Archives: February 2013

I found some perfectly fine comments in spam and removed them from spam. Our spam guard went extra-vigilant this morning but I think it was also confused by some of the language. Please folks, I know we discuss topics of sex at this blog, but for reasons of civility as well as not confusing the spam filters, avoid using language about genitalia, etc.

Next Tuesday, I have the pleasure of interviewing Professor John Culhane, co-author with Carrie Stone, of Same-Sex Legal Kit for Dummies.  As a pastor, I found the read incredibly helpful.  This interview will be available on our FamilyScholars Conversations Podcast channel and we’d love to address any questions you might have.  Submit your questions in the comment section, and we’ll see what we can do to incorporate them into the discussion!

For our “American Advice” class at Lake Forest College, this week we are reading From Catharine Beecher to Martha Stewart: A Cultural History of Domestic Advice, by Sarah A. Leavitt. Chapter One offers an extended discussion of parlors:

Domestic advisors disagreed violently with the general public on the subject of parlors. Although many suggestions given by domestic advice writers were followed, such as suggestions on room arrangements and craft ideas, the parlor was one subject that stayed in the realm of fantasy. No matter how hard they tried, and they did try, domestic advisors’ fantasy of the simplified, livable living room never replaced the appeal of the show parlor for most American families.

Apparently,

Middle class families in large cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, and Denver had access to richly upholstered chairs, gilded mirrors, carpets, and wallpapers and curtains of good quality. They hung paintings on the walls and arranged knick-knacks, such as vases and clocks, on their mantels. But the Victorian parlor was not only the bastion of the rich and urban. Frontier families, homesteading in Nebraska in the late nineteenth century, followed the same rules, installing different wallpapers, less fancy center-table lamps, and cheaper fabric for the curtains, perhaps, but the meanings of the rooms were the same. When domestic advisors criticized the parlors of the Victorian era, they looked not only to the middle-class residents of eastern cities, but also to the West…

The domestic advisors argued,

The parlor did not encourage family togetherness or love, but false opulence. ‘Who does not glance back,’ wrote Lida Clarkson in 1887, ‘almost with a shudder, at the old-fashioned times of stiff, uninviting rooms with cold, dead walls [and] horse-hair furniture?’ ‘The parlor should be the rallying point in daily family life,’ wrote Susan Anna Brown in her 1881 Home Topics. She criticized the use of the parlor as a ‘best’ room and advocated a ‘room in which centers the soul and throbs the heart of family life.’

(all quotations from page 31)

Did you grow up in a home with a room that no one was allowed to use? What do we make of the “family rooms” that are the selling points of new homes today, in an era in which high rates of family fragmentation arguably define us? And, what would 19^th century domestic advisors make of today’s design magazines in which no photo spread is complete without a tousle-headed toddler bounding barefoot over the furniture?

Our next episode of FamilyScholars Conversations is available at ITunes.  Elizabeth Marquardt and I discuss President Obama’s call to support the marriages of low-income Americans as well as build up fathers.  We also talk a little bit about sewing. It’s short but sweet, and if you haven’t subscribed, what are you waiting for?

We’ve hit the 50 comments limit, but the conversation is hopping, so I want to re-open the comments thread for “Four Concepts of Truth.”  Thanks to all who are participating!

What is driving today’s culture wars?   Religion?  Political manipulations?  Sincere disagreements over important issues?

Yes, all of these factors are important.  But there is another one as well, and it’s the underlying differences in our concepts of truth. 

What are truth’s qualities?  Can we know what is true?  If so, how?  In this post, hoping for your feedback, I want at least to begin to adumbrate four at least partially competing concepts of truth. 

1.         Truth is one and is known.

In this conception, all of life’s important questions can be asked, and for each question, there is one (and only one) true answer. More fundamentally, truth in this conception is a coherent unity existing on one plane.  That is, all of the particular “pieces” of truth fit together perfectly, like pieces of an intricate jig-saw puzzle, ultimately comprising one clear and well-ordered image of the good – one unified portrait of truth that pertains to all people in all situations at all times. In this conception, therefore, truth is both intrinsic and objective. What isn’t truth, is error. 

The methodological procedure most suited for this conception of truth is deductive reasoning. That is, from certain true statements, I can proceed logically to certain necessarily true implications; and given a true premise, I can logically reach certain necessarily true conclusions.  Therefore, starting from certain fundamental or revealed truths, I as the truth-seeker can proceed logically outward and downward (“truth flows downhill”), eventually building a complex and seamless system of interlocking definitions, premises, and conclusions about all of life’s main questions.

2.         Truth is one and can be known.

In this conception of truth, just as in our first, truth in principle is one, universal, and accessible to all; truth is intrinsic and objective, such that the only categories are truth and error; and each bit of truth fits smoothly into a larger coherent pattern, again like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, ultimately producing one unified and universally applicable portrait of truth.   

But in this conception, we don’t already know the truth.  Instead, we are diligently looking for it, like explorers looking for gold, or scientists in a lab. We don’t yet have the problem all worked out – there is still considerable confusion, disagreement, and clouded perception – but we know, we have faith, that if we try hard enough and long enough, we will win the prize and finally know what is true. We’ll find the gold.   

The methodological procedure most suited for this conception of truth is inductive reasoning. That is, we start from small observable facts, and proceed incrementally outward and upward, piling up fact upon fact, until the weight of evidence leads us to certain empirically valid generalizations.  Eventually in this way, the truth-seeker builds up a body of truth, similar to the way that a brick-layer constructs a wall – that is, layer by layer, with each layer resting securely on top of the layers that came before. 

 3.         Truth is romantic.

In our first two conceptions, truth comes mainly from reason. But in the conception of truth as romantic, truth is larger and more powerful than reason alone and is not constrained by it.  In this conception, we find the truth from our whole selves – our desires and intuitions, our thoughts, our dreams, our bonds with others, our needs, our history and our entire personality. We come to know that some things are simply too beautiful to be untrue.  We come to know that some things are too important or too needful or too primitively potent to be untrue.

This conception of truth breaks decisively with the claims of universality and objectivity.  It does not claim that there is one objectively true answer to each question, and it does not claim that all true answers fit together into one harmonious pattern of truth. Quite the contrary! In this way of knowing, what was once objective becomes subjective, and what was once whole and universal becomes partial and particular. 

For these reasons, truth in this conception is no longer like a jig-saw puzzle, in which all answers fit together into one, but instead more like a brilliant painting on a canvas or a beautiful poem on a page, bursting particular declarations of human passion and power.   

4.         Truth is plural.    

The fundamental premise of the conception of truth as plural is a kind of philosophical negation, or what might be called epistemological realism or modesty.  The conception of truth as plural rejects the (in its view, pretentious) idea that the philosopher, like the person completing a jig-saw puzzle, can fit every important true thing about the universe into one harmonious whole.  Instead, in this conception the truth-seeker accepts both the reality and legitimacy of values pluralism – the notion that, within certain (and debatable) ranges, there are, among persons of rational capacity and good will, inescapably diverse and at times conflicting understandings of what is good and what is true; and that, absent the resort by society to violence and coercion, these divergent views do not and likely will never fit together into a harmonious pattern in which every aspect of truth  reinforces and is reinforced by all the other aspects.  

Accordingly, in this way of knowing, a good question is usually better than a final answer; and in this epistemology we find a consistent emphasis on argument (that always leads to more argument) and on engagement (that always leads to more engagement). For these reasons, truth in this conception is neither like a jig-saw puzzle that is painstakingly assembled, or like a painting or poem that potently declares itself for itself, but instead more like of those Alexander Calder mobiles, with their multiple parts that can variously turn and spin and tilt and shimmer in relationship to one another, such that in principle no two views of the mobile are exactly the same.      

 Therefore What?

Of course, these four proposed concepts are only ideal types. Real life is obviously more messy and heterodox than these stiff categorizations would imply.  Many individuals, for example, mix and mingle these conceptions in their own journeys, seeming  to partake of more than one of them.   

My current obsession with this issue stems largely from my wrestling with the issue of gay marriage.   From day one, my philosophical approach to the issue – both earlier, when I opposed gay marriage, and now, when I favor it – is what I (drawing on others) call “goods in conflict,” which fundamentally partakes of the view that truth is plural. 

That is, I saw and still see the truth that marriage, more than any other arrangement, vitalizes the bonds between children and their biological parents and reflects institutionally the dual (male-female) origin of the human child.  At the same time, I saw and still see the truth that homosexual conduct is benign and that homosexual love is equal in dignity to heterosexual love.  I believed and continue to believe that, especially in the context of our current U.S.debate, these two truths – these two legitimate and to me compelling claims of what is good and what is true – cannot be fully reconciled.  At least to some degree, they conflict. Thus the term “goods in conflict.”   

But for me, working in this epistemological vineyard got confusing and at times depressing.  When I opposed gay marriage, I could find hardly a soul on my side who agreed with my view that truth is plural.  I’d ask those who are now my former comrades:  Do you have any doubt at all on this issue?  Do you see even one good argument on the other side?  The answers were No and No.  Hell, no. Absolutely not.     

Now that I favor gay marriage, it’s the same thing.  I ask my current comrades:  Do you believe that your argument has any weaknesses?  Is there even one valid reason to oppose gay marriage? The answers come back the same:  No.  Hell, no. Absolutely not. What category, then, are my new comrades in?  Do they believe, with philosophical liberals like me, that truth is plural?  Or do they, pretty much exactly like their opponents in the marriage debate, believe that truth is one and that what’s not truth, is error?  The apparent answer to this question worries me.     

For these and other reasons, I give it over to you, kind readers.  What do you make of my descriptions of these four concepts?  Are they accurate?  Fair-minded?  What’s missing?  What needs to be added?  Corrected?  Once we get the descriptions right, we can proceed to evaluating the significance of these concepts in today’s culture wars and arguing over which one is the most … true.

At The American Conservative, discussing John Huntsman’s endorsement of gay marriage, Dreher posts a coment from a young reader:

I’ll give you my perspective as a young person (24) who supports gay marriage. I think there’s a fundamental disconnect between the older generation and this one, and perhaps this might help you to understand it (although I think you already do, to some extent).

Your conception of marriage, the traditional one, is that a man and a woman get married for the purpose of procreation. Marriage isn’t really about romantic love in this conception, but rather a framework for the rearing of children. If we take for granted that this is what marriage is, then I don’t think it’s bigoted at all to not have gay marriage, so long as the coupling is respected.

The problem for people my age is this: your definition of marriage was displaced prior to our lifetime. I have no memory of when that definition was true. Virtually everyone under the age of 30 has lived their entire lives under a culture that believes marriage is an expression of romantic love between two people.

So for a young person with a conservative disposition, the battle against gay marriage isn’t the same as it is for you. You’re trying to conserve something that existed in your lifetime and has since been destroyed. For a young person, there’s nothing to conserve. If the only world they know is one where marriage is an expression of romantic love, any effort to bar a group of people from that doesn’t feel like the conservation of anything, just discrimination.

I have heard this from many younger people.  If, 50 years from now, marriage is basically down the tubes, except as a status symbol for the upscale, and curious historians look back and ask “why?” and “when was the turning point?”,  I don’t think very many people will answer, “because in the 2010s they adopted gay marriage.”  But I do think many people are likely to answer, “because starting in the 1970s they stopped believing that marriage was a social institution.”

Want an example of what “marriage as a social institution” means?   In the 1960s, if you asked Americans, “Do you think a troubled marriage should stay together for the sake of the children?”, most Americans said “yes.”  Today, most say “no.”   

Want another?  In the 1940s, while in a German prison awaiting his excecution by the Nazis, the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to an engaged couple on their wedding day: “From this day on, it won’t be your love that keeps your marriage alive, it will be your marriage that keeps your love alive.”  In a society in which marriage is a social institution, young couples hear those words and say, “I think I understand.”  In society in which marriage is not social institution, young couples hear those words and say,”I have no idea what he’s talking about.”

In The American Conservative, my friend Jeremy Beer writes about the Catholic philosopher David Schindler.   Schindler is an interesting man (I’ve met him a few times) — a wide-ranging and serious thinker.  He’s also difficult to read, and so part of what Beer does in this essay is try to “translate” Schindler for those of us (and I include myself) who experience trying to read him straight-on as pretty heavy sledding.  So here is Beer on Schindler on epistemology:

Specifically, liberalism fails to apprehend that “love is the basic act and order of things.” Love brings all there is into existence, it is through love that all there is continues in existence, and it is for love that all things exist. Reality is in this sense triadic: all things are in, through, and for love. Being might therefore be said to be an order or “logic” of love.

… In Schindler’s account of reason—one shared by Popes Benedict and John Paul II—faith does not narrow reason, nor does faith exist alongside reason as something “added” to it from without. Rather, faith enlarges reason from within, helping it to function better precisely as reason.

… Perhaps no theme emerges more consistently in Schindler’s metaphysical reflections as a target of criticism than that of “extrinsicism.” The neo-Thomists, in the Communio view, held to an “extrinsic” model of the nature-grace relationship. In such a model, nature is self-subsistent and in principle knowable in its totality without the aid of the supernatural—without, that is, grace. Grace adds to nature but is fundamentally “outside” of it; Christian revelation therefore adds nothing to our knowledge of nature as nature. To Communio thinkers like Schindler, this model is an unnecessary and indeed catastrophic capitulation to Enlightenment ideas about nature that are not just secular, but secularist.

… As a metaphysical alternative to extrinsicism, Schindler argues analogically from the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Here the idea of “distinction-in-unity” becomes a key concept. The secular and the sacred, faith and reason, nature and grace, are indeed distinguishable, but they simultaneously and at their core relate to one another in the terms of an inseparable unity—“circumincession” is Schindler’s term for this relationship. We see such a relationship, again analogically, in the bond between husband and wife, who are distinct persons yet “one flesh,” or in the relationship between the Father and the Son, distinct persons yet one God. Distinction-in-unity is enabled by and is the form of love …

Now, Schindler is a serious man whose thought deserves attentiveness.  And Schindler has much to say about how a “philosophy of love” pertains to close-to-the-ground contemporary issues, such as the current U.S. culture wars.  All of this merits attention.  But here I only want to make two quick observations about Schindler’s epistemology, in part because they touch upon my current interest (obsession?) with the issues of doubt and the concept of goods in conflict. 

The first observation is that Schindler’s view appears to be strictly monistic.  There is one truth, one idea, one reality, one Word, from which all else in the universe is derived and around which all other aspects of human meaning and experience are (can be, should be) harmoniously ordered.   There are no “goods in conflict” here (e.g., gay equality is good; customary marriage is good; the two are not entirely compatible or the same); instead, everthing is of one piece.  Or so his thought appears to me.   

The second is that Schindler’s world view appears to depend decisively on the belief that one thing can be two or more things at once.  Faith is faith, and reason is reason, but faith and reason are also one inseparable unity (i.e., one thing).  The natural is the natural and the supernatural is the supernatural, but neither, properly understood, is “extrinsic” to the other.  The married couple is two but also and to the same degree one; the godhead is three but also and to the same degree one.  And so on.  G. K. Chesterton wrote hundreds of essays (many of them quite lovely), and in nearly every one of them, as I can recall, we find this idea (or at least this rhetorical strategy) stressing that one thing is also one or more other things.  Now, when Isaiah Berlin insisted over and over again in his lectures and writings that “the thing is only the thing,” this contrary assertion about reality – the idea that one thing is also two or more things at once — is exactly what he meant to be disagreeing with. 

I can’t and won’t even try to solve these controversies here (though patient readers know that, as it were, “Ich bin ein Berliner”).  I only want to adumbrate two of the conceptual issues that jumped out at me as I read Beer’s interesting essay.