ISSN 0014-1690 The Ethical Record Vol. 97 No. 1 February 1992

CONTENTS Page Do Non-Believers need Ritual? Barbara Smoker 3 Discovering Ideology George Walford 5 The Philosophy of Signs of C.S. Peirce C. Wertheim 9 Memories of the Ethical Church Derek L. Paul ' 13 Separate Muslim Schools Barbara Smoker 14 Letters 16

Editorial

We have all been saddened by the death over the New Year of Les Warren, a long-time member of the Society and a member of the General Committee. A full obituary notice will appear in the next issue.

This issue of the ER contains two contributions which evoke nearly extinct cultures. One is an unsolicited account by Derek L. Paul which describes a stage in the development of humanism which seems very strange to me, and doubtless others. Certainly for me, it has a great charm. I appeal to any readers with similar memories to write them up and submit them. Photographs and copies of the humanist hymn books that Derek mentions would be most welcome, they will be copied and returned. This is with a view either to publication in the ER, or to be used in whatever exhibition or book is produced for the forthcoming bicentenary of SPES.

The other contribution is the letter from L.G. Smith, responding to some remarks in the previous editorial. I reprint it in full so that this very typical and symptomatically revealing specimen of that sensibility formed by the Popular Front is in the public domain. It expresses the nationalism, the dishonesty and the conservatism of that political culture whose major axis was the CPGB. Smith suggests that I was 'unaware of the conditions obtaining at that time', he implies that if I was 'aware' then I would accept his interpretation. He goes on to suggest that this defect is due to my tender years having deprived me of the 'experience'. This argument is of the same type as that used by South Africans who supported Apartheid against its European critics. The argumentis conservative because it rests on the assumption that experience is a pure, raw, theoryless datum, and that theory is an ephemeral and airy construct. It further assumes that the possible subjects of experience are homogeneous: that anyone in that time and place would have the same experience and the same views on it. Smith writes that like McColl 'we were all guilty at the time of an inability to see the effects of the seige mentality ...' If by 'we' he refers to British Stalinists then he may be correct. If by 'we' he means marxists or revolutionaries, then he is lying. Criticisms of the USSR had appeared in the 1920s by Alexander Berkman and by Emma Goldman; Ante Ciliga's The Russian Enigma was published in London in 1940; Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed appeared in 1937. These criticisms were not from an 'ivory tower': anarchists and Trotskyists were been murdered behind Republican lines by Stalin's agents. These criticisms went far beyond Smith's weaselwords that continues on page

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we 'found ourselves aware of at least a few disturbing facts'. It was not even as if these 'disturbing facts' were admitted and defended; but that they were denied and those who exposed them were systematically vilified. This was Comrade Harry Pollitt in 1938: 'the glorious achievements of socialism within the Soviet Union's frontiers - achievements in the teeth of Trotskyite sabotage at home and Trotskyite plotting abroad' (The World Hails Twentieth Anniversary of the Soviet Union, Moscow, 1938). It is amazing that Smith can tell me that I do not understand 'working class unity' when he is still defending a tradition which smashed any workers organisations which failed to toe the party line. His letter shows that the Stalinist tradition of historical falsification is still being kept up: 'we did not obey directives from anybody, not even Stalin' indeed! The British Road to Socialism was actually written by Uncle Joe! One of the features of Popular Frontism was its displacement of class politics by appeal to constructed national traditions. This continued into the CPGB's cultural politics of the early '50s, which emphasised 'Britishness' over alien American culture - see Arena special issue June/July '51 The USA Threat to British Culture. I suggest that this was the political background to the folk-song revival and that it should not be seen just in the rosy tints painted by Smith. This nationalism reappears in the anti-German chauvinism that Smith concludes with. He is quite right that the Vatican-dominated culture which now faces many millions is horrific; there could hardly be a more telling condemnation of the old 'Peoples' Democracies' than that their citizens came to even prefer the Vatican. Smith thinks that I am a 'cynic' and that the 'fight is now lost'. His fight is lost - good riddance. But with the collapse of Stalinism the road to the recovery of the communist project is now clearer than it has been for decades.

At a meeting of the Policy and Programme Subcommittee Steve Norley suggested that an issue of the ER should be a special one on the future of SPES. Whether there should be a special issue or an ongoing debate is an open question. Contributions on the future of SPES are invited.

Finally, will all contributors please ensure that MSS are clearly legible. A couple of recent submissions have been on very faint computer print-outs, which causes problems. If the writer who sent in an unaddressed handwritten letter on Theocaris would like to resubmit it following the guidelines on p.3 then it may well be published. •

2 Ethical Record, February, 1992 DO NON-BELIEVERS NEED RITUAL?

Barbara Smoker Summary of SPES talk 23 June, 1991

In its widest sense, ritual covers any kind of behaviour specifically stereotyped for particular recurring circumstances or occasions, and might be said to include the instinctual behaviour of most animal species for such biological purposes as courtship, nest-building, or the establishment of hierarchy. Much human behaviour is of a similar nature, but, as a conceptualising species, man deliberately builds on the instinct for ritual as an aid in the control of the complexities of human society.

Every area of human society — whether tribal areas or areas of activity — has its own particular rituals. For instance, in the western world the handshake is widespread, as an indication of peaceful intentions, though its original practicality — to make it impossible to draw a sword — no longer applies. Ritualistic words are uttered at the same time, and one phrase used on first meeting that is peculiar to England — and is especially ritualistic in that though it is in the form of a question it is answered only by the same question — is "How do you do?"

Narrowing the kinds of ritual to annual festivals, we have many based on the changing seasons, often in an earlier stage of civilisation as reminders of agricultural work to be done at those times. Then there are the personal "rites of passage" — that is, ceremonies to mark a turning-point in life — such as birthday parties, particularly on coming of age, with such integral rituals as blowing out the candles on the cake; and, of course, weddings and funerals. It was natural that from the earliest times there should be a religious component to these ceremonies and that the god-men should become involved with them.

In fact, it is religious ceremonies and liturgy that are mainly associated with the word "ritual".

If there is some positive need in most of us for various social rituals, do those of us who have eschewed all religious belief need to replace religious ritual with something comparable?

It depends partly on one's individual temperament, but even more, perhaps, on the cultural expectations of the community at large. In this country, there is not a great demand for secular naming ceremonies, as only a small proportion of the Christian (and nominally Christian) population of Britain nowadays has their babies baptised. This is even more true of confirmation. In Scandinavian countries, on the other hand, confirmation is still the norm, so the greatest demand on their humanist organisations is for a secular citizen's confirmation ceremony, without which the young people from non-religious families would feel that they had not been recognised by the community as having grown up. In this country, however, this is not so. Contributions should conform to one of the Membership of the Society includes subscription following standards: to The Ethical Record Non-members may sub- On Disc - Word Star, Word Perfect, MS Word. scribe to the journal for E6/year. Include clearly legible print-out. Contribution should be sent to the Editor, at Typewritten- A4 paper, double-spaced with wide Conway Hall. margins, clear ribbon. Deadline for contributions for any month's issue Handwritten - A4 paper, narrow lined with is the first day of the preceeding month. margin. Printed, with clear distinction between capitals and non-capitals.

Ethical Record February, 1992 3 Church weddings are on the border-line, and during the past few years there has been a steady increase in the demand for secular wedding ceremonies to follow the minimal legal formality at the register office (or, occasionally, to replace a legal wedding altogether) and for analagous ceremonies to affirm the commitment of gay and lesbian couples to one another and help them to "come out" as a couple among their friends and (sometimes) relations.

However, the one ceremony for which most people feel a definite need in Britain is the funeral; and it is still quite usual for non-churchgoers arranging funerals for people who were also non-churchgoers (and even non-believers) simply to leave the funeral-director to arrange for a clergyman to officiate — though there is no legal requirement about it. The result is almost always unsatisfactory, for the officiant rarely takes the trouble to find out anything about the dead person beyond the name and age, so there is nothing personal added to the traditional ritual, which is therefore based on an inappropriate belief in a future life and is the same for everybody.

Nowadays, with more and more people consciously rejecting the religious beliefs of their family backgrounds, such ceremonies are unacceptable (or, at least hypocritical), for many families. They are then faced with the choice of putting up with the religious ritual (whatever their mental reservations), together with the absence of personal relevance; cutting out the ceremony altogether; or having an analogous ceremony, without the religious bits and with more personal content. It can sometimes be quite a dilemma, and cause family upsets.

For instance, an atheist who used to be a fundamentalist Christian and whose wife still is one, asked me what he should do about their respective funerals. If she dies first, he would be expected to arrange a religious funeral for her; on the other hand, if he dies first, having requested a secular funeral, this would only upset his wife and others close to him, who would probably ignore his request anyway. My reply to him was that the form of a funeral generally means more to the religious person than to the non-believer, so he should be magnanimous about it and be prepared to arrange for his wife the religious funeral she wants. In any case, it would be appropriate to her life — and appropriateness is surely the main requirement from a secular-humanist viewpoint. As for his own funeral, he has now done his best to resolve the problem by leaving his body for medical research or teaching — as I have done myself, partly for the same reason — but, of course, one cannot guarantee that one's executor or next-of-kin will arrange this or that the teaching hospitals will want the body when the time comes. Though the person concerned will know nothing about his funeral, it could make a difference to his posthumous reputation and to religious propaganda if it is assumed that a religious funeral indicates a death-bed conversion.

If it is decided to have no funeral ceremony of any kind — whether or not because the body is to be used for medical purposes — this often leaves the bereaved family and friends, however rational, feeling cheated and empty. For most human beings, it is an important therapy to have their feelings openly expressed at a time of bereavement and to participate in a public acknowledgment of the life that has finished — especially if that life and personality are appraised, honoured, and celebrated, as in the secular-humanist form of funeral. Also, a funeral gives friends and relations a special opportunity to come together, to share their memories of the person who has died and to help one another come to terms with the death. But these needs can be met by a memorial meeting instead of, or subsequent to, a funeral ceremony.

The secular funeral eliminates any reference to a supposed future life — except for the continuing influence of the dead person's life and work — and puts the emphasis on the life and personality that have been. Secular funerals of this kind have been provided by the Ethical and Secularist movements, as well as the Chartist, Socialist, and Co-operative societies, for well over

4 Ethical Record, February, 1992 one-and-a-half centuries on behalf of their members. But in the past few decades, and especially since the publication of a number of books on secular-humanist funerals in the last two or three years, there has been a rapid increase in the demand for such funerals by agnostic and non-committed families, and even by those that simply have the complication of mixed religions or hostility towards the Church.

It has become more common for family members and friends to act as officiants themselves,particularly with the help of the RPA leaflet on funerals or the BHA booklet Funerals Without God(compiled by Jane Wynne Willson), but in many cases (perhaps most), there is no one who feels able to do so, either because of too much emotional involvement or lack of experience in public speaking. In such cases a secular-humanist officiant is required —but, although more people in the humanist organisations have recently been volunteering to be trained to join the panel of secular-humanist officiants, it is often difficult to meet the demand for officiants in some localities, and more people are needed (especially the early retired, with experience of public speaking) to come forward to fill that role. •

DISCOVERING IDEOLOGY

George Walford Summary of SPES talk, 17 November 1991

Attitudes towards ideology are changing. With people beginning to accept that it affects their own movements it is becoming respectable, and I shall try to put before you some of the ideas that lead in to the theory presented in my book Beyond Politics. This is known as systematic ideology; it explains a good deal that other theories leave untouched, and it presents the major ideologies as forming a system.

An ideology is made up of ideas — I use that word in the broadest sense, to include purposes, beliefs, values and assumptions. These are not just abstract, academic ideas; they affect behaviour. And they are not just separate, isolated ideas; they fit together, they form a set. An ideology is like an uncompleted jigsaw puzzle; you can add other pieces but they have to be the right size and shape.

I can't analyse each new idea offered me for truth, logic and rationality; apart from other difficulties there just isn't time. And if I accept them all, or accept and reject them at random, I shall quickly go mad. I need a quick and easy way of testing new ideas, and my ideoloo provides this. I accept the idea if it fits into my ideology and reject it if it doesn't. I don't think this out every time; mostly I just accept the ideas that feel right. But when I do stop to examine what I'm doing. I find that they feel right because they fit.

Sometimes a new idea doesn't fit well, but the evidence supporting it is so strong that I am forced to accept it. When this happens I have to make room for a by shifting the ideas I already have, and the bigger the set that has to be moved the more effort this takes. It is often surprisingly hard to change even one idea belonging to an ideology, and this is because the small stone you think you are trying to pick up is in fact the tip of a buried rock.

An ideology has the peculiar feature that it can affect people without their being aware of it. This separates it from other sets of ideas, such as philosophies and sciences, and we have to ask how it comes about.

Ethical Record, February, 1992 5 When I start to think about my own behaviour, I soon find that some of the ideas that affect me are ones I didn't know I had. Reaching the bottom of a flight of stairs I stumble. We say I trod on a step that wasn't there, and in order to do that I must have had the idea that the step was there. I didn't know I had this idea, but it still affected my behaviour. If I sit down and begin to list all the ideas that affect my actions it turns out that ones I didn't know I had are greatly in the majority. Just sitting in a chair involves chains of ideas leading even to ideas about the nature of the universe. In a universe in which gravity kept reversing itself, so that every ten minutes the floor became the ceiling. I wouldn't be sitting there all peaceful and relaxed. Unless I make an effort most of these ideas remain hidden from me, but they still affect my behaviour. An ideology is like an iceberg, much the greater part of it remains below the surface.

My idea about the extra step being there was false, but I acted as if it were true, and we are constantly doing this; we have to if we are ever to get anything done. As I stand here talking I have no doubt that this is a real event, but I've had this experience before; talking to a group of people, quite sure it was really happening. And then I woke up to find myself in bed. But this memory does not stop me talking. Knowledge absolutely true and certain is not to be had; we have to behave as if our ideas were completely reliable while knowing, if we stop to think about it, that they are not.

Now we can say that my ideology is a set of ideas which affect my behaviour, most of them not present to my awareness; I act as if they were true while knowing, if I stop to think about it, that they may be false. I am constantly doing what my ideas indicate, and this usually gives the result I want; if not, I quickly realise this and alter them. At least, with little actions I do this; with bigger things it gets more difficult. For example: Is there a God who sends each of us to heaven or hell after we die? I am satisfied that there isn't, but I don't know this with absolute certainty. I accept this idea that there is no such God because it fits in with the rest of my ideology, but I may be wrong. I may have a nasty surprise coming.

Ideology affects my behaviour, but not all of it; only the things I mean to do. I get hungry, display the knee-jerk reflex, prefer jelly to custard. All these actions, and many others, are not affected by my ideas and ideology does not come into it. In individual behaviour ideology is only one influence among others, and often a minor one.

But I dont't always act as a separate individual; when I find other people who have ideas and purposes similar to mine I join them and act as one of a group. Organisations and institutions of all sorts are made up in this way, and here ideology comes into its own, in its effects on groups made up of people who come together in pursuit of a common purpose.

When a group has been formed in this way the personal features of its members offset one another. You like custard while I prefer jelly and the group shows no preference either way. Within an ideological group psychological influences cancel out. It is moved by the things its members have in common, their ideas and pruposes. Which is to say their ideology.

As we noticed earlier, ideas come in sets, but the connections between them are not always obvious. As I stand here talking I shift my eyes around the room. I turn over sheets of paper, and if I get tired I may sit down. Each of these actions is purposeful, therefore influenced by my ideology but there doesn't seem to be any connection between them. I choose them simply because they are convenient, useful, effective; they help me make a

6 Ethical Record, February, 1992 point. Or, to use a more general term, they are expedient. And in saying that we have found the link between them. A great many of my decisions I make simply because it is expedient to do so. Whether to step off wit h the right foot or the left, to wear the blue suit or the gray, to travel by bus or tube. I am making these choices all day, every day, and there are no rules that apply to them. I simply choose the most expedient action.

Evidently, my ideology is able to accept the ideas which underlie these actions; they fit into it, it shares this quality of expediency with them. Here we have the expedient ideology. The ideas belonging to it have been accepted because they were pleasant or convenient, and it allows me to accept any other ideas of this sort.

Over large areas of behaviour moral or scientificstandards just don't apply. And these areas are not trivial. Eating, drinking, sleeping, going from here to there, picking things up and moving them around. These are the fundamental activities,and the expedient way of doing them is the right way; there is no other standard. Expediency is the ideology of ordinary, casual, easy-going living, of family life, of play, companionship and enjoyment. It is the default ideology, the one we fall back on when not trying to meet demands from outside.

We all spend a great deal of time acting by it, but it has limits. When people are acting expediently none of them can ever know what the others are going to do when out of sight, and this means they can only operate in small, face-to-face groups. You can't run a railway if the signalman leaves the signal-box whenever he feels like it. Using only the expedient ideology you can't even have agriculture. In hungry times the expedient thing is to eat all you have, but farmers can't do that, they have to preserve the seed corn and the breeding cattle. People who depend on agriculture have to be thrifty, fore-sighted, responsible, careful, reliable, sometimes brave. They must stop acting entirely by expediency and, for part of the time at least, follow the rules. They have to adopt the ideology of principle.

The same condition applies to all the other activities where people co-operate on any large scale. The Church, the police, the educational system, the medical services,the Army, Navy and Air Force, the law, conservatism, industry and business. Each of these is able to do its job because each person engaged in it knows the others will behave in a principled way.

You ean still have people who always act by expediency,and in fact every society has a great many of them. But it also has enough principled people to make it pleasanter and more convenient for the expedient people to act, in public affairs, mostly as if they held the ideology of principle, even though they don't. This second ideology, the ideology of principle, makes organised society possible.

I will bring forward one more ideology, and then we can look to see how they fit together. This next one is the ideology underlying science.Scientists engaged in their professionare not satisfied to do the expedient thing, and although they do get things right in principle — or try to — they don't stop there. They count and measure, and strive to make their counting and measuring ever more accurate. The scientific ideology is made up of accurate ideas and it will only accept accurate ideas. If scientists engaged in their profession are offered inaccurate ideas they either reject them or they get work turning them into accurate ideas so they can accept them.

Here we have the ideology of precision, and although scientists are the most obvious people holding it they're not the only ones to do so. Logicians also seek accuracy, so do accountants, and so does liberalism. Liberalism is not satisfied, as conservatism tends to be, with being democratic in principle; it wants democracy spelt out in accurate detail, precise democracy. And I have to mention one other group that holds this ideology.

Ethical Record February, 1992 7 Here the humanists and freethinkers first appear. With the ideology of precision authority begins to lose its grip, people start thinking independently. They become critical of established religion, and while some become nonconformists others turn to humanism and freethought. Humanists and freethinkers put religion under the microscope, treating it the way a scientist will treat a specimen sent in for analysis. Precision does seem to be exactly the word for what they are aiming at.

We now have in front of us these three major ideologies: expediency, principle and precision. There are other ideologies after precision, but they get very theoretical. The groups holding them are small, and we already have enough complications for one talk. I will say a bit more about the three we've been looking at, about the way they fit together, and then wind up.

They don't just stand as it were side by side, and they don't always conflict, though certainly they do sometimes. As I was saying earlier, they form a system; that's why this . theory is called systematic ideology. A mental diagram will be Useful here, and one suggested by Adrian Williams presents the ideologies as nested, one inside the other. In the order: expediency, principle, precision, each ideology enables the next one to develop.

It is by acting expediently, by eating when we're hungry sleeping when we're tired, and so on, that we keep ourselves alive. Expediency forms the outermost nest, it maintains the human life that makes the more developed ideologies possible. Also, humans being a gregarious species, they find it pleasant and convenient to live in groups rather than by themselves.

Expediency provide the people and the community that enable principle to operate. And the ideology of principle enables precision to function. You have to get things right in principle before you start worrying about being exactly right. Take religious thinking as an example. So long as people feel free to believe whatever they like a humanist can't make much impression on them. It's all too indefinite, arguing with it is like trying to cut a piece of water in two. The humanists and freethinkers need institutional religion; they need its ability to set up organised creeds and doctrines. After religion has hammered religious principles into firm shape and got them widely accepted, that's when the humanists can get to work showing what is wrong with them. Institutional religion works by the ideology of principle, and it opens the way for the humanists and freethinkers with their ideology of precision. In many other ways, too, principle enables precision to operate. Once you've got commerce going you can start keeping exact accounts; when you have your thinking roughly organised you can go on to strict logic, and when you have an organised, established society able to provide education, funds, equipment and security, you can have scientists. But not before.

So we have expediency enabling principle to work, and principle making a place for precision. This is how systematic ideology sees them fitting together.

This picture of the ideologies as nested shows the outer ones protecting and serving the inner, but actually it's more complicated than that. The inner ones also help the outer. They may not mean to do this but they can't help themselves. They do it mainly by criticising and opposing them.

For two centuries and more religion has been under attack from humanists and freethinkers, and one result is that priests no longer have people burnt alive in the name of a god of love. By its own standards religious practice has improved, and it owes much of

8 Ethical Record, February, 1992 this improvement to criticism from humanists and freethinkers. Business is rendered more efficient by criticism from accountants, thinking on all sorts of subjects benefits from scrutiny by logicians, and science has led industry beyond hand manufacture into mechanisation. The precision activities have helped the principled ones in all sorts of ways, and these developments benefit the people who live entirely by expediency. Among other things, they enable more of them to survive.

Our society today does some terrible things. But after all the wars, disasters, massacres and mass starvation, there are far more people alive than ever before, and when you come to compare one society with another, that is the main standard, the ability to support human life.

All the ideologies have contributed to this, including the ones we haven't mentioned this morning. But the ones that have done most of it are these three : Expediency, principle and precision. Without these ideologies most of us would not be here today to worry about our troubles, and I would like to end by giving you a slogan: UP WITH IDEOLOGY! •

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SIGNS OF C.S. PEIRCE

Christine Wertheim SPES talk, 17 November, 1991

In recent years there has been much talk about the relationship between Mind and Matter, between what we now more commonly call Consciousness and the grey matter of the Brain, the particular organ in which this consciousness is said to be seated. The renewed interest in this question seems, at least initially, to be inspired by developments in physics, for the new conceptions of matter which twentieth physics has been producing seem to be closer to our every day notions of Mind than they do to our conceptions of what Matter is. Relativity, in which the position of the viewer plays an intergral part in determining the features of a system, quantum mechanics, which recongnizes no stable 'objects', only fields across which potential objects may manifest themselves, and more recently chaos theory in which, though everything is determined by the initial conditions and mathematizable laws, we can never say what the next instant in a system will be like, for the laws are such that they do not produce continuously predictable changes, but lead to sequences of instances whose variety may be so vast it seems as if the system is mutating randomly.

All these features we are accustomed to regarding as familiar when we think of the way the Mind behaves, but come as a shock when found to be operative in inanimate Matter. "Now," scientists seem to be saying, "if Matter has the qualities of uncertainity, unpredictability and system-wide-responsivity which were once seen as peculiar to Mind, then perhaps Mind is, after all, merely a form of, or at least a product of, Matter, and not, as Descartes maintained, a totally different substance." This solution to a long-standing problem is extremely interesting, and after some three hundred years of so-called Dualism, certainly welcome. However, it becomes obvious when one reads the work of the American Charles Sanders Peirce that, irrespective of the solution, the problem itself is a product of the very perspective these scientists are trying to overcome. For in reading this man's work, one has the distinct impression that from his perspective this problem is simply irrelevant, for within his framework the world is not divided into any such substances in the first place.

For Peirce the Mind-Matter problem is based on a distinction between Mind and Matter that is itself a problem needing investigation. It is not something to be assumed blindly in the first place. The problem is that we in the modern western world are so bound up in our

Ethical Record, February, 1992 9 watered-down version of the Cartesian framework we merely question the relations between its term, not the terms themselves. But for Peirce these terms have to be questioned. However, in his view this kind of questioning does not fall within the province of physics, but must be dealt with by the more general science of Metaphysics, which hands down principles to the more particular physical sciences. Likewise, Metaphysics itself takes its principles from the preceeding science of Logic. Thus we see, Peirce believed in a strict heirarchy of disciplines in which the more general are presupposed by the more particular. His overall hierarchical schema is:-

SCIENCES OF RESEARCH A — Mathematics — practice of the Imag(e)-in-a(c)tion B — Philosophy — study of what externally imposes on Imagination Phenomenology - study of the General Categories of Phenomena (only 3 in Peirce's schema) 2— Normative Science - study of Norms. Esthetics - study of the Norms of Value

Ethics - study of the Norms of Acceptability Logic - study of the Norms of Validity Grammar - study of Classes of Signs Critic - study of Conditions of Truth in Arguments Methodology - study of Methods used in pursuit of Truth 3— Metaphysics - study of the Consequences of the Structures of Logic on the General problems of Reality

PRACTICAL SCIENCES — study of particular aspects of Reality Physics - study of the Environment Physics, Chemistry, Biology, etc. Psychics - study of Humanity Psychology, History, Linguistics, Sociology, etc.

Here we see that Logic is itself a long way down the list, preceeded by Ethics, Esthetics, Phenomenology and finally Mathematics. One may argue about the positioning of these disciplines, but when considered as a whole system Peirce's hierarchy displays remarkable consistency.

Charles Sanders Peirce was born in 1839 in Boston Massachusetts during the flowering of America's finest intellectual culture. Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau and the James family all lived there. In this atmosphere, the young Peirce, whose intellectual talents were early recognized and rigorously trained by his mathematician father, acquired an enormous capacity for wonder. His degree was in Chemistry, but he was either employed in or wrote on fields as various as astronomy, geodesy, mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, theology and philosopy, to mention only a few. If anyone could claim to be a modern Renaissance man it was Peirce. But above all he was a logician.

Today, we tend to think of Logic as almost a branch of mathematics. The reason for this is that, along with the mathematicians Boole, Frege and De Morgan, Peirce developed a kind of language, known as either quanified or relational logic, which looks like a form of mathematics. A logical language, of which there are now hundreds, is actually just a special kind of tool for making representations of the relations between entities. That is, logic does not study individuals or things, but takes as its object the relations between individuals and/or things. Modern logicians are simply craftspeople who use logical tools to study problems about

10 Ethical Record, February, 1992 the relations betwen people and/or things. Here we can begin to see why Logic preceeds Metaphysics, and why Metaphysics must preceed Physics. Peirce however, though he developed such a range of representational forms he rivals even Matisse and Picasso for inventiveness and versatility, was as much interested in the theory behind them as he was in actually using these tools. As he saw it, Logic is a form of representation, and if the practice of Logic is that form of representation, which takes as its object the relations between things, then the theory of Logic is simply the theory of how relations may be represented in the first place. For Peirce, the term Logic predominately refers to this theory, not to the practice which utilizes the tools developed from it.

Logic has been studied and defined in many ways, but the principle which was to form the basis of Peirce's theory is taken from Medieval, not Classical philosophy. Unlike many others in this modern world, Peirce did not believe that between the fall of Rome in the fourth century AD, and the ressurection of classical culture a thousand years later, there was a period of intellectual darkness. He read all the Medieval works he could get his hands on, and from this reading became convinced that their conception of a representation as a system of signs was the most tennable so far proposed. Further, he understood what none of the European scholars, for whom later in this century the sign would assume a central importance, understood, namely that a sign is not essentially a bipartite, but a tripartite entity. Peirces understanding of the tripartite nature of signs is directly related to his work in mathematics, which had produced a thesis that three is both the minimum and sufficient number of primary categories necessary to cover all conceptions of experience. It is no accident that this is the very number enshrined as sacred in the Christian religion in the form of the Holy Trinity. Medieval theology was a great deal more than we enlightened Moderns like to give it credit for being.

In Peirce's view, a Sign is a relation between a sign proper, called the representamen, an object, which the sign represents, and an interpretant which is the effect of this representation on whatever entity acknowledges the sign. (see diag I). It is this notion of the interpretant as the effect of a representation that distinguishes Peirce's theory of signs from all others. Further more, every interpretant is itself a sign having its own object and arousing in its turn its own interpretant which is a sign having its own object, and so on, ad infinitum. (see diag 2).

Diagram I:- The Tripartite Semeiotic Relation

Semeiotics = the theory In tepretant = (ef feet of Rep resen tat ion) of Signs

Sign = (vehicle of Representation) Object = (Purpose of Rep resen tat ion)

Ethical Record, February, 1992 II Diag ram 2:- The Infinite Signify ing Cha in

0 original

So 1 o — Si

Su

Thus, in Peirce's view, every act of signification generates an infinite chain of signs which has as its limits the original object and the ultimate interpretant. These infinite chains of significant acts are what forms Reality, which in its generality is the object of Metaphysics.

It is here that we can begin to see just how radical Peirce's vision really is, for in these continuously significant chains the distinction which matters is not that between Mind and Matter, but that which holds between the object, the representamen and the interpretant, any or all of which may be composed of either mental or material substances, or something else altogether. For instance, a red traffic light is a sign, or representamen, signifying a law which which states that one should cease driving right now, right here. It is the colour of the light, not the light itself that is the sign, though of course this colour must be embodied in some medium. The object of this sign is a social law, to wit, that Thou shalt not continue to drive at this point, while the interpretant is firstly the considered action of putting one's foot on the brake, and secondly, after one has been driving for some time, the instinctual knowledge of this law, which knowledge determines that without even thinking one simply puts one's foot on the brake pedal immediately the red light flashes. (Of course, if the 'driver does not understand the reference of the sign, no significant act takes place and no one stops. But society would break down if none was capable of recognizing signs. Peirce's theory is simply an attempt to understand how it is possible that we can learn to recognize signs, and what is more, to be actually affected by them.)

We see from the above example that the distinction between Mind and Matter is the very least of our problems here, for in this case we have as our object a Law, while a mere Quality, the colour red, is our sign, and an action leading to a piece of knowledge which is also a Law, is our interpretant. Where, in the old framework which divides the world into Mind and Matter, one would like to know, should we place these 'qualities' and 'laws'? It is precisely because Peirce recognized that both qualities and laws are as much a part of Reality as actual 'things' or 'ideas' that he developed his radical vision to encompass them. When physicists stop trying to write philosophy for themselves and start paying attention to the work of men like Peirce who have devoted their lives to this difficult region of human knowledge, then they will begin to see their own work in terms that are not determined by the dictates of their own inadequate understanding of Descartes. Then maybe we too will come to understand that they have taken as the objects of their investigation, along with the Reality of the actual things and ideas that abound in this universe, the Reality of its qualities and laws as well. Only then can we stop objectivizing into "substances" what Matters to us, that is, what we Mind about. •

12 Ethical Record, February, 1992 MEMORIES OF THE ETHICAL CHURCH

Derek L. Paul

I first started going to the Ethical Church in Queensway, Bayswater with my sister Marguerite about 1937 when I was fourteen and still at school.

The 'services' were conducted by Harold Blackham, that fine mind who, with his combination of intellect, compassion and pragmatism, has always personified Humanism in my eyes. In his academic gown he presented a most dignified 'ministerial' figure in the circular church. His 'sermon' was the high point of the service, always a most thought- provok ing discourse.

The choir, up in the gallery, was deeply impressive, trained and conducted by Dr. Charles Kennedy Scott, a leading light in choral music at that time. There was a remarkable bass cantor who, in his workaday life, was a porter on the Great Western Railway at Paddington. I especially remember his powerful rendering from Brahms's Four Serious Songs — '0 death, 0 death, how bitter art thou'. The fine soprano was Ursula Edgcumbe, the sculptress. We had large printed service books of secular `hymns' to words of the poets, Tennyson, Shelley etc. The 'congregation' was never large. I recall Marjorie and Leslie Kew, Gladys Todd and others I can no longer put a name to. Usually included were two elderly ladies who always made a point of leaving before the collection was taken.

There were regular lectures and discussion groups on weekday evenings in 'the room below' as the crypt was referred to. I recall one in particular with the title 'Bachelor Motherhood and Plural Marriage', advertised of course in the New Statesman, which naturally intrigued my young mind long before the Permissive Society emerged. The two elderly ladies attended, though they can hardly have been candidates in either category.

There was also the Friday Club which organised country rambles on Saturday afternoons and Sundays. I believe there were also social events on Friday evenings though I never went to any. But walking ('hiking' in those days) was my thing and we went far afield into the Green Belt which was much 'greener fifty years ago. We were generally led by Eric Webb, a delightful character, who worked for one of the big London estate agents. He was fond of his pint (especially Benskins) at the pretty country pubs where we arrived for lunch. After imbibing he would chant, in ecclesiastical sing-song:Those who are in a drunken stupor know the way. Those who are not in a drunken stupor do not know the way'. He liked to end the walk with a 'thrill' which, in winter, might mean descending a steep ice-bound slope to the station. I remember an elegant young woman who turned up for the hike in high-heeled shoes and a fur coat.

We always included a magnificent tea, at ninepence or a shilling a head, a truly lavish spread. I have always had a hearty appetite (perhaps a euphemism for greed) and still today regard eating as a process of tidying up the table. So I was called upon to clear the board when the adults were replete. With boundless young energy I can recollect running twice up and down lvinghoe Beacon while the rest of the party had only struggled up half-way.

The dear old Ethical Church was eventually sold and, I believe, provided funds for the BHA headquarters in Prince of Wales Terrace. I feel that if it still existed, in its old form, it might catch the spirit of the times and be popular with young people today, though it would need as charismatic a figure as harold Blackham to carry it along. • Ethical Record, February, 1992 13 SEPARATE MUSLIM SCHOOLS

National Secular Society Press Statement, from Barbara Smoker Saturday's inaugural meeting of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain brought together fundamentalist Muslims of various ethnic groups, prepared to sink their differences in opposition to any British laws and social practice that they regard as inimical to the Koran and Muslim interests.

Dr Kalim Siddiqui, leader of this so-called parliament, reiterated the Muslim demand for public funding for separate Muslim schools — predictably, and unanswerably, making the point that, while Muslims have to pay through taxation for Anglican, Roman Catholic, and a few Jewish, denominational schools with grant-aided or voluntary-aided status, they are denied equal rights for their own schools.

This is something about which the National Secular Society has been warning our politicians and education authorities for decades past. We did so, for instance, in April, 1986, when the Education Committee of the London Borough of Brent misguidedly recommended, in the name of racial harmony, that the Brondesbury Park lslamia Primary School should be accorded voluntary-aided status. Had this succeeded, a flood of similar applications would have followed. So far, the Government has been able to turn down all applications and recommendations for such schools on the ground that (largely because of fanatical prohibitions, such as not allowing musical instruments within the school walls), the curriculum fails to meet the national requirements for public funding. But if one of these schools should remove the grounds of this official rationalisation, where would we be?

It is surely bad enough that we already have in this country Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Jewish schools that segregate children according to their religious background. The resulting divisiveness — as seen at its worst in Northern Ireland — would be vastly increased by the proliferation of denominational schools for the more recently immigrant religions, segregating their children from the host population, on the basis, de facto, of skin colour as well as sex and creed, and, moreover, dividing them from one another and importing to this country the religious strife and bitterness that exists on the Indian sub-continent. Indeed, most Muslim parents, realising that state schooling is in the best interests of their children, do not support the separate education demands of the fanatical, short-sighted minority which the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain exemplifies.

The National Secular Society has, since its inception in 1866, urged the abolition of all church schools, and now points to the added danger that their existence poses today: in the name of equity, it gives Muslims (and Sikhs and others) the same right to state- subsidised segregated schooling as Christians and Jews — with all the social harm that such a policy would be sure to build up for the future.

It is therefore high time that Parliament (that is, the proper Parliament) began to phase out state subsidies to denominational schools of every kind, so as to discourage segregated schooling.

We urge all political parties, teachers' unions, educationists, responsible religious leaders, communicators, and members of the general public, to press for legislation to phase mit the public financing of all denominational education and to support the transfer of any redundant church schools to the appropriate LEA.

14 Ethical Record, February, 1992 This would make economic sense, too, since not only is the dual system of education notoriously wasteful of resources but at least 85% of the capital cost and 100% of the running costs of church schools are paid for out of the public purse.

The National Secular Society is also opposed to the other Muslim educational demand: that their traditional faith and practices should be adequately provided for in the state sector. It is not for the school to provide for any religious teaching or practice. The school ought not to be used as a part-time mosque — nor, for that matter, a part-time church, synagogue, or temple. There are enough out-of school hours for religious instruction and prayers without trepassing on the time required for legitimate school subjects.

If religion is taught at all in the county schools (as required under the present law, which we wish to see repealed), then certainly Islam should take its place alongside other world religions — provided, of course, that the teaching is objective and that alternative world view-s (disbelief, including secular humanism, as well as a representative range of beliefs) are accorded comparable time and respect.

Thus, in the light of fundamentalist Muslim demands, three things need to be legislated out of existence, as a matter of urgency: the public funding of all denominational schools, the religious clauses of the Education Reform Act, and, in a different sphere but for similar reasons, the blasphemy law. •

HUMANIST HOLIDAYS LONDON STUDENT SKEPTICS

Humanist Holidays: Easter 1992 February, 3rd 1992 In Torquay ( 17th - 21st April). Dr John Hosfall debuking the Gaia Comfortable, pleasantly-situated hotel hypothesis near railway station. February, 17th 1992 All rooms with facilities. The history and current status of the £102 per person half board. Flat Earth Society by Ellis Hillman. Bookings by 1st March. Rooms 3c, University of London Union Enquiries to: Building, Mallet Street, London WC1. Gillian Bailey, 18 Priors Road, 7.30 pm for 8.00 pm prompt start. Cheltenham, GI52 5AA. Full programme from Tel: 00242 - 239175 Mike Hoe/gate 081-882 2606

Ethical Record, February, 1992 15 LETTERS answer my original request for reliable, factual information. The quotes in von Cohn Mills — Amersham, Bucks. Holdt's articles are frequently unreferenced, which would make it difficult if not I note that Bob von Holdt's article was impractical to verify them even if the reprinted (ER November 1991) as a documents were available to humanists response to comments made by Nicolas generally, say in the Conway Hall Library. Walter, and by me (ER passim). To simplify Why not request copies of documentation, matters, may I use 'the Movement' to cover both from Green critics of the Movement both the Movement and its ancillary like Bob von Holdt, and from the secular organisations, the Community, the humanist critics he alludes to, for those who Humanist Party, and Green Future. wish to research the Movement and have Bob von Ho1dt appears to have decided the time? that the Movement was a cult before he 1 declined to add to my reply about the became involved, and nothing has happened predictions about the Gulf War because I either during his involvement, or since, to lacked the time to do so, and this is still so. I change that view. What would he reply to don't have to agree with, or defend, every the claim that he has been embittered by the prediction that was made about the Gulf experiences which forced him to leave the War — in fact I specifically pointed out that Movement? He claims that the Movement is some of them were incorrect. I don't have to hierarchical and not democratic, but this answer everything the Editor writes on this does not prove the frequently made claim subject; I don't necessarily accept his that the Movement is quasi-fascist. He paraphrase of the predictions. Nor are the criticises the Movement as anthropocentric, predictions necessarily central to the Peace but this is a criticism of humanism Movement's case against military action in frequently made by Greens, and not a the Gulf. I'm not a spokesman for the Peace specific criticism of the Movement. There Movement, either. Were the predictions he are many humanists who would also claim criticises actually made on behalf of the to be Greens. Peace Movement? My original request was sparked off by I take the view that the firing of the oil reading an acrimonious dispute on Green wells in the Gulf was a catastrophe with Net between memberi of the Green serious global environmental effects. If this Committees of Correspondence and of isn't the same as a global environmental Green Future. If the Movement does use catastrophe, then so be it. smear tactics in response to criticism, The fact that Iraqi troops withdrew from reading this didn't convince me that their Kuwait after military action doesn't prove Green critics didn't do the same! Roger that military action was necessary or Picklum, a GCoC activist, had circulated sufficient to cause Iraqi withdrawal. dossiers to back up his claims to Greens in Economic sanctions were not shown to have America and Europe, which led Green failed before engaging upon military action, Future to inquire how he could afford it. I and economic sanctions still continue long haven't been able to see or obtain copies of after Iraqi withdrawal. This doesn't prove this dossier, although I know of people in there was no causal link between military this country who claim to have copies; action and withdrawal, and I never perhaps others might have better luck. suggested there was none. What I do Material on the Movement has been posted suggest, and suggested at the time, is that an on Green Net this year, but the number of end, desirable though it may be, doesn't files and their length made it quite justify any means. This isn't moralising, but impractical for me, in common with most acceptance of causality! Green Net users, to download and read it. If the Editor doesn't accept the label of Rob von Holdt's article tends to confirm MacCarthyite, why does he draw attention some of the previous claims, but it doesn't to the connection of the erstwhile CPGB

16 Ethical Record February, 1992 with the Peace Movement? This does read Barbara Smoker's lecture on a later page. like defending a shaky consensus by She makes this clear within the first two or marginalising dissent. Such a connection three lines. You appear to be unaware of the doesn't add anything to the argument that conditions obtaining at that time. Perhaps mistaken predictions are a serious your years did not allow you to experience embarrassment and are being quietly those times. I could have said 'lucky you' forgotten. but then with all the pain we played an effective part in history and for those of us Ed's Note: The predictions that I mention will who professed Marxism at that time there be found in The Sunday Times, 3 March were very conscious decisions. We did not 1991. Such predictions are discussed in obey directives from anybody, not even Pundits and Patriots, Philip Towle, Institute Stalin. Long before media control in Britain for European Defence and Strategic Studies, allowed it to become a matter of public 1991. In my note to PE. Perry's letter ER concern most of us found ourselves aware of Novembver '91 I characterised McCarthyism at least a few disturbing facts about many of as 'defending a shaky and partly imaginary the things going on in the U.S.S.R. Some concensus by demonising dissent'. Colin Mills dropped out, most like myself, rationalised. has shifted to 'marginalising dissent'. It is not Life there must have been hard but it had I who 'marginalised the Peace Movement had its successes, and it had saved the world during the Gulf War; it was marginal - I am from fascism. Later on I came to realise that not evaluating that fact. Colin assumes that Stalin had sacrificed the Communist Party because I criticise this concensus then 1 am to this end. Under siege a man of that thereby in favor of that which supported the strength of will may do very evil things. war. This is nor so. Were there alternatives? I still do not know and now probably never shall.

L.G. Smith — London Colney, Herts. However the matter under consideration is the political character of Ewan McColl. I Since joining S.P.E.S. several years ago in do not know what sort of ivory tower your the hope that I should be able to participate political consciousness lives in but back in in discussion of a broad range of topics of the early fifties Ewan McColl started the relevance to our human condition I have folksong movement soon to be joined by found myself facing practical problems Peggy Seeger, Bert Lloyd and many others. which curtail activities as happens with It is now recognised as a major part of advancing age everywhere. I have attended British culture which has sustained itself in some meetings with enjoyment tempered spite of official tardiness in giving it the with a growing feeling that humanism, at place it deserves. In an era in which western least in this country, is severely blemished by culture achieved its greatest drift downwards an attitude of holier-than-thou-ism. The into becoming merely entertainment, he recent improvement in the Record has been showed us ordinary people how to accompanied by an even &eater tendency in participate in expressing our own feelings this direction as evidenced by the latest about our origins in a way that was pure (Dec/Jan) editorial. enjoyment. This of course, could be said to be among the aims of SPES though no In particular I note the references to closer to achievement after two hundred Ewan McColl. That he had his weaknesses, years. I think it should be said that McColl as have we all, is undoubted. You accuse was himself a force for humanism all his life. him of something of which we were all He recognised the humanity of ordinary guilty at the time. An inability to see the people and its roots far back in their history effects of the siege mentality into which to an extent that, if we were to draw up a socialism had slipped since the revolution. list of the forces working for the good in the This is of course the basis of the matter of twentieth century, he would be somewhere

Ethical Record February, 1992 17 near the top and 'official' humanism a long, communist to be coopted onto an executive long way down. II, this list were to rate body of CND. That was in 1961 and that effectiveness he would still be up there and was in spite of, not because I was a the humanist movement almost nowhere. It communist. The hostile response from most must be a matter of importance to us in the (but not all) of my comrades in the CP was society that due recognition be given to the enlightening. While many in CND had part played byn this individual in making come to realise that the real problem was in living history. 1 must plead for an apology the west and that the cost of atomic to the family of Ewan McColl for this error. weapons to the USSR was unbearable, in the CP their confidence in the Soviet While talking of communism in Britain it Communist Party blinded them to the may be of interest that, taking what I then weakness of the Soviet economy. thought to be a rational attitude for good or I cannot say much about the CP in recent ill to the horrifying events of that time in the years. All that is a long way behind me now Soviet Union lead me to the conclusion that but I will not stand by and hear the kind of the greatest political error of this century in malignity in which you indulge being this country and with, I believe, thrown at people who for all their mistakes repercussions worldwide, was the Ibrmation battled without reward and frequently at in 1920 of the C.P.G.B. It was not much use great loss, for peace and socialism. Perhaps though because by then the working class of your cynicism leads you to think because Britain had accepted the leadership of the that fight is now lost that you can join in the Labour Party with right wing labour in full current wisdom of pretending it did not save control. Taking the left out and isolating the world. Just watch! In the late nineteenth them in a small select band may have as well as the early twentieth century, when seemed a good idea at the time (Lenin socialism was ceasing to be an idealistic certainly approved) it left them forever dream and was becoming a realistic marginalised. There were countless possibility, an essential pillar of all socialist doorsteps I stood on in elections where they programmes was the ending of war. In 1917 paid tribute to the party and gave a that became a matter of practical politics. contribution to the funds and then said "But The war was brought to an end by the we are still voting Labour because they can revolution. For 23 years and then after the win, you can't". You Mr. Editor, may not second war for a further 46, over a large recognise the principal here expressed but part of the globe the battle was to prevent any of the blokes I worked with in war. We now know at what cost. engineering would have recognised it as working class unity, though they may not We also see what has now replaced this. have used that kind of cliche. Peoples who "endured" the cold war at terrible cost are again at each others throats. Activity in CND in its early years taught Germany is again the dominant figure in me also how difficult it was for communists Europe and the Vatican rules from Sea to to accept that they had no god-given right to sea or will do when Germany has again lead all struggles everywhere. You say that a established the right of the Ustashis to rule "lying culture" of British Stalinism "rubbed Croatia. This time though there is no, off' onto the proponents(sic) of CND in counterbalance. Germany is no longer Nazi their long association with members of the because it does not need to be and as long CPGB. In your eyes at least it appears to as it is winning will not need to be. That have left a very dirty smear. In fact it was democratic veneer is very thin and the many years before the CND leadership women of Poland and Eastern Germany accepted the fact of communist opposition now know from the bitter personal to nuclear weapons. It was very many more experience of the illegalisation of abortion before the CP recognised the genuineness of what it means to have the Vatican in control unilateralism. I believe I was the first of minds.

18 Ethical Record, February, 1992 Peter Cadogan — London, NW6 can only lie in the human genius itself

I am sure that Mark Neoeleous, like Brutus, P.S. As a matter of interest 1 have sent a is an honourable man. I write to identify copy of this letter to Nicloas as chairman of what seems to me to be the ultimate the General Committee. background of our ditTerence. Ever since the seventeenth century thoughlnl people have been side-lined into S.E. Parker — London, W2 one or more of three cul-de-sacs. The first was natural science and its assumption, Mark Neocleous is quite right to criticize iinplicit or explicit, that all real kmiwledge Peter Cadogan's idealization of Nietzsche. was open to measurement and mathematics However, he does not help to clarify and that the humanities and human Nietzsche's philosophy by his simplistic relations were something else and of a claim that Nietzsche was primarily secondary order. The second was the concerned to overcome "the threat of Benthannte (and Thatcherite) focus on socialism". Socialism was only one of the money and the market as the great many "symptoms" of "degeneration" mediator, the hidden hand. The third was attacked by Nietzsche — although he did the marxist-socialist assumption that it was make a remarkably accurate prediction of class that moved us. its forthcoming clash with the "territorial All three have failed us just as certainly as imperative" in The Will To Power aphorism we have been failed by the alleged 125 to which Neocleous refers. Christianity of the Churches. So after four Nietzsche, as 1 pointed in my talk to the failed gods we find ourselves, without SPES on June 18, 1989, was above all bearings, in the waste-land of consumerism. concerned to solve what he saw as the This is one reason why I was glad to problem of "the death of God". This had stand in. at 48 hours notice, to give my created for Nietzsche an agonizing void lecture on Nietzsche. He is/was one of the which he sought to fill with a new ideal: the handful of people who have not made any Superman. "All beings have created of the four great mistakes instanced above something beyond themselves, are ye going and who, with hindsight, can be seen to got to be the ebb of this great tide'? Behold, I it substantially right. Today he is slowly teach you Superman". (Thus %mice coming into his own. Zarathustra). Nietzsche was first and The others include Bacon, Winstanley, firentost a religious prophet. Blake, Coleridge, J.S. Mill, Ruskin, Mark Neocleous is also wrong in claiming Christina Rosetti, Tolstoy, Morris, Gandhi, that by "slave mentality" Nietzsche means D.H, Lawrence, Camus, R.G. Collingwood, only "the working class". It is evident from John MacMurray, Dora Russell and our any reading of The Antichrist that he did not own W.J. Fox and Moncurc Conway. confine this description to the workers, but SPES, ever since 1793, has played an applied it to all who were Christian, indeed honourable part in this heretical tradition. to the weak generally. Long may it continue to do so! Finally, Peter Cadogan states that Blake But to sit back is to perish. The Society preceded Nietzsche in "unmasking" missed the 'green' opportunity of the Christian morality. In the very year of 'seventies and is still not at all sure where it Nietzsche's birth, 1844, there appeared Max is going. Matters arc coming to a head so Stirner's The Ego and His Own in which not rapidly how can we opt for less than only Christian morality, but all morality, is Jerusalem? And for that we shall need every unmasked in a manner going far beyond word of Blake's Albion and Nietzsche's that of Blake and Nietzsche. Zarathrustra in keeping with all those of the holistic prophets and philosophers who have discovered that the answer to our problem

Ethical Record, February, 1992 19 George Watford — London, N5 got past that: when he spoke of an ideologist he did not memi one who studied ideas Colin Mills' letter. commenting in some remarks of mine in the September issue, presents the standard Marxkt nimhination of strong language, weak argument. Peter NI. Lonsdale — London, 175 misrepresentation and thilure to understand. I did not say that communism has failed. Theo Theocharis (Dec. ER, p5) speaks of hut that it has lost even the illusory 'an irrational Popperian attitude'. I attended appearance of partial success. Since Karl Sir Karl's London University lunch-time was as careful as any other fonuneLeller to lectures (1961/2) and must say that he is far avoid putting a date on his prophecies, so from irrational. 'Do not say you have a long as class society continues we never shall theory. You have an idea. And if you want be able to say that Marxism has failed, only to see if it is a good idea attack it as hard as that it has not succeeded yet. I have little you can, and try to destroy it. Then. if it doubt that in 2092 Colin's successors will survives, you may have a good idea.' still he peering round that corner expecting Nothing could be more rational than that. to meet the revolution. Certainly rationalism cannot be based upon untested suppositions. His above words, But if he thinks that Marxism will remembered very clearly, make Sir Karl confinue to attract the attention it has Popper a first class rationalist. enjoyed since 1917 he is going to be a disappointed man. Its popularity, such as it was, arose from the widespread belief that it Nlargaret Chisman — Tring, Herts. did have some connection with the October Revolution and the USSR. With that gone I agree with all the points made in the (and the other "communist" countries not keynote address at the Annual Re-Union, far behind). Marxism will return to its especially having a three session conference. l'ormer condition as the hobby of a few This could be held at Conway Hall on a disturbed intellectuals. As Alan Brinkley has Saturday, with a session before lunch, one in Noted: "In America, at least. Marxism has early afternoon and one in late afternoon, reverted to 'dun it was in The beginning: a with coffee, a light lunch and tea provided pursuit confined to the tnodern equivalent of in the fee. Perhaps Eric could suggest the the 13thish Museum reading-room". That speakers and the Chairmen for the plenary reversion will not remain limited to sessions, and also for the group discussions. America. The Marxists are going to find It could turn out to be very well attended theniselves back in their black hole, crying and could bring Humanists together who do through the bars. forlornly trying to not normally meet each other much. persuade the rest of us to join them. Other than the Sunday events and It is an old Marxist trick to "refute", with educational courses laid on by SPES there is shouts of triumph, a claim which was never not much general Humanist activity in made. Systematic ideology has never central London — due to the structure of claimed to be "the systematic application of BHA groups based on localities. the science of ideas" (and if ColM has been The conference should have the aim, not expecting it to fit that description this may merely of intellectual discussion — however explain his difficulty in understanding it). much we all enjoy this — but to make some The phrase "science of ideas", with its forward thinking proposals. We must not implied limitations. better Ins the work of rest on any laurels — the struggle for a sane Destutt de Tracy, who introduced the term world is nowhere near won. "ideology"..lf Colin will read The German Ideology he will find that even Marx, crude though his thinking on the subject was, had

20 Ethical Record, February 1992 David Murray — lmndon NW6 remarks is a lecture in America, to an *educated audience', doubtless containing Adrian Williams ends his delence of .1ung many 'Jewish intellectuals' (quoting from against my criticism on a pedagogical mile. Williams). The context of the works that I so I will begin similarly: Adrian is not quote was Europe. unintelligent. but he is a poor student Williams makes much of the fact that the because he has no respect for the texts he Nazi Kurt Gauger's pro-Jung speech was studies, but evades their central themes and {nun a member of the SA and that it 'must constructs 'readings' on the basis of have been in the first hall of that year [1934] distorted fragments..lhis is evident in para. because it was June 30th that the smashing 3 of his letter. Ile begins by pointing out or the SA started, to be completed in a few that I did not claim that Jung was days'. The first assertion is correct - the personally a Nazi. but he then takes my speech was delivered in May. The second remark that Jung was 'in complicity with claim, and the implication that Williams Nazism' to mean a claim about .1wig's own bases on it, is false. The SA was not political behavior. I made it clear in toy talk completely 'smashed' in June. Its leaders and in the text of it IER. July/August 1991) who called for a 'second revolution' were that my concern was with the wthings of killed and the power of the SA reduced, but ung. it survived as an organisation. Gauger I quote passages which show that Jung's himself was in correspondence with Jung in view of women, of Jews, or black Africans, 1936, and throughout WWII was a member of race and nation and of modernity were of The German Institute for Psychological continuous with those of Nazi ideology. Research and Psychotherapy, known as the Williams manages to read some of these as 'Goring Institute'. There was no systematic being 'critical..in an indirect way'. Well yes, condemnation ofJung's theories hy the of course Jung offered criticisms after 1945 - NSDAP. The only putative fact that he would, wouldn't he! But at the same time Williams refers to as evidence for his he tells us that in the early '30s 'there were contrary claim is the unsupported statement not a kw things that appeared plausible and by Jung that the Terry Lectures were seemed to speak in favor of the regime'. suppressed and he himself 'figured on the Williams does not even acknowledge this Nazi black list'. Even if true, the first claim remark, never mind begin to consider what does not amount to much. That work could in Jung's position made it possible. All that have been suppressed because it claimed he can offer as an example of earlier that Nazism privileged the role of the State, criticism by Jung is the comment that 'Now whereas in fact Nazi theory subordinated we behold the amazing spectacle of states the state to the Party and the 'racial taking over the age-old totalitarian claims of community'. Adrian Williams tells us that theocracy' (P.uvhology and Religion, CW II, he has failed to find independent para 83, The Terry Lectures, 1937). This confirmation of this 'mainly because I don't follows a discussion on the effect of the know enough historians' — perhaps it is Protestant Reformation on the functioning because the claim is an invention ofJung's! of religious energy in the European psyche; Adrian's strongest criticism of my view of suggesting that its referent is Nazi Germany. Jung is expressed here: The Nazis It is followed by a comment about 'childish militarised a whole country... By theories of how to create paradise on earth': comparison Jung merely worked on a coming from someone of Jung's aristocratic theory to provide a basis for therapy... sensibility this suggests the Soviet Union. which acknowledged differences between the This is just the kind of vague fudging that sexes or different/racial cultural groups'. His his audience would have found congenial. defence ofJung at the same time trivialises Jung's defenders urge us to see him as a him. Jung regarded himself and was and is man of his time, 'in context'. It is significant seen by others as elaborating a philosophy that the context of these vague and liberal which will save humanity from the spiritual

Ethical Record Fehruwy, 1992 21 deadness of a machine age...materialism... would not be different individuals if they rationalism...reductionism...and so on. There were not unequal)...' (The First International is no doubt whatsoever that this is why he is and After. Penguin 1974, p. 346 - 7). But thought important. what is at issue here is not an abstract and All of his major themes are to be found in general notion of difference, but those Nazi ideology. Ern anti-modernism is precise and particular differences that figure continuous with Nazi neo-Romanticism in so prominently in the racist and sexist a just the sense that the themes of traditional discourse of Jung and of Nazism. rural (not Manchester) conservatism are. It is not marxism that asserts that They are continuous in the sense that J.R everyone is the same, it is liberalism, Jung's Stern writes of the relation between Nazi attacks on equality are an echo of the ideas and those of earlier reactionaries: 'the German criticism of the revolution of 1789: views he [Hitler] held and shared with his 'Herder reacts against the rationalism which associates had been without exception the contends that man is everywhere the same, staple of extremist German right-wing that the person who lives in Germany, in politics for some fifty years before 1918'. England, in Africa, is one and the same (Hitler - The Fuhrer and the People. Fontana, being ... It follows therefore that two nations 1979, p. 17). The fact that 'most British cannot have the same Volksgeist, the same people have never heard of Jung (Williams) national culture...man is the product of the is irrelevant. Jung is the figure of authority land which he inhabits, of the climate in who is referred to at all cultural levels to which he has developed'. (Jacques confer respectability on astrology, Godechot, The Counter Revolution - Doctrine mysticism, holism, characterology. What is and Action 1789-1804, Princeton University especially important about Jung here is that Press, 1981). The conceptual conflation of his writings express not just a neo-Romantic liberalism and marxism is another rhetorical assault on science but also are themselves device which Jung shares with Nazism. Why studded with the crassest and most and how this is made is a large issue, which reductionist scientistic claims - archytypes as cannot be pursued here. brain structures, the direct causal effect of I have no expectation that this reply will the earth on body and mind, the possibility result in Williams ceasing to deny the plain of a science that is pure description. Just this and evident meaning of those passages that I contradiction suffuses Nazi ideology. quoted in my talk on Jung: Ears have walls. The intellectual squalor of Jung's It is my hope that some others who are apologists is well-shown in Williams' attracted to that seductive and poisonous penultiamate paragraph: 'The impression ... charlatan will start to hear his siren song is that you think that anyone who expresses with a critical and resistant ear. views accepting differences between the sexes or cultural groups is effectively a Nazi'. Of course there are 'differences', that has SOURCES OF HUMANITY never been the issue. Williams asserts that I 4 exhibitions in the small hall. deny this because I am a marxist. There 14th-20th February — Emily Johns, have indeed been those who denied any Joan James, Irene Runayker. differences and did so because they were (or 21st-27th February — Ronal Best, thought themselves to be) marxists. There is Ali Yanka, Ursula Bayer. no warrant for this in Manc's own writings. 28th February-5th March — Indeed he asserts the opposite in a well- Maureen Sinclair, Valerie White. known work (well-known, that is, to those 6th-12th March — Linda Landers, who actually read Marx) usually called 'The Rosemary Phelpps, Wendy Meaden. Critique of the Gothe Programme': 'One person, however, may be physically and intellectually superior to another% he goes on to discuss 'unequal individuals (and they

22 Ethical Recorck February, 1992 PROGRAMME OF EVENTS

Lectures and forums are held in the library and are free (collection). FEBRUARY

Sunday, 2nd I I am Lecture: 'Whistleblowing - the ultimate treason?'. ProfessorGEam,D VINTEN. Whistleblowing is constantly in the media. Is it helpful and constructive in organisations, or counter-productive?

3 pm -Weill Acts" 'Pungartnik' with Diane Rose, performs the music of Kurt Weill and the lyrics of B. Brecht.

Sunday, 9th I I am Lecture: 'My nine years in an Iranian jail' - S. AZADI & 'Repression under the Islamic Republic' - an Iranian oppositionist.

3 pm Lecture: 'The A.N.C. - a radical critique'. BARUCH lintsoN South African historian, editor of Searchlight South Africa and former political prisoner will offer a marxist criticism of the A.N.C.

Sunday 16th II ant Lecture: 'Generic engineering and biological weapons'. DR SUE MAYER of Greenpeace will discuss how genetic engineering research undertaken by the military threatens to undermine biological weapons disarmament and how the technology, in other applications, may also threaten the environment.

3 pm Lecture: 'The early English encounter with Marx'. JOHN COWLEY. sociology lecturer at City University will discuss the life and politics of Ernest Belfort Bax (1854 - 1926), one of the first English interpreters of Marx.

Sunday 23rd I I am To be announced

3 pm To be announced MARCH

Sunday 1st I I am Lecture: Twilight of the Idles. MARK NEOCLEOUS argues that the contemporary post- modern turn to the philosopher Nietzsche illustrates a willful and dangerous ignorance of the implications of his philosophy.

3 pm To be announced

Sunday 8th It am 'The jab of humanism'. There is much debate as to what humanism can do for people and how people can use humanism to do things for each other. HARRY STOPES-ROE. SPES appointed lecturer considers this debate.

3 pm To be announced South Place Sunday Concerts - February 1992

2nd Diana Cummins (violin), Joy Farrell (clarinet) and Angela Hewitt (piano): Stravinsky - 'The Soldier's Tale' Schubert - Violin Sonata No I, A Minor Brahms - Clarinet Sonata No I, F Minor Bartok - 'Contrasts'

9th Musicians of the Royal Exchange, director Anthony Goldstone: Goetz - Quintet in C Minor, Opus 16 Rossini - Sonata for Strings No 3, C Major Rossini - Two Piano Solos Schubert - 'The Trout Quintet', D 667

16th Duke String Quartet: Bartok - Quartet No 2, A Minor Shostakovitch - Quartet No 8, Opus 110 Dvorak - Quartet in F Major, Opus 96, 'The Americans'

23rd The Greig Piano Trio: Haydn - Trio No 27, C Major Grieg - 'Andante Con Moto' Valen - Trio Opus 5 Mendelssohn - Trio Opus 66, C Minor

SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Registered Charity No. 251396 Founded in 1793, the Soeicty is a progressive movement whose aim is the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism, and the cultivution of a rational and humane way of life.

We invite to membership all those who reject supernatural creeds and find themselves in sympathy with our Views. At Conway Hall there are opportunities for participation in many kinds of cultural activitits. including discussions. lectures. concerts and socials. A comprehensive reference and lending library is available, and all members and Associatvs receive the Society's journal. The Ethical Retied ten times a year. The Sunday Evening Chamber Music Concerts hounded in 1887 have achieved international renown. Memorial and Funeral Services are available to member:. Minimum subscriptions are: Members lb p.a.: Lite Members 1)126 (Life Membership is available only to members plat least one year's standing). It is of help to the Society's officers irmembers pay their subscriptions by Bankers Order, and it is of funher financial benefit to the Society if Deeds of Covenant are entered into.

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