The End of Times

One may wonder, in response to the previous blog post, whether there I perhaps apply double standards. Why do I find it interesting that Herman Philipse qualifies the Christian reinterpretation of the end of times as cheating, while I appreciate the revision by professional historians, for example concerning the history of Israel, as a sign of a scientific attitude? What is the difference between the two revisions? Don’t they both testify of advancing understanding and therewith of an open and actually modern approach to reality?

About the latter I'm not so sure. For me, in making revisions and changing images, it is very important to know by which motive that is inspired. Is it in order to rescue an Idea or an Ideology (which I think is dubious) or only because the existing image is in conflict with certain empirical findings and hence with experiences of people (which I think is nicely empirical).

The abandoning by Christianity of the expectation of a soon end of times is, in my view, an example of the first mentioned kind of reinterpretation. In it the original central notion is maintained: that of a divine Plan which, after the salvation work of Christ, provides a logical plan-completion in the guise of the end of the world, that’s to say of Doomsday. In itself keeping that idea intact may be quite harmless, but it gets complicated if meanwhile empirical reality retains its function of supporting that idea. Because to the extent Doomsday fails to occur, one has to do more and more violence to empirical reality to ensure that the latter remains consistent with the Plan.

The historian Hugenholtz expresses this in response to the sixth century bishop and historywriter Gregory of Tours as follows: "The past and also the often lovingly described present is subservient to the future, also proves the correctness of expectations of the future. The past and the writing of history are at the service of the expected youngest day, they seem to determine that youngest day, seem to open possibilities for calculating the exact time of the youngest day”.

So, reality here has the function of providing proof. And that role was not kept limited in the Christian tradition to historical reality, also physical nature began to be examined for signs of evidence, with a view on the positioning of man in the divine Plan.

If faith stimulates the empirical sciences but at the same time assigns to the empirical the function of providing proofs for its theology, then two things happen. In the first instance, the sciences will come to flourish because of that stimulus. But in the second instance the specific dynamics of science, with the critical cognitive attitude that belongs to it, leads to resistance against its position of subordination to faith. Science then may revolt against truth claims of faith in the empirical field and dissociate itself from it. In this phase, I believe, the Western Christian world finds itself since the Enlightenment.

For a comparison it is interesting to iuxtapose to the Christian scheme the relationship between faith and the empirical in Judaism. In the Jewish tradition, empirical science never expanded as enormly as in Christianity. Reality in Judaism has never had to the same extent the function to provide evidence for the correctness of a revealed Plan. The fact that contemporary Israeli settlers interpret their annexation successes as proof of God’s will in accordance with his Plan is therefore a relatively new, and in my opinion not welcome development in Judaism.

It is decidedly not the case that in Judaism traditionally there was no Plan. It was and is very present there indeed, and may even be called the Mother of All Plans. But, as to the content of the Plan, one could not do much more than speculate about it. Therefore new thoughts about the Plan could relatively easily develop when events gave cause for that. And there was no lack of occasions or crises. Thus, history is a form of digesting and coming to terms with the past. For this purpose history needs not to be practiced in an exact way. The faith did not depend on empirical vicissitudes, however difficult it was to interpret them. It just was the way it was, it was identity.

Thus in the above the distance has become clear which separates both Christianity and Judaism from scientific historiography. Reinterpretations in the historical sciences are ideally only about empirical reality. Unlike in Christianity in the historical sciences the core of your beliefs may change because that core ís the image of empirical reality, nothing more and nothing less. And unlike Judaism scientific historiography attaches big value to exactness of research with no other purpose than making a credible reconstruction of the past.

Large differences therefore, all in all.

See also Mission completed

History as an exact science

The Dutch religion basher Herman Philipse is not one of my favorite thinkers, but lately I heard him speak on the slipperiness of a lot of religion on which I could agree with him. He talked about the philosophical school of the logical positivists and explained that they view religious statements as impossible. That's to say, meaningful religious statements. Because, they and Philipse say, propositions are only meaningful if they are empirically decidable. So you have to be able to test on the basis of observable phenomena whether a statement is true or not. If you can not perform such a test those statements have no meaning.

When you claim a statement to be true, the question is, according to the logical positivists, to formulate it in such a way that the statement is verifiable. You can do that by adding specifications. For example by indicating, in making a prediction, as precisely as possible the phenomenon you expect to occur. If indeed it occurs then you're right, otherwise not. At least this provides clarity.

However, religions generally do not pretend to offer that kind of clarity. And as they don’t have such pretension they don’t bother so much when Philipse reproaches them unclarity or meaninglessness. There are different kinds of meaning, those religions say. So they don’t háve to worry about his criticism.

But Philipse also pointed out - and I found that interesting - that sometimes religions dó claim to make true statements about physical phenomena. He mentioned as an example the predictions of early Christianity, among other places reflected in the letters of Paul, about a soon end of the world. The end was expected to occur within a generation. So, here a specific, rebuttable statement is being made, which meets the requirements which according to logical positivism may be posed to propositions. And so appeared, because the world did not finish. So the statement was refuted by reality.

But, says Philipse, Christianity was not a good loser. People preferred not to dwell too long on this refutation of the prediction and instead they switched to another register. Namely the register of unearthly meanings. And even though I believe that these may have their own legitimation, I understand very well that to Philipse such a maneuver feels like cheating. Especially since after this first register change the switching between registers continued. The claim to be able to designate God's signs in the observable reality remained and we partly owe the flowering of Western science to that pretension. But, on occasion, that claim could be traded in for the idea that the Real Truth absconds from earthly dimensions.

The interesting thing about this is that it reveals a fundamental orientation of Christianity: it is about truth, and in that orientation towards truth empirical reality plays - sometimes - the role that reality plays for the logical positivists: to provide proof for propositions. However, when such proof cannot be provided, in Christianity the empirical gets a subordinate place and appears to be of only superficial significance. And that’s precisely contrary to what the logical positivists thought was right.

And different also from what historians want to do. Because in historical science, carried out properly, findings matter. The reconstruction of the past can change, based on new findings and insights, and even fundamentally so. This is shown for example in the historiography of the Second World War or with the New Historians in Israel about the creation of the Jewish state. From this perspective it is really strange, in fact, that logical positivism is associated primarily with the natural sciences. For in historiography the empirical matters substantially. Isn’t that what we call ‘exact’ indeed?

Out of place

It may have its charm sometimes, to be completely out of place. To use words and phrases which for the listener feel like not appropriate to the activity or the conversation that is going on. And not because you do not understand what that activity or conversation is about, but because you very consciously want to say different words and phrases. Levinas did so in his expositions with other philosophers, because he wanted to introduce new language into philosophy.

I myself try to do so in the workshop Thinking for someone else. One of the observations of that workshop is that the language spoken in organizations often ignores fundamental experiences of employees. In line with that observation I talk about the ‘violence’ that organizers thus do to their employees. And about the ‘injury’ being done that way and about the ‘sorrow’ of people who suffer from it.

Sometimes I note that for some participants of the workshop all this is too much. Come on man! We are talking about organizations and about labour relations to which reasonable people have committed themselves completely voluntarily! That requires another vocabulary, namely of professionalism, reasonableness, maturity. And if we really want to do something ethical or moral in organizations, we can do so through moral codes and procedures.

A problem is that the latter do not seem to have much effect. Procedures do not generate inspiration, however widespread the indignation is about bonus hunters and dirty tricks. “That should not be allowed” people say, and then take resort to procedural language, to standards of decency and legislation. They keep themselves out.

In earlier days there used to be a richer language to talk with each other about such things, says ethicist Theo Boer. For within the denominationally compartimentalized groups of those days there was a certain consensus about the good life. This offered a kind of shelter, and because of that words could be used that are adequate to morality. After the collapse of the compartimentalized society just a kind of hull morality is left, an almost technocratic minimum for all, in which even words like respect and tolerance may soon become empty slogans or sometimes commands.

I understand what Boer means: morality should be talked about, one should have the opportunity to come up with stories, and one should be able to collide with one another. But I don’t share his nostalgia for the past, because within the one time denominations a lot of stories appeared to be not welcome indeed, such as those of gays or divorced people. The minimum hull moral may still feel for many of them as a liberation.

What remains to be considered is that within the denominationally compartimentalized system words were used which, according to philosopher Edith Brugmans, you can not do without if you want to talk about morality: “Moral words like pain and sacrifice I do not often hear anymore”. In this domain there is in her view a big vocabular deficiency, because one does not manage with just procedural language.

Hence the idiosyncratic language of my workshops. I think there is no other option for us than to learn to use words like ‘violence', 'pain', 'sorrow', 'injury' in simple, everyday situations. So even within organizations, because they are full of violence, pain, sorrow and injuries.

Also see Levinas and Spinoza

Overhasty Enlightenment

British prosecutors last month issued an arrest warrant against the former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. In previous years Spanish magistrates ordered the arrest of, among others, Chilean and Israeli (former) politicians. But the Spanish Parliament in June announced to remove the principle of universal jurisdiction from its legal system. The Spanish act decides that the transnational jurisdiction will apply only in cases where Spaniards are involved.

Transnational or universal jurisdiction means that within a particularist, national legal system all crimes against humanity can be addressed. Even if the crime took place outside that country, or if the defendants are citizens of other countries.

Universal jurisdiction is one of the possibilities of justice in among other countries England, Belgium and Spain, but as stated, the latter country wants to get rid of it now. As reasons for abolishing it are mentioned mainly practical matters, and in particular the effect that you can get political problems with more or less befriended countries. For example, in its relationship with Israel, the Spanish government felt hindered by it.

But are there only objections of a pragmatic nature to argue against universal jurisdiction? That thought suggests that in the Spanish decision a laudable principle is defeated under the pressure of common political and practical reasons. For that the idea behind universal jurisdiction is praiseworthy indeed is undeniable. Universal jurisdiction is designed to protect the weak and vulnerable of this world by ensuring that war criminals can be tried. Even if they live in countries with a poorly developed legal system. It remains a fine principle.

Yet I think that a more fundamental observation can be made to that nice principle. Already at first sight there is something incongruous in the combination of a nation state and universalism. The nation state is something which is by definition arbitrary, an entity shaped by many historical caprices. It clashes with a universalism which, in line with Enlightenment enthusiasm, wants to be universally valid, regardless of location and time.

The incongruence is further highlighted when we give the history of the system of nation states a closer look. Both the nation state and the market economy stem from competition and the pursuit of strategic advantage over others. That still makes itself felt in such matters as the environment protection, where the combination of nation states on the one hand, and marketprinciples on the other, block a global response to pollution.

We do not need to be condescending about this, because this self-organization through competing national units is only too self-evident. Neither of course do we need to extol it, and to stop all attempts to enlighted universalism looking across borders. Universal justice remains a good idea and it must be wonderful to experience it.

But it becomes problematic when this universalism is so euphoric and triumphalist, that it loses out of sight the origin of nation states and the incongruence of particularistic universalism. Particularly in Western Europe this is an actual risk. The decades of stable peace in Europe - mainly because of American protection - can deprive us of the sight on the underlying, still active aspects of the system of rival nation states. We forget our own origin and end up in an illusion.

Besides it may lead us into the situation that we no longer understand what it means for a country not to be yet in that luxury position. The claim to universal justice can become arrogant and lose the understanding for countries where the rivalry manifests itself in a more hostile way than with us. Of course one must ask whether such a country is doing enough to bring peace within reach. But being in a phase of hostility with other countries is, in itself, legitimate - given the arbitrariness of our system of national boundaries. It is no different than the stage the Western European nations found themselves in, one hundred years and two world wars ago. And be sure that for instance 'disproportionality' looks very different when you’re inside than when you’re outside.

An honest assessment of regimes at war must therefore take that situation of conflict as its starting point. So, such a country is at war and then: how does it deal with that. According to the jurist Kamminga you do well on such an assessment not to be too quick in bringing your own legal system into play. It remains a rough remedy, and wherever it is possible it is preferable to deal with war criminals in their own country. Certainly if a legal system is well equipped for this, which according to Kamminga, for example is the case in Israel.

Dismantling

In the explanation to the beautiful exhibition Cézanne, Picasso, Mondriaan in the Hague Municipal Museum remarkable words were used to describe what exactly those three painters did in their work.

For example, it was said with regard to Picasso that he ‘dismantled’ his images. Where previously landscapes and - certainly in the classical humanistic tradition - especially people were presented as one and indivisible, Picasso began to emphasize parts. He did this by turning inside out ears, noses, breasts and limbs and expanding them.

The portraits in which Picasso proceeds like this, can very well be regarded as striking images of a new view of man. They remind us of anatomical exercises, but now much more radical than Rembrandt painted them. This is not about dead bodies, but about portraits of living people who are laid out in their parts.

One could say: this is a kind of anti-creativity, the opposite of creation. But then you conceive of ‘creating’ as: the ‘making’ of something. In contrast, one could insist that ‘creating’ and ‘splitting’ do not have to lie that far apart, or more precisely, that indeed they belong together. The latter is the thesis of Ellen ten Wolde, a theologian who has studied a lot on the words used in the biblical creation story. She believes that in that story making and separating alternate, and only in combination with one another make possible a cosmos that knows plurality.

The action of splitting, which according to Van Wolde is inherent to creation, is indicated by the Hebrew word bara. This word is traditionally translated as ‘to create’ in the sense of ‘to make’, but ‘to separate’ would, in her view, be a better translation. In addition, the traditional conception of creation as ‘making’ remains intact, and for that Van Wolde points to the word asa.

Asa and bara alternate, for example in the creation of heaven and earth. Darkness is already there, the water is already there, both have been ‘made’ already. By subsequently ‘splitting’ the mass of water, space comes into being between the heavens and the earth and in it God ‘makes’ the light.

The idea that creation contains an aspect of separation seems to me to be philosophically interesting. That is because of the point that Ten Wolde touches. Namely that - beyond the massive, mystical unity of the All - (sub)divisions become possible between creatures. And therewith, paradoxically, relationships and connectedness.

Along that road Ten Wolde takes a distance – for once not through natural science, but in a text-scientific way - from an interpretation of creation that has long been dominant in the West. Namely the idea of the created universe as an eternal, static and stable entity, which has its counterpart on earth in the form of clerical and administrative hierarchies.

By taking that distance, opportunities arise in the human world to deal differently with each other. If separation and distinction are already present indeed in the idiom of the creation story, then it is not suprising that something like a Jewish tradition can grow out of it. Because the culture of debate may be the most important attribute of that tradition.

Also see Kant avant la lettre

Squabbling

It is rather noteworthy that many traditional, religion-related objections to Jews show a similarity to objections that, from several corners, are brought up against the democratic system of government as most Western countries know it today.

Traditional anti-Jewish objections for instance come from Christianity. In Christian circles, with reference to the vehemence with which Jews could carry on against one another, the phrase was coined: ‘It looks like a Jews-church here’ to indicate that somewhere there was much uproar. And besides Christians know the phrase ‘two Jews, three opinions’, a statement indeed that is not contradicted by Jews. On the contrary, all the major Jewish debates and disagreements have been extensively documented and preserved in the Talmud. With as much focus on the winning as on the losing parties.

Where the Qur'an comments negatively on Jews, according to the American Islamic scholar Frank Peters this is largely due to the Jewish culture of debate. Because of that, Judaism acquired the negative image of a religion that succumbed to schisms and sectarianism.

These objections against internal wrangling resemble the revulsion that one regularly can hear being voiced against democracy: that it is cumbersome and slow, that it encourages manipulation and squabbling and that it does not generate the unity needed to face the future. This kind of criticism on democracy comes from all sides. From less educated citizens up to well to do reactionary circles, attached to law and order.

To some extent I can understand that. If you're attached to a certain order - and I myself definitely am - then a lot of the political fuss indeed soon feels as disruptive. It often does not look very edifying. Just take the horse trading that apparently is needed to get Obama's health insurance system adopted by the U.S. Congress, and probably even in heavily battered form.

The endless game of give and take of democratic politics easily creates the image of being filthy and vulgar. It certainly is not something everybody likes to participate in. It is more suitable for the Churchill type of politician ( "Democracy is a bad system but it's the best we've got") than for the Van Agt type, a Dutch Prime Minister who after the formation of his third cabinet preferred to leave the scene to others.

But the point is: is there an alternative to democracy? And what should that alternative look like?

If inertia, squabbling and being unsufficiently prepared for the future mark democracy and make it rather worthless, then the answer must be sought in centralized administration that can proceed energetically through tight, swift decision-making. That is, in dictatorship.

But – no matter how great my desire for order – I do not believe in it. Not in the field of religion, because a strict hierarchy and thinking-discipline would have the upperhand. And to see how that turns out, it is sufficient to refer to the Roman Catholic church where silence had to be kept about the abuse of children by Irish priests. And apparently Rome could enforce that silence. That seems not good to me.

Nor do I believe in dictatorship in the field of politics. Indeed, as for the future, it is not entirely accidental that in dictatorially led countries the environment until recently was no issue. That we manage now to talk about it at all, we owe to the democracies. Even though, on the other hand, precisely because of democracy and the fear for their voters, politicians dare not go far enough.

Squabbling is all in the game, I just say to myself.

That makes sense

That makes sense, I thought, when a headline reported that Moscow and the Vatican want to strengthen their mutual relationship. Because, when I read that, I took 'Moscow' as a reference to the ‘Russian soul’. And that soul stands for mystical experience and not for a political or diplomatic authority. With that interpretation, I was not too far wrong, as the message appeared to be about a rapprochement between the Russian Orthodox Church - the guardian of that soul - and the Roman Catholic Church.

Indeed, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church have a lot in common. They both cherish warm music and a sheltering mysticism. This is no wonder, because their cultures both stem from a time when reason was not yet as almighty as she was from the seventeenth century. They survived the blow that rational thinking has struck and which made Protestantism feel so cold and scanty. That shared ancient warmth makes the liturgies of Rome and Moscow very enjoyable and their mystique - whatever it is worth - so real. Probably they recognize and appreciate this in one another.

In addition, they both are not very fond of enlightenment and democracy. In Russia, they are surprisingly open about that. Many nationalists, including Solzhenitsyn, believe that the autonomy of the individual clashes with the mystical experience of the unity of God and country in Russia. And according to the Russian philosopher Alexandr Tsipko the Russians don’t connect very well to liberal ideas.

The Catholic Church is not equally open about this, because nowadays this church is rooted too much in modern Western society. In some countries she even has benefited a lot from modern liberal views on religious freedom. In the Netherlands for instance that made possible the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in 1853.

Nevertheless in my estimation lay participation and democracy are not in the DNA of the Catholic Church, the real match is lacking. The church is not strongly opposed to them, and certainly has an eye for the blessings that democracy and the constitutional state entailed. But she does not get really enthousiastic about it. The relationship rather resembles a marriage of convenience.

Also of that the Netherlands offer a good illustration. Because from the moment that in the sixties the experiments started with influence from below, with a more understandable liturgy and a place for women and lay-folk, it went downhill with the church. The national, broad Dutch folk church seems not to survive its internal democratization. What remains are the more conservative Catholic groups. These are small, but vital. The real Catholicism, it appears, is strongly tied to hierarchy and classical piety, in a traditional style. Exactly as archbishop Eijk would have it.

This strengthens my preference for a tradition with which democratic thought and shrewd reasoning are in the genes, combined with warm music and ancient rites.