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Home , After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre, Atomism (social)

Can Wonder Save ?

Or

Is Wonder a Liberal ?

The liberal political order is under attack. Such a statement would have appeared hyperbolic only a few years ago, but is today not much of a stretch. Populist movements in

Europe and America challenge the liberal order both domestically and internationally. These democratic political challenges mirror other challenges from scholars and public intellectuals alike. Recent years have seen the publication of titles such as Why Liberalism Failed; The

Retreat of Western Liberalism; Against Democracy; and more.1 The behind such challenges vary: there is backlash to the uneven distribution of economic globalization, there is a strengthening of identity as an alternative to liberalism, and there are calls for a return to the smaller communities that characterized the pre-modern,Copyright pre-liberal world. Yet, there is a deep and enduring question about liberal political order that underpins these prominent recent challenges. The question is whether the liberal order can provide the spiritual nourishment that beings require. Few, including critics of liberalism, doubt the material benefits that the modern liberal world has made possible. Despite these benefits, however, liberalism ultimately leads to the spiritual impoverishment of citizens, or so the story goes. As Alexander

Solzhenitsyn warned us forty years ago, Western liberalism began “the dangerous trend of worshiping man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and the accumulation of material , all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and

1 Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (New Haven: Press, 2018); Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017); Jason Brennan, Against Democracy (Princeton: Press, 2016);Draft , Post-Liberalism: Studies in Political Thought (Routledge, 2014). higher , were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any higher meaning.” Physical security and material wealth are not enough, for the

“human soul longs for things higher, warmer, purer.”2

Solzhenitsyn’s warning was echoed by critics of liberalism in the years since his famous address, and those echoes have grown louder in recent years. Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism

Failed follows the Solzhenitsynian logic, arguing that the spiritual emptiness we see all around us is the achievement of the liberal promise, a promise that placed the ’s material well- being over all else.3 The political and economic benefits of the liberal order are no longer enough to produce a full of steadfast liberal supporters. To hear Solzhenitsyn again:

“[w]e have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we are being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life.”4 From communitarians to progressives to recent critics of different stripes, liberalism is under attack for its apparent inability to provide spiritual nourishment and meaning to Copyrightlife. If the broad liberal order that has structured the West for nearly half a millennium is to endure, it must be able to answer the question: is spiritual fulfillment possible for liberal citizens? Put differently, does liberalism enable, or at least not prevent, the spiritual fulfillment of its citizens?

Of course, the central for surrounding liberalism’s ability to provide spiritual nourishment is the fact that it purposefully seeks to cut the individual’s connections to cultural , political communities, and religious organizations. Historically, such

2 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “A World Split Apart – Commencement Address at Harvard University,” OrthodoxyToday.org, June 8, 1978, http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/SolzhenitsynHarvard.php. 3 Deneen repeatedly criticizes the materialism of liberalism throughout the book, but here is a pithy summary of his position: “In contrast to ancient theory—which understood to be achieved only through virtuous self- government—modern theory defines liberty as the greatest possible pursuit of satisfaction of the appetites…” Deneen, 2018, p. 48. 4 Solzhenitsyn (1978) Draft connections served as the primary domains of spiritual life. Without them, it is unclear what is out there to sustain and nourish the spirit. Liberal democratic institutions, married to a capitalist free-, is a winning recipe for material prosperity, physical security, and political stability and legitimacy. Yet, if Solzhenitsyn is correct, this recipe is not enough. Some will say that religion can still fill the spiritual lacuna created by liberalism, and surely it remains a real possibility. Nevertheless, others insist that liberal “atomism” and secularism has already done much to destroy the role that religion plays in the spiritual orientation of liberal .

In this paper, I intend to take Solzhenitsyn’s warning seriously, and consider where a liberal individual—free of connections to the aforementioned traditional sources—might look for spiritual fulfillment. I suggest that a sense of wonder is a viable alternative, an alternative that may find in liberalism particularly fertile ground for its growth and development. A sense of wonder may provide a path towards “spiritual fullness” for liberal individuals. I will use the notion of spiritual fullness as a criterion of success, as a standardCopyright by which we can judge liberalism and political systems in general. First, I suggest that one of the principal aims, whether explicitly or implicitly expressed, of many theorists of politics is that politics must be organized in such a way as to enable—if not to direct—citizens to achieve spiritual fulfillment.

Put differently, I suggest that many political theorists are concerned not exclusively with questions of , equality, distribution, political legitimacy, and the like; many are also concerned with the spiritual state of individual citizens and the political community as a whole.

This suggestion is justified by the language some prominent contemporary political theorists are wont to employ. They speak of the “malaise of ”, the loss of “narrative unity” or personal stories, and the loss of “identity”.5 These terms do not denote the traditional metrics for

5 See, respectively, Charles Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, Inc., 1991); Alasdair MacIntyre, :Draft A study in Moral Theory (: Notre Dame Press, 1984); Michael J. Sandel, judging political regimes, e.g. justice, security, fairness, prosperity, and legitimacy. Rather, these terms denote an interest in the spiritual state of the citizens within political regimes, in this case the modern liberal regimes that dominate the West. On this basis, I believe we are justified in using the notion of spiritual fullness as a standard.

The variety of spiritual experience is necessary to note because where individuals achieve spiritual fullness varies as well. Some theorists speak of the fulfillment that comes from active political life and the pursuit of public honor, others of self-realization through community membership and a strong sense of identity, and others speak more generally of the pursuit of . Political has something to say about all of these ends, and I think all of these ideas about ends can be understood to have a common goal of enabling spiritual fullness.

Political philosopher Charles Taylor describes spiritual fullness accordingly: “We all see our lives, and/or the space wherein we live our lives, as having a certain moral/spiritual shape. Somewhere, in some activity, or condition, lies a fullness,Copyright a richness.”6 These activities or conditions “help us to situate a place of fullness, to which we orient ourselves morally or spiritually. They can orient us because they offer some sense of what they are of: the presence of

God, or the voice of nature, or the force which flows through everything, or the alignment in us of desire and the drive to form.”7 All of us do or should seek out a sense of spiritual fullness, yet how a place of fullness will be described depends largely on the moral and spiritual outlook of the person doing the describing. The religious woman feels the presence of God, the mystic the energy of the universe, the naturalist the power of nature; but in each such a state they feel spiritually full.

Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996) 6 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 5. 7 Ibid., 6. Draft The question, then, becomes whether a liberal citizen can achieve a state of spiritual fullness. Is it possible for individuals, disconnected from traditional sources of fullness, to seek and find it elsewhere? First, we need an outline of some of the common criticisms levied against the “spiritual emptiness” of liberalism. Later, we will follow with a discussion of how a sense of wonder might mitigate them, even if we accept general thrust of these criticisms. The characteristic of liberalism is alleged to create spiritually empty persons, and as a consequence, a spiritually empty society.

The Disconnected Liberal

Many scholars insist that it is liberal political order that disconnects us from the things that might bring us spiritual fullness, things like religion, politics, community, and traditional values. Taylor, Alasdair Macintyre, , and Deneen argue in different ways that liberalism disconnects individuals from sources of meaning, sources that offer a place for our attachments and provide a sense of identity. Meaningful attachments,Copyright liberal critics emphasize, come from engagement with political and communal life. Thus, we need to transcend what they see as an “atomized” self through attachment to something greater than the individual, and the choices they give are politics, the broader community, and (which includes religion).

What is it about liberalism that precludes meaningful attachments, and consequently spiritual fullness? Emphasis on individual liberty, guaranteed by individual , and the political virtue of toleration are the preferred ends of liberal political order. Hence, liberalism places the individual in a position prior to political community. The liberal self has a very limited scope of obligation to community. follows Kant’s argument that there are

“natural duties” we owe other persons as persons. These duties obtain regardless of what political regime a person livesDraft under. For the liberal self only such natural duties are obligatory, i.e. they are duties one has whether one has consented to them or not. One may, as a liberal citizen, incur other duties and obligations, but only on the condition that they are voluntary. All particular obligations to others—i.e. those that are not universally applicable to all other —can only be founded in . Therefore, particular obligations to others in the same political community cannot be coerced or forced upon the liberal self; they must be freely chosen. This renders the liberal citizen largely independent of political society. As Rawls acknowledges, “there is no political obligation, strictly speaking, for citizens generally.”8

Communitarians view this fact of liberalism as resulting in the “atomization” of society.

Taylor lumps all liberal theories into this category. Taylor uses the term ‘atomism’ often to describe liberalism, as he describes in his essay of the same name:

The term ‘atomism’ is used loosely to characterize the doctrines of theory which arose in the seventeenth century and also successor doctrines which may not have made use of the notion of social contract but which inherited a vision of society as in some sense constituted by individuals for the fulfillment of ends which were primarily individual.9 Copyright Atomistic liberal theories place the ends of individuals above the ends of society and community.

Deneen echoes Taylor’s view, arguing that liberalism is not so much about rights as it is a transformation of human life and the world.

Liberalism is thus not merely, as is often portrayed, a narrowly political project of constitutional government and juridical defense of rights. Rather, it seeks to transform all of human life and the world. Its two revolutions—its anthropological individualism and the voluntarist conception of choice, and its insistence on the human separation from and opposition to nature—created its distinctive and new understanding of liberty as the most extensive possible expansion of the human sphere of autonomous activity.10

8 John Rawls, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 114. 9 Charles Taylor, “Atomism” in Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 187. It is highly probable, given Taylor’s writings on Rawls elsewhere, that the “successor doctrines” that Taylor has in mind begin with Rawls. 10 Deneen (2018), 37. Draft At its core, liberalism promises to liberate individuals from previous constraints of society and nature, thereby extending as much as possible the “human sphere of autonomous activity”. As we shall see, communitarians believe that this relationship of individual to society at once misinterprets our basic nature and is an obstacle for creating the meaningful attachments that can lead to spiritual fullness. According to Sandel, we have disregarded our fundamental nature as “storytelling beings”, inextricably connected to the stories of other individuals around us. Human beings require a meaningful narrative for life, a story about who they are, why they are here, and how they should live. Liberalism threatens to enervate or potentially eliminate the natural human capacity for narrative by allowing individuals to reject their own traditions and historical roles. He remarks:

There is a growing danger that, individually and collectively, we will find ourselves slipping into a fragmented, storyless condition. The loss of the capacity for narrative would amount to the ultimate disempowering of the human subject, for without narrative there is no continuity between present and past, and therefore no responsibility, and therefore no possibility of acting together to govern ourselves. Since human beings are storytelling beings, we are bound to rebel against theCopyright drift to storylessness.11

We must recover our meaningful narrative, according to Sandel, by once again recognizing and reaffirming the social, historical, and political roles given to us. We might infer that only by doing so will we feel spiritually full.

Likewise, MacIntyre claims that disconnected liberal individuals have lost their

“narrative unity”, their greater roles within their families, communities, and within history as a whole. He emphasizes the importance of narrative for a full spiritual life. MacIntyre’s theory of virtue is his self-proclaimed attempt to put us on a path out of what he deems are the “new dark ages” of . A brief summary of this attempt is required for our purposes here.

MacIntyre argues that liberal modernity is marked by a disappearance of the belief in a natural

11 Sandel (1996), 351. (italics mine)Draft human , i.e. an objective good that we can reason about in order to reach its truth. It has been replaced with subjective morality with a focus on a person’s “values”, which cannot be argued about. The consequences of this disappearance are that it has become impossible to provide morality with a rational justification and that morality has ceased to have a coherent relation to human nature. He concludes that Nietzschean nihilism and an empty moral pluralism are the inevitable, and extremely undesirable, products of modern liberalism.12 MacIntyre’s prescription for this liberal malady is a return to Aristotelian virtue. His theory of virtue consists of three stages of temporal development: the first outlines how individuals acquire for themselves; the second stage examines how virtues fit in a whole, unified life; the third shows how virtue “relates the life of the individual to that of his or her community.”13

The third stage begins when one realizes that “I am never able to seek for the good or exercise the virtues only qua individual…it is not just that different individuals live in different social circumstances; it is also that we all approach our own circumstances as bearers of a

14 Copyright particular social identity.” The wholeness or “narrative unity” of one’s life must include the story of one’s social, historical, and political background. MacIntyre uses language nearly identical to Sandel to illustrate this fact. “I am someone’s son or daughter, someone else’s cousin or uncle; I am a citizen of this or that city, a member of this or that guild or profession; I belong to this clan, that tribe, this nation. Hence what is good for me has to be the good for one who inhabits these roles.”15 For MacIntyre as for Sandel, the self is empty, stripped of meaningful narrative, without the social, historical, and political content such roles provide. The

12 J.B. Schneewind, “Virtue, Narrative, and Community: MacIntyre and Morality,” The Journal of Philosophy 79 (1982): 654. 13 Schneewind (1982), 655. 14 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A study in Moral Theory (Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 1984), 220. 15 Ibid. Draft idea of the liberal individual, with its emphasis on and choice, wrongly locates these roles in the realm of choice, as open to acceptance or rejection, and therefore misses the essential nature of each individual as part of larger human story.

Finally, Taylor attempts to show that humans must live within a framework that supplies meaning to life. This is peculiar to the modern liberal, secular age in which religious and philosophic moral structures built around ideas of good and are weakening and no longer have a hold on most people. Taylor claims that “the [ancient and medieval] existential predicament in which one fears condemnation is quite different from the [modern] one where one fears, above all, meaninglessness.”16 Thus, a framework of meaning is necessary if we are to overcome our greatest fear, but also to ground one’s identity. “To know who I am is a species of knowing where I stand. My identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide my frame or horizon.”17 All frameworks of meaning must, according to Taylor,Copyright come from social, historical, and political commitments to which all individuals are inextricably attached. Taylor contrasts the

“disengaged self” with the “strong evaluator”. The former is the self of liberal modernity, an atomistic person who is “metaphysically independent of society.”18 This person seeks a framework of meaning to supply standards of living but has nowhere to go to find these standards. We must get such standards outside ourselves lest any evaluation of our lives become merely subjective preference. A “strong evaluator” recognizes this, utilizing a “vocabulary of worth” to undergird his standards of living. This “vocabulary of worth” comes from the

“horizon of evaluations”—or frameworks—rooted in history, community and society.19 Taylor

16 Charles Taylor. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007, 18. 17 Ibid., 27. 18 Crittenden (1992), 16. 19 Ibid., 18. Draft endeavors to show that without the standards and evaluations that membership in a larger human community offers to the individual, he or she will be lost at sea, meandering through life without a framework of meaning. In other words, communal values are necessary for any meaningful attachment to life, and therefore for spiritual fullness.

Ultimately, these thinkers call for a return to republicanism or a more communitarian form of democracy, and they are predicated on the belief that these forms of government can cultivate spiritually fulfilled citizens, while a liberal regime cannot. The individualism intrinsic to liberalism is deemed something like a spiritual disease. In this paper, I seek to challenge the claim that liberal citizens are ineluctably spiritually desolate. Indeed, taking seriously the premise that liberal political order allows for, even encourages, individualism and detachment from politics and community, there are still possibilities for spiritual fulfillment. I will accept the idea that the individual we find in liberal is largely detached from political life, broader community, religion, cultural tradition, etc. This Copyrightalso means, however, that liberal citizens ought to be less susceptible to authority—to or interpretations handed down from authorities “above”—and more likely to create their own interpretation of things in the world. Resistance to intellectual authority is part and parcel of the Enlightenment , an ideal that aligns closely with liberalism both theoretically and historically. The loosening of authority leads to possibilities for other sources of spiritual fullness to arise, namely, a stronger sense of wonder and the aesthetic experience that comes with it.

Experiencing Wonder

How might wonder come into this story, and how might it evade or mitigate the charges against liberalism? We mustDraft examine the experience of wonder and investigate how it affects how one engages the world. I argue that when one experiences wonder one not only asks questions about the world but also forms an aesthetic relationship to the world. Put more simply,

I think that when one wonders one has both inquisitive thoughts about the world and also aesthetic feelings towards the world. I argue further through the experience of wonder one may achieve a better spiritual state, a state not marked by emptiness but rather fullness.

What do I mean, precisely, by wonder? Wonder seems to have two aspects. From one angle, wonder is curiosity or the impulse to investigate. From another, wonder is incredulity, astonishment, amazement, appreciation, acceptance, and gratitude. In the first aspect, one wonders about what exists and seeks greater understanding of it. , from ontology, cosmology, to are all concerned with these questions and employ various methods of investigation. In the second one wonders not about what is in existence but that anything exists at all. This aspect of wonder does not question anything; it is not the spark of intellectual curiosity leading to great discoveries or new creations,Copyright depending on one’s epistemological platform. Philip Fisher reminds us that the English word “wonder” is used in two senses. The inquisitive “I wonder why….?” and also the exclamatory “What a wonder!”20

The first begins the activity of science; the second marks the aesthetic sense of admiration, “the pleasure of amazement, and delight in the thing itself.”21 In other words, to experience wonder is not only to experience curiosity or the impulse to investigate; it is to be astounded by the complexity and sublimity of existence.

20 Fisher, Philip. Wonder, The Rainbow, and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. p. 11. 21 Ibid Draft The very beginnings of Western thought might be traced to a feeling of wonder, but we will see that wonder as conceived by ancient thinkers is more closely aligned with the first aspect of wonder. Indeed, ’s attributes the practice of philosophy itself to a need to scratch the itch of wonder. For the ancients, wonder is the germ of philosophy, as Socrates explains to Theodorus in Plato’s Theaetetus: “Because that experience, the feeling of wonder, is very characteristic of a philosopher: philosophy has no other starting-point.”22 Aristotle echoes this Socratic belief in his Metaphysics, asserting, “at first men wondered about the more obvious problems that demanded explanation; gradually their inquiries spread farther afield, and they asked questions upon such larger topics as changes in the sun and moon and stars, and the origin of the world. Now a man laboring under astonishment and perplexity is conscious of this own ignorance….”23 The philosopher knows his own ignorance, a claim that goes back to Socrates.

The philosopher is a model for a human open to the experience of wonder. The ancients tie wonder to wisdom and philosophy,Copyright for they understand it as curiosity and the impulse to investigate the unknown and potentially unknowable. This seems to render the experience of wonder nearly exclusive territory of the philosophic and the lovers of wisdom.

The philosopher is a knower; wonder will incite the quest for knowledge that, when attained, ceases the state of wonderment. Wonder to these ancient Greek philosophers is the mark of a higher human type, perhaps even one with the potential to be a philosopher king or a god residing outside of the human community. I contend that the ancients were wrong to tie wonder so tightly to wisdom; to philosophy motivated by curiosity. They in fact narrowed the possibility of understanding wonder. Wonder sparks curiosity and investigation, yet these are married to an

22 Plato Theaetetus. Trans. John McDowell Clarendon: Oxford University Press, 1973. P. 21 23 Aristotle Metaphysics. Trans. JohnDraft Warrington/ The Aldine Press, 1956. P. 55. unreflective marveling at existence—an aesthetic state of mind—that is accessible to all who experience wonder and enjoy the freedom necessary for it, not merely the theoretical or scientific man.

An emphasis on the aesthetic experience of wonder calls for a deeper understanding of aesthetic experience in general. Aesthetic appreciation, whether of beauty or of the sublime, whether found in art or nature, dislocates us; it transports us away from the vicissitudes of everyday life. It thereby disconnects us from the social, political world we inhabit. Forms of authority, whether religious, cultural, political or scientific, no longer have a hold on us when we are in the throes of aesthetic experience. Through this dislocation and disconnection, the individual emerges from society, spiritually isolated and detached—at least ephemerally—from any social or political conception of his or her self. When we confront the aesthetic aspect of wonder, we encounter this spiritual isolation and detachment. One can say, then, that when one wonders he is spiritually free. Only with freedom of thoughtCopyright are we truly able to confront existence without preconceived explanations of its meaning. Put differently, only with freedom of thought can we experience wonder; it is a precondition for wonder. We will return to this idea later when we discuss how liberalism should provide the fertile ground required for freedom of thought.

How is wonder aesthetic? I will try to answer that query here, borrowing heavily from

Immanuel Kant’s of aesthetic experience and Wittgenstein’s views on wonder and aesthetics. According to Kant, aesthetic experience is a state of mind, both intellectual and active, that consists of four aspects. I will concentrate on two of these aspects here: first, that aesthetic experience is markedDraft by a free play of the imagination and understanding; second, that it is marked by “purposiveness without a purpose.”24 The first, free play of the imagination and understanding, must be viewed in light of Kantian epistemology. The role of the imagination is to gather information from the senses and use such information to form an image.25 The understanding then organizes these images into a concept, yet, in the case of aesthetic experience, no concept is organized or defined. Throughout aesthetic experience, there remains a “free play” of both imagination and understanding. This free play is evident in any instance of wonder, and therefore wonder as I am speaking of it here is best described as an aesthetic experience of Kant’s variety, an intellectual and active state of mind.

The second Kantian aspect of aesthetic experience that is evident in the experience of wonder is what Kant calls “purposiveness without a purpose,” which can also be translated as

“finality without end.” The idea here is that when confronted by an object of wonder (or beauty, which Kant’s formula is aimed at) one cannot spell out the purpose of the object in question; at least one cannot spell this out without ceasing the aestheticCopyright experience. Purposiveness without a purpose is characteristic of “free beauty,” which is an appreciation of beauty without any defined concepts and a free play of the imagination and understanding. The alternative translation,

“finality without end,” illuminates this process as well. The object in question is a finality insofar as it is appreciated without a determination of its “end,” or purpose. Once a purpose is thought or articulated the experience of free play—and with it the aesthetic experience—has terminated. This appreciation of a finality without end is characteristic of the experience of wonder; wonder about objects—and also about dogmatic explanations of the world, be they

24 The two other aspects are 1. Disinterested judgment and 2. Exemplary necessity. These two aspects neither support nor detract from the argument here, and are therefore omitted. 25 Imagination, therefore, is to be understood as that faculty which makes images using the ingredients that are provided by the senses. This is, of course, not the conventional sense of imagination, which seems to focus instead on creating images precisely when sensory data is lacking. E.g., “I imagine a dragon”, though of course I cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or touch it. Draft scientific, philosophic, religious, or even mystical—erases the existing beliefs about the ends or purposes of the things in question, at least as long as the experience of wonder occurs.

Wittgenstein has similar ideas about aesthetics. For Wittgenstein, to speak about aesthetics—or ethics, for that matter—is to run up against the boundaries of language.26 He uses the example of the experience of wonder to illustrate this tendency. We cannot, he says, use language to describe an experience of wonder in an absolute sense, though we can in a relative sense. Let me summarize one of Wittgenstein’s examples to illustrate this difference: we can say, “I wonder how that dog got so big!” when we encounter the biggest, or one of the biggest, dogs we have ever seen. In this case, we wonder at the size of the dog, knowing from experience that the size of a dog is often smaller. We are therefore surprised at the size of this particular dog and wonder at it. However, we cannot, Wittgenstein postulates, craft a similar sentence for an experience of wonder that is the result of wondering that the dog, or any dogs, exist at all. That is, it is nonsensical to say, “I wonder that the dog exists!” Copyrightwhen I have no way of knowing a world in which a dog does not exist. For as long as I have existed I have lived in a world where dogs exist, so it makes no sense to say, “I wonder that the dog exists” when there is no known alternative case to which I could compare this case. Yet it is wrong to think that when

Wittgenstein deems it nonsense to craft such a sentence he likewise deems it unimportant.27

Instead, the experience of wonder that the dog exists—or put differently, that the existence of the

26 Wittgenstein, Ludwig “A Lecture on Ethics”. The Philosophical Review, Vol.74, No. 1 (Jan. 1965) pp. 3-12 27 Here we must bear in mind Wittgenstein’s view on language. Propositional language (which is used to describe the world) deals with sense perception and descriptive “facts” of the world. We can talk about our sense perceptions of the world and others can judge, using their sense perceptions, whether our language matches the “facts” of the world. But ethics and aesthetics cannot be expressed using propositional language. They are “nonsensical,” but not “senseless.” Ethics and aesthetics are transcendental and cannot be spoken about but they can be witnessed or experienced. See Stengel, Kathrin. “Ethics as Style: Wittgenstein’s Aesthetic Ethics and Ethical Aesthetics” Today, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Winter 2004)Draft for a good discussion of this. dog is a miracle—is wonder in an absolute sense. The experience is not relative to any other possible experience but it is an experience of wonder nonetheless.

According to Wittgenstein, this absolute experience of wonder cannot be spoken about— it is aesthetic and as such can be felt and shown but never described using propositional language, for it “runs up against the boundaries of language.” This is an experience that

Wittgenstein would call “beyond significant language” and “inexpressible;” yet he would stress that while it cannot be logically framed in propositional language it can, however, be witnessed—it “shows itself.”28 Wittgenstein uses the example of wonder to show that ethics and aesthetics cannot truly by described in language, but that they exist nonetheless. Wittgenstein’s distinction between absolute and relative wonder aligns closely with the two aspects of wonder I have proposed here. The first aspect of wonder, i.e. curiosity and the impulse to investigate, aligns with wonder in the relative sense. We are curious when we see an abnormally large dog and may seek to investigate it further. When it comes to theCopyright wonder that a dog exists at all—a Wittgensteinian example of wonder in an absolute sense—we can really only wonder in the second sense, or aspect. We merely find ourselves in an aesthetic state of mind, a state of admiration and amazement.

Both Kant and Wittgenstein suggest that aesthetic experience cannot be spoken about.

For Kant, aesthetic experience ceases once the object admired is articulated or connected to a concept. For Wittgenstein certain aesthetic experience, like that of wonder in the absolute sense, is not something that can be spoken about at all. Thinking about aesthetic experience in this way urges us to question authoritative or dogmatic descriptions of the world. I suggest that the

28 Wittgenstein, Ludwig Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. G.K. Ogden. New York: Dover Publications, 1999. 6.512 and 4.1212 Draft aesthetics of wonder here described are challenged by more dogmatic political, scientific, religious, or even mystic descriptions of the world. If we adhere to such descriptions of the world or objects in the world without question, we have closed ourselves off from wonder, both inquisitive and aesthetic. In our insistence on describing and explaining the world we lose the ability to wonder at it, which includes appreciating it aesthetically. What we lose is more than just the aesthetic state of mind described above but also the free play of the senses and emotions characteristic of aesthetic experience.

When Kant speaks of an aesthetic state of mind it covers the sensory perceptions and emotions that travel through the mind. Recalling the words of Fisher above, wonder is marked by sensory perceptions and emotions that stem from “the pleasure of amazement, and delight in the thing itself.” If, by closing ourselves off from wonder we lose these joys of aesthetic experience, we ought to want to challenge or disregard the authoritative or dogmatic explanations mentioned above, at least from time to time. Copyright I believe this is what Wittgenstein had in mind when he declared, “Man has to awaken to wonder—and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.”29 We should note here that Wittgenstein seems to be speaking of dogmatic science. Science, through the thrill of discovery and the creation of elegant or sublime theories, can itself be a cause of wonder. But, as Wittgenstein warns, we should beware of dogmatic scientific claims that cut us off from wonder, that “send us to sleep”.

Let us turn to an example of an experience of wonder and flesh out the two aspects described above. Eric often hikes in the mountains, and he often repeats his favorite trails. As he hikes up over a ridge, he earns his first unobstructed view of a spectacular mountain peak. At

29 Wittgenstein, Culture and ValueDraft, 1930. this moment on this trail, he often finds himself in a state of wonder. He feels dislocated from his previous state and is transported away from it. Eric appreciates the mountain aesthetically and thinks the best way to express this appreciation is to look at the mountain and think, or say,

“What a wonder!” Perhaps Eric takes this aesthetic perspective a bit further, and says to his friend that it appears as though “the mountain’s soft cap of snow keeps it warm during the winter.” His friend is a botanist and doesn’t care much for his interpretation, because he is coming from a scientific perspective. He responds with something like: “no, the snow is frozen precipitation that typically gathers at higher elevations, and as it melts it feeds the rivers and streams that irrigate the valleys and meadows where trees, plants and grasses can then grow.”

Which interpretation is correct? The answer is that both can be considered correct; it is not the case that one interpretation is right and the other wrong, but rather that the interpretations stem from distinct perspectives: aesthetic and scientific. From these distinct perspectives, they can both be right. “The mountain’s soft cap of snow keepsCopyright it warm in the winter” is an interpretation that arises out of an aesthetic perspective of the view of the mountain. From this perspective, the mountain is seen as a whole, as a unified phenomenon. It is also viewed with some degree of aesthetic distance. The botanist’s interpretation, on the other hand, is more in line with what we may call a reductionistic, scientific perspective, which views the mountain not as a whole but a collection of parts, each playing a specific biological role. The question about which perspective is better, then, depends on the attitudes and interests of the people involved, it depends on what a particular situation calls for. Scientific perspective is clearly better if one wishes to learn about the snow’s ecological function, but if one seeks to enjoy the beauty of the momentary glimpse of a snowy mountain peak, an aesthetic perspective is clearly superior. Draft Within aesthetic perspective there is a sense of artistry involved, as the subject places his own interpretation or perspective on the world. Perhaps new perspectives and interpretations, when they do occur, require the experience of wonder. To become the artist of our world through new perspectives and interpretations requires a break from old ones, and this break in a sense marks the experience of wonder. The majority of perspectives and interpretations we have of the world are given to us through various forms of authority, and wonder is often the result of breaking free of these dogmas or authoritative interpretations. Wonder does not occur in a vacuum, but within the normal chronology of life events. And it may be the case that we must be “awake” to wonder in order to experience it. Being awake may require a loosening of the hold of authority.

So how does one get to the point where such wonder occurs? It is not as if one can merely say to oneself, “I’d like to wonder now” and an experience of wonder ensues. We do not often question events in our lives; the vast majority of externalCopyright events and our own actions occur unconsciously. However, wonder is inquisitive and for us to experience it we must break out of unconscious habit. Wonder requires a certain openness to new ways of thinking and, indeed, a relaxation of old ways of thinking before it can take hold. There must be some loosening of restraints in our thinking, a process by which we become aware of the “gap” between thoughts.30

A certain mental tension exists when thought follows authoritative interpretations of any sort.

One focuses one’s mental energy on replicating what one has been taught by authority and is thereby closed to new interpretations. In such a mental state wonder is impossible, but as this tension eases wonder may emerge in its place. In this case, wonder succeeds a pre-wonder state marked by the easing of mental tension caused by dogmatic and routine ways of thinking.

30 I am indebted to Kathleen HigginsDraft for this idea. Wonder, then, requires an already open and independent mind. The greater the influence of authority, the lesser the opportunity for, or even the possibility of, wonder.

The Fertile Ground of Liberalism

Liberalism, and the enlightenment ideals that rose with it, makes a determined effort to resist easy acceptance of authoritative interpretations and dogma of all kinds. This is not to suggest that authority plays no role in liberal societies, or that every liberal is walking around with an entirely open and independent mind. Nevertheless, liberalism does encourage the use of one’s own faculties rather than reliance on ideas passed down. I do not intend to expound all the ways in which liberalism is friendly to freedom of thought and freedom of , but we can review the basic Millian ideas for liberal society to gain a workable understanding. Mill was interested not just in liberal democratic institutions, but the way that individuals within liberal societies were given freedoms to think for themselves. Copyright Mill’s famous On Liberty places the tension between individual and society in stark relief, attempting to identify and define “civil, or social liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual.”31 Whether or not a society respects the nature and limits of societal power determines its liberality. Mill likewise helps us to understand the true range of individual freedom. As Gertrude Himmelfarb concludes, On

Liberty leaves us with “what , more than anyone else, bequeathed to us: the idea of the free and sovereign individual.”32 Mill’s theory of liberty focuses on necessity of free thought and free discussion (speech) for the emergence of truth, and further on the need to look

31 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb (New York: Penguin Books, 1981), 59. 32 Ibid., 8. Draft past one’s own prejudices and understand the perspectives of others for true knowledge.33

Moreover, Mill set out to understand the ways in which society—not institutions, but the collective body itself—affect or threaten the freedom of thought of individuals that comprise it.

Over and above the political institutions required for individual freedoms, collective opinion also poses a threat independence of mind. According to Mill: “There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs as protection against political despotism.”34 Indeed, liberal individuals are not guaranteed freedom from authority merely by living in a liberal regime; they must also remain vigilant against the tyranny of collective opinion.35

Unsurprisingly, the inner life of individuals –their “internal culture”—occupies an important place in Mill’s theory of liberty. Indeed, Mill argues that “the appropriate region of human liberty” comprises “the inward domain of consciousness,Copyright demanding liberty of conscience in the most comprehensive sense, liberty of thought and feeling, absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological….”36 In other words, easy acceptance of authoritative or dogmatic interpretations on all subjects should be avoided in a society that is truly liberal. Opinions from authorities may be

33 Consider Mill’s famous quotation: “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.” Ibid., 98. 34 Ibid, 63. 35 He also notes humankind’s proclivity for controlling the thought of others: “The disposition of mankind, whether as rulers or as fellow citizens, to impose their own opinions and inclinations as a rule of conduct on others is so energetically supported by some of the best and by some of the worst feelings incident to human nature that it is hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of power; and as the power is not declining, but growing, unless a strong barrier of moral conviction can be raised against the mischief, we must expect, in the present circumstances of the world, to see it increase.” Ibid., 73 36 Ibid., 71. Draft accepted, but only after being weighed and measured by individuals themselves. They cannot be accepted unquestioningly.

Liberalism, as represented by Mill, serves the purpose of loosening the restraints of authority—thereby loosening the restraints on our thinking and leaving us more open to wonder—on a grand scale. The suggestion here is that liberalism provides fertile ground for a strong sense of wonder (which is not to say it takes us all the way there) and therefore opens up possibilities for spiritual fulfillment outside of the traditional sources advocated by liberal critics.

To make the matter clearer, we might say that liberalism is a good match for skepticism, which is in turn a good partner to wonder. Skepticism is a powerful way to destabilize, and thereby mitigate the influence of, the authority of conventional wisdom and public opinion because skeptical citizens tend to be wary of not just propaganda and slogans but dogmatic theories of politics, science, and religion in general. Indeed, the way skeptics live, in practice rather than theory, provides an alternative to conventional wisdom andCopyright public opinion. But isn’t skepticism marked by its lack of spirituality? By its lack of any guiding or fixed content? Isn’t spiritual emptiness a near synonym of skepticism? Here I have suggested that wonder acts as a sort of spiritual orientation for a skeptic. A skeptical person’s resistance to authoritative descriptions and interpretations and curious nature enable a strong sense of wonder. This sense of wonder constitutes a sort of spirituality. The aesthetic state of mind that is a result of wonder is a state of spiritual fullness.

At a minimum, we can conclude that wonder is a possible source of spiritual fulfillment even for an “atomized” or disconnected liberal citizen. There is also reason to believe that liberal societies are especially conducive to the experience of wonder. I will stop short of judging whether wonder canDraft save liberalism from a spiritual malaise, but it should be taken seriously as an important source of spiritual fulfillment, and liberal critics are far too quick to declare liberal citizens bereft of spiritual nourishment, irrevocably disconnected from the things that truly matter. We should look deeper into the ideas central to liberalism to find pathways to spiritual fulfillment, and wonder is a good pathway to start out upon.

Copyright

Draft