence the paradox known in theology as kenosis, that divine action involves emptying of the self, a rejection of the values of the world. The apathy of Alfred E Neuman, candidate patron saint of apatheism, fastidiously avoids any such higher commitments.Harry Marks wrote:I feel that the main block to acting in the public interest is not absence of thought or awareness but inner preoccupation with the measuring sticks we use for self-esteem. A good appreciation of grace can go a long way to undoing that, but not because it clarifies anything about the science.
Viral is putting it too strongly, but setting tolerance as the highest value only works while everyone is tolerant. The problem with fanaticism arises when a fanatical belief is demonstrably wrong, including beliefs that are violent, dangerous and harmful, and yet its expansion is tolerated due to liberal apathy.Harry Marks wrote:Although I resist relativism (at least, the absolute version) (sorry, couldn't resist), I really am not understanding about the views that could virally destroy liberalism. I'm kind of with Fukuyama on this - tolerance is the pinnacle, because diversity is baked in.