Moral Ontology in the Age of Science: A Philosophical Case for the Mystery of Goodness by Joseph Morrill Kirby A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Institute for Christian Studies Copyright © 2018 by Joseph Morrill Kirby Moral Ontology in the Age of Science: A Philosophical Case for the Mystery of Goodness Joseph Morrill Kirby Doctor of Philosophy Institute for Christian Studies 2018 In this dissertation, I attempt to convince an audience of modern naturalists that Socrates’ famous moral thesis—that we should prefer to suffer injustice rather than inflict it, because it is impossible for an unjust person to be happy—is true. Rather than logical proof, however, I focus on questions of rhetoric and of spiritual practice. In short, I argue that the existential truth of Socrates’ claim only begins to manifest for those who adopt a particular curriculum of spiritual training, which combines the pursuit of moral goodness with the pursuit of self-knowledge; this training, however, needs to be undertaken under the aegis of a philosophical rhetoric that first opens us to at least the possibility that Socrates might be right. In the first two chapters of this dissertation, therefore, I focus on rhetoric, as the attempt to destabilize the common naturalist confidence that their own scientific worldview is grounded on the true nature of reality, and that this unprecedented understanding shows Socrates’ moral thesis to be nonsense. Following this, from chapters three to five, I present the aforementioned spiritual curriculum: the “spirituality from above,” oriented towards moral goodness, in contradistinction to the “spirituality from below” that is oriented toward self-knowledge. After presenting the logic of this bivalent practice in chapter three, I then explicate it with reference to the philosophies of David Hume and Richard Rorty (chapter four), and then Plato and Nietzsche (chapter five). Finally, in chapter six, I consider what accepting the truth of Socrates’ moral thesis would mean for the way we live our everyday lives, under conditions of peace, in which the question of whether to suffer or inflict injustice will likely not be a pressing existential concern, and the question of what it actually means to be just will always be unclear and disputed. i Acknowledgments I would first like to thank my supervisor Ronald Kuipers. Without Ron’s willingness to let me explore these ideas, freely, without necessarily knowing where I was going, this dissertation could not have been written. At the same time, Ron also provided me with the right amount of direction, to keep these free explorations focused on the simple necessity of actually producing a completed dissertation. My goal was always to write something that would satisfy the demands of academic philosophy, but which would also be relevant (and readable) to non-philosophers who have an interest in these subjects. It might have taken a bit longer than usual, but I think we have succeeded in fulfilling both of these constraints. Also, I must thank Ron for his conscientious editing as we got closer to the finish line, even as his time came under increasing pressure from an expanding list of new responsibilities. Let me also express my gratitude to some of the other senior members at ICS: Bob Sweetman, whose course on “Rhetoric and Philosophy” in 2013 first furnished me with the seed that slowly grew into this dissertation; Nik Ansell, whose “Biblical Foundations” course in 2010 opened my eyes to the possibility of Biblical interpretation as a vehicle for spiritual and philosophical insight; and Lambert Zuidervaart, whose course on Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action, way back in 2007, first opened me to the idea of doing a PhD at the Institute for Christian Studies. On that note, let me also thank the people who have generously supported this institution over the last half century. Finally, I would also like to thank my dear wife Nanako, who thought she was signing up for a four year PhD program, only to end up on an eight year odyssey that seemed, sometimes, like it would never end. We are almost done now, and the next phase of our life together is beginning to take some interesting new shapes. ii Table of Contents Introduction . 1 Perennial Objections to Socrates’ Moral Thesis . 1 Modern Naturalism and the Socratic Moral Thesis . 5 Outline of the Argument . 12 1 On the Rhetoric of Suffering . 19 Introduction . 19 1.1 The Rhetorical Power of Suffering and the Rationality of Traditional Authority . 20 1.2 The Rhetoric of the Socratic Moral Thesis . 24 1.3 Science and the Rhetoric of Morality . 27 1.4 The Rhetoric of Suffering and the Crucifixion of Jesus . 30 1.5 The Rhetoric of Religion and the Culture of Modern Naturalism . 35 1.6 The Ontology of War and the Ontology of Mystery . 41 1.7 The Rhetoric of Mystery and the Rationality of Naturalism . 47 1.8 The Ontology of Mystery and the Danger of Madness . 51 Conclusion . 57 2 Naturalist Moral Philosophy and the Catastrophe of Thinking . 59 Introduction: The Catastrophe of Thinking . 59 2.1 The Doctrine of the Subjectivity of Values . 64 2.2 The Whatness and Thatness of Morality . 68 iii 2.3 Inverse Theodicy and Naturalist Moral Philosophy . 72 2.4 Daniel Dennett’s Scientific Morality . 76 2.5 Life and Security as Moral Ontology . 81 2.6 Mackie’s Inverse Theodicy of Disenchantment . 85 2.7 Summary of the Argument . 90 2.8 The Ambivalence of Traditional Authority . 91 Conclusion: The Dilemma of Mutilation . 94 3 The Curriculum of Spiritual Religion . 98 Introduction . 98 3.1 The Spirituality from Above . 106 3.2 The Spirituality from Below . 111 3.3 The First and Second Temptations of Christ . 116 3.4 Radical Hope in the Thatness of the Good . 120 3.5 Origen’s Interpretation of the Three Books of Solomon . 125 Conclusion: Spiritual Religion and the Dilemma of Mutilation . 132 4 The Spiritual Practices of David Hume and Richard Rorty . 139 4.1 David Hume’s Spiritual Practice . 140 4.2 Hume’s Response to his Philosophical Descent . 145 4.3 Hume’s Ontology of War . 150 4.4 Richard Rorty’s Spiritual Practice . 156 4.5 The Incomplete Historicism of Rorty’s Nietzsche . 161 iv 4.6 The Incomplete Historicism of Richard Rorty . 165 4.7 Rorty and Heidegger . 172 Conclusion . 176 5 The Temptation of Pleasure in the Abyss . 180 Introduction . 180 5.1 The Virtue of Aporia in Plato’s Early Dialogues . 183 5.2 The Temptation of Pleasure within the Aporia . 186 5.3 The Danger and Promise of Pleasure in Plato’s Dialogues . 189 5.4 Kirkland’s Plato and the Spiritual Curriculum of Neoplatonism . 195 5.5 Nietzsche’s Practice of the Spirituality from Below . 198 5.6 The Relationship between Art and Truth in Nietzsche’s Thought . 204 5.7 To Recreate all “It Was” into “Thus I Willed It” . 211 5.8 The Craving for Pleasure and the Terror of the Abyss . 216 Conclusion . 224 6 The Utility of Myth within the Ontology of Mystery . 226 Introduction: The Socratic Moral Thesis and “Normal” Life . 226 6.1 The Interpretation of Myth as a Technique for the Spirituality from Below . 230 6.2 Contrasting Interpretations of Genesis . 236 6.3 Žižec’s Interpretation of the Crucifixion and the Fall . 241 6.4 Interpreting the Third Temptation of Christ . 246 6.5 The Third Temptation of Christ and the Moral Vocabulary of Naturalism . 255 v Conclusion . 263 Conclusion . 267 Bibliography . 276 vi 1 Introduction In the Gorgias, Socrates argues that “doing what’s unjust [is] worse than suffering it,”1 not only because doing what is unjust is bad or shameful, but also because it is impossible for an unjust person to be happy. As he puts it, “the admirable and good person, man or woman, is happy, but … the one who’s unjust and wicked is miserable.”2 In this thesis, I argue for the truth of this claim: that despite all appearances to the contrary, and when understood in the correct way, Socrates is telling the truth—which means that we, too, can only become happy by struggling to become just. Perennial Objections to Socrates’ Moral Thesis It would be customary to begin a philosophical argument of this sort by defining exactly what Socrates means by words like “good,” “happy,” “unjust,” and “miserable.” Against this normal procedure, however, I will instead begin from the opposite end of the rhetorical spectrum, with a description of some of the immediate objections we might want to raise against Socrates’ claim, based on our own everyday understanding of these terms. As we will see, many of these initial objections were as viable in Plato’s time as they are today.3 In the Gorgias, for example, Polus makes the obvious initial rebuttal, arguing that Socrates’ claim is clearly refuted by the unjust yet happy Archelaus, who, through a series of betrayals and murders, became the tyrant of Macedonia. Polus argues that, in spite of these crimes, Archelaus “remains unaware of how ‘miserable’ he’s become, and feels no remorse either.”4 In Pluralism and Philosophy (2000), philosopher John Kekes makes a similar point. The “religious-moral 1 Plato, Gorgias, trans. Donald J. Zeyl, in Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), 474b. 2 Plato, Gorgias, 470e. 3 To be clear, when I cite the words of Socrates in this dissertation, I am referring to the Socrates that Plato portrays in his dialogues, primarily the Gorgias and the Republic. I am not concerned with what the real, historical Socrates may or may not have said, or how Plato’s depiction might deviate from this historical person.