Existence and the Good

Franklin I. Gamwell

Description

Morals and politics depend on a metaphysical backing. All reality is marked by certain necessary features and a divine purpose inherent in all reality defines the good to which all human life should be directed.

These are bold assertions in a climate where the credibility of metaphysics is widely denied. Indeed, for the past two centuries, Western philosophy has been marked by a consensus that questions about moral and political life should be considered separately from questions about ultimate reality. In this challenging work, Franklin I. Gamwell defends metaphysical necessity against both modern and postmodern critiques. The metaphysics vindicated is not the traditional form both critiques typically have in view, however. Instead, Gamwell outlines a neoclassical project for which Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne are the main philosophical resources. As it maintains the significance of theistic metaphysics, the book makes no appeal to religious authority but solely to common human experience, and on this basis articulates principles of human purpose and democratic justice.
Preface
Introduction

1. The Metaphysics of Existence

The Western Background
The Necessity of Existence
The Task of Metaphysics

2. The Metaphysics of Subjectivity

Totality and Meaning
Totality Is Prior to Meaning

3. The Metaphysics of God and the World

Final Real Things
The Divine Individual
God and the World

4. The Metaphysics of Human Purpose

Decision for a Self-Understanding
The Comprehensive Good
Human Purposes
The Good of Human Rights

5. The Metaphysics of Democracy, Part 1

Introduction
Democracy without Metaphysics
Democracy without Metaphysics: A Critique

6. The Metaphysics of Democracy, Part 2

The Principle of Communicative Respect
Constitutional Principles of Justice
Democracy and Substantive Justice
Democracy and the Comprehensive Good

Notes
Works Cited
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Métaphysique
• Philosophie de la religion
• Philosophy of religion
• Metaphysics

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 02 janvier 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438435947
• Langue: English

Extrait

Existence and the Good
Metaphysical Necessity in Morals and Politics
Franklin I. Gamwell

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2011 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gamwell, Franklin I.
Existence and the good : metaphysical necessity in morals and politics / Franklin I. Gamwell.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-3593-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Ethics. 2. Theism. 3. Metaphysics. 4. Religion and ethics. 5. Democracy—Philosophy. 6. Democracy—Religious aspects. I. Title.
BJ47.G29 2011
171'.2—dc22                                                                                                       2010032054
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To David Tracy
Preface
The title of this book, Existence and the Good , intends to signal two related interests that have, in one way or another, occupied my attention for some time. One is the importance of metaphysical necessity—and, specifically, a theistic metaphysics—to a critical understanding of human life within the surrounding entirety of things in which we find ourselves. The second is the importance of teleology—or, more precisely, a comprehensive good—to moral and political theory. The argument here relates the two by defining the good to which morals and politics are properly directed through the theistic metaphysics and thus a divine purpose. In its own way, then, the book appropriates the words of Thomas Jefferson, marking both our private and public responsibilities through “the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.”
The attempt to redeem a comprehensive purpose for morals and politics requires discussion of metaphysics in two senses. On the one hand, metaphysics in what I call the strict sense explicates the necessary character of all existence or reality as such; on the other hand, metaphysics in what I call the broad sense explicates the necessary character of subjective existence as such and, thereby, of specifically human life. Metaphysics in the broad sense concerns life with conscious purpose, our existence by way of deciding how we will understand ourselves, and this book seeks to clarify authentic self-understanding in relation to the ultimate nature of things, explicated by metaphysics in the strict sense. This twofold understanding of metaphysics, then, provides the backing for the supreme moral principle and, through it, for democratic principles of justice. Accordingly, the argument here also reflects my abiding concern to show how specifically religious convictions about the human condition in relation to the whole of reality are important to the promise of democratic politics.
Three academic colleagues and friends have carefully read the manuscript at some stage in its development and have offered proposals for revision: Philip E. Devenish, Schubert M. Ogden, and Alexander F. Vishio. I am most grateful for their generous help, encouragement, and friendship. In addition, I express my gratitude for the discussion and critique of some ideas herein by participants in a conference at the Center for Process Studies in Claremont, California, and for the critical readings of the anonymous readers for publication. Naturally, none of these people is responsible for deficiencies in the book, but all of them have served the reader by improving the work.
I take the liberty of dedicating the book, as an expression of my abiding gratitude and admiration, to David Tracy, my teacher, colleague, and friend.
I also express my thanks for permission to reprint in revised form substantial portions of my essay, “The Purpose of Human Rights,” Process Studies 29/2 (2000): 322–46, subsequently republished in Mississippi College Law Review 22, no. 2 (2003): 239–61. Further, I express special thanks to Matthew R. Petrusek for his careful and thoughtful preparation of the index.
Introduction
The good life and the common good, this work argues, require a metaphysical backing. In contrast, moral and political theories today widely deny the credibility of metaphysics and assume that conceptions of good action and justice can be redeemed without thought about the ultimate nature of things. Thereby, these theories deny the source of their own validity, casting moral and political good adrift. This introduction summarizes how succeeding chapters seek to discredit the assumption and to establish principles for human life and community that depend on metaphysical necessity.
Naturally, a summary introduction cannot sufficiently defend its assertions. Typically, therefore, I will here only mention the arguments in question, asking patience until later discussion can pursue the greater clarity they need and respond to criticisms they may evoke. On the whole, this summary follows the course pursued within the subsequent chapters, although a few occasions counsel some relatively minor reordering of the relevant points.
Without a metaphysical backing, morals and politics are also separated from religion. At least, this occurs insofar as religious beliefs include understandings of human life in relation to all things, and thus a religion cannot be fully clarified without explicating its metaphysical affirmations. To be sure, some moral thinkers agree that religions include beliefs about how adherents should orient their lives, even while these thinkers deny that valid moral principles require any conception of a comprehensive order. Similarly, some political philosophers concede that citizens might rely on religious convictions as they participate in politics, even while these theorists deny that principles of justice depend on metaphysical conditions. At least to first appearances, however, such views are inconsistent with many or most religions, for which moral and political good can never be separated from their ground in ultimate reality. This book is not focused on a discussion of religion, but I will argue that metaphysical necessity in morals and politics includes a theistic backing.
Beginning with chapter 4 , the book explicates directly an idea of moral responsibility marked by a metaphysical telos for all things. We are morally bound by a comprehensive purpose and thus a comprehensive good to which all of our activities ought to be directed. In human life, this good is the maximal unity-in-diversity or richness of everyone's experience. That same good, I argue, authorizes certain principles of human rights and, through them, more specific norms of human interaction. The latter include democratic politics, that is, government where “we the people” are sovereign and, through full and free discussion and debate, should pursue justice as the general empowerment of all. At least in this respect, Thomas Jefferson had it right: our common life is accountable to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.”
The final two chapters, then, pursue the metaphysical authorization of democracy. Virtually all recent democratic theories endorse religious freedom as a political principle, even while they require principles of justice, at least constitutional principles, without metaphysical implications. In contrast, I will argue, democracy itself can be vindicated only on theistic grounds. At the same time, democracy so prescribed is politics by the way of reason, and thus a democratic constitution cannot properly announce or stipulate the grounds for its own vindication. To the contrary, the way of reason requires the sovereignty of every citizen over her or his belief about the ultimate terms of political assessment. Hence, democracy on theistic grounds also endorses—indeed, provides the only consistent endorsementof—religious freedom.
But if morals and politics depend on ultimate reality, the indispensable beginning toward making this point is a defense of metaphysics. This is needed because contemporary theories of human practice, in seeking their autonomy from metaphysics, exemplify a dominant consensus marking Western philosophy as a whole during the past two centuries. On this majority view, all study of ourselves and the world around us must be independent of beliefs about reality or existence as such. Perhaps this view betrays how the immense success of modern empirical science seemed to render metaphysics irrelevant, if not an obstacle, to understanding ourselves and the world. More recently, I expect, greater familiarity with cultures and societies other than one's own has evoked, somewhat paradoxically, a heightened sense of how understanding is conditioned by cultural and social context and, thereby, a profound suspicion of claims to universal truth. In any event, the dominant consensus rejects a philosophical tradition beginning in classical Greece and stretching through medieval thought into early modernity. At least since the achievement of Immanuel Kant, the question of “being qua being,” as Aristotle defined it, has increasingly been discredited because the inquiry addressing it is said to be meaningless or futile or a matter of mere speculation.
In due course, I will commend a neoclassical metaphysics first given systematic formulation by Alfred North Whitehead. Whitehead's most comprehensive work, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology , is notably—perhaps notoriously—characterized by idiosyncratic terminology. Although I credit his reasons for introducing un familiarterms, a contemporar