Thanks for a thought-provoking essay. I think of Alasdair MacIntyre’s work and O. Carter Snead’s “What It Means to be Human” as exemplary in this regard.
Dogs know natural law FAR better than people do. Most dogs haven't read Aristotle or Aquinas.
The notion that reason comes before morality seems to be part of Catholic intellectual tradition. It's backwards. Reason is how we justify BREAKING natural law. Any decision at all can be defended validly by reason.
Jonathan height writes about this as well, where our moral thought is built in on an intuitional level. I think the challenge of using philosophy or reason well is to articulate those intuitions, rather than rebutting them with fancy arguments or even supporting them with fancy arguments. Our intuitions can’t be supported by reason, because they don’t stand in need of any support!
As I was reading here, Joel, I kept thinking of I Corinthians 2:14-15, which led me to try to find what might be called secular arguments for what we do read in Scripture but often would not want to quote in some settings because it would not be accepted as authoritative. Romans 2:14-15 is pertinent as well. Russ
The first Corinthians passage is interesting; I would think it’s about special revelation in the gospel. When you are looking for secular reasons for moral truths, those are things that can be known apart from the spirit of God, by natural law and common grace!
In the realm of theology, we must continue to prioritize the revitalization of Natural Theology. The role of the natural theologian closely aligns with the concept of a politically engaged Christian voice that you advocate for.
This is very well done, but I would add that I think Cass’s critics in some respect simply not living in reality. The reality is that explicitly Christian argumentation is already locked out of the public discourse, literally by force of law. If your local city council commissions a prayer event, they can expect to be sued by secularists and lose. Same if you pass any statute explicitly rooted in faith. So the realistic options are: find a way to defend Christian ideals in secular terms, or lose the argument. It’s not a fair fight, which is unfortunate, but people should be realistic about it.
(Incidentally, this is also the best argument for integralism: that we already have an integralist government, it’s just secular instead of Catholic.)
I remain deeply skeptical of the existence of public reason. Even if we could somehow escape other forms of skepticism, it seems impossible to come to an understanding of what sort of ends we seek which everyone can agree to:
"Theft, incest, infanticide, parricide, have all had a place among virtuous actions."
- Pascal
In the end, the only way to settle fundamental value disagreements is force or threat of force
Sorry I say this with all due respect but this argument fails. Saying we always talk about morality before we understand metaphysics therefore it precedes it is just plain wrong. This would be like when my 7-year-old nephew got 2 100-dollar bills for his First Communion, and he thought he had 1000 dollars would prove that 100 + 100 = 1000 because he said something before truly understood. Ethics cannot be done without understanding what is actually true. As for the idea of giving "religious people" a space I agree that is a false dichotomy because it implies religion is simply an experiential feeling I have rather than what is true. However, Cass (along with the other secular people you mentioned) still fails and much worse because even though they say arguments should be secular (aka accessible to public reason) their reason doesn't even work because through act/potency, per se casual series, essence/existence you can easily show theism is true which is why all serious philosophers before modernity were theists. However, because of their pride (Cass' case saying religion "doesn't click") or through bad arguments (the expert scientists say so) all these thinkers are totally incoherent and any moral argument they give boils down to consequentialism of how nice it is to live in a Christian society where others make sacrifices, yet they don't want to have to make the sacrifices themselves.
I appreciate these objections, but I would consider that the moral argument was parallel to the kinds of cosmological arguments you mentioned. No one starts from God. We start from finite things, and we reason back to their cause. The same goes for morality. You could find lots of moral realist among contemporary analytic philosophers. You can use this as a leverage to show them that purely naturalistic view of the world does not suffice. That’s the kind of thing I’m arguing. It’s also the best attitude to take towards unbelieving thinkers in order to persuade.
Yeah I just think that moral realism among analytic philosophers is crazy and makes no sense but they all just want to be good liberals because that's fashionable. But I get what you're saying, we need to be strategic, but I don't think it's the best strategy, I think teaching people the truth directly is the best strategy because if you go off intuitions they can often be wrong, especially given that intuitions are shaped by the environment which is totally run by people hostile to religion
But I don’t think we just know the truth (of Christianity) directly. Why do you or I really think that there’s anything more to this world thanmatter in motion? I know that the inescapability of morality and the fact that it’s not reducible to the material is one of the reasons I believe. So I can follow that argument within an unbeliever who sees that there’s something going on with morality.
But vague appeals to morality have totally failed because you need truth first. After Virtue shows this well. One man's child abuse is another man's "affirmation." You need to actually establish the truth first and go from there. As for matter in motion, for thousands of years there was no issue with the idea that we are just matter in motion (or that we are just minds), guys like Aquinas would have laughed at that because it leaves no place for the mind. We can show that is silly with just basic philosophy and we need to get back to that and align faith with reason not just vague "moral intuitions" because those don't work and never will work
If I’m not mistaken, McIntyre does not argue that. He argues that deontology and utilitarianism do not work in the absence of God or a moral tradition. He argues that we need a return to Greek virtue ethics, though not only the Greek ones. On that level, virtue is natural, and it doesn’t require faith.
My only point on McIntyre is that you can't start with morality effectively because what a person views as moral is so shaped by the assumptions they start with, that you will basically be speaking different languages. The atom bomb is good example where modern, consequentialist man thinks it's a no brainer when the Church and any serious ancient thinker would have thought it appalling. Not to mention there are plenty of people in modern days that believe morality is a social construct so just appealing to "common sense" morality doesn't work, I mean in every Western country we have people defending the slaughter of millions of innocent babies and they act self righteous about it. I do agree that virtue is natural. The natural virtues are prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude which anyone can do without the aid of Divine Revelation. However, the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and love are divinely revealed and not accessible to pure reason.
Thanks for a thought-provoking essay. I think of Alasdair MacIntyre’s work and O. Carter Snead’s “What It Means to be Human” as exemplary in this regard.
Both of them Catholic iirc. 😉
Dogs know natural law FAR better than people do. Most dogs haven't read Aristotle or Aquinas.
The notion that reason comes before morality seems to be part of Catholic intellectual tradition. It's backwards. Reason is how we justify BREAKING natural law. Any decision at all can be defended validly by reason.
Jonathan height writes about this as well, where our moral thought is built in on an intuitional level. I think the challenge of using philosophy or reason well is to articulate those intuitions, rather than rebutting them with fancy arguments or even supporting them with fancy arguments. Our intuitions can’t be supported by reason, because they don’t stand in need of any support!
As I was reading here, Joel, I kept thinking of I Corinthians 2:14-15, which led me to try to find what might be called secular arguments for what we do read in Scripture but often would not want to quote in some settings because it would not be accepted as authoritative. Romans 2:14-15 is pertinent as well. Russ
The first Corinthians passage is interesting; I would think it’s about special revelation in the gospel. When you are looking for secular reasons for moral truths, those are things that can be known apart from the spirit of God, by natural law and common grace!
In the realm of theology, we must continue to prioritize the revitalization of Natural Theology. The role of the natural theologian closely aligns with the concept of a politically engaged Christian voice that you advocate for.
This is very well done, but I would add that I think Cass’s critics in some respect simply not living in reality. The reality is that explicitly Christian argumentation is already locked out of the public discourse, literally by force of law. If your local city council commissions a prayer event, they can expect to be sued by secularists and lose. Same if you pass any statute explicitly rooted in faith. So the realistic options are: find a way to defend Christian ideals in secular terms, or lose the argument. It’s not a fair fight, which is unfortunate, but people should be realistic about it.
(Incidentally, this is also the best argument for integralism: that we already have an integralist government, it’s just secular instead of Catholic.)
I remain deeply skeptical of the existence of public reason. Even if we could somehow escape other forms of skepticism, it seems impossible to come to an understanding of what sort of ends we seek which everyone can agree to:
"Theft, incest, infanticide, parricide, have all had a place among virtuous actions."
- Pascal
In the end, the only way to settle fundamental value disagreements is force or threat of force
Sorry I say this with all due respect but this argument fails. Saying we always talk about morality before we understand metaphysics therefore it precedes it is just plain wrong. This would be like when my 7-year-old nephew got 2 100-dollar bills for his First Communion, and he thought he had 1000 dollars would prove that 100 + 100 = 1000 because he said something before truly understood. Ethics cannot be done without understanding what is actually true. As for the idea of giving "religious people" a space I agree that is a false dichotomy because it implies religion is simply an experiential feeling I have rather than what is true. However, Cass (along with the other secular people you mentioned) still fails and much worse because even though they say arguments should be secular (aka accessible to public reason) their reason doesn't even work because through act/potency, per se casual series, essence/existence you can easily show theism is true which is why all serious philosophers before modernity were theists. However, because of their pride (Cass' case saying religion "doesn't click") or through bad arguments (the expert scientists say so) all these thinkers are totally incoherent and any moral argument they give boils down to consequentialism of how nice it is to live in a Christian society where others make sacrifices, yet they don't want to have to make the sacrifices themselves.
I appreciate these objections, but I would consider that the moral argument was parallel to the kinds of cosmological arguments you mentioned. No one starts from God. We start from finite things, and we reason back to their cause. The same goes for morality. You could find lots of moral realist among contemporary analytic philosophers. You can use this as a leverage to show them that purely naturalistic view of the world does not suffice. That’s the kind of thing I’m arguing. It’s also the best attitude to take towards unbelieving thinkers in order to persuade.
Yeah I just think that moral realism among analytic philosophers is crazy and makes no sense but they all just want to be good liberals because that's fashionable. But I get what you're saying, we need to be strategic, but I don't think it's the best strategy, I think teaching people the truth directly is the best strategy because if you go off intuitions they can often be wrong, especially given that intuitions are shaped by the environment which is totally run by people hostile to religion
But I don’t think we just know the truth (of Christianity) directly. Why do you or I really think that there’s anything more to this world thanmatter in motion? I know that the inescapability of morality and the fact that it’s not reducible to the material is one of the reasons I believe. So I can follow that argument within an unbeliever who sees that there’s something going on with morality.
But vague appeals to morality have totally failed because you need truth first. After Virtue shows this well. One man's child abuse is another man's "affirmation." You need to actually establish the truth first and go from there. As for matter in motion, for thousands of years there was no issue with the idea that we are just matter in motion (or that we are just minds), guys like Aquinas would have laughed at that because it leaves no place for the mind. We can show that is silly with just basic philosophy and we need to get back to that and align faith with reason not just vague "moral intuitions" because those don't work and never will work
If I’m not mistaken, McIntyre does not argue that. He argues that deontology and utilitarianism do not work in the absence of God or a moral tradition. He argues that we need a return to Greek virtue ethics, though not only the Greek ones. On that level, virtue is natural, and it doesn’t require faith.
My only point on McIntyre is that you can't start with morality effectively because what a person views as moral is so shaped by the assumptions they start with, that you will basically be speaking different languages. The atom bomb is good example where modern, consequentialist man thinks it's a no brainer when the Church and any serious ancient thinker would have thought it appalling. Not to mention there are plenty of people in modern days that believe morality is a social construct so just appealing to "common sense" morality doesn't work, I mean in every Western country we have people defending the slaughter of millions of innocent babies and they act self righteous about it. I do agree that virtue is natural. The natural virtues are prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude which anyone can do without the aid of Divine Revelation. However, the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and love are divinely revealed and not accessible to pure reason.