Notes on philosophy, religion, theology, pedagogy, "and so on and so on"
Author: Brian LePort
Religious Studies Instructor at TMI Episcopal (San Antonio, TX). PhD in Religion and Theology from the University of Bristol (Bristol, UK). Married to Miranda Perez. Human to a Cocker Spaniel named Frida. Fan of the San Francisco 49ers, San Francisco Giants, and Golden State Warriors.
As a long time listener of the podcast Very Bad Wizards, I purchased Tamler Sommers’ book Why Honor Matterswith a positive disposition toward the author but a negative one toward the focus of the book: honor and honor cultures. My moral/ethical leanings are shaped by a “dignity framework,” whether that be because of my upbringing as a Christian and the explorations in Christian theology that have indoctrinated me, or (and?) because of my attempt to develop a rational basis for my moral and ethical beliefs that don’t appeal to divine revelation (often a secular derivative of Christian morality, if I’m honest). Right or wrong, Christian morality is presented as emerging from the example of a man, Jesus, who appealed to dignity (by way of the imago dei) in the honor/shame culture of the Roman Empire, with obvious favoritism toward the former. Jesus suffered because of an honor culture (i.e. his Passion) but the Kingdom of God that he preached imagined the world as a dignity utopia. This paradigm makes honor cultures look archaic and unevolved.
Sommers’ book doesn’t abandon the value of dignity-based morality but instead sheds light on the strengths of honor-based morality that we have lost in societies that have abandoned an honor-shame structure. He doesn’t ignore that weaknesses of honor culture—for example, honor killings, cyclical revenge, and such. He builds a steel man for the values of honor culture that I found at time convincing and at other times at least worth pondering further. And this book knocked me off my high horse by putting a spotlight on where dignity culture has failed (e.g. the American justice system and our world’s largest prison population).
I was attracted to the book for a negative reason: I’ve begun to think, contrary to some, that we’re not a society that needs less shame but one that may need more of it. I don’t mean old school, religious, Puritan-style shame. But I do think that social media has revealed a side of us in “Western” culture that’s gotten very ugly. It’s individualism taken to its most absurd extreme. We do what we want and we don’t care who it impacts, as long as we enjoy it. I think there should be some shame in that. The flip side of this is that there needs to be more people who want to live honorable lives: who care about their name, their reputation, and that of those closest to them. (For example, I want the name “LePort” to mean something that it definitely hasn’t mean in previous generations, and I want it to be a good name that my son can proudly own.) If you’re generally interested in a philosopher making a defense of the strengths of honor-based morality, or if you’ve had a concern similar to my own, then I highly recommend this book. It’s well-written and its case is argued as about as good as anyone can argue for honor-based morality in our current context.
Today, I watched ABC News as it live-streamed the selection of Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost to become Pope Leo XIV. As he was being introduced, and the audience was being read to in Latin, I wouldn’t say that I was in “awe” of the spectacle, but I did admire it. A short while later, I was talking with a colleague who is Catholic. We were surprised to see that an American been chosen. As our conversation preceded, I said something to the extent that even many of us Protestants, if we’re honest, look to whoever the Pope is to be an exemplar and we may look to him even for some form of moral guidance. Not on all things, obviously, but on many. (Even Benedict XVI, the only Pope that I’ve seen live in person as he spoke from a window into St. Peter’s Square when I was visiting Rome, was a man whose scholarship and theological intellect was worth hearing.) We pay attention to who the Pope is. We have preferences. And as I told him, I don’t pay attention to or care about whoever the Southern Baptist Convention elects to lead them. If I’m honest, I have a marginal interest in who the Episcopal Church choses. But the Pope? Well, he’s the Pope!
I don’t know why this is the case. Why do I, a Protestant with an affiliation with the Episcopal Church, care who the Pope is? What is the appeal of the papacy for a person like me? (I’m sure Catholics have their take!) It’s kind of like Americans who care about British royalty. Similarly to such Americans, most who probably wouldn’t want their to be a “King of the United States” (though many of Trump’s supporters seem open to the idea), care about who wears the Crown in England. If we didn’t, why did we watch Netflix’s drama, The Crown? Why did we care about Princess Diana or Prince Harry? Why do I as a Protestant, who wouldn’t want to be part of a theological tradition like Catholicism (I had my flirt with Catholicism briefly in the early 2010s), be invested in who the Catholic Church elects? I’ve shared some thoughts on this already (see “Why the next Pope matters”), but I think there is something about the majesty of it all that resonates with human nature, even humans like me who tend to be suspicious of hierarchies or at least see hierarchies as purely functional and acceptable only because society needs them to survive (I presume).
One of my favorite parts of fatherhood thus far has been observing how new, interesting, and exciting everything is for my son. He will stare at a ceiling fan, an exit sign, or a baseball game on TV, taking everything in. He’s basically a phenomenologist. Most recently, as he nears being able to eat solids, he watches every movement my wife and I make when we eat. Though I try to remain a curious person, seeking newness where it can be found, like most adults, it can feel like life is cyclical and mundane.
For my son, there’s nothing mundane. In the “philosophical novel” Sophie’s World, a mysterious letter writing philosopher says this of children:
To children, the world and everything in it is new, something that gives astonishment. It is not like that for adults. Most adults accept the world as a matter of course.
He goes on to write that, “This is precisely where philosophers are the notable exception.” The implication is that philosophers try to preserve something of the curiosity of children (p. 19). As much as an enjoy philosophy for this very reason, it doesn’t impact me the way that just watching my son does. As he lives this new life, it makes my life feel new again.
Pope Francis died last night at the age of 88. As a non-Catholic, some may think that this is irrelevant to me, or relevant only in the way that news of the death of any major world leader is relevant. And I can see why, especially if you know me. As I’ve grown older, I’ve become more and more classically liberal Protestant. I’m more aligned with the theology of say a Paul Tillich than a Pope Francis.
“Il Presidente della Repubblica Sergio Mattarella incontra Papa Francesco” via Wikipedia
If I’m honest, as I’ve watched Christianity devolve and degenerate in the United States, I think less and less about my religion, period. I used to think about it all the time. I thought theologically consistently. I’ll confess that I’ve become disillusioned. What passes for Christianity today is an embarrassment. The past ten years have been nothing short of disheartening for me as an American Christian. I prefer not to think about it all that much if I don’t have to. Why waste my time on such a depressing topic?
But Pope Francis was a bright spot especially during this dark decade. Not because I agreed with him. Not because he was “liberal” in any sense of the word that aligns with what I think of when I think of that word. (Maybe he was “left” of Pope Benedict XVI but that’s not saying much.) He was a bright spot because the Catholic Church exists and will exist past my life time. There will be a Pope. Someone will be the Pope. The best that someone like myself can hope for is that whoever the Pope is, they’ll be pastoral, advocate for peace, care for the poor and the outcast of society, and try to model the type of Christianity that I would like to see exist in the world. Pope Francis was that type of Pope. While I may have disagreed with him on matters like gay marriage, there’s no denying that he was a man of compassion and love that far exceeded anything I’ve exhibited in my life. For that reason, he was a Pope that I admired, respected, and dare I say, even “followed” looking for him to provide us wisdom on topics ranging from the climate, to the economy, to war. He was a moral exemplar, through and through.
The next Pope matters because we needed and continue to need a man like Pope Francis in our world. There will be a man in the Vatican who will have influence over the world’s nearly 1.5 billion Catholics. If a man like Pope Francis is at the helm, it’s better for all of us, whether you’re a liberal Protestant like me, an atheist, a Buddhist, or whatever. His leadership helps make for a better world in ways that I know we can’t objectively measure but surely can feel. So, my hopes and maybe even prayers are with the Catholic Church as they choose their next Pope. Their decision impacts all of us.
A year or so ago, I heard a talk on authenticity. The speaker told the audience that they knew that they had acted in ways that were disappointing to the community, that they had caused unnecessary trouble, and that they had hurt and offended people but that ultimately, they would do it all over again because they were being authentic to themselves. Some of the people in attendance applauded this speech, affirming this definition of authenticity: being true to who one is. I was appalled by it.
For one, I reject the idea that there’s an essential “I” to be “discovered”. This is why I find personality tests to be meaningless. I don’t agree with the presentation of selfhood that suggests that we’re a fixed self that we need to discover/understand to be happy. While there is much about ourselves that remains consistent over time, there’s also much that remains in constant flux, and we choose (however strong or weak you want to define that word) who we want to become. We don’t discover who we are already. I’ve been influenced by Buddhist and Existentialist accounts of personhood to the point where such ideas about the self—that we are who we are and the best that we can do is discover it and better understand it—seem insensible to me (see “Buddhism, Existentialism, and the Enneagram”).
I find what that speaker called “authenticity” to be contrary to authenticity; I find what that speaker called “authenticity” to be what Existentialists call “Bad Faith”. In her book, How To Be Authentic: Simone de Beauvoir and the Quest for Fulfillment, Skye C. Cleary defines “Bad Faith” this way (p. 253):
“Self-deception which involves denying our own or others’ freedom. We are in bad faith when we avoid the truth of our life and situation, when we deny we have choices, or when we reject responsibility for our actions.”
The speech that I heard fits the definition of “Bad Faith” ala Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The speaker denied their freedom to reflect and change. They chose to “avoid the truth of” their “life and situation”.
So, what then would I say is “Authenticity”. I return to Cleary (pp. x-xi):
“To become authentic means to create our own essence. It’s the creation that is vital here. We don’t discover ourselves, we make ourselves. Authenticity is a way of expressing our freedom: to realize and accept that we are free; to be lucid about what we can and can’t choose about ourselves, our situation, and others; and to use our freedom as a tool to shape ourselves. Our selves are not the product of a chain of impersonal causes and effects. Creating ourselves is an art form—the act of intentionally choosing who we become.”
Existentialist thinkers say “existence precedes essence”. We exist but we’re not defined yet. We’re born with certain characteristics, yes, and Existentialist call this our “facticity”. But what makes us different from say a rock or a cactus, is that our “facticity” doesn’t completely define us. We can experience “transcendence” as humans where rise above our facticity to give ourselves greater meaning, or to create our “essence”. This “creation” is what makes us authentic.
This is contrary to the talk I heard, or personality tests that help us “discover who we are”. For Existentialist, there’s no permanent “I” to be “true to”; there’s an “I” that continues to create itself. So, when this speaker said they recognized all the wrong they had done but then chose to double-down on it rather than confessing the wrong and declaring a desire to do better, they weren’t being authentic at all; they were acting in Bad Faith thereby creating “bad authenticity” or “authenticity” as it’s understood in the crudest and laziest way possible. If we reject our responsibility for ourselves in the name of letting our “true self” shine, then we’re being inauthentic because we’re denying that we’re making a decision to remain who we’ve been in spite of our awareness of ourselves and how that awareness demands that we change for our sake and the sake of others. We’re being inauthentic in that we’re (in the words of St. Paul) thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought to think, not recognizing that as humans we’re categorically no better than other humans even as we convince ourselves that we are and that we have the right to act in ways that we would never accept from others if they acted that way toward us.
This week, I read Jean-Paul Sartre’s lecture “Existentialism Is a Humanism”. I was struck by one line in particular. It reminded me of the Kantian Categorical Imperative: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” But Sartre’s version is framed existentially. He says (quoting from Macomber’s translation, p. 24), “…in creating the man each of us wills ourselves to be, there is not a single one of our actions that does not at the same time create an image of man as we think he ought to be.”
If I understand existentialism, it doesn’t offer forth a strict, structured ethical system by which all must abide. But there is an ethic based in our freedom as humans and our responsibility for our actions. Sartre says that once we’re “cast into this world” against our choice—because we have no choice when it comes to our being born—we are “responsible for everything” we do (p. 29). We can’t blame our actions on others. We do them. Presumably, we do them with a sense of justification. We do them thinking they’re right to do. Sartre is convinced that no one acts thinking that their action is evil. “We always choose the good, and nothing can be good for any of us unless it is good for all.” This isn’t quite Kantian. We’re not making a choice with the Categorical Imperative in mind, explicitly. But we may be abiding by it implicitly. Because we think that if we can do it, humans should be able to do it. And if humans should be able to do it, then in essence, our actions tell everyone around us, whether or not we place them within a concrete ethical framework, that this is what we think is good and right. And whether we would want others to do what we’ve done is secondary to the fact that once we’ve done it, we suggest that humans can and should be able to do it, and if humans can and should be able to do as we’ve done, then this is what we deem acceptable for humans, as a whole. Even if we’re narcissistic enough to say that we alone should be able to act in a certain way, the reality is that we’re a human among humans, so the louder claim of our actions is “this is how humans should act”. We wouldn’t act as we do if we didn’t believe this.
This week, I was thinking about social media. I hate social media. Also, I spent more time that I should on it. I’ll check Facebook, then Threads, then Instagram, then Bluesky. (X is a hellhole that I left long ago, and I’m too old—at least I see myself as too old—to care about TikTok.) I’ll post. I’ll get some interaction on Instagram, especially if I post pictures of my kid, but hardly any interaction otherwise. It’s kind of depressing. It’s like talking to yourself in a cafe.
So, if I understand the past couple of decades, we outsourced clubs, churches, etc., to tech companies who spend all their effort trying to keep us doomscrolling so they can throw ads at us. I think this t-shirt that I saw in a store several months ago is correct in its messaging:
As I pondered the sad trade that we have made, I thought to myself, “I should join a book club.” I kid you not, this week a good friend of mine sent me a text asking if I’d like to create a book club with him. I think there will be three of us. It’ll have to be over Zoom because the other two live in Canada. But I’m excited. And I think this is our solution to the world social media has broken: book clubs, or at least some kind of club. Shared hobbies. Shared interests in general that bring us together. Zoom isn’t ideal but at least I’ll be interacting with a friend, and we’ll have a project that brings us together once a week for a half hour or so. This is the type of thing that will help us break free from Zuckerberg’s algorithms. And we need to become free.
The mall that is closest to my house is a sad place to visit. Many of the storefronts are empty. There’s minimal foot traffic. It feels like a ghost town. I shouldn’t care. I don’t like shopping. I don’t like crowds. There are two malls within driving distance—one indoor and one outdoor—that have a lot more life in them. I don’t make an extra effort to go to those two malls unless I need something specific. So, why would I feel sad about the empty mall?
I think it’s because, though an introvert, I like to know that there are public places that are flourishing. I like to know that our communities have a place where community happens. I think this is the same reason that I’m saddened sometimes by the closing of churches. But I’m part of the problem. I don’t make an effort to shop at malls, or to spend time socializing there. Much of what I purchase is delivered to my door through various services. And I won’t claim to be a consistent contributor to any local church. So, maybe I’m a hypocrite who wants to know these places exist for when I’m in the mood.
Or, maybe I feel like “I” don’t need malls and churches all that much but that the society of which I’m part does. People speak of America having a “loneliness epidemic”. If Derek Thompson is right, we may be becoming a country where people prefer to be alone, which isn’t the same thing as being lonely (see his article “The Anti-Social Century” in The Atlantic or listen to Thompson’s interview with Sean Iling: “The cost of spending time alone”). This is eroding our collective identity, our sense of community, and our trust in one another. No wonder our politics are so partisan! Again, I think the charge of my hypocrisy sticks because I’m one of these people who prefers to be alone, has lost interest in engaging fellow Americans who are on the far side of the aisle, and doesn’t do much to contribute to building my local community. Maybe the empty mall is sad because it’s a reminder not only of the problem but my unwillingness to struggle for a solution.
I mentioned the philosopher Simone Weil a few posts ago (see “Simone Weil’s rootedness”), and her book, The Need for Roots. In that post, I mentioned my desire to meditate on her “vital needs of the human soul”. This post will be the first in a series where I’ll summarize what she says about each one and then share my own meditation on it. For Weil, these vital needs can be understood this way: (1) they are an attempt to answer this question: “what needs related to the life of the soul corresponds to the body’s need for food, sleep, and warmth”; (2) and they “must never be confused with desires, whims, fantasies or vices” (p. 8, Schwartz translation). While this may sound theological in nature, and for Weil it seems like there’s no line between theological and philosophical thinking, let me say that if the word “soul” is distracting, try to think of psychological well-being. Also, I don’t think one needs to assume the a soul/body or mind/body dualism to find value in this list. It’s common to speak of physical and psychological needs as distinct even if we believe that the mind/soul/psyche is material.
The list of vital needs First, let me share the list that Weil created. It’s fifteen items long, so this series may take some time:
Order
Freedom
Obedience
Initiative & Responsibility
Equality
Hierarchy
Honor
Punishment
Freedom of Opinion/Association
Security
Risk
Private Property
Shared Property (“participation in collective goods”)
Rootedness
The Need for Truth
The reason that I want to (1) summarize and then (2) reflect/meditate upon each is that I’m not sure if I agree with this list as a whole. As I re-read each one, it’ll give me a chance to critically evaluate what Weil wrote. If there’s space, I want to end my class “Philosophy for Human Flourishing” with a lesson on this list, so this gives me a chance to really evaluate it. Let’s begin with “Order”.
Summarizing Weil’s comments on “Order” Weil calls the need for “Order” “the main need of the soul” that is “the one closest to its eternal destiny” (p. 8). What does she mean by “Order”? Her definition is as follows: “a web of social relations such that no one is forced to violate strict obligations in order to fulfill other obligations” (pp. 8-9). For context, Weil begins the book (p. 1), “The concept of obligations takes precedence over that of rights, which are subordinate and relative to it. A right is not effective on its own, but solely in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds.” In other words, I can demand people recognize my rights all day, but if they feel no obligation to me then there’s nothing to the language of rights; and if I don’t feel obligated to others, then I won’t recognize their rights. As she said, “…a right that is not recognized by anyone amounts to very little.” Also (p. 1), “He in turn has rights when he is considered from the point of view of others who recognize obligations towards him”.
With a shift in our attention from rights to obligations, “Obligations are only binding on human beings” and “Identical obligations bind all human beings” (p. 2). Our identical obligations to other human beings means, “There is an obligation towards every human being through the mere fact that they are a human being” (p. 2). Her foundation for these claims is definitely theological in nature. She says that the obligations are not based on “de facto situations, or on legal precedent, or on customs, social structure or relations of force, or on the legacy of the past, or the supposed direction of history…This obligation is not based on any convention” (pp. 4-5). Instead, “This obligation is eternal.” Why? “It echoes the eternal destiny of all human beings.” Since, theologically speaking, the human is eternal, so our obligation to these other eternal being with which we surround ourselves. “This obligation is unconditional.”
When Weil describes our obligations to every other human, they include “not to let them suffer from hunger”; “shelter, clothing, warmth, hygiene and care for the sick”; and those things that are “not physical” but part of the “moral life” (p. 6). With this in mind, we see that “Order” means that making sure that people can fulfill their varying obligations to others. Weil mourns, writing “Nowadays, there is a very high degree or disorder and incompatibility between obligations.” But she’s not confident that this order is possible. She writes (p. 9), “Unfortunately, there is no method for reducing the incompatibility. It is not even certain that the idea of an order in which all obligations are compatibility is not a fantasy.”
She takes hope is the widely diverse universe working in a synchronized way, and “truly beautiful works of art” doing the same. But it seems to me that this is the best she can offer: a hope. She writes (p. 9):
Lastly, our awareness of our various obligations always stems from a desire for good that is unique, fixed and identical to itself for each man, from the cradle to the grave. This desire perpetually stirring inside us prevents us from ever resigning ourselves to situations where the obligations are incompatible. Either we resort to lying in order to forget they exist, or we struggle blindly to extricate ourselves from them.
If I’m reading her correctly, Weil is saying that we desire a world in which our obligations are not in conflict. This is a need of ours, even the central one. But it’s also one that may be “a fantasy”. We want a morally structured society. I presume that this implies that a morally dysfunctional society leaves us unable to experience this order that we crave
Reflecting on Weil’s comments on “Order” Every philosophical thought experiment from the trolly-problem on is a reminder that we live in a morally tense universe. As I wrote in my last post, “Effective Altruism and moral intuition”, there are moral systems that make a lot of sense but then when pressed, feel immoral at points. This is true of a lying deontologist and a hard-line utilitarian. But the desire that we have for such a framework is real, and if I’m understanding Weil, then maybe the constant striving for such “Order” is the best we can achieve.
Our pursuit of “Order” and our desire to create it for others is why every moral treatise and moral system has come into existence. We argue for our preferred morality in hopes of finding the morality that will work for all of us. This hasn’t happened yet but again, I think the goal is noble and what’s the alternative. Even if we concede some form of moral relativism, that’s a system, that’s a structure that we land upon in order to find “Order”.
Let me be brief (-ish) with this blog post. I’m preparing lessons for my new class, “Philosophy for Human Flourishing”. One of them will ask students to imagine themselves as a CEO of a pharmaceutical company that has the opportunity to make their company more efficient by implementing AI technology that promises to create more life-saving medicine quicker for cheaper. But this means laying off many of their employees. What should they do? I’ll break the class down into four groups, all responsible for making an argument from one of these four ethical paradigms: Aristotelean Virtue Ethics; Deontology; Utilitarianism; and Effective Altruism.
In preparation, I’ve been entertaining the arguments of the Effective Altruists and I find myself conflicted. (If Effective Altruism is new to you, here’s an introduction: Effective Altruism.org.) In short, Effective Altruism seems to universalize morality. It aims to be objective and rational, making moral decisions based on data. For example, many Effective Altruists, argue that while you could spend $1,000 on say a charity for researching glaucoma or for providing underprivileged students with sports equipment, you’re better off using that money for malaria nets, or vitamins, or vaccines, because charities that focus on these things save more lives. So, your charity is more effective. And following Peter Singer’s classical “Drowning Child Thought Experiment”, they argue that distance—geographic, in the original version, but even through time in some more recent versions—shouldn’t prevent you from saving a life. In other words, shared nationality doesn’t make someone more deserving. If you can save one American life with $1,000, but thirty in some country across the world, then you save the thirty. (This feels a little like the trolly problem.) There’s no denying that this is more “effective”. And it’s difficult to make the argument that something like shared nationality makes a life worth saving. This may be because I’m influenced by teachings like the Parable of the Good Samaritan, or because I fear the slippery slope of where such ideologies can lead, as various nationalist ideologies have shown us in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries!
On the other hand, something feels off about Effective Altruism. Morality that lacks relationally feels…immoral. It seems weird to say no to the homeless person standing right in front of you, looking them in the eye while denying them help, because that money will go further if sent to someone on the other side of the world. Ethnocentrism, nationalism, and such ideologies are dangerous, but does that mean that there’s no place for preferring “closeness”, for lack of a better word. I won’t lie: I’d save my son before saving hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of kids on the other side of the world. In fact, in some sense, by raising a young American, and knowing the cost it’ll take to do so, I’ve already chosen to spend money and resources on his one life that theoretically could’ve saved many, many lives elsewhere. And I feel like this is the right thing to do; I feel like my obligation to my son is greater, by far, than my obligation to people elsewhere. Am I hypocritical for this? It’s something that I’m pondering.
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