An Orthodoxy That May Be

Never one to give a definitive answer, Derrida answered the question of his religion with the coy statement that he quite rightly past for an atheist, an answer that kept the question open and hinted at the insufficiency of categories of religion such as theist/atheist.   Derrida’s deconstruction aimed to make us aware of the functions of exclusion inherent in the categories of language.  Derrida’s answer to the religion question suggests that he thought the theist/atheist binary excluded, at the very least, him.  The label agnostic didn’t fit him either.  His “religious” views eluded our classifications and categorizations. 

 

Echoing Derrida, Jon Stanley argues in The Other Journal that every Christian should quite rightly pass for an atheist, but the atheism he has in mind is not the rejection of God, but a rejection of the “idols of our time” such as nationalism, technologism, and economism: the pursuit of national interest, technology, and wealth all at any cost.  The sense of atheist he thinks Christians should don is that of the term as applied to the early Christians by the Roman Empire.  

 

Taking his argument a step further, Stanley offers a “subtle and suggestive Christian credo” of his own:

 

Am I an atheist? Well, if that means one who no longer desires God and testifies to the reality of God in my life, and one who has given up on the hope of the name of God and the naming of God being significant for human life, then, “No, I am not an atheist.” But if that means one who is suspicious of the gods of our age (as the idols of our time), and sensitive to the way in which our submission to them leads to injustice and makes life on earth a “living hell” for many, then, “Yes, I quite rightly pass for an atheist.”

And am I a theist? Well, if that means feeling the need to subscribe to the theological doctrines and moral conventions that go by the name “orthodoxy,” and if historically any “theism” (particularly “classical theism”) has always been some form of “deism” (the belief in a distant, dispassionate, and authoritarian supreme being), then, “No, I am not a theist.” But if it refers to the wholehearted allegiance to God and God’s good creation, and if this translates into a desire for God that is simultaneously a desire for justice, and a love of God that is simultaneously a love of neighbor, then, “Yes, I quite rightly pass for a theist.”

 

Stanley rejects a type of theism marked by a subscription to the theological doctrines and moral conventions that go by the name “orthodoxy,” but he doesn’t articulate why or explain whether he sees this subscription as idolatry akin to nationalism, technologism, and economism.  He condemned those idolatries to the extent that they pursue their valued object “at any cost.”  Does subscription to orthodoxy imply a belief at any cost?  I don’t see why that would be.

 

I suspect rather that Stanley’s rejection stems from the deconstructionist policy of keeping us open to what our formulas exclude.  Orthodoxy obviously excludes the heterodox.  A right way of thinking excludes what it holds as wrong ways of thinking.  Deconstruction would seem to be anti-orthodoxy in that claims to orthodoxy exclude a great deal and often with much passion, and sometimes with much violence.  Besides, claims to speak for God, especially by the powerful, probably should raise red flags.  The propositions of orthodoxy may exclude what they have no right to exclude, and those who claim their religion as the one, true, orthodox religion may violate more than the right to freedom of religion in their defense of the official creed.

 

John D. Caputo, to whom Stanley is much indebted, also rejected the idea of there being one, true, orthodox religion.  “We may and need to have many religions, and many ‘sacred scriptures,’ to long as all of them are true,” Caputo wrote in his book On Religion.[i]  I wouldn’t call this relativism in religion, as Caputo has a standard by which to judge religious practices and claims of religious truth – the love of God – but I think Caputo himself, in his interest in including what “orthodoxy” excludes, excludes a possible religious truth.  He claims that religious truth “does not have to do with approved propositions,”[ii] but offers no evidence against the possibility of there being human propositions approved by God, or that these approved propositions might help guide the love of God towards God and away from idols and other false deities. 

 

According to Caputo, religions are artifacts or historical constructions that articulate the love of God.[iii]  They are “instituted by God” only in the sense that “the various religious forms of life arise in response to something that has swept us away…” He sees God as a question and not as an answer, but is it impossible that God may be both?

 

By excluding orthodoxy from the “theism” or “religious truth” they defend, Stanley and Caputo exclude the possibility that God has instituted a particular religious response to his revelation and has given his guidance to that religion in its formulas.  Excluding such a possibility would seem to run counter to the spirit of deconstruction.  Deconstructionists should, in the name of justice, open claims of orthodoxy to what they exclude, but, in being consistent deconstructionists, they should also remain open to an orthodoxy that may be.

 

H/T: The Church and Postmodern Culture

  

 

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[i] John Caputo, On Religion (New York, NY: Routledge, 2001), 110.

[ii] Caputo, 112.

[iii] Caputo, 112.

On Constructing Reality

A Sketch

 

We cannot know reality as it is in itself because our experience of reality, through which we come to know reality, is mediated by language.  As an object of our experience and a content of our knowledge, reality is a product of the functions of linguistic mediation. 

 

By using a word as a signifier, we identify the object signified as one thing and not another.  A word establishes distinguishing boundaries, revealing what is contained within and concealing what resides without.  Words used together construct meaningful structures and frameworks, and these more complex structures and frameworks also establish boundaries that reveal and conceal the signified objects.

 

The linguistic function of establishing boundaries begins not after the experience of an object but rather prior to the experience.  The object which we experience, reality included, is not immediately present to us, for the functioning of linguistic signs grants us passage to and mediates our encounter with that object.  Language is already functioning at the start of our experience of reality.[i] 

 

Say I am exploring a cave and come upon some writing on the cavern walls; I might say that I first encountered the writing when I first perceived it and that language comes into play following the initial perception of the writing on the wall.  After seeing the writing on the wall, I can then formulate in language an expression indicative of this perception of writing.  Language, however, functions not only at this stage in the experience: following the perception; it makes the perception possible in the first place.  Language functions prior to the perception.

 

In order for me to perceive the writing upon the wall I have to have in my mind some concept, however vague or precise, of writing.  If I possess no such concept, then I will not see writing, but instead something else, perhaps markings on the wall.  But for that perception of markings to occur, I would need to have some concept in my mind of markings.  Whenever we perceive a thing, we perceive it as something, as it fits into the boundaries established by our language.[ii]  What fits inside the framework may be revealed to us; what lies outside will be concealed from us.

 

Given this, we might still be able to know reality as it is in itself in so far as reality fit into the boundaries established by the words of our philosophical constructs; however, while the signified may be revealed in the signifier, the revelation within the boundaries is not transparent. 

 

A professor of mine remarked that if you want to understand a philosopher, study his metaphors.  Metaphors, and more generally figurative and symbolic language, are a fundamental component in the constructed frameworks by which we understand reality.  In addition, words bearing literal significance are fashioned in and inseparable from their historical and cultural birth and functioning.  Language lives by the blood of history and culture, time and place.  Whereas figurative language creates meaning, all language rooted in historical and cultural significance produces meaning, in so far as the meanings of words are marked by the world in which they were born and live.  To speak metaphorically, they radiate the colors the age; they emit the scents of their times and places.  They are not transparent windows through which we see the things themselves as they really are.   The window is not so open that we can smell the natural fragrance with no artificial scent added: the window frame has its own scent that is added to that of reality.  The window glass is stained, revealing and concealing the picture beyond, and adding to and subtracting from what we see. 

 

The mediations of language, which give us access to reality, function beyond setting boundaries.  Reality, in so far as we know it by means of language is in a way a product of language.  The reality that we know, that our philosophical acts pursue, we in truth partially produce.  The natural is in a sense artificial.  The philosophical realist, either metaphysical or phenomenological, should consider that language mediates – indeed, shapes – our perception and interpretation of reality, whether that reality is formulated in terms of “forms,” “being,” “essence,” or the “things-themselves.”  “Every time metaphysics takes a stab at determining ‘Being,’ it comes up with some sort of being (substance, form, will, mind, etc.),” writes John D. Caputo in Radical Hermeneutics.[iii] 

 

W. Norris Clarke, S.J., a Thomistic metaphysician and far more conservative than Caputo, agrees that “the conceptual-linguistic expression of what [metaphysicians] have discovered will always have to resign itself to being incomplete, falling short of the fullness of the real, in a word, perspectival, seen from within the resources of thinking, speaking, imagining, and feeling of the metaphysicians own culture in its situation in human history.”[iv]  

 

The mediations of language do not condemn the philosopher to an absolute relativism, which denies that we can know reality.  These mediations merely mean that we cannot know reality as it is in itself, not that we cannot know reality.  Whereas realism assumes that our ideas correspond to the way things are, relativism assumes that no such correspondence exists.  Relativism denies the correspondence between our ideas and reality, throwing the correspondence theory of truth to the wind.  The functions of language here described mean that any such correspondence is not one-to-one.

That said, the correspondence theory of truth takes a hit from the functioning of linguistic mediations.  No one has a pure, unmediated access to reality.  No one sees reality as it is in itself, nor knows it as such.  Rather, what we each see and know, if reality is really the object of our perception and knowledge, is in a way a product of our making, a social construct, if you will.  The correspondence theory of truth says that a proposition’s truth is determined by whether or not it corresponds to reality, but no one can fully test that correspondence.  Reality as it is in itself lies ahead of our experience, ahead our perception, ahead our interpretation, ahead our knowledge.  We test a statement not by reality itself free of our subjectivity, but by what we know of reality; and what we know of reality we have perceived and understood, but also produced and constructed.   

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[i] Caputo, John D., Radical Hermeneutics, 136.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid, 178.

[iv] Clarke, W. Norris, The One and the Many, 7.