"I saw him [Evelyn Waugh] as like Bernanos, 'between the Angel of Light and the Angel of Darkness, looking at each in turn with the same enraged hunger for the absolute.' ..."
-- Malcolm Muggeridge
As of my posting of this essay hackers prevented me from using italics and bold script. "Errors" will be inserted, regularly, to maximize frustration effects. The goal is to produce a violent reaction or a statement that is sufficiently "politically incorrect" to justify further crimes committed against me. How any crimes can be justified is beyond me, but not beyond New Jersey's OAE. I expect this essay to be vandalized, repeatedly, and I will do my best to make all necessary corrections promptly.
James Wood, "The Celestial Teapot," in The New Republic, December 17, 2006, at p. 27.
Malcolm Muggeridge, "Affairs of the Heart" (New York: Dell, 1949).
Malcolm Muggeridge, "Chronicles of Wasted Time: An Autobiography" (Washington, D.C.: Regnery-Gateway, 1972).
Malcolm Muggeridge, "The End of Christendom" (Grand Rapis: William B. Erdman's Pub., 1980).
Since my last review of this essay, Mr. Wood has kindly shared with us, once again, his amazing wisdom on these troubling theological questions:
James Wood, "God in the Quad," in The New Yorker, August 31, 2009, at p. 75.
In response, I will post a review essay entitled: "Incoherence in 'The New Yorker.'" I am astonished to discover that Mr. Wood teaches at Harvard University. Happily, he teaches literature and not philosophy or theology. Mr. Wood explains to religious persons, everywhere in the world -- including many of the most distinguished scholars in the greatest universities, like his own school: "Since belief in God is clearly madness or weakness, the new atheists must scramble around for quasi-biological explanations for this stubborn malady."
Within a page, Mr. Wood will contradict himself and refute his primary contention to the extent that such a contention is discernible in this article. Religious believers seem delighted by their "malady," despite Professor Wood's discontent. I wonder whether Mr. Wood is related to David Stove? Jim Holt, perhaps? Manohla Dargis? Mathew Alper? Patricia Cohen?
Italics and bold script were unavailable when I first posted this essay.
I.
As I was reading this well-written article by James Wood, I experienced a strange "Twilight Zone"-like sense of encountering an earlier self in Mr. Wood's polished prose. Mr. Wood is forty. As I write the first draft of this essay, I am forty-nine. The views expressed by Mr. Wood and his manner of expressing them in this article are nearly identical to the sort of things I might have said when I was forty. Furthermore, they are expressed with the confidence and ease I often displayed then, when I allowed myself to reveal my "too-clever-by-half" side, which was rarely.
Mr. Wood suggests in this article that "this" (you mean, now?) may be atheism's moment of conquest. I doubt it. In fact, I believe that just the opposite is true. We are witnessing a renewal of the forms of spirituality. No one will destroy the religious impulse in men and women. The challenge is to direct that impulse in socially beneficial and humanitarian directions as opposed to violent and destructive "acting out" of fundamentalist passions in wars or suicide bombings.
The past seven to ten years in my life have been "eventful," as they say in romance novels, marked among other things by intense reading and study as well as great suffering. These years have been a difficult course of study, not so much academically as emotionally. I feel more and not less child-like and simple today than when I began my journey. I am more puzzled now by the questions which intrigue me than when I began thinking about them in earnest. Mr. Wood is fortunate. Mr. Wood is less puzzled than I ever have been or could ever be. He is much more confident about what is right and where he stands.
Mr. Wood explains all about atheism and religion in this article, indulging in an occasional dig at poor benighted masses of believers, clinging to archaic religious notions in a world that has moved beyond them. We simple readers are fortunate indeed to have Mr. Wood instruct us on these matters. Regrettably, I am more puzzled than enlightened after reading this article and others like it. Perhaps the wisdom of philosopher and journalist "Jim Holt" can guide my steps in this uncertain terrain. ("Incoherence in 'The New York Times.'")
Mr. Wood tells readers that he lost his faith early. He was already a kind of atheist at fifteen. Every clever boy is an atheist at fifteen. Some remain clever boys well beyond age fifteen. I was probably like that -- clever but not very wise. Mr. Wood writes: "I sat down with a piece of paper and drew a line down the middle: on one side I would compile my reasons to believe and on the other the reasons not to." (p. 27.)
Why didn't any of us think of this technique? For Mr. Wood, the debit side won out:
"On the debit side was: God's failure to answer prayers; the worldwide varieties of religious experiences" -- curiously, for some reason, this global popularity of faith is seen as a debit for religious belief? -- "and traditions, and a feeling that they could not be compatible; and, overwhelmingly, the difficulty of reconciling God with the reality of evil. The standard atheist package, alas." (p. 27.)
Well, that's that. Unfortunately, annoying Socratic questions continue to linger in my mind. Mr. Wood says that God fails to answer prayers. But how does he know whether God has answered a prayer?
"... because one knows what one has oneself requested, and therefore what has been denied. If you pray for a member of your congregation to get better and she dies, your prayer was not answered." (p. 27.)
Are you sure? Are you demanding that God answer your prayers as you would wish them to be answered? Are you asking God to do tricks for you? To perform for you? To do miracles for you? Are you asking God to be your pet dog? Do you think that "amuse" is what an infinite Being "does"? If there is a God, then is it His/Her mission to please you by entertaining or satisfying your every whim? Do you want God to be a magician at your birthday party? Do you think that you really know what you are asking when you pray?
Suppose a man asks God for a Rolex watch. He has been good all year. He pays his taxes. He votes for Republicans in every election. Or is Lucifer the Republican? Surely, God can toss a Rolex his way. It is not much to ask for, right? Nothing at all, really. Silence. No Rolex. Therefore, there is no God. Much the same is true when a woman votes for Democrats and asks for a Patek Philipe wristwatch. Same result. Hence, no God.
What if God wishes to teach this man something about how he should think about "things" and what value he should place on objects. Suppose that God wants this man to reflect on what he wishes to do with his wealth in a world of desperate poverty for billions of people? What if God intends for him to ask: "What is wealth?" Or: "What is value?" Our Republican friends will accuse us of Communism, of course, when they should speak of blasphemy in chatting about such matters on the golf course.
Don't get me wrong, it may be right for him to purchase that Rolex. He will enjoy it and his doing so will provide employment and economic benefits for others. It may also be true that he will learn that he does not need that expensive watch and that he doesn't really want it anyway. He can use the money for other reasons that will make him and others happier and better off. As a result of this "loss," our hypothetical friend may discover something about what it means to speak of luxury or wealth. It may turn out that this discovery about value will lead him to further discoveries that illuminate his mission and reveal a calling to serve others in life. He may learn the difference between value and price. None of this learning should preclude a person from admiring a beautiful object, like a great wristwatch.
My best thoughts are what I give away these days. I am told that this alone makes me a fool and unamerican. Please compare Alasdair MacIntyre, "Marxism and Christianity" (Indiana: Notre Dame, 1968) with Cornel West, "Prophecy, Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity!" (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1982).
What if he were really asking God a question about "happiness" by asking for a Rolex? What if he did not understand his question or his needs when he presented them to God? The only way for God to answer this man's prayer, lovingly, was by denying his request for a Rolex.
When we pray for someone not to die, are we really asking if we ourselves will have to die some day? If so, what will be the most truthful answer to that question? I did not ask for the most soothing or desired answer, but the most truthful or necessary answer?
Why do we have to die? The only answer to this question that makes sense (to me) is a single word -- "now." The infinite value of this instant -- shared within the privacy of my mind and heart, especially, with those I love and also with all others -- is based on the fragility of the fleeting moment. I love you ... now. Therefore, I love you forever and achingly, longingly, for the priceless loss of each instant that vanishes, further separating me from you.
Mortality gives my every breath and heartbeat that is and must be shared with all others eternal reality and incalculable value. Now is forever. This "forever" is what you take from a person separated from a loved-one: "To hold eternity in the palm of your hand and infinity in one hour." (William Blake)
The evil person causing suffering at this moment to another human being is befouling his or her own precious moment in time that is, necessarily, shared with his victim. You are your brother's keeper.
Mr. Wood moves on to the big problem. This is the obstacle that killed my religious faith, early in my life. The problem of evil:
"More devastating still to belief was the apprehension that there was a grotesque amount of suffering in the world, and that I could not reconcile this with any of the powers or qualities usually ascribed to God." (p. 28.)
Mr. Wood takes a Chinese menu approach to this question and tells us that:
"Theology's two most reliable offerings at the bazaar of theodicy are the Soul-Making and the Free Will Defense. [Surely, Mr. Wood means "Defenses," plural.] The former argues that suffering is some kind of mysterious training, inseparable from worldly existence, and finally a good in its own right. In heaven, anyway, 'God will wipe away all tears from their eyes,' as the Book of Revelation has it."
"The Free Will defense suggests that for us to act as moral agents we must have free will, and that as soon as we have free will we will abuse it." (p. 28.)
There are many clever and profound responses to this problem of evil. I am in the middle of a book about Leibnitz and Spinoza. I might indulge in a display of cleverness at Mr. Wood's expense by appropriating a powerful and subtle seventeenth century theodicy. There are some serious philosophical errors by Mr. Wood in this article. I prefer to think "with" him, in the simplest possible terms, about these issues and to invite readers to join us in doing so.
Let us pause to reflect on what is involved in this inquiry. Don't worry, I will point out errors, gently and politely, along the way. More important than errors, however, is clarity about what we are hoping to accomplish when thinking about such great mysteries. David Walsh, "Reason Within the Limits of Religion," in 'The Modern Philosophical Revolution: The Luminosity of Existence" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 53-60. ("Kant uses the language of METANOIA, by which the soul is transformed in the light of the idea of God.") Please see my essay "R.D. Laing and Evil."
What is evil? What do we mean by "God"? What are we asking when we confront this terrible phenomenon? Why is it that the vast majority of Americans and others, all over the world, believe in God -- as many as 95% of Americans think of themselves, in some sense, as "spiritual" or "religious" persons? Are they all deluded or stupid? Are they all suffering from a "malady"? Even the graduates of Harvard University's Divinity School are mentally ill for believing in God, Mr. Wood? ("Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")
Given these facts, how is it possible for a tiny group of highly privileged people -- who disagree about the existence of God -- to speak of this as "atheism's moment"? Is a little humility not called for before making such a confident assertion? Is this the moment for another inserted "error"?
An "error" was indeed inserted in the foregoing sentence, answering my question. How does it feel to be treated the way you treat others, ladies and gentlemen of New Jersey? The spacing between paragraphs has been altered several times and italics come and go in the text. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")
I am not suggesting -- and I certainly will not argue -- that religion should only supply comfort for the oppressed, deprived, violated, who should forget their hopes for justice in this world or their outrage at evil in order to focus on the next world (if there is a next world), leaving evil to those concerned with legal justice (who are often evil themselves, as in New Jersey).
I respect religion as a form of resistance to oppression and inspiration for necessary revolutions -- ideally, rebellions in evil places (like New Jersey), where persons may be moved by their faiths to burn evil-doers in Trenton. Start with Lesniak, Rabner, Milgram and Codey. Later, the faithful are welcome to pray for the souls of these sinners to the extent that they have souls. Yes, I am joking. I think.
II.
Let us begin with Mr. Wood's statement of the issue:
"The existence of great pain and evil in the world limits God's power or qualifies his [sic.] goodness. If he allows enormous suffering, then he is not good, and if he cannot stop this suffering, then he is not very powerful." (p. 28.)
"Orthodox theology," according to Mr. Wood, "admits that it cannot 'solve' this dilemma." (p. 28.) I have not spoken to "orthodox theology" lately, so I am not sure of which theological tradition Mr. Wood has in mind in making this claim. Is he? Is Mr. Wood alluding to Catholic or Protestant theologians? Jews? Moslems? Each of these faiths has a profound and unique tradition of reflection on this set of problems. We are not told what are Mr. Wood's targets of criticism. Mr. Wood tends to confuse several thinkers' ideas, along with apologetic traditions developed in rival Christian traditions. It may be helpful to provide a clearer statement of the issue. Notice the first six words in this paragraph:
"In Christianity and other Western religions, God is supposed to be omnipotent (i.e., able to do anything logically possible), omniscient (i.e., able to know everything logically possible to know), and perfectly good; yet manifestly there is evil (e.g., pain and other suffering) in the world. Atheists have argued [as a challenge to believers] that since an omnipotent being could prevent evil if [He/She] chose, an omnipotent being would always choose to do so, [therefore,] there is no God of the kind supposed."
Ted Honderich, ed., "The Oxford Companion to Philosophy" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 254-255.
In formulating the issue in terms of a "problem" of evil and accepting the reality of this problem -- even as a valid challenge for believers -- Mr. Wood has undermined his own position as, say, a pro-science skeptic who accepts the validity of the fact/value distinction (he alludes, vaguely, to Wittgenstein), even as he rejects the idea of God, or of a world filled with objective values.
To see the world as characterized by evil is to enter the moral domain. To accept that the world has only events and facts, amenable to pure factual descriptions distinct from all values, is to vanish the problem: there is, then, no such thing as evil. Things happen. That is all. It is all "relative." Murder of an innocent child is only bad from the child's "perspective." Maybe it is only bad from the point of view of a human observer who "chooses" to regard such an act as evil.
To regard a "valueless" description of the human world and events as possible or "worth" pursuing (valuing a valueless description) is to choose a world denuded or deprived of ALL ideals or values -- a world without evil because it is also without good -- and such a world poses no moral challenge to the existence of God. On the contrary, such a conception is a kind of theodicy that says there is no evil, everything just "is." God becomes the absent clockmaker of this mechanical universe whose purposes may remain inscrutable. ("John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")
The moment you regard evil as a REAL characteristic of the world, or of human actions as such, "objectively," you have made some important ontological commitments -- also metaethical and ethical commitments -- regardless of whether you "wish" to do so.
Notice that to reject evil as existing in the world is also to make a metaphysical commitment, again, for this is to postulate the metaphysical emptiness of the world which becomes a "Wasteland." For the true nihilist, there is no evil. Things just happen. All judgments of value (for nihilists) are mere subjective "choices." Hence, there is no objective point from which to say that the Holocaust, for example, was an evil event. It was O.K. for Hitler; not O.K. for Hitler's victims and us, according to the nihilists and skeptics.
The language of good and evil is a religious language. Abandoning that language may amount to a surrender of our humanity. These ontological commitments are analogous to logical entailments. To give up the language of good and evil is to abandon valuing, which is essential to what we mean by "persons." This is a kind of death. Despite trendy opinions these days, such a surrender of the moral faculty is harder than it seems. Rentention of the moral faculty, however, will bring us soon to the concept of God. Pick your poison.
It is not a response to the logic of these observations to delete a word from or insert another "error in this essay. Such vandalism of this text is an expression of frustration and admittance of intellectual bankruptcy in this debate on the part of my adversaries.
Any more "errors" to be inserted, boys and girls? Would you care to destroy my capacity to use italics or bold script as a response to what I am saying? ("'The Rite': A Movie Review.")
The moment you say that the world contains only events. The moment you regard values (subjective) as individual impositions or judgments of events that occur in the empirical world (objective), you have made all judgments of value "relative" and, allegedly, unobjective. Interpretations may be objective without being natural phenomena, like rocks and trees. To regard the world of events as more real than the world of interpretations is a value judgment.
There is no "evil" for the nihlist. There are merely different perspectives on events. However, every human event is also an action, a product of intentionality, and actions necessarily unfold in the moral as well as empirical realm at the same "time." An action is not merely an event.
Any position in philosophy involves "entanglements" -- as does any stance in recent mathematical and physics theories. Mr. Wood, seemingly, fails to appreciate this point. There is no such thing as evil unless there is goodness. In stating the problem of evil, Mr. Wood has tacitly accepted the idea of an all-powerful and benevolent God who makes the existence of evil a "problem." Notice that, for believers, this is a problem for human understanding, not for God.
Mr. Wood has accepted a good God's possible existence and is engaged in religious speculation by deploying the language of "evil." Any number of scholars insist on this point, God is beyond human notions of good and evil, since His perspective transcends all partial and limited relations and views of persons. In the Hegelian and idealist tradition evil dissolves in the Absolute, as the conflicts of history are resolved with Spirit's self-recognition:
"Moral evil exists only in moral experience, and that experience in its essence is full of inconsistency. For morality desires unconsciously, with the suppression of evil, to become wholly non-moral [i.e., to transcend the partiality of human moral categories.] It certainly would shrink from this end, but it thus unknowingly desires the existence and perpetuity of evil. ... Morality itself, which makes evil [possible,] desires in evil to remove a condition of its own being. It labors essentially to pass into a supermoral and therefore a non-moral sphere." (Love.)
This is to set the stage for Friedrich Nietzsche's "Superman." Without a subject that transcends human moral ordering, evil is (allegedly) "all relative." After all, "what is good for Hitler may not be good for me," I was told by an adversary in philosophical debate.
Evil in the world means there must be good in the world. Mr. Wood's second article in "The New Yorker" is worse than the first, making assumptions concerning God and faith that are truly bizarre. Notice the next line of argument:
"But, if we will follow it and will frankly adopt this tendency, we may dispose of our difficulty. For the content, willed as evil and in opposition to the good, can enter as an element into a wider arrangement. Evil, as we say (usually without meaning it), is overruled and subserves. It is enlisted and it plays a part in a higher good end, and in this sense, unknowingly is good."
F.H. Bradley, "Appearance and Reality" (New York: McMillan, 1897), pp. 201-202.
Goethe's Mephistopheles explains: "I am that spirit that, seeking to do evil, always does good."
Even in the darkest moment of the Holocaust, as millions were murdered, there are surviving accounts of human love so great that persons chose to share the suffering and pain of a neighbor, sometimes a stranger, even at the cost of their lives. Now. One such action of selfless love -- a single instant of absolute self-giving -- is sufficient to establish that the world is not entirely evil, that the gates of hell shall not prevail against love, that human goodness, gentleness, and grace are indestructible.
For a symbol of such indestructibility in the seemingly fragile, I suggest a visit to the MET Museum where among the artifacts from China are Sung and Ming porcelains, some are eggshell thin and beautiful beyond my ability to describe, like a Raphael Madonna. These objects have survived for centuries. Their loveliness and grace is timeless. They express "the feminine grace of China combined with masculine strength." All of the calamities and wars of two centuries in America have not altered them. Love is like those beautiful objects. Love is tougher than you think. These essays vandalized dozens of times in a desperate effort to discredit arguments that have prevailed against all opposition for centuries will also endure, inviting the attention and consideration of readers against all efforts at cybercrime, censorship and suppression.
Many years ago I visited the Jewish Museum in New York to see Hebrew manuscripts from medieval Spain that had survived all of the horrors of the Inquisition and events of subsequent centuries. Some had been hidden for their owners, allegedly, by scholars who happened to be priests. They were astonishing examples of devotion and loving creative artistry, copied by hand -- over decades probably in the life of a single scribe -- at the risk of this person's life, communicating the ethics of the Law.
This act of writing is a work of love and a tribute to the indestructibility of Judaism and Israel that is more impressive than all the weapons in the world.
One person's sacrifice for another establishes human dignity against all of the buffeting powers of fate or malice. Every person -- even the person who hurts us -- deserves respect for his or her dignity and due process of law before the infliction of legal punishment. If you are capable of being disturbed by the reality of evil then you are already "within" the concept of God (substitute the word "Goodness" for "God") as a universe of discourse. ("Is it rational to believe in God?")
I expected more sabotage than I have encountered, so far. ("The Soldier and the Ballerina.")
"I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is at once the type and test of all great art. What the artist is always looking for is the mode of existence in which soul and body are one and indivisible: in which the outward is expressive of the inward: in which form reveals. Of such modes of existence there are not a few: youth and the arts preoccupied with youth may serve as a model for us at one moment: at another we may like to think that, in its subtlety and sensitiveness of impression, its suggestion of a spirit dwelling in external things and making its raiment of earth and air, of mist and city alike, and in its morbid sympathy of its moods, and tones, and colours, modern landscape art is realizing for us pictorially what was realized in such plastic perfection by the Greeks. [Turner's seascapes.] Music, in which all subject is absorbed in expression and cannot be separated from it, is a complex example, and a flower or a child a simple example, of what I mean; but sorrow is the ultimate type both in life and art."
Oscar Wilde, "De Profundis," in "De Profundis and Other Writings" (London: Penguin, 1984), pp. 160-161.
Mr. Wood is blissfully unaware of this difficulty concerning entanglement, as I say, or of the fine mess he has got himself into. R.G. Collingwood's caution concerning the importance of history and of appreciating the question to which any philosophical position is an answer should be borne in mind by the reader, since it is forgotten by Mr. Wood.
I am afraid that Mr. Wood's discussion becomes progressively more muddled as he proceeds to state his case against God. Mr. Wood's understanding of the "Soul-Making" and "Free Will" arguments is inadequate. There are several flawed assumptions made -- most importantly one that is unarticulated concerning what is meant by "God" and "heaven" -- assumptions that have the effect of erasing Mr. Wood's sentences even as he writes them. I will deal with this issue later in concluding this essay.
Having established that Mr. Wood has, unknowingly, rejected atheism -- not God -- by accepting the reality of the "problem of evil," we are now in a position to examine his critique of the "defenses" to the "presence of evil difficulty" in accepting God, defenses which are offered by great philosophers and theologians to this day. Mr. Wood's critique of these defenses is also incoherent. There is no substantial discussion concerning what is a "solution" to this "problem," or whether a solution is needed at all by the religious believer.
Devout persons, among whom one might include thinkers of the caliber of Kierkegaard and Simone Weil, say simply "trust." From the ultimate perspective of God or the Absolute, there is no evil. In giving God that trust and in prayer, you must approach the divinity in "fear and trembling" and not as if you were hanging out with your high school friends or others that you are in a position to "judge." Kierkegaard would say, gently, "it is not all relative to us." We are a part of an infinite order that includes moral meaning. We see through a glass darkly.
Albert Camus responds: "The final judgment will be of God and not of man." Further reflection might have taught, even so great a thinker, that such a judgment and condemnation can only concern men and women, never really God, whose love is such -- I know that this is paradoxical -- that He stands in the dock with the offender and also on the bench with the judge. Evil disappears with faith because it vanishes in the ultimate goodness of the whole that chooses to accept or embrace evil in order to transcend it, even while suffering horribly from the same evil. This is a language of metaphors.
Christ instructs followers not merely to forgive, but to love their enemies. I think we will all agree that this is not easy. I am sure that a world of genuine Christians, persons acting on this instruction, will be a more peaceful and beautiful world than the one we know. If you find such a world, then please tell me where it is. The Christian response is: "Here and now."
The gross misunderstanding of Islamic theories of heaven are based on too literal a reading of attempts to describe the state of identification with God/Allah. The intricacy in the lettering of texts from the Koran in mosques is a representation of the unity or "entanglement" of all things in God's "Law." You stand within that law and are a moral subject, even if you are not a Moslem. Every person's soul is a verse from the Koran.
A new "error" has been inserted since my review. I have now corrected it.
The meaning of both sacrifice and murder in the camps cannot be known by any one person in any single lifetime. This is not to suggest that there is no meaning to the Shoah. "Pleasure for the beautiful body," Wilde says, "but pain for the beautiful soul." Perhaps the true Christian world of love may be found or created even or especially at Auschwitz. The goodness required by the Law in Judaism followed the victims into the camps and crematoria.
We are engaged in philosophical and theological speculation, against a barrage of censorship and cybercrime, which is also an invitation to those who would silence us to reflect on these issues and arguments. The great misunderstanding of love on the part of evil-doers is always the inability to see the indestructible power of love against injustice, corruption, material might.
We will not be moved. We will not be destroyed. We shall overcome.
Men who were kept in a prison and tortured spoke to me of conducting philosophical discussions in their worst torture chambers. Macolm X transformed his prison experience into a self-administered university education. Philosophy has the power to banish ignorance and brutality even in the worst hell holes imaginable. Henry Chadwick, "Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).
The moral law in Judaism is not insular nor exclusive because all persons are moral subjects in Judaism, including non-Jews. Eichmann received a trial and defense. Conviction rested on evidence and the death sentence was not preceded by torture or years in a concentration camp. Israel would not do to Eichmann what he had done to millions of other human beings, even as it punished him in accordance with the law. Not even Eichman could be denied basic human dignity in Israel. ("The Audacity of Hope.")
Italics come and go in this essay as words continue to be deleted from my sentences.
Hitler's mistaken assessment of British culture and resolve is repeated by evil-doers, every day: Our human gentleness and compassion for those who are weak or sick is compatible with indestructible and fearless struggle against those who would hurt such helpless persons. ("Why Terry Eagleton Hates Americans.")
Another "error" inserted and corrected on a day when my access to the Internet has been obstructed.
For Hegel and Bradley -- whose Absolute is not moral in a human sense only, I must emphazise this, because it transcends all human moralities and perspectives -- evil is linked necessarily to finite relations among particulars (you and me), thus dissolving in the perspective of the Absolute that is beyond such relations while giving them meaning. The religious background to this issue is irremovable from the discussion:
"My conclusion is that the notion of evil cannot be readily detached from its previous theological and metaphysical contexts as some contemporary thinkers assume. For it is hard to see how evil can be thought of as both relational and radical (or absolute), contrastive and non-contrastive, without drawing on conceptual resources such as those deployed by German idealism."
Take another look at my point about ontological commitments or think of entanglement relations in physics:
"Not to think of evil in this way would deprive it of the quality that Paul Ricoeur, formulating the same paradox, describes as 'absolute character of irruption.' For Ricoeur this quality is crucial to our sense of evil. Furthermore, to take evil seriously, ... is to run up against the limits of any morally relativizing view of the world, including [any] position of radical finitude."
Peter Dews, "'Radical Finitude' and the Problem of Evil," in Maria Pia Lara, ed., "Rethinking Evil" (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), p. 51-52 and Paul Ricoeur, "Evil: A Challenge to Philosophy and Theology" (New York & London: Continuum, 2004), pp. 27-28: "Evil is inscribed on the heart of the human subject (the subject of law or a moral subject), on the heart of the extremely complex and deliberately historical REALITY that makes up the human subject."
Terry Eagleton's beautifully written essay "On Evil" (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010) is recommended. In pondering the attempts to destroy or suppress my writings, every day, I am reminded of Professor Eagleton's comment concerning "the kind of cruelty which seeks to relieve a frightful inner lack." (p. 106.)
Is it possible that the existence of evil is an argument against nihilism and for a loving and all-powerful God? Consider this comment by Hans Jonas -- German and Jew, philosopher and theologian -- whose life coincided with horrible events in Germany and whose faith is dismissed by Mr. Wood as "madness" or, at best, a "malady":
"... this I like to believe: that there was weeping in the heights at the waste and despoliation of humanity ... 'The voice of thy brother's blood cries unto me from the ground': Should we not believe that the immense chorus of such cries that has risen up in our lifetimes [Auschwitz] now hangs over our world as a dark and accusing cloud? That eternity looms down upon us with a frown, wounded itself and perturbed in its depths?"
"Mortality and Morality: A Search for the Good After Auschwitz" (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996), p. 129 (quoted by Dews, supra at p. 48.)
In a truly Godless universe, Auschwitz produces only indifference. Our horror and disgust at evil ("America's Holocaust") point to its opposite. For Jonas, God gives himself -- "bleeds" creation and freedom "for" humanity -- electing to share in human suffering and mortality, as the payment necessary for the POSSIBLE achievement by each one of us of our true human spiritual identity, through our free choices made in agony.
Christ (for Christians) is the point at which God's love and human suffering meet. ("No Charges for Alleged Child Porn Possession in New Jersey.")
Christ is what the moral law is in Jewish thinking on this issue (for Jews), the Covenant with God; or the moral guidance of Mohammed (in Islam); or the ways to enlightenment in Hinduism; and Dharma in Buddhism -- all of these religious traditions seek to convey instructions and examples, for life, by way of symbols to cope with evil. The shared aim of religions is to mediate between divinity -- moral life -- and "natural" humanity in order to reconcile love with power. ("Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory.")
I cannot overstate the importance of a face-to-face encounter accross a desk with absolute evil. Persons who have known such ... "beings" (I hesitate to use the word "persons") will never be the same. The abyss that opens at one's feet simply cannot be described at second hand. ("The Wanderer and His Shadow.")
I urge you to view the videotaped interviews with Jeffrey Dahmer. It is impossible to view those tapes and avoid the conclusion that Mr. Dahmer was a terribly afflicted and impoverished human being. One recoils in horror and pity from becoming Jeffrey Dahmer, preferring the fate of his victims to the affectless and sub-human state of this zombie-like monster. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")
Another "error" inserted and corrected, after months when this text was untouched.
Few of the victims of the camps would have opted to be Mengele even if this would have meant salvation from the ovens. Why?
I ask Mr. Wood to consider whether ALL religious believers as opposed to persons like Mr. Dhamer -- whether Dhamer acted as an atheist or as a religious fundamentalist -- are suffering from a "malady." What kind of religion is a "malady"? Why is religion a "malady"? How is religion understood? Is either atheism or nihilism a greater religious "malady"? Mr. Wood does not tell us. Perhaps he does not know what he thinks on this question.
Mr. Wood fails to appreciate the philosophical and theological history of this problem and dialogue. The problem of evil is a dilemma for believers, not for atheists. Hence, Mr. Wood has revealed himself to be, again, either a believer malgre lui ... or a very confused journalist who is serenely confident (for some reason) that the issue is very simple. In fact, it is very difficult, for us. Incidentally, the moral difficulties associated with the encounter with absolute evil that I describe are of two different kinds: 1) rage at evil actions that blinds us to the remnants of the evil person's humanity; or 2) indifference to the criminal and his acts, resulting from disgust, which reduces us to the same level as the evil human being.
I highly recommend Chief Inspector Jane Tennyson's solutions to these troubles -- a sense of duty, discipline, effort and long rests. The challenge is to refrain from behaving towards those human monsters without affect in the way that they behave towards their victims, as tempting as such inclinations become, because there may be no return from ultimate levels of hatred. This avoidance of hatred is a matter of daily struggle. Gaza? 9/11?
What is "soul-making"? Mr. Wood believes that this has to do with "some kind of mysterious training inseparable from worldy existence, and finally a good in its own right." (p. 28.) This issue is, in fact, much more complicated and cannot be distinguished easily from free will discussions. The very idea of a human being involves the concept of freedom. Freedom is simply what we are. This is true in a way that cannot be attributed to any other creatures that we know or encounter in the empirical world. It is the difference in us that makes a difference -- both ontologically and morally -- in our social lives. Freedom is a painful thing. The absence of freedom is death as a person. Jeffrey Dahmer is the perfect example of this spiritual death.
"... in all talk of freedom, morals, and so on, what is worth talking about is not what a person ought to or can do but the sort of person he might or could be. There may be certain actions to be recommended about this, but these will not be to do with the things originally under discussion: these (and whatever is done about them) are of less importance."
Nicholas Mosley, "Experience and Religion" (London: Dalkey Archive Press, 2006), p. 41.
We must be good to do good. We choose and are aware of our actions. This amounts to saying, like it or not, that we are forced into moral life if we are persons. Some are willing to abandon this burden of being persons becoming something subhuman, like a concentration camp guard. Terry Tuchin? (Mengele) Stuart Rabner? (Eichmann) This means that our choices are always shadowed by suffering and pain. Each day that the cover-up continues is a renewal of the tortures.
Malcolm Muggeridge in a conversation with William F. Buckley, Jr. spoke of Shakespeare's defense of the sufferings endured by King Lear as necessary to the play, to the meaning of the work and its moral wisdom or aesthetic purposes. "No pain, no gain" says the sign at "Crunch Gym." The same is true in the spiritual workout that we call "life." Recall my quotation from Oscar Wilde concerning the "beautiful soul."
None of this justifies inflicting pain on others in order to claim that survival of that pain has taught the victim a great deal. To scoff at the claim that, in heaven, "all tears will be wiped away and we will be free of pain and suffering," (p. 28) is to fail to understand that heaven (like God) is not far away or a distant place to which we may go, but that both are here and now, part of us always. Heaven is God's sharing in our sufferings and pains as love. Again, these are metaphors.
We cannot avoid thinking in symbols and metaphors when pondering such matters. Therefore, the claim that in heaven "there is no freedom" -- because if there were freedom, humans would merely abuse it again -- is absurd. Heaven is a moral and spiritual space where freedom results in love, necessarily. In heaven, evil is no longer possible because "love is the light that disperses the darkness." Heaven is an option for all of us, at any time and place, even in Auschwitz.
Heaven is the turn to that loving and suffering God (Love) -- not "out there" in the world, but "in here," within the self. To love is not to go for a walk on a deserted beach and hold hands, it is to hurt with and for others, while struggling for justice. Love may be the only force that allows us to walk away from violence and hatred. It follows from this reasoning that freedom is essential to what we are because it enables us to make the difficult choices -- agonizingly -- that will lead us to build a human soul, to achieve goodness, gentleness and grace, by means of a life-long overcoming of our baser instincts, that is, by overcoming evil within and outside of ourselves. This is what many philosophers describe as the loving dialectic. (The 'Galatea Scenario' and the Mind/Body Problem" and "A Doll's Aria.")
Is this capacity for love also a "malady" to be cured with violence? Why will I always refuse violence or the destruction of any book? Because both actions seem to diminish a person in a horrible and nearly irreparable way. To realize that there are persons in this world whose goal is to make others violent, psychotic or suicidal is to appreciate the loss of humanity in all forms of cruelty. What you do to another you do to yourself.
Any more inserted "errors"? I have just corrected an inserted "error" for the tenth time, at least the tenth time. Think of the SICKNESS that causes a person to deface this essay once more. ("Invicta Watch Company" and "The Invicta Watch Company Caper.")
It is exceedingly difficult to sustain such a state of constant struggle. Jihad. Agon. Stations of the Cross. Kabbalistic discipline. Buddhist monasticism. Most of us are deeply flawed and imperfect animals, but striving, aspiring, hopeful creatures, nevertheless, seeking the true fulfillment of our natures. Full humanity. And this spiritual realization makes goodness flow and prevents us from committing evil acts because we then -- by loving -- find ourselves in a psychic space that excludes even the possibility of hatred or intentionally harming others, as a freely chosen course of action for us.
If you are good, then you can only do good. All it takes to be good is to love and remain in that love "eternally." Now. The message is simple and true. Yet achievement of this goal is the most difficult challenge possible for any of us. It is made more difficult by those using the whip against us, every day, which is the condition of most persons on the planet today. None of this precludes us from insisting on justice and punishment of evil-doers. ("An Open Letter to My Torturers in New Jersey, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli.")
It is confused to ask: Why "heaven was not instituted on earth"? Heaven is instituted on earth and possibly (for believers) beyond this vale of tears. God is here and now. All you have to do is to desire and reach out for God (love) and heaven (loving) in your life. The effort required in moral and spiritual struggle is overwhelming, as I say, because so much ego and pain must be lived through and accepted in order to be transcended. You must affirm this world of shadows. Hegel offers a secularization of this greatest human wisdom in strictly philosophical terms:
"If all things are members of a living whole, the life that animates that whole must have a wider definition, -- it must be a life which comprehends even life itself. Pain, disharmony, and evil, must be seen to be incapable of breaking through the all-embracing unity, and even to be themselves the means of realizing it. Unreason itself must find a place, were it only a place to annihilate itself, under the universal rule of reason [and guidance of love,] which impartially rains its fertilizing showers upon the evil and the good, and stimulates each in turn to show what is in it; since just in this impartiality lies security for the triumph of good. In such a theory optimism must be reached not by the exclusion but by the exhaustion of pessimism [and evil:] the ultimate affirmation of philosophy must include in itself and overcome all the negations and contradictions of skepticism."
Edward Caird, "Hegel" (London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1883), pp. 38-39.
You begin to see the Christian source of Niezsche's advice to "will" your life by "becoming the person you are." This effort can only be described as a via cruxis. This embrace of pain -- including the pain of those we love -- is the only way to be fully human. In theological language, this is to discover God as the companion of our journeys, at every step, with every breath and fall that we take. Each of us is carrying a cross. We are asked for something more. We are asked to help carry the cross of our neighbor.
Defacing my writings or preventing me from using italics or destroying my computer does not seem like much of a refutation of these insights. Invading the life of a victim, acting secretly on that life in order to "condition" or force a person in a direction you deem desirable, or to destroy a victim in accordance with the wishes of governments, is the epitome of evil as it constitutes a denial of freedom or the status of "persons" to victims. How do you live with yourself, Terry Tuchin? Diana Lisa Riccioli? Stuart Rabner? ("Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?")
Yet another letter was removed from a word and restored to that word by me.
Years and months of abuse have to be overcome, without surrendering to rage or a desire for vengeance -- rejecting violence every day -- while always insisting on justice. Hypocrisy and sanctimony must be endured, again, without succumbing to anger or cruelty. Hideous laughter at one's deepest thoughts and aspirations, humiliations, insults, abuse become familiar companions for billions of people in the world. Censorship. Silencing. Neglect.
The tendency to twist us into knots of hatred and violence in response to such treatment, at the hands of those who then, hypocritically, seek to instruct us concerning "ethics" or to wield power over us (which is also the experience of the vast majority of persons in this world), can easily transform any of us into moral monsters, like our tormentors.
Love alone prevents this all-too-human fall into lethal despair that can only explode in collective hatred and violence -- often self-violence for many women, especially, who are denied love as opposed to sex in their lives. ("What is it like to be censored in America?" and "How censorship works in America" then "What is it like to be plagiarized?")
"Above all, man comes to himself only by being addressed; as one who was brought into existence as a creature, he moreover becomes fully himself only by responding. He himself is the language [love as a human choice] that God uses to speak to him; how could he not understand himself better than anywhere else? Coming into existence in God's light, he enters into his own clarity, without thereby endangering his nature (in a spiritual fashion) or his creaturehood (through pride). Man becomes whole ... only in God's salvation ... . The sign of the God who empties Himself into humanity, death, and abandonment by God, shows us why God came forth from Himself, indeed descended below Himself, as creator of the world: it corresponds to His absolute being and essence to reveal Himself in His unfathomable and absolutely uncompelled freedom as INEXHAUSTIBLE LOVE. This love is not the absolute Good beyond being, but is the depth and height, the length and breath of being itself "... here and now.
Hans Urs Von Balthasar, S.J. "Love Alone is Credible" (San Francisco: St. Ignatius, 2004), p. 145 (emphasis added).
I continue to emphasize that this condition of affliction and suffering is the plight of the overwhelming majority of people. I am sure that this reality is meaningful and goes a long way towards explaining the popularity of religion as a "malady." Perhaps religion is more of a cure than a malady, as love is always both sickness and cure. There are two orientations in life: some people side with the suffering masses; others identify with those inflicting the suffering. It is difficult to dispute the observation of one political leader that: "those who turn their backs on the poor are rejecting Christ." Forget who said it. Ask yourself: Do you agree with this observation? I do. ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'")
By "creating the world" is meant investing the world with meanings discernible by conscious subjects who participate in this creation. In other words, God's "creation" of the world is the grace that allows us to create ourselves through our meanings and understandings of all that is. (Thomas Jefferson, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Merton, Simone Weil, Gustavo Gutierrez and many others have echoed these thoughts.)
You must share in the creation of the world, every day, because you can not avoid creating yourself. The analogy to phenomenological-hermeneutics in aesthetics is obvious. When does a movie happen? What is a movie? What is the meaning of any movie? You decide. (For a film that is also a work of theology, see Harold Pinter's/Elia Kazan's "The Last Tycoon.")
You got something better than freedom and love? This insight does not seem all that trite or shallow to me. I do not believe that science conflicts with this message of love. As for the nonsense which provides Mr. Wood with his title, it is borrowed from a famous Bertrand Russell essay. Russell admits that the existence of God cannot be disproved, but neither can "a celestial teapot orbiting the sun." (p. 30.)
With a chuckle, Mr. Wood comments: "... we cannot prove God's non-existence, but we cannot prove anything's non-existence." (p. 30.)
I think we can prove that love is better than hate, empirically. But there is a significant difference between God and this hypothetical teapot. God seems to be "experienced" by people, here and now, and is not simply beyond us in a distant place. He is imminent in creation; not merely transcendent. His/Her mystery is that He/She is also transcendent. You are here physically; mentally, you may be elsewhere. We share in this so-called "divine" capacity for "multiplicity." Perhaps, the universe also shares in this (feminine?) complexity and variability. Again: this is poetry that communicates ethical truth. ("Pieta" and "Metaphor is Mystery.")
There is a highly plausible philosophical defense of the concept of God available to believers that does not require resort to revelation. God cannot be disproved. This is a negative defense of the concept of God. There is also a positive defense of the concept of God based on the testimony of first-hand experience of God by many persons:
"Surely, reality is what we think it is; reality that is revealed to us by our experiences."
Brian Greene, "Roads to Reality," in "The Fabric of the Universe" (London: Penguin, 2004), p. 5.
Many people continue to "experience" God, collectively and individually. Are they all deluded? Have you experienced the "concept" of evolution in its totality? Can you be certain that your experience of any concept, scientific or otherwise, is identical to another person's experience of that same concept? Concepts are universals. Have you experienced America? Not your section of America, but America as a nation with a two hundred year history? If not, then would you say that America, as a nation, does not exist? Your acceptance of the totality of America's existence is an act of faith. To the extent that you are alive and capable of love -- to that extent, you already experience God as instantiated in your loving, which is Being.
If you answer that you experience America's history and vastness -- both geographical and moral vastness -- from wherever you are in the country, then I ask that you think, again, about the concept of God. If you have loved another person, Simone Weil suggests, then you have shared in the essence of God -- for God is that love that you have felt for a child, say, whether you recognized Her, as love, or not. She recognizes you.
Like God, each of us is an experience and an invitation. For this reason the exorcist demands the name of the demon possessing a victim in the Catholic ritual -- This insistence on name-giving is both a demand for recognition and act of revelation or assertion of freedom against evil. Malice always prefers the slithering behind-the-back attack from the darkness to any face-to-face confrontation.
Will you accept or reject an invitation from God (love) to become the person you are?
