2.2.1 Two Examples of Principled Centrism
To clarify this, here’s one example from our current political scene: one of the most important tensions between the key concepts/values of freedom and equality. How one defines and values each of these in relation to the other plays a crucial role in the identity of one’s faith and politics as more liberal/conservative (left/right).
Cases of the extreme “either/or” types today are (1) Tea Party movements, on the far right, which define and value freedom--seen as individuals free from government restrictions--as almost totally trumping any concerns for equality and (2) Socialist movements, on the far left, which define and value equality--seen as government involvement to create much greater income equality--almost completely trumping any concerns for individual freedom. (One key difference between these two, however, is that the former is gaining dangerous strength presently, while the latter is almost totally impotent and, therefore, not a real threat to the health of our democracy at this time.)
Cases of the extreme “either/or” types today are (1) Tea Party movements, on the far right, which define and value freedom--seen as individuals free from government restrictions--as almost totally trumping any concerns for equality and (2) Socialist movements, on the far left, which define and value equality--seen as government involvement to create much greater income equality--almost completely trumping any concerns for individual freedom. (One key difference between these two, however, is that the former is gaining dangerous strength presently, while the latter is almost totally impotent and, therefore, not a real threat to the health of our democracy at this time.)
Examples of the centrist “both/and” types today are (1) David Brooks, center-right political/public life/religion commentator, and (2) E.J. Dionne, center-left political/public life/religion commentator. They each value freedom and equality in such ways that both concepts play important positive roles in their standpoints. Brooks has a non-exclusive idea of individual freedom, which includes a qualifying concern for the Common Good. Dionne has a non-exclusive idea of equality, which includes a qualifying concern for individual freedom, even while strongly challenging our present obscene inequalities. (They are both helping me clarify and develop my own center-left position on both faith and politics.) |
Another example, this one from the history of Western philosophy, will also be helpful in understanding my position in this website. The entire time span can be divided into (1) pre-modern, (2) modern and (3) postmodern periods. In each there were key philosophical principled centrists who took the polarized earlier positions of their period and found creative ways to overcome the impasses by synergizing the best insights of each to form a surprisingly new kind of position that entirely reshaped the field. Part of the common motivation for their work was the strong sceptical philosophies that also arose in each period.
Note: I'm going into more detail in these philosophical examples; because the fields of theology and political science, which are the primary subjects of this website, are grounded in the field of philosophy in important ways. For me, the postmodern philosopher Paul Ricoeur (see below) has most influenced my understanding of faith and politics.
Note: I'm going into more detail in these philosophical examples; because the fields of theology and political science, which are the primary subjects of this website, are grounded in the field of philosophy in important ways. For me, the postmodern philosopher Paul Ricoeur (see below) has most influenced my understanding of faith and politics.
(1) Aristotle (384-322 BCE) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and the teacher of Alexander the Great. His philosophy is the first great principled centrism in the 2,500-year old Western philosophical tradition and a model for all that followed. In this pre-modern period, he discovered a way to overcome the impasses created by the polarized schools of thought of his day--the Greek formalism that had culminated in Plato and materialistic atomism--while at the same time dealing with the scepticism of the Sophists. |
Aristotle was confronted with what seemed to be an intractable polarization between the schools of thought of his day--form vs. matter as ultimate explanations of the nature of reality and a scepticism that we can really know anything. He looked “beyond the box” and discovered a way beyond the impasse. From his new perspective he saw the need for four types of causes--formal, material, efficient, and final--which took the best of both the existing concepts of form and matter up into a new synergistic union with two new concepts. This gave these two warring concepts different (and now compatible) definitions and values to be sure. However, it was a brilliant solution to the main problems in the area of metaphysics of his day (as also in the area of ethics with his “Golden Mean”) that is still influencing philosophy today.
For a long time now, Raphael’s fresco The School of Athens (right, bottom), has been iconic for many in this regard. Plato and Aristotle are placed in the most important elevated, centered position; Plato, (holding his Timaeus book) is pointing up, indicating that the Ideas transcend the material world; while Aristotle (holding his Ethics book) is motioning down, indicating that Form is always grounded in material world (seen more clearly in the book cover above the painting).
Of course, the fresco’s balance between Plato and Aristotle doesn’t capture the preference for the latter that I have been describing like the title of the book, Aristotle’s Children (right, top) does. It’s one of the books I will highlight, which argues that the rediscovery of Aristotle in the Christian West was crucial for the development of natural science and thus makes us all more Aristotelian than Platonic in our secular culture, and partially explains the historical tension between it and otherworldly, soul-in-heaven/hell theology common in the West. |
(2) Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German philosopher who lived his whole life in Konigsberg, the capital of Prussia at that time. He also lived at a time of great flux in the field of knowledge or epistemology. In this modern period there were major successes in the physical sciences (Newton, etc.), expanding the empirical knowledge of the world. At the same time, the sceptical Scottish philosopher David Hume was challenging the very foundations of knowledge philosophically, including the concept of causation itself. |
Kant, who said he was aroused from his “dogmatic slumbers” by Hume in the early 1770s, spent the next decade working through the philosophical problems he inherited from Hume and the polarized schools of Continental Idealism and British Empiricism to come up with a surprising new principled centrism. In metaphysics he proposed a “Copernican Revolution” (an apt astronomical metaphor), which radically changed philosophy. This paradigm shift involved moving from thinking that human cognition must conform to objects, to the opposite--that the objects must conform to cognition. In his new synergistic “transcendental idealism” time and space themselves are not part of an objective reality external to our minds, they are rather part of the structure of our minds that shape incoming experience in ways that allow for a whole new foundation for knowledge--scientific and philosophical. In the area of morality he developed a new theory of duty, centered around the idea of “the Categorical Imperative,” which is dramatically different from Aristotle’s ethics, centered on an idea of "the good."
(3) Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) was a French philosopher (also a Reform Protestant who wrote biblical interpretation and theological works) who taught at the University of Chicago in addition to in his native France. I find his prolific work the best principled centrist philosophical position of the postmodern period. He takes up and builds on the ancient Greek centrist Aristotle and the modern German centrist Kant, among many others, in several dimensions of his thought. One of the most significant is his synergistic bridging of Aristotle’s ethics of “the good” with Kant’s morality of “the right,” a long standing polarization in Western philosophy. |
Ricoeur also was able to bring together the best insights of the large polarized schools of thought of his own day--Continental Phenomenology/Hermeneutics and Anglo-American Analytical/Linguistic Philosophy--while at the same time dealing effectively with relativistic Postmodern skeptics. His generous, synergistic philosophy--bringing together so much of the the best of the Western philosophical tradition with his strikingly new insights for our time--is the deepest philosophical foundation of my worldview.
These three examples give you a glimpse of the deep philosophical scholarly foundations available for both centrist faith and politics. As you’ll see, because of their pivotal principled centrisms for the three major periods of the history of philosophy, the three philosophers (above) play a key role in many of the resources gathered on this website.
(Click this button for the next page, which deals with the fact that so many Americans doubt
there can be any healthy relationships at all between religion and politics.) |