Mattias Desmet ('The Psychology of Totalitarianism') talks to John Waters

 

Mattias Desmet has been popping up on youtube speaking about the phenomenon of mass formation or the coalescenceof a significant percentage of the population around a perceived situation  that must be dealt with even at the cost of abandoning normal ethical principles.  The covid 19 ‘emergency’ which I have been calling covidology is an example of this zombification.  A lot of people got bitten.

In his conversation with John Waters he covers much of the same ground as he did previously linking the panicked response to the emergence of totalitarianism.  He’s written a book on this ‘The Psychology of Totalitarianism’ which is to be published later this month.  The difference between the usual delineation of the mechanisms facilitating the emergence of a mob mind and this conversation with John Waters is the sympathetic vibration of their strings which brought out what Otto called the non-rational sources of knowledge and awe normally called wisdom.  Aristotle and the Thomists, that band, call it connaturality.  The not-mentioned Jacques Maritain frequently writes about it in ‘The Degrees of Knowledge’- on my book stand at the moment.

Have a look: you’re worth it.

totalitarianism

Modern Moral Philosophy by Elizabeth Anscombe

 I’ve read that this paper is important and I suppose that it is though I have noticed that judicious context elision can negate what is its main purport: to be an engine of stultification. All modern ethical theories are rendered foolish by their unwitting divorce from a philosophical psychology of the person.  The ‘is’ of their oughts is missing in action.  It is this which gives the force to the quotable:

This word ‘ought’ having become a word of mere mesmeric force, could not, in the character of having that force, be inferred from anything whatever.

Anscombe having a Catholic Christian view of morality would be committed to a virtually instinctual grasp of good and evil.  The following through of that impetus leads to a connaturality with the good in the Aristotelian/Thomistic sense of that term.  ‘What the good man deems to be good is good’ (Aristotle iirc)

From 2018:

ethics without god

describes a argumentative trajectory which culminates in a position contrary to that which he first starts out with. Is this an indication of retrocausality in action whereby a power acts from the future on a present situation? The ineluctable power of the truth that is yet to be assented to mitigates the contemporary confusion.

It begins, as American reflections often do, with a story. A student is shocked by Prof. Troy’s admission that he has no religious beliefs. This evokes his comment:

 ‘But Professor Jollimore,’ he stammered, ‘how can you not believe in God? You teach ethics for a living!’

The series of lectures in contemporary Ethics that was being taught made no mention of “the scaffolding of any faith or religious tradition”(T.Jo.) which in itself is a questionable choice. Leaving out the whole history of moralizing up to comparatively recent times is an example of bias and egregious leading. In any case the spontaneous reaction of a student is not a serious basis for a generalisation. I call that a ‘straw boy’. There’s nearly enough of them in the essay to make a full complement of mummers like the Straw Boys of Wexford that go out with the wren on St.Stephen’s Day.

His argument against divine rule is summarized:

Adding God would give us divine rewards and punishments, but that’s only to add self-interested reasons to be ethical, not genuinely moral reasons.

We’re not very far down the page when that hedging locution ‘suspect’ comes on the pitch:

 I suspect that something else is going on, and that in most cases these arguments are just rationalisations for the belief that morality depends on faith in God. The actual explanation, I believe, is something else.

This lateral thought sends him in a direction which subverts his original thesis. Religion is fixed on the personal not the theoretical. There are no impossible computations about universal felicity.

This emphasis on being attentive to concrete reality tallies with the idea that it is the emotions (compassion and sympathy in particular), rather than abstract rational principles, that are doing the motivating when it comes to ethical behaviour.

It is wisdom that enables discernment:

Wisdom, as opposed to knowledge, might seem a somewhat quaint notion in the contemporary world. (Indeed at this point even the word ‘knowledge’ sounds quaint to many people, who prefer to talk about ‘data’ or ‘information.’)

Professor Jollimore quotes that section of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics on connaturality that I have referenced a few times in posts:

‘Actions, then,’ Aristotle taught, ‘are called just and temperate when they are such as the just or the temperate man would do; but it is not the man who does these that is just and temperate, but the man who also does them as just and temperate men do them.’

It would be impertinent of me to remind the professor that for Aristotle the highest form of happiness lies in contemplation. It is divine because the divine nous is absorbed in self awareness as its highest condition. It thinks itself. (cf. Lambda 9 Metaphysics) We become aligned to the divine in following that path.

It is in the summation to his essay that the strange turn occurs:

The idea that morality stems from strong character rather than from obedience to a strict set of rules, for instance, is very much in line with the moral reorientation proposed by Christ in the New Testament, from a view centered on obedience to God’s commandments to one in which love and compassion take centre stage.

We need to:

.....teach ourselves to stop looking at morality as an abstract and isolated set of requirements and demands — an external authority that stands apart from and sets limits on human existence — and see it instead as a set of commitments, enthusiasms, and passions that are woven into the very fabric of our lives.

An exemplar that generates enthusiasm (en theos - god within) is the only force that can draw us out an in-group morality based on obligation to a universal one based on love. Such are the great saints and sages of world religions.

Hey Troy, you’re nearly there.

 

Professor Troy Jollimore on Religion Based Morality

Troy Jollimore’s Aeon essay on ethics without god
ethics without god
describes a argumentative trajectory which culminates in a position contrary to that which he first starts out with. Is this an indication of retrocausality in action whereby a power acts from the future on a present situation? The ineluctable power of the truth that is yet to be assented to mitigates the contemporary confusion.

It begins, as American reflections often do, with a story. A student is shocked by Prof. Troy’s admission that he has no religious beliefs. This evokes his comment:

 ‘But Professor Jollimore,’ he stammered, ‘how can you not believe in God? You teach ethics for a living!’

The series of lectures in contemporary Ethics that was being taught made no mention of “the scaffolding of any faith or religious tradition”(T.Jo.) which in itself is a questionable choice. Leaving out the whole history of moralizing up to comparatively recent times is an example of bias and egregious leading. In any case the spontaneous reaction of a student is not a serious basis for a generalisation. I call that a ‘straw boy’. There’s nearly enough of them in the essay to make a full complement of mummers like the Straw Boys of Wexford that go out with the wren on St.Stephen’s Day.

His argument against divine rule is summarized:

Adding God would give us divine rewards and punishments, but that’s only to add self-interested reasons to be ethical, not genuinely moral reasons.

We’re not very far down the page when that hedging locution ‘worry’ comes on the pitch:

 I suspect that something else is going on, and that in most cases these arguments are just rationalisations for the belief that morality depends on faith in God. The actual explanation, I believe, is something else.

This lateral thought sends him in a direction which subverts his original thesis. Religion is fixed on the personal not the theoretical. There are no impossible computations about universal felicity.

This emphasis on being attentive to concrete reality tallies with the idea that it is the emotions (compassion and sympathy in particular), rather than abstract rational principles, that are doing the motivating when it comes to ethical behaviour.

It is wisdom that enables discernment:

Wisdom, as opposed to knowledge, might seem a somewhat quaint notion in the contemporary world. (Indeed at this point even the word ‘knowledge’ sounds quaint to many people, who prefer to talk about ‘data’ or ‘information.’)

Professor Jollimore quotes that section of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics on connaturality that I have referenced a few times in posts:

‘Actions, then,’ Aristotle taught, ‘are called just and temperate when they are such as the just or the temperate man would do; but it is not the man who does these that is just and temperate, but the man who also does them as just and temperate men do them.’

It would be impertinent of me to remind the professor that for Aristotle the highest form of happiness lies in contemplation. It is divine because the divine nous is absorbed in self awareness as its highest condition. It thinks itself. (cf. Lambda 9 Metaphysics) We become aligned to the divine in following that path.

It is in the summation to his essay that the strange turn occurs:

The idea that morality stems from strong character rather than from obedience to a strict set of rules, for instance, is very much in line with the moral reorientation proposed by Christ in the New Testament, from a view centered on obedience to God’s commandments to one in which love and compassion take centre stage.

We need to:

.....teach ourselves to stop looking at morality as an abstract and isolated set of requirements and demands — an external authority that stands apart from and sets limits on human existence — and see it instead as a set of commitments, enthusiasms, and passions that are woven into the very fabric of our lives.

An exemplar that generates enthusiasm (en theos - god within) is the only force that can draw us out an in-group morality based on obligation to a universal one based on love. Such are the great saints and sages of world religions.

Hey Troy, you’re nearly there.

Natural born adepts

For this further reason, one should not on the strength of mere logic challenge something that has to be known from the Vedas. For reasoning, that has no Vedic foundation and springs from the mere imagination of persons, lacks conclusiveness. For man’s conjecture has no limits. Thus it is seen that an argument discovered by adepts with great effort is falsified by other adepts; and an argument hit upon by the latter is proved to be hollow by still others. So nobody can rely on any argument as conclusive, for human intellect differs. If, however, the reasoning of somebody having wide fame, say for instance, Kapila or someone else, be relied on under the belief that this must be conclusive, even so it surely remains inconclusive, inasmuch as people, whose greatness is well recognised and who are the initiators of scriptures (or schools of thought) - for instance, Kapila, Kanada, and others - are seen to have divergent views.

(B.S.B. II.i.11)

It is to be noted that the Vedantin states the important ground rule for this challenge to reasoning; it only applies to those items of knowledge that can only be known from the Vedas. His imaginary interlocutor, with the generic title of the opponent demurs but does not take this stricture into account. He says that the excellence of reasoning is its self correction or constant overcoming of the mistakes of the past. In any case reasoning must be resorted to in the study of the proper import of disputed meanings in the Vedas themselves.

The Vedantin admits that these points are valid to a certain degree.

To this (we Vedantins say): “Even so there is no getting away from the defect.” Although reasoning may be noticed to have finality in some contexts, still in the present context it cannot possibly get any immunity from the charge of being inconclusive; for this extremely sublime subject matter, concerned with the reality of the cause of the Universe and leading to the goal of liberation, cannot even be guessed without the help of the Vedas. An we said that It cannot be known either through perception, being devoid of form etc., or through inference etc., being devoid of the grounds of inference etc.

.....That content of knowledge is said to be the most real since it ever remains the same; and in the world, the knowledge of that kind is said to be right knowledge, as for instance, the knowledge about fire that it is hot. This being the case, people should have no divergence when they have true knowledge, whereas the difference among people who knowledge is based on reasoning is well known from their mutual opposition. For it is a patent fact of experience, that when a logician asserts, “This indeed is the true knowledge”, it is upset by somebody else. And what is established by the latter is disproved by still another. How can any knowledge, arising from reasoning, be correct, when its content has no fixity of form?
........It is also not possible to assemble all the logicians of past, present, and future at the same place and time, whereby to arrive at a single idea, having the same form and content, so as to be the right knowledge. But since the Vedas are eternal and a source of knowledge, they can reasonably reveal as their subject-matter something which is (well established and) unchanging; and the knowledge arising from the Upanisads is alone the true knowledge.

Forgive the long citation but sometimes it seems better to take the risk of being boring to give a proper representation of a view. Shankara wrote in the 9th. C. and his aim was to preserve the final authority of the Vedas in matters that were beyond perception. This also included the code of everyday behaviour which was known as the dharmasastras and was based on the Vedas. Lacking the benefit of evolutionary psychology these codes of conduct were able to stagger along from milennia to millenia. Without the Vedas (cognate with vid/vision), there is left the power of reasoning which in dilemmas could lead to rationalising whatever it is you desire. The ingenuity of Western Philosophers and Bio-Ethicists employed on the subject of abortion is not found in the dharmasastras. It has always been regarded as a grave sin and those who represent that attitude as the sole property of Catholics, Orthodox and ‘fundies’ are simply wrong. It is obvious that an individual guided by their own natural light will not automatically see this. There is so to speak a natural law, a dharma, but it is not something that can be reliably discovered by anybody in good faith applying their native reason. Only those who are enlightened and at one with changeless truth can discern dharmic action in any circumstance.

Interestingly this rejection of the discernment of natural law through the unaided use of reason has been stated with emphasis by the Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart in his typically trenchant manner.
is-ought and nature's laws
What appears to be the convergence between natural law and a particular perspective on ethics is no more than the overshadowing of the fact of Christianity. Nature and reason without the illumination of the Christ event would point in no obvious direction. Some Thomists affect to find this baffling.

Professor Hart also seems to be sceptical about the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas as being strict proofs of the existence of God. It is said that a salient difference between Catholic and Orthodox Christianity is that the Orthodox missed the Enlightenment class. One does get the impression that Catholic thinkers require proofs and reasons to keep the holy rollers and snake handlers at a distance.

A counter might be that it is only men of good will who are connatural with the good that are capable of discerning the natural law. That brings in an extra-rational element, connaturality and the variability of persons and cultures. It is natural wisdom cf:connaturality and wisdom
but it is doubtful whether it will give a universal clear and authoritative guide for action.

Wisdom

Is there such a thing as wisdom. Could someone be so connatural with wisdom that everything they do and say has that virtue.

"But in all such matters that which appears to the good man is thought to be really so." (i.e. that which appears good to him) Aristotle,'Nichomachean Ethics' Bk.10.chap.V.

Wisdom and Truth can often be connatural with persons who know nothing of abstruse philosophy and ethical theory. The only explanation is that they are it. A Nisargadatta or a Ramakrishna is more impressive than a hyper educated Brahmin but of course 'it' can land anywhere.

From War and Peace:
"Oh, well, of course, folks are different. One man lives for his own wants and nothing else, like Mituh, he only thinks of filling his belly, but Fokanitch, is a righteous man. He lives for his soul. He does not forget God."
"How thinks of God? How does he live for his soul?" Levin almost shouted.
"Why, to be sure, in truth, in God's way. Folks are different. Take you now, you wouldn't wrong a man ......"
"Yes, yes, good-bye!" said Levin, breathless with excitement, and turning round he took his stick and walked quickly away towards home. At the peasant's words that Fokanitch lived for his soul, in truth, in God's way, undefined but significant ideas seemed to burst out as though they had been locked up, and all striving towards one goal, they thronged whirling through his head, blinding him with their light.