Adrian Pabst - Metaphysics

during that interview and in my introduction to it there were a number of references to the area of philosophy known as metaphysics Davison talked about the nature of reality throughout our discussion the relationship between truth goodness and beauty was a constant presence john Milbank's essay referred to modern philosophical assumptions that denied the ontological reality of reason each of these subjects involve questions or assumptions about the real nature of things metaphysics is concerned with what is real and how our experience relates to what is real well behaved citizens of liberal democracies typically assume that we can safely ignore questions of what is ultimately real liberal democracies operate with the assumption that such things are unknowable or of no consequence for political life or just not worth getting worked up about but the assumption that we can do without concern for metaphysics is a metaphysical assumption itself it assumes that all human beings are really in reality creatures who can order public life well without reference to questions about what is ultimately real it assumes something about the nature of human nature and about the nature of political order the claim that the nature of the ultimately real is politically insignificant is not a neutral claim Christian theology has historically been faced with countless questions that have a metaphysical dimension how does an infinite creator interact with a finite creation what's the meaning of the image of God in human beings and the consequences of that image for the unborn what's the relationship between mind and body and of mind and body to spirit how are the dual natures of Christ interrelated and how can God be three-in-one what's the meaning of I am as a defining name for God and of logos as a defining name for Christ what are the ramifications of the Apostle Paul's affirmation that in God we live and move and have our being and that in Christ all things hold together how does the nature of the church as the body of Christ direct our lives as believers and how might we properly tend and keep sexual relations given what the Apostle calls a profound mystery at the heart of marriage these are just a few matters many with pressing practical considerations that involve metaphysical questions but we live in a culture that regards metaphysics as an exotic academic pursuit and many of us attend churches that implicitly regard questions about the nature of things as a distraction from the real work of discipleship many Christians thus absorb from the culture around them fashionable assumptions about the nature of things though they might occasionally try to insert concerns about select moral matters into those assumptions there has in recent years been something of a revival in Christian metaphysics inspired in part it would seem by the obvious cultural dead end of modernity and the subsequent retrieval of Christian theologians and philosophers including many political philosophers of many pre-modern claims and arguments about the nature of things a new book by philosopher Adrian papst is part of this revival it's notably part of a series of scholarly books defiantly called interventions books intended by the editors of the series and by the authors to question the accepted terms of discussion that dominate various disciplines and thus reinforce the nihilism of our age the book Adrienne papst has written is entitled metaphysics the creation of hierarchy he begins his book by saying that it quote seeks to retrieve metaphysics and reveal its theological nature close quote in that short statement of purpose papst embeds his argument that individual things are what they are that they have the nature that they have because of their relationship to the triune God who sustains them in relationship to all other individual things it may be a criminally irresponsible oversimplification but for present purposes I hope it's adequate for those of you whose eyes glazed over as soon as I said the word metaphysics rest assured this is hard for me too but I think it's worth some effort it's worth the effort because most if not all of our peculiarly modern disorders are tied to metaphysical confusion one way or another I recently talked with Adrian papst about his book and we began by discussing why metaphysics is in such bad repute since the 19th century metaphysics has had a very bad name arguably beginning with the sort of positivist revolution inaugurated by by a West Canton in France but also of course extending to thinkers as varied as Nietzsche and then in the 20th century Heidegger a lot of French thinkers like Derrida lose more recently Miriam there is now a very long established tradition of philosophy that in some ways suggests that metaphysics has passed or ought to have passed and I think that's something I very much take issue with in in the book ought to have passed because of some kind of natural evolution that we've outgrown it in some way the thought has outgrown it yes both thought and experience so the claim somehow is that metaphysics locks us into some kind of straightjacket some kind of iron cage of Platonists dualism or some form of modern Moniz and perhaps alla Hegel and that we very much need to rid ourselves from these constricting shackles and it seems to me that a lot of this rests on a profound miss reading of the long philosophical metaphysical tradition in the West and indeed beyond because for instance Platonism as they often associate it with some form of irreducible dualism between on the one hand the world of ideas and on the other hand the world of things but of course Plato never said any such thing at on the country he always insisted that ideas are instantiated in things and that we as finite beings with finite minds can only know ideas through things so we have no direct cognition or vision of of ideas themselves all we have is in some sense the participation of things and ideas and that's what we can know and of course the metaphysics of participation is very much what Plato developed and and bequeathed to us and I think it's a core part of the Christian tradition I'm sure we'll get onto that so yeah a little later yeah in I think the first chapter of the book you write Plato does not advocate a turn away from sensible ephemeral particular x' in the perceptible world of things towards transcendent timeless forms in the invisible world of ideas and yet that's the that's the conventional picture of Plato that he does advocate this dualism and that we can we can move on from these particular things to the transcendence quite safely which is why I think many of us tend to equate Plato with Gnosticism that and and yet you you insist this is not true to what Plato is what his project is about absolutely and I think it's not true for various reasons first of all when we look at more closely at how Plato things we can know any ideas I think one popular misconception is to say oh yes it's the disembodied soul prior to its embodiment that has already seen everything known and everything and then we kind of tried desperately to remember to recall this knowledge of ideas that the soul had prior to its instantiation in the body but of course once again Plato never said anything like that the disembodied soul is very much a metaphor and as we we'll know metaphors are not to be interpreted literally indeed none of Plato's metaphors analogies myths or any other figures of speech should ever be interpreted literally in fact nothing should ever be interpreted literally zero a period and we notice also from the biblical tradition so I think it's very dangerous to have a literalist reading secondly when Plato talks of recollection the Greek word of course is anamnesis an animal esis doesn't mean remembering something which we once knew but have since forgotten anamnesis in most of Plato's texts the middle but also the later dialogues actually means something like being awakened to being alerted to so when we see Beauty what we're being alerted to is the idea of beauty so when we see something beautiful we are in some sense awakened to this idea of beauty same with the good same with justice and so on and and thirdly I think the the key point and Plato is to say that we never completely transcend the material embodied world even when we have knowledge of the good it's in some way still with reference to the physical world so let me give you another example the famous myth of the cave about which more more books have been written perhaps entire libraries have been written by now I think the key argument in that myth of the cave is that when man frees themselves from the false ideas to do with shadows in the cave and finally escapes and leaves behind a state of ignorance and comes to some kind of knowledge he discovers that the author of all things is the son now the son of causes something which even if we can never fully glimpse it or perceive it because we simply cannot be equal to its to its brightness it's still something which is also material it's not just a material light it's also something which still has in some ways their material form or appearance so even when we discover the author of all things we don't have a abstract cognition that is independent of the world I think it's very much part of our universe and in our finite mortal condition that is in some sense all that's available to us so their data somehow once we've had cognition we can sort of leave behind the material world because it's really corrupt degenerate is holding us back I just don't think corresponds to a proper reading of Plato maybe you could explain a little bit the the idea of the metaphysics of participation and how in the first chapter you talk about that the the dilemma that was present in in pre-socratic philosophy of the the problem what we know today is the problem of the one and the many of how universals and particulars can be related and and various attempts to solve this problem is is this idea of participation a way of solving it and and what does Plato have in mind and and then if you could also how does this fit with with a Christian understanding of of God as creator mm-hmm yes I think pasta patient is a key concept or theory or paradigm to try and understand how it is that universes in particular in some mysterious way relate to to to one another in other way of saying this is to say that our experience of the world is very much one of unity and multiplicity at the same time so we all have at different moments in our lives I think a sort of in co-ed sense that there is indeed one reality out there that we all inhabit but that that reality also is a multiplicity of perspectives and therefore cannot be reduced to just a single vantage point but it doesn't but it doesn't seem entirely chaotic given their multiplicity exactly and I think it's to try and understand this idea that there is some fundamental order some fundamental order direction of things that there's some sort of tell us towards which we all in different ways how oriented so Plato would say it's it's a natural desire for the supernatural good or I'm paraphrasing Velux sort of what what he would say now what I'm trying to argue in the book is that participation is indeed key to making sense because it explains in some ways how particulars can partake of universal so how something can be said to be beautiful because in some ways it participates in the idea of beauty but the other key argued I'm trying to make is that we can't really understand how it is that particulars partake of universals unless we understand that universals are always already relational and I think this is quite an important part of the the platanus frame whether perhaps hasn't always been sufficiently accentuated that is to say for Plato it's not just the case that somehow material things in some mysterious way participate in in in material ideas is that the ideas themselves are relational as I say they give themselves ecstatically they in some ways if you like are transcendent truly speaking and unlike Aristotle's prime mover the good is as Plato says in the Republic the author of all things it's a creative principle so the good in some sense likes to share its goodness with other things so the good in dows all other forms with goodness and indeed in dows all things were goodness so everything has a share of the good because that's how the good is so relationality and participation are very much if you like two sides of the same coin huh and this coin is a creative principle and I think only the biblical tradition only Judaism and Christianity can fully make sense of why the good would be creative because because of course the big problem in Plato is that the good is in some sense impersonal anonymous and also matter just pre-exists and neither really captures the nature the universe so the the biblical egg is absolutely central in explaining how days that all things come from God and tend towards God so the good or the beautiful are not stark and infertile realities that are simply abstracted but again you see there's a use of return ecstasy there's a there's an ecstatic expression and and a promulgation in some way yet that that is and and the Christian account gives us a is is it the personality of God that that gives us resources that Plato didn't have yes I think it's the personal nature of the creative principle that's so so crucial and really changes everything and also the idea that the personal creative principle creates everything out of nothing including matter mm-hmm because of course Plato was unable to explain why there would be anything like matter why a matter would be in some ways predisposed towards receiving form and so on and so forth and here I think it has to be said Aristotle already made a breakthrough when he spoke of act and potency ed he spoke of matter in terms of potency and form in terms of act and the interaction between the two I think explains much better how things are the way they are so I think Plato if I can be in some ways simplistic I think Plato's very good on in some ways why things are Aristotle is very good on how things are but ultimately neither really explains it fully and you need a biblically grounded Christian account to really make sense fully of how and why things are the way they are and the focus of the book of course is on individuation so how and why things are all in some ways unique and individual but my point is that they are so because there are relational and and I think it's that relationality which I find more in places and I find in Aristotle so individual things can't be understood individualistically as it were exactly because I think so much of modern thinking too in some ways make a huge leap in time from from antiquity to to the modern age so much of modern thinking focuses on individual substance individual essence or some variant thereof and and I think it always comes up against a very fundamental and simple question which is well why why would things be individual in the first place what makes them individual because much of modern thinking explains in great detail how individual things generate other individual things and that's of course very very important but there's little in critical engagement with wider individual in the first place and most modern thing is just posited as some kind of given and I just don't think that that adds up and that's I think where we need a metaphysics of relationality and participation but that can only be a theological one because no anonymous creative principle could explain in the end why it would want to issue forth into a multiplicity of individual things it doesn't even explain why the courage principle itself is is individual and I think a personal God who is both one and and three I think captures that paradox I think not just better than then played on our soul but just captures our paradox and that's why I think that the Christian tradition is so central to - all - all philosophy at the beginning of this segment I said that modern politics typically excludes discussion about the nature of things from political debate but political debate about good policies must be grounded in some idea about how to define the common good and behind visions of the common good there are usually unstated assumptions about the good perhaps one of the reasons our political conversations are so rancorous and so deadlocked is that we falsely assume that we can talk about things like creating wealth or promoting justice or redefining marriage without any discussion about what these things really are our deepest disagreements are finally metaphysical which is to say that they're finally theological but we're not allowed to bring such fundamental questions into public debate even though metaphysical and theological assumptions are regularly smuggled into our policies as a lecturer in politics at the University of Kent Adrienne papst is profoundly concerned with the practical consequences of metaphysical assumptions and believes that the practical problems we face will not be ameliorated without a more adequate and truthful framework of understanding take economics for example the Italian economist stefano de mani who has written a lot on civil economy and and has shaped the the most recent social encyclical Caritas in Veritate it has said very correctly I think in a in a recent chapter that the common good is not just the aggregate good it's not just a sum total of all individual goods the common good is in some sense an objective reality that we are all part of to varying degrees and so that when one person isn't flourishing in some sense no one is now once again people might be saying well isn't that a little bit naive or utopian you know how can you possibly achieve mutual flourishing across the board but the point is here not to say that we are talking about equal outcomes what this idea of common good in a very strong substantive way is all about is to say it's not about majorities versus minorities it's not the utilitarian calculus you know the greater happiness of the greater number it has to involve something that doesn't violate anyone's dignity so if anyone's dignity is violated and what kind of Mont cannot possibly speak of a just society of a just politics or indeed a just economy and in that sense we are really all part of this common good so it may sound very abstract but in the end it's actually quite concrete it's about the dignity of the person it's about human flourishing and these are not the same things as utility or happiness in the second chapter of the book you you make reference to Benedict the sixteenth famous Regensburg address which many people don't know that the title was actually three stages in the program of D hellenization which is somewhat cumbersome but you you suggest that he he provides a kind of vision of what you call an unrealized potential for an alternative modernity and I won't read the rest of the sentence but I assume you mean by alternative modernity that that modernity did emphasize the dignity of the individual as you've just been talking about that that modernity did want to affirm the reality of of the good in the individual but it but it went about it the the need we have for an alternative modernity is because modernity as we actually have lived through it affirm that dignity in a faulty way yes I think I think we've just said it's possibly the most charitable interpretation if I may say so yes that's good because we don't want to dismiss all of it you know all of its achievements and all all the progress that has nothing I've never been so charitable towards modernity so well it's it's it's curious that that my book has generated it anyway no I think it was the Holy Spirit well and we must be we must be generous especially in in adversary' but but I think that the point is indeed that modernity puts the emphasis on the individual but not so much on the person that's a an argument one can easily demonstrate I think we don't he puts the emphasis Indian more on individual happiness rather than some notion of the common good and I think crucially modernity somehow suggests that there's a almost like a linear monolithic path towards progress and towards sort of self fulfillment whereas I think the alternative modernity that per Benedict speaks to I think is a modernity that champions the dignity of the person the common good and does not view socio-economic progress as somehow the only means of delivering human flourishing on the contrary I think what's secular modernity does and I think second mobility is the dominant strand of modernity is indeed to neglect the costs of progress and in some ways the book suggests that Christian thinking isn't anti modern or a modern it's indeed perhaps even more modern than a lot of modern thinking because it actually follows through a lot of these intuitions but it does so along different lines lines that are more relational more reciprocal and I do think that that is a in alternative modernity that that doesn't fall into the trap of either individualism or collectivism Adrian lecturer in politics at the University of Kent a fellow of the centre of theology and philosophy and the author of metaphysics the creation of hierarchy

Channel: ObjectiveBob

Views: 3,786

Keywords: Adrian Pabst, John Milbank, metaphysics, philosophy, religion, God, theology, David Bentley Hart

Id: odmdAISZ5cs

Length: 24min 34sec (1474 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 10 2017