An Introduction to Philosophy for Deacons: Issue #10

(The following are the written notes/texts of four, three hour, online session presentations given in the months of February through May in A.D. 2018.  A similar set of presentations was given to a previous group some years earlier.  The group consisted of diaconal aspirants, spouses, and diocesan officials of the Diocese of Pueblo in Colorado, United States.  The twelve articles found here will consist of the introductory comments, followed by eleven specific philosophical issues, covered in those four online sessions.)

 

Let us now turn attention to the tenth issue: the rediscovery of Aristotelian Realism and Ethics

 

Aristotle:

The Medieval Period, the Middle Ages ends with the rediscovery of Aristotle’s realism.

Due to Augustine’s appropriation of Platonic idealism, Christianity takes a neo-Platonic turn, developing social and political structures which emphasize an immaterial spirituality; things such as God and angels and heaven and prayer.

One manifestation of this neo-Platonic turn is the development of the monastic movement; which represents the choices of many to remove themselves from the work-a-day world to a world which is closer to heaven and God.

However, the occupants of the monasteries are still very much human and need to fill their time.  In addition to food production and prayer, many are involved in the discovery, repair, copying, and preservation of extant texts.

Among those texts preserved are the writings of Aristotle.  Christianity’s turn away from Aristotelian realism and toward Platonic idealism is the means by which Aristotle’s realism is saved for future generations.

 

Thomas Aquinas:

• Rediscovers the writings of Aristotle
• Thomas uses Aristotle’s methods and philosophical concepts to investigate theological matters.
• The rediscovery of Aristotelian realism will lead to the birth of modern science.
• Thomas uses Aristotelian social and political concepts to create new ideas and attitudes toward issues of political power, government, and law.
• And very important is his use of Aristotle to expand upon ideas of Saint Augustine to formulate a Natural Law theory.

Natural Law theory

• Consistent and compatible with a contingent view of human nature (down-to-earth)(feet on the ground).
• Consistent and compatible with both the incarnation focus of Roman Catholicism and its faith based soteriological concepts.
• There are four types of Law: eternal, natural, positive, and divine.
• The manner in which Thomas discusses these indicates that he, Saint Thomas, fully believes that morality and politics must have human happiness as their focus and must always take into account the changing nature of human contingencies.
  • Eternal Law:  the order/ways of the universe as they exist in the mind of God “before” anything is created
  • Natural Law: the order/laws of the created universe as they actually exist in that created universe, put there by God, and the intellectual ability present in the human mind as a result of the presence of the Holy Spirit in each person, by which the person discerns the natural law.
  • Positive Law:  The ability of humans to take the natural laws they discern and apply them to human social and political and moral affairs.  (This Law is called Positive, because the word Positive is derived from the Latin word posit meaning “he puts/places”.  Sometimes Positive Law is called, somewhat inaccurately, Human Law or Civil Law.
  • Divine Law: refers to special announcements of revelation such as the 10 Commandments or Magisterial pronouncements which seek to fill holes present in the human knowledge and application of natural law.  
    • For example, following the example of Jesus’ parable of the Weeds Among the Wheat (Matthew 13:24-30), Aquinas points out that if a lawgiver or law enforcer were too rigid, the application of law would do more harm than good.  Thomas points out that if every evil were legislated against, much harm would be done.  This is Thomas’ way of saying human nature is contingent, messy, broken, and that the lawgiver and law enforcer must make accommodations for those limitations.  (E.g. needle exchange)

• Sensitivity to human nature as it actually is, will lead Aquinas to articulate (ST, I of II, Q19) his famous articulation of freedom of conscience; the right of the individual to follow his or her own well informed conscience, even when the dictates of that conscience are at odds with civil and/or ecclesial law.

 

Kant:

Five hundred years after Saint Thomas, Immanuel Kant will articulate ideas already percolating in western culture between the times of Aquinas and Kant.

Among these Kantian ideas is that morality should not be based upon nor accommodate the contingent, messy, incarnational, actual, down-to-earth, earthy ways of human nature.  Morality should be based on a priori synthetic propositions, which apply to all situations for all humans at all times.

Kant is a return to Platonism.  The un-earthly, non-human, ideal moral ideas of Kant bare a resemblance to the neo-Platonic Christianity of the Medieval/Middle Ages period, to the Platonism adopted by Augustine and to the idealism of Plato.

One manifestation of that Platonic adoption is that morality should be based on ideal concepts of law and morality.  Therefore, a Natural Law based morality, such as that of Aquinas, is to be rejected for two reasons (which we saw earlier):

• Thomas Natural Law moral theory asks us to be realistic, down-to-earth, and to take into consideration the ever present aspects of human contingency.  Thomas’ morality is an incarnation reality.  Like Jesus, Thomas’ morality seeks to be fully immersed in the actual real human condition; not to have the human condition perfected as a condition for God to enter human history.  Kant rejects such a contingency based morality because such a morality can never be infallibly formalized.
• Only ideal a priori synthetic ideas, like the algorithms governing an idealized right triangle, can obtain the necessary universality to be right in every instance.  To base morality on nature is to base morality on entities which, like the shapes of actual triangular forms, can never be universally uniform.

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An Introduction to Philosophy for Deacons: Issue #9

(The following are the written notes/texts of four, three hour, online session presentations given in the months of February through May in A.D. 2018.  A similar set of presentations was given to a previous group some years earlier.  The group consisted of diaconal aspirants, spouses, and diocesan officials of the Diocese of Pueblo in Colorado, United States.  The twelve articles found here will consist of the introductory comments, followed by eleven specific philosophical issues, covered in those four online sessions.)

Let us now turn attention to the the ninth issue:  Knowledge Acquisition

Earlier, in the third issue, I pointed out a contrast between Plato, with whom ancient/classical philosophy begins, and Rene Descartes, with whom modern philosophy begins.

With Plato, as exemplified by his Allegory of the Cave, we are introduced to the idea that the best path to knowledge acquisition is through the community activity of dialogue.

With Descartes, as intimated by the narrative of his winter bivouac, we are introduced to the idea that the only useful path to knowledge acquisition is through isolated activity which denies the value of community dialogue.

There are other aspects of this contrast to which I now wish to introduce you.

Augustine’s “I believe so that I might understand” and Saint Anselm’s advocacy of “faith seeking understanding”, provide us examples of a mind set that the best path to knowledge acquisition is through attitudes of faith, trust, and loyalty.

This communal dialogical mentality continues throughout the Medieval Middle Ages period, examples being the monasteries as places of knowledge preservation and the development of the universities in the later Medieval Middle Ages period.

But, at the beginning of the period of modern philosophy, around A.D. 1250, we see a contrary attitude arise which gives rise to what might be called causation-limited-science and to what is called, the technological agenda of modernity.

In the words of Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon, two of the greatest minds of modern mathematics and scientific method, we see a complete awareness of the previous faith based attitude and a complete rejection the trusting, loyal, faith filled based learning espoused by the faith based attitude.

We see this rejection of faith, trust, and loyalty as a sure basis for knowledge acquisition in the sixth part of Descartes Discourse on Method.  In the following quotation, Descartes rejects “the speculative philosophy taught in the schools”,   “The schools” refers to the birth of the universities in the late Middle Ages.  The phrase “speculative philosophy” refers to the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle.  Descartes writes, 

“I perceived it to be possible to arrive at knowledge highly useful in life; and instead of the speculative philosophy usually taught in the schools, to discover a practical, by means of which, knowing the force and action of fire, water, air the stars, the heavens, and all the other bodies that surround us, as distinctly as we know the various crafts of our artisans, we might also apply them in the same way to all the uses to which they are adapted, and thus render ourselves the lords [masters] and possessors of nature.”

We can also see this same rejection in the words of Francis Bacon where he writes, “The Research into final causes, like a Virgin dedicated to God, generates nothing.”  The “final causes”, which Bacon rejects refers to the internal causation ideas of Aristotle and to the Christian God who authors and stills goals and purposes in the things God creates.

Finally, we see this rejection of the Platonic Christian ideal of knowledge acquisition happening best within attitudes and institutions based on faith, trust, and loyalty, in the section of the Meditations and Discourse on Method in which Descartes writes his well known je pense, donc je suis, cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am”.  Descartes tells us that “I think, therefore I am” is only a broader example of his most central idea, which is, je doute, donc je suis, “I doubt, therefore I am.”  With his “I doubt, therefore I am” as the basis of his new infallible method of knowledge of acquisition, he tells us that the best way to acquire new knowledge is by doubting every assertion, being skeptical of every assertion until they are proven self-evidently or proven by mathematical consistency and/or logical support.

An Introduction to Philosophy for Deacons: Issue #8

{The following are the written notes/texts of four, three hour, online session presentations given in the months of February through May in A.D. 2018.  A similar set of presentations was given to a previous group some years earlier.  The group consisted of diaconal aspirants, spouses, and diocesan officials of the Diocese of Pueblo in Colorado, United States.  The twelve articles found here will consist of the introductory comments, followed by eleven specific philosophical issues, covered in those four online sessions.)

Let us now turn attention to the eighth issue: the impact of Christianity’s appropriation and adoption of Platonic idealism.

Plato’s idealism stated that what was most real were immaterial things such as the forms of things and various immaterial categorical concepts such as treeness, and numbers.  Plato reasoned that the only way we have awareness and knowledge of the various material things we sense, is because of the immaterial categorical concepts of those same things which exist in our minds, and to which we can attach and sort those various material things we sense.

Saint Augustine and others noticed a striking similarity between Plato’s emphasis on the immaterial realities and those realities which Christianity highly valued; immaterial things such as God, angels, heaven, eternal life, prayer, meditation.

This attraction would cause Christianity to take a neo-Platonic turn in which the social and political structures of Christianity focus on the importance and primacy of immaterial things.  One of those things on which neo-Platonic Christianity focused were those institutions which took individual persons out of the work-a-day common world of man and woman, and placed them in monasteries dedicated to a focus on spiritual things, prayer, God, truths, ideas.

In the safe and quiet monasteries, space and time and resources were dedicated to scriptoriums; places where various texts were received, repaired, copied, and stored.

Among the writings which are collected, and repaired, and copied, and stored, are the many writings of the Greek realist, Aristotle.  

Because Aristotle’s writings focused primarily on real tangible contingent material things, though copied and preserved, Aristotle’s writings were not much read, consulted, or used.

But, they were preserved.

At the end of the Medieval Middle Ages Period, the brilliant Dominican monk, Saint Thomas Aquinas, will be introduced to, pick up, read and begin to redefine Christianity’s social and political structures in terms of the realism of Aristotle.

Aquinas’ emphasis on Aristotelian realism will be among and will cause others to look at Aristotle again.  Among those who reconsider the writings of Aristotle are those modern persons who will take Aristotle’s ideas on methods-of-acquiring-new-knowledge and develop these into modern scientific methods.

Saint Augustine’s neo-Platonism will preserve Aristotelian realism which will then be able to be rediscovered by Saint Thomas Aquinas which in turn will lead to the best aspects of the science, social, and political structures of the modern world.

An Introduction to Philosophy for Deacons: Issue #7

{The following are the written notes/texts of four, three hour, online session presentations given in the months of February through May in A.D. 2018.  A similar set of presentations was given to a previous group some years earlier.  The group consisted of diaconal aspirants, spouses, and diocesan officials of the Diocese of Pueblo in Colorado, United States.  The twelve articles found here will consist of the introductory comments, followed by eleven specific philosophical issues, covered in those four online sessions.)

Let us now turn attention to the seventh issue:  the beginning of philosophical anthropology

You may recall that the Ancient/Classical period of philosophy begins around 300 B.C. when Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle redirect the attention of philosophy to things human; specifically, human social and political structures and issues.  This classical period runs for about seven hundred years, until the arrival of Saint Augustine and another philosopher named Plotinus.

In the writings of Saint Augustine we see a definite refinement of the human focus of philosophy.  Saint Augustine takes the Socratic, Platonic, Aristotelian turn of philosophy toward things human, and redirects philosophy to a focus, not on the things humans do, but focuses on the human person her and himself.

We see this in his Confessions with his famous quaestio mihi factus sum, “A question to myself, I have become.”  And then he spends the rest of the Confessions, analyzing the human mind, heart, soul, emotions, drives, and spirit.

This is the beginning of philosophical anthropology.

An Introduction to Philosophy for Deacons: Issue #6

{The following are the written notes/texts of four, three hour, online session presentations given in the months of February through May in A.D. 2018.  A similar set of presentations was given to a previous group some years earlier.  The group consisted of diaconal aspirants, spouses, and diocesan officials of the Diocese of Pueblo in Colorado, United States.  The twelve articles found here will consist of the introductory comments, followed by eleven specific philosophical issues, covered in those four online sessions.)

Let us now turn attention to the sixth issue:  the bookends of the Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages, a great deal of learning was occurring, despite the name Dark Ages given to this same Medieval period.

On the front end the Medieval period, roughly around A.D. 400, was Saint Augustine.  Augustine would inseminate the Christianity of the Middle Ages with a Platonic idealism.  This insemination led to the preservation of massive amounts of knowledge in the scriptoriums of the monasteries spread throughout Europe.

On the back end of the Medieval period, roughly around A.D. 1250, was Saint Thomas Aquinas who, acting as an intellectual midwife, would help the realism of Aristotle be reborn into western civilization.

The Roman Catholic Saints, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, were the intellectual bookends of the Medieval Middle Ages period.

An Introduction to Philosophy for Deacons: Issue #5

{The following are the written notes/texts of four, three hour, online session presentations given in the months of February through May in A.D. 2018.  A similar set of presentations was given to a previous group some years earlier.  The group consisted of diaconal aspirants, spouses, and diocesan officials of the Diocese of Pueblo in Colorado, United States.  The twelve articles found here will consist of the introductory comments, followed by eleven specific philosophical issues, covered in those four online sessions.)

 

Let us now turn attention to the fifth issue:  To describe the impactful manner in which Aristotelian Ethics was used to express ideas of Christian morality, it is illustratively helpful to focus on the idea of happiness within Judaism and Christianity, and within Aristotelian Ethics.  This is what we will do first.  Then second, I will introduce you to modernity’s renunciation of happiness as a central focus of morality and ethics.

Father Demetrius Dumm, a monk of the order of Saint Benedict, was a highly credentialed lifelong scholar and teacher of sacred scripture.  For over sixty years he studied the Bible and taught Sacred Scriptures.

In his book Praying the Scriptures, he writes of the narratives written in the Bible, “It is clear…that…God…wants to be known primarily as the God who performs great deeds of love and mercy leading to liberation and joy…This is the central core of biblical revelation about God.  All other factors are subordinate and intended only to illustrate or to draw implications from this essential revelation…”

The Bible exists for the purpose of revealing, to generations of future readers, that God’s acts of mercy and love are for the purpose of helping human beings find that freedom which leads to their happiness.

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says much the same thing; the goal and purpose of morality is to help people be happy.

For Aristotle, the purpose of intellectually understanding morality and ethics, and the purpose of living an ethical life is to be happy.  Fifteen centuries later, Saint Thomas Aquinas will say the same thing, with the slight qualification that the goal of morality is to be reasonably happy in this life and completely happy in eternity.

Aristotle and Aquinas believe that happiness is why we do morality and act morally.  For them, the goal and purpose of morality is human happiness.

There are many moral systems.  There are many moralities.  These differ, primarily, in what they consider to be the focus of doing morality and being moral.  Some moral goals other than happiness are holiness, pleasure, beauty, productivity and accomplishment, oneness with creation, duty, detachment.

The degree to which an ethical system deviates from happiness as its goal and purpose, is the degree to which that ethical/moral system becomes weird, inhuman, and inhumane.  For example, consider Nazism.  The goal of this system is beauty as defined by Arian-Nazi eugenic principles.

For Aristotle, the goal of morality is human happiness.

To become happy, Aristotle then provides an ethical philosophy; a moral philosophy.  Aristotle’s ethics include the following ideas:

• Happiness is the goal of moral education, thinking, and practice
• Happiness is the goal because what is most real are actual material physical things; primary among which are human beings.
• The reality within which human beingness is conducted is a reality of contingency, of change.  Thus, moral principles must be flexible in order to lead human beings, living within a contingent reality, to happiness.
  • Some fifteen centuries after Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, following the lead of Saint Augustine, will develop a moral philosophy which seeks to expand upon Aristotle’s idea of happiness as the goal and Aristotle’s idea that contingency is a necessary reality which any good moral system must accommodate.  To this end, Saint Thomas Aquinas will develop a theory called The Natural Law theory.
    • In the Natural Law theory, natural law is the use of human reason by a human being to discern moral truths.
    • This natural law is not the same as the eternal law found in the mind of God.  Natural law is more flexible, contingent, better matched to a contingent human nature.
    • Further, because human situations are filled with change and contingency, it is often the case that a too rigid application of law would be harmful to human beings.  Thus, Saint Thomas spoke of the need for a Divine Law, delivered by God to man in the form of various revelations (think of the 10 commandments or magisterial teaching) which helps bend and modify human laws and their applications which have become too rigid.  [It is valuable, in this context, to recall that within a democracy, the purpose of law is to restrict freedom so that all persons might share a political equality.  Sometimes this restriction of freedom can become too rigid, requiring a modifying influence such as that which divine law can supply.]

• Aristotle taught that the path of human happiness begins with virtue, virtues, and a virtuous lifestyle.
• Virtue is defined by Aristotle as excellence of character.
• This excellence of character is the highest moral state.
• Excellence of character is obtained by doing good deeds habitually.
• Because virtue is attained by learning and doing good-deeds-habitually, morality is taught and learned.  One is not born morally excellent of character.  Excellence of character is learned.
• However, doing-good-deeds-habitually is not the highest moral state.  Excellence of character is the highest moral state.  Doing-good-deeds-habitually has an instrumental value, not a primary value.
• Doing-good-deeds-habitually is a matter of learning moderation.  Virtues always lie in a mean between two vices.  Thus, the virtue of courage lies between the vices of rash-fearlessness and cowardliness.  Vices are always, perversions of the related virtue.  For example, rash-fearlessness is an excess of courage.  Cowardliness is a deficiency of courage.
  • This idea of virtue as the mean between two vices was appropriated by Aristotle from his knowledge of the temple to Apollo at Delphi in Greece, the home of the political-prophetic-seers, the Delphic Sybils.  On the lintel on one side of the temple, the well known famous words no-thay sow-ton; “know yourself” were engraved.  On the lintel above the pediments on the other side of the temple are the words maydane agan, “do the middle”.
  • “Do the middle” will be developed by Aristotle into his idea that virtues stand as the means between associated vices; between that vice which is an over-doing of the associated virtue and that vice which is a deficiency of the associated virtue.
  • Some centuries later maydane-agan/“do the middle”, will be translated into the Latin aphorism virtus stat in media res, “virtue stands in the middle”.  Some centuries later, this Latin aphorism will be translated, somewhat incorrectly, into the English aphorism, “Moderation in all things.”
  • I say that “moderation in all things” incorrectly summarizes Aristotle for the following reason.  “Moderation in all things” implies in most people’s minds that when a tough moral issue is faced, it is always good to seek the middle ground; to compromise.  Aristotle would disagree with this.  Aristotle would say, that in dealing with tough moral issues, one should use one’s mind to intellectually determine what the virtuous act should be.  Then, the degree to which one overdoes that virtue is a vice and the degree to which one’s virtuous action is insufficient is also a vice.  Aristotle does not advise seeking the middle.
• Aristotle tells us that there is a typology of persons, morally considered.  These are, from top to bottom: godlike, virtuous, continent, incontinent, vicious, and brutish.
  • The Godlike and brutish type of persons are not actually moral at all since they are the way they are by nature.  They do not learn to be godlike or brutish.  They are Godlike or brutish by nature, not be learning.
  • Since godlikeness is by nature, and since human moral excellence is learned, it does no good for a human to imitate godlikeness.  This idea of Aristotle’s recalls the words of French mathematician/philosopher Blaise Pascal; “Man is neither angel nor beast, and unhappily whoever wants to act the angel, acts the beast.”
  • Thus, for Aristotle godlikeness and brutishness have no moral value in terms of teaching us anything about being morally excellent.  To be morally excellent we need to focus our attention on the other four types of moral beings:  the virtuous, the continent, the incontinent, and the vicious.
    • The virtuous person is the person who possesses an excellent character by means of doing good deeds habitually.
    • The continent person is the person who wants to do good deeds and often succeeds.  Further, the continent man thinks virtue is about doing good deeds habitually.
    • The incontinent person is the person who desires to do good but often fails.  He too thinks virtue is about doing-good-habitually.
    • The vicious person is the person who desires to do evil and often does so.
  • The continent and incontinent persons are not virtuous.  They are not virtuous, not because they have failed at doing-good-deeds-habitually but because they think virtue is about, is equivalent to doing-good-deeds-habitually.  The error of continence is not a lack of doing good, it is a lack of correct moral attitudes and thinking.
• Aristotle’s idea, that doing-good-deeds is not the highest moral value, is almost a perfect match for that Pauline soteriology, Saint Paul’s theology of how we are saved, that salvation is unearned.  For Saint Paul, one obtains salvation by means of an unearned grace.  For Saint Paul, one is saved by accepting the gift of salvation earned for us by the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ.
  • St. Paul’s grace based soteriology is identical in this regard to Aristotle’s ethical philosophy.  For Saint Paul, one cannot earn salvation.  For Aristotle, virtue is not the same as doing-good-deeds.

This ethics, this moral philosophy of Aristotle becomes and to this day remains the preferred way to express and teach Christian morality.

However, beginning with modernity, Aristotelian and Christian moral principles began to be challenged.  These challenges were finally put into writing by Immanual Kant.

Today, many preachers and homilists and moral educators who identify themselves as Christian will, when asked, say that they teach a morality consistent with that taught by Jesus.  However, in reality, many of them are teaching some version of Kantian ethics.  Kantian ethics is not the Christian morality of Saint Paul or the ethics of Aristotle.  It is not the ethical moral system of the Roman Catholic Church.

What is Kantian Ethics?

• In just a few words, Kantian ethics is the reduction of morality to Aristotelian continence.
• Immanual Kant was a genius and a good man.  He was also probably OCD.  Every day of his life he would take a morning walk which was so regular, the town began to set its clocks according to when Kant took his walk.  Kant drank up to 100 cups of coffee a day.  Kant, when invited to coffee, would insist on the coffee be served in a certain type of cup on a certain type of saucer turned a certain direction, etc.
  • In his personal life, Kant wanted strict order.  He liked things to be static, finished, complete.  He did not like disorder, chaos, change, contingency.
  • In short, he did not like human nature which is, by definition, contingent.
  • Thus, he spent his life seeking to discover and develop a morality which would remove contingency from human existence and which would deny the value of being aware of and accommodating contingency.
• Though Kant agrees with Aristotle that all human beings seek to be happy, Kant stated that different persons attain happiness by different routes, by actualizing different values.  Thus, happiness is contingent to the values people identify and pursue.  Because happiness is awash in contingency, Kant declares that happiness cannot be the goal of a useful moral system.
• Kant also rejects a Natural Law morality of Saint Thomas Aquinas because it too is awash in contingency.  He rejects Natural Law morality for two reasons.
  • First, Thomas’ concepts of the Natural Law and of Divine Law expressly incorporate an awareness for human contingency and the need to adopt and adapt to that contingency.
  • Second, Kant rejects the Natural Law theory because it is natural.  Because it is based on nature, human nature, it cannot possibly provide the infallible, always unchanging, moral principles which Kant seeks.
    • Kant would invite us to think of the mathematical construct called a right triangle.  As you know, there is an algorithm, a rule, which tells us the relationship of the lengths of the sides of right triangle.  That rule, called the Pythagorean theorem, states that the sum of the squares of the lengths of the two short sides, is equal to the square of the length of the long side.
    • Kant points out that this algorithm is only true of an idealized right triangle.  In nature, Kant would point out, though there are many triangular shaped forms, there are no actual triangles in nature.  The triangular shapes appearing in nature, and even in human artifacts, always deviate from the exact shape of idealized mathematical triangles.  Thus, one cannot never find the pythagorean theorem in nature.  One can only find this law and rule which is always the same, if one deals with an idealized reality; not with a natural reality.
    • Therefore, if one seeks to find a moral philosophy which will always be correct for all persons and for all times, one can never find that moral system by thinking about nature or human realities which are never ideal; which are always contingent.
• In order to find and form a moral philosophy which can beneficially guide all human action, always, and for everyone; one must turn, not to nature (nor must one turn to eternal law or divine law).  One must turn to pure human reasoning.  In pure human reason, within the logical constructs of mind, one will find a metaphysics of moral principles which will always guide moral thinking and moral actions correctly.
  • These pure logical moral constructs of human reasons are referred to as a priori synthetical practical moral propositions.
  • There is only one such always infallible moral rule which one needs to know and by which one needs to abide to always act morally, and to create a truly moral world and society.  That moral rule is:
    • “Do only those things which you would allow all other persons to do.”
  • Notice, virtue as a matter of excellence of character is replaced by Kant with a definition of morality as a matter of action, of doing. “Do only those things” and “allow others to do”.  Kant reduces morality to continence.  Remember Aristotle’s definition of continence?  Doing-good-deeds-habitually, and his definition of the continent man as one who thinks morality is about doing; doing-good-deeds-habitually.
• Now, where does a morality based on “doing” lead us?  Where does a continence based morality lead us?
  • If “doing good” is the definition of being moral, then how does one become even more moral?  By doing-more-good.  And how does one become even better?  “By doing-even-more-good.  And how does one get better?  by doing-more.
  • There is no end to doing-more-good.  If doing-more-good has no end, then the summit of moral excellence is ceaseless-frenetic-activity.
  • Despite Kant wish to turn us into beings which are angels, which are not contingent, where always the women are strong and the men are good looking and the children are always above average…;  despite this desire, the fact is the human beings are contingent, messy, broken, fractured entities.   To teach contingent beings that they should be ceaselessly-frenetically-active can lead to only one conclusion; workaholism, the addiction to accomplishment.
• In addition to redefining morality as continence, Kantian ethics replaces character with accomplishment as the highest moral value.
• Kant’s morality is consistent with the words found on the lintel above the gate at the death camp, Auschwitz, arbeit macht frei, “work shall set you free”.  This is quite different from the “do the middle” found on the lintel at Delphi.
• And thus, we are finally able to see that the replacement of a Christian morality with a Kantian morality necessary leads the Christian to replace a grace-based-soteriology with a merit-based-soteriology. 
  • An example of a Kantian/merit-based-soteriological thinking would be the presentation or sermon or counseling which makes use of “the final judgment” narrative of Matthew 25:31 through 46 as a motivation to inspire participation in some activity, membership, or fund-raising project.

An Introduction to Philosophy for Deacons: Issue #4

{The following are the written notes/texts of four, three hour, online session presentations given in the months of February through May in A.D. 2018.  A similar set of presentations was given to a previous group some years earlier.  The group consisted of diaconal aspirants, spouses, and diocesan officials of the Diocese of Pueblo in Colorado, United States.  The twelve articles found here will consist of the introductory comments, followed by eleven specific philosophical issues, covered in those four online sessions.)

 

Let us now turn attention to the fourth issue:  An overview of Christianity’s appropriation of Greek language and culture.

Christianity began as an offshoot of the Jewish religion, within a Hebrew speaking Jewish culture and locale.  As long as Christianity confined itself to this small area, and limited itself to the language and culture of this relatively small group of people, as long as Christianity remained a Jewish/Hebrew phenomenon, it would not grow.

However, Christianity began to grow fast and would eventually become the dominant religion and philosophy of western culture due, in part, to its appropriation and use of Greek language and culture to spread Christian ideas and attitudes.  At this time Greek language was the common language of the Roman Empire.

Christianity grew fast once it adopted the more commonly used Greek language and once it appropriated and began to use Greek philosophical ideas to express its spiritual and religious ideas and attitudes.  A specific example, and an important example of this Christian appropriation of Greek language and culture to express its own ideas was Christianity’s appropriation and use of Aristotelian Ethics to express the ideas and attitudes of Christian morality.

The philosophical constructs of Plato and Aristotle were so useful and effective a tool for Christian evangelization that we even begin to see the creation of paintings and religious icons dedicated to the Wise Plato and the Wise Aristotle.