Philosophy: a few months and what has changed?
I originally posted this on my myspace blog
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Given that I don't update very often, I don't expect many people check my profile for new additions on a regular basis. I myself don't even do so for people who do update frequently. My blogging is spasmodic at best. Of course, this isn't without reason, I know over the past few years my personal views have been subject to abrupt and frequent change, in other words, I'm a bit fickle. Theologically I've have made several changes in the 6-7 years since I entered college:
-"Non-Denominational"/Wesleyan-Methodist
-Lutheran
-Reformed (broad sense)
-Episcopal
-Presbyterian
-Episcopal
-Lutheran again
-Reformed Baptist (small stint, I'd really rather not talk about it)
-Lutheran for nearly the last time
-Anglo-Catholic/Episcopal
However, Philosophically, while I made some adaptive, minor changes with regards to detail (i.e. from deontologist to prima facie deontologist), only one major change was enacted: from premodern/objectivism to existentialism.
Given that these two subjects (religion and philosophy, the name of my major in fact) are so closely related, you would think I would have noticed the disproportionate number of shifts in one versus the other. Unfortunately it was not to be so, I remained unaware, and as that philosophical exchange was inacted, subtly my understanding of theology began to change. Little did I realize my philosophy and theology were subconciously competing for the ruling seat in my mind, or the fact that my philosophy was winning. I began to, unknowingly, cease searching for the right answer and began to search for the "meaningful" answer, stop searching for the truth and begin searching for comfort, stop defending truth but defending that comfort.
Of course, it was all a failure, the simul justus only comforted so long as it was new and I felt the weight of the peccator; the t.u.l.i.p. only smelled sweet when I could ignore the manure; and the via media only gave me rest when I was halfway between two points and too tired to finish the trip. The more of a harlot I became, the cheaper the payback. When in Lutheran mode I would intentionally sin in order to feel justified, when in calvinist mode I would intentionally do "that which was in me" so that I could trust alone in soverignity, and when in episcopal mode I would practice my rituals faithfully so that I could neglect my unfaithful interiority.
If only I could have realized then the source of my true ills, and just how bankrupt my new philosophical account was.
I came by it honestly enough. It's difficult for a first-year college student, a boy convinced of his own unassailable apologetic, to encounter Hume and Kant. Where they made dints in my proverbial armor, rather than repair them, I abandoned armor altogether. Where Kant had inflicted a minor wound (in his critiques, of course, of the "proofs" for God's existence) and I was in desperate need of treatment, existentialism (particularly Kierkegaard's) offered to me instead a poison disguised as antiseptic, and I continued to use it as I grew sick, trusting someday it would finally make me well again.
But, all things in God's good time, I came around- during Mass no less. I realized that the world of existentialism and postmodernism is exactly the world as it does not present itself too us. The senses and emotions are not objects in and of themselves but responses to what is exterior. To focus on the sensation is to lose it's source, and to focus on the choice is to loose what is being chosen. There is no basis whatsoever for the semi-solipsistic understanding of reality which existentialism requires. There is no reason to believe that reality is in some sense our own creation, in fact it argues to us that it is not.
Even if someone where to existentially choose Christianity, the moment they did they must give up existentialism, via Ecclesiastes 6:10 and Hebrews 11:6.
Where am I now philosophically? Who knows? I know I'm not where I was, I know it took me six years to get there, so it might take me six years to undue it. But above all I know that existentialism, as I took it, leads the wrong way. I say as I took it because, of course, it was my version of existentialism, not Kierkegaard's or Sartre's, or anyone else's for that matter, that did the damage. It was my understanding of subjectivity, but I think the poison seems to run throughout. Perhaps my emotions are still a little misleading.
Any feedback, either direction, would be appreciated.
God Bless
-------------------------------------------
Given that I don't update very often, I don't expect many people check my profile for new additions on a regular basis. I myself don't even do so for people who do update frequently. My blogging is spasmodic at best. Of course, this isn't without reason, I know over the past few years my personal views have been subject to abrupt and frequent change, in other words, I'm a bit fickle. Theologically I've have made several changes in the 6-7 years since I entered college:
-"Non-Denominational"/Wesleyan-Methodist
-Lutheran
-Reformed (broad sense)
-Episcopal
-Presbyterian
-Episcopal
-Lutheran again
-Reformed Baptist (small stint, I'd really rather not talk about it)
-Lutheran for nearly the last time
-Anglo-Catholic/Episcopal
However, Philosophically, while I made some adaptive, minor changes with regards to detail (i.e. from deontologist to prima facie deontologist), only one major change was enacted: from premodern/objectivism to existentialism.
Given that these two subjects (religion and philosophy, the name of my major in fact) are so closely related, you would think I would have noticed the disproportionate number of shifts in one versus the other. Unfortunately it was not to be so, I remained unaware, and as that philosophical exchange was inacted, subtly my understanding of theology began to change. Little did I realize my philosophy and theology were subconciously competing for the ruling seat in my mind, or the fact that my philosophy was winning. I began to, unknowingly, cease searching for the right answer and began to search for the "meaningful" answer, stop searching for the truth and begin searching for comfort, stop defending truth but defending that comfort.
Of course, it was all a failure, the simul justus only comforted so long as it was new and I felt the weight of the peccator; the t.u.l.i.p. only smelled sweet when I could ignore the manure; and the via media only gave me rest when I was halfway between two points and too tired to finish the trip. The more of a harlot I became, the cheaper the payback. When in Lutheran mode I would intentionally sin in order to feel justified, when in calvinist mode I would intentionally do "that which was in me" so that I could trust alone in soverignity, and when in episcopal mode I would practice my rituals faithfully so that I could neglect my unfaithful interiority.
If only I could have realized then the source of my true ills, and just how bankrupt my new philosophical account was.
I came by it honestly enough. It's difficult for a first-year college student, a boy convinced of his own unassailable apologetic, to encounter Hume and Kant. Where they made dints in my proverbial armor, rather than repair them, I abandoned armor altogether. Where Kant had inflicted a minor wound (in his critiques, of course, of the "proofs" for God's existence) and I was in desperate need of treatment, existentialism (particularly Kierkegaard's) offered to me instead a poison disguised as antiseptic, and I continued to use it as I grew sick, trusting someday it would finally make me well again.
But, all things in God's good time, I came around- during Mass no less. I realized that the world of existentialism and postmodernism is exactly the world as it does not present itself too us. The senses and emotions are not objects in and of themselves but responses to what is exterior. To focus on the sensation is to lose it's source, and to focus on the choice is to loose what is being chosen. There is no basis whatsoever for the semi-solipsistic understanding of reality which existentialism requires. There is no reason to believe that reality is in some sense our own creation, in fact it argues to us that it is not.
Even if someone where to existentially choose Christianity, the moment they did they must give up existentialism, via Ecclesiastes 6:10 and Hebrews 11:6.
Where am I now philosophically? Who knows? I know I'm not where I was, I know it took me six years to get there, so it might take me six years to undue it. But above all I know that existentialism, as I took it, leads the wrong way. I say as I took it because, of course, it was my version of existentialism, not Kierkegaard's or Sartre's, or anyone else's for that matter, that did the damage. It was my understanding of subjectivity, but I think the poison seems to run throughout. Perhaps my emotions are still a little misleading.
Any feedback, either direction, would be appreciated.
God Bless
posted by Scott at 10:35 AM
1 comments
