Re-Thinking The Ethics Of Parsimony, Part Two: “Cultivated Deviance” (Or Not Cheating Contingency)

By Michael W. Payne

[Michael Payne is Professor of Theology and Ethics at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Miss. The first part of this aricle appears as “Re-Thinking the Ethics of Parsimony, Part One: On Not Cheating Contingency,” WTJ 67 (2005): 23-49.]

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. 

—Archilocus 

You may know a truth, but if it’s at all complicated you have to be an artist not to utter it as a lie. 

—Iris Murdoch, An Accidental Man

I. Introduction

In Part One of this two-part article, we provided an overview of the increasing interest on the part of philosophers in reconstructing the moral-ethical landscape particularly as it relates to the role literature and the imagination might play in the work of ethics. In Part Two I will (1) argue that as Christian ethicists we should take a more hopeful (although not un-critical!) view toward the discoveries represented by both Nussbaum and Rorty. The insights both authors reflect lead us to reassess the role of rules and particularly the impact that “rule-based” or “act-based” ethical approaches have had in obscuring the dramatic quality of moral experience as suggested by scripture itself. The attractiveness of rules and “act-based” ethics is inherently misguided. We will discover that its appeal is based, among other things, on an impoverished understanding of moral reasoning that is predicated on a fallacious view of moral concepts and terms as univocal and literal. I will argue secondly (2) that this misunderstanding leads inevitably to an oversimplification of moral living, one that fails to encompass the full range of interconnected faculties that constitute the believer as a moral agent construed in a way most consistent with scripture. Pursuant to this end, I will examine the suggestive use made by the apostle Paul of the cluster of terms dokimazo, aesthesis, and aestheteria as they illustrate the complex nature of moral judgment and the role of imaginative discernment in Christian living. It is again hoped that this discussion will provide a preliminary attempt to re-think ethics from a more robustly Christian and theological perspective.

II. Contra “Thin”

Why are we so attracted to “rules” and “act-based” versions of ethics and morality? If we employ the oppositional terms thick/thin, unstable/stable, and imagination/reason, we can perhaps see more easily what the perceived advantages are for rules and acts as sound bases for construing ethics and the moral life.

For one thing, act-based ethics, which are largely “rule-governed” or criteria-driven ethical theories, are appealingly simple (or are at least imagined to be simple). This is reflected in the tendency to employ what Bernard Williams identifies (borrowing from Clifford Geertz) as thin as opposed to thick moral concepts.[1]

The term thin is meant to portray the “obviousness” of the moral rules or concepts, their “literal” and “univocal” qualities, which makes them more likely to qualify as objectively perceived facts (open to any observer regardless of context); in other words, they are just what we need to guide actions unequivocally, to provide the “ought” basis for establishing obligations universally. As Mark Johnson describes this tendency, “They must have a single definite meaning, so that their application to concrete situations is simply a matter of determining whether the necessary and sufficient conditions defining the concept actually obtain in experience (i.e., actually apply to the concrete situation).”[2] They are thin because putatively they are unfettered by context, social and historical contingency (stable), and, last but not least, ascertainable by reason—something universally shared by all men (thus overcoming the charge of relativism). Thin concepts/ terms are, for example, those such as right, wrong, lie or don’t lie, kill or don’t kill, do not steal, duty, obligation, and so on. These terms or concepts require little or no imaginative reasoning since they are understood to be literal and univocal.

However, there are dangers in so construing such terms/concepts as univocal and somehow literal in meaning. For one thing, to do so presupposes a referential (representational) theory of language, which, as we saw earlier with Wittgenstein, simply is not workable with natural human languages. After all, what of those forms of expression which are not reducible to such “word-object” delimitations, such as poetic language? Such reductive theories of word meaning minimize a language’s (expressions’) richness (their application potential or surplus of significance). Recall our earlier observations on Wittgenstein and the way he observed language works in the real world. Here we can draw our focus more specifically on the question of “meaning” as follows. Wittgenstein writes:

But if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we should have to say it was its use.[3] 

The sign (the sentence) gets its significance from the system of signs, from the language to which it belongs. Roughly: understanding a sentence means understanding a language.[4] 

For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word ‘meaning,’ it can be explained thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.[5]

Wittgenstein’s point here is that the use of an expression is the key to its meaning, that is, the particular or distinctive role it plays in the various activities where it is actually employed by speakers (communicators). What is it then that speakers do when they employ specific terms or expressions? This, according to Wittgenstein, is the key to determining the “meaning” of any word or series of words. The life of an expression (Wittgenstein’s understanding of “meaning”) is its being a part of a language, and so to understand the word or expression (sentence) is to understand a language.

John Frame employs a similar line of argument in his discussion of the role of application in determining meaning, with particular reference to the relationship between our knowledge of the world and our knowledge of the scripture as law. Frame writes, “No matter how elaborate a linguistic explanation is, it is always the responsibility of the hearer to relate the explanation to the situation in which he is living and thus to understand the language.”[6] This is something that must be done by the individual, not vicariously by someone for someone else (no ventriloquism allowed!). Frame goes on to note, “Therefore any law will require knowledge of the world if it is to be properly applied.”[7] Thus meaning is application, entailing one’s ability to use the language/expression/sentence/ word in ways that include answering basic questions about its context, possible translations, possible implications, and so forth. Thus “when one lacks knowledge of how to ‘apply’ a text, his claim to know the ‘meaning’ becomes an empty—meaningless—claim.”[8] Frame draws the implication even further by noting that there is an interrelatedness between language (scripture/law) and the facts of history (use, grammar, culture, etc.) which makes the relationship one of mutuality not of hierarchy. He writes,

And now I can make an even more surprising statement: just as the law is a fact, so the facts are laws in a sense; they have normative force. Why? Because as we have seen, the facts determine the meaning of the laws. To discover the meanings of the facts is at the same time to discover the specific applications of the laws—applications that are as binding as the laws themselves.. .. The law itself commands us to live wisely—to live according to an understanding of reality. It commands us to be governed by the facts, to take account of what is. Thus the law gives to the facts a normative status.[9]

I would argue that it was a recognition of this very way in which language functions as a polysemous and polyvocal system which enlivened the exegetical insights of a Calvin or a Luther.[10] Take, for example, Paul’s admonition in Eph 4:28: “Those who steal must stop stealing.”[11] In Calvin’s thirty-first Sermon on Ephesians, which he preached between 1558 and 1559, Calvin says,

Now when St. Paul speaks here of thefts, he does not refer to such thieves as men punish with whipping or with hanging, but to all kinds of sly and crafty dealing that are used to get other men’s goods by evil practices such as extortion, deeds of violence and all other similar things.. .. Although a merchant may be accounted a man of good skill, yet he will still have a store of tricks and wiles, and they will belike nets laid for the simple and such as are without experience, who do not perceive them. The case is the same with those who follow the mechanical arts, for they have the skill to counterfeit their works in such a way that men shall be deceived by them. Again, with regard to prices, there is no trusting the sellers.. .. In short, there is no class of men in which there are not infinite faults and extortions to be seen for every man wishes to get the upper hand and make himself stronger than the rest.[12]

In commenting on the eighth commandment (Exod 20:15), “Thou shalt not steal,” Martin Luther in his Treatise on Good Works (1520) takes the command to extend far beyond the obvious, that is, theft. According to Luther, it covers “every kind of sharp practice which men perpetrate against each other in matters of worldly goods. For instance, greed, usury, overcharging, counterfeit goods, short measure, short weight and who could give an account of all the smart, novel and sharp-witted tricks which daily increase in every trade.”[13]

Even if one were to grant that a large number of moral/ethical experiences are governable by these thin moral terms/concepts, the simple fact is that much (perhaps most!) of our moral experience is not. The error, in part at least, arises in generalizing from these more or less obvious moral cases to the less obvious ones as if the same kind of reasoning is operating in both.

Building on a thin construal of ethics, Alan Donagan has proposed a possible schematic form for determining what is and what is not appropriate for the moral person to do in any given situation. He argues that specific precepts will usually if not always fit one of the following three options:

1. It is always permissible to do an action of the kind K (permissions).
2. It is never permissible to do an action of the kind K (prohibitions).
3. It is never morally permissible not to do an action of the kind K, if an occasion occurs on which one can be done (strict obligations).[14]

Thus, any possible act is one that the agent may do, may not do (under any circumstances), or must always do if possible. Any system of morality would then be charged with providing a series of precepts compatible with the schema above that would cover the kinds of acts performed or considered in ordinary experience. However, the difficulty lies in determining which kinds of actions fit which of the three possible schemas. Additional premises are needed which might inform moral agents in any possible moral setting, whether one or another possible act does or does not conform with the precept under consideration. Herein lies the problem: “The system is not axiomatic, but rather involves the bringing of various kinds of actions under the one central concept.”[15] But how do we judge which do and which do not fall under this one central concept? These judgments are not directed by “rules,” unless one is prepared to follow an infinite regress of rules upon rules, ad infinitum. Judgment of this sort is not reducible to the kind of formalized reasoning active at the “rule” level of moral understanding.[16] Are we then to appeal to an intuitive awareness of what does and what does not fit under the specified rule? And is this a collective intuition made and sustained by a community?

The appeal of “rule-based” ethics and morality is largely centered on the stable core of most of our rules which seem to present little or no difficulty in applying. The difficulty arises in new and “fuzzy” applications. These new applications often cause us to reconsider the precise nature of the previously undisputed normative rule, thus throwing us into confusion as to its previously established role as absolute moral norm.[17] H. L. A. Hart offers an enlightening illustration of this problem in his study of a statute that prohibited the use of wheeled vehicles in a park:

A legal rule forbids you to take a vehicle into the public park. Plainly this forbids an automobile, but what about bicycles, roller skates, toy automobiles? What about airplanes? Are these, as we say, to be called ‘vehicles’ for the purpose of the rule or not? If we are to communicate with each other at all,.. . then the general words we use. . .must have some standard instance in which no doubts are felt about its application. There must be a core of settled meaning, but there will be as well, a penumbra of debated cases in which words are neither obviously applicable nor obviously ruled out. These cases will each have some features in common with the standard case; they will lack others or be accompanied by features not present in the standard cases.. .. If a penumbra of uncertainty must surround all legal rules, then their application to specific cases in the penumbral area cannot be a matter of logical deduction, and so deductive reasoning, which for generations has been cherished as the very perfection of human reasoning, cannot serve as a model for what judges, or indeed anyone, should do.[18]

What the penumbral cases incite in us is the awareness that there is an inextricable and productive relationship between the rule (norm) and application made by the moral agent in any given context. This relationship is not reducible to deductive reasoning (connecting dots) but something far more complex. This complexity is reflected in the use of thick moral concepts.

Thick concepts are not minimalistic but robust and encompass more than simply externalized states of affairs produced by certain acts, whether moral or otherwise. Rather, they convey both normative and descriptive content, content that exceeds our ability to provide an exhaustive set of necessary and sufficient conditions to qualify. These would include moral concepts such as wisdom, insight, trustworthiness, understanding, treacherousness, courageousness, and so on. These concepts “are not only normative terms, conveying a [positive as well as] negative evaluation, but indicate the way in which the believer acted improperly [or properly].”[19] How, for example, is insight reducible to a state of being “rule-governed”? What of wisdom or understanding? Is there an algorithm or procedure for determining these even in principle?[20] These concepts are all deeply connected to the penumbral areas, where grasping the contours of the situation and making application all contribute to our overall understanding of what the norm(s) in fact are.

This of course raises the thorny issue of exactly how “normative” or “absolute” the rules and commands really are if in fact they seem to enlarge themselves, that is, encompass more disparate areas of experience, which increasingly blurs the previously imagined sharp boundaries of meaning. This is directly related to what was alluded to earlier in this article regarding the “determined” and “under-determined” nature of rules, commands, and principles. However, this is only a problem if we are operating with an impoverished understanding of word/sentence meaning (e.g., the early Wittgenstein). Vern Poythress has noted that this is reflected in many Christian readings (treatments) of the Bible itself and has led to innumerable fallacies or mistakes in interpretation/application. Poythress writes,

A key area in our exegesis and our understanding of the Bible is the area of word meanings and the use of words in the Bible. It is also an area in which we can easily make mistakes. Some people have imagined that words in the Bible all have a special technical precision and give us automatically fixed, rigid categories. These fixed categories are then thought to exclude any kind of flexibility in the use of perspectives. I believe the opposite is the case.[21]

As Poythress goes on to note, natural languages are not capable of the kind of precision implicit in univocalist theories of language and meaning. The very terms/words employed in any natural language are those currently available— the so-called vocabulary stock. This stock is finite, whereas “the speakers of the language are capable of saying an indefinite number of things about an indefinite number of subjects using these words.”[22] This is possible due to the fact that “the words themselves, as members of the lexical system, can be applied to a range of cases.”[23] This constitutes the variation and distribution of terms based on purpose. Likewise, the very boundaries of the meanings of terms are what Poythress refers to as “fuzzy.” For example, the very act of distinguishing between one term and another as a means of classification leads inexorably to the creation of “intermediate cases.” Poythress notes,

Sometimes we will be unable to say easily which category the case belongs to. Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? In such cases, we must beware of an inappropriate appeal to the law of excluded middle. The law of excluded middle says that, for any proposition A, either A is true or not-A is true. This law, however, may not help solve complex mixed cases. “Either it is raining or it is not raining,” someone says. But it may be misting, something between an ordinary rain and no water at all.[24]

The only way to eliminate this aporia is to invent terms with the kind of precision we desire in order to eliminate this ambiguity. In doing so, however, we are no longer dealing with a natural language, but an invented, technical language. Embellishing this point, George Steiner has noted,

But the cardinal issue is this: the ‘messiness’ of language, its fundamental difference from the ordered, closed systematization of mathematics or formal logic, the polysemy of individual words, are neither a defect nor a surface feature which can be cleared up by the analysis of deep structures. The fundamental ‘looseness’ of natural language is crucial to the creative functions of internalized and outward speech. A ‘closed’ syntax, a formally exhaustible semantics, would be a closed world.. .. New worlds are born between the lines.[25]

In addition, as Poythress goes on to show, we cannot control how readers/ interpreters will in fact draw the boundaries themselves. With natural languages, there is a range of variation and potential meaning that constitutes what Wittgenstein referred to as “family resemblances.”[26] He observes that whatever resemblances there may be within this particular “family” of terms, it is always a matter of degree. How closely must the term reflect commonalities of the core for it to be granted admission (“family status”) into the circle? People making this decision may disagree on what the necessary and sufficient conditions are and when they have been met. Acknowledging this does not, however, lead to skepticism concerning the validity of our interpretation, but rather to a greater appreciation of just how connected the scriptures are to human experience in the world. Poythress argues,

We ought to recognize, then, the fluid character of meaning boundaries and the complex character of resemblances in dealing with language use both outside and inside of the Bible. Such recognition can only be for the good, since it gives us more accurate insight into what the Bible says and how much language tells us about the world.[27]

In some ways the issues again boil down to questions of “unity” and “diversity,” or that twentieth-century cause c´ele`bre known as “pluralism.” Once we talk about “family resemblances,” “intermediate cases,” and gradations of meaning, are we not left with no real “meaning” in the end?[28] If there is no univocal/literal “core” to our understanding of “ethical” (e.g., the Ten Commandments), why bother talking about being ethical at all? Doesn’t it end up meaning whatever we want it to mean?

The answer is a resounding “No!” The problem lies buried in the very conception of “unity” we are searching for. Is this concept derived from our reading of scripture or is it one we have imported into our thinking from somewhere else?[29] Poythress has observed that among the reasons for our faulty conceptualizations of precision as it relates to both language and moral concepts is our disposition to believe that “theological knowledge should resemble the certainty and rigor of Euclid’s system.”[30] In addition, there are those influences which “derive from suppositions about God’s knowledge.” Here is perhaps an even greater misconception which needs correction. Poythress continues,

We know that human thinking and human knowledge are often partial and flawed. But since God knows all things exhaustively, he is able to isolate each bit of truth and know it precisely. Christians sometimes assume, therefore, that this kind of knowledge is our ideal and that, when God speaks to us, his message will approximate this ideal.[31]

What we discover when reading the Bible is, however, just the opposite. We often fall prey to such a reductionist reading of the Bible in our attempt to suppress the very “diversity” we find expressed in the Bible—the very Bible confessional believers proclaim to be the fruit of verbal and plenary inspiration. The Gospels illustrate Poythress’s point. Given the “diversity” of these accounts, how do we lay claim to some immune “core” or univocal meaning? The only reason we would strive for such a univocal meaning would be the implicit assumption that such a meaning is the only way to secure “meaning” Poythress states,

As one who believes in plenary, verbal inspiration of the canonical books of the Bible, I find such a view incorrect. The full text of each Gospel is what God says as well as what the Evangelist says. There is no tension here between divine speaking and human speaking, any more than there is a tension between the fact that Christ’s speeches are God speaking and a human being speaking. ... It follows, then, that the very diversity of the Gospels is a divine diversity.. .. And so we are driven back to ask what God’s view is of the historical events recorded in the Gospels. The surprising answer is simply that God’s view is the Gospels themselves, in their unity and diversity.[32]

Applied to ethics, we can argue that the stability (unity) of the moral concept/rule, and its surplus of significance/application (the use to which it is put), is itself related to the source of the moral concept, namely, God himself. Yet, it is the triune God’s very inexhaustibility and the very nature of special revelation contained in scripture (e.g., through the deployment of what we refer to as human language—which is dilemma prone[33]) that is at the root of the often troubling relatedness of the agent’s role in determining the meaning of any moral term/concept at any given point in time. In other words, paralleling the “fuzziness” inherent in language qua language, there is both a “determined” (meaning) and an “under-determined” (application/significance) quality resident in all moral rules and concepts as well. The “unity” of Christian truth is grounded in the unity of the Godhead. As Rowan Williams aptly puts the matter, “If there is one God, the acts of that God should, prima facie, be consistent; the community established by the divine action should have some unifying points of reference; and reflective speech of that community should in some way articulate the divine consistency, or, at the very least, be able to deal with and contain what seems to make for fragmentation.”[34] Where do we look for the pattern in determining the unifying speech of the believer? Williams suggests that “our own consideration of how we should speak of the unity of doctrinal [moral?] language must be shaped by the methods displayed in these writings [scripture].”[35] The Bible is our canon, and it establishes itself as our point of reference. As a book of discord and polyphony displayed diachronically and meant to be read diachronically the Bible “is the canonical text of a community in which there are limits to pluralism.”[36] What does it mean, however, to read the scripture (law/rules/commands) diachronically? What does it mean in fact to live diachronically? This is the key to understanding a thick conception of Christian living.

III. Toward a “Thick Version” of Christian Living: The Storied Imagination

An ethics of parsimony is in many ways generated and sustained by what Wittgenstein referred to as “our craving for generality”[37] Such “cravings” are often based on what we have discovered are misguided beliefs in the “literal” and “univocal” meaning of rules/commands (which provides their imagined stability). We have seen how such assumptions are in fact problematic to a valid reading of rules and, more specifically, the texts themselves (which is where these rules are embedded)—which begs the question of what “rules” are as language forms. The answer to this question determines what in fact an appropriate reading of rules/texts would then look like.[38]

A corrective is thus needed if we are to answer to the full complexity of the moral experience, an experience that includes factors ignored for the most part by an ethics of parsimony. What is arguably gained by its purported universality—with respect to its objectivity (detached, ahistorical quality), its universally obligatory character (transcultural quality), and its universally accessible qualities (reason-based)—is offset by what is in fact lost, namely, a serious recognition of the complexity of moral/ethical living, which is reflected in the personal, existential, and social-historical aspects of our moral experience and knowledge. Employing a spatial metaphor, Charles Taylor has noted, “I can be ignorant of the lie of the land around me—not know the important locations which make it up or how they relate to each other. This ignorance can be cured by a good map. But then I can be lost in another way if I don’t know how to place myself on this map.”[39] How do I “place myself on the map,” that is, make moral sense of my life and my choices, if I continue to disregard or at best relegate to a lower order, these other factors which constitute me as a moral being?

A more fruitful response to this aporia lies in the reconfiguring of moral experience in light of what I will call, following the lead of Rowan Williams, a dramatic reading of scripture (and by extension, the self-world relation itself!).[40] This reading is made up of two moments that converge simultaneously to produce the kind of moral vision needed for a more robust picture of Christian moral experience. These two moments are the visional (what Williams refers to as diachronic) and the aesthetic (the aesthesis referred to, for example, by Paul in Phil 1:9). I will limit somewhat my remarks regarding the visional and concentrate more fully on the aesthetic moment.

A visional reading of life (and texts) is one that attempts to see life as more than a mere succession of events or occurrences (whether found in life or in scripture), and in doing so attempts to establish a more synoptic or “narrative” viewpoint.[41] Whereas the ethics of parsimony (employing the model we began with) focuses almost exclusively on the arguably simplest form of objectivity, for example, rules and commands (and their application to specific situations of crisis),[42] the visional recognizes that the part is known only in relation to the whole. In Williams’s words, the ethics of parsimony is modeled along the lines of the “synchronic” rather than the “diachronic.” The “synchronic” which suggests attention to the literalness of the rule or command (or text) in fact diminishes the true literalness of the text.[43] This is achieved by furthering an abstraction, namely, the ahistorical “present” tense of interpretation and understanding. Williams writes,

To attend to a ‘literal’ sense. .. is to insist upon there being some controlling force in the fact that meaning comes to light in a process of learning to perceive; it is to challenge the idea that there could be an adequate reading of the text which ignored the time of the text itself, its own movement, with the time of the writer and the writer’s world opened up to us through the movement of the text. It is to protect against any reading which elided or softened or simply ignored the tensions realized and worked through in the time of the text.. .. Concern with the literal, the diachronic, is a way of resisting the premature unities and harmonies of a non-literal reading. .. in which the time that matters is only the present of the reader faced with the ‘spatial’ expanse of a text cut off from its own inner processes and the history of its production.[44]

What appears as guardian of the “literal” becomes a haven of timelessness. The attraction to the “synchronic” is in fact more about the reader’s aversion to risk and the provisionality of meaning, and less about getting at the truth of things. The “dilemma proneness” of language is tentatively obviated by our addiction to pseudo-literalness (i.e., parsimonious readings of rules and commands) and the implicitly diremptive strategy of misconstruing the nature of literalness itself. The Christian reader who should know better than to harbor erroneous “fact-value” distinctions, in point of fact, is the one who propagates such notions in his very reading of texts and rules. In a dramatic reading, as Williams describes it, we see “fact” and “value” merge in the narrative field of human existence. Recognizing this reality enables the individual (reader) to develop what Paul Ricoeur refers to as “narrative intelligence.”[45]

Ricoeur has noted that there is a deeply profound relationship between story (narrative) and human life. Drawing on Aristotle’s definition of mythos as “plot,” he develops a dynamic conception of the relation between subject (individual) and history (time). Narration (storytelling) involves the bringing together (unifying) of what would otherwise be seen as discontinuous (discordant) actors and events into an intelligible form (whole). In doing this, narrative displays time in both its qualities as “open” and “closed.” Ricoeur writes,

One can say that two kinds of time are found in every story told: on the one hand, a discrete, open, and theoretically undefined succession of incidents;. .. on the other hand, the story told presents another temporal aspect characterized by the integration, the culmination, and the ending in virtue of which a story gains an outline. In this sense I would say: to compose a story is, from the temporal point of view, to derive a configuration from a succession.[46]

Thus, following Ricoeur’s suggestion, the parameters are established for interpreting human experience from a perspective that embraces the totality of possible moments of existence, without making each individuated moment insignificant or meaningless. Through what I am calling a dramatic reading, this can be achieved without the sundering of either the need for boundaries (the “determined”) or the capacity for extension (the “under-determined”). What do I mean?

Ricoeur uses the dialectical partnering of “sedimentation” and “innovation” to explicate this relationship. By this he makes reference to the living quality of the historically mediated narrative (text/tradition) that continues to be “innovative,” that is, producing new applications and understandings. There is a fixed quality to the tradition or text (narrative in this instance), but the text that is interpreted (engaged) requires imaginative re-figuring if it is to enter the contemporary situation in which the reader now engages. The innovation is rule-governed, that is, not helter-skelter, but also not encased in a kind of “servile repetition.” Rather, there is what Ricoeur refers to as a “calculated deviance,” a kind of “regulated deformation.” All of this is meant to produce a transfigured reader. In the end, the goal for Ricoeur (and for us) is the development of what he calls “phronetic intelligence,” or what scripture refers to as “wisdom” and “insight.”[47] Hans Frei describes how the process is one whereby the biblical texts themselves “seek to overcome our reality”:

We are to fit our own life into its world, feel ourselves to be elements in its structure of universal history.. .. Everything else that happens in the world can only be conceived as an element in this sequence; into it everything that is known about the world. .. must be fitted as an ingredient of the divine plan.[48]

IV. The Problem of Contingency Once More: Synchronicity (Plato) vs. Diachronicity (Aristotle)

Referring back to our earlier discussion of the difference between Plato and Aristotle we can perhaps see what is involved in this idea of “calculated deviance” as described by Ricoeur. The issue in a sense is one of “normativity”[49] In a now classic essay on the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy[50] the philosopher Isaiah Berlin made use of the “hedgehog” and the “fox” distinction to distinguish between two kinds of thinkers. Taking a line from the Greek poet Archilocus—”The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”—Berlin classified the hedgehog as one “who relates everything to a single coherent vision” while the fox is “scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves.”[51] The hedgehog is drawn to the “universal” or general where the fox is focused upon the “particular” or the individual event or experience.

The former downplays differences and minimizes distinctions seeking unity or harmony, whereas the latter gives equal weight to each particular detail or nuance and leaves the table a mess from the hedgehog’s perspective.

These respective tendencies have a rich heritage that goes back several millennia in the history of philosophy, starting arguably with Heraclitus and Parmenides and evident also in the contrasting approaches of Plato and Aristotle.[52] Heraclitus’s emphasis (the fox?) on movement, change, and empiricism is countered by Parmenides’ focus upon unity and oneness. The former is perceived to lead to irrationalism and skepticism (after all, everything is constantly changing and we are bombarded by new bits of experience on a minute by minute basis), whereas the latter is a prototype of rationalism, imposing unity and coherence where none seems to exist. Perhaps no one in the history of ideas better illustrates the “hedgehog” of Archilocus’s poem than Plato,[53] who pictured human life as a movement (pilgrimage?) from “appearance” to “reality,” namely, a move away from the world of sense experience (where desire rules and distorts) as a source of knowledge, which in the end could only give one “opinion,” to an apprehension of the Forms, through what Plato refers to as anamnesis or “recollection,” and the exercise of “reason,” which could and did offer “certainty.” Plato thus sets up a tension between “lived experience” and “thought” which parallels his division of man’s essential constitution as being made up of “higher” and “lower” elements. Life is largely about gaining control or mastery over one’s lower parts; thus the “good man” is the master of himself.[54] Success in this process means the rule of the “higher” over the “lower,” or, in Plato’s thought, reason over the desires or appetites. As a result, order is achieved where otherwise chaos or anarchy would rule. Rather than the insatiable appetite of desire ruling man’s life, a kind of centering or self-collectedness attains hegemony. To be rational is to be calm, collected, and cool, not given to extremes of any kind: the former is a condition Plato describes as “healthy” whereas the latter, one of disease or disfigurement.[55]

“Order” is an important concept for Plato, and the role of well-functioning reason is to see or to “perceive” that order. For Plato, reason is the ability to understand and to “see.” It is “visional” by nature. It is also the ability to give a reasoned explanation of that order, that is, to be governed by reason is to be governed by a true vision of things, to have the right understanding of things. It is to grasp the natural order as it really and truly is. This order gives us the proper balance between the various priorities we are meant to have in our living and loving. The goal is then to see correctly and to be governed by that vision (reason). The true vision functions then as the standard or measuring line for our activities. The part finds its true meaning only in relation to the whole of things.

The whole of things is summed up for Plato in the Idea of the Good, that which sums up, encompasses, all the bits and pieces of Good we encounter only in partial form through experience. Plato describes it thusly:

For surely, Adeimantus, the man whose mind is truly fixed on eternal realities has no leisure to turn his eyes downward upon the petty affairs of men, and so engaging in strife with them to be filled with envy and hate, but fixes his gaze upon the things of the eternal and unchanging order, and seeing that they neither wrong nor are wronged by one another, but all abide in harmony as reason bids, he will endeavor to imitate them and, as far as may be, to fashion himself in their likeness and assimilate himself to them. Or do you think it possible not to imitate the things to which anyone attaches himself with admiration?[56]

Plato believed that a vision directed toward the world of experience that is ruled by contingency and shadows is to be trapped in the world of illusion. These are what Plato refers to as lovers of sight, sound, and the spectacle. His now famous parable of the cave dwellers[57] illustrates the point. Some degree of awareness is possible before escape from the cave, but it is largely only an illusory, defective kind of awareness.[58] What is needed is a vision of the Form of Good. .. the very Form itself. The Forms in Plato’s philosophy come to be understood as “changeless” and “eternal” objects of a kind of spiritual vision (not ordinary knowledge). They are known by “direct experience,” unmediated by ordinary language or other media. They are “unitary” and “simple” and not fully expressed in the sensible world at all. Everything in the physical and spatial world is at best a “copy” and two or three removes from the original.[59] Most importantly, for Plato, the Good is “person-neutral.”

Since what Plato regards as the “lower parts of the soul” can only draw the individual to the shadowy and partial in experience, the result will always be to lead us to a “veil of ignorance.” Art, part of the ordinary world of perceptible things, is hence only illusion, a shadow. The artist is thus engaged in a form of “deceptive practice.” Remember, the goal is to remember (“recollect” as Plato described it) the Form(s), and art or anything aesthetic and “person-specific” or “person-directed” can only provide a caricature of the truth. In addition, by appealing to the desires it promotes a kind of collusion between the senses and desires. For Plato, the highest pleasures can only be found in contemplating the eternal, changeless, and unitary Good. Art, which is by definition open to interpretation, leads only to folly. We are to seek the “pattern” of things, the fixed and certain, not the fluid and alterable aspects of things. The work of the artist then deceives us into believing we have gained access to the true nature of things when in reality we are still in the cave. Better to be the “craftsman” where measuring and counting (mathematics) are the most useful aids, appealing as they do to those parts of the soul that are most reliable, that is, calculating and measuring (Republic 602C, 603A). The artist celebrates the deception and enslaves us to the “mean petty slavery of the particular” (Symposium 210D).

So much for the unitary (synchronic) vision of the hedgehog; what of the fox? The “fox” of course is Aristotle. We will not revisit our earlier remarks concerning Aristotle’s advance over Plato except to note that whereas Aristotle agrees that all actions aim at some good, the task of ethics is primarily to discover the chief or most final good.[60] In other words, the good Aristotle has in mind is not some Platonic Form but somehow the good for a specific man or for the individual himself.[61] Practical normativity is thus best (perhaps only) understood through relation to the agent’s specific good and that given as “end” (telos). Not a generic end, but a specific “end” for the individual under discussion. There is a resulting vertigo from this conceptualization. Aristotle moves away from the grasping at the Form (Good), which for Plato is more or less unrealizable anyway, to the securing of the particular good for the particular individual. The “good” is not codifiable (reducible to generalizable rules), but is realized through experience itself (diachronic). This is illustrated in Aristotle’s understanding of the “Practical Syllogism.” It is recalled that the syllogism is about deductive logic, or the movement from major premise (some universal knowledge, in this instance, let’s say, some moral precept) to minor premise, namely, the situation that confronts the agent, to conclusion, that is, what is to be done as a deductive conclusion. The syllogism works only if the major premise is in fact codifiable, that is, apt for serving as a major premise in a syllogism. However, we are confronted with the dubiousness of such an idea once we enter the real world of language and its irreducible qualities (recall Aristotle’s previous comments regarding the “Ultimate Particular”). Can any rule “capture” the mind of God in the sense that it is unequivocally and unambiguously articulated in the maxim (whatever maxim one chooses)? Does the “real” ever in fact fully meet (exhaust) the “ideal”? If not, how do we proceed? The answer lies in recognizing that we have imposed a version of rationality that may in fact be erroneous. John McDowell writes,

A deep-rooted prejudice about rationality blocks ready acceptance of this. A moral outlook is a specific determination of one’s practical rationality: it shapes one’s view about what reasons one has for acting. Rationality requires consistency; a specific conception of rationality in a particular area imposes a specific form on the abstract requirement of consistency—a specific view of what counts.. .. The prejudice is the idea that acting in the light of a specific conception of rationality must be explicable in terms of being guided by a formulable universal principle.[62]

It is precisely this prejudice that Aristotle’s formulation of the syllogism challenges. Why must there be a “formulable universal principle” suited to serve as the major premise of the syllogism? The answer is simple: it is a logical necessity, that is, it is necessary only if one needs to proceed according to the canons of deductive logic! But no matter how tightly one construes the “universal principle,” the potential for dilemma still threatens. This is what constitutes “hard cases.” These are cases that resist any resolution by standard argument form. They usually resolve into comments like, “You are not looking correctly,” or “Don’t you see?” Either one is simply not following the rules in terms of concept formation and application or one is delusional. The former is the frustration that arises when the seemingly obvious and compelling principle is somehow missed. But implicit in this conclusion is the reliance on a version of rationality that simply would not allow other factors to play a role in moral application. The problem is one of “detachment” or “disengagement” as the necessary precondition and criterion for deductive correctness. After all, it simply is not possible to arrive at clear and exact conclusions unless one is able to step outside human experience, language, and culture to make the necessary decisions relative to deductive logic. Of course, we cannot step outside the “forms of life” or what Stanley Cavell refers to as “the whirl of organism.” Cavell writes concerning the complexity of both self-understanding and what we might call “other-understanding” as follows:

We learn and teach words in certain contexts, and then we are expected, and expect others, to be able to project them into further contexts. Nothing insures that this projection will take place (in particular, not the grasping of universals nor the grasping of books of rules), just as nothing insures that we will make, and understand, the same projections. That on the whole we do is a matter of our sharing routes of interest and feeling, modes of response, senses of humor and of significance and of fulfillment, of what is outrageous, of what is similar to what else, what is a rebuke, what is forgiveness, of when an utterance is an assertion, when an appeal, when an explanation—all the whirl of organism.[63]

Thus, Aristotle reformulates the syllogism in light of his refusal to posit a codifiable (universal) major premise or principle. Rather, the major premise is transformed into a legitimate subject of desire (orexis) that is then transferable into an action that comports with the desire. The minor premise is what must be changed or altered in order for the desire to be operationalized. For Aristotle this major premise is the individual’s conception of the kind of life worth leading, one that in the end is characterized as “blessed.” This overarching “end” is the measure against which one judges practically how this end or “good” is to be actualized in one’s own experience.[64] It appears that according to this model of the syllogism, one comes to know what he is to do, not by applying rules but by being a certain kind of person, that is, the kind who sees situations in a certain and distinctive way.

To return to Ricoeur’s notion of “calculated deviance” mentioned above, it now appears that there is good reason to allow for a range of under-determined-ness in our understanding of rules or principles. The alternative is both the positing of an illusion with respect to what rules can do, what language can do, and what we can do. There is a certain vertigo that arises with recognition of this. However, the answer to this vertiginous experience is not a return to the rules, but something else.

V. A Dramatic Reading (Performance): Laying Hold of the Imagination

Recall our earlier connection between dramatic (ethical) living and dramatic reading. Gerard Loughlin writes concerning this notion,

A literal reading of the text is one that follows it to the letter; not in the sense of trying to discern the frailties of its historical reference; nor in seeking for the disclosure of the human condition within its interstices; but in the sense of making oneself over to its narrative in order to be made anew.[65]

In many ways, as Loughlin points out, this refers to our realizing or bringing to performance what the scriptures portray, that is, the identity they call us to emulate or embody. This calls for our “identifying ourselves in the story being contemplated. .. its movements, transactions, transformations. .. an active working through of the story’s movement in our own time.”[66] This is what Nicholas Lash refers to so poignantly in his article “Performing the Scriptures.”[67] Interpreting the Bible is, according to Lash, somewhat akin to interpreting a musical score or dramatic script.[68] To interpret a Beethoven score, it is not sufficient simply to “play the notes” correctly or even to interpret the music consistently with its past performances (interpretations). These are certainly necessary but what is needed is more than technical accuracy. A kind of creative fidelity is necessary one that can only be achieved “through performance” and in the awareness that there is an audience of both listeners and critics. All three make the music happen. What is true of Beethoven and Shakespeare is fundamentally true of the scriptures themselves. Lash states:

I want to suggest, first, that, although the texts of the New Testament may be read, and read with profit, by anyone interested in Western Culture and concerned for the human predicament, the fundamental form of the Christian interpretation of scripture is the life, activity and organization of the believing community. Secondly that Christian practice, as interpretative action, consists in the performance of texts which are construed as ‘rendering’, bearing witness to, one whose words and deeds, discourse and suffering, ‘rendered’ the truth of God in human history. The performance of the New Testament enacts the conviction that these texts are most appropriately read as the story of Jesus, the story of everyone else, and the story of God.[69]

The point Lash seems to be asserting is one that directly corresponds to the paradigm being suggested here, namely, to avoid overly simplistic assumptions about reading and about interpretation, the very issues that prompted our initial discussion of language and rules earlier. The only alternative to the kind of engagement we are describing above is one that succumbs to an aberrant neo-Platonizing of language and interpretation, a perspective reflected in the early and middle dialogues of Plato himself, one that hopes of achieving a kind of God’s eye point of view on meaning—one that then makes the designative view of language dominant. No less a light than Augustine surrendered to such notions in his reflections on language and fallen-ness.[70] Once one accepts as an a priori truth that language is by definition “imperfect,” since by definition it is made up of “symbols” that are inherently open to a variety of interpretations, one is forced to deny that language qua language existed before the Fall (since there was no imperfection before the Fall). Unless, that is, mental telepathy counts! And by extension, why would we need language after the consummation of history? Language is only valuable in media res. Language is in fact really only for “creaturely” communication, that is, between creatures. Since there is always a gap between signa and res, there will always be distortion. Augustine comments:

Man as he labors on the earth, that is, as he has become dried up by his sins, has need of divine teaching from human words, like rain from the clouds. However, such knowledge will be destroyed. For while seeking our food, we see now in an enigma, as in a cloud, but then we will see face to face, when the whole face of our earth will be watered by the interior springs of water springing up.[71]

The argument being made in this article is of course contrary to any suggestion that language’s qualities as multivalent and polysemic are inherently problematic when it comes to making sense of our lives in an ethical manner. Quite the contrary. There is something profoundly disclosive about the nature of the relationship being sustained by God with man through the mystery of language and understanding that demands our closest attention. The goal of understanding and obedience is not to identify or isolate “timeless” truths[72] and then simply connect the dots.[73] That would be more like wanting to have the candy without the wrapper. The goal is really about becoming more “finely aware.”[74]

VI. Becoming “Finely Aware,” or Particularizing not Generalizing

In her now classic work, The Sovereignty of Good, Iris Murdoch writes, “I can only choose within the world I can see, in the moral sense of ‘see’ which implies that clear vision is a result of moral imagination and moral effort.”[75] Consistent with our initial suspicion concerning the purported sufficiency of “action-based” or “belief-based” models of moral theorizing for understanding and construing ethical living, we need to complete our exploration with a brief analysis of exactly what is meant by the art of apprehension or attention with specific reference to the nature of what defines our existence as moral creatures (and specifically as believers).

1. The Intratextual Moment, or “Insight” and Moral Living in Philippians 1:9–11

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. (Phil 1:9–11)[76]

The New Testament provides us with an important illustration of what I am referring to as a thick conception of moral living in the writings of Paul, particularly in the use Paul makes of the term aisthesis (translated “insight”) in Phil 1:9 as a practical extension of epignosis (“knowledge”).[77] Early in Paul’s thanksgiving to God for what has been produced in the lives of the Philippians (1:9–11), Paul specifies the kinds of things he is intent on praying for in his hopes for an enlargement of their experience as followers of Christ.

He begins by praying for an abundance of love (v. 9) to be experienced and manifested both individually (existentially) and in the community (corporately). Secondly, he prays for an increase in “knowledge and depth of insight” (v. 9). It is particularly the relationship between the former (“love”) and the latter (“insight”) that interests us here, because in an important sense, insight is only possible in relation to an ever-widening understanding of God and his character—namely, our love for God. Epignosis is, after all, expressive of the kind of knowledge God is said to have of us (intimate), and, as is elsewhere indicated, will characterize our knowledge of him at the end of human history (1 Cor 13:12). This is a “full knowledge” which expresses a deep personal appropriation of God’s presence. It is not knowledge on a purely object level (intellectual) but a far more personal, intimate kind of knowledge. Giving sufficient attention to this feature should inhibit our tendency to limit the range of “important” ethical questions to issues of “doing” and “choosing.” Love surely has the added dimension of “having the power to move” us. It is of extraordinary moment in ethical reflection not simply what we are choosing to do, but “what we in fact are,” and this is directly correlative to “what (whom) we love.” Our shyness concerning this is largely due to the inarticulacy associated with such a notion. It is not intellective and hence not easily described or measured. “Love” in this instance serves as a kind of “background” understanding that encapsulates the entirety of the moral experience of the believer. It includes acquired habits (practices) and paradigms for making sense of experience generally. Far from providing crystal clear decision-making procedures that are predicated on detachment and disengagement, the focus is on larger and often difficult-to-articulate goods bound up with our experience of love for God. So what is the insight that Paul then prays for?

Aisthesis (“insight”) is a hapax legomenon in the New Testament. Its meaning is, therefore, somewhat more obscure, echoing the interests expressed in the secular Greek expression indicating an understanding that flows out of experience. It is likewise employed in the LXX where of the twenty-seven occurrences, twenty-two are in the book of Proverbs.[78] Gordon Fee notes the parallel between the use of aisthesis and its near synonym sunesis in Col 1:9 (which is a kind of equivalent prayer of Paul’s) which reads: “That by means of all of the Spirit’s wisdom [sophia] and insight [sunesis] you might be filled with the knowledge [epignosis] of God’s will.”[79]

The meaning of aisthesis is perhaps best conveyed in Ernst Kasemann’s reading: “the feeling for the actual situation at the time,” which highlights what might be referred to as “phronetic intelligence.”[80] Epignosis conveys a broader scope (landscape) whereas aisthesis suggests the more specific, contextual application (portrait) where attention to the details and nuances is most important.[81] The cognate form of aisthesis, namely, aistheteria, appears in Heb 5:14 and is translated “senses” or more expansively, “moral faculties.” The passage reads: “But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” The NIV does not translate aistheteria, and translates pros diakrisin (“to discern”) by the English verb “distinguish.”

Just as in the book of Hebrews the intended result of such “training” or “exercise” is that the people might be able to “discern” the presumably finer nuances of good and evil, so in the Epistle to the Philippians Paul extends this intended result in the following verse (1:10), only with a slightly different focus: “.. .so that you may be able to discern what is best [eis to dokimazein humas ta diapheronta] and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ.” Here the term Paul employs is dokimazein (“discern” or “prove”)[82] within the assumed context where there might be more than one “good” thing to choose from (“what really matters”)— not to distinguish good from evil as in Heb 5:14.[83] As P. T O’Brien writes,

This phrase can also be understood against the religious background of Judaism. The Jew was to choose what was essential on the basis of the law. Apparently for Paul’s opponents the norm for choosing what was excellent was found either in the attainable standards of the law, or in the behavior that does not rise above ‘earthly things’. But the Philippians who were in Christ were to make such choices of what was vital. .. on the basis of an ever increasing love—a love that penetrated more deeply into the knowledge of God and the treasures of Christ, and imparted to the Christian a keener and more delicate moral sense for specific situations.[84]

Paul seems to know something most of us do not. Of course, this could be said of Jesus too![85] Charles Taylor has spoken suggestively of the fact that we are primarily “forest dwellers” who are most often intent on (some might say “obsessed with”) living either exclusively in pens, or at most in large, open fields.[86] Even if we cannot achieve our desired goal, we can pretend to.[87] He writes, “The forest is virtually untracked. Or, rather, there are old tracks; they appear on maps which have been handed down to us. But when you get in there, it is very hard to find them.”[88 ]Finding the tracks does not require sharper and clearer concepts (principles), but rather a more attentive vision or perception. As Murdoch describes it, what we need is “a difference of Gestalt.”[89] Cora Diamond illustrates this with G. K. Chesterton’s choice of Gestalt, namely, life as an adventure, the world as “a wild and startling place.” This picture of the world (the forest) “went with a great tenderness towards the world, a sense of modesty, and a willingness to submit to what might appear to be odd limitations.”[90] This conceptual attitude (Gestalt) provided by Chesterton does not produce a criteria (set of rules for application) that precedes the application of his Gestalt, but rather, the attitude is what provides the background or the “convictions that underlay any conscious understanding of the world.”[91] This is what provided him with a language and images that then made his choices intelligible.

Paul provides us with numerous pictures of the world, the theatre where God displays his character and his power but also his wonder and mystery.[92] The “new creation” is perhaps one of his most evocative images and the one with the most obvious power of ethical applicability.[93] Paul writes, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. . .” (2 Cor 5:17). It is no accident that Paul employs ktisis (“new creation”) in reference to the transformational effect of Christ’s reconciling work in, through, and upon the world. Ktisis is used in Rom 8:18–25 to refer to the whole of the created order. A “new created order” has been brought into being by Christ’s reconciling work. This positions believers as “those upon whom the ends of the age” have met (1 Cor 10:11). The end of one time and the beginning of a new time stand as the junction point between two ages, the point where those today stand (1 Cor 7:31). We are not left to our own “wits,” however, since we have been given the Holy Spirit (2 Cor 1:22; 5:5). The “already” and “not yet” perspective assures us that there is no crystalline pure logic that can be found or employed to elucidate the tracks through the forest of human experience, an experience that Paul elsewhere describes as one characterized by suffering and loss (2 Cor 4:7–9, 11). There is an unimpeachable ambiguity that endows human existence and human perception. And yet, we are also those Paul describes as having the ability to “increase and abound in love,” to be “blameless,” and to be “sanctified” (1 Thess 3:12–13; 5:23–24). All of this is apparently possible even in the midst of the forest (2 Cor 4:7). Any attempt to transcend these limits (by whatever reductionistic methodology or strategy) would be an act of idolatry.

Notes

1. Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana Press, 1993), 128–30.
2. Mark Johnson, Moral Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 81.
3. Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and the Brown Books (ed. Rush Rhees; 2ded.; Oxford: Blackwell, 1960), 4. Hereafter cited as BL/BRBK.
4. Ibid., 5.
5. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (trans. G. E. M. Anscombe; New York: Macmillan, 1958), 43. Hereafter cited as PI.
6. John Frame, T he Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg, N J.: P&R, 1987), 66.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 67.
9. Ibid., 67-68.
10. For an interesting appraisal of Medieval and Reformation interpretative strategies, see the essay by Richard A. Muller and John L. Thompson, “The Significance of Precritical Exegesis: Retrospect and Prospect,” in Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the Reformation (ed. Richard A. Muller and John L. Thompson; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1996), 335–45.
11. Those being referred to here are not those “who once stole” but rather, as indicated by the use of the present participle ho klepton, seems to refer to a recurring problem within the midst of the body of the church to whom Paul is writing.
12. John Calvin, Sermons on Ephesians (revised version of the original translation from French by A. Golding, 1577; London: Banner of Truth, 1973), 451–52.
13. Luther Works (trans. James Atkinson; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968), 44:107.
14. Alan Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 67–68.
15. Johnson, Imagination, 86.
16. See Stephen Toulmin’s reflections on “field-independent” and “field-dependent” reasoning in The Uses of Argument (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), 11–43.
17. Wittgenstein argues repeatedly concerning the “preconceived idea of the crystalline purity” of logic as a mistake in understanding. On any level, Wittgenstein notes that such a picture of logic is “not a result of investigation: it was a requirement” (PI, 107). He notes, “But what becomes of logic now? Its rigour seems to be giving way here.—But in that case doesn’t logic altogether disappear?— For how can it lose its rigour? Of course not by our bargaining any of its rigour out of it.—The preconceived idea of crystalline purity can only be removed by turning our whole examination round” (PI, 107). Wittgenstein also writes: “Let us suppose that the Russellian contradiction had never been found. Now—is it quite clear that in that case we should have possessed a false idea of calculus? For aren’t there various possibilities here? And suppose the contradiction had been discovered but we were not excited about it, and had settled e.g., that no conclusions were to be drawn from it. (As no one does draw conclusions from the ‘Liar.’) Would this have been an obvious mistake? ‘But in that case it isn’t proper calculus! It loses all strictness!’ Well, not all. And it is only lacking in full strictness, if one has a particular ideal of rigour, wants a particular style in mathematics.” Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (ed. G. H. von Wright, R. Rhees, and G. E. M. Anscombe; trans. G. E. M. Anscombe; 2d ed.; Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), V-12. Hereafter cited as RFM.
18. H. L. A. Hart, “Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals,” Harvard Law Review 71 (1958): 593.
19. Linda Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 20.
20. What of “forbearance” and “kindness” (1 Cor 13:4), which are aspects of love? How can “noble,” “pure,” “lovely,” and “admirable” (Phil 4:8) be rule-governed?
21. Vern S. Poythress, Symphonic Theology: The Validity of Multiple Perspectives in Theology (Grand Rapids: Academie Books, 1987), 55.
22. Ibid., 56-57.
23. Ibid., 57.
24. Ibid., 65.
25. George Steiner, After Babel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 228, emphasis added.
26. Wittgenstein writes: “Would it be any wonder if the technique of calculating had a family of applications?” (RFM, V-8D). He continues: “Why should I not say that what we call mathematics is a family of activities with a family of purposes?” (RFM, V-15C). With reference to number, he writes: “Why do we call something a ‘number’? Well, perhaps because it has a direct-relationship with several things that have hitherto been called number; and this can be said to give it an indirect relationship to other things we call the same name. And we extend our concept of number as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre” (PI, 67B). In the very next remark he writes: “Fo r I can give the concept ‘number’ rigid limits in this way, that is, use the word ‘number’ for a rigidly limited concept, but I can also use it so that the extension of the concept is not closed by a frontier” (PI, 68).
27. Poythress, Symphonic Theology, 66. Poythress develops these insights further with regard to interpretation theory in his God-Centered Biblical Interpretation (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R, 1999).
28. I cannot pursue this question fully due to limitations of scope (and publication!), but an excellent place to begin is Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998).
29. See Wittgenstein’s earlier comments on the “crystalline purity of logic.” This is what Wilfrid Sellars referred to as the “Myth of the Given” in his “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” in Science, Perception and Reality (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), 176.
30. Poythress, Symphonic Theology, 47.
31. Ibid., 48.
32. Ibid., 48-49.
33. I owe this observation and the productive use he makes of it to Robert J. Fogelin’s excellent essay “Wittgenstein’s Critique of Philosophy” in The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein (ed. Has Sluga and David G. Stern; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 54.
34. Rowan Williams, “The Unity of Christian Truth,” in On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 21.
35. Ibid., 22.
36. Rowan Williams, T he Discipline of Scripture, in On Christian Theology, 56. In stressing the “unity” that emerges from the narrative, Paul Ricoeur employs the contrastive pairing of “discordant concord” in his “Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator,” in A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination (ed. Mario J. Valdes; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 426.
37. Wittgenstein, BL/BRBK, 17. Ricoeur discusses this problematic in terms of the polarization between idem identity and ipse identity, the former tending toward generalization and stability (sedimented) and the latter being more fluid and act-governed/articulated (innovative). For more on this see Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (trans. Kathleen Blamey; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 117–23.
38. In The Discipline of Scripture Williams observes how what we often call fundamentalism was a reaction against more sophisticated hermeneutical approaches that went overboard in the opposite direction. As a consequence, “literal” came to be identified with “historical,” only “historical could now only be applied to a univocally descriptive and exact representation of particular sequences of ‘fact”’ (p. 48). For further reflection on these matters, one should consult Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974).
39. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 41.
40. Williams, The Discipline of Scripture, 44–59. My following paragraphs also show strong reliance on Charles Wood, Vision and Discernment: An Orientation in Theological Study (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), esp. 57–78; as well as Ricoeur, “Life,” 425–37.
41. This is decidedly not a view from nowhere (e.g., Thomas Nagel) but a profoundly intra-textual” viewpoint. See Hans Frei, “The ‘Literal Reading’ of Biblical Narrative in the Christian Tradition: Does It Stretch or Will It Break?” in The Bible and the Narrative Tradition (ed. Frank McConnell; New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 36–77.
42. Edmund Pincoffs, Quandary Ethics, in Revisions: Changing Perspectives in Moral Philosophy (ed. Stanley Hauerwas and A. MacIntyre; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 92–112.
43. Such confusion arises by the failure to see the subtle yet important distinction between “letteralness” and “literalness.” For more on this see the insightful discussion by Gerard Loughlin, “Following to the Letter: The Literal Use of Scripture,” Literature and Theology 9 (Dec. 1995): 370-82. For a more complete analysis by Loughlin, see his Telling God’s Story: Bible, Church and Narrative Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
44. Williams, “The Discipline of Scripture,” 47.
45. Ricoeur, “Life,” 428.
46. Ibid., 427. For more on this theme in the writings of Paul Ricoeur, one should consult his Time and Narrative (3 vols.; trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), esp. vol. 3.
47. Ricoeur, “Life,” 428–30.
48. Frei, Eclipse, 3.
49. This takes us back to the issues that drove the internalism/externalism debate that is perhaps best exemplified in the debates of the 17th and 18th centuries in Britain. On this see Stephen Darwall, The British Moralists and The Internal ‘Ought’: 1640–1740 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
50. Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History (New York: New American Library, 1957).
51. Ibid., 7-8.
52. For more on this see Colin Gunton’s excellent work in The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
53. To generalize about Plato’s thought on any point is to tread on pretty thin ice. However, some generalizations can be made with due respect being given to the shifts and changes in his thought as reflected in the various dialogues written over an extended period of time. For example, Plato moves from a somewhat straightforward version of “realism” with respect to perception and the Forms, i.e., a kind of “imminent universal” idea, to a more “transcendent model” of the Forms (cf. Theaetetus and Republic respectively). For more on this see G. M. A. Grube, Plato’s Thought (1935; repr. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980); Richard Kraube, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Plato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
54. Republic, 430E.
55. Republic, IV, 444D-E.
56. Republic, IV, 500B-C.
57. Plato’s The Republic and Phaedo are the best places to begin in analyzing his theory of Forms and the illustration of the cave. For the best recent translation and analysis of The Republic, see Robin Waterfield’s translation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); for the Phaedo, see David Gallop’s translation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). For useful and accessible commentary on Phaedo, see David Bostock, Plato’s Phaedo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). For a thorough and accessible analysis of The Republic, see Julia Annas, Introduction to Plato’s Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).
58. Plato refers to this as eikasia, a state of vague, image-ridden illusion.
59. For example, the carpenter makes a table (a copy of the Form) which is then drawn by the artist (three removes from the original). He (the artist) does so from a singular and limited point of view! On the problem of mimesis in Plato and its extension in the history of western philosophy, see Willaim Schweiker, Mimetic Reflections: A Study in Hermeneutics, Theology and Ethics (New York: Fordham University Press, 1990), esp. 15–17.
60. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (trans. W. D. Ross; New York: Oxford University Press,1980), I.1–2. Hereafter cited as NE. Also see Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 3–43.
61. NE, I.4.
62. John McDowell, Virtue and Reason, in Mind, Value, and Reality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 58.
63. Stanley Cavell, Must WeMean What We Say? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 52.
64. Aristotle writes, “If, then, there is some end (telos) of the things we can do, an end which we wish for because of it itself, while we wish for the other things because of it; and if we do not choose everything because of something else. .. then it is clear that this would be the good, and the best [good]. So surely as far as our lives are concerned knowledge of this has great influence, and just like archers with a target we would be more likely to achieve what we ought” (NE, 1094 a 18–24).
65. Loughlin, “Following to the Letter,” 379.
66. Williams, “The Discipline of Scripture,” 50.
67. Nicholas Lash, “Performing the Scriptures,” in his collection titled Theology on the Way to Emmaus (London: SCM, 1986), 37–46.
68. Hans Urs von Balthasar explores similar themes, particularly “dramatic existence,” in his Theodramatik: Vol. 1, Prolegomena (Einsiedein: Johannes Verlag, 1973) (ET: Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory: Vol. 1, Prolegomena [trans. Graham Harrison; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988]).
69. Lash, “Performing the Scriptures,” 42.
70. See the earlier discussion of language in Part One of this article, On Not Cheating Contingency,” WTJ 67 (2005): 23-49. In addition, see the fine work of James K. A. Smith, The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 133–48.
71. Augustine, De Genesi contra Manichaeos libri 2.5.6.
72. This idea corresponds to what Frei so convincingly argues against, namely, creating false criteria whereby the text of scripture is measured against false standards, e.g., by whatever historical criticism deems the “sense” of the historical.
73. Dorothee Solle, Phantasie und Gehorsam: Uberlegungen zu einer kunftigen christlichen Ethik (Stuttgart: Kreuz Verlag 1968). Solle argues for “answer” rather than “obedience” since the latter suggests an automaton-like response, i.e., without “thinking”—something she feels the German people have demonstrated an all-too-common facility for in their history I think she might protest too much, but there is a subtlety to her argument that suggests that morality or ethics is more than automatic response, one reflected in the simplistic model of ethics being criticized in this article. In many ways her concerns regarding “obedience” are rooted in the Kantian Achtung, which is a reversal of the subject’s encounter with the Sublime, i.e., contingency that returns one to the actions of a rational “will” and to duty.
74. Henry James, The Art of the Novel (New York: Scribner, 1937), 149.
75. Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), 37.
76. All English translations unless otherwise noted are from the NIV.
77. This is evidenced by the use of the single preposition that governs both nouns.
78. See the comments of P. T. O’Brien, Philippians (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 75–76.
79. Gordon Fee, Philippians (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 100.
80. See Ricoeur s comments on this idea in ‘Life, 428.
81. The term “discernment” is an apt translation of aisthesis (“insight”), and this is further conveyed by the Latin “discernere,” meaning “to sift” or “to distinguish.”
82. Compare, e.g., Luke 12:56; 14:19; Heb 3:9; 1 John 4:1. For Paul’s use of dokimazein and other terms related to “discernment,” see Gerard Therrien, LeDiscernement (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1973).
83. The expression ta diapheronta is not referring to “things that differ” fundamentally, as for example, between “good” and “evil,” but between degrees of excellence. See the comments by O’Brien, Philippians, 77, esp. n. 28.
84. O’Brien, Philippians, 77–78.
85. See Richard B. Hays s exemplary exegetical insight into Jesus employment of what he refers to as a “hermeneutic of mercy” to insist on the need for “insight” in understanding the relationship between “rigor” and “mercy” in interpreting the law. This is elucidated most fully in his The Moral Vision of the New Testament (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1996), 101–4.
86. I owe this metaphor (i.e., “forest dwellers”) to Charles Taylor, “Iris Murdoch and Moral Philosophy,” in Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human Goodness (ed. Maria Antonaccio and William Schweiker; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 3–28. Further to the implications of the metaphor, see Jakob Meloe, “Some Remarks on Agent Perception,” in Perspectives on Human Conduct (ed. Lars Hertzberg and Juhani Pietarinen; Leiden: Brill, 1988), 89–96.
87. Meloe notes: “There are two ways of not seeing what there is to see. One is where you locate the action to its proper activity space, but you are not experienced enough, or not (as yet) conceptually equipped, to catch its richness. You don’t see enough of it. The other, more dramatic, is where you allocate it to the wrong activity space. You are blind to it” (“Some Remarks,” 92, emphasis added).
88. Taylor, “Murdoch and Moral Philosophy,” 18.
89. Murdoch, “Vision and Choice,” 40–41.
90. Cora Diamond, “We are Perpetually Moralists,” in Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human Goodness, 93.
91. Ibid., 94.
92. My following discussion closely reflects the argument developed more fully by Hays in Moral Vision, 19–27.
93. See 2 Cor 5:14–18.