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Posted by: gcarkner | May 29, 2024

Taylor’s Wisdom: Commitment to the Good

Relation to the Good as a Key Element in Ethical Maturity and Conscientiousness

Charles Taylor takes the opportunity to fill out the picture/ecology of the moral self in more detail and to propose a vital relationship with the good as part of moral self-constitution. This addresses some of the dark implications of Foucault’s work on identity. Taylor’s analysis of morality is tightly interwoven with his analysis of the self in Western culture and that is very helpful as a critique of Foucault: Taylor (1989, 3) argues that the human self is an inherently moral entity; self is always situated in moral space: “Selfhood and the good … or selfhood and morality, turn out to be inextricably intertwined themes.” He does not settle for the self as a work of art, inventor or self, or artist of self. He wants more.

The moral ontology proposed by Taylor sets up a lively tension and contrast with Foucault; it challenges at points, it reveals what is hidden beneath the surface at other points, and it shows what is left out of the doctrine of aesthetic-freedom. Such a doctrine has become an ideology in today’s academic culture. This dialogue is deemed fruitful because there are insights to be gained by comparing and contrasting a more simple and minimalist ontology with a broader, richer, and more complex one. There is beauty in the simplicity of Foucault, of course, but there are serious problems of anti-humanism and potential for implosion into nihilism. Taylor’s discourse is a good route to comprehending/resolving Foucault’s skewed concept of freedom in context of a larger whole. Taylor is fair in raising some good questions on the one hand, and highlighting the insights of Foucault on the other. It is an important contribution to the current debate about identity. I begin with Taylor’s case for moral realism.

Taylor’s argument for moral realism is five-fold. In terms of moral givens, he argues that certain perennial features of the self are present irrespective of culture or the way they are expressed or understood. He starts his analysis with the question of how humans operate as moral beings in their actual moral experiences in daily life, and with their reflection upon those experiences. So like Foucault, he is interested in praxis as well as theory. Beginning with humans and the way they experience morality, he claims that the most plausible explanation of morality is one that takes seriously the human perception of the independence of goods–we have an objective and subjective relationship with the moral good. He does not want to substitute a philosophical abstraction for how people live and think.

Firstly, he argues for the ubiquity of moral intuitions and judgments in human experience. We can all agree to this phenomenon. These are intuitions that transcend basic human desires for survival, sex, or self-realization. They are also referred to as second-order desires, strong evaluations or qualitative discriminations. All these terms are employed by Taylor. Note the important reference to the ‘quality of the will’. This concept of second-order desires appeals to the ancient idea of the good. Although interwoven with the self, it transcends the self in significant ways.

Secondly, he argues that there is a need for a larger moral picture to facilitate the task of making sense of moral experience (debates, deliberations, decisions, and actions). He calls this picture (map) a moral framework or horizon. Each framework is made up of several goods held together in a coherent relationship with one another, producing a moral worldview or social imaginary. The moral self is in a dialectical relationship with its framework; this is not a static set of conditions.

Thirdly, he recognizes that there is a key defining good within each moral framework, which he calls the hypergood. The hypergood is the highest/most important good and operates a controlling influence over the other goods within the framework. It defines the overall character of the framework and thus is central to the discussion of the moral self.

Fourthly, Taylor recognizes a narrative and communal texture to the pursuit of the good in moral self-constitution. Humans interpret their lives in narrative and communal terms as they pursue moral goods. This narrative articulation helps the individual to find a unity/continuity amidst the complexity of moral experience and a plurality of goods vying for one’s attention. This is key to making moral sense of life experience. It is also part of the quest of one’s life.

Fifthly, Taylor speaks of the sources of the moral, which he refers to as the constitutive good. The constitutive good (a category of moral motivation) gives meaning to and empowers the hypergood and the other life goods within the moral framework. It provides the constitutive ground of worth or value of the life goods, and empowers the self to live the good life. This is a very significant dimension that is often missed in moral deliberation.

Therefore, moral/spiritual identity is intimately interwoven with the pursuit of the good in Taylor’s ontology. This is essential to meaning and purpose. He discerns these five categories as basic givens, structural features that are common to the life of all morally healthy human beings. Taylor wants to problematize the occlusion or exclusion of such parameters, such qualitative distinctions for moral reasoning. He believes that within the life of the individual, there is a multiplicity of goods to be recognized, acted upon, and pursued. Taylor emphasizes the importance of being circumspect about these very significant goods. It entails a moral ontology of the self at its best, or most whole. It was not developed by Taylor specifically for a response to Foucault, but offers a useful framework for this dialogue on moral self-constitution.

As a nominalist and anti-essentialist, Foucault has suggested that there is no objective, stable human moral nature either independent of culture or one’s historical formation, or alternatively independent of one’s own private self-construction. Therefore, on his view, the constructing forces of society and government are in tension with the constructing force of the individual self. This is the battle line for identity formation. Culture tends to determine the meaning one assigns to the world around, and what one takes as human and natural. Therefore, what is often called human nature is very temporary, contingent, local, and changeable. The quest for freedom means that change is necessary; every self is involved in the process of defining and shaping itself. In Foucault’s mind, there is no universal human nature other than either the ability to acquire a culture from society or the nature individuals construct themselves. Moral selves are either a cultural product or a self-made product, or perhaps some combination of the two.

Foucault’s moral ontology of aesthetic-freedom entails a whole meta-position of relativism, multiplicity, difference, and diversity. We should not miss that it too is an ideology. It is one that excludes the moral good as defined by Taylor drawing on a historic understanding going back to the Greeks. For Foucault, there exists no ultimate or final moral position or common set of moral parameters, which is to be seen as hierarchically justified. In this, he agrees with many of his fellow late moderns. Attempts at claiming such justification would be seen by him as a fatal flaw. His relativist moral position means that he does not believe that it is possible to argue rationally for the superiority of one moral construction over another. We have said that this can lead to chaos, anti-humanism, or nihilism.

There is no totalizing or final position because that would be to court vulnerability to domination. All positions, according to Foucault, are seen as problematic and dangerous, implicated with power, regime-biased. Ethics, in his sense, is history all the way down or a historical-cultural predisposition or bias, and therefore must be constantly put under the critical knife. Moral self-constitution changes from place to place and era to era, and ultimately individual to individual. The moral vision he offers in an age of moral crisis and nihilism (loss of moral consensus) is that the self might gain increased control over self-construction and escape dominating power strategies. This tool can be of some help and provide a basis for dialogue with Taylor’s dynamic grappling with the good. For Foucault, the creativity and originality of self is the road to freedom from domination. It is clear by now that he does not offer hope for society as a whole in his ethics–no mutual or common good. Freedom has an individual shape and it is a contest, a struggle. Perhaps he has in mind the image of the Greek Olympic Games. One must assertively and proactively manage one’s own identity. This sets the stage for debate on moral ontology as it relates to the self.

Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Watkin, C. (2018). Michel Foucault. Philipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: christianity, ethics, morality, philosophy, spirituality

Posted by: gcarkner | May 27, 2024

Taylor Versus Foucault on Freedom 1/

Freedom, Identity and the Good

Proposition One: Redeemed freedom means that one refuses freedom as an ontological ground of ethics, and embraces a new definition of freedom within an ontology/frame of the moral good. Charles Taylor’s moral horizon of the good is offered as a lively and robust alternative to Foucault’s horizon of aesthetic-freedom.

Foucault’s idea of autonomous freedom as self-invention, self-interpretation, self- expression, self-legislation and self-justification is radical indeed. Schwöbel sums it up:

In deciding for policies of action which incorporate choices concerning the interpretation of our possibilities of action, of our goals of action and of the norms of action we attempt to observe, we decide the fundamental orientation of our lives. Such decisions are examples of self-determination. Self-determination is contrasted to determination by external authorities. (C. Schwöbel, 1995, pp. 62-3)

Aesthetic-freedom certainly has its appeal; it comes with a creative, youthful energy, to launch human subjectivity, overcoming the inertia and restrictions of governmentality and unhappy power relations. This is often attractive to young people with an edge of rebellion against authority. Foucault does not apologize for its élitist outlook. But this view of freedom has revealed a failure to offer sufficient direction for subjectivity, for a sophisticated use of the will. It lacks a platform for critical appraisal of our actions or choices. Thus, it shows a major deficit in equipping the individual for serious moral reflection, debate and action. It short circuits moral discourse by moving too quickly to praxis or action, without sufficient reflection on the reasons for such action, or the virtues or moral goods endemic to ethics. It can lead to moral autism (Matthew B. Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head, 183-93) with the loss of moral language needed to distinguish oneself, or even worse to nihilism, will-to-power and violence.

During the conversation with Foucault in previous posts, cracks and contradictions in his ideology of the aesthetic (Terry Eagleton) have emerged along with its potential dangers of overindulgence–of Dionysian proportions. The great philosopher Charles Taylor illuminates the darker side of Foucault’s artful freedom. The absolute sovereignty that Foucault gives to the individual for self-expression raises concerns: it may indulge in a fantasy of the human will. Foucault propounds a very optimistic philosophical anthropology of the aesthetic self (artistic work is worthy in and of itself, of course) with great faith in the creativity and imagination of the individual. At the same time, there is great cynicism about society and its institutions. He understands that domination can occur in corporate regimes of knowledge (making evil and oppression visible), but he is less open to acknowledge the potential evil in individual self-shaping and self-expression, radical self-control–aka expressive individualism. This is a major oversight/blind spot which is not acceptable in such a notable scholar.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: foucault, michel-foucault, morality, philosophy, politics

Posted by: gcarkner | May 24, 2024

Taylor Versus Foucault on Ethics

Foucault, by privileging the aesthetic hermeneutic of self, the ontology of freedom, and the power of the creative imagination, has managed to launch a whole new discourse for ethics; it is an ethics of aesthetic self-empowerment, and expressive individualism. For Foucault, the clear weight of bias in his discourse on subjectivity is towards a radical autonomy, not construction as a communal dialogue, nor was it a communal ethics. It is an ethics of the individual. This tends to skew Foucault’s theory of the moral self towards an ethics of self-interest or even narcissism (excessive self-care). According to Foucault, ethics means that the self studies the power relations within the social matrix, abstracts itself from the problematized social matrix, rethinks itself, and then imposes the newly invented self combatively onto society. “The understanding of value as something created gives a sense of freedom and power” (Taylor, 1991, p. 67). Foucault attempts to deal with self-constitution issue through his strong emphasis on the creative, constructive imagination. For him, the language of a transcendent good is repressed in self-making, in favour of the language of creative imagination and radical individual self-articulation. The grammar of the good is rethought and refigured in terms of the artistic self; self and its expression are taken as the proximate source of the good and the true.

The sources of the self, to use Taylor’s language, are contained within the creative self. Once this is realized, suggests Foucault, individual freedom and power will emerge. Unlike other conceptions of transcendent moral sources in reason, nature or God, Foucault focuses on sources of the self within the self, in the register of moral empowerment. Such a perception of sources, such a “love affair with power” makes it possible to relativize, even marginalize the other and the social world. This gives one power over the other and the world, a power which could easily be abused by such a subject. It at least decreases vulnerability to the other. This is especially acute given Foucault’s emphasis on the kind of accountability that is merely a self-reflexive phenomenon, a responsibility to care for self as a prime directive. It produces a radical self-determining form of freedom: “It seems that significance can be conferred by choice, by making my life an exercise in freedom” (C. Taylor, 1991, 69). The one remaining virtue is choice itself. The kinder side of this, says Taylor, is that this is “taken as supports for the demands of difference” (C. Taylor, 1991, 69). But overall, it pushes towards the atomization of society–social chaos.

Characteristics of the Aesthetic, Post-Romantic Self as gleaned from C. Taylor, 1989, 434-455:

1. Art is superior to morality, and sees itself in conflict with the social moral order.

2. Humans live in a chaotic or fallen natural and social world, rooted in chaos and the will to power. One can take an affirmative stance towards the world through seeing it as beautiful—seeing the world through an aesthetic lens. This is the only remaining basis for its justification.

3. Being itself is not good as such, nor is human being per se taken as good.

4. Hope resides in a strong belief in the power of the creative imagination to transfigure or transform the world and the self, or to reveal it afresh as beautiful.

5. Language is a key means of changing the world, or at least the way one sees the world—key to one’s poetic self-expression, and re-writing of one’s self.

6. This tends to result in an aesthetic amorality, a move beyond good and evil, an embrace or affirmation of violence and cruelty as well as patience and care. There can be no logical or moral distinction between them. We are experiencing this in Western culture and politics today.

Foucault would agree basically with Taylor’s placement of his project in the twentieth century cultural transition called the Post-Romantic Turn (Taylor, 1989, 434-55)30. The expressivism (desire for freedom of expression) of this tradition gives a higher, even a normative significance to the aesthetic, and opens a full challenge to the moral (Taylor, 1991, 63). Foucault wishes to transcend the code-morality with its universal intent towards normalization, by a new morality of the evolving ethics of the autonomous self. The pressing question at this stage of the argument is whether Foucault himself is captive to his own totalizing and unexamined impulse, the aestheticization of the moral self. There is a strong tendency in Foucault to celebrate the individual’s own powers to construct and interpret reality in a context shaped by immanence and the finite, and to deny the legitimacy of any binding moral horizon, any transcendent principle or ideal, or moral culture outside the self. Taylor (1989) sees the picture in the quote below.

Foucault’s spiritual profile: an even higher estimate of the unrestricted powers of the imagination than the Romantics had, and hence a celebration of those powers … This subjectivism of self-celebration is a standard temptation in a culture which exalts freedom and puts such value on the creative imagination. (C. Taylor, 1989, 489, 490)

According to this sentiment resulting from a strong atheism, all values are welcome to the table of open hospitality, indicating a moral levelling. The consequence is that nothing appears to be of ultimate value, better or worse, innately. Virtues and vices, good and evil are levelled and reduced to an individual’s stylization; only one’s individually chosen values remain–with the freedom to cherish them or discard them later. It is ethics as self-assertive politics; one posits and then promotes one’s values in the name of style. This is a Nietzschean embrace of it all in the name of beauty. There is no higher or lower morality, no higher or lower marks of authenticity in Foucault. They are all just expressions of the self, all legitimated in and of themselves. “Beauty is a satisfaction for itself … gives its own intrinsic fulfilment. Its goal is internal” (C. Taylor, 1991, 64). Also, “aesthetic wholeness is an independent goal with its own telos, its own form of goodness and satisfaction” (C. Taylor, 1991, 65). Taylor makes the connection between Nietzsche’s nihilism and Foucault on the issue of the aesthetic (C. Taylor, 1991, 60)

It is here that one more clearly recognizes that Foucault’s project of the recovery of the subjective agency is threatened by a loss of meaning. There is a potential implosion into a fatal and tragic nihilism, self imploding in upon itself, without a broader horizon of significance and the recognition/validation by the other (triangulation). Foucault strategically sought to escape nihilism through the invention of the aesthetic self, but it has failed. Taylor (1989) notes that in this philosophical turn, there is a tendency to legitimate action and ethical behaviour according to beauty rather than by its inherent good.

What in the universe commands our affirmation, when we have overcome the all-too-human, is not properly called its goodness but comes closer to being its beauty…. Part of the heroism of the Nietzschean superman is that he can rise beyond the moral, beyond the concern with the good, and manage in spite of suffering and disorder and the absence of all justice to respond to something like the beauty of it all. (C. Taylor, 1989, 454)

The interpretative lens of goodness (perhaps even right and wrong) is exchanged for the lens of the beautiful. The beauty of it all makes all things tolerable. In William T. Cavanaugh’s (2024) language, this is a form of idolatry of the self. If Foucault’s ethics as artistic life is passed through such a repudiation of the moral, any socially empowering moral principle is recognized and yet demoted in favour of the individual’s controlled agenda over the self. This entails a distortion of reality and a distortion of the self. A prestigious place is given to one’s own inner powers of construing, imagining or interpreting the world, while making over the self. Self-confidence is encouraged, but sensitivity to, and responsibility for the other is wanting.

Aestheticism naturally endorses violence and undercuts Foucault ‘liberating’ ethics. Taylor reveals the dark side:

This is the revolt from within unbelief … against the primacy of life … from a sense of being confined, diminished by this sense of primacy. This has been an important stream in our culture, something woven into the inspiration of poets and writers—for example Baudelaire and Mallarme. The most influential proponent of this kind of view is undoubtedly Nietzsche, and it is significant that the most important antihumanist thinkers of our time—for example Foucault, Derrida, behind them Bataille—all draw heavily on Nietzsche. Nietzsche rebelled against the idea that our highest goal is to preserve and increase life, to prevent suffering. He rejects that both metaphysically and practically. He rejects the egalitarianism underlying this whole affirmation of ordinary life … Life itself can push to cruelty, to domination, to exclusion, and, indeed, does so in its moments of most exhuberant affirmation … There is nothing higher than the movement of life itself (the Will to Power). But it chafes at the benevolence, the universalism, the harmony, the order. It wants to rehabilitate destruction and chaos, the infliction of suffering and exploitation, as part of the life to be affirmed. Life properly affirmed affirms death and destruction. To pretend otherwise is to try to restrict it, hem it in, deprive it of its highest manifestations, which are precisely what makes it something you can say yes to. (Taylor, 1991, p. 27)

Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Taylor, C. (1991). The Malaise of Modernity. Concord, ON: Anansi.

Cavanaugh, W.T. The Uses of Idolatry, Oxford University Press, 2024.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: foucault, michel-foucault, philosophy, politics, writing

Posted by: gcarkner | May 18, 2024

Charles Taylor’s Wisdom, Scrutiny re: Overreach of the Aesthetic in Ethics

Taylor’s Concern with the Overreach of Aesthetic Self-Making in Morality

This post explores a critical appraisal of Foucault’s ethics as aesthetic self-determination, which ultimately yields a full-orbed self-making or self-invention. A strategic starting point is with Taylor’s diagnostics of self-constitution in his book, The Malaise of Modernity (Taylor, 1991, 65-67). This chart is employed as a criteria grid to begin the critical examination of the robustness of Foucault concept of aesthetic moral self-constitution, which is lively in late modern culture today. It highlights what is present and what is excluded (the gaps); it leads us on a trajectory of opening up our awareness of the full dimensions of the self. Taylor begins by agreeing with Foucault that, in the West, one is self-consciously involved in one’s self-development, and that one’s identity, one’s spirituality, and one’s moral self are intimately linked; those dimensions are common to both philosophers. Both are also critical of a cultural over-emphasis on scientific definitions of the moral self. Their debate begins when one asks who and what else is involved in one’s self-shaping.

In Taylor’s analysis, there are five significant criteria in the chart below, divided into categories A and B, indicators of the shape of one’s own moral self-constitution/formation. It is a chart which is respectful of the plurality of contemporary approaches. Taylor suggests that all five elements tend to be involved, in some combination, in the pursuit of an authentic life.

Taylor’s Moral Self-Construction Diagnostics

Category A (Creativity)

(i) Creation and construction (as well as discovery) of the self.

(ii) Pursuit of originality in one’s self-crafting.

(iii) Opposition to the rules of society and even potentially to what one traditionally recognizes as morality, the moral sense, or the moral order.

Category B (Social and Communal Accountability)

(i) Openness to horizons of significance prevents one’s self-creation from losing the background that can save it from insignificance and trivialization (self-destructive tendencies).

(ii) Self-definition needs to be developed in dialogue with significant others, that is, fellow moral interlocutors. (Taylor, 1991, 65, 66)

This chart is rooted in Taylor’s moral ontology of the good, but contains a broad application. While admitting the strong impact of the Post-Romantic Turn in philosophy (of which Foucault is a part), Taylor understands the existence and currency of the language of self-construction. [Post-Romantic Philosophy, in the late nineteenth early twentieth century, traces from Schopenhauer to Baudelaire to Nietzsche to Foucault.] Taylor takes Foucault seriously, even though he disagrees with him on certain key emphases. Taylor does not reject the Romantic and Post-Romantic traditions out of hand, but he does bring a critical reflection to bear on them.

Taylor believes in both objective, social, and subjective components to ethics. He does not concede the legitimacy of just any form of self-construction, a view that puts him into a significant tension with Foucault’s perspective on the self. Referring back to the chart above, Taylor’s concern with Foucault (as with other Neo-Nietzscheans) is the extreme emphasis that he places on Category A (Creativity), and the near exclusion of an emphasis on Category B (Social Accountability and Mutuality). Moreover, he contests that Foucault’s radical nominalism, which denies the possibility of self-discovery along with self-creation (Ai); his problem is with what he considers an over-emphasis or skewing/unnecessary bending of reality. Taylor has a higher stake in, puts a higher value on, certain human and natural (even moral) givens than Foucault. Taylor is not a nominalist but a falsifiable moral realist.

Furthermore, Taylor questions the merits and overall legitimacy of category Aiii, that self-constitution should automatically, by definition, involve denial of the moral rules of society—the anarchic/narcissistic stance. This makes an idol of self and one’s choice. He does not have an inherent bias against social norms, but nor is he an uncritical social conventionalist. Taylor (1991, 63) can ask seriously why aesthetic self-making should necessarily pass through a repudiation of the moral and moral history. Also, why are all moral regimes and all humanisms written off so thoroughly by Foucault? Finally, his concern with Foucault is the inherent denial of the significance of category Bi and Bii, including the idea of moral horizons and the more social dimension of self-making, which includes important elements of triangulation (Matthew Crawford) in identity production. Foucault’s idea of moral self-constitution is extremely individualistic.

Taylor, as a more communitarian thinker, brings a fresh set of concerns to the table of discussion on the self. He suggests that,

“What must be wrong is a simple privileging of one over the other (A over B) …. That is what trendy doctrines of “deconstruction” involve today … they stress (Ai) the constructive, creative nature of our expressive languages, while altogether forgetting (Bi). They capture the more extreme forms of (Aiii), the amoralism of creativity … while forgetting (Bii), its dialogical setting, which binds us to others …. These thinkers buy into the background outlook of authenticity, for instance in their understanding of the creative, self-constitutive powers of language … while ignoring some of its essential constituents.” (Taylor, 1991, pp. 66, 67)

Taylor’s concern is that Foucault makes such a move, ignoring certain key constituents of self-articulation or self-constitution, such as the dynamics of Category B (Accountability). By abolishing all extra-self horizons of significance, and demoting the significance of dialogue with other moral interlocutors, morality can become a monologue, narcissistic, an abstract self-projection onto the world, rather than a source of communal conversation and cooperation–which is essential for one’s emotional health and sanity. It entails a kind of excarnation–living in one’s own head. It does not promote responsible citizenship or build community.

Bibliography:

Taylor, C. (1991). The Malaise of Modernity. Concord, ON: Anansi (also published as The Ethics of Authenticity).

Crawford, M. (2016). The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction.

Eagleton, T. (1990). The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Oxford: Blackwell

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: foucault, michel-foucault, philosophy, politics, writing

Posted by: gcarkner | May 17, 2024

Charles Taylor’s Wisdom

Taylor’s Case for Moral Realism in Sources of the Self.

Charles Taylor’s argument for moral realism is five-fold: In terms of moral givens, he argues that certain perennial features of the self are present irrespective of culture or the way they are expressed or understood. He starts his analysis with the question of how humans operate as moral beings in their actual moral experiences, and how they reflect upon those experiences. So like Foucault, he is interested in praxis. Beginning with humans and the way they experience morality, he claims that the most plausible explanation of morality is one that takes seriously humans’ perception of the independence of goods. He does not want to substitute a philosophical abstraction for how people live and think.

Firstly, he argues for the ubiquity of moral intuitions and judgments in human experience. These are intuitions that transcend basic human desires for survival, sex, or self-realization. They are also referred to as second-order desires, strong evaluations or qualitative discriminations: each of these terms is used by Taylor. One notes the important reference to the quality of the will. This concept of second-order desires appeals to the ancient idea of the good, one which although interwoven with the self, transcends the self in significant ways.

Secondly, he argues that there is a need for a larger moral picture to facilitate the task of making sense of moral experience (debates, deliberations, decisions and actions). He calls this picture (map) a moral framework or horizon. Each framework is made up of several goods held together in a coherent relationship with one another, producing a moral worldview. The moral self is in a dialectical relationship with its framework; it is not a static set of conditions.

Thirdly, he recognizes that there is a key defining good within each moral framework, which he calls the hypergood. The hypergood is the highest good and operates a controlling influence over the other goods within the framework; it defines the overall character of the framework and thus is central to the discussion of the moral self.

Fourthly, Taylor recognizes a narrative and communal texture to the pursuit of the good in moral self-constitution. Humans interpret their lives in narrative and communal terms as they pursue moral goods. This narrative articulation helps the self to find a unity amidst the complexity of moral experience and a plurality of goods vying for one’s attention.

Fifthly, Taylor speaks of the sources of the moral, which he refers to as the constitutive good. The constitutive good (a category of moral motivation) gives meaning to and empowers, the hypergood and the other life goods within the moral framework. It provides the constitutive ground of the worth or value of the life goods, and allows the self to live the good life; this is a very significant dimension.

Moral identity is interwoven with the pursuit of the good in life in Taylor’s ontology. He discerns these five categories as givens, structural features that are common to the life of all morally healthy human beings. Taylor wants to problematize the occlusion or exclusion of such parameters, such qualitative distinctions for moral reasoning, because he believes that within the life of the self, there is a multiplicity of goods to be recognized, acted upon and pursued. Taylor emphasizes the importance of being circumspect about these goods. It is quite an ambitious and challenging proposal, a moral ontology of the self at its best, or most whole. It offers a useful framework for dialogue across differences of interpretation on moral self-constitution.

Qualities of a Strong Identity for Philosopher Charles Taylor Humans at their best, their fullest, richest linguistic and social capacity

Their words and actions cohere-integrity.

They pursue what is of top significance without deviation. They pursue wholeness and unity of motives, not confusion, brokenness, and fragmentation.

They overcome dispersal, contradiction, or self-stifling: temptations to reduce themselves to something less or lower (the race to the bottom).

The results of this pursuit involve them in seeing better, believing better, loving better, and living a more wholistic life. We respect our future self by taking our present self more seriously through more responsible behaviour. Never forget that we are always situated in moral space, on a moral journey, we are thoroughly moral creatures. Morality is intimately entwined with identity, narrative, community, and spirituality.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: ethics, leadership, moral-philosophy, morality, philosophy

Posted by: gcarkner | April 5, 2024

Christian Philosophy Continues to Flourish

William Lane Craig, PhD University of Birmingham, PhD University of Munich

Paul Gould, PhD Purdue University

Alvin Plantinga, PhD Yale University

James K. A. Smith, PhD Villanova University

Nicholas Wolterstorff, PhD Harvard University

Gary Habermas, PhD Michigan State University

Charles Taylor, PhD Oxford University

Jacques Maritain

Richard Swinburne, Fellow of the British Academy, taught at Oxford

Peter Kreeft, PhD Fordham University

Alasdair MacIntyre, one of the foremost professors of philosophy of ethics and politics

Jean-Luc Marion, student of Jacques Derrida

Eleanore Stump, PhD Cornell University

Peter Van Inwagen, PhD University of Rochester

J.P. Moreland, PhD University of Southern California

Jerry l. Walls, PhD University of Notre Dame

Alexander Truss, PhD UBC, PhD University of Pittsburgh

Follow Your Passion. You are not a Victim. You are a Visionary!

“Be who God meant you to be, and you will set the world on fire.” ~Catharine of Siena

UBC GFCF Distinguished Scholars for 2024-25

Wednesday, September 24, 2024 @ 4:00 PM William T. Cavanaugh, The Uses of Idolatry.

Abstract In this talk, our heavily researched speaker offers a sustained and interdisciplinary argument that worship has not waned in our supposedly “secular” world. Rather, the target of worship has changed, migrating from the explicit worship of God to the implicit worship of things. Cavanaugh examines modern idolatries and the ways in which humans become dominated and harmed by their own creations. While Cavanaugh is critical of modern idolatries, his argument is also sympathetic, seeing in idolatry a deep longing in the human heart for the transformation of our lives. Ranging widely across the fields of history, philosophy, political science, sociology, and cultural studies, Cavanaugh develops an account of modernity as not the condition of being disenchanted but the condition of having learned to describe the world as disenchanted.

Biography William T. Cavanaugh, PhD from Duke University, is Professor of Catholic Studies and director for the Centre for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology at DePaul University. He is the author of The Myth of Religious Violence, Oxford University Press, 2009; and The Uses of Idols, Oxford University Press, 2024. His specialty is political theology, economic ethics, and ecclesiology.

2. November 7, 2024 @ 12:00 PM Denis Alexander. Finding God Through Dawkins: a Dramatic Irony

Abstract The so-called ‘New Atheism’ movement that came to prominence in the earlier part of this century has now declined. However, it has left in its wake an intriguing residue of religious and cultural consequences. One of the most prominent spokespersons for the movement has been Professor Richard Dawkins from Oxford University. The 2023 Kregel book, co-edited by Alister McGrath and Denis Alexander, Coming to Faith Through Dawkins, comprises twelve essays written by twelve different authors from five different countries and describes how the works of Dawkins and other New Atheist writers were influential in leading them from atheism or agnosticism to Christian faith. This lecture will review the roots of the New Atheism movement, and why it has led some former skeptics to Christian faith.

Biography Denis Alexander, a noted geneticist, biochemist, and cancer researcher is the Founding Director (Emeritus) of The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, Cambridge, where he is Emeritus Fellow of St. Edmund’s College. He is past Chair of the Molecular Immunology Programme and Head of the Laboratory of Lymphocyte Signalling and Development at The Babraham Institute, Cambridge. Dr. Alexander’s latest books are: Is There Purpose in Biology? Oxford: Lion, 2018; and Are We Slaves to Our Genes? Cambridge University Press, 2020. He gave the 2012 Gifford Lectures at St. Andrew’s University.

3. Thursday, January 30, 2025 @ 4 PM Jeremy Begbie, Professor of Theology and Music, Duke University C. S. Lewis and Unfulfilled Longing: An Exploration through Music

Abstract C. S. Lewis famously spoke of fleeting experiences of joy he had early in life, a longing for something this world cannot satisfy. Dr. Begbie will creatively explore this through music, comparing this pre-Christian unfulfilled desire with Christian hope.

Biography Jeremy Begbie is the Thomas A. Langford Distinguished Research Professor of Theology at Duke Divinity School, and McDonald Agape Director of Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts. He teaches systematic theology, and specializes in the interface between theology and the arts. He is Senior Member at Wolfson College, Cambridge, and an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge. His books include Theology, Music and Time (Cambridge University Press); Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music (Baker/SPCK); and Music, Modernity, and God (Oxford University Press); and Abundantly More (Baker). He is a very engaging speaker who has taught widely in the UK and North America, and delivered multimedia performance-lectures in many parts of the world.

4. Tuesday, March 4 @ 12:00 PM Quentin Genuis Rethinking Medical Ethics in Light of the Good.

Abstract What features define human life and the value of the individual? How do individuals and communities understand and withstand suffering and pain? What is good dying? In our time, the essential human questions are often viewed primarily as bioethics issues. In reality, these are not exclusively medical or bioethical inquiries. Rather they are complicated and challenging ethical questions with which all human beings and societies must grapple. How does Christian philosophy and theology inform these life and death questions at deeper, more foundational levels?

Biography Dr. Quentin Genuis MD is an Emergency Physician at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, and the Physician Ethicist for Providence Health Care. He holds a Master of Letters in Ethics from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He teaches in academic, clinical, professional, and lay settings on a variety of issues related to bioethics. His research and writing interests include the autonomy debates, end-of-life care, compassion, human dignity, addictions, and theological anthropology.

See: Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture: Grounding Our Identity in Christ by Gordon E. Carkner PhD, Wipf & Stock Publishing, 2024

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Posted by: gcarkner | February 23, 2024

Abigail Favale Brings Clarity to Gender Ambivalence

Abigail Favale

Professor Notre Dame University

Examining the Sources of Gender: Why Sexual Difference Matters

Two Resources as Follow-up to the Lecture:

1. First, an expert guide on youth gender medicine that Abigail co-wrote with a pediatric endocrinologist; this gives a thorough overview of the research on gender medicine for young people.

2. Second, the study from Finland on the question of suicide mentioned in the discussion, with an analysis of the study here.

Abstract How do contemporary theories of gender compare to the understanding of gender in the Christian imagination? This talk will provide a sketch of two distinct paradigms–the “gender paradigm” and the “Genesis paradigm”–and bring those two frameworks into conversation with one another, highlighting points of consonance and dissonance between them.

Biography Abigail Favale, Ph.D., is a professor in the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. She has an academic background in gender studies and feminist theory, and writes regularly about these topics from a Catholic perspective. She is the author of The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory (Ignatius 2022) and Into the Deep: An Unlikely Catholic Conversion (Cascade 2018), as well as numerous essays and articles. Abigail’s essays and short stories have appeared in print and online for publications such as First Things, The Atlantic, Church Life, and Potomac Review. She was awarded the J.F. Powers Prize for short fiction in 2017.

See also Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self; and Gordon E. Carkner, Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture https://ubcgcu.org/coming-soon/ .

Quotes from Favale’s Book

Difference between men and women have too often been used to justify a strict hierarchy of value and roles between the sexes. In the effort to reject this, feminists thought has typically regarded sexual difference itself with hostility and has downplayed difference in order to affirm equal dignity.

We must engage the vital questions of personhood, sex, identity, and freedom at the level of a worldview. The gender paradigm affirms a radically constructivist view of reality, the reifies it as truth, demanding that others assent to its veracity and adopt its language.

The Gender Paradigm (feminism’s offspring): According to the gender paradigm, there is no creator, and so we are free to create ourselves. The body is an object with no intrinsic meaning; we give it whatever meaning we want, using technology to undo what is perceived to be “natural”. We do not receive meaning from God or our bodies or the world–we impose it. What we take to be “real” is merely a linguistic construct; ergo we should consciously wield language to conjure the reality we want. To be free is to transgress limits continually, to unfetter the will. “Woman” and “man” are language-based identities that can be inhabited by anyone. Because truth is just a story we tell ourselves, all self-told stories are true.

Creation/Genesis/Biblical Paradigm: We are unities of body and spirit; our bodies are an integral part of our identity that connect us to the created order and serves as a bridge between our inmost being and the outer world, and a sacramental sign of the hidden mystery of God. Both man and woman are made in God’s image, and our sexual difference is part of the goodness of the created order, signalling that we are made for reciprocal love. We have been granted a share in the divine power of language in order to make words that reveal the truth about ourselves and our world.

Michel Foucault is the god-father of contemporary gender theory. Angela Franks aptly describes the Foulcauldian view of sex, which now holds supremacy in our culture. Sex for Foucault, is about “bodies and pleasures”…. Bodily sex has been divorced from procreative potential, reduced to appearance and pleasure-making.

John Money’s malleable and disembodied concept of gender swept through the academy, becoming thoroughly entrenched in feminist theory and the social sciences…. Sex refers to biology, and gender refers to social meanings attached to sex…. Ultimately the concept of gender has driven a wedge between body and identity.… This has paved the way to an even more fragmented and unstable understanding of personhood. Because gender is no longer anchored in bodily realities, it has become a postmodern juggernaut, impossible to capture, impossible to name. Unlike sex, gender can be continually altered and deployed, and we are witnessing a wide proliferation of its meaning.

Judith Butler, godmother of gender theory … argues that gender is an unconscious and socially compelled performance, a series of acts and behaviours that create the illusion of an essential identity of “man” and “woman”. In this view, gender is entirely a social construct, a complex fiction that we inherit and then repeatedly reenact.

In culture today, we are seeing a gnostic split between body (sex) and soul (gender). We now have an inherently unstable concept of gender. The concept of gender has driven a wedge between body and identity. “Gender” can be continually altered and redeployed, and we are witnessing in real time the wild proliferation of its meaning. From the trans definition, gender identity is seen to be located in the mind. Others see it as merely a social construct.

“The more I study what gender has become, the more it feels like an empty signifier, a word that is only a shell, conveniently waiting to be filled with whatever meaning is most useful. There is a gender category for every proclivity, every flick of mood, every possible aesthetic: Agender, Bigender, Trigender, Demigender, Demifluid, Demiflux, Pangender.” Abigail Favale

There are people in turmoil and the gender paradigm has become the dominant lens for interpreting that turmoil, and that’s not good. We are living in an era when our young women are increasingly deciding they would be better off as men. Many young women are rebelling against the hypersexulaization of the female body, but in doing so, they are turning against the body itself. The female body, in our shared imagination, no longer signals creation, nourishment, and primal compassion, but rather the prospect of sterile pleasure.

Medicalizing the Problem: The affirmation approach encourages violence to the healthy body rather than carefully working through underlying causes of psychological distress and considering ways of managing that distress that does not cause physical harm.

The new wave of pop gender theory offers a choose-your-own-adventure self. This framework, which has captured our cultural imagination, fragments personhood into mix-and-match categories of gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, and biological sex.

A Different Way of Seeing: Considering oneself as a being who is created moves the discussion of identity to new ground, setting the frame of a transcendent order–an order beyond the natural that sustains its existence and safe-guards its meaning. To be a creature rather than an accident, establishes the human person as a being-in-relation with the divine. We are not alone in the cosmos…. When we see the world as a created cosmos, this transfigures everything: embodiment, sex, suffering, freedom, desire–this is gathered up into an all-embracing mystery, an ongoing interplay between human and divine…. Once understood as created, selfhood, including one’s sex, becomes a gift that can be accepted, rather than something that must be constructed.

We are confronted in our time with two divergent understandings of freedom: on the one hand, freedom according to postmodernity, an open-ended process of self-definition whose only limit is death; on the other, freedoms an ever-deepening sense of belonging and wholeness, not only with oneself, but in relation to all that is.

Why Faith is Vital to Good Scholarship

Christian graduate students demonstrate their faith (of the richness and variety in Hebrews 11) every day on campus. This faith, which is deeply relevant for academic and personal life, is rooted in historical experience, in hope and in God-ordained promise. Christ-centered and incarnate faith is a fulcrum that can move the world and leverage the future. On one side it is a private treasure and pursuit; on the other hand it is public truth for all (Lesslie Newbigin).

In our journey at UBC, we maintain that Christian faith is good for everyone no matter their background (even the neo-atheist). Robust faith involves a persistent search for both understanding and wise integrity; it can open the doors of insight and improve one’s relational skill and sensibilities at the same time.

Dynamic faith, located in a quest to grow up into full maturity in Christ (Eugene Peterson, Practice Resurrection), will expand the horizons of academic research, and offer wisdom on managing projects, funding, time and talent. It is worth breaking a couple drill bits to get down into the deeper layers of weighty, God-honoring faith. It a faith worthy of testing.

Too many students miss out on the opportunity to grow as a person while doing their PhD; they are skill heavy and maturity light and and can leave UBC morally naive. The current public exclusion of faith from academic discourse is nothing short of a tragedy. So agrees Douglas Todd the Vancouver Sun religion and ethics editor in his June 9, 2012 piece called “Can Higher Education Recover its ‘Soul’?” University of Florida’s history professor John Sommerfield says that the secularization of the university has gone too far, to the detriment of its own stated purpose of training future leaders.

David Adams Richards, famous Canadian novelist, in his bold book God Is: my search for faith in a secular world., refuses the stifling of the Christian voice in public: Faith to him is the essential key to freedom (a sure way out of human violence and self-destruction), and a key to wholeness of mind and life. It prevents power from having the last say. At the end of the day, faith is a boon for academia and often used without proper credit; one cannot do proper science without faith in certain key assumptions.

Faith and reason, when discovered and used in creative synergy, are very complementary, innovative and powerful; they do not properly exist in separate realms (D. Stephen Long, Speaking of God) but together. Faith rejects fantasy and superstition; it ultimately wants all of reality, not a reduced version of it.

The certainties which the church has received as a gift require its participation in humanity’s ‘common struggle’ to attain truth. The human search for truth, which is philosophy’s vocation, is not in opposition to theology’s reception of truth as a gift. What we struggle to understand by reason we also receive by faith. No contradiction exists between the certainties of faith and the common struggle of humans to attain truth. The truths humanity seeks by common reason (philosophy) and the certainties of faith can be placed over against each other such that each illuminates the other and renders it intelligible until the two ultimately become one, which is of course what the incarnation does in reverse. The concretion of the one Person illumines the natures of both divinity and humanity. (D. Stephen Long p. 87)

Let’s enjoy the adventure of bringing faith and scholarship together in mutual enrichment.

Dr. Gary Habermas on Transformation in Scholarship on the Resurrection:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay_Db4RwZ_M

Easter Poems by Malcolm Guite

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Posted by: gcarkner | January 18, 2024

Chris Watkin Offers a Fresh Vision for Culture

Christopher Watkin

Lecturer Monash University, Australia

The Bible as a Tool for Changing Culture

Wednesday, February 14, 2024, 4:00 PM

Live Video Recording

Abstract

The question of the relationship between Christianity and culture increasingly takes centre stage in debates both within and outside the church today. This talk reflects on how a constructive, nuanced and—to many modern ears—fresh vision for contemporary society can be drawn from a rich engagement with the Bible’s storyline, guided by Augustine’s magisterial work City of God. What might it look like to reimagine Augustine’s mode of engagement with late Roman society in our own cultural moment of late modernity?

Biography

Christopher Watkin (PhD, University of Cambridge) is senior lecturer in French studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is a scholar with an international reputation in the area of modern and contemporary European thought, atheism, and the relationship between the Bible and philosophy. His published work runs the spectrum from academic monographs on contemporary philosophy to books written for general readers, both Christian and secular, and include Difficult Atheism, From Plato to Postmodernism; Great Thinkers: Jacques Derrida. His recent impressive 2022 tome with Zondervan Academic is Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture.

Companion Volume: Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture

Now available on Amazon and local Bookstores.

The paradigm of the gift places us in the posture of recipients. We receive existence, we receive meaning, and we receive love. To be sure we are creative recipients, as we shall see in the chapters that follow, and receiving the gift of the universe certainly does not make us passive. But the fact remains that we are recipients nonetheless. The one thing we should not do with a gift is pretend we bought or made it ourselves. The giver is usually thanked, so our fundamental orientation to existence in the paradigm of the figure of gratuity is one of praise and thanksgiving.

To live and die by the dynamics of “making a name for ourselves” is to submit to a court of a public opinion which only allows certain achievements to count, and it is to give a warped view of life in which value is ascribed to our words and deeds according to the fickle tastes of the crowd.

Over the past century or so, as values of duty, collective identity, and conformity have been overtaken by a premium on nonconformity and what philosopher Charles Taylor calls “expressive individualism,” we have been increasingly told that we live our best life when we go our own way, in the face of what “they” tell us to do. And so we obediently obey this ubiquitous social command to be our own master and blaze our own trail. (Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory)

The incarnation acts as the pinpoint focus to which all time before it is drawn, and from which all time after it radiates out…. At the incarnation, the narrative that began with the heavens and the earth converges on a single baby as it “sharpens at last into one small bright point like the head of a spear”…. As we move forward in time past the incarnation, we will witness not a further restriction but an explosion in the scope of the narrative as, by the end of the Bible, God’s plans are again seen to encompass the whole universe…. The incarnation is an event that splits time in two…. Of all the biblical events that irreparably alter the course of history and create an indelible “before” and “after,” the incarnation is perhaps the one that has left the deepest mark on modern culture. It gives rise to today’s most widely celebrated Christian festival, Christmas, and the contrasting juxtaposition of almighty deity and fragile newborn has captured the minds of countless artists and poets, as well as the hearts and imaginations of many believers…. “What makes the form of Christ attractive,” writes William Cavanaugh, “is the perfect harmony between finite form and infinite fullness, the particular and the universal.”… Christ bridges Lessing’s ditch with his own universal particularity, forever uniting the immediate and the ultimate, life and reality, experience and truth. (C. Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory, 349-51)

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: apologetics, atheism, christianity, philosophy, religion

Posted by: gcarkner | December 8, 2023

A Life Well Worth Living

Sources of Identity, Meaning, Relationship to the Moral Good

The Examined, Reflective, Whole, Deeper, Purposeful Life is Well Worth Living

Garibaldi Lake

my culture, country and family of origin, the history of my people, my mother tongue and color–where I was born, my early years, my roots
my personal passion, or more deeply, my sense of calling–what and where I want to contribute, my life trajectory, my life’s work
my educational and job experience/training–my leadership skill set derived from my many mentors, colleagues and friends
my priceless personal mentors, coaches, partners and life journey guides, people who have stretched my vision
my ongoing reading and lifelong learning–my quest to expand my horizons
my sexual orientation, the biology of my body, my gender socialization and choices about self-expression, wise management of sexual desires: My understanding of, respect for, and appreciation of, the opposite sex. What is sexual health and wholeness?
my religion, philosophy of life, worldview or ideological orientation, sources of inspiration and spirituality, my ideals, higher values, standards and principles–those meta-biological drivers
my experience of trauma, tragedy, abuse and suffering, failures, handicaps, plus how I cope with suffering and hard circumstances or personal loss
the friends I hang with–my social life and romantic life–network for personal sanity, meaning, and joy
my creative engagement with people who differ from me, either in background or convictions, my listening skills and ability to learn from others that I may disagree with, or who make me feel uncomfortable with my own assumptions–my teachability and openness to growth through dialogue
the community or charity projects where I volunteer and attempt to make a better, more equal playing field in the game of life
the larger story or narrative that makes sense of my life–clarifying what really matters, what constitutes being human at a higher level, what gives solidity, weight and substance to my biography
my children, their lives, their needs and aspirations–the creative sacrifice of giving them life, nurture, guidance and purpose, believing in them and their potential, championing them and their accomplishments
a vision of the proper union of faith and responsibility (J. Peterson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mTS57hkAUk)

See My New Book: Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture by Gordon E. Carkner, Wipf & Stock: available for order on February 24, 2024. For the latest update, see: https://ubcgcu/coming-soon/

Email: orders@wipfandstock.com

my commitment to the poor, the homeless, the marginalized–community service, social compassion, positive social change
my political affiliations, causes, debates and engagements–my sense of justice, human rights, concern for democracy, peace-making, the common good
my moral commitments to certain virtues and values (strong evaluations)–the good, the admirable and noble–leading to my growth in character and civility, my consistent relationship to my highest good, things that empower my moral agency and set me free to be more responsible. This is how I “become better through seeing better” (Charles Taylor).
my self-concept as a global citizen, commitments to the wellbeing of other people groups and nations–my ambassadorial role
my sense of calling on my life
my relationship to creation, to the land, air, and oceans, to the wellbeing of the planet for the long term–creation care and community justice regarding resources and food
my local social roots–my deeper experience of neighbourhood, church and community–positive agency and communion
my economic, career track potential and capacity–traction in applying my knowledge, being innovative, taking leadership, shaping culture, making art, leaving a positive legacy (Andy Crouch, Culture Making)
my prayer, worship and spiritual life practices, relationship with the divine–experience of the transcendent, my quest for wisdom towards a life worth living–my engagement with the Bible as a source of friendship with God
my music and aesthetic interests, loves, participation–seeking the good of my mental and emotional health, my creative artistic expression, the nurture of my aesthetic self, continually expanding my tastes seriously and not just for entertainment
how I deal with my personal addictions and obsessions–darker motives and habits–my inner chaos, my deceptiveness, dishonesty with self and others, my manipulative refusal to take responsibility, to admit where I have been wrong, to ask for forgiveness, to admit where I am not speaking the truth–confronting the charlatan and coward within who exploits others for personal gain
my means of recreation, relaxation, creative outlets, entertainment, fun and adventure–my quest for good health, reducing anxiety, for the long journey of contributing
my self-articulation or profile on social media, video, audio or print media, public speaking, book and article writing–Do I build others up, share vision, respond thoughtfully, help people make good connections, take the posture of a seeker after truth, harmony and goodness?
my relationship to the very transcendent, powerful and life-changing agape love, which helps heuristically to shape and interpret both my stance towards myself and my stance towards the larger world. Is love my first priority or power?
my relationship to the Incarnation of Jesus who they call the Christ: the transcendent & immanent God we celebrate at Christmas.

In Summation Be Real; Be Attentive; Be a Whole Person; Be Innovative; Be Resilient Amidst Your Suffering; Go For Depth; Live with Integrity; Take Care of Yourself; Work Towards Harmony Between Various Sectors of Your Life; Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Identity Basket; Operate in Good Faith; Prioritize The Goods in Your Moral Life; Examine Your Motives and Conscience; Practice the Virtues; Tell the Truth; Invest in Community; Write Your Authentic Story; Appreciate the Many Gifts Given to You & Build Out Your Narrative From There; Practice Gratitude; Keep Poetry in Your Life; Take Robust Responsibility for Yourself and Your World; Marry the Quest for Freedom with Good Faith Responsibility; Love the Good, the True, and the Beautiful; Seek Friendship Wherever You Travel and Work; Help Out Those Less Fortunate and Be Generous to a Fault.

To have meaning is to stand for something other than oneself, to establish a link with a value, an idea, an ideal beyond oneself [a referent]. Life has meaning, for example, for those who spend their lives in search of a cure for a disease., or in the struggle against injustice, or just to show every day that society can be more than a jungle. The link one establishes with this value or idea confers a higher value on life…. A life that has meaning recognizes certain references…. In other words, it is paradoxically worth something only to the extent that it admits itself not to be of supreme value, by recognizing what is worth more than itself, by its ability to organize itself around something else. Everyone will admit that existence is at once both finite and deficient. We consider society to be mediocre, love insufficient, a lifespan too narrow. The person whose life has meaning is the one who, instead of remaining complacently in the midst of his regrets, decides to strive for perfection, however imperfectly, to express the absolute, even through his own deficiencies, to seek eternity, even if only temporarily. If he spends his life making peace in society or rendering justice to victims, he is effectively pointing, even if it is with a trembling finger, to the existence of peace and justice as such…. By pursuing referents, he points to them. He awkwardly expresses these impalpable, immaterial figures of hope or expectancy…. Individual existence, when it means something, points to its referent through its day-to-day actions and behaviours, the sacrifices it accepts and the risks it dares to take…. The seeker moves forward, all the while wondering, “What is worth serving?” Individual existence structures itself through the call for meaning. Existence is shaped by questions and expectations.

~Chantal Delsol, Icarus Fallen: The Search for Meaning in an Uncertain World (4-5)

Roger Scrutin on Virtue, Freedom & Accountability

Virtue consists in the ability take full responsibility for one’s acts, intentions, and avowals, in the face of all the motives for renouncing or denouncing them. It is the ability to retain and sustain the first-personal centre of one’s life and emotions, in the face of decentering temptations with which we are surrounded and which reflect the fact that we are human beings, with animal fears and appetites, and not transcendental subjects, motivated by reason alone….. Virtues are dispositions that we praise, and their absence is the object of shame…. It is through virtue that our actions and emotions remain centred in the self, and vice means the decentering of action and emotion…. Vice is literally a loss of self-control, and the vicious person is the one on whom we cannot rely in matters of obligation and commitment…. Freedom and accountability are co-extensive in the human agent…. Freedom and community are linked by their very nature, and the truly free being is always taking account of others in order to coordinate his or her presence with theirs…. We need the virtues that transfer our motives from the animal to the personal centre of our being–the virtues that put us in charge of our passions [because] we exist within a tightly woven social context. Human beings find their fulfilment in mutual love and self-giving, but they get to this point via a long path of self-development, in which imitation, obedience and self-control are necessary moments….. Let’s put virtue and good habits back at the centre of personal life.” (R. Scrutin, On Human Nature, 100, 103, 104, 111, 112)

Next GFCF Lecture February 7, 2024

Christopher Watkin Engages Late Modern Culture

Lecturer at Monash University, Australia

Expertise: Philosophy, Religion, Atheism, Humanity, Freedom

I make sense of how people make sense of the world

His Topic of Discussion

The Bible as a Tool for Changing Culture

Wednesday, February 7, 2024, 12:00 PM

Join us via Zoom:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89825646244?pwd=SUXSUqmMFBoysFyKBmtj4Nth2fV7EO.1

Abstract

The question of the relationship between Christianity and culture increasingly takes centre stage in debates both within and outside the church today. This talk reflects on how a constructive, nuanced and—to many modern ears—fresh vision for contemporary society can be drawn from a rich engagement with the Bible’s storyline, guided by Augustine’s magisterial work City of God. What might it look like to reimagine Augustine’s mode of engagement with late Roman society in our own cultural moment of late modernity?

Biography

Christopher Watkin (PhD, University of Cambridge) is senior lecturer in French studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is a scholar with an international reputation in the area of modern and contemporary European thought, atheism, and the relationship between the Bible and philosophy. His published work runs the spectrum from academic monographs on contemporary philosophy to books written for general readers, both Christian and secular, and include Difficult Atheism, From Plato to Postmodernism; Great Thinkers: Jacques Derrida. His recent impressive 2022 tome with Zondervan Academic is Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture.

Winner of Christian Book of the Year Award in Australia

Two Ways of Seeing/Reading/Understanding the World

a. The Epistemological Way of Seeing:

The set of priority relations within this picture often tends towards a closed world position (CWS) within the immanent frame (Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, 2007, chapter 15). Its assumptions include proponents like Descartes, Locke, and Hume. Taylor calls this the modern buffered self. We find this approach rooted in Anglo-American philosophy. The connection between self and world is an I-It relationship.

Knowledge of self and its status comes before knowledge of the world (things) and others (cogito ergo sum).
Knowledge of reality is a neutral fact before the individual self attributes value to it.
Knowledge of things of the natural order comes before any theoretical invocations or any transcendence. Transcendence is often problematized, doubted or repressed—for example, in reductive materialism. This approach tends to write dimensions of transcendence out of the equation as a danger to wellbeing (superstition). Science morphs into scientism.
Human meaning is much harder to capture in this frame of reference—leading to disenchantment. It can cause alienation and lead to skepticism, or promote disengagment from a cold, mechanistic, materialistic cosmos.
Language is the Designative type (Hobbes, Locke, Condillac)—instrumental, pointing at an object, manipulating objects, and often in turn manipulating people as objects. It is a flattened form of language, which does not allow us to Name things in their depth of context, their embeddedness. Poetry, symbol, myth are missing. Scientific rationalism is dominant: evidence and justified belief.
Power and violence hides under the cloak of knowledge and techne: colonization, imperialism, war, environmental exploitation, Global North versus Global South. Hubris is an endemic problem.
Ethics is left to the private sphere of individual values, because of the fact-value split or dualism—moral subjectivism results. This often leads to loss of moral agency and nihilism, partly due to the loss of narrative and the communal dimension of ethics.
Human flourishing is a central concern within this immanent frame: reduction of suffering and increase of happiness/wellbeing. Health, lifespan, safety, entertainment, economic opportunity, consumer choice are key cultural drivers. This results in a thin self, focused on rights, entitlements, opportunities to advance one’s own personal interests.

b. The Hermeneutical Way of Seeing:

The working assumptions of this approach includes proponents like Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, the later Wittgenstein, Charles Taylor and Jens Zimmermann. We find this approach rooted more in Continental philosophy. The connection between the self and the world is an I-Thou relationship.

Self is not the first priority: the world, society and the game/drama of life come first. We only have knowledge as agents coping with the world, and it makes no sense to doubt that world in its fullness. Taken at face value, this world is shot through with meaning and discovery.
There is no priority of a neutral grasp of things over and above their value. It comes to us as a whole experience of facts and valuations all at once, interwoven with each other.
Our primordial identity is as a new player inducted into an old game. We learn the game and begin to interpret experience for ourselves within a larger communal context. Identity, morality and spirituality are interwoven within us. We sort through our conversations, dialogue with interlocutors, looking for a robust and practical picture of reality.
Transcendence or the divine horizon is a possible larger context of this game. Radical skepticism is not as strong here as in the epistemological approach. There is a smaller likelihood of a closed world system (CWS—closed to transcendence as a spin on reality) view in the hermeneutical approach. In a sense, it is more humble, nuanced, embodied and socially situated.
Language use is the Expressive-Constitutive type (Herder, Hamann, Humboldt, Gadamer) The mythic, poetic, aesthetic, and liturgical returns. Language is rich and expressive, open, creative, appealing to the depths of the human soul. Language is a sign. See Charles Taylor, The Language Animal.
Moral agency is revived within a community (oneself as another) with a strong narrative identity, in a relationship to the good, within a hierarchy of moral goods and practical virtuous habits that are mutually enriching and nurturing. One is more patient with the Other, the stranger: hospitality dominates over hostility.
The focus of human flourishing is on how we can live well, within our social location—a whole geography of relationships that shape our identity, and which we in turn shape as well. This is a thick version of the self, open to strong transcendence, within a meaningful whole.

The Logic of Incarnation—Why God Took on Human Flesh Incarnation concerns both the Person and the Work of Christ…. Incarnation impacts salvation, theological anthropology, and the doctrine of God. It is about much more than mere remedy or repair. Christ is complete and characteristically distinct in his humanity. The divine Word does not change or evolve, but takes humanity up into divinity. Incarnation is grounded in the nature of God, even as it creates a whole new and profound relationship with humanity, and offers a gift to raise the dignity of human beings. The Word is eternally part of Jesus the man—who is both human and divine. But the Incarnation does not exhaust God of his plenitude. Like creation, it does not change or restrict the Creator. It rather shows the love and artfulness of God in a human mode, divine holiness in the course of a human biography, revealing the infinite God in finite ways. Jesus most fully bears the Image of God, restoring it from its corruption—an act of solidarity and redemption intended to restore key human capacities to know and to love (relationally, reflectively, with receptivity and agency), to do justice and love mercy. There is a deep coherence and beauty to all the dynamics of Incarnation. All that prepares for it and follows from it, is a drama into which human life, history, and culture is gradually drawn. Above all, Christian theologians would want to say that the Incarnation, even more than the presence of human life, crowns the extraordinary dignity of life on Earth, or the dignity of the entire cosmos.

Andrew P. Davison, Professor of Theology and Natural Science @ Cambridge University.

Annunciation by Cambridge Poet-Chaplain Malcolm Guise

We see so little, stayed on surfaces,

We calculate the outsides of all things,

Preoccupied with our own purposes

We miss the shimmer of the angels’ wings,

They coruscate around us in their joy

A swirl of wheels and eyes and wings unfurled,

They guard the good we purpose to destroy,

A hidden blaze of glory in God’s world.

But on this day a young girl stopped to see

With open eyes and heart. She heard the voice;

The promise of His glory yet to be,

As time stood still for her to make a choice;

Gabriel knelt and not a feather stirred,

The Word himself was waiting on her word.

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/tag/annunciation/

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: ap-language, authenticity, daily-muse, faithinthegospel, inspiration, quotes-about-life, quotes-on-life

Posted by: gcarkner | August 7, 2023

Spring Term 2024 UBC Lecture Series

Dialogue on key issues brings one’s graduate experience to life. Come and meet new friends at GCU & GFCF, stimulating interlocutors that could last a lifetime. Our biblical dialogue this fall will be from Paul’s letters to the Philippians and Colossians. Big Question as we enter the fall season of study, research, experimentation and debate, Can Faith & Reason Make Up and Become Friends? https://ubcgcu.org/2014/09/26/can-faith-and-reason-be-friends/

Abigail Favale, The Genesis of Gender

Christopher Watkin

Lecturer Monash University, Australia

Philosophy, Religion, Atheism, Humanity, Freedom

I make sense of how people make sense of the world

The Bible as a Tool for Changing Culture

Abstract

Biography

Next in GFCF Abigail Favale, Professor in the McGrath Institute for Church Life, Notre Dame University on March 13, 2024. Topic: Examining the Sources of Gender: Why Sexual Difference Matters.

Abstract: How do contemporary theories of gender compare to the understanding of gender in the Christian imagination? This talk will provide a sketch of two distinct paradigms–the “gender paradigm” and the “Genesis paradigm”–and bring those two frameworks into conversation with one another, highlighting points of consonance and dissonance between them.

Biography: Abigail Favale, Ph.D., is a professor in the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. She has an academic background in gender studies and feminist theory, and writes regularly about these topics from a Catholic perspective. She is the author of The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory (Ignatius 2022) and Into the Deep: An Unlikely Catholic Conversion (Cascade 2018), as well as numerous essays and articles. Abigail’s essays and short stories have appeared in print and online for publications such as First Things, The Atlantic, Church Life, and Potomac Review. She was awarded the J.F. Powers Prize for short fiction in 2017.

Andrew Paul Davison

Professor of Theology and Natural Science

Cambridge University

Abstract

Widespread scientific confidence in there being a natural origin of life, rather than a supernatural one, is a latecomer in the history of thought, held back as much by scientific considerations as by belief that this is more the purview of religion. Yet, over the course of the past century, a natural origin has become the default position. Surprisingly little theological thought has been given to that, with the mainstream churches taking a natural origin for granted, while some more conservative traditions hold out against the possibility. In this talk, Professor Davison will sketch this history, and argue that while Christian theology can take a natural origin to life in its stride, that deserves more attention than it often gets.

Biography

One of the founders of the Cambridge Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe, Andrew Davison is the Starbridge Professor of Theology and Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow in Theology and Dean of Chapel at Corpus Christi College. He is the author of many books, including Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics and Astrobiology and Christian Doctrine: Exploring the Implications of Life in the Universe (both Cambridge University Press).

Astrobiology and Christian Doctrine available at Regent Bookstore.

Video of Dr. Davison on Plato & Theology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMahVSGqZiY

“This is not a book that predicts the future. It asks only ‘What if there is life in the Universe, beyond the bounds of Earth?’ Does such a postulate influence Christian doctrine? There are two motives in the mind of the author: (i) to prepare the human community to be ready to receive and process future signs of life elsewhere and (ii) after a journey in unfamiliar territory, to return home with fresh eyes. In nineteen tightly packed chapters, Andrew Davison, a metaphysical realist, addresses theological implications of the 1995 discovery of an exoplanet orbiting another star like our own sun. Our understandings of creation, revelation, uniqueness, Christology, eschatology and much else are given a fresh coat of paint. This is a must read for all of us.” (Dr. Olav Slaymaker, Professor Emeritus Geography, UBC)

p.s. I am fascinated by Andrew’s book both in terms of it’s intellectual honesty and it’s identification with metaphysical realism. His careful discussion of the contemporary relevance of Aquinas is also new for me.

Regarding Life: “The emergence of life within the realm of the non-living is a shift of the highest significance. It is so profound, on a qualitative level, as to render quantitative comparison otiose…. Above all, Christian theologians would want to say that the Incarnation, even more than the presence of human life, crowns the extraordinary dignity of life on Earth, or the dignity of the entire cosmos.” (Astrobiology and Christian Doctrine, 81)

Regarding Knowledge: “Something objective underlies any true sense of things, whether in knowledge of a creature, or in a creature’s witness to God. It does not require a denial of contingency, however, or mediation when it comes to knowing…. However, none of those elements of contingency, mediation, or particularity need undo the realist sense that, at root, knowledge is a witness to reality, based on a reception from that reality. To be true, knowledge need only to be a faithful participation in it, a faithful reception from it.” (A. Davison, Astrobiology and Christian Doctrine, 129-30)

“[Life] infuses [the living thing] with an increased perfection, a more intense degree of being. We may say, therefore, that living things exist more intensely; they have a higher pitch of being: they are more. The flower growing unobserved and hidden in a crevice upon the highest mountain has greater interiority and intensity of being: it is more than the mountain, greater in its interior perfection than the giant and majestic beauty of the physical universe: it is more. In this light we may read Acquinas’ remark: nobilis cuiuscumque rei est sibi secundum sum esse [Every excellence in any given thing belongs to it according to its being].” (Fran O’Rourke, ‘Virtus Essendi: Being in Pseudo-Dionysius and Acquinas,’ Dionysius 15 (1990): 68-9.

“The distinction and multitude of things come from the intention of the first agent, who is God. For he brought things into being in order that goodness might be communicated to creatures, and be represented by them; and because his goodness could not ne adequately represented by one creature alone, he produced many and diverse creatures, that what was wanting to one in representation of divine goodness might be supplied by another. For goodness, which in God is simple and uniform, in creatures is manifold and divided and hence the whole universe together participates the divine goodness more perfectly, and represents it better than any single creature whatever.” (Thomas Acquinas, Summa Theologica, I.47.1)

New Books in 2024:

Gordon Carkner, Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture: Grounding our Identity in Christ. Wipf & Stock, 2024. See: https://ubcgcu.org/coming-soon/

Ross Hastings, God and Molecules: Chemical Evolution and Divine Providence. IVP Academic, 2024.

Many Thanks to the UBC Murrin Fund

More Info: https://ubcgfcf.com

GFCF October Lecture Now on YouTube: See Below!

October 3, 2023 @ 12:00 noon John Lennox, Professor Emeritus Mathematics, Oxford University. Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity.

Response from Dr. Craig Gay, Regent College.

Abstract: Dr. Lennox offers a probing conversation centered on the current and future impact of artificial intelligence technology. He will discuss the current state of AI, its benefits, dangers and future implications. He will explain the current capacity of AI, its advantages and disadvantages, the facts and fiction. Will Artificial Intelligence usher in a new utopia or a surveillance society dystopia? How do we protect our privacy in an age of digitalization of everything and deep machine learning? He authored the book, 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity (Zondervan, 2020).

Biography: John Lennox is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. He is a bioethicist, philosopher, author, and Christian apologist. He has written many highly-regarded books on religion, ethics and the relationship between science and faith, which covers key developments in technological enhancement, bioengineering and AI. Over the past 15 years, Lennox has been part of numerous public debates defending the Christian faith, including debates with Christopher Hitchens, Michael Shermer and Richard Dawkins. He has lectured and given courses to enthusiastic audiences on science and Christian faith around the globe.

Are we happy with AI surveillance capitalism?

How does ethics catch up with the speed of technological innovation? What is morally essential to all humans?

What are the implications of moving beyond ‘Narrow’ AI to Artificial General Intelligence (transhumanism)?

How are we to understand the AI Religion of Neil MacCarthur?

Do we like Yuval Noah Harari’s idea of humans as ‘hackable animals’, with the potential of becoming like gods?

What kind of moral capacity is AI ever to have?

How does utopian ideology operate in the AI space?

Sample of Speed of AI Development https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnboHTfYsfk

Templeton Green College

3. February 7, 2024: Christopher Watkin, French Studies, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. The Bible as a Tool for Changing Culture.

Abstract: The question of the relationship between Christianity and culture increasingly takes centre stage in debates both within and outside the church today. This talk reflects on how a constructive, nuanced and–to many modern ears–fresh vision for contemporary society can be drawn from a rich engagement with the Bible’s storyline, guided by Augustine’s magisterial work City of God. What might it look like to reimagine Augustine’s mode of engagement with late Roman society in our own cultural moment of late modernity?

Biography: Christopher Watkin (PhD, University of Cambridge) is senior lecturer in French studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is a scholar with an international reputation in the area of modern and contemporary European thought, atheism, and the relationship between the Bible and philosophy. His published work runs the spectrum from academic monographs on contemporary philosophy to books written for general readers, both Christian and secular, and include Difficult Atheism, From Plato to Postmodernism; Great Thinkers: Jacques Derrida. His recent impressive 2022 tome with Zondervan Academic is Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture.

4. March 13, 2024, Abigail Favale, Professor in the McGrath Institute for Church Life, Notre Dame University. Examining the Sources of Gender: Why Sexual Difference Matters.

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ubcgcu

Taylor’s Wisdom: Commitment to the Good

Taylor Versus Foucault on Freedom 1/

Taylor Versus Foucault on Ethics

Charles Taylor’s Wisdom, Scrutiny re: Overreach of the Aesthetic in Ethics

Charles Taylor’s Wisdom

Christian Philosophy Continues to Flourish

Abigail Favale Brings Clarity to Gender Ambivalence

Chris Watkin Offers a Fresh Vision for Culture

A Life Well Worth Living

a. The Epistemological Way of Seeing:

b. The Hermeneutical Way of Seeing:

Spring Term 2024 UBC Lecture Series

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