Sometimes I wonder ...

Recently, I have been reading a lot of Christine Korsgaard's works in ethics. For those unfamiliar, she is a "contemporary Kantian" ethicist. In her case, this means that she has a constructivist interpretation of Kant's text. The basic idea is that we are bound to ethics, because the rules of ethics are also the rules of action. I think there are good reasons to argue this is not Kant's view, and that it does not succeed in producing the sort of ethics Kant would want.

The key to this sort of interpretation is assuming that Kant is an anti-realist in metaphysics and ethics. This would put him in line with much of contemporary philosophy, but I think the truth of the matter is more complicated for Kant. Kant is a skeptic about claims of metaphysical knowledge, but I think he assumes there is a real fact of the matter which is inaccessible to limited humans. Instead, we have access only to the re-rendered objects of our concepts and to sensed phenomenon.

What makes me unwilling to qualify Kant as an anti-realist is that his entire account is predicated on belief that he is accurately reaching the nature of cognition (through a transcendental argument) and that he thinks reason is common between the theoretical and practical dimensions. In a sense, this makes him like many contemporary philosophers -- committed to the idea of reasonability.

Purity of heart is to will one thing. In the last week or so, I have been in Tokyo. I came to visit friends who also do house church here. I have been impressed and challenged. I would also say that I have also seen ways that I would do things differently. On the plane and the trains, I have been reading a gift that my wife gave me for my birthday, "Purity of Heart is To Will One Thing."

Labels: Kierkegaard

My reading list work continues. I've read everything on the list now and have summarized everything but one thing. The last remaining detail is to summarize Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel Kant (the Doctrine of Virtue section only). I've been working scuriously on all of this and kind of tired of it.

In large part, I learned that Kant's position has much more subtlety than I had foreseen. I think the problems with the GW do, however, underlie much of the reset of the project as I had imagined. The basic issue is whether ethics is wholly constituted by its formal part. Two problems arise. First, if ethics is its formal part, then does the material part become non-ethical or anti-ethical when it affects human behavior. Second, can ethical problems undergo formalization without loosing meaning.

The second problem arises in objections such as the "Tennis on Sunday" objection where actions that are innocuous on a common sense analysis appear to be immoral according to the test of universalization. The issue is how do identify the maxim of our action such that it includes the right particulars and excludes the wrong ones. For instance, can we qualify a prohibition about sex to allow for marriage but say adultery is wrong? Can we allow for lying when the circumstances make our choice contingent on the threat of immediate harm to others?

In the case of the last question, Kant resoundingly and repeatedly says no and holds that lying is always wrong. Given this datum, are there any facts about the world that can be included in a test of universalization? If not, then we cannot prohibit adultery as illicit sex and allow marriage as licit sex. We might be able to prohibit adultery as promise-breaking or some other criterion. But then it seems that we can allow untruth to be uttered as long as the maxim behind its action is on the principle of saving life.

This, however, won't do, because the basic principle is one principle as far as Kant is concerned. So there's a number of issues to be resolved here that require Kant's simple principle to perform some interesting acrobatics to avoid blatantly wrong positions.

The first problem exposes a very different limitation of Kant's ethics. Kant's basic presentation says that acting from anything other than the maxim which corresponds to universal law is wrong. This includes acting from any inclination we might have -- whether it is fleeting or consistent. On a first analysis, this makes Kant's view seem incompatible with doing someone because you love them.

Nancy Sherman has written a good deal about this trying to overcome this reading by seeing Kant as closer to Aristotle. The issue with her solution, however, is that she is short on text at the most crucial moments. Depending mostly on bits from Anthropology, she argues that Kant has a more nuanced view of emotions than GW allows. The issue, however, is that the ethical works consistently have Kant admitting only one emotion: respect. Respect, as Kant defines it (which differs from how Sherman seems to think of it), is a singular emotion: an objective feeling that is respect for the law. In GW and again in MM, Kant explains that this is unlike any other feeling -- and that it is wholly separate from these feelings which arise from animal nature and inclination. Instead, it arises from our humanity (specifically our reason).

Labels: Kant, Problems, Reading List

I was reading through the last few entries of this blog, and I realized that I just reread Sickness Unto Death as part of my PhD requirements. It's still a great book, but it makes better sense with Works of Love in mind. Basically, SUD explains the relationship between self, other, and God as a fundamental constitution of the person. WL, in turn, explains how such a self would express itself in ... works of love in this world. Central to both accounts is God's role as the ultimate arbiter of true and false.

Labels: Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death, Works of Love

I haven't posted here in a while. Much has changed in my life since the days where I was here. I would say that my fundamental values remain the same even if I've come to express them in different ways.

Many joyful things have happened. I dated, was engaged, and am now married. I started on a PhD and am now in my third year.

My ideas of how to do church have changed dramatically. While I still think liturgy has its own beauty, I think that the goal of church should be training people up in Christ. As far as I understand it, liturgy provides some opportunities for this. Teaching provides some as well. But ultimately, the average church service wastes a lot of precious time. Instead of being built around an extensive liturgy performed by a professional staff and a sermon delivered by a skilled orator, I now think that church should be a small community of people who know and challenge each other.

post in response to Simon at (http://blog.simon-cozens.org/post/view/1356?comments=1)
I realize that this post is rather outdated. I will do my best to address some of your concerns. I don't think it will be convincing per se.
First off, I think it is a very good point to bring up the problem of the now. House church is definitely an arrangement that feels it is best suited to meeting people's current needs. But like every other movement, it also believes that it's better than the other options.
I am somewhat confused by the statments you've made regarding their desire to have things flow upwards. Either you misunderstood them or they are taking a strange bent with this compared to other house church movements. While some historical missionary movements targeted leaders (i.e. India), house churches suggest rather that people work with people with similar interests, so a house church would form around a common basis. It's actually counter the model as described in the West to particularly target the leaders.
In answer to your questions, house church groups believe that house churches were supplanted by the Constantian model of church-state and the rest is history. In this respect, they are a group that holds that they are representing the Acts model of church and that the contemporary notion is a consequence of a series of historical transformations to church structures that are ultimately less efficient for the gospel.
In response to your second question, this seems to be a fallacious line of argument. The suggestion you're making is "what protects your mode of doing church from merely becoming self-expression rather than the Spirit speaking?" In answer to that, I ask "what prevents a regular church from doing the same?" In the latter case, it seems like every possible response is that either (a) the preacher is somehow exempt from having the same sort of self-based statements or (b) the congregation controls this by changing churches. Thus, I don't see how this is an especially big problem for house church versus another model. Further, in house churches, everyone there can speak and question what the person is saying -- an option not normal to a traditional church.
Your third question is just plain strange. As an example, "How does your view that the world is round differ from Hitler's?" I would suspect that it does not if you believe the world is round. What makes JW what it is does not arise merely from legalism. Still, I can see your point. There's a definite emphasis on evangelism, leadership, and multiplication, and it will make people uncomfortable. The immediate follow-up is, then, why are they uncomfortable? The probable answer is that they would prefer a model of church that allows attendance.
Fourth, I've never been to a campus crusade meet, but I do know some of the people who work campus crusade in Japan. But house church shouldn't be indistinguishable. One of the essential differences is that a campus crusade meet is an event with assigned leaders and a decent number of people. A house church should be smaller than that and involve everyone who is there. It is both a church and a relational network (an ekklesia -- or community if you would).

I think your point about James is more interesting. But it needs to be counter-balanced with the reality that the word does not occur elsewhere in the NT. For instance, it is not a part of the description of the Corinthian church or the worship structure that Paul suggests for it there. So I guess my question in response to that would be, how much weight does that 1 verse have and what are we to make of it?

Paul quite obviously began his outreach in each city by first trying to reach the Jews and tell them Jesus is in the Messiah. And he did so by going to their synagogues and hanging out with them. This rarely worked, so he would find a gentile and start telling him about new life in Jesus.

I had a dream...
I want to say it was Thursday two weeks ago. I'm trying to eliminate all sorts of worthless scraps of paper, so I'm translating the strange scrawl that I wrote when I awoke to memorialze the dream. I don't remember much of it except what I told Stephanie at the time: it was all people from the group i was in at Great Shepherd after college. They were a good group of people; it's a real pity that I've lost touch with all of them.
Here's what I remember: Gas was $1.89/gallon but somehow $2.02/gallon elsewhere -- prices that are presently unheard of. There's something about someone named Monica on the piece of paper... I don't know anyone named Monica and there wasn't anyone like that in the small group.
Now, the clearer part.
I saw Mark from small group and he suggested that we get together the upcoming Monday. I was kind of hesitant, because I think I'd already made plans with Stephanie. Slowly but surely other members of the small group appeared in the dream, the Kerricks and Lindsay. I particularly remember the Kerrick's baby. Another strange memory was that everyone caught on to the fact I was hesitating to say okay to hanging out with Mark on Monday. And one of the women (either Lindsay or Sarah) in the group asked, "so who's that girl you've spending a lot of time with recently?" I answered "Stephanie, she's my girlfriend."

There's two more details I wrote that aren't coherent with this part. One is that I said Sarah realized I have a girlfriend, and there's no sense of "realizing" when I stated it clearly. Second there is an odd detail about the pastor's wife indicating I should make myself clearer or something.

And finally the odd two word fragment "ask out." This is the most inconsistent piece of it all in light of the clear part. I think most of the time dreams are just how our brain adds and stores memories interacting with our mind in some weird way because it's not normally awake at the time.

I welcome any thought on this.

The summa continues to provide interesting fodder for thought. Particularly, it seems to be prefacing many of the later arguments concerning God's existence.
Summa Theologica Article 2 Question 2

Latin:
Praeterea, si demonstraretur Deum esse, hoc non esset nisi ex effectibus eius. Sed effectus eius non sunt proportionati ei, cum ipse sit infinitus, et effectus finiti; finiti autem ad infinitum non est proportio. Cum ergo causa non possit demonstrari per effectum sibi non proportionatum, videtur quod Deum esse non possit demonstrari.

English:
Objection 3: Further, if the existence of God were demonstrated, this could only be from His effects. But His effects are not proportionate to Him, since He is infinite and His effects are finite; and between the finite and infinite there is no proportion. Therefore, since a cause cannot be demonstrated by an effect not proportionate to it, it seems that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated. (CCEL Translation)


日本語：
問題三：次は、神様の存在の認めりてば、それは効果からでした。けれど神様の効果と神様は同じじゃない。神様は無限ですけど神様の効果は限界あります。限界ことと無限ことは計りません。すなわち、原因の存在は効果から違いあればで認めりません。そして神様の存在は神様の効果から認めない。

... Now if only I can actually get to the effects.