Intentional Blindness

Fr. James V. Schall SJ offers a penetrating reflection in the New Pantagruel. It's a long, but worthwhile, analysis of the source of Reasonable philosophy.

He opens with an epistemological problem discussed by C.S. Lewis:

But the problem that Lewis originally presented was of another order than that of the proper use of words. Rather, he presented the problem of whether we can ever get outside of ourselves in our knowing processes. If we cannot, when we spell out its implications, it is a rather frightening prospect. It seems that the writers of English textbooks for school children explained this passage from Coleridge in quite an odd fashion. For them, the problem was not whether the waterfalls, in its own real grandeur, was “pretty” or “sublime.” Neither of these two words, in these authors’ view, referred to the waterfalls at all. They referred to the thoughts or emotions of the tourists about the said falls. These thoughts were, evidently, themselves either “pretty” or “sublime” according to the inner “feelings” the observers imposed on them.

In other words, shades of epistemological theory, the tourists were not seeing the waterfall at all but only their thoughts about the waterfalls. Whether they knew the actual waterfalls at all was not the problem of the text book writers, however much it is the problem of epistemology itself. As Lewis quipped, in effect, that if someone says that “you are ugly,” it does not refer to you at all. Rather it refers to the observer’s thoughts about you. It means “my thoughts about you are ugly,” whatever in fact you might look like, even “pretty” or “sublime.” Such a theory is delightfully absurd really.

But such theory is not harmless. Its real effect is to deprive us of the world itself, including the waterfalls, sublime, pretty, prettier, or even ugly. We thus walk about in a world in which nothing, as it is in its true being, can affect us. Things are not what they are but what we think they are. And if we think that a waterfall is “pretty,” who can disagree with us since there is no reality available to us, as there evidently was to Coleridge, by which we can inquire whether our ideas correspond to it. We cannot be moved by what is, because reality does not get through to us. We are not concerned about what our thoughts refer to. We are concerned with the thoughts themselves and try to describe them, not what they are said to know.

We are, so it is said, “free” of reality. We are liberated from things. They do not impinge on us for their truth, but we make them what they are. In looking at our thoughts about waterfalls, then, we are only looking at our own feelings as if they mattered, not the waterfalls. Just how we know these “feelings” are even about waterfalls themselves is not clear. The content of our feelings is said to be imposed by us on ourselves not by the waterfalls. If we cannot distinguish between “sublime” and “pretty,” why can we distinguish between a waterfalls and, say, a tree or a goat? What is there to respond to besides ourselves and our feelings?

Later in his reflection, Fr. Schall explains how this flawed epistemology gives rise to the existential trap that is today's modern nihilism:

Why, we might inquire, if there is one world, one human nature in which we all participate, are there so many convoluted and contradictory theories about how to live the one life we are given in the one world we all inhabit? Modern “tolerance” theory wants us not to “judge” other views in terms of good or bad, truth or falsity, but only in terms of “different” and “very different.” Still, we cannot help notice that one claim always serves, within this world of universal tolerance, to cause bitter antagonism. That is the notion that there is a right way to live. That there is a right and wrong that is true and grounded in what is. This “right” way, moreover, is not merely another human concoction or confabulation. And if there is a right way, there must be likewise a wrong way to live. This view, which has ancient roots, as do the modern theories that oppose it, is more and more looked upon as the principle that undermines modern culture. Insofar as modern culture is based on simple, naive relativism, this is true.

Normally, if someone is not living as he should, as some objective criterion would seem to suggest that he live, we should think that that person would be glad to have his erroneous ways pointed out to him so that he could correct himself. He would, in other words, want to call “sublime” things precisely “sublime,” true things true. We soon discover, however, that most people do not like to be confronted with the notion that their way of living is not the best, and even may be quite wrong. If we know of the meaning of “original sin,” we should not be at all surprised at this situation. Charges of arrogance and hypocrisy go back and forth. It all seems like a futile effort. What are we to make of it?

In The Idler for Saturday, 21 October 1758, Samuel Johnson made the following very Socratic observation: “It has been the endeavour of all those whom the world has reverenced for superior wisdom, to persuade man to be acquainted with himself, to learn his own powers and his own weakness, to observe by what evils he is most dangerously beset, and by what temptations most easily overcome.” Behind this “know thyself” observation is the frank realization that, on self-reflection, we realize that we not only do things that are wrong or evil, but that we are tempted to do so even if we do not do them. We must then take steps both to understand the dimensions of the evil to which we are tempted and how to deal with them.

Very few of us, Johnson tells us, can “search deep into their own minds without meeting what they wish to hide from themselves…” So what do we do? We devise theories that apparently explain that what we actually do, whatever it is, is quite fine. Many simply try to avoid the issue of conscience or guilt. We can put pressing things aside. Others will be struck by examples of goodness and their own actions in relationship to them. “These are forced to pacify the mutiny of reason with fair promises, and quiet their thoughts with designs of calling all their actions to review, and planning a new scheme for the time to come. There is nothing we estimate so fallaciously as the force of our own resolutions, nor any fallacy which we so unwillingly and tardily detect.” In other words, the bitterness we find in reactions to any claims of truth has its roots here in our defensive intellectual reaction whereby we construct an alternate truth to the truth of what is.

Johnson put the main blame for our refusal to recognize what is right and change our ways to the very Aristotelian difficulty of changing any habit once we are set in it. We think it is an easy thing to reform, but for most people, it is not. Yet, beyond this difficulty, there are those who actively seek to defend at all costs their option for a freedom the content in their actions. They do not discover this content but define it. They are autonomous. This counter formulation is no easy task, to be sure. “Those who are in the power of evil habits, must conquer them as they can, and conquered they must be, or neither wisdom or happiness can be attained…”

Fr. Schall discovers the cornerstone of the Reasonable metaphysics that drives so many elites into the waiting arms of the Dictatorship of Relativism. People have subscribed to a metaphysics in order to defend the indefensible. The problem remains as simple as it is difficult: original sin. Far too many of us desire what we ought not desire. Others among us desire the good we ought to seek, but we desire it to an extreme. Disordered desire plagues us now as it has done since we first chose to become our own arbiters of right and wrong. These days, the more Reasonable among us have constructed the subjectivism that allows them to rationalize their disordered desires away. They have intentionally blinded themselves to a reality beyond their own perceptions. They have concluded that they, and they alone, arbitrate the very reality of their lives. If they can help it, some of them will then arbitrate the lives of others. Thus, they celebrate the touchstones of today's nihilism: absolute individualism, the worship of moloch through the sacrament of abortion, the unfettered pursuit of the One Thing that Matters, versions 1.0 and 2.0. Any manifestation that we determine the nature of all things, especially right and wrong, becomes the holy obligation of our time, according to the Reasonable.

The intensity with which many Reasonable elites confront Fools testifies to the contradiction they experience. Every day they live in a world of their own fashioning, yet that world remains isolated from the Reality on which their existence depends. The Fools laughter and witness of the Truth disrupts their navel-gazing metaphysics, exposing themselves to their own disordered desires in the light of reality that they can't ignore. They see the evil they wish they did not possess, but they refuse to even want to be free of it. Thus, they scream until the source of their illusion's interruption drowns in the echo of their own futile protest.

The shrieking has become quite predominant lately because the Reasonable sense they're losing their hegemony. Fools grow seemingly out of the ground every day. Everymen pay less and less attention to their cherished metaphysics. They lose the ideological battle more and more each day, while their continued exile from power proceeds without a hint of change.

Still, Fools need to do even more work. Our redemption in Christ remains the only antidote to the poison of sin, including that terminal addiction to evil, concupescience--the burnt remainder of our forgiven original sin. Only when we live in communion with him, and with each other in his body, will we consistently make the moral choices for which we will construct an ordered metaphysics. Only then will Foolishness once again be reasonable. Only then will what passes for Reasonable philosophy today draw the derisive laughter it deserves. Fools can't rest until that day dawns on us all. Our families, communities and societies can't wait.