Abstract
Developing Tyler Roberts’s recognition that humanistic inquiry ineliminably involves irreducibly “first-personal” questions, this essay situates that idea with respect to debates in philosophy of mind – debates, in particular, about the irreducibly normative character of intentionality. It is further argued, in Kantian terms, that freedom consists in our being attuned to such normative considerations, and that our being so cannot coherently be explained away. In this way, one of Roberts’s central ideas – that as scholars of religion, we should “commit ourselves to asking what practical difference it makes to study people as if they were free” – is bolstered. The essay then asks whether this line of argument recommends any conclusions particularly regarding religion, or whether instead it amounts only to a case for the distinctiveness of generally humanistic inquiry. After considering Franklin Gamwell’s argument that “religion” does indeed represent an essential dimension of human being, the essay concludes by exploring more limited ways of conceiving the distinctiveness of religious studies among the fields of humanistic inquiry. It is suggested that whether or not an argument like Gamwell’s works, scholars in the fields of religious studies are uniquely positioned to identify the normative considerations that inexorably distinguish human activity as such. This suggestion is developed by considering recent scholarship on religion and constitutional law, with regard to which it is argued that such scholarship is cogent only insofar as it is informed by perspectives from religious studies – perspectives, in particular, that acknowledge the norm-laden character of all discourse.
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Notes
- 1.
Schopen’s work is replete with claims to the effect that such-and-such a piece of material evidence reflects “the only actually attestable form of the actual – as opposed to the ideal – Buddhist doctrine of karma” (1997, 6–7). The passage from Asad (1993, 34) is characterizing a view he attributes to St. Augustine. (It should be noted that Asad is commendably careful about distinguishing this kind of epistemic point from questions of truth, per se.) The growth in literature on cognitive-scientific and bio-evolutionary studies in religion currently shows no signs of slowing, and examples are many; consider, e.g., Barrett 2010, Boyer 2001, Pyysiäinen 2009.
- 2.
For an elaboration of my understanding of the relation between intentionality (in the philosophically technical sense of that word) and the normative character of reasons, see Arnold 2012, 81–115 (et passim).
- 3.
The phrase “the significance of efforts at thought and of intellectual criticism” is quoted from Smith 2004, 17. Smith emphasizes, with regard to locative and utopian views, that these do not respectively correspond to “archaic” (or “primitive”) and “modern”; rather, “[b]oth have been and remain coeval existential possibilities which may be appropriated whenever and wherever they correspond to man’s experience of his world. While in this culture, at this time or in that place, one or the other view may appear the more dominant, this does not effect the postulation of the basic availability of both at any time, in any place.” (Smith 1993, 101)
- 4.
- 5.
I am much influenced, in my understanding of Kant, by the work of John McDowell; for a sustained reading of his philosophical project, see Arnold 2012, 94–108 (et passim).
- 6.
The foregoing proposal from Dennett represents, then, one way of arguing against the thought that reason really is “practical”; for the point of the “intentional stance” idea is precisely to make sense of purposeful behavior without supposing that anyone really “has” reasons for such.
- 7.
Kant says as much when he emphasizes that the theoretical reason that shows freedom to be problematic is itself but a development of the same responsiveness to reasons that we already exhibit when we so much as understand anyone’s demand that we justify something we have claimed or done: “…if pure reason of itself can be and really is practical, as the consciousness of the moral law proves it to be, it is still only one and the same reason which, whether from a theoretical or a practical perspective, judges according to a priori principles… in the union of pure speculative with pure practical reason in one cognition, the latter has primacy… one cannot require pure practical reason to be subordinate to speculative reason and so reverse the order, since all interest is ultimately practical and even that of speculative reason is only conditional and is complete in practical use alone.” (1788, 101–02)
- 8.
Here, interspersed with my own brief glosses, is what the argument looks like when Gamwell makes it (with the following all from 1994, 26): “Granting that understanding of self, others, and some larger reality occurs, some may still contest the claim that this understanding constitutes such activity.” That is, some may deny that reason really is “practical,” and argue instead that the appearance that it is can be given an alternative explanation; as Gamwell puts this point, “Some modes of thought attempt to treat understanding as an ‘epiphenomenon,’ such that no mention of or reference to it is required in order to identify any given activity, and human science may proceed ‘objectively’ or in a manner that seeks causal relationships similar to those pursued by the sciences of nonhuman existence.” Like Kant, Gamwell responds by arguing that this is self-referentially incoherent: “But to treat self-understanding as an epiphenomenon is in truth to deny that it occurs, because an activity that understands itself must in some measure thereby determine itself.” Self-understanding constitutively involves, as Kant would put it, some measure of freedom, which Gamwell unpacks thus: “Self-understanding, in other words, necessarily transcends other-determination, and, therefore, an activity in which self-understanding occurs is in some measure a product of self-determination or is constituted by that understanding… [Regardless of how much ‘other-determination’ may figure in any case of this,] it remains that the completion of a human activity waits on how it chooses to understand itself.” This, I think, is just as Roberts meant in saying, in a passage quoted above, that “all the knowledge in the world about my historical context, psychological profile, or genetic makeup cannot make decisions for me.”
- 9.
For Ogden, too, “religion” likewise denotes “the primary form of culture in terms of which we human beings explicitly ask and answer the existential question of the meaning of ultimate reality for us” (1992, 5) – and Ogden, too, characteristically advances transcendental arguments to the effect that human existence as such necessarily implies some orientation to that question, such that “the existential question” is “never the question whether there is a ground of basic confidence in life’s worth…rather, the question of faith is always how the ground of confidence can be so conceived and symbolized that our consent to life can be true and authentic.” (1986, 108)
- 10.
This is, for example, how I understand particularly the Madhyamaka tradition of Indian Buddhist philosophy; see, e.g., Arnold 2010.
- 11.
There is a vast literature that could be cited in connection with the claims and characterizations of this paragraph; for present purposes, it will suffice to refer the reader to Lewis 2011, which I here cite not only for its useful bibliographic references regarding a similar characterization of the field, but also as having been helpful to me in clarifying my own thinking about the issues here being scouted. I particularly commend Lewis’s thoughts regarding the culturally dominant characterization of religion as reason’s “other.”
- 12.
For some examples that helpfully elaborate this point, see Lewis 2011, 173–77.
- 13.
Also at issue in the case was the scope and enforceability of a particular piece of Florida legislation, the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” – hence the reference to “these laws.”
- 14.
Sullivan further notes that “[i]f the Warner plaintiffs were to win eventually on the First Amendment claim, and religiously motivated persons were thereupon given an exemption from the Boca Raton Cemetery Regulations, the resulting favoring of religion over not-religion could arguably constitute and unconstitutional ‘establishment of religion,’ as prohibited by the First Amendment.” (2005, 25) The same Constitutional tension has been much discussed by Stanley Fish; see, e.g., Fish 2001.
- 15.
Tellingly, Sullivan reports that on the final day of the trial, the presiding judge announced that he had enjoyed the chance to “talk theology all day,” with regard to which Sullivan comments that when he thus “speaks of ‘talking theology’ he is referring to his efforts to determine exactly what counts as religion for the purposes of law.” (2005, 4) That there were indeed unavoidably theological considerations in play is clear from, inter alia, the recurrent theme of conflicting Protestant and Catholic intuitions about what “religion” is rightly thought to involve; for the plaintiffs in the case were Catholics for whom certain embodied practices are central to religious life, whereas the presiding judge (and a number of the expert witnesses) instead held views to the effect that “religion” is essentially a matter of belief or conscience. (See, e.g., pp.61–69, 92, et passim.) Conflicting intuitions along these lines have of course been historically central to the entire modern legal discourse of religious freedom; as Sullivan notes, citing the work of Philip Hamburger, “a persuasive case has been made that the doctrine of the separation of church and state, itself the central ‘doctrine’ of American church/state politics today, developed popularly as an anti-Catholic tool in the nineteenth century.” (2005, 62) Sullivan, who is not only a legal expert but also a scholar in religious studies, well appreciates points such as this; the failure of some involved in Warren vs. Boca Raton to share her more nuanced perspective led to sometimes breathtaking displays of obtuseness. Thus, for example, Sullivan reports that the first question she was asked at trial was, absurdly, this: “Could you tell the Court, give the Court a very brief history of the history of Christianity as it relates to Orthodox and Catholic and the Reformation and development of modern religion in America?” Appreciating the absurdity of the question, Sullivan said to the judge, “I’ll make this short,” to which he dismissively replied: “Well, I think I’ve got some background on that, but it’s got to be in the record. So go ahead.” (2005, 85) Given his own theological commitment to the eminently Protestant idea that “religion” was a matter of personal beliefs informed by Bible study, the singularly unimpressive judge evidently could not countenance the possibility that scholars might be any more expert in “religion” than he is.
- 16.
Jason Springs (2012) has thoughtfully considered something of the extent to which religious disagreement may thus irreducibly involve what he calls (following Chantal Mouffe) “agonistic pluralism,” which must remain largely intractable to philosophical settlement.
- 17.
Consider, in this regard, Clayton 2006 and Sen 2005 – two recent books that commonly argue (albeit in different ways) that the classical traditions of Indian philosophy, in particular, represent an ideal of reasoned public debate that was not predicated (as much Enlightenment thought arguably is) on the thought that only likelihood of agreement could attest thereto.
- 18.
So, too, for that matter, does Sullivan, who finally suggests that “freedom and equality are better realized, and liberty better defended, if religion, qua religion, is not made an object of specific legal protection. The legal defense of human dignity and of life beyond the state must be honored in other ways.” (Sullivan 2005, 138)
- 19.
Of metaphysics, for example, Leiter opines that it “seems to be distinguished, in part, by the relationship in which it stands to the empirical evidence of the sciences: namely, that such a view about the ‘essence’ or ‘ultimate nature’ of things neither claims support from empirical evidence nor purports to be constrained by empirical evidence” (2013, 47). While it is certainly right to say that most philosophers would distinguish essentially metaphysical questions from essentially empirical ones, it is philosophically naive to suppose that the difference can be characterized in terms of the failure of metaphysics to be scientific; there is a conceptually basic difference, e.g., between questions like did this person commit the crime? (which can be settled by empirical evidence), and what is a “person”? (which is not decidable only on empirical grounds, requiring, instead, analysis of a concept).
- 20.
Notwithstanding, for example, the extent to which many of the arguments of “reformed epistemologists” are arguably consistent with mainstream epistemological positions, Leiter – dismissing the idea that these philosophers might represent counter-examples to his claims about the manifestly unwarranted character of religious belief – says only that “I am going to assume – uncontroversially among most philosophers but controversially among reformed epistemologists – that ‘reformed epistemology’ is nothing more than an effort to insulate religious faith from ordinary standards of reasons and evidence in common sense and the sciences” (which he then takes to warrant the conclusion that religion is therefore “a culpable form of unwarranted belief given those ordinary epistemic standards”) (2013, 81). Even more dismissively, Leiter says of all “nonnaturalist” versions of moral realism that they are “mere artifacts of academic philosophy, which, through specialization, encourages the dialectical ingenuity that results in every position in logical space finding a defender, no matter how bizarre.” (2013, 152–41)
- 21.
That this is effectively the way Leiter understands his title question is clear from such statements of his conclusion as this: “there is no apparent moral reason why states should carve out special protections that encourage individuals to structure their lives around categorical demands that are insulated from the standards of evidence and reasoning we everywhere else expect to constitute constraints on judgment and action… Singling out religion for toleration is tantamount to thinking we ought to encourage precisely this conjunction of categorical fervor and its basis in epistemic indifference…” (2013, 63–64)
- 22.
This is not to say that all religious persons or communities would be satisfied with a First Amendment that enjoined toleration only of conscientious beliefs rather than of religion, per se; surely there are many material benefits that accrue to some communities in virtue of the status quo. My point is only that a great many religious persons or communities might well take guaranteed protection of conscientious beliefs to be sufficient – and that there may be no good reason, apart from self-interested material considerations, why that is not as they ought to hold.
- 23.
See note 15, above.
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Arnold, D. (2021). What Religious Studies Can Teach the Humanities: A Philosophical Perspective. In: Eckel, M.D., Speight, C.A., DuJardin, T. (eds) The Future of the Philosophy of Religion. Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44606-2_3
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