Class reflections
This week I took an intensive course at Meadville-Lombard Theological Seminary with Sharon Welch, author of A Feminist Ethic of Risk and several other books on postmodern ethics. She’s the new provost at Meadville, formerly the head of the religious studies department at UM-Columbia. I took the class primarily because we were covering Engaged Buddhism.
Overview
As my earlier reading summaries showed, I was ambivalent about the texts, especially some of the arguments for ethical pragmatism. Yet the class challenged me in a few unexpected ways. First, I was exposed to postcolonial history that I was not aware of before. I read Redemption, and others gave summaries of books like King Leopold’s Ghost (which tells the story of the creation of the Congo). Secondly, my understanding of epistemology was challenged. In seminary, I was introduced to Michael Polanyi and his ideas about bodily knowing, tacit knowing, etc. There, the question was "How do we know God?", and was a step away from foundationalism and extreme propositionalism. In my master’s program, I took a step back to more precise language about how we perceive the world, distinguishing between causes and reasons, etc. The question was "How do we know what is true?" This course, because it is framed by a continental approach, is more interested in social epistemology, or historical knowing. The authors challenged their readers, "Why does what you think is true count as ‘true’?"
In terms of Buddhism, I’ve been challenged to read the work of Fred Dallmyer, a continental philosopher who works in political philosophy, in a Heideggerian vein, but who has also examined the work of Nagarjuna and other Indian philosophers. From what I understand (I haven’t yet read him), he looks at the confluence between "Eastern" and "Western" philosophy.
Pragmatism
Dwayne asked me, in the last post, why Welch thinks pragmatism is really the only justifiable ethical response. The best I can do here is to cite Welch’s own words, in After Empire:
Criticizing John Rawl’s theory of ethics, she says it "misses the fact that what we want and see as socially valuable for ourselves and for others is already shaped by where we are now", and in Sweet Dreams in America she says there is no "foundation of moral action", and that "rules are swept aside by emotions, by fear and by short sightedness."
Her argument is that Enlightenment values resulted in oppression, and that any counterfactual argument (she cites Alan Dershowitz’s discussion of torture) is limited. Unfortunately, while she attempts to make claims that "truth is multiple", that "no standpoint is privileged", etc., I think she’s made some category mistakes. From my standpoint, she has confused rational justifications with rhetorical impact and historical outcomes. Because "Enlightenment values" didn’t result in freedom for women and people of color is no reason to jettison the whole structure. Perhaps there is room within those structures for the freedoms they overlooked because of bias.
Further, her example of Shulz refuting Dershowitz doesn’t avoid counterfactuals for history, but it merely hones the counterfactual! (Shulz says that the ticking bomb case overlooks the chances of authorities having information about the location of the bomb, the certainty that the detainee knows where it is, etc.)
But yes, Welch thinks attempts to outline ethical principles based on human capabilities (like Martha Nussbaum) will fail, because we cannot agree upon specifics of those capabilities in cultural contexts. Several times in class I asked her about Nussbaum, and I brought up Christine Korsgaard, too. Her emphasis is upon the "Beauty Way" of Pueblo Indians, the "skilled means" of Buddhists, and the recognition of beauty and interrelatedness as a motivation for ethical acting. And I kept asking, "how do we know what is beautiful?", "how do we know whether difference should be celebrated or overcome?", "what do you mean by ‘deep contact’?" etc.
Further Reading
However, I’m not an ethicist, so my major interest was the epistemological presupposition of the thinkers we read. Too, I think that while eschewing "metaphysics", and the priority of metaphysics over ethics, there is an implicit assumption about the self that guides ethical reflection. My paper is going to examine (with the help of Dallmyer, perhaps) how Engaged Buddhism’s view of the self guides its ethic, and how Welch’s view of the postmodern self guides hers–and whether the views are compatible and sufficient.
Also, I am continuing to read about John McDowell and his indebtedness to continental thinkers–and hoping to read some Hans Georg Gadamer at some point. McDowell cites Gadamer a few times, and his work has been, I understand, used across academic lines. I’d like to continue to understand Foucault, as well, and get some substantial critique of his historical conclusions, since I haven’t the scholarship to recognize where is is astray. As well, I want to continue to read about Dharmakirti and Nagarjuna’s philosophy, as a foil to the Western philosophers I’m working through.
Ultimately, I would like to be able to work through how it is that we are able to make conceptual shifts in history but at the same time have our individual epistemology connected to reality. I cannot deny that the history of knowledge is complex, but yet there is a biological similarity in our perception of the world. How do macro-concepts (by which I mean historical notions like "sexuality" or "self") arise from and engage with micro-concepts (the individual mind’s reflection on the world)? And how does the structure of reality play into all of this? I think back to Kant’s transcendental arguments and the Buddhist concept of dependent co-origination. In what ways is the world separate from our structuring of it, and how is it not?
I’ll continue to post reflections here as I have them–I have two articles, one on McDowell and one on Direct Realism, that I’m reading, as well as several from Dallmyer to look at. As always, clarifying questions, corrections are welcome!