Beyond labels: a message from a human being

I find that I am still having trouble with labels. I wrote in my last blog, that if people really insisted on ‘pigeon–holing’ me, then I would be happy to call myself a rationalist. However, some people feel that this is, in Emmanuel Levinas’ words, ‘too abstract to fill an inner life, too poor in figures of style to narrate the story of a soul. (Though I suspect that they reach this conclusion by reason rather than revelation!). However, a quotation from Albert Schweitzer may prove a corrective in this respect:

At no price must the feelings and phrases of Romanticism be allowed to prevent our generation from forming a clear conception of what reason really is. It is no dry intellectualism which would suppress all the manifold movements of our inner life, but the totality of all the functions of our spirit in their living action and interaction. In it our intellect and our                       

will hold that mysterious intercourse which determines the character of our spiritual being. Civilization of Ethics, (1932)

It would be useful also to look closely at what Peter Medawar said about reason, as quoted in my last blog

… I deem it a comic blunder to believe…that the exercise of reason is sufficient to explain our condition and where necessary to remedy it, but I do believe that the exercise of reason is unconditionally necessary and that we disregard it at our peril.

Therefore, I do not believe that we are going to be remotely impoverished as a result of employing a rationalist approach. In fact I think that it is a capital illusion to believe so: and anyway, nothing will change whatever you believe! John Cowper Powys may be able to help out here. In his book In Spite of ~ A Philosophy for Everyman (1953, republished Village Press, 1974), he writes (assuming a conversational approach to his reader):

Our conviction is that the mysterious poetry of life would be left untouched if all the “sacred” books in the world were destroyed and every commentary upon every revelation, and every interpretation of every oracle, and every “logos” of every prophet, were burnt by fire or drowned in the sea.

 In place of this mystical and theological “love” our small company of simplificators at the beginning of their terrific task have all agreed that they would like to substitute the plain word “kindness,” which everyone can understand and about which there is nothing thaumaturgic [magical] or miraculous. Nor must anyone suppose that it was without intricate discussion of every aspect of this extremely complicated topic that we finally made up our minds [on the above].

However, later in the same book, Powys argues — in his own inimitable (quasi–Proustian!) manner — that:

 If once you start meddling with this thing [the argument between belief and non–belief] you’ll find it hard to escape. All the meanest, all the most vicious, all the proudest, vainest and most conceited impulses we possess, all the complicated cruelties, morbidities, phobias and manias that dog our darkest moments, come crowding into our heads and quivering along our nerves the moment we begin attacking religion or defending religion!  

 

Well, I think that he is right — and geniality seems to be the first casualty (self included). The seeds of fundamentalism are sown, and the soil is quite indifferent: a nurturing ground for certainty and unshakeable belief. The ‘blooms’ may have different colours, but all share the same disease. It might well be termed fear. I do not imagine that Sam Harris — author of The End of Faith — exactly suffers from this ‘condition’. Nonetheless, he has written in this book that, “Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.” Well, in the case of Hitler — and assuming an impossible foreknowledge — it is difficult to disagree. But what Sam Harris is actually here proposing is, that we should kill people for their beliefs. Welcome to the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition! Now, I have not read Sam Harris’ book, and I take this quotation from a review in the TLS by Mark Vernon of Chris Hedges’ I Don’t Believe in Atheists ~ The dangerous rise of the secular fundamentalist (Continuum). In the review, Vernon continues, ‘Hedges correctly identifies such rhetoric, which some radical groups also indulge in, as “violent” and also “apocalyptic”. He fears it because he has seen how the warfare it promotes “becomes its own culture. It alters reality by massive acts of violence.”

Mark Vernon conclude his review by saying that ‘…the nub of the issue is the fundamentalist mind–set, manifest in the individual — secular or religious — who refuses to accept the ambiguities of existence and the ethical weight of wonder.’

Can we not leave it at this? Fundamentally, I realise that my approach is Postmodern. In other words I do not believe in (or hold to) any of the ‘grand narratives’ — theism, Marxism, Platonism, Freudianism, Darwinism, etc. Therefore, I intend to return to the position of refusing to call myself anything but a human being. I foresee the objections: ‘Oh, so you don’t believe in anything then.’ You’re a nihilist, Hart!’ Well, these are wide of the mark, but don’t expect any further explanation. I had intended to write more on religion, but have decided not to.* It leads nowhere. Before I was born (and became, by degrees, conscious) there was an eternity of time, which nowise bothered me; after I have died, I expect the same: an eternity of time, of which I will be totally unaware. Everything else in the universe will carry on evolving: process everlasting, as might be said.

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* Except in an historical sense, if something interests me in this sphere.

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…is it not reasonable to suspect that if existence were pointless and the universe were void of meaning, we would never have achieved the ability to entertain this very thought — to wit that existence is pointless and the universe devoid of meaning?

Leszek Kołakowski