Monthly Archives: July 2023

Interlude: Why Bother?

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Today I want to step back from the current series (The Road to Moral “Progress”: From Obedience to Self-governance to Autonomy and Beyond) and address a question some of you may be asking:  Why bother with so much history? Why approach the contemporary moral climate in such a roundabout way?

Why History?

As many of you know, I am very interested—bordering on obsession—in how certain very powerful segments of contemporary culture came to think as they do about morality. But some readers may be wondering why we need to understand the historical origins of the crazy ideas that emanate from university social science, education, and literature departments. What does it matter from where Hollywood and Silicon Valley got their twisted values? Whatever their origin—you may be saying to yourself—these ideas contradict the reason and common sense of every right-thinking person: everyone knows that we are born male or female, men can’t have babies, and people are not born equal in every respect.

Indeed (you may concede), it is helpful to realize that progressive philosophy presupposes that the goal of human progress is liberation from all limits. But we don’t need to study the entire history of modern moral philosophy to see that striving toward this goal is futile. We already know that achieving it is impossible! And if the goal that drives a historical process is impossible, we can be sure that this striving has been misdirected from the beginning. So, why trace out how it went wrong?

Good Observations…

I admit that you don’t need to know the historical origin of a bad idea to see that it is illogical or immoral or empirically false or impractical. It may be only curiosity that leads some of us to ask how otherwise intelligent people could believe that a person can be born in the “wrong” body or that it is morally permissible (or even imperative) to give female hormones to an underage school boy (with or without parental consent) or to attempt by way of surgery to transform a female body into a male body. Perhaps so. But there may be more at stake than merely satisfying a curiosity.

I see your point, but consider that these ideas appear absurd to you only because you hold to a different way of looking at the world. And your worldview also has a history. You believe in the God revealed in the Bible: the all-knowing, omnipotent, all-wise, Creator of heaven and earth, the author of the moral law, and the hope of the world. You were taught to accept the limits imposed by the Creator, to trust God even when you do not understand God’s ways, and to worship God alone. Judged by this worldview, the modern progressive view—that we ought to aspire to divine status—appears not only rebellious, disobedient, and immoral but absurd, insane, and suicidal! Viewed through this lens, we see that the divisions in contemporary culture result not merely from the clash of a few contradictory moral ideas but from the collision of two diametrically opposed worldviews.

You may suggest, then, that the most reasonable response to the errors of progressive culture is to preach the Christian gospel and explain the worldview implicit therein and call for conversion. For only then can people see what is wrong with progressive moral philosophy. I agree with this strategy up to a point. Each misguided moral perspective makes sense only when placed within the complete progressive worldview. Likewise, Christian morals make sense only within the Christian worldview. Challenging each progressive absurdity individually will probably be ineffective. Complete conversion is needed.

To share Christianity effectively with some people, however, it may be necessary to explain the historical origins of the progressive worldview. Most progressive-leaning people are not postmodern philosophers or social science professors who incessantly quote postmodern philosophers—usually, I might add, without understanding them. They are not Hollywood actors or tech industry workers who say whatever they need to say to fit into their corporate cultures. Nor are they politicians who do whatever it takes to hold together a progressive coalition. For the most part they are college educated professionals whose main impulse is to conform to the trends dominant among other college educated professionals. Their moral beliefs are an unstable mixture of progressive and traditional ideas.

Reasons for Studying History

How might learning about the historical origins of contemporary progressive philosophy help people to rethink their progressive ideas? Three ways come to mind:

1. It dispels the illusion that progressive ideas are self-evident.

When everyone around us voices progressive ideas, the rewards for conformity are great and the punishment for nonconformity is severe. We have little motivation to question them. But the study of history demonstrates the contingency of progressive morality. Chance and circumstance—not merely reason and goodwill—contributed to the construction of progressive culture. When a way of thinking loses the aura of self-evidence, we are forced to ask the question of its truth.

2. Understanding the genesis of the progressive worldview frees us to ask where it might lead in the future.

I admit the difference between historical development of an idea and the logical unfolding of an idea. Logic is timeless; history is temporal. History does not necessarily follow the path of logical implication. Chance and human freedom and caprice also influence the flow of history. Nevertheless, there is a certain resemblance between logical and historical movement. Each generation tends to modify or contradict or extend the ideas of preceding generations. One generation argues that belief in human dignity demands freedom from kings and priests. The next generation demands freedom from all traditional moral rules, and the next asserts freedom from God and nature. What’s next? Where will it all lead?

3. Historical study places before us a decision between two starkly different worldviews and ways of living.

As I said above, most people hold to a mixture of progressive and traditional beliefs. Studying the origin and historical development of progressivism demonstrates that these two types of beliefs are incompatible. Progressive moral values presuppose a progressive worldview and traditional beliefs presuppose a traditional worldview. The history that led to the creation of contemporary progressive culture gradually replaced God, Christ, and creation with humanity, science, and technology. Perhaps the study of history will help some people see that these two worldviews are incompatible. You can’t have it both ways. You have to choose between them and reform your life accordingly.

The Road to Moral “Progress”: From Obedience to Self-Governance to Autonomy and Beyond (Part Two)

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This essay is part two of a series I began on July 10, 2023 in which I am pursuing the question of the origin of the moral climate that dominates large segments of modern society. Before the modern era, the ideal moral person dutifully conformed to the moral tradition handed them by their forbearers. The church was the chief guardian and the clergy were the main interpreters of this tradition. People were expected to obey their betters or else.

Note: As in part one of this series, also in this essay I am relying on J. B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Moral Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1998). In addition, I will use the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s (SEP) entry on “Hugo Grotius” written by Jon Miller. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/grotius/

What is Self-Governance?

Around the year 1600 confidence in the authority of tradition and the church began to wane. Moral philosophers began to seek ways to replace tradition and the clergy with other sources of moral knowledge and establish another ideal for a moral person. That other ideal was self-governance, that is to say, the view that every rational agent has independent access both to the moral knowledge they need to guide their lives and to the motivation to act in keeping with this knowledge.

None of the early architects of the morality of self-government denied the existence of God. Practically all of them believed that a creator God was necessary to morality. However, they focused not on supernaturally revealed moral law but on the moral guidance woven into the created order and in human nature. Human beings possess the power of reason, which enables them to discover the moral law embedded in nature.

Hugo Grotius (1583-1645): Pioneer of Self-Governance

As an example of the change from the ideal of obedience to that of self-governance, we can examine the thought of the Dutch lawyer and statesman Hugo Grotius. Hugo Grotius transformed the medieval moral law theory into a modern one. His works were studied for 200 years after his death and even today he is still recognized as the father of international law. According to Jon Miller [“Hugo Grotius” (SEP)], we can get a handle on Grotius’s moral theory by looking at his answers to four questions about the nature of morality, questions about the source, contents, obligatory force, and scope of moral law.

What is the source of the moral law?

As I said above, no early modern moral philosopher denied the existence of God. Nor did Grotius do so; nevertheless, he did not want to root our knowledge of the moral law in a source accessible only by faith in divine revelation. He makes this clear in a famous (or infamous) passage:

What we have been saying would have a degree of validity even if we should concede [etiamsi daremus] that which cannot be conceded without the utmost wickedness, that there is no God, or that the affairs of men are of no concern to him (Quoted in Miller, SEP).

To discover the moral law, we must look at nature. “The mother of right—that is, of natural law”—Grotius explains, “is human nature” (Quoted in Miller, SEP). In another place he says,

The law of nature is a dictate of right reason, which points out that an act, according as it is or is not in conformity with rational nature, has in it a quality of moral baseness or moral necessity; and that, in consequence, such an act is either forbidden or enjoined (Quoted in Miller, SEP).

Clearly, viewing nature as the repository and reason as the measure of the moral law gives plausibility to the idea of self-governance.

What is the specific content of the moral law?

According to Grotius, we find two contrary drives in human nature, the drive for self-preservation and the need for fellowship with other human beings. The challenge of living successfully in human society is finding a way to harmonize these two seemingly contrary drives. For Grotius, the system of rules that harmonizes, or at least balances, these two forces is the law of nature. And this system of rules must be discovered by empirical observation and study of human behavior. It cannot be derived deductively from first principles.

The theoretical status of moral law, in the Grotian understanding of it, has more in common with the empirical sciences than it does with theology or metaphysics.

What gives moral law is obligatory force?

If the moral law is merely a set of rules that balances self-interest and sociability, what gives it the force of obligation? The laws that govern the physical world do not obligate human beings to obey them. If moral rules are merely guides for living successfully in the world, why do we incur guilt by breaking them? Is morality no more than prudence and enlightened self-interest? According to Schneewind (pp. 73-75), Grotius never answered this question. He merely asserts that some acts are inherently good and some inherently evil and that we should do good and avoid evil. But if you ask why we should prefer good over evil, the answer seems to be that doing good will lead to success in living and doing evil will lead to failure. Whence then the obligation?

What is the scope of moral law?

According to Grotius, the moral law applies to every human being. Since all (or most) human beings are rational and social and have independent access to the law of nature, everyone falls under the jurisdiction of the moral law. Religious disagreements, class differences, and other distinctions between human beings do not lessen the binding nature of moral law.

The Instability of Self-Governance

As time passed, the Grotian concept of self-governance proved unstable. It contained inner contradictions that eventually caused its dissolution. Originally, the ideal of self-governance was opposed to obedience. Obedience had to be rejected because it divided human beings into those who commanded and those who obeyed, masters and servants, learned and ignorant…all to the detriment of the ideals of universal human dignity and freedom. Self-governance promised to do greater justice to human dignity and freedom.

But the concept of self-governance could not completely rid morality of obedience to an alien law and obligations not imposed on oneself. Indeed, individuals were presumed to be competent to use their reason to discern the moral law given in nature. Nevertheless, that law—whatever its origin—was not the product of the human will. Though reason possesses power to discover the moral law, it cannot create it. Self-governance, then, does not live up to its name. As long as the moral laws we must obey derive from the will of another or from blind and purposeless nature, we are not truly self-governing.

A truly self-governing agent must not only be able to discern the moral law embedded in nature but must also be the author of those laws. The name given to this type of moral ideal is autonomy, which means something like “law unto oneself.”

Next Time: The Invention of Autonomy

The Many Faces of Academic Freedom*

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As readers of this blog know, I have had a long-term interest in higher education, especially in the nature of the Christian college. Today I want to focus on the theme of academic freedom. I just finished reading Daniel Gordon, What is Academic Freedom? A Century of Debate–1915 to the Present (Routledge, 2023.).** Gordon is professor of history at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. It’s not possible in one short essay to do justice to this excellent study. My goal is to present a very compressed summary of the book and draw your attention to some things I learned from reading it.

It pains me not to recount all the stories, authors, and related issues in this book—the case of Angela Davis ([1969/70] Can the Regents of the University of California fire you for being a communist?), Steven Salaita (Can your offer of employment be rescinded because of your anti-Israeli statements?). What about the work of Stanley Fish on academic freedom or the thought of Alexander Meiklejohn on the absolute nature of freedom of speech or Edward Said on academic freedom and the politicization of the study of literature? And so much else!

Lessons Learned

The current controversies about the presence of Marxism, Critical Race Theory, gender theory, and other forms of “radical indoctrination” in American colleges and universities were initiated in 2003 by David Horowitz. Horowitz began a campaign to get state legislatures to ban (mainly) Marxist indoctrination from university classrooms by adopting the Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) into state law. Horowitz received support from dozens of state legislators and huge pushback from university faculty members. The debate continues today and promises to intensify as the 2024 campaign season progresses. Should academic freedom extend to a professor’s political activism and advocacy in the classroom? Horowitz’s campaign focuses on the academic freedom of students not to be coerced or intimidated into accepting a professor’s political viewpoint. On the other side, defenders of “radical” professors and the politicized classroom claim the academic freedom to teach their views even if unpopular. Both sides appeal to academic freedom.

The genius of Gordon’s book is its historical explanation of how the concept of academic freedom came to be understood in such dramatically different ways. I will focus on Gordon’s documentation of three historical changes that profoundly affect contemporary discussions of academic freedom.

The American Association of University Professors

In 1915, Arthur Lovejoy and others founded the American Association of University Professors. In view of the continuing push toward the professionalization of the American professorate and the desire to forestall governmental interference and censorship of teaching and publication, Lovejoy wrote the 1915 AAUP General Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure. The Declaration claims the right of professors to explore issues within their disciplinary expertise with great latitude in view of their noble calling. However, it warns against using the classroom to “indoctrinate” (Lovejoy’s word) young students with the opinions of the professor, especially with partisan political views on issues of current social concern. Additionally, the original 1915 Declaration urges professors to be cautious in their speech in non-academic settings: “In their extramural utterances, it is obvious that academic teachers are under a peculiar obligation to avoid hasty or unverified or exaggerated statements, and to refrain from intemperate or sensational modes of expression.”

However, by 2006 the AAUP had changed its opposition to politicizing the classroom under the presidency (2006-2012) of Cary Nelson. Nelson was the chief opponent of the Horowitz project. Long before the AAUP got on board, the American University had already shifted its understanding of academic freedom. The shift began in the 1960s with the founding of programs in Black Studies, Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies, and other analogous groups. These programs were from the very beginning unapologetic advocacy groups. By the 1990s postmodernism (Michel Foucault) had convinced many academics that all speech is political. According to postmodernism, those who claim scientific neutrality or objectivity merely hide the power structures that favor their class. Today, two visions of academic freedom compete for dominance, the postmodern activist and the anti-political professional view.

Freedom of Speech

The second historical transformation I had not fully understood before I read Gordon’s book is the change in the jurisprudence of free speech. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution addresses the right of speech: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech….” Originally, this restriction applied to the federal government only. States were free to enact their own bills of rights and laws concerning, among other things, speech. After the Civil War, the United States ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution (1868). It begins, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States…. The bolded lines are taken today as applying to the states all the rights of the citizen listed in the Amendments to the Federal Constitution. What I did not know was that it took the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, until well into the twentieth century to apply “freedom of speech” to the states.

Additionally, I did not understand the federal Judiciary’s evolving theory of what constitutes a legitimate limit on speech. Until the early twentieth century, the courts agreed that speech that tended to create unrest or might reasonably be thought to do so was not protected by the First Amendment. In the 1919 case Schenck v. United States, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, articulated the “clear and present danger” test for when the government may limit the exercise of speech. However in the 1969 Brandenburg v. Ohio case, the Supreme Court replaced the “clear and present danger” test with the “imminent lawless action” test. As is clear, the conditions under which speech may be limited by a government entity became more and more restrictive as the century unfolded. Correspondingly, the scope of free speech was expanded exponentially.

The Fusion of Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech

Before the 1960s, academic freedom was distinguished from the constitutional right to freedom of speech. Academic freedom was considered a special freedom to teach based on the unique calling and qualifications of the professor, the nature of academia, and the special role of the university in society. One can see this distinction clearly in the 1915 AAUP General Principles of Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure. In public spaces, controversies over speech rights were focused on the political and commercial spheres, and in the 1915 statement those activities were excluded from the classroom as inappropriate to the profession. Moreover, as we saw in the previous section on the history of free speech, until the 1960s government at all levels could restrict speech for a number of reasons. Hence before that time, appealing to the right of free speech in an academic setting would not have helped one’s case. Moreover, appealing to the First Amendment to protect academic speech would in effect surrender the special status of teaching as a profession and place it on the same level as a political rant or an advertisement for soap.

But within the last 50 years, the courts, the professorate, and the public have come to identify academic freedom with freedom of speech. And since the courts now protect even the most outrageous and radical forms of speech, activist professors that wish to use such speech in the classroom increasingly appeal to the First Amendment to protect their right to say whatever they wish in the classroom–political rants, recruitment drives, and vitriolic, personal attacks on religious and political leaders.

Academic Freedom in Christian Colleges

Though Gordon’s book deals with state educational institutions only, I believe it can be helpful in grappling with the issue of academic freedom in Christian colleges. I want to expand on this at a later date, but let me tell you briefly what I mean. (1) Gordon explodes the idea that there is only one definition of academic freedom that must be implemented in every institution that claims to be true to the nature of the academic vocation. Christian colleges, then, should be free to define academic freedom in a way that fits their mission. (2) Debunking the idea that academic freedom must be subsumed under the more general concept of freedom of speech will help Christian colleges resist encroachments by the state, accrediting bodies, and professors that work against the Christian mission of the college.

*See also my essay of January 24, 2022, “Academic Freedom in Context.”

**As of this writing, the Kindle version of this book is free! And instantly available!

The Road to Moral “Progress”: From Obedience to Self-Governance to Autonomy and Beyond

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In a previous essay (“At the Edge of Ruin,” June 22, 2023), I shared some insights I received from reading J. B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Moral Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1998). In that essay I reflected on the significance of the tension between voluntarism and intellectualism in the history of modern moral philosophy. In passing I mentioned Schneewind’s compressed summary of that history: from obedience to self-governance to autonomy. Today, I want to begin a brief series using this summary as a window into the soul of contemporary culture.

Morality in General

As preparation for comparing and contrasting these three views of the ideal moral life, let’s make some generalizations about morality. Every moral ideal must answer certain questions about the nature of morality:

(1) What is the ground of the distinction between right and wrong, good and bad?

(2) How can we discern what is right and good in life’s circumstances?

(3) What is the proper motivation to act in a right and good way?

(4) What is freedom?

(5) What is the nature and extent of human dignity.

Obedience

In the Bible and for most of Christian history, the ideal moral stance of the individual was a spirit of humble obedience to God’s commands. Human beings stand under divine authority and God has graciously revealed his wise and good will. The first verse of Psalm 119 pronounces a blessing on those “who walk according to the law of the Lord,” and the hymn continues to praise God’s laws for 175 more verses. The Old Testament book of Proverbs begins with this maxim: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (1:7). The Lord promises to bless Abraham, not only because he believed (Gen 15:6 and Romans 4:3), but also because he “obeyed me and did everything I required of him, keeping my commands, my decrees and my instructions” (Gen 26:5). The New Testament also exalts the life of obedience. Jesus does the “will” of his Father (John 4:34, Matt 26:35, 42). He “learned obedience from what he suffered” (Hebrews 5: 8b). And obedience to God’s will remains an ideal in the life of the Christian.

Obedience in Practice

The ideal of obedience answers the questions above in the following way: In the Bible and in traditional Christian moral theology, (1) God’s holy character and good will determine what is right and wrong and good and bad. (2) Human beings, being blinded by pride, misdirected desires, and limited knowledge, need divine guidance and wisdom to discern the right and good way. God knows perfectly his character and will and in various ways has communicated to us what is right and good. (3) Human beings ought to be motivated to obey God as a response to his perfect character and his love demonstrated in creation and in Christ. However, the Bible also warns of the destructive consequences of disobedience that follow naturally from misdeeds or that are inflicted by the divine Judge. (4) In the Bible, freedom is the removal of all impediments that hinder the soul from knowing and loving God and conforming to the divine life. True freedom is found only through union with Christ in the power of the Spirit. Faithful obedience to God’s will in the present anticipates the future realization of perfect freedom. (5) For Christianity, true human dignity or worth is grounded in God’s plan to share his eternal life and power with his human children. There is no greater dignity than to be a child of God. Obedience is our way of stepping into the character of that future eternal life insofar as possible in the present life.

Obedience Abused

By 1600, however, the ideal of obedience had come into disrepute in the eyes of many moral philosophers. In the medieval church, the ideal of faithful obedience to God’s will was used to justify the demand that the people obey the clergy and the Christian state. The people were expected to obey without question their “betters” in spiritual and secular matters. In the century of Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Hobbes, and Locke (1609-1690), however, demands for blind, “servile” obedience to authority seemed more and more out of step with the progress of reason. Galileo had demonstrated by empirical evidence that the earth orbits the Sun, and Newton had discovered the mathematical laws of celestial motion. Descartes proposed that all knowledge be grounded in the human mind’s power to establish a point of certainty within itself. Hobbes and Locke, each in his own way, proposed that rational analysis of human nature itself could discover moral principles sufficient to found a governmental order and legitimate its exercise of coercive power. In this climate many thinkers were searching for a new understanding of morality to replace obedience to authority. The stage was set for the new moral ideal of self-governance to make its appearance.

To be continued…