Disagreeing Virtuously

Religious Conflict in Interdisciplinary Perspective

Olli-Pekka Vainio

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781467447164
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ethics & Religion

Disagreement is inevitable, particularly in our current context, marked by the close coexistence of conflicting values and perspectives in politics, religion, and ethics. How can we deal with disagreement ethically and constructively in our pluralistic world? In Disagreeing Virtuously Olli-Pekka Vainio presents a valuable interdisciplinary approach to that question, drawing on insights from intellectual history, the cognitive sciences, philosophy of religion, and virtue theory. After mapping the current discussion on disagreement among various disciplines, Vainio offers fresh ways to understand the complicated nature of human disagreement and recommends ways to manage our interpersonal and intercommunal conflicts in ethically sustainable ways.

CHAPTER 1

We Have Been Here Before

But what differences are there which cannot be thus decided, and which therefore make us angry and set us at enmity with one another? I dare say the answer does not occur to you at the moment, and therefore I will suggest that these enmities arise when the matters of difference are the just and unjust, good and evil, honorable and dishonorable. Are not these the points about which men differ, and about which when we are unable satisfactorily to decide our differences, you and I and all of us quarrel, when we do quarrel?

Plato, Euthyphro 7

For human reason is very deficient in things concerning God. A sign of this is that philosophers in their researches, by natural investigation, into human affairs, have fallen into many errors, and have disagreed among themselves.

St. Thomas Aquinas, ST II-IIae.2.4

The first philosophical writings that have been preserved for us give mutually conflicting accounts of the nature of ultimate reality and the possibility of knowledge. Although history does not offer consensus, there are multiple lessons to be drawn from the writings of our predecessors. The philosophical problem of disagreement has been with us from the beginning, and over the centuries we have tried to solve the problem in myriad ways, some of which I will summarize in the following pages. Against this background, we may come to understand our own disagreements and proposed solutions more clearly.

1.1.Malleable Men and the Council of the Wise: Plato and Aristotle

One of the first philosophical treatises from the pre-Socratic period comes from Parmenides of Elea (515–445 BC), whose Poem focuses on the opinions of simple men who are misled by naively following their senses. Because the world of senses is in a constant state of flux, we are not able to form correct opinions about what is and what is not and we are therefore doomed to form contradictory convictions. Philosophers, instead, know a better way: the meditation of “uncreated and imperishable . . . whole and of single kind and unshaken and perfect.”¹

Here, among the early Greek philosophers, we observe that a question about knowledge is immediately transformed into a question about metaphysics.² Heraclitus (fl. 500 BC), Parmenides’s contemporary, argued that unchanged and motionless being is not the object of true knowledge; instead change is eternal. For Heraclitus, the ultimate nature of reality is not static and harmonious in the way Parmenides thought. The underlying harmony is to be found in corresponding states that are in eternal opposition. This leads him to conclude, “It is necessary to know that war is common and right is strife, and that all things happen by strife and necessity.”³ This river-like constant change shows people their true place in the world: “War is the father of all and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men, some he makes slaves, others free.”⁴ War and strife are eternal; their cessation would indicate the end of the world.

Here we have two basic stances that were to become the two opposite poles of stability and change, being and nothingness, toward which all metaphysical solutions gravitate in the history of Western philosophy. These disputes, which go back to the first serious attempts to philosophize, illustrate the complexity of disagreement. If our disagreements were only about perception, things might not be that serious.⁵ However, we are immediately faced with metaphysical questions, which are consequently linked to questions of value. In ancient philosophy the different topics of philosophy were so intermingled that it was not possible to distinguish between epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and political philosophy, as happens in modern philosophy.

Plato

Plato’s epistemology is tied directly to his metaphysical views. In the Republic, for example, Plato argues that perceptible things cannot be the object of proper knowledge since perceptible things can present themselves in ways that contradict each other. That is why convictions regarding perceptible objects are just opinions (doxa). Knowledge (epistēmē) is possible only in relation to Ideas. Sometimes it seems that Plato restricts knowledge only to the knowing of the One (hen) and immediately related ideas, with the result that one actually “knows” very few things. Consequently, if knowledge proper is only about hen, epistemology regarding ordinary things loses much of its value as a reasonable pursuit. We should not let the shadows on the wall drag us into senseless disputes because our opinions about them are necessarily deficient.⁶

Nevertheless, even if Plato is not interested in the justification of beliefs in a modern sense, he believes that things such as goodness and justice are worth serious examination. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates points out that we tend to agree on simple things but get easily confused when faced with issues like justice and goodness, especially if we fall under the influence of a master rhetorician.⁷

Socrates: Every one is aware that about some things we are agreed, whereas about other things we differ.

Phaedrus: I think that I understand you; but will you explain yourself?

Socrates: When any one speaks of iron and silver, is not the same thing present in the minds of all?

Phaedrus: Certainly.

Socrates: But when any one speaks of justice and goodness we part company and are at odds with one another and with ourselves?

Phaedrus: Precisely.

Socrates: Then in some things we agree, but not in others?

Phaedrus: That is true.

Socrates: In which are we more likely to be deceived, and in which has rhetoric the greater power?

Phaedrus: Clearly, in the uncertain class.⁸

The above dialogue underlines the need for criteria and standards against which values are evaluated. The criticism of rhetoric arises from the debaters’ analysis of Lysia’s speech on love. Socrates and Phaedrus criticize Lysia for not defining the concepts he is using. This way Lysia “begins at the end”: from the conclusions without properly introducing his arguments, necessary concepts, and their definitions. Consequently, masses are led astray by rhetoricians who make complicated things look simple. Against this view, Socrates argues that dialectic (philosophy) is greater than rhetoric because it leads people to understand the things as they are.⁹

Nicholas White notes that the peculiarity of Plato’s “metaphysical epistemology” is found in the cases of puzzlement regarding particular goods. There is no talk about different contexts or ways of knowing (because the context is always less than ideal for humans). Plato simply goes on to explain what this particular good consists of in reality.¹⁰ In the Republic, Plato’s suggested solution to value disagreements is the meditation of Ideas. But is our knowledge of Ideas more secure?

Plato’s imagined republic reflects the human soul’s ideal condition: the rational part of the soul rules over the irrational part. In like manner, society’s lower classes behave rationally when they submit themselves to the upper classes, and the upper classes are rational when they rule wisely over the lower classes.¹¹ The utopian state is needed to educate people in the right way; namely, if people are subjected to a substandard moral environment in their youth, it is almost impossible to correct them later. As an example of perfection, Plato envisions an ideal judge who has not been familiarized with crimes in his youth, but who “should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others.”¹²

Plato has no rosy view of humanity.¹³ Truth is easily corrupted, and human nature is prone to go astray if not properly tutored. This leads him to create a utopian (and totalitarian) state, which enables humans to achieve harmony and happiness (eudaimonia). Plato argues that conflicts typically arise in situations when there is some question of ownership. As a result, conflicts can be avoided by removing standard family structures and private property. This radical reorganization of social life should lead to equitable treatment. However, the sense of ownership extends to one’s own body and makes the complete uprooting of the notion of the private (idion) impossible. Here we face the crucial moment in Plato’s theory, summarized by Martha Nussbaum: “For the body is not only the biggest obstacle to stable life and to true evaluation; it is also the most dangerous source of conflict, and therefore the biggest obstacle to impartial and harmonious civic justice.”¹⁴

It is not only the commoners who suffer from their bodily restrictions; philosophers are subject to it as well. In Plato’s utopian state, philosophers rule the other classes, who willingly submit themselves to philosophers’ tutelage. For this reason, philosophers cannot have any private property either; honor is their only salary. However, other classes do not easily yield to philosophers’ rule. Even if philosophical knowledge is available for all, it is easily lost, and it cannot be promulgated to the society as a whole if the correct system, namely, a utopian state, is not in place.

Plato senses that even philosophers can become corrupt, which consequently makes it harder to use the Ideas as the starting point from which to start intellectual enquiry.¹⁵ This underscores the fragility of his utopian state, and eventually leads him to conclude that such a state will never come into being. Instead, we should strive for the Republic’s ideals without the state’s support. Even in the less-than-ideal state, it is the philosophers’ task to enter the cave they have left behind and educate the cave dwellers.¹⁶

Plato offers several enduring pieces of advice on managing disagreement in our time. The rhetoricians are still among us and continue to lead people in multiple directions. However, the means of bringing the desired state about are not well suited for contemporary democracies. For Plato, politics is not about coming together from different backgrounds and trying to find a common way; the common people have nothing worthwhile to say. Knowledge is restricted to the philosophical elite. Plato’s state is an intellectual aristocracy, which, sadly, is not able to secure its own internal consensus, as the later history of philosophy demonstrates, and which Plato himself also anticipates.

Aristotle

Aristotle follows the basic division of the parts of the soul that was assumed in Plato’s Academy. According to Aristotle, the human soul consists of three parts: vegetative, appetitive or animal, and rational. The vegetative soul joins us together with the world of nature, and it does not actually have an effect on our actions. The animal soul is responsible for those actions that we have in common with living beings, such as sensations, desires, and emotions. The properly human part is the rational soul, and it is divided into theoretical and calculative parts. The theoretical part deals with scientific reasoning, while the calculative part determines which actions we should perform.¹⁷

An action (and the person who performs it) can be regarded as good when the rational and appetitive parts work together harmoniously so that the action resonates with the particular good that is the action’s goal.¹⁸ If the calculative part does not rule over the appetitive part, the person in question behaves like an animal driven by its involuntary desires.

How, then, does the person engage with the world in a rational way? Aristotle’s philosop...