Fish and Millman
To Noah’s thoughtful post below I want to append two quotations from Stanley Fish, who, for all his other failings, is one of the sharpest commentators on the set of issues that Noah raises.
The first passage is from an essay called “Vicki Frost Objects” (from his book The Trouble with Principle) which concerns a legal wrangle between a public education system and a Christian fundamentalist mom who rejected its model of tolerance and open-mindedness:
What, after all, is the difference between a sectarian school which disallows challenges to the divinity of Christ and a so-called nonideological school which disallows discussion of the same question? In both contexts something goes without saying and something else cannot be said (Christ is not God or he is). There is of course a difference, not however between a closed environment and an open one but between environments that are differently closed.
The second passage may be found in an essay Fish wrote some years ago for First Things, an essay which I strongly recommended that the magazine publish but which I also begged I be allowed to respond to. Father Neuhaus, however, insisted on writing his own response, which I don’t think gets to the heart of the matter.
The trouble with Christianity, and with any religion grounded in unshakable convictions, is that it lacks the generosity necessary to the marketplace’s full functioning. Christianity, Mill declares, in what he takes to be a devastating judgment, is “one-sided,” that is, insistent upon the rightness of its perspective and deaf to the perspectives that might challenge it.
I am hardly the first to observe that Mill’s position contains its own difficulties and internal inconsistencies. The imperative of keeping the marketplace of ideas open means that some ideas—those urged with an unhappy exclusiveness—must either themselves be excluded or be admitted only on the condition that they blunt the edge of their assertiveness, and present themselves for possible correction. Willmoore Kendall asks, if a society is dedicated, as Mill urges that it be, to “a national religion of skepticism, to the suspension of judgment as the exercise of judgment par excellence,” what can it say to a man who urges an opinion “not predicated on that view,” a man who “with every syllable of faith he utters, challenges the very foundations of skeptical society”? To such a man, Kendall answers, the society can only say, “You cannot enter into our discussions.” “The all-questions-are-open-questions society,” he concludes, cannot “practice tolerance toward those who disagree with it”; those “it must persecute — and so on its very own showing, arrest the pursuit of truth.”
This is a very powerful argument, and one to which I shall return, but it is not the argument I will finally want to stress, because to use it as a weapon against the doctrine of liberal toleration is to win a debating point but concede the larger point by accepting toleration as the final measure of judgment.
Fish goes on to say that what American Christians should desire is “not an expansion of the marketplace of ideas, but its disbanding and replacement by a regime of virtue as opposed to a regime of process.” But this is wrong on several counts, chief of which is that it fails to understand that the architectonic virtue for Christians should be charity, which, the history of Christendom tells us, has never been well practiced by those with the power to impose a (supposed) regime of virtue. Christians, like everyone else, are most trustworthy when they come to the table with empty hands.
Once again, deeply and profoundly missing the core truth.
What, after all, is the difference between a sectarian school which disallows challenges to the divinity of Christ and a so-called nonideological school which disallows discussion of the same question?
The difference is the continuous, crude and dishonest attempt to paint secularism as a “peer” religion, “compare and contrast”, lol.
Secularism is the absence of religion, while xianity is just another religion.
— matoko_chan · Feb 20, 09:11 PM · #
Yes, and that is Alan’s point.
— John · Feb 20, 09:17 PM · #
If that is his point, then xians simply have no place at the table, hands full or empty.
— matoko_chan · Feb 20, 09:35 PM · #
translation, for the analogy-challenged, quit prancing and braying in the public square and keep it in your pants…..err…..churches.
— matoko_chan · Feb 20, 09:38 PM · #
Matoko,
I’ve seen your comments on several sites, and there’s something I don’t understand. You believe, with some pretty good evidence, that Christians and social conservatives are in demographic decline. You’ve concluded that social conservatism is a doomed movement. And, as best I can tell, you have decided to sit back and laugh at them until they finally disappear.
If you had your way, you would tell social conservatism to accept secular liberalism or… or what? What’s behind that threat? I suppose you’re saying they’ll just have to take it, that they don’t have a choice in the matter. And you won’t compromise. But what if they won’t compromise either? I don’t think you understand the power of resentment. When compromise is impossible, the only choices are total victory, total defeat, total stalemate (eternal war of attrition). If you eventually get your total victory, and they still won’t surrender, you will have to grind them into misery, imprison them, or kill them. If they got their total victory (unlikely, I know) wouldn’t they do the same to you? But until the victory comes, you will have a war of attrition. And I don’t see how that works out for anyone.
Fortunately, many people do believe in compromise, at least up to a point. And, more than that, they believe in rhetoric and persuasion, even with those they find to be unreasonable. Alan and Noah are trying to figure out what these compromises should look like. They’re talking about how best to avoid the problems of resentment and culture war, or, at least, how we can have cultural disagreements without the war. The great benefit of persuasion is that, when it works, you don’t have to deal with any of the resentment that comes from conquering or destroying.
So let’s assume that conservatism is a failed paradigm, and that conservatives are blind to this, or refuse to admit it out of self-interest. Let’s also assume that you’re right about the movement having no future. Why do you want fight the war, or even just gloat about it, when you could persuade some people to defect and just wait the other ones out? Then you get the skills and talents of the defectors and none of the problems of attrition. Wouldn’t that make life easier until the day the social conservatives finally disappear?
-wrb
— william randolph · Feb 21, 12:36 AM · #
Or nothing. What a stupid threat! It’s like saying “you’d better experience acceleration towards the surface of the Earth at 9 m/s/s or else.”
— Chet · Feb 21, 01:40 AM · #
Putting Fish up in your post seems to me a complete waste of electrons. He is nowhere close to making a valid, honest argument.
To take only the first quote – the second is no better – he clearly asserts that in a nonsectarian school it goes without saying that Christ is not God and this truth cannot be challenged. Has he ever been to a public school? My kids have Jewish school friends, conservative Christian friends, Muslims, and atheists. They sometimes discuss these things among themselves, but (unless you count teaching evolution) I can’t recall any time the school implied in any way that their beliefs were wrong or invalid.
If there’s a reason we should take this guy seriously, I fail to see it. He’s operating based on a weird fantasy about what secular society is like.
— peterg · Feb 21, 06:08 PM · #
It seems to me as if we should take people like Fish seriously. There are places in the world where the marketplace of ideas has been replaced by a regime of virtue, for explicitly religious reasons. Interestingly, those places are not run by Christians, but such places do exist.
“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.” It’s funny, bcause it’s true. It’s true because Professor Jacobs’ point about charity is exactly correct.
For my part, I don’t mind if Stanley Fish wants to pretend otherwise.
Love bears all things. Or, so I’m told. You guys are free to think what you want, of course…
— yo la tengo · Feb 21, 09:19 PM · #
Now that I’ve had a chance to read Fish’s article and skim Neuhaus’s, it seems like Fish manages to stack the argument in his favor by choosing only Milton and Augustine as exemplars of the religious impulse. Both men were intellectual giants, but “charity” isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when I think of them.
I’ll be reading the Neuhaus article more carefully to try to figure out what he might have missed in his response.
— william randolph · Feb 21, 09:55 PM · #
he clearly asserts that in a nonsectarian school it goes without saying that Christ is not God and this truth cannot be challenged
peterg, I really don’t think that’s what Fish is saying. His point is that a “secular” school “disallows discussion” of whether Christ is God — not that people in the school don’t have private conversations about the subject, but that in the actual formal activities of the school (classroom discussion, school newspapers, assemblies) there’s an agreement that we keep religious assertions off-limits. That much is true, isn’t it?
Also, note that Fish doesn’t say that that’s a bad thing. In his legal writings, Fish makes it clear that he thinks the state is perfectly justified in bracketing such divisive questions. He just wants to say that when the state does that, it’s not being “more open” than a religious school, just “differently closed,” and he thinks the state ought to admit that: “Yes,” he wants the state to say, “we’re about encouraging certain values appropriate to a liberal social order. What’s the problem?”
But he also wants liberals to understand that there’s a certain kind of person, usually a religiously conservative person, who doesn’t buy the whole system. I don’t think Fish agrees with any of those persons, but he does try to clarify their point of view.
— Alan Jacobs · Feb 22, 12:18 AM · #
Christians, like everyone else, are most trustworthy when they come to the table with empty hands.
Quote of the day.
— The Reticulator · Feb 22, 04:01 AM · #
That seems pretty clear, contra Jacobs. He’s pretty clearly saying that secularism is the same as godlessness – that is, to not say that Jesus is God is the exact same thing as saying that Jesus is not God.
This is just the old “you can’t really be tolerant unless you’re also tolerant of intolerance” argument that Christianists have always used to assert their right to oppress others – that, indeed, if they cannot oppress, they are being oppressed. I don’t know what kind of idiot you’d have to be to find it compelling.
— Chet · Feb 22, 05:37 AM · #
If you had your way, you would tell social conservatism to accept secular liberalism or… or what?
I would tell them to quit their prancing and braying in the public square, and I would tell the upper right tail of conservative intelligentsia to quit giving them cover to do so.
— matoko_chan · Feb 22, 10:59 PM · #
Matoko,
Well, you’ve said those things many times. But I haven’t yet seen anyone obey you. They’re not just giving in. So what do you do now? Mock them? Gloat? Assert and repeat ad nauseam? Or do you make the effort to persuade?
— william randolph · Feb 22, 11:29 PM · #
Only the upper right tail has the substrate to be persuadable.
And they already know I’m right.
But they fail their duty to persuade and lead the base……all they do is make excuse and rationalization, giving cover to the tribal anti-humanist illiberal base.
The base doesn’t have the substrate.
They can be led, but not persuaded.
— matoko_chan · Feb 23, 02:35 AM · #
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk
— Tony Comstock · Feb 23, 03:53 AM · #
Matoko,
Then let’s assume smart people who disagree with you are lying. Isn’t it more reasonable to try to persuade them to stop lying, do their duty, and properly lead the base? And doesn’t that take argument rather than repetitious assertion? If you want someone to change their behavior and you can’t force them to do it, don’t you have to offer them a good reason to act differently?
And also: what if someone has “the substrate to be persuadable” but has never encountered your arguments before? Is that somehow impossible?
— william randolph · Feb 23, 07:06 PM · #
/shrug
For example….Manzi acknowledged to me privately that Palin’s looks are a major component of her rise to VP candidate.
Never a word of that in public.
Just like Larison and the oogedy-boogedies.
Never an acknowledgement of the fact that it is simply WRONG for a mob to try to impose religious mores on other citizens in a republic.
Instead convoluted pretzel logic about “traditional wisdom” and acknowledging human nature.
The “human nature” Razib and others should be acknowledging is raw tribalism, not preserving cultural intra-tribal mechanisms.
At this point the conservatives are the true heirs of Kylon and the Democrats.
I’m just a single mathematikos crying in the wilderness.
— matoko_chan · Feb 24, 03:21 PM · #
Matoko,
Thanks for meeting me at least partway here. If you want to be a semi-Cassandra—forever proclaiming, seldom heeded—that is your prerogative. But I think you would do better, in terms of actually getting people to change their minds rather than just retrench, if you chose persuasion over proclamation. I see your complaints, and I can see from your perspective what it is that other people are doing wrong, but the question is still this: what are you doing to make it better?
— william randolph · Feb 24, 07:11 PM · #
Actually….I’m trying to shame them into doing the right thing.
But they are shameless, lol.
— matoko_chan · Feb 24, 11:06 PM · #
Then perhaps new tactics are required?
— william randolph · Feb 25, 12:11 AM · #
I’m open to both strategic and tacitical suggestions.
Obviously, nothing I’m doing now is working.
;)
— matoko_chan · Feb 25, 02:57 PM · #
Perhaps a topical application of Frum might help.
At least he had enough nads to escape the Mad Shamans of NRO.
“A federal bank takeover is a bad thing obviously. I wonder though if we conservatives understand clearly enough why it is a bad thing. It’s not because we are living through an enactment of the early chapters of Atlas Shrugged. It’s because the banks are collapsing. Obama, Pelosi, et al are big-spending, high-taxing liberals. They are not socialists. They are no more eager to own these banks than the first President Bush was to own the savings and loan industry – in both cases, federal ownership was a final recourse after a terrible failure. And it was on our watch, not Obama’s, that this failure began. Our refusal to take notice of this obvious fact may excite the Republican faithful. But it is doing tremendous damage to our ability to respond effectively to the crisis.”
— matoko_chan · Feb 26, 02:16 AM · #