Belonging Again (Part 42)
Is sustainable character possible for the majority without "God-terms?"
I have criticisms of The Death of Character that I will expound upon further, the main one being that I don’t readily see how traditional-CCE can avoid collapsing into “values” and “self-will” without religion (though CCE as understood with “Absolute Knowing” could be different). Hunter stresses that religion isn’t necessary for CCE, and though I can see how that could be true for at least a time, I don’t see how CCE can be sustained without religion (a point Hunter might agree with, though I’m not sure). After citing Sir Thomas More as an example of character, of when ‘yielding to the creed existing within becomes more precious than life itself,’ Hunter wrote:¹
‘Does this mean that character requires religious faith? / No. / This point bears repeating: character does not require religious faith. But it does require the conviction of truth made sacred, abiding as an authoritative presence within consciousness and life, reinforced by habits institutionalized within a moral community.’²
Perhaps this was truer before our Cosmopolitan Age, but today when communities are less isolated, and “givens” are more difficult to experience without existential anxiety, I struggle to see how character would be possible without religion (perhaps it’s possible for a minority, but not the majority, though arguably the majority has never had character). This is because without religion, I do not see how it is possible for a “commanding truth” to indeed become “commanding” — unless that is it relies on law, threat, or isolationism.³ If by law or threat, what results might not be character at all; if by isolationism, Globalization and Pluralism must arguably fail.
Without belief in a God (who is ultimately in control), it seems unlikely to me that the majority would “stand up for” their beliefs and convictions when they face consequences for their beliefs, precisely because there is “ambiguity” regarding if the beliefs should be “stood up for” in the first place (especially due to the lack of “social support,” as previously discussed). Even if God doesn’t exist, for character as distinct from “values,” God might be necessary, but if Christopher Hitchens is correct and “religion poisons everything,” perhaps character similarly contaminates. Perhaps while the fate of a people is determined by its character, the religion that makes necessary character possible is perhaps necessarily poisonous. Perhaps we need belief in a God who doesn’t exist to save ourselves with what ultimately destroys us? Perhaps. Always perhaps.
By “God” here, I don’t necessarily mean Christ, Allah, or anything like that, but rather an “Ultimate Transcendent” more generally. By religion, I’m suggesting “emergent activity around an Ultimate Transcendent” (it should be noted that Hunter may disagree with my use of terms). Since the word “God” carries so much weight, I will use the (uppercased) term “X” from hence forth as opposed to “x” (which I will use referring to nontranscendent principles like freedom, justice, and so on — principles which we may think are objectively true, but which we cannot be certain of such).
To restate my criticism: I don’t see how character is possible without X; I can see how it is temporarily possible with an X that ultimately turns out to be an x (nontranscendent), but I can’t see how it is possible with x. If our Cosmopolitan, Pluralistic, and/or Globalized Age has made X impossible, I don’t see how that doesn’t mean character is also impossible precisely because character does require X. Unless that is an Atheist X is possible (as could be the case with “Absolute Knowing”); otherwise, only “values” seem possible.⁴ But perhaps the grave of character is one upon which we should dance (and efforts to regain it through “Absolute Knowing” too risky)…
In their discussion “Character is Destiny,” David Brooks and James Hunter conversed about how character is inherently combative: it is a fight against temptation, narcissism, materialism, and the like. To make distinctions between “self,” “character,” and “will” (distinctions I cannot promise this paper has held to consistently), for the self to have character, it must not always give into what it wills (though this doesn’t mean that what is willed is always bad): it could be said that the degree by which a self has character is to the degree it has made itself “distinguishable from its (initial) will” (relative to some sense of right and wrong).⁵ ⁶ For example, pretend that a person has four encounters with the poor and every time wants to ignore them (at first): two times the person doesn’t, and two times the person does. Relative to these situations, it could be said the person has had character fifty percent of the time (though obviously such quantitative measures are reductive — I’m just making a general point).
Now, we still must ask if it was wrong for the person to ignore the poor, for perhaps they were yelling at him to “leave us alone,” making it right to do so, and yet the individual followed a general moral premise (“it’s right to help the poor”) to combat his desire to ignore the downtrodden and “help them.” Considering this, it’s possible for a person to have “bad character.” Hence, even though perhaps a person may develop character to stand against his initial will, it doesn’t follow that what develops the person’s character is necessarily “what would be good” to do regarding the four poor people (suggesting why Nazism and “character” can connect) — and yet we also cannot assume that it would be wrong to help the poor people even if they don’t want to be helped. Complexity intensifies, suggesting the need for thinking in terms of “Absolute Moral Conditionality” — though that is another topic for another time.
Still, generally, character is self-denial, but if the source of the moral order in which character is defined is the self (x) versus X, then acts of character cannot readily be acts of self-denial. Character and self-expression become indistinguishable (as “therapeutic”), perhaps like two rivers that merge. If ‘the sources by which we define the ‘moral’ life and, by extension, ‘good’ character’ are ultimately rooted in x and not X, then the sources are ultimately self-sources, and hence the standard by which “character” could be defined from “self” makes it difficult for “character” and “self” to be defined apart (“meaningfully”).⁷ The “self” and “character” of a person never combat but merge, which suggests the question: “Can there be ‘bends in the river of will’ and x without X?”
I don’t think a person requires X to help the poor or to resist a desire to ignore the poor — values (x) are sufficient for this — my question is if character is possible, not just kindness, which can be “a possible characteristic of character” but not “character” in its entirety, and as we have discussed it is character which we seem to need to avoid the problems outlined in “Belonging Again” (please keep in mind that there are ways to “be kind” according to Nazism or within Mobs, hence why “kindness” isn’t enough). But wait: if a person changes his will from “not wanting to help the poor” to doing so, isn’t the act of helping the poor an act of will versus want? Isn’t then “self” and “character” distinguishable, as I claim they are with X? A fair counter, and arguably it might be, but that’s the problem: there is always an “ambiguity” which can contribute to the very existential anxiety we have discussed throughout this essay as problematic. If there is a constant X to which x is always working to conform, then even if this X is an illusion, it still provides a psychological tool to help us feel less ambiguous about what we are doing. Without this tool, we must be skilled at handling ambiguity, which perhaps only a minority can so handle.
Where there is no X, then we can never drawn a clear distinction between character and self: we are always dealing with “character/self,” which is ambiguous and anxiety-producing. Character is found in the change between the initial will and the will that follows it, and it could perhaps be said that one’s character can be measured by the number of times these kinds of changes have happened, but if it is not clear when these bends occur and when they do not, then we cannot easily say with confidence that character has developed. We’re stuck with ambiguity.
We need both “will” and “wants,” as we need both “givens” and “releases,” so I have not meant to suggest “will is good” while “want is bad.” Rather, the problem is when the categories all blur together, as they seem to do without X (similarly, we have today blurred together categories like “spiritual” and “religious,” which has similarly brought about changes for which we don’t seem ready). “Givens” suggest “a big picture” we need to keep in mind and stay situated in, for they suggest “a social order” in which we as individuals need to be situated. Similarly, “will” suggests something bigger than us and/or “a big picture” that is working beyond our immediate desires: for example, if I want to yell at someone, I can will to stay silent, keeping in mind that I don’t want to entirely destroy the relationship. “God” has traditionally assured there was always some “big picture” we could contrast our will against, relative to any and all circumstances, for “God” was utterly transcendent. Though I would have to say more about the term, in this way, X was a tremendous “psychotechnology” that assured “will” and “want” could always be meaningfully defined apart (at least in the minds of people, which is what counts for “existential stability”). X was transcendent, and thus X could always be taken into account, regardless of circumstance, and thus every circumstance could theoretically prove an opportunity for developing character. If there is something about humans that needs to feel like they can prove “they have what it takes” (which can be associated with “Thymos,” as Raymond K. Hessel discusses), then the loss of X could be the loss of the possibility of addressing that need. This could lead to nihilism and worse.
So, is character possible without X (which might be the question of if Thymos is still possible, though I will leave that topic for now)?⁸ Perhaps it is possible for a minority to be “Atheist Thomas Mores,” but what about the majority? Perhaps it is possible for a “minority to keep the course” of nonviolent resistance, but as the difficulty increases, without belief in “Eternal Salvation” (for example), will not an ever-smaller number of people remain? To help us think through these questions, we will explore a distinction made by Timothy Keller between “discovered meaning” and “created meaning,” which I think sheds light on the difference between “CCE founded on X” and “CCE founded on x.” Before that though, we will touch on the work of Mircea Eliade and his depiction of the relation between religion and spirituality, an exploration which I think can help move us into the work of Keller. Ultimately, we will have to inquire into the possibility of an “Absolute Knower,” Child, etc. to treat “a created meaning” as identical to “a discovered meaning” — which might be precisely who an “Absolute Knower” is — but we will see.
.
.
.
Notes
¹Hunter, James Davison. The Death of Character: Moral Education in an Age Without Good or Evil. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2000: 17.
²Hunter, James Davison. The Death of Character: Moral Education in an Age Without Good or Evil. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2000: 19.
³Hunter, James Davison. The Death of Character: Moral Education in an Age Without Good or Evil. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2000: 19.
⁴To allude to “Kafka, Law, and Character” by O.G. Rose, if it the case that character is required to keep freedom desirable, then freedom is not possible where X is lost.
⁵There is a strong argument to be made that Capitalism contributes to the blurring away of character by operating off of desires and training people to indulge desires — it is possible that the socioeconomic system that has best enriched the world is also what contributes to the death of character, a tragedy like that discussed in “The Tragedy of Us” by O.G. Rose. If it is the case that Capitalism requires freedom and freedom requires character, the tragedy only grows.
That said, Deidre McCloskey would shoot back that Capitalism doesn’t just make us better off but better: she would take a strong stance against the notion that Capitalism ruins character. Capitalism can help make us virtuous, though perhaps certain forms of it may make us more materialistic, and perhaps Capitalism can’t make us have the character Capitalism may require if particular communities no longer exist (as Hunter discussed).
‘In a fallen world the bourgeois life is not perfect. But it’s better than any available alternative,’ McCloskey writes.¹ Referring to Capitalists as “the bourgeoisie,” and arguing that most of us are members of the bourgeoisie now, she acknowledges that ‘the virtues of the bourgeoisie, Lord knows, do not lead straight to heaven,’ but still argues that we are better for them.² ‘The market [is] an occasion for virtue, an expression of solidarity across gender, social class, ethnicity.’³ ‘Bourgeois life has not in practice, [McCloskey] claim[s], excluded the other virtues. In fact, it often has nourished them.’⁴ McCloskey’s argument is elaborated on extensively throughout her trilogy, which shouldn’t be missed.
If this is true, perhaps Capitalism helps bring about character in a people? But if Capitalism simultaneously leads to Globalization and Pluralism, it may on the other hand undermine the “givens” which make character possible? Perhaps for the better.
¹McCloskey, Deirdre N. The Bourgeois Virtues. The University of Chicago Press, 2006: 1.
²McCloskey, Deirdre N. The Bourgeois Virtues. The University of Chicago Press, 2006: 2.
³McCloskey, Deirdre N. The Bourgeois Virtues. The University of Chicago Press, 2006: 4.
⁴McCloskey, Deirdre N. The Bourgeois Virtues. The University of Chicago Press, 2006: 8.
⁶It should be noted that a society that believes in determinism will be a society that struggles to make a distinction between “self” and “character,” for if the self is determined, even if it could “choose to will against the will” (which is difficult to imagine possible), whatever was done would lack meaning.
⁷Hunter, James Davison. The Death of Character: Moral Education in an Age Without Good or Evil. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2000: 20.
⁸To have character isn’t simply to be “unlike the world” and/or “above it”: if it was, the cynic and ironist would be people of character. In fact, if a society comes to think of character as being “above the world,” it may come to define character in terms of the irony David Foster Wallace thought was ruining the world.
.
.
.
For more, please visit O.G. Rose.com. Also, please subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Instagram, Anchor, and Facebook.