Transcendentalism
∞
Is It Time For A New Transcendentalism?
For the last few weeks I have found
myself returning to this question: Is it
time for a new Transcendentalism?
I normally try to write simple blog posts, but this one might get a little technical. I'll try to minimize the jargon (and so, no doubt, will do some injustice to the technical stuff) but feel free to skip the following section if you like.
The Seeds Of Transcendentalism
When we teach Transcendentalism, we emphasize a few key texts by figures like Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Carlyle, Coleridge, Hedge, and others of their acquaintance. Attention to nature, and terms like "self-reliance" and "civil disobedience" shape our understanding of the movement, though they are more like the fruit of the movement than its seeds.
One of the most important seeds of Transcendentalism is the refusal to let one's self be owned, defined, or constrained by others. Today, "self-reliance" sounds like a description of someone who owns a generator in case the power goes out, or who learns engine repair so she doesn't need to depend on a mechanic. But closer to the heart of Transcendentalism is suspicion of others' descriptions of the self and the world.
Inspired in part by Kant's phenomenology and in part by German and English Romanticism, Emerson charted a course between the stifling atmosphere of inherited religion and the determinism of mechanistic philosophies. Unable to find a reliable source of knowledge in the experienced world (our perceptions are always a little off, and maybe they're completely mistaken, as when we hallucinate) Kant located another source of knowledge in our innate ability to know the world at all. Kant argued that we have innate structures of knowledge, intuitive forms that transcend all experience and so are not subject to the doubt directed at experience. Emerson Platonized Kant's epistemology, taking Kant to mean that our inward reflections not only form the world, but give us direct access to the meaning of the world. The individual knower knows some things without being taught them by anyone else.
To put that in other terms, Emerson's Transcendentalism emphasized an "original relation to the universe," in which we trust our intuitions and exercise distrust towards beliefs that have come from outside us. This calls for "prospective," not retrospective, thinking, meaning a willingness to look forward to new possibilities rather than looking backwards to the rules and traditions of our ancestors to acquire rules for our lives.
In even simpler terms, when we let churches and other institutions (scientific, economic, cultural, etc) limit our self-understanding, we also allow them to constrain the scope of our possibilities.
A New Transcendentalism
It may seem we no longer need Transcendentalism because churches are losing their authority and many of us feel free to think what we wish. I am skeptical of this latter claim. Peirce argues that we do not seek the truth; we seek relief from the irritation of doubt. We look for beliefs that are comfortable, and the most comfortable beliefs are the ones that mesh well with the beliefs of others around us. C.S. Lewis, in his preface to Athanasius' De Incarnatione, argues that we should read old books because that is one of the surest ways to have our current beliefs challenged. He adds that simply reading broadly in modern books will not do because people who live in any given age tend to share most of their beliefs. Training in history, and especially in the history of ideas, exposes our beliefs to a broader community that can cast doubt on what we believe.
Another way of saying this is that we agree with ideas that bear the imprimatur of our community. One idea that has growing acceptance is the idea that to be human is to be describable. I admit I am fascinated by this idea, and I delight in learning about the molecules that make our bodies, and the ways they interact.
But I find myself resisting this description of life. Not because it seems wrong, but only because it seems incomplete. It is tempting to turn a good description into a complete one, to be satisfied with a partial description precisely because there is no pressure not to accept it.
Isn't this one of the things we mock in earlier ages, though? I mean their unblinking acceptance of what everyone else around them believed. Are we so free of that same tendency in our own age?
Doubt As A Gardener
Let me add at this point that I find myself thinking about this in my quietest times of reflection, which makes me think it's not coming to me as a polemic against something so much as an apology for something. I don't want to argue against science, because I think science is one of the finest things we've ever come up with. What I want is something that will nevertheless act as a loyal opposition to science, a court jester, perhaps, who will listen patiently to court business about the latest discoveries, but then impudently ask "Yes, but why do you care?" Or say "That's really beautiful, isn't it? Now - tell me about beauty in a way that doesn't leave anything out."
It won't be easy. Transcendentalists and jesters aren't often taken seriously, but their work is perhaps the most serious and important type of work. What I am calling for is like what Cornel West calls prophecy, a missional work of justice, a forward-looking, love-driven endeavor that doesn't want to see anyone taken prisoner by a merely adequate account of what it means to be human. I don't have a full vision of what this means; I'm writing about it here as a first step of externalizing a hunch that it's time to reclaim something of Emerson's vision and to plant the seeds of some doubt.
Doubt is not the enemy of faith and knowledge; it is the gardener who prunes the plant so that it may flourish.
I normally try to write simple blog posts, but this one might get a little technical. I'll try to minimize the jargon (and so, no doubt, will do some injustice to the technical stuff) but feel free to skip the following section if you like.
The Seeds Of Transcendentalism
When we teach Transcendentalism, we emphasize a few key texts by figures like Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Carlyle, Coleridge, Hedge, and others of their acquaintance. Attention to nature, and terms like "self-reliance" and "civil disobedience" shape our understanding of the movement, though they are more like the fruit of the movement than its seeds.
One of the most important seeds of Transcendentalism is the refusal to let one's self be owned, defined, or constrained by others. Today, "self-reliance" sounds like a description of someone who owns a generator in case the power goes out, or who learns engine repair so she doesn't need to depend on a mechanic. But closer to the heart of Transcendentalism is suspicion of others' descriptions of the self and the world.
Inspired in part by Kant's phenomenology and in part by German and English Romanticism, Emerson charted a course between the stifling atmosphere of inherited religion and the determinism of mechanistic philosophies. Unable to find a reliable source of knowledge in the experienced world (our perceptions are always a little off, and maybe they're completely mistaken, as when we hallucinate) Kant located another source of knowledge in our innate ability to know the world at all. Kant argued that we have innate structures of knowledge, intuitive forms that transcend all experience and so are not subject to the doubt directed at experience. Emerson Platonized Kant's epistemology, taking Kant to mean that our inward reflections not only form the world, but give us direct access to the meaning of the world. The individual knower knows some things without being taught them by anyone else.
To put that in other terms, Emerson's Transcendentalism emphasized an "original relation to the universe," in which we trust our intuitions and exercise distrust towards beliefs that have come from outside us. This calls for "prospective," not retrospective, thinking, meaning a willingness to look forward to new possibilities rather than looking backwards to the rules and traditions of our ancestors to acquire rules for our lives.
In even simpler terms, when we let churches and other institutions (scientific, economic, cultural, etc) limit our self-understanding, we also allow them to constrain the scope of our possibilities.
A New Transcendentalism
It may seem we no longer need Transcendentalism because churches are losing their authority and many of us feel free to think what we wish. I am skeptical of this latter claim. Peirce argues that we do not seek the truth; we seek relief from the irritation of doubt. We look for beliefs that are comfortable, and the most comfortable beliefs are the ones that mesh well with the beliefs of others around us. C.S. Lewis, in his preface to Athanasius' De Incarnatione, argues that we should read old books because that is one of the surest ways to have our current beliefs challenged. He adds that simply reading broadly in modern books will not do because people who live in any given age tend to share most of their beliefs. Training in history, and especially in the history of ideas, exposes our beliefs to a broader community that can cast doubt on what we believe.
Another way of saying this is that we agree with ideas that bear the imprimatur of our community. One idea that has growing acceptance is the idea that to be human is to be describable. I admit I am fascinated by this idea, and I delight in learning about the molecules that make our bodies, and the ways they interact.
But I find myself resisting this description of life. Not because it seems wrong, but only because it seems incomplete. It is tempting to turn a good description into a complete one, to be satisfied with a partial description precisely because there is no pressure not to accept it.
Isn't this one of the things we mock in earlier ages, though? I mean their unblinking acceptance of what everyone else around them believed. Are we so free of that same tendency in our own age?
Doubt As A Gardener
Let me add at this point that I find myself thinking about this in my quietest times of reflection, which makes me think it's not coming to me as a polemic against something so much as an apology for something. I don't want to argue against science, because I think science is one of the finest things we've ever come up with. What I want is something that will nevertheless act as a loyal opposition to science, a court jester, perhaps, who will listen patiently to court business about the latest discoveries, but then impudently ask "Yes, but why do you care?" Or say "That's really beautiful, isn't it? Now - tell me about beauty in a way that doesn't leave anything out."
It won't be easy. Transcendentalists and jesters aren't often taken seriously, but their work is perhaps the most serious and important type of work. What I am calling for is like what Cornel West calls prophecy, a missional work of justice, a forward-looking, love-driven endeavor that doesn't want to see anyone taken prisoner by a merely adequate account of what it means to be human. I don't have a full vision of what this means; I'm writing about it here as a first step of externalizing a hunch that it's time to reclaim something of Emerson's vision and to plant the seeds of some doubt.
Doubt is not the enemy of faith and knowledge; it is the gardener who prunes the plant so that it may flourish.
∞
Reluctant Prayer
I do not like to pray, but I think prayer is important.
Of course, "prayer" can mean many different things, and I do not mean all of them. But - despite my disliking for the activity of prayer - I practice several kinds of prayer.
Petition and Intercession
I spend most of my prayer time asking for things. This probably sounds foolish on more than one level. Here's the thing: I use the language of asking because it's what comes most naturally. I'm not an expert at this. But this asking is, for me, like stretching my muscles before a run. If I stretch well, I can run further and faster, and I do more good than harm. Stretching prepares me to do more than I could have done otherwise. It expels stiffness and inertia and inaction.
Asking God to do good in the lives of others could be a cop-out, where we dump our problems on the divine and then proceed to ignore them. What I try to practice is a kind of asking where I'm not giving up on being part of the solution. Frankly, I think a lot of the big problems in the world will take more than just me, so I have no shame about asking God to do some of the heavy lifting. But it's also important that I take some time out of my day to practice being less concerned with my own worries and more concerned with others. This is not the run; it is the warmup, the stretching. The stretching does some good all on its own, but it also prepares me to do other good.
One part of this I have a hard time sorting out is whether and how to tell people I am praying for them. Some people are grateful for it, others are bothered by it. I understand both of those reactions. There are times when we feel the weight of grief less heavily when we know others care enough to devote part of their day to the contemplation of our suffering. And there are times when it seems like people tell us about their prayers so that we will think more highly of them. I have yet to figure this all out. I'll just say it now: if you tell me of your sorrows, I will do my best to remember those sorrows in my quiet time, and I will bring them, in silent contemplation, into the presence of my contemplation of the divine.
Make Me A Blessing
My main prayer each day is one I learned from actor Richard Gere. Years ago, after he became a Buddhist, he said in an interview that when he meets someone he says to himself, silently, "Let me be a blessing to this person." This has stayed with me, and it seems like a good prayer. (He might not call it a prayer, which is fine with me.) I begin my day with that prayer, in the abstract, something like this: "Let me be a blessing to everyone I encounter, to everyone affected by my life. Let me be a blessing, and not a curse. Let me not bring shame on anyone, and keep me from doing or saying what is foolish or harmful." This is not unlike the well-known prayer of St Francis, whose story I have loved since Professor Pardon Tillinghast first made me study it in college years ago.
We Become Like What We Worship
What lies behind all this is my hunch - and I admit it's just a hunch - that we come to resemble the things that matter most to us, the things that we treasure and mentally caress in our inmost parts. And I think this happens subtly and slowly, the way habits build up, or the way our bodies slowly change over time, one cell division at a time. The little things add up to the big thing; our small gestures become the great sweep of our lives.
So in prayer I'm trying to take time out of each day to at least expose myself once again to the things I think are most worth imitating: love of neighbor, love of justice, peacemaking, contentment, hospitality, generosity, gentleness, defense of the downtrodden, healing, joy, patience, self-control. So much of the rest of my day I wind up chasing after things that take up an amount of time that is disproportionate to their value.
If prayer does nothing else than force me to remember what I claim is important--even if this means exposing myself to myself as a hypocrite--then it has already done me some good. And I hope this will mean I'm less of a jerk to everyone else, too. When I'm honest with myself (and let's be honest, that's not as often as it should be) this leads me to what churches have long called confession and repentance, the acknowledgement that I'm not all I claim to be, that I'm not yet all I could be, that I have let myself and others down, and that needs to change. Perhaps this comes from my long interest in Socrates: I think it's probably healthy to make it a habit to consider one's own life.
Musement and Contemplation
There is another kind of prayer that I find quite difficult most of the time, but sometimes I fall into it, and when I do, it is always a delight. It happens sometimes when I am walking, or in the shower, or while reading something that utterly disrupts my usual patterns of thinking. It happens sometimes while I lie awake at night. Charles Peirce talks about this as "musement," a kind of disinterested contemplation of all our possible and actual experiences.
Emerson called prayer the consideration of the facts of the universe from the highest possible point of view. I'm not sure I get anything like the highest possible point of view when I pray, but contemplative prayer does feel like an attempt to at least consider what such a point of view would be like.
Perhaps the best part of this Peircean/Emersonian kind of prayer is the opportunity for rest. Oddly, Peirce says that this is not a relaxation of one's mental powers but the vigorous use of one's powers. The difference between this and hard work is that musement doesn't try to accomplish anything. Peirce says that we could call this "Pure Play." Play may be physically tiring but it is mentally and spiritually refreshing, and it often shows us things we would not otherwise have seen. At least, this is my experience in the outdoors - I climb mountains and wade in rivers and snorkel in the ocean in order to experience the moment when what is possible becomes actual, when what I have not yet seen becomes a fact in my existence. The novelty of it makes life delicious.
Why I Pray
This is a good deal of what drives me to pray, anyway: I want to love my neighbor and my world more than I actually do, so I spend time preparing to do so; I want to become more like the best things and the best people I know, so I spend time dwelling on them, in the belief that worship shapes my character; and I know it is good for me to have my patterns of thought disrupted, so I try to allow myself to enter into a playful contemplation of the world and all that it symbolizes. None of this is easy. It is like any other exercise, sometimes rewarding, often difficult, and nearly always a preparation for the unexpected.
Of course, "prayer" can mean many different things, and I do not mean all of them. But - despite my disliking for the activity of prayer - I practice several kinds of prayer.
Petition and Intercession
I spend most of my prayer time asking for things. This probably sounds foolish on more than one level. Here's the thing: I use the language of asking because it's what comes most naturally. I'm not an expert at this. But this asking is, for me, like stretching my muscles before a run. If I stretch well, I can run further and faster, and I do more good than harm. Stretching prepares me to do more than I could have done otherwise. It expels stiffness and inertia and inaction.
Asking God to do good in the lives of others could be a cop-out, where we dump our problems on the divine and then proceed to ignore them. What I try to practice is a kind of asking where I'm not giving up on being part of the solution. Frankly, I think a lot of the big problems in the world will take more than just me, so I have no shame about asking God to do some of the heavy lifting. But it's also important that I take some time out of my day to practice being less concerned with my own worries and more concerned with others. This is not the run; it is the warmup, the stretching. The stretching does some good all on its own, but it also prepares me to do other good.
One part of this I have a hard time sorting out is whether and how to tell people I am praying for them. Some people are grateful for it, others are bothered by it. I understand both of those reactions. There are times when we feel the weight of grief less heavily when we know others care enough to devote part of their day to the contemplation of our suffering. And there are times when it seems like people tell us about their prayers so that we will think more highly of them. I have yet to figure this all out. I'll just say it now: if you tell me of your sorrows, I will do my best to remember those sorrows in my quiet time, and I will bring them, in silent contemplation, into the presence of my contemplation of the divine.
Make Me A Blessing
My main prayer each day is one I learned from actor Richard Gere. Years ago, after he became a Buddhist, he said in an interview that when he meets someone he says to himself, silently, "Let me be a blessing to this person." This has stayed with me, and it seems like a good prayer. (He might not call it a prayer, which is fine with me.) I begin my day with that prayer, in the abstract, something like this: "Let me be a blessing to everyone I encounter, to everyone affected by my life. Let me be a blessing, and not a curse. Let me not bring shame on anyone, and keep me from doing or saying what is foolish or harmful." This is not unlike the well-known prayer of St Francis, whose story I have loved since Professor Pardon Tillinghast first made me study it in college years ago.
We Become Like What We Worship
What lies behind all this is my hunch - and I admit it's just a hunch - that we come to resemble the things that matter most to us, the things that we treasure and mentally caress in our inmost parts. And I think this happens subtly and slowly, the way habits build up, or the way our bodies slowly change over time, one cell division at a time. The little things add up to the big thing; our small gestures become the great sweep of our lives.
So in prayer I'm trying to take time out of each day to at least expose myself once again to the things I think are most worth imitating: love of neighbor, love of justice, peacemaking, contentment, hospitality, generosity, gentleness, defense of the downtrodden, healing, joy, patience, self-control. So much of the rest of my day I wind up chasing after things that take up an amount of time that is disproportionate to their value.
If prayer does nothing else than force me to remember what I claim is important--even if this means exposing myself to myself as a hypocrite--then it has already done me some good. And I hope this will mean I'm less of a jerk to everyone else, too. When I'm honest with myself (and let's be honest, that's not as often as it should be) this leads me to what churches have long called confession and repentance, the acknowledgement that I'm not all I claim to be, that I'm not yet all I could be, that I have let myself and others down, and that needs to change. Perhaps this comes from my long interest in Socrates: I think it's probably healthy to make it a habit to consider one's own life.
Musement and Contemplation
There is another kind of prayer that I find quite difficult most of the time, but sometimes I fall into it, and when I do, it is always a delight. It happens sometimes when I am walking, or in the shower, or while reading something that utterly disrupts my usual patterns of thinking. It happens sometimes while I lie awake at night. Charles Peirce talks about this as "musement," a kind of disinterested contemplation of all our possible and actual experiences.
Emerson called prayer the consideration of the facts of the universe from the highest possible point of view. I'm not sure I get anything like the highest possible point of view when I pray, but contemplative prayer does feel like an attempt to at least consider what such a point of view would be like.
Perhaps the best part of this Peircean/Emersonian kind of prayer is the opportunity for rest. Oddly, Peirce says that this is not a relaxation of one's mental powers but the vigorous use of one's powers. The difference between this and hard work is that musement doesn't try to accomplish anything. Peirce says that we could call this "Pure Play." Play may be physically tiring but it is mentally and spiritually refreshing, and it often shows us things we would not otherwise have seen. At least, this is my experience in the outdoors - I climb mountains and wade in rivers and snorkel in the ocean in order to experience the moment when what is possible becomes actual, when what I have not yet seen becomes a fact in my existence. The novelty of it makes life delicious.
Why I Pray
This is a good deal of what drives me to pray, anyway: I want to love my neighbor and my world more than I actually do, so I spend time preparing to do so; I want to become more like the best things and the best people I know, so I spend time dwelling on them, in the belief that worship shapes my character; and I know it is good for me to have my patterns of thought disrupted, so I try to allow myself to enter into a playful contemplation of the world and all that it symbolizes. None of this is easy. It is like any other exercise, sometimes rewarding, often difficult, and nearly always a preparation for the unexpected.
∞
Socrates and the Trees
It's always dangerous to assume one knows what Plato thinks, since Plato goes out of his way not to tell us what he thinks. Nevertheless, inasmuch as Socrates is his mouthpiece, here is one place where I think Socrates is mistaken. Socrates, speaking to Phaedrus, says, "I'm a lover of learning, and trees and open country won't teach me anything, whereas men in the town do." (230d)
I disagree with what Socrates says here, and it is an unfortunate fact of history that many Platonists have taken a similar position to this one. I just read this line in an otherwise very good book, David Keller and Frank Golley's The Philosophy of Ecology: From Science To Synthesis.
It's a fine collection of key articles in environmental philosophy. In the introduction, however, they contrast Socrates with Thoreau - something Thoreau himself did - and make Thoreau out to be the one more interested in trees. Thoreau was interested in trees, especially at the end of his life, but that does not make the comparison apt.
The irony of this line is that it comes from a dialogue in which Socrates continues to point out to his interlocutor just how much one can learn from a close observation of nature. He repeatedly draws attention to the trees, the water, and the cicadas. Socrates and Plato are not known as fathers of empiricism, but the view that their heads are so far in the Clouds that they cannot see the well they're about to step into has occupied too much of our attention. We would do better to notice that Socrates pays attention to the trees. We would do better still to pay some attention to the trees ourselves.
I disagree with what Socrates says here, and it is an unfortunate fact of history that many Platonists have taken a similar position to this one. I just read this line in an otherwise very good book, David Keller and Frank Golley's The Philosophy of Ecology: From Science To Synthesis.
It's a fine collection of key articles in environmental philosophy. In the introduction, however, they contrast Socrates with Thoreau - something Thoreau himself did - and make Thoreau out to be the one more interested in trees. Thoreau was interested in trees, especially at the end of his life, but that does not make the comparison apt.
The irony of this line is that it comes from a dialogue in which Socrates continues to point out to his interlocutor just how much one can learn from a close observation of nature. He repeatedly draws attention to the trees, the water, and the cicadas. Socrates and Plato are not known as fathers of empiricism, but the view that their heads are so far in the Clouds that they cannot see the well they're about to step into has occupied too much of our attention. We would do better to notice that Socrates pays attention to the trees. We would do better still to pay some attention to the trees ourselves.