“Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith- A Dialogue” by Rene Girard and Gianni Vattimo

This book contains a series of three public debates between Girard and Vattimo, from the late 1990s, followed by concluding essays by both men, summarizing their differing positions. Girard is a French anthropologist and Vattimo an Italian philosopher, but both are practicing Catholics, though neither doctrinaire by any means. Girard should be regarded as the more traditionalist of the pair, whereas Vattimo considers himself a left Heideggerian nihilist, who has found his way back to Catholicism. The two find plenty in common, however. The debates’ moderator, Pierpaolo Antonello, suggests, “if we seek a unifying philosophical theme encompassing both authors, a common cornerstone of their outlook, that would be “the death of God” in both the philosophical and the anthropological senses.”

Vattimo states that, after reading Girard, a key term he began implementing was secularization. He defines it thus, “secularization, which I take to mean the effective realization of Christianity as a nonsacrificial religion…. Secularization is not the relinquishment of the sacred but the complete application of the sacred tradition to given human phenomena…. Christianity is the religion that opens the way to an existence not strictly religious, if we take “religious” to mean binding restraints, imposition, authority…. Charity takes the place of discipline.” Girard offers a word of caution. “If our cultural evolution has led us to substitute ourselves for God, then we had better realize that we have taken on an enormous responsibility…. Judaism and Christianity are aware that if we try to do away with all the prohibitions, the limits that the archaic religions imposed, we are putting at risk not only ourselves but the existence of the whole world…. Secularization also entails the end of the sacrificial…. When, thanks to Christianity, we get rid of the sacred, there is a salvific opening up to agape, to charity, but there is also an opening up to perhaps greater violence.” Girard goes on by describing the facts common to all archaic myth, as he sees them. “Every myth is a failed Passion. Not in the sense that the victim was not killed, but that the anthropological truth of this death, of this innocent death, was not unveiled. The question the Passion poses is: which side are we on? Are we with the crowd that accuses Jesus of being guilty, or are we on the other side?… Myth is always dominated by the viewpoint of the crowd, which designates the victim and proclaims his guilt, whereas in the Passion story we see the other side too, the position of the innocent victim.”

In the next debate between Girard and Vattimo, the two discuss cultural, ethical, and moral relativism. Vattimo begins, “I think of God as relativist because he is the only entity who really could be, given that he gazes down on the various cultures of humanity from on high.” Girard brings in his ideas on mimetism. “The mimetic theory is an effort to demonstrate that cultural differences, no matter how significant they may be at one level, are insignificant at another…. Man is essentially competitive and inclined to rivalry. He wants to outdo his neighbor, and so he competes with him. Human intelligence, the spirit of initiative, is basically competitive.”

In the final debate, where the men discuss their readings of Heidegger and Nietzsche, Girard brings up what he sees as the crucial point. “The most important thing Nietzsche ever said about religion (and, I would hazard, the most important thing said in theology since the time of Saint Paul) is that in myth the victim is always expelled and justly killed (and in this sense, I, too, could claim to be a bit of a Nietzschean), whereas the community bears no blame. Sacrifice is something necessary and therefore positive because a community, a society, that cannot kill, that cannot victimize, no matter if the victims are innocent, is condemned to extinction; it is condemned to exactly the kind of weakness we have today, a weakness inherited from Christianity…. [Nietzsche] chooses to take the part of violence!” In the end, Girard asks of Vattimo, in a world stripped of the safety valve of the scapegoat mechanism, “How do we control the ever-present tendency of the crowd to veer off into some excess?”

“The Story of the Stone Vol. IV- The Debt of Tears” by Cao Xueqin (translated by John Minford)

This volume continues the story of the Jia clan, both the Ning-Guo and Rong-Guo houses. Cao Xueqin again details the forms, duties, and protocols expected of such illustrious families, connected so intimately to the Imperial Household by government position and even marriage. Grandmother Jia’s grandchildren have all grown up and marriage is foremost on everyone in the household’s minds. Again, the differences in attitude towards the female and male Jia descendants becomes apparent. It is said of the young ladies of the household, only partially in jest, “Marry a daughter, throw out the water.” Lady Wang, Grandmother Jia’s daughter-in-law and Ladyship of the Rong-Guo House, continues, “Can’t you see that sooner or later every girl has to leave home, and that once she’s married her own family has no business to interfere? She must look to her own future. If fate has been kind to her, well and good. If not, she must learn to live with it all the same.” As for the males, her husband, Jia Zheng, states, “Speaking of Bao-yu, the boy spends all of his time loafing about in the garden—it simply won’t do. With one’s daughters—well, one has one’s disappointments, I realize, but in the long run girls get married and leave the family anyway. With a son, however, it is totally different. If he should fall by the wayside, the whole future of the family could be threatened.”

In this volume, Jia Zheng finally sends his son, Bao-yu, to school to learn the philosophical classics, primarily Confucius and Mencius. His tutor, Dai-Ru, admonishes the boy, “In the phrase sine Nomine, Nomen refers not to Success in the Worldly Sense but rather to an Individual’s Achievement in the Moral and Intellectual Spheres. In this sense it by no means implies Official Rank. On the contrary, many of the Great Sages of Antiquity were Obscure Figures who Withdrew from the World; and yet we hold them in the Highest Esteem, do we not?” Bao-yu’s female cousin, Dai-yu, also tutors him on the finer points of Buddhist philosophy, “Can’t you see? It’s the illusion of “me” that creates the illusion of “others”, and a life lived under these twin illusions is bound to be beset with frustrations, fears, confusion, foolish dreams and a host of other obstacles and entanglements.”

Living beyond the family’s means and eating into their capital to keep up appearances is a reality for all in the Jia household, which has finally even sunk at the most senior levels. Grandmother Jia’s eldest son, Jia She, observes, “We are not exactly the great and glorious house we once were, you know. Nothing but hollow facade.” His younger brother, Jia Zheng, chimes in grimly, “Our respectability is more than balanced by our lack of ability and positive achievement. We are living on borrowed time, and one day it will run out.” Even Grandmother Jia, herself, caustically comments, “In a family like ours we never need to do our own sewing, I know. But it’s as well to know how. Then you will never need be at the mercy of others.” Even a friendly ghost in her Ladyship’s dream chimes in, warning, “Prosperity may all too soon be spent; draw back, draw back before it is too late.”

“Essays” by Michel de Montaigne (translated by Donald M. Frame)

In this formidable collection of essays, Montaigne dissects every minute aspect of his own life, from the nitty-gritty of his kidney stones and sleep habits to larger philosophical themes, such as parental obligation, religious duty, and metaphysics. Each essay has an ostensible title, but Montaigne wanders freely and fruitfully with digressions that sometimes never return to their source. He also shows the breath of his reading, quoting extensively from classical authors to reinforce his points—most frequently Cicero, Seneca, Horace, Lucretius, and Virgil. Montaigne also delves into the current events of his day, obliquely relating how his practical advice might help ameliorate the bitter divide engulfing his country, the French civil war of religion during the sixteenth century. As a landed aristocrat, he had a vested interest in keeping the peace and his property.

Montaigne’s inquiry is, at heart, on how to live the good life: both in virtue and in pleasantness. He begins by addressing his reader directly, “Thus, reader, I am myself the matter of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject.” In his writings, Montaigne returns to a few choice subjects again and again. One is the nature of philosophy. He writes, “Cicero says that to philosophize is nothing else but to prepare for death. This is because study and contemplation draw our soul out of us to some extent and keep it busy outside the body; which is a sort of apprenticeship and semblance of death. Or else it is because all the wisdom and reasoning in the world boils down finally to this point: to teach us not to be afraid to die.” Montaigne also connects the first philosophers with the poets. “And indeed philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do these ancient authors derive all their authority, but from the poets? And the first ones were themselves poets, and treat of philosophy in their style. Plato is but a disconnected poet.” One is not so sure if Plato, given his own opinion of poets, would agree. Montaigne, much later, continues, “Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry its progress, ignorance its end.”

Montaigne is a cultural pluralist. He believes strongly in the powers of tradition and custom. He states, “The laws of conscience, which we say are born of nature, are born of custom. Each man, holding in inward veneration the opinions and the behavior approved and accepted around him, cannot break loose from them without remorse, or apply himself to them without self-satisfaction.” To wit, Montaigne states, “Everything that seems strange to us we condemn, and everything that we do not understand.” We always are prone to judge the foreign as falsely inferior. He cautions humility. “A soul guaranteed against prejudice is marvelously advanced towards tranquility.”

Montaigne also believes in the natural inequality of man. He quotes, “Plutarch says somewhere that he does not find so much difference between one animal and another as he does between one man and another.” Montaigne has much disdain for the mob. “The common herd, not having the faculty of judging things in themselves, let themselves be carried away by chance and by appearances, when once they have been given the temerity to despise and judge the opinions that they had held in extreme reverence, such as those in which their salvation is concerned.” Montaigne cautions to be careful in the quest for knowledge. “From obeying and yielding spring all other virtues, as from presumption all sin. And on the contrary, the first temptation that came to human nature from the devil, its first poison, insinuated itself into us through promises he made us of knowledge and intelligence: Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil [Genesis]. And the sirens, in Homer, to trick Ulysses and lure him into their dangerous and ruinous snares, offer him the gift of knowledge.”

Montaigne is humble in his thoughts. He is complicated and nuanced. He is not one for categorical absolutes and sweeping statements of truth. “I am attached to the general and just cause only with moderation and without feverishness…. All legitimate and equitable intentions are of themselves equable and temperate.” What he states on one page he might refute or, at least, quibble with on another. He makes the distinction between legislation and morality. “There are lawful vices, as there are many either good or excusable actions that are unlawful…. Now laws remain in credit not because they are just, but because they are laws. That is the mystic foundation of their authority; they have no other…. To be disciplined within, in his own bosom, where all is permissible, where all is concealed—that’s the point.” Men might have a public persona, but also a private character. “Men have seemed miraculous to the world, in whom their wives and valets have never seen anything even worth noticing. Few men have been admired by their own households.” He willingly admits to this inconsistency of mind. “I have nothing to say about myself absolutely, simply, and solidly, without confusion and without mixture, or in one word.” Montaigne’s quest is one for self-knowledge. “And he who understands nothing of himself, what can he understand?” He continues, “The world always looks straight ahead; as for me, I turn my gaze inward, I fix it there and keep it busy. Everyone looks in front of him; as for me, I look inside of me; I have no business but with myself; I continually observe myself, I take stock of myself.” Montaigne has matured and changed, but will not judge if it is for the good. “Myself now and myself a while ago are indeed two; but when better, I simply cannot say.”

Montaigne trusts only in himself. “We have no wish to be good men according to God; we cannot be so according to ourselves.” He sets greatest store in the independence of his own mind. “I set little value on my own opinions, but I set just as little on those of others…. If I do not take advice, I give still less.” Montaigne lives above the fray and is content in his modest fortune and public obligations. “Extremely idle, extremely independent, both by nature and by art. I would as soon lend my blood as my pains. I have a soul all its own, accustomed to conducting itself in its own way. Having had neither governor nor master forced on me to this day, I have gone just so far as I pleased, and at my own pace. This has made me soft and useless for serving others, and no good to anyone but myself…. The only ability I have needed is the ability to content myself with my lot, which, however, if you take it rightly, requires a well-ordered state of mind, equally difficult in every kind of fortune, and which we see by experience is more readily found in want than in abundance; perhaps because, as with our other passions, hunger for riches is sharpened more by the use of them than by the lack of them, and because the virtue of moderation is rarer than that of patience.” Montaigne urges caution in wearing a public mask, most especially if hiding from oneself. “Those who have a false opinion of themselves can feed on false appropriations; not I…. I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.”

Montaigne constantly returns to the theme of preparing for his own death. He quotes, “Lucius Aruntius killed himself, he said, to escape both his future and his past.” Montaigne states, “My trade and my art is living.” His sole aim in life is to learn how to best live the good life. But that is fundamentally intertwined in preparing for a good death. “We are great fools. “He has spent his life in idleness,” we say; “I have done nothing today.” What, have you not lived? That is not only the fundamental but the most illustrious of your occupations. “If I had been placed in a position to manage great affairs, I would have shown what I can do.” Have you been able to think out and manage your own life? You have done the greatest task of all…. To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.” Finally, Montaigne admits, “I talk about everything by way of conversation, and about nothing by way of advice…. Truly, I have not only a great number of propensities but also plenty of opinions which I would be glad to make my son dislike, if I had one. What if the truest opinions are not always the most suitable to man, so wild is his composition!”

“Equals” by Adam Phillips

This is another collection of Phillips’ essays, subdivided into three categories: Equals, Under Psychoanalysis, and Characters. Each essay is a self-contained piece, with the theme of the collection, on the nature of equality in relationships between people (or lack there of), ever-floating loosely in the background. Phillips first essay, “Superiority,” makes the point that “equality…. is the legitimation, if not the celebration, of conflict.” In order for there to be a real dispute there must be some kind of rough balance of standing between the parties. On the other hand, “the authoritarian order pre-empts conflict, which is in and of itself a primary value. And to value conflict—to prefer the openness of conflict to the closure of intimidation—necessitates some notion of equality.” Phillips continues by bringing it back to his field of expertise, “The aim of psychoanalysis, one could say, might be the precondition for democracy; that a person be able to more than bear conflict, and be able to see and enjoy the value of differing voices and alternative positions.”

In his next essay, “On Being Laughed At,” Phillips expands on his idea of how relationships between people often involve tensions. Indeed, he asserts that there often can even be tension between two parts of the Self. “In circulation with others—and in the circulation with ourselves that is called psychoanalysis—it becomes extremely difficult to sustain, to hold in place, our preferred images of ourselves, of who we would rather be…. We are always other than what we want to be…. We don’t look the same as we look to ourselves.” That is what is so piercing about getting laughed at. The self-constructed veil of illusion is lifted for all the public to see. Phillips suggests, “To grow up is to discover what it is one is unequal to.” Some people bear this revelation better than others. Phillips assumes that the ridiculer reveals more about himself than the one exposed to the ridicule. “To laugh at someone one must enjoy their hatred of being laughed at…. It is one thing to acknowledge—if one is psychologically minded to—that we are likely to project whatever it is we find unbearable about ourselves into others. It is quite another to ridicule or mock this unbearable something once it has been so projected.”

Phillips begins his second section, “Under Psychoanalysis”, with the essay, “Around and About Madness.” He quotes psychoanalyst John Rickman that “madness is when you can’t find anyone who can stand you.” Madness is inherently social. It is about what it says about the sane just as much as it is about the insane. “In so far as they don’t break the law…. they are more like people with disturbingly bad manners. People who, by not playing the game, make us wonder what the game is. And indeed why the rest of us have consented to play it…. Those people referred to (however loosely) as mad are always people who seem to be unable or unwilling to follow rules. Their language, their beliefs, their bodily gestures, their hygiene, their hopes and expectations can be wildly at odds with some putative norm. They remind us of what it is to be normal.”

In the essay “Making It Old,” Phillips discusses the baggage that we all carry from our past. He suggests, “Our preoccupations are the way our pasts go on in our future…. Memory is of desire; we are formulating, we are picturing, in what we call our memories disguised descriptions of previous and longed-for satisfactions and terrors…. One is always bringing ones own past to the past…. There is the past that can seem to be searching us out, while we go in search of other pasts.” He prolongs the theme of our past  continually playing a role in our present and future selves in his next essay, “Childhood Again.” He explains, “The details of a life, of course, can never be predicted; nor can the content or the exact working of the repetitions…. But what can be assumed is that there will be repetitions, and that these repetitions found their initial (and initiating) forms in childhood…. The experiences of childhood—if that is what they are—are at once our most privileged and elusive referents. Memory becomes the hope, in however disguised a form, of the possibility of satisfaction.”

The last section of Phillips’ book is a series of character sketches taken from his book reviews of biographies, as well as novels. Phillips continues to pile on the insights while attempting to analyze from afar. In “Svengali,” he asserts, “That people want things that apparently do them harm—that they can desire the unimproving thing—might make us wonder less about human depravity and rather more about the points that pleasure makes.” Returning to how people view their pasts in “Isherwood,” Phillips states, “It is only in retrospect that we can avoid being so narrow-minded about ourselves…. Recollection, Isherwood intimates, may be the best cure for egotism.” In a review of the novel, “Mr. Phillips,” Phillips describes how the eponymous hero views his life course as charted. He is a man full of superstition. “The feeling that there are other powers, whether malign or in some way on our side, makes life seem more like something going on inside a novel than the random, intractable thing that we have to go through unassisted.” Of course, the person Phillips is ostensibly analyzing to make this point, is, in point of fact, a character within Lanchester’s novel. In “Russell” Phillips gets back to his theme of how perilous relationships are between people, but sometimes even more so between one’s own Self. “Disappointment with other people is easier to deal with, and rather more exhilarating, than disappointment with oneself. If one can bear it, though, disappointment with oneself may lead somewhere: once you realise you’ve got your ideal self wrong you can come up with a new one.” Finally, in his penultimate essay, “Ravelstein,” Phillips makes one last point about how amorphous the play between humans can be when we try to relate to one another. “That we might be full of other people—engaged in endless mutual biography—makes a more private sense of self difficult to account for.”

“Statesman” by Plato (translated by C.J. Rowe)

This is another dialogue starring the mysterious Visitor of “Sophist” fame. Now, his interlocutor is Socrates’ namesake, the so-called Young Socrates. After bantering around for a bit, they get to the crux of the matter. The Visitor suggests, “that kingly rule was one of the sorts of expert knowledge…. It seems that of constitutions too the one that is correct in comparison with the rest, and alone a constitution, is the one in which the rulers would be found truly possessing expert knowledge, and not merely seeming to do so…. And whether they purge the city for its benefit by putting some people to death or else by exiling them, or whether again they make it smaller by sending out colonies somewhere like swarms of bees, or build it up by introducing people from somewhere outside and making them citizens—so long as they act to preserve it on the basis of expert knowledge and what is just, making it better than it was so far as they can, this is the constitution which alone we must say is correct.” The Visitor seems to be giving utmost leeway to the opinions of experts in ruling the polis. He continues, “It is clear that the art of the legislator belongs to that of the king; but the best thing is not that the laws should prevail, but rather the kingly man who possesses wisdom.” There goes rule of law. It comes down to personal wisdom versus legislation. “Law could never accurately embrace what is best and most just for all at the same time, and so prescribe what is best. For the dissimilarities between human beings and their actions, and the fact that practically nothing in human affairs ever remains stable, prevent any sort of expertise whatsoever from making any simple decision in any sphere that covers all cases and will last for all time.”

The Visitor uses a metaphor to explain the role of the ideal Statesman, “Just as a steersman, always watching out for what is to the benefit of the ship and the sailors, preserves his fellow sailors not by putting things down in writing but offering his expertise as law, so too in the same manner a constitution would be correct, would it not, if it issued from those who are able to rule in this way, offering strength of their expertise as more powerful than the laws?” The Visitor seems to want to let the experts steer the ship of State, as circumstances arise, how they see best, without being constrained by tradition, precedent, and, most certainly, legislation. But who will these expert statesmen be? It is obvious, according to the Visitor, “that a mass of any people whatsoever would never be able to acquire this sort of expert knowledge and so govern a city with intelligence; and that we must look for that one constitution, the correct one, in relation to a small element in the population, few in number, or even a single individual.” The Visitor does worry that false prophets might claim to be experts and claim that mantle to the detriment of the whole State. “If they were to do such a thing without having expert knowledge, they would be undertaking to imitate what is true, but would imitate it altogether badly.” The Visitor next reiterates whom he has in mind as experts. “No large collection of people is capable of acquiring any sort of expertise whatsoever…. Then if some sort of kingly expertise exists, neither the collection of people that consists of the rich, nor all the people together, could ever acquire this expert knowledge of statesmanship.” The Visitor concedes that this is a dangerous proposition as it will attract many false experts. “Then it is in this way that the tyrant has come about, we say, and the king, and oligarchy, and aristocracy, and democracy—because people found themselves unable to put up with the idea of that single individual of ours as monarch, and refused to believe that there would ever come to be anyone who deserved to rule in such a way, so as to be willing and able to rule with virtue and expert knowledge, distributing what is just and right correctly to all. They think that a person in such a position always mutilates, kills and generally maltreats whichever of us he wishes.” Remember, the Visitor is setting out his case for the ideal Statesman, the platonic form, which might never exist in reality, and contrasting it at times, with what actually happens in the polis of reality. To that end, he states, “So then we must also remove those who participate in all these constitutions, except for the one based on knowledge, as being, not statesmen, but experts in faction.” If it is not statesmanship by impartial intelligence, then rule devolves into command by party and faction.

The Visitor next returns to the responsibilities of a proper Statesman. “What is really kingship must not itself perform practical tasks, but control those with the capacity to perform them, because it knows when it is the right time to begin and set in motion the most important things in cities, and when it is the wrong time; and the others must do what has been prescribed for them.” The Visitor goes back to one of his favorite metaphors for the proper occupation of kingship- the weaver, “The one that controls all of these, and the laws, and cares for every aspect of things in the city, weaving everything together in the most correct way—this, embracing its capacity with the appellation belonging to the whole, we would, it seems, most appropriately call statesmanship.” The job of the Statesman is to weave together and balance the various personalities of the best men of the polis to make sure that these men are put in a position to care for the day to day functions of the State. Skill in rhetoric, generalship, and judging of the laws are subordinate to the primacy of statesmanship and, therefore, must be delegated and not necessarily practiced by the king. Achieving balance to set the State in equilibrium is paramount. Neither men of too much courage, nor men of too much moderation must exert undue pull on the levers of State—this balance is the role of the ideal statesman. To that end, the Visitor admonishes, “This is the single and complete task of kingly weaving-together, never to allow moderate dispositions to stand away from the courageous. Rather, by working them closely into each other as if with a shuttle, through sharing of opinions, through honors, dishonor, esteem, and the giving of pledges to one another, it draws together a smooth and ‘fine-woven’ fabric out of them, as the expression is, and always entrusts offices in cities to these in common…. For the dispositions of moderate people when in office are markedly cautious, just and conservative, but they lack bite, and a certain sharp and practical keenness…. And the dispositions of the courageous, in their turn, are inferior to the others in relation to justice and caution, but have an exceptional degree of keenness when it comes to action…. This marks the completion of the fabric which is the product of the art of statesmanship: the weaving together, with regular intertwining, of the dispositions of brave and moderate people—when the expertise belonging to the king brings their life together in agreement and friendship and makes it common between them, completing the most magnificent and best of all fabrics and covering with it all the other inhabitants of cities.”