Mysticism, perhaps for good reason, is something of a dirty word in philosophy, but I think that something that has gone by this name is necessary for ethics or moral philosophy. My goal in this paper is to explain this thesis, clarifying what I mean by ‘mysticism’, and exploring some of the advantages and disadvantages of mysticism in ethics. Not surprisingly, mysticism is associated with religious views on ethical issues, and these are often conservative. One danger of appeals to the mystical is that they can seem to justify the irrational and evil prejudices of people on the right wing. Another danger is that they might seem to justify nothing at all, or perhaps anything whatever. But I should first define mysticism.
In her essay on “Contraception and Chastity,” Elizabeth Anscombe claims that the sense that casual sex dishonors the body is a mystical perception. She also says that the sense that leaving dead bodies out with the trash shows a lack of proper respect is mystical too. It seems to me that Leon Kass has exactly the same kind of perception in mind when he talks about the “wisdom of repugnance.” He asks rhetorically in his essay on that subject: “Can anyone really give an argument fully adequate to the horror which is father-daughter incest (even with consent), or having sex with animals, or mutilating a corpse, or eating human flesh, or even just (just!) raping or murdering another human being?”
I do not know whether Kass really means to imply that having sex with animals is worse than rape and murder as he might seem to (I doubt it), but my goal is not to defend the specific values that Anscombe (a Catholic) and Kass (a one-time member of George W. Bush’s government) support. Rather, I am interested in the limits of rational argument that Kass points out. These limits can be seen by liberal and progressive thinkers as well as conservative ones. I would argue, for instance, that the idea that human beings have natural rights is a mystical one. The same might be said about the very idea of a moral law.
This kind of “mystical perception” or “wisdom of repugnance” obviously depends on a certain kind of emotional response, but it is not thereby non-rational. Indeed, someone who put his dead or dying mother out with the rubbish would be regarded as highly irrational, precisely because (or insofar as) he saw nothing wrong with doing so. Moral reasoning typically begins from certain data, such as the badness of pain, the value of human life, the desirability of autonomy, and so on. Our perception that such things are indeed good or bad, however, is hard to justify empirically or logically. Instead it rests on a kind of emotional response. People who lack this kind of basic emotional orientation to the world would strike us as alien and hard, if not impossible, to reason with. In this sense reason and emotion are intertwined.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Abstract mysticism
This is an abstract I'm working on for a conference paper. A previous version of it was unsuccessful, so I've revised it, but perhaps not enough. I'm working with a 500-word limit, so I can't add anything unless I also take something else away. Any suggestions, though, would be welcome.
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I'm not sure I buy the suggestion in the last paragraph that the person who put his dead mother out with the garbage is irrational--that is, I would think another word (insane?) makes more sense. (That is, would Spock say of putting mother out, "That's not rational, Captain"?)
ReplyDeleteSome, I guess, would say that you could just call all of this non-cognitivism and be done with it. But maybe what you want is to say that having certain emotional responses/mystical perceptions is a precondition of being a moral agent? Or that sanity requires a "mystical" acceptance of some non-cognitive reactions?
Sorry, I don't feel like this is very helpful, but I'll post it in case you can do something with it...
why use the word 'mystical' here, since other less-mystical options seem available?
ReplyDeletei have the sense that you're going to have to at least be phenomenologically specific to earn the right to be heard out.
Matthew, I think the word 'irrational' can be used in several ways and this is a perfectly good one. But you're right, I do mean something like insane. Part of my point is that Spock is not all that rational, or is only rational in a fairly narrow sense. I guess I need to clarify all this, and it might well be worth revising the abstract to squeeze some of this clarification in.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to call it non-cognitivism, partly because the idea of mystical perception suggests that one knows what one perceives. I don't want to call it cognitivism either, though, partly because that doesn't fit Kass's view. And yet I think Anscombe and Kass are talking about the same thing (maybe that's where I'm going wrong).
I like the fact that the word 'mystical' sounds so bad and yet what Anscombe means by it seems pretty reasonable. One of the main things I want to say is that these seemingly very unattractive views are actually quite attractive in some ways. But I might be shooting myself in the foot by putting the unattractiveness right up front. It also might be better to focus on matters of more substance. Thanks, j.
wouldn't the attractiveness or reasonableness be a sign that maybe anscombe has over-sold things a bit?
ReplyDeletein one of erving goffman's essays—maybe in the last one in 'relations in public'?, but i bet elsewhere—he observes that the dignity accorded to human subjects could be thought of as the last holdout in the gradual de-ritualization of society, from its former state in more religious periods of extracting all kinds of elaborate shows of ritual deference and ritually obliged performances, not just to people but gods, idols, objects, special occasions or circumstances, whatever.
(that would be one way of spelling out the specialness, i guess, without calling it 'mystical'.)
but… putting pressure on something that sounds bad is probably a good idea, too.
I suppose I do think that Anscombe goes too far in the sense that I'm not a Catholic and don't believe many of the things that she believes. But I agree with her about its being bad to put bodies out with the trash, and I think this matters because many ethicists want to treat only the sentient or only the rational as mattering. Other things that matter about it include that this is an example of rationality (in one sense of that word at least) consisting in a certain kind of emotional response, so that there is no contrast or distinction between reason and emotion here (as people sometimes think there must always be), and that, although "mysticism" sounds bad, if this is that people mean by it then it isn't actually that bad. I wouldn't talk about "mystical perception" myself, though, unless I wanted to annoy philosophers.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Goffman reference--I might explore that.
And Matthew, I don't want to talk about preconditions of being a moral agent, but this is close enough to what I want to say that it will be important for me to locate my position in relation to this kind of claim. That might involve getting into whether we can understand the mentally ill, which could connect with Rupert Read's work on this, to which Coetzee has responded.
I wonder whether this is any better:
ReplyDeleteElizabeth Anscombe claims that “mystical perception” is what gives us the sense that leaving dead bodies out with the trash shows a lack of proper respect. Leon Kass has a similar kind of perception in mind when he talks about the “wisdom of repugnance.” He asks rhetorically in his essay on that subject whether anyone can really “give an argument fully adequate to the horror which is” incest, “or having sex with animals, or mutilating a corpse, or eating human flesh,” or more everyday wrongs such as murder. Anscombe’s talk of perception suggests a form of cognitivism, while Kass sounds like a non-cognitivist, yet they appear to have the very same phenomenon in mind. Moral beliefs are often hard to justify rationally, however irrational their rejection might be.
My goal is not to defend the specific values that Anscombe (a Catholic) and Kass (a one-time member of George W. Bush’s government) support. Rather, I am interested in exploring the limits of rational argument that Kass points out. These limits can be seen by secular, liberal and progressive thinkers as well as by religious and conservative ones. I would argue, for instance, that the idea that human beings have natural rights is might be called “mystical,” and the same might be said about the very idea that there is a moral law.
“Mystical perception” of this type obviously depends on a certain kind of emotional response, but it is not thereby unconnected with questions of rationality. Indeed, someone who put his dead or dying mother out with the rubbish would be regarded as highly irrational, precisely because (or insofar as) he saw nothing wrong with doing so. Moral reasoning typically begins from certain data, such as the badness of pain, the value of human life, the desirability of autonomy, and so on. Our perception that such things are indeed good or bad, however, is hard to justify empirically or logically. Instead it rests on a kind of emotional response. People who lack this kind of basic emotional orientation to the world would strike us as alien and hard, if not impossible, to reason with. In this sense reason and emotion are intertwined.
It is tempting to say that a certain amount of emotional health (or, less judgmentally, a certain kind of emotional orientation to the world) is a necessary condition for being a moral agent, but it would be very hard to draw sharp lines around exactly who or what is (or could be) a moral agent and who or what is not. Rather it seems better to say that we would not recognize someone as a moral being unless they shared certain ways of behaving, ways of assessing actions or reasoning about them, and certain kinds of emotional reaction with us.
In this paper I outline the interconnectedness of emotion and reason in recognizably ethical thought and behavior, and explore both the importance and the dangers of our reliance on intuitions of the kind described by Anscombe and Kass.
yeah, that's more careful about framing the opposition between A. and K., and setting a context for talk about 'mystical perception' that seems it will be tolerated. (there's a typo in the second paragraph: 'is might'.)
ReplyDeletenot knowing anything about ethics, it seems to me that your stress on 'emotional' in the latter half is bound to bring out questions about hume from other ignorant audience members. i also expect a lot of people would look at the idea about the need for an emotional response and start whipping out reductios in order to prove it.
why call the response 'emotional'? (what is the field of alternative possibilities?)
Thanks, j. I think you're right that 'emotion' is the wrong word. What I want is a word that would cover both the idea that some truth is being perceived and the idea that there can be wisdom in feelings of repugnance (and of what is required in order to honor something appropriately). I wonder if 'perception' would be better. "Perceptual health" doesn't sound right though. I might need to mix up the words so that it's clear that not too much weight should be placed on any one choice. One of these words might be 'intuition.' Another might be 'sense,' as in "our sense of what is appropriate."
ReplyDeleteMakes me think of Acquinas and "affective cognition" or Anscombe's "connatural knowledge". At any rate, I think Anscombe's "mystical perception" undoubtedly links back to Aristotle's "the decision rests with perception". "Mystical perception" could be her way of inheriting that idea in her Catholic context.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think that's exactly it. I'll have to explore the Aristotle and Aquinas connections and see how much I want to say about them. Thanks.
ReplyDelete