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2013

Book Review of Franklin I. Gamwell, Existence and the Good: Metaphysical Necessity in Morals and Politics

Matthew R. Petrusek Loyola Marymount University, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Petrusek, Matthew R. Review of Franklin I. Gamwell, Existence and the Good: Metaphysical Necessity in Morals and Politics (SUNY, 2012). Symposia: The Journal of the Department for the Study of Religion University of Toronto V (2013): 46-48.

This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Theological Studies at Digital Commons @ Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theological Studies Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons@Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 46! SYMPOSIA readings of Paul still persist in the present book by University of Chicago Professor volume, and demarcate a site of struggle Emeritus Franklin I. Gamwell, reaffirms and between modern interpreters. On the one side enhances the process theologian’s reputation of this struggle are those who use Paul’s for analytic power and systematic clarity in letters and the postcolonial posture as ciphers service of democracy and human rights. The for their own political engagements— text—in many ways a comprehensive scholarship and political action melded synthesis of Gamwell’s previous projects— together. Examples in the collection can be seeks to demonstrate that one cannot identify found in the emphasis on an “ethics of inter- and justify the existence and nature of the pretation” (p. 174), the plea to the “Christian human good, including the goods of human Occident” to “renounce its complicity in the rights and democracy, without engaging in colonial and neo-colonial enterprise” (p. 222), metaphysics. and the “lessons that Christianity must learn Gamwell commences by identifying and from Marxism” (p. 50). For theologians and scrutinizing three foundational theories of scholars of Paul in theological seminaries and morality that, on his reading, all fail to divinity schools this politically interested provide a rationally-warranted conception of approach is expected. On the other side of the the good: (1) liberal theories that uphold the struggle are scholars of religion in universities existence of universal reason yet reject the for whom this politically engaged approach is possibility of metaphysical inquiry and thus regarded as unacceptable, and considered the derivation of morality from the nature of symptomatic of a broader problem in the field existence itself; (2) classical metaphysical of biblical studies, namely, theology masking theories that uphold the possibility of deriving as objective scholarship. A book review is not a principle of the good from the nature of the place to adjudicate this issue, except to say reality as such, yet allow for the identification that postcolonial criticism can be pulled in of the good by means of negation; and (3) either direction: as another interpretive tool to post-modern theories that reject the possibility mine Paul’s letters as historical data; or, as of universal reason altogether and, thus, the another interpretive tool to mine Paul’s letters existence of a universal good at all. Gamwell for homiletic insights. The two are very sees Immanuel Kant as paradigmatically different. representing the first category, St. Thomas Aquinas the second, and Martin Heidegger the David A. Kaden third. Department for the Study of Religion Gamwell builds his alternative to these University of Toronto theories atop the foundational insight that the [email protected] claim “nothing exists” is logically absurd. To argue, for example, that we can only speak of the teleological good by means of negation— as Aquinas seeks to do by establishing an Existence and The Good: Metaphysical analogical justification for the existence and Necessity in Morals and Politics. Written by nature of God—is rationally untenable. If one Franklin I. Gamwell. Albany, NY: SUNY cannot say something positively univocal Press, 2012. x + 209 pages. ISBN about the nature of the good, then, Gamwell 1438435924. $24.95 US, $24.95 CDN. argues, one is open to the charge either of articulating nonsense (akin, he says, to Existence and the Good: Metaphysical asserting the existence of a “colorless yellow Necessity in Morals and Politics, the latest rose”) or to claiming, implicitly, that “nothing BOOK REVIEWS 47! exists”—which, Gamwell maintains, is prag- thought of Alfred North Whitehead and matically self-contradictory. Kant’s wholesale Charles Hartshorne, he devotes chapters 2 and rejection of the possibility of metaphysical 3 to precisely, if densely at times, spelling out inquiry on the one hand, and Heidegger’s this metaphysical vision. This culminates in rejection of universal reason on the other, do the demonstration of the existence of a being not escape this critique, either: Gamwell seeks who, in the author’s words, is “an eminently to demonstrate that both “Noumena” and temporal individual, who from everlasting to “Dasein” are ultimately reducible to the same everlasting has existed and will exist as the contradictory, rationally absurd assertion: ever-changing because of ever-increasing “nothing exists.” unifications of whatever has occurred in the Likewise, Gamwell argues that non- world” (8). teleological moral theories that seek to make- This divine being’s existence and nature, up for the deficiencies of Kantian ethics by according to Gamwell, can be demon-strated supplying substantive, positive content to the by means of rational reflection alone; indeed, categorical imperative—like those advanced it is this divine being’s very temporality—the by Alan Gewirth, Jügen Habermas, and Karl- fact that it exists in time—that not only makes Otto Apel—also fail to provide a rationally- it accessible to human reason, but necessarily warranted foundation for morality because so: each rational person, Gamwell argues, has they commit what Gamwell calls the a constitutive awareness, at least implicitly, of “partialistic fallacy”: in seeking to establish the divine being’s existence and totality, morality independently of any one, telic which he calls an “original belief.” It is this purpose, they end up, contradictorily, affirm- constitutive belief, in turn, that provides the ing the existence of one telic purpose: that all conceptual grounds for pivoting from action ought seek to affirm the reality that existence itself to the good itself, and in there is no telic purpose, which, Gamwell particular, the human good. By virtue of each argues, is a kind of telic purpose itself. person’s “original belief,” Gamwell contends, In the wake of rejecting these one not only necessarily knows the consti- alternatives, Gamwell moves to construct his tutive nature of existence, but also necessarily own theoretical grounding for a rationally- knows it as teleological, and in particular, as warranted conception of the good, which he “the concrete realization of unity in diversity” identifies as “neo-classical metaphysics.” His (11). One knows, in other words, that exist- position is “classical” in that it recognizes the ence properly understood constitutes the good, necessity of metaphysics—and, in particular, and it is this constitutive knowledge, in turn, theistic metaphysics—in order to make that generates the human capacity not only to rationally justifiable claims about the exist- make choices, but to be able to make moral ence and nature of the good, including the choices—that is, to choose to act in accord- human good. It is “neo,” on the other hand, ance with the comprehensive good that one because it rejects the claim common in cannot fail to know, or to choose against it. classical metaphysics that one can know the From and within this metaphysical and nature of the good by means of negation. In teleological framework, Gamwell then moves response, Gamwell seeks to identify positively swiftly but deftly in chapter 4 to elaborating and univocally the necessary constitutive on this conception of moral freedom and features both of existence itself (what he calls responsibility, which, in turn, he leverages and “metaphysics in the strict sense”) and of refines to demonstrate the existence of what subjectivity itself (what he calls “metaphysics he calls “social practices.” These practices, in the broad sense”). Drawing deeply on the authorized by and derived from the 48! SYMPOSIA teleological nature of the good, include the warranted principal of religious neutrality, foundational principle of “communicative thus solving the problem that Stout, in respect,” by which Gamwell means the recog- Gamwell’s mind, aptly describes but fails to nition that any claim a subject makes to moral redress. validity—that is, any statement an individual Encapsulating Existence and the Good is makes to explain and justify her actions— uniquely hazardous because Gamwell’s implicitly and necessarily affirms the right for systematic argument, like the metaphysical any other subject to contest it and make her system he so carefully describes, is own claims to moral validity. This principle, meticulously and syllogistically disciplined at Gamwell emphasizes, is implicitly rooted in every step, and so defies generalization. Yet the nature of the good but explicitly morally even in summary form it is clear that the neutral to competing moral visions. It does, project makes an essential contribution to nevertheless, establish the grounds for basic contemporary moral theory, both in general human rights. and in relation to the more specific issues of The principle of communicative respect human rights and the possibility of religiously also provides the foundation for a neutral democratic discourse. Even if one does constitutional principle of authentic religious not finish the book convinced of the rationally freedom, according to Gamwell. And it is demonstrable existence of an all-encompass- here, in the final chapters of the book, where ing temporal being who grows in ever- he moves from discussing social practices increasing actuality, perhaps the text’s great- more generally to the justification of democr- est strength is its capacity to illuminate the acy more specifically, and in particular, the rational weaknesses of alternative moral para- possibility of a genuinely religiously neutral digms with unassuming but devastating constitution. In an extended and generously- precision. Indeed, given that most contempor- argued conversation with Jeffrey Stout’s ary ethicists—including both Rawlsian “lib- Democracy and Tradition, Gamwell erals” and MacIntyrean “traditionalists”—still highlights the strengths of Stout’s critiques of appear to agree that Immanuel Kant has had what he calls “liberalism” and “the new the final word on the validity of metaphysical traditionalism,” defined, respect-ively, as the inquiry in general and metaphysical ethical claim that comprehensive visions of the good inquiry more specifically, Gamwell’s work do not belong in public discourse at all brilliantly provides a much-needed rejoinder. (“liberalism”), and as the competing claim Perhaps metaphysics is not dead after all. that religiously neutral discourse is impossible because universal moral reason is a fiction Matthew R. Petrusek (the “new traditionalism”). Yet, not The University of Chicago Divinity School surprisingly, Gamwell ultimately disagrees [email protected] with Stout’s contention that the solution to the standoff is to engage in what Stout calls “ethics without metaphysics.” One of the foundational insights Gamwell seeks to advance in the book is that we cannot, rationally speaking, cleave the former from the latter. Happily, however, the metaphysical reality Gamwell describes, and the nature of the good he locates within and derives from it includes the recognition of a rationally-