Athens and Jerusalem, Disagreement and Dogmatism: The Case of Gilson

Elliot in a comment from an earlier thread  writes,

 . . . I mentioned negligence about the truth. Something similar seems to be the case regarding reasons and arguments. Folks might be interested in them (and even in weak ones) if they support a belief already held. But the same folks might turn away from good arguments in disgust if those arguments undermine their beliefs.

What’s happening here? Confirmation bias? Something like Sartrean bad faith or Heideggerian inauthenticity? Pauline suppression of the truth? (Romans 1:18) Intellectual laziness? Doxastic rigidity? Indifference to intellectual virtue?

Something else?

Elliot is here touching upon a problem that not only fascinates me intellectually, but vexes me existentially. It is the old problem of Athens and Jerusalem: given their tension, does one have final authority over the other, and if so, which?   Must philosophy be assigned a merely ancillary status? Is philosophy the handmaiden of theology (philosophia ancilla theologiae)? Must philosophy listen and submit when (revelation-based) theology speaks? Or must the putative revelations of a religion satisfy the exigencies of autonomous reason in order to be credible (worthy of belief) in the first place? Many moderns would argue that Trinity and Incarnation, for example, flout  norms of rationality, or even worse, norms of morality, and for one or the other or both of these reasons, ought not be accepted.  

Etienne Gilson comes down on the Hierosolymitan side:

When the mind of a Christian begins to take an interest in metaphysics, the faith of his childhood has already provided him with the true answers to most of these questions. He still may well wonder how they are true, but he knows that they are true. As to the how, Christian philosophers investigate it when they they look for a rational justification of all the revealed truths accessible to the natural light of understanding. Only, when they set to work, the game is already over. [. . .] In any case, speaking for myself, I have never conceived the possibility of a split conscience divided between faith and philosophy. The Creed of the catechism of Paris has held all the key positions that have dominated, since early childhood, my interpretation of the world. What I believed then, I still believe. And without in any way confusing it with my faith, whose essence must be kept pure, I know that the philosophy I have today is wholly encompassed within the sphere of my religious belief. (The Philosopher and Theology, Cluny Media, 2020, p. 5, bolding added, italics in original)

I have bolded the main points. Gilson holds that the faith he uncritically imbibed as a child is true. But he does not merely believe it is true, he knows that it is true. Knowledge, however, entails objective certainty, not mere subjective certitude. So we may justly attribute to Gilson the claim that he is objectively certain that the main traditional Catholic tenets are true, and that therefore  it is impossible that he be mistaken about them.

And so the game is over before it begins. Which game? The very serious 'game' of rational examination, of critical evaluation, the Socratic 'game.' ("The unexamined life is not worth living.")  And so for Gilson there is simply no genuine problem of faith versus reason, no serious question whether reason has any legitimate role to play in the evaluation of the putative truths of revelation.  From the point of view of an arch-dogmatist such as Gilson, there is nothing 'putative' about them.  They are objectively, absolutely, certain such that:

Whatever philosophy may have to say will come later, and since it will not be permitted to add anything to the articles of faith, any more than to curtail them, [i. e., subtract anything from them] it can well be said that in the order of saving truth philosophy will come, not only late, but too late. (p. 4, italics added)

I hope we can agree that what a true philosopher, a serious philosopher, is after is the "saving truth," although what salvation is, and what it involves, are matters of controversy, whether one is operating within the ambit of philosophy or of theology.  Don't make the mistake of supposing that salvation is solely the concern of religionists. After all, Plato, Plotinus, and Spinoza, to mention just these three, were all concerned with  a truth that saves.

Gilson is asserting that he and others like him who were brought up at a certain time, in a certain place, in a particular version of Christianity, the traditional Roman Catholic version, possess for all eternity the saving truth, a truth that stands fast and is known (with objective certainty) to stand fast, regardless of what any other religion (including a competing version of  Christianity) or wisdom tradition has to say.  He is also asserting that philosophy can neither add anything to nor subtract anything from the substance of the salvific truth that Gilson and others like him firmly possess. And so philosophy's role can only be ancillary, preambulatory (as in, e.g., the preambulum fidei of Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica), expository, and clarifying, but never critical or evaluative.  That is to say, on Gilson's conception (which of course is not just his) philosophy will not be permitted (see quotation immediately above) to have veto power, i.e., power to reject any tenet of the depositum fidei as codified and transmitted by the one, true, holy, catholic (universal), and apostolic  church.

To cap it all off, Gilson reports that he himself is psychologically incapable of admitting even the possibility of a "split conscience," or perhaps 'split consciousness,' that is, a conscience/consciousness that is "divided between faith and philosophy" and is thus pulled in opposite directions, the one Athenian, the other Hierosolymitan. 

This confession of incapacity shows that Gilson has no personal, existential grasp of the problem of faith versus reason. To understand the problem, one must live the tension between the autonomy of reason and the heteronomy of obedient faith. One cannot appreciate the problem without feeling that tension; Gilson fails to feel the tension; he therefore has no existential appreciation of the problem.

To take the tension seriously and existentially, one must appreciate the legitimacy of the claims made by the two 'cities.' One cannot simply dismiss one or the other of them.  The 'Four Horsemen'  of the now passé New Atheism, Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris, two of whom are now dead,* dismissed the claims of Jerusalem; Gilson dismisses the claims of Athens, unless Athens is willing to accept a subaltern status at once ancillary, preambulatory, expository, and clarifying.  I trust the reader understands that Gilson is not taking a Tertullian tack: he is not saying that the two cities have nothing to do with one another. They have something to do with one another, all right, in the way that a handmaiden and her mistress have something to do with one another. For a Thomist such as Gilson, revelation supplements reason without contradicting it; equally, however, revelation is under no obligation to satisfy the exigencies of reason: it needn't be rationally acceptable to be true.

For example, Trinity and Incarnation are truths whether or not reason can make sense of them or explain how they could be true. These items of revelation are true despite their apparently contradictory status. If reason can explain how they could be true, fine and dandy; if reason cannot explain how they could be true, no matter: they remain true nonetheless as truths beyond our ken as mysteries. What is paradoxical for us need not be contradictory in itself. Reason in us has no veto power over revelational disclosures.

Insofar as Gilson dismisses Athens and its claims, he privileges his own position, and finds nothing either rationally  or morally unacceptable in his doing so. Thus the diametrical disagreement of others equally intelligent, equally well-informed, and in equal possession of the moral and intellectual virtues, does not give him pause: it does not appear to him to be a good reason to question the supposed truth he was brought up to believe.  

I find this privileging of one's position to be a dubious affair.  Surely my position cannot be privileged just because it is mine. After all, my opponent who we are assuming is my epistemic peer, can do the same: he can privilege his position and announce that disagreement with him gives him no good reason to question his position.  Suppose our positions are diametrically opposed: each logically excludes the other. If he is justified in privileging his position just because it is his, and I am justified in privileging my position just because it is mine, then we are both justified in privileging our respective positions, and I have no more reason to accept mine than he has to accept his. I would have just as good a reason to accept his as he would have to accept mine. Logically, we would be in the same boat.

I conclude that a person cannot justify his privileging of his position simply because it is his.  What then justifies such privileging? Gilson might just announce that his position is justified because it is true and it is true regardless of who holds it.  But then how does he know that? He says: philosophy has no veto power over the deliverances of any divine revelation. His opponent says: Philosophy does have veto power over the deliverances of divine revelations that either are or entail logical contradictions. These proposition are contradictory: only one of them can be true.  Which?  Gilson cannot reasonably maintain that he knows that what he was brought up to believe is true because he was brought up to believe it.

Contra Gilson, my view is that, if you and I are epistemic peers, then your disagreement with me gives me good reason to question and doubt the position I take.  So, by my lights, Gilson has no rational right to make the claims he makes in the passages quoted. He ought not dogmatically claim that his view is absolutely true; he ought to admit that he has freely decided to accept as true the doctrine that he was brought up to believe and live in accordance with it. That is what intellectual honesty demands.

Getting back to Elliot, and in agreement with him, I agree that a good (bad) argument cannot be defined as one that leads to a conclusion that one is antecedently inclined to accept (reject).  That is no way to evaluate arguments! So why do so may people proceed that way?  I agree with all of Elliot's explanations for different cases.

_________________

*Philosophy department graffiti: "God is dead." -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead." -- God 

As for the tension between faith and reason (philosophy), I am reminded of a famous passage from Goethe's Faust:

Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust,
die eine will sich von der andern trennen:
Die eine hält in derber Liebeslust
sich an die Welt mit klammernden Organen;
die andre hebt gewaltsam sich vom Dust
zu den Gefilden hoher Ahnen.

        Faust 1, Vers 1112 - 1117; Vor dem Tor. 

https://www.gutzitiert.de/zitat_autor_johann_wolfgang_von_goethe_thema_seele_zitat_18635.html

 

Comments

[Vito B. Caiati]

Bill,

As someone who has “live[d] the tension between the autonomy of reason and the heteronomy of obedient faith” for most of the almost eight decades of my life, I fully agree with the argument that you make here, which recalls our February 2022 exchange of views on “Doubting the Teachings of One’s Religion” https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2022/02/doubting-the-teachings-of-ones-religion.html), in which I affirm my belief that “that certain dogmas and doctrines by their very nature engender … doubts” and you speak of the intellectual obligation, to “at least sometimes, question truth and efficacy of beliefs and practices.” Today, as then, I endorse both of these positions. And it seems to me, no philosopher, that the essence of Gilson’s inability to distinguish between philosophic knowledge and religious belief is found in his assertion that that “What I believed then, I still believe. And without in any way confusing it with my faith, whose essence must be kept pure…” This does not work, since what he claimed to be true was, from the very first instance, grounded on the very faith that he wishes to keep separate from philosophy and, hence, “pure.”

Like Elliot, I am not sure what motivates this feeble attempt to evade the philosophic standoff, and hence the uncertainty, that has from earliest times characterized the debates on the hard metaphysical mysteries of human existence, but I suspect that fear is the emotion that underlies it.

Vito

[BV]

Vito,

I am glad we agree.

I think you would enjoy Gilson's book given its autobiographical tenor. It is a translation from the French by his daughter. He has a lot of interesting things to say about his teachers at the Sorbonne around the turn of the century.

[Elliott]

Bill,

Like a skilled running back, you've taken my short hand-off and carried the ball dozens of yards up the field. (I don't watch football, but the analogy seems apt.)

You wrote: "I find this privileging of one's position to be a dubious affair. Surely my position cannot be privileged just because it is mine."

I very much agree with you. And I suspect that, if questioned sufficiently, many would face the conclusion that they favor their respective positions merely because those positions are theirs. In a sense, they favor themselves and select views which suit their needs and desires w/o regard for matters of truth and reason.

[Elliott]

>>Contra Gilson, my view is that, if you and I are epistemic peers, then your disagreement with me gives me good reason to question and doubt the position I take.<<

I agree, Bill. I don't hold that epistemic peer disagreement requires one to abandon his view, but I do think that such disagreement ought to engender careful questioning and reasonable doubt.

[Elliott]

>>Knowledge, however, entails objective certainty, not mere subjective certitude.>>

I agree that knowledge entails objective certainty (or at least I’m strongly inclined to that position, despite its many objectors), although what such certainty amounts to is a difficult question. Subjective certitude is a different matter altogether; it’s not sufficient for knowledge and perhaps not even necessary.

I suspect someone on Gilson’s side could respond that knowledge does not entail objective certainty but only minimally/non-conclusively justified true belief such that the minimal justification is consistent with the live possibility of being wrong. Let’s call this view MJTB (minimally justified true belief.)

One problem with MJTB is that it lands its defender in the territory of making and defending concessive knowledge attributions such as: “I know that p, but p might be false.” CKAs strike me as (defeasible) evidence that one does not in fact know that p. If, from Jones’ perspective, it might be false that the grocery store is open now, then Jones doesn’t really know that the store is open now.

Another problem with MJTB is that if knowledge requires only minimally justified TB, then one could have such justification for p, and p could turn out to be luckily true in such a way that it’s arguable that one did not know that p. It seems to me that such epistemic luck isn’t consistent with strict knowledge. If one strictly knows that p, one does not get lucky about p’s being true. (This seems to be one of the lessons from Gettier’s project. And it seems that a good way to avoid the problem of epistemic luck is to hold that knowledge entails objective certainty.)