Author Archives: jbernal

Opposing views on issues of knowledge, truth, and reality

Juan Bernal

Recently an email correspondence  stimulated interest in an old epistemological-metaphysical  issues.

This fellow traveler (in philosophy) wrote:

“Given that mind-body dualism was given such bad reviews in the 20th century, it shouldn’t be too hard to imagine that the distinction between the subjective and the objective has no metaphysical significance. Instead, it is an artifice and a convention. It is useful within limits, but not useful for metaphysical purposes. What we have instead is “pure experience” as in the philosophies of the pragmatists (i.e. James and Dewey). All the elements of pure experience are potentially useful in framing a metaphysical philosophy. Thus those elements that are rejected from the point of view of objective thought can be considered important from the point of view of an up-to-date monism like that of James (see his 1904 essay, “Does Consciousness Exist?”).  Feelings may be considered to be as much an indication of what is real as perceptions.”

My reply:

In the modern age it may not be “hard to imagine” that the subjective/objective distinction has no “metaphysical significance,” but it surely does not follow from a philosophical rejection of the mind-body dualism.   Rejecting mind-body dualism, with its implication of mind as entity apart from body, does have metaphysical implications; but this is distinct from questions regarding the significance of the distinction between subjective experience and objective reality.  I don’t see any reason for dropping that distinction as important and significant, especially with regard to epistemological issues.  It is as simple as saying that what you feel about something (an event, a person) must be kept distinct from an honest, scientific-like assessment of that event or person.  For example, I feel very strongly that OJ Simpson killed his wife; but I realize that I cannot prove it (in a legal sense).  My strong feelings (even passion) about the event does not establish the nature of the event.  If you drop such a distinction as significant, then you open the gates to chaos based on subjective feelings and opinions.

I also question your comments about “pure experience” in the philosophy of a pragmatist like John Dewey.  Did Dewey propose that “elements of pure experience are potentially useful in framing a metaphysical philosophy”?  Your remarks suggest this. However, as far as I recall, Dewey (like Darwin, Reid, L. Wittgenstein, G. Ryle, and DW Hamlyn) reject the Cartesian notion (do we throw Husserl in here too?) that we start with purely subjective experience and frame a metaphysical knowledge of the world.   Let me add that recently I have expressed great skepticism of this notion of pure experience, questioning just what exactly the purity of experience is supposed to be.  My view is that it is another notion that some people throw around without ever having examined what exactly they’re saying.

You state that part of the issue is whether or not feelings are real.  Of course people have feelings or feel strongly about things.  But this surely does not imply what you seem to think is implied when you state:  “Feelings may be considered to be as much an indication of what is real as perceptions.”  You state that “feelings are an indication of what is real.”  Surely you’re just playing with words here.  An indication of what is real is a public matter (like a knowledge claim) in the sense that if you claim that S indicates the reality of R, you’re obligated to show others that this is so.  You cannot simply say “I feel that it is so.”  Our (another friend in the discussion) was surely right to point out that your feeling that X is R merely indicates something about you, and most likely nothing about  X.

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To which the fellow traveler replied:  

You wanted to make the point that the distinction remains useful even for people who reject mind-body dualism. I agree. However, when we use those terms it’s hard to avoid dualistic connotations. It’s hard to avoid thinking in terms of “what goes on in my mind” and what goes on in a “world out there.” Once we drop dualism, we have some options. We can become radical empiricists, believing that the distinction between subject and object arises within experience. Or we can drop one of the two categories, becoming either pure subjectivists or pure objectivists depending on which one we drop.

I intended my denial that the subjective/objective distinction has metaphysical significance to entail a claim that neither the combination of them nor either of them taken separately names an independent reality. If they exist at all, they exist only as properties of an underlying reality.

 In support of the view that the subjective/objective distinction is still useful for non-dualists, you wrote, “One’s strong feeling that something is true does not make it true.”

 But now the non-dualist faces the problem of determining what makes something true. For dualists truth is a matter of correspondence between what’s in one’s mind and what’s out there in objective reality. If the non-dualist wants to retain a correspondence theory of truth, how does he adapt it to a non-dualist theory?

 If you can figure out how to do it, let us know. If you can’t, then what do you mean when you say, “One’s strong feeling that something is true does not make it true.” How do you know what makes a statement true?

You asked whether Dewey proposed that elements of pure experience are potentially useful in framing a metaphysical philosophy. In the preface to “Experience and Nature” he says his aim throughout the book is to replace “the traditional separation of nature and experience” with the idea of continuity. If nature and experience are separated, they are two different things/substances. If there is a continuity between them, they are both real, but they are not two different things/substances. They are distinguishable properties or aspects of one thing/substance. What is that one thing/substance?

On the issue of whether feelings can be as much an indication of what is real as perceptions, it all depends on how we look at it. If we bring one set of assumptions, we get one answer. If we bring another set of assumptions, we get another answer. For example, if we reason from the perspective of dualism, we can understand sensation as information from the external world, we can base perception on sensation, and we can explain feelings as purely internal responses that tell us nothing about what is “out there.” This line of thinking leads us to the conclusion that empirical science, based on information received through our senses about the external world, is our most reliable, indeed our only source of knowledge about the real (i.e. external) world. And that leads to the conclusion, as you put it, that “an indication of what is real is a public matter.” But, if we assume with Dewey that experience and nature are related to each other like right and left or up and down, then anything that belongs to that one reality of which experience and nature are aspects can tell us something about the fundamental nature of that reality. An indication of reality would not have to be a public matter.
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In reply I stated the following:

Human beings (persons, which I assume we are) are biological beings capable of thought and feelings.

Sometimes when we think or feel that something is the case, our thought and/or feelings are reliable; other times they are not.  This is a simple fact, a truism about our ordinary experience. [It is hard to imagine anyone disputing this.]

Whether our thoughts are reliable or not can be determined by experience and inter-personal confirmation.  [E.G., I'm lost in the woods and come to a fork in the path, path A and path B.  I have reason for thinking that path A will lead me out of the woods.  I take path A and find that it does take me to safety.  My thought was reliable in that case; and its reliability was confirmed by experience.  There is absolutely no need to become puzzled by the notion of a correspondence between my thought and the objective fact!]

None of this requires that we implicitly assume any kind of dualism between mind and matter, or any philosopher’s dualism between experience and the object experienced.  Any talk of mind or thoughts or feelings can be restated as talk about the person (biological being with big brain and conditioned by culture) thinking or feeling in a particular way.  There is no need to become mystified by the notion of mind existing as an entity in its own right or even as a mysterious attachment to the biological organism (which is all we are).

None of this requires that we assume (or explain) any correspondence ( lack of it) between our thoughts and material reality, or between experience and the world.

When I say (or think) that X is A, my statement that “X is A” is true if and only if X in fact is A.   There is no mention of correspondence here.
That X is A in fact can be confirmed by scientific means or by ordinary empirical investigation (I confirm that X is A by checking and double-checking; and by having others confirm that X is A.)

When Dewey proposes that we replace “the traditional separation of nature and experience” with the idea of continuity, his proposal goes along the lines outlined above.  He surely was not proposing a metaphysics in which nature and experience are “distinguishable properties or aspects of one thing/substance.”  He is merely pointing out that our experience is continuous with nature, both our nature and objective nature (i.e., the world, our environment). The question “What is that substance?” is  the wrong question.  Asking that question attempts to get us into a metaphysical mode which a good pragmatist like Dewey would surely (and appropriately) avoid.  Avoiding or ignoring any assumptions that gets us into that mode is likely a very good way to go in philosophy today.

 

Over-reaching when we promote philosophy

by Juan Bernal

Over-reach:

When I was a mere neophyte in my humanities studies (late 1960s), some professors in my Literature and History courses would complain that too often people in philosophy talked as if only philosophers were the real thinkers (supposedly historians and literary scholars were not real thinkers) and complain also that philosopher all too often claimed credit for many beneficial developments in history, as if only philosophers had made major contributions to social progress and humanitarian development.  They must have had good reasons for complaining since I remember walking away from introductory classes in philosophy thinking that philosophy was where the real thinking took place and philosophy contributed a great deal to the development of civilization.  (I did not know any better!)

We hear the same prejudice expressed today when enthusiasts of philosophy claim that critical thinking is taught mainly, if not exclusively, in philosophy courses, ignoring the fact that students learn critical thinking in a variety of disciplines and courses of study.

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 We invented everything of worth! 

Some of your older readers might recall that during the Cold War between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union representatives of the USSR (e.g. Nikita Krushchev) would claim that scientists in the USSR had invented such things as electrical power and the telephone, contrary to conventional claims that Western scientists and engineers actually invented and developed those technologies.  Sometimes we even heard that the USSR invented democracy and equal rights for women.  Of course, any cursory look at historical accounts of how these things and institutions arose quickly refuted those fantastic claims by spokesmen for the Soviet Union.  The Soviets were simply exaggerating their role in historical developments and “puffing themselves up” so as to bigger than they really were.

Do we have a similar situation with the claims as to all that has originated from the work of philosophy by some enthusiasts of philosophy?  Don’t we often hear that the roots of science, democracy, and all progressive social developments are found in the work and rational arguments of some philosophers?

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Philosophers as Major Players in the Demise of Slavery – Another case of Over-Reach?   

At one of his musical performances, Yanni (piano-keyboards-band leader) declares that “everything good that has happened to people begin with just one idea in the mind of one person.”  Like many things that people say, this sounds good but probably will not hold up when applied to what has really happened in histories of societies and cultures.

In similar fashion, Rebecca Goldstein (“Speaking Prose All Our Lives,” Humanist, Jan-Feb 2013 volume) declares that

“all humanitarian developments started out as theoretical moral arguments.” (p. 19)

She states this in the process of arguing that rational moral arguments, like those offered by Immanuel Kant and Jeremy Bentham, inspired the social movements against slavery and also against the long-standing denial of women’s rights.  She cites John Locke as offering the “first abstract argument against slavery and includes a passage by Locke:

“Freedom of men under government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, …. a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where that rule prescribes not; and not be be subject to the inconstant  , uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man, as freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of nature.”

Is this an “abstract argument against slavery”?  Goldstein is correct to say that Locke’s reasoning can be applied against slavery, but it is just as likely that John Locke did not have slavery in mind at all, but was arguing for the liberty of Englishmen against the threat of a tyrannical authority (King or dictator).  At any rate, according to Goldstein,  Locke  makes a strong statement against the institution of slavery.  She would offer this an example of what she calls the

“provenance of the moral “intuitions” harbored within moral philosophy.” (see page 20)

But are these claims of the significance of philosophical arguments in the development of humanitarianism and the anti-slavery movement really credible?  How do they measure up to the historical events and social processes from which a more conscientious humanitarianism arose, and gave basis for the movements to eradicate the institution of slavery?  When you look, even cursorily, at the historical events and social developments that led to progress in these areas you find that philosophers – with their rational arguments – did not play the major role that Goldstein insinuates.   A cursory look at the history of anti-slavery and abolitionists discloses the involvement a variety of persons and the play of social-economic forces.

It is true that some philosophers, such as those associated with the Enlightenment who wrote of the rights of all people in the face of Royalist tyranny and others who emphasized the importance of human freedom, played a role in changing some peoples’ thinking on the status of some human beings as mere property of the slave owners.   But probably a greater role was played by political movements such as the French Revolution and by religious leaders who seriously questioned the compatibility of Christian values and the institution of slavery.  In England where the anti-slavery movement started we hear of the activism of Quakers (e.g., Anthony Benezet, a Quaker whose family moved to America in the late eighteenth century) and people like Thomas Clarkson, who was a great early organizer of abolitionists.  Neither of these men were philosophers and we don’t have reason for thinking they were inspired by abstract, philosophical arguments to take up the cause of anti-slavery.

In both England and America, many of the early abolitionists had religious motivation for their stand against slavery.  It would be hard to find philosophical abstract arguments motivating an abolitionist like John Brown and his followers, who resorted to violence to fight slavery.  And we cannot overlook the role that victims of slavery themselves played in bringing about changes that inspired society to oppose slavery:  the Haitian slaves’ insurrection of the 18th century, for example.  The writings and activism of former slaves like Frederick Douglas and the example of Nat Turner, who led a slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831.  These people were not acting because of “abstract moral arguments” by some distant philosophers, but acting from the horrors and suffering that the institution of slavery brought to them and others like them.

Moreover, most probably economic forces and social change (having nothing to do with philosophy) played a big role in bringing about an atmosphere (in thinking, values, and political processes) that led to the end of slavery as an accepted institution.  When commerce and manufacturing resulted in a decrease in the profitable use of human slavery in some advanced societies, the entrenched thinking and ideologies that had supported institutionalize slavery for many centuries begin to weaken.  You don’t have to be a Marxist to recognize that economic forces and commercial interests play a greater role in changing the direction of societies than do the abstract moral arguments of philosophers, not to mention the role that religious faith play in shaping peoples beliefs and values.

Consequently, it seems that Goldstein over-reaches on behalf of the relevance and effectiveness of rational argument and the role that philosophers – with their rational arguments –  played in bringing about an end to slavery and the plight of women (regarded as second-class members of society).  Like with Yanni’s grand statement, so with Goldstein’s declaration of rational philosophy being the starting point of humanitarian developments, when we test the grand statement against the actual social and historical developments we find much reason for doubting and rejecting them.

The humanitarian movements that have helped to bring about the end of the institution of slavery have included social, historical, and economic forces not at all philosophical in nature; and have been executed by different people of different backgrounds, most of whom were not inspired by the “theoretical moral arguments” of some philosopher or other.

We Find Discrimination Everywhere!

by Juan Bernal

Before the passage of civil rights and voting rights legislation in the 1960s and 70s, many southern states required that voters answer questions meant to show their qualification for voting.  White people would get some softball question like “How many eggs in a dozen?”; whereas, blacks would be hit with questions about relativity physics or quantum physics: “Explain the Copenhagen version of quantum phenomena.”   Who do you suppose was qualified to vote?

 The Joke 

In his latest book for the non-scientific layman, Leonard Mlodinow  (See* below) recounts a joke in his discussion of the stereo-typing and categorization of people.  As Mlodinow tells it, three gentlemen (a white Catholic, a white Jew, and a poor black man) die and head for the gate of heaven where the Lord will question them to determine their qualifications for entry.

(I’m not sure why Mlodinow puts the Lord performing the function normally assigned to St. Peter; maybe it has something to do with Leonard’s Jewish background.)

What follows is paraphrase of the joke.  I have altered Mlodinow’s words slightly.

At any rate, the first man, a white Catholic, comes to the gate and stands before the Lord who asks that he state his qualifications for entry into heaven.  The Catholic answers: “Lord, I followed all the rules of the church, regularly attended mass, and was kind to my fellow humans, even if others were biased against me because of my Catholicism.”  The Lord says fine, but before I let you enter you must correctly spell a word.  “What word, Lord?” the Catholic asks.  “God”, says the Lord.  The Catholic easily spells G-O-D  and is granted entry.

Next, the Jewish gentleman comes to the gate and stands before the Lord who asks this fellow the same question: what are his qualifications for entry into heaven.  The Jewish man answers: “Lord, I followed your commandments, studied and revered the Torah, and treated all people as I wanted them to treat me, despite all the anti-Semitism directed against me.”  The Lord says fine, but before I let you enter you must correctly spell a word.  “What word, Lord?” the Jew asks.  The word is “God”, says the Lord.  The Jew easily spells G-O-D  and is granted entry.

Finally, the poor old black man, comes to the gate and stands before the Lord who asks the same question as with the other two. The black man answers: “Lord, I despite all the racist discrimination that I had to endure I never became bitter but always tried to follow your teaching, and I always tried to treat every one kindly and fairly, regardless of the color of their skin.”  The Lord smiles and says that’s good,  but before I let you enter you must correctly spell a word.  “What word, Lord?” the black man asks.  “Czechoslovokia,”  says the Lord. …

(Some things never change!)

(No people.  This is not a racist joke!)

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An Elaboration on this instructive joke.

According to an anonymous reviewer of Mlodinow’s book, the joke was read to a conference of community college philosophy instructors (Western States, including California), 650 of whom were given a questionnaire to get their interpretation of the joke.  (I have not been able to confirm that this survey really did take place, but simply describe what was reported to me.)

The respondents distributed as follows:

32% correctly read the joke as commentary on the universality of racial prejudice and hypocrisy (even the Lord..)

16% correctly noted that the joke said something about our ideas of justice and fair play

12% did not even see the point of the joke at all, asking lame questions like, “Why Czechoslovakia?”

(These are philosophy instructors, you must understand their limitations.)

8% were bothered by the story’s placing God and not St. Peter as heaven’s gate keeper, and could not get past that bit of incongruity to answer other questions.

10% were Christian theists who objected strongly to the way the joke characterized the Lord as being unjust to the black man.  Why, God would never do that!

12% did not understand why Mlodinow would include the joke in a chapter on our unconscious stereo-typing and categorization.

5% were offended by what they mistook as a racist joke.

The remaining 5% were black philosophy instructors who just laughed, asked “So what’s new?” and went about their conference business.

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* Subliminal, How your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior. Mlodinow is a physicist at Caltech who co-authored The Grand Design, with Stephen Hawkin; and had an earlier, very entertaining book, The Drunkard’s Walk – How Randomness Rules our Lives

Is torture of a person ever morally justified?

By Juan Bernal

A corresponding philosopher, call him “John,”  posed the following example of “justified torture”, and followed with a few questions:

Suppose that a kid-napper has taken a child, and holds it for ransom. The kid-napper buries the child in an underground vault with limited air supply. The police capture the kid-napper who refuses to divulge the whereabouts of the vault.

Would Dirty Harry, the detective, be morally justified in using torture, since there is not sufficient time to obtain truth serum, or any other means of obtaining  the information needed to save the child’s life?

Do you believe that the example shows that torture is sometimes justified if done with a good will?

Or is torture always wrong?

Or is torture only justified if the actual results (not the intended results) are good?

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I replied with the following remarks:  John, I cannot imagine too many real-world case in which torture of a human being (with or without a good will) would be morally justified.  So, I’m inclined to say that torturing of a human being is not morally justifiable; although it is not always an inhumane or criminal act. 

How’s that for hedging?!

In your example, we have to buy into the premise that torturing the kidnapper will result in the information necessary to save the child.  Then the question is whether this means of extracting the information (torture) is morally justifiable, if it will save the victim, the kidnapped child.  Likely, most of us are inclined to say that  such torture is morally justified; but we’re inclined to do so because of the way the case is presented: The criminal is at the receiving end of the torture; he probably deserves it; and this is the only way of saving the kidnapped child.  What rational, morally conscientious person would ever trade the well-being of the kidnapper for the sure death of the child?  Not many, if any.  But this is a made-up case, probably only good as a classroom example for discussion. It is not the type of case that people are likely to confront.

In the real world, nobody knows at the outset of the torture session that it will result in the life-saving information.  Nobody can even be certain that the child is still alive. In many real-world cases, we often don’t know that the person being tortured is really a criminal or bad person deserving such intense pain. With reference to a real-world case, let’s ask your question again: Is torture of the kidnapper morally justified?  Here the answer is not so clear.  Here we have to make a ‘judgement call’ which may or may not be correct.  Here we cannot be certain that we would be doing the morally right thing, either by torturing the alleged Kidnapper or refusing to torture.

A similar dilemma arises concerning the CIA’s use of waterboarding to try to get information from suspected terrorists.  Is such torture justifiable when the information can only be gotten from that individual?  Is it justifiable when other sources might be available?  Is it justifiable when the information might prevent another deadly terrorist attack?

Of course, philosophers are fond of imagining crazy cases in which one might be inclined to affirm that torture of a person (even of an innocent child) is morally justified.  For example, if by allowing such torture, the suffering of millions would cease and be replaced by great well being for all (a paradise on earth; millions of children no longer suffer sickness, hunger, and cruelty).  Then the questioner, maybe a Utilitarian, will press the issue by pointing out how great the ratio of happiness is gained over the suffering of the one victim, 200 million / one.  Then how could any rational, morally attentive person deny the moral justification of the torture?


Plug in your own answer; but it probably won’t say much about real-world moral dilemma that people often face.

So I will go out on the limb and declare that torturing people in attempts to extract crucial information is not a morally justifiable act.  It might turn out to be a prudent or utilitarian act, one that yields some desirable result.   But in the end, the torturer (if he/she is honest) might have to admit to gaining a desirable result through immoral means.  It is similar to the acts in a war in which our warriors have to kill enemy soldiers.  Is the killing of human beings morally justified?   Or is it merely the prudent, practical thing that must be done when one is a soldier and the nation is at war, with no implication that it is the morally justifiable thing to do?  Or probably a better example is the case of Israeli secret service agents tracking down and killing suspected anti-Israeli terrorists.  They get very good at this and probably do something that reduces the terrorist threat against Israel.  But do they do something that is morally justifiable?  It is likely that some of them conclude that in hunting down the suspected terrorist they (Israeli agents) have had to become terrorists themselves.   That is not a case of moral justification.

Reacting to a racist remark on election night – a brief discussion

by Juan Bernal

Mary: A friend of mine from a local college attended a gathering of Orange County Republicans on election night. At this gathering there were a number of  prominent OC Republicans, including a well known district attorney (not named).  When President Obama’s re-election was assured and Obama  started to give his victory speech (night of November 6, 2012), this leading GOP lawyer  shouted “turn that ni***er off.”    This is one of our district attorneys and a leading Republican in our county!.

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Henry:  That is pretty shocking. I like to say our Orange County republicans are not lost in racial hatred, but I guess this says otherwise.

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Tomas:  Racism has been a basic tenet of Republican Party policy and politics for quite a while – ever since the Democrats passed the Civil Rights laws. The “southern”  was a deliberate effort to hold onto power a while longer in the face of a (slowly) progressing America of changing demographics and (curse the word) evolution.

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Joseph:  But Racism exists in both parties. People of color in certain instances voted for President Obama because of President Obama’s color. Racism is not to be extrapolated to all republicans because of incidents like this any more than it should be extrapolated to all democrats of color. Such thinking is illogical and is a common bias…believing that anecdotal incidents are statistically valid.

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Juan:   Yes, I suppose that when we remark that back in the 1950s there were John Crow laws and segregation throughout the South which kept blacks in their place and reserved all privileges for the whites, we’re being ‘racist’ on behalf of the blacks? And I suppose that when we remind our privileged young people of today the extent that white society and white-dominated government discriminated in the first part of the 20th century against Asians and Mexican Americans throughout the West, the Southwest and especially in Texas (denying them employment, housing and access to education), we are being ‘racist’ against the poor victimized white society? Racial discrimination, as you well know, comes from all classes and most individuals, but it is most destructive when the dominant group uses it to maintain their dominance and privileges, a dominance and privilege that our GOP (Guardians of Privilege) in political life work to preserve.

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Tomas:  Correct Juan. The bigots love that equivalence BS that they learned from False Nuze.
Individual prejudice is human and is not the issue.
Racism as an institution and basis for policy (as it is in the GOP – officially part of their platform and most of the laws they try to pass) is a different thing from personal bias. It is precisely the ability to impose that hatred and bigotry through laws that makes it a problem. That is something the bigots will never admit because it exposes their own bigotry.

MY VIEWS ABOUT TAXATION AND THE ECONOMY – By Robert Richert

By Robert A. Richert

It is difficult to calmly discuss political issues with family and friends with divergent opinions.  All of this prompted me to do some homework and to share my views calmly in the form of an article.  I welcome well reasoned responses, hopefully backed by reliable sources.  I am often critical of people who write and speak on issues and claim some authority; yet who do not have the expertise, experience, or wisdom to do so.  Yet, here I go!  However, unlike them, I freely admit that I am not an expert in economics; I am a curious amateur.  I admit that I may be wrong in my assessment of some items in the link below and this article.  I understand that my article is by no means comprehensive, and that I may have inadvertently left out some important and relevant arguments and facts.  I am not rigidly glued to any economic theory, or passionate about this subject to anywhere near the degree I am about science; a subject about which I do have some expertise.  I am writing this partly because I am frustrated by the political polarization in our country, the name calling and blaming from all sides, and what I perceive as a continuous and unfair trashing of ‘liberalism’ and president Obama by the political and religious right.  Liberal ideology has been on the defensive since Reagan was president.  When is the last time you heard a well known Democratic politician brag about being a liberal?  Many conservative views on economics, such as that lower tax rates stimulate economic growth and the converse hurts growth, are generally accepted by many, including some Democrats, as a given fact.  At the Democratic Convention, Bill Clinton presented a detailed critique of conservative economics over the last 40 years, and I think this was long overdue.  The time has come to question established and widely believed conservative economic views and place conservatives on the defensive, for a change.

Finally, I was inspired to share my views at this time because of a question asked recently by a friend and repeated in the first sentence below:

A friend asked why I voted for Obama when my business has been so adversely affected by this economy.  It’s a fair question!  One of my responses is that deep wounds do not heal quickly.  It took more than 12 years to recover from the Great Depression, and the crash of 2008 was nearly as bad as that of 1929; and it’s the worst economic crash since that time.  Many experts claim that despite Roosevelt’s various programs to spur the economy, our entrance into WW II was the primary reason for that recovery.  Through all of those terrible years of Depression, most people stuck by Roosevelt and he remained quite popular.  They understood that he was not the cause, and that he was doing his best to bring on a recovery.  My other response to the above question is that we don’t have a control group for comparison to the last 4 years under Obama.  In other words, we don’t have another twin planet nearby in which McCain won the presidency in 2008 but all other things were exactly the same.  This way, we could observe if McCain and company would have healed the economy any better than Obama.  My opinion is that things would be about the same and maybe worse!  This is based upon the information that follows.  Furthermore, critics of Obama’s economic policies offer no credible evidence to support their argument that things would have been better under a Republican administration.

This brings me to two major Republican claims of relevance here; that low tax rates lead to economic growth, and that trickle down economics works.  Attached is an article with information and lots of graphs spanning the last 60 years.  This information strongly undermines this Republican point of view:

http://www.businessinsider.com/study-tax-cuts-dont-lead-to-growth-2012-9.

I have checked some the information on the above link with more than one source and I haven’t found any statistics from reliable sources that substantially disagree.  Here’s the bottom line: Since WW II there is no positive correlation between low tax rates and economic growth – in fact, quite the opposite.  For most of that time the economy was better when tax rates were higher!  It may seem counter intuitive, but it is true.  Why?  I’m not sure, but maybe the information below may shed light.

I agree Obama and many, if not most economists that the Federal Government and the private sector should partner to make the economy work for the betterment of all.  Although past Republican administrations advocated smaller government in general, these ‘old school’ Republicans agreed with Democrats that government investment in certain things like infrastructure (bridges, roads, etc.) was good for the economy as a whole.  They understood that these government investments helped to foster economic growth in the private sector and this activity results in increased revenues for the government – it’s a win, win situation.  Eisenhower believed that.  His administration invested heavily in infrastructure; for example, they developed our national highway system and this helped the private sector to prosper.  It opened up the entire country to interstate commerce.  Nixon, Bush senior, and even Reagan to some degree also believed that government had a role to play in helping the economy; particularly in basics like infrastructure.  Classic Republican leaders like Eisenhower, Nixon, and Dole were moderates by today’s standards.  Nixon created the EPA; that would never happen today under a Republican administration.  Unfortunately, many of today’s Republican’s have moved so far to the right that they don’t seem to agree with their counterparts of years ago on even the basic issue of funding infrastructure.  There is a big difference between believing in smaller government, but respecting its role in various important ways, than in believing, like most in the Tea Party, many Republicans, and shrill conservative talk show hosts, that government is the problem and cannot do anything right.  I think this view has caused great harm to our economy, and has contributed to negative public attitudes about government.  I wonder if it has become a self fulfilling prophecy: If the morale of government leaders and workers is continually undermined by these harsh voices, why should we expect excellence from them?

It is my contention that during the first four years of Obama’s presidency, we have lived in essentially a Republican economy; yes, a Republican economy!  For example, despite strong objections by progressives and many other Democrats, Obama did NOT raise taxes during his first four years.  He bended to the Republicans and preserved the Bush tax rates from 2001.  Note that these federal tax rates are the lowest per capita since WW II, and have been in effect for eleven straight years.  According to The Economist magazine, during Obama’s first term, the growth of government increased much less than in the last 40 years!  At the same time, the income of the top 2% has skyrocketed, while the income for the average Joe Blow has stagnated.  Also, large corporations and several banks are sitting on huge reserves of cash.  So, all these things being in Republican economic favor, why hasn’t the trickle trickled down?  I think the evidence is clear that since WW II, conservative beliefs about low tax rates stimulating economic prosperity and trickle down economics are not supported by the evidence.

Republicans complain about the exploding deficit.  The fact is that since WW II, the deficit has increased more under Republican administrations than Democrats.  George W. Bush increased the deficit substantially from a surplus by engaging us in two unpaid for wars!  Yes, the deficit has increased by about four billion under Obama, but this is due to the fact that although the government must continue to pay its bills, revenue has shrunk greatly thanks to the 2008 crash and subsequent devastated economy.  The deficit skyrocketed during WW II to a much higher degree per capita than today.  We recovered from that and we can recover from our current negative balance.  I speculate that the deficit would be about as high as it is now had McCain been elected in 2008.  No President is a dictator with the power to wave a magic wand and make bad things disappear!  In order to effectively reduce the deficit, most economists and our president favor cutting government spending AND increasing revenue.

Republicans also complain about over regulation, and that this is hurting economic prosperity.  I am uncomfortable with over generalizations like this.  Obviously, some regulations, such as on how our drugs are tested, the way that our food is made and processed, and the way that industry affects our environment are needed and important.  I’m also sure that over regulation is a problem in some areas.  How much regulation should be imposed upon Wall Street, and how effective would it be?  I haven’t a clue; I only hope that smart, rational, cool heads will prevail.  It seems to me that debates about government regulation should be about specifics and details, not broad, sweeping generalizations.

Few people know that since WW II tax rates on high income earners were far higher than in recent years.  For example, the top income tax rate was 90% under Eisenhower, and I don’t recall anyone calling him a Socialist!  When Kennedy took office, I believe the top rate was 71% to 75%, and his administration reduced it.  No doubt that extreme tax hikes like these would adversely affect the economy today.  However, no one is advocating such extremes.  Obama’s tax plan only raises taxes moderately on those making over $250,000 per year.  I agree with conservative columnist Bill Kristol that most of these earners would barely feel it.  This is the same rate as during the Clinton presidency when the economy soared and deficits dissolved to become a surplus; after his tax hikes!  Now that the election is over, several Republicans in Congress are finally conceding that small tax hikes on the so called ‘rich’ will not adversely affect the economy.  It is about time!  Thus, based upon past experience and the weight of evidence, it is highly unlikely that Obama’s proposed tax hike, if signed into law, would have a negative impact on the economy.

I agree with Republicans and the president that the corporate tax rate at about 35% is too high.  However, few, if any large corporations pay that amount!  They have armies of lawyers working the system exploiting loopholes to reduce the amount of real taxes they pay.  I also agree with Republicans that in past years California Democrats have been reckless with our money.  For example, it is outrageous that some state employees receive early retirement with high pay and some receive ridiculously high pensions!  Governor Brown got his wish with the recent tax increases.  I think that it would be a big mistake if the new Democratic super majority raises more taxes, especially now in a slow ‘recovery’.  While I’m uncertain as to how moderate increased taxes will affect California’s economy in the near future, I am certain that this would not be smart politics considering that so many people feel that taxes are high enough or too high.  I also understand that in the past when Federal tax rates were high, state sales and state income tax rates were low or non-existent.  I am uncomfortable that people I know who are making good money, around $150,000 per year, pay about 40% of their income in state and Federal taxes.  I think that is uncomfortably high.  At the same time, I am quite uncomfortable that people like Mitt Romney only pay about 15% of their income in taxes.

Like Obama, I want smart, efficient government.  I want our government to operate with the mind set that each dollar they spend comes out of the pockets of their loved ones and neighbors, not some abstract, bottomless well.  I agree with our president that the best way to make for a healthy economy is from the middle outward not the top down.  Put more money in the pockets of middle class Americans and they will spend it.  This not only involves keeping middle income taxes at a low rate, but also encouraging small business growth.  This is trickle up economics.  Trickle down economics does not work!  At the same time, reward companies that create jobs here by reducing their taxes and punish companies that send jobs overseas by raising theirs.  The same goes for companies that are environmentally friendly and those that are not.

Despite the right wing barrage of nonsense about Obama over the last four years – that he is a Muslim, Socialist, weak on foreign policy, not born in the US, etc. – the people have spoken, and he was re-elected President.  Obama is a good man.  He is a smart, pragmatic, realist…and on the right track!  That is why I support him despite my own and our country’s current economic situation.

Richard Rorty and the false charge of relativism in Pragmatism

Juan Bernal

Recently I have been confronted by various students of philosophy who hold that pragmatism is a hopelessly relativistic philosophy. One sees pragmatism as characteristic of “naturalism,” which denies an objective form of truth, opting instead for practical solutions which work but may not represent truth at all. Another made the statement that, if truth is whatever works, something that he found in William James’ philosophy, then any practice or policy that works for majority (e.g. persecution of minorities) is ‘true,’ insofar as it brings about the results that the majority desires.

The American, twentieth-century pragmatist, Richard Rorty  denied that pragmatism implies that type of destructive relativism.  In a collection of papers titled Objectivity, Relativism & Truth* , specifically in “Solidarity or Objectivity,” (p. 21) and ““Science as Solidarity” (p.35),  Rorty argued that pragmatism is not a relativistic philosophy at all,  and that a pragmatic philosophy is very much in the spirit of a good scientific approach to resolving problems.   What Rorty says about his pragmatism surely applies to other versions of the pragmatists’ approach, and seems consistent with the approach of early pragmatists like William James and John Dewey.

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from “Solidarity or Objectivity”

“There are two ..ways in which reflective people try, by placing their lives in a larger context, to give sense to their lives. The first is by telling the story of their contributions to a community. . . The second way is to describe themselves as standing in immediate relation to a nonhuman reality. ….stories of the first kind exemplify the desire for solidarity, and ..stories of the latter kind exemplify the desire for objectivity.

“The tradition in Western culture which centers around the notion of the search for truth, a tradition which runs from the Greek philosophers through the Enlightenment, is the clearest example of the attempt to find a sense of one’s existence by turning … to objectivity. The idea of Truth as something to be pursued for its own sake, not because it will be good for oneself, or for one’s real or imaginary community, is the central theme of this tradition. It was perhaps the growing awareness of by the Greeks of the sheer diversity of human communities which stimulated the emergence of this ideal. A fear of parochialism, of being confined within the horizons of the group into which one happens to be born, … helps produce the skeptical and ironic tone characteristic of Euripides and Socrates. Herodotus’ willingness to take the barbarians seriously enough to describe their customs in detail may be been a … prelude to Plato’s claim that the way to transcend skepticism is to envisage a common goal of humanity — a goal set by nature rather than by Greek culture. The combination of Socratic alienation and Platonic hope give rise to the idea of the intellectual as someone who is in touch with the nature of things, not by the way of the opinions of his community, but in a more immediate way.

“Plato developed the idea of such an intellectual by means of the distinction between knowledge and opinion, and between appearance and reality. Such distinctions .. (bring about) .. the idea that rational inquiry should make visible a realm to which nonintellectuals have little access, and of whose very existence they may be doubtful. In the Enlightenment, this notion became concrete in the adoption of the Newtonian physical scientist as a model of the intellectual. To most thinkers of the 18th century, it was clear that the access to Nature which physical science had provided should be followed by the establishment of social, political, and economic institutions which were in accordance with Nature. Ever since, liberal social thought has centered around social reform as made possible by objective knowledge of what human beings are like –not knowledge of what Greeks or Frenchmen or Chinese are like, but of humanity as such. We are the heirs to this objectivist tradition, which centers around the idea that we must step outside our community long enough to examine it in light of something which transcends it, namely, that which it has in common with every other actual and possible human community. . . Much of the rhetoric of contemporary intellectual life takes for granted that the goal of scientific inquiry into man is to understand “underlying structures,” or “cultural invariant factors,” or “biologically determined patterns.”

“Those who wish to ground solidarity in objectivity –call them realists — have to construe truth as correspondence to reality. So they .. construct a metaphysics which has room for a special relation between beliefs and objects which will differentiate true from false beliefs. They .. also argue that there are procedures of justification of belief which are natural and not merely local. So they ..construct an epistemology which has room for a kind of justification which is not merely social but natural, springing from human nature itself, and made possible by a link between that part of nature and the rest of nature. On their view, the … procedures which are thought of as providing rational justification by one or another culture may or may not really be rational. For to be truly rational, procedures of justification must lead to truth, to correspondence to reality, to the intrinsic nature of things.”

“By contrast, those who wish to reduce objectivity to solidarity — call them “pragmatists” –do not require either a metaphysics or an epistemology. They view truth as, in Wm. James’ phrase, what is good for us to believe. So they do not need an account of a relation between beliefs and objects called ‘correspondence,’ nor an account of human cognitive abilities which ensures that our species is capable of entering into that relation. They see the gap between truth and justification not as something to be bridged by isolating a natural and trans-cultural sort of rationality which can be used to criticize certain cultures and praise others, but simply as the gap between the actual good and the possible better. From a pragmatist point of view, to say that what is rational for us now to believe may not be true, is simply to say that somebody may come up with a better idea. It is to say that there is always room for improved belief, since new evidence, or new hypotheses, or a whole new vocabulary, may come along. For pragmatists, the desire for objectivity is not the desire to escape the limitations of one’s community, but simply the desire for as much intersubjective agreement as possible, the desire to extend the reference of “us” as far as we can. So far as pragmatists make a distinction between knowledge and opinion, it is simply the distinction between topics on which such agreement is relatively easy to get and topics on which agreement is relatively hard to get.” (22-23)

“Relativism” is the traditional epithet applied to pragmatists by realists. Three current views are commonly referred to by this name. The first is the view that every belief is as good as every other. The second is the view that “true” is an equivocal term, having as many meanings as there are procedures of justification. The third is the view that there is nothing to be said about either truth or rationality apart from descriptions of the familiar procedures of justification which a given society – ours – uses in one or another area of inquiry. The pragmatist holds the ethnocentric third view. But he does not hold the self-refuting first view, nor the eccentric second view. . . However, it is not clear why “relativist” should be thought of as an appropriate term for the ethnocentric third view, the one which the pragmatist does hold. For the pragmatist is not holding a positive theory which says that something is relative to something else. He is, instead, making the purely negative point that we should drop the traditionally distinction between knowledge and opinion, construed as the distinction between truth as correspondence to reality and truth as a commendatory term for well-justified beliefs. . . ..the pragmatist does not have a theory of truth, much less a relativistic one. As a partisan of solidarity, his account of the value of cooperative human inquiry has only an ethical base, not an epistemological or metaphysical one. Not having any epistemology, a fortiori he does not have a relativistic one.” (23-24)

From “Science as Solidarity”

…We [pragmatists] ..would like to substitute the idea of “unforced agreement” for that of “objectivity.”

To say that unforced agreement is enough raises the specter of relativism. For those who say that a pragmatic view of rationality is unwholesomely relativistic ask: “Unforced agreement among whom? Us? The Nazis? Any arbitrary culture or group? The answer, of course, is “us.” This necessarily ethnocentric answer simply says that we must work by our own lights. . . What we cannot do is to rise above all human communities, actual and possible. We cannot find a skyhook which lifts us out of mere coherence – mere agreement – to something like “correspondence with reality as it is in itself.” (38)

“One reason why dropping this latter notion strikes many people as “relativistic” is that it denies the necessity that inquiry should someday converge to a single point – that Truth is “out there,” up in front of us, waiting for us to reach it. This latter image seems to us pragmatists an unfortunate attempt to carry a religious view of the world over into an increasingly secular culture. (38-39) . . . . Pragmatists would like to replace the desire for objectivity – the desire to be in touch with a reality which is more than some community with which we identify ourselves – with the desire for solidarity with that community. They think that the habits of relying on persuasion rather than force, of respect for the opinions of colleagues, of curiosity for new data and ideas, are the only virtues which scientist have. They do not think that there is an intellectual virtue called “rationality” over and above these moral virtues. (39)

On this view there is no reason to praise scientists for being more “objective” or “logical” or “methodical” or “devoted to truth” than other people. But there is plenty of reason to praise the institutions that they [i.e., scientists] have developed and within which they work, and to use these as models for the rest of culture. For these institutions give concreteness and detail to the idea of “unforced agreement.” . . . My rejection of traditional notions of rationality can be summed up by saying that the only sense in which science is exemplary is that it is a model of human solidarity. We should think of the institutions and practices which make up various scientific communities as providing suggestions about the way in which the rest of culture might organize itself. (39)

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* Richard Rorty,  Objectivity, Relativism & Truth -  Philosophical Papers, Volume 1, Cambridge U. Press, 1991

Bertrand Russell on the Budda’s and the Christian’s Ideal, and Nietzsche’s ‘Pathology’

Juan Bernal

In his book, A History of Western Philosophy,*  Bertrand Russell makes some rather surprising statements about love as definitive of two great religions, Christianity and Buddhism.   It is in the process of contrasting what he sees as advocacy of love by Christianity and the Buddha with what he takes as Friedrich Nietzsche’s ethic, that Russell contrasts the Christianity’s and Buddhists love for humanity with Nietzsche’s complete lack of sympathy for others. In the process Russell effectively misleads us both with regard to the religious ideal and Nietzsche’s philosophy.

Near the end of his section on Nietzsche (** pp. 760-773), Russell takes up what he calls the “ethical, as opposed to the political question.”

“The ethical, as opposed to the political, question is one as to sympathy. Sympathy, in the sense of being made unhappy by the suffering of others, is to some extent natural to human beings; … But the development of this feeling is very different in different people. Some find pleasure in the infliction of torture; others, like Buddha, feel that they cannot be completely happy so long as any living thing is suffering.” (p. 771)

Since he will eventually contrast Buddha’s ethics with Nietzsche’s, Russell here insinuates that the Buddha sought happiness, which he could not realize as long as others were suffering; whereas others –Does he mean to include Nietzsche here? -  find pleasure in the suffering of others.  Why mention this contrast unless it is to insinuate that Nietzsche is one who finds pleasure in the suffering of others?  Where is there any textual basis for this view of Nietzsche?   Moreover, did the Buddha seek complete happiness?

Russell continues:

“Most people divide mankind emotionally into friends and enemies, feeling sympathy for the former, but not for the latter. An ethic such as that of Christianity or Buddhism has its emotional basis in universal sympathy. Nietzsche’s [On the other hand] in a complete absence of sympathy. (He frequently preaches against sympathy, …he has no difficulty in following his own precepts.)” (p. 771)

He imagines an argument in which the Buddha speaks

“..of the lepers, outcast and miserable; the poor, toiling with aching limbs and barely kept alive by scanty nourishment; the wounded in battle dying in slow agony; the orphans, ill-treated by cruel guardians; and even the most successful haunted by the thought of failure and death. From all this load of sorrow, he [Buddha] would say, a way of salvation must be found, and salvation can only come through love.” (p.771)

Russell characterizes Nietzsche in starkly opposing terms:  He sees Nietzsche as disdaining all concern and compassion for the suffering of ordinary people, who only suffer trivially; whereas the suffering and pain endured by great men always serves a higher, artistic purpose. (see page 772)

Russell imagines that Buddha would refer to Jesus as his hero:

“I too have my heroes: my successor Jesus, because he told men to love their enemies, ….”

Furthermore, Russell’s Buddha charges that Nietzsche “loves pain” and that his love of life is a sham.

“But those who really love life would be happy as no one can be happy in the world as it is.” (p. 772)

Russell then states that he “agrees with Buddha as [he] has imagined him” and that he dislikes Nietzsche because he [Nietzsche]

“likes the contemplation of pain, because he erects conceit in to a duty, because the men he most admires are conquerors, whose glory is cleverness in cause men to die. But I think the ultimate argument against his philosophy … lies not in an appeal to facts, but in an appeal to the emotions.  Nietzsche despises universal love; I feel it the motive power to all that I desire as regards the world.” (p.772)

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In his contrasting the proponents of universal love (Buddhism and Christianity) and Nietzsche’s ‘ethics’ rejecting sympathy for others as desirable,  Russell commits three basic errors.

  •  He greatly oversimplifies the message of the Gospel’s Jesus, ignoring those aspects that do not promote love.
  • He seems to mis-characterize the mission of the Buddha, which does not appear to be one based on love for his fellow human beings.
  • He oversimplifies and distorts one rather minor aspect of Nietzsche’s philosophy.

Let’s briefly take each in turn.

Jesus:  Admittedly, there are passages in the Gospels which show Jesus as preaching love for everyone, including one’s adversaries.  Some of this actions and teachings emphasize that one must not only return loving acts with loving acts, but even respond to violence and hatred with love for the perpetrator.  Christians like to emphasize this aspect of Jesus’s teachings.  But if we think that the essential teaching of Jesus is the message of love for humanity, we oversimplify the messages of the Gospel.  For the Gospels also include plenty of passages and utterances which diverge significantly from the message of love for all humans.  Jesus often directs hostility and venom toward the Pharisees, the Scribes, and other Jews who did not accept his message of salvation.  He even spends some time talking about the dire consequences (eternal fires of Hell) awaiting those who reject his doctrine.  This is hardly a message of love.  Furthermore, the main theme of the Gospels is that of salvation; what one must believe and what one must do in order to achieve eternal salvation, that ultimate reward of heaven.  In short, much of the message of the Gospel is one of a prudent ethics: One that teaches that we must change our lives and do what is required in order to be saved. This is more a message of faith in a religious doctrine and obedience to the teachings (of the Christ) than it is a message of love for humanity.

The Buddha:   Did the Gautama Buddha, of the earliest form of Buddhism, Theraveda Buddhism, teach love for humanity?  It is not obvious that he did.  Some people bring up the alleged fact that the Buddha acted out of a great compassion for the suffering humans. But can we equate compassion with love?  Maybe we can at least in the sense of love as agape, which the dictionary characterizes as divine love or God’s love for humanity; and also as a spontaneous, altruistic love.  Supposedly, when the Buddha was exposed to the suffering that most humans experience, he felt great compassion for humanity, and hence took on the task of bringing an end to this suffering.  However, when we read accounts of the Buddha’s path to enlightenment, it is not obvious that love for humanity motivated him to seek enlightenment and eventual release from the cycle of existence (hence, the cycle of suffering).  He associated suffering with attachment to illusion and the things of the material world; and he sought enlightenment and release from material illusion and the endless cycle of suffering, death and reincarnation. To the extent that he taught others or guided others to follow his example, most probably it was because he wanted to put them on a path to freedom from error and illusion, and the consequent suffering, a path that would enable them eventually to realize enlightenment and release from existence.  Along with Russell, one might see the Buddha’s mission as one expressing love for his fellow humans.  But most interpretations of Theravada Buddhism do not so characterize the Buddha’s actions.

Nietzsche:  Even someone who is only moderately familiar with Nietzsche’s work will be skeptical about Russell’s characterization of Nietzsche’s philosophy.  This is not the place to get into much detail, but one could start by noting that Nietzsche does not develop an ethics in which he preaches or teaches a particular view of ethical good or advocates ethical principles.   He does not teach a philosophy of disdain for the ideals of a Buddha or even those of an ethical Jesus.  He does not teach that we should reject sympathy for others, as much express skepticism about those who claim ‘universal love’ as the motive for their actions.   He does not love pain and suffering, as much as try to see pain and suffering as sometimes motivating achievement and artistic excellence.  To the degree that Nietzsche deals with issues that Russell brings up, it is as a social critic, as an advocate of the re-evaluation of traditional values, and a questioner of what he sees as bad faith.  It is false that Nietzsche admires the politically powerful and holds them up as ideals to be followed.  Readers are often misled into this error (Russell’s error) because of Nietzsche’s ironic style and his occasional statement of preference for some powerful villain over a deceptive, dishonest hypocrite who pretends to practice high ideals.

Russell offers a caricature of Nietzsche’s work, which can not at all be accurately characterized as advocating a specific ethical position or political position.   In so characterizing Nietzsche, Russell makes the same mistake that the Nazi did in characterizing Nietzsche as a prophet of totalitarianism.  Both are mere distortions, as can be readily seen from a basic study of man’s work.

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*  Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, 1945 (A Clarion Book, by Simon and Schuster,  New York, New York)  -  thirteenth paperback printing 1967

**  page references are  to the Simon and Schuster 1967 paperback printing

 

A Brief Statement of the Irony of Early Christian History

Juan Bernal

2010   1/20

It is difficult to overstate this fact: The Christianity that we know today results from the Gentiles’ transformation of what was probably the message of a Jewish Sage from Galilee.  In fact, the Hellenized version of “Jesus” was first developed by Paul of Tarsus and John (of the Fourth Gospel).  This Hellenized philosophy has little or nothing to do with teachings of the person known as Yeshu or Yeshua, the flesh-and-blood person who is likely the basis for the Gospel Jesus, which develops the image of Jesus promoted by the evangelists, who were not the immediate followers of Yeshua.

 

When we try to get to facts concerning Yeshua from Galilee we have to dig through numerous layers of doctrine and popular myth.  Even for the critically-minded, educated historian-scholar, the flesh-and-blood person who walked the hills of Galilee and Judea is lost in the fog of subsequent doctrine, events and political drama (e.g., the need of the early Christians to distance themselves from the Jews and gain the sympathy of the Romans).

 

1/24   Historical Ironies:

Paul’s missionary  work and his teachings were a major factor in the early development of Christian doctrine; yet Paul’s teachings had little to do with the message of Yeshua, the Galilean teaching.

Early in the fourth century AD, the Roman emperor Constantine was primarily responsible for the fact that Christianity became the major religion in the Roman Empire and eventually became a major world religion. Yet, Constantine was not by any measure a Christian man.

The teachings of a Jewish sage are transformed into a Hellenized, somewhat mystical philosophy and eventually Christian doctrine over the course of a few decades.  After a few centuries, the Christian doctrine becomes a Roman institution.

1/27

To say that the Roman Emperor Constantine experienced a religious conversion is to speak in a very misleading way. Did he embrace Christianity as his faith and philosophy of life?  Did he come to accept the teachings in the Gospels and accept the risen Christ as his savior?  Any cursory reading of the history and actions of Constantine, before and after his alleged ‘conversion’ will surely yield an emphatic negative answer to each of those questions.

Yet, Constantine was probably most responsible for the fact that Christianity went from being primarily a minority cult to becoming a religion of universal significance.

 

What we can learn from Tolstoy’s Morality Tale, “How much land does a man need?”

Juan Bernal

            Tolstoy’s short story –  “How much land does a man need?” — is a religious-morality tale which can be interpreted in a variety of ways,  but which seems primarily concerned with the destructive consequences of human ambition.  The story is about a man named Pahom – a peasant farmer —  who desires to acquire more land, acquires some land, but is not satisfied and needs to acquire more.  Eventually he over-reaches, forfeits all his accumulated wealth and causes his own death.  (*See below for a Summary of story).  The message to take from the story may be as simple as a warning against biting off more than you can chew, or we could say simply that the story shows how human nature pushes us to want more and more. We are never content with our lives, no matter how well off we may be; and , while trying to improve our standard of living, we put ourselves in danger of ending up with nothing.

But the story can be understood as presenting a message of greater complexity.

What Tolstoy gives us is a didactic tale, a story meant to teach a moral or religious lesson. His purpose likely was to show how greed and an excessive desire for earthly wealth can destroy a person.  Along with this, Tolstoy offers a lesson about the consequences of ignoring spiritual needs and the state of one’s soul, in favor of acquiring more and more material wealth.  In general, it is a story of what can happen when humans become too ambitious and greedy.  There are similar stories in myth, religious scripture, and secular literature.  For example, the story of King Midas and his “golden” touch.  In Genesis, the Tower of Babel is a brief account of how the excessive ambition of humans is struck down by God.

An important element in Tolstoy’s story is a boast by the farmer, Pahom, that if he had enough land he would not fear anyone, not even the Devil.  This is heard by the Devil who says to himself:

 “All right! We shall see about that. I’ll give you land enough; and by means of that land I will get you!”

The Devil then sets in motion the series of events that eventually end as Pahom forfeits everything including his life.

So we have a story in which Tolstoy teaches a lesson about humility and the need to fear and respect the Devil, or at least recognize the power he can exert over us.  For those who don’t believe in the Devil, the mythical character  can be seen as personifying those aspects of our nature which are destructive and can eventually lead to our complete demise.  This is probably how Tolstoy would have us read the story.

But there are different ways that we can interpret and react to the story. For example, w can take it in terms of its religious message, or in terms of a philosophical/ethical teaching, or maybe in terms of a teaching about social good.   Today, we can even see it as making a point about our ecological awareness; and we can read it in the context of our consumer-driven economic system.

Let’s take each of these in turn.

  • Religious aspect:  The story teaches that humans need to the state of their soul, rather than material wealth, with an eye to eternity rather than temporal, earthly reality.

A well-known passage from the Gospel expresses the sentiment:

Matthew 6.19: Do not lay up treasures on earth, where rust and moths consume, and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither rust nor moths consume, nor thieves break in and steal. For where the treasures are, there also will by thy heart.”

  • Philosophical/Ethical aspect:  We could read the story about the need for moderation in one’s life. In this light, consider Aristotle’s ethical teaching that reason aims at a mean between the extremes of  defect and  that of excess.  Pahom was never satisfied with what was enough land, and allowed his compulsion for more and more to ruin everything.  He sought ever more land and the sense of security and pleasure that would ensue, or so the thought.  He did not observe the recommendation from Epicurus that the pleasure worth having is that which is consistent with reason and moderation.  Here the question is one of asking whether the drive for personal wealth really benefits the individual is an detriment to true human fulfillment. We could also raise the question of moral justice and fairness.  How did Pahom’s drive for more land affect others?  Were their interests and needs respected?

When you own so much (stuff) that you lose track of all that you possess, you have passed the point of owning too much.  When you become so enslaved to acquiring more and holding on to what you have, you have lost sight of the real purpose of living.

  • Social aspect  -  Here we would ask how the ambitions of an individual to acquire great wealth affects the greater affected?  Does Pahom have any responsibility to the human community of which he is part? Or is it true that individual effort to improve one’s prospects is his only thing that should concern each person, and that others have to look out for themselves?
  • Ecological aspect  -  In today’s world, a world of overpopulation, dwindling natural resources, and the increasingly destructive affect that human activity has on the environment,  we can raise the question of how the drive to acquire more and more wealth by the many individual’s and groups of individual’s affects the natural environment of which we are all part.   In other words, we can point out that nobody acts in a vacuum, isolated from natural world.  What we do has significant effect on the quality of our environment (air, water, land).  We use up the earth’s resources and add to the waste that accumulates in our lands and oceans.  When our contemporary Pahoms work to accumulate more and more wealth, are the needs of the earth and environment respected?

Mike David, Op-Ed: Just as a virus’s only reason for existence is to expand, without regard or awareness of the effect of its expansion on its host body, our economic system pursues its infinite expansion without regard or awareness of its effect on human welfare or the environment. Though the earth is finite, it is sustainable, so we reject, in the words of Michael Nagler, “the inherent contradiction of an economy based on indefinitely increasing wants – instead of on human needs that the planet has ample resources to fulfill.”

  • Economic aspect   -   As a last set of considerations, we could ask about the propriety of our behavior (or seeking to enrich ourselves) in the context of the economic system. In a capitalist economy like exists in the US, people are seen as consumers.  As consumers we’re expected to buy things so that the economy can grow.  The more we buy, the better the state of economy.  So a wealthy person who buys expensive things would be good for the economy.   And, finally, in a capitalist system, people are inclined to think that a person has the right to whatever he earns or works to accumulate.  In other  words, if Pahom worked for his greater share of land and was willing to make the legal deals necessary to purchase his land, nobody had any business in stopping his from his purchases.  In short, Tolstoy’s story would fall on deaf ears.

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As an additional exercise, the reader might try different applications of the question,

How much X does a person (or person’s) need? 

In asking these questions, you might also distinguish between need, desire, and merit.  In short, how much is the mark of a wise person and how that of thoughtless acquisitiveness?

 

  • How much wealth does a person need?
  • How large a house does a person need?
  • How large a vehicle of transportation (viz., car) does a person need?
  • How powerful a military does a nation need?
  • How many nuclear warheads does a nation need?
  • How much wealth and power does a society need?  At what point does it become inconsistent with a good life for the citizens?
  • Do the requirements of economic expansion require that we consume ever more?
  • How many automobiles, highways, freeways ……?
  • How much population that the earth need?

Take great care in how you respond.  Remember, the Devil might be listening!

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* A brief summary of Tolstoy’s “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”

The main character is a man named Pahóm. At the beginning of the story, he is a peasant farmer, a man of humble means who lives a decent life.  But, after his sister-in-law has bragged that city folk have a much better life than country peasants, Pahom bemoans the fact that he does not own land. He states that “if I had plenty of land, I shouldn’t fear the Devil himself!” Little does he know that the Devil is sitting close by and listening.

The Devil says: “All right! We shall see about that. I’ll give you land enough; and by means of that land I will get you into my power.”

Shortly thereafter, Pahóm manages to buy some land from a lady in his village. He works hard, makes a profit and is able to pay off his debts and live a more comfortable life. But he is not satisfied and, after a peasant told him about the opportunity to own more land, he moves to a larger area of land.. Pahóm grows more crops and amasses a small fortune, but it is still not content.  Now another character tells him of another opportunity to own more land.

Pahóm hears (from a tradesman) about the Bashkirs, a simple people who own a huge amount of land deep in Central Asia. After a long trek, Pahóm meets the Bashkirs on the vast steppe. He is prepared to negotiate a price for as much land as possible, but before he can do so, the Bashkirs make him a very unusual offer, the same one that they make to anyone who wishes to buy land from them.

For one thousand rubles (a large sum in those days), Pahóm can buy as much land as he can walk around in one day. He has to start at daybreak and mark his route with a shovel at key points along the way. As long as he returns to the starting point before sunset, the land that he has marked off will be his. If he fails to return on time, the money is forfeited.

Pahóm is thrilled. He is certain that he can cover a great distance and that he will have more land than he could have ever imagined. That night, Pahóm has a foreboding dream in which he sees himself lying dead at the feet of the Devil (who changes appearances – peasant, tradesman, chief of the Baskirs), who is laughing.

The next day, with the Bashkirs watching from the starting point, Pahóm sets off at a good pace as soon as the sun crests the horizon. He covers a lot of ground, marking his way as he goes. At various points he begins to think that he should change direction and work his way back, but he is constantly tempted by the thought of adding just a bit more land. The day wears on and, as the sun begins to set, Pahóm discovers that he is still far from the starting point. Realizing that he has been too greedy and taken too much land, he runs back as fast as he can to where the Bashkirs are waiting. He arrives at the starting point in the nick of time just before the sun sets. However, as the Bashkirs cheer his good fortune, Pahóm drops dead from exhaustion.

Tolstoy concludes: “The Bashkirs clicked their tongues to show their pity. His servant picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for Pahóm to lie in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.”

The story addresses the age-old question of how much wealth does a person need. How much is enough? In this story, all that was required was a plot large enough in which to bury the man who wanted too much.