This Document Contains Chapters 13 to 14 CHAPTER 13: PHILOSOPHY AND BELIEF IN GOD Main Points 1. Religious commitment involves philosophical beliefs. The philosophy of religion attempts to understand and rationally evaluate these beliefs. In contrast to theology, it does not make religious assumptions in doing so. 2. The beliefs of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition have received the most discussion by Western philosophers. Two Christian Greats 3. Anselm. Though he thought it impossible for anyone to reason about God or God’s existence without already believing in him, Anselm was willing to evaluate on its own merit and independently of religious assumptions the idea that God does not exist. 4. The ontological argument. Anselm’s ontological arguments attempt to show that disbelief in God entails self-contradiction. 5. Gaunilo’s objection. Gaunilo attempted to refute Anselm’s first argument, using the idea of the most perfect island. If Anselm’s reasoning is sound, Gaunilo argued, then the most perfect island must exist in reality because if it didn’t, any island that did exist in reality would be more perfect than the most perfect island. 6. St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas’s Five Ways: the first three proofs of God’s existence (motion, causation, contingency) are versions of cosmological argument; the fourth proof (degrees of goodness) is a moral argument; the fifth proof (purpose) is a teleological argument. Many consider the third way the soundest proof; Aquinas favored the first way. 7. The first way. Because there is change in general, a first mover (God) must therefore exist that is moved by no other. 8. The second way. Nothing causes itself; if no first cause exists, there would be no effects. So we must admit a first cause, namely, God. For Aquinas, there cannot be an infinite series of simultaneous causes or movers. 9. The third way. If everything belonged to the category “need not exist,” then at one time nothing existed. That being the case, nothing would exist now. Thus, there must be something the existence of which is necessary, and because it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things that have their necessity caused by another, there must be a necessary being that has its own necessity, and this is God. 10. The fourth and fifth ways. All natural things possess degrees of goodness, truth, and all other perfections; there must be that which is the source of these perfections, and that is what is called God. Natural things act for an end or purpose, functioning in accordance with a plan or design; thus, an intelligent being exists by which things are directed toward their end, and this intelligent being is God. 11. Aquinas: Some theological truths (truths of revelation) cannot be discovered by philosophy. But other truths (God’s existence) can be proven by philosophy. Mysticism 12. It is one thing to say “God came to me” in mystical experience but another to explain why such experience is a reliable form of knowledge. 13. The mystic Julian of Norwich focuses on the nature of personal religious and moral knowledge, as well as on whether it is possible to know God. She denied that there is any meaningful difference in the validity of mystical revelations (she called them “showings”) made directly to our soul and knowledge derived through reason. We can know God only partly through revelation; further knowledge comes through loving God. 14. For Julian, God lives in us and we in God; we are one with God and are nurtured and fed knowledge of God and of ourselves by this divine parent. 15. Julian: The knowledge God gives the mystics can provide reasons for ordinary people to have hope in the midst of wars, plagues, and religious disputes. Seventeenth-Century Perspectives 16. René Descartes. Descartes found God’s existence indubitable, for three reasons. The first two are combination ontological–cosmological arguments; the third is a streamlined ontological argument. 17. Descartes’s first proof. Descartes reasons that he is a thinking thing who finds within his mind the idea of God, of an infinite and perfect being. There must be a cause of such an idea, but because there must be as much reality or perfection in the cause of an idea as there is in the content of the idea, God exists. 18. Descartes’s second proof. (1) I exist as a thing that has an idea of God; (2) everything that exists has a cause that brought it into existence and that sustains it in existence; (3) the only thing adequate to cause and sustain me, a thing that has an idea of God, is God; (4) therefore God exists. 19. It seems possible to devise alternative explanations for one’s having the idea of God; Descartes’s first proofs depend on this not being possible. 20. Descartes’s third proof. A version of the ontological argument: (1) My conception of God is the conception of a being that possesses all perfections; (2) existence is a perfection; (3) therefore I cannot conceive of God as not existing; (4) God therefore exists. 21. Leibniz. Remembered for his development of calculus independently of Newton, for his metaphysical doctrine of monads, and for the principle of sufficient reason used as a proof of God. 22. Leibniz and the Principle of Sufficient Reason: Unless there is something outside the series of events, some reason for the entire series itself, there is no sufficient reason for any occurrence. This “something outside” is God. Further, because God is a sufficient reason for God’s own existence, God is a necessary being. 23. The proof is thought by many to be the soundest cosmological argument. 24. Leibniz and the problem of evil. The problem of evil (how can there be evil if God is all-good and all-powerful?) was considered in detail by Augustine who made the following observations: (1) Human evil results when humans use their free will to turn away from God; (2) evil is a privation, or lack of good, that results from this turning away; (3) because a lack of something is not something, this evil is not something God created; (4) human sin is cancelled out in the end by divine retribution; (5) our view of the world is limited and finite, meaning that we are not in a position to judge its overall goodness. 25. Leibniz’ theodicy (defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence in view of apparent evil) said that for God to create things other than himself, the created things logically must be limited and imperfect. Thus, to the extent that creation is imperfect, it is not wholly good, and thus it is “evil.” 26. Yet, using the principle of sufficient reason, Leibniz reasoned that this is the best or most perfect of all worlds possible (because God had chosen it for existence). That is, it is the best world given the materials God used; it is not a perfect world. 27. Leibniz’ theodicy was ridiculed by Voltaire in his famous novel Candide. Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Perspectives 28. David Hume. He harshly criticized the teleological and cosmological arguments for the existence of God based on his empiricist epistemological principles. 29. Hume and the argument from design (teleological argument): As stated by Hume, the teleological argument reasons from an effect (the world or universe) and its parts to its cause (God); and it’s an argument from analogy, in which he effect (the world or universe) is likened to a human contrivance, the cause is likened to a human creator, and the mechanism of creation is likened to human thought and intelligence. 30. Hume’s criticisms of the teleological argument were many: We cannot attribute to the cause any qualities beyond those, or different from those, required for the effect; given the limitedness of our viewpoint we cannot say that the world is perfect or deserves praise; we cannot infer cause from a single effect; we cannot assume that the cause of the world is like the causes of happenings in it or that the entire world was created by the same mechanisms by which happenings in it are caused; we cannot be sure the world is not the result of trial and error by a multitude of creators; we are in no position to evaluate the comparison of the world to a human artifact. 31. Hume and the cosmological argument (which concludes that a necessary being, an uncaused cause, exists): (1) As far as we can make out, the universe may itself be “the necessarily existing being”; (2) if you maintain that everything has a prior cause it is contradictory also to maintain that there was a first cause; (3) if I explain the cause of each member of a series of things there is no further need for an explanation of the series itself as if it were some further thing. 32. A verbal dispute? Theists say the universe was created by the divine will but admit there is an immeasurable gulf between the creativity of the divine mind and human creativity. Atheists concede there is some original or fundamental principle of order in the universe, but they insist there is only the remotest analogy to everyday creative processes or to human intelligence. Hume suggested the dispute between the theist and atheist was only verbal and not fundamentally different in kind. 33. Immanuel Kant. Provided one of the most famous moral arguments for God’s existence, but criticized the three traditional proofs. 34. What is wrong with the ontological proof? The ontological argument assumes that existence is a predicate, which is false. 35. What is wrong with the cosmological and teleological proofs? The cosmological argument rests on the ontological argument and employs a principle (that every contingent has a cause) that has significance only in experience to arrive at a conclusion beyond experience. The teleological argument, according to Kant, proves at best only an architect who works with the matter in the world, and not a creator. 36. Belief in God rationally justified. Nevertheless, although we do not have theoretical or meta- physical proof of God, God’s existence must be assumed as a postulate of practical reason. 37. Søren Kierkegaard. For Kierkegaard, God is beyond the grasp of reason, and the idea that God came to us as a man in the person of Jesus is intellectually absurd; yet Kierkegaard was totally committed to Christianity. 38. Kierkegaard: Truth is subjective; it lies not in what we believe but in how we live. We must commit ourselves to God not through a search for objective truth (as if it would give meaning to life) but through a leap of faith, through a nonintellectual, passionate commitment to Christianity. 39. Kierkegaard: The objective uncertainty of God is essential to a true faith in Him. 40. Friedrich Nietzsche. When Nietzsche writes that “God is dead,” he does not mean that God once existed and now no longer does. He means instead that there is no intelligent plan to the universe and the order we imagine to exist is merely pasted on by the human mind. But the mass of people, motivated mainly by resentment, see the world as law-governed and adhere to “slave morality” that praises the person who serves others in self-sacrifice. 41. Nietzsche: Slave morality is contrasted with the morality of the “overman” or “superman,” a new kind of human being whose forerunners included Alexander the Great and Napoleon. 42. Nietzsche’s thesis that there is no God and its apparent corollary that there are no absolute and necessary criteria of right and wrong were accepted by such twentieth-century existentialists as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. 43. William James. For James, the question of God’s existence was (1) a live issue; (2) a momentous one; and (3) forced (such that a suspension of judgment amount to deciding against God). 44. James: If the religious beliefs are true but there is insufficient evidence for them, then a policy of avoiding error at any cost is an irrational policy because it cuts off a person’s opportunity to make friends with God. 45. On the matter of free will and determinism: Determinism is unworkable, he said, because it entailed never regretting what happened (it would be illogical to feel it should not have happened). Acceptance of determinism is inconsistent with the practices of moral beings, who perceive themselves as making genuine choices. Twentieth-Century Perspectives 46. James’s critics thought he had elevated wishful thinking to the status of proof; believers questioned his implicit assumption that God’s existence cannot be established. Others said James’s belief in God amounted to a gamble, like Pascal’s wager, rather than true religious acceptance of God. 47. God and logical positivism. A central tenet of the Vienna Circle and of logical positivism is the verifiability principle of meaning, according to which the meaning of a factual proposition is the experience you would have to have to know that it is true. 48. Theological utterances such as “God exists” or “God created the world” appear unverifiable by experience, and hence meaningless. 49. Logical positivists were not atheists in the sense of denying God’s existence. Their position was that the utterances “God exists” and “God does not exist” are both nonsense. 50. Mary Daly: The unfolding of God. Mary Daly, in Beyond God the Father: “If God is male, then the male is God.” 51. Daly: Theological symbolism and communication “serve the purposes of patriarchal social arrangements.” 52. Daly: Women’s confrontation with the “structured evil of patriarchy” implies a striving toward psychic wholeness, self-realization and self-transcendence. 53. Daly: “God” as an intransitive verb would not be conceived as an object, implying limitation, for God as “Being” (the “most active and dynamic verb of all”) is contrasted only with non-being. 54. Daly: Becoming who one really is requires existential courage to confront the experience of nothingness, nonbeing. 55. Daly: The women’s revolution must ultimately be religious; it must reach “outward and inward toward the God beyond and beneath the gods who have stolen our identity.” In dealing with “demonic power relationships” and “structured evil” rage is required as a positive creative force. 56. Intelligent Design or Evolution? Intelligent design is the idea that a complete explanation of the universe requires positing an intelligent designer. Proponents include Phillip E. Johnson, Michael J. Behe, and William A. Dembski. 57. Behe: Evolution cannot explain cellular systems that are “irreducibly complex.” 58. Dembski: Design can be inferred from contingency, complexity and specification. 59. Johnson: Evolution’s materialist assumptions (“methodological naturalism”) are self-refuting. (The materialist must explain human reason in terms of “unthinking matter”; but if, as for evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, the appearance of purpose evolution is merely illusion, what is the status of purpose human reason? How can genuine purpose or meaning arise from the purposeless flow of cause and effect?) 60. Legal battles: (1) Kansas Board of Education; (2) Dover (Pennsylvania) Area School District; (3) Texas Board of Education. 61. God, the Fine-Tuner. Martin Rees, the Royal Astronomer of England, identifies six numbers that are a “recipe for the universe.” They appear to be “fine-tuned” since the slightest deviation would mean the universe could not have existed. Is the best explanation for such fine-tuning the existence of a cosmic intelligence? Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, disputes such a conclusion. 62. Who needs reasons for believing in God? Analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga has argued that the theist may accept the belief in God as a “basic belief,” a belief it is rational to hold without supporting evidence and that is foundational for the entire system of the theist’s beliefs. Boxes The Black Cat (What the theologian finds in a dark room) Reductio Proofs (Useful for understanding the ontological argument) Profile: St. Thomas Aquinas (A brilliant thinker, nicknamed the Dumb Ox) The Big Bang (The Big Bang hypothesis leads to a hard choice between an unexplainable universe or one explainable only by reference to something nonphysical) Profile: The Anchoress, Julian of Norwich (Best known for her mystical “showings”) Miracles (Hume’s principle for evaluating reports of miracles) God’s Foreknowledge and Free Will (The difficulty involved in maintaining both) Religion: Illusion with a Future (Freud’s view) Profile: William James (Perhaps the most famous American intellectual of his time) Pascal’s Wager (Either God exists or he does not; by betting that he does you lose nothing if he doesn’t) God Is Coming, and She Is Furious (On God’s gender) Readings 13.1 St. Anselm, from Proslogion This is Anselm’s first and most famous version of the ontological argument. 13.2 St. Thomas Aquinas, from Summa Theologica The five ways. 13.3 G.W. Leibniz, from Monadology An explanation of the principle of sufficient reason and then its application to prove God exists. 13.4 Friedrich Nietzsche, from The Gay Science Nietzsche’s assertion that God is dead and his explanation of what it means. 13.5 Antony Flew, from “Theology and Falsification” Flew’s famous parable, developed from a John Wisdom tale, about an invisible gardener who tends a field but escapes all efforts to detect him. (In recent years Flew has expressed more sympathy toward deism.) 13.6 Mary Daly, from “After the Death of God the Father” A selection from Beyond God the Father in which Daly discusses the rootedness of theology in patriarchy and what can be done to enable women to speak more authentically about God. 13.7 Richard Dawkins, from The God Delusion A consideration of the “Anthropic Principle,” which says that because of the universe exists, the universe had to be such as to permit their eventual emergence. Dawkins dismisses the theist’s claim that “God, when setting up the universe, tuned the fundamental constants of the universe so that each one lay in its Goldilocks [i.e., “just right”] zone for the production of life. . . . As ever, the theist’s answer is deeply unsatisfying, because it leaves the existence of God unexplained.” Lecture and Discussion Ideas Explain Hume’s reasoning for remaining skeptical of reports of miracles. Is this reasoning sound? Hume’s principle is this: before you accept a report of a miracle, stop and think. The report’s being false would have to be a greater miracle than the miracle it reports, if you are to be rationally justified in accepting that report. Hume’s principle makes it difficult to accept any reports of miracles, and this is as it should be. On the face of things the likelihood that the person who reports having seen the miracle was deceived or deluded, or has mis recorded or misremembered what was seen, or is mentally imbalanced or is just plain lying, is greater than that the report is true. Deception, delusion, mis recording, misremembering, and mental imbalance are all common things, whereas miracles, by definition, are not. Even outright fraud, judging from the steps we take to secure ourselves against its threat, is among the most common of human activities. Turn in any direction, and you will encounter ID checks, signature verification cards, stamps, certificates, lie detectors, tests, locks, and a hundred other things whose very existence is vivid testimony that people all too commonly deceive, cheat, lie, and are otherwise dishonest. True, Hume’s principle also makes it difficult to accept strange new discoveries, findings, and theories. Back in flat-earth days it would have required many not to accept reports that the earth is round. But this, again, is exactly as it should be. Sometimes rationality requires us to reject claims that later turn out to have been true. We would have to concede, of course, that it is not always clear when one thing is more miraculous than another. But at the very least Hume’s principle helps us all remember how very strong the proof must be before we accept reports of miracles. We want now to outline a talk that you might find useful if the topic of so-called psychic miracles ever arises in class. One of us goes out of his way to make sure that this topic does arise in his class. Far too few these days seem sufficiently critical of claims made by and for so-called psychics. Our little talk divides itself into three parts. In the first part, having defined psychic powers (the power to possess information about the world through no sensory means and without having inferred it from something that is present to sense), we invite the class to relate incidents that they think qualify as psychic. In the second part we discuss alternative ways of looking at coincidence. In the third part we ask the class to imagine how the world would be if people really did have psychic powers. Here is a little more detail: In the first part, when we ask people to tell their own psychic stories, they invariably come forth with reports of premonitions and what are called psychic crisis-coincidences. The premonition experiences usually involve dreaming about an event before it happens. The crisis-coincidences involve dreaming of a close friend or dear relative at the same time something awful happens to the person. You know the type of thing we are talking about. The important thing is to keep track (without saying anything) of what counts as a psychic premonition or crisis-coincidence in your class. As you will probably see, what counts as psychic is not just thinking of a close friend or dear relative, for any friend or relative—or even a passing acquaintance—will do. And what counts is not just dreaming of the person, whoever he or she may be, for just plain thinking about him or her counts as well. And further, for a coincidence to count as psychic it is not even necessary that you think (or dream) about the person at the time the awful thing is happening to him or her. If the awful event happens a little before the dream (or thought), that counts. If it happens a little after, that counts too. If it even happens quite a bit before or after it may count as well. And finally, as you will see, for a coincidence to count as psychic it is not even required that what happens to the other person be awful. It just has to be significant in some way or other. The criteria for what counts as a psychic premonition have a similar looseness about them. At the end of the first part you might suggest that what makes these various experiences seem psychic is that it seems ridiculous to suppose that they were really mere coincidences. Everyone has now been properly primed, and it is time to move to the second part of the talk. In this part of the talk you point out that there are two different ways of looking at coincidences. One can look at them “subjectively” or one can look at them “objectively.” You look at them subjectively when you say, “Good grief! What are the chances that I would be thinking about my brother’s son at the very time that he was falling off a cliff (or whatever)?” You look at them objectively when you say, “What are the chances that someone or other among the world’s 5 billion-plus inhabitants would think or dream or daydream about someone or other among his friends, relatives, and other assorted acquaintances at the same time or a little before or a little after something or other of significance happened to him or her?” Once people start looking at these coincidences “objectively,” they don’t seem the least bit surprising. In fact, given how many people there are, and how many people each person knows, and how often people think or dream or daydream about someone or other they know, you would expect such coincidences to be happening to someone or other at every instant. It’s like the lottery, we tell the class: the chances of your winning are a million to one. But the chances of someone’s winning are dead certain. Most get the idea. In case they don’t, you have to explain. “The fact that so many of you have had these experiences is not evidence of ESP but is exactly what you would expect from coincidence. What would be really weird is if no one at all in the class had had an experience of this sort.” In the third part of the talk, we invite the class to consider what the world would be like if ESP were a common phenomenon. We ask them, for example, if there would be any point in teachers giving tests, bartenders checking IDs, police questioning suspects, bailiffs swearing in witnesses, casinos operating, or the Madame Rubies of the world reading palms for a pittance when they could make a killing on the stock market or in Vegas. No, these considerations don’t show that we don’t all have ESP in some vague and inchoate form, but then, what would? Is James correct in saying that you cannot really suspend judgment about God’s existence? James said that the agnostic backs the field against the belief in God, but many students don’t quite understand what he meant. If you back the field against the favorite in a horse race, the only way you lose is if the favorite wins. If any other horse wins you get a percentage of the purse. Backing the field is a relatively safe, and somewhat timid, bet. James was implying that the agnostic tries to take the safe way out. The agnostic thinks the favorite horse, the theist’s horse, won’t win, but he doesn’t want to risk everything on the atheist’s horse, so he bets on the field. The analogy isn’t exact, but it conveys a vivid image. Theists often think of agnostics in this way, as wishy-washy atheists. For that matter, atheists too sometimes think agnostics are namby-pambies who don’t have the courage to own up to atheism. So an interesting question arises. Why does agnosticism tend to be viewed by both parties as a kind of weak-kneed atheism? Why isn’t it viewed as weak-kneed theism, or possibly as just plain neutral? It must be, it seems to us, that many people agree with James that the question of God’s existence is “forced”; that is, it is a question you cannot suspend judgment on. The question “Does God exist?” apparently is viewed as like the question “Are you going to shake hands with me at this very instant?”—a question to which “I don’t know” as a response would be equivalent to “no.” So the question becomes, is there reason to think that “Does God exist?” is forced, and that “I don’t know” is equivalent to “no”? There is reason to think this, perhaps, if you accept the ontological argument and believe that to understand what God is to know that he exists. The person who accepts the ontological argument would have to maintain that anyone who says “I don’t know” implies that he or she understands the question asked, and therefore understands the meaning of “God,” and therefore must concede that God exists. From the point of view of an adherent of the ontological argument, if you understand what the question (“Does God exist?”) means, you must either answer “yes” or fall into logical contradiction. The atheist and agnostic both, from this point of view, sleep in the same bed, because neither answers “yes.” We are tempted, therefore, to say that James’s belief that the question of God’s existence is forced rests on the assumption that the ontological argument is valid. Let’s just keep in mind too that James’s entire “proof” of God rests on his belief that that question is forced. Assuming that there is scientific evidence that the universe had an absolute beginning, does that evidence also prove the existence of God? Explain. We treated this in the box (The Big Bang) in the text, but to elaborate a bit on what we said there: Theists have maintained that the totality of natural events that is the universe requires an explanation and that that explanation must involve God. Many philosophers have said in response, agreeing with Hume, that the explanation of the totality of natural events does not require reference to God: if each natural event were explained by reference to other natural events, then the totality of events itself would have been explained without invoking God. If, however, there were a first natural event, then that event could not be explained by reference to antecedent natural events, and the subsequent events that depended on that first event would similarly lack a purely naturalistic explanation. So, if the theory that the universe had an absolute beginning in the Big Bang is a true theory and does entail that there was a first natural event, then we seem to face these choices: (1) The event is unexplainable. (2) The event is explainable, but only by reference to something supernatural. It might be said that the first event might be given a naturalistic explanation that does not require mentioning earlier events or conditions. But what kind of explanation would this be? Option (1), it might be noted, is difficult to accept psychologically only because every event that we have experienced has been caused. But let’s not forget that the first event, if it was not caused by God (and maybe even if it was) happened ex nihilo. Now, we don’t have any experience of something’s coming to exist ex nihilo. And because we do not have any such experience, it is an unwarranted extension of our experience to maintain that what is true of events that we have experienced must also be true of such events as something’s coming to exist ex nihilo. We don’t have experience of anything even remotely like the first natural event, so we cannot apply the lessons of experience to it. Once this fact is realized, it seems to be a lot less difficult to suppose that the first event (if there were such a thing) really did just happen, without explanation. Philosophers’ Principal Works St. Anselm (c. 1033–1109) Monologion Proslogion Gaunilo (eleventh century) In Behalf of the Fool Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) On Being and Essence (1253) Truth (Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate [1256–1259]) Summa Contra Gentiles (1258–1260) On the Power of God (1265) Summa Theologica (1265–1269) In Librum de Causis (1271) Julian of Norwich (1342–1414?) Showings René Descartes (1596–1650) Discourse on Method (1637) Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) Principles of Philosophy (1644) Gottfried W. Leibniz (1646–1716) Theodicy (1710) Monadology (1714) New Essays (1765) David Hume (1711–1776) A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751) Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) Critique of Pure Reason (1781) Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783) Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) Critique of Practical Reason (1788) Critique of Judgment (1790) Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Either/Or (1843) Philosophical Fragments (1844) The Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846) Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) The Birth of Tragedy (1872) Beyond Good and Evil (1886) Twilight of the Idols (1888) Ecce Homo (1888) Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1891) Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) The Future of an Illusion (1927) Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1939) William James (1842–1910) Principles of Psychology (1890) The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897) The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) Pragmatism (1907) A Pluralistic Universe (1909) The Meaning of Truth (1909) Some Problems in Philosophy (1911) Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912) Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) Pensées (unpublished during Pascal’s life-time) De l’Esprit géométrique (unpublished during Pascal’s lifetime) Antony Flew (1923–2010) New Essays in Philosophical Theology (ed. with Alasdair MacIntyre) (1955) The Presumption of Atheism, and Other Philosophical Essays on God, Freedom and Immortality (1976) God: A Critical Enquiry (2nd ed.) (1984) There Is a God (2007) Mary Daly (1928–2010) Beyond God the Father (1973) Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978) Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (1984) Phillip E. Johnson (1940- ) Darwin on Trial (1993) Objections Sustained (2000) The Right Questions (2002) Richard Dawkins (1941- ) The Selfish Gene (1976) The Blind Watchmaker (1987) The God Delusion (2006) The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution (2009) Michael J. Behe (1952- ) Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge of Evolution (1996) The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism (2007) William A. Dembski (1960- ) Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology (1999) The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World (2009) Martin Rees (1942- ) Just Six Numbers (2000) Our Final Hour (2003) What We Still Don’t Know (2007) Alvin Plantinga (1932– ) The Nature of Necessity (1974) “Advice to Christian Philosophers” (1984) Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief In God (1984) God and Other Minds (rev. ed.) (1991) Warrant: The Current Debate (1993) Warrant and Proper Function (1993) Knowledge of God (Great Debates in Philosophy) (co-author) (2008) CHAPTER 14: FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY Main Points 1. There is no single “feminist philosophy”; though feminists share a deep commitment that women and men should be treated equally, they do not agree on what the agenda should be. 2. Feminist philosophy is a loose term for the many varieties of feminist philosophical discourse: liberal, Marxist/socialist, radical/anarchical, ecological, phenomenological, postmodern, and postfeminist. 3. Feminist philosophy has evolved in response to traditional philosophical concerns which, though presented as neutral, are (so feminist thinkers claim) patriarchal and that exclude or minimize women and women’s issues (including the world of the other, the constitution of the self, and gender perspectives). 4. Feminist thought in general is often divided into the categories of first wave, second wave, post feminism, and third wave, though the borders overlap. The First Wave 5. Mary Wollstonecraft: A precursor of the first-wave feminist movement (which spanned roughly 1850 through the early part of the twentieth century), she argued against Rousseau’s view that women’s education should be designed entirely to make them pleasing to men. 6. Wollstonecraft: Educating women as the playthings of men would have bad consequences for society and for women. Most important, she argued that women were as capable as men of attaining the “masculine” virtues of wisdom and rationality if only society would allow those virtues to be cultivated. 7. Anna Doyle Wheeler, a utilitarian reformer, collaborated with utopian/reformist philosopher William Thompson on the famous essay, “The Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women, against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to Restrain Them in Political, and Thence in Civil and Domestic, Slavery.” The essay argued that denying rights to women was inconsistent with the utilitarian principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. 8. Harriet Taylor: A proponent of women’s suffrage, she asserted that the nonphysiologically differences between men and women were socially constructed. 9. The first wave of feminist thought worked toward obtaining voting rights for women, abolition, and temperance causes; though it saw results, larger social problems (inequality of pay, differences in education, the perception of women as primarily ornamental and nurturing) remained. The Second Wave 10. The term second wave refers to feminist activism in the U.S., Britain and Europe from the late 1960s through the late 1980s. 11. Simone de Beauvoir brought to feminist thought the Continental traditions of existentialism and phenomenology. Her focus was on the cultural mechanisms of oppression that left women in the role of the Other to man’s Self. 12. De Beauvoir argues that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” That is, the category “woman” is another name for “Other” and is imposed by a male-dominated society, just as neighbors tend to treat strangers as “Other.” 13. The word patriarchy was coined early in the second wave to represent the set of institutions that legitimized universal male power. 14. New approaches to theory produced a variety of sometimes overlapping approaches: Liberal feminism claims that all humans deserve freedom of choice and equality of opportunity. Radical feminism targets cultural phenomena (such as advertising and pornography) that treat women as sexual objects, and identifies patriarchy as the root cause of women’s subordination in the global sphere. Lesbian feminism views the social norm of heterosexuality as a form of oppression and points out that lesbian morality is the morality of a community, not isolated individuals’ moral choices. Socialist feminism combines Marxist and radical feminist perspectives and argues that differences between men and women that are based on economic divisions of labor should be reconstructed. Black feminism (also known as “womanism”), an American phenomenon, claims the dual oppression of both gender and race. 15. Second-wave feminism has helped produce sexual harassment policies, shelters for battered women and their children, public education on abuse and rape, contraception, legalization of abortion, women’s studies programs, and childcare services in the workplace. The Third Wave 16. Third-wave feminism, which calls itself “sex positive,” began between 1983 and the early 1990s, did not replace second-wave feminism but moved in a different direction, rejecting what it views as the second wave’s essentialism (that there is a female identify that represents all women). 17. Third-wave feminism contains many often conflicting strands of theory, including queer theory, ecofeminism, postcolonial theory, postmodernism, and cultural critique. The movement is pro-pornography (which is diametrically opposed to second-wave thought), supports transsexuals (who were rejected by those in the second wave as surgically altered men), and rejects the binary distinctions between male and female. 18. Leslie Haywood and Jennifer Drake define the third wave as “a movement that contains elements of second wave critique of beauty culture, sexual abuse, and power structures while it also acknowledges and makes us of the pleasure, danger, and defining power of those structures.” 19. Post feminism, though it is a nebulous category, tends to argue that all authoritative models of gender must be deconstructed and reevaluated. Some argue that feminists have already met their goals and must move beyond struggle and resistance. 20. Another group of postfeminists, represented by Naomi Wolf, discusses what Wolf calls “victim feminism” and calls for replacing it with “power feminism.” 21. Postfeminists view second-wave values as lacking in appeal to younger feminists. Critics regard them as antifeminist or as part of a conservative group that dismisses the feminist agenda as no longer relevant since the movement’s goals have been achieved. Feminist Moral Theory 22. Researcher Carol Gilligan argues that studies of moral development in childhood tend to be studies of boys. Gilligan maintains that girls put more emphasis on care and the preservation of personal relationships whereas boys put more emphasis on abstract justice and individual rights. Context and care for others are central features in women’s moral reasoning. 23. Psychoanalyst Nancy Chodorow argues that contemporary child-rearing practices foster a strong need for connectedness in little girls and for separation and autonomy in little boys. Thus, girls and boys learn very different lessons about how to relate to the world and others in it. Boys may wind up as misogynous; girls may be more open to exploitation. 24. Nel Nodding’s: An ethics of caring is not a set of principles or maxims but a way of responding to people and situations. (Nodding’s, unlike Gilligan, believes the ethics of caring preferable to an ethics of rights; Gilligan does not make this claim of superiority.) 25. Sara Ruddick: “Maternal thinking” puts a priority on “holding” over “acquiring” and is distinguished from the “instrumentalism of technocracy.” Ruddick also warns against sentimentalizing the maternal virtues of “humility” and “cheerfulness.” 26. Some feminist ethicists have noted that a care-centered ethics has perhaps not been freely chosen by women but has arisen to serve the needs of patriarchal society. Other feminist writers have emphasized the utility of an ethics of rights and justice as a foundation for social institutions in which the competing claims of persons who do not know each other must be balanced. Sexism and Language 27. The use of “man” to express the concept of humanity, as well as the male gender, tends to obscure the role of women in society; slang terms for women tend to reflect certain hostile dispositions to them (an older unmarried man is a “swinging single” or “happy bachelor” but an older unmarried woman is an “old maid”). 28. Stephanie Ross argues that metaphors associated with women (such as “screw” in describing sexual intercourse) reflect demeaning cultural attitudes toward women. 29. Sherryl Kleinman argues that if women really had equal status with men they wouldn’t be included in the clearly masculine term you guys. How would a group of men feel being called “you gals”? Feminist Epistemology 30. Feminist thought has challenged mainstream epistemology (which assumes the ideal knower is disembodied, purely rational, fully informed, and completely objective). Feminist epistemologists point out that even supposedly objective scientists import their own prejudices and biases into their observations. 31. Knowledge-gathering is a human project, and reason—but also emotion, social class, gender, and other factors—plays a role in what is “known.” Any ideal that rules out the “human factor” in its characterization of knowledge will unjustly privilege the group claiming that true knowledge is only obtainable by people who are just like them and have only their social characteristics. French Feminist Philosophy and Psychoanalytical Theory 32. In general, French feminist philosophy is based on psychoanalytic theory, concerned with the unconscious and with gendered subjectivity, drawing heavily on the work of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida. 33. Sigmund Freud developed two central psychoanalytic conceptions, the Oedipus Complex (the desire of the male child to possess the mother and kill the father as a rival for the attentions of the mother) and the Castration Complex (the male child’s fear of being castrated by the father). A correlate is the theory that the female child experiences penis envy when she discovers that males children have penises and she doesn’t. 34. Jacques Lacan rejected parts of Freud’s work, placing it instead in the context of semiotics, linguistics, and literature. Lacan’s subject is split between consciousness and unconsciousness, the latter being the absence of identity. 35. Lacan: Masculinity and femininity is the result of the child’s development of an identity, that is, the meaning of sexual difference, not the anatomical differences themselves. Sexual difference becomes a part of language, thought and culture. 36. Lacan: In the pre-oedipal stage there is no separation between the self of the child and its mother, so there is no Other. When the child enters the “symbolic order” of the patriarchal culture the child perceives the phallus as the symbol of the father, and then the self-splits into self and other. This results in the birth of the unconscious, which Lacan regards as repressed desire. All of life is seeking for lost unity. 37. The three French philosophers Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva, though they dispute Lacan’s (and Freud’s) “Law of the Father,” theorize about Lacan’s discussions of the relationship of gender to repressed desire, resulting in a model for both social relations and, on an abstract level, textual relations. 38. Irigaray, Kristeva and Cixous acknowledge existence of a female self (subject) who is still and always Other and is related to the language of the unconscious, not in terms of words but in terms of gaps, silences, interruptions, moments between decisions, and other nonverbal transactions. 39. Like Lacan, Jaques Derrida focuses on unseen discourse. For Derrida, a text always contains its own subversions, such as punctuation, indications of pauses, missing expressions, or, in more complex literary devices, remarks that deflect, divert, or expose what might be called the “textual unconscious.” 40. Derrida’s thought is about constructing binary oppositions so they play off each other, which is a similar tactic in feminist philosophy. Just as Lacan insists that the conscious and unconscious are always present, Derrida insists that both the text and its subtext (its hidden meaning) are always present. 41. Derrida: When the subtext is expressed, paradoxes come into view and the text is no longer stable. The process of “deconstruction” can continue indefinitely. What takes place between the two poles (binary oppositions) is a combination of sameness and difference, a kind of “play,” which Derrida calls “difference” (not the English word “difference” but rather the free space where meanings are fluid). 42. Irigaray, Kristeva and Cixous each use experimental literary forms to dissolve the traditional line between author and text. 43. Luce Irigaray argues that male and female desire/language are fundamentally alien to each other. The patriarchal order of the phallus as linear, rational, and symbolic cannot comprehend feminine expressions of desire/language. There is no room for the feminine in the traditional masculinist order. 44. Irigaray is critical of Freudian theory because it describes women as dependent and secondary, so she inverts it. If woman is not one, she is “more than one,” more than her capacity for motherhood. A woman’s individual identity must be reconceptualized in order to free her of Freud’s description. She revisions Lacan, freeing the woman to be her own source to produce meaning so that woman has her own identity apart from what is traditionally assigned by a culturally produced identity. 45. Though critics of Irigaray accuse her of essentialism (of focusing on the essential female qualities of embodiment), her focus in later writing is on the capacity of a woman to define herself. 46. As part of the struggle to reclaim autonomy for women, Irigaray reappropriates the divine as female by constructing a new divine in one’s own image, an ideal for women to work toward. 47. Julia Kristeva, though she resists being categorized as a feminist, has with her radical critique of the “signifying practice” contributed to feminist theories of discourse. 48. Kristeva reworks Lacan’s separation of the preconscious and the symbolic orders into what she calls the semiotic and the symbolic. Expanding on the Lacanian model of the mirror stage (self-recognition), she argues the female semiotic has been devalued, that both the prelinguistic level and the symbolic are present in the subject. Feminine signification has been marginalized because it threatens the traditionally masculinist symbolic discourse. Contrary to Freud and Lacan, in her view every child can choose to identify with either parent after the mirror stage. 49. The maternal semiotic disrupts the rational, unified, speaking subject, and challenges the symbolic order. The time of the symbolic order is linear, sequential, and goal oriented; the semiotic order contains another kind of time. She emphasizes the multiple nature of women’s expressions and sees a kind of metaethics that takes into account all differences. 50. For Kristeva, though she doesn’t believe in an actual divinity, religion is a feminine discourse, a place where love and ethics meet. Theology is a kind of constructed fantasy invented to ward off the reality of death. She sees religion as a language that maintains the tension between our psychological needs and our personal cognition of reality. 51. Kristeva uses religious discourse to mediate a healing space between the symbolic and the semiotic, self and other, though not subscribing to it as ultimate truth. 52. Hélène Cixous writes in multiple disciplines (including philosophy, poetry, fiction, literary criticism and psychoanalytical theory), often all at the same time. She writes at the limits of language in a style called écriture féminine to mitigate the damage done by “masculinist” structures in philosophical writing. Hers is a language that is continually evolving, that uses metaphor to cross the boundaries between theory and other forms of discourse. 53. Cixous does not conceive of the body as a biological universal or as a referential independent of texts. The whole focus of her work is to demonstrate that language doesn’t exist outside the body. Her goal is to read texts, including philosophical texts, and to displace those that are “masculine” to find the feminine elements. 54. Her themes (such as the author and the writing process, the reading-writing relationship, the reader-writer relationship, psychoanalytical concerns regarding identity and other self-other relations, the maternal/paternal, the metaphor of exile, and more) are reworked continually in subsequent texts in the way that Derrida’s sentences are restatements: the circles of thought expand and become ever more inclusive. Notice that she does not generally write about feminist activist issues such as domestic violence, child care, abortion, pornography, or poverty. 55. Four phases of her work: (1) Early literary criticism; (2) Freud/Lacan period; (3) an exploration of the feminine element in Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector; and (4) playwriting (her work deals with humanity’s global pain and injustice). 56. “Laugh of the Medusa.” In this essay by Cixous the feminine body is not a body at all; it is embodied textual movement, a metaphor. Medusa is not to be feared, she argues. (For Freud the myth of Medusa represented the two ways men feel about women: they desire women, and they fear women as different, mysterious, and dangerous.) Women must show men their “sexts” (sex + text), the new women’s writing in which there is space for difference and where there is no Lacanian “lack.” Readings 14.1 Mary Wollstonecraft, from A Vindication of the Rights of Women Wollstonecraft defends the view that society should abandon the practice of enculturating women to weakness and depravity. 14.2 Simone de Beauvoir, from The Second Sex In this reading de Beauvoir defines “woman” as “the Other” and examines parallels between women and other social groupings. She writes that “those who make much of ‘equality in difference’ could not with good grace refuse to grant me the possible existence of difference in equality. . . . To gain the supreme victory, it is necessary, for one thing, that by and through their natural differentiation men and women unequivocally affirm their brotherhood.” 14.3 Nancy Chodorow, from “The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender” Chodorow argues that gender identify is socially constructed differently for women and men because women are the primary family caretakers. This inequality can be corrected by a fundamental reorganization of parenting. 14.4 Carol Gilligan, from “Woman’s Place in Man’s Life Cycle” Gilligan argues that a woman’s moral development is related to her psychological development, which is altered by the conflicting responsibilities of her role as nurturer. This results in a contextual mode of thinking that frames moral decisions. 14.5 Sandra Harding, from “Conclusion: Epistemological Questions” An explanation of major theories of feminist science with an examination of gender-loyalty concerns and scientific objectivity. 14.6 Hélène Cixous, from “The Laugh of the Medusa” An argument on both the metaphorical and literal levels about the nature of women’s sexuality and the need for women to write themselves. 14.7 Sherryl Kleinman, from “Goodbye, You Guys” It can seem harmless and inclusive, but “a friendly sounding phrase like ‘you guys’ can do damage.” Lecture and Discussion Ideas Do all oppressed groups suffer? Are all groups that suffer oppressed? In her 1983 article, “Sexism,” Marilyn Frye argues that the whole system of gender is really one of power. She notes that we go to a great deal of trouble to keep the sexes distinct; even products that have no inherent differences, like shampoos, deodorants, and razor blades, are packaged differently for men and women. For one group to oppress another, Frye reasons, there must be (at least) two distinct groups so that it will seem rational to treat them differently. She argues that the thousands of ways in which artificial differences between women and men are reinforced are all little acts of sexism. It’s important to emphasize to students that Frye thinks that “suffering” and “oppression” are different. This subject frequently comes up in the discussion of feminist issues. Students will argue—correctly—that white men suffer in their lives. Frye suggests that simple suffering is not sufficient for oppression; indeed, oppressors can suffer pretty dismally. But if their options are not systematically limited by the social structures under which they live, then they do not count as oppressed. Nor does being oppressed necessarily manifest itself as suffering. There are plenty of historical cases of people who were abjectly oppressed (certain slaves, for instance) who did not experience themselves as suffering. Nevertheless, because they labored under social structures that systematically immobilized them and limited their opportunities, Frye would argue that they were oppressed. Oppression, in short, is more objective than suffering. Suffering requires that the individual feel some sort of psychological discomfort and that the individual be aware of that discomfort. Oppression has to do with the social system that surrounds all members of the community and that systematically advantages one group and disadvantages another. It follows from this analysis that one can be oppressed without knowing it, whereas one cannot suffer without knowing it. Philosophers’ Principal Works Judith Butler (1956-) Performative Acts and Gender Constitution (1988) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"(1993) Undoing Gender (2004) Giving An Account of Oneself (2005) Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (1997) Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life (1787) A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792) Anna Doyle Wheeler (1765–1833) “The Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women, against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to Restrain Them in Political, and Thence in Civil and Domestic, Slavery” (with William Thompson) (1825) Harriet Taylor (c. 1807–1858) The Enfranchisement of Women Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) The Second Sex (1953) Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (1959) The Prime of Life (1962) Hélène Cixous (1937– ) The Hélène Cixous Reader (1994) Stigmata: Escaping Texts (1996) Marilyn Frye (1941– ) The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (1983) Willful Virgin (1992) Carol Gilligan (1936– ) In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (1982) Making Connections: The Relational Worlds of Adolescent Girls at Emma Willard School (joint author) (1990) Nancy Chodorow (1944– ) The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (1978) Feminism and Psychoanalysis (1989) Femininities, Masculinities, Sexualities: Freud and Beyond (1994) Nel Nodding’s (1929– ) Caring (1984) Women and Evil (1989) Educating for Intelligent Belief or Unbelief (1993) Sara Ruddick (1935– ) Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace (1990) Stephanie Ross (1949– ) How Words Hurt: Attitude, Metaphor, and Oppression (1981) Naomi Wolf (1962– ) The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women (1990) Fire With Fire (1994) The End of America: Letter of Warning To a Young Patriot (2007) Sandra Harding (1935– ) Is Science Multicultural?: Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies (1998) Decentering the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial, and Feminist World (2000) Science and Social Inequality: Feminist and Postcolonial Issues (2006) Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) The Language of the Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis (1966) The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1978) Julia Kristeva (1941– ) Revolution in Poetic Language (1984) Strangers to Ourselves (1991) The Feminine and the Sacred (2001) Luce Irigaray (1930– ) This Sex Which Is Not One (1985) The Irigaray Reader (1991) Elemental Passions (1992) An Ethics of Sexual Difference (1993) Thinking the Difference: For a Peaceful Revolution (1994) Instructor Manual for Philosophy: The Power of Ideas Brooke Noel Moore, Kenneth Bruder 9780078038358
Download
Close
Close
