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With a tip of the hat to 3QuarksDaily for pointing us to it, I encourage you to read the Archbishop of Canterbury's Lecture on Civil and Religious Law in England.

It brings up an important theme we raised in a previous entry. Revealed law depends for its application on the interpreters of the text/code/law. That is to say, certain people (priests, rabbis, imams... whoever) claim to speak for God. They set themselves up as mediators between the lay folk and the deity. There can be no disagreement, no appeal of their dictates. This is the danger of allowing religionists to wield secular power.

In fundamentalist Christianity, for example, preachers claim to speak for God. Their authority, they claim, comes from God. They claim the Bible is the inerrant revealed Word of God, whole and complete and without any admixture of error. This, on any rational view, is a naked power grab. For when you look at what they are claiming, you see the delusions and deceptions at play.

First of all, they claim the original text itself was actually dictated by God himself through His Holy Spirit and that the writers merely took some sort of inspired divine dictation without adding a single comma, jot, or tittle of their own. [Old Joke: Where do you find the Bible in a fundamentalist library (assuming they have one) catalog? It will be filed under 'S', for 'Spirit, Holy']. The Bible is the sole authority—not the tradition, not the commentary, not the priesthood. Sola scriptorum. Second, they assume the translations they use are accurate and claim it is only the translation of the original words they choose that counts—some translations are holier than others. Third, they pick and choose which passages of the Bible count and which don't. Thus, war-mongering preachers tend to ignore Jesus's injunction to turn the other cheek and love your enemy. They choose to apply selected Old Testament laws when they suit their purpose (homosexual behavior is an 'abomination') and ignore them when they don't (don't eat shrimp or pork, also 'abominations') because Jesus's coming superseded the code of the Torah. Fourth, they claim their interpretations of the text are solely legitimate. And fifth, they claim their applications of their interpretations to contemporary situations are authoritative. The only thing they lack is the power, in our secular society, to enforce their claims.

This, in short, is the universal problem.

Leap of Faith

Let's say the point of view of this blog is agnostic with respect to Codes and Principles. Does that make it agnostic with respect to the theism vs. atheism dispute? Probably, yes. It takes a leap of faith to say either that there is or there is not a god (or gods).

Christians say that the eyewitness accounts of the incarnate Christ provide definitive proof of God's existence once and for all. Some atheists claim the existence of evil in the world prove that no such God can exist. Other proofs abound. None, ultimately, conclusive (except to believers/non-believers—let's call them adherents or proponents); all requiring faith! It's been awhile since I read Kierkegaard, but I'm not sure even he picked up on this view that even atheism requires a leap of faith. Of course, I could be wrong.

I'm only human.

Still, for purposes of getting at The Wisdom of the West, I'll bear in mind that our society tolerates both theism and atheism—within certain bounds. The debate rages, and will continue to do so.

Principles and Allegiances

As a corollary of the previous entry, can we say that principles necessarily have allegiances? That is to say, if someone says you should act in accordance with such-and-such a principle (for example, "don't covet your neighbors's wife or ass"), that person is suggesting your acts be 'controlled' or 'guided' by one of the competing Codes we talked about (i.e., the Ten Commandments) because that principle has an allegiance or connection with that Code.

Allegiances to divergent Codes—a/k/a acting in accordance with a specific set of principles—is a source of conflict, especially where the Codes are mutually exclusive by definition. For example, Christians, at base, assert there is no other means of salvation than through the saving work of God through his Son, Jesus the Incarnate Christ, as set forth in, variously, the Gospels, the tradition, the authority of the Church, etc. Muslims, similarly, assert that there can be no salvation short of the inculcation of Sharia law—its own set of principles. There's not a lot of overlap there; in fact, there is none I can see.

Then, there's the principle near and dear to the Ron Paul faithful: 'that government which governs least, governs best.' Of course, the conflict between this principle and the principle that government should even up the playing field of opportunity by helping those who are least able to help themselves, helped fuel the extreme ideological warfare of the 20th Century.

Thus, when push comes to shove, as a result of principled action (taken to extremes, radicalized, enforced, etc.) there must be wars. Conflict spills over, radicalizes, erupts.

What does this do for Kant's categorical imperative? It says: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." I will only act in a principled way (in accordance with my deeply held principles). What's more, it should become a universal law that everybody should act in accordance with his/her deeply held principles. Inevitable conflict results. And war. I'm not sure that's what Kant wanted or intended. (Set aside arguments about normative vs. meta-languages for a moment.)

So, are principles bad things as a general rule?

The Problem with Principles

Principles: What are they? What do we do with them? How many of them are there? Where do they come from? How do we tell when they apply? How do know they are any good?

As soon as we start talking about principles ("conservative principles", "principled argument", etc.), we run into trouble. People talk like they exist out there somewhere and all we have to do is make use of them. Of course, this implies that we're dummies or somehow morally deficient if we don't. Or, it implies that we only have to analyze our own decisions and actions to divine which principles motivated our actions. It also implies that there are good principles and bad principles (ones we should use and ones we shouldn't).

As a start, let's say that there isn't really any one set of principles that cover all our life experiences. Some argue for the Torah, others for the teachings of Jesus, even others for the Koran. But there are also Analects, Vedas, Sayings, Teachings, Ways, Dialogues, etc. Setting aside for the moment that few if any of these are of truly "Western" origin (as we've titled our little blog), there is some wisdom in seeking principles in these sources not least because they have been adopted and implemented by Western societies for ages. But that is beside the point. There is simply no one 'Code' (as in the sense of a legal code) that incorporates all necessary principles for the conduct of life within it.

There are competing codes—many having similar and even identical principles—but no one comprehensive code that is complete and consistent in that it contains all and only those principles necessary for anyone to draw on in making any given decision.