History of Christianity

The history of Judaism begins very near the beginning of recorded history itself, in the period of the earliest states, when culture was dominated by superstition, and religion was made into a justification for state power. In the fact that their culture and religion gave justification for the power of their rulers, the Jews were not different from other ancient peoples, such as the Babylonians and Hittites.

Judaism was unique in giving great emphasis to a written text, the Torah, which contained the core of the people’s laws. It anticipated “social contract” theories by making the laws come from an ancient covenant between the people and God. By giving such divine approval to the laws in the exact written form they were (allegedly) first given, Judaism created a lively interpretive tradition to preserve the meaning of the texts, leading to Pharisaism and eventually to the Talmud.

It is in the context of Pharisaism that Christianity was born. Christ gave new interpretations to the old laws, bringing them more in accordance with reason, though the superstition of the elders would not long endure this. He helped his movement spread by means of apocalyptic fervor: since the Kingdom of Heaven is coming soon, when all earthly kingdoms shall pass away and all men will be judged according to their deeds, special attention to one’s conduct seems to be called for. So it was that Christianity spread widely, but not far beyond the Jews at first.

Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, changed this by spreading the Christian revelation very far into the Gentile peoples. He accomplished this by having such faith in Christ’s reinterpretation of the law that he emphasized that keeping the old, peculiarly Jewish law would not matter to salvation when the Kingdom came. Since the apocalyptic message was maintained, the Gospel maintained its speedy spread, ultimately penetrating into all the peoples of the Empire.

With the Pharisees spurned as an interpretive tradition, Christianity was able to bring the law even further into accordance with reason by means of philosophy, which, by then, had already developed to a great extent. Fathers such as Augustine and Ambrose were able to read the Scriptures in light of advanced philosophical concepts which they had garnered from Plato and from the Stoics.

They were aided in doing this by support from the Roman Church, which was established as the keeper of the peculiarly Christian tradition. Since the philosophical theologians were not condemned by Rome, they could be assumed, even by the more superstitious faithful, to have brought no perversions into the divine law. The Church allowed the Christian revelation to be brought to as great a level of enlightenment as the sensibilities of the time could bear.

The Church, as an organization, was then for centuries a great aid to philosophy, because it existed independently of earthly kingdoms, and could support, with its own means, the development of doctrines which criticized the exercise of power by states. It also made people more concerned with obeying their bishops than their kings, which gave its doctrine great weight. The apocalyptic message was also attenuated by this further philosophical development, with the Kingdom of Heaven now being largely known to be clearly outside history, although this rational interpretation was not dogmatized.

After these centuries of light, however, the superstitious element flared up again. With the publication of original ancient texts of the Old and New Testaments, some persons thought themselves able to discover the true meaning of the laws with the aid, not of reason, but of history. They thought they could discover what the law meant when it was given by the Apostles, and they gave this original meaning greater credence than either philosophy or Church Tradition. So it was that Luther operated, and he enlisted the aid of kings, who were fed up with the Church’s criticism of their abuses of power, and were eager to support someone who might curb it. Soon he had many followers – and also, due to his abandonment of a ground of unity, many splintered sects.

Luther’s hermeneutical dogmatism, as might be contrasted with the hermeneutical scepticism of the enlightened Catholic centuries, was then a support, not only for extreme heights of statism – as may be seen, for instance, in Luther’s text on peasant mobs – but also for ghastly heights of generalized superstition, as may be seen in the various Calvinist attempts at theocracy. Apocalypticism, too, was sporadically reborn in its full extremity, leading to earnest predictions that “the end is near” every few decades or so.

For a time, the Catholics were embarrassed by the superstitious zeal of the Protestants, leading to a warm renewal of superstition within their own fold. It was in this context that the Church, which had allowed wildly broad speculations in the time of the Scholastics, was at length able to condemn Galileo for his hasty support of geocentrism. Hermeneutical dogmatism was able to have some effect upon Catholic theology and practice, but always tempered by philosophy, which the Church never abandoned.

Within Catholicism, at least, there may still be hope for a full return of reason to religion, and new centuries of enlightened philosophical theologians. Protestantism, on the other hand, depends for its very existence upon the dogmatist superstition, since if history cannot determine the meaning of the texts, then they ought to either accept a living authority or abandon them. Protestantism must remain superstitious until it either dies, collapsing into irreligion, or is reabsorbed into the Catholic fold.

History of thought

The history of thought might be explained in light of the two opposite habits of mind, superstition and enthusiasm, which are the twin enemies of true religion and true philosophy.

To recap, enthusiasm is characterized by an attribution of nature to art, and is most naturally found in proletarian ideology, which is created to support the proletariat’s hopes of cataclysmic revolution. Superstition, on the other hand, is characterized by an attribution of art to nature, and is most naturally found in aristocratic ideology, which is created to support the aristocracy’s maintenance in power. True religion and philosophy, which attribute to each thing its true character, are synonymous with bourgeois ideology, which supports neither revolution nor ossification, but the natural progress of society.

Besides integrating the theory of these habits into class theory, I also use these names for the corresponding habits of mind in regard to economic policy – where enthusiasm will support forcible equality of means, and superstition will support the forcible consolidation of classes – and social habits, especially regarding family and sex – where enthusiasm will support the extreme weakening of the family, likely by means of communal childrearing, and superstition will support its extreme strengthening, with great benefits accruing to membership in certain extended families. Since these names are uncommon in these fields, they have the advantage of not being confused for an a posteriori generalization from the opinions of actually-existent proletarian and aristocratic classes, although I should certainly try to account for any divergences in that regard.

With this theory laid down, we may notice that, since the earliest period of recorded history corresponds to the rise of the first states, it necessarily corresponds to the predominance of superstition. Aristocratic ideology dominates the ancient record, where religion is perverted into a support for the ruler – who is called either divine or divinely favored – and economic and social policy accordingly concur for the preservation of the power of noble families.

This happened at least until the rise of the first democratic states, in ancient Athens. This was a form of government which dominated by enthusiastic tendencies – however limited the franchise was at the time – and remarkably slow to suppress dissent. As a result, the first rise of true religion and true philosophy happened in Athens, largely in opposition to the prevailing enthusiasm of the times, and as a result, leaning (insofar as it erred) in favor of supporting superstition, as may be seen by the aristocratic structure of Plato’s Republic. Still, philosophy was not so perverted as to entirely favor superstition, and Plato’s Republic would be the least oppressive of aristocracies if made actual.

Ever since its creation, philosophy would maintain its middle position, opposing the excesses of enthusiasm on the one hand and superstition on the other; as indicated, it focused on opposing superstition in aristocratic states, and mostly enthusiasm in democratic states. Rome’s mixed constitution gave it reason, at different times, to oppose both.

In the French Revolution, philosophy allied so successfully with popular enthusiasm as to entirely overturn aristocratic superstition, leading to the general proliferation of democratic government. This proliferation, in turn, has made it useful for certain elites to cater to popular enthusiasm, partly overturning the old class allegiances. It became the fashion for violent power to justify itself through its supposed great help in restraining economic inequality. Since the Cold War, therefore, philosophy has had the most occasion to lean towards superstition, allying with the conservatives against the enthusiastic excesses of the socialists.

But the tide may change soon.

Empirical postulates of sexual morality

In the post on sexual morality, I covered only those parts of sexual morality that are necessarily true. Those propositions follow necessarily from my concepts of the human being as a rational animal that reproduces sexually, and of his sexual powers as oriented toward this reproduction; therefore, they must always remain true as long as those concepts still apply to human beings.

However, it is difficult to apply those propositions in conduct without a more detailed understanding of particular cases. It happens that the way in which I would tend to generate such an understanding is liable to the formulation of some general empirical postulates, which I believe apply for the most part, and in most cases, although not necessarily and in every case, since they constitute my generalized analysis of contingent empirical conditions, and do not follow from the anthropological concepts. To communicate my thinking as clearly as possible, therefore, I have written down these postulates.

Postulate 1 — Monogamy is, for the most part, helpful to the end of marriage, and ought to be encouraged within it.

When multiple men have sex with the same woman, it can be hard to determine the father of each child she has, which is relevant to the custody obligations involved – although this is less of a problem now that we have DNA tests. Besides this peculiarity, I believe that it is also generally difficult to efficiently arrange for the care of children when the same person is involved in multiple marriages.

Postulate 2 — Antiphysical acts are, for the most part, justified, so that a preference for them is usually virtuous.

I believe that the exceptional conditions which I said could justify antiphysical sexual acts in fact hold for most cases wherein they are performed. Insofar as this condition holds, homosexual tendencies should be considered virtuous, since they tend toward relationships of pure friendship, without debasement of the rational faculty by submission to the reproductive impulses.

Postulate 3 — Entelechic acts are, generally, not helpful to the end of marriage when done under a certain age, and ought to be discouraged in such cases.

Since teenage pregnancies are associated with negative consequences for the mother’s health and the child’s development, they produce difficulties for the end of marriage, which is childrearing; so, they cannot be rationally preferred to reproduction at a later age. Additionally, since people generally seek to establish their career and professional education during their youth, young parenthood is likely to interfere with a couple’s ability to materially provide for their child; the child’s spiritual welfare is also likely to suffer from being raised by immature parents. For these reasons, reproduction is best delayed until these issues no longer endanger the goal of childrearing, which tends to happen around age 20.

Postulate 4 — Antiphysical acts are usually not justified when done within any kind of subordinate relationship, including all relationships with a significant age disparity.

Sexual acts performed within a friendship, in the sense defined, are performed by persons who hold all things in common, including each other’s bodies. This community benefits from, and adds to, the intensity of sexual excitement; and this fact seems to be the foundation for the fact that antiphysical sexual acts may contribute to a friendship, so that they are justified within it. Within unequal relationships, it seems in turn that, similarly, their inequality is reinforced by the act; this hinders the relationship’s attaining to equality, which is the goal of all unequal autotelic relationships. Since the act is contrary to the end of the relationship in this case, it is irrational to perform, and therefore immoral.

Philosophy and philosophers

This post is about the definition of “philosophy” and “philosopher”.

Philosophy

A concept is like the mental version of a word. The difference is that a word can be interpreted in various meanings, like, “bachelor” can mean either an unmarried man, or can mean someone with a bachelor’s degree. But a concept is in your mind, so it is the same as one of the meanings. In this case, we could say that the word “bachelor” can represent two concepts.

If we wanted to talk scientifically about bachelors, we should decide which of the meanings of the word we’re talking about. So we could decide to say “bachelor” only to mean an unmarried man. Once we define a specific meaning in which we want to use a word, then it’s called a “term”.

A theory is a collection of terms and rules for how to use them, and knowledge that we decide to put in those terms. So for instance, physics is a theory that uses the terms “mass”, “force”, “acceleration”, and so on.

Philosophy is a theory about the terms that are used in all other theories and usually not defined by them, like “mind”, “matter”, “change”, etc. And “the philosophy of” a particular theory focuses on the philosophical terms relevant to it, as you might see with “the philosophy of physics” and so on.

Philosophers

The broadest possible sense of “philosopher” might include every human being. Common usage is not far from this; it includes anyone with some “philosophy” title, maybe even a mere philosophy graduate.

I like to say “philosopher” like “artist”. An artist is someone who produces art; similarly, a philosopher is someone who produces philosophy. So philosophy teachers, and historians of philosophy, are not necessarily philosophers. This has nothing to do with academic credentials, which is historically appropriate.

I also think the truest sense would include only those with a complete system. Philosophy only began when Plato united rational inquiry into nature and morals. Someone who does less than this may be contributing to philosophy, but not really doing philosophy.

Explicit structure

“Explicit is better than implicit.”
— The Zen of Python

Some works are highly systematic, and they make their structure explicit. They may have intricately divided subheadings like Kant’s works, or they may try to emphatically set apart the definitions and axioms like Spinoza, or they may use an apparatus like medieval disputation or symbolic logic.

Other works leave that implicit. Hobbes’s Leviathan is rightly recognized as a highly understandable and systematic and rigorous work, even if it’s mistaken about things— but it’s relatively “low-tech”, with the running text apparently divided into chapters just to break up the reading and make lookups easier. The case is similar with Murray Rothbard’s ethics and economics, regardless of their other merits.

Implicit structure seems to make for more pleasant reading, but it can also make the structure harder to pick out. Some people may not notice that, besides his famous self-ownership, Rothbard introduces an entirely new fundamental axiom when he starts to talk about punishment and proportionality, since he doesn’t set it apart very emphatically.

It seems easier to simply dismiss an implicitly structured work, since there is no simple way to pick out the parts of its analysis that you reject or would want changed. If you disagree with Hobbes, then I guess you just disagree, and that’s that. If you reject a proposition of Spinoza, on the other hand, you can easily be called upon to criticize either the demonstration or the definitions and axioms which it explicitly evokes.

Sometimes, a lack of explicit structure can allow for a real lack of structure. Hume’s Treatise seems to have a lot of “filler” chapters, which I’m not sure why he even included them. It probably made sense at the time. Maybe.

I think that, in the end, explicit structure is simply better, it’s just not used more because it’s harder to accomplish. Some great work has been done with merely implicit structure, but it could benefit from more explicit formulation— as Spinoza did to Descartes, in his geometrical exposition of the Principles.

Damages

The payment of damages must be distinguished both from the restitution of stolen goods and from punishment. It is like the former in some ways and like the latter in others.

• Distinction as to definition
• Distinction as to source of moral obligation
• Distinction as to peacefulness and extent

Distinction as to definition

The restitution of stolen goods is the return of the specific objects that were stolen, without any attempt to compensate for the fact that they must have suffered wear and use and possibly have been damaged. The payment of damages is the attempt to compensate for all of these things; it includes use and wear, since these are damages done to the good in a broad sense.

Punishment is an act of direct or indirect interference upon a criminal’s body or property¹ with the intention to correct moral vices that he is thought to have. It may be materially the same with an act of restitution or payment of damages, but not formally the same, since it is only punishment insofar as it is understood through this definition. An act of punishment, insofar as it is neither restitution nor payment of damages, may be called “pure punishment”.

Distinction as to source of moral obligation

The moral obligation of a criminal to give restitution is the same as the criminal’s obligation to respect property rights. The moral obligation of a criminal to pay damages follows from a similar, but not identical, source. The moral obligation of a criminal to seek his own punishment follows from a significantly different reasoning.

The obligation of a human being to respect property rights follows from the fact that a legitimate owner of property must be expected to have purposes to fulfill with it, so that usage of the property without his consent must be interfering with his purposes, therefore creating an action conflict, which is violent and irrational.

The obligation of a criminal to pay damages follows from the fact that a legitimate owner of property must be expected to have had purposes to fulfill with it, so that, when his property was damaged, his ability to fulfill those purposes was to that extent permanently impeded. So, assuming his purposes to have been rational, it is irrational not to desire that he regain his power to fulfill them, since otherwise he must be understood to have desires that he cannot satisfy, which makes him less understandable as a rational being to that extent.

The moral obligation of a criminal to seek his own punishment follows to a certain extent from his obligation to be virtuous, supposing that there do exist punishments available which he knows to be efficacious for correcting his vices; additionally, goodwill for his community obliges him to seek the deterrence of further crimes in it, as his punishment might provide.

Distinction as to peacefulness and extent

Payment of damages, like punishment, may be exacted either coercively or uncoercively. Like punishment, it is also always uncertain as to what precise extent is proper. Coercive payment of damages, like coercive punishment, may only be exacted by a legitimate state.

Restitution of stolen goods, on the other hand, is always of a precise extent, which is the return of whatever currently remains of the good. Regardless of whether it is exacted voluntarily or involuntarily, its exaction does not constitute coercion, since the property rights have remained with the legitimate owner throughout.

While a state may exercise mercy and refuse to punish, a state may not exercise mercy on behalf of the victim by refusing to exact just damages. However, the state need not agree with the victim as to what extent of damages is just.

Notes

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1. In the beginning of the post on punishment, I only mentioned the criminal’s body. But the broad definition stated at that point was clearly including both direct and indirect interference, since I moved on to distinguish coercive from uncoercive punishments. This is because I believe interference with a person’s property, whether direct or indirect, to be a kind of indirect interference with their body.↩

How to interpret the Pope

Mike Lewis, editor of WherePeterIs.com, wrote a blog post in June that contains the following passage:

So the question becomes whether you are able to accept the teaching in good conscience or not. If the pope was to, say, add a sentence to the Catechism mandating that all Catholics were morally bound to be Yankees fans, I would (obviously) dissent.

Fortunately I believe Catholicism to be true, so that will never happen. But the point is that I lack the authority to change the actual Church teaching. Yet many Catholics think they can undo Amoris Laetitia or say the Church approves of the death penalty because it doesn’t align with their understanding of Catholic doctrine. They can’t.

He’s right to think that this will never happen. But in that post, he seems to think that this can never seem to happen, either. And I think this isn’t right.

The Church could seem to teach absurdities, but never truly teach them

If the Pope added the sentence to the Catechism, “all Catholics are morally bound to be Yankees fans”, this sentence in that context wouldn’t necessarily mean to teach that all Catholics are morally bound to be Yankees fans. This is because faith cannot contradict reason, and the Church herself teaches this, and it would be contrary to reason to believe that all Catholics are morally bound to be Yankees fans.

If the sentence “all Catholics are morally bound to be Yankees fans” were added to the Catechism, the proper interpretation of it would therefore be as meaning something figurative, or as a misprint, or something else like that. It certainly can’t mean what on the surface it appears to mean, since that would be irrational. And since it never meant to teach anything wrong, it would not be dissent to disagree with the idea that all Catholics are morally bound to be Yankees fans; it would only be dissent to disagree with whatever the sentence’s “true meaning” was in that context.

Absurdities are different from contradictions with (the apparent meaning of) Tradition

I do not mean to propose a standard of what I agree with, but only one of conformity with the nature of human reason itself, which cannot believe absurd ideas like “murder is okay” or “circles are not round”. These sentences are impossible to accept on their surface meaning, and if we wanted to be charitable with an ordinary friend, we certainly wouldn’t believe he meant to teach their surface meaning if he said the corresponding sentences. We should be much more charitable with the Church, which necessarily never contradicts herself or human reason.

Mike has a point when he raises examples about the Trinity or about traditions more broadly. Unlike matters of reason – such as morality – we don’t have knowledge about the true interpretation of matters of faith. Private interpretation is Protestant, after all. So, if the Pope said that “the Trinity has four persons in it”, it is possible that the surface meaning of that is actually correct, and the previous Church teachings that seemed to teach the contrary were the ones who misspoke. Either way, the Church is consistent, and it is possible for a reasonable person to accept all her teachings, as we are required to. Mike seems to think that in some cases, it would be impossible, and we would have to dissent from some – even though it would still not be right to do so. But we can’t have a moral duty to do the impossible.

Surface interpretation can be dissent, while rational and consistent interpretation cannot

Mike seems to think that this sort of rational and consistent interpretation of sentences is itself some kind of Protestant private interpretation. But it isn’t, since the Pope remains the authority on which persons are Catholic. If the Pope really meant to teach that murder is okay, he could exercise his authority by excommunicating everyone who interpreted his sentence “murder is okay” in a more rationalized way. If he did this, of course, it would mean that Catholicism is false, since it would obviously be necessary to believe something irrational to be a Catholic. But until the Pope did this, it would be the Catholics who actually believed that the Church taught that murder is okay who would be the dissenters, since it is blasphemous to interpret the Church to have meant something irrational.

Anyway, Mike has recently said these arguments in the context of a discussion with Ed Feser about the death penalty, and I don’t agree with either of their opinions on the topic.