Catholicism and modern individualism

Further to two recent posts, one about Steven Pinker's view that the Enlightenment is the source of science, reason and progress, and another about Tom Holland's view of the modern west as being very much the legacy of Christendom, I came across this interesting article.

A growing body of research suggests that populations around the globe vary substantially along several important psychological dimensions and that populations characterized as Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) are particularly unusual. People from these societies tend to be more individualistic, independent, and impersonally prosocial (e.g., trusting of strangers) while revealing less conformity and in-group loyalty. Although these patterns are now well documented, few efforts have sought to explain them. Here, we propose that the Western Church (i.e., the branch of Christianity that evolved into the Roman Catholic Church) transformed European kinship structures during the Middle Ages and that this transformation was a key factor behind a shift towards a WEIRDer psychology.

By breaking down extended kin-based institutions and encouraging a nuclear family structure, the Church encouraged more individualistic behaviour.

This also ties in with Larry Siedentop's brilliant Inventing the Individual; the Origins of Western Liberalism which makes a very powerful argument along similar lines, i.e. that the moral revolution unleashed by Christianity sewed the seeds of modern individualism as we know it.

This idea of the Catholic Church as a cultivator of individualism is rather refreshing when one has come to take for granted the more popular idea that the church inculcated authoritarianism and generally frustrated human freedom, i.e. the kind of idea that Pinker would promulgate.

There is also an irony to this; the individualism that the Church unleashed basically went rogue and now thrives independently of any religious objectives.

This highlights two different types of causation; physical and logical. Speaking logically, i.e. the language of necessity, if I was to suggest that you needed Christianity to be have individualism, such an argument would be difficult to sustain.  There are many argument for individual freedom that do not rest on religious foundation. The writings of Kant and Rawls immediately spring to mind as examples. Rawls appealed to hypothetical metaphysical state of nature (i.e. veil of ignorance) in making his case - that this is also a secularised version of the Christian soul doesn't mean it relies on the   actual existence of souls to be valid.

Speaking in terms of physical causation, i.e. the language of historic contingency, it is extremely hard to see how modern individualism could have emerged without Christianity. Without the church's concern with individual souls, conscience and will, the conceptual space for the notion of individual flourishing would not even have existed.

These arguments are a reminder that in criticising modern individualism, Catholics should be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and remember that individual freedom remains inextricably linked to the faith. Christians should be wary ceding individual freedom as a principle to liberals and being seduced by anti-individual movements on the right.

"Backwoodsmen"

Speaking in the election, Leo Varadkar said;

"Other parties talk about change, but we have been the ones who have been driving it through, and we want to finish it. 

And if we have a Fianna Fáil led government, I have no doubt that the social progress we have seen in recent years will not continue.

There are a lot of backwoodsmen in Fianna Fáil that would slow down social progress. 

The referendum would not have happened had Fianna Fáil been in office."

So this is obviously a reference to the fact that a significant number of Fianna Fáil TDs opposed repeal of the 8th amendment in the 2018 referendum.

I had to look up the meaning of the term "backwoodsman", and according to dictionary.com it means "an inhabitant of backwoods, especially one regarded as uncouth or backward."

Just as a reminder, 33% of the electorate voted to keep the 8th amendment. So Varadkar, a man looking to be re-elected as Taoiseach, has essentially called a third of Irish people uncouth and backward.

The first thing that struck me was the double standard here. This is because Varadkar is also quoted as saying that it was:

"a really unfortunate thing that in the last couple of years, particularly the past couple of months, some parties have tried to inject class politics into Irish politics.

And that:

"Fianna Fáil are trying to pit working class against middle class."

So basically culture war politics, whereby the country is divided into "backwoodsmen" and whatever the opposite it, is ok, but class politics, whereby the country is divided into working and middle class is not. What kind of logic sees one as good and the other bad.

The answer to that is to be found in Fine Gael's understanding of "social progress". And not just Fine Gael's understanding of that term, but liberal Ireland's too.

What better embodiment of this conceptualisation than Sen. Catherine Noone and her recent comments on Varadkar and the subject of autism. Noone was a key political figure in the run up to referendum, chairing the Oireachtas committee recommending its repeal. She was prominent in public debate and was highly visible in Dublin castle for the victory celebrations. Almost the perfect symbol of the 21 century Irish woman - empowered, professional, independent. Very socially progressive.

And during the election campaign she described Varadkar as being "on the spectrum" and "autistic" because of his supposedly socially awkward manner. Noone probably meant it as a compliment to her party boss, trying to generate empathy for him. The only problem is that these remarks were deeply ignorant, mean and offensive to people with autism.

On its own, we might not read much more into this episode. But in the context of Fine Gael's abysmal performance on issues like healthcare, housing and crime, all issues which betray a boderline sociopathic lack of empathy with and compassion for ordinary Irish people, it reveals more. It reveals a highly ideological view of social progress, one centred on the maximisation of economic and social liberty  for a very exclusive class of society, one that is mainly urban, professional and well-off, at the expense of virtually everyone else.

The views of Noone, so passionately pro-"freedom" and empowerment of the marginalised in one sense and yet so crassly ignorant of other marginalised people in another, are perfectly coherent and in character for a party, which let's face it, has a very warped sense of morality.

Taking the ball home

On the recent controversy over the Fine Gael government's plans to commemorate the RIC, and the subsequent decision to cancel those plans, Irish independent economist Dan O'Brien argues that "reflecting on history should become more like the practice of faith - a private affair." This is to avoid unnecessary controversy caused by bringing up old and irrelevant divisions.

Is Dan sulking? The force of public opinion caused Fine Gael to backtrack on its ill-advised proposal. Perhaps Dan is a bit sore over this and consequently does not want anything to be publicly commemorated now. The giveaway is the following line; "...and how strongly some of those who opposed it appear to feel on the subject."

So all the strong feelings are on one side? The proposal itself was the outcome of Minister Flanagan's own very personal and strong feelings about the subject. It was completely and explcitly unsupported by the expert advisory group on commemorations, despite the minister's claims otherwise. His strong feelings on the subject were also apparent in various interviews he did to try and defend his decision.

There were strong feelings on both sides. But the issue here is not an inability to commemorate the past, but just an unwillingness to celebrate certain things, and a feeling of genuine annoyance when a government tries to celebrate those things.

It probably was an irrelevant and unnecessary distraction but that was Fine Gael's fault for starting such a pointless fight. It was not irrelevant in the sense that the history of the RIC or Tans in Ireland is irrelevant. History like that is as relevant as the current times dictate, and the passions (passion not being a dirty word btw) aroused show that the subject matter is still very important.

So contrary to O'Brien's narrative, Fine Gael, due to strong feelings, sought to commemorate something that was not appropriate to commemorate, and were forced to backtrack due to inevitable and justifiable backlash of the pubic. Using this as a argument for banning all commemorations is just sour grapes. The controversy is a signal to think a little more carefully about what we commemorate, not that commemorations should cease full stop.

Review: Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind by Tom Holland

In this lengthy tome, historian Tom Holland provides a history of Christianity and Christendom up to the present day. The central thesis is that the current Western mindset, despite its secular pretensions, is still undeniably Christian in both its genealogical origin but also its core philosophy and outlook. 

The book starts in ancient Greece and advances chapter by chapter over two millenia, through the inception of Christianity to the present day. Mini-biographies of key figures, philosophical, religious and political alike, are interwoven into the narrative. The book has many chapters, each with rich stories and vivid descriptions that serve to bring the past to life.

I

As stated, the main thrust of the book is twofold. The first is that the Western Mind is Christian in origin. As a theory of historical causation - that the birth of the Christian idea caused the emergence of the Western Mind as we know it today - this argument is convincing and well made. The rival thesis is one mostly associated with the French Philosophers of the Enlightenment and later British propagandists. It presents the modern mindset as emerging in the Reformation and picking up where the Roman Empire and classical antiquity left off. It is what Herbert Butterfield famously described in his book of the same name as "The Whig Interpretation of History." The middle ages represent an interruption or an aberration in this otherwise continuous historical chain.

Writing on the French Revolution, at a time of widespread murder of clergy and destruction of religious property, Holland sums up the dominant view with regards to Christianity and the Catholic Church in particular:

"A grim warning of what might happen should the revolution fail was to be found in the history of Greece and Rome. The radiance that lately had begun to dawn over Europe was not the continent's first experience of enlightenment. The battle between reason and unreason, between civilisation and barbarism, between philosophy and religion, was one that had been fought in ancient times as well. (p.381)"

By this point in the book, however, Holland has already demonstrated how unsustainable this view is. Firstly, even before making any arguments, the succession of events shows more continuity than disjointedness. Whilst Rome is deemed to have 'fallen' in the 5th century (or to be more precise the Western part of it) its descent wasn't as clear cut as such language suggests. Holland writes that in the 6th century the province of Africa had been recaptured by the Romans, as was Rome, and was a secure province (p.162). And there were 'Caesars' in the West centuries later.  In the 8th century, Charlemagne ascended to the rule of the Franks. Holland writes:

"he exerted a sway that was Roman in its scope. In 800, the pope set an official seal on the comparison in Rome itself; for therefore on Christmas Day, he crowned the Frankish warlord and hailed him as "Augustus". Then having done so, he fell before Charles' feet. Such obeisance had for centuries been the due of only one man: the emperor in Constantinople."

It is said that Rome fell when the barbarians invaded in 476 AD. In reality there was no sudden barbarian invasion. The Barbarians were not actual barbarians, but Germans and Goths (the latter were incidentally Christian). These groups had been interacting with Rome for two hundred years; the Goths had even sacked Rome before in 410 AD.  Goths and Germans had been the power behind the throne is Rome for many years before it officially fell. The character of Rome changed significantly over time and there is no one point where a changing of the guard can be said to have occurred. Obviously, historians for the sake of explanation do need to draw lines somewhere. The point is that they make judgements in doing so.

II 

Secondly, as Holland shows, the idea that Europe's enlightened spirit in the 18th century had more in common with the ancient world than the world of Christianity, in particular pre-Reformation Christianity, is not credible. Granted, the Christian worldview marked a radical and decisive shift from that of the Greco-Roman one in its heyday, but not in the way that the superficial self-serving propaganda of the philosophes would claim.

Holland shows how in Ancient Greece a philosophical tradition emerged which was based on rationality. For Aristotle:

"In the heavens...beyond the sublunar world to which mortals were confined, bodies were eternal and obedient to unchanging circular orbits; and yet these movements, perfect though they were, depended in turn upon a mover which itself never moved. (p.20)"

Thus emerged the idea of an ordered cosmos. For Aristotle, the lover of wisdom (the Philosopher) undertook to understand the laws that governed this cosmos for its own sake. The subsequent question, then, was how to order the affairs of the world. The answer was to observe the laws of nature. This meant that society was to be organised according to the natural order of hierarchical power. Humans ruled animals, Men ruled Women and Greeks ruled barbarians (p.21). Holland writes how the practical application of this philosophy by the contemporary ruler, Demetrius, led to the disenfranchisement of the poor and the abolition of assemblies (p.22). Later, when Pompey the Great conquered Greece for the Roman republic, he would use this philosophy to "gild his self image". The conquests, the enslavement, the glory - this was all part of the natural cosmic order. A sort of binary logic of master and slave was institutionalised.

"As on the battlefield of Troy, so in the new world forged by Rome, it was only by putting others in the shade that a man most fully became a man".

Was this the pagan world that Montesquieu was referring to in which he said a "spirit of toleration and gentleness had ruled" (p.381)? Of course, in their infatuation with reason, the French Philosophes   took another key idea for granted, the dignity of the human individual. This is at the heart of the Christian message and constituted a total inversion of the dominant Greco-Roman paradigm. Holland writes;

"Not as a leader of armies, not as the conqueror of Caesars, but as a victim the Messiah had come. (p.85)"

This idea was shocking and totally novel. Holland refers to the preachings of St Paul in the embryonic stage of Christianity. Paul proclaimed that the human body was a temple of the Holy Spirit (p.81). Paul taught that to suffer, to be beaten, to be abused, to be degraded was to share in the glory of Christ. For those who adopted God, the spirit of Jesus would redeem their bodies (Ibid).

The dignity of the individual was also enhanced through the Christian view of marriage. Man and woman in marriage were joined like Christ and the Church were joined. While the woman was instructed to submit to her husband, the man was instructed to be faithful to his wife. This was in marked contrast to an earlier Roman view of marriage in which a double standard prevailed, and where there was no obligation of fidelity on the man. Divorce was only allowed in rare circumstances (p.265-6). This therefore put a premium on the institution of marriage to the benefit of the partaking individuals.

In relation to science, the great strides in science in the 16th and 17th centuries were the culmination of centuries of effort. The adoption of the Heliocentric model in astronomy, a key milestone in science's progress, drew on the work of earlier scholars in Oxford and Paris (p.338). Such achievements would not have been possible without universities, uniquely Christian inventions. Nor indeed would they have been possible without the Church's respect for natural philosophy and reason. Notwithstanding this reality, the myth of the medieval period being an age of ignorance and backwardness became popularised in the late 19th century (p.430).

The spirit of toleration and secularisation was an accidental outcome of the 30 Years War of the 17th century. Christianity, therefore, cannot take any credit for it. The settlement that followed brought about the separation of church and state and individual freedom of worship. This is what Herbert Butterfield meant when he wrote about modern Western principles such as democracy and liberty being the accidental product of the clash between certain sects, rather than the necessary product of a particular dynamic within Christianity, i.e. Protestantism.

In retrospect, then, it seems that the Reformation is the key event (inadvertently) whereby Christianity and the technology it cultivated (i.e. science, humanism, reason) began to part way. 

III

The next question is whether the Western mind today is still inherently Christian. While the case is well made that Christianity got us to this point, the jury is out on whether we still need it. Holland believes that we do. He describes Angela Merkel's response to the 2015 Refugee crisis as Christian in all but name (p.503). Similarly, the iconoclastic satire of Charlie Hebdo is not unlike the desecration of idols by early enthusiasts of the Reformation (p.506).

The key here is to recognise the distinction between means and ends. Christianity was once the end towards which certain means (technologies) were developed. As modernity unfolded, these technologies took on a life of their own and the end they served lost relevance. We eventually arrived at the point, after the end of the Second World War, where ends either became completed privatised (liberalism) or declared non-existent (existentialism). And so Angela Merkel may have been privately motivated by religion, but her public stance was standard liberal humanitarianism. And Charlie Hebdo exalted freedom of speech for the sake of, well, freedom of speech.

With that in mind, the only conclusion is that the West may have had Christian origins but is no longer Christian in its DNA. And that is to its peril.

Steven Pinker and Whig History

In his book, Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker makes two basic claims; firstly, that the world is a better place than it used to be by reference to various metrics such as quality of life, hunger, poverty, violence etc; secondly, that the reason for this improvement is enlightenment values such as reason, science, progress and humanism.

It is very hard to deny that he has a point in relation to the first claim, though there may be arguments to be made that this is a qualitative question in addition to just being a quantitative one. We will return to this at a later point.

In relation to the second claim, Pinker's approach is nakedly ideological if not embarrassingly naive. In the Whig Interpretation of History, Herbert Butterfield wrote about a tendency among historians to attribute the rise of modern British liberal democracy to a sort of instinct towards progress, a will to progress even, that had its roots in the Reformation. Whig historians saw history as a struggle between the progressive instinct and the reactionary reflex.

Pinker is very clear that when he speaks of progress, he is not referring to any metaphysical teleological force. That is, it has happened because of human action and will only continue to happen if humans make it so. There is no inevitability to it - it is contingent rather than necessary.

Like the Whigs though, Pinker still sees the modern world as being a tug of war between two broad sets of values. He sets up a binary opposition of Enlightenment versus Counter-Enlightenment. All of the good progress is down to Enlightenment values and has happened in spite of the counter-enlightenment. If we can just concentrate on the former, the world will get better.

And like any true ideologue, certain concepts and events, regardless of their occurrence in time and space, are put into the Enlightenment category with the contra being put into the other.

So, for example, humanism, science and reason are all put into the Enlightenment category. Unreason, exemplified by religion, is a counter-Enlightenment phenomenon. The same goes for anti-humanism, again exemplified by religion's pro-occupation with soul, but also nationalism's subordination of the individual to the tribe. (And Pinker makes it clear that he includes nationalisms "fused with Marxist Liberation movements").

In the second decade of the 21st century, he speaks of populist movements that are "tribal rather than cosmopolitan, authoritarian rather than democratic, contemptuous of experts rather than respectful of knowledge, and nostalgic for an idyllic past rather than hopeful for a better future." (p29) He attributes this general counter-enlightenment to the Romantic movement of the early 19th century that "pushed back hard against Enlightenment ideals". (p30)

Unfortunately for Pinker this thesis is full of holes, big and small.

1. First of all, there are the usual tricks with time and space you get with ideologues. He lists Rousseau and Herder amongst the romanticists, even though they were clearly active before the romantic period and are much closer in time and actual relation to the Enlightenment. He suggests that fundamentalist religion is part of the counter-enlightenment, even though that has its origins in the Reformation which predates it by a couple of hundred years. He claims science for the Enlightenment even though the scientific revolution took place in the 17th century, and arguably had its roots in medieval times as historians of science now accept.

It could be argued that Enlightenment is a state of mind rather than a specific event, but then we are in the realms of Whiggish-style teleology, where events are explained by reference to later events or timeless concepts. 

The same point can be made about reason more generally. Thomas Aquinas, the medieval philosopher, insisted on the importance of reason in the field of theology. Not content to depend on revelation alone, Aquinas felt that any truth must also be supportable by rational argument. The British philosopher, Bertrand Russell, criticised Aquinas' approach to reasoning, arguing that it was not conducted in the spirit of free inquiry, with a willingness to follow it wherever it lead, but with the intention of only using to arrive at a pre-conceived conclusion, and to fall back on revelation in any case should the argument fail. Russell's critique of Aquinas is adequately dismantled here. The fact is that it is very questionable whether any reasoning is conducted in a truly free spirit that is independent of any belief systems or value assumptions. More importantly, though, it doesn't matter because the reasoning will stand or fall on its own merits anyway. The takeaway is that Aquinas, and other medieval thinkers, placed a clear emphasis on reasoning which could only have served to increase its value. 

2. Secondly, we have lazy mischaracterisations, such as the idea that romanticism was anti-humanist or anti-individual. Romanticism was a very broad and complex movement. It took place against the backdrop of political, social and economic upheaval. Certain elements of romanticism certainly sought to re-discover and re-empower the individual in a quickly changing world. The same goes for nationalism, which played an important role in the rise of modern democracy in the 19th century and formation of the nation-state as we know it. Nationalism was the key ingredient in conferring political and popular legitimacy on newly expanding states and economies.

After designating nationalism as a bad concept, he writes that it should not be confused with "civic values, public spirit, social responsibility, or cultural pride". (p31) Of course, this sophistic sleight of hand misses the point, namely that the whole utility of nationalism is that it has provided, historically, an emotional imperative to do these very things. It cultivates practical patriotism. It's like saying, love of your town should not be confused with having an anti-litter ethic; but loving your town will give you more motivation not to litter.

Furthermore, nationalism or at least the rise of the nation-state was a key vehicle by which the power of the Catholic church had been pushed back in the centuries preceding the Enlightenment. This is rather inconvenient for Pinker's thesis as it disrupts the idea that nationalism and religion are cosy bedfellows with regards to the values that the Enlightenment is supposed to own. A local example also supports the point; the Catholic Church in Ireland generally opposed all Irish nationalism throughout the 19th century, whether it be expressed constitutionally or otherwise. Only with liberation theology in South America in the 20th century did we see any kind of meaningful partnership between the Catholic Church on some clerical level and nationalist movements. 

3. This leads us nicely onto another set of holes, namely Pinker's selection bias. He is keen to point out the Enlightenment's first and proudest offspring, the American revolution and speak about the enlightened nature of both its founding documents and fathers. In relation to its second, but not so proud, offspring - the French revolution - he is unsurprisingly a little quieter. Suffice to say, the French revolution exalted reason as a virtue and brought that logic to its very violent and bloody conclusion. Not that the American revolution is completely clean from Pinker's point of view either. At the time, it had a clear nationalist component to it, and one that was clearly more tribal (i.e. anti-British, if not other ethnicities too) than the dispassionate social contract he approves of.

Another blatant case of elision is his favourably citing of David Hume and Immanuel Kant in defence of reason. Hume famously said that reason is the slave of the passions and that it cannot give rise to moral motivation. This is a direct contradiction of what Pinker is calling for - the prioritisation of reason as a virtue as opposed to just a tool. Kant was influenced by Hume and also warned about the limits of reason. Pinker claims to follow the example of Hume and Adam Smith by saying he starts with an honest appraisal of human nature and goes from there. But in bluntly dismissing romanticism, nationalism and religion (on faulty grounds) he really isn't. There's no real attempt to marry human nature with the principles he advocates in a practical way. Instead he just ignores that point, doubling down on the point about needing reason, science, humanism. Ironically, he advocates humanism yet seems distinctly uninterested in humanising these subjects.

His discussions on humanism and religion also elide the important role of Quakers in the abolition of slavery.

In summary, Pinker has failed to make the case that reason, science or humanism are direct products of the Enlightenment. They have disparate roots. In his book, Butterfield argued that British liberal democracy was the accidental outcome of the clash of Catholicism and Protestantism. Its the same story here. The modern world, good and bad, is a product of the clash of many intellectual strands and traditions. Democracy and freedom owe as much to romantics and religion as they do to the enlightenment thinkers. This also causes him to go wrong in his belief that science, reason, humanism on their own can be of benefit to us.

In this area, Pinker has all the hallmarks of someone who has stepped out of his academic comfort zone and has found himself out of his depth. He still refers to the Dark Ages, a term that is now largely discredited amongst historians. He cites the case of Galileo as an example of religion's incompatibility with science, totally ignorant to the nuances of that case and the other elements it involved. I think Pinker will come to be seen as a very overrated and over-achieving public intellectual in time.