The NY Times' online offerings include a columnist named Stanley Fish, whose essays remind me of the sorts of lectures most of us had to force ourselves to stay awake for in philosophy classes.
The goal seems to be the same as the one I think Mercedes Benz engineers have: how many parts can we possibly use to accomplish a given task, with the mechanism designed to make routine maintenance impossible without a dozen custom tools?
Fish seems especially given to lecturing those who lack religion on the error of their ways. I don't know why religious intellectuals seem to regard those of us who find religion irrelevant as such a bone in their throats. I'm not talking about Professional Atheists who make a point of attacking religion. I'm talking about people who simply go about their business without taking religion into account one way or another.
The latest stab came out yesterday, titled:
"Does Reason Know What It Is Missing?--Secular reason is missing something, and one noted philosopher now feels that something is religion."
Numerous reader comments followed, mostly tackling Fish's thesis with learned reasoning. I took a somewhat different tack:
Fish's entire (and rather prolix) argument rests on the unspoken assumption that there's no such thing as human nature. We're a blank slate, wandering purposely over the landscape until we fall over a cliff and expire meaninglessly--unless Religion writes Purpose on that blank slate.
Um, there is such a thing as human nature, however. And it give us purpose aplenty, built right into our DNA, there for the taking. Fish should spend more time observing people and less time wandering about in his philosophical cloud.
This is just one more example of the patronizing condescension of religious intellectuals towards those they define as "secular humanists"--a term crafted to describe the religion we lack instead of the life we have.
It all helps justify one wag's description of what "PhD" means (at least in the liberal arts): "Piled higher & Deeper."
Last Thursday I rode my bicycle--with great effort--up a steep hill for a total of 2,500 feet of climbing, despite being in my 60s. It was a crisp spring day here in California, with clouds in the sky and birds in the trees around me. I needed two hours and a few minutes to summit, and another hour to get back down safely. This evening, after showering, I cuddled with my spouse of 28 years and watched a particularly good episode of "House."
As Camus described in "The Myth of Sisyphus" my afternoon's labor was both meaningless and, existentially, entirely meaningful. Ditto snuggling with my spouse.
Get it?
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2 comments:
You ought to see about getting a "like" button :) Finally, a political commentator I don't want to choke. I tried to read Fish's article, it made about as much sense as the crap in the Conventional Moral Problems class I'm failing, and by the way, these conventional moral problems are only really considered problems by people as ancient as our professor. Except you apparently, before I stumbled across this I was beginning to believe most old people I'm not related to are politically backwards, which is a shame because otherwise most old people are pretty cool. Continue sharing the wisdom of sanity! :D
I've come to think that college professors should have to have worked in the real world for a couple of decades before they got to teach college. Might help.
Reminds me of a Sufi teaching story. A Seeker After Truth heard of a great sage living up in the Atlas mountains. After many travails and adventures he finally found the sage, sweeping the walk to the front door of his modest cottage.
The seeker ran up and prostrated himself at the sage's feet, crying out "Take me as a student, Master!"
The sage swept around him, saying "No dice, pal. I'm busy."
For weeks this scene repeated itself as the Seeker kept trying to get the sage to take him on.
Finally the sage relented. He asked the Seeker "Do you recall the village you passed on the way here, about a week's walk down the mountain?"
The Seeker did.
"Well then. Go to the village. Take up a trade. Marry. Have children. When you're 50, come back here."
The Seeker's ecstatic expression turned to puzzlement. He said "I thought you said I could study with you."
The Sage said "So I did. What are you waiting for?"
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