Faith in the Flybottle

I teach medieval philosophy in fall 2021. One of the readings will be St. Augustine of Hippo's Contra Academicos (variously translated as "Against the Academicians," "Against Academics," or "An Answer to Skeptics"). This is a reading of Book 1, chapter 1, Augustine's dedicatory introduction to Romanianus.  

In today's episode, we get to visit one of the most famous texts in philosophy: Immanuel Kant's "Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?" While this short essay can be exciting for undergraduates who are (hopefully) starting to think for themselves, its implications for the religious and for philosophers of religion are less clear. Is tradition a bad thing? Is trusting one's "guardians" always worse than finding one's own answers to religious questions? Is the Enlightenment philosophy of modernity simply one more form of dogmatism? Ask yourself these and related questions while you listen to and think through passages of Kant's prose in German and English!

There is debate over whether the Swedish scientist-turned-theologian, Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), should be considered a philosopher or delusive mystic; a Christian or a heretic. In midlife, Swedenborg began to have mystical experiences that prompted him to write extensively of religious reform in light of a startling discovery: we are all living in the days after the Last Judgment. Nothing is as it seems. Beside becoming the inspiration for a new Christian religion, the "New Church," Swedenborg is best known for his works on "Heaven and Hell" and "Arcana Coelesitia" (Heavenly Mysteries), which the other 18th century Immanuel (Kant) read and was impacted by, for better or worse. 

Given that I want to one day spend a series of podcast episodes talking about Kant's philosophy of religion, I thought starting with some of Swedenborg's writings (which are and have become obscure) would be insightful. And given my preoccupation with the Problems of Evil, I thought the relatively short "Angelic Wisdom concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom" (1763), precursor to a treatise on Divine Providence, would be as good a place to start as any. 

It's just the reading today, but in the future, hopefully we can talk about it!

Today's episode picks up where we left off a couple weeks ago, debating Orual's and Psyche's relative moral and epistemic culpability for their religious disagreement. Mason figures out that I've been using the text as a "stimulus" for a philosophical "community of inquiry" style discussion while he prefers a more internal, literary, and hermaneutic approach: we may have been talking past each other. We also see that "Till We Have Faces" is Lewis' most successful attempt to retell a myth (the others being his prep school recasting of the Norse God Loki as a tragic hero and his partial translation of the Aeneid) and to call out fallen human rebelliousness against God and love. 

In today's episode, Mason, Ife, and I continue our discussion of C. S. Lewis' greatest novel - Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold. We touch on the Problem of Divine Hiddenness, —J. L. Schellenberg's formulation of the problem posed to the religious by the fact that God's existence (if God exists of course) remains hidden from many reasonable people— and how Lewis' characters illustrate the problem despite the book being written almost 40 years before Schellenberg's argument. We also bring up the skeptical problem posed by sincere religious faith, the differences between Orual and Psyche, and the importance of epistemic humility.

Wittgenstein once said that "An entire mythology is stored in our language" and we must plow through the whole of it (RFGB). One way to do that is to examine traditional myths, legends, and folktales in order to learn about past peoples and ourselves. Join me, Ann, Ife, and Mason to talk about one of my favorite books, Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis. We'll talk about the Stoic Fox, whether devouring always accompanies erotic desire, what it means and feels like to be "fallen," and what good hugs have to do with epistemology. 

If you need a summary of the original myth, check out TED Ed's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjj_-CPxjCM

Be sure to look at Giovanni Baglione's (1566-1643) "Sacred and Profane Love" https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baglione.jpg and Gustav Klimt's (1862-1918) "Die Umarmung" (The Embrace) from the Stoclet Palace Frieze: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Preparatory_design_-_Klimt_-_Stoclet_Palace.jpg

Today, my former students, Ann, Diego, Ife, Mason, and I complete our discussion on our Easter reading of Part I of Goethe's Faust. We try to get some of the details of Part II right, talk about why Faust was so arrogant with the Erdgeist, what it means to be made in the image of God, what magic and King Solomon (from the Bible) have to do with each other, and existential dread related to academia. 

Wittgenstein once wrote that culture is like an observance. Contemplating works of culture is an important part of the Wittgensteinian tradition. Since last Sunday was Easter and today is the Eastern Orthodox Pascha, get into the Easter season spirit by virtually meeting with four of my former undergraduate research assistants, Ann, Diego, Ife, and Mason to discuss themes and scenes from Goethe's Faust Part I. 

Be sure to check out the paintings that Ann and Ife refer to: Joseph Fay's "Faust and Mephisto in the Dungeon" and Hans Stubenrauch's "Apparition of the Earth Spirit"

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Fay,_Faust_und_Mephisto_im_Kerker,_1848.jpg 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stubenrauch_Erdgeist.jpg

In this episode, we continue our examination of Anselm's argument. First we'll correct some of Norman Malcolm's oversights and then take a look at Wittgenstein's distinction between relative and absolute value in his famous but misleading "Lecture on Ethics." We'll even catch a glimpse of one of Wittgenstein's own mystical experiences: the experience of feeling absolutely safe in the Hands of God. From absolute safety, we jump to absolute joy as I give an alternative Wittgensteinian twist to the final chapters of Anselm's argument.

In this episode, we examine the so-called "ontological argument" of Anselm of Bec (a.k.a. St. Anselm of Canterbury). We'll take a look at the inner turmoil that drove Anselm to write two great works of medieval philosophy: the Monologion and Proslogion, and how this connects to prayer as thinking about the meaning of life. We will also focus on the American Wittgensteinian philosopher, Norman Malcolm's defence of Anselm's argument against philosophers following Kant. Malcolm believes that Anselm's argument shows that God's infinite reality is unlike any other and is closely connected to the human need for infinite forgiveness. 

What is prayer? What does it mean for someone to pray? In this episode, I examine the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, a remark by the early Wittgenstein on prayer, and the first book in the tradition of Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, the Concept of Prayer by D. Z. Phillips (1934-2006). Find out why Wittgenstein thought prayer is thinking about the meaning of life, how this changed, and why Phillips thought philosophy of religion was harder than building the Tower of Babel.

In this pilot episode, I'll be breaking down the importance of having a clear overview (übersichtliche Darstellung) for the Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), one of the most famous but obscure philosophers of the 20th century. From the forbidding and paradoxical "God's eye point of view" of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, to the humbler ordinary point of view of every day life in the Philosophical Investigations, perspective is everything for Wittgenstein and can turn useless junk and broken lives into works of art.