Towards an incomplete, contaminated, ambitious education
This was originally published on my Substack, the Journal of Embarrassing Catholic Studies. (Caveat: some of the language is a bit Catholic inside baseball!)
In describing the “ideal school,” the first question is, why send your kid to school at all? There is, of course, the obvious efficiency involved in educating children communally: there’s an economy of scale in conveying skills and information to children when you put them together. There are the “social benefits” involved in having your child spend time with other children. A school also helps domestic life by providing childcare and creating a source of predictability and routine. However, if a school simply views itself as a provider of these services, it will cultivate an attitude towards education which is excessively individualistic, even selfish.
A good school must recognize that the parents are primary educators; however, it will not simply view itself as an instrument of the parents’ will, a way of conveying pre-specified goods to the child. Instead, it will be a place where the child (and the parents) develop somewhat open-ended relationships which are serious enough to have their own claims on the child and on the family. These relationships should not, of course, supersede the authority of the parents over the child—a school should not expose the child to things which the parents have forbidden, nor should it make such extensive demands on the child that the parental relationship is an afterthought—but the best education occurs in the contexts of relationships which make their own demands.
In this sense, a school’s relationship to the child will be analogous to the grandparents’ relationship to the child. Grandparents must accept that the parents’ relationship with the child is more fundamental than their own—they shouldn’t violate the express wishes of the parents, undermine the parents, or try to become the dominant influence in the child’s life—but they shouldn’t be micromanaged either, nor should they constantly ask the parents “what are your goals for the time that I spend with little Cecilia?” This isn’t simply because the relationship will be less “effective” in nurturing the child if it’s micromanaged (though this is true); it’s because the relationship has its own dignity, and requires that each party have freedom to exercise creative agency.
Aristotle correctly described man as a political, rational animal. Our vocation takes this into account: each side of the great commandment is an I-and-thou affair. Because we are rational and relational, we are able to love; this requires freedom. One aspect of this love is the simple “fiat!” but this love also frequently involves a more creative form of human agency[1]: speaking with a friend, creating a work of art, raising a child—these tasks are not mostly made up of us saying “okay, I’ll execute the commands you’ve given me because I love you”; they typically involve us directly perceiving that a word, a brushstroke, an action is good, and choosing it.[2]
Our education will focally occur in the contexts of relationships which teach us to pursue the good more fully. In these relationships, there’s a dialectic between love-of-the-other and love-of-the-end-pursued. “Friendship” is perhaps the best example of this kind of free relationship. Many friendships are formed over a common pursuit (social justice, soccer, philosophical discussion, putting on a play), and common pursuits will often continue to structure the friendship. But over time the friendship itself takes on a certain priority. It isn’t that pursuits have ceased to matter; because of the friendship, they actually matter more. But the friendship matters yet more still.
Life within a school should be like this: the students should have the opportunity to cultivate friendships and pursue intellectual and artistic projects in a dialectical fashion, structured by love.
Learning and working in this context of love is revolutionary. In a theological context, we think of St Josemaria’s description of sanctified work. In a romantic context, we think of the attention that lovers put into their letters and their efforts at self-improvement; romantic love can catalyze all sorts of other good ambitions. In a domestic context, we think of Charlotte Mason’s description of the child narrating a story to an attentive parent.
Perhaps it is unrealistic to think of a school as this sort of context, at least most of the time. But many people have had communitarian experiences where their activity took on a new light. Perhaps it was a summer camp, a play, a particular group of friends, a sports team, an extended family or tight knit neighborhood; in any case, there was a sense that what you did mattered, and that it mattered precisely because it was part of the story that you were all living and witnessing together. (This can be true even if there are rivalries, factions, drama, even if you wouldn’t necessarily have become close friends with any of the people individually in another context.) The goal of a school should be to provide its members with this sort of local “public” life, and a context for more specific relationships.
Of course, it’s a choice to send your child to school, so it’s impossible to avoid the thought of “optimizing” relationships. We should do everything we can to create a context for good relationships—in terms of the environment, time management, philosophy, etc.—and if a school becomes harmful it’s natural to leave. (This is less true with grandparents; they have to be really, really terrible before you should avoid them!) But there should be a certain kind of stickiness to a school. I’ve heard many Catholic families say as a form of encouragement “you just take education one year at a time.” This may be true, but it is certainly not the ideal. A much better situation is that you have an acceptable school and you send all your kids there, even when it isn’t optimized for a given child in a given year. Among other things, this teaches your children a correct lesson: life isn’t about optimizing their experience, their relationships, or even optimizing their educational progress. Rather, the child is a person who belongs in a particular communitarian context, and they should pursue various (good) ends within that context.
The “school as service-provider” model is, I think, connected to another educational error that many people today make (though the people are not all the same), which is to view the task of the parents as essentially being about “launching” the child to autonomous success. On the secular version of this view, the parents need to “give the child the tools of success.” The basic idea is that skills are even more useful than cash: you can use them anywhere to get what you need. Catholic parents sometimes take a related view about virtue, using similar language of investment. By “investing” in the child’s formation, the child will reap spiritual benefits. Well this is of course true, but it’s easy to get the order of priorities wrong. The reason to strive to grow in virtue today is first of all as an act of love. We are never to grow discouraged in our moral progress (or lack thereof) because the times that exist are “now” and “eternity,” and there are always acts of faith, hope and love that we can do now. (I realize I’ve probably just stated some sort of theological/metaphysical error, but something close to this is true.) Of course we need to be realistic about how habit formation works, to act prudently today in light of how our actions are likely to affect things tomorrow, etc. But the sort of capitalist/investment-based version of virtue ethics is suspect, at least when it is dominant. (We need to remember the parable of the workers, and not just the parable of the talents.) If your child grows up to be a drug addict, this does not mean your education of them was a “waste,” or that it “didn’t work.” You should be educating them (and loving them) in a way that is worth doing even in the event that their life is a terrible failure in human terms.
What I have said creates a difficulty for describing a school in advance. Because I want to recognize the legitimate demands of relationships within the school, and the rights of teachers to educate with a relatively high degree of freedom, I can’t say “it will look exactly like this.” My hope is that people at the school would spend some good time arguing with one another about how things should be. Arguing about stuff is an important part of communal life. So here are some things that I would argue for:
Division of subject matter into “necessary” and “unnecessary”
Everyone learns the necessary subject matter, and they learn it together
E.g. civics, reading/writing, basic math
Sometimes they’d learn it in a large group (as in the case of civics, Greek myths, Shakespeare, singing, etc.) to cultivate the sense that everybody knows this
For subjects like reading/math, students would study relatively independently and in small groups, working on a a modest and fixed time per day
These subjects would take up a relatively small time in the day, e.g. 30 minutes math, 30 minutes reading (until kids really know how to read), 30-60 minutes “common communal subjects.”
Students are forced to do this as a demand of justice: you need to know this much stuff to be a functional member of society and also a functional member of this particular community, to be properly publicly spirited
This ensures that the kids get what they really need to get, and will be able to pursue these fields farther if the develop interests
Everyone has a lot of time for pursuing other subjects
The math kid might spend three hours a day learning math
Mentorship would play a big role here, especially in helping the students manage their own time
The students would have further instruction available from adults
Teaches the students a sense of responsibility and the right kind of ambition: learn math because it’s beautiful! Play soccer for the glory of your school! Cook because it’s delicious and an act of service! Recite Shakespeare because it’s something to do with your friends.
By having the right sort of people at the school (i.e., adults who have serious academic ambitions and who have loving relationships within the school; kids who come from families where this is normal) you can set the right “tone” at the school: everyone will be motivated to pursue their work in a somewhat ambitious way.
Montessori ideas:
2.5-3 hour work periods
Tactile stuff as needed
Mixed age classrooms!
caveats:
Be clear about what is required and what’s optional, using a standard of justice
At a certain age children should be required to learn hand washing
If a child doesn’t want to do bean spooning or pasting, this shouldn’t be required unless he needs to be able to do these things to carry out his duties (which is unlikely)
(In my experience, Montessori classrooms sometimes pretend they are giving the child a choice, when they are actually strongly pressuring the child to act in the way that “the good children act.” If sitting out for an activity is an option, the teacher shouldn’t act disappointed that the child chooses it; if it isn’t an option to sit out for an activity, the teacher should be prepared to force the child--and to give the child a punishment, rather than a consequence (although these have their place, too)--if the child disobeys. To be clear, I think that very few activities should be required!)
Don’t fetishize work!
A university model: teachers are working in their fields (the English teacher writing poetry, the history teacher writing op-eds, the math teacher studying higher math for herself, etc.) They are bringing the students into this.
School as a place for engaging in the worthwhile-for-their-own-sake activities. E.g., a school newspaper that publishes all sorts of things (poetry, reviews of school plays, arguments about current events, argument about school policy) and which parents—and other people!—can also participate in
Classical ideas:
Trivium: have the kids learn lots of facts at a young age! Teach logic and rhetoric at age-appropriate times; have a context for rhetoric
Teach Latin, Greek, Ancient Hebrew!
Read great books! But:
don’t fetishize the canon! Great books are useful partly because they tend to be pretty good (and sometimes even great) but largely because they are the books from our particular culture
A concern for our particular culture should also lead to engagement with contemporary, non-canonical works that are culturally important today
Don’t think of the canon as something you can “complete”
The more you’ve read, the more you should realize that you haven’t read everything you should read
Our sense of melancholy and incompleteness should grow with time, rather than shrinking
Don’t cultivate the following attitude in students when they go out into the world: “because I’ve read Aquinas and Dante and you never have, we have nothing to talk about.”
Language immersion from the youngest age (ideally German or French)
Music appreciation and singing from the youngest age
Lots of plays, especially Shakespeare
Learn social dancing
Uniforms, or a dress code that is simple and oriented around formality/beauty rather than modesty. (But really, a uniform would be best!)
Charlotte mason ideas:
Lots of outside time!
Young children do not need to be taught very much
Doing things attentively, but for short periods
Living books, rather than textbooks (at least for most things)
Education as relational!
Only:
Take a more public-spirited, communitarian route!
The sort of school I’m describing will provide an education that is partly non-transferable: a lot of the goods you’ve pursued matter precisely in relation to these people; you may have picked up some skills along the way, but the experience isn’t optimized for college admissions. It’s also ambitious: you are pursuing literature, math, theater, music, etc. for its own sake, and with intensity. The education is necessarily incomplete, and understands itself to be so; you should grow thirstier the more you drink. And the education will be contaminated: because it is relational, because people at the school are free, you will be exposed to their errors (and their bad taste!) alongside the good.
Key Texts for pedagogical philosophy:
The Gospel; Simon Leys, The Hall of Uselessness; Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics; Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition; Natalia Ginzburg, The Little Virtues; all of GK Chesterton; Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought. (Also probably Pieper’s Leisure, the Basis of Culture but I haven’t actually read it.)
Footnotes:
[1] Just as love can call us to submit to a frightening demand (Abraham & Isaac, the Annunciation, Gethsemane), it can also lead us to acts of creativity. For instance, the Angel told Mary that Elizabeth was pregnant, but the Visitation wasn’t a micromanaged affair; it’s more appropriate to characterize Mary and Elizabeth’s words there as “inspired” than “obedient.”
[2] A good person in good circumstances will actively enjoy the fact that his actions are obedient, but he doesn’t need the concept of “obedience” to understand why the thing is worth doing; someone who is depressed, in a difficult circumstance, or vicious may need the concept to successfully complete things that he doesn’t directly perceive as desirable. The beatitudes are central to the Christian life, but our goal should never be to submit people to the difficulties which bring them about. (We don’t try to persecute people for righteousness sake, e.g.) So, although we should seek to be obedient in all things, and teach children to do likewise, we should use the concept of “obedience” only as needed, so as to avoid provoking our children (Ephesians 6:4) or burdening ourselves in the wrong way. (To be clear, the concept may be needed a lot, because the normal thing is for us to be vicious and for our circumstances to be hard!)
Another Obstacle to Elite Religion
Christ and the Rich Young Man (from wikipedia)
Ross Douthat offers a couple reasons that American elites are unlikely to get religion: first, they hold (irrational) anti-supernaturalist prejudices; second, “the American educated class is deeply committed to a moral vision that regards emancipated, self-directed choice as essential to human freedom and the good life.”
I’ll add a third reason: religion undermines the sense of mastery—the experience of earned and earn-able distinction—which is central to the identity of many American elites.
To the extent that America is meritocratic, elites are winners in a system that divides people up on the basis of real (though only quite partial) virtues: they're usually clever, ambitious, organized, competent. They find meaning and a sense of identity in doing interesting work, work that makes a difference, work that puts their faculties and training to use. Also, it's important to them that they're the people who "get it."
(To be clear, I think both these desires—the desire to do meaningful work and the desire to get it—are good and reasonable! But you should be willing to give up the first desire if necessary, and you should be careful that the second desire doesn't get in the way of actually perceiving the truth, that you want to really get it rather than just feeling like one of the people who “get it.")
It’s hard for such people to “get” a religion like Christianity, because it doesn't offer the sense of mastery which they're used to; in fact, it usually undermines it in a pretty shocking way. Most people who become Christian, who try to follow the commandments of the Church, find that it's really difficult, and not in the "good difficult" sense that elites love—the hard workout, the challenging job—but difficult because it involves repeated failures, failures which may continue for your entire earthly life. This is a “life project” where you don’t get to view yourself as the hero; instead, it requires that you accept you’re going to be the “difficult person” in the relationship, that, on net, you’ll be a recipient of forgiveness more than you get to be the person who generously offers it to those who are less fortunate/able/virtuous.
A couple of my friends—both educated at elite schools, both very capable—have explicitly cited this as a reason for rejecting Christianity. One friend—a very admirable person who has devoted their life to learning and service rather than to acquiring money or prestige—told me that they could never become a Christian because the inability to be “good enough” in the achievement department would make them depressed. Another friend converted to Catholicism as an adult, but became depressed after years of committing the same sins, confessing them, struggling against them, and then committing them again. They decided that it would be better for their mental health to categorize these things as “not sins” and move on.
But almost everyone who tries sincerely to live as a Christian will find themselves confessing the same sins over and over. And this is particularly hard for elites to handle: they're used to either being able to write something off as "not a problem, not something I need to work on" or being able to solve it decisively. But the idea that you need to keep struggling against something while also cultivating an attitude of peace and detachment about your own performance is... well, it's the opposite of meritocratic. Elites are just like everyone else in that they’re sinners, but unlike everyone else they're used to viewing themselves as special, and as especially virtuous.
To be clear, I’m not just blaming elites here; Christians sometimes fail to emphasize the extent to which Christianity is at war with the meritocratic prejudices of meritocratic elites. I suspect this is because Christians want to emphasize moral realism and the value of virtue, and to encourage people to grow in the virtues. But we need to emphasize both aspects of G-d’s love for us: not just that He calls us to radical transformation, but also that He loves us right now, just the way we are. The path to transformation might be messy, slow, and uncertain and most of us will need to rely on being loved—rather than relying on our prospects of success, prospects that might look dim most of the time—if we’re going to keep going.
This was originally published on my Substack, the Journal of Embarrassing Catholic Studies.
Cases Against Contraception
This is a collection of essays about sexual ethics. and contraception that I’ve written on my Substack, the Journal of Embarrassing Catholic Studies.
1) How to Talk About Sexual Ethics
3) A Philosophical Argument Against Contraception
I’ll try to keep this list updated but I make no promises…
Abortion should be Illegal
Trigger warning: I use some very graphic language here. May not be suitable reading for a person who has had an abortion. Style is a bit “philosophy paper.” May be boring/impenetrable.
The killing of unborn children is the greatest human rights issue of our time. More than half a million children are poisoned, dismembered or otherwise intentionally killed in utero in the US every year. That this is legal is gravely unjust.
There are three attitudes you might take about abortion 1) a fetus is not a person, so abortion is fine, 2) a fetus is a person, but abortion must be allowed for feminist reasons, 3) a fetus is a person, and deserves legal protection from abortion. I will assess each of these arguments in turn.
“A fetus is not a person.”
There are three reasons that you might think a fetus is not a person. One relies on developmental abilities: a young embryo is less intelligent and capable than a mouse. Another relies on location: whether you’re a human or not might depend on where you are located. The third relies on sentimentality: it’s usually less upsetting to have a miscarriage than to see your two-week old baby die.
The main problem with the developmental approach is that it concedes too much. If you take the view that we should only count someone as “human” or extend human rights to them if they reach a certain developmental threshold, then the threshold is much higher than a newborn. In other words, if fetuses aren’t humans, then neither are newborns. (This is why Peter Singer argues that infanticide should be legal.) We don’t protect human newborns on the grounds that they are intelligent, autonomous, or capable. Babies are incompetent and vulnerable, and we protect them because they are human. Similarly, we shouldn’t deny human rights to people who are severely disabled. Even if a person is less intelligent than a pig, chimpanzee, or dolphin, we still owe her more protection than we owe to these animals.
Some people ridicule the idea of protecting very young embryos, and ask sarcastically if we also need to protect sperm, if ejaculation is a genocide. The answer is—obviously—no. From a biological point of view, life begins when the sperm and the egg unite and form a new organism with his or her own DNA. This organism is the same person, although much younger, than the adult he or she will eventually become. A zygote is essentially different from a sperm in that a zygote will continue developing into an adult if she’s provided with the right environment and ample nourishment (and provided that she isn’t killed by violence, an accident, or a disease). If you provide a sperm with these things, it will just remain a sperm. In the absence of a specific, well grounded reason to think otherwise, we should accept the biological definition of when a new organism comes into being—i.e., at conception.
Some people think that a baby’s location in the womb means that she is not a person. This is, frankly, ridiculous. A creature’s location cannot affect whether or not she is a person. It might affect other things, like whether or not they have citizenship in a particular place, but I can only think of nationalist reasons for declaring that you’re not human if you exist in a certain location. (For instance, perhaps someone might argue “only American citizens are humans, the unborn are not American citizens, therefore the unborn are not humans.” But this argument is wrong: humanity cannot depend on citizenship.)
I think sentimentality is the most common reason for imagining that a fetus isn’t a person. It’s pretty common for very young embryos to die, but parents don’t always react to these deaths as strongly as they would to the death of a two-week-old newborn. I suspect location and development both play a role in our sentiments here: by living outside the uterus, a child is able to develop more of a relationship with her parents, and older babies look more like adult humans.
To be clear, considerations like do I have a relationship with this person? can be relevant when we think about our moral obligations. Relationships are often the source of moral obligations. For instance, you may feel a moral obligation to adopt the children of a friend or sibling who suddenly dies, even if you don’t feel a moral obligation to adopt in general. However, our relationship with a person (or our lack of relationship with a person) is never a good reason for thinking that someone isn’t a person, or that they don’t have human rights. This is why we recognize the full humanity of people with extreme ASD: the fact that a person is non-verbal and “difficult to relate to” doesn’t affect whether she is a person. Similarly, this is why we protect newborns who are severely disabled and disfigured, even if they don’t look like a “cute baby,” and even if they don’t look much like a baby. We recognize that these children are human and we respect their human dignity; their humanity is not affected by terminal illness, deformity or disability.
Similarly, we need to be clear that, to quote Dr Seuss “a person is a person, no matter how small.” All human babies are human persons, even ones who are small as zygotes. The only question is whether it’s always wrong to abort a person.
“A fetus is a person, but abortion should be legal”
Some defenders of legalized abortion have argued that even if fetuses are humans, abortion is acceptable. For instance, the philosopher Judith Jarvist Thomson has proposed the following thought experiment: Suppose one morning you woke up and found that a famous cellist was attached to you in such a way that if you disconnected him, he would die. He’s going to be there for nine months. Surely you have the right to detach him. If you decide to let him stay attached, that’s a choice, not something that can be imposed on you.
Whether or not we have an obligation to keep him attached, this analogy faces a problem: abortion usually doesn’t involve “detaching” the baby who then peacefully dies. Instead, abortion typically involves poisoning the baby, dismembering her, or crushing her skull. If I woke up one morning to find a cellist attached to me, I’m quite confident that I would not have the right to detach him by, say, poisoning him or sawing him in half.
In other words, since a fetus/embryo is a person, the only situations in which abortion might be acceptable are ones that don’t involve directly killing the child. If pregnancy is like having a cellist attached to you, there’s an argument for saying that a woman has the right to detach the baby non-violently even though she knows that the child will die. For instance, hospitals might offer a procedure where they induce labor very prematurely, and then provide hospice care to the infant while she dies. The mother could elect to be awake or asleep for this process to avoid the trauma of seeing the child die.
This kind of arrangement would only be acceptable if you really don’t have an obligation to stay attached to the cellist. And frankly, I suspect that in most cases, you would have a moral obligation to stay attached even if detachment involved a non-violent death for the cellist. If you were doing really vital work—say you’re the only doctor for hundreds of miles, and dozens of people will die if you stay attached to the cellist—you might be justified in detaching him (in a non-violent way). But most of the time, if you’re the only person who can keep another person alive, and the time for which this will be true is limited, you have an obligation to keep them alive even if it’s inconvenient.
“A fetus is a person and so abortion should be illegal.”
Given that abortion usually involves the direct killing of a child, it should be illegal. Just as immigrants and non-citizens should be protected from violence by American citizens, so too, children who are in a uterus. This right to freedom-from-violence should apply to people in the womb, and to those who live abroad, as well as to those who are more visible to US citizens. (There’s much to be said about the injustice of American foreign policy, but that’s a rant for another day.)
I said earlier that relationships can give rise to moral obligations. This can apply to chosen relationships, like marriage or friendship, but it can also apply to unchosen relationships, like the relation with a sibling. An unplanned pregnancy is an unchosen relationship that can give rise to moral obligations, both because the mother is the only person capable of keeping the child alive, and also because the parent-child relationship is morally relevant. Because of this, Thomson’s “cellist” analogy isn’t quite right. There’s a difference between waking up attached to a famous cellist and waking up attached to your own sibling, or—in the case of pregnancy—to your own child. Our obligations to our children are stronger than our obligations to strangers; this is true before and after they are born (though it’s particularly true before they’re born, because we’re the only people who can keep them alive), and it’s true whether or not their conception was planned (if we have a planned child and an unplanned one, we don’t owe the unplanned child less). This is another reason for thinking that the “abortion alternative” I proposed above—premature induction with hospice care—is a form of neglect that is very, very hard to justify.
But if abortion should be illegal, what does this mean for women’s rights? If a woman can’t terminate an unwanted pregnancy, how can she be equal to a man?
I believe this is the wrong way to approach women’s equality with men. To quote Leah Libresco:
Often, our equality is premised on remaking ourselves to be more like the median man, whether that means changing our style of speaking to exclude apologies, changing our breastfeeding plans to keep up with work’s minimal accommodations, or changing our bodies to suppress fertility and destroy our children.
We say no, and that, instead, the world must remake itself to be hospitable to women, not the other way around. That means valuing interdependence and vulnerability, rather than idealizing autonomy.
The fact that people can become pregnant—and indeed, that every person alive was gestated by a pregnant person—suggests that humans are not, by nature, independent. Instead, we are interdependent. The fact that all reproductive labor is done by people with female biology suggests that we need to restructure our society in a way that is more supportive of this work. Instead of viewing women as defective men, instead of trying to correct our “defects,” we should confront the facts of female biology. Sometimes people get pregnant. All those people are women. Those people owe something to their babies. And other people owe something to them.
In other words, we should view a woman who experiences an unplanned pregnancy as the normal person, rather than regarding a 25-65 year-old male with no dependents as the standard. Interdependence is, in fact, more representative of the human experience. It’s normal to be suddenly imposed upon by the needs of another human, and to suddenly impose upon others. Most people are at least one of: children, elderly, sick, capable-of-pregnancy, pregnant, or parenting children under the age of 15. The group made of healthy childless adult men and healthy childless post-menopausal women is a minority. If we really viewed women as normal humans, instead of seeking equality by making women less imposed-upon, we would try to make being-imposed-upon more normal. Pregnancy is always an imposition, even when it’s actively sought. But in the model we’ve chosen, the model where abortion is available, society can say “pregnancy is always the pregnant person’s choice,” which is to say, “we owe nothing to those who are pregnant.”
As it happens, “those who are pregnant” always have female biology. A more authentic feminism would regard pregnancy, even unplanned or difficult pregnancy, as a normal part of life, and it would find ways to include people other than pregnant women in the group of those who are imposed-upon. Instead of insisting that women have the right to imitate male autonomy, we should insist that men have an obligation to imitate female availability-to-others.
This original version of this article is available on my Substack, the Journal of Embarrassing Catholic Studies.
Truth vs. Conscience: Against Alan Jacobs’ Defense of A Hidden Life
…Not only is bad hagiography uninspiring; it tells something false about Christianity. In stripping away the historical facts about the actual Franz, Malick treats sanctity as a force which makes a person more abstract and less particular. This simply doesn’t make sense within the context of Christian theology. Christians believe that God became a historical person; why would we then suppose that Christian practice reduces the saint to an ahistorical abstraction? Moreover, if Christianity is true—if to be a saint is to be an excellent Christian—we should expect that the saints will be more unique than the average person. True excellence usually makes a person more distinct: the diversity amongst great writers, pianists or philosophers is much greater than the diversity amongst mediocre ones. We should expect to see the same dynamic among the saints.
Jacobs is therefore wrong to suppose that showing the details of a saint’s life could get in the way of depicting Christ’s Passion. The excellence of the saint is an excellence in imitating Christ, in bearing witness to him. (“Martyr” means “witness.”) This doesn’t require that the saint crudely ape the activities of Christ: many saints have never engaged in carpentry or commercial fishing, have never been itinerant preachers or been killed by Roman soldiers. Rather, the saint manifests the presence of Christ in her personality and in her historical circumstances.
The best way, then, to show Christ’s Passion in the life of a saint is to show the saint’s actual martyrdom, in its messiness and particularity. Whether it is the martyrdom of Joan of Arc (who briefly recanted before accepting her death at the stake), or of St. Mark Ji Tianxiang (who was still addicted to opium when he was beheaded in the Boxer Rebellion), we can't make the story “more Christian” by stripping away these weaknesses. Christ told the disciples that they would face martyrdom and warned them: "Make up your minds not to prepare your defense, because I myself shall give you an eloquence and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to resist or contradict." (Luke 21:14-15.) Christians should listen to these expressions of Christ’s eloquence as actually expressed in history, rather than crudely cutting and pasting scenes from the Passion narrative in their place. The best way to show Christ's Passion through the life of the saint is to show the life of that particular historical person, as it actually occurred.
Read the rest at Ethika Politika.
Inherited Merit
In which I review The Meritocracy Trap by Daniel Markovits:
“Markovits may be right that productivity and money should be redistributed in our society, but real flourishing will be impossible as long as dignity, glory, and relevance hinge on economic productivity and potential. Indeed, any system that allows social mobility on the basis of productivity will cultivate the sense that productivity is the most important thing. Because we are sorted by our economic productivity and potential, we find ourselves in communities that are homogeneous along these axes. How can we avoid putting “merit” at the center of our lives if losing it will cause us to lose the respect of our peers?”
Read more at First Things.
Aristotle on the Spectrum
“We could arrive at a saner approach to autism by drawing on Aristotelian virtue ethics. Unlike Kant’s approach, virtue ethics recognized that most ethical questions can’t be answered by the simple application of rules; good judgment is also required. And virtue is the precondition to exercising good judgment. On this approach, we can treat autism as a temperament: an aspect of the personality that affects how a person is disposed to grow in the virtues. This allows us to accept autism as an important component of a person’s personality—and as something which we shouldn’t try to change—without requiring us to be relativists about the good and the bad or to be fatalistic. Instead, a diagnosis can provide insights into a person’s strengths and weaknesses, set realistic expectations for her development, and provide a path for growing in virtue that is consonant with her personality.”
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NFP IS NOT ALWAYS MARRIAGE BUILDING
When I was engaged, a friend asked whether I planned to use contraception. I explained that I did not, and that I was learning to use natural family planning. She wished me well, but warned that it had not worked for her. “What they don't tell you in those classes is that you have to abstain at just the times when it’s hardest. That’s how I got pregnant the first time, and the second time. After that I started taking the pill.”
It's a scandal that my friend was not warned of NFP's challenges by her instructors. Had she been, she might have stuck with it. Unfortunately, a lot of NFP promoters preach NFP as a prosperity gospel. When this happens, NFP doesn’t deliver and people abandon it.
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