To Keep a True Lent
by Robert Herrick
Is this a fast, to keep
The larder lean ?
And clean
From fat of veals and sheep ?
Is it to quit the dish
Of flesh, yet still
To fill
The platter high with fish ?
Is it to fast an hour,
Or ragg’d to go,
Or show
A downcast look and sour ?
No ; ‘tis a fast to dole
Thy sheaf of wheat,
And meat,
Unto the hungry soul.
It is to fast from strife,
From old debate
And hate ;
To circumcise thy life.
To show a heart grief-rent ;
To starve thy sin,
Not bin ;
And that’s to keep thy Lent.
Saturday, April 09, 2011
To Starve Thy Sin, Not Bin
Friday, April 08, 2011
Hume as Historian
Daniel Little has a post on Hume as historian at "Understanding Society." I think gets some things right, although I think it also overlooks some very important things.
(1) It is quite true that Hume's History is highly biographical and focused on linear narrative. But I think it's inaccurate to say that "The narrative proceeds from court to parliament to war to plots to trials and executions, with virtually no commentary on the sequence." In fact, none of Hume's contemporaries read him this way: they read it as a continual commentary. In the charged politics of the time it was impossible for them not to do so. Many of the interpretations of events Hume makes were very controversial interpretations; as Hume somewhat melodramatically put it, everyone was united in rage against the man who presumed to shed a tear for King Charles and the Earl of Stafford. (It's also very hyperbolic since the History was very popular, indeed, Hume's most popular work in his lifetime and for a considerable time afterward.) His work was also widely seen as a sustained attack against Calvinism. The reasons for this are important, and lead us to the second point.
(2) We know from Hume's letters that the reason he shortchanges most of England's early history is that it is with the Stuarts that he first could clearly see the operation of factions. And this is exactly what the History of England is: it is a sustained study of factions in the concrete case of England. It is a biographical history, but saying that it is a biographical history makes it sound as if it were just a story of Great Men. But there is a reason it is biographical, and the reason is that factions lift up elites. Factions form around people, or certain people become representative of them, and so forth. All the economic and social context that Little finds missing in Hume is missing because factions don't take them into account except in very limited ways; the oppositions between Court and Country, for instance, were never about finer details of economics or government.
(3) Further, I think it's important to pay close attention to the mechanisms to which Hume explicitly appeals. These mechanisms aren't explained at great length in the History itself; in order to find theoretical discussion of them we have to go to Hume's essays. But they are there. Superstition (or priestcraft) and enthusiasm are posited as playing a real causal role in large parts of the History, for instance. As I've noted before, there's some room to doubt about whether Hume's use of them is sufficiently coherent for them to do the work he clearly thinks they need to be doing, and Hume's Calvinist critics, like MacQueen, pressed his use of superstition and enthusiasm as causal explanations very hard. But the important thing for our purposes is that there is in fact a large scale theoretical explanation of events going on throughout the History, one involving Hume's theories of political and religious factions. That he is less abstract in his explanations than Gibbon is certainly true; but that's because abstractions don't explain: particular events do. Hume's treatment of the particular events as explanatory, however, does involve a real theoretical set of ideas about how explanation in historical matters should work. It's just not right to say that there are no explanatory themes in the work; every page is full of them, and what is more, they were recognized as such, and criticized as such, by Hume's contemporaries.
(1) It is quite true that Hume's History is highly biographical and focused on linear narrative. But I think it's inaccurate to say that "The narrative proceeds from court to parliament to war to plots to trials and executions, with virtually no commentary on the sequence." In fact, none of Hume's contemporaries read him this way: they read it as a continual commentary. In the charged politics of the time it was impossible for them not to do so. Many of the interpretations of events Hume makes were very controversial interpretations; as Hume somewhat melodramatically put it, everyone was united in rage against the man who presumed to shed a tear for King Charles and the Earl of Stafford. (It's also very hyperbolic since the History was very popular, indeed, Hume's most popular work in his lifetime and for a considerable time afterward.) His work was also widely seen as a sustained attack against Calvinism. The reasons for this are important, and lead us to the second point.
(2) We know from Hume's letters that the reason he shortchanges most of England's early history is that it is with the Stuarts that he first could clearly see the operation of factions. And this is exactly what the History of England is: it is a sustained study of factions in the concrete case of England. It is a biographical history, but saying that it is a biographical history makes it sound as if it were just a story of Great Men. But there is a reason it is biographical, and the reason is that factions lift up elites. Factions form around people, or certain people become representative of them, and so forth. All the economic and social context that Little finds missing in Hume is missing because factions don't take them into account except in very limited ways; the oppositions between Court and Country, for instance, were never about finer details of economics or government.
(3) Further, I think it's important to pay close attention to the mechanisms to which Hume explicitly appeals. These mechanisms aren't explained at great length in the History itself; in order to find theoretical discussion of them we have to go to Hume's essays. But they are there. Superstition (or priestcraft) and enthusiasm are posited as playing a real causal role in large parts of the History, for instance. As I've noted before, there's some room to doubt about whether Hume's use of them is sufficiently coherent for them to do the work he clearly thinks they need to be doing, and Hume's Calvinist critics, like MacQueen, pressed his use of superstition and enthusiasm as causal explanations very hard. But the important thing for our purposes is that there is in fact a large scale theoretical explanation of events going on throughout the History, one involving Hume's theories of political and religious factions. That he is less abstract in his explanations than Gibbon is certainly true; but that's because abstractions don't explain: particular events do. Hume's treatment of the particular events as explanatory, however, does involve a real theoretical set of ideas about how explanation in historical matters should work. It's just not right to say that there are no explanatory themes in the work; every page is full of them, and what is more, they were recognized as such, and criticized as such, by Hume's contemporaries.
Fala
I rarely post any pictures of myself, but here I am, between having seen Jefferson and going to see Lincoln, making friends with Fala at the Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Fala was the memorable part of what became one of FDR's most famous speeches (from September 23, 1944):
Fala was the memorable part of what became one of FDR's most famous speeches (from September 23, 1944):
These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family doesn't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him--at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars--his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself--such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself as indispensable. But I think I have a right to resent, to object to, libelous statements about my dog.
Thursday, April 07, 2011
Thursday Virtue/Vice: Superstition
According to Aquinas, religion is a moral virtue by which one does well in rendering what is due to God. However, all moral virtues are described by the doctrine of the mean: they are means between extremes of defect and excess. The vice of excess that is opposed to religion is called 'superstition'.
However, there is an initial problem here. By its very nature, we cannot render what is due to God in such a way as to equal what God deserves. How then can we have an excess here? It's possible to have an excess because of an important feature of the doctrine of the mean that is overlooked. It is true that the golden mean lies between extremes, but these extremes can be extremes of conditions or circumstances of the act as well as extremes of the basic act. In this case, while the act of religion can never itself be 'too much' if properly directed, one can be excessive in religious devotion by rendering it to things other than God, or by failing to use appropriate means.
The virtue of religion has three primary ends, and these ends structure how Aquinas sees superstition.
(1) The first end of religious acts is to give reverence to God. Failing to do so is a sin of defect, but giving the reverence appropriate to God to something that is not God is a sin of excess and called idolatry. On Aquinas's view this is the most grievous kind of sin possible, although, as always, in particular cases it may be more or less bad due to circumstances, and the less bad cases of idolatry may sometiems be less bad than particular cases of other vices. Idolatry arises for a number of different reasons -- excessive attachment to non-divine things, perversion of our natural inclination to make representations of things, and ignorance of the difference between great creaturely power and truly divine power.
(2) The second end of religious acts is to be taught by God. When we engage in religious acts in order to be taught by something other than God, this is called divination. Aquinas thinks that this often arises through a pathological twist on a natural inclination: we have a natural inclination to know the future by human means (study of causes and the like). But we either get impatient or greedy and want to know the future by more than human means, or to know more of the future than human means (confined to things that happen always or for the most part) allow.
(3) The third end of religious acts is to direct human acts to God. When we adapt these religious acts so that our human acts are directed by them to things other than God, this is superstitious observance or magic. We fall into this vice through using inappropriate means to satisfy our natural inclination to learn things -- hence the longstanding links between the vice of magic and the vice of curiosity (which has to do with trying to learn things we are either not ready or not able to learn without detriment to ourselves or others) -- and through attempting to do things by using mere signs as if they were causes.
All of these are miscarriages of religious actions -- they render religious honor to things other than God. In addition, there is a fourth kind of superstition:
(4) When we really render religious honor to God, but in an inappropriate way, this is undue or inappropriate worship. Aquinas sees these as being a sort of religious lie. Thus someone who insisted on practices contrary to Christian principles or worship (e.g., demanding Jewish circumcision for entrance into the Church), or a priest who insisted on deviating from ecclesiastical requirements and customs in liturgy, is presenting a false sort of worship due to the mismatch between the means he is using and what it is supposed to represent.
All four of these involve a focus on various external features of religious acts, and thus neglect the heart of religious worship.
However, there is an initial problem here. By its very nature, we cannot render what is due to God in such a way as to equal what God deserves. How then can we have an excess here? It's possible to have an excess because of an important feature of the doctrine of the mean that is overlooked. It is true that the golden mean lies between extremes, but these extremes can be extremes of conditions or circumstances of the act as well as extremes of the basic act. In this case, while the act of religion can never itself be 'too much' if properly directed, one can be excessive in religious devotion by rendering it to things other than God, or by failing to use appropriate means.
The virtue of religion has three primary ends, and these ends structure how Aquinas sees superstition.
(1) The first end of religious acts is to give reverence to God. Failing to do so is a sin of defect, but giving the reverence appropriate to God to something that is not God is a sin of excess and called idolatry. On Aquinas's view this is the most grievous kind of sin possible, although, as always, in particular cases it may be more or less bad due to circumstances, and the less bad cases of idolatry may sometiems be less bad than particular cases of other vices. Idolatry arises for a number of different reasons -- excessive attachment to non-divine things, perversion of our natural inclination to make representations of things, and ignorance of the difference between great creaturely power and truly divine power.
(2) The second end of religious acts is to be taught by God. When we engage in religious acts in order to be taught by something other than God, this is called divination. Aquinas thinks that this often arises through a pathological twist on a natural inclination: we have a natural inclination to know the future by human means (study of causes and the like). But we either get impatient or greedy and want to know the future by more than human means, or to know more of the future than human means (confined to things that happen always or for the most part) allow.
(3) The third end of religious acts is to direct human acts to God. When we adapt these religious acts so that our human acts are directed by them to things other than God, this is superstitious observance or magic. We fall into this vice through using inappropriate means to satisfy our natural inclination to learn things -- hence the longstanding links between the vice of magic and the vice of curiosity (which has to do with trying to learn things we are either not ready or not able to learn without detriment to ourselves or others) -- and through attempting to do things by using mere signs as if they were causes.
All of these are miscarriages of religious actions -- they render religious honor to things other than God. In addition, there is a fourth kind of superstition:
(4) When we really render religious honor to God, but in an inappropriate way, this is undue or inappropriate worship. Aquinas sees these as being a sort of religious lie. Thus someone who insisted on practices contrary to Christian principles or worship (e.g., demanding Jewish circumcision for entrance into the Church), or a priest who insisted on deviating from ecclesiastical requirements and customs in liturgy, is presenting a false sort of worship due to the mismatch between the means he is using and what it is supposed to represent.
All four of these involve a focus on various external features of religious acts, and thus neglect the heart of religious worship.
March's Virtue/Vice Posts
March was a busy month for me, so there are only two:
Virtue
Religion
Vice
Craftiness, Guile, and Fraud
---
February's Virtue/Vice Posts
Virtue
Religion
Vice
Craftiness, Guile, and Fraud
---
February's Virtue/Vice Posts
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
There Comes a Point Beyond Which It's All Icing on the Cake Anyway
Martin Rees was recently given some Templeton prize or other; Templeton, of course, gives prizes and grants to scientists whose work has something or other to do with spirituality. There are people who are very critical of Templeton's work for encouraging the mixing of science and religion. (Rees is explicitly an atheist, but has been pretty vocal for the claim that science and religious belief are not inconsistent, and in arguing that the Church of England is valuable for cultural reasons). I wouldn't mention it at all, but I was extraordinarily amused by this:
Looking at the short version of Martin Rees's CV, which doesn't even list his many, many papers in peer-reviewed journals, I really think he can take the hit.
Professor Richard Dawkins, the Oxford evolutionary biologist and atheist, said, "This will look great on Templeton's CV. Not so good on Martin's."
Looking at the short version of Martin Rees's CV, which doesn't even list his many, many papers in peer-reviewed journals, I really think he can take the hit.
An Everlasting Night
A Hymn To Christ
by John Donne
In what torn ship soever I embark,
That ship shall be my emblem of thy Ark;
What sea soever swallow me, that flood
Shall be to me an emblem of thy blood;
Though thou with clouds of anger do disguise
Thy face, yet through that mask I know those eyes,
Which, though they turn away sometimes,
They never will despise.
I sacrifice this Island unto thee,
And all whom I loved there, and who loved me;
When I have put our seas 'twixt them and me,
Put thou thy sea betwixt my sins and thee.
As the tree's sap doth seek the root below
In winter, in my winter now I go,
Where none but thee, th' Eternal root
Of true Love, I may know.
Nor thou nor thy religion dost control
The amorousness of an harmonious Soul,
But thou wouldst have that love thyself: as thou
Art jealous, Lord, so I am jealous now,
Thou lov'st not, till from loving more, Thou free
My soul: who ever gives, takes liberty:
O, if thou car'st not whom I love
Alas, thou lov'st not me.
Seal then this bill of my Divorce to All,
On whom those fainter beams of love did fall;
Marry those loves, which in youth scattered be
On Fame, Wit, Hopes (false mistresses) to thee.
Churches are best for Prayer, that have least light:
To see God only, I go out of sight:
And to 'scape stormy days, I choose
An Everlasting night.
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