Arche Vol. I, No. 1 (Fall 2015)

A Journal Published by the Philosophy and Political Theory Students of Patrick Henry College

STAFF & CONTRIBUTORS editor-in-chief

Samuel Cordle senior editor publication manager

Sarah Dunford senior editor

Sarah Crandall assistant editor

Kyle Snyder

assistant editor

Lanson Ho’opai

The Arche Journal of Philosophy and Political Theory is an undergraduate journal publishing academic essays on topics of philosophy proper and political theory.

Arche (Ἀρχή) is an ancient Greek word meaning “beginning” or “origin.”

Carrying the idea of a source or ground of being from which other things flow, it captures the purpose of this journal: to present careful writing dealing with first principles and the deepest questions of reality and human life.

Essays in the journal represent the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily the views of Patrick Henry College or the editors.

Patrick Henry College 10 Patrick Henry Circle Purcellville, VA 20132 (540) 338-1776 archejournal@gmail.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Authors of the respective essays in this publication retain copyright privileges.

Copyright © 2015 • Printed in the United States of America.

TA B LE O F C O N T EN T S Letter from the Editor

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Of Matter and Mind:

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A Critique of Physicalism

By Francis Richard Riggs

The Problem of Divine Perfection and Freedom:

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The Failure of Indeterminism:

40

The Tyranny of Tolerance:

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Book Reviews

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The Grace, Creative Freedom, and Beauty of God

By Timothy Hsu

God’s Nature and the Definition of Freedom

By Samuel Cordle

A Diagnosis and Prescription

By Katie Montoya

The World Beyond Your Head

By Matthew B. Crawford Reviewed by Sarah Crandall

To Flourish or Destruct

By Christian Smith Reviewed by Sarah Dunford

LET TER FROM THE EDITOR

Why Read a Philosophy Journal: A Call to Humble Rigor in Intellectual Life Careful thinking takes time and perseverance. Properly understanding complex realities requires certain intellectual virtues, including patience, diligence, and humility, all of which connect to the love of knowledge and truth.

Though all academic pursuits require the cultivation and exercise of certain virtuous dispositions of the mind, theoretical studies like philosophy require particular care. Tackling the fundamental questions of reality and human existence involves the patience to invest the time needed to understand concepts that are not easily grasped, the knowledge-loving diligence to address difficult issues and exercise the mind in the task of contemplation, and the humility to recognize the limits of one’s understanding and the complexity of some issues which defy systematization. A student of philosophy with these virtues will not settle for the simple explanation merely for the sake of its simplicity. He combats his appetite for immediate intellectual gratification. Instead of quickly solving a problem and moving on, he is willing to embark on a journey of thought, to puzzle over deep questions, and to follow ideas to their conclusions.

Alexis de Tocqueville warned about the vicious tendency of intellectual restlessness in democratic societies. The democratic citizen “does all things in haste, contents himself with approximations, and never stops but for a moment to consider each of his acts. His curiosity is at once insatiable and satisfied at little cost, for he insists on knowing very quickly rather than on knowing well.

He scarcely has the time and he soon loses the taste for going into depth. . . . The habit of inattention ought to be considered the greatest vice of the democratic mind.”1 Precision, depth of understanding, and careful expression more readily come for those who love knowledge and truth enough to engage in an intellectual life of humble rigor. Reality does not always fit into neat categories. Even careful and precise study does not necessarily, and often should not, produce clean distinctions or systematic solutions to deep questions. Though it seeks deeper understanding of complex realities, the pursuit of knowledge guided by intellectual virtues does not primarily seek to discover or construct a system. With humility the student can recognize that complexity may not vanish even with advanced understanding and can discern which questions may not have readily apparent, simple solutions.

Of course, simplicity is not inherently suspect. Truth is sometimes quite 1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 584.

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simple. However, for the many times when truth may not correspond to the simplified, bare categories humans create, the danger of falling into ideology should motivate particular care. Oversimplification and reductionism provide the perfect tools for the exploitation of less-than-thorough understandings of ideas and issues through ideological power play. Simplicity is not the same as clarity and is not an end in itself. Encapsulating complex ideas in slogans fosters debates and shouting matches—or worse—but not careful understanding and constructive dialogue. What Russell Kirk called the “drug of ideology” George Orwell foresaw in his description of “the streamlined men who think in slogans and talk in bullets.”2 To resist succumbing to the ideological hijacking of intellectual life, we must recognize that answering deep questions matters profoundly. Not only do philosophical views deeply affect how we live our lives, but the process of wrestling with these deep questions is, at least in part, what makes us distinctly human. Living the good life, the life of truly human flourishing, involves slowing down, acting and thinking with more care, and taking the time actually to contemplate the good, the true, and the beautiful. In some ways, the process of thought is as important and beneficial as arriving at the right theoretical conclusion, at least in terms of human flourishing.

This journal presents attempts at careful theoretical thought by students of philosophy and political theory. “Of Matter and Mind” critiques the metaphysical theory of physicalism, which denies mind-independent non-physical realities.

The physicalist-realist debate has myriad implications for the conception of the human soul, God, and many other ideas. “The Problem of Divine Perfection and Freedom” and “The Failure of Indeterminism” consider the question in the philosophy of religion of divine freedom, a discussion which influences views about God’s relationship with his creation and especially with man, as well as views on the nature of freedom in general. “The Tyranny of Tolerance” examines the political and social consequences of a particular view of freedom and tolerance.

Finally, the book reviews section considers two recently published books that deal with human nature and the effects of society upon it. Take time to wrestle with these questions. Revel in the gift of intellectual inquiry, and do not rush through to conclusions and talking points too quickly. A careful examination of questions such as the ones these papers present will lead to a more richly realized humanity and a fuller life.

Cogitate profunde, Samuel Cordle 2. Russell Kirk, “The Drug of Ideology,” in The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007), 348-365. George Orwell, Coming Up for Air (Orlando, FL: Mariner Books, 1969), 186.

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OF MATTER AND MIND A CRITIQUE OF PHYSICALISM Francis Richard Riggs

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n Philosophical Naturalism, David Papineau promotes a physicalist understanding of the mind. To Papineau, all mental states are identical to physical states, and there are no mental phenomena that are distinguishable or separable from physical phenomena.

Papineau’s argument for his position is primarily negative: since there is no good reason to accept dualism, one should accept physicalism by default. He defines dualism as “any theory which holds that certain mental states M involve certain conscious characteristics C, and then insists that no physical state P could possibly have those characteristics.”1 This broad definition incorporates any position which holds that the mental is qualitatively distinct from the physical, and so it includes substance dualism, property dualism, and epiphenomenalism. Papineau considers two arguments favoring the dualist position, but he argues that both are guilty of the antipathetic fallacy. He argues that there is no good reason to suppose that “internal” descriptions of subjective conscious experiences and “external” descriptions of brain states refer to different things. Since all arguments for dualism have failed, one should opt for his simpler philosophical position. However, Papineau’s physicalism fails to provide an adequate account of subjective conscious experiences. To show this, I will begin by criticizing his analysis of dualism’s epistemic status. Due to its intuitive appeal, I will argue that dualism is prima facie justified. Since there is no evidence for physicalism or against dualism, I will argue that one should accept dualism, not physicalism, as 1. David Papineau, Philosophical Naturalism (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993), 27.

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the default philosophical position. After this, I will present reasons for rejecting his theory of mind. Specifically, I will argue that mental states cannot be identified with physiological or functional states. Because there is at least one mental state that is not identical to any physical state, I will conclude that Papineau’s position is false.

E xposition In the first chapter, David Papineau presents his conception of physicalism.

Very broadly, “[p]hysicalism is the thesis that everything is physical.”2 Papineau’s view is more nuanced than this statement, and so he carefully describes the defining characteristics of his physicalist theory. He writes, “For the purposes of this book, then, physicalism will mean the conjunction of supervenience and token congruence.”3 Supervenience, on the one hand, refers to the supervenience of everything upon the physical. That is, “two systems cannot differ chemically, or biologically, or psychologically, or whatever, without differing physically.”4 As such, if two systems are physically identical, then they are identical in every other way. Although supervenience is necessary for physicalism, it is not sufficient. As he notes, epiphenomenalism is consistent with supervenience upon the physical, for it holds that mental states are causally determined by the physical yet “float above” the brain. For this reason, physicalism must hold “that the mental is in some sense the same substance as the physical.”5 In order to understand Papineau’s concept of token congruence, let us briefly overview type identity and token identity. On the one hand, a type is “a general kind of thing that can be in more than one place at the same time or at the same place at different, interrupted times.”6 In contrast, a token is “an individual, particular instance of a type.” 7 For example, consider God’s declaration to Moses: “I AM WHO I AM.”8 How many words are in this statement? If “word” is construed as a token, then there are five words. However, if “word” is construed as a type, then there are three words (“I,” “am,” and “who”). These two concepts provide different ways of construing identity. In the context of mental and physical properties, type identity consists in some type of mental state (e.g., pain) being identical to some type of brain state. Papineau considers this sort of 2. Daniel Stoljar, “Physicalism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/physicalism/ (accessed February 27, 2015).

3. Papineau, 13.

4. Ibid., 10.

5. Ibid., 11.

6. James Porter Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 251.

7. Ibid.

8. Exod. 3:14 (English Standard Version).

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identity to be insufficient for many sorts of psychological properties. As he notes, if the human psychological state of being worried about the future were identical to some neurophysiological state, then it would be impossible for aliens with silicon-based brains to be worried about the future in the same way. To Papineau, mind-body identity must involve some sort of token identity. According to token identity theory, “every token mental event is some token physical event or other.” 9 That is, there is not one type of neurophysiological state which every instance of worrying about the future must match. Rather, every instance of worrying about the future will be identical to some physical state. However, Papineau holds that “there are various ways of filling out this notion” of token identity.10 In fact, he seems to blend the two concepts together in his understanding of token congruence. He writes, Henceforth I shall assume that there are two ways in which instantiations of properties can be ‘token congruent’. The straightforward case is type identity: the two properties involved are the same property. The other case is realization: even though the two properties are not the same property, the instantiation of one is realized by the instantiation of the other.11

According to Papineau’s understanding, type identity can satisfy the requirements of token identity. After all, whenever two types are identical, instantiations or occurrences of those types (i.e., tokens) will also be identical. This understanding of token congruence, together with supervenience, constitutes Papineau’s definition of physicalism.

Based on this understanding of physicalism, Papineau argues that “there is in fact no good motivation for the dualist view of consciousness.”12 In order to show that dualism is preferable, one must show that certain mental phenomena cannot be identified or explained in terms of physical states. According to Papineau, dualist arguments have failed to meet this burden. First, he considers Thomas Nagel’s argument against reductionist accounts of physicalism with respect to consciousness.13 According to Nagel, our present understanding of physics cannot account for the subjective character of experience. The reductive analyses 9. Linda Wetzel, “Types and Tokens,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/types-tokens/ (accessed February 27, 2015).

10. Papineau, 12.

11. Ibid., 24.

12. Ibid., 103.

13. Interestingly, Papineau lists Nagel’s article among the “recent arguments for dualism” (104). It is worth noting that Nagel’s article does not specifically argue that dualism is true or even that physicalism is false. Rather, Nagel argues only against a particular formulation of physicalism (reductive physicalism).

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provided by modern physicalism fail, for such accounts (whether physiological or functional) are logically compatible with the absence of consciousness. This does not entail that physicalism is false, but that “We do not have the beginnings of a conception of how it might be true.”14 In response to this, Papineau acknowledges that subconscious experiences do indeed exist, but they are identical to some physical state. He writes, “So, physicalists can say that the difference between bats, who have echolocatory experiences, and humans, who do not, is simply that certain physical events, namely those which constitute echolocatory experiences, occur in bats, but not in humans.”15 Next, Papineau responds to Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument against physicalism. In the article “What Mary Didn’t Know,” Jackson presents a thought experiment which shows the insufficiency of purely physical knowledge.

Mary, who grew up in a black-and-white environment, attained an exhaustive knowledge of the world’s physical nature. As such, she knew everything there was to know about physics, chemistry, and neurophysiology. Now, as Jackson argues, “[P]hysicalists must hold that complete physical knowledge is complete knowledge simpliciter.”16 However, when Mary experiences red for the first time, she learns something new—something which was not included within her exhaustive knowledge of the world’s physical nature. For this reason, Jackson concludes that physicalism is false. Although Papineau concedes that Mary did learn something new when experiencing red for the first time, he denies that “these [differences] involve her becoming acquainted with some subjective feature of colour experience.”17 That is, Mary’s new knowledge does not consist in the acquisition of new information per se, but in the ability to re-create and re-identify her experiences. As he writes, “[H]er original experience of seeing red is not that she acquires some new item of knowledge, but simply that she can now do something she could not do before, namely re-create that experience in imagination and memory.”18 It is worth noting that Papineau does not deny that new experiences lead to the acquisition of new concepts. Prior to experiencing red, Mary had third-person concepts about what it is like to experience red. After experiencing red, Mary had both third-person and first-person concepts of experiencing red. However, Papineau argues that the two concepts refer to the same thing.

Experience does not reveal new features about the world, but “new experiences 14. Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” The Philosophical Review 83, no. 4 (October 1974), 447.

15. Papineau, 105-6.

16. Frank Jackson, “What Mary Didn’t Know,” The Journal of Philosophy 83, no. 5 (May 1986), 291.

17. Papineau, 107.

18. Ibid., 108-9.

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lead to our acquiring new concepts for thinking about those features.”19 As such, he argues that “there is no reason to suppose that such first-person concepts are not co-referential with third-person concepts of experience.”20 When dualists argue that first-person and third-person concepts refer to different things, they commit the antipathetic fallacy. Although the distinction between first-person and third-person modes of thought makes the antipathetic fallacy tempting, it is nevertheless unsound. Since such an inference is unwarranted, one should remain with the simpler conclusion: third-person and third-person describe the same entity. For example, Mary’s first-person concept of seeing red (i.e., what it is like to experience redness) and her third-person concept of seeing red (i.e., the physical description of her brain state when she perceived red) referred to the exact same thing. Although both concepts are obtained from different perspectives, they both describe some physical state.

In the absence of any compelling reasons to accept dualism, one should accept a physicalist account of consciousness. As noted earlier, this view holds that every mental state is identical to or is realized by some physical state. Papineau anticipates a certain sort of objection to his physicalist view. It seems natural to question why, exactly, consciousness emerges in some physical states and not others. Numerous physicalist philosophers, such as David Armstrong and Daniel Dennett, have provided theories which identify certain physical states common to all conscious experiences. However, one might object that such theories merely identify physically acceptable characteristics (what Papineau refers to as “A”) without explaining why those states are conscious and not others. In response to this, Papineau denies that consciousness is something which merely accompanies A. He writes, “Being conscious isn’t something over and above having A, it just is having A.”21 To suggest that consciousness is not simply having A is to commit the antipathetic fallacy. Moreover, the physicalist has no burden to explain why they are the same, just as one need not explain why Mark Twain and Samuel Clemens were the same person: “If they really are the same thing, then we can’t explain why they are the same thing.”22 At the end of the fourth chapter, Papineau explains how token congruence operates within his physicalist paradigm. As he notes, it can be difficult to specify one particular sort of physical state to which all mental states are identical.

On the one hand, if all mental states were equated with physiological states, then it would be impossible for creatures with different brain compositions (say, creatures with silicone-based brains) to experience consciousness. For this rea19. Papineau, 111.

20. Ibid., 114.

21. Ibid., 120.

22. Ibid., 121.

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son, one might be tempted to identify all mental states with functional states (“being-in-a-state-which-disposes-you-to-certain-sorts-of-behavior”).23 On the other hand, there are thought experiments which show that some mental states are probably physiological rather than functional. Suppose, for instance, that one is born with malfunctioning retinas, and she perceives all green objects as red. Due to her retinal defect, she would react to her “green” mental states in the same way that others respond to “red” mental states, which entails that these mental states are not merely functional. To resolve these conflicting intuitions about the identity of mental states, Papineau suggests that both may be correct in varying extents. That is, some mental states (e.g., pain and spatial perception) are best identified as functional states, while other mental states (e.g., experiences of color) are probably physiological states. Since both functional states and physiological states satisfy Papineau’s concept of token congruence, and since all mental states are functional or physiological, then all instantiated mental states are identical to some specific physical state.

Evaluation The Epistemic Status of Physicalism Before examining the truth or falsity of Papineau’s position, it is worth examining the epistemic statuses of dualism and physicalism. After all, whether Papineau’s arguments are persuasive or not largely depends on which position is the rational “default.” In this context, the “default” position refers to whichever side is rationally preferable in the absence of positive evidence or counterevidence for either position. The default position might be said to be prima facie justified.

As Moreland and Craig write, a person is prima facie justified in holding a belief “just in case that person holds the belief in question and has no good reason to think that he is not justified in doing so, in other words, he has no reason to think that there are defeaters of the belief sufficient on balance to remove the justification for the belief.”24 For example, if dualism is the default position, then one is justified in accepting it if there is no evidence in favor of physicalism and if there is no counterevidence to dualism. Conversely, if physicalism is the default position, then one should prefer it to dualism, all other things being equal. Throughout Philosophical Naturalism, Papineau promotes the latter view: physicalism should be accepted by default if there is no positive evidence to show that dualism is true. As he writes, “I want to argue that there is in fact no good motivation for the dualist view of consciousness, and that we should 23. Papineau, 133.

24. Moreland and Craig, 113-114.

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therefore uphold the simple physicalist position that all mental states, including conscious states, are identical with or realized by physical states.”25 Presumably, this diagnosis stems from the application of Ockham’s Razor to the mind-body problem. Since physicalism postulates fewer entities than dualistic positions, it is rationally preferable by default.

However, Papineau’s epistemic diagnosis is faulty. First, his understanding is inconsistent with his portrayal of dualism as a commonsense position. At the beginning of his discussion on the antipathetic fallacy, he acknowledges the intuitive appeal of dualism: “However, it would be foolish to deny that such intuitions [that conscious experiences are not identical to brain states] exist. Such non-physicalist intuitions exert a strong pull on all of us, even on physicalist philosophers like myself who are committed to rejecting them.”26 At first glance, it seems that such intuitive appeal ought to be sufficient to provide non-physicalism with prima facie justification. After all, according to Michael Huemer’s principle of phenomenal conservatism (PC), “If it seems to one as if P, then one is thereby at least prima facie justified in believing that P.”27 By this criterion, dualism receives prima facie justification, for it certainly seems—as Papineau himself notes—that conscious experiences are not identical to brain states. Moreover, PC seems to be a highly plausible criterion for prima facie justification. Due to the length of this paper, it is impossible to provide an adequate treatment of the arguments in favor of PC. Suffice it to say that we accept most (if not all) of our fundamental beliefs about reality solely upon the basis that they seem to be the case. Consider, for example, my belief that there is a coffee cup to the left of my keyboard. It is certainly possible that my belief is incorrect—perhaps I am hallucinating—and I cannot provide a compelling argument for this belief without already assuming the reliability of my sensory experiences. However, it really does seem to me that there is a cup to the left of my keyboard, and I am rationally justified in accepting my belief for this reason. As such, if PC is correct—which seems likely—then dualism, not physicalism, is the default philosophical position.

Of course, Papineau does not believe that the intuitive appeal of dualism is sufficient to warrant its acceptance. After all, he argues that people instinctively commit the antipathetic fallacy even though physicalism is true. As he writes, “[I]t is all too easy to conclude, when we reflect on the difference between these two categories of thought, that only the first-person thoughts really refer to experiences, while the third-person thoughts refer to nothing except physical 25. Papineau, 103.

26. Ibid., 115.

27. Michael Huemer, Skepticism and the Veil of Perception (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001), xii.

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states.”28 For this reason, people naturally find themselves believing that conscious experiences are not identical to physical states. Since the intuitive appeal of dualism can be explained just as easily by physicalism, there is no good reason why we should prefer dualism.

However, Papineau’s assessment has two problems: the antipathetic fallacy is not actually a fallacy, and explaining the intuitive appeal of a belief does not itself undermine its prima facie justification. To see why his position fails, let us consider the following scenario. Suppose that Bill, a solipsistic philosopher, seeks to criticize the ontologically-bloated position adopted by Ted, who is a metaphysical realist. To Bill, there is no particularly compelling set of reasons to posit the existence of other conscious minds and an external world. However, Bill realizes that the position held by Ted has a strong intuitive appeal. Nevertheless, Bill accuses Ted of the antipathetic fallacy, and he provides an explanation for intuitions that favor realism. As it turns out, there are two ways of thinking about our conscious experiences: self-thoughts and other-thoughts. Typically, selfthoughts are understood as referring to one’s own being, while other-thoughts are understood as referring to things external to oneself. Due to the distinction between self-thoughts and other-thoughts, it certainly is tempting to infer that the two thoughts refer to different things, and so it is only natural to conclude that an external world exists. However, according to Bill, to make such an inference is to commit the antipathetic fallacy. Simply put, there is no good reason to suppose that other-thoughts refer to things outside of our conscious experience.

In the absence of any arguments in favor of realism, Ted should accept the simpler position that both self-thoughts and other-thoughts refer to the same thing: subjective conscious experiences. Since solipsism provides ontological parsimony, and since solipsism can sufficiently explain the intuitive appeal of realism, Bill concludes that solipsism is the default philosophical position.

To most people, it seems obvious that Bill somehow misdiagnosed the respective epistemic statuses of solipsism and realism. However, his arguments in favor of solipsism closely resemble those in favor of physicalism, and Papineau’s argument fails for the same reasons as Bill’s. First, it does not seem that the antipathetic fallacy is a fallacy at all. After all, fallacies are errors in reasoning, but the modes of thought attributed to the antipathetic fallacy do not involve logical inferences. On brief reflection, it simply seems that subjective experiences are qualitatively distinct from physical phenomena, just as it simply seems that there is an external world beyond one’s own conscious experiences.29 These 28. Papineau, 115.

29. Of course, there are good arguments for believing that conscious experiences are not identical to physical states, and I will consider some of these arguments later in this paper. However, it is worth noting that such arguments are based upon the intuitive understanding that something

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intuitions do not resemble inference, but perception. As Moreland and Craig write, intuition is a “direct awareness of something that is directly present to consciousness.”30 Since the intuitive appeal of dualism does not stem from faulty inferences, it seems fallacious to accuse dualists of committing the antipathetic fallacy. Second, from the fact that solipsism and physicalism can explain the intuitive appeal of realism and dualism respectively, it does not follow that the latter positions are deprived of prima facie justification. For example, let us consider the belief that my memory is more or less reliable. Since this belief seems to be the case, it is prima facie justified (as per PC). Now, suppose that someone tells me that my memory is actually malfunctioning. According to his depiction, some of my cognitive faculties spontaneously produce false beliefs about the past.

Suppose that I inform him of my contrary observations, but he simply asserts that I would believe that my memory was reliable even if were malfunctioning.

Clearly, however, I would still be justified in believing that my memory is reliable even though the intuitive appeal of this belief can be explained otherwise.

If there is no evidence to suppose that my belief is false, then I am still justified in accepting its truth. The same principle applies to realism and dualism. If these beliefs are prima facie justified—which seems likely in light of PC—then the existence of alternate possible explanations for their intuitive appeal does nothing to undermine their justification. Therefore, if dualism is as intuitive as Papineau believes; if there is no positive evidence in favor of physicalism; and if there is no counterevidence to dualism, then dualism is prima facie justified, and therefore it should be accepted as the default philosophical position.

Mental and Physical Causation As it turns out, there are no compelling arguments in favor of physicalism.

As noted earlier, physicalism is the conjunction of supervenience and token congruence. Now, taken by itself, supervenience does not make physicalism more probable than dualism. After all, supervenience holds simply that, if two systems are physically identical, then they will be identical in every other way (or, conversely, two systems cannot differ without differing physically). However, dualism is perfectly consistent with the notion that mental states correspond to physical states. A dualist can hold that differing mental states directly correlate to differing physical states without holding that mental states are identical to physical states. As such, positive arguments in favor of physicalism must consist about subjective conscious experiences is simply different from what is intuitively understood as physical. As Nagel notes, it is simply difficult to see how the subjective character of experience could be a physical phenomenon.

30. Moreland and Craig, 72.

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in arguments for token congruence, and so we must consider Papineau’s arguments in support of token congruence. Papineau writes, “My overall argument for token congruence is that the completeness of physics and the causal influence of the mental, plus the absurdity of the overdetermination of all behavior, imply that mental causes must in some sense be the same causes as physical causes.”31 Now, this argument consists in two distinct claims: the completeness of physics and the causal influence of the mental make token congruence probable, while the absurdity of overdetermination makes dualism improbable. However, both of these claims are faulty, and neither establishes the truth of physicalism.

For Papineau, the completeness of physics provides both the strongest evidence for physicalism and the strongest counterevidence for dualism. According to this principle, “[P]hysics, unlike the other special sciences, is complete, in the sense that all physical events are determined, or have their chances determined, by prior physical events according to physical laws.”32 In other words, all physical events have physical causes. As such, any physical human events (behaviors, neurochemical reactions, etc.) can be explained with strictly physical causes. If there are mental causes, they must be understood as a subset of physical causes.

Since there are no nonphysical causes, dualism is false. Now, the strength of this argument seems to be contingent upon the strength of his underlying principle.

It is important to note that the completeness of physics is supported by inductive inference. He writes, “I am here making an empirical claim. The history of science yields a great deal of empirical evidence about the kind of causes that are responsible for the motion of stones and other kinds of matter . . . . [Empirical evidence] provide[s] sufficient grounds for concluding that mental categories are not among them.”33 As such, this argument can be falsified by providing an example of a physical event which is not caused by physical causes.

To see whether this principle is sound, let us carefully examine the structure of his inductive inference. His argument seems to adopt the following form: [1] All observed physical events have physical causes.

[2] All neurophysiological events are physical events.

[3] Therefore, all neurophysiological events have physical causes.

This sort of inference can be understood in probabilistic terms: the strength of its conclusion depends upon whether its premises make it probable. As it turns out, there may be good reason for supposing that [3] is not probable in respect to [1] and [2]. After all, the category of “physical events” is broader than the 31. Papineau, 26.

32. Ibid., 16.

33. Ibid., 31.

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category of “observed physical events.” Now, if there is no reason to suppose that any neurophysiological events are dissimilar to all other observed events, then the inference seems strong. However, one type of neurophysiological event—acts of volition—seems to be qualitatively distinct from all other physical events. In regards to acts of volition, there seems to be an intuitive hesitance to attribute those actions to deterministic physical causes. For example, it seems intuitively wrong to suppose that my decision to write this sentence is simply brought forth by a chain of physical causes in the same way that a bowling ball causes a pin to fall over. Moreover, when we interact with other people, we do not instinctively understand their actions as merely the byproduct of impersonal chemical reactions. Without further investigation, there seems to be prima facie justification for believing that acts of volition are not caused by strictly physical causes. No other physical events share this feature—there is no prima facie justification for believing, say, that a falling stone is not caused by a physical cause. For this reason, there might be prima facie justification for believing that the completeness of physics is false.

Of course, it does not follow that the completeness of physics is entirely false. After all, it seems obvious that most physical phenomena are caused by physical events in something like a deterministic fashion. However, inferences drawn from bodies of non-volitional events do not immediately apply to acts of volition. From the fact that all non-volitional physical events have physical causes, it does not follow that all volitional events also have physical causes. In order for the completeness of physics to be relevant to the mind-body problem, there must be empirical evidence showing that acts of volition are caused by physical events. Here, we should specify exactly what sort of evidence is required for the completeness of physics to apply to volitional acts. First, it is not sufficient to show merely that stimulating certain portions of the brain will cause an individual to perform certain actions involuntarily. After all, we are not interested in discovering whether neurophysiological events are responsible for physically causing external actions, for this has been shown to be true. In addition, it is not sufficient to show merely that an act of volition directly causes some neurochemical reaction. Rather, the issue of primary concern is whether physical events cause a person to choose to perform a certain action. As such, there must be experimental data which shows that the neurophysiological events associated with conscious acts of choice are caused by prior physical events in a roughly deterministic fashion. As far as I am aware, no such data presently exists.34 If such data did exist at the time Papineau was writing, he did not consider it important 34. I was unable to find anyone who provided scientific evidence to show that the neurophysiological events associated with choice are themselves caused solely by prior neurophysiological events. Others, like Papineau, provided inductive philosophical arguments for their positions.

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enough to mention. Rather, he simply dismisses the possibility that any mental events are caused by nonphysical causation. As he writes, “I think we have good empirical reason to reject this possibility as absurd.”35 Now, there would be good empirical reason to support his claim only if it could be shown that inferences obtained from empirical observations of non-volitional events applied equally to volitional events. This is not at all obvious, and we even have prima facie justification in believing that volitional events are not caused by purely physical events.

For this reason, we are not justified in accepting the completeness of physics, and so his argument for token congruence fails.

For the same reasons, his argument against dualism also fails. Papineau argues that, if the completeness of physics is true, and if nonphysical mental causes also exist, then human actions would be overdetermined. That is, for every human action, there would be two sufficient causes responsible for its occurrence.

He writes, “So it follows that your arm rising has two causes: a mental cause, your decision, and also a physical cause, your neurones [sic] firing.”36 As he notes, such a conclusion seems absurd at face value. In order to satisfy the completeness of physics, he identifies mental causes with physical causes and thereby avoids the absurdity of over-determination. For the sake of argument, I will not contest the absurdity of overdetermination (although it might not be quite as absurd as he makes it out to be). However, his argument fails to establish that dualism is false. Papineau shows simply that certain forms of dualism are incompatible with his conception of physical determinism (i.e., the completeness of physics).

First, this argument does nothing to undermine those forms of dualism which are compatible with the absence of mental causation (i.e., epiphenomenalism). If our conclusions about the epistemic status of dualism are correct, then physical determinism should lead one to accept epiphenomenalism rather than physicalism. In addition, there is no compelling reason why dualists should feel obliged to affirm the completeness of physics. As noted earlier, our intuitions about the causes responsible for human acts of volition seem to provide prima facie justification for supposing that physical determinism is false, and there is no available counterevidence which would undermine that prima facie justification. In fact, one might simply argue that the truth of dualism entails the falsity of physical determinism. As our previous discussions have shown, dualism stands in an epistemically superior position to the completeness of physics, so this inference would be justified. Since dualism is prima facie justified; since there is no positive evidence in support of physicalism; and since there is no counterevidence to dualism, then one should accept dualism over physicalism.

35. Papineau, 32.

36. Ibid., 22.

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Problems with Physicalism At this point, one might object to the epistemic burden which has been placed on the side of physicalism. Perhaps not all physicalists would, like Papineau, acknowledge that dualism has a strong intuitive appeal. Perhaps it might not seem intuitively obvious that subjective conscious experiences cannot be identified with physical states. Alternatively, one might deny that intuitive appeal is sufficient to confer prima facie justification—perhaps Huemer’s principle of phenomenal conservatism is incorrect. For the sake of argument, let us suppose that these objections are valid. Let us suppose that neither dualism nor physicalism enjoys prima facie justification. Now, even if physicalism did share this epistemic equality with dualism at face value, there still seem to be good reasons for believing that it is false. As noted earlier, Papineau’s theory is contingent upon the idea that conscious experiences can be identified with either physiological states or functional states. If these physical states alone are incapable of providing a sufficient account of subjective conscious experiences, then there is strong counterevidence for physicalism and, in turn, strong evidence for dualism.

Before discussing this, however, let us briefly consider the criterion by which we shall examine their identity. According to Leibniz’s Law of Identity, then if x and y are identical, then everything that is true of x is true of y, and vice versa.37 In other words, identical entities will have exactly the same properties: if x has one property that y does not, or if x lacks one property that y possesses, then x and y are not identical. Since this law is noncontroversial, and since it seems intuitively true, I will use it to examine the mind-body problem. If mental states are identical to physical states, then mental states will have exactly the same properties as their corresponding physical states, and vice versa. So, if it turns out that at least some mental states are not identical to physical states according to Leibniz’s Law, then physicalism is false.

On the one hand, it seems that mental states are not identical to physiological states. For our purposes, let us consider Papineau’s belief that physicalism is probably true. Let us refer to the mental state of belief in physicalism as MS1, and let us refer to its corresponding physiological state for this belief as PS1.

Now, according to a type theory of identity, if MS1 is identical to PS1, then MS1 is identical to some particular type of physiological state. Accordingly, all instantiations of MS1 will be identical to PS1. However, if this were true, then it would be possible only for humans (or beings with the same brain structure) to believe that physicalism is true; after all, PS1 signifies a distinctly human physiological state. However, it is conceivable that beings with different brain compositions and structures could believe in physicalism. Let us consider, for example, Pa37. E. J. Lowe, A Survey of Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 23.

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pineau’s “silicon-based denizens of Proxima Centauri’s third planet.”38 If these intelligent aliens are capable of believing that physicalism is true—which seems consistent with Papineau’s depiction—then it must be possible for them to have MS1 without having PS1. Since MS1 possibly exists without PS1, and since PS1 cannot possibly exist without PS1, then at least one thing is true about MS1 that is not true about PS1. For this reason, the two types are not identical.

However, Papineau himself understands the problems associated with a type theory of identity in respect to the mind-body problem. As such, he considers a token theory of identity to be sufficient for the identification of the mental with the physical. As noted earlier, a token theory of identity holds that “[i]ndividual mental state tokens are always identical to individual physical state tokens even if no general conditions can be stated for identifying mental state types with physical state types.”39 According to this theory, mental state MS1 might be realized by PS1 in one being and PS2 in another being. So, both humans and silicon-based aliens could believe that physicalism is true even though their brains have different physical compositions. Although token theory solves one problem, it introduces another: what, exactly, places PS1 and PS2 in the same category?

Surely the unifying element of PS1 and PS2 is not some physiological property, for we, like Papineau, are assuming that humans and silicon-based aliens have radically different physiologies. In order for PS1 and PS2 to realize the same mental state, there must be some reason why PS3 (the physiological state which realizes, say, the sensation of smell in aliens) does not also realize MS1. It will not be sufficient to cite some similar physiological structure between PS1 and PS2 that is not shared by PS3, for such a maneuver would simply revert to type identity. If the MS1 realized by PS1 is identical to the MS1 realized by PS2, then its identity must consist in some non-physiological property. It seems that dualism better explains the unity of token physiological states. As Moreland and Craig write in a similar discussion, “The dualist would say that all pain tokens are members of the type known as pain because each individual pain possesses something in common that is the essence of each pain: a specific type of conscious feeling.”40 However, Papineau’s position makes no reference to conscious experiences. It is not sufficient merely to assert that first-person thoughts and third-person thoughts do refer to the same entity. There must be some explanation of why PS1 and PS2 refer to the same type of mental state. This problem indicates that one thing is true about MS1 that is true about neither PS1 nor PS2: namely, that MS1 is possibly realized by different physiological states. Let us consider some token mental state, say, Papineau’s belief in physicalism. We can say that his belief in physicalism 38. Papineau, 12.

39. Moreland and Craig, 254.

40. Ibid., 255.

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could have been realized by a different physiological state, but we cannot say the same about his present physiological state. Since tokens of MS1 can be realized by a variety of physiological states, it follows that they are not identical to token physiological states.

Since mental states cannot be identical to physiological states, they must be identical to functional states if physicalism is true. As noted earlier, Papineau defined a functional state as “being-in-a-state-which-disposes-you-to-certainsorts-of-behavior.” According to this conception, a mental state is defined by its functional role in a series of causally related events. Consider, for example, the following sequence of events: Papineau hears someone ask, “What is your position on the mind-body problem?” and Papineau responds, “Physicalism is true.”

In this scenario, the question did not directly cause the answer to occur. Rather, there was an internal mental state which performed a specific functional role in answering the question. In this instance, mental state MS1 (belief in physicalism) occupied functional role F1: under the conditions of external stimuli A (hearing the question), cause behavior B (uttering the response). However, MS1 might occupy multiple functional roles. Suppose that someone instead asked him, “Do you believe that dualism is true?” and he responded, “No, I believe that dualism is false.” Here, we might say that MS1 occupied functional role F 2: under the conditions of external stimuli C (hearing the second question), cause behavior D (uttering the second response). As such, a functional state comprises a specified set of functional roles that are defined in terms of causal inputs and causal outputs. Strictly speaking, functionalism (the identification of mental states with functional states) is not inconsistent with dualism, for one could hold that nonphysical mental states occupy certain functional roles. However, in the context of physicalism, functional states are understood to be realized by some token physical states. This functional conception of mental states solves some of the problems raised by alien minds. Although human brains and silicon-based brains are qualitatively different, they both realize FS1 (the functional state attributed to belief in physicalism), for the belief performs the same functional roles in both organisms. Since MS1 is identical to FS1, it can be said that both the human and the alien share the same mental state.

Despite its advantages, a functional conception of mental states is problematic. After all, it seems that functional states can exist in the absence of mental states. Consider, for example, John Searle’s famous Chinese room thought experiment. Searle imagines himself, an English speaker, locked inside a room with several batches of Chinese writing. Searle knows nothing about Chinese: as he writes, “I’m not even confident that I could recognize Chinese writing as Chinese writing distinct from, say, Japanese writing or meaningless squiggles.”41 41. John Searle, “Minds, Brains, and Programs,” The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3, no. 3

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In addition, he is given a rulebook for manipulating the set of Chinese symbols, and he diligently follows his instructions. When he passes the symbols out of the room, he is handed new Chinese symbols with new rules for manipulating those symbols. As it turns out, the sets of symbols handed to him are called “questions,” and the symbols he passes out of the room are called “answers.” Searle writes, “From the external point of view . . . my answers to the questions are absolutely indistinguishable from those of native Chinese speakers. Nobody just looking at my answers can tell that I don’t speak a word of Chinese.”42 This story shows that a formal program (i.e., the man in the room) can manipulate Chinese symbols and produce intelligible answers to Chinese questions without actually understanding Chinese. Although Searle used this thought experiment to criticize a particular view of artificial intelligence, the Chinese room provides an equally strong criticism of functionalism. From an external perspective, the man in the Chinese room possessed the functional state of understanding Chinese: for every Chinese question, he presented an intelligible and relevant response. However, he lacked the mental state of actually understanding Chinese. To make things more interesting, suppose that a different man occupies the Chinese room, and Chinese inquirers were asking him questions about physicalism. Writing in Chinese, the people ask, “Do you believe that dualism is true?” The man in the room follows his rulebook, and outputs the answer, “No, I believe that dualism is false.” After asking several more questions, the people outside are firmly convinced that the person inside the room is a committed physicalist. However, the man inside understands nothing about the discussion—in fact, he is a dualist! In this scenario, the man in the room possessed FS1 while lacking MS1. As such, there is at least one thing true about FS1 that is not true about MS1: namely, that FS1 possibly exists without MS1. In addition, it shows that FS1 is logically compatible with MS2 (the mental state of belief in dualism) even though MS1 is logically incompatible with MS2. For these reasons, MS1 is not identical to FS1, which entails that belief in physicalism cannot be understood as a functional state.

Now, if Papineau’s presentation of physicalism is true, then every mental state must be identical to a physiological or functional state. As our previous discussions have revealed, there exists at least one mental state (MS1) that cannot be identified with either. By further elaboration, it could probably be shown that no mental states whatsoever would fall within either category. However, it is not necessary to argue this broader point in order to show that physicalism is false.

Since MS1 is identical to neither PS1 nor FS1, then belief in physicalism falsifies Papineau’s thesis.

(September 1980), 418.

42. Ibid., 418.

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C onclusion In this paper, I argued that Papineau’s physicalist theory is unjustified and unsound. First, I argued that dualism, not physicalism, should be accepted as the default philosophical position. As Papineau notes, dualism is intuitively appealing, and I argued that this is sufficient for prima facie justification. In addition, he offers no good reasons why physicalism should be preferred over dualism at face value. The issue of mental causation provides no compelling evidence for physicalism or against dualism, and so I maintained that dualism retains its prima facie justification. Next, I provided reasons for believing that Papineau’s physicalism is false. His theory entails that all mental states are identical to some physiological or functional state, but I argue that there is at least one mental state which is identical to neither. Since there is no good reason to think that physicalism is true, and since there is good reason to suppose that it is false, then one should reject Papineau’s position and accept dualism.

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Bibliogr aphy Huemer, Michael. Skepticism and the Veil of Perception. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001.

Jackson, Frank. “What Mary Didn’t Know.” The Journal of Philosophy 83, no. 5 (May 1986): 291-95. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2026143 (accessed January 17, 2015).

Lowe, E. J. A Survey of Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Moreland, James Porter, and William Lane Craig. Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003.

Nagel, Thomas. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” The Philosophical Review 83, no. 4 (October 1974): 435-50. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2183914 (accessed January 11, 2015).

Papineau, David. Philosophical Naturalism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993.

Searle, John. “Minds, Brains, and Programs.” The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3, no. 3 (September 1980): 417-24.

Stoljar, Daniel. “Physicalism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/physicalism/ (accessed February 27, 2015).

Wetzel, Linda. “Types and Tokens.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/ types-tokens/ (accessed February 27, 2015).

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THE PROBLEM OF DIVINE PERFECTION AND FREEDOM: THE GRACE, CREATIVE FREEDOM, AND BEAUTY OF GOD Timothy Hsu

P

ractitioners of perfect being theology have long faced the difficulty of explaining how God, the absolutely perfect being, can act in accordance with his perfect goodness while retaining possession of perfect freedom. Gottfried Leibniz, by his assertion that God’s maximal perfection requires that he create the best of all possible worlds, has particularly brought this problem to light. Some philosophers have responded by denying the existence of a best possible world, while others contend that doing so rules out God’s existence as a perfect being altogether. The tension between perfect goodness and freedom, however, is insoluble because of the terms in which it is set. The problem of divine perfection and divine freedom emerges from a dual misunderstanding of the nature of perfect goodness and the nature of creative activity, the product of an inappropriately applied analytic paradigm. Once properly understood, the problem vanishes into irrelevance in light of the grace, creative freedom, and personhood of God. The P roblem: P erfection, F reedom , and the Best Possible World As Thomas Morris explains, the basis of perfect being theology is the Anselmian conception of God as “that than which no greater can be conceived,” understood by most philosophers to mean “the greatest possible being, an individ-

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ual exhibiting maximal perfection.”1 Morris notes that all practitioners of perfect being theology must begin by consulting their value intuitions, in order to form an understanding of what perfections a supremely perfect being would possess. 2 This introduces a danger for those who adhere to the veracity of the Christian Scriptures, for “it is possible for our value intuitions to be skewed or distorted by a dominant or powerful philosophical tradition.”3 Morris concludes, however, that so long as a “revelational control” is in place and can veto any unbiblical ideas that emerge from philosophical ruminations, perfect being theology sufficiently accounts for the danger of straying from a biblical conception of God.4 Perfect being theology has perhaps no greater or more famous practitioner than the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. In his essay “Concerning Divine Perfection,” Leibniz asserts that the most common and most meaningful conception of God affirms that “God is an absolutely perfect being,” possessing all kinds of perfection and all to their highest degree.5 God, Leibniz affirms, is perfect not only metaphysically but morally; thus, in addition to possessing maximal wisdom and power, God acts unfailingly in accordance with perfect, unsurpassable goodness.6 Following Leibniz’s lead, Mark Murphy explains, “A perfectly good being has the best desires that a being can have, and exhibits the best traits of character, and acts in an unsurpassably excellent way. . . . A morally perfect being . . . has morally unsurpassable agency.” 7 Directly following from Leibniz’s conception of God as the absolutely perfect being is the famous Leibnizian thesis that the actual world is the best of all possible worlds. Being omnipotent, God could have chosen any possible world to create; being perfectly good, however, God only would have chosen the best world to create.8 “It follows from the supreme perfection of God,” argues Leibniz, “that in creating the universe he has chosen the best possible plan.”9 For Leibniz, then, the creation of the best of all possible worlds is a direct consequence of the perfection of God. The idea of a best possible world, however, has been met with scrutiny and 1. Thomas Morris, Our Idea of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 35.

2. Ibid., 39.

3. Ibid., 43.

4. Ibid.

5. Gottfried Leibniz, “Concerning Divine Perfection,” in Treasury of Philosophy, ed. Dagobert Runes (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1955), 688.

6. Ibid.

7. Mark Murphy, “Perfect Goodness,” ed. Edward Zalta (Spring 2014 Edition), in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed May 4, 2015, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perfect-goodness/.

8. David Blumenfeld, “Is the Best World Possible?,” The Philosophical Review 84, no. 2 (Apr., 1975): 163.

9. Ibid., 176.

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even rejected by many philosophers. Some have wondered if the concept of a best possible world is even possible, postulating that perhaps for any world God could create there is a better one.10 William Rowe notes that a strong motivation for those who deny the possibility of a best possible world is to simply avoid the burden of defending Leibniz’s thesis that a world better than the actual one, with all its evils, is not even a logical possibility.11 Ironically, then, Leibniz’s thesis— that a perfectly good God would create the best possible world—is questioned by some as perhaps impossible, and noted by others to be a “perfectly unbelievable conclusion.”12 Another powerful motivation for denying the existence of a best possible world, Rowe suggests, is the apparently severe limitation it imposes on God’s freedom in creating a world.13 Leibniz comments in his essay, “I think that one acts imperfectly if he acts with less perfection than he is capable of. To show that an architect could have done better is to find fault with his work.”14 Thus, if God is an absolutely perfect being, all that he does and creates must be unsurpassable, so maximally perfect that he himself could not have done better. Rowe agrees, noting that “it appears to be inconceivable that a supremely perfect being would act to bring about less good than he can.”15 It follows, then, that if it is possible for God to create a maximally good (i.e. best) world, he has no other choice but to create that world. “On the assumption that God (the supremely perfect being) exists and that there is a best creatable world,” Rowe remarks, “[we reach] the conclusion that God is neither free not to create a world nor free to create a world less than the best creatable world.”16 To refrain from creating or to create any lesser world would be to act with less perfection than possible, bringing about less good than God could have done and ultimately violating perfect, unsurpassable goodness. Thus, on Leibniz’s view, God—who is perfectly free as well as perfectly good—did not have the option of not creating or creating a world other than the precise one that he did.

David Blumenfeld suggests that Leibniz recognized the threat that his conception of absolute perfection posed to divine freedom to create, and offered a solution by defining God’s perfect goodness as perfectly free. Contrary to what might be expected, Leibniz holds “that God freely chooses to be determined by 10. These philosophers range from Alvin Plantinga to Thomas Aquinas, predating Leibniz.

Blumenfeld, 163. William Rowe, “Can God Be Free?,” in Michael Rea and Louis Pojman, Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 7th ed. (Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning, 2015), 132.

11. Rowe, “Can God Be Free?,” 137.

12. Blemenfeld, 163.

13. Rowe, “Can God Be Free?,” 137.

14. Leibniz, 688.

15. Rowe, “Can God Be Free?,” 132.

16. Ibid.

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considerations of perfection.”17 In metaphysical terms, divine adherence to the best is not necessary, but contingent; thus, strictly speaking, it is possible that God would choose less than the best, though it is certain that he would not.18 Leibniz calls this divine inclination towards the best “true liberty, and the most perfect.”19 Thus, on Leibniz’s view, God remains perfectly free when constrained by his perfect goodness to create the best possible world, because his very adherence to perfect goodness is “itself a matter of free choice.”20 Blumenfeld notes the clear motive for this view is Leibniz’s desire to preserve God’s freedom as an essential aspect of his perfect nature. He also notes the difficulty embedded in this ingenious solution: “How God’s choice of the best can be contingent, given that he is by definition [i.e. necessarily] all-good, is a serious and well-known problem.”21 Leibniz may have realized that his thesis—that a perfectly good creator can only create the best possible world—was a problem for divine freedom. However, his solution—defining perfect freedom to be a contingent choice of a necessary aspect of God’s being—has been found by many to be equally problematic.22 Skeptical of the idea of a best possible world and aware of its unwelcome implications for divine freedom to create, some philosophers have sought to demonstrate that a supremely perfect being need not create the best possible world because no such world is possible. If there is an infinite number of possible worlds that God could have chosen to create, as Leibniz held, there remain two alternatives to the “best possible world” scenario: (1) the series of worlds could infinitely increase in value (as integers do) or asymptotically approach unlimited perfection, indicating that for any selected world a better one could be created; or 17. Blumenfeld, 172 (emphasis added).

18. Ibid., 169, 172.

19. Ibid., 176. Elsewhere in his work, Leibniz ties the perfect liberty of God to his maximal rationality, another facet of his absolute perfection. In scornful reply to those who suppose they safeguard the freedom of God by suggesting that he could have done better in creation, Leibniz remarks, “As if it were not the highest [i.e. most perfect] liberty to act in perfection according to the sovereign reason.” Leibniz, 688-9.

20. Blumenfeld, 169. It should be noted that for Leibniz, adherence to perfection would include perfect rationality as well as perfect moral goodness. For the sake of simplicity, however, the following discussion will treat perfect (moral) goodness as the primary expression of divine perfection under discussion.

21. Blumenfeld notes an equal motive on Leibniz’s part is to “avoid the charge that this world is the only one that is (really) possible” (i.e. to avoid fatalism). Ibid.

22. It should be noted that, as Rowe makes clear, the question at hand is not whether or not God is free to cease being perfectly good (most, if not all, would agree that it would be absurd for an essentially good being to have such “freedom”). The arena of divine freedom being considered is whether or not God is free with respect to creating—(1) Was God free to not create at all?, (2) Was God free to have created a different world than he did? On Leibniz’s view of perfect freedom, the answer to both of these is no. Rowe, “Can God Be Free?,” 129.

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(2) multiple worlds may score highest on the scale of perfection and worldly value.23 In either of these cases—a series of worlds where a better always exists, or where multiple worlds tie for best—creating the best among all possible worlds would be impossible because there is no single, best, creatable world.

If the best possible world is in fact impossible, perhaps both divine perfect goodness and freedom to create can be maintained without resorting to Leibniz’s problematic solution. Morris and other philosophers argue that since perfect goodness is not constrained to perform logical impossibilities (i.e. create a best possible world that does not exist), God could choose to create a world other than the absolute best without doing violence to his divine perfection.24 Moreover, even if God’s perfect goodness constrains him to create a world rather than no world, or to choose only from among the worlds that tie for most perfect, God would retain some measure of creative freedom rather than being determined, necessarily or contingently, by the best.25 Thus, many philosophers argue that if no best creatable world exists, divine perfection need not result in the creation of the best possible world or the sacrifice of divine freedom to create.

Ultimately, however, these solutions fall short in their attempts to preserve both divine perfection and divine freedom. Rowe agrees that God’s perfect goodness is not impugned by being unable to actualize a logical impossibility, but this is besides the issue; if there is an infinite series of worlds of increasing value, then it would always be logically possible for God to create a better world than the one he selected.26 In such a case, God’s absolute perfection would be in jeopardy, for “any being who knowingly does something . . . less good than it could do falls short of being the best possible being.”27 If, on the other hand, God could have chosen from a pool of equally maximally good worlds, then the selection of which world to create would have been arbitrary, without reason, which Leibniz considers to be metaphysically impossible for a supremely perfect, maximally rational being.28 In either case, if no best possible world existed, Leibniz remarks that God would have refrained from creating at all rather than make a world less than absolutely perfect, “since he cannot act without a reason, or prefer the less perfect to the more perfect.”29 Both alternatives to a best creatable 23. Blumenfeld, 163.

24. Norman Kretzmann argues this point by an analogy to omnipotence: just as perfect power is not impugned by an inability to achieve the logically impossible, neither is perfect goodness. Rowe, “Can God Be Free?,” 133, 139.

25. Both Richard Swinburne (who suggests that God could always create a better world) and Thomas Flint (who suggests that God selects from a range of equally perfect alternatives) make variations of this argument. Edward Wierenga, “The Freedom of God,” in Rea and Pojman, 147.

26. Rowe, “Can God Be Free?,” 139.

27. Ibid., 133.

28. Blumenfeld, 173-174.

29. Ibid., 166.

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world—an infinite series of better worlds, or multiple worlds ranking equally perfect—would result in either no creation at all or a divinely arbitrary selection.

Even if such an arbitrary choice could be made, contrary to Leibniz, it still presents an inadequate account of divine, perfect freedom. As Edward Wierenga comments, whether along an infinite spectrum of “betters” or among a tie of “bests,” defining God’s freedom as choosing between equal or indifferent alternatives “amounts to saying that God is free only when it does not matter what he does.”30 However one attempts to deny the existence of a best possible world, then, it appears that doing so posits something less than absolute divine perfection, particularly perfect goodness, and still offers an unsatisfying account of divine freedom, a purportedly perfect freedom.

The concept of a best possible world cannot be separated from Leibniz’s conception of God as the supremely perfect being, simply because the former is implicit in the latter. Blumenfeld notes that “[Leibniz] conceives of God as a being who freely decides to follow the principle of perfection,” whose essential perfection includes a perfect will that pursues the greatest good while retaining perfect freedom in doing so.31 However, Leibniz also conceives of God as a perfectly rational being who necessarily acts only with a sufficient reason. If God must choose to create from an infinite succession of better worlds or a range of worlds tying for best, this pits two aspects of God’s perfect nature against each other: the principle of sufficient reason (that God necessarily acts only with a sufficient reason) against the principle of perfection (that God contingently chooses the more perfect over the less perfect). The former would compel God to refrain from creating a world (because he lacks sufficient reason to select any world instead of a better or equally perfect alternative), while the latter would require him to choose a world to create (because non-being is less perfect than being).32 Creating a world would be less than perfectly rational (acting without a reason); not creating a world would be less than perfectly good (bringing about less good than he could have)—a contradiction in the divine nature. Blumenfeld concludes that if there were no best possible world, “the concept of God [as the supremely perfect being would] be impossible.”33 Thus, rejecting the existence of a best possible world is tantamount to rejecting Leibniz’s conception of God as the absolutely perfect being.

Denying the existence of a best possible world, then, may introduce a far more dire problem for the theist than reconciling God’s perfection with God’s 30. Wierenga, 149.

31. Blumenfeld, 176.

32. Ibid., 172-4. Blumenfeld notes that the dilemma would be solved if God necessarily acted according to perfection, but Leibniz’s commitment to God acting perfectly contingently (and necessarily acting only with a sufficient reason) keeps the problem intact.

33. Ibid., 177.

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freedom. Rowe concurs with Leibniz that “An unsurpassably good, omnipotent, omniscient world-creator is consistent only with the creation of an unsurpassably good world,” meaning that the best possible being can only create the best possible world.34 Thus, if the actual world is not the best of all possible worlds, it logically follows that God—the best possible, maximally perfect being—does not exist.35 The argument may be expressed this way: [1] If God exists, he is the supremely perfect being.

[2] If God, the supremely perfect being, creates a world, that world must be the best of all possible worlds.

Both Leibniz and Rowe agree that [2] follows from [1]. Leibniz goes on to reason: [3] God exists.

[4] God has created this world.

[5] Therefore, this world is the best of all possible worlds.36 Whereas, Rowe offers a very different premise, following from [1] and [2]: [3`] If this world is not the best of all possible worlds, God does not exist.37 Rowe supposes the following premise contrary to [5]: [4`] The best possible world does not exist.38 He also implies what may be called an inductive argument against God’s existence from these premises, namely that it is unlikely that [5] is true, that is, most likely:39 [5`] This world is not the best of all possible worlds. [not [5]]40 Whether with deductive conclusiveness from [3`] or inductive likelihood from

34. Rowe, “Can God Be Free?,” 140.

35. Ibid., 133.

36. This line of reasoning is easily derived from Leibniz’s own work, as Blumenfeld’s treatment of it shows. Blumenfeld, 166.

37. This can be understood as a simpler restatement of Rowe’s “Principle B”: “If an omniscient being creates a world when there is a better world that it could have created, then it is possible that there exists a being morally better than it” [i.e. that it is not morally unsurpassable, and thus, not God]. Rowe calls this principle “plausible, if not self-evident.” Rowe, “Can God Be Free?,” 1334.

38. Rowe never states this premise outright, but it can be reasonably inferred by enthymematic use as he affirms (1), (2), (3`), and states elsewhere that he accepts (6). It also follows from his thought experiment with an infinite series of worlds, each denoting its overall value by an integer.

Rowe, “Can God Be Free?,” 139. Rowe, “The Inductive Argument from Evil Against the Existence of God,” in Rea and Pojman, 270.

39. This is “inductive” in the same sense that Rowe’s calls his argument from evil against the existence of God so. Rowe, “The Inductive Argument from Evil against the Existence of God,” 265.

40. This can be inferred from Rowe’s comment that many are motivated to embrace the no best creatable world hypothesis in order not to defend Leibniz’s thesis. Rowe, “Can God Be Free?,” 137. It also seems to be supported by Blumenfeld’s christening of the thesis as “perfectly unbelievable.”

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[5`], the conclusion validly follows: [6] Therefore, God does not exist. [not [3]]41 Mark Murphy echoes a similar conclusion: “It follows that in a ‘no best world’ scenario, there is no agency that God could exhibit that is unsurpassable.

Since God is perfectly good only if God’s agency is unsurpassable, necessarily, God is not perfectly good.”42 In other words, Murphy reasons from [4`] to not [1]; and in the context perfect being theology, this is tantamount to saying that God does not exist. Judging by the validity of these arguments, it follows under these premises that one cannot accept Leibniz’s theism, [3] and [4], without accepting his best possible world thesis, [5]; it likewise follows that one cannot argue against the possibility or actuality of the best possible world, [4`] or [5`], without accepting Rowe’s conclusion of atheism, [6]. Thus, whether in an effort to preserve divine freedom or simply to avoid the “perfectly unbelievable” conclusion of Leibniz’s argument, every attempt to demonstrate the truth of [4`]— that the best possible world is actually impossible—contributes, knowingly or unwittingly, to a conclusion opposing not merely the freedom of God to create, but his very existence.

The problem of divine perfection and divine freedom, the tension between perfect goodness and perfect freedom, has one final barb with which the theist must contend: the problem is not merely limited to God’s freedom to create a world, but his freedom to act at all. Wierenga notes that by his very nature as a perfect being, if God is in circumstances C and action A is the best course of action to take, God would know A to be the best choice (by his perfect knowledge), be able to do A (by his perfect power), and want to do A (by his perfect goodness).43 Wierenga thus concludes: “in virtue of God’s essential perfections, whenever he is in circumstances in which a certain action is the best, a logically sufficient condition obtains for his performing that action.”44 This leaves God with no other choice but best possible action in that situation, creating precisely the same predicament noted in the divine creation of a world: the supremely perfect being is logically constrained to a single alternative by his perfect goodness, leaving his perfect freedom apparently little room to operate.45 41. “On the supposition that for every creatable world there is another world that is better than it . . . principle B leads to . . . the conclusion that there is no essentially omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being.” Rowe, “Can God Be Free?,” 134.

42. Murphy, “Perfect Goodness.”

43. Wierenga, 144.

44. Ibid.

45. As Wierenga notes (and ultimately rejects), this discussion presupposes a libertarian view of freedom (which maintains that the ability to have done otherwise is essential to freedom).

Ibid., 144, 150. However, even the compatibilist Leibniz insists that God contingently chooses the best option and that, strictly speaking, the less perfect options are still logically possible. As Blumenfeld says, it is difficult to see how such a choice could be freely contingent when God’s essential

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As with choosing from an infinite selection of possible worlds to create, it is possible that there are situations where among an infinite range of potential actions, no course of action is maximally, exclusively the best. However, this introduces the same host of problems as before: at best, God’s perfect freedom is reduced to arbitrary decisions when it does not matter what choice he makes; at worst, God is condemned to eternal inaction due to his inability to choose without a sufficient reason, or, worse yet for the theist, cannot exist because a supremely perfect being must be able to choose the best course of action. The best available option in this scenario seems hardly desirable for even a non-maximally rational, imperfect being.

If perfect being theology is true, God is by his very essence maximally, supremely, absolutely perfect: perfect in knowledge, in reason, in power, in goodness, in freedom. Yet if the best of all possible beings cannot prefer the less perfect to the more perfect, cannot bring about less good than he is capable of, and cannot choose anything among an infinite range of options but the unsurpassably best, it follows that the theist has several alternatives to choose from: He must stick by the “perfectly unbelievable” (and possibly impossible) conclusion that the actual world is the best among all possible worlds (possibly entailing that the other worlds are not actually possible). He must maintain that divine freedom, the highest and truest and most perfect liberty, consists in inevitably (though perhaps somehow contingently) choosing to be determined by the best in any given situation or arbitrarily selecting from a pool of tied options when the magnitude of the decision is effectively irrelevant. Or, it seems the other option is to reject the “best possible world” as impossible (or at least heavily improbable), and conclude that the maker of the actual world is not by essence unsurpassably, maximally, absolutely perfect (i.e. reject perfect being theology), or does not exist at all (i.e. reject theism altogether).

By all appearances, divine perfection cannot be maintained without damaging divine freedom; divine freedom cannot be rescued without rejecting divine perfection; divine perfection cannot be jettisoned without denying divine existence. Herein lies the problem of divine perfection and divine freedom.

(i.e. necessary) attributes compel him to choose only the best, effectively limiting his possible options until only the most perfect remains.

A compatibilist perhaps need not be threatened by any of these considerations, so long as he embraces what even Leibniz was unwilling to accept: that God necessarily (rather than contingently) is determined by the best. Thus, another solution remains: one could maintain that perfect freedom is compatible with fatalistic necessity, or deny that freedom is an essential perfection (or attribute whatsoever) of God.

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The P roblem with the P roblem: A D ual M isunderstanding For those dissatisfied with all of the aforementioned alternatives, the problem of reconciling and maintaining both divine perfection and divine freedom is insoluble. No other option is available if one accepts the underlying assumptions of the discussion.

Yet it is these very assumptions that create the problem and render it solution-less. The problem emerges from the mistaken confines of a flawed paradigm, one that misunderstands the nature of both perfect goodness and creative freedom. Examining this misunderstanding may show the problem for what it is—insoluble because of the terms in which it is set—and perhaps betray the influence of powerful and dominant philosophical tradition that has ducked the revelational control of Scripture and skewed a proper understanding of both the perfect goodness and perfect freedom of God.46 Maximizing Goodness vs. Giving Grace Leibniz was not the first to affirm that divine perfection would necessitate the making of the best creatable world; centuries prior, Plato held precisely the same position.47 As Robert Adams explains, “Plato . . . held that a perfectly good creator would make the very best world he could. He thought that if the creator chose to make a world less good than he could have made, that could be understood only in terms of some defect in the creator’s character.”48 Leibniz echoes this by his assertion that to act with less perfection than one is capable of is to act imperfectly. The underlying assumption of Plato and Leibniz’s moral ideal can be expressed thus: By definition, a perfectly good being must act to maximize as much good as possible.49 Both Plato and Leibniz, then, logically conclude that a perfectly 46. There is no intent in this paper to make a historical argument on the influence of certain philosophies on Leibniz or other practitioners of perfect being theology. The author only notes the striking correlation and consequences of ideas and paradigms, and suggests historical influence may be a possible explanation.

47. It may also be noted that a Platonic idea of perfection might have influenced Leibniz’s concept of a best possible world. Strictly speaking, the best possible world would not be the Platonic Form of a world, since the best creatable world must be able to exist in time and space and the Forms necessarily do not. However, both Leibniz’s best possible world and the Platonic Form of a world are perfect in the sense of being an unsurpassable, maximally good ideal. See Allan Silverman, “Plato’s Middle Period Metaphysics and Epistemology,” ed. Edward Zalta (Fall 2014 Edition), in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed May 4, 2015, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ plato-metaphysics/.

48. Robert Adams, “Must God Create the Best?,” The Philosophical Review 81, no. 3 (Jul., 1972): 323.

49. Ibid., 317-8.

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good creator must maximize as much good as possible in creating and produce the best world he possibly can.50 It is this conception of perfect goodness, assumed in the assertion that a perfect creator must create the best of worlds, that provides the backdrop to the problem of divine perfection and freedom.

Adams challenges this assumption by arguing that the Judeo-Christian tradition typically offers a different understanding of perfect goodness altogether. As both creator and agent, a perfectly good being must satisfy the moral ideal; yet as Adams notes, Plato and Leibniz’s moral ideal lacks an element that the typical Judeo-Christian ethic holds as essential to perfect goodness: grace.51 Adams suggests that grace can be understood as “a disposition to love which is not dependent on the merit of the person loved.”52 If God acted graciously in creation, then, he may well have chosen to create and love creatures regardless of whether or not they were the best possible creatures that he could have created.

By this view, God’s perfect goodness is not violated by his failure to maximize as much good as he is capable of doing; in some ways, his goodness may even be expressed by his decision to create less than the best possible, a virtue rather than a moral defect. A more stark contrast to Plato and Leibniz’s ethical ideal could hardly be imagined.

The contrast between these opposing moral ideals can be seen in the vastly different expressions of worship and adoration of God’s perfect goodness they inspire. Leibniz writes that the “great truth that God acts always in the most perfect and most desirable manner possible, is in my opinion the basis of the love which we owe to God in all things.”53 Leibniz views God’s actions—including his creation of man and the world—as a direct extension of the divine essence, which always acts in the most perfect, maximally good manner possible. He roots the praise and adoration he owes to God in this assurance that God’s perfect action will always bring about the most good possible.

By contrast, Adams notes that more typically in the Judeo-Christian tradition, worship of God is founded upon gratitude for the undeserved kindness and goodness of God, not necessarily praise of his moral rectitude in choosing the best possible mode of action.54 Considering the Psalmist’s expression of surprise and gratitude in Psalm 8:3-6 that God would concern himself with man at all, 50. “God . . . has chosen the most perfect [world], that is to say the one which is at the same time the simplest in hypotheses and the richest in phenomena” (i.e. the world that maximizes the most good at the highest efficiency). Leibniz, 692.

51. Adams, 323-4. Adams notes that Leibniz is not the only Christian utilitarian, but argues that a utilitarian ethic is not typical of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

52. Adams, 324. This is not a claim that Plato and Leibniz share the same ethic in all respects, but only insofar as they relate to a perfectly good being necessarily bringing about as much good as possible.

53. Leibniz, 689.

54. Adams, 324.

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Adams observes, “Such utterances seem incongruous with the idea that God created because if He had not He would have failed to bring about the best possible state of affairs.”55 He sums up the typical Judeo-Christian attitude of worship in this way: “I am glad that I [and other people] exist, and I thank God for the life He has given me [and others]. . . . Doubtless there could be more excellent creatures than we. But I believe that God, in His grace, created us and loves us; and I accept that gladly and gratefully.”56 On this view, God’s actions are not so much an extension as an expression of his perfect goodness, freely given and undeservedly received, and thus worthy of the most profound worship, gratitude, and love.

Herein lies the crucial difference between the Leibnizian conception of goodness and the understanding of grace articulated by Adams: grace is necessarily tied to freedom, because grace is not grace unless it is freely given.57 Perhaps this is why Leibniz attempts to insist that God’s choice of the best is contingent; he recognizes that perfect goodness is inadequate if only given by necessity. Yet his attempt fails because of his commitment to the view explicated before: By definition, a perfectly good being must act to maximize as much good as possible. Necessarily, such an assumption introduces the moral and metaphysical necessity that makes grace impossible and constrains divine freedom to choose the absolute best or best available option. Thus, the misunderstanding is a dual one: the misconception of divine freedom is implicit in the misconstrual of divine perfect goodness.

Without a Leibnizian conception of perfect goodness, the problem of divine perfection and freedom collapses before it can take form. As stated before, the problem depends upon the assertion that [1] If God exists, he is the supremely perfect being. logically leads to the conclusion that [2] If God creates a world, that world must be the best of all possible worlds.

Both Leibniz and Rowe accept these two premises without question, while others have tried to challenge [2] on the basis that a best possible world might not exist. On a traditional Judeo-Christian understanding of grace, Adams challenges the idea of perfect goodness implicit in [1] that would require [2] to follow in the first place. He suggests that in saying that God is perfectly good, those who hold to this conception need not “[commit] themselves to the view that God is the kind of being who would not create any other world than the best possible 55. Adams, 325.

56. Ibid.

57. This notion shifts the focus from an external obligation—the goodness to be maximized external to the giver, the merit of another that demands a moral response—to an internal choice— the fact that the giver loves and gives, simply and freely, because he is good.

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. . . for they regard grace as an important part of perfect goodness.”58 Thus, on this view, [2] does not follow from [1] and the problem cannot even get off of the ground.

The challenge Adams’ poses to the problem is so fundamental that it is missed by those who unquestioningly hold to the conception of perfect goodness implicit in [1]. Both Rowe and Wierenga reject Adams’ conclusion by saying that even if Adams proves that God is not morally obligated to choose the best, it may still be necessary for God to choose the best in light of his other virtues and perfections.59 Neither of them offer an argument to support this; both merely assume that it is more likely than not that God’s perfection would still require him to maximize as much good as he can even if is not a moral obligation. In other words, they fail to recognize that Adams is posing a challenge to their very notion of perfect goodness. Hence, for them, the problem remains intact.

Plato is not the only one whose moral ideal finds the notion of grace— goodness bestowed under no moral obligation or necessity, freely given and undeservedly received—utterly alien and foreign. Despite his insistence on the contingently free choice of God towards the best, for Leibniz, God would not be worthy of worship if he failed to bring about as much goodness as he possibly could, because it would be impossible for him to do so and still qualify as a supremely perfectly, maximally good being. Rowe likewise holds that for a perfectly good being to bring about less good than he possibly could is practically inconceivable. Perhaps the most alien, impossible, and inconceivable notion of all is the one that most worshipers in the Judeo-Christian tradition find to be their basis for all the worship, gratitude, and love that they owe to God: a perfectly good God who had no metaphysical necessity or moral obligation towards his undeserving creatures to bring about any good at all—and simply, out of his grace, freely chose to create a world and love his creatures anyway.

Analyzing Alternatives vs. Crafting a New Creation In view of understanding God’s perfect goodness as a free expression of grace rather than a necessity of maximizing good, the problem of reconciling God’s perfect goodness with his perfect freedom has perhaps already collapsed from want of weight to support itself. There remains, however, an entirely different way of examining the dual misunderstanding that underlies the problem, penetrating beyond even its beginning assumptions to the paradigm in which they take origin. This paradigm views divine perfection and divine freedom as problems to be solved, when in reality, they are creative realities that cannot be 58. Adams, 325.

59. Rowe, “Can God Be Free?,” 132; Wierenga, 145-6.

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wholly captured by an analytic, problem-solving approach.

A “problem-solving paradigm” explores reality as a series of problems and searches for respective solutions. Like a detective story or arithmetic problem, the solution must be found within the terms in which the problem is set, and thus can be found by analyzing the data that constitutes the problem.60 If there is any solution to be found at all, it must be discovered within the problem’s set parameters. Under such a paradigm, then, the logical approach is to examine the data offered by the problem, consider potential solutions from among the alternatives it allows, and select the option that best satisfies the puzzle.61 Leibniz’s very conception of perfect goodness requires him to view it as a problem demanding a solution. When describing perfect action by human analogy, Leibniz writes, He who acts perfectly is like an excellent Geometer who knows how to find the best construction for a problem; like a good architect who utilizes his location and the funds destined for the building in the most advantageous manner . . . like a good householder who employs his property in such a way that there shall be nothing uncultivated or sterile; like a clever machinist who makes his production in the least difficult way possible; and like an intelligent author who encloses the most of reality in the least possible compass.62

Underlying all these examples is the same moral ideal and analytic mindset: to act perfectly is to solve the problem of maximizing as much utility or good as possible within the limitations of one’s medium of labor.63 Thus, Leibniz conceives of perfectly good action as the discovery of a solution: the best possible mode of action within one’s parameters, whether that be in constructing a geometric problem, utilizing one’s location and funds, economizing one’s production capacities, or selecting a possible world to create. For Leibniz, the terms of being a perfectly good being constitutes the problem of maximizing as much good as possible; being perfectly good, then, naturally entails finding the best possible solution among one’s alternatives.

Implicit in this formulation is another application of the problem-solving mentality: seeing the act of creation as a selection from a range of alternatives.

Leibniz understands God’s creation of the world to have been, in effect, a survey of the infinite series of possible worlds, an identification of the candidate that 60. Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1941),

186.

61. Ibid., 186-7, 191.

62. Leibniz, 690.

63. This accords well with Adams’ observation that Leibniz is basically utilitarian in his ethic. Adams, 318.

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maximized the most good, and an actualization of that particular world. By this view, God’s creative act consisted of making a selection out of an infinite number of blueprints (i.e. possible worlds). The tacit idea of creative activity held here might be expressed thus: Creative activity consists of selecting from a range of pre-existing alternatives. This is the fundamental understanding of creative activity assumed by Leibniz and every philosopher who accepts Leibniz’s conception of creation upon entering the discussion.

A creative mind, however, does not approach the act of creation as a problem to be solved by analysis of presented alternatives. As author and playwright Dorothy Sayers notes, “[a] creator does not set out from a set of data, and proceed, like a crossword solver or a student of elementary algebra, to deduce from them a [solution]. The concept of ‘problem and solution’ is . . . meaningless [when] applied to the act of creation.”64 Where analysis is concerned with dissecting data into its constituent parts, creative activity treats the data as material to be put together to form something from them. Analysis examines the merits of the options that lie before it; creative activity brings into being what did not exist prior to the creative act. As Sayers notes of the active creator, “We do not . . . merely examine the data to disentangle something that was in them already: we use them to construct something that was not there before.”65 The goal of creation is not to discover a pre-existing solution from the initial data of a problem, but to craft into being a new creation.

Certainly, it is possible to view all creative activity in terms of problems and solutions; to do so, however, misses the creative soul of the work. As Sayers notes, while one could imagine Shakespeare setting out to solve the “problems” of writing a successful play, managing the technicalities of production and drawing convincing character arcs, “Hamlet is something more than the sum of its problems.”66 The same can be said for the creative work of God; every good thing in creation can be understood in retrospect as the meeting of a moral or metaphysical necessity for the best, a piece of the cosmic solution to the problem of divine perfection. Every result can be seen as the alternative that ranked most highly among its peers on the divine scale of creative options, the blueprint that best met the problematic terms. To do so, however, betrays an analytic mindset that is ill-equipped to grasp the nature of creative activity.

By conceiving of God’s creative act as a selection from pre-existing alternatives rather than the making of something new, Leibniz and all who have followed his lead miss the essence of the creative act. They mistakenly substitute the analytic for the creative, the best alternative for the new creation, the paradigm 64. Sayer, 186-7.

65. Ibid., 191.

66. Ibid., 193.

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of problem-solving for the creative freedom of crafting something into being that does not yet exist. They assume that divine creative activity is no more than an analysis selecting from an infinite number of blueprints, when it may be more true to the nature of creative work to say that God draws the blueprint in creation. Viewing the perfect goodness and creation of God as problems, then, may have a much greater cost than merely introducing an insoluble problem; those who adopt such a paradigm run the risk of missing the creative soul of God. Not a P roblem but a P erson: The Unsurpassable Beaut y of G od The problem of divine perfection and divine freedom is indeed a problem, but only because it is understood in problematic terms. Leibniz sets the terms for the entire discussion by conceiving of God’s creation of the world to be the problem of maximizing as much good as possible, soluble only by selecting from among the infinite range of candidates the best possible world to create. These, then, are the axiomatic terms in which the problem of divine perfection and divine freedom are set: [A] By definition, a perfectly good being must act to maximize as much good as possible.

[B] Creative activity consists of selecting from a range of pre-existing alternatives.

If these are the preconditions of the problem that must be satisfied, the following solution becomes obvious: [C] To perform a creative act, a perfect being must select the best alternative, that is, the option that maximizes the most good.

Excepting Adams, every philosopher noted in this discussion has operated under these terms in pursuit of this solution. The disagreements have arisen only on the exact shape of the solution: if the best must be absolute or only the best available, if a best can be chosen if there are infinitely better options or a pool of equally maximized alternatives, if a viable solution is even possible or more probable than atheism. As long as the terms of the problem remain in place, however, there is no choice but to choose from among the alternatives offered by these terms, namely, to seek some form of a solution, however unsatisfactory, or conclude that the problem is insoluble.

When the dual misunderstanding is cleared away, however, the terms of the problem cease to be problematic. Understood as grace, perfect goodness poses no conflict to perfect freedom in creation—ultimately, the two are a part of the same reality.

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In the morality of my station and duties the station presents us with the duty, and we say “Yes” or “No.” “I will” or “I will not. . .” In the morality of challenge or grace the situation says, “Here is a mess, a crying evil, a need! What can you do about it?”

We are asked not to say “Yes” or “No” or “I will” or “I will not,” but to be inventive, to create, to discover something new. . . . “Gracious” conduct is somehow like the work of an artist. It needs imagination and spontaneity. It is not a choice between presented alternatives but the creation of something new.67

Divine perfection and divine creation are not problems to be solved, whether offering binary or infinite alternatives. Both grace and the act of creation fundamentally require “imagination and spontaneity”—what might be called creative freedom—because grace is fundamentally a creative act. If grace is truly a crucial element in perfect goodness (as the traditional Judeo-Christian ethic teaches), and if creative activity vitally requires freedom (as Sayers and other creatively active thinkers hold), then reconciling perfect goodness and perfect freedom in the nature of God is anything but a problematic conflict. The two are inseparably wedded together in the dual notion of freely given goodness and imaginatively spontaneous creation—in the notion of grace.

Ultimately, the analytic paradigm behind the dual problem of divine perfection and freedom fails to capture that God is not an abstraction of perfection, a concept which must be manipulated and adjusted in order to offer the perfect solution to the problem of divine being, but a person. As Michael Rea observes, One odd feature of much contemporary philosophy of religion is that it seems to portray God as having a “personality” that is almost entirely empty, allowing his behavior to be almost exhaustively determined by facts about how it would be best for others for an omnipotent [and perfectly good] being to behave. But why should we think of God like this? God is supposed to be a person not only of unsurpassable love and goodness but of unsurpassable beauty. Could God really be that sort of person if he’s nothing more than a cosmic, others-oriented, utility-maximizing [i.e. good-maximizing] machine? On that way of thinking, God—the being who is supposed to be a person par excellence—ends up having no real self.68

67. A.D. Lindsay, quoted in Sayers, The Mind of the Maker, 192.

68. Michael Rea, “Divine Hiddenness, Divine Silence,” in Rea and Pojman, 391. A closely related observation would be to note the equally odd and common practice, largely mimicked in the first portion of this paper, of treating God as though his attributes are merely concepts able to be created, tailored, and destroyed by inquiring minds. If God is actually a person who truly exists, it is downright absurd to speak of “preserving,” “endangering,” “rescuing,” etc. the attributes of God. If God exists and is actually perfectly free, how does it endanger his freedom if my philosophical system is unable to conceptually reconcile it with my idea of his perfect goodness?This tendency may be explainable, of course, as a shorthand to circumvent the cumbersomeness of always stating “my conception of X attribute of God.” It may well introduce, however, a dangerous tendency for theists

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An omniscient machine could rifle through the endless permutations and combinations of various states of affairs that make up an infinite series of possible worlds and identify which pre-existing alternative would maximize the most goodness—only a person could begin with nothing and craft a new creation out of it.

The problem of divine perfection and divine freedom predicates itself on a fundamental misunderstanding of perfect goodness, freedom, and creation. Its terms put perfect goodness and perfect freedom at odds with one another in the act of creation, and consequently, all the alternatives it offers as potential solutions do so as well. Yet rather than resignedly accepting the best available alternative or agonizing over the problem’s insolubility, those who walk by grace can perhaps create a new path that goes beyond mere analysis to find the best possible option. If God is not a good-maximizing, alternative-analyzing machine or the solution to the problem of divine being, then perhaps perfect goodness and perfect freedom are not in conflict, but wedded together in gracious union. If God is a gracious, creative, unsurpassably beautiful person, who freely gives of his own goodness and exercises his freedom in the crafting of something new, there can be no conflict. The problems and solutions alike fade away into nothing in the light of the gracious goodness, the creative freedom, and the unsurpassably beautiful perfection of such a Person.

to actually think of God as an atheist does—a mere concept to be debated, altered, or ignored at will. Perhaps those who wish to not reinforce this notion of deity and believe themselves to be in relationship with the living God would do well to guard against this tendency.

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Bibliogr aphy Adams, Robert, “Must God Create the Best?” The Philosophical Review 81, no. 3 (Jul.,1972): 317-332.

Blumenfield, David. “Is the Best Possible World Possible?” The Philosophical Review 84, no. 2 (Apr., 1975): 163-77.

Leibniz, Gottfried. “Concerning Divine Perfection.” In Treasury of Philosophy, edited by Dagobert Runes, 685-692. New York: The Philosophical Library, 1955.

Morris, Thomas. Our Idea of God: An Introduction to Philosophical Theology. Downers Grover, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991.

Murphy, Mark, “Perfect Goodness,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition), Edward Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ perfect-goodness/.

Rea, Michael. “Divine Hiddenness, Divine Silence.” In Rea and Pojman, 383392.

Rea, Michael and Louis Pojman, eds. Philosophy of Religion: an anthology. 7th ed.

Stamford: Cengage Learning, 2014.

Rowe, William. “The Inductive Argument from Evil against the Existence of God.” In Rea and Pojman, 264-270.

Rowe, William. “Can God Be Free?” In Rea and Pojman, 128-143.

Sayers, Dorothy. The Mind of the Maker. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1941.

Silverman, Allan, “Plato’s Middle Period Metaphysics and Epistemology,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014 Edition), Edward Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-metaphysics/#Bib. Wierenga, Edward. “The Freedom of God.” In Rea and Pojman, 144-152.

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THE FAILURE OF INDETERMINISM: GOD’S NATURE AND THE DEFINITION OF FREEDOM Samuel Cordle

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he Bible frequently speaks of God in superlative terms, leading classical theists to view God as infinitely high above man and as boundlessly great. Regardless of the success or failure of St. Anselm’s famous ontological argument for God’s existence, his definition of God accurately expresses the view of “perfect being theology,” the widely held theological framework of classical theism.1 God is, according to Anselm, “something than which nothing greater can be thought,”2 or, as William Rowe clarifies, “the being than which none greater is possible.”3 Describing a consistent unity of God’s superlative attributes is not a simple endeavor, however, since various supposedly great qualities appear to conflict. Based on a concept of God as transcendent and perfect, viewing God as having no bounds in his being or his action seems natural.

Seemingly, a perfect God greater than all things should have the ability and prerogative to do anything he wanted. The psalmist proclaims, “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.”4 However, an objection to a view of God as completely limitless immediately arises. As the Bible describes him, God has certain definitive 1. Thomas V. Morris, Our Idea of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 35.

2. Anselm, Monologion and Proslogion, with the Replies of Gaunilo and Anselm, trans. by Thomas Williams (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1996), 99.

3. William L. Rowe, “The Ontological Argument,” in William L. Rowe on Philosophy of Religion: Selected Writings, edited by Nick Trakakis (Burlington: VT, Ashgate Publishing Company, 2007), 355.

4. Psalm 115:3 (English Standard Version). See also Psalm 135:6.

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characteristics, also affirmed by classical theists, such as omnibenevolence and orderliness, with which other qualities or actions would be inconsistent. Central to a coherent concept of God, then, is the question, can God do absolutely anything? This question breaks down into two others, suggesting a close connection between the concepts of divine omnipotence and divine freedom: does God have the ability to do absolutely anything? And may God choose any course of action? Properly conceiving of God requires reconciling the divine nature with divine freedom. Ultimately, God is free in his choices, but affirming his freedom requires a nuanced understanding of the definition of freedom. True divine freedom does not consist in unlimited choice but encompasses both rational and normative components that provide the framework for genuine volitional choices.

Before addressing the question of divine freedom, we must understand what we mean by “freedom.” There is by no means agreement in the philosophical community presently or historically as to the meaning of this term and the associated concept. William Reese catalogs several different definitions of freedom, associating important thinkers with each view. Perhaps one of the most intuitive and basic senses of freedom “turns on the idea of significance choice” and consists in the “power of selecting any one of two or more alternatives.”5 The central concept of choice among real options leads to another idea implied by this view of freedom, that of the absence of constraint. On this conception of freedom, “it is natural to think of the future as open, or indeterminate. Hence, indeterminism is a natural corollary of this view of freedom.”6 Reese himself seems to side with this view of freedom, expressing as part of his original definition the idea of the absence of limitation. Freedom is the “quality of not being constrained by fate, necessity, or circumstance in one’s decisions and actions.”7 Taken to its fullest extent, this view of freedom eschews all sorts of necessity, including logical necessity, since genuinely free action must be unlimited and undetermined by anything but individual choice.

Reese gives examples of several prominent adherents of this view of freedom: William of Ockham, Rene Descartes, William James and, on a very extensive view of free choice, existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre.8 These are only a few of the proponents of this view of freedom as undetermined choice, and this view may be the most commonly held, since it carries a great degree of intuitive weight and often seems the most natural sense of freedom in human experience.

Discussions of divine freedom often operate on the presumption of this sense of 5. William Reese, “Freedom,” in Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1996), 242.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Reese, 242-243.

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the term.9 Essentially, this view is a libertarian view of freedom, chosen by those who see determinism and freedom as incompatible and who “choose to deny determinism in order to salvage freedom.”10 Definitions of freedom, as we will see, however, do not always fit neatly into either a libertarian or a compatibilist category, since these terms encompass strictly the relationship between freedom and determinism and are often used in discussions of human freedom alone.

Given the intuitive plausibility of the conception of freedom as undetermined choice, before considering other definitions of freedom, we will address the question of whether God has freedom in this sense. Does God have any limitations on him whatsoever? It would seem reasonable to suppose that logical possibility “limits” both God’s power and his choice. In considering the famous puzzle concerning God’s omnipotence of whether God can create a rock too heavy for him to lift, George Mavrodes concludes that this “dilemma fails because it consists of asking whether God can do a self-contradictory thing.”11 He goes on to observe that “it is the very omnipotence of God which makes the existence of such a stone absolutely impossible, while it is the fact that I am finite in power which makes it possible for me to make a boat too heavy for me to lift.”12 St. Thomas Aquinas counters a challenge to divine omnipotence similarly, by nuancing the definition of omnipotence. Omnipotence, expressed in the phrase, “God can do all things,” must rightly be understood to mean, “God can do all things that are possible.”13 By this Aquinas does not suggest that God’s omnipotence consists in the ability “to do all things that are possible to created nature” but in the ability to “do all things that are possible absolutely.”14 God can do anything logically possible, in the sense that “the predicate is not incompatible with the subject,” as in the example of creating the stone he cannot lift.15 That God cannot do, and thus cannot choose, something logically impossible may seem uncontroversial enough, but consistent adherents to the view of freedom as undetermined choice may object. On Aquinas’s definition of omnipotence, closely related to divine freedom, God’s decisions to act or create are limited by the principles of logic. One can hear the proponent of indeterminism in the voice of Aquinas’s objector, claiming a view of omnipotence that makes it inconsistent with necessity: “If God, then, were omnipotent, all things would be 9. See, e.g., William L. Rowe, Can God Be Free? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

10. Tim Crane and Katalin Farkas, Metaphysics: A Guide and Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 668.

11. George Mavrodes, “Some Puzzles Concerning Omnipotence,” The Philosophical Review 72:2 (1963), 221.

12. Ibid., 222.

13. Aquinas, “Is God’s Power Limited?” in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 7th ed., edited by Michael Rea and Louis Pojman (Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning, 2015), 105.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

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possible; nothing, therefore, impossible. But if we take away the impossible, then we destroy also the necessary; for what necessarily exists cannot possible not exist. Therefore, there would be nothing at all that is necessary in things if God were omnipotent.”16 Harry Frankfurt considers the conflict between the modal boundaries of logic and the omnipotence of God very real, and he concludes, contrary to Aquinas and Mavrodes, that settling on the solution of omnipotence bound by logic is not the only viable option. If God could do one logically impossible thing in creating a stone he could not lift, he could also do another and proceed to lift the stone. “If an omnipotent being can do what is logically impossible, then He can not only create situations which He cannot handle but also, since He is not bound by the limits of consistency, He can handle situations which He cannot handle.”17 A great deal of the impetus for making God’s power and free choice independent from the principles of logic rests on a deep-rooted uneasiness with the Platonic conception of necessary or self-existent entities outside the control of God. In this sense the consideration of the relationship between modal logic and God, particularly as an omnipotent and free being, quickly transforms into the question of whether God has a nature. Hendrick Hart expresses the seriousness of this question, suggesting that “a view that commits one to holding that God is subject to laws (exemplifies predicables) that are neither created by him nor identical to him, is a view that commits one to holding that God is neither sovereign nor omnipotent.”18 The impulse that leads to denying that there is anything self-existent other than God himself or that God is bound by anything, even including a nature, must not be lightly overlooked. Alvin Plantinga refers to this motive as the “sovereignty-aseity intuition.”19 We might similarly call it the “indeterministic freedom intuition.” Qualities of God such as his independence as the first being, his control over all things, and his freedom from constraint at least intuitively seem fitting for a perfect, greatest possible God. Desiring to preserve these qualities, proponents of the view of freedom as unconstrained choice may decide to deny that God has a nature. Plantinga frames the dilemma in the context of whether God’s character is of necessity: Take the property omniscience for example. If that property didn’t exist, then God wouldn’t have it, in which case he wouldn’t be omniscient. So the existence of 263.

16. Aquinas, 104-105.

17. Harry G. Frankfurt, “The Logic of Omnipotence,” The Philosophical Review 73:2 (1964),

18. Hendrick Hart, “On the Distinction Between Creator and Creature,” Philosophia Reformata 44:2 (1979), 184.

19. Alvin Plantinga, Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1980), 34.

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omniscience is a necessary condition of God’s being the way he is; in this sense he seems to be dependent upon it. Omniscience, furthermore, has a certain character . . . . But its displaying this character is not up to God and is not within his control. God did not bring it about that omniscience has this character, and there is no action he could have taken whereby this property would have been differently constituted. Neither its existence nor its character seems to be within his control.

Furthermore, its existence and its having the character it does are necessary conditions of God’s being the way he is. But how is this compatible with his being truly sovereign? . . . Still further, suppose God has a nature—a property he has essentially that includes each property essential to him. Perhaps God is essentially omniscient; that is, perhaps it’s just not possible that he fail to be omniscient. If so, then it isn’t up to him whether he has that property; his having it is in no way dependent upon his own decision or will. He simply finds himself with it; and that he has it is in no way up to him. So God’s having a nature seems incompatible with his being in total control. 20

From Plantinga’s explanation of the problem, we see that both the idea that God is not bound and the idea that God has a nature he does not create have a great deal of intuitive support. Despite the good intention of the sovereignty-aseity intuition or the unlimited freedom intuition, neither sovereignty nor freedom should be the only consideration that determines our position on whether God has a nature that limits his choice and action. Plantinga outlines several possible solutions to the dilemma between God’s nature and his sovereignty (or, similarly, his freedom). Aquinas seeks to escape between the horns of the dilemma, preserving both God’s nature and his sovereign aseity as the First Mover. To do so, Aquinas proposes that God was identical to the his divine nature. Otherwise, Aquinas believes, God will be dependent on his properties in a sense not suitable to his position as the independent, self-existence first being. We have already seen how Aquinas departs from the view of freedom as indeterministic choice in his explanation of God’s omnipotence. His solution is thus driven by the motivation of preserving God’s aseity more than preserving a particular conception of God’s freedom. “If he had properties and a nature distinct from him, then he would exist and display the character he does display because of a relation in which he stands to something other than himself. And this doesn’t fit with his existence a se. Aquinas therefore concludes that these properties are indeed ‘in’ God, but in such a way that he is identical with them.

He just is his nature.”21 Aquinas has presented a legitimate solution to the dilemma, but he may have gone too far in his proposition of divine simplicity, or that there are no distinctions within God. Plantinga points out that, given divine 20. Plantinga, 6-8.

21. Ibid., 33.

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simplicity as Aquinas expresses it, the problem divine simplicity was intended to solve does not necessarily go away. God would be identical with certain states of affairs, meaning that they would exist in every world he does, but again this would mean that their existence and possession of certain characteristics is not up to God.22 We return, then, to the problem of whether we must abandon God’s nature in order to preserve his sovereign aseity and free choice. Plantinga next considers the possible solution of nominalism: God does not have a nature because there are no natures. He possesses no essential properties because there are no properties. Again, this conclusion can be motivated by the sovereignty-aseity intuition, seeking to preserve sovereign aseity by doing away with the whole Platonic pantheon of forms that seem to threaten God’s position as the only self-existent being and source of all things.23 Though most Christian philosophers have not been nominalists, William Lane Craig has argued that nominalism, or at least conceptualism, should be an open option for Christians, because of the need to preserve God’s aseity.24 William of Ockham comes to this conclusion by starting with omnipotence as the criterion for the character of God. He explains his starting point: “I prove this first by the article of faith ‘I believe in God the Father almighty,’ which I understand in the following sense: Anything is to be attributed to the divine power, when it does not contain a manifest contradiction.”25 Even here Ockham attempts to maintain some sense of the modal logic framework, but his conclusion of rejecting universals ends up threatening rationality as well. R. J. Snell explains the price of accepting nominalism: Without nature or essence to limit his actions God created the world for no intelligible reason and according to no discernable order. God is inscrutable, and since God is not limited either by intrinsic nature, goodness, or rationality, God is revealed simply as an exercise in power, as a divine will that exercises his will without any apparent reason. Ockham is consistent, at least, for he realizes that God’s will can be completely arbitrary. Ockham even admits that “God can command that He not be loved for a certain time . . .” and not only would there not be any contradiction in this but it would then be good to hate God. This is a fateful blow to rationality, for God does not serve as the exemplar of rationality but places all rational “constants” into question. 26 22. Plantinga, 52.

23. Ibid., 63.

24. William Lane Craig, “God and Abstract Objects,” in The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity, edited by Alan Padgett and James Stump (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).

25. William of Ockham, Philosophical Writings, trans. Philotheus Boehner (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1990), 26.

26. R. J. Snell, “Overcoming Omnipotence: The Crisis of Divine Freedom in Ockham and Descartes,” Quodlibet Journal 5:1 (2003).

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Nominalism does indeed succeed in preserving divine freedom and complete sovereignty. As Plantinga puts it, here “the sovereignty-aseity intuition boasts of total satisfaction; there is nothing whatever outside the control of the Creator. There are no features of himself or anything else he must just put up with; everything whatever is and is whatever it is at his behest and by his sufferance.”27 In its attempt to place everything under the control of God, Ockham’s solution approaches very closely to what Plantinga calls the “universal possibilism” of Rene Descartes. Literally everything is possible for God.28 Descartes’s separation between God and logic becomes even more drastic than Ockham’s.

Rene Descartes’s denied God’s nature, but he was no nominalist. Instead, God has no nature, “not, indeed, because there are no properties to have, but because none of his properties is essential to him.”29 Every property that God has is within his control, subject to the determination of his will. God has no constraints from a nature that cannot possibly be changed. With Descartes we return to the related question of whether God is “above” or independent of logic. Describing the universal possibilism of Descartes, Harry Frankfurt suggests that his view leaves open the “unintelligible possibility that God knows that He does not exist,” since God could choose to make this proposition or state of affairs true if He so willed.30 Considering this proposition, “[1] God knows that he does not exist,” Plantinga outlines Descartes’s argument in logical form: [2] God is sovereign.

[3] If God is sovereign, then everything is dependent upon him.

[4] If everything is dependent upon him, then every truth is within his control.

[5] If every truth is within his control, then [1] could be true and is possible.

Therefore [6] [1] is possible.

Though [3] and [4] seem to have some intuitive weight, it would seem that a denial of [6] should carry even more weight. “The conflict is between two intuitions: the intuition that some propositions are impossible and the intuition that if God is genuinely sovereign, then everything is possible.”31 But of course not everything is possible, Plantinga responds, so we can turn Descartes’s argument on its head by denying that God can know he does not exist. Following the sovereignty-aseity intuition and the intuition of freedom as unconstrained choice to the end without limit, we would reach a conclusion repugnant to orthodox Christian theology. Certainly, if we hold the authority of Scripture, at least, God 27. Plantinga, 90.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid., 126.

30. Harry G. Frankfurt, “Descartes on the Creation of the Eternal Truths,” The Philosophical Review 86:1 (1977), 53.

31. Plantinga, 139.

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must exist; in no sense could God know his non-existence. For that matter, in no sense could God know a contradiction at all. By exposing the problems with nominalism and Descartes’s universal possibilism, Plantinga shows that “God has at least one essential property: not knowing that he does not exist. We should therefore assert forthrightly that God has a nature and that not everything is possible—even for him.”32 The apparent conflict between God’s nature and his sovereign freedom is, in a sense, a sort of Euthyphro dilemma. In Plato’s Euthyphro dialogue Socrates attempts to get Euthyphro to define what piety or goodness is, and the question arises whether the standards for these things are logically or ontologically prior to the decision of divine will. Socrates asks, “Is that which is holy loved by the gods because it is holy, or is it holy because it is loved by the gods?”33 We have been dealing with a similar question: does God act the way he does because of the bounds of his nature, or does his nature (or if he has none, his character and actions) come from the choice of his will? Thus far we have seen the problems with settling on the latter option. For instance, if God created logic, then the principles of logic could possibly be other than they are, and God could affirm contradictions if he so willed. This is the ultimate conclusion of the view of freedom as indeterministic choice, when that view is applied to God. On this view, God’s freedom consists in acts of will rather than choices according to reason.

If God must be free and have control over everything about himself, we end up either with the arbitrariness of Ockham’s position or the possibility of irrationality in Descartes’s. Applied consistently, a view that God’s choices must be undetermined and unlimited by anything remakes God in a sort of existentialist conception: God’s existence precedes his essence, and his choice is ultimately free to change anything about himself or to create his nature as he wishes.34 The ultimate conclusions of Ockham, Descartes, and Sartre seem obviously repugnant to biblical Christianity, and we are left with the alternative that God must have a nature that informs and even determines his actions. He must act in accordance with his nature.

This conclusion brings us back to our original question of whether God is indeed free. Rather than making a certain view of freedom our starting point, we should start from Scripture’s apparent indication that God has a nature and that his nature is a certain way and use this to inform which view of freedom we accept. Indeterminism, a view of freedom completely averse to necessity, is incompatible with the existence of a divine nature. That this view of freedom 32. Plantinga, 139-140.

33. Plato, Euthyphro 10a.

34. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism (New Haven: Yale University Press: 2007), 20.

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leads (at least for Descartes) to the possibility for arbitrariness and irrationality suggests not that God is not free but that a new conception of freedom is needed.

William Rowe, operating under the view of freedom as undetermined choice, comes to the opposite conclusion. Speaking in the context of God’s freedom in choosing which world to create, he states that “[o]n the assumption that God (the supremely perfect being) exists and that there is a best, creatable world, we’ve reached the conclusion that God is neither free not to create a world nor free to create a world less than the best creatable world.”35 Rowe goes on to suggest, however, that there may be a possibility for divine freedom if God “creates his nature and, by virtue of having created it, is thereby causally responsible for his own nature.”36 Unwilling to reconsider the definition of freedom as consistent with essential necessity, Rowe can only resort to the option of locating freedom in the arbitrary choice of divine will. He does find attractive Thomas Morris’s concept that God can be a “delimiter of possibilities,” which in Rowe’s application would seem to give God some responsibility over his nature. Morris, however, actually articulates this idea as a corollary to the Anselmian conception of God: Such a God is a delimiter of possibilities. If there is a being who exists necessarily, and is necessarily omnipotent, omniscient, and good, than many states of affairs which otherwise would represent genuine possibilities, and which by all non-theistic tests of logic and semantics do represent possibilities, are strictly impossible in the strongest sense. In particular, worlds containing certain sorts or amounts of disvalue or evil are metaphysically ruled out by the nature of God, divinely preclude from the realm of real possibility. 37

For Morris, the delimitation of possibilities does not come about as a result of a choice of God’s will in creating his own nature but by virtue of his nature being the way it is. Ultimately, Rowe finds the presence of necessity too strong even in his application of Morris to satisfy his own conception of significant free choice.38 Conceiving of freedom differently, however, may open the possibility for God to be genuinely free. William Reese points to a second meaning of freedom, which consists in “doing as one wishes.”39 Along with the initial view of indeterminism, this view does highlight the important role that the will must play in genuine freedom. Furthermore, this view is consistent with determinism.

35. Rowe, Can God Be Free?, 151.

36. Ibid.

37. Thomas V. Morris, Anselmian Explorations: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), 48.

38. Rowe, Can God Be Free?, 166 39. Reese, 243.

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“When a wish is gratified by one’s own action, even if the having of the wish was determined by a set of causes, one is free on this view.”40 However, like the indeterminist view of freedom, this view is not an adequate conception of freedom, since it describes freedom simply in terms of will. Again, freedom as nothing more than will encounters serious problems, since God could choose whatever he wishes, opening the possibility for God to choose evil or wish logical impossibility.

God’s choice and his wishes must have two broad constraints from his nature: rationality and goodness. We have already seen the importance of the principles of modal logic in the way that God’s nature bounds his decisions and actions. Logical possibility limits God’s choice. Logic is neither created by God nor entirely independent of God, but is related to his very nature. Based on his conclusion in opposition to Descartes that God has at least one essential and necessary property, his own existence, Plantinga points out that “the proposition ‘God has a nature’ is equivalent to ‘There are some necessary propositions.’”41 Furthermore, “for any necessarily existing abstract object O, the property of affirming the existence of O is part of God’s nature.”42 In exploring the limits that logic places upon divine choice and ability, we have in a sense never gone beyond exploring the nature of God himself, so there is no power or necessity outside the nature of God constraining him. “Of course God neither needs nor uses logic; that is, he never comes to know a proposition A by inferring it from a proposition B. Nevertheless each theorem of logic . . . is such that affirm it is part of God’s nature.”43 In light of this realization that God is by nature logical, a proper conception of freedom must include a rational component.

Furthermore, the goodness of God seems to place an important boundary on divine choice. God is by nature perfectly good, and it would be inconceivable to the biblical authors for God to have the ability to desire or choose to do evil. Adding this boundary to our already established logical framework and to the importance of the will, we arrive at a final conception of freedom: genuine freedom involves a volitional component, which must be informed and directed by both a rational component and a normative component. This view of freedom has been articulated by both Augustine and Aquinas. Both support the reality of choice, but free choice is informed by divine knowledge and identified with the Good.44 As Reese explains, Augustine “distinguishes between libertum arbitrium, the free choice which implies the power to do evil, and libertas, which 40. Reese, 243.

41. Plantinga, 140-141.

42. Ibid., 142.

43. Ibid., 144.

44. Reese, 242, 244.

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is the good use of that choice. The divine freedom is that of libertas, and not the libertum arbitrium.”45 Furthermore, in the association between freedom and the Good, “[t]he free act acquires a normative connotation, so that freedom means doing what one ought to do. In this sense God who is perfectly good, and could not be otherwise, is also perfectly free.”46 Though Gottfried Leibniz leans toward the second understanding of freedom, in terms of willful choice unconstrained by external forces and in accordance with desire, he nuances this view by adding the rational and normative components similar to Augustine and Aquinas. Leibniz describes God’s freedom as the ability “to use one’s free will for the best.”47 He describes this view of freedom in very classical terms reminiscent of his predecessors in tradition: “There is nothing less servile, and nothing more in accordance with the highest degree of freedom, than to be always led toward the good, and always by one’s own inclination, without any constraint and without any displeasure.”48 Operating in the same context as Leibniz and Rowe in his consideration of God’s freedom in creating the best world, Edward Wierenga concludes that acting in accordance with the divine nature need in no way jeopardize divine freedom. Like Augustine, Aquinas, and Leibniz, he suggests that freedom of choice stands in close relation to both goodness and understanding or reason.

Even if in some circumstances C God’s knowing that A is the best action, his wanting to do A, and his being able to do A is a logically sufficient condition of his doing A in C, it is nevertheless in virtue of his own nature that he knows that A is the best action, wants to do A, and is able to do A. There is no long chain stretching back to things separate from him that give him this constellation of knowledge, desire, and ability; it is due to his own knowledge and power and goodness. I see no reason not to say, accordingly, that God is free, even when he does what is best.49

In a proper conception of freedom, the will must neither be neglected nor made supreme and autonomous. Freedom must consist in willing the good one knows. God’s nature is supremely perfect and perfectly good and is thus the best it could be. God wills the good of his own nature because of the reason that it is the best. At this point we can attempt to resolve the adaptation of the Euthyphro dilemma in the context of the divine nature and divine freedom. God does 45. Reese, 242.

46. Ibid., 244.

47. Gottfried Leibniz, Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil (London: Routledge & K. Paul: 1952), 386.

48. Ibid.

49. Edward Wierenga, “The Freedom of God,” in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 7th ed, edited by Michael Rea and Louis Pojman (Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning, 2015), 150.

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not create his own nature; he does indeed act the way he does because of the necessity of his nature. But God also acts the way he does because he wills to do so. Every decision and action of God is willful, but none is separated from the context of his understanding of what is best in accordance with his nature. Laura Garcia insightfully draws a distinction between this view of divine freedom and the view that freedom is simply doing one’s wishes: Treating God’s goodness as a feature primarily of his will, as virtue theories suggest, rather than as a feature primarily of his intellect, sustains a more positive understanding of divine freedom. Richard Swinburne and others define perfect freedom negatively, as freedom from external coercion and from forces that could interfere with or prevent what one wills. This is surely an important aspect of freedom, but it neglects the Thomistic insight that the will is appetitive, that is oriented toward the good. In perfect freedom, then, the will seeks the highest good and perfectly possesses what it wills.50

Conceiving of freedom as volition choice directed by understanding toward goodness actually fits well with the way the Bible speaks of freedom. Particularly in the New Testament, references to freedom are not opposed to the necessary or the normative. Freedom in Christ is not absolute freedom to act arbitrarily as one wills. Instead, freedom involves an orientation toward right action. Paul reminds the Galatians, “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.”51 Peter conveys a similar command, indicating that the bounds of what is right are not inconsistent with true freedom: “Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.”52 Twice James speaks of the “perfect law of liberty,” implying that genuine freedom can exist within proper boundaries. The Lord’s Spirit is what brings freedom.53 Indeterminism fails to adequately account for the divine nature and opens up the possibility for arbitrariness and irrationality in God. Action and choice in accordance with the divine nature, with what God knows is best, does not detract from God’s freedom, but rather contributes to it.

50. Laura Garcia, “Moral Perfection,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, edited by Thomas P. Flint and Michael C. Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 234.

51. Galatians 5:13 (ESV).

52. 1 Peter 2:16.

53. 2 Corinthians 3:17.

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Bibliogr aphy Anselm. Monologion and Proslogion, with the Replies of Gaunilo and Anselm, trans.

by Thomas Williams. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1996.

Aquinas, “Is God’s Power Limited?” In Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 7th ed, 104-106. Edited by Michael Rea and Louis Pojman. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning, 2015.

Craig, William L. “God and Abstract Objects.” In The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity, 441-452. Edited by Alan Padgett and James Stump.

Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.

Crane, Tim and Katalin Farkas. Metaphysics: A Guide and Anthology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Frankfurt, Harry G. “Descartes of the Creation of the Eternal Truths.” The Philosophical Review. 86:1 (1977), Frankfurt, Harry G. “The Logic of Omnipotence.” The Philosophical Review 73:2 (1964): 262-263.

Garcia, Laura. “Moral Perfection.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, 217-238. Edited by Thomas P. Flint and Michael C. Rea. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Hart, Hendrick. “On the Distinction Between Creator and Creature,” Philosophia Reformata 44:2 (1979): 183-193.

Leibniz, Gottfried. Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil. London: Routledge & K. Paul: 1952.

Morris, Thomas V. Anselmian Explorations: Essays in Philosophical Theology. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987. ______. Our Idea of God. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991.

Ockham, William. Philosophical Writings, trans. Philotheus Boehner. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1990.

Plato. Euthyphro. In Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 36: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, 52

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Phaedo, Phaedrus, trans. by Harold North Fowler. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.

Reese, William L. “Freedom.” In Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion, 242-244.

Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1996.

Rowe, William L. Can God Be Free? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. ______. “The Ontological Argument.” In William L. Rowe on Philosophy of Religion: Selected Writings, 353-362.

Plantinga, Alvin. Does God Have a Nature? Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1980.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism is a Humanism. New Haven: Yale University Press: 2007.

Snell, R. J. “Overcoming Omnipotence: The Crisis of Divine Freedom in Ockham and Descartes.” Quodlibet Journal 5:1 (2003), http://www.quodlibet.net/ articles/snell-freedom.shtml.

Wierenga, Edward. “The Freedom of God.” In Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 7th ed, 143-152. Edited by Michael Rea and Louis Pojman. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning, 2015.

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THE TYRANNY OF TOLERANCE: A DIAGNOSIS AND PERSCRIPTION Katie Montoya

Tyranny of Tolerance was written in May 2015, anticipating the pending Supreme Court decision of Obergefell v. Hodges, announced on June 26, 2015. The author’s analysis of the glorification of tolerance is increasingly relevant as we see the continual effects of June’s decision.

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n April 28, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral argument on the case of Obergefell v. Hodges. This case—known colloquially as “the gay marriage case”—concerns the constitutionality of the state of Ohio’s ban on recognizing the marriages of same-sex couples who were legally married in other states.1 The question that the Supreme Court considered in oral argument and will presumably issue a ruling on within the next two months is whether the Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to issue marriage licenses to two people of the same sex.

During oral argument, Justice Samuel Alito asked Solicitor General Donald Verrelli whether tax-exempt universities who do not wish to recognize samesex unions as marriages would be able to maintain their tax-exempt status.

Speaking for the United States government, the Solicitor General warned, “It’s certainly going to be an issue. . . . I don’t deny that.”2 General Verrelli’s statement sent an unequivocal message to American organizations that understand mar1. Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015) (Transcript of Oral Argument), available at http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/14-556q1_l5gm.pdf (accessed April 30, 2015).

2. Ibid.

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riage differently than the current administration’s view expressed by the Solicitor General: alter your views, or accept the consequences; be tolerant, or you will not be tolerated.

At the end of On the Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau considers the exaltation of the quality of ‘tolerance’ in a State with a strong civil religion, describing this tolerance as allowing for any action that aligns with the beliefs the State requires of its citizens. ‘Intolerance’ is thereby understood as contradicting the creed of the State. For Rousseau, such intolerance is punishable by death or banishment.3 The argument of this paper is that Rousseau’s vision of a State boasting a civil religion marked by tolerance is being realized in modern America and that this development both exemplifies and exacerbates the mutually reinforcing relationship between individualism and the institutional State. “State” will be understood throughout this argument according to Robert Nisbet’s description: a centralized government spanning a specific territory that claims a monopoly on force, conscription, taxation, education, and the power to define and punish crime.4 To develop this argument, I will first provide a detailed summary of Rousseau’s theory of the individual and the State as well as his understanding of tolerance. I will then furnish examples of how the notion of ‘tolerance’ is being used to silence particular groups in modern American society in a manner resembling what Rousseau dreamed of. After diagnosing this problem, I will attempt to suggest some remedy. With the background of what conditions Burke, Tocqueville, and Nisbet considered necessary for the longevity of a free society, I will offer to the Christian reader both principles for consideration and practical steps toward taming Leviathan and combatting the tyranny of tolerance.

Rousseau R ealized Rousseau on the Individual and the State Rousseau’s understanding of the ideal relationship between the State and the individual is the foundation for his praise of tolerance. Simply stated, Rousseau argues that freedom is only realized when the institutional State is strong enough to quash the restrictions on individuals set by intermediary associations.

Rousseau opens his treatise with the familiar line, “Man is born free, and 3. See Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “On the Social Contract”, in The Basic Political Writings, 2nd ed., ed. and trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2011), 249–250.

4. Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom (Wilmington: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2010), 92–94.

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everywhere he is in chains.”5 The natural state of man is to be entirely independent of every other man including his family, which Rousseau labels as the only “natural” society.6 However, Rousseau estimates that social and government structures have ‘chained’ men and prevented them from acting freely. Thus, the purpose of his argument is to present a theory for some form of governmental organization having the authority of force to protect “the person and goods of each associate” while allowing the individual to obey only himself.7 For Rousseau, the realization of this dream is the social contract, which he believes is arranged to further the “general will” and to preserve the relative autonomy of the individual. Each member of the contract cedes all of his power to the “supreme direction of the general will” leaving each member as simply an “indivisible part of the whole.”8 The individuals may then establish a government to execute laws that further the general will and preserve liberty.9 In order to promote the general will, the sovereign (or the public force representing the sovereign) may demand from a citizen any “portion of his power, his goods, and liberty” that benefits the general will.10 The power of the sovereign is indivisible, and no exterior fundamental law restrains it.11 Crucially, within Rousseau’s social contract, there are only two components: the individual and the State. In other words, the only levels of interaction that Rousseau recognizes are the private and the public.12 There is no room for intermediate associations—meaning non-state institutions such as family, church, or even private schools—that could divide the citizens’ devotion to the State. In his Discourse on Political Economy, the absence of the family from Rousseau’s framework is especially obvious. His comments on the importance of public education are worth quoting at length: If children are raised in common . . . if they are imbued with the laws of the state and the maxims of the general will, if they are instructed to respect them above all things, if they are surrounded by examples and objects that constantly speak to them of the tender mother [la patrie, “the homeland”] who nourishes them…and in turn of the debt they owe her, undoubtedly they thus will learn to cherish one 5. Rousseau, “On the Social Contract,” 156.

6. Ibid., 157.

7. Rousseau, “On the Social Contract,” 164.

8. Ibid., 164 (emphasis removed).

9. Ibid., 192.

10. Ibid., 174.

11. Ibid., 166, 171. For the remainder of this paper, the term “State” will be used to refer to this idea of a sovereign, institutionalized body that exerts some control over almost every area of an individual’s life.

12. Rousseau, “On the Social Contract,” 165.

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another as brothers, never to want anything but what the society wants . . .13

Rousseau’s use of the language of familial relationships to describe connections with the State and fellow citizens indicates his emphasis on the State as the only association proper for an individual’s loyalty. Consequently, any significant amount of education occurring within the home is suspicious to him; he calls public education “one of the fundamental maxims of popular or legitimate government.”14 Rousseau contends that the close connection of the individual and State preserves the freedom of each individual to follow his “private will.” However, it is a curious freedom that he describes. Rousseau would permit a citizen to hold a “private will” different from the “general will that he has as a citizen.”15 But the individual may not express his deviant view. If a citizen does act contrarily to the general will, Rousseau’s contract requires that the citizen be corrected by force. He explains, “Whoever refuses to obey the general will, will be forced to do so by the entire body. This means merely that he will be forced to be free.”16 Such enforcement extends to ensuring that men view morality and their “duties” according to the State’s prescription, because for Rousseau, the State is the sole arbiter of morality and justice.17 No obligations to intermediary associations such as family or neighbor inform the individual of his role in his society: his duties are dictated by the sovereign alone.

Civil Religion in Rousseau’s State The intermediary association most despicable to Rousseau is the Christian church. The final chapter of On the Social Contract is primarily devoted to an exposition on the dangers that Christianity poses for the social contract and the need for a civil religion to demand man’s religious devotion.

Rousseau unequivocally indicates that men are beings who must worship something. He notes that early civilizations generally formed their societies around worshiping some deity and that a state has never been formed that was not based upon religion.18 Yet, for Rousseau, Christianity is distinguishable from any other religion. He argues that prior to Christianity, the religion of a civili13. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Discourse on Political Economy,” in The Basic Political Writings, 2nd ed., ed. and trans. by Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2011), 138 (emphasis added).

14. Rousseau, “Discourse on Political Economy,” 138.

15. Rousseau, “On the Social Contract,” 166.

16. Ibid., 167 (emphasis added).

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid., 243, 246.

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zation was typically tied to and informed its political laws.19 Though the religion of the people generally dictated their political actions, their allegiance was not divided between the State and an independent church. At the earliest stages of Christianity, it became obvious that Christians, focusing on an “otherworldly” king, were willing to disobey rules of the Roman Empire despite the consequent persecution.20 For Rousseau, the Christian’s focus on the heavenly kingdom leaves him apathetic to the condition of the earthly kingdom: “As long as he has nothing to reproach himself for, it maters little to him whether everything is going well or poorly down here.”21 Rousseau regards this as a destructive division of allegiance between the church and the political sovereign, laying the foundation for “perpetual jurisdictional conflict that has made all good polity impossible in Christian states.”22 Though he despises Christianity, Rousseau’s belief that man must worship something leads him to propose an alternative form of worship. Thus, Rousseau proposes a “religion of the citizen” based on a “purely civil profession of faith” that directs men’s loyalty and service to the State.23 Under this framework, the sovereign is the sole prescriber of the articles of the faith and may require a citizen to observe the State orthodoxy.24 Rousseau justifies this compulsion arguing that the practices of a citizen are useful to the general will, because it is in the State’s best interest that each citizen have a religion that motivates him to love his duties.25 He quips that an individual is free to have opinions in addition to the State’s, but these beliefs cannot prevent him from being a “good citizen.”26 Rousseau concludes the chapter on civil religion by discussing the substance of its creed. He is remiss to specify “positive dogmas” that should be contained within a civil religion, but he identifies ‘intolerance’ as the one quality that must be expunged from the citizenry.27 Rousseau contemplates intolerance in a theological sense; he offers the example of persons of a particular religious persuasion considering fellow citizens who do not share their beliefs as condemned to eternal punishment.28 He argues that this sort of intolerance makes it “impossible to live in peace” and that it will inevitably have “some civil effect.”29 In his footnote on the notion of intolerance having a “civil effect,” Rousseau specifies that al19. Rousseau, “On the Social Contract,” 244.

20. Ibid., 245.

21. Ibid., 248.

22. Ibid., 245.

23. Ibid., 246–247, 250.

24. Ibid., 250.

25. Ibid., 249.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid., 250.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid.

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lowing the church the authority to recognize marriages based on whether the parties ascribed to particular doctrines could cause mass chaos and jeopardize the exclusive authority of the sovereign.30 Due to the potential ‘civil effects’ of different religions adhering to their particular dogmas, Rousseau declares that tolerance will be extended only to those whose actions do not contradict the orthodoxy of the State. In his words, “Tolerance should be shown to all those who tolerate others, as long as their dogmas contain nothing contrary to the duties of the citizen.”31 It is this understanding of tolerance that I contend is being used to destroy both the existence of and freedoms of intermediate associations in the United States.

Manifestations of Rousseau’s Tolerance in Modern America The movement for the legal recognition of same-sex ‘marriage’ in America has been one of the most successful campaigns at suppressing those holding contrary views. “Intolerance”—or its close affiliate “discrimination”—is increasingly invoked to justify the persecution of outliers. Furthermore, the growing number of difficulties for Christian churches and organizations to operate compared to non-Christian groups rings reminiscent of Rousseau’s vision. The State has been particularly apt to cry ‘intolerant’ in respect to the beliefs about the nature of marriage expressed by wedding vendors. This trend is especially notable in light of Rousseau’s discussion concerning the State’s interest on withholding from churches the authority to define marriage.

Several examples demonstrate the similarity of the exaltation of ‘tolerance’ as a desirable quality in America with Rousseau’s analysis of the term. In 2006, a New Mexico photographer and her husband declined to photograph the “commitment ceremony” of two lesbians saying that to do so would violate their religious beliefs. The two women sued the photographers on the basis of sexual orientation discrimination. The government’s response to the suit indicates the primacy given to ‘tolerance.’ The New Mexico Human Rights Commission found the photographers guilty of discrimination and ordered them to pay $7,000 to the two lesbians. The New Mexico Supreme Court affirmed this judgment, a concurring judge infamously declaring: In the . . . world of the marketplace, the [photographers] have to channel their conduct, not their beliefs, so as to leave space for other Americans who believe something different. That compromise is part of the glue that holds us together as a nation, the tolerance that lubricates the varied moving parts of us as a people. . . .

30. Rousseau, “On the Social Contract,” Footnote 156.

31. Ibid., 251.

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In short, I would say to the [photographers], with the utmost respect: it is the price of citizenship. 32

The Elane Photography studio closed shortly after this decision was handed down from the New Mexico Supreme Court.

The state of Oregon is similarly handling the case of the owners of a bakery who, based on their Christian faith, refused to make a wedding cake for two lesbians’ same-sex marriage celebration.33 The lesbian couple sued the shop under an Oregon statute that prohibits businesses from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and further argued that the emotional distress they had suffered on account of the bakery’s refusal was akin to “‘mental rape.’”34 Upon finding that the bakery “clearly . . . unlawfully discriminated” against the couple, an Oregon administrative law judge recommended that the bakery pay a $135,000 fine to compensate the couple for emotional damages.35 Though a crowd-fund campaign was launched to help the owners of the bakery pay the massive fine, the campaign was quickly disabled when the online host determined that the bakery had been charged with a crime and thereby could not receive donations through that medium.36 This case not only exemplifies the government passing on the legitimacy of claimed religious beliefs but also provides an example of a private company acquiescing to government condemnation of fellow citizen.

The State’s intolerance of those deemed intolerant is not limited to the wedding industry. For example, Chick-fil-A was recently prohibited from opening a location at Johns Hopkins University—a government-funded institution—due to the pressures of one student organization. The Student Government Association declared that Chick-fil-A exemplifies “‘micro-aggression’” on the LGBT community and argued that their community should not be “‘subjected’” to supporting the restaurant chain.37 Additionally, Christian churches are finding 32. Elane Photography, LLC v. Willock, ___ N.M. ___, 309 P.3d 53 (2013) available at http:// www.nmcompcomm.us/nmcases/NMSC/2013/13sc-040.pdf (accessed November 7, 2015) (emphasis added).

33. George Rede, “Same-Sex Couple in Sweet Cakes Controversy Should Receive $135,000, Hearings Officer Says,” Oregonian, April 24, 2015, http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index. ssf/2015/04/same-sex_couple_in_sweet_cakes.html (accessed May 1, 2015).

34. “Same-Sex Couple Claim ‘Mental Rape’ and Will Get $135,000 after Sweet Cakes

By Melissa Refused to Bake Cake for Them,” Inquisitr, April 26, 2015, http://www.inquisitr. com/2044881/lesbians-claim-mental-rape-get-135000-sweet-cakes-by-melissa-refused-bakecake/ (accessed May 1, 2015).

35. Ibid.

36. Jay Richards, “Gofundme Disables Campaign for Christian Bakery After Pressure from Bakery’s Competitor,” Stream, April 25, 2015, https://stream.org/gofundme-disables-campaign-for-christian-bakery-after-pressure/ (accessed May 1, 2015).

37. Jessica Chasmar, “Johns Hopkins Students Reject Chick-fil-A Proposal, Call Chain a ‘microaggression’,” Washington Times, April 23, 2015, http://www.washingtontimes.com/

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themselves increasingly subject to regulations that do not bind any comparable religious group or intermediate association. This is illustrated by the case of Reed v. Town of Gilbert in which a man and his wife who pastor a small Presbyterian church are challenging a town code that treats advertisements for churches significantly differently than even political signs. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling determining whether the Reed’s Christian church is protected from such state discrimination by the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech or by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.38 Furthermore, if the Supreme Court does decide in its ruling on Obergefell v. Hodges (mentioned in brief at the beginning of the paper) that all states must solemnize and recognize same-sex marriages, Christian churches and nonprofits could lose their status as tax-exempt organizations, meaning that the government would no longer considered them charitable organizations.39 Aside from these pressures on associations, the State (referring to the federal government) is becoming increasingly involved in matters of public education. As noted above, Rousseau warned that parents should not permitted to be too involved in the education of their children in order to preserve the unity of the State. The federal government appears to have swallowed this theory as evidenced by the Department of Education’s recent actions concerning the Common Core. In late April 2015, when hundreds of thousands of parents withheld their children from federally-subsidized Common Core testing, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan declared that the federal government had an “‘obligation to step in.’”40 Duncan both threatened to levy sanctions against schools with low percentages of test takers and accused parents whose children opted-out of testing of hurting the “civil rights community.”41 This declaration hinted at a government motivation to ensure that all children learn the same material, even if it requires accusing some citizens of racism.

Each of these accounts demonstrates that if an individual fails to align with what the State currently prescribes as orthodox, his or her very livelihood may be jeopardized. These political and social pressures on those deemed “intolerant” closely resemble what Rousseau described in his discussion of civil religion. The situation demands the question of how to go about successfully resisting Rousnews/2015/apr/23/johns-hopkins-university-students-reject-chick-fil/ (accessed May 1, 2015) .

38. U.S. Supreme Court Snapshot: Reed v. Town of Gilbert (Scottsdale: Alliance Defending Freedom, 2015), http://www.adfmedia.org/files/ReedSnapshot.pdf (accessed May 1, 2015).

39. See Internal Revenue Service, “Exempt Purposes - Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3),” August 28, 2014.

40. David French, “Feds Play the Race Card to Crush Parents’ Revolt Against the Common Core,” National Review, April 24, 2015, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417476/feds-playrace-card-crush-parents-revolt-against-common-core-david-french (accessed May 1, 2015).

41. Ibid.

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seau’s tolerance and restore some semblance of separation between the individual and the State. The answer may be found in both the resurgence of intermediate associations and spiritual revival.

Rousseau R esisted Intermediate Associations: Traditional and Continued Significance Over the past four centuries, certain thinkers have propounded the necessity of a layer between the individual and the State. Without associations such as the family and church, the individual turns to the State for provisions and satisfactions typically found in the family or church.42 The State is content to furnish such services as bolsters the power of the State by leaving the individual dependent upon it. To this end, Russell Kirk affirms Rousseau’s understanding of the necessity of religion in a country and argues in “Civilization without Religion?” that statism will emerge in the absence of religious influence.43 Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Robert Nisbet each explain the proper relationship of the individual, intermediate associations, and the State.

Edmund Burke Writing at the time of the French Revolution, English statesman Edmund Burke propounds a vision of society and religion completely opposite that of Rousseau. Burke understands that man is fundamentally a “religious animal,” but unlike Rousseau, he ties religion to the transcendent.44 For Burke, it is essential that men recognize the eternal, immutable law, as this law provides the order that divorces right and wrong from the whims of men. In the absence of fundamental law, those in power have the unlimited ability “to make a constitution which shall conform to their designs.”45 Burke regards Christianity as the religion that properly instructs man as to this law and thus decries the French effort to throw off Christianity.46 Burke’s entire method of conceiving society differs from Rousseau. For Burke, no one is simply an “individual.” Instead, unique persons are connected 42. Healthcare and poverty relief are two common examples.

43. Russell Kirk, “Civilization without Religion?” in The Essential Russell Kirk (Wilmington: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2007), 111.

44. Edmund Burke, Select Works of Edmund Burke, vol. 2, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999), 186.

45. Ibid., 135.

46. Ibid., 186.

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to a family, their family’s history, a class, and numerous small societies.47 Burke famously explains, “To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle . . . of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind.”48 These little platoons teach love, veneration, affection, and admiration, which Burke regards as the kinds of sentiments that bind men together.49 Contrary to Rousseau’s emphasis on teaching children that the State is the mother that loves them and should receive their love, Burke argues that the State cannot teach sentiments such as love. Rather, the family and the church are the best instillers of these qualities.50 Importantly, these small associations also acquaint men with the moral order, and without this moral order, it is impossible to maintain liberty. For Burke, liberty must be regulated, and it is best regulated and stabilized when constrained by an understanding of the moral order.51 A lexis de Tocqueville In his 1830 work Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville provides a thorough account of the importance of the Christian religion and intermediate associations to liberty. Tocqueville argued that the Spirit of Religion (and consequently the practice of religion) was foundational to the American democracy, but the religion of which he speaks is unequivocally distinct from the State.52 In fact, Tocqueville argues that a society may remain free only if it is indirectly marked by religion (specifically Christianity).53 For Tocqueville, freedom is not achieved through the power of the sovereign State. Rather, it is an art attainable and maintainable only when the citizens possess a particular set of “mores” inculcated by the family and the church.54 These mores serve as a sort of internal control on men, circumscribing their actions so that the State has no need to exert itself. Thus, while Tocqueville and Rousseau agree that religion is an indispensable element of a free society, their views on the proper relationship between religion and the State vastly differ. Rousseau imagined that freedom would only be possible when the citizens’ devotion to the State and its laws was unmixed; Tocqueville observed that freedom in America was only sustained by habits cul47. See Burke, 119.

48. Ibid., 136.

49. Ibid., 137.

50. Ibid., 173.

51. Ibid., 92–93.

52. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), Vol. II, Part 1, Chapter 5; Vol. I, Part 2, Chapter 10.

53. Ibid., Vol. I, Part 2.

54. Ibid., Vol. I, Part 2, Chapter 10.

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tivated through a religion separated from the State.

Importantly, Tocqueville emphasizes the importance of creating some buffer between the people and the government within a democracy. Tocqueville worries that unless some form of artificial aristocracy stands between the State and the people, the State will begin invading intimate matters of individuals’ lives, including charity and education.55 He stresses that to maintain freedom in a democracy, political associations must be formed to counterbalance the power of the State.56 Thus for Tocqueville, intermediate associations are necessary both to cultivate mores and to push against the expansion of government power.

Robert Nisbet In the 123 years between Tocqueville and Nisbet, American government swung from being a highly decentralized system to an ever growing centralized power. The country had weathered the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, and two World Wars, and with each event, the political landscape of the country altered. By the time that Nisbet wrote The Quest for Community in 1953, he saw a country full of isolated individuals questing for some sense of belonging and resorting not to family and church for a sense of community but to the State.

Nisbet argues that this change was effectuated by the altered structure of the modern State. He contends that the modern composition of the State—meaning a centralized government over particular territorial boundaries—has disintegrated the communities that Tocqueville considered necessary for the maintenance of the American project.57 Nisbet further argues that the modern state has placed more emphasis on interacting with the individual than any other government institution has in history and that this interaction with individuals has made the modern State the most influential social force.58 Thus the State has no interest in recognizing the traditional forms of social relationships that in which men have existed (such as family and church) as these are simply competitors for citizen’s supreme devotion.59 According to Nisbet, the centralization of the State is ultimately traceable to the “spiritual cravings” of the people left unfulfilled by religion and thus pursued in the State.60 He explains, “Whatever else the brilliant literature of political disillusionment of our day has demonstrated, it has made clear that efforts to translate all spiritual problems into secular terms are fraught with stultification 55. Tocqueville, Democracy in America., Vol. I, Part 2, Chapter 8.

56. Ibid.

57. Nisbet, The Quest for Community, 40.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid., 41.

60. Ibid., 39.

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as well as tyranny.”61 Nisbet’s understanding of the spiritual element behind the growth of individualism and statism is essential to remember when contriving a method for recovery.

Principles for Action The examples provided above of the growing pressure on individual American Christians to abandon their beliefs in order to express State-supported dogmas demonstrate that the State is fulfilling the religious role Rousseau envisioned by prescribing creeds and punishing defectors. In the examples given, the State deemed that the concerns of some particular individuals should be tolerated by the rest of society and then threatened to demolish the values of individuals, intermediate associations, and religious groups who disagree.

Burke, Tocqueville, and Nisbet help elucidate the conditions that have been shown to promote the stability of American freedom. For many decades, the vibrancy of associations independent from the government and the sincerity of religious sentiments cultivated by such small associations checked the advances of individualism, statism, and civil religion. A solution to the problem of tolerance must therefore be aimed at reviving the associations that check the advance of the State and cultivate the habits necessary for liberty. To this end, I will offer several principles that should guide Christians’ attempt to dispel the emphasis on tolerance and three practical actions that could help cultivate the conditions that have proven necessary to keep civil religion at bay.

Before advancing too far, I want to emphasize the continued importance of Christians voting in elections, including primaries and especially in local collections. I do not believe that we are at a point like Alasdair MacIntyre describes at the end of After Virtue at which it is necessary to abandon efforts at “shoring up” the American republic.62 In reality, Christians contribute a significant percentage of the vote in every election. A survey conducted by Public Opinion Strategies immediately after the 2014 election indicated that Christians constituted almost one third of the electorate and voted for the Republican Party 88% of the time.63 American Christians should focus on getting their fellow Christians to the polls, but the structural and spiritual nature of the crisis facing America cannot be denied, and these problems are not necessarily addressed in the ballot box.

Three main principles will guide this consideration of steps toward recov61. Nisbet, 39.

62. Alasdair C. MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 3rd ed. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 263.

63. Ralph Reed, “Contra Media Narrative, Voters of Faith Still Matter,” National Review, November 5, 2014, http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/392135/contra-media-narrative-votersfaith-still-matter-ralph-reed (accessed May 1, 2015).

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ery. First, in seeking a solution to the demise of intermediate associations and the influence of religion, it is crucial not to simplistically advocate a return to the America of 1830. As Eliot muses in “Little Gidding:” We cannot revive old factions We cannot restore old policies Or follow an antique drum.64

Thus the suggestions explained below are meant as adaptations for twenty-first century in America in light of what has been proven useful at keeping the State at bay. Second, any suggested solution must recognize that there needs to be some way to place some buffer between the individual and the State, and this cushion must be completely separate from the realm of the State. Thirdly (and most importantly), as the emphasis on tolerance is traceable to a primarily spiritual pursuit (that is, the willingness to adhere to some form of civil religion), the solution to the problem must be principally oriented towards spiritual matters. In A Human Economy, Wilheim Röpke describes the necessity of always keeping in mind the spiritual nature of man when considering any social issue, for “the ultimate source of our civilization’s disease is the spiritual and religious crisis which has overtaken all of us and which each must master for himself.”65 These three principles will inform the three actions that I propose for seeking to diminish the power of tolerance. The specific suggestions are aimed at helping revive institutions that preserve intermediary associations free from the influence of the State. In addition, these actions recognize the legitimacy of authorities other than the centralized state and help provide some order to life from a non- authoritarian source.

Action 1: Strengthen Localities Focusing on strengthening local communities is one manner of developing associations that eliminate the need for massive centralization of the State. In his essay “Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community,” Wendell Berry defines “community” as “a locally understood interdependence of local people, local culture, local economy, and local nature.”66 Such a community has at least two important roles. First, it can provide order, charity, and education in such a way that there 64. T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” in Collected Poems, 1909–1962 (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1963), 206.

65. Wilhelm Röpke, A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market (Wilmington: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2014), 8.

66. Wendell Berry, “Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community,” in Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 120.

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is no need for the intervention of larger government. Second, it can function as a cushion between individuals (the private) and the state (the public).

Concerning the first point, some of the most significant expansions of the American State have been connected to the expansion of welfare programs. If small communities (and the churches and families within those communities) work to provide healthcare, excellent education, proper food, and care for the aged, there is little need for the State to intervene in intimate matters in the lives of individual citizens. Berry explains the latter concept of the cushion between the public and private in “Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community.” He emphasizes the efficacy of allowing a small community to educate its members, inculcate morals, and provide order to life.67 If the community is successful at doing the things that Berry suggests, there is no need for the State to directly interact with individual citizens. Laws and customs can generally be settled at the level of the community where individuals are known and regarded with affection.

Action II: Cultivate a Natur al Nobilit y Restoring small communities that are willing and able to support their members removes the justification for an invasive, centralized State, but equally important is the establishment of nongovernment associations that will inculcate certain habits of behavior among the citizens. Röpke specifically considers the formation of such a ‘natural nobility,’ arguing that no free society can survive unless a class of people acts as the “nation’s conscience.” He exhorts, “To belong to this group of moral aristocrats should be the most desirable aim.”68 For Röpke, this ‘nobility’ is vital to a free society not only because of its role in setting behavioral expectations but also in influencing the votes of many people.

Christians should aspire to be members of such an aristocracy and recognize that their influence over even the smallest of groups is important. The Christian soccer mom whose integrity and thoughtfulness encourages other women to act similarly or the teenager who can well articulate the arguments against abortion are examples of the natural nobility necessary to preserving a system of morality outside of the State. Morals set by such an artificial aristocracy could help push against the tenets of State orthodoxy, including tolerance.

Action III: D ynamic Churches Finally, and most importantly, Christian churches must actively seek to proclaim the truth of the Gospel to their locales, thereby offering a realistic al67. Berry, 120.

68. Röpke, 131.

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ternative to subconscious devotion to State dogma. Curiously, revolutionaries are continually attempting to change their imperfect world into a perfect society replete with justice and equality. Having abandoned any belief in God, such men have no explanation for the origin of the justice they seek or for the desire for perfection that they feel.

The church can offer both an explanation for these longings and the possibility of fulfillment. Josef Pieper argues that men have a common longing for perfection based on the account passed down through generations of man’s blissful existence in the Garden of Eden.69 Pieper further contends that Christianity explains men’s common understanding of “salvation, disaster, guilt, punishment, harmony, and happiness.”70 Alternately, like C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, the church can point to the reality of the coming heavenly kingdom to explain the human longing for perfection. Ultimately, the church can offer security in knowing that while perfection on earth will never be achieved, the Christian can seek the good of his city while awaiting the City of God. In his book Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, Ross Douthat suggests that the exponential growth of both moral vice and the State over the last fifty years can be attributed to the promulgation of poor doctrine in Christian churches.71 If Douthat’s theory is correct, American churches must purge themselves of bad doctrine, revive orthodox teaching, and adopt a rigorous orthopraxy. If members of the church consistently exemplify the fruit of a life filled by the Holy Spirit, offer thoughtful and persuasive answers to the afflictions of society, and care for the needs of their members as the Scripture instructs, nonbelievers may seek refuge for their spiritual longings in the church and not the State.

C onclusion The “tolerance” that Rousseau lauded as the primary quality of civil religion is manifesting itself in America and is slowly attacking the institutions of the family and the church. Despite the deliberate attack on the Christian faith, Christians remain in an ideal position to answer the spiritual emptiness propelling such State orthodoxy by offering insight into the only freedom: the security of redemption through the sacrifice of Christ.

69. Josef Pieper, Tradition: Concept and Claim (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2008), 56.

70. Ibid., 55.

71. See Ross Douthat, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (New York: Free Press, 2012).

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Bibliogr aphy Berry, Wendell. “Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community.” In Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays. 117-173. New York: Pantheon Books, 1993.

Burke, Edmund. Select Works of Edmund Burke. Vol. 2. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999.

Douthat, Ross. Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics. New York: Free Press, 2012.

Eliot, T.S. “The Four Quartets.” In Collected Poems 1909–1962. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1963.

Internal Revenue Service. “Exempt Purposes - Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3).” August 28, 2014.

Kirk, Russell. “Civilization without Religion?” In The Essential Russell Kirk.

Wilmington: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2007.

Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. San Francisco: Harper, 1980.

MacIntyre, Alasdair C. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 3rd ed. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.

Nisbet, Robert. The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom. Wilmington: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2010.

Pieper, Josef. Tradition: Concept and Claim. South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2008.

Röpke, Wilhelm. A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market.

Wilmington: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2014.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. “Discourse on Political Economy.” In Basic Political Writings. 2nd ed, edited and translated by Donald A. Cress, 121–52. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2011.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. “On the Social Contract.” In Basic Political Writings.

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2nd ed, edited and translated by Donald A. Cress, 153–252. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2011.

Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

U.S. Supreme Court Snapshot: Reed v. Town of Gilbert. Scottsdale: Alliance Defending Freedom, 2015. http://www.adfmedia.org/files/ReedSnapshot.pdf (accessed May 1, 2015)..

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The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction. Matthew B. Crawford. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015. 320 pp.

Reviewed by Sarah Crandall What does it mean to be fully human? To what extent should individuals seek autonomy as opposed to heteronomy? Is the human ideal freedom from all limitations, or freedom within one’s particular temporal and physical situation?

These are a sampling of the questions Matthew Crawford seeks to address in his latest contribution to the world of political philosophy, The World Beyond Your Head. Blending metaphysics, epistemology, and political theory with contemporary social commentary, he argues that “we find ourselves situated in a world that is not of our making, and this ‘situatedness’ is fundamental to what a human being is” (26). His goal: to recover the relevance of the “real world” to the human individual at a time when technological developments and the modern desire for absolute autonomy are seeking to divorce the two.

The World Beyond Your Head is Crawford’s second major work, following Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, which explores the value of hands-on labor in light of the tendency to elevate intellectual endeavors. The two books fit together well, exploring the consequences of dichotomizing thinking and doing. His published essays evince a marked interest in issues relating to attention, education, autonomy, and human labor. A senior fellow at University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture with a Ph.D in political philosophy from the University of Chicago, he seeks to maintain a thinking-doing balance in his personal life by operating a shop for custom motorcycle repair, an experience which informs both of his books and capitalizes on his undergraduate degree in physics from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Crawford bases his conclusions on several assumptions about human nature—most fundamentally, that a common human nature does indeed exist. Humans are evaluative creatures, capable of second-order desires, of distinguishing coherent narrative threads, and of designing and implementing constructs for the efficient direction of human behavior (what Crawford terms jigs and nudges) (19, 21, 43). He devotes a significant portion of his book to defending the epistemological theory of embodied perception—that humans come to know the world around them by acting in it and contacting it directly, not merely through symbolic representations of it. Crawford’s concern is that the widespread epidemic of distraction and the prevalence of attempts to manipulate human attenVol. I, No. 1

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tion are symptomatic of a broader disconnectedness from the objects and individuals around man, due to a faulty epistemology that emphasizes experience of representations or illusions over experience of reality. He relates this to the modern ideal of autonomy—that humans impose their will without reference to any external limits—tracing this ideal back to the Kantian empirical-rational divide (74). This division overlooks the possibility of learning through participation in a tangible reality and has led to much self-isolation. Crawford sees this self-isolation exemplified through automated driver-assist technology, which separates the driver from the road through mediating instruments like electronic brakes or prerecorded engine noises, as well as through the modern-day gambling industry, which profits by enabling people to block out real-world limitations like risk, financial resources, and other obligations and providing them with an addictive illusion of choice. Crawford objects to this philosophy strongly, pointing out the irony in the way a wrong understanding of human dignity as rooted in autonomy leads to acceptance of “activities that leave one compromised and degraded” (108).

Divorcing rational choice from an accessible reality also has implications for human relationships. In particular, Crawford points to the rejection of any sort of authority and an inability to relate to other individuals in community, which have led to a loss of creativity and to what he terms a “flattening phenomenon”—a “polite separation” between “interchangeable, autonomous subjects” with “no complementarity . . ., no differentiation and dependence” (129, 192193). He counters this flattening with the extended example of an organ makers shop, which blends past, present, and future in a symbiotic relationship and which uses social authority as a basis for individual contributions.

Crawford’s reflections are timely and well-substantiated with accessible illustrations, many of which are quite personal. The problem of distraction and the question of how individuals relate to society has fostered quite a bit of recent philosophical discussion (see, for example, To Flourish or Destruct, reviewed below), and Crawford brings a unique perspective as a scholar who is attempting to break out of the ivory tower and test his ideas in the real world of which he writes.

However, this book does leave the reader with some unanswered questions.

Although Crawford does begin by pointing out several characteristics of human nature, he seems to lack an ultimate justification for his conception of human nature, veering at times a little too close to existentialism for comfort. Although he modifies Hegel’s idea of the self, saying that it is only revealed, but not constituted, by man’s actions in society, he fails to provide an ultimate counter-source of its constitution (152). Similarly, although Crawford speaks of man’s need to evaluate his actions and of man’s “visceral concern for excellence,” he never provides 72

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a standard for evaluation apart from those that are socially determined (155, 158). In light of his understanding of a reality that is not posited or virtual, this discussion seems to be begging for a more robust exploration of what it means to have a human nature and telos or end, and the source of those fixed characteristics (173). Perhaps a future book can continue this discussion and explore the extent to which social interactions shape human nature. For now, readers are encouraged to explore the world beyond their heads, remembering that their heads are just as real as the world around them.

To Flourish or Destruct: A Personalist Theory of Human Goods, Motivations, Failure, and Evil. Christian Smith. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2015. 342 pp.

Reviewed by Sarah Dunford In his newest book, To Flourish or Destruct, Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith calls for a new understanding of the human person and his surrounding society in social studies. His earlier books, Moral, Believing Animals and What is a Person? examined the nature of human personhood. Here, this conversation is extended with an expressly teleological view of the human person which explains his relationship with society and purpose in life. Through his analysis, Smith seeks to lay a foundation that forms an accurate model of humanity and society. All other models of human beings present a false view of reality. He calls his model “natural-goods-seeking-persons,” a point which he devotes his book to explaining.

Two concepts are essential to understanding Smith’s argument—critical realism and personalism. Critical realism is a theory of reality which seeks an ontological understanding of the world, not merely one of cause and effect. When we understand what a thing is, we can study how it works to produce the effects we see in the world. Personalism is a theory of human nature which primarily “wants to know what persons are.” Smith distinguishes between a person and an individual. Sociology often looks at humans as individuals who are studied as they react to certain variables. This ignores the internal nature of humans and examines only empirical, material evidence. What most differentiates personalism from other models of human beings is its distinction between personhood ontologically and experientially. Ontologically, human beings possess the same personhood. They share a telos which is their common goal and establishes what it means to be fully human. Existentially, human beings have not reached their telos. Thus, while they possess the fullness of personhood in their being, their Vol. I, No. 1

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expression of it is not yet complete. Together, ontological and experiential personhood form critical realist personalism, the model of human beings Smith says is most descriptive of reality.

Many sociologists base their view of human personhood on the idea that human beings derive their personhood from their society. This is the view entitled “social situationism.” In response, Smith states that human personhood is an inherent possession independent of society. This does not mean that human beings are not influenced by their surrounding society. Rather, society plays an important role in human flourishing, for it can either aid the person’s journey towards his telos, or it can pull him away. Thus, while society is an important feature of human flourishing, it does not create, but rather reveals the already present personhood.

Due to the foreign nature of teleology to the modern mind, Smith takes roughly half the book to provide the context for this discussion and allow those who hold other positions to reevaluate and change their understanding of human nature. Can we really be satisfied with a view of the human being derived from how he reacts to external conditions? Or is there something within man that defines who he is and provides internal motivations for his actions? Smith argues for the latter case. The personhood inherent in human beings contains internal motivations (such as beliefs, desires, and emotions) which lead to action.

While having established that flourishing is the movement of a person towards his telos, it is still necessary to explain what exactly flourishing entails.

Smith delays this explanation to the last third of the book, needing first to demonstrate the influence of theory on the practice of social science (regardless of whether or not we hold a conscious theory of human nature, our views will impact the way we approach science) and lay the foundation for study of human ontology.

Human personhood is expressed in six basic human goods—physical survival, security, and pleasure; knowledge of reality; identity coherence and affirmation; the exercise of purposive agency; moral affirmation; and social belonging and love. These goods are not just individual preferences of what a single person may see as “good,” but are objective goods which are rooted in reality. They are called goods because human nature is oriented toward them. All together, these goods constitute a single end, which is our human flourishing as persons. In order to flourish, a human must pursue all these goods.

Perhaps the biggest question left after reading this book is, Where does personhood come from? If we assume the claim that personhood is something possessed inherently in each person’s being, what is its source? Is Smith’s explanation of the six basic human goods a sufficient and exhaustive account of human

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nature, or do these merely derive from a nature that was instilled from elsewhere? Why are the six basic goods the necessary aspects of human flourishing?

It is circular to state that the pursuit of the six basic goods leads to flourishing personhood while they also derive from what it means to be a person. While goods can lead to and derive from personhood at the same time, to avoid this circular confusion, there must be an explanation why personhood is the way it is.

This may be a topic suited to be addressed in a later topic.

Smith’s explanation of critical realist personalism provides a basis for analyzing human actions from a more complete model than those currently used in sociology. While his main audience is social scientists, Smith notes that a proper view of human beings is essential to moral philosophy and political theory. Regardless of one’s area of study and interests, there is much to be gleaned from Smith’s analysis of human personhood, for all must have an understanding of human personhood to lead a flourishing life.

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